by Amy Cross
“Did you examine his clothing?”
“It’s some kind of very simple fabric with a wide fiber. Basic, no label, looks like maybe it was homemade. We’re trying to work out where the fabric originated, so we can start pinning the guy down.” He sighs. “We’ll nail this son-of-a-bitch eventually. I’ve put in a request to get some people here from London as fast as possible, because right now I don’t have a clue. I don’t even know where to start. It’s as if he just popped out of nowhere along with that ferry.”
“Can I try talking to him?”
“You?” he asks, clearly surprised by the idea.
“It’s worth a shot.”
“I was under the impression that your expertise was reckless rescue attempts,” he replies, “not interrogating survivors.”
“I like to multi-task.”
“You don’t have the right clearance to talk to a survivor.”
“Then I’d better hope nobody reports me, hadn’t I?”
Stepping past him, I make my way along to the far end of the trailer, stopping when I get closer to the figure. He’s still staring at me, and I’m starting to feel a little unnerved not only by the way he seems so focused on me, but by the way all the others on the ferry were doing the same thing. There’s something strangely calm about him, too, as if he’s in no way troubled by everything that has happened to him. Back on the boat, none of the passengers seemed bothered about trying to get to safety, and then again when he was in the water, I didn’t see any sign that this guy was trying to save himself. And now, sitting here, he just seems content to wait.
“Good luck,” Stratton mutters, having followed me along the trailer.
“Hi,” I say, forcing a smile as I grab a chair and sit opposite the survivor. “My name’s Sophie Carpenter. Do you remember me? I was the first one who got to you out on the rocks?”
I wait for a reply, but of course he simply stares at me.
“Sophie,” I say again, more clearly this time, before pointing at my chest. “Sophie.” I hold my hand out for him to shake, but he looks down at it as if he doesn’t understand. “What’s your name?” I ask.
No reply.
Now that I’m closer, I can see that his head is completely bald. Even his eyebrows and eyelashes seem to have been removed, and there’s no stubble or regrowth that I can see anywhere. There are thick wrinkles in his skin, though, and at a rough estimate I’d say that he’s in his fifties or even sixties, while his yellowish skin suggests some kind of underlying medical problem. His eyes, which share that yellowness, are also specked with blood.
“England,” I say after a moment. “Britain. You’re in the United Kingdom. Do you understand?”
He stares at me.
Taking my phone out, I bring up a map app and quickly locate the UK, before turning the screen for him to see.
“England,” I say again, pointing at the image. “You’re in England.”
He stares at the screen, squinting slightly, but there’s no hint of recognition in his eyes.
Zooming out on the app, I show him a map of the world.
“Home?” I ask, pointing at the map again. “Can you show me? Where is home, for you?”
He stares at the map.
“Where is home?” I ask again.
“This is hopeless,” Stratton mutters, watching from nearby.
Ignoring him, I bring up a news page and start a video from last night, showing the stricken ferry being rocked by waves. I kind of expect this, at least, to bring about some kind of reaction, but the survivor simply stares passively at the screen as the video plays.
“You,” I say, pointing at the phone. “Last night, you were on that boat! Do you understand?”
He stares at the screen for a moment longer, before turning to look back at me.
I look over at Carter. “Is there any chance he’s suffered a head injury?”
“That’s what I thought at first,” he replies, “but I don’t see evidence of one. Anything serious enough to cause concussion should show some kind of surface-level trauma, but there’s nothing. Maybe the proper medical team will have more luck, but the storm’s making it hard for them to reach us.”
Turning back to the survivor, I can’t help but feel increasingly concerned by his stare. I’m probably being paranoid, but I feel as if it’s me, out of all the people in this room, who seems to have attracted his attention the most.
“Where are you from?” I ask, starting to run out of ideas already. Figuring it’s worth a shot, I try the only sign language I know, but nothing seems to be getting through to him.
“We’re going to have to wait until someone arrives from London,” Stratton says, over my shoulder. “They’ll get the guy talking. There’s not a language in the world that those guys don’t know.”
“Hang on,” I mutter. Leaning over to a nearby desk, I grab a piece of paper and a pen, and I quickly write my name before holding it up for the man to see. “Sophie,” I say clearly and slowly, while pointing at the letters, before holding the paper and pen out for him, hoping he’ll take them. I wait, but he simply continues to stare at me. When I try to slip the pen into his hand, he ignores it completely and lets it drop to the floor.
“I need to check my equipment,” Carter says, heading over to another desk. He sounds frustrated, and I can definitely sympathize right now.
Staring at the man, I finally realize that there’s no way I can get through to him. I need to leave this to the professionals, whenever they get here. “You’ll be okay,” I tell him finally, as I get to my feet. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but -”
Suddenly he says something, just a few words in a gravely, husky voice that sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before.
“I’m sorry,” I reply, “can you say that again?”
He speaks a few more short, rasping words. I have no clue what he’s trying to tell me, but his eyes are still fixed on mine.
“Sophie,” I say again, pointing at my chest before indicating the rest of the trailer. “England.”
He says something else, with a hint of urgency, but I can’t make out a word of it. This time he keeps going, as if he’s stringing together a sentence, before finally he falls quiet again.
“I don’t have a clue,” I say with a sigh, turning to Stratton. “He has to be from somewhere, but you need someone who really knows how to break things down and trace the root of the words coming from his mouth. You saw how he reacted to the paper and pen, he doesn’t seem remotely motivated to communicate with us. I guess he must be scared.” I pause for a moment. “Have you had any luck finding other survivors?”
“We’ve got teams out there now,” he replies, “and -”
I wait for him to continue. “And what?”
“Maybe we should take this outside,” he adds, glancing past me. “He might not want to talk to us, but your chap definitely seems happy to listen.”
Turning, I see that the man is still staring at me. I force a faint smile, before following Stratton to the door and stepping out into the wind and rain. In some weird way, the bad weather is actually refreshing as it batters my skin, and the gray, murky morning is a relief after the stormy night. Beneath my feet, the ground is soft and muddy.
“Something isn’t right here,” Stratton says, turning to me.
“No kidding,” I reply.
“I’ve covered rescues like this before,” he continues, “where there are questions about the origin of a vessel. They’re always different, always challenging, there’s always something that doesn’t quite fit, but everything about this one is throwing me for a complete loop. I don’t even know where to begin.”
“There’s something about him,” I reply. “I can’t put my finger on it, but something just felt wrong when I was talking to him. It was the same when I saw the rest of them out on the ferry, they just seemed so… calm. There was no fear in their eyes, no panic, no sense that they were scared of drowning.”
“Do you think
maybe they were drugged?” he asks. “Maybe when they were put on the boat, they got drugged to keep them docile? We’ve heard of people-smugglers doing worse things in the past.”
“It’s possible,” I tell him, “but refugees and asylum-seekers are usually scared, they usually want to know what’s going to happen to them. This guy seems to view us as an irrelevance, it’s almost as if he’s waiting for something. Get someone to screen his blood, maybe there’s some kind of infection that could help zero in on his home. Check under his nails, check for parasites, just try to find markers that can narrow it down, even just a little. Anything’s worth a shot right now.” Feeling my phone vibrate, I pull it from my pocket and see that Rob’s trying to get in touch. I hesitate for a moment, before rejecting the call. I’ll make things right with him later, when I’m not so busy.
“There’s no need for you to stick around,” Stratton tells me. “I’ve got a team here. Mark Phillips shouldn’t even have called you in the first place. I still don’t quite understand why he did that.”
“I’d like to stay,” I reply, “at least for the rest of today. Now I’m here, I might as well see if I can be useful.”
“No more wild moves, though,” he mutters. “You don’t go anywhere without my express permission. I don’t know what things were like before my time, but now that I’m in charge, there’s a chain of command, and I’m right at the top.”
“Have fun up there.”
“I know who you are, you know,” he continues. “People still talk about you, Sophie Carpenter. If you hadn’t quit, you’d probably be in my shoes right now.”
“Lucky miss,” I reply with a faint smile, before turning as I hear raised voices nearby. Over by the farthest trailer, an elderly woman is being guided back by a couple of rescue-workers, but she’s shouting about something.
“Great,” Stratton says with a sigh. “Another crazed local doing her best Straw Dogs impression.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“It’s the old dear from that house on the other side of the bay. She’s been down here all morning, ranting about how we need to pack up and get out of here.”
“Why?”
“I don’t care. She must be ninety if she’s a day.” He turns to me. “I’m not taking advice from her, and I’m not taking advice from you. I don’t believe in heroes, and I run my operations as a team effort based on data analysis and strict interpretation of the rules. Anyone who tries to stand out or overstep their role is unwelcome. Maybe that seems boring, but it gets things done. If you don’t like that, you can follow Mark and get the hell out of here.”
“No, I just -” Pausing, I try to work out what he means. “Follow Mark out of here?”
“After this operation,” he replies. “Didn’t he tell you? He handed in his notice a couple of hours ago, he’s following you out into the real world.” As his radio crackles, he takes a step back. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a million and one things to be doing, so I’ll catch up with you later. If you cause any trouble at all, you’re out of here.”
As he walks away, I try to make sense of that last bombshell. Mark never mentioned anything about leaving the coastguard, which would seem like kind of relevant information given that he called me up out of the blue, five years after our last contact. It never occurred to me that he was keeping something from me, but now I’m starting to think that he hasn’t been entirely honest about his reason for getting in touch.
A few hundred feet further inland, the old woman is finally being led away.
Chapter Five
“So we took that registration number you were able to read while you were on the ferry,” Louis explains, as he works on his laptop in the data trailer, “and we ran it against every database we could think of.”
“And?” I reply.
“Nothing. According to national and international maritime agencies around the world, there’s no vessel with the 4889013 mark.” He pauses, and I can tell that there’s something else, something he hasn’t told me yet. “At least,” he adds, “there’s no current vessel with that mark.”
“Where’s Mark?” I ask, looking back along the trailer.
“He stepped out for some fresh air. The thing is, I checked -”
“Fresh air?” I reply, turning back to him. “How did he seem?”
“I don’t know, really. Tired?”
“How well do you know Mark?” I ask.
“We’re on the same pub quiz team.”
“Do you know why he’s quitting the coastguard?”
“Quitting?” He stares at me for a moment, and it’s clear that this is news to him. “The coastguard is his life. There’s no way he’s quitting.”
I pause for a moment, before turning back to the laptop. “Sure. I must’ve got my wires crossed. Show me what you’ve got here.”
“I finally checked out a database that covers lost vessels,” he explains, opening another browser tab, “and I found this sucker on a list of lost, un-recovered cargo vessels.”
“Lost?” I ask, leaning down to look at the screen. “As in stolen?”
“As in sunk,” he replies, scrolling down the page until he comes to a black-and-white photo. “As in glug-glug, down the spout, sleeping with the fishes. Recognize it?”
As soon as I see the photo, I realize that he’s right. Even from this grainy view, it’s clear that he’s found an image of the ferry in some far-off port. After all these years, we’re finally starting to find out where this damn thing comes from. Looking at the photo’s caption, I see a name.
“The Aspheron?” I mutter. “Sounds… What is that, Greek?”
“Could be. We’re still trying to find the origin of the boat, but so far we know that by the 1940s it was running trade routes out of Hong Kong. There’s nothing particularly unusual about that, of course. It was quite common back in the day to flog rusty old piles to the other side of the world.”
“The 1940s? How old is this thing?”
“This photo shows it in 1946,” he explains. “As you can see, even by then it was in need of a fresh paint job. It’s hard to believe anyone would risk their life by sailing in the damn thing, but I guess people get desperate. Safety standards weren’t exactly top-notch back then. I’ve located partial records for the trade routes of the time, and the Aspheron seems to have been in near-constant use, mainly heading out to places like Singapore and as far south as northern Australia.”
“Talk about a workhorse,” I mutter. “But how did it end up here?”
“That’s where we’re stumped,” Louis continues, scrolling further down the page, “because in 1949, age and poor maintenance finally caught up with the Aspheron.” He turns to me. “The goddamn thing sank in Hong Kong harbor, taking three crew-members with it. Mark and I tried to make sense of the whole thing, but we’re stumped.”
“Okay,” I reply, “but -”
“And here it is,” he adds, scrolling down a little further until he reaches a grainy underwater photo, “in 1972, when divers looking for another wreck happened to find the remains of the Aspheron. Right where it should have been, in Hong Kong harbor.”
Staring at the screen, I can’t help but feel a shudder of recognition as I see the same deck that I was briefly walking on last night. I want to say that there’s been a mistake, that somehow they’ve mistaken one boat for another, but deep down I know that isn’t possible. This photo even shows the bridge, with the windows dark, just like they were when I was swinging past them.
“That’s nearly thirty years,” Louis points out, “that the Aspheron spent in the depths of Hong Kong harbor.”
“So who raised it?” I ask. “And why?”
“No-one, according to the records. Another research team reported seeing the wreck in 1981, but there’s certainly nothing to indicate that it was ever recovered.” He turns to me. “Hong Kong harbor is one of the busiest in the world, you can’t exactly raise a boat without anyone noticing. You need permits and documentation comin
g out of your wazoo before you can even think about something like that.”
“If it had been underwater for that long,” I point out, “there’s no way anyone could just bring it up and start using it again. The amount of work required would be economically and practically unfeasible, you’d be talking about a massive undertaking, and for what? Just to get that heap of junk to float again for a few more years? There’s no reason for anyone to do anything like that, and even if they did, there’d be a record.”
“So how did that boat,” he asks, tapping the screen, “end up off the shore of Cornwall last night?”
***
“I thought I’d find you out here,” I say half an hour later, as I reach a section of the clifftop that overlooks the entire bay. “I remember how you always used to find the most desolate spots when you needed to get away from everything.”
“Should’ve known I couldn’t hide from you,” Mark replies, with a faint smile.
As I sit next to him on the tarpaulin he’s using as a makeshift blanket, I can’t help but reciprocate that smile. The storm has mostly died down now, and the rain has stopped, leaving just a strong wind that keeps trying to pull my hair loose from the pins that are holding it back. All around us, the long grass is waving and rustling, while down below the edge of the cliff there’s still a strong tide, with waves – albeit much weaker than before – battering the pebbly beach. I always think the natural world is at its most beautiful in the wake of a good, strong storm.
“Did they find anyone else?” I ask, looking back out at the gray, choppy sea.
“Search and rescue crews are all over the area,” he replies. “I don’t think they expect to do much rescuing, though. The odds of anyone being pulled out of there alive are…” His voice trails off, but he doesn’t need to finish the sentence.
We both know there’ll be no more survivors.
“The entire ferry is below the surface,” he continues. “There’s nothing floating, but they think they’ve found the location.”
“We need to go down there,” I tell him. “We need to check it out.”
