Читать книгу The Fish Kisser - James Hawkins - Страница 6

Detective Inspector David Bliss, still fuming at his colleagues, scooted around the deserted restaurants and coffee shops, frantically seeking Roger LeClarc. “There’ll be hell to pay if we lose the fat git,” Sergeant Jones had said, before he had discovered the duty-free bar and lost his senses. Yet, despite his size, LeClarc had slithered from sight.

Nosmo King had also searched for LeClarc; his motives were less virtuous, and he found himself being hauled to the bridge by a crewman who stumbled across him on the aft deck just as he’d launched a life raft in a final act of desperation. Looking like an antisubmarine depth charges, the cylindrical capsule descended spectacularly into the water, leaving King musing, “Did I do that?” The ripcord yanked tight, splitting it apart, the emerging life raft inflated like the wings of a newly hatched butterfly as carbon dioxide flooded its body.

Jacobs’ voice startled him, “Oy! What’ya doing?”

Heart thumping, he looked over his shoulder to find the catering assistant heading his way.

“Man overboard!” he shouted excitedly, then turned to peer at the raft: a child’s giant paddling pool bucking and leaping in a white-water thrill ride as it bounced repeatedly off the ships wake. His spirits sank. “Bugger. It’s tied on,” he muttered to himself, realizing the ripcord was tethered to a shackle at his feet. Jacobs’ calloused hand grabbed his wrist as he reached down to undo it.

“I didn’t see nobody fall overboard,” said the young catering assistant cagily, his mind whirling at the thought that he might be dealing with a deranged lunatic or a dangerous drunk.

“Well I did,” King lied. “Look, there he is.”

The crewman, used to keeping watch, gazed into the blackness. “Where?”

“Over there. Look he’s waving,” said King with a positiveness that defied contradiction.

“Can’t see no one,” said Jacobs finally, although the flatness of his tone suggested his conviction was draining.

Nosmo seized the moment. “I’m not going to let the poor bastard drown even if you are. Help or get out o’ the bloody way.”

Jacobs let go of King’s wrist, deftly unscrewed the shackle, and they watched for a couple of seconds as the raft was swept astern on the tide created by the propellers’ thrust.

Jacobs shut the bridge door behind them and King found himself blinded by absolute blackness. A voice floated out of the dark. “Yup. What do you want?”

King froze, fearful of walking into something painful.

“Jacobs, Sir,” called the voice from behind him. “This passenger says someone’s fallen overboard.”

“Well don’t just stand there, come in.”

Which way? wondered King. “Uh, I can’t see anything.”

“Don’t worry, your eyes will get used to it in a minute,” said the disembodied voice. “Bring him to the radar cubicle Jacobs, there’s more light there.”

Guiding hands on his shoulders propelled King across the bridge to an area cordoned off with blackout curtains. The invisible man explained, “We have to keep it dark so we can see what’s ahead—no streetlights at sea. Lots of yachts have poor navigation lights. Some don’t have any.”

Squeezed together inside the tiny cubicle, the men took on an alien appearance in the luminous green glow from the radar screen, and King wilted under the presence of the officer. Six-foot-four and two hundred and fifty pounds, he estimated, and the man’s smart uniform, contrasting sharply with the catering assistant’s grease-streaked jeans and dirty shirt, added weight.

Pulling himself upright, Nosmo King strengthened his resolve and launched himself at the officer. “Why don’t you stop the ship?.Someone’s fallen overboard.”

“Sir, this isn’t a double-decker bus. You don’t just hit the brakes and stop. I’ve given the bos’n instructions, but I need to know exactly what happened.”

This was someone used to giving orders, expecting to receive answers, and King’s confidence crumpled. It’s a good job the lighting’s poor he thought, as beads of sweat broke out on his upper lip and the blood drained from his face. “Ah … well. Ah … like he told you,” he stuttered, “I… I saw someone fall overboard.”

“How did they fall?”

That’s sharp, thought King. “What do you mean, how did they fall?” he stalled, having given no thought to the physical difficulty of falling over a ship’s rail, but realizing from the officer’s tone it might be impossible; that it would need a jump, a push, or a violent lurch in a stormy sea.

Apparently the officer had similar thoughts and had no intention of helping out. “Sir, please explain to me exactly what you saw; how he fell.”

King, cornered, backtracked. “Well… I came out on deck and saw a figure disappear over the side. I dunno how it happened. Didn’t notice what he looked like. It was over in a second. I just rushed to the back …”

“Stern,” corrected Jacobs.

“Yeah … stern. I went to the stern and saw him in the water, so I chucked one of those life-thingies over.”

“You launched a life raft?”

“Ah …”

“That’s when I saw him,” Jacobs started, cutting King off. “He’d just launched an inflatable off the starboard upper boat deck.”

With a doubtful look the officer turned questioningly to the catering assistant. “Did you see the man go overboard?”

“No, Sir. And I couldn’t see him in the water neither,” Jacobs shot back, his confidence buoyed by the senior officer’s apparent scepticism.

Shit, thought King, if they won’t stop the ship I’m screwed. “Sir …” he began but the officer waived him off.

“Would you excuse us for a moment?” he said, catching Jacobs’ sleeve and pulling him out of the cubicle.

Left alone, King’s mind raced. How the hell did I get mixed up with this. The poor fat geezer’s going to drown … not such a bad thing, for him anyway … but what else can I do, they obviously don’t believe me. You know the rules, he thought. The catechism according to the locker room lawyers: Stick rigidly to the story, say as little as possible, and deny everything contradictory; even if they’ve got photos. He’d heard a similar phrase a thousand times, even uttered it a few. Whenever a fellow cop was in trouble for remodelling a prisoner’s nose, creatively constructing a confession, or even lifting a few things from the scene of a burglary the advice of colleagues was always the same. “Keep your mouth shut and deny, deny, deny.”

“But they’ve got the evidence!”

“Even if they’ve got video—deny it. Evidence can always get lost.” That’s a laugh, he thought; cops give exactly the opposite advice to criminals: soft voiced, persuading, “Why don’t you tell me all about it? It’ll go in your favour and I’ll even put in a word with the judge.”

How many times had he said roughly the same thing, knowing very well that ninety percent of criminals were only convicted because they’d blabbed. As for putting in a word with the judge: even the chief constable would be stretching the thin blue line if he tried that one. Anyway, the only reason he’d got mixed up with Motsom was because he’d believed his chief inspector, who’d persuaded him everything would be alright if he just told the truth. He’d blabbed, and where had it got him—prison, dishonourable discharge. I’ll keep my bloody mouth shut in future, he’d thought at the time. But there wouldn’t be a future. He was out of the force, unemployed, with a certificate of service that wouldn’t get him a job as a bouncer in a daycare centre.

Jacobs and the officer crammed themselves back into the tiny cubicle, interrupting King’s woeful thoughts, and his hand involuntarily sprang to his nose: Jacobs needed more than a clean shirt. His attention swung back to the officer who was insistently tapping his finger on the radar screen where numerous lights twinkled like stars in an alien sky.

“See all these dots. Do you know what they are, Sir?”

King’s mind was adrift, still smarting from past injustices, and he queried glibly, “Ships?”

“No, Sir. These dots up here are ships,” said the officer pointing out an area where there was only a smattering. Then he returned to a part of the screen where so many tiny points of light clustered together they melded like dots of paint in a Pisarro masterpiece. “This is clutter—caused by big waves or heavy rainfall. That’s what this is—a storm, a big storm, and it’s headed our way. I don’t want to stop and look for a missing passenger unless I’m absolutely certain. Do you understand?”

King nodded thoughtfully as if re-evaluating his account of LeClarc’s disappearance, then pulled his face into a funereal seriousness, deepened his tone respectfully, and pronounced, “I’m sure he fell overboard, Sir.”

The officer made up his mind. “Call the captain,” he barked, then rattled orders to the invisible crewmen on the bridge, while leaving King pondering over the mess of luminescent dots from the approaching gale. “Poor bastard,” he breathed.

The captain, tie-less in a slept-in shirt, fly undone, and hair all over the place, looked as though he’d been dragged out of a brothel in a raid; he was not in the best of moods when he appeared in his brightly lit office, behind the bridge, a few minutes later. At fifty-nine, he’d been at sea long enough to know passengers would report seeing all sorts of things—usually UFOs or giant green squids—especially at night. He had hoped to get a few hours sleep before dealing with the impending storm, but now he faced the same dilemma as the officer: If he ignored King, and it turned out someone was missing, all hell would break loose—the press would have a field day. He was already envisioning the headlines: “Drowning Man Left to Perish.” “Passenger’s Pleas Ignored—Man Dies.”

“What’s your name, Sir?” he enquired in a no-nonsense tone, sitting at his desk and taking notes, while peering inquisitively over the top of his spectacles at King.

“Nosmo King, Captain,” he replied without hesitation.

“Strange name …?” he began, his words floating.

“Nickname,” King obliged. “It’s David, but everyone called me Nosmo at police college because I didn’t smoke.”

A look of confusion furrowed the captain’s brow, his blood-shot eyes squeezed into questioning slits.

“Nosmo King … no-smo-king,” explained King, the urgency in his voice screaming, “For God’s sake hurry up. There’s a man drowning out there.”

But the captain, refusing to be harried, echoed. “Police college?”

Another unasked question demanding an answer.

Big mistake, thought King, realizing instantly that he’d violated the criminal’s code by volunteering information. “Long time ago,” he shrugged, as if it had been of no consequence, and re-iterated his story. The captain’s pen flashed across the log as they spoke, but he kept his focus on King, reading his expression, noting his tapping foot and wringing hands. Feeling the rising tension, King tried holding the other man’s steely gaze, but found his eyes wandering to the porthole, his mind striving to deal with the possibility that his quarry was struggling for life in the cold, black ocean.

The wall clock ticked noisily as the captain took forever to scan his notes. He looked up. “How do you know it was a man?”

Now what? thought King as the captain, chief officer and Jacobs held their breaths, and he felt six eyes burning into him as tense seconds ticked by. “I only assume it was a man,” he said eventually, reigning in his voice, feeling as if his chest were in a vice. “I suppose it could have been a woman. But I just have the feeling it was a man.”

The search started almost immediately—02:34:17 according to the digital clock in the officers’ wardroom where King had been told to wait. And each second ticked by with exasperating slowness as he paced in rhythm, willing the next digit to appear. Five steps one way and five back. Ten seconds! Is that all? Hurry up for Christ’s sake; start turning the ship round. Motsom will kill me if we don’t find him.

Kings’ anxiety was echoed on the bridge, now a hive of activity. When King had first entered, its gloomily serene atmosphere had reminded him of the church he’d attended, early each morning, as a young altar boy. Even the smell had been strangely reminiscent—an amalgam of leather, varnish, and dampness—which to him, an eleven-year-old struggling with the concept of Christian faith, became the embodiment of the Holy Ghost. Now, the ghostly congregation of officers and crew stood at their allotted stations and watched as a halo of multicoloured rotating lights, in the ceiling above the captain’s head, indicated the ship was turning hard to port.

“Another ten degrees to port,” the captain chanted.

“Ten degrees to port,” echoed an acolyte in the guise of the chief officer.

“Ten degrees to port it is, Sir,” responded a server whose job it was to turn the handlebars, which had replaced the giant steering wheel no longer necessary on a modern ship.

The acolyte took up the cry again, adding his own prayer for good measure. “Ten degrees to port it is, Captain. Heading now, two hundred and twenty-five degrees. E.T.A. 17 minutes.”

“Thank you, Chief,” said the captain who might just as easily have intoned, “Amen.”

The service continued; litany and responses flying back and forth as a hundred details were attended to: Preparation of lifeboats and rescue teams—For those in peril on the sea: Lord have mercy—notification to coastguards and other ships; updates on the position of the approaching storm— From lightning and tempest … Good Lord deliver us—requests to the port authorities in Holland, asking they delay trains, advise relatives, inform the police, and carry out a dozen other tasks—Oh God, the Father of Heaven: have mercy …

A supplication, by ships tannoy, for information about any passenger whose presence was unknown, brought no response, and the captain considered holding a roll call of all crewmembers and passengers, even starting to give the chief officer an order, but then thought better of it. With over two thousand people on board, it would take hours to assemble them in a place where they could be counted with certainty. But, he realized, if just one were accidentally counted twice the man in the water would be left to drown. Yet, if the tally were accurate and showed no one missing would he risk his conscience by accepting the result?

Once committed, the captain—the High Priest of the ship—would do whatever he could to find and rescue the missing man.

Roger vomited and retched periodically as the salt water slopped into his mouth. Seasick, and sick of the sea, he struggled less and less for survival as his tired body sank deeper. The effort of climbing each successively higher crest had become too great, and the fast approaching gale whipped waves into a frenzy that tripped over each other and shot gobs of spray into his face. A fit, accomplished swimmer may have surmounted the ever-steepening sea, but Roger was not fit—had never been fit. Fat, even very fat, was the best possible description of his physical condition. Fat, but certainly not fit. In all probability it was his fatness that had kept him afloat for the past twenty minutes or so, although his eiderdown coat was definitely a contributing factor.

“Waste of bloody money,” his mother had screeched when she’d picked the price tag out of his trashcan. “They must’ve seen you coming, you great dolt.”

Although it was now gradually soaking up seawater, the coat, stuffed with waterproof duck plumage and sealed with a multitude of zips and ties, provided excellent buoyancy and protection against the cold. He had never regretted buying it, despite his mother’s reaction; in fact, he was beginning to find it amusing to do things deliberately to aggravate her. Although lying about his homosexuality was perhaps the worst thing he could have done. Why did I say that? he’d wondered. She’d taken it badly, smacking him fiercely over the head with a plate. “Wait ’til your father gets home,” she’d shouted. “You bloody poofter! Wait ’til I tell ’im.”

He’d laughed it off. “I was only joking.”

Am I? he’d wondered darkly.

Am I what?

Gay or just joking?

He’d been tempted, more through default than desire. If women didn’t fancy him, and they didn’t, then maybe, just maybe, he’d have more success with men. Rejection was both swifter and more painful—one false start in a park washroom left him with pants round his knees, his head in the toilet, and the contents of his wallet being divvyed up amongst a vicious gang of assertive gays. Failure to make his chosen team was bad enough without being rolled over by the opposition.

He’d deliberately upset his mother in other ways too—unnecessarily staying out until three or four o’clock in the morning, knowing she’d wait up for him, worrying to death he’d been attacked or hurt in an accident.

What is she thinking now? he wondered, as he was tossed mid-ocean in the darkness.

She’s funny, he thought, his mind drawing a fuzzy picture of her: floury faced, heavily wrinkled—puckered almost—a large woman—not physically—she’d never been really big, but always managed to occupy more space than she should have done considering her size. As she had shrunken with age, she had seemingly grown larger and larger until she had taken command of the whole house. She’s definitely funny, thought Roger—though not in any humorous sense. Funny how she doted; fretting at the slightest sniffle of a cold, panicking if the train was late—phoning the railway station, expecting to hear there had been a crash. Yet, when it came to his appearance—”Puppy fat,” she called it when he complained about his diet of meat pies, chips, and chocolate.

“Mum, I’m thirty-one,” he had protested.

“What d’ye wanna be skinny for?” she retorted.

She knows why, he thought, but couldn’t bring himself to tell her. “I want a woman,” he longed to scream. “I want to know what it’s like to fuck a woman.” But he’d never said it, strangely finding it easier to lie about being gay than admit his true desires for a woman.

The computer had caused a major rift. While other obsessive mothers might be insidiously sabotaging relationships between sons and their wives or girlfriends, Roger’s mother picked a fight with his computer. The noise it made—”whirring like a maniac”—the space it took up, the electricity it used. She even complained it was causing interference on her television. “Snow,” she called it. “Shut that thing off,” she would shout up the stairs. “You’re making snow on my telly.” The television, “hers” through a jealously guarded remote, took precedence over real life and had been the leash she’d used to tie him to her side. “Don’t go out our Roger, your favourite program’s on tonight,” she’d say at the mere suggestion he was planning an excursion. But the computer had changed all that. Now he could go anywhere in the world without leaving his room, and without her.

Her resentment had led to petty sabotage: “Bit of an accident,” she claimed, when he’d left the computer on by mistake one day. He’d soon put a stop to that; protecting files with passwords, and locking the computer. He would even have locked his room if he could have summonsed the courage. “After all I did for you,” she’d whimper, alluding to the pain of childbirth, stretch marks, cellulite, saggy breasts, and a slumped backside. “And now you lock your door!”

Her insignia of suffering had been used to ward off several of Roger’s teenage insurrections, and now he lacked the strength to overcome the omnipotence of progeny guilt.

Roger was disappearing, and disappearing fast. Semi-conscious, and buffeted like a rubber duck in rapids, he’d withdrawn from the horror of his situation. He could do that: Switch off the rest of the world and reside only in the comfort of his mind.

“The lights are on but nobody’s home,” his father would mock.

But this time, his lights were going out. His will to survive was rapidly draining, and he was drifting toward death.

Everything aboard the ship had changed—so many lives shifted by a single thoughtless act. On the bridge, the captain was still in communion with his crew, even ordering hot chocolate and doughnuts for everyone. Most, dragged like he from the comfort of a warm bunk, were grateful for his consideration.

“Drink this in remembrance of me,” he could have said, as he passed a steaming cup, heavily laden with sugar, to the chief officer. “How far John?” he asked, in an informal way. Just a friendly enquiry. The simple action of handing over a cup of cocoa bringing an instant bond between the two men, changing their relationship from master and servant to that of friends. But the relationship could flip back, instantly, should it be necessary. And both men knew it.

“About another four minutes to point Alpha, Bert, if the computers are right. Although God knows what chance we’ve got of finding the poor bastard in this weather … assuming there is a poor bastard.”

Point Alpha—the spot in the vast ocean where, according to the computerized navigation system, Roger’s body should be found, alive or dead.

With a bridge resembling the flight deck of Starship Enterprise, the SS Rotterdam was equipped with all the latest aids: A satellite navigation system locked onto signals emitted by a dozen man-made moons; anti-collision radar tracked other vessels fifty miles or more away; and the auto pilot knew exactly where the ship was, where it had been, and where it was going. Apart from the intricate manoeuvres required to navigate congested harbours at each end of the voyage, the ship was perfectly capable of finding her own way across the North Sea. She could also retrace her steps, precisely, to any given point of the voyage.

Working backwards from the moment of King’s arrival on the bridge, the navigation officer had calculated the moment Roger was believed to have disappeared overboard. The on-board computers turned that time into a location: Point Alpha—a mere pinpoint on the ocean’s surface, yet a point defined with more accuracy than the distance between one wave and the next. Finding a needle in a haystack would have been child’s play for this computer. Finding a fat man mid-ocean was well within its capability.

Many of the passengers were up; woken by the violent movements, which contrasted so sharply with the gentle sway, that lulled them to sleep just a few hours earlier. Few knew what had happened. Most remained in their cabins, a nasty surprise awaiting them in the morning when, at daybreak, they would peer out of the porthole expecting to see the familiar green landscape of Holland only to find a dirty, rolling sea. A few passengers, forced out of their cabins and onto deck by heaving stomachs, were surprised to find a large number of crewmembers hanging over the rails, studying the wave tops.

Searchlights lit the area around the sides of the ship, clearly illuminating each green wave as it smashed against the hull and climbed high up the superstructure before losing power and dropping back, only to be picked up and thrown back again by the next one. The ship, now almost stationery, rolled like a giant metronome marking time with the hellish cacophony created by the rising wind and crashing waves. Wave after wave attacked the ship, flinging spray high into the air, stinging the faces of the exhilarated passengers and disgruntled crewmembers lining the rails. But beyond the fringe of lights, the rest of the world had dissolved into the blackness of outer space.

Below decks, in the Calypso Bar, an alcoholic duo of detectives were still aggravating the barman. Nosmo King had been wrong in thinking they were en-route to a boozy goodwill convention. Their task, they believed, was almost complete and, in a few short hours, their Dutch counterparts would take over the mission and relieve them of responsibilities for the following thirty-six hours. A day and a half they planned to spend seeing the sights of Amsterdam.

“Hey. Barman. Whash your name anyway,” slurred one of the detectives.

“It’s Len, Sir.”

“Yeah, Len, baby. Uh, what’s happening. Can’t you keep this bloody boat still.” Detective Constable Doug Smythe, with many years of drinking under his belt and a maze of flamboyant capillaries on his nose, was sober enough to realize the swaying motion was not just in his head. But the other detective, a younger man with brush cut hair, and a goatee, which he believed fashionable, had flopped forward against the bar and wound his arm around a stanchion to prevent himself from sliding off the chair.

Sergeant Jones had ventured to the washroom, and was now making his way back across the deserted dance floor, waltzing back and forth in tune to the reeling of the ship. Sickness had left its mark—slicks of mucous stained his shirt and right trouser leg, and a large dollop of vomit perched on the toe of his right shoe.

The obstacle-free dance floor presented no real challenge to Jones, other than remaining upright with nothing solid to grasp. But the stairs, tables, and chairs of the bar area were an entirely different terrain, yet to be conquered. The Calypso Bar occupied the entire aft section of the ship—a cavernous auditorium of six semi-circular terraces overlooking the dance floor, each terrace reached from the one below by a wide flight of eight stairs. The bar itself was almost five decks higher than the dance floor, and only a ship’s architect with an outrageous sense of humour could have placed the bar at the top of the incline and the washroom at the bottom.

Jones fell as he climbed the steps to the first terrace and was catapulted into a table by a particularly violent pitch. Grabbing a chair, he held on, bracing himself against the next lurch. Seconds later the ship slammed into another wave. “Hold tight!” he shouted to himself, grasping the chair tightly, but it was unattached and crashed with him down the eight steps to the hardwood floor below.

“Buggerin’ ell!” he screamed, his words lost in the vastness of the almost deserted auditorium. He tried the stairs again, only climbing three before being shaken off balance, then lying on his back on the dance floor, swearing at the ceiling fifty feet above, unaware his left wrist had been shattered in the first fall.

“I think your mate needs a hand,” said Len, watching from his perch at the bar, giving D.C. Smythe a poke.

“Oh shit,” he replied, dragging his younger colleague with him to the sergeant’s aid.

With the detectives no longer at the bar, Len seized his chance to escape and in less than thirty seconds ripped the cash drawer from the till, flicked off the lights, slammed and locked the bar grill, and was on his way to bed.

Disappointment awaited him at the purser’s office, where he went to pay in the evening’s takings.

“All hands on deck mate,” the assistant purser said. “Didn’t you hear the call? Some poor sod’s gone for a swim.”

He hadn’t heard; didn’t want to hear. Working late into the night wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t done a day shift for his mate, a kitchen fitter, the previous day. Just for a second he considered sloping off to bed, figuring he’d not be missed, but the assistant purser, with more years at sea than he wanted to remember— waiting for a pair of dead purser’s pants, according to his wife—saw the intention spread across Len’s face.

“I’ll tell the deck officer you’re on your way then,” he said, pointedly, as he picked up a walkie-talkie from the desk.

“Fuck you,” Len muttered, ambling disgruntledly toward the boat deck.

“This is the centre of the search area,” the deck officer was explaining as Len joined a group of crewmembers sheltering from the storm under one of the larger lifeboats. An audience of curious passengers were hanging about in the shade of the boat, listening to his performance, so the officer tuned his voice to a high pitched whine, sounding like a 1950s BBC radio announcer. “We believe the man should be somewhere in this area …”

“Sounds as if someone’s fallen overboard,” relayed one of the passengers to his wife, shielding herself from the gale behind a storage locker.

“I hope we don’t miss our train.”

“He might drown.”

“They’ll be ever so disappointed if we’re late for the wedding.”

“Luv, there’s a man missing!”

“I know … but he’s our only son … sometimes I think you don’t care.”

“The weather’s deteriorating rapidly,” continued the officer, “so we must find him quickly. There’s no description— report anything you see in the water. Any questions?” He paused long enough to scan the group—twenty men in fluorescent sou’westers hunching against the rain and spray, not an ounce of enthusiasm among them.

“Questions …” he repeated, raising an eyebrow, pausing. “No? Good. We are relying on each and every one of you to do your best.”

“Who does he think he is: Lord Nelson?” whispered a first-class waiter, but heard by many.

“Is there a problem?” shouted the officer in response to the gale of laughter, triggering more laughter.

“O.K., men. Go to your stations.”

“Full of piss and self-importance,” mumbled one of the engine room greasers, unhappy at being dragged from the warmth of the engine room and even more upset to discover his lookout station, on the starboard side, faced directly into the prevailing wind.

Detective Inspector Bliss, coming out onto the upper deck just as the men were drifting away, was unaware of the search, or its cause, and introduced himself to the deck officer. “D.I. Bliss, Metropolitan Police Serious Crime Squad. Can I help?”

“Oh Inspector … Yes. We think there’s a man overboard—perhaps you could help keep watch?”

Bliss jumped. “Man overboard.” His eyes flashed wide. “Who is it? When was this? What happened?”

“Hang on officer, I don’t know, you’d better speak to the captain. Let me just make sure everyone is at their post and I’ll take you along to the bridge.”

“Please hurry. I think I might know who it is.”

Since leaving the others in the bar, Bliss had scoured the ship for Roger. His first stop, the purser’s office, to locate Roger’s cabin number had proved interesting.

“No one of that name,” said the assistant purser, quickly running his finger down the passenger list, paying little attention.

“Let me look,” said Bliss snatching the book from under his fingers. “There must be some mistake.”

“No mistake, Sir,” continued the assistant purser, grappling the book back with an air of certainty.

Bliss relinquished his grasp. “How can you be sure?”

“Never forget a name, Sir … could tell you the name of everyone who’s got a cabin, all two hundred and seventy-eight of ’em.”

Bliss scanned the list and found the total. “Two hundred and seventy-eight,” he breathed.

“That’s right, Sir.” said the officer, keeping his focus firmly on Bliss. “Starts with Adnam, ends with Yannus, and there’s eight Smiths—but there ain’t no LeClarcs, not tonight anyhow.”

Bliss, impressed, awe-struck even, believed him. “I was sure he’d have a cabin,” he muttered, starting to turn away, unsure what to do next.

But the assistant purser wasn’t finished. “Ah … It is possible that he’s got a cabin, Sir …” he began, nervously shuffling the list.

“How? I don’t understand. You said his name wasn’t on the list.”

“You didn’t hear this from me, but … well maybe he paid cash and someone forgot to take his name.”

“I bet they forgot to put the money in the register as well,” said Bliss, quickly catching on, thinking it was an easy way for a crewmember to make a few extra quid every trip. He’d been in Serious Crimes long enough to know that whenever cash transactions took place, you could bet someone was taking a cut.

Without a cabin number, he turned his attention to the sleeping lounges. Hundreds of sweaty bodies, fidgeting on reclining chairs, formed a thick smelly carpet of humanity as he fought his way up and down the darkened aisles in between the rows—the stale odour of sleepers alternating with the stink of cheap perfume and the stench of an occasional fart. Backpacks, suitcases, even cardboard boxes stuffed with the belongings of the poorest passengers created an obstacle course in the tight aisles, tripping him repeatedly. Passengers, rudely awakened by his thrashing arms as he tried to steady himself, cursed him in a dozen languages. At the end of one row, between the last seat and the wall, he fell over a body lying on the floor. Pulling himself upright he began apologizing then, to his astonishment, saw he’d fallen over a young couple clearly engaged in oral sex. The woman, an attractive long-haired blond, on top of the young man, looked up with a fierce expression, as if to say, “Piss off,” and carried on, quite unperturbed.

He quickly found the deck steward, a badly shaven unmade-bed of a man, with rotten teeth and a grubby red coat, slouched in the bright area between the two dimly lit lounges.

“There’s a couple bonking in there,” he said disapprovingly.

“I’ve seen worse mate,” replied the steward, only half opening his eyes, making no attempt to move.

With the feeling that he must have led a sheltered life, Bliss walked away, shaking his head.

Bliss had been deep in the vessel’s bowels, examining Roger’s green Renault, while the ship had been turning around and had not noticed the change in direction. Brushing aside the sign warning of the danger of entering the vehicle deck during the voyage he’d slid open the heavy steel door and had been met by the acrid mechanical odour of engine oil, rubber, and hot metal.

Roger LeClarc’s Renault, nestling amongst a raft of flashier models, was locked. He tried both doors, and the trunk, then peered through the driver’s window and was surprised to see a suitcase and several smaller bags on the back seat. Maybe he doesn’t have a cabin after all.

The small green car was familiar, very familiar. Bliss and the other officers had been keeping tabs on it for more than a week. They’d lost him a few times— round the clock surveillance of a target could be incredibly difficult, if not impossible. A moment’s inattention, a little bad luck, or a run of red traffic lights was all it took for a vehicle to disappear, seemingly without trace. But, on each occasion, a quick analysis of Roger’s regular pattern of behaviour enabled him to be located, either at his mother’s or at the little terraced house near Watford railway station where he often spent his evenings before returning home in the early hours.

Details of his impending trip to Holland were well known. Roger, something of a celebrity in the computer world, had been invited to address a symposium of world leaders in The Hague: “Communicating in the Third Millennium,” a two-day exposé of modern telecommunications, extolling the advantages of globalization and convergence. Ostensibly, Roger was an independent delegate, though few of the attendees would have been surprised to learn that he was the cyber-star of an aggressive multi-media equipment provider hell-bent on cornering the market.

Following Roger from his mother’s house in Watford on the northern outskirts of London, to the ferry port had been straightforward. With the exception of a ten minute stop at the tiny terraced house on Junction Road, he’d poodled the Renault along at a modest pace to north Essex, sticking to main roads, avoiding bottle-necks.

Animosity between the detectives in the surveillance vehicle had flared during the trip, although there had been a number of times during their week of watch-keeping when they had volubly disagreed on tactics. As Sergeant Jones drove, with Senior Officer Bliss in the passenger seat keeping his sights on Roger’s Renault, the other two detectives lolled in the back planning the excursion to Amsterdam.

“Red light district first, mate,” said Wilson, digging Smythe in the ribs.

“I wanna try one of those brown bars,”

“What,” laughed Wilson. “A Mars bar?”

“No you dork, one of those hash …”

“I know you fool. I was pulling yer plonker.”

“Leave me plonker out of this—I got plans for me plonker,” he laughed. “I’ve heard the broads sit in windows starkers; showin’ everything.”

“Haven’t you seen one before?” cut in Bliss.

“Bet it’s a long time since you seen one,” said Smythe, poking Bliss’ shoulder, giggling stupidly.

Bliss ignored him, as he tried to shut out painful memories and focussed on the road. Concentrating on the green Renault half a mile ahead, he wondered whether either of them would actually pluck up the courage when faced with the opportunity. Regardless of the wares in the window, they’d probably be disappointed to discover one knocking shop to be much like another. The visual “sizzle,” he guessed, would lure them to a steak cut from a tough old cow. Their ardour would be dimmed almost immediately by the request for cash in advance, and, having paid, and not before, would they discover the Venus in the window was unavailable—taking a break between rounds of sexual wrestling. Finally, after choosing an inferior model with a puritanically grim face and blubbery breasts, the fifteen minute performance would take place on a creaking bed in a room lit only by a couple of cheap candles. No amount of scent from burning wax would mask the chalky odour of spent semen from a thousand previous temple worshippers. The eternal triumph of hope over experience, thought Bliss, remembering his days on the morality squad and the universal sense of dissatisfaction. “You think I enjoyed it?” they would ask—pimps, whores and Johns alike.

“You lot make me sick,” he said, turning on the two detectives accusingly.

“You make me sick,” shot back Wilson, unable to come up with a sensible response.

“You catch some poor hooker in Brixton with a few ounces of grass,” countered Bliss, “and you think you’ve cracked the world’s drug problem. Then off you go to Holland to get blasted, and get your leg over some whore young enough to be your daughter. You’ve got the morals of a tomcat in heat.”

“Tomcats don’t get in heat, Guv. Thought you’d know that. It’s only the females that get in heat. Tomcats are good for a screw anytime.”

“Precisely,” replied Bliss, turning back to the road, his point made.

Sergeant Jones had stayed out of the argument, and Bliss had no doubt he would be with the others when the time came.

“I’ll take you to the captain now,” the deck officer was saying, but Bliss was miles away, still worried about LeClarc, and listening to the tannoy blaring overhead.

“Attention all passengers. If there is a doctor on board would you please report to the captain’s office, ten deck for’ard, immediately. Thank you.”

“Somebody must be pretty sick,” he said as he followed the officer to the bridge.

“I bet the guy in the water isn’t feeling too great either,” replied the officer.

Roger was definitely not feeling great, he really wasn’t feeling much at all. Numb from the cold, abandoned, hopeless, he’d retreated to his inner world and more or less made up his mind to die. Drifting into unconsciousness had been easy—managed without even trying—but the fierce winds and wild sea conspired to keep him alive, flinging him around like flotsam in the surf. The wind was his lifesaver, tearing apart the waves that bore him, surrounding him with fizzing foam—more air than water—penetrating every crevice in his coat, turning it into a balloon.

A heavy weight crashed on his head and sent him under for the umpteenth time. This is it. I’ll go quietly, he decided, then fell out of the side of the wave as it exploded into a billion droplets and tumbled into the gulley below. He surfaced back to consciousness in time to feel the following wave pick him up—the uphill climb at the start of yet another roller coaster—and he’d almost reached the top when he felt the heavy weight crushing him down again.

“Get it over with,” he shouted, but no words came as he slid back down; this time the weight stayed with him, pressing firmly against his left shoulder.

What’s happening? he was yelling inside. What’s happening to me? Look. But his eyes, stung once too often by the lashing salt spray, wouldn’t open. Fear and the absolute blackness spun his thoughts back to his teenage years. He was fifteen or sixteen playing with himself in the bathroom with the curtains drawn, lights off, eyes shut tight, sitting on his hand until it went numb, then pretending it belonged to another—a girl perhaps.

“What’ye doing in there, our Roger?” she called, creeping up to the door unheard.

Oh shit! “Nothing, Mum.”

“Liar! What are you doing? Open this door now.”

“No.”

“D’ye wanna clout?”

Tears welled. “No, Mum—please don’t.”

“Come on out then—hurry up.”

“I love you, Mum,” he cried, opening the door.

“Humph,” she grunted, going back downstairs to Dynasty. “You’ll go blind.”

He stood at the top, pants round his ankles, watching her, hating her. Why had he said that? Why had he said, “I love you?”

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” he screamed inside. “I bloody hate you.”

The painful memory reminded him he was still alive and he forced apart his eyelids, but a wash of blue-black Indian ink had painted the sea and sky into one. Then the huge weight shoved again and, spinning his head, he saw a phantom—a large patch of lighter coloured space, twisting and turning right behind him. The ghostly patch was misty, indistinct, but it had substance, he could feel it nudging and bumping into him. Intrigue overcame fear and he timidly reached out. “It’s solid,” he said to himself in disbelief, feeling resistance against his hypothermic fingers.

The ghost was tugging at his sleeve. This must be Death, he thought, trying again to get free, feeling his arm being pulled once more; Death’s spectre coming to carry me off.

“Stop it,” he yelled. “Stop it. I don’t want to die— I’m sorry Mum. I’m sorry. I love you.” But the ghost kept pulling, dragging him through the water, dancing in the wind, skipping over the waves.

Then, in an instant something changed—logic took control, as the spectre smacked him heavily, bringing him to his senses. Suddenly conscious it was real, not part of some elaborate nightmare, he grasped for the smooth, slippery object. Understanding slowly filtered through his doziness. It’s a life raft, he realized, amazed, as he was flung repeatedly against it, the sleeve of his left arm trapped by one of the many ropes looped along its side.

A hundred or more times, Roger and the life-raft were dragged up and down the watery hillsides as he desperately searched for a way to clamber aboard; then fate took a hand and he found himself on the crest of a wave, the raft in the valley beneath, and he flopped effortlessly onto it. Exhausted, yet relieved, he dropped back into unconsciousness, totally unaware that the SS Rotterdam was less than half a mile away, with a hundred and forty-three pairs of eyes straining into the darkness, seeking any trace of the raft or him.

“Something off the port bow—about ten o’clock,” cried a female officer, catching a fleeting glimpse of lightness. Tension on the bridge instantly turned to excitement, men frantically adjusted binoculars and swung them from starboard to port, all eyes focussed in Roger’s direction, but the huge waves conspired to keep him hidden. He and his ghostly chariot, wallowing from trough to trough, trapped under one breaking wave after another, would have been invisible even in broad daylight.

“Nothing,” sighed the officer a few moments later, her disappointed whisper easily heard in the tension filled darkness of the bridge. “Sorry—my mistake.”

“No problem,” replied the captain. “We’re well beyond maximum range anyway. He couldn’t have drifted this far in thirty minutes.”

The officers wandered back to their stations on the bridge, some taking the opportunity for a quick slurp of cocoa and a bite of doughnut. A couple made a dash for the washroom. The suspense was dissipating and everyone was grateful for the excuse to take a break, falsely justified by the apparent sighting.

“Captain, I’ve got a police inspector outside who reckons he knows the victim,” the deck officer was saying to the captain’s shadow in the gloom.

“That’s interesting—must be some sort of outing,” he chortled, “I’ve already got three in my office.” He snapped the last thread of tension as he raised his voice, “Anyone else got a policeman? We’ve got four and want to make up a set … Take over, Chief,” he continued, stifling a few sniggers, “I’ll be in my office if anything happens. Try to keep her head in the waves, bos’n, or we’ll be up to our necks in vomit.”

Sergeant Jones, together with his fellow drinkers, had fetched up in the captain’s office in search of salvation, but had found little. Every lurch of the ship pulled his face into another grimace; the alcohol was wearing thin, just hazy vision, bad breath, and the persistent reek of vomit remained. He should have been hovering, contentedly, but the searing pain in his wrist and strong coffee had brought him down to earth. No doctor had come forward and the captain, dealing with lost sleep, a missing passenger, and an approaching storm, had kept the lock on the medicine cabinet. “No time for self-inflicted wounds,” he’d muttered to the chief officer with a wry smile, thinking: A little suffering is good for my soul.

“After you, Inspector.” said the captain, ushering Bliss into his office. “Do you lot know each other by any chance?”

Sergeant Jones looked up sheepishly and, with his good hand, pointed to his broken wrist, now in a sling. “Had a bit of an accident, Guv. Fell down some ruddy stairps.” He should have said steps or stairs, but the words coalesced somewhere in the great void between his brain and mouth. The other two sat hunched, silently counting carpet squares.

“Captain, I wonder if I could speak to you outside. Would you mind?” requested Bliss, without acknowledging his sergeant.

“Bliss, old chap …” pleaded the sergeant, but Bliss was already in the corridor.

“There’s some cocoa and doughnuts in the Officer’s mess if you’re interested,” said the captain, sliding the door shut behind him and cutting Jones off.

“Thank you, Sir. A cup of cocoa would be very welcome. Sorry about the Serg and the others, I think they’ve had a drop too much. I’ll sort them out later, but I thought you would want to know that I believe the man you’re looking for is named Roger LeClarc.”

The captain stopped mid-pour. “Could you tell me why you think it’s him?”

“Well, it’s pretty hush-hush but, basically, we’ve had him under surveillance for the past week or two. He was on the ship but disappeared just about the time this guy went overboard. I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find him.”

“Is he dangerous?” enquired the captain, getting the wrong end of the stick.

“Oh, no … He’s not in trouble … Well, maybe he is,” Bliss added reflectively. “But he’s not wanted—not by us anyway.” He paused, sensing the confusion on the captain’s face. “Sorry, I can’t really tell you more at the moment, but with your permission I’d like to make some enquiries, see if I can find out what happened, that sort of thing.”

“Well, I’d appreciate your assistance to be honest. Huh … I didn’t catch your name?”

“Bliss, Sir. Detective Inspector David Bliss. Serious Crime Squad.”

His warrant card, produced from a black leather pouch, was brushed aside. “Fine, you go ahead. Oh, you’d probably like to start with the guy who saw him go over. I’d appreciate your opinion to be honest. He seems a bit vague.”

The chief officer led D.I. Bliss to the Officer’s ward-room and found Nosmo King cleaning the gaps in his teeth with a fingernail.

“Mr. King tells me he used to be a policeman. Isn’t that right, Sir?” said the officer with a condescending tone, leaving King squirming as uncomfortably as a patient with dirty underwear in a doctor’s waiting room, and wishing he’d found some other way to stop the ship—sabotage perhaps? He started to rise, but Bliss waved him down. “What force?”

“Thames Valley, but only for awhile—Oxford.”

Bliss pulled up a chair and reminisced, “I did a course once with a bloke from Oxford …” then cut himself short. “Tell me what happened, what you saw, Sir,” he said, the policeman in him taking command.

King’s account, now well practised, omitted only one detail; his meeting with Motsom in the bar following Roger’s disappearance, before the fiasco with the life raft and his brush with catering assistant Jacobs.

“So where were you before you went on deck?” asked Bliss, unaware of the timing of events, recognizing King as one of the men in the bar.

“Just wandering around really. Here and there, you know.”

“In the bar?” asked Bliss, his tone offering no clue as to the correct response.

“No,” he shot back, much too quickly, much too aggressively. Instantly regretting the boldness of his statement, he tried to soften the punch. “I don’t think so … I don’t think I was in the bar … but,” he added, covering all his bases, “I suppose I might have popped in at sometime.”

Bliss, confounded, couldn’t fathom a reason for King’s wavering, or why he would lie—unless it had been a lover’s tiff and King was embarrassed. “Funny,” he said, “I could’ve sworn I saw you in there with another bloke.”

Perspiration reappeared on King’s upper lip, his mouth dried, and his legs crossed themselves without any conscious thought on his part. “You … you must be mistaken,” he choked, but as he said it, his right hand flew toward his mouth, attempting to gag the lie. Realising what was happening, King consciously diverted his hand, giving his ear an unnecessary tweak.

Gotcha! thought Bliss, recognizing the tell-tale gestures of a liar, and pressed his advantage, asking again about the bar. King eventually conceded he’d been in the bar just before he went on deck to throw the life raft. “I forgot,” he added lamely, “what with all the commotion—the bloke falling overboard and all.”

“And the other man?” continued Bliss, pushing King into a tight spot.

“No one … a stranger.”

“Didn’t look like a stranger to me.”

King took a few seconds, his mind racing, then came out with a rambling explanation, putting Motsom down as a quidam he’d mistaken as an old school chum. Their “tiff,” he claimed, had been nothing more than a heated denial by the other man, annoyed at being disturbed.

Entering the SS Rotterdam’s bridge twenty minutes later, Bliss walked into the same black wall that startles everyone the first time they visit a ship’s wheelhouse at night. The captain spotted him immediately and beckoned, unseen, in the darkness. “Ah, Inspector, if you’d like to come over here, I’m about twenty feet to your right.”

Bliss turned, started walking, shuffling each foot forward a few inches at a time.

“Mind the …”

The warning came too late. He’d collided with a slender pole then reddened as a giggle ran round the bridge. Thank God it’s dark, he thought as he side-stepped the pole and continued blindly, but his eyes gradually brought fuzzy shapes into view until he made out the pale sphere of the captain’s face.

“Well, what do you make of our Mr. King?” asked a set of teeth, glowing like the Cheshire cat’s grin.

“I’m not sure, Captain, to be honest. Although the good news from my point of view is that the man over-board isn’t my man—at least I’m pretty sure it isn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s a question of timing, Sir,” replied Bliss recalling his interview of King. “I don’t know why he’s lying, but I can vouch for the fact he was with someone in the bar for at least two minutes before he went on deck and saw the guy jump, or fall … Anyway, that pretty well lets my man out. It must’ve been someone else,” he concluded. “Assuming King hasn’t made the whole thing up.”

“Whoever it is,” the captain responded, “I don’t fancy his chances. Thirty minutes in this water is about all anyone can take. It’s been well over an hour now.”

The chief officer, with an ear to the conversation, was anxious to continue the voyage. It would be his job, along with the purser, to deal with the complaints of passengers angry at missed train connections and delayed business meetings. “Should we call it off, Captain?” he asked, hopefully.

“We’ll give it another fifteen minutes, Chief. One last sweep, and then we’ll just pray no one’s missing when we dock.”

Fifteen minutes later, the SS Rotterdam resumed her voyage and the pale glow of the sun, still far below the eastern horizon, started to lighten the sky, but no sun would shine that day, or the following two days—not on that part of the North Sea. The storm headed north, its sights set on the offshore oilfields and the coast of Norway, leaving in its wake a large bank of cloud, and a confused and jumbled sea. Roger unconsciously rode his inflated chariot, like a thrill-seeker on an inner tube behind a speedboat, face down, arms flung forward grasping the rope. He was on the canvas roof, his great weight forcing it down. Beneath him the raft was full of water, and had he scrambled inside, he would certainly have drowned.

He stirred, briefly, long enough to assess his predicament. Fearing he might tumble off, he gathered together several ropes and lashed himself into position as firmly as his frozen fingers would allow. Now, feeling safer, he let exhaustion take over, started to doze, and began thinking of his other life, the one he’d left behind just four hours earlier, wondering if he would ever return. He thought of his the little green Renault, his beloved computer, and the house. His house. The little terraced house on Junction Road, in Watford; that would really send his mother crazy if she ever found out. He’d forgotten all about the house.

And then he thought of Trudy.

“Oh my God,” he screamed, suddenly wide awake. “What will happen to Trudy?”