The Boy Who Liked Monsters (Commander Shaw Book 19)

by Philip McCutchan

  “The muster by the police, yes, Bois was present to answer his name.”

  “You saw him yourself?”

  “Yes,” Kubat said. It would be an understatement to say I was puzzled. The shooting had been real enough, but who else would have done it? Not sheer coincidence, surely. Another gunman on the loose, mistaking his target – no, that wouldn’t wash. An accomplice, well-paid to do a job for Louis Leclerc alias, as it now appeared, Jean Bois? It wouldn’t be the first time Leclerc had got others to do his dirty work for him. But who, if that was so, was the accomplice? Well – of course: this Alphonse Freyard who had deserted. Leclerc’s tool. Which in my book made Louis Leclerc equally guilty of Mandy’s murder.

  I took a deep breath and faced Captain Kubat squarely. I said, “I ask your help, Captain. You can do justice a big service.” It sounded pompous and it was meant to. Captain Kubat was himself not devoid of pomposity or of an awareness of his position of authority aboard his ship. I buttered him up a little, saying much was in his hands and that he was obviously the sort of man who could bear it worthily. He agreed that this was so, and I watched him preen. I said that I wanted him to say nothing of identities to any of his officers or crew, not to mention the reason for my visit, not to make any reference to photographs. He assured me of his cooperation. I said that the authorities would be very grateful; and casually Captain Kubat mentioned a reward. I said that this was certainly a possibility but first there must be a result in that our people knew he had not opened his mouth in the wrong quarter.

  “There will be no opening of the mouth,” Kubat promised.

  I went ashore. Of course, I knew that Louis Leclerc would by now be aware that his accomplice had botched the job. He would try another time. I didn’t believe he would himself desert, not in England, not now. But the police guard would be maintained until the Zonguldak had cleared away through the lock for the open sea and Cherbourg, where I still intended to go. Now that I knew where he was, that he hadn’t deserted, Louis Leclerc would be better watched than arrested. There was one thing: he couldn’t be sure I’d recognised him through that porthole. He might feel safe on that score. I was still convinced that there was a link between him and Robert Alexander Neskuke’s death. That link would be found if it was the last thing I ever did.

  I was driven back to the police station and then to Brighton for the London train, to report to Max’s duty officer in Focal House and afterwards back to my flat for some sleep, if sleep came. Then a trip across the Channel.

  The train journey was torture. I thought constantly of what I’d left behind in Shoreham Docks. I was very bitter with myself. This thing had now become personal.

  Three

  Shoreham police had said they would be contacting Dr Askew’s partners in the Worthing practice and that no doubt those partners would inform the family. Mandy’s parents lived in the west country in Lydford on the fringe of Dartmoor. She’d often talked about the moor, saying that the South Downs were lovely but couldn’t be compared with the west and the vast loneliness of Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor … What the family would be told, I knew not. All I knew was that I could tell them nothing at this stage: it had to remain official, coming from the police, a nasty accident in Shoreham Docks. In company with a man, whose car it had been.

  I didn’t know what they would make of that. But they’d hardly be expecting her to lead the life of a nun so they might not read into it what was in fact not there. Our friendship in earlier years had never gone that far.

  I would go to see them when the job was over, when I could report, circumspectly and with a proper regard for security, that Mandy’s killer had been run to earth. But I didn’t think I would ever feel innocence again.

  In the meantime there was going to be another inquest to add to that on Neskuke but Max would see to it that this was delayed until I became available if the depositions I’d given to the police were not found to be good enough for the inquest to be held in my absence. I thought for a moment about Robert Alexander Neskuke. He’d never married; he had a sister and that was about all. After making my report to the duty officer in Focal House I visualised the press reports to come. They would go to town on Mandy Askew, the local papers especially would be full of it. Not that cars hadn’t gone over into the harbour water before now – they had, so the police had said. But this was something special, a local GP, young and female. There would be all manner of theories being bandied about ranging probably from murder to attempted abduction, drunk driving to just damned carelessness on the part of the driver who could have been trying to grope on the move.

  I went back to my flat, poured myself two large whiskies in quick succession, after a hot bath; when I turned in sleep didn’t come, as I’d expected. All the images returned and I had nightmares about conger-eels, long thick bodies weaving in and out of the submerged car, evil faces, flesh-ripping teeth. The only time I’d seen them at close quarters was behind the thick glass of a tank at the Sealife Centre in Southsea. They’d been loathsome.

  I was woken by the burr of my telephone. I looked at my wrist-watch: seven a.m. I must have slept longer than I’d thought. The caller was Max.

  “Are you all right, Shaw?”

  I said I was, surprised that that should be his first question. Max was hard when it came to personal considerations. He asked what, precisely, the girl had been to me. He merely grunted at my answer.

  I said, “You’ll have had my full report, or are you not ringing from Focal House?”

  “I’m not, but I’ve had your report on the security line.” He was using the security line again now, the instrument coloured red. “I’m in the picture. What about the Zonguldak itself?”

  “What about it?”

  Max sounded irritable. “Do you or do you not wish the ship to be held in Shoreham?”

  I thought I’d made that plain. “No,” I said. “No suspicions to be aroused. I’m going to Cherbourg.”

  “When?”

  “Later today.”

  “What about this Alphonse Freyard?”

  “Wanted for murder,” I said between my teeth. “The police are well aware. I suggest we leave that to them – ”

  “Agreed,” Max cut in. “No overt 6D2 involvement. As for you, Shaw, you have a clear field. Just keep in touch via our people in France.”

  “When necessary,” I said, “I’ll do that.”

  Max rang off. I got up, shaved, had a bath, made myself breakfast: strong coffee, toast and marmalade, a couple of cigarettes. I made some phone calls from the kiosk down the road from my flat, ascertained the time of the next sailing from Portsmouth to Cherbourg. I had time in hand to make the sea crossing, perhaps more anonymously than going by air. I went back to the flat, packed a grip and went by Underground to Waterloo station for the Portsmouth train. I wondered about that funnel death: someone – Kubat, the police? – had commented that it would be difficult to bring aboard a body unobserved and shove it down the funnel. There is always a night watchman aboard a ship in port, though of course some are more watchful than others and anyway slackness can set in. Turkish ships might well not be very tautly run. All the same, it would need a lot of luck. And I reckoned the same thing would apply to a live stowaway, if not quite so firmly. Live people, unencumbered, can move quickly. Nevertheless, dead or alive, it all pointed to an accomplice, Alphonse Freyard obviously, acting in concert with Louis Leclerc alias Jean Bois for the embarkation of Robert Alexander Neskuke as well as for the attempted killing of me, the actual killing accidentally of Mandy Askew. Thus, if the police managed to catch up with Freyard, and made him talk, they too might find out some answers.

  *

  The ferry entered Cherbourg, past the ancient forts outside, across the quiet stretch inside the breakwaters, to go alongside the wharf where the big Cunarders used to lie, the Queen Mary and the first Queen Elizabeth, handy for the customs shed now dismantled like the old Ocean Terminal at Southampton. Beyond I could see the many floors of the Sofitel, not so
dominant now as a few years earlier when I’d last known Cherbourg. There were many more high-rise buildings now. Opposite the end of the jetty used to be the Hotel Tourville, now gone. When I’d been cleared through customs and immigration I walked with my grip into the town, along a dusty road and across the swing bridge between the outer and inner harbours. Cherbourg still had the same smell that I remembered: a mixture of fish, fuel oil, garbage, and something intrinsically French. It was unmistakable, like the smell of Africa wafting over the sea as you made an approach, basically indescribable.

  I knew a hotel that was better suited to my purpose, more frequented than the Sofitel by the less affluent and on occasions by doubtful characters including seamen from the ships, both French Navy and merchant service, interested in striking up female acquaintance on a short-term basis with the mam’selles in the bar. This hotel was in a back street, narrow and fetid with rubbish, a street in which I had once seen the odd sight of a nun in full old-fashioned rig, wimple and all, on a noisy motor-cycle, steering a course between the garbage piles, pedestrians and stray dogs and cats.

  I had stayed in this hotel before, and wondered if the same Madame was there. She was, and she recognised me – even recalling the name I’d been using then.

  “Ah, M’sieur Calvert!”

  I smiled at her. “Back again, Madame – ”

  “After so many years, yes.”

  “You have a room?” I asked.

  “Oh, but yes, of course, for you, M’sieur. For how long?”

  “Uncertain,” I said. “Shall we say a week?”

  A week was agreed upon. It ought to be more than enough. The Zonguldak would be unlikely, in fact, to remain in Cherbourg as long as a week. But if I wanted to stay longer, Madame Chaumet would give me preference. After we had made our more public arrangements, I made a private one with Madame Chaumet, who had sometimes entertained me in her sitting-room behind the bar; from there, there was a view of the bar area.

  Those in the bar couldn’t see into the sitting-room. Madame Chaumet, who had understood that in a vague sort of way I was connected with the police in Britain, said she would be pleased to accommodate me from time to time on this current visit.

  “Full discretion,” I said. “You understand, I know.”

  “I understand, M’sieur. On me you can rely absolutely.”

  I knew I could. Madame was safe. Pretty old now, she’d been in the French Resistance and her husband’s life had been saved from the Germans by British intervention. She had never forgotten. The sun shone from the collective British backside. In those war years she had undergone torture by the Gestapo, and she had never uttered. She looked the part, too: big, formidable, face like a rock. Husbandless now – old Michel had died a few years after the end of the war – she ran the bar and hotel like a man, standing no nonsense from drunks or anyone else. The girls who sat in the bar were under her thumb as well. The brothel interests lay in the upper floors, all very discreet, and of course Madame Chaumet took her commissions in advance. I’d gathered the business was pretty lucrative, and enabled Madame Chaumet to gamble on the Bourse and become, mostly, richer. She could easily have retired but she enjoyed the work, she enjoyed the cosmopolitan atmosphere, she enjoyed meeting different people of many different nationalities and she had very many contacts on both sides of the law.

  In short, she could be useful.

  *

  Captain Kubat had given me his departure time from Shoreham and his ETA in Cherbourg, which was 9 p.m. the following day. I used the interval in re-familiarising myself with Cherbourg and its environs. Time is always well spent in getting to know the geography; it aids speedy movement and disappearances. Next day I went out on a creaky old bus to Barfleur, where there were a number of bars. Whole carcases were being cooked over open fires along the sea wall and the smell was appetising but I hadn’t come to eat. I had come to see a man called Marcus Bright, an Englishman, although he had lived so long in France that he could be and often was mistaken for a Frenchman. Bright had been in the SAS until some ten years earlier and was now an artist, painting water-colours, seascapes, all around the Cotentin and Manche. He lived in a small house almost hanging over the water at the end of the sea wall, beyond the cooking pots. He was our man in the area and his occupation gave him plenty of scope for keeping his eyes open and ears cocked.

  He wasn’t surprised to see me. Focal House had already been in touch. He knew, too, what I wanted: anything relevant about the Zonguldak and Alphonse Freyard.

  “Right,” I said. “Also anything new on Louis Leclerc, now known as Jean Bois, seaman?”

  Bright shrugged, pulled at a greying beard. The shrug was very French, suiting the beret which he wore constantly. I knew he had a livid scar over his head and that the hair didn’t grow. That had happened in Northern Ireland – Londonderry. “There’s nothing known of Leclerc since he escaped. Simply vanished from human ken.”

  That wasn’t surprising and I’d asked as a long shot. Marcus Bright said that the Zonguldak was often in Cherbourg. Not regularly, but five or six visits a year. Once, there had been a little difficulty over heroin found aboard in the crew’s quarters and there had been an arrest.

  “Not Freyard by any chance?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not Freyard. The name was … I think Despard, yes. Ferit Kubat was in the clear.”

  “What’s he like?”

  Marcus Bright laughed. “Easy-going, wants no trouble. Keen on women. I believe he has a wife in Antalya – ”

  “Not in Shoreham?”

  “Another wife perhaps … I assume from your question that there was a woman. There usually is.” Bright chuckled. “Was she fat?”

  “Very. Do I take it there’s nothing against him?”

  Marcus shrugged. “Frankly I don’t know much about him, but I believe he keeps his nose clean in all other directions. I doubt if you’ll find there was any collusion in getting poor Neskuke aboard. Not from Kubat.”

  “What about Freyard?”

  “A nasty character by all accounts. Criminal record – ”

  “Murder?”

  “That’s never been nailed on him. Robbery, violence, blackmail, that sort of thing.” Bright lit a fierce-looking cheroot. I refused his offer of one and lit a cigarette. He said, “Neskuke, now. What’s your view?”

  “Mystery. Why stow away? Why, if he was dead already, bring him aboard?”

  “Quite. I gather there hasn’t been an inquest yet. I also gather the police surgeon, and forensic, attribute his death to the fumes.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So he came aboard alive. Under his own steam, or by force majeure?”

  “We don’t know which,” I said. “But I’ll go for a voluntary act.”

  “Not necessarily. He could have been doped.”

  “The medics didn’t find anything.”

  “Sometimes they don’t, they’re not infallible. Just a whiff of something that wouldn’t show afterwards. However, we’re still left with the question, why?”

  It went on being a question. Marcus Bright didn’t have any ideas. I’d been puzzling about it constantly. Neskuke had been absent from the scene for a long time, presumed dead. But once he’d surfaced all he’d had to do was to make contact with a British embassy or consul, or with a local 6D2 agency come to that, and he’d have been whizzed through to England fastest possible. Stowing away was a ridiculous risk for a man like Neskuke to take. The only answer I could come up with was that he’d got out, or thought he had, just one jump ahead of some kind of pursuit and had had no chance of making a proper contact. Maybe he’d met Leclerc or Freyard in a dockside bar, in Malta or Cherbourg, and fixed a deal for payment or the promise of it. It still didn’t quite add up.

  I said, “We don’t know what happened to him in the interval between vanishing and turning up again.”

  “Exactly. We don’t know where he was, in what country. That could have a bearing, couldn’t it?

 
; It could, I agreed. If only we knew. Obviously, he’d have wanted to get back to England, even if only for purely personal reasons. But there was that dedication to duty that was part and parcel of Neskuke. There could have been something more. He could have had something to impart, something vital. If he had, could it be that Louis Leclerc knew what that something was? Could Neskuke – this was all theorising – could Neskuke, when negotiating passage in the Zonguldak’s funnel, have given something away? Unlikely, I thought: neither Leclerc nor Freyard would have appeared to him as trustworthy recipients of important messages. But if he’d been desperate, as well he might … then death in a funnel, all unsuspecting until it was too late, could have given Leclerc a clear field to use the information.

  Fanciful? Perhaps. But so often the truth is just that.

  *

  I went back on the bus to Cherbourg. Marcus Bright would keep in touch and would be available when and if needed. He’d asked if I wanted the use of a car: this, he could fix. I said not yet. I was more anonymous without a car and currently it was men from the Zonguldak that I was interested in and they wouldn’t have cars in Cherbourg presumably. Most seamen make direct for the bars and stay there until they are assisted out. Quite often you find them in the gutters along with the garbage. It’s a part of sea life. Wine, women and song. If not overdone, it’s very satisfactory but there comes a time when you feel you’ve had enough of it. It doesn’t really get you anywhere as you grow older, and the girls get younger.

  That night behind the bar I sat with Madame Chaumet who disappeared from time to time to deal with a customer and kept me supplied with small glasses of cognac. The trade of both sorts went on and I had a good view until they went upstairs. The men mostly had a seafaring aspect, donkey jackets, jeans, some in seaboots. Around seven p.m. a number of customers gathered in a bunch. They called for cognac. After a while one or two of them got a little tight and there was shouting and laughter. By this time three of the newcomers had their arms around young women and there was a lot of ooh-la-la, chiefly what sounded like German, giggling and protesting and mauling.