Bernard Cornwell - Thrillers 01 Page 7

  “Nick!” Melissa contritely held the medal out to me and I tenderly restored the statuette to its side table. “I was only asking,” she said in a hurt tone.

  “And all I’m asking, Melissa dear”—I put the medal back into my pocket—“is why you rented Lime Wharf to Bannister.”

  “You were crippled, weren’t you? That frightfully pudgy doctor said you’d never walk again, so it seemed hardly likely

  that you’d ever need the boat, let alone the smelly wharf. And your boat was nothing but scrap, Nick! It was a wreck! No one was looking after it.”

  “Jimmy Nicholls was. Except he was ill.”

  “He certainly wasn’t doing a very good job,” Melissa said tartly. “And frankly, Nick, I thought you could do with the extra money. For the children, of course, and I really think, Nick, that you should thank me. I was only doing what I thought right, and it took quite a lot of my time and a great deal of effort to arrange it.”

  The nerve of it was awe-inspiring. I reflected that if the boat’s registration papers had not been safe in my lawyer’s office Melissa would have sold Sycorax off to get herself a new hat for Royal Ascot. “How much rent is loverboy paying you for the wharf?”

  “Don’t be crude, Nicholas.”

  I met her gaze and wondered how many times she’d been unfaithful to me during our marriage. “How much?” I asked again.

  The door opened, saving Melissa the need to answer, and the Honourable John came into the room. He looks every inch as expensive as his wife. The Honourable John is tall, thin, very pin-striped, with sleek black hair that lies close to a narrow and handsome head. He checked as he saw me. “Ah. Didn’t know you were here, Nick. I hear you’re going to be a telly personality?”

  “They want me to encourage the nation to its duty.”

  “Splendid, splendid.” He hovered. “And are you recovering well?”

  “Fine most of the time,” I said cheerfully, “but every now and then a fuse blows and I go berserk. I killed an investment broker last week. The doctors think the sight of a pin-striped suit makes me unstable.”

  “Jolly good, jolly good.” The Honourable John was uncomfortable with me, and I don’t much blame him. It’s probably fitting that a man should be nervous around the ex-husband he cuckolded. “I just came in,” he explained to Melissa, “for the Common Market report on broccoli.”

  “In the escritoire, darling, with your other thrillers. Nick was being tiresome about his wharf.”

  “And quite right, too. I said you didn’t have any right to rent it out.” The Honourable John shot up in my estimation.

  Melissa glared at her husband. “It was for Mands and Pip,” she said.

  “Like auctioning my golf-clubs! I don’t suppose there’s a child born who’s worth a good iron, what?” He dug about in the papers on the desk and found whatever he wanted. “I’m off to see someone. Will I see you for dinner, darling?”

  “No,” I said. They ignored me, kissed, and the Honourable John left.

  “Don’t take any notice of him,” Melissa said. “He’s really very fond of Mands and Pip.”

  “Does he know about you and Anthony Bannister?” I asked.

  She twisted like a disturbed cat. “Do not be more tiresome than you absolutely need to be, Nicholas.”

  I stared into her face. A wedge-shaped face, narrowing from the broad clear brow to the delicate chin. It was, as my father had liked to say, a face where everything was wrong. Her nose was too long, her eyes too wide apart, her mouth was too small, yet altogether, with her pale, pale hair, it was a face that made men turn on the pavements as she went by. It was impossible, watching her now, to imagine that I had once been married to this pale and silky beauty.

  “Who,” I said, returning to the earlier question that Melissa had avoided answering, “is threatening Anthony Bannister?”

  My previous question had been about Melissa’s relations with Bannister and she smelt blackmail. “My marriage is very happy, Nick. Hon-John and I are both grown up.” Melissa said it in a warning tone of voice.

  “I hope it stays very happy,” I said, thus becoming a blackmailer, and at the same time curious to hear what would be churned up from Melissa’s remarkable memory.

  “It’s only a story.” Melissa opened an onyx box, took out a cigarette and waited for me to hasten forward with a lighter.

  I did not move so Melissa lit her own cigarette. “I mean, there are bound to be stories, Nick. There always are. About

  glamorous men like Tony.” She paused to blow out a stream of smoke. Her overmantel was thick with embossed invitation cards. There was one, I saw, from my old mess. Good old loyalty. “You mustn’t repeat this, Nick,” she said dutifully.

  “Of course not.”

  “It’s all to do with Nadeznha, his late lamented. Awful name, isn’t it? Sounds like one of those Russian ballet dancers who defect to the West as soon as they discover pantyhose and underarm deodorants. Anyway, you know she died last year?”

  “I know.”

  “People were full of sympathy for Tony, of course, but there is just the teensiest whim of suspicion that he might have wanted her out of the way.” Melissa watched me very carefully. “It’s the perfect murder, isn’t it? I mean, who’s to know?”

  “Overboard,” I said.

  “Exactly. One splash and you don’t even have to buy a coffin, do you? Perhaps that’s why I never went sailing with you?” She smiled to show she had not meant it. “Anyway, Nadeznha died at night and there was only one other person on deck.”

  “The Boer?”

  “Score a bull’s eye.”

  “But why would Bannister want her dead?”

  Melissa rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Because she was going to walk out on him, of course! That’s what everyone thinks, anyway. And she’d have skinned him. Think of the alimony!” Melissa’s voice took on an unaccustomed enthusiasm. “And I’m sure Tony’s not exactly playing the taxman with a straight bat. He’s got endless offshore companies and shady little bank accounts. Nadeznha would have revealed all, wouldn’t she?”

  “He must have good lawyers,” I said. “And divorce must be as common as tealeaves among TV people.”

  “As common as cocaine, anyway,” Melissa corrected me. “But Nadeznha would have had much better lawyers. She was frightfully wealthy. And anyway, Tony’s pride couldn’t have endured losing a catch like Nadeznha.”

  “Was she a catch?”

  “Only Kassouli’s daughter.” Melissa’s tone showed how disgusted she was by my ignorance. “Oh, come on, Nick! Even you must have heard of Yassir Kassouli!”

  I’d heard of him, of course. It was a name mentioned in the same breath as Getty, or Rockefeller, or Croesus. Yassir Kassouli owned ships, oil companies, finance houses and manufacturing industries around the globe. He had been born in the Levant, but had married an American wife and become an American citizen. He was rumoured to be richer than God.

  “His money,” Melissa said, “will go to his son, but Nadeznha can’t have died poor, can she? She was the genuine American Princess.”

  “She was certainly pretty.” I thought of the photographs in Bannister’s Devon house.

  “If you like bouncing tanned flesh and Girl Guide eyes, yes.” Melissa shuddered. “Mind you, there was something quite eerie about all that mixed blood. She married Tony on the rebound, of course, and Kassouli never really approved. She was slumming in his eyes. And Yassir Kassouli has never forgiven Tony for her death. I mean, at worst it was murder, and at best carelessness. And you can imagine how sinister someone like Kassouli can be if he decides he doesn’t like you. He’s hardly likely to send you a solicitor’s letter; much more likely to slip a cobra into your bed.” She laughed.

  “Do you think Bannister murdered Nadeznha?” I asked.

  “I never said any such thing!”

  “You think the Boer pushed her overboard?” I pressed her.

  Melissa adopted a look of hurt innocence. “I am m
erely telling you the faintest, most malicious, trace of gossip, and I will utterly deny ever mentioning Tony’s name to you.” She tapped ash into a crystal bowl. “But the answer to your question, Nick, as to who might have threatened Tony, is Yassir Kassouli. The current whisper is that Yassir’s sworn that Tony’s not going to win the St Pierre.”

  “Which is why Bannister keeps that Boer brute around?”

  “You’re very slow, Nick, but you do eventually grasp the point. Exactly.” Melissa stubbed out her cigarette to show that the subject was closed. “So what are you going to do now, Nick?”

  “I’ll see the kids in two weeks.”

  “I don’t mean that, Nick. I mean with what passes for the rest of your life?”

  “Ah! I’m going to repair Sycorax, then sail her to New Zealand. I’ll fly back to see the kids when I can.”

  “You think money grows on trees?”

  “My affair.”

  She picked up the emery board again. “Get a job, Nick. I mean, it’s frightfully brave of you to think you can sail round the world, but you really can’t. Hon-John will help you. He has oodles of friends who’d be jolly pleased to hire a VC. You can buy a grown-up suit and call yourself a public-relations man.”

  “I’m going to sail round the world.”

  She shrugged. “I shall need security from you, Nick. I mean, you can’t just abandon your children in destitution while you gallivant in the South Seas, can you?”

  “Why ever not?”

  “I shall have to tell my lawyers that you’re planning to run away, Nick. I hate to do it, you know that, but I really don’t have any choice. None.”

  I smiled. “Dear Melissa. Money, money money.”

  “Who’ll look after the children if I don’t?”

  “Their nanny?” I kissed her upturned cheeck. “I’ll see you in two weeks?”

  “Goodbye, Nicholas. The maid will see you out.” She pulled the bellrope.

  I left Melissa empty-handed, but in truth I had not expected to get any of Bannister’s rent money.

  But nor had I expected to hear the sibilant whisper of a rumoured crime. Was that what Inspector Abbott had meant when he spoke of using the long spoon? I limped through the drifts of fallen blossom and remembered Nadeznha Bannister’s face from her photographs; she had been so pretty and happy, and now she lay thousands of feet deep with her body rotted by gas and drifting in the sluggish darkness.

  And there was a whisper, nothing more than a catspaw of wind rippling a perfect ocean calm, that she had been murdered.

  And Bannister was clearly protecting the Boer.

  And, I told myself, it was none of my damned business. None.

  It was none of my business, but I couldn’t shake it out of my head.

  When I got back to Devon I searched amongst the yachting magazines in Bannister’s study for an account of the accident that had killed Nadeznha. I found something even better; in a brown folder on his desk there was a transcript of the inquest into Nadeznha’s death.

  It told a simple story. Wildtrack had been on the return leg of the St Pierre, some five hundred miles off the Canadian coast, and sailing hard in a night watch. The seas were heavy, and the following wind was force six to seven, but gusting to eight. At two in the morning Nadeznha Bannister had been the watch captain. The only other person on deck was Fanny Mulder, described in the inquest papers as the boat’s navigator. That seemed odd. I’d been told Fanny was the professional skipper, and anyway, why would a navigator be standing a night watch as crew?

  Mulder’s evidence stated that the wind had risen after midnight, but that Nadeznha Bannister had decided against reducing sail. In the old days a yacht always shortened sail to ride out gales, but in today’s races they went hell for leather to win. The boat, Mulder testified, had been going fast. At about two in the morning Nadeznha noticed that the boom was riding high and she had asked Fanny to go forward and check that the kicking strap hadn’t loosened. He went forward. He wore a safety harness. He testified that Nadeznha, who was at the wheel in the aft cockpit, was similarly harnessed. He remembered, as he went through the centre cockpit, thinking that the seas were becoming higher and more dangerous. He found the kicking strap’s anchor had snapped. Just as he was re-rigging the strap to a D-ring at the mainmast’s base, Wildtrack was pooped. A great sea, larger than any other in that dark night, broke on to the yacht’s stern. She shuddered, half-swamped, and Fanny told how he had been thrust forward by the rush of the cold water. His harness held, but by the time he had recovered himself, and by the time that Wildtrack had juddered free of the heavy seas, he found that Nadeznha was gone. The

  yacht’s jackstaff, danbuoys, guardrails and lifebelts had been swept from the stern by the violence of the breaking wave.

  Bannister, who was named as skipper of Wildtrack, was the first man on deck. The rest of the crew quickly followed. They dropped sail, started the engine and used white flares to search the sea. At daybreak they were still searching, though by then there could have been no hope, for Nadeznha Bannister had not been wearing a lifejacket, trusting instead to her safety harness. An American search plane had scoured the area at dawn, but by mid-day any hopes of a miracle had long been abandoned. Nadeznha Bannister’s body had never been found.

  The coroner remarked that Wildtrack had not shortened sail, and he criticized the attitude of yachtsmen who believed that risks should be taken for the ephemeral rewards of victory. That was the only criticism. He noted that the decision not to shorten sail had been taken by the deceased, whose skill at sailing and whose bravery at sea were not in question. It was a tragic accident, and the sympathy of the court was extended to Mr Anthony Bannister and to Nadeznha’s father, Mr Yassir Kassouli, who had flown from America to attend the inquest.

  The verdict was accidental death, and the matter was closed.

  “Force six or seven?” Jimmy Nicholls said. “I wouldn’t shorten sail

  either.”

  “You think it was an accident?” I asked.

  “I weren’t there, boy. Nor were you. But it just shows you, don’t it? Always unlucky if you take a maid to sea. Maids should stay ashore, they should.”

  It was Tuesday. My lawyer had advised me that, if I wanted Sycorax restored, I should make the film, and so Jimmy was taking me to the marina in his thirty-foot fishing boat. It was a warm day, very warm, but Jimmy was dressed in his usual woollen vest, flannel shirt, serge waistcoat and shapeless tweed jacket that hung over thick tar-stained trousers which were tucked into fleece-lined sea-boots. Ne’er cast a clout till May be out, they say in England, but Jimmy did not intend discarding any clothing until he was stripped for his coffin.

  He had almost found the coffin this last winter. “Buggers put me in hospital, Nick.” He had told me this twenty times already, but Jimmy never liked to let a point drop until he was convinced it had been well understood. “T’weren’t my fault, nor was it. Bloody social workers! Told me I were living in a slum, they did. Told me it were the Government’s doing. I told’ em it were my home.” He coughed vilely and spat towards the houseboat that was still moored on my wharf. Mulder was supposed to live in the ugly floating hut, but I had not seen the South African since my visit to Bannister’s house in Richmond.

  “You should give up smoking, Jimmy,” I said.

  “Buggers would like that, wouldn’t they? There was a time when an Englishman were free, Nick, but we ain’t free now. They’ll be stopping our ale next. They’ll have us all on milk and lettuce next, like the Chinese.” The Chinese diet was one of the many matters on which Jimmy was seriously misinformed. The one subject of which he was a complete master was seamanship.

  He was seventy-three now. In his twenties he had sailed in a J-class racing yacht; one of the twenty hired hands who lived in the scuttleless fo’c’sle of a rich man’s racer with a single bucket for all their waste. Jimmy’s job had been mastheadman, spending his days a hundred feet high on the crosstrees to ensure that the big sails did n
ot tangle with the standing rigging. He had been paid three pounds and five shillings a week, with two shillings added for food and an extra pound for every race won. During the war he’d served in destroyers and been torpedoed twice. In 1947 he had become a deckhand on a small coaster that shuttled china clay and fertilizers about the Channel. Later he’d worked in trawlers, while now, notionally retired, he owned this clinker-built boat that hunted bass, crab and lobsters off the jagged headlands. Jimmy was a Devon seaman, tough as the granite cliffs that tried to suck his boat into their grinding undertow. I suspected that when his time came Jimmy would arrange his own death in those dark waters rather than surrender to the hospital’s oxygen tent.

  Now, as we chugged downstream, I again probed Jimmy’s opinions of Nadeznha Bannister’s death. “I don’t reckon she’d have taken a risk,” Jimmy said. “She could sail a boat right enough, I’ll say that for the maid.”

  That was like Socrates admitting that someone was a reasonably clear thinker. “Right enough to fall overboard?” I asked.

  “Ah!” It was half cough and half spit. “You’re all the same, you youngsters. You think you know what you’re doing out there! I’ve seen men who knew the sea like a hound knows its master, and they still went oversides. There isn’t a law, Nick, not about the water. How long you been sailing, now?”

  “Since I was twelve.”

  “How long’s that?”

  I had to think. “Twenty-two years.”

  Jimmy nodded happily. “And in another twenty-two, boy, you just might have learned a thing or two.”

  I kept trawling for gossip. “Did you ever hear anything about Mrs Bannister?”

  He shook his head. “Not that would surprise you, no.”

  “I heard she might have been having an affair.”

  “T’weren’t with me!” He roared with laughter, and the laugh turned into a hacking cough.

  I waited for the coughing to finish. “I’ve heard rumours, Jimmy, that it wasn’t an accident.”

  “Rumours.” He spat over the side. “There are always rumours. They say she was pushed, don’t they? I heard that. And they say as how it wasn’t that Mulder fellow on deck with her, but Mr Bannister.”