The Black Tide

Alone, the nagging doubt remained. An eye for an eye? The Old Testament, Jean had said, and even she hadn’t thought I was right, insisting that I do what Saltley said. The best friends a man could hope for and they had not only helped me run away, but had insisted I had no alternative. A lawyer, the media, two such good friends — and I hadn’t killed him. The stupid little bitch had got it wrong, leaping to conclusions. I could have thrown her father overboard. I could have taken him back to the tanker. Instead, I had cleaned him up, given him water … I was going over and over it in my mind all the way to Tangier, and still that sense of unreality. I couldn’t believe it, and at the same time that feeling of being watched, expecting some anonymous individual representing Interpol or some other Establishment organization to pick me up at any moment.

I reached Tangier and nobody stopped me. There was a levanter blowing through the Straits and it was

rough crossing over to the Rock, Arabs and Gibraltarians all being sick amongst a heaped-up mass of baggage. Nobody bothered about me. There was no policeman waiting for me on the jetty at Gibraltar. I got a water taxi and went round to the marina, the top of the Rock shrouded in mist and a drizzle of rain starting to fall.

Prospero, when I found her, was about fifty feet long, broad-beamed with a broad stern and a sharp bow. She looked like a huge plastic and chrome dart with a metal mast against which the halyards flapped unceasingly in the wind, adding to the jingling metallic symphony of sound that rattled across the marina. Terylene ropes lay in tangled confusion, the cockpit floorboards up, the wheel linkage in pieces. A man in blue shorts and a blue sweater was working on what looked like a self-steering gear. He turned at my hail and came aft. ‘You’re Trevor Rodin, are you?’ He had broad open features with a wide smile. ‘I had a telex this morning to expect you. I’m Mark Stewart, Pamela’s brother.’

He didn’t need to tell me that. They were very alike. He took me below into the wood-trimmed saloon and poured me a drink. ‘Boat’s a bit of a mess at the moment, but with luck we’ll get away by the end of the week.’ They had originally been planning to make Malta in time for the Middle Sea Race, but his father hadn’t been able to get away and Saltley, who usually navigated for them, was tied up on a case he felt he couldn’t leave. ‘So we’re still here,’ he said. ‘Lucky really.’ And he added, ‘Pamela and the old

Salt will be here tomorrow. There’s Toni Bartello, a Gibraltarian pal of mine, you and me. That’s the lot. Anyway, going south we shouldn’t get anything much above seven or eight, so it should be all right. Pam’s not so good on the foredeck — not so good as a man, I mean — but she’s bloody good on the helm, and she’ll stay there just about for ever, no matter what’s coming aboard.’

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘Didn’t Salt brief you?’

I shook my head. No point in telling him I’d been offered the boat as a hideout for a fortnight or so until somebody somewhere sighted those tankers.

He took me over to the chart table and from the top drawer produced Chart No. 4104, Lisbon to Freetown. He spread it out. ‘There. That’s where we’re going.’ He reached over, putting the tip of his forefinger on the Selvagen Islands.

We finished our drink then and he took me on a tour of the ship. But I didn’t take much of it in. I was thinking of the Selvagens, the bleakness of that description I’d read, wondering what it would be like hanging round the islands in the depth of winter waiting for two tankers which might never appear.

PART SIX

THE BLACK TIDE

CHAPTER ONE

Gibraltar was a strange interlude, quite unreal in a sense, the Rock towering above us and most of those in the marina in holiday clothes and a holiday mood. The sun shone and it was quite warm by day, except in the wind which blew hard from the east. There was a lot to do, for the boat had been stripped of everything to get at the hydraulics, which ran the length of the hull and had sprung a leak, and there were stores to get, water and fuel to load. Each day I listened to the BBC news on the radio above the chart table, half expecting to hear my name and hoping to God I wouldn’t.

I had asked Saltley, of course, as soon as he’d arrived on board. But as far as he knew no warrant had been issued for my arrest. ‘I’m not at all sure the Choffel business comes within their jurisdiction.’ We were down in the bare saloon then, his bags opened on the table as he changed into work clothes of jeans and T-shirt. Pamela was changing up for’ard and Mark

had taken the taxi back into town. ‘It’s probably a question of where the killing took place.’

‘He was shot on the dhow.’