Dark Oceans

by Mark Macrossan

  She frowned, deep in thought, before continuing. ‘In Zurich I got mixed up with a bit of a rich crowd, kids of European… captains of industry, that kind of thing, and I… I went off the rails a little. And later… when I was old enough to know better, I met Irwin in a bar and… He was the finance world’s golden boy back then. At least in Zurich. I really had no idea what I was dealing with. I did know that he was married though. So no excuses. I was a bored, naive… or foolish… excitement-seeking young girl in a Big Money town. We moved to Paris… well, he did, he and his wife, and I followed… I think it was in Paris that he met Dominique Drayle… You won’t have heard of him, but―’

  ‘I have, actually. Russian mafia. Right?’

  ‘How did you…?’

  ‘A little private detective told me.’

  She looked at him for a moment. ‘You’re not quite what I was expecting.’

  ‘Neither are you.’

  She shook her head as if she couldn’t quite believe she was there, in that house, with him. Or that’s the way Jon saw it. And he’d been wrong before, but Isla seemed different…

  ‘Then my life started to unravel,’ she went on. ‘I mean, really unravel. At the seams. Irwin began to… treat me badly. Physically, you know? And I began to have my suspicions about… not just the people he was meeting with, but his wife… She was some mouse, you see, from Prague. She just… faded from view. But he kept up the pretence about his marriage so he could take other mistresses. He’d tell them, when he was running to me, that I was his wife, and vice versa. As a method of juggling affairs, it sure was a solid business model.’

  ‘And you killed him.’

  Pause.

  ‘Fishing knife, since you asked.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘It was a tribal… a traditional knife. From the South Pacific. When? The night before last, the night I saw you. In that flat. He was trying to…’ She shook her head. ‘That was the flat we moved to, after Paris. Everything became clearer, after we moved to London. I was doing my own… research, you see. Which was when I found out about things. About Drayle and that crooked cop Stephens, and what they do. About Irwin’s double-life with his mistresses. Everything Irwin touched turned to… not gold but you know, the opposite. It turned to shit. The stuff these people are into. I overheard a conversation recently, about someone having to travel up to Scotland and dumping someone – dumping him, whoever he was, dumping the bag in a deep, dark loch. I wanted to believe Irwin was talking about someone else, nothing to do with him, maybe something he’d heard about or read, but I came to realise I was kidding myself. So you know. I knew, sooner or later, that was going to be me, in that bag in the loch. Nessie… that’s her name, isn’t it?… Nessie food.’

  ‘Hang on.’ Any mention of Stephens gave him a sick feeling in his stomach and he went to double-check the front door was locked. There was always the prospect that he hadn’t actually killed him, despite what his gut instinct was telling him. And even dead, Stephens was still a formidable proposition somehow – Jon wouldn’t have put it past his ghost to do something. He shook these meandering thoughts from his head. A slide into insanity, at this point, would have been unhelpful.

  ‘So anyway,’ Isla said when he was back in the room, ‘it was in the course of my investigations that I was following you.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘I first learnt about your wife… your ex-wife, sorry, Romy…’

  ‘God. Romy.’

  ‘… it was just after she’d become Irwin’s other mistress. This was when we were still in Paris.’

  ‘Are you sure Irwin didn’t say anything about her?’

  She shook her head. ‘I promise you. He’s never even mentioned her name. Not to me. But I found out about her, and recently I came across an email that referred to the money that went into your account by mistake. Romy’s mistake. You were obviously in danger, and I wanted to find out exactly what was going on. So… I spied on you.’ And she shrugged, as if apologizing.

  His brain was trying to process this new information.

  ‘I was there when Stephens found Irwin’s body I think,’ he said, ‘In Soho… yesterday? What day is it?’

  ‘That would have made him mad. Not so long ago… it was around the time I was checking up on Irwin and planning my escape… I realized I was being followed by him. By Stephens. He even came to my life modelling classes, he was really brazen about it. At first I just thought he was some kind of old pervert.’

  Both of them sat there, lost in their thoughts for a moment as the wind continued to throw its skull-clattering tantrum outside. A car approached, drove past… and kept going.

  ‘Funnily enough,’ Isla said suddenly, once it was just them and the wind again, ‘ironically… it was my fault you ever had anything to do with Irwin. You or Romy. Because it was when Irwin was checking up on me… investigating my background, that he found out about Nevers, and I think he must have started blackmailing him or something. And then… this is the bit that’s not clear to me… but there was some connection between Nevers and Romy, they used the same solicitor I think―’

  ‘Brilling,’ he said. ‘Paul Brilling, that’s right. He was my solicitor, that’s why Romy used him.’

  ‘Right. So that’s how Irwin met Romy, probably, through that connection, and then everything flowed from that, all the business with the money into the wrong account and so on.’

  ‘So Nevers’ death… Was that Irwin’s doing, do you think?’

  He’d assumed that Isla didn’t know about the will, and about Nevers supposedly being his father, but at the mention of Nevers’ death, she looked almost more upset than he was. He could have sworn there was a watery glaze over her eyes. Was it only just sinking in, perhaps, that she’d killed someone? She could hardly have been missing Irwin, from what she’d told him. It was probably all just catching up with her. And him, too, for that matter.

  She slowly shook her head. ‘Nothing would surprise me with these animals,’ she said in a low-toned voice.

  No, he thought. Nothing would surprise him either. He thought about Nevers, and Romy and Emerald. And Detective Nigel Stephens trying to kill him on the beach. But something else was bothering him. Something that was just hovering there in the wings of his mind, waiting its turn on the stage…

  He was distracted as another car drove past.

  But it didn’t. It was pulling up outside, and with a short, braking squeal, it stopped altogether and the engine cut.

  ‘That’s here,’ he said.

  95. 50° 47' 25" N 0° 0' 0" E

  (“Lucinda”, Peacehaven)

  7.20am Greenwich Mean Time (07:20 UTC)

  Monday, 28 October

  ‘Quickly,’ Jon said. ‘There’s a way out the… Stay away from the window!’

  ‘Didn’t you say his car was grey? Stephens’s?’ She joined him in the hall. ‘This one’s yellow.’

  ‘This way. Grey, yeah, but he may have friends, wouldn’t you think?’

  They were in the kitchen, at the rear door of the house.

  ‘Hold on. Yellow?’

  There was the sound of a key rattling in the front door lock, and a curse, and the sound of the door opening.

  ‘Bertie!!’ Alastair’s voice echoed through the house. ‘Will you get inside!’

  Jon breathed out. ‘Thank God. It’s Alastair.’

  ‘Who’s Alastair?’

  Alastair was standing in the doorway, wearing an army-green, all-weather jacket with the hood up. He barely raised an eyebrow when he saw Jon, who’d just returned to the front hall.

  ‘Ah. So you are here. I thought you were still up in London. It’s this bloody storm… oh hello there.’

  ‘Alastair… Isla. Isla, Alastair.’

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Wonderful, well I don’t want to get in the way, if I’d known you two love birds were here keeping an eye on things, I wouldn’t have needed to drag both of us out of bed at robinfart, would I Bertie. Ev
erything OK?’

  ‘Fine other than―’

  ‘Bertie! Will you kindly bloody well get in here, how many times do I have to ask politely?! Unbelievable. He’s fascinated by storms. Probably because dogs hate them so much. My-enemy’s-enemy way of thinking. BERTIE!!’

  Bertie came trotting on through, past the guard of honour in the hallway…

  ‘Hello Bertie,’ Jon offered.

  … and straight on to ensure all was in order in the kitchen.

  Looking over Alastair’s shoulder, Jon could see the Mustang – out there in all that greyness and gloom, it was like a little portable burst of sunshine.

  Once Alastair had settled in and recounted, in some detail, his own dramas, including having to deal with the “wind-blown tarpaulins, downed plane trees and toppled cranes” – in fact, it was, according to Alastair, nothing short of a miracle he and Bertie made it out of London alive – Jon was able to give him a potted version of recent events.

  ‘So in a nutshell,’ Jon said, after he’d finished, ‘there are now bodies all over the place, and Isla and I are most definitely going to be “wanted for questioning”, so not an ideal situation.’

  ‘I know exactly how you must feel, dear boy. Well that won’t do at all, will it. You know, keep this to yourselves, but the word on the street is that our good old MI5 has been following this Russian crowd for a while and they’re well aware the Met’s been infiltrated.’

  ‘Word on the street?’ Isla said, with a mischievous glint in her eye. ‘Or maybe you’re one of them yourself. An MI5.’

  ‘So the best thing,’ Alastair went on, after a small hesitation, but otherwise ignoring the interjection. ‘The best thing I think, at least until they sort this godawful business out, is for the two of you to skedaddle.’

  ‘Skedaddle. Skedaddle how?’ Jon asked.

  ‘Let me think, let me think.’ And in a matter of seconds, and with a big frown and a contorted face, he managed to squeeze out an idea. ‘I’ve got it. I have a fisherman friend in Rye. Mad as a cut snake (speaking of Black Mambas). I’d lay odds he’d be willing to take you out. For the right fee.’

  ‘Take us out?’

  ‘Out there!’ said Alastair pointing seaward.

  ‘Where to? Africa?’

  ‘Not exactly, but you’re warm.’

  Alastair decided they had to get as far away as possible and as quickly as possible – an uncontroversial proposition in itself – and the airports were out (“quickest way to get yourselves caught”). The only thing for it was to catch a fishing trawler to France, and to make their own way through Spain to Morocco (“basically you’ll be reverse-refugees… anti-refugees if you like… going against the flow of traffic, it’s the only way to travel”), and only once they’d set foot on the African continent should they allow themselves the luxury of going to an airport and travelling by air. They’d have to split up after they arrived in France of course, they’d be way too conspicuous as a couple. And then, in Africa, they’d be well-advised to head for Honiara.

  ‘Honiara?’ asked Jon.

  ‘The Solomon Islands, East of New Guinea, North-east of Australia. Middle of the South Pacific.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because like Wales, no-one goes there, and because unlike Wales, it’s on the other side of the bloody world. And it’s beautiful. Did you know it’s only twenty-five miles across, and ninety miles long, this is the main island, Guadalcanal, and it has a mountain that’s higher than the highest mountain in Australia? Nearly eight thousand feet? Turquoise waters, tropical bloody… God! I’ll go there if you don’t! Anyway I have contacts there. But first things first. We have to get you out of bloody England.’

  ‘You mean go out in that?’ Isla asked. ‘But it’s a big storm.’

  ‘It’ll be a bit bumpy I expect, that is true my dear. In fact this will interest you. I just received a text from a friend of mine…’ Alastair fumbled around for his phone. ‘Here it is. From Nazaré in Portugal, don’t ask me where that is, but some chap there has just surfed the largest wave ever surfed. This morning! Half an hour ago! A hundred bloody feet high! So yes, it won’t exactly be smooth sailing so to speak, but Alan’s an absolutely five star skipper, and if anyone can get you to a sleepy little seaside village in Brittany, unscathed and unarrested, it’s Alan. He could do it drunk with his eyes closed… in fact I suspect that’s how he does do it. But he’s a good one, isn’t he Bertie. We went on a fishing trip once with Alan, didn’t we. Bertie thought all his Christmases had come at once, with all those fish jumping around on the deck. Cat heaven, wasn’t it.’ Alastair suddenly donned his serious mask. ‘It’s not ideal, I know, but there’s no other way. And it’s so bloody mad…’

  ‘They won’t think to look for us there,’ said Jon.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘At the bottom of the Channel,’ said Isla.

  Before they sat down to nut out some details, Jon couldn’t resist commenting on something that had come up earlier.

  ‘So Alastair. How do you know all this stuff. Did Isla nail it? Are you MI5? Is this one of your safe-houses?’

  ‘MI5? Me? My dear boy, can you seriously imagine me as a spy? Ha! Now where were we…’

  * * *

  And thus plans were drawn up, and arrangements made for Jon and Isla to leave Lucinda, and Alastair and Bertie, and England. Effective immediately.

  And the sooner the better, too. There was no telling what would happen once Stephens’ body was found – if he was even dead of course, and if the sea hadn’t, in its fury, whisked him away. Jon was itching to check, to see if there was a body there, but it was too risky for him, or for either of the others, to go anywhere near it.

  It was a good plan, Jon had to admit. Radical, but preferable to the alternatives. And he was with Isla too, if only for a short time, so that was a plus. Things could be far worse. And he could… should, by rights… have been dead by now, so all of this was really a bonus. Still, and despite owning a plethora of reasons to be feeling insecure, he couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling he was missing something, and wondered if it wasn’t that thing at the back of his mind that refused to reveal itself. Something to do with Isla, he felt.

  He’d have to leave those worries aside for the moment though, because it was time to pack for France, for Africa, for the South Pacific.

  96. 17° 42' 5" S 168° 19' 11" E

  (Port Vila Airport)

  2.15pm Vanuatu Time (03:15 UTC)

  Tuesday, 29 October

  She was finally off the plane. It was nearly thirty-two hours since she’d boarded the first one – in Aberdeen, Scotland – and if it proved one thing, it was that she could never be an astronaut, or a cosmonaut. Packed into a small space like that for so long… she might have been a fish, but she was no sardine.

  The black tarmac shimmered as it radiated waves of heat skywards, back to the source. And walking across it, Ishiko made her way towards the airport terminal. Surrounded by the wildly green, tropical hills, she should have been elated, at least after the million greys of Aberdeen. The Coral Sea. The fish! But the enthusiasm just wasn’t materializing.

  She hoisted the strap of her stone-grey Muji bag and swapped shoulders. That was the problem. What the bag contained. The Decagon, it was like a bad luck charm, it had only brought her problems. Including the scar on her forearm, which meant she had to wear a long-sleeved top, even in this heat. The Decagon had done that.

  It had also made her doubt everything about her life that she’d taken for granted. All that she’d taken as certain. Maybe that was a good thing, but why didn’t she feel any happier, then? She was definitely doubting her job, if you could even call it that, and the people she worked for. Well not for much longer. She’d get rid of this thing and get rid of this job. And then she’d be free. As free as the fish in the sea.

  She could go somewhere and start living a normal life. Put an end to her solitary existence. Find a lover. Like Bertrand, for example, the man she’d killed.
/>
  She knew the truth of it, though. She’d killed her soulmate. Her instincts told her that then, and they were telling her that now.

  And the Decagon had done that too.

  * * *

  An hour later, in her room, she used her laptop to connect to the hotel’s Wi-Fi. She sent a message to say she’d arrived and received a quick response. Again, there was no sign-off (just a smiley-face, even worse), but something told her it was written by a male. She hoped it was Aleks but accepted it probably wasn’t. She didn’t care, just wanted to get this over and done with. They could take their Decagon and leave her alone.

  The message read:

  Welcome to Vanuatu.

  Meet tomorrow morning at 9.00 a.m. at the Nambawan Cafe in Port Vila. It’s in town, on the water.

  Bring your things. Including the thing. : )

  97. 17° 44' 14" S 168° 18' 44" E

  (Nambawan Cafe, Port Vila)

  9am Vanuatu Time (22:00 UTC)

  Wednesday, 30 October

  The Nambawan cafe was located in the centre of town, and right on the edge of Vila Bay. Partly undercover, partly outdoors, it was full of backpackers and travellers from around the globe. Eating their Big Fella baguettes and drinking their fruit smoothies and mega mugs of Tanna coffee. The cafe sat near the end of a row of dive shops, and restaurants and tourist-targeted clothing stalls stretching along a section of the waterfront. And the view was sunny, and watery and warm. Mainstays clinked, boats bobbed about, outboard motors growled around.

  Ishiko was right on time – she wanted to impress on her final job – and chose a table in the shade. She was wearing black shorts and a black, long-sleeved top – not a great choice for the tropics (she’d buy something more colourful at one of the stalls) – as well as flip-flops, a navy New York Yankees baseball cap and large, dark sunglasses. Put her Muji bag down on the chair next to her and looked around. Not that she knew who she was looking for.