That spring morning, I was writing the first chapter of what would become The Deceiver. There was a knock on the study door. I was irritated because, when writing, I ask only to be left alone with strictly the typewriter and the coffee. Interruptions are confined to the outbreak of fire or some major crisis. But I replied with a curt “What?”
The answer came through the door. So-and-so has collapsed. She named the head of the investment company through which, but not in which, I had invested my life’s savings. The man was one whom I had known for thirteen years and whom I thought, wrongly as it turned out, that I could trust.
I misunderstood the word collapse and presumed a heart attack or stroke, which seemed odd, because he was only in his forties. She meant his company had collapsed and he had been arrested.
Even when I learned the truth, I was not particularly worried. After all, my investments were nothing other than what had been chosen on his recommendation, and I had insisted on fund managers who were utterly reputable, solid, and above all safe. No spectacular returns, thank you, no matter how inviting the blandishments. It was only when seated with the detectives of the Metropolitan Police City Fraud Squad that the full measure of the swindle was explained to me.
The investments simply were not there. The documents were forged. The savings had been raided, embezzled, and spent trying to prop up the great Wizard of Oz–style facade. And I was not the only one. Other victims were banks, insurance houses, and all the private clients.
Receivers were appointed, but quickly realized the total assets of the collapsed sham would be just enough to cover their own fees. Naturally. The total missing sum from all the victims combined was about £32 million, £20 million to financial institutions and the remainder from private clients.
It was a strange year. The detectives slowly prepared their case for the Crown Prosecution Service, and I was amazed to learn how many victims would refuse to testify. It is the vanity factor. Those who pride themselves on their acumen cannot bear to admit they have been taken.
I had no such inhibitions, having always known I was useless in the management of money. So I became the detectives’ favorite guest and they explained how it had all been done.
Actually, I was not simply penniless, but owed an additional million pounds. This was because, seeking to buy the farm, I had suggested I encash some portfolio to buy the place outright. I was persuaded to take out a mortgage instead, as the shrewd management of the million would generate more than a mortgage would cost. It was all bunkum, of course. The necessary portfolios could not be encashed because they were not there. So it was soon clear I was worth zero minus an extra million.
The case ground on at a snail’s pace. Eventually, in 1993, it came to court. I was not needed as a witness. Thanks to a brilliant defense lawyer, a useless prosecutor, and a judge who had never tried a criminal case in his life, the charges were reduced to two small technical offenses and the sentence was 180 hours of community service.
The Biafran affair had deprived me of any faith or trust in the senior mandarins of the Civil Service. The trial of 1993 did the same for my belief in the legal system and the judiciary.
Anyway, I had made up my mind that there was only one thing for it. That was, at the age of fifty, to write more novels and make it all back. So I did.
THE PASSING OF HUMPY
There were three of us standing at the stern of the game-fisher Otter out of Islamorada, in the Florida Keys, and we were after amberjack, those big, heavy, deep-bodied giants of the mackerel family who fight like hell.
Both my boys were with me; Stuart, the fanatical angler who never took his eyes off the rigs, and the younger Shane, who could get bored when nothing struck. The Otter was hove to several miles out into the Gulf Stream, right over a submerged mountaintop called “the 409,” because it was 409 feet beneath the water, or simply “the Hump.” It was the school summer holidays of 1991.
It was Shane who first saw the tiny, fluttering object off the stern, struggling toward us on exhausted wings, coming from the east. High above the little traveler was a black-backed gull, its orange razor beak eager for a kill. Another joined it and they screamed at the sight of the tiny prey beneath them. One by one we ceased watching the rod tips for the giveaway tremble of a bite far below and watched the struggle.
The little flier was not a seabird at all—there is none that small. It was evidently exhausted and at the end of its strength. It dipped in tiredness toward the tea, fluttered frantically to rise and struggle on for a few more yards. We watched in silence, yearning for it to win. A few more yards and it could fall onto our afterdeck. But tiredness won. It finally sank again and the sea rose to take it.
But it was only a few feet from the transom. Perhaps there was a chance. I grabbed the scoop net from the deck and, above and behind me, watching from his flying bridge, skipper Clyde Upchurch engaged gear and moved back a few feet. I got the mesh beneath the little bird that lay motionless on the swell and hoisted it aboard.
I am no ornithologist, but I was pretty certain it was a finch out of Africa. It should have been emigrating to Europe, but clearly had been blown way off course and out to sea. Disorientated, it must have taken refuge in the rigging of a freighter and thus had crossed the Atlantic, but without food or water seemed weakened.
But there was land behind us, the chain of Florida’s islands six miles away, and perhaps the little fellow had sensed this and tried to get there. But it had failed. Above the stern the gulls screamed in outrage over their lost meal and veered away.
Shane took the tiny body in his cupped hands and went back into the cabin. Because of where we were, we named the little stowaway Humpy. And we went on fishing.
Shane prepared a bed of paper tissues and laid what we presumed was the little corpse upon it in a pool of sunlight on the cabin table. Ten minutes later, he gave a yell. The tiny beady eye that had been closed in death was now open. Humpy was still alive. Shane appointed himself nurse in chief.
He formed the flat bed into a nest of soft tissue paper, took some bottled water, and dribbled a few drops onto the beak. It opened and the drops disappeared. Humpy woke up and began to preen. More spring water, more tissues, a slow wipe-off to clear the tacky salt from the plumage. Humpy perked and fluttered.
It was another thirty minutes before he felt able to fly. Shane was catching flies trapped in the cabin windows. I suggested Humpy was a seed eater, as he refused the flies but finally accepted a tiny crumb of bread from the packed lunch. Then he spread his wings and flew.
Not far at first. Just off the table, around the cabin and back to the table. As in pilot training, we called it circuits and bumps. He did about a dozen circuits of the cabin, had a rest, had more drops of water, and then found an open window. Shane yelled in alarm and rushed outside.
Humpy was doing his circuits, all right, but around the moored boat. The afternoon wore on, and it was time to go. The charter was almost over and we had to get back to Islamorada. Then it all went wrong.
With lines retrieved and rods stored, there was no cause to stay. High aloft, Clyde engaged gear and pushed the throttle forward. The Otter leaped to the command and Shane screamed. Humpy was somewhere astern and his salvation was racing away to the west. We all turned and yelled, but Clyde could not hear us above the engine roar.
Stuart ran up the ladder to tap him on the shoulder. The Otter stopped in the water, but she had surged for at least two hundred yards. We all gazed astern, and there he was. Fluttering above the wake, trying to catch up with the only sanctuary for miles around.
We started shouting encouragement . . . and the gull came back. Humpy so nearly made it. He was ten yards from the stern when the sharp orange beak took him. I noticed a box of lead weights lying open on the deck, seized the largest I could see, and flung it at the gull above us.
A hit would have been impossible, but the gull must have seen some dark object coming toward it, for it uttered another raucous scream. And dropped the little finch in its beak. The crumpled form fell back to the surface of the ocean again. Clyde backed the Otter slowly toward the feathery lump on the water. Again I fished it out.