Sea of Troubles Box Set

by Peter Tonkin

  Robin filled her days with doing immediately important tasks, being casually careful to give priority to those which allowed her to explore. She kept expecting to fit her activities into the routines dictated by the captain, but Sin seemed to be a hard man to pin down. By the dog watches on Tuesday afternoon, Robin was actively seeking him out. The ship should have gone through a full lifeboat drill but it had singularly failed to do so. This was worrying. Although the individual pieces of equipment, from the boats themselves to the lines on the davits, all checked satisfactorily, the only way to check them properly was to test the system as a whole, and that meant using it. But even though she was ship’s security officer, only the captain could call a lifeboat drill.

  As lading officer, Robin needed at the least to inform her commanding officer that she had checked every single container aboard from the outside — except for the series of containers carried in the deepest section of the hold. She needed to apprise him of the fact that she proposed to open some containers and check that their contents actually agreed with the manifests.

  In her attempts to reach the elusive captain, Robin came up against the intransigent and unsettling Fat Chow, chief steward. When at last, on that sultry Tuesday evening, she hammered on the captain’s cabin door, it was the chief steward who answered, like a cornered rat turning on a terrier. Or, better, like a cobra confronting a mongoose. ‘Captain not available, missy,’ she was informed. ‘He ssend hiss orderss through me. You do what I ssay, misssy. Yess?’

  ‘Fat Chow, are you familiar with the phrase “In your dreams”?’

  ‘No misssy.’

  ‘Keep this up, and you’ll get to know all about it. Now, I need to see the captain. I accept orders from no one else. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, misssy.’

  ‘Good. Do I get to see him?’ She pushed against the door. The wiry man holding it was surprisingly strong. There was no way past him other than to fight him.

  ‘Captain sick, misssy.’ Their eyes locked. He was simply not going to let her past.

  ‘Really?’ If force would not work, maybe cunning would. ‘Then perhaps I should inform you that I am ship’s medical officer — and, indeed, acting captain if he’s too sick for command.’

  ‘Chow?’ called the captain’s voice from inside the cabin. The chief steward shot her a fulminating glance and slammed the door. As soon as the door was closed, the key turned in the lock. ‘Well done, Fat Chow,’ said Robin, loudly enough to be heard if he was listening. ‘Two keys in two days. That must be some kind of a record.’

  So it was that running a ship she didn’t know with a cargo she hadn’t properly checked, a crew she had never met, and safety equipment she had not had a chance to test took up all too much of Robin’s time. The long middle watches were her only unpressured time, the only time in which she could think, plan and question, but it was in the busy dog watches that she expected to achieve her first real breakthrough, for it was then that she was up and about, searching, looking and checking, militantly unaware of the cold eyes of Fat Chow, Wai Chan and the mysterious Captain Sin, which were all focused on her back.

  In the event, the first of the answers came not during the workaday dog watches but in the quiet middle watches, so that at first, when the way began to come off the ship at 02:36 on Thursday morning, Robin believed that the strange sensation she was experiencing must be part of a dream.

  As soon as she realised that the strange sensation was actually a sudden cessation of engine vibration, Robin pulled herself out of the watchkeeper’s chair and crossed to the long shelf of equipment which reached under the clearview windows across the front of the bridge. There were no alarms ringing. Nothing untoward seemed to be happening — except that the automatic log showed that the ship’s speed was falling rapidly away from the eight knots she had maintained since Singapore.

  Robin’s first action was to call the captain. Such a loss of propulsion had to be reported immediately. Her call was answered at once by a wide awake and very irate Captain Sin; she had half expected to be talking to Fat Chow. Inform Chief Engineer Chen Hang, she was instructed by the miraculously fit and clear-thinking commanding officer, and tell that lazy individual to get his act in order.

  The chief, too, answered on the first ring and grudgingly agreed to assemble his engineering officers and find out what was going on.

  By the time there was a full showing in the engine room, it was the better part of 03:00 and the Seram Queen was dead in the water, except that a sluggish current was pulling her fitfully north-eastwards along her plotted course, towards the Paracel Islands which lay perhaps seventy kilometres dead ahead. There was, Robin calculated as senior navigating officer on the bridge, no real danger at present. Seram Queen was well over the Herald Bank which stood, at its height, 235 metres below the keel. To the starboard lay the Bombay Reef and to the port, Discovery. But one was thirty kilometres distant and the other more than forty. Not even the warning light on the tall tower on Bombay reached this far. On this course with the currents charitable, the vessel could drift for the better part of a week before there was any real chance of coming dangerously aground on Woody Island of the beautifully named Amphitrite Group, north-east of the Paracels, or on Lincoln Island further west, which already stood with one great wreck so obvious there that it was a recommended radar beacon. So it was with very little immediate disquiet that Robin dialled the engine room and asked the chief for a prognosis.

  ‘Engine broken,’ observed the gruff Chen Hang. ‘Take time to fix.’

  ‘Yes, I understand that, Chief; but may I tell the captain how much time? One hour? Two?’

  ‘No ideas until I find problem, missy. Maybe one day.’ The word ‘day’ hit her like a slap in the face. ‘One day?’

  ‘I do not know. You get off the phone and maybe I be able to find out, missy! Yah?’

  The captain was hardly more courteous and Robin recognised that she was caught in the unenviable position of being the lubricant which kept two rough but important parts of the crew from rubbing each other raw. Her lips thinned. She had gone well past this situation in her normal professional life. Nowadays she had people to act as lubricant for her! She was a ship’s captain and a senior executive. She owned this tub, for heaven’s sake, every stick and every soul aboard, she shouldn’t be greasing egos, she should be kicking butt and pissing people off left, right and centre!

  The thought was as wry as it was inaccurate. Rarely, if ever, had Robin rubbed anyone raw. Even those who failed to give satisfactory service were exhorted and uplifted to improving their performance. Not even the most intran-sigently idle or cross-grained had proved able to resist her dogged excellence of example for long. But she was all too well aware that she was not in any position to pull this crew round; only Captain Sin could do that.

  The rest of the watch was filled with a quiet bustle of activity. Robin called Sam Yung out of his scarce-warm bed and summoned the grumbling Wai Chan to her side as well. The navigating officers had much careful work to do. The relatively modem navigational aids available to them — and efficiently functioning as long as the ship’s power continued independently of her main motors — established the ship’s position with near-perfect accuracy. But only as long as power was maintained. Only a fool would have failed to act on the assumption that they might go blind, deaf and dumb at any moment. Radio Officer Tso was called up too, but the captain refused permission to send a distress signal or even to alert head office. Robin understood that, at least — she would have kept quiet for a while too. Seram Queen stood in no danger and Robin’s navigating team was perfectly capable of checking, almost to the centimetre, how close any stood, on either hand, ahead and below. But as the long night waned, Robin realised that Chief Engineer Hang had meant what he had said. The engines were not going to come back to life immediately. As dawn crept up, promising a scorchingly bright, high-pressure, monsoon-cooled day, she handed over to Wai Chan and dismissed the comatose Sam Yung to grab a fe
w hours’ sleep, as she herself proposed to do.

  After a couple of hours restless slumber in the all too quiet environment of the powerless ship, Robin awoke with the irresistible impulse to test the emergency generators in case the maladies currently affecting the engines should spread to the main alternators, as she had half expected them to do last night. In the cold light of day — even a hot, calm day such as this — her fears of the coffin watch now looked even more unsettling. If the chief was right, then there would be no power tonight either. Drifting towards the jumble of banks, reefs and islands of the Paracels wide awake with full electronic warning of any danger nearer than ten kilometres was one thing. Going in blind as well as powerless was something else again. Going into the Paracel Islands powerless and blind might be very dangerous indeed. And once she had arrived at this thought, she felt an equally irresistible urge to institute the lifeboat drill which Captain Sin had neglected to hold so far.

  Rolling out of her bunk, still half asleep, Robin climbed into the ready-folded, easy-to-reach uniform which she had taken out of the ‘clean’ drawer last thing last night. With everything pulled on, tucked in, hooked and buttoned, Robin dragged a long-bristled brush through the golden riot of her curls and crossed to the door — and froze.

  Her fingers grasped the cold brass door handle but her eyes were fixed on the empty keyhole. A frantic search through her dirty laundry proved that the key still lay in its usual shirt pocket and Robin wracked her brains for a moment, trying to remember whether she had turned it in the lock and popped it back in the pocket without thinking. One turn and pull on the handle revealed that she had collapsed into her bunk and left the door unlocked. Mentally she cursed herself. Her sleep had been short but deep. Anyone could have come in and done more or less anything. The very thought made her flesh creep. She swung back impulsively and was just about to check her shoulder bag and Edgar Tan’s priceless gun when the emergency alarm shrilled.

  The noise of the alarm was so unexpected and so loud that it made her start with surprise. She turned, hesitating between the gun and her duty, her mind a turmoil. She looked at the chunky watch she had worn for so many years — though it looked thoroughly inappropriate on her slim wrist. It was 08:07 local time. Wai Chan was on the bridge. She and Sam Yung had enjoyed little more than two hours’ sleep after all, and now they would have to face God knew what. As these thoughts raced through her head, she forced herself to be calm. Perhaps this was the lifeboat drill she so much wanted the captain to hold. Whatever it was, she could not possibly waste time looking in her case now.

  Within five seconds of the alarm’s first sound, she reached for the handset of her bedside phone. There was no reply from the bridge or the engine room. Well, even in the absence of contact with the captain and the chief, her duty was clear enough, and defined by Sam Yung’s emergency lists which she had been so careful to study. She caught up the two-way radio from her bedside table and slipped it into her pocket. She crossed to the door once more, glanced around the room from the threshold and locked the door on the way out. Then she was pounding up the corridor to her emergency station, adrenaline lending wings to her heels. It was possible that this unannounced emergency was more serious than a drill — on this ship, almost anything seemed possible.

  As Robin ran out onto the deck her eyes were busy amid the bustle of crew, trying to find the captain. He was nowhere to be seen down here, but a couple of figures loomed on the port bridge wing high above. That ought to be the captain and the watch officer. She pulled out her walkie-talkie. Thumbed the open channel to the bridge. ‘First officer on the main deck,’ she said. ‘Please explain the nature of the emergency. Over.’

  As she waited for a reply, she looked around her, glad that this was a crew of small-bodied Orientals amongst whom she stood tall.

  ‘ … Drill,’ said her radio. ‘Proceed to …’

  ‘First officer understands this is a lifeboat drill. Proceeding to my designated position. Over.’

  Teams seemed to be forming at the lifeboats and she crossed to her place and began counting the faces, knowing she could never hope to remember all the strange names of the men who should be there. Still too busy to feel isolated or even faintly at risk, she walked briskly down the line, counting. Further down the deck, she could see Sam Yung doing exactly the same thing. On the far side of the bridgehouse, the senior officers in the boats which should have been commanded by the captain and the second officer would be doing the same, she knew. ‘First officer. All present, over.’

  ‘Proceed.’

  Her eyebrows rose. The man might have been sick but he was certainly making up for lost time now — a full drill. Well, OK.

  ‘Swing out,’ she ordered. As though the team had been practising every day so far, they swung into action, hitting the trigger lever and standing ready for the gravity davit to swing out. The long arms moved, then hesitated, then stopped altogether. This was just what she had been afraid of. The pivots were salted solid. Mentally berating herself for not having done more, Robin strode forward, pushing her men aside, to get a closer look at the problem.

  It was the wrong thing to do, more risky than she could have calculated. But she was tired, under more strain than she cared to admit and at the far end of a chain of circumstances which could not have been better designed to undermine her solid grasp of professional sealore if it had been worked out with care and on purpose.

  Just as she came under the davit, before she could crouch to inspect the apparently frozen pivot, the whole thing lurched into motion once again. No one moved a muscle or called a warning. Perhaps the disaster happened too quickly, too unexpectedly, catching them all unawares.

  The keel of the lifeboat came down like a guillotine blade exactly across the crown of Robin’s head and laid her out cold on the deck, curled up against the upright of the safety rail, as the boat lurched on down into position with a thunderous scream.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  So important was the package from London that the courier was sitting waiting with it when Edgar Tan arrived at the China Queens office for his regular morning checkup at ten thirty Singapore time on Thursday, 19 June. ‘What’s this?’ Tan asked the delivery boy.

  ‘Urgent package from London,’ answered the courier. ‘They said I had to wait and hand it over personally.’

  The detective let himself into the office so that he could show his identification and letter of authority to the young man. The envelope was padded and, in spite of its directions, Customs stamps and senders’ details, it looked brand new, as though it was ready to send not as though it was at its destination, half a world later. And it was so light, he discovered as soon as he had signed for it, it might almost have been empty.

  He turned it between his long fingers, wondering whether to open it at once or whether to listen to the answerphone messages first. Fortunately he listened — so that he could think a little more — before he acted. It was the second message which told him what he needed to know.

  ‘William Heritage here. I understand that in my daughter Robin’s absence I will be talking to the detective Mr Tan. Earlier today, Wednesday, we came into possession of a postcard apparently posted last week by Captain Walter Gough, somewhere in the Philippines. We have taken all the details we can here and will try to work out whether he really sent it or not, and if he did, where exactly he is at present. In the meantime, I have sealed the card itself in plastic and sent it by courier directly to the China Queens Office. If it hasn’t arrived yet it will do so imminently and you are advised to wait for it. I have notified Hong Kong of my actions and they agree that Singapore is the better place for the card to go. It may well be that local people there with you will be able to discover more about it than we can at this end. I would strongly advise some sort of contact with the police if that is possible. At the very least you will want to check it for fingerprints, I am sure. We have no record of Captain Gough’s fingerprints, I am afraid. Nor have the British authoritie
s, as far as I can ascertain. But there might be others and they might be germane. We are certain that the writing is his, and so is his wife. There seem to be several obvious conclusions to be drawn at once, even at first glance. This is especially true if the photograph on the card is a picture of the captain’s current whereabouts or anywhere nearby, as seems to be suggested in the message. But these thoughts will be best discussed at a later date, I think. If you wish to talk things over do not hesitate to call me. If I’m not here myself I guarantee that there will be someone competent to pass on my thoughts and those of the International Maritime Bureau with whom I have been in touch. Signing off now.’

  *

  ‘What does it say?’ mused Inspector Sung, looking down at the plastic-wrapped message while various of his underlings assembled to operate upon the little square of cardboard as though it were a murder victim at a post-mortem.

  Tan took the question literally and read out the message. ‘It says “I’m fine, don’t worry. Policies all activate within six months. Death or disappearance — standard for sailors. Should start to pay by Xmas if you tell no one. Mortgage should hold till then as company continue to pay OK under HM personnel rules. Bri Jordan will advise if any trouble. He knows. Don’t tell Wally. Too much for him. The picture is what I see each evening. Never stopped loving you — started to hate the life. Sorry, sorry, sorry.” It’s unsigned but there’s apparently no doubt.’