Cassidy said, “We’ll go aboard if you like. You’ll get a closer look.”
Shaw nodded. “Thank you, Captain.”
Cassidy went aft towards the gangway leading into the vessel’s after well-deck. Shaw and Hargreave followed him up a ladder to the boat-deck and then down into the fore well-deck where the cargo was being worked. Cassidy called “Good morning” to the ship’s Chief Officer and then he and the others, standing clear of the hatch, watched as the next sling was lifted from the dockside. As the jib, controlled by Seldon in the cab, was swung in towards the ship, Shaw realized he was being watched. He looked up at Seldon’s face. He met the man’s eyes, saw the anxious, puzzled look, then the sudden gleam of fear and hate that told him he had been recognized. Watching the face, fixing it in his mind, Shaw failed to notice that the speed of swing of the jib, and of the heavy load hanging from it, was increasing as it came in towards the hold. With the cased machine parts hanging at a ten-degree angle from the horizontal line and around twenty feet behind the jib, the crane centred over the hold and stopped dead, the flexible steel-wire rope coming out fast over the sheaves of the blocks as the load swung inwards.
Shaw just heard Cassidy’s roar: “Mind your heads, there!” then he felt himself being flung violently to the deck. As he hit the planking the big crates swung viciously across where he and Hargreave had been standing a fraction of a second earlier, taking with them a whole section of the guardrail, splintering themselves on the steel hatch-coaming which was now bent right out of shape, and coming to rest on the deck. Miraculously, no one had been hurt.
Looking up, Shaw caught the vicious animal twist of the crane-driver’s lips, saw the white face and in it, once again, the look of fear and hate. A moment later Siggings started to scramble out of his cab.
Shaw and Cassidy both yelled it out together: “Stop that man!”
Chapter Five
Back in the dockmaster’s office Shaw lit a cigarette and said, “I agree entirely it was deliberate, but I want it played down. Treated as an accident — which I take it in fact it could have been?”
“It could have been,” Cassidy snapped. “But only if the crane-driver was so god-damn inexperienced it’d have been a crime to let him loose on anything that moved!”
“You mean it’ll look suspicious if he’s allowed to get away with it — and I agree.” Shaw blew smoke. “I’ve no objection to his being put through the usual disciplinary routine for an act of gross carelessness. My point is, I don’t want the police brought in — that’s all.”
Cassidy looked at him quizzically. “Until now, I’ve been assuming you were a policeman yourself.”
“Not exactly. I can’t go into details, and all this is strictly confidential. I don’t want anything to go outside the dock, if you follow. I’m going to ask you to treat this as an act of carelessness and inefficiency — haul Seldon over the coals for that just as much as you like, but don’t let on you know it was a deliberate attempt to kill someone — undoubtedly me. Can you do that, Captain?”
Cassidy shrugged eloquently and glanced at Hargreave, who nodded. Hargreave said, “I don’t like it any more than you do, Captain. It’s no way to run a dock, but we’ll do it Shaw’s way for now. D’you want to see Seldon yourself?” he added, turning to Shaw.
“Not here. I’ll be making contact with him in my own way now I’ve identified him. Meanwhile, Captain, what’s your routine for dealing with him?”
“You know yourself he’s waiting for me to see him now,” Cassidy said shortly. “I’ll have him in and tell him a thing or two, and then suspend him from work pending consultation with the union.”
“And then?”
“After I’ve seen him, he can go home.”
Shaw said, “Fine.”
It wasn’t entirely surprising, perhaps, that Siggings had recognized him; quite possibly the man would have had Shaw pointed out to him aboard the New South Wales all that time ago, probably by the Swede, Sigurd Anderssen… and ever since, Shaw would have remained, quite naturally, in Siggings’s memory, would have remained as a man to be feared and avoided — and if he couldn’t be avoided, killed.
It all began to fit.
Shaw, hidden behind a newspaper although he was well back from the dock gates, waited in the driving seat of the Mercedes. He hadn’t long to wait before Siggings came out, on foot and looking dead scared, hands in pockets, head sunk between scraggy shoulder-blades and raincoat collar well up. He didn’t spot Shaw, though he took a good look all around while pretending to light a cigarette, before he turned north.
After that he moved fast.
Shaw started up the Mercedes and drove along behind Siggings, dropping to a crawl as he reached the man. Siggings looked round, white-faced, then stopped dead like a rabbit caught in the glare of headlights. Jerking the door open Shaw said, “Get in, Siggings. It’s really wonderful to meet you at last.”
Siggings licked his lips, glancing all around as he had when he’d come out from the dock. Shaw had the Browning in his hand now and Siggings must have known he would use it.
Nevertheless, Shaw made certain of the point. He said, “You know as well as I do that if I kill you, you’ll just be written off as a shut case — at last.”
Siggings’s lips quivered and slowly, his eyes on the muzzle of the automatic, he obeyed orders and got into the car. “Now,” Shaw told him, “we’re going for a drive. We’ll drive until we’re clear of what might be called your home ground, then we’ll stop and we’ll have a cosy little chat. Don’t try anything funny, because I assure you my reflexes are fast and I know how you’d hate to attract the attention of the authorities.”
Siggings hadn’t uttered a word so far but Shaw could almost feel him cringe. He had never been a particularly gutsy specimen. He hadn’t been one of the prime movers in the attempt to destroy the New South Wales by blowing up her nuclear reactor — catspaw was an adequately fitting description. Shaw pulled out smoothly into the stream of traffic coming away from the docks and drove fast for the Victoria Dock Road and the left turn into the East India Dock Road. Soon he was in the Commercial Road and coming into White-chapel. He didn’t say a word to Siggings until he had taken the Mercedes right through the City to the Strand and into a side turning, where he stopped.
“Right,” he said crisply. “Now we talk. I’m not going to bore you, Siggings, by recapping all the charges you’re still facing in connexion with past events, except just to remind you they include treason and conspiracy to murder on a very large scale indeed. What I’m more concerned about at the moment is that you tried to murder me today on board the Kurdistan.”
Siggings shook his head. “It was an accident. I swear it was. Cassidy’s accepted what I told him, and—”
“Has he?” Shaw grinned in an unfriendly way. “For certain reasons which I’m not going into now, I asked Captain Cassidy to play it down, but it doesn’t have to stay that way, Siggings. Cassidy can play it up again — right up, the moment I say so. It was stupid of you, because you could never have got away with it — but then I don’t credit you with much intelligence anyway. So I wouldn’t press my luck if I were you, Siggings. I don’t like having my life threatened.”