The Black Tide

boxes, heading out from under the balcony into the centre of the Room. Michael Stewart’s box was in the far corner. There were three men in it and a queue of three or four clerks waiting upon him with papers ready in their hands. He handed over to one of the others and came hurrying across. I saw him glance at Saltley, who gave a little nod, then he was greeting me. ‘We’ll have a quick drink first. I’ve sent my daughter up to grab a table. She insisted on lunching with us.’ His hand was on my arm, steering me to the lifts near the Lime Street entrance, and I was remembering my meeting with the girl the previous night. She had been quite plain-looking with a squarish face, very little make-up and no jewellery; a big, sensible girl with strong hands and a nice smile. ‘You’ve seen the files, have you? Got all the information you need?’ His voice sounded tense. ‘That’s the Casualty Board, incidentally.’ He nodded to two short display panels opposite the lifts peppered with yellow pages of typescript secured with bulldog clips. ‘That’s where all the bad news is posted. The Ulcer Board, a friend of mine calls it. Every year, it seems, the casualties get worse. When are you leaving?’

‘Tomorrow morning,’ Saltley answered for me. ‘He’s flying to Nantes.’

‘Nantes! Why Nantes?’

‘A contact,’ I told him. I turned to Saltley. ‘A hunch really.’ I knew he’d understand that.

‘And after Nantes?’ Stewart asked.

‘One of the Gulf ports. Dubai most probably since that seems to be my man’s present base. But from my

knowledge of him I’d say he operates in any port of the Gulf where there’s drugs or arms or something equally nasty to be shipped. At the moment he’s headhunting officers for a consortium starting up in the tanker business. I think he’s recruited Choffel.’

‘And you’re going to let yourself be recruited, that it?’ His assumption came as a shock, though I suppose the thought had been there at the back of my mind. We were in the lift then and he was smiling, his manner suddenly easier and more relaxed. He turned to Saltley. ‘Looks like you’ve picked a flier.’ And then to me: ‘You don’t waste time. How did you hear this man was recruiting ships’ officers?’

I explained briefly and by then we had reached the second floor and were out into a big room with high narrow windows. It was very crowded, the waitresses bustling from table to table with trays of drinks. ‘Ah! There’s Pam, and she’s got a table.’ His face had brightened, his manner suddenly almost boyish. ‘Best of running a boat, even daughters do as they’re told.’

Pamela Stewart was holding the fort at a table in a large annexe guarded by white pillars. There was an oil painting above her head of the Room cleared of boxes with a diamond-spangled ball in formal swing. She jumped to her feet, her eyes lighting, and in that instant she looked quite lovely, brimming over with youth and vitality. Perhaps it was her presence, the way she leaned forward, her eyes on me all the time, but before I had even finished my Bloody Mary I had filled them in on Baldwick and how he and Choffel were a possible lead. And over lunch, in one of the

wooden cubicles of the solid, rather old-fashioned restaurant they called the Captain’s Room after the room in the old Lloyd’s Coffee House where the insurance business had all started, I even talked about my book. And all the time I was conscious of Pamela’s brownish-green eyes watching me intently. She was dressed in a close-knit woollen dress, very plain with a high neck. It was the colour of autumn gold and there was a golden eagle clutching a round globe of some deep-red stone at her throat.

And afterwards, when we had finished our coffee, she insisted on taking me down to the Nelson Exhibition on the Gallery floor. It was a beautiful room, all rich woodwork and flanked by glass display cabinets full of Nelson letters and a lot of silver. There was an alcove to the left with a big oil canvas of Nelson by a painter called Abbott, and at the far end Hardy’s golden Trafalgar sword was displayed in a separate case below some more Nelson letters and a Hopner print of him. And then I was leaning on the only other glass table case in the room, staring at the log of HMS Euryalus covering the period 23 May to 11 March 1806. It was open at the page recording Nelson’s England expects signal.

‘Something I want you to understand…’ She wasn’t looking at the log book. She hadn’t commented on it, or on anything else in the room. The visit to the exhibition was just an excuse, and now, with her back to the priceless relic, leaning her handsomely shaped body against the case containing Hardy’s sword, she went on in a quiet, very throaty voice, ‘We’re in

trouble, and after listening to you today, over drinks and during lunch, I’ve got a sort of feeling … I don’t know how to put this. But it’s like you are our only hope, if you see what I mean.’