Until Death (21 page)

Kelly sat up. ‘On October 30th?’

‘Yes. Why is that important?’

Georgie saw her pause, thinking through some problem. ‘Sylvie crowed to my daughter that I was going away at the end of the month. Christos is sending the kids away to school on November 1st, his mother’s going with them. He’s clearing the decks of everyone. Why?’

Georgie looked at her. ‘We need to find out what’s on that ship, Kelly.’

But Kelly was thinking something else. ‘Where am
I
supposed to be going?’

G
eorgie left the gym first and drove back to the docks. Stuck in a long queue on the Highway in Wapping, she pushed in the cigarette lighter and waited for it to pop back out. She touched the end of her finger with it. Less than a second later she had drawn it away, the pain of the burn lingering unpleasantly. Georgie spent the rest of the journey thinking about what women would suffer for the sake of their children.

In the evening Georgie wanted to go to the climbing wall and Ryan gave her a lift part of the way. They chatted about Dad and other family, about a neighbour trying to build an extension who was having problems with a busybody in the planning department of the council, according to Ryan. Georgie instinctively took the council’s side, but decided it was best not to tell Ryan that. She wanted their journey to be pleasant and relaxed, Kiss FM was blaring, and it was good to have a catch-up with her brother.

They were stationary at the lights when Ryan made an announcement. ‘We’ve got something for you – me and Uncle Ed.’

She was confused. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘A phone message. Want me to play it for you?’

He was looking triumphant and sly, the two commonest Bell traits. She became alarmed. ‘You didn’t do what I told you not to the other night, did you?’

‘Yeah. It works a treat. If you have the number you can get in to their message service – if they’ve never put in a security code or changed the factory default. He hadn’t, probably because he rarely uses it, like most people nowadays—’

‘Who’s
he
?’

‘Your shipping guy.’

Georgie was horrified. ‘You broke into the message service of Christos Malamatos? How did you find his number?’

‘You left your bag by the fire when you stomped out. You’re always so moody these days, G, we all think it. So Uncle Ed looked through your papers. Malamatos sounds Greek. Is he?’

‘For fuck’s sake – I told you not to do that. What were you doing rooting round in my bag?’

‘Oh, come on,’ added Ryan. ‘We’re trying to help. Do you want to hear the message or not?’

‘No, I bloody well don’t. It’s illegal.’

‘That’s not true though, G, is it? I know you want to get on, you don’t want to be stepped on all your life, just like we don’t.’

She knew he meant the rest of the Bells. Everyone doing what they could to live a little better, dream a little bigger. She had the same blood running through her veins. It was what she wanted, too. Ryan was waving his phone in front of her face, teasing her with it.

She switched off the radio. ‘Play it.’

He pressed a button and put it on speaker. The automatically generated computer voice said, ‘A message was left on Saturday, 19th October at 6.35 a.m. The caller withheld their number.’ Then a bunch of noises and a man’s voice, slow and deliberate. ‘1824 is no.’ There was the sound of the phone being put down.

‘Is that it?’ She couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice.

Ryan was indignant. ‘What did you want? A murder confession?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Who phones at six thirty in the morning? Everyone says their name when they leave a message, even if it’s me phoning you. You know, the moronic “Hi, sis, it’s me, Ryan” – as if you don’t recognise my voice. But this message? It’s code, must be, and people only use code when they’ve got something to hide. You took his mobile and iPad and stuff when you searched the place, didn’t you, so no one would have been able to contact him. This is the old-fashioned way.’

Georgie thought for a moment. They had gone to Christos’s flat the day before the message, on Friday the 18th.

‘Play it again.’

They both hunched over, listening in. ‘What can you make out about the voice?’

‘He’s disguised it. It’s impossible to know if he’s young, old, it’s too short a message to reveal an accent. It’s just a man, that’s all.’

Georgie nodded. ‘Which is why he risked leaving the message.’

Ryan played it again.

‘What’s that noise at the end?’ There was a scrapy-tappy sound just before the call was cut. ‘Play it again.’

The pitter-patter scraping, then the clunk of the phone going down.

Ryan shrugged. ‘Sounds like Shelley when she taps her shellacs on the bar.’ They both listened again to the short message, frowning at each other. Then Ryan smiled. ‘You see, you can’t resist, G. It’s human nature to want to know.’

Georgie shook her head. ‘You are not to do that again.’

‘The thanks I’ve just had,’ said Ryan, ‘I’m hardly going to go out of my way. But it’s still a useful trick to know.’ He put the phone away in his pocket.

‘It’s against the law, Ryan. That should matter.’

Her brother shrugged and roared away up the bus lane.

T
he storm was building in intensity, the slate-grey sky throwing flurries of rain at the windscreen, the ship careening down wave troughs and cresting skywards. The crew had worked for long hours, battening down everything that could move and cause damage. The Wolf was sweaty under his waterproofs and went back to his room to change. He found Luciana naked on the floor of the cabin doing the sun salute, the TV blaring. ‘You OK?’ he asked. ‘Not feeling sick?’

She didn’t even open her eyes as she pointed her perfect bum at the ceiling. ‘Never better.’

He smiled, came out and swayed down the corridor to Jonas’s door. It was closed. He was probably knees to the lino and head down the toilet, wishing he’d flown cattle class back to Heathrow. Sometimes these storms lasted for weeks, not days. He paused, wondering whether to knock. The door next to Jonas’s opened and the company security guy came out.

The door banged shut with force behind him as the ship listed. The Wolf narrowed his eyes. ‘That’s not your cabin. What are you doing in there?’

The guy drew himself up, quick to anger and quick to pull rank. ‘It’s none of your business,’ he shot back. He wasn’t prepared to be grilled by any old deckhand.

The Wolf was having none of it. ‘Cabins are off limits. So unless you tell me what you were doing in there, I’ll be forced to enter and take a look myself.’

The guy looked at him like he was something that had got trapped in the grooves of his shoe. ‘I’m moving cabins. I threw up in mine.’

The Wolf relented. You couldn’t expect everyone to adjust as well as Luciana had to being on board.

‘I was in number 23. I’ll enjoy knowing that you’ll be the one to clear it up.’ He walked away down the corridor as the Wolf stared at his retreating back, his fists opening and closing.

He went up to the bridge where the captain and the first mate were. The Wolf could see the rings of the storm on the weather chart had tightened, like a noose round a convict’s neck. The President was watching the might of the storm through the toiling windscreen wipers, standing with his legs wide to counteract the listing.

‘It’s going to be a cracker,’ said the Wolf.

‘Yes, stronger than we thought. Force 9 at least.’ The President looked grey and tired.

‘Should we have moved around it?’ The Wolf would be surprised if he said yes – the ship could ride through hurricanes without too much bother and this storm wasn’t that big. Yet.

‘We could have tracked further south, but that would have delayed us several days.’ He let out a grin, keeping the atmosphere light. ‘Let’s show our guests what this ship can tolerate.’

Their conversation stopped as the President took a call. The ship moved down a wave and they felt their feet and their stomachs lift. Spray hammered the windows and the white of a wave hit the prow.

The Wolf was surprised to see Jonas come on to the bridge. ‘I expected you would be calling God on the great white telephone.’

‘Me, I feel great.’

‘I’m glad you’re OK, seasickness can be really bad.’

The President was trying to explain to whoever was on the phone that the storm was fast-changing and unpredictable. But it sounded like he couldn’t get a word in edgeways. From the tone of his voice he was only a shade away from apologising, something the Wolf found surprising. He was captain of the ship. You stood by your decisions and defended them. You were in control. The President turned to the Wolf and rolled his eyes. He was being leaned on from on high. ‘Of course, I’ll—’ Another long pause. ‘The cargo is fine,’ he managed to say, before being cut off again.

Jonas was talking to the Wolf, but the Wolf wasn’t listening. ‘Who’s that?’ he mouthed at the captain.

The captain covered the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘Head honcho, checking everything’s OK. He’s spending too much time looking at weather patterns. He’s getting stressed.’

‘The owner?’

The President nodded, the phone still to his ear.

A pen rolled across the bridge before the President caught it and clipped it back in his breast pocket. In this weather anything not tied down found a life and energy of its own. The Wolf looked out through the rain at the hundreds of tonnes of cargo surging north-eastwards to London. Christos was stressing about his ship in the storm. The contents had better have been fixed down securely inside those cans, or things would be damaged. He smiled.

‘Wolf, do you want to play ping-pong?’ Jonas was leaning on one of the rails with his elbows, completely unconcerned about the weather.

He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t work with this listing. I’ve got a much better game. Come on.’ A feeling close to joy surged through him as he jumped down the stairs of the bridge and out into the corridor. ‘You can’t do this on dry land.’ He took Jonas to a staircase of nine steps between the accommodation floors. ‘Here’s the challenge. How do you walk down those stairs without touching any of them or the walls?’

Jonas thought for a moment and then shrugged, stumped.

The Wolf grinned. ‘Watch this.’ He waited for a few moments as he felt the ship list to one side. ‘Here we go!’ The ship hit another huge wave and rolled back sideways, the staircase tipping up, becoming more horizontal with the lean of the ship. The Wolf took a long stride at the moment he judged the ship to be as far over as possible. Right then he staircase was at less than a twenty-five-degree angle and one long step could bring him to the bottom of what would be an impossible drop only moments before. A second later he was at the bottom of the staircase. ‘See? Walking on water. Now you do it.’

Jonas laughed nervously, his hand gripping the stair rail. The ship was leaning the other way now, the staircase an almost vertical drop. The Wolf could see Jonas’s hands were white where they clutched the rail. The ship rebalanced and began to careen back the other way.

‘Get ready,’ shouted the Wolf.

The Wolf saw Jonas take a deep breath and shout as he jumped along rather than down the stairs. As he landed he was screaming with exhilaration at the altered angles.

‘Now watch this. You can jump up them, too.’ The Wolf waited till the top of the staircase had tipped down with the ship’s movement and jumped back up to the top stair.

‘Man, that is better than an acid trip!’ shouted Jonas.

You’d know, thought the Wolf.

F
or Kelly every remaining moment with her children was precious. It was Tuesday and they should have been at school, but she kept them home on the pretence that they needed to pack and organise. Also, being indoors served another purpose, she wasn’t followed by Christos’s men. Now Yannis was on the kitchen floor playing with Lego and Florence was opening cupboards and pulling out ingredients.

‘Mum, I want to make cake batter and eat it all.’ Florence tried to extricate the mixer from a crowded shelf.

‘Let me.’ She pulled out the Magimix and set it on the counter. She needed to treasure these normal moments with her children. Suddenly a memory flashed before her and she smiled. ‘Do you remember, Flo, when Amber put Daddy’s watch in the cake?’

Florence turned towards her, her face a triumph of rediscovery. ‘Yes! “Watch cake, watch cake”.’ Her daughter laughed.

‘What?’ Yannis looked up, not understanding.

‘Amber would have been about two and you were four, Florence. We were making a cake. Amber was standing on the chair by the stove, and Flo and I kept saying that when the cake went in the oven we would have to keep an eye on it to make sure it didn’t burn. Dad took off his watch so Florence could tell us when the big hand got to six and then a little later we came back to the stove and we couldn’t find the watch anywhere—’

‘Yeah! Yeah! And we were hunting all over the place for it and Dad was getting annoyed and eventually the cake came out of the oven and Mum cut it and in the middle was Daddy’s watch.’

‘That’s right,’ continued Kelly. ‘Amber had put it in the cake. She turned her little face to me and she said, “Watch cake, watch cake.” It must be one of your earliest memories.’

Florence nodded, looking at Kelly with her pale eyes. ‘I see her, you know. Sometimes I see her.’

‘So do I, honey, so do I.’ Kelly burst into tears. ‘She lives in you, a little bit of her is in you always.’ She sat down on a chair because the strength in her legs had drained away. Her children came and put their arms around her, the simple uncomplicated acts of love from those who were young.

‘Well, this is an affecting scene.’

Kelly pulled away sharply. Christos was in the doorway to the living room; she’d had no idea he was even home. Her love for her dead daughter was chased away by a visceral hatred for the man blocking a doorway in her home.

‘Florence, it’s important to remember to live life for now. You’ve got Yannis here, you’ll always have Yannis and me.’