The Cold North Sea

by The Cold North Sea (retail) (epub)

  He went into the men’s toilets, a large tiled chamber with a high ceiling. There was a line of toilet cubicles, fully enclosed, with the doors and their glass panels above extending all the way from floor to ceiling. None displayed an engaged sign.

  He inserted one of his pennies into the door lock of one of them (‘speculate to accumulate,’ he heard a voice in his head say). Once inside, he stood on the wooden toilet seat – wincing as he did so – and lifted off the heavy iron black cistern lid. He tried to use it to smash off the box inside the lock that contained the money – the ‘spent pennies’ – but it was too unwieldy.

  Instead Finch pulled the chain, flushed the toilet, stood on the seat, reached over and jammed the ball cock to prevent the cistern refilling. He prised off a section of the flush pipe, giving the copper tubing a twist along the way and, using the sharp metal edge as a chisel, slowly and surely managed to dig the lock out of the door, releasing the coins. He could now afford his train fare with three pence to spare.

  The man was pulling down the shutters in the ticket office but Finch caught him just in time and bought a single to London for the next day – in effect, less than six hours’ time.

  ‘H’ar y’all right, sir?’ asked the man, taken aback by the blood and bruising on his face.

  Finch explained that he’d been in an automobile earlier which had skidded down a slope – the reason he was travelling now by train. In doing so it had caused him to bump his forehead. One of the passengers, a man sitting in the front, had fared far worse than he had (which was the truth). Judging by Finch’s accent that he was no barroom brawler, the man took pity and, touching his nose conspiratorially, gave him a ticket for first class instead.

  ‘Just between me and you, sir. Make sure you look after y’self.’

  Finch half slept on a bench and thought of the time he and Annie, when they were on the run, had camped out amid the sea of bodies at Cape Town railway station.

  At some point the adrenalin would wear off, he knew. At some point the injuries would catch up with him, and probably very soon. He also knew – death of Dryden or not – he was a marked man and so, instead, he roused himself, forwent the bench and tucked himself away in the shadows with a good vantage point. He opted for rest over sleep.

  He was dreadfully thirsty but the toilets and their washbasins had closed and the public drinking fountain wasn’t working. He thought about venturing into the city but he was in too much discomfort.

  It seemed to take forever but, before first light, the new day’s station activity began. He had enough money for a cup of tea from a stall and then, at five, he headed painfully, unsteadily for his train.

  The odd person had stared at him and he knew that his injuries would draw attention. On a near-empty train, the luxury of first class was redundant, but he appreciated the ticket clerk’s kindness, and it probably made him less conspicuous should anyone be looking out for a man on the run. When the inspector came, he pulled his cap down low and – affecting the manner of a man half asleep – handed his ticket over for clipping without looking up.

  Two hours later he was at Liverpool Street station, amid the sanctuary of the rush-hour crowds, armed with the only plan that made sense. He had just enough change for the fare to the West End and, after waiting for the rush to subside, rode the number 11 omnibus back via St Paul’s and Fleet Street to the Strand. With his body about to give up, he began a painful hobble down Savoy Street, alongside Waterloo Bridge, to the Thames and the Embankment Gardens.

  His eye was now swollen and black. He thought he might have broken his nose. He had a near-dislocated right wrist with severe abrasions and a burn; not to mention the agony of his ribs, that stinging deep cut on his forehead and the accursed lump that Cole had given him.

  He knew where to find Annie but couldn’t risk going into the hotel, so instead he staggered and stumbled round to collapse at the back of her favourite park bench.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  With the help of a hotel porter, paid handsomely for his assistance, Annie managed to get Finch to the tradesmen’s entrance of the Savoy. Finch was filthy and he smelled, though the porter knew better than to complain.

  Loitering out of sight till the coast was clear, they bundled Finch into the service elevator. The porter, a young man from India, who looked upon the mission as something humanitarian rather anything clandestine, assured her that they hadn’t been seen.

  At the penthouse they got out, thankful there was no chambermaid lurking in the private corridor. With Finch’s arms around their shoulders, the porter helped Annie walk Finch to her room, where they propped him on a Queen Anne chair which she had the foresight to cover with a blanket first.

  She gave the young man a huge five shillings as a tip, thanking him for his absolute discretion. She knew Mr D’Oyly Carte personally, she said (she didn’t). She asked him – ‘Pandit’, he said his name was – if he could arrange, privately, some room-service food to be delivered along with access to a first-aid kit of some sort. As a seemingly exciting diversion from the quotidian, not to mention a lucrative one, the porter snapped to the task.

  Annie hung a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door and went to run a bath. Then she helped Finch out of his clothes, stripping him down to his underwear. He had a badly bruised midriff, with – she determined on a cursory examination – a possible cracked rib or ribs. His face was cut, bruised and swollen, particularly on the left side, with a black eye to go with it. There was an impressive lump on the top left-hand side of his skull.

  Running along his forehead, just below the hairline, source of much of the encrusted blood, was a nasty, deep cut – about three inches long – that gaped open and was liable to infection. Finch’s right wrist was cut and bruised and appeared to have a flash burn on the underside – the kind she had seen on the battlefield, a common injury for those discharging firearms.

  She wrapped the blanket around him, as much to preserve the chair as for warmth, went to the drinks cabinet and poured him a large brandy. Finch cupped the bowl glass in his left hand and took a long sip.

  ‘Thank you,’ he mumbled.

  She then lit him one of her cigarettes and placed an ashtray stand next to him. He nodded his gratitude again.

  When the bath was ready, run to a good temperature, she helped him stand and led him into the bathroom. Leaning on the edge of the tub and assuring her that he could get in unaided, she left him to it, urging him not to get hot water in the head wound or on the burn on his wrist

  She knocked periodically on the door to check that he was all right. But, half an hour later, Finch emerged, cleaned up, looking vaguely human, dressed in a pair of fresh gold silk pyjamas, white cotton slippers and a maroon and blue striped bathrobe with the hotel’s name embroidered in gold thread on the pocket.

  ‘Hope this is okay?’

  It was, she said.

  Pandit the porter had come and gone again in the meanwhile. He had rustled up some scrambled eggs on toast and a pot of tea left over from breakfast – nothing too challenging for an injured man (some story about a man he knew once in his village back home who’d had internal bleeding and eaten the wrong kind of food and it had killed him).

  The medical kit was rudimentary, the kind of thing they kept on the side in the hotel kitchen, but he hoped it would help. It had plenty of wound dressings. Again, Annie had expressed her appreciation.

  Finch took his seat at the room service trolley, on which the flap had been raised, locked in place, to act as an ad hoc table. Annie removed the stainless steel plate cover (Edward would have accepted nothing less than silver and made a song and dance about it). Finch ate cautiously at first but then began tucking in.

  ‘Thank you, Annie,’ he said again.

  ‘Listen,’ she replied. ‘I’m glad to help, but this is not a good situation… you being here… for any number of reasons… You understand me?’

  He nodded a yes.

  While he ate, she told him of her visit
earlier from Detective Coates of Scotland Yard. Then, when he’d finished, she helped him to sit on the edge of the bed. She had some gauze, ointment and bandages ready. After helping him off with his pyjama top, she bound his ribs, then applied a dressing to his wrist.

  ‘Haven’t done this in a while,’ she said. ‘Getting out of practice.’

  He’d put on a bit of weight since South Africa she thought. There was a softness to him. She stood over him and studied his forehead, gently turning it back and forth in the light from the window.

  ‘It’s going to need stitching.’

  There were no such items in the first-aid pack so she went to a drawer and came back with a hotel sewing kit, the kind used for replacing buttons. She threaded a needle with black cotton, then upturned a bottle of iodine onto some gauze and dabbed gently at the gash, which was swollen and sore and an angry red around the edges.

  Finch winced but then composed himself. She took a match, lit it under the needle to sterilise it, then commenced with her needlework.

  ‘Good boy,’ she said mockingly.

  For the first time he smiled.

  When she’d snipped off the final thread, Annie helped Finch up onto the bed and propped him upright with pillows. She poured him some tea and, over the next half an hour, let him tell her all that had happened in Norfolk: events in Endthorpe, at the guest house, the trip out to see Nathan Cole at Blakeney and the agony of his encounter with Dryden. It was followed by his rescue, then, finally, the strange duplicitous reversal by Cole – a man who had committed his ‘murder’.

  ‘The weird thing was, Annie, I was so angered by it,’ he growled. ‘Not just the blow, but by the sheer gall of what he’d just done… I wasn’t driven by any motive to stay alive… to survive… it was complete, blind rage. I wanted to climb back on board and kill him. It was adrenalin, pure adrenalin that saved me…’

  She lit him another cigarette and one for herself too.

  ‘He was clever,’ he went on. ‘He was watching the current, the tide, and knew just when to do his dirty work.’

  ‘Jesus, Finch. You were lucky.’

  He finished up detailing his train-hopping back down to London.

  She tried to sound reasonable, to sound comforting, given all that he’d gone through, but she knew her tone sounded hostile to him.

  ‘And you chose not to go to the police, not to your lawyer friend, not to Maude… but instead you came here?’

  ‘It was the only thing I could think of. All I could afford. My gratitude again, Annie. I’ll not hang around. As soon as—’

  ‘Edward’s still away,’ she said. ‘In fact, he won’t be coming back here at all. Going directly to Liverpool from Scotland. I’m meeting him up there on Saturday. But like I say, Finch you… we… have to be discreet.’

  She poured him some more tea.

  ‘Finch?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll be honest with you… something Coates said. The stuff about the drinking, the personality changes, violent mood swings… He had me convinced for a moment. And then, what you just said, about rage…’

  He tried to laugh it off but it was a weak effort.

  ‘Please, Finch, you have to tell me. Is there something here you should worry about… something I should worry about?’

  ‘No, Annie, I promise.’

  She went to the French doors and looked out over the Thames again. The river traffic was ploughing up and down as ever.

  ‘So, do you have a plan?… What’s next?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I need to sleep on it… literally.’

  ‘Fair enough. You must be exhausted.’

  While he shifted position, she pulled back the counterpane and the quilt. She rearranged the pillows.

  ‘The only plan I had till now,’ he sighed, ‘the only thing that kept me going… was getting back to you.’

  The silence was awkward. His words sounded to her like the lyric to some cheesy music hall ballad.

  ‘Here,’ she said, businesslike.

  She helped him off with his dressing gown and he climbed right in. In a matronly fashion, she realised, perhaps even a maternal fashion, she tucked him in.

  ‘Just an hour or two. You understand?’

  But he was already asleep…

  * * *

  ‘Finch… Finch?’

  He stirred. Rare sun was streaming in through the window.

  ‘Finch?’

  He was groggy.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Ten past eleven.’

  ‘How long…?’

  She could tell by his face that he was in considerable discomfort. He probably had a thumper of a headache. He was putting on a brave show.

  ‘Couple of hours, a little more… Here.’

  She had ordered some more tea. His own Zeiss wristwatch lay on the bedside table. He reached for it and nodded approval that, for all its tribulations, the time was correct. He strapped it on.

  He also noticed, in the corner, that she’d bundled up his old clothes.

  ‘Is that a hint?’

  She hoped her face conveyed the necessary gravity.

  ‘Finch, I’ve been thinking. It’s like I said the very first time… in South Africa. You need to go the police. We can find someone sympathetic, I’m sure and—’

  ‘Annie, I’m the apparent killer of a policeman!’

  ‘No, Finch. You’ve been wronged. You’re innocent and you know it. Someone tried to murder you for Christ’s sake. This Nathan Cole, they can arrest him.’

  ‘No, Annie, the local coppers in Norfolk are up to their necks in this thing. It’d be Cole’s word against mine about what happened. And I know who they’d believe.’

  ‘What about this solicitor friend… this lawyer…?’

  ‘Jilkes? I’m afraid not. They got to him too, remember? Plus he’s got a wife, kids. And I made a promise.’

  ‘What kind of promise?’

  ‘That I’d keep him out of it.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘The bigger picture, Finch… Ursa… If it’s as you say… What happened in the North Sea, this is deadly serious… of national importance.’

  ‘Exactly, Annie. Which is exactly why I need to get to the bottom of it, find a trusted person…’

  ‘The detective… Coates… Yes, I know, he was singing from the official hymn sheet. But he seemed reasonable… I’m sure if—’

  ‘NO!’

  ‘Jesus, Finch, there’s no need to be so bloody rude.’

  She saw the guilt flash across his face.

  ‘Look, Annie. If I go to the authorities, I have to have everything cast iron. Everything has to be proven. Otherwise, to them, it’s just supposition and fairy stories. I’ll come over to them just like Pickersgill did to Maude and myself. Like some ranting lunatic.’

  Annie sipped her tea.

  ‘That’s the first time you’ve mentioned her, Finch.’

  He cast his eyes down.

  ‘Finch?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Maude, come on, she’s lovely… What’s not to like?’

  ‘Please, I—’

  ‘Damn you, Finch! You were forthright enough with your opinions about me.’

  She felt the rush of blood.

  ‘Are you trying to pick a fight?’ he snapped. ‘It sounds like it.’

  Damn you, Finch.

  She huffed and slammed her cup down on its saucer.

  ‘You can’t just do this, Finch… come crawling back here. I’m happy to help… really, I am… but I’m embarrassed that you’re my first port of call.’

  ‘Why?… Because we signed papers…? Official Secrets…? Jesus, Annie. Lord knows I wanted to steer clear of this thing altogether. But it came to us Annie, not us to it…’

  She swung her arms in exasperation.

  ‘Because I’m married, for Christ’s sake.’

  She
had got him.

  ‘Happily married?’ he retorted.

  ‘To hell with you, Finch. Get out of here. This is your mess… again!… You sort it out!’

  Finch tried to get up. It was hard work. She took pity, came over and helped. He sat on the edge of the bed. He could probably smell on her breath that she’d had a brandy herself. Could he see that she’d been crying? She looked away.

  ‘Here…’

  She unhooked Edward’s dry-cleaned suit from the back of the door.

  ‘…You’re about the same size. Help yourself to a shirt, tie, whatever you need…’

  She pointed at the wardrobe, the dresser…

  ‘You sure?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Your shoe size?’

  ‘Ten.’

  She rooted in the bottom of the wardrobe. She handed him a pair of brown brogues.

  ‘May pinch a bit but they’ll have to do… And you’ll need a hat to cover the bandage.’

  She went off into the sitting room to allow Finch to get dressed. On her own, she sat and smoked another cigarette. Five minutes later Finch entered. He was not completely sure on his feet but markedly better than before.

  She found it difficult to speak. There was her husband’s suit – royal blue with a navy-blue pinstripe – only the man inside it wasn’t her husband. She wondered for a moment if…

  ‘This any good?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘This…’

  He casually scooped the Henry James from the coffee table and thumbed through it. She had forgone the dust jacket for its reddish-brown linen binding and had turned down the corner on page seventeen.

  ‘Oh… I don’t know, I haven’t really had a chance to get into it yet.’

  On the marbled endpaper, at the top right, she had written her initials in ink. She knew he would have seen it: ‘A.J.’ – ‘Annie Jones’ – not ‘A.P.’

  The clothes fit well. He looked good in them. She couldn’t deny it.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Like I’ve been kicked by a mule.’