The Fish Kisser (5 page)

“I've seen worse mate,” replied the steward, only half opening his eyes, making no attempt to move.

With the feeling that he must have led a sheltered life, Bliss walked away, shaking his head.

Bliss had been deep in the vessel's bowels, examining Roger's green Renault, while the ship had been turning around and had not noticed the change in direction. Brushing aside the sign warning of the danger of entering the vehicle deck during the voyage he'd slid open the
heavy steel door and had been met by the acrid mechanical odour of engine oil, rubber, and hot metal.

Roger LeClarc's Renault, nestling amongst a raft of flashier models, was locked. He tried both doors, and the trunk, then peered through the driver's window and was surprised to see a suitcase and several smaller bags on the back seat. Maybe he doesn't have a cabin after all.

The small green car was familiar, very familiar. Bliss and the other officers had been keeping tabs on it for more than a week. They'd lost him a few times— round the clock surveillance of a target could be incredibly difficult, if not impossible. A moment's inattention, a little bad luck, or a run of red traffic lights was all it took for a vehicle to disappear, seemingly without trace. But, on each occasion, a quick analysis of Roger's regular pattern of behaviour enabled him to be located, either at his mother's or at the little terraced house near Watford railway station where he often spent his evenings before returning home in the early hours.

Details of his impending trip to Holland were well known. Roger, something of a celebrity in the computer world, had been invited to address a symposium of world leaders in The Hague: “Communicating in the Third Millennium,” a two-day exposé of modern telecommunications, extolling the advantages of globalization and convergence. Ostensibly, Roger was an independent delegate, though few of the attendees would have been surprised to learn that he was the cyber-star of an aggressive multi-media equipment provider hell-bent on cornering the market.

Following Roger from his mother's house in Watford on the northern outskirts of London, to the ferry port had been straightforward. With the exception of a ten minute
stop at the tiny terraced house on Junction Road, he'd poodled the Renault along at a modest pace to north Essex, sticking to main roads, avoiding bottle-necks.

Animosity between the detectives in the surveillance vehicle had flared during the trip, although there had been a number of times during their week of watch-keeping when they had volubly disagreed on tactics. As Sergeant Jones drove, with Senior Officer Bliss in the passenger seat keeping his sights on Roger's Renault, the other two detectives lolled in the back planning the excursion to Amsterdam.

“Red light district first, mate,” said Wilson, digging Smythe in the ribs.

“I wanna try one of those brown bars,”

“What,” laughed Wilson. “A Mars bar?”

“No you dork, one of those hash …”

“I know you fool. I was pulling yer plonker.”

“Leave me plonker out of this—I got plans for me plonker,” he laughed. “I've heard the broads sit in windows starkers; showin' everything.”

“Haven't you seen one before?” cut in Bliss.

“Bet it's a long time since you seen one,” said Smythe, poking Bliss' shoulder, giggling stupidly.

Bliss ignored him, as he tried to shut out painful memories and focussed on the road. Concentrating on the green Renault half a mile ahead, he wondered whether either of them would actually pluck up the courage when faced with the opportunity. Regardless of the wares in the window, they'd probably be disappointed to discover one knocking shop to be much like another. The visual “sizzle,” he guessed, would lure them to a steak cut from a tough old cow. Their ardour would be dimmed almost immediately by the request for cash in advance, and, having paid, and not before, would they discover the Venus in the window was
unavailable—taking a break between rounds of sexual wrestling. Finally, after choosing an inferior model with a puritanically grim face and blubbery breasts, the fifteen minute performance would take place on a creaking bed in a room lit only by a couple of cheap candles. No amount of scent from burning wax would mask the chalky odour of spent semen from a thousand previous temple worshippers. The eternal triumph of hope over experience, thought Bliss, remembering his days on the morality squad and the universal sense of dissatisfaction. “You think I enjoyed it?” they would ask—pimps, whores and Johns alike.

“You lot make me sick,” he said, turning on the two detectives accusingly.

“You make
me
sick,” shot back Wilson, unable to come up with a sensible response.

“You catch some poor hooker in Brixton with a few ounces of grass,” countered Bliss, “and you think you've cracked the world's drug problem. Then off you go to Holland to get blasted, and get your leg over some whore young enough to be your daughter. You've got the morals of a tomcat in heat.”

“Tomcats don't get in heat, Guv. Thought you'd know that. It's only the females that get in heat. Tomcats are good for a screw anytime.”

“Precisely,” replied Bliss, turning back to the road, his point made.

Sergeant Jones had stayed out of the argument, and Bliss had no doubt he would be with the others when the time came.

“I'll take you to the captain now,” the deck officer was saying, but Bliss was miles away, still worried about LeClarc, and listening to the tannoy blaring overhead.

“Attention all passengers. If there is a doctor on board would you please report to the captain's office, ten deck for'ard, immediately. Thank you.”

“Somebody must be pretty sick,” he said as he followed the officer to the bridge.

“I bet the guy in the water isn't feeling too great either,” replied the officer.

Roger was definitely not feeling great, he really wasn't feeling much at all. Numb from the cold, abandoned, hopeless, he'd retreated to his inner world and more or less made up his mind to die. Drifting into unconsciousness had been easy—managed without even trying—but the fierce winds and wild sea conspired to keep him alive, flinging him around like flotsam in the surf. The wind was his lifesaver, tearing apart the waves that bore him, surrounding him with fizzing foam—more air than water—penetrating every crevice in his coat, turning it into a balloon.

A heavy weight crashed on his head and sent him under for the umpteenth time. This is it. I'll go quietly, he decided, then fell out of the side of the wave as it exploded into a billion droplets and tumbled into the gulley below. He surfaced back to consciousness in time to feel the following wave pick him up—the uphill climb at the start of yet another roller coaster—and he'd almost reached the top when he felt the heavy weight crushing him down again.

“Get it over with,” he shouted, but no words came as he slid back down; this time the weight stayed with him, pressing firmly against his left shoulder.

What's happening? he was yelling inside. What's happening to me? Look. But his eyes, stung once too often by the lashing salt spray, wouldn't open. Fear
and the absolute blackness spun his thoughts back to his teenage years. He was fifteen or sixteen playing with himself in the bathroom with the curtains drawn, lights off, eyes shut tight, sitting on his hand until it went numb, then pretending it belonged to another—a girl perhaps.

“What'ye doing in there, our Roger?” she called, creeping up to the door unheard.

Oh shit! “Nothing, Mum.”

“Liar! What are you doing? Open this door now.”

“No.”

“D'ye wanna clout?”

Tears welled. “No, Mum—please don't.”

“Come on out then—hurry up.”

“I love you, Mum,” he cried, opening the door.

“Humph,” she grunted, going back downstairs to
Dynasty.
“You'll go blind.”

He stood at the top, pants round his ankles, watching her, hating her. Why had he said that? Why had he said, “I love you?”

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” he screamed inside. “I bloody hate you.”

The painful memory reminded him he was still alive and he forced apart his eyelids, but a wash of blue-black Indian ink had painted the sea and sky into one. Then the huge weight shoved again and, spinning his head, he saw a phantom—a large patch of lighter coloured space, twisting and turning right behind him. The ghostly patch was misty, indistinct, but it had substance, he could feel it nudging and bumping into him. Intrigue overcame fear and he timidly reached out. “It's solid,” he said to himself in disbelief, feeling resistance against his hypothermic fingers.

The ghost was tugging at his sleeve. This must be Death, he thought, trying again to get free, feeling his
arm being pulled once more; Death's spectre coming to carry me off.

“Stop it,” he yelled. “Stop it. I don't want to die— I'm sorry Mum. I'm sorry. I love you.” But the ghost kept pulling, dragging him through the water, dancing in the wind, skipping over the waves.

Then, in an instant something changed—logic took control, as the spectre smacked him heavily, bringing him to his senses. Suddenly conscious it was real, not part of some elaborate nightmare, he grasped for the smooth, slippery object. Understanding slowly filtered through his doziness. It's a life raft, he realized, amazed, as he was flung repeatedly against it, the sleeve of his left arm trapped by one of the many ropes looped along its side.

A hundred or more times, Roger and the life-raft were dragged up and down the watery hillsides as he desperately searched for a way to clamber aboard; then fate took a hand and he found himself on the crest of a wave, the raft in the valley beneath, and he flopped effortlessly onto it. Exhausted, yet relieved, he dropped back into unconsciousness, totally unaware that the SS
Rotterdam
was less than half a mile away, with a hundred and forty-three pairs of eyes straining into the darkness, seeking any trace of the raft or him.

“Something off the port bow—about ten o'clock,” cried a female officer, catching a fleeting glimpse of lightness. Tension on the bridge instantly turned to excitement, men frantically adjusted binoculars and swung them from starboard to port, all eyes focussed in Roger's direction, but the huge waves conspired to keep him hidden. He and his ghostly chariot, wallowing from trough to trough, trapped under one breaking wave after another, would have been invisible even in broad daylight.

“Nothing,” sighed the officer a few moments later, her disappointed whisper easily heard in the tension filled darkness of the bridge. “Sorry—my mistake.”

“No problem,” replied the captain. “We're well beyond maximum range anyway. He couldn't have drifted this far in thirty minutes.”

The officers wandered back to their stations on the bridge, some taking the opportunity for a quick slurp of cocoa and a bite of doughnut. A couple made a dash for the washroom. The suspense was dissipating and everyone was grateful for the excuse to take a break, falsely justified by the apparent sighting.

“Captain, I've got a police inspector outside who reckons he knows the victim,” the deck officer was saying to the captain's shadow in the gloom.

“That's interesting—must be some sort of outing,” he chortled, “I've already got three in my office.” He snapped the last thread of tension as he raised his voice, “Anyone else got a policeman? We've got four and want to make up a set … Take over, Chief,” he continued, stifling a few sniggers, “I'll be in my office if anything happens. Try to keep her head in the waves, bos'n, or we'll be up to our necks in vomit.”

Sergeant Jones, together with his fellow drinkers, had fetched up in the captain's office in search of salvation, but had found little. Every lurch of the ship pulled his face into another grimace; the alcohol was wearing thin, just hazy vision, bad breath, and the persistent reek of vomit remained. He should have been hovering, contentedly, but the searing pain in his wrist and strong coffee had brought him down to earth. No doctor had come forward and the captain, dealing with lost sleep, a missing passenger, and an approaching storm, had kept the lock on the medicine cabinet. “No time for
self-inflicted wounds,” he'd muttered to the chief officer with a wry smile, thinking: A little suffering is good for my soul.

“After you, Inspector.” said the captain, ushering Bliss into his office. “Do you lot know each other by any chance?”

Sergeant Jones looked up sheepishly and, with his good hand, pointed to his broken wrist, now in a sling. “Had a bit of an accident, Guv. Fell down some ruddy stairps.” He should have said steps or stairs, but the words coalesced somewhere in the great void between his brain and mouth. The other two sat hunched, silently counting carpet squares.

“Captain, I wonder if I could speak to you outside. Would you mind?” requested Bliss, without acknowledging his sergeant.

“Bliss, old chap …” pleaded the sergeant, but Bliss was already in the corridor.

“There's some cocoa and doughnuts in the Officer's mess if you're interested,” said the captain, sliding the door shut behind him and cutting Jones off.

“Thank you, Sir. A cup of cocoa would be very welcome. Sorry about the Serg and the others, I think they've had a drop too much. I'll sort them out later, but I thought you would want to know that I believe the man you're looking for is named Roger LeClarc.”

The captain stopped mid-pour. “Could you tell me why you think it's him?”

“Well, it's pretty hush-hush but, basically, we've had him under surveillance for the past week or two. He was on the ship but disappeared just about the time this guy went overboard. I've looked everywhere and can't find him.”

“Is he dangerous?” enquired the captain, getting the wrong end of the stick.

“Oh, no … He's not in trouble … Well, maybe he is,” Bliss added reflectively. “But he's not wanted—not by us anyway.” He paused, sensing the confusion on the captain's face. “Sorry, I can't really tell you more at the moment, but with your permission I'd like to make some enquiries, see if I can find out what happened, that sort of thing.”