Free The Black Tide by Hammond Innes

pushed past a man with an armful of the Lloyd’s List and then we were in his little corner and he had plonked himself down at a table with a VDU on it. ‘Let’s see what the computer says.’ While his fingers were busy on the keyboard he introduced me to Spurling, a sharp-featured, sandy-haired man with a long freckled face and bushy sideburns. What the computer said was INSTRUCTION INCORRECT. ‘Hell!’ He tried it again with the same result. ‘Looks as though our fellow in Bahrain got the name of the ship wrong.’
    Spurling leaned over his shoulder. ‘Try the French spelling – with an ‘e’ at the end, same as in his telex.’
    He tried it and immediately line after line of print began coming up on the VDU screen, everything about the ship, the fact that it was French and due to sail today, also its destination, which was Karachi. He glanced up at me and I could see the wheels turning. ‘That ship you were mate on, plying between Bombay and the Gulf – based on Karachi, wasn’t she?’
    I nodded.
    ‘And the crew, Pakistani?’
    ‘Some of them.’
    ‘So you speak the language.’
    ‘I speak a little Urdu, yes.’
    He nodded, turning his head to stare at the windows and the driving lines of snow. ‘Choffel,’ he murmured. ‘That name rings a bell.’ He turned to Spurling. ‘Remember that little Lebanese freighter they found waterlogged but still afloat off Pantelleria? I suddenly thought of her in my bath this morning. Not in connection with Choffel, of course. ButSperidion. Wasn’t Speridion the name of the ship’s engineer?’
    Spurling thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Speridion, Choffel – not sure.’ He was frowning in concentration as he lit a cigarette from the butt of his last and stubbed out the remains in the tobacco tin beside his IN-tray. ‘It’s quite a time back. Seventy-six, maybe seventy-seven.’ He hesitated, drawing on the cigarette. ‘The crew abandoned her. Skipper’s name, I remember—’
    ‘Never mind the skipper. It’s the engineer we want.’
    ‘It’ll be on the file. I’m certain I put it on the file.’ He reached over to a small steel cabinet, but then he checked. ‘I need the ship’s name. You know that. Just give me the name …’
    But Ferrers couldn’t remember the name, only that there had been a Greek engineer involved. From what they said I gathered the cabinet contained confidential casualty information that included the background of ships’ officers and crew members known to have been involved in fraud. Then Spurling was muttering to himself, still frowning in concentration: ‘A crook Lebanese company owned her. Can’t recall the company’s name, but Beirut. That’s where the ship was registered. A small tanker. I’m sure it was a tanker.’ And he added, ‘Pity you can’t remember the name. Everything in that file is listed under the name of a ship.’
    ‘I know that.’
    ‘Then you’d better start searching again.’
    ‘I’ve been through two years of casualty records already this morning. That’s seventy microfiches.’
    ‘You love it.’ Spurling grinned at me, nodding to a shelf full of thick loose-leafed volumes on the wall behind us. ‘All our casualty records are micro-filmed and filed in those binders. The VDU there acts as a viewing box and you can get a print-out at the touch of a button. It’s Barty’s own personal toy. Try the winter of seventy-five, seventy-six.’
    ‘Back to where we first started keeping records?’ Ferrers got slowly to his feet. ‘It’ll take me an hour to go through that lot.’
    Spurling smiled at him wickedly. ‘It’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it?’
    Ferrers gave a snort. ‘May I remind you we’re supposed to be keeping tabs on over six hundred vessels for various clients.’
    ‘They’ll never know, and if you pull the information Forthright want out of the box who’s to say you’re wasting your time?’ Spurling looked at me and dropped an eyelid, his face