Corpse (Commander Shaw Book 15)

by Philip McCutchan

  But it didn’t. God was on our side.

  Suddenly, the boat lurched and the way came off: for my money, we’d hit the Burnham Flats themselves or some shifting sand that had formed a bank beneath the water, extending from the Flats in the same way as the notorious Goodwins shift with every tide. Whatever it was, it upset Brennan. Literally. As I felt him cannon against my back, and as the men in front of me lurched about as well, I brought up a knee and got one of them in a tender spot. He howled with pain, and as he doubled up I took him on the point of the jaw and undoubled him again. He crashed across his mate and went overboard. Felicity came in right on cue: she leaned backwards, her body almost flat, and got her hands tight around Brennan’s neck and held him. The confusion was utter: from our starboard side came a cry of sheer terror and pleading. The man who’d gone overboard had been gripped by quicksands and was being sucked down. I saw an oar being upraised in the bows and before it could come down on my head I grabbed the blade and gave it a very hard shove, and its holder lost his balance and went the same way as his mate. Meanwhile Brennan was in danger of being throttled and one of the other men was wrenching at Felicity’s arms. She had a grip of steel and he wasn’t getting far but he was well occupied and I brought the heavy oar down on his head and he didn’t know a thing. All this time, the larger vessel, a coaster of around two thousand tons at a guess, had been lowering a boat, having prudently stood clear herself of the shallows, and this boat was now approaching. I yelled at Felicity to leave Brennan and make herself scarce in the water but to take care to remain waterborne and not touch bottom if she wished to live. She obeyed; I went over with her, going in gently and floating. We urged our bodies away from the treacherous sands, in the direction of Gore Head, while Brennan and his mate, remaining in the boat’s safety, used their guns to try to shoot us out. Lead pinged and zipped round us but we were becoming more invisible in the darkness and nothing found its mark. The sound of gunfire, however, spread. Something, some unknown vessel passing north to seaward of the Wash, put on a searchlight and began sending exploratory signals by lamp.

  Brennan stopped shooting, and we kept going on our backs until I put a leg down and failed to find bottom, after which we rolled over and moved faster for Gore Head. By this time the sweeping searchlight must have been spotted from the opposite shore, for we heard a power boat coming out from the direction of Skegness. The ship that had come in to pick us up was sheering off now; I wondered if it had picked up Polecat Brennan.

  *

  It felt good to be aboard the Skegness lifeboat. We cruised around the perimeter of the Flats, seeking Brennan. There was no sign of him. The rowing boat was there, high and dry as the tide raced on out … probably he’d been taken off in safety. He’d always had a charmed life in former days.

  “The coaster,” the lifeboat coxswain said. “We’ll have the legs of her.” The ship was out to sea again now, her engines no doubt set at Full Ahead, on a northerly course.

  I said, “We leave him. With any luck he’ll think I went the way of those two mates of his.”

  “But surely — “

  “No. It may sound crazy, but it’s not. I’ve a shrewd idea where I’ll pick him up again, and he’s infinitely more valuable on the loose, believe me.” Already I had made my identity known to the lifeboatman, though I’d gone into no detail as to Brennan’s background and likely associations. In the meantime I was squeezing water out of myself, and Felicity’s teeth were chattering. Brennan would keep, and what I’d said had been the dead truth: Brennan would lead me, if not all the way, then nicely along the line that might put me in touch with CORPSE — even if only indirectly by way of WUSWIPP — and that was the vital thing. I got the lifeboat to put us ashore in Cromer, and from there I telephoned the Coastguard station in Gorleston. From information on the plot, they believed the pick-up vessel to be the Camilo Ruiz, registered in Barcelona and bound from Leith in Scotland to Almeria in Andalusia. That fitted. Maybe the Camilo Ruiz had now shifted target from Almeria to, say, somewhere in Scandinavia but it fitted.

  *

  Focal House made all the arrangements as to bookings and passports and next day Miss Mandrake and I were in the Gatwick air terminal. We were to travel to Malaga, and thence by self-drive hired car to Torremolinos, as tourists: Mr and Mrs Groves, independent of the package tour operators, though we couldn’t help but be surrounded by their clients once we reached the Costa del Sol.

  We sat in an exclusive lounge bar overlooking part of the runway pattern, and drank expensive drinks, sitting on our own by a window. Felicity gave a sudden shiver. I looked at her. “Not getting a cold, I hope?”

  “No. It’s just that I can’t get those two men out of my mind. The quicksands.”

  “Horrible,” I said. “Down and down, till the sand fills your mouth and lungs. It could have been us. Brennan may be there yet for all we know.”

  “If he is- — “

  “It’ll take longer without him, true, but we’ll pick up a lead. I’ve a feeling Spain holds the box of secrets, as it were … and Brennan won’t be the only key to it.”

  “I think we made a wrong move yesterday. If we’d taken Brennan in and put him under the grill — ”

  “No,” I said flatly. I finished the remains of my Scotch and took my glass and Felicity’s to the bar and had them refilled. My thoughts roved gloomily over the possible future: frankly, I didn’t see how I or anyone else could possibly, short of total world cooperation and just try that on the array of power blocs into which the said world was split, prevent the sailing and arrival of ships unknown with cargoes that would in all probability not appear on their manifests. I was becoming more and more convinced that the threat would not materialise by way of the official Windscale deliveries, though Max, I knew, was still pressing for government action to halt all such deliveries until the situation clarified. There would be difficulties even in this since it would give rise to massive speculation and all manner of theorising in the press that would start to set the public on edge. And the counter-action was pathetic, really: Customs and Excise were fully stretched as it was, and the inward shipping would in time be queuing up from the Downs and the Bishop Rock to all ports in the British Isles. Strangulation would set in. And the extended defence — the Royal Navy — scarcely existed any more. The odd through-deck cruiser, a handful of frigates, a collection of fibreglass minehunters and whatnot, submarines, fishery protection vessels … sure, a small number of merchant vessels could be checked at sea but it would only be a drop in the ocean. Set against CORPSE, it all began to look pretty small and insignificant. I thought, as I went back with the drinks, about the incoming crowds we’d seen in the arrival area: all nationalities, all colours, all ages. Any of them could be freshly infiltrating arteries of CORPSE, all set for the off. One thing would be pretty certain: they would all head well inland! When the explosive devices blew and the death-ships fragmented to scatter the nuclear debris wholesale, many miles around the coasts would wither.

  Our call came through on the wings of one of Gatwick’s cultured voices and we drifted towards the departure gate. I kept an eye lifting on our flight companions. An unremarkable bunch, all heading for sun and holiday and well prepared in advance with dark glasses through which Gatwick must have been all but invisible. Shoulder bags, jeans, funny sunhats, suntan lotion, cameras, giggles from a bevy of maidens casting anticipatory eyes towards some youths who might relieve them in due course of their maidenly state … some matrons with sportily clad old husbands, flowery shirts and all … Gatwick, anyway, was normal. I spotted no villainously familiar faces, no tails, nothing of that kind of interest. The flight was mundane too, though after departure I looked down upon disappearing England with some nostalgia, hoping I would find it as I left it, all happy transistor din, petrol fumes, and A23. Alongside Felicity and I sat a couple who lost no time in identifying themselves as Chester and Edie Ogmanfiller from Lewiston, Idaho.

  “Real glad to make your acquaintan
ce, sir … ”

  They were on the wrong side of middle age, they were all smiles, and they talked the whole way to Malaga. They’d already done Paris, France and had come back to Britain before going on to Spain because they liked London so much; I dare say the chewing-gum walked into the pavements of Piccadilly made them feel at home. They, too were going to Torremolinos, so we would meet again. As a matter of fact we had them with us all the way to Torremolinos: decanted at Malaga’s airport, they found their booking had got all snarled up and there was no self-drive hire car waiting for them, and at that stage another could not be got but one would be delivered as soon as possible at Torremolinos, so what could I do but offer them a lift in ours?

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  “Not at all.”

  Edie Ogmanfiller was too fat and generally cumbersome to squeeze into the back of our two-door model, so Felicity went in the back with Chester and I had Edie in front. I had to put a good face on it, and I saw the funny side: world salvation arrives at the hot spot with the fat lady of Idaho.

  *

  Torremolinos was bursting its seams and sweat seemed to run in rivers from lobstered flesh. What wasn’t a tourist was a waiter, or a shopkeeper Hogging trinkets made in Japan but Torremolinos orientated, or a tour official looking like death as his charges battered him verbally about double bookings, overused sanitation, or bugs in the bedclothes. It was all an expensive way of not enjoying oneself, but we were here on business and I got down to it as soon as we had checked into our accommodation. It was a nice room, with a balcony and an outlook over the blue and polluted Mediterranean and a lingering smell of garlic. We left it after unpacking our bags and checking for bugs, just in case, and this time I meant metal bugs, and we went out into the heave and tumult to see what might be seen. I was upon religion bent: the police superintendent in Peterborough had told me the Flood Fearers’ base was in Andalusia, hence our destination. Andalusia was a big place, of course, but one had to start somewhere. Currently there was not a parson in sight, at least not one in a dog collar, and very possibly the Flood Fearers didn’t wear such anyway. I spotted a scurry of Catholic priests from time to time, averting their faces from sin, but there would be no help there. In Spain adherents even of the established Church of England were written down officially as heretics.

  Sweltering, we found a bar with small sunshaded tables. Felicity drank some local vino and I drank Fundador, a very nice Spanish brandy that went well with sun and heat. In point of fact the sun didn’t really penetrate the street canyons of Torremolinos. In some ways one might as well have been in New York or Chicago, though the guardia civil, well in evidence in their leather head-dress with the flat back, didn’t look like the average American cop, all gun and gum. I was thinking of New York when a tired voice by my side said, “Well, gee whiz,” and I looked up at the Ogmanfillers.

  “Heat affecting you?” I asked, waving them to a chair.

  “I’ll say!”

  They sank down with relief and started smiling again, and talking. They insisted on buying us drinks when the waiter came up. I was hardly listening to their chatter and nearly missed something interesting — would have done if Felicity hadn’t given me a nudge under the table. I said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that?”

  “Churches,” Ogmanfiller said. “God you know?”

  I knew, I said. I waved a hand around. “Spain’s full of them.”

  “Catholics, sure.”

  There was a tinge of disparagement in his tone: I gathered the Ogmanfillers were Protestants. They said that whilst in France and Britain they’d done a number of churches. Just for the architectural interest, of course, the buildings themselves: they hadn’t liked a lot of what they’d seen in France — too much darned show, Ogmanfiller said. Give him the simplicity of, say, the Scottish kirk which his folks way back had been members of. He said it with nostalgia and in my mind’s eye I saw him in the tartan of the Clan MacOgmanfiller and wondered in what form he would wear it: once, in a bar in York, old not New, I’d seen an American backside wearing Bermuda shorts in the honoured tartan of the Black Watch. Anyway, it turned out that Ogmanfiller had been referring to his maternal ancestors. He didn’t say what the paternal ones had been. As the Ogmanfillers yacked away, veering off religion now, I brought them back to it. I had had an idea: to go on a Flood Fearer hunt in company with Mr and Mrs Ogmanfiller from Idaho might be good cover. We would look kind of genuine … the Ogmanfillers were genuine tourists all right and no more to be wondered at than any other American tourist doing religion in Spain. And their interest would be for real too: they could be relied upon to make all the right noises of enquiry. It just might be an aid to my investigations, so I began to lead them towards the sly notion. But I scarcely needed to. They knew all about the Flood Fearers, and of course this wasn’t really surprising since, as it turned out, the sect, like the local pastor himself, had had its origins in the USA.

  ‘They’re still there,” Ogmanfiller said.

  “You don’t say.” I caught Felicity’s wink: don’t overdo it, the wink said.

  “He’s right,” Mrs Ogmanfiller said earnestly.

  “Built an Ark,” her husband went on. “Made an Ark on dry land. No animals. Just the congregation, get it? When the rains start, the Flood Fearers get aboard the Ark and ride the Flood in safety. There’s electronic warning devices from the pastor’s residence to all the congregation, and when the pastor gets God’s warning, well, he alerts the rest and they all climb aboard.” Ogmanfiller made a joke: “Guess that pastor’s even got heaven bugged.” He roared with laughter and slapped a colourful thigh. “Didn’t know they’d come out here to Spain?”

  I said, “I’m told they have. I don’t know about the Ark.” I had another vision: the Ark, navigating into a British port loaded to the gunwales with nuclear waste and a latter-day Noah high-tailing it ashore after setting the explosive device. It wasn’t really very funny. Anyway, I suggested to Ogmanfiller that we might all join forces and go for a look around. He wasn’t keen at first. The sect in the States, he said, didn’t welcome outsiders. You couldn’t blame them. I knew he could be right, which was precisely why I wanted him along. The Ogmanfillers of this world get places by sheer persistent inquisitiveness, and their open-eyed wonder of itself puts them beyond suspicion. I could sense his inquisitiveness already starting to rise to the surface and overcome his hesitation. It would make a good story for the folks back home in Idaho, and he might get some good movie shots. I gave him another spiel.

  He glanced at his wife. “What d’ya think. Edie?”

  She said, “Well … “

  Ogmanfiller turned to me. “Okay, we’ll come. Know where these Flood Fearers are?”

  “No,” I answered, “but we can always ask around.”

  Next morning I did just that and to my surprise it wasn’t easy to get a line on the Flood Fearers. I would have thought they’d stand out a mile in Andalusia, but no. They evidently kept themselves to themselves, with notable success. In the end it was a priest, all black like a crow except for a touch of white at the adam’s-apple, who gave Felicity the word outside a bar. She spoke Spanish, and she used it to good effect. The priest was almost blushing beneath his wide-brimmed black hat, probably imagining all manner of things beneath Felicity’s T-shirt and jeans. Later, there would be many Hail Marys to be said. When Felicity spoke of the Flood Fearers he crossed himself and uttered many words, then went away fast, beetling off into the skyscraper hinterland that sat so oddly on the coast of Spain. Felicity interpreted and we went along to the hotel where the Ogmanfillers were staying. We found them drinking mint juleps on the terrace, under an umbrella of many colours, like Ogmanfiller’s shirt.

  “A little way beyond a village called Carena,” I said. “Around fifty miles north-east by the road map. I suggest we take my car.”

  This suggestion was agreeable. Driving out of Torremolinos, I felt a weird prickling in my spine, some sort of premonition coming to
me very suddenly. It was a lovely day if you didn’t mind the tremendous heat, with a cloudless blue sky beating the sun down on to the equally blue Mediterranean, and here were we, going off to snoop at a bunch of people anticipating the Flood. And in my book something else, something much nastier even if on a less world-wide scale. I glanced over my shoulder at Ogmanfiller, chatting easily to Felicity. He certainly wasn’t worried, and no reason why he should be. He was getting his movie camera all set up for the shots of a lifetime.

  FIVE

  It was, I believe, the analogy of the Ark that had cast a shadow on my premonitive mind. Somehow, the Ark had always had a doomful ring to me — it shouldn’t, of course, since it was a message of hope, really, that the good would survive so long as they took prudent precautions after receiving the warning from above. I think maybe it’s largely because of my basic naval training: the Ark didn’t appear in retrospect all that seaworthy and must in fact have been remarkably unstable. However, when we had covered the fifty miles of dusty, rutted track that passed for a first-class road, there was no Ark visible although, from the village of Carena, which was perched upon a peak, we had a tremendous and awe-inspiring view all round. We saw the great ranges of the Sierra Nevada, we could even see the ancient city of Granada around the climbing towers of the Alhambra in the far distance. The countryside was all aridity, burned brown except for occasional patches of green cultivation. It would have to be some flood to make any impression here, I thought.