The Cold North Sea

by The Cold North Sea (retail) (epub)

  ‘…’Fraid you got work t’do, boy…’

  Cole tethered the billowing sail to a cleat on the port side. He placed Finch’s hand on the tiller.

  ‘…Hold’ar hard this direction. See that red lobster float yonder. See it…?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘…Aim for har.’

  Finch nodded.

  Cole made better work of the bailing and got rid of all but a puddle. When done, he reeled Dryden’s body in to the stern. The man’s waders had come off, pulled away by the weight of the water in them.

  ‘Shame. They’re good ’uns… Hodgsons.’

  Cole began shoving the lead fishing weights into the dead man’s pockets.

  ‘Just in case the anchor line break.’

  He stopped suddenly when he got to the breast pocket.

  ‘Look!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘What?’

  He pulled out the key for the handcuffs. He dangled it gleefully from his finger.

  ‘Must a-been tucked right in deep.’

  Finch was beyond being able to formulate a response.

  Cole took over on the tiller again. Going against the tide and tacking against the wind was tricky in an overladen boat and with a one-armed man at the helm. But Cole’s skill was impressive. Finch really didn’t have any sense of time, but they must have got nearly a mile out when Cole reached over again and tied his anchor to the line round Dryden.

  ‘Can they trace it… the anchor?’ asked Finch.

  Cole’s look suggested that Finch was an idiot.

  ‘Right, here goes.’

  The boat rolled almost to the water line as Cole leaned over, undid the rope and heaved clear. Dryden hung there for a moment, just the hump of his back visible till the anchor took hold, and then went straight under. The few bubbles didn’t linger.

  ‘Crab food,’ said Cole.

  ‘Thank you again,’ said Finch.

  ‘Like I say…’

  They drifted beyond the spot and Finch thought about the unknown world down below… the secrets that lay hidden in the fathoms. Back to landward, Blakeney Point was just a smudge.

  ‘So what happens now?’ Finch asked

  Cole blew out a sigh.

  ‘First light I get my wife and child out o’here… Mavis… my Isaac… We got friends all over. Head up north most likely. Well away from Norfolk.’

  Beyond the tidal breakers, the sea was rolling rather than rough. Finch was so cold it didn’t seem to matter any more. Cole reached inside his own jacket and retrieved Finch’s whisky flask, the one that Dryden had thrown to him.

  ‘Here…’

  Finch took a grateful swig.

  ‘I reckon you’re a man o’ ’spensive taste, Dr Finch,’ Cole smiled.

  Finch just about managed to reciprocate.

  They sat there for a moment. There was not another boat in sight. They both knew it but neither said it – they had been lucky.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Cole.’

  ‘You can call me Nathan by now.’

  ‘Then tell me, Nathan… please… What the hell’s going on…? You have to be into something pretty deep to shoot dead the local chief of police?’

  ‘He was aboot a-kill you, Dr Finch.’

  ‘For which I’ll be forever grateful… But you said something else. You said he “had it coming”.’

  Finch passed the flask back. Cole signalled for Finch to take the tiller again while he changed the tack, tethering the sail to starboard this time. Tucked under the bow was his rucksack, Finch noticed. Cole had retrieved it from the shingle.

  ‘’xactly as I say. Man was no good. ’specially since…’

  ‘Since what?’

  Cole reached under a shelf at the boat’s prow. He pulled out a small rubber bag.

  ‘There she is…’

  It contained a wax pouch of tobacco and cigarette papers.

  ‘…My life preserver.’

  With one hand he crafted two roll-up cigarettes and passed one to Finch.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Finch handed him his lighter… the lighter that had saved him. That and a half-remembered lecture by some anonymous instructor at Aldershot who’d given a group of RAMC officers a crash course in basic weapons training prior to shipping out for the Cape and had painstakingly – to a bored-beyond-belief classroom – described in forensic detail the properties of a bullet.

  ‘That’s it, hold ’ar steady. You doin’ a good job, Dr Finch.’

  Cole puffed on his cigarette and gazed out to sea.

  ‘Well I s’pose I do owe you some sort of explanation,’ he mused. ‘I mean… after all you been through…’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  While Finch held the tiller, Cole smoked and finished the story he had been meaning to tell… before the police had shown up. Four weeks ago, he began, Pickersgill’s mission boat, the Kittiwake, a thirty-footer, had been chartered by some out-of-towners up from London, supposedly for scientific purposes – ‘this Freeland Corporation,’ he said.

  ‘Dryden made the introductions. Did it discreet. According to instruction, Sid and his crew were to take ’ar out o’er the Dogger Bank. These so-called scientists, they were goin’ to monitor some of the fishing stocks. “Oceanographers” they call themselves.

  ‘There were two o’ them, these academics, an Englishman and a yeller ’un, some sort of Oriental… I don’t know. Had some gear with them, electronic, which was carried on board in a packing crate.’

  It was all done in secret, added Cole; no one else knew about the trip or saw them boarding. It was prearranged that they were to be over the Dogger Bank at a specific time – 8 p.m. on October 21st.

  ‘Trafalgar Day, as it happens,’ Cole added. ‘’Ole Nelson, he born round these parts, y’know – Burnham Thorpe.’

  Finch nodded.

  ‘Sid ask me t’crew that night,’ he explained, ‘but I’m already commit to a crab boat that weekend… Shame, it pay better for once. But ole Sid, he know right away that the academic, the English one… reckon he military… armed forces. You know wha’s like, Doctor, can spot ’em a mile orf…’

  It was true.

  ‘…An’ the gear they carryin’? Well Bertie Brandon he reco’nise it right away… A wireless radio set… big coil transmitter an’ a battery pack. He’s in South Africa too, see. Royal Engineers. Be relayin’ signals from the army scouts outside o’Mafeking. An’ the Oriental? Everyone call him a Chinaman. But Bertie, he reckon the li’l fucker Japanese. You pardon my French.’

  Finch waved away the apology.

  ‘Just like we seein’ in the pictures… the noos-papers – you know, all skinny, round spectacles… an’ dressin’ like us now, like some London toff – suit, cravat…’

  ‘That’s a stereotype, Nathan.’

  ‘Call it wha’ you want, Dr Finch. Make no difference…’

  He paused to redo his sail.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘tha’ night, eight o’clock, just as I ’stablish, they get to within a mile range o’the Hull fleet. Well guess what they do?’

  ‘Pickersgill’s crew?’

  ‘No, these other two…’

  He said it with contempt.

  ‘…these “oceanographers”…’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Finch shrugged.

  ‘Send up a kite… Big thing, silk and bamboo, with a wire attached back down to the boat. For “meteorological purposes”, or so they claim. As if a seaman hant got the gumption to work out the weather for his self. But really, it’s an aerial as you call it. And then they start transmittin’ is what. You know, a Morse tapper, the Jap doin’ all the tippy-tappy.’

  Asked Finch: ‘You mean, what, radio telegraphy?’

  Ahead, out to sea, hung a thick grey curtain of rain. It would be moving inshore, Finch knew. They were in its path.

  ‘If you say so, Doctor,’ said Cole. ‘Keep at it awhile, they do. Dint take too much to figure later that they tryin’a ’tract the attention o’those ole Russian wars
hips. Just a con trick. You know, Japanese chatter in the North Sea bein’ picked up soon enough on a battleship wireless receiver…?’

  Cole was watching the horizon, too. Finch deduced he didn’t like what he saw.

  ‘…Them Russians, they soon hear the chatter, then when they see those Hull trawlers, they put two’n two together, make five. They think they really are Japanese gunboats an’ start firin’. You know, just like the Russkies in the noos-papers’s sayin’ all along. Tha’s wha’ Sid think anyway.’

  ‘Christ!’

  ‘Tha’s right. ’xactly what I say.’

  Finch was stunned, momentarily speechless.

  ‘Nathan. If this is true… If it can be proven to be true, then this is devastating… The issue is exactly as serious as Pickersgill was trying to claim… Something of national… international significance. Whoever did this could be about to start a war. At the very least they’ve got several good men killed, and I include Pickersgill and his friends among their number.’

  ‘No doubt aboot that, Dr Finch. But who? Who you think do such a thing?’

  He hauled a lanyard and instructed Finch to push hard on the tiller, swinging her about. The boom veered right across and they had to duck. They were heading back to shore.

  ‘Therein lies the problem, Nathan. God knows I’ve had my own brush with them in the past… the secret service, military intelligence… Thing is, they all move in mysterious ways… and every country’s got their own versions. Usually they work against each other, sometimes they act in consort, operating on a level that most governments can’t. But there are plenty of reasons for wanting to start a war between Britain and Russia, that’s for sure. There are plenty of people willing it right here in our own parliament. But can you imagine if, say… I don’t know, Germany was behind this thing… whether it be state-sponsored, or a freelance, rogue operation…? I mean, a war between Britain and Russia would suit them down to the ground.’

  ‘I’m thinkin’ along those lines myself, Doctor.’

  With the wind behind it and its load lightened, the boat picked up speed.

  ‘So what happened?’ said Finch. ‘Pickersgill gets back from sea, and then what?’

  ‘Well, back ashore, these “scientists” disappear into the night along with their gear. Dryden starts taking care of Pickersgill’s crew on Freeland’s behalf. You know, gin’em a few extra quid on the absolute guarantee they keep their traps shut. Thing is none of ’em actually sees what’s goin’ on over the Dogger Bank that night…’

  The boat was zipping along now, skimming over the swell.

  ‘Hold on… Pickersgill… I got the impression he was witness to events – the Russian warships, the trawlers? Saw it all?’

  Cole rolled Finch a new cigarette. He lit it for him.

  ‘No… not at all… You makin’ an assumption, Doctor…’

  Finch thought for a moment of the venerable detective he knew in Cape Town, Harry Brookman, who’d chastised him repeatedly for his impulsive conclusion-jumping.

  ‘…Just said that he was there, tha’s all. Course, Crabby Stamshaw, Buster Compton, they never look’a noos-paper in their lives. But Sid, he soon read aboot what’s goin’ on out there at sea that night. Say he think he hear rumbles, big guns, see flashes in the fog after they leave the area. Round midnight or so. Anyway, he start t’smell sumpin’ fishy. Now he put two an’ two together. So he resolve t’do, in his mind, what he think is the right thing…’

  ‘You mean go to the police?’

  ‘’xactly… Get to the bottom of it… But o’course the police is Superintendent Dryden. He shut Sid up. He tell him he’s a “fantasist”, he call ’im… He got a screw loose.’

  ‘So Sid takes it elsewhere?’

  ‘Again, ’xactly right… Ole Sid, he do sumpin’ bold. He call a meetin’ o’ the Fishermen’s Collective, the local crab boys. Goin’ t’get ’em all come down the Oddfellows Hall. He even invite a local noos-paper man. Get it all on record. Plans t’tell ’em all ’boot what happen that night – the radio, the Japanese, the Russians…’

  The boat was going too fast for her own good. Cole took in some sail, slowing her.

  ‘Now in my defence, Doctor, ole Sid, he already tell me ’boot it all. Swear me to secrecy. I tell ’im t’keep his mouth shut. T’ent nothin’ he can do t’bring those Hull boys back. An’ nothin’ he can achieve by takin’ on the likes of Dryden and those higher up.’

  ‘I hate to say it, but you were right… I mean about Pickersgill…’

  He nodded his appreciation.

  ‘An’ then the inevitable. Dryden, he get wind o’the meetin’ tha’s goin’ a-happen two day hence. He get to Fat Pete and the Fishermen’s Collective first. Tell ’em all in advance that Sid, he men’lly defective, him just sore aboot some petty local charterin’ matter and that by raisin’ it in public like he intend, it mean ole tax man’s goin’ a-come in’, pook his nose around in their business, stop all the back-hand trade they do – fish they sell black market to the big hotels and the like. Get ’em all in trouble. Get ’em all in debt.’

  ‘And so, what, Pickersgill’s an outcast as a consequence, a black sheep?’

  With the tiller tucked under his arm, Finch tried crafting a roll-up himself. He packed the tobacco in way too loosely and half of it fell out when he went to light it.

  ‘Worse’n that. Dryden gets this Freeland lot back in to pay them all, the Fishermen’s Collective, a handsome slice… on the sly, o’course… cash. Recompense, if you like, for all the “inconvenience” that Sid, this one l’il ole boy’s caused. They dint mean t’open no can o’worms, they say. They just humble “Oceanographers”…’

  He spat the word out again.

  ‘…Dint mean to cause a stir. Want a-say sorry an’ all that. Apologise. And o’course Sid’s meetin’ gets cancelled.’

  Cole made Finch a fresh, tight roll-up. The wind was starting to buffet from different directions, the water getting choppier. Finch steadied himself as he lit it up.

  ‘But Christ,’ said Cole, nodding Finch his reassurance. ‘I mean these boys, they get paid huge. Tens o’pounds. An’ the promise there’s plen’y more where that come from, if they can all sit tight. More Freeland business in future…

  ‘I must stress, none of the Endthorpe fishermen knows aboot the Japanese feller and all that stuff, by the way. Still don’t. Word never get out aboot that. They all think Sid just some busybody, some God-botherin’ do-gooder out a-spoil their big payday – their mistrust pretty much confirmed when ole Sid go orf on the run.’

  ‘But what about the deaths… Sid… his crew…?’

  Cole shrugged.

  ‘Accidents… Enough said… It happens… Everyday hazard… And Sid… When they find out he die too… Well he’ll just turn out to be a rum ’un after all…’

  ‘What about the dead men’s families? Didn’t they think it odd… a mighty coincidence?’

  The first rain hit. But the big squall was still behind them. It seemed just a prelude. They hunched themselves against it, Cole playing the sail the whole time.

  ‘That for me’s the saddest thing, Dr Finch. Ole Crabby… Buster… Neither one of them’s “thinkers”, as you might say. Bertie Brandon too for that matter – their brains made o’ dynamite it still wouldn’t blow their hats off. Yet Sid, once he start yarpin’ to them ’boot this stuff with the Russian navy, he put ideas in their heads. An o’course, none too bright as they are, they go straight to Superintendent Dryden…’

  He gave a look that suggested to Finch he knew what happened next.

  ‘…What you might say a case o’people cutting their losses. The Fishermen’s Collective, they’re all wise enough to be discreet ’boot the money they come into. Right careful. No trouble. But ole Bertie Brandon, the little bit he’d already copped for the keepie-quiet, and some more they give the Kittiwake boys besides, he’s fool enough to start blowin’ it all on the drink. Drawin’ attention… enough to convince Dryden’s lot t
hat them off the Kittiwake’s a liability, a dead loss. Literally. Hence, four men now gorn. Though I tell you, boy… The first three… Their widows… This Freeland? Pays ’em handsome. I mean handsome. More money they ever ’arn a lifetime. Enough to make ’em believe their husbands died in accidents at sea…’

  He gave a sardonic smile.

  ‘…Can’t blame ’em. We’re poor people. Fishin’s no money. This sort o’thing never happen t’people like us. An’ Dryden, he got the town in his pocket. Never been more clear. You cross him, you finished. You tattle, he know aboot it… Though not any more.’

  Cole was scanning the sea now, watching the movement of the water.

  ‘And so, what, the Kittiwake’s crew were killed – three men, then Sid?’ said Finch. ‘Me too, nearly… Just so everyone can sit on their fat piles of hush money?’

  Cole blew out his cheeks.

  ‘Tha’s one way t’put it. Maybe. But me? These fishermen… the others? I reckon they just scared. Know they take money they don’t deserve and feelin’ guilty ’boot it. A-feared a-bein’ rumbled. And are just naturally suspicious o’anyone who arrive in town askin’ the wrong sort o’questions…’

  He mused on it.

  ‘…Conspiracy o’silence, Doctor? More like conspiracy o’fear. Way I look at it – Buster, Crabby, Bertie… Sid. They’re warnings to ’em… Crows nailed to a fence… Christ knows they’ll shit their britches when they find out ole Dryden’s been done for too!’

  He hauled the lanyard, pulling the sail in closer still as they got within distance of the breakers. Cole was right, noted Finch, the current had already taken them well to the west, just empty shingle beach ahead, beginning to merge into more flats of sand and mud.

  ‘An’ tha’s why I’m gettin’ out a-here, Doctor. I’m a marked man. Guilt by association… with Sid… an’ now with you. Word’ll be out we crossed paths… Oh… an’ I never take a penny, by the way.’

  Finch had no idea what he was supposed to be steering towards; it was a struggle to keep the tiller under control.

  ‘Just run with the current,’ instructed Cole. ‘Let the boat do the work.’