The Abigail Affair (11 page)

The plan had worked like a charm. He had climbed up and hidden on the top rack of shelves, lying full length behind the cardboard boxes. He had needed to shift them around to make room for himself.

Then he started to wait. At once he regretted not making his hiding place more comfortable, for the widely spaced stainless steel mesh shelves dug into his skin. He squirmed. He should have laid down some towels to make a bed. Was there time to do this now? He decided not.

The minutes passed. Toby lay as still as he could and willed himself not to fidget.

He could not get his arm up to look at his watch and had no idea how much time had passed. It could have been thirty minutes. Then he heard the door open. He inhaled and held his breath.

“Shit!” Or something that sounded like that. An oath, anyway, and in an Eastern European accent. It was Ski-Pants, his tormentor. Toby held his breath still. He needed the man to do the right thing.

The sound of boxes being shifted came up to him. It wasn’t going to work! The man would find him in a moment. Toby started to feel light-headed. He breathed out as slowly as he could and then in again shallowly, aware that the slightest movement would give away his hiding place.

There was some more scuffling and shifting from below. Then silence. The man was thinking.

Go, go, Toby willed. And sure enough, footsteps retreated. Now just leave the door ...

He lay tensed, waiting for the slam of the door and the click of the key in the lock. But it didn’t come. As he had hoped, the man had assumed that Toby had escaped or been let out, and had left the door open in his haste to find reinforcements.

Toby waited another minute, then elbowed aside the boxes that hid him, fished out the ladder and reversed his ascent. Once back on floor level, he peered out the door. No one. He scooted out, trying to remember the positions of the cameras. In this manner he had got away.

There were no cameras down here in the nether regions of the
Amelia
, he was fairly sure, so he took a left to a stairwell and descended. He was in unfamiliar territory now but knew he was heading towards the engine room of the yacht.

He went down as far as he could. A hatch faced him, and he needed both hands to pull the handle down. The hatch opened with a slight creak. He stepped through.

He was on a kind of caged walkway in the bowels of the ship. He looked up and around for cameras, but saw none. And he had not noticed any images showing this sort of place during his night watch.

Through the mesh of the cage which surrounded the walkway, he saw what looked like generators and air-conditioning compressors. It didn’t seem to be the main engine room. That was good, as he might well run into Timmins the grease monkey there.

He was trying to get to the water toys compartment. His plan, wild but just worth it—after all, he had little to lose—was to steal a jet ski and make his escape to shore. They would quickly spot him, of course, but with a few minutes’ head start, he could maybe hold off any pursuers until he reached land. He was sure nothing could outrun a jet ski.

The difficulties were immense. First, he had to find the compartment. The easy and obvious way down was via the elevator, which he knew opened directly into the boat bay. The bottom button of the elevator panel was labelled “Sea Level.” But using the elevator was out of the question. He had to take the service route.

Having got there, he would have to open the hull doors (could they even be opened under way?). There were certain to be cameras. Then there was the challenge of getting the jet ski into the water. There had to be a ramp, a slide or a hoist. Could he possibly work it all out without detection?

He wavered.

Perhaps it would be better to stow away after all.

No.

That could never work.

So he pressed on down the walkway. At the end was another hatch. He seized the handle and pushed down. This one opened smoothly. He stepped up and through and closed it behind him. Inside was a spiral staircase leading down. It had to go to sea level. Toby descended. It got hotter as he went lower, and the only light came from a single bulb in a wire enclosure.

At the bottom, yet another hatch faced him. Toby reached out to pull the handle down, and froze. There were voices on the other side. Then he heard the whine of an electric motor. He put his ear to the heavy steel door. Was that the sound of the sea? He thought he could hear splashing or sloshing.

He seemed to be outside the water toys’ hangar. However, it was already occupied, and it sounded as if the sea doors were open too. Probably they were conducting the dead girl’s burial at sea.

Toby had not considered this possibility. Pressing ahead would lead to certain capture and very possibly his ejection into the sea alongside the girl. It was time to retreat. He turned and climbed back up the spiral staircase.

As he opened the hatch, he caught a glimpse of someone standing on the other side. He moved to push the hatch shut again, but in a swift movement, Julia stepped through and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“How did you escape?” she hissed. “It hasn’t helped your cause. They’re out for your blood.”

“Never mind that. Did you get through to the captain and alert him?” Toby asked.

“No, I was just about to when Scotty pulled the phone out of my hand. Said he would do it and shooed me out of the bridge.”

“I’ll bet he never made the call. That would have raised the alarm. At the moment, no one off this yacht knows what’s happened.”

Julia was still holding Toby by the shoulders. She had a strong grip which belied her short stature. She shook him. “Did you do it, Toby?” she asked.

“You think I murdered that girl? Are you crazy? Why would I do that?”

“Krigov is saying that after I was relieved, they all went to bed and left you and the girl in the bar, and you probably ended up snorting coke together, and you couldn’t handle it, you got into a argument and you were so high you assaulted and throttled her.”

“You believe that? You think they would do that? Let me snort their wretched coke? You saw how they treated me after dinner. And do you think I would behave like that on my first night aboard? Or ever?”

“I don’t know what to believe, Toby. Then Scott says he caught you trying to escape down the cleaning gantry in the small hours. Is that right? Why did you do that?”

“I wasn’t trying to escape, I was investigating screams from the guest quarters.”

“On the gantry in the rain in the middle of the night? You’re not making sense.” She tightened her grip on his shoulders.

Toby pulled away from Julia roughly. “Don’t you see, I’ve been set up for this.”

“I think you should turn yourself in and take your chances. You’ve not helped by getting out of that room. Szczepanski will wring your neck if he’s given the chance.”

“I don’t intend to give him that opportunity. Now, if you’re not going to help me, will you at least leave me to do my thing? Does anyone know you’re here?”

“I was on watch. I saw you heading this way on the monitors. There’s no one on the bridge now. We are going dead slow and pretty much everyone is in the boat bay.”

“I realised that, so I was retracing my steps when you nabbed me.”

“Give yourself up, Toby. Come with me.” Her blonde hair bobbed as she raised her chin to look him in the eyes. She made it sound as if she was asking him for a dance. Sweet and reasonable. Toby had no intention of complying.

“No way. Now, if you’re not going to help me, at least don’t make things worse. Turn around and go back to the bridge. You shouldn’t have left it anyway. You’ll be in trouble if they find you down here.”

“Not likely, particularly if I hand you in. Face it, Toby, you can’t hide out on this yacht. Once they’ve done whatever they’re planning to do with the dead girl, they’ll organise a search.”

“Where are we heading?” Toby asked. He desperately needed to get on top of this situation. While he was free, there was hope.

Before Julia could answer, Toby heard a clanking sound from behind him. Someone else was coming! “Quick, hide me,” Toby said.

“Too late,” Julia said, and indeed it was, because Szczepanski had come into view and was steaming towards them.

“I found him!” shouted Julia. “Thank God you’re here.” She dropped her voice and whispered, “Put your hands behind your back and turn around.”

“No, I …” began Toby. Then something in Julia’s tone made him comply. He turned to face the oncoming deckhand and put his hands behind his back. Julia grabbed his wrists with one hand. With the other, she slipped something into his right hand. Hard and cool with rounded edges.

“OK, I give up,” Toby said.

Ski-Pants was there and in his face. “I ask to kill you, but they say no,” he offered.

“That’s a shame for you,” Toby said. He stared Ski-Pants in the eye. The object in his hand felt like a baby cell phone. As he talked, he transferred it to his trouser pocket. “Just tell me what to do, and I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t kick me any more.”

The deckhand grabbed his arm and spun him around. “We go,” he said.

Toby moved on, expecting a boot in the bottom at any time to encourage his progress. He wasn’t sure if Julia was following them or not. Presumably, she would be heading back to the bridge.

They came to the hatch which led to the boat bay. The deckhand ordered Toby to open it, which he did. Toby stepped up and through and into the cavernous boat hangar.

He took in the scene.

The hangar doors were open to the sea. The wet suits swayed on their rail and the morning sun reflected sparkles off whitecaps in the distance. Toby could see no land. The yacht rolled a little in the swell, although the sea outside looked smooth. A couple of seabirds swooped low to the waves and flew a foot above the water like fighter pilots training for a low-level attack. The
Amelia
was stationary in the water, or very nearly so.

Krigov stood with his hands on his hips while Scott manned a crane with an extending arm. They were about to launch one of the white RIBs – rigid inflatable boat, or tender—which Toby had admired the previous evening.

“Bring him over,” barked Krigov.

Ski-Pants shoved Toby ahead of him towards the Russian.

Krigov was sweating, with beads on his brow. “Quite the escape artist,” he said.

Toby decided to dispense with the niceties. “What about your investigation? Did you find who murdered the girl?”

“Hugh Grant, you have a flair for the ridiculous. Of course we found the murderer. Who else but you?”

“I heard screams coming from a guest cabin after everyone had retired for the night.”

“Well, the girl was certainly not in my cabin, and equally certainly not in Walther’s.”

“How do I know you aren’t lying?”

Krigov laughed. “I thought I was in charge of this investigation, not you. And I thought I owned this yacht. Now, get your clothes off. Strip.”

Toby’s heart started to pound. This looked bad. “Why do you want me to take off my clothes? You’re not going to kill me too, are you? Bad plan. I’m a British subject. You’ll never get away with it.”

Krigov laughed sharply and loudly. “You talk in clichés. You should improve your spoken English. My son could have given you lessons, when he was in London. It would be rough justice to dispose of you now, but justice done. An eye for an eye, the Old Testament allows. However, we are not murderers like you. I simply want you off my yacht.”

Toby’s panic receded, but only slightly. “You’re going to cast me off in the RIB? Like Captain Bligh?”

“You flatter yourself with the comparison. And we are a long way from Pitcairn Island. Now come, take your clothes off. Time is pressing.”

Toby unzipped and took down his shorts, and pulled off his uniform polo shirt.

“Your shoes and socks too. You may keep your underwear on to preserve your famous British dignity.”

Toby hopped from foot to foot and removed his trainers and socks.

“Now put these on.” Krigov picked up a plastic carrier bag and threw it at Toby, who caught it. Inside was Toby’s shore gear that he had travelled in: his Stone Island multi-pocket grey trousers, Nike trainers, smelly white shoe liners and Jasper Conran green Y-neck T-shirt. Toby wrinkled his nose. “You want me to wear these again?” he said.

Krigov roared with laughter and Scott cursed in an “I-don’t-believe-it” tone. “Sorry we didn’t have time to launder and press them for you,” Krigov said through his chuckles. “Don’t worry, you won’t be on public view.”

Against every instinct in his body, Toby stepped into the trousers and pulled the smelly, crumpled shirt over his head. Now, combined with his aches, pains and bruises, he felt truly rotten. He hung his shoulders and waited for the next development. He was keenly aware that the cell phone was still in his uniform shorts pocket. He needed to find a way to transfer it to his own trousers.

“Help me with this tender,” Scott commanded.

“Just a sec,” Toby said. “Let me fold these up. They’ll get filthy on the deck.” He bent and picked up the uniform polo shirt and made an elaborate show of folding it.

“For Christ’s sake,” Scott said. “Leave the bloody clothes and come over here.”

Krigov, however, was laughing again. “Patience, Scotty, Little Lord Fauntleroy is right. Those uniforms must be respected.” Scott cursed again and Toby took advantage of the short respite to palm the phone from the uniform shorts into his baggy trousers. He caught a glimpse of the phone: a little clamshell Sony Ericsson. Well done, Julia! She had obviously ignored the ban on phones just as she ignored the on-deck smoking prohibition.

He picked up the shorts, smoothed them and straightened out the seams.

“Enough,” Krigov said. “You are playing for time, young man. Get to work.”

Toby set the folded clothes on a box marked “Life Preservers” and went to help Scott.

The first officer operated the crane. With a whine, the metal cable took up the slack, and the RIB rose off its rack. Toby steadied it, to stop it swinging as the yacht rolled.