The Black Tide

humdrum details on which any assessment of what might have caused the vessel’s mysterious disappearance would depend. There was nothing about crew, no photograph, nothing — which was odd as GODCO always photographed and dossiered crew personnel before every voyage. I knew that because I had shipped a man once who had refused to sail on a GODCO tanker at the last moment because he wouldn’t be photographed. In the end, he told me the reason he was camera-shy was that he was bigamously married and afraid that his first wife, whom he described as a right bitch, might see it and come after him. Why we all leap so readily to fanciful conclusions I am not sure, but until then I was convinced that he was either one of the train robbers still on the run, or else a murderer.

There was an internal and an external telephone on the desk. I lifted the external receiver and asked the switchboard operator for a line. She didn’t ask who I was or who I was going to ring at the office’s expense, she just gave me the line. But when I got through to the GODCO offices in Curzon Street and asked for the current voyage Aurora B crew details and pictures, they said all crew information was held at their Dubai offices. They gave me the number and the man to contact.

I might not have followed it up, except that I had asked for the Petros Jupiter file and the girl had come back to say that it was with Mr Pritchard and he was asking who I was and why I wanted it. While I waited, hoping he’d let me see it, I asked the switchboard if it

was possible to get me the Dubai number and in a matter of minutes I was through to the GODCO Marine Superintendent’s office. The man in charge of crew dossiers said that copies of all information concerning the Aurora B and the Howdo Stranger crews, including copies of the crew pictures, had been despatched airmail to London two days ago. But when I rang the London office again the man I had spoken to before finally admitted their staff was so depleted that morning that he couldn’t tell me whether the crew details had arrived or not.

After that there was nothing for me to do but sit there waiting in that empty office. It was an odd feeling, as though I was suspended in limbo — the frozen world outside, and here, encased in concrete and glass, an organization that fed upon disaster, encapsulating the realities of existence, the gales, the sand storms, the oiled-up beaches, the furnace heat of raging fires, into typed reports and telex messages compressed and neatly filed between plastic covers. Cargoes, ships, dockside greed and boardroom chicanery, the remote cold-bloodedness of owners whose decisions were based on money, not humanity, it was all there, neatly filed and docketed — remote, unreal. Legal cases, nothing more.

The previous night, just as I was leaving, Michael Stewart had come into the club with his wife and daughter. They had been to the theatre, but when Saltley introduced me to him I could see the evening had not been a success. The man was under intense strain. And that morning I had spent the first hour

or so visiting two shipping offices close to the Baltic Exchange in St Mary Axe. Rates were low, a lot of vessels still laid up and the chances of employment very slight unless you happened to be in a place where the need of a ship’s officer was urgent.

Humans, not files — that was the real world. In the circumstances I could count myself lucky I’d had two offers of a job and hadn’t had to go looking for either of them. There was a tap at the door and a sharp-faced man with a little brushed-up moustache sidled in, a file under his arm. ‘Rodin?’ He had a tired voice that matched the weary look on his face. He gave the impression of having seen too much of the wrong side of life.

I nodded and he said his name was Pritchard. His eyes, which were dark, had a nervous sort of clockwork tick, shifting back and forth, left and right, avoiding contact, but at the same time examining me closely. ‘Salt told me you’d be asking for the Petros Jupiter file. Any particular reason, apart from your wife’s involvement?’

‘Isn’t that sufficient?’ I disliked the darting eyes, his lack of sensitivity, the coldness of his manner.

He put the file down on the desk in front of me, flipped open the plastic cover and pointed to the most recent item, a telex. ‘That arrived this morning.’ And he stood over me while I read it, watching me closely all the time, waiting no doubt to see how I would react to the news.

The telex was from the Lloyd’s agent at Karachi. The Corsaire had docked that morning at first light.

PASSENGER CHOFFEL NOT ON BOARD. TRANSSHIPPED TO DHOW HORMUZ STRAITS II.OO GMT YESTERDAY. CORSAIRE’S CAPTAIN UNABLE TO IDENTIFY DHOW’S NATIONALITY. NO NAME. NO FLAG. SKIPPER SPOKE SOME ENGLISH, NO FRENCH. ALL ON BOARD PROBABLY ARAB. ADVISE CONTACT AGENTS UAE PORTS.