Dead in the Water (23 page)

“
Put your hand on it. Stop the flow,” says Terry. “You’ll make a God awful mess otherwise.”

“
What about the smell of petrol?”

“
Best not light a fag just yet. Get her down first, Jez, if that’s alright with you.”

The landing itself is smooth, but Terry pulls off the runway at the first taxiway exit and parks the floatplane some way away from the other light planes on a hard standing of baked earth. Half an hour later, after Terry has checked the cans for leakage, finding nothing more serious than the smell that always lingers around petrol cans, and has bandaged Jeremy’s head wound, the two of them are sitting in what passes for a terminal building, drinking coffee.

“
Nice landing. What do you think Jez? It’s when you start carting explosives round for people, that’s when it gets hairy.”

4
3 Amazonas, Venezuela

She was anticipating rough water, not a vertical drop. The water is racing so fast, and their two guides are paddling with such power that as the canoe goes over the top of the falls, it seems to launch into space, instead of pivoting gently and falling with the flow of water. Now she knows why they insisted that she and José sit at the back of the canoe. They hit the pool five feet below like a racing swimmer. The front of the canoe plunges into the river, soon resurfacing, though now half full of water. This was not her dream of being on the raft, gently cheating time, drifting in the spiritual protection of forest gods and ancient wisdom.

To avoid getting caught in eddies which might drive them onto rocks, they have to stay in the middle of the fearsome current, which means steering close to the very things they are trying to avoid and frequently glancing against rocks, tearing splinters of wood from the rough hewn canoe.

After three more waterfalls, the river widens and calms.

Their guides paddle gently over to a sandy beach, Rachel turns to look back at José, and she smiles in relief. As they stand to get out of the beached canoe, he shakes his head and says simply, “I do not think it is finished.” He’s right.

What follows is the most arduous part of their journey. For maybe two miles they have to carry the dugout over land, negotiating their way through dense forest, clambering over rocks until they reach an inland cliff. Blue goes first. Once Rachel is at the bottom, Spider and José manoeuvre the canoe to the edge of the cliff, then lower it slowly on a liana. Spider then pulls the liana back up and ties it round José’s waist, like a primitive climbing rope. In spite of this, he’s forced to use his left arm. When he reaches the bottom of the cliff he stands briefly upright, before collapsing. But there is little sympathy for him from either of the Yanomami, who simply wait until he can stand. Thankfully, the trek back to the river is only a hundred metres or so.

The cliff which caused them such difficulty is part of a long ridge. When they arrive at the river, they find themselves on the edge of a large pool below a waterfall, this one three or four times as high as anything they have canoed over. This is where they stay the night, again sleeping in the dugout.

When the sky brightens, triggering the riot of sound that greets the rising sun, they are alone. Their guides have gone. After sharing some fruit between the two of them, they start on their way. José reckons it’s no more than a day and a half to Esmerelda, and for the first time in several days he smiles. The current will take them downstream. It is a measure of his physical weakness that he’s willing to let Rachel sit at the back and do most of the paddling; but it is gentle work. All she needs is keep the dugout facing downstream and avoid obstacles. The river widens quickly and, as it does, the forest canopy no longer curtains their view of the sky. If the sun burns through the cloud cover, they’ll need to protect themselves in some way. In the meantime, Rachel takes out the supposedly waterproof satphone and camera from the waterlogged bag, hoping there’s enough light to activate the phone’s solar charger. Within minutes there’s an indication that the battery’s charging. But she’s impatient. How much charge do you need on these things? Less than three quarters of an hour after dawn, she tries it. There’s a signal. She’s connected. Wonderful. She wants to hug José and sing – but José is asleep. She tries Jeremy Peters on his landline. No reply, and she leaves a wry message wondering what he’s doing at 6.45 in the morning that he can’t come to the phone. She’d ring her dad, but he never has his mobile on when he’s at work. She texts him a short message and will ring him later. Wait until the evening London time, and that way she can be certain that the satphone will be properly charged.

She does, however, contact the FPA outpost in Esmerelda. There’ll not be anyone there at this time of day, but it’s worth leaving a message. She needs to let them know about José: if they could get hold of something with a decent outboard motor and come to meet them, they might even be able to get him some medical attention before the end of the day. The phone has only rung three times when, to her amazement, Ronaldo picks up. “FPA. Ronaldo.”

“
Hi. This is Rachel. Rachel Boyd.”

“
Rachel ––”

“
I’ve not got much charge on the phone. José Dias is really bad. We’re on the river. He reckons we could …” The damn phone’s gone dead. “Hello. Ronaldo?” She checks the battery. It’s half charged. She leaves it another ten minutes just to boost the charge enough to be on the safe side; and tries again. The phone rings. And rings. Nobody picks up. Maybe they’re already on their way.

Most of Mark’s morning is spent in telephone conversations with a dozen or more senior people in oil companies and the airlines, where the measures he’s proposing will have the biggest impact; people whom he has cultivated for many years; not exactly friends, but trusted confidential sources. The message he’s getting is fairly consistent: there’ll be a howl of public outrage, but they have been expecting these measures since before the election and what concerns them is a level playing field. For the airlines this means ensuring that foreign carriers aren’t handed an unfair advantage. Overall, the discussions are reassuring; the responses pretty much as he anticipated. What’s so frustrating is that Angela Bloody Walker’s not around. Of course she has to be seen in the right places, and the appalling effects of the storm could be just the catalyst that’s needed to get these policies implemented; but Mark is beginning to feel that since the bomb attacks, everything’s on fucking hold.

He goes to get himself another cup of coffee; as he walks past Barbara, she looks up, making a lame attempt to smile. “You alright, Ba?” he asks.

“
Sorry,” she says quietly. “I’m not quite with it today.”

“
Are you OK?”

“
Do you want to know?”

“
Of course.”

“
It’s my mum. She lives in Rye. They’ve had terrible flooding. I’ve not been able to get in touch with her. And Christopher’s school’s closed, so he’s at home on his own; and I’ve told him not to go out, but he’s twelve, Mark. And how do you keep a twelve year old boy indoors when havoc is so exciting?”

“
I don’t think you should be here, Ba.”

“
There’s nobody could come in and keep an eye on him. He’s too old for a babysitter. I tried. I did try. But everybody’s ––”

“
You should go home. I’ll pay for a taxi.”

“
I’ve never missed a day’s work.”

“
Ba. I’m telling you. You should go home. Go on.”

She agrees to go, grateful and slightly sheepish. “See you tomorrow then,” she says, gathering her things.

“
Not if Chris’s school’s still closed. I mean it, Ba.”

Ba’s worries about Christopher prompt Mark to call the
One World
office. He needs to bite the bullet and talk to John about Stephen. The office landline’s out of order, so he calls Cathy’s mobile. She’s in surprisingly good spirits. There’s a healthy batch of volunteers; and the deluge has kept the police off their backs for a while.

“
I’m so glad you called, Mark. I think it’d be brilliant if you go and see Suzie.”

“
Sorry?”

“
Suzie White. Allan Hunter’s partner. We talked about ––”

“
Yes. Yes, I’ll do that.” He asks again if he can speak to John.

“
John?”

“
The guy who was organising volunteers the other day.”

“
John Lacey. He’s not in today.”

“
Could you give me his number, then?”

“
Sorry, Mark,” she says, sounding slightly embarrassed. “We think the phone’s are being tapped – so we don’t give out volunteers’ numbers over the phone.”

“
Are you kidding me?”

“
The police think Allan Hunter is a serious terrorist. Suzie’s under surveillance. We’re all under suspicion, Mark.”

“
Come on, Cathy. You just gave me Suzie’s number. I need to talk to John.”

“
Suzie’s not a volunteer, Mark. It’s a security thing. Something we all agreed. I’ll get him to ring you if that’s alright.” It’s not alright; the last thing he wants is an earful from a cynical thug, but … fuck it … if there’s the faintest chance that he knows where Stephen might be.

“
OK”

“
John was a good friend of Allan’s. If you’re going to see Suzie, she might be able to tell you ––”

“
Thanks Cathy. That’s great. I’ll do what I can with the Allan Hunter business. Promise. Be in touch.”

On days when he’s working at the Cowley Street offices, he rarely breaks except for a sandwich; but today the place is claustrophobic with anxiety and gloom, and he needs time to think. Looking out of his air-conditioned office, three storeys up, Cowley Street is bathed in glorious early summer sunshine, puddles glimmering inoffensively in the sunlight, and it’s easy to forget the horrors of the night before. Once outside, however, the reek of raw sewage drying and fermenting in the unfamiliar heat is pervasive, drifting up on a light wind from parts of South London where whole streets are covered by tides of excrement. He’s tempted to call in at the Commons and get something in one of the cafés; but for the moment, and unusually for Mark, he wants to avoid people he knows. He decides instead to cross the river and seek out the anonymity of the Festival Hall.

Westminster Bridge has been closed to traffic, and there are fewer pedestrians than usual at this time of day. Debris from the storm which has snagged on the piers of the bridge – tree branches, wooden crates, plastic sheeting, scaffolding planks and what looks like the hull of a capsized boat – has built into a small dam. On the pier nearest the Westminster bank workmen are trying to pull some of this material from the water. Two of them, having abseiled down from the parapet of the bridge, have attached one of the larger branches to a wire rope emerging from a winch on the back of their Land Rover. Mark watches for a few minutes, admiring the skill and the application of these guys, wondering whether the work is even more hazardous than it looks. He’s about to go on his way when his question is answered. One of the men hanging over the river signals to those above to start the winch. A small group of onlookers, most of them tourists with cameras at the ready, determined to salvage video material from their visit to London, breaks into applause when the branch is pulled clear and the dam starts to slowly shift. The current takes hold of the capsized boat, which starts to ease around the pier. Once the boat is on the move, a freak of the current starts to right it and the splintered remains of a mast rises up a few feet from the water, catching the rope on which one of the men is harnessed, threatening to smash him against the bridge. Then the mast sinks back into the water, and the hull is swept from view. The man on the end of the rope waves to his colleagues that he’s OK – to another round of applause from the onlookers – but there is also that sense of guilty disappointment that sometimes accompanies catastrophes averted. This won’t get many hits on YouTube. Mark moves on and crosses the roadway.

Stopping again on the other side of the bridge, he finds himself gazing down at the river. The water is in turmoil. He stands mesmerised by the hidden dark powers of the river, when something breaks the surface. Probably some of the debris dislodged by the team working on the bridge. He’s about to turn away when he recognises the something as a dog. At first he thinks the animal must be dead; but then he sees its jaws moving and hears an awful sound, combining the despair of a howl and the fury of a bark. He looks around, as if anybody could help, but there’s nobody else on this side of the bridge and when he looks back, the dog has gone, sucked down by powerful undertows.

The dog was visible for no more than four or five seconds, but the image stays with Mark and haunts him for much of the day. He’s unable to pin down why this should be. It’s not sentimentality. He likes dogs; but placed beside the considerable loss of human life resulting from the storm, it’s hardly shocking. Maybe it’s the missing human connection that chafes so much, that lures him back to revisit again and again that halting moment when he realised that the dog was drowning; maybe that is what he finds so disturbing: the enigma. Whose dog, and how did it get in the water? He imagines the dog trapped in the cabin of the boat as it smashed against the bridge, surviving in a pocket of air, its world turned upside down, loyally guarding the abandoned boat.

The Festival Hall is virtually empty, with few visitors and minimal staff. Only one of the cafés is open, and the choice is limited; but salad is what he’d wanted anyway, though he doesn’t much enjoy it. A troubling memory has emerged from his distant past: a dog leaping into the dreadful currents of the Portland Race, chasing a stick in a final act of loyalty to a master wanting to rid himself of all responsibilities before committing suicide. He knows it’s not something he witnessed personally. Was it something he read? A story told by a teacher in school? Or a film? He cannot empty his head of the sound of that howling, wailing bark.