Trouble

by Michael Gilbert

  Copyright & Information

  Trouble

  First published in 1987

  © Estate of Michael Gilbert; House of Stratus 1987-2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Michael Gilbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  0755105303 9780755105304 Print

  0755132467 9780755132461 Kindle

  0755132467 9780755132461 Epub

  0755146867 9780755146864 Epdf

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Born in Lincolnshire, England, Michael Francis Gilbert graduated in law from the University of London in 1937, shortly after which he first spent some time teaching at a prep-school which was followed by six years serving with the Royal Horse Artillery. During World War II he was captured following service in North Africa and Italy, and his prisoner-of-war experiences later leading to the writing of the acclaimed novel ‘Death in Captivity’ in 1952.

  After the war, Gilbert worked as a solicitor in London, but his writing continued throughout his legal career and in addition to novels he wrote stage plays and scripts for radio and television. He is, however, best remembered for his novels, which have been described as witty and meticulously-plotted espionage and police procedural thrillers, but which exemplify realism.

  HRF Keating stated that ‘Smallbone Deceased’ was amongst the 100 best crime andmystery books ever published. “The plot,” wrote Keating, “is inevery way as good as those of Agatha Christie at her best: as neatlydovetailed, as inherently complex yet retaining a decent credibility, and asfull of cunningly-suggested red herrings.” It featured Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, who went on to appear in later novels and short stories, and another series wasbuilt around Patrick Petrella, a London based police constable (later promoted)who was fluent in four languages and had a love for both poetry and fine wine. Othermemorable characters around which Gilbert built stories included Calder and Behrens. They are elderly but quite amiable agents, who are nonetheless ruthless andprepared to take on tasks too much at the dirty end of the business for theiryounger colleagues. They are brought out of retirement periodically uponreceiving a bank statement containing a code.

  Muchof Michael Gilbert’s writing was done on the train as he travelled from home tohis office in London: “I always take a latish train to work,” heexplained in 1980, “and, of course, I go first class. I have no trouble inwriting because I prepare a thorough synopsis beforehand.”. After retirementfrom the law, however, he nevertheless continued and also reviewed for ‘TheDaily Telegraph’, as well as editing ‘The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes’.

  Gilbertwas appointed CBE in 1980. Generally regarded as ‘one of the elder statesmen ofthe British crime writing fraternity, he was a founder-member of the BritishCrime Writers’ Association and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by theMystery Writers of America, before receiving the Lifetime ‘Anthony’ Achievementaward at the 1990 Boucheron in London.

  MichaelGilbert died in 2006, aged ninety three, and was survived by his wife and theirtwo sons and five daughters.

  The ambush was laid with speed, efficiency and simplicity. From his point of vantage the fair-haired man observed it with a mixture of fury and the admiration of a professional for a professional job well done.

  At the last moment, when the van could be heard coming up from the sea, but was still out of sight round the final bend in the track, the three caravans started up their engines and drove out, completely filling the path which ran between the border-fences of the two caravan areas. The dawn was almost up, but the caravans, grey and unlit, were not easy to spot and the van was only twenty yards away when the driver realised that his way was barred. He stamped on his brakes and skidded to a halt. A man stood up on either side of the track. They were wearing combat jackets and were carrying Hechler and Koch MP5 machine pistols. The taller of the men said, “End of journey. All out.”

  The driver jerked the gear into reverse, but before the van could move a shot had slammed into the engine.

  Prologue

  Cuckmere Haven – Het Zoute – Hereford

  The Belgian motor fishing vessel Petite Amie nosed her way inshore. The steadying sail, the only canvas she carried, was set on the stubby mizzenmast aft and her ninety horsepower Gardner engine was running at quarter speed. It was two o’clock in the morning of midsummer day and the moon, nearly full, was turning the blackness into a pearly dimness which would have ravished the heart of an artist.

  Tinus Meagher, owner and skipper of the Petite Amie, was not ravished. He was in a filthy temper, made worse for him by the fact that he had no one to work it off on. What he needed was someone who would answer back and could be shouted down. His crew, on this trip, was two youngsters, neither of them suitable as a conversational punch bag.

  His nephew, Marise, mazed poor boy, would chuckle at anything he said, complimentary or insulting. Dirk, who was standing beside him in the tiny wheelhouse, was a different proposition. He had, by his own account, spent some time in the French Navy and could normally be relied on to speak his mind, but he was too conscious of his dubious position on this particular trip to do more than agree with anything that was said to him.

  “An ebb tide,” said Meagher. “A fockink ebb tide. Think of it, boy. I’m told to lay my boat on the two fathom mark in an ebb tide. Have they given it one moment of thought? Do they know that my draught is two metres? Have they troubled to carry out the simple calculation which would have informed them that two metres is more than one fathom? Do they suppose that less than one fathom is a suitable clearance on an ebb tide? Well – what do you say?”

  Dirk said that Herr Wulfkind had probably given no thought to the matter at all. He added that this was typical of landsmen who tried to deal with sea matters.

  “Landsman or no landsman, is it beyond him to make a calculation which would not be too hard for a child of seven? And another thing. Has he considered that we are approaching the mouth of a river? Even a small river brings down new sand-banks to its mouth every year. And how old is our chart? I will tell you. It is twelve years old. Had he thought of that, do you suppose?”

  Dirk said that Herr Wulfkind was probably as ignorant of charts as of everything except the sale of marble. He managed to switch the conversation by announcing that he thought he could now see the Seven Sisters.

  “There, surely, a point or two to starboard.”

  He rattled out this expression as if to demonstrate the jargon he had picked up in his brief and inglorious career in the French Navy.

  “Don’t think, make sure,” growled Meagher.

  Dirk went out on to the after deck, treading carefully to avoid the four coffin-shaped boxes which were stacked there. He had a pair of night-glasses, but did not need to use them. He could see the line of the seven cliff faces clearly enough. He judged that they were half a mile offshore and
went back to the wheelhouse to report.

  The skipper received the news without enthusiasm. He had reverted to a further grievance.

  “Lights,” he said. “You were there when the instruction was given. We were to proceed without lights. Did the fockink boggert think I was driving a motor-bus down the main street in Brussels?”

  Dirk took this for a joke and sniggered. It was a mistake.

  “Why do you laugh, boy? Is it because you have no more brains in your head than Herr Wulfkind? Do you think that if we sailed without lights we should not be seen? Of course we are seen. We are seen by every ship that looks into its radar screen. Just as I look into mine and see them. They say, what is this? A ship sailing without lights. He must be up to no good. Send out a warning. So I disregard such a stupid instruction. I sail with my port and starboard lights and my masthead light, as an honest skipper should. All the same,” he added, peering out of the starboard side-window, “I think perhaps I will turn them out now.”

  By this time they were closing fast on the shore. Dirk went aft again. No need for glasses. He could pick out quite clearly the white posts he had been told to look for, one at each end of the line of shingle which formed a strip of beach at the foot of the cliffs.

  He took out the Navy-type prismatic compass, holding it with his thumb hitched through the ring in the way he had been taught and lifting it to his eye. Then he read off a bearing to each post in turn.

  Left post 348°. Right post 12°.

  He shouted, “Too far out.”

  Meagher shouted back. “Too far out? What sort of instruction is that? You’re the navigator. Tell me how much too far.”

  The trigonometry involved in this calculation was beyond Dirk. He could only guess.

  “A hundred metres. Maybe two hundred.”

  They were level with the beach now and could see the white froth on the river as it tumbled out to sea. Meagher swung the wheel and they came round in a shoreward circle and returned on their track. He had his eyes on the echo-sounder beside the wheel. Despite his protests he was reasonably certain that it would keep him out of trouble. The graph line on the recorder had been creeping upwards for some time, but it still showed him a clearance of six metres.

  More than three fathoms. He could afford to edge in a little closer.

  The boat, with the tidal current heading it and with what little wind there was dead astern, was now almost completely steady. Dirk was taking readings to each post in turn as they came in.

  35°, 40°, 42°, to the right hand post.

  325°, 320°, 318°, to the left hand post.

  He said to himself, “That’ll do.” The momentum of the boat would carry them forward to the 315°/45° mark which was his objective.

  He shouted, in an oddly authoritative voice, “Anchor down.” Marise jumped to the capstan and let go the anchor. The boat swung gently round, presenting its stern to the beach.

  The activity which followed involved all three of them. A mushroom-shaped buoy with four rings under it, which had been hanging over the side, was lowered into the water, brought round to the stern and anchored. A plank was laid from the after deck to the stern rail and, one by one, the coffin-shaped boxes were manhandled up it. Each box had attached to it a length of chain ending with a snap-link. As soon as the snap-link was attached to the ring under the buoy, the case was lowered over the sides.

  “And now,” said Meagher, who seemed to be recovering his normal good spirits with the end of the job in sight, “we will put on the old gentleman’s night cap.”

  This was a bonnet-shaped piece of netting with streamers of brown and black hessian and seaweed laced through it. It had been designed to fit over the rounded top of the buoy.

  “Tie it firmly,” said Meagher. “The old gentleman may be restless in bed. His cap must not tumble off.”

  The two boys laughed.

  “No time for jokes,” said Meagher. He stumped back to the wheelhouse. “Home now. Bring in the anchor. And we will turn on the lights. All the fockink lights.”

  The Petite Amie swung round and gathered speed. In the wake that it left behind, the lump of hessian and seaweed bobbed up and down.

  It seemed to be beckoning.

  The Cuckmere Haven caravan camp lies off the Seaford-Eastbourne road beyond Exeat Bridge. A track, cut into the enduring chalk, runs south from it for half a mile, following the left bank of the Cuckmere stream until this reaches the pebbly beach and runs out to sea below the foot of the cliffs.

  The camp was full; thirty caravans, each on its allotted pitch. Most of them were occupied by married couples or by family parties. An exception was the small and gaily painted van which the fair-haired man had brought in three days before. It had been squeezed into the only remaining space, in the bottom corner of the camp, up against the southern boundary fence. This was not a favoured position, but it suited the fair-haired man, who could walk out of the camp and along the track to the beach without passing any of the other caravanners.

  People who had seen him had agreed that he looked a pleasant young man, though one or two who had happened to meet him at closer quarters, on his way to the communal water-point, or shopping in the camp store, had jibbed at the word ‘young’. Seen at a distance he looked like a fair-haired brown-faced boy. But it was not a boy’s face.

  “It’s a mysterious sort of face,” said Mrs. Brumby to her husband. “A face with a lot of experience behind it.”

  “A film star, I suppose,” said Mr. Brumby.

  “Well, he could be. It’s that sort of face.”

  To which Mr. Brumby had said, “Nonsense,” this being his normal reaction to his wife’s ideas. “Ten to one he’s a clerk in an office, enjoying a quiet weekend by the sea. Nothing mysterious about him.”

  Had he been in a position to observe the fair-haired man’s actions at two o’clock on that midsummer morning, Mr. Brumby might have revised his opinion. It was not that he was behaving in a particularly odd way, but all of his movements had an air of planning and purpose behind them.

  He had finished a very simple meal. He was now washing and drying the dishes and stowing them away in the cupboard beside the sink. An empty corned-beef tin, the heel of a loaf, the remains of a packet of butter and two cans which had held lager beer went into a pail under the sink. Like any careful housewife doing messy work, the man had been wearing rubber gloves. He did not, however, remove them when he started on the next operation, which was a general tidying up.

  The blankets, which were part of the caravan stores, were folded and placed on the bunk, which was then shut down. His own linen, a pillow-case and two towels, went into his pack with his few personal belongings. He was a scrupulous tidier. An empty matchbox from a shelf above the bed was dropped into his knapsack, with the few papers in the waste-paper basket. After that he started work with a duster. He polished every surface and edge which could possibly have held dust and some which could hardly have done so. Finally, he brushed the carpet and rolled it up. By the time this housework had been finished his watch showed three forty-five a.m.

  His knapsack was the sort carried by climbers. It had two straps which went over the shoulders. The man fastened it in position over the windcheater which he had put on, took a final look round, turned out the lamp over the bed and slid back the shutter which covered the window.

  Midsummer day. It would be light by four o’clock, or very soon afterwards. Through the window he could see the three grey caravans. They had arrived at eight o’clock on the previous evening. Since there had been no regular site for them to occupy they had been allowed to stand in a row along the southern boundary, outside the fence; thus, incidentally, blocking his exit in that direction.

  This was not the only thing about the caravans which had interested him. It was the conduct of their occupants.

  Normally new arrivals would emerge as soon as their caravan was in position, to fetch water, to visit the shop, to look round for acquaintances. If there were children,
they would be allowed out to play whilst supper was being cooked. If it was fine, and it had been very fine all that day, a canopy might be erected and camp-chairs and tables brought out and set up.

  The occupants of the three caravans had done none of these things. In fact, although he had watched from his window, he had caught no more than an occasional glimpse of any of them. They all seemed to be men. He had heard the occasional murmur of voices. Their lights had gone out promptly at eleven o’clock.

  “You might have thought Last Post and Lights Out had been blown on a bugle,” said the watcher. It worried him, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  The boat would have come and gone. The van would be arriving at any minute now. If the agreed timings had been observed, it would drive down the track between the two wings of the camp at precisely four fifteen a.m.

  It was time to take up observation.

  He opened the door and stepped out. He had already chosen his position. He would be underneath the caravan in the line which fronted the track on the nearside. From there he could see the van, both arriving and departing. When it was safely away on the road to Seaford, his own job would be finished, and he would slip off by the footpath which led up-river to Alfriston where he had garaged a car, hired in a name which was not his own.

  The van was an army three-tonner with four-wheel drive and ample stowage space under its canopy. As it crossed Exeat Bridge the driver glanced down at his wrist-watch. A minute short of four fifteen. In the preliminary conferences it had been suggested that there might be some mist over the river and there were contingency plans for this, but the June air was as clear as crystal. As soon as he had swung into the track he turned out both head and side lights. The surface of the track, being chalk, was easily visible and the light was growing rapidly. In less than five minutes he had reached the edge of the shingle beach and had swung the truck round, with its back to the sea.