by A J Waines
Once we get to speed, I feel like I’m in a wind tunnel. My hair’s flying everywhere, the ferocious gusts clawing at my skin through my thin blouse. I didn’t set out dressed for this, but I don’t care. We’re here to find Beth and even if I have to go without food, warmth and shelter for a week, it will be worth it. I only hope she’s on Spellbound.
The low revving engine rises in pitch to a trembling racket and the wind whips past, roaring in my ears, as we charge across the waves. I wouldn’t like to do too much of this on a full stomach.
‘You can join me if you like,’ he adds. I step up beside him and as I adjust my lifejacket, my neck-scarf breaks loose and is flung out onto the water. It serves to remind me how precarious we are, riding on this vast expanse of water where the only way is down.
‘Damn…’ I call out. I nip my lips together. Beth gave me that scarf last Christmas. I blink away the sting of tears, not wanting Peter to see how close I am to breaking down.
‘We’re close to a container tanker,’ he says, urging me to go back to my seat. ‘It might get a bit bumpy. Hold on.’
We seem a long way from the cluster of lights, but even so, all of a sudden the boat is tipped back, then we plunge forward in a big rush of water. It’s like being on a big-dipper.
With the fading light, the sea has turned into an uninviting cauldron of onyx black, with a scattering of green, white and red lights in the far distance. I can’t tell which are reflections and which are the real thing.
‘There she is!’ says Peter, pointing out on to the horizon. For a split second I think he means Beth, but of course, it’s Spellbound he’s referring to.
Peter reaches over to the radio. ‘Spellbound, Spellbound, this is Peter Roper on Gloriana – channel 16, over.’
There’s a long gap, then a voice crackles back. ‘Gloriana, this is Spellbound. Switch to channel 68, over.’
‘Gloriana switching to channel 68, over.’
He turns to me. ‘Okay, I’ve got the boat on the radio. I’m just going to say we’re pulling alongside and want to come aboard.’
He gets a response in acknowledgement and he turns the wheel. An odd rattling noise comes from behind me.
‘Ooh, doesn’t sound right,’ he says. The sound amplifies and he cuts the engine. The quiet aftermath and gentle wash of the waves come as a relief.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Not sure,’ he says. I get out of his way as he kneels down, staring into the water.
‘Can you hold the torch?’ he asks, handing it to me. I train the beam on the propeller and he feels around.
‘There’s something caught,’ he says.
My hand goes straight to my throat. My scarf. Is this my fault? Will we fail to reach Beth in time because of a stupid loose knot around my neck?
I bend down beside him, but there’s not much I can do to help.
‘Get an oar,’ he calls out.
I hand him the torch, then reach down to the clips at the side of the boat and hand him one. He leans out, almost topples overboard, grappling with the obstruction. Finally he turns around, red faced, holding up a large dripping object.
‘Plastic bag…’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Bloody litter.’
It takes fifteen minutes before we’re on our way again. I stamp from side to side, furious with the delay, precious minutes lost that could make all the difference.
When we reach Carl’s boat, he manoeuvres alongside it. I expect to see Amelia at the helm, but instead, it’s a woman with coiffured red hair.
‘Oh, it’s Nancy,’ Peter whispers to me. ‘Amelia’s friend.’ I recall the name.
A younger man beside her takes the wheel and she greets us at the side of the boat.
‘Peter, how lovely to see you,’ she says.
‘We’re looking for Amelia…and Beth…are they here?’
She gives an exaggerated jolt of surprise. ‘Here? No. I saw Amelia earlier. She’s on shore. And Beth? You mean your fiancée, Beth?’
‘Yes. She’s missing. Is she aboard?’
‘Good grief, no! Why would she be here?’
As they speak I’m trying to get a good look at the rest of the boat, but it seems to have several decks and there’s little to see from where I’m standing.
‘Can we come aboard?’ he asks.
‘Be my guests…’
Nancy calls over the henchman and instructs him to tie our boat to theirs and help us step across. Peter waits to check he’s done it properly.
As we join Nancy, there are no polite introductions.
‘When did you last see Amelia?’ Peter asks.
Nancy points to a decanter of brandy and raises her eyebrows in invitation.
He shakes his head for the two of us. ‘Seriously, Nancy – this is no time for fun and games.’
Nancy is all multi-coloured chiffon scarves and bling. Her white wafty palazzo trousers and off the shoulder tunic suggest she’s bound for somewhere like Monaco. She looks like she’s spent considerable time trying to look chic and is just about getting away with it, although her hoity-toity accent sounds as fake as Amelia’s.
‘Like I said, I saw her earlier.’ She tufts up the back of her backcombed French twist as though she’s in front of a mirror. ‘We came in at Littlehampton for supplies. She met us there, but she changed her mind about coming aboard.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ she says, as if it’s none of her business. ‘You know Mia, always flitting from one thing to the next. She must have had something better to do.’
‘We’ll take a look around, if you have no objection?’ Peter says, already pushing past her.
‘A little bit unusual, but go ahead,’ she snorts. She turns away, leaving us to find our own way around.
Peter leads me to the back of the boat and once we’ve done a full circuit, we go inside, past a bar and into a salon area. The henchman, wearing a T-shirt that shows off an eagle tattoo pulled out of shape by overworked biceps, is close behind us watching our every move. Peter opens cupboards and storage spaces. He knows the boat, he’ll spot any hiding places.
All the while I’m looking for something to indicate that Beth has been here, anything that might belong to her. Something she may have left behind.
We go through a door into the master cabin. A heady mix of spray deodorant, strong perfume and the biscuity aroma of fake tan greets us. The room is filled with bits and pieces I can only assume belong to Nancy; an open jewellery case containing green and amber coloured stones embedded in earrings and bracelets, copies of ‘Vogue’, ‘Unique Homes’ and ‘Plane and Pilot’ tossed on the bed, a silk dressing gown beside it. There are a pair of tickets to Ascot under an Omega watch on the dressing table. Everything smacks of a surplus of cash.
I crouch down to look under the bed where alongside boxes of shoes, I find a stack of wedding magazines.
‘Who’s getting married?’ I ask Peter, straightening up.
He shrugs. ‘Nothing to do with Beth and I,’ he says pointedly.
He checks the ensuite, before asking our nameless escort if we can see the engine room. He obliges and we follow him down a flight to take a look. I check behind pipes and pumps while Peter asks for a metal cabinet to be opened. Apart from that, there’s nowhere to conceal anyone down there.
There are smaller cabins with bunk beds and a storage cupboard, which is currently empty apart from stacks of towels, bed linen and toilet rolls on a mattress.
‘What does Nancy do for a living?’ I ask as we check out the kitchen.
‘She’s a lady of leisure. Her husband died five years ago, I think…he was a kind of Richard Branson figure – a super-entrepreneur.
‘Had any stowaways?’ Peter asks our escort.
‘Nope,’ he says, his arms folded, leaning against the sink.
‘What about luggage hatches?’ I ask him.
The hatches contain only empty suitcases and he shows us a couple of other places only big enough for a cat to hide a
way in. He seems very accommodating – in fact, they’ve both been far too obliging, which tells me one thing. They’ve got nothing to hide. Beth isn’t here.
On the way back to Nancy on the main deck, Peter tells me we’ve covered everything. My heart sinks. We’re going to head back without her and I don’t have anywhere else to look.
‘You’ll stay for a drink?’ she says, handing a clipboard to her right-hand man. As we hit the wake from a nearby tanker, he loses his balance temporarily and drops the pen he was holding. It rolls towards my foot, so I bend down to pick it up.
‘No. We’ll head off,’ Peter replies. ‘But you’ll let me know if you hear anything about Beth, won’t you? Anything at all?’
‘Of course,’ she says, formally.
I’m about to hand over the biro when the end of it catches the light. It has two tiny rows of indentations – one row at the end and another about a centimetre below it. A distinct pattern of teeth marks I’ve seen time and time again on the pens in my own home. It tells me all I need to know.
‘Beth has been here!’ I hold out the biro. ‘This is her trademark. I’d swear to it. Where is she?’
53
Beth
‘I can’t die like this,’ Amelia whimpers, making a reckless attempt to stand. She loses her balance and splashes down into the sinking boat.
We both fight the inevitable, clawing at the dinghy trying to stay inside it, but it’s futile. The sea is claiming us. It has covered our legs completely by now. Amelia cups her hands and is scooping up tiny pools of water, only she doesn’t reach out far enough and the water ends up back where it came from.
‘This was her idea to get rid of us both,’ she hisses.
‘Whose idea?’
‘Nancy’s, of course!’
‘She was out to get both of us. You, for having a fling with my husband and me…because she must have got it into her stupid little head that I killed him.’
I’m trying to grasp what she’s saying.
‘She thinks you killed Carl...’ I say, my voice juddering with the cold.
‘She must do…to have gone to such lengths. She must be mad. She’s the one who kidnapped you. She followed you and tracked you down at a cottage somewhere. She wanted you to confess to the affair.’
‘It’s true…Carl and I did meet up three of four times,’ I tell her. ‘But it was only a brief, silly fling. Carl certainly wasn’t serious about me.’
‘I believe you. I can see now that she did her utmost to point me in your direction.’ She’s frantically fighting the sea, her legs spread-eagled. ‘And the letter he wrote about leaving me must have been about her. She was the one having an affair with Carl!’
I’m barely taking in what she’s saying. My brain is already gridlocked with trying to figure out how we’re going to survive this.
‘Your name cropped up early on,’ she says, ‘and Nancy jumped on it, kept coming back to it, obviously twisting the facts to divert attention away from her own smutty affair with my husband.’ Her mouth drops open. ‘The emerald pendant was for her, not you, of course – with ginger hair, green is the obvious colour to wear.’ She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t twig that.’
The sun has set now, leaching away the remaining light in the sky.
‘Ah…that’s why this useless piece of junk was strapped to the back of the yacht,’ she adds. ‘It should have been the decent dinghy with the outboard motor…“in for repairs” she said…lying bitch.’
My mind latches on to an idea.
‘Do you smoke?’ I ask, noticing the slight bulge in the top pocket of her blouse.
‘What. At a time like this?’
I reach down and grab the blanket I was wrapped in, dragging it away from the water.
‘Do you!?’ I say, raising my voice.
‘I’m trying to give up…but with—’
‘Do you have a lighter!?’ I yell into her face, the blanket bundled against me.
She reaches into the pocket, looking mystified, but pulls out what I’m looking for. A surge of pure joy sweeps through my chest. Amelia is shaking so much that she almost drops the lighter. I snatch it away just in time.
The blanket is dripping, but one corner is still dry. I don’t know if it will be enough. I don’t know if this is going to work. I flick the spark wheel with my thumb and it makes a grinding sound, but no flame appears. Amelia is so caught up with unravelling the truth that she seems momentarily oblivious to our dire situation.
‘I only found that letter this week, but Nancy must have thought I knew about it much earlier. She must have thought I killed Carl…because I couldn’t bear the indignity of him running off with my best friend.’ She snatches a breath. ‘No wonder she was so keen to help me go through his documents.’ She’s staring blindly ahead, unaware of what I’m trying to do.
‘I bet she found her own phone number in Carl’s papers and destroyed it, putting the stupid coded one with your number there instead. She’d seen your number on the phone bill. She was obviously looking for anything she could find to incriminate you.’
‘Amelia, Amelia!’ I scream at her. ‘Swim!’
She looks down and shrieks, as if she’s been miles away. We’re still sitting in the dinghy, but there’s only the occasional glimpse of orange rubber. Before long we’ll be on our own, floating without any support.
‘Let yourself go into the water,’ I tell her firmly, ‘we can’t stop this now. Just start treading water.’
Amelia is yelping like a dog, flapping about, trying to do the opposite and lever herself out of the sea. She’s going to knock the lighter out of my hand if I’m not careful – then we’ll have nothing.
‘Let the dinghy go! Just imagine you’re in an infinity pool somewhere. Kick with your legs and keep your head out of the water.’ The sea is about to consume the last of the dinghy. ‘You can swim, right?’
She nods her head slightly, her chin quivering.
The dinghy is too heavy with water and slides out of sight under the surface. ‘Let it go,’ I tell her. ‘It’s no use anymore.’
She looks horrified, watching as it’s gobbled up by the sea. In seconds, it’s gone. We’re on our own, forced to kick harder. I hold the blanket up with one hand, the lighter with the other. I’m thankful for all those times I swam at the leisure centre and didn’t give up when it got tough. I flick the flint again and this time there’s a flame. I hold the two items together and wait.
‘Please light, please light…’ I hiss.
The blanket starts to smoke, but doesn’t ignite. I try again. And again. With my arms full, unable to keep myself afloat, I duck under the surface getting water in my mouth. The churning swell snatches at my face and I’m gasping with the effort to hold the blanket up. The muscles in my arms are screaming.
Amelia is flailing around in little circles, gulping, splashing, not knowing which way to turn. ‘Save me, save me,’ she whines.
‘Save your energy,’ I yell at her, spitting out the salty spume. ‘Go in slow-motion. You won’t sink.’ My voice comes out like a pneumatic drill, as my whole body spasms with the cold.
I try the lighter again and the flicker takes this time. As it meets the fabric, it starts to smoulder. I weave the edge of the blanket into the air to encourage the flame to grow, but I have little control as I flounder beneath it. Against all the odds, it flares up into a bright orange glow, but the rest of the blanket is too wet and within the space of three or four snatched breaths, the flame hisses and dissolves into smoke. I hold it aloft for as long as I can, then let it slide into the water. Amelia has at last stopped her blubbering, but she’s clearly not a strong swimmer. The most she’s probably ever swum is two lengths in a luxury spa.
I look up at the sky. It’s overcast and the clouds have already eaten up most of the stars. Before long we’re not going to be able to see a thing. To any boats out there we’ll be completely invisible.
My hands are so cold they’ve solidified in
to useless claws. My mind keeps tugging me back to disaster movies I’ve seen. Ships going down at sea. It’s hyperthermia that turns out to be the real threat at times like this. The real enemy that finally drags the victims under, their muscles succumbing to a frozen paralysis. Is this going to happen to us?
It doesn’t take long before Amelia is in serious trouble. Her eyes flicker and she slides down under the surface.
‘Amelia! Wake up! Keep treading water!’
She lets herself roll over face down, not fighting any more.
I can barely pick out her shape, but manage to get myself behind her and turn her over. Grabbing her hip, I tip her chin back with my left hand and kick beneath her. She fights me at first and almost drags me under.
‘Let go, Amelia…let me help you…drop back, let go...’
With my body under hers, I cradle her head and skull lightly with my right hand, forcing my legs to keep moving in a scissor kick. We won’t make any headway like this, but that’s not the point. The only way to stay alive is to keep our mouths out of the water. And hope someone saw our short-lived flare.
54
Rachel
Nancy takes a moment to react.
‘That’s not my pen. It’s Amelia’s,’ she snaps. ‘I know nothing about it.’
‘But it’s here,’ I say.
‘Well…Amelia has been here, hasn’t she? It’s not exactly damning evidence.’
Peter looks bemused and Nancy blinks through a lengthy pause. For the first time, her glib composure appears ruffled. Peter turns and takes several steps towards the back of the boat. ‘Where’s the dinghy?’ he asks.
I follow his line of sight and notice a small empty platform at the rear, with loose ropes and clips.
‘There should be a dinghy for getting sailors to and from the yacht at the marina,’ he tells me, striding back.
