“I found a ship,” he said.
Joby nodded. He was about the same age as Fletcher. Same height, too. Fletcher was of a thicker build, but there was no fat on him, either; he had big bones. Some people might have judged him at first sight to be a trifle awkward in his movements, but they would have been wrong; he was surprisingly agile and light on his feet. He had fair hair, a rather craggy face and a nose slightly bent in the middle as the result of a punch received in a boxing bout fairly early in life. He had never rated himself as handsome, and as far as he knew no one else had, either. It had never worried him.
“Told you she’s somewheres around here,” Joby said. “My pa, he’d talk about it plenty. Nearest the war ever come to the island. Nearest anybody ever wanted it to come, I reckon.” He pointed towards a rocky islet thrusting up from the water some distance away. “Knowed it was a bit to the east of that rock.”
Joby’s motor-boat was not very new and not very big, but he maintained it in first-class condition. It was his chief means of livelihood; it paid the expenses of his little family, and none of them had yet gone hungry or badly clothed; which was something to be thankful for with things the way they were. Most of his income came from American holidaymakers who wanted to go fishing or skin-diving or simply for a nice quiet trip along the coast. When there were no bookings of that kind he would give Fletcher the offer of a cheap rate, sometimes little more than the cost of the fuel. He said it was better than hanging around the house doing nothing. Not that Fletcher had ever seen Joby hanging around doing nothing; he always seemed to be able to find a job to do.
“I found something else down there, too,” Fletcher said.
He had not intended telling Joby; he had not intended telling anyone. Once it was told he knew that he had to become involved, and he did not wish to be involved in a thing like that. But it had slipped out, and he had a feeling that the moment he had spoken those seven innocent words he had in effect said good-bye to the quiet life and had taken a step into another kind of world — a world of violence and intrigue; a world he wanted no part in.
“Uh-huh?” Joby said; and waited.
Fletcher saw that he could still draw back. There were plenty of things he could have seen down there, apart from the ship. He could make up some story for Joby; he could destroy the film in his underwater camera; he could keep the discovery to himself and stay out of trouble. That would be the wise course; he was under no compulsion to reveal what he had seen; it was none of his business, nothing that he need get caught up with.
Nevertheless, as though under some irresistible compulsion to reveal it all, he went on.
“I found a boat.”
“A boat?” Joby said. “You mean a lifeboat?”
“No, not a lifeboat. A motor-boat. Like this. Only bigger. A cabin cruiser.”
“Well, now,” Joby said thoughtfully. “Is that so?”
“Did you hear of any boat being sunk around here lately?”
Joby shook his head. “Not me. But mebbe it wasn’t lately. Mebbe bin down there a long time.”
“No; it hasn’t been there long. Not more than a week or so, I’d say.”
“You sure ’bout that?”
“Pretty sure.”
“That’s strange. Bin calm weather. No high winds. Why would a boat go down like that? Why no report about it?”
“That’s what I’ve been wondering. There’s something else I’ve been wondering about, too. The bodies.”
Joby looked startled. “Bodies?”
“Five men. In the cabin. They’ve been shot.”
Joby’s eyes opened very wide. “Now what you sayin’? Shot? For sure?”
“For sure,” Fletcher said. “One bullet each. Through the head. No sign of any struggle. It was just as if they’d been executed.”
“My, oh my! And you figure it wasn’t so long ago?”
“Couldn’t have been. Not with the bodies still in the condition they are. Not by my reckoning.”
“So!” Joby made a soft hissing noise through his pursed lips, and he was frowning a little. Fletcher wondered whether he was also thinking this might be something in which it would be advisable not to get involved. “Now what you aimin’ to do ’bout it?”
“I don’t know,” Fletcher said.
“Could just do nothin’. Nobody goin’ to know if you don’ say a word.”
“Is that what you’re advising?”
“I don’t advise nothin’,” Joby said.
“But you think it might be best not to get mixed up in this thing?”
“Well, what d’you think? Five men get theirselves shot through the cranium and dumped at the bottom of the sea. Stan’s to reason there’s somebody aroun’ that don’t much want them drug up to the surface. It’s like somebody might get awful sore at anyone as put that kinda thing in motion. Like somebody might get to doin’ some more shootin’. You get me?”
“Sounds to me as if you are telling me to leave it alone.”
“I’m tellin’ you what might be safest.”
“And if I don’t say anything about it, you won’t, either? Is that it?”
“I di’n’t see no boat,” Joby said. “I di’n’t see no men with holes in their heads. I jus’ di’n’t see nothin’. No, sir.”
Which was one way of saying that if Fletcher decided to keep his mouth shut, Joby would do the same. But would it work out like that? A secret held by more than one person was no longer a secret. Suppose Joby were to tell his wife, not meaning it to go any further. Would Paulina be able to keep such an exciting piece of information to herself? He doubted it. No; the thing had to come out now, and it would be better to reveal it at once than to let it leak out gradually; that way matters would only be so much the worse.
Joby had been watching him closely and appeared to have read his thoughts. “Ain’t going to leave it, are you? Ain’t jus’ goin’ to forget all about it.”
“I don’t think it’s possible,” Fletcher said. “For one thing, it’d be committing an offence not to report it. And then if it did leak out we’d be in worse trouble.”
“How you reckon it could leak out?”
“Well, things do, you know.”
Joby understood. “Okay. Mebbe you’re right. So you tell the cops, huh?”
“I think I’ll have to. Then it’ll be for them to figure it out. Anyway, what can happen to me if I tell them? I didn’t shoot the men and sink the boat. Nobody’s going to say I did. I’m clean.”
“You’re clean sure enough,” Joby admitted. “But bein’ clean don’ mean there ain’t nothin’ can happen to you all the same. Mebbe you’s okay with the cops an’ mebbe not so okay with some other people.”
“You’re trying to discourage me.”
“I’m lookin’ at things the way they are.”
“It still adds up to a lot of plain discouragement.”
“An’ you still aim to go an’ tell the cops?”
“I still aim to do that,” Fletcher said.
Joby shrugged resignedly. “Okay then. We may as well head for home.”
TWO:
LEAVE IT TO US
Joby took his boat up to a pier on the east side of Jamestown harbour and said he would wait there until Fletcher had completed his business with the police. It was then mid-afternoon and the town was sweltering in the sun; white walls reflecting the glare, tarmac softening in the heat, an odour of petrol exhaust and ripe fruit hanging in the air.
It was a ten-minute walk from the waterfront to police headquarters, a plain, architecturally undistinguished, four-storey building with a large car-park in front and a few palm-trees giving a bit of shade here and there, Fletcher walked across the car-park and up the steps to the main entrance. He had never previously been inside the place and he was not at all sure he ever wanted to be inside it again; it made him nervous. Perfectly innocent though he knew himself to be, in these surroundings he could not avoid a sense of guilt; it was almost as though he had come to confess to a crime rather than to report one committed by someone else, some person or persons unknown.