Sea Lord

Then, because I might not get a chance to use the hook, I prepared my other weapons. Some, like the rocket alarm flares, were potentially lethal, while others, like the fire-extinguishers, were merely nasty. If Garrard and Peel did appear, then at least I would have a reception for them.

And I knew I might need all the weapons. Garrard’s reputation was frightening: an officer gone bad, a trained killer, and a man in desperate need of money.

He did not come that first night. I slept nervously, but undisturbed. In the morning I shaved in Sunflower’s cockpit and watched the yachts motoring towards the sea. It promised to be a warm day. There was no sign of any plain-clothes policemen, but Harry had warned me that they would not be highly visible. “If you can see them,” he had told me, “then so can the nasties.”

I slung my shaving water overboard, then went below and fried myself a big pan of eggs and bacon. I made a Thermos flask of coffee, then carried the whole breakfast up to the cockpit just in time to see Jennifer Pallavicini walking down the pontoon.

“Good morning,” I said cheerfully. “Coffee?”

She ignored the offer, telling me instead that we had both been asked to appear on an early evening television programme. “I’ve said yes for you,” she said.

“Coffee?” I asked again.

She looked at her watch. “Thank you,” she said in a rather grudging voice. She stepped down into the cockpit and sat opposite me. She was carrying a heavy bag that she gratefully dropped into the cockpit sole.

“Bacon and eggs?” I offered her my own plate.

She shuddered. “No, thank you.”

I fetched a mug and poured her some coffee. As she drank it she watched me wolf down the bacon and eggs. “Don’t you ever put on weight?” she asked at last.

“No.”

“Lucky you.” She flinched as I mopped up the egg yolk and brown sauce with a piece of well-buttered white bread. “Don’t you have any idea about healthy eating?” she was driven to ask.

“Well fried and lots of it,” I said enthusiastically.

“You like to shock people, don’t you?”

“What, me? Never. Tell me about this television programme I don’t want to appear on.”

“It’s in London.”

I groaned. “Tell me how I’m supposed to get to London for this television programme I don’t want to appear on?”

“We’ll arrange transport for you.”

“How are you getting there?” I asked hopefully.

“My stepfather’s helicopter,” she answered very distantly, letting me know that, even if politeness forced her to offer me a ride, I should be well-mannered enough to refuse. “I can give you a lift if you like, but I’m leaving very soon. Hans and I have to go to a lunch reception at the Hayward Gallery.”

“What are they showing this month?” I asked. “Collages of squashed cockroaches? Municipal litter baskets? Finger-painting by the Islington Lesbian Collective?”

“Late-eighteenth-century English landscapes, if you must know.”

I gave her a wink. “I’ll give it a miss.”

“Philistine,” she said, but not angrily. Indeed, it was said almost fondly, and the warm tone seemed to surprise her as much as it did me. We looked at each other. I think we were both taken aback by the affection she had unintentionally expressed. She half smiled, then hurried to cover that tiny moment of truth. “Well, you are!” she protested too hastily. “Only a Philistine would give away a Van Gogh!”

“I did it so you’d be hugely impressed by my generosity, not to mention my quixotic soul. I have this theory, you see, that women prefer irresponsible rogues to Swiss cheese merchants.”

“Rogues with twenty million pounds,” she pointed out, “are marginally more attractive than rogues without.”

I laughed. It was an odd moment. At one instant we had been at each other’s throats and suddenly, for no apparent reason that I could snatch from the air, we were smiling at each other.

“If you must know,” she said, “I thought you were an idiot to give it away.”

I nodded. “That’s probably a very fair assessment.”

“Do you regret doing it?” she asked in genuine interest.

I pretended to think about it. “If it didn’t impress you then it was clearly a wasted gesture.”

She smiled, and I thought how beautiful she was. “It impressed me,” she confessed, “but if you regret it, then I promise you my stepfather won’t keep you to it.”

“I don’t back out of contracts.”

She didn’t pursue the subject. “Did you see the television news last night?”

“I don’t have a television.”

“They gave our press conference a lot of time,” she said, “and they were especially kind to you. They didn’t show you hitting anyone and they didn’t let anyone hear you swearing.”

“Untruthful bastards, aren’t they?”

“And here are the morning papers.” She spilt the big bag at my feet. I picked up the papers one by one. The serious papers had given us a fair bit of space, but nothing compared to the tabloids, which had jumped all over the story. There were a lot of pictures of me, most of them in Sunflower, but a fair number also showed me sitting in the hotel with Jennifer Pallavicini. ‘Vagabond Earl Sails Home’, one caption said. “You will notice,” Jennifer said, “that your presence guaranteed us a heavy coverage.”

“My presence? Not yours?”

“I’m not newsworthy,” she said disparagingly. “No, it’s the vagabond earl who caught their fancy.”

I lifted a tabloid which had printed her picture larger than mine. She looked very sexy in the picture, perhaps because the photographer had been almost under the floorboards to aim his camera up her skirt. I thought again how good she’d look in a bikini. Or out of one.

“Do you ever go sailing?” I asked her suddenly.

“Sometimes.” She sounded defensive.

“With Hans?” I sounded defensive.

“Hans doesn’t have time for sailing. No, a friend of Mummy’s has a ketch.”

A friend of Mummy’s would, I thought. “A big ketch?” I asked instead.

“At least twice the size of Sunflower,” she said airily.

“You should try small boat sailing,” I said. “It’s wetter, and more intimate. Why don’t you come for a sail in Sunflower?”

I expected her usual refusal, especially after I’d used the word ‘intimate’, but surprisingly, and after a moment’s hesitation, she gave an abrupt nod. “All right. Maybe. One day.”

“Only maybe?” I asked.

She smiled. “A definite maybe.”

It was worth giving up a Van Gogh for that feeling. It really was. I must have smiled, for she smiled back at me, but then I had to look away because running footsteps were suddenly loud on the pontoon bridge and a voice was shouting for me. “Johnny! You bastard! Johnny!”

I twisted round, already reaching for the weighted boathook, but my importunate visitor was neither Garrard nor Peel, but Charlie. I noticed one of the plain-clothes policemen running along the quay towards the pontoon’s bridge, but when I stood with a welcoming expression on my face, my guardian angel relaxed. “Charlie!” I shouted.

“God Almighty!” He ran down the pontoon, leaped on to Sunflower’s counter, then jumped down on to the mass of newspapers in the cockpit. “You bastard!” He was clearly pleased to see me.

He slapped my back. I introduced him to Jennifer, who nodded very coolly. “Mr Barratt,” she said in acknowledgement of the introduction.

Charlie looked from Jennifer to me, then back to Jennifer. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”

“No, Mr Barratt, you are not.” All her previous coolness had returned. She retrieved her bag. “I’ll see you this evening, my lord.”

“Where?”