Dastardly Deeds (20 page)

Every bone in my body felt bruised, every centimetre of flesh flayed. Frothy water splashed against my face. I turned, searching for the others. Almost immediately I spotted Tessa, not far away, the reflective patches on her lifebuoy glimmering against the choppy sea. I dog paddled stiffly towards her and took hold of the floating rope. She didn’t react. Her head was back and her eyes closed, her arms, with the buoy tucked beneath, just drifting in the water.

‘Tessa!
Tessa!
’

Her eyelids rippled, just slightly, but enough to tell me that she was alive. I felt awash with relief. I found the severed part of my own rope and then, with clumsy, shaking hands, frayed the ends enough to tie them together. It formed a tethered section about forty centimetres long, sufficient for proximity yet with distance. A surge of laughter accompanied this last thought but I swallowed it, aware that if I allowed it space, I might never stop.

I paddled us around until we faced the ship again. It was already some distance away, a cascading chandelier of lights on the darkening water. A faint slipstream of music followed in its wake. But there were no sirens sounding, no lifeboats being lowered, no pale faces peering at us in shock. Nobody had seen us fall. Nobody even knew we were missing. We were in serious trouble.

Tessa came to as I was bandaging her arm with a strip of material I had torn from my own shirt. I may have been a little rough. She flailed around, hitting me once on the shoulder. I could see by her face the moment that reality had sunk in. She began to cry.

‘It’s not over till it’s over,’ I said, mainly because it was the first thing that popped into my head. I wasn’t usually given to proverbs.

She ignored me, staring at the receding ship instead. Fat tears dribbled down both cheeks and her nostrils gleamed wetly. She was not an attractive crier. ‘They’re leaving us. It’s so cold. I’m freezing.’

‘Me too.’

‘We’re going to die.’

‘At least we survived the fall,’ I said brightly. ‘So there’s always hope.’

She leant forward to wipe her nose on her sleeve. ‘What are you? Bloody Pollyanna? We’re going to
die
. Just admit it.’

‘Okay, we’re going to die. Happy now?’

She let out a strangled yelp, pointing past my shoulder. ‘There’s Phoebe!’

I twisted around and sure enough, there was Phoebe, swimming towards us. I began paddling frantically backwards, using my hands as oars. Beside me, Tessa was doing the same. Phoebe stopped, stretching out her arms to float some distance away. Her face was the same colour as the churn of the waves.

‘Help,’ she said simply, in a hoarse voice.

Tessa was still trying to paddle away but was now anchored by my lack of movement. ‘Nell, no. Let her die.’

‘Help,’ said Phoebe again. ‘Please.’

I stared at her. If I did nothing for long enough, then I wouldn’t have to do anything at all. She would just sink from view. It would be out of my hands.

‘Nell,’ said Tessa urgently. ‘She tried to
kill
us.’

‘I know.’ I raised my voice to call across to Phoebe. ‘Have you still got that knife? Show me your hands.’

She lifted both arms, immediately sinking into the water. She spluttered back to the surface but it clearly took an effort.

At what stage did you help someone who had shown that they were capable of murder? At what stage did you,
could
you, watch them die? I took a deep breath. ‘If we let you hang on to the rope, I swear that if you try anything, we’ll wrap it around your neck. There’s two of us and only one of you.’

‘I won’t,’ she replied weakly. ‘I promise.’

I turned to Tessa. ‘We have to try. We can’t just leave her.’

‘I suppose. Okay. But I want it on the record I was
not
in favour.’

‘Duly noted.’ I began to paddle across, Tessa floating behind. When we reached Phoebe, she grabbed at the tied rope between the two buoys and then hung there, staring at the water. Her wet hair was all the same colour, the fringe plastered across her scalp.

‘You tried to kill us,’ said Tessa balefully. ‘You stabbed my arm.’

Phoebe didn’t reply. Keeping an eye on her, I paddled sideways until I could see the ship again. It was no longer a chandelier but a disco ball, all the lights fused into a single star. It had left behind a salmon-grey sky, with the setting sun a crimson pustule on the horizon. The wake of the ship had parted, leaving a vast, rippling expanse of midnight blue. The juxtaposition of colours would have been beautiful if I had been elsewhere. Like sitting on the deck with a glass of wine.

‘Why didn’t anyone see us?’ asked Tessa in a tone of wonderment.

I shrugged, framing myself with ripples. My legs stung with cold. Even so, I knew that the water temperature of the Mediterranean Sea was mild, around eighteen to nineteen degrees Celsius. Lucy had done a project on hypothermia in high school and so I also knew, from the myriad fun facts I had helped her glue on the poster paper, that hypothermia would set in when the body’s core temperature dropped below the normal rate. Its progress was then fairly rapid. From shivering and slurred speech to a loss of muscle control, drowsiness, incoherence and exhaustion. The final stage was unconsciousness, accompanied by respiratory distress and/or cardiac arrest. The warmer waters in which we were currently floating would merely prolong matters. We would be lucky to survive the night. Which, I estimated, would fall in another hour or so.

‘Sorry,’ said Phoebe, looking at Tessa. The word was without syllables, a flat breath of sound.

‘It’s a bit late for that,’ snapped Tessa. ‘My daughter is going to be motherless because of you.’

I refrained from pointing out that her daughter was motherless at this very moment, mainly because the mother in question had chosen to holiday without her. Blood had begun to seep through her bandage again. I wondered if sharks frequented the area.

‘Do you think they’ll know we’re missing by now?’ asked Tessa in a low voice.

It would be almost dinnertime. They would be gathering in the restaurant, having their glasses filled, poring over the menu. ‘They’ll probably just think we’re running late.’

‘Darcy will have wondered why I didn’t go down to the cabin to change.’

I looked at her curiously. ‘Did he know you went off to see me?’

‘No.’ She made a noise like a moist giggle. ‘Of course not.’

‘I won’t be missed yet,’ said Phoebe. ‘If ever.’

The ship had all but disappeared, reduced to just a miasma of smudged light in the distance. Beyond the pale faces of my companions, all else was turning pewter. A sharp feeling of panic stabbed whenever I thought about the impending darkness. I wriggled my toes, trying to maintain movement with minimum effort. Then I flexed each muscle in turn, all the way up to my neck. The cold was biting but worse was the nothingness around my legs. They dangled, unseen. By me at least.

‘Do you think there are sharks here?’ asked Tessa, holding her arm. ‘I’m scared of sharks.’

‘And I’m scared of plummeting from a cruise ship into the middle of the sea and then being left to drown in the pitch-dark. So we’re probably even.’

To my surprise, Phoebe laughed. It wasn’t the most joyful sound but it had more emotion than her previous offerings. She was barely moving, her arms draped over the rope. Several items of clothing floated on the surface around her. I thought she would probably slip away at some stage, like Jack Dawson in
Titanic
. Which meant I had a limited window in which to fill in some gaps. Besides, I needed distraction.

I touched her lightly on the arm. ‘Why did you kill them?’

She was silent for so long that I thought she wouldn’t answer. When her voice finally came, it was monotone. ‘Everyone acts like Anna was an angel. She wasn’t. She treated Scott horribly. She said to me once that I was such a good foil for her. Tall and awkward where she was … not.’ The whine of words paused for a moment. ‘That last night, she was so full of everything. Her new apartment, her new job, her new friends. She had a mobile phone, one of the first, and she kept making calls all evening. And Scott thought she wanted him back. But I knew she didn’t. She even laughed about it when he was getting drinks.’

I spoke gently. ‘What happened when she left?’

‘I pulled out of the car park and turned the corner. She was standing at the taxi rank, talking on her mobile. Probably about us. I was so angry I drove straight at her. You should have seen her face.’ Her voice lifted. ‘And then I just drove away. I didn’t even look in the mirror.’

‘Who’s Anna?’ asked Tessa, confused.

‘A friend of theirs from university,’ I replied, keeping my eyes on Phoebe. ‘Did you regret it afterwards?’

‘Not at all.’ Her voice finally contained emotion. ‘She deserved it.’

Tessa glanced at me. Her expression said it all. Phoebe was certifiably mad. I was floating in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea with a madwoman. ‘What about April?’ I asked evenly. ‘Did she deserve it too?’

‘Yes. She was bossy and rude and acted like she was better than everyone else. I thought she’d changed but she hadn’t. I went to her room for a drink after we got back that night and we were sitting on the balustrade. Those thick concrete ones. She said she was going to have a fling with Scott on the ship. She thought it was funny. Told me she’d let me know what he was like. So I pushed her. She was so shocked.’ She hesitated, as if remembering. Her eyes narrowed. ‘Never thought I’d do anything like that, did she?’

‘You’re a monster,’ said Tessa.

‘
They
were monsters,’ spat Phoebe, with some of her earlier venom.

I leant away. I should never have felt sorry for her. Clearly she felt no sympathy for anyone else. She had
murdered
her friends. ‘What about me? What did I ever do to you? We’ve barely spoken!’

‘No, you wouldn’t have bothered speaking to
me
.’ She flashed me a bitter glance. ‘I wasn’t
interesting
enough. And I wasn’t a
man
.’

‘You’re an idiot,’ I said flatly. ‘I’ve spent more time with my sister, and Deb, on this cruise than any of the guys. Besides I was having a drink with you only an hour or so ago!’

‘Yes, and look what happened there. You said those horrible things.’

‘And so you tried to kill me.’ I went to fold my arms but realised I needed them to anchor the lifebuoy. ‘
That
seems reasonable. Any regrets now?’

Phoebe didn’t answer. She had gone back to staring at the water. Tendrils of hair had come loose from her plait, floating across the water like seaweed. The ship had now disappeared, a broad ribbon of red along the horizon all that separated us from total darkness. They definitely would be questioning our absence by now, asking who had seen us last and when. I wondered whether Ashley would be starting to doubt his confidence that nothing untoward had taken place. Would he feel a flush of guilt, of responsibility? The thought gave me a grim feeling of pleasure.

‘I was only going to ask your advice about telling Darcy,’ said Tessa in a small voice. She was still holding her arm. ‘Seeing as you’ve had so many kids. How you thought he might take it.’

I looked at her expressionlessly. My sympathy for her, for having been caught in this predicament, was rapidly fading. I turned back to Phoebe. ‘But you didn’t buy sunglasses in Istanbul.’

‘So?’

‘Well, then you didn’t use the money from Kim’s purse.’

She stared at me. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘You thought Kim Satchwell was me,’ I explained slowly. ‘At Gallipoli. So you followed her down the track and hit her over the head, took the money out of her purse. What happened then? Did you give the money to Donald?’

‘You’re a fruitcake. I don’t know what anyone sees in you.’

I examined her carefully. She was either a very good actor or she really had no idea. And surely she would have admitted to Kim Satchwell’s murder given she had freely confessed, even boasted, about the other two. Which meant that they weren’t connected. Maybe Ashley had been right about this, at least. It had been a robbery after all, and the amorous Clint had scattered signed ten lira notes around Turkey like confetti. ‘In that case, did you happen to put something in my doorjamb the other day?’

She sighed, as if I was taking up her valuable time. ‘Now why would I do that?’

‘Because you wanted to sneak in later and smother me while I slept?’

‘You watch too much television. Apart from anything else, I might not have thought much of you, but I didn’t actually want to kill you until you said those horrid things. Teach you to mind your tongue, won’t it?’

‘Yes.’ I gazed across the darkened sea. ‘I’ll remember that in the future.’

‘There
is
no future,’ commented Tessa sourly. She suddenly lurched to one side. ‘Something touched my leg! Something touched my leg!’

‘Then keep still,’ I snapped. ‘Jerking around won’t help. Besides, it was probably one of Phoebe’s skirts.’

Tessa was staring around her, as if a sea creature was about to materialise.

‘You have to keep movements to a minimum,’ I added. ‘Otherwise you’ll get hypothermia quicker.’

She moaned, still peering at the water.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Phoebe quietly. ‘Nothing matters. It’s all too late.’

‘Thank you for that inspiring speech,’ I said. I wanted to turn my back on her, but that was probably not advisable.

They would have sent out a search party by now, first to our various cabins in case we’d had an accident or taken a nap. Then they would stand around the corridor, staring at each other with growing concern. They would split up to cover all the various parts of the ship. The front, where Ashley and I used to meet, the casino, the buffet, the emporium, the library. Finally, a couple of them would make their way to the pool deck and climb the stairs to the upper deck. At the back, around the corner, their faces would pale as they took in the pool of blood, the severed rope, and the missing lifebuoys. I hoped Ashley was there, but not Ruby or Quinn.

Tessa tried to strike up another conversation but I wasn’t interested. The side of my head throbbed from where I had been struck. I was tired and cold and utterly miserable.
Posthumously awarded Pulitzer Prize remains uncollected.
I was going to die because two men had tried to chat me up. And their friend had been so bitter with jealousy that she had seen what she wanted to see, what she had always seen. Darkness had now fallen, although with a plump moon that shed a silvery sheen across the water. The lifebuoys also provided their own glow, the reflective tape an iridescent greenish white. They cast an alien patina across our faces.

I was nauseously conscious of the life that teemed below my dangling legs. If carnivorous sea creatures didn’t get me, then hypothermia would. Sometime during the night, my speech would slur into incoherence. Exhaustion would drag me under. I thought of my daughters, who would be devastated by my loss. My mother would be furious, my sister guilt-ridden. And me, I would be dead.