Sea Lord

my hesitation. “So you’re not as pure as you’d have us believe, my lord? You wish to amend the terms of the agreement?”

“Bugger your amendments.” I shook his hand.

Which meant that to surprise a multimillionaire, and to impress his stepdaughter, who was engaged to a squillionaire and despised me anyway, I’d just given away a Van Gogh. And I knew just how my ancestor, the seventeenth Earl, must have felt when he lost all the family’s Irish estates and all our rich sugar plantations in the Caribbean on the single turn of the ace of diamonds; I felt like a proper fool.

Harry was almost doubled over with laughter. We had left the family and gone into the garden where we were hidden from the house by a big yew hedge. “What a berk you are! Sweet Jesus! What a bloody berk!”

“Shut up.” I was far more angry with myself than I was with Harry.

“Sweet suffering Christ!” He laughed again. “You gave it away! And you only did it to impress that bird! How much is it worth? Twenty million?” He shook his head in wonderment. “You gave away a Van Gogh worth twenty millions!”

“I don’t care about the bloody money,” I said bitterly.

“Of course you care, Johnny, you just don’t want to admit it.” Harry gave a final hoot of delighted laughter.

“I don’t care about the money,” I insisted, “I never have. I wouldn’t be a blue-water sailor if I cared about money.”

“A blue-water sailor,” he mocked me with cruel mimicry. “But you care about the Contessa, don’t you? And it’ll take more than a shabby boat to get into her knickers. She’s the kind that needs a diamond necklace before every tumble, and I reckon you’ve just blown away your chances, Johnny.”

“You’re a crude swine, Harry.”

“But let’s hope I’m a clever one, my son.” He lit a cigarette and stared at a statue of a half-naked nymph which graced an alcove in the hedge. “Clever enough to stop Sir Leon paying the ransom. That’s all he wants to do, pay up, because he thinks that’s the surest way to get his picture. He can’t wait. He’s like a kid locked out of the toyshop, but I don’t believe it’s as easy as he thinks. If they can winkle four million out of him now, what’s to stop them going back to the well with a bigger bucket? They can’t be fools, they must know it’s worth more than four million.”

I didn’t answer. I was still trying to accustom myself to a belief in Elizabeth’s guilt. I didn’t like her, I’d really never liked her, but it was hard to think of her as wanting my death. Yet Harry’s arguments had been persuasive. “Why don’t you just search Elizabeth’s house?” I asked him. “If you find the picture, then it will all be over.”

“Funnily enough my grandmother taught me to suck eggs before you were born, Johnny. Don’t be a cretin. She won’t have a bloody Van Gogh tucked away in the attic. It’s been hidden away for four years, and we’re going to have to be clever if we’re to get it back.”

“Then find Garrard,” I suggested.

“I’m looking for Mr Garrard,” Abbott said grimly, “but he’s done a bunk. So we have to persuade Mr Garrard to find us.” He still squinted up at the nymph’s mossy breasts. “A nasty piece of work, Mr Garrard.”

“You know him?”

“Of course I know him.” Harry abandoned the nymph to walk slowly up the newly cut grass to where a fountain sparkled prettily in the afternoon sunshine. He sat on the wall that circled the fountain’s pool and looked at me quizzically. “He got slung out of the Paras for nicking the mess funds, then, because the Fraud squad found him monkeying about with some dodgy bonds, he did a bunk and joined one of those mercenary groups in Southern Africa. About five years ago he came home on leave, and he never went back. He’s been small-time ever since, bookies and winkling, which is very puzzling.” Harry tapped cigarette ash into the fountain’s pool. “Why does a top- drawer bastard with a good brain scratch around with lowlife villains? He was making good money in Africa.”

“He must be making more here.”

“Not now, he isn’t.” Harry frowned. “But I reckon Garrard’s bought a share of that picture. He’s not hired labour, Johnny, but a full partner with your sister. And he’ll be coming after you with a knife because he smells several million quid at the end of the road. How do you feel about that?”

“I’m not ecstatic at the prospect.”

“But at least you’d die in the knowledge that you’d helped me solve an old crime.”

“Up yours, too.”

“Because if I’m right,” Harry went on, “they’d still rather have you out of the way. With you dead Elizabeth can sell the painting on the open market and she won’t have to answer any awkward questions about where her fortune came from; she’ll be free, rich, and laughing.”

“And I’ll be dead.”

“Not with your Uncle Harry looking after you” – he gave me an evil grin with his tombstone teeth – “and if I’m clever,” he went on, “I’ll have your sister and Garrard behind bars, Jenny-baby will be married to that Swiss cheese, Sir Leon will have his painting, and you’ll be as poor as a church mouse because you gave your family fortune away. So shall we start letting the evil ones know that you can’t wait to be knifed?”

I went to a gap in the hedge to see if Jennifer had followed us out to the gardens, but the empty lawns just shimmered in the day’s heat. Which meant I was alone, and poor, and about to be a target.

Five days later, on a summer’s day as beautiful as any that could be wished, I sailed Sunflower into Dartmouth. The sun shone benevolently and the wind was a well-behaved force three, just enough to shift Sunflower along nicely, yet not strong enough to jar the launches which carried the television news crews.

This was Harry’s malicious way of baiting his hook: publicity.

Sir Leon’s publicity department had made the arrangements. John, Earl of Stowey, once suspected of stealing his family’s Van Gogh, was returning to England to help the authorities find it. The press release carefully ignored the fact that I had twice visited England earlier in the year; instead it was implied that like a prodigal I had just sailed back from unknown waters. As I neared the river mouth more launches joined the procession till I began to feel like one of those record-breaking circumnavigators coming home. Questions were shouted across to my cockpit, but I waved them away. I wanted to berth safely first.

A berth had been reserved for me on the inner side of the town pontoon. I sailed Sunflower into the narrow space which was just, but only just, wide enough for me to turn her. I was showing off. Most people would have used the motor for the final approach and the turn into the tide, but I hoped Jennifer Pallavicini was waiting for me on the quay, so I sailed Sunflower into the confined water between pontoon and quay, swung her bows hard over, knew I’d misjudged the flooding tide, began to panic, and prayed desperately that Sunflower would keep way on her as we came up to wind and tide. She didn’t, but hung up, and I realised that in twenty seconds the wind and tide would drive my new mast against the bridge which led from the town quay to the pontoon. I didn’t have time to start the engine, so swore instead, but then Sunflower was saved by a quick-witted yachtsman who told me to heave him a line. I did, and was ignominiously hauled into the vacant berth where one of the waiting reporters sincerely congratulated me on a fine piece of seamanship.

The questions were unavoidable now. Had I heard about the damage done to the painting? Yes. What had made me change my mind and come home to help? That damage. Where had I been? Everywhere. Would I sell the painting if it was recovered? All the time I was trying to secure Sunflower properly, tensioning her warps and springs and sometimes cursing at a reporter who got in my way. Two of Sir Leon’s publicity men were trying to impose order on the chaos and only managed to make things worse. One photographer went down into Sunflower’s cabin and started taking flash photographs so I hauled him out and threw him on to the pontoon. Photographs were taken of that. Another photographer cheered me up by falling overboard.

I finally succeeded in locking the boat. The publicity men shepherded me towards a nearby hotel where a room had been reserved for a formal press conference. Jennifer Pallavicini was already there. I said good morning. She said good morning. The two of us then sat behind a table while the rabble arranged their lights and microphones. A full size reproduction of the Stowey Sunflowers was framed on the wall behind us. I noticed that Jennifer was not wearing her engagement ring, and decided that she must keep it for private occasions only. Or perhaps Harry Abbott was right, and most of the time it was kept in a bank vault.