Colombo listened intently, frowning a little, his eyes on Jared’s animated face. ‘And this stash house? Where might that be?’
‘God knows. But you’re looking for an isolated spot, where a boat could come and go without being noticed too much. A dry place where the stuff can be stored. A place where one or two regular visitors won’t attract attention. The shore dealers have to drop by and pick up the stuff, remember, so it has to be on a road. It’s most likely someone’s house.’
‘That limits the possibilities somewhat.’
‘That’s what I’m telling you.’ Jared stood up to put more wood on the fire. ‘Fancy a trip round Brentness tomorrow?’
Colombo shuddered.
‘It’s OK. I can handle a boat. We’d better call on Ishmael too. He keeps an eye on things much more than he says he does. He’ll have noticed your car at Hogg’s Beach by then anyway.’
‘With Baskerville’s trailer on it. That’s true. And I have to get the inflatable back.’
‘Wind’s supposed to die down tomorrow morning,’ said Jared. ‘We can get off by noon. We can tow Baskerville’s rubber ring across with us. I have to do the gannets first. Right now I’m going to bed. I’d better find you something to sleep on first, I suppose.’
By morning, the wind had chased the last of the cloud away and almost blown itself out. The land was laid bare: Mount Prosper seemed to rise over them barely a stone’s throw away, and as they crossed the sound the houses at Lyonsness, the tower of Ravnscar, and the ribbon of road winding up to the pass were etched as clear as the background in a Renaissance painting. As they rounded the headland the sea turned choppy, with little white-topped waves that slopped over the side as they met the breeze that was still coming in from the west. The lava ridges on Brentness basked and glinted in the sun like a comatose dragon. Anything could be hidden there among the fissures and hollows and crumpled rock. But in bad weather, as Jared pointed out, there were no possible landings, and even in a flat calm it was a risky business coming close in among the toothed edges of the lava. And in the lava field there was no road.
Colombo swept the horizon with binoculars for the tenth time. ‘Well, they didn’t hang about. Not very sporting to make off while I slept, after all I went through.’
‘Maybe they’ll send you a postcard from Boulogne. Well, do we go round to Ogg’s Cove? There’s nothing out here, unless it’s a submarine. Jesus! … Colombo, look out!’
There was a queer sigh from landward, like a monster gently stirring in its sleep. A moment later the boat began to accelerate south-west towards the shores of Mount Brasil, as if the land itself were sucking them hungrily inward. The engine throbbed on ineffectually. A wall of water detached itself from the cliffs and sped backwards, obliterating the succession of white-topped wavelets. It was dark green, paler at the top, with curls of white foam along its crest. It came fast, much too fast to flee. Jared turned the bows right into it, and Colombo bit back a cry of protest. Green water towered thirty feet over them like an advancing precipice. They could feel themselves being sucked up into it. They were almost under it; they had to go under. Colombo shut his eyes for the impact. Instead he felt the boat tip backwards, much too far, then rise, and keep rising, like speeding up a lift shaft. He looked, and there was the crest still right above them, poised to break. Then it burst. Water crashed down, drenching them. The boat went down in a barrage of spray. But not under; they were still sliding, down and down and down. Colombo, blinded by a vicious sea that was trying to fling him out of the boat, grabbed on to the gunwales and hung on with all his strength. The boat bucked and tossed and tried to fling him out, but he held on. They were going over; they had to be going over. He clung with both hands to the port gunwale, ready to shove clear when she tipped. But it didn’t happen. Suddenly the sea poured away so he could breathe. Through a blur of water he saw Mount Prosper reeling back into a clear sky and vanishing into the next wild wave. Then he was being pitched this way and that, with no pattern or reason to go by. All he could do was hold on.
‘Colombo! Bale! There’s a baler under the seat! Right under you!’
He scrabbled about in a foot of seawater and found a cut-off plastic milk carton at the end of a piece of string. He baled, as fast as he was able, still clinging to the gunwale with one hand, with lumps of water leaping into his face and trying to snatch the baler out of his hands. The whole sea seemed to be in the boat, and it wasn’t getting less. But no more waves came over them. He was out of breath, clumsy from kneeling in the sea, and his arm ached. Jed was baling too, faster than he could. They were tossing so much it was hard to tell which way was up. Maybe the water was going down at last. Augustine and the angel. Colombo gasped for air and kept on baling.
‘Good, good! Keep going!’
What the hell did Jed think he was doing? He kept going. Suddenly there wasn’t so much water. The gunwales were out of the sea again, back where they should be. It was harder to get a full baler. Less water in the bottom. He kept on baling.
Jared wasn’t baling any more. Out of the corner of his eye Colombo saw him pull on the starter cord of the silent outboard. Baskerville’s dinghy had vanished. Colombo kept baling. Jared tried the starter again, and then again. All of a sudden the engine blasted out and the boat leapt forward, hurling Colombo down into the bottom. Jared turned down the throttle, and Colombo struggled to his hands and knees again, peered out and saw Brentness ahead of them. It was pitching violently to and fro. No, it wasn’t. It hadn’t moved; it was the boat that was being flung about like a plank in a whirlpool. But the whirlpool was vanishing too, down some diabolic plughole, leaving them lurching up and down on a strangely disturbed sea. Colombo looked up. The sun still beat down on them out of a calm blue sky.
‘Jesus,’ said Jared, dropping his baler into the boat. ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’
Colombo let go cautiously with one hand, and crossed himself.
‘Jesus, did you see that?’
‘No,’ said Colombo, ‘but I certainly felt something. What happened?’
‘We got through,’ said Jared. ‘I just cut the towrope and headed my boat straight into it. It was the only thing to do.’
‘If I saw what I think I saw, there was a large wave going backwards, right on to us.’
‘You saw it.’ Jared spat into the sea. ‘Earthquake. Well, something was on our side, that’s for sure.’ He looked at Colombo. ‘You OK? You look a bit green.’
‘Fine, thank you. But it’ll be quite a relief to get to Tarshish.’
‘Well, I’m not about to chuck you overboard. That wave came up a bit south of west. Off Mount Brasil, I should say, Dorrado way.’
‘Dorrado? you don’t think anything’s happened in Dorrado?’
Jared looked at him. ‘Of course, your family. No, it won’t be Dorrado. It’ll be this side of the mountain. Only under water, as like as not. Probably not a soul on land felt a thing. And a wave coming that way … no. Well, suppose we head for Ferdy’s Landing? See what’s happened?’
‘Will Ishmael run to a stiff drink?’
‘Coffee,’ said Jared succinctly.
Ishmael was in his office. From a distance the building looked like it always had: a stone-built byre with a low-pitched roof just across the yard from the house. The only indication that anything might have changed were the big rooflights, and a satellite dish attached to the gable.
Walking in at the door was like walking out of Hy Brasil and into a cell in the great global honeycomb. You might be anywhere, not in the flesh but in words anyway. The inside of the office was wood-lined, windowless except for the two open north-facing skylights, which filled the place with the brightness of the summer sky. The walls were covered with tapestries, mostly from South America, and the floor between the two built-in desks was covered by a big Armenian rug. The desks were strewn with phones, a fax machine, printer, monitors and lap-top computers. At the far end of the room an ancient stereo system was belting out Palestrina, drowning
out the sounds of the oyster catchers on the shore outside. Even so, it was hard to believe that Ishmael hadn’t noticed anything local going on at all. When they went in he was talking against the music to someone on the phone who was apparently trying to sell new stocks on the Chicago market. Ishmael looked round at his visitors, noted their soaked state, and raised his brows. Jared and Colombo stood dripping on the doormat, and waited.
Ishmael put the phone down at last, and came outside with Jared as soon as they’d told him what had happened, but nothing looked different. The tide-rip in the sound was just as usual, and the peaks of Despair rose peacefully into the still sky.
‘I think it’s all right,’ said Jared. ‘I’d like to check as soon as possible.’
‘Check?’ asked Ishmael, following his gaze. ‘Oh. The Cortes. The Cortes won’t have been touched. Not by a wave going north by west from Mount Brasil. Think about it! Certainly not at ninety-two feet. Think, Jed! You know a lot better than I do.’
‘You’re right. But with disturbance in the area … I’d like to make sure.’
‘If there’s disturbance in the area I’m not about to do a dive just under a five-hundred-foot cliff. Not until we get an all clear,’ said Ishmael firmly. ‘Come on, Jed, don’t be so single-minded. How about a bit of lateral thinking: like, is everyone still alive in Dorrado? Let’s see if Colombo’s got through to anybody.’
Colombo put the phone down just as they came in. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Only the sea went out in Dorrado. That was Maeve. Not a tremor. But the sea went out.’ He sat down heavily, shivering in his wet clothes. A moment later he reached for the phone again. ‘Do you have the number for the Pele Centre?’
‘It’s 264. Go ahead. If you get West I’ll have a word with him too.’
Half an hour later Colombo was still telephoning. Jared, by this time sketchily attired in a green towel, prowled around the office with a mug of hot coffee. The stereo, turned down low, had switched over to Monteverdi. While he listened to Colombo, Jared stared at the nearest computer screen. NASDAQ, it said at the top, and underneath was a section of an alphabetical list of company names followed by the latest quotes. The other computer screen displayed a company profile: a name followed by tables of figures lined up across the screen. Beside the keyboard someone had left a school exercise book open about half way through. The page was filled with careful writing, which said:
Meu nome é Raquel Pereira. Tenho doze anos. Tenho duas irmãs, três gatos e um porquinho da Índia. Um porquinho da Índia morreu. Moro em Ferdy’s Landing. Não gosto da escola.
Colombo, resplendent in Ishmael’s Royal Stuart tartan dressing gown, put the phone down, dialled the number of the Times, and began talking to his editor. The door opened and Ishmael came in. ‘The dryer’ll be another ten minutes,’ he said to Jared in an undertone. ‘Did he get Olly?’
‘No,’ whispered Jared, ‘the Pele Centre’s permanently engaged. So Colombo rang Hy Brasil Radio and gave them his story: accurate enough if you allow a twenty per cent variant for exaggeration. Seemingly they’d heard from the coastguards in Ogg’s Cove and Dorrado but no eyewitnesses at sea, so they were thrilled to bits to get our man from the Times. Then he rang his brother-in-law, who’d seen it himself from Dorrado coastguard station, and also he’d spoken to Toby Ready at Ogg’s Cove. Apparently at Dorrado the sea went right out and swept in again about six feet over the high tide line – thank God it was low tide – and at Ogg’s Cove it vanished entirely, but Colombo couldn’t get through to Ogg’s Cove either. Now he’s talking to his editor again.’
‘The sea vanished?’
‘That’s right. No more sea. It just went right out and drained the bay. Of course their first thought was “tidal wave”, and they just had time to turn on the siren, when it came back. It went right over the sea wall and washed out the houses along the harbour, and of course the dunes are flooded. But it’s no worse than that. And you really truly never noticed anything?’
‘I’ve just had another look. It’s left a line of debris just below the high tide mark. Brentness must have sheltered us. I still can’t believe I was in here and never knew a thing. I should have got windows in this place after all.’
‘Well, I don’t understand why you didn’t. If I had this view I’d want to see out of every wall.’
‘When I’m working I’m working,’ said Ishmael. ‘Besides, it would spoil the line of the building. But I can’t believe I missed this.’
‘Typing away right through Revelations,’ agreed Jared. ‘It sounds like a Beckett play. When Colombo’s finished he’ll be off to the west coast. I think I’ll go with him. Do you want to come? Then we could tell you about this other business on the way.’
Ishmael frowned at his screen. ‘I suppose I could. I’d like to talk to the coastguards in Ogg’s Cove. If we take the four-by-four we can go over the back track. Save Colombo taking that tin can of his all the way back round the mountain. We could stop by the Pele Centre on the way. I need to talk to West. As far as I know the Emergency Service has no strategy for tidal waves or flooding. I never thought of it before, but they should have. And yes, I want to hear about this trawler. I’ll come. Why not? I’ve missed it all so far.’
‘You will? He’ll fall on your neck.’ Jared laid his hand over Colombo’s to stop him dialling yet another number. ‘Hear that, sleuth? Ishmael’s going to drive us over the back road. Save you at least an hour, and we can drop in on Olly on the way. And you’ll have dry clothes in ten minutes. Come on, Watson! The game’s afoot!’
NINE
Sidony Redruth. Ravnscar Castle. June 5th.
Notes for Undiscovered Islands (working title).
IF YOU GO to the end of Harbour Street in Ogg’s Cove, you get to a long concrete harbour wall, where on a calm day you can walk out to the small skerry which has the harbour light on it. I’d been sitting there for a while, watching the waves break lazily on the black beach that lies just south of the town, and now I was walking slowly back to the shore. On the seaward side the waves slapped against the wall; on the harbour side the water was flat and green, and I could see down to the little fishes scavenging below.
The coastguard station is on the promontory where the harbour wall meets the land. It’s a timber-framed building, smartly painted in white picked out in red. Big double doors open on to the slipway where the Ogg’s Cove lifeboat is pulled up. I walked round the building. There were two men standing outside the open doors, one small and weatherbeaten, with greying hair under a coastguard’s cap. The other was the man I’d seen talking to Colombo in Finnegan’s, the one who’d asked about Spanish gold. He was wearing faded jeans and a red checked shirt, but even so he looked like Lawrence Fishburn in the film of Othello, at the beginning when he’s just going off in triumph to re-capture Cyprus. To my surprise he called me by name as I passed. I went over to them.
‘Ishmael Pereira,’ he said, and shook my hand. ‘This is Tobias Ready, who runs this station. Toby, this is Sidony Redruth, who’s staying up at Ravnscar. Colombo tells me you’re writing a book?’
I could murder Colombo; I realise now I never asked him to be discreet, but he doesn’t look like a gossip. It’s too late to complain now. The good part, I have to admit, is that it makes it more possible to ask questions. In fact I ended up getting a tour of the station, and that was useful. It isn’t very big. They’re most proud of their two new twenty-eight-foot medium rescue boats with their twin 200 Merc engines. At least, that’s what Mr Ready said they were, and certainly the boat on the slipway had engines that looked large and powerful out of all proportion to its size. They need to be, because the boats go at fifty knots, which is almost sixty miles an hour when you work it out. The boat looked fat like an inflatable, but you could tell it’s actually very strongly built. It has a curved deck round a solid wheelhouse, and really not much else. It only needs a crew of two, which doesn’t seem much when you imagine what a rescue at sea must be like. Mr Ready showed me the gear for getting a
man out of the sea. On a warm spring day on land, I found it difficult to imagine.
The rest of the station was small-scale and friendly. Next to the new boat there were open lockers with each man’s survival gear, and a pile of yellow drysuits on top. Each locker had its owner’s name on it: J. Outhwaite, L. Hilton, I. Cavalcanti, C. A. Alton, A. Bardens, J. Williams, J. Button, J. Howell, P. Kinnear, N. Frodge, G. Fuller, J. Pauquette, T. Collins, R. Elphinstone, T. Ready. I read the last name twice, and wondered if he’d been teased much at school, and whether this had helped to build his character sufficiently to become a chief coastguard. As well as all the boat gear and life-saving equipment there was a table tennis table at the back, which made the whole outfit seem more homely. When we went through to the mess there were a couple of young men at one of the tables. Ishmael told me later that most of the crew are under twenty-five. Above the mess and the galley there’s a big radio room, and Mr Ready’s own office looking over the harbour. He has pictures on his walls of lifeboats crashing through tremendous seas, which personally I would find discouraging, but then I don’t pretend to be either knowledgeable or brave.
While we were there Mr Ready was called to the radio office, so Ishmael and I stood chatting for a bit. He used to work part-time for the coastguards when he first moved from St Brandons to Ferdy’s Landing. The station is primarily for search and rescue, but he said it has a law-enforcing function as well. I thought of an article I’d read in last week’s Times, and I asked him if he meant smuggling. He laughed, and said it was more often cases of speeding and drunk driving, and not keeping to the wake restrictions in the harbour. Not very exciting, really, or so he said. But the training had been useful. For example, he’d been seconded to do a diving course, and he’s done quite a bit of that since. It turns out he’s been working on the Spanish shipwreck off the island of Despair. I wanted to ask him more about that, but then Mr Ready came back. I didn’t want to outstay my welcome, so I thanked them both, and left.
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