Death Ship

by Jim Kelly

  Clay read the line out loud, and Banks put her cup down, unable to disguise the shake of the hand. Turning away, she pointed to the airship, now a distinct cigar-shaped silhouette in a cloudless sky, its attendant gliding shadow turning a patch of sea a deep marine blue.

  ‘Taxpayers’ money, no doubt,’ she said.

  Something in her seemed to snap then, and she briskly wheeled her chair away, into the bedroom, returning with a large box of Milk Tray which she set on the table.

  ‘I can have one. Just one: doctor’s orders. Diabetes – recently diagnosed. I’m working my way through the box.’

  Her hand hung over the selection, her tongue emerging from her narrow mouth to lick her upper lip.

  Clay looked at the chocolates. ‘Who gave you this box?’

  ‘Esther. She always brought chocolates, from George. Not always Milk Tray, but always cheap. I told her when she brought these not to bother anymore. They hardly had money to waste. It’s unkind of me, but when I heard what she’d done, I thought, she didn’t tell George, she wanted the chocolates so that she could make friends on the bus.’

  Clay picked up the box, noting that the second layer was untouched. ‘When she visited, she came by bus?’

  ‘Yes. As I said. Once a week.’ Banks’s hands, which often fidgeted, were suddenly still.

  Clay took the top layer off and held the tray up to the light. One of the chocolates, an orange truffle, seemed to be slightly smudged with a fingerprint. She had a good sense of smell, and noted that, despite the presence of a hazelnut cluster, the box gave off quite a strong smell of almonds.

  FORTY-THREE

  When Captain Ring finally spoke, he was close enough to the observation porthole to fog the glass, the blemish of his breath coming and going like a visible heartbeat. The decompression chamber’s neon-lit interior seemed to swallow his words in its soundproofed walls, so that when they did emerge through the intercom above the hatch, each syllable was dull, flat, and nasal. Shaw, perched on the chamber operator’s metal seat, struggled to dispel the illusion that Ring was still underwater, trapped beyond the watertight door, and that a fish might idly glide between them.

  The captain sat slumped on the bench, his black hair hanging in rat’s tails, like a piece of human flotsam, washed up, shipwrecked. His skin seemed to soak up the white light, reminiscent of a piece of cod on a marble slab, the muscles on his narrow legs hanging loose, still occasionally twitching as his nerves shot inaccurate, desperate signals around his body. The fingers of the left hand were bandaged, bloodstains marking the point where his flailing hand had hit the steel rim of the manlock tube as he’d swum towards the surface.

  In shorts and a T-shirt, Ring cradled a flask of hot, sweet tea, and a thermal cup. Shaw felt that he had acquired the aura of the survivor; stripped down, he seemed younger, the hero who’d risen from the sea.

  ‘The diver?’ asked Ring.

  ‘Nothing yet,’ said Shaw. ‘My sergeant’s up aloft on deck. There’s a thin trail of oxygen still escaping to the surface from the caisson. But no sign as yet of a diver, a boat, or anything marking the spot. We’ve got men checking the beach. But remember: this was Big Bang Day; apart from the protest boats, which were held within a tightly patrolled area, there was nothing moving on the water, and certainly nothing on the shoreline. You’re sure there was someone outside?’

  ‘No question. Once I located the vent, I could hear the lock turning. There was someone outside, someone trying to flood the caisson.’ He took in a long, calm lungful of air, but a judder of the ribcage betrayed the strain.

  Shaw splayed a hand on the glass, ‘Look: this is all about a ship called the Calabria. It sank in 1953, on the night of the great flood. I think your father was on board Coram’s tug, the Lagan. It stood off the ship, waiting to put on a line, but the crew refused help. Did he ever talk about what happened that night?’

  Ring tipped his head back, a sigh causing the glass to blush again. ‘Christ. This isn’t about something that happened half a century ago, Shaw. This is about some bunch of nutters trying to stop this construction project.’

  ‘We’ll come to that,’ said Shaw. ‘But first: the Calabria. You shared a love of the sea. You must have talked. Just tell me what you know.’

  Ring held the warm flask to his cheek. ‘What makes you think it was a subject that we could talk about? The loss of a ship, and on that night? Mum and Dad lost friends, the town was devastated, so the anniversary – January thirty-first – was to be endured. I don’t think Dad ever got over what happened to him; he certainly quit the boats. Old Coram got him a job at Wells in the back office, on the radio, like he was running a taxi firm at sea. Demeaning really, but he was never bitter. He knew the sea, loved it, but he couldn’t go back out. Ever. So, no. We didn’t talk about it. Not for years.’ Ring closed his eyes, and for a moment Shaw thought he’d passed out. Reopened, they scanned the interior of the chamber, widening to clear the focus. ‘But Coram talked about it. You couldn’t shut him up. It was part of the narrative, the rise of the family fortunes, the loss of the Lagan being the pit, the nadir, before the acquisition of the new boat, the Judy, the phoenix rising, to be followed by the Meg, and the Sal, the Fran, and the rest of the fleet.’ Ring licked his lips. ‘I could tell Dad wasn’t happy with it, that he had to kind of endure the telling. The loss of the Calabria never got a mention, not a footnote. It was just one of the reasons they were out there that night.

  ‘Any celebration – Christmas, a leaving party, a boat launch, whatever – the old man would get to his feet, the great patriarch. Dad would sit and listen, and I’d catch his eye and there was something there all right, something that said, One day, one day, son, I’ll tell you the truth.’

  ‘And did he?’

  Ring pressed a hand against the curved metal roof of the cylinder, as if testing its strength. ‘In 2003 – the fiftieth anniversary – they held a service on the beach and I took them, Mum and Dad; he’d retired by then, so maybe that loosened his tongue. That’s one of the advantages of age: in one way, there’s less to lose, fewer years to ruin. And there was no real danger. What was I going to do? Run to the police?

  ‘When we got back to the house that day, I could see something was wrong. There were tears – there were always tears on the anniversary – but he just sat by the fire. Angry – that’s what I felt, angry and ashamed. So I said, Just tell me, for Christ’s sake. We waited until Mum went to bed, by which time the whisky was well down the bottle. Then he refused. Point blank. Said the past was the past. I said if he didn’t tell me the truth, I’d start asking questions. I’d go to the police if I had to.

  ‘I saw it then: the terror – no other word comes close – the terror he felt at the prospect of telling me the truth. But I told him there was no other way. If he didn’t tell me then, I’d go and get Mum, and I’d make him tell us both.

  ‘That did it. There were excuses first – or, if I’m being kind, explanations. The sea was bad, treacherous – it often is – but that night he said was a one-off, what they call a thousand-year storm. By the time they’d got the Lagan into open water, and they’d spotted the Calabria, the sea state was what we’d call flat white – so that’s kind of boiling, but no waves. It’s what you get at the centre of a depression, the eye of the storm. It’s not good, because any way you go, you’re sailing into bad water. And it’s dusk, on a winter’s night. But there was an opportunity too, because for a short while – a window in time – they could get alongside.

  ‘Even though she was sinking, there was still a chance of saving her because Coram had a plan, a bit of local knowledge. There’s a great horseshoe-shaped sand bank, called Roaring Island, and inside that – even at high water – there’s an anchorage, a stretch of sheltered water; we call it Holme Lake – you’ll know it, Shaw. Not on any chart, mind. Sounds crazy, a lake at sea, but it’s there, all right. It wasn’t high tide – the water was backing out – so if they could get her into the lee of the sand banks
, she’d have had a chance at least of sitting out the worst of the wind till dawn.

  ‘They got the Lagan alongside and offered her a line. Crew turned that down flat – twice: once by loud hailer, once on the short-wave radio. No problem with language apparently, because the captain – Beck – spoke English. But, no. No help. Thanks, but no thanks. Why? Because saving the ship would have given the Lagan the right to a salvage claim. Did they think they could ride it out alone? Maybe. Brave, either way, because in that sea you’d be dead in seconds; with the cold, the sea state, you’d be dragged under.

  ‘Dad said it was Coram who decided not to take no for an answer. If they could save the ship, they’d land a share of the value of the vessel, and the cargo – a fortune by anyone’s standards along this coast in the fifties. Coram told them a number; that was the genius of it – thirty thousand each. Made it up, of course. She was carrying timber. But once it was said, it must have been like a spell, because back then that was the kind of money that could change your life.

  ‘And they could save the crew as well. I think Dad clung to that, later, when he had the time to think. The Calabria was sinking, right there, in front of their eyes. If they could get her anchored in Holme Lake, they could take the crew off.

  ‘Coram outlined the plan: they’d board her, put a line on, tow her to sheltered water. Later, they’d say Beck accepted the help, then reneged on the contract. That was the word Dad said Coram used, the one they’d have to remember if it got to court. Reneged.

  ‘They left Dad on the Lagan, and he brought her right alongside. I think they knew, you see, that he was reluctant, that his nerve would fail if they asked him to board her, but Coram and the other crewman – Dell Craig – they were up for it. Armed too: the old man had a pistol he’d stashed on board since the war, and Craig could use his fists, but he took a fish gaff too. Coram’s target was the bridge. Craig was to go below decks, after attaching the line. Dad said he saw nothing because he had to take the Lagan off, in the lee, and wait for a signal by light.’ Ring poured himself coffee, his hand steady, colour flooding back into his pale skin. For the first time he looked into Shaw’s eyes. ‘There’s an old word for it – piracy. It’s the new word for it too – off East Africa, the Philippines. Back then, boarding a ship, armed, in international waters would have carried the death penalty.

  ‘Dad said after six or seven minutes Coram flashed the signal to bring the Lagan back alongside. Craig jumped over first, alone, with his lip busted, and Coram followed, carrying the line, but without the pistol. Beck, the captain, had seen it coming, he said, and armed the crew. They’d been waiting with fish hooks and a couple of shotguns. Dad’s theory – which we’ll never know the truth of – was that they weren’t carrying timber at all, but running something – contraband. Coram said the crew fired on them, then went below to the hold, although Dad never heard a shot. By that time the Calabria was actually awash at the stern, so there was no point getting a line to her anyway. So they gave it up.

  ‘The swell came up – six, eight foot, then more – so they took the Lagan out a hundred yards, and then the Calabria caught a wave beam on. Dad said she broke her back, the Calabria – went down in two halves, in less than a minute. Coram sent up a flare, which lit up the sea, and they spotted the lifeboat, a mile off but gaining. But it was too late. Worst thing he’d ever seen, because a ship’s a coffin, and he knew they were all aboard, probably down in the hold trying to fix the pumps.

  ‘The lifeboat circled, and they swapped radio calls, but they never did find a body. The Lagan headed for Lynn. The lifeboat marked the spot and swung back in towards the coast and the South Beach, because by now the word had got out that the tide had broken the seawall and people were trapped.’

  A buzzer sounded and Shaw, who’d leant his body against the metal cylinder of the chamber, felt the bolts unlock automatically on the hatch. As it opened, it seemed to expel its own breath.

  ‘They were lucky, all of them, to survive the night,’ said Ring. ‘I doubt Coram’s lost a night’s sleep all these years, but it preyed on Dad – the contrast of it, I suppose: them drowning, while he and his mates survived. That night, the anniversary in 2003 – a year before he died – he said that things might have been different if they’d left her be, that they’d driven the crew below, that they’d lost the chance to abandon ship.

  ‘Craig – even roughneck Dell Craig – I don’t think he was ever the same again. Ended up with a tea hut on the front, just by the Spyglass. I reckon Coram bankrolled that. People like Coram, they keep their friends close, their enemies closer. It must get tricky in the end, telling them apart. He died a few years back, a care home up the coast.’ Ring accepted a towel from one of the crew who’d come down with fresh coffee. ‘Dad went a few months after that night, by the fire at home with the bottle of whisky. By and large he’d kept his secret, but I think it ruined his life. Men like Coram brush such things aside. Dad couldn’t. Dishonour – it’s corrosive. I think it undermined his own view of himself.’

  ‘You think he told the whole truth?’

  Ring, pulling on clothes, stopped, straightened his back. ‘I guess. As much as he could. Depends how honest he was with himself. But he was still haunted, right to the end. Always was.’

  Shaw thought of Dirk Hartog’s body suspended in the sea by its tether, and Coram’s tower-top room, with its eye-like balcony looking out over the beach – and, finally, a new image: Dell Craig’s tea hut, with its rectangular view, seawards again, as if he too was condemned to keep a perpetual vigil.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Marc Ross had been airborne for nearly two hours when Free Spirit slid over the Norfolk coast. The organizers of the fly-past had felt that the Ross family deserved at least some reward for their part in the discovery of Sunny Hunny’s Zeppelin past. Donald had been offered the seat for the trip, but had nominated Marc instead; Donald, despite his passion for the depths of the earth, was scared of heights and wanted Marc to record the voyage using his considerable skills as a photographer. The airship’s gondola, for pilot and passengers, was slung beneath the great balloon. Marc had his window open so that he could get the Canon outside, and pan down to the landscape passing beneath.

  The Canon fired off a series of pictures capturing the scene below, as the remote seaside resort of Sea Palling slid under the airship. The pilot in the front seat waved a hand to the port side, indicating a fishing boat below, mobbed by gulls, but Marc ignored him, uploading a picture to Instagram using the onboard Wi-Fi.

  Take-off had been at ten that morning from the vast hangars at Cardington, near Bedford, ninety miles west. That had provided Marc’s first picture opportunity, as the cab from the hotel dropped him and his father by the vast double doors, already inching back on winches to reveal a dark, shadowy interior, in which the Free Spirit hung suspended in one corner, dwarfed by the shed that had once housed the R101 and the other Leviathans of the airship age.

  A local newspaper reporter had cornered Marc, just as the ship began to edge towards the light, a crowd chatting excitedly behind a police cordon. He’d been spellbound by the gentle purring of the engines, the grace of the craft, and its fluid translation from one place to another, like some eerie, airborne whale.

  ‘How do you feel?’ the reporter asked.

  Marc communicated with images, with photographs and sketches, but words always failed him. ‘Excited,’ he said, letting his dad take over.

  Since take-off he’d kept his eyes open, his head to the open window, a large-scale road atlas on his lap, across which the pilot had drawn a rough approximation of their intended course. The images had passed beneath: the spaghetti string of the A1, the mushroom discs looking star-wards from the radio telescopes strung across the Cambridgeshire countryside, the roof of King’s College Chapel, a trio of punts on the open river at Fen Ditton, then the patchwork fens like a chessboard, Ely Cathedral (he’d been told by Donald to note the octagonal central tower, like a single chamber of a beehi
ve), and then the Norfolk hills, throwing shadows while the sun was still low, like a flock of sheeps’ backs.

  Editing the pictures as he went along, he posted selected shots, thrilled that his 431 followers would find the images popping up on their mobile phones.

  Now they were over water, Marc’s eyes locked on the patterns the waves made, and he took a series of pictures, which he then modified with the camera’s various filters – noir, sepia, and tonal – until he had created a stunning image of mathematical beauty. Then came the serried ranks of breakers at right angles to the north-west wind, the swirls around the sand banks like soapy water going down the plughole, and the white horses, where the wind whipped the foam off the top, as if clipped by gunfire. Finally, ahead, he glimpsed the dim, blue outline of the Norfolk coastal hills, indicating that they’d swung round into the Wash and were approaching land. Below, two windsurfers rode the waves, one becoming airborne as he watched, spinning on the breeze, before splashing down.

  The engine thrust dimmed, so that he could slide more comfortably back in his seat, and they seemed to hang in the air, motionless, above the shuffling waves, until – at an impossibly serene pace – the pier-head rig appeared directly below, the MV Telamon, the support tug, the great crane, and, standing off a hundred yards, the distinctive yellow teardrop-shaped hull of the lifeboat.

  Over Cambridge and the fens, they’d been high, only just below a thin line of fluffy cirrus cloud, but now Marc could see that they’d dropped to a hundred feet, possibly less. Men on the deck of the Telamon waved, seagulls in a line on the wire that ran across to the jack-up barge rose as one, and in the blue marine water a skidoo traced a crazy path of circles and curves, a water canon playing on anything within range.

  Gliding east, Free Spirit traced the line of the old pier. All the airship’s windows were open now, and on the air they heard the unmistakable sound of a crowd cheering, and Marc thought of Eric and Jonah and his mum, watching the approach from the esplanade. The rest of the passengers were up and out of their seats, looking through the pilot’s forward window, watching the approach of the red-and-white cliffs, the fragile tracery of the funfair to the south, and, beyond, the gentle whaleback of the hill behind the town, studded with its stately villas.