The Hunt and the Kill

by Holly Watt

  She remembered Noah’s fear of the man in Milton Keynes, the determination of the man on Hampstead Heath. Bailey had assembled a formidable team.

  Casey’s legs were getting heavy, slow, her leg was throbbing where she had sliced it. She remembered a sign she had seen back in Cape Town. Great Whites! Cage diving! Out in the wild!

  And here she was, swimming with a trail of blood following her in the sea.

  Her breath caught in her throat. It was hopeless, all of it. She would never escape.

  A wave washed over her face, and then another, and she felt the sea pull her down, as it had so many. She felt the yawn of nothing beneath her. She was a speck in the vastness of the sea, and what would it matter if she stopped and let the ocean take her … What would it matter …

  Light-headed.

  Casey shook her head, forced her arms through the water. Keep going.

  She was further from the shore now. The tide must be drifting her away from the land, inch by deadly inch. Casey tried to correct her course, legs kicking slowly. Kick, and kick, and kick again.

  Debbie and Marcella and a galleon, on a hospital wall. Tony and Lauren and sea monsters, swirling through the magnolia.

  Delirious.

  There was a yacht, far ahead of her. Another speck in the immense expanse of this ocean. But the sailors would never see her, a small, dark head, bobbing in the sea, just another piece of jetsam. And she could never reach them: that yacht floated in another world, untouchable.

  Keep kicking.

  A sort of peace.

  Keep trying.

  This must be drowning …

  Casey kicked again.

  I’ll be there in a minute.

  She kept her eyes on the yacht, counting the strokes in her head for something to do. The hills wavered. They seemed nearer for a moment, then further away, then closer again. The yacht was tacking now, catching the wind. She thought of the Renaissance, flying over the waves. Those people were having a perfect day, right there, just out of her reach. They would live, and she would die, and that was all there was.

  A wave caught her by surprise, swamping her, filling her eyes and her mouth with salt and water.

  Maybe it was time.

  Cat’s Cradle or Kissing Gate? I love you.

  Another kick.

  You don’t have to choose.

  Another kick.

  You do have to choose.

  And behind her, she heard the scream of an engine.

  It was the silver speedboat, searing over the waves. Casey turned her head almost dreamily, too tired for fear. The boat was bouncing from crest to crest, spattering spray and froth. In the blue of the morning, it looked almost beautiful.

  There were three men on board, searching.

  They saw her easily. She knew that they would. She might have been just one tiny dot in an endless surge of waves, but they were hunting her. She couldn’t dive down out of sight. Not again. If she let go of the air, she would sink down and down, and never resurface.

  She couldn’t.

  The speedboat was hurtling straight towards her now, its prow leaping out of the water as it powered along.

  The shriek of the engine filled the air. Casey was hypnotised by the thud of the boat skimming over the waves towards her. It was less than a hundred feet away now.

  You do have to choose.

  Casey dived beneath the surface, forcing herself deep into the clutches of the ocean.

  The boat stormed over her, the propellers ripping through the water just a few inches above her feet. There was an underwater howl, a comet trail of foam, and then the boat was out of sight, disappearing into the blue haze of the sea.

  Casey’s lungs burned.

  Stay down.

  I can’t.

  Stay down or you’ll die.

  But I can’t.

  She surged to the surface. In the distance, the speedboat was turning sharply. She could see the men’s eyes raking the surface of the water, scanning, hunting: there.

  The speedboat accelerated towards her again.

  Casey imagined the propellers slicing through the water towards her. Those steel blades would churn blindly through the ocean: savage, indifferent killers. They would bite into her, carving through flesh and bone without hesitation. There would be a short, sharp scream absorbed by the water. An eruption of blood in the ocean. A few lumps of meat floating.

  The sharks would deal with that.

  The speedboat was coming back again, rearing up out of the water, and Casey dived down again, down again, deep into the strange world below.

  She didn’t make it as far down this time. She felt the punch of the water swirling just below the boat, and when she bobbed awkwardly to the surface, she saw one of the men at the front of the boat, pointing straight at her. That’s what they did with a man overboard, wasn’t it? That was one person’s job: their only task. Point and point and point, so the ship didn’t lose sight of a tiny black dot in the waves. Point and point, so she couldn’t be lost. Point and point, so she could never survive.

  The motor screamed again, faster this time. The big double propellers would be blurring round, too fast to see …

  Down again, down again, down and down.

  They must have decided that a battered, dismembered body would raise fewer questions than a bullet-ridden corpse. Must have decided not to bother with a gun. And it was fun, this, too.

  Up again. A pathetic attempt to swim a few strokes to the left, to try and escape the man’s gaze as she came up. But his eye was on her as soon as she surfaced: it was hopeless. You can’t hide in an ocean. For a moment, Casey trod water, rising and falling with the waves.

  Waiting.

  The speedboat was turning, glittering in the sunlight.

  Any second now, it would accelerate again. Any second now.

  There was a burst of sound, somewhere off to Casey’s left. A loudspeaker, far away. She was so focused on the speedboat at first that she barely noticed.

  But the pace of the speedboat slackened, the motor dropping quite suddenly to a purr.

  Casey turned her head with an agonising effort, startled to see the yacht far closer now. The yacht was moving rapidly, closing the gap with a surprising speed. Casey kept kicking, keeping her face just above the waves. Now she could make out a man in the prow of the yacht, and a few seconds later she could see a lifebuoy in his hands. The loudspeaker echoed over the water again.

  ‘We’ll get her, mate.’

  The speedboat had come to a bobbing halt.

  ‘We were trying to grab her,’ one of the men shouted across, as the yacht drew nearer.

  ‘Sure you were.’ The tone was equivocal.

  It was Zac, she realised. Zac, sailing the yacht with a careless ease.

  He didn’t wave, just set his jaw. Not engaging with the men on the speedboat as he concentrated on Casey, daring them to interrupt him. It was a big yacht, she could see. There was at least one other shape in the cockpit, and there might be any number of people below decks. Too many witnesses. Zac threw the lifebuoy to Casey, a bright orange splash in the water.

  ‘She’ll be fine now,’ Zac shouted. ‘You lot can head off.’

  They hesitated, the speedboat’s engine grumbling in neutral.

  ‘Everything OK?’ the second man was swinging forward from the yacht’s cockpit, moving easily up the shifting deck.

  ‘Everything’s fine.’

  Zac was leaning down to the water, and Casey felt only sheer exhaustion as she reached up with her last scrap of energy, grabbing for his hand.

  ‘We have,’ he murmured, ‘to stop meeting like this.’

  The next minute she was sprawled on the deck, gasping for air, unable to move. Somewhere far in the distance, she heard the speedboat rev up, and then it was racing away over the waves, leaving only a hint of petrol fumes in the air.

  Casey lay on the deck, watching the lowered sails flap aimlessly in the wind.

  Zac passed her a Coke, a
nd after a while, she struggled up and took a swig.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She was still wearing the black dress, soaked through and snagged in places. She examined the cut on her leg. The broken window had sliced deep. The blood was trickling down her leg, mingling with the seawater and dripping on the deck. Robotically, she assessed her other injuries. She had gashed her elbow, the skin torn and bruised. There was a deep graze on her shin that she didn’t remember getting. As she stared at the graze – a shocked purple red, the shape of the rock scored deep into her skin – the leg started to throb.

  ‘We’re heading back to the harbour, so you’ll be able to see a doctor soon,’ the other man said. She assumed he was the yacht’s skipper.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’

  ‘We could see,’ the skipper said slowly, ‘that the speedboat was moving about oddly.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They did a right number on you. Do you want me to call the police?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I’m fine.’

  He gave her a disillusioned look and made his way back to the cockpit. Zac threw her a towel, a big sweater and an old pair of board shorts, and she put them on, gratefully.

  They raised the sails again, and tightened the sheets. And as they turned back towards the harbour, Casey watched the faraway hills, a million thoughts racing through her head.

  56

  Zac had chartered the yacht for a day’s sailing, Casey deduced as they headed to the port. All the way back to the port, he gave no indication that he had met Casey before, busying himself with the sails.

  At the harbour, the skipper summoned a taxi.

  ‘She should get checked out at the hospital,’ Zac said, as Casey limped towards the car. ‘I’ll take her.’

  And the skipper nodded, waving them off.

  Casey slumped in the back seat as the car weaved through the Cape Town chaos.

  ‘Delphine saw you run from the house,’ Zac said. ‘She was watching with binoculars. She told me where to go.’

  Casey nodded at the taxi driver. Not now.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Casey,’ Zac muttered.

  He messaged Delphine though, showing Casey the screen. I’ve got her. Speak later.

  A pause, and then he added a couple of words.

  Thank you.

  At the hotel, Casey hobbled through the courtyard. With the board shorts reefed around her waist and the oversized jumper reaching halfway to her knees, she knew she must look strange. Her hair had dried in the sea breeze, stiff with salt. The cut on her leg was still bleeding, and she was covered with scrapes and bruises. She felt the hotel staff’s eyes land on her and flutter away again.

  In Zac’s room, she took him through the events in staccato sentences.

  ‘What happened to Garrick?’ he asked at the end.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She knew she sounded cold.

  Zac turned away from her, stepping towards the window, looking out at the brightness of the day. Casey watched his back, too tired for emotion.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she added, unable to cover the insincerity in her voice. ‘He may be all right.’

  ‘And he may not be.’

  Zac was tracing shapes on the floor to ceiling window, pushing his fingertips hard against the glass.

  ‘I know you want to trust Garrick, Zac,’ Casey said. ‘But he hadn’t even told you Bailey was his father.’

  ‘I’m aware of that.’ Zac sounded as if he was gritting his teeth.

  He was silhouetted against the brilliance. Casey had to squint as she looked towards him.

  ‘What version of events did Garrick tell you in San Francisco?’ she persisted. ‘When he said you had to stop developing Corax? Why didn’t he just tell you Bailey was his father?’

  ‘He told me that Bailey had threatened his mother,’ said Zac. ‘And that Frank was dead. I had known Jeanie McElroy for years, don’t forget. She had always been … kind to me.’

  Zac’s mother had been ill, Casey remembered. Jeanie McElroy must have stepped into the breach when Zac and her son were at school together.

  ‘So you agreed to go off to Mauritius and forget all about it? Take the money and run?’

  ‘Not everyone wants their name on a plaque in a crappy park in London, Casey.’

  ‘It was quite a big part of the story for Garrick to leave out though, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Zac turned and met her eye.

  She saw the hurt, for a split second, and didn’t care. Pressed down harder on the bruise instead. ‘Presumably Garrick will tell Bailey that you’re involved in getting to the bottom of whatever happened to Corax.’

  ‘Presumably, yes. If he’s still alive. Which he may not be judging by the state of you.’

  ‘Why did Garrick stop working at Adsero?’ Casey asked, the questions spiralling up endlessly. ‘What happened to make him leave and set up his own company?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Zac sounded weary. ‘He never said.’

  ‘We have to … ’ – but she ran out of words.

  ‘So what now?’ Zac turned back to the view. ‘What now, Psyche?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Casey staggered back to her own hotel room. The Fitzgerald Brennan Trust, she thought. The Fitzgerald Brennan Trust. The Fitzgerald Brennan Trust.

  She dragged off the board shorts and the sweater and dumped the remains of the sparkly black dress in the wastepaper basket.

  The papers from the office had been lost with the sequined bag. Her camera, too. Casey vaguely remembered the bag’s strap snapping as she threw herself off the rocks and into the water. For a moment, she was furious with herself, but then she forced away the anger. No, you would not have made it if you had turned back for the bag. No, you couldn’t go back. This was the only way.

  She imagined the bag sinking down in the ocean below Bailey’s house, the papers blurring and disintegrating, the camera snuffed out.

  Everything was gone.

  Casey threw herself on the bed, exhausted.

  The Fitzgerald Brennan Trust, like a burr in her mind.

  She sat up and reached for her laptop, searching for the name over and over again. Nothing came up.

  Nothing.

  Someone knocked on her door. She ignored it. Then her phone buzzed. Let me in, Casey.

  Wearily, she stood, and opened the door.

  Zac was carrying a paperback and a comprehensive-looking first-aid kit. Without a word, he gestured towards the bed. Feeling like a child, Casey sat on the edge of the bed, watching tiredly as he unpacked the small bag, laying out the contents neatly on the carpet. He dressed her wounds, one by one.

  Antiseptic, this’ll sting, sorry, and bandages, several of them, smoothed on so carefully.

  It was easy to forget that he was a doctor, Casey thought blearily. And a good one too, once.

  When he was finished, he looked up at her, not having to repeat the words. What now?

  I don’t know, thought Casey. I just don’t know.

  ‘I’ll be outside,’ said Zac.

  He stood up and stepped out on to Casey’s small balcony. He looked at the view, the blue of the sea so gentle from here, and then he sat down in a deckchair, opened the paperback and began to read.

  Oddly comforted by his presence, Casey reached for the laptop again, scrolling through her notes.

  She ignored a one-word message from Dash – Budget??! – and read through her notes on Flora Ashcroft once again. Then her notes on Colindale, and the transcript of the conversation with Noah. Fitting the jigsaw together, piece by piece. Does this fit here? No. Here? Definitely not. Start with the corners, then: what are you sure about?

  Nothing.

  She clicked open her file on the Njana visit. Here was the list of diseases. Here were the photographs of the agar plates.

  Click, click, click. She checked through the photographs, one by one.

  A biosafety cabinet. Rows of beakers. Tables made of scaffolding and planks. A w
ide shot of the laboratory.

  Casey stopped, looking again at the photograph of the laboratory.

  At the far end was the wall of cheap kitchen cabinets. And a stack of files.

  Casey peered closer, zooming in. A stack of files. A stack of grey files. A stack of files just like the ones in the house in Llandudno.

  ‘Zac,’ she called out. ‘Look.’

  She enhanced the photograph as much as possible.

  ‘What?’ Zac was beside her. ‘What am I looking at, Psyche?’

  ‘There.’ Casey pointed. ‘Look there.’

  ‘FBT,’ Zac read aloud, ‘ASF, WGF. What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘The Fitzgerald Brennan Trust,’ Casey spelled out the names. ‘The Almond Sheehan Foundation. The Wheaton Gulati Foundation.’

  ‘But what are they? I don’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Casey said. ‘I don’t know, precisely.’

  ‘You don’t,’ Zac corrected her, ‘know at all.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a coincidence,’ said Casey, ‘that Bailey set up a foundation named after Ernest Brennan and Ed less than a month after they both died. What if he sets them up as a sort of … I don’t know. A sort of atonement? A form of penance.’

  ‘Expiation,’ said Zac slowly. ‘A stab at redemption.’

  ‘It might … ’

  ‘But who is Almond then? Who is Sheehan?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Casey.

  She had trawled through dozens of websites as she sat on the hotel bed. Could see no suspicious deaths, and certainly nothing that tied them into Bailey.

  ‘When was that foundation set up? The Almond Sheehan one?’

  ‘Five or six years ago?’ Casey tried to remember the panicked moments in the Llandudno office. ‘Brennan was scared of Bailey. I saw it when he answered the phone in front of me. Maybe Bailey spoke to him again later. Maybe … ’

  She stared at the photograph of the laboratory. She had hidden in the cupboard directly under that stack of files, she thought, burning with frustration. She had been just inches away from the stack of information.

  ‘Well,’ said Zac. ‘It doesn’t really help us, does it? There’s no way we can get back into Njana. Not now.’