Emil Jacques, impatient and under pressure, unusually sent an acceptance by post of the Brussels proposition without clearly planning his ambush in advance, confident he would think of a good one in plenty of time. Meanwhile, as he waited for the Brussels up-front money to arrive, he would finish off Gypsy Joe: he would spend the weekend in England, earning the Rockman fee. He set off on this plan but almost at once things again began to go wrong. Even before he’d even left the city, his car broke down. (‘Mon auto ne marche pas.’) Emil cursed.
It was Friday morning. He was told his car would be repaired by Monday lunchtime. Emil Jacques blasphemed.
He went into a travel agent’s office to study his options and found himself at the desk of a smiling motherly middle-aged madame who took a liking to her youngish customer and made endless helpful suggestions.
Monsieur wanted to spend the weekend in England? Well, of course, he must fly.
Sabena, Belgium’s airline, had frequent flights every day to Heathrow.
Madame gestured to a poster on the wall advertising a fantail of huge aeroplanes, all taking off.
Emil Jacques Guirlande shuddered and began to sweat.
Monsieur could rent a car at Heathrow. She, Madame, would arrange it.
Emil Jacques took a heroic grip on his neurosis and said he would go by sea, by car ferry, as he had intended. Madame said the delay obviously meant that he would miss the boat he’d planned to take, but he could go later by a different route and she, Madame, could arrange a rental car to meet him at Dover.
Emil Jacques agreed.
Beaming with pleasure Madame busied herself on the telephone while her customer wiped his forehead.
She told him kindly that soon he would be able to travel to England by tunnel. The excavation would be starting this year, 1987. Wasn’t that splendid? In one instant Emil Jacques progressed from fear of flying to Tunnel claustrophobia.
Madame gave him tickets and reservations and a boarding pass for his preference for water.
She said, ‘I’m afraid the crossing takes four and a half hours, but I’ve booked a rental car to be ready for you at Dover. So sorry about your troubles with your own.’
Emil Jacques, still smothering his trembles, paid her with feeble smiles and prudent cash and, following her directions, travelled by train to the Channel coast. He carried with him his metal suitcase and an overnight grip, and he reassured himself over and over again that if this unsettling departure from his normal approach to slaughter looked at all risky he would return to see to Gypsy Joe at a later, calmer date.
He boarded the ferry, along with about four hundred and fifty other passengers, many of whom had come across from England on a day-trip to shop and were going home laden with bags labelled ‘Duty Free’. Emil Jacques found a seat in the bar and ordered mineral water, and tightly gripped his metal suitcase between his feet.
The ferry moved off from its berth on Friday 6 March 1987 at five past six in the evening. At six twenty-four the ship cleared the harbour’s outer mole and accelerated towards the open sea.
Four minutes later, she sank.
Extract from the official account of the accident, published by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
On the 6th March 1987 the Roll on/Roll off passenger and freight ferry Herald of Free Enterprise sailed from Number 12 berth in the inner harbour at Zeebrugge at 18.05 G.M.T. The Herald was manned by a crew of 80 hands all told and was laden with 81 cars, 47 freight vehicles and three other vehicles.
Approximately 459 passengers had embarked for the voyage to Dover. The Herald passed the outer mole at 18.24. She capsized about four minutes later. During the final moments the Herald turned rapidly to starboard and was prevented from sinking totally by reason only that her port side took the ground in shallow water. The Herald came to rest with her starboard side above the surface. Water rapidly filled the ship below the surface level with the result that not less than 150 passengers and 38 members of the crew lost their lives.
The Herald capsized because she went to sea with her inner and outer bow doors open.
The bow doors were open because they had not been closed after the cars and other vehicles had been loaded for the passage to Dover. No one had checked the doors were shut.
The ferry filled and capsized fast in thirty seconds.
The hull, showing above the water, had been painted a brilliant red.
Red as traffic lights.
Redder than Red Millbrook’s hair.
RED.
In England at six twenty-five on 6 March Davey The Rock, in self-pitying tears, borrowed enough from Nigel Tape to get drunk. Broke, out of work, starved of sex and frightened to disintegration of a half-paid murderer, The Rock blamed everyone else.
When the Herald capsized, Emil Jacques’ gun-laden metal suitcase slid away inexorably from between his feet. He stretched to catch it, and fell from a height, and the last thing the murderer who feared flying saw was the wall of water that drowned him.
At ten o’clock that evening, while the cold North Sea still swirled in eddies through the settling wreck, Gypsy Joe left his house and made his quiet normal rounds of his stableful of dozing horses; as he would safely do the next night, and the next night, and the next.
The stars were bright.
Not knowing why, Gypsy Joe felt at peace.
Song for Mona
There are crimes that aren’t punishable by imprisonment or fines. There’s no official offence called Grievous Mental Harm. Malice aforethought can apply to more than murder — but malice can be nonplussed by goodwill.
Song for Mona is a new story about an old old sin.
Joanie Vine accompanied her mother to the races and loathed every minute of it. Joanie Vine was ashamed of the way her mother dressed, spoke and lived; that is to say, she recoiled with averted eyes from the weathered tweed trilby above the tightly-belted raincoat; winced at the loud unreconstructed vowels and grammar of a Welsh woman from the valleys, and couldn’t bring herself to identify to others her mother’s occupation as a groom of horses.
Joanie Vine accompanied her mother to the first day of the Cheltenham Festival — one of the most prestigious jump meetings of the year — solely because it was her mother’s sixtieth birthday, and Joanie Vine aimed to receive admiring plaudits from her friends for her magnanimous thoughtfulness. Even before the first race she’d decided to lose her mother as soon as possible, but meanwhile she couldn’t understand why so many people instinctively smiled at the ill-dressed woman she had automatically relegated to one step behind her heels.
Mona Watkins — Joanie Vine’s mother — bore her daughter dutiful love and wouldn’t admit to herself that what Joanie felt for her was close to physical hatred. Joanie didn’t like Mona touching her and wriggled away from any attempt at a motherly hug. Mona, if she thought about it, though she didn’t often because of the regret it caused her, could blame Joanie’s progression from adolescent rebellion to active dislike on the advent in the local amateur dramatic society of a certain plump self-satisfied thirty-year-old smooth-tongued Peregrine Vine, assistant to auctioneers of antiques and fine arts.