A Prospect of Vengeance (10 page)

‘It is at this point, one may suspect, that something went wrong, and we must attempt to recreate the situation from the little evidence we have.

‘The deceased would most probably have been intending to head out to sea on a southerly course, and once clear of the Shingles to have gone about, and sailed across Poole Bay until he picked up the Fairway. By then the tide would have turned, so he would have had a fair run into Poole entrance. Daylight would then not have been far away, so he would have timed it exactly right to arrive at Poole Bridge for the early morning opening. With a mooring waiting for him in Holes Bay, he would have intended to go ashore at Cobbs Quay, and then taken a taxi back to Lymington, as he had done before on such occasions.

‘But this he never did. We must surmise, rather, that when he went on to the starboard tack, probably somewhere off Barton in Christchurch Bay, the jib sheet shackle came adrift. It is significant that when the boat was found the jib was flogging and the sheets lying on deck, with the pin gone from the shackle.

‘That, for an experienced yachtsman, would have been only a minor annoyance. All he had to do was to find a spare shackle, clamber up to the foredeck to fit it, return to the cockpit, and then sheet in and carry on.

‘Being perhaps a little further inshore than he cared to be, he would have lashed the tiller and sailed towards open sea under mainsail alone as he hunted out a shackle and fitted it to the jib.

‘It is at this moment, also, that he should have taken those precautions which should have been second nature to him—‘

(This was where the coroner had ceased to be a yachtsman, and had become all-coroner, sad and solemn and wise-after-the-event. But it had been good old Elwyn Rhys-Lewis who had been more convincing earlier.)

(‘Yes, of course he should have put on a lifejacket, and a safety-harness—or both—before he went up on the foredeck. But there are times when you just go ahead and get the job done … And how long would he have lasted in a cold sea on a November night—dangling over the side and unable to climb back? I remember chaps in the navy who didn’t want to learn to swim—they said it only prolonged the agony.’)

(The coroner had reprimanded him at that point!)

(‘Yes, sir—that may be. But a single-hander’s motto is “Don’t go over in the first place”, sir.’)

So there it was: at that point Elwyn Rhys-Lewis and the coroner had both agreed on the ‘freak wave’ theory. Which Rhys-Lewis had more vividly described as ‘the Sod’s Law of the Sea’—‘when wind-and-water hit you in that single unguarded moment, groping around to catch a flogging sail—and then you’re over the side and alone, with your boat sailing on without you, to the Port of Heaven—‘

‘We may be somewhat surprised that the body of the deceased was not recovered in the search next day, or that it never came ashore as others have done. But we have also heard an expert witness from the RNLI testify that the ebbing tide would have carried it several miles into the bay. And if it finished up in the Needles Channel, in the shipping lane, then it may have been hit by a large vessel well before daylight.

‘So, before I record my verdict, it is more than ever necessary for me to emphasize that, however experienced one may be, the necessary and prudent precautions must be paramount. One witness has spoken of what he called “the Sod’s Law of the sea”. But—‘

That had given the
Telegraph
sub-editor his arresting headline ‘
”
Sod
’
s Law
”
killed yachtsman
’
.

But that had been a ‘Sod’s Law of the sea’. And it had been a quite different Sod’s Law—a ‘Sod’s Law
of the land
’
which had finally brought Philip Masson into the light, all these years afterwards; which, in his neat little report, Reg Buller had pounced on smartly:

‘
Why did they plant him there? It
’
s a good question, because bodies have a way of turning up. HM prisons are full of people who believed otherwise. But these chummies weren
’
t so stupid as that, they just had very bad luck. Because that old ruin, where they planted him
—
and the nice old farmhouse on the hillside above, where the kids came from
—
was all due to go under the line of the motorway. So the machines would have cut through the hillside above there, and piled the soil on top of the ruin and buried him deep. And what must have given the chummies the idea was that it was about that time that the
“
Motorway Murders
”
came to light: this bulldozer driver was murdering women in his spare time, and then covering them deep next morning at work. That was a year or two
before, but it was a big talking-point. Only then the Government fell, so there was a new Minister. And they found a lot of rare flowers on the moor there, which didn
’
t grow anywhere else. So they finally re-routed the motorway by a couple of miles in 1980, and left that bit out. This is what
’
s called
“
Green Politics
”
today, I believe. But I
’
d call it
“
bad luck
”
…
for chummie.
’

More like
very
bad luck, Ian had mentally added there. Because the alleged drowning of Philip Masson had otherwise been perfect. There had been no dangerous carrying of bodies (always a risky business; and, presumably, Masson had been intercepted and murdered close to where he’d been buried, in the middle of rural nowhere). And then a false Masson had taken his car on, and slipped aboard the
Jenny III
in the gathering dusk, either taking another inflatable on board to get ashore, or (in view of the weather) rendezvousing with one of his confederates just north of the Shingles.

But, otherwise … it had been damn-near perfect, with no tell-tale body (bodies also were a risk, however neatly killed; and with Philip Masson the autopsy would have been very thorough, for sure); but, for the rest, it had been utterly professional—plausible and detailed, but not too detailed … just basically
ordinary
.

Those three hours hadn’t been wasted; the deceptive half of Philip Masson’s death would eventually make a good detailed chapter in the story—and if Elwyn Rhys-Lewis turned out to be as good-and-true a friend as he sounded; which, on mature reflection, he probably was; but even then he would supply more good copy, as he gnashed his teeth about the way he had innocently helped his friend’s murderers. So it was already shaping up nicely—it would make a fascinating contrast even … the
false
inquest, before the real one—

And then the door had banged, and Reg Buller had made his entrance.

‘I’ve lost my bloody pipe.’ He patted all his bulging pockets, ignoring the ‘No Smoking’ notice, and the worried hovering of Ian’s favourite assistant librarian until she got round in front of him. ‘It’sh all right, love—I wasn’t going to smoke it. I was only going to suck it. An’ … I know how to work the machine—an’ how to wind the film back afterwards. Don’t worry, love.’

‘It’s all right, Miss Russell.’ Ian didn’t think it was ‘all right’. But Reg Buller had also been at work on 1978 elsewhere this afternoon, and he desperately wanted to know what had come out of that latest foray. And, in any event, since Reg was in no case to look after him, he must look after Reg. ‘I know this gentleman. And I’ll vouch for him, Miss Russell.’

Miss Russell gave him a disappointed-fearful look. ‘Just so he doesn’t make any
noise
, Mr Robinson. You can talk here—‘ She could smell Reg now, and didn’t find him reassuring. ‘—but no
noise
, if you please.’

‘No noise!’ Buller put his finger to his lips. ‘If you hear a noise—it’s
him
, not me. Trust me!’ He almost knocked over a chair, watching it rock without trying to rescue it before he sat down in it. ‘No noise!’

Miss Russell had fled then. And Reg Buller hadn’t made a sound, as he went about his business, after he had briefly explained where he’d been.

But now his chair scraped back noisily.

‘Thish ish it. You mark my wordsh, Ian lad! Thish ish it!’

Ian looked up from his notes, but past Buller, not at him, to make sure that Miss Russell (never mind her boss) was not within earshot of this over-loud pronouncement. His credit was good in this library, as it needed to be with all the work he did in it because of its excellent range of microfilmed newspapers; and, at a pinch, it might survive the brewery-fumes Reg was exhaling. But it would never survive that deadliest of sins,
noise
.

Buller sat back, staring at him. ‘Well, c’mon an’
shee
—
‘

‘
Sssh
! For heaven’s sake, Reg!’

Buller looked around. ‘It’s all right—‘ The slur disappeared magically but the voice was still far too loud. ‘—there’s nobody out there. I made sure of that. We’re okay.’

‘Nobody’, of course, excluded librarians in Reg Buller’s
dramatis personae
, and until John Tully came up with the answers, that was the best they could hope for. But he had worked too hard here to obtain his special privileges to let Buller queer his pitch. ‘I meant
you
, man—‘ He pointed at the other printed legend on the wall ‘—that means “No piss-artists and dossers-coming-in-from-the-cold”, Reg.’

‘There’s no call to be offensive. An’ inaccurate—‘ Buller adjusted his upper dentures with a calloused thumb and index finger ostentatiously ‘—I’ve been having trouble with this new set of choppers. And it isn’t cold. And anything I may have imbibed this fine Monday was strictly in the line of duty, as I carefully explained to you—‘ His voice fell nevertheless, from jubilant conversational to a penetrating stage-whisper. ‘—you just look at this, Ian lad. An’ then I may accept your apology.’

Ian steeled himself against disappointment as he got up. It was just conceivably possible that he had done Buller an injustice, but unlikely—at least, so far as the imbibing was concerned. What he had remembered from previous occasions was that Reg’s ‘necessary disbursements to contacts’, which figured substantially in his expense account, chiefly related to alcohol, rather than to old-fashioned back-handers (although these figured also, in nicely round multiples of five in sterling, and of tens and hundreds in foreign monopoly currencies). But then, of course, ‘contacts’—‘contacts’ back-handed when necessary, but alcoholically-oiled invariably—were the very stuff of Reg’s
modus operandi
. And in this case it had been ‘a bloke I know in the Street, who’s a sub on
The People
now—but he was a young reporter on the
Northern Gazette
back in ‘78, and he’s doing shifts now, to keep his ex-wife in gin-an’-tonic’, and ‘I had to fill him up in the Stab before I could get him to talk, and not remember what I’d asked him about afterwards’. And because of all of
that
, it had seemed quite depressingly possible that Reg had been enjoying himself at Fielding and Robinson’s expense, just for starters.

‘All right, Reg—‘ But then he remembered also that Reg got results. And that Reg, in spite of his warnings, seemed to be excited by this one (false teeth or alcohol notwithstanding) ‘—let’s have a look, then.’

Buller shifted obligingly, to allow him to peer under the canopy at the magnified projection of the reel of microfilm.

‘I can’t see a bloody thing, Reg—it’s all out of focus.’ It occurred to him insanely that Buller, seeing everything out of focus already, had had to de-focus it in order actually to see it. But, even out of focus, the main headline was still just readable.

‘Oh—sorry!’ Reg adjusted the focus, first swimming it into pale grey infinity, and then sharpening it into readability. ‘
There—eh
?”

DEATH OF A MAD DOG, Ian read again obediently. And was again repelled by the crude simplicity of the message in its tabloid form, however eye-catchingly true it might have been (he remembered also reading similar proclamations of this same event, in smaller type and more sober words, in
The Times
and the
Guardian
and the
Daily Telegraph
, not an hour ago, on this same machine; but Reg had naturally chosen his favourite newspaper).

‘So—?’ Twisting back towards Buller, he caught the full reek of Reg’s share of those ‘necessary disbursements’.

‘”Mad Dog O’Leary”—?’ At close quarters Reg Buller’s eyes were like nothing so much as two halves of the same blood-orange. ‘Christ! I suppose you were a fucking student at the time, demonstrating because your grant didn’t keep you in beer-money! Or what was it—Rhodesia? Or bleeding Watergate, an’ poor old Tricky-Dickie—?’

‘Watergate wasn’t ‘78.’ Having just been all through the papers of the time, Ian felt safe now: he could even place Michael ‘Mad Dog’ O’Leary in his brief nine-days’ horror context. And he was not about to admit how little of what he had read had struck any chord of memory, even though he had lived through that November and had presumably read in the original what he and Reg Buller had now re-read on this machine. Truthfully, except for a vague recollection that those had been The Last Days of Labour, Before Thatcher, with threatened bakers’ strikes, nurses’ strikes and car workers’ strikes, he could remember very little of that ‘Winter of Discontent’, in which ‘Mad Dog’ had been just another horror story among many. ‘Actually, I was just beginning to panic before my final examinations, Reg. But I do remember we weren’t doing too well in Australia.’

‘Australia?’

‘In the cricket, Reg.’ Knowing that Buller despised all sports, he felt he was somehow reasserting himself. ‘It was rather depressing, as I recall.’

‘You can say that again! That whole bloody winter was depressing—‘