“Oh no …” he started, then stopped, tilted his head to one side, threw open his hands, and disclaimed all responsibility. “Well yes, I suppose so, if you put it like that. With nearly two thousand passengers you can never be sure. It’s not like an aircraft—we don’t assign seats, and we often get strays.”
“Strays?” enquired Bliss. Dogs, cats, what? “Strays?”
“Yeah … friends of crewmembers smuggled aboard for a freebie; hitchhikers in the back of trucks, even people hiding in car’s trunks so they can avoid the fare. The vehicles aren’t searched by British Customs on the way out, and the Dutch authorities don’t care if you bought a ticket as long as you’ve got a valid passport.”
“So, how will we know if you lost someone in the night?”
The purser’s shrug told the story, but Bliss heard him out. “You won’t. Not unless a friend or relative reports them missing, or we find luggage in a cabin, or a car on the car deck after everyone’s left.”
Billy Motsom, cabin 2042, tired, furious, and very worried, was having similar thoughts and had a spotlight on King. “So, Mister, what are you goin’ to do if the poxy little shit did go over the side, eh?”
“Look, I was hired to follow him that’s all. Nothing else—nothing dodgy. I don’t know why you want him and don’t care. You paid me …”
“Correction,” cut in Motsom. “We was going to pay you.”
“You’d bloody better. I’ve done my job. I followed him around for three bloody weeks. It was me that found out about this trip. There’s nothing else I can do.”
King rose toward the door but was forced back with a snarl. “You ain’t goin’ anywhere until I tell you—now sit down.”
He sat, sensing the simmering violence. Not that he hadn’t been warned. “Real nasty piece of work,” one of the few ex-colleagues still prepared to talk to him had said, “though he hasn’t got any serious convictions.”
“O.K., let me put you in the picture,” continued Motsom, sounding helpful. “This ain’t no game of hide and bloody seek, it’s big business and you’re part of it, like it or not. So we may as well be friends. O.K.?”
King said nothing, unsure whether to be more fearful of Motsom as an employer or a friend, and he buried his head, mumbling into his hands, “Why did I get mixed up in this?”
“Money—Nosmo. Just like me.”
“No. Not like you …” he started, but Motsom cut him short.
“The only difference between you an’ me,” he sneered, “is you’ve done time. You’re an old lag, an excon, a bent cop.”
King, stung by the suggestion, stared into his fingers, thinking: First I get shut out by a snotty D.I., then a piece of dog turd calls me bent. Who’s the criminal here? I didn’t take back-handers; I wasn’t shaking down drug addicts for part of their stash; I’m no crook. But he had no answer, he was trapped by his past.
Motsom took his silence as agreement and, with the air seemingly straightened, softened his tone, “LeClarc has some computer stuff the Arabs want, that’s all, and we was hired to get it, O.K.”
King tried to butt in, “I wasn’t hired …”
But Motsom held up his hand, now the cop, saying, “Wait, I ain’t finished,” and he continued firmly. “We was hired, both of us. It’s just that I only told you what you needed to know.”
“Bollocks! You knew I wouldn’t do it if you told me the truth.”
“Maybe yeah. Maybe no. Who knows. Anyhow it’s too late, you’ve lied to the captain.”
“And the police,” added King, absentmindedly.
“The police?” Motsom exploded, shooting upright, nudging over a beer, which flipped onto the floor and rolled back and forth, spilling drops on the mottled blue carpet.
King quickly bent to pick up the bottle, but Motsom grasped his shoulder and hauled him upright.
“Leave it,” he ordered. “What did you say about the filth?”
King winced at the derogatory term, then shrugged, matter-of-factly, “There’s a bunch of cops on board and one of ’em, a snotty inspector, was making noises about the missing bloke, that’s all. Just routine. Couldn’t resist poking his nose in.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you idiot?” he shouted, “What are they doing here anyway?”
“They’re going on some sort of visit,” he shrugged, his imagination running away with him. “Stop worrying, I didn’t tell ’em anything. They’ve no idea who’s missing and even if they did, they couldn’t connect him to us.”
It was true that D.I. Bliss didn’t know who was missing, if anyone, though he shivered at the idea of any man struggling for survival in the ship’s wake. From his perch in the first class restaurant, high in the ship’s stern, he stared pensively at the evil sea, then slit open another croissant (baked on board every day according to the waiter) and poured coffee for the two contrite constables.
“Drink,” he ordered, and they drank.
Sergeant Jones had not joined them, his purple swollen wrist making movement of any kind painful. He was, in any case, pre-occupied—working up a story to cover his backside.
“Right, you two,” said Bliss, noticing how well the green of the sea reflected in their faces. “We’re docking in half an hour. I’ve looked everywhere on this damn ship and I can’t find LeClarc, so he’s either hiding ’cos he spotted us, or it was him who went over the side and that private dick is lying about the time.”
“So what’s the big plan, Inspector?” asked Wilson, with caustic undertone.
Bliss picked up the sarcasm and twisted it around, “I could always follow your example … get legless, break my wrist…”
“You lost him …” Wilson started, accusingly, but Smythe touched his arm. “Leave it Willy, let’s wait and see. Anyway, what are we going to do about the sergeant?”
Bliss picked up his coffee. “An ambulance will be on the quayside and he’ll be going back on tonight’s ship once he’s been plastered.”
“Good old Serg,” sniggered D.C. Smythe. “Plastered two nights running.”
All three laughed—like a team.
A hollow “boom” from the tannoy system echoed throughout the ship and a singsong voice rang out, “Will all car drivers and passengers please re-join your vehicles for embarkation.”
“That’s us,” said Bliss, downing his coffee as he rose. “Grab our bags and chuck them in the car, then wait for me. I’m going to see if I can spot him getting into the Renault.”
The narrow companionway to the car deck was swamped by a tide of sweaty, struggling, fed-up passengers, with fractious kids screaming, “Are we there yet?” and fractious parents screaming, “Are we there yet?” Bliss squeezed his way as far as a stairwell but his descent was blocked by a vertical wall of miserable humanity. “Police. Let me through,” he called hopefully, but a truck driver inflated himself into a road block, mumbling, “Push off and wait your turn. You’re not in England now.” Bliss retreated, tried two other stairwells without success and was finally swept down to Car Deck B with a crowd. He wanted to be on Deck A—where LeClarc’s car was. Weaving in and out of the slowly moving cars, he reached the deck just in time to see Roger’s green Renault driving off the ramp onto the quayside.
“Quick, follow him,” he shouted to Wilson, as he leapt into the back of their car. Wilson slammed it into gear, stared ahead, ignored the angry horns and voices of maddened motorists, and forced a path off the ship.
They