A Sprig of Sea Lavender Read online

  ‘Do you want to arrest the man and woman on the boat here?’

  ‘No. There is strong suspicion that they are involved in the art frauds, and that’s why I need to have them watched. I expect the motor-cruiser to leave Yarmouth in the morning and I was going to ask if you can get hold of a sea-going boat to follow her.’

  ‘We can get a boat all right. There’s a small fleet of tenders serving the oil-rigs. They’re powerful, sturdy craft, and I’m sure we can borrow one. Where do you expect the cruiser to make for?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s capable of the crossing to Holland, but she may go no farther than Poplar’s Fen – that’s about twenty miles down the coast. The vital thing is that we should discover where she does go.’

  ‘Well, the oil-rig tenders work the North Sea in all weathers, they have fine crews and they could certainly get over to Holland if necessary. Get on to the Harbourmaster, Bill. Tell him the sort of boat we want, though you’d better not say anything about why. Say we need her now, ready to sail at short notice, perhaps at first light. The Harbourmaster’s a good sort and I’m sure he can fix it for us. Ask him to ring back as soon as possible with the name of the boat and where she’s lying.’ To Piet he said, ‘How many men do you want to go with you?’

  ‘Two would be enough, I think. And I rather feel that they should be armed.’

  ‘Where do you expect to make your arrest?’

  ‘Probably at Poplar’s Fen. I doubt if a sea-going oil-rig tender could get over the bar, and in any case it would be better not to follow the cruiser into the Fen. If the cruiser goes there we could be put ashore at Walberswick and go on by road. If she doesn’t make for the Fen then I’d like myself and one of your men put ashore, leaving one officer on the tender to see what happens to the cruiser.’

  The superintendent studied a big map hanging on the wall. ‘Poplar’s Fen is well south of Lowestoft and not in my division,’ he said. ‘I can certainly help with the boat and provide a couple of men to follow the cruiser from Yarmouth, but I think I’d better ask my opposite number at Lowestoft to have some men waiting for you at Walberswick – you will be going ashore there, anyway. And if the cruiser’s got to be followed beyond Poplar’s Fen I think both my men ought to stay on board. They will have to follow your customers when they land, and they can easily split up. Do you want the Lowestoft men armed?’

  ‘I think it would be safer, yes.’

  ‘Well, it’s not for me to teach you your business, but if there’s a possibility of real trouble, two men are not going to be enough. I’m going to ask Lowestoft to have four men waiting for you at Walberswick, shall we say from eight o’clock onwards?’

  ‘That’s immensely good of you. Eight o’clock should be all right. Even if the cruiser leaves at first light, I don’t see how she could be there before eight. She’d have to average over rather than under ten knots – possible, but I doubt it.’

  ‘The oil-rig tender will be capable of a good deal more than that, so you’ll have power in hand to get ahead of her and keep her in sight. By the way, I’d better tell Lowestoft that you’ll need a car with their men, or rather, two cars. There’ll be five of you and you’ll need another car if you succeed in making your arrest.’

  ‘Would you like me to go with the Chief Inspector on the tender?’ Detective-Inspector Lennard asked.

  ‘You took the thought out of my head! Can you get one of your lads to go with you?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll see to it now.’

  ‘And I’ll get on to Lowestoft. I’d better do that myself, because we’re asking quite a lot of them.’

  ‘I told your man watching the cruiser that I’d get back to relieve him as soon as I could,’ Piet said.

  ‘I don’t know how you work in the Metropolitan Police, but in my division Chief Inspectors are supposed to get a bit of rest sometimes. You’ll be busy enough as soon as we’ve fixed up the tender. You stay here and have another cup of tea. We’ll see to the relief.’

  ‘I can only say thank you again. I also want to make a call to London. Can I use one of your phones?’

  ‘Of course. Use the phone in here, and I’ll get on to Lowestoft from the duty room.’

  *

  Piet rang his mother’s home at Greenwich. It was dreadfully late, but he half-hoped that Sally might be waiting up for the telephone to ring. In any case, his mother had an extension phone beside her bed. It was his mother who answered.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry to wake you up, but can you get hold of Sally for me? It’s quite important,’ Piet said.

  ‘But she’s not here! She left around ten o’clock. She was expecting a call from you all evening, and when it didn’t come she said she thought you might need her and that she knew where you’d probably be. She asked where she could hire a car at that time of night and I said she could have my Mini – you know I hardly ever use it nowadays.’

  IX

  At Sea

  PIET’S INSTINCT WAS to get hold of a car at once and drive to Poplar’s Fen, but he couldn’t undo all the arrangements he’d just made, and there was no certainty that Sally would even be at the Fen. Where else could she possibly have gone? To look for him at New Scotland Yard? That was absurd – she wouldn’t need a car, for at ten o’clock there were still trains and buses into London, and she would know that if he could get to his office he’d have telephoned, or got someone to telephone for him. To Lavenham for her art class? She couldn’t possibly have wanted to leave at ten o’clock at night for Lavenham. For some sinister purpose that he couldn’t even guess? He admitted to himself that he was more than a little in love with Sally – had he been a fool to trust her? He knew next to nothing of her background –was she really working against him, reporting everything he said and did to someone else? Quite possible, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. It was at least equally possible that she had felt that something had taken him out of London, and that he had some urgent reason for returning to the Fen. Well, if she was as close to him as he felt himself to be to her she was right about his having to leave London, but wrong in calculating that he must have returned to the Fen. If his other suspicions were anything like right she could well be in considerable danger in turning up at the Fen in the middle of the night. Should he get a police party sent there forthwith, to search the place and try to find Sally? That might invite the very danger he feared – it doesn’t take long to shoot someone. And he still didn’t really know enough: he knew what he wanted to do when he got back to the Fen, but he couldn’t possibly explain the instincts, feelings and suspicions that had been building up in his mind to an unknown police officer at the other end of a telephone. To invoke a dramatic police invasion in the middle of the night might wreck everything and scatter all the evidence he hoped to find. The harsh truth was that there was nothing he could do immediately to help Sally. If she had gone back to the Fen she’d have to take her chance, poor kid, and he could only pray that he’d get there in the morning in time to prevent the worst of his fears from being realised. He’d been banking on the fact that no one else at Poplar’s Fen could yet know precisely what he was beginning to understand. Reason told him that he was probably right and if so, Sally might be in no immediate danger. But reason is one thing, imagination another, and imagination here was not greatly comforted by reason. Yet reason had to win. He must stay where he was, wait for his plans to be carried out and do nothing to alert those it was his job to pursue even if it meant doing nothing at the moment for Sally.

  The teapot was quite cold now, but worry made him thirsty, and pouring out a cup of cold tea at least gave him something to do. He was drinking cold tea when the superintendent came back. ‘All fixed up, my boy,’ he said. ‘The tender Daffodil is waiting for you at the Lower Quay – that’s only a few hundred yards from where your cruiser’s moored. She’s fully crewed and was going out anyway in the morning, but they’ve managed to switch her job to another boat. So she’s all yours. It’ll cost the ratepayers a bit for the charte
r, but I’ll see if I can send the bill to the Metropolitan Police. No need to worry about that now – and if the public wants to be protected against crime they’ve damned well got to pay for it. Lowestoft’s been jolly good, but they don’t like your idea of coming ashore at Walberswick.’

  ‘I was thinking of doing that in a dinghy from the tender,’ Piet said.

  ‘Yes, but they don’t think much of it. They say you’d do better to let the tender take you into Southwold. She can get in there, it’s only a wee bit north of Walberswick across the River Blyth, and as far as getting by road to Poplar’s Fen is concerned they reckon it makes next to no odds. So if you approve, Detective-Sergeant Skinner with three men and two cars will be waiting for you on the quay at Southwold from eight o’clock on. All we’ve got to do is to phone back and say if you agree.’

  ‘Of course I agree – they know the coast far better than I do.’

  ‘Good. That’s all laid on, then. At this end Jim Lennard and a constable are ready to go off with you to the Daffodil. I know her skipper slightly – go fishing with him sometimes. He’s a man called Mick Mallory – but everybody calls him Mick. Give him my regards, and he’ll do anything for you. He’s a Yarmouth man and reckoned among the finest seamen on the coast.’

  Piet glanced at his watch. It was just after four a.m. ‘It’s getting on towards dawn and I think we’ll go off now,’ he said.

  ‘Right. I’ll phone Lowestoft about the change to Southwold. Good luck.’

  ‘I can’t begin to thank you properly.’

  ‘Get away with you! We’re all policemen, doing the same job. Come back and spend a holiday in Yarmouth. And we’ll go fishing with Mick.’

  *

  Daffodil was a small diesel-engined tug, workmanlike in looks and specially built for the job of serving oil-rigs in the North Sea. She could tow heavy floating equipment, carry engineering stores, or food and water. It was work that called for seamanship of the highest order, for loading or unloading anything from a rig meant going as nearly as possible alongside, with the constant risk of being carried onto the vulnerable legs of the rig by the vicious North Sea swell.

  The tide had risen considerably since Piet left his observation post on the other quay, and it was only a step from the quayside onto Daffodil’s afterdeck. Skipper Mallory met them as they came on board. ‘Don’t often get a police job. How’s my old pal the super?’ he asked.

  ‘Particularly asked me to bring you his regards,’ Piet said. ‘I’m Chief Inspector Deventer of the Metropolitan Police. You probably know Inspector Lennard of the Yarmouth force, and this is Constable Macleod.’

  ‘Glad to meet you. Mick’s the name here. Come into our grand saloon for a bit of breakfast and tell me just what you want us to do.’

  The ‘grand saloon’ was an all-purpose cuddy under the bridge deck forrard, with a table bolted to the deck, a settee-berth along one side and a passageway on the other. There were three doors, one leading to the fo’c’sle, one to a tiny cabin and one to the galley. The table was laid for a meal and almost as soon as they got there the deckhand/cook appeared with a huge pot of tea, went away and came back with a tray of plates of bacon and eggs. ‘Not knowing when you want us to sail, thought we might as well start with breakfast. Never go anywhere without breakfast – that’s my motto,’ Skipper Mick said.

  The bacon and eggs, and a thick slice of bread and butter, made Piet feel better. He explained that he wanted Daffodil to follow a motor-cruiser moored on the Upper Quay, which he expected to sail soon after daylight. ‘We’ll be able to see her from the bridge, with glasses, anyway, when it’s light enough,’ the skipper said. ‘We’ll go up after breakfast, for it’s getting light now. Where’s she making for?’

  ‘That’s the point – I don’t know,’ Piet said. ‘My guess is that she’ll make for Poplar’s Fen, just south of Walberswick, but I don’t know.’

  ‘Not going into Poplar’s Fen in Daffodil! I know that entrance because I’ve done it in a small fishing boat. There’s a dangerous bar, though there’s quite a good anchorage in the river when you get inside.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting that you should go in. I want to see if the cruiser goes there. If she does, I’d like you to drop us all off at Southwold, and then your job’s done. If she doesn’t, I want you to drop me at Southwold and follow the cruiser with Inspector Lennard and Constable Macleod.’

  ‘Won’t take long to nip into Southwold. I’d suggest we get ahead of her and hang about off Southwold. Then we can see what she does, and act according. I know that coast pretty well, but come up on the bridge and we’ll have a look at the chart.’

  It was light enough to see across the river. There were no yachts lying to the Lower Quay – all craft there were working boats, like Daffodil. On the Upper Quay there were several yachts, with some working vessels, among them the small freighter in the shadow of whose superstructure Piet had stood to watch the cruiser. He identified the freighter first, and having found her it was easy to spot the cruiser. She was lying as he had left her, though with the rising tide she was more nearly level with the quayside. There was no sign of any movement on board.

  Piet pointed her out to the skipper. ‘I’ll get my mate to keep an eye on her,’ he said. ‘He can see if anyone comes on deck to unmoor. As soon as there’s any sign of that we’ll get out into the stream. We can hang around for a few minutes and then follow at a safe distance. Now for that chart.’

  The mate took post on the bridge to watch the cruiser, while Piet and the skipper studied the chart. ‘What do you reckon she can do?’ the skipper asked.

  ‘Well, I’ve never been on her, so I don’t know. But she seems to be built for comfort rather than speed. I’d give her around ten knots, perhaps twelve going all out.’

  ‘Without a tow we can do well over twenty,’ the skipper said. ‘Even if we have to lose time putting into Southwold she won’t be able to get away. See, it’s just like I thought. We can be off Southwold a couple of miles ahead of her, and wait to see if she’s making for the entrance to the Fen. She’s low in the water, but there’s no mist this morning and visibility looks like being good. From a position off Southwold, with the glasses, we should be able to see pretty well to the Poplar’s Fen entrance. If he’s really going in there, sooner him than me.’

  ‘He’s done it several times before – he has a mooring on the river.’

  ‘Well, good luck to him. Or perhaps you don’t want him to have good luck.’

  ‘I don’t want him to be wrecked on the Fen bar. I suspect him of being a bad lot, but we should have to try to rescue him, and that would be a lot of trouble for everybody, besides standing Daffodil into danger.’

  ‘We should have to do it all the same. So I’ll say good luck to him, in a navigational sense, anyway.’

  *

  At eight o’clock there was still no sign of movement on the cruiser, but a few minutes after eight the mate called out from the bridge, ‘Look like she’s getting under way.’

  The skipper had a look through his own binoculars and then handed them to Piet. The man had already cast off forrard and the woman was holding the stern line. There was no wheelhouse proper on the cruiser: she was steered from a wheel set to port on the cabin bulkhead, at the fore end of the cockpit, over which a canvas canopy could be extended to provide some shelter from the weather. The canopy was not extended now. Piet saw the man give the bow a push from the quay with a boathook and then go to the wheel, handing the boathook to the woman in the stern. She hauled in the mooring line, gave another shove with the boathook and the cruiser moved out slowly into the stream.

  Having taken his own look, the skipper did not wait for any further news from either Piet or the mate. He ordered Daffodil to cast off and get under way, and took the wheel himself. ‘Tide’s still making,’ he said, ‘and we’ve got to be careful passing the south pier, because of the eddy there. Can be troublesome to a biggish vessel, because your bow can be pushed one way while your stern is s
till trying to go another. Doubt if it will worry him much, he’s not long enough. And it won’t bother us, because I know all about it. I think we’ll wait to see him through before we follow.’

  With skilful use of wheel and engine he held Daffodil in midstream while the cruiser gathered way and made towards the entrance to the Haven. Watching through the glasses Piet saw her tossed about a bit as she caught the eddy mentioned by the skipper, but she got through safely and made towards the open sea. Daffodil put on power and followed her out.

  ‘He’s going south all right,’ the skipper said, ‘he’s making for the Hewitt Channel. That’s the main channel for anyone going south’ards – runs between the Scroby Bank and the Corton Sands. Runs east-south-east near enough, for two to three miles, until you pick up the North Corton buoy. With his draught he could probably get over most of Corton now, but if he’s any sense he’ll stick to the channel until he picks up the buoy. He’s got to get a good offing to get round Lowestoft, and ESE is as good a course as any for him at the moment. We’ll stay well behind him in the channel and see what he does when he gets to the buoy.’

  Daffodil slowed down, keeping roughly half a mile astern of the cruiser. The sands blanketed the swell to some extent, and with the glasses Piet could make out two figures in the cockpit. The man was at the wheel, the woman sitting aft. They seemed to be in no particular hurry, going at about eight knots. At this rate it would be three hours or so before they could make the Fen. The sergeant and his men at Southwold would have a long wait. That couldn’t be helped. The cruiser might have left a couple of hours earlier, she might be faster than she seemed, and if he was right he couldn’t afford to take risks.