The Black Tide

at the back of the ground floor. ‘The girl found it lying on the floor underneath the bed after you’d gone.’ From flipping idly through the pages I began to read, then I became engrossed, all our life together and Balkaer, Cornwall, the birds — it all flooded back, the bare little basement room filled with the surge of the Atlantic breaking against the cliffs, the cry of seabirds and Karen’s.-voice. There was a strange peacefulness in the words I had written, a sense of being close to the basics of life. In this moment, in retrospect, it seemed like a dream existence and I was near to tears as the simplicity and richness of our lives was unfolded, so vividly that I could hardly believe the words were my own. And at times I found myself thinking of Choffel, those bare hills and the simplicity of his boyhood, Cornish cliffs and Welsh hills, the same thread and at the end the two of us coming together on that dhow.

Next day I phoned Forthright’s, but Saltley’s secretary said he would be at the Law Courts all morning. He was expecting me, however, and she said I could see him in the late afternoon, around four if that was convenient. I was back in the world of marine solicitors, insurance and missing tankers.

CHAPTER THREE

Yes, but what’s the motive?’ I was sitting facing Saltley across his desk and when I told him I didn’t know, he said it was a pity I hadn’t stayed on board instead of jumping on to the dhow just because I was determined to destroy Choffel. ‘If you’d stayed, then you’d have discovered their destination, and sooner or later you would have had an opportunity to get a message out by radio.’

‘Unlikely,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘There are always opportunities.’ And when I pointed out that at least he now knew the tanker was still afloat, which was more than he could have expected when he employed me, he said, ‘I appreciate that, Rodin, but I’ve only got your word for it.’

‘You don’t believe me?’ My voice trembled on the verge of anger.

‘Oh, I believe you. You couldn’t have made it up, not all the people and the astonishing sight of a tanker

against cliffs at the head of that inlet. But the ship isn’t there any longer. To get a claim for millions of dollars set aside we’ve got to be able to prove the Aurora B is still afloat.’

‘And my word isn’t good enough?’

‘Not in law. Now if Choffel were still alive…’ He was leaning on his desk, his hands locked together on top of the thick file his secretary had left with him. ‘Is there anything else he told you that’s relevant? Anything at all? You were two days on that dhow together.’

‘He was wounded and a lot of the time he was unconscious, or nearly so.’

‘Yes, of course.’ But then he began to take me through every exchange of words I had had with the man. I found it very difficult to recall his exact words, particularly when he had been rambling on about his boyhood and his life up there in the bare Welsh hills, and all the time those dark eyes staring at me unblinking. Finally Saltley asked me why I thought he had seized the dhow. ‘Surely it wasn’t just to get away from you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Were you really going to kill him?’

‘Possibly. I can’t be sure, can I?’

‘You said his daughter had told him, in that letter of hers, that you were going to kill him. Is that right?’

‘Yes, that’s what he said.’

He was silent for a long time, thinking. ‘If I put you in court, as a witness, they’d dig that out of you right away. They’d say you were mentally unhinged at the time, that you weren’t responsible for your actions,

and that you now don’t know what is true and what is the product of your imagination.’

‘They’ll know soon enough,’ I told him angrily. ‘In a few weeks from now the Aurora B will appear in some port or other and Sadeq will carry out his mission. They’ll know then all right.’

He nodded. ‘And Choffel gave no hint to you at any time what that mission might be?’

‘No.’

‘Or the destination?’

‘I tell you, no.’

‘Did you ask him?’

‘About the destination?’

‘Yes. Did you specifically ask him what it was?’

‘I think so,’ I murmured, staring at him and trying to remember, feeling as though I were already in the witness box and he was cross-examining me. ‘I think it was during that first night at sea. We were through the Straits then and into the Oman Gulf and he’d somehow dragged himself up to the poop to tell me the engine needed oil. He started talking then, about the ships he’d been in, the Stella Rosa and the engineer whose name he’d taken. I asked him about the Aurora B and the other ship, and what they were going to do with the oil, where they were going to spill it. It had to be something like that and I thought it was probably a European port, so I asked him where. I remember I kept on asking him where and shaking him, trying to get it out of him.’

‘And did you?’

‘No, I was too rough with him. He was screaming