Hostage to Fortune

by Carolyn McCrae

  “You can come back to the town but just not to this station,” the policeman said patiently, as if talking to a small child. “Now, do you want to find your way back to the quay or do you want to accept the hospitality of one of our cells for the night?”

  “Home,” Guy said, suddenly overcome with sleepiness.

  When he woke up the next morning in his own cabin on Peabody Three he had completely forgotten the argument, the brawl, the hour he had spent in the police station and was completely unaware that his presence in the town, and on that particular yacht, had been officially recorded.

  “You got back all right last night?” the owner asked the following morning.

  “Just about, boss,” Guy replied still nursing his hangover.

  “Call me AP,” the owner instructed. “And I’ll call you Guy.”

  They sat on either side of the table on the deck, drinking coffee and making an effort to get to know each other.

  “When do you want to be off, AP?” Guy added the name awkwardly.

  “In a couple of days. You’ll want to get settled in first. How’s your cabin?”

  “Perfect, thanks. A little smaller than I’m used to but it has everything I need.”

  Guy had already checked Peabody Three for the hidden compartments that were to be found on most yachts. Those he discovered, including two in his cabin, would be suitable only for rum and drugs but he felt there was also the possibility of smuggling small groups of people. The cabins were small but there were three of them apart from his own and the owner’s.

  “Good. I want you to be happy.”

  “Where do you want to go?” Guy asked.

  “Where do you suggest?”

  Guy could see no harm in suggesting an island with low duties on alcohol and a tolerant approach to drugs followed by a trip to one where duties were high. There were lucrative deals to be made which Guy felt sure he could keep secret from AP.

  Through that winter Guy grew more confident handling both Peabody Three and AP.

  He had been right in his original assessment, that AP was ignorant of the yacht he owned and of sailing generally, so did not notice the mistakes Guy made. Nor did he notice the loading and unloading of boxes and packages at the various ports they visited.

  At the end of April Guy felt sufficiently confident to suggest that they gave two passengers a ride.

  “AP?”

  “Yes, Guy?”

  “There’s a couple I met on the quay…”

  “Yes?”

  “They’re stuck. They need to get to Dominica. Can we help?”

  “Help?”

  “Take them there. As passengers. They’re willing to pay.”

  “I don’t need help with the costs,” AP replied. “I do not need money.”

  “No,” Guy replied patiently. “I know you don’t need it, I’m not saying you need it, I’m just saying it might be fun.”

  “Fun?”

  “Yes. Different people on board. Different people who we will never have to meet up with again.”

  Guy knew his boss was interested in young men. He had watched him carefully when they had been ashore and had realised in which direction his interests lay. AP had not approached him yet, but he knew he would one day.

  “We will have people on board who may…” he left his sentence unfinished, leaving it to his boss’s imagination what opportunities would arise.

  “Really?” AP asked. “You think…?” He didn’t have to finish his sentence; they both knew what they were talking about.

  “I do.”

  “Then I think we should take them.”

  The passengers they took on from the various locations in Central and South America were mainly young and Guy was aware AP took frequent advantage of the situation. It would have been difficult for him not to notice the number of times young men they were carrying spent nights in the boss’s cabin. AP did not seem to notice that the people they gave rides to were always picked up from the poorer countries and islands and dropped in the more prosperous areas with strong British or American connections.

  Nor did he question whether the cash that Guy handed over to him was all that the passengers had paid.

  For more than a year Peabody Three cruised the Caribbean, untroubled.

  Guy began converting the cash he had stashed in one of the secret compartments in his cabin into gold and every time he added to it he congratulated himself on his ingenuity. He felt he was doing pretty well for a simple hired hand, though he was ambitious. He wanted Peabody Three for himself.

  The thought occurred to him more than once that AP could have an accident, fall overboard, disappear, but he knew that would not work. All the paperwork was in AP’s name and he would never get away with murder.

  He knew that, one day, something would happen that would mean he could blackmail AP into giving him control of the yacht. Then he would be able to go where he wanted, when he wanted, and keep all the money he made.

  His opportunity came early in the summer of 2015.

  “Steer a course to Road Town, Tortola,” AP said.

  “But we’re headed for Limon in Costa Rica,” Guy argued. He had a shipment to collect. “Why Road Town?”

  “I have to be there and it is not up to you to question what I say, is it?”

  “No. You are the boss,” Guy replied, wondering what the problem was that had caused the change in the way they operated. “How long will we be there?”

  “Two days, at least.”

  Since every time they had been to that island, or one of the other Virgin Islands, they had never spent more than a few hours in port, Guy wondered why two days would be necessary. He was suspicious and his feeling that something was wrong was reinforced as AP’s mood was bleak as they headed north.

  The night before they would arrive in Road Town AP handed Guy several hundred US dollars in cash.

  “Take a couple of days’ leave. Have some fun. Sow some more of those beautiful wild oats of yours; there’ll be lots of pretty girls able and willing to entertain a good-looking young man like you.”

  Guy wondered if he imagined resentment, even jealousy, in his boss’s voice.

  He had been aware for months that AP was attracted to him.

  The first time a hand had been placed on his thigh, and an arm laced, casually, around his shoulders, Guy had shaken his head and said he wasn’t like that.

  He knew that, one day, he would be able to use AP’s devotion to his own advantage.

  Because of AP’s strange behaviour and reclusive mood leading up to their visit to Road Town, Guy decided to follow him when he walked away from Peabody Three, safely berthed in the marina.

  AP led him to an anonymous office building, with shutters down over the windows. There was no ostentatious corporate signage, just the small plaque which gave the name of the business and told Guy it was a bank. He leant against the wall by an open window and was pleased to hear AP’s voice.

  He could not hear the name his boss gave but he heard the end of his sentence. “… and you have frozen my account. I demand to know why.”

  There was a lot of talking that Guy could not hear until the banker spoke out clearly, “I will tell your father, then, that there is nothing to prevent him from allowing further payments from the fund.”

  There was more conversation Guy could not quite hear before he heard his boss’s relieved voice. “Good. We’ve cleared that up now, have we? You will release the funds?”

  This time Guy was able to hear the other half of the conversation. “Your father has made it clear that you only continue to receive the income from the trust if your life is unblemished by scandal. He will not have his good name, and his company’s reputation, besmirched by connection with anything that you might have done, or might do in the future, that might be illegal.”

&nb
sp; “That’s nonsense!” The reply was too loud.

  “Nor can this bank be associated with business that could in any way be suspect.”

  “Of course not.” Guy recognised the sharp sarcasm in AP’s voice. “We can’t have that, can we?”

  “No, sir, we can’t. Your father is adamant. Any signs of illegality or immorality and he will cut off your income.”

  “He can’t do that!”

  “Oh yes, I’m afraid he can.”

  “If I sign these wretched forms you can restore payments now?”

  There was more conversation that Guy could not hear before the conversation appeared to end.

  Guy leant back against the wall as AP left the building and then walked quickly in the opposite direction, eventually finding a bar where he intended to get very drunk.

  After several drinks he decided he would have to get hold of AP’s phone, the one he kept in his cabin; on that he would find names that would make his threat of blackmail real. He grimaced, thinking about what he would have to do to get his hands on that phone.

  “No big deal,” he said to himself. “Sex is sex is sex, it doesn’t matter the crap who or what you do it with.”

  “What did you say?” The over-made-up woman put her arm around his shoulders. “Did you just say sex is sex?”

  Guy, too drunk to realise he had spoken aloud, looked the woman up and down and nodded. “How long have you got?”

  Two days later Guy found his way back to Peabody Three and within a few minutes was in bed with AP.

  In the middle of the night, after checking that his boss was asleep beside him, Guy swung his legs from the bed and felt his way towards the table where he had seen him leave his phone the night before.

  It took only a few moments to check through the contacts and old texts to get the names of other members of his family and, most importantly, the name of his father’s firm. He put the phone back and got back into the bed.

  It was some time before Guy felt an arm across his chest, legs against his and a body move across him.

  “Not so fast,” Guy said in a voice he realised was not unlike that of his father.

  “Guy?”

  “Things are going to change around here.”

  “Change? Come on Guy, stop playing around. Make some tea. What time is it anyway?”

  “It’s just after five thirty. I will make the tea this time but things are going to change from now on.”

  “So you said. How?”

  “I know who you are.”

  “Really? So, what is my name?”

  Guy was silent. In all his prying he had found only the name Arjay. “Your name is Arjay.”

  “Actually, it isn’t.”

  “Your name isn’t Arjay?” Guy couldn’t hide his disappointment.

  “No. It is not. If you wanted to know my full name surely you could have worked that out from all the paperwork a long time ago if you’d chosen to do that.”

  “You keep all that well hidden away.”

  “Of course I do. But does it really matter what my name is? Am I not the same man nameless or named?”

  He traced his finger across Guy’s chest, moving down through the thickening hair past his navel.

  Guy pushed the hand away. “It matters that I know who and what your father is. And how they might react if they discovered what you have been up to.”

  “So? What have I been up to?”

  “The boys?”

  “My father has long been aware that I am, shall I say, gay. You cannot blackmail me on that.”

  “But the smuggling?”

  “What smuggling?”

  Guy realised for the first time just how blind his boss had been. He had not seen the tobacco and the drugs and the rum so that was excusable; but he had seen the people. Guy wondered whether it was possible he had really believed they were paying passengers.

  “This boat, your precious Peabody Three, has spent the last year and a bit smuggling rum, cigarettes, drugs and people around the Caribbean.” Guy ignored AP’s shocked expression. “You were blind. And now, if you don’t do as I say, and I mean everything I say, I will tell your father how you have been making your trust fund money stretch out to support all this.”

  “What? What do you know about all that?”

  “More than you imagine.”

  “If my father knew he’d cut me off. I’d have nothing. You wouldn’t want him to do that now, would you?”

  “Then all you have to do is do as I say.”

  “And this? You’ll do this again?” AP gestured to the crumpled bed sheets.

  “When and if I want to,” Guy replied firmly. “Everything will be on my terms. Mine. You do anything and everything I ask or your family will know all about your illegal activities.”

  “Mine? Surely they are yours?”

  “Not mine, AP, Arjy or whatever your real name is, I’m just a hired hand. This is your yacht. All the paperwork is yours, signed by you, at every port we’ve been to. All the responsibility is yours.”

  “All the responsibility is mine? But you are the strong one, aren’t you? I accept that. But please…” He pulled at Guy’s arm, turning him towards him. “Please. Make me feel good again.”

  And Guy thought it was in his interests to comply.

  Three months later Guy was drinking in a beachside bar in Phillipsburg, Sint Maarten. He had been there for more than four hours while he waited for a contact to meet him and the contact was very late.

  Absentmindedly, he picked up a newspaper from a table just vacated by an English couple, obviously off a cruise ship.

  He was not too drunk to read the name ‘Warwick Eden’ in the headline.

  The man he knew was his uncle, his father’s younger brother; the one who had inherited everything that should have been his, had been elected to Parliament in a shock by-election result.

  The more he read the more he was disgusted.

  Warwick’s party, England Force, was virulently right wing. They advocated forced repatriation of immigrants and their families unless they had been in England for more than fifty years. He advocated the forced break-up of the United Kingdom with independence for Scotland and Wales and the unification of Ireland. Until that occurred he advocated that no language other than English could be spoken or written in official documents; Welsh, Gaelic and Cornish were to be eradicated from all road signs.

  “The man’s a complete idiot!” he said, to no one in particular.

  “Who’s that?” a man at the adjoining table asked.

  “Warwick bloody Eden.”

  “You know him, do you?”

  “Only what I’ve been reading.”

  “He talks a lot of sense. England will be far better off, far safer, with men like that running it and all coloureds, coons and spades fucking off. They were right back in the fifties when they said ‘no coloureds, no Irish and no dogs’.”

  “So you think this man is right?”

  “More than right. He speaks for many of us.”

  “Don’t you care that he’s an enormously rich, arrogant shit?”

  “No. Why would I? I don’t care what he is as long as he gets the country out of the mess all those wishy-washy bleeding-heart liberals have got us into.”

  Guy had never been political.

  If anyone had asked him how he would vote in his first election he would probably have said that he wouldn’t have bothered, but what that man said, and the way he said it, riled him. He had no truck with the rich and famous, he hated them, even though he would have given everything to be one of them, as he should have been.

  “You’d vote for this man?” Guy asked.

  “Abso-fucking-bloody-lutely.”

  “You like him?”

  “Oh no! Not at all, but he’s what this countr
y needs. Make him PM, that’s what I say.”

  “Prime Minister?”

  “Why not. Anyone’s better than this load of tosspots we have now.”

  “Really? Do a lot of people think the same as you?”

  “Oh yes. How long is it since you were in England?”

  “Three years.”

  “You haven’t seen it then. Every day it gets worse, more foreigners worming their way into our country, taking our jobs, using up all our NHS and skiving on hand-outs. We’re all ready and willing to put King Warwick on the throne.”

  Guy went back to Peabody Three and checked as many news sites on the internet as he could find.

  It seemed that Warwick Eden, his rich and privileged uncle, was aiming to take control of the country through England Force and then, no doubt, change the course of history.

  Guy would probably have stayed in the Caribbean, believing that there was nothing he could do to change matters, even if he wanted to, had it not been for a biography he found online. Warwick’s comments about his elder brother were quoted at length.

  My elder brother Barford was always the privileged one. He was the first to have the best of everything. Despite our father being incredibly well off I only ever got hand-me-downs. I never thought it was fair. Barford was always my father’s favourite. When he left home my father was distraught. He never got in touch with us and we never knew where he was. I thought that was very selfish of him. He threw everything away. His education. Everything. We learned too late that he was involved in violence, in drugs and male prostitution and all sorts of other illegal activities. He was wanted by the police; he was bringing my name, the Eden name, into disrepute. Yet we were devastated when we heard of his dreadful accident. They said it was an accident, a surfing accident, but I knew he had been beaten up. His murderers were never brought to justice. Yet another failing of our dreadfully inadequate police. I believe his terrible activities had caught up with him. But we were all very pleased he was dead. Dead, he could no longer bring shame on the Eden name.

  Guy recognised that some of the facts coincided with the story his father had told him and he wondered which report was the more accurate.