“Bugger!” I shouted the curse aloud and thumped an impotent fist against the metal skin of the nearest caravan.
There was to be no freedom after all, but only duty, because it was time to catch a thief.
I went back to Devon that night, retrieved my oars, rowed myself out to Sunflower, and poured myself the dregs of my last bottle of whiskey. I felt an insidious temptation to let the ebbing tide take me to sea, but instead I slept and, in the morning, went ashore and found a public phone.
The bullet had to be bitten. Charlie must know that I was back in England and that all his generosity had not bought me the freedom he so envied. I phoned his yard, but he wasn’t in his office, so I called Yvonne. She sounded surprised to hear my voice, but did not ask where I was or what I wanted. She said Charlie was away from home.
“In Hertfordshire again?”
“Scotland, I think.” She didn’t sound as if it mattered very much. “He’s sub-contracting on a road-widening scheme.”
“Tell him I’m back, Yvonne. I’m moored in the Exe at the moment, but I don’t know how long I’ll stay here, but he can always try the Channel radio stations.”
She did not sound very pleased, but promised to tell Charlie when he called home. Perhaps she thought I’d come to take more money off him. I said goodbye to her, then called Directory Enquiries to find the number of the Buzzacott Museum Gallery. This was a harder bullet to bite, but it had to be done. I asked for Jennifer Pallavicini, but the man who answered the phone in her office said she was in New York. She was expected back soon, but, in the meantime, was there any message?
“Tell her that John Rossendale called and that I’m back in England. Tell her she can probably reach me by radio.” I gave him a list of coast radio stations and Sunflower’s call sign. The man was clearly bemused, but docilely took down the information. Then, because I had nothing better to do, I took Sunflower to sea.
I knocked about the Channel for a few days. I was tempted to visit Jersey, but I did not know what good it would do. Georgina might be pleased to see me, but I could offer her no reassurances, so I chickened out. I visited a friend in Lèzardrieux, and tried to persuade myself I was in love with a waitress in his riverfront cafe. Jacques drove me to the casino at Dinard where, despite my avowal that I couldn’t afford to gamble, I won three thousand francs. When the francs didn’t change the waitress’s mind I went downstream and anchored off the Ile Bréhat, where I stayed for two days. I listened to the traffic lists on the VHF, but neither Sunflower’s name nor her call sign were ever mentioned. I made one link call to the Buzzacott Museum Gallery, charging the cost to Elizabeth’s home number, but Jennifer Pallavicini had still not returned.
After two days I decided to sail to the Scilly Isles, which I’d never visited. The forecast had promised a southeast wind, but three hours off the Breton coast the wind veered round the compass which meant that I was faced by a devil of a windward flog. I held to it, lured by the unknown Scillies, which I reached just after dusk the next day. I anchored in Porth Cressa and spent a miserable night heaving and sheering in strong seas driven by a rising west wind. The morning was filthy with rain and blowing half a gale, so, without going ashore, I hauled up the anchor, let the foresails turn Sunflower, and took myself off. The wind was gusting to force eight, and the seas were heaping into thumping great monsters. White crests cascaded down the wave faces. Another yacht, a big Moody, left the Scillies at the same time, but by midday I had lost her in the misting squalls which were slithering up towards Cornwall. I was enjoying myself. Sunflower was running well, hard before the wind and rolling her boom under every few minutes. In the early afternoon I caught a glimpse of the Lizard, black in the grey murk, but then a rainstorm blotted it out. I heard thunder to the north, and saw one stabbing crack of lightning pierce the gloom. Sunflower slammed her stem into a wave, scattered white water twelve feet high, then dipped her nose as a following sea swept under her counter. This was Channel sailing at its best; hard, fast, wet and exhilarating.
Next morning, in Dartmouth, I rowed to the marina where Sunflower had been relaunched, but there was no sign of Barratry. I had not really expected to see her, so I went ashore, found a telephone, but could get no answer from Charlie’s house. I tried the yard, but he wasn’t there either. I called Jennifer Pallavicini, but she was evidently not back from America, for there was no answer from her office.
To hell with it, I thought. To hell with it. I walked in a gusting breeze among the tourists on the quayside and I wished I was far away. Except that two caravans in a corner of Elizabeth’s farm were holding me home. I needed to solve that problem, and I was achieving nothing by knocking about the Channel and brooding. I went back to the telephone box. Jennifer Pallavicini had told me in Horta that Harry Abbott was the policeman in charge of discovering the mutilated Van Gogh. Harry was a bastard, but he was a bastard who could be reached by telephone, so I called him.
He wasn’t in his Exeter office, but I held on while he was tracked down. He couldn’t come to the phone, but passed on a message that I should meet him next morning in the café on Dartmouth’s quay.
I spent the day drying out the boat and washing the salt out of my hair and clothes. Next morning I rowed ashore early and ordered a double helping of bacon, egg, sausages and chips. I had bought a tabloid and was amusing myself by reading about the vicar who’d run off with the organist’s husband when a hand tapped my shoulder.
I turned. Harry Abbott’s lugubrious and unhealthy face gazed solemnly down into mine. The face smiled, revealing long yellow teeth. “Oh, God,” I said.
“I haven’t been promoted that high yet. I’m only a Detective Inspector, but that is very close to being God.” He reached over my shoulder and stole one of my chips. “I like chips for breakfast.”
“If you want some chips, order your own.”
He stole another. “I’ve already had a plateful. Very nice they were, too, with a spot of vinegar.” He sat opposite me and sprinkled vinegar on his stolen chip. “You’re looking very well, Johnny,” he said. “If I’d had my way, you’d still be in prison now.”
“So you failed.”
“Justice is like the pox,” he said, “in the end it gets everyone.”
“Very funny, Harry.”
He ordered himself a coffee and spooned sugar into the cup. He then lit a cigarette and blew smoke at me. “Did you know Jimmy Nicholls?”
“No.”
“He died of smoking, just like your mother. Were you upset by her death, Johnny?”
“Piss off, Harry.”
Detective Inspector Harry Abbott looks like a joke. He’s cadaverous, tall, grey, and apparently always at death’s door, but he’s a cunning sod. When he had interrogated me about the stolen Van Gogh he had come foully close to persuading me to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear. I’d been innocent, but Harry had been relentless, almost persuading me that I had to be guilty. He is not a man to underestimate.