I heard it, but somehow I didn’t take it in, the moment of Pieter Hals’s death. My gaze, my whole consciousness was fixed on the Aurora B’s bows. They were turning now, turning back to her original course — but too slowly. Steadily, relentlessly they were closing the gap that separated them from the other tanker. There was no further order to fire, nothing Tigris could do, the oil-filled bulk of the tanker ploughing on and everybody holding their breath waiting for the moment of impact.
It came, strangely, without any sound, a crumpling of the bows, a curling up and ripping open of steel plates below the Howdo Stranger’s superstructure, all in slow time. And it went on and on, for the collision was at an oblique angle and the Aurora B went slicing up the whole long side of the other tanker, ripping her open from end to end, and the sound of that disembowelment came to us as a low grinding and crunching that went on and on, endlessly.
It stopped in the end, after what seemed a great while, the two black-hulled leviathans finally coming to rest with barely two or three cables of open water between them, water that became dark and filthy, almost black, with the crude oil bubbling out of them, the waves all flattened by the weight of it. No fire. No smoke. Just the oil bubbling up from under the sea like a volcano erupting.
The Nimrod made a slow pass over the scene, the pilot reporting — ‘From where I’m sitting it looks as though both tankers are aground on the Sandettie. One has her port side completely shattered. She was going astern at the moment of collision so she really got herself carved up. She still has her engines at full astern. I can see the prop churning up the seabed, a lot of brown mud and sand mixing with the oil pouring out of her tanks. The other tanker — the rogue — she’s got her bows stove in, of course, and it looks as though she’s holed on the starb’d side right back as far as the pipe derricks. A lot of oil coming out of her, too…’
And Pieter Hals dead. I was quite certain he was dead. That sound had been the chatter of automatics. ‘Looks like the Kent coast is going to get the brunt of it,’ Fellowes said quietly. The forecast was for the westerly winds to back south-easterly and increase to gale force in the southern North Sea. And since oil slicks move at roughly one-thirtieth of the wind speed he reckoned the first of the oil would come ashore right below the Langdon Battery Operations Centre at about noon the next day.
It was two days later, after dark, that I finally arrived back at Balkaer, stumbling down the cliff path in the starlight, the squat shape of the cottage showing black against the pale glimmer of the sea. There’d be a fire to welcome me, Jean had said when I’d phoned her from London, and now I could see the smoke of it drifting lazily up. I could hear the beat of the waves in the cove, the sound of them surging along the cliffs. Suddenly I felt as though I had never been away, everything so familiar. I would lift the latch and Karen would come running…
The key was there in the door and it wasn’t locked. I lifted the latch and pushed it open. The bright glow of the fire lit the interior, shadows flickering on the walls, and I was thinking of her as I closed the door, shutting out the sound of the sea in the cove. And then I turned, and my heart stood still.
She was sitting in the chair. In her own chair. Sitting there by the fire, her hands in her lap, her head turned towards me and her face in shadow. She was watching me. I could feel her eyes on me and my knees were like water.
‘Karen!’, I heard myself breathe her name, and the figure rose from the chair, her firelit shadow climbing from wall to ceiling, so big it filled the room.
She spoke then, and it wasn’t Karen, it wasa’l voice.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I startled y The voice was liquid, a soft lilt that was Welsh like Karen’s, but a different intonation. ‘Jean Kerrison—* she pronounced it Jarne. ‘They’re out this evening, at St Ives. So she gave me the key, said I could wait for you here.’
‘Why?’ I had recognized her now and my voice was hostile, thinking of the miles of beaches black with oil, all those ships, men working round the clock — the Petros Jupiter all over again, and now Choffel’s daughter, here at Balkaer. Had they found his body? Was that it? Was he still alive? ‘Why?’ I said again. ‘Why have you come here?’
She gave a shrug. ‘To say I am sorry, I suppose.’ She had turned away so that the fire’s glow was on her face and I could see the determined line of the jaw, the broad brow beneath the jet black hair. ‘Did Jarne tell you she came-to see me? In London. Almost a month ago, it was. She came to my hotel.’
‘Jean — to London!’ I was still staring at her.
‘She want to tell me about the ship my father is in, the Petros Jupiter, and how you were out in a boat searching for your wife in a fog when she destroyed it. She want to tell me also what kind of man you are, so that I would know, you see, that you were not the man to kill my father.’ I had moved towards the fire and the flames lit her face as she looked at me, her expression strangely serene. ‘She is very fond of you, I think.’ And she added, ‘You are a lucky man to have people like Jarne and Jim Kerrison who will do so much for you. She almost convince me, you see.’
‘So you still think I killed him?’
‘It’s true then. You don’t know.’ She half shook her head, sitting down again and smiling gently to herself. ‘I don’t believe it when she tell me you don’t know.’
I stared at her, feeling suddenly very tired. ‘What is all this? Why are you here?’
‘I tell you, to say I am sorry. I didn’t believe you, but now I know.’ And then she blurted it out: ‘I have withdrawn everything — everything I say about you. I should have done that after Jarne saw me, but instead I went back to France. I do not say anything, not then. But now… There is a full statement from the Pakistani crew. Everything you say about how my father is shot and wounded is confirmed. It was that man Sadeq.’ She hesitated, and there were tears in her eyes. Then she said, her voice almost choked with emotion, ‘So now I am here. To apologize to you, and to ask you something…’ Again the hesitation. ‘A favour.’ There was a long silence. At length she said, ‘Will you tell me what happened please, on the Aurora B, when you meet my father, and later, particularly later, when you are together on the dhow.’
I had slumped into my usual chair, unable to think of anything at that moment but the fact that I was cleared. Free! Free of everything now, except the past. Just as he had said, no one can escape that.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘I want to know.’
‘It’s all in my statement.’
‘I know it is. I have read it. But that is not the same, is it now? I would like you to tell me yourself.’
Go through it all again! I shook my head.
‘Please,’ she pleaded. And suddenly she was out of the chair, squatting on the rush matting at my feet. ‘Don’t you understand? What I did to you, the accusations, the anger, the hate — yes, hate — was because I loved him. He was such a gentle, kindly man, and with my mother dead, he was all I had. He brought me up, and whatever he did wrong was done out of love for my mother. Try to understand, will you — and forgive.’ Silence then and the firelight flickering on her face, her eyes staring at me very wide. ‘What did you talk about, on that dhow? What did he say? He must have said much. All that time together, two days. Two whole days.’