The Golden Keel

‘Next day we left early as planned and, as we moved out, I heard the police boat revving up. They followed us a long way while I was taking it nice and easy, cruising at about ten knots so they wouldn’t lose me. They hung on to my tail for about thirty miles, waiting for the bang and laughing to themselves fit to bust, I suppose. But they didn’t laugh when the bang came and blew the arse off their own boat.

‘I turned and picked them up. It was all good clean fun – no one was hurt. When I’d got them out of the water I took them back to Algiers – the noble rescuer. You ought to have seen the faces of the Security boys when I pitched up. Of course, they had to go through the motions of thanking me for rescuing those lousy, shipwrecked mariners. I kept a straight face and said I thought it must have been one of the antisubmarine depth charges in the stern that had gone off. They said it couldn’t have been that because police boats don’t carry depth charges. And that was that.’

He chuckled. ‘No, they don’t like me in Algiers.’

I laughed with him. It was a good story and he had told it well.

I was in two minds about Metcalfe; he had his advantages and his disadvantages. On the one hand, he could give us a lot of help in Tangier; he knew the ropes and had the contacts. On the other hand, we had to be careful he didn’t get wind of what we were doing. He was a hell of a good chap and all that, but if he knew we were going to show up with four tons of gold he would hijack us without a second thought. We were his kind of meat.

Yes, we had to be very careful in our dealings with Mr Metcalfe. I made a mental note to tell the others not to let anything drop in his presence.

I said, ‘What kind of boat have you got?’

‘A Fairmile,’ he said. ‘I’ve re-engined it, of course.’

I knew of the Fairmiles, but I had never seen one close up. They had been built in the hundreds during the war for harbour defence. The story was that they were built by the mile and cut off as needed. They were 112 feet overall with powerful engines and could work up over twenty knots easily, but they had the reputation of being bad rollers in a cross sea. They were not armoured or anything like that, being built of wood, and when a few of them went into St Nazaire with the Campbelltown they got shot up very badly.

After the war you could buy a surplus Fairmile for about five thousand quid and they had become a favourite with the smugglers of Tangier. If Metcalfe had re-engined his Fairmile, he had probably gone for power to outrun the revenue cutters and his boat would be capable of at least twenty-six knots in an emergency. Sanford would have no chance of outrunning a boat like that if it came to the push.

‘I’d like to see her sometime,’ I said. There was no harm in looking over a potential enemy.

‘Sure,’ said Metcalfe expansively. ‘But not just yet. I’m going out tomorrow night.’

That was good news – with Metcalfe out of the way we might be able to go about our business undisturbed. ‘When are you coming back?’ I asked.

‘Some time next week,’ he said. ‘Depending on the wind and the rain and suchlike things.’

‘Such as those French Security bastards?’

‘That’s right,’ he said carelessly. ‘Let’s eat.’

II

Metcalfe made us free of his flat and said we could live there in his absence – the servants would look after us. That afternoon he took me round town and introduced me to several people. Some were obviously good contacts to have, such as a ship’s chandler and a boat builder. Others were not so obviously good; there was a villainous-looking café proprietor, a Greek with no discernible occupation and a Hungarian who explained volubly that he was a ‘Freedom Fighter’ who had escaped from Hungary after the abortive revolution of 1956. I was particularly cynical about him.