by Will Adams
Rebecca’s head slowly cleared. She checked her arms, legs, head and torso, was relieved to find scratches and bruises but no serious damage except for her shoulder. She looked out. Smoke and water vapour rose in clouds from her crumpled bonnet. The slope was so steep that the Jeep was only held in place by a tangled net of spiny brush, creaking and groaning beneath the strain. She could smell diesel and oil. She needed to get out quick. She tried to unfasten her seat-belt, but the buckle had jammed. She shimmied out sideways instead, keeping her shoulder as still as possible, retrieved the holdall and her bag, dropped them through the empty windscreen and followed them out. She had to jump down to the ground. The jolt was so exquisite on her left shoulder that she cried out, both from the pain itself and from knowledge of what lay ahead. Her shoulder had dislocated twice before, once after an awkward parachute landing, once deep in the Australian outback, trying to grab the reins of a snake-spooked horse that had bucked her. Catching that damned mare and riding her six miles back to camp had taken Rebecca three hours. For the last two of those, her shoulder muscles had been in spasm. It had been the most gruelling ordeal of her life, the kind that ages you, that makes you understand why patients in chronic pain seek to die. They’d had to cut open her shoulder to fix it. God only knew what would happen in Madagascar.
She took her mobile from her bag, but it had no signal. She breathed deeply to quell her rising panic. On safari in Kenya last year, a knuckle-head South African had tried to impress her with all his scars, so she’d retorted with her shoulder. He’d laughed at that. Dislocations didn’t count. Christ only knew how many times he’d dislocated his shoulder; he just slammed it against the nearest tree. If some loudmouth guide could do it, thought Rebecca grimly, then she could, too. She held her left arm with its ball as near its socket as she could figure, then threw herself hard against the front bumper of the Jeep. She screamed in agony and failure. She stood, wiped away her tears, gritted her teeth and hurled herself even harder. The pain was so fierce and prolonged that she screamed and carried on screaming, her screams turning into cries of frustration. It wasn’t going to work. Your body would tell you these things if you listened. She squatted down. As a zoologist, she understood the rudiments of primate anatomy. The shoulder wasn’t a typical ball-and-socket joint, because it needed to facilitate such a wide range of movement. The ball therefore sat upon the socket rather like an egg upon its cup, held in place by muscles, tendons and ligaments. That made it all the more prone to dislocation, but it also made it easier to fix. Reduction was a matter of angles, torque and traction. That South African had been a braggart, but not a liar.
The carry-straps of Mustafa’s canvas holdall had detachable metal buckles at either end. She took them off with her teeth and her good right hand, clipped them together into a single, long rope. The muscles in her left shoulder were beginning to twitch and fibrillate. In ten minutes, it would be too late. She tried not to let panic hurry her into mistakes. She tied slipknots in either end, tightened one loop around her left wrist, the second around her left foot. Then she stood up tall, lifting her leg so that the strap was taut, but no more. Satisfied, she now pressed down and outwards with her foot, pulling her wrist, arm and shoulder forwards. She could feel the ball getting closer and closer to its socket, but it still needed a sideways jolt to snap it back into place. She closed her eyes and let herself fall sideways to the ground, landing flush upon her shoulder. For a terrible moment pain screeched at her like angry geese, but then everything slotted sweetly back and it was glorious, like a tooth abscess bursting, like orgasm, like mainlined heroin, no pleasure came close to the flooding relief from insupportable pain, it was so sweet, so The euphoria faded fast. Her shoulder began to throb. She remembered that Adam’s and Emilia’s lives depended upon her. She was monstrously late, but she still had the cash and she wasn’t about to give up yet. The Jeep was dead. She needed to hike back to the road, flag down a vehicle. She held the money-bag as a buffer in front of her to barge through the brush. She was making good progress when she saw a flash of movement ahead. It vanished, reappeared. Andriama’s offhand remark about bad men knowing of the ransom echoed in her mind. She caught and held her breath, crouched and froze. She put down the holdall, picked up a large sharp flint instead, and steeled herself to strike.
III
The latest GPS transmission had come from a wooded hill off the Ilakaka road. Knox passed a likely track but didn’t stop at once, lest it was being watched. Then he saw wisps of smoke rising from the hillside and had a sudden dread that he was already too late, so he turned around and drove back, hid his bike in the trees and continued on foot, keeping to the verges so that he could take cover should anyone Rebecca came charging out of the trees to his left, yelling and swinging a rock. He put up his arms to protect himself, but she’d already recognised him. ‘You!’ she said. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ But then she saw the GPS handset and her question answered itself. ‘I left that for Therese!’ she protested.
‘For God’s sake,’ he said. ‘You can’t take on this kind of thing alone. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘They told me not to.’ Her eyes filled with dismay. ‘They’ve got Adam and Emilia. They said they’d kill them if I told anyone at all.’
‘They’re alive? You’re sure?’
‘I spoke to my father. He said “we’re both well”. He said “we”.’
‘That’s fantastic!’ said Knox.
‘But I’m late,’ she said. ‘I’m so late.’
‘Then let’s get moving, eh?’ He took the holdall from her, led her down to the motorbike, pulled it out of the trees. ‘Where to?’ he asked.
‘They said to turn right after an orange roadside stall. There was a stall. It looked sort of orange.’ She started breathing fast, fighting down panic. ‘I must have got it wrong.’
He could see how close to the edge she was. He put his hand to her cheek. ‘Listen to me, Rebecca,’ he said. ‘Kidnappers have strong nerves. They have to, by definition; they wouldn’t be in the business otherwise. They’re greedy too. Five hundred million ariary is a ton of money. So this isn’t over. Not by a long shot. You understand?’
She nodded, covered his hand with her own. ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ she said. ‘Things got on top of me.’
‘It was my fault,’ he told her. ‘I should have told you the truth about myself that first night. I had good reasons not to, I swear, but even so I should have-’
‘It’s okay,’ she said. She gave his hand a squeeze. ‘Explanations can wait. Right now we need to get going.’
He nodded, straddled the bike, balanced the holdall on his lap. Rebecca climbed on behind, anchored herself to him with her right arm. He drove to the main road, turned towards Ilakaka. It was about ten minutes before they reached a vividly orange roadside stall with a thinly grassed avenue on the right just after it. He didn’t look around, lest she take it as reproach, just swung right down the track, followed it to a bright glade with an ancient tamarind at its centre. He circled it once, idled to a stop, waited for Rebecca to get off, then rocked the bike up on to its stands.
‘There should be a bag,’ she said. ‘A yellow bag.’
‘They must have been back already. Write a note. Explain what happened. Assure them you have the money and want to give it to them. Give them a way to contact you.’
She nodded and took a pen from her bag, uncapped it with her teeth, was scribbling her note when she hesitated and looked around. ‘There’s no mobile signal in Eden,’ she said.
‘So we’ll stay in Tulear tonight.’
‘What was the name of that hotel?’
He told her. She wrote it down, pinned the note with a stone at the base of the tamarind. He couldn’t help but notice that she was doing everything with her right hand. ‘What’s up with your left arm?’ he frowned, as she walked back to the bike.
‘My shoulder,’ she told him. ‘I dislocated it when I crashed the Jeep.’
‘Fo
r fuck’s sake! Why didn’t you say?’
‘It’s okay. I put it back.’
‘You what?’
‘It’s no big deal,’ she assured him, as she climbed back astride the bike. ‘You just slam it against the nearest tree.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
I
Boris reached Eden mid-afternoon. He saw the boat first, then the boathouse and the sign. He set down his bags and walked along the edge of the trees, the Heckler amp; Koch in his pocket ready for a quick draw in case anyone should appear; but no one did.
He made his way up the track to the compound. There was no one there either. The main building was locked and all the cabins were empty. There was no sign of Knox at all. He went back down to the beach, stripped off his trousers, waded out to the boat. There was a bag on deck, tagged as belonging to Matthew Richardson, Knox’s alias. Boris opened it up and rummaged around. There was dive-gear inside, expensive-looking stuff, not the sort you’d just forget about, or leave lying around for the benefit any light-fingered passer-by.
No doubt about it, Knox would be coming back aboard this boat some time very soon.
And Boris intended to be waiting.
II
Knox took it slow on the drive back to Tulear, now that he knew Rebecca had a sore shoulder. Even so hampered, however, she was a good pillion passenger, taking her cues from him, leaning as he leaned. Her chin was on his shoulder, her mouth against his neck, her breath upon his throat. Every time he braked to avoid a pothole or rock in the road, deceleration pressed her against his back.
The afternoon had sped by. The sun began setting as they approached Tulear. Knox turned on the headlight only to discover that it was broken. Gloaming turned into night. There was a cacophony ahead, a wedding party blocking the road, tooting horns and yelling exultantly out their windows. He could have pushed and wended his way through, but instead he waited until the long train had finally passed. It made him realise that he didn’t want this ride to end. Maybe Rebecca felt the same; he could feel her arm tightening around his chest.
They reached their hotel. She climbed gingerly off the back. ‘Why don’t you sort out our rooms?’ he suggested. ‘I’ll go get some bandages and things for your hands.’ He found a chemist open a couple of blocks away, bought all the first-aid supplies that could possibly be of use, added a bag of ice from a general store. He could hear water running when he arrived outside her room, knocked. The water stopped and she opened her door a few moments later, a towel wrapped around her waist, her blouse unbuttoned but clasped closed with her right hand.
He held up his bags of shopping. ‘You want me to do your dressings?’ he asked.
‘Please,’ she said. She walked to her bed, stretched out on her back, still holding her blouse. He closed her door, went to kneel beside her, rested the ice-pack upon her left shoulder. He inspected her hands first. They were still dirty from the day, despite her efforts at washing them, but at least the coral cuts seemed to be healing well. He cleaned her left palm with gel, then painted it with iodine and put on new dressings. He motioned for her right hand. Her blouse fell open a little way as she held it out. She made no effort to close it. He looked down at her, then up into her eyes, already there waiting for him. She reached out and touched his cheek, stroked it with her thumb.
He said softly: ‘You asked me the other day if I had someone special.’
‘You’re married,’ she said. ‘You have a wife.’
He thought of Emilia, of the strong possibility that he was Michel’s father, of the complications that would surely ensue if he let temptation get the better of him. ‘I have a family,’ he told her.
Her face fell; she looked stricken. ‘Stay with me,’ she said. ‘Just for tonight.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You mean you don’t want to.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean I can’t.’
Her mobile rang at that moment, its buzzer making it shiver and rotate upon the bedside table. They looked at it and then at each other with the same thought: the kidnappers had found the note. Rebecca breathed in deep as she picked it up and answered it. ‘Yes?’ she said. Colour seemed to drain from her complexion as she listened. Her expression hardened. She gave directions to the hotel, ended the call and set her phone back down on the bedside table.
‘Well?’ frowned Knox. ‘Who was it?’
‘My business partner, Titch,’ she told him. ‘He’s just flown in from England.’
III
Rebecca clutched the ice-pack to her shoulder when she went down to meet Titch, dribbles of water running coldly down her flanks. His taxi pulled up. He took his time paying the fare and then retrieving his luggage, as though apprehensive of his welcome. Rebecca went over to greet him, kissed him on either cheek. ‘What are you doing here, Titch?’ she frowned.
‘Your phone-call,’ he said, shouldering his overnight bag. ‘It sounded like you could use some help.’
‘You flew all this way because of a phone call?’
He glanced over at Daniel, standing a few paces away in the hotel entrance, lowered his voice so that he couldn’t be overheard. ‘You said you’d had a ransom demand. What with our recent conversation about the company finances, you know, I thought you might need a hand putting it together.’
She laid her hand on his elbow, touched beyond words. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said. ‘But it’s okay, I’ve been able to borrow it. You should have called.’
‘I tried. You never answered. Besides, I figured you could use a friend anyway.’ He glanced over at Daniel again, gave her an interrogative look, as if to ask whether he could speak freely in front of him. She assured him he could, led him across and performed the introductions.
‘Daniel,’ said Titch, as they shook hands. ‘So you’re the one who rescued Rebecca from the reef?’
‘He had to rescue me again today,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘It’s becoming rather an irritating habit of his.’
‘Is that right?’ asked Titch.
Something in his voice reminded Rebecca of the uncomfortable night he’d taken her hand and made his declaration. Maybe there was more to his flying out here than he was letting on; but she put the disloyal thought aside. ‘You must be starving,’ she said. ‘I know I am.’
‘You want to go out?’
She shook her head. She dared not leave the ransom money unguarded in her room, but nor did she much fancy lugging it around town.
‘I’ll pick us up some pizzas,’ said Daniel. ‘Give you two a chance to catch up.’
‘Thanks.’ She led Titch up to her room, out on to her balcony, talked him through everything that had happened since they’d last spoken. She was just finishing up when Daniel arrived back with beers and some boxes of pizza: thin, scorched crusts smeared with tomato sauce and sprinkled sparingly with toppings. Titch tore off a strip that he rolled up like calzone and stuffed into his mouth. Then he turned to Rebecca, flapping his hands from the heat of it, evidently wanting to say something, but struggling to swallow. ‘So what now?’ he managed finally.
‘I guess we wait for the kidnappers to contact us,’ said Rebecca.
‘Can’t we do something? I mean, what about that mobile phone guy?’
‘What mobile phone guy?’
‘The one the kidnappers called to give you your instructions.’
‘Someone just knew his number, that’s all.’
‘Yes, but how did they know to call just when you were passing? I mean, either he gave them the nod or they had someone watching.’ Rebecca frowned, a little worried she’d not thought of this herself. ‘Maybe we could talk to him in the morning, see if he knows anything.’
‘It’s a good idea,’ acknowledged Rebecca.
‘And there’s something else,’ said Titch. ‘The kidnappers originally contacted you up at the Eden Reserve, right?’
‘So?’
‘So what if they didn’t get your message in the clearing? I mean, what if they still think the
best way to contact you is by slipping a note beneath Eden’s front door?’ Rebecca glanced at Daniel, who nodded. ‘The thing is,’ continued Titch. ‘Perhaps one of us should be there, just in case. I mean, it can’t be you, Rebecca. You’ve clearly got to be here in case they try to contact you or call your mobile, right? But I could go.’ He glanced back and forth between her and Daniel. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve ridden a motorbike, and you’d have to give me directions, but-’
‘I’ll go,’ said Daniel.
‘No!’ protested Rebecca.
‘He’s right,’ said Daniel, getting to his feet. ‘One of us should be there. It makes sense for it to be me.’
‘You’re not leaving now, are you?’ asked Rebecca, dismayed. ‘You can’t. Your headlight doesn’t even work.’
‘Yes, but I can leave at dawn, and that means filling her up while the petrol station’s still open. Besides, I’m bushed. It’s been one hell of a day.’ He put his hand on her shoulder as he made his way past her to the balcony door, and she felt the jolt of contact run right through her. But if Daniel felt it too, he gave no sign. He merely nodded at Titch. ‘It was good to meet you,’ he said.
