This was all right, because I can swim like a fish. Anyway, I’d hoped by then to have unloaded all the recovered antiques.
‘And when I come sailing back,’ I chuckled, ‘guess which clever little donkey will be waiting here to cart the goodies into hiding, here in the hut?’ I winked. ‘I’ll rescue Devvo if he confesses, by which time there’ll be enough rescue boats on the scene to witness . . .’
It seemed foolproof to me then. No wonder I was grinning all over my face. I went inside and lit the lantern in Drummer’s window to guide me home, and splodged my way back to the staithe. Terry had said the boat would be all stocked up and full of petrol. I had the keys.
It was a grand thing, long and white. These modern fast craft always seem taller than necessary but I suppose our boat-builders know what they’re doing. They charge enough. It had radar, and a mast with a great bulbous thing at the top and a lot of wires. ‘Radar’s hazy inshore, but invaluable,’ Terry had said, showing me how it worked. The idiot had wanted to show me its insides. The point was that none of it seemed missing. I’d got more maps than the Navy. Anyway, I knew where I was going.
I got the engine going by simply pressing a knob by the key. The last family carful was leaving the staithe as I moved the boat into the channel, carefully keeping my lights off though some white riding lights were showing in the lower creeks. As I turned my craft into the sea lane I could see the single flash of the lightship miles down the coast where the treacherous sands steadily ingest coastal freighters year after year.
I put her at low speed between the promontory of the clubhouse and the shipyard. Somebody flashed one handlamp at me. I ignored them. In the dusk a wind was rising steadily. That tinselly tinkling was beginning to sound again, the wires tapping on the metal masts of the yachts pulled up on the hard. Somehow comforted by the din, I smiled and glanced round at the little harbour. Plenty of lights, street neons reflecting well on the darkening sky. I was reassured. There would be plenty of help there should I need it. Surprisingly how easily lights are seen over a black sea.
‘Devvo,’ I bleated joyously, ‘here I come.’
As I left the shelter of the harbour and the wind’s force began tugging for the first time I admitted that I didn’t really intend to kill Devvo or his two goons. I’d only be troublesome if they started anything. Otherwise I’d bring them tamely to justice, which was after all what it’s about,
isn’t it? Germoline would be narked because I’d this funny feeling she wanted blood, but women are like that. Even if it did mean helping Maslow to get promotion . . .
The boat started rocking up and down on the choppy sea. Watching the waves rising against my hull made me giddy as I started out between the long dunes into the open sea. I began to discover one thing after another, all vaguely worrying. You’d point the boat at some distant light, and after a minute you’d find your bows sideways on even if you’d kept the illuminated compass perfectly still along one of the lines marked on its glass. Presumably all sorts of nasty currents were moving about under the water. I had a chart telling you which way they went but hadn’t time to study it seeing I’d spent the afternoon resting, so to speak, with Dolly at the cottage after my exertions of the morning’s ploughing.
I must have gone zigzag for more than a mile, correcting every furlong or so on the lightship as the sky darkened. The speedo said I was going about six knots, whatever they are. I tried to make this reading sensible by spitting over the side and watching it float past but got into difficulties by not steering straight so gave it up. The cockpit had an interior lamp which I switched off. If Devvo’s boat overtook mine in the darkness I didn’t want him spotting me.
The motion of the boat was making me feel vaguely queasy. And I suppose the knowledge that I was drawing near to that enormous great concrete monster out there in the ocean wasn’t doing me any good. Anyway, I had a knife with me, a modern piece of Scandinavian metal ten inches long which I’d nicked from one of the tacklers’ harness racks that afternoon. I’m like that, a real planner. No doubt Devvo’s goons would be knuckled up and maybe armed with a pistol or three. Devvo naturally would be clean as a whistle. My boat chugged on.
My face was wet from spray. The wind was cutting across me now, making my eyes water with the cold, but I could make out the red light on the old sea fort’s mast. Was there some gnarled old salt left on the fort to tend the light? Nowadays they were automatic, I supposed, though you can never tell. My spirits rose. Some poor sod stationed on the wretched thing meant at least one guaranteed witness.
I decided to curve right round the fort and come at it from seaward. That would give me less of an edge by reducing the time I’d have. Devvo’s merry crew would probably come direct from landward. I cracked another couple of knots on the speedo and turned south-east or thereabouts.
Coming up to a big solid mass sticking menacingly out of the sea in the dark’s a frightening experience. It’s also very sudden, which sounds odd unless you’ve done it. I’d kept my eyes on the red beacon that meant the sea fort, which had climbed slowly up the black sky the further out I got. Then it started disappearing and only coming back again when the boat rose on the swell. I tumbled that I must be getting very near and that the lip of the fort’s main platform was cutting the beacon off from view. I wished now I’d had the sense to take some daylight measurements.
It was then I heard the rushing, sucking sound of those vast legs of the fort, sloshing in the water. For a moment I almost gave up and turned back. God knows what made me soldier on. It might have been lust for the antiques I hoped were concealed there, or maybe love of Dolly, to show what a hell of a bloke I was. The funny thing is that it might actually have been hatred of Devlin, as Maud alleged, a curious concept. Anyhow I kept going, cutting my speed. I felt stalled but the instruments showed otherwise. The wind had crossed me again and was now whipping at the other side, stinging my eyes with spray and making my face feel cut to ribbons. I was shivering. No wonder these
yachting types dress like astronauts. Dolly had brought me a woollen hat and muffler and I have this thick short coat for long drives from the days when I had something to drive.
When the sounds got unpleasantly close I put the beam lights on, and almost swooned. I’d thought I was being careful, but now, with the yellow lamps illuminating the huge fort, I knew it had been cowardice, my typical trick of postponing anything unpleasant. I was about fifty yards off, the boat already being tugged and shoved with the crushing spread of waves round the nearest of the vast legs. There were four, of enormous girth, draped with green weeds and discoloured from corrosion. Metal stanchions had trickled their oxides like blood down the slimy legs, creating an impression of straddled limbs impaled by some giant stapler causing dirty haemorrhages towards the fast sea. I switched into reverse and for a horrible instant thought she wasn’t going to pull away. Then I was standing off about a hundred yards, pushed by the currents in a way I hadn’t expected. I wasn’t really frightened, but what with the cold and the rising wind and the frigging noise, not to mention that fearsome monster looming above, I felt like staying away at any price.
I was still to seaward. The noise from here was somehow magnified, caught up in the hollow under the belly and funnelled out in a succession of squelches and sucks.
I managed it without much difficulty, except that my hands were freezing and unbearably sluggish. Once one end was tethered I only had to rush back to the cockpit and throw the gears into neutral then pull her round on the rope the way I wanted. Doug had explained about the rocks between the seaward pair of legs. Modern oil rigs mostly float. These old sea forts are actually built on the ocean’s bedrock, with a protecting line of concrete or
dredged rock on the side away from the land. In wartime this served both as a breakwater and as a mooring line. Rough, but effective. If I’d worked it out right, the breakwater would hide my boat from direct view from anyone tying up to one of the landward pillars – and the right-hand pillar was the special pillar Hepplestone’s model had indicated. I switched off and pocketed the keys, gave one last despairing upwards shine of my torch to fix the layout in my mind and put the boat’s lights off.
There were projecting iron handholds from the pillar. Not the easiest climb, but I suppose that was the intention. The first step was about chest height. I’d brought a clothes line and some old gardening gloves, but how the hell you lowered a score of antiques down from a thing like this fort into a bobbing boat on your own without help . . . I climbed. They say don’t look down when you’re up high, but nobody tells you the other most important climbing lesson, which is: never look up, especially if you’re climbing the underbelly of an old sea tower.
The handholds were rusted and slimed. I stopped and shone my torch every three or four just to make sure there was something to grab and that my hand wouldn’t be left waving in the air when I needed support. I ought to have kept an eye out for approaching lights at this stage but I was frightened enough. There was this moaning, faint and fairly quiet, as if the wind was hurt at not being allowed in. Give me land any time.
At the top, flat surfaces stretched away into the distance. I shone the torch only once, clinging on like a tick on a bull. Above me the handholds led up into a rectangular hole like a loft ladder does into an attic. I beamed upwards. The light hit nothing but space, which gave me hope there might be a respectable floor for me to stand on. I climbed in, shaky and trying not to look down. It stank of must
and seaweed. Holding on with my left hand I shone the torch on a level with my face and almost shouted from relief. There was a rectangular room about forty feet by forty, almost as if I’d simply climbed into a barn loft. I hauled myself in, scrambling away from that horrible edge and the sea’s noise beneath. For a minute I wheezed on my hands and knees, partly relief. Behind me, what had been a hole promising safety had now become the start of a bloody great drop and I didn’t want any part of that. I got away from it fast and tried to control my shaking limbs. No wonder Lemuel had looked decidedly grey with fatigue after the ploughing. Until now I’d regarded myself as fit as a flea.
I started first on the flooring, treading carefully, then pushing the walls to make certain I was in something really solid. The feeling of emptiness was all about, as if I’d come to a deserted city. I tried to sense if anyone was here or not, and got no vibes. The fact should have reassured me and didn’t.
I walked round and round coughing on the dust. A big empty room with a hole at one corner and a metal door at the other. No windows, no footmarks in the dust except mine. I reasoned that, if Drummer had been killed for seeing them load the stuff in, their route would have to be up one of the landward side legs. Logical. The walls were covered with graffiti, testifying to some intrepid holidaymakers getting their money’s worth out of the hired powerboats from Clacton or somewhere. A few faded scrawls from soldiers fervently marking the days off to demob, and that was that. I crossed to the door and pulled it back on its crossbar.
It led up five steps to the start of two corridors. The left one. My torch flickered ahead. It looked about two hundred feet long and was littered with debris, though God
knows where that came from. Pieces of planking, some glass and a bottle or two, even a brick. The ceiling seemed to be made of crossbeamed concrete and the walls were the same endless fawn-coloured tiers. I trod cautiously along it, realizing that the sound of the sea was getting fainter with each step.
About halfway along, a double entrance led into what must have been some sort of briefing room. It was low but wide, with a central spiral of stairs upward round a thick circular pillar. I vaguely remember the silhouettes of these forts. They all have a flat tier, then a somewhat bulbous turret structure like the highest bit of a lighthouse. There were footmarks in the dust round the stairs, showing that Devvo’s happy band had been here. I climbed slowly, holding on to the rail. A metal door blocked the way about the level of the operations-room ceiling but it answered to a hefty shove, and I was through into the top of the fort. The lookout room was no more than thirty feet in diameter. Slit windows showed the distant shore lights directly opposite, the lightship’s signals from the Sands, and I caught a glimpse of the sea lights shining where the oil ships steamed north–south from the fields and refineries along the coast. I could even have picked out Joe’s station and the harbour lights of Barncaster Staithe, but I felt too vulnerable in this derelict place. It was beginning to give me the willies. Perhaps Devvo had heard of my renting a power yacht from Barncaster and was coming without lights, same as me. The slimy creep, I thought indignantly. Just the sort of rotten filthy trick he would get up to. The trouble was I had no real plan, which was what was making me mad. I’d assumed that if I’d got here first I’d somehow be in control, able to dictate terms to Devvo. Now I wasn’t sure I’d done right.
I could threaten him with the police, of course, though
Maslow was about as useless a threat as you could imagine, and Devvo had already got away with murdering Drummer. After a few times I decided to change my original non-plan to a new non-plan. The thing was to try to find the antiques first, maybe shift them to some place in the fort where I could keep them under lock and key, for use as a bargaining counter.
Time was passing. Nervously, I hurried down from the turret into the big operations room and began an urgent search of the rooms leading off it. It was a huge place, bigger even than I had imagined. Like a ship, always so much more space than you dream of. I raced from one place to the next, shoving metal doors open and spluttering on the dust that hit me every time. A third of the way around, I was soaked in sweat, and realized I’d never get round the place in just a few hours. I had to think. Of course I’d known it would be a big task but assumed that my luck would carry me through. Maybe, I began to think, I’d trusted luck instead of brain.