‘More than would be needed by the passage crews?’
Bennett snorted. ‘Good heavens, yes, a hell of a sight more! You and fifty others couldn’t eat that lot in ten voyages round the world.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser! I think,’ Shaw said, ‘I’d like to go right through everything aboard, every compartment, as thoroughly as possible.’ He turned for the door. ‘By the way — I should have asked you this before — is there any damage to prove beyond doubt that she hit the Wrangles?’
Bennett laughed. ‘None at all, but that doesn’t mean much. It’d most probably be the towing ships that actually hit, d’you see. The dock could have been pulled over the lightship, but a little cockleshell like the Wrangles wouldn’t leave a scratch on this contraption, except perhaps along her bottom.’ The boom of the sea as it slapped on the sides came to them weirdly, and he added, ‘I’d be glad if you’d hurry now. There’s a lot of ground to cover, and it’s blowing up out there.’
‘Of course. I’m not forgetting the weather, Captain, and I’ll be as quick as I possibly can, I assure you. As soon as I’ve done, I’ll report by radio from the Hilary and ask for instructions as to the dock itself. All right?’
Descending a ladder that led into the depths below the dock’s starboard store-room — where he had examined the food and other stores for himself — Shaw came to another steel deck. This was a big area that appeared to cover the whole of the dock below the strengthened flooring on which a ship using the dock would rest once the flooding chambers had been pumped dry to lift her clear of the water. There was little headroom here, and Shaw and Bennett were able to move along only on hands and knees. Breaking the surface of this secondary deck, beneath the huge girders that supported the main deck close above, were rows of round manholes covered with heavy hatches, watertight hatches tightly clipped down.
‘I suppose those’ll be the entries to the flooding chambers,’ Shaw said. His voice echoed and re-echoed, breaking the oppressive, tomb-like silence. ‘I’m just going to open them all up, Captain, and take a look.’
‘You won’t find anything down there, you know.’ Bennett’s voice was peremptory and edgy now; he was clearly concerned about the weather, and indeed the dock was already lifting a little to the beginnings of a short, breaking sea over a ground swell. ‘Except possibly a slop of stinking water — and not much of that seeing she’s riding high and clear.’
‘You never know,’ Shaw murmured, with an attempt at a cheerful levity. ‘Might find a German who went down for a quiet smoke and never felt the bump… anyway, it’s worth a look.’ He added soberly, ‘Don’t forget, a lot of men died last night when the Wrangles went, and we might—’
‘I don’t need the Navy to remind me of that,’ Bennett snapped abruptly. ‘I’m not forgetting that at all. Well — come on, then. I’ll give you a hand.’
‘Thanks, Captain.’
They crawled forward behind the beam of Bennett’s torch. Reaching the first of the hatches, they knocked off the clips. When the cover was pushed back on its hinge Shaw directed the torch down into the cavity and the murk. There was a faint slop of water and a filthy smell like sewers. The torch beam flashed on the dank sides of the chamber, glimmered faintly on the scummy water far below, little more than two or three inches deep, Shaw fancied. A steel ladder led vertically downward, but Shaw didn’t descend it. He could see all he needed to see from up top, and there wasn’t anything to arouse his interest down there. But he and Bennett, once the hatch was down again and the clips secured, meticulously opened each of the manholes, and they had examined all but three or four when Shaw made a totally unexpected and horrifying discovery.
He was knocking the clips off one of the manholes when he heard the suck and gurgle of water immediately below, and he realized that this chamber, like one or two of the others they had examined, was flooded, no doubt for purposes of trim. The hatch came up more easily than the others, almost as if it were being pressed open from beneath, but neither Shaw nor Bennett saw the head until the hatch was fully open. Then, as the hatch released it, some pressure of the water forced the body up and up and it emerged to waist level, perfectly rigid, with the arms by the sides, like a resurrection from the dead, until its weight toppled it sideways and it fell across the lip of the hatch.
Chapter Three
It was a woman’s body, a young woman’s body, and it was naked, which wasn’t going to make identification any easier.
Helped by Bennett, Shaw pulled the legs clear of the hatch and turned the body face upward. He was certain the girl hadn’t been dead for long; there were no signs of deterioration or decomposition, only a very slight waxiness of the skin.
Shaw said, ‘From the look of her, I don’t believe she drowned. I’d say she was dead when she went in, though we can’t be sure of that till the lungs are examined, I suppose.’ He added, ‘I wonder why they put her in there, with all this sea around?’
Bennett, his face white in the beam of the torch, said, ‘She’d have drifted ashore somewhere. They wouldn’t dump her till they were well clear of the Channel, anyway.’
‘No, of course… silly of me.’ Shaw raised the head, then gently lowered it to the steel decking again. The face had been a decidedly attractive one; there was a generously curving mouth, wide brown eyes and a straight nose, and the cheekbones were high. She had a patrician look and there was personality there, a strong personality, obvious even in death. Perhaps she’d been killed because of it. The hair, though wet and streaked and scummy now, was basically ash-blonde, and very fine. She was tall and altogether well-made, with good curves.
Shaw felt an overwhelming surge of pity as he looked down at that still body. Below the hatch, the trapped water shifted sluggishly from side to side as the dock moved in the swell. How had such a girl come to be down in that chamber, how had she been aboard the dock at all, how had she come to die? She had been, he judged, barely twenty-five years old. This was tragedy, and it was going to alter his whole concept of this job.
‘We’d better get her up top,’ Bennett said tautly. The monotonous boom-boom of waves slapping against the dock’s plates sounded like a knell as Shaw took hold of the girl’s shoulders. Rhetorically Bennett asked, ‘Is she why the towing ships hopped it, I wonder?’
They got the body up on deck, in the cold wind on the high dock-side where Shaw had been put down, and it was then, when they were in full daylight, that Shaw noticed for the first time the tiny indentation — it was scarcely big enough to be called a hole — in the smooth flesh. It was just below the left breast and above the line of sun-tan, where a bikini bra had so evidently once enclosed her slim body.
‘Shot,’ he said laconically to the group of Trinity House men. ‘Probably a .22. Poor kid… Captain, may I go across and use the Hilary’s radio?’
Bennett nodded. ‘Of course, whenever you like. Who d’you want to contact?’
‘My chief in the Admiralty. I’ll send a message in the departmental cypher and ask for a helicopter to take myself and the body off. It’ll be held in naval custody for the time being.’