The Black Tide

‘I’m not sure he even understood. His mind was wandering, not quite delirious, but bloody near it. I think he was probably referring back to one of the ships he’d wrecked. It might even have been the Petros Jupiter. There was a Dutch salvage outfit trying to get her off the Kettle’s Bottom before he’d even come ashore.’

‘And where do you think those tankers are going to meet up?’

‘You asked me that before. I don’t know.’

‘Have you thought about it?’

‘Not really. I’ve had other things—’

‘Well, I have. So’s Michael.’ He turned to Pamela. ‘We discussed it for quite a while after you’d left. We even got the charts sent up. If the destination is Europe—’ He turned back to me. ‘That’s what you think, isn’t it — that the target is somewhere in Europe?

If it is, then it’s over twelve thousand miles from the Hormuz Straits to the Western Approaches of the English Channel. That’s about forty days slow steaming or just over twenty-eight at full speed; and they could meet up at countless points along the west coast of Africa.’ And he added, ‘The only alternative would be the Cape, but I am not aware the Iranians have ever shown any interest in Black Africa. So I agree with you, if there is a target, then it’s somewhere in Europe where several countries hold Iranian prisoners, the Germans and ourselves certainly.’

We discussed it for a while, then he left, taking Pamela with him. He had his car outside, and when he said he had arranged to meet her father for a drink at their club, she immediately got her coat. ‘Can I take this?’ She had picked up the typescript and was holding it gripped under her arm.

I nodded dumbly, standing there, watching, as the lawyer helped her on with her coat. ‘I’m glad you didn’t kill the man,’ he said, looking at me over his shoulder and smiling. ‘His daughter was quite positive the Lavandou was the only ship he wrecked.’

‘She was bound to say that,’ I told him angrily.

He nodded. ‘Nevertheless, I found her very convincing. She said he had paid dearly for that one criminal action.’

That phrase of his struck a chord, and after they had left, when I was standing at the window, staring

up at the street and thinking about the way she had

accepted his offer of a lift, as though coming to see

me had been just an interlude and her own world so

much more congenial than this bare little room and the company of a man who might at any moment be charged with murder, it came back to me. Choffel had used almost identical words — God knows I’ve paid, he had said, and he’d repeated the word paid, spitting blood. Had he really become so desperate he’d taken jobs he knew were dubious and then, when a ship was sunk, had found himself picked on, a scapegoat though he’d had no part in the actual scuttling? Could any man be that stupid, or desperate, or plain unlucky? The Olympic Ore, the Stella Rosa, the Petros Jupiter — that was three I knew about, as well as the Lavandou, and he’d used three different names. It seemed incredible, and yet… why lie to me so urgently when he must have known he was dying?

I thought about that a lot as I sat alone over my evening meal in a crowded Chinese restaurant. Also about his daughter, how angry she had been, calling him an innocent man and spitting in my face because I didn’t believe her. If she could more or less convince a cold-blooded solicitor like Saltley …

But my mind shied away from that, remembering the Petros Jupiter and that night in the fog when my whole world had gone up in flames. And suddenly I knew where I would lie up while waiting for those tankers to re-emerge. If they wanted to arrest me, that’s where they’d have to do it, with the evidence of what he’d done there before their eyes.

I didn’t tell the police. I didn’t tell anyone. I left just as dawn was breaking, having paid my bill the night before, and was at Paddington in time to catch

the intercity express to Penzance. And when I arrived at Balkaer, there it was just as I had left it, the furniture and everything still in place, and no board up to say it was for sale. It was dark then and cold, hardly any wind and the sea in the cove below only a gentle murmur. I got the fire going, and after hanging the bedclothes round it to air, I walked back up to the Kerrisons’ and had a meal with them. They had met me at Penzance and Jean had seemed so pleased to see me I could have wept.

That night I slept on the sofa in front of the fire, unwilling to face the damp cold of the empty bedroom upstairs. The glow of the peat was warm and friendly, and though memories crowded in — even the sofa on which I lay conjured a picture of Karen, her dark eyes bright with excitement as it was knocked down to, us for next to nothing at the tail end of a farmhouse sale — they no longer depressed me. Balkaer still felt like home and I was glad I had come, glad I hadn’t put it up for sale immediately, the key still with the Kerrisons.