by Andy Maslen
The landscape beyond the manicured lawns was a gently rolling chequerboard of fields and woods, demarcated by dark-green hedges and isolated copses. The yellow of the rape fields was so vivid it appeared to leak from the neat rectangles into their bright-green neighbours. Her ambling had taken her to a spot where half of Berkshire was laid out before her. Here and there in the foreground, pale-pink flowering cherries shed petals like snow.
It was a beautiful scene.
Shame about Collier’s corpse.
She kicked the disfigured face staring up at her from the ground.
A pile of leaves burst into the air in front of the toe of her boot.
Oh! Just me, then.
Using the dead Albanian’s phone, she called a number she’d memorised.
“Who’s this?” A strong Spanish accent she remembered from her boat trip over.
“It’s Stella. Is that you, Rafael?”
“Sí. Yes, I mean. How come my phone don’t recognise you?”
“I’m using a friend’s. Mine’s on charge.”
“Yeah? Well remember to fuckin’ delete the call record afterwards. I don’t want nobody tracin’ me.”
“Relax. I’m going to do more than delete the call. Listen, I’ve got the merchandise. I feel like a trip to somewhere hot and sunny.”
“Funny lady. OK. I’m gonna text you the GPS for the pickup. Not to this number, OK? Your phone. Call me when you get there. We’ll come and find you.”
She returned to the hotel, packed and checked out. The holdall containing Ronnie Wilks’s cash bumped uncomfortably against her bruised thigh, and she stopped to sling the strap over her other shoulder. That made her wince even more. She gritted her teeth and strode out of the lift and over to the reception desk.
The sheaf of banknotes she used to pay her bill drew a look of fleeting incomprehension from Kerry, who had obviously pulled a split shift.
“It’s called cash, Kerry,” she said. “Old school.”
“Sorry. Everyone pays by card these days.”
Stella shrugged.
“What can I say? I’m not everyone.”
Inside the BMW’s cabin, she pulled out her own phone. There was a single text waiting for her. She didn’t need to unlock it to see it was a GPS reference. A minute or so later, she had the location plugged into Google Maps and was pulling out of the hotel carpark, heading west.
The rendezvous with Ronnie Wilks’s boat crew was on a deserted stretch of the Welsh coast. The blue route on the phone’s screen was virtually a straight line for the next hundred-odd miles. Straight down the M4, over the Severn Bridge and on into Wales, where she’d switch to country roads. But Stella had a detour in mind.
Twenty-five minutes later, she pulled into a multi-storey carpark in the centre of Reading. The town was as anonymous as any of the others that ringed London within commuting distance. Which suited Stella perfectly.
She drove carefully through each level, looking for the vehicle she wanted. The first two storeys were a bust – nothing but family cars in a dazzling array of colours ranging from grey through silver and dark-blue to black. On the third level, she saw a raised white roofline on the other side of the row of cars she was passing and uttered a quiet, “Yes!”
She parked a few spaces away from the white transit van and killed the engine. On the drive in to the town, she’d stopped at a hardware shop and bought a roll of silver duct tape. She picked it up and left the car, looking around as she made her way over to the van. The side bore the name of a builder and a mobile number. She pulled a strip of tape off the roll and severed it with her teeth. Then a second. She stuck both to her left sleeve then hoisted herself up between a concrete pillar and the flat side of the van until she could reach the roof. She placed the dead man’s phone dead centre on the roof. She stuck it down with the two lengths of duct tape in a cross. The roof was dirty, but she rubbed the tape down and was gratified to see it forming a strong seal against the paintwork.
Back in her car, she smiled to herself.
“Let’s see you track me from that, Tamit whoever-you-are. I hope his next job’s in fucking Aberdeen.”
She walked down to the pedestrian entrance to the car park and slid her ticket into the machine. While she fished around in her pocket for change, the machine beeped. She looked up. It was declining to charge her as her stay had been under fifteen minutes. “Have a nice day!” the dot matrix display said.
“I think I will,” she said, causing the young man behind her to smile as Stella turned away with her ticket.
The phone’s satnav took her into Wales and then on a series of increasingly narrow, winding roads until it announced that she had reached her destination. She pulled over at the edge of a static-homes park, giving out onto a stretch of empty beach. Despite the sun, the place had a deserted, sorry look, as if a giant had left his collection of shoe boxes scattered over the landscape. Here and there one of the occupants had attempted to brighten up their patch of real estate with a few flowers in a window box, but these homes were outnumbered by weathered blocks of white-painted aluminium and corrugated plastic propping up bicycles or clothes-drying poles.
She called Rafael.
“I’m here.”
“OK. I’ll come in on the dinghy. Drive on for a kilometre up the coast towards St Donats. There’s a viewpoint. Leave your bike there and walk down the path. There’s a stony beach. Turn left and head for the rock arch. Through there’s a little bay. That’s where I’ll be. Give me about fifteen minutes.”
She didn’t bother telling him about the bike. No point.
“I’ll be there. Don’t be late.”
For the last time, she twisted the key in the BMW’s ignition and selected Drive. Turning the silver car in a wide circle, she took a final look down at the scattered park homes. From one, a fat woman in a bright-pink housecoat emerged. The woman looked up at the car and waved. Stella raised her right hand then let it drop back to the wheel.
The remaining portion of her journey took three minutes. The weather was turning, and grey clouds blotted out the sun. She pulled off into the carpark for the beauty spot, the car’s tyres crunching and popping on the gravel. The only other vehicle in the carpark was a yellow-and-white VW camper van, adorned with decals. VeeDub at the Pub, read one. I’m Not Broken Down, I’m Just Sleeping, said another.
She opened the boot and unloaded the bags. One holdall stuffed with a couple of million quid of stolen money. Or drug money, maybe. Dodgy, anyway. One smaller bag containing her clothes and washbag; an illegally acquired, police-issue Glock 17 pistol wrapped in a sweatshirt; and a second illicit weapon – the dead man’s Ruger – similarly hidden inside a couple of T-shirts. And her messenger bag, the torn strap repaired with more duct tape, which contained her passports and the papers she’d retrieved from Ulysses Road.
Shouldering the messenger bag, she hoisted the two holdalls and set off towards the beginning of the stony path that led down, between gorse bushes and stretches of scrubby grass and wildflowers, towards the beach. A cold wind whipped up from nowhere, biting at the tips of her exposed ears. But at least she didn’t have stray long hairs flicking around her face. She stumbled, cursing, on a flint that caught under her right foot, and staggered under the shifting weight of the money bag.
Righting herself, she looked up. Coming towards her was a tanned man with long, straggly blond hair, one arm raised and crooked around a tall, thin bag resting on his shoulder. At first she took him to be wearing black leggings but as he drew nearer she realised he was wearing a wetsuit with the upper part tied round his waist by the arms. The bag was actually a surfboard in a black nylon cover. Covering his top half was a faded pink sweatshirt with a ragged neck, advertising Kerly’s Surfwear in bold cobalt-blue script.
She’d taken him to be midthirties, judging from his lean build and long hair. But as he came within talking distance she saw that he was much older, maybe midfifties or even sixty-something. His eyes were the same bright b
lue as the logo on his sweatshirt, and the sun had etched deep lines that fanned out from the outer corners of his eyes.
“You’ve missed the weather for a picnic, I’m afraid,” he said with a grin that revealed crooked teeth.
“Yeah, I can see that.” She noticed he was looking at her bags – not the usual sort of load you’d be toting down to a deserted beach on the mid-Welsh coast. “I’m a photographer. I’m doing a series about climate change.”
“Oh, well, I could tell you plenty of stories about that. I saw a shark last week. Here! In bloody Glamorgan. Big one, too, not one of those little porbeagles.”
Stella smiled.
“Maybe I’ll get lucky and capture a great white. I’m sorry but I have to go. I’m tight for time.”
The man smiled back. He reminded her of her father.
“Oh, sorry. Don’t mind me. Hope you get some good shots. Cheerio!”
“Bye!” she said, standing to one side to let him and his board pass on the narrow path.
Now she was alone, and she resumed her march towards the beach.
Her phone rang. It was Vicky Riley.
“Vicky? You all right?”
She could tell immediately that Riley wasn’t. She cupped her free hand round the phone to shut out the noise of the surf.
“No. Far from it. They killed my godparents. I’ve just come back from the funeral.”
“Oh, shit, I’m so sorry. I should never have got you into this.”
“Don’t be stupid. I was already in it. I told you at mine. Richard and I were already onto the bastards. They just upped the stakes.”
“Look, I’m on my way out of the country for a couple of days. Can you get somewhere safe?”
“I’m going to stay with a friend from university. She’s a hippy, living off the grid. I doubt even PPM could find her.”
“Good. Listen, I have to go. I’ll call you when I’m back. We need to meet.”
42
Ships That Pass
By the time Stella arrived on the shingle that began where the marram grass and thin band of dirty grey sand ended, icy spots of rain were blowing off the sea into her face. The sky had turned the colour of lead, and the waves, which surfer guy had abandoned, were thrashing and colliding with each other on their untidy way to the beach.
Just as Rafael had described, a rock arch protruded into the sea from a spot maybe two hundred yards to her left. The shingle, ranging in size from marbles to tennis balls, made the going difficult, and by the time she reached the arch she’d twisted both ankles a handful of times each, though not badly enough to slow her down, just to cause her to utter a series of increasingly violent oaths. Passing under the arch’s wind-weathered ceiling, she stumbled once more.
“Fucking hell!” she yelled into the teeth of the onshore wind.
Thirty yards further on, sitting on the smooth round side of a black inflatable with an outboard was Rafael. He’d pulled the boat out of the water and turned it round in readiness. As Stella reached him, he pushed himself upright and took a couple of paces towards her, hands outstretched. Gratefully, she shrugged the holdalls off her complaining shoulders and let him take them from her. As if they contained nothing but feathers he hefted them into the inflatable.
“Help me push it into the water. Then get in. I follow,” he said with a smile.
He really is a very attractive man, Stella thought. Then, That’s odd, he’s the second man I’ve ogled recently.
“Come on, then, let’s do it. I feel the need to be out on the water.”
Standing hip to hip at the stern, one each side of the motor, Stella and Rafael leaned against the backboard and heaved the boat into the wavelets slapping and shushing at the shingle. The wind had picked up, and some quirk of acoustics from the rock arch generated a moan that sounded like a choir singing from three different scores.
“Get in!” he shouted. “We need to make the boat soon.”
Stella swung herself over the side of the boat, aiming to keep her feet dry but treading in a pocket of soft sand among the stones and sinking up to her ankle in freezing sea water.
“Shit!” she said, before settling herself on a plastic thwart and clamping her knees around the money bag.
The little boat bobbled and bounced as Rafael gave it one final push before jumping in himself. He let the outboard down into the water and pulled the starter cord. The engine fired immediately and he slipped it into Forward, sending the boat surging through the incoming surf.
Stella ran her fingers through her hair, which the rain had styled into punky spikes. She licked her lips, tasting salt from the spray, and turned to Rafael, who was staring straight at her, a grin playing on his face, as he held the boat steady despite the bucking surf.
“What?” she asked.
“You look good. Your hair is better. Than before, I mean. You look like a, I don’t know the English word. In Spanish it is duendecilla.”
Stella swiped a palm across her face to clear the spray from her skin. She gripped the thin lifeline looping along the side of the boat.
“I did Spanish A-level, but I don’t remember hearing that word.”
“Uh, it is, you know, a little creature in the forest. Like a girl, only tiny. She has wings, you know, and a little hat.”
“What? A fairy?”
“Yes, maybe. But more of mischief than magic.”
Stella laughed. She thought of the hair styles advertised in Pouri’s salon back in Kilburn.
“You mean a pixie!”
His face broke into a wide smile.
“Yes! That is it. You are a little English pixie!”
Stella laughed. Then screamed as the boat was lifted by a wave and slapped back down onto its flat underside.
“Shit, Rafael, can’t you find some calmer water? If you dump me in the sea I’ll never forgive you.”
By way of an answer, he pointed over her shoulder. She turned to face the bow and smiled. Rocking at anchor, maybe a hundred yards further on, was the yacht. Sleek, white-and-navy, sharp-nosed. She’d always assumed yachts had sails, but Ronnie had put her straight on the matter. “You’ve got your stink pots and your blow boats,” he’d explained over more of the champagne they’d drunk to seal the deal back at the house in Marbella. “Motor or sail. Those big fuck-off boats at the marina, well, they’re called yachts but the only sails you’ll find on them are drug sales.” He’d cackled at his own witticism and drained the rest of his champagne.
Rafael motored up to the side of the boat and stood to tie the painter round a chromed rail at the stern. He beckoned Stella and she stood, keeping her knees bent against the rocking of the dinghy, and stepped over the thwart to his outstretched hand. On the rear deck of the yacht, she reached out for the bags and one by one he handed them up to her. Then he pulled himself up and climbed down the steps into the cockpit.
Stella followed him and greeted the other member of the crew. His name was Pepi; where Rafael was talkative, he was taciturn. He acknowledged her with the briefest nod of his shaggy head and turned back to the wheel. The two men spoke in Spanish. Scouring her memory, Stella was able to rescue enough of her sixth-form Spanish to decide they weren’t planning on dumping her overboard in the Atlantic but simply plotting a course back to Marbella.
She went through to her cabin, grateful that for all his criminal lifestyle and ill-gotten gains, at least Ronnie had invested some of it in a decent-sized boat. She’d never suffered from seasickness and so she lay back on her narrow bed and closed her eyes, letting the rhythmic pitching lull her to a sleep she felt she richly deserved. The cabin smelled faintly of diesel oil, but there was something else, too. The scent of lavender. She cracked an eye open and saw a small bottle of purple liquid on a shelf, from which a handful of scent sticks emerged like a tepee.
In her dream, she, Richard and Lola were having a picnic. They sat happily together on a grassy hill overlooking the same landscape she’d seen from the hotel garden. Irregular rectangles of gree
n and yellow, ragged green hedges marking one off from the next. Absurd drifts of pink petals in which Lola rolled and gambolled like a newborn lamb. Richard was trying to get her attention, but she only had eyes for her daughter, who was shrieking with joy as she threw double handfuls of the tiny pink petals into the sky. Finding his words were having no effect, he tapped on the side of her head.
“Hey! Stella.”
Tap-tap-tap went his knuckles on her temple. She tried to brush his hand away but he just tapped harder.
Knock-knock-knock.
“No,” she muttered. “Stop it.”
Knock-knock-knock.
The landscape faded from view, Richard and Lola with it. She opened her eyes.
A voice sounded from the other side of the door.
“Stella? I have tea for you. And something to eat.”
She sat up in bed and swung her legs over the side.
The cabin was small enough that she could reach the door in a few paces. She opened it to find Rafael standing there, holding a mug of tea and a blue-and-yellow plate with what looked like a BLT on it.
He smiled. “I thought maybe la duendecilla would be hungry.”
The sandwich smelled delicious, and the tea was a rich copper colour and steaming.
“I am. Thank you.” She reached out for the mug and plate and, as their fingertips touched beneath the crockery, made a small, but significant decision.
“Do you want to come in? Share it with me?”
He shrugged.
“OK.”
There being no chair in the cabin, Stella sat back on the bed and patted the space next to her. She knew it was a clichéd gesture, but she was too tired to be original. The bed sagged a little as the tall Spaniard sat next to her, placing himself a respectful eighteen inches away from her right hip. She took one half of the sandwich and offered the other to him. The tea was strong, and scented with bergamot beneath the English Breakfast. She blew on the surface and gulped it down as soon as it was cool enough.