The Abigail Affair (14 page)

“No. I know this looks bad, but it was nothing to do with me,” Toby insisted. “You have to believe me. Will you take me ashore please? I’ve had no water all day.”

“We been sent to pick up the tender,” Shaun said. “They say you thief it and kidnap this here girl. Now it seem you murder her. I not taking you anywhere.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” Toby said. “You mean the Russian man on the
Amelia
or the South African first officer?”

“I dunno. I don’ know nuttin’ about no yacht. I just get a call from my cousin Obadiah to come over here, collect a stolen rubber tender.”

The other boatman, Amos, shouted “Everything cool, man? We going now.”

Shaun turned his head and shouted, “Wait up.” He turned back to Toby. “Go and stand over there.” He waved in the general direction of the end of the beach.

“You’ve got to take me! You can’t leave me here—I’ll die!” Toby said. “This is not my doing. I’m the victim here. Whoever told you to come here is in league with the Russian. They’re trying to frame me for the murder of this girl. It happened last night. Look, that body is not fresh. Smell it, man.” Toby stretched out his hands. “For God’s sake, don’t abandon me!”

“Amos, come!” Shaun shouted to his colleague. “An’ bring the cutlasses.” He turned to Toby. “Now go and stand away from us, or my friend will come and give you a good chopping.”

Amos jumped into the water with a splash. Toby saw that he was a bigger man, also powerfully built. Toby was no match for these two. But he wasn’t about to give up and walk away.

“One more time, listen,” he said. “I … did … not … do … this. Now let’s all get off this god-forsaken little rock. I’ll pay you well once I get ashore. My father will wire me the money. He will send you whatever you want.”

Shaun pondered this for a moment. “You happy to spend your father’s money to save your skin,” he said. “I don’ need your money, white boy. I got a new boat now.” He waved at the RIB.

“You’re going to steal the RIB? You’re crazy. Krigov will find it in hours and probably kill you. How do you expect to ride around in a white leather centre console tender and not be noticed?”

“No, they say we keep the boat, no worries. Jus’ leave we old pirogue in its place.”

Amos walked up and joined the group. He was an evil-looking specimen, Toby noted, as filthy as Shaun and carrying two cutlasses, one in each hand, each with a glinting, freshly ground blade. This gave him the appearance of a movie pirate, an image enhanced by the red handkerchief he wore bandana-style around his head.

Toby’s mind whirred. “They said you could keep the tender? That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of boat. Why would they give you that?”

“Don’ know, don’ care,” Shaun said. “We goin’ to start a tourist business, eh, Amos? Fishin’ and divin’ and the like. Whale watchin.’”

“You’ll have to clean yourselves up first,” Toby said. “No tourist will go near you smelling like that. Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression.”

The big pirate Amos turned his head and spat into the sand. “Enough shit from you, boy,” he growled. “Now go out of sight or I chop your right hand off.” He raised one of his cutlasses to reinforce the point.

“You say you are to leave the pirogue here? So I can escape on that?”

Amos and Shaun looked at each other. Shaun said, “No fuel.”

“What do mean? You just arrived. There must be fuel.”

“The boss man say to take the fuel from the pirogue and refuel the RIB, leave no fuel behind.”

“What boss man? You said you got a call from Obadiah.”

“Yeah, well, he deal with the business, we just do what we have to do. We’ll leave word with the Coastguard that you out here with a body, they come and sort everything out.”

Toby didn’t believe this for a moment. “You won’t call the Coastguard. That would incriminate you. And you’ll have to explain how your fishing boat got left out here.”

“We wastin’ time,” Amos said, in a low voice. “Come on, Shaun. Let’s get goin.’”

“No!” shouted Toby. “For pity’s sake! Aren’t you Christians? How can you leave me to die? At least give me some water.”

In response, Amos raised his cutlass and swiped at Toby. Toby jumped back. Amos raised his arm again, high over his head. Toby turned and slipped, half fell on the sand, picked himself up and sprinted up the beach. Amos shouted after him, “Any closer an’ I chop you.”

Toby was powerless to do anything other than watch from a safe distance. One of the men waded back to the fishing boat, climbed in, bent down and reappeared a few seconds later with a can attached to a long rubber hose. The other man waded up and took the can from him.

The two proceeded to the white RIB, pushed it back off the beach with some difficulty until it floated, and climbed in. They attached the rubber hose to something inside. After another minute, Toby heard a roar as the RIB’s engine fired up.

A short while later he was alone again, more thirsty than ever, and feeling a panicky desperation that he had never experienced in his life.

This could be it, Toby boy
. No more flirting at the Snooty Goose. No more crewing in the Caribbean. Just a dry and dusty death on an uninhabited island, with only a smelly, decomposing corpse for company. And you could have avoided everything by sounding the alarm and high-tailing it off the yacht! What could they have done?

Well, he was not giving up without a fight. The behaviour of the two local fishermen had incensed him even further.

The sun was starting to burn his neck and shoulders. He retrieved his damp T-shirt from the beach and pulled it back on.

He trudged back to his fire, which had burned low, but still had life. With a heavy heart, he piled more fuel on it. The heat and smoke swirled everywhere. Whichever side of the fire he stood, the smoke seemed to follow him like a cunning adversary.

Soon, however, the fire built back up to a healthy blaze and Toby could stand well away and draw some deep breaths of fresh air to clear his lungs. He found the remaining oil, held his T-shirt up to his nose and mouth, approached the flames and threw the oil into the centre. Thick, black smoke billowed anew. At least his unpleasant visitors hadn’t extinguished his beacon.

Just then, a distant “boom” sounded from across the water.

Thunder? From a clear blue sky? No—from an explosion!

The booby birds, which had been quiet earlier, rose up in a flock, wheeled and screeched in alarm, and spread out in a cloud of flapping wings.

Toby spun around and peered out to sea, shielding his eyes against the sun.

On the horizon, a brief flare of orange confirmed it. Something had blown up. Above the orange flicker, quite clearly visible even in the glare of midday, a pall of black smoke began to arise.

A second later, there was a further explosion, much louder than the first.

Toby stood still and watched as the orange glow flared briefly brighter, then diminished rapidly. Then there was just smoke visible, above the water. After a bit, Toby could see clear blue sky between the horizon and the bottom of the smoke cloud. The source of the explosion had sunk.

Toby struggled to make sense of what he had seen. It looked very much as if the fishermen in their RIB had met with disaster. It was about the right place on the horizon. What had happened? Maybe they had reattached the fuel line incorrectly, fuel had leaked out, and ignited the portable tank somehow. Or had Scott sabotaged the craft? It had all sounded so unlikely—“We been sent to collect a stolen tender.” No one in their right mind would have sent those two to do anything responsible with an expensive boat. No, they had been duped and sacrificed. Also, at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea, they would not spread any tales about dead girls and white boys on offshore islands.

Nor would they alert the Coastguard, if ever they intended to.

As for Toby, there was no longer any evidence to link him to the
Amelia V
. Apart from the dead girl, of course, if he could persuade someone that she had been aboard.

Overall, Toby was not sorry to see the demise of the two hateful fishermen who had so callously left him. Good riddance to them, at least.

He stood still and watched.

After a few minutes, the smoke out to sea had almost dispersed.

It was time to investigate the pirogue.

That was his boat now.

He took off his trainers, waded into the water and climbed up into the local boat.

He saw at once that there was no fuel tank. That must have been the thing with the rubber hose they had transferred into the RIB to get it going. That in turn meant he had no chance of starting the outboard engine. It might have a few cc’s of fuel in the line, but that would last only seconds.

The inside of the boat was a tangled mess of equipment, ropes, discarded empty oil bottles, bits of fishing net, line and floats. Toby could hardly put his feet anywhere without tangling them up in some hazard. A powerful stench of dead fish reached his nostrils. Several small snappers and flying fish lay around, bloated and covered with flies.

He rooted around in the garbage. He found a rusty adjustable wrench and a white polystyrene take-away food container, empty. Then, with a leap of excitement in his heart, he spotted an individual-sized plastic mineral water bottle. He eagerly seized it up. Nearly full, and apparently with water. He unscrewed the cap and sniffed gingerly. No odour. He took a cautious sip. It was water, not of the best quality and not mineral water, but undeniably water. He took several gulps and was about to empty the little bottle when he remembered his Personal Survival Techniques lecture. “Make your water rations last,” Jock had said. “It’s better to take a sip every hour than gulp it all down.” At the time, dozing in a classroom in Southampton, it had all seemed rather far-fetched to Toby. Now he gave thanks for being awake enough to remember this key advice.

Quickly he screwed the top back on the precious water. He twisted the lid tight and placed the bottle with exaggerated care on a seat where he could see it.

This was his first stroke of good fortune since he had arrived in the West Indies. He was determined to see it as an omen.

Then things got even better.

The men had left a pair of oars.

They lay under a tangle of nets, bits of plastic and ends of rope. He pulled them out. They were handcrafted, no more than long sticks with plywood paddles nailed on the ends. But they were workable oars.

He now faced a dilemma. Should he try to row to the mainland, and safety? Or should he stay on the wretched islet until dusk, conserve his strength, try the phone once more, maybe attract attention with his fire, hope for rescue, and if not forthcoming, set out tomorrow morning early?

Waiting seemed the rational thing, especially now he had a little water.

There again, he had tried the phone from the best spot already with no success. Trailing up to the summit once more would use precious energy and water, probably to no effect. Plus he would have to wait all afternoon in the heat of the sun. And any rescuer would find the dead body. That would lead to certain trouble.

He had half a small bottle of water, so he wasn’t going to die of thirst any time soon. If he set out now, he could reach the mainland by—when? He had no idea. How fast could he row—and how far did he have to go?

He decided to have a test row in the boat. He got out, waded up to the beach and untied the painter from the rock, then returned to the boat and got back in. Then he hauled back on the anchor rope. This in itself proved to be hot and heavy work. The boat bucked in the gentle swell off the beach, and the wind, light though it was, seemed to fight him. The boat swung around parallel to the beach. Toby heaved the coarse rope in, hand over hand. After a minute, he wished he had gloves on. The rope was abrading his hands. Blisters were the last thing he needed. He tied the rope off temporarily and scoured the garbage in the bottom of the boat. No gloves, but plenty of pieces of foul-looking rag. With these, he fashioned mittens of a sort and returned to his hauling.

He heaved again, and eventually the anchor rope gave way to rusty, slimy chain. Toby hauled. The chain clanked into the boat.

The anchor came up with relative ease. Toby reached over and hauled the dripping thing in.

Freed from the seabed, the boat started to drift back towards the beach. Toby realised he should have prepared himself first. He scrabbled for the oars. In the process, he stubbed the big toe of his right foot. He let out a yell of pain. He bent down to examine the toe. It was a nasty blow and would swell up for sure, maybe go black, but there was only a little blood.

He should have brought his trainers with him, to provide a secure footing for rowing—and to protect his feet. He debated whether to wade back ashore and fetch them, but decided against it. After all, he had stubbed his toe already and the boat was no longer anchored.

He put the first oar over the side and inserted it in the rowlocks—except they weren’t really rowlocks, just a pair of sticks rammed into holes in the gunwhale. There was nothing to secure the oars in place.

Holding the first oar down with his foot, he bent down to pick up the second, and inserted it between the sticks on the opposite side.

He was ready to row.

At once, he saw it was not going to be easy. The oars were designed for use by two people, one on each side. They were not really long enough for a single rower in the centre of the boat. By raising his hands above his head, he could get the tips of the oars into the water. But it was difficult to get much of a stroke before the oars came out of the water again.

With short strokes, Toby managed to propel the heavy wooden pirogue away from the beach. Encouraged, he rowed some more.

The boat started to glide quite nicely, developing some momentum. Toby looked over his shoulder. He was approaching the shallow reef. He pulled the port side oar and steered into the deeper water. Now there was reef on both sides of the boat, green and brown, just under the surface. It really was quite a narrow channel. Toby realised it would be hard to turn the boat around and head back to the island.