We were still discussing it as we drove out of Bohalle, the road now hugging the bank of the Loire, through Les Rosiers, St Clément-de-Levées and St Martin-de-la-Place. At Saumur, with its fairy château perched above the river, we crossed over to the south bank and almost immediately the road was bounded by shallow limestone cliffs along which conventional house fronts had been built as façades to what were apparently troglodyte dwellings. ‘Les Tuffeaux,’ Barre said, and talked for a moment about the mushroom industry that had grown side by side with the wine business in caves carved out of the limestone to provide the building material for medieval churches.
He stopped at a riverside café to enquire the way and afterwards we turned right at Souzay to join a narrow road close under the cliffs. Mushrooms, he said, were a by-product of the Cavalry School at Saumur. ‘What you call horse shit,’ he added, laughing. It was a long, very narrow road and the Choffel house was at the end, in a little cul-de-sac where there was a cave half-hidden by a drooping mass of vegetation, the entrance sealed off by an iron door with a dilapidated notice announcing Vin à Vendre. We parked there and walked back. The figures 5042 were painted black above the rough plaster porch and from a rusty little iron gate opposite that led into a small rose garden there was a fine view over tiled rooftops to the broad waters of the Loire glinting in a cold shaft of sunlight. Dark clouds hung over the northern bank where the vineyards gave way to forest.
I had no preconceived mental picture of Choffel’s daughter. I expected her to be dark, of course, but I hadn’t really thought about it, my mind on how I could persuade her to give us the information I needed. It came as a shock, when she opened the door, to find there was something vaguely familiar about her. She was about twenty, well-rounded with black hair cut in a fringe that framed a squarish face and I had the feeling I had seen her before.
Barre introduced us and at my name she turned her head, staring at me with a puzzled frown. Her eyes were large and dark like sloes, very bright, but that may have been because of her cold. She looked as though she was running a temperature. Barre was still talking, and after a moment’s hesitation, during which her eyes remained fixed on my face, she let us into the house. ‘I have told her we are here about the Petros Jupiter insurance, nothing else,’ Barre whispered as she ushered us into what I suppose would be called the parlour in that sort of house. It was a comfortably furnished room and almost the first thing I noticed was a photograph of her father, the same dark features and prominent nose I had seen in the newspaper pictures, but clean shaven and bareheaded, the crinkly black hair carefully smoothed down, and he was smiling self-consciously, dressed in his engineer’s uniform. Standing beside it, in an identical silvered frame, was the photograph of a young woman with the most enormous eyes staring out of a long, gaunt face. She had a broad, pale brow and a mass of curly brown hair. ‘My family,’ the girl said to me in English, and then she had turned back to Barre, speaking in French again, the tone of her voice sharp and questioning.
It was a strange room, more than half of it natural rock that had been plastered over and then decorated. This and the colour of the walls, which was a pale green, gave it a certain coldness, and with just the one window it had an almost claustrophobic feel to it. I heard my name mentioned and Guinevere Choffel was repeating it, staring at me again, her eyes wide, a shocked look that was mixed with doubt and confusion. ‘Why are you here? What do you want?’ Her English was perfect, but with something of a lilt to it, and she said again, ‘Why are you here?’ her voice dropping away to a note of despair. ‘It was an accident,’ she breathed. ‘An accident, do you hear?’
She knew! That was my first reaction. She knew about Karen, what had happened. And the reason I was here, she must have guessed that, for she didn’t believe me when I said I represented Forthright & Co., the marine solicitors dealing with the case, and needed her father’s address so that we could arrange for him to make a statement. ‘No. It’s something else, isn’t it?’ And in the flash of her eyes, the sound of her voice, I had that sense of familiarity again, but stronger now. And then it dawned on me. She was like Karen in a way, the same sort of build, the same high colouring against the raven black hair, that lilt in the voice; that emotional quality, too, the voice rising and those dark eyes bright with the flash of her anger: ‘You don’t understand. You don’t know my father or you wouldn’t think such a thing.’ She pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt and turned away to blow her nose. ‘He’s had a hard life,’ she mumbled. ‘So many things gone wrong, and not his fault – except that once.’ This last was swallowed so that I almost lost it. And then she had turned and was facing me again, her voice rising: ‘Now you’re here, blaming him. It’s been the same, always, you understand. Always. Do you know what it’s like, to be accused of things you don’t do? Well, do you?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘No,’ she said, her voice higher still and trembling. ‘Of course you don’t. It’s never happened to you. And now you come here, asking me, his daughter, to tell you where he’s gone. You think I would do that when you have already passed judgment on him?’ She seemed to take a grip of herself then, speaking slowly and with emphasis, ‘It’s not his fault the ship is wrecked. You must believe that. Please.’
‘You saw him in La Rochelle, did you?’ Or perhaps he had only had time to contact her by phone.
‘In La Rochelle?’ She stared at me.
‘In the trawler basin there, when he arrived in the Vague d’Or.’
‘No, I don’t go to La Rochelle. Is he in La Rochelle?’ She sounded surprised.
‘He didn’t contact you?’
‘No, how could he? I didn’t know.’ She was still staring at me, breathing heavily. ‘La Rochelle, you say?’ And when I explained, she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t see him there, or anywhere. I didn’t know he was in France.’
‘But you’ve had a letter from him?’
‘No, not since—’ she checked herself. ‘No. No letter.’
‘But you’ve heard from him. You know where he is.’
She didn’t answer that, her lips tight shut now.
‘Do you know a man named Baldwick?’ I thought there was a flicker of recognition in her eyes. ‘He’s in Nantes. Has he phoned you, or sent you a message?’
She lifted her head then, the dark eyes staring into mine. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? You’ve made up your—’ She shook her head. ‘You had better go please. I have nothing to tell you, nothing at all, do you hear?’ Her voice, quieter now, the lilt stronger, had an undercurrent of tension in it. ‘She was your wife, I suppose. I read about it in an English paper.’ And when I didn’t answer, she suddenly cried out, ‘She did it – herself. You cannot blame somebody who wasn’t there.’ I could smell her fear of me then as she went on, ‘I’m sorry. But it’s her fault. Nothing to do with my father.’
‘Then why didn’t he stay in England? If he’d waited for the Enquiry—’
‘It’s nothing to do with him, I tell you.’ And then, vehemently, almost wildly – ‘It’s the chief engineer. He’s the man you should ask questions about, not my father.’
‘Is that what he’s told you?’
She nodded.
‘You have heard from him then,’ I said.
‘Of course. He wrote me as soon as he landed in Cornwall.’
‘Did he tell you he was planning to get away in a Breton fishing boat, that he didn’t dare face the Enquiry?’
‘No, he didn’t say that. But I was glad – glad when I knew. For his sake.’ She must have been very conscious of my hostility, for she suddenly shouted at me, ‘What do you expect him to do? Wait to be accused by a chief engineer who isn’t sick, but drunk and incompetent? It’s happened before, you know. Why should he wait, an innocent man, to be accused again?’ She was standing quite close to me, looking up into my face, her eyes wide and desperate. ‘You don’t believe me?’
‘No,’ I said.
And then she did something so unexpected it shocked
me deeply. She spat in my face. She jerked her head and ejected her germ-laden spittle straight into my face. ‘Maquereau! You’re like all the rest. When you’ve got a man down you kick his teeth in. My father is the finest, most generous, kindly man I know, and you use him, all of you, as though he is nothing but a turd under your feet. I hate you. I hate the whole world.’ Tears were streaming down her face and she rushed to the door, pulling it open and screaming, ‘Get out! D’you hear? Allez! And tell your friends, everybody, that he is clear of you all now. He’s free, and you’ll never find him. Never.’
The door banged behind us.
‘Is not a very rewarding visit, eh?’ Barre said with a chuckle as we walked back to the car. He seemed to enjoy my discomfort, and then as we drove back down to the main road he said, ‘Nothing is what it seems to be, isn’t it so? The man you regard as a terrorist, others think of in ideological terms. So what about Choffel, eh? You see him as a wrecker, a man who has deliberately caused a tanker to go on to the rocks, but to his daughter he is a kindly, generous man who would not hurt a soul and you are the enemy.’ He glanced at me quickly. ‘How do you think he sees himself?’
I hadn’t considered that. ‘I’ve had other things to think about,’ I told him.
‘That is not an answer.’ He waited a moment, then said, ‘But why does he do it?’
‘Money,’ I said. ‘What else?’
‘There are other reasons – anger, frustration, politics. Have you thought about those?’
‘No.’
He gave a little shrug and after that he didn’t ask any more questions. It was a filthy drive, night falling and the traffic heavy after we had passed through Saumur. He seemed withdrawn then. A dusting of sleet gradually laid a white coating over everything. He had the radio on, the windscreen wipers clicking back and forth – my eyes closed, my mind drifting into reverie, no longer thinking about the girl, but about my meeting with Baldwick. It loomed closer every minute and I had no idea where it would take me, what I was letting myself in for. Suppose I was wrong? Suppose he hadn’t recruited Choffel? Then it would be to no purpose and I could find myself involved in something so crooked that not even my letter of agreement with Forthright’s would protect me.
It was just on six when we pulled up at the entrance to my hotel. ‘I’m sorry you don’t get what you want,’ he said. ‘But the girl was frightened. You realize that.’ And he sat there, staring at me, waiting for me to say something. ‘You frightened her,’ he said again.
I started to open the door, thanking him for the trouble he had taken and for the lunch he had insisted on buying me, but his hand gripped my arm, holding me. ‘So! She is right. It was your wife. I had forgotten the name. I did not connect.’ He was leaning towards me, his face close, his eyes staring into mine. ‘Mon Dieu!’ he breathed. ‘And you have no proof, none at all.’
No?’ I laughed. The man was being stupid. ‘For God’s sake! The chief was sick, or so he says. Choffel was in charge, and for the secondary reduction gear to go right after an engine failure … that … that’s too much of a coincidence. He was quite close to it when it happened. He admitted that.’ And then I was reminding him that, at the first opportunity, the man had stolen a dinghy, got aboard a Breton fishing boat, then flown out to Bahrain to board a freighter bound for Karachi and had finally been picked up by a dhow in the Hormuz Straits. ‘His escape, everything, organized, even his name changed from Speridion back to Choffel. What more do you want?’
He sat back then with a little sigh, both hands on the wheel. ‘Maybe,’ he murmured. ‘But she’s a nice girl and she was scared.’
‘She knew I was right. She knew he was caught up in some crooked scheme—’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ But then he shrugged and left it at that. ‘Alors! If there is anything more I can do for you—’ He barely waited for me to get out before pulling away into the traffic.
There was a note for me at the desk. Baldwick was back and waiting for me in the hotel’s bar-restaurant. I went up to my room, had a wash in lukewarm water, then stood at the window for a moment staring down at the shop-lit street below, where cars moved sluggishly in a glitter of tiny snowflakes. Now that the moment of my meeting with Baldwick had come, I was unsure of myself, disliking the man and the whole stinking mess of Arab corruption on which he battened. A gust of wind drove snowflakes hard like sugar against the window and I laughed, remembering the girl. If it were true what Barre had said, that she’d been frightened of me … well, now I knew what it felt like. I was scared of Baldwick, of thrusting my neck into his world, not knowing where it would lead. And the girl reminding me of Karen. God damn it! If I was scared now, how would it be when I was face to face with her father?
I turned abruptly from the window. It wasn’t murder. To kill a rat like that … Why else was I here, anyway? In Nantes. At the same hotel as Baldwick. And she’d known about Baldwick. I was certain of it, that gleam of recognition when I mentioned his name. She’d associated him with her father’s escape. And Baldwick in Sennen when that picture had been taken of the Petros Jupiter’s crew coming ashore. To recruit a man like Choffel meant he’d been told to find an engineer who was an experienced wrecker.
I shivered, the room cold, the future looming uncertain. Another gust rattled the window. I made an effort, pulled myself together and started down the stairs.
The bar-restaurant looked out on to the street, the windows edged with a dusting of ice crystals, the snow driving horizontally. The place was cold and almost empty. Baldwick was sitting at a table pulled as close as possible to a moveable gas fire. He had another man with him, a thin-faced man with a dark blue scarf wrapped round a scrawny neck and a few strands of hair slicked so carefully over the high bald dome of his head that they looked as though they were glued there. ‘Albert Varsac,’ Baldwick said.
The man rose, tall and gaunt. ‘Capitaine Varsac.’ He held out a bony hand.
‘First mate on a coaster’s as far as you ever got.’ Baldwick laughed, prodding him with a thick finger. ‘That’s raight, ain’t it? You never bin an effing captain in yer life.’ He waved me to a seat opposite. ‘Got your message,’ he said. His eyes were glassy, his mood truculent. He shouted for a glass, and when it came, he sloshed red wine into it and pushed it across to me. ‘So you changed your mind, eh?’
I nodded, wondering how far I would have to commit myself in order to catch up with Choffel.
‘Why?’ He leaned forward, his big bullet head thrust towards me, the hard bright eyes staring me in the face. ‘You good as told me ter bugger off when I saw you down at that little rat hole of a cottage of yours. Get a’t, you said. I don’t want anything to do wi’ yer bloody proper-propositions. Raight?’ He wasn’t drunk, but he’d obviously had a skin full, the north country accent more pronounced, his voice a little slurred. ‘So why’re you here, eh? Why’ve you changed yer mind?’ His tone was hostile.
I hesitated, glancing at the Frenchman who was gazing at me with drunken concentration. ‘The reason doesn’t matter.’ My voice sounded nervous, fear of the man taking hold of me again.
‘I got ter be sure …’ He said it slowly, to himself, and I suddenly sensed a mood of uncertainty in him. In that moment, as he picked up the bottle and thrust it into Varsac’s hands, I glimpsed it from his point of view, engaging men he didn’t know for some crooked scheme he didn’t dare tell them about or perhaps didn’t even know himself. ‘You piss off,’ he told the Frenchman. ‘I wan’ ter talk to Rodin ’ere alone.’ He waved the man away, an impatient flick of a great paw, and when he’d gone, he called for another bottle. ‘Now’, he said. ‘Let’s ’ave it. Why’re you here?’ He was leaning forward again, the hard little eyes boring into me, and I sat there for what seemed an age, staring at him speechless, not knowing what to say, conscious only that it wasn’t going to be easy. The bastard was suspicious.
‘The book,’ I said finally, my voice no more than a whisper. ‘The publishers turned it down.’
&
nbsp; ‘The publishers?’ He stared at me blankly. Then, suddenly remembering, he opened his mouth and let out a great gust of laughter. ‘Turned it da’n, did they? That bleedin’ book of yours. An’ now you come runnin’ ter me.’ He sat back, belching and patting his stomach, a smug, self-satisfied gleam in his eye. ‘Wot makes yer think I still got a job for yer, eh?’
There was a sort of cunning in the way he said it, but his acceptance of my explanation gave me confidence. ‘The desk said you were booked out to Marseilles in the morning,’ I said. ‘If you’d got all the officers you needed, you’d be headed for Dubai, not Marseilles. And you didn’t get the master of the Petros Jupiter, only the engineer.’
I was taking a chance in saying that, but he only grinned at me. ‘Been makin’ enquiries, have yer?’
‘Where’s the ship?’ I asked. I thought he might be drunk enough to tell me. ‘Abu Dhabi, Dubai—’
The grin faded. ‘Yer don’t ask questions, mate. Not if yer wantin’ a job a’t o’ me. Got it?’ He leaned forward, the glassy eyes staring. ‘You’ve no idea, have you – no idea at all what a man like me ’as ter do ter turn an honest silver thaler.’ There was sweat on his forehead, his eyes glazing, and he was breathing deeply so that I thought for a moment he was going to pass out on me. ‘But this is different.’ He seemed to pull himself together. ‘The men I need – they got ter be …’ His voice trailed away and he was silent for a while, staring down at his glass as though thinking something out. Finally he lifted his head, looking straight at me as he said, ‘I got ter be careful, see.’ His eyes held mine for a long moment, then he refilled our glasses. ‘You sold that cottage of yours?’
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘I’ve told them not to put it on the market till the spring.’
He lifted his glass, swallowing half of it at a gulp as though it were beer. ‘Won’t fetch much, will it?’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smiling. ‘Yer wife dead and yer book in the dustbin, in a bit of a mess, ain’t yer?’ His eyes creased, smiling at me as though somebody in a bit of a mess was what life was all about. ‘Got anything tucked away?’
The Black Tide Page 11