“Afternoon, Nick.” He aimed the Colt at my head and, before I could move, pulled the trigger.
It was unloaded. He chuckled. “Naughty, Nick, very! You know what the penalty is for possession of an unlicensed firearm?”
“A golfing weekend with you, Harry?”
He tutted. “Ungrateful, aren’t you, Nick? I save your mangy hide and all you do is insult me. What’s George bringing in these days?”
“Nothing much. A few radios, mostly French.” I tied the whip into place and climbed down to the deck. By using the peak halliard I had a perfectly good crane that swung the stove dangerously close to Abbott’s head. He deigned to steer it down to the cockpit floor.
“I thought you’d like to know,” he said, “that there is no longer a warrant out for your arrest.”
“I didn’t know there ever was one.”
“A hue and cry, Nick, that’s what there was. We searched for you high and low! Do you know what you have cost Her Majesty’s Government in police overtime?”
“Is that what you’re on now, Harry? Overtime?” I saw it was my beer he was drinking. He courteously offered me a bottle, which I took, then I sat opposite him. “Cheers, Harry.”
“Cheers, Nick.” He drained the bottle and opened another. “The funny boys are in on this one, Nick.”
“Funny boys?”
“Very funny boys. They’re not kind and gentle like me, Nick.
They’re full of self-importance and they talk impressively about the safety of the realm. They have nevertheless decided that your life should be spared.”
“Why?”
“How would I know?” He lit a cigarette and flipped the dead match over the side to float among the other garbage in George’s dock. “But there is a condition, Nick.”
I put my legs up on the opposite thwart. I was wearing old shorts and the scars at the backs of my thighs looked pink and horrid. Abbott glanced at them and grimaced. “Phosphorus?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were shot?”
“Bullet hit a phosphorus grenade hanging on my belt. The phosphorus caught fire, and the bullet split in two. One lump went down the right thigh, and the bigger lump up my spine.”
“Nasty.” He said it with genuine sympathy.
“I’ve had better days than that,” I agreed.
“It’s because of that, you see, that they trust you. Wounded war hero and all that, Nick. I mean, it’s unthinkable that one of Her Majesty’s VCs would be carrying an illegal shooter or helping Georgie Cullen bring in dicky radios from the French coast, isn’t it?”
“Quite unthinkable,” I agreed.
“So you’re going to piss off, Nick. You’re going to sail this heap of garbage round the world and you are not going to try and stop Mr Bannister sailing on the St Pierre.”
I finished the beer and opened another. The day was blisteringly hot. “Is that the condition, Harry? That I bugger off and leave Bannister alone?”
“Took a lot of my time to fix it.” He spoke warningly. “If the Chief Clown had his way, Nick, you’d be roasting in prison now. And not in some nice open prison like your dad, but a real Victorian horror story.”
“Thanks, Harry.”
Inspector Abbott had surrendered to the day’s heat far enough to discard his blazer, but no more. He wiped his face with a rag. “Mr Bannister lodged a complaint about you. He says you dismasted his boat, cut its warps, and all in practice for the day when you were going to sink it at sea. Do you know he’s even got a tape-recording?”
“That tape’s a—”
“I know, Nick!” Abbott held up a weary hand. “We’ve spoken to Mr Harding, haven’t we? And Mr Harding has seen the error of his wicked ways. He hasn’t got any proof now, so there can’t be a scandalous little story which will upset our American cousins. We don’t want to upset them, because they’ve got all the money these days. We are a client state, Nick.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t suppose you do, Nick. Who was the little bloke with you on the night you put nasty holes in nice Mr Bannister’s speedboat?”
“I can’t remember, Harry.”
“Make sure he forgets, too. Sleeping dogs should be left slumber-ing, Nick, and you were in danger of waking them up.” I offered him another beer. He took it. “Mind you,” Abbott went on, “Mr Bannister had a mind to aggravate things. He was unleash-ing the lawyers on you, but we pointed out that if they found you, and if he pressed charges, then we’d naturally insist that he and his Boer would have to stay in England and give evidence.”
“Which he didn’t want to do…” I was beginning to understand some things now “…because it might jeopardize his timing for the St Pierre?”
“Exactly.”
I tipped my head back and rested it on Sycorax’s guardrails. I wondered if I was understanding too much. “You want Bannister to die, don’t you?”
Harry tutted. “You mustn’t talk about death, Nick.”
“You want to keep Kassouli’s jobs?”
“I imagine the Chief Clown wants to, yes.”
My head was still tipped back. “Are you a funny boy, Harry?”
“I’m just the dogsbody, Nick.”
I brought my head forward. This policeman liked to play the genial fool, but his eyes were very shrewd.
“So Yassir Kassouli gets what he wants?” I said.
“The rich usually do, Nick.” He paused. “And between you and me, and no one else, Mr Kassouli wanted you arrested. He wanted the bloody book thrown at you. But we’ve persuaded him that we can look after our own. That’s what I’m doing now, Nick. Looking after you.”
“This comes from the bloody Government, doesn’t it?” He heard my anger. “Now, Nick!”
“Jesus wept!” I drank some beer. “Suppose Bannister’s innocent?” Abbott shook his head. “Why confuse the issue?” He laughed at me. “Bloody hell, Nick, since when were you the white knight?” I said nothing, and he sighed. “You’re a bloody fool, Nick. Why did you go to the press?”
“I wanted out.”
“You should have talked to me.” Abbott looked at me in silence for a few seconds, then shook his head sadly. “Nick, it comes from the top, and you’re powerless to do anything. So forget it.” I made a non-committal noise.
Abbott drank beer. “I saw your dad last week.”
“How was he?”
“He misses you. When are you going to see him?”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“I think you should, Nick. In fact I think I’ll make that another condition of not arresting you.”
“I thought you said there was no warrant for me any more?” Abbott hefted the gun. “Three years?”
“How did you find it?”
He smiled. “Did George tell you I threatened to use a metal detector?”
I smiled back, remembering the charade. “Yes.”
“Which meant that you’d hide the gun near a piece of metal, so as to confuse your Uncle Harry. So I just had a look at your engine, and hey presto.”
“It’s a souvenir, Harry.”
He looked at the barrel. “Ejercito Argentina. Didn’t do the silly buggers a lot of good, did it? So, are you going to try and warn Mr Bannister?” I hesitated. Abbott shook his head at my foolishness.
“It won’t do you any good, Nick. Do you think he’ll listen to you?”
“No.”
“So I’ll take it you won’t try, which answer will please the Chief Clown. Are you going to stay away from Bannister’s house, his television studio, his mistress’s house, and everybody else’s bloody house?”