The Pirate Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘No,’ she said gracelessly and stupidly. ‘Thank you.’

  He smiled a minuscule smile and gestured with his left hand, almost — but not quite — bowing. They crossed to a door which led into a corridor not quite wide enough for them to walk down side by side. The door opened inwards and he managed to hold it for her and then to move away so smartly that he was still in the lead. Robin followed him, looking right and left at the series of open-barred doorways into old-fashioned holding cells which resembled something out of a cowboy film. Halfway down, however, there were full doors with sliding panels at eye level. At the first of these Lee stopped and rapped with the end of his swagger stick. The eye hole slammed open and then closed. There came a rattle of keys on the far side. The door opened and a young policeman stood at attention. Lee brushed in past him and Robin followed.

  Richard was sitting at a table, dressed in the ill-fitting clothes he had worn for his first court appearance four days ago. When he saw them, he stood up. In direct opposition to Lee’s almost fussily precise movements, his actions were a slow, almost lazy, unfolding limb by long limb.

  ‘Richard,’ said Robin, still so flustered that she almost forgot the position they were in. ‘I’ve moved heaven and earth to get you these. I hope to God they all fit.’

  She placed the bags on the table before him and he turned the piercing blue-white brightness of his eyes down towards them. How massive his hands were, she thought; but how gentle. He slid the charcoal suit out of its bright bag so gently the tissue paper didn’t even rustle. He lifted out the boat-sized black shoes, tutted quietly to himself and lifted the black cotton roll of the socks. He picked up the white silk of the shirt and shook it with one violent gesture, suddenly, like a bullfighter with a cape. Both Lee and his constable jumped at the movement and Robin suddenly realised how nervous of him they were.

  Naturally, she thought. They believed he had killed forty people late last week.

  ‘I don’t like these,’ said Richard, utterly unexpectedly. He was holding up silk boxer shorts.

  ‘I know, darling,’ answered Robin without thinking. ‘But they didn’t have any Y-fronts in your size.’

  ‘They’ll have to do then,’ he said with resignation.

  Then it hit her. They had just had a perfectly normal conversation. Domestic and personal, but all the more normal for that. ‘Richard,’ she squealed, leaning forward over the table. ‘Richard! It’s me. Robin.’

  With startling speed Commander Lee wrenched her back and she staggered until she collided with the constable by the door, her left hand smashing agonisingly against the butt of his holstered pistol.

  Everything stopped for a moment. Richard was frozen in place, holding the boxer shorts and staring at them with utter vacancy, his eyes as flat as glass, like doll’s eyes.

  ‘Captain Mariner,’ rasped Commander Lee, no longer quite so urbane.

  Robin looked at her burning hand. The knuckles were skinned and beginning to bleed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and brought the knuckles to her lips. She sucked at the blood thoughtlessly, like a schoolgirl. All of her attention was on Richard. ‘But I … he …’

  Then Richard was in motion again, putting the underwear beside the rest of the clothes and folding himself silently back into the chair.

  ‘I thought he was back. I am sorry. I couldn’t help it. I thought he was better.’

  Commander Lee nodded once. ‘He does that sometimes. Just for a second. Then he’s gone again. The psychiatrist says —’

  ‘He’s seeing a psychiatrist?’

  ‘Of course, Captain. What do you think? The man is unwell, he must be treated; we have a duty of care. And anyway, it is also in our interests that he should get his memory back.’

  ‘But what if he remembers that he had nothing to do with the deaths?’

  Again that minuscule smile. ‘In our experience, when the memory really returns, they all remember that they did the crimes of which they stand accused. That’s always what they were trying to forget, you see.’

  *

  The sole survivor of the stricken Sulu Queen stepped carefully into the silk boxer shorts, his face set like stone. He had forgotten that he did not like boxer shorts, but he was acutely aware that he hated performing intimate functions under the eyes of police guards. He settled the cool silk round his lean waist and crossed to the table, falling into one of those routines so old that it needed no conscious exercise of memory. He unrolled the socks and hopped like an ungainly stork on one leg and then the other as he put them on. The shirt was a joy, loose, billowing and the correct collar size. He would rather have had cotton than silk — now who would have bought him a silk shirt? Still, never mind. He shook out the trousers, stepped into them and pulled them up. He met his first problem as he did them up. They were a good deal too loose for him. He frowned. There were no braces. Now what … After a moment’s hesitation, he took the black tie from the ill-fitting outfit he had just removed and knotted it round his waist. He looked at the guard. ‘Needs must,’ he said. ‘But I look as though I’m off to play cricket.’

  The guard smiled once, the expression switching on and off like a facial tick. There was a sheen of sweat on his skin, although it was quite cool in here. The survivor wondered what the matter was, never guessing that the man saw him as a homicidal monster and was terrified of him.

  The survivor did not know it, but he was only able to enjoy this much freedom and to move about unrestrained because the guard was a crack shot, with orders to kill at the first sign of trouble. There was also a squad of his colleagues, equally lethal, on the far end of the video link which monitored every move, waking or sleeping, day and night. In blissful ignorance, he reached for his shoes and slipped them on, lacing them carefully and double-tying the knots. ‘Not really the thing,’ he burbled on mindlessly. ‘But what can you do?’ He pulled the rich but conservative tie out of its box and knotted it expertly in a full Windsor. He tucked the thin tail into the label behind the thick face of the tie and smoothed it down his stomach, looking around for a mirror. There were, of course, no mirrors. He tutted thoughtlessly and straightened the knot by using the backs of his fingers and thumb against the wings of his shirt collar. Then he slipped on the suit jacket and buttoned it. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Can’t see the tie holding my trousers up now. This suit is pretty big, though. Think I’ve lost weight lately?’

  The guard stood silent.

  The survivor shrugged. ‘Well, I’m ready,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘Now, where is it I’m actually going?’

  *

  ‘Captain Richard Mariner,’ read an official, quietly but clearly, ‘you stand accused that on or about midnight on the night of Thursday, 8th May, you murdered Brian Stanley Jordan. How do you plead?’

  Silence. Not a whisper, not a breath in the crowded courtroom.

  ‘Let it be recorded,’ said Stipendiary Magistrate Morgan quietly, ‘that the prisoner made no answer to that charge. And let that be entered as a plea of not guilty to the first count of murder.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You may proceed.’

  ‘Captain Richard Mariner. You stand accused that on or about midnight of Thursday, 8th May, you murdered Charles William Macallan. How do you plead?’

  This time the silence lasted for only an instant.

  ‘Let it be recorded that the prisoner made no answer to the charge. And let that be entered as a plea of not guilty to the second count of murder.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Proceed.’

  ‘Captain Richard Mariner …’

  Let this not be happening. Oh God, let this not be happening. The words were bad enough on their own but even in the legalistic phrases they brought with them pictures … more than pictures … smells, sounds, the feelings of that night … the terror, the horror, the helplessness … the madness … the horror, the horror … How could this be happening? Where had it begun? Where would it end? How much more destruction was there still to come? Oh
God … Oh God …

  Robin sat rigid, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. Beside her, Andrew Balfour tried to impart strength and control to his extraordinary client through his square, solid shoulder by a kind of osmosis. It would get much worse later on and he was saving his brotherly grip for then — he had calculated he might need to hold her hand in due course and would probably need to support her from the court and the building in the end. He had asked her to listen to the charges — there might be a clue there that only she would notice. But he had warned her and warned her again to try and avoid using her imagination. If she began to visualise the acts described, and to visualise Richard doing them, she would be incapacitated and useless. But she was taking it hard, he could see that. And there was much worse to come. She closed her eyes and the first tear trickled down her cheek. It was time, Andrew thought, to take Robin by the arm. There would be crowds in the street outside, he thought, and where there were crowds there would be cameras.

  ‘Now that we have the charges, Mr Po, and a full list of all the deceased discovered aboard, do you think we could proceed, please?’

  ‘Certainly, sir. The prosecution would first call Captain Daniel Huuk of the Royal Navy, liaising with the Royal Hong Kong Police Force in the matter of coastguard duties.’

  ‘Captain Huuk.’

  Daniel Huuk stood in the witness box, the soul of calm reliability and utter professionalism. He calmly gave a statement which detailed how, on the early morning of Friday last, 9 May 1997, he had been contacted at his office in HMS Tamar by an unknown informant who had warned him in vague but urgent terms that all was not well on the Sulu Queen inbound from Singapore and, in consultation with his police liaison officer, he had determined to check on the ship. He had approached the vessel in disguise, aware that his information might not be genuine — or innocent. As the ship, apparently derelict, had drifted into Hong Kong waters and into his jurisdiction, Huuk had led his men aboard …

  As the captain’s calm voice detailed the exploration through the stricken vessel, describing everything he found there, Robin suddenly jerked into convulsive action, like a marionette in the hands of a child. She pulled out a notepad and started writing feverishly.

  Andrew leaned forward. ‘It’s all right,’ he breathed. ‘You don’t need to make notes. We’ll get a full transcript of all this.’

  She shook her head and continued writing. But only for a moment. She wrote only two words and showed it to him: WHERE’S WALLY?

  He frowned. Shook his head. He did not understand. He wondered for an instant whether she had gone a little mad. Not surprising, under the circumstances.

  By way of answer, she underlined the simple question with such force that the paper tore.

  Andrew shrugged.

  She moved to add some explanation, but her movement was arrested by Daniel Huuk’s admission that, confronted by the prisoner, blood bedabbled and wild, he shot him on the left temple with an anti-personnel round and blasted him backwards down a full flight of metal-edged steps to land on the back of his head. ‘When I got to the bottom of the steps,’ Huuk admitted calmly, ‘I was extremely surprised to find Captain Mariner was still alive.’

  Andrew’s grip on Robin’s arm stopped being supportive and became a fierce restraint as he felt her begin to move. Shuddering, she subsided. The little pad with its cryptic message fell onto her lap and lay there, forgotten.

  Daniel Huuk described how one team of his men had got the ship under power again and rendezvoused with a helicopter from RAF Sek Kong. He detailed the manner in which Captain Mariner, still not expected to survive, was loaded in. Under the direction of the police liaison officer, he had moved none of the dead bodies but rather left them in place until the ship tied up at a buoy off HMS Tamar.

  Huuk came to the end of his statement and was replaced by Commander Lee. The policeman detailed the manner in which he had called together the best-qualified forensic team he could find in the Crown Colony, and had proceeded to examine, record and ultimately to remove all the victims from the ship. And how he and his team had spent the better part of a week doing nothing but establishing identity, circumstance and cause of death. He described how the stricken ship had next been moved to Kwai Chung where another two teams of experts had gone aboard, one to detail, move and hold the ship’s cargo, the other to examine the scene of crime — the most extensive scene of crime in the history of the Crown Colony’s police force — and to gather the last of the clues which would go towards the construction of their prima facie case in preparation for this hearing. ‘Sir,’ he concluded, ‘I feel that you should be aware that, because of the scale of this enquiry, there is a range of details still under investigation. What we have here, are the broad brush-strokes, so to speak. As you will understand, I am sure.’

  ‘We shall see, Commander Lee, in due course.’

  Next came the pathologist who had carried out the postmortem examinations. His evidence was a summary of much detailed work, but it added nothing new to the proceedings except to describe how the victims died, and when. The only exception to this was his introduction into the case of the six Vietnamese who had died some days earlier than anyone else, and whose bodies, although extensively ravaged at some earlier time, had more recently been treated with reverence and respect.

  Last came an expert witness whose name Robin did not hear. He was a tall, stooped Westerner of professorial bearing and sibilant, nearly silent, diction. He had been called in, he stated, to examine the weapons used in the incident aboard the Sulu Queen and to establish whether there were any links between the weapons and the clothing, persons and environs of those people, living and dead, who were involved.

  ‘I was presented,’ whispered the professor, ‘with a range of clothing for examination. It was all tagged but not assigned. It was all stained and soiled with a range of bodily fluids, most notably blood, and it varied between two broad sorts: standard nightwear and equally standard seafarers’ overalls. There was also some footwear, equally varied. I was also presented with a range of weaponry, rather more unusual. There was an M14 automatic weapon, caked with a range of bodily fluids. There was a Smith and Wesson .44 calibre automatic handgun with three rounds of Magnum strength remaining in the clip. And there was a basic panga, again caked in bodily fluids, mostly blood. This was especially true of the handle, which was effectively a rag wrapped round the metal tine at the base of the blade. The rag had been bound with adhesive carpet tape.

  ‘I was required to examine all these articles in order to establish whether, at the basic level, there were any attributable fingerprints. I was required to examine the articles further to establish whether the blood and bone fragments could be assigned to any members of the ship’s crew on an individual basis. Finally, I was asked to examine the firearms in particular, in order to ascertain whether it was possible to establish whether any individual person had been murdered with those weapons or could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to have fired them.’

  ‘Yes?’ Prompted Morgan gently, as though the professor was as frail as he looked to be. ‘And what did you establish, Professor?’

  ‘Among the range of facts I established, the following seem to me to be germane.

  ‘First: on the smooth surface of the carpet-tape handle of the panga which certainly executed the helmsman Win Chau as well as the two officers found on the bridge, there was only one clear set of fingerprints. These belong to the accused, Captain Richard Mariner.

  ‘Secondly: on the Armalite M16 assault rifle, discovered in the … ah … fluids on the floor of the ship’s library where the vast majority of the victims were later found, once again there is only one set of identifiable fingerprints. Those of the accused, Captain Richard Mariner.

  ‘Thirdly and finally: with regard to the Smith and Wesson .44 calibre Magnum automatic handgun. It was to be expected that Captain Mariner’s fingerprints would be on it as a witness has given in evidence that he saw the accused holding it. However, I was able t
o establish that this gun, with the captain’s fingerprints on it, was the gun used in the execution-style killings of two of the officers on the bridge and of the first officer and the chief engineer. Further, there was one — and only one — set of clothing and footwear which was uniquely stained with blood and fragments of soft body parts and bone such as could only occur, in my submission, if the wearer was closely involved in the murders in question. This clothing was also stained by the residue of a range of bums and deposits such as could only be consistent with the repeated firing of the Smith and Wesson .44 calibre handgun held by the police if it was loaded with a Magnum load, such as was discovered in its half-empty clip.

  ‘All of this clothing was, as I discovered later, the clothing worn at the time of his apprehension by the accused, Captain Richard Mariner.’

  *

  Richard was transferred half an hour later when Stipendiary Magistrate Morgan ruled that there was indeed a case for him to answer. Again, as planned, Edward Thong rose and agreed that the situation was in many ways unique. Because of the exceptional situation, he said, the Captain’s defence team requested that the trial date be set as soon as possible. With no very good grace, Morgan agreed that he would see whether it would be possible for the trial to be heard at the Supreme Court in five weeks’ time, during the final days of Crown rule in the colony. He also agreed, with some surprise, to waive reporting restrictions.

  Richard’s face was still wreathed in the utter unconcern which had characterised it so far, like a man totally unaware of the danger of his position and deaf to the increasing cry of vilification being hurled against him from every quarter.

  Robin was not so deaf or unaware. As she rose, she found herself in urgent need of Andrew’s supportive arm. Indeed, as they walked out of the courtroom into the corridor outside, and then immediately into the wide, cool reception hall of the Magistrate’s Court, Andrew thought that his client might very well be going to faint. He had worried about her face going red and blotchy, now he was much more worried by its absolute pallor. She was as white as a corpse, and in his job he had seen a good few corpses.