Twisted Little Things and Other Stories (24 page)

Zooming out on the app, I show him a map of the world.

“Home?” I ask, pointing at the map again. “Can you show me? Where is home, for you?”

He stares at the map.

“Where is
home
?” I ask again.

“This is hopeless,” Mark mutters, watching from nearby.

Ignoring him, I bring up a news page and start a video from last night, showing the stricken ferry being rocked by waves. I kind of expect this, at least, to bring about some kind of reaction, but the survivor simply stares passively at the screen as the video plays.

“You,” I say, pointing at the phone. “Last night,
you
were on that boat! Do you understand? Somehow you survived.”

He stares at the screen for a moment longer, before turning to look back at me.

I look over at Carter. “Is there any chance he's suffered a head injury?”

“That's what I thought at first,” he replies, “but I don't see any evidence. Anything serious enough to cause concussion should show some kind of surface-level trauma, but there's nothing. Maybe the proper medical team will have more luck, but the storm's making it hard for them to reach us. We're kinda running a back-to-basics operation for now.”

Turning back to the survivor, I can't help but feel increasingly concerned by his stare. I'm probably being paranoid, but I feel as if it's me, out of all the people in this room, who seems to have attracted his attention the most.

“Where are you from?” I ask, starting to run out of ideas already. Figuring it's worth a shot, I try the only sign language I know, but nothing seems to be getting through to him.

“We're going to have to wait until someone arrives from London,” Mark says, over my shoulder. “They'll get him talking. There's not a language in the world that those guys don't know.”

“Assuming he wants to talk,” I point out.

“Why wouldn't he?” Mark asks. “He must realize we're here to help him. I mean, what the hell else does he expect to happen?”

“Hang on,” I mutter. Leaning over to a nearby desk, I grab a piece of paper and a pen, and I quickly write my name before holding it up for the man to see. “Sophie,” I say clearly and slowly, while pointing at the letters, before holding the paper and pen out for him, hoping he'll take them. I wait, but he simply continues to stare at me. When I try to slip the pen into his hand, he ignores it completely and lets it drop to the floor.

“I need to check my equipment,” Carter says, heading over to another desk. He sounds frustrated, and I can definitely sympathize right now.

Staring at the man, I finally realize that there's no way I can get through to him. I need to leave this to the professionals, whenever they get here. “You'll be okay,” I tell him finally, as I get to my feet. “I don't know what's going to happen, but -”

Suddenly he says something, just a few words in a gravely, husky voice that sounds like nothing I've ever heard before.

“I'm sorry,” I reply, “can you say that again?”

He speaks a few more short, rasping words. I have no clue what he's trying to tell me, but his eyes are still fixed on mine.

“Sophie,” I say again, pointing at my chest before indicating the rest of the trailer. “England.”

He says something else, with a hint of urgency, but I can't make out a word of it. This time he keeps going, as if he's stringing together a sentence, before finally he falls quiet again.

“I don't have a clue,” I say with a sigh, turning to Mark. “He has to be from somewhere, but you need someone who really knows how to break things down and trace the root of the words coming from his mouth. You saw how he reacted to the paper and pen, he doesn't seem remotely motivated to communicate with us. I guess he must be scared.” I pause for a moment. “Have you had any luck finding other survivors?”

“We've got teams out there now,” he replies, “and -”

I wait for him to continue. “And what?”

“Maybe we should take this outside,” he adds, glancing past me. “He might not want to talk to us, but your chap definitely seems happy to listen.”

Turning, I see that the man is still staring at me. I force a faint smile, before following Mark to the door and stepping out into the wind and rain. In some weird way, the bad weather is actually refreshing as it batters my skin, and the gray, murky morning is a relief after the stormy night. Beneath my feet, the ground is soft and muddy.

“Something isn't right here,” Mark says, turning to me.

“No kidding,” I reply.

“I've covered rescues like this before,” he continues, “where there are questions about the origin of a vessel. They're always different, always challenging, there's always something that doesn't quite fit, but
everything
about this one is throwing me for a complete loop. I don't even know where to begin.”

“There's something about him,” I reply. “I can't put my finger on it, but something just felt wrong when I was talking to him. It was the same when I saw the rest of them out on the ferry, they just seemed so... calm. There was no fear in their eyes, no panic, no sense that they were scared of drowning.”

“Do you think maybe they were drugged?” he asks. “Maybe when they were put on the boat, they got drugged to keep them docile? We've heard of people-smugglers doing worse things in the past.”

“It's possible,” I tell him, “but refugees and asylum-seekers are usually scared, they usually want to know what's going to happen to them. This guy seems to view us as an irrelevance, it's almost as if he's waiting for something.” I pause for a moment, trying to work out what to do next. “Get someone to screen his blood, maybe there's some kind of infection that could help zero in on his home region. Check under his nails, check for parasites, just try to find markers that can narrow it down, even just a little. Anything's worth a shot right now.” Feeling my phone vibrate, I pull it from my pocket and see that Rob's trying to get in touch. I hesitate for a moment, before rejecting the call again. I'll make things right with him later, when I'm not so busy.

“Are you sticking around?” Mark asks.

I pause for a moment, before nodding. “I didn't come all this way just to turn around when things get interesting.”

“When Stratton gets here -”

“Stratton isn't here yet,” I point out, “and from what I've heard, he's decided to set out on foot. Eight miles across muddy, boggy land? That's gonna take him a while.” Hearing raised voices nearby, I turn and look past the trailer. A couple of hundred feet away, an elderly woman is being guided back by a couple of rescue-workers, but she's shouting about something.

“Great,” Mark says with a sigh. “Another crazed local doing her best
Straw Dogs
impression.”

“What's wrong?” I ask.

“It's the old dear from that house on the other side of the bay. She's been down here all morning, ranting about how we need to pack up and get out of here.”

“Why?”

“I don't have a clue. She must be ninety if she's a day.” He turns to me. “I have to get on to some people in London, and see about getting a bio-hazard team down here. It looks like we have just the one survivor from the ferry last night, so he's our best shot at figuring this whole thing out. We're going to get to the bottom of it, though. After all these years, we're finally going to work out where that ferry came from and what it was doing out there.”

“Maybe,” I mutter, as the rain picks up a little.

“Not maybe,” he replies, patting my shoulder as he heads to one of the other trailers. “Definitely.”

A few hundred feet further inland, the old woman is finally being led away, but she's still shouting at the officers. For some reason, she really doesn't like the fact that we're working here.

Chapter Five

“So we enhanced one of your photos of the ferry,” Louis explains, as he works on his laptop in the data trailer, “and we managed to make out a registration number, and we ran that against every database we could think of.”

“And?” I reply.

“Nothing. According to national and international maritime agencies around the world, there's no vessel with 4889013 as an identifier.” He pauses, and I can tell that there's something else, something he hasn't told me yet. “At least,” he adds, “there's no
current
vessel with that identifier.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I finally checked out a database that covers lost vessels,” he explains, opening another browser tab, “and I found this sucker on a list of lost, un-recovered cargo vessels.”

“Lost?” I ask, leaning down to look at the screen. “As in stolen?”

“As in sunk,” he replies, scrolling down the page until he comes to a black-and-white photo. “As in glug-glug, down the spout, sleeping with the fishes. Pretty definitely, too. Recognize it?”

As soon as I see the photo, I realize that he's right. Even from this grainy view, it's clear that he's found an image of the ferry in some far-off port. After all these years, we're finally starting to find out where this damn thing comes from. Looking at the photo's caption, I see a name.

“The Aspheron?” I mutter. “Sounds... What is that, Greek?”

“Could be. We're still trying to find the origin of the boat, but so far we know that by the 1940s it was running trade routes out of Hong Kong. There's nothing particularly unusual about that, of course. It was quite common back in the day to flog rusty old piles to the other side of the world and let them live out their final days as cargo mules.”

“The 1940s? How old is this thing?”

“This photo shows it in 1946,” he explains. “As you can see, even by then it was in need of a fresh paint job. It's hard to believe anyone would risk their life by sailing in the damn thing seventy years later, but I guess people get desperate. Safety standards weren't exactly top-notch back then, either. I've located partial records for the trade routes of the time, and the Aspheron seems to have been in near-constant use, mainly heading out to places like Singapore and as far south as northern Australia.”

“Talk about a workhorse,” I mutter. “But how did it end up here?”

“That's where we're stumped,” Louis continues, scrolling further down the page, “because in 1949, age and poor maintenance finally caught up with the Aspheron.” He turns to me. “The goddamn thing sank in Hong Kong harbor, taking three crew-members with it. Mark and I tried to make sense of the whole thing, but we're stumped.”

“Okay,” I reply, “but -”

“And here it is,” he adds, scrolling down a little further until he reaches a grainy underwater photo, “in 1972, when divers looking for another wreck happened to find the remains of the Aspheron. Right where it should have been, in Hong Kong harbor.”

Staring at the screen, I can't help but feel a shudder of recognition as I see the same deck that I was briefly walking on last night. I want to say that there's been a mistake, that somehow they've mistaken one boat for another, but deep down I know that isn't possible. This photo even shows the bridge, with the windows dark, just like they were when I was swinging past them.

“That's nearly thirty years,” Louis points out, “that the Aspheron spent in the depths of Hong Kong harbor.”

“So who raised it?” I ask. “And why?”

“No-one, according to the records. Another research team reported seeing the wreck in 1981, but there's certainly nothing to indicate that it was ever recovered.” He turns to me. “Hong Kong harbor is one of the busiest in the world, you can't exactly raise a boat without anyone noticing. You need permits and documentation coming out of your wazoo before you can even think about doing something like that.”

“If it had been underwater for that long,” I point out, “there's no way anyone could just bring it up and start using it again. The amount of work required would be insane, you'd be talking about a massive undertaking, and for what? Just to get that heap of junk to float again for a few more years? There's no reason for anyone to do anything like that, and even if they did, there'd be a record.”

“So how did that boat,” he asks, tapping the screen, “end up off the shore of Cornwall last night?”

***

“I thought I'd find you out here,” I say half an hour later, as I reach a section of the clifftop that overlooks the entire bay. “I remember how you always used to find the most desolate spots when you needed to get away from everything.”

“Should've known I couldn't hide from you,” Mark replies, with a faint smile.

As I sit next to him on the tarpaulin he's using as a makeshift blanket, I can't help but reciprocate that smile. The storm has mostly died down now, and the rain has stopped, leaving just a strong wind that keeps trying to pull my hair loose from the pins that are holding it back. All around us, the long grass is waving and rustling, while down below the edge of the cliff there's still a strong tide, with waves – albeit much weaker than before – battering the pebbly beach. I always think the natural world is at its most beautiful in the wake of a good, strong storm.

“I got a call from Stratton a few minutes ago,” he continues. “He was in a field about five miles away, and I could hear cows mooing in the background. Somehow, I don't think his journey here is going too well.”

“Did they find anyone else?” I ask, looking back out at the gray, choppy sea.

“Search and rescue crews are all over the area,” he replies. “I don't think they expect to do much rescuing, though. The odds of anyone being pulled out of there alive are...” His voice trails off, but he doesn't need to finish the sentence.

We both know there'll be no more survivors.

“The entire ferry is below the surface,” he continues. “There's nothing floating, but they think they've found the location.”

“We need to go down there,” I tell him. “We need to check it out.”

He nods.

“And we need to do it soon.”

He nods again.

“And you need to tell me the truth,” I add.

He turns to me.

“I heard a rumor that you're quitting,” I continue. “No offense, Mark, but you live for your work, you're the kind of guy who'd probably drop down dead within six months of retiring.” I wait for him to offer an explanation, but finally I have to ask. “So what gives?”

“I...” His voice trails off again, and he turns to look back out at the bay.

“And why did you call me down here for this?” I ask. “You don't need me here. You
want
me here, I'm
useful
here, but you laid it on a bit thick when you called. You couldn've done all of this without me. Hell, maybe I'm even getting in the way.” Again, I wait for a reply, and again none is forthcoming. “What's this all about, Mark?”

He stares out to sea for a moment, as waves continue to crash against the rocks below the cliff.

“It's about that goddamn ferry,” he says finally. “Every time we come close to finding it, it slips away.”

“I know, but -”

“I won't let it happen this time. Still...” Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a battered notebook that I recognize immediately. “Remember this?”

Taking the notebook, I start flicking through the pages. Mark and I used to take turns making notes about the ferry, so there's a mix of my handwriting and Mark's. Turning to the first page, I spot an entry marked almost ten years ago, which was when we first became aware of the mysterious ferry.

“It became our white whale for a few years, didn't it?” he says after a moment. “Remember how much time we spent trying to pin the damn thing down? Every time it slipped into view, it'd slip away again before we could do anything.”

“I never mentioned it to anyone else,” I reply. “I thought they'd write us off as crazy.”

“Me too, until it hit the Sullivan's cruiser.”

“To be fair,” I point out, “we don't
know
it was the ferry that hit them.”

“Don't we?”

Pausing, I realize that he's right: there's no other explanation. Five years ago, the ferry hit that cruiser and caused it to overturn, and we weren't able to save the family in time.

“I don't want to say that I've become obsessed,” he continues, “but... I've definitely become obsessed. After you quit, I carried on with my research. Over the past few years, I've found half a dozen references to the ferry in shipping documentation from around the world, and I've personally been involved in two investigations where an old ferry just like this one has been cited as the cause of an accident. It looms out of nowhere and disappears just as quickly, like a...”

His voice trails off.

“Say it,” I tell him.

“Like a ghost ship,” he admits. “Everyone else just thinks it's a joke, but I tracked down a guy who used to work this coast in the eighties. He'd heard about the damn thing too. Turns out it's a bit of a whispered legend in these parts.”

“There's no way a rogue ferry of that size could be operating,” I point out. “With modern radar systems, modern shipping technology, it would've been identified and seized by now.” I wait for him to reply. “What port does it sail from? What routes does it take?”

“I have no idea.”

“All these things leave traces, so what -”

“People have died because of this thing,” he continues. “Last year, a fishing boat called the Coretianna sank off the coast of Brittany, after being hit by an unknown vessel when visibility was low. Two years before that, another fishing boat near the Shetlands got into trouble when it was rammed by a boat that the captain claimed had come out of nowhere and struck them. He described an aging ferry that ignored all attempts at communication.”

“And you think that was the Aspheron?”

“I
know
it was the Aspheron.”

“Then what -”

“Did you read the report into the Sullivans' deaths?”

A shiver passes up my spine at the mention of that incident. “Mark -”

“Did you read it?”

I shake my head. “I avoided it.”

“There was evidence on the upturned hull of their cruiser that they'd been hit by a large vessel.” He pauses. “I went through the records and there was no evidence of another vessel in the area but -”

“Stop,” I reply, fighting the urge to get up and walk away.

“Now do you understand why I called you last night?” he asks. “If I'm right, this ferry has caused several incidents over the years, including the accident that killed the Sullivan family.”

“You're putting two and two together and coming up with forty,” I tell him. “You're veering into the realm of...” I pause, searching for the right words. “Explanations that defy logic.”

“I'm considering the possibilities. When you quit the coastguard five years ago, after the Sullivan family's accident, I damn near followed you out, but I decided to stay and keep investigating this ferry. I swore that if I ever tracked it down properly, that'd be the end for me. I came close several times, but it always slipped away before I could get to it. Given the link to the Sullivan family, I thought you'd want to be involved. We always agreed that you'd come back if we had a real shot at this thing.”

“There's only so long you can get away with calling me a consultant,” I point out.

“I don't care. I'm willing to break every rule in the book to get this thing nailed down.” He pauses again. “A friend of mine is Stratton's driver. Let's just say that Stratton's journey here this morning is being deliberately slowed.”

“Are you serious?”

He nods. “When he gets here, he'll take control and that ferry will be lost to us again. I need to discover the truth before it's too late.”

Nodding, I watch as waves continue to crash against the rocks below. I open my mouth to tell him about my visions of the dead Sullivan girl, but at the last moment I hold back. Glancing toward the other end of the bay, I spot the distant house and see that someone's up there, watching us.

“I see the Sullivan girl sometimes,” I tell him, my voice trembling slightly.

“Which girl?”

“The girl from the Sullivans' boat. Mary Sullivan. The one who died.”

He pauses. “When you say you see her -”

“Clear as day,” I continue, with tears in my eyes. “Standing right in front of me, staring at me as if she knows I should have done more to save her.” Taking a deep breath, I realize I can feel tears welling in my eyes, but I sniff them back. “I first saw her that night on the rescue boat after I came around. I thought it was an artifact of the concussion, but ever since, every few months... I have nightmares, too. I don't believe in ghosts or any of that rubbish, but I swear to God, I see Mary Sullivan sometimes. When I'm awake, when I'm asleep...” Pausing, I watch the waves for a moment longer, before turning to him. “I'm glad you called.”

“I almost didn't.”

“If you really think this ferry caused the accident that killed the Sullivans five years ago,” I add, “then we have to know for sure. Maybe -”