‘You should be in bed,’ I said. ‘You look as though you’re running a temperature.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She sat down abruptly, waving me to the seat on the opposite side of the table. ‘I couldn’t let you leave, like that. As if I had no understanding, no sympathy.’
‘You’re Welsh, aren’t you?’ I asked.
‘Half Welsh, yes. My mother was French.’
‘From Vertou.’
Her eyes widened. ‘So you’ve been making enquiries?’
‘Of course.’ And I added, ‘My wife was Welsh. But not her name. Her name was Karen.’
‘Yes, I know. I read about it. When I heard the news I read all the English papers I could get…’ Her voice faded, floundering over the macabre memory of what had been printed in the English press.
‘Karen was from Swansea. That’s where we met. In the docks there.’
‘It was nothing to do with my father,’ she whispered urgently. ‘Please. You’ve got to believe that. You must believe it, because it’s true. It was an accident.’
‘And he’s a Welshman, you say?’
‘He was born there, yes.’
‘Where?’
‘In the middle somewhere. I’m not sure.’
‘What was his name then?’
It was on the tip of her tongue, but then she hesitated. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘A fellow Welshman…’ I murmured, not looking at her now, knowing I had tried to trap her.
‘You’re not Welsh.’ Her voice was suddenly harder, an undercurrent of impatience. ‘The way you talk sounds like it sometimes, but if you were Welsh now—‘
‘It would make no difference.’
‘If you were, you would have the imagination to see—‘
‘I have plenty of imagination,’ I cut in angrily. ‘Too much perhaps.’
She was staring at me now, her eyes wide and the same look of horror dawning. ‘Please. Won’t you try to understand. He’s never had a chance. Ever since the Stella Rosa. You know about the Stella Rosa, I suppose?’
‘Yes.’
‘He was exonerated, you know.’
‘The Stella Rosa was gun-running.’
‘There was no other ship available. My mother was sick and he needed the money.’
‘Honest engineers don’t go gun-running,’ I told her. ‘Then, when the ship was wrecked, he blamed one of his engineer officers, a man named Aristides Speridion.’
She nodded slowly, her eyes dropping to her hands.
‘What happened to Speridion? Has he told you?’
She didn’t answer.
Varsac poked his head round the door to say the taxi had arrived. I waved him away. ‘Tell it to wait,’ I said. And then to the girl, ‘You realize that when the Petros Jupiter went on to the rocks by Land’s End he was in charge of the engine-room? And masquerading under the name of Aristides Speridion. He even had Speridion’s passport.’
‘I know.’ The admission seemed dragged out of her, the words a whisper. She suddenly reached out, touched my hand. ‘There’s some explanation. I know there is. There must be. Can’t you wait — until after the Enquiry? It’s like a court of law, isn’t it? The truth — the real truth — it’ll all come out.’ Her voice was urgent, desperate to believe that he would be vindicated, his innocence proved. ‘He’s such a kind man. You should have seen him when my mother was dying—‘
‘If there were a chance that the Enquiry would vindicate him, he’d surely have stayed. Instead—‘ But I left it at that. His action in fleeing the country made it all so obvious and I’d no quarrel with her. I began to get to my feet. She should have had the sense to face up to the situation. The man was guilty as hell and no good her pleading his innocence when the facts were all against it. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go now. The flight to Paris—‘
‘It’s Dubai, isn’t it? You’re going to Dubai.’
I nodded.
‘When you see my father…’ She got slowly to her feet, tears in her eyes as she stood facing me. ‘Give him my love, will you. Tell him I did my best. I tried to stop you.’ She stood quite still, facing me, with her hands to her side, as though she were facing a firing squad. ‘Please remember that when you find him.’ And then, in a sudden violent outburst, ‘I don’t understand you. Will nothing satisfy the bitterness that’s eating you up? Isn’t there anything—‘ But then she stopped, her body stiffening as she turned away, gathering up her handbag and walking blindly out by the street door.
She left me with the bill for her coffee and a feeling of sadness that such a nice girl, so absolutely loyal, should have such a man as her father. Nothing she had said had made the slightest difference, his guilt so obvious that I thought she was probably convinced of it, too, as I went out to the waiting taxi. Varsac was already there with the door open. I handed my bags to the driver, saw to it that he put them both in the boot and then, as I was bending down to get in, the girl’s voice behind me called out, ‘Monsieur. Un moment.’ I turned to find her standing by the bonnet of the taxi with one of those flat little miniature cameras to her eye and at that moment the shutter blinked. It blinked again before I had time to move. ‘Why did you do that?’ I was reaching out for the camera, but she put it behind her, standing stiff and defiant. ‘You touch me and I’ll scream,’ she said. ‘You can’t take my camera.’
‘But why?’ I said again.
She laughed, a snorting sound. ‘So that my children will know what the murderer of their grandfather looked like. The police, too. Anything happens to my father and I’ll give these pictures to the police.’ She took a step back, the camera to her eye again as she took another snap. Then she turned, darting across the pavement into the hotel.
‘Depeche-toi. Depeche-toi. Nous allons louper I’avion? Varsac’s voice sounded agitated.
I hesitated, but there was nothing I could do, so I got into the taxi and we drove out of Nantes across the Loire to the airport. And all the way there I was thinking about the photographs, her reason for taking them — ‘When you meet my father—‘ Those were her words. ‘Dubai,’ she had said. ‘You’re going to Dubai.’ So now I knew, Choffel was in Dubai. He would be waiting for me there, an engineer in the same ship.
Two hours later we were in Paris, at the Charles de Gaulle Airport, waiting for the flight to Dubai. In the end we didn’t board until 20.30, and even then we were lucky in that there had been several cancellations, for this was the Thursday morning flight, delayed now by over thirty hours and every seat taken.
PART FOUR
THE DHOW
CHAPTER ONE
It was a six and a half hour flight from Paris to Dubai and nothing to do but sit there, thinking about my meeting with Choffel, what I was going to do. Up till then I hadn’t given much thought to the practicalities. I had never owned a gun, never even fired one. I had no weapon with me of any sort, and though I had seen death out in the Hindu Kush when I was a kid, it was death through cold or disease or lack of food. Once, in Basra, I had watched from a hotel balcony as an armoured car and some riot police gunned down a handful of youths. That was before the Iraqi-Iranian war, a protest by Shia sect students and again I was only a spectator. I’d never killed anyone myself. Even the little Baluchi boy, whose doll-like features haunted me, had been thrown into the Creek by the others. I had taken no part in it.
Now, as the big jet whispered through the sky at 37,000 feet, my mind was on Dubai, and the thought that tomorrow, or the next day, or when we boarded the tanker, I could be confronted with Choffel caused my skin to prickle and perspiration to break out all over my body. I pictured his face when we met, how he would react, and the excitement of it shook me. So vivid was the picture my imagination produced that, sitting there, with the seat at full recline and a blanket round my waist, the lights dimmed and all the rest of the passengers fast asleep, the blood drummed in my ears, fantasies of killing flickering through my brain so that suddenly I had an overwhelming orgasmic sense of power. A knife. It would have to be a knife. One of those big silver-hiked, curved-bladed kanjar knives the Bedu wore tucked into the belts of their flowing robes. Getting hold of a knife like that wouldn’t be difficult, not in Dubai, where Axab merchants along the waterfront sold anything from gold and opium to slave girls, and a pistol would be equally available. Still, a knife would be better. But then what did I do? And where would I find him? At one of the hotels in Dubai or holed up in some desert hideout? He could be in one of the neighbouring sheikdoms — Abu Dhabi or Sharjah, or at some Bedu house in the El Ain oasis. And the tanker, where would that be berthed? The only place Baldwick had mentioned was Dubai. If it was in Port Rashid at the entrance to the Creek, then Choffel could already be on board. I pictured myself going up the gangway, being taken to my cabin, then joining the other officers in the mess-room and Henri Choffel standing there, his hand held out in greeting, not knowing who I was. What did I do then — wait until the end of the voyage? A full shipload of Gulf crude, that would mean Europe most likely — down Africa, round the Cape and up almost the full length of the Atlantic. Five weeks at least, presuming the evaporators were in good condition and the boiler didn’t start cutting out, five weeks during which I would be meeting Choffel daily, in the mess-room at the evening pour-out, at mealtimes in the saloon.