The Poisoned Island (16 page)

Heading straight for Colby.

This is when what had been disconcerting becomes terrible. Each time he has the dream, during these four days, the
fear is greater, because each time the smoke from the chimney grows darker, more knowing, and the girlish laughter which accompanies its progress rises in pitch and intensity. By now it is the cackling of a girl on the point of turning into a witch, still with some humanity but with a growing awareness of her own capacity. Colby hears it coming, and he runs down Oak Lane, through the tunnel of trees.

His breath is loud and repetitive—in-out, in-out, in-out, a fearful desperate march to escape. The giggling of the female is a waltz: ha-ha-HA, ha-ha-HA, ha-ha-HA. And though he cannot see it, dare not look back, he knows that the smoke serpent is undulating in time to this regular rhythm, a snake dancing on the air.

Colby knows, with a grim dismay, that he is being chased. He must stay in the middle of the road. He must stay out of the woods.

His father appears to his right, carrying an axe.

“Where are you going, Colby?” he asks.

“To work, Father,” Colby says, still breathing in march time.

“If you come through the woods on this side, the way is easier,” his father says.

This is a lie, and it scares Colby.

A woman appears on Colby’s left side. An Otaheite woman, her hair loose down her back, dressed in that strange bark cloth they wore, a tattoo of a tree carved into her shoulder.

“Where are you going, Colby?” she asks.

“To work, woman,” Colby says.

“If you come through the woods on this side, the way is easier,” she says.

“You must choose, Colby, soon,” says his father, and points up the road. Colby can see that the road has split down the middle, a fissure that winds down the lane. “Don’t fall down the crack.”

Colby tries to stop, but can’t. His feet are no longer in his control. He is walking, walking, walking, and the only thing he can do, the only thing that is left to him, is to choose. Right or left. Father or lover. Oak or . . . What?

The Otaheite woman touches his arm, and the sensation of her skin is as hot as fire and as soft as silk. She leaves her hand there and he feels himself leaning her way, changing his direction, heading into the forest on her side of the road, forest which is no longer green and mossy but shining and rain-drenched and quivering with life . . .

His father grabs his other arm, and shouts at him.

“Listen, Colby! Listen! You are in danger! You cannot see the danger!”

The woman’s hand is soft on his arm, but it somehow pulls insistently, and his father’s fingers are loosening.

“Colby! Colby!”

The fissure approaches. It is wide, as wide as the Channel, as wide as the Pacific, and soon he will fall into it. The woman presses her fingers into his arm, and with that his father’s grip loosens and disappears and now he is on the left-hand side of the fissure. It is empty and black in there, as dark as a mine. He is walking, but the woman’s touch has gone. He looks to his left, and she is no longer there.

But there is something else in the trees now, something huge and hungry and angry. It smolders inside the quivering trees, it screams and it shouts, its high voice that of a woman with murdered children. It streams through the trees, closer and closer, and Colby veers away from it, his insides turned to ash, and one step, two step, he falls sideways into the fissure, down into the blackness . . .

Colby Potter is dreaming. He has been dreaming for four days.

Horton consults his list of the
Solander
’s crew as the men start to come into the Rotherhithe tavern. There are a total of forty-eight names, starting with the commander, Captain Hopkins. Almost two-thirds of these names make up the sailing crew of officers and seamen, while the remainder are daymen, not on the watch, including four gardeners. Three of the thirteen able seamen are now dead.

Horton has asked for as many of the crew as possible to be sent to this particular tavern. The gardeners are already in Kew, and he will have to travel there to meet them. Hopkins is vague as to when and where the officers might be spoken to, and maintains a seaman’s insistence that Horton come to the officers, and not the other way around. But he agrees to send the remaining crew and the daymen to meet Horton at the appointed place.

The tavern where Horton has been waiting is a small, old place, a fragment of an older time on the Surrey shore. The
place has been made anachronistic by the new brickwork of Rotherhithe, which has begun to trace the outlines of the new dock system like ivy climbing a new wall. This old tavern is one of many which line Rotherhithe Street. The name of the place commends it to the recent past before men began digging the new docks into the land: the Narwhal. The tavern is a different type of whale, one with the magical ability to swallow up men sober and disgorge them drunk.

As they come in the men from the
Solander
look no different from any other gang of sailors recently returned from a voyage. Their skin is cracked and brown, and even a few days after their return they still dress with their open-necked shirts and scarves around their necks, as if they were beating to quarters off Barbados rather than shivering in a London early summer. Nor do these men show any sign of the fatal illnesses that can break out in a ship carving its way home from the Pacific: no flux or scurvy, no coughing or bleeding gums or fever or gray, anxious faces. They are robust and defiant, scruffy but strong, ennobled and empowered by being in a pack, unshaven, salty, and muttering.

He stands up from his table as the last of them comes in. Captain Hopkins has not accompanied him. He’d offered to, but Horton had refused, conscious of how easy it would be to fall in with such a man, and to forget that the captain, like the rest of his crew, is a possible perpetrator. No fraternizing, even with officers.

“Men,” he says, putting an authority in his voice which he doesn’t quite feel. They stare, neither acknowledging him nor quite ignoring him. There are fifteen of them standing there, which means a good number are unaccounted for. “I
am Waterman-Constable Charles Horton of the River Police Office. No doubt you know why you’re here. I wish to speak with each of you about Sam Ransome.”

“Ye can speak of him,” says one of the men, an older red-haired Scot. “But don’t expect nae nourishment from the words. The man was a waste of God’s air.”

There are mutters of agreement.

“Then we’ll start with you,” says Horton, and the Scot scowls at him. “Your name?”

“Angus Carrick. Commonly called Red Angus. And who are ye to ask questions?”

“I have given you my name.”

“Aye, that you have. But I don’t know ye from Adam, lad. On whose authority are you askin’ us these things?”

The man is belligerent but clearly intelligent. Horton looks him in the eye as he speaks.

“You are here under the command of your captain. He himself is bound to assist me in my enquiries, since I investigate under the authority of John Harriott, superintending magistrate of the River Police Office, constituted by Parliament in the name of the King to prevent crime and misdemeanors on the river. Any man who does not assist willingly will be arrested and taken to the Police Office in Wapping, where he will be locked away and interrogated at my leisure. Does this make things clearer?”

The men say nothing to that, and Red Angus Carrick looks away.

Another man, tall and blond as a Viking, speaks up.

“Ask away, mate,” he says, quietly but firmly. “There’s little need for violent speech.”

Horton looks at him, and thinks that perhaps he was deceived. Where Carrick was sparky and resentful, this man
looks both exhausted and resigned, though it is clear the other crewmen pay him significant respect. He is one of the two or three born leaders among the men of every vessel, the ones who transmit the wishes of the officers through their compliance but who also hold the possibility of mutiny in their hands. But he is also the sickliest looking of the whole bunch of them, obviously dog-tired. Perhaps he has been whoring and drinking his way up and down the river ever since the
Solander
returned.

“And I will use no violent speech. Your name?”

“Jeremiah Critchley, sir. Carpenter’s mate.”

“Very good. Now, the rest of you, starting with Carrick: name, and position in the crew, if you please.” He sits down, and makes ready to tick the men’s names off the list Hopkins has provided.

The Scot scowls. But then, Horton thinks, Scots do scowl, do they not?

“Cook,” he says, and one by one they follow him.

“Calder. Boatswain’s mate.”

“Haddow. Sailmaker.”

“Bywater. Able seaman.”

“Dougherty. Butcher.”

“Forshaw. Surgeon’s assistant.”

“Beasley. Able seaman.”

“Fitton. Able seaman.”

“Gilks. Cooper.”

“Flaherty. Able seaman.”

“Brooks. Captain’s clerk.”

“Mackay. Quartermaster’s mate.”

“Nunn. Sailmaker.”

“Craven. Able seaman.”

“Thank you. We’ll conduct the interviews upstairs. If you
don’t mind, Carrick. The rest of you wait here until I call for you.”

*  *  *

The interviews are generally sticky affairs, but it is a stickiness to which Horton has become used in the months since he has been investigating incidents on behalf of John Harriott. Ordinary people do not recognize his right to ask them questions; they feel he is impertinent. Usually they demand (as Red Angus had) to understand under whose authority he shelters. Even when he explains matters they seem to think the only appropriate place for an
interrogation
is a courtroom, under the eyes of a judge. This is the kind of questioning a thousand years of history has taught them.

Horton has therefore had to learn how to conduct these interviews, and has begun thinking of them as theatrical performances in which there are two players. For some subjects he affects a comradely warmth. With others, he adopts an officious asperity. But always he is playing a role. Captain Hopkins had been easy; the two of them had fallen into an open way of talking, as between two equals meeting at a coffeehouse. The crewmen of the
Solander
are another matter, and Horton finds he has to be constantly reminding them both of the power of his office and the justice of his investigation.

The first, Red Angus Carrick, is arguably the most difficult, not least because he will set the tone for the others, like the first act in a play. The room above the Narwhal is small and contains only an armchair and a side table. On the table Horton has placed a pile of paper and a quill with a pot of ink. He goes to stand by the window.

The Scot is a big man, but once he is seated Horton instantly
feels more comfortable. He leans back on the windowsill, looking directly at Carrick.

“You had little time for Ransome, then.”

The Scot has relaxed, no longer playing out a role for his shipmates. His demeanor is now playfully grumpy rather than aggressive.

“Nae one of us had time for Ransome.”

“He had no comrades on board the ship?”

“We’re all comrades, Officer Charles Horton,” says the Scot. “At sea, a crew watches for itself. And for each other.” He sneers at Horton, in that universal look of contempt for the landlubber that all sailors share. Horton lets it pass. No lubber he.

“Friends, then. Did Ransome have any friends?”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“Because Ransome is dead.”

“Ransome was killed for his wages. ’Tis common knowledge along the wharves.”

“It is?” says Horton, navigating untruths as carefully as he can. “Well, we need to be sure. There are some particulars of his death which are worthy of investigation.”

“Particulars?” sneers the Scot. “You sound like a City clerk.”

Horton bristles finally.

“No, sir, not a clerk. An officer of the River Police. And a former lieutenant in the King’s Navy, man and boy. I outrank you in experience and in office, cook.”

The Scot laughs, looking him up and down as if to test the truth of his claim.

“Lieutenant, eh? And why not captain, Constable Horton? Was it not to your liking?”

Impertinent but perceptive
. Horton waits a moment, holding the Scot’s eyes until they drop away.

“Did anything happen on the voyage which might have caused another crewman to have killed Ransome?”

“Ah, that’s it then. You think one of us did for him. But not an officer, eh?”

“The officers will be interviewed.”

“Always us first, though, is it not?”

“Carrick, I am not here to argue belowdecks politics with you.” Though I would have some things to say which would shock you, Horton thinks.

“Mr. Horton, or whatever it is I call ye, this voyage wasn’t like most others. Barely a bad moment, good winds, no storms, and no doubt I don’t need to describe the attractions of Otaheite to an old Navy hand like
you
.”

“Humor me, Carrick. Describe the attractions to me.”

The Scot visibly warms to the question. His eyes look into a tropical distance as he speaks.