BLIND SPOT - AND TWO OTHERS

BLIND SPOT PART 6

19

  I watched Old Danny as he pushed the Lovelace backed towards the mainland, through a slowly descending thickening fog. “Let me into a professional secret. How in the world did you find that buoy in this mist? Your equipment is virtually useless in this weather. You couldn’t take any bearings, there're the waves, tide, the mist, currents – and yet there you are, right on the nose. It can’t be done.”

  “And yet, I did it,” Old Danny said smiling, puffing on his cigar.

  “And yet, you did it,” I repeated.

  He held the end of the cigar close to his eyes. “I think I should put this out. It’s getting, so I can’t even see the length of the wheelhouse windows, far less beyond them.”

  I stuck my head out the side window and withdrew it again. “It’s not the cigar,” I announced. “No need to quit smoking, quite yet, Danny. Visibility is zero, and I mean zero. You’re flying blind on instruments.”

  “Switch on the wheelhouse lights, will you?” He told me. “Makes it all the easier to read the charts, depth-sounder and doesn’t affect my radar.”

  When the light came on I noticed, for the first time, Old Danny was showing something approaching worry. He never spared a glance through the wheelhouse windows, and only a very occasional glance for the compass: he was navigating almost entirely by chart and sounder.

  We were out near enough in the mid-channel, heading north-north-east against the gathering ebb, the engine at minimum revs. He continued on this course for two cables before pushing the throttle wide open and lighting another cigar. In the flare of the match the dark face was quiet and thoughtful, no more.

  For quite a while there was nothing to be seen, just patches of grey mist swirling past our bows and then the mist thinned, giving maybe a hundred metres visibility. Now, we could just about make out the coastline.

  Forty metres away, Old Danny eased the throttle and gave the wheel a touch to port. We were now to the west of the almost phosphorescently foaming whiteness that marked the point where the flood tide ripped past the outer end of the eastern breakwater. Twenty metres away he pushed the throttle open again, we were heading straight for where the unseen west breakwater must be, we were too far over to port, it was impossible now that we could avoid smashing bow first into it, then suddenly Old Danny had the wheel spinning to starboard, the tide pushing him the same way, and we were through and not an inch of precious paintwork had been removed. Old Danny now had the engine in neutral. I wondered briefly whether, if I practised for the rest of my life, I could affect a manoeuvre like that: I knew damned well that I couldn’t.

  I had radioed ahead, and they were waiting for us when we arrived back at the harbour. Old Danny brought the Lovelace alongside as neatly as I could park my car by the kerb and I stepped on to the stone pier to a welcoming smile and kiss from Kimberley and a deep furrowed frown from the jowl-faced DI Silver.

  “This better be good, John,” he scowled. “I’m bloody freezing waiting for you here.”

  “Well, I know who was responsible for Simon Nunn’s death.”                                                

  “Go on,” DI Silver snarled.

  “There is always more to any one person than what they choose to reveal,” my glance fell on Kimberley. “Simon Nunn enjoyed walking along the cliff path every morning. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” she replied quickly.

  “All through this investigation I’ve asked questions and listened to the answers and examined my perceptions a bit more closely and gradually a very different picture began to emerge.”

  “So, who was responsible?” DI Silver insisted.

  “Danny Mountfitchet.”

  Everyone turned and looked at the old fisherman, who was still disembarking the Lovelace.

  “I didn’t f*****g kill him,” he shouted. “How could you Mr Handful? I just took you out on my bloody boat for f**k’s sake!”

  “Shut your mouth, Danny,” DI Silver bellowed at him. “And watch your language. There is a lady present.”

  I held up a hand. “It’s alright, Danny,” I reassured him. “I said you were responsible for his death. I didn’t say that you killed him.”

  “What are you on about, John?” DI Silver asked.

  “It was this that killed him.” I pointed to the buoy, resting on the deck of the Lovelace.

  DI Silver looked at me in utter bewilderment. “Have you gone mad?”

  “Not at all,” I replied. “This has been my stumbling block. Because until earlier today the entire population of Oxmarket had the opportunity to kill Simon Nunn.”

  “What happened earlier today, then?” Kimberley asked, who had been quieter for longer than I could remember.

  “I worked out that the buoy was what killed him.”

  My comment fell into the silence like a stone. Ripples of disbelief spread through the small group.

  “What?”

  “I was left with two whys',” I continued. “Why should anyone wish to murder Simon Nunn in the first place and, much more puzzling, why choose to do it on the main public footpath that runs along the top of the cliffs and where you are likely to be seen by hundreds of people? Frankly, the second why, was what convinced me that it wasn’t murder.”

  Now I retraced my steps and, once again, every head of my small audience as if yoked together on one invisible string, turned. I leaned back against the harbour wall hands in pockets.

  “Once I put aside the notion that there was no motive, no opportunity, I was left with a third, equally powerful reason and, I believe, the correct solution.”

  “Which is?” DI Silver pressed.

  “That Simon Nunn’s death was a complete accident.”

  I paused then and the silence lay ripe with doubt and stabbed by startled looks. At first dense it slowly became more lightsome, gathering point and clarity. I could see that Kimberley would almost choke on the suspense, so I decided to put her and everyone else out of their misery.

  “How did he manage to walk along the cliff path every day?” I asked her. “He was visually impaired, wasn’t he? It was a dangerous past-time to undertake don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Kimberley admitted and then added, “I don’t know, I supposed so.”

  “Well, it was,” I went on, “that is why he used the sound of a buoy’s warning bell to gauge his distance from the edge. His hearing was so acute that he could carry out his morning constitutional without fear of suffering a terrible accident.”

  “Oh, my God,” Kimberley gasped in shocking realization.

  “Then yesterday morning, Old Danny’s fishing boat accidentally severed the anchor rope of a buoy causing it to float further away from the shore. When it rang while Simon Nunn was out for his walk, he thought he was further away from the edge than he was. He walked over the edge and fell tragically to his death.”

  The silence that ensued hung heavy in the air, like Old Danny’s cigar smoke and lingered for longer than was comfortable. A silence laden with unasked questions and unspoken answers settled on the quayside.

  Old Danny, tried to register self-righteousness and lofty detachment, but it merely looked as if he wished he were a thousand miles away.

  He eventually broke the silence. “Can we go home now?” He said. “I’m starving.”

 “I tell you what,” I said, “Let’s go to the Waggoner’s Rest and have drink. On me of course.”

  Without any further conversation our little group made its way away from the harbour. The wind had stiffened a little but was still soft. The sun had burst through the clouds on the eastern horizon, spilling liquid copper across the sea. I looked towards the cliffs where Simon Nunn had fallen and noticed from where I was positioned a blind spot that also might have contributed towards his death.

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