The Fish Kisser

by James Hawkins

  Animosity between the detectives in the surveillance vehicle had flared during the trip, although there had been a number of times during their week of watch-keeping when they had volubly disagreed on tactics. As Sergeant Jones drove, with Senior Officer Bliss in the passenger seat keeping his sights on Roger’s Renault, the other two detectives lolled in the back planning the excursion to Amsterdam.

  “Red light district first, mate,” said Wilson, digging Smythe in the ribs.

  “I wanna try one of those brown bars,”

  “What,” laughed Wilson. “A Mars bar?”

  “No you dork, one of those hash …”

  “I know you fool. I was pulling yer plonker.”

  “Leave me plonker out of this—I got plans for me plonker,” he laughed. “I’ve heard the broads sit in windows starkers; showin’ everything.”

  “Haven’t you seen one before?” cut in Bliss.

  “Bet it’s a long time since you seen one,” said Smythe, poking Bliss’ shoulder, giggling stupidly.

  Bliss ignored him, as he tried to shut out painful memories and focussed on the road. Concentrating on the green Renault half a mile ahead, he wondered whether either of them would actually pluck up the courage when faced with the opportunity. Regardless of the wares in the window, they’d probably be disappointed to discover one knocking shop to be much like another. The visual “sizzle,” he guessed, would lure them to a steak cut from a tough old cow. Their ardour would be dimmed almost immediately by the request for cash in advance, and, having paid, and not before, would they discover the Venus in the window was unavailable—taking a break between rounds of sexual wrestling. Finally, after choosing an inferior model with a puritanically grim face and blubbery breasts, the fifteen minute performance would take place on a creaking bed in a room lit only by a couple of cheap candles. No amount of scent from burning wax would mask the chalky odour of spent semen from a thousand previous temple worshippers. The eternal triumph of hope over experience, thought Bliss, remembering his days on the morality squad and the universal sense of dissatisfaction. “You think I enjoyed it?” they would ask—pimps, whores and Johns alike.

  “You lot make me sick,” he said, turning on the two detectives accusingly.

  “You make me sick,” shot back Wilson, unable to come up with a sensible response.

  “You catch some poor hooker in Brixton with a few ounces of grass,” countered Bliss, “and you think you’ve cracked the world’s drug problem. Then off you go to Holland to get blasted, and get your leg over some whore young enough to be your daughter. You’ve got the morals of a tomcat in heat.”

  “Tomcats don’t get in heat, Guv. Thought you’d know that. It’s only the females that get in heat. Tomcats are good for a screw anytime.”

  “Precisely,” replied Bliss, turning back to the road, his point made.

  Sergeant Jones had stayed out of the argument, and Bliss had no doubt he would be with the others when the time came.

  “I’ll take you to the captain now,” the deck officer was saying, but Bliss was miles away, still worried about LeClarc, and listening to the tannoy blaring overhead.

  “Attention all passengers. If there is a doctor on board would you please report to the captain’s office, ten deck for’ard, immediately. Thank you.”

  “Somebody must be pretty sick,” he said as he followed the officer to the bridge.

  “I bet the guy in the water isn’t feeling too great either,” replied the officer.

  Roger was definitely not feeling great, he really wasn’t feeling much at all. Numb from the cold, abandoned, hopeless, he’d retreated to his inner world and more or less made up his mind to die. Drifting into unconsciousness had been easy—managed without even trying—but the fierce winds and wild sea conspired to keep him alive, flinging him around like flotsam in the surf. The wind was his lifesaver, tearing apart the waves that bore him, surrounding him with fizzing foam—more air than water—penetrating every crevice in his coat, turning it into a balloon.

  A heavy weight crashed on his head and sent him under for the umpteenth time. This is it. I’ll go quietly, he decided, then fell out of the side of the wave as it exploded into a billion droplets and tumbled into the gulley below. He surfaced back to consciousness in time to feel the following wave pick him up—the uphill climb at the start of yet another roller coaster—and he’d almost reached the top when he felt the heavy weight crushing him down again.

  “Get it over with,” he shouted, but no words came as he slid back down; this time the weight stayed with him, pressing firmly against his left shoulder.

  What’s happening? he was yelling inside. What’s happening to me? Look. But his eyes, stung once too often by the lashing salt spray, wouldn’t open. Fear and the absolute blackness spun his thoughts back to his teenage years. He was fifteen or sixteen playing with himself in the bathroom with the curtains drawn, lights off, eyes shut tight, sitting on his hand until it went numb, then pretending it belonged to another—a girl perhaps.

  “What’ye doing in there, our Roger?” she called, creeping up to the door unheard.

  Oh shit! “Nothing, Mum.”

  “Liar! What are you doing? Open this door now.”

  “No.”

  “D’ye wanna clout?”

  Tears welled. “No, Mum—please don’t.”

  “Come on out then—hurry up.”

  “I love you, Mum,” he cried, opening the door.

  “Humph,” she grunted, going back downstairs to Dynasty. “You’ll go blind.”

  He stood at the top, pants round his ankles, watching her, hating her. Why had he said that? Why had he said, “I love you?”

  “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” he screamed inside. “I bloody hate you.”

  The painful memory reminded him he was still alive and he forced apart his eyelids, but a wash of blue-black Indian ink had painted the sea and sky into one. Then the huge weight shoved again and, spinning his head, he saw a phantom—a large patch of lighter coloured space, twisting and turning right behind him. The ghostly patch was misty, indistinct, but it had substance, he could feel it nudging and bumping into him. Intrigue overcame fear and he timidly reached out. “It’s solid,” he said to himself in disbelief, feeling resistance against his hypothermic fingers.

  The ghost was tugging at his sleeve. This must be Death, he thought, trying again to get free, feeling his arm being pulled once more; Death’s spectre coming to carry me off.

  “Stop it,” he yelled. “Stop it. I don’t want to die— I’m sorry Mum. I’m sorry. I love you.” But the ghost kept pulling, dragging him through the water, dancing in the wind, skipping over the waves.

  Then, in an instant something changed—logic took control, as the spectre smacked him heavily, bringing him to his senses. Suddenly conscious it was real, not part of some elaborate nightmare, he grasped for the smooth, slippery object. Understanding slowly filtered through his doziness. It’s a life raft, he realized, amazed, as he was flung repeatedly against it, the sleeve of his left arm trapped by one of the many ropes looped along its side.

  A hundred or more times, Roger and the life-raft were dragged up and down the watery hillsides as he desperately searched for a way to clamber aboard; then fate took a hand and he found himself on the crest of a wave, the raft in the valley beneath, and he flopped effortlessly onto it. Exhausted, yet relieved, he dropped back into unconsciousness, totally unaware that the SS Rotterdam was less than half a mile away, with a hundred and forty-three pairs of eyes straining into the darkness, seeking any trace of the raft or him.

  “Something off the port bow—about ten o’clock,” cried a female officer, catching a fleeting glimpse of lightness. Tension on the bridge instantly turned to excitement, men frantically adjusted binoculars and swung them from starboard to port, all eyes focussed in Roger’s direction, but the huge waves conspired to keep him hidden. He and his ghostly chariot, wallowing from trough to trough, trapped under one breaking wave aft
er another, would have been invisible even in broad daylight.

  “Nothing,” sighed the officer a few moments later, her disappointed whisper easily heard in the tension filled darkness of the bridge. “Sorry—my mistake.”

  “No problem,” replied the captain. “We’re well beyond maximum range anyway. He couldn’t have drifted this far in thirty minutes.”

  The officers wandered back to their stations on the bridge, some taking the opportunity for a quick slurp of cocoa and a bite of doughnut. A couple made a dash for the washroom. The suspense was dissipating and everyone was grateful for the excuse to take a break, falsely justified by the apparent sighting.

  “Captain, I’ve got a police inspector outside who reckons he knows the victim,” the deck officer was saying to the captain’s shadow in the gloom.

  “That’s interesting—must be some sort of outing,” he chortled, “I’ve already got three in my office.” He snapped the last thread of tension as he raised his voice, “Anyone else got a policeman? We’ve got four and want to make up a set … Take over, Chief,” he continued, stifling a few sniggers, “I’ll be in my office if anything happens. Try to keep her head in the waves, bos’n, or we’ll be up to our necks in vomit.”

  Sergeant Jones, together with his fellow drinkers, had fetched up in the captain’s office in search of salvation, but had found little. Every lurch of the ship pulled his face into another grimace; the alcohol was wearing thin, just hazy vision, bad breath, and the persistent reek of vomit remained. He should have been hovering, contentedly, but the searing pain in his wrist and strong coffee had brought him down to earth. No doctor had come forward and the captain, dealing with lost sleep, a missing passenger, and an approaching storm, had kept the lock on the medicine cabinet. “No time for self-inflicted wounds,” he’d muttered to the chief officer with a wry smile, thinking: A little suffering is good for my soul.

  “After you, Inspector.” said the captain, ushering Bliss into his office. “Do you lot know each other by any chance?”

  Sergeant Jones looked up sheepishly and, with his good hand, pointed to his broken wrist, now in a sling. “Had a bit of an accident, Guv. Fell down some ruddy stairps.” He should have said steps or stairs, but the words coalesced somewhere in the great void between his brain and mouth. The other two sat hunched, silently counting carpet squares.

  “Captain, I wonder if I could speak to you outside. Would you mind?” requested Bliss, without acknowledging his sergeant.

  “Bliss, old chap …” pleaded the sergeant, but Bliss was already in the corridor.

  “There’s some cocoa and doughnuts in the Officer’s mess if you’re interested,” said the captain, sliding the door shut behind him and cutting Jones off.

  “Thank you, Sir. A cup of cocoa would be very welcome. Sorry about the Serg and the others, I think they’ve had a drop too much. I’ll sort them out later, but I thought you would want to know that I believe the man you’re looking for is named Roger LeClarc.”

  The captain stopped mid-pour. “Could you tell me why you think it’s him?”

  “Well, it’s pretty hush-hush but, basically, we’ve had him under surveillance for the past week or two. He was on the ship but disappeared just about the time this guy went overboard. I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find him.”

  “Is he dangerous?” enquired the captain, getting the wrong end of the stick.

  “Oh, no … He’s not in trouble … Well, maybe he is,” Bliss added reflectively. “But he’s not wanted—not by us anyway.” He paused, sensing the confusion on the captain’s face. “Sorry, I can’t really tell you more at the moment, but with your permission I’d like to make some enquiries, see if I can find out what happened, that sort of thing.”

  “Well, I’d appreciate your assistance to be honest. Huh … I didn’t catch your name?”

  “Bliss, Sir. Detective Inspector David Bliss. Serious Crime Squad.”

  His warrant card, produced from a black leather pouch, was brushed aside. “Fine, you go ahead. Oh, you’d probably like to start with the guy who saw him go over. I’d appreciate your opinion to be honest. He seems a bit vague.”

  The chief officer led D.I. Bliss to the Officer’s ward-room and found Nosmo King cleaning the gaps in his teeth with a fingernail.

  “Mr. King tells me he used to be a policeman. Isn’t that right, Sir?” said the officer with a condescending tone, leaving King squirming as uncomfortably as a patient with dirty underwear in a doctor’s waiting room, and wishing he’d found some other way to stop the ship—sabotage perhaps? He started to rise, but Bliss waved him down. “What force?”

  “Thames Valley, but only for awhile—Oxford.”

  Bliss pulled up a chair and reminisced, “I did a course once with a bloke from Oxford …” then cut himself short. “Tell me what happened, what you saw, Sir,” he said, the policeman in him taking command.

  King’s account, now well practised, omitted only one detail; his meeting with Motsom in the bar following Roger’s disappearance, before the fiasco with the life raft and his brush with catering assistant Jacobs.

  “So where were you before you went on deck?” asked Bliss, unaware of the timing of events, recognizing King as one of the men in the bar.

  “Just wandering around really. Here and there, you know.”

  “In the bar?” asked Bliss, his tone offering no clue as to the correct response.

  “No,” he shot back, much too quickly, much too aggressively. Instantly regretting the boldness of his statement, he tried to soften the punch. “I don’t think so … I don’t think I was in the bar … but,” he added, covering all his bases, “I suppose I might have popped in at sometime.”

  Bliss, confounded, couldn’t fathom a reason for King’s wavering, or why he would lie—unless it had been a lover’s tiff and King was embarrassed. “Funny,” he said, “I could’ve sworn I saw you in there with another bloke.”

  Perspiration reappeared on King’s upper lip, his mouth dried, and his legs crossed themselves without any conscious thought on his part. “You … you must be mistaken,” he choked, but as he said it, his right hand flew toward his mouth, attempting to gag the lie. Realising what was happening, King consciously diverted his hand, giving his ear an unnecessary tweak.

  Gotcha! thought Bliss, recognizing the tell-tale gestures of a liar, and pressed his advantage, asking again about the bar. King eventually conceded he’d been in the bar just before he went on deck to throw the life raft. “I forgot,” he added lamely, “what with all the commotion—the bloke falling overboard and all.”

  “And the other man?” continued Bliss, pushing King into a tight spot.

  “No one … a stranger.”

  “Didn’t look like a stranger to me.”

  King took a few seconds, his mind racing, then came out with a rambling explanation, putting Motsom down as a quidam he’d mistaken as an old school chum. Their “tiff,” he claimed, had been nothing more than a heated denial by the other man, annoyed at being disturbed.

  Entering the SS Rotterdam’s bridge twenty minutes later, Bliss walked into the same black wall that startles everyone the first time they visit a ship’s wheelhouse at night. The captain spotted him immediately and beckoned, unseen, in the darkness. “Ah, Inspector, if you’d like to come over here, I’m about twenty feet to your right.”

  Bliss turned, started walking, shuffling each foot forward a few inches at a time.

  “Mind the …”

  The warning came too late. He’d collided with a slender pole then reddened as a giggle ran round the bridge. Thank God it’s dark, he thought as he side-stepped the pole and continued blindly, but his eyes gradually brought fuzzy shapes into view until he made out the pale sphere of the captain’s face.

  “Well, what do you make of our Mr. King?” asked a set of teeth, glowing like the Cheshire cat’s grin.

  “I’m not sure, Captain, to be honest. Although the good news from my point of view is that the man over
-board isn’t my man—at least I’m pretty sure it isn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s a question of timing, Sir,” replied Bliss recalling his interview of King. “I don’t know why he’s lying, but I can vouch for the fact he was with someone in the bar for at least two minutes before he went on deck and saw the guy jump, or fall … Anyway, that pretty well lets my man out. It must’ve been someone else,” he concluded. “Assuming King hasn’t made the whole thing up.”

  “Whoever it is,” the captain responded, “I don’t fancy his chances. Thirty minutes in this water is about all anyone can take. It’s been well over an hour now.”

  The chief officer, with an ear to the conversation, was anxious to continue the voyage. It would be his job, along with the purser, to deal with the complaints of passengers angry at missed train connections and delayed business meetings. “Should we call it off, Captain?” he asked, hopefully.

  “We’ll give it another fifteen minutes, Chief. One last sweep, and then we’ll just pray no one’s missing when we dock.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the SS Rotterdam resumed her voyage and the pale glow of the sun, still far below the eastern horizon, started to lighten the sky, but no sun would shine that day, or the following two days—not on that part of the North Sea. The storm headed north, its sights set on the offshore oilfields and the coast of Norway, leaving in its wake a large bank of cloud, and a confused and jumbled sea. Roger unconsciously rode his inflated chariot, like a thrill-seeker on an inner tube behind a speedboat, face down, arms flung forward grasping the rope. He was on the canvas roof, his great weight forcing it down. Beneath him the raft was full of water, and had he scrambled inside, he would certainly have drowned.

  He stirred, briefly, long enough to assess his predicament. Fearing he might tumble off, he gathered together several ropes and lashed himself into position as firmly as his frozen fingers would allow. Now, feeling safer, he let exhaustion take over, started to doze, and began thinking of his other life, the one he’d left behind just four hours earlier, wondering if he would ever return. He thought of his the little green Renault, his beloved computer, and the house. His house. The little terraced house on Junction Road, in Watford; that would really send his mother crazy if she ever found out. He’d forgotten all about the house.