"Death Drop" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gill B M)

Five

THE REVEREND SIMON SHULTER wore his dog collar on Sundays only, but on this morning made an exception. It looked incongruous with his blue sports jacket and jeans, but it stated his identity and cut out a lot of unnecessary explanations. He waylaid Fleming on his return to The Lantern after his visit to the doctor and suggested they should have a drink together. "I read the piece about your staying here in the paper this morning and I came straight over. The Marristone Grange boys attend my church. I knew David. We'd had a chat or two about confirmation."

Fleming's first reaction was a curt refusal, but he bit it back. Here was another stranger who had known his son. Confirmation? David? Religion hadn't played any role in his life at all. Ruth had arranged with her local pastor to have him christened, and he had a vague recollection of the ceremony in Ruth's non-conformist chapel. After that – nothing.

He agreed to the drink, one pint of bitter. Shulter ordered the same. They took their drinks over to the window recess where the watery sun gleamed intermittently and dazzled on Shutter's gold-framed spectacles so that he was forced to move his chair sideways to the table.

He was used to bereavements, but not to one of this nature and he made the usual speech of condolence hesitantly.

Fleming politely heard him out. Irreparable loss. It was odd how even a young cleric, just a few years out of theological college, fastened on to the well-worn cliches. This one had difficulty with his r's… not an impediment exactly, but one r too many which didn't quite come out as a burr. 'Deepest sympathy' would come next followed by 'God's will'.

Shulter said quietly, "I've made the usual noises at you. I haven't the gift of tongues, I'm afraid. There aren't any words for this. I have a young kid of my own. If it had happened to him, I'd feel as you feel. I think I can just about reach out and touch the edge of what you're feeling."

They sat in silence.

Fleming was the first to break it. "The autopsy is going on now."

"Try not to think of it."

"How can I help but think of it?"

"I know. But nothing is ever quite as bad as we imagine it is. I'm sorry I wasn't at the mortuary with you. Brannigan or Preston should have told me." He raised his glass of beer and watched the sunlight send little diamond flashes of foam into oblivion. That Fleming was seeing the autopsy in every small detail he had no doubt and he didn't know how to stop him seeing it. Now was the time to talk about the body and the spirit and he knew he didn't dare. This was raw and real. One word now delivered with unction rather than with belly-aching truth and the small thread of communication that they were beginning to establish would snap. Fleming would get up and go and he would chalk up another failure. It was his job to be here – God help him. Literally God help him. He didn't know how to help Fleming.

"Would you have agreed to the confirmation?" He asked the question for the sake of saying something. The answer no longer mattered.

"I don't know. I suppose so." It was a life-line of words and Fleming held on to it. Go on, he thought, talk to me. Tell me about the living David.

"Marristone Grange is C, of E. as you know. Confirmation is usual if the parents agree. I'd asked David about his own feelings on it and he said it was okay by him if it was okay by you. I sensed there was a close bond of affection between you."

"Yes."

"He didn't accept things easily. He questioned the Creed. Why would Christ descend into hell? He wanted chapter and verse quoted for everything. And then the Trinity – who or what was the Holy Ghost? He more or less accused me of inventing the Holy Ghost." Shulter smiled slightly. "He had a very literal mind, your son. Did you. know that?"

"Tell me more."

"I take Scripture classes several times a term – not with any of the set examinations in mind, but just to get to know the boys. It's part of the Marristone Grange tradition. My predecessor had let it lapse and it seemed a pity. I remember asking David's class about their favourite Biblical character and David surprised me by saying Zaccheus. It had taken guts, David said, to climb that tree with the mob trying to elbow him out."

Fleming drew his beer towards him. He asked the question with some disquiet. "Did you sense that David himself was being elbowed out – by the other lads?"

Shulter's obvious surprise reassured him. "Far from it. He was likeable."

"He had no obvious enemies? No boy in his class that he was afraid of?"

Shulter, aware that the flat lands of pain had assumed the unpredictability of quicksand, began treading with caution. Enemies? What young boy didn't have enemies? An enemy of a day or a week metamorphosed into a friend of a day or a week. Marristone Grange wasn't terrorist country. Fleming was speaking of children.

"I can't imagine your lad being afraid of anyone. Certainly of no-one in my Scripture class. If something specific is worrying you, I think you should tell me more."

He listened, perturbed, as Fleming told him about the sketch. Consolation was called for and he tried to give it. "I think you're probably reading more into it than you should. He had been ill. Medication can have odd side-effects. He might have had a drug-induced nightmare and then drawn the picture."

"He might. It wasn't an explanation that Doctor Preston put forward. Perhaps he was trying to protect his pills as you are trying to protect the school." It was bitter.

It was also, Shulter thought, unjust. If he were trying to protect anyone he was trying to protect Fleming himself. Whatever had happened it was over and finished. Fleming's acceptance of the boy's death was the first necessary step towards healing. The balm of Christian faith could only be applied when the wound was ready for it. The next question he had to ask would rub in salt, but it had to be asked.

"I'm not trying to protect the school. It just seemed to me that it could be physiological rather than psychological." He balked at the question and then eventually rushed it out. "I wanted to see you this morning to ask what you intend doing about the funeral?"

Fleming felt shock waves travel through his pores. His mind hadn't taken him that far. Shulter, aware how close he was to a breakdown, wished they were anywhere other than in a public bar. He moved his chair so that Fleming was partly screened from any curious onlooker.

Fleming, controlled again, felt the unexpressed sympathy. He imagined Shulter on the other side of a partition in a confessional. A quiet presence. Only the Church of England didn't have confessionals, did it? David hadn't been brought up C. of E. or R.C. His christening had been in the U.R.C. Which Godly trade union was to take charge of the burial ceremony?

Shulter pressed on gently with the practicalities. "I'll go with you to the undertaker. I wish I could take over all that side of it for you, but I'm afraid it's something you have to do yourself."

"I realise that."

"The funeral will probably be early next week – a few days after the inquest. Unless you decide to make other arrangements, I'll take the service – if you'll allow me to."

"I'm not a member of.your church."

"That doesn't matter."

"Or even a believer."

"That doesn't matter either."

Shulter suddenly remembered some words of David's… not spoken to him but to another boy in his hearing after David thought he was out of earshot. "It seems to me you've got to flipping well take a heck of a lot on trust -• do you think that's what he means by faith?" He debated whether or not to repeat the words to Fleming. They were so apt in this particular situation Fleming might believe he had made them up. He risked it.

Fleming heard David in the words. Trust. Faith. The words in the present context were hollow. David had trusted him and he in turn had trusted the school to take care of him. The kind of faith that consoled after the debacle was something outside his ken. He wished it were not. He wished he could go now with Shulter to his church and heave off this burden at the altar steps. He wished he could have a simple peasant faith – or the kind of faith that David was looking for.

He was aware that Shulter had something else to ask, and was wary of asking it. He waited and the question came with some hesitancy.

"The school has its own small chapel. At one time it was used for services. It's consecrated. Until the funeral would you like David's body to lie there – or do you want him to be taken to the undertaker's Chapel of Rest?"

Fleming's answer came with no hesitation whatsoever. "Anywhere but the school. The bloody place killed him."

Shulter, about to protest, thought better of it. Fleming's hatred was beyond reason. He hoped it was without just cause.

By three o'clock the day had begun to be beautiful. The morning clouds had shredded in the wind and though the rain was still sporadic it gleamed with sunshine. The inlet of water, channelled from the harbour, rolled in with a soft breathing movement that touched the old craft of the Maritime Museum so that they, too, rolled and breathed and muttered like old men dreaming.

A Portuguese frigate painted in strong blues and crimsons splashed the water around it with paler blues and crimsons. Next to it the wind played in the lug sails of a Chinese lorcha. An elderly Thames barge and a Danish jagt moved in unison, their timbers creaking.

The paddle-steamers resisted the wind but responded to the water with slow rhythms evocative of ancient sea-shanties. The extraordinary peace of the place was suddenly shattered by the scream of a gull as it alighted on a tall thin funnel. From nearby a dozen gulls swooped in, calling and thrashing the water with their wings.

The small group at the entrance gate waited wordlessly and watched the gulls come and go. Hammond, standing a little away from the others, wished that he could have prevailed upon Brannigan to let him come alone. Brannigan at the last minute had decided to dilute the interview by bringing four of the senior boys, too. He had argued that Fleming would want to interview them anyway, and that the interview might as well take place on the ship where the accident had happened. Durrant, at fifteen, was the youngest and not sensitive. Masters, Welling and Stonley at sixteen plus were old enough to face the facts of the situation. In another year or two they would be out in the world. Fleming, no matter what his feelings were, wouldn't ride them hard. It was unspoken, but implied, that in their presence Fleming wouldn't ride Hammond too hard either.

Hammond guessed that Fleming would see it as a bodyguard and add contempt to all his other emotions. He felt tired – even a little uncaring – as if the anxiety of the last few days had slowly exuded like pus from a boil. His mind refused to conjure up what had happened in detail, instead scraps of information he had dictated to the boys swam up to the surface like so much flotsam in the harbour. The Sirius on her trip across the Atlantic had averaged 6.7 knots. The Comet averaged 6.7 in British coastal waters. Both better than the Clermont's 4.7 knots. Snorter's propeller and Smith's screw of the early nineteenth century were the forerunners of Ericsson's double propeller of the mid-nineteenth century.

Brannigan said, "He's just crossing the road by the traffic island."

Fleming saw the four boys before he noticed Brannigan and Hammond. Their stillness as they watched him approaching was almost hypnotic. He felt like an aircraft being beamed in on radar and then, breaking the pull of their eyes, he looked beyond them and saw Brannigan and another younger man who must be Hammond.

So this was the one. Tall – slightly stoop-shouldered -• thick, fair hair badly cut – bony features – a long wide mouth – unrevealing eyes.

Brannigan made the introduction quickly and nervously, almost immediately turning from Hammond and drawing the boys forward. "These are the older lads who were on the ship at the time. I didn't think it was wise or necessary to have the younger ones along… This is Welling."

"How do you do, sir?" Welling dared to do what Hammond hadn't. He extended his hand.

Fleming took it. The boy lacked the usual awkwardness of adolescence. He had a glossy gracefulness. Masters was different in both physique and character. He was short and swarthy and mumbled inaudibly. His intense embarrassment struck a sympathetic chord in Fleming. This time he proffered his hand and the boy took it. Stonley, nondescript and silent, inclined his head stiffly and then moved quickly so that Durrant could come forward. Fleming remembered the name.

"Durrant."

"Yes, sir. How do you do, sir?"

There was a certain bravado in the tone, something in the expression in the eyes, that seemed to belong to another situation. He looked at a tall, rather ugly, gangling boy who had bashed David for voicing a preference for baseball. But not just that, he sensed something more. Durrant looked back at him and saw quite simply an enemy. The method of his extermination would become clear in time. His imagination was already feeding on it.

"You're the boy who objects to baseball, Durrant?"

The quick tongue touched the thick lower lip. "Only in this country, sir. He went on about it a bit."

"And you hit him – a bit?"

"Not hard, sir."

Fleming turned from him and looked at Hammond again. He indicated the boys. "Your idea?"

Brannigan spoke before Hammond could answer. "No -• entirely mine."

"I fail to see the reason for it."

"You wanted an enquiry. The boys were there. They will be able to tell you what they saw or didn't see."

He had to agree to it. He wondered what kind of loyalty Hammond could drum up. The feeling of being behind enemy lines was strongly with him again. Hammond was being safely hedged around. The degree of his vulnerability depended on the boys and Brannigan himself.

Hammond said gruffly, "We can meet alone, if that's what you want, later on… I haven't tried to sympathise with you. Anything I say you'll probably misconstrue. If I say I'm sorry that David died – and I am, desperately and deeply sorry – you'll see it as an admission of guilt. I admit nothing. There was no negligence."

Fleming was silent.

Brannigan, deploring Hammond's attitude but not surprised by it, suggested that they should go into the Museum. He had already bought the tickets, including one for Fleming. A party of Swedish students of both sexes went through the gate at the same time. They spoke loudly, cheerfully and incomprehensibly and looked with some curiosity at the group of boys and men who spoke not at all.

Their leader, who had some English, approached Brannigan. "Where is the position of the little ships, would you tell me please?"

Brannigan, cravenly glad of their presence but sufficiently strong-minded to make an effort to get rid of them answered curtly. "The models? In the shed – up those steps over there."

"The little boats of the primitive times, but not the models. The catamaran and the trees with the dug-out centre and the bamboo raft."

"They're in the adjoining shed – the shed next to that one. They are numbered in your catalogue."

"You are coming that way, too, please?"

"No. We are interested in the vessels on the water."

"And we also. Someone who would help with the interpretation we should be most happy to have." '

Brannigan said firmly. "I'm sorry. It's not convenient for you to join us. You will find officials in each section. Ask one of them."

The Swede rejoined his group. He spoke to them quickly and bitterly.

Welling said in an aside to Masters, "How to make friends and influence people."

Brannigan overheard him. "In any other circumstances, Welling, your criticism would be justified."

"I'm sorry, sir. I understand the situation. I wasn't being critical."

"No? Amusing, perhaps?"

"No, sir. It was a stupid remark, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

There were times, Brannigan thought, when the honest-eyed, easy-tongued, commendably hard-working sixth former got under his skin even more than Durrant did – which was saying a lot. Durrant had sparked up when Fleming had mentioned the baseball incident – rather like a bull being surprised by a matador's barb – but his expression had cooled down again to moroseness. Fleming's acquisition of that particular barb had surprised Brannigan, too, and disconcerted him more than a little.

The wind blew an empty sweet bag against Durrant's ankle. He picked it up, made a ball of it, and dropped it into the water. The waves took it and flipped it against the black painted hull of a yellow-sailed ketch.

Hammond spoke irritably, "There's a rubbish bin over there."

Durrant, not aware he was being addressed, didn't answer. His ability to switch off from reality into a more congenial and interesting environment had been acquired over the years. His growing physical strength and bizarre imagination combined forcefully into what he saw as a power-house in an alien city. He could people that city as and how he wished and dominate them – some in fact, others in fantasy. His mind was now on Fleming senior. Brannigan, as a heavy-booted Colditz commandant, was by comparison small fry. Around Fleming was an aura of blood. Pleasurably he felt a small crawl of fear. This enemy was in the world inside his head – and he was in the world outside it. He began smelling the water of the harbour again and saw that the sweet bag had rounded the bow and disappeared.

Brannigan went over to Fleming. "It would have been better to have come here' after closing time with no-one around. I can still arrange to do that if you would like me to?"

Fleming saw it as procrastination. "Let's get on with it – now."

Hammond, surprisingly, brushed past Brannigan and took the lead. He walked a few paces ahead of everyone, his head hunched between his shoulders, his arms swinging. The wind blew his hair into a parting across the back of his head so that his scalp showed white against the brown of his neck. When he stopped and turned, the wind took his hair the other way and he put his hand up in an irritable gesture and smoothed it.

"That's it. The Mariana." He indicated a cargo vessel with a green and yellow funnel. It was pulling lazily at its anchor as if in a half-hearted attempt at freedom.

Fleming saw the name enclosed in a thin red-painted rectangle on the bow. Mariana. It was incongruously gentle. Like an execution chamber hung around with silk.

Now that he was here he wished he were anywhere but here. The thrusting reality of David's death had degrees of penetration. To bear the pain and yet retain his calm demanded of his strength more than he was capable of. His instinct now was to turn and go. He had seen and heard all he could take. He wanted no more of it.

Aware that his hands were shaking he put them behind his back and gripped his wrists hard.

Brannigan was beside him. There was sympathy in his voice. "There's no need to board her. Hammond can explain the positioning of the boys from here."

"We'll board her."

Hammond led the way down the gangplank. His voice assumed the slightly higher pitch he used in class. "Every time I take a group of boys on a ship we move around the ship as a group to discover the general lay-out of it. After that each boy, apart from the younger ones who stay with me, goes to work on the particular part of the project assigned to him. I suggest we move around the ship now as a group – afterwards the boys can take up their individual positions and you can question them individually, if that's what you want to do."

"That's what I want to do. But your guided tour can wait. I want to see the hold where it happened. Now."

What the hell was Hammond thinking, of, Fleming wondered. A slow build-up to a grand finale? Bridge deck. Boat deck. Lower deck. And now wait for it, Fleming, while the drums roll.

That he could quite easily kill Hammond occurred to him. He was emotionally capable of it.

Their eyes met.

Hammond shrugged. "All right. I wasn't trying to defer it. It was a duplication of the usual routine. I'm trying to present everything exactly as it happened." He turned to the boys. "Stay here. There's no point in your coming too."

The companion-way was short and steep. Fleming followed behind Brannigan and Hammond. The rail was wet under his hands, whether from the other men's sweat or his own he didn't know. The smell of the deck was of tar and carbolic.

Hammond explained, "There are three hatches. The one forrard is beamed. The tarpaulin was on this one as it is now. The other – where David fell – is just below the poop deck." He led the way.

His attitude was almost casual. "That's the one. There's no cover on it. There wasn't then and there isn't now. You might be able to screw damages out of the Maritime Museum for not covering it." He noticed Brannigan's expression and didn't care. The right words eluded him. A speech of sympathy at this point would be like offering milk to a cobra.

Fleming went over to the hatch and looked down into the darkness of the hold. It went down about fifteen feet.

David had stood here – or hereabouts – wearing a blindfold. The edge of the hatch would have come up to his thighs. An unwary step wouldn't have toppled him over. He had either climbed over or been pushed over.

The words that had been battering at the back of his mind for days came out as a whisper. "I don't understand." He repeated them to himself. I don't understand. Brannigan, as grey-faced as he was, looked at him in silence.

Only Hammond appeared cool. "After the accident, I climbed down into the hold – down that iron ladder. It's not well lit, but I have a torch. Do you want to go down?"

Fleming turned to him. "Accident? Did you say accident? Look at the height of the hatch side. I only have your words his hands weren't tied."

"His hands were -not tied. He could have rested them on the side of the hatch – perhaps have been doing handstands. Small boys don't have a sharp sense of danger – they're full of bravado. He could have been acting out some scene of daring from his imagination. He was imaginative."

"Was he? What else was he?" Very quiet – very level.

"I don't understand you."

"Was he sick? Disturbed? Unhappy? Frightened?"

"You're referring to the sketch?"

Brannigan said quickly, "I explained about it. I think, perhaps, its significance…"

Fleming interrupted him. He went on addressing Hammond. "I don't know what happened to my son – but I mean to know. Imaginative, you say. A circus act on the edge of the hold. Do you honestly believe that? Can you stand there now and look at me and say you believe that?"

Hammond made a helpless movement with his hands.

Anything I believe won't carry any weight with you at all.

You're determined to think the worst. I'm sorry David died.

I've said that before. If I say it a hundred times again it won't shift your prejudice against me."

"Too right it won't. His safety was your responsibility. Where the hell were you when you should have been right here?"

"I was looking after three small boys and trusting the rest to do as they were told."

"And David was told to do what?"

Hammond indicated the poop deck. "To get up there and make notes on the rudder machinery."

"That's asking a lot of a twelve-year-old."

"A twelve-year-old, an eight-year-old – they produce according to their ability."

"The sketch showed a regression to six. At what age level was the work you set him on the rudder machinery?"

Some of Hammond's aggression left him. "It wasn't done. He made no attempt to do it. I suppose you'll suggest now that he made a suicidal leap because I set him an impossible task."

"So you've dared use the word suicide at last. Be careful – you might become indiscreet."

Brannigan interrupted with some forcefulness. "We're not gaining anything by this. None of us knows what happened to David. We're here to try to reconstruct the scene – as far as we know it – and with the help of the other boys. Shall we get on with it? Or do you want to go down the hold?" • "I want to go down the hold." He added, "On my own."

Brannigan held Hammond's torch while he made the descent. Hammond went over to the rail and looked down at the water. The sun was edging the waves with silver. There was a sour sickness in his mouth and his chest felt tight as if Fleming had kicked him in the ribs; but still he was aware that the sun shone and the shadowed waters at the harbour edge were a deep cobalt.

He tried not to think of Fleming in the hold.

He tried not to think of Fleming's child.

The hold smelt of salt and seasoned timber and rope. The hatch above was a square of light. The light, like spilled water, flowed thinly and trickled off into a deep darkness.

Fleming bent down and touched the timbers almost directly under the hatch. His mind refused to see David lying dead. Complete identification with him wasn't possible. His own id protected him from what he couldn't take. He had reached the limit of his own separate existence and he couldn't over-step that limit. David had died. He himself was inexorably alive. As an act of contrition for his own limitation he wanted to lie on the timbers where David had lain, but he stopped himself. Brannigan was up there somewhere in the light. The private agony had to be contained in the mind.

When he climbed up the ladder again he surprised Brannigan by appearing so calm.

Brannigan helped him over the edge of the hatch. "Are you all right?"

"Yes." "Then let's get back to the boys."

The boys, like abandoned guests at a macabre party, stood uneasily where they had been left. Brannigan felt a twinge of conscience that he had let them in for this. An interview up at the school would have been less traumatic. There, in their own environment, they had appeared adult enough and tough enough to be here – now he was less sure of them.

Hammond looked to him for a lead and when one wasn't forthcoming took command himself. "You all remember where you were on the day that David fell. We'll start with you, Stonley. The engine-room, wasn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Take Mr. Fleming there."

Brannigan said that he would go along, too. "You don't object?" This to Fleming.

"No. The boys are your responsibility." It came out heavy with innnuendo.

Brannigan's lips tightened and he said nothing. Stonley skipped down the steps into the engine-room with some ease, but once there seemed to freeze into stillness.

Fleming with sudden compassion tried to get it over quickly. "How long were you down there?"

"I don't know. I didn't notice the time. I was making sketches."

"Did you see David at all?"

"Not since we arrived. We had our different jobs to do."

"Did you hear him call out?"

"No."

"Did you hear anyone call out?"

"No."

"When did you know that David had fallen?"

"I heard voices up on deck. I guessed something was wrong."

"Did you go anywhere near the hold yourself?"

"No." Stonley's hands were in his pockets. He took out his handkerchief and a half-smoked cigarette fell out. He put his foot over it.

Brannigan saw, but didn't comment. Stonley hadn't set the Maritime Museum ablaze – yet. One crisis at a time was sufficient. He looked enquiringly at Fleming. "Is there anything else you want to ask?"

Fleming thought – yes, but he doubted the wisdom of asking it. Stonley would probably freeze even further into the machinery and find no words to answer him. He tried the question: "If you had to describe David in a word or two – how would you describe him?"

"I don't understand you, sir."

"I know he was a few years younger than you, so you might not have had much contact. Can you be objective enough about him to say how he impressed you – or didn't you particularly notice him at all?"

"Oh, yes, I noticed him, sir." Stonley's foot drew the cigarette stub back towards him and he stood more com fortably. "He struck me as being…" he paused, looking for the word, "I don't know how to say it – one off from the herd, not a pack animal."

"You mean he ran alone – that the other lads disliked him?"

"No. They liked him. He played around with the other twelve-year-old kids – but sometimes he'd be alone and not seem to mind."

Fleming thought, you noticed him pretty intently – and was perturbed.

The other boys' answers to the same question were more superficial. Welling in the navigation house on the bridge said, "Happy and cheerful, sir," and added "absolutely" for good measure.

Masters, in the captain's cabin, blushed crimson with embarrassment and came out with a strangled "All right."

Neither boy had seen David fall.

Durrant, on the fo'c'sle deck had been the furthest away from the hold and he was the last of the boys interviewed.

He leaned back against the windlass as Fleming and Brannigan approached. Their footsteps were quiet on the deck but he magnified them in his imagination so that the thumping of his heart became the stamping of jackboots. A thrill of anticipation, almost orgasmic, prickled through his flesh.

He turned a suitably grave face towards Fleming and completely ignored Brannigan. "You want to ask me some questions, sir?"

Fleming on a sudden impulse tried a different approach. The situation – with this particular boy – was different. He said brusquely, "Tell me about it."

Durrant felt the impact of the challenge like a blow. His muscles tightened and then he slowly breathed out. "I wish I could tell you about it, sir, but I wasn't there so I don't know."

The waves were making soft little slapping sounds against the bow and there were far-off voices in the wind.

"Tell me what you were doing from the time you came here on your assignment until David fell."

Durrant looked past Fleming's head. The blue arch of the sky darkened in his mind and metamorphosed into a flat low ceiling of steel. The salt air became fetid and difficult to breathe. The winch behind him held the cold menace of torture. An exquisite pain flowed through his wrists where they touched the ropes.

"Are you all right?" Brannigan's voice.

He looked at the second inquisitor with ill-concealed disdain. "Oh yes, sir -just a little upset when I think about it, sir."

"You haven't answered me yet." No softness in this voice.

He reorientated himself. "My assignment was to make a sketch of the fo'c'sle deck and the windlass. I'm not good at drawing so I couldn't do it very fast. I hadn't done very much when I heard David shout."

This time it was Fleming who felt the physical impact of shock. None of the other boys had heard anything.

"The hold is at the stern – the other end of the freighter – how is it you could hear from here?"

"The wind carries sound, sir. If you listen now you can hear that party of Swedes talking on that freighter over there."

It was true. The other boys had been in enclosed areas.

"Go on. You heard him shout. What did he shout?"

"You don't shout anything when you're falling, sir. It was a muffled sort of scream." He looked to see if he had drawn blood and saw with satisfaction that he had.

Fleming, white-faced now, thrust on. "What did you do then?"

"Well, naturally, sir, I went to see. There was enough light to see David lying down in the hold. His head looked wrong on his shoulders. He wasn't moving."

"And then?"

"Mr. Hammond arrived. He told me to stay where I was. He went down to look. When he came up again he went over to the rail. I thought he was going to be sick."

"Did he speak to you?"

"After going to the rail? He must have, sir, but I can't remember. When you've had a shock nothing you say makes much sense. I think he said something about fetching a doctor – or that might have been Mr. Sherborne."

"Mr. Sherborne?"

"One of the other housemasters. His boys were on the next ship – that one over there where the Swedes are now."

Fleming looked over at the other vessel. "So there were three of you standing near the hatch almost immediately afterwards?"

"No. Mr. Sherborne was amongst the people who began to come. It's like that with an accident, sir. There's nobody, and then there's a crowd. You don't notice them coming, but somehow they find out and they come."

"And then what happened?"

"Mr. Hammond didn't seem to know what to do so Mr. Sherborne took charge. He made Welling responsible for us as he's the most senior boy. He told Welling to take us into the cafeteria until one of the other masters could take us back to the school. We sat around a couple of tables and waited. We heard the siren of the ambulance – or it could have been the police. We couldn't see from where we were. One of the younger boys went over to the door to see if he could see anything and Welling belted him around the ear."

"When you looked down the hatch into the hold – before Hammond climbed down – could you see David's hands?"

"Yes, sir."

"Were they tied?"

"No."

"How was he lying?"

"On his stomach – his arms flung out on each side of him. Like this." Durrant went down on his stomach and demonstrated. He lay for less than a minute, but long enough to smell the tar of the deck and feel a rough splinter rub his jaw. He pressed his face into it and closed his eyes. The terror-dark engulfed him. He swam through it valiantly. The aperture of the escape hatch was closing razor sharp on his neck. He rolled over and his head touched Brannigan's fawn suede shoe.

He got up clumsily. "That's how he lay, sir."

"You're sure about his hands?"

"Absolutely sure."

"There's not much light in the hold. How clearly could you see?"

"Clearly enough to see that. He was a shape. Black against grey. His handkerchief was around his eyes. If someone is being executed then his hands are tied."

The knowing eyes looked at Fleming and measured with satisfaction the degree of pain that the image inflicted.

Brannigan expostulated, "For God's sake!"

Durrant turned to him. "Well, that's what his father thinks, sir."

Fleming asked quietly, "What do you think happened to him, Durrant?"

"I think he got bored, -sir – so he began to play around. If you put a blindfold on you get muddled about heights and distances. He could have leaned over the hatch side and overbalanced." He smiled suddenly and his face became suffused with purity and simple gentleness. "I really do think that's how it happened, sir."

Fleming turned from him and began walking away.

Brannigan caught up with him. "Satisfied? His explanation was plausible."

Fleming glanced over his shoulder to make sure Durrant was out of earshot. "What's the matter with him?"

"What do you mean?"

Fleming wasn't sure what he meant, but he knew what he sensed. During some parts of the interview Durrant was a fairly typical fifteen-year-old boy – during other parts he wasn't there at all.

He wondered if Brannigan had a drugs problem at the school, but kept the thought to himself. Durrant certainly wasn't high – and the withdrawal was intermittent and for very short periods.

He tried to answer Brannigan. "He's not like the other lads."

Brannigan, knowing it to be true, refused to admit it. "No two lads are alike. Durrant hasn't a very stable background. It may reflect in his attitude."

"How does he behave towards the other boys?" Brannigan answered with truth. "As far as I know, quite properly. No-one has ever complained."

Hammond was awaiting their return on the boat deck. He didn't ask anything about the boys' responses and it was Brannigan who volunteered the information. "The only one who heard anything was Durrant."

"Yes. As I told you at the time." Hammond took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one.

Brannigan mentioned Stonley's cigarette stub. "I didn't say anything. I leave it to you. He's probably having a quiet smoke down in the engine-room now."

"The least of our troubles."

"That's what I thought." Brannigan offered to round up the boys himself. "While you and Mr. Fleming have a talk – if that's what you both want to do?" Hammond shrugged. "It's the object of the exercise. We can winkle Masters out of the captain's cabin and have a talk there."

The cabin was full of polished mahogany and red plush. Everything was battened to the floor. Masters who had been fantasising about a voyage in the China seas took himself off with some reluctance and joined Brannigan and the other boys.

Hammond went and sat on the bunk and Fleming took the ornately carved Spanish mahogany chair near the flap-down table. Hammond's cigarette was Turkish and heavy. He shook his head as Hammond offered him one. "So you and Durrant were the first on the scene?"

"Yes. We arrived within a few minutes of each other. It was a traumatic experience for the boy."

"I imagine he could take it better than most."

"If you were a schoolmaster, Mr. Fleming, you would be careful not to make snap judgments. You can't sum up a lad's character quite that fast."

"I take your point – but we're not here to discuss Durrant. How well did you know my son?"

"Obviously not well enough to read his mind." Fleming thought, 'You smooth, uncaring bastard… He forced down his anger. "You spoke to him sometimes?"

"Naturally. I'm – I was – his housemaster."

"Earlier, you said he was imaginative. In what way?"

"Each House puts on its own Christmas entertainment. His contribution to ours was commendable. We didn't use all his ideas, but we used some."

Fleming had a vague recollection of David's mentioning a Christmas play. Jealousy that this man knew more about it than he did stung him, wasp-like, and he had consciously to brush it aside. "I've read his essays. There was one about being a research scientist. What field of research?"

Hammond was surprised. "Good God, I don't know! Is it relevant?"

"To killing himself? No. To knowing him – yes. You spoke to him. He was in your care."

"As you keep saying."

"And will keep on saying."

Hammond thought, What do you want of me, Fleming – my own blood, too?… He felt very tired.

Fleming didn't know what he wanted of Hammond… a weak, grovelling confession of negligence – or a flare-up into belligerence so that all the anger could spill over into an elemental tearing of flesh.

"Why should my son commit suicide?"

"No reason. I don't believe he did."

The silence was long and heavy. The ship creaked a little as it moved. Voices speaking in Swedish came softly from a distance and then, like the gradual turning up of a radio, were loud outside the door. It was flung open, letting in the fresh salt air and a dazzle of sunlight. The young bearded Swede felt the mood of the cabin much as a seaman becomes aware of the brooding atmosphere of an approaching storm. He mumbled an apology. "I disturb you. I'm sorry. I go."

Hammond got up from the bunk. "You've as much right to be here as we have." He addressed Fleming. "Have you anything else to say?"

"At this moment – no."

He, too, got up. The air out there where the Swede stood had a sweet fresh sanity. In here it was rank and bitter with proximity. He waited until Hammond had gone out through the door and walked a little way along the deck and then he followed him at a deliberate distance.

Brannigan, anxiously observing, saw them as the stalker and the prey. Both men were pale-faced, but showed no other outward sign of stress. Brannigan went to meet them. He spoke to Hammond first. "You've helped clear matters up a little?" Hammond looked through him and didn't answer. He approached Fleming. "I'm sorry the party of Swedes disturbed you." The lie came out so palpably that he was sorry he had spoken.

Fleming's eyes rested on him contemplatively. "I am arranging to have legal representation at the inquest. A London solicitor – a friend of the family. She knew my wife and son."

"If you think it necessary…"

"I do. Who is representing the school?"

Brannigan gave the information reluctantly. "A local solicitor, with good background knowledge of the school and the circumstances."

"An old boy, perhaps?" It was a bullet fired at random and Fleming saw with surprise that it had struck its target. Brannigan, about to speak, was silenced.

"And the coroner… an old boy, too?" It was suave.

"No."

Fleming said, with deep sarcasm, "Pity – but you can't win them all."

Brannigan's resentment boiled over into anger. "Your implications are slanderous and totally unfair. For Christ's sake, we're not inhuman. What kind of reparation is there? What do you want us to do?"

The impossible, Fleming thought, give me David alive.