Operation Piracy

by Paul Somers

  Harris sat back, and dabbed his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform jacket. He looked grey, and just about all-in. The reporters got down his last few words, and waited, tense with interest. It was certainly a terrific story.

  “Well, now, are there any questions you’d like to put to Harris before I go on?” Attwood asked. He was as methodical as a chairman at a board meeting.

  There were a lot of questions. The first one, obviously, was whether Harris could describe the men—but he couldn’t, not helpfully. Their faces, he said, had been completely blackened. Both of them had worn dark overalls and black berets, so there’d been nothing distinctive about them. Both of them seemed about average size. Harris thought they’d both been cleans-shaven, though he couldn’t be certain about that because of the black on their faces. He didn’t think there was a chance that he’d recognise either of them again if he saw them. Only one of them had spoken—the one who’d asked for help in the first place—and he hadn’t said very much. He’d had a rough, growling sort of voice. Someone asked if it had sounded like a natural voice, and Harris thought not.

  We asked him if he could describe the cruiser, and he was able to give us a pretty detailed account of that, because he’d had the searchlight on it. He said it had been about thirty feet long, or maybe a bit less, with a dark-painted hull, a short mast with a furled steadying sail, and an open cockpit aft. He hadn’t noticed its name, and he hadn’t got around to asking—he’d been too concerned with getting the supposedly injured man aboard. Some technically-minded reporter asked him whether the engine had sounded like a petrol or a diesel one and Harris said that no one aboard Wanderer had heard the engine and that the men must have made off under sail when the raid was over—perhaps because they didn’t want the engine heard. It seemed rather odd, but that was all he could think of. Someone else asked what rope had been used for the lashing up, and Harris said there’d been a coil lying in a corner of the wheel-house and they’d used that.

  As the questions died down, Attwood said, “Well, now, Quigley, can we have your story? Keep it short.” He was evidently determined to tie the whole thing up for us in one sitting.

  Quigley was a well-built young man of twenty-five or so with a head of very blond hair, an open, almost cherubic face, and a lot of freckles. He looked tired, too, but nothing like as tired as Harris. He said he’d been asleep in his cabin in the forecastle, and had been wakened by the sound of the engines going astern as Harris had come alongside the cruiser. He’d heard a voice hailing the bridge, but he hadn’t been able to see anything because his cabin was on the wrong side of the ship. Then Harris had rung down, and he’d hurried on deck. He’d only had a brief glimpse of the cruiser, because the two men had pulled their guns almost at once, but Harris’s description was about right, he thought. He said he wouldn’t recognise the raiders if he saw them again, either. As far as the rest of his story was concerned, his impressions tallied exactly with Harris’s. He’d heard the hammering and the screams and a couple of quick bursts from a gun, but nothing that everyone else hadn’t heard.

  “Well, now we come to what happened below,” Attwood said. “I’m afraid my wife is too upset to talk to you herself at the moment—she and Mrs. Rankin have both retired to rest—so I’ll have to give you the facts for her. She was wakened, as we all were, by a tremendous banging in the corridor outside the cabins. Before she could even get out of bed a man burst into her cabin, which wasn’t locked, pointing a gun and a torch at her. She screamed, and called for me. The man went straight to her dressing-table and snatched up her jewel case. She heard some shots, and then the man rushed out, locking the cabin door behind him. His face was completely blackened and my wife, like the crew, doesn’t think she would recognise him again. It was all over in a second or two, and he didn’t say a word.”

  Attwood paused. “I, of course, didn’t see him at all. I woke when the racket started and tried to get out of my door, but I couldn’t. I heard my wife scream, and call out. I tried to batter the door down with a chair, but I only succeeded in breaking the chair. I tried to ring the bridge, but I couldn’t get a reply. It was a pretty ghastly ten minutes, for me and for all of us, particularly after the shots. Finally, Quigley got my door open and I went out and we found poor David Scott lying dead.”

  Attwood looked at Rankin. “Anything to add, Basil?”

  Rankin shook his head. He was a dapper little man of about fifty, with neat, greying hair and a grey toothbrush moustache. “Only that I tried to break out, too, but the door was too tough.”

  Attwood nodded. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, there’s your story, and a very shocking one it is. Any more questions?”

  Mollie said, “Could you tell us a little about Mr. Scott?”

  “I’m glad you asked me that,” Attwood said, “because it gives me an opportunity to pay tribute to him. He was a fine young fellow, a good friend of mine as well as a loyal servant, and his death is a great tragedy … If you want facts, he was thirty-five years old—Winchester and Cambridge, rowing blue, served in the Marines during the war with courage and distinction—just the sort of young fellow we can’t afford to lose. He’d been my confidential secretary and close companion since 1951 … I can only add that I shall leave no stone unturned to see that his murderes are brought to justice.”

  Someone said, “What have the police done so far, Mr. Attwood?”

  “I’d say they’ve done a great deal in a remarkably short time—I’ve nothing but praise for them. Directly they learned what had happened they got in touch with the Admiralty police and the R.A.F. Search and Rescue Centre at Plymouth and a search was started for the cruiser right away. There was a big sweep by aircraft this morning, and the hunt has been going on all day. Of course, we’ve no idea where the boat went to after the raid, but there’s been a general warning to shipping to look out for her. According to Harris, a fairly large cargo boat passed us on a westerly course shortly before the attack, and the authorities are trying to establish its identity and see if it can give any information. Beyond that the police have been busy all day with their routine inquiries, as you can imagine—photographing and measuring and taking statements. We’ve scarcely had a moment to breathe.”

  A reporter named Timmins, from one of the picture papers, said, “Can you give us any idea, Mr. Attwood, of the value of the jewellery that was stolen?”

  “I can tell you it was very considerable,” Attwood said.

  “Could it be in the—well, the five-figure bracket?” Timmins pressed him.

  He didn’t have to press very hard. “It could be in the six-figure bracket,” Attwood said grimly.

  “Insured, of course?”

  “Naturally.”

  There were a few more minor questions. We gathered that Bob Crisp, the young steward, and Wilson, the cook, had played no part in the affair at all until the very end, because the raiders had locked the door leading to the forecastle from below, as well as from the deck, and they’d both been confined in their quarters until Quigley had gone forward to get his tools and had let them out. The gags that had been used on Harris and Quigley, presumably to prevent them raising the alarm before the raiders reached the cabins, had been bits of torn-up sheet, which the police had taken away with them. The raiders didn’t appear to have left anything else behind. We were all anxious to have a look round below, particularly the photographers, but Attwood said he couldn’t have the ladies disturbed at the moment. If we cared to row out again in the morning, he’d be only too glad for us to take pictures and see anything we wanted to see. Asked about his plans, he said he thought they’d all be staying on board until after the inquest on David Scott, and beyond that they hadn’t decided anything.

  Someone thanked him for the way he’d organised the interviews for us, and he said he was always glad to help the Press and only wished it had been a less tragic occasion. Then we stampeded for the boats. It was quite dark by now, and even after Harris had switched the searchlight on there was a
good deal of confusion and one reporter finished up in the water. I looked around to see if Mollie needed any help, but I needn’t have worried—young Quigley, I saw, was handing her into her dinghy.

  Ashore, there was another rush, this time for telephones. I was too late for a box by the quay, and had to drive several hundred yards before I found an empty one. There were scores of unanswered questions in my mind, but I hadn’t time to consider them now. It was touch-and-go whether the story would make the early editions in any case—and I had more than enough material to be going on with. I got through to the office quickly and dictated my piece from my notes. It was a pretty rough job, but the subs. would knock it into shape and at this late hour the facts were all that mattered. Afterwards I was put through to the News Desk, and Blair answered the phone. By rights, he should have gone home hours ago, but he could never tear himself away if there was anything big happening. I gave him the gist of what I’d put over and he grunted happily, which was one of his ways of showing enthusiasm, and said it looked as though I’d need some help and he’d send Lawson down on the night train to lend a hand.

  It was too late to make any more inquiries that night, and I set to work to find a bed. I had quite a job, what with the holiday-makers and the Press, but I finally got a room in a modest little pub called the Anchor, overlooking the square. I felt pretty tired myself after the all-day drive and the hectic evening, but my mind was active and I lay awake for some time, thinking about the raid. Technically, it had been a staggering achievement—it must have been planned to the last detail, and carried out by men with ice-cool heads. Men, I thought, who must have had an intimate knowledge of Wanderer and her movements—that would be a line to follow up. What I couldn’t understand, what didn’t appear ice-cool at all, was why they should have shot down David Scott, who’d apparently been safely shut up in his cabin like all the others and not in a position to do them any harm. It seemed, on the face of it, a singularly pointless bit of butchery.

  Chapter Four

  I breakfasted early, off coffee and rashers and all the newspapers I could lay my hands on. The sensational story had knocked almost everything else off the front pages, and the headlines—on the pattern of the Record’s “Pirates Raid Attwood Yacht”—“Secretary Shot Dead” “£100,000 Jewel Haul”—were big and bold. But at this early stage the reports lacked variety, and I soon put them aside and began to think about the next moves.

  I’d barely finished breakfast when Lawson arrived, full of enthusiasm for the story, and with a stack of papers as big as my own. He’d slept on the train and was very chipper.

  “I see Mollie Bourne’s down here,” he said with a grin, after we’d exchanged greetings. “I hope you’ll be able to-concentrate on the job, old boy.”

  I said I’d try.

  “That’s the spirit—keep a firm hand on your ugly passions and you should go far. Very dull road, though!” He picked up the Record and held it out at arm’s length, gazing at the front page as reverently as though it had been an Old Master. “To think the customer gets all that for twopence!”

  I smiled.

  “Quite a hand-out old Attwood gave you, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, “he certainly got through the business.”

  “Anything you ought to fill me in on?”

  I gave him my impressions of the people aboard Wanderer whom I’d met and told him a few minor details that I’d left out of my report. Then we got down to discussing the case. I mentioned the point about the raiders’ obvious familiarity with Wanderer and Lawson agreed it was a line to pursue. I also raised the point about Scott which had been bothering me overnight. “He wasn’t in their way,” I said, “so why should they have bumped him off?”

  Lawson looked knowing. It was one of his most characteristic facial expressions. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “the same thought occurred to me when I read your piece last night—and I’ve got a notion about it.” He took a newspaper clipping from his pocket—a library clipping—and passed it to me. There was a strict rule against abstracting clippings from the library files, but Lawson never bothered much about rules. “Have a look at that,” he said.

  I had a look at it. It was a gossip paragraph from a London evening paper of September 1954. It was headed “Bodyguard”, and it referred to an Attwood incident that had been reported a few months earlier. Apparently Wanderer had put into a North African port during a summer cruise when a nationalist demonstration had been in progress, and Attwood and his wife had been involved in what the paper called an “ugly scene” as they went ashore. In future, according to the paragraph, David Scott would accompany his employer on all trips in the capacity of bodyguard as well as confidential secretary. There were some personal details about Scott, which gave the impression that he was a pretty rugged physical specimen. The face in the accompanying picture was rugged, too, in a good-looking way.

  I passed the clipping back. “Bodyguard or not,” I said, “he was still shut up in his cabin.”

  “I dare say, old boy, but bodyguards often carry guns. It’s just a thought, but maybe Scott had a gun. If so, he wouldn’t have been at all inoffensive.”

  “If he did have a gun,” I said, “he didn’t use it—at least, I don’t think so. If any of the shooting had been done by him, outwards through the door, there’d have been marks on the other side of the corridor, and nobody mentioned any.”

  “Maybe he didn’t have time to shoot. The raiders might have known he had a gun, and shot him up before he could make a move.”

  “If so, they chose a pretty chancy way of doing it,” I said, “jamming up his door and then shooting through it. Wouldn’t it have been easier for them to open his door and shoot him before they started their operations?”

  “Then he’d have had a chance to shoot them first … I know this is all speculation, but I think it’s worth looking into.”

  “Well, yes,” I said.

  “Right. Now what I propose, old boy, is that we tackle the police first and see what they’ve got that’s new, and after that we’ll have a browse around the yacht. I suggest you concentrate on this question of how the raiders knew so much about Wanderer, and I’ll pick up what I can get, and we’ll pool our ideas later. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. Since Lawson was senior to me, and also a Crime Reporter of great experience, I usually deferred to him on tactics when we were working on a story together.

  The police station was only a short distance from the pub, so we walked. A dozen reporters were already there, standing about in groups. We gathered that Superintendent Anstey had promised to make an early statement, and soon after ten-thirty a constable came out and said he was ready for us and we all filed in.

  Anstey was a big, heavy-chinned, formidable-looking man, but his manner to us was friendly. No doubt he realised that he needed us as much as we needed him, for the first thing he told us was that so far they’d had no luck in tracing the raiding cruiser in spite of a most intensive sea hunt. Apparently the aircraft which had gone out the previous day from the R. A.F. Search and Rescue Centre had been at the scene of the raid very soon after dawn, or about four hours after the incident had occurred. The raider, at that time, could hardly have been more than fifty miles away. They’d flown round and round in widening circles and in excellent visibility, but had seen no small cruiser within that radius. The conclusion seemed to be that the raider had been no longer at sea—that it must have put in, in fact, to some creek or harbour. The part of the coast that was considered to have been within its reach stretched roughly from the Fal in the east to Penzance in the west, a distance by sea of sixty or seventy miles, and took in the whole peninsula of the Lizard. Checking up on the many tiny harbours, Anstey said, would be comparatively easy—the real problem was the maze of quiet creeks on the eastern side of the peninsula. The great inlet of the Fal, running ten miles up to Truro, itself had innumerable branches that would all have to be searched. A few miles to the south of it, the Helford rive
r presented an even more complex pattern of inlets. A large number of small naval craft were being used on the job, and a good deal of ground had already been covered, so far without result. A complicating factor was that the cruiser described by Harris was by no means an unusual type of boat, and among the many hundreds of holiday craft in local waters there were certain to be quite a number sufficiently like her to require investigation. Publicity by the Press might well shorten the search, and Anstey said he’d be grateful for our full co-operation. That, of course, was very satisfactory for us, too. It meant that from now on we were going to have a smooth passage as far as the police were concerned.