Black Reef

by Nick Elliott

  BLACK REEF

  Nick Elliott

  Seaward Publishing

  BLACK REEF

  By Nick Elliott

  Published by Seaward Publishing

  Amazon Edition

  Copyright © Nick Elliott, 2018

  The right of Nick Elliott to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, other than that in which it was purchased, without the written permission of the author.

  ISBN 978-0-9929028-6-5

  Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is coincidental.

  Formatted by Jo Harrison ~ Author Assistant

  To the memory of my parents,

  Walter and Kathleen

  ‘Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.’

  Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  About The Author

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  It’s the question every author is asked: what prompted you to write a book? Setting aside the fact I’d had it in the back of my mind for years, what prompted me to get started on Sea of Gold, the first in the Angus McKinnon series, was the idea of recording some of the more interesting, outlandish even, events of my career in the shipping business. I wrote out a list and realised that if I reshaped, embellished and dramatised all this material I might have the makings of a thriller. ‘Write what you know’ is the adage, and that’s what I would do. On a trip to Morocco, I bought a red notebook at the airport and started writing detailed notes. At this point it just seemed like fun. After all, I told myself, I don’t actually have to go through with it.

  The next milestone was a trip to Greece specifically for research. By this time I was fully committed to the project – to finishing the book. And finally, two years later, Sea of Gold was published.

  Although gold, as the title suggests, is an important element in the story, I’d never thought of gold as a thread which would run through the whole trilogy: Sea of Gold, Dark Ocean and Black Reef. But unintentionally, that’s what happened. Gold, I realised, had become a metaphor for the greed and the lust for power that the villains in the stories had in common. A golden thread was being spun.

  But what about the protagonist? Angus, an ex-seafarer Scot, born in Hong Kong and based in Greece, appeared in my imagination without much trouble. I’ve spent most of my life in and around ships and ports. I live in Scotland now but lived in Hong Kong and Greece for many years too.

  What was not so straightforward was an early decision to write in the first person. I was warned of the difficulties of presenting everything from the main character’s point of view only, but I wouldn’t be dissuaded. Taking a leaf out of Len Deighton’s books (his superbly drawn protagonists, Harry Palmer and Bernard Samson, are both presented in the first person), I was happy to accept the limitations of this style in favour of bringing the reader closer in to Angus’s own character, his opinions, how he reacts to events as the stories unfold and his subjective view of the people and the world around him.

  Angus might seem a reluctant spy. It certainly wasn’t his chosen profession; rather, he stumbled into the murky world of espionage and frequently questions his own judgement in allowing it to happen. But as an outsider, he also feels able to challenge the precepts of the intelligence business. He’s a tough, independent loner who has no qualms about going up against his superiors, not to mention his adversaries.

  I decided to give Angus a private life, and a tragic back story. His domestic affairs, and particularly his relationships with women, are often complicated. He’s no saint but he’s a decent, reliable, morally sound guy. And like the rest of us, he’s fallible too.

  So, drawn into a world of intrigue and danger from the (relative) security of his marine claims investigation business, Angus finds he’s unable to step back as events overtake him. And those events take him to all corners of the world: far from his base in Piraeus to the Black Sea, the Indian Ocean, Thailand and the Philippines, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Africa and of course, Scotland.

  Writing of these places has been a big part of the enjoyment for me. ‘Travelling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller,’ said Ibn Battuta, the Muslim Berber scholar and compulsive explorer who travelled the medieval world in the fourteenth century. And I agree.

  Nick Elliott, 2018

  Chapter 1

  Captain Luka Babic swung to and fro with the movement of the ship which, barely underway, was rolling heavily in the Atlantic swell.

  ‘We should take him down, Padre. Will you help me?’ I said. The body begins to smell when gases created by microorganisms are released and decomposition starts. Babic had been dead for a while. At this point I didn’t know how long but the putrid smell, a bit like rotting garbage only much worse, filled the small dayroom we were gathered in. Three of those present held handkerchiefs over their nose and mouth. One of them, the ship’s agent Lopes, had had to leave the room.

  The last person to see the skipper of the Dalmatia Star alive had been the chief steward, who’d brought a meal in to him at around six the previous evening. It was still there on the captain’s desk, untouched and distinctly unappetising.

  ‘Sim, Senhor,’ the padre replied. Father Manuel was an elderly man, seventy perhaps, who had been despatched from the Apostleship of the Sea, a charity offering pastoral care for the world’s seafarers when their ships are in port, or as in this case, off port limits: the ship was hove to in international waters some fifteen miles off the Portuguese coast. The padre had travelled up from Setubal on the other side of the Rio Tagus, to join us, and seemed calm despite the difficult journey. It had taken us over two hours on a small harbour tug to reach the ship from port. In the bad weather, boarding had been precarious, particularly for Father Manuel. The crew had lowered the ship’s diagonal accommodation ladder for us but the tug’s gunwales had slammed up against the bottom of the ladder with every roll so we’d had to use the pilot ladder which they’d lowered down to the boarding mark, a white and yellow rectangle painted onto the ship’s hull. Then, helped by a man rope, we’d crossed safely to the accommodation ladder and on up to the deck.

  The captain had been strung up using a leather belt. He must have placed it around his neck first, threading one end through the buckle to form a noose before tying the end of it around one of the arms of the sprinkler head which extended from the ceiling of his cabin and which itself was screwed into the pipes of the ship’s fire control system above. Looking around I could see it was the only securing point high enough and strong enough from which to hang a man.r />
  I had already photographed him from different angles including his face, oddly relaxed-looking now. I’d imagined bulging eyes and a protruding tongue but Babic looked at peace, something with which I might console his widow I thought.

  The padre stepped up onto the stool reaching out to place a shaky hand on my shoulder as he did so. I guessed Babic himself would have stood on this stool before kicking it from under him in the last moments of his life. I put my arms round his waist and lifted him so the padre could reach up to remove the noose from around his neck. Close up the smell was overpowering and I struggled not to gag. Then between us we carried him from the dayroom into his bedroom and laid him on the bed.

  Now there were just the two of us I examined the body and particularly the neck, more closely, taking photos as I did. He was wearing a white shirt with a captain’s four straight gold bars on the epaulettes. One of these was twisted and two of his shirt buttons were missing. I checked the pockets of his trousers but found nothing. He was still wearing his shoes and socks. What does a man do before taking his life? Write a suicide note? I’d already searched his desk. Now I looked through the bedside drawers and the wardrobe and found nothing.

  ‘What do you think, Padre? What should we be looking for?’

  ‘Will there not be a post mortem examination?’

  ‘Yes, there will. I just wondered if you had any observations to make.’

  ‘Who am I to judge? That is God’s work. Why, you think he did not kill himself? That he was murdered?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I wasn’t a pathologist but I’d seen a few things to make me wonder. ‘Let’s leave him in peace now.’

  The padre said a prayer and marked Babic’s forehead with the sign of the cross. We pulled a sheet over him and left, closing the door after us before returning to the dayroom.

  Both the door into the passageway and the portholes were open, allowing the salty Atlantic breeze to blow through and clear the air. The three other men there were the chief officer, the ship’s agent and a senior superintendent from the shipowner’s office in Rijeka. His name was Vladimir Horvat.

  ‘Can we get on with this?’ said Horvat in his heavily accented English as we sat down. ‘I have to get back to my office.’

  ‘I have a few questions,’ I said. I wasn’t sure whether he had a reason for being obstructive or whether this was just his normal manner. He was a heavily built, muscular man with a large head, cropped blond hair and small dark eyes below barely discernible eyebrows. His most noticeable feature was his mouth. His thin lips framed a slit like a tiny letterbox. His teeth, when they showed, were stained yellow. He’d been chain-smoking since I’d first met him earlier in the day and he was lighting up another cigarette as we spoke.

  We’d come out to the ship together, having met in the Lisbon agent’s office that afternoon. I’d flown direct from Edinburgh and he, via Frankfurt from Rijeka. Since we’d met his behaviour had been abrupt to the point of open hostility.

  ‘Did you know Captain Babic well?’ I asked.

  ‘What has that got to do with anything?’

  ‘How long had he been with the company? Was he a reliable officer? Was there anything in his medical records or his reports to suggest he might be depressed? Suicidal? I’m trying to build up a background picture of what might have led up to this.’

  ‘Not that I know of. Why don’t you ask the chief mate here, or the other officers?’

  ‘Because I’m asking you,’ I replied, my patience wearing thin. ‘I’ll get to the crew later. Right now I expect you to answer my questions.’

  ‘Babic was an average master,’ he said grudgingly. ‘We had no bad reports from him or about him. I looked at his medical report before I left the office. He was fit for duty.’

  ‘What do you know of his personal life, his domestic situation?’

  ‘He was married to a Greek woman. More than that I do not know.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘Yes. Two boys, I believe.’

  ‘And they live in Thessaloniki, is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why do you think he hanged himself instead of just jumping overboard?’ I asked, as much to myself as to the others.

  The padre replied. He’d been thinking about it. ‘Who knows, Senhor? Maybe drowning alone in the ocean with no one to find his body was a prospect he could not face.’

  I wasn’t getting far with my questioning. Babic had a reason for ending it all, whether it concerned his personal life and state of mind or something else. That’s if he had been the one to end it. I persevered with Horvat.

  ‘I want to know about this voyage,’ I said. ‘She loaded in Trabzon. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Second-hand vehicles, machinery and spare parts for discharge where? I know she was ordered to wait here off Lisbon for further orders but what’s her final destination?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Look, Horvat,’ I said. ‘We can do this the easy or the not so easy way. I have authority from the ship’s insurers and by proxy from the flag state, to conduct an initial investigation on their behalf. I’m not leaving the ship until I have some answers, and neither are you.’

  ‘You cannot order me around.’

  ‘Stop me,’ I challenged him. I’d told the agent this might take some time but I was still hoping to get ashore before midnight. There was a big storm the other side of the Atlantic spinning its way eastwards. The weather was worsening, which was why we’d taken a tug and not the agent’s launch. There might come a point when it was too rough to get back to port.

  I tried a different tack. ‘Just answer my questions. They shouldn’t present any difficulties if you have nothing to hide. Alternatively, we can tell the chief officer here to bring the ship into port. He has a Master’s licence and the agent can order up a pilot.’

  ‘That will cost money. We will incur port and pilotage dues unnecessarily.’

  ‘Such costs will be recoverable under your P&I cover,’ I reminded him. In the shipping industry protection and indemnity insurance is arranged through mutual associations known simply as P&I Clubs, in this case the Caledonian Marine Mutual Protection & Indemnity Association of Leith in Scotland, a Club formed in the late nineteenth century in the heyday of the British merchant marine. As a freelance marine claims investigator based in Piraeus, close to the biggest community of shipowners on the planet, most of my work came from Greek owners whose ships were entered with the CMM. The kinds of claims we handled were many and various. Cargo damage and collision liability, crew death and injury, as well as contractual fraud were just a few I’d been brought in on over the years. But I’d been called into this case because Croatia, for reasons of proximity, fell under my jurisdiction, and because of the last case I’d handled, which peripherally had involved the same shipowner.

  ‘We are not taking the ship into port, do you understand? I will answer your questions but the ship will remain in international waters.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘You say you don’t know her destination, yet the ship is carrying a full cargo of motor vehicles and machinery. I don’t understand.’

  ‘The cargo was purchased speculatively. A sale has not yet been finalised. Such situations are not uncommon as you will know, McKinnon.’

  He was right but I wasn’t convinced. ‘Why did the ship head north after passing Gibraltar? Do the shippers expect to sell the cargo in north Europe? That seems unlikely.’

  ‘This I do not know.’

  I turned to the chief mate. ‘I’d like to see the cargo manifest.’

  He looked nervously at Horvat, who nodded his consent. The mate walked over to Babic’s desk and handed me a plastic folder of documents. There was one bill of lading covering the whole cargo, a cargo manifest and a set of tally sheets from Trabzon, the loadport. The shipper was named as the Trabzon Logistics Company. In the consignee column on both the bill of lading and the manifest were the words, To Order, in other wor
ds, to be advised once the cargo had been sold. The cargo description stated second-hand vehicles.

  I handed back the folder. ‘I’d like a copy of the crew list too.’

  Again, the nervous glance at Horvat, who again nodded his consent. I scanned it briefly. Twenty-four crew, or twenty-three now, mostly Croatian and Polish officers with Filipino ratings. ‘I’d like a quick look around the ship now, then we can wrap this up,’ I said.

  ‘Is that really necessary?’ Horvat demanded.

  ‘Yes, it is.’ I wanted to get a feel for the atmosphere, the condition of the ship. And I wanted to talk to the chief mate without Horvat breathing down his neck. Inevitably in my line of business, you met resistance if shipowners, charterers or whoever else might be involved in a claim or dispute wished to conceal relevant facts. I’d learned to recognise such behaviour and in this case it was blatantly obvious.

  ‘You don’t want to go into the holds, I hope. In this weather there’s a risk of seawater damage to the vehicles.’

  I couldn’t argue with him on that. Seawater was already washing over the deck as the ship plunged into the swell. Opening the hatches would risk flooding the holds.

  I addressed the agent, a middle-aged Portuguese man who had been listening to our exchanges with interest. ‘Mr Lopes, can you work with the tug and ship’s crew to transfer Captain Babic’s body onto the tug. It will need to be taken to the mortuary for the post mortem and until it’s decided where he will be buried.’

  ‘Can’t we bury him here, at sea?’ Horvat asked. ‘It is the tradition.’

  ‘No. A post mortem examination will be necessary. If his widow were to raise a successful claim against the owners, it would be for CMM as the insurers to settle it. We need to establish cause of death. There may well be an enquiry by the flag state too. As I told you, I’m here to represent them as well.’

  ‘Alright,’ said Lopes. ‘Let me organise it.’