I tacked. We were well off Bolt Head now. The sea was spattered with yachts; many, like me, heading westwards. I was not going far; just down the Devon coast. Nor was I hurrying. I lashed the tiller, then went below where I buttered a piece of bread and made a flask of tea. I breakfasted in the cockpit as terns dive-bombed the sea. There was a gentle swell, a small chop, and a steady wind. Sunflower was fairly tight on the breeze, but she held her course well. She bridled sometimes, threatening to luff, and occasionally, as a steeper chop slapped the hull, some of the wreckage would rattle down below.
Once clear of Bolt Tail I turned a few points to the north and Sunflower seemed to ease up. She was enjoying herself now, and I felt the urge to turn her bows towards the open ocean and let her sail far far away. But first I had to repair her, because only then could the two of us go back where we belonged.
By midday, under a brassy brilliant sun, we were sailing into Plymouth Sound. We passed Drake’s Island, heading for the Hamoaze. This was naval and commercial water, slicked with oil, as romantic as a sludge pump, yet out of here had sailed all the ships of English history; the Victory and the Mayflower, the Revenge and the Golden Hind.
Yet the place I sought had neither grandeur nor history, but only the hopelessness of decay. It was a boatyard consisting of a slip, a grubby dock, an empty grid, a filthy quay, a workshop, a warehouse, and a forlorn office. A few workboats were tied at the quay, but all looked ready for the scrapyard. No work seemed to be going on in the yard, though I saw an old green Jaguar parked by the offices which suggested that someone was minding the shop. After four years I’d half expected to find the old yard sold, but it was still here; a monument to sloth and carelessness.
I moored Sunflower to a decrepit fishing boat, then climbed a rusting ladder to the dock. A woman’s bicycle leaned beside the office door which had a piece of hardboard nailed across the space where a pane of glass had evidently been broken. A similar repair disfigured the door at the top of the stairs. I pushed the door open, astonishing the secretary who sat behind the ancient desk. I blew her a kiss. “You’re still here, Rita?”
“God love me!” Rita was a dim, good-natured girl who spent her days reading True Romance magazines. There was no other work for her to do in the yard except make the tea and answer the phone. “Johnny? Is it really you?”
“It’s really me.” I took her hand, made an elaborate bow, and kissed a painted fingernail. “Is the old sod in?”
“He’s probably asleep.” She stared at me. “You haven’t half got a suntan!” Then, remembering something, she dutifully frowned. “I saw it in the papers about your mother. I am sorry, John.”
I shrugged, as though I was unable to articulate my own sorrow, then pushed open the door to the inner office.
George Cullen started awake with a splutter. He tried to pretend that he had been working, and at the same time offered me a hurt look as though I’d offended him by not knocking, then, blinking fully awake, he recognised me. He smiled, decided a smile was not appropriate, and stood to offer me a hand. “My lord!”
“It’s Johnny to you,” I said, “and how are you, you old fraud?”
He shook my hand. “Johnny.” He said it tentatively, as though trying the name out, though he’d known me as nothing else since I’d been thirteen. Still, George was one of those men who liked to know a peer. “Johnny,” he said again, this time with pleasure as though he truly was glad to see me. “Quite a surprise! You’ll have a glass of something with an old friend, won’t you?”
He produced a bottle of Scotch which had a label I’d never seen before and hope never to see again. In Mozambique, which is a destination I would not recommend to passing yachtsmen, I had drunk from a bottle which purported to be Scotch. It was called ‘Sbell’, and bore a very poor copy of a Bells label. Sbell whisky was a drink for a desperate man, though it made an excellent all-purpose solvent. George’s Scotch was of the same order. I took a sip, then grimaced. “Where on earth did you get this muck, George?”
“It was a business gift, Johnny. From an associate.”
“Bloody hell.” I drank it anyway, then held out my glass for more.
George refilled my glass. He’s an affable crook. He looks as bent as any front-bench politician, what with his beer belly, jowly face, and small suspicious eyes, but he has a great taste for gossip and a healthy fear of the prison yard. He had inherited this Hamoaze boatyard from his father, but the yard didn’t do real business any more. George’s income came from fencing items thieved from boats. The police must have known about him, so the only explanation for his continued liberty must have been that he was grassing on someone. I’d known George for twenty-one years. I used to spend my holidays working in the yard. Back then there had still been a semblance of industry at Cullen’s Boats, but that pretence seemed to have been long dropped.
He waddled to the window and stared down at Sunflower. “Been far in her, Johnny?”
“Round the world, George.”
“Have you now?” He gazed at her as he stuffed his pipe with tobacco. “I’ve always fancied sailing round the world. Never had the chance, of course. Too busy.”
George couldn’t make it past Plymouth Breakwater in a gin palace, let alone sail round the world, but I smiled politely. He shrugged, then hospitably offered me his tobacco pouch. “Just visiting, are you, Johnny?”
I shook my head. “I want your grid for a couple of days, and what’s left of your workshop.”
“Of course, Johnny, of course. I’ll have to check that no one’s booked in, of course, but…”
“Shut up, George. Of course no one’s booked in. And don’t worry, I’ll earn my keep.”
“Ah.” George frowned. I suppose he had been expecting me to offer him cash, while now I was suggesting that he paid me for odd jobs, but his cupidity was beaten by his snobbishness. A lord was a lord, even if he was penniless. George lit his pipe, then went back to his littered desk. “We’ll work something out, Johnny.”
“And I want something else, George.”
He heard the wariness in my voice and matched it with his own. “Something else?”
“I don’t want anyone to know I’m here.”
George might be a sluggish old toad, but he has a nose for mischief. He slumped down in his padded chair. “The police again, Johnny?”
“Not the police. A couple of bastards think I’ve got something. They came looking for it yesterday, and they might come looking again. So I don’t want them to know where I am.”
“Anyone I know?”
I described the two men as I filled my pipe with George’s black shag. I couldn’t give much of a description of the big balding man who had helmed the dory, but I offered an excellent description of the thin man who had such a crisp public school accent.
“Garrard,” George interrupted me when I mentioned the thin man’s voice.
“Garrard?”
“Trevor Garrard. Used to be in the army. A right posh villain, he is. Was he carrying a knife?”
“Yes.”
“That’s Garrard, then. You don’t have to worry about his mate, he’s just a thick lump of muscle, nothing more, but you should watch Garrard. He’s nasty.” I was not in the least surprised that George knew the two men because there was very little villainy in the Southwest that George did not know about. “Garrard was cashiered out the army,” George went on, “then he got snared by the Fraud Squad, so now he’s a winkler. He did a bit of bookie’s business at one time, but I don’t suppose he dares show his face on a racecourse these days. He was too violent, you see, and the coppers got a line on him, so nowadays he’s mostly a winkler.”