The Black Tide Page 5

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  But instead of going back to Balkaer, I went with Jimmy in his van to the cleansing station. We helped there for a while, getting back just in time for lunch. And afterwards I stayed on, enjoying the warmth of their company, the cosy heat of the coal fire. The wind had dropped, but there was still cloud over the moors and it got dark early. I didn’t think about it when they switched the television on for the news, but then, suddenly, I was sitting up, electrified, seeing it all over again through the eyes of the camera – the red glow of the blazing tanker and the ILB coming into the slipway, the three of us caught against the furnace glare of the burning oil with ragged wisps of fog in the background, and myself, dazed and speaking slowly, as though in a trance, trying to answer their questions, telling them what had happened. The wind was blowing in my hair and my face had the pallor of death in the hard glare of the spotlight.

  Back at the cottage, with the aftermath of the gale beating into the cove, it was my own TV shadow, my wild, ghostly appearance that stayed in my mind, not the words I had spoken. I was tired by then, so emotionally exhausted that I fell asleep by the fire. I spent most of the night there and in the morning, when I went up to the top, above the elephant rock, and looked across to the Longships, all that remained of the Petros Jupiter was the blackened bridge housing half sunk and leaning drunkenly against the Kettle’s Bottom.

  It was a bright, sparkling morning, the sort of morning that would have had Karen bubbling with that almost childishly excited Welsh enthusiasm of hers. I walked on, across the fields and down the road into Sennen, and there I found the story of what she had done plastered all over the papers with eye-witness accounts and statements from the salvage boss and pollution experts, also from several politicians.

  Reading about it, I found it all strangely remote, as though it hadn’t been Karen out there, but somebody else. Reporters came and a girl from the local radio station with a portable tape recorder. But by then I was in a daze, answering their questions automatically. It didn’t seem real, any of it, the seas now rolling in unobstructed to break on the Shark’s Fin, only the top of the hull’s twisted wreck just showing at low water and no slick, the oil all burned up or driven ashore. It only seemed real when I was back at Balkaer. Then the emptiness of the cottage was like a constant nagging ache. Or when I was down in the cove. Wreckers from far and wide were prowling the shores of Whitesand Bay, searching all the headlands. They were picking up bits and pieces of the Petros Jupiter as far north as Cape Cornwall.

  I began to get a stack of mail, letters from all sorts of people, conservationists chiefly, though some of them attacked me for encouraging Karen to sacrifice herself unnecessarily or accused me of standing by while she committed suicide. They were from women mainly, the bulk of them praising what she had done. Saturday, the mail included several invitations to speak at conservationist meetings and a letter from the publishers. This I saved until after my return from Penzance, where I saw the agents and put Balkaer up for sale. The letter was signed Ken Jordan, Senior Editor. He wanted me to go up to London and see him, but with Karen gone, the cottage for sale, that part of my life was ended. It didn’t seem important any more, the book no longer meaning very much to me. And on the Sunday, which was sunny with an easterly breeze, families wandered down the path from the lane to stand and point, and giggle in embarrassment when I told them to bugger off. There was even a man who pushed open the cottage door to take pictures of the interior. He was quite upset when I slammed it in his face. Because he had seen Balkaer on TV in his own home he seemed to think in some curious way that he owned the place.

  And then, about dusk, when all the gawpers and souvenir hunters had gone, there was a knock at the door and I opened it to find a man dressed in a sheepskin jacket and a polo-necked sweater standing there. He had a fur cap rammed tight down on his bullet head.

  I recognized him at once, though it must have been three years or more since I had last seen him; those broad powerful shoulders, the beer-barrel belly, the little pig eyes and the round heavy face. He was of that breed of Englishman that has made Brits a word of contempt.

  I didn’t ask him in. I just stood there, waiting. The last time I’d seen him was at a shipboard party on a Liberian tanker waiting to load at Bahrain. ‘Remember me?’

  I nodded. I had met him several times, on different ships, in different ports, and in hotel bars where he was always flush with money, always buying rounds of drinks. The word was that he was front man for a drug-smuggling ring.

  ‘Len Baldwick,’ he said, holding out a big paw. ‘Can I have a word with you?’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘You. The future.’ The small grey eyes were watching me, the whites as clear as if he’d never touched a drop of alcohol in his life. ‘You’ll be thinking of a ship now?’

  ‘Will I?’

  He ducked his head, pushing his way in. ‘Saw you on the telly.’ He unzipped the sheepskin jacket, pushing the fur cap to the back of his head. ‘Peat fire, eh? You always were a bit simple-like. I told you, way back, didn’t I – being honest and licking the arses of the owners don’t pay. Now look where it’s got you. You lost your wife. She’s gone and you’re on your own. You got nothing, laddie, nothing at all.’

  ‘What the hell do you want?’ Any ordinary man I’d have thrown out. But he was well over six foot, massive as a rock. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘To offer you a job.’ And he went on to explain that he was head-hunting for a consortium going into the tanker business. ‘Oil money,’ he explained, drooping an eyelid. ‘You know how it is. Bubbles out of the arse of any Muslim in the Gulf. These people are starting their own fleet, see, an’ while crew’s no problem, it’s not so easy to find officers. The right sort, that is.’ He was watching me out of the corner of his eyes. ‘The money’s good. Double British rates.’ He hesitated. ‘And a bonus at the end.’

  ‘End of what?’ I asked. ‘What’s the bonus for?’

  He shrugged. ‘For getting the ship there. End of voyage bonus.’ He was standing with his legs apart, staring at me. ‘Air passage out, of course. Everything provided.’

  The two years since I’d come to England fell away. I was back in the Gulf, back in a world where promises are seldom met, nothing is what it seems and men like Baldwick scavenge the hotels and clubs fomenting bar talk that is the never-never land of salesmen’s dreams. Nothing would have induced me to accept an offer from him, but I didn’t tell him that. I excused myself on the grounds that I had written a book and would be seeing the publishers shortly.

  ‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed and burst out laughing. ‘I come here offering you the job of first officer on a hundred thousand tonner, and you talk about a bloody book. You out of your mind?’

  ‘No,’ I said. Just a question of values. I know what I want to do with my life.’

  ‘Pollution. On the telly you was talking about pollution and crooked tanker owners, the need for government to introduce new laws.’ He hesitated, eyeing me speculatively. ‘Maybe these people can help.’ He said it tentatively and I nearly burst out laughing it was so damned silly. Baldwick of all people on the side of the angels! Quick as a flash he sensed my reaction. ‘So you won’t even discuss it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I come all the way from Bristol to make you an offer most men would jump at—’

  ‘Then why haven’t they? Why come to me?’

  ‘I told you. I saw you on the telly.’ And he added, ‘These people, they understand about pollution. They can afford to run their ships so there won’t be any. The idea is to improve the tanker image, and they’ll put pressure on any government that doesn’t behave sensibly.’

  ‘What pressure?’ I asked.

  ‘How the hell do I know? Political pressure, I imagine. Anyway, Pieter Hals is one of the skippers. He wouldn’t have signed on if he hadn’t believed they were serious about it.’

  Hals was the man who had stood on the deck of a flag-of-c
onvenience tanker in the Niger River with a bomb in his hand threatening to blow it up, and himself with it, if the effects of a collision weren’t remedied before he sailed. She was scored along one side and leaking oil. The account I had read had commented that he was wilder than the Green Peace movement or the union leader in Brest who’d called his men out to stop a Greek cargo vessel sailing with an oil leak in the stern gland. ‘Who are these people?’ I asked.

  He shook his head, laughing and telling me he wasn’t here to gossip about the consortium, just to offer me a job and if I didn’t want it, what the hell did it matter to me who the owners were. ‘They operate in the Gulf, of course, and they want ships’ officers, deck as well as engineers.’ He stood there for a moment, feet apart, with his back to the fire watching me out of his bright little button eyes. ‘Tonight I’ll be in Falmouth,’ he said. ‘I’ll be talking to the captain of the Petros Jupiter. He’ll be looking for another job I wouldn’t wonder.’ He waited, and when I didn’t say anything, he nodded. ‘Okay, suit yourself He pulled a business card from his wallet, took out what looked like a real gold pen, and after copying some entries from a leather diary on to the back of the card, he handed it to me. ‘If you change your mind, those are my immediate movements.’ The card described him as Consultant. On the back he had written down dates and telephone numbers for Liverpool, Nantes, Marseilles, Dubai.

  He stood there a moment longer, pointedly surveying the stone-walled room and the junk furniture. Then he turned and zipped up his fleece-lined jacket. I opened the door for him and as he was going out he paused, looking down at me. ‘You’re not a company man any longer. You want a berth, you got to go out into the market and face all the other ships’ officers that’s out of a job.’ His little eyes were cold, his lips a hard line. ‘I’m warning you, Rodin, you’ll find the going rough. A VLCC – you never had anything like that. It’s the chance of a lifetime for a man like you.’ He stood there a moment longer, staring down at me as though to check that his words had sunk in. Then he nodded. ‘Okay. It’s your loss. But if you change your mind, ring me before I leave for France.’

  He left then and I stood there, watching him as he climbed the path, leaning his body into it, and thinking how odd it was, the power of the media. First the publishers, conjured out of the blue because of the publicity, and now Baldwick, appearing like some evil genie and talking of pollution as though oil slicks could be eliminated by rubbing a few gold coins together.

  I went back into the cottage, to another night of loneliness with only the memory of Karen for company. And next day I had a service for her in the local church.

  There was still nothing to bury. Nothing had been found of her, nothing at all, so it was just a sort of memorial service to a girl who had immolated herself in protest against oil pollution. Most people seemed to regard it as a futile gesture, but they were kind and they turned up in force. The environmentalists made a bit of a demo out of it, the local press were there and two BBC men from Bristol. The little church was packed and it was raining.

  The service was very moving, I think because of all the people and the strength of feeling that reached out to me. And afterwards, when one of the reporters started questioning me about her motives, I was in such an emotional state that I just let my feelings rip, telling him I’d get the bastard who put the Petros Jupiter on the rocks, killing Karen, killing the birds, ruining our bit of Cornwall. ‘If the government won’t stop it, I will.’ There was a camera running, everybody staring, and when somebody asked me if I meant to take on the oil companies I answered him, ‘No, the ship owners – the tanker owners – the bastards that switch names, companies, ownership – the whole stinking, sodding mess of corrupt tanker dealing …’ Somebody pulled me away then, Andy I think. I was in tears, coming out of the church, straight from that service. And that night they had a brief flash of that interview on Nationwide. I watched it in the lounge of a Penzance hotel over a farewell drink with the Kerrisons, shocked as much by the haggard look of my face, and the tears streaming down it, as by the violence of my words. Then they drove me to the station and I caught the night train to London.

  It was five days since it had happened, five miserable days alone at the cottage. On the Saturday, when I had seen the estate agents in Penzance, I had told them they could deal with the contents when they liked, but to leave the cottage until the spring, when the evenings would be drawing out and the daffodils in bloom in the sheltered patch behind the elephant rock. It would sell better then. But though it wouldn’t be on the market immediately, the mere fact of having arranged to sell it had had the effect of making me feel an interloper, the place we had striven for and loved so much suddenly no longer part of my life. It added to the bitterness of my departure as the wheels rattled me eastwards through the night.

  I hadn’t bothered about a sleeper. I sat up all the way, dozing fitfully, thinking about the Petros Jupiter and what I’d do to that dirty little Greek when I caught up with him. It was either that or start thinking about Karen, and I couldn’t face that, not any more. Not after that service. I felt drained, too nervously exhausted to plan ahead. I didn’t even think about the letter from the publishers. That meant thinking constructively, about my writing, about the future. I didn’t want to think about the future. I didn’t want to face up to a future alone. And so I sat there, my mind drifting on the edge of consciousness, nerves taut and the wheels hammering the name Speridion into my tired brain. Aristides Speridion. Aristides Speridion.

  Dawn broke, cold and grey, the wind blowing out of the north, a curtain of sleet beginning to whiten the roofs of the buildings backed on to the railway. It was much too early to ring the solicitors when we pulled into Paddington, so I took the Circle Line to Liverpool Street, checked my two cases into a lock-up and just had time to buy some papers before catching the next train for Colchester.

  Except for a brief paragraph in the Telegraph headed OIL SLICK DEMO AT CORNISH CHURCH, the Petros Jupiter seemed to have dropped right out of the news. The lead story in all the papers was the arrest of four more terrorists at the GB Shahpur Petro-Chemical Company’s offices in the City. They were charged with being implicated in the Piccadilly Underground explosion that had killed eleven people just before Christmas.

  Feeling drowsy as the train ran into the flat Essex countryside, I went into the buffet for some coffee. There was a queue and, while I was waiting, the guard came through checking tickets. The buffet car was full, every seat occupied, and when I finally got my coffee I took it through into the next coach and sat down in an almost empty first class compartment. There was one occupant only, a neat elderly man with rimless half-glasses who sat hunched in an overcoat in the far window seat reading the Economist. He was making notes and on the seat beside him several articles on insurance lay on top of a slim black leather briefcase. Outside the windows, the drizzle had turned to snow, a thick driving veil of white. I held the paper cup in both hands, sipping the hot coffee and wondering whether I was wasting my time travelling all the way down to see Ferrers when it would have been so much simpler to phone. Quite probably Lloyd’s Intelligence Services wouldn’t know anything more than had already been released to the press. And if they did, would he tell me?

  One thing I was sure about, however … if they did know anything more, then I had a far better chance of getting it out of him if I saw him personally. Also, by going to their offices I could see the set-up, form some idea of what their sources of information were. I knew they had agents all over the world, but though I had been conscious of the extraordinary global network controlled by Lloyd’s of London ever since I had become a ship’s officer, I had no real idea how the organization worked, least of all how its Intelligence Service operated. And from Colchester of all places! Why not London?

  The answer to that was supplied by the man opposite me. As we neared Colchester he put his Economist carefully away in his briefcase and began gathering his things together. I asked him if he could direct me to Sheepen
Place and he looked at me quickly with a little smile. ‘Lloyd’s Shipping Press?’

  ‘No, Intelligence Services,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Same thing. You’re a ship captain, are you?’

  I shook my head. ‘Mate only, though I’ve got my master’s certificate. I left the sea a few years back.’

  ‘Ah, you work for marine solicitors, eh?’ He glanced out of the window. ‘Snowing quite hard now. My wife’s meeting me with the car. We can give you a lift.’ And when I said I could get a taxi, that I didn’t want to take them out of their way, he said, ‘No trouble. It’s quite close. Within walking distance.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘Except that it’s not a good day for walking, eh?’

  The train was slowing now, and as we took our place in the corridor, I asked him why such a vital part of Lloyd’s should be tucked away in an East Anglian coastal town. He looked at me, frowning. ‘I suppose because members of Lloyd’s traditionally live in East Anglia. The best of ’em, anyway,’ he added, smiling. ‘In the great days of the railways Liverpool Street was a handy way of getting out into the country. Now a lot of the big insurance companies, some of the largest of the Lloyd’s brokers, have moved their administrative organizations out of the City, to Colchester, Ipswich, even as far north as Norwich. Costs are a lot less than in the City and staff don’t have to commute so far.’ The train jerked to a stop and we got out into a bitter wind.

  It was much colder than it had been in London, the snow small-flaked and hard like ice. The car his wife was driving was a brand-new Mercedes, their background a whole world away from mine. We drove down under the railway bridge, the road curving away to the right. The snow was heavier now, the Town Hall tower, which marked the centre of Colchester, only just visible on its hill. The insurance man turned from answering his wife’s queries about a frozen tap and said, ‘You know, I envy you ships’ officers who handle marine solicitors’ enquiries. Not only does it take you all over the world, but you’re dealing all the time with case histories, all the exciting side of insurance. Whereas people like me, we make money, of course, but broking, looking after Names, dealing with accounts, finances, that sort of thing — it’s all very humdrum, you know. Down here I’ve got an office employs between two and three hundred, and all the time flogging back and forth to London.’ We were on a new road, crossing a big double culvert where the Colne ran between banks of snow. ‘Across the A12 roundabout, then left and left again at the next,’ he said to his wife, and she answered sharply, ‘I know where it is, Alfred.’