The Luminaries

thought was strangely thrilling. Lightly he said, ‘I’ve thought of something that might be of some help to you.’
    Carver’s scowl deepened. ‘Who says I need help?’
    ‘You’re right,’ said Gascoigne. ‘I am impertinent.’
    ‘Say it, though,’ said Carver.
    ‘Well, here,’ said Gascoigne. ‘As I mentioned before, my late wife’s father worked in shipping insurance. His speciality was P&I—protection and indemnity.’
    ‘I told you I don’t have that.’
    ‘Yes,’ Gascoigne said, ‘but there’s a good chance that the man who sold you this ship—what was his name?’
    ‘Lauderback,’ said Carver.
    Gascoigne paused in a show of surprise. ‘Not the politician!’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Alistair Lauderback? But he’s in Hokitika now—running for the Westland seat!’
    ‘Go on with what you were saying. P&I.’
    ‘Yes,’ Gascoigne said, shaking his head. ‘Well. There’s a good chance that Mr. Lauderback, if he owned several ships, belonged to some sort of a shipowners’ association. There’s a good chancethat he paid a yearly fee into a mutual fund, called P&I, as an additional insurance that was of a slightly different nature than what you and I might think of as conventional cover.’
    ‘To protect the cargo?’
    ‘No,’ said Gascoigne. ‘P&I works more like a mutual pool, into which all the shipowners pay a yearly fee, and out of which they can then draw down funds if they find themselves liable for any damages that regular insurers refuse to touch. Liabilities of the kind that you’re facing now. Wreck removal, for instance. It’s possible that
Godspeed
could remain protected, even though the ownership of the ship has changed.’
    ‘How?’ He spoke the word without curiosity.
    ‘Well, if P&I was taken out some years ago, and this is the first significant accident that this particular ship has sustained, then Mr. Lauderback might be in credit against
Godspeed
. You see, P&I doesn’t work like regular insurance—there aren’t any shareholders, and no company, really: nobody’s looking to make a profit off anyone else. Instead it’s a co-operative body of men, all of them shipowners themselves. Every man pays his dues every year, until there’s enough in the pool to cover them all. After that, the ships stay covered—at least, until something goes wrong, and then somebody has to dip into the pool for some reason. The notion of being “in credit” applies very nearly.’
    ‘Like a private account,’ Carver said. ‘For
Godspeed
.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    Carver thought about this. ‘How would I know about it?’
    Gascoigne shrugged. ‘You could ask around. The association would have to be registered, and the shipowners would have to be listed by name. This is assuming that Lauderback indeed belongs to such a group, of course—but I would venture to say that it’s very likely that he does.’
    In fact this was more than likely: it was certain. Alistair Lauderback
did
have protection and indemnity against all his crafts, and each ship
was
in credit to the tune of nearly a thousand pounds, and Carver
was
legally entitled to draw down these funds to help pay for the removal of the wreck from the Hokitika spit, so long as hefiled his appeal before the middle of May—whereupon a year would have passed since the sale of the craft, and Lauderback’s legal obligation to
Godspeed
would cease. Gascoigne knew all this for certain because he had made the inquiries himself, first in the offices of Balfour Shipping, and then in the news archives of the
Times
, and then at the Harbourmaster’s office, and then at the Reserve Bank. He knew that Lauderback belonged to a small co-operative of shipowners called the Garrity Group, so named for its most prominent member, John Hincher Garrity, who was (as Gascoigne had discovered) an enthusiastic champion of the Age of Sail, the imminent twilight of that era notwithstanding, and who was also, it transpired, the incumbent Member of Parliament for the electorate of Heathcote in the East, and Lauderback’s very good friend.
    We ought to clarify that Gascoigne had made these inquiries in the service of a separate investigation—one that was not concerned with maritime insurance, or with John Hincher Garrity, in the slightest . Since the night of the 27th of January he had spent long hours in the Harbourmaster’s office, poring over old logs and old pages of the shipping news; he had worked with Löwenthal to examine all the old political