‘How do you intend to stop me?’
‘I’m not going to threaten you. I’m not going to say Kristjan Einarsson will rot in jail – or whoever replaces Zayala will be pointed in Erla Torfadóttir’s direction – if you don’t leave well alone. But you must understand. I’m fully committed to this project. Fully committed.’
‘Why? What is so important about it?’
Driscoll glanced over his shoulder. ‘Nanoq,’ he called.
Espersen appeared in the dining room doorway. Wada momentarily failed to recognize him without his woolly hat. He too was wearing a suit.
‘What arrangements have you made for Wada-san?’ Driscoll asked.
‘MS Horisont sails from Þorlákshöfn tomorrow morning, bound for Rotterdam.’
‘Journey time?’
‘Three days. Depending on the weather.’
Driscoll nodded in apparent satisfaction. ‘Good enough.’
‘There’ll be no record of her passage. The skipper’s someone I’ve worked with before.’
‘What if I refuse to go?’ Wada asked, cutting into their cosy discussion of her removal from Iceland.
Driscoll gave her a pained smile. ‘Your consent isn’t strictly essential, though I’d urge you to cooperate. The deaths of Ohara and Zayala will trigger a vigorous response by Nishizaki. You wouldn’t want to be here when whoever he sends next starts looking for answers. I’m offering you an undetectable escape route. Take it. You won’t get a better offer.’
‘That is certain,’ murmured Espersen.
And, despite herself, Wada believed him.
Driscoll spared her no more time. He left shortly afterwards, instructing Espersen to transport her to Þorlákshöfn that evening. After he’d gone, Espersen said they’d set off as soon as it got dark. He cooked her a meal, which was surprisingly good. He did nothing to prevent her leaving the house, but he didn’t really need to. She had nothing to leave with. Espersen had her passport, not to mention her phone. Driscoll had the kage-boshi file and the Emergence print-out. Her hard-won gains had all been taken from her.
‘But you’re alive, Wada,’ said Espersen as he served her salmon fishcakes and a glass of white wine. ‘Unlike the two people Nishizaki sent to kill you. That puts you ahead of the game.’
‘He did not send them to kill me,’ Wada objected. ‘Caldwell was the target. And he is dead. Thanks to me, some would say.’
‘We all have to take our chances.’
‘You did not tell Driscoll about the handcuffs?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘It would have upset him. I know how difficult Caldwell was to handle. So, I’m not making any judgements. He’s dead. You’re alive. How are the fishcakes?’
‘Delicious.’
‘Good. Drink your wine. There’ll be no alcohol on the Horisont.’
‘What does Driscoll expect me to do when I reach Rotterdam?’
‘Stay out of his way. And out of Nishizaki’s. That really would be the smart thing to do. Think you can manage that?’
Wada looked at Espersen across the table. And said nothing.
The evening drive to Þorlákshöfn took them south from Reykjavík along empty roads. Little was said, there being little to say. Wada was leaving Iceland. The investigation Kodaka had begun and which she’d foolishly tried to continue was over. Kodaka was dead. So was Martin Caldwell. And Mimori Takenaga was beyond her help. She should count herself lucky to be alive. And she should concentrate on staying that way. As Espersen had said, it was the smart thing to do.
Þorlákshöfn wasn’t much of a place. They seemed to arrive at the entrance to the docks almost as soon as they’d passed the sign welcoming them to the village. Wada could see a large cargo vessel at the quayside: the Horisont, obviously.
She expected Espersen to drive straight to the quay, but he pulled up just short of the dock gates and out of range of the nearest street lamp. He turned off the engine and wound down his window to let in the chill night air. There was the sound of a crane operating ahead of them and occasional shouted exchanges between deck hands and dock workers.
‘The Horisont is a Danish-owned vessel,’ Espersen said quietly, handing her her passport. ‘But the skipper and the first mate are the only Danes on board. The crew don’t speak much English. And you shouldn’t try to speak to them anyway. You’ll be allowed out of your cabin when they’re at sea. But until the ship sails tomorrow and during a stopover in the Faroe Islands, you’ll be kept below decks. Understood?’
‘I understand.’
‘The only ship-to-shore communications are on the bridge. Stay away. OK?’
‘I will not try to use their radio, I promise. And since you have my phone, I will be completely out of touch with the world until the ship docks in Rotterdam. That is as you want it, I assume.’
‘Correct.’
‘Are you taking me any further? Or do I have to walk the rest of the way?’
‘No. I’ll take you aboard. In a moment.’
A moment passed. Then several more.
‘What are we waiting for?’ Wada asked.
‘This.’ He took a computer memory stick out of his pocket and handed it to her.
‘What is this?’
‘The Emergence files. The whole lot. Everything.’
‘How did you get it? When Kristjan and I tried to download those files, we were blocked.’
‘I found the stick in Zayala’s truck. He must have come to Iceland with some way of harvesting the information from Quartizon’s records. My guess is he’s already sent it back to Nishizaki HQ in Tokyo. Who knows what they’ll make of it there. Driscoll probably has some plan to deal with the fallout, but the whole thing sits wrong with me. It’s all in Japanese, of course. I only know what it is because I’ve seen Emergence written in Japanese so often I recognize the word.’
‘Why does it “sit wrong” with you?’
‘As I told you, I’m Danish. I was born in Copenhagen. But my mother’s a Greenlander. You probably heard Driscoll call me Nanoq. It’s a nickname. My real name’s Uffe. Nanoq is the Greenlandic word for a bear. I know the country. And a bit of the language. I closed land purchase option deals for Quartizon there as well as here in Iceland. In Canada too. When some … persuasion was needed.’
‘And this troubles you?’
‘There’s something about Emergence that just doesn’t smell right. Like the fact that all the records are in Japanese. There’s a secret buried inside it. A secret no one’s allowed to know. That bothers me. Has done for quite a while. I can’t do anything about it, though. I wouldn’t know where to start. But you?’ He turned his head to look at her. ‘You can do something.’
‘How?’
‘Quartizon used a climatologist at Cambridge University to research background details for the Emergence project. The whole operation was supposed to be based on her work. But some of the locations I went to …’ He paused. ‘It didn’t add up.’
‘How did it not “add up”?’
‘I can’t explain. If she won’t talk to you, it’s better you don’t know any more. Try to get her to look at the files. You’ll have to translate the contents for her. See if she thinks her findings have been properly followed.’
‘Is there some reason why they might not have been?’
‘Just listen to what she says.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Dr Michaela Morrisette.’
‘Where can I find her?’
‘Cambridge University climatology department should do it.’
‘It is the Easter vacation. Nobody will be there.’
‘She’s a workaholic. Probably looks on Easter as a good opportunity for quality time in the lab.’
‘And if not?’
‘Her home address is forty-four Alford Street, Cambridge. Speak to her face to face or not at all.’
‘But I won’t be able to speak to anyone for at least three days.’
‘More like fou
r, by the time you’ve travelled from Rotterdam to Cambridge. There’s nothing I can do about that. As for the travelling, go by train and ferry. Avoid airports.’
‘What do you expect me to do about whatever Dr Morrisette says – if she says anything?’
‘I don’t know, Wada, because I don’t know what she’s going to say. You’ll just have to work it out for yourself.’
‘You said the smart thing to do was to stay out of Driscoll’s way.’
‘It still is. But sometimes there’s the smart thing … and the right thing. And I get the feeling you know the difference. Sorry to dump it on you. There’s no one else I can ask.’
Wada didn’t know what to say to that. She held the memory stick in her palm and considered the possibility of handing it back. But she didn’t.
‘Ready to go aboard now?’ Espersen asked eventually.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Ready.’
TWENTY-TWO
NICK WATCHED THE runway fade from view as the icelandair morning flight to London took off from Keflavík airport. He felt a keen sense of frustration about his failure to accomplish what he’d specifically gone to Iceland for: a meeting with Peter Driscoll. It was tempered by relief that he’d avoided straying into the intrigues that had swallowed Caldwell and Wada. He was alive and well and free to carry on with his comfortable existence. He knew he should be grateful for that. It wasn’t a small thing. Caldwell’s death was a continuing reminder of that. Yet he knew the mystery of Peter Driscoll wouldn’t leave him alone until he could see and speak to the man who was his father.
He’d been promised that would happen, as and when Driscoll judged it safe. But would it really? Would Driscoll ever judge it safe? There was no way for Nick to tell. He didn’t know how the man’s mind worked. Or what was needed to make their meeting safe.
He’d gone to Iceland with myriad questions. Some of them had been answered. But they’d only given rise to others. There was still so much he didn’t understand. And in the short term there was the problem of what he was going to tell Kate.
He’d phoned her late the previous night and explained Driscoll had refused to meet him but had promised to be in touch eventually. Naturally, he’d said nothing about his dealings with Erla Torfadóttir, far less the death of Martin Caldwell. Telling her about such things would only alarm her. He didn’t like deceiving her. In fact, he hated everything that doing so involved. But, for the moment, he couldn’t see any way round it.
Perhaps, it occurred to him as the plane levelled off and the FASTEN SEATBELTS sign went out, it would be better if Driscoll never did contact him. He supposed he could find a way to live with that. Plenty of people got by without ever knowing their father. Maybe he ought to settle for being one of them.
The MS Horisont nosed out of Þorlákshöfn harbour into a grey swell. Wada watched the harbour wall fall away behind the ship through the porthole of her cabin, calculating it would soon be acceptable for her to show herself on the small portion of the deck she’d been given access to.
The skipper, a taciturn, grizzle-bearded man called Jakobsen, had made it clear Wada was aboard on sufferance. She had no doubt he’d been paid well to transport her, but that evidently didn’t extend to treating her courteously. As soon as Espersen had gone back ashore, he told her bluntly that going on deck when the ship was in harbour, visiting the bridge without his permission or attempting to engage with the crew at any time would result in her being locked in her cabin. After her experiences at Stóri-Asgarbær, this wasn’t something she wanted to risk, so she intended to follow his orders to the letter.
That was easier in principle than practice, however. She’d woken feeling sick, which she attributed to diesel fumes tainting the atmosphere in her cabin. She longed for some lungfuls of fresh air. But another cause of sickness – the rolling of the vessel – was already making itself felt. It promised to be a long three days to Rotterdam.
Eventually, though, the tedium and discomfort of the voyage would give way to the unpredictability of her next exploration of the secrets of Emergence. She had those secrets in her hand, on the memory stick Espersen had given her, but without a computer the stick was just a useless piece of plastic.
That would change once she was ashore. But for now all she could do was wait. Another look through the porthole showed the harbour wall as just a dark line on the horizon. Iceland was behind them.
With the memory stick wedged securely in her pocket, she headed for the door.
Nick found it hard to tell whether Kate was disappointed by his failure to meet his father in Iceland or not. She sympathized with him genuinely enough, but he nonetheless detected an unspoken relief that Peter Driscoll, man of mystery, hadn’t entered their lives after all. She seemed to doubt whether Nick would ever in fact hear from him. Or was it that she hoped he never would?
Either way, a resumption of normality was clearly what suited her best. And Nick tried hard to behave as if it suited him too.The situation was out of his control anyway. Driscoll knew where he was. The next move was up to him.
On Good Friday, Nick called round at April’s house, early enough to be confident of finding her in. He had to tell her something about what had happened.
‘I haven’t seen Peter,’ he began. ‘It turned out to be a wild goose chase. He covers his tracks well. I have to face it, April, he probably doesn’t want to meet me and is making sure he doesn’t. So, there it is, at least for now. I’m taking “don’t want to know” for an answer.’
‘Really?’ April couldn’t have concealed her relief even if she wanted to.
‘What else can I do?’
There were a few things, of course, which he wasn’t about to mention, such as pump Miranda for more information or track down Vinod Hardekar. But then he wasn’t about to mention Hardekar at all. Nor the fact that April’s old friend, Marty Caldwell, had died a gruesome death in Iceland. There was a lot he wasn’t about to tell her. But his conscience was clear. April and Caro had kept the truth about his paternity from him all his life. He was entitled to do some keeping back of the truth now himself. And, really, what good would it do to tell her Marty was dead, anyway? He supposed she’d hear about it eventually. And, whatever she heard, whenever she heard it, it would be better for her to have no reason to think he knew anything about it.
‘No point pretending I’m not pleased, Nicky,’ she said, embracing him. ‘I reckon it’s better for you this way.’
‘I know you do.’
And maybe, he thought, it truly was.
The deck of a freighter ploughing through the North Atlantic proved to be a hostile place to spend time, although Wada braved it as often as she could, since her seasickness tended to abate in the open air. Espersen had kept her phone, but not her copy of The Makioka Sisters. Unfortunately, reading only made her feel sicker, so there was little to distract her from the boredom and discomfort of the voyage. The crew kept their distance and all she got from Captain Jakobsen was a curt nod whenever they came within sight of each other.
The seasickness lifted during the ship’s stopover in the Faroe Islands, but Wada saw nothing of their surroundings beyond a restricted view of Tórshavn harbour through the porthole of her cabin. Soon enough, the Horisont was back out on the grey, heaving ocean.
As the days at sea slowly passed, Rotterdam became an ever more alluring destination. No matter that it was probably just a featureless port city – Yokohama transplanted to the Netherlands – all she wanted was to arrive there. And then …
Easter Sunday came and, with it, the gathering of Kate’s family at her parents’ house in Virginia Water. Nick usually managed to throw himself into such events, entertaining Kate’s nephew and niece and doing a good impression of being amused by her father’s account of golf club politics. It was harder work than usual, however, and he suspected it showed. On more than one occasion he was accused, good-humouredly enough, of inattention – wool-gathering, as his mother-in-law called it. He did his best to laugh the
accusations off and over-compensated by drinking more than he should have. He suspected Kate would be levelling a few complaints at him during the drive home.
All in all, he wasn’t finding normality an easy place to go back to.
Terse and sour-mannered though he was, Captain Jakobsen was an expert in what he was paid to do. As the MS Horisont entered the vast complex of wharves and basins that was Rotterdam docks, Wada began to wonder just how easy it was going to be to leave the ship. But Jakobsen had arrangements for her well in hand. Within half an hour of the Horisont docking, she was able to disembark in the company of several Somali crew members under the cover of a group shore pass. It was Easter Sunday and harbour staff were thin on the ground. Within another half an hour, Wada was in a taxi heading for Rotterdam Centraal station.
At the station she made enquiries about ferry services to the UK. There was good news and bad. A ferry ran from Hoek van Holland, less than an hour away, to Harwich, on the east coast of England. She reckoned getting from there to Cambridge couldn’t be too difficult. The snag was that it was an eight-hour crossing and the next ferry was at ten o’clock.
Wada was going to have the pleasure of another night at sea.
Nick slept badly that night, partly because of a hangover after the lunch in Virginia Water. Kate hadn’t reproached him for drinking too much. Perhaps she sensed the disappointment his trip to Iceland had left him with. He supposed that must have been clearer to her than he’d intended. He promised himself in the small hours of Easter Monday that he’d put the mystery of Peter Ellery/Evans/Driscoll out of his thoughts. The next move was his father’s to take. Whether he took it or not was up to him. There was nothing more Nick could do.
And he was going to live with that.
TWENTY-THREE
WADA WAS THE first passenger off the hook of holland to Harwich ferry on Monday morning. The seasickness had been even worse on the ferry than it had been on the Horisont. It was a relief to set foot on dry land.
The Fine Art of Invisible Detection Page 25
