'I wish it did.' I jumped on to the cabin top, moving aft across the top of it to drop down into the cockpit. There was a swivel chair for the helmsman immediately aft of the wheel and a console full of dials — engine revs, speed through the water, true and apparent wind speeds, just about everything anybody could want, and though the door was locked, I could see through the glass panel that the whole arrangement was repeated in the saloon, which was broad and spacious, running across the ship with a semi-circular settle, a big folding table and steps leading down into the hulls on each side. Compared with the old Santa Mariathe accommodation was so grand it was more like a house, and around the chart table, on the starb'd side, there was everything a navigator could wish for, radar, sat-nav and Decca, ship-to-shore radio telephone…
'Quite a machine, eh?' the American said.
I nodded, laughing ruefully. To own this sort of a vessel I'd have to sell both our villas. They were in our joint names, and even if Soo agreed and we succeeded in selling them on the present market, it would probably not be enough. The ship needed painting, of course, and the scrape along the outer curve of the port hull was deeper than I had thought. It looked as though some frames might be broken. But otherwise she seemed in remarkably good shape. There was even a big semi-inflatable moored alongside with wheel steering, spray screen and remote controls to the outboard engine.
I hauled myself back on to the American's deck. 'You came through Gib, you say. Did you see a Royal Navy frigate in the harbour there?'
'Not that I recall. It's a big place, all those high stone quays, and anyway we were round in the marina.' And he added, 'We saw some US Navy ships though. They were powering through the Straits as we came in from Cape St Vincent. Destroyers by the look of them. More watchdogs for the Sixth Fleet's carriers, I guess.'
I was back on the dock then, wondering why anyone should want an old fishing boat like the Santa Mariain place of that cat. I could see her name now. It was on the flat, sloping stern of each hull — Thunderflash.If I owned a machine like that… I turned back to the American. 'What made you think I was the owner?'
He smiled and gave a quick shrug. 'Something in the way you were moving about her. Thought maybe it was a delivery job.' There had been four of them on board, he told me, when they came in that morning. One he took to be the skipper, two were obviously crew, and there had also been a short, 'dark man dressed in a suit who looked and behaved like a passenger. They had had to clear immigration, as well as health and customs, so he presumed the boat had come from France or Italy, which could of course mean Corsica or Sardinia. The passenger had gone ashore immediately afterwards, the skipper about an hour later, while the others just sat around drinking wine and listening to the radio. The skipper had returned about half an hour before I had arrived with a man who was obviously Florez and the four of them had then gone across to Anton's for a drink.
The cafe-bar was almost opposite the Estacion Maritima, just back of the Customs House. Above it loomed the older part of Mahon, clouds scudding over a moon-dark sky. As always at this time of night, the bar was dark and very crowded. They were at a table at the far end, heads close together, coffee cups and glasses at their elbows, a bottle in the centre. They were talking in English and as I approached I heard one of them say, 'Fifteen minutes, and that's not driving fast.'
Florez saw me then, and as he switched on a smile and got to his feet, the man sitting with his back to me raised his hand as though for silence. 'You want a drink with your coffee, Mr Steele?' Florez called the order to the barman and pulled up a chair. 'Later we go over to the ship.' He didn't introduce me to any of the others, merely saying I was the man he had been talking about.
There was a short, awkward silence after I had sat down. I was between Florez and the man I took to be the skipper. He wore an old reefer and his neck stuck out of the collar of it like a column running straight up into the long, narrow head. His face, what little I could see of it in that light, was weathered to a dark brown, a strong, flamboyantly handsome face with a powerful jaw line and a nose that hung straight and sharp over a narrow, tight-lipped mouth. It was an almost Gallic face, the eyes very bright, the brilliance of the whites under the thick head of black hair giving them a wide-eyed look that was almost a stare. A little black moustache, turned down over the comers of the mouth, seemed to split his features in two, dividing the jaw and the mouth from the sharp, pointed nose and staring eyes. If it hadn't been for the moustache, I think I might have recognised him at once.
That fishing boat of yours…' he said. 'Senor Florez took me to see it this morning, fust what I and my two friends here are looking for.' His two friends, seated across the table from me, nodded. One of them was small and sharp-featured, the other much larger, a big barrel of a chest, broad shoulders, his crumpled features reminding me of a boxer from Dublin I had picked up one time in Gib and delivered to Tangier. 'We got to earn a living.' He smiled an engaging, friendly smile. 'Nice place, Mahon.
Fishing good, too.' There was a softness in his voice, the accent faintly Irish.
'What he means is we're just about broke,' the man beside me went on. 'We need a fishing boat and somewhere ashore where we can live and store our gear. You happen to have what we want. I saw that villa you're building this afternoon. I also had a look at Port d'Addaia. If we had the villa we'd keep the boat there. Nice and handy. Well sheltered, too.' He wasn't looking at me now, his eyes on his coffee as though talking to himself and his hands flat on the table. They were big, fine-boned, very capable-looking hands. 'Now tell me something about this fishing boat of yours — speed, range, charts on board, sails, etc. I've read the details, of course, and one of your men showed me over her, but I'd like to hear about her from you, okay?'
My coffee came as I began to run through the inventory and the performance, and all the time I was thinking of that catamaran and trying to build up the value of the Santa Maria,knowing that the exchange was heavily weighted in my favour. To build a cat like that at the present time good God, it would cost a fortune.
A glass had come with my coffee. He reached for the bottle and filled it for me. 'Salud!'We drank, raising our glasses as though the deal were already completed.
'I saw you come in this morning,' I said. 'Where were you from?'
He stared at me, and there was something about the eyes.. but then he had turned away. 'Fishing,' he said. 'We'd been fishing.'
'You had a passenger on board, so I naturally thought..'
'I tell you, we'd been fishing.' He looked at me again, his eyes coldly hostile. 'There was a friend of mine with us. We enjoy fishing. All of us.' He stared at me hard for a moment. 'Don't we?' he said to the other two, and they nodded. 'Okay.' He knocked back the rest of his drink and got almost violently to his feet. 'If you're interested in the deal, then we'll go over to Thunderflashand you can poke around down below. But — ' and he leaned suddenly over me, prodding my chest with a hard index finger, 'don't go asking stupid questions, see. One of the reasons we're all here is because Florez said you were discreet — when it was to your advantage. Right?'
I didn't say anything. Looking up at him and seeing those eyes staring down at me, I suddenly realised who he was. This was the man Gareth Lloyd Jones had been looking for. Evans. Patrick Evans. Slowly I got to my feet, the others too, and we all went out and across the road to the dock. The American was below as we clambered across his boat and dropped on to the deck of the catamaran. Evans unlocked the door, ushering me below in a way that left me in no doubt that he was the owner, and the moment I stepped down into that great saloon, with its breadth and comfort and the fabulous view for'ard, I was hooked. I had never been in this type of craft before. Even at the Boat Show in London, the last time I had been there, I hadn't seen anything like this, so immaculately designed, so perfectly suited to cruising in the Mediterranean.