Dave had a unique gift; he could describe any number of girls in minute detail, and still make then all sound alike. He was probably right, at that. I let the anatomy lesson chatter on; it was something else familiar, and I needed everything I could get. I couldn’t drive away the night. It obstinately refused to fade; indeed, little details kept leaping back at me, bright and clear – the gleaming patch of water and its entangled masts, the heavy tang of those roots, the woman’s jewellery jingling lightly as she drew sword, the hidden tremor in Jyp’s voice. There was no getting away from it. Last night either something had happened, something had been unleashed – and I did not like to think what – or I was steadily going mad. I couldn’t say which idea scared me more.
At last Dave went in search of coffee, and left me alone to face my dilemma. Faced it had to be. Why couldn’t I just let this fade, he way it had the first time? Or was that only madness, too? I could run the same computer checks again, but what would that tell me? Couldn’t I remember any other solid facts but that one ship name? Then I hesitated. There was something … The jingle of that woman’s jewellery, Mall’s jewellery – that voice of hers telling the Wolves to get away, get back on board that hulk …
Pretty evidently she’d spat out the name of the Wolves’ ship, or of one crewed by them. What if I –
Quickly, looking around anxiously to see if Clare or anyone was coming, I logged onto the harbour register once again, and tapped in the name as I guessed it must be spelt. Chorazin …
The search screen stayed up only a second or two. Then it blinked and scrolled down into the usual file card.
Chorazin, merchantman privateer (630 tons, 24 guns) Danziger Wharf, berth 4
Out of: Hispaniola, ports West Master: Rooke, Azazael In transit: repair and reprovision, indef. Capacity: spoken for Destination: the East
I closed my eyes. What next? If I typed in Flying Dutchman, what was I going to find? Captain Vanderdecken, overdue at the Europoort-Scheldt with a cargo of ectoplasm?
But there the entry was, when I opened my eyes. There was no fooling myself, not this time, no writing this off as drunken romanticism or nightmares. After last night I knew the difference only too well.
I wasn’t even mad. And if I wasn’t, perhaps a great many other people weren’t, either. Beneath the blandly obvious surface of things there must be all kinds of dark undercurrents stirring; and perhaps they, like me, had swum blindly into one and been borne away, kicking, far beyond their depth.
Jyp had been right to boot me out. I was a creature of the surface, of the shallows; I’d no resources to help me cope. Suddenly I was afraid to confront the world I knew, the world I thought I’d come to some kind of truce with. Never mind sticking to everyday life now, moving on rails – I wouldn’t even dare trust that, not any more. How could I believe the blandly ordinary appearance of things now? How was I to know some other, stronger current wasn’t lurking in the depths beneath, ready to sweep me away?
The telephone on my desk began to ring. It had a soft, warbling call, but I jumped and sat staring, heart pounding, as if it were the chatter of a rattlesnake. Then Dave came back in, and with a hasty snort I extinguished the screen with one hand and picked up the phone with the other.
‘A Mr Peters to speak to you, Steve,’ said Clare. ‘About a private shipping matter, is all he says, so he wants you personally. Are you feeling up to dealing with him?’
‘Oh, put him on,’ I sighed. Every company in our line gets its share of private individuals wanting to ship Auntie’s armchair or their bargain grandfather clock over to America, that kind of thing; we usually referred them to specialist movers. But when the smooth voice came on the line I changed my opinion.
‘Mr Stephen Fisher? But of course!’ The English was too impeccable, and accented. A lawyer, was my immediate reaction, or a broker, or some other kind of fixer. ‘My name is T.J. Peters. Accept my apologies for breaking into your busy day. But I have a matter in hand of a substantial goods consignment I wish to import. The nature of it I would rather not disclose –’
‘Then I’m sorry –’ I began. Once in a while we also attract cagey characters wanting to exploit our reputation to ship large anonymous crates without attracting customs attention; them we fend off, hastily.
‘Over the telephone, I should say. To you in person, of course, there need be no problem of commercial security. But the matter is urgent. If I might assume the liberty of calling upon you later this afternoon, say around four-thirty, would I find you in?’
Of course he would; I could hardly say anything else. But as the afternoon wore on I wished more and more I had put him off. The sky outside had stopped drizzling, but looked heavier and greyer and more thundery as the day passed. It was stifling; but worse still was the growing sense of oppression that hung in the heavy air. The whole office seemed to feel it; people snapped at one another, made stupid slips or just gave up working and sat staring into space. Dave fell silent; Clare made me three cups of coffee in twenty minutes. Gemma went off home with a headache. There was something almost menacing about it. I longed for honest thunder and rain to break the spell. Thanks to Mr Peters I couldn’t just slip off home; and I was glad of that, in a way. I didn’t want to be alone right now. The thought of it kept me working, though I didn’t seem to be getting very far. At last, around four-fifteen, I decided I needed some air to wake me up before my client came, and mooched out along the back corridor.
The glaziers had finished with the back door, and I swung it open and stepped out onto the balcony leading to the metal stairs. A few breaths of air were stirring here, freshened by the trees beyond the wall of the car-park; faint drops of rain sprinkled onto my face, like tears. I drew a few deep breaths, thought of climbing one floor up to the top, but decided against it. Mr Peters should be here in ten minutes, and I wanted to brush up, straighten my tie and so on. I was glad I’d put on my Cagliari suit today; these Continental types were more impressed by Italian tailoring. I went back inside, and was just passing the back of the office next to mine when I heard the first voices raised, a rising scale of protest, outrage, and sheer fright. Then the crash came.
In that sullen quiet it was appalling. It might have been thunder; but the shriek that followed froze my blood. Now there were other voices, angry shouts, cries and sounds of smashing, crashing, things falling – and more shrieks.
I froze, with every nerve in me raw and shivering. Before last night I might have gone running to see what was the matter; and who knows what might have happened then? As it was, it took all the strength of will I had to inch forward. And as I did so, I saw, blurred behind the ribbed glass partition of my office, tall shapes that strode back and forth amidst a crescendo of booming and splintering crashes. Then suddenly one stopped, loomed up with frightening speed right against the glass, and I saw a weird spiked crest bobbing, heard that harsh reptilian croak again, raised now in a crowing rasp of triumph.