The Body in the Ice

by A. J. MacKenzie

  The cutter drew closer. The man in the boat cupped his hands and gave a soft hail. ‘Finny! Say voo?’

  A moment, and then a voice sounded low over the water from the ship. ‘C’est moi, bien sûr. Où êtes-vous?’

  ‘Heave to. I’ll come to you.’ He dug in the oars again.

  A few minutes later the boat was alongside the cutter, hulls bumping together in the long swells. ‘Yorkshire Tom’, said a shadowy figure in the cutter. He spoke good English, though with a rasping north French accent. ‘It is good to see you, my friend. All is well?’

  ‘All quiet, Finny. Are we on?’

  ‘As agreed, in two days time. We’ll come a little before high tide, as usual. Here are the manifests.’

  An oilcloth packet was passed over. Inside it, the man called Yorkshire Tom knew, were lists of the consignments that would be smuggled across the Channel: tubs of gin, casks and bottles of brandy, bolts of silk and lace, bales of tobacco: comforts and luxuries which were heavily taxed in England. Every item on the manifests had been ordered and spoken for, some by local shopkeepers in Kent, others by middlemen and negociants who would transport the goods to London and arrange their sale there. That was nothing to do with him; the task of men like Finny and Yorkshire Tom was merely to get the cargoes across the Channel and safely ashore.

  ‘You have the downpayment, of course’, Finny added.

  ‘Of course.’ Yorkshire Tom reached into the boat and pulled out a heavy canvas bag that clinked a little. ‘Twenty per cent’, he said, handing the bag across to the cutter, where eager hands grasped it. ‘Rest to follow on receipt of the goods.’

  ‘Bon. I will inform Le Passeur. The location is the same? St Mary’s Bay?’

  ‘Yes. Look for the usual signals.’

  ‘And the Preventive Men?’

  ‘The revenue cruiser went down the Channel yesterday. She’ll be down Brighton way until next week. We’ve arranged a distraction for the land guard, but if they do come near us, Clubber will have enough men to deal with them.’

  ‘Then all is well.’

  Yorkshire Tom nodded in the dark. ‘Le Passeur will be in charge of the boats. What about Bertrand? Will he be there?’

  The man called Finny chuckled. ‘Bertrand does not want to see you. Does he still owe you the money?’

  ‘He does’, said Yorkshire Tom. Finny chuckled again. All the smuggling communities on both sides of the Channel knew that Bertrand owed this debt, and why.

  ‘I saw Bertrand’s lugger this evening’, said Finny, conversationally. ‘He set out from Wimereux just after sunset, shaping a course west. On that heading, I reckon he was making for Dungeness.’

  Yorkshire Tom swore. ‘What’s that blasted lubber up to now?’

  ‘I have no idea. We do not see each other socially.’ Finny was from Ambleteuse, while Bertrand was from Wimereux; the French smugglers, just like the English ones, had their local rivalries. ‘I must go’, said the Frenchman. ‘It will be light soon. Au revoir, Tom.’

  The man in the boat waved and dug in his oars, pulling away from the cutter. Dim in the darkness, he saw her mainsail run up, and then another jib; she turned, gathering way, and vanished into the night. Yorkshire Tom, who also answered to the name of Joshua Stemp, rested on his oars for a moment, thinking about the man called Bertrand.

  Six months ago, he had done the Frenchman a good turn, helping him escape from an English gaol and recover his ship. The price for this favour had been clearly agreed. But since then, Bertrand had been elusive. Stemp’s inquiring messages had gone unanswered. When Stemp himself went across to Wimereux, there was no sign of Bertrand; his colleagues claimed that he had gone away to visit his dying mother. Or was it grandmother? They had not been certain.

  ‘Dungeness’, Stemp muttered to himself. ‘What would that daft French bugger be doing down at Dungeness? Who is he meeting there?’ Did Bertrand perhaps have a new English business partner? If so, Stemp wanted to know who it was. He dug in the oars again and bent his back, turning the boat south and rowing steadily across the quiet, rolling sea.

  High above, the stars shimmered in their cold, distant glory. The coast of Romney Marsh lay low to his left; he could just make out the tall tower of St Nicholas, dark against the starlight. From time to time, he stopped and turned to scan the sea ahead through his spyglass.

  An hour passed. The gleam of Dungeness lighthouse was brighter now. Dawn must not be far away. Stemp turned to look ahead once more, and at once drew in his oars, letting the boat rest on the gentle sea. Through the glass, he could see a shadow against the stars; a dark rectangle, the lugsail of a ship perhaps half a mile away, crawling over the sea in the light breeze. He stared hard at the sail. This was not Bertrand’s ship. In fact, he was quite certain he had never seen that particular rig before.

  Even as he watched, a light flashed from the ship’s deck, a lantern briefly uncovered and then covered again. The signal was repeated. Stemp strained his eyes, looking for an answering signal from the shore; he saw none. But the ship’s captain must have been satisfied, for the sail came down. The lugger drifted on the current now, her bare masts and yards dark lines against the faint sky. Cautiously, Stemp dipped his oars and rowed a little closer.

  Another sound came to his ears; the creak and splash of oars. Another rowing boat was coming out from shore. Again, Stemp strained his eyes through the spyglass, seeing the silhouette come out of the night. He studied the boat, and then went still.

  He knew the boat, and he knew the man who owned it. All the boats built along this coast were of the same design, with high thwarts and pointed prows, but equally, every one was built by hand and each had its own unique character.

  This particular boat belonged to man called Noakes, a boatman from Hythe. Like Stemp himself, Noakes was a smuggler; but even in that unruly fraternity, he was regarded as a violent and dangerous man. Stemp suspected him of murdering at least two men, possibly more, although no charges had ever been brought against him. He focused the spyglass on the man at the oars. There: that bulky shape, driving the boat over the water with powerful strokes, that surely was Noakes in person. Instinctively, like a man trying to ward off danger, Stemp crouched a little lower in the darkness.

  The boat moved up alongside the lugger. Voices called quiet greetings. Stemp continued to study the ship. She was broad in the beam, and judging by the way she rolled on the swells, of shallow draught. From the rake of her masts and the angle of her yards, he was certain she was not French. Dutch, perhaps? He had seen ships out of Rotterdam in the past, and they looked a little like this.

  He looked again. There were gaps in her bulwarks too; gunports. This ship carried cannon.

  Something was being lowered carefully into Noakes’s boat, something long and heavy. In the darkness, Stemp could not see clearly what it was. He watched the silhouettes of the men on deck, talking and gesturing to Noakes. Then the lugger hoisted her sails and turned away east, sailing close to the wind. Noakes watched her go for a moment, and then began to row again, heading straight back to shore.

  Cautiously, keeping to a parallel course, Stemp followed. They were not far from Dungeness now, no more than half a mile from the point, the lighthouse a stone finger rising from the empty wastes around it. In the east, the light was growing. Pink streaks began to flush the sky, the waves below reflecting patterns of rippling pale and shadow.

  The air grew hazy. Fog rose, feather white from the water. In a matter of minutes, the sunrise and the coast were both out of sight. The lighthouse faded and vanished. Visibility fell to perhaps twenty or thirty yards. Cold and clammy, the fog settled on Stemp. Sweating though he was from his exertions, he still felt the chill bite into him. A gull mewed, its cry muffled in the thick air.

  Up ahead more gulls were wailing. Something had disturbed them; Noakes, perhaps, landing his boat. Stemp turned towards where he thought the sound was coming from and rowed on, slowly, straining his ears. Now he could hear the sea on the invisible shore
, waves breaking with a soft thump, foam hissing on the beach, then the rattle of stones as the receding waves dragged the shingle after them.

  Ta-whoom . . . sheeeee . . . ratta-ratta-ratta-ratta-ratta.

  Ta-whoom . . . sheeeee . . . ratta-ratta-ratta-ratta.

  The beach loomed out of the mist, a steep bank of shingle in front of him. Stemp ran his boat ashore with a grate of keel on stone and stepped out, dragging the boat up onto the beach. His boots crunched on the stones with every step. The fog hung like a grey cloak, hiding everything. Still the sea hissed and rattled.

  Ta-whoom . . . sheeeee . . . ratta-ratta-ratta-ratta.

  ‘Ee-ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!’ Something hurtled, shrieking out of the mist and nearly hit Stemp’s head before veering off sharply, still wailing in alarm. He started violently, reaching for his knife. Then he realised it was a gull, lost in the fog like himself. He cursed, then stood working out what to do next.

  He thought Noakes might have landed a little way to his left. Slowly, with deliberate steps, he set off down the beach. The shingle crunched beneath his boots. The wind rose gently at his back and sent ghostly shapes of fog spinning around him, clutching at him. His heart thudded hard in his chest. He was sweating and cold. The fog reeked of the sea, filling his nostrils. The clumps of sea kale that grew out of the shingle were black in the dull light. Crunch, crunch, crunch went his boots, and the sea continued its hissing rhythm, sinister in the fog.

  Ta-whoom . . . sheeeee . . . ratta-ratta-ratta-ratta.

  A dark shape in the fog ahead, a low lump on the beach. He crouched down, drawing his knife. A gull cried mournfully overhead, setting his stretched nerves still further on edge. He wiped the water from his face and moved forward slowly, crunching. The outlines of the dark shape hardened and he saw Noakes’s boat, deserted. Indentations in the shingle showed that the boat’s owner had climbed the beach and gone inland. Stemp waited for several minutes, listening for any sound of his return, but beyond the sea and the nerve-shredding cries of the gulls, all was silent.

  He walked forward to the boat. He listened again for a moment, then stooped and drew back the boat’s canvas cover. Then he stood stock still, staring.

  Lying in the bottom of the boat was a coffin.

  Tingling with tension, Stemp studied it. The coffin was plain, of dark wood with carrying handles on either side. The lid was securely nailed down, either to protect the cadaver inside or, more likely, to prevent the smells of corruption from escaping. It had been a little damaged in its recent handling; splinters had been knocked out of one corner. Stemp wondered, briefly, where it had come from, and whose body was inside.

  Stemp was not a superstitious man, and he had been in the presence of death before, many times. But here, on this lonely fogbound beach, with the sea hissing and rattling and the dark sea kale glowing like devil’s eyes against the pale shingle, the hair stood up on the nape of his neck. He drew the cover back over the boat, concealing the coffin, and backed away. His hands were shaking. He no longer cared who the body in the boat was. He only wanted to get away from this place before he was spotted.

  Too late. Crunch, crunch, crunch came distant to his ears. Invisible overhead, a gull screamed a warning.

  Panicked, Stemp turned and ran back towards his boat; but the thing pursuing him ran faster still. He heard the footsteps drawing closer and closer, the rattle of shingle louder and louder; cornered, he wheeled knife in hand, and out of the fog came an immense shape, its size magnified by the dim light, bounding on four legs across the shingle. It was a mastiff, a huge one, black fur matted with damp, jaws dripping long strings of slaver. When it saw him, it skidded to a halt and then stalked forward slowly, hackles raised, eyes mad with violence, growling deep in its throat. The dog threw up its head and barked loudly, twice.

  Stemp cursed. He stepped backwards, still facing the dog, knife held well to the fore; not that the knife would be much use against the mastiff. One leap, and it would throw him backwards and pin him, then rip out his throat. And now he could hear more running steps, the dog’s master coming in response to its call. He continued to back away, his eyes never leaving the dog, until he bumped against his own boat.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch. The running footsteps were only a few yards away. Still watching the dog, Stemp heaved the boat into the water, then scrambled over the thwarts. The mastiff rushed after him, teeth bared and ready for the kill. Stemp stood up in the boat, an oar in his hand. He flailed at the dog, then pushed against the shingle to drive the boat into deeper water. Balked, the mastiff raged at him, dancing up and down the line of the water snarling and barking. After him, out of the drifting fog came a big man with shaggy dark hair, carrying a knife of his own. His seamed face and broken nose were dark with rage.

  ‘Yorkshire Tom! Get back here, you bastard!’

  ‘Go to hell, Noakes’, said Stemp, breathing hard.

  Noakes roared at him, baring yellow, gapped teeth. ‘Damn you! What’re you doing down here? This ain’t your patch!’

  ‘I could say the same about you.’ Stemp sat down on the bench, slammed the oars into their locks and dug into the water, pulling hard.

  ‘Get back here, I say! Get back here!’ The boat carried further from the beach, and Noakes snarled. ‘Nah, that’s it! Run away, you bloody coward!’

  Stemp gritted his teeth and pulled on the oars again. ‘I’m coming after you, Tom!’ Noakes shouted, slashing the air with his knife. ‘I’ll finish you, by God I will! I’ll cut your heart out, you son of a whore!’

  ‘Go bugger yourself’, said Stemp. It was not the most original insult, but it was all he had energy for. Then the fog swirled again and the beach was hidden from view, and all he could hear was the complaint of the gulls and the mad snarl of the dog. Weary with relief, he turned the boat north towards home.

  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Zaffre Publishing

  This ebook edition published in 2017 by

  Zaffre Publishing

  80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE

  www.zaffrebooks.co.uk

  Copyright © A.J. MacKenzie

  The moral right of A.J. MacKenzie to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-7857-6124-9

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7857-6122-5

  This ebook was produced by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd

  Zaffre Publishing is an imprint of Bonnier Zaffre, a Bonnier Publishing company

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