Hindsight (53 page)

‘How cool is this?’ he heard her say, and within moments, her lips moved to pronounce the words like a warped movie with the soundtrack behind sync; an actress kissing silence to a tune already played. ‘We’re sailing through our conversation — literally. Does it make it any easier for you, Freddie? Less confusing not to hear everything that’s coming all at once? I mean, it must be quieter at sea, surely?’

He shrugged. ‘This water is busy.’ Growing busier too. He felt less and less hopeful of being man enough to save her when the time came — his muscles spritely enough to climb trees and crawl into drains and other secret spaces at Serenity, but his body aging now by the minute, and his confidence withering. He hadn’t expected this — a journey across water. In all his life, he’d always known what was coming; so many futures — an endless torment. Now,
not
knowing seemed far more terrifying!

Outside, he saw six large, menacing crewmen, and heard too many competing sounds and arguments to know exactly how their futures would unravel. He could hear the furors aboard other craft too; absent now but he knew they’d pass this way soon. Without being at the final destination itself, he could only hear those screams which were loud enough to travel over distance as well as backwards in time — among them a man’s voice saying, ‘Don’t scream. You’ll die faster.’

His sweet angel turned to him then, sharing her smile and drawing one from him in that magical way that she had, no matter how miserable he felt. He closed his old eyes and heard her voice whispering to him in gentle echoes as each word broke the soft end of the sound barrier; each ripple flattening and setting like stone as they passed from the future into history.

‘You know what this feels like?’ she asked.

Again that same male echo warned, ‘Don’t scream, you’ll die faster.’

Reopening his eyes, he enjoyed the bliss of reading her lips and hearing her voice one more time from memory.

‘Like riding a drunk duck,’ he said, timing it to ensure they said it together.

She laughed, and he tried to laugh too, but her future screams echoed softer, drawing nearer in time as well as in distance.

Don’t scream or you’ll die faster
— clearer now but softer and still all the future echoes of all those other sounds soon to come. He couldn’t judge how far into the future he could hear any more. Sound seemed to travel so differently over water. They were still sailing into it, and as always, the distant futures screamed so loud he could only feel them out there beyond the upper field of his hearing.

‘Are we there yet?’ she asked, playfully triggering the wipers to life again — and he nodded, already hearing the wane of the engines and the pounding of a fist against her window.

Give me your phone!
he said urgently with his hands in case they could lip-read from a distance.
They’re going to search you!
Wrenching his headphones from his ears, he pushed the music stick and headphones into her lap.
I’m a deaf old fool!
he reminded her.
You must hurry! They won’t search me properly!

‘Honey, there’s nobody …’ Then she saw them — five fishermen and the captain approaching with purpose, and although the vessel slowed to bob far between shores, two of those men broke away to open the gates in the guardrail behind her car.

Galvanised into action, she switched her phone to hostage mode too and passed it to him, touching hands one last time — the echoes suggesting forever, but for her sake, he couldn’t let himself be distracted. He stashed her phone down his tracksuit pants and into the front fork of his underwear, blushing as he noticed it was still warm from her own body.

A fist pounded against her window.

Step out of the car please
: his lips cracked and weathered, but still easy to read; the captain of their destiny.

Why?
she called as the doors were wrenched open, and from behind their backs the captain and his five men all drew menacing T-shaped machine guns.

Don’t scream or you’ll die faster.

I’ve been instructed to say nothing, but I’m permitted to show you. This way please.

Freddie refrained from getting out until the captain’s words had finished leaving his mouth, already hearing his angel’s pleas for them to leave him alone, and that same warning, still echoing over again.
Don’t scream or you’ll die faster.

He began to rock, driven mad by it, straining to hear the softer echoes at the same time, and make sense of them. He heard himself struggle and then speak — heard his angel struggling too against one of the five men — and then as he was hauled bodily from the car and thrust backwards over the hood, he grappled to stay with the silent fisherman and clutch hold of his beard, while on the far side of the car, the matron was hauled bodily out too, putting an end to those of her echoes.

‘Such pretty hair,’ Freddie said, opening his mouth to gulp out the words he’d already heard, as if rehearsed. ‘I wish I had your pretty hair! Do you need to oil it, like I oil my head?’ He tried to stroke the man’s beard, already knowing the standard reaction — same as always from anyone when he played this game of hiding his intentions — but this time restraining himself from defending himself as his hand was slapped away.

What’s wrong with him?
asked the captain.
He sounds like he’s not the full shipment.

He’s deaf. He can’t hear anything, and he’s a little senile so he frightens easily. If you need to talk to him, please … please talk through me.

The captain nodded, but not to her. On his signal, two men wrenched Freddie and his angel to stand aside near a rack of cylinders, while three others attended to the car, rolling the windows down first, shifting gears into neutral and releasing the handbrake. One of them searched all the storage spaces too, and found Fredarick’s Braille manuscript under the seat, where Freddie had stashed it.

Watching them flip through the pages, Freddie could see the dangerous look cross their faces; the colourless dots in the paper were
to them
a secret code.

Freddie panicked, struggling and screaming, but unable to control himself when the turn of fate had occurred so unheralded. He’d needed those pages to make it into Mira’s hands — to solicit her help in staying away from Serenity and in so doing, to keep all such trouble as this away from his beloved matron.

The captain clicked his fingers, taking charge of the manuscript, then pointed to the car and to the open gate in the railing.

‘No!’ screamed Matron Sanchez, but there was no stopping them from rolling her car overboard.

Search them
, said the captain, and they did, finding only a music stick in her pockets, a few coins and a biro which all followed the car overboard, while the pockets in Freddie’s tracksuit pants turned inside-out empty, like elephant ears.

‘Want to see my trunk too?’ Freddie said, masking the anger of an inner demon who began drumming in his head like a new alter-ego trying to break free. The deck heaved, giving the additional sensation that he was disoriented or drunk. He hadn’t noticed it until then, having never been on a boat in his life, but he realised he could now sense the next wave coming and his body was reacting just a little too early each time.

Another wave from the captain signalled it was time to follow him.

What are you doing?
screamed the matron as the strange man dragged her kicking and screaming to the hooks of a huge crane, mounted amidships.
What do you want with us?

Freddie strained to hear any future response from them too, but there came none except for the sounds of more struggling and screaming, and that same warning over and again, growing steadily softer.
Don’t scream or you’ll die faster.

Echoes of their footsteps preceded the unloading of a long black cylinder from the nearest rack, roughly twice the length and thickness of his body, while a sixth man appeared from the crowd bearing a torchlight and a much smaller cylinder, about the size of a coffee thermos, which he adjusted and made to hiss as if it was spitting gas.

In numb horror, Freddie and his angel watched as one of the men twisted a knob on the end of the big cylinder, popping a long lid open like a coffin, and then rolling it to spill out a belly full of ice — her future screams now echoing softer and softer towards silence.

Lockman saw the fishing trawler ahead through the murky night beyond the cabin window, unloading racks of dark cylinders into the black water. Patterson and Cinq peered through the long windows too, seeming just as intrigued, while father and son Greppias shared a glance of renewed camaraderie.

‘What happened?’ Gabby asked, groggy and rubbing her forehead.

‘Patience,’ Gregan replied, then from his pocket, he withdrew a small torch, pointed it at the deck inside the cabin and switched it on. Turning the face changed the colour of the light from white to red, yellow and finally green, then he approached the window and flashed it three times at the trawler.

Almost immediately, he received three green flashes in reply.

‘Time,’ Gregan said. ‘Bring them all.’

‘You don’t need her,’ Lockman said with a glance to Sei. ‘Or the park ranger. By the time they reach port, you’ll be long gone — and you’ll score points with Mira.’

‘Everyone,’ Gregan repeated, and on command, Pobody manoeuvred the catamaran alongside the trawler while Gregan glanced from Lockman to Mira and back again, both still tied back to back through the seat. ‘Is it me?’ he asked, ‘or does your dog seem tamer now that he’s tied to her?’

‘He was her bodyguard,’ Patterson replied. ‘They spent time alone together.’

‘Did they now …?’ Gregan smiled.

‘It wasn’t like that!’ Lockman argued. ‘She hates me and the feeling’s mutual. If it wasn’t for her, I’d have been on leave now and up to my armpits in bikini girls.’

‘Regardless,’ Patterson said, ‘I’m sure the colonel will want to pick your brains for any intel about her — and I’m sure you must be keen to see him again.’

Comprehension slugged him in the gut as powerfully as any fist; they were using him to keep Mira safe, all the way to Colonel Kitching.

‘Let’s not break up a good thing,’ Gregan said. ‘Cut them loose and re-tie them. She can be his ball and chain until it’s time to send them their separate ways.’

Patterson nodded, just as the cat bumped against the port side of the much taller trawler.

‘She’ll need hands free to climb,’ Lockman argued.

‘Not if you carry her,’ Gregan said. ‘Keep one of his hands bound to her. That’ll make sure he doesn’t drop her or misbehave.’

Cinq complied by slicing their current bindings using the knife she’d taken from Lockman at the penthouse, and refastening the wrist of his injured arm to Mira’s as if holding hands with her, while leaving his strong arm free for climbing.

Uno led Lockman out of the cabin, trailing Mira. Behind him, Patterson followed carrying Ben’s limp body over his shoulder and Greggie with Corporal Sei, who livened up enough to struggle and required another of Greppia’s men to knock her out and help lift her as the first of their group up the ladder. Waves caused both vessels to bump harder against each other, while wind caused the ladder to flap despite the weight of bodies climbing.

Ben stirred and Patterson let him down almost gently onto the deck. ‘This isn’t going to work. He’s too heavy to lug up that ladder.’

Gregan pulled a gun on him, and other weapons bristled around the deck. More pointed down at them from the trawler. ‘Is this the moment you betray us?’ Gregan asked. ‘You planning on springing an ambush?’

‘Calm down,’ Patterson said, signalling his people to lower their weapons. ‘We’ve been through all that. Colonel Kitching sent us to help — only this man is a bag of broken bones.’

‘Ben?’ Mira cried, causing Lockman to catch her before she got too close to them. ‘What have you done to him?’

‘Hold still,’ Lockman whispered as she continued to struggle and complain. ‘Don’t make things any worse for him.’

‘Sir, you need him alive,’ Patterson said, ignoring her continued cries and complaints. ‘Or else she won’t cooperate, which means I need to find a safer way of getting him up there. Give a shout to your people and have them send down one of the hooks from that crane. It can work both sides of the trawler at once, can’t it?’

‘That it can …’ Gregan whistled for it, and within minutes, a steel hook ran down to them by electric pulley. Patterson used a pair of padded rain jackets from the
Edukitty
to rig a harness for Chiron, enabling his limp body to be raised onto the trawler deck, where the other crew disentangled him — and Uno scrambled up the ladder to ensure it.

Gabby was ushered up the dangerously flapping ladder next at the point of an Uzi by one of Greppia’s men, while Gregan signalled for the hook to be lowered a second time.