Medusa

He was staring straight at me, his eyes blacker than ever in the glare of the wall light. ‘It was a little unnerving really. I was alone, you see, and yet I couldn’t help it. I had to know what it was all about. So I clambered up the bank, and as soon as my head cleared the top of it, I stopped.’ He paused again, and it was almost as though he did it for effect. Then he went on, his voice very quiet: ‘Tide was at the full, and it was a spring tide, the river and the inlet of the King’s Fleet almost brimming over with water, otherwise they would never have got it in there. I just stood there, gaping at the thing, it was such an incredible sight — a large catamaran, black-hulled, its single aluminium mast gleaming like silver in the moonlight. It was moored stem-on to the bank with an anchor out in the middle of the Fleet, and there were men passing cases up through a hatch in the starb’d hull to others on the bank.’

His hand was gripped on the edge of the table, the stub of his cigarette burning unheeded in the ashtray. ‘The quick furtiveness of their movements, their faces covered by stocking masks, gave a weirdness to the scene, the moon bright now and everything very clear and sharp in the frost. I snuggled down in the whitened grasses. Smugglers! I wasn’t sure, but clearly something was being run ashore at dead of night, and that meant contraband of some sort.’ His eyes flicked up at me. ‘What the hell do you do in a situation like that?’ And he went on, softly as though talking to himself. ‘I was alone, you see. I trained my glasses on them. There were three on deck, two ashore, and another passing the cases up. Six altogether, and one of them standing with his hand on his hip … I focused the glasses on the case being passed up over the stern, searched the growing pile on the bank. That’s when I began to be really scared.’

He was silent for a moment, staring into space. ‘It wasn’t drink, you see, nor drugs. It was arms! I wasn’t in any doubt. There were long cases that could only contain hand-held rocket-launchers, others that looked more like rifles, but it was the ammunition boxes — I’d seen too many of those not to recognise them instantly.’

He stopped then, stubbing out his cigarette, and in the silence I was conscious again of the ship’s sounds, and of the movement, too. ‘Maybe he caught the glint of my binocular lenses in the moonlight,’ he went on slowly. ‘Whatever it was, he was suddenly looking straight at me. Then he said something to the others and they froze, their stockinged faces all turned towards me.’ He shook his head. ‘It was unbelievable. The coincidence of it. The two of us …’ His voice faded into silence.

‘You mean it was Evans?’

‘Yes. Pat.’ He nodded. ‘And now — again. Out here. It’s as though some devilish fate …’ He left the sentence unfinished, and when I asked him what had happened, he shrugged. ‘What you’d expect, considering the cargo they were running. They had a man in the outfield, hidden in the tall grasses by the sluice. I ran straight into him. Big fellow. Rose up right in front of me and knocked me out, cold. Next thing I knew I was lying on the wooden grating of the catamaran’s steering platform with Pat bending over me.’ And after a moment he said, ‘Lucky for me. They’d have killed me if he hadn’t been there.’ He lit another cigarette, his eyes closed, his mind far away so that I had to get the rest of it out of him by question and answer.

When he had come round the catamaran was already under way. He could hear the winches clicking as the sails were hoisted and hardened in. Then the engines were cut and Evans whispered urgently to him to lie still. ‘I could hear voices on the deck for’ard, Irish voices, and Pat with his mouth right against my ear telling me he’d slip me into the water as close to Woodbridge Haven buoy as possible. He told me they’d tied up to it on the way in, waiting for the tide to make over the bar. The warp hadn’t been double-ended, so instead of slipping it, they had cut it.’

He stopped there, apparently lost in the memory of that night and what had happened after they’d crossed the bar.

‘And that was the rope you used to lash yourself to the buoy,’ I prompted.

He nodded slowly. ‘He had me flung overboard up-tide of the buoy so that I pretty well drifted down on to it. They were Irish on board, not East Coasters, and they didn’t understand. They wanted me dead, but not with a bullet in my guts. Found drowned — ’ He smiled wryly. ‘Nobody can ever be accused of murder if you’re picked up out of the sea with your lungs full of water.’

‘But why did he do it?’ I asked. The blood relationship was all very well, but the man was running arms to the IRA in England…

‘There was a condition, of course.’ I hardly heard the words, they were spoken so softly.