The Abigail Affair (9 page)

Beyond the racks, on the far wall, was a butcher’s section with joints of meat, whole chickens complete with head and feathers, and even four skinned rabbits, all hanging on a rail. The floor beneath him shifted as the yacht rolled gently. One of the rabbit’s paws flopped back and forth like something in an
Alien
movie, as if it still had a vestige of life and was beckoning Toby to rescue it.

Toby was looking for a different sort of dead meat—the Russian girl, Irina. In every book he’d read, bodies turned up in the fridge. He probed around. He shifted a crate of figs so he could see through and behind the shelving.

Nothing.

He had a good look at the meat hanging up to see if it bore any human resemblance.

It didn’t.

He saw a shelf full of small boxes. He poked around, found a packet of expensive-looking crackers, slid his finger under the top and ripped it open. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

He munched a cracker. Very cheesy, like everything on the
Amelia
. He closed the lid and put the box back behind all the others. As he did this, he nudged an open box with English lettering on the side. It said “Salt – Iodised. Produce of Engeland.” That was strange. Surely anyone producing anything in England knew how to spell the word? There wasn’t another country called Engeland, was there? It sounded faintly Dutch. Perhaps it was a Dutch region.

He wracked his brains, but came up with nothing. Intrigued, he pulled the box down on to the shelf below and examined it. It contained wrapped and sealed bags without any markings on them. Salt? Toby poked a finger into a bag and tried to make a small hole with what was left of his fingernail. He pushed and twisted his finger. The plastic gave way suddenly and the powdery contents sprayed everywhere. Some went on his shirt. He dusted himself down quickly. He moistened a finger and tasted.

The tingling on his tongue confirmed his suspicion. He had tried it only once, a couple of years ago, at a dodgy party given by Rodney in Rodney’s stepfather’s Docklands flat while the man was away for the weekend. Anyway, he remembered the sensation well enough.

This was cocaine.

He reached up to the higher shelf and pushed boxes around, looking for any more boxes with similar labelling.

Nothing.

The box he had found contained maybe five kilos of the stuff. Presumably it was just another supply, alongside the caviar and the champagne, that your average oligarch demanded. No official would be likely ever to search the galley of a vessel such as this.

Toby pondered how he could use this information to his advantage. Should he pocket a bag and hide it and have it ready as evidence when he reached shore? A second’s thought confirmed this as a dreadful idea. No, it was better just to file the knowledge away in case he needed it.

Now, where were the freezers? That was a more likely place to stow a victim.

He became aware of a change in the light behind him. He spun around just in time to see the door of the chill room swinging shut. He charged for the door, but was too late. It clunked shut in his face. He pushed, but it did not give. He put his shoulder against it. He couldn’t budge it—it was firmly latched. Then he heard a metallic sliding sound as the handle engaged. He shouted, “Hey—let me out! It’s Toby! I’m in here!” Maybe Chef had returned to his post, found the door ajar, and simply assumed it had been left open.

No response. He hammered anew and yelled, “Let me out! I was just doing an inventory of cheeses for the Boss! We’re short of Emmental! And those little red BabyBel thingies! Quick! Open up!”

The door remained resolutely closed. Toby put his ear to the door. No sound came through the thick insulated steel.

Hell. He was locked in, and it was starting to look as if it were no accident.

He started to shiver. He had been in the cold several minutes now, and it was seeping through his thin clothing into his bones. If he had been locked in deliberately, how long would he be kept prisoner—and why? They needed him for deck and steward duties. It made no sense. Maybe it
was
an accident. In that case, the next visitor to the chiller would be Chef, preparing lunch. Toby checked his watch. The orange numerals showed 9.30am.

At this point, the lights went out. They were obviously on some sort of timer. The only illumination now came from two small red LED lights in the ceiling. They cast a darkroom glow. As Toby contemplated his situation, his night vision started to kick in. A few more moments and he could make out the shelves, and move around without bumping himself.

With his hands in front of him, he shuffled towards the door and felt for the green puffa jackets. His fingers touched fabric. He reached down a jacket and put it on.

He was in no immediate danger. He wanted a pee, but that could wait. And he wouldn’t go hungry, provided he didn’t mind a diet of luxury deli foods.

The ship rolled again. It was surprising how much it moved. It felt like one of those old Channel ferries that Toby and Rodney and the gang used to take for a booze cruise to Boulogne, way back in his mid-teens.

They must be in the open sea by now. Toby keenly wanted to know where they were heading. Once thing was certain—he himself was getting into deeper water by the minute.

A pang of fear ran up his back and neck like electricity. For the first time, he realised how potentially dangerous his situation was. He was out of touch with his family and friends and locked up on a psychopath’s yacht in the Caribbean. With no mobile phone.

The ship lurched again, more than before. He grabbed a shelf to steady himself. Toby knew one thing—if he were the owner, he would have demanded more stability for his fifty million dollars than this.

He forced himself to breathe in and out slowly, but his anxiety did not ease. How long had he been trapped here? He pressed the button on his watch and it glowed 9.38am. Less than ten minutes. Could he get hypothermia in here and die? A young couple had expired of this in their car the previous winter in Gloucestershire.

There must be something he could do. Think!

After a while, a thought did strike him. The manufacturers of this yacht would surely not have made it possible for someone to get shut in here. There must be a way out.

He moved to the door, found the hinges by touch, slid his hands to the other side and swept his hands up and down. There—a switch! He pressed it. There was a little buzz and a flicker, and then fluorescent lighting sprang up—much stronger than the courtesy light that had come on automatically earlier. The sudden glare dazzled Toby, who blinked several times.

After a few seconds, he was accustomed to the light and focused his eyes. Underneath the light switch was a red button with a metallic label underneath it in Russian, French, and English, saying “Press for Emergency Door Release.” Toby pressed, there was a click as some mechanism operated, and the door swung open. He sighed with relief, shrugged off the quilted jacket and hung it back on its hook. Then he peeped out to the left and right. No one in the galley. He moved to the galley door, now closed, and opened it. Again he peered out. No one in the corridor. He retraced his steps to his bucket of cloths and polish. Holding it would give him a look of purpose.

Next stop, his cabin to fetch his wet and dirty clothing and seek out Julia for laundry information and a pow-wow.

He padded down the corridor, turned right and headed down the metallic staircase towards the deck with the crew cabins. Still no one was around.

He had passed several cameras, so anyone watching on the bridge would know where he was. But with his bucket and purposeful stride, he hoped he didn’t look surreptitious, even though he had no right to be inside.

He reached the crew corridor without mishap, took a right, reached his own cabin and opened the door.

The girl Irina was lying on her back on his bunk.

And if she wasn’t dead before, she very certainly was now.

Chapter 8

They had dressed her in a pink bikini. Her face was fixed in a grimace, with the lips drawn back, and the teeth bared and clenched together. Her eyes were blackened. There were numerous livid bruises on her arms and torso. Round her neck was a mass of clear thread—fishing line, which led to a fishing rod, which lay alongside her on the bed. Her arms were palm upwards at her sides. Her feet were swollen and purplish in colour, and her legs were spread apart.

Toby took in the scene. He stood motionless. Why had they dressed the body up in a bikini and dumped it in here? It must have been obvious that he could show up at any time. He advanced into the little cabin, as if the gruesome cadaver had begun to exert a magnetic pull on him.

It took a few seconds for the truth to dawn. They were setting him up. There could be no other explanation. He moved over to the bed and looked down at the corpse. The eyes were open. Toby felt himself tremble as if he had suddenly got the flu. Weren’t you supposed to close the eyes of corpses like in the movies? He put out his hand and hesitated. He noticed the end of the fishing line was buried in the girl’s neck below the right ear. There must be a fishhook in there. Toby couldn’t bring himself to touch the snarling face. It was too late to try to enlist support from Julia or anyone on board. He needed to get to an outside phone, urgently, and call 999—no, 911 out here.

There was a phone on the wall of his cabin next to the shower room door. He had not asked about the telephone system and had no idea how it worked, or whether it could connect to the outside world.

There was a notice in a metal frame by the phone, but exasperatingly, it was only in Russian. The only thing Toby could recognise were the numbers. They were three digits, extensions within the yacht for sure. He scanned the notice for any clues. Usually, on shore, dialling “9” brought up an outside line. He couldn’t think of anything better to do, so he picked up the receiver and pressed “9.” “Bridge,” said a voice in a clipped South African accent.

Scott.

Hell
.

He put the phone back quickly.

While he was thinking about his next move, the phone rang, making him jump. Should he answer it or run? Run to where? He couldn’t hope to hide away for days, even on a vessel this size. He picked up the phone. “Yes?”

“Were you trying to call me? Everything OK?”

“Yes, sir, everything is OK. I’ve been given a fifteen-minute break to sort out some laundry and I wondered if I could get an outside line to call my parents and tell them I’m safely on board.”

“After your skylarking last night and that performance on the dock? Are you crazy? Anyway, the satellite phone system is not for social calls for junior ranks. All outside calls have to come through the bridge.”

He heard a rap on the door. It opened immediately and Julia poked her head in. Toby looked up, the phone still at his ear. Julia took in the situation. Toby said into the phone, “I have to get back on duty, sir,” put the receiver back on the cradle and said to Julia, “It wasn’t me. I just walked in and found her. We have to get a message to the authorities ashore. Or rather, you do, because I can’t get access. This ship is a nightmare. And there’s a shitload of cocaine in the chill room.”

Julia stood in the doorway. Her face was pale. “Oh my God, Toby. That poor girl. We can’t take this on. Krigov will kill us both too if we do anything. Were you reporting this to Scotty?”

Toby moved round the end of the bed and seized Julia’s arms. “Julia, don’t you see, I am being set up for this. Scott may or may not be in on it. I didn’t tell him anything just now.”

Julia shrugged free of Toby’s grasp and moved to the bed. “Why the fishing line?” she said in a near whisper, and again, “Oh my God.” Then she composed herself, took a deep breath, and said in a more normal voice, “Here’s what we do. You take the heat for now. I’ll call the captain in Miami and brief him. He can decide what to do.”

“Shouldn’t we call the cops here?”

“Where?”

“St Helen’s.”

“We’re out of their waters. Anyway, what are they going to do? Try to catch the
Amelia
and arrest it? They haven’t even got a proper Coastguard.”

Toby plumbed the well of his literary and movie-going knowledge, but all he could come up with was, “What about Interpol and the FBI? Don’t they have international jurisdiction?”

“The FBI, in theory. But even if they took the slightest interest, you have been set up as the chief suspect. So my plan is best.”

Toby’s head spun. He looked from the corpse to Julia and back. She was right. He could do little more now. He nodded. Then he remembered the paper Irina had given him. “There’s more. Irina came to me on the bridge last night. She was scared witless and wanted to get off the yacht. She gave me this.” He extricated the folded copy from his shorts and handed it over.

Julia looked at it. “What is it?”

“You tell me.”

“Well, it’s a printout of five chart positions, or ‘waypoints’, with detailed GPS coordinates, and skull-and-crossbones icons by them. And in the corner of the sheet, the words SO MANY DEATHS in tiny English capitals in the Boss’s handwriting, together with some other indecipherable doodles.”

“What does it mean?”

“Well, the icon is a standard Raytheon symbol you can use to mark a spot on the chartplotter. The other symbols are a fish, a shipwreck, a treasure chest, and so on. These could be dive sites, I guess. They’re all in these waters. Not necessarily anything sinister. Except for the SO MANY DEATHS bit. But the Boss is a great doodler. Perhaps he’s been reading a history of the Third Reich.”

“Irina thought it marked where they had murdered people and dumped their bodies overboard, I think. She found it in the Boss’s bedside cabinet. It doesn’t look innocent to me, particularly now that Irina is dead. Can you get this to the authorities? They can check out the waypoints for bodies.”

Julia seemed to hesitate. Then she handed the paper back to Toby. “Hide it away again in your back pocket. We’ll talk later. For now, I’ve got to be seen to do the loyal thing.” She picked up the phone and in a moment said, “Sir, there is a serious problem. Please come to Robinson’s cabin with Szczepanski.” She looked up at Toby. “They’re on their way. Stay calm and don’t make things worse.”