Crespin said, ‘I take it then that you’re satisfied, sir?’
‘Satisfied? I certainly am!’ Scarlett rested his hand on Crespin’s shoulder. ‘I know how you must feel, how we all feel about seeing good men die. But look at it this way. If every single man had been killed and the ship sunk it would have been worthwhile. You have to weigh up the odds. Learn to use a force small enough to tie down a far greater number of the enemy. And small enough to be no crippling loss if the balance goes against it.’ He patted his shoulder. ‘But I’m being morbid. This is your day, and I’m pleased.’
He looked over the screen and continued briskly, ‘Mostly superficial damage, by the look of it. Moriarty can fix it, or I’ll know the reason why! We have to learn to improvise in this unit. Improvise and make do. If you think Sousse is crude, then just you wait until we really get going!’ He tapped the side of his hooked nose. ‘But that’d be telling, eh?’
Crespin let the words wash over him like spray. It seemed as if Scarlett would never stop, never go away.
Scarlett said, ‘I shall be leaving for Malta tomorrow. With the Sicily invasion going so well we can’t stand still, you know. Plans to make, possibilities to explore and all that sort of thing.’
‘And my orders, sir?’
Scarlett seemed to consider the question. ‘Get your ship repaired and restocked with everything you need. You’ll not get a dockyard refit here so don’t try and make a big thing of it. Patch up and splash on some fresh paint and she’ll be as good as new.’ He laughed. ‘But I don’t have to teach you these tricks, do I?’
Crespin did not answer directly. He was thinking of the blazing tanks, the seaman being dragged by his leg along the pier and Porteous with the dead girl. So many vivid pictures. Then he said, ‘A month at the least, I should think.’
‘What? You’re playing games with me again, Crespin, because I’m a rotten old amateur, eh?’ Scarlett’s face seemed to be swimming in a mist. ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t have that, old chap. Three weeks at the most. I’ve already told Moriarty what I want, so don’t try and get round him, there’s a good chap!’
‘She’s not built for this sort of thing, sir. For that reason she needs extra care, otherwise something will go just when we need her most.’
Scarlett studied him sadly. ‘There you go again. You must try to remember that your command is not a way of life, it’s steel and guns, a weapon! And you must ensure that is how it stays.’ He consulted his watch. ‘Must be off now. Lot to do.’ He grinned. ‘Almost forgot. I’m recommending you for a bar to your D.S.G. I’ll make out a list for you to sign of other possible decorations for your chaps. Oh, and that Sub of yours, Shannon, I’m suggesting that his second stripe is brought forward. It all helps to keep ’em happy, you know!’ He swung round on the ladder and ran quickly to the deck.
Crespin gave him a few minutes and then walked slowly towards the ladder. He had hardly left the bridge for eight days and his legs felt unwilling to make the effort.
As he reached the deck he saw the hands already at work dragging the shore power lines inboard, along with all the clutter of welding gear and nameless pieces of steel plate. They looked dirty and unshaven, but worked as a team in a way he had not seen before. As he passed amongst them some looked up and grinned self-consciously, others merely stared at him with a mixture of awe and pride. The fear and the uncertainty were behind them, the future too remote to contemplate. They were safe in harbour, and every other sailor and bloody civvie in the port had come to see them. It was as simple as that. And to most of them, who had expected to be killed or taken prisoner, Crespin represented far more than the commanding officer of their battered little ship. He was the ship, her strength and her cunning rolled into one.
Crespin realized none of those things, but in spite of his troubled thoughts he was deeply moved by what he saw.
He climbed down another ladder and saw Barker, the steward, clearing the mess of soiled bandages and dressings from the wardroom, with every scuttle open to drive away the stench and pain of death. In his own small cabin he could not completely escape. There were two splinter-holes above his desk and blood on the carpet where a wounded stoker had been laid to die.
There was a tap on the door even as he rested his head on his hands. ‘Well?’ He could hardly get the word out.
It was Shannon. ‘There’s an officer of the Military Police here, sir. He’s had a telephone call from Captain Scarlett.’
Crespin forced his brain back to work. It did not make any sense. ‘Phone call? But he was with me a few minutes ago.’
Shannon stared at him. ‘Nearly half an hour, sir.’
Crespin looked away. Half an hour. He must have been asleep on this chair without knowing it. ‘What does he want?’
‘It seems that our deserter, Able Seaman Trotter, is holed up in some house on the other side of town, sir.’ Shannon seemed irritated. ‘I told the Provost officer that he should have dealt with it, but it seems that Captain Scarlett thought you’d want to handle the matter.’
Crespin groped for his cap. Scarlett obviously considered that an arrest effected by the military might cast blight on the Thistle’s impressive return.
‘All right, I’ll come up.’ He saw Shannon’s eyes exploring the cabin and added, ‘By the way, you’re being promoted. It’s not official, but you can take it for granted.’
Shannon was visibly shaken. ‘Thank you, sir. I—I mean, thank you very much!’
Crespin eyed him emptily. That was odd. Shannon’s voice had taken on a distinct northern accent. It was strange he had not noticed it before.
He could not bring himself to like Shannon very much, but he had certainly shown himself capable of keeping his head in action.
He said, ‘Well, let’s get it over with.’
The M.P. lieutenant had small, gimlet eyes and an aggressive black moustache. He carried a leather cane under one arm, and threw up a salute which would have done credit to the Guards.
Crespin wondered what sort of a picture he made by comparison. Red-eyed, in a sweat-stained shirt with a face still stiff from salt-spray and smoke.
He said, ‘Are you sure it’s our deserter?’
The M.P. replied primly, ‘No, sir. But Captain Scarlett has been informed that it is. And acting on information received I have placed two of my men in a position near the house to await instructions.’ He even sounded like a policeman.
He moved his boots noisily. ‘I have a jeep on the jetty, sir.’
Crespin saw Porteous hovering by one of the working parties and beckoned him across. ‘We’re going for the deserter, Sub. He is in your division, I believe?’
Porteous nodded vacantly. ‘Yes, sir.’
When they reached the gangway Wemyss said quickly, ‘Would you like me to detail a proper escort, sir!’ He shifted under Crespin’s gaze. ‘You could do with some rest.’
He was really implying it was odd to say the least for a captain to go looking for a mere deserter.
Crespin replied calmly, ‘I’m just going for the ride, Number One. I’ve one or two items on my mind and this might help to clear them.’
He climbed on to the brow, and as the pipes twittered in salute he turned and looked along the exposed side of his ship. She had certainly been lucky. The wounds were bad, but by some miracle nothing vital had been touched. He thought of Scarlett’s description. A weapon. Not a way of life. It was strange how deeply he could still feel those words. As if he had been insulted personally.
By the jeep the M.P. stopped to check his revolver, and Crespin said coldly, ‘You won’t need that, Lieutenant!’
‘You can’t be too sure with these chaps, sir.’ The M.P. was frowning severely.
‘In this war you can’t be sure of any bloody thing.’ Crespin climbed into the jeep and lapsed into silence.
Scarlett had said he was going to Malta. So the girl would be leaving, too. It would be interesting to see if she remembered her invitation.
With
a jerk the jeep bounded forward, and both ship and jetty were swallowed immediately in a pall of churned dust.
It did not take very long to reach the house where the deserter was said to be in hiding. It was one of a terrace of tall, dingy buildings with flaking plaster and an air of general decay. Some of the windows had iron balconies which were linked to similar structures on the opposite side of the narrow street by lines full of sad-looking washing, carpets and clothes for which there was presumably no room to spare in this rabbit warren of rooms and apartments. Another police jeep was parked at an intersection, and a tall M.P. snapped to attention and saluted as they approached.
‘I’ve sent Thompson round the back, sir.’ He gestured towards a deeply shadowed doorway. ‘This is the only other way out.’ He glanced curiously at the two naval officers. ‘I gather from the old ratbag who runs this joint that the sailor is on the top floor. There’s a brothel on the next landing, and some of the girls have been keeping him supplied with food and that.’ He grinned. ‘Other things as well, I shouldn’t wonder.’
The M.P. lieutenant plucked his moustache impatiently. ‘We’d better go on up. We don’t want a crowd gathering around us.’
Crespin looked up and down the narrow street. Apart from a dozing beggar in a doorway and two scavenging dogs it was deserted. The teeming occupants were either down at the harbour watching the Thistle or still enjoying their siesta, he thought. The whole place stank of dirt and urine, and he found himself wondering what would make a man exchange the clean, ordered world of a ship for this. It was no solution, no matter what trouble he had got into, and he would certainly end up in detention barracks or the local jail.
He followed the two M.P.s inside and started up the great sagging stairway with Porteous close on his heels. Each landing was more seedy than the one before, and only when they passed a door which had been recently painted and bore the words ‘Off Limits to Allied Personnel’ did he hear any sign of life. What must have been a very old gramophone was playing ‘I left my heart in an English garden’, and they could hear some girls giggling and what sounded like someone having a bath.
The M.P. officer grunted, ‘Always chasing our chaps out of here. I’ll bloody well close it if they don’t toe the line.’
On the top landing there were only two doors, and the M.P. lieutenant pointed with his cane. ‘That must be the one. There’s a Greek in the other room.’
Crespin looked at him. He obviously came here quite a lot. Maybe that was why he kept the brothel off limits. So that he could have its dubious pleasures all to himself.
He lifted his cane and rapped smartly on the door. There was no sound in reply, and on the landing below the giggling and the scraping music suddenly fell silent.
The M.P. scowled. ‘So we’re being awkward, are we?’ He rattled the handle adding, ‘Locked, too!’
The corporal put his ear to the door and then yelled, ‘This is the Military Police! Open the door or we’ll bust it down!’ Nothing happened and he added unnecessarily, ‘He’s not going to answer, sir.’
Crespin stood back watching the two policemen with sudden dislike. He should not have come. The preparations for breaking into Trotter’s squalid world were both humiliating and embarrassing.
The corporal stood back and then thrust his shoulder hard against the door. It flew inwards with a splintering crash, and the M.P. lieutenant was inside the room, his pistol in his hand before Crespin could make a move to follow.
But it was in pitch darkness with just a few bright horizontal slits of sunlight from a shuttered window on the far side. There was no sound of movement and only the monotonous buzzing of flies broke the silence around them.
The lieutenant said wearily, ‘The bastard must have gone over the roof. Open that window, Corporal, before I spew up!’
Feet shuffled on the landing, and Crespin could sense the other inmates of the building creeping up the stairway to see what was happening.
But Trotter had not gone over the roof after all. As the shutters banged open and a shaft of dusty sunlight cut across the littered room Crespin saw him sitting slumped sideways against a table, one hand resting on some crumpled papers, the other holding a long-barrelled Italian automatic.
Porteous said quietly, ‘Oh Christ! He’s blown half his head away!’ He retched and then thrust a handkerchief against his mouth.
Crespin made himself walk across to the rigid figure in the chair. Trotter’s eyes were almost shut, the features contorted, frozen at the moment of impact. But in the filtered sunlight Crespin could see the narrow slits of reflected glare, so that it looked as if Trotter might be still alive and would suddenly open them wide and condemn their intrusion. But the right side of his head had almost gone, and Crespin had to swallow hard to restrain the nausea as he stared at the flies which covered the blood and shattered bone in a murmuring, eager mass.
The lieutenant said, ‘Go down and phone for the meat waggon, Corporal.’ He pushed Trotter’s other hand aside with his revolver and held the paper up to the light.
To Crespin he said, ‘It’s easy for them to get hold of these guns, sir. The whole place is full of junk left behind by the enemy.’ His eyes hardened. ‘This is interesting. He started to make a confession.’ He moved closer to the window, his eyes moving busily back and forth over the large scrawling handwriting. ‘He says that he has not been able to sleep or eat because of what he done.’ His lip curled with amusement. ‘Not much of a writer, was he?’
Crespin snapped, ‘Just read the letter! The grammar lesson can wait!’
The lieutenant flushed and continued reading in a strained tone. ‘He says that it was murder. There was no other word for it. That he knows nothing can make it right, but that he had to get it off his mind.’ He turned over the paper. ‘Damn, that’s all he’s written!’
Crespin took it from his hand and stared at it. So it had been Trotter who had killed that German. To Porteous he said wearily, ‘Is it his handwriting?’ He just wanted to get away from this place.
Porteous nodded.
The M.P. lieutenant had recovered his dignity by now. ‘Can you be sure, I mean, if there’s no actual signature?’
Porteous said flatly, ‘I’m sure. He was in my division. He came to me once to ask how to write an allotment form for his mother. I noticed his handwriting then.’
The M.P. eyed him bleakly. ‘You’re something of an expert, are you?’
Porteous looked at him, his eyes suddenly angry. ‘I was a barrister, Lieutenant. I’m used to this sort of thing.’ He paused. ‘And policemen!’
The M.P. snatched the letter and folded it inside his wallet. ‘That wraps it up then. Nothing more we can do here. I’ll go and see if the ambulance is here yet.’ He strode out of the room and could be heard snapping at the silent people on the stairs.
Crespin said quietly, ‘Little bastard!’
Porteous clutched his arm. ‘Look, sir, I don’t know how to say this.’ He swallowed hard, and in the shaft of sunlight his plump features were wet with sweat. He persisted, ‘I remember Trotter’s handwriting for another reason.’
Crespin faced him. ‘Go on.’
‘He was left-handed, sir.’ Some of his confidence faded under Crespin’s level stare. ‘You can check with Petty Officer Dunbar, sir. He’ll be able to confirm …’
Crespin walked back to the corpse. ‘Left-handed, you say?’
Porteous would not go any closer. ‘Yes.’
‘This is a heavy automatic, Sub. Yet he’s holding it perfectly in his right hand.’
Their eyes met across the dead man’s bowed head. Then Porteous replied quietly, ‘Exactly, sir.’ He glanced towards the door. ‘Shall I fetch the lieutenant back?’ He looked wretched.
‘No. It can’t help Trotter now. And neither can we solve anything by warning whoever it was who killed him.’ He saw the uncertainty on Porteous’s face. ‘He’s got a mother, remember? To die away from home is bad enough. To be murdered is another thing entirely.’
Porteous nodded. ‘I see, sir.’
They walked from the room, closing the door behind them.
At the main entrance they found an ambulance and several M.P.s writing busily in their notebooks.
The lieutenant said, ‘I’ll want a brief report from you, sir. All the usual stuff. But it’s just a straightforward case. I expect you’re well rid of him.’
The corporal said, ‘Can I drive you back to your ship, sir?’
Crespin shook his head. ‘Take Sub-Lieutenant Porteous. I’m going to walk for a bit.’ He saw the corporal and Porteous exchange an uneasy glance.
Porteous said awkwardly, ‘Is there anything I can do, sir?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ll be all right, Sub. Number One can cope well enough without me.’
Porteous saluted and climbed into the jeep. As it roared away he was still staring back, his face filled with concern.
Crespin pushed through a small group of chattering onlookers and strode quickly away from the building. Porteous’s legal mind was probably worried by what he had just seen and by the way Crespin had made him withhold what he saw from the proper authority. As he strode down the street Crespin was even surprised at himself. But his mind was too tired to cope, even though he repeatedly told himself that the pattern was clear to see, if only he could concentrate.
If Trotter had been murdered, why was it necessary for his killer to make it look like suicide? Murders were probably two a penny here, and one more would hardly matter. Trotter had been writing what amounted to a confession, and his killer had not bothered to destroy it before shooting him at point-blank range. He halted in his tracks, suddenly cold. Unless there had been another sheet of paper which he had destroyed? It must have been like that. A few more lines to betray another man, someone who had helped him to kill the German and throw him overboard. The man who had pulled the trigger.
Crespin strode on. That was ridiculous. No one else was ashore but himself and Porteous. There had to be another solution, if only he could work it out.
To Risks Unknown Page 15