The Cold North Sea

by The Cold North Sea (retail) (epub)

  ‘I tell you… please… I don’t know anything about Ursa. I saw the name written down, that’s all… Is it “bear”?… Something to do with Russia?’

  Dryden took his time. Ominously, Finch felt the first cold swirl as a low wave passed, the white foam head running along its peak from one side to the other.

  ‘Reckon you got a good hour’s thinking time afore you start gulping and spluttering. Will be a right pretty picture. Shame I won’t be here to see it. Wife packed the “thigh-highs” not the “chests”.’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘You know I once knew an old boy, a fisherman, who’d just about drowned, till they fished him out and managed to pump the water out of him. Said the worst thing of all, while going under, trapped in his boat, not far off the beach… was that he could see people… ordinary folks on the shore going about their everyday business, oblivious to the fact that he was about to meet his maker.’

  ‘Listen… I’m telling you… I know nothing about Ursa!’

  ‘And therein lies my dilemma, Finch. Whether you do or don’t. It’s immaterial now. You’re a threat. The best thing for everyone concerned is that you just disappear.’

  He turned to face Finch again.

  ‘One for the road…’

  He balled his right fist and swung it back. Finch closed his eyes.

  BANG!

  Dryden hung there for a moment, a strange quizzical look on his face. Then he staggered forward.

  BANG!

  He took one… two… three steps and slumped right on top of Finch, his face pressed right into his, the grey eyes gone, unfocused. A terminal rasp of breath rattled on Finch’s cheek, expelled from a man who’d just been shot… Dead.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Finch used every last ounce of energy to kick Dryden’s body off him. With lifeless limbs lolling, the man rolled over and splashed face down in the water. Finch strained his neck and blinked through the blurring and the blood. Ahead to the left, behind the mound of a mudflat, he thought he saw the tip of a short mast.

  He willed himself to focus, but he could now hear it too – a person advancing towards him, sloshing through the water…

  Nathan Cole.

  He had a rifle slung over his shoulder.

  Cole reached the concrete block and gave Dryden’s capsized body a prod. The superintendent’s feet dragged in the mud, holding him in place.

  ‘Believe me, I want a-do that fr’a long time.’

  He turned to Finch and examined his face. He hissed out a sigh, pulled out a blue and white spotted kerchief from his pocket, dipped it in the water and handed it up, indicating for him to press it to his left cheek.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Thank you…’

  ‘Give you a right beltin’.’

  ‘No… I mean…’

  Finch nodded at the body.

  ‘…Thank you.’

  Cole shrugged, as if dispatching Dryden were no more a courtesy than holding the door open for someone.

  ‘Don’t thank me… thank ole Sid,’ he replied. ‘You were good to him. Help him in his hour o’need. Least I can do’s show my gra’itude.’

  ‘But I thought…’

  He chuckled to himself.

  ‘Wha’ you think? I lead you on a merry dance with my little show for the boys in blue back there… Gettin’ all roiled up…? Believe me, I know more’n anyone, there’s only one way ole Dryden’s mind work.’

  Finch eyed Cole’s rifle, slung about him with a webbing strap. A Lee–Enfield. He’d seen enough of those to last him a lifetime.

  ‘What you might call a souvenir,’ Cole quipped. ‘Arms for an arm.’

  Finch thought for a second of Jilkes – what he’d said about ex-servicemen keeping hold of their weapons.

  Cole switched his attention to Finch’s handcuffed wrist.

  ‘Don’t make life bloody easy, do ’e?…’

  He poked at the body again.

  ‘…Never did. Ole bastard…’

  He rolled Dryden over.

  ‘…Creeks and channels all over these parts. Know ’em like the back o’my hand… my right hand. Tha’s how I sneak up orn ya.’

  Dryden’s face was blank, the eyes dull. For someone who had exerted such power over him not five minutes ago, to Finch he now seemed so pathetic. There was a ragged exit wound… two exit wounds… on his left chest, right over the heart. Cole, even with one hand, was clearly a very good shot.

  ‘The key,’ said Finch. ‘He put it in his jacket. The breast pocket.’

  Cole dug his hand in.

  ‘Wha’ I call self-preservation,’ he recounted, as he felt around. ‘But one thing, sure as eggs is eggs. Regardless o’what happen a-you. After Sid, I’m next…’

  ‘The breast pocket,’ repeated Finch, with more urgency.

  ‘Hold you hard.’

  Cole patted around. Finch did not like the look on his face. After the breast pocket, he tried the others, then, with greater desperation, every fold in the material, front and back, from every conceivable angle.

  He looked Finch in the eye.

  ‘Bad news.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘T’ent there.’

  ‘Try again.’

  He did so but to no avail.

  ‘Maybe in the mud…?’

  As adept as he was with one arm, the rising tide and the encumbrance of a rifle slung around him made it tricky for Cole. He lay his gun down on the block next to Finch, threw his jacket on top, then ducked under the water. He came up for air.

  ‘Impossible to see.’

  He plunged again. Finch got a glimpse of his white hand feeling around. He came up, shook his head, then scaled the block. With its bottom half wet and the seaweed now a billowing slippery carpet, it was not easy to get sure footing. Once up, Cole pushed and pulled at the rusty ring, then the handcuffs. They cut deep into Finch’s wrist.

  Finch felt the cold shock in his groin as the first low breaker hit him full on.

  ‘Here…’ Cole said and beckoned for Finch to pass up the rifle. But he had not reckoned on the extent of Finch’s incapacity. His grip on it was unsure.

  Splash!

  It slipped into the water.

  ‘Shit!’ yelled Cole.

  He slid down on his backside, jumped back in and fished it out. He was standing waist-deep.

  ‘Well that’s buggered the next part o’ the plan,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  Cole tilted the rifle. Water poured out of the barrel.

  ‘I was goin’ a-shoot through the chain on the handcuffs.’

  The pain in Finch’s wrist was increasing. The wetter the block got, the more he slipped down. The more he swung on the handcuff, the more it cut into the skin, the more it acted like a tourniquet. He was too weak to keep shifting position. He grabbed the rusty ring with his left hand also, trying to relieve the pressure.

  Cole wedged the rifle’s stock under his left armpit and pulled back the bolt; the chamber was water-logged too.

  ‘Nope,’ he muttered.

  He shuttled the bolt and tried firing a one-handed round into the air. The pin just went click. He ejected the cartridge and put it in his jacket laying there on the block. He tried another to no avail.

  ‘S’all I had, the five in the magazine. Two o’them I used on Dryden.’

  He climbed up again and tried the remaining bullet, firing with the thin chain of the handcuffs pressed right across the barrel.

  ‘This work, you’ll get a burn on your wrist, a right good-un,’ he said.

  Finch didn’t even brace himself. He knew what was coming. Again, all they got was click-click-click as Cole repeated the exercise for good measure.

  With all three cartridges set aside in his jacket, he slid down and rifled through the floating Dryden’s pockets once more. There was nothing else in them of any significance – a wallet, some coins – they could use to free Finch. Cole bobbed underwater again and felt around on the seabed.

&
nbsp; But… nothing.

  He climbed up again. He pulled at the corroded metal ring for all he was worth. He even shoved the gun barrel in to it to try and use it as a lever. All he did was bend the barrel. Finch pulled the chain taught for him while he smashed away at it with the rifle butt, and then repeated it on the big rusty metal ring of the block. After five minutes of hammering it was clear it was a futile exercise.

  The water was above Finch’s waist now. Small waves were beginning to break around them more frequently. It was so cold Finch was shivering uncontrollably. Cole lay his jacket over him.

  ‘Be a while t’get help. Even if I sail back home ’gainst the tide, not sure I’ve anythin’ there. And then I’ve got a-get back.’

  Attached to his belt was a sheathed hunting knife. He removed it for Finch to see. It had a curved steel blade, about eight inches long.

  ‘You’ll never saw through solid metal with that,’ said Finch.

  ‘That’s not wha’ I meant.’

  He registered the look of shock on Finch’s face.

  ‘It’s oiled, sharp…’

  ‘Wait! No!’

  ‘I can skin’n gut a rabbit in under a minute. I know how t’get in between the bone.’

  ‘WAIT!’

  ‘Wha’ else you suggest for Chrissakes?’

  Finch fell silent. And then…

  ‘A cartridge.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A cartridge… From the rifle…!’

  ‘Hold on.’

  Cole stopped him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s floatin’ orf.’

  Dryden had started to drift. Cole jumped down yet again. With his legs near numb with cold, Finch could feel Cole tugging at his own ankle.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Tuckin’ the toe o’your boot into his belt… There, he’s tethered good n’ proper.’

  The weight of the body put even more strain on Finch’s wrist.

  ‘You were sayin’?’ asked Cole.

  ‘A cartridge,’ winced Finch. ‘In my inside pocket, there’s a cigarette lighter. We use some dry clothing. You can rip up my shirt. Whatever you need. We wedge some material under the ring, then place a cartridge under the chain link on the handcuffs. We set the material alight. Build a fire. It will heat the metal bullet casing. When the brass is red hot, it’ll ignite the powder in the cartridge… the cordite. The bullet will be expelled from the casing. It’s how a bullet works.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘You got any better ideas?’

  A hundred yards or so away, Cole’s skiff had risen on the tide. It was near fully visible from behind what was left of the mudbank, which had been reduced to a small islet.

  The water was creeping over Finch’s stomach, halfway up the exposed side of the block. Cole got the lighter out of Finch’s pocket just in time. Doing the best he could with his one arm and with Finch shackled, he partially wrestled off Finch’s jacket, then pretty much ripped the shirt straight off his back.

  He screwed the dry cloth into a ball for a fire, just as Finch described, packing in the material under the handcuff links, and squashed in Finch’s knitted tie for good measure. He wedged the bullet in vertically, nestling its nose into a link, pointing upwards.

  ‘No, the other way,’ said Finch.

  ‘Wha’?’

  Finch was so exhausted, he could barely get the words out.

  ‘Bullet’s held in place by a crimp in the metal casing… In a gun, the cartridge is held fast… so the bullet is released… Here… with it being insecure…’

  ‘For Chrissakes… What?!’

  ‘…It’s the other way round… Law of physics… It’s the bullet that’s solid, heavy. The metal of the cartridge is hollow, light… So it’s the bullet which will expel the cartridge…’

  ‘Will it work?’

  Finch gave him a look.

  Cole splashed Finch’s jacket sleeve and pulled it up as a protective barrier over his wrist. He ripped some more of Finch’s shirt, wet it and bound it round his hand.

  ‘Here goes…’

  The dry material for the fire did not light at first. But, sheltering the flame from the wind, it took.

  ‘Now you’d better stand clear,’ ordered Finch.

  Cole hooded his own jacket over Finch’s head, then turned his back, ducking out of the way, and hoped for the best. After a couple of minutes, Cole looked up.

  ‘S’not workin’’

  ‘Needs to generate some serious heat. Needs to get red hot.’

  ‘’ll take forever. The lighter… There naphtha in it?’ ventured Cole. ‘That’d add to the flame. I could open it…’

  Finch yelled straight over him.

  ‘Another cartridge… Split it open… The butt of the rifle… Use the powder within… the cordite… Extract it…’

  ‘Tha’s an explosive, Doctor… Raw ’splosive… Not stable…’

  ‘I don’t know what else to do. The only thing I can think of…’

  The water was up to his chest. A low roll came in and, for the first time, washed over his face. Finch spluttered the water away.

  Cole took the first of the two spare cartridges, climbed up and wedged it in a crack in the block’s uppermost edge, with the bullet head poking out. Swinging with one arm, he brought the rifle butt down hard. The bullet and its casing just pinged off into the sea.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Try again!’ urged Finch.

  ‘No… I mean the fire’s gorn out.’

  The water was up to Finch’s shoulders.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s dry up top for now… still two foot clear… we can relight it… Just do it!’

  Cole repeated the exercise with the second.

  This time he whacked so hard he simply forced the bullet into the crack.

  He sighed and reached to his belt again.

  ‘Sorry, Dr Finch. Reckon it’s the knife.’

  ‘NO… TRY AGAIN…!’

  ‘Really. S’not that bad, once you get used to it.’

  A breaker swamped right over Finch’s face again.

  ‘JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, COLE…’ he choked. ‘GET BACK THERE RIGHT NOW AND BREAK THE HEAD OFF THAT FUCKING BULLET!!!’

  The concrete block was now just an angular ridge poking three feet above the water. Cole fiddled for what seemed like forever, teasing the bullet out of the crack with his knife. He then braced himself, took a sure swing from well behind his head and, with a manic, one-handed thump, brought the rifle butt down on the cartridge.

  ‘YES!’

  He stooped, prised off the loose bullet-head then gently eased out the metal casing, being sure to keep it upright. Finch gestured for Cole to pass it to him and to light a new fire. There was a strip of dry shirt up by the ring still.

  While Finch struggled to keep his head above the water, he raised his left hand in the air, keeping the cartridge clear. Cole complied and set to work on the material with the lighter, starting a new fire. This time, using his hands to shield it, he got a flame first time, right under the chain of the handcuffs.

  ‘Okay, she’s alight.’

  The fire burned with the original cartridge still wedged in place.

  ‘Right… Again…’ panted Finch. ‘Take cover.’

  Cole ducked into the water and placed himself on the leeward side of the block, pulling himself in tight. Flames licked at the chain.

  ‘Okay, here goes,’ said Finch.

  He mouthed ‘One… Two…’ and on the ‘Three’ reached up with the bullet casing to tip the gunpowder directly onto the flame.

  BANG!!!

  With a huge jolt to go with it, Finch felt a searing burn on his wrist in the gap between the wet material protecting his arm and hand.

  Cole lifted his head.

  ‘You beauty!’ he yelled. ‘IT WORKED!’

  Finch was choking, having to hold his breath between waves.

  The chain had only partially shattered. But Cole climbed up again and swung
the rifle butt down hard on it. With brute force he bent the remainder of the link open.

  ‘There!’

  Cole pulled Finch clear and down into the water. Pushing the floating Dryden before them, they paddled through the icy water against the growing force of the incoming tide.

  Towards the mudbank it grew more shallow, but the current was strong, like hands grabbing at their shins. They were sinking in up to their knees. Finch had no energy. Cole struggled to help him. White breakers began to crash with force. They had to turn their backs with each one.

  The mudbank island had been reduced to just a pimple. They squelched onto it on their bellies, dragging Dryden behind them.

  ‘Here, lemme get you on board,’ said Cole.

  He sloshed into the water again and pulled the boat over, straining on its anchor line. Once alongside, Finch rolled over the gunwale, taking a good portion of seawater with him, and lay prone. Cole tied Dryden to the stern of the skiff, fastening him securely round his chest. He then threw his dud rifle on board and hauled himself over.

  He weighed anchor, then pushed off with an oar and unfurled the triangular sail. He wound the halyard round his left vestigial elbow and, with his right hand, grabbled the tiller, pointing her into the wind. He kicked an empty corn beef tin in Finch’s direction and urged him to bail out. Finch propped himself up and did the best he could. They tacked against the onshore bluster.

  ‘First thing we need t’do is dis-poos o’him,’ Cole said, nodding at Dryden, trailing behind them. They could use the anchor, he explained… and there were some fishing weights they could also use to send him to the bottom.

  ‘Won’t it be obvious? I mean, if he washes up ashore?… I mean what happened to him?’

  ‘Trust me,’ said Cole. ‘Tides ’n’ currents round here, the rough stones ’n’ rocks, he come ashore ten mile away – over to the west beyond Wells… Hunstanton. Yip, they put two and two t’gether. Know it’s him just aboot. But he be mashed to a pulp. Won’ even know the ole boy’s been shot. If no one see us… and I don’t think they do, we be blocked from view… we’re fine… Here…’

  He got Finch to sit up. He was battered, broken, had just the shreds of a shirt under his jacket and was caked head to toe in mud.