The Bo’sun nodded and opened another small wall locker
– this one had a key to it. It was a small liquor cupboard and from a padded velvet retainer McKinnon removed a rum bottle and laid it on the Captain’s bunk.
‘I don’t suppose the Captain will mind that either,’ Patterson said. ‘For the stretcher-bearers?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The Bo’sun started opening drawers in the Captain’s table and found what he was looking for in the third drawer, two leather-bound folders which he handed to Patterson. ‘Prayer book and burial service, sir. But I should think the burial service would be enough. Somebody’s got to read it.’
‘Good God. I’m not a preacher, Bo’sun.’
‘No, sir. But you’re the officer commanding.’
‘Good God,’ Patterson repeated. He placed the folders reverently on the Captain’s table. ‘I’ll look at those later.’
‘”Home signal”,’ the Bo’sun said slowly. ‘That’s what the Captain said, wasn’t it? “Home signal”.’
‘Yes.’
‘ “Homing signal” is what he was trying to say. “Homing signal”. Should have thought of it before – but I suppose that’s why Captain Bowen is a captain and I’m not. How do you think the Condor managed to locate us in the darkness? All right, it was half dawn when he attacked but he must have been on the course when it was still night. How did he know where we were?’
‘U-boat?’
‘No U-boat. The Andover’s sonar would have picked him up.’ The Bo’sun was repeating the words that Captain Bowen had used.
‘Ah.’ Patterson nodded. ‘Homing signal. Our saboteur friend.’
‘Flannelfoot, as Mr Jamieson calls him. Not only was he busy fiddling around with our electrical circuits, he was transmitting a continuous signal. A directional signal. The Condor knew where we were to the inch. I don’t know whether the Condor was equipped to receive such signals, I know nothing about planes, but it wouldn’t have mattered, some place like Alta Fjord could have picked up the signal and transmitted our bearing to the Condor.’
‘You have it, of course, Bo’sun, you have it to rights.’ Patterson looked at the two guns. ‘One for me and one for you.’
‘If you say so, sir.’
‘Don’t be daft, who else would have it?’ Patterson picked up a gun. ‘I’ve never even held one of these things in my hand, far less fired one. But you know, Bo’sun, I don’t really think I would mind firing a shot once. Just one.’
‘Neither would I, sir.’
Second Officer Rawlings was lying beside the wheel and there was no mystery as to how he had died: what must have been a flying shard of metal had all but decapitated him.
‘Where’s the helmsman?’ the Bo’sun asked. ‘Was he a survivor, then?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know who was on. Maybe Rawlings had sent him to get something. But there were two survivors up here, apart from the Captain and Chief Officer -McGuigan and Jones.’
‘McGuigan and Jones? What were they doing up here?’
‘It seems Mr Kennet had called them up and posted them as look-outs, one on either wing. I suppose that’s why they survived, just as Captain Bowen and Mr Kennel survived. They’re in the hospital, too.’
‘Badly hurt?’
‘Unharmed, I believe. Shock, that’s all.’
The Bo’sun moved out to the port wing and Patterson followed. The wing was wholly undamaged, no signs of metal buckling anywhere. The Bo’sun indicated a once grey but now badly scorched metal box which was attached just below the wind-breaker: its top and one side had been blown off.
‘That’s where they kept the Wessex rockets,’ the Bo’sun said.
They went back inside and the Bo’sun moved towards the wireless office hatchway: the sliding wooden door was no longer there.
‘I wouldn’t look, if I were you,’ Patterson said.
‘The men have got to, haven’t they?’
Chief Radio Officer Spenser was lying on the deck but he was no longer recognizable as such. He was just an amorphous mass of bone and flesh and torn, blood-saturated clothing: had it not been for the clothing it could have been the shattered remnants of any animal lying there. When McKinnon looked away Patterson could see that some colour had drained from the deeply-tanned face.
‘The first bomb must have gone off directly beneath him,’ the Bo’sun said. ‘God, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ll attend to him myself. Third Officer Batesman. I know he was the officer of the watch. Any idea where he is, sir?’
‘In the chart room. I don’t advise you to go there either.’
Batesman was recognizable but only just. He was still on his chair, half-leaning, half-lying on the table, what was left of his head pillowed on a blood-stained chart. McKinnon returned to the bridge.
‘I don’t suppose it will be any comfort to their relatives to know that they died without knowing. I’ll fix him up myself, too. I couldn’t ask the men.’ He looked ahead through the totally shattered windscreens. At least, he thought, they wouldn’t be needing a Kent clear-view screen any more. ‘Wind’s backing to the east,’ he said absently. ‘Bound to bring more snow. At least it might help to hide us from the wolves – if there are any wolves around.’
‘You think, perhaps, they might come back to finish us off?’ The Chief was shivering violently but that was only because he was accustomed to the warmth of the engine-room: the temperature on the bridge was about 6ºF -twenty-six degrees of frost – and the wind held steady at twenty knots.
‘Who can be sure, sir? But I really don’t think so. Even one of those Heinkel torpedo-bombers could have finished us off if they had had a mind to. Come to that, the Condor could have done the same thing.’
‘It did pretty well as it was, if you ask me.’
‘Not nearly as well as it could have done. I know that a Condor normally carries 250-kilo bombs – that’s about 550 Ibs. A stick of those bombs – say three or four – would have sent us to the bottom. Even two might have been enough – they’d have certainly blown the superstructure out of existence, not just crippled it.’
‘The Royal Navy again, is that it, Bo’sun?’
‘I know explosives, sir. Those bombs couldn’t have been any more than fifty kilos each. Don’t you think, sir, that we might have some interesting questions to ask that Condor captain when he regains consciousness?’
‘In the hope of getting some interesting answers, is that it? Including the answer to the question why he bombed a hospital ship in the first place.’
‘Well, yes, perhaps.’
‘What do you mean – perhaps?’
‘There’s just a chance – a faint one, I admit – that he didn’t know he was bombing a hospital ship.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Bo’sun. Of course he knew he was attacking a hospital ship. How big does a red cross have to be before you see it?’
‘I’m not trying to make any excuses for him, sir.’ There -was a touch of asperity in McKinnon’s voice and Patterson frowned, not at the Bo’sun but because it was most unlike the Bo’sun to adopt such a tone without reason. ‘It was still only half-dawn, sir. Looking down, things look much darker than they do at sea level. You’ve only got to go up to a crow’s nest to appreciate that.’ As Patterson had never been in a crow’s nest in his life he probably fell ill-equipped to comment on the Bo’sun’s observation. ‘As he was approaching from dead astern he couldn’t possibly have seen the markings on the ship’s sides and as he was flying very low he couldn’t have seen the red cross on the foredeck – the superstructure would have blocked off his view.’
‘That still leaves the red cross on the afterdeck. Even though it might have been only half light, he must have seen that.’
‘Not with the amount of smoke you were putting up under full power.’
There’s that. There is a possibility.’ He was unconvinced and watched with some impatience as the Bo’sun spun the now useless wheel and examined the binnacle compass and the standby compass, now smashed beyond any hope of repair.
‘Do we have to remain up here?’ Patterson said. ‘There’s nothing we can do here at the moment and I’m freezing to death. I suggest the Captain’s cabin.’
‘I was about to suggest the same, sir.’
The temperature in the cabin was no more than freezing point, but that was considerably warmer than it had been on the bridge and, more importantly, there was no wind there. Patterson went straight to the liquor cabinet and extracted a bottle of Scotch.
‘If you can do it I can do it. We’ll explain to the Captain later. I don’t really like rum and I need it.’
‘A specific against pneumonia?’
‘Something like that. You will join me?’
‘Yes, sir. The cold doesn’t worry me but I think I’m going to need it in the next hour or so. Do you think the steering can be fixed, sir?’