Revenge of the Tide (30 page)

I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. On the deck of the
Scarisbrick Jean
, Malcolm’s shorn grey head popped up and then went below again. I moved quickly back into the shelter of the bushes and turned towards the van. He’d driven it through a gap and parked it in a space tucked away in between two trees. From the rocky, unmade road the van would have been invisible; from the northern bank of the river, it would have been possible to see the back of it sticking out, but little more than that.

‘Is this where you’ve been all this time?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘On and off. I’ve been here solidly for the last couple of nights. But I had to go back to London, too, last week. And I was over there for a bit,’ he said, pointing directly across the river to Cuxton. The public waste site was on the opposite bank and I could just about make out the queue of cars waiting to dump broken furniture, hedge clippings and whatever else into the skips.

I sat next to him again. His shoulders were bowed, and when I looked at his hands, gripping his knees, I realised they were shaking. I put my hand over his, squeezed it. His skin was cold, rough to the touch, the knuckles scarred and dirty. I looked at his face, but he was staring resolutely out across the bit of river we could see in the space between the greenery.

‘What’s going on, Dylan?’ I asked quietly.

He made a noise, like a grunt of sheer hopelessness. A
Where do you want me to start?
kind of noise.

‘What happened to Caddy?’

‘Wrong place. Wrong time.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Fitz thought he had a leak. He thought Caddy was it – he was having her followed. They followed her all the way to your boat. Apparently they lost her at the marina, then she suddenly popped up in front of them – don’t ask me how or why, I don’t know. She started yelling. One of the fuckwits punched her and she went down. That’s what they said to Fitz when they got back to the club, anyway.’

I stared at him, the thoughts spinning and whirling around my head. ‘You mean it was an accident?’

‘No, it was them being complete fucking idiots. It was an accident that it happened near your boat. A coincidence, I guess. Apart from the fact that you invited her to your party.’

It was all my fault, was what he meant. I was still processing this when I realised he was saying something else.

‘…thing is, Fitz didn’t know where you were. In fact, he’d almost forgotten all about you. And then when the fuckwits went back to the club and told him what had happened – when he’d come down from the ceiling – he started wondering what she was doing in a boatyard. And he found out you were here.’

‘So what?’

‘So, now he thinks you and Caddy were in on some scheme together. He doesn’t know what. But sooner or later his paranoia will bring him to bloody invent something. Which is why you’re in big trouble.’

‘I thought it was the parcel,’ I said, vaguely.

He gave a short laugh. ‘The parcel? You mean the one I gave you? I don’t think so. Not unless you’ve been waving it about.’

‘Dylan. Someone took it. I don’t know when. I’m sure it was there on Thursday, then this morning when I looked it was gone.’

He was staring at me with an amused smile on his face. Whatever I’d expected in reaction to the news that his precious parcel was missing, it certainly wasn’t this.

‘You never looked in it?’ he said.

‘No. Of course not. I just hid it, like you told me to.’

He rubbed a hand over his scalp and sighed. ‘Put it this way. Whichever idiot has got it will get a big shock when they finally open it up.’

The clouds were thickening over the bridge, moving so fast it looked as though the bridge was swaying and might fall at any minute. It was dizzying. It was starting to get dark.

‘Why are you here, Dylan? If you’re not here to pick up the parcel, what are you doing here?’

He didn’t answer at first, looking out across the grey-brown river to the opposite bank, to the trees and the grass and, in the distance, the cars queuing to get round to deposit their rubbish in the public waste facility.

‘I’m here because of you, of course,’ he said, so softly that I wasn’t even sure I’d heard him.

‘Me?’

‘I was watching out for you.’

My first reaction was to blurt out that he hadn’t been doing a very good job, considering the number of times I’d felt threatened and afraid in the last few days, but I bit my cheek instead. ‘Does Fitz know you’re here?’ I asked at last.

‘Of course not.’

‘Where does he think you are, then?’ I asked, remembering how Dylan was like Fitz’s shadow, the one out of all of them who seemed to be completely trusted, always there.

He shrugged miserably. ‘Told him I was going to Spain to see Lauren.’

‘You won’t have much of a tan when you go back.’

He laughed then, a throaty laugh that ended in a cough. ‘Not much of a one for sunbathing, me,’ he said.

‘No, I guess you’re not. Jim said you’d done a runner.’

‘Did he now?’ he said. ‘That’s interesting.’

‘You weren’t answering when he called you, same as you weren’t answering me. Why did you do that?’

‘I rang him when I needed to.’

‘And why did you ring me the night after Caddy died? I answered the phone and you didn’t say anything.’

‘I wanted to check you were okay. Then Fitz turned up and I had to pretend I was listening to voicemail. It’s not that easy to make private phone calls in that place, you know that. Always someone watching. Anyway,’ he said with finality, ‘I’m not going back.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a long story. But I’m not doing it any more. I’ve had enough. Like you.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to go to Spain,’ he said. ‘Set up my own club, a bar, something like that.’

‘Sounds like a really good plan,’ I said. ‘I almost wish I could come with you.’

He looked at me properly for the first time. His eyes were dark, and the twinkle behind them I’d always thought made him look cheeky, not dangerous like the others, wasn’t there any more.

‘That wouldn’t be a good idea,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘Fitz will come looking for me,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t take kindly to people who let him down.’

‘Like Caddy?’

‘Yeah, if you like. You need to stay where you’re safe.’

‘I’m not exactly safe here, am I?’ I said. ‘Why should I stay?’

I felt him tense up next to me and for a moment I wondered if I’d said completely the wrong thing. I was almost expecting him to lose his temper, shout at me.

But when he spoke again, his voice was even quieter. A calm, measured response.

‘It won’t be forever.’

‘What won’t?’

‘You’re only in danger because of Fitz. Once he’s sorted out, you’ll be fine.’

‘Sorted out?’ I echoed. ‘What do you mean? Who’s going to sort him out?’

‘Christ!’ he said, raising his voice for the first time. ‘You and your fucking questions! And to think the reason I liked you so much is that you knew when to keep quiet about shit like this!’

‘I’m sick of being the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on! Why don’t you trust me?’

‘I do trust you. There’s just a lot of stuff you’re better off not knowing.’

‘What’s in the parcel, Dylan?’

When he answered, his reply was so unexpected I thought I’d misheard him and I had to ask him to repeat it. ‘What?’

‘Flour. It’s just bags of flour. Self-raising.’

W
e were standing by the office, looking down towards the boats. There was no sign of life at all – nobody skulking in the shadows, watching; no one in the office, or the showers, or the laundry. Nobody around the boats. All was quiet and silent.

I rang Jim again, and this time his phone was switched off.

‘What shall I do?’ I asked Dylan. ‘Shall I leave a message?’

He shrugged, all his attention focused on the boats. He started walking towards the pontoon.

‘Jim, it’s me. Just to tell you I’m with Dylan. We’re going back to the boat. Come and meet us there, okay?’

There was blood on the deck of the
Scarisbrick Jean.
I saw it as Dylan and I made our way down the pontoon towards the
Revenge of the Tide.

It was a smear, a long streak of brown and red, along Josie’s proudly scrubbed wooden deck, as though something large or heavy had been dragged through it. It went into the cabin through the doorway that was now tightly closed and locked. And a smear, maybe a handprint, on the gunwale as if someone with bloody hands had steadied themselves while leaving the boat.

‘Oh, God,’ I said. ‘Look – there’s more…’

There was another handprint on the gunwale of the
Revenge of the Tide
as well, a smear. Spots of blood on the deck.

Dylan went first. He was different now, tense, his body solid and even bigger than it had been just a few minutes before. He was readying himself.

The lock on the door was broken off. I followed him down the steps into the cabin and they were there. The saloon was crowded with people. It was like some kind of fucked-up Barclay reunion. Fitz, very different in a pair of jeans and designer trainers, and Nicks, lounging on the sofa, making themselves at home. In the galley, to my horror, Leon Arnold, leaning against the cooker, and the one who’d watched the door for him that night he’d attacked me – Markus? Sitting on the table at the dinette, swinging his feet and looking cheerful.

I looked away from them.

And on the floor, his wrists tied behind his back and not moving, was Malcolm. His short grey hair was stained red. His eyes were closed.

‘What have you done?’ I said to Nicks, breathless with rage. ‘What did Malcolm ever do to you, you bastard?’

Fitz smiled at me. ‘He thought he had a brain. Didn’t you, you little piece of shit?’