I did my best.
I did everything I possibly could, but he had simply disappeared (more tears).
Of course, I left out a few details here and there, but I felt happy that I had given a pretty accurate version of events. There was even the added bonus that the press were all over it and it seemed I would be able to sell my heart-wrenching story to the highest bidder.
Every cloud.
The real icing on the cake however, was what the unfortunate tragedy meant as far as Jane, Anita and their kids were concerned. As Daniel’s body had not been recovered, there would be no death certificate before a minimum of seven years had passed. Until then, all his assets and bank accounts would be frozen, including the ones in America. Even after seven years, I learned he would not automatically be presumed dead. There would still be a lot of hoops to jump through to get a death certificate and release funds. And of course, there was the Trustee in Bankruptcy, prowling around in the shadows like a hyena, waiting to scavenge whatever she could from the carcass and having all the time in the world to make both Jane and Anita’s lives a misery.
It was one hell of a mess, I thought to myself, unable to resist a little smile of satisfaction.
A mess I no longer had any part in. Finally, I was free of all the lies, the deception, the humiliation.
I learned the hard way that none of us can ever know what we are truly capable of until we are pushed to our limits.
Everyone has a breaking point. Mine turned out to be the door to my future.
Epilogue
Monsters really do exist. They move amongst us, disguised as one of us. We can never truly get rid of them. That is why they are so dangerous.
The little yacht, Talina, bobbed around in the waves, sails flapping gently. There was almost no wind and the two men on board were in no hurry. They were about fifty miles off Falmouth, but they had no intention of actually going into the port. Not with the twenty kilos of cocaine they were carrying, stashed in the bilges. The older of the two was at the helm, smoking a cigarette, while the younger one chose to pass the time playing games on his iPhone. Neither of them showed any interest in making conversation.
The young man looked up abruptly from his phone.
‘Did you feel that?’
‘What the feck are you talking about?’
‘We hit something in the water just now. I felt it. There it is again.’
He reached into his pocket and leaned over the side to shine a torch down into the water along the length of the hull. It had been almost imperceptible, but he had definitely felt something knock against the fibreglass of the boat. He gave a startled little cry of shock and instinctively moved back.
‘Holy fuck, there’s someone in the water! Quick, help me!’ he shouted.
The light had picked up the reflective strip of a partially inflated lifejacket. The thing knocking against the hull was the man’s head, barely above water.
‘Leave him, I say. The last thing we need is anything to draw attention to ourselves. He’s most likely dead anyway. The water’s feckin’ freezing.’
‘Fuck man, we can’t just leave him. No way. I’m not having that on my conscience. Come on, for fuck’s sake! Help me get him on the boat.’
The older man muttered something incomprehensible under his breath, tossed his cigarette into the water and, against his better judgement, reluctantly went over to lend a hand.
The man in the water was not small and, with his sodden clothes weighing him down even further, it was a mammoth task for the two men to drag him aboard. In the end, they had to winch him in with the help of an improvised sling made from one of the halyards. He was unconscious and frozen to the touch, but further checks confirmed that he was, by some miraculous form of divine intervention, alive. Half carrying, half dragging him down below, the two men set about removing his lifejacket and outer layers of clothing and wrapping him up in anything they could find, in an attempt to raise his body temperature to something closer to normal. After about half an hour, they decided they had done all they could and left his fate in the hands of the gods, while they went back on deck to discuss the implications of this new situation for them. They were a couple of hours early for the rendezvous, so they had a bit of breathing space, but neither of them was under any illusion that this new ‘complication’ would not go down well with the boss man. The older of the two, whose name was Vincent, lit another cigarette, clearly rattled.
‘Where the fuck did he come from anyway? There’s not another vessel in sight for fuck’s sake. How the hell is he even alive?’
A low moan from the cabin reaffirmed that the stranger had indeed lived to tell the tale of his ordeal, whatever it may have been. The younger man, Darragh, moved to go down and check on him, but Vincent gripped his arm sharply to stop him.
‘Put your balaclava on,’ he hissed. ‘We can’t risk him seeing our faces or I swear we’ll have to finish him off ourselves.’
Darragh looked at him, unsure whether or not he was serious, but he knew better than to question and did as he was told. The man was barely conscious but had begun to shiver violently. A good sign, if the bits of information he had gleaned about hypothermia over the years were true. He searched around in the cabin and found an old sleeping bag someone had left in the back of the boat. After a bit of a struggle, he managed to manoeuvre the man into it and zip it up to keep any remaining scraps of body heat from escaping. It seemed to do the trick and the shivering subsided a little.
Vincent looked around as he drew on his cigarette and saw a white steaming light heading their way.
‘For fuck’s sake, they’re here already.’
An hour later their highly valuable and totally illegal cargo had been swiftly and efficiently exchanged for a bulky envelope of cash. Faces were concealed at all times. There were no names and no pleasantries, just a simple, no-nonsense business transaction and the two boats disappeared in opposite directions. Nothing had been said about the additional crew member, but as they headed back home to the southwest coast of Ireland, they realised they had to decide quickly what the hell they were going to do with him.
In the end, they had plenty of time to come up with a plan because it was a good five hours before their ‘problem’ was awake and able to talk. The men had by then decided on a course of action that would enable them to get rid of him, but also keep their consciences clear, given the fact that informing the authorities of the incident was completely out of the question. They would pull into a secluded bay they knew of on the south coast and take him ashore in the dinghy. They would dump him there on the beach but, after that, he would be on his own. He would find himself miles from anywhere, but that was his problem. At least he would be alive and on dry land, with significantly improved chances of survival. He would never have seen their faces and the boat bore no identifying name on the hull or stern. She was as anonymous as they were. It was the best plan they could come up with and they were as happy with it as they could be, given the circumstances.
Darragh was the one to break the news to the man as they approached the bay. He expected the stranger to plead with them to take him safely to a port, beg them to get him back to his home and his family, but to Darragh’s amazement, there was only relief on his face and just a hint of a smile.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered, closing his eyes for a moment before continuing.
‘That suits me fine. Being ‘dead’ is a particularly attractive option for me right now.’
THE END
* * *
[1] Cory Newman PhD, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.
[2] dictionary.com
[3] Medically reviewed by Timothy J. Legg, PhD CRNP on January 11, 2018 — Written by Tim Jewell
[4] yourdictionary.com
[5] Spiritual-encyclopedia.com
Twenty Years a Stranger (The Stranger Series Book 1) Page 37
