The Black Tide

So he’d gone, got clear away. The chances of finding him now … I closed the file and sat staring at the phone. I could do as the Karachi agent advised, start ringing round the ports of the United Arab Emirates. But how would the Lloyd’s agent in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha, Bahrain or Kuwait know what dhow it was? There were so many in the Gulf.

‘You’ve seen all you want?’

I nodded.

‘Your only interest then was Choffel?’ He was leaning over me, his eyes darting.

‘Yes.’

‘Pity!’ He hesitated. T never had a case like this before. Stranding is one thing. We might have been able to claim negligence in their employment of a man like Choffel, particularly as he had assumed a different name. In any case, both the ship and its cargo could have been salvaged. That was what the Dutch said. But then your wife’s action… quite unprecedented. It introduced a new dimension altogether.’

‘She’s dead,’ I said.

The words meant nothing to him. ‘There’s no

policy I’ve ever seen covers that sort of thing. You couldn’t call it sabotage, could you?’

I stared at him, disliking him intensely. No use telling him I’d seen her die, watched the ship go up, and the man who’d caused her death running free somewhere in the Gulf. I opened the file again, leafing through the thick wad of papers. It was similar to the Aurora B file, but much fuller, of course, since the vessel had been there on the rocks for all to see. Salvage reports were interspersed with newspaper cuttings and both shore and marine pollution assessments …

‘Salt said you might be going out there for us.’

‘Yes. I might.’ But where? Where would that dhow have taken him? Where the hell would he have gone? Dubai? Dubai was at least 100 miles from the Straits. Ras al Khaimah perhaps, or Khor al Fakkan, which was outside the Gulf on the shores of the Arabian Sea, or Muscat even. There were so many places and all of Arabia for him to get lost in. Iran and Pakistan, too. The dhow might have headed north to the coasts of either of those countries, or to one of the islands in the Gulf.

‘If you do go out there for Saltley—’ I was searching back through the file as he went on, picking his words carefully: ‘He’ll be employing you on behalf of his own clients, to try and discover what happened to the Aurora B and this new one that’s disappeared.’ Another, longer pause. I wasn’t really listening. I had reached a wadge of newspaper clippings and was living again that night when I’d gone out with Andy in the ILB. ‘But you’ll keep me informed, won’t you? If you

do find Choffel, I mean. That’s why you’re going, isn’t it? And if you find him, then try and get a written statement out of him.’

He was leaning right over me, his voice insistent, and I felt like throwing the file at him. Couldn’t he understand what I was feeling, reading through those cuttings? And his voice going on again, cold, incisive: ‘It could be worth quite a lot to you. I’m sure my clients would not be ungrateful. There’s usually a reward, something quite substantial, when an insurance claim is refuted. And the claim here is in the order of eleven million, so we’re not talking about—’

I looked up at him then, hating him for his stupidity. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ My voice sounded high and uncontrolled. ‘Money! I’m not going after him for money.’

He had the grace then to say he was sorry, a muttered apology as he turned away and opened the door. I think he was suddenly a little scared of me. ‘I’ll leave the file — you might like to look through it…’ The clockwork eyes darted back and forth. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I didn’t quite realize…’ The door closed, and he was gone, leaving me alone with those macabre cuttings.

A lot of the newspaper reports I hadn’t seen before. They were spread over several days, and there were pictures. For factual details the Telegraph coverage seemed the best, and both the Telegraph and The Times had run long articles on the problems of pollution. And then I came upon this, from a weekly magazine: Was she a nut-case, or just a totally impractical young woman determined to set fire to the slick? Or was it done in full command of her senses, an act of great courage undertaken with one aim in mind — to shock the country into taking action to deal with the terrible and growing menace that successive governments have swept under the carpet? And there was a headline I thought Karen would have appreciated — GIRL’S TANKER PYRE SAVES SEABIRDS. The pictures, too — the whole front page of the Sun, a night shot with the mist lit by flames, a photograph of Karen inset on one side and one of myself on the other, a clip probably from the TV interview after I’d come back with Andy, my hair plastered over my face, my mouth open and shouting, my eyes wild.