The Fish Kisser (2 page)

“O.K. I'll stop the bloody ship,” he replied at last, shifting back into gear, telling himself his decision had nothing to do with Motsom's threat, that his only concern was LeClarc … knowing he was lying.

Nosmo King, disgraced ex-cop turned private detective, jogged from the alcove, caught a glimpse of the three men at the bar and instantly summed them up. Scotland Yard detectives—probably on a taxpayer-funded goodwill junket to some unsuspecting foreign force. Memories of his days as a detective on such trips flashed to mind. Pissed most of the time, he recalled. The bloody foreigners were always so hospitable, and were used to drinking the local booze. Blurred memories of blurred visits—one boozy encounter followed by another—shot through his mind, alcohol greasing the flow of conversation between people of different nationalities.

They'll regret it, he thought, rushing the stairs to the upper deck three at a time. His mind was racing ahead. How the hell do you stop a ship? Shout, “Man overboard!,” or is that only in the movies? Then a frigid blast of night sea air sharpened his senses as he forced open the heavy steel door to the deck. What the hell am I doing? I'm not even sure the poor bastard went overboard.

It was less than five minutes—five terrifying minutes— that Roger had been in the sea. Hope and despair had edged each other out a million times. The biting chill had numbed his body but stung his brain. How can it be this cold? It's the end of July—I think?

Death had visited him in the first few minutes as he'd struggled for breath against the iron hand clamped around his chest, but he'd fought off the spectre and his breathing had gradually eased. Who had claimed drowning was the least painful of all deaths? he wondered,
recalling reading it somewhere—
Reader's Digest
probably. What did they know? Who had come back from drowning to tell their story?

He stopped swimming. “Why struggle?” said the small voice in his head. “You're drowning. Why prolong the agony?”

Twice he let go, allowing himself to sink slowly, but his will to survive brought him flailing, coughing, and spluttering back to the surface. So much for it being painless, he thought, as he re-fought the chest cramps. This isn't a hot bath or a Jacuzzi; this isn't the Caribbean or Hawaii. This is the North Sea: Cold, bleak, and tempestuous. Nothing lives or dies comfortably here.

“Anyway,” said the inner voice, rationalizing, “what about your parents? Maybe you should try for their sake.”

His salt-stung eyes closed as he tried to conjure up images of them. A couple of featureless old people watching television in the sitting room of a three-bed-room semi-detached house in Watford was the closest he could get. Does Dad still have a moustache? he worried, becoming obsessed, convinced that failure to remember was evidence of death.

Pinch yourself.

He did … Nothing. Total numbness.

Panic!

“Calm down,” said the voice. “You can prove you're alive. Just remember what they look like.”

Noises and smells rather than images sprang to mind. Old people's noises and smells—belches and farts, clicking false teeth, diarrhoea and disinfectant, and his mother's voice, grating, and demanding.

“Is that you, our Roger?” she'd sing out as he arrived home from the office each evening, her eyes glued to the television.

“No, it's a fucking maniac come to slice off yer head,” he'd mumble
sotto voce.
“Only me,” he'd call cheerfully, already halfway upstairs to his room.

“Yer late; yer dinner's cold,” she'd whine.

“I've eaten,” he'd shout, slam his door, and slump in front of his computer, safe and secure in his own world.

They won't remember me; won't even miss me, he thought and for a moment had a feeling of total freedom—thirty-one years old, finally escaping their clutches—even perversely revelling in the knowledge that his mother wouldn't have any say over his demise, and wouldn't be able to bask in the spotlight of sympathy. Drowning at sea wasn't the same as being hit by a truck on the High Street. No disfigured body in intensive care for her and her bingo friends to cluck over; no fearsome array of life support machines for her to shake her head at; no parade of weeping relatives commiserating over her impending loss. “Oh you poor dear— he was such a nice boy.” And there would be no prognosis of survival given by an over-optimistic doctor, unable, or unwilling, to commit himself to the terrible truth. Without a body to view, weep over and bury, there would always be a question mark, a faint hope, a possibility. “Maybe he's run off with a bird—or a bloke—to get away from her,” neighbours would tittle-tattle behind her back. And she'd hear them … sniggering as she shuffled to the corner store wearing her loss in her downcast eyes. Instead of mourning a lost son for a few weeks, or months, her mourning would last forever. “Serves her bloody right,” he said to himself.

Memories, however hazy, of his mother kindled thoughts of his room and the techno-shrine he had built there. And her jealous admonition: “You think more of that damn computer than you do of me.” True, he thought, and promised himself the pleasure of telling
her so—one day. It was an easy promise, now knowing he never would.

Thoughts of his beloved computer stirred images of his stubby fingers flitting across the keyboard. “My fingers!” he screamed and stopped swimming, just for a second, bringing both hands together, fingertip-to-fingertip. Feeling nothing, he whipped them out of the water, sank like a stone, and had to fight his way back to the surface. Catching his breath, he gingerly lifted his right hand to his face and peered closely. The total darkness that initially surrounded him had faded as his eyes had grown accustomed. His pallid fingers were silhouetted against the blackness of the sea, but their outline and colour blended into a grey miasma and, feeling himself sinking again, he dropped his hand back into the water to resume paddling. He hoped his fingers would be alright—prayed they would be.

A light flickered above the horizon then quickly disappeared. A few seconds later it was back, then out again. I'm hallucinating, he thought, and stared, intently, determined not to let it fade, but just as he concluded it was real, it went out again.

“It could be a lighthouse,” he mused and headed in that direction.

Two minutes later, his mind, working in slow motion, caught on to the fact it was a distant ship. The light, flickering on and off like a dysfunctional advertising sign, was in rhythm to the lazy swell. Now identified, it held his attention. Is it coming or going? he wondered. His hopes leapt. They're coming back for me. Yes, that's it. Someone saw me go overboard and now they're searching.

Instinct overcame logic. “Help! Help!” he screeched. The ship was miles away. “Help! Help!” He had more chance of being heard by a passing jumbo jet.
His contracted vocal chords barely squeaked, his lungs pained with the effort, and the sounds that did escape were instantly grabbed by the breeze and scattered so quickly he wasn't sure he had made any noise at all.

Exhausted by the effort, he shut out the distant light, sank inside his mind, and found a procession of embarrassing memories parading past him: A ten-year-old with his head firmly jammed in the wrought iron banister—sore ears for a week; one from the fireman as he fought to free him, and the other from his mother's heavy hand. Plummeting out of the old oak tree on the common. “So not everyone can climb trees.”

“Anyone can climb that one. My kid sister can climb that one.” And that from a girl!

Then there was the goal post falling down during the school soccer finals—the saw marks clearly visible. Never picked, not even as a substitute, not for any team, both captains saying, “You can have the fatso.” He'd shown them.

Mrs. Merryweather's Alsatian jumping out of the next-door upstairs window onto the greenhouse roof was a recurring vision. As a twelve-year-old, he'd been the first on the scene searching frantically amid the debris of glass, geraniums, and pulped tomatoes, trying to find the marrow-bone he'd tossed from his bedroom window moments earlier. The big dog bled to death in minutes and the bone, still clenched between his teeth, was buried with him. Various theories were put forward to explain Rex's fatal behaviour. “Rabies,” suggested Roger, trying to deflect inquisitive stares.

“Nonsense,” responded his father, but a worried look spread over his mother's face.

“You didn't get bit, did you?” she enquired quickly, checking his hands for signs.

“I 'spect he were chasing one of the cats,” said Mrs. Merryweather through tears, then added redundantly, “Rex never done nothin' like this before.”

Everyone had their own ideas, jaundiced eyes fixated on Roger, though no one was willing to risk his mother's wrath by pointing a finger.

As if waking from a dream to an unusual noise, Roger's conscious mind tried desperately to take control, and fighting through a mental fog to make sense of what was happening. It's true, he thought, your whole life does flash before you in death. Then reality struck—as far as he could tell he was dead.

Nosmo King, still smarting from his conversation with Billy Motsom, prayed otherwise, and was on the aft deck of the SS
Rotterdam,
desperately searching for some way of stopping the ship without becoming ensnared in the inevitable furore.

Detective Inspector David Bliss, still fuming at his colleagues, scooted around the deserted restaurants and coffee shops, frantically seeking Roger LeClarc. “There'll be hell to pay if we lose the fat git,” Sergeant Jones had said, before he had discovered the duty-free bar and lost his senses. Yet, despite his size, LeClarc had slithered from sight.

Nosmo King had also searched for LeClarc; his motives were less virtuous, and he found himself being hauled to the bridge by a crewman who stumbled across him on the aft deck just as he'd launched a life raft in a final act of desperation. Looking like an antisubmarine depth charges, the cylindrical capsule descended spectacularly into the water, leaving King musing, “Did I do that?” The ripcord yanked tight, splitting it apart, the emerging life raft inflated like the wings of a newly hatched butterfly as carbon dioxide flooded its body.

Jacobs' voice startled him, “Oy! What'ya doing?”

Heart thumping, he looked over his shoulder to find the catering assistant heading his way.

“Man overboard!” he shouted excitedly, then turned to peer at the raft: a child's giant paddling pool bucking and leaping in a white-water thrill ride as it bounced repeatedly off the ships wake. His spirits sank. “Bugger. It's tied on,” he muttered to himself, realizing the ripcord was tethered to a shackle at his feet. Jacobs' calloused hand grabbed his wrist as he reached down to undo it.

“I didn't see nobody fall overboard,” said the young catering assistant cagily, his mind whirling at the thought that he might be dealing with a deranged lunatic or a dangerous drunk.

“Well I did,” King lied. “Look, there he is.”

The crewman, used to keeping watch, gazed into the blackness. “Where?”

“Over there. Look he's waving,” said King with a positiveness that defied contradiction.

“Can't see no one,” said Jacobs finally, although the flatness of his tone suggested his conviction was draining.

Nosmo seized the moment. “I'm not going to let the poor bastard drown even if you are. Help or get out o' the bloody way.”

Jacobs let go of King's wrist, deftly unscrewed the shackle, and they watched for a couple of seconds as the raft was swept astern on the tide created by the propellers' thrust.

Jacobs shut the bridge door behind them and King found himself blinded by absolute blackness. A voice floated out of the dark. “Yup. What do you want?”

King froze, fearful of walking into something painful.

“Jacobs, Sir,” called the voice from behind him. “This passenger says someone's fallen overboard.”

“Well don't just stand there, come in.”

Which way? wondered King. “Uh, I can't see anything.”

“Don't worry, your eyes will get used to it in a minute,” said the disembodied voice. “Bring him to the radar cubicle Jacobs, there's more light there.”

Guiding hands on his shoulders propelled King across the bridge to an area cordoned off with blackout curtains. The invisible man explained, “We have to keep it dark so we can see what's ahead—no streetlights at sea. Lots of yachts have poor navigation lights. Some don't have any.”

Squeezed together inside the tiny cubicle, the men took on an alien appearance in the luminous green glow from the radar screen, and King wilted under the presence of the officer. Six-foot-four and two hundred and fifty pounds, he estimated, and the man's smart uniform, contrasting sharply with the catering assistant's grease-streaked jeans and dirty shirt, added weight.

Pulling himself upright, Nosmo King strengthened his resolve and launched himself at the officer. “Why don't you stop the ship?.Someone's fallen overboard.”

“Sir, this isn't a double-decker bus. You don't just hit the brakes and stop. I've given the bos'n instructions, but I need to know exactly what happened.”

This was someone used to giving orders, expecting to receive answers, and King's confidence crumpled. It's a good job the lighting's poor he thought, as beads of sweat broke out on his upper lip and the blood drained from his face. “Ah … well. Ah … like he told you,” he stuttered, “I… I saw someone fall overboard.”

“How did they fall?”

That's sharp, thought King. “What do you mean, how did they fall?” he stalled, having given no thought to the physical difficulty of falling over a ship's rail, but
realizing from the officer's tone it might be impossible; that it would need a jump, a push, or a violent lurch in a stormy sea.