The Rumples had completely disappeared into thin air or were on the run, with every Government agency in the land looking for them. But who would they be looking for? As masters of disguise and deception, I doubted very much whether the Rumples were even in the UK anymore.
Anything that had to be done had to be done on our own. I sat down in front of the computer screen.
“What are you doing?” asked Fiona. I looked up at her, and asked her if she would mind making some very strong coffee for us both.
I typed the brief report to LJ in London, clicked the Send key and then put the laptop away. Fiona brought coffee. I told her I had sent an update of the situation to LJ, and that she could either continue the chase with me or was free to take any action she wished in respect of the drugs operation. I also reminded her that because of the Partners’ association with the British Government, any mention of Ferran & Cardini or myself would be denied emphatically and that all traces of our involvement down here in Dorset would be erased from all files as a matter of course. That said, and out of the way, I stood up and went through to the kitchen.
“You’re not giving me the brush off, that easily. I’m with you all the way, like I said before, Jake Dillon. We’re going to finish this together, whether you like it or not.”
“If that’s what you want. We’ll start by rowing out to Harry’s boat then,” I stifled a yawn, and was suddenly feeling really tired.
Fiona brought the dinghy gently alongside the hull of the Star Dust. I scrambled on to the teak laid deck in my bare feet — I didn’t want to risk leaving wet footmarks across it. Fiona stepped agilely onto the ladder, and before coming aboard, kicked the dinghy away into the channel.
I watched through night vision binoculars, willing George ‘Thomas’ Ferdinand not to appear until we were both suitably concealed. Then I walked across the bridge looking for a place for us both to hide and wait. There was only the one stowage locker on the far side of the wheelhouse, which would just about take me. Fiona wasn’t happy about getting inside the tight space and so went off below to find her own hiding space.
It was a bit tight for my size, almost coffin-like, but I jammed the blade of my diver’s knife under the bottom edge of the fibreglass lid, which gave me some airflow, but not enough to dispel the smell of damp. We waited.
Half an hour later, something struck the side of the boat with a dull thud. It wasn’t very seaman like and I began to wonder whether it was George.
Perhaps Harry had still been playing games and had lured me into a trap. I flushed with sudden fear at the thought of this locker really becoming a coffin.
I heard George’s voice shouting at the other person in the dinghy to keep a tight hold of the rope. The dinghy was evidently drifting away. A young woman’s voice, a little hysterical was telling him to take hold of the metal case. “Don’t drop it in the water, you stupid bitch. The oars are all over the place; you’re going to lose one of them.”
George pulled hard on the rope and the small dinghy slammed into the side of the hull again. The girl clambered onto the deck and in a West Country accent, she hurled a string of expletives at George Ferdinand.
They seemed to be an age getting aboard, and then I heard George walking across the deck to the control console. There was a click as he switched on the lights over the controls. If I held my face horizontal, with my ear pressed tight against the deck, I could just see through one of the small ventilation grills at the bottom of the locker lid. My right eye had a narrow range of vision that included the top half of the person at the controls.
I could see George in profile — the pock marked face with long sideburns and the small scar around his ear. The anchor came up with a clattering and the big diesel inboard motors throbbed into life at the push of the starter button. George engaged the twin screws and I felt the water thrash under the hull.
The lights above his head threw his sunken eyes into two dark, skeletal shadows. His hands moved across the controls, articulate and smooth, while his eyes watched the beams, the compass and the rev. counters. This was the real George, a man that I’d never seen before, a very capable, professional sailor. From the seat at the controls he couldn’t see the ship’s clock. Every few moments he would call to the girl with him, “What time is it?” and she would tell him.
He moved the throttles as far forward as they could go and the hull began hammering against the water like a road worker’s pneumatic hammer. When he was satisfied with the course, George told the woman to take the wheel and hold it steady. I heard the click as the aluminium case was unlocked. I pressed my ear closer to the wooden deck inside the locker, and this gave me a slightly wider range of vision. The woman was staring into the dark while George crouched on the floor over what looked like some sort of portable sonar equipment, to which he was connecting headphones and the cable for what looked like the underwater sounder. Then he stood up and walked to the stern of the boat, placing the coil of wire near to the lower dive platform, and his footsteps came back towards the wheelhouse.
He shouted, “Starboard — keep the bloody line steady as she goes, will you.” The girl he had brought aboard was mid twenties and definitely, I thought, the same person that Fiona had interviewed, firstly at Flackyard’s club and then for a second time only a few days ago.
She sat at the wheel, her hands gripping it tightly, looking straight ahead into the darkness. George was talking quickly to her about Harry making a run for it. How the bastard had cleaned out George’s bank account of nearly three million pounds. George was completely at a loss as to how Harry could possibly have found out the details and passwords of the account, gained access electronically using an Internet Café access point, and then completely covered his tracks.
There was a click and the girl was bathed in reflected light as Ferdinand moved the beam of the big searchlight out across the waves. I felt the boat slow and the engine pitch drop as George brought the cruiser about a few degrees, slamming it into the swell. Outside there was the sound of water sloshing over the edge and rushing along the teak deck. The boat vibrated again as Ferdinand pushed the big throttle levers forward as far as they would go. After two or three minutes he slackened off the power and turned to port.
He shouted at the girl to use the big searchlight and to keep her eyes peeled for any rocks just below the surface of the water. We must be entering a cove, I thought. These parts of the Dorset coastline abound with both large and small inlets and coves that have been used for centuries by smugglers, and are ideal places for putting ashore without anyone seeing. George had dropped the sonar over the side, and was now listening through the headphones intently. His arm came up, flapping about and he shouted frantically at the girl to go gently around the cove again, this time in a tight arc.
Becoming more and more panicked by George’s shouting, the young girl was not only trying to look out for rocks, but steer the boat as well.
Ferdinand in frustration at her slowness to respond to his orders hurled at her a string of four letter words as he snatched the wheel from her and spun it viciously, knocking her sideways onto the throttle levers in his haste to get her out of the way.
The large cruiser slid sideways, uncontrolled, the propellers screaming to get hold of the water as the deck heeled over towards the dark sea.
It was bad timing on my part that I had chosen that moment to emerge.
The locker lid flew open and I tumbled out, sprawling across the deck with the life jackets that I had been lying on. My face struck one of the uprights supporting the chart table, my arm-twisted behind me, and I heard my automatic pistol slide forward out of its holster. George got control and the deck came level.