‘So what did he do?’
He watched a burgee fill and crack straight in a brief, sudden air. ‘Sometimes he’d go out same time as us. Set off ’ell for leather. Never see where he fished. Sometimes he’d come in same time as us. Come off with a big ole cool box o’ fish every week. “Had a bit o’ luck,” he’d say. “Got some big ones,” he’d say.’ He snorted. ‘Any fish he had, I reckon he bought at Macfisheries.’ He seemed amused at his own wit.
‘Did he ever show you his catch?’
‘Never showed no one. Never saw what he ’ad in that box. “Got some beauties,” he’d say. That went straight in ’is car, and off away, out o’ town, quick as you like.’
Slider was having trouble with the cool box – that thing wasn’t designed to be portable. ‘That refrigerated box in the cockpit—’
‘Not that one. Portable job. Kept th’electric one on-board.’
Slider had an image of Rogers coming in, tying up, emerging with his cool box on to an apparently indifferent harbourside, blissfully unaware of the dozens of eyes clocking his every movement. But if no one ever said anything, what harm?
‘Dead, eh?’ the old man mused at last, staring at the swirl of slack-tide on the brown-grey water.
‘He was up to something,’ Slider said indifferently to a passing seagull.
‘Free trade, thass what we call it,’ the old man said at the conclusion of some thought process. ‘Suppose to be in th’ole Europeen Union, ent we? Suppose to be free movement o’ goods. So how come a man can’t bring in a foo bits an’ bobs for hisself an’ his mates without th’ole Customs and Excise persecootin’ him?’
‘Beats me,’ Slider said. ‘That’s not my department.’
‘Huh!’ the man snorted, but it was aimed at the Customs and Excise, not Slider, who was still, as a man who could tell when the tide was turning, the acceptable face of the law.
‘So the doctor was a free-trader,’ Slider mused, not making it a question.
‘He weren’t sport fishin’, thass for sure,’ his new friend agreed, and then, as a final, huge concession, actually looked at Slider and said, ‘Coastguard bin watchin’ him. You go and talk to coastguard.’
‘Thanks,’ Slider said. After a suitable pause, he nodded farewell and he and Atherton moved nonchalantly away. The old man remained where he was, staring up the river, to show he hadn’t been talking to them at all.
The coastguard on duty, Steve Wilderspin, was a fatherly-looking middle-aged man whose firm face suggested a core of steel and whose level, noticing eyes wouldn’t have been out of place on a policeman. He reminded Slider of Dave Bright. He examined Slider’s and Atherton’s warrant cards with professional swiftness, and showed no surprise when Slider asked him about the Windhover.
‘We’ve been watching her for a while,’ he said. ‘We thought it was a bit odd the doc berthed her here, instead of the marina at Lowestoft. Nothing strange about a rich London consultant wanting a place in Southwold,’ he was quick to add. ‘We’ve got a few of that sort, I can tell you. Barristers, hedge fund managers, all sorts of top people. It’s that kind of place. But Windhover’s a showy craft, the sort people like to show off when they’ve sunk that much money into it. And Doc Rogers wasn’t showing her off to anyone. No parties, no pals down from London for weekend cruises. He didn’t even join the Yacht Club. A man doesn’t buy a super speed cruiser like that and then not talk to anyone about it.’ His eyes crinkled with amusement at the thought. ‘There was only half a dozen Mark IIs ever made, and four of them are in the States. Who ever heard of an owner not wanting to boast about that sort of thing?’
‘You’re right,’ Slider said.
‘And she’s fast,’ Wilderspin went on, ‘and built for the open seas. What was he doing poodling about coastal waters with his once-a-week fishing trips? But on the other hand, a man can spend his money on anything he likes. It’s a free country. If he wants to waste a power-craft like that, it’s his business.’ He looked at Slider. ‘There’s plenty of rich people with Maseratis and nowhere to let ’em out, am I right? And driving bloody great off-roaders around Kensington and Chelsea.’
‘Exactly,’ said Slider.
‘So we just kept an eye on him. And we’ve never seen him bringing anything bulky off the Windhover. So unless he was smuggling diamonds—’ He shrugged.
‘You didn’t ever try to inspect his luggage?’
Wilderspin’s sea-faded eyes opened a fraction. ‘Can’t do that. Especially not to a respectable Southwold resident. No evidence against him.’
‘What if you knew he was meeting another craft out at sea?’
‘Ah,’ Wilderspin said with satisfaction. ‘That’d be different. Have you got something?’
Slider said, ‘The one time he took someone with him he had a close encounter with a boat called Havik.’ He spelled it. ‘From a Dutch port beginning with “I”.’
‘IJmuiden,’ Wilderspin said at once. ‘Lay you any money. IJmuiden port and marina – practically the first place you come to if you sail straight from Southwold to Holland.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘That gives us something to work with. It could be diamonds, in that case. IJmuiden’s only a stone’s throw from Amsterdam, which is the biggest centre for diamond distribution on the continent.’ He looked consideringly at Slider and Atherton. ‘To find out anything more, I’m going to have to refer this upwards, to get co-operation with the Dutch coastguards. Is that going to mess up your case?’
‘Can you hold off for a bit?’ Slider said. ‘I’m going to have to refer upwards as well. And if there is a big operation going on, we don’t want to spook them before we’ve laid our hands on the murderer.’
‘Fair enough,’ Wilderspin said. ‘Can’t have people murdering our citizens with impunity.’
‘Funny thing is,’ Atherton said when they left, ‘I’m pretty sure he meant Southwold citizens, not British citizens.’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me a bit,’ said Slider from the depth of furious thinking.
Mackay was duty officer, and Hollis was there, doing a bit of office-managering on his own account, because he wasn’t getting on with his second wife and liked to get out of the house when he could. Porson had arrived by the time Slider and Atherton got back, and they all gathered round him in the CID room, as he sat on the edge of Atherton’s desk (always the tidiest) and fiddled with a biro, clicking the end in and out like Edmundo Ros on speed.
‘Smuggling, eh?’ he said thoughtfully, when they had told the whole story of the boat.
‘Windhover being the name of the organization that was paying his salary, unless Rogers was just being clever about it, it’s tempting to think they also bought him the boat, or owned it and lent it to him for the purpose,’ Slider said.
‘That would make it a criminal organization,’ Hollis said. ‘A diamond smuggling ring. They paid him a retainer through his bank and then a cash bonus on top whenever he did a job.’
‘That works all right,’ Mackay said. ‘Explains why he had all the cash, and not too much on his credit card. But who were the jokers he was wining and dining?’
‘Customers for the diamonds,’ Hollis said. ‘Rich Arabs and Indians and suchlike – the kind of people that do buy diamonds.’
‘It explains Southwold and it explains the secrecy,’ Atherton said. ‘He’s not going to tell his female conquests that he’s a smuggler. Important secret work sounds much better for wifey, and consultant will do for anyone he’s not going to know for long.’
‘Talking of consultants, why did Sir Bernard Webber say he hadn’t seen Rogers in years?’ Slider said. ‘Helen Aldous says Rogers dropped in from time to time at Cloisterwood to see Webber.’