Isvik Page 6

  Why? Why? Why? Why had she been killed? All that effort to prove her husband right, to prove he’d really seen the ship and hadn’t hallucinated. I was thinking about the irony of it, the waste, as I walked towards the overhead railway and South Quay station.

  To the west of the Telegraph building a narrow walkway led to the dockside and the gangway leading to Le Boat, a restaurant occupying the upper deck of a vessel called the Celtic Surveyor and incongruously roofed in a sort of plastic reproduction of a big top. A journalist going on board at the stern told me the ship belonged to his newspaper and had been moored there to act as the staff canteen. He was critical of the management for letting off the upper part to a commercial outfit and said they had had quite a fight to get the restaurant to repaint the original name on bows and stern. ‘It’s bad luck to change the name of a ship, isn’t it? Le Boat!’ There was a lot of expression in the way he said it.

  The drizzle had started again, a fine, wet mist. The sun had gone and the water of the dock was very still and very black. The Telegraph’s patch was fenced off from the next development, but by clinging to the barbed wire wrapped round a stanchion I was able to swing my body out over the dock and on to the other side. An open gravel expanse led to a neat brick array of office and residential accommodation facing a dockside walk along the line of Maritime Trust vessels, which included the tug Portwey, and beyond that the coaster Robin with the Lydia Eva moored outside.

  The water between these vessels was foul with accumulated filth, the surface of it some six to eight feet below me. Vertical iron ladders, rusted and overgrown with weeds, were set at intervals in the dockside. This was where her body had been fished out of the water, right under the tug’s bows where a scum of plastic cartons, old rags and pieces of wood lay congealed in a viscid layer of oil. I should have asked that woman in Mellish Street whether anybody had visited her the night she had been killed, whether she had seen a car parked outside, for now that I had seen the dock for myself I was even more convinced her body must have been dumped there.

  I walked back through the new development to Marsh Wall. A construction worker in a hard hat was pile-driving steel rods that protruded from around the base of one of the round columns supporting the overhead railway, the machine he was using kicking up dust and making a noise like a compressed-air drill. I tried to picture this place at night, no construction workers, everything quiet. There were street lights and the development had some exterior lighting of its own. There would be shadows, deep shadows, and nobody about, the alleyways between the buildings like black shafts. He could have knocked her unconscious, then pushed her in, the place deserted and nobody to hear her cry out or the splash of her body as it hit the water. A train ground at the rails overhead and I wondered how late they ran. Could somebody in one of the carriages have seen her standing there with Carlos?

  A sign almost opposite me indicated the top of Lemanton Steps. I crossed the road and found myself looking down two flights of new brick that led off the high green bank built to retain the water of the dock. The steps led down into Manilla Street, past a timber importers, ‘Lemanton & Son, Established 1837’, and right opposite was a pub with the improbable name of The North Pole. By then I was tired and hungry. Inside, I found it full of construction workers and for a moment I thought it was just a grog shop, but as my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I saw one of the girls come out from behind the bar with a plate of sandwiches. She was a big, dark girl with skin-tight black pants and a seductive swagger to her bottom that matched the big-toothed smile and the come-hither black eyes.

  I got myself a lager, and when she brought me my thick wad of a ham sandwich, I asked her if she’d ever served the young woman whose body had been found in the dock. ‘Did she ever come in here?’ I asked. ‘Did you know her?’

  She checked, the plate still in her hand, her eyes gone dead and the smile wiped from her face, all the flounce gone out of her so that she suddenly looked old and worn. She half shook her head, banging the plate on the table and turning quickly away. I hadn’t expected such a positive reaction from what had been no more than a random enquiry and I was left with the certainty that my question had scared her.

  I watched her while I ate my sandwich and she never smiled once after that, and she didn’t come near me again. It was the other girl who collected my money, but as I left the pub I was conscious that she was watching me furtively.

  It worried me all the way back to the City and Liverpool Street station, the certainty that she knew something. But what? In the end I pushed it to the back of my mind. She would deny it, of course, so no point in telling anybody. But when the police finally caught up with Carlos and began to build up their case …

  That girl, and his carelessness in letting her bag fall into the water, nagged at my mind again that night. It was in the small hours, lying awake and thinking of her stretched out naked in that refrigerated tin box, that I remembered how she had suddenly referred to what I now knew to be the Disappeareds. It was just after we had come out of the Blackwall Tunnel and she could see young Carlos following us. ‘So many killed,’ she had murmured, staring into the rear-view mirror.

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ I had asked her and she had turned on me. ‘Eduardo is one of them,’ she had said. ‘Eduardo is my brother. My younger brother. And that little bastard –’ She nodded at the reflection in her rear mirror – ‘Why is he here? Why does Ángel send him?’ And she had gone on about her half-brother, how evil he could be.

  Something else she had said came back to me then. ‘He hated Eduardo.’ And when I had asked her why, she had said, ‘Because he is a good man, a Connor-Gómez. Not Sicilian. My father has told him Eduardo –’ Her mouth shut tight on whatever it was she was going to say. ‘That is before they burn down the store.’ She swung across the truck we were passing into the left-hand lane and then made the sharp turn left where it was signposted Isle of Dogs.

  That was when we had lost sight of the car behind. Her mood had changed then, the tension gone. I should have mentioned all this to the Inspector, but I hadn’t remembered at the time. I had been too shocked at the sight of her body, everything else blotted out. And then Victor Wellington reminding me of it. Had she meant her half-brother was one of those responsible for what had happened to the Disappeareds? Or was she simply saying he had been a supporter of the Junta, the military regime that had caused the terror, or at least condoned it? I knew very little about it, only what I had read in the papers after the invasion of the Falkland Islands, and anyway it was no concern of mine – except that I had met Iris Sunderby and had been brought down to London to try and identify her body.

  To get it out of my mind I took the following day off, borrowed a friend’s boat and sailed it out to Blakeney Point, anchoring under the shingle there. It was one of those cloudless East Coast days, the sun blazing down and a bite in the wind, which was north-east force 3 to 4, the sort of day when even visitors from hot climates suffer from sunburn. I stayed out overnight, caught some fish, and after making a splendid breakfast of them, sailed back in the dawn to find that Iain Ward had phoned in my absence.

  The message on my Ansaphone said he had seen the papers that morning and would I phone him urgently. And he gave his telephone number. By ‘that morning’ he obviously meant the previous morning’s papers. I didn’t take any papers myself, but my next-door neighbour let me have a look at his Express and there, under the heading ‘DOCKLAND KILLING’, I found my name referred to as one of those who had been called in to identify the body. Inspector Blaxall was quoted as saying that positive identification would probably depend on dental evidence and as a resident of the Argentine it might be some time before the police in Buenos Aires were able to trace her records. Even then the condition of the body would make it difficult to check the dental information. There followed the names of those who had been called in to identify the body, among them mine: Peter Kettil, a wood preservative consultant, who had also talked to Mrs Su
nderby at the conference on board the Cutty Sark last week, seems to have been fairly sure the body in the dock was hers.

  The report went on to give something of Iris Sunderby’s background. Her father, Juan Connor-Gómez, had been head of the family department store in Buenos Aires. He had committed suicide just before the Falklands war, his business having failed following a fire that gutted the main building and destroyed something over a million pounds’ worth of stock. Her brother, Eduardo, a bio-chemist, had disappeared at about the same time. According to the police, the possibility that this is a political killing cannot be ruled out. ‘It may be that it goes back to the period when people all over the Argentine, but particularly in cities like Buenos Aires, were disappearing. A report on the family background from the police in Buenos Aires is urgently awaited. Until our people have that report the purpose behind this brutal killing will not be known.’

  I phoned Ward at once, but got no answer, and it wasn’t until evening that I finally got through to him.

  ‘Are ye all set, Peter?’ Those were his opening words. And when I asked him what he was talking about, he said, ‘Are ye all packed an’ ready to go, ’cause Ah’ve booked tae seats fur Sunday on a flight to Madrid. We stay overnight, then fly Iberia direct to Mexico City. Meet ye at the BA check-in desk at 13.00. That all right?’

  I couldn’t think what to say for a moment, the abruptness of it taking my breath away. ‘You mean you’re going ahead with the expedition?’

  ‘Och aye.’ He said it quietly, a matter-of-fact statement. ‘Why not? The boat is there. We can sail as soon as we get to Punta Arenas.’

  ‘But …’ It was now Wednesday evening. ‘Are you serious? I mean … well, you can’t leave for a sail in the Weddell Sea just like that. We’d need stores, gear, clothes. We’d need to plan ahead, to plan very carefully.’

  ‘All taken care of.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Ye just listen to me. Ah’m used to organism’ things at short notice. Ah’ve cabled that Norwegian to have the boat stored an’ ready to sail within a week and Ah’ve transferred the necessary funds to a local bank wi’ instructions to settle all accounts. Ye’ve got a passport, have ye?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A valid passport. Ye’ve no’ let it run out?’

  ‘No. It’s fairly new.’ My thoughts were running away with me, my imagination too. It was one thing to sit in on a meeting like that in the Cutty Sark theorising about whether or not there was an old frigate locked in the ice of the Weddell Sea, talking vaguely about an expedition to recover it; quite another to have somebody say we leave in four days’ time, destination Antarctica. ‘Visas,’ I said. ‘I’d need visas. And money – traveller’s cheques. Another thing, what do we wear? For an expedition like that you need special clothing.’

  ‘All taken care of,’ he said again. ‘Ah provide the money, an’ the special clothing, the very latest in protective gear, that’s being flown out, Ah hope tonight. ’Fraid Ah had to guess yer size. Visas will be dealt with by me travel agent. His office is in London.’ He had me write down the address, which was in Windmill Street. ‘Have yer passport there by 09.00 tomorrow mornin’ and Jonnie Crick promises to hand it back to ye wi’ all the necessary visas in time fur us to catch the plane. Okay?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not okay. This is Norfolk, not London, and it’s already past eight in the evening.’

  ‘Of course. Ah should have told ye. A motorcycle courier from a delivery firm callin’ itself the Norfolk Flyer will pick yer passport up at 06.30 tomorrow mornin’. And see that there’s a full-face picture of yerself with it fur photocopying. And when ye pick yer passport up on Sunday mornin’, pick mine up as well.’ For the moment his voice seemed to have lost almost all trace of an accent. ‘Windmill Street,’ he added, ‘is just to the north of Piccadilly Circus, a turning off Shaftesbury Avenue. Ye’ll find Jonnie’s office on the third floor. Don’t forget, will ye? Ah need to be on the plane to Madrid with everythin’ sorted out and Ah’ve still a lot to dae. Hold on a minute now and Ah’ll give ye the flight number.’

  ‘Look, this is crazy,’ I said. ‘Nobody planning an expedition leaves it to the last minute like this, certainly not an expedition to the Antarctic. You haven’t even got the boat yet.’

  ‘Ye’re wrong there, laddie. Ah bought Isvik last week, two days after we met at Greenwich. What shall we call her, the Iain Ward?’ The way he said it, the fact that he was considering changing her name, the whole precipitate business of rushing off to the Antarctic made me suddenly feel I was dealing with a megalomaniac. Yet he had seemed sensible enough. Maybe it was the telephone. The telephone does accentuate inflexions in the voice, nuances of personality that are not perceptible when overlaid by the visual impact of the individual. But I was thinking of Iris Sunderby’s words – an ego a mile high – and her view that his accent was phoney.

  ‘Are ye there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m still here.’ What the hell did I say to him?

  ‘Luke, d’ye want the job or not?’

  ‘I didn’t know you were offering me a job.’ I said it without thinking, to gain time while I tried to find a few answers to the questions racing through my mind. If his travel agent could produce visas for two or three of the more difficult South American countries at such short notice there must either be something wrong with them or … ‘How much are these visas going to cost you?’ I asked him.

  ‘That’s none of yer business. But they’ll be the real thin’, not forgeries.’ I could almost hear him smiling at the other end of the line. ‘They’ll cost a bit more, of course, but everythin’ costs more if ye’re in a hurry. Aye, and if it’s money that’s worryin’ ye, Ah’m no’ expectin’ ye to come along just fur the ride. Ye’ll be there to dae a job so Ah’ll pay ye a salary. No’ a very big one, mind ye, but still enough to provide fur yer funeral if we get into trouble and lose our lives. Now, is there anythin’ else, otherwise … Och, the flight number.’ He gave it to me. ‘Terminal One.’

  ‘I’m not going to be rushed into this,’ I said. ‘I need time to think.’

  ‘We don’t have time.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ I demanded. ‘It’s still winter down there. There’s lots of time before the spring –’

  ‘The time of year doesn’t concern me.’

  ‘What does then? Why are you in such a hurry?’

  ‘Ah’ll tell ye when we reach Madrid, no’ before. Now, dae ye want the job or not? Ah need a wood preservative expert, somebody whose technical opinion will be accepted, but it doesn’t have to be ye.’ His voice hardened as he added, ‘Ah’ll be frank with ye. Ye’re not by any means the best qualified expert available. Inside of a week Ah could have somebody with more qualifications flown out to join me. So ye think it over, okay?’ The smile was back in his voice. ‘See ye at the BA check-in desk 13.00 hours Sunday. And don’t forget to pick up the passports from Jonnie.’

  There was a click and the line went dead. I was left standing there staring blankly at the saltings, my mind in a turmoil. Slowly I put the receiver back on its rest. The sun was setting, the salt marsh illuminated in a golden glow. Glimmers of light picked out the dark ribbons of water, the hides used by the wardens and the bird-watching members of the NNT standing stiffly like pillboxes, black and white Friesians grazing with their rumps turned to the north-westerly breeze, and far away across the flat expanse of the reclaimed marsh, beyond the pale yellow line of the shingle horizon, the white of a tanker’s bridge was followed by the red funnel of a freighter, their passage so distant they seemed to hang there, immobile.

  My mother called from the kitchen. ‘Who was that, dear?’

  I didn’t answer for the moment. The sound of her familiar voice seemed to accentuate the appalling choice with which I had been presented. I was in the front room of my family’s semi-detached house on the coast road just east of Cley with its white-painted picture-postcard windmill. Since my father’s death it had become my den. Now I called it my office.<
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  ‘Anybody I know?’

  ‘No.’ I went over to the window. ‘Just a client.’

  ‘Well, supper will be ready in a moment, so don’t do any more work.’

  The tanker and the red funnel had repositioned themselves imperceptibly and I was looking at the view with a sense of hyperawareness. It was a view that I had come to take for granted. But not now, not if I were going to hand my passport, to that Norfolk Flyer chap in the dawn and then go down to London on the Sunday, to Windmill Street and on to Heathrow in time to meet Ward at the flight check-in desk at 13.00. And if I went with him … That view was suddenly very precious to me.

  The Warden came out of his house near the end of our row of neat semis. I watched him as he crossed the road and took the well-worn path out to the first hide. Even in winter with the wind blowing straight down from the Arctic and the marshland all frozen solid, the waterways iced over and a dusting of snow on everything, the crystals driven horizontally against the glass of the window with a sound like the rustle of silk, even in those conditions, this Arctic shore of Norfolk had its charm. And now as I stared, I felt it clutching at my heart.

  Punta Arenas! That was where he was asking me to go and I hadn’t even looked it up in my school atlas. No point, I had thought. Iris Sunderby was dead. And now this Glaswegian planning to run the expedition himself.

  Why?

  I leaned my forehead against the cold of the windowpane. No harm in meeting him. I could always refuse to fly at the last moment. I ticked off in my mind the questions I needed to ask him.

  ‘Supper’s ready, dear. Bangers and mash, your father’s favourite. Come along. I’m taking it in now.’

  ‘All right, Mum.’ And I stood there for a moment longer as I thought of my father. He had never been abroad. Incredibly he had never been to London, had barely been outside of Norfolk all his life, and when we had moved to Cley this view had been for him a total fulfilment. And yet, when I said I was going on a Whitbread round-the-worlder, he hadn’t batted an eyelid, hadn’t attempted to dissuade me.