The German Numbers Woman (40 page)

Following Richard, he registered every plank of the architecture, feeling his way so that he would sooner be able to move on his own, a small world to master. Obstacles were noted, he counted steps, the height of a door latch. They met Scuddilaw coming on deck. ‘Still out of action, is he?'

‘He won't be in the morning.'

Scud's laugh had a touch of envy. ‘I'd be lucky to get over a bender like that, at least without getting a string of ulcers.'

Howard tried a suitable growl. ‘It ain't the first I've had. Nor the last, I expect.'

Scud looked close. ‘Can't you see at all, though?'

‘I'm waiting for the light o' the sun to come back.'

‘He'll stand watch for me at the radio,' Richard said. ‘You don't need eyes for that.'

Scud whistled his way up the steps, leaving Howard to fumble a twisting path into a lower bunk, which smelled of mildew and sweat. Richard drew off his boots, unpeeled him from the anorak. ‘There's a bowl, if you have to throw up again.'

‘Thanks, a lot.'

‘There'll be time for thanks when we get back. I'll wake you in the morning, and sit you down to a Killisick fry-up. I expect real life will start then, but we'll be fifty miles off Brittany, so it won't much matter.'

Howard pulled the blanket close, though needed no covering to keep out the light, of which it seemed there couldn't be much. He felt harrowed and helpless with exhaustion, as if he hadn't fallen asleep for months. Flashes of light dominated his human sphere, tail ends of phrases stabbing like toothpicks sticking out of delectable titbits, the sort Laura had put between his fingers at a party they'd given for the neighbours when first moving into the house.

He was happier for being away, gammy stomach or not, though Richard would be on the carpet for bringing someone like him on board. Hard to think why he had, even though I know so much. He could have told me to get lost or do my worst, but supposed I would give the game away, which I have in any case. Stolen a march on them there. Having me on board was safer, but they didn't imagine someone so far at the end of his tether, who could do nothing more to stay alive than get mixed up in a stunt that would either push me into another world, or get off the world altogether.

He gripped the boards, hung on for fear of being thrown out. Neither sea hands nor sea legs were with him yet, and at such bumping around he couldn't see how they ever would be. A scene of Richard talking to Laura played, and to get the picture right he put an age on Laura and gave Richard a more distinctive face, though the one from the first meeting stayed clear enough. He heard him denying there was any option but to give permission for the trip. Out of darkness came enlightenment, for what it was worth, at this late stage. He knew Richard's arguments but couldn't place his tone of voice, or the persuasive phrases he must have used, and sensed a mystery in what had been exchanged between them, something finally powerful enough on Richard's part to win her agreement. From the day she had returned with an altered view of the matter he picked up a connection between her and Richard which no longer existed between the two of them.

He was now in the mind to think about it, with the crunching bump of water against the bunk, and a low whistle of wind carrying down the companionway, feeling emptiness and fatigue, alone in the narrow space, shouts and laughter from the others who seemed all over the boat. Happy to be on their way, they were light headed, relieved that the die had been cast. So was he. When Laura returned from her call on Richard, and said he could go to the Azores after all, he had finally made his decision to send the letter in morse to the police. Searching the labyrinth as to why, he lost consciousness into sleep.

Not a light anywhere, no land between them and the northern hump of Spain, five hundred miles away. On the bridge Richard almost disdained to look at the murk. As always on the first day aboard he wanted to sleep, so much that he felt a pain at the ribs, as if months would be necessary to get him back to normal, though by the second day his alertness was always as sharp as ever.

Slight swell, sea moderate, as they termed it, but one bash after another sent them all over the place. A sunshot tomorrow would show how much they had strayed. Satellite navigation was on its way in, but this trip (probably the last without it) they would go by sextant and radio, which had never failed them before.

George Cleaver was hot stuff with sextant and almanacks, taught to him as a youth by one of the trawler skippers going back and forth to Iceland. He'd practised and studied all his life, and Richard admired his professional stance as he stood on deck like a ramrod to clean and adjust the mirrors, as if he were Captain Cook himself, but with a swinish temper when the midday sun didn't show, as if it stayed hidden to spite him alone. He never took a drink to smooth the creases out of his frown. Richard could work sunsights but preferred to let Cleaver do it so that he would never stop assuming he was top of the class, as indeed he was. The log was also his to keep, and he measured the distance run like a fussy old hen at times, though never cursing when it wouldn't come right. Nothing to do but keep a straight course, he was as reliable as any man could be.

Richard saw Laura, but would she have shot so clearly to mind if Howard hadn't been on board? The answer had to be yes, for such a magnificent woman who had given herself so completely. How he had come to be lumbered with her husband was a puzzle, and he recalled his impulse while driving by Plymouth to stop the car and push him out, leaving him to wander like a blind beggar until – till what? The police would pick him up and he would tell them his story as they drove him home. An intriguing scene, that of shooting off at top speed while Howard fumbled his way around a lay-by looking for a place to piss. The rest was nightmare material. Waistcoat would have so many guts for garters they'd think they were at the Moulin Rouge. So here Howard was, dead to the wide and crippled by seasickness, like an anchor waiting to go overboard.

He shook the vision away, to mull on their present expedition. At this stage it seemed that getting back to England with such a huge pick-up would need a miracle to bring it off, though the collective intention was there and the fires of greed burned in them like the best of true Britons.

Steadying the wheel, he couldn't stop dwelling on Laura's resplendent body, while the enveloping green drek tumbled around the boat slapping its way on a steady two-o-five for land at the end of the world. He would like to spend some of his money on living with her, rent a house in the farthest north of Scotland (as far as they could get away from Howard) where they would fuck themselves out for as long as it took. A mad plan to dote on, yet the prospect wouldn't go away. Better to steer through dangerous shoals with lots to think about, or be anxious at the boat getting lost in empty watery space, the mind only fixed on survival.

More was unknown about the journey than any set out on before. Yet he was relaxed, intrigued on getting at part of himself which damped both hope or anxiety, and brought a peace of mind he entirely trusted, heading into such thoughts as easily as the boat was chopping a way through the drizzle and darkness.

Sometime after breakfast Ted Killisick shook Richard out of his dreams. He had gone to sleep wanting to piss and, unwilling to get up and go to the heads, had experienced a different intensity of dream than when he'd had a little to drink before going to bed and didn't need to do so. Dreams induced by a full and irritated bladder were deeper and more turgid on the pictorial front, yet harder to grasp and impossible to recollect on waking. When not aware of needing to piss he hardly dreamed, or the dreams were so shallow there was more chance of recalling the tail end of one, though being so close to the surface there was little enough worth noting. He saw Ted's grinning face. ‘What the hell is it?'

‘Waistcoat wants to see you.'

‘What for?'

‘He's raving about old Blind Pugh. I think he's going mad.'

Back from the heads, he knocked at the door and went into Waistcoat's cabin. The chintzy bed had been made, a button-eyed teddy bear wearing a sailor's hat lying across the fluffed-up pillows. Waistcoat held onto the side rail of his desk. He seemed about to jump up and down, not only hit the ceiling but crash through the superstructure and up into the inclement sky. The hard features of a drug boat master had taken away that superficial resemblance to an eminent Harley Street surgeon. A line of blood showed from the shaving cut on his cheek. He was halfway into his blue and white padded anorak. ‘That fucking radio wizard you brought on board is stone blind.'

‘He looks it, I know, but he had a few over the odds yesterday. Once he hits the bottle it's hard to get him off.'

‘He must have drunk the fucking Thames, then.'

‘Should be all right soon.'

‘Listen, don't fuck with me. You're lying. He's been blind since birth, you stupid bog-nosed swivel-eyed get. Blinder than the blindest fucking bat, the way he wiggled his eyelids at me. How did you put him onto us? I mean, it's a nightmare. He'll do for us. We'll get three hundred fucking years apiece.'

Richard, split between amusement and wrath, let the force-nine gale wash over him, pulled back his years as a ship's officer so as to stay cool, no twitch or smile or alteration to his face, a stance that never failed. This, however, was a hard one. He had never seen Waistcoat's hand tremble, which did as he lit his usual slim cigar. Maybe something other than Howard's blindness had boiled him up, though impossible to guess what it might be. ‘I told you in London why he had to come with us, and you agreed.'

‘But you didn't tell me he was fucking blind.'

‘I didn't think it mattered.'

‘Mattered? On a boat like this? I can't believe it. Do you think it's a floating St Dunstan's?'

‘We brought him because of what he knows. We did the only sensible thing. Apart from that he's an ace radio man, the best I've known, and we're lucky to get him. His ears are sharper than those of anybody who can see. He'll be a godsend when we get close. Blind operators aren't rare in full employment. Half those on the coast stations were blind at one time. Another thing is that from our point of view he'll see nothing of what goes on. In that respect we couldn't have a better man. He can take my place at the radio, so that I'll be more use on board. Another thing is you won't have to pay him like the rest of us, maybe just a bit of bonus for a handout when we get back. You'll have a lot to thank me for when it's over. And when it comes to getting back, with the danger of us being intercepted, he'll be very useful indeed.'

Waistcoat must have been a neat man in a cell. He tapped his ash carefully into the silver tray, its handle the debonair figure of Sir Walter Raleigh wearing cap and sword. ‘You're either the cleverest man on my books, or you've got more than one fucking screw loose. I can only hope for your sake that you're clever.'

Richard sensed a little cooling down. ‘You had a crew of six, and now we have seven. Could prove lucky.'

‘Well, I'm not superstitious. I got rid of that crap long ago' – though Richard noticed his glance at the teddy bear. ‘Just make sure he don't fall overboard, that's all I say.'

‘I'll see to it.'

‘A fucking blind man!'

‘Is that all you wanted to see me for?'

‘Yes, piss off.'

Glad to go, but Waistcoat called him back. ‘Did you hear that Nimrod this morning?'

‘I was getting some shut-eye.'

‘He buzzed us.'

‘They always do. They like to know what's going on.'

‘Let's hope that's all it is.'

‘They buzz everybody. He took some pretty pictures, I expect. We didn't sign out with the coastguards?'

‘None of your fucking business.'

He was sure they hadn't. ‘Everything's as normal, then. It's the last they'll see of us, dead on course for Spain they'll think, to stock up on fags and brandy.'

Waistcoat looked troubled. ‘The French'll be looking at our number plate next.'

‘They'll be none the wiser.'

Waistcoat came as near to a compliment as he could get. ‘Not a bad manoeuvre of yours though, to alter course before Finisterre. As long as we don't run out of fuel fifty miles off land. We'd look a right lot of charlies paddling into harbour with our passports. It might have been possible at one time, when they were stiffbacked, but now they're like fucking laundry books.'

Richard arranged a chuckle. ‘Yeh, a real come down. But don't worry about that, Chief. It's part of my business, to think,' he said before going out.

Eleven at night, when all lights were off and they were halfway across Biscay, they'd change direction and go due west until eight in the morning, well out of Spanish surveillance. From then on it would be a straight course for the Azores. It had been Cleaver's plan as much as his, but compliments from Waistcoat never came amiss.

TWENTY-FIVE

The sea was losing its bumps, and his lack of sleep led him to think the air was warmer. He scrounged a coffee from the galley, and found Howard looking – if that could be the word – astern, as if to see the last of England, and wonder what Laura was up to. I should know. She'd be mooning about us both, Richard supposed. Take her off to Scotland I will, and when we've done all there is to be done and I can't stand the sight of her stern and lovely face I'll kick her out. Meanwhile I'll cherish the memory and, damn, love her as well.

‘I hear you had a hard time with the chief?'

‘He gave me hell, but I think it's going to be all right.' Howard's head went back as he laughed. ‘I heard a croak or two, and lots of swearing. His face was right up to mine. I thought he was going to punch me, so I got ready to give him a bigger one back. But he pulled off, and I heard a door slam. I can't think why he should be so upset, except maybe he should have been told already.'