by Derek Hansen
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Lieutenant Brian Littlemore was twenty-nine years old and the Cormorant was his first command. Like every young officer, he dreamed of the opportunities which could fast-track him through the ranks. The Shoto Maru offered him precisely the sort of opportunity he was looking for. An heroic arrest in appalling weather, unshakable grounds for conviction, justifiable public outrage, and plenty of publicity for the arresting officer. Provided he beat the Shearwater to the prize. He ran in close to the eastern shore of Little Barrier, taking advantage of the wind shadow and calmer seas to coax a few extra knots out of his boat. White water flew up from the bow and slammed into the bridge, a clear warning that they were rounding Little Barrier and running straight into the teeth of the westerly. The hull shuddered and the engine strained. Lieutenant Littlemore had no choice but to ease back to two-thirds speed. He consoled himself with the thought that the Shearwater would be doing things just as tough. He took his mark as he rounded East Cape and began his search in earnest. Five miles west-south-west then due south with fingers crossed if no contact was made. Lieutenant Littlemore allowed himself a smile. It was hardly normal, regulation naval search procedure, but Mickey Finn was hardly regulation Navy, and certainly not normal. He regarded him as yesterday’s hero, a relic from the war, full of passion and hatred of the enemy, with an ill-concealed disrespect for the Navy’s softly-softly approach to poachers. But Mickey was a Navy man’s man and relentless when he was on the trail of a poacher. There was nobody Lieutenant Littlemore would have preferred to have orchestrating the search, and he followed Mickey’s instructions to the letter. Twenty miles to the south, the Shearwater was charging northwards ten miles out from shore, equally hell-bent on glory and with the advantage of full tanks. But if Mickey Finn’s best guess was right and if he stuck to the plan, Lieutenant Littlemore knew the Shoto Maru was his.
Down below him, his radar operator was twiddling with the settings, trying desperately to make some sense out of the noise and interference on his screen, searching for a contact. Effective range hovered around four and a half miles and nothing he did afforded much improvement. He had no doubt that the Shoto Maru would spot them first if they ever got close enough, because its radar scanners were not only more powerful but positioned higher than his own and able to see further. But he knew the weather would be limiting them, too, and a lot would depend on the human factor – the diligence of their radar operator.
‘Coffee, sir.’
Lieutenant Littlemore hadn’t noticed his coxswain ghost up alongside him in the dark. ‘Thank you Cox’n, you must be psychic.’
‘One mile to go, sir, before we turn south.’
‘One mile.’
‘Yes, sir. Then it’s scrotum scrunch time.’
Mickey had given up staring at the phone in his office. He couldn’t will it to ring any more than he’d been able to will Gloria into his arms. He stared at her instead and considered his tactics. He’d been taught that people’s resistance was at its lowest in the early hours of the morning, and tried to decide whether or not to put the theory to test. Once again his mouth anticipated his brain.
‘Something I’ve been meaning to ask you.’
‘Sir?’
Mickey looked up into her face, giving her his full and undivided attention. There wasn’t the slightest hint of weariness about her, in fact he couldn’t recall seeing her quite so alert and eager before. So much for theories. She met his gaze expectantly, her big hazel eyes as round as saucers and as innocent as a school girl’s. He felt himself go weak at the knees and all his carefully marshalled words scramble into a heap inside his brain. Forty-three years old, a war veteran and he was still nervous about asking a young lady to have dinner with him, not that dinner was the ultimate aim of the engagement. Should he or shouldn’t he? The temptation was certainly there, along with the opportunity. Time to make contact of the personal kind.
‘Gloria –’ he began and was suddenly relieved when the phone rang. ‘Excuse me, Lieutenant Commander Finn.’
‘Signals, sir. Cormorant reports a contact. Made and lost at the very limit of their range. Dead ahead and heading south. Approximately five miles. Almost spot on the predicted position.’
‘Bingo.’ Mickey spoke softly into the phone, suppressing his excitement for the sake of his audience. He gave Gloria a triumphant wink. ‘What speed is the Cormorant making?’
‘Down to ten knots, sir. Weather dead abeam.’
‘Notify the Shearwater. We’re coming down. I want to hear this ball by bloody ball.’ He stood up. Gloria still hadn’t moved. She just gazed at him in awe and admiration. He threw his massive arms around her and hugged her. She responded with a strength he never suspected she possessed. ‘Right on the nail, Gloria. Right on the bloody nail. We’ve got them stone motherless cold with their noses in the trough. This is why we joined the Navy. This is why you and I are going to have dinner together tomorrow night and celebrate.’
‘Whatever you say, sir.’
‘You got it! Now go. Round up the team.’
The Shoto Maru’s winches whined as they struggled under the load. The ship pitched and rolled, treading water at half trawl speed as it hauled in the heavily laden net. The rear lights burst into life, lighting up the deck and the sea for a hundred yards all around. The otter boards inched towards the stern, were gathered in and coupled into sheaves. The water reflected pink. The pink of blood and thousands upon thousands of juvenile snapper. The net began its crawl up the stern ramp, creeping when Shimojo wanted it to rush. The deck crew glanced around nervously at the halo of light surrounding the stern, but the powerful arcs were unable to penetrate more than two or three hundred yards through the rain. The skipper watched approvingly as the crew connected the gantry cables to the lifting loops. A rope was already in position to split the load. The endless hours Shimojo had spent drilling the crew so they could work in the dark were paying dividends when it mattered most. Everything was under control until the intercom blared.
‘Captain! Contact two miles astern!’
Shimojo stared at the speaker, stunned speechless. Two miles! How had another vessel managed to come so close without detection? He was even less prepared when the intercom blared a second time.
‘Captain! Second contact five miles south-east!’
The crew hesitated, awaiting instructions. The port chute was open and gaping hungrily.
‘Continue!’ barked Shimojo.
The cod end lifted off the deck, swung towards the port chute and tore open, releasing the catch into the hold below. Shimojo looked on grimly. He checked his watch. They had time – just enough time – to stow fish and nets and clear the rear deck, but no reason to deny a request to board. They were caught red-handed unless . . . unless . . . His eyes hardened. Just as his crewmen opened the starboard chutes to accept the second half of the catch, he ordered a hard turn to starboard and full power. The bows lifted under the sudden thrust of the engines, heeled over sharply as the full force of wind and wave caught them broadside on. The load of fish which had been slowly swinging from the port to the starboard chute accelerated. He heard the scream above the sound of the wind and knew his manoeuvre had succeeded. The Second Officer ran towards him with confirmation. Shimojo cut speed to four knots and turned back into the wind.
‘Continue!’ he ordered. ‘Discharge the catch!’
Lieutenant Littlemore peered intently into the murk, trying to spot the trawler in front of him. The contact had given no indication that it was aware of his presence and appeared to be maintaining trawl speed as best they could tell. He wished he could crank a few more knots out of his boat but the conditions made that impossible. Hopefully they had the Shoto Maru with its nets still in the water.
‘Heading south-west, Sir. Trawl speed.’
‘Thanks, Cox’n.’ Why hadn’t the trawler reacted? No matter how sleepy or incompetent their radar officer was, the Cormorant had to be showing up on their scree
n like a Christmas tree. The same with the Shearwater. In the end, he didn’t care. All the evidence pointed to the fact that they had the Shoto Maru on toast. A dead duck waiting to be snapped up by the hounds.
‘Cox’n!’ he bellowed.
‘Sir.’ The reply came soft but clear, without a hint of irony. The coxswain hadn’t moved and was standing right alongside him.
‘Sorry. Get a camera and stand by.’
‘Aye aye, Sir.’
‘Christ! Look! Dead ahead! Get that camera!’ The rain ahead had begun to glow. Lieutenant Littlemore strained to catch detail in the hotspot at the centre, but a wave crashed over the starboard bow sending a solid wall of water onto his windscreen. Even so, there was no doubting what he was seeing. The trawler had its stern lights on. It was still working. They’d caught the Japs red-handed. ‘Hurry Cox’n!’ But the words had barely left his lips when the boat disappeared, swallowed up into the night.
Mickey stared at the speakers in the communications room. Against all the odds they’d done it! Caught Shimojo cold with his hand in the till. He hardly dared breathe as Lieutenant Littlemore repeated his request.
‘Shoto Maru, Shoto Maru. This is HMNZS Cormorant two hundred yards off your port bow. You are in breach of sovereign waters. Please heave to. You are ordered to stop, now! Over.’ Everyone was staring at the speakers, nobody breathing. Nothing. The Japanese were ignoring the Cormorant. Mickey pictured the patrol boat’s spotlight playing on the trawler’s bridge and wondered how anybody could possibly ignore it.
‘They’re goners,’ he pronounced. He listened as Lieutenant Littlemore again repeated his request. Almost leapt with joy when the Japanese voice responded, was instantly glad he hadn’t.
‘This is Shoto Maru 375. We request assistance. Repeat, we request assistance. Over.’
‘Request assistance?’ Mickey stared at the speaker in disbelief.
‘Give me Lieutenant Littlemore!’ Mickey brushed aside the radio operator.
‘Littlemore, do you read me? Over.’
‘Come in, Lieutenant Commander. Over.’
‘Brian, for God’s sake what’s going on? They had their stern lights on. They were fishing. You caught them red-handed. What’s happening on the rear deck? Over.’
‘Nothing, sir. The rear deck is deserted. Over.’
‘Christ!’ Mickey put his head in his hands. ‘But you did see them fishing?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Navigation lights?’
‘On when we drew alongside.’
Mickey groaned. What were the Japanese up to? He’d pulled off the impossible. He’d found them, caught them! They were fishing. ‘Brian, ask them what grounds they have for their request, and get a boarding party over immediately to check out the process line. Their request has given you grounds to board them. Christ! You don’t need grounds! You have enough reason to send over an army of occupation. Go ahead. We’ll listen in. Over.’
The Signals room sat silent, numbed, all eyes on the speaker. The exchange was laboured, the voice hesitant, the English barely understandable, but its message was clear. It told them they’d lost. Their plan had been perfect, the execution faultless, yet they’d lost. Mickey stared down at the floor, aware that everyone was watching him, waiting for him to pull a miracle out of the hat. But there were no miracles left. The captain of the Shoto Maru had used up the last of them.
‘You have to admire the bastard,’ he said at last. ‘We had him but he still beat us. Right now you can bet he has every man on board topping, tailing and packing fish, and there’s not a bloody thing we can do about it.’
Mickey turned and left the communications room, dragging himself leaden-footed back to his office. The trawler’s skipper had found the only way out of his predicament. But how had he managed to get someone to break his back for him at such a convenient time? What kind of man volunteered to fall down a fish chute? It was beautiful. What was the Shoto Maru doing in New Zealand waters? Coming into port on a mercy mission. Why were they travelling at trawl speed? To prevent further harm to the injured seaman. Why wouldn’t they accept a boarding party? No point unless the Cormorant could provide them with a doctor, which it couldn’t. Heaving to served no purpose. They had no choice but to let the Shoto Maru make its own speed, which would be governed by the number of fish they needed to process. The skipper could take all the time in the world to crawl into port while a comet tail of traitorous seagulls eagerly devoured the waste from the processing line and all evidence of the trawler’s activities. Mickey made up his mind to meet the Shoto Maru when it berthed at Marsden Wharf, even though he knew all the fish they’d hauled out of the Gulf would be packed and frozen as solid as rocks. He wanted to meet the man who had beaten him.
In the meantime he had a report to write and a draft press release to prepare. Two patrol boats in mercy dash to rescue injured seaman. Naval PR would love it, but anybody with any kind of a brain would realise that the Shoto Maru was almost certainly the boat that had been stealing fish right along the north-east coast, and wonder why the Navy was being so nice to them. After Lieutenant Commander Scriven’s performance with the media, they’d also probably wonder why the Navy was so stupid. He swallowed a mouthful of coffee. It was stone cold but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t any colder than his career prospects.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Rosie awoke early and true to her new resolutions began to exercise. Her muscles were stiff from the exertions of the preceding days, but gradually warmed to the task. She began to realise what her more physical friends had been trying to tell her all her life. Her exercises made her feel alive and vital, unbelievably righteous and even buoyant. She’d had a number of men friends who’d exercised with weights and divided their time equally between their apparatus and their mirror. Rosie had thought they were motivated by narcissism, even though they talked grandly about the sense of well-being lifting weights gave them. She didn’t care about muscle definition or tone. She exercised to survive.
Crisp, slightly burnt toast spread with Vegemite and accompanied by a cup of tea constituted breakfast. She planned her day as she nibbled at her toast. There were many things she could do, in fact needed to do. For a start, she had to get her boat working, and learn how to operate it against the day when she needed to take it around to Fitzroy. She was down to four small cans of diesel. She could do without butter or meat and had enough essential foodstuffs to get by, provided the occasional fish obliged her by hooking up on her line. The one thing she couldn’t do without was power, and she couldn’t have power without fuel for the generator. The boat was definitely a priority.
But so, too, was the toilet. She reasoned that if she only dug a little every day, she’d dig a new pit soon enough. It was the perfect job for newly aroused muscles. She figured she could move the outhouse the same way. Dismantle it bit by bit, then put it back together again over the new pit. It all seemed so simple to a mind that had yet to wake up to the realities of foundations, verticals, levels and right angles. It didn’t matter. In her heart, Rosie knew nothing was ever as simple as it seemed, but, in the afterglow of her exercises, refused to entertain any negative thoughts. The longer she sat contemplating her next bold step, the more determined she became to strike a blow that would proclaim her permanence. In the strange logic of the moment it occurred to her to tackle the most dangerous but ultimately most satisfying job first. She decided to get rid of her greatest irritation. The scrape of torn guttering on her veranda roof had mocked and ridiculed her for not being man enough to fix it. There was her challenge, and potential for triumph as proud and glorious as any flag atop any mountain. It was time to climb her Everest and stake her claim to Wreck Bay.
She washed her breakfast dishes, dressed in old clothes and overalls, and wandered outside onto her veranda. The rain had eased to an exhausted drizzle. It was still cold but there was no wind to cut through the fabric and chill her. She stepped out into the yard to examine her guttering and downp
ipe. It amazed her the way things always rusted out first in the most inaccessible and inconvenient places. The hillside had been dug away to accommodate the western end of her bach, and fell away sharply at the eastern end where the guttering had rotted. Even if she’d been able to find secure footing, Bernie’s old extension ladder had no hope of reaching up to the corner. She had no choice but to crawl out over the roof. That presented its own problems. The roof sloped north and south from a central ridge, steep enough to indicate that Bernie had once taken pride in his workmanship. It glistened wetly and looked as slippery as all hell.
Rosie was no genius with rope, but had endured enough knotted shoelaces as a school girl to believe that a good granny could do most jobs. She threw two loops around the chimney stack, which poked up through the ridge in the uphill half of the roof. It would have suited her better if it had been in the other half, but she still figured it could save her from catastrophe. She pulled the rope as tight as she could and tied it off with a triple granny. She looped the other end around her waist and also tied it off. Her ambition was limited. All she wanted to do was take a close look at the guttering and examine her options. Temporary repairs would suffice. With the rope attached, there was no way she could tip over the high side if the worst came to the worst. Nor would she hit the ground if she slipped and tumbled over the veranda. She judged that the rope would pull her up well short.