Vengeance in the Sun

by Margaret Pemberton

  Ahead of me a silver line of foam creamed round the Helena’s hull, and after about fifteen minutes hard rowing I could make out the shape of the two dinghies anchored to the yacht. Through the darkness the Helena loomed nearer and nearer, the dull glow of lights showing behind a curtained cabin window. With a grating sound the rowing boat scraped alongside her. I had nothing to anchor on to, nothing to tie the rowing boat with. I paddled alongside until I reached the dinghies, and in the fleeting moonlight caught a brief glimpse of the rope ladder. I grasped it, the boat rocking wildly beneath me, then, letting her float free, I began to climb.

  It wasn’t pleasant. The ladder swung alarmingly and it was pitch black and cold. The only thing that kept my courage up was the thought of Danielle and the relief she would feel on seeing me.

  Eternities later I stood on the empty deck, straining my ears for the sound of footsteps or voices. What I did hear was the distant sound of a child’s crying. Carefully I began to walk along the darkened deck towards the cockpit. The cabin door opened easily. Large windows on either side gazed blankly out at the glittering sea, the faint light showing settee berths and cupboards. I walked quickly through it, past a long, narrow galley, recently used, and then another cabin with a single bunk in it. All were empty and all were in darkness. I descended a short flight of steps and the crying became more distinct. The cabin door facing me was edged with light, and ther were voices. Both of them instantly recognisable.

  Bradley was saying with quiet viciousness: “ I knew it was you! All along I knew it was you!”

  And subdued but clear. I heard Ian Lyall say: “You bastard, Van de Naude. You number one prize bastard!”

  Danielle was saying tearfully: “Please take me home. I don’t like it here anymore. I want my mummy.”

  My hand tightened on the door knob and I pushed.

  I don’t know who was the most surprised. Danielle, who raced towards me, throwing herself in my arms. Ian Lyall, eyes blazing, or Bradley, a gun levelled at Ian Lyall’s chest.

  “What the hell.…” Ian began, his eyes widening, moving towards me.

  “Stay where you are!” Bradley ordered.

  Ian Lyall stopped, his desperate glance going from Bradley’s gun, to Danielle, to myself.

  Danielle’s arms were around my waist, her face pressed close against me. I held her to me tightly, my eyes fixed on Ian Lyall’s, saying in a voice I scarcely recognised: “How could you? How could you do this to her!” then, feeling myself on the verge of tears, I said: “I don’t know what will happen to you and I don’t care. I’m taking Danny home.” With her hand clutched tight in mine I turned to leave.

  “You’re not going to find that as easy as you think,” Ian said dryly.

  I looked at him again, glad I had never allowed myself to respond to his overtures of friendship.

  “I knew there was something wrong about you the first day I arrived. I heard you talking to Helena, shouting at her, telling her I would have to go. Now I know why. You were frightened I would carry out my duties too conscientiously. Make things too difficult for you! Well, you’ve failed. I’m taking Danny back to the villa and I’m going to find it very easy to do so. There’s not much you can do now with a gun pointing at your chest!”

  “There’s not much you can do single-handed and unarmed, either,” and he smiled. A bitter, defeated smile. “If you hadn’t seen me tonight there was a chance for Danny. Now there’s none.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  He said, and his voice was patient. “No, I know you don’t. But you will. Give or take five minutes.”

  I said to Bradley: “ I’m taking Danielle back in the dinghy. You and Ian can come back in the other one. The rowing boat I came in is probably in the middle of the Mediterranean by now.”

  A familiar voice said from the cabin door behind me: “ Sorry, Lucy. We can’t let you do that.”

  I spun round.

  “I’d have given a thousand dollars for it not to have happened this way, Lucy.” It was the first time I had seen Steve without a smile on his face.

  I said stupidly: “How did you get here?”

  “He’s been here all the time,” Ian said. “Ever since he took Danny from her room.”

  “I don’t believe you.…” The walls of the cabin were beginning to close in on me, beginning to spin. Steve stepped forward, taking me firmly by both shoulders and pressing me down in a chair.

  “I’m afraid the man’s right, Lucy. You should have stayed at the villa like you were told.”

  “You!” I managed weakly. “You kidnapped Danny?”

  “With a little help from his friends,” Ian said bitterly.

  The cabin walls began to steady and recede. I gazed at the tableau before me. Steve, staring concernedly down at me. Ian, white-faced and defeated, and Bradley, still holding the gun.

  I licked dry lips, saying to Bradley: “ Shouldn’t that thing be pointing at Steve? You heard what he just said.”

  “Yes. I heard. It seems you didn’t.”

  “Danielle’s kidnapper,” Ian said quietly, though I no longer needed telling. “Is the bastard you just helped tonight.”

  I tried to speak but no sound came. Danielle said: “Steve brought lots of new games for me to play with, but I got tired and now I want to go home and Bradley is frightening me and I want Mummy.…”

  I pulled her onto my knee, cuddling her close.

  “Why?” I asked, looking once more at Bradley.

  “Why is no concern of yours,” he said off-handedly, looking at his watch. Then to Steve. “We’d better wait another half hour. The roads will still be busy with traffic from Palma.”

  I said inadequately to Ian: “I’m sorry.”

  He grinned, pushing his mop of red hair away from his forehead, looking more boyish than ever. “ There’s no need to be. You did a good job of looking after Danny. You foiled one kidnap attempt.”

  “You mean the night her chocolate was drugged?”

  He nodded.

  “I thought it was you that had done it. Steve told me it was you and I believed him.”

  “Steve had his own reasons for giving me as bad a press as he could. Firstly he didn’t want you running to me if you thought anything was wrong, and secondly he was frightened of a developing relationship. He guessed how I felt about you.”

  My face flushed, remembering the lies I had believed so easily the off-handed way I had always treated him.

  I said to Steve: “And the second time the Mogadon was in the Coke?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

  “The car accident. Was that a kidnap attempt as well?”

  Bradley laughed shortly and I saw Steve wince. Bradley said cuttingly: “It would have been if Steve hadn’t fouled it up.”

  “You were supposed to go over the cliff with the car, Lucy. Brad wanted no witnesses. I couldn’t do it to you,” his eyes were pleading. “Everything I’ve said is the truth. I do love you. I wanted to finish the job, leave Majorca, and start afresh somewhere else with you. You need never have known.…”

  I turned away, unable to bear the sight of him any longer.

  “Who was driving the Cadillac?” I asked Bradley.

  “A friend who, like Steve, is prepared to do anything if the money is right.”

  “And who did the car belong to?”

  Bradley’s narrow face smiled. “ Lyall. Lyall had one for his work in Palma. The work he thought we didn’t know about. We borrowed it. It appealed to my sense of humour. I knew Helena wouldn’t report it to the police if the attempt failed. She couldn’t afford to have Lyall taken in custody for questioning. She needed him at the villa. They both knew what the accident was and she thought Lyall could handle it. After all, that’s what she paid him for.”

  I looked at Ian questioningly. He said simply: “I’m a private detective, not a tutor. Helena was taking no risks. Or thought she wasn’t. She knew there were people who would do anything to stop
John becoming Premier of Ovambia. She took kidnapping into consideration a long time ago. I had the use of one of the Ria Square flats. Telephone calls at the villa are notoriously public.”

  “And that’s why Janet went there to talk to you? She suspected something and knew who you were?”

  “Janet Grey,” he said, his face contorted with grief. “Was my cousin, and these two smiling bastards pushed her from a fifth floor window!”

  “I wasn’t there!” Steve shouted. “I had nothing to do with it!”

  “You didn’t exactly run to the police and tell them who did, did you!” Ian yelled back, his face ablaze.

  “And now you’ll murder me, like you did Janet?” I said, turning to Bradley.

  “Yes.”

  Steve moved forward in a gesture of protest, to be waved back imperiously by Bradley.

  My throat felt so tight I could hardly speak. When I did it was little more than a croak: “And Danielle? What are you going to do with Danielle?”

  Bradley smiled, his chill, humourless smile. “You’ll be responsible for her death. If you hadn’t told me you’d seen Lyall tonight he might have freed her. Even if he hadn’t, Danielle would never have seen me. Only Steve. And arangements for Steve to leave the island were already well planned. There would have been no need to have killed Danielle. Now, thanks to you, we have no option.”

  It didn’t seem to bother him much.

  “Why?” I asked uncomprehendingly. “Why does it matter to you whether your father is Premier of Ovambia or not? Why is it so important that you’re prepared to kill, to prevent him?”

  He said coldly, not even bothering to look at me: “If my father becomes leader of a nation of illiterate wogs, my political career in South Africa is over. Besides, I wanted revenge.”

  “Revenge? Revenge for what?”

  He laughed unpleasantly. “ You can ask that? My father marries that black bitch, degrading my mother’s memory, degrading my name and you can ask that? I’ve lived with the stigma of that marriage for twenty years! For twenty years I’ve promised myself revenge. Now I have it and no-one, no-one is going to take it from me!”

  Violently he jabbed the gun in Ian’s side. “On your feet, Lyall. We’re going places.”

  I gave a cry of protest and Steve said reassuringly: “Don’t worry, Lucy. He’s going to be all right. Brad’s angry, that’s all.”

  It seemed like the understatement of the year.

  I half rose to my feet as Ian passed, our hands touching briefly, then Steve knocked them apart and Danielle began to stir, raising frightened eyes to mine. I sat down again, watching fearfully as Bradley forced him out of the cabin. At the door Ian paused, looking back at me, grinning briefly: “ I’m sorry about that overheard conversation. I didn’t want you in any danger, that’s all. At least now I know why you were so unfriendly. It’s some comfort,” and then Bradley dug the gun painfully in his back, sending him stumbling down the corridor.

  Steve took my hand and I snatched it away angrily. His voice had thickened: “ I still want you, Lucy.”

  “Dead or alive?”

  “Brad didn’t mean all that. He’s just trying to frighten you. Stick with me and.…”

  A muffled shot rang out and seconds later there came the soft drop of a body as it slid beneath the waves.

  “He’s killed him,” I said softly. “He’s killed Ian.”

  Steve’s face had whitened, his grasp on my arm tightening painfully.

  “Listen to me, Lucy. Brad’s the boss, not me. He’s the one with the hardware. But I won’t let him hurt you. I promise!”

  I could already hear Bradley’s feet hurrying down the steps.

  “And Danny?” I asked hoarsely. “What about Danny?”

  Before he could answer the door opened and Bradley said briefly:

  “I want the two of them back on the island.”

  “Are we going home?” Danny asked hopefully. “Now Mr Lyall has gone home, can we go home too?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “ We’re going home.”

  But I knew from the expression on Bradley Van de Naude’s face that we hadn’t a hope in hell.

  There was no chance for heroics. Nothing to do but obediently follow Steve down the rope ladder to the dinghy, reassuring and comforting Danielle as best I could. The expression on Steve’s face was one of intense anxiety. Whatever Bradley’s plans were, it was obvious he hadn’t taken Steve into his confidence.

  The dinghy pitched and rolled, and Danielle and myself huddled together, cold and wet, and I tried to force my numbed brain to think. The waves dropped, slapping lightly alongside as we neared the shore, and then the dinghy bucked over the shallows and Steve leapt out, helping me after him, carrying Danielle while Bradley dragged the dinghy up the beach.

  The sand was a silver crescent, ghostly in the moonlight. The woods still and silent as we began to climb. Hope began to grow within me. Mario and Peggy would be in the villa. If I could shout and attract attention, there was no way Bradley could talk his way out. Not after the things Danielle had seen in the cabin. As if reading my thoughts, Bradley said: “ We’ll have to gag them both. I’ll make sure the villa is safe. Peggy was in bed before I left but Mario was still out. He could be waiting up for me to return. I’ll get rid of him and then we take them through the villa and take two of the cars.”

  “That’s a bit of a bloody risk, isn’t it?” Steve asked, the tautness of his nerves showing in his voice.

  “There’s no other way to the courtyard but through the villa,” Bradley said tersely. “First things first. I don’t want one whisper from these two. Not one.”

  Danielle gave a frightened cry as Steve clapped his hand over her mouth. I was already drawing breath for the loudest scream of my life when Bradley forced a hanky in my mouth, binding it with broad elastoplast. Then he pulled my hands behind my back, tying them tightly, and with Danielle also silenced, we began to climb the last few bends to the villa.

  The curtain of jasmine hung milky-white in the darkness, the heady smell filling the air thickly. As I brushed past it, the petals scattering on my head and shoulders, my fear vanished.

  Ian was dead, and I was the only one who could bring his murderer to justice. And the only one who could save Danielle. To do these two things I had to stay alive myself. I was grimly determined to do so.

  In the thickness of the woods, before the path emerged onto the terrace, Bradley handed Steve the gun and then slipped silently across and into the villa. The salon light was on and I guessed Mario was there, waiting for Bradley’s return. My eyes sought Steve’s.

  His eyes held doubt and indecision, and then he moved quickly, trying to untie my hands. The knots were tight and he had no torch to see by. He blasphemed viciously and as they loosened Bradley was already sprinting back towards us. I turned desperate eyes to Steve’s. He had the gun! If he acted now! His hand fell uselessly back to his side. Bradley, seeing my freed hands smiled grimly, taking the gun from Steve, pointing it at me.

  “I’ll take the girl. You take the kid,” and to me, “ Don’t get any fancy ideas. I’ve told Mario you’re involved in the kidnapping and he’ll shoot you as soon as look at you!”

  Steve lifted Danielle, carrying her a captive into her own home. I followed, Bradley’s gun in my back. Coffee cups lay scattered on the glass topped tables. Mario had had a long wait. Swiftly we walked through the villa to the courtyard. Mario’s old car, the Audi, the Fiat, all were there. Till then I had had no idea what Bradley’s intentions were. If he wanted to murder us, it seemed simpler if he had done it at sea. He turned to Steve.

  “You take the kid in the Audi. I’ll take the girl. We’ll meet at the Devesas.”

  My eyes met Steve’s and understanding dawned simultaneously. Danielle and myself. In one car. Over the cliff. Steve couldn’t go along with it, I was sure of that. Now he knew what Bradley’s intentions were he must be thinking of a way of helping us. But he was unarmed, and spineless, as I had just found out
.

  As the car rocked down onto the blackened headland, Bradley leaned across and with one hand ripped the elastoplast from my mouth, saying softly: “I owe you, Lucy Matthews.”

  He touched his temple where the purple welt of bruising showed even in the dimness of the car. Then, with no warning, he swung his fist into the side of my face, sending me smashing into the side of the car, blinded by searing pain. It must have been several minutes later that my vision returned, for when I could see and hear clearly again, the mountain road was already showing like a thin white snake in the headlamps of the car. He laughed.

  “I always get my revenge, Lucy Matthews. Even if it takes twenty years as it has with Helena.”

  Gingerly I fingered the side of my face, moving my jaw fractionally, grateful it still moved. For the first time emotion crept into his cold, cultivated voice. He sounded elated as he said:

  “Now nothing can stop me! I’ve sweated my guts out for political power in South Africa. I’ve got wealth, talent, charm, I’m a leader, not a follower like the Steve Patterson’s of this world! And one thing stopped me. Would always stop me. My father’s known association with APFO. When I heard what he intended doing! Christ!” he slung the car suicidally round a hairpin bend, “ That was it! Bradley Van de Naude finished for good. And why?” the elation turned to viciousness. “ Because he lets that black bitch treat him like a little dog. Well she’s the one who will do the begging now! For her precious half-caste brat!” and he began to laugh as the car plunged through a tunnel of trees and down a steep rush in the mountainside.