The Atlas Murders (27 page)

“What do you think? He asked
Henry, “I was going to try sometime in the early hours, about three in the
morning.”

“You know there’s a dock
policeman on duty at the entrance to the docks, so you’d have to swim round to
another part of the dock and climb up one of those ladders.”

 “I can swim but not that far,
it’s a hundred yards across to the other side. So I’d chance hiding on this
side and when the ship sailed, I’d make my move.”

Henry didn’t want to be seen
as too opposed to the idea, and he had to go along with him to maintain his
cover. “The only thing is if they catch you, they’d make you a prime suspect
for the murders. You know, for trying to run away and all that.”

 “I’d explain how I was in
fear of one of my ship mates and didn’t want to sail with him. They’d surely
understand.”

 “It’s up to your Gary. I’ll
help you if there’s anything I can do. Let me know what you decide?”

 “It won’t be until tomorrow
night, that’s our last night before sailing. Did you hear we’re bound for Japan?
Have you ever been there? They have the best ports in the world.”

 “No, I’ve never been to
Japan. I wonder if there’ll be any restriction on our shore leave there, especially
if there are no developments catching this murderer.”

 “Hard to say, I hope I won’t
have to worry about it. I’ll be here running around with some nice little
Aussie babe and not bothered.”

Not if I have anything to do
with it, thought Henry, as he changed into a clean shirt and combed his hair.

“Time for duty again.”

 The next day Gary Conrad wouldn’t
commit himself to saying whether he was going to jump ship or not; he skirted
around the subject whenever Henry mentioned it.

Henry was hoping Danny might
make an appearance but there were very few dockers on the ship now, only a
handful compared to when loading general cargo. So it wouldn’t be so easy for
him to masquerade as one of them.

A dust cloud from the grain hung
over the whole area and all doors and ports had to be kept closed, so Henry
couldn’t go on deck to look for Danny; a couple of minutes out there and he
would have been covered in fine white dust. The word going around was that the
ship would be sailing at midday next day. Henry had his letters ready to post.
As usual, he had to give them to the chief steward who would give them to the
ship’s agent. He wondered at the risk in that. What if the letters were opened
by the police authorities, he thought. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of imagination
they would do something like that if they thought it could further their
investigation. To hell he decided, he couldn’t chance it, he’d incriminate Vera
and blow his own cover.

Coming from the pantry with a
mug of tea he met one of the dockers in the alleyway. He was all covered up and
had only a slit for his eyes, white dust falling and trailing behind him. He
had a leather bag on a length of pole that the dockers stuck out under the
grain chute to catch samples of the grain pouring into the ship’s hold. As the
man approached Henry, he lifted the cloth mask off his face. Henry stared at
his eyes with their white powdery lashes.

 “Bloody hell, Danny! I
barely recognized you.”

 “Where can we talk?”

 Henry turned back and went
out onto the off side alleyway; the dust here wasn’t as bad and there was no
one around. Henry was anxious for any news that might help him, but Danny had
to disappoint him. There was no breakthrough, they were still going with the
same theory; the man who had the key was their main suspect.

“I have some letters to post.
Would you do the honors for me, I don’t want to chance giving them to the
ship’s agent.”

Henry went to his cabin and
got the letters.

“Here you are Danny, and in
this envelope is our forwarding address for Japan, it’s a port called Shimizu. Please
write me and let me know if there are any developments from the fingerprinting.
Also Danny, there’s another problem. My roommate, Gary is going to jump ship
sometime in the early hours of tomorrow morning and this will be a blow to
everything. We need to keep them all together until the whole business is
solved.”

 “I agree wholeheartedly. He
cannot be allowed to jump ship here. I’ll let my contact know, and don’t worry,
he definitely will not get ashore.”

 “But Danny, he said he might
jump over her side down somewhere off the after deck, he won’t try the gangway.
He intends to hide and not try the main gate until the ship has sailed.”

 “Henry don’t worry, he’ll
sail. I’ll guarantee you that.”

“I’m not too worried, Danny. To
keep up my cover I’ve told Conrad that I would help him jump ship, but if he
does, I have my own contingency plan to ensure he won’t get very far.”

 “That’s good Henry, but
listen for God’s sake, be careful. This man you’re hunting is very dangerous. He
is capable of killing, not only girls but anyone he might think is getting in
his way. Good luck.”

 “Thanks Danny, and good luck
to you.”

 Henry was lying in his bunk,
studying his atlas. He looked at his watch it was just coming up to midnight.
Gary Conrad came in with a towel around his middle after showering.

“Have you decided what you
are doing?”

 “I’m going.”

 “Do you want me to do
anything like keep look out or such?”

 “Would you come out on deck
and keep lookout on the policeman at the end of the gangway? I’ve been watching
him and he often comes on board to go into the pantry to get a cup of tea from
our watchman.”

 “What time does he generally
do that?”

 “They make tea at three so
that’s the time I intended to go.”

 “I’m getting a bit of shut
eye. Call me when you’re ready to go.”

 “Right mate, I’ll do that.”

 Henry turned off his bunk
light and had an uneasy restless sleep, expecting Conrad’s call at any moment.
He awoke a couple of times and turned back into the bulkhead thinking it wasn’t
time yet. He was awoken by a knock on the door. “Shake yourself!” came the call
from the night watchman. Henry looked at his watch, it was six thirty! He
jumped down and saw that his cabin mate’s bunk was empty. He felt a bit disappointed
that Conrad hadn’t woken him. Obviously he didn’t trust him enough. He looked
in his locker and drawers and saw he had traveled light; he took only small, personal
things.

Henry showered and went to
his duty. He laid the saloon table before the second steward asked him the
whereabouts of Gary. “I don’t know, he wasn’t in his bunk this morning, that’s
all I know.”

 The chief steward came into
the pantry, “the galley boy is missing.” Then the second steward chipped in,
“and Gary Conrad is also on the missing list.”

 “Two gone?

“Better report this to the
captain, are you sure now lads?”

 “They’re just not around,”
was the second steward’s reply.

 Henry said nothing and went
about his duty laying the saloon tables. The officers arrived for breakfast and
all the talk was about the two missing men. The silos were pumping the last of
our cargo into the holds and a buzz at the prospect of sailing was in the air.
The captain came and sat at the head of his table. He’d aged years in a few
days; he looked feeble and helpless as he turned to the chief officer. “Did you
notify the authorities of our two jumping ship?”

 “Yes sir, I did. If we don’t
get them back we’ll find it hard to get any crewmen to replace them, with the
name this ship has now gotten for herself.”

 “I couldn’t agree more, it’s
a sad day for us all. How did they get ashore, wasn’t there a policeman on duty?”

 “There was sir but we’re so
low in the water they could easily jump onto the quay wall.”

 “I see, but is there not
more security outside at the dock entrance?”

 “Yes there is, so I don’t
know how they managed to get through that.”

The captain finished his
grapefruit and laid down his spoon, and then for the first time since the
tragedy he smiled - albeit a cynical smile. “They’re not gone far; they’re
still hiding out around the silos not a stone’s throw from the ship. You wait
and see.”

Henry heard him summing up
the tactics the lads had adopted and thought the captain was no fool. You don’t
become master of a ship for knowing nothing, he reasoned. He was also relieved
that he would not have to leave his planned anonymous note telling the captain
where to look for Conrad.

 After breakfast Henry locked
his cabin door and had a good search through whatever Conrad had left behind. He
hoped there might be something that he had overlooked and might connect him to
the murders, but he found no more than on his first search. He had just put
back his stuff in his locker when he heard a voice outside in the alleyway. He
took the catch off the door and he had just stepped back when it opened. Gary Conrad
walked in. He closed the door behind him and threw a cloth bag onto the couch.
Henry said nothing. His roommate sat on his bunk and put his hands in his head.
“Another couple of hours and I’d be free when this tub had sailed.”

 “Why didn’t you call me this
morning?”

“I was late and the lad who was
with me did look out for me and then I did it for him, so we were ok.”

 “What happened then, where
did you go?”

 “We hid in a small house. It’s
a power station with all sorts of electrical stuff in it, got down behind some
kind of generators and thought how could anyone find us here? Well find us they
did and here we are back again. I feel like I’ve been shanghaied.”

 “I suppose we all feel like
that at times. We just have to make the best of it now. Sailing at midday, at
least being Japan it will be a decent port. I hope there won’t be any hitches
about going ashore there.”

 “Jesus Henry, we’ve had
enough hitches for one trip. Not getting shore leave in Japan would be
unthinkable.”

Chapter
Twenty-Six

It was the first morning at sea;
Gary Conrad and the galley boy were hauled before the captain. Both were logged
half a day’s pay and fined two pounds for trying to jump ship. And they also received
a severe reprimand from stone-faced captain.

The first few days of the
voyage east and then round Cape Howe and north east up the Australian coast,
were uneventful but the weather was pleasant. Gary Conrad was becoming agitated,
uneasy and short tempered. Henry thought it best to confront him. He suspected
he might be getting a bit of aggravation from suspicious crewmen for attempting
to jump ship.

The evening of their fourth
day out both were sitting and listening to the radio.

“Gary is there something
bothering you, I don’t want to pry but you seem a bit out of sorts since we
sailed.”

 “There’s some talk going
round that because I tried to jump ship I must be guilty of the two murders. This
is serious stuff Henry. Three of those crewmen, acting as self-appointed ‘detectives’,
hauled the galley boy into one of the firemen’s cabin and gave him a going over.”

 “I thought that if you
jumped ship this would be the crews’ reaction. They’re clutching at straws;
anything that even looks half suspicious they’re latching onto. So getting
caught and having to come back and sail with them is putting you in their
sights. Gary, you will have to stand up to them if you’re being intimidated. I
will stand by you, but we’ll have to try and get more support.”

 “Thanks Henry but who else
would stand up to them with me? There’s only the galley boy and he’s shit
scared of them.”

 “I’m not scared of them and
I’ll confront them with you - anytime. Just tell me who the ones are that are
threatening you.”

 “There are a few groups. You’ve
seen them yourself going around whispering and having meetings in one another’s
cabins.”

Henry went and opened the
door and looked out into the alleyway.

“Thought I heard someone
outside. I’m getting paranoid now. But I know the boatswain, one A.B. and an
oldish fellow, a fireman are on your case. Even I’ve been getting some nasty
looks from them. What did they do to the galley boy?”

 “They slapped him around and
kept questioning him about going down the hold with a girl in Colombo. Then
they went on about Pippa and asked him did he know which cabin she was sleeping
in. He was never even up in that part of the ship. They also asked him about me
and if he knew why I jumped ship; was it because I was guilty. You see Henry,
they’re going to get at me as soon as they get a chance.”

 “You just stick around with
me, especially when you go forward to the pantry or the recreation room. We’ll
see how brave they are when confronted by two.”

 Gary was searching through a
drawer. “Here got it, it’s not much but better than nothing.” He held a pocket
knife in his hand, pulled open the blade and waved it around.

 Henry stepped back, “take it
easy there you’re not very adept with that and I wouldn’t think it would be
much of a match for the knives the deck hands carry.”

 “Yeah, you’re right, but
those bastard firemen don’t carry knives so it might help to ward off them.
We’ll see how they like it if I wave it under their noses.”

Henry pulled out his small
knife and compared it with Gary’s.

“Between the two they’re not
much but maybe they’ll show we’re intent on not being messed around with.”

 Gary put away his knife and
was a little more confident.

 “If the two of us stick
together maybe they might leave us alone.”

 “It looks like that’s all we
can do. There’s no use going to the higher echelons and complaining because
nothing’s really happened yet, and even then I don’t think it would do much
good.”

 However, word somehow
reached the officers about the intimidating of some crew members, and the
galley boy sporting a black eye was fuelling the rumor. The captain called the
senior men from below deck; carpenter, boatswain, cook and donkey man. He
warned them all that if any intimidation or violence was carried out against
any crew member, he would deal with the culprit or culprits in the severest
manner available to him under shipboard law. He asserted his authority in no
uncertain terms realizing the consequences of these actions.

As he spoke to the crewmen,
the captain was determined to nip the unrest in the bud. “Believe me when I say,
there’s plenty of shipboard laws available, including putting all of you on a
charge of incitement to mutiny if my orders are not obeyed. Now, I want you men
to relay this to all crew under you. To a degree I sympathize with what you are
trying to do, but it’s not the right way to go about it. We have to let the
authorities deal with it and hope the fingerprinting when completed, will get
us a breakthrough. So please men, I don’t want to hear any more about this.”

They left his day room
deflated but not altogether unbowed, and later told the men in the mess room a
watered down account of what the captain had said to them. The deep resentment
and unhappiness of the crew at being treated in such a manner because of one
bad bastard was not going to go away so easy.

 Gary Conrad and Henry stayed
very much together when they were in the mess room for meals or later at night
in the pantry for a mug of tea and a sandwich. They didn’t venture very much to
the recreation room, but neither did many of the other men. The Rangoon
continued to make good progress with brilliant weather up the east coast of
Australia, past the Great Barrier Reef and on through the Coral Sea. Sitting
out on deck in the glorious tropical evenings was wonderful therapy for the
taut nerves and anxiety attacks which were increasingly afflicting Conrad. He
now seemed to be becoming less prone to the moodiness and silences that were
keeping him shut away in his cabin for long off duty spells. Henry and Gary sat
on number four hatch smoking and saying very little.

Conrad stood up and went over
to where a heaving line was tied to a cleat on the gunwale and began heaving it
in. Tied to the end of it was a pair of blue jeans. He pulled them on board and
shook them out.

“Well what do you think? As soon
as I give them a rinse now, they’ll be perfect”

 Henry looked at the spotless
blue jeans.

 “Best washing machine I’ve
seen, sure beats hand washing.”

 Gary went to the laundry
room and rinsed out his jeans, but before he could leave, three men walked in.
The boatswain was the spokesman with a fireman and an A.B.

 “We want to talk to you.”

 Gary looked to see if was
Henry around, and when he couldn’t see him, his fear heightened.

“What do you want to talk
about?”

 The boatswain grabbed him by
the arm and began to push him into the alleyway; a fireman seized his other arm
and they were pulling and pushing him along. He got very agitated and started
to struggle, but to no avail. The two strong men were taking him to the nearest
cabin which was the boatswain’s.

 “Let me fucking go! Get away
from me!” he shouted.

 Some of the crew came out of
their cabins into the alleyway to see what the commotion was. One was Tukola.
They just stood there as Gary was being forced into the cabin. Henry then
arrived after hearing Gary’s shouts.

 “What do you think you’re
doing with him?”

 “Don’t make this your
business mate - just piss off.”

 “This
is
my business.
You let him be and take your hands off him.”

 Tukola and some other deck
hands came closer for a look; they wanted to see if Henry would have the action
to go with the talk. At that moment, Henry moved in, grabbed Gary’s arm and
tried to wrestle him out of his captors’ grip, but the boatswain pushed him from
behind and knocked him against the bulkhead.

“Fuck off, or you’ll be next,”
he snarled.

 Standing next to him was a
deck hand with his knife in its sheath on his belt. Henry saw it and pulled it
out he shoved it up under the boatswain’s chin.

“Let him go now.”

They all backed off except
Tukola who took out his knife and held it low. Henry had seen the move so he
stepped back and pulling Gary from his tormentors’ he turned to Tukola.

 “If you intend to use that
knife, do so. If not, put it back where it belongs.”

He lifted his own knife to a
threatening position and stared Tukola down - testing his mettle. After
replacing the knife in its sheath, Tukola turned and walked away. Henry threw
his requisitioned knife at the bulkhead and it stuck there quivering.

“Thanks,” he said to the knife’s
owner.

They walked away from the
bemused crewmen and didn’t speak until they got back to their cabin. Gary was
visibly shaken and so was Henry, but he didn’t want to show it. Gary lay back
on his bunk and gave a loud sigh.

“Thanks Henry, that was close.
I thought you were a goner. I feared the worst from those bastards, they were
going to give me a good going over.”

 “If they’d had a little more
back up, we might not have got away so easy. What do you think of that Tukola
putting his oar in? I don’t like him or his attitude.”

 “You could be right about him;
he’s one man I’d stay clear of. Not that I ever have anything to do with him.”

“Tell me.” Henry paused to
focus his thoughts, “what do you really know about him, there seems to be more
to him than meets the eye?”

Henry was deliberately
baiting Conrad to see if he knew anything about Tukola.

He hesitated before he
answered.

“He strikes me as a man who could
be dangerous like he was tonight. It was none of his business but he wanted to
get involved, and I think he’d use that knife quick enough. By the way Henry,
where did you learn to handle yourself like that, and would you have used the
knife if you had to?”

 “When I was younger I was in
the defense forces for a while and they taught us a bit about self-defense - it
comes in handy sometimes. I don’t think this will end just yet. They’re not
going to give up just like that. As Shakespeare said: ‘we’ve scotched the snake
not killed it.’ We’ll have to be careful not to get caught anywhere on our own.”

 “I certainly agree with
that, but what about your knife, you only borrowed it; the little ones we have
are not much good.”

 “I agree. Do you know of any
place we could get decent knives?”

 “We could get them ashore,
but not on the ship. You don’t think the steward gives them out with the
cigarette issue?”

 Henry was indignant, “of
course I know he doesn’t give them out, but could you get a couple of table
knives and we could point and sharpen them. They’d just about do until we got
to Japan where we could get proper ones. If they realize we have nothing to
defend ourselves with, we stand no chance.”

 Gary opened the cabin door
and looked out.

“Thought I heard someone
outside.”

 “You’re becoming paranoid;
they’ve surely more suspects to be annoying besides us two. Do you think we could
steal two knives, perhaps one from the officer’s pantry and one from our mess?”

“Yeah, that shouldn’t be a
bother. Just leave it to me.”

Two days later carrying their
stolen cutlery, they went aft on the main deck to the poop house. It was
another beautiful tropical evening. In the poop house there was a bench vice.
Henry put Gary on lookout and he went to work sharpening the knives
with a small file.
Happy with his work he then took a length of light lanyard rope and put it in
his pocket. Outside he turned to Gary. “Job completed. They’re not exactly like
the knives Robinson Crusoe would have used, but they’re better than nothing.”

 Back in their cabin he
showed them to Gary who nodded his approval. He pulled out the lanyard. “We’re
going to make handles with this. Just bind it round nice and tight and it will
give a bit of a grip. Look, you see, they now look like proper knives and
should act as a deterrent. After all, we really only want to let the bastards
know we can if need arises, defend ourselves. I shouldn’t think we will ever
have to use them in a serious way, but letting them know we’re no soft touch is
half the battle.”

 They carried the knives with
them during all their off duty time and never had another confrontation with
their would-be inquisitors.

 Henry was no nearer to
solving this crime when they reached Shimizu than he was when they left Melbourne.
Once again he hadn’t had the chance to search Tukola’s cabin; he had nothing
new on Sean Sweeney or Gary Conrad and regardless of Vera’s suspicion, he went
along with the account from Fokir that Oswyn Welland was away until an hour
before sailing from Bombay.

Henry was aware that although
a suspect, he was starting to become a little too friendly with his cabin mate,
Gary. However, he was also minded of his police training when he was told by an
expert in criminal behavior, that some of the most callous killers could come
across as the most charming and urbane of people. This he thought, was
something he would have to keep to the forefront of his mind if he was to
maintain objectivity.