Before Kingstone could answer, the telephone on his bureau rang.

The senator glowered, composed his features and picked up the receiver. “I’m right here. Yes, I’ll hold.”

He turned an expressionless face to Joe and Armitage. “Gentlemen. Would you be so kind as to pick up Miss Ivanova and skedaddle? Weather permitting, I am about to speak on the radiotelephone to the President of the United States.” He gave them a sudden, bitter grin. “He’ll want to know if I’m settling in and making friends. I wouldn’t care to have you overhear my answer.”

CHAPTER 11

Ten o’clock. Inspector Orford cast a calculating look at the skies over the Thames and his agitation increased. He muttered to the river policeman standing quietly by his side in the shadows: “Clouds moving in, Eddie. It’ll be dark in a minute or two. Can’t wait any longer. Something’s gone wrong.”

They were sharing, in some discomfort, the confined space of a workman’s shelter put up at the inspector’s request by the City of London maintenance department, keeping watch on the Chelsea foreshore.

River Officer Eddie Evans shrugged. He was a tough-looking young man with the weathered features and muscular build of a sailor. The peak of his képi, pulled squarely down over his forehead, accentuated the mischievous glitter of his eyes, the black slicker cape about his shoulders turned him into an element of the grey and umber palette that was the riverbank in this under-lit part of Chelsea Reach. He was at home here in the shadows. “Well, there goes your tide,” he murmured, “more than half way out, I’d say. Next low in twelve hours’ time—broad daylight.”

Orford hoped this wasn’t going to turn technical. He knew as much about the tides as most Londoners: they came and went twice a day. If asked, he would have hazarded a guess that the water rose by the height of a London double-decker bus. But, truth to say, he only noticed it when it disgorged something unpleasant into his lap.

“There’s a slippage of course—a drag of an hour and a bit each day—so what you’re seeing at this minute is not exactly the scene as it was three days ago.” His River Rat associate never consulted a Thames tides table, Orford noted. These men, technically a part of the metropolitan police, spiritually an independent outfit, lived their lives on a crime-infested fast-flowing sewer that carved its way through the busiest city in the world. They were an unlikely blend of law enforcer and sailor and they’d take on anyone—drugs gangs, smugglers, Lascar pirates and other low life—armed with no more than a stout baton held in a gnarled hand. The same hand that, the next minute, would be extended to save a drowning soul from the water or haul in a corpse caught in the nets they kept aboard their motor launch. The Thames was the last resort of the desperate—and occasionally the first resort of the murderous.

“You’d have got more or less the same conditions as we have now. Perhaps a bit less light in the sky,” said Officer Evans. Keeping it simple for his land-lubber colleague, thank God, Orford thought. “If your villains really knew what they were doing, they’d have made their play before the moon got any higher. Now—tonight’s moon? You’ll find she’ll be waxing gibbous. That’s three quarters to you, Governor. It’ll be too bright in half an hour. Time to pull your finger out!… Sir,” he remembered to add.

Oh, Lord! Moon timetables to consider now as well as tides. Orford felt suddenly old, wrong-footed and crotchety. “You’ll find I’ll be waxing gibbous, my lad, if you dish out any more of your advice when you ought to be keeping quiet.”

“S’what I’m here for!” the young man said, unabashed. “On-the-spot fluvial, riparian and meterological information and support.” The words tripped off his tongue with relish. “And here’s a bit more you can have for nothing: if I were planting a body right there,” Eddie pointed to the foreshore where the dowsers had been at work, “I’d have stuck it in at midnight. On Wednesday. Perfect conditions. Wouldn’t have taken long. Easy digging and the water washes your tracks away. Wouldn’t be the first time some smart aleck had the same thought. You’d be surprised what we’ve found a foot or so under! You hide your stuff and clear off sharpish. Even if the next tide dislodges it, you’re long gone. And, once it’s afloat—well it could have come from a hundred miles upstream as far as anybody can tell. Chances are it’ll be rotted away beyond ID-ing by the time it ends up in our nets.”

He peered back over his shoulder at the embankment. “No gas lights to speak of? Did you think to …?”

“Someone’s removed the gas mantle. And no one’s reported it yet. Not very socially responsible, the residents. Very convenient for our burial party, are we thinking?”

“So. Is he at home, your witness? Shall we go and disturb him? Ask him what he saw and heard two nights ago at about this time? What vehicles he saw on the embankment.”

Orford began to realise that patience was not a virtue valued by the River Rats. Action was more in their line. “Hold your horses, Eddie. I’ll ask the questions. My beat blokes are aware of someone skulking around in the area but haven’t spotted him today. They weren’t alerted until this afternoon so they weren’t exactly on the lookout. I got here a couple of hours ago—full daylight—and he hasn’t approached the boat in that time. That’s a south-facing slope open to direct sun … there’s no way he would have spent the afternoon out there under a boat. So—he’s not there yet. He’s either got wind of something and scarpered or he’s gone off for a fish supper.”

Officer Evans was not at ease. “Look, sir—these rough sleepers—there’s hundreds of ’em on the foreshore along down as far as the estuary. They wash in and out as regular as the tides. And when they’ve found a billet, they stick to it. Fight for it. Establish rights. A boat like that,” he pointed to the overturned clinker, “may not look much to a bloke like you with a house in Bermondsey, but it’s dry and it keeps the worst of the weather off. A bit of shelter worth staking a claim to. The minute the ‘owner’ fails to turn up you can bet your boots someone else will take over. If you want the right one, he’s in there already—nipped in when you weren’t looking—or he’s buggered off and you’ll find the wrong bloke sneaks in to take up residence.”

Orford made his decision. “Let’s go. Torches off.”

They approached in silence, just able in the dying light to avoid obstacles on the dried mud. They paused within a foot of the rotting timbers and looked at each other. Eddie Evans held a finger under his nose, registering disgust. Orford nodded in agreement. The riverbank was a stinking place but punching through the general background of effluent was an overpowering odour of decay. It was seeping up through the flaking boards of the upturned boat.

Eddie put a hand on the surface. The planks still retained heat from the afternoon sun. At a nod from Orford, Eddie rapped on the wood. They listened. Eddie knocked again, more loudly, announcing, “Thames Police! Anybody at home?” No sound. Orford shook his head and mimed uplifting the boat. The two officers clicked on the strong beams of their police torches, placed them on the ground, illuminating the scene, and seized the landward rim of the gunwale.

“Go!” grunted Orford and the boat, lighter than he had anticipated, shot upwards. The whole contraption rolled over, rocked back drunkenly and settled onto its ancient keel.

Gasping, spluttering and swearing, it was a long moment before they could communicate with each other. Orford flung a large cotton handkerchief over his nose and mouth in a vain effort to blot out the stench, the buffet of hot air that hit him in the face and the swarm of flies that rose up to invade his nostrils. He was distantly aware of a stream of sea-salty curses spouting from the River Rat.