“How were you supposed to kill me, Peel?”
“We was just supposed to drown you,” he almost whispered in reply, “then sink the little boat. To make it look like you’d drowned and the money had sunk.”
“To make it look as if I’d stolen the money? As well as the painting?”
“Yes, guv.”
“Thank you, Peel,” I said very politely, then turned away from him. I found some old stained charts in a drawer, but I. didn’t really need them. I knew where fifty twelve zero three forty-six was. I could probably have got there blindfold, but I spread a passage chart out all the same, then reloaded the gun’s right barrel. “Did you turn the gas on in my boat, Peel?” I asked it very casually.
“No, guv, honest.”
“Did Mr Garrard?”
“No.” In the glass I could see he was shivering. A big shivering musclebound man. “Honest,” he added pathetically. He was trying to help me now.
I turned again and fired. The gun hammered at the night and Peel cowered and shivered.
I lowered the gun so that it was pointing into his face. “Did you or Mr Garrard turn the gas on in my boat, Peel?”
“No, guv, we didn’t. As God is my witness, we didn’t. I don’t know nothing about any gas! We’ve been in France, Mr Garrard and me, we ain’t been anywhere near your boat! Not since that night he tipped it over, and he wasn’t even supposed to do that! We weren’t even supposed to kill you that time, guv. We was only scaring you!” He was staring at me with doggish devotion now; I was his master and he would please me. “We was just supposed to scare you! And that first time, Mr Garrard was only going to talk to you, but he found the girl on your boat and he thought you was double-crossing us!” He was staring into the twin black holes of the gun barrels. “Honest, guv.” He paused, evidently remembering who I was. “Honest, my lord.”
I turned away from him. I reloaded the gun with the last cartridge, then laid the weapon down. The VHF was screwed to the wheelhouse roof and tuned to Channel 37; the private marina channel. That was the channel on which my instructions had been relayed, and presumably the channel on which my enemies were even now listening. They had to be close, within thirty or forty miles, which meant France or the islands. I thought France the likeliest answer. Perhaps it was Elizabeth keeping a radio watch, wondering what was happening out in the fog-shrouded waters, and it was time to put my sister out of her apprehensive misery. I unhooked the microphone, held it a little too far from my mouth, and said the single word. “Fingers.” I paused, then repeated the word before hanging up the microphone. There was no acknowledgement, but I’d expected none. This night’s trickery had been designed to keep the radio traffic to a minimum to avoid detection. It had all been so very clever.
And nothing, I thought, was cleverer than the way Elizabeth had used the Decca navigation system, for only a Decca set could have sent two landlubbers safely across the Channel. I doubted whether Garrard could have navigated his way through the shoals, tides and rocks of the Channel Islands, but any fool could read the little arrows on the Decca which told him to go left or right, forwards or backwards. Cleverest of all, I thought, was the selection of Les Trois Grunes; the only cardinal buoy in the islands which offered a straight course back to the second waypoint; a course that went arrow straight between the rocks of the Casquets and the northern reefs of Guernsey. No need to dog-leg, no need to read a chart, all that was required was to follow the little arrows. They had been clever, so very clever. Had Peter, in one of his soberer moments, told Elizabeth about the Decca? Or about the gas bottle she would find on any deep-sea yacht?
I turned. “Right, Peel!” I said enthusiastically. “On your feet and into the cuddy.”
“The what?”
“The cabin. There.” I pointed under the foredeck where a tiny space afforded two bunks and a galley. “Dry yourself off and make us some tea or coffee. No sugar for me, just milk. And hurry!”
He hurried. He saw his partner’s blood smeared across the windscreen as he passed me, but he didn’t react. I must have looked fearsome, half-naked and bloody, so he just ducked down and scuttled gratefully into the cuddy. “Throw me up a towel!” I shouted after him. “And any spare clothes down there.”
I pushed the throttle forward and felt the stern dig down into the water. Eighty-seven miles to go, then the last confrontation. And all for one picture.
Peel made tea. Mist-Spinner thumped happily through the waves. I had dried myself, wrapped the towel about the cut at my waist, then pulled on a thick sweater which Peel had brought up from the cuddy. He was eager for my approval now. “Good cup of tea?” he asked me.
“What you’re going to do now” – I ignored his friendliness – “is clear up the boat. You see that boxlike thing on the front?”
“Yes, guv. My lord.”
“It’s called a forehatch. Open it, then tip Garrard inside.”
“Tip…”
“Do it!”
He did it. Once I’d heard Garrard’s corpse thump down into the cuddy, I gave Peel a bucket and mop. “Now clean off the blood.”
He started work. I pulled the case of bearer bonds on to the chart table and left it there. The engine ran happily. I was making ten knots, a good enough speed.
The fog cleared when we were north of the Casquets. I turned off all the wheelhouse lights so I could see better. We were about to cross the traffic separation zones where the big tankers thumped oblivious in and out of the Atlantic. Mist-Spinner left a clean clear wake on the dark swell. Peel, his job done, crouched at the far side of the wheelhouse and stared in awe at the giant ships.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Peel.”
“Your first name, you idiot.”
“Ronny.”
I rewarded him with a smile. “Got any cigarettes, Ronny?”
“Don’t smoke, guv.”
“Garrard did, didn’t he?”
“He did, yes.”
“Any in his pockets, do you think?”
He stared in horror at me. “You want me to…” Then he realised that was precisely what I wanted him to do, so he opened the cuddy door, took a breath, and climbed down. I could hear his noises of disgust, but after a few minutes he reappeared with a half-empty packet and a lighter.
“Thank you, Ronny.”
He was pathetically grateful for a kind word. I lit a cigarette and dragged the smoke into my lungs.
“Am I in trouble?” Peel asked after a while.
“A lot.” I throttled back to let a bulk carrier slide a half-mile ahead of me. The beam from the Channel Light Vessel was reflected from the long waves to starboard.
“I only did what Mr Garrard told me to do,” Peel pleaded.
“And what else did Mr Garrard tell you, Ronny? Did he tell you about my sister?”
He nodded. “She was going to get the painting when you was dead, see? And then she was going to sell it, and she was going to give Mr Garrard his share of the money. Because he bought it, you see.”
“I don’t see, no.”
“Right back at the beginning. When he met your sister at the races. She asked him to help her find it, and she gave him money for the expenses, like, and he did find it, and he bought a third share off the bloke, because the bloke was short of readies and couldn’t find a proper buyer. It’s too hot, you see. Mr Garrard said you couldn’t sell really famous paintings, only the rubbish.”
I was staring ahead at the empty sea. Peel was worried by my silence, but for a long time I just steered the compass course and ignored him.
“A third share?” I asked him at last.
“That’s right. One for Mr Garrard, one for your sister, though of course she didn’t have to pay anything ’cos she was going to sell it, like, and the other third –”