The Black Tide

‘It’s nothing to do with him, I tell you.’ And then, vehemently, almost wildly — ‘It’s the chief engineer. He’s the man you should ask questions about, not my father.’

‘Is that what he’s told you?’

She nodded.

‘You have heard from him then,’ I said.

‘Of course. He wrote me as soon as he landed in Cornwall.’

‘Did he tell you he was planning to get away in a Breton fishing boat, that he didn’t dare face the Enquiry?’

‘No, he didn’t say that. But I was glad — glad when I knew. For his sake.’ She must have been very conscious of my hostility, for she suddenly shouted at me, ‘What do you expect him to do? Wait to be accused by a chief engineer who isn’t sick, but drunk and incompetent? It’s happened before, you know. Why should he wait, an innocent man, to be accused again?’ She was standing quite close to me, looking up into my face, her eyes wide and desperate. ‘You don’t believe me?’

‘No,’ I said.

And then she did something so unexpected it shocked me deeply. She spat in my face. She jerked her head and ejected her germ-laden spittle straight into my face. ‘Maquereau! You’re like all the rest. When you’ve got a man down you kick his teeth in. My father is the finest, most generous, kindly man I know, and you use him, all of you, as though he is nothing but a turd under your feet. I hate you. I hate the whole world.’ Tears were streaming down her face and she rushed to the door, pulling it open and screaming, ‘Get out! D’you hear? Allez! And tell your friends, everybody, that he is clear of you all now. He’s free, and you’ll never find him. Never.’

The door banged behind us.

‘Is not a very rewarding visit, eh?’ Barre said with a chuckle as we walked back to the car. He seemed to enjoy my discomfort, and then as we drove back down to the main road he said, ‘Nothing is what it seems to be, isn’t it so? The man you regard as a terrorist, others think of in ideological terms. So what about Choffel, eh? You see him as a wrecker, a man who has deliberately caused a tanker to go on to the rocks, but to his daughter he is a kindly, generous man who would not hurt a soul and you are the enemy.’ He glanced at me quickly. ‘How do you think he sees himself?’

I hadn’t considered that. ‘I’ve had other things to think about,’ I told him.

‘That is not an answer.’ He waited a moment, then said, ‘But why does he do it?’

‘Money,’ I said. ‘What else?’

‘There are other reasons — anger, frustration, politics. Have you thought about those?’

‘No.’

He gave a little shrug and after that he didn’t ask any more questions. It was a filthy drive, night falling and the traffic heavy after we had passed through Saumur. He seemed withdrawn then. A dusting of sleet gradually laid a white coating over everything. He had the radio on, the windscreen wipers clicking back and forth — my eyes closed, my mind drifting into reverie, no longer thinking about the girl, but about my meeting with Baldwick. It loomed closer every minute and I had no idea where it would take me, what I was letting myself in for. Suppose I was wrong? Suppose he hadn’t recruited Choffel? Then it would be to no purpose and I could find myself involved in something so crooked that not even my letter of agreement with Forthright’s would protect me.

It was just on six when we pulled up at the entrance to my hotel. ‘I’m sorry you don’t get what you want,’ he said. ‘But the girl was frightened. You realize that.’ And he sat there, staring at me, waiting for me to say something. ‘You frightened her,’ he said again.

I started to open the door, thanking him for the trouble he had taken and for the lunch he had insisted on buying me, but his hand gripped my arm, holding me. ‘So! She is right. It was your wife. I had forgotten the name. I did not connect.’ He was leaning towards me, his face close, his eyes staring into mine. ‘Mon Dieu!’ he breathed. ‘And you have no proof, none at all.’

‘No?’ I laughed. The man was being stupid. ‘For God’s sake! The chief was sick, or so he says. Choffel was in charge, and for the secondary reduction gear to go right after an engine failure… that… that’s too much of a coincidence. He was quite close to it when it happened. He admitted that.’ And then I was reminding him that, at the first opportunity, the man had stolen a dinghy, got aboard a Breton fishing boat, then flown out to Bahrain to board a freighter bound for Karachi and had finally been picked up by a dhow in the Hormuz Straits. ‘His escape, everything, organized, even his name changed from Speridion back to Choffel. What more do you want?’

He sat back then with a little sigh, both hands on the wheel. ‘Maybe,’ he murmured. ‘But she’s a nice girl and she was scared.’

‘She knew I was right. She knew he was caught up in some crooked scheme—’

‘No, I don’t think so.’ But then he shrugged and left it at that. ‘Alors! If there is anything more I can do for you—’ He barely waited for me to get out before pulling away into the traffic.