by Nick Elliott
‘So what’s he doing with CMM then?’ I’d asked. We were supposed to be highly selective when assessing a shipowner’s credentials.
‘I’d not have the Sinclair Buchan fleet on our books if it was up to me but they’ve been with us from the early days. They were one of the Club’s founding members back in the eighteen-eighties. And up till the time Buchan’s old man died they were a very well-run outfit.’
‘Okay, I’ll go through the motions.’
‘Angus, there’s something else. This is strictly entre nous but there’s a suspicion that other parties might be involved in the hunt for the Lady Monteith’s cargo.’
‘I’m not surprised. There’s no shortage of treasure hunters around the Far East and if everything I hear about the loot that’s lying on the seabed from here to Indonesia is true, it’s inevitable the Lady Monteith would come to their attention.’
‘Yes, only I’m not talking about your average treasure hunter. But I can’t tell you anymore because I don’t know myself, only that there might be dark forces at work. I know that sounds dreadfully melodramatic but just keep your antennae tuned and I’ll let you know more when I can.’
What with Claire’s appraisal of Montague Buchan and his plush office on the fifty-seventh floor of one of Central District’s most prestigious skyscrapers, not to mention the leather-covered door, I had already formed a picture of the man: a negative stereotype of a none too bright philanderer busy squandering the family fortune on wine, women, lost causes and exorbitant rents. With all this in my mind we shook hands.
‘Mr McKinnon. Your Ms Scott told me you were on your way to see us and to render our full cooperation to you in this matter. She spoke highly of you.’
‘I was in the region already,’ I said as we looked out at what would have been a spectacular view up the harbour if not for the smog carried down from the high-sulphur coal-fired power stations spread along the Pearl River Delta. He sat facing me across the coffee table on which the Sinclair Buchan house flag, company magazine and a couple of shipping journals were artfully scattered.
Buchan matched Claire’s description: mid-sixties, tall, tanned, in good shape, wavy silver hair swept back off his forehead. His grey eyes were clear. And he was weighing me up in the same way I was him.
We were discussing the smog when the door opened and the woman who’d shown me in reappeared, carefully backing into the room which enabled her to enter without spilling anything on the tray she was carrying. She placed it on the table bending to unload cups, the cafetiere and a plate of chocolate biscuits; three cups.
‘This is Susanna, Mr McKinnon, my daughter and co-director.’ Claire hadn’t mentioned her.
I stood up and we shook hands. Her hair was almost black with a naturally lustrous sheen. Her high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes and lightly tanned skin made her effortlessly beautiful. She wore a black skirt and a tight-fitting magenta coloured jacket which accentuated her shapely figure. There was nothing coquettish about her smile. It seemed open and friendly, however fleeting. I guessed her to be in her early to mid-thirties. She walked over to a shelving unit and came back with a hefty green file and a laptop both of which she placed on the coffee table. When she’d served us all coffee she sat down. Every move was performed with a natural, unhurried grace.
‘So,’ Buchan began. ‘You will know something of this strange and harrowing tale but I would like you to hear it from us direct, and then we can discuss the way forward.’
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘but it’s only fair to warn you that a provisional assessment by the CMM’s claims people doesn’t hold out much hope of their being a claim – that is to say against the Club itself.’
‘Quite. Claire did warn me of this and I was not at all surprised. But I told her I wanted the best investigator the Club had. She said she had just the man and he was already in the region salving his social conscience in the mountains of Mindanao. She was looking for an opportunity to draw you away from your altruistic exploits and this case she thought would do nicely.’
‘She said that did she?’
He smiled. ‘She seems to know you only too well.’
‘Tell me your side of the story,’ I said, ‘and I’ll see how we can help; even if there’s no claim we can certainly render advice. But there’ll be a charge for my time and the CMM lawyer’s legal opinion in any event. I’m freelance by the way, but in practice I work pretty much exclusively for the CMM.’
‘So I was told. She also told me a little of your background here in Hong Kong: a tragedy. Your father was a highly regarded police officer, Mr McKinnon. He might have ended up Commissioner had he lived. I suspect you inherited some of his investigative talents.’
‘I hope so,’ I said. But I’d spotted the model of a ship on the far side of the office. Monty Buchan noticed my interest. ‘Come over and have a look. It’s the Lady Monteith.’
‘I thought it might be.’
The glass case in which the model rested was at least six feet long. The model itself was beautifully crafted from the days when shipyards had their own modelling shops. Such highly detailed replicas were presented to the shipowner by the yard on delivery of the vessel and this was one such example. The Lady Monteith was a fine looking ship and the model did her justice: from the tiny windlass and anchor chains laid out on the forepeak to the brass propeller at her stern.
‘Beautiful, isn’t she,’ Monty Buchan said. ‘Pride of our fleet.’
‘Yes it is.’ I noticed Buchan was visibly moved just by looking at it.
‘Shall we get on with this?’ suggested Susanna Buchan extracting documents from the green folder and laying them out on the table. And it was she who began by giving a lengthy account of the wreck of the Lady Monteith.
Chapter 3
I didn’t get back to the hotel until well past midnight. We had talked in the office until after dark. The air around the harbour had cleared with a change in wind direction and the extravagant galaxy of lights that was Hong Kong’s version of night-time was revealed to its full effect beneath us.
We’d ended up walking to the Hong Kong Club, first for drinks in the Members Bar where Buchan was clearly a habitué, then for dinner in the Red Room, where he was also greeted with due deference. And wherever we were heads turned in Susanna Buchan’s direction.
By the end of the evening Montague Buchan and I were mildly inebriated, on first-name terms – “call me Monty” - and I thought I had a pretty clear idea of just what their agenda was. Whether the CMM could help or not was another matter but I felt I’d reached that stage in the case where I knew what needed to be done.
When my phone rang at half past three in the morning dragging me out of a deep and dreamless sleep, I cursed myself for not having turned it off before I went to bed.
‘Kyrios Angus?’ said an unfamiliar voice.
‘Ne. Legete.’
‘I am Sophia’s nephew,’ he said switching to English.
‘Sophia?’ How many Sophias did I know?
‘Yes, Kyrios Alastair’s housekeeper, on the island.
I was with him now. ‘Yes of course. How are they?’
He hesitated. ‘I’m afraid Kyrios Alastair has passed away.’
I was shocked, and wide awake now. ‘God, I’m sorry to hear that. When did this happen?’
‘Last night we believe, but his death seems very unusual, sir. And the police here are treating it with much suspicion.’
‘Well how did he die?’ I asked. Rear Admiral (ret’d) Alastair Marshall was a friend. And though he’d never have admitted it, he was also an intelligence officer, an old spook with his fingers still in many pies, at least until this morning.
‘They don’t know for sure but it seems he may have been poisoned. My aunt is very upset. She wanted you to know of this. Kyrios Alastair had left a note. It gave your name and your telephone number.’
Sophia had been his housekeeper for years. She lived in, and despite her age, was still sprightly. And she cooked prett
y much every meal that Alastair Marshall ate. No wonder she was upset.
‘What else did this note say?’
‘It makes no sense to me.’
‘Can you read it to me?’
‘It says just your name: “McKinnon,” then your telephone number, then: “Eastfield 176.” That’s all.’
It made no sense to me either. My mind was reeling as I tried to gather my thoughts. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘Where is Alastair’s body now? And when’s the funeral?’
‘They take him to Thessaloniki for the post mortem already but they say he will be returned this Thursday for the funeral on Friday.’
That gave me just two days. Despite the interruption to the case I decided there and then to head back to Greece, not just because Alastair had been a friend and something of a mentor to me, but the nature of his work involved maintaining a close relationship with the CMM as well as other P&I Clubs, and that relationship was, more often than not, channelled through myself. If he had been murdered then… My mind began to turn around the obvious questions: who and why?
‘I’ll be there, Kostas.’ I rang off and stood for a long time staring out at the harbour view trying to make sense of what I’d just been told. It wouldn’t surprise me if Alastair had enemies. The opaque world of commercial shipping was plagued by crime of one sort or another. Piracy and hijacking were rife off both east and west coasts of Africa and in the waters of the South China Sea as well. Such crimes were usually motivated by simple greed. Demands for astronomical sums of money had to be negotiated and sensitive arrangements made to deliver the ransom pay-offs. Both the CMM and Alastair Marshall were often involved in such negotiations and they were never amicable affairs. Often there was a terrorism dimension to deal with too.
Then there was commercial fraud: intricate contractual charter-party scams; complex letter of credit crimes and other such rackets. Alastair Marshall was often at the heart of solving these crimes which was why he kept close counsel with the world of the P&I Clubs who insured the shipowner victims against such losses.
Chapter 4
When I arrived on the northern Aegean island where Alastair Marshall had made his home, the church bells were ringing doubles which they did on the day of a funeral, calling the mourners together. It was a dismal sound.
Laying the dead to rest involves a certain set of rituals for the Greek Orthodox Church, performed by the local priest. There were hymns and prayers. Then pallbearers carried the casket into the church placing it before the altar. Once the service was finished, mourners filed past the open casket to view the body and pay their final respects. Many left flowers. The priest then anointed Alastair’s body with oil and dust reciting verses from the Old Testament.
After all this we boarded the island bus packed with the other mourners and rattled up the hill to the cemetery on the edge of the old village high above the port.
We disembarked into a bitter north easterly wind driving a cold rain directly at us. Although we were now separated, Eleni had travelled to the island with me. She was talking with some of the other mourners, visibly upset. Eleni and I had been together for as long as I’d known Alastair. We used to visit him in his sprawling home further up the island and he’d taken to staying with us in Piraeus on his infrequent trips to Athens. Alastair and Eleni had got on well. I think he saw her as a surrogate daughter. He had no children of his own – or not that he ever spoke of. And there was no sign of relatives or any other visitors from off the island on this desolate occasion other than ourselves. And Claire Scott.
Claire, despite her senior position with the CMM, was one of Alastair’s people. I had prised this confession from them both following the conclusion to a case just a year earlier. Claire had been enrolled into Alastair’s International Maritime Task Force straight from Oxford as far as I could gather. As a talented lawyer, the CMM, which by the nature of its work was down by the head with lawyers, provided an ideal cover for her covert work with the IMTF, a shady offshoot of what was once British Naval Intelligence and was now merged into the Ministry of Defence’s Intelligence Department.
It had been set up as a taskforce to investigate the spate of maritime fraud incidents which reached epidemic proportions in the seventies. Its success in getting to the route of these crimes ensured the IMTF’s future. Before long they were supplying various EU and NATO naval organisations with intelligence relating to the flood of piracy attacks in and around the Gulf of Aden. It suited the IMTF’s masters in the Ministry of Defence to retain its taskforce status. It allowed for greater flexibility and less accountability. This much I'd learned. I'd also learned that much of its work was carried out off the books, including Alastair’s remit. On the previous occasion I'd become involved with them, he'd made this perfectly clear, though I still ended up signing the Official Secrets Act.
I walked over to Claire. I’d introduced her to Eleni earlier. They both knew about each other. My affair with Claire had started long before I’d met Eleni, only to lie dormant before being rekindled after Eleni and I were together. It was complicated, though less so now that Eleni had a new man in her life. And they were both mature enough not to show whatever feelings they might have towards each other – or so I hoped.
‘He was a fine man and a good friend.’ Claire said in a voice filled with emotion. Aside from their professional relationship Claire, like Eleni, had held Alastair in deep affection.
She was shivering. I wanted to put my arm around her but it wasn’t the right occasion.
‘We need to talk,’ she said, her manner suddenly business-like.
‘Of course.’
She looked at me. ‘Soon. When are you leaving?’
‘Tomorrow night. I want to visit the house, and talk to Sophia and Kostas, the nephew. Then back to Piraeus. There’s an evening ferry.’
‘Where are you staying tonight?’
‘There’s a little guest house here in the village.’
‘I’m at the hotel in the port. Can you come down this evening and we can talk there?’
‘Sure.’
The priest bestowed the final blessings. We watched as the casket was lowered into the grave. Some of the mourners tossed flowers and soil onto it. After three or four years the grave would be re-opened and the bones removed, washed in wine or olive oil and kept in the osteofilakio, the church ossuary. After the burial we went with other mourners for the makaria, a meal to celebrate Alastair’s life, akin to a wake.
Later I walked down the ancient kaldirimi donkey path to the hotel in the port. It was more sheltered down there than on the hill but the storm had still invaded the little harbour and water was slopping over the quayside threatening the tavernas that lined the front.
This was the island where I dreamt that one day I would make my home. Whatever the time of year it showed nature in all its intensity. Winter snow storms could bring down trees by the force of the wind and the weight of the snow. Sheet and fork lightning accompanied by simultaneous thunderclaps would turn a storm into a dramatic son et lumiere show. In spring the hillsides and meadows were carpeted in wild flowers and in summer the place was alive with the sound of cicadas and the smell of herbs. Off the coast, dolphins played around the local caiques as they made their way to and from the outlying islands. Young falcons dived after insects as they honed their hunting skills. It was a magical place and I loved it, but none of this was on my mind as I entered the hotel and spotted Claire in a bar off the lobby.
There were no more than half a dozen people in the room but there was a cosy fug about the place. She’d found a table beside a wood-burning stove in the corner well out of earshot of the Greek islanders drinking at the bar. I walked over.
‘What are you drinking?’ she asked.
‘Scotch – whichever they’ve got.’ She’d already ordered a Metaxa and a hot chocolate for herself. She signalled the young guy behind the bar and ordered a Black Label for me and another Metaxa for herself. The drinks came. ‘I can’t get over the measures they p
our in this country,’ she said.
‘It’s the only reason I live in Greece.’
She smiled.
‘So tell me,’ I said to get the conversation on track.
She took a sip of her drink taking her time before answering. She was like that, always weighing things up judiciously before pronouncing, ever the lawyer. But when I’d first met her she was a reckless young case handler intent on making a name for herself and getting into trouble in the process, from which, many years ago, I’d been sent to extricate her. Marriage to Edward, another lawyer, children and a rapid rise through the ranks at the CMM had followed. But her marriage was faltering and the strain of being called into active field service for the IMTF had taken its toll, in particular the act of killing in the course of saving my life not long ago.
I looked at her now. It was some months since we’d last met. Despite her training I sensed she had never quite recovered from what had happened the previous year on a dark night in the port of Perama when, in my defence, she had shot a man. A short time later, on this island, we had been attacked by another man, again intent on murder. And again, Claire had helped save us both. I knew at the time these incidents had taken their toll. Now, despite her natural beauty, I saw the strain in her face and in her body language. Some of that self-confidence that had helped propel her to the heights of a demanding career had slipped away. Perhaps it was just her reaction to Alastair’s violent death, but she was normally expert in compartmentalising her emotions. Now I worried that those violent events had triggered PTSD.
Claire and I had been lovers but parted ways, twice. I’d returned to Eleni and Claire to her husband, for the sake of the children she’d said. I wondered how it was working out, but I didn’t ask.
‘Monty Buchan has disappeared,’ she announced.