Death in the City, page 21
There was a longish pause. Then the R/T crackled again. ‘I’m putting back to Clacton. Can you stand by?’
‘I can stand by for a bit, but I don’t know how much longer,’ Richardson said. ‘If she doesn’t break up he ought to be all right – that is, if he hasn’t jumped into the sea.’
‘I’ll come out again in the morning – we can get on board at low tide.’
‘Can I talk to him?’ I asked Richardson. He gave me the phone.
‘Police to coxswain,’ I said. ‘No time to explain now, but we have reason to be interested in that ship. I’ll get a signal to the Clacton police to meet you. No need to treat the crew as criminals – they may not be. But they’re not to disperse until they’ve been interviewed. The police will see to all that when you get ashore. This is just to warn you – and don’t say anything to the crew before the police meet them.’
‘OK,’ said the coxswain laconically. ‘Signing off now.’
*
I wrote out a message to be radioed to the Admiralty for Scotland Yard.
As the lights of the departing lifeboat disappeared Richardson asked me to come into the chart room. ‘What the hell do you think we ought to do?’ he said. ‘It goes against the grain to abandon the wreck while there’s even a possibility of someone being still on board. But it’s only a possibility. And if we stay here much longer there’s a more than even chance of losing the frigate.’
‘His radio was working before. Try to call him up now,’ I said.
Richardson got the Radio Officer to do this. He tried and tried. ‘HMS Onyx to Agnes . . . HMS Onyx to Agnes . . .’ But the receiver stayed dead.
‘You won’t like it, but I know what I’m going to do,’ I said. ‘I’m going to take one of your rubber dinghies and get on board the wreck. Then you must push off and find an anchorage in the Crouch.’
‘You! I shall just order you not to.’
‘No time for inter-Service rivalry, old boy. It’s not so mad. I couldn’t run your frigate, but I’ve handled small boats all my life. In a rubber dinghy I can get right up to the wreck, and she’s listing so much aft that I’m sure I can get on board. It’s vitally important to know what she’s carrying and, if possible, to get hold of the master. I’ll borrow a revolver from you, if your armourer can let me have one.’
‘But it is madness!’
‘No, it isn’t. A rubber dinghy’s as good as a lifeboat in conditions like this – better in some ways, because it draws so little. If the wreck doesn’t break up, I’ll stay on board and motor off – if Naval outboards work – at low tide. If not, I’ll wait for the lifeboat to come and pick me up. Come on, let’s get started. I know you’ve got a rubber dinghy because I saw one all ready for use when I came on board.’
Richardson ran his hand through his hair. Onyx gave a sudden lurch, and we felt her scrape for a moment on sand. That settled it. Mercifully, the frigate only touched the bank and was afloat again in a moment, but the next touch might easily be fatal.
I was provided hastily with oilies, a torch, a revolver, and – a particularly kindly thought of Richardson’s – a bottle of the wardroom’s malt whisky. It would have been next to impossible to launch an ordinary ship’s boat, but here the rubber dinghy came into her own: four men lifted her to the side, waited for a downward roll, and simply dropped her into the sea, holding her to the frigate by lines from the dinghy’s bow and stern. It was harder for me. I had to scramble down a rope ladder but, again waiting for a downward roll, I went down a few rungs and just dropped into the dinghy.
‘Naval outboards do work,’ Richardson called down to me. ‘Good luck. I’ll send help as soon as I can.’
They held my lines until the outboard fired, and then I shouted, ‘Let go.’ I drew away quickly from the frigate, waved, and made for the wreck.
*
Onyx had to clear out. It would have been useful to have her searchlight, but it didn’t matter much, for I was so close to the wreck that I could make out the mass of it even in the darkness. The rubber dinghy rode the seas like a gull. Drawing so little water I could get right round the wreck, and I throttled back as I came up to her steeply-listing quarter. I could just reach the rail with the dinghy’s boathook, grabbed it, and considered what to do. The wreck itself gave me an Ice from the breaking seas on the other side of her. Near my rail was a davit, and after a couple of tries I managed to throw a line round it. The trickiest part was to get hold of the end of the line. I missed it three times, but then the wind did the job for me, and blew the line into my face.
With a line securely round the davit, I made fast the dinghy so that I could haul her in again from the wreck, and hung on to the line until a lifting sea gave me a chance to grab the lowest rung of the rail. It was a struggle to get on board, but one foot found a tiny purchase on the rim of a porthole, and with a heave I managed to get a knee up to the edge of the deck. I waited for a moment to get my breath, and then climbed over the rail.
The deck was sloping like the roof of a house, but it was only a side deck, and there was a handrail running along the central superstructure that housed the Agnes’s accommodation, and ended with her bridge. I tested my torch to see if it still worked. It did, but I didn’t need it, for I had only to follow the handrail to get to the companionway leading to the bridge.
I made for the bridge, and then I did need the torch. The Agnes was rather larger than the frigate, and her bridge seemed roomy by comparison. It was in a horrible mess, the wheel leaning drunkenly, and everything movable or breakable torn apart by the force with which she had struck the bank. A door leading aft from the bridge was open – it had been partly torn from its hinges – and I went through it. There were other doors opening from a small passage, all now broken. Chart room and radio room were a shambles, though the radio, I knew, had still worked after she struck. To starboard were the captain’s quarters. I went in – and as I shone my torch into what was apparently the captain’s day-room a man in Merchant Navy uniform got up from the broken chair on which he had wedged himself. I didn’t even think of my revolver. With the torch in my left hand I held out my right hand to him.
‘Captain Stavanger?’ I said. ‘I’m very glad to meet you. May I say that you are an exceedingly brave man?’
He said nothing.
‘You ran her on the bank deliberately, didn’t you?’
Then he did speak. ‘It was the only thing left to do.’ He paused. ‘No, there is one thing more to be done. It will not take long. If you will excuse me for a moment, I shall do it now.’
‘No,’ I said gently. ‘That is no longer necessary.’
* See Death in the North Sea (Gollancz).
XII
THE WILDFOWL REMAIN . . .
SO I MISSED all the excitement at Winter Marsh.
My adventure on the wreck ended, indeed, rather tamely, by walking off at low tide to meet the lifeboat, her coxswain far from pleased at performing what he called ‘a ferry service for a couple of lunatics’. I explained things briefly, and when he learned that I had managed to get on board during the gale he became almost friendly. Andrew Stavanger was near exhaustion, but thankful that his own particular nightmare had ended, though he had, unhappily, still more pain to come.
The lifeboat took us to Clacton, and I went at once to the police station to get in touch with Pusey. They were expecting me, and had more news for me than I for them. Some of their news was already in the papers, and more poured out from the radio. Vivian Carolan, it seemed, had been forestalled in attempting to stage the coup d’état at which he had been hinting in his recent speeches, and what the news bulletin called the Battle of Winter Marsh had gone against him. He was now dead, killed by a bullet in the head, but whether fired by someone else, or by his own hand, was unclear.
Winter Marsh was apparently the depot of his private political group, a weird mixture of extreme left-wing socialism, English, as distinct from Welsh or Scottish, Nationalism, and a kind of Nazism with the Celts replacing the Jews as the enemies of the human race. He seemed to have got many of his ideas from Hitler – there was much contorted socialism mixed with National Socialism – but his plans came nearer lunacy than politics. Nevertheless, he had a following. They were collecting arms at Winter Marsh, and undoubtedly prepared to fight.
The radio news was most unsatisfactory because the facts on which it was based were thin. Even so, it was exciting enough. For reasons left unexplained the police had decided to raid Winter Marsh. They were met by Carolan and about fifty of his supporters, who had opened fire. Things were going very badly for the police when the Royal Naval frigate Onyx, which happened to be patrolling in the area, providentially came up. A landing party from the frigate turned the tables. Casualties were mercifully light. Carolan and three of his men were dead, and half a dozen more injured. Two policemen and a Naval sub-lieutenant were wounded. All the injured were in hospital and reported to be progressing well. Carolan’s party had been rounded up, and would be charged with various offences later in the day.
I had a word with Pusey on the phone, but didn’t attempt any long explanations. I asked him to get a Customs party to the wreck of the Agnes before she broke up – having survived the gale, the wreck would be safe until the next high tide. The gale moderated with the morning, and I thought it even possible that the Agnes might be salvaged. Pusey undertook to see to all this, and the Clacton police provided a car to take Stavanger and me to London.
*
Seddon was with Pusey when I got to the office. ‘The PM is very pleased with us,’ Pusey said.
I had other things to think of. First, I had to get in touch with Henniker. Pusey’s secretary got him on the phone. ‘You can blow up things any time you like now,’ I told him. He wanted to ask me about the extraordinary events at Winter Marsh, but I had to cut him off. I promised him a full account of things when I stood him that dinner I owed him, but said that it would just have to wait. He understood, and didn’t hold it against me – in any case, his own hands were now full.
Then I introduced Andrew Stavanger. ‘Captain Stavanger has confessed to killing Felix Varsov – he is the man whose body was found by Southwark Bridge,’ I said. ‘When you have heard the whole story I’m sure you will agree with me that no court would ever convict him. My own feeling is that he ought not even to be charged with the killing, but I suppose that’s a matter for the Director of Public Prosecutions. Meanwhile, he’s perfectly ready to consider himself under arrest.’
‘I can deal with that,’ Seddon said. ‘If Captain Stavanger will come with me I’ll see to the formalities, and then he can be released on bail.’
‘What he needs most are a good meal, and some sleep. I was thinking of asking Miss Macdonald to look after him.’
‘I can see to that too, if Captain Stavanger agrees.’
*
‘A hell of a lot has happened while you’ve been gallivanting at sea, Peter. I don’t even know what you’ve been doing. How on earth did you find Stavanger?’
‘A hell of a lot more is going to happen,’ I said, ‘The Ingard empire is going to go bust this morning. Ingard himself, and the shipping man Lennis, have got to be arrested. There’s evidence to charge both of them with being concerned in smuggling arms, and I’ve no doubt we can bring other charges as well. Can you send police to Ingard House straightaway? And to their homes, in case they’ve already decided to hop it.’
‘As a matter of fact, we’ve done that already,’ Pusey said. ‘I acted at once, as soon as I got news of Winter Marsh. As far as we know the place belongs to their company, and it was imperative to get hold of them for questioning. They were both picked up at home in the early hours of this morning, and taken to Scotland Yard. They’re there now, both screaming for lawyers, which I suppose they’ll have to have when we start questioning them seriously. This is an appallingly political case.’
‘As far as Ingard and Co are concerned, it’s a straightforward criminal case. Among other things, Stavanger never wrote any letter to the bank authorising the use of his money to pay the Ingard cheque.’
‘What a shrewd old banker Sir Geoffrey Gillington is! But for his suspicions . . . well, I don’t know, I think things were coming to a sort of climax, anyway. I’ve got a lot more to tell you. You were quite right about Belgium, though in a way for the wrong reasons.’
‘So they were getting arms from Belgium!’
‘Yes, but by a most ingenious fraud. When they bought the Winter Marsh site from the Ministry of Defence, they found, or forged, or got hold of somehow, some MoD stationery. Using this, they placed apparently official orders with one of the Belgium ordnance depots for arms and ammunition. They specified which ships they were to be loaded on – all T and T vessels. The Belgians carried out the orders in good faith, but they were getting a bit bothered about payment. They didn’t want to make too much fuss for fear of upsetting the British Government and losing what looked like a valuable contract, but when our Military Attaché began to make inquiries they were delighted to see him. They were less delighted when they realised what had been happening.’
‘So the managing director of that ordnance factory was just wrong.’
‘No, he wasn’t. He traced that batch of cartridges quite properly, and as far as he knew none of it had gone to the UK. What he didn’t know was that the ordnance depot in Belgium which he supplied with cartridges, used them to meet orders which they thought came from the British Government.’
‘Lord, what a tangle! I suppose the Belgians will just have to stand the loss.’
‘I don’t know. It’s quite possible that HMG may make some ex gratia contribution for the sake of good relations – I must say I rather hope so. But that’s not our problem. Tell me about Stavanger.’
Before I could start, Seddon came back. ‘Everything’s fixed up,’ he said. ‘Miss Macdonald is overjoyed. She’s taken Stavanger to her own flat, and he’s agreed to stay there until we get in touch with him. It’s a bit of a risk, I suppose.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think there’s any risk. Andrew Stavanger is an honourable man, and an extremely brave one. From what he told me during the night, and from what we know ourselves, I think we can piece together pretty well the whole story.
‘Miss Macdonald was quite right in thinking that the pressure on Andrew Stavanger to sell his shipping company to Ingard came from his daughter. After his wife’s death he had nothing much to live for, except her. She obviously wanted control of the ships for her own, or her husband’s purposes, but she didn’t want to work through her father because she knew that he’d never do what she wanted. How far back the Ingard relationship goes, we don’t yet know. I suspect some time, and I also suspect that Ingard and Co cheated her all round the clock – I mean, they used the ships and the cash they got with them for all sorts of purposes that Mrs Carolan probably knew nothing about.
‘Stavanger found himself more and more frozen out from anything to do with running the ships. But he was born and bred with ships, and he soon understood that something very fishy was going on. His own crisis came when he began to suspect that the ships were being used for running guns to Ireland, a suspicion that naturally horrified him.
‘But Ingard had a crisis of his own coming up at the same time. He had that huge payment to make to Irwin Osnafeld, and with the collapse of his property empire there wasn’t enough money in the bank. Who suggested using Stavanger’s private money I don’t know – it’s one of the things we’ve yet to find out, if we ever do. I wouldn’t put it past Mrs Carolan. But there’s no doubt that somebody wrote that letter to the bank, and forged Stavanger’s signature. That also meant that Stavanger had got to go. I think Mrs Carolan must have known about it, for otherwise she could hardly have helped showing some concern about her father’s disappearance.
‘What happened was this. The day the letter went to the bank, Lennis was particularly friendly to Stavanger, said they weren’t making enough use of his vast experience of the sea, and that it would be nice if he could get to know some of the new skippers who were taking over as the old men retired. There was a chance that evening – the Agnes would be lying at the old T and T berth in Gallions Reach and a new master, Captain Lemming, was taking her over from there. Could Stavanger go down to Gallions Reach and have dinner on board with the new man?
‘Stavanger agreed readily enough – he had his own reasons for wanting to find out anything he could about the new masters.
‘The Agnes was not berthed – she was lying to a buoy just off the T and T line jetty. Captain Lemming met him on the jetty, and they went out to the ship in the Agnes’s launch, which was at the jetty stairs. Captain Lemming was not in uniform, but there was no particular reason why he should be. He drove the launch himself, explaining that there were only his steward and a couple of men on board, since the new crew would not be joining till the morning.
‘It struck Stavanger as a little odd that they were going out to dine on an almost unmanned ship – why not meet for a meal in a restaurant ashore? But he said nothing, and when they got on board it seemed all right. There was a table laid for dinner in the master’s day-cabin off the bridge, and if the steward had cooked the meal himself, he was clearly a good cook. They had a pleasant dinner together, Lemming proving an attractive host with a fund of interesting stories about the sea and ships he’d sailed in. After the steward had brought coffee, Lemming told the man that he could go – he, too, was being relieved for the next voyage, and as he was a Londoner he could get home that night. Stavanger thought this considerate of Lemming. The steward was told to get one of the men still on board to take him to the jetty in the launch, and to bring back the launch. A few minutes later Stavanger heard the motor start.
‘The next thing was that Lemming suddenly got up and left the table. Some instinct prompted Stavanger to look round, and he saw Lemming standing behind him with a knife raised to stab into his back.
