by J G Alva
A little voice piped up in the back of his mind, a cruel voice, a little goblin of conjecture: are you really a hundred percent certain that she loves you? A hundred percent certain?
Yes, they were happy. Alright, they had disagreements, but what couple didn’t? No, he refused to accept that Jessica had plotted with Mike against him. Mike had been acting alone.
So what would happen now Nick was out of the picture?
Well, the company would be Jessica’s, and she would probably hand over most of the running of it to Mike. Maybe he felt he could pull the company out from under her, it wouldn’t be hard, she didn’t know that much about it, or about business matters in general. But it would take time, and that was obviously something Mike felt he didn’t have enough of. Maybe Mike thought he could seduce her. A lonely widow, nursing a broken heart, might very well turn to someone she knew for comfort and solace, and Mike was a good looking bloke, maybe not good looking but he had a way with women, there was always some attractive bit of eye candy on his arm at the Christmas or summer parties, always a different one every year, but always the same type, as if they had been cut out of a mould on a production line: young, blonde, trim, polite but vacuous. Jessica was too much of a woman for him to handle. If he thought he could work his charms on her, he was in for a bit of a shock.
Nick stood up and started back.
It didn’t make sense. He had the idea he was missing some of the facts, because the pieces didn’t fit together, so he decided it was useless to try and weave what he had together in to some sort of workable theory; all he could do was work with what he already knew: that Mike had arranged to have him killed for £200,000.
All of Nick’s muscles had knotted again and he made himself relax just one more time. Fucking Mike. A sliver of fear touched him briefly, but it was swept away in a turbulent storm of sudden, merciless anger. My God, if he ever got off this island...
Nick stopped, ice in his heart from a new thought.
What if Mike planned to kill Jessica?
Very much like his plan to get rid of Nick, if he got rid of Jessica, all of Mitchell Cole would be his…if that was what he was after. What if he was plotting her demise at this very moment? He would probably have to wait some years to avoid suspicion, but after that time had passed he could arrange a little accident for Jessica, a fall down the stairs maybe, or a fire. My God, Nick could see it in his mind’s eye as if it had already happened. He looked at the watch on his arm, useless now, it had stopped completely about three weeks ago, but it helped his mind to fall in to rational patterns. It was July now. Mike wouldn’t do anything for a year at least. Probably not two years, but let’s say a year to be on the safe side. He had that much time.
He had to get off this fucking island before that year was up. He felt the urgency of it in all his limbs.
The idea that had been brewing for some time in his mind popped to the surface suddenly, like an old corpse stuck at the river’s bottom, freed up by the torrent from a summer storm.
He put a little purpose in his stride and made his way back to Rebekah.
◆◆◆
“No,” Rebekah said.
For a moment Nick thought he had misheard her.
“What?”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“It’s too dangerous to stay here,” Nick said. “This place is killing us.”
“We don’t even know where we are,” Rebekah said desperately. “If we set out on a raft with no idea of where we’re going, we could end up bobbing around on the ocean until we die of dehydration.”
“There’s hundreds of islands in the Seychelles,” Nick said. “And thousands of tourists. We’re bound to come across one or the other.”
“If you believe that then why don’t you stay here and wait to be found. That’s the more sensible option.”
“For God’s sake, Rebekah, I want to get off this island.”
“I know you do,” Rebekah said, her voice and eyes caring, “and so do I, but this isn’t the way. It’s too dangerous.”
Nick paced in a tight circle, stopped, faced her.
“You’re right,” he said. “It will be dangerous. And if you don’t want to do it that’s fair enough. I’ll go alone. That way I know you’ll be safe here, and when I find help I’ll bring it back.”
Rebekah stared down at the sand.
“When you were ill,” she said softly, “I tried to imagine what it would be like to be on this island by myself. And the thought scared me to death. I don’t...I don’t think I could handle it. I think I’d go mad.” Her eyes looked at him beseechingly. “We’ll be rescued soon, I know we will. Maybe not for a couple of months, but we will be rescued. Can’t we just wait, Nick? Please?”
He looked at her. She looked so small and fragile, sitting on that big empty beach, that she seemed to melt some of the anger and urgency in him. And he thought about leaving her here by herself, and about his own panic at her disappearance the month before. Solitude was a cruelty he didn’t want to enforce on her.
“Alright,” he relented. He still had time. Mike wouldn’t do anything for a year at least. He could wait. “We wait. We’ll see what happens.”
Rebekah nodded and lowered her head, but not before Nick saw her bottom lip tremble.
◆◆◆
CHAPTER 5
“Why would this Michael Ross try to have you killed?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been looking at it from every angle and all I can think of is...money. He wanted Mitchell Cole for himself.” Nick spread his hands with the coconut shells in them. “That’s it. I can’t think of anything else.”
Rebekah paused, picking her way carefully amongst the mushroom-shaped rocks, also with a coconut shell in each hand.
“And why would he get pirates to do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well.” Rebekah was mindful of her next steps. “He could have pushed you down the stairs. Do you know what I mean? Instead of travelling halfway around the world.”
It was a good question.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, after thinking about it. “Do people who set out to murder use any logical thought process? How logical is murder, as a course of action?”
“I suppose not.”
“Maybe – in his mind – this was the only logical way he could think of to set it up so he looked innocent.”
She considered his answer.
“What is he like, this Michael Ross?” She asked eventually.
“You mean, what sort of a person is he?”
“Yeah.”
Nick shrugged.
“Easy going. Likeable. Ambitious. He’s a sports fanatic. You know, does all this sky diving and bungee jumping.”
“Would you have thought him capable of this sort of thing? If I hadn’t told you about what I heard? Would you have suspected him?”
Nick stared at her, thought about it, and then shook his head.
“No. I’ve known Mike for about two years, and I never would have suspected him capable of this. But then again, how well do we really know anyone? Mike’s got a whole history before he met me, you know, his time in the Navy and all that, and I bet there’s stuff he did then I wouldn’t have thought him capable of now, but he’s already done it. Do you see what I mean?”
Rebekah frowned.
“I think so.”
She scooped up water in her dried out coconut shells and took a sip. Nick did the same.
“And I’ve been thinking about the two hundred thousand,” Nick said. “One hundred thousand before, and then one hundred thousand after it was done. That’s a lot of money to come up with, even for Mike. He could have gotten a loan, I suppose, but that would have attracted some attention. I was thinking...”
“What?”
“I’m wondering if Arthur was involved.”
“Arthur?”
“When Mike joined, I had an accountancy firm doing my books. Mike suggested we could save money by doing it
in house, and he knew just the guy, an old friend of his by the name of Arthur Keats. Arthur Keats is a strange guy. Short, quiet, always impeccably turned out. A clever man. I’ve known him for about eight months, but I probably haven’t spoken more than a hundred words to him. I was thinking...if Mike wanted to get his hands on some money, with Arthur being the accountant, they could have used some of the money from the Mitchell Cole business accounts, without me knowing anything about it. They’re old friends, they go way back...they could be in this together.” Nick paused, thinking about it. “My God, that takes the biscuit. Using my own money to try to have me killed.”
“Does this Arthur Keats seem like a bad person at all?”
Nick made a face.
“I don’t really know. I hardly know him. His credentials all checked out, but I don’t really know him, do you know what I mean? It’s possible he could do this, but I don’t know him well enough to tell you either way.” He paused, digesting what he had just said, and then added, “I didn’t know either of them, and I employed them. Not the smartest move in the world, huh?”
◆◆◆
“Merry Christmas,” Rebekah said.
Nick looked up in surprise.
They had now discovered what constituted the rainy season in the Seychelles, a period of about a month, at least so far, alternating between a sporadic drizzle broken by the occasional tropical storm. The most recent storm had come on them the night before, the island lit by flashes of lighting that seemed to scratch lines in the fabric of the sky itself, fantastic spectacles that were at the same time breath-taking and terrifying, and now it was only the drizzle that rained down on them, so fine it was like a mist; it turned the sand to sludge and made the leaves hang low on the trees, weighted down with moisture.
Nick had constructed something of a shelter only a short way back from the beach, on more solid ground; he had dug holes and put in long, sturdy pieces of driftwood, scoured clean and almost colourless by the sun and the sea; he had then added cross beams, that sat in grooves carved out of them using sharp chunks of rock; leaves had been woven together to form a roof of sorts, and this had been tied to the cross beams using vines which they had dried out in the sun. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked, and best of all it had stood up to the battering the intermittent storms bestowed upon them.
Now they sat huddled underneath it, neither of them particularly uncomfortable; the coolness was a welcome change to the constant assault of the heat. Nick had been thinking about putting some sort of barrier on one side, to stop what wind there was from blowing through, when Rebekah had spoken and interrupted his thoughts.
“Christmas?” He said.
Rebekah smiled.
“Didn’t you hear Santa’s sleigh bells in the night?”
Her smile hurt Nick. Rebekah looked so frail now that if she fell over he wouldn’t have been surprised to see her shatter in to a dozen pieces, like a sun dried log.
“He left you this,” she said, and reached behind herself for something.
She produced a parcel of leaves, and Nick took it, unwrapping the leaves carefully in his hands.
“I hope it fits,” she said.
It was a bracelet of sorts, consisting of a strand of sun dried vine decorated with six shells.
He took it, and as he did so was overcome with shame at the thought that he had nothing to give her in return. The ugliness that had been growing within him rose up momentarily, a leering toad face that was inside him all the time, and seemed to get bigger every day. You have been so wrapped up in yourself, the toad cooed cruelly. You have been so wrapped up in your own hurt that you’ve hardly noticed her. You don’t deserve this present. You don’t deserve anything.
The voice was right, he had to concede. More than once Nick had wished that Rebekah had not told him of the whispered conversation she had overheard on the St. Anne…or wished that she hadn’t heard it at all. Now Nick’s days were consumed imagining the ways in which he could hurt and humiliate Michael Ross and Arthur Keats, if and when he finally got back to civilization.
Occasionally he would snap out of it and slightly removed from everything look back at himself and be disgusted and saddened by what he had become, this nice happy man who had poison in his veins now instead of blood, but he could not leave the vindictive thoughts alone for long, they were like a drug and he was addicted to them. He needed them. They were the fuel now that made the island easier to bear. He would not let the island beat him, he had decided. He would survive, and he would get back to England and he would exact his revenge on his good friend Michael Ross and his co-conspirator Arthur Keats.
In his weaker moments he wondered if Mike hadn’t succeeded in what he had set out to do. The man who now sat under this leaf roof in Nick Mitchell’s skin was not the man who had crawled out of the ocean with the wounded Rebekah under his arm. That man really had died; a Hate-creature in a Nick suit was all that was left.
The fit was a little tight, but with a little work he managed to slip the bracelet over his hand and on to his wrist. He looked at it, feeling humble.
“I didn’t get you anything,” he said, woodenly.
She smiled again.
“That doesn’t matter. I know it’s not much, I know it’s silly, but I just wanted us to celebrate Christmas. Do you like it?”
Nick fingered it, turning it slowly on his wrist. With alarm he realised he was going to start crying, and that there was nothing he could do to stop it, but he fought it anyway, gulping back the tears like a fish thrown out of the river gasping for air, and he hid his face, because he didn’t want her to see, because he had to be strong – he was the man, he had to be strong if they were going to survive this.
There was movement out of the corner of his eye and then Rebekah was hugging him, her tiny warm body wrapped around his, her face in the side of his neck, and he could smell her, he knew the smell so well now, it was a part of him, and he held her, the parent become the child, the child become the parent, and he buried his face in her hair, smelling the good clean smell of her, the smell of Rebekah, and almost without any control over himself he was crushing her against him, closer, closer, and they held each other, just holding on, just....holding on, and in that moment the dam broke within him, and the tears came flooding out, an endless fountain.
◆◆◆
“Why are you still wearing that watch?” Rebekah asked.
“Huh?”
Nick, lost in his own thoughts, came back to the conversation.
Rebekah pointed to the watch on his left wrist.
“You said it hasn’t worked for months. Why are you still wearing it?”
Nick looked down at it. He shrugged.
“I don’t know.” He smiled. “One last homage to civilisation?”
“You should take it off. It’s bad for your skin. Look. You’re red and peeling underneath it. Take it off.”
Nick put his hand protectively over it.
“No. It’s alright.”
Rebekah stared at him.
“That’s typical of you.”
Nick frowned.
“What do you mean?”
"Holding on to something that's pointless."
"What?"
Rebekah turned away.
“Never mind,” she said.
◆◆◆
There was a place in the woods.
It was a place he didn’t go to very often, and when he had no need to go there he avoided it, as if the ground were cursed.
He had found it about a month after they had come to the island, a little hollow amongst the trees, screened from all sides, one side a large rock at the base of the hill.
He went there now, glancing quickly around to make sure that nobody was there. Nobody? No, only that Rebekah had not followed him and was somewhere nearby. Satisfied that he was alone, he entered the hollow. His heart began its racing. He unzipped his trousers, the zip a little rusty after all this time, the trousers themselves split in a hundred places, l
oose on him where had had lost so much weight. He freed himself, already hard, and commenced to masturbate, caught up in his need for release, all thoughts of revenge banished for the moment, the memory of Jessica all that was filling his head, the kissing, the loving, until in a final explosion it was over, and he was done.
The feeling of shame and guilt that usually came afterward seemed to him totally disproportionate to the act. He was a man, he needed this release, what was there to feel guilty about? But there it was, the guilt, part of the toad thing that was a constant companion now, and zipping up and leaving the hollow his face, had he been able to see it, would have made him unhappier still, a rictus of misery and self-loathing that curled his mouth and put lines in his cheeks where he normally had none.
Further back amongst the trees, hidden from view, Rebekah watched.
◆◆◆
There could be no secrets on the island, not on an island of this size anyway. He should have known that, and been prepared, but the shock of Rebekah’s sudden appearance as he worked on the raft felt like a betrayal of her, so much so that he actually blushed with shame.
Her face was red as well, but he saw this was not embarrassment for having followed him, but anger. He knew her well enough now to know every expression on her face, and she was furious. The veins in her neck stood out like electrical cables.
“What are you doing,” she demanded, her voice almost a squeak.
“Rebekah – "
“Were you...were you even going to tell me?”
Nick sighed.
“Of course I was going to tell you.”
“When? When you were out in the bay on it? When you were on the horizon?”
He came towards her, but she stepped back, out of reach. He stopped.
“Were you just going to leave me here?”
There were tears in her eyes.
Nick, angry at how she was making him feel, said hotly, “we have to get off this island. I didn’t tell you because you don’t want to talk about it. Every time I bring it up you change the subject. Don’t you want to get off this island? Don’t you want to get back?”
