'I think, again, the essence of the issue is missed,' he said softly. 'I'm not talking of any morsel of charity owed to a man who fell far, but of the business at hand. We spoke of a rat run. What I made of the somewhat distraught communication from the officer on location, the rat run operates. She reported that he, the only individual I have interest in, boarded the dinghy and was en route to the mother boat when the light was cut. The Anneliese Royal is at sea and we are alive, have a man to track… Kitchen's fate is of no concern to me, is a mere distraction, as are the reasons for the stupidity of his actions.'
A dawn had gone, and the last of the storm slipped inland. A final shower of rain plastered the beach and was blown on over the German mainland and towards the heathland of Luneburg and the Baltic coast beyond. The sun broke through, caught the tail of the shower and threw down a rainbow. One end of the rainbow was on the island's endless flat sands and on the slackening surf as the gale died. It's colours danced on the body of a drowned man that was heaved backwards and forwards by the disapearing tide. A woman walking her dog found it, and thought, from a distance, that the cadaver was a dead seal, but when she came close she saw the eyes of a man, wide in terror, and the rainbow went on.
A man – long decamped to the mainland town of Norden – brought his wife and three teenage children to the island's cemetery at Ostdorf to lay flowers on the grave of his parents. For the adults it would be a solemn few minutes of contemplation while the children rambled among the stones. He was recovering memories of a stern disciplinarian merchant mariner, and a mother who had survived Baltrum's elements into old age, when his vigil was broken by the shriek of his younger daughter. He hurried to the girl, his mood of respect fractured. He found, wrapped against this stone, the body of a man wizened with age and the sunlight fell on darkened bloodstains.
Murmuring, so that she would not be heard by her son or by the girls, his wife said, 'You know who that is? It's old Netzer, it is Oskar Netzer. Never had a good word for a living soul, never had a friend since she died, never did a day's work… Never did anything useful to others. The end of a wasted life. What could have happened to him to make all that blood?'
Polly crouched in front of the washing-machine. She had emptied into it everything from the rucksack that could be soaped, rinsed, tumbled, and the sleeping-bag. Dried sand caked the linoleum. She heard the door of the apartment open and it was then kicked shut.
She called out, 'I'm back – in the kitchen.'
She stood and started to strip.
She was aware that Ronnie was in the doorway.
She peeled off layers of clothing and bent to stuff them into the machine.
A trilling voice was behind her: 'Oh, brilliant, good to see you. Had a good time? Christ, that's a serious mess, bloody hell. You been sleeping on a beach?
Doesn't your lot run to hotels? Don't tell me, you didn't get any shopping done. God, Polly, what's that on your hands? Is that blood, old blood, on you? Are you all right?'
She was naked, and she had to heave against the washing-machine's door to fasten it, then hit the button.
'I'm fine. Thanks for asking, but I'm fine… Yes, it's blood. Not to worry, not mine.'
She watched the machine churning suds through the window in the door.
'You know what I'm going to ask.' She heard the giggle. 'Whatever it was you did – don't mind me – did you win?'
She felt the cold on her skin, not the warmth of him.
She felt the salt in her throat, not the taste of him.
'Some people won and some people lost. But they're history, the winners and losers.'
She walked past Ronnie, across the hall and into the bathroom, and lost herself behind the shower curtain.
Under a cascade of hot water, near to scalding, she scrubbed herself clean. Sand from her hair welled at the plughole and she washed the last of his old blood from her hands.
She yelled, and did not know if she was heard, 'You never really learn it, do you? Who are the winners and who are the losers?'
Harry Rogers brought the trawler into harbour – and did not know that a crisis committee had monitored his progress across the North Sea and that a pilotless drone flying from Boscombe Down had been overhead and tracking the Anneliese Royal with a state-of-the-art lens, and that a submarine's periscope had scanned him from close quarters as he approached the East Anglian shore.
They tied up.
They reported to the harbourmaster that a winding-gear malfunction had prevented them fishing when the storm had blown out, that they had no catch to land.
His boy, Billy, took his grandson, Paul, to a doctor's surgery in the town for a check-up on his arm and to assess the damage from continuous seasickness.
Harry stayed on board.
With a hose, a brush and a mop, he sluiced through the wheel-house and the galley, and if he lifted his head he saw the rest of the town's fleet put to sea in breezy sunshine.
For more than three hours, he was alone on the trawler with memories of a storm blowing off a German island that were alive, and dreams of owning an historic sailboat that were dead.
He locked the wheel-house, hitched his bag on to his shoulder and walked the deck to the point where the old encrusted ladder would take him up on to the quay. He swung his legs over the side and on to a slippery rung, and saw two men above him.
No bullshit, no protestations of innocence… Too exhausted for it, too much of his life hacked from him.
They came down the ladder, gingerly, in their city shoes and suits, and he led them back to the wheelhouse. He made them coffee, but that did not soften the coldness on their faces.
He had no one on board. They could search if they wanted to. He had brought back no passenger.
Harry said, 'You make a mistake in your life, and each day that follows it's harder to extricate yourself from that mistake. My mistake was Ricky Capel. I have no excuses and I look for no sympathy, and the mistake is mine. You want to know about the man with Ricky Capel on the beach, and I'll tell you what you want to know. Billy went out in the dinghy, in a hell of a sea, and part of what I'm saying is from him, but most of it is from what I saw with the light. They were in the water, big swell and surf, and coming slow towards the dinghy. I saw this guy come off the beach, and he ran into the surf, and Ricky Capel and his man never saw him. Ricky was behind. The guy smacked into Ricky Capel and he put him down. They went together, under, then just the guy came up. The man, Ricky's man, turned, would have seen the guy, fired at him. I saw the flashes and I heard the gun, and the guy went down, and I killed the light. The man got on board Billy's dinghy. Billy brought him back to us. I was turning hard. Billy came on board first, and then he had hold of the rope, took it from young Paul, and the man was going to follow him. I left the wheel, left it spinning, and I went on deck, and I got the rope off Billy, and I chucked it. He lifted the gun and I was flat in his sights. He'd have blasted me but it didn't fire, must have been too much water in it, and then there was the gap between him and us… I went back in the wheel-house and took the engine to power. We left him. He had the dinghy, he had an outboard with a full tank, he had the reserve, but he didn't have us. I never saw him again, God's truth, and Billy didn't, nor Paul. We took her back to sea. I can't say what happened to him, but it was foul conditions for an open dinghy. Can't say whether he drowned, made a landfall, whether he survived and is still out there, can't.'
He had been summoned to the heavenly heights of Vauxhall Bridge Cross. He had knocked and there was the answering call for him to enter, but then he was kept standing for those few seconds, while the assistant deputy director studied desk papers, that confirmed celestial authority.
'Ah – sorry, good to see you, Freddie. Your leave went well?'