Dark Oceans

by Mark Macrossan

  Copper. The word reverberated in his head. It was something to do with the police. But what was it?

  He looked over, made sure the unsmiling checkout woman from the subcontinent wasn’t watching, and gave the machine a good hard kick in its guts with the heel of his shoe. The tin monstrosity rattled and juddered and to Jon at least, his lightning coup de pied felt exquisite. He smiled a question mark at the Tesco woman frowning at him, calmly picked up his unexpected items and left the store.

  He gave up trying to think. The weather was clearing, and strolling the last couple of blocks home, he simply admired the sky. The sky and the sunset, but it was no ordinary sunset, there were a myriad variations on the theme, sundown orange and all its relations: rose and coral, crimson and cherry, burgundy, fuchsia, vermillion and pink. Salmon and ruby, russet and copper and red.

  Copper and red.

  It was the red-haired girl, that’s what was going on in his head. The one he’d just seen near the tube station: he’d seen her a week ago in Notting Hill, he was sure it was the same girl. Just before the car had nearly hit him. Was she following him?

  Or was he just cracking up?

  He continued on home through the lonely West Kensington streets – they were treeless in this part, looking more like a Pompeii or a Herculaneum before the calamity, long rows of ivory-coloured terraces with their Romanesque columns, dignified against a classical sky, like a painting by Claude Lorrain. There was no-one around. Even Bertie, his neighbour’s cat, didn’t bother to come out and greet him. Wouldn’t deign to do the civilised thing.

  There was, clearly, something wrong.

  The feeling that something was wrong continued all the way home to his cul-de-sac in its quiet corner of West Kensington. Qui Vive, Who Goes There, what sort of name was that for a home?

  Qui Vive stood out, which suddenly seemed like a bad idea, but there was no denying it. It was a lovely house. As his footsteps echoed against lesser walls (and still no sign of Bertie, where was Bertie?) and the proud white building ahead of him gradually swelled, occupying an increasingly greater portion of his field of vision and eventually dominating it completely, he couldn’t help but admire the place. It was a dignified two storeys, in contrast to the three of its neighbours, and had large angled bay windows, a moulded string course with a cornice and parapet, and its white bricks were set off with a Klein blue trim: it was a happy-looking abode if ever he’d seen one, as well as being all very noble somehow, in a castle-like, French Foreign Legion, Saharan fort sort of way, with a touch of Greece thrown in… A kind of I-am-but-I’m-not way of thinking. He liked it, it reminded him of himself or at least how he’d once been.

  He passed the wrought-iron, fleur-de-lis railings and gate, walked over the mosaic compass design built into the entrance path, and ascended the three steps to the front door. The words above the door, Qui Vive, asked him the question and he gave the house his silent reply. The mail slot in the door reminded him of a mouth, especially now because it was stuck half-open: there was something lodged in it. Mail, it looked like – a bundle, for the owner, or possibly the previous tenants. When he pushed it through, the bronze flap nipped his fingers like a hungry dog.

  He put his key in the front door – it was stiff and difficult to turn (had he noticed this before?) – and when it opened, it straightaway seemed to hit something. It couldn’t have been the bundle of letters that he’d just pushed through. This was nothing that would fit through a mail slot, it was solid and immoveable, like a heavy bag or a sack, or a body.

  A body? What was he thinking?

  He pushed harder on the door and it gradually gave way – as if the obstruction was being shoved, inch by inch, across the floor inside – and eventually the gap was big enough to be able to squeeze through.

  As it turned out it was nothing, just a section of carpet which had buckled and become stuck under the door.

  And himself, he had to stop worrying over nothing.

  He closed the door and stood there for a moment, taking in the smells of his new home. Musty, as you’d expect, there’d been the recent rains but there was something else. Like a soap or a scent, a perfume or aftershave he wasn’t familiar with. Remnants of the previous tenants’ perhaps, evidence of their existence, but again, why hadn’t he noticed it before?

  The living room, at least, was the way he’d left it that morning with its clutter of velvet sofas, and paintings, and bookshelves filled with histories. A skylight revealed the deepening colours of the low sky above.

  It was all perfectly quiet.

  He lay down on one of the sofas for a moment and stared out, through the glass or plastic or whatever it was, to the heavens beyond. A passing jet, thousands of feet up, was heading, rocketing, in a geometrically-perfect straight line across the firmament, with a vapour trail like a plume of smoke stretched out behind it, an explicit statement that it was coming from somewhere and going somewhere else. The gradually expanding streak of white was lit by the last rays of the sun and added another dimension to this majestic sky. The wide blue yonder. Beyond it there were stars but in London at least, they tended to remain hidden, as if out of shyness or calculation. Like his pursuers perhaps.

  Pursuers? Bodies? Why did his mind continue with this folly? There was nothing. Just a series of accidents. Flukes.

  He sighed and his sigh seemed to echo, and linger past the fading of his breath, feeling the walls, testing them…

  What was that? It sounded like a clicking noise. He jumped to his feet, silently, from his prone position, not breathing, his ears straining to hear whatever came next. But nothing did. In the extreme distance, a muffled car horn. But the house remained quiet. His ears hadn’t deceived him though, he’d definitely heard it. It had been crisp and distinct. And it had come from downstairs. It had come from the kitchen.

  He crept across the living room, relieved the house was carpeted and silently made his way down the stairs, past framed architectural drawings from the seventeenth century, another London. Another world, really.

  A tinkle. Another sound, and there was no doubt, it had come from behind the door at the bottom of the stairs, the door to the kitchen.

  There were only two ways to enter a room when you wanted to catch a potential adversary off-guard: either as quickly as possible or as slowly. He chose the former. He gently enclosed the door knob in his hand and tightened his grip, remembering which way it turned and on a mental count of three, threw the door open, ready to duck.

  The intruder was a wide-eyed, orange, confusion of fur.

  Bertie was completely taken by surprise and for a split second stood frozen, his paw stuck in mid-air, before he jumped straight up off the floor, all legs and tail and big eyes, and then torpedoed across the kitchen floor and through the closed door. Through the cat flap.

  He hadn’t even noticed he had a cat flap.

  He was relieved, but he still conducted a thorough search of the house while his heart rate returned to normal – or as ‘normal’ as it was going to get, after the last seven days.

  Around nine that evening, his ex-wife rang. It was just after he’d finished his dinner and a third glass of red. He was feeling relaxed, finally, for the first time in days, so the phone call was well-timed.

  ‘Jon?’

  Romy was a journalist and a writer and their short, two year marriage had produced no children – just incendiary arguments, moments (to be honest) of great sex, and some good ideas for Romy’s writing. But really, nothing much else to speak of. They were both unquestionably happier apart; their respective hearts had grown fonder but not more desirous. Indeed the positive effects of absence had easily outweighed the negative ones, and had done so for about two years now and neither of them saw any reason to change that. There was, however, still a level of affection there that never seemed to fade. He was pleased to hear from her.

  ‘Romy!’

  ‘So you’ve moved.’

  ‘Well… yes. How did you find me?’

&n
bsp; ‘Sabine told me.’

  ‘So, what, are you two hanging out these days?’

  ‘I don’t hang out, or in, or anywhere, for that matter, these days. I’m too busy to hang. I called your place. Your old place.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just call my mobile?’

  ‘I tried to,’ she said.

  He looked at his phone on the table in front of him. Dead, out of juice. He’d have to charge it again. These new phones, unbelievable.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ she continued. ‘Sabine didn’t give much away.’

  ‘You know. The music started and stopped. And here I am.’

  ‘Where are you. She said Kensington. You’re not in a palace by any chance, are you?’

  ‘West Kensington, in fact, so no. Not quite.’

  ‘So it’s all over. Again.’

  ‘It happens, as they say. So anyway, enough about me, how are you.’

  ‘Thought you’d never ask. I’m pregnant.’

  A lengthy silence followed while he collected his thoughts. A portion of his life flashed before his eyes, namely, two and a half years living with Romy in their modest ‘abode’ as she insisted on calling it, in Carlyle Square, just around the corner from the Chelsea Arts Club. His vision of their future life together had never really extended past Friday evenings getting drunk with Romy and her friends in the Arts Club garden and it certainly didn’t include children or pregnancies or anything of that ilk. What’s more, as far as he knew, there was no-one ‘special’ in her life, so this latest piece of news came to him somewhat as a shock.

  ‘Jon? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, sorry. Congratulations. Of course congratulations.’

  ‘Well. Thanks, but there was nothing to it, really.’

  ‘Oh I’m sure you deserve at least some of the credit.’

  ‘It could have been you, you know,’ she said. Her tone was serious. She was serious.

  ‘Never saw it as being your thing exactly, Romy. Children I mean, as opposed to the bit where you pretend to make them.’

  ‘Was I good at that do you think?’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘Well as I say,’ she said. ‘It could have been you, but it seemed that the attractions of all things German were destined to win out…’

  ‘Well, not all things.’

  ‘… although as it now appears, not. Shame. Just when I was thinking they won the war after all.’

  ‘Who’s the lucky fellow, then.’

  ‘Oh…’ She sounded dismissive. Maybe she didn’t know who the father was? ‘Just a journo.’

  ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘Doubt it. Writes for the Independent.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I think,’ she added. Was she seeking his blessing? Commiseration? Forgiveness for being a bitch? Requesting him to be the father of her unborn child, tell the kid the truth when he’s twelve?

  ‘So you rang our Notting Hill flat,’ Jon said. ‘Were you wanting―’

  ‘Just to say hi, really.’

  She never would have rung Notting Hill, not if there was a chance Sabine would have answered. Whether his mobile was dead or not. What the hell was going on?

  ‘Let me know if you need anything,’ she added.

  ‘Of course, thanks. Are you sure you’re…’ But he didn’t know how to finish his sentence. He did his best though, soldiered on. ‘I mean… I hope things, um… go well for you.’ An awkward silence. ‘And please Romy, I’m sure your, um, man, whatever his name is, actually what is his name? I do read the Independent sometimes you know, aim for more of a spread these days, so… ’ But she remained silent. ‘OK, that’s fine, but if you need anything, you tell me, all right? I mean it.’ Still no response. ‘Romy?’

  Just silence. No breathing. Not even background noise.

  ‘Romy?’

  She’d gone, But there’d been no disconnection tone. No click. Nothing, But she was definitely gone. Vanished, seemingly, into thin air.

  How completely odd, he thought. And when darker thoughts crept in, like a shadow over a sunny sea, he quickly dismissed them. She obviously had an urgent call. Probably said something while he was talking… So why was the line still open?

  ‘Romy? Are you there?

  He hung up. Tried redial, but just got her voicemail. Left the usual, perfunctory “we got cut off, great to hear from you, speak soon” kind of message.

  Maybe he was reading too much into it, but he knew Romy and it didn’t make sense, didn’t feel right. For every benign, logical explanation, there was a disconcerting one. And at the very least, how unfortunate. How annoying that such a welcome phone call from an old friend, just when he needed it most, should turn out in such a weird, unsettling way. To use a card game metaphor, he just couldn’t seem to take a trick these days. It was one thing after the other.

  These thoughts, though, soon dissipated like teardrops in an ocean and by the time he’d finished a further glass of wine and saluted the almost full moon that was now visible (majestic, radiating a cold, brittle light) and by the time he’d said goodnight to the bookshelves and sofas, tapestries and Persian rugs, stuffed animal (just the one, the macaw from Peru) and to the paintings and the rest of the eccentric contents of Qui Vive (he was fortunate to have a landlord with such, apparently, meagre storage space at his disposal), and set off up the stairs to his bedroom and gone to bed and turned out the light (leaving vividly before his eyes the image of the last thing he saw, a rustic painting of a golden, Cotswold stone cottage, brought to life by its rustling trees and smoking chimney), his thoughts were already as light and airy as dandelion seeds on a summer breeze. Perhaps it was the fact that Romy still cared, or he still mattered to her or perhaps it was the house itself, but he went to sleep with a peaceful look on his face for the first time in weeks…

  … And he woke up choking to death.

  Choking and coughing, in pitch darkness. As hard as he tried to suck in air, nothing would come. He sat bolt upright, threw off his bedclothes, grappled for the bedside light which went tumbling off into the murk. The light from his radio alarm clock was barely visible, the room was full of dense, acrid smoke, reeking of burning plastic. Industrial. No clean air, nothing for his lungs, just this suffocating black fog like a bag over his head. He fell to the floor, his limbs no longer obeying commands, and in this way Jonathon Marriner slowly, slowly lost consciousness, and the last thing he thought of was a headline, a headline in the morning paper, and on television too, a news item about the death of a man in a house fire in West Kensington, not Kensington…

  Part Two – Dark Oceans

  LEE. Do you ever get a sudden dark feeling about something?

  MALKINA. Concerning a deal?

  LEE. Concerning anything.

  MALKINA. I don’t know. But I could imagine that my dark and your dark are different darks.

  (from the screenplay The Counselor by Cormac McCarthy)

  11. 24° 40' 4" S 14° 29' 22" E

  (Southern Atlantic, off the Skeleton Coast, Namibia)

  Two months earlier. Tuesday, 13 August

  It had been an unusual day, but then again, every day on the Diamond Moon had a tendency to be unusual.

  For some reason, no matter how many times he did it, the headcount kept coming up as one too many. There were supposed to be only ten of them – including himself – so it shouldn’t have been difficult. And now there were eleven. Better than being one short, of course – bad news for any scuba group, everyone’s heard about those incidents. But one extra? How did that happen?

  Bertrand ran a hand through his long, wet locks and counted one more time. But there was no doubt. Eleven. Including the Japanese girl who came on her own and had to be buddied by Bertrand himself. Eleven and for the life of him, he couldn’t work out who was here now that hadn’t been here earlier. There was no-one who looked unfamiliar… Speaking of the Japanese girl – he’d suddenly forgotten her name – where was she? (Had he counted her in the eleven? If not
, that would make twelve, that was all he needed.) He asked one of the others. But Gerhard, a fifty-five year old German with a weathered, mahogany face, just shrugged.

  So what was going on? Maybe he was suffering from a touch of nitrogen narcosis. Rapture of the deep.

  Possibly number eleven was the new guy, the ex-fisherman or dockworker or whatever he was, from Marseilles, he could see him right now, chatting to one of the women. Arnaud, that was his name. Dark-eyed, he was a strange one, always lingering in passageways like a bad smell, possibly a little simple. Was Arnaud not included in the original ten? No, he was, definitely. (What had he done with the list?)

  Today was going to go down as one of the strangest days Bertrand had ever experienced.

  First, there was the white shark. Not a great white, but a shark that was actually all white. The whole group had been underwater, diving at a depth of about forty metres, and this… vision… glided past. Everyone froze of course, and stopped breathing too, judging by the absence of bubbles. And as quickly as it had arrived, it departed, vanishing into the underwater gloom, its gigantic pale tail waving them all goodbye.

  And if that wasn’t strange enough, by the time they arrived at the wreck, Bertrand’s compass had inverted itself – north was now pointing south and south, north. He knew this because the bow of the Prospero’s Dancer, an old British clipper from the early nineteenth century, pointed east, and according to his compass, it was now pointing west. The ship, half-buried under the sands of the sea floor, could hardly have turned around one-eighty degrees – the currents could be pretty wild and powerful in this part of the world, but not that powerful – so his compass had obviously had a fit.

  And then, in the wreck itself, there wasn’t a single fish to be seen. It was normally teeming with them. Teeming. And today, not a single one! It gave Bertrand the creeps, as they explored around and inside the ship’s skeleton, and he couldn’t get away fast enough.