Island of the Aunts

Chapter 11

The Great London Aunt Hunt was still going badly. The pictures of Etta and Coral and Myrtle went on flapping on the walls of police stations everywhere but the people who came to say they had seen one or other of them were obviously barmy. A man came and said a lollipop lady who was helping schoolchildren across the road in Kensington had a moustache and was certainly Aunt Etta, but she wasn’t. Another man said he had seen Aunt Myrtle busking outside a cinema, but he hadn’t. And anyone weighing over a hundred kilos and wearing jewellery was apt to be hauled off by the police in case she was Coral.

“Don’t call me ‘aunt’,” terrified women were begging their nephews and nieces all over London’s streets and, by the time the children had been gone three weeks, the word had almost disappeared.

Minette’s mother, as the days passed with no news, smoked three packets of cigarettes a day, couldn’t sleep without slurping a full tumbler of whisky and allowed her flat to get into even more of a mess than before. Of course in some ways it was easier without Minette who kept trying to tidy up and open windows. All the same, Mrs Danby couldn’t help wishing she had let her have a nightlight.

“And I should have taken her to the seaside — she always wanted to go,” she said to her latest boyfriend.

“You can take her when she comes back,” he said, dropping his empty lager can over the side of the sofa. “Though I’ve never seen much point to the seaside myself. The water comes in, the water goes out — what’s the sense in that?”

Professor Danby too wished he had done some things and hadn’t done others. He had promised every time she came to take Minette to the ice rink and there’d never been time, and he’d known really that she didn’t want an encyclopaedia without pictures for her birthday.

But when they telephoned each other for news of Minette, the Danbys quarrelled as much as ever. They had decided that she had run away, and of course they blamed each other.

“I’m surprised she lasted so long in that pigsty you live in,” the professor said.

“Well, really,” Mrs Danby would reply. “Considering that your place would make an underground tomb on a rainy Sunday look like Disneyland, you’ve got a nerve!”

The Mountjoys were not sorry about anything they had done. They were sure that Fabio had had everything he needed in their house and that in sending him to Greymarsh Towers — and paying for it — they had treated him better than any poor child from the back of beyond had a right to expect. But they did wonder whether they should tell Fabio’s mother that he had disappeared, and his other grandparents in South America.

“I really can’t face the thought of having a lot of foreigners coming here and waving their arms,” said Mrs Mountjoy. “They probably paint their faces and don’t wear shoes.”

Old Mr Mountjoy agreed. “Still, she is the boy’s mother. We’ll give it a few more days and then if there’s no news we’ll have to let them know.”

Both the Mountjoys and the Danbys were angry with the police. “You’ve gone cold on the case,” Mrs Danby accused the superintendent.

But she was very wrong. Discovering the third kidnap and the third aunt had given the police a new and important lead. Two days after Stanley Sprott came to report that his son was missing, an “Aunt Myrtle” was seen in Putney swimming baths. She had long greyish hair and an open mouth, which is a silly thing to have in a swimming bath, so it had to be her.

The police wearily pulled her in and sent an officer to Mr Sprott’s house to ask the housekeeper to come and identify her — and learnt that Mr Sprott wasn’t there.

So where was he, they wanted to know. He was supposed to be standing by in case there was news of Lambert.

At first no one would tell him, but when the policeman threatened to get a search warrant, the secretary admitted that he had gone away in his yacht.

“That’ll be the Hurricane,” said the superintendent thoughtfully when the officer got back to the station.

They knew a bit about Mr Sprott’s activities and his yacht.

“I think we’ll see what he’s up to. He may have got a lead on the boy.”

“What about the other parents — it’s likely the children are all together. Should we tell them?”

“Not yet. If we find them we’ll bring the parents out by helicopter. But we won’t say anything yet.”

The team that Stanley Sprott had sent to the chart room at the British Museum, to look for lonely islands with two islands to the east of them, had found an ancient map with three that seemed likely.

Now the Hurricane was steaming to the first of these — a place called Dooneray off the west coast of Scotland. It was a small island and there were no houses marked on it, but it seemed quite likely that the mad aunts who held his son were keeping him imprisoned in a cave.

As he paced the deck, Stanley Sprott was wondering about the ransom. Why had no one asked him for money in exchange for Lambert? Not that he’d have paid it — he’d have blown the kidnappers to hell before he wasted money like that — but it was odd. Everything was odd about this child snatch.

Though Mr Sprott was wearing a uniform — a navy cut reefer and a cap covered in gold braid — he never did any real work on the boat. He had a captain who sailed it, and two crew members to whom he kept shouting orders which they ignored. If they hadn’t, they would have run aground many a time because Mr Sprott had no real knowledge or understanding of boats.

The Hurricane had all the silly things on board that one finds on boats that are rich men’s toys: a jacuzzi with gold taps, a vast bed covered with a leopard skin and a lounge with a built-in cocktail bar.

But the boat itself wasn’t silly. She’d been a patrol boat belonging to Naval Intelligence and she had all the latest electronic aids to help her find her position. She also had something unusual; an outsize hold with reinforced sides in which Mr Sprott carried things he didn’t want people to see.

And she was armed. A heavy calibre machine gun was fitted on the stern deck which Mr Sprott said he needed in case of robbers in the Indian Ocean. And though sometimes his passengers were pretty girls who sunbathed and did nothing except giggle and drink cocktails, sometimes his passengers were not silly at all. Like the two men now who were playing cards below deck. Their names were Boris and Casimir and they came from a country where a boy who didn’t know how to use a gun by the time he was six years old wasn’t too likely to grow up.

And always, whether the Hurricane was on a pleasure cruise or on serious business, Stanley Sprott took along his bodyguard, Des.

“There it is,” said the Captain, pointing to a low shape in the sea in front of them. “That’s Dooneray now.”

It was true that the island had no houses, but it had a whole rash of huts — new-looking, wooden ones. And moving round between the huts, and down on the shore, were people. Quite a lot of people.

“They’re a funny colour,” said Des, screwing up his eyes.

Des was right. The people were…pink. Quite a bright pink which caught the light and glistened a little.

The Hurricane shut down her engines. There was no pier; they would have to drop the anchor and go ashore in the dinghy.

Some of the pink people looked up and waved.

“I’m not going ashore,” said the first mate. “I’m not going if it costs me my job. Someone else can take the dinghy.”

“Nor me neither,” said Des. “I’ll do anything for you, boss, but I’m not going to land among that lot.”

“You’ll do exactly what I tell you,” said Stanley Sprott. But he didn’t speak with quite his usual venom. To tell the truth he too was looking a little sick.

No one could have been nicer than the leader of the pink people. He had a friendly smile and he introduced his wife, who was called Mabel, and his cousin, whose name was James.

But he wouldn’t put on any clothes. None of them would put on any clothes.

“I’m afraid you must take us as you find us. This is a nudist colony; we believe most strongly that our Creator wants us to keep our bodies open to the air and light. In fact we would be grateful if you too would take off your clothes. It is a rule of the island that no one who comes here keeps his skin muffled in unhealthy garments.”

Behind him, in the dinghy, Casimir giggled and Mr Sprott turned to glare at him. Then: “Rubbish!” he said. “Now listen carefully: I’ve got you all covered.” He pointed to the two gunmen in the boat. “And I want every man, woman and child to line up over there. I’m looking for a missing boy and I’m going to search every nook and cranny, so don’t try to hide anything or I’ll blow you all to hell.”

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” said the leader politely. “But can’t we offer you some lunch?”

Mr Sprott shuddered. On a patch of grass a group of people with nothing on were frying sausages over an open-air grill. He had never seen anything so dangerous.

A terrible hour followed. The pink people went on being polite and friendly but they still wouldn’t put on any clothes. They let him go where he liked — into their sleeping huts, their communal dining room, their gym…Though he knew really that if Lambert had been held by mad aunts who were nudists he would have mentioned it on the telephone, Mr Sprott felt obliged to search every inch of the island, and made Des search with him.

When they left, the leader presented them with a bunch of sea thrift and an oyster.

“Go in peace, friends,” he said.

As they set a course for the second island on their list, Mr Sprott was not in a good temper. Mr Sprott in fact boiled and snorted and raged and swore that he would get the pink people arrested and deported and imprisoned, which was silly of him since the nudists had every right to be where they were. As for the policemen manning the fishing boat which was following the Hurricane, they laughed so much that they could hardly keep a straight course. They had watched Mr Sprott’s landing through their binoculars and thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen.