Medusa

He nodded. ‘I know somebody who practises at Shotley on the old ranges we used as kids. That’s how I know about the commercial range facilities.’

‘Who was that?’ I asked him, but he was already back to the story of Gareth Lloyd Jones climbing that mast. ‘Poor little bugger, he got himself to the top of the ladder and it was at that point he made the mistake of looking down. I know what it feels like, looking down from that height, because I was the cadet chosen to stand point, right on top of that fucking button. There’s a lightning conductor there and that’s all you’ve got to hang on to, standing to attention with the others manning the yard and some bloody admiral inspecting the school.’ He leaned back, his eyes half-closed, and still that smile. ‘Hadn’t thought about it till now, but yes, I suppose he’d feel I’d saved his life.’

The way he had told it, such relish in the recollection, and now going on to explain how he had got Gareth down, talking to him all the time. ‘You get pretty close to a boy when you’ve been through an experience like that together. It wasn’t easy for either of us.’ There was a flamboyance about the man. It was as though he had an urgent need for self-dramatisation. I think this is often the case with men who are preternaturally handsome, perhaps because their looks make things appear so easy at first, and then suddenly they begin to realise looks are not enough. ‘Still in the Navy, is he?’ And when I told him Lloyd Jones had just been promoted and had left Menorca to take command of a frigate waiting for him in Gibraltar, he nodded. ‘Of course. He was cut out for it, real Navy material. But Lieutenant Commander, and a frigate of his own …’ He swirled the whisky round in his glass. ‘You sure he didn’t say anything about why he was looking for me?’ He raised his eyes, staring at me.

‘I don’t think I asked him,’ I said. ‘I presumed, when he said you were at school together, that you were close friends, is that right?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. We’re certainly close.’ And he smiled as though at some private joke. He smiled a lot during that meeting on Thunderflash, but the smile never reached his eyes, and his face wasn’t a smiling face. When he smiled it was a conscious stretching of the mouth that revealed teeth so white and even they might have been false. And it wasn’t only his face that was hard. His body was hard, too. Even then I was conscious that he was a very fit, very tough man.

‘You saved his life twice,’ I said. But he wasn’t to be drawn on that, his mind already back to the subject of the Santa Maria and the villa up on Punta Codolar. He wanted to start fishing right away. And he added with a thin, rather wry smile, ‘Silly, isn’t it? Here I am with this boat that’s worth a small fortune, and I’m short of money and nowhere to live.’ He wanted to make the exchange right away. ‘Tomorrow. I’d like us to be free to shift our gear on to the fishing boat tomorrow. You’re not using her for anything. I’ve looked her over and she’s ready to go. So’s Thunderflash. A quick clean round the ship after we’ve gone and you could have a charter party on board by the weekend. What do you say?’

What I said, of course, was that I’d have to talk it over with Soo and she wouldn’t be out of hospital until next morning. ‘Exchanging boats is one thing,’ I told him. ‘But that villa was my wife’s idea. I don’t know whether she’ll agree.’ For a moment I toyed with the thought that I might force through an exchange on a boat-for-boat basis, perhaps with a small cash addition, but he wasn’t that much of a fool.

In the end he agreed to leave it over until I had had a chance to talk to Soo. ‘Ring Señor Flórez here. He’ll know where to find me. But I want that fishing boat by Saturday at the latest, tanked up with fuel and ready to go. That gives you two days, okay?’ He got to his feet then, and when I asked him whether he needed anybody local to show him the best fishing grounds, he looked at me sharply and said, ‘Don’t bother. I know where I’m going.’

‘What about charts then?’

‘Not your problem. I got all the charts.’ And he added, ‘You ring Flórez, eh? Tomorrow, right after you pick up your wife from the hospital.’

I told him that might not be long enough to talk her into the deal, but in fact Soo proved much easier to persuade than I had expected. She was more interested in the man’s friendship with Gareth Lloyd Jones at Ganges than in the future of the villa she had so recklessly acquired the day before she lost the child. ‘But didn’t you ask him?’ she demanded almost angrily when I told her I had no idea what the relationship of the two men had been after the flagpole episode. ‘I’m certain there was something between them, an intimacy — I don’t think it was sexual. You don’t think Gareth’s in any sense gay, do you? I mean, he doesn’t behave like one.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he is.’ In fact, I hadn’t given it a thought.