Lena’s eyes widened and then they narrowed, making way for a smile. She actually smiled. And as the man on top of her continued to thrust, the rod of his cock unashamed to show itself, reveal its length (and there was that steam train again), Lena just said a barely audible ‘OK’.
OK?
And then: ‘Roy…’
The man slowed. The train was pulling into the station.
‘Roy this is…’ But she left the end of her sentences for someone else to finish. ‘This is…’
And the man stopped and slowly turned his head. Roy would never forget that face for as long as he lived (yeah). Like a pig dog made human – a pig dog man – with small slits for eyes, a broad, dark brown face, mop of black hair like an exploding helmet, shiny skin and a mouth, by degrees, stretching into a grin.
‘Edward Lang,’ the man said in an unplaceable accent, just whispery, slightly rasping. And with that, still staring at Roy, he started up again. Thrusting. Thrusting his cock into Roy’s girl. Thrusting and smiling at the same time.
Roy, naturally enough, resolved to put a stop to things right then and there, and he proceeded to make his move.
68. 33° 53' 45" S1 51° 15' 38" E
(Over Tamarama Beach, Sydney)
4.05pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time (05:05 UTC)
Saturday, 26 October
Ruart was looking out his window as they took off over Sydney’s eastern suburbs, en route to Vanuatu via Brisbane.
(En route, it was the same in English. Yet another reminder of how many English words were in fact French. The Académie française were beating themselves up over nothing with all their worry over a few English words creeping in here and there. C’est la vie! he wanted to say to them. Such a bourgeois bunch of bon vivants they were anyway. A clique if ever he’d seen one. Provocateurs. It was, he suspected, more about preserving their own raison d’être.)
Below him, the beaches and bays stood out starkly against the dark blue of the ocean. He didn’t know the names of any of them, except for Bondi Beach – he could guess which one it was too: the big one, packed with people, its symmetrical curve of sand bringing to mind the hull of a Viking longship. Or an artificial smile.
The one immediately next to it was a smaller, more benign-looking strand, shaped like a horseshoe. The houses seemed to crowd around the tiny beach, seemed to be pushing forwards, straining to get a better view of the beautiful coastline with its sandstone cliffs and jewel sea.
He wondered who they were, those people in their houses and apartments down there, and what sort of luck they had to have to get to live in a place like that.
But then again, he didn’t believe in luck, did he. Or, in other words, as some would say, you made your own.
69. 22° 36' 37" S 161° 10' 26" E
(Over the Coral Sea, 975km north-east of Brisbane)
8.15pm Australian Eastern Standard Time (10:15 UTC)
Saturday, 26 October
Another dark sea. Would he ever be free of them?
Below him, the sheer vastness and desolation of the night-time ocean seemed to rise up and seep through the skin of the aircraft, and fill the cabin, and Ruart, with a mood of deep melancholy. His Air Vanuatu flight had left Brisbane over an hour earlier – night had already fallen by the time they’d taken off – and there was still more than an hour to go before they reached Port Vila, hurtling as they were northeastwards towards the Equator and into the night.
He worked out they would have crossed the Tropic of Capricorn by now. He was back in the tropics.
While in transit in Brisbane, he’d had a chance to call home. It was mid-morning in Paris, and as it was a Saturday, there was every chance Marine was going to be out, taking Madeleine or Jack to dance or football. As it happened she was in, although she’d become so distant now, Ruart found himself wishing he’d got the answering machine instead. It was like phoning someone not just in another country, but in another universe, and not necessarily a parallel one either. The distance thing was taking its toll, clearly. He was in an ‘antimeridian’ world now and he may as well have been trying to contact her from the Mysterious Beyond, from the world of the dead. And maybe he was? Maybe he’d died in Réunion – in the Jardin de L’État for example, which wasn’t entirely inconceivable – and everything since then had been a dead man’s dream. Who said the dead don’t dream? Prove it!
But flying over the Coral Sea, this was no dream.
But… maybe the distance really had changed him somehow. Had it turned him into his own double? His own doppelgänger? And ditched the real Laurent Ruart somewhere? Whatever was going on, his marriage wasn’t taking it so well. Another week and Marine would be asking for a divorce. And he hadn’t even done anything! No, the sooner he got this over and done with, the better. Go to Vanuatu, do what he had to do (whatever that was) and get out. Go home.
Maybe he was on the wrong flight. Maybe he should have changed his ticket in Brisbane, boarded a plane for Singapore and hotfooted it back to Paris. The thought had crossed his mind. But he was sticking with the decision he made in Broome; he was giving this one final shot. Everything pointed to Drayle being in Vanuatu. He had all the signs, all the indications but no facts, no incontrovertible evidence, but that kind of thing, how often does that land in your lap? He was going to have to work with maybes and probablys like everyone else in this miserable world.
Indeed, while in Brisbane, as his call to Marine had been so depressingly short, he’d had a chance to call the Préfecture and it turned out they had a couple of items of interest for him.
Apparently the alleged ship in the desert, the Destino Em Distancia, if it ever existed, was no more. Or at least the part of it that stuck out of the sand, because according to the Western Australian police, their man in Broome, Brad Hanson (that name again!), told them he’d checked out the site and found nothing but a charred pile of wood. He said that whatever had been there before – possibly the remnants of an old hut, or aboriginal gunyah – had been somehow set alight. Hanson thought the deceased officers may have “dreamt the whole ship thing up”, and may have been partaking in whatever substances ultimately “led to their demise”.
Ruart was annoyed with himself that he hadn’t thought about speaking to this Brad Hanson when he’d been in Broome. Another opportunity lost through carelessness.
The other thing was more of a piece of non-information, namely that the Préfecture’s informant in Port Vila (using the term loosely – informants were supposed to come up with information) had made no sightings of anyone matching Drayle’s description. And he was distinctive-looking too, with his bright mop of curly blond hair, cleft chin, and facial scar, so you could hardly miss him. There was, however, a large boat that had recently arrived in Vila Bay – a super- or mega- yacht (their informant was not, apparently, up to providing dimensional estimates, or even a name for that matter). The rumour being bandied about in Port Vila was that it belonged to “the guys from Google”, and even though rumours in that town were as quick to combust as wildfires in a Mediterranean summer, according to the Préfecture it probably really was them, as they’d been known to hang out there. And there was no evidence that Drayle had invested in another yacht since the sale of the Diamond Moon. Still. There was a smell in the air.
He looked down at the ocean again: it was as familiar as the last one he’d flown over, yet somehow completely different too, even cloaked in night as it was. There was still no moon, so there were no phosphorescent pillows of cloud to soften the hard, unforgiving darkness below. And below the darkness? More of the same, just the friendless depths of the sea. The thought made him shiver. Imagine falling, dropping, into the ocean down there. In the middle of the night. With, what, one, two, three thousand metres of water beneath your feet and everything that that contained…
Thinking of the ocean depths beneath him brought to mind the enigmatic decagon, the riddle of which he decided was probably being unravelled at that very moment in London, in some small, in
significant backroom of the British Museum. By a researcher called Delia.
He thought about Delia. Or, that is, he constructed a ‘Delia’ in his mind, what he imagined her to be (it was natural to do this, now that Marine was vanishing before his eyes). Delia was tanned and attractive, he decided, and with blonde hair, pulled back… no… with short blonde hair: more modern, and all the better for working outside in the hot sun, under hats. He imagined her at a ‘dig’, the beads of sweat fitfully rolling down her smooth brown neck, and eventually joining forces, collectively plunging downwards through the canyoning “V” of her cleavage…
And he wondered what Delia was wearing right now, in that backroom of the museum, because even though it was Saturday morning in London, those PhDs, they worked hard. For sure they did.
70. 51° 31' 06" N 0° 7' 33" W
(Footpath outside the British Museum, London)
At the same moment…
11.25am British Summer Time (10:25 UTC)
Saturday, 26 October
The building itself was impressive – it made her feel like she’d somehow stepped clean out of London and into Ancient Rome or Greece – but the pillars lined up along the front of the building were beginning to freak her out a little bit. At the top of each one it looked like there was a pair of eyes perched there, staring at her. No mouth, no ears, just eyes. Together, the pillars were like a row of sentries, all of whom, at the same time, had just spotted her.
Was this woman ever going to show? Maybe they were wrong, or she’d decided not to come in after all.
But wait. There. Heading towards her in the blue dress. Was that her? If it wasn’t, that was it. She was giving up.
But it was her. At last.
71. 51° 31' 05" N 0° 7' 36" W
(Footpath outside the British Museum)
11.25am British Summer Time (10:25 UTC)
Saturday, 26 October
Almost there.
Delia was walking along Great Russell Street, and she’d reached the gold-tipped black railings that fenced off the Museum like a prison. It hadn’t been the best of days. She’d got off the Tube at Tottenham Court Road which she never did as a rule – she usually stayed on until Holborn, what was she thinking? – and today she was reminded why: the rampaging, jostling throngs of sweaty, loud, young European tourists. And she’d just noticed the grease stain (from that blasted dinner party, she never wanted to go to it in the first place) – it hadn’t come out of her blue dress after all. And she was tired. And her joints ached. She hadn’t been sleeping properly: she spent a significant portion of most nights awake worrying about things that didn’t matter (a state of affairs only marginally better than having things that did matter to worry about). Of course she knew it as well as anyone: it all came with the territory when you were eighty-two.
And everything suggested eighty-three would involve more of the same, so there was no point in wallowing. You just had to get on with it.
Which is what she was doing with this doctorate. “Almost there” with that one, too. She didn’t want to think about how many years it had taken her (her BA in archaeology and art history was, by now, almost ancient history itself), which was why, at the age of eighty-two, she was working like a galley slave to get this thing finished. She was going to get to be “Dr. Lamprey” rather than “poor old Delia” and she was going to do it before she died. Even if it killed her, ha ha.
Hence the extra hours. Hence the coming in on a Saturday morning, and battling her way through the legions of marauding tourists like Boudicca. It was worth it though: she loved her work. The thesis she was working on for her PhD degree at the University of East Anglia was on Ocean Trade – one of the themes the Museum was currently focussing on – and specifically trade between Europe and the Far East in the pre-steamship era from the sixteenth century through to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. It was a fascinating period, the “Age of Sail”: so many shipwrecks! They were dark times indeed.
The crowds were already beginning to build around the entrance to the Museum, presumably for two exhibitions that had opened recently, “Beyond El Dorado: power and gold in ancient Columbia” and “Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art”. Power and gold appealed to her; sex and pleasure she’d leave for the kids.
It hadn’t helped that lately, almost daily, she’d had her work interrupted by a series of inquiries from the Frogs… that is, the police in Paris (with the knowledge and approval of their British counterparts, as well as Interpol). All hush-hush too, so in one sense exciting (although not being able to boast about it was rather tiresome), but in another sense it was just a big pain in the behind in terms of what it was doing to her work schedule (speaking of behind). But not really because she had to admit, the unfolding story behind this Dominique Drayle character and his associates was intriguing if a little scary.
In fact they’d even told her to “watch her step”. Fancy that! At her age.
At the end of the day though, the most rewarding aspect concerned this artefact, this Isfahan Decagon. The latest information the French had gleaned about it really did seem to fill a number of gaps for her, did seem to provide the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle as it were, and much of it, if she were honest with herself, was probably helping her with finishing this blasted thesis.
It was, of course, more than just a little bit disconcerting, to think that criminals were using your research (they’d even been spying on her!) to further their own selfish goals – in combination no doubt with the multitude of unsavoury and despicable means at their disposal – but as shamed as she was to say it, it was also quite nice to know that someone was paying attention to what you were doing and maybe even proving you right!
Funnily enough, it was just when she started thinking again about the Frogs’ warning to take care, and was looking at the faces around her, trying to imagine which one might be the assassin, that the strangest thing happened. One of those very faces was making a beeline for her.
It was a young woman, and she was carrying a large grey sports bag concealing who knows what.
Delia froze, wondering if this was her time and, while she was at it, noting how apposite it would be, were she to be gunned down outside the British Museum, laying down her life for her degree, as it were…
And then the woman said something.
Delia couldn’t make out what she was saying, though. It occurred to her she could have been speaking in one of the Eastern Asian tongues, because she looked Japanese or Chinese.
The woman spoke again, more clearly this time.
Delia Lamprey.
‘I’m sorry,’ Delia said. ‘I’m not sure what you…’ She was pleased with the way she had so quickly slipped into ‘spy’ mode, not admitting her identity. Maybe her next career?
‘You know about the ……’ the woman said, although Delia couldn’t understand the last word or words of her sentence. It was put as a statement, she felt, although assumed it was meant as a question. The woman’s accent was certainly heavy.
‘The… what, I’m sorry?’
‘The ……’
No. Still couldn’t get it, and Delia shook her head.
And then the woman began unzipping her grey sports bag.
A gun. It was all Delia could think. Here it comes. She’s pulling out a gun.
But it wasn’t a gun. It was a glittering, bejewelled artefact of some kind, a sort of box, with an Islamic design over it, and the box was round… no… it was ten sided. Was it? Could it be? Was it the Isfahan Decagon?
‘Is that…?’ But Delia had to be careful, she didn’t know what or whom she was dealing with. ‘What is that?’
But Delia got nothing more out of her because the woman had frozen, was staring at something over Delia’s shoulder. She looked like she’d seen a ghost and Delia turned around to see what she was looking at. But there was nothing, just people going about their business. Scurrying every which way like ants. (You couldn’t escape the crowds in London, for the simple
reason that being in London was like being inside one great ant colony. The sooner she could get away from all these city ants and back to her cottage outside Norwich the better.)
And when she looked back, the woman had gone. Vanished, back into the surrounding swirl of humanity, along with…
Good God, Delia thought. It didn’t bear thinking about. But…
Could it have been? Could it really have been?
72. 51° 31' 7" N 0° 7' 31" W
(Footpath outside the British Museum)
11.27am British Summer Time (10:27 UTC)
Saturday, 26 October
Ishiko was striding out, taking big steps and not looking back.
Whenever something went wrong, there was always a valuable lesson to be learnt. This time it was a simple one: always go with your gut instinct and never allow your head, or logic, to overrule it.
Deep down, she’d known it was a crazy idea to approach this old woman. (Had she really thought Delia was going to happily sacrifice her valuable time and give her, a complete stranger, a personal antiquities lecture? reveal what she hadn’t even published herself yet? and not tell anyone about their meeting?) But seeing Bertrand again was the last straw. She hadn’t seen him since the aquarium in Cape Town, and maybe it wasn’t him – how could any of them be him? he was dead! – but the resemblance was just too close to be a coincidence. The guy walking towards them was his spitting image: it was Bertrand with a haircut. He stared right back at her too, like he’d planned it, like he was saying to her: I’m going to torture you for the rest of your life.
Ishiko turned the corner: she didn’t know the name of the street but she’d check her phone in a minute and make sure she was heading in the right direction. Her original plan (which she should have kept to) had been to just get out of London and head north. To Scotland, to a city called Aberdeen. And she’d still do that: she had even more of a reason to now. The train left from Kings Cross station (she probably wouldn’t make the 11.47, she’d have to wait for the next one, the 12.47), so all she had to do was find it, she knew it was nearby.
Dark Oceans Page 34