by Tim Heald
Cornwall leaned against the rail and looked out over the swirling whitecaps, feeling the salt on his face. ‘Maybe you’re Ashley’s sleeper. You’ve been put in place, lulled me into a false sense of well-being and acceptance and then just when I least expect it you explode. An emotional suicide bomber, programmed to go off at the most lethal moment.’
She snorted. ‘Clever analogy,’ she said, ‘but insulting. I’m shocked. Anyone would think you didn’t trust me.’
‘Let’s go in,’ he said abruptly. ‘I need a strong coffee and a straight think.’
It was a relief to escape the raw wind and spume and to find oneself rocking comparatively gently at the bar while Boris’s espresso machine fizzed and fumed.
‘Did you like Ashley?’ he asked the girl.
She wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s sort of the wrong question,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Liking or not liking was never part of the equation with Ashley. He was a sort of Svengali figure and I was mesmerized. You don’t like or dislike people in situations like that. I was in thrall. Thrall. There’s a word. I’m not even exactly sure what it means but that’s what I was in. Bad place to be. Much better off out of it.’
Their coffees came. The ship rocked.
‘Maybe I was in thrall to Ashley once upon a time too,’ said Tudor. He felt comfortable suddenly. The insecurity of the abortive hijacking and the threat of the storm outside seemed to have abated. Disconcertingly he found himself thinking of modern shipwrecks. Titanic, of course, but more recently the car ferry Estonia which capsized in the Baltic in 1994 killing more than 800. Tudor’s own opinion regarding the disaster was that it was an accident brought about by faulty design, shoddy maintenance – greed, indiscipline and a furious storm. There was however, a conspiracy theory led by a former TV reporter called Jutta Rabe. Tudor had read her book and talked to many of those concerned. Jutta Rabe had made a film of the tragedy starring Greta Scacchi as an intrepid German TV reporter. Tudor had thought it ridiculous. However he could not completely discount the theory that the ship’s bows had been blown off by explosive charges planted by former KGB agents who escaped in a lifeboat and were never found. The notion seemed fanciful and melodramatic, but then conspiracy theories nearly always did and sometimes they were correct.
More to the point, in a way, was the sense of complete security which preceded the capsize. Hundreds of people were drinking in the bars; many others were in their cabins, tucked up, asleep, lulled there by the seductively soporific motion of the ship. Much as now, moving to and fro on a bar stool, contemplating a serious double espresso in five star comfort alongside a pretty person with dangerous legs and lips. What could be safer?
It reminded him of that remark in Conan Doyle about the smiling English countryside actually being a much more dangerous place than the snarling English city. Boris’ Bar on the Duchess had an almost womb-like quality with its serried ranks of single malts and insect-riddled tequilas. Boris himself shimmered about shaking cocktails smoothly and exuding a reassuring charm. The carpets were thick. The sepia prints of ancient ships and seafarers spoke of history and tried and tested values. There was a scent of expensive cigar and Chanel.
Yet... it would be stretching a point to say that they were sitting in a floating death-trap but this place was nowhere as safe as it seemed. Like life itself. One of the obvious discoveries he had made in the course of his academic career was that the only way most people got through life was because they believed that life would always continue in a placid almost somnolent almost entirely predictable fashion. If you could see the horrors around the corner you’d give up immediately, slash your wrists or throw yourself somewhere from a great height.
This was an obvious fact but academics devoted their lives to stating the obvious in a mildly obfuscatory manner designed to impress the laity. It was almost a definition of his role: to spend a long time and much research in order to demonstrate a proposition which most people thought too obvious to be worth discussing. You took some corny old adage such as ‘Pride comes before a fall’ and conducted a number of case-studies, got a market research company to issue question¬naires to demonstrate that in 51 per cent of all known cases pride did indeed come before a fall, but that notwithstanding this, the chances of it doing so were significantly greater if you were a low-earning smoker from the Scottish borders than if you were an affluent retired non-smoker in the Home Counties.
The proposition he now considered was how the time to really worry about some unexpected disaster was when you were feeling most secure. That was when these things struck. That was what happened on the Estonia and the Titanic. Those on board, believed, against all the evidence that the vessels were unsinkable. 'Blow, blow thou winter wind/Thou art not so unkind/As man’s ingratitude.’ Shakespeare. As You Like It. But had Shakespeare ever really been in a tempest? Were his storms truly convincing? Did he, like J.M.W. Turner, lash himself to the mast of a struggling ship in order to experience the reality of a storm at sea. Did it really matter? What price imagination?
'Penny for them,’ said Elizabeth, at his elbow.
‘I was just thinking how good the coffee was and how much I needed it. Also that I’m speaking this afternoon and I’m not sure how much enthusiasm I can really muster for the Bounty and Bligh.’
‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ she said. ‘You were thinking about Ashley. Trying to get inside his head.’
‘Why ask if you know the answers?’ he said, 'Little Miss Know All.’
She was right of course. If she had been wrong he wouldn’t have been so unreasonably irritated. Getting inside the head of your opponent, the criminal, was one of the first essentials of good detection. It was the most obvious reason for the West’s inability to cope with al-Qaeda. Very few westerners, especially those in the security services, had the knowledge and sophistication to get inside the heads of Islamic preachers or disaffected Asian youths. He, Tudor, probably didn’t have what it took to get inside the head of Ashley Carpenter. Nevertheless he knew that that was where the answers lay. Psychological understanding.
It was why the old-fashioned custom whereby coppers hung out with villains, drank in their dens, flirted with their molls and were, shamefully, often as bent as the criminals they were supposed to be chasing, was in some ways more effective than the modern ivory tower methods involving DNA and the internet. Same went for crime reporting. The old-fashioned ways may have seemed primitive or politically incorrect but they were often effective.
‘You’re away with the fairies,’ she said. The ship lurched suddenly and their coffee cups slid in unison down the bar counter spilling as they went.
‘I suppose,’ he admitted. Then, in self-vindication, said, ‘I was only thinking. There’s a lot to think about.’
‘Fancy sharing some of them?’
He looked at her, wondering, not for the first time, what was going on inside that pretty little head of hers and then cursing himself for being so patronizing even though he was keeping these male-chauvinist thoughts to himself.
‘The more I know about crime,’ he said, ‘the more I understand how little I know. That’s life, but even so. I mean, I think Ashley is obsessional about me for some reason I don’t properly understand. I always liked him. Or thought I did. He seems to hate me. I don’t understand why. And if I don’t fully understand why I’ll never be able to predict what he’ll do next. Which is true of nearly all criminal activity.’
‘Ashley is beyond understanding,’ she said, with feeling. ‘He’s almost certainly criminally insane which means that someone who is sane and law-abiding is in serious trouble when it comes to comprehending what makes Ashley tick. I don’t think anyone who isn’t barmy can ever properly come to terms with someone who is – despite what shrinks say. But, hey, I thought this cruise was supposed to be a rest?’
Tudor retrieved his coffee and sipped.
‘That’s the theory,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they are. Just as often they’re so stressful you need a
holiday when you get home.’
He suddenly felt a need to unburden himself and slip into confessional mode. However, he was saved by the bell – literally. The bell was electronic and amplified and signified twelve noon. When it had finished sounding a voice came over the Tannoy. It was Scottish.
‘Hi, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,’ it began unpromisingly. ‘This is your Staff Captain, Angus Donaldson, speaking from the bridge. It is twelve noon and we are approximately three hundred miles west of Ireland steaming at a speed of approximately fifteen knots through winds of around Force Seven. And the first thing I should say, apart from wishing all and every one of you a very good day, is to apologize on behalf of the Master of the Duchess, Captain Sam Hardy. Unfortunately, Captain Sam became unwell in the night and is suffering from laryngitis.
‘I am happy to tell you that he is not actually suffering. Indeed he ate a hearty breakfast and he would be here with us talking to you today were it not for the fact that due to the illness from which he is suffering he has lost his voice completely.’
Captain Donaldson had clearly not lost his. One after another not particularly funny Scottish jokes, followed each other in a staccato stand-up-speakery of one-liners. Interspersed among these there were one or two more or less pertinent facts about the ship’s position and prospects. Donaldson did not, at any stage, allude to the dramatic incident involving the Tipperary Tatler girl and her friends. After about five minutes of wittering he signed off with an old chestnut about an Englishman, a Welshman and a Scotsman and what people wore under their kilts.
Tudor looked at his pupil and she gazed back at him.
‘What do you make of that?’ he asked. ‘Old Captain Birdseye seemed his usual implausible self last night.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ she said.
‘So?’
‘Fishy,’ she said, arching her eyebrows. ‘Captain overboard perhaps? A bridge too far?’
Tudor frowned but said nothing.
Chapter Twelve
They lunched off caviar in the Dowager’s Diner and sat at a table next to Prince Abdullah. Tudor always lunched off caviar when guest-lecturing. It was an extravagance he could otherwise not afford and it was relatively slimming despite the soured cream and the blinis. The restaurant, despite its kitsch name, was extravagantly elegant and reserved for the use of those in suites or the most expensive staterooms. Tudor and Elizabeth Burney somehow just made the cut largely thanks to the good offices of Mandy Goldslinger. Only Sir Goronwy and Lady Watkyn of the other guest speakers were similarly honoured. Little Freddie Grim was a class or two below in the Baroness Brasserie and gentlemen hosts such as Ambrose Perry were way beneath the salt and, almost, the water-line in the Butler’s Pantry.
The Prince ate mulligatawny soup, steak and kidney pudding, and jam roly poly. In between courses he smoked untipped Passing Cloud cigarettes. Tudor and Elizabeth watched out of the corners of their eyes with an almost awed fascination.
Eventually when all three were drinking coffee and the Prince was smoking yet another cigarette, he spoke.
‘I do hope,’ he said, in a nasal parody of an Oxford-BBC-Wodehousian accent, ‘that my smoking does not cause offence.’
Tudor and Elizabeth, both of whom would have much preferred a non-smoking dining-room, shook their heads and murmured polite nothings.
Evidently encouraged by this the Prince unbent.
‘Smoking at mealtimes is customary in my country,’ he said, smiling. ‘Just as it used to be in yours. However, the use of nicotine appears to have become unfashionable. In fact’ – and here he leaned towards them in a conspiratorial way – ‘in fact, I am sorry to say that as the result of pressure from certain non-smoking passengers, the owners of the Duchess went so far as to propose a shipboard ban on the practice. Happily they have now desisted.’
The Prince was clearly eager to impart a confidence so Tudor encouraged him to do so.
‘What made them do that?’ he asked innocently.
‘Aha,’ said the Prince, stubbing out a cigarette and immediately lighting another. ‘Money. As you say it speaks louder than words.’
Neither Tudor nor the girl were sure how to respond to this truism so they said nothing. However they both smiled in an encouraging way designed to make the Prince confide further.
‘Between you and I,’ he said conspiratorially, ‘it was that fellow Umlaut. He is not a good man, Herr Umlaut. Not one of us.’
Tudor was tempted to say ‘Ach so!’ or ‘Don’t mention the war’. Instead he merely muttered something inane about some of his best friends being German. He didn’t much like the look of the Umlauts either, but it had nothing to do with xenophobia. He just didn’t like the look of them. It was as simple as that. Or as complex. The half-empty, half-full argument.
‘In any event,’ said the Prince, ‘he was easily defeated. I simply told the shipping company that if the Duchess was declared a no-smoking zone I should like my money back. With interest. And as I have booked the two largest and most expensive suites for the best part of the next ten years this represented a substantial amount of spondulicks, at least as far as a not particularly well-managed medium-sized commercial company is concerned.
‘My grandfather made a fortune trading with river steamers on the Euphrates. He also built the world’s largest yacht. You have probably heard of her. The Ethel Selina named after my grandmother who was English and came from Letchworth. My beloved Granny Ethel.’ The Prince smiled and blew a blue smoke ring at the ceiling watching it wistfully as it dissolved above him.
‘Owning your own yacht, however, is, as you would put it, a mug’s game. Which is why I prefer to make my home aboard the Duchess.’
This was not an option available to either Tudor or Elizabeth but they nevertheless nodded in dutiful agreement as if they too were in the Forbes’ Magazine top hundred richest people in the world list. Then for a moment the three of them contemplated the coincidence which had thrown them together in such weird incongruity. Tudor was about to break the gathering ice with a hastily put-together platitude when the ship’s klaxon sounded.
It was the daily message from the bridge but, contrary to usual practice, it was not the captain.
Tudor took a sip of wine and frowned.
‘The captain seemed in good voice yesterday evening,’ he said.
‘Stentorian,’ agreed Elizabeth.
‘Like the proverbial foghorn,’ said Prince Abdullah as the staff captain chuntered on with longitudes, latitudes, gale warnings and ancient jokes.
None of the three could be bothered listening. It was perfectly obvious that they were sailing through stormy weather but that they were more or less on schedule. This was the Atlantic Ocean after all and the sturdy old Duchess was designed to cope with her. She might toss about a bit but she would emerge unscathed and on time. After all she had been doing so for the best part of thirty years.
‘I sense some form of rodent assailing the nostrils,’ said the Prince. Tudor wondered what sort of language school had taught him to maul the English tongue in such a peculiarly archaic manner. Actually it probably wasn’t a language school but some sort of mad tutor hired through some hopeless rival of Gabbitas and Thring, the educational employment agency.
‘The Master’s vocal chords appeared to be functioning with their usual stentorian efficiency,’ said the Prince. ‘Would you care to join me in a sticky?’
Tudor and Elizabeth looked at each other warily. It had been a hard and unusual day so far and Tudor had a lecture to deliver. Even so, both felt that they were on the verge of an interesting break-through. They were not exactly making a new friend but they seemed on the verge of crashing a hitherto forbidding barrier. In an unexpectedly threatening little world they could use any ally they could find. It would be good to have Prince Abdullah on side, however precariously.
They settled for a Calvados apiece.
‘You come here often?’ asked Tudor, disingenuously, as the Staff Captain
finally signed off with yet another ghastly joke.
The Prince sighed. It seemed to Tudor that the sigh was both weary and wary – a sign of fatigue and caution.
‘I feel at home here,’ he said, ‘but perhaps not as at home as I once did.’
Tudor and Elizabeth hung on his words, smiling encouragingly, saying nothing.
‘They tried to stop smoking,’ said the Prince, ‘until I persuaded them that it was an abuse of civil liberties. Dashed impertinence. Like this hand-washing rigmarole. I don’t hold with it.’
Because of something called the Norovirus, previously known as the Norwalk Virus, passengers were required to go through a ritual hand cleansing when boarding the ship or entering any of the restaurants. All passengers were given a piece of paper which contained the admonition: we would like to remind you that the simplest preventative measure you can take to help maintain our healthy environment is to wash your hands frequently and thoroughly with soap for at least twenty seconds and rinse them well under running water. We strongly recommend that you follow this procedure each time you use the toilet, after coughing or sneezings and before eating, drinking or smoking. Avoid touching your mouth.
‘Bloody cheek,’ said the Prince, blowing blue smoke at the ceiling. ‘If I want to wash my hands before smoking I’ll decide for myself, thank you. I haven’t been spoken to like that since I was eight years old and that was by matron at my boarding prep.’
The Prince seemed angry.
‘I have been sailing on the Duchess for many years and I would like to sail on the Duchess for many years to come,’ he said. ‘I have paid the company massive quantities of spondulicks, much of it on account and in advance. In return I expect service and deference. Part of which’ – and here his voice went up an octave or so – ‘involves having a captain who is capable of being on the bridge and speaking to the ship’s passengers on a daily basis. Laryngitis, shlaryngitis, as my Jewish friends would say. Nelson would never have succumbed to such a thing. Horatio would have remained on the bridge at all times and spoken with the voice of an Englishman.’