I straightened up at last and settled on the same course towards the estuary. Say ten minutes and I would be in the mouth of the Barncaster creeks.
And so would Devvo, which would be his tough luck.
Chapter 17
Time often has a will of its own. Some hours go like a bomb. Others trail past like clapped-out snails, like now. My boat was static. I’d been stuck in one position for hours, about a mile offshore as far as I could estimate.
Devvo’s boat had slowed down, then stopped. Naturally I’d stopped too, reversing to kill the speed, then holding her in neutral. A few times she needed a touch of the propeller to keep station but not often. Once I heard Devvo’s boat throttle up loudly and saw the radar dot move to stand offshore a furlong further or so. I instantly pulled out a similar distance. Maybe he was afraid of being swept in by that sinister rush of the dawn tide when it came.
To still the engine would leave me dawdling if Devvo shot off fast. Even then I wouldn’t lose him altogether but I wasn’t sure how our boats compared for speed. I’d risked too much to let him get away now. I remember thinking this quite clearly despite not knowing why I simply wasn’t trotting home to a hot meal.
Through the hours we had drifted steadily southwards along the coast in the thick fog. Now I was completely safe and a winner I couldn’t help gloating, believing Devvo was now in my hands, virtually my prisoner. Perhaps lulled by the reassuring sense of security I began to nod off. Every now and then I caught myself snoring and frightened myself to death by jerking suddenly awake. When that happened I scanned the radar screen feverishly to make sure Devvo’s boat hadn’t given me the slip. I invented games to keep me awake, and very exciting they were. Counting foghorns, a real gripper. And seeing how many different tones I could detect – high, low, gravelly. Every now and then I gave the throttle a nudge just to keep the engine on its toes. Everything had to be ready for it, though what ‘it’ was I couldn’t imagine. Once I was pulled from a personal twilight by a deep muffled crump from seawards. I listened hard and peered blindly about but the sound didn’t recur. A single swollen wave lifted the boat a minute later, then was gone. Sleepily I put it down to an extra-super super-tanker passing and went back to waiting.
I’d hoped for the fog to clear as the night wore on, but if anything it grew thicker. Maybe the after-affects of my immersion and the fright I’d had were greater than I thought. Anyway I grew so cold towards dawn I went to sit inside the cabin for a few minutes. There was a kettle and one of those gas-burners, with clean water from plastic pipes. It took some time but I made hot water. Teeth chattering, I took it and a couple more pies back to the cockpit. Maybe I’d caught malaria from the sea, or was that polio? By then I’d ripped a blanket into an improvised poncho. I felt like nothing on earth. A sartorial mess, but drowsily confident. I nodded off a little, fell awake, checked the screen. Devvo was still there.
‘And, Devvo,’ I said quietly, ‘so am I.’
A seagull perching on the cabin roof gave me a momentary thrombus about an hour later.
‘Watch it,’ I told it laconically. ‘Stuffed case-mounted seabirds have gone up thirty-seven per cent.’ It eyed me hungrily and I chucked it some pie. Watching it go made me realize I could see it. The elementary fact forced itself into my sleepy brain. See? Seagulls don’t fly much in fog. Therefore as I’d dozed the fog had started lifting. And dawn was coming.
I wearily rubbed my face to alert myself. My engine’s deep mutter sounded strong and quiet as ever. A few exercises standing up in the cockpit did nothing to help my stiffness so I stopped that and got some more hot water, hurrying back to watch the screen.
Gradually the darkness lessened. I knew that the boats tend to move about the estuary even in the early hours. Our few fishing vessels would be easy to spot on radar. They usually headed straight out, Indian file, and I knew from Joe there were only four in harbour.
As dawn came, today merely a sulphurous yellow version of darkness, I realized the boat was now rocking more than it had, perhaps some sign that the tide was on the turn. I was too tired to start looking tide tables up at this stage. I just wanted to get the whole thing over and done with, but exactly how I did not know.
At exactly six-thirty by the cockpit chronometer Devvo’s boat started up with a roar. It was too near for my comfort. Maybe my vigilance was going. I heard it quite clearly and moved sloppily into pursuit. Of course they didn’t know they were being followed so it wouldn’t seem to matter much. The screen showed them heading southwards, not steering into the estuary but going parallel to the coast. Maybe they were looking for their rendezvous. A freighter from Holland, perhaps? Or that big grey coaster which people rumoured made pick-ups for the Hamburg antiques trade? Port Felixstowe is rumoured to be cast-iron so it would have to be in one of the creeks. Probably Devvo had waited because he was early. Why, I wondered idly as I steered a following course south, was the stuff not transferred out at sea? Easy enough when it was calm like this, and much less likely to be sussed out by the coastguards, fog or no fog. Two knots, I observed. They must have time to spare.
At this funeral speed keeping Devvo’s dot tracked was easy. By guesswork I was some three furlongs from him, hardly more than a stone’s throw. We seemed to be a half-mile off the estuary now. As the choppy water began to rock me unpleasantly side to side the sound of a bell came clearly across the harbour mouth. That would be one of the buoys which lined Barncaster’s lower reaches. Once I heard an engine start and the sound of a car’s horn. I even glimpsed a tall mast’s riding light. The screen wasn’t much use now. It had blurred into a haze of green. I didn’t much care, because any company meant safety.
The sky was lightening with every second. Dense fog everywhere still, but things were definitely looking up. Land and daylight. Those plus my – well, somebody’s – precious load of antiques equalled success. And my precious chunk of chrysoberyl, with private knowledge of a King Solomon’s mineful in my own private spot on the sea bed. With the loot I could easily hire a couple of professional divers . . .
I was gloating like this when I noticed a green blip moving quickly out from the green haze which indicated the crowded estuary. A shrill engine was audible, and getting nearer. Well, I thought resignedly, it’s about time Joe Poges showed up. I’d done nothing wrong so far, or so I thought. If anybody was in the clear it was me. Devvo would get ten years, richly deserved. The engine sounded closer. And the police would prevent anybody doing anybody else any GBH, right? Maybe it was all for the best.
Suddenly uneasy, I noticed Devvo’s boat had slowed. I cut speed, if you can call a slow drift speed. From the rate at which he was now going it looked as if he’d slipped the engine altogether. After a hesitation I too went into neutral. The green blip from behind was coming on faster. My boat was between the two. And now Devvo’s boat was moving again – northwards? Towards me. Slowly, but definitely with deliberate intent. I could hear both, and see sod all. Worried, I looked up and swung my head to listen. Maybe I should try the radio now, raise Joe Poges and say what was going on but I didn’t know how, and wavelengths are Greek to me. I’d actually bent to fiddle with it when a boat hurtled at me out of the fog roaring with bows raised like it was taking off. I had a single second to shove the gear lever forward. The boat crumped against my boat’s side, flinging me off my feet with a numbing shock. I wobbled upright into a world abruptly gone mad and grabbed the throttle, bellowing in alarm.
The bloody boat was the same one I’d used to rescue Germoline, the big Yank’s estuary yacht, flying its commodore’s flag. I’d seen it all in a millisec as it loomed out of the fog. I yelled frantic insults and slammed some way into my boat. The quicker I was out of this the better. I glared around into the thinning fog but saw nothing. The boat had vanished. In my sudden fright it seemed to me that engines sounded from every direction. I was just taking off landwards when I saw on the screen that Devvo’s blip had gone. But between the estuary and me a steady blip was slowly circli
ng, probably Devvo, waiting over there in case I ran for land. And another was closing swiftly at me. I shoved the throttle and headed for Devvo’s blip, cursing myself at the chances I’d now have to take.
How thick I’d been. It was so obvious. If my hired boat possessed one of these radar gadgets, it stood to reason Devvo’s would. Of course he’d have seen me on his radar and simply led me on. Then he’d waited until one of his goons could row ashore – maybe on an inflatable dinghy of the sort my boat carried – and nick a boat, by merest chance the Yank’s again. Unless the Yank too was in on it?
The following blip was closing fast, now in earshot. I glared around into the fog like a cornered animal. Nothing. The sea was increasingly choppy now and I was finding standing difficult. The tide must have started. And Devvo’s blip was starting at me. There seemed no way home. Whichever way I steered I’d get trapped between the two of them, a bobbing walnut in the jaws of a seaborne nutcracker. My only advantage was that my boat was as big as the commodore’s. I risked a glance at the radar screen. My own engine’s sound dulled theirs, and I’d lost all sense of direction. Nobody would see us from the shore. Worse, the nearer we were to land the more blurred the screen. There’d be a real risk of running aground on one of those frigging sandbanks. I’d be a sitting duck. After all this.
In a sudden rage I burst the throttle into life and felt the deck lift as the boat accelerated into the estuary mouth. In for a penny in for a pound. No use looking at the hazed radar screen now. The rocking and shuddering practically flung me out. I realized in fright that I hadn’t even donned a life-jacket, and the boat carried six. Going so fast, the bows lifting and juddering nastily, I could do nothing else except gasp at the speed and hang on to the wheel to keep her straight. I gaped at the fog ahead, hoping I’d guessed the distance right. The fog rushed past me, parting and flinging past my face. Fear of what I wanted to do was draining me of willpower. Any strength I’d possessed had been left in the fort back there. Another glance at the screen. The swine following was as fast as me – and so close. Devvo’s blip was rapidly closing from ahead. I cut the speed back with a jerk.
They came at me simultaneously. Jesus, but Devvo’s boat looked big, a destroyer compared to mine. It came suddenly cutting the water into great level spouts through the fog, its engine deep with intent and power. In that second I glanced from front to back, judged the relative speed. The commodore’s boat was in line, coming at me, about twenty feet to go. I cracked the throttle ahead, curving to the right in the start of as narrow a circle as I could go, screaming abuse at the engine to move us.
‘You idle bastard,’ I bawled at it, terrified. The commodore’s boat tried following, hurtling round into a great banking curve and spraying a wall of sea up on to Devvo’s advancing bows and lifting its pale side. The crash wasn’t so much a crash as a clang with a muffled clatter. I was too busy wrestling with my steering-wheel to see much of what happened behind. I could again see nothing when I’d recovered and got my own boat slowed and straightened up in the choppy water, now surging unpleasantly high. The fog was light yellow now, pale, quiet. And empty. Engines muttered nearby. Somebody shouted.
While I was checking the screen a sudden whoosh sounded. I swear I even felt the heat. A reddish glow penetrated the fog for just an instant and was gone. A swift turbulence rippled across the sea, the blast tapped against my face, and that was that. Somebody’s boat had exploded, maybe the commodore’s again. Dear God. That was all I needed. I headed out to sea again, with the blip I guessed to be Devvo somewhere among the green haze that was the estuary’s banks. Which one was he? This close inshore the radar seemed sod-all use. I cut the engine and peered at the screen. Twenty, there must be twenty discrete blips there, if not more, and a haze that could mean anything. A bell was clanging. Somebody must have heard the explosion and be calling the men out to help, though exactly where was difficult to tell. They’d see as little as me in this fog, I thought, though the more boats put out from shore the merrier, as far as I was concerned. All I needed was one friend. The trouble was I’d got none. My belly was cramped and my chest still thumping from the realization that the explosion might have been me.
At this point I seriously considered standing some miles offshore till the fog cleared. It didn’t take much to make me realize what an error that would be. Devvo’s boat was bigger and faster. Nothing would please him more than having me out there with no witnesses and no chance of assistance. This fog was a blessing for him. For me it was yet another danger. So it had to be inshore, and soon.
I swung round, slow but steady. The radar swept the coast in a great blur. I decided to ignore it. The tide would be running, filling the inlets and creeks and bringing up the boats as distinct radar points. But which of the fleet of static boats would turn out to be Devvo’s?
Then I had a brainwave. Drummer’s creek, where the commodore’s boat was normally moored, where I’d struggled across to that sandbank. It filled at the tide. Only a short distance over the mudflats to Drummer’s hut and Germoline. I could make it safely to land, moor there, dart across the mudflats past Drummer’s shed to tell Joe Poges and simply have him arrest Devvo! Once I reached land there’d be no problem. I could of course cruise boldly up the estuary, but I knew Devvo well enough by now not to do the obvious thing. He would get me for sure, probably ram me, claiming that stupid Lovejoy – that clumsy, dangerously unskilled sailor – had made some mistake and caused some calamity. His boat would cut mine in two like it had the commodore’s, and I’d go for a burton. And the fog, thinning all too slowly, would hide all.
I guessed I was almost about the spot where I’d escaped from between the two boats, and flicked out of gear to search for debris. Maybe the explosion had been both of them after all, not just the commodore’s boat alone. My spirits rose. I might be free this very moment. A loss of a lot of antiques, but I would survive.
Something floated close by, wood maybe. A clue to who had suffered the destruction. I leant down to peer at the water and an oily hand rose from the sea and grabbed at my arm. ‘Ooooh!’ I flailed back, screaming and gasping and beating at the horrible thing. It was coated in black slime, blistered almost beyond recognition. I screeched in terror, lashed out at it with my feet as it kept coming, lifting out of the heaving sea in a mad benediction and finally clinging to the brass rail. I kept kicking and screaming from fright until it slipped away leaving a ghastly bloodstained oily mark on the gunwale. I flung the gear in and roared away fast as I could go. My teeth were chattering and my hands uncontrollable.
The boat had bucked a good half-mile with me whining and shivering at the wheel before I got my mind back again and cut speed. Thank God no innocent boat was in the way or I’d have bisected it without a chance. While she slowed to idling I struggled to regain control of myself. My hands were jellies and I was cursing and blinding about being out on the bloody ocean in the first place. It took me ten minutes to steady up and stop shaking all over. I couldn’t even look at the smears on the gunwale. The terrible fact was I’d just killed a man. Killed. Whoever it was had been a shipwrecked mariner, and I’d just killed him. He’d reached for help and I’d . . . and I’d . . . I heard myself moaning and tried to stop. All right, I’d panicked, been terrified. But my instincts to help had been submerged – I swallowed at the word – well, overcome by horror. And what was worse I’d felt the propeller chop, pause, jerk before pushing the boat on, as if it had . . . almost as if something in the water had fouled the propeller and been cut . . . been cut . . .
Naturally I made excuses. I told myself it had probably been Devvo’s goon, and he’d been armed. I told myself it was a hoarding attempt and not a plea for rescue, but I knew I was lying. How much of my savagery had been Lovejoy the buffoonish antique dealer, and how much sheer hate? It might even have been envy of Devvo’s wealth, his birds, his power. I had a splitting headache. I’d have given anything just to reach land and go to sleep. But a living man, badly burned from the explosion, had
been reaching from the sea for help, and I’d killed him. Being scared’s no excuse. Vengeance isn’t, either.
An unutterable weariness settled on me. Maybe it was the cumulative exhaustion, maybe the permeating cold. But maybe it was the wretched suspicion of myself. As I said, I’ve always believed that there’s nothing wrong with greed. Nowadays it’s one of the few remaining honest motives. But I’d always thought myself a pretty kindish bloke, even if some characters get on my nerves. Well, whatever I thought, being depressed was only stupid. I had to go through with it. No escape out to sea. Staying here meant that sooner or later I’d run out of petrol, wreck myself or do something just as hopeless in the fog. Nothing for it. I’d turn south, aim for Drummer’s creek fast as I could go, and get the hell off this ocean to turn Devvo in.
As I spun the wheel I somehow felt I was cutting my losses.
I took bearings from the radar screen. Its haze had diminished and I was able to spot the seaward bulge, south of which Drummer’s creek started. Despite this, heading inshore in fog’s hair-raising. East Anglian sea fogs are famed for density and patchiness. Several times I let the way fall off until my confidence returned. Tiredness and cold were taking it out of me and concentrating on the screen was proving difficult, though I hadn’t been scrapping Devvo on the ocean as long as all that. Collingwood in his wooden sailing ship had waited for the French fleet three years without a break.
My instincts were dulled, practically non-existent, but something made me uneasy. By rights, the nearer I got to Drummer’s creek the more relieved I should have been. Instead I grew increasingly edgy and fidgety. Once I even started whistling, nervous as a cat, stopping myself as a precaution. The screen was now only guessing where the long sandbanks lay, though I wasn’t unduly worried. From the time I’d pulled Drummer off I remembered that the sea flooded swiftly in from the south until the sandbank was cut off. I could easily find my way by letting the ocean do it for me. On impulse I cut the engine. A gentle waft of air cooled my cheek. Maybe that would lift the fog, another worry. Another ten minutes and I’d be opposite the southern arm of Drummer’s creek. I felt the erratic seas swirling me on, pulling jerkily as the dangerous undercurrents competed for the boat. The only benefit was I knew which way the tide was going.
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