Dastardly Deeds

by Evans, Ilsa

  ‘Why didn’t anyone see us?’ asked Tessa in a tone of wonderment.

  I shrugged, framing myself with ripples. My legs stung with cold. Even so, I knew that the water temperature of the Mediterranean Sea was mild, around eighteen to nineteen degrees Celsius. Lucy had done a project on hypothermia in high school and so I also knew, from the myriad fun facts I had helped her glue on the poster paper, that hypothermia would set in when the body’s core temperature dropped below the normal rate. Its progress was then fairly rapid. From shivering and slurred speech to a loss of muscle control, drowsiness, incoherence and exhaustion. The final stage was unconsciousness, accompanied by respiratory distress and/or cardiac arrest. The warmer waters in which we were currently floating would merely prolong matters. We would be lucky to survive the night. Which, I estimated, would fall in another hour or so.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Phoebe, looking at Tessa. The word was without syllables, a flat breath of sound.

  ‘It’s a bit late for that,’ snapped Tessa. ‘My daughter is going to be motherless because of you.’

  I refrained from pointing out that her daughter was motherless at this very moment, mainly because the mother in question had chosen to holiday without her. Blood had begun to seep through her bandage again. I wondered if sharks frequented the area.

  ‘Do you think they’ll know we’re missing by now?’ asked Tessa in a low voice.

  It would be almost dinnertime. They would be gathering in the restaurant, having their glasses filled, poring over the menu. ‘They’ll probably just think we’re running late.’

  ‘Darcy will have wondered why I didn’t go down to the cabin to change.’

  I looked at her curiously. ‘Did he know you went off to see me?’

  ‘No.’ She made a noise like a moist giggle. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I won’t be missed yet,’ said Phoebe. ‘If ever.’

  The ship had all but disappeared, reduced to just a miasma of smudged light in the distance. Beyond the pale faces of my companions, all else was turning pewter. A sharp feeling of panic stabbed whenever I thought about the impending darkness. I wriggled my toes, trying to maintain movement with minimum effort. Then I flexed each muscle in turn, all the way up to my neck. The cold was biting but worse was the nothingness around my legs. They dangled, unseen. By me at least.

  ‘Do you think there are sharks here?’ asked Tessa, holding her arm. ‘I’m scared of sharks.’

  ‘And I’m scared of plummeting from a cruise ship into the middle of the sea and then being left to drown in the pitch-dark. So we’re probably even.’

  To my surprise, Phoebe laughed. It wasn’t the most joyful sound but it had more emotion than her previous offerings. She was barely moving, her arms draped over the rope. Several items of clothing floated on the surface around her. I thought she would probably slip away at some stage, like Jack Dawson in Titanic. Which meant I had a limited window in which to fill in some gaps. Besides, I needed distraction.

  I touched her lightly on the arm. ‘Why did you kill them?’

  She was silent for so long that I thought she wouldn’t answer. When her voice finally came, it was monotone. ‘Everyone acts like Anna was an angel. She wasn’t. She treated Scott horribly. She said to me once that I was such a good foil for her. Tall and awkward where she was … not.’ The whine of words paused for a moment. ‘That last night, she was so full of everything. Her new apartment, her new job, her new friends. She had a mobile phone, one of the first, and she kept making calls all evening. And Scott thought she wanted him back. But I knew she didn’t. She even laughed about it when he was getting drinks.’

  I spoke gently. ‘What happened when she left?’

  ‘I pulled out of the car park and turned the corner. She was standing at the taxi rank, talking on her mobile. Probably about us. I was so angry I drove straight at her. You should have seen her face.’ Her voice lifted. ‘And then I just drove away. I didn’t even look in the mirror.’

  ‘Who’s Anna?’ asked Tessa, confused.

  ‘A friend of theirs from university,’ I replied, keeping my eyes on Phoebe. ‘Did you regret it afterwards?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Her voice finally contained emotion. ‘She deserved it.’

  Tessa glanced at me. Her expression said it all. Phoebe was certifiably mad. I was floating in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea with a madwoman. ‘What about April?’ I asked evenly. ‘Did she deserve it too?’

  ‘Yes. She was bossy and rude and acted like she was better than everyone else. I thought she’d changed but she hadn’t. I went to her room for a drink after we got back that night and we were sitting on the balustrade. Those thick concrete ones. She said she was going to have a fling with Scott on the ship. She thought it was funny. Told me she’d let me know what he was like. So I pushed her. She was so shocked.’ She hesitated, as if remembering. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Never thought I’d do anything like that, did she?’

  ‘You’re a monster,’ said Tessa.

  ‘They were monsters,’ spat Phoebe, with some of her earlier venom.

  I leant away. I should never have felt sorry for her. Clearly she felt no sympathy for anyone else. She had murdered her friends. ‘What about me? What did I ever do to you? We’ve barely spoken!’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t have bothered speaking to me.’ She flashed me a bitter glance. ‘I wasn’t interesting enough. And I wasn’t a man.’

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ I said flatly. ‘I’ve spent more time with my sister, and Deb, on this cruise than any of the guys. Besides I was having a drink with you only an hour or so ago!’

  ‘Yes, and look what happened there. You said those horrible things.’

  ‘And so you tried to kill me.’ I went to fold my arms but realised I needed them to anchor the lifebuoy. ‘That seems reasonable. Any regrets now?’

  Phoebe didn’t answer. She had gone back to staring at the water. Tendrils of hair had come loose from her plait, floating across the water like seaweed. The ship had now disappeared, a broad ribbon of red along the horizon all that separated us from total darkness. They definitely would be questioning our absence by now, asking who had seen us last and when. I wondered whether Ashley would be starting to doubt his confidence that nothing untoward had taken place. Would he feel a flush of guilt, of responsibility? The thought gave me a grim feeling of pleasure.

  ‘I was only going to ask your advice about telling Darcy,’ said Tessa in a small voice. She was still holding her arm. ‘Seeing as you’ve had so many kids. How you thought he might take it.’

  I looked at her expressionlessly. My sympathy for her, for having been caught in this predicament, was rapidly fading. I turned back to Phoebe. ‘But you didn’t buy sunglasses in Istanbul.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, then you didn’t use the money from Kim’s purse.’

  She stared at me. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You thought Kim Satchwell was me,’ I explained slowly. ‘At Gallipoli. So you followed her down the track and hit her over the head, took the money out of her purse. What happened then? Did you give the money to Donald?’

  ‘You’re a fruitcake. I don’t know what anyone sees in you.’

  I examined her carefully. She was either a very good actor or she really had no idea. And surely she would have admitted to Kim Satchwell’s murder given she had freely confessed, even boasted, about the other two. Which meant that they weren’t connected. Maybe Ashley had been right about this, at least. It had been a robbery after all, and the amorous Clint had scattered signed ten lira notes around Turkey like confetti. ‘In that case, did you happen to put something in my doorjamb the other day?’

  She sighed, as if I was taking up her valuable time. ‘Now why would I do that?’

  ‘Because you wanted to sneak in later and smother me while I slept?’

  ‘You watch too much television. Apart from anything else, I might not have thought much of you, but I didn’t actually want to k
ill you until you said those horrid things. Teach you to mind your tongue, won’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ I gazed across the darkened sea. ‘I’ll remember that in the future.’

  ‘There is no future,’ commented Tessa sourly. She suddenly lurched to one side. ‘Something touched my leg! Something touched my leg!’

  ‘Then keep still,’ I snapped. ‘Jerking around won’t help. Besides, it was probably one of Phoebe’s skirts.’

  Tessa was staring around her, as if a sea creature was about to materialise.

  ‘You have to keep movements to a minimum,’ I added. ‘Otherwise you’ll get hypothermia quicker.’

  She moaned, still peering at the water.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Phoebe quietly. ‘Nothing matters. It’s all too late.’

  ‘Thank you for that inspiring speech,’ I said. I wanted to turn my back on her, but that was probably not advisable.

  They would have sent out a search party by now, first to our various cabins in case we’d had an accident or taken a nap. Then they would stand around the corridor, staring at each other with growing concern. They would split up to cover all the various parts of the ship. The front, where Ashley and I used to meet, the casino, the buffet, the emporium, the library. Finally, a couple of them would make their way to the pool deck and climb the stairs to the upper deck. At the back, around the corner, their faces would pale as they took in the pool of blood, the severed rope, and the missing lifebuoys. I hoped Ashley was there, but not Ruby or Quinn.

  Tessa tried to strike up another conversation but I wasn’t interested. The side of my head throbbed from where I had been struck. I was tired and cold and utterly miserable. Posthumously awarded Pulitzer Prize remains uncollected. I was going to die because two men had tried to chat me up. And their friend had been so bitter with jealousy that she had seen what she wanted to see, what she had always seen. Darkness had now fallen, although with a plump moon that shed a silvery sheen across the water. The lifebuoys also provided their own glow, the reflective tape an iridescent greenish white. They cast an alien patina across our faces.

  I was nauseously conscious of the life that teemed below my dangling legs. If carnivorous sea creatures didn’t get me, then hypothermia would. Sometime during the night, my speech would slur into incoherence. Exhaustion would drag me under. I thought of my daughters, who would be devastated by my loss. My mother would be furious, my sister guilt-ridden. And me, I would be dead.

  Chapter 28

  I heard a rumour that you were retiring. Please don’t.

  I was wrapped in a doona, feather-light and fluffy. Wrapped in semi-slumber, sleep beckoning lazily from the corner. Everything was languid, flowing in and around, with all the time in the world. Except that I wasn’t and I hadn’t. I jerked awake, yet again. This had been the pattern for the last few hours. As always, Phoebe was watching me. Her eyes glittered in the darkness. She was waiting until I gave in all together and slipped from the buoy. She knew she had more staying power than I did and it was just a matter of patience. This time she wouldn’t need to do anything at all.

  Leaning forward, I dipped my face into the sea and then shook my head. Phoebe flinched as she was sprayed with water. There was no horizon any more, the sea and the sky a meld of inky darkness. Stars studded the sky like shards of diamond. I couldn’t quite see Tessa but thought she might be dozing also. There was little danger of her slipping as she was held tight around her chest. Big breasts had their benefits.

  I was cold, colder than I had ever been before. Every few minutes my teeth would break into a paroxysm of chattering. This would have been useful if it had also kept me awake, a sort of five-minute alarm, but it was no match for a weariness that liquefied my bones. My eyes were like sandbags, filled with lead. Once, when Scarlet was a baby, I had contracted the flu. Everything had hurt, even my hair. This was one hundred times worse. But I also knew that the next stage was numbness. I felt a wave of regret for never having learnt to mediate. Even yoga might have been useful.

  A wave drifted me around so that I momentarily faced Phoebe. We stared at each other. ‘I didn’t flirt with them, you know. I wasn’t interested at all.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘No, you can’t believe me,’ I replied tiredly. ‘Otherwise all of this would have been for nothing.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘I’m in love with Ashley,’ I said, mouthing the words but not letting them loose. I thought it might be true. I yearned for him, the touch of his hand, his gaze, his presence. The solidity, the security of him. I couldn’t remember why we had ever broken up. I was glad he was on the ship. Between him and Petra, and Darcy, my girls would be taken care of.

  I estimated that it was probably around midnight. By now there would be no doubt that all three of us were gone. Phone calls would have been made to Australia. Scarlet would have rushed around to Lucy’s house, or vice versa. My mother may well have joined them. On the ship, they would be sitting together, perhaps even on the upper deck, staring into the darkness. Trying to calculate how long we could survive, but not verbalising the answer. Every now and again the security staff might come over to ask a few more questions, just for something to do. Ashley would be like that as well. Chafing against the inaction, trying to piece together what had happened.

  It suddenly occurred to me, with dull organic awareness rather than a flash of brilliance, that they wouldn’t know that it was all because of Phoebe. The truth, which had victims and perpetrator all tumbling overboard, was just too bizarre. Instead, they would jump to the conclusion that somebody else had thrown the three of us over. And they would be looking straight at either Donald or Scott.

  ‘Swap places,’ said Phoebe. ‘Just for half an hour. I promise I’ll give it back.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can’t hang on much longer.’

  ‘Tough.’

  Tessa moaned. Ripples arced from her lifebuoy. Phoebe bobbed, still staring at me. She reached out a hand slowly, her gaze steady, and took hold of the rope looping around my buoy. I didn’t even think, just formed a fist and drove it into her temple, in much the same spot as she had hit me. It didn’t have a lot of force but she yelped, letting go immediately.

  ‘Nell?’ whispered Tessa. She followed with a groan that was threaded with pain. ‘I think I’m losing the baby.’

  ‘Oh, god.’ I stared at her helplessly.

  ‘I didn’t want it but now I do.’ She began to cry. It soon fused into another groan that stretched through the silence, bouncing off the waves. I tried to move my legs but they hung like slabs of meat. I used my arms instead, paddling around until I could reach out to take her hand. She gripped it tightly, a ring cutting into my skin. It was probably one that Darcy had given her. I was floating in the middle of the sea with two women, one mad and the other losing a baby who had been fathered by my ex-husband.

  ‘Just ten minutes,’ begged Phoebe, her words a slur of sound. ‘I can’t hold on.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please. I’m going to die.’

  ‘Good.’

  Tessa’s face shone greenly. Her every groan was accompanied by a rigidity that I could feel vibrating through her hand. It would last, like labour, for a minute or so, before gradually loosening off. Her fingers would soften as she began to cry quietly instead. The pattern became familiar, almost hypnotising. After a long while, the sounds petered into silence, leaving just the gentle lapping of waves against the lifebuoys. My eyes felt heavy. I leant back, staring at the sky. Star light, star bright, I wish I may I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight. That I could pull my doona over my head, close my eyes and curl into the foetal position. Let myself sink into the soft, comforting embrace of nothingness. Woman dies. The end.

  Chapter 29

  I am writing to complain about your last piece. Although I know it was a guest writer and not you, I think you need to take responsibility as your name is on the column. I shall be checking carefully every wee
kend to ensure this situation does not repeat itself. Be warned.

  I woke from darkness into sheer, floundering panic. Gasping for air, I swallowed water as I fought for the surface. I rose into the centre of the lifebuoy, spluttering as I flung my arms over the sides. It was like moving body parts that didn’t belong to me. Water streamed down my face. Several long minutes passed before I had enough control to look around. Tessa was laying back in her own lifebuoy, bobbing gently some distance away, her eyes closed, but Phoebe was gone.

  I stared numbly at the rope, now drifting loosely in the water. She had been there, and now she wasn’t. A part of me knew that if she had been, then my descent into the water might have been my last. It was difficult to really care. There was no energy for emotion. At the same time, sadness was like concrete.

  But there was something else different as well, something that teased at the edge of awareness. It took me a while to realise that it was the lighter shade of dark. Everything was a little bit clearer. Tessa, the rope, the glistening ripples of water. I lifted my head to stare towards the horizon. It was trimmed with pearl-grey. We had made it to dawn.

  I heard a noise that sounded like a sob, and realised it was mine. Tears rolled down my cheeks. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. Not just because night, that endless stretch of unfathomable desolation, had been banished, but because it simply was beautiful.

  For the next hour I watched as grey graduated into a ribbon of silver and then gold. It scattered crystals across the water, crowning the waves with brilliance. It was so wondrous, so filled with hope and renaissance, that I was not at all surprised when I first heard the helicopter. As it came closer, the throb became almost impossibly loud. It churned the water around me. I lay back, lifting my face as I closed my eyes. And then there were voices, shouting instructions that I did not have the energy to follow. Minutes later, I felt myself being strapped into something and pressed against a strong, male body. It was quite pleasant. I wanted to tell them to take Tessa first, but the thought of being left behind reawakened my fear. Instead I wrapped my arms around the body as we were lifted into the air, higher and higher. I kept my eyes closed. I did not like chairlifts.