by Muriel Gray
Neither spoke, and it seemed to each of them that the blood beating in their veins was louder than the undercurrent of diesel engine beneath the floor. The noise came again. It sounded like shuffling. At almost the same time as a timorous moan started to be emitted unconsciously from the back of Erol’s throat, the source of the shuffling noise revealed itself as it appeared around the harshly lit corner of E-deck.
Edgar Pasco did not lower his meat cleaver, because even though the figure that moved before them was pathetic in its countenance, it was sufficiently horrific to make him catch his breath in fright.
Fen Sahg was naked to the waist, his thin body smeared with blood, a shoebox clutched to his breast as though it were an infant as he shuffled down the corridor in the direction of the elevator. He turned his head to look at the two men, stopped and blinked at them as though they had materialized by enchantment. Edgar opened his mouth to say something, but found that words would not come. His mind was still frantically piecing together the combination of what they believed to have been Raul’s screams, the cessation of those screams, and the horrific appearance of the MV Lysicrates’ oiler Sahg.
Fen saved him the trouble of speech. Slowly he raised one thin, bloodied finger and pointed it at the huddling men. His lip trembled and in his eyes shone a fury that was as terrifying as the state of his body.
“He interrupted.”
His voice was low but it held enough spite to fuel a war. Edgar’s fist tightened around his weapon and Erol pressed himself against the wall.
“He interrupted and it made him go.” Fen’s finger remained pointing at them for a moment, then he lowered it as lethargically as he raised it, held his box tighter, turned from them and continued on his shuffled journey.
Neither man moved as Fen disappeared from view. Only Erol made a sound, and it was difficult to tell whether it was indeed a word or yet another involuntary expression of fear when he whispered, “Raul.”
14
“He was right about one thing.”
Esther, the small of her back against the cool metal of the taff rail, looked across at Cotton, her troubled expression broken momentarily by curiosity.
“Yeah?”
“I could do with a stiff drink.”
Esther watched Matthew’s face as he wrestled with the truth of that for a moment, then turned her gaze to the huddle of men further up the cargo deck being addressed in urgent terms by Chadin. She was glad he’d broken the silence, and particularly with that subject. Something big was on her mind.
“How long have you known Skinner?”
He leant forward on the rail, gazing out at the invisible black sea. “Two years, four months.”
Matthew had answered too quickly and too accurately for the casualness of the question, indicating that the time had already been significant to him for a reason unimparted to her. She left it.
“How well do you know him?”
Matthew thought about it, bent his head and shrugged. “As well as anyone you sail with.”
“Do you like him?”
Matthew continued to look out to sea, shifting his position in a way that told her he was uncomfortable with the topic. “I guess he saved my life.”
Esther turned back and faced him, though the action merely afforded her access to the side of his face. “Can I hear about it?”
Cotton shrugged again, then spat into the ocean. “It’s not that interesting.”
“I’m interested.”
He glanced up at her, then back at the sea. She waited.
“I was a captain. Lost my master’s licence for drinking on watch. Couldn’t sail again as an officer with any of the reputable companies. He persuaded Sonstar, not the most rigorous of companies when it comes to regulations, to bend the rules. Employed me when no one else would.”
Esther nodded, though not necessarily out of understanding. “And you couldn’t live if you didn’t sail?”
“That’s right.”
Esther was quiet for a moment, knowing that everything about his attitude to being here on this ship since they had first met suggested that this last answer was a lie.
“Why do you suppose he did that, Matthew?”
“Who knows? Maybe someone did him a favour in the past. Felt he should pass it on.”
Esther cleared her throat. She wanted her next question to be delicate, but she knew it wasn’t a skill that the good fairies had given her over her crib. “Isn’t a first officer kind of important to a captain?”
Matthew looked up at her. “Yeah.”
She’d started. She’d better finish. “So wouldn’t taking on a drunk then, even as a favour, be absolute folly?”
Matthew stayed leaning, but his hands wrung together. “You got a point?”
“In the last two years has he ever tried to help you stop drinking?”
Matthew snorted in derision. “What?”
“I’m serious. If he wanted to give you another chance, then presumably he’d want to stop you drinking. Get you sober, maybe even get back your master’s ticket.”
Matthew was looking at her with a hint of anger in his eye. “I’m not getting this.”
“What I’m saying is, if his plan clearly wasn’t to rehabilitate you, then what was it?”
“Fuck knows, Esther. Maybe he’s just a nice guy.”
“And is he?”
Matthew looked away for a moment, composed himself, then looked back again. “I guess I hardly know him.”
Esther nodded again. Cotton stood straight.
“Don’t you think with the kind of shit we’re having to deal with right now, a character assessment of our captain is a little misplaced?”
Esther was still nodding to herself, sorting through stuff she couldn’t quite figure out yet. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
They were quiet for a moment until a clamour broke out from the men up the deck. Voices were raised and Chadin was waving his arms.
Matthew wiped his mouth. “I should sort that out.”
Esther grabbed his arm. “I didn’t mean to hurt you there.”
“You didn’t,” he lied.
“Matthew. Where does Skinner keep the gun?”
“He won’t let you have it, Esther. He’s right. There are regulations about these kind of things. Forget it.”
“I wasn’t planning on asking again.”
Matthew Cotton looked at her closely. From a distance the voices clamoured, shouting each other down. “You don’t trust him, do you?”
“There’s three bodies on board. We can’t call for help. I’ll start trusting people when I’ve got some steel in my hand.”
He blinked at her for a moment. For the last few moments Matthew Cotton had been feeling something he hadn’t expected to feel again in this life. He knew why she was asking these questions. They were about Skinner, not really about him. But something in her voice, the way she looked at him alerted him to an undercurrent of emotion that he had found comforting. Her voice had not contained pity or contempt. It had contained sympathy, concern, maybe even a tiny glimpse of something else. Cotton couldn’t afford to give it head-time, but there was no denying that a part of him had been touched by her, by a kindness he hadn’t seen coming. Then his hand went to the pocket of his trousers where her Dictaphone and its garbled tape still waited to be translated. The memory of that thing between the holds flitted momentarily across his inner vision, and Matthew Cotton weighed his options.
“There’s a hand gun in the metal locker in most captains’ cabins. In the passageway between his bathroom and main office. It’ll be locked.”
She gently squeezed the arm she still held. They both knew where she was headed next.
“And you?”
“I’m going to dig out my best Filipino for ‘pull yourselves together,’ then I’m going to close these fucking holds.”
“And the tape?”
“It’s here. What about it?”
Esther removed her hand. “It might not be important, but I
need to know what that boy is saying.”
He glanced at her, and despite himself, sighed. “So what if it’s a cult? We know it’s Fen. Sohn saw him.”
“And the thing you saw? The reason you want those holds closed?”
“I don’t get the connection.”
She looked at him with an expression that made Cotton melt. It held trust, understanding, complicity and a fierce youthful intelligence. “Humour me.”
He nodded. At that moment he would have done just about anything for her. No one had looked at Matthew Cotton like that for a very long time indeed. He cleared his throat. “Maybe you should wait for me. You shouldn’t move about this ship alone.”
She smiled. “Funny. I was going to say the same to you.”
She slipped away leaving Matthew Cotton with the urgent and very real hope that she was a hide more than just a bullshitting kid.
Renato looked at his feet.
“I think that might make matters worse.”
Skinner kept looking at his second officer with a gaze that forced the man to look away. “In what respect?”
“Because they’ll want to keep looking for Thomas Inlatta.”
Skinner looked down at the angry gathering of men on the deck below the bridge. He tapped lightly on the glass. “I think, Renato, that if you asked them right now whether their priority was searching for an almost-certainly-dead colleague, or saving their skins until the sister-ship joins us, you might find they change their tune.”
Lhoon looked back up. “You think we’re all in danger?”
“Why do you think I’m going to confine the whole crew to the safety of the engine room until we catch Sahg?”
The first officer nodded, relieved that the captain was displaying some patriarchal authority at last. “I think you should know that Chadin wants us to sail for port. That’s what they’re discussing.”
Skinner’s finger stopped tapping the glass. “What?”
Renato scratched nervously at the back of his neck. “He thinks we should head back to Callao. Just in case the company ship doesn’t come.”
Skinner turned around slowly, and in place of the mildly distracted expression that Renato was used to confronting, and tired of trying to penetrate, there was something else there. Lloyd Skinner looked focused and dangerously angry. Something in Renato’s face must have alerted Skinner to the fact he was a betraying an emotion that he had intended to remain private, for while he watched, Lhoon saw the captain’s features settle themselves, with a little difficulty, back into the repose of an uninterested man.
“Really? And you?”
“I’m here to follow your orders.”
Skinner nodded, searching the man’s eyes with a laser of scrutiny Renato didn’t know he possessed.
“Good. Then gather the remaining crew members that are still below, take them to the engine room and wait for the rest.”
Renato nodded in compliance, but didn’t go. Skinner raised an eyebrow.
“Captain?”
Skinner didn’t reply, but his face told Renato he was waiting and it had better be good.
“You’re absolutely sure about the sister-ship?”
“I’m interested why you would ask me that.”
“It’s the company. Even if they gave you a time and co-ordinates and a reason, they’re not, you know, the most reliable people. They change their plans at a moment’s notice if there’s money to be made, and right now they don’t even know we’re in trouble.”
Skinner considered this for a moment with, to Renato’s relief, a peaceful expression. “So you’re with Chadin?”
Renato flushed. “No, no. It’s just that, as your officer, it helps me to understand when I know what you know.”
Lloyd Skinner crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at the ground. “Renato, do I look like someone who wants to risk not only the lives of all my crew, but my own too?”
The second officer kept his eyes on Skinner until the captain looked up and met his gaze. “No,” Renato Lhoon said.
“Then that’s all you need to know.”
“I just want to be of more help in persuading the men.”
Skinner sighed. He sounded weary. “You know as much as I do. They haven’t told me why we’re meeting, but shall we say they were sufficiently insistent that I have no shadow of a doubt whatsoever that in exactly three and half hours from now, the MV Elysium will be docking alongside us. I have, as I explained before, weighed up all the best options, and believe me, Renato, this is the best.”
Renato Lhoon glowed with pleasure. Included at last in his captain’s confidence, he smiled a smile that he hoped conveyed a shared wisdom and adult sense of responsibility, though the truth was that it did little more than reveal triumph. Second Officer Lhoon nodded once and left.
On the cargo deck below Skinner could see Cotton joining the throng, and watched as the faces of the men turned towards him to listen. Lloyd Skinner allowed himself a moment to ponder once again on how simple it was to manipulate the stupid, before he finished the small chore he had to do on the bridge and left.
It was spoiled. The ceremony, the ecstasy of divine service, the being at one with his master. All spoiled because of the scum that he sailed with. Fen wiped at his sweating mouth with the back of a hand, leaving a smear of blood like badly-applied lipstick. It changed nothing, of course. Everything was going to plan. Everything was so nearly in place. But it was only he, Fen Sahg, who had been thwarted by the foolish interruption to his sacred liturgy. And now he would have to wait until the real coming, the final and conclusive part of his duties, before he could bask in the physical joy that serving afforded him. There was murder in Fen’s heart. When this was done, he would make them pay for the loss of that moment. Surely he would be allowed that. Surely.
For now though, he had work to do. The time was nearing and he knew that the old engineer would already be spreading the news of Fen’s last chore. But although he didn’t want to acknowledge it, Fen was growing tired. His ecstasy had a physical price and he could feel his heart beating too loudly and too quickly under his thin frame.
If only he could join again, feel that energy surge through him, the energy that came from so long ago, from so much past pain and long-lost knowledge, then he would be capable of anything.
He hugged himself when he called back the image of his master’s briefly shared memory, the way he had seen so clearly why mankind casts away its waste in disgust, its unwanted things, its dead, its effluent, its sins and its shames, without understanding the dazzling truth only Fen and his master knew. The truth that everything is everything else, and that the things that have been cast away must come back.
He sniffed back a block of rancid mucus, an unpleasant but unavoidable side-effect of his contact, and shuffled along the engine room floor towards the small hatch to the cofferdams. It was already open a fraction, and his bare feet clicked on the sticky trail that led up to it and through it.
Holding his box carefully, Fen Sahg crouched down and crawled through the hatch. He had no need of a torch. He knew where he would find him, and anyway, the route was already so familiar to him that he knew where to watch for obstacles, where to crouch low and where he could stand tall. There was safety in all that darkness. It was not a darkness he need fear. And as if to prove it, the carelessness with which he left the hatch door open was not only an indication of how tired he was, but of how little it mattered if they found him this time. It was all so near, there was nothing they could do to stop it. Nothing.
Skinner’s cabin was on D-deck, one floor below the bridge, and as Esther loped quietly up the metal staircase, the foul odour that had greeted her on entering the accommodation block grew fainter. It bothered her.
The smell was bad on the cargo deck, particularly since the derrick’s grab had stirred the trash around, but out there the breeze carried it in wafts and made it bearable. Why would it be so strong inside?
However, the ventilation and air-fl
ow of cargo smells was low on her list of problems to solve, so she filed it under “odd,” and kept her wits on the jobs in hand.
The first was to check that Skinner was still on the bridge. The second was to get into his cabin and somehow force the lock on the weapon cabinet. Though her trailer park buddies had given her plenty of opportunity to watch and learn, cat-burglary and lock-picking were not her best subjects, nor, come to that, was subtlety, which was why Esther Mulholland was carrying a fire-axe to do the job instead.
As she tiptoed past the captain’s deck towards the bridge, she slid the tool behind her back and moved closer to the wall. The door to the bridge, as always, was wedged open, and the black windows reflected the room back at her through the gap. She could see no one. Mindful of the fact that if she could see a figure in the reflection, then they would see her too, Esther bent low and ducked down below the height of the instrument panels. She moved cautiously forward and craned her neck. There was definitely no one on the bridge. If the captain was there, he must be out on one of the wings. This was annoying. She had assumed that she would merely check Skinner was still at his post, then retreat quickly to his cabin and get on with it. The fact she couldn’t see him from here meant she was going to have to enter the bridge on some pretext and risk making him suspicious. For a moment she contemplated returning to Cotton and making him come up here to keep Skinner busy, but time was running out. Esther slid the axe beneath a pipe on the wall, stood up and walked into the bridge.
It was empty. A quick glance to both port and starboard wings told her they too were very much devoid of Captain Lloyd Skinner.
“Shit.”
She ran to the door again and picked up the axe, but as she started to descend the stairs a noise stopped her. Someone was closing a cabin door on D-deck. Esther crept quietly to the corner of the stair well and peered round. Lloyd Skinner was leaving his cabin. She ducked her head back behind the metal wall and waited for the sounds of his footfall, getting ready to move fast if they indicated he was about to return to the bridge by the stairs. But he wasn’t walking. He must still be standing by the door of his cabin. She waited some more, and then cautiously inched her head to the edge and looked around. Skinner was busy. He was checking the bullet chamber of a small handgun. Finishing the job, he clicked it shut, looked quickly at his watch like a clerk checking his lunchbreak, then slid the weapon into the pocket of his trousers as though it were nothing more than a pair of shades. He looked up as she dived behind her cover again, and she readied herself for a sprint. But his footfall told her that the bridge was not his destination. She listened as his footsteps clanged down the stairwell, and she mused firstly at how fearless he was alone in the face of such carnage, and secondly how bad her timing was. She was disappointed that he had retrieved the gun; but at least he had taken her warning that it might be needed to hunt down Sahg. Why that bothered her Esther couldn’t quite say, except that for a girl who had rarely been without a weapon since she was twelve, it troubled her it was him and not her. The times that her own stolen cache of cheap weaponry had saved her from serious damage through her rough teenage years, merely by the fact that she had them and didn’t have to use them, had made her respect rather than fear the gun. But she’d seen what they could do in the wrong hands, and Matthew was right. She didn’t trust Skinner.