Sea Lord

to retrieve that flying rope and rerig it, and that, I knew, would take some careful work.

The rope was cut, so I needed some more to make its length good. George had some old rope lying in the yard, but I did not trust it. Instead, and taking exquisite care not to upset Sunflower’s precarious balance, I lowered myself into her cockpit. I stayed on the dockside gunwales, adding my weight to her stability. In a cave-locker in the cockpit I had some spare warps. I found one and tossed it up to the quay, then, still staying hard by the dock wall, I groped with the boathook for the rope’s bitter end.

The wind was carrying the cut rope away from me, out over the dark waters of the dock. I reached for the errant line with the boathook’s full length, but the weighted head made the implement much too unwieldy for such a delicate job. I slotted the heavy boathook back into place and pulled out the other one. That did the job quickly, snagging the wind-whipped rope-end that I drew towards me. I held on to it as I climbed back to the quayside.

It took five minutes to disentangle the rope from where it had blown itself about the shrouds. The wind dried me as I worked, but I was still bitterly cold.

I tied the cut rope to my spare warp with a sheet bend, then made a lorryman’s hitch in the warp. I threaded the loose end through the ringbolt, back through the hitch’s loop, then hauled it tight. I felt Sunflower’s mast come towards me as the rope took her weight. I made two turns and hitches to make the whole thing fast, then let out my breath. Sunflower was secure again.

“Clever boy,” said Trevor Garrard.

I turned.

He was no more than five paces from me. He held the knife loosely in his bandaged right hand, but it wasn’t the long blade which disturbed me, rather his face, which was lit by the bulb outside George’s office. He was utterly confident. Whatever happened now, and it was bound to be violent, this man had no fear.

“But you’re not so clever as you think,” he went on in a mocking tone, “because it was really rather obvious that you’d make your boat safe as soon as we’d gone, so all I had to do was stay in the yard.” He smiled in tribute of his own cleverness, then gave me a small mocking bow. “Good evening, my lord.”

I said nothing. Being naked made me feel horribly vulnerable. I had no weapon, and this man’s calm assurance was very frightening. He might smile at me, but his eyes were feral, suggesting a man who knew neither pity nor remorse. A bitter man, fallen from grace and resentful. I backed away from him, but there was nowhere to flee to, except the river, and Garrard had carefully placed himself between me and that refuge.

I backed round the workshop corner in time to hear the main gate creak open again.

“That’s Peel coming back,” Garrard said. “You haven’t met Peel properly, have you? I’ll introduce you in a moment.”

My right foot jarred against a loose metal stanchion. I stooped quickly and picked it up. It was a two-foot length of rusting angle-iron sharpened to a crude point. The weapon gave me some confidence, but it did not seem to worry Garrard. “Peel!” he shouted.

“I’m here, Mr Garrard.”

“Find a tarpaulin, Peel.” Garrard gave his orders as though he was still in the army. He looked back to me. “Peel is not the brightest luminary to emerge from the state-school system, but he has the gross virtue of huge bodily strength. He used to be a professional wrestler. If you attack me with that crude piece of iron, my lord, I shall be forced to hurt you rather nastily.”

“I don’t have the painting,” I said in a futile hope that the denial would give him pause.

“Of course you don’t. My task is simply to make certain that you don’t get it back.”

He was so foully sure of himself, and he was confusing me. Why was he so confident that I didn’t have the painting? He had surely suspected me when he had searched Sunflower, but tonight he had not even bothered to go into her cabin. I was trying to snatch answers from a fog, and the fog was shot through with rank fear. “Do you have the painting?” I asked him.

He laughed, but said nothing.

“Do you know who’s got it?” I tried. I did not expect an answer now; I was merely trying to keep him talking while I looked for an opportunity to attack him. I was holding the angle-iron low, like a knife. I guessed I could get in one nasty blow before Garrard could use his blade. I was apprehensive, but it wasn’t my first fight, and I knew these next few moments had to be carefully planned, then efficiently executed. It’s like sailing in filthy weather; the better prepared you are, the more likely your survival is. I was outnumbered, and plainly Garrard was chillingly confident of his skills, but I still had an excellent chance. I only needed to reach the river and, because I was naked and they were fully dressed, I knew neither man could outswim me. In the meantime I must behave as they expected me to behave: timidly. “Do you know who’s got the painting?” I asked again.

“Let us say, my lord, that I know you don’t have it.”

“Then why the hell did you search my boat?” I almost charged him then, but I saw a wariness in his eye that kept me still.

“I searched your boat,” he said, “to see if I could discover any correspondence. But clearly, if you are planning to retrieve the painting, you’ve made the arrangements by phone.”

“You’re crazy! I haven’t made any arrangements!”

“But you’re negotiating with Buzzacott. We have to stop that, my lord.”

“Got it!” Peel had found the filthy sheet of old canvas which had half protected George’s pile of sand. He dragged it into the yard, then grinned when he saw I was bare-arsed naked. I had turned to face him, but kept glancing back to make sure Garrard did not move. He didn’t.

“His lordship appears to be shivering with the cold,” Garrard called to his partner, “so wrap him up. But don’t mark him!”

Peel advanced on me. He had spread the canvas out like a matador’s cloak. I was frightened, so much so that I could feel the goose-bumps on my naked flesh and I could hear the blood thumping at my ear-drums, but I was still confident that I might yet outwit these two and reach the river. I feared for what might happen to Sunflower, but at least I would escape a filleting. Then the import of what Garrard had just said dawned on me. He didn’t want me marked. Which surely meant he wouldn’t use the knife?

“Easy now, guv.” Peel had a raw east London voice. He had lumbered to within a few paces of me and now spread the canvas wide to engulf me.

I turned and charged at Garrard. I shouted as I charged. The knife in his bandaged right hand was a sliver of mirror-bright light. I planned to shoulder-charge him and to drive the angle-iron like a rusting stake into his belly. He seemed frozen by astonishment at my sudden attack, and I felt the brief fierce joy of imminent victory. I drew the stake back for the single crippling blow, then struck.

And he moved. One second he was a sitting duck, and the next he had leaped aside like a hare. He merely put out a foot.

I tripped on his foot and sprawled on to the yard’s cobbles. The angle-iron clattered away.

It had all been so shamefully easy for Garrard, who now stood over me with his knife. “Does your lordship wish to offer us any further amusement?”

I struck up at him with my fist, but Garrard avoided the blow easily. He reached down with his left hand, I flailed at it, but he simply jabbed his fingers at my neck and a sudden, searing pain paralysed me. I gasped for breath, couldn’t scream, couldn’t move, and had to lie there, wide-eyed, as Peel swathed me in the canvas. He wrapped the clammy material round me with movements that were almost tender. “There,” he said soothingly, “that didn’t hurt, did it?”

Anger and fear and pain flared in me. I was angry at being so easily humiliated, and suddenly terrified because I was now at their mercy. The pain receded, and I found I could move again, but the canvas restricted me as tightly as a strait-jacket. “I promised not to mark you, my lord, but I said nothing about not hurting you.” The sardonic Garrard stood above me. “So kindly co-operate with us.”

I stared up at him, resenting and hating him, but utterly helpless. I’d been taught a lesson: that Garrard was an expert in violence and pain. The army had trained him to it, but had been unable to discipline him, so now he was a dangerous animal, loose and vicious. He sheathed his knife. “I always believe some explanation is a courtesy, so I will merely say, my lord, that your sin consisted in inheriting the painting.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” Truth and desperation gave my words vehemence, but they left Garrard quite unmoved.