The Yacht Party

by Perry, Tasmina

  ‘Have you got any signal?’ asked Stella. Every now and then a bar would pop onto a phone and they would scrabble to send or receive a message.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Lara. ‘Not since I heard from Marion.’ Sandrine’s parents had returned to Corsica, but had kept Lara up to date on the plans for the funeral. They were being kind, of course, keeping Lara involved, but with each missive it became more real. One day soon, she was going to have to accept the idea that Sandrine wasn’t coming back. But not yet.

  ‘Are you sure we’re close?’ said Lara. She was sitting so far forward over the steering wheel, her forehead was practically touching the glass.

  ‘That’s what my phone’s saying,’ said Stella. ‘Mind you, I’ve got zero signal, so we could have passed Ullapool hours ago.’

  ‘There!’ She pointed at a sign emerging from the sea mist.

  Ullapool Harbour, it read. Ferry vehicle check-in.

  ‘We’d better park,’ said Lara, swinging into a space by the dock. ‘Otherwise we might drive off the edge of the world.’

  She yanked on the handbrake and they clambered out, stretching and groaning, the cold air clean and sharp after the over-heated fug of the car. Lara turned her face up towards the sky. The weather was definitely easing off. Maybe.

  ‘Would you just smell that, though?’ said Stella, inhaling deeply.

  ‘The sea?’

  Stella grinned and pointed to a café behind them.

  ‘No, fish and chips.’

  It was already gone two o’clock and they both agreed that they were starving. Stella went into the shop and came out with two white bags. They sat on the stone wall that framed the crescent of pebbly beach. Lara unwrapped the paper and picked off the crispy batter just as a blast of wind whipped along the front and pushed the cloud back. Suddenly they could see the other side of the bay, then, like a giant hand was pulling back a curtain, the snow-capped mountains beyond.

  ‘Now that’s special,’ said Lara, eyes wide. ‘Almost worth the drive.’

  ‘Almost,’ said Stella, dipping a chip into a pool of ketchup.

  ‘So have you been here before?’

  Stella shook her head.

  ‘Nah. We didn’t really go on holiday when I was a kid. And if we had, we’d have got the hell outta Scotland and gone somewhere bloody warm. What about you?’

  ‘I spent nearly every summer in Scotland but never came this far north.’

  MOAAA-RRRGH

  ‘What the…?’

  MOOAW-WARR

  A ghostly shape emerged from behind the harbour buildings, like a moving office block.

  ‘Is that the ferry?’

  ‘It’s huge. How many passengers are they expecting?’

  Although it was late spring, the village looked deserted. Lara wondered what had brought a young woman like Rebecca out here.

  ‘Why do you think Rebecca didn’t go to Helen’s funeral?’ said Stella, as if she were reading her thoughts. ‘It seems strange given they were such close friends.’

  Lara tried to imagine herself not attending Sandrine’s funeral but she couldn’t, no matter how painful her grief.

  ‘I’m not sure. But we’re going to find out,’ she said, crunching her wrapper into a ball and tossing it into a bin.

  Rebecca’s aunt hadn’t returned Lara’s call, but it hadn’t taken Stella too long to find out the address of her Ullapool property. When you had a name and an approximate geographical area, it wasn’t difficult in the twenty-first century. They drove up the hill away from the water into a residential area of squat houses. Pebble-dashed and simple, they were designed with the sole purpose of standing up to wind, rain and snow. Practical, yes, but welcoming they were not. Flipping up her collar – their flimsy London coats entirely unsuitable for the north – Lara strode up the path and rang the doorbell. Nothing. She tried again: they could hear the buzzer inside, but no lights, no movement. No one home.

  Lara peered through the front window into a living space. She could see copy of Grazia magazine, a can of coke on the coffee table and pair of Converse by the sofa. Not Becky’s aunt, at a guess. Lara got back in the car.

  ‘No-one’s home but I don’t think they’ll be long,’ she said, turning up the heater.

  ‘Not long is too long,’ said Stella. ‘I’m freezing. I might go back to the chippy to get a pie.’

  Lara silenced her as she adjusted the rear-view mirror to watch an approaching figure. A young woman with blonde hair pulled back into a pony tail.

  ‘Is that her?’ said Stella, but Lara was already out of the car.

  ‘Rebecca Robertson?’ she called, crossing the road to cut her off before she could reach the house. Fear crossed the girl’s face. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Lara Stone. This is Stella Harris, we’re journalists. Ian Groves suggested we speak to you.’

  ‘About what?’ she said, her body language guarded.

  ‘About your friend Helen and what happened in Haiti.’

  Rebecca shook her head and dodged around Lara.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘Rebecca, please. This is important.’

  The young woman flashed her a look of anger.

  ‘Who for? You?’

  In her rush, the girl dropped her keys trying to get them in the door, swearing under her breath.

  ‘Listen, Becky,’ said Lara quickly. ‘My friend was killed too and I’m pretty sure her death is linked to Helen’s.’

  Rebecca straightened up and looked at Lara, then across to Stella, who nodded.

  ‘Let’s walk,’ she said, skirting around the house and along the backs of narrow gardens, then down a grassy bank towards the loch.

  She walked briskly, leaving the house behind them. ‘I bet this feels very different to Haiti,’ said Lara, matching her pace.

  ‘Sometimes the real world can feel very far away in this part of the Highlands. Haiti is busy, chaotic sometimes, but it can still feel alien. So I guess the two places aren’t so different.’

  ‘Down here,’ she said, passing through a gap in the breakwater and down onto the stony beach. Rebecca sat down on a rock in the shelter of a beached sailing boat, its pea-green paint peeling like shavings of bark.

  ‘So?’ said Rebecca, finally looking directly at Lara. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We don’t want you to feel frightened, that’s the first thing,’ said Lara.

  ‘It’s a little late for that,’ she said, curling her lip. ‘Jumping out at me in the middle of the bloody road. I can’t believe Helen’s dad told you to come.’

  ‘You’re hiding, aren’t you?’

  Rebecca gave a sarcastic laugh. ‘You think I’d come to live up here out of choice?’

  ‘What happened in Haiti, Becky?’

  Rebecca glared at Lara. ‘Nothing good.’

  Then she seemed to lose all her fight and her shoulders slumped.

  ‘Actually we were having a good time, at the start anyway. Helen loved it, she was so taken with the whole thing.’

  ‘Just Helen? Not you?’

  ‘I just wanted to travel. I’d never been out of Scotland, so I was up for the experience, meeting new people, eating weird food. I wanted a buzz, you know? I knew Haiti would be gritty, but honestly, it was too gritty for me. Helen loved it though. She was really into the cause, she was properly passionate about helping people.’

  Rebecca threw another stone. ‘I guess that’s what got her in trouble.’

  ‘What trouble, Rebecca?’

  The young woman hesitated.

  ‘I know you know something, Becky. And the more people you tell, the safer you’ll be.’

  The young woman’s eyes were glittering.

  It was a few seconds before she spoke again.

  ‘Helen saw something,’ she said. ‘Trafficking.’

  It was just one word, but it made their whole investigation come together. Lara wanted to let out a whoop, but it wasn�
��t the time or place. Besides, they were a long way from proving it.

  ‘Helen loved photography,’ continued Rebecca. ‘As soon as she got to Haiti she started a project photographing the people; she wanted to show the beauty of the country as well as the poverty, she had some idea about putting on an exhibition once we got back to Scotland. So she used to wander about on her own taking photos.’

  Lara gave a sad smile, imagining Helen’s spirit.

  ‘On one of the photography trips, Helen saw a man put a young Haitian woman into a pick-up truck. Helen recognised her. Her name was Esther. Barely sixteen and until recently she had lived in one of the orphanages in Port-au-Prince. Helen tried to find Esther, but she had disappeared.’

  ‘Helen thought she had been trafficked away from the area?’ said Lara.

  Rebecca nodded.

  ‘Helen asked around and found out that over the past few months, fifteen young women had gone missing from the Cité Soleil slums alone.’

  ‘Did Helen tell anyone? The police or one of the charities?’

  Rebecca gave a cynical smile.

  ‘The man with Esther, the one who put her in the truck? His name was Nils. He worked for ImpactAid.’

  Lara looked at her in disbelief. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yep. Helen told Diego, our manager, showed him the photos she’d taken of Esther and the pick-up truck. Like that,’ – Becky clicked her fingers – ‘Nils disappeared too and we thought he’d been arrested or something. But no, one of our friends saw him a few days later up in Port-de-Paix on the other side of the peninsula.’ Rebecca jabbed a finger for emphasis. ‘He was still working for the charity.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Stella and Rebecca nodded. She seemed calmer now, almost relieved to be finally telling her story.

  ‘Helen was furious. She said she was going to go straight to the top because it turns out that Victoria Sachs, the founder of ImpactAid, was coming into town, for some photo-story for one of the big American papers.’

  Stella was standing closer now, fascinated by the story.

  ‘Did she see her?’

  ‘Oh yeah, Helen was ballsy. She went to Victoria’s hotel, showed her the photos and told her how many girls had disappeared. How she believed Nils was involved in the trafficking. How she thought his role was to use his knowledge of the locals via his ImpactAid work to identify vulnerable girls.’

  ‘Because they’d trust Nils,’ said Lara grimly.

  Rebecca nodded. ‘Victoria was outraged, said she’d launch an immediate inquiry.’

  ‘And did she?’

  Rebecca looked at Lara, her eyes glistening.

  ‘I don’t know. All I know if that two weeks later, Helen was dead.’

  Chapter 24

  ‘Nice place,’ whispered Alex, leaning across the restaurant table to Dominic. ‘How the hell did you manage to book this?’

  The Corinth was a throwback to the days before the credit crunch, a converted bank in Threadneedle Street, which made the most of the opulent ground floor; the reception-cum-bar was housed in an airy circular room surrounded with white pillars, lit from above by a domed glass ceiling. It was certainly a fitting setting for Dom’s dinner. The private banqueting rooms were so sought after that solid-gold connections and a hefty bribe to the maître d’ were required. Alex had to hand it to Dom; he knew how to impress.

  ‘Well here they are,’ said Dom, standing to greet the other guests as they walked in. ‘This is David and Paul, they’ve already slung in some seed capital, you’ll like them. Sean’s a big city player too, he’d be really useful down the line.’

  Alex smiled and shook hands, but he had to admit he was on edge. He’d called Dom to suggest that they meet to discuss The Filter project in more detail. Alex wasn’t seriously considering jumping ship – not yet – but it was definitely worth exploring, especially after Charlie’s revelations that Darius wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Dom had jumped at the chance, and Alex had expected a convivial supper to discuss Dom’s vision for the company, but this? This didn’t feel like recruitment. It felt like an episode of Dragon’s Den.

  ‘Dom tells me you’re the George Best on the pitch,’ said David as the conversation turned to football, not long after the main course had been cleared away.

  Alex usually found banker-types hard work, but Becker was down-to-earth with a dry sense of humour – he didn’t take himself too seriously and they’d bonded within the first five minutes over a shared a love of running: it turned out that they both had a routine of jogging along the south bank of the river at sunset to unwind after a hard day. In another life, Alex could see himself being friends with someone like Becker, jogging together or hanging out for beers.

  ‘I’m not sure if that’s a compliment,’ smiled Alex. ‘Is he calling me an alcoholic womaniser?’

  ‘I think he said you have a “sweet right foot”, but yes, I suppose he could have been alluding to the “talented but failed to reach his potential” part of it.’

  Alex looked at him with surprise, but Becker laughed.

  ‘Alex, I’m an investor in The Filter and I’ll be putting more money in the pot once we’ve found an Editorial Director. You can’t blame me for doing my due diligence. I know you’ve stalled at AMG and I know you’re smart enough and ambitious enough to see that this is a good move for you.’ He see-sawed a hand. ‘Although I can also see that might feel like a risk too.’

  Alex looked at the man with interest. He’d done his homework too: Becker had made a fortune selling his mail-order beauty company and now was considered one of the most astute investors in the City.

  ‘I thought the purpose of this meeting was to convince me that The Filter is the right career move for me. Not insult me.’

  He smiled; he said the words light-heartedly but he meant it.

  David didn’t take it personally.

  ‘Look Alex, the others…’ he nodded across to the other members of the investment syndicate currently deep in conversation with Dominic. ‘They’re young, they’re flash and they love media investments like this: they sound impressive when they’re boasting about their portfolio poolside in Ibiza.’

  Alex laughed.

  ‘And you’re not an Ibiza kind of guy, am I right?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘So why have you committed to The Filter?’ asked Alex. ‘I mean, I think Dom’s idea is a strong one, but you must have been offered dozens of media investments, why this one?’

  Becker looked straight at him.

  ‘Because of Dom. And if you sign on the dotted line, Alex, I’ll be happier making a further investment.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘The idea is good, sure, but what I like to do is invest in people,’ said Becker. I ask myself “can this guy, this team do what they’re saying?” Dom’s full of energy and can charm the birds from the trees, but he needs an editorial magician and I think that person is you.’

  Alex nodded. It had been a long time since he’d been talked about as an asset.

  ‘You really think I should do it?’ he asked Becker. He was flattered, but he was also genuinely interested. Sometimes you needed to see things – yourself – through someone else’s eyes.

  ‘I’m not sure you should be asking me for advice,’ said Becker. ‘My money’s already in, remember? But yes. I think you’re wasted at the Chronicle. You have an impressive CV and a rock-solid reputation, but I really think you can do more, Alex. Newspapers were cutting edge in Queen Victoria’s time. The world’s moved on.’

  Throughout the meal, Alex found himself mulling Becker’s words – and more importantly, watching the other men around the table.

  David, Paul and Sean were all sharp, energetic men who approached life as if everything was possible.

  ‘Listen Alex,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve laid my cards on the table and I genuinely think this project would be a good fit for you, but can I ask you what your hesitation is?’

  ‘Honestly? I love print, I always have.
My dad was a newsagent, I grew up with ink on my fingers. And print still has authority. People believe what they read in papers, they trust us to tell them the truth. There’s power in that.’

  David nodded, sipping his wine.

  ‘Very true. But is truth enough? You asked me earlier why I chose this project over the others I’ve been offered? I liked this one because it’s focused on what the reader actually wants. You’d be amazed how rare that is. There was one other media start-up I was tempted by: LiveNews – have you heard of it? I think the guy pitched it as TED Talks meets The Economist.’

  Alex laughed. ‘Actually that does sound pretty good.’

  ‘Yeah, but it was so worthy,’ said Becker. ‘So serious. Why can’t anything have a personality anymore?’

  Alex nodded. It was something he had to fight against all the time. Corporate entities valued data and spreadsheets and they resisted anything which couldn’t be quantified like ‘fun’.

  ‘I think you nailed it earlier,’ said Alex. ‘It’s all about the people running things. New media launches are often run by City guys and entrepreneurs. They don’t have anyone on board who really understands how to connect with the news.’

  David put his cup down.

  ‘Actually this one did. He’s a senior editor at that Dutch paper, De Telegraaf, the one that keeps winning awards? He was impressive but… who wants to be lectured to all the time?’

  Alex was intrigued. It was always interesting to know who in their little world was making moves.

  ‘I worked in Europe for a little while. Who was this guy?’

  Becker hesitated.

  ‘Come on,’ said Alex, topping up his glass. ‘I won’t tell.’

  ‘Stefan Melberg? Do you know him?’

  Stefan? Lara’s Stefan?

  He missed David’s wine glass and Claret dribbled onto the tablecloth.

  ‘We’ve got mutual friends,’ said Alex, as casually as he could. ‘Actually Stefan’s involved with Le Caché, the journalism collective. Was this LiveNews an extension of the collective?’