Last Ditch (11 page)

Forked lightning wrote itself with a flourish across the Heavens and almost simultaneously a gigantic tin tray banged overhead. A woman in the street crossed herself and broke into a shuffle. Ricky thought: ‘If I combed my hair it would crackle.’

A few big drops fell like bullets in the dust and then, tremendously, the rain came down.

It was a really ferocious storm. The streets were running streams, lightning whiplashed almost continuously, thunder mingled with the din made by rain on roofs, sea and stone. Ricky’s espadrilles felt as if they dissolved on his feet.

But he went on downhill to the sea, taking a kind of satisfaction in pandemonium. Here was the bistro where he had breakfasted, here the first group of shops. And here the deserted front, not a soul on it, pounded by the deluge and beyond it the high tide pocked all over with rain. Le Beau Rivage overlooked this scene. Ricky could see a number of people staring out from its glassed-in portico and wondered if Ferrant was among them.

The
Island Belle
rocked at her moorings. Her gangway grated on the wharf.

Ricky saw that the administrative offices were shut, but a goods shed, in which three cars were parked, was open. He sheltered there. It was very dark. The rain drummed remorselessly on the roof. He got an impression of somebody else being in the shed: an impression so strong that he called out, ‘Hullo! Anyone at home?’ but there was no answer. He shook the rain from his mackintosh and hood and fished out his handkerchief to wipe his face. ‘This has been a rum sort of a day,’ he thought, and wondered how best to wind it up.

Evidently the
Island Belle
would not sail for some time. The cars and a number of crates were yet, he supposed, to be put aboard her. He thought he remembered that a notice of some sort was exhibited at the foot of the gangway: probably the time of sailing. The Cove and his own familiar island began to seem very attractive. He would find out when the
Island Belle
sailed, return to the hotel for his rucksack, pay his bill and rejoin her.

He pulled his hood well over his face and squelched out of the shed into the storm.

It was only a short distance to the ship’s moorings. Her bows rose and fell and above the storm he could hear her rubbing-strake grind against the jetty. He walked forward into the rain and was halfblinded. When he came alongside the ship he stopped at the edge of the jetty and peered up, wondering if there was a watchman aboard.

The blow came as if it was part of the storm, a violence that struck him below the shoulders. The jetty had gone from under his feet. The side of the ship flew upwards. He thought: ‘This is abominable,’ and was hit in the face. Green cold enclosed him and his mouth was full of water. Then he knew what had happened.

He had fallen between the turn of the bilge and the jetty, had struck against something on his way down and had sunk and risen. Salt water stung the back of his nose and lodged in his throat. He floundered in a narrow channel between the legs of the jetty and the sloping side of the bilge.

‘Did he fall or was he pushed?’ thought Ricky, struggling in his prison, and knew quite definitely that he had been pushed.

He had no idea how much leeway the ship’s moorings allowed her or whether she might roll to such a degree that he could be crushed against the legs of the jetty, the only motionless things in a heaving universe.

His head cleared. Instinctive physical reactions had kept him afloat for the first moments. He now got himself under control. ‘I ought to yell,’ he thought, and a distant thunderclap answered him. He turned on his back; the ship rolled and disclosed a faint daylight moon careering across a gap in the clouds. With great difficulty he began to swim, sometimes touching the piles and grazing his hands and feet on barnacles. The turn of the bilge passed slowly above him and at last was gone. He had cleared the bows of the
Island Belle.
There was St Pierre-des-Roches with the Hotel Beau Rivage and the hill and the church spire above it.

Now, should he yell for help? But there was still Somebody up there perhaps who wanted him drowned, crushed, whatever way – dead. He trod water, bobbing and ducking, and looked about him.

Not three feet away was a steel ladder.

When he reached and clung to it he still thought of the assailant who might be up there, waiting. He was now so cold that it would be better to risk anything rather than stay where he was. So he climbed, slowly. He had lost his espadrilles and the rungs bit into his feet. There was a sound like a voice very far away: In his head, he thought: Not real. Half-way up he paused. Everything had become quiet. It no longer rained.

‘Hey! Hey there! Are you all right?’

For a moment he didn’t know where to look. The voice seemed to have come out of the sky. Then he saw, in the bows of the ship, leaning over the taffrail, a man in oilskins and sou’wester. He waved at Ricky.

‘Are you OK, mate?’ shouted the man.

Ricky tried to answer but could only produce a croak.

‘Hang on, I’ll be with you. Hang on.’

Ricky hauled himself up another three rungs. His reeling head was just below the level of the jetty. He pushed his left arm through the rungs of the ladder and hung there, clinging with his right hand. He heard boots clump down the gangway and along the jetty towards him.

‘You’ll be all right,’ said the voice, close above him. He let his head flop back. The face under the sou’wester was red and concerned and looked very big against the sky. An arm and a purplish hand reached down. ‘Come on, then,’ said the voice, ‘only a couple more.’

‘I’m sort of – gone –’ Ricky whispered.

‘Not you. You’re fine. Make the effort, Jack.’

He made the effort and was caught by the arms and saved.

He lay on the jetty saying: ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ and being sick.

The man was very kind. He took off his oilskin and spread it over Ricky, whose teeth now chattered like castanets. He lay on his back and saw the clouds part and disperse. He felt the sun on his face.

‘You’re doing good, mate,’ said the man. ‘How’s about we go on board and take a drop of something for the cold? You was aboard us this morning? That right?’

‘Yes. This morning.’

‘Up she rises. Take it easy. Lovely.’

He was on his feet. They began to move along the jetty.

‘Is there anybody else?’ Ricky said.

‘How’d you mean, anybody else?’

‘Watching.’

‘You’re not yourself. You’ll be all right. Here we go, then.’

Ricky made heavy work of the gangway. Once on board he did what he was told. The man took him into the little saloon. He helped him strip and brought him a vest and heavy underpants. He lay on a bench and was covered with a blanket and overcoats and given half a tumbler of raw whisky. It made him gasp and shudder, but it ran through him like fire. ‘Super,’ he said. ‘That’s super.’

‘What happened, then? Did you slip on the jetty or what?’

‘I was pushed. No, I’m not wandering and I’m not tight – yet. I was given a bloody great shove in the back. I swear I was. Listen.’

The man listened. He scraped his jaw and eyed Ricky and every now and then wagged his head.

‘I was looking up at the deck, trying to see if anyone was about. I wanted to know when she sails. I was on the edge almost. I can feel it now – two hands hard in the small of my back. I took a bloody great stride into damn-all and dropped. I hit something. Under my eye, it was.’

The man leant forward and peered at his face. ‘It’s coming up lovely,’ he admitted. ‘I’ll say that for you.’

‘Didn’t you see anybody?’

‘Me! I was taking a bit of kip, mate, wasn’t I? Below. Something woke me, see. Thunder or what-have-you and I come up on deck and there you was, swimming and ducking and grabbing the ladder. I hailed you but you didn’t seem to take no notice. Not at first you didn’t.’

‘He must have been hiding in the goods shed. He must have followed me down and sneaked into the shed.’

‘Reckon you think you know who done it, do you? Somebody got it in for you, like?’ He stared at Ricky. ‘You don’t look the type,’ he said. ‘Nor yet you don’t sound like it, neither.’

‘It’s hard to explain,’ Ricky sighed. He was beginning to feel sleepy.

‘Look,’ said the man, ‘we sail at six. Was you thinking of sailing with us, then? Just to know, like. No hurry.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Ricky said. ‘Yes, please.’

‘Where’s your dunnage?’

Ricky pulled himself together and told him. The man said his mate, the second deckhand, was relieving him as watchman at four-thirty. He offered to collect Ricky’s belongings from the hotel and pay his bill. Ricky fished his waterproof wallet out of an inside pocket of his raincoat and found that the notes were not too wet to be presentable.

‘I can’t thank you enough,’ he said. ‘Look. Take a taxi. Buy yourself a bottle of scotch from me. You will, won’t you?’

He said he would. He also said his name was Jim le Compte and they’d have to get Ricky dressed proper and sitting up before the Old Man came aboard them.

And by six o’clock Ricky was sitting in the saloon fully dressed with a rug over his knees. It was a smoother crossing than he had feared and rather to his surprise he was not sea-sick, but slept through most of it. At Montjoy he said goodbye to his friend. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘Jim, I owe you a lot already. Will you do something more for me?’

‘What would that be?’

‘Forget about there being anyone else in it. I just skidded and fell. Please don’t think,’ Ricky added, ‘that I’m in any sort of trouble. Believe me, I’m not. Word of honour. But – will you be a good chap and leave it that way?’

Le Compte looked at him for some moments with his head on one side. ‘Fair enough, squire,’ he said at last. ‘If that’s the way you want it. You skidded and fell.’

‘You
are
a good chap,’ said Ricky. He went ashore carrying a rucksack full of wet clothes and took a taxi to the Cove.

He let himself in and went straight upstairs, passing Mrs Ferrant who was speaking on the telephone.

When he entered his room a very tall man got up out of the armchair.

It was his father.

‘So you see I’m on duty,’ said Alleyn. ‘Fox and I have got a couple of tarted-up apartments at the Neo-Ritz, or whatever it calls itself, in Montjoy, the use of a police car and a tidy programme of routine work ahead. I wouldn’t have any business talking to you, Rick, except that by an exasperating twist, you may turn out to be a source of information.’

‘Hi!’ said Ricky excitedly. ‘Is it about Miss Harkness?’

‘Why?’ Alleyn asked sharply.

‘I only wondered.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of telling you what it’s about normally, but if we’re to get any further I think I’ll have to. And Rick – I want an absolute assurance that you’ll discuss this business with nobody. But nobody. In the smallest degree. It must be as if it’d never been. Right?’

‘Right,’ said Ricky, and his father thought he heard a tinge of regret.

‘Nobody,’ Alleyn repeated. ‘And certainly not Julia Pharamond.’

Ricky blushed.

‘As far as you’re concerned, Fox and I have come over to discuss a proposed adjustment to reciprocal procedure between the island constabulary and the mainland police. We shall be sweating it out at interminable and deadly-boring meetings. That’s the story. Got it?’

‘Yes, Cid.’

‘Cid’, deriving from CID, was the name Ricky and his friends gave his father.

‘Yes. And nobody’s going to believe it when we start nosing round at the riding stables. But never mind. Let’s say that as we were here, the local chaps thought they’d like a second opinion. By the way, talking about local chaps, the Super at Montjoy hasn’t helped matters by bursting his appendix and having an urgent operation. The local sergeant at the Cove – Plank – but, of course, you know Plank – is detailed to the job.’

‘He’s nobody’s fool.’

‘Good. Now, coming back to you. The really important bit to remember is that we must be held to take no interest whatever in Mr Ferrant’s holidays and we’ve never even heard of Sydney Jones.’

‘But,’ Ricky ventured, ‘I’ve told the Pharamonds about his visit to you and Mum.’

‘Damn. All right, then. It passed off quietly and nothing has ever come of it.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do say so. Loud and clear.’

‘Yes, Cid.’

‘Good. All right. Are you hungry, by the way?’

‘Now you mention it.’

‘Could that formidable lady downstairs be persuaded to give us both something to eat?’

‘I’m sure. I’ll ask her.’

‘You’d better tell her you slid on the wet wharf and banged your cheek on a stanchion.’

‘She’ll think I was drunk.’

‘Good. You smell like a scotch hangover anyway. Are you sure you’re all right, old boy? Sure?’

‘Fine. Now. I’ll have a word with Mrs F.’

When he’d gone, Alleyn looked out of the window at the darkening Cove and turned over Ricky’s account of his visit to St Pierre-des-Roches and the events that preceded it. People, he reflected, liked to talk about police cases in terms of a jigsaw puzzle and that was fair enough as far as it went. But in this instance he couldn’t be sure that the bits all belonged to the same puzzle. ‘Only connect,’ Forster owlishly laid down as the novelist’s law. He could equally have been setting out a guide for investigating officers.

There had never been any question of Ricky following in his father’s footsteps. From the time when his son went to his first school, Alleyn had been at pains to keep his job at a remove as far as the boy was concerned. Ricky’s academic career had been more than satisfactory and about as far removed from the squalor, bore-dom, horror and cynicism of a policeman’s lot as it would be possible to imagine.

And now? Here they were, both of them, converging on a case that might well turn out to be all compact of such elements. And over and above everything else, here was Ricky, escaped from what, almost certainly, had been a murderous attack, the thought of which sent an icy spasm through his father’s stomach. Get him out of it, smartly, now, before there was any further involvement, he thought – and then had to recognize that already Ricky’s involvement was too far advanced for this to be possible. He must be treated as someone who might, himself in the clear, provide the police with ‘helpful information’.