The Black Tide

‘So Choffel knew he was dead. He must have known otherwise he wouldn’t have used the man’s name. And to use Speridion’s name he’d need his papers.’ Ferrers was staring down at the file. ‘I wonder what really happened to Speridion? It says here — At the Enquiry held at Palermo Chief Engineer Henri Choffel stated that he and two of his men tried to stop the flow of water into the engine-room, but the cocks on the sea water inlet to the cooling systems had been opened and then damaged. Speridion had been on duty. Choffel thought he had probably been paid to sink the ship by agents of the Moroccan government.” Ferrers shook his head, sucking in air through his teeth. ‘And on the Petros Jupiter he was using the name Speridion. That means it’s almost certainly sabotage.’

‘And if he did have the Greek’s papers and the police start looking into the Stella Rosa sinking—’ Spurling hesitated. ‘It could be murder, couldn’t it?’

I thought he was jumping to conclusions. But perhaps that was because I had been thinking all the time in terms of Speridion. Choffel was something different, something new. It took time for my mind to switch. But murder as well as sabotage… ‘God Almighty!’ I said. ‘Nobody who’d killed his second engineer, and then accused him of sabotaging the ship, would dream of using the man’s name.’

‘Wouldn’t he?’ Spurling had turned to his typewriter, the file beside him. ‘If I let you loose on that filing cabinet, you’d be surprised at the stupidity of

some of the marine frauds and the damn fool things men do. They’re amateurs, most of them, not professionals. Remember the Salem, sunk off the West African coast right within sight of a BP tanker. They never seem to realize it takes time to sink a really big ship. I tell you, they do the craziest things.’

‘If they didn’t,’ Ferrers said, ‘there isn’t a member of any marine syndicate at Lloyd’s who’d be making money. They’d be losing their shirts instead.’ He turned as Fairley appeared at his elbow, a telex in his hand.

‘Just come in,’ he said. ‘Michael Stewart’s box. Anything we can tell him about the Howdo Stranger. It’s gone missing.’ He placed the telex on Spurling’s typewriter. ‘I’ve checked the Confidential Index. Nothing. Hardly surprising. It’s owned and run by Gulf Oil Development.’

‘A tanker then?’ Spurling picked up the telex and began reading it.

Fairley nodded. ‘About the same size as the Aurora B, the GOD CO ship that went missing two months ago.’ He leaned over Spurling’s shoulder, checking the telex. ‘This one’s 116,000 tons. She had a full cargo for Japan. Same destination, you see. And loaded out of the same port, Mina Zayed.’ He straightened up with a shrug. ‘She’s ten years old, but she’d just passed survey Al, yet now, suddenly, she fails to report on schedule.’

‘Where?’ Ferrers asked.

‘Estimated probable position somewhere southwest of Sri Lanka.’

‘And the radio schedule.’

‘Twice weekly. Same as Aurora B.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll look up the Aurora B details, let them have a print-out of that. Then we’ll see what else we can cobble together.’

Standing there, totally ignored now, I was surprised at the speed with which their attention had switched, Spurling already hunched over the VDU checking with the computer, Ferrers reaching for the nearest binder, searching for the fiche on which the microfilmed details of the Aurora B casualty had been stored. ‘Two of them can’t have blown up.’ Fairley pushed a hand up through his fair hair, which was now as rumpled as the rest of him. ‘Two GODCO tankers in two months, it’s not possible.’

‘What about the Berge Istra and the Berge Vanga? Ferrers said without looking round. ‘Norwegian and just as good a stable as GODCO.’

Spurling looked up from the telex he had been reading and said, ‘She left the Abu Dhabi port of Zayed 18.00 hours January 5.’ He turned to Fairley. ‘When did she miss her radio schedule?’

‘Yesterday afternoon. It’s in the telex.’

‘Yes, but it doesn’t give the time.’

‘I checked the Aurora B schedule,’ Fairley told him. ‘She was reporting in at 14.00 hours Tuesdays and Fridays.’

‘So this one could be the same time, but Mondays and Thursdays.’ Spurling had the Lloyd’s Maritime Atlas open at the Indian Ocean page and was pencilling figures on a slip of paper. ‘That’s it then. West or southwest of Sri Lanka. Just about where the Aurora

B missed her schedule. Previous schedule would have been roughly between Muscat and Karachi, so if she really is a casualty, then it could have happened anywhere between there and Sri Lanka.’

Fairley nodded. ‘You’re thinking it could be fraud.’

‘We’ve had radio frauds before. It became quite fashionable a couple of years back.’