“O.K., Inspector Bliss, shoot. What’s your problem?”
The others spluttered into stupid laughter, “Problems, problems.”
“In private,” he added, catching the sergeant’s sleeve.
Sergeant Jones shook him off and puckered his lips for a drink. “Oh come on, Sir. Spit it out, I haven’t got all night. We’ve got serious work to do.”
Bliss hesitated, pivoting around, checking for eavesdroppers. Len had made himself scarce, washing glasses further along the bar, hoping they’d get the message. No one else was close, though two men arguing at a small table set into an alcove caught his eye. Instinct and twenty years experience alerted his senses. When he’d wandered through the bar earlier the alcove tables, with room for two or three at a squeeze, had been the preserve of courting couples, some, he assumed by the tartness of the women, being paid for their services. Now, as he watched, the two men huddled together, quarrelling face to face. Putting it down to a lover’s tiff, he turned back to the sergeant with a sobering stare. “I’ve lost him,” he said forcefully.
Sergeant Jones critically examined the clarity of his beer against an ornamental bar lamp—an art nouveau knock-off masquerading as Lalique—then shrugged. “So what. We’re on a ship, aren’t we? He couldn’t get off … unless he’s decided to swim to Amsterdam.”
The other two roared.
“Have a drink Guv’nor and stop worrying,” continued the sergeant, drawing the barman toward him with a crook of a finger.
“No, thank you, Sergeant. I’m on duty,” Bliss countered pointedly, and stood in silence for a second as he contemplated pulling rank. Then, realizing the men would be of little use, decided to let it go. “I’m going to look for him myself,” he said, moving toward the door.
“Miserable git,” mumbled one of the others. “No wonder yer missus left yer.”
“She didn’t leave …” he turned defensively, annoyed that he was still defined by a relationship that had sunk years ago; then decided not to waste his breath, not to salt his own wounds. Anyway, there had been others.
The argument between the two “lovers” in the alcove was briefly put on hold as Bliss passed. The second he was out of the way, Billy Motsom, a stubby, forty-something, professional enforcer, slinking behind the manicured facade of a mutual fund salesman, stabbed a finger at the other man, spitting, “The Arab wants this guy’s head on a plate. You’d better deliver, or it’ll be your f’kin head.”
The other, Nosmo King, taller and decidedly unmanicured, rose determinedly, seeking a way out when Motsom slammed his fist on the table. “You lost him, so you’d better stop this ship and get him picked up damn quick. Understand?” King mopped his forehead with his sleeve desperate to gain thinking time, but Motsom’s stare pierced painfully into his skull.
“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