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.“Now what the captain did notice,” he begins again, “was that both the yacht’s sails had numbers on them, and that the sails looked patchy.That’s what he called them—patchy.I can only think the sails were racing sails, made of Kevlar, or partly of Kevlar, which is a darkish brown fabric used in ugly great squares on racing sails and looks—well, patchy.Now…” His hands are still.“The lads at the yard here tell me Minerva did not have numbers on both sails—only the mainsail.And that all the sails were made of standard Terylene, brilliant white.No Kevlar.And no patches.” He rotates his hand; his pencil describes a slow arc.“Of course, the captain might have been mistaken…”“But you don’t think so?”He shrugs, but I can see he doesn’t think so.A moment of silence passes between us.Warm air wafts in from the window.Moreland asks with sudden concern, “Would you like anything? A cold drink? Tea?” He moves as if to get up.“Thanks, but no.”“Sure?”I nod quickly.I look back at the chart.I manage: “So you think it wasn’t Minerva they saw?”He turns his head to catch my words.I realise I have been whispering.“I’m sorry?” he says.I repeat it a little louder.“I think it’s unlikely.Also…if Minerva had been lost in the estuary somewhere, if she’d bumped onto a shoal or been run down by a ship along this route then she’d probably have been found by now.It’s mainly shallow water, you see.It’s very busy water.Chances are”—he chooses his words—“something would have trawled into the wreck by this time, or caught a blip on its depth sounder.” He is ticking off the arguments, one by one.“The only place a wreck might be missed is the Black Deep, I suppose, or the King’s Channel, where the water’s much deeper.But that’s just where the coastguard have been asking people to look, for that very reason.”I stare unseeing at the chart, trying to picture the Black Deep.I see swirling water and racing tides and ships suddenly bearing down out of the fog.“And what about here?” I ask, indicating the wide expanse of sea to the east, the route of caution.“Yes,” he concedes immediately, “that’d be different.A wreck would be far less likely to be found there.” But from the way he says this, I gather he doesn’t think Harry went that way.“Charles said”—I make an effort to bring my voice up to volume—“that you’d found something new?” I look up at him.He pulls in his mouth, he sits forward, he gestures uncertainty, as if to dampen any hopes I might be harbouring.“Well, I wouldn’t say found exactly.It was more of an idea, really…a theory.”I wait expectantly.“It seemed to me…” Breaking off, he roots around under the chart and pulls out a sheaf of papers and looks at them thoughtfully.“I took a good look at the weather.I got all the weather reports.Local, national.I asked people who were around the river that Friday.Then I put myself in Harry’s place.” He opens one hand, he pauses, finally he says, “And I decided that unless I was hell-bent on having a miserable time I would never have left that night.”His words seem to fade out, like a radio that has gone off tune, and it’s a moment before I pick them up again.“…There was a gale blowing right through Thursday night into Friday morning.” He leafs through his papers until he finds the one he’s after.“Then all that heavy rain.Then drizzle.Then mist and fog.” With each point he taps the back of his fingers against the paper.“And on the Friday night there would still have been a large sea running.” He shakes his head.“One way and another, I’d have been tempted to stay firmly on the mooring and turn in early with a stiff whisky.” He shuffles the paper to the back and refers to the next sheet.“Now conditions were much better the next morning.Only a thin coastal mist which burnt off as the sun came up.A light northerly breeze, force two to three.Almost perfect.Although if you were being fussy, a bit more wind might have been nice.But…” He throws up a hand that says this would have been too much to ask.Reaching down to retrieve the first map from the floor, he spreads it out again.He points to the river mouth.“Now on Saturday morning, at about six, a yacht was seen going through the narrows here.She was white-hulled.She had a single mast.She was about the right size.And”—he says with slow emphasis—“she was towing a white dinghy.Flattish, like a dory.”He glances my way, he looks back at the map; he is giving me time.“It was a rambler who saw it,” he murmurs conversationally.“He’d parked his car on the north side there.Starting off on a walk.Doesn’t know much about boats, but knows what he saw.And it’s narrow there, boats pass close to the shore.He’d have seen clearly, even with a mist about.”Shaping his hands into a cathedral, he rasps the tips of his forefingers over his chin.He waits, but I have nothing to say, no questions to ask, and presently, after a glance in my direction, he picks up the thread again.“The only thing about the timing of this is the tide.At six it—”“So early?” My interruption comes from nowhere.I hardly know why I’ve made it.For a moment I am confused by my own train of thought.“To get there, he’d have had to start…” I shrug.“At five? Wouldn’t it have been dark? I thought it was dark…”He makes a show of consulting his notes, although I sense that he already has the answer.“Sunrise was a quarter to six.So…He narrows his eyes in calculation.“It would have been twilight from five or thereabouts.Time to leave the mooring and get down to the river mouth.The journey would’ve taken an hour, more or less, so…“Nothing unexplained; nothing left out.Gathering himself again, Moreland goes back to the chart.“At 06.00, when this yacht was leaving the river, the tide was still running northeast.At up to two knots.If it was Minerva, then she would have made slow headway against it, even with the engine running.Now if something disabled her fairly soon—let’s say almost immediately—then this tide would have swept her backwards”—he sweeps a hand up the chart—“and she’d have ended up north-east of the river mouth, not to the south at all.” He pauses, he sucks in his lips.“You see what I mean?”Something bothers me, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.“When you say disabled…?”“By whatever it was.Fire.Explosion.Collision.”The thought comes at last.“You mean…the boat might not have sunk straight away?”“It’s possible she went straight down…A collision with a large vessel, something cataclysmic [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]