“My break came about three months later. Flackyard came into the bar on his own without his minders, which was very rare because they followed him everywhere. He talked around the houses for hours, never getting to the point, always in riddles. Eventually, he came clean and offered me an opportunity beyond my wildest dreams.”
“What did he offer you,” I asked.
“He offered me the opportunity of a life time — to get back at, and get equal, with the stuck up gits in the army who had me kicked out. But most of all he offered me Oliver Hawkworth on a plate. The man I most hated and still hate to this very day.”
George poured himself another brandy from the bottle I’d brought down from the saloon. He picked up his drink and sipped at it. “You’re probably wondering what the catch was with Flackyard. Well, there wasn’t one, all he wanted from me was my help in setting up a string of titty bars along the south coast.”
“Did you plant the bomb that killed my friend Charlie McIntyre?” I asked.
“Kill him? I couldn’t have killed him.” He drank some more. “You can’t imagine a mountaineer cutting the rope of another mountaineer, could you?”
“Well, it’s like that. I had a lot of respect for Charlie, he was undoubtedly the best explosives expert on the open market as well as a damn good diver.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you George, but I had to ask.”
“It was Rumple,” George said, ever so quietly that I almost didn’t hear him say it.
He poured himself another brandy, shouted up to the girl to cut the engine revs, and told me that we were just wasting fuel. We sat in silence for some time, looking out to sea. Somehow I knew what George had told me was all true.
Chapter 31
Ferdinand and I sat on the rear deck of the “Star Dust” in silence for some time. When I finally said it, I tried to make it sound as casual as you like. “So were you given Constantine’s list by Flackyard at the very outset, were you, George?”
“You must be joking; Flackyard would never give anyone that list.”
“So how did you get the names from it?”
“You make me laugh,” said Ferdinand. I found that difficult to believe.
“Don’t you realise even now, that we have all been completely outsmarted by a man who is cleverer than all of us put together?”
“Go on,” I said.
“One man and one man only has access to the list, to the only copy that is in existence. One man went to a lot of trouble to get it and even more to putting it somewhere only he can get to it.” He paused, after a long silence he said, “The list is stored on a CD inside a watertight canister made to look like a lobster pot on the sea bed. To retrieve the pot you have to know roughly where it’s located, but because of the tidal currents it moves around.”
“That equipment in the aluminium case over there,” he pointed to the case laying on the lower deck, “well, that underwater sonar ‘calls’ the lobster pot to the surface by remotely detonating and inflating the pot’s tiny onboard ballast tanks. But you have to be virtually on top of it before the sonar can send a strong enough signal.”
“And that’s what you were trying to do just now.”
“I stole that equipment from Flackyard’s house. It’s a portable unit designed for close range locating. Flackyard has the real thing in his study.”
“He sits there every evening before dinner and gloats because he knows exactly where the list is at all times. All he has to do is bring up a local coastal chart on his computer screen; the homing device he had fitted to the pot interacts with the specially designed software, and bingo the computer does the rest.” Ferdinand’s voice went very quiet.
“He’d tricked me again.” He looked up at me sharply. “It’s not there in that cove, it’s moved to another location!”
I nodded. “Tell me about Hawkworth,” I said.
“Hawkworth was only one,” George went on, “Flackyard forced a lot of people on the list to invest money in his businesses or ensure that lucrative Government development contracts were his for the taking.”
“But you soon got the idea,” I supplemented, “you told Hawkworth to arrange a supply line of raw opium so that your little partnership with Caplin would flourish.”
“It wasn’t hard to guess, I suppose.” Ferdinand nodded.
I said, “What did Flackyard do with the money?”
There was no reply. I said, “Has it gone to finance extreme right wing movements? Has it gone to finance present-day fascist groups — is he part of an organisation they call the New World Order?”
Ferdinand closed his eyes, “Yes,” he said. “I’m still a believer in the cause.”
“Robert Flackyard is a great man, but like many that are truly great he has some childish weaknesses that will most certainly bring him down off that pedestal one day. Of that you can be sure.” His eyes were still closed.
The girl’s voice from the wheelhouse sounded above the beat of the sea.
We were rounding Old Harry Rocks.
“I’ll come up.” As I said it there was a thump like a heavy hammer being swung against the hull.
“A piece of flotsam,” Ferdinand shouted up at me. The girl had brought the throttle back to half speed. Again there was a thump and a third immediately after. The girl coughed and then slumped, falling sideways off the stool. I caught her. She was limp as she slid to the floor. The front of my shirt was soaked in blood.
Ferdinand, Fiona and I all stayed motionless; Ferdinand still tied to the boat and the girl at my feet.
As we processed the possibilities through our brains. I was thinking of Flackyard, but Ferdinand had a more practical slant. He knew the person concerned.
“It’s Harry Caplin,” he said. The boat purred gently towards the shore.
“Where?” I said.
“Firing his hunting rifle from the cliff-top if I know him,” said Ferdinand.
There were two more thumps and now listening for it, I heard the gun crack a long way away. The deck was slippery with the girl’s blood.
Ferdinand had broken out in a sweat, and his eyes were nervous, flitting around trying to see the invisible sniper. “If we go up to the wheelhouse we get shot. If we stay down here the boat heaves itself on to the rocks around the point at Old Harry, and we will drown.” The cruiser lurched against the swell.
“Can we get to the rudder control without going across the deck?”
“It would take too long, in this sort of sea we have to do something quick.”
Without the girl at the helm the boat was slopping and slipping beam-on to the sea. It was a big fibreglass and plywood craft. I imagined it hitting the rocks and changing to shredded wheat at one swipe. The girl had regained consciousness, crying out with the searing pain from her punctured lung.
Fiona knelt down and took off her jacket. She covered the girls upper body and then said to me.
“Jake, throw me over that life jacket. I want to prop her head up into a more comfortable position.”
Ferdinand had clambered up the steps from the dive platform and was screaming at me to untie him.
This done, he snaked his way towards the saloon on his belly, reappearing a few seconds later with the oneinch thick; round aluminium tabletop from the main cabin in his arms. How he had managed to lift it with so much brandy inside him, I have no idea. But he had summoned the strength to heave it up the four steps without getting his head shot off, letting it thump heavily onto the floor of wheelhouse and then staying low using it as a shield to get onto the bridge. He rolled it forward and I heard a great echoing clang as one of Harry Caplin’s bullets glanced off the metal. Ferdinand was lying full-length on the deck by now, with the lowest part of the boat’s wheel in his hand. He spun it round and the boat began to respond.