The Trespassers

by Meg Mundell

  ~

  Billie stared into the dark, felt the cool wash of the fan skim back and forth across the hot cabin. Her aim had been to dip into the stream, fish out the necessary info and get out quickly, sidestep the hysteria. She’d always tended towards the dry side – avoided wallowing in that poisonous undertow of anger and opinion, the emotional runoff from millions of anonymous strangers.

  But curiosity had won out: she’d seen the swirling fear and vitriol, the wild entanglement of fact and emotion. Unable to stop herself, scanning the accusations with a mounting sense of horror: the angry claims that lives had been lost because untrained people had taken on well-paid medical roles they were not qualified for. That those amateurs who’d profited so handsomely from suffering and death – those greedy frauds who’d been so cavalier with human lives, let loved ones die so pointlessly, stacked their bodies on ice down in some grubby cargo hold – now had blood on their hands. The sense of injustice was like a physical pain. She couldn’t defend herself, was locked out of the conversation.

  Her brain kept looping back to an anonymous piece by someone who’d lost a relative aboard the Steadfast. The tone was bereft, rather than aggrieved, but the item had attracted a sympathetic chorus of howlers, and the thread had swiftly taken a vindictive swerve. Become yet another rabid condemnation of the inept imposters who’d been paid big money to let twelve people die. Never mind that the thirteenth victim had died right here, in the care of local doctors.

  That piece hadn’t named the nurses, but the details were not difficult to dig up, her own name most prominent. They’d used an old work photo: Billie standing at a sink in a dirty set of scrubs, a scowl on her face. She looked like bad news – surly, guilty of something, unapologetic.

  All those strangers – they didn’t know her. Had no idea how hard she’d fought to keep the sick ones on this side of the void, stop death from claiming them. She felt tears pricking at her eyes, blinked them away. She was not a crier. Blubbing never helped.

  She turned her pillow, seeking out a cool spot. Heard a rustle: felt something rigid beneath it, a foreign object. She shone her torch under the pillow. In the beam of light lay a large envelope, the flap stuck down. She turned it over.

  The words were printed in a neat, familiar hand: Private – Secret – Confidential. DO NOT TELL. She smiled at the air of mystery, the childlike dedication to intrigue: the boy had snuck in here to leave this for her. He hadn’t forgotten her.

  Billie tore open the flap, and felt her smile fade. She recognised the first drawing at a glance, one of a set the interrogators had coaxed out of the boy. They’d photographed the whole series, as if it was important evidence, returning the originals to him in an envelope very much like this one.

  The drawing had disturbed her at the time: a window framed by black-scribbled night. Goods stacked on shelves, water tanks set on a bench, a fire extinguisher bolted to the wall. Below all this, at the bottom of the picture, a pair of work boots attached to horizontal legs, and a floor awash with long streaks of bright red.

  The second drawing was new, but there was no mistaking its subject. A stark portrait: fierce deep-set eyes, wild black beard, blue uniform shirt, the red star on the pocket. A strong likeness: the kid could draw. Smeared across the man’s face, from cheek to temple, was a vivid slash of red. Marshall: the chief steward.

  The torch beam hovered between the two images, alternating light and dark. Billie drew the torch back, the circle widening, so both drawings were caught in its bright gaze.

  A dawning realisation: that she had been oblivious, had left the child to his own devices, missed the signs. That his fear, his vulnerability, ran much deeper than she’d cared to know.

  Could there be another way to read this? Part of her mind rejected what lay in front of her, refused to join the dots, sought an alternative explanation.

  Of course the boy could be mistaken, be imagining things, forming conclusions with no basis in fact. But this message was hardly ambiguous – it was a testimony of sorts.

  Fragments of memory whirling and coalescing, the pieces now clicking into place: Davy Whelan, sprawled on the kiosk floor in a pool of his own blood, the open water tank on the bench above. Scoot’s broken body, drifting with the tide. The boy’s near-drowning, his injury, his constant watchfulness. A voice calling after them: That kid’s not right in the head. One common denominator, a nauseous outline taking shape.

  She recalled Marshall necking sly grog in the storeroom, singing along with her to ‘Skye Boat Song’; standing guard that day the nurses were forced into service, his gaze sliding away from her. The man all but spitting in her face that time, accusing her of spreading the sickness. A glimpse of him in a passageway, sanning his hands with almost manic fervour. His recent disarray, his air of human wreckage. Talk of him weeping in public, passed out drunk, ranting nonsense. And his interest in the boy: there was a hostile edge to it. Whatever Cleary had seen, there was bad knowledge between the two of them.

  Who could she trust? Not management: Marshall was one of them. She must tread carefully, for Cleary’s sake. Handled rashly, this coded message could place the boy at grave risk.

  By torchlight Billie retrieved the smuggled device from the lining of her luggage. In the dark of the kitchenette, shielding the screen’s illicit glow, she sent a swift message: Evan Marshall, on crew: look into him.

  ~

  Days passed with no response. No sign of Mitch since his last dispatch, the news about the poisoned water tank. Had the journalist left the ship? Been discovered?

  Billie tried to focus on the child, to let him know she’d understood his message. To signal that she would do her best to protect him, to keep his mother safe. But Cleary refused to leave his ma’s side, so Billie could not spell out these assurances too specifically: had to transmit them through gesture, eye contact, facial expressions; coded pledges. It wasn’t enough.

  Friends forever? she wrote in his notebook. I’ll come visit you in Dublin once we get home.

  Pinkie swear? Cleary put down the pen, held up his little finger.

  They hooked their pinkies together and made a pact: come what may, they’d always stay in touch. Would always remain fast friends.

  But her assurances felt flimsy, his hopeful glances almost painful. The boy looked thin and sleepless. His knee was healing, but wouldn’t yet bear his full weight, the crutches still needed. The cabin he now shared with his mother was located near the stern, on the lower decks: relatively isolated, and not far from the crew’s quarters.

  How real was the danger? Kellahan had seen Scoot’s body. Had described the injuries, cited the autopsy report: Multiple fractures to the skull, patterned contusions indicating blunt force trauma. Abraded contusions and lacerations to the face. Chop injuries to the upper chest with underlying fracture of right clavicle. If Marshall knew there was a witness to his crime, a possibility that he would be exposed, an undersized kid and his frail mother wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Another thought: it wasn’t an easy task, beating a man to death. Had Marshall managed it alone, or did he have help? Who else might wish the child harm?

  When a berth became free in the nurses’ cabin, Billie pressed for Cleary and his ma to relocate and share the lower bunk. ‘All those stairs are bad for his knee,’ she argued. ‘We’re a quiet bunch. And this way I can watch him while you rest.’

  Cate was reluctant, but the boy begged, and Kellahan helped secure clearance. Billie arranged new wristbands and tacked up a curtain so Cate could nap in her bed during the day. It wasn’t enough, but it was something.

  And then, at last, a reply. The message landed in the small hours of the morning: Meet me 3 p.m. today. Same place.

  ~

  The saloon was busy, a gathering in progress, a group of passengers airing grievances and plotting insurrection, voices raised to unwise volumes. They’d soon attract attention. Bill
ie slipped past and made for the concealed booth.

  Mitch looked different. Unshaven and underslept, with an air of nervous brio, as if he’d overdone the coffee. The journo did not waste time on greetings.

  ‘I’ve found something,’ he announced. He seemed keyed up, eager to talk. But then he hedged. Asked why she’d singled Marshall out. What did she know about the chief steward?

  Billie shook her head. ‘Nothing you can use,’ she said firmly. ‘Just gossip.’ She had to keep the boy out of this, not risk exposing him to further danger. ‘I don’t have long, so …’

  ‘There’s this guy I work with,’ said Mitch. ‘Gun for hire, stream trawler.’ This hacker pal had been awake for days – chasing digital trails, pulling in darkstream favours, cracking correspondence, digging into financial records.

  ‘He’s struck pay dirt,’ said Mitch. ‘The intel’s not strictly legal, but we can feed it through a leak site.’ He raised his eyebrows, seeking her reaction. A hint of arrogance, of self-congratulation, about him now.

  Patience ebbing, Billie let the silence sit, refusing to buy into his performance.

  ‘Evidence,’ he said. ‘Payments from one of the rival shippers, Orion. Three lump-sum transfers, made to a shadow account registered to a string of proxies.’

  ‘Payments?’ she echoed. He had her full attention now. ‘To who?’

  ‘The recipient’s name is Evan Marshall – just like you thought.’ The journo narrowed his eyes, gauging her reaction. ‘A former Orion employee. The company’s paid him a shitload of money, all covert, in instalments. The dates are interesting.’ An initial payment made early last year, he said, just after Marshall joined Red Star. The second sum – triple the size, an obscene amount – landing soon after Davy Whelan was killed. The final chunk, like a dirty afterthought, deposited just two weeks ago.

  ‘Billie?’ said Mitch softly. ‘Your tip helped. I think we’ve got him.’

  Scenes of damage played in her head: open wounds, deep bruises; the mottled pallor of a fresh cadaver, the blistered sheen of autolysis.

  ‘You’re certain?’ she asked. ‘There’s no doubt?’

  ‘Positive. The payment trail leads back to Charon Group. A subsidiary of Orion.’ He seemed pleased with himself. ‘They were careless.’

  There’s something in the water … Devil water … Poison money.

  Scoot: he’d known. She felt sick, her thoughts spinning. The picture coming into focus, despite her own raw sense of disbelief.

  ‘What happens now?’

  ‘Nobody else knows yet,’ said Mitch. ‘Can’t risk a leak yet – it’s not safe for me. I’ll float the story in the next day or two. But first I need to somehow get myself out of here.’ He swallowed, and Billie was struck by how young he looked. Doubt now flitting across those boyish features. ‘There’s been other breaches. Things are tightening up. They’re running extra background checks.’

  She couldn’t take it in: the idea that all that horror, that brutal destruction of life, had been driven by something so banal. Money: a means of exchange. She felt a surge of revulsion. Understood, in that moment, the urge for retribution, the lure of violence. How you could hate someone enough to hurt them, badly.

  ‘I owe you,’ Mitch was saying. ‘We’d have uncovered this eventually, no doubt, but you narrowed things down, pointed me in the right direction.’ Conditional gratitude, then – a not-so-subtle bid to minimise any debt she might be owed in this exchange.

  ‘What about us?’ she asked. ‘The nurses, the passengers, all of us – can you help get us out of here?’

  Mitch tried for a smile, but it lacked the usual warmth. ‘Once this story breaks I’ll do my best – apply pressure, advocate for all of you to be released. Try to get some kind of resolution.’ He rose abruptly. ‘Gotta go. Hang in there.’ And he was gone.

  ~

  Staring out to sea, she let the images reel through her mind: Cate’s unconscious form, her sunken cheeks and bloodless lips; the boy’s dark eyes seeking out Billie in the dim of their shared cabin, all the hope and terror compressed into that small body. The hostile officials, the hologram judge and her sidekick, all seeking to lay blame wherever it might stick; the bluffing medicos, the silence from above. All those howlers, polluting the stream with their misdirected hatred.

  And the dead: she recalled them all in detail, every single person who had died down there in that stinking room. Her own gloved hands, zipping the body bags shut.

  What she’d give to confront Marshall herself, make him feel the full weight of her hatred, be diminished by it. What kind of inner deficit could bring someone to commit such an act?

  No, it was too risky. He might trace it back to the boy.

  Or could the opposite be true: what if she issued a covert warning, hinted that she had his measure? It might give Marshall pause, make him back off the kid.

  ~

  Chance sprang an opportunity that afternoon.

  In calm weather the crew unfurled the sails across the deck as shelter from the sun. Billie sat in the shade, watching Cleary play knucklebones with a group of kids, a circle of red sunhats bent over their game. Cate was stretched out nearby, dozing.

  At the sight of Evan Marshall striding across the deck, Billie snapped to attention. The man came to a halt on the edge of the children’s circle, observing the game’s progress. Sensing his presence some of the kids squinted up, then turned back to their play.

  But not Cleary: the boy did not raise his head. He crouched motionless, the knucklebones clenched in his fist. Billie watched as the other kids urged him to take his turn; she witnessed him fumbling the metal pieces, dropping them to the deck, forfeiting the game. Only then did Marshall move away.

  Billie intercepted the man as he reached the hatchway. Blocked his path, met his eye.

  ‘You’re being watched,’ she said. ‘They know. There’s evidence.’

  Marshall glared back at her. Something crossed his face: a flicker of doubt, or apprehension. Then his expression hardened. He leant in close, as if sharing an endearment. ‘Mind yourself, scab,’ he said, spitting each word as if it was a curse. ‘You don’t know what you’re dealing with.’

  He turned and walked away.

  Billie’s legs felt boneless, and she was short of air. This was no longer a matter of dislike or contempt, or even disgust. No, it had gone beyond that. Now she was afraid of him too.

  TOM

  I was up on the main deck with the children, collecting stray knucklebones after a tournament, when an ungodly racket floated out across the water: a metallic clank and rattle, like a giant lawnmower firing up.

  The Nightingale was drawing up her anchor chain.

  The kids and I stood along the gunwale, watching the anchor’s progress as it was winched up from the depths. Once it was flush with the hull, tugboats were manoeuvred into position, lines cast down. Then the hospital ship turned its back on us and began to edge away.

  The children observed this procedure in near-silence.

  As the Nightingale slunk past, its upper decks conspicuously empty, Mia turned to me. ‘That means the bug’s all gone,’ the child declared. ‘There’s no more sickness.’ She was scowling, as if defying me to disagree.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘We’re safe now.’

  Nearby I saw Billie, smoking discreetly, cigarette held low, exhaling out the corner of her mouth. In the shadow of the mast Cleary stood with his mother, bearing witness to the Nightingale’s slow retreat. I noticed the boy glance around, checking Billie’s whereabouts. She smiled at him, and he turned back to watch the hospital ship inch away into the distance.

  ~

  I was dead to the world when the alarm blared out, an urgent squalling that shattered any hope of sleep. Guards were stomping the aisles, rousing people, turfing stragglers out of bed. I heard the word evacuate and joined the q
ueue of men shuffling from the room.

  The upper decks were jammed with people in various states of undress – barefoot crewmen, passengers in pyjamas. Soldiers corralled us towards the stern. An acrid stink hung heavy in the air.

  Fire! The ship’s on fire!

  We couldn’t see the flames at first. A row of barricades hemmed us in behind the wheelhouse, and beyond it stood a line of soldiers. They came and went, craned their necks, keeping tabs on what was happening down the far end, out of sight.

  Black smoke was drifting up through the rigging. A young boy had clambered up onto his dad’s shoulders, the child’s silhouette framed by an eerie flickering light.

  A woman called out to the nearest soldier: ‘How bad is it? Are we being evacuated?’

  The soldier pretended not to hear, but the woman persevered, kept calling to him.

  ‘We’re waiting for instructions,’ he yelled back, then turned away and busied himself with his radio. He looked no older than eighteen, and was clearly frightened.

  A collective gasp: now we saw it – bright filaments of flame reaching up into the night, snatching at the air. The fire was towards the bow of the ship, the flames licking around the yardarm. Black smoke seeped across the moon and someone let out a sharp scream.

  Fear swept through the crowd. People were leaning over the rails, calling for help. A group of men tried to shove the barricades aside, but the soldiers converged, weapons half raised, shouting at them to get back. A police boat ploughed into view, lights flashing, an official on deck wielding a loudhailer, his voice ringing out across the water: Please remain calm. The fire is being contained. Please remain calm.

  Smoke roiled and billowed, the flames climbing higher now, the air rippling hot, the fire gathering force. I could feel the heat of it on my upturned face. Why weren’t they evacuating us?

  A passenger was braced against the rail, his young daughter held aloft, one arm wrapped firm around the girl’s middle, holding her out like an offering. He was shouting to someone below, pleading: Get the children off. Take the children!