CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE SUN WAS setting. It was setting behind the sea off Westport, between the two rock walls of the Tip Head. It looked like a big red penalty goal by Alan Hewson, sailing over the uprights.

It was the only bit of calm Royce’d had all day and he’d wandered down, past the harbourmaster’s office, just to get out of the way and watch the sun go down. Behind him the lagoon, the river, the trauma; to his right the tidal swamp and the remains of a wharf so old no one could remember what it had been for. Ahead and to the left, the river, bloodied by the sun.

The sun sank and lost its shape as it did so, shimmering into nebulosity, grappling for control of itself before it shuddered apart. Shit, were they in for a little Big Bang? Noddy Somerville’s look of helpless blankness in the face of big questions about the universe floated across the surface of the unsettled sun. Then it disappeared, spreading itself like crimson egg yolk across the horizon as it did. Gone.

A second later there was an explosion of green light, right where the sun had been. It blatted both ways down the line of the horizon as if it were a tightrope, then surged upwards and made a point, blindingly green, about a million miles up. Jupiter’s Needle, they called it. He’d seen it for the first time in his life.

He stayed, staring out to sea and fitting the black negative of the needle – burnt into his retina – onto the spot where the positive green image had been. He stayed looking until the blackness of the sky matched the negative. Then he turned, knowing more than he had before.

DOING SOMETHING BECAUSE you’ve got a shrewd idea it’s right is called a hunch. Why’s it called a hunch? Royce gave a shrug. He realised he’d just hunched his shoulders to do it.

A darkening mosaic of asphalt, dust, grey wooden sleepers and copses of reedy grass. Ancient brown metal lay everywhere, in the semi-completed shapes of old train parts – boilers, funnels, coal boxes, pistons. Steel wagon wheels lay like ringworm in the coarse, rustling grass. The darkness smelt of tar, ozone and mud.

Royce loped down the wharf towards the Buller Lion.

The three big cement silos still radiated whiteness somehow, in the near dark. From this close they looked like Saturn rockets at Cape Canaveral with gantries joined to them, spuming rocket smoke made of cement dust. Blazing lights at the foot of the buildings were the flames of ignition. The lift-off illusion was completed by the roar of fan pumps, pushing cement into the bowels of the ship.

A steep, narrow aluminium gangway, corrugated by footholds, was covered – would you believe it – in green carpet. They’d laid out the green carpet for him.

An articulated Guardian Cement truck, bent like an accordion, was plugged into the bottom of a silo, presumably refilling the cement being blasted into the ship. The driver had leaned over a bollard to have a smoke, staring at something in the water of the wharf – probably a man-eating eel. Then he’d gone back to his cab.

Royce, in the shadows of the railyard fence, was alone, profoundly alone, seemingly in complete possession – if he went up that gangplank – of the Buller Lion.

He sidled aboard like a rat that had changed its mind.

ALL NON-CREW MEMBERS MUST PROCEED TO VISITOR CONTROL said the first sign (there were to be many). FOLLOW THE RED ARROWS.

As it happens there were no red arrows, but he wouldn’t have followed them anyway. He was not here as a registered visitor – his visit would remain unofficial.

His hunch was pretty basic. Marjorie had been given American money by Betty, and then by Stan. Where did Stan get American money? From Betty. Where was Betty? Somewhere Stan had helped her to be, in exchange for American money. And Stan worked on the Buller Lion. End of hunch.