She made way for him, her soft body pressing against his as they squeezed past each other. “I don’t think I could sleep now even if I wanted to.”
He grinned. “Make some more tea, then, and come back. Things might get interesting.”
He increased speed a little, racing the heavy weather that threatened from the east, and after a while she returned with the tea. The wheel kicked like a living thing in his hands and he strained his eyes into the grey waste of the morning.
The sea grew rougher, waves rocking Foxhunter from side to side, and again Mallory increased speed until the prow seemed to lift clean out of the water each time a wave rolled beneath them.
Half an hour later they raised Alderney and he became aware of that great tidal surge that drives in through the Channel Islands, raising the level of the water in the Golfe de St. Malo by as much as thirty feet.
He altered course for Guernsey and asked Anne to get the forecast on the radio in the saloon. She took her time over it and when she came back she carried more tea and sandwiches on a tray.
“It’s pretty hopeful,” she said. “Wind moderating, rain squalls dying away.”
“Anything else?”
“Some fog patches in the islands, but nothing to worry about.”
Gradually the wind died, the sea calmed and they ran into a clear September morning with a slight mist rising from the water Mallory opened a window and inhaled the freshness. When he turned she was smiling at him.
“You can handle a boat, Mr. Mallory. I’ll say that for you.”
"Don”t forget to. mention the fact in my reference.”
She smiled, picked up the tray and went out again. He leaned over the chart and checked the course. Foxhunter rounded Les Hanois lighthouse on the western tip of Guernsey an hour and a half later and seagulls and cormorants cried harshly in the sky, sweeping in across the deck from the great cliffs.
Already visibility was becoming worse, fog drifting in patches across the open sea as Guernsey dropped behind the horizon. He set the automatic pilot, leaned over the chart and Anne Grant came in.
“How are we doing?”
“With any kind of luck we should reach lie de Roc in an hour to an hour and a half. Depends on the fog. If we run into any really bad patches things could get tricky.”
“There’s a large-scale Admiralty chart of the island and its approaches in the top drawer,” she said. “I bought it specially.”
He took it out and they leaned over it together. He de Roc was perhaps two miles long and three across, the only anchorage a bay at the southern end. The entire area was encircled by a network of sunken reefs with only two deep-water channels giving anything like a safe passage through.
Til take her if you like,” Anne said. “I know these waters like the back of my hand and you need to.”
“The damned place looks like a death-trap.” Mallory shook his head. “I wouldn’t like to be drifting in on those shores on a dirty night.”
“A lot of good ships have done just that. You see St. Pierre a mile to the north? In the old days whenever a gale was blowing in from the Atlantic ships were often swept between the two islands to founder on the great sunken reef which links them. At low tide the water-level drops as much as thirty-feet and you can see some of those old wrecks.”
“Dangerous waters to go swimming in.”
She nodded. “Especially at the wrong time. As a matter of fact, the barman from Owen Morgan’s hotel was drowned only the other day. His body drifted in the evening before I left.”
“Not so good.” Mallory moved on quickly. “I see there’s a castle marked on St. Pierre.”
“A Gothic mausoleum. It’s out on a twenty-year lease to a French count, Philippe de Beaumont.”
“The place is going to be busier than I thought.”
She shook her head. “We don’t see much of him. He stays pretty close to home and we don’t get many visitors on the island. The hotel only has six bedrooms. They’re booked right through the summer, of course, but Owen usually ends the season at the beginning of September. He likes to enjoy the last of the good weather himself.”
“He won’t need much staff, then?”
“Only during the season and then he uses Guernsey girls. He’s had a French cook living in full-time for nearly a year now. She should have left at the end of the season, but stayed on.”
“Sounds a rather obvious set-up.”
She shrugged. “It’s their own affair and she’s a nice girl. I hope he marries her.”
The fog lifted a little and on either hand the sea broke in a white foam over great reefs. Mallory smiled grimly. “I think this is where you start doing your stuff.”
She took over the wheel and altered course half a point. A moment later, through a sudden break in the fog, the towering cliffs of the island loomed into view and then the grey curtain dropped into place again.
Mallory reduced speed and Anne Grant took the cruiser forward into the fog. She seemed completely unperturbed and he shrugged fatalistically, pulled down the other seat and took out a cigarette.
At that moment the whole boat rocked violently and Mallory and the girl were thrown across to the other side of the wheelhouse. Foxhunter yawed alarmingly and Mallory shoved the girl away and scrambled across to the spinning wheel.
As he pulled the boat back on course, Anne Grant moved beside him and they peered out into the fog. Perhaps a hundred feet to starboard he caught a glimpse of something solid moving through the water and a sizable wave rolled back to rock Foxhunter again.
“And what in the hell was that?” he said.
“Probably a basking shark. They’re common enough in these waters, but it must have been a big one to leave a wake like that.”
Mallory stared out into the fog, a frown on his face, remembering the force of that wave. Could a shark, however big it was, have set up such a disturbance? He was still thinking about it when they emerged from the last patch of fog and lie de Roc reared out of the sea a quarter of a mile away.
To the west was St. Pierre, much smaller, a little blurred because visibility at that distance still wasn’t good. Between the two islands the sea frothed and roared over the great underwater bridge.
“We’re in the clear now,” Anne Grant said, and he gave Foxhunter everything she had as they roared through the water towards the great round cove which opened to meet them.
The water was a deep translucent blue, reminding him strangely of the Mediterranean. A stone jetty jutted fifty feet out from the shore and above it was the hotel, a two-storeyed, white-painted building sheltering in a hollow from the winter gales.
A fifteen-foot launch was moored on the far side of the cove. A young, dark-haired man in sun-glasses was sitting in the stern looking over the side. As he turned towards them a swimmer surfaced and Mallory caught a flash of blonde hair.
When they were a hundred feet from the jetty he cut the engines and Foxhunter settled back into the water, drifting in on her own momentum. Anne Grant was already getting the fenders over the side and Mallory ran out to help her. The moment they touched he jumped for the jetty with a line and ran it twice around an iron bollard. Foxhunter jerked once, bumped against the jetty and was still.
As he moved to fasten the other line, an engine roared into life, the sound echoing harshly from the cliffs, and the launch came towards the jetty. The swimmer was already almost there. Anne Grant moved to the port rail and Mallory joined her.
“Fiona,” she said simply.
As the girl arrived Mallory leaned down and hauled her up and over the rail. She crouched on deck for a moment, laughing and shaking herself like a young puppy.
“But it’s marvellous, Anne. Simply marvellous.”
She didn’t even look eighteen, long blonde hair trailing damply to her shoulders. She wore a pair of bathing pants and the upper half of a rubber diving suit in bright yellow that fitted her slim figure like a second skin.
She examined Mallory with interest and her eyes widened in approval. “And where did you find him?”
Anne laughed and kissed her affectionately. “Now, don’t start, Fiona. This is Neil Mallory. He’s going to run the boat for us for a month or two till we get the hang of things.”