I knew then why I had got the job. Nobody who knew the ship would touch it, and I’d been on the beach, you know, for a long time…’
He looked at me as though seeking sympathy, then gave a shrug. ‘But even when I knew about him, it never occurred to me there would have been a whole voyage, more than one probably, when the oil filters hadn’t been properly cleaned, almost no maintenance at all. You leave the oil filters dirty, you get lack of lubrication, you see — on the gears, both the primary and the secondary. The primary are double helical gears and the debris from them settles to the bottom and finishes up under the secondary reduction gear. In a seaway, rolling like we were that night, broadside-on to the waves, pieces of metal must have got sloshed up into the gears. We were all working flat out, you see, on the evaporator pipes. It had been like that all the voyage, the tubes just about worn out and always having to be patched up, so I didn’t think about the gears. I didn’t have time, the Chief mostly in his cabin, drinking, you know, and then, when we got steaming again…’ He gave a shrug. ‘I didn’t do anything. I didn’t put anything in the gears. It was the debris did it, the debris of bad maintenance. You understand? We were only a few miles off Land’s End when the noise started. It was the secondary reduction gear, the one that drives the shaft. A hell of a noise. The teeth were being ripped off and they were going through the mesh of the gears. Nothing I could do. Nothing anybody could do. And it wasn’t deliberate. Just negligence.’
He had been talking very fast, but he paused there, watching to see how I would react. ‘That was how it happened.’ He passed his tongue round his lips. ‘My only fault was that I didn’t check. I should have gone over everything in that engine-room. But I never had time. There was never any time, man — always something more urgent.’
He was lying, of course. It was all part of the game. ‘What did they pay you?’ I asked him.
‘Pay me?’ He was frowning, his eyes wide.
‘For doing the job, then slipping away like that so that no one else could be blamed, only Speridion.’ A professional scuttler, he would only have done it for a straight fee. A big one, too, for there was the skipper of the Breton fishing boat to pay and then the cost of flying out to Bahrain and fixing passage on the Corsaire.
He shook his head, his dark eyes staring at me and his hands clasping and unclasping. ‘How can I convince you? I know how it must appear, but my only fault was I didn’t check. I thought we’d make it. After we got through Biscay I thought that junk yard of machinery would see me through to the end of the voyage.’ Again the little helpless shrug. ‘I did think of going to the captain and insisting we put in for complete refit, but it was a Greek company, and you know what Greek shipowners are like when you suggest anything that cuts into their profits, and after the Cape… Well, there was nowhere after that, so I let it go.’ And he added, his hands clasped very tight, ‘Only once in my life—‘ But then he checked himself, shaking his head slowly from side to side, his eyes staring at me as though hypnotized. ‘Can’t you understand? When you’ve been without a job for a long time—‘ He paused, licking his lips again, then went on in a rush of words: ‘You’ll take anything then, any job that comes along. You don’t ask questions. You just take it.’
‘Under an assumed name.’
His mouth opened, then closed abruptly, and I could see him trying to think of an answer. ‘There were reasons,’ he murmured. ‘Personal reasons.’
‘So you called yourself Speridion. Aristides Speridion.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you had a passport — Speridion’s passport.’
He knew what I was driving at. I could see it in his face. He didn’t answer, his mouth tight shut.
‘What happened to the real Speridion?’
He half shook his head, sitting there unable to say a word. ‘My God!’ I said, swinging my legs off the bunk. ‘You come here, telling me I don’t understand, but it’s not only my wife you’ve killed—‘
‘No!’ He had leapt to his feet. ‘I took his papers, yes. But the ship was sinking and he was dead already, floating face down in the oily water that was flooding the engine-room.’ And he said again, urgently, ‘He was already dead, I tell you. He’d no use for the papers any more.’
‘And Choffel?’ I asked. ‘Henri Choffel, who fell into the harbour at Cayenne just when you needed a job.’ I, too, was on my feet then, tucking the towel around my waist. I pushed him back into the chair, standing over him as I said, ‘That was 1958, wasn’t it? Just after you’d sunk the French ship Lavandou.’
He was staring up at me, his mouth fallen open, a stunned look on his face. ‘How do you know?’ He seemed on the verge of tears, his voice almost pathetic as he said hoarsely, ‘I was going to tell you — everything. About the Lavandou as well. I was just twenty-two, a very junior engineer and I needed money. My mother…’ His voice seemed to break at the recollection. ‘It all started from that. I said it was a long story, you remember. I didn’t think you knew. It was so long ago, and ever since—‘ He unclasped his hands, reaching out and clutching hold of me. ‘You’re like all the rest. You’re trying to damn me without a hearing. But I will be heard. I must be.’ He was tugging at my arm. ‘I’ve done nothing, nothing to be ashamed of — nothing to cause you any hurt. It’s all in your imagination.’
Imagination! I was suddenly shaking with anger. How dare the murderous little swine try and pretend he was misunderstood and all he had ever done was the fault of other people. ‘Get out of here!’ My voice was trembling, anger taking hold, uncontrollable. ‘Get out before I kill you.’
I shall always remember the look on his face at that moment. So sad, so pained, and the way he hung his head like a whipped cur as he pushed the chair away, stepping back and moving slowly away from me. And all the time his eyes on mine, a pleading look that seemed desperately trying to bridge the gap between us. As the door closed behind him I had the distinct impression that he was like a drowning man calling for help.
Mad, I thought. A psychiatric case. He must be. How else could he try and plead his innocence when the facts stared him in the face? It was a Jekyll and Hyde situation. Only a schizophrenic, temporarily throwing off the evil side of his nature and assuming the mantle of his innocent self, could so blatantly ignore the truth when confronted by it.
God, what a mess! I lay back on the bunk again, anger draining away, the sweat cold on my body. I switched off the light, feeling exhausted and rubbing myself with the towel. Time stood still, the darkness closed around me. It had the impenetrable blackness of a tomb. Maybe I dozed. I was very tired, a mental numbness. So much had happened. So much to think about, and my nerves taut. I remember a murmur of voices, the sound of drunken laughter outside the door, and Rod Selkirk’s voice, a little slurred, singing an old voyageur song I had heard a long time ago when I shared a cabin with an ex-Hudson’s Bay apprentice. A door slammed, cutting the sound abruptly off, and after that there was silence again, a stillness that seemed to stretch the nerves, holding sleep at bay.
Thinking about the Aurora B and what would happen to us all on board during the next few weeks, I had a dream and woke from it with the impression that Choffel had uttered a fearful muffled scream as he fell to his death down the shaft of an old mine. Had he been pushed — by me? I was drenched in sweat, the stagnant water closing over his head only dimly seen, a fading memory. The time was 01.25 and the faint murmur of the generator had grown to the steady hum of something more powerful — the auxiliary perhaps. I could feel it vibrating under me and some loose change I had put with my wallet on the dressing table was rattling spasmodically. I got up and put my eye to the little pinpoint of clear glass. There were men in the bows, dark shadows in the starlight, and there were others coming up through a hatchway to join them with their hands on top of their heads.