The Boy Who Liked Monsters (Commander Shaw Book 19) Read online

  The Boy Who Liked Monsters

  A Commander Shaw Novel

  Philip McCutchan

  © Philip McCutchan 1989

  Philip McCutchan has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1989 by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  One

  “Shoreham,” Max said.

  “Shoreham?”

  “Shoreham Docks. In Sussex.”

  “I know it’s in Sussex,” I said irritably. A few years ago I’d liked walking the Sussex Downs. There were some nice villages in the folds of the Downs, some worthwhile pubs, and there had been a girl, a young doctor doing GP training and attached for some six months to Worthing Hospital, a house officer in geriatrics, Worthing’s speciality. She liked getting away from it and I had been at a loose end, on long leave from the troubles of 6D2 after a particularly nasty job in Beirut. However, that was all in the past. But it seemed I was due for Sussex again.

  “What’s it all about?” I asked.

  Max, Big Max who was boss of Focal House, Head of 6D2 in Britain – Head in fact of the whole worldwide outfit that worked internationally and independently of governments, although we had their full approval and often worked behind the scenes on their behalf – had turned to stare out from his vast window in the penthouse office suite. There was a wonderful panoramic view over all of London that wasn’t obscured by other high-rise blocks. You could see a lot of the Thames, you could see Hampstead Heath, you could see the M1, a broad ribbon passing the service area at Scratchwood.

  Max didn’t seem to have heard my question. I asked it again, and he turned to face me. He was looking thoughtful and puzzled. Running a heavy freckled hand through his thatch of hair, darkish grey, he said, “We don’t know yet. That’s for you to find out, Shaw.”

  “You said there was a body aboard a ship.”

  “Yes.”

  “Identity?”

  “Not known.”

  “No clues, no leads? A body could be – anybody. Why are we involved?”

  Max gave a short laugh, but there was no humour in it. He said, “I’m coming to that. This ship – it’s Turkish owned. The hands were painting the ship in Shoreham when the body was found in the funnel. Believed to have been a stowaway, possibly come aboard in Malta. For certain reasons that I’ll come to, I doubt the stowaway theory, though that could be the case – I don’t rule it out. Anyway, it was on a ledge in the funnel, right in the path of the engine-room uptakes, one of which was fractured. It’s a motor vessel – diesel. Man presumed overcome by the fumes when the ship left port. The fumes were held in by the funnel capping. A sort of mummification process set in.”

  “It’s actually mummified?” I asked without belief.

  “Not time for that. Call it smoked. Like a kipper. The term’s not important. It sounds as though the body is.” Max added, “Sussex Police got in touch after their surgeon had made an examination. You may ask why. Reason – the body had been branded, probably like cattle with a red-hot iron. On the left upper arm and again on the chest. Deeply marked. And there was evidence of ill-treatment, not to say torture. Cigarette burns, cuts, scars from flogging.”

  Max always did like keeping people in suspense, or anyway consumed with curiosity. I asked what the brand mark was, though in fact I had got there.

  “6D2,” Max said.

  *

  I drove down into West Sussex straight away, M23 past Gatwick to Pease Pottage. I turned off the non-motorway section of the A23 at Handcross, went through Cowfold and Henfield and under the A27 for the A259 for Shoreham Docks. I took that route because they were parts I’d known: that girl – she’d liked wandering around the gardens at Nymans and Leonardslee. The smoked corpse wasn’t going to go away so I saw no need to plunge through Brighton from the more direct route. Also, I’d decided to go aboard the ship before contacting the police. The ship’s master might have some ideas. The ship was the mv Zonguldak; the master’s name, as reported by Sussex Police, was Ferit Kubat, which could be unpropitious language-wise but the police had said he spoke fair English.

  I drove into the docks and found the ship under police guard alongside the old coal wharf where the colliers used to discharge to the gas works, now demolished, and the old Brighton B power station since redundantised. The Zonguldak was a coasting vessel of some 4,000 tons and was a lot cleaner than I had imagined she might be. After checking with the PC on guard I spoke to a man at the gangway, who referred me to someone else since he had no idea what I was saying. The second man was wearing an officer’s cap and a reefer jacket with washed-out denim trousers. He addressed me in Turkish, and in English I said I wished words with the master.

  “With Captain Kubat?” His English was heavily accented.

  “Yes. If you please.”

  “You? Name, please?”

  “Commander Shaw.”

  He repeated this in slow motion, making a hash of it. I wished he would hurry; the spring morning had turned suddenly to cloud and overcast and drizzle. He asked, “Police, yes?”

  I said I was, more or less, for the sake of avoiding more explanations. The misinformation worked: I was led aft to the accommodation, up two ladders to the deck below the bridge, the master’s deck. My guide knocked and opened the door, all apparently in one movement. I went in and at once saw that I had come at the wrong moment. There was a settee beneath a line of square ports, and Captain Kubat was busy on it. The fat, dark lady who was also on the settee had her blouse well up and Captain Kubat’s other hand was being withdrawn from lower down.

  “I beg your pardon,” I said, but I stood my ground. It was, after all, nearly noon. “The name’s Shaw … from London.”

  “Yes. I am sorry.” Captain Kubat made shooing motions at the fat woman, who gathered herself together and went through a door leading, I presumed, to the Captain’s sleeping cabin. “My wife … and I have been much occupied. The police, you understand.”

  “Quite. They can be slow – ”

  “Slow, yes. Very slow.” Captain Kubat’s English wasn’t at all bad, which was a relief. “Commander Shaw – yes, I was told. You are from the headquarters in London.”

  I nodded.

  “You come about the unfortunate person, the body of the man. You would like a drink.”

  It was a statement, not a question. Captain Kubat moved across the cabin, as fat as his wife, if that was really what she was, and certainly she didn’t look local. He brought a bottle and two glasses from a cupboard fixed to the bulkhead. It was ouzo, which I don’t much like, but a drink was welcome enough. Gallantly, Captain Kubat toasted Her Majesty the Queen of England and I toasted the President of Turkey, whose name I didn’t know but it didn’t appear to matter. Then I asked if Captain Kubat could tell me anything about the body.

  “Only that it is dead from fumes.” He shrugged his massive shoulders.

  “Yes. Do you know for sure when the man came aboard, and where from?”

  “Malta I think but cannot be sure. I call also at Cherbourg. Already I tell the police all this. So simple. I know nothing useful.” Captain Kubat dr
ank more of the ouzo and then scratched for a while beneath his left armpit. He wore no jacket and the armpits of his white shirt were yellow with old sweat. The thin light through the square ports reflected from a completely bald head. He seemed reflective himself, as though cudgelling his brains for something to tell me. Then he asked me if the commander was a police rank or a naval one. I said it was the latter but I had been away from the sea for a long time now.

  “Does not matter. We seamen, we remain seamen together, all good comrades you would say. We are different from the land men, yes?”

  I agreed: never mind the nationality, seamen were a race of their own, transcending frontiers. Captain Kubat nodded vigorously, and then came up with a theory. “The fumed person,” he said, “was not a seaman. You will agree, I believe. A seaman would have known the dangers of funnels, of noxious gases, yes?”

  “Yes,” I said. It was fairly obvious and I fancied the police would have ticked over on that as well as Captain Kubat, for what it might be worth. Captain Kubat finished his drink and then said I would wish to see the inside of the funnel. I said I would. We left the cabin and went out into the drizzle. We climbed up aft of the bridge, on to the engine-room casing from which the funnel rose, a streamlined sort of funnel painted a nasty shade of pink with the owners’ house flag emblazoned on each side. It was a squat funnel and there was a steel ladder running up the after part, leading to a small platform at the top, with an access hatch to the funnel’s interior. Behind Captain Kubat, I climbed and from the platform looked down into murkiness. Kubat had brought an electric light bulb on a wandering lead, and this he switched on. The beam showed the ledge on which the stowaway had sat, waiting for the Zonguldak to clear away to sea.

  I asked how often the funnel’s interior was investigated, how often it was cleaned.

  “Not often,” Captain Kubat said.

  “Can you be more precise, Captain?”

  Kubat shrugged. “Perhaps … every year. Once a year, maybe.”

  So in fact the man could have been dead for up to a year, though this was unlikely: the mummification process would probably have rendered the body brittle and it might have crumbled when shifted. I asked about ports of call in that time, whether or not the ship had been on a regular run. He said it had not; it was a tramp ship, taking mainly coastal cargoes from wherever they could be picked up. The Zonguldak ranged from British and Scandinavian ports to Germany, France, Spain and the Mediterranean. Captain Kubat had already, he said, provided the police with a list of all ports visited since he had been master, together with dates. The body had been discovered the day before, in fact, just before the hands had knocked off work, and the subsequent police activity plus the compiling of the required list of ports had occupied Captain Kubat for the whole of the night, which no doubt explained the antics on the settee.

  I asked, “Who found the brand marks, Captain? The police?”

  “Not the police. Me. I was called to examine and I found them.” Captain Kubat dabbed at his cheeks with a handkerchief; there was sweat mixed with the wet from the drizzle. It must have been pretty ghastly, I supposed, not the sort of thing normally found in a ship’s funnel. I asked if the brand marks had meant anything to Captain Kubat. They had not, at that time.

  “Why were these marks on the body?” Kubat asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Nor is it known who the man was.”

  “No.” By this time we had come down from the funnel-top platform. We went back into Kubat’s cabin. The fat lady was reclining on the settee, a cup of strong-looking coffee in her hand. She glared at me and there was a lengthy altercation in Turkish. Captain Kubat shrugged his shoulders, rolled his eyes, lifted his hands palms upwards in a gesture of despair. He looked at me and said, “I am sorry. My wife is upset.”

  “That’s not surprising,” I said. I refused more ouzo and took my leave, pondering on Cherbourg and the Zonguldak’s call there only a few days before according to Captain Kubat. Max had said Malta, no mention of Cherbourg. The reason could be the length of time, the time since death, worked out by forensic and reported to Focal House. I drove on to the police station and had words with the superintendent in charge. I was supplied with photocopies of Kubat’s port list, and with a nominal list of the Zonguldak’s officers and crew. The police didn’t seem particularly interested except as regards the apparent involvement of 6D2. Death was a frequent visitor. Shoreham was close enough to Brighton. Sussex Police got the overflow of violence, of affrays, knifings in clubs and public houses, muggings, beatings up of innocent pedestrians, murders in the gay community and the massage-parlour circuit, to say nothing of the lunatic drivers on the A23 out of Brighton. A body in a funnel didn’t raise many eyebrows; it was more a nuisance than anything worse. But 6D2 did make a difference.

  “Any theories about that?” the superintendent asked.

  “None at all,” I said. “Yet. There’ll be an inquest, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you,” I asked, “know of any reason to suspect that the death might not have been due to the fumes – that the body could have been put there dead already?”

  “It’s been considered, Commander. But it’s thought highly unlikely a body could be brought aboard, hoisted to the funnel, and bedded down as it were on a ledge, all unseen. And forensic didn’t find anything. No lodged bullet, no recent knife wounds, no strangulation marks, no evidence of poisoning, that sort of thing. No blows to the head.”

  “I gathered there’d been other marks. Torture.”

  “Yes. But all there for a long while. Nothing recent.”

  I nodded. “I’d like to see the body now,” I said.

  I was taken to a mortuary, a cold place painted dark green, with a slab where the body from the Zonguldak lay on its back, staring up at the ceiling. A small man, just the size to fit that ledge in the funnel. Age about forty-five, fair hair, blue eyes, no visible distinguishing marks but I knew right away who he was.

  The superintendent was looking at me. He said curiously, “Do you recognise the man, Commander?”

  I said I did. He asked for the identification. I said I couldn’t, at this moment, divulge the name. I quoted state security. I had to report farther up the chain, I said.

  “The coroner – ”

  “I know all about the coroner, Superintendent. Be assured Focal House will get in touch with him.”

  I left then. I believed the inquest might prove interesting. The pathologists are pretty much on the ball when faced with a challenge. Driving away from police HQ with the supplied photocopies I made a sudden decision for no reason that I could lay a finger on. I deviated back into the docks for another look at the Zonguldak – just a drive past her towards the car park and beach at the western end, and then back past again. In the event I was glad I’d had that sudden impulse. As I drove back, having in any case to take it slow because of the obstructions and clutter of any working wharf, I saw, just for an instant, a face framed in a porthole in the crew’s accommodation beneath the Captain’s and officers’ decks. Just an instant: but I’d seen that face before. Definitely. It was a hard face, a cruel and vicious face, thin-lipped, hook-nosed, low forehead beneath black hair, big ears. And the eyes. They had, I was certain, recognised me; and they had sent hate across the gap between us. Those eyes very surely wished me dead.

  It was intriguing. I tried hard to get my memory going but it was no use. I couldn’t place the man. I’d met so many villains in my time with 6D2: they could be numbered in hundreds. Of those that still lived, the majority undoubtedly wished me dead. That was nothing new. But for my money there had to be a link between that nasty face and the 6D2 brand on the dead stowaway. If I could only find it, explanations should come easier.

  I drove out of the docks and this time turned up for Brighton and the A23 which would take me onto the motorway. I had a lot of research to do at 6D2 HQ, a lot of microfilm files to go through and time might be short. Captain Kubat had tol
d me just before I left the ship that he was due to sail for Cherbourg in two days’ time. The police superintendent had said there was no valid reason for holding the ship until after the inquest: all the depositions had been made and photographs taken. But because of those brand marks I knew I would have little difficulty in persuading Max to pull the strings that would hold the Zonguldak in port. However, I wanted to have harder evidence of my disquiet than a quick glimpse of a face framed by a porthole.

  Two

  Focal House had everything: current information availability worldwide from agents with adequate staffs in all the capitals outside the Soviet bloc, sub-agencies like consular offices in the ports and smaller cities and by means of the 6D2 unofficial contacts with governments. The London HQ, like the others, was fully computerised; there was a fingerprint section that was as efficient as the Yard’s or the Surete’s or the FBI’s; there was a medical section, a shooting range with instructors who’d been police marksmen or NCOs from the Parachute Regiment and the SAS. We had a legal section, disguise experts, interpreters, eggheads who specialised in meteorology, electronics, industrial espionage, military and naval matters, even the world’s sewage systems because sewage systems are sometimes ideal for the placing of explosives. Whatever you wanted to know, there was someone at HQ who could find the answer for you.

  They found me the face; I consulted the computerised files and got the assistance of the photofit experts. Then they produced a selection of actual photographs and I had the identification beyond a doubt.

  I rang through to the penthouse suite and said I wanted to see Max urgently.

  *

  I told Max first that I’d recognised the body in Shoreham.

  “Who?”

  I said, “Neskuke. Remember?”

  “Neskuke. Of course I do! Robert Alexander Neskuke, disappeared ten months ago, from our embassy in Moscow. Vanished totally, believed either murdered or defected though Moscow never made any claims regarding the latter.”