‘The ship was wrecked deliberately then?’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘Why were you phoning me then?’
‘Marine solicitors. They want to see you.’
‘Why?’
He shook his head. ‘Can’t talk here. First — read that.’ He handed me a telex slip one of the operators had passed across to him. ‘Came in last night.’
It was from Lloyd’s agent at La Rochelle and dated the previous day, January 11:
VAGUE D’OR LOCKED INTO TRAWLER BASIN HERE TWO DAYS AGO. CAPTAIN HAS NO INFORMATION ARISTIDES SPERIDION. MAN TAKEN ON BOARD OFF
PORTHCURNO IS SHIP’S ENGINEER HENRI CHOFFEL. THIS MAN LEAVES IMMEDIATELY FOR PARIS EN ROUTE BY AIR TO BAHRAIN. THIS IS CERTAIN AS ALL NECESSARY BOOKINGS MADE LOCALLY.
The telex then went on to describe Choffel as short with dark hair -
POSSIBLY PIED NOIR, SPEAKS FRENCH WITH AN ACCENT, AQUILINE FEATURES, AGE 46, WIFE DEAD. DAUGHTER ONLY. ADDRESS 5042 LES TUFFEAUX, PARNAY, NEAR SAUMUR-ON-LOIRE. HOLDS FRENCH PASSPORT.
Time and occupation right, the Breton fishing boat, too. I was remembering a list I had read in one of the papers giving the names of French boats operating off the Cornish coast. I was almost certain one of them had been the Vague d’Or. Only the man’s name was different. ‘He must have had two passports,’ I said.
Ferrers nodded, handing me another telex. ‘This just came in.’ It was from Bahrain:
SUBJECT OF QUERY ARRIVED BAHRAIN YDAY MORNING. WENT STRAIGHT ABOARD FREIGHTER CORSAIRE, BUT NOT AS ENGINEER, AS PASSENGER. CORSAIRE NOW TAKING ON FUEL PREPARATORY TO SAILING.
So by now he would have gone. Ferrers took the telexes from me and passed them to one of the operators with instructions to transmit the information to Forthright & Co. ‘They’re the solicitors.’ He gave me a quick, searching glance, then jerked his head towards the far corner of the floor. ‘We don’t encourage visitors,’ he said as we got away from the clatter of the telexes. ‘So I’d be glad if you’d keep it to yourself that you’ve been here.’
‘It doesn’t give the ship’s destination,’ I said.
‘No, but I can soon find that out.’ He pushed past a man with an armful of the Lloyd’s List, and then we were in his little corner and he had plonked himself down at a table with a VDU on it. ‘Let’s see what the computer says.’ While his fingers were busy on the keyboard he introduced me to Spurling, a sharp-featured, sandy-haired man with a long freckled face and bushy sideburns. What the computer said was instruction incorrect. ‘Hell!’ He tried it again with the same result. ‘Looks as though our fellow in Bahrain got the name of the ship wrong.’
Spurling leaned over his shoulder. ‘Try the French spelling — with an “e” at the end, same as in his telex.’
He tried it and immediately line after line of print began coming up on the VDU screen, everything about the ship, the fact that it was French and due to sail today, also its destination, which was Karachi. He glanced up at me and I could see the wheels turning. ‘That ship you were mate on, plying between Bombay and the Gulf — based on Karachi, wasn’t she?’
I nodded.
‘And the crew, Pakistani?’
‘Some of them.’
‘So you speak the language.’
‘I speak a little Urdu, yes.’
He nodded, turning his head to stare at the windows and the driving lines of snow. ‘Choffel,’ he murmured. ‘That name rings a bell.’ He turned to Spurling. ‘Remember that little Lebanese freighter they found waterlogged but still afloat off Pantelleria? I suddenly thought of her in my bath this morning. Not in connection with Choffel, of course. But Speridion. Wasn’t Speridion the name of the ship’s engineer?’
Spurling thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Speridion, Choffel — not sure.’ He was frowning in concentration as he lit a cigarette from the butt of his last and stubbed out the remains in the tobacco tin beside his in-tray. ‘It’s quite a time back. Seventy-six, maybe seventy-seven.’ He hesitated, drawing on a cigarette. ‘The crew abandoned her. Skipper’s name, I remember—‘
‘Never mind the skipper. It’s the engineer we want.’
‘It’ll be on the file. I’m certain I put it on the file.’ He reached over to a small steel cabinet, but then he checked. ‘I need the ship’s name. You know that. Just give me the name…’
But Ferrers couldn’t remember the name, only that there had been a Greek engineer involved. From what they said I gathered the cabinet contained confidential casualty information that included the background of ships’ officers and crew members known to have been involved in fraud. Then Spurling was muttering to himself, still frowning in concentration: ‘A crook Lebanese company owned her. Can’t recall the company’s name, but Beirut. That’s where the ship was registered. A small tanker. I’m sure it was a tanker.’ And he added, ‘Pity you can’t remember the name. Everything in that file is listed under the name of a ship.’
‘I know that.’
‘Then you’d better start searching again.’
‘I’ve been through two years of casualty records already this morning. That’s seventy microfiches.’
‘You love it.’ Spurling grinned at me, nodding to a shelf full of thick loose-leafed volumes on the wall behind us. ‘All our casualty records are micro-filmed and filed in those binders. The VDU there acts as a viewing box and you can get a print-out at the touch of a button. It’s Barty’s own personal toy. Try the winter of seventy-five, seventy-six.’
‘Back to where we first started keeping records?’ Ferrers got slowly to his feet. ‘It’ll take me an hour to go through that lot.’
Spurling smiled at him wickedly. ‘It’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it?’
Ferrers gave a snort. ‘May I remind you we’re supposed to be keeping tabs on over six hundred vessels for various clients.’
‘They’ll never know, and if you pull the information Forthright want out of the box who’s to say you’re wasting your time?’ Spurling looked at me and dropped an eyelid, his face deadpan. ‘Come to think of it, I doubt if it was winter. They were several days in an open boat. Try March or April, seventy-seven.
She had her tanks full of arms, that’s why you remember her.’
Ferrers nodded, reaching down the second volume from the far end of the shelf. I watched him as he searched quickly through the fiche pockets, extracted one and slipped it into the scanning slot. Immediately the VDU screen came alive with information which changed quickly as he shifted from microfilm to microfilm. And when he had finished with that fiche, I put it back in its pocket for him, while he began searching the next. Each fiche, measuring about 6x4 inches, was imprinted with rows of tiny little microfilms hardly bigger than pinheads.
He was over half an hour, working first forwards through 1977, then backwards into ‘76. He worked in the silence of total concentration, and with Spurling’s attention divided between his typewriter and the telephone, they seemed to have forgotten all about me. At one point Spurling passed me a telex giving the latest report on the Petros Jupiter salvage situation. Smit International, the Dutch salvage people, had announced their intention of withdrawing from any further attempt to salvage the wreck. Their divers had only been able to operate for two days since the explosion, a total of 8 hours. But apparently this had been sufficient to establish the general condition of the wreck, which was now lying in three sections to the north of Kettle’s Bottom with only the skeletal remains of the superstructure awash at low tide. The effect of the explosion, followed by the intense heat generated by the ignition of the five tanks containing oil, had been such that they regarded any attempt to salvage the remains of the vessel as quite profitless. And they added that, in its present position, they did not consider it a danger to shipping. Further, all tanks were now completely ruptured and empty of oil.