Angry Moon

Chapter 1a

     “It was a night just like this.”

     Eddie turned in surprise to look at the man standing beside him. A stranger. A man he’d never seen before. “Excuse me?” he said.

     “It was a night just like this,” the man repeated. “A cold night, November the seventeenth nineteen eighty two, when the Queen of Esbjerg, pride of the Jutland Shipping Company, set sail for the last time.”

     Eddie wasn’t sure how to react. Being spoken to, out of the blue, by a complete stranger wasn't something he was used to. The other man was older than him, in his fifties by the look of him, with a short, neatly trimmed beard and a bald head. He was wearing a smart suit under his warm coat. He was looking at him, as if expecting him to reply, and Eddie searched his mind for something to say. Something non committal that would, hopefully, enable him to avoid being drawn into a conversation. Not that he was anti social or anything. He liked a good chat as much as anyone, but he'd come up here to be alone with his thoughts and he just wanted to think for a while. “You don't say,” he said therefore.

     The man nodded soberly. “The air was biting cold,” he said, his breath making a cloud that hung between the two men. “So cold it stung your face and hands, but as still as a tomb. The sea was as smooth as a mirror. You could see the stars and the moon reflected in it, just like today.”

     He spoke slowly and deliberately, to give each syllable weight and meaning. He turned his gaze across the water stretched out below them, its surface disturbed only by the wake of the ferry as it pulled away from the coast of Denmark. “As if the very elements knew that the ship would never return and were holding their breaths as a sign of respect. It was the same time of day as well. Eight in the evening when the ship slipped out to sea for the last time with four hundred living souls on board. The ship would be sailing through the night, just as we are now. The similarities between then and now... Well, I'm not saying it means anything, of course. That would just be silly superstition.”

     “What happened?” asked Eddie, finding himself hooked despite himself.

     “It should have been an eighteen hour crossing, but the Captain was in a hurry. Why, we may never know. He was determined to make the crossing in sixteen hours.” He turned to look at Eddie again, and there was a strange intensity in his eyes that disturbed him a little. “Maybe it was important to him to reach Harwich before midday. Whatever the reason, it was just ten minutes before noon when the ship drew close to port. It slipped past Landguard Point with its cranes and warehouses. Past Ha'penny pier, devoid of the usual crowd of gawping tourists that cold November day. It entered the brown, sludgy waters of the River Stour and it pulled up at the quayside at the very stroke of noon itself.”

     Eddie found his eyes narrowing with suspicion. “So it made the crossing then,” he said.

     The other man nodded. “The passengers disembarked. Shortly afterwards most of the crew did as well. Just another successful sea crossing, no different from a thousand others it had made.” He drew a heavy breath. “No different at all.”

     “I thought you were going to say that the ship sank or something.”

     “Why would you think that?”

     “Well, why tell the story otherwise?”

     “I was just saying that it was a day just like today. Not everything has to be a drama, does it?”

     “You said it was the last time the ship made the crossing!”

     “That's right. It was an old ship. It was moved to Edinburgh, where it was broken up for scrap later that year.”