Sea Lord

help himself. He must have sensed the danger, for he gave a great heave just as a surge of the swell tipped up the stern so that he fell, gasping and exhausted, into the boat.

I could hear the suck and rebound of the water about the rocks. We were close to the rock pinnacles, too close, and the suction of the white water was drawing us closer. I staggered forward, started the engine, and pushed the gear lever forward. For a second the engine faltered and I thought for a terrible second that I hadn’t cleared the propeller blades properly and that we would be drawn crashingly down into the rocks. I rammed the throttle forward, prayed, and somehow the engine recovered. The rocks were perilously close now, just off the port beam. We tipped towards them and I thought we were doomed to slide sideways down the smooth face of the indrawn water to hammer our gunwales on the black rock. I gave Mist-Spinner full rudder and raced the engine. A wave shattered to port, spewing water high over Mist-Spinner’s aerials. The propeller seemed to be spinning uselessly in the broken water, I felt a sideways lurch, then the blades bit the sea and the boat began to fight her way free. A rebound of water shoved us on our way. I spun the wheel amidships to lessen the resistance to the propeller’s thrust and, inch by inch, then foot by foot, Mist- Spinner gained speed. I turned her to starboard again, and this time there was no resistance and she went sweetly away towards safety. I said a prayer of thanks, pulled back the throttle, then turned to watch the broken sea recede.

Peel had not moved. Perhaps he had been too scared to move, or perhaps he had been too weakened by his long immersion. He just watched me. Beyond him was the rock-shattered swell, and beyond that, somehow safe in the turmoil, was Marianne. She had drifted north of the rising pinnacle. She was pitching and rolling, and I supposed she would drift onwards to be tumbled ashore on a French beach. Then the fog and the night hid her from me and I turned Mist-Spinner westwards.

I’d found four spare shotgun cartridges when I’d searched for the knife to free Mist- Spinner’s propellers. Now I took them from the cave-locker and let Peel watch me as I loaded the shotgun. He didn’t move, not even when I put the gun down while I checked the fuel. She had two extra tanks in side-lockers, plenty enough for whatever else this night might bring.

Peel watched me go back to the wheelhouse. “Where’s Mr Garrard?” he asked nervously.

“On the foredeck. He hasn’t got a head any more. If you move, you won’t have one either.” I lifted the shotgun on to my lap as I accelerated Mist-Spinner into the shredding fog. I saw the flash of the cardinal buoy, went past it, and only then did I let Mist-Spinner drift.

Because it was time to find my way out of the electronic maze.

The Decca had two waypoints only. We were already at the first so the mystery’s end must lie at the second. I summoned that second waypoint to the screen. It lay at fifty degrees, twelve minutes and forty seconds of arc north, by zero three degrees, forty-six minutes and sixty seconds of arc west. It was 87.2 miles away at a course of 311. So very precise, I thought, so very well planned.

“How were you supposed to kill me, Peel?” I didn’t turn round to ask the question. That wasn’t insouciance or bravery because I could see his reflection in the windscreen and he wasn’t moving.

He did not answer.

“How were you supposed to kill me, Peel?” I asked again.

He still did not answer so I whipped round on the helmsman’s chair and fired the right barrel two feet above his head. The pellets probably grazed his bald head, for he whimpered.

“How were you supposed to kill me, Peel?”

“We was just supposed to drown you,” he almost whispered in reply, “then sink the little boat. To make it look like you’d drowned and the money had sunk.”

“To make it look as if I’d stolen the money? As well as the painting?”

“Yes, guv.”

“Thank you, Peel,” I said very politely, then turned away from him. I found some old stained charts in a drawer, but I. didn’t really need them. I knew where fifty twelve zero three forty-six was. I could probably have got there blindfold, but I spread a passage chart out all the same, then reloaded the gun’s right barrel. “Did you turn the gas on in my boat, Peel?” I asked it very casually.

“No, guv, honest.”

“Did Mr Garrard?”

“No.” In the glass I could see he was shivering. A big shivering musclebound man. “Honest,” he added pathetically. He was trying to help me now.

I turned again and fired. The gun hammered at the night and Peel cowered and shivered.

I lowered the gun so that it was pointing into his face. “Did you or Mr Garrard turn the gas on in my boat, Peel?”

“No, guv, we didn’t. As God is my witness, we didn’t. I don’t know nothing about any gas! We’ve been in France, Mr Garrard and me, we ain’t been anywhere near your boat! Not since that night he tipped it over, and he wasn’t even supposed to do that! We weren’t even supposed to kill you that time, guv. We was only scaring you!” He was staring at me with doggish devotion now; I was his master and he would please me. “We was just supposed to scare you! And that first time, Mr Garrard was only going to talk to you, but he found the girl on your boat and he thought you was double-crossing us!” He was staring into the twin black holes of the gun barrels. “Honest, guv.” He paused, evidently remembering who I was. “Honest, my lord.”

I turned away from him. I reloaded the gun with the last cartridge, then laid the weapon down. The VHF was screwed to the wheelhouse roof and tuned to Channel 37; the private marina channel. That was the channel on which my instructions had been relayed, and presumably the channel on which my enemies were even now listening. They had to be close, within thirty or forty miles, which meant France or the islands. I thought France the likeliest answer. Perhaps it was Elizabeth keeping a radio watch, wondering what was happening out in the fog- shrouded waters, and it was time to put my sister out of her apprehensive misery. I unhooked the microphone, held it a little too far from my mouth, and said the single word. “Fingers.” I paused, then repeated the word before hanging up the microphone. There was no acknowledgement, but I’d expected none. This night’s trickery had been designed to keep the radio traffic to a minimum to avoid detection. It had all been so very clever.

And nothing, I thought, was cleverer than the way Elizabeth had used the Decca navigation system, for only a Decca set could have sent two landlubbers safely across the Channel. I doubted whether Garrard could have navigated his way through the shoals, tides and rocks of the Channel Islands, but any fool could read the little arrows on the Decca which told him to go left or right, forwards or backwards. Cleverest of all, I thought, was the selection of Les Trois Grunes; the only cardinal buoy in the islands which offered a straight course back to the second waypoint; a course that went arrow straight between the rocks of the Casquets and the northern reefs of Guernsey. No need to dog-leg, no need to read a chart, all that was required was to follow the little arrows. They had been clever, so very clever. Had Peter, in one of his soberer moments, told Elizabeth about the Decca? Or about the gas bottle she would find on any deep-sea yacht?

I turned. “Right, Peel!” I said enthusiastically. “On your feet and into the cuddy.”

“The what?”

“The cabin. There.” I pointed under the foredeck where a tiny space afforded two bunks and a galley. “Dry yourself off and make us some tea or coffee. No sugar for me, just milk. And hurry!”

He hurried. He saw his partner’s blood smeared across the windscreen as he passed me, but he didn’t react. I must have looked fearsome, half-naked and bloody, so he just ducked down and scuttled gratefully into the cuddy. “Throw me up a towel!” I shouted after him. “And any spare clothes down there.”

I pushed the throttle forward and felt the stern dig down into the water. Eighty-seven miles to go, then the last confrontation. And all for one picture.

Peel made tea. Mist-Spinner thumped happily through the waves. I had dried myself, wrapped the towel about the cut at my waist, then pulled on a thick sweater which Peel had brought up from the cuddy. He was eager for my approval now. “Good cup of tea?” he asked me.

“What you’re going to do now” – I ignored his friendliness – “is clear up the boat. You see that boxlike thing on the front?”

“Yes, guv. My lord.”

“It’s called a forehatch. Open it, then tip Garrard inside.”

“Tip…”