by Peter Tonkin
‘But, bruise or no bruise,’ said Robin quietly, ‘what would make a mark like that?’
‘I don’t know. Something straight and heavy. Narrow, but blunt.’
‘Like a heavy meat cleaver? Only not the blade. The spine,’ she suggested.
‘Yes. That would do the job perfectly,’ Doc agreed.
‘If it might have been a cleaver, then it was likely our madman,’ said Robin. ‘And that’s a bit worrying, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it likely was,’ agreed Doc. ‘At least I hope the hell it was. We’re all under far too much pressure as it is without someone else running around killing people in the showers. But why is the fact that it’s probably the madman worrying as you say?’
‘Two reasons, I’d say,’ mused Robin. ‘Maybe more than two. And they may well be linked to each other. Firstly, why would even a madman use a meat cleaver if he’s got a gun? And secondly, why would he want to use the back of the cleaver when he’s got a razor-sharp blade?’
Li chimed in at that point. ‘Perhaps a madman doesn’t know he’s got a gun,’ he offered acutely. ‘Maybe he’s too mad to know what a gun is.’
‘Fair enough,’ allowed Robin. ‘So why not just hit him with it as though it’s a club? A rock? Whatever mad guys use these days?’
‘Other than chainsaws, you mean?’ asked Li slyly.
‘Because he hit him with the cleaver,’ proposed Doc more seriously. ‘Maybe the cleaver was what he had in his dominant hand. The right hand.’
‘OK. I’ll accept that. Then why the back of the cleaver? I mean not even a madman carries a cleaver back to front. That looks like a conscious decision to me - and that’s what’s worrying. If he made a decision then he had a reason.’
‘Right,’ allowed the Doc. ‘Then what’s the reason?’
‘Think. You have a gun and a cleaver and you want to kill someone but you don’t shoot them and you don’t want to cut them. Why is that?’
Li and Doc looked at each other then at Robin. The penny still had not dropped. So she continued. ‘So that you don’t get blood everywhere. Most especially, you don’t get blood on anyone’s clothes.’
They understood then. Or they understood some of it. They understood at least the significance of a naked man coming into a shower room with only a gun and a meat cleaver to cover his modesty - then going out again after a murder still with the gun and the cleaver, but leaving a naked corpse behind.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Doc. ‘He’s got himself dressed!’
‘More than that,’ said Robin. ‘He’s got himself disguised.’
Of all the things that needed doing aboard Quebec that night, fixing the damage to the vent in the upper-deck passageway aft of the fin was the least important. So that when Paolo returned to the place that he had first heard the Heavenly Voices, he was able to leap upward and catch at the edges of the hole, pull himself upwards and twist his slight body through. The crawlspace between the deck head and the casing was narrow but it had a restful familiarity to the man - or rather to the creature Paolo still was. It was dark in here but no longer pitch black. And anyway, he had his strange-shaped torch now. It was warm, too, for the twenty per cent air-con had started circulating a little heat - which rose, as heat will. And the man was insane, not superhuman. He curled up in the elbow where the horizontal deck met the vertical fin, rested his head on the arm that held the cleaver, placed the arm that held the handgun along the upper ridge of his ribs, hip and thigh, and simply fell fast asleep.
No one else aboard Quebec got much sleep. Most of them were convinced that the instant they closed their eyes - or even lowered their guard - the madman would appear out of impossibly unlikely places and hack them screaming into pieces. Their fear was not all childish; nor could it all be blamed on the media where such monsters roamed unchecked performing miracles of mindless violence. And in so doing making a fortune for film directors, actors, authors and journalists. There were genuine grounds for worry, not least the fact that he must have passed through the ship at least once after Gupta’s death, unremarked and unsuspected because he was dressed in Gupta’s clothes. That in itself bespoke a disturbing failure of focus amongst many of those aboard. They were so busy looking for a naked, slavering animal that when the real thing passed them in a boiler suit they noticed nothing at all. Inevitably, it seemed, the stress of their situation and the exhaustion that sprang from it allowed things to get out of proportion all too easily.
Robin for one could see this clearly - and, with it, the real danger that the nameless stranger presented. Not only that they were so fixated on one thing that they let another wander freely in their midst but also that as time went on and he remained undiscovered everyone aboard was watching out for him more and more carefully. And watching out for their actual duties less and less. Which was a very dangerous distraction indeed.
Robin answered it in the only way she could, and with Mark’s grateful blessing and full authority. And with Leading Seaman Li very close at hand. A couple of times in every watch through evening and the night she patrolled the whole vessel herself, from stem to stem. Or as far as she could get each way, which effectively meant from weapons stowage to motor control. She passed, according to her plan at least, like Florence Nightingale or Mary Seacole bringing brightness, calm, quiet and peace. And a brisk return to duty and responsibility for anyone failing or falling short. In Quebec's current situation, they would be fortunate indeed to survive even if everyone worked together and pulled their weight. As things stood, it was all that Mark Robertson could do to stop more and more people deserting their posts to prowl the corridors and passageways in dangerous groups armed with anything that looked as though it would do serious damage to anyone. Tempers flared. Confrontations needed calming. Officers, commissioned and non-commissioned alike, who should have been monuments of calm reliability, became at the drop of a hat screaming martinets who would have found themselves right at home on the Bounty.
For Robin, in spite of her fond dream of spreading the light of reason and calm, it all came to a head over the bulkhead door in the forward sleeping area. She was pretty exhausted and increasingly short-tempered herself by the time the situation began to build. She had lost all track of time, especially as she had grabbed a couple of power naps courtesy of Doc and Li, who watched over her as she lay in the last spare sickbay bunk. She fondly supposed these naps to have lasted an hour each at most but in actual fact both Doc and Li had nodded off during their watch themselves, unknowingly protected from discovery by the fact that Robin’s watch had fallen victim to her adventures in the life raft. Like Richard’s steel-cased Rolex Oyster Perpetual, it was an analogue, but, unlike his, the water-resistance had failed and the timepiece was taking nearly two hours to get the minute hand round the dial. But this whole situation had its fortunate side, for only a couple of hours’ solid sleep kept Li under control. For the leading seaman was whipping himself up into something akin to a frenzy of lust that was, at the very least, going to get him sacked as Robin’s right-hand man - a situation in which he was proving invaluable to her.
Outside the submarine it was approaching dawn, therefore, when Robin awoke for the second time, fondly believing her watch when it told her it was still the wee small hours of the middle watch. Li had jumped awake immediately before her but had not yet found any way of invading her immediate privacy with his gaze - or anything more solid. ‘Ah, Mr Li,’ she said, uncharacteristically springing into full wakefulness without the application of teak-dark early morning tea. ‘It’s just after 03:00. Time for a patrol.’
She rolled out of the bunk, scratched the tousled golden glory of her head and slid on her deck-shoes, failing to notice for a moment just how many buttons had come undone below her throat. Something that made up to Li for the fact that her overall was no longer so transparent now it was dry. They set off side by side for the control room. The conning tower was manned, of course, but the watch officers were comatose and sitting silently. They hardly rai
sed an eyebrow as Robin and Li came past, let alone a smile or a conversation. Still believing the timepiece that was nearly four hours slow, Robin pressed on, hardly surprised at the lethargy - a traditional part of the 00:00-04:00 middle watch.
At the forward end of the control room the passageway split. One part led straight through the bulkhead door into the upper heads and showers area where they had discovered Gupta’s body. The other led to a steep companionway. Here Robin decided to lead the way down into the areas immediately below weapons storage. Since Pellier had sealed the door, the room remained full of water to a depth of nearly a metre and Robin wanted to see whether or not it was leaking down into the other areas.
The forward companionway took them down into the corridor leading past the lower heads and showers. Beyond these were the refrigeration areas on the right as they faced forwards towards the flooded bow. On the left there were the dry-goods stores. Robin opened and closed all the massive fridges, content with a fairly quick check through to establish that nothing was obviously wrong. Then she and Li turned left and went into the storage rooms. Here their checking was slower. There were shadowy little nooks and crannies all over the place and although their primary concern was to search for leaks, they too soon fell into the trap of keeping too much of an eye out for hidden madmen armed with cleavers and SIG-Sauer P226s.
Robin came out alive and dry but stressed and less than happy. Li, sensitive to atmosphere, was also on a short fuse. All of which made matters worse when they reached the next door forward. This was a metal bulkhead door with a strengthened glass window in it. The glass had been modestly - not to say mockingly - covered by a tiny pair of pink gingham curtains. For this was the crew’s sleeping quarters.
Without thinking, Robin banged the traditional ‘shave and a haircut’ warning and went through the bulkhead first, swinging the heavy portal inward and stepping over the sill. She was only halfway through the door when she was stopped by a heavy shoulder and by something cold at her throat. She looked down to see the handle of the big Sabatier knife held in a hairy fist. Li came crowding close behind her and the sharp edge of the blade bit at her skin. She stopped, stunned, feeling weirdly as though she had stepped into some kind of pirate movie. ‘Who goes there?’ demanded a gruff voice in her ear.
‘For crying out loud...’ she answered. ‘What in God’s name...’
‘That’s not the password...,’ replied the gruff voice, even more threateningly, in a cloud of halitosis that came close to knocking her out.
‘It’s that English broad,’ said another voice. ‘Says she’s a captain or some such.’
‘Came aboard with Psycho Bob, didn’t she?’ The shoulder crowded, the halitosis intensified, the Sabatier thrust up under her chin. The knife blade really did tickle in a strange and unsettling manner. It made her wonder, was that perspiration gathering in the hollow of her throat - or was it blood?
‘Yes!’ she snapped. ‘I came aboard with Psycho Bob, as you call him. And I also brought my husband’s tug, which is all that’s keeping you alive! I’m here with Captain Robertson’s authority. Now stand back and let me do my job!’
The seaman with the Sabatier fell back and Robin stepped into the crew’s sleeping quarters with Li on her heels like a bantamweight boxer looking for a prize-fight. There was a surprising number of people in here, women as well as men, all crew - no officers that she could see. People she had talked to in the galley as well as around the boat - which explained the Sabatier at least. ‘Shouldn’t some of you be on duty?’ she enquired, simply surprised by the number of them.
They exchanged looks and shrugs. Li at her shoulder muttered, ‘Leave it, Captain.’ Or maybe it was just, ‘Leave, Captain.’
But in fact Robin had come in here with a purpose beyond routine inspection. She pushed forward. The man with the knife fell back, his bark obviously worse than his bite. His dog’s breath worse than both. The rest of the area was lined with bunks, most of them occupied but with few of the occupants even pretending to be asleep. In the pallor of the twenty per cent security lighting and the coffin-square regularity of the shadows, they looked like a set of extras from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They even cringed back a little from the glare of her torch as though she had brought sunlight into their strange, stuffy, not to say smelly, vault.
At the forward end of the bunk area there was another bulkhead door, and this was what Robin had come to inspect. Here, as up above, safety had given way to security and the door was solid metal. It opened into the forward areas where the secret radar and sonar equipment were. Where, Robin knew all too well - as did they all, in fact - there were currently several tons of Atlantic water, pulling the bow- section relentlessly down.
The door was sweating like a villain in a police interrogation cell with the pressure starting to build. Robin had been expecting that. The water was cold; the bunk area was hot, the metal was a good conductor. But she had not expected such a large puddle of water on the deck below the door itself. She frowned, kneeling for a closer look.
Just as she did so, the vessel seemed to give a stir; a kind of surge forward. There was a buzz of concern through the room. Robin looked up at the frowning Li. ‘It’s all right,’ she said loudly, speaking to more than just her companion. ‘The tug’s just pushing our speed up by a couple of knots or so. Nothing to worry about.’
She turned back to the sweating door, her eyes narrow. Like a surgeon seeking the full extent of a cancer, she explored slowly and minutely. ‘Li, is there a towel or something there?’
He passed her a spare pillow. She mopped the door dry with that, then sat back on her heels, watching to see where the sweating reappeared first. And, oddly, it was not on the painted surface of the door at all, but at the edge. All around the edge, in fact, as though the seal was beginning to give way. ‘Can you pass me another cloth or whatever, Mr Li?’ she asked. ‘I just want to wipe this dry again.’
The submarine’s hull gave that stirring surge forward once again.
Someone groaned, quite loudly.
Robin looked up to see Mr Li turning away in search of another pillow.
Someone groaned again and a tiny jet of water sprayed into Robin’s eyes.
‘LOOK OUT!’ she screamed at the top of her voice and threw herself aside.
Just as the door burst open and the first few tons of Atlantic water exploded into the room.
Twenty
Pressure
Richard couldn’t breathe. It was almost as though the physical weight of the water flooding into Quebec and being supplemented by an equal weight of water flowing relentlessly over him was piled up on his chest. He had the vague sense beyond the gathering agony of his suffocation that the hull around him was being battered by a giant with a sledgehammer. Then everything went silent - except for the agonized pulsing of his blood in his ears.
Choking, suffocating and on the verge of the overwhelming panic that would have consumed a lesser man, Richard fought to clear his mind. The netting cut into him as though he had suddenly been transported to a planet where his weight had been multiplied by ten. Only the speed at which his line was snaking past, sucked into the relative vacuum behind him, undermined the disorientating impression.
Certainly Richard’s ability to move his torso and legs had almost completely gone. Only his arms seemed to have any kind of freedom at all. But his head seemed to be welded in place and his vision was darkening rapidly. For it was the pressure on his chest that was important. Solid bone and muscle of arm and leg could take it. Only the chest, filled with thin air and therefore fatally compressible, could really let him down, even under these extreme circumstances. But there had to be something he could do. There had to be something. But what?
He felt the nose of the sub jerk down as the weight of water pressing in on him was added to the weight already in her. And that gave him an idea. Depth and pressure were the same thing to a diver. And they were met in the same way - by regulating the pressure of whatever gas he
was breathing. That was the crucial thing. Just as the pressure of water on a swimmer’s ribs is so great that it is impossible to breathe through a snorkel deeper than a metre below the surface at most, so the pressure at any depth greater than that must be met by equal pressure back. Only when the balance of pressure is restored can the diver begin to breathe.
With a smoky black edge swirling round his vision, Richard groped for the pressure regulator on his compressed-air pack. He turned it gingerly, as slowly and carefully as he dared. Too much pressure might prove as fatal as too little and burst his lungs like balloons. He had an instantaneous cartoon vision of himself, over-inflated, zooming up into the sky. But then his lungs began to fill with air and his vision began to clear. More than just his vision, indeed.
‘Richard! Are you all right?’ called Tom, and Richard had a vague impression that Tom had been calling that for a while. The captain’s shadow moved across his vision, close enough to make him jump but far enough away to stay clear of the suction crushing down on Richard.
‘Here, Tom. And not likely to be going anywhere soon by the looks of things. Over,’ Richard answered.
‘How do you feel? Over.’
‘I’ll live, as long as the sub stays afloat. Over.’
‘Listen, Richard, the chief and I have been thinking about that. The line to your harness is pretty strong. We could maybe get Gus Van Allen to winch you out of there.’ ‘Off-hand I’d say that if Gus could sort out the tangle to my line caused by the fact that it’s been sucked back over my shoulder through the net, then, if he could get everything out of here past the sharp edges of the damage and pull it on out of the current, he’d still only find my chest and maybe my arms in the harness when he got it aboard Sissy. I don’t see my head or legs moving much no matter what my chest does Over.’