Blood in the Water: A DCI Keane Scottish Crime Thriller

by Oliver Davies

  Once I was buckled into one of the fold-down seats lining the side of the cabin, we were good to go. The winch operator handed me a headset, so I could listen in on any radio chatter, and I put it on.

  We headed due north until it was time to veer into the low curving course that the captain had plotted to keep us well out of sight of the Kværnen as we overtook her. Every passing minute of inaction was just making me feel more anxious about what might be happening on that yacht. Was Shay still okay down there? Where the hell had he managed to hide when Jordan and Phelps went on board, anyway? Well, at least he had control of the onboard cameras. He could keep watch on everyone, but he’d have made damned sure they couldn’t see him.

  “Five minutes, Conall,” Jack’s voice finally informed me over the headset. “Keep an eye on your compass, and for God’s sake, activate your GPS signal if you get into any trouble in the water so we can swing back and pick you up. Swim south-west at a slow, steady pace every other minute after we drop you. The current pulls steadily to the northeast here, but it’s slow. We’ll get you down to a few feet above the surface.”

  Good. I didn’t want the trouble of unbuckling a harness while I trod water. I loosed my restraints and pulled up my undersuit and then my drysuit and fastened them both up. Using the handholds, I moved back to where the rest of my gear was waiting. Once the gloves were sealed on, I strapped on the dive watch, making sure the GPS was deactivated, and fastened my little air tank to the chest straps. Lastly, I clipped a sheathed dive knife to my leg. It was made of good, strong stainless steel with the usual cutting edge, serrated edge and notch for line cutting. The hood and mask could wait for now.

  I left the borrowed headset with the winchman and headed back up to the front, where the winch operator was ready to slide the door open for me. Once he had, I sat on the lip, pulled my hood up and settled my mask into place. The Sikorsky settled lower, and I gave him a thumbs-up before pushing off. I surfaced again quickly, and when I signalled that I was okay, he ducked back and slid the door shut. The Sikorsky lifted a little and headed off to the west to circle back behind the Kværnen. The suit was good. I didn’t feel any chill at all yet.

  Thank goodness for good weather and calm water. I checked my compass and started off.

  Twenty-Two

  Shay

  Well, this was just bloody typical! There I was, feeling ever so pleased with myself, car purring away happily like it hadn’t done for ages, nicely tuned up again, and then those two arseholes had to show up and spoil a perfectly enjoyable night.

  I’d just got my jacket out of the cloakroom when I heard a quiet splashing noise from outside the windows and glanced out. Min, smart system that it was, had turned all but the guide lights off in here after we’d left earlier. The deck lights were still on out there, though, and I could see the dinghy rowing quietly along the side of the boat towards the dive platform at the stern. I didn’t need a second glance to tell me who was in it, or that Phelps, at least, was armed. There was no way I could get off now without being spotted.

  I silenced my phone and ran through the layout of the boat in my head. Where was the best place to hide? It seemed to me that the main salon here was the place they’d be least likely to search properly. The lockers under the couches? I lifted the lid of the first one. No, that was full of crap. They probably all were. The cloakroom? If that top cupboard above the hanging rack was empty, I could definitely curl up in there. It had looked nice and deep.

  I dived back in there and hopped up on a padded footlocker bench to open it. All clear, apart from a few boxes at one end, and just in time. I could hear stealthy steps coming up the little companionway to the stern deck. A quick pull up and a controlled leg swing, and I was halfway there. No loud thumps either. I eased carefully in, twisted myself over and pulled the doors closed. For good measure, I moved the boxes, setting each one down at the front of the shelf with barely a whisper of sound. Curled up as flat as possible behind them, I quickly checked with my phone light as I heard the two men sneak into the salon out there. The barrier was tall enough to conceal me. It would have to do.

  A careful look would show some black fabric from my jacket and trousers through some little gaps, but that could be anything. Besides, if they even bothered to look in here, I doubted they’d do more than give it a quick glance.

  I heard some low whispers and the sound of the guest bathroom door opening and then the closer sound of my own door being eased open. The footlocker lid made a little thump as it was shut again after a quick check, and then there was a brief stab of light as someone opened my cupboard and immediately closed it again.

  “Nobody here. Go and check up on the flybridge.”

  The cloakroom door closed again. So far, so good. They weren’t as quiet as I would have been if I’d been invading a place. Even from in here, I could hear when they headed downstairs. That should give me time enough to get out of here and go and alert Conall. Only I couldn’t do that, could I, because, by the time we got back here, they’d have Mads, Daniels and Verity all rounded up. And there was the matter of the gun, or guns, to consider. I fired off a quick text to Conall, or at least I tried to. They’d activated a jammer. Crap! The next thing I knew, they might start scanning for active phones. I turned mine off. It was no use to me now, anyway.

  I heard a distant, angry voice from below and a muffled thump and nothing much after that but unidentifiable noises for a few minutes until I heard several people coming back up again.

  “Sit down.” That was an English accent. Phelps then. “Where are all your pretty little groupies, Nielsen?”

  “If you are referring to my houseguests, the scholarship students are staying in town tonight.”

  “Pick up a fresh one, did you?” That was Jordan, the Aberdonian. He must have noticed the state we’d left the place in down there. We’d ended up raiding the kitchen for snacks and another bottle at one point. Oh, and accidentally half flooded the bathroom too. “You’re a greedy, entitled prick, did you know that, Nielsen?”

  “As you can see, my dinner guest left earlier.” I’d dozed off when he did for a couple of hours, but Mads had still been fast asleep when I slipped out.

  “What are you doing here, Brian? And who’s this?” Daniels’ voice.

  “That’s Mr Jordan to you. And we’ll ask the questions, so shut your uppity mouth before I decide to shut it for you. I’m talking to the boss’s son, not the hired help.”

  “Boy or girl?” I heard Phelps ask. “Your ‘dinner guest.’ I gather you’re one of those filthy deviants who can’t make their minds up.”

  “On the contrary, I made my mind up years ago. I chose not to halve my options by excluding an entire gender for no good reason. Not that it’s anyone’s business but my own.”

  I smiled to myself. Mads didn’t sound in the least bit intimidated. Good for him!

  “You didn’t answer my question.” An angry growl there.

  “Just leave it,” Jordan said impatiently. “What does that matter to us, anyway? When are Jules and the others coming back?”

  “I couldn’t say precisely. I told them that anyone who wasn’t here by eight would be left behind, but I wouldn’t expect them before half-past seven. They don’t like early mornings very much. That gives you plenty of time to steal whatever you came for… Oh. This isn’t a robbery, then? I do hope you’re not expecting my father to cough up some ridiculous ransom for me. He’s very publicly made his policy on kidnappers and hijackers perfectly clear. There will be no negotiation.”

  “Nobody’s kidnapping anybody,” Jordan told him shortly. “You’re just going to be helpful and cooperative and give us a lift up to Tórshavn, and then we can all go our separate ways again. I know that police inspector came to talk to you about me, so you can probably guess why we’d like to leave the country nice and quietly. As long as you behave yourself, nobody needs to get hurt.”

  Well, that was interesting. How did they know that Conall had been here? Had so
meone paid them a little visit, when they were holed up on the Jeanie, to warn Brian Jordan that he’d been identified?

  The next three hours weren’t much fun after that. I kept an ear open for anything of interest but spent most of the time considering my options and composing code to have ready for when I could move. There was no chance of that before we got underway. There’d been a ladder up to an access hatch against the rear wall of the control room where Daniels had been working earlier.

  Comparing its position to the layout up here, I was pretty sure that must be set into the beautifully finished wooden flooring under the fancy rug between the couches out there, a couple of feet to this side of the end of the smart table. A manual fire escape, so the crew wouldn’t be trapped if the doors sealed automatically. There was probably another one, at the rear of the stern deck, leading down to the engine room, but I couldn’t risk using that one. Anyone up on the fly bridge would spot me there if they happened to look down.

  Alejandro and friends all turned up eventually and were summarily rounded up. My best guess was that it might have been about seven forty-five by then. I heard everyone being herded downstairs and carefully shifted my position for the twentieth time, so I could work, motionlessly, on another group of muscles. Even in a space like this, there was a lot you could do to keep your circulation going nicely and avoid any numbness.

  Not long after that, I heard at least two people coming back up. They went outside, and I heard footsteps thumping along the deck. Whoever was out there would be untying the mooring lines, leaving them looped ready to slip, and making sure the fenders were hanging over the sides in the right positions to avoid any bumps or scrapes as we pulled out. Someone started the engines up, a neutral, idling vibration.

  “Slip the lines and get up here.” That was Phelps.

  More thudding, and then Kværnen came alive with a little jerk. We were easing away from the dock. I waited another ten minutes or so before carefully moving all the boxes out of the way, opening the cupboard doors and silently lowering myself down. It felt good to stretch out again properly, and I spent a few more minutes quietly limbering up again. No noises out there except for the odd snatch of voices from above. I eased the cloakroom door open and crept out.

  Nobody on this deck, as I’d thought.

  The access hatch was exactly where I’d calculated it should be. The whole thing lifted up noiselessly on well-oiled hinges when I gave it an experimental pull. I slid myself into a position where my feet could find the ladder. Keeping one hand on the hatch, I got a grip on the side rail and moved my feet down a few rungs. Now, I could lower the hatch carefully and alternate my free hand to push the end corners of the rug out again before gently lowering the hatch the last couple of inches.

  Perfect. No sound of anyone reacting to my furtive movements. I looked down and around. The control room door had closed itself again after they’d taken Verity and Daniels out, so I didn’t have to worry about anyone spotting me from the passageway. The hidden cameras I’d clocked all over the boat were an entirely different matter. Did Jordan know about those? Could he access them?

  Either way, those were my second priority once I’d accessed the system. First, I’d need to lock that door. I doubted any of the crew would have access to the camera system, anyway. I went across to the door, listening intently. No sound out there apart from the low thrum of the engines, which was all-pervasive. First things first.

  The other door did lead through to the crew quarters. A small cabin with bunks for four, and, on the other side, a pokey bathroom and an equally cramped but well equipped little galley. Passing those, I went through to the engine room where I found what I was looking for. A well equipped little tool station.

  I slipped a utility knife into the little pocket I’d added to the inside of my jacket cuff and grabbed wire cutters, and electrical tape to shove in my pockets. There should be some insulated, high voltage safety gloves around here somewhere. Yes, they were hanging from a hook on the side of the workbench. I pulled open a few little drawers and soon found all the bits and pieces I needed.

  Back in the control room, I settled myself into Daniels’ seat and typed in the login that Mads had used to access the Syslog. He had a good, random character string password, and he was quite speedy with the keyboard too. There was no way he could have known I’d clocked it, and I’d make sure to wipe all record of it being used when I was done. I pulled up the boat’s schematics and locked both the control room doors. I’d release the one to the passageway again when I was good and ready.

  Now for the cameras. Nielsen Senior must have given the kids access to those, so they could turn them off when they wanted some privacy. Mads, I was happy to see, had been a gentleman last night. I hadn’t thought he was the kind to film anyone without their permission, but you couldn’t always tell. The only footage of me on the system was from our little visit on Thursday and the earlier part of the evening.

  I wiped all of that.

  Next, I ran through the available camera views and pulled the most useful ones up onto a few of the monitor screens. Cory Phelps was up on the flybridge with Mads. That shouting and thumping I’d heard when our hijackers first went below must have been Mads reacting badly to being startled awake by two strange men. Somebody had landed a good solid blow or two to his face.

  It wasn’t like they’d hit Conall, which would have made me really angry, but I already considered Mads to be sort of a friend, somehow, or at least a potential friend. They needn’t have done that. From what I’d overheard from the cupboard, Brian Jordan was just plain jealous. After all, Mads was rich, very good looking and very good at seducing people, none of which Jordan could claim to be. Cory Phelps just plain despised him, which was far more dangerous.

  I decided that Jordan had probably been the one who’d hit Mads, just to slow him down enough to notice the gun and quiet down after his rude awakening. Phelps would probably have tried to break his nose or knock some teeth out while he was at it. Another view of the flybridge wasn’t worth keeping on display, but it did show me that Phelps had a gun and that he also had a handheld radio. So they could talk to each other.

  Everyone else was in Mads’ stateroom. Jordan was lounging on the bed, and he, too, had a gun and a radio. He also had a tablet which he probably used to monitor communications. Speaking of… ah! There were no active mobile signals on board. They must have collected everyone’s phones and turned them all off. But the jammer had only been needed whilst there was still a chance of someone managing to call for help before they’d taken control of the boat. Yeah, Jordan would have known that someone would soon notice if Kværnen stopped communicating with the satellite link for a lengthy period of time.

  The students were all sleeping peacefully by then. They must have given them all a choice between a sedative and a bullet, and they’d opted for the less permanent outage. Daniels and Verity were awake, but that made sense. They might need them if there was a technical problem that Jordan couldn’t handle. I put that camera feed up on a screen as well and added a couple of views of the main salon, another from outside the control room door and one that showed me the dive platform hanging off the stern.

  I fed in the first segment of the code I’d been working on whilst I was stuck in that cupboard. That patch allowed me to open up a covert link to my laptop back in Stornoway. To Jordan, any data I was receiving or sending out would just look like the usual satellite chatter he was already used to seeing. I woke her up, and she obligingly opened up a remote console for me to work in, which meant I could really get going now. I logged off Mads’ user profile and got started.

  Once I’d tracked our course and speed, I could start running calculations on a good spot to stop this baby dead in the water. I set an alert to tell me when Conall got around to turning his laptop on, because I could bounce what I needed straight onto his screen when the time came. He’d probably start freaking out enough to turn it on once he’d had his morning caffeine fix and reali
sed I was missing and not answering my phone.

  As I didn’t know what time Conall would wake up, or how quickly he’d start panicking, I decided to set up a few options, thirty minutes apart, covering the period between twelve and two. I picked five different sets of coordinates, more or less on our route for each time slot and got to work setting up a little programme that would make the subtle, necessary course and speed corrections for any of those whilst feeding the unadulterated, alternative data to the helm and the satellite.

  Stopping to check my screens regularly and constantly keeping my ears open slowed me down a bit, but there was no real rush. Jordan left the stateroom once, to make some sandwiches and grab a couple of beers. He took Phelps’ snack up to him then returned to the main stateroom with his own. Nothing for Mads? Oh well, I’d seen that he at least had some water bottles up there. He’d be okay.

  Coding done, for now, I emptied my pockets and measured out the lengths of wire I’d need from their spools before cutting them. Poor Daniels and Verity didn’t look at all comfortable. Watching Jordan casually swigging that beer down probably wasn’t making them feel any better about their situation. It was weird, how thirsty you suddenly felt as soon as it became impossible to get a drink.

  I wired up the three-pin plug and switched out the puny fuse for a thirty amp one I’d found in a drawer. Then I connected my control switch and fed the next wires into that too before wrapping the stripped ends around the foot of the ladder and securing them with grey electrical tape. Another check of the monitors, no change there. It looked like a perfect day to be out on the water. I bet Mads and the students would have been having a great time by now if it wasn’t for this little interruption to their plans.