Operation Piracy

by Paul Somers

  A large police sergeant was standing alone in a small oasis of empty pier and I elbowed my way through to him, not without some nervousness. I was still new enough in the reporting game to find uniformed authority a bit daunting at the start of a story and the sergeant didn’t look as though he was exactly bubbling with bonhomie. Probably he’d had quite a day with the crowds. I almost wished Lawson was around—he had an ingratiating “old boy” technique with the police that nearly always worked. I had no technique at all—just a direct approach.

  I said, “’Evening, Officer,” and produced my Press pass. ‘I’m Curtis of the Record.”

  “Yes, sir?” He was very polite and very stolid. If I’d said I was Sanders of the River I don’t think he’d have batted an eyelid.

  “Er—what’s the position?” I said.

  He looked at me appraisingly for a couple of seconds and then, to my surprise, he became quite friendly and told me what he knew. It wasn’t very much, but it was certainly sensational. Wanderer, it appeared, had put to sea the previous evening, bound for the South of France. She’d returned to harbour around dawn with a report that she’d been stopped and boarded by men with guns. Attwood’s secretary, a man named Scott, had been shot dead during the raid. The police, headed by a Superintendent Anstey of the local C.I.D., together with various naval and harbour officials, had been to-ing and fro-ing all day, taking statements. Scott’s body had been removed to the mortuary that afternoon. Except for officials, no one had yet come ashore from the yacht, and so far no statement had been made by anybody. “They’ve all been too busy,” the sergeant said.

  I said I was sure they had. I felt relieved—at least it looked as though I hadn’t missed anything. “Well,” I said, “I suppose I’d better get out there, too, if all the boats haven’t been taken.”

  The sergeant nodded. “If I were you, sir, I’d go along to the Customs Quay—you’re more likely to get one there than here. That’s the quay, just behind those tugs. Go up Market Street and bear to your left.

  I thanked him warmly, and passed quickly through the turnstile. As I walked up Market Street, the holiday crowd grew thinner, and at the Customs Quay itself there was only a scattering of people. The little harbour, there, scarcely more than a pool, was crammed with dinghies, floating now on the high tide. Many of them were yacht tenders, but a man in a blue jersey with the word “Seagull” embroidered on it soon picked me out a hire boat and, when he learned I was a reporter, said I could use it as long as I wanted and settle up when I’d finished with it. That suited me perfectly.

  It took me only a few minutes to row out to Wanderer. The fleet of small boats hanging around her seemed to have grown. I scrutinised their occupants carefully, but I didn’t recognise anyone from London. I had a few words with a photographer from one of the West Country papers, but though he’d been there most of the day he knew no more than I did. He looked pretty browned off, and so did the others. I rested on my oars and considered what to do. I thought Attwood was almost certain to say something that evening, even if the police didn’t, but I might be wrong, and if I was I’d need all the scraps of information I could get. I rowed in close to Wanderer’s gangway and asked a bleak-looking, flat-capped policeman in the launch if he knew when we might be getting a statement, and he said he had no idea. I rowed on round the yacht, making mental notes about her in case I had to fall back on a descriptive piece. She was a little smaller than I’d first thought, but beautifully kept and obviously very luxurious inside. I could hear a murmur of voices from inside the saloon, but the curtains were drawn over the windows so that it was impossible to see anything. She looked very placid, lying quietly at anchor in the still water, and it was hard to believe she’d been the object of a violent raid only a few hours before.

  After a moment or two I switched my attention to the other craft that were lying near her in the anchorage. What I needed was a quotable interview with somebody, and they seemed to offer the best hope. I let the dinghy drift slowly down on the falling tide while I took a look round. There was a ketch named Morna, of about ten tons, tied up to a mooring buoy a few yards astern of Wanderer, but she seemed to be unoccupied. Abreast of her there was a small sloop named Wings with a man and a girl aboard, but it turned out they’d only just arrived at the anchorage and knew nothing. Astern of her was a 40-foot motor cruiser named Curlew, a rather battered job in urgent need of a coat of paint. Two men in open-necked shirts and khaki shorts were sitting drinking beer in the large after cockpit—a slim, tanned one, and a pink, tubby one. A fishing rod stuck out over the stern. I called out, “Have you been here all day?” and one of them replied, “We’ve been here three days, on and off.” They sounded quite promising interviewees. I closed up to them, grabbed hold of their counter, and introduced myself.

  “Hugh Curtis?” the slim man said. “Oh, yes—I’ve seen your name in the paper. I take the Record myself, as a matter of fact …” His tone was interested, and I congratulated myself on having hit on a regular reader. That always helped.

  He glanced across at Wanderer. “I suppose you’ve come down about the raid. Pretty shocking business, isn’t it?”

  I agreed that it was. “Not that I know much about it, yet,” I said. “Have you heard anything?”

  “Only that she was attacked during the night and the old boy’s secretary was shot. I guess everyone knows that by now, though.”

  I nodded. “Were you here when she came in this morning?”

  “Yes—right here. It was about six o’clock—I was just making the tea.”

  “I should think you were surprised to see her back, weren’t you?”

  “I certainly was, after all the fuss there’d been about her trip.”

  “What happened after she came in?”

  “Well, there was a hell of a commotion on board—raised voices, people rushing around, really quite a flap. They were in a tremendous hurry to lower their tender and I thought perhaps someone had been taken ill and they needed a doctor. Then the police arrived, and we realised there was more to it than that.”

  “Who fetched the police?”

  “One of the crew—short, thickset chap, with fair hair.”

  “What about the secretary who was shot—did you ever see him?”

  “Oh, yes, we saw him once or twice—but never very close. He was a young fellow, husky build, dark—that’s about all I can tell you.”

  “Do you happen to know who else was aboard?”

  “Well, the crew, of course—three men and a boy, we saw—and Attwood and his wife—and at least two others. Another man and a woman.”

  “You’ve no idea who they are?”

  “Not a clue, I’m afraid.” The slim man gave a faint grin. “Bit out of our class, you know—we weren’t invited to any of their parties … Sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

  “Oh, well, you’ve given me a line or two,” I said. “Have you any objection to my quoting you—about seeing Wanderer come in?”

  “Not if you don’t embroider things too much! My name’s Thornton—John Thornton. This is Tony Blake … When will the stuff be appearing?”

  “To-morrow morning—that is if we use it. It’ll depend what else I can get, of course. Thanks a lot, anyway.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I let go of the counter and rowed slowly back through the anchorage. The armada of waiting dinghies was still growing and by now I recognised one or two familiar Fleet Street faces among their occupants. Attwood was going to have a good audience for his story when he finally broke silence. But the police were still aboard the yacht, and there wasn’t a sign of anything happening yet. I’d just decided to approach a couple on a yawl and see if I could get any more information when, over on the Customs Quay, I saw a car arriving that I knew well—a very lush Sunbeam Talbot 90 in cream and sage. My pulse quickened. I’d been wondering all day whether I should see Mollie Bourne on this assignment, and here she was. I felt, among more disturbing emotions, a faint satisfaction th
at I’d beaten her to Falmouth. Mollie was never easy to get ahead of. In fact, she had a reputation in Fleet Street for being so far ahead of everyone else that on occasion she helped to make the news rather than report it—and that sort of reputation wasn’t earned lightly.

  I quickly gave up the idea of visiting the yawl, and rowed in towards the quay instead. Mollie had already got hold of a boat, and I intercepted her fifty yards from the shore.

  “Hallo, Hugh,” she said, and gave me a friendly-colleague sort of smile that must have taken a bit of practice. I thought again how breathtakingly lovely she was, with her rich chestnut hair and dark eyes and wonderfully creamy complexion. If I hadn’t already fallen for her, I could easily have done so then. She was wearing a very simple summer dress that had probably cost the earth, and in spite of the warm evening she looked as cool as a shower. No one would have guessed she’d just driven nearly three hundred miles.

  She made a little gesture towards the Attwood yacht. “What’s happening?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Everyone’s being mum.” I asked her if she’d heard about the shot secretary and was delighted to find that she hadn’t. I gave her the few facts that I knew.

  “Big stuff,” she said coolly, but I wasn’t deceived. There was a gleam of professional excitement in her eyes as she took in the covered windows of the yacht, the police guard, the floating reporters. She must have decided that the situation was in hand, for she suddenly relaxed.

  “Well, it’s nice to see you again,” she said, in a carefully detached voice. I doubted if she’d forgotten a certain fairly passionate session we’d had together a few months earlier, but the memory certainly didn’t obtrude. “You’re quite a stranger.”

  “That’s hardly my fault,” I said wryly. Actually, I’d made at least half a dozen attempts to date her up since those incredible three days in May when we’d nearly come to grief together on the Loddon Castle story, but I’d only managed to see her twice and I hadn’t made any further headway with her. “How is the Courier’s spoiled darling?”

  “Busy,” she said.

  “And elusive.”

  “Well, you know I’m wedded to my job.”

  “It’s an unhallowed union.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What’s more,” I said, “there’s no future in it.”

  She laughed. “There’s quite a good present.”

  “If you mean lots of lucre, yes,” I said, with a pointed glance at the Sunbeam Talbot.

  “I mean lots of interest,” she said reprovingly. She turned her boat a little so that she could keep an eye on Wanderer. “I’d say this was going to be quite a story.”

  “I’m surprised you’re not a guest on the yacht,” I said.

  She laughed again. “Actually, I was asked, but I had another engagement.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said. “I think you’re slipping.”

  “Do you? We’ll see.”

  She dipped her oars and began to pull gently towards the yacht. I kept pace with her. As we moved in among the other boats a voice said, “Hallo, Curtis, you down here?” and I stopped to chat to a photographer I knew. The next thing I saw was that Mollie had rowed in close to the starboard side of Wanderer and was talking to a man in white trousers and a reefer jacket who’d emerged from the saloon. We converged on her instantly, like ducks rushing for bread. The man disappeared, and Mollie called out to us, “Mr. Attwood’s going to see us all on board in five minutes.”

  If there’d been any sense of fair play in Fleet Street, she’d have been given a handicap!

  Chapter Three

  A few moments later the police came trooping out. They brushed aside all attempts to question them and left at once in their launch. Very soon the man in the reefer came to the rail again and said we could go aboard. There were so many rowing boats that we had to tie them all together and make a raft for the chaps on the outside to walk over. Then we filed up the gangway and crossed the beautifully laid deck to the saloon. Dusk was just beginning to fall, and someone switched on the lights as we entered. It was a small but very pleasant saloon, tastefully appointed in a modern style.

  Bruce Attwood, an unmistakable figure to anyone who’d ever seen his picture, was sitting at the head of the table. He looked unbelievably like a stage tycoon. He was a big, florid man of sixty-five or so, with gleaming white hair, a commanding nose, and heavy jowls. He was obviously strained and tired after his long ordeal, but he still managed to convey an impressive air of authority.

  He said, “I’m afraid there’s only limited accommodation, gentlemen—you’ll have to dispose yourselves as best you can.” Then he noticed Mollie, and he half rose and drew out a chair for her. He waited until we’d draped ourselves round the walls and had our note-books out, and then he introduced the other people present. The man in the reefer was his guest, Basil Rankin. In addition, there was the captain, John Harris; his mate, Tom Quigley; a young steward named Bob Crisp; and a cook named Wilson.

  “Well, now,” Attwood said, “all of us in this ship have had a very exhausting time and we’d like to get to bed, so if you don’t mind we’ll keep the proceedings as short as we can. As I expect you know, we sailed from here last night, bound for the Riviera. Aboard were my guests, Mr. Rankin and his wife; my wife and myself; my secretary David Scott, and the crew of four. Just before one in the morning, when Harris was on the bridge and the rest of us were asleep, we encountered a small boat that appeared to be in trouble, and took two men aboard. They immediately produced guns, incapacitated the crew, shot my secretary dead, entered my wife’s cabin, and made off with her jewel case.”

  He paused a moment, looking round. No one seemed at all surprised to hear about the jewels. Considering the way Charmian Attwood had flaunted them in public for years, an attempt on them had had to be made some time. The only really intriguing thing was that it had been made at sea.

  “Right,” he said. “Now I’ll ask Harris to take up the story in detail.”

  I jotted down a note or two on Harris. He was a lean, brown, muscular-looking man in his middle thirties. White crowsfeet fanned from the corners of his blue eyes where the sun had failed to penetrate the creases. He had a wide, thin, rather bitter mouth. His face was drawn with fatigue, and he seemed to be feeling the strain even more than Attwood. There was, I saw, an ugly bruise over his left cheekbone. One way and another, he couldn’t have looked grimmer if he’d just lost his ship through negligence.

  “Well,” he began, “we were about forty-five miles south of Falmouth, doing about twelve knots on a course to clear Ushant …” He spoke slowly and decisively, with a faint West Country burr that was attractive. “It was a pretty dark night, but clear, with a calm sea. I’d noticed a green light over to starboard and was keeping an eye on it as we passed about a couple of cables away, and then I suddenly saw a yellowish-white flare at the same spot. A flare at night is always reckoned to be a distress signal, so I changed course at once and went to investigate. The flare died down before I reached it, but the green light was still showing. I switched my searchlight on as I went alongside the boat, and saw that it was a small motor cruiser. Its engine was stopped, and it was drifting. A man called up that they’d had an explosion aboard and that his companion’s arm was burned, and could they come up, so of course I said they could. I called up Quigley on the intercom and asked him to report to the bridge. Then I took the cruiser’s rope and made her fast to us amidships and lowered the gangway. One of the men helped the other one up. Both their faces were black with smoke—or so I thought at the time—and the second one had an arm in a sling. They reached the deck just about the same time that Quigley arrived. I was just going to ring through to Mr. Attwood and tell him what had happened when both men suddenly pulled out guns and one of them said it was a hold-up and if we gave any trouble they’d shoot us. I thought maybe they were bluffing—anyway, I made a grab for the ship’s siren to warn the others. But before I could reach it the man whose ar
m was supposed to be burned gave me a terrific wallop in the face and knocked me down, and then they stuck their guns into us and I didn’t try anything else … The thing was, they sounded as though they meant business, and short of getting shot out of hand there didn’t seem to be anything we could do …”

  Attwood broke in, “Perhaps I should say at this point that in my view no blame attaches either to Harris or Quigley over the way they behaved. Men can’t be expected to argue with guns—I wouldn’t have tried it myself. Go on, Harris.”

  The captain’s mouth had taken on a sardonic twist, and it struck me that he didn’t attach a lot of value to Attwood’s opinion, one way or the other. It was just a fleeting impression, but it stayed with me.

  “Well,” Harris went on, “they told us to go into the wheelhouse and sit down back to back and then one of them stuck gags in our mouths and lashed us together with a rope while the other one kept us covered. After that, one of them took something heavy from his pocket, I think it was a hammer, and smashed the radio transmitter. The other one went on deck and locked the door that leads to the forecastle, where Wilson and young Bob were asleep. Then they both went below. Quigley and I were doing our best to loosen the rope, but they’d done a pretty good job on us. There was a lot of noise coming from below—something that sounded like more hammering, and a scream, and some shots and shouting. But it didn’t last long—the whole thing was over in three or four minutes. Then the two men came on deck again and disappeared down the gangway to their own boat. We were still struggling to get loose but it was another ten minutes before Quigley managed to wriggle out of the rope the rope and set me free. Then we both rushed below. We found that the doors of the cabins occupied by Mr. Attwood and Mr. Scott and Mr. and Mrs. Rankin had all been jammed from the outside with iron wedges driven in close to the latches. Mrs. Attwood’s door had been locked from the outside, and the key left in the lock. I sent Quigley forward to get some tools, and I released Mrs. Attwood, and then Quigley and I got the other doors open after a bit of a struggle and everyone came out—except Mr. Scott. We found him lying dead on the floor of his cabin—one of the men had fired through his door from the corridor, and shot him. After a bit we went up on deck again, and there was no sign of the cruiser, and Mr. Attwood said we’d better put back to Falmouth, so we did.”