by Will Adams
Not AB negative, she prayed silently. Please God, not AB negative. She took away her last finger.
It was AB negative.
FORTY-EIGHT
I
Rebecca put back the medallion and was zipping up Daniel’s bag when she heard him coming out of the bridge. She stood up and turned, but not quickly enough to escape his notice.
‘Looking for something?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she told him.
He shrugged, let it go. ‘I’m taking us south-east,’ he said. ‘We’ll be back at the pass soon.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘And thanks.’
He gave her a slightly puzzled look. ‘You don’t have to keep thanking me, Rebecca,’ he said.
She nodded, aware she was behaving strangely and was bound to arouse his suspicion; but it was hard to stop herself. ‘Maybe I should check on Pierre,’ she said.
‘He’ll be fine.’
‘He took a blow to the head,’ she said.
Daniel shrugged. ‘As you like,’ he said, returning inside the bridge.
The roll of the deck threw her a little. The breeze had grown strong, rousing the sea with it. She unbolted and opened the main hatch. It was dark inside, but the decklights were strong enough to see Pierre lying on his side, still securely trussed. She lowered herself into the hold. ‘Are you awake?’ she murmured. He gave a grunt of acknowledgement. She put a finger to her lips to ask for quiet. He nodded. She untied his gag.
‘Please, Rebecca,’ he begged. ‘You have to believe me. I didn’t do anything to Adam or Emilia. I swear I didn’t. They were my friends, my closest friends. I loved them both.’ He was weeping and snuffling piteously. She found his protestations unnervingly convincing. ‘Please, Rebecca,’ he said. ‘You can’t trust that man. He’s the one! He’s the one!’
He was hog-tied, his ankles and wrists separately bound, then knotted together behind his back. She examined the knots more closely. By undoing one knot, she could leave his wrists and ankles securely bound, just not to each other. It would make him more comfortable and enable her to release him quicker in an emergency. In the half-light, with the wet rope, unpicking the knot was hard. She was so concentrated on it that she didn’t even hear Daniel approaching across the deck above until he appeared at the hatch. ‘What are you doing?’ he frowned.
‘I was just making sure his knots were secure,’ she told him.
‘And?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not very good at this kind of thing.’
‘Let me have a look.’
‘It’s okay. I can-’
‘Come on, Rebecca. If there’s something wrong with his knots, I need to see for myself.’
The hold was too small for them all. Daniel helped Rebecca out first, then lowered himself down. He knelt beside Pierre, looked up and around at her in surprise. ‘Did you untie this?’ he asked.
‘I told you it was getting loose.’
He shook his head. ‘I know knots, Rebecca. No way he did this himself.’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Rebecca?’ asked Daniel. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
She moved as quickly as she could, slammed closed the hatch before he could reach it, shot the bolts. ‘Rebecca!’ he yelled, pounding the underside of the hatch. ‘Let me out!’
‘You’ve been on this boat before,’ she said.
The pounding stopped. ‘Of course I have. I sailed it up from Tulear with you.’
‘No. Before then.’
‘Rebecca, I was never on this boat before then. I swear it.’
‘The police have proof.’
‘They can’t. It’s not possible. What kind of proof?’
‘The incontrovertible kind.’
‘No! I swear to you. They’re lying. They must be.’
Rebecca thought of Andriama. ‘No,’ she said. ‘They’re not lying.’
There was silence. ‘Don’t do this, Rebecca. You’ve got to trust me. This is madness! Let me out!’ He began hammering again on the hatch. It was a sturdy piece of work, two planks of cassave held in place with steel hinges and bolts, but it wasn’t designed as a brig, it wouldn’t hold him forever. She needed to get back to Eden before he broke free. She’d be safe once back inside the lodge. She hurried to the bridge. The Yvette rose on a swell. She saw, to her left and right, the white lines of breakers on the reefs. The pass was directly ahead. Compass, sonar, GPS, charts. But they weren’t second nature to her, as to Daniel. She had no confidence in herself.
Behind her, the pounding increased in intensity. A splintering noise came from the hatch. She looked around as a pale yellow crack appeared in the cassave. It wouldn’t hold him much longer, and once he was out, she’d be at his mercy. She needed to subdue him while she still could. She remembered the anaesthetics in the cabin’s medicine chest. She hurried down the steep steps, opened it up. Yes. A full bottle of ketamine, now a party drug of choice, but originally for anaesthetising mammals in the wild. It was perfect for dart-guns because it was so fast-acting, even if not injected directly into a vein. She tore a new syringe from its plastic wrapping as she hurried back up the steps. She’d used ketamine plenty of times herself over the years. Dosage was proportional to body-mass. She made an estimate of Daniel’s weight, sucked up the requisite amount. The wood splintered. Daniel reached out an arm and fumbled blindly for the bolts. The Yvette pitched over a wave. Rebecca stumbled and went sprawling. Daniel found the first bolt, slid it back. She scrambled on all fours along the deck as Daniel found the second bolt. She stabbed the needle as high up his arm as she could reach, plunging the ketamine into his system with her thumb. He yelled as the hatch flew open, slammed back on its hinges. She fled to the cabin, down the steps, pulled the hatch closed above her, shot the bolt just as Daniel arrived, stamping down hard on the wood. ‘What have you done to me?’ he cried, fear in his voice. ‘What the fuck was that stuff?’ He stamped down again, harder. The wood splintered, his foot came rushing through, catching her on the forehead, throwing her sprawling backwards, tripping over the medicine chest, falling against the cot, knocking a pole out of its slot, bringing Emilia tumbling down on top of her, cold and clammy, and the sound of her own voice screaming, screaming, screaming at this waking nightmare, pushing her sister off her, brushing at her tainted skin.
It was a while before she stopped screaming, and noticed the silence.
FORTY-NINE
I
Rebecca looked up. Daniel’s leg was still plunged through the hatch, but he wasn’t moving. The ketamine had worked. She got to her feet, pushed his foot up and out through the gaping hole, unbolted the hatch. Daniel had fallen across it, so she had to heave to clear him away. Her heart played all sorts of tricks on her as she looked down at him. Sorrow and fear; love and hate. But she had no time to second-guess herself. Ketamine was a temporary solution. It would buy her maybe twenty minutes. She needed to make the most of that time.
There was plenty of rope left in the lockers. She tied his wrists together behind his back, then his ankles, emulating as best she could what Daniel had done to Pierre. But Daniel knew knots; she didn’t. She gagged him and tied him to the rail, so that she could keep an eye on him from the bridge. Then she went to check on Pierre too. He begged her to release him, but she shook her head. One of these two men was a murderer, but she still wasn’t sure which. Get back into the lagoon, raise reinforcements, then Pierre and Daniel could plead their cases all they liked.
The sea was growing rougher. There was no obvious direction or pattern to the waves. Each time the Yvette rose on the swell, she’d glimpse the pass and steer back towards it; but then they’d pitch into a trough and it would corkscrew her all over the place, so that whenever she next rose, they were off course again.
Daniel raised his head a little, looked around. He caught her eye and froze for a moment, as if his memory had returned. He started rubbing his hands and ankles back and forth to gain some play. ‘Stop that!’ she shouted. But he di
dn’t stop. ‘Please!’ she cried. ‘Just let me get us home. Then I’ll let you free.’ But he looked at the turbulent sea and shook his head. The bottle of ketamine rolled across the deck. She picked it up; there was still a little left. She went down into the cabin for a fresh syringe, came back up to find Daniel working furiously at his wrists, getting some decent play in them now. She sucked up the last of the ketamine, plunged it into his arm. Blood bubbled on his skin. They both looked at each other for a moment, before Daniel resumed his frantic efforts to escape. Rebecca took a step back. One hand free, two hands, pulling off his gag, scrabbling at his ankles. But then his hands stopped obeying him, his movements slowed, he groaned and was out again.
She approached him warily. His wrists were free, his ankles almost so. She checked his pulse. Faint and slow, but regular enough. She retied his knots as well as she could, aware they wouldn’t hold him long. The hatches were broken. She was out of anaesthetics. She needed some other plan. Daniel’s bag was close by. She fetched it, opened it up. It had his dive equipment inside, the re-breather, wetsuit and a small tank of oxygen. She pulled out the wetsuit to make space, then added the handgun and all the lead weights she could find in the bench lockers. By the time she was finished, it was so heavy she could barely pick it up, but it still had too much air in it for her purpose, so she scooped up sea-water in a bucket and splashed it into the bag until it spilled glassily on to the deck. Then she zipped it up and lashed it to Daniel’s ankles with a coil of rope.
It was growing a fraction less dark. Night would be over soon. Back inside the bridge, rising and falling on the swell, she lined up the Yvette for the pass once more, glancing around regularly to check Daniel for signs of life. It wasn’t long before he raised his head groggily. She went out, knelt beside him, waited until he focused and looked her in the eye. ‘Listen to me,’ she told him. ‘See this rope around your ankles? It’s tied to your bag, which I’ve filled with weights. If you cause me any more trouble, I’ll throw it overboard, and it’ll take you with it. I really, really don’t want to do that. I swear I don’t. All I want to do is get us safely back to Eden. But I’ll do it if you make me. Do you understand?’
He nodded. She hurried back to the bridge. The sea was getting higher all the time; the boat kept skewing on the swell. A great wave crashed over their side; she looked around to see Daniel working again at his knots. ‘Stop it!’ she shouted, but he kept at it. She ran back out, lifted up the bag. He stopped struggling at once, nodded compliance. But then the Yvette began sliding from the crest of a swell, and kept on going. His eyes went past her; he blanched and redoubled his efforts to get free. Rebecca glanced around. The foamy crest of a freak wave towered above them, bearing down fast. The Yvette was already deep in its trough. She stared at it in horror for a moment, then back down at Daniel, struggling furiously now, helpless at her feet, bound and weighted and doomed, utterly dependent upon her. And she realised, in that one fraction of a second, that all the incriminating evidence in the world didn’t matter a damn. She threw herself down upon him, straddled her arms and legs around him, grabbed hold of a davit to pin them both to the deck, took a deep breath and held it as the wave swept them along, tipping the Yvette almost on to her side and hurtling them along with it for several seconds, so that Rebecca was certain they’d capsize. But Adam had built her for stability and safety rather than speed. The wave crashed over them and the Yvette bobbed aright, drenched and creaking but afloat, Daniel still in her arms. She buried her head into his shoulder, hugged him and began sobbing in relief.
It was a moment later that she heard the hiss. She looked around. The weighted bag had washed overboard and the rope tying it to Daniel’s ankles was paying out. It reached full length and dragged Daniel and her both against the sopping deck to the rail. She held on to him grimly, a tug-of-war in which she struggled to gain ground, but wasn’t losing either, buying him time to free his hands. Her arms began to tire. Her shoulder throbbed. The knots around his wrists and ankles had soaked and pulled tight. The Yvette tilted again. Rebecca looked up, appalled. Freak waves sometimes came in pairs. This one, if anything, was even bigger. Daniel began breathing fast and deep, packing his lungs with air. Then it crashed over them, picking them both up and sweeping them overboard. Rebecca still had hold of Daniel, but the weighted bag pulled him down and took her with him. They sank quickly; he began slipping through her fingers. She grabbed his elbow but her fingers slid down his forearm to his wrist. She tried to hold him, but he was too heavy for her and he fell away. He must have freed his hands, however, for at the last moment he grabbed her ankle, pulling her down with him, her lungs bursting for air, both of them doomed unless she got away. But before she could kick free, he simply let her go.
She swam for the surface, gasping in air the second she breached it, then looking around for Daniel, praying he’d pop up beside her; but there was no sign of him. She waited for him to resurface, riding the swell of waves, searching all around her, but in vain. She dived down, again and again, flapping her arms in hope, but it was futile in the enormous darkness. Her heart turned to lead inside her as seconds accumulated into minutes. She could still feel his grip around her ankle. She could still feel the way he’d let go.
The Yvette had righted herself. She was maybe fifty or sixty metres away, being swept towards the reef. Rebecca needed to get back to her now. The highest waves had passed, but the swell was still steep, and took real effort to negotiate, so that her injured shoulder ached wretchedly by the time she made it. She worked her way around to the stern ladder, hauled herself aboard. Pierre was banging and yelling in terror in the hold. She’d forgotten all about him. She glanced down through the broken starboard hatch. He was sitting up in a foot or so of water, having spat out his neckerchief, his wrists and ankles still tied.‘Let me out!’ he begged, when he saw her. ‘Let me out! Please. I meant no harm. I swear it.’
The waves were taking them ever closer to the reefs. She didn’t have much time. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said.
He looked cowed, beaten. ‘It was a gift from God, Becca,’ he said. ‘Your father was just going to give it away.’
‘You sent him that email, then came back to watch.’
‘No.’
She turned and walked away. He yelled out desperately behind her: ‘I swear it, Rebecca. It was only a sudden idea to send that email. I meant to ask Lalao and Marie-Claire to watch where your father sails. From different places, you know.’
Rebecca went back. ‘Triangulation,’ she said flatly.
‘Yes. But I never even got hold of them, I swear. Nothing happened.’
‘Nothing except my father and sister dying,’ she said bitterly. ‘They were your friends. They did everything for you. How could you betray them like that?’
He had the grace to look ashamed. ‘All my women, my children. You think my life comes free? Please, Becca.’ He got on to his knees to show her his wrists bound behind him. ‘Untie me. Please.’
She shook her head, too angry even to look at him. She had no time anyway. The waves were still pushing them inexorably towards the reef. The floor of the bridge was swilling with water. The engine had stalled. Her heart was in her mouth when she tried and failed to restart it, but thankfully it came alive at the third attempt. She swung the Yvette around and away. It was growing lighter all the time, and her anger made her decisive, which in turn made steering easier. She reached the pass, steered them back into the relative calm of the lagoon.
The eastern sky was pale with dawn. She felt a terrible weariness. Daniel must have been guilty after all. He must have been. She couldn’t bear to contemplate anything else. He’d been greedy for the treasure, he’d made his way down here and murdered her father and sister. He’d deserved everything he’d got. But each time she drew close to convincing herself, she remembered the feel of his hand around her ankle, the way he’d let her go, sacrificing himself so that she could live. Was that the action of a murderer? Of a psychopath? In a daz
e, she steered the Yvette back to Eden, until the hull scraped sand and she cut the engine. Her hands began trembling wildly, as though her body were demanding back-payment for everything she’d put it through.
Pierre was still bawling to be let free, but she couldn’t face him, not yet. She went down into the cabin instead, where Emilia had tumbled face-down in a couple of inches of water on the floor. She righted the bed, hauled her back up on to it, trying not to look at the trickles of sand that leaked from her nostrils and mouth. The Yvette lurched suddenly on its keel, sending a low wave of water washing across the cabin, carrying all kinds of flotsam with it, including Emilia’s camera, the very camera whose disappearance had set her worrying about Daniel. She felt hollowed as she picked it up, turned it over. A hook at the back had broken, allowing the strap to escape. She remembered how Daniel had stumbled when bringing Emilia down the companionway steps into the cabin. The camera must have snagged on something, snapping the hook. She turned it on. It was a digital camera, its display allowing you to view your most recent photographs. She went through them one by one. Adam outside the lodge, a scuba tank on his shoulder. Emilia with Michel, playing on the sand. Then one of Therese holding Michel and waving them off. Out on the boat now, sunlight on turquoise waters and the white sail of a distant pirogue. Adam grinning at the camera as he zipped up his wetsuit, then another with him in the full gear, about to make a dive. And not a sign of Daniel anywhere, or of Pierre, or of anyone but Adam and Emilia themselves.
She looked over at Emilia. Now that the sheet was off her, she noticed her pulped left leg and the fine-meshed gillnet around her ankle. It was dreadful stuff, all too easy to get tangled up in. She tried to think back to her father, whether there’d been any on him. She couldn’t remember seeing any, but his lower body had been covered by that altar cloth, and she couldn’t be sure.
