Wildtrack Page 9

  "I'm planning a late run," Bannister said now, "and the far north route. With any luck I'll come home just when the autumn programme schedule begins. That'll start next season's shows with a triumph."

  "Is that why you're doing it?"

  "I'm doing it to prove that a British boat can do it. And for Nadeznha's memory. And because the television company are paying me to do it, and because my audience want me to win." He rattled the reasons off as if by rote, then paused before adding the final justification, "And to prove that a TV star isn't just a powder-puff in an overlit studio."

  He had given the final reason lightly, but I suspected it was the most important spur to his ambition. "Is that what people think?"

  "Don't you?" he challenged me.

  "I wouldn't choose the life," I said, "but I suppose someone has to do it."

  He smiled. "Most of them are just powder-puffs in overlit studios, Nick. They think they're so damned clever merely because they're on the idiot box, while the truth is that the job demands a great deal less intelligence than people think. So if I want to make my mark properly then I have to achieve something rigorous, don't I? Something like the St Pierre. It may not be the VC, but it will do."

  It was a remarkable admission, even beguiling in its candour, and it explained why Bannister surrounded himself by strong men like Mulder and his loutish crew. Acceptance by such brutes made Bannister feel strong. He laughed suddenly, perhaps embarrassed because he had betrayed something personal.

  Angela's miserable eyes watched me over the edge of her blanket. I put a hand on the small wheel that was linked to the larger helm in the central cockpit and I felt the rudder's tremors vibrating the stainless-steel spokes. I was thinking of the night of Nadeznha's death. If Wildtrack had been running before a heavy sea then why, in the name of God, would an experienced sailor con the ship from the aft cockpit? The centre cockpit would be far more comfortable, but perhaps Nadeznha Bannister had chosen this smaller cockpit as a vantage point to watch for the great waves looming from the darkness behind. I shivered as I imagined the tons of freezing water collapsing on to Wildtrack 's stern. It would be just like being hit by a truckload of cement dropped from two floors up.

  Angela twisted round to throw up the seasickness pills and I politely looked away, past the danbuoys, to watch Wildtrack's seething and curling wake. A cormorant flew low and fast across our stern. "Do you think Wildtrack can win it?" Bannister asked abruptly.

  "With luck, yes."

  "Would you like to be a part of it, Nick? As navigator?"

  "Me?" I was astonished by the offer. "You don't need a navigator, Bannister! You've got more bloody electronics on this thing than an Apollo mooncraft!"

  "The race rules say we must carry a specialist navigator."

  "I thought Fanny was your navigator?"

  "He was, but he'll take Nadeznha's place as a watch captain this year." Bannister turned as his crew spilt the spinnaker from its chute. The gaudily coloured sail blossomed as he turned back to me. "It's really Angela's thought, not mine, but I like the idea very much. Why don't we end your film by showing you leaving Cherbourg in Wildtrack? The film will be transmitted while we're at sea, and it'll help whip up some public enthusiasm for the film about the race itself."

  I didn't think he'd asked me because of any affection for me, but it was still somewhat demeaning to realize that he only wanted my film to be a taster for his own greater triumph. "I thought the end of my film was Sycorax sailing into the sunset?"

  "Maybe we'll use that over the opening titles. But think of it, Nick! Winning the St Pierre!" Bannister spoke with a sudden enthusiasm. "Licking the Frogs at their own game!"

  Angela watched me like a sick hawk. I shook my head. "I've never been a speed-merchant. I like going slow."

  "But do think about it," he urged me. "In a couple of months I'll be giving a big party to formally announce my bid for the trophy. I'd like to say you'll be a part of the effort, Nick. Will you think about it?"

  "You need a specialist navigator," I said. "Some guy who's a race tactician as well. I'm really not going to be of any use to you."

  "Not in the race, maybe"—Angela forced the words out—"but you'll help the ratings."

  "Ratings?" I somehow took the word to refer to the members of Mulder's crew; as if they were naval ratings.

  "The viewing figures," Angela said with an acidity which implied that my misunderstanding betrayed an astonishing stupidity. "The VC makes you interesting, Mr Sandman, interesting enough to guarantee us more than twenty million viewers. Anticipating that kind of audience rating will mean we can increase the price of the advertising slots, and that's how you'll be useful to us."

  At least she had been honest, though that did not soften the offence I felt. So my Victoria Cross was to become an advertiser's weapon? A means of selling more dogfood and baked beans? I was framing an outright and offended refusal when a violent lurch of Wildtrack 's hull ended the conversation. Angela jerked upright, vomiting, and I saw the mainsail's shadow whip over us. There was a noise like a bass-string thumping the sky, and the boat was suddenly gybing, broaching and falling on her beam. I grabbed the small wheel for support. The tall mast was bending, breaking, then falling to leeward. Broken water boiled up the scuppers and spilt cold into the self-draining cockpits. A shroud whipped skywards, flicking a broken spreader with it. The unleashed spinnaker billowed ahead as the mast fell. The slick hull rolled, recovered and slowed. The seas were low, no more than two or three feet, but even so Wildtrack 's bows were buried and the boat staggered as if she'd sailed into a sandbank. Rigging was tangling and the mainsail was shredding with a noise like the fire of an automatic weapon.

  Bannister stood, half fell, and shouted incoherently. A crew-member was overboard, tangled in the fallen shrouds. Angela was curled on the thwart, sobbing. Mulder's voice bellowed above the din and chaos, inflicting order on the panic.

  A port shroud had parted. The stainless-steel wire, made to carry all the weight of great winds on a towering mast, must have snapped. The mast and sails had ripped overboard. It had taken no more than two or three seconds, and now Wildtrack lay wallowing and draining in the gentle seas. No one was hurt. The boat had pulled up short and it was a simple matter to pull the crewman who had gone overboard back to safety. The film crew, who had been staying out of the way in the main cabin, poured in panic up to the centre cockpit and were curtly told to get the hell out of the way.

  "Fuck." Bannister was staring helplessly at the shambles.

  "Wire-cutters!" Mulder shouted.

  I stayed out of the way. The crew knew what to do. The broken and fallen rigging was secured, then the remaining stays and shrouds were cut so that the wreckage could be dragged inboard. The engine was started. All in all it had been a mild accident, impressive to watch, but harmless except to Bannister's purse.

  And to his anger. He took me forward and showed me the turnbuckle that had taken up the tension of the broken shroud. It had not been the wire which snapped, but rather the turnbuckle that had simply let the shroud go. It was threaded inside, and someone had taken a circular file to the threads and worn them almost smooth. The sabotage was clumsily obvious; there were even shards of filed metal still sticking to the grease which had been put on to the abraded threads. Just enough purchase had been left to grip the shroud but as soon as Mulder put the spinnaker's extra weight on the mast the threads had given way. Once that shroud had gone, the others on the port side had snapped like cheesewire under strain.

  "Fanny!" Bannister was livid with anger. "From now on you live in the boatyard. All of you!"

  "Does that mean I get my wharf back?" I asked tactlessly.

  For a second I thought Bannister was going to hit me, but then he nodded. "You get your damned wharf back." His anger was showing as petulance, like a child losing a treat. He pushed past me, going back to the stern where his girlfriend was still slumped in the stomach-churning misery of the sea. For the moment Bannister appeared t
o have forgotten his offer that I should sail to St Pierre triumph as part of this boat's crew.

  But I hadn't forgotten.

  And I wouldn't do it. There are lucky boats and unlucky boats. That isn't a fancy, nor a superstition, but a fact. Sycorax was a lucky boat, but I smelt the stench of disaster about Wildtrack. She had already killed Bannister's first wife, and now someone had dismasted her. She was crewed by a surly pack and skippered by a kleptomaniac. I did not care what fame or fortune might come to the crew of this boat if she won the St Pierre, but I would not share it, for I would not sail in a boat that so reeked of ill-luck.

  Bannister could sail the Atlantic without me. I knew he'd repeat the offer again, but so far I'd given him too much for too little. This time the answer would be no. When I sailed my next ocean it would be in Sycorax and in no other boat, just Sycorax .

  Mulder scowled at me, pushed the throttle hard open, and we motored ignominiously home.

  PART TWO

  Inspector Abbott came to the village pub three weeks after Wildtrack had been dismasted. He was wearing trousers made of a wide blue and pink check that looked like dismantled curtains.

  "You're looking better," he said to me in a rather grudging voice.

  "I'm fine, Harry." I said it confidently, but it was not really true. I was swimming two miles every morning in Bannister's indoor pool and the exercise was laying new muscle beneath the scar tissue, but my leg could still betray me with a sudden and numbing weakness. Only the day before, while walking down from the village post-office, I'd sprawled helplessly on the pavement. One minute my right leg had been doggedly reliable, the next, and for no apparent reason, it had just gone limp. But I would not admit to the weakness, lest I persuaded myself that I was not fit enough to sail across the world. "I assume from the fancy dress that you're not on duty?"

  Abbott plucked at the trousers. "Don't you like them, Nick?"

  "They're bloody horrible."

  "They're American golfer's trousers," he said with hurt dignity. "They're meant to improve the swing. Plenty of room in the crotch, you see? You want a lemonade, Nick? A bottle of cherry pop, perhaps?"

  "A pint of best, Harry."

  He carefully carried the two full pints of beer to my table. It was early evening and the pub was still empty, though in a few weeks the crush of tourists would make the riverside bar uninhabitable. Abbott sipped the top off his beer and sighed with pleasure. "Got your medal back, did you?"

  "I did, and thank you."

  He acknowledged the thanks with a gracious wave of his cigarette lighter. "What do you think of the Boer now?"

  "He's a good sailor," I said neutrally.

  "So was Bluebeard." Abbott lit a cigarette. "I haven't seen Mr Bannister lately."

  "He's on Capri with his girlfriend. They're on holiday."

  "I wonder why he's stopped going to America for his holidays," Abbott said with an air of puzzled innocence, then shook his head. "Me? I get a week with the wife's sister in bloody Frinton. Who's the girlfriend?"

  "Girl called Angela Westmacott. She's a producer on Bannister's programme."

  Abbott frowned, then clicked his fingers. "Skinny bint, blonde hair?"

  "Right."

  "Looks a bit like your ex-wife; starved. How is Melissa?"

  "She struggles on."

  "I've never understood why men go for those skinny ones." Abbott paused to drain his pint. "I nicked a bloke once who'd murdered a complete stranger. The victim's wife asked him to do it, you see, so he bashed the bloke's head in with a poker. Very messy. She'd promised him a bit of nooky, which is why he did it, and the woman was as scrawny as a plucked chicken. You know what he told me when he confessed?"

  "No."

  "He said that it was probably the only chance he would ever get to go to bed with a pretty woman. Pretty? She was about as pretty as a toothpick. And to cap it all she didn't even give it to him! Told him to sod off when he trotted round with his pecker sharpened." Abbott stared ruefully across the river. "It was almost the perfect murder, wasn't it? Having your best-beloved turned off by a stranger."

  The slight stress on 'perfect murder' was the second hint that Abbott was not here entirely because he was thirsty. His first hint had been the gentle query why Bannister no longer visited America. "Perfect murder?" I prompted him.

  "My beer glass is empty, Nick, and it's your round."

  I dutifully fetched two pints. "Perfect murder?" I asked again.

  "The thing about a perfect murder, Nick, is that we'll never even know it's happened. So officially there's no such thing as a perfect murder. So if you hear about one, Nick, don't believe in it."

  The comments were too pointed to ignore. "Does that mean," I asked, "that it was an accident?"

  "That what was an accident?" Abbott pretended innocence.

  "Nadeznha Bannister?"

  "I wasn't there, Nick, I wasn't there." Abbott was obscurely pleased with himself. I'd been given a message, though I wasn't at all sure what or why. Abbott fixed me with his hangdog look. "Have you heard these rumours that someone's trying to scupper Bannister's chances of winning the St Pierre?"

  "I've heard them."

  "And you know what happened two nights ago in the marina?"

  "I heard." Wildtrack's warps had been cut in the dead of the night. There was a spring tide at the full and, if it had not been for a visiting French yachtsman, Bannister's boat might have been carried out to sea. Mulder and his crew had been sleeping alongside in the houseboat that had been moved from my wharf and the Frenchman's shout of warning had woken them just in time. It had all ended safely, and it might all have been dismissed as a trivial incident but for the fact that the warps had been cut. That made it into another attempt at sabotage.

  "But clumsy," Abbott now said. "Very clumsy. I mean, if you wanted to stop a bugger from winning the St Pierre, would you knock his mast off now? Or cut him adrift now? Why not wait till he's in the race?"

  "Does somebody want to stop Bannister winning the St Pierre?" I asked.

  Abbott blithely ignored my question. "Kids could have climbed the marina fence and cut the mooring ropes, I suppose."

  "The mast wasn't wrecked by kids," I said. "I saw the turnbuckle, and it was sabotage."

  "Whatever a turnbuckle might be," Abbott said gloomily. "It was probably buggered up by a crew member who just wanted a week off."

  That was a possible answer, I supposed. Certainly, if Melissa was right and Yassir Kassouli did want to end Bannister's chances of winning the trophy, then the two incidents were very trivial, especially for a man of Kassouli's reputed wealth. "Are you making enquiries?" I asked Abbott.

  "Christ, no! I don't want to get involved. Besides, as I told you, I'm not crime anymore."

  "What are you, Harry?"

  "Odds and sods, Nick. General dogsbody." He sounded bored.

  And I was confused. Abbott was sailing very close to the rumours I'd heard, but always sheering off before anything definite was said. If a message was being given to me, then it was being delivered so elliptically that I was utterly at a loss. I also knew it would be no good demanding elucidation, for Abbott would simply say he was just having an idle chat. "Seen your old man lately?" he asked me now.

  "I've been busy."

  "You and Jimmy Nicholls, I hear," Abbott said. Jimmy was helping me to repair Sycorax. "How is he?"

  "Coughing."

  "Not long for this world, poor old sod. He shouldn't smoke so much, should he?" Abbott contemplated putting out his own cigarette, then decided to suck at it instead. He blew smoke at me. "When's the big party, Nick?"

  He was referring to the party that was to be held at Bannister's riverside house in the early summer. The party was not just a social affair, but also the occasion on which Bannister would formally announce his entry into the St Pierre. It did not matter that he had already broadcast his intention on nationwide television, he would do it again so that his bid would receive further attention in the newspapers
and yachting magazines.

  "I hear," Abbott said, "that Bannister's introducing his crew at the party?"

  "I wouldn't know, Harry."

  "I just wanted to say to you, Nick, that I do hope you won't be one of them?"

  He was not being elliptical now, far from it. "I won't be," I said.

  "Because I did hear that Bannister asked you."

  I wondered how Abbott had heard, but decided it was simply riverside gossip. I'd told Jimmy, which was the equivalent of printing the news on the front page of the local newspaper. "He did ask," I said. "I said no, and I haven't heard anything since."

  "Will he ask again?"

  I shrugged. "Probably."

  "Then go on saying no."

  I finished my pint and leaned back. "Why, Harry?"

  "Why? Because in an unperverted sort of way, Nick, I'm reasonably fond of you. For your father's sake, you understand, and because you were stupid enough to win that bloody gong. I wouldn't want to see you turned into sharkbait. And that boat of Bannister's does seem to be," he paused, "unlucky?"

  "Unlucky," I agreed, then wondered if the vague stress Abbott had laid on the word was yet another hint. I tried to force him into a straight answer. "Are you telling me that someone is trying to stop him?"

  "Buggered if I know, Nick. Perhaps Bannister's paranoid. I mean being on the fucking telly must make a man paranoid." He drained his pint. "I know you'd like to buy me another one, Nick, but the wife has cooked some tripe and pig's trotters as a special treat, so I'll be on my way. Remember what I said."

  "I'll remember."

  I heard his car start and labour up the hill. Out on the river a kid doggedly tacked a Mirror dinghy upstream. Behind it, motoring into the wind, came Mystique. The American girl stood at her tiller and I hoped she might swing across to the pub's ramshackle pier for a drink, but she stayed on the far bank's channel instead.

  A heron flew past her aluminium-hulled boat and climbed to its nest. Three swans floated beneath the trees. It was a spring evening, full of innocence and charm.