When Eight Bells Toll

THREE

I need my sleep, just like anyone else. Ten hours, perhaps only eight, and I would have been my own man again. Maybe not exuding brightness, optimism and cheerfulness, the circumstances weren't right for that, but at least a going concern, alert, perceptive, my mind operating on what Uncle Arthur would be by now regarding as its customary abysmal level but still the best it could achieve. But I wasn't given that ten hours. Nor even the eight. Exactly three hours after dropping off I was wide awake again. Well, anyway, awake. I would have had to be stone deaf, drugged or dead to go on sleeping through the bawling and thumping that was currently assailing my left ear from what appeared to be a distance of not more than twelve inches.

"Ahoy, there, Firecrest! Ahoy there!" Thump, thump, thump on the boat's side. "Can I come aboard? Ahoy, there! Ahoy, ahoy, ahoy!"

I cursed this nautical idiot from the depths of my sleep-ridden being, swung a pair of unsteady legs to the deck and levered myself out of the bunk. I almost fell down, I seemed to have only one leg left, and my neck ached fiercely. A glance at the mirror gave quick external confirmation of my internal decrepitude. A haggard unshaven face, unnaturally pale, and bleary bloodshot eyes with dark circles under them. I looked away hurriedly, there were lots of things I could put up with first thing in the morning, but not sights like that.

I opened the door across the passage. Hunslett was sound asleep and snoring. I returned to my own cabin and got busy with the dressing-gown and Paisley scarf again. The iron-lunged thumping character outside was still at it, if I didn't hurry he would be roaring out "a vast there" any moment. I combed my hair into some sort of order and made my way to die upper deck.

It was a cold, wet and windy world. A grey, dreary, unpleasant world, why the hell couldn't they have let me sleep on. The rain was coining down in slanting sheets, bouncing inches high on the decks, doubling the milkiness of the spume-flecked sea. The lonely wind mourned through the rigging and the lower registers of sound and the steep-sided wind-truncated waves, maybe three feet from tip to trough, were high enough to make passage difficult if not dangerous for the average yacht tender.

They didn't make things in the slightest difficult or dangerous for the yacht tender that now lay alongside us. It maybe wasn't as big — it looked it at first sight — as the Firecrest, but it was big enough to have a glassed-in cabin for'ard, a wheelhouse that bristled and gleamed with controls and instrumentation that would have been no disgrace to a VC-10 and, abaft that, a sunken cockpit that could have sunbathed a football team without overcrowding. There were three crewmen dressed in black oilskins and fancy French navy hats with black ribbons down the back, two of them each with a boat-hook round one of the Firecrest's guardrail stanchions. Half a dozen big inflated spherical rubber fenders kept the Firecrest from rubbing its plebeian paintwork against the whitely-varnished spotlessness of the tender alongside and it didn't require the name on the bows or the crew's hats to let me know that this was the tender that normally took up most of the after-deck space on the Shangri-la.

Amidships a stocky figure clad in a white vaguely naval brass-buttoned uniform and holding above his head a golf umbrella that would have had Joseph green with envy, stopped banging his gloved fist against the Firecrest's planking and glared up at me.

"Ha!" I've never actually heard anyone snort out a word but this came pretty close to it. "There you are at last. Took your time about it, didn't you? I'm soaked, man, soaked!" A few spots of rain did show up quite clearly on the white seersucker. "May I come aboard?" He didn't wait for any permission, just leaped aboard with surprising nimbleness for a man of his build and years and nipped into the Firecrest's wheelhouse ahead of me, which was pretty selfish of him as he still had his umbrella and all I had was my dressing-gown. I followed and closed the door behind me.

He was a short, powerfully built character, fifty-five I would have guessed, with a heavily-tanned jowled face, close-cropped iron-grey hair with tufted eyebrows to match, long straight nose and a mouth that looked as if it had been closed with a zip-fastener. A good-looking cove, if you liked that type of looks. The dark darting eyes looked me up and down and if he was impressed by what he saw he made a heroic effort to keep his admiration in check.

"Sorry for the delay," I apologised. "Short of sleep. We had the customs aboard in the middle of the night and I couldn't get off after that." Always tell everyone the truth if there's an even chance of that truth coming out anyway, which in this case there was: gives one a reputation for forthright honesty.

"The customs?" He looked as if he intended to say "pshaw" or "fiddlesticks" or something of that order, then changed his mind and looked up sharply. "An intolerable bunch of busybodies. And in the middle of the night. Shouldn't have let them aboard. Sent them packing. Intolerable. What the deuce did they want?" He gave the distinct impression of having himself had some trouble with the customs in the past.

"They were looking for stolen chemicals. Stolen from some place in Ayrshire. Wrong boat."

"Idiots!" He thrust out a stubby hand, he'd passed his final judgment on the unfortunate customs and the subject was now closed. "Skouras. Sir Anthony Skouras."

"Petersen." His grip made me wince, fess from the sheer power of it than from the gouging effects of the large number of thickly encrusted rings that adorned his fingers. I wouldn't have been surprised to see some on his thumbs but he'd missed out on that. I looked at him with new interest "Sir Anthony Skouras. I've heard of you of course."

"Nothing good. Columnists don't like me because they know I despise them. A Cypriot who made his shipping millions through sheer ruthlessness, they say. True. Asked by the Greek Government to leave Athens. True. Became a naturalised British citizen and bought a knighthood. Absolutely true. Charitable works and public services. Money can buy anything. A baronetcy next hut the marker's not right at the moment. Price is bound to fall. Can I use your radio transmitter? I see you have one."

"What's that?" The abrupt switch had me off-balance, no great achievement the way I was feeling.

"Your radio transmitter, man! Don't you listen to the news? All those major defence projects cancelled by the Pentagon. Price of steel tumbling. Must get through to my New York broker at once!"

"Sorry. Certainly you may — but, but your own radio-telephone? Surely — "

"It's out of action." His mouth became more tight-lipped than ever and the inevitable happened: it disappeared. "It's urgent, Mr. Petersen."

"Immediately. You know how to operate this model?"

He smiled thinly, which was probably the only way he was capable of smiling. Compared to the cinema-organ job he'd have aboard the Shangri-la, asking him if he could operate this was like asking the captain of a transatlantic jet if he could fly a Tiger Moth. "I think I can manage, Mr. Petersen."

"Call me when you're finished, 113 be in the saloon." He'd be calling me before he'd finished, he'd be calling me before he'd even started. But I couldn't tell him. Word gets around. I went down to the saloon, contemplated a shave and decided against it. It wouldn't take that long. It didn't. He appeared at the saloon door inside a minute, his face grim.

"Your radio is out of order, Mr. Petersen."

"They're tricky to operates some of those older fobs," I said tactfully. "Maybe if I — "

"I say it's out of order. I mean it’s out of order."

"Damned odd. It was working — "

"Would you care to try it, please?"

I tried it. Nothing. I twiddled everything I could lay hands on. Nothing.

"A power failure, perhaps," I suggested. "I'll check — "

"Would you be so good as to remove the face-plate, please?"

I stared at him in perplexity, switching the expression, after a suitable interval, to shrewd thoughtfulness. "What do you know, Sir Anthony, that I don't?"

"You'll find out."

So I found out and went through all the proper motions of consternation, incredulity and tight-lipped indignation. Finally I said: "You knew. How did you know?"

"Obvious, isn't it?"

"Your transmitter," I said slowly. "It's more than just out order. You had the same midnight caller."

"And the Orion." The mouth vanished again. "The big blue ketch lying close in. Only other craft in the harbour apart from us with a radio transmitter. Smashed. Just come from there."

"Smashed? Theirs as well? But who in God's name — it must be the work of a madman."

"Is it? Is it the work of a madman? I know something of those matters. My first wife — " He broke off abruptly and gave an odd shake of the head, then went on slowly: "The mentally disturbed are irrational, haphazard, purposeless, aimless in their behaviour patterns. This seems an entirely irrational act, but an act with a method and a purpose to it. Not haphazard. It's planned. There's a reason. At first I thought the reason was to cut off my connection with the mainland. But it can't be that. By rendering me temporarily incommunicado nobody stands to gain, I don't stand to lose."

"But you said the New York Stock — "

"A bagatelle," he said contemptuously. "Nobody likes to lose money." Not more than a few millions anyway. "No, Mr. Petersen, I am not the target. We have here an A and a B. A regards it as vital that he remains in constant communication with the mainland. B regards it as vital that A doesn't. So B takes steps. There's something damned funny going on in Torbay. And something big. I have a nose for such things."

He was no fool but then not many morons have ended up as multi-millionaires. I couldn't have put it better myself. I said: "Reported this to the police yet?"

"Going there now. After I've made a phone call or two," The eyes suddenly became bleak and cold, "Unless our friend has smashed up the two public call boxes in the main street."

"He's done better than that. He's brought down the lines to the mainland. Somewhere down the Sound. No one knows where."

He stared at me, wheeled to leave, then turned, his face empty of expression. "How did you know that?" The tone matched the face.

"Police told me. They were aboard with the customs last night."

"The police? That's damned odd. What were the police doing here?" He paused and looked at me with his cold measuring eyes. "A personal question, Mr. Petersen. No impertinence intended. A question of elimination. What are you doing here? No offence."

"No offence. My friend and I are marine biologists. A working trip. Not our boat -the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries." I smiled. "We have impeccable references, Sir Anthony."

"Marine biology, eh? Hobby of mine, you might say. Layman, of course. Must have a talk sometime." He was speaking absent-mindedly, his thoughts elsewhere. "Could you describe the policeman, Mr. Petersen?"

I did and he nodded. "That's him all right. Odd, very odd. Must have a word with Archie about this."

"Archie?"

"Sergeant MacDonald. This is my fifth consecutive season's cruising based on Torbay. The South of France and the Aegean can't hold a candle to these waters. Know quite a few of the locals pretty well by this time. He was alone?"

"No. A young constable. His son, he said. Melancholy son of lad."

"Peter MacDonald. He has reason for his melancholy, Mr. Petersen. His two young brothers, sixteen years old, twins, died a few months back. At an Inverness-shire, lost in a late snow-storm in the Cairngorms. The father is tougher, doesn't show it so much. A great tragedy. I knew them both. Fine boys."

I made some appropriate comment but he wasn't listening.

"I must be on my way, Mr. Petersen. Put this damned strange affair in MacDonald's hand. Don't see that he can do much. Then off for a short cruise."

I looked through the wheelhouse windows at the dark skies, the white-capped seas, the driving rain. "You picked a day for it."

"The rougher the better. No bravado. I like a mill-pond as well as any man. Just had new stabilisers fitted in the Clyde — we got back up here only two days ago -and it seems like a good day to try them out." He smiled suddenly and put out his hand. "Sorry to have barged in. Taken up far too much of your time. Seemed rude, I suppose. Some say I am. You and your colleague care to come aboard for a drink to-night? We eat early at sea. Eight o'clock, say? I'll send the tender." That meant we didn't rate an invitation to dinner, which would have made a change from Hunslett and his damned baked beans, but even an invitation like this would have given rise to envious tooth-gnashing in some of the stateliest homes in the land: it was no secret that the bluest blood in England, from Royalty downwards, regarded a holiday invitation to the island Skouras owned off the Albanian coast as the conferment of the social cachet of the year or any year. Skouras didn't wait for an answer and didn't seem to expect one. I didn't blame him. It would have been many years since Skouras had discovered that it was an immutable law of human nature, human nature being what it is, that no one ever turned down one of his invitations.

"You'll be coming to tell me about your smashed transmitter and asking me what the devil I intend to do about it," Sergeant MacDonald said tiredly. "Well, Mr. Petersen, I know all about it already. Sir Anthony Skouras was here half an hour ago. Sir Anthony had a lot to say. And Mr. Campbell, the owner of the Orion, has just left. He'd a lot to say, too."

"Not me, Sergeant. I'm a man of few words." I gave him what I hoped looked like a self-deprecatory smile. "Except, of course, when the police and customs drag me out of bed in the middle of the night. I take it our friends have left?"

"Just as soon as they'd put us ashore. Customs are just a damn nuisance." Like myself, he looked as if he could do with some hours' sleep. "Frankly, Mr, Petersen, I don't know what to do about the broken radio-transmitters. Why on earth — who on earth would want to do a daft vicious thing like that?"

"That's what I came to ask you."

"I can go aboard your boat," MacDonald said slowly. "I can take out my notebook, look around and see if I can't find any clues. I wouldn't know what to look for. Maybe if I knew something about fingerprinting and analysis and microscopy I might just find out something. But I don't. I'm an island policeman, not a one-man Flying Squad. This is C.I.D. work and we'd have to call in Glasgow. I doubt if they'd send a couple of detectives to investigate a few smashed radio valves."

"Old man Skouras draws a lot of water."

"Sir?"

"He's powerful. He has influence. If Skouras wanted action I'm damned sure he could get it. If the need arose and the mood struck him I'm sure he could be a very unpleasant character indeed."

"There's not a better man or a kinder man ever sailed into Torbay," MacDonald said warmly. That hard brown fact could conceal practically anything that MacDonald wanted it to conceal but this rime he was hiding nothing. "Maybe his ways aren't my ways. Maybe he's a hard, aye, a ruthless businessman. Maybe, as die papers hint, his private life wouldn't bear investigation. That's none of my business. But if you were to look for a man in Torbay to say a word against him, you'll have a busy time on your hands, Mr. Petersen."

"You've taken me up wrongly, Sergeant," I said mildly. "I don't even know the man."

"No. But we do. See that?" He pointed through the side window of the police station to a large Swedish-style timber building beyond the pier. "Our new village hall. Town hall, they call it. Sir Anthony gave us that. Those six wee chalets up the hill there? For old folks. Sir Anthony again — every penny from his own pocket. Who takes all the schoolchildren to the Oban Games — Sir Anthony on the Shangri-la, Contributes to every charity going and now he has plans to build a boatyard to give employment to the young men of Torbay — there's not much else going since the fishing-boats left."

"Well, good for old Skouras," I said. "He seems to have adopted the place. Lucky Torbay. I wish he'd buy me a new radio-transmitter."

"I'll keep my eyes and ears open, Mr, Petersen. I can't do more. If anything turns up I'll let you know at once."

I told him thanks, and left. I hadn't particularly wanted to go there, but it would have looked damned odd if I hadn't turned up to add my pennyworth to the chorus of bitter complaint.

I was very glad that I had turned up.

The midday reception from London was poor. This was due less 10 the fact that reception is always better after dark than to the fact that I couldn't use our telescopic radio mast: but it was fair enough and Uncle's voice was brisk and business-like and clear.

"Well, Caroline, we've found our missing friends," he said.

"How many?" I asked cautiously, "Uncle Arthur's ambiguous references weren't always as clear as Uncle Arthur imagined them to be.

"All twenty-five." That made it the former crew of the Nantesville, "Two of them are pretty badly hurt but they'll be all right." That accounted for the blood I had found in the captain's and one of the engineers' cabins.

"Where?" I asked.

He gave me a map reference. Just north of Wexford. The Nantesville had sailed from Bristol, she couldn't have been more than a few hours on her way before she'd run into trouble.

"Exactly the same procedure as on the previous occasions," Uncle Arthur was saying. "Held in a lonely farmhouse for a couple of nights. Plenty to eat and drink and blankets to keep the cold out. Then they woke up one morning and found their guards had gone."

"But a different procedure in stopping the — our friend?" I'd almost said Nantesville and Uncle Arthur wouldn't have liked that at all.

"As always. We must concede them a certain ingenuity, Caroline. After having smuggled men aboard in port, then using the sinking fishing-boat routine, the police launch routine and the yacht with the appendicitis case aboard, I thought they would be starting to repeat themselves. But this time they came up with a new one — possibly because it's the first time they've hi-jacked a ship during the hours of darkness. Carley rafts, this time, with about ten survivors aboard, dead ahead of the vessel. Oil all over the sea. A weak distress flare that couldn't have been seen a mile away and probably was designed that way. You know the rest."

"Yes, Annabelle." I knew the rest. After that the routine was always the same. The rescued survivors, displaying a marked lack of gratitude, would whip out pistols, round up the crew, tie black muslin bags over their heads so that they couldn't identify the vessel that would appear within the hour to take them off, march them on board the unknown vessel, land them on some lonely beach during the dark then march them again, often a very long way indeed, till they arrived at their prison. A deserted farmhouse. Always a deserted farm-house. And always in Ireland, three times in the north and now twice in the south. Meantime the prize crew sailed the hi-jacked vessel to God alone knew where and the first the world knew of the disappearance of the pirated vessel was when the original crew, released after two or three days' painless captivity, would turn up at some remote dwelling and start hollering for the nearest telephone.

"Betty and Dorothy," I said. "Were they still in safe concealment when the crew were taken off?"

"I imagine so. I don't know. Details are still coming in and I understand the doctors won't let anyone see the captain yet." Only the captain had known of the presence aboard of Baker and Delmont. "Forty-one hours now, Caroline. What have you done?"

For a moment I wondered irritably what the devil he was talking about. Then I remembered. He'd given me forty-eight hours. Seven were gone.

"I've had three hours' sleep." He'd consider that an utter waste of time, his employees weren't considered to need sleep. "I've talked to the constabulary ashore. And I've talked to a wealthy yachtsman, next boat to us here. We're paying him a social call to-night."

There was a pause. "You're doing what to-night, Caroline?"

"Visiting. We've been invited, Harriet and I. For drinks."

This time the pause was markedly longer. Then he said: "You have forty-one hours, Caroline."

"Yes, Annabelle."

"We assume you haven't taken leave of your senses."

"I don't know how unanimous informed opinion might be about that. I don't think I have."

"And you haven't given up? No, not that. You're too damn stiff-necked and — and — "

"Stupid?"

"Who's the yachtsman?"

I told him. It took me some time, partly because I had to spell out names with the aid of his damned code-book, partly because I gave him a very full account of everything Skouras had said to me and everything Sergeant MacDonald had said about Skouras. When his voice came again it was cagey and wary. As Uncle Arthur couldn't see me I permitted myself a cynical grin. Even Cabinet Ministers found it difficult to make the grade as far as Skouras's dinner-table, but the Permanent Under-Secretaries, the men with whom the real power of government lies, practically had their own initialled napkin rings. UnderSecretaries were the bane of Uncle Arthur's life.

"You'll have to watch your step very carefully here, Caroline."

"Betty and Dorothy aren't coming home any more, Annabelle. Someone has to pay. I want someone to pay. You want someone to pay. We all do."

"But it's inconceivable that a man in his position, a man of his wealth — "

"I'm sorry, Annabelle. I don't understand."

"A man like that. Dammit all, I know him well, Caroline. We dine together. First-name terms. Know his present wife even better. Ex-actress. A philanthropist like that. A man who's spent five consecutive seasons there. Would a man like that, a millionaire like that, spend all that time, all that money, just to build up a front — "

"Skouras?" I used the code name. Interrogatory, incredulous, as if it had just dawned upon me what Uncle Arthur was talking about. "I never said I suspected him, Annabelle. I have no reason to suspect him."

"Ah!" It's difficult to convey a sense of heartfelt gladness, profound satisfaction and brow-mopping relief in a single syllable, but Uncle Arthur managed it without any trouble. "Then why go?" A casual eavesdropper might have thought he detected a note of pained jealousy in Uncle Arthur's voice, and the casual eavesdropper would have been right. Uncle Arthur had only one weakness in his make-up — he was a social snob of monumental proportions.

"I want aboard. I want to see this smashed transmitter of his."

"Why?"

"A hunch, let me call it, Annabelle. No more."

Uncle Arthur was going in for the long silences in a big way to-day. Then he said: "A hunch? A hunch? You told me this morning you were on to something,"

"There's something else. I want you to contact the Post Office Savings Bank, Head Office, in Scotland. After that, the Records files of some Scottish newspapers. I suggest The Glasgow Herald, the Scottish Dotty Express and, most particularly, the West Highland weekly, the Oban Times."

"Ah!" No relief this time, just satisfaction. "This is more like it, Caroline. What do you want and why?"

So I told him what I wanted and why, Jots more of the fancy code work, and when I'd finished he said; "I'll have my staff on to this straight away, I'll have all the information you want by midnight."

"Then I don't want it, Annabelle. Midnight's too late for me. Midnight's no use to me."

"Don't ask the impossible, Caroline." He muttered something to himself, something I couldn't catch, then: "I'll pull every strings Caroline. Nine o'clock."

"Four o'clock, Annabelle."

"Four o'clock this afternoon?" When it came to incredulity he had me whacked to the wide. "Four hours' time? You have taken leave of your senses."

"You can have ten men on it in ten minutes. Twenty in twenty minutes. Where's the door that isn't open to you? Especially the door of the Assistant Commissioner. Professionals don't kill for the hell of it. They kill because they must. They kill to gain time. Every additional hour is vital to them. And if it's vital to them, how much more so is it to us? Or do you think we're dealing with amateurs, Annabelle?"

"Call me at four," he said heavily. "I'll see what I have for you. What's your next move, Caroline?"

"Bed," I said. "I'm going to get some sleep."

"Of course. Time, as you said, is of the essence. You mustn't waste it, must you, Caroline?" He signed off. He sounded bitter. No doubt he was bitter. But then, insomnia apart, Uncle Arthur could rely on a full quota of sleep during the coming night. Which was more than I could. No certain foreknowledge, no second sight, just a hunch, but not a small one, the kind of hunch you couldn't have hidden behind the Empire State Building. Just like the one I had about the Shangri-la.

I only just managed to catch the last fading notes of the alarm as it went off at ten minutes to four. I felt worse than I had done when we'd lain down after a miserable lunch of corned beef and reconstituted powdered potatoes — if old Skouras had had a spark of human decency, he'd have made that invitation for dinner. I wasn't only growing old, I felt old. I'd been working too long for Uncle Arthur. The pay was good but the hours and working conditions — I'd have wagered that Uncle Arthur hadn't even set eyes on a tin of corned beef since World War II — were shocking. And all this constant worrying, chiefly about life expectancy, helped wear a man down.

Hunslett came out of his cabin as I came out of mine. He looked just as old as I did. If they had to rely on a couple of ageing crocks like us, I thought morosely, the rising generation must be a pretty sorry lot.

Passing through the saloon, I wondered bitterly about the identity of all those characters who wrote so glibly about the Western Isles in general and the Torbay area in particular as being a yachtsman's paradise without equal in Europe, Obviously, they'd never been there. Fleet Street was their home and home was a place they never left, not if they could help it. An ignorant bunch of travel and advertising copy writers who regarded King's Cross as the northern limits of civilisation. Well, maybe not all that ignorant, at least they were smart enough to stay south of King's Cross.

Four o'clock on an autumn afternoon, but already it was more night than day. The sun wasn't down yet, not by a very long way, but it might as well have been for all the chance it had of penetrating the rolling masses of heavy dark cloud hurrying away to the eastwards to the inky blackness of the horizon beyond Torbay. The slanting sheeting rain that foamed whitely across the bay further reduced what little visibility there was to a limit of not more than four hundred yards. The village itself, half a mile distant and nestling in the dark shadow of the steeply-rising pine-covered hills behind, might never have existed. Off to the north-west I could see the navigation lights of a craft rounding the headland, Skouras returning from his stabiliser test run. Down in the Shangri-la's gleaming galley a master chef would be preparing the sumptuous evening meal, the one to which we hadn't been invited. I tried to put the thought of that meal out of my mind, but I couldn't, so I just put it as far away as possible and followed Hunslett into the engine-room.

Hunslett took the spare earphones and squatted beside me on the deck, notebook on his knee. Hunslett was as competent in shorthand as he was in everything else. I hoped that Uncle Arthur would have something to tell us, that Hunslett's presence there would be necessary. It was.

"Congratulations, Caroline," Uncle Arthur said without preamble. "You really are on to something." As far as it is possible for a dead flat monotone voice to assume an over-tone of warmth, then Uncle Arthur's did just that. He sounded positively friendly. More likely it was some freak of transmission or reception but at least he hadn't started off by bawling me out.

"We've traced those Post Office Savings books," he went on. He rattled off book numbers and details of times and amounts of deposits, things of no interest to me, then said: "Last deposits were on December 27th. Ten pounds in each case. Present balance is pound 78,143.60. Exactly the same in both. And those accounts have not been closed."

He paused for a moment to let me congratulate him, which I did, then continued.

"That's nothing, Caroline. Listen. Your queries about any mysterious accidents, deaths, disappearances off the west coasts of Inverness-shire or Argyll, or anything happening to people from that area. We've struck oil, Caroline, we've really struck oil. My God, why did we never think of this before. Have your pencil handy?"

"Harriet has."

"Here we go. This seems to have been the most disastrous sailing season for years in the west of Scotland. But first, one from last year. The Pinto, a well-found sea-worthy forty-five foot motor cruiser left Kyle of Lochalsh for Oban at 8 a.m. September 4th. She should have arrived that afternoon. She never did. No trace of her has ever been found."

"What was the weather at the time, Annabelle?"

"I thought you'd ask me that, Caroline." Uncle Arthur's combination of modesty and quiet satisfaction could be very trying at times. "I checked with the Met. office. Force one, variable. Flat calm, cloudless sky. Then we come to this year. April 6th and April 26th. The Evening Star and the Jeannie Rose. Two East Coast fishing boats — one from Buckie, the other from Fraserburgh."

"But both based on the west coast?"

"I wish you wouldn't try to steal my thunder," Uncle Arthur complained. "Both were based on Oban. Both were lobster boats. The Evening Star, the first one to go, was found stranded on the rocks off Islay. The Jeannie Rose vanished without trace. No member of either crew was ever found. Then again on the 17th of May. This time a well-known racing yacht, the Cap Gris Nez, an English built and owned craft, despite her name, highly experienced skipper, navigator and crew, all of them long-time and often successful competitors in R.O.R.C. races. That class. Left Londonderry for the north of Scotland in fine weather. Disappeared. She was found almost a month later — or what was left of her — washed up on the Isle of Skye."

"And the crew?"

"Need you ask? Never found. Then the last case, a few weeks ago — August 8th. Husband, wife, two teenage children, son and daughter. Converted lifeboat, the

Kingfisher. By all accounts a pretty competent sailor, been at it for years. But he'd never done any night navigation, so he set out one calm evening to do a night cruise. Vanished. Boat and crew."

"Where did he set out from?"

"Torbay."

That one word made his afternoon. It made mine, too. I said: "And do you still think the Nantesville is hell and gone to Iceland or some remote fjord in northern Norway?"

"I never thought anything of the kind." Uncle's human relationship barometer had suddenly swung back from friendly to normal, normal lying somewhere between cool and glacial. "The significance of the dates will not have escaped you?"

"No, Annabelle, the significance has not escaped me." The Buckie fishing-boat, the Evening Star, had been found washed up on Islay three days after the S.S. Holmwood had vanished off the south coast of Ireland. The Jeanne Rose had vanished exactly three days after the M.V. Antara had as mysteriously disappeared in the St. George's Channel. The Cap Gris Nez, the R.O.R.C. racer that had finally landed up on the rocks of the island of Skye had vanished the same day as the M.V. Headley Pioneer had disappeared somewhere, it was thought, off Northern Ireland. And the converted lifeboat, Kingfisher, had disappeared, never to be seen again, just two days after the S.S. Hurricane Spray had left the Clyde, also never to be seen again. Coincidence was coincidence and I classed those who denied its existence with intellectual giants like the twentieth-century South African president who stoutly maintained that the world was flat and that an incautious step would take you over the edge with results as permanent as they would be disastrous: but this was plain ridiculous. The odds against such a perfect matching of dates could be calculated only in astronomical terms: while the complete disappearance of the crews of four small boats that had come to grief in so very limited an area was the final nail in the coffin of coincidence. I said as much to Uncle.

"Let us not waste time by dwelling upon the obvious, Caroline," Uncle said coldly, which was pretty ungracious of him as the idea had never even entered his head until I had put it there four hours previously. "The point is — what is to be done? Islay to Skye is a pretty big area. Where does this get us?"

"How much weight can you bring to bear to secure the co-operation" of the television and radio networks?"

There was a pause, then: "What do you have in mind, Caroline?" Uncle at his most forbidding.

"An insertion of an item in their news bulletins."

"Well." An even longer pause. "It was done daily during the war, of course. I believe it's been done once or twice since. Can't compel them, of course -they're a stuffy lot, both the B.B.C. and the I.T.A." His tone left little doubt as to his opinion of those diehard reactionaries who brooked no interference, an odd reaction from one who was himself a past-master of brookmanship of this nature. "If they can be persuaded that it's completely apolitical and in the national interest there's a chance. What do you want?"

"An item that a distress signal has been received from a sinking yacht somewhere south of Skye, Exact position unknown. Signals ceased, the worst feared, an air-sea search to be mounted at first light to-morrow. That's all."

"I may manage it. Your reason, Caroline?"

"I want to look around. I want an excuse to move around without raising eyebrows."

"You're going to volunteer the Firecrest for this search and then poke around where you shouldn't?"

"We have our faults, Annabelle, Harriet and I, but we're not crazy. I wouldn't take this tub across the Serpentine without a favourable weather forecast. It's blowing a Force 7 outside. And a boat search would take a lifetime too long in those parts. What I had in mind was this. At the very eastern rip of Torbay Island, about five miles from the villages there's a small deserted sandy cove, semicircular and well protected by steep bluffs and pine trees. Will you please arrange to have a long-range helicopter there exactly at dawn."

"And now it's your turn to think I am crazy," Uncle Arthur said coldly. That remark about the sea-keeping qualities of big own brain-child, the Firecrest, would have rankled badly. "I'm supposed to snap my fingers and hey presto I a helicopter will be there at dawn."

"That's fourteen hours from now, Annabelle. At five o'clock this morning you were prepared to snap your fingers and have a helicopter here by noon. Seven hours. Exactly half the time. But that was for something important like getting me down to London to give me the bawling out of a lifetime before firing me."

"Call me at midnight, Caroline. I hope to God you know what you are doing."

I said: "Yes, sir," and hung up. I didn't mean, Yes, sir, I knew what I was doing, I meant, Yes, sir, I hoped to God I knew what I was doing.

If the carpet in the Shangri-la saloon had cost a penny under five thousand pounds, then old Skouras must have picked it up second-hand somewhere. Twenty by thirty, bronze and russet and gold, but mainly gold, it flowed across the deck like a field of ripe corn, an illusion heightened both by its depth and the impediment it offered to progress. You had to wade through the damn thing. I'd never seen an item of furnishing like it in my life except for the curtains that covered two-thirds of the bulkhead space. The curtains made the carpet look rather shoddy. Persian or Afghanistan, with a heavy gleaming weave that gave a shimmering shot-silk effect with every little movement of the Shangri-la, they stretched all the way from deckhead to deck. What little of the bulkheads that could be seen were sheathed in a satiny tropical hardwood, the same wood as was used for the magnificent bar that took up most of the after bulkhead of the saloon. The opulently upholstered settees and armchairs and bar-stools, dark green leather with gold piping, would have cost another fortune, even the trade-in value of the beaten copper tables scattered carelessly about the carpet would have fed a family of five for a year. At the Savoy Grill.

On the port bulkhead hung two Cézannes, on the starboard two Renoirs. The pictures were a mistake. In that room they didn't have a chance. They'd have felt more at home in the galley.

So would I. So, I was pretty sure, would Hunslett. It wasn't merely that our sports coats and Paisley scarves clashed violently with the decor in general and the black ties and dinner jackets of our host and his other guests in particular. It wasn't even that the general run of conversation might have been specifically designed to reduce Hunslett and myself to our proper status of artisans and pretty inferior artisans at that. Ah this talk about debentures and mergers and cross-options and takeovers and millions and millions of dollars has a pretty demoralising effect on the lower classes, but you didn't need to have the I.Q. of a genius to realise that this line of talk wasn't being aimed specifically at us; to the lads with the black ties, debentures and takeovers were the stuff and staff of life and so a principal staple of conversation. Besides, this wish to be somewhere else obviously didn't apply only to us: at least two others, a bald-headed, goatee-bearded merchant banker by the name of Henri Biscarte and a big bluff Scots lawyer by the name of MacCallum were just as uncomfortable as I felt, but showed it a great deal more.

A silent movie picture of the scene would have given no due as to what was wrong. Everything was so very comfortable, so very civilised. The deep armchairs invited complete relaxation. A blazing if superfluous log-fire burned in the hearth. Skouras was the smiling and genial host to the life. The glasses were never empty — the press of an unheard bell brought a white-jacketed steward who silently refilled glasses and as silently departed again. All so urbane, so wealthy, so pleasantly peaceful. Until you cut in the movie sound-track, that was. That was when you wished you were in the galley.

Skouras had his glass refilled for the fourth time in the forty-five minutes we had been there, smiled at his wife sitting in the armchair across the fire from him, lifted his glass in a toast.

"To you, my dear. To your patience with putting up with us all, so well. A most boring trip for you, most boring. I congratulate you."

I looked at Charlotte Skouras. Everybody looked at Charlotte Skouras. There was nothing unusual in that, millions of people had looked at Charlotte Skouras when she had been the most sought-after actress in Europe. Even in those days she'd been neither particularly young nor beautiful, she didn't have to be because she'd been a great actress and not a beautiful but boneheaded movie star. Now she was even older and less good-looking and her figure was beginning to go. But men still looked at her. She was somewhere in her late thirties, but they would still be looking at her when she was in her bath-chair. She had that kind of face. A worn face, a used face, a face that had been used for living and laughing and thinking and feeling and suffering, a face with brown tired wise-knowing eyes a thousand years old, a face that had more quality and character in every little line and wrinkle — and heaven only knew there was no shortage of these — than in a whole battalion of the fringe-haired darlings of contemporary society, the ones in the glossy magazines, the ones who week after week stared out at you with their smooth and beautiful faces, with their beautiful and empty eyes. Put them in the same room as Charlotte Skouras and no one would ever have seen them. Mass-produced carbon copies of chocolate boxes are no kind of competition at all for a great painter's original in oils.

"You are very kind, Anthony." Charlotte Skouras had a deep slow slightly-foreign accented voice, and, just then, a tired strained smile that accorded well with the darkness under the brown eyes. "But I am never bored. Truly. You know that."

"With this lot as guests?" Skouras's smile was as broad as ever. "A Skouras board meeting in the Western Isles instead of your blue-blooded favourites on a cruise in the Levant? Take Dollmann here." He nodded to the man by his side, a tall thin bespectacled character with receding thin dark hair who looked as if he needed a shave but didn't. John Dollmann, the managing director of the Skouras shipping lines. "Eh, John? How do you rate yourself as a substitute for young Viscount Horley? The one with sawdust in his head and fifteen million in the bank?"

"Poorly, I'm afraid, Sir Anthony." Dollmann was as urbane as Skouras himself, as apparently unconscious of anything untoward in the atmosphere. "Very poorly. I've a great deal more brains, a great deal less money and I've no pretensions to being a gay and witty conversationalist."

"Young Horley was rather the life and soul of the party, wasn't he? Especially when I wasn't around," Skouras added thoughtfully. He looked at me. "You know him, Mr. Petersen?"

"I've heard of him. I don't move in those circles, Sir Anthony." Urbane as all hell, that was me.

"Um." Skouras looked quizzically at the two men sitting close by myself. One, rejoicing in the good Anglo-Saxon name of Hermann Lavorski, a big jovial twinkling-eyed man with a great booming laugh and an inexhaustible supply of risqué stories, was, I'd been told, his accountant and financial adviser. I'd never seen anyone less like an accountant and finance wizard, so that probably made him the best in the business. The other, a middle-aged, balding, Sphinx-faced character with a drooping handle-bar moustache of the type once sported by Wild Bin Hickock and a head that cried out for a bowler hat, was Lord Charnley, who, in spite of his title, found it necessary to work as a broker in the City to make ends meet. "And how would you rate our two good friends here, Charlotte?" This with another wide and friendly smile at his wife.

"I'm afraid I don't understand." Charlotte Skouras looked at her husband steadily, not smiling.

"Come now, come now, of course you do understand. I’m still talking about the poor company I provide for so young and attractive a woman as you." He looked at Hunslett. "She is a young and attractive woman, don't you think, Mr. Hunslett?"

"Well, now." Hunslett leaned back in, his armchair, fingers judiciously steepled, an urbanely sophisticated man entering into the spirit of things. "What is youth, Sir Anthony? I don't know." He smiled across at Charlotte Skouras. "Mrs. Skouras will never be old. As for attractive — well, it's a bit superfluous to ask that. For ten million European men -and for myself — Mrs. Skouras was the most attractive actress of her time."

"Was, Mr. Hunslett? Was?" Old Skouras was leaning forward in his chair now, the smile a shadow of its former self. "But now, Mr. Hunslett?"

"Mrs. Skouras's producers must have employed the worst cameramen in Europe." Hunslett's dark, saturnine face gave nothing away. He smiled at Charlotte Skouras. "If I may be pardoned so personal a remark."

If I'd had a sword in my hand and the authority to use it, I'd have knighted Hunslett on the spot. After, of course, having first had a swipe at Skouras.

"The days of chivalry are not yet over," Skouras smiled. I saw MacCallum and Biscarte, the bearded banker, stir uncomfortably in their seats. It was damnably awkward. Skouras went on: "I only meant, my dear, that Charnley and Lavorski here are poor substitutes for sparkling young company like Welsh-blood, the young American oil man, or Domenico, that Spanish count with the passion for amateur astronomy. The one who used to take you on the afterdeck to point out the stars in the Aegean." He looked again at Charnley and Lavorski. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, you just wouldn't do at all."

"I don't know if I'm all that insulted," Lavorski said comfortably. "Charnley and I have our points. Um — I haven't seen young Domenico around for quite some time." He'd have made an excellent stage feed man, would Lavorski, trained to say his lines at exactly the right time.

"You won't see him around for a very much longer time," Skouras said grimly. "At least not in my yacht or in any of my houses." A pause. "Or near anything I own. I promised him I'd see the colour of his noble Castilian blood if I ever clapped eyes on him again." He laughed suddenly. "I must apologise for even bringing that nonentity's name into the conversation. Mr. Hunslett, Mr. Petersen. Your glasses are empty."

"You've been very kind, Sir Anthony. We've enjoyed ourselves immensely." Bluff old, stupid old Calvert, too obtuse to notice what was going on. "But we'd like to get back. It's blowing up badly to-night and Hunslett and I would like to move the Firecrest into the shelter of Garve Island." I rose to a window, pulling one of his Afghanistan or whatever curtains to one side. It felt as heavy as a stage fire curtain, no wonder he needed stabilisers with all that top weight on. "That's why we left our riding and cabin lights on. To see if we'd moved. She dragged a fair bit earlier this evening."

"So soon? So soon?" He sounded genuinely disappointed.

"But of course, if you're worried — " He pressed a button, not the one for the steward, and the saloon door opened. The man who entered was a small weather beaten character with two gold stripes on his sleeves. Captain Black, the Shangri-la captain. He'd accompanied Skouras when we'd been briefly shown around the Shangri-la after arriving aboard, a tour that had included an inspection of the smashed radio transmitter. No question about it, their radio was well and truly out of action.

"Ah, Captain Black. Have the tender brought alongside at once, will you. Mr. Petersen and Mr. Hunslett are anxious to get back to the Firecrest as soon as possible."

"Yes, sir. I'm afraid there'll be a certain delay, Sir Anthony."

"Delay?" Old Skouras could put a frown in his voice without putting one on his face.

"The old trouble, I'm afraid," Captain Black said apologetically.

"Those bloody carburettors," Skouras swore. "You were right, Captain Black, you were right. Last tender I'll ever have with petrol engines fitted. Let me know as soon as she's all right. And detail one of the hands to keep an eye on the Firecrest to see that she doesn't lose position. Mr. Peterson's afraid she'll drag."

"Don't worry, sir." I didn't know whether Black was speaking to Skouras or myself. "She'll be all right."

He left. Skouras spent some time in extolling diesel engines and cursing petrol ones, pressed some more whisky on Hunslett and myself and ignored my protests, which were based less on any dislike of whisky in general or Skouras in particular than on the fact that I didn't consider it very good preparation for the night that lay ahead of me. Just before nine o'clock he pressed a button by his arm rest and the doors of a cabinet automatically opened to reveal a 23-inchTV set.

Uncle Arthur hadn't let me down. The newscaster gave quite a dramatic account of the last message received from the T.S.D.Y. Moray Rose, reported not under command and making water fast somewhere to the south of the Island of Skye. A full-scale air and sea search, starting at dawn the next day, was promised.

Skouras switched the set off. "The sea's crowded with damn fools who should never be allowed outside a canal basin. What's the latest on the weather? Anyone know?"

"There was a Hebrides Force 8 warning on the 1758 shipping forecast," Charlotte Skouras said quietly. "South-west, they said."

"Since when did you start listening to forecasts?" Skouras demanded. "Or to the radio at all? But of course, my dear, I'd forgotten. Not so much to occupy your time these days, have you? Force 8 and south-west, eh? And the yacht would be coming down from the Kyle of Lochalsh, straight into it. They must be mad. And they have a radio — they sent a message. That makes them stark staring lunatics. Whether they didn't listen to the forecast or whether they listened and still set out, they must have been lunatics. Get them everywhere."

"Some of those lunatics may be dying, drowning now. Or already drowned," Charlotte Skouras said. The shadows under the brown eyes seemed bigger and darker than ever, but there was still life in those brown eyes.

For perhaps five seconds Skouras, face set, stared at her and I felt that if I snapped my fingers there would be a loud tinkling or crashing sound, the atmosphere was as brittle as that. Then he turned away with a laugh and said to me: "The little woman, eh, Petersen? The little mother — only she has no children. Tell me, Petersen, are you married?"

I smiled at him while debating the wisdom of throwing my whisky glass in his face or clobbering him with something heavy, then decided against it. Apart from the fact that it would only make matters worse, I didn't fancy the swim back to the Firecrest. So I smiled and smiled, feeling the knife under the cloak, and said: "Afraid not, Sir Arthur."

"Afraid not? Afraid not?" He laughed his hearty good-fellowship laugh, the kind I can't stand, and went on cryptically "You're not so young to be sufficiently naive to talk that way, come now, are you, Mr. Petersen?"

"Thirty-eight and never had a chance," I said cheerfully. "The old story, Sir Anthony. The ones I'd have wouldn't have me. And vice-versa." Which wasn't quite true. The driver of a Bentley with, the doctors had estimated, certainly not less than a bottle of whisky inside him, had ended my marriage before it was two months old — and also accounted for the savagely scarred left side of my face. It was then that Uncle Arthur had prised me from my marine salvage business and since then no girl with any sense would ever have contemplated marrying me if she'd known what my job was. What made it even more difficult was the fact that I couldn't tell her in the first place. And the scars didn't help."

"You don't look a fool to me," Skouras smiled, "If I may say so without offence." That was rich, old Skouras worrying about giving offence. The zip-fastener of a mouth softened into what, in view of his next words, I correctly interpreted in advance as being a nostalgic smile. "I'm Joking, of course. It's not all that bad. A man must have his fun. Charlotte?"

"Yes?" The brown eyes wary, watchful.

"There's something I want from our stateroom. Would you -?"

"The stewardess. Couldn't she -?"

"This is personal, my dear. And, as Air, Hunslett has pointed out, at least by inference, you're a good deal younger than I am." He smiled at Hunslett to show that no offence was intended. "The picture on my dressing-table,"

"What!" She suddenly sat forward in her armchair, hands reaching for the fronts of the arm rests as if about to pull herself to her feet. Something touched a switch inside Skouras and the smiling eyes went bleak and hard and cold, changing their direction of gaze fractionally. It lasted only a moment because his wife had caught it even before I did, because she sat forward abruptly, smoothing down the short sleeves of her dress over suntanned arms. Quick and smooth, but not quite quick enough. For a period of not more than two seconds the sleeves had ridden nearly all the way up to her shoulders — and nearly four inches below those shoulders each arm had been encircled by a ring of bluish-red bruises, A continuous ring. Not the kind of bruises that are made by blows or finger pressure. The kind that are made by a rope.

Skouras was smiling again, pressing the bell to summon the steward. Charlotte Skouras rose without a further word and hurried quickly from the room. I could have wondered if I'd only imagined this momentary tableau I'd seen, but I knew damned well I hadn't. I was paid not to have an imagination of that kind.

She was back inside a moment, a picture frame maybe six by eight in her hand. She handed it to Skouras and sat down quickly in her own chair. This time she was very careful with the sleeves, without seeming to be.

"My wife, gentlemen," Skouras said. He rose from his armchair and handed round a photograph of a dark-eyed, dark-haired woman with a smiling face that emphasised the high Slavonic cheek-bones. "My first wife, Anna. We were married for thirty years. Marriage isn't all that bad. That's Anna, gentlemen."

If I'd a gramme of human decency left in me I should have knocked him down and trampled all over him. For a man to state openly in company that he kept the picture of his former wife by his bedside and then impose upon his present wife the final and utter humiliation and degradation of fetching it was beyond belief. That and the rope-burns on his present wife's arms made him almost too good for shooting. But I couldn't do it, I couldn't do anything about it. The old coot's heart was in his voice and his eyes. If this was acting, it was the most superb acting I had ever seen, the tear that trickled down from his right eye would have rated an Oscar any year since cinema had begun. And if it wasn't acting then it was just the picture of a sad and lonely man, no longer young, momentarily oblivious of this world, gazing desolately at the only thing in this world that he loved, that he ever had loved or ever would love, something gone beyond recall. And that was what it was.

If it hadn't been for the other picture, the picture of the still, proud, humiliated Charlotte Skouras staring sightlessly into the fire, I might have felt a lump in my own throat. As it happened, I'd no difficulty in restraining my emotion. One man couldn't, however, but it wasn't sympathy for Skouras that got the better of him.

MacCallum, the Scots lawyer, pale-faced with outrage, rose to his feet, said something in a thick voice about not feeling well, wished us good night and left. The bearded banker left on his heels. Skouras didn't see them go, he'd fumbled his way back to his seat and was staring before him, his eyes as sightless as those of his wife. Like his wife, he was seeing something in the depths of the flames. The picture lay face down on his knee. He didn't even look up when Captain Black came in and told us the tender was ready to take us back to the Firecrest.

When the tender had left us aboard our own boat we waited till it was half-way back to the Shangri-la, closed the saloon door, unbuttoned the studded carpet and pulled it back. Carefully I lifted a sheet of newspaper and there, on the thin film of flour spread out on the paper below it, were four perfect sets of footprints. We tried our two for'ard cabins, the engine-room and the after cabin, and the silk threads we'd so laboriously fitted before our departure to the Shangri-la were all snapped.

Somebody, two at least to judge from the footprints, had been through the entire length of the Firecrest, They could have had at least a clear hour for the job, so Hunslett and I spent a clear hour trying to find out why they had been there. We found nothing, no reason at all.

"Well," I said, "at least we know now why they were so anxious to have us aboard the Shangri-la."

"To give them a dear field here? That's why the tender wasn't ready — it was here."

"What else?"

"There's something else. I can't put my finger on it. But there's something else."

"Let me know in the morning. When you call Uncle at midnight, ask him to dig up what information he can on those characters on the Shangri-la and about the physician who attended the late Lady Skouras. There's a lot I want to know about the late Lady Skouras." I told him what I wanted to know. "Meantime, let's shift this boat over to Garve Island. I've got to be up at three-thirty — you've all the time for sleep in the world."

I 'should have listened to Hunslett. Again I should have listened to Hunslett. And again for Hunslett's sake. But I didn't know then that Hunslett was to have time for all the sleep in the world.