66 Metres (18 page)

‘Careful, it's not very safe,' Jake said.

She pulled herself up through the square hole. ‘Then why are you up here?' The slates were slippery. She kicked off her shoes, let them drop back into the room, tested her grip, then crawled over to where he sat, half-naked, propped up next to the brick chimney. He held out his hand and for form's sake she took it, and sat next to him.

‘Nice view?' she inquired. But she could already see that it was. ‘Come here often?'

He nodded, but heavily. ‘Used to. It's the best place to judge the weather and the sea state before a dive.' He pointed. ‘There are breakers far out. You can't see them from down on the shore.'

He had a point, but clearly there was more going on. ‘What's on your mind, Jake?'

He seemed to consider whether or not to tell her some dark secret. But then the cloud that had passed over his face earlier lifted. He bent forward and kissed her. ‘Let's go back inside.'

She went through the window first, then he followed. As soon as he was standing next to her in the room, he kissed her urgently, pulled her clothes off a little roughly, which strangely she didn't mind. She whispered ‘Do we have time?'

He grinned. ‘I'll be quick.'

She made a face. ‘Oh grea –' But his mouth welded to hers as he pushed her back against the wall. His hands clasped her buttocks, lifting her off the floor. She wrapped her legs around him. Dammit, he felt good.

For once, she was quick, too.

Breakfast was awkward, no other word for it. It was always hard after the first night with someone to pretend nothing had happened. What helped was that Fi had evidently gotten her way with Claus, who was broadcasting it to everyone. Fi didn't seem to mind. Elise kept shooting glances at Jake and Nadia, but he acted normal, and as for Nadia, well, Elise didn't know what normal was in her case. And they were all time-pressured, the boat left in an hour.

Nadia went back up to her room and decided it would be best to walk to Pete and Ben's boat alone, Jake could meet her there. Throwing a few items into a lightweight bag, she descended the three flights of stairs and walked out the back door, and bumped right into Kennedy.

He barred her way. ‘Hello, it's…?'

‘Nadia,' she offered.

‘Right,' he said, still blocking the passage, looking more to the side than at her, as if he was trying to remember something. ‘We met the other day, didn't we?'

Nadia tried to act nonchalant, saying she'd visited all the dive shops including his. Kennedy's brow furrowed, like he had a question, or a supposition. She needed to get away.

‘I'm sorry about what happened to your dive shop,' she said. ‘We all came down last night when we heard the explosion. It was awful.'

His voice firmed. He looked her in the eye. ‘We?'

‘Yes, I've hooked up with Jake and Elise's lot, you might know them.'

He looked away again, then seemed to make up his mind, and spat it out. ‘You see, the thing is, one of my staff was out walking early evening yesterday and saw someone fitting your description around the back of my shop.'

Nadia knew she couldn't respond too quickly, her confusion had to appear real.

‘What? Someone like me? What do you mean?' She took a step back. ‘Hang on, you're not
saying… But I was here, I crashed out after a deep dive with Jake.'

‘You were alone, then.'

He had her. Even if he wasn't sure, it would be enough for the police to come asking, a strong lead that could overturn the usual forty-eight hour caution. She had to nip this one in the bud.

‘Well, not alone, actually.' She grinned like a schoolgirl. ‘Er… Jake…'

‘Ah. Is he here? Actually, I came to see Jake, to thank him and the others for helping out last night. A miracle no one was hurt, still don't know why none of the tanks exploded.'

‘Probably not hot enough,' she said.

‘Actually, I believe they were emptied. Who would do that, other than a diver? Must have taken an hour to empty them without making a lot of noise.'

She shrugged. ‘Who knows what's in an arsonist's head?'

Kennedy nodded, but still barred her way. ‘Listen, the guy who saw you, I mean someone like you, maybe you should meet him, it might help clarify what the real culprit looked like. He's down at the police station right now giving them a description.'

Nadia's mind spun. ‘I'm diving this morning, with Jake.' She allowed herself to look sheepish, not particularly difficult. ‘You see, the thing is, with Jake… It's not exactly common knowledge.'

‘It is now,' Elise said, making Nadia whirl around. How long had Elise been listening? Nadia felt a vague urge to apologise. But then again, there seemed to be nothing between Jake and Elise except tension.

‘Hello, Elise,' Kennedy said. He seemed embarrassed by the situation, presumably because he'd known Jake and Elise when they'd been together. He moved to one side.

‘My condolences, Mark, really,' Elise said. ‘Whoever burned down your place should be shot.'

‘I'd really better be going,' Nadia said. ‘I'm really sorry about your shop.'

She left the two of them to catch up, and pondered different ways it could play out once Jake emerged: he could deny being with her, Kennedy might not ask the question, or might just ask a general one as to whether Jake was sleeping with Nadia.

She walked at a brisk pace, the sun gleaming off the morning tide. She dodged through the throng already heading to the beach. Several people almost collided with her. Why didn't people look where they were going most of the time, just open their eyes and pay attention? A mother with three screaming toddlers in tow almost ran Nadia down with an oversized pushchair, and at one point a swarthy man in a broad-rim straw hat bumped into her as he exited a sweet shop, apologised in a German accent, and stumbled on his way. But she finally made it past the thick
of the crowd and sped up as she spotted Pete and Ben's dive shack, the two of them prepping the boat. Pete acted cool with her, business-friendly, and didn't mention anything about her Tsuba dive plans with Jake. Ben gave her a knowing shrug. She went into the shack to sort out her gear.

Jake arrived twenty minutes later, looking tense, and joined her after greeting Pete. He helped her on with her gear, but all professional again, as if nothing had happened between them. Maybe he was just being discreet, especially since she was sure Pete and Ben knew Elise and Jake's history. There seemed to be few secrets on these sunny isles. But she needed to check how things had played out after she'd left.

‘Did Kennedy ask about us?'

‘Why would he?' His look was intense, scrutinising her.

‘Never mind. Let's go diving.'

Kennedy or Elise must have said something, because Jake was being cool with her. She noticed he was throwing glances at her while she was checking her gear. Avoiding his gaze, she happened to glance at her rucksack. The lower outside pouch was open. It was hard to bend down with all the kit on her back, but she could see it was empty. There'd been nothing of value in it except her hotel keycard, and that didn't have a number on it, just the name of the inn.

While boarding the boat, she played back the morning events, wondering when someone could have pinched it.
The man in the straw hat
. It had to be him. She couldn't picture him, and that worried her. That was the sign of a pro. German accent, that much she remembered, maybe a beard – no, not a beard. She couldn't remember his face at all, except… emerald green eyes.

‘Ready?' Pete said.

She lowered her gear into place and secured the ensemble to the central rack with a bungee cord, then sat down.

‘Let's go,' she said.

Ben took over once they were underway, and Pete came and stood in front of both of her and Jake.

‘No Tsuba tomorrow,' he said, then held up a hand before she could speak. ‘Kennedy has eight divers with no dive boat.'

Jake said nothing, just stared out to sea, then turned to face her, again that look of scrutiny. What was going on with him? Unless… No, he didn't fit the profile.

She wanted to say that Kennedy was insured, and probably so too were the divers, but she understood how things worked here. Although the dive operators in the Scillies were competitors, when something like this happened, they pulled together. It made sense, eight pissed-off divers writing bad reviews on the internet affected everyone in the area, not just one operator.

‘So,' Pete said, ‘either you go with Elise, because I heard she's diving there tomorrow, or you wait a few more days till things have calmed down.' He went to join Ben at the console at the front of the boat.

A few more days wasn't an option. Someone had seen her near Kennedy's, and she'd now seen two men who were possible operatives, and who they worked for didn't really matter. Kadinsky wouldn't wait. She turned to Jake, speaking quietly against the noise of the engines and the surf, so only he could hear.

‘Ask Elise,' she said. ‘We could dive from her boat.'

‘Right,' he said, relaxing a little, becoming more like the man she'd been with last night. ‘Like that's going to work.'

She laid her palm on his hand. ‘It will work, if you ask in the right way.'

He stared at her. ‘What are you saying?'

She uttered a word she'd sworn a long time ago never to use. ‘Please.'

‘You must really want to dive this wreck, Nadia. Why? What does it mean to you?' There was an edge to his voice, almost accusatory.

‘Everything,' Nadia said. ‘Life or death.'

He freed his hand, and wouldn't look at her, instead gazing out to sea.

She patted his neoprene-encased thigh. ‘I'm sorry, I –'

‘I'll talk to Elise later.' He sounded angry.

A part of her had wanted to sleep with him one more time. But even if he hadn't gone cold on her, she'd already known it was the very last thing she should do. Last night had been fun, an interlude, but she had to get back to work. Find a way to dive the Tsuba before Kadinsky's patience ran out, or the other two operatives came after her. Jake would get over her; maybe he already had, maybe he preferred Elise. Whatever. Just another one night stand for him, a new notch on his bedpost. A little different for her, though, after five years of abstinence.

Too bad
.

Her break-time was over. She needed to get back onto the other side of that thermocline where she belonged. Easily done. Because something was really bothering her.
Where the hell was Sammy?
He should be back at Kadinsky's dacha by now. And then she thought of Katya, her life hanging in the balance. The rumour was, Kadinsky liked to beat people nearly to death before burying them. Would he do that to Katya? Five years ago, no. But today?

Nadia felt nauseous thinking about it, and leaned over the side. She let her hand catch some of the spray, and wiped it over her face. She stared out to sea. She wanted to be underwater. Life was better there.

‘Can't we go any faster?' she shouted forward to Pete, who turned around.

‘Sure, but it'll get a little bumpy.'

‘Don't care,' she said.

Pete pushed the lever forward and the boat accelerated. Soon they were bouncing off the wave-crests, smacking down hard every four seconds, a steady rhythm, like a slow heartbeat, like the pulsing LEDs on the Rose.

She spoke softly into the wind, so no one else could hear. ‘I'm going to find you, whatever it takes.'

Chapter Ten

Jake scanned the horizon. The sea was getting rougher, the swells deeper, the clouds angrier. A storm was brewing, heading inland. Like the one inside his head since this morning. He glanced at Nadia, seated on the rubber tube edge of the RIB, keeping her own counsel. Lorne had phoned after breakfast. The leads out of Frankfurt had shifted back to Heathrow, not Russia. Trails were going cold fast. Nadia had moved back up the suspect list. Yesterday he'd assumed it wasn't her – but her obsession with the Tsuba… Life or death, she'd said. And Mark Kennedy had spoken to him after she'd left, asked him whether she'd been with him yesterday afternoon. He'd replied in a vague way. But after talking to Mark, he'd gone back in, spoken to Geoff, the owner of the inn, and made an embarrassed request to go back into Nadia's room, played it up, said he'd left something important there. Geoff knew him well enough, and had let him in. Jake had searched a while. He found the Beretta. He'd sat down, suddenly empty, feeling like the air had just been sucked out of the room. Call yourself a pattern-recogniser?

Nadia was the diver in the Thames.

He'd gone back downstairs, returned the key card. Thought about phoning Lorne there and then, but he wanted to confirm where the Rose was. And now he had. Nadia had.
The Rose is on the Tsuba
. He'd call Lorne as soon as they got back. Have Nadia arrested. Navy divers would retrieve the Rose.

He tried not to look at her. Yesterday evening he'd thought it would be just another one night stand, like Vibeke. But it had been so very different. Something about this girl. They hadn't spoken much, as if they didn't need to, they just clicked, relaxed with each other the way it took many couples months or even years to do so. Real chemistry, too, their bodies had taken over. She was like crack cocaine, one hit and he was hooked.

It wasn't just the sex. Diving with her had been like diving with Sean. No need for words, just two people working as a team, anticipating each other's actions, intuiting what they each needed or wanted to do next. Rare. Bloody rare. Soul chemistry, Sean had called it. You could spend your whole life looking for that kind of rapport. After Anne and her affair, he'd given up on love, which just made you someone else's hostage. What he'd search for ever since though, was a relationship that simply worked. One that didn't require trust, because you just
knew
.