This was someone used to giving orders, expecting to receive answers, and King’s confidence crumpled. It’s a good job the lighting’s poor he thought, as beads of sweat broke out on his upper lip and the blood drained from his face. “Ah … well. Ah … like he told you,” he stuttered, “I… I saw someone fall overboard.”
“How did they fall?”
That’s sharp, thought King. “What do you mean, how did they fall?” he stalled, having given no thought to the physical difficulty of falling over a ship’s rail, but realizing from the officer’s tone it might be impossible; that it would need a jump, a push, or a violent lurch in a stormy sea.
Apparently the officer had similar thoughts and had no intention of helping out. “Sir, please explain to me exactly what you saw; how he fell.”
King, cornered, backtracked. “Well… I came out on deck and saw a figure disappear over the side. I dunno how it happened. Didn’t notice what he looked like. It was over in a second. I just rushed to the back …”
“Stern,” corrected Jacobs.
“Yeah … stern. I went to the stern and saw him in the water, so I chucked one of those life-thingies over.”
“You launched a life raft?”
“Ah …”
“That’s when I saw him,” Jacobs started, cutting King off. “He’d just launched an inflatable off the starboard upper boat deck.”
With a doubtful look the officer turned questioningly to the catering assistant. “Did you see the man go overboard?”
“No, Sir. And I couldn’t see him in the water neither,” Jacobs shot back, his confidence buoyed by the senior officer’s apparent scepticism.
Shit, thought King, if they won’t stop the ship I’m screwed. “Sir …” he began but the officer waived him off.
“Would you excuse us for a moment?” he said, catching Jacobs’ sleeve and pulling him out of the cubicle.
Left alone, King’s mind raced. How the hell did I get mixed up with this. The poor fat geezer’s going to drown … not such a bad thing, for him anyway … but what else can I do, they obviously don’t believe me. You know the rules, he thought. The catechism according to the locker room lawyers: Stick rigidly to the story, say as little as possible, and deny everything contradictory; even if they’ve got photos. He’d heard a similar phrase a thousand times, even uttered it a few. Whenever a fellow cop was in trouble for remodelling a prisoner’s nose, creatively constructing a confession, or even lifting a few things from the scene of a burglary the advice of colleagues was always the same. “Keep your mouth shut and deny, deny, deny.”
“But they’ve got the evidence!”
“Even if they’ve got video—deny it. Evidence can always get lost.” That’s a laugh, he thought; cops give exactly the opposite advice to criminals: soft voiced, persuading, “Why don’t you tell me all about it? It’ll go in your favour and I’ll even put in a word with the judge.”
How many times had he said roughly the same thing, knowing very well that ninety percent of criminals were only convicted because they’d blabbed. As for putting in a word with the judge: even the chief constable would be stretching the thin blue line if he tried that one. Anyway, the only reason he’d got mixed up with Motsom was because he’d believed his chief inspector, who’d persuaded him everything would be alright if he just told the truth. He’d blabbed, and where had it got him—prison, dishonourable discharge. I’ll keep my bloody mouth shut in future, he’d thought at the time. But there wouldn’t be a future. He was out of the force, unemployed, with a certificate of service that wouldn’t get him a job as a bouncer in a daycare centre.
Jacobs and the officer crammed themselves back into the tiny cubicle, interrupting King’s woeful thoughts, and his hand involuntarily sprang to his nose: Jacobs needed more than a clean shirt. His attention swung back to the officer who was insistently tapping his finger on the radar screen where numerous lights twinkled like stars in an alien sky.
“See all these dots. Do you know what they are, Sir?”
King’s mind was adrift, still smarting from past injustices, and he queried glibly, “Ships?”
“No, Sir. These dots up here are ships,” said the officer pointing out an area where there was only a smattering. Then he returned to a part of the screen where so many tiny points of light clustered together they melded like dots of paint in a Pisarro masterpiece. “This is clutter—caused by big waves or heavy rainfall. That’s what this is—a storm, a big storm, and it’s headed our way. I don’t want to stop and look for a missing passenger unless I’m absolutely certain. Do you understand?”
King nodded thoughtfully as if re-evaluating his account of LeClarc’s disappearance, then pulled his face into a funereal seriousness, deepened his tone respectfully, and pronounced, “I’m sure he fell overboard, Sir.”
The officer made up his mind. “Call the captain,” he barked, then rattled orders to the invisible crewmen on the bridge, while leaving King pondering over the mess of luminescent dots from the approaching gale. “Poor bastard,” he breathed.
The captain, tie-less in a slept-in shirt, fly undone, and hair all over the place, looked as though he’d been dragged out of a brothel in a raid; he was not in the best of moods when he appeared in his brightly lit office, behind the bridge, a few minutes later. At fifty-nine, he’d been at sea long enough to know passengers would report seeing all sorts of things—usually UFOs or giant green squids—especially at night. He had hoped to get a few hours sleep before dealing with the impending storm, but now he faced the same dilemma as the officer: If he ignored King, and it turned out someone was missing, all hell would break loose—the press would have a field day. He was already envisioning the headlines: “Drowning Man Left to Perish.” “Passenger’s Pleas Ignored—Man Dies.”
“What’s your name, Sir?” he enquired in a no-nonsense tone, sitting at his desk and taking notes, while peering inquisitively over the top of his spectacles at King.
“Nosmo King, Captain,” he replied without hesitation.
“Strange name …?” he began, his words floating.
“Nickname,” King obliged. “It’s David, but everyone called me Nosmo at police college because I didn’t smoke.”
A look of confusion furrowed the captain’s brow, his blood-shot eyes squeezed into questioning slits.
“Nosmo King … no-smo-king,” explained King, the urgency in his voice screaming, “For God’s sake hurry up. There’s a man drowning out there.”
But the captain, refusing to be harried, echoed. “Police college?”
Another unasked question demanding an answer.
Big mistake, thought King, realizing instantly that he’d violated the criminal’s code by volunteering information. “Long time ago,” he shrugged, as if it had been of no consequence, and re-iterated his story. The captain’s pen flashed across the log as they spoke, but he kept his focus on King, reading his expression, noting his tapping foot and wringing hands. Feeling the rising tension, King tried holding the other man’s steely gaze, but found his eyes wandering to the porthole, his mind striving to deal with the possibility that his quarry was struggling for life in the cold, black ocean.
The wall clock ticked noisily as the captain took forever to scan his notes. He looked up. “How do you know it was a man?”
Now what? thought King as the captain, chief officer and Jacobs held their breaths, and he felt six eyes burning into him as tense seconds ticked by. “I only assume it was a man,” he said eventually, reigning in his voice, feeling as if his chest were in a vice. “I suppose it could have been a woman. But I just have the feeling it was a man.”
The