Down Among the Dead Men

28

Georgina wasn’t happy missing her Sunday breakfast to be on the road by 6.30 a.m. All the way to Selsey she emitted short, disapproving sighs as if every turn in the road was a pain. And when a sea mist crept over the fields, she said she might as well have stayed in bed. ‘What’s the point of making a search in these conditions?’

‘The mist makes no difference,’ Diamond said. ‘We know the GPS reading and the search is under the water.’

They met the dive team — four of them, led by a giant of a man called Dave Albison — beside the launch ramp for the lifeboat, the main feature of a long narrow stretch of pebble beach. But they weren’t using the ramp. A large rigid inflatable was on the stones ready to go.

Georgina gave it a suspicious look and said she’d been expecting a proper boat — not the most tactful of starts. The senior man said it was their main marine vessel and they were proud of it. He added that she might want to put on waterproofs. They had spares with them.

For Diamond, the spectacle of his boss in bright yellow and with her ample chest augmented by a life jacket was an amusing sideshow.

‘Does it bounce?’ she asked.

‘The sea doesn’t get much calmer than this,’ Dave Albison said — which didn’t exactly answer the question.

Screaming seagulls added their own comment.

The team loaded so much diving equipment into the front of the vessel that Diamond found himself wondering if there would be room for everyone as well. But the professionals didn’t seem to have any doubts. They boarded their two passengers in the shallows and then three of them gave the craft a hefty push to get it afloat. They leapt on board, the motor spluttered and roared, a beacon light flashed and the search mission was under way.

Did it bounce much? It did, but there wasn’t any point in protesting, because you wouldn’t have been heard. The thing fairly raced towards the deeper water. Diamond had a suspicion that this was the SRU’s payback time. There was really no reason to be hurtling across the water at maximum speed unless it was to intimidate the passengers. The same team had spent a fruitless day at Fortiman House and now their Sunday morning was spoken for as well.

In the mist, it was extremely exciting or extremely scary, depending on your state of nerves. Diamond made sure he didn’t lock eyes with Georgina. She was being brave. He’d insisted she came on the trip, pressing her at least as hard as he’d pressed that duty officer. She would regret not being there, he’d said. This was the most promising shout they’d hadt! A sighting at sea was one thing; a sighting with a GPS reading was a gift from the gods. Even the SRU lads had been impressed by that.

What seemed a long ride took under ten minutes in reality before Albison eased the throttle. One of his team took a reading. They were close.

It was weird to be fixing a position in open water with only sea and mist on all sides. The Selsey shore had vanished. With Albison using his iPhone to call the fine points, they used paddles to manoeuvre before taking the decision to lower an anchor. One of the crew, already in a drysuit, was being prepared to dive, making checks to valves and seals. When Diamond saw a tin of powder being used, he tried to lighten the mood a little.

‘Is that talc you’ve got there?’

‘It is.’

‘Does the suit chafe, then?’

‘It’s to help the hands through the wrist seals,’ Albison said. He wasn’t receptive to chafing jokes.

‘Will he take a camera down?’

‘That’s the plan. You won’t see much if he doesn’t.’

‘So can we look at the images up here?’

Albison said in a voice as unfriendly as the sea, ‘Would you mind letting us get on with our job?’

Fair enough, he thought. Diving is risky at the best of times. There were safety procedures to be gone through in a small space and the experts could do without some landlubber demanding a running commentary. Instead, he asked Georgina how she was doing. She had her arms clasped tight below the life jacket.

‘Do you want an honest answer? My hair is ruined and I wish I was wearing thermals.’

‘It should get warmer when the mist lifts.’

‘Good God, I can’t wait that long.’

He was shivering himself, even under the waterproofs. For once his two-piece suit hadn’t been the ideal choice.

She asked him, ‘Is Commander Hahn aware of what we’re doing?’

‘He doesn’t work over the weekend.’

‘I was thinking he’d want to be informed.’

Diamond nodded, privately thinking Archie Hahn would hit the roof if he was told they were on the trail of missing people.

A line had been put overboard for the diver to use. The youngest of the team, he was finally ready to go, full-face mask and fins on, gas cylinders attached and a dive video camera strapped to his chest. He seated himself on the side, gave a thumbs up and dropped back-first into the water. A splash, a glimpse of fins and he disappeared.

Already his colleagues were fully occupied with something else, as if the diver entering the water wasn’t important. They were giving their attention to a flickering monitor.

Diamond gestured to Georgina and they both edged closer for a view.

For some seconds there was nothing on the screen you could call an image. Then the interference stopped and they could see things moving, definitely the contour of the seabed. A crop of the weed known as dead men’s fingers sharpened into focus. Something like a sheet of newspaper rippled and rose from the mud.

‘Skate,’ Albison said.

The diver’s movement disturbed more flat fish. This was all quite involving for those above, sharing in the search, in spite of their discomfort.

Diamond wasn’t comfortable with the underwater images. They reminded him of a dream he’d been getting lately, of being trapped in deep water.

‘For some reason, his intercom isn’t functioning,’ Albison said. ‘I may have to bring him up to fix it.’

Georgina exchanged a glance with Diamond — and not with the diver’s welfare in mind. This could be a long morning.

More swaying weed and no sign yet of anything you wouldn’t expect to see down there. The quality of the picture was good. They had a glimpse of the line the diver was using and some bubbles from his regulator.

‘Making a turn,’ someone explained.

‘Is he OK?’

‘He appears to be.’

‘Has he spotted something?’

‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ Albison said to Diamond. ‘Horizontal visibility isn’t great today. He’s surveying the area. Doesn’t look like there’s much of interest to you, but he’ll be thorough.’

‘The GPS marked the place where the suspect surfaced, not necessarily where he was below water,’ Diamond said.

‘We’re aware of that, sir,’ was spoken in a tone that might as well have said the team weren’t total novices.

‘Perhaps this man you’re calling the suspect was innocently filming the life below, just as our diver is,’ Georgina said.

This wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear.

Doubts had been introduced and Georgina started to act and look like the player with the winning hand as the methodical process continued. Weed, mud and the occasional fish. The first thrill of seeing submarine life on the screen was wearing off. There is only so much seaweed you can find interesting.

The diver glided to a new section and his left hand loomed large on the screen and then reduced in size as he stretched towards the seabed. He was agitating the mud, creating clouds that fogged everything for some seconds.

They waited for the cloudy mud to clear.

With agonising slowness, some of the silt dispersed and they saw the diver’s hand again, this time with a raised thumb.

‘He’s found something,’ Diamond said.

‘You wish,’ Georgina said.

More seconds passed before the image sharpened enough to be apparent. Where there had been mud there was now a cleared patch that was level, so level that it could only be man-made.

‘Looks like a floor.’

‘The surface of something or other.’

‘A ship’s deck — assuming the rest of it is buried?’

Diamond’s stomach clenched. He wasn’t down there with the diver, and he had to keep telling himself he wasn’t.

The diver moved on a couple of yards and repeated the process, clouding the screen again. When it cleared, another level section was revealed.

‘All right, I’m willing to believe there’s a wreck down there,’ Georgina said. ‘I expect that’s what the mysterious diver found and why he was annoyed at being seen. They like to keep these finds a secret in case there are valuables to be salvaged.’

If that was truly the case, Diamond thought, the man must have been disappointed. ‘It looks metal rather than wood. It can’t be all that old. A lot of shipping went down here or hereabouts in the war.’

‘Quite a discovery, even so,’ Georgina said. ‘I believe divers are very competitive. Are you satisfied? Mystery over?’

While they were talking, the diver had progressed several more yards.

‘He’s found something else,’ Albison said.

‘Not another strip of deck?’ Georgina said. ‘He’s made his point, hasn’t he? Can’t you call him up?’

But the ‘something else’ was being revealed, fast filling the screen: an area of blackness that was actually a void.

Diamond stared at the screen. This was so involving that he clasped his hand to his mouth.

They were looking at an opening in the deck, a square hatch.

Albison said, ‘He’ll get some light on it.’

A right angle defining one corner of the hatch entrance slid across the screen. This wasn’t edited television, it was disconcerting and jerky, but compelling. The diver was preparing to go inside. His free hand grasped the crosspiece. He’d switched on a lamp attached to his helmet.

‘A hold of some sort,’ Albison said.

Diamond didn’t need the commentary. Everyone could see what was being revealed.

The diver had dipped inside and now visibility was restricted to what appeared in the light-beam.

First there was more mud. The interior was silted to a level of several feet, but above that some large objects were coming into shot, stowed between the mud and the underside of the deck.

‘What’s he found?’ one of the team said.

‘Looks like a plastic sack with something inside,’ Albison said.

The ray of light moved slowly along a row of such sacks, some partially immersed in mud, as if they had been in position longer than others.

Diamond said, ‘If this is what I think it is, we’ve found what we came for.’

The diver reached towards one of the sacks and poked the thing several times. It remained securely tied. He worked at it without result. Every action underwater is subject to resistance. He pulled back briefly and his arms disappeared from the screen. When they came into view again, he was holding his knife.

No one spoke.

The knife was seen to penetrate the plastic. The diver made a slit and widened it with a sawing motion. Abruptly, he withdrew the knife. The opening in the sack gaped as if something was straining to get out. After a couple of seconds, it slipped out and hung below the bag.

‘God help us,’ Georgina whispered.

They were looking at a human hand.