THURSDAY'S ORCHID (18 page)

The ship had stopped her slight roll, the sea now calm, the sun shining, and a gentle breeze blowing. Peaceful, and yet my thoughts still drifted to Pete lying stiff amongst the sides of lamb and beef; and I knew that but for the parka it might have been me stretched out rigid and cold.

Syrius
was moving through the water at a good rate of knots, gliding through the calm sea and sending a bow wave spreading out behind us. The second officer reckoned we were doing seventeen knots – just over thirty kilometres an hour.

Now that Pete was gone I was at a loose end. I kept to myself for most of the morning, and spent the greater part of the afternoon up on the bridge. Flint didn’t seem to mind. It probably gave him someone to talk to other than his Chinese officers. All I had been able to get out of them were monosyllabic answers and I don’t think the captain would have fared any better.

“Where are you bound for, Mr. Rider?” he asked. He still couldn’t get around to calling me by my Christian name. “I mean, once we get to Singapore?”

“I’m not really certain,” I replied, keeping to the semi-frien
dly tone he had used. “There’s a few people I want to look up.” I had to keep it as general as I could. “I was in Singapore on business a few months ago doing some research for my book, and made a number of friends.” Which was fairly accurate. “There’s also a couple of ladies it might be fun to meet again.” Here was the opening I needed to sidetrack him. “Tell me, what do you think of the ladies of Singapore?”

“Don’t have much to do with tarts,” he grumbled. “Get into too much trouble. Besides, I’m a married man.”

I hadn’t thought of him as being married. He went on staring out towards the sea, perhaps thinking of his wife and family, wherever they might be. At least I had got his mind off Singapore, or so I thought.

“And after Singapore, what then?” he asked, looking up from the compass. “Going to write your book?”

“I don’t really know,” I replied. “I might go on somewhere else.” I waited until he had his face into the radar hood and then asked: “Where’s the ship headed after Singapore. I might come with you.”

His head shot up out of the rubber hood. He looked at me, not certain whether I was serious or only making fun of him. Then, knowing I didn’t really expect an answer to my question, he moved off to the chart room. I followed after him and then rubbed it in. “But I’ll only come along if you can g
ive an undertaking that there’ll be nobody else falling down ladders and things.”

He spun round. “Damn you, you young smart-arse! I didn’t want you two on board in the first place!”

I felt small. It wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t killed Pete. He was the effect, not the cause.

“Captain,” I said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” He grunted, but didn’t say a word. “Tell me,” I went on. “When do you think we’ll get to Singapore?”

He looked up from his charts, silent for a moment, still offended, but the redness now gone from his face.

“Difficult to give a time and day at this stage,” he said quietly. “It depends on the weather and currents. The currents could give us an extra two knots, but the wind will probably blow against us. If it stays like it is at the moment we could arrive at Singapore in sixteen or seventeen days. But if it blows up, then who knows? Ask me again in ten days’ time.”

“What effect could the weather have on our speed?” I asked.

He pulled one of the charts from the pile and spread it out on the chart table. “Once we get into the Solomon and Bismar
ck Seas we’ll need plenty of sea-room.” He pointed to an area on the chart. “If the weather closes down then we go to half speed.” I looked up from the chart to see him smiling. “We wouldn’t want to bump into an island or another ship now, would we?”

I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to frighten me, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction if he was. As he ro
lled the chart up, I asked: “And when will we be in the first of those two seas?”

He smiled to himself, knowing he had the better of me. “At our present rate of knots we should be around the Louisiade Archipelago towards first light in the morning. That’s just off the south-eastern
tip of New Guinea. From then on we’ll be in the Solomon Sea.” At least he knew his navigation. What did it matter what his manners were like? “And about twenty-four hours after that, once we pass through the strait which separates New Britain from New Guinea, we should be into the Bismarck Sea. Here.” He reached for another chart. “This is the strait we go through.”

I looked down at the chart.
There were islands and reefs all over the place. He rolled the chart up and walked back to the radar, busying himself with the affairs of the ship for the next five minutes and not giving me a second thought.

He was becoming bored with my questions, and I had something else I wanted to go and do, something for Pete. There were so many things Pete had planned to do after Singapore. I couldn’t do those for him, but at least I could make certain that the contents of his freezers got to his clients, and the money was paid. I could send it to his parents. They would appreciate that, and if Pete was up there watching down on us, he would be ple
ased, knowing he had been proven right after all.

But that would have to wait until we docked in Singapore, and yet there was another thing he had promised to do that couldn’t wait. We had been going to compose a telegram to his one-night stand in Cairns – Annie, or Ann, or whatever. His death
had put a stop to that, but there was no reason why it couldn’t still be sent. Her address was in the leather-bound diary he carried. The last place I had seen it was on the dresser in his cabin.

I went up and tried the door, but it was locked – captain’s orders, nothing to be touched until the authorities gave clearance. I could force the lock, but someone might notice the scratches. Then I remembered the Indian steward and his use of a key to my cabin door that morning. He had a set of master keys to all of the cabins; and I knew where he kept them. There was a hook on the wall by the galley door where I had seen them hanging on more than one occasion.

The third key fitted and I slipped into the cabin and closed the door. The dresser was bare. Everything had been taken: no comb, no small change, no dirty clothes and no diary. Suddenly the door rattled. I watched as it turned, watched as the door slowly opened towards me. I stepped backwards, adrenalin surging, fists clenched and ready to fend off the attack. The Indian steward stood in the doorway, repeating his stare of the morning.

“What you want here?” he demanded.

“Mr. Cameron borrowed my sunglasses while we were in Cairns,” I shot back. “I wanted to get them back.” It was the best I could come up with at short notice. “They don’t seem to be here. Nothing seems to be here. Where is everything?”

“Captain lock everything in captain’s cabin. Lock money and papers in captain’s safe. You go now.”

He was in trouble. I shouldn’t have been able to get his keys. He had been careless and he knew it.

“Where you get keys?” he asked angrily.

I was certain he wouldn’t talk to the captain, and even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. It would be embarrassing, that’s all. Flint’s face would crease in a grin as I told him about Pete’s steady girlfriend doing the dirty on him before he was even out of the country. He would have a laugh at Pete’s expense. But, on the other hand, maybe it was better that he didn’t find out.

I had a couple of dollars in my pocket and handed them to the steward. “Let’s keep this to ourselves, shall we?” I gave him a wink as he took the cash from my fingers. He locked the door after I had stepped out into the passage, and waited whilst I walked away, not moving until I turned into the stairwell.

Maybe handing him the money had not been such a good idea, but it was done now.

That night I rigged
my door again. I had told the steward during dinner to forget about early morning coffee in future. I think he already had.

I crawled between the sheets, sure in the knowledge that at last I would have my eight hours of deep uninterrupted sleep.

Nothing was ever so far from the truth!

Eleven

I was dead to the world, dreaming about a young lady I had seduced in the back of a friend’s car after some school dance – way back in the halcyon days of adolescent youth.
She was a sweet, petite, blue-eyed innocent: all blushes. The ball gown was up around her waist: a mass of pink ribbon and ruffles. Her hands were pushing mine away, but not struggling as much as she should have been.

Her lips moved to my ear and she kept whispering: “Please don’t do that. No, you mustn’t. Someone might come! Please be careful.”

We were going at it in a passionate fury. It was a large car – an old Pontiac. Pant, pant, stroke, groan and then the feeling started to build with a rush. At that age it didn’t take very long.

There was a sudden thrust from beneath, rocketing me through the air, tossing me off her soft body and dropping me on my back on the floor with my legs up in the air. The bitch had shoved me away with energy you wouldn’t have believed
possible, right at the vital moment, and, like a fool, all I could do was lie on the floor and stare up at my legs; and yet they weren’t my legs.

I blinked and looked again. They were my legs, but they had pyjama pants on; and there was no cute young maiden looking down at me with innocent eyes. I struggled up out of the depths of sleep and slowly realised where I was – on the floor of my cabin with my
legs propped up against the wall. I stood up and, as I put my feet to the deck, realised that the whole ship was shuddering violently.

I looked over at the door, thinking at first that the killer was inside the room, but it was still closed and my barricade intact; except for the water jug. It was in pieces on the floor.

The shuddering continued and I could feel the ship straining, as if trying to force itself forward. I stood stock still, not knowing what to do, trying not to panic. Slowly the immense vibration stilled, and the engines became quiet.

We had stopped.

In the middle of the ocean?

But what had thrown me out of bed? I grabbed a pair of trousers, jumped into them, threw aside the two chairs and the suitcase, picked my way through the broken glass, and rushed out into the corridor. It was then that the bell shattered the silence, piercing my brain like the scream of a banshee.

One of the officers came charging down the stairs leading from the bridge, his face panic-stricken, eyes wide. “Quick, quick! Get your life-jacket and go to your boat station. Please hurry!”

“What’s happened?”
I yelled at him.
“Why the hell have we stopped?”

He kept moving towards the doors leading to the deck, turning his head to me as he went past. “No time, no time. Get life-jacket and go to boat deck, now! Go!”

There was terror in his eyes.

I shot back into the cabin. But where the hell was the damn life-jacket? I remembered seeing it when I had first arrived on board and had immediately thought of the
Titanic
. I found it stuffed under the bunk behind the other suitcase.

Nobody had shown me how to use the awkward lump of padding, but somehow I managed to get it on. It seemed to be the right way round. At least the tiny plastic light was at the front.

Right, I had done the first thing he had told me. What was next? The boat deck. It was the one where the lifeboats were kept; only logical I suppose. I raced up the stairwell, two steps at a time, or probably four; my body about two seconds ahead of my brain. I burst through the door and stumbled out on to the boat deck to find nearly half the ship’s complement darting about in a panic. The other half was probably on the starboard side, running around in similar circles.

The crew
had the lifeboats swung out and were preparing to lower them. And then it hit me. They were abandoning ship! We were sinking!

The marijuana!

I wanted to scream at them. Never mind the women and children! Save the cargo!

I stood dumbfounded. It wasn’t the thought of being tossed around in a tiny boat in the middle of the ocean that had pole-axed me. It was the grass. All that money and no insurance, no comeback, nothing.

We clustered together; each of us top-heavy in life-jackets. It was the closest I had ever got to any of the women. What a time to think of sex. But at least it showed that I hadn’t completely lost my mind; I still had some of my priorities right.

We must have been out on
deck for all of ten minutes, milling around while the lifeboats swayed out at the end of their ropes. It’s a long time when you’re expecting the ship to sink under you at any second.

At the end of that eternity the first officer came down from the bridge and gave the order to stand away from the boats; but to leave them swung out and ready to be
dropped. At least I think that’s what he said. My Chinese or Malay is non-existent; but that’s what they did in any case. By this time I’d had enough.

“What the goddamned hell is going on?” I yelled, trying hard to keep my voice from wavering.
“Will you people stop all this jabbering and waving of bloody hands and tell me in plain English what the fuck is going on!”

The first officer turned to me. “Please remain calm Mr. Rider.”

Remain calm! That was a joke. All around me people were panicking and running out lifeboats; and he was telling me to remain calm. What the hell did he expect?

I stood with my mouth open as he continued.

“We have hit the reef, and we are still sitting on it. I don’t think we have been holed and we aren’t taking on water.” Oh, terrific! “Please keep your life-jacket on and stay out on deck until the captain issues further orders.”

With that
he was off again, back up to the bridge with the captain. Some captain! So damn smart, with his currents and his fancy charts, that he couldn’t even steer clear of a huge great reef!

The all-clear was given about an hour later, and by that time it was obvious that we weren’t going anywhere. Sunrise was still a long way off, but there was enough moonlight to tell
that we weren’t moving; weren’t even rolling with the swell. We were stuck fast.

The main engines had been shut down, but I could still hear the auxiliaries humming. Everything else seemed to be functioning: water – both hot and cold – still came out of the taps; the electric power was working; and I could smell food cooking.

There was nothing said by those who came down for that meal, everyone alert, listening, waiting for another sudden lurching of the vessel.

It was
still that twilight between night and day, with the false dawn colouring the faint horizon to the east; but it was not yet light enough to take stock of the situation, to see where in the hell we were. The saloon was a hive of conversation, questions being asked and surmises being made. It was the second officer, taking a minute or two for a hurried breakfast, who gave me the few brief details of the ship’s condition.

The engine room had been checked, as had the shaft tunnel. There were no apparent leaks in the engine room and only a couple of minor ones in the tunnel, but both of these were normal, leaks in the propellor-shaft gland and nothing to worry about.

We lingered over coffee. There was nothing else to do but wait for the sun to come up.

After
breakfast the whole of the ship’s complement wandered up and down the deck – including the women. There was hardly a breath of wind and the only sound was the hum of the auxiliaries, quietly throbbing away deep within the hull.

The crew stared at me solemnly, as though suggesting that it was my fault, their looks saying that if Pete hadn’t died this wouldn’t have happened. Passengers on a cargo ship were bad luck. I could almost read their thoughts. One or two spat in my direction. Not at me, but the intent was plain. I was the outsider, someone to blame.

The deck was fast becoming a place to avoid. The miserable sons of bitches were capable of anything; so I made my way up to the bridge. With any luck the captain would be on his own, and I had a few things I wanted to put to him in no uncertain terms.

He was not alone. The chief engineer and the electrician were with him, all three grouped around the radar console. The cover was off.

“Well, what in the name of hell was wrong with it?” I heard the captain ask, addressing his remark to the electrician: a wiry Chinese of uncertain age, dressed in a once-white boiler-suit, pockets loaded down with an assortment of screwdrivers and pliers, the boiler-suit undone to the waist.

The electrician scratched his bald head, glanced down at his grimy leather sandals and then back up to Flint. “Nothing that I can see.” His English was good. “It’s working perfectly now. I can’t see any loose connections. The transistors all seem to be operating okay under full load. There doesn’t appear to be any power fluctuation. If there had been, it would have blown a fuse; but it hasn’t.” He scratched his head again. “I can’t find a thing wrong. Are you certain it wasn’t accidentally switched off?”

Flint glared at him and was ready to explode, but saw me out of the corner of his eye as I stepped into the room; and then he let fly. “What the hell do you want, Rider?”

“Flint!” I yelled back at him. “When I took this bloody ship, I didn’t expect to wake up in the middle of the night and find myself flung out of bed to the sound of screaming alarms. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be told to take to the boats like something out of the
Wreck of the Titanic
! And yet here we are, shipwrecked on some bloody reef out in the middle of some bloody ocean!”

I was starting to get steam up. He stood to his full height, glowering, sun-cracked hands on hips. But there was no stopping me once I got going.

“I thought maybe you might at least be kind enough to tell me a bit more about the situation.” I snapped sarcastically. “Are you going to get this bloody boat off this fucking reef? Or are we going to sink to the bottom of the goddamn sea, cargo and all; or fucking what?”

I realised too late that I had expressed concern for the cargo.

He didn’t move a muscle, waiting for me to get it all out. Then he spoke, a steely calm in his voice.

“Mr. Rider, I didn’t invite you on board my ship, and at the moment you are the least of my worries.” He paused. “But, in order to put your mind at rest, and to get you off my back, I can tell you that there’s no chance of the ship sinking at the moment.” He moved over to the wide windows overlooking the bow of the ship. “We are hard up on this fucking reef – as you so delicately put it – and we’re likely to stay here for a while; unless we can get her off on the hig
h tide. As soon as it gets light we will have the hatch covers off and examine the holds for damage. As far as I can tell, we haven’t taken on any water.” It was getting better all the time. “With luck we might be able to back her off on the high tide this afternoon …., at about one o’clock.”

He sounded confident, but he sure as hell didn’t look it; and if he thought that was the end of it as far as I was concerned, then he was mistaken.

“Okay, Captain,” I said, quieter now. “That’s point number one. Now for the second point. How the hell did it happen?” He straightened up even further, chin jutting forward. “You told me there would be no problems until after we rounded the tip of New Guinea; and even that would only happen if the weather cut up rough. So, what did bloody happen?”

I had calmed down; but it was a deadly calm. They had done about as much to me as they could do. This time I was fighting back; letting them know that I was not something to be ignored. My cargo was at stake; my entire future on the line.

He looked at me and then at the other two; but they turned their heads to the radar. It wasn’t their fight. This time it wasn’t the booze that turned his face crimson – it was fury. I was criticizing him and his ship. He was shaking, his lips quivered, but I held my ground, my anger matching his. I could see veins throbbing in his temple.

And then he realised that he was captain, that he was in charge and that it was up to him to defuse the situation before we were at each other’s throats.

“I don’t know,” he finally replied, holding his temper back. “The ship was on automatic pilot, with the third officer on watch. He checked the compass bearings at about three in the morning. We were bang on course.” Not an apt choice of words, but I let it pass as he continued. “The radar was functioning normally when he went into the chart room to plot the next change of course. He says he was only in there for ten minutes or so; spending the rest of the time in the wheelhouse. During the watch he checked our course on the radar every fifteen minutes.”

So far so good. Everything normal and yet we still end up on a reef. He went on: “Some time before four o’clock the officer realised that the wheel wasn’t moving from side to side, as it should have been. He called down to me on the bridge phone and I told him to check the course on the radar.” Here comes the crunch, I thought to myself. “It wasn’t working, so he called me again.”

He was sweating, and the sun wasn’t even up yet. I wasn’t certain whether he was hiding something, or having trouble getting his thoughts in order.

“Go on,” I said. “What happened next?”

“Before I could get out of the cabin door, I felt her ground. I raced up here, pushed the boat-stations alarm and rang for full astern. But it was no use.” He paused. “We have shut down the main engines until we can assess the position. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get her off with the engines at high tide, but we can’t really do anything until then.”