by Chris Vick
‘In fact,’ said Goofy. ‘If they’re going to know we’ve been we might as well leave a message.’ Goofy’s eyes shone brightly. He got a knife out of his bag, and before Jake could stop him had grabbed a bag of cocaine and stabbed it. Sheer-white, block-packed powder fell over his hands and spilt into the water. Goofy took a tiny bit on the end of his knife, put it to his nose and snorted.
‘Just for old time’s sake, like,’ he said, then dropped the bag in the water, like he was tossing away a beer can.
Jake watched, gobsmacked, hyperventilating.
‘What … are … you … doing?’
Goofy grabbed another bag, and pierced it deeply. Once, twice, again and again. Like a potato he was about to put it in a microwave. He took it outside and threw it, far as he could.
‘Earth to Goofy. I repeat: What are you doing?’
‘We can’t carry this shit. I ain’t leaving it for them to do damage with.’
Goofy went and got as many bags as he could carry, and did the same to them, piercing them with the knife and throwing them away. He worked hard and quick, till all the bags had been thrown. Over by the cliff, Jake saw the bags slowly sinking as they filled with water. A soft white cloud was billowing out from each of them, before dispersing in the current.
Jake stood, open-mouthed. He could actually feel his own face turning white.
‘I think we might have some very, very pissed-off drug dealers on our hands. Let’s go. Now.’
But Goofy hadn’t finished. He took his knife, and, holding the blade like a pen, he scratched the shape of a hand into the cabin door: clenched, upturned, with the middle finger up.
He sniggered as he did it, then started laughing, fully. ‘I’d love to see their faces. It’ll drive ’em nuts. They’ll be searching the cove and cliff top for hours. They won’t imagine the truth. They came down the path. No one could possibly get a boat in, not even a dinghy. There’s too many rocks. They won’t have a clue.’ He laughed again. Like a devil.
Jake cracked up too, giggling nervously. He couldn’t help it. He felt madly high.
‘You bloody mentalist. You’ll get us killed. We need to be sensible, stay in control.’ He couldn’t stop giggling.
‘Control is overrated. Come on,’ said Goofy, with a wink. ‘Let’s get the boards, shall we?’
They climbed out of the cabin, leapt off the boat and waded to the shore, watching the path the whole time. Then got the boards and headed out, with the rucksacks on their backs, past the boat, over and between the rocks that filled the mouth of the cove.
Jake didn’t calm his paddling till they were round the cliff and heading steadily down the coast.
Hannah
THERE WERE FIVE of them, on the beach at dawn. Herself and Steve Hopkins, plus Dan and Jo from his team – dedicated young whale-heads like herself, they were thrilled with the prospect of getting close to orcas. Neil Trevedra completed the gang. He was the leader of her local survey group, a long-haired, unshaven, often grumpy, sea dog. But no one knew the coast better, and he had a boat. A rigid inflatable with a fibreglass hull and buoyancy tubes running down the sides.
Strapped to the deck were plastic barrels filled with snorkels, cameras, binoculars, flasks of coffee, survey clipboards and jerrycans of fuel. Hannah wore her wetsuit, under her waterproofs and woolly jumper. It might be a long day. And a cold one, even if the sun was out.
A blood-orange glow seeped over the hills, promising sun. The sea was calm, with blue light and a breath of breeze. The storm had gone. Two days earlier, the sea had screamed with violence. Yesterday, it had churned with dark anger.
Today, it was just … still.
The same place. But different. The silence of it was haunting.
They pulled and heaved the RIB over the mustard sand and into frothy shallows. Step by step, the sea took the weight of the boat. Once heavy and static, now it became buoyant and free.
They climbed aboard. Neil captained the boat from the stern. Dan and Jo sat port, with Steve starboard. Hannah knelt at the bow, facing out, bins in hand. Ready.
The cranking whine of the engine broke the peace. They rode over the flat azure, out of the bay, then hooked left. The plan was to run parallel to the coast a quarter-mile out, transecting in zigzags. If there were orcas there, the boat would find them.
Dan, Jo and Hannah made a bet. The first to spot a fin would get a free beer when they got back. Hannah was determined it would be her.
It was surprising, this calm. A storm usually left chaos in its wake. But the south coast had taken a bigger hit, and the wind today was south. Offshore on the north, flattening the ocean. Once they’d passed Cape Kernow point, they’d see what the storm had really left.
If the whales weren’t in these calm waters, they’d be there, in the wilder deep.
Or gone. That would be best. But still, Hannah wanted to see them.
Twice she thought she saw the front of a fin, carving out of the water, black and sword-like. Twice she braced herself, the shout freezing in her throat.
It was just cormorants, tricking her with their wings.
After an hour, they came round the Cape. The water here was storm-rocked. The state: ‘moderate’. Choppy, Jake would say.
When the swell hit the boat side-on, they pitched and listed. When they ran into it, thick spray exploded over the bow. Hannah loved it. Her skin thrilled with it.
They ran a transect to the Pendrogeth Islands, off the Cape.
‘There’s no whales around, it’s obvious,’ said Steve.
But Neil, wordless and frowning, guided the boat steadily towards the islands.
Like orcas, these islands and the ones beyond them had fearsome reputations. And threatening names: Widow’s Reef; the Giant; Devil’s Horns. They stretched from the Cape to the Scillies.
The sea bed around was a maze of cruel currents and rocks like teeth.
Water that was either rocky-shallow or dark as the night. Fishing boats got caught here, like flies in a web.
They only circled the near islands. There were others, further out. It was too dangerous to go there, though. Besides, if the orcas had gone that far out, they were leaving.
They circled the furthest island they dared to. A rock lovingly named Mottle Island because it was so coated with bird poo.
Nothing there, either.
‘Time to go home,’ said Neil. Hannah exchanged sympathetic smiles with Jo and Dan.
‘It’s good they’ve gone,’ she said. But her heart sank. She couldn’t deny her disappointment.
Bins were put away, flasks and sandwiches unpacked. They slowed to a near halt, bobbing in the water.
‘Not too long, please,’ said Steve. ‘I should be getting back.’
While the others ate, Hannah kept looking.
And saw …
A grey cloud on the horizon.
Was it? No, not a cloud. Something like a swarm of flies.
Birds.
No biggy. These islands were covered with them. The deep channels brought shoals of fish, easy pickings for cormorants, gannets and herring gulls.
Still, there were so many of them. Littering the sky.
Hannah held up her hand.
‘Seen something?’ asked Dan.
‘Nine o’clock. Birds, swarming.’
‘Not unusual,’ said Neil.
‘There’s hundreds.’
Neil lifted his bins.
‘I have to get back,’ said Steve. ‘See how they’re getting on with that trench.’
‘Just birds,’ said Neil.
‘You think there might be orcas there?’ said Jo to Hannah.
‘Whales and birds congregate round the same shoals. Orca whales might too, chasing seals after fish and … Neil, we haven’t seen a single seal, today.’
She didn’t need to say more. The islands were a seal paradise. There were hundreds in these waters. But if orcas had been around … they’d have scarpered.
‘Let’s go have a look!’
said Dan.
‘No seals? That is mighty odd. We’ll take a quick look,’ said Neil.
‘What about fuel …’ Steve started. Neil silenced him with a scowl. Hannah smiled. You don’t argue with the captain of a boat. Even a RIB.
Closer, the sky was dark with birds. Crawking and squawking, gathered round a small rock.
A rock that looked like the head of a whale.
Floating, looking to the sky.
Dead.
Coming closer, they saw a net round its tail, holding its body. A bird perched on its head, pecking at a net wound.
Behind the whale, the sharp sunlight illuminated the water fathoms deep. It wasn’t just one whale down there. Black shapes were strung along a net like charms on a chain.
None of them were alive. That was certain.
The boat came to a halt. Neil tuned the engine to its lowest setting and kept it whirring, but pivoted it out of the water.
This was worse than on the beach. She had hoped – expected – to see orcas alive today, if she saw them at all. Now that hope had died.
They fell into numb silence. No one said what Hannah felt. If they’d risked the weather yesterday, they might have averted this.
‘Let’s get a record of this mess, shall we?’ she said.
Neil unpacked the underwater camera and checked the casing. Steve took a GPS reading. It was all very practical.
‘Okay, who’s going to go down to get footage and stills?’ said Neil.
‘I am,’ said Hannah. She held her hand out. Neil gave her the camera.
She wanted to see this closer, to feel. Not to turn her face from this horror, but to see it without flinching. She had to get used to it. To harden her heart. In order to do some good.
Hannah took her coat off, so she was wearing just her wetty. She donned flippers and snorkel, then fell into the water, backwards, off the side of the RIB.
The water was endless deep here.
And in it: corpses.
There were four of them, connected by the net, in a line, each one deeper than the last. Beyond them, a great trail of netting vanished in the depths.
Taking a long breath, she dived, so far down her eardrums ached with the pressure.
It was silent there. The silence not just of the ocean, but of death.
She took pictures.
The net – and the whales – shifted and rocked gently in the current. The stark curving shape of the whales was beautiful, even now. Floating ghosts.
Two had deep gashes in their flanks, where they’d struggled and the net had cut deep. The wounds were bloodless. Blubber oozed out, bloated by water.
The whales had suffocated. Held their breath. A slow death. Hannah forced herself to stay down, to use the flippers to keep going deeper, further. Till it hurt. Till she felt desperate. She did this so she would know what it was like for them. She had to feel some hurt too, some pain.
She kept down till she couldn’t bear it any more. She surfaced, gasping. Hands pulled her on to the boat.
She handed the camera over, threw the snorkel down, took off the flippers. Accepted a towel and sat huddled, feeling empty like she’d left her guts and heart in the water.
Neil looked through the viewfinder at the pics and nodded.
She looked over the side and saw the fish, drawn to the flesh like iron filings to a magnet.
The whales would attract huge numbers of them, and they, in turn, would be easy pickings for the birds.
Yesterday the whales had been royalty of the sea. Now they were a feast of free and easy food.
That was nature. Cruel.
Or was it? People said nature was cruel; said orcas were cruel when they played with seals before killing them, then said they were kind when they helped drowning sailors. But, she thought, ‘cruel’ and ‘kind’ are human words. They don’t have much meaning out here.
In spite of the awfulness of this, Hannah felt strangely blessed to have seen it.
Neil put the propeller back in the water, and ramped the engine throttle.
As they travelled, images ran through her mind. The rich blue of the sea. The black and white of the orcas. The nets. The white wounds and water-bloated blubber.
Hannah knew she had captured what had happened, and that it would be of some use. Evidence of pair trawl nets. Probably illegal.
The wounds haunted her the most. Deep and bloodless. Those images would stay with her.
The wounds.
The wounds!
She threw the towel down.
‘Neil. Neil, wait!’ She put a hand up. They slowed. ‘Those wounds aren’t fresh. There’s no way they are. Steve?’
‘They must be,’ he said.
‘No. Look at the pics. The flesh is loose and waterlogged. Those bodies aren’t recently dead. Too much flesh has been picked off too.’
‘Lemme see,’ said Neil. Hannah handed him the camera. He riffled through the shots, his brow creased with concentration.
‘Hard to say,’ he said.
‘These aren’t the orcas that were seen yesterday,’ said Hannah. ‘They can’t be.’
‘We have to keep looking,’ said Jo.
But Neil shook his head ‘Fuel. Have to get back. We’ve looked all around.’
‘That’s right,’ said Steve. ‘These aren’t the ones seen yesterday. They’ve gone.’
Perhaps they had.
They motored back, round the Cape, into the flat calm.
Ahead, far off, Hannah saw a black shape slip out of the water, then back in.
Just another cormorant, she told herself. Don’t play tricks with me, God, she thought.
Then … what looked like a puff of smoke, shooting out of the sea.
Her heart was in her mouth now.
A stark black scimitar rose, arced and fell back into the water.
‘Orca. Ten o’clock!’
The engine was killed. Heads turned … to see a flat ocean. Calm to the horizon.
‘You sure?’ said Dan.
‘I saw …’
She focused her bins on the spot.
…
…
The water erupted. The orca full-breached out of the water. A black bomb, freezing in the air before crashing in a white-water explosion.
‘Wow!’
‘Bloody hell!’
‘Oh my God!’
They all shouted at once.
A fin rose up, breaking the surface. And another, and another. Black, arcing, smooth fins. Phooshes of misty breath that evaporated in the sun. The orcas were heading their way.
‘I knew it, I knew it,’ Hannah shouted.
An orca passed them.
Phoosh. They appeared and disappeared, coal-black fins up, then sweeping down.
It became a game, guessing where they would appear, how close to the boat.
Hannah’s gang were like kids, pointing and shouting. Cameras and notebooks lay on the deck, unused.
Even Neil grinned.
The whales headed past them, away from the islands and the Cape, moving up the coast.
‘Why haven’t they left?’ asked Jo
Hannah thought of Little One.
‘Because they’re searching,’ she said. ‘For their family.’
Jake
THE PADDLE TOOK a long time.
Goofy set the pace, gliding through the water like a swan, which was annoying because Jake was huffing-tired. All his juice was gone and pure adrenaline kept him moving.
‘I’m going to have words with you, you mad bastard,’ Jake shouted.
Jake had a vision. Two blokes standing in the boat, looking for extremely valuable cocaine that was no longer there.
The men might have put up with ‘lost goods’. ‘Stolen’ would get them a different kind of ‘upset’.
*
The walk from Hope Cove was nervy.
Jake checked every car and van that passed. Man or woman driving? How many people in there?
But there were only pensioners, an
d women with kids.
Jake wanted to get in that van and get to Goofy’s flat. Quick.
Without seeing anyone.
They almost made it too. He opened the back door of the van.
‘Awright, bro. Where’s good, then?’
Sean was walking up the road from Whitesands. He had Rag in tow. Ned’s brother. A stoner-longboarder, with short dreads and a thick gut. He was munching on a cake.
Jake weighed up how this looked. Boards. Wet hair. Sand on the wetsuits where they’d lain on the beach getting their breath back. Soaking rucksacks.
Sean walked up and stood, arms folded, head cocked, frowning.
‘Where’ve you been?’ said Sean.
Jake opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
‘Secret spot?’ said Rag. There were reefs that worked when the waves were small. But none were close by, and Rag knew it.
Both of the lads looked curious. Even suspicious. Or was he just being paranoid?
‘What’s with the rucksacks?’ said Sean. Water was dripping off them, on to the tarmac.
‘Er, um …’
‘Training,’ said Goofy. Jake felt his rucksack being pulled off his back. Goofy threw it in the van. ‘We paddled our boards for miles, with weights on our backs.’ He hoiked a thumb at Jake. ‘Getting him ready for Hawaii. Rips, big swells, giant waves. Got to get him fit, isn’t it? You wouldn’t want your bro hitting Pipeline unprepared, would you?’
Sean’s head leant sideways, looking into the back of the van. Goofy shut the door.
‘Anyhow, you worthless groms. What you up to?’
‘We’ve been to look at the whales. There’s TV cameras, a crowd, police. Everyone’s down there.’
‘I said not to tell anyone,’ said Jake.
‘I didn’t … well, only Rag, and some girls.’
‘What’s the latest?’
Sean shrugged. ‘Most are dead. Rest are dying. I heard they might blow up the bodies to stop them rotting. We wanna see that, right, Rag?’
Rag nodded vigorously, his mouth full of cake.
Jake shook his head. ‘You grim little bastards.’
Goofy was already in the driver’s seat. He started the engine, Jake got in and they drove off.
As they headed down the twisted lanes to Brook Cove, Jake thought about how Goofy had come up with a believable story. How he’d got them out of the cove on their boards. How comfortable he’d been, through all of it.
