The Valley (13 page)

Back in the control room, Max turned off the GPS, explaining that it recorded data. Instead he pointed to a spot on the paper chart about ten miles to the east of the Isle of Wight, and left me to head towards it, whilst he went down to the mess. The anchor chain lay in the doorway where he had dumped it, and, as we sped across the open sea, it clinked and rattled.

After forty minutes, Max came back up and handed me a fleece and some rubber gloves. Whilst I put these on, he pointed the boat into the wind and pulled the throttle back so the engines ticked over just enough to maintain our position. He descended to the mess again, and then I heard him clambering up the stairs very slowly, emerging at the top with Gerry’s body slung over his shoulder.

Gerry was wrapped in what seemed to be a white burial shroud, made from several white cotton sheets, knotted together and tied tight around his torso, binding his arms to his body like a swaddled baby. His head poked out of one end, his mouth hanging open, the blue bruises visible on his cheeks.

Max lowered the corpse onto the deck next to the anchor chain, and then rolled Gerry onto his back, exposing the large damp red patch around his chest. With our gloves on, we wrapped the anchor chain around Gerry’s body, first going round and round his waist, then up to his shoulders and down to his groin. Max had stripped Gerry of all his clothes, and as I pulled the chain between Gerry’s legs, the shroud rode up, revealing his circumcised penis.

With the last few links, Max fashioned a couple of half-hitches and then pulled the chain tight. Together we dragged Gerry’s body across the deck to the side of the boat, where we knelt down and gave the body one final heave, pushing it over the bottom wire of the safety rail.

There was a loud splash. I looked down and saw the body briefly floating on its back, Gerry’s open eyes still staring up at me; then the corpse pirouetted, the weight of the chain dragging his head and torso down first, so the last I saw of Gerry was the pale soles of his feet disappearing into the darkness.

I looked back across the deck. There was a long crimson smudge marking our path back to the control room. Max lifted up the top of the bench that skirted the control room and extracted from the chest below a plastic mop and a half-gallon drum of bleach, which he sloshed all over the deck. I followed behind him, mopping vigorously. By the time I reached the edge of the boat, he had found a high pressure hose. He yelled at me to stand back and then swamped the deck with sea water.

‘We need to move away from here,’ he said, handing me the hose. He started the engines and the boat surged forward, spray splashing over the bows, mingling with the water from my hose.

‘What should I do with the mop?’ I yelled.

‘Chuck it,’ Max said.

I threw it over the side. As I returned to the control room, Max thrust a plastic bag into my arms.

‘Throw these overboard, as well,’ he said. ‘But make sure they are fifty yards apart.’

I looked inside the bag. The first two items were an iPhone and a cheap pay-as-you-go mobile. I threw one to the left, counted to twenty, then threw the other to my right. Next followed Gerry’s wallet, watch, pen and keys; then his glasses and belt; and finally his shoes. For a moment I wondered where his clothes were, until I realised that Max had only given me things that would sink immediately.

After ten minutes, Max stopped the boat, and headed off down to the mess again.

‘Can I help?’ I asked.

‘Not down here, but can you clean the control room and the stairs? Get some cloths and bleach from the hold and remember to keep your gloves on. You can use the hose as well. There are drains at the bottom, and the pump is on, so you won’t flood the boat.’

I started in the control room, wiping the wheel and all the instruments and then the floor, before moving down the stairs, one step at a time. I swamped everything with bleach, wiped it clean with the cloth then rinsed it with the hose. The chlorine stung my eyes and nostrils. Several times I had to rush back on deck to breathe in fresh air.

After half an hour, Max opened the door of the mess. ‘Anyone near us?’ he asked.

I checked. We had drifted about a mile out to sea but we were still a long way from the main shipping lanes.

‘Not a soul.’

‘Great,’ Max said. ‘Let’s have some lunch.’

On the table in the mess was the lunch that Max had bought for Gerry: foie gras, Parma ham, gulls’ eggs, vintage claret and various other delicacies. Apart from the table and two chairs, all the other furniture was stacked on top of each other, with a few soap suds still clinging to the vinyl coverings. But there was no visible evidence that anything more violent than a rigorous spring-clean had occurred in the room.

I sat down and started to take off my rubber gloves.

‘Keep your gloves on,’ Max said. ‘You can rinse them under the tap, if you want.’

He piled his plate high with food and wolfed it all down, pausing only to comment on how good the wine was. In contrast I pushed a small slither of smoked salmon around my plate like a bulimic fashion model.

‘Where do you want to be put ashore?’ he asked. ‘Why don’t you come to Cornwall? It will take a day and a night but you could be back at your desk on Monday morning. Or if you’ve got your passport, we could head for Normandy.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m driving to Hampshire for the weekend.’

He eyed me, questioningly. ‘I told you to come by train. Where’s your car parked?’

‘In the town car park near the marina. Why?’

For a moment, Max was lost in thought, weighing up new possibilities. Then all of a sudden, he was smiling again. ‘It’s nothing really,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I want to keep you insulated – totally insulated – from what’s happened here. Trains are more anonymous than cars, that’s all.’

I decided to change the subject. ‘You mentioned us doing some more work on the boat?’

‘We are going to have a barbecue,’ Max said.

I gestured with my hands towards all the uneaten food on the table.

Max laughed. ‘Not that type of barbecue,’ he said.

He led me up to the deck and around to the back of the boat, where he opened a locker. Inside was a huge barbecue, complete with firelighters, charcoal and a lighter. He left me to build the fire. I used fifteen firelighters, five times as many as I really needed, and two bags of charcoal, creating an inferno.

Max returned, carrying three plastic bags and wearing gloves. He wrenched the grill off the barbecue and tossed it into the sea, then threw one of the bags over to me. It contained Gerry’s clothes. I pulled out his suit jacket and placed it on the burning coals. For a few seconds it smouldered and then it crumpled into a fiery ball.

‘I need to do another clean down below,’ he said. ‘Whilst I’m gone, keep an eye out for any boats and shout if we start to drift any closer to the shore.’

I burnt Gerry’s shirt next. It was caked in blood, which bubbled and spat as the flames took hold. The rest of Gerry’s clothes swiftly followed; then Max’s clothes; then the towels, mopheads and sponges that he must have used to clean the mess.

I had just chucked on some more charcoal and firelighters, when Max returned carrying my backpack and yet another plastic bag.

He held up my backpack. ‘Have you got a change of clothes in here?’ he said.

‘Barely,’ I said. Most of the clothes for my weekend were in a suitcase sitting in the boot of my car.

‘Well, make sure you burn anything that could have touched Gerry. Everything else, you’ll have to get rid of onshore.’

There was something about the way Max said ‘get rid of’ that troubled me. I looked down at the plastic bag he was carrying. The twin barrels of the shotgun poked out from a towel. The blackened stub-end of the silencer was still attached to the tip and somehow it made the gun appear more evil. Instinctively, I backed away from it and tripped over a bag of charcoal. Max held out a gloved hand to help me back onto my feet, but I recoiled from that too.

‘John, are you all right?’

I hauled myself up and stumbled off to the front of the boat, suddenly desperate to get away from him and the gun.

‘Hey, what’s the matter, John?’

It only took two strides of Max’s long legs to catch up with me and put an arm around my shoulders. As we rounded the narrowest part of the deck, where the full width of the control room left only a half metre gap between it and the edge of the boat, I sensed how easy it would be for me to disappear at sea, as well as all the other evidence.

I spun around. Max was smiling at me. ‘Come on. We’ve earned a rest,’ he said. ‘Let’s sit out on deck. Do you want a beer?’

I shook my head, but allowed him to guide me to the spot where we had sat at the start of the day, waiting for Gerry to arrive. It was only a few feet from where we had wrapped his body in a chain.

Max still held the bag with the gun in it. I shuddered when I saw it.

‘Are you cold?’ Max said.

‘A bit. I must have got used to the heat of the fire.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

I forced a smile. ‘I’m cold and I’ve breathed in too much smoke, that’s all.’

‘Perhaps you should stay the night.’

‘No,’ I said immediately.

Max looked at me. I clamped my jaws together, frightened that otherwise my teeth would start chattering.

‘I’m worried about you, John,’ he said.

‘I need some rest that’s all. The weekend will be perfect.’

‘Who are you seeing?’

‘A girl.’

‘What’s she called?’

‘Angela. It’s all right. There won’t be any pillow talk.’

I looked down. The gun was swaddled in one of the white fluffy face towels that Lucy had smuggled on board. The embroidered initials – MFG & LJG – were just visible.

‘We’ve got company,’ Max suddenly said.

He pointed to a boat. It was at least half a mile away, but heading towards us.

Max stood up. ‘It’s a fishing trawler. I’ll start the engines. Can you get rid of this?’

He thrust the bag into my hands.

‘Take the cartridges out of the gun’, he said, ‘and drop them over the side. When the trawler’s out of sight, wipe the gun down with the towel, then chuck the gun overboard and burn the towel. And then burn your gloves and fleece.’

He dashed off to the control room. By the time I had reached the stern, he had fired up the diesels and their exhaust blended with the smoke from the barbecue, making me choke. I knelt down, unwrapped the gun and opened it up. I tried to extract the cartridges with my fingers, but my rubber gloves were too thick and my hands were trembling.

I looked over the side of the boat. The trawler stayed on its course, and gradually we eased away from it. But Max kept going, heading further and further out to sea. I could just see the back of his head through the small window at the rear of the control room. He didn’t once turn around.

I stared at the gun. I needed to get off the boat. If Max was difficult about it, the gun could be my only way of making sure I got my way.

I reached over to my backpack and took out my spare pair of clothes. In their place, I slid the loaded gun inside, slanting it diagonally across the back. To fit it in, I had to rip off the charred remains of the silencer, and I wrapped this in the blood stained towel, and squeezed that into the pack as well, before zipping it up.

I put on the fresh clothes and flung my old ones onto the red-hot charcoal. The fleece melted into a tar-like paste, emitting oily black smoke that became even more acrid when I threw on the gloves and the plastic bags.

I felt the engine die down. Ten seconds later, Max was by my side.

‘Everything gone?’ he said.

I nodded. He set off back to the mess.

I scooped up my backpack. ‘Max, I want to go ashore now,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, John.’

‘No, I want to go now,’ I repeated, following him into the control room and down the stairs.

At the door to the mess, he spun around. ‘You can’t come in here. There’s no evidence that you’ve ever been here and I want to keep it that way.’

‘Max!’ I shouted but he closed the door behind him, and a second later I heard the bolt slide across it.

‘John, go back upstairs,’ he shouted from the other side of the door. ‘Check the fishing trawler isn’t around.’

I could feel the shotgun in my pack. Briefly I considered pulling it out, aiming it at the door and blasting my way inside, until I remembered I only had one unspent cartridge, so I had better not waste it.

I retreated up the stairs to the control room. There was no sign of the fishing trawler.

Max emerged two minutes later, wearing another fleece and a pair of jeans, and holding a bin-liner containing the clothes he had been wearing.

‘I’ll take you ashore the moment I’ve burnt these,’ he said.

We walked around to the barbecue and chucked his clothes into the bowl in silence. It was the second set of his clothes that I had burnt, and I wondered how many more Max would destroy before he felt satisfied that no incriminating evidence existed. When he had finished, we pushed the barbecue over the side, producing a short lived plume of hissing steam, and then a dirty brown slick in the water.

We looked at one another.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay aboard?’ Max asked.

‘Very.’

‘I can’t go back to the marina,’ he said. ‘It’s always packed with weekenders on a Friday night.’

I could sense him assessing me, weighing up the risk I posed. My backpack was only a yard away. If he turned his back, I could pull the gun out and take him by surprise.

‘I suppose I could drop you at Bembridge,’ he said. ‘It’s on the Isle of Wight. You’ll have to take a taxi to the hydrofoil and then another on the mainland to get to the marina.’

‘That’s fine.’

‘Bembridge it is then,’ he said and headed back to the control room.

As Max swung the boat around, I washed my hands and face with the hose. Then I slung my backpack over my shoulder and went to join him by the wheel, asking him to point out on the chart where we now were, and checking our course all the way back to Bembridge.