‘Of course. You don’t argue with two hundred thousand quid. Anyway, the boat was out on a mooring in the deep water passage, so they left her fit for the owner’s visit and brought her tender ashore, for him to use when he got there.’
‘A black rubber dinghy?’
‘I didn’t ask. The night watchman had been told to expect the party, so he let them in, and helped generally, and saw them off. I got him out of bed this morning to talk to him, and he was none too pleased, but he remembers the evening quite well, because of course the boat sailed off that night and never came back.
‘What did he say?’
‘There were two lots of people, he said. One lot came in an old white van, which he didn’t think much of for an owner of such a boat. You’d expect a Rolls, he said.’ Johnny chuckled. ‘The first arrivals, three people, were the crew. They unloaded stores from an estate car and made two trips out to the boat. Then the white van arrived with several more men, and one of those was lying down. They told the nightwatchman he was dead drunk, and that was you, I reckon. Then the first three men and the drunk man went out to the boat, and the other men drove away in the old van and the estate car, and that was that. The nightwatchman thought it a very boring sort of party, and noted the embarkation in his log, and paid no more attention. Next morning, no boat.’
‘And no report to the police?’
‘The owner had taken his own property, which he’d fully paid for. Goldenwave had expected him to take command of her a week later, anyway, so they made no fuss.’
‘You’ve done absolute marvels,’ I said.
‘Do you want to hear about Alastair Yardley?’
‘There’s more?’
‘There sure is. He seems to be quite well-known. Several of the bigger shipyards have recommended him to people who want their boats sailed from England, say, to Bermuda, or the Caribbean, and so on, and don’t have a regular crew, and also don’t want to cross oceans themselves. He signs on his own crew, and pays them himself. He’s no crook. Got a good reputation. Tough, though. And he’s not cheap. If he agreed to help shanghai you, you can bet Mr Arthur Robinson paid through the nose for the service. But you can ask him yourself, if you like.’
‘What do you mean?’
Johnny was justifiably triumphant. ‘I struck dead lucky, mate. Mind you, I chased him round six shipyards, but he’s in England now to fetch another yacht, and he’ll talk to you if you ring him more or less at once.’
‘I don’t believe it!’
‘Here’s the number.’ He read out the numbers, and I wrote them down. ‘Ring him before two o’clock. You can also talk to the chap in charge of Goldenwave, if you like. This is his number. He said he’d help in any way he could.’
‘You’re fantastic,’ I said, stunned to breathlessness by his success.
‘We got a real lucky break, mate, because when I took those photographs to Cowes first thing this morning, I asked round everybody, and there was a feller in the third yard I tried who’d worked at Goldenwave last year, and he said it looked like their Golden Sixty Five, so I rang them, and it was the departure date that clinched it.’
‘I can’t begin to thank you.’
‘To tell you the truth, mate, it’s been a bit of excitement, and there isn’t all that much about, these days. I’ve enjoyed this morning, and that’s a fact.’
‘I’ll give you a ring. Tell you how things turn out.’
‘Great. Can’t wait. And see you.’
He disconnected, and with an odd sinking feeling in my stomach I rang the first of the numbers he’d given me. A shipyard. Could I speak to Alastair Yardley? Hang on, said the switchboard. I hung.
‘Hullo?’
The familiar voice. Bold, self-assertive, challenging the world.
‘It’s Roland Britten,’ I said.
There was a silence, then he said, ‘Yeah,’ slowly.
‘You said you’d talk to me.’
‘Yeah.’ He paused. ‘Your friend this morning, John Frederick, the boat-builder, he tells me I was sold a pup about you.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I was told you were a blackmailer.’
‘A what?’
‘Yeah.’ He sighed. ‘Well, this guy Arthur Robinson, he said you’d set up his wife in some compromising photographs and were trying to blackmail her, and he wanted you taught a lesson.’
‘Oh,’ I said blankly. It explained a great deal, I thought.
‘Your friend Frederick told me that was all crap. He said I’d been conned. I reckon I was. All the other guys in the yard here know all about you winning that race and going missing. They just told me. Seems it was in all the papers. But I didn’t see them, of course.’
‘How long,’ I said, ‘were you supposed to keep me on board?’
‘He said to ring him Monday evening, April 4th, and he’d tell me when and where and how to set you loose. But of course, you jumped ship the Tuesday before, and how you got that lever off is a bloody mystery... I rang him that night, and he was so bloody angry he couldn’t get the words out. So then he said he wouldn’t pay me for the job on you, and I said if he didn’t he could whistle for his boat, I’d just sail it into some port somewhere and walk away, and he’d have God’s own job finding it. So I said he could send me the money to Palma, where I bank, and when I got it I’d do what he wanted, which was to take his boat to Antibes and deliver it to the ship brokers there.’
‘Brokers?’
‘Yeah. Funny, that. He’d only just bought it. What did he want to sell it for?’
‘Well...’ I said. ‘Do you remember his telephone number?’
‘No. Threw it away, didn’t I, as soon as I was shot of his boat.’
‘At Antibes?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Did you meet him?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. That night at Lymington. He told me not to talk to you, and not to listen, because you’d tell me lies, and not to let you know where we were, and not to leave a mark on you, and to watch out because you were as slippery as an eel.’ He paused a second. ‘He was right about that, come to think.’
‘Do you remember what he looked like?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘what I saw of him; but it was mostly in the dark, out on the quay.’ He described Arthur Robinson as I’d expected, and well enough to be conclusive.
‘I wasn’t intending to go for another week,’ he said. ‘The weather forecasts were all bad for Biscay, and I’d only been out in her once, in light air, not enough to know how she’d handle in a gale, but he rang Goldenwave that morning and spoke to me, and told me about you, and said gale or no gale he’d make it worth my while if I’d go that evening and take you with me.’
‘I hope it was worth it,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ he said frankly. ‘I got paid double.’
I laughed in my throat. ‘Er...’ I said, ‘is it possible for a boat just to sail off from England and wander round Mediterranean ports, when it hasn’t even got a name? I mean, do you have to pass Customs, and things like that?’
‘You can pass Customs if you want to waste a bloody lot of time. Otherwise, unless you tell them, a port doesn’t know whether you’ve come from two miles down the coast, or two thousand. The big ports collect mooring fees, that’s all they’re interested in. If you drop anchor at somewhere like Formentor, which we did one night with you, no one takes a blind bit of notice. Easy come, easy go, that’s what it’s like on the sea. Best way to live, I reckon.’
‘It sounds marvellous,’ I sighed enviously.
‘Yeah. Look...’ he paused a second, ‘are you going to set the police on me, or anything? Because I’m off today, on the afternoon tide, and I’m not telling where.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No police.’
He let his breath out audibly in relief. ‘I reckon...’ He paused. ‘Thanks, then. And well, sorry, like.’