“Did she fall in from here?” she asked the river, staring down at it.
There was no answer. Looking up Jane saw that she was alone with Gerry; the others had gone back along the deck. She felt his arms go round her, saw his face close to her own.
“Sheila!” she cried, pushing him away. “Did she fall in from here, from this boat? She must have! There was nowhere on the towpath—”
He pulled her close.
“Darling, darling!” the soft false voice was murmuring. “I love you. Love me as you did the other night. Darling!”
He was so intent upon subduing her that he did not hear, or did not rightly interpret, the powerful chug of the police launch engine. But Jane heard it and fought him off with renewed vigour. A moment later a brilliant beam swept the decks from end to end.
“Christ!”
Gerry dived for the shelter of the wheelhouse behind them, still clutching Jane with one hand, trying to drag her with him. But freed from his arms she had clung to the rail with one hand and now tore herself from his grasp and stood upright, her face turned to the searchlight, staring full into it to make sure of recognition.
The light swept away and was turned off. The launch appeared to move on up the river. Looking round Jane found herself quite alone.
The cabin cruiser rocked as the visitors crowded out on to the decks. Standing still where Gerry had left her, Jane saw that their numbers were already very much reduced. They must have been leaving quietly from the other side all the time she had been there with Gerry. How long was that? Surely not more than a few minutes?
She put a hand to her head. It was aching and she felt more than ever confused and far away. How silly to come here at all! How absurd to drink anything with this bunch of obvious crooks!
What a panic they were in just because a searchlight had played over them! She laughed aloud.
“Jane!”
She started violently. It was Tim’s voice, low, urgent, but she could see no one. The wind was stronger than ever now, blowing straight across the river from the opposite bank. She hugged her coat round her, wondering if she had really heard a voice or not.
“Jane!” it came again. “Listen. I’ll get you off and you must go home as quick as you can. Don’t recognise me. Go round to the boats and I’ll get you off.”
She moved obediently. As she passed into the small crowd waiting near the rail on the shore side of the launch she looked down and saw Tim, sitting in one of the dinghies, waiting to move up for passengers.
But before his turn came, or hers, Gerry was beside her again, taking her arm, pushing her forward, ordering people out of their way and succeeding in moving them. She saw with disgust and mounting fear that Tim was not able to help her now. She was forced into a waiting dinghy and swept away with Gerry.
Looking back despairingly she saw Tim tie up the small boat he was in and clamber quickly on board the launch. Then they were at the steps, she was helped up them and with Gerry again at her elbow, marched away.
In silence they reached the side road and the sports car. In silence Gerry unlocked it and ordered her into the passenger seat. Her head was clearer now. An acute sense of danger sharpened her clouded wits.
“Where are we going?” she asked, when he failed to take the road that led to her flat.
“The hospital,” he said. “There is something there you have to show me, my dear.”
Chapter Seventeen
Tim stayed where he was until he saw Gerry moving off along the towpath with Jane. Though he would have preferred to see her leave alone, when he could have caught her up before she had gone very far, he was relieved to see her back on solid earth and moving away from the river.
When there was no further chance of his being recognised, he pulled himself up on to the deck of the launch. But three of the remaining guests who stood clustered near the rail, impatiently waiting to get ashore, asked to be taken off, so he embarked once more. The ebb was beginning to run fast, now. He had some difficulty getting alongside the steps and more still in returning again to the cabin-cruiser.
Arrived there he found his services were no longer needed. The other dinghy had removed the last of the guests, the deck was deserted.
Tim’s first thought was to go ashore by himself, take his car to Jane’s flat and find her there. But the empty deck above him was very tempting. If the launch was really deserted, why not take a look round her? He was puzzled by the sudden dispersal of the party. It was not late. They had seemed to be enjoying themselves. Drink was circulating freely, morale was high, but no one showed the usual bad temper and aggression of the partly drunk.
True the wind had got up, with the suddenness it often showed over water. The launch was rolling at her mooring. Being a good sailor he had not been bothered by it. Perhaps they had. Perhaps they felt sick. Particularly the addicts. Well, serve them right if they did.
He had not understood the full significance of the searchlight. He had not realised how it would seem to the guilty consciences on board. The little addicts, as fearful of losing their supplies as they were of having them found in their pockets, were ready to panic at the slightest hint of police interest. Though they knew nothing of the Bream gang’s inner workings and depended upon them with a pitiful, desperate trust, they knew that at the first danger sign of trouble with the police they must remove themselves immediately and thereafter swear total ignorance. They had a double interest in this; to save themselves from the penalties of the law and also from the reprisals of the gang if they should in any way betray it.
Climbing back on to the launch Tim moved silently round the decks. The wind was stronger now, blowing direct inshore. No one lurked in the shadows, no one rose up to confront him. It would have been too cold to stay out in any case, he decided. But a light still shone in the cabin, so he went up to the open door of the wheelhouse, passed in and peered down the companionway.
At first he saw only litter and the stains of spilt drink and cigarette ash. Then he saw a leg thrust out and as he moved down to discover the owner a drunken voice said, “Whas—at?”
Giles Winter was sprawling on one of the bunks, his jacket off, his tie hanging loose, his eyes half-closed.
“The others have all gone ashore,” said Tim. “D’ you want to be ferried over?”
“Who th’hell are you?”
“One of the party. The dinghy’s outside.”
“Live here,” Giles said, rolling over so that his face was hidden from Tim. “My boat. Sleep aboard. You want sleep aboard?”
“Not particularly,” Tim said. But he moved towards the forward cabin door. It was a chance to have a real look round. A chance not to be missed.
“Please yourself,” Giles muttered, not looking round.
He seemed to be passing out pretty rapidly, Tim thought, so he moved gently forward and passed through the cabin door and shut it very quietly after him.
The rolling of the launch made movement slow and difficult. Holding on to the top of one of the bunks Tim looked about him.
The two berths were piled with folded blankets. They did not seem to have been used for some time. The man in the saloon probably used the seat he was now lying on, Tim decided.
Under each bunk there was a drawer that pulled out. Both were quite empty. Beyond, another closed door led to a forepeak with a wash-basin and lavatory set at one side and a jumble of rope, shackles, empty petrol tins and a couple of large anchors at the other.
Which makes three, Tim thought, looking at them, remembering the one lashed in chocks on the foredeck.
He began to turn over the junk, vaguely disappointed that he had found nothing of sinister import anywhere on board. His foot slipped on a round object. He picked it up. An anchor buoy, evidently. Well, that was natural enough. A good idea to buoy the anchor. Was this the only one or did they have one for each anchor?
He went on searching, turning over lengths of rope, mooring lines mostly, one large coil he could not move. A towing
line, perhaps?
Then he found it. Made of plastic, coloured to look like brown glass, even painted with an exact replica of the label of a well-known beer. The narrow end was shaped with a scooped-out hollow; the base of the bottle had a flange with a hole in it through which a light line could be threaded.
It could be another anchor buoy, but who wanted an anchor buoy elaborately got up to look like a floating bottle?
A floating bottle! A bottle that could carry any reasonably light package attached to its base. It would bob about, disregarded, until it was located by those for whom it was intended.
Tim’s excitement rose. Now he understood. The launch picked up the supplies somewhere at the mouth of the Thames. Stick a cork, a real cork, in the top of the false plastic bottle, supply it to the chap with the goods, probably at the last port of call before London. All he had to do was tie on a prepared, waterproofed package and drop the whole thing overboard minus the cork. The launch and the organisation did the rest.
Pushing the thing inside his windcheater Tim retreated into the cabin and moved to the saloon door. He turned the handle carefully and pushed. Nothing happened. Feeling a sudden nausea, a quick wave of self-condemnation, he tried again and pushed hard, not caring now if he made a noise.
Giles Winter’s voice, clear and sharp, not at all drunken, said, “No go, my friend. We don’t like snoopers.”
“Open this door,” Tim ordered. “Can’t your guests visit the heads without having this feeble sort of joke?”
“No joke at all. We know who you are. You weren’t invited.”
Tim forced himself to speak quietly.
“If it isn’t a joke, what is it? You can’t keep me here indefinitely. I would very soon be missed at the hospital.”
“Did you tell anyone where you were going?”
It was a new voice that spoke. Though Tim did not know the man. Ronald Bream had joined his partner in the saloon.
“Yes,” lied Tim and added truthfully, “They all know I like to walk down to the bridge in the evening.”
“But you didn’t walk, did you?”
So they knew that, too. Probably knew he had taken Jane out to dinner and where. While he was considering the full significance of his position the door opened suddenly and he found himself confronted by Winter with a levelled gun and a short stout figure he had noticed at the rail while he was trying to take off Jane.
“Come out,” Winter said. “Ron wants to go in there. Come out and stand against that wall.”
Tim had no alternative. Bream went rapidly into the cabin and beyond into the forepeak. After a few seconds he came out again.
“Nix,” he said. His face was anxious, sweating a little.
“Frisk him,” Winter ordered.
Bream found the plastic buoy almost at once.
“That settles it.”
Winter motioned to Tim with a sideways jerk of his head. “Back inside,” he said grimly.
Tim saw that he meant it, that he would not hesitate to use the gun. He went back into the cabin, the door was locked again from the outside. At the same instant the light went out.
All right, he thought, let them think they have me bottled, let them go. They’d be a jump ahead, he knew, but with all that stuff in the forepeak, the spare anchors, the chain, the rope, he ought to be able to break his way out when he was alone.
He waited. The voices died away. They had gone out on deck. Presently he heard sounds again, coming now from the outside of the hull, a hoarse shout, a few bumps, then silence again, unbroken, final he hoped.
It was only now that he realised he was standing in an inch of water.
He stared down in the darkness, unbelieving, suddenly very much afraid. He felt it seep into his shoes, coldly mount over them. Before he recovered enough to move it was halfway up his calf and lapping against the sides of the bunks.
He sprang into the forepeak to drag out an anchor and hurl it against the door. But in the dark, under water, it was not easy to locate anything distinctly. He stumbled about, fumbling with the junk that lay everywhere, desperately trying to remember where he had seen the things, dragging away at rope that led nowhere, tripping over boxes. The anchors seemed to have vanished. Perhaps Bream had moved them deliberately into some inaccessible corner.
And all the time the water rose. It was impossible now to go on searching in the forepeak. He had a sudden panic fear he would not be able to find his way back into the cabin, where the roof was higher. But he managed it.
No use now to hope to batter down the door. Water held it on both sides. The launch was sinking; those bloody thugs had opened the sea-cocks or whatever you called them. Had scuttled, anyway. They meant her to go to the bottom with him inside her. They intended to drown him because he now knew too much.
Tim remembered, despairingly, that the cabin-cruiser was on moorings, tied fore and aft away from the shore, so that whenever the gang wanted to go off down the river they could do so, regardless of the tide. So whatever he did he was going to sink with her and this was the end.
Nevertheless he climbed on one of the bunks and as the water rose, crouched with his face turned up to the roof, determined to last as long as he could. When the cabin was full to the top of the door and the pressure equalised he would try to kick the door down before he drowned.
A sudden lurch flung him off balance and under the water. He recovered, only to feel his head strike the roof, still under water. Understanding came in a quick surge of hope. He turned, struck out under water, bumped into the bunk on the opposite side of the cabin, climbed on to it and with bursting lungs emerged into air and stayed there, gasping.
On this side of the cabin the water was barely up to his neck. As he waited, conscious only of the utter stillness in place of swinging motion and of the stale air, growing more stale every minute, the water began to slide away. It was down to his waist, to his knees. It had left him high but not dry on the bunk. Presently he stretched a leg over the side. The water was less than twelve inches on the cabin sole.
But the air was getting worse all the time. He might not drown now, not on this tide, but he might suffocate.
While he was on the bunk he remembered he had felt something soft against the side of the boat. A curtain, perhaps, over a porthole. He turned to investigate, found what he sought and dragged it away. Dimly, through a coating of river mud he saw lights. He need not have been in such terrifying darkness if he had remembered those small thick curtains earlier.
The porthole had a clasp. It was very stiff, not often opened, evidently, and not improved by its short immersion, but he got it open and stayed beside it for some minutes, drawing in great gulps of air, astonished to find himself still alive.
He now understood fully what had happened. They meant to drown him and lose the launch. Stage an accident, perhaps? Or clear out altogether. They had let the water in, but they had reckoned without the wind. It had blown hard enough to move the cabin cruiser towards the shore. With the tide running out she had taken the ground and tilted over. Fortunately he had been on the bunk nearer the shore, so his weight added to the wind had helped to put her down in this position. Instead of a couple of inches of air above the water on an even keel, inches that would disappear as she sank, she had grounded and tipped and he had found safety.
For a few hours, only. When the tide rose again the launch would not rise, but the water would. Higher than before. He had to get out and fast.
By the light from the open porthole Tim managed to locate a useful piece of hard junk from the forepeak. It was a length of hollow, rounded metal used as an additional lever on the anchor winch. With it he managed to splinter the cabin door and then wrench it apart. He wriggled through the gap he had made, clambered to his feet and promptly fell down again.
The deck of the saloon was covered with a thin film of oily mud. Tim picked himself up and struggled to the companionway and up it into the wheelhouse and on into the open air. The stench below had been unbearab
le. In any case, though he felt weak and still breathless, he was determined to complete his escape as quickly as possible.
On deck he moved to the bows and looked over. He saw at once that apart from the action of the wind, which still blew with considerable force, another factor had helped to strand the boat.
In order that the warps tying her to the buoys should not hold her up when she was nearly water-logged, but let her sink to the bottom of the river, Winter and Bream had let them off considerably; lengthened them both fore and aft. This accounted for the shouts and bumps he had heard before they left. In plain fact, their action, intended to assist in drowning him, had contributed very largely to preserving his life. They had given the cruiser a freer range of movement and the wind, blowing her strongly broadside on, towards the shore, had done the rest.
Tim’s spirits rose considerably as he noted this, in spite of the fact that he was now very cold and shivering violently and saw no immediate prospect of getting off the launch. Though she had gone aground she was not near enough to any of the other vessels for him to jump on to one of them. Nor could he walk over the mud; he would only sink in it or stick there and drown as the tide rose.
He could shout for help. There were no lights on any of the houseboats. He did not even know if they were inhabited. He saw no dinghies among them. Those off-shore were on the mud, like the cabin-cruiser. The ones on the wall leaned against it and one another.
Though it was now well past midnight, he guessed, the usual steady stream of cars was passing over Hammersmith Bridge. They were an encouraging sight, but not helpful.
He looked towards the shore. He could not see any movement on the towpath and he had no means of knowing if the enemy still lurked there, watching. They would, if this was the case, know that the launch had not sunk. They might even have seen him emerge on deck, alive. They might be watching for the next tide to finish him off.
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