Their leader, who had some English, approached Brannigan. "Where is the position of the little ships, would you tell me please?"
Brannigan, cravenly glad of their presence but sufficiently strong-minded to make an effort to get rid of them answered curtly. "The models? In the shed – up those steps over there."
"The little boats of the primitive times, but not the models. The catamaran and the trees with the dug-out centre and the bamboo raft."
"They're in the adjoining shed – the shed next to that one. They are numbered in your catalogue."
"You are coming that way, too, please?"
"No. We are interested in the vessels on the water."
"And we also. Someone who would help with the interpretation we should be most happy to have." '
Brannigan said firmly. "I'm sorry. It's not convenient for you to join us. You will find officials in each section. Ask one of them."
The Swede rejoined his group. He spoke to them quickly and bitterly.
Welling said in an aside to Masters, "How to make friends and influence people."
Brannigan overheard him. "In any other circumstances, Welling, your criticism would be justified."
"I'm sorry, sir. I understand the situation. I wasn't being critical."
"No? Amusing, perhaps?"
"No, sir. It was a stupid remark, sir. I'm sorry, sir."
There were times, Brannigan thought, when the honest-eyed, easy-tongued, commendably hard-working sixth former got under his skin even more than Durrant did – which was saying a lot. Durrant had sparked up when Fleming had mentioned the baseball incident – rather like a bull being surprised by a matador's barb – but his expression had cooled down again to moroseness. Fleming's acquisition of that particular barb had surprised Brannigan, too, and disconcerted him more than a little.
The wind blew an empty sweet bag against Durrant's ankle. He picked it up, made a ball of it, and dropped it into the water. The waves took it and flipped it against the black painted hull of a yellow-sailed ketch.
Hammond spoke irritably, "There's a rubbish bin over there."
Durrant, not aware he was being addressed, didn't answer. His ability to switch off from reality into a more congenial and interesting environment had been acquired over the years. His growing physical strength and bizarre imagination combined forcefully into what he saw as a power-house in an alien city. He could people that city as and how he wished and dominate them – some in fact, others in fantasy. His mind was now on Fleming senior. Brannigan, as a heavy-booted Colditz commandant, was by comparison small fry. Around Fleming was an aura of blood. Pleasurably he felt a small crawl of fear. This enemy was in the world inside his head – and he was in the world outside it. He began smelling the water of the harbour again and saw that the sweet bag had rounded the bow and disappeared.
Brannigan went over to Fleming. "It would have been better to have come here' after closing time with no-one around. I can still arrange to do that if you would like me to?"
Fleming saw it as procrastination. "Let's get on with it – now."
Hammond, surprisingly, brushed past Brannigan and took the lead. He walked a few paces ahead of everyone, his head hunched between his shoulders, his arms swinging. The wind blew his hair into a parting across the back of his head so that his scalp showed white against the brown of his neck. When he stopped and turned, the wind took his hair the other way and he put his hand up in an irritable gesture and smoothed it.
"That's it. The Mariana." He indicated a cargo vessel with a green and yellow funnel. It was pulling lazily at its anchor as if in a half-hearted attempt at freedom.
Fleming saw the name enclosed in a thin red-painted rectangle on the bow. Mariana. It was incongruously gentle. Like an execution chamber hung around with silk.
Now that he was here he wished he were anywhere but here. The thrusting reality of David's death had degrees of penetration. To bear the pain and yet retain his calm demanded of his strength more than he was capable of. His instinct now was to turn and go. He had seen and heard all he could take. He wanted no more of it.
Aware that his hands were shaking he put them behind his back and gripped his wrists hard.
Brannigan was beside him. There was sympathy in his voice. "There's no need to board her. Hammond can explain the positioning of the boys from here."
"We'll board her."
Hammond led the way down the gangplank. His voice assumed the slightly higher pitch he used in class. "Every time I take a group of boys on a ship we move around the ship as a group to discover the general lay-out of it. After that each boy, apart from the younger ones who stay with me, goes to work on the particular part of the project assigned to him. I suggest we move around the ship now as a group – afterwards the boys can take up their individual positions and you can question them individually, if that's what you want to do."
"That's what I want to do. But your guided tour can wait. I want to see the hold where it happened. Now."
What the hell was Hammond thinking, of, Fleming wondered. A slow build-up to a grand finale? Bridge deck. Boat deck. Lower deck. And now wait for it, Fleming, while the drums roll.
That he could quite easily kill Hammond occurred to him. He was emotionally capable of it.
Their eyes met.
Hammond shrugged. "All right. I wasn't trying to defer it. It was a duplication of the usual routine. I'm trying to present everything exactly as it happened." He turned to the boys. "Stay here. There's no point in your coming too."
The companion-way was short and steep. Fleming followed behind Brannigan and Hammond. The rail was wet under his hands, whether from the other men's sweat or his own he didn't know. The smell of the deck was of tar and carbolic.
Hammond explained, "There are three hatches. The one forrard is beamed. The tarpaulin was on this one as it is now. The other – where David fell – is just below the poop deck." He led the way.
His attitude was almost casual. "That's the one. There's no cover on it. There wasn't then and there isn't now. You might be able to screw damages out of the Maritime Museum for not covering it." He noticed Brannigan's expression and didn't care. The right words eluded him. A speech of sympathy at this point would be like offering milk to a cobra.
Fleming went over to the hatch and looked down into the darkness of the hold. It went down about fifteen feet.
David had stood here – or hereabouts – wearing a blindfold. The edge of the hatch would have come up to his thighs. An unwary step wouldn't have toppled him over. He had either climbed over or been pushed over.
The words that had been battering at the back of his mind for days came out as a whisper. "I don't understand." He repeated them to himself. I don't understand. Brannigan, as grey-faced as he was, looked at him in silence.
Only Hammond appeared cool. "After the accident, I climbed down into the hold – down that iron ladder. It's not well lit, but I have a torch. Do you want to go down?"
Fleming turned to him. "Accident? Did you say accident? Look at the height of the hatch side. I only have your words his hands weren't tied."
"His hands were -not tied. He could have rested them on the side of the hatch – perhaps have been doing handstands. Small boys don't have a sharp sense of danger – they're full of bravado. He could have been acting out some scene of daring from his imagination. He was imaginative."
"Was he? What else was he?" Very quiet – very level.
"I don't understand you."
"Was he sick? Disturbed? Unhappy? Frightened?"
"You're referring to the sketch?"
Brannigan said quickly, "I explained about it. I think, perhaps, its significance…"