There was a note for me at the desk. Baldwick was back and waiting for me in the hotel’s bar-restaurant. I went up to my room, had a wash in lukewarm water, then stood at the window for a moment staring down at the shop-lit street below, where cars moved sluggishly in a glitter of tiny snowflakes. Now that the moment of my meeting with Baldwick had come, I was unsure of myself, disliking the man and the whole stinking mess of Arab corruption on which he
battened. A gust of wind drove snowflakes hard like sugar against the window and I laughed, remembering the girl. If it were true what Barre had said, that she’d been frightened of me … well, now I knew what it felt like. I was scared of Baldwick, of thrusting my neck into his world, not knowing where it would lead. And the girl reminding me of Karen. God damn it! If I was scared now, how would it be when I was face to face with her father?
I turned abruptly from the window. It wasn’t murder. To kill a rat like that… Why else was I here, anyway? In Nantes. At the same hotel as Baldwick. And she’d known about Baldwick. I was certain of it, that gleam of recognition when I mentioned his name. She’d associated him with her father’s escape. And Baldwick in Sennen when that picture had been taken of the Petros Jupiter’s crew coming ashore. To recruit a man like Choffel meant he’d been told to find an engineer who was an experienced wrecker.
I shivered, the room cold, the future looming uncertain. Another gust rattled the window. I made an effort, pulled myself together and started down the
stairs.
The bar-restaurant looked out on to the street, the windows edged with a dusting of ice crystals, the snow driving horizontally. The place was cold and almost empty. Baldwick was sitting at a table pulled as close as possible to a moveable gas fire. He had another man with him, a thin-faced man with a dark blue scarf wrapped round a scrawny neck and a few strands of hair slicked so carefully over the high bald dome of his
head that they looked as though they were glued there. ‘Albert Varsac,’ Baldwick said.
The man rose, tall and gaunt. ‘Capitaine Varsac.’ He held out a bony hand.
‘First mate on a coaster’s as far as you ever got.’ Baldwick laughed, prodding him with a thick finger. ‘That’s raight, ain’t it? You never bin an effing captain in yer life.’ He waved me to a seat opposite. ‘Got your message,’ he said. His eyes were glassy, his mood truculent. He shouted for a glass, and when it came, he sloshed red wine into it and pushed it across to me. ‘So you changed your mind, eh?’
I nodded, wondering how far I would have to commit myself in order to catch up with Choffel.
‘Why?’ He leaned forward, his big bullet head thrust towards me, the hard bright eyes staring me in the face. ‘You good as told me ter bugger off when I saw you down at that little rat hole of a cottage of yours. Get a’t, you said. I don’t want anything to do wi’ yer bloody proper-propositions. Raight?’ He wasn’t drunk, but he’d obviously had a skinful, the north country accent more pronounced, his voice a little slurred. ‘So why’re you here, eh? Why’ve you changed yer mind?’ His tone was hostile.
I hesitated, glancing at the Frenchman who was fazing at me with drunken concentration. ‘The reason doesn’t matter.’ My voice sounded nervous, fear of the man taking hold of me again.
‘I got ter be sure …” He said it slowly, to himself, and I suddenly sensed a mood of uncertainty in him. In that moment, as he. picked up the bottle and thrust
it into Varsac’s hands, I glimpsed it from his point of view, engaging men he didn’t know for some crooked scheme he didn’t dare tell them about or perhaps didn’t even know himself. ‘You piss off,’ he told the Frenchman. ‘I wan’ ter talk to Rodin ‘ere alone.’ He waved the man away, an impatient flick of a great paw, and when he’d gone, he called for another bottle. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Let’s ‘ave it. Why’re you here?’ He was leaning forward again, the hard little eyes boring into me, and I sat there for what seemed an age, staring at him speechless, not knowing what to say, conscious only that it wasn’t going to be easy. The bastard was suspicious.
‘The book,’ I said finally, my voice no more than a whisper. ‘The publishers turned it down.’
‘The publishers?’ He stared at me blankly. Then, suddenly remembering, he opened his mouth and let out a great gust of laughter. ‘Turned it da’n, did they? That bleedin’ book of yours. An’ now you come runnin’ ter me.’ He sat back, belching and patting his stomach, a smug, self-satisfied gleam in his eye. ‘Wot makes yer think I still got a job for yer, eh?’
There was a sort of cunning in the way he said it, but his acceptance of my explanation gave me confidence. ‘The desk said you were booked out to Marseilles in the morning,’ I said. ‘If you’d got all the officers you needed, you’d be headed for Dubai, not Marseilles. And you didn’t get the master of the Petros Jupiter, only the engineer.’
