The Black Tide

CHAPTER ONE

The clouds were thinning when we landed at Nantes, fitful gleams of sunlight flickering on wet tarmac, and in the city itself the French moved quickly, huddled in topcoats, for it was cold with an east wind blowing down the river. Baldwick was out when I reached the Hotel du Commerce, and not expected back until evening. I scribbled him a note, and after checking into a room, took a taxi to the address of the Lloyd’s agent. His name was Louis Barre and he had a small, untidy office looking out over the quay to a glimpse of the river through the superstructure of a cargo vessel.

‘Mistair Rodin?’ He was on his feet, waving a telex at me as I entered. ‘Zis arrive thees morning to say you are coming to me. Sit down, sit down please.’ He waved me to a chair. ‘You want to know about Choffel, eh? The Petros Jupiter. I have made enquiries.’ He was large and energetic, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet as he talked, jiggling a bunch of keys in the pocket of his jacket. ‘He is what I think you call my patch.’ His English was quick, almost staccato, the words ejected like grape pips through half-closed teeth. ‘It is a big river, the Loire, but Nantes is not like a seaport. It is more… what is the word? More a port of the region. Along the quay here we know many people, and Choffel, he has a house at Parnay, a few kilometres beyond Saumur, so it is not difficult for me to find out about him.’

He bounced across to the door of the outer office, rattled some French at the girl who had shown me in, then turned back to me: ‘She has now finished typing the report. You like coffee while you read it? Milk, sugar?’ I said I’d like it black and he nodded. ‘Deux noirs,’ he said and handed me a single sheet of typescript. ‘It gives the background, all I can discover about him. If you want more, then we drive to Parnay and talk to his daughter. She is secretary at a clinic in Saumur. But today she is at home because she has a bad cold.’

The report was in the form of notes and typed in English:

The coffee arrived and I read the report through again, conscious all the time of the Frenchman’s impatience. It told me very little I didn’t already know, except about Choffel’s personal life, but that was no concern of mine. The Stella Rosa — nothing new there. And no information about the sinking of the Olympic Ore. I wished I had asked about that at Colchester, but there had been so much information to absorb. All the report amounted to was confirmation of a doubtful record. I finished the Nescafe, concentrating on the last part of the report. Why mushrooms? Why spend a year or more a long way up the river at Parnay? And the daughter — would she know where he had gone? If they were close, which was possible with his wife dead, then she might have had a letter.

‘What is it?’ Barre suddenly exploded. ‘You are not satisfied? There is something more you think your people require?’

I hesitated. The man had done his best. But it was disappointing. ‘Choffel left the Corsaire in the Straits of Hormuz, did you know that?’

‘Yes. I have a telex from Pritchard two days ago to that effect. He is trans-shipped to a dhow.’

‘But you don’t know where he is now.’

He stared at me as though I had said something outrageous. ‘Pritchard ask only for background information. He does not ask me where he is gone, what his plans are. How could I possibly tell him that? A man like Choffel, on the run as you say, does not shout his destination from the rooftops.’

‘His daughter might know. It’s almost a week now. He could have written.’

‘You want to question her, she is at her house today. Or I take you to Reaux.’ He produced the names of several individuals who had given him background information. ‘You wish to question them yourself?’

I shook my head. I didn’t see how that would help.

‘So why do you come?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Why don’t you stay in London till you receive my report?’

I hesitated. ‘Did any of them mention a man named Baldwick in connection with Choffel? Len Baldwick. He’s at the Hotel du Commerce.’

He shook his head. ‘What is he? What is he doing here?’ And when I told him, he said, ‘But if he is recruiting these types, why Nantes? Why not Brest or Marseilles, some big seaport where he has more chance of finding what he want?’

‘That’s something I hope to discover this evening.’

‘So that is why you come here, to see this Englishman who is staying at your hotel?’

‘Partly.’ I was looking down at the sheet of typing again. ‘How do you know Choffel’s daughter is at home today?’

‘I phone the clinic in Saumur this morning.’

‘But not her home.’

‘No.’

‘Can we phone her now?’

‘She is not on the phone.’

‘You think she knows where her father is?’

He didn’t answer that, his sharp eyes staring and a frown on his face. ‘So! That is why you are here.’ He leaned forward, his elbows on the desk, the knuckles of his hands pressed into his cheeks, looking straight at me. ‘It is not the man’s background that interests you, it is where you can find him. Why? You are not the police. You cannot arrest him. Even if you discover where he is—‘ He stopped there, silent for a moment, his eyes still fixed on me. ‘All right then. Okay.’ He suddenly bounced to his feet. ‘I take you to see her. It is only two hours, a bit more per’aps according to the traffic. And there is a little restaurant I know just beyond Angers where we can eat.’

He had a Renault 20 and he drove fast, the radio on all the time so that conversation was almost impossible. I leaned back and closed my eyes, lulled by the husky voice of a singer crooning a French love song, wondering about the girl, what she would be able to tell me. And in the evening I would be meeting Bald-wick. The thought depressed me — that and Barre’s hostility. I could feel it in the silent intensity of his driving. He didn’t understand, of course. He hadn’t connected me with the woman who had blown the ship up. And it had been tactless of me not to conceal my disappointment at his report. Two years living an isolated existence with just one other human being

I had forgotten the pressures of everyday life, the sensitivity of men whose pride was part of their individual armour against the world. Rationalization, self-justification… God! How tired I was! How very, very tired!

The drone of the engine, the voice singing, the sky dark and the wind blattering at the car in gusts… I had a feeling of remoteness, my mind transported, drifting in a daze. Emotional exhaustion perhaps, or just the loneliness. Sitting there, my eyes closed, my cap pushed back, my body enveloped in the heat from the engine — heavy lorries thundering by, the flash of headlights in the murk… Christ! What a filthy lousy day! And here I was being driven by a stranger, a Frenchman, through a land gripped in winter, to meet the daughter of a man I’d sworn to kill… Guinevere a name from Arthurian legend, was that important? Would she have heard from him? He could be in the desert now, or at sea, or buried in the teeming masses of some Arab town. Dubai, Sharjah, Ras al Khaimah, Khor al Fakkan — the Emirate names passing through my mind like a refrain — and Muscat, too, El Ain… all the names of all the places I had ever visited in the Gulf. Where would it be — where would I catch up with him? And when I did, would I really kill him? Would I have the guts?

And then, after a long time, I saw his newspaper picture face twisted in pain, the wide stare, the shocked surprise and the blood spurting. What had I used? In God’s name, was it a knife, or was it my bare hands? My teeth were bared and gritted, my fingers wet and feeling flesh, squeezing, squeezing, and I was cursing as the tongue came out and his eyes glazed…

‘Angers,’ Barre said and I blinked my eyes and sat up.

We were off the dual carriageway, driving into the centre of a city. ‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured. ‘I must have fallen asleep.’

‘You’re tired, I think. You were talking to yourself.’ He switched off the radio. ‘We are coming now to one of the great chateaux of France.’ He turned off to the right, away from the river which he said was the Maine, and above us I saw a line of great black-banded towers. ‘A pity you don’t have time to view the tapestries of the Apocalypse — this city has some of the most remarkable tapestries in the world.’ He talked then about the Angevin kings and the Plantag-enet connection until we stopped at a little hotel in Bohalle for lunch.

What I had said while I was asleep in the car I don’t know, but all through the meal, it seemed, he avoided the purpose of our journey, putting himself out to be entertaining as though I were somebody to be treated with care. It was only at the end, over the last of the wine and some excellent local cheese, that he suddenly said, ‘That girl, what are you going to say to her, have you thought?’

I gave a little shrug. What the hell was I going to say to her? ‘Does she know her father wrecked a tanker?’

‘It’s not certain. There’s no proof yet. But of course she knows he’s- under suspicion. It is in all the papers. And yesterday the local press print a statement from the skipper of the Vague d’Or.’ And he added, ‘Is better you leave it to me, eh? She may not have any English and if I talk to her—‘

‘Ask her if she’s heard from her father, if possible get his address.’

‘And how do we explain ourselves? She might talk to me, but with two of us there — I don’t know.’ He was frowning. ‘I think if I were her I would be asking some questions before giving any answers.’

We were still discussing it as we drove out of Bohalle, the road now hugging the bank of the Loire, through Les Rosiers, St Clement-de-Levees and St Martin-de-la-Place. At Saumur, with its fairy chateau perched above the river, we crossed over to the south bank and almost immediately the road was bounded by shallow limestone cliffs along which conventional house fronts had been built as facades to what were apparently troglodyte dwellings. ‘Les Tuffeaux,’ Barre said, and talked for a moment about the mushroom industry that had grown side by side with the wine business in caves carved out of the limestone to provide the building material for medieval churches.

He stopped at a riverside cafe to enquire the way and afterwards we turned right at Souzay to join a narrow road close under the cliffs. Mushrooms, he said, were a by-product of the Cavalry School at Saumur. ‘What you call horse shit,’ he added, laughing. It was a long, very narrow road and the Choffel house was at the end, in a little cul-de-sac where there was a cave half-hidden by a drooping mass of vegetation, the entrance sealed off by an iron door with a dilapidated notice announcing Vin a Vendre. We parked there and walked back. The figures 5042 were painted black above the rough plaster porch and from a rusty little iron gate opposite that led into a small rose garden there was a fine view over tiled rooftops to the broad waters of the Loire glinting in a cold shaft of sunlight. Dark clouds hung over the northern bank where the vineyards gave way to forest.

I had no preconceived mental picture of Choffel’s daughter. I expected her to be dark, of course, but I hadn’t really thought about it, my mind on how I could persuade her to give us the information I needed. It came as a shock, when she opened the door, to find there was something vaguely familiar about her. She was about twenty, well-rounded with black hair cut in a fringe that framed a squarish face and I had the feeling I had seen her before.

Barre introduced us and at my name she turned her head, staring at me with a puzzled frown. Her eyes were large and dark like sloes, very bright, but that may have been because of her cold. She looked as though she was running a temperature. Barre was still talking, and after a moment’s hesitation, during which her eyes remained fixed on my face, she let us into the house. ‘I have told her we are here about the Petros Jupiter insurance, nothing else,’ Barre whispered as she ushered us into what I suppose would be called the parlour in that sort of house. It was a comfortably furnished room and almost the first thing I noticed was a photograph of her father, the same dark features and prominent nose I had seen in the newspaper pictures, but clean shaven and bare-headed, the crinkly black hair carefully smoothed down, and he was smiling self-consciously, dressed in his engineer’s uniform. Standing beside it, in an identical silver frame, was the photograph of a young woman with the most enormous eyes staring out of a long, gaunt face. She had a broad, pale brow and a mass of curly brown hair. ‘My family,’ the girl said to me in English, and then she had turned back to Barre, speaking in French again, the tone of her voice sharp and questioning.

It was a strange room, more than half of it natural rock that had been plastered over and then decorated. This and the colour cf the walls, which was a pale green, gave it a certain coldness, and with just the one window it had an almost claustrophobic feel to it. I heard my name mentioned and Guinevere Choffel was repeating it, staring at me again, her eyes wide, a shocked look that was mixed with doubt and confusion. ‘Why are you here? What do you want?’ Her English was perfect, but with something of a lilt to it, and she said again, ‘Why are you here?’ her voice dropping away to a note of despair. ‘It was an accident,’ she breathed. ‘An accident, do you hear?’

She knew! That was my first reaction. She knew about Karen, what had happened. And the reason I was here, she must have guessed that, for she didn’t believe me when I said I represented Forthright & Co., the marine solicitors dealing with the case, and needed her father’s address so that we could arrange for him to make a statement. ‘No. It’s something else, isn’t it?’ And in the flash of her eyes, the sound of her voice, I had that sense of familiarity again, but stronger now. And then it dawned on me. She was like Karen in a way, the same sort of build, the same high colouring against the raven black hair, that lilt in the voice; that emotional quality, too, the voice rising and those dark eyes bright with the flash of her anger: ‘You don’t understand. You don’t know my father or you wouldn’t think such a thing.’ She pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt and turned away to blow her nose. ‘He’s had a hard life,’ she mumbled. ‘So many things gone wrong, and not his fault — except that once.’ This last was swallowed so that I almost lost it. And then she had turned and was facing me again, her voice rising: ‘Now you’re here, blaming him. It’s been the same, always, you understand. Always. Do you know what it’s like, to be accused of things you don’t do? Well, do you?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘No,’ she said, her voice higher still and trembling. ‘Of course you don’t. It’s never happened to you. And now you come here, asking me, his daughter, to tell you where he’s gone. You think I would do that when you have” already passed judgment on him?’ She seemed to take a grip of herself then, speaking slowly and with emphasis, ‘It’s not his fault the ship is wrecked. You must believe that. Please.’

‘You saw him in La Rochelle, did you?’ Or perhaps he had only had time to contact her by phone.

‘In La Rochelle?’ She stared at me.

‘In the trawler basin there, when he arrived in the Vague d’Or.’

‘No, I don’t go to La Rochelle. Is he in La Rochelle?’ She sounded surprised.

‘He didn’t contact you?’

‘No, how could he? I didn’t know.’ She was still staring at me, breathing heavily. ‘La Rochelle, you say?’ And when I explained, she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t see him there, or anywhere. I didn’t know he was in France.’

‘But you’ve had a letter from him?’

‘No, not since—‘ she checked herself. ‘No. No letter.’

‘But you’ve heard from him. You know where he is.

She didn’t answer that, her lips tight shut now.

‘Do you know a man named Baldwick?’ I thought there was a flicker of recognition in her eyes. ‘He’s in Nantes. Has he phoned you, or sent you a message?’

She lifted her head then, the dark eyes staring into mine. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? You’ve made up your—‘ She shook her head. ‘You had better go please. I have nothing to tell you, nothing at all, do you hear?’ Her voice, quieter now, the lilt stronger, had an undercurrent of tension in it. ‘She was your wife, I suppose. I read about it in an English paper.’ And when I didn’t answer, she suddenly cried out, ‘She did it — herself. You cannot blame somebody who wasn’t there.’ I could smell her fear of me then as she went on, ‘I’m sorry. But it’s her fault. Nothing to do with my father.’

‘Then why didn’t he stay in England? If he’d waited for the Enquiry—‘

‘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.

There was a note for me at the desk. Baldwick was back and waiting for me in the hotel’s bar-restaurant. I went up to my room, had a wash in lukewarm water, then stood at the window for a moment staring down at the shop-lit street below, where cars moved sluggishly in a glitter of tiny snowflakes. Now that the moment of my meeting with Baldwick had come, I was unsure of myself, disliking the man and the whole stinking mess of Arab corruption on which he battened. A gust of wind drove snowflakes hard like sugar against the window and I laughed, remembering the girl. If it were true what Barre had said, that she’d been frightened of me… well, now I knew what it felt like. I was scared of Baldwick, of thrusting my neck into his world, not knowing where it would lead. And the girl reminding me of Karen. God damn it! If I was scared now, how would it be when I was face to face with her father?

I turned abruptly from the window. It wasn’t murder. To kill a rat like that… Why else was I here, anyway? In Nantes. At the same hotel as Baldwick. And she’d known about Baldwick. I was certain of it, that gleam of recognition when I mentioned his name. She’d associated him with her father’s escape. And Baldwick in Sennen when that picture had been taken of the Petros Jupiter’s crew coming ashore. To recruit a man like Choffel meant he’d been told to find an engineer who was an experienced wrecker.

I shivered, the room cold, the future looming uncertain. Another gust rattled the window. I made an effort, pulled myself together and started down the stairs.

The bar-restaurant looked out on to the street, the windows edged with a dusting of ice crystals, the snow driving horizontally. The place was cold and almost empty. Baldwick was sitting at a table pulled as close as possible to a moveable gas fire. He had another man with him, a thin-faced man with a dark blue scarf wrapped round a scrawny neck and a few strands of hair slicked so carefully over the high bald dome of his head that they looked as though they were glued there. ‘Albert Varsac,’ Baldwick said.

The man rose, tall and gaunt. ‘Capitaine Varsac.’ He held out a bony hand.

‘First mate on a coaster’s as far as you ever got.’ Baldwick laughed, prodding him with a thick finger. ‘That’s raight, ain’t it? You never bin an effing captain in yer life.’ He waved me to a seat opposite. ‘Got your message,’ he said. His eyes were glassy, his mood truculent. He shouted for a glass, and when it came, he sloshed red wine into it and pushed it across to me. ‘So you changed your mind, eh?’

I nodded, wondering how far I would have to commit myself in order to catch up with Choffel.

‘Why?’ He leaned forward, his big bullet head thrust towards me, the hard bright eyes staring me in the face. ‘You good as told me ter bugger off when I saw you down at that little rat hole of a cottage of yours. Get a’t, you said. I don’t want anything to do wi’ yer bloody proper-propositions. Raight?’ He wasn’t drunk, but he’d obviously had a skinful, the north country accent more pronounced, his voice a little slurred. ‘So why’re you here, eh? Why’ve you changed yer mind?’ His tone was hostile.

I hesitated, glancing at the Frenchman who was fazing at me with drunken concentration. ‘The reason doesn’t matter.’ My voice sounded nervous, fear of the man taking hold of me again.

‘I got ter be sure…” He said it slowly, to himself, and I suddenly sensed a mood of uncertainty in him. In that moment, as he. picked up the bottle and thrust it into Varsac’s hands, I glimpsed it from his point of view, engaging men he didn’t know for some crooked scheme he didn’t dare tell them about or perhaps didn’t even know himself. ‘You piss off,’ he told the Frenchman. ‘I wan’ ter talk to Rodin ‘ere alone.’ He waved the man away, an impatient flick of a great paw, and when he’d gone, he called for another bottle. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Let’s ‘ave it. Why’re you here?’ He was leaning forward again, the hard little eyes boring into me, and I sat there for what seemed an age, staring at him speechless, not knowing what to say, conscious only that it wasn’t going to be easy. The bastard was suspicious.

‘The book,’ I said finally, my voice no more than a whisper. ‘The publishers turned it down.’

‘The publishers?’ He stared at me blankly. Then, suddenly remembering, he opened his mouth and let out a great gust of laughter. ‘Turned it da’n, did they? That bleedin’ book of yours. An’ now you come runnin’ ter me.’ He sat back, belching and patting his stomach, a smug, self-satisfied gleam in his eye. ‘Wot makes yer think I still got a job for yer, eh?’

There was a sort of cunning in the way he said it, but his acceptance of my explanation gave me confidence. ‘The desk said you were booked out to Marseilles in the morning,’ I said. ‘If you’d got all the officers you needed, you’d be headed for Dubai, not Marseilles. And you didn’t get the master of the Petros Jupiter, only the engineer.’

I was taking a chance in saying that, but he only grinned at me. ‘Been makin’ enquiries, have yer?’

‘Where’s the ship?’ I asked. I thought he might be drunk enough to tell me. ‘Abu Dhabi, Dubai—‘

The grin faded. ‘Yer don’t ask questions, mate. Not if yer wantin’ a job a’t o’ me. Got it?’ He leaned forward, the glassy eyes staring. ‘You’ve no idea, have you — no idea at all what a man like me ‘as ter do ter turn an honest silver thaler.’ There was sweat on his forehead, his eyes glazing, and he was breathing deeply so that I thought for a moment he was going to pass out on me. ‘But this is different.’ He seemed to pull himself together. ‘The men I need — they got ter be…” His voice trailed away and he was silent for a while, staring down at his glass as though thinking something out. Finally he lifted his head, looking straight at me as he said, ‘I got ter be careful, see.’ His eyes held mine for a long moment, then he refilled our glasses. ‘You sold that cottage of yours?’

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘I’ve told them not to put it on the market till the spring.’

He lifted his glass, swallowing half of it at a gulp as though it were beer. ‘Won’t fetch much, will it?’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smiling. ‘Yer wife dead and yer book in the dustbin, in a bit of a mess, ain’t yer?’ His eyes creased, smiling at me as though somebody in a bit of a mess was what life was all about. ‘Got anything tucked away?’

He said it casually, but I sensed that the question was important. ‘How do you mean?’

‘You got enough to get here…’ He sat there, waiting.

‘Just enough,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’

‘No return ticket?’ I shook my head.

‘Christ, man! You took a chance.’ He nodded. ‘So you’re out o’ bread an’ no way of getting back to the U-kay, no prospect of finding work there anyway?’

I didn’t say anything and he grinned at me. ‘Orl raight, so I still got a berth for a second mate.’ He leaned forward, peering into my face. ‘But wot makes you think you’re the man for the job?’

‘Depends what it is,’ I said. But he wouldn’t tell me that, or who the owners were, not even the name of the ship. It was double rates and an end of voyage bonus, so what was I worrying about? ‘You want the job or don’t you?’

I knew then that I had no alternative. To find Choffel I would have to commit myself. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You got any money at all, apart from what you’ll get from that cottage?’

‘Enough to pay the hotel bill, that’s all.’ I didn’t know whether he was fishing for a bribe or not. ‘No dole money, no redundancy?’ ‘I don’t qualify.’

‘So you got nothing. An’ now yer wife’s gone…’ He thumped the table, gloating at me. ‘You got nothing at all, have you?’ He sat back, smiling and lifting his glass in his big fist. ‘Orl raight, Trevor — yer on. Nantes-Paris, then Paris-Dubai, an’ after that you wait until we’re ready for you, everything laid on — hotel, swimming, booze, girls, anything you want. Just one thing though—‘ He reached out a big hand and gripped my arm. ‘No tricks. An’ remember — it’s ‘cos of me you’re getting the job. Understand?’

I nodded. I hadn’t been in the Gulf all those years not to recognize the glint in his eyes. ‘How much?’ I asked.

‘Voyage money will be paid in advance. You hand me half of it, okay?’ And he added, ‘You’ll still be getting full second mate’s pay. And you keep the bonus.’ The bonus would be five hundred quid, he said — ‘So you don’t ask questions, see.’

And so it was agreed. For half my pay I put myself in his hands, committed to an unknown ship and an unknown destination. ‘I booked your flight, by the way.’ He grinned at me slyly. ‘Did that soon as I heard you’d checked into the hotel.’ He emptied the bottle into our glasses and when we had finished it, he got hold of Varsac and we had a meal together. There was more wine and cognac with the coffee. The talk turned to sex, interminable sordid stories of the Gulf. Varsac had been in Jibuti. He was very funny about the madame of a brothel who changed into a man. And Baldwick became morose. I mentioned the Petros Jupiter again, asking him whether he knew anything about the engineer he’d recruited, but he stared at me with such drunken hostility that I didn’t persist. He knew I had been getting at something, but he was confused and he wasn’t sure what. In the end I went to bed.

My room was close under the eaves. It was cold, |the bed not aired and I couldn’t sleep. The window rattled in the gusts and I kept thinking of that girl, the horror in her eyes, the way she’d spat in my face. I lay there, listening to the gusts, remembering that night off Sennen, the fog exploding into flames. And the Lloyd’s agent trying to tell me I’d no proof. The girl, too. It’s not his fault, she had said — ‘She did it herself.’ But they hadn’t been there. They hadn’t seen it. And Choffel. What would he say when I finally caught up with him, when I got hold of the murderous little bastard, my hands at his throat, the flesh yielding…? The wind beat against the window, a cold draught on my face. God damn it! What sort of a monster had I become?

I was shivering then, my eyes wet with tears. God in Heaven! Why should I start on self-recrimination when I’d right on my side? It wasn’t vengeance. It was justice. Somebody had to see to it that he never wrecked another vessel. And then I was thinking about why he’d done it. Greed! Stupid, senseless greed! But that wasn’t peculiar to him. It was a curse affecting us all, the whole human race, harvesting the sea till there was nothing left but oceans and oceans of dead water, drilling for energy, tanking it round the world, feeding factories that poured toxic waste into the rivers, supplying farms with pesticides that poisoned the land, pumping heat and fumes into the life-giving atmosphere until it was a lethal hothouse. What was Choffel by comparison? A nothing, just a symbol, a symptom of human rapacity, and myself a Quixote tilting at the windmill of man’s self-destructive urge.

It was an argument and a view of life that went round and round in my head as gusts rattled the door and the rafters crackled in the frost. And then I woke to complete stillness in a grey dawn that held everything in a grip of silence, the window panes frosted over and the rooftops opposite a glazed white. It was no longer freezing and by the time I was dressed there was a gleam of watery sunshine, the world outside beginning to thaw.

Baldwick was already there when I went into the bar-restaurant for breakfast, sitting at a table with a pot of coffee and a basketful of rolls in front of him. ‘Take a seat.’ He pulled out a chair for me, indicating the coffee. ‘Help yourself.’ He had his mouth full, chewing voraciously at a roll, his heavy cheeks glowing pink as though he had been for a brisk walk in the cold morning air, his big frame full of vigour. ‘Paris is no go, thick as a pig’s snout. If the fog don’t lift you could be here another night.’

He had settled with the desk and had given Varsac the air tickets. All the time he was talking those little eyes of his were fixed on me intently. Something was worrying him, some sixth sense perhaps — ‘Keep yer mouth shut.’ He was suddenly leaning forward, his face close to mine and nothing in his eyes or his voice, nothing at all to indicate he had been drinking heavily the night before. ‘Understand? Anyone starts talking they could find themselves in trouble. I’m telling you that ‘cos I reck’n you’re far too intelligent not to know you don’t get double rates and a bonus for a run-of-the-bloody-mill voyage. Okay?’

I nodded, finding it difficult to meet the bright beady eyes barely a foot from mine.

‘You still thinking about the Petros Jupiter} ‘Cos if you are…’

I shook my head, reaching for the coffee and pouring myself a cup as I enquired why he had asked.

‘Last night. You were asking questions about the engineer.’

‘Was I?’

‘You know bloody well you were. Did you think I was too drunk or something not to remember? How did you know I’d anything to do with the man?’

‘You were in Sennen when the crew came ashore.’ But the instant I’d said it I knew it was a mistake. He pounced on it immediately.

‘Sennen? Who said I went to Sennen? Falmouth, I told you.’

I nodded, buttering myself a roll and not looking at him. ‘I heard you’d been at Sennen earlier, that’s all.’

‘Who told you?’

‘I don’t know.’ I gulped down some coffee. ‘Everything was a bit mixed up at the time. A press photographer, I think.’

‘I never was at Sennen. Understand?’ His fist slammed down on the table, rattling the crockery. ‘Forget it. Forget everything — okay? Just do the job you’re paid for…’ He looked up as Varsac joined us. The Frenchman’s face was more cadaverous than ever, heavy pouches below the bloodshot eyes. ‘Mornin’, Albert,’ Baldwick said brightly. ‘You look as though you’ve been tangling with Madame all night.’ He picked up the pot and poured him a coffee. ‘You’ll take it black, eh?’ And as Varsac sat down heavily and buried his long nose in the coffee, he added, ‘Bet yer if a nice plump Baluchi girl walked in now you couldn’t do a thing aba’t it.’ And he let out a great guffaw as he slapped the wretched Varsac on the back.

His taxi arrived a few minutes later and as he got up from the table, he paused for a moment, staring at me. ‘See you in Dubai,’ he said. ‘And no tricks, see?’ He was smiling at me, but not with his eyes. For a moment he stood there, looking down at me. Finally he nodded as though satisfied, turning abruptly and going out to the waiting taxi.

Flights south were leaving on schedule, but Paris and all the north of France was fogged in. It looked as though we’d be kicking our heels in Nantes for some hours yet and I went in search of the papers. The only English ones I could find were the Telegraph and the Financial Times and I looked through them over a fine a I’eau in the bar. There was no news of the missing tankers in either of them, the front page of the Telegraph full of the trial of terrorists charged with the Piccadilly bomb outrage, and there had been a demonstration outside the Old Bailey in which shots had been fired at the police. It was in the Financial Times that I found a small paragraph tucked away on an inside page headed tanker claim rejected: ‘Solicitors for a Lloyd’s syndicate operated by Mr Michael Stewart have rejected a claim by the NSO Harben company of Schiedam in respect of the loss of the tanker Petros Jupiter. No reason has been given, but it is presumably based on their assessment of the evidence that will be given at the Enquiry due to begin on January 27. The amount of the claim is put at over £9 million for the hull alone. This is the largest marine insurance claim so far this year.’

Just before midday we were informed that it was unlikely we would get away until the following morning. A definite decision would be made after lunch. I got hold of a city plan and walked down to the riverside quays where the cargo ships lay. The sun was quite warm, the streets all dripping with melted snow. At the offices of the Reaux shipping company my request to speak to somebody who had actually known Choffel resulted in my being shown into a tiny waiting-room and left there for a long time. The walls were hung with the framed photographs of ships, most of them old and faded, and there was a table with copies of French shipping magazines. Finally, a youngster, who spoke good schoolboy English, took me along the quay to a small grain carrier that had only just come in. There I was introduced to an elderly chief engineer who had been on the Tarzan in 1959.

He described Choffel as a quiet man who didn’t say very much, just got on with the job. He had had very little French at that time, but was eager to learn because he wanted to live in France. I asked him why, but he just shrugged.

‘Was he a good engineer?’

‘Mais out — excellent.’ And then he said something that came as a complete surprise to me. He said, ‘Henri Choffel, vous savez, il etait anglais.’ English! That was something that hadn’t occurred to me. But then suddenly things began to fall into place. The girl — it explained the lilt, that sense of familiarity, that vague likeness to Karen, the name even. Of course, Welsh! How would a French engineer know the difference — Welsh, English, it was all one to him.

But it didn’t help me to an understanding of the man, and he couldn’t tell me what ships he’d been on or where he came from. I asked him what sort of company Choffel had kept when they were in port, but apparently he had usually stayed on board, studying French and talking to the French members of the crew. He was on the Tarzan almost a year, and by the time he was promoted to another of the Reaux ships he was quite fluent. There was only one other worthwhile thing he told me. Choffel had had the word FORMIDABLE and the date 1952 tattooed across his chest. The old man pronounced it, of course, in the French way, but it could just as easily have been English and the name of a ship.

Barre was out to lunch by the time I reached his office, but I arranged with his secretary for a telex to be sent to Pritchard advising that a search be made for the name of any Welshman serving as a conscript in the engine-room of HMS Formidable in 1952. It was a chance. Once Pritchard had the man’s original name, he’d be able to find out what merchant ships he’d served in later and whether any of them had been wrecked shortly before he had joined the Tarzan under the name of Henri Choffel.

Back at the hotel, after a meal and a bottle of wine at a little restaurant by the river, I found Varsac waiting anxiously for me in reception with his bags packed. Paris was now clear and our flight would be leaving Nantes at 16.10. I got my key and was told there was a Mademoiselle Choffel wishing to speak with me. She was having a coffee in the bar.

I left Varsac to order a taxi, got the bags from my room and then went through into the bar-restaurant. She was sitting in a corner facing the door into the hotel and she got up with a nervous little smile as I went towards her. There were dark shadows under her eyes and her face was flushed. She held out her hand. ‘I had to come. I want to apologize. I was upset. Terribly upset. I didn’t know what I was saying, or doing. It was such a shock.’ The words poured out of her as we shook hands, her clasp hot and moist.

‘You should be in bed,’ I said. ‘You look as though you’re running a temperature.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ She sat down abruptly, waving me to the seat on the opposite side of the table. ‘I couldn’t let you leave, like that. As if I had no understanding, no sympathy.’

‘You’re Welsh, aren’t you?’ I asked.

‘Half Welsh, yes. My mother was French.’

‘From Vertou.’

Her eyes widened. ‘So you’ve been making enquiries?’

‘Of course.’ And I added, ‘My wife was Welsh. But not her name. Her name was Karen.’

‘Yes, I know. I read about it. When I heard the news I read all the English papers I could get…’ Her voice faded, floundering over the macabre memory of what had been printed in the English press.

‘Karen was from Swansea. That’s where we met. In the docks there.’

‘It was nothing to do with my father,’ she whispered urgently. ‘Please. You’ve got to believe that. You must believe it, because it’s true. It was an accident.’

‘And he’s a Welshman, you say?’

‘He was born there, yes.’

‘Where?’

‘In the middle somewhere. I’m not sure.’

‘What was his name then?’

It was on the tip of her tongue, but then she hesitated. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘A fellow Welshman…’ I murmured, not looking at her now, knowing I had tried to trap her.

‘You’re not Welsh.’ Her voice was suddenly harder, an undercurrent of impatience. ‘The way you talk sounds like it sometimes, but if you were Welsh now—‘

‘It would make no difference.’

‘If you were, you would have the imagination to see—‘

‘I have plenty of imagination,’ I cut in angrily. ‘Too much perhaps.’

She was staring at me now, her eyes wide and the same look of horror dawning. ‘Please. Won’t you try to understand. He’s never had a chance. Ever since the Stella Rosa. You know about the Stella Rosa, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘He was exonerated, you know.’

‘The Stella Rosa was gun-running.’

‘There was no other ship available. My mother was sick and he needed the money.’

‘Honest engineers don’t go gun-running,’ I told her. ‘Then, when the ship was wrecked, he blamed one of his engineer officers, a man named Aristides Speridion.’

She nodded slowly, her eyes dropping to her hands.

‘What happened to Speridion? Has he told you?’

She didn’t answer.

Varsac poked his head round the door to say the taxi had arrived. I waved him away. ‘Tell it to wait,’ I said. And then to the girl, ‘You realize that when the Petros Jupiter went on to the rocks by Land’s End he was in charge of the engine-room? And masquerading under the name of Aristides Speridion. He even had Speridion’s passport.’

‘I know.’ The admission seemed dragged out of her, the words a whisper. She suddenly reached out, touched my hand. ‘There’s some explanation. I know there is. There must be. Can’t you wait — until after the Enquiry? It’s like a court of law, isn’t it? The truth — the real truth — it’ll all come out.’ Her voice was urgent, desperate to believe that he would be vindicated, his innocence proved. ‘He’s such a kind man. You should have seen him when my mother was dying—‘

‘If there were a chance that the Enquiry would vindicate him, he’d surely have stayed. Instead—‘ But I left it at that. His action in fleeing the country made it all so obvious and I’d no quarrel with her. I began to get to my feet. She should have had the sense to face up to the situation. The man was guilty as hell and no good her pleading his innocence when the facts were all against it. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go now. The flight to Paris—‘

‘It’s Dubai, isn’t it? You’re going to Dubai.’

I nodded.

‘When you see my father…’ She got slowly to her feet, tears in her eyes as she stood facing me. ‘Give him my love, will you. Tell him I did my best. I tried to stop you.’ She stood quite still, facing me, with her hands to her side, as though she were facing a firing squad. ‘Please remember that when you find him.’ And then, in a sudden violent outburst, ‘I don’t understand you. Will nothing satisfy the bitterness that’s eating you up? Isn’t there anything—‘ But then she stopped, her body stiffening as she turned away, gathering up her handbag and walking blindly out by the street door.

She left me with the bill for her coffee and a feeling of sadness that such a nice girl, so absolutely loyal, should have such a man as her father. Nothing she had said had made the slightest difference, his guilt so obvious that I thought she was probably convinced of it, too, as I went out to the waiting taxi. Varsac was already there with the door open. I handed my bags to the driver, saw to it that he put them both in the boot and then, as I was bending down to get in, the girl’s voice behind me called out, ‘Monsieur. Un moment.’ I turned to find her standing by the bonnet of the taxi with one of those flat little miniature cameras to her eye and at that moment the shutter blinked. It blinked again before I had time to move. ‘Why did you do that?’ I was reaching out for the camera, but she put it behind her, standing stiff and defiant. ‘You touch me and I’ll scream,’ she said. ‘You can’t take my camera.’

‘But why?’ I said again.

She laughed, a snorting sound. ‘So that my children will know what the murderer of their grandfather looked like. The police, too. Anything happens to my father and I’ll give these pictures to the police.’ She took a step back, the camera to her eye again as she took another snap. Then she turned, darting across the pavement into the hotel.

‘Depeche-toi. Depeche-toi. Nous allons louper I’avion? Varsac’s voice sounded agitated.

I hesitated, but there was nothing I could do, so I got into the taxi and we drove out of Nantes across the Loire to the airport. And all the way there I was thinking about the photographs, her reason for taking them — ‘When you meet my father—‘ Those were her words. ‘Dubai,’ she had said. ‘You’re going to Dubai.’ So now I knew, Choffel was in Dubai. He would be waiting for me there, an engineer in the same ship.

Two hours later we were in Paris, at the Charles de Gaulle Airport, waiting for the flight to Dubai. In the end we didn’t board until 20.30, and even then we were lucky in that there had been several cancellations, for this was the Thursday morning flight, delayed now by over thirty hours and every seat taken.