Revenge of the Tide Page 31

  The sobbing started again when I was dressed. I curled into a ball in the corner, my back to the door, my body shaking with it.

  I was still curled up like this when Arnold came back. ‘Get up,’ he said.

  I didn’t move and he grabbed my arm, digging his fingers in and dragging me backwards over the bed. I yelped in pain and fear, gripping the waistband of my jeans, horrified at the thought of being undressed again. But he needed me for something else now.

  ‘Get up on deck. Fitz wants you to drive the boat.’

  Drive the boat?

  I stumbled through to the saloon. The boat was swaying and rocking in a way I’d never felt before. The tide was rising, but not quickly enough – every few moments I felt a jolt and a scrape when the hull brushed against the riverbed.

  There were two bodies on the floor. Malcolm’s and Dylan’s. Standing over them, Fitz: the gun he was holding aimed at Dylan’s head.

  My hand covered my mouth in horror. Holding back a scream. I had no words left for him.

  The whole scene was alien to me. My boat, my beautiful boat, was a strange place now with these people here, with these events taking place inside it.

  Then I realised something. If Fitz was still pointing the gun at Dylan, that meant he was alive. And in that moment I heard him make a noise. His head was covered in blood, as though they’d kicked him over and over. He was lying awkwardly, half on his back, his legs sprawled wide. And his foot moved. Very well, then. He was alive. And then I saw Malcolm’s hand, lifted and moving in a vague, graceful wave before falling on to his chest.

  ‘Get up there,’ Fitz said, jerking his head up to the wheelhouse. ‘Get up there and I might not kill your fucking shit of a boyfriend. Yet.’

  As I hauled myself up the steps, I could hear the sirens. Nicks was waiting for me at the top of the steps. He had his hands on the wheel but it was jerking out of his grip, as first the tide took it and then the silt, the rudder catching against the bottom. The engine roared and rumbled and I could hardly hear myself think.

  ‘You,’ he yelled, ‘steer this thing. Get us to deeper water. Right?’

  ‘You need Malcolm,’ I shouted back. ‘I’ve never done it before.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Malcolm. The guy he shot. Down there. He knows the river.’

  The Revenge was adrift, maybe fifteen metres from the pontoon. I could see blue flashing lights, coming towards us down the hill. The marina was in darkness.

  The boat jolted again, harder this time, enough to make Nicks lose his footing.

  ‘I said you need Malcolm!’ I yelled at him.

  He stuck his head through the door to the cabin and shouted something at Fitz. And then, a few moments later, Malcolm was being shoved up through the doorway. Conscious, bloody, but still it was Malcolm. He looked at me, squinting and frowning as though he had no idea what was going on.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I said, trying to get him to focus on me.

  ‘Yeah, yeah…’ he said.

  ‘You need to steer,’ I said, putting his hand on the wheel.

  He looked blank. Nicks was in the doorway to the cabin, talking to Fitz. I got close to Malcolm, close enough to smell the sweat and the blood and the fear.

  ‘You need to steer. Right?’

  Finally he got it. He gripped the wheel and turned it gently, and the Revenge started to move away from the pontoon again. Blue lights now, flashing outside the gate to the marina. One car pulled into the car park, then a second.

  The Revenge of the Tide eased off the mud and rocked into the flow of the river. Malcolm steered the boat round, back towards the Strood bank. Nicks stepped back as Fitz came up the steps and into the wheelhouse. I moved out of the way. He had blood on his hands, blood down the front of his jeans. The gun was still in his hand. The boat was roaring out into the midstream now, away from the bank and the police officers who were gathering on the pontoon, torches shining over us, flashing into the wheelhouse.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ Malcolm shouted at them.

  Fitz was slapping Nicks on the shoulder as though they’d done something smart, outwitted the gavvers, escaping from under their very noses. ‘I dunno, mate. Just keep driving for now, right?’

  Malcolm was turning the wheel slowly, bringing his hands back to the two o’clock position each time. And Fitz and Nicks had to move to the stern to keep watching the pontoon. I wondered what Malcolm was playing at. The Revenge was heading straight for the other bank now.

  Fitz was laughing, cupping his hand to his ear as the officers on the pontoon shouted things that none of us could hear. Nicks was next to him, almost leaning over the edge.

  ‘What did you think you were doing, Malcolm?’ I asked him, trying to get him to look me in the eye.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Malc! Did you ring him?’

  ‘I was trying to help, okay? I was trying to get rid of it for you.’

  ‘By selling it to Fitz?’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t my finest moment, alright?’

  I looked over his shoulder at Fitz, who seemed to have given up on taunting the police. He looked joyous, as though he’d just done the best deal of his life. ‘What are you two gossiping about?’ he shouted. ‘Get on with it, you fuck!’

  I turned back to Malcolm and he looked determined, focused, a gleam in his eye that I hadn’t seen before. ‘Get ready,’ he said, and I didn’t understand what he meant until there was a great bang, like an explosion. The boat stopped dead and I was catapulted sideways, down the steps and into the cabin, landing on my back with a crash. I skidded backwards along the floorboards and hit my head on something, one of the cupboards in the galley.

  My ears were full of the grinding of the engine, louder than ever, vibrations coming through the floor and rattling the cups and plates. A book, papers, a bowl fell off the top of the galley worktop and landed on my head. Above it all, shouting, yelling, noises from the deck.

  I struggled to my feet and hauled myself upright. The boat was listing to port and the saloon was at a crazy angle. Dylan had rolled over and was lying in a jumble of limbs and broken bits of furniture, cushions from the dinette, against the bottom of the sofa. I crawled over to him.

  ‘Dylan? Can you hear me?’

  His face, his poor face. Even in the darkness I could see so much blood on him. I touched his cheek, crying.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I sobbed. ‘I should have listened to you, I should have listened.’

  He made a noise then, not quite a groan. A cough, above the noise of the engine churning. And he said something – I couldn’t hear him.

  ‘What?’ I put my ear next to his mouth. ‘What did you say? Say it again.’

  ‘I said alright.’

  I kissed his cheek and tasted blood. He coughed again, raised an arm and pushed me away. I was going to have to leave him here.

  A weapon – I needed a weapon. I scrambled back to the galley. All the knives had fallen out of the knife block except for one: a small vegetable knife. It wasn’t going to be much good against Fitz’s gun, but it was the best I could do.

  I pulled myself back up the steps. Malcolm was there, leaning back against the wooden wall of the wheelhouse, holding his head. Blood was pouring from a cut above his eye. Fitz was lying in on the ground in a heap, not moving.

  ‘What happened?’ I yelled. ‘Where’s Nicks?’

  He waved a hand to the deck and I went to look.

  Nicks had fallen from the deck into the water below. But we had run aground. In the dim light I could see him, half-swimming, half-wading towards the boat. The water was coming in almost visibly, the tide tugging at his legs and pulling him backwards. The more he struggled in the mud, the more it pulled him back. And then he fell forward into the water. Pushing himself upwards with his hands in the mud now, his legs stuck up to his knees, he was never going to make it.

  I shoved the knife into my pocket and went to the storage locker on the deck, f
ound a lifejacket, pulling it clear. They’d come with the boat. I had no idea if they’d ever been used, or worn.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted.

  Nicks was flailing in the water, struggling to remain upright. He tried to turn but that made him lose balance and he fell again.

  I threw the lifejacket at him. It flew through the air and landed in the water a few metres away from him, but it might as well have been a mile. He stretched and tried to reach it, and one of his legs, miraculously, came free of the mud and he fell backwards into the water. At that moment the stern of the boat caught against a surge of tide and, with nobody at the wheel to guide it, turned in a slow, graceful arc. The momentum of it was powerful and fast, and before I realised what was happening I saw Nicks’s face illuminated in torchlight from the pontoon, saw the fear in his eyes as the hull came towards him.

  There was a thud, a bang, and the boat passed over him. I raced to the port side, hoping to see him come up, but there was nothing. Nothing.

  And then there was another sound, a shout from behind me, a crash. Fitz was wrestling with Malcolm on the deck, the two of them rolling over and over on the slope until they ended up in a heap against the port gunwale. Fitz was punching at Malcolm’s face, over and over again, his fist coming away bloody, blood spraying in droplets.

  ‘Stop it, stop it!’ I yelled, my voice drowned by the churning engine and carried away by the wind.

  I pulled at Fitz’s back but he was slippery with mud, and cold. I felt for the knife. It was small, just a little kitchen knife, but before I could think about it too hard I jabbed it into his upper shoulder. Not hard, or deep, just enough to make him stop.

  Blood started seeping from the wound into the fabric, blooming into a wide crimson flower, and he turned, struggling to his feet. Malcolm lay still, his face away from me against the storage locker on the port side.

  ‘What the fuck did you do that for?’ Fitz yelled at me, trying to reach behind his shoulder to feel the wound. ‘Are you fucking mad?’

  I still had the knife in my hand but he swiped at it, grabbed for it. I kept hold of it and as Fitz turned his body towards me there was a bang, a shot, loud above the noise of the engine, echoing across the empty space. I didn’t feel any pain. I looked down at my body in shock, expecting to see blood, expecting to see a hole somewhere. Then Fitz let out a scream and crumpled into a ball.

  Malcolm was still. Fitz was on his side in a foetal crouch, making high wailing noises.

  Above that, and above the painful grinding noise of the engine, I could hear more sirens. They seemed louder, the vibrations passing through my feet and into my chest with a discordant rhythm. And another sound, distant, a helicopter… but too far away?

  Dylan. I wanted Dylan.

  I ran down the steps. It was dark, the cabin was a mess and the floor was wet, slippery with blood. I looked across to the bottom of the sofa. He wasn’t there.

  The engine finally spluttered and cut out. Then I could hear it, the definite thud-thud of a helicopter, and a spotlight shone down on to the deck of the boat and in through the open wheelhouse door. I could see blood on the walls, on the floor. A bloody handprint on the wooden cladding near the door to my bedroom. And noise – I could hear movement. And a sudden bang, the noise of wood cracking and splintering.

  The door was open. The bedroom was a mess, a tangled angled mess with bedding and dark blood on the walls. On the floor, against the bed Leon Arnold lay still, his leg twisted beneath him. He wasn’t moving.

  The noise, again. I looked to my left, to the open doorway of the second bedroom. The two figures inside it fighting, a tangle of bodies, fists, and it took me a moment to realise that it must be Dylan, must be Markus – but which one – and what could I do?

  In the corner of the room, tipped on its side, was my crate of tools. I lifted the nearest – a plane, heavy and solid. And at that moment the light shone through the porthole and Dylan was on the floor, and Markus with his knee on Dylan’s chest, a piece of wood he’d broken away from the edge of the berth, a big lump of two-by-four raised back at shoulder height ready to swing it into Dylan’s skull.

  I must have hit him with the plane. I had it in my hand and then he was lying on the floor, slipping a little on the smooth floor and sliding to a stop against what was left of the berth.

  I dropped the plane. I was on my knees next to Dylan, not knowing where to touch, not knowing how to help him.

  Noises from the cabin, shouts and steps, lights shining down the corridor. I thought it was Fitz. I put my body across Dylan’s and held him, protecting him.

  Forty

  The hospital in the middle of the night: a soul-destroying place to be.

  Josie and I had been sitting in the same hard plastic chairs bolted to the floor, for the past two hours. Before that, we’d been allowed in to see Malcolm, or at least Josie had. I’d watched through the doorway, a police officer standing next to me in case I did something, or said something, or tried to run – I didn’t even know. But they were here in any case. I stopped paying attention after a while and the next time I looked the male officer had gone and a female officer was there in his place. She spoke to me, random words that made sense at the time, and I nodded to her and said, ‘Yes, okay,’ and that seemed to satisfy her because she was quiet after that.

  The police officer had brought me a cup of brown liquid that might have been coffee. It burned my throat but I scarcely noticed. My head was trying to sort through what had happened, but none of it made sense. It churned in my brain and every version that came out was somehow wrong, faulty, failed.

  Josie had given up asking me questions. Every time she mentioned Malcolm’s name, I cried. She told me that she’d gone into the Scarisbrick Jean and found flour, several bags of it, piles of it tipped up on the floor. Flour everywhere. She had no idea what that was all about.

  That was the one bit that made sense to me. Malcolm had taken the package out of the hatch, expecting it to contain drugs. Then he’d phoned them, had made contact with Fitz, believing the parcel to be a shipment of drugs belonging to the criminal gang. And Fitz had come down himself to sort the mess out, thinking maybe that he’d finally discovered that someone was skanking him, taking a cut of the drugs he was importing, and that the stash was in Malcolm and Josie’s boat. And of course when they opened the package in front of Malcolm, poor Malcolm who was as crap at being a criminal as he was at everything else and hadn’t thought to look inside the parcel himself first, the kilos of cocaine they’d all been expecting turned out to be six bags of self-raising flour.

  ‘It’s that one from before,’ Josie said, and I looked up.

  Jim Carling was striding up the corridor towards us.

  He was dressed in jeans and a brown jacket, frowning and looking left to right as though he was lost somehow and cross with himself for not knowing what was going on.

  I rose to my feet, wanting to call to him or wave, but not sure what he would say, how he would react. But when he saw me he smiled. He touched my arm gently, as though he wanted to hold me, but I moved away. We stood awkwardly a few feet apart. This was, after all, a professional meeting rather than a social one. ‘Where were you?’ was the first thing I said.

  ‘I tried to get there. As soon as I got your message I got patrols to go out to the marina…’

  ‘They nearly killed him, Jim. They nearly killed Dylan. And Fitz shot Malcolm. It was so awful, it was…’ I was crying again, the tears that didn’t seem to stop for more than a few moments at a time.

  He took me in his arms and this time I didn’t pull back. I sobbed loudly, out of control, and he held me tighter, and stroked my hair, and made soothing noises that somehow made it all worse, not better.

  In the end he said to me, ‘Come for a walk.’

  The sobs had subsided to jerky breaths, my hands shaking. He put his arm around my shoulders and steered me down the corridor, past the reception desk to the entrance.

  Outside it was chilly, the
air crisp. I breathed it in deeply. I thought that I would never take breathing fresh air for granted again. We found a wooden bench and sat there for a few moments in the darkness. I wondered if he’d come to tell me Dylan was dead. They’d taken him away in an ambulance. Every time I asked, nobody seemed to have any idea what had happened to him.

  ‘You know they’re going to arrest you,’ he said.

  ‘I think I hit him with a plane.’

  ‘Yeah, don’t tell me anything, I don’t want to know about that. I’m just letting you know.’

  ‘How’s Dylan?’ I asked. ‘Have you heard anything? They won’t tell me.’

  Jim’s face was grave. ‘He’s going to be fine,’ he said.

  ‘Have you seen him? Is he really okay? I thought they’d killed him. I thought Fitz had killed him.’

  ‘No, he’s alright. Fitz is in a room somewhere upstairs. You know he shot his own bollock off?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Accidentally, of course. Occupational hazard, keeping your firearm tucked into your waistband. He’s been arrested. They’ve got a guard on him.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘Leon Arnold’s just got concussion, would you believe? The other one is upstairs with head injuries. Not as bad as it looks.’

  I waited for him to say something about Nicks, but that was all he said.

  ‘What about my boat?’

  ‘The marine unit’s getting a tug and they’re going to bring it back to the boatyard at high tide. I think it’s alright.’

  ‘You know they were after Dylan,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You need to keep him away from them, Jim.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s kind of what I spend my whole working life doing, keeping Dylan out of trouble.’

  ‘You told me you’d been at school with him. I knew you were lying; I just didn’t know why.’

  He looked at me steadily, his cheeks flushed. ‘I wouldn’t have lied to you without good reason.’

  The sky was turning grey at the edges, the shapes of the trees standing out now against the clouds and the sky. I was tired, numb, cold. I wanted to go home and sleep forever.