Dirty Business (The First Acer Sansom Novel)

by Oliver Tidy

  ***

  26

  Sansom didn’t need the binoculars to monitor their progress. The white streak thrown up by the little craft’s wake as it rose and fell across the pond-like surface was picked out by the keenness of the sun’s low rays.

  The speedboat was also the only sign of life in the world. Its high-pitched whine drifted across the water to him. As he followed its path, he realised that something about its course wasn’t right, wasn’t what he was expecting. It wasn’t coming out towards him in the direct line that it should be. Instead, it was making for the larger craft.

  Even as he realised what was happening, a plume of dark smoke, like the visible after-effects of a cannon being fired, could be seen hovering above the yacht before dispersing in the morning air. The reverberation of the big engines turning over drifted across the stillness to him, consolidating this information.

  He persuaded himself that it made no difference. Big or small, he had no intention of getting anywhere near them and, looking at the bulk of the mother ship, he doubted whether it would be a match for the pace and manoeuvrability of his own transport, should it come to that.

  There was a delay of some minutes, while they got out of the speedboat and it was tethered to ride in the wake of the bigger yacht, like some reluctant child being dragged behind its parent.

  It gave Sansom the time and opportunity to understand that men like Botha would always want to attend meetings, gatherings, wherever they were, with the superior position, the upper hand and advantage, even if it were only psychological.

  You came in a car; he’d arrive with a pair of top-of-the-range four-wheel-drives. You had two bodyguards; he had four. You came in a propeller-driven plane; he’d turn up in a private jet. You were there in a speedboat; he’d need to go get his multi-million-pound yacht.

  It was as much about image and impression as anything else. Images and impressions created concepts of power in men’s minds, which often served the purpose of removing the need for any further physical demonstration of it.

  Eventually, the bigger craft turned around and, crossing the short distance of sea, came to a stop a few hundred yards away from Sansom. The David and Goliath comparison sidled into Sansom’s consciousness and he derived some small comfort from the reported outcome of that encounter.

  Training the binoculars on the vessel’s deck, he could make out clearly now the figures and faces of those crowding the space at the rail. Tallis looked dishevelled and anxious, even at that distance. Sansom caught a look of what he imagined to be worry on his face, but the gentle rising and falling of the little boat made it impossible to fix on to anything for close scrutiny for long.

  Next to Tallis and clutching the railing with both hands was Eda. She stared out blindly across the water. Her face clearly betrayed her fear. Something inside Sansom wanted to reach out and gather her to him, pull her in close, stroke her hair and make it all go away. He realised that he was in this position, this fight, as much for her now as for himself.

  At least neither of them appeared hurt in any way. Towering over everyone in the little group was Lucifer, directing some unseen minion to activity.

  Raking the rest of the craft’s deck, Sansom brought the glasses to bear on a linen-suited older-looking man in a matching panama hat. He was on the level of decking immediately above the smaller group. As Sansom studied him, he brought his hand to his mouth and Sansom saw the wispy exhalation of cigar smoke briefly obscure his features.

  Sansom understood that he was getting his first proper look at the man Botha, who was staring back across the water at him from behind over-sized sunglasses. This was the person for whom Sansom had travelled thousands of miles, had spent hundreds of nights dreaming of and plotting against. Here was the man he believed to be ultimately responsible for what had become the ruination of his existence.

  The buzzing of the phone in Sansom’s pocket jolted him out of his thoughts. As he fumbled for it, he glanced down at the woman and realised that she had not moved from her position on the bench seat. Her back was to the yacht and she was still huddled inside the blanket, detached and disturbed. He wondered whether she was perhaps clinically unwell.

  ‘Lovely morning for it,’ said Lucifer.

  ‘Could be worse,’ said Sansom. Bracing his body against the structure of the boat as it bobbed up and down, he brought the binoculars back up. He saw his own activity mirrored across the short stretch of sea. Staring back at him, binoculars in one hand and mobile phone in the other, stood Lucifer. Sansom caught the flash of white teeth as the huge man appreciated the humour that he obviously derived from their common activity, mocking him in doing so.

  Sansom’s hatred for this man, the man whose voice he recognised from a walkie-talkie conversation a year ago – before his wife and child and everyone else on The Rendezvous were executed – writhed within him. Sansom knew that this could never be over for him while that man was still alive and he had breath to pursue him.

  ‘As a show of good faith, we’re going to let your two go first. We’ll send them over with the little outboard. The girl assures me that she’ll have no problem managing it. Between ourselves,’ he said, ‘I can tell you something that she did have a problem managing.’ As he said this, Sansom focussed on the big man, saw him let the glasses fall to be supported on the strap around his neck and, with his now-free hand, clutch his genitals.

  He knew that Sansom was watching him. His face broke into another wide grin at the opportunity to goad Sansom. Sansom flicked to Eda’s face but could see that she was completely oblivious to the man’s remarks. It was all, he realised, for him, something to rile him with, derail him with.

  He felt only revulsion for the man and a sinking feeling in his stomach as he was unable to keep the suggested images out of his mind’s eye. He found himself wondering if there could be truth in it and just as quickly realised that there could. This man, a murderer of women and children, had proved himself capable of anything.

  Sansom found himself looking at Eda again, trying to fathom something of the downcast look about her. He felt a stinging in his eyes and blinked away the rising emotion before it threatened to erupt out of him.

  ‘Anyway,’ went on the big man, ‘I can tell you all about that next time we meet. We could compare notes.’ He chuckled for Sansom’s benefit before continuing. ‘However, before we send our guests on their way, we would like a little look at Mrs Botha, make sure that she’s in one piece.’

  Sansom turned to the woman. ‘They want to see you before they release them,’ he said. She sat immobile for a moment and Sansom thought she wasn’t going to cooperate. Then, getting to her feet with the air of having something clear in her mind, she stood between him and them.

  The blanket fell from her and in the full light of the early day Sansom could see that she was indeed a stunning creature. The untended tangle of her shoulder-length hair added to the picture of her as a natural beauty. The deep natural tan of the pure Mediterranean skin, the flawlessly-formed shoulders, the inverted curve of her slender back, down to the delicate rump and elongated, perfectly-proportioned legs that a man would fantasise about.

  She made no attempt to pick the blanket up and cover her modesty. She stood up straight, her chin raised in a proud and almost defiant gesture. Sansom found himself wondering if there was a hidden agenda to her little display.

  Holding the binoculars as steady as he could on the big black man, he wondered if it was his imagination or a trick of the intensifying shimmering light that there was an alteration in the features of Lucifer – a slip, a tightness about the jaw. It put Sansom in mind of the expression one might see on the face of a man who watched another bump into his car.

  Sansom was aware that Lucifer was talking again. His voice and playfulness seemed undented, ‘She’s a fine specimen, wouldn’t you say? Like some of that yourself, eh?’

  The boldness of the man to make such a remark within feet of his boss, the woman’s husband, hatched the f
eeling in Sansom that there was something missing in the master and servant relationship. He said, ‘Are you done?’

  ‘For now. Soon as you have your friends back, we’d like to see Mrs Botha making her way over. She has no trouble managing it, you can take that from me.’ Sansom closed the phone, cutting off the moronic laughter that seemed to punctuate the big man’s every remark.

  ‘How do you put up with him?’ he said to her. ‘What can he possibly offer you?’

  She had folded herself up on to the bench seat again, but she had not covered herself with the blanket. ‘He has his uses,’ she said.

  She took an interest now in the approach of the little craft. She sat upright, the magnificence of her form in her adopted posture threatening to be a distraction for him. They both knew that there was nothing to be gained for her now by creating trouble. Her means of escape was minutes away and the knowledge seemed to buoy her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, unable to look over her shoulder to meet his eye.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For your losses. I’m truly sorry. It is,’ she took a moment to find the most appropriate word, ‘unimaginable. In your position, I’d be doing the same. I’d never rest until I had my revenge. You won’t, will you?’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  After a few seconds, she said, ‘What if you had something to live for? What if the horrors that you had imagined turned out not to be completely trustworthy, not absolutely true?’ She still had her back to him, leaving him without the opportunity to derive some additional meaning from her expression.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he said.

  She hesitated, either lost for the way to phrase what was in her thoughts or thinking better of them, and then the little boat was only feet away.

  Sansom dismissed her words as the guilty ramblings of her tiredness and realisations. She understood that she was part of his misery and misfortune – her lifestyle was based on it. She had claimed to know what her husband’s business was, but Sansom doubted that she ever wanted to be involved in the details. And now that she was, now that she had to face up to certain truths, it made her morally uncomfortable. She’d probably go home and massage her conscience in some shallow, material way: a generous donation of tainted money to some charity and then back on with her luxurious and ignorant existence.

  He got to his feet, leaned over the side and took hold of the rail of the joining craft as it came alongside. His mind emptied, to be filled with thoughts for the pair returned to him. He greeted Tallis with a handshake of genuine affection. As he helped Eda over the side he held her briefly to him and was warmed in his core to feel it returned. But the happy reunion would have to wait.

  They were all conscious of the presence of the scantily-clad woman sitting staring up at them. With her face turned towards them now, Sansom could see that she had again been crying.

  She regarded the newcomers, committing their faces to her memory. ‘Are my children on board?’ were the only words that she had for them.

  ‘No,’ answered Tallis kindly, ever the gentleman. ‘They were taken ashore to some sort of farmhouse.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. It was clear that she was familiar with the location.

  Tallis and Eda shuffled aside, giving her room to depart. She ignored Sansom’s offered hand to assist her climb down into the little boat. Perched on the rear bench with her hand around the grip of the throttle, she regained some of her former poise and composure. As Sansom gave the necessary shove clear, she looked up into his face. Her features were suddenly cloaked in a disconcerting sadness. She was unrecognisable as the fiery woman he had encountered not twelve hours previously.

  ‘Get away from here,’ she said. ‘Give this up. While you can, leave. You do have something to live for. Get away,’ she repeated. ‘In a month, find me. You’ll know where to look.’

  With nothing further to say, she wound open the throttle and they watched her expertly etch a curve into the surface of the sea as she moved away from them. Immediately it was clear that her course was not set for her husband’s yacht. Proud, free and changed, she was heading for the shore and her family.

  ‘Right,’ said Sansom, dragging his attention back to the urgency of their situation, ‘hold on, we’re leaving.’ He slipped behind the wheel and pulled back the throttle. As he did so the top covering of the right-hand outboard inexplicably flew up into the air in an explosion of noise and energy to splash down some ten feet behind them.

  Sansom’s instant thought was that the worst possible luck had struck and the engine had malfunctioned. The following echoing crack that rent the air in the split second that it took to travel from its source on the deck of Botha’s yacht across the open water to the speedboat explained everything to Sansom.

  In a surreal transportation of time and place, he found himself back on the shore of the Pacific island with high velocity ammunition tearing the air around him, and he realised in that moment that history was repeating itself for him.

  ‘Get down,’ he shouted. ‘They’re shooting at us.’ As if to reinforce his point, a deafening crash filled the air as a fist-sized hole was punched into the fibreglass side of the boat, spraying shards of the material across the seats. He pushed the throttle and the engine spluttered. Already, there was a thick black smoke billowing from it.

  Another round of the devastating ammunition smashed into the structure of the little boat. Eda screamed and Sansom whipped around thinking that she’d been hit. He encouraged the boat to lurch forward and a further shot split the air above him with a deafening crack.

  He needed to make them a moving target, not a sitting duck. The engine caught and they began limping away. Crouching behind the wheel, he aimed the craft at the shore in a direction away from Botha that would either see them beach it or rip the bottom out of her on the rocks.

  The windscreen shattered above his head, covering him in a thousand tiny shards of laminated glass. In his agony of helplessness, he could hear the chortling of the big man as he imagined him sighting them up again and watching with satisfaction their continued disintegration with every hit.

  He risked a look over the prow and his heart sank as he saw the tips of barely-submerged rocks waiting for them. Easing back on the throttle, the engine spluttered again. The smoke was heavier now. In a desperate moment of uncalculated risk, he left his position and crawled back to Tallis and Eda. He opened his mouth to speak as another hit showered them with more fibreglass.

  ‘Get over the side,’ he shouted, flinging two life-jackets at them. ‘I can’t take it in. It’s dead. She’s full of fuel. She’ll go up any moment. Come on. We’ll have to swim for it.’

  The pair needed little further encouragement and Sansom watched as they both leapt into the water clutching the buoyancy aids.

  Once Eda had orientated herself, she looked around for the other two. She felt safer in the water. Tallis was spluttering nearby but he had a firm grasp of his float. She couldn’t see Sansom and a wave of panic swept through her. She shouted for him and was answered by the increased note of the outboards’ engines.

  To her horror, she saw the speedboat move away from them and she knew then that he had never had any intention of coming with them. She screamed after him, but he would never hear her above the roar.

  With both of them into the safer environment of the water, Sansom returned to the controls of the boat. He heard Eda’s shout above the splutter and grumble of the engines, but he had seen Botha’s yacht begin a course towards them and he knew that they would have no mercy from the sadistic element on board as they floundered in the water so far from land.

  With a leap of faith, he coaxed the engines into life again. He could smell fuel now and knew that he was sitting on a bomb that could go up at any second. Peering through what was left of the windscreen, he sighted the yacht bearing down on them, approximately three hundred yards away. Gently, he nursed the craft out into deeper water, away from the splashing figures of Eda and
Tallis.

  The bullets continued to whizz and crack as the boat slowly edged out. Someone was clearly enjoying himself. And then his engines caught, responded to his throttling, and the craft surged forward. He looked over his shoulder at the smoke pouring from the damaged outboard and knew that he was on the last of his borrowed time.

  Looking over at the more cumbersome yacht, he was presented with a side view, in which was clearly framed the bulk of Lucifer lining up another shot and, above him on the higher level, Botha looking on like a doting father watching a son knock over tin ducks at the fair.

  The glorious idea came to Sansom then in a flash of vengeful brilliance. He lined up the prow of the speed boat, opened up the throttle to its fullest extent and thrilled at its immediate response. Whoever was steering Botha’s yacht was paying attention because he noticed an alteration in their course.

  The game of tag had been reversed and David was coming for his Goliath. He anchored the throttle as best he could, but as soon as he removed his pressure the speed fell away.

  He couldn’t take the risk of failing again. It seemed to him in those fateful final seconds that he’d been failing people for too long. He’d failed his wife and child; he’d failed the passengers and crew of The Rendezvous; he’d failed Tallis; he’d failed Eda. Ultimately, he had failed himself. It wasn’t something that he was going to repeat. Here, he had his chance to make his amends, to take his revenge for all of them.

  As the speedboat quickly closed the final hundred yards between him and the yacht he was aware of many things. His intelligence accepted, filtered and made sense of more information than he would have ever thought possible for a man speeding towards his death.

  He saw Botha on the uppermost deck turn and scramble for a doorway; he saw the face of some nameless individual at the window of the bridge look down at him with a horror-stricken expression; he saw the resolute, erect, dominating form of Lucifer staring down at him, daring him to pull it off, unable to tear himself away from the spectacle about to unfold even if it must result in his own death.