The Tick of Death

by Peter Lovesey

  ‘That’s Canvey away to the right. This is Hole Haven,’ Rossanna presently informed him. ‘It looks a fine stretch of water, doesn’t it? Half a mile, would you say? Moonshine, Mr Sargent. If we turned the helm now we should run aground. The only navigable part is a narrow channel running close to Canvey, and that is where Patrick is making for.’

  When the launch did begin to leave the fairway, the hulks were already in view, moored close together in the shadow of a tall dyke that buttressed Canvey Island from the tide. A line of illuminated buoys served as a warning to other shipping, and seemed to have impressed the dozen or so craft seeing the night out in the channel, for they were anchored at respectful distances.

  ‘We’ll lower the funnel now,’ Devlin called from the wheel. ‘She’s got a good head on her. We’ll go in close, my darlings.’

  The launch coursed steadily towards the dynamite flotilla, its own lights now extinguished and its crew alert for any sign of a coastguard vessel. Malone joined Cribb at the stern without exchanging a word. Now that they stood together for the first time, there was six clear inches difference in their heights. Cribb decided it was time to indicate his dependability. ‘That grapnel you have in your hand, Mr Malone. Is it for securing a line to the Moravia?’

  The big man gave the curt nod such an obvious inquiry deserved.

  ‘In that case,’ Cribb went on, ‘perhaps you would allow me to be the first to go aboard. As the lighter man in weight, I should impose less strain upon the line, and when I get to the top I can ascertain that it is quite secure for you.’

  Malone was sufficiently touched by this to turn his head and take a closer look at his assistant.

  ‘I can shin up a rope as well as the next man and a little better than some,’ Cribb added. ‘I shan’t keep you waiting long.’

  ‘Very well,’ agreed Malone, after considering it.

  Devlin had already steered the launch between the buoys, and it was gliding noiselessly towards two hugely-looming hulks, the barnacle encrustments on their surfaces glistening in the moonlight. Cribb glanced towards the cabin. Somewhere in there was Rossanna, wrapped in a black shawl, scrutinising every detail of the night’s doings for her father. A hazardous duty that, for one of the fair sex, but from his observations he would wager that she was equal to any crisis the night would produce.

  They passed under the bows of one vessel to the more sheltered side. The Moravia was ahead of them, secured by anchors at bow and stern, and lit by four lanterns. It was fortunate, Cribb decided, that Malone had got some practice, at least, at throwing the hammer. He did not like to speculate on the possible consequence of the grapnel striking one of the lanterns.

  Devlin swung the wheel and they came alongside the hulk. Malone had moved forward and neatly fastened the painter to the aft anchor-chain of the Moravia. The launch came gently to rest against the vessel’s towering side. Cribb waited for his companion to throw up the grapnel, hoping he had the wit to realise that on this occasion the object was accuracy, not distance. Happily it lodged neatly in position at the first attempt.

  It was Cribb’s turn, the chance to prove his usefulness. He took a high grip on the rope like a bell-ringer, tested the strength of the grapnel’s hold and swung his legs clear of the deck, to clamp the rope between his ankles at the highest convenient point. In rope-climbing, the foothold is everything, as he demonstrated impressively, using the leverage of the thighs to gain height. It was an exercise he had not performed for a number of years, but one well-suited to his long, spare frame, as he had first discovered in his training for the military. Being ordered to demonstrate rope-ascents to the entire platoon at Canterbury barracks had more than compensated at the time for his ineptitude at foot-drill.

  He reached the top in seconds, took a grip on the Moravia’s bulwark and clambered aboard. Momentarily, he crouched to recover his breath and relax his stomach-muscles in the way of a seasoned trouper who retires to the wings between displays of agility. He had not taken his second breath when he saw the feet.

  They were wearing canvas shoes and coming fast in his direction along the deck. There was no time to take in the rest of the figure, but Cribb was in no doubt that it would be armed with some offensive instrument and he did not propose to present his still-sore head for further attention. Remaining in the crouched position, he tucked his right forearm between shins and deck and rolled rapidly over in the path of the advancing feet. It was like projecting a barrel down a ramp. The impact bowled the feet from under the figure and it crashed over Cribb’s back. He threw himself upon it to crush any retaliatory move, but he need not have bothered. The body was inert.

  Cribb examined the man—the ship’s caretaker, he assumed—and found with relief that he was breathing, but unconscious. Probably his head had made connexion with the bulwark on the way down; a fortunate circumstance, because it went against the grain to commit violent assault upon a man who was simply trying to do his duty, albeit with a particularly ugly-looking belaying-pin. Cribb did not pause to moralise longer, but set about tying the hands and feet of the caretaker with the rope he had brought. As he finished the job, Malone’s head appeared above the bulwark. ‘What happened?’ he asked Cribb in a stage whisper, then saw the caretaker on the deck and exclaimed, ‘Moses! You’re a sharp mover. We were supposed to tackle the bugger together.’ He heaved himself on to the deck, leaned over to signal to the launch that all was well, picked up the belaying-pin and wrenched a hasp and padlock from the hatch with prodigious ease. Cribb was thankful he had dealt with the caretaker himself. He might so easily have become a party to murder.

  Malone swung back the hatch and descended a ladder into the hold.

  ‘Can you see all right?’ Cribb inquired into the darkness.

  ‘Don’t touch the lanterns!’ Malone cautioned in a whisper that was probably heard on Canvey Island. ‘It’s here, by Jesus. Crates of the stuff. You’d better come down.’

  Cribb obeyed, and when his eyes adjusted sufficiently for him to find a way between rows of boxes stacked three high, he joined Malone, who was already pushing one towards him.

  ‘Half-hundredweight crates, just as she said,’ he told Cribb. ‘Take the other end, will you? We can’t be too careful with this stuff.’

  They shuffled along the aisle to the ladder and by degrees got the crate on deck. In the moonlight, the mark of the Nobel Explosives Company was clearly visible on the lid under a Danger-Explosives warning.

  ‘There’s some lettering here,’ said Malone. ‘N.G.75. Is it a code, at all, d’you reckon?’

  ‘Seventy-five per cent nitro-glycerine,’ explained Cribb.

  ‘Holy Father! All this lot and only one caretaker! It’s a public scandal!’

  ‘Report it to your Member of Parliament,’ Cribb suggested dryly. ‘Hadn’t we better collect the other crates meanwhile?’

  They returned to their removals and within a short time had the full consignment of six ready for loading on to the launch. Malone appeared quite breathless at the end, a development which could hardly be put down to want of strength. Cribb could think of only one explanation: the man’s nerves were troubling him. Strange, for a dynamiter. Perhaps the knowledge of what a little of the stuff could do made him uncomfortable in the presence of so much. His hands were definitely trembling as he passed his length of rope around the first crate to secure it for the descent.

  Cribb peered over the side. Devlin, below, returned his wave. For stability, Malone wound the loose end of his rope once around the ship’s rail and pulled it taut. ‘You’d better hold the line,’ he told Cribb. ‘I’ll lift the crate carefully over. Be ready to take the strain when I tell you, for God’s sake.’ He picked up the crate as if it were a sleeping baby and gently lowered it over the side. ‘Now!’

  It was less difficult to control than Cribb expected, possibly because Malone was draped over the rail steadying the rope. Less than half a minute later came the easing of tension that meant it had arrived on the launch. Devlin
released the rope and they repeated the operation with the second crate.

  The third was the one that transformed everything. It was halfway down its twenty-foot descent when something— a turbulence in the water, or a moment’s loss of concentration by the handlers—started it swinging. There was a sickening thud as it hit the side of the hulk, followed by another, less powerful. ‘God in Heaven!’ Malone suddenly shrieked in alarm. ‘It’s slipping the rope!’ Half a hundredweight of dynamite was going to crash on to the deck of the launch and he was manifestly unwilling to wait for the result. He had scrambled over the railing and hit the water before Cribb, still holding his line, felt the loss of resistance indicating that the crate was no longer at the other end of it. A stifled scream from Rossanna was overtaken by a crash and the sound of splitting timber. Nothing worse.

  Somewhere nearby, voices were shouting questions into the night. Malone’s cry of panic had raised the guardians of the other hulks. Cribb crossed to where the grapnel still supported the line he had used to board the Moravia, and let himself down with a little less elegance than in his military heyday. The shattered crate had spilled cartridges of dynamite over the deck of the launch. Devlin had been knocked aside and was picking himself up.

  ‘Are you fit?’ Cribb asked.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Get to the wheel then and get under way. I’ll see to this.’

  ‘Is it safe to handle?’ asked Rossanna, coming from the cabin.

  ‘Yes,’ said Cribb, ‘but I must move the pieces away from the engine-room. One spark . . .’

  ‘I’ll help you.’

  The shouting on the sister ships continued. Someone was using a lantern to flash signals to Canvey Island.

  Devlin raised the funnel and the launch throbbed into life. A shout close at hand distracted Cribb. Malone, his mop of hair flattened seal-like to his head, was trying to clamber aboard.

  ‘He can hold on,’ said Rossanna, but Cribb thought otherwise and moved to give assistance. The waterlogged hammer-thrower was four times as heavy as the crates and quite a different undertaking, but by brute strength and simple mechanics Cribb engineered him into a position where he could topple over on to the deck.

  The launch weaved between two hulks and made for the open river, listing precariously as Devlin swung the wheel. Rossanna helped Cribb cover the crates with a tarpaulin. A voice was appealing to them through a megaphone to declare their identity, even though it was fast becoming obvious that they were not much interested in replying. The caretakers’ isolation in their different vessels had brought an encouraging element of confusion to the scene. The coastguards, when they came from Canvey, would get half-a-dozen conflicting accounts of the raid.

  Cribb joined the others in the cabin. Malone had shed most of his sodden clothes and was getting dry by shovelling coke into the boiler. ‘Once we clear the Haven we’ll have a flood tide with us,’ called Devlin. ‘No one’s going to overtake us then.’

  ‘They may not overtake us, Patrick,’ said Rossanna, ‘but if someone has the wit to use the telegraph, there could be a coastguard launch coming to meet us from Gravesend. If we get home tonight, it will be more than we deserve. And I do not relish telling my father that his plans were frustrated by a shameful exhibition of panic.’

  ‘We got some dynamite,’ said Devlin in mitigation.

  ‘Less than half the amount we came for.’

  ‘The crate was slipping,’ said Malone defensively. ‘It might have blown us all sky-high.’

  ‘And who was supposed to have secured it?’ Rossanna demanded in a fury. ‘Are you admitting to incompetence as well as funk? Did Mr Sargent here scream like a schoolgirl and jump into the water? No, he kept his head.’

  ‘Rossanna, don’t get in a wax,’ said Devlin. ‘We’ll think of something to tell your father.’

  Cribb wondered what. It would be disturbingly easy for Devlin to shield Malone by blaming the newcomer for the imperfections in the expedition. He hoped he could rely on Rossanna.

  When the launch headed towards the Lower Hope and began to make swifter progress, the tension aboard eased perceptibly. Malone borrowed Devlin’s coat and went forward to keep watch for any sign of a coastguard boat. Rossanna drew her shawl moodily about her and went aft.

  ‘Ah, that’s a fine woman,’ Devlin said to Cribb in the cordial vein of their conversation at Lillie Bridge, as if any unpleasantness between them was forgotten, ‘but she bears the devil of a lot of responsibility. It doesn’t do to cross her when she’s implementing her father’s plans. Since the accident, she and McGee have grown very close. Understandably. She was always sympathetic to the cause, but it didn’t go to anything more adventurous than joining the Ladies’ Land League until McGee practically blew his head off trying to make a clock-timed machine. It looked as though the whole campaign had foundered before it had got under way. He’s the brains, you understand. Malone and I are very minor in the organisation. Then word came from New York that we were to take our orders from Rossanna, she being able to interpret her father’s statements to us.’

  ‘But it isn’t always practical for McGee to be present,’ Cribb observed, ‘and who gives the orders then?’ He knew the answer, but he was interested in Devlin’s reaction to the question.

  ‘She’s every bit as forceful as her father,’ said Devlin. ‘I don’t know whether it’s the Irish blood or the red hair, or both, but she gets her way, Mr Sargent, she gets her way.’

  ‘Pardon me for smiling,’ said Cribb. ‘It’s a queer sight to an outsider—two sturdy fellows like yourself and Malone taking orders from a slip of a girl like that. I should have thought one of you might have had his hand around her waist by now. Isn’t she susceptible to manly charm?’

  ‘I told you,’ said Devlin. ‘She’s devoted to her father. It might be difficult for you to apprehend, but there it is. Besides, Malone and I are here to do a job. There’ll be women enough when we get home.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Cribb. ‘Believe me, I wasn’t questioning your loyalty to the cause, or your manhood. I was merely curious to know why Miss McGee has just gone forward to join Malone.’

  He got his answer within seconds. It came in the form of a pistol-shot that echoed across the waters of the Lower Hope.

  ‘Lord! Has she gone mad?’ exclaimed Cribb. He left the cabin and ran to where she stood with smoke still rising from the revolver in her hand. Malone lay dead at her feet.

  ‘Get him over the side, Mr Sargent,’ she told Cribb matter-of-factly. ‘Ireland has no need of cowards.’

  Cribb had never been so close to murder. Constable Bottle had died like this. Perhaps Thackeray. So incensed was he that he acted instinctively, regardless of how an agent of the crown conducted himself. He wrenched the gun from her grasp, flung it down and took her by the shoulders. ‘That was a lunatic thing to do, Miss McGee, a monstrous, callous act. I’ll not demean myself by throwing insults at a woman, but, by God, I know what you are now, and what you deserve. Get below, before I thrash you.’

  CHAPTER

  8

  ‘NOBODY EVER SPOKE TO me like that except my father,’ said Rossanna as she heaped devilled kidneys on to Cribb’s plate. It was 6 a.m., and he was seated at a bare wooden table in the kitchen of the dynamiters’ house. Much against his expectation, they had passed through Gravesend Reach and got back without further incident. Devlin, with the strain of the night’s doings written on his face, had gone straight to bed. Rossanna had confounded Cribb by meekly offering to cook him breakfast before they retired.

  The first shock of Malone’s sudden dispatch had passed. It had been the fact of murder more than any sentiment about the hammer-thrower’s going that had prompted Cribb to react so impulsively. Malone had not been one of the most endearing representatives of his race, and it had been more fatiguing than distressing consigning him to the Thames. There had been time after that, as the launch steamed homeward, to consider how a secret agent might recover from such a lapse.

/>   ‘You were absolutely right, of course,’ Rossanna continued. ‘I should never have fired the shot. I didn’t give a thought for the dynamite on board. Ridiculous! I might have killed us all.’

  ‘You understood my reason for speaking to you so strongly, then?’ said Cribb, with resource.

  ‘Graphically, Mr Sargent. I am at a loss to understand how you exercised such restraint. I deserved nothing less than the chastisement you were ready to inflict on me.’

  An exceptional development. Far from the hostile reaction he had expected, she seemed to have warmed towards him.

  ‘Aren’t you going to have some kidneys, Miss McGee?’

  ‘I wasn’t intending to—but if I might be so bold as to take one from your plate, it would give an opportunity of talking to you a little longer.’

  ‘Please help yourself.’

  She gave a tentative smile, and forked a kidney from his plate. Then she sat opposite him, turning the fork speculatively in front of her face. ‘You were magnificent tonight, Mr Sargent. I shall be reporting favourably to my father.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Cribb.

  ‘Do you know what most impressed me? It was when you remained completely calm when the crate fell. Nine men out of ten in your position would have followed Malone into the river. Panic is extremely contagious.’