Dark Oceans

by Mark Macrossan

  For sure, he would never actually precipitate such an event – he was no murderer after all – and he wasn’t even willing it to happen either, but he couldn’t control where his mind went, could he? This was how the criminal mind worked of course, balancing the prize with the risk and eliminating the risk to such an extent that the seeking of the prize became, irresistibly, the only course of action open. And just as the criminal mind worked like this, so did, by force of necessity, the mind of the pursuing detective. Purely as a force for good, naturally. That was the difference between someone like him, and someone like Drayle. Morality versus no morality.

  It was, then, pure fantasy on Ruart’s part, this scenario. But at the same time, it did make one think. If they both fell in, and there were no witnesses, Ruart could simply walk back to the Landcruiser, tell the driver there was no reason to wait, that he’d seen the other two head off in another vehicle, that they’d be doing their own thing. No-one would be any the wiser. Problem solved. It wouldn’t solve his Drayle problem, sure, but his Marine problem would disappear as quickly as a body vaporized in a lake of magma.

  In other words, about five seconds. And anyone’d be happy with that.

  91. 50° 47' 25" N 0° 0' 0" E

  (“Lucinda”, Peacehaven)

  The same time

  6.30am Greenwich Mean Time (06:30 UTC)

  Monday, 28 October

  ‘When I said Lucinda was located on the Prime Meridian,’ Alastair had said to Jon two days earlier, ‘I should have been more specific. She’s voluptuously draped across the WGS 84 Prime Meridian. This is the prime meridian used by most GPS systems, including Google Earth, which is the one you’ll be using if you decide to try to join Lord Lucan in Burkina Faso. The Prime Meridian that passes through the Greenwich Observatory is the Airy Prime Meridian, which is about a hundred yards west of the WGS 84. But it doesn’t end there… because many British monuments and other markers, including the Prime Meridian monument in Peacehaven, are based on the Bradley Meridian aren’t they. The Bradley’s a superseded measurement that is, in turn, six yards to the west of the Airy. Bloody typical, isn’t it? Just to confuse us. It helps them, you know. Helps them to keep things slippery. Let’s go with three Prime Meridians, shall we? Now there’s an idea!’

  Why Jon had that conversation in his head when he woke up was anyone’s guess. It was one of those hallucinations you have when you’re still half-asleep but have a dream in your head which refuses to leave. They’re usually annoying, as this one was. The WGS 84, Airy and Bradley prime meridians were rattling around in there, essentially making nuisances of themselves. Banging around as if questions of geographical accuracy had suddenly become matters of great importance to him. At least it explained one thing, though: why the Prime Meridian monument was further up the road than it should have been, given Lucinda’s particular claim to fame.

  Finally he shook himself free of the geometry and sat up.

  It was almost sunrise and the storm had turned nasty. Not much in the way of rain now, but the wind was howling. Next door’s washing was gone – collected by either the neighbour or the tempest – the windowpanes were rattling and the skies were dark and scudding.

  What had, in truth, pushed him out of bed wasn’t the Prime Meridian, but rather something that had really been bothering him, nagging at him, all night. Stephens was a cop. With all the resources. They would find him. And while Stephens may have been threatening to hunt him “until the end of time”, something told him he wouldn’t be needing that long. If he stopped, they’d get him, it was as simple as that. He only stood a chance if he kept moving. And if you had to do some serious moving about, what better time to be doing it than at the height of a great storm?

  He was still in the clothes he’d been wearing the day before, he’d slept in them – they were the same clothes he’d been wearing for days: old navy suit, blue shirt, black shoes and black university college tie (one of the Oxford colleges, St Peters, had Alastair been to Oxford?) – and all he had to do was slip on his shoes and jacket and grab his faithful BOAC bag. His spare shirt, underwear and socks were all used now anyway – he’d ‘rotate’ them later. The only reason he wore the tie was to keep his neck warm. His suit was now almost as creased as his harrier’s and he knew he must have looked like a homeless person. Of course, he was a homeless person, he had to remind himself. Just slightly more cashed up.

  Where to now? Sometimes it was better to do the least sensible thing, particularly when you were being chased by someone who knew you were sensible. And the stupidest thing to do, with this storm, seemed to be to catch a ferry to France. Never mind that they’d probably be delayed or cancelled – all the less reason any sane person, with adequate means, would attempt it at short notice. Portsmouth, he thought. Catch a Brittany ferry to St. Malo? Senseless. (Perfect.)

  From a window in the living room, he checked the street for unfamiliar vehicles before deciding the coast was clear. He had time to mull over what he assumed was an old pirate’s expression, and hoped that for him the coast would indeed be clear as he made his way back along it to Newhaven. He left via the front door and locked it, wondering if he’d ever be back to unlock it again. He had a feeling he wouldn’t.

  Outside, the wind was coming in hard from the west; it was gusting up to fifty or sixty miles an hour, making walking difficult – he even had to slip the strap of his shoulder bag over his head, to secure it diagonally across his body. There was no-one around but he’d already decided to keep to the smaller front road, The Promenade, for as far as he could. Just in case. He walked down Dorothy Street, buffeted, as though he were constantly being shouldered off the footpath, and when he looked up and straight ahead he could see, beyond The Promenade and the edge of the cliffs there, the troubled, black ocean, mountainous and streaked with white. When he reached the front he turned left, east, and with the wind behind him – a small mercy – he headed for Newhaven.

  After walking about forty yards or so he had a strange unshakeable feeling. Didn’t know whether it was the half-dream or not, but he stopped and turned around, squinting into the gale and the small, stinging pellets of rain that had just begun to appear again (not “fall”, because they were being driven horizontally). He could see the Prime Meridian monument: it would have been about a hundred yards away and the thought did occur that that placed him pretty close to squarely over the WGS 84 Prime Meridian (along with Lucinda). Next to the monument though, and thus located on a prime meridian of its own (the Bradley), a car that was parked there, and it was the only one, suddenly switched its lights on. It was a brand new, storm-grey Range Rover.

  It was probably an unfortunate coincidence – the synchronicity of the lights being switched on, and his own sudden presence on The Promenade – but he was completely spooked. He turned and walked quickly towards the beach access up ahead.

  The access road consisted of a crook-shaped cutting down through the cliffs to the sea defence which doubled as an undercliff walkway. He wasn’t sure whether the vehicle had turned off or was hanging back: he couldn’t hear it or see its lights, but that proved little, due to the noise of the wind and the curvature of the road. He told himself he was being hyperreactive, and made a mental note to watch it in future if he wanted to avoid drawing attention to himself. For now though, he decided he’d wait at the bottom for a few minutes before heading back up again. Pretend he was just being a storm-watcher.

  In better weather, the pathway along the sea defence, being hidden from the road above, would have provided an attractive alternative route for him, for part of the way at least, but not today: the gale-force winds – hurricane-force, probably – were whipping the sea into a foaming frenzy and pushing waves and spray over the sea wall in numerous places turning the path into a dead end.

  The beams from the headlights arrived first.

  Jon didn’t wait around to get a glimpse of who was driving the Range Rover, or whether they were going to get out and follow him. Because he knew.
He knew before he heard the door open and he knew before he saw the grey suit.

  He ran west along the undercliff path but in that direction it turned out to be “under construction” and he was forced to descend a set of stairs onto the beach there. The beach – consisting of a stretch of rounded stones and pebbles, as all the beaches were in that part of the world – was awash with spray and foam and the last gasp of an occasional rogue wave (although it was more of a grasp than a gasp, if you were unlucky enough to be caught by one) and he found himself clambering and slipping over the smooth wet stones in a kind of living nightmare.

  Detective Nigel Stephens, a large man, was probably having more difficulty than Jon, but he kept coming, stumbling onwards with a fearful momentum – an unstoppable juggernaut – and there was nowhere, ultimately, that Jon could go. The beach was finite and the cliffs were unclimbable. And then, to make matters far worse, he lost his footing and fell awkwardly, jamming his shoulder painfully between two rocks and almost knocking his teeth out. He twisted around onto his back in time to see Stephens, his grey trouser legs dark and wet from the rushing edges of the sea, standing still and reaching into his jacket. Pulled out a handgun, no silencer. Flashes of West Kensington, as Stephens put one leg on a rock to steady himself and raised his arm, and pointed his weapon. Jon froze. He was still wedged between the stones and realized there was nothing he could do to save himself.

  Stephens fired.

  And missed. Blasted some stones a couple of feet away. He shook his head and wiped the rain from his eyes.

  And in the middle of this, all Jon could think was where was everyone? Was anyone seeing this? He was being executed by a policeman on a public beach in a civilized country, was there really no-one to witness it?

  Stephens picked himself up, found his footing again, and began to move in closer, for a better shot Jon supposed. The screaming wind was ferocious now, the shotgun rain was still peppering the air – the wind was equal parts air, rain, spray and foam – and the wave height was increasing if anything, the waves crashing more loudly. It was pretty obvious why Stephens didn’t need a silencer…

  And straight away Jon remembered the gun at the bottom of his bag. (That he still even had the bag, was no doubt due to his having securely strapped it across himself earlier). How could he have forgotten about the gun! Quickly felt for it, pulled it out, safety catch off, and all the while not daring to look up…

  But Stephens was still battling the elements and clambering in closer, slipping and staggering in equal measure.

  Jon raised his Beretta. Stephens caught what was happening and stopped, but didn’t react, just smiled and shook his head. Stumbled slightly and found his footing again. Jon knew he had to shoot, Stephens was, maybe twenty yards away and was unlikely to miss next time.

  Like some nineteenth century pistol duel, with Jon still pointing his gun, Stephens raised his own gun again. The one advantage Jon had was that Stephens was to his east. Stephens had the wind and rain in his face and Jon did not.

  Jon began squeezing the trigger but found he couldn’t do it. It was ridiculous, his life was in danger, but he’d never shot anyone before and it wasn’t so easy, even as this person was clearly about to―

  Stephens fired. The moment he did, or perhaps an instant beforehand, his foot slipped and the bullet went wildly astray, and buried itself into the cliff face. This time Stephens cursed, and stood upright again, furious with himself.

  Jon fired.

  First time lucky: Stephens’ left shoulder punched backwards, his arms suddenly splayed out like he was directing traffic (or an orchestra) and the big man stumbled backwards towards the waves, and then tripped and keeled over, falling out of sight down the slope of pebbles.

  Had he killed him? He didn’t hang around to check. He put the gun back in his bag, got up and scrambled over the rocks like a crab, half running, half sliding, not daring to look back until he reached the access road and the Range Rover that was still parked there. From that position, he could see roughly where Stephens had fallen, but as to whether the dark shape he could see was a body or just a rock, and if it was just rock whether the waves had claimed him, God only knew, and there was no time to find out. He ran back up to the road at the top, The Promenade, and then as calmly as he could, walked back to Lucinda. He calculated that if Stephens had known where he was staying he would have shot him in his bed. Far better to lie low for a while than be visible on the streets.

  When he arrived, the front door was open. He’d assumed at first that he’d forgotten to close it, and it wasn’t until he was safely inside and he’d shut the front door behind him that he recalled, with clarity, locking it when he’d left.

  Supporting this conclusion to some extent, was the fact that there was someone else there.

  92. 19° 31' 46" S 169° 26' 43" E

  (Mount Yasur, Tanna Island)

  At the same moment…

  6pm Vanuatu Time (07:00 UTC)

  Monday, 28 October

  ‘So,’ said Lang. ‘I think this is probably the spot. Here.’

  They’d been gradually making their way around the crater rim, for better viewing. For sure, the walls of the crater had grown progressively steeper and more vertiginous. The sun had just set and the fireworks display below them was becoming increasingly resplendent and dramatic.

  Jagged flakes of tossed-out lava littered the ground around them like broken glass, as sulphurous smoke smeared the darkening sky.

  ‘What spot,’ asked Ruart. The viewing didn’t look so different to what they’d been exposed to for the last five minutes or so – except the precipice was more sheer – and, more importantly perhaps, there was something in Lang’s voice that bothered him. Something about his accent…

  ‘For our little show, Robert,’ Lang said.

  Yours or the volcano’s? he thought. He noticed Lena reaching around for something in her daypack.

  ‘Or should I say Commandant,’ said Lang. ‘Commandant Laurent Ruart.’

  Ruart uttered a silent curse.

  ‘Of the Préfecture de police in Paris, no?’ Lang said in flawless French. ‘Who so desperately wants to find his man, this Dominique Drayle… so desperate he is, that he spends his precious holidays away from his dear wife and children, scouring the great oceans of the world, the Indian, the Pacific… Well. We all know how much a Frenchman likes his family holidays, so we know it must be important to him. Ah, but then one remembers that he is the brother of Constance…’

  ‘In English, Dominique,’ said Lena.

  Dominique? Ruart looked into Lang’s pig eyes and the ugly truth became horribly clear. Lang, or rather Drayle, smiled at the look of understanding and horror that must have crossed his face.

  ‘Precisely,’ Lang/Drayle said to him, reverting to English. ‘It’s your eureka moment, I can tell. That must be satisfying for you, surely? Monsieur le cop? To finally have the answer you’ve been seeking for so long? Where is this Dominique Drayle? Isn’t it so often the case. The answer is right under your big French nose all along.’

  He was rapidly calculating his chances of survival, looking for a possible way out, but every model yielded the same result. It was clearly no coincidence – so to speak – that they’d chosen this moment, this place, to reveal the truth. Lang/Drayle would have covered every conceivable response – even the quickest of evasive or offensive manoeuvres would be doomed to failure. Sure enough, when he looked across at Lena, he saw what she’d been reaching for in her daypack: she was training a gun on him – a Sig Mosquito with a silencer. He turned back to Lang/Drayle.

  ‘Dominique Drayle.’ It was all he could think of to say (and he had to buy some time somehow, after all). He still couldn’t quite believe it, though. The guy looked nothing like his photos – not a single one. ‘I’m not sure I really believe you.’

  ‘Of course not. I had a little work done, as they say. Do you think it makes me look younger? OK. Let me see. Proof. Shall I tell you what it was like to fuc
k your sister, perhaps?’

  Ruart came close to charging Drayle and taking them both, him and Drayle, over the edge. Lena wouldn’t have had time to react and it would have been all over in the blink of an eye. All over for him, but all over for Drayle too. But Drayle seemed to read his mind and he stepped back away from the brink. I should have done it when I had the chance.

  ‘How long have you known?’ Ruart asked. He directed the question to both of them, but turned to face Lena. She maintained her cold, steady gaze. A real killer, that one.

  ‘Does it really matter?’ Drayle said. ‘You could ask a whole lot of questions and I could give you a whole lot of answers, but what would the point of that be? In the circumstances. It’d simply be a waste of everyone’s time, wouldn’t it. Ours and yours.’

  There was little doubt what they intended, but hope was a weapon, and he still had a little of it left…

  ‘One or two answers… two minutes to satisfy my curiosity,’ he said, doing everything he could to avoid losing it, and to keep at bay thoughts of his family. ‘If it’s not too much to ask.’

  ‘Well it is, actually. Now here’s what’s going to happen and I’m afraid it may seem a bit unpalatable at first.’

  Now, he thought. Now would be a good time for that piece of molten rock to come hurtling down on top of Lena. He promised the god of good luck that if it did, he’d never doubt his existence again.

  ‘You see that lake down there?’ Drayle said. ‘We’re going to get you to dive into it.’

  Dive into it. Into a molten lake of magma.

  He looked at Drayle and then Lena. Hoping a last minute stroke of genius would descend upon him. But nothing came.