Adrift, p.20
Adrift, page 20
I nod slowly.
‘Well, what if you set up some cameras in my room too? Then, when the shit hits the fan the next time… we can catch him in the act.’
31
PRESENT DAY
I keep expecting Rhys to suddenly leap up from the blood-soaked deck, wipe the red liquid from his face and reveal that this is all just some elaborate prank. None of the blood is real, and his convulsing and Fergus’s ghostly pallor were all just a part of a well-rehearsed act. But Rhys doesn’t rise, and the thin puddle continues to sway and flow in rhythm with the boat on the increasingly agitated sea.
The wind is whipping up around us – the onset of a storm? – and it’s causing the yacht to tilt and bob with every ebb and flow. White spray splashes up with every dip and rise. One thing’s for certain: we won’t be able to stay up on deck if the wind gets much stronger.
‘What are we going to do with Rhys’s body?’ I shout over the din to Sophie, who is pacing, and probably not aiding the shift of the boat.
‘He’ll have to go in the cage with the others.’
She is so matter of fact that it could be mistaken for heartlessness, but I know she’s just trying to be practical.
‘You two put him in the cage,’ she says, ‘while I try to find something to mop the deck with.’
She disappears down into the galley in search of tools.
I look to Fergus and raise my eyebrows, encouraging him to prepare himself for lifting the body, but he can’t keep his eyes off his fallen friend.
He suddenly drops to his knees, and lays Rhys out flat onto his back, holding two fingers to his neck.
I try to pull him away. ‘It’s too late. I already checked for a pulse. He’s gone.’
‘No, I’m sure I can still feel a pulse. It’s faint, but there’s something there. Give me your hand.’
Without another word, he grabs my hand, and pulls me down to my knees, pressing my fingers against his skin.
‘I can’t feel a pulse, Fergus, I think you’re imagining it.’
‘No, no, it’s there. I can feel it. He’s still alive. We can’t just throw him in the cage like some discarded bag of crisps. He’ll drown and then we’ll have killed him. Maybe if we can get him talking, he can tell us what happened?’
He’s agitated, and I wish Sophie had sent me in search of the mop and bucket instead. I snatch my hand free, and attempt to stand, but another jerk of the boat has me crashing back to the floor, dangerously close to the puddle of blood, but I manage to keep my shoulder away as it slams into the wooden deck. I try again, this time parting my legs more, and scoop my hands under Fergus’s armpits. I heave him up, but he fights all the way, trying to pull himself back to Rhys. As soon as Fergus is on his feet, I twist him round so he is facing me.
‘He’s gone, bro. There’s nothing we can do for him.’
Sophie reappears, mop and bucket in hand, and a disappointed look on her face when she sees Rhys is where she left him.
‘I’ll get the cage up,’ she says, pointing up at the cockpit.
The motor whirs as the mechanism engages and the cage begins to rise out of the water. Elena’s body has floated to the top. Her long dark hair splays out, and her white face stares back at me through the metal bars. I can’t have Fergus seeing her like this – he can’t see what will also happen to Rhys’s body – so I keep him facing away, as I manoeuvre the cage, unlock and raise the lid. I try to push Elena’s face beneath the water with my foot, but it bobs with every attempt. Maybe we should have thought of tying them to the bottom of the cage so that this wouldn’t have been a problem, but in truth, I never realised just how many bodies we’d be trying to hide in here. One thing’s for sure: the cage isn’t large enough to hold all of us.
‘Don’t look,’ I tell Fergus forcefully. ‘Okay? You take Rhys’s feet, and I’ll lift him by the arms. Best thing is for you to keep your eyes closed. Stay behind the safety rope and edge along as I pull, but stop when I do.’
He nods his understanding, and looks at Sophie, who’s standing in the safety of the cockpit. Then he stoops and coils his fingers around Rhys’s ankles. I don’t have a choice but to step into the bloody puddle to get my hands under his arms, but we manage to lift him up. It takes a heave to get him on to the rim of the vessel, and Fergus closes his eyes as I instructed, while we edge along until my bottom grazes the lid of the cage. Then I position Rhys’s torso on the lid and gently slide him down into the water.
Once his body is in, I slam the lid shut and reach down to lock it. I should warn Fergus to keep his eyes closed, but I’m too busy fiddling with the lock, and I hear him gasp and retch when he spots Elena’s face just below the bars, as if she’s trying to escape.
I straighten and try to get to him, but he’s having none of it, hopping back onto the deck, which Sophie has just cleaned, and hurries down below, screaming that he’s not putting up with this any more.
‘Probably best to give him a minute,’ Sophie suggests, as she continues to drain the blood into the bucket of soapy water. The bubbles have turned a hellish red colour. ‘I think there’s a storm brewing, which means we’ll be sitting ducks if we can’t get this yacht moving. As soon as I’m done with the clean-up, I’ll attempt to bypass the ignition.’
‘With all due respect, Soph, are you sure that’s such a wise idea?’
She slows the mop to a stop. ‘What choice do we have? The way I see things: either Raymond really is back from the dead – and I don’t believe that for a second – or one of you is responsible for what happened to Elena, Christophe and now Rhys. I know I’m not a killer, so that just leaves the two of you. Frankly, I don’t want to ride out a storm trapped below deck with either possibility coming to fruition.’
She’s about to start mopping again, but I grab hold of the plastic handle. ‘It wasn’t all that long ago you had your head buried in a bottle of wine, so you’ll forgive me questioning the steadiness of your hands before you start playing with electrified cables.’
She glowers under the weight of my expectant stare. ‘Funny, but watching one of your closest friends bleed to death from the face has something of a sobering effect. I’m fine. I didn’t drink too much. Back in the day, it used to take me two bottles before I even felt tipsy.’ She thrusts out a hand, holding it flat at the bottom of my nose, as if to prove just how steady it is.
I start to see Sophie in a new light. I haven’t had a drink all day, and after what we’ve just witnessed, not a single part of me would be that steady. Is there another reason she’s not reacting to Rhys’s bloody end as any normal person would?
I swipe her hand away. ‘I need to check on Fergus. How long do you think you’ll be before the blood is gone?’
She looks at what remains of the puddle. ‘A few minutes.’
I head through the hatch and down the steps, into the galley. There’s no sign of Fergus here or in the dinette, so I continue to the narrow corridor, and find him in his room, the first cabin to the right.
‘Sophie’s going to try and hotwire the yacht in a minute.’
‘What? No, we can’t leave. What if Harry swims back?’
It’s been over an hour since Harry left, and I don’t even know whether he could have made it to the shoreline in that time. I feel like we’ve drifted closer to the thread of land we saw this morning, but it’s now indistinguishable from the dark cloud coming ever closer to our location. I don’t want to consider the prospect that Harry won’t make it to safety. I can’t lose another friend. Not today.
‘If he’s swimming back, we’ll be able to collect him on the way,’ I say, in an attempt to pacify Fergus.
‘But we might not see him unless he’s on the same course as us. Please, Pete, we should just sit and wait for help to come.’
His confidence in Harry to make it and send aid is admirable, but the only reason he’d return is if he didn’t find help. If he doesn’t make it, we’ll remain stranded out here at the killer’s mercy.
Unless that’s what he actually wants?
My brow furrows as I consider the man standing before me, and he fixes me with an equally quizzical look. With Harry gone, I have nobody I can discuss my suspicions with. There’s so much going on, and I just don’t know who I can or should trust. Fergus is about to marry my sister, but he wasn’t always so reliable at university. Sophie, on the other hand, has been a good friend for so long, but what if the abuse she experienced for all of our sakes is now manifesting and forcing her to react?
I take an unsteady step backwards, casting my gaze towards the countertop in the galley, and notice the knife block: the large chef’s knife and one of the smaller ones are missing. I didn’t use either when preparing the pasta lunch, and it was definitely full when I last saw it. I glance back at Fergus, but his hands appear empty as he twists his fingers nervously.
I hear Sophie return with the mop and a now empty bucket; presumably she tipped the bloody water overboard, though I’m not sure that was such a smart move, given there may still be sharks lurking nearby.
‘I need to lift up the floor so I can get at the engine,’ she says, squeezing past me, along the hall to the V-berth. ‘When I tell you, Pete, I want you to go up to the cockpit. I’ve managed to extract the ignition block, and you’ll see two cables poking out of the bottom. When one of them moves, I want you to shout to Fergus which one it is, right or left. Fergus, I want you standing by the hatch, so you can then shout the message to me below deck. Got that?’
‘We can’t move the boat,’ Fergus says, the most decisive he’s been this entire trip. ‘We need to give Harry time to find help.’
Sophie shakes her head. ‘You – we all – need to accept that Harry’s already dead.’
My head snaps round, and my vision blurs as I feel the penny drop. All this time, I’ve been clinging on to the hope that his cheeky grin will suddenly reappear from out of the water, but there’s no faulting her logic.
‘Even with a tank of air, there’s no way he’d have enough to cover that distance. It must be a good two to three nautical miles back to that strip of shore, and we don’t even know if that was the mainland, or Paradise Cove where we were supposed to be heading.’ She takes a breath, and looks from Fergus to me. ‘Harry’s gone. And unless we want to join him, we need to get this yacht started.’
Fergus doesn’t budge. ‘There’s three of us. Let’s put it to the vote. I vote we stay. Sophie votes we go. Pete?’
I hate being put in the middle like this. I don’t want to disappoint either of them, but if by some miracle Sophie does manage to hotwire the engine, I also don’t want to think of Harry being stranded in the water and us not finding him.
I look at Fergus’s pleading eyes, and then at Sophie. And then it hits me: if Raymond isn’t behind all of this, then one of these two is. I can’t breathe. I no longer know which of them to trust. I don’t want to spend another second at the hands of a killer, so I fix Sophie with a hard stare. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’
‘As certain as I’m ever going to be. It’s this or we never get home.’
I nod. ‘Then we try to get the engine started.’
I don’t wait for Fergus to argue, climbing the steps out of the hatch and then up to the cockpit. I see where Sophie has managed to pull out the ignition block, and I see the two cables she’s referring to. I focus on them, looking for any movement.
‘Right,’ I call out, when the first one jiggles, and I hear Fergus relay the message. ‘Left,’ I call out when I see the second cable twitch.
There’s a sputtering sound, as if the yacht is waking from a deep slumber. And then there’s the loudest explosion.
The whole yacht shakes as plumes of thick black smoke appear at the bow.
32
TEN YEARS AGO
It’s been two weeks since we returned from the Christmas break and Sophie revealed the true extent of her relationship with Raymond. The physical bruises have healed, but I sense she’s still tending to the psychological scars, judging by the number of empty bottles in the recycle bin. She’s also been spending more and more time in Christophe’s room, and there’s only one reason I can think of for her to be up there.
I’ve shared my concerns, but she assures me she has everything under control, and despite my reservations, she’s a grown woman in control of her own mind, and I do have a tendency to overanalyse situations.
The others have subsequently returned to the house, and it feels like a fresh start. Rhys has been seeing a girl from his course, and since the new term started, there’s been no awkwardness or animosity between us. I still haven’t wanted Carly to stay over since Paris – although there’s now tape over the lens in the smoke alarm, I still don’t know whether the device has a microphone as well.
I ordered additional cameras for Sophie’s bedroom. They’ve been set up, covering all angles. As and when Raymond shows his cracked face, the trap will be sprung. I’m not comfortable with Sophie using herself as bait, but she’s leaving me little choice. Ultimately, if we want Raymond prosecuted for his brutality, we need evidence.
The cameras are hidden in an open and empty can of Stella Artois; in an ornamental waving cat – the kind I’ve often seen in our local Chinese takeaway; and in a picture frame that now holds a humorous postcard declaring ‘Smile, you’re on camera’. If I walked into Sophie’s room looking for where the cameras were hidden, my eye would be drawn to all three spots, but without that foresight, they just look like poor taste souvenirs.
‘You’ve checked the motion sensors are working?’ Sophie asks, as I pack my rucksack with criminology textbooks.
‘Checked and double-checked,’ I reassure her. ‘What time are you expecting him to come round?’
It’s Thursday, and all of us are due to be out between midday and two. Fergus, Harry and Rhys have been on campus since nine, and I’m about to walk with Christophe who is starting his shift at one of the pubs near the campus.
‘He’s likely to come and do his routine room check just after twelve. He’ll be angry when he can’t unlock your door. He’ll come knocking, and I’ll casually pretend I didn’t know you’d changed it. He’ll be fuming, especially after you taped up the lens in the smoke detector.’ She pauses, and looks down at the tremble in her hands, the first sign of nerves I’ve seen from her since she suggested this plan of action. ‘He’ll demand I make it up to him, and then…’
‘I don’t like this plan,’ I tell her forthrightly. ‘Why don’t I pretend to go, and then sneak back? I could hide out in the garden, and if things get too rough, I can leap out and we can fight him off together.’
‘I can handle this, Pete. You don’t need to worry.’
But I am worried.
Sophie’s plan only works if he does what he did last time, but what if he’s angrier and goes too far? She doesn’t seem prepared to consider the amount of danger she’s voluntarily putting herself in. I’m terrified that I’ll come back and find he’s killed her. She was in such a bad state last time, and his violence has been escalating. It’s only a matter of time before he does damage that can’t be reversed. What if today’s that day?
‘Will you at least message me when he gets here? I don’t want to leave you on your own for a second longer than necessary.’
She offers a non-committal grunt. ‘Relax, everything is going to go to plan.’
‘At least message me when he’s gone, so I can get back here and we can get you and the footage to the police. We’ll tell them you had no knowledge of the surveillance cameras I set up. It’ll seem like less of a honey trap that way. They’ll take photographs of your injuries, and paired with the video, it should be enough for them to arrest and hopefully prosecute him.’
Sophie offers me a thin smile, but it only heightens my own anxiety.
‘Pete? You ready to go?’ Christophe calls from the kitchen.
I want to shout back that I’m not ready and have decided to stay here, but Sophie is ushering me towards my door. Before I leave, I pull her into a tight hug – almost as if it might be the last time I’m going to see her. I watch as she slowly walks upstairs, and then I turn to Christophe.
‘I’m going to be late,’ he moans, unaware of what’s about to unfold in this house.
I look back up the stairs at Sophie’s door, and then make a choice. If I can’t be here to help fight him off, then I need to do whatever I can to help her protect herself in case he does go too far.
‘I forgot something,’ I quickly say and hurry back to my room. ‘You go on ahead, and I’ll catch you up.’
He looks at his watch, but doesn’t argue, stomping towards the patio door, and out into the garden. I quickly unlock my door, enter and go to the bottom drawer of my desk. I fish around until I find the bottle of extra strength sleeping pills I swiped from my mum’s medicine cabinet over Christmas. I twist off the clicking cap and drop two into my hand. Two are usually enough to knock her out for the night, she tells me, but given Raymond’s size, I pop out a third pill to be safe.
I lock my door and hurry back to the kitchen, where I crush the pills between two teaspoons, before tipping the contents into the open bottle of whiskey that Sophie has left on the table. It’s Raymond’s favourite brand, she said, and he always has a drink when he first arrives. I shake the bottle and watch the residue slowly dissolve into the caramel-coloured liquid. I stop and spin around when I feel someone watching me, but Sophie’s door remains closed. Putting it down to paranoia, I place the bottle on the table, then hurry out into the garden, catching up with Christophe as he unlocks the gate out to the footpath.
Time on campus drags. I can’t stop watching the clock. It’s the longest two hours of my life. Sophie hasn’t messaged to say Raymond arrived, nor has she messaged to say he’s gone. It’s possible he was a no-show, in which case all my nail chewing has been in vain. I want to message her, but if I’m to make out to the police we haven’t entrapped Raymond, I need my phone’s history clear.
