Sea of Gold

by Nick Elliott

  I thought about motive. It wasn’t much of a stretch to conclude that both men were murdered because of what they knew. According to Manish, Pruang Wongsurin hadn’t just shrugged off his misfortune at being defrauded. Instead, it seemed, he’d started sniffing around and had tracked down a foreigner whom he’d suspected of being involved. They’d had dinner together though. So up to that point perhaps he’d simply thought his assailant was able to help him find who had defrauded him. But he’d been wrong and he’d paid the price.

  Now this. From the photos Timson had not just been in Durban at the same time as the Astro Maria, he’d actually attended the loading. What had he discovered? What had he wanted me to know when he’d asked to meet?

  I’d finished the whisky. There was no more in the minibar so I opened a beer, still trying to get over what had just happened.

  How long before Timson’s body was discovered and a murder enquiry begun, I wondered. And how long before whoever was behind the killings connected me to the two cases? Perhaps they already had.

  I opened up the camera again, plugged in a USB cable and ran it to my laptop downloading the photos to get a proper look at them. I examined each image, zooming in to examine the detail, wanting to find a clue but seeing nothing other than the result of a surveyor’s routine work to support his report. But Timson was supposed to be retired. Why had he gone back to Africa for this job? What, if anything, was his connection with the sinking of the Astro Maria, and what had he wanted to tell me? Above all, why had he been murdered?

  Crowding in behind these questions was one I couldn’t just speculate about: why hadn’t I called the police?

  CHAPTER 15

  Dougal Morrison looked undernourished. His skinny frame and the bony, skull-like features of his face spoke of suffering and pain which he had certainly endured, but this impression was misleading. Dougal had made sergeant in what was nowadays the 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland – the Black Watch. He had been amongst some three hundred and fifty battalion troops who had carried out one of the largest air assault operations of the NATO campaign in Afghanistan – Operation Panchai Palang, or Panther’s Claw. In a direct engagement with the Taliban he was hit in the backside and now walked with not so much a limp as a roll. He looked fifty but was actually in his mid-thirties. The overall effect was of a man who had seen better days, but Dougal was fit and as hard as nails. Besides his campaign medals he’d received the Military Cross for bayonet-charging three Taliban fighters after running out of ammunition. It was when he was retreating that he’d got hit from behind.

  To his chagrin he had been honourably discharged on the grounds of his disability, but despite this setback he had set up as a private investigator from his terraced house in Newhaven, the little harbour between Leith and Granton. His qualifications for this new career were nil unless you counted his natural intelligence, his cunning and his tenacity, not to mention his courage.

  We met at the Harbour Inn. Dougal was grumbling about one of his clients. ‘If you’ve had one bag o’ shite for breakfast you can bet he’ll a’ had three. I just ignore it, ken?’

  ‘Aye, Dougal, I know the type,’ I said. He had a distinctive turn of phrase. ‘Now listen, I have a wee job for you if you’re interested?’

  ‘Aye well, go on, let’s hear it then?’

  I’d found Dougal a couple of years ago. My landlady, Betty Buchanan, had wanted to trace a niece who’d gone missing some years before. We interviewed three investigators and chose Dougal because he seemed very determined, and because he was cheap. Within two days he’d found the girl living in a squat in Manchester. I’d then used him on another case for a London-based Greek shipowner who believed his young trophy wife was cheating on him. She was, and together we’d had to dissuade the old Greek from violent retribution.

  It was lunchtime but we were the only ones in the pub. We sat in a corner and over our beers I gave him the full version of the facts.

  ‘And you’re thinking all this is somehow connected; that not just your frauds are linked to one another but they in turn could be linked to the sinking of your Astro Maria? That’s a bit of a stretch isn’t it, pal?’

  ‘Is it?’ I was glad Dougal was challenging my theory. It forced me to justify it as well as reassuring me that he was taking it all in. ‘I admit it’s tenuous, but look at the sequence of events. First, the wording of the Laytime clauses in the Scots idiom points to a Scottish source; second, Derek Timson had worked for the CMM, the one and only Scottish P&I Club, again pointing up this way. Men have been murdered in both cases – Wongsurin over the Sophia M fraud and, it seems, Timson over the sinking. Believe me, Dougal, even in the world of shipping such a series of events coming on top of one another can hardly be put down to coincidence. But my principal brief is to investigate the Astro Maria sinking, not try and prove any linkage to the frauds.’ I hesitated knowing that wasn’t strictly true. ‘If there is a link though, the implications get a whole lot more serious.’

  ‘Okay, I get you. So what is it you want from me?’

  ‘I want to know everything about Timson’s life over the past six months,’ I said. ‘We know he was in Durban late September when the Astro Maria was loading. What was he doing before then, and since? Where did he go, what did he do, who did he meet with? Meetings, phone and email records. Whatever you can find. And follow each lead through, Dougal.’ He was good at doing that. He wouldn’t come back to me for instructions every time he found something.

  But something else was worrying me. ‘The murder of Wongsurin in Thailand is one thing,’ I said. ‘Timson’s murder here in Blighty is something else. I illegally entered his flat and took evidence away in the form of his camera. And I found the body. I’ve covered my traces for now but how long before passenger flight manifests, local hotel and car hire records, all that kind of stuff is checked and my name comes up?’

  ‘Why not just clear it up now? Just go and tell them. Get it out the way.’

  ‘Because, Dougal, I’m booked to fly out to the wreck site. If I get embroiled with the police now I’ll miss finding out what really happened. Not just to the Astro Maria and her crew but to Wongsurin in Thailand and poor old Timson too.’

  Dougal’s contacts in Police Scotland were close and reached high. Despite his shabby profile he was well regarded there on account of one particular case in which he’d presented them with a complete file on the procurement of young East European girls into Edinburgh’s sex trade. It had resulted in the high-profile arrest and prosecution of a Lithuanian gang operating in the capital. From then on Dougal’s star shone brightly and his credentials were secured.

  ‘I might need a favour, Dougal. You’ve got connections in the force up here. I might call on your powers of persuasion. If I roll up at the front door of Devon and Cornwall Police now, it’ll likely lead to criminal charges and an awful lot of explaining. This is a complex case with all sorts of jurisdictional issues. I’m happy to cooperate with them but I need to be free to move about unhindered, for now at least.’

  ‘All right. If they come knocking I’ll see what I can do,’ he muttered sceptically.

  ‘Good. Now I’m going to go through the whole thing again just in case we’ve missed anything.’

  ‘Aye, all right,’ he said again, ‘but get me another pint first, eh?’

  CHAPTER 16

  The flight from Perth to the Cocos Keeling Islands seemed interminable on top of the twenty-eight-hour marathon from Athens to Perth, which included a lengthy stopover in Dubai. On that second leg from Dubai I had been sleeping well with the help of a bottle of Australian Shiraz with dinner and the lie-flat seat. That was until I was awoken from a dream by the stewardess. ‘Are you all right, sir? You were crying out in your sleep.’

  ‘I’m okay,’ I said. It was Derek Timson’s lifeless face gaping up at me that I’d been dreaming about. In the dream Timson’s eyes seemed to protrude until they became detached from his head. I couldn’t get the gruesome image out of m
y mind.

  I didn’t sleep after that. Instead, unsure whether I should be eating breakfast, lunch or dinner, I ordered a gin and tonic and sat worrying about my increasingly ambivalent feelings towards Claire and Eleni. Was it possible to love two women at the same time? Yes, it was. But where did that leave them? I forced the conundrum from my mind. I had other things to agonise over.

  From Perth, finally and after a further stop at Christmas Island, the little Embraer island hopper dipped down onto the Cocos’ West Island runway.

  I’d returned from Scotland to Greece to see Michael Kyriakou. We’d agreed to meet in my office early so I could catch up on some of the backlog Zoe had left for me before he arrived.

  I was there before seven. Michael arrived at eight, early for any Greek. I poured coffee and we sat down at the little table in the corner of the room.

  Because I’d attended the Trinity House meeting in an unofficial capacity, all further communications amongst the group had been channelled through Michael, and this was the first chance we’d had to catch up.

  ‘Were you surprised the insurers agreed to share the cost?’ Michael asked, referring to the Trinity House group’s decision to fund a search for the Astro Maria.

  ‘Unprecedented I believe, but if a proper investigation is to be made then it’s the best way. As of now, no one has a clue as to who might have sabotaged the ship, or why. How else are we going to get to the root of it?’

  Charles Harrison had been true to his word when he’d said he would do everything within his powers to get to the bottom of the case, and we’d all agreed to support him.

  Michael stretched back in his chair. He looked tired, whether from the strain of the last few weeks or because he was unaccustomed to early morning meetings, I couldn’t tell.

  ‘The Australian press are still on the story,’ he said. They had been since the ship had gone down. It had happened close to one of their territorial possessions.

  ‘Lloyd’s List too,’ I said, ‘and the rest of the maritime press.’

  Harrison had acted promptly once he had a consensus on sharing costs. The ROV support vessel, Geo Venturer, was open and on station off Batam. Although built for work in the offshore oil and gas sector, the ship was ideal for this kind of task too, equipped with side-scan sonar, two W-ROVs – heavy-duty, work-class remotely operated underwater vehicles – as well as several smaller ‘eyeball’ ROVs for lighting and filming work.

  The Nawihiki government, in its capacity as flag state, had chartered her at short notice and she’d been quickly prepared for the voyage out to the search area. Most of the Trinity House group were either joining the search themselves or sending a representative. And most of them had already embarked in Singapore.

  The voyage distance from there to the wreck site was just under fifteen hundred nautical miles – six days steaming. I’d been assigned as the owners’ representative to join the ship on site. I agreed to keep Michael updated with daily email reports, the reliability of ship-board communications permitting, and left Athens that evening.

  The Cocos airfield had been built onto a coral reef during World War II to support Allied aircraft. Today it was shared with the local golf club, players pausing between swings as the infrequent flights came and went.

  I joined four Australian oil removal technicians who’d arrived earlier from their base in Brisbane. Like me, they were waiting for the helicopter to ferry them out to the Geo Venturer. Over beers they were discussing the merits of the Cocos Islands as a windsurfing centre.

  ‘They reckon these islands will be taken over by the Yanks for their drone reconnaissance flights,’ one of them pronounced. ‘It’ll mean a new airfield and goodbye to your windsurfing. The whole place’ll be shut down tight as a clam.’

  ‘That’s just media speculation, mate,’ said another. ‘What is it they say? The job of the press is to excite and alarm. That’s all it is.’

  The conversation moved on to the task ahead. For them this would be a very preliminary exercise prior to actually removing the ship’s fuel – that was if we found the ship, and if it was then deemed possible, which they thought it would be – at a price.

  The beat of the Super Puma’s blades interrupted their speculating as in a storm of dust it settled down on the tarmac fifty metres away.

  We walked out with our bags, adopting that stoop people assume when boarding helicopters. I buckled up and donned a noise-reduction headset as the heavy craft lifted off and swung out over the ocean to the north-west.

  Helped by the jetlag I dozed off and awoke two and a half hours later as we began our descent, banking, then hovering over the bright red vessel before alighting gently onto the Geo Venturer’s helideck just as the setting sun was casting a golden glow over the sea’s surface.

  There followed the ritual of disembarkation: thumbs up from the pilot to the helideck crew, chocks placed in front of the wheels, door opened. We were beckoned out and directed to the front to avoid the aft rotor, then off the helideck to await our bags and be met by two armed security guards. These tough ex-military personnel were here in case of a piracy attack, which seemed improbable this side of the Indian Ocean, so far from their traditional hunting grounds. They decided we had to be searched anyway and escorted us to the ship’s office. It was a room some five metres square. Against one bulkhead was a series of visual displays set up on a long table with four chairs. On the opposite side were a coffee machine and an assortment of hard hats, overalls and boots. Two large whiteboards were fixed against another bulkhead. Framed procedures and regulations were neatly arrayed and despite the clutter, there was a sense of order about the place.

  Once the guards had carried out their cursory search the second officer introduced himself. ‘Safety induction first,’ he announced. We watched a safety video and then he took us round the ship: life jackets, life-rafts, lifeboats, where to eat, the workout room, the sauna, and finally up to the bridge.

  ‘Welcome aboard, gents.’ The captain was a genial Australian. ‘As you know, your fellow clients all boarded in Singapore so they’re pretty much settled in and acquainted with shipboard life by now.’

  We followed him over to the chart table. ‘We arrived here in the search area a couple of days ago and we’ve already started transecting the designated zone,’ he said, pointing out our position on the chart. ‘I’ll leave it at that for now. The project manager will give you a full briefing at twenty hundred in the mess, that’s thirty minutes from now. And you can meet the others then too and get a beer in before dinner.’

  We were escorted back down and shown our quarters. Amidst noisy protests, the oil removal team got doubled up into two cabins. I was luckier. I had one to myself complete with bunk, settee, wi-fi, external phone and a TV; and the comforting view of a lifeboat outside.

  I unpacked, showered and went along to the mess. Just us newcomers were there for the briefing and the project manager kept it short and to the point.

  The Geo Venturer had arrived at zero six hundred two days previously at the location of the Astro Maria’s automated DSC distress alert. This provided a starting point for the search, which would begin in earnest the next morning.

  If and when sonar detected the wreck, then the Geo Venturer’s ROVs would be launched and we’d be able to monitor their progress from the slave displays in the ship’s office. The control room itself, where the ROV supervisor and pilots worked, was officially out of bounds but we could listen to the supervisor as he spoke with his team to give us an idea of what was going on.

  Other clients joined us at the bar. Most of them I knew from the Trinity House meeting but in the days since sailing from Singapore, a routine had been established and there was the sense that a group dynamic had already formed. It was up to the newcomers now to fit in.

  Some of the ship’s officers and the helicopter crew were there nursing beers, as were Charles Harrison and Stephen Barclay, the surveyor representing the Astro Maria’s classification society, whom I’d first
seen with Kershope at the Trinity House meeting, and again at Grant’s party.

  The hull and cargo underwriters and the P&I Club representative drifted in as we were getting our briefing. Then an explosives expert from Portsmouth and a Dutch salvage master joined us as we were finishing off.

  As we sat down for dinner the only woman in the group came and sat down. I’d been told that Coreminex, the charterers whose cargo of mining equipment had been lost with the ship, would be on board and they’d sent Yvonne Grey, a South African.

  Underlying the light-hearted chatter that evening was a palpable sense of anticipation. Everyone was eager for results. First, the side-scan sonar array, which would be hauled through the water by something called a towfish, had to locate the wreck. This itself could take days or even weeks.

  Once the wreck had been located, one or more of the Geo Venturer’s big W-ROVs would be flown down to the site. Given the depth of water in the area, it would take at least twenty-four hours to reach the seabed. All this had been explained at length by the project manager, but the complexity of the task only seemed to fuel the group’s eagerness and it formed the main topic of conversation over dinner that night.

  Mike Horrocks, the ex-Royal Navy explosives man from Portsmouth, was sitting opposite me. Even after a couple of glasses of wine and a little coaxing he was circumspect as to what we might find if, as we all suspected, there had been an explosion on board the Astro Maria.

  ‘An extensive debris field could signal an explosion as the cause of the ship’s sudden demise,’ he admitted cautiously.

  Wil Muldijk, the Dutch salvage master, was more forthcoming. ‘Everything about this case points to a sudden and catastrophic event, which to me means an explosion. But whether it was deliberate, in the form of a timed explosive charge, or accidental, such as a crankcase explosion in the engine room, which somehow caused the breaching of the stern tube and the seacocks too, we must wait and see. But,’ he added, pouring more wine, ‘if the latter was the case then surely there’d have been time for some of them to get off the ship, no?’