Free Ring of Terror by Michael Gilbert

Not that I was worrying just then about the papers. I was thinking first about getting back on to dry land, which I did, via a ladder two hundred yards downstream. Next thing I was worrying about was how the thing could have been rigged. As soon as I’d changed into some dry clothes I tackled the man who was running the loading operation. He said it was two of the Russians who handled the crane. Reliable men, he said, who’d never failed to swing the scoop back alongside the building when they knocked off. Must have been intruders. Boys, perhaps, playing with the machinery. Panicked when they saw what they’d done and run off. It sounded thin to me, but difficult to prove anything.’
    ‘You were lucky to get away with nothing worse than a ducking.’
    ‘Agreed. Pity about the papers, though.’
    Emmeline Farnsworth, who had been listening with growing impatience, said, ‘The way you keep on about those papers. What do they matter? Don’t you realise that but for the grace of God, you’d have been under a heap of stones, squashed as flat as a black beetle?’
    ‘Well, I wasn’t,’ said Farnsworth. He shook his head, as though clearing such ideas out of it. ‘But one thing did make me think that Silistreau was behind it. My deputy, who came round that evening to find out how I was, told me that Morrowitz – as he called him – had packed up and pushed off on the train that very same afternoon. As you may imagine, I grabbed the telephone and left word for Fred Wensley. The four o’clock train stops at York for an hour and doesn’t reach London till half past ten, so he’d have had time to get the arrival platform covered.’
    Mrs Farnsworth, who was as little interested in trains as she was in papers, muttered something uncomplimentary about a husband who couldn’t look after himself and if he didn’t clear those Russians out she didn’t know what would happen next.
    ‘They’ll be no trouble now the big man’s gone,’ said Farnsworth. ‘And I’ve got some news for you, young Luke. The Amelie’s nearly finished loading and with any luck she’ll be away on the evening tide tomorrow. Better get a good night’s rest. Might be another rough trip.’
    In fact, the sea was as calm as the North Sea ever condescends to be in winter. Luke, standing by the stern rail and watching the roofs and towers of Newcastle disappearing into the evening mist, was thinking about Mrs Farnsworth’s expression, ‘squashed flat as a black beetle’. It was an exaggeration, of course. The contents of the skip would have knocked Farnsworth on to his face and would certainly have dazed him. Long enough for Silistreau lurking in one of the nearby entrances to dart out and pick up the briefcase, and perhaps kick Farnsworth’s head in for good measure. What was really worrying him was not the damage Farnsworth had escaped by his prompt action, or the loss of the papers. It was a growing appreciation of the sort of man they were up against: a man of influence among his fellow emigrants; a man clever enough to devise and organise in the short time he had been there, such an elaborate and nearly successful ambush.
    As Luke turned to go he glanced out to sea. What he saw was a cloud, so black and heavy that it looked solid. The skipper, behind him, said, ‘Yon’s a present from Russia.’
    ‘Stormy weather, is it?’
    ‘Not so much a blow as a dowsing. There’s a bucket of rain in it, aye, and sleet and maybe snow. ‘Twon’t be much pleasure for anyone to be up here while they’re hosing that little lot over us.’
    Certainly, in the next few days the deck was no place for anyone not properly protected by oilskins against the wet and by thick clothing against the bitter cold. Luke spent most of the journey in the cuddy talking to members of the crew as they were allowed down, one after the other, to get some warmth into their bodies.
    The skipper had to spend a lot of his time aloft and when he did come below was in no mood