Sea of Gold

by Nick Elliott

  The ship was ventilating her holds but rice is prone to sweating and with the high humidity and frequent rain, she couldn’t sit out there much longer before the cargo began to deteriorate. Everyone was anxious and it showed in the atmosphere at dinner.

  The next morning brought more rain. We got started early. There is a lengthy process to the task of collecting evidence following any incident which might become the subject of a claim and Manish knew it well. Armed with camera, voice recorder and his iPad, he set about interviewing officers and crew, examining and photographing documents and sampling the cargo. This kind of work was often conducted by a Club-appointed surveyor but Manish was more than capable of handling it himself. It was my bread and butter too but I liked to entrust such work to the local correspondent where I knew they had the ability, freeing me up for other matters, and today I was more interested in talking the case through informally with the skipper.

  As port calls at Kosichang go this had been pretty routine, he said. His main concern had been the loading operation. Frequent rain squalls had meant closing the hatches several times a day and the stevedores were a disorganised bunch, camping out on deck with their womenfolk, coming and going as it suited them. The rice barges likewise would appear at irregular intervals.

  ‘I presume there was no sign of the timecharterer, Universal Agriprods, but tell me about their agent, Captain.’

  ‘No, there was no sign of Universal Agripods. I didn’t expect there to be but their agent seemed all right. He came on board for the delivery of the vessel onto the timecharter. He was young – in his twenties.’ Tomic dug a business card out of a small box on his desk and handed it to me.

  It gave a name and address in Bangkok with phone numbers, email and even a website address, all of which Christos Mavritis and I had already checked and found no trace of. It seemed likely the ‘agency’ had been set up for this one job and then shut down.

  ‘How about the shipper himself, Pruang Wongsurin? Was he on board much?’ Wongsurin’s company, the optimistically named Triumph Trading Limited, was, along with Mavritis, the other defrauded party.

  ‘No, not much. Once or twice during the two weeks we were there loading, I’d say.’

  We talked on. I probed him on the detail of the Kosichang call, the cargo documentation particularly, but nothing else emerged. I’d handled enough cases to know when I wasn’t getting the whole story, but this time I wasn’t so sure. Tomic didn’t seem to be hiding anything, but something still bothered me. Was this really just a one-off con perpetrated by smart local amateurs, as it seemed to be, or was it part of something bigger and more organised? Then I realised the problem. I had to concede, reluctantly, that I was letting my suspicion of this fraud being connected to the old Med Runner case cloud my judgement. Somewhere in the back of my mind a conspiracy theory was developing, and I now recognised that I was looking for evidence to support the idea that some sophisticated crime syndicate was at work. But I was out here on the Club’s time and at their expense to assess this one case, not pursue my own baseless hunches.

  I thanked him and went and found Manish who had almost finished his survey and interviews with the deck officers and crew.

  ‘Anything interesting?’

  ‘All pretty routine according to what they’re telling me,’ said Manish.

  ‘What about the cargo? Any sign of rotting?’

  ‘No. No putrid smell, yet. And we opened up a few bags for inspection. But she can’t sit out here for ever more. She needs to get away so the holds can be properly ventilated and the voyage completed.’

  I let him finish off before calling up the launch.

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘Is this turning into a wild goose chase?’ It was Grant. We’d interviewed the skipper of the Sophia M and his crew. Now it was standard procedure to talk to the other aggrieved party, the shipper. And the shipper was in Thailand.

  But Grant was right to challenge all this running around at the Club’s expense, just as I was right to rebuff him.

  ‘Either we make a proper investigation out of this and pursue it to its conclusion, at least as far as the road takes us, or we can tell Mavritis to shove his claim. It’s your call, Grant.’

  ‘No, all right. Go to Bangkok, but perhaps then you might grace us with your presence over here for a few days. You’ve missed the last three case reviews and there’s a backlog building up that needs dealing with. Or, I’m sorry, were you planning a vacation?’

  ‘Very funny, Grant. For an American your sarcasm is coming along nicely.’

  ‘You would know, Angus. Sarcasm’s all I’ve ever learned from you.’

  As I’d expected, when I got to Bangkok and started asking around, there was no sign of the timecharterers, Universal Agriprods, or their agent. I could spend my life looking for them but instead I told Manish to keep his eyes and ears open. Thailand was his backyard.

  My best bet was to talk to the defrauded shipper. I’d phoned Triumph Trading’s Bangkok office from Singapore and been told Wongsurin would be there but when I got to the building in South Sathorn Road there was no sign of him. He’d gone down to Kosichang to supervise the loading of another rice cargo, they said. I guessed he wanted to make quite sure this charter wasn’t going to go wrong the way the Sophia M’s had.

  I hailed a bright magenta cab to take me down the coast. We fought our way out of the city’s traffic and onto the tollway. Three hours later I was on the pier at Sriracha looking for a ride out to the ship.

  The Lucky Hawk lay out at anchor surrounded by a cluster of barges from up-river. Other ships lay nearby, some also loading rice, others discharging cement or fertiliser.

  What with the barges and other craft milling about, it took some manoeuvring to get alongside the ship. As the swell lifted the little boat up and down, I leapt onto the gangway and clambered up to the deck to be greeted by a scene more like a refugee camp than a loading operation.

  Men, women, old folk and children were everywhere – dozens of them. These were the stevedores with their families that Tomic had mentioned, brought along to help with cargo work as well as handle domestic chores – washing, preparing meals and generally turning the ship into their own busy little community.

  Sacks of rice in cargo nets were swinging across the ship’s side from the barges below, suspended in mid-air from the ship’s cranes before being lowered into the hold for stowage by swarms of labourers, their brown torsos glistening with sweat. Although it was late in the day, it was still damned hot. I could feel the heat rising from the steel deck through the soles of my shoes as well as burning down onto my head.

  A Filipino AB led the way into the cool of the air-conditioned accommodation block and up to the captain’s day cabin.

  ‘We’ve restricted access to a single door from the deck into the crew accommodation. There’s a toilet just inside for them but it’s not enough,’ complained the skipper. ‘The rest of the accommodation is kept locked up. I’ve given them part of the fo’c’sle store to use as a makeshift kitchen. What more can I do?’

  As we watched from his dayroom window another cargo net swung up into view from a barge below. Instead of rice, half a dozen women with their children were clinging on inside, shouting and laughing before being dumped unceremoniously onto the neatly stowed bags in number three hold.

  ‘What can I do?’ he said again, shrugging.

  From up here the scene looked more like a circus than a refugee camp. Colourful plastic awnings had been made fast around the main deck and the fo’c’sle providing some shade from the sun. But it didn’t seem to bother the Thais. To add to the carnival atmosphere, local pop music was blaring out from a makeshift sound system they’d rigged up.

  ‘Things will really get going now the sun’s setting,’ the captain went on. He was a middle-aged Filipino and despite his grumbling I sensed he wasn’t too concerned. He’d no doubt seen it all before.

  ‘Not just the music. They’ll knock off loading in the next half hour o
r so and the party will start. Karaoke, food, beer … Anyway, you’re not here for that.’ He turned away from the window. ‘Our shipper Mr Wongsurin has been telling me all about his misfortune with the Sophia M. I gather she’s entered with your Club, Mr McKinnon?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m here to interview him. He is on board isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he reached for his desk phone to call the chief officer. ‘Mr Wongsurin with you? Okay, ask him if he’d like to come to my cabin will you? I have someone here who wants to meet him.

  ‘He’s been on board since we arrived,’ the captain said, replacing the phone. ‘He’s very thorough following his last misfortune. He came on board with his surveyor to do the pre-loading survey and has stayed since. We’ve given him the supercargo’s cabin.’

  The chief mate appeared at the door with Pruang Wongsurin in tow. We shook hands. I was interested in this man. On the one hand he had come closer than anyone to the rogue charterer and on the other, I couldn’t rule out the possibility that he was somehow an accessory, tied up in the scam. I was pretty sure the consignee in the Med Runner case had been involved in the cargo theft. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to paint Wongsurin the same colour.

  He was, on the face of it anyway, a courteous, soft-spoken individual with the graciousness you would expect from a Thai. He looked no more than forty, dressed casually in jeans and a dark shirt. Even the skipper, who was not tall, seemed to tower above this slight figure.

  ‘Captain,’ I said. ‘Can we borrow the ship’s office for an hour?’

  ‘Best use the supercargo’s quarters. The ship’s office is full of tally clerks and stevedores.’

  We went down to the deck below and parked ourselves in the tiny office Wongsurin had been given.

  He sat down with a sigh. He had a defeated look to him.

  ‘Mr Wongsurin,’ I began. ‘How are cargo underwriters taking your claim on the Sophia M?’

  ‘They’ve rejected the claim.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Clause 4.6 of the Institute Cargo Clauses. They say voyage abandoned.’

  ‘But the voyage hasn’t been abandoned yet.’

  ‘That’s what I tell them, but they just say call when voyage is resumed.’

  ‘Well, let’s see what the Club has to say about continuing the voyage. They’ll be talking to your insurers I’m sure, and we all know that the cargo will begin to deteriorate if the ship lies at anchor for much longer. They’re ventilating the holds as best they can for now, but we need a decision in the next couple of days.’

  ‘You went to ship in Singapore? What you find out?’

  ‘Yes, but if you mean have I found out who defrauded you, I’m afraid not. I was hoping you might help me there. Tell me what you think happened. Give me your version of events,’ I said, placing my voice recorder on the table in front of us.

  I had Manish’s and my own transcripts from the Sophia M. Now I had to see if they tallied with what the shipper said. Wongsurin was a regular shipper of bagged rice to West Africa but had only been in business for three or four years and I figured he’d just got complacent. Business in Thailand wasn’t always conducted as diligently as it should be, which is why fraudulent transactions could be accomplished with relative ease, provided there was the right balance of greed and gullibility on the part of the victims.

  ‘What contact did you have with the timecharterer?’ I asked.

  ‘All through broker.’ I remembered seeing a name.

  ‘Hillside?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Hillside Shipbroking was a small London chartering broker. I didn’t know them but Joe Ellis, the CMM’s Syndicate 2 claims manager, the syndicate in which the Mavritis fleet was entered, had said in his case notification that one of his people would be talking to them. Before I’d left Singapore I’d asked Manish to chase him up.

  ‘Did you or Universal Agriprods arrange a pre-loading inspection of the holds?’

  ‘No. They said not necessary.’

  ‘Did that not strike you as strange? After all, you arranged a surveyor on this vessel to inspect the holds before loading, right?’

  Wongsurin looked uncomfortable. ‘Don’t always do survey if captain says okay.’

  Tomic, the Sophia M’s skipper, and the mate had both told Manish that there had been no inspection carried out. But they’d also remarked that this was unusual and had claused the mate’s receipts accordingly.

  The fraudsters, Universal Agriprods, knowing they were going to vanish anyway, would have seen no reason to protect themselves against future claims for cargo damage by arranging a pre-loading survey but it should have aroused the suspicion of the shipper, unless of course the shipper, Wongsurin, was part of the scam.

  ‘Were you on board the Sophia M throughout loading?’ I asked.

  ‘Every day sir, yes.’ This wasn’t what Tomic had told me.

  ‘So you were supervising? Keeping an eye on things, on how the cargo was being loaded, right?’

  ‘Of course, every day.’

  If Wongsurin was involved in the fraud he was doing a good job of playing the hapless victim. I’d offered him a few crumbs of comfort but until the Club and cargo underwriters agreed the voyage could be completed, he faced probable bankruptcy, he said. I told him a decision would have to be taken soon and that the Club would be in touch with his cargo underwriters to sort it out.

  ‘This has ruined me, my family,’ he lamented. ‘Bank has lien on my house now.’ I did my best to console him. When I got up to leave he stood too. He looked at me. ‘When I find them, I kill them,’ he said. He looked desperate enough to mean it and I felt sorry for him.

  ‘That’s not a good idea, Mr Wongsurin. We will do our best to track them down, and so will your cargo underwriters. You have talked to the police haven’t you?’

  ‘Police cannot help,’ he said darkly. I pressed him on this but he clammed up. He probably didn’t want the police to get involved for reasons I could only guess at.

  I went back to the captain’s cabin, thanked him for his time and left him worrying about garbage disposal and the ship’s freshwater supply. The stevedore mob had made a hell of a mess and been exhausting his water reserves, he said.

  When I returned to the deck I was accosted. ‘You wanna beer, mister?’ She was a round-faced dumpy little woman with a big smile. Night had fallen quickly as it did in those parts, but it was still stiflingly hot and humid. The beer on the other hand looked icy cold. I accepted it gladly.

  ‘What your name?’

  ‘Angus. What’s yours?’

  ‘Sriwan.’

  She must have been waiting for me. I’d noticed her earlier when I came on board. She seemed to have some kind of supervisory role amongst the hangers-on from the stevedoring community encamped on the ship.

  ‘You come from Sophia M, mister?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, wondering how she knew.

  ‘I was on that ship.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Big problem with that ship, no?’

  ‘What do you mean, Sriwan?’ I asked more cautiously now. I supposed news of Wongsurin’s troubles had reached these shipboard workers too.

  ‘Farang come on board but not see captain. Not see chief mate. Not see any ship officer.’

  ‘I see. So what was the foreigner doing on the ship?’

  ‘Said he was surveyor but not look like surveyor. No hard hat, no overall, no camera.’

  ‘So what did he look like?’

  ‘Like you. All farang look same,’ she laughed.

  ‘Did you speak to him?’

  ‘I ask him what he doing there. He say he surveyor but not surveyor.’

  She was sharp – everyone I’d spoken to, as well as the records, said no survey had taken place.

  ‘Mmm. So he had dark hair like me.’

  ‘No. No hair. Very short.’

  ‘Ah. He was short then?

  ‘No, tall like you. But short hair.’


  ‘Right.’

  ‘Not much hair on top but hair here,’ she said, touching her upper lip.

  ‘Ah, a moustache.’

  ‘His skin very white, and light hair, not like you. And he sweat plenty.’

  We carried on like this, me teasing her memory for more detail and her just teasing me. In the end though I had a profile of a foreigner, tallish (the Thais are not a tall race), with short, fair hair, a fair moustache and a tendency to perspire in the heat. It wasn’t much to go on.

  ‘Was Mr Wongsurin, the shipper, on board then?’

  ‘No, not on board then. Farang ask that too. Then go away.’

  I thanked her and asked her to hail the water taxi, handing her a thousand baht note for her trouble. Close by another woman was cooking a curry with squid caught from over the ship’s side. The air was thick with the smell of the spicy food. A group of men were crouched on the deck playing cards and drinking beer. Money was changing hands amidst shouts and laughter. I was tempted to stay.

  I was halfway down the gangway when Sriwan called out: ‘You like me find you nice girl? My niece here very pretty girl.’

  ‘Not just now thanks,’ I called back. She was still laughing as I jumped onto the deck of the launch.

  So. Despite Wongsurin’s assurance to the contrary, both Captain Tomic and my new friend Sriwan were certain he was not on board the Sophia M every day. It was a small lie perhaps, but a lie nonetheless.

  And the fair-haired foreigner? He didn’t bother seeing the captain or officers, but he was looking for Wongsurin.

  As the launch headed for the shore I looked back at the ship with the rice barges clustered around her, cargo lights blazing and the music drifting back over the water.

  More questions than answers still.

  CHAPTER 5

  Sometimes the breaks in an investigation come without much conscious effort. At around thirty-seven thousand feet, somewhere west of the Alps on the Athens to Edinburgh flight, a thought occurred to me. The oxygen, or possibly the third Scotch I was enjoying, may have helped, but it was something the man next to me said which prompted it: ‘I told the wife it was outwith our realm of interest and we shouldn’t get tangled up in other people’s affairs, but you know what women are like. Cannae keep their noses out of other folk’s business, eh?’