A Shock to the System

by Simon Brett

  Then he dared to look ahead. Of course there were more boats there. He shouldn’t have panicked. Of course he’d find Tara’s Dream.

  He looked back, sensing the outline of the houses and the position of the picture window. He still seemed to be on course. Two other boats lay one each side of him, but their outlines were wrong; one was a motor launch, the other a huge dinghy. But there was something else ahead.

  This boat was shifting and swaying as it felt the tug of the tide. The keel was still grounded at the front, but the boat’s stern twitched.

  Graham flashed his torch, again to be disappointed. Spray Queen.

  But there was another shape just beyond that moved more regularly, responding to the ripples of the sea and the drag of its mooring chain. Graham’s eyes strained to prise apart the darkness, but he couldn’t be sure.

  He moved forward slowly. Each raised footstep made a sucking sound as it left the mud. He stepped into the water till it tickled at the wader’s ankles.

  Then he flashed the torch.

  Tara’s Dream. He had found her.

  The boat was definitely afloat, only some two metres away from him. Graham looked at his watch. 1.54. He wished he had understood the Tide Table better and knew whether the water was still receding or had started to rise.

  But he couldn’t worry about that. Having got so close, he would complete the job. In ten minutes he reckoned he could be on his way back. He stepped forward.

  He was surprised by the power of the current that dragged at his legs, but he managed to keep his balance. He was also surprised by how quickly the ground shelved. And by how much further away the boat was than it had at first appeared.

  He concentrated hard on the placement of his feet. He tried shuffling, but the mud was too sticky, so he had to risk the lift of each foot and subsequent moment of imbalance. His pullover felt suffocatingly hot; sweat dribbled down his sides to the top of his trousers.

  At last he had one hand on the side of the boat and felt the stippled effect of its non-slip surface under his fingers. It was then he remembered that he had not brought his rubber gloves.

  But nothing was going to stop him now. He threw the torch into the boat, hearing it clatter on the wooden boards within, then moved round to the stern, where the vessel was lowest in the water. The top of the transom was at chest height, the water level round his knees, though it splashed higher.

  The first attempt to heave himself up failed. His body slipped back, raising a spout of spray between the hull and his chest. He felt the shock of the water’s coldness and tasted salt on his tongue. Damp trickled over the top of his waders.

  The second attempt succeeded. He jerked the weight of his body over the transom and, in an ungainly scramble of flailing legs, slid down into the well of the boat.

  Swivelling his body round, he lay on his back, with his feet still over the side. He was about to bring them in, when he was halted by a caution. Muddy footsteps all over the clean fibreglass and bottom-boards were not the kind of signature he wanted to leave on the job. He unbuckled the straps from his belt and slid his legs out with some difficulty. He left the waders flat with their feet dangling over the transom.

  When he stood up, the boat’s movement brought immediate queasiness. In his state of hypertension, nausea seemed dangerously close. That really would do it, to leave a neat little pool of vomit as a calling-card. He forced control on himself and reached under the damp pullover to the key in the breast pocket of his shirt.

  God, if it didn’t fit, after all this. . He tottered forward to the cabin hatch and felt for the padlock with his right hand. His left hand trembled so much that he couldn’t guide the key into its socket. He dropped it and had to scrabble through the bottom-boards by torchlight. He was careful to switch off the torch before the beam rose above the side of the boat. Eliminate risk.

  Imposing calmness, he approached the padlock again. The key slid into its aperture and clicked home. He turned it. Another click, and the padlock sprang open.

  Graham felt a deep peace. It would be all right. It was all going to work, after all.

  He pushed back the sliding hatch at the top, gently, then lifted out the vertical wooden section. With a surge of comfort, he realised that his memory of how the opening worked had been accurate.

  Now he felt relaxed. Steady against the rocking boat, he turned back for the torch and then stepped down into the cabin.

  The tiny windows were curtained, so he felt safe to use the torch. Keeping its beam low, he made a quick survey of the cramped space. Forward, the recess with its four bunks was illuminated. He drew across the thick curtain which separated this from the tiny galley area. The torch beam passed across the folding table, nylon sail bags and the two hot-plates fixed over the curtained space where the Calor Gas cylinder was stored.

  He directed the torch to the hatch above his head. It was as he had remembered. The fibreglass top slid back and forth on wooden rails.

  It was perfect.

  He slid the hatch backwards and forwards experimentally. Then, with all the time in the world, he selected one of his strips of sandpaper and glued it along the underside edge of the hatch, just above the rail. He closed the hatch and marked a point on the rail a couple of inches in front of the sandpaper.

  Pushing the hatch forward again, he got out his gimlet and, from above, drilled a neat hole in the rail where he had marked it. He slid the hatch back to check the alignment. It was right.

  He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out the box of Swan Vestas matches.

  As he felt it a new, cold horror struck him. The cardboard was damp and soft to the touch. He snatched it open and struck a match against the side of the box. Nothing. Maybe it was just the abrasive surface that was wet. He tried a match against one of his own dry pieces of sandpaper. Nothing. He tried another, and another, and another.

  ‘Fuck it! Fuck it!’ he screamed in childlike frustration. He dropped the matches, and sank to the floor of the galley, weeping.

  It was a look at his watch that finally brought him to his senses. 2.17. He must either sort something out or get away quickly. If Robert Benham arrived next morning for a day’s sailing and found his office rival in Tara’s Dream, it would not look good.

  Robert Benham. Robert Benham was of course hyperefficient. He was the sort of man who would ensure that his boat contained all requisite stores.

  Graham straightened out of his crumpled heap of self-pity and moved across to the gas rings.

  Good old Robert. There, tucked behind the blue metal frame lay not one, but two boxes of Swan Vestas matches. One match on its own wobbled sideways in the hole he had drilled. Two stayed, but didn’t feel very secure. Three, however, jammed in, tight and unshifting.

  He moved the hatch back gingerly, but the matches stood too proud. He took them out and cut them down to the right length. The matchheads almost touched the underside of the hatch. They would definitely touch the sandpaper as it was pushed over them.

  He couldn’t resist one practice go. He moved the hatch to its closed position, very slowly, so that the sandpaper just caressed the red matchheads.

  Then, with only average force, he opened the hatch. There was a little rasp and a flame flared.

  It worked.

  He closed the hatch hastily and the action put out the flame. When inspected, the fibreglass showed a slight discoloration behind the sandpaper, but the flash had been too brief to deform its shape.

  Graham took out the three spent matches and, almost as if he were blessing them, cut three new ones to length and set them in place.

  Shining the torch on the floor, he meticulously picked up all his spilled, damp matches and put them in his pocket.

  Then, covering his hand with a tea-towel that lay neatly beside the stove, he turned the switches of both hot-plates on, low. Reaching through the curtain beneath, he found the domed stopcock of the Calor Gas cylinder. One way it would not turn.

  The other way it gave. He u
nscrewed it as far as it would go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The night was darker when he emerged from the galley. He guided the vertical board into its slot, moving the top hatch forward a few centimetres to do so. This was done with infinite care; he had no wish to fire his detonator too early. Then he replaced the padlock and pushed it together to lock. A quick wipe round the hatches and padlock with a handkerchief was the only fingerprint precaution he took.

  Still keeping the muddy feet out of the boat, he contrived to pull the waders back on and fix the tops to his belt. Ducking under the ropes which lashed tiller and boom in place, he eased his body round until he perched on the transom.

  The darkness was too thick now for him to see the water’s edge, but the one upstairs light still on in Bosham Quay showed the direction he had to take.

  With one hand on the stern of the boat and the other holding the torch, he launched himself into the hissing blackness.

  The shock was how far he fell. Water closed, growling, over his head. The tide had risen faster than he had expected. His feet, muffled in the waders, touched nothing solid. He kicked upwards towards the surface.

  Then he felt a new wetness as the space around his legs filled. Kicking became harder as the weight of water dragged him down. He gasped, salt water rasped through his nose, mouth and trachea. All was darkness, noise and pain.

  His hands fumbled in panic for the buckles of the waders, but their new leather was stiff and reluctant. Then, thank

  God, he thought of his belt. Though he could feel it constricting around him, he managed to undo the buckle and tug it free. With a lung-bursting effort, he kicked and kicked, until at last the waders’ weight slipped away from him. He kicked again and at last his head broke the surface. He gasped for air and the waves slapped in another mouthful of salt water.

  His chest was tight and the cold bit into his bones. He knew he couldn’t survive long in these conditions.

  Tara’s Dream was no longer visible. Graham was so low in the water that he could see nothing but the sky. But even without bearings, he could feel that the water was propelling him along at some speed.

  Despair threatened, but he fought it. He hadn’t come this far to be snuffed out so easily. He commanded an extra kick from his trembling legs and managed to raise himself a little out of the water. Fortunately, he was facing the right direction. For a second he saw above the waves the gleam of light from Bosham Quay. He kicked towards it.

  His clothes clung and dragged at him, but he did not pause to remove them. He could not spare the energy to manoeuvre himself out of the pullover, and, though the jeans would slip off easily enough, he remembered the car keys in the pocket. To be stranded, drenched through, beside a locked hire-car in Bosham, was not going to help the secrecy of his mission.

  Progress was agony, but he was going with the tide and eventually one foot scraped on mud. Graham tried to stand and received another scouring mouthful of water. He forced his limbs onward and at last both feet were grounded. His arms still made swimming movements and though the water was shallow enough for him to stand, he had no strength, and shambled ashore on all fours.

  He lay, beached and panting, thinking he would never move again. But he felt the lapping of water round his legs and knew that the tide was rising fast. He eased himself to his feet and tottered towards the quayside light. His teeth chattered and his whole body was shaken by spasms of shivering. His shoes had been taken by the rising tide and shingle scratched at his feet.

  He willed himself not to look at his watch until he was by the car. His shaking body was moving as fast as it could; and extra panic was as likely to slow him down as spur him to greater effort.

  The tarmac pressed sharp stones into his soles as he inched forward. The pavement was less painful, but his first two steps had left large give-away footprints, so he stuck to the road. He was relying on the tide to erase his traces over the mud.

  At last he leant against the Vauxhall Chevette and dared to turn his arm and raise the bedraggled sleeve that covered his watch. In his exhaustion he would not have been surprised to discover a whole day had elapsed since last he stood there.

  The journey from the boat had taken little more than half an hour. It seemed incredible. He felt an urge to laugh, from sheer weakness and relief.

  But he curbed it. He was not far behind his schedule. Having survived this far, he mustn’t fail now.

  As quietly as he could, he unlocked the car and extinguished the interior light which came on when the door opened. He was still trembling, but that was just a physical reaction to exposure; emotionally he was beginning to regain control.

  He reached into the back of the car for a black plastic bag he had in readiness and then, standing in the street, took off all his clothes and placed them in it.

  The risk of being nicked for indecent exposure was perhaps an unnecessary one, but Graham hadn’t reckoned on being soaked to the skin. And he decided that he was less likely to be discovered by some affronted resident of Bosham at two a.m. than to receive unwelcome enquiries from the car-hire firm about salt and mud stains on their upholstery.

  He reached again into the back of the car for the shirt, jacket, trousers and underpants he had ready and, in spite of his trembling, was quickly dressed. He brushed the worst of the sand and mud off his wounded feet before donning socks and shoes. His body felt salty damp under his clothes, but there hadn’t been time to dry himself properly.

  Turning the neck of the black plastic bag, he slung it into the well behind the front seats. He would have put it in the boot, but didn’t want to risk the noise of slamming the lid.

  He sat in the car, breathed deeply and tried to control the chattering of his teeth. A light came on in a curtained upstairs window of a house opposite. Probably just some elderly incontinent making his way to the bathroom, but Graham didn’t want to wait to find out.

  With a little choke, the car started first time. He turned the heater on full and drove slowly out of Bosham.

  As he did so, it started to rain. Heavy, steady rain. Rain to wash away footprints and mud from the fibregiass and boards of Tara’s Dream.

  Graham grinned. The random gods of chance were on his side.

  It was 3.13.

  There was a builder’s skip outside a demolition site on the outskirts of Haslemere. Graham’s bag of sea-wet clothes was shoved into it under a pile of broken lathes and torn wallpaper.

  When he reached Barnes, he parked the Chevette exactly where he had driven it off from some four and a half hours earlier.

  He put his key in the door of the Boileau Avenue house at 4.54. As he did so, he caught a strong whiff of seaweed. At the same moment another panic gripped him. Suppose Stella had woken up.

  The light from the landing was sufficient for him to see her through the half-open door. In fact, the breathing reassured him before he looked. The snores had given way to deep sighs. She had shifted her position and now lay sideways, the slipped duvet revealing breasts squashed together by her arms.

  3:01 was displayed by the clock radio.

  The immersion heater had not been switched off since Merrily’s death. Since she had spent more time in the house than Graham, she had always controlled the central heating and immersion. And since the latter had been switched on at the time of her death, Graham found a plentiful supply of hot water for his bath.

  He had to wash everything including his hair.

  Already Stella was no doubt finding his behaviour in bed odd; if he came to her smelling of seaweed she was going to find it odder still.

  The hot water restored him. He still ached, but he felt very satisfied, warm and drowsy. Mustn’t go to sleep yet, though. A large Scotch after the bath and then to bed. Must remember to wash his shirt and underpants. And his socks. Yes, and take the jacket and trousers to the cleaners, get rid of the smell.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  Stella stood in the doorway. Her body sagged and bulged. He r
ealised that in his preoccupation he had not previously taken in her nakedness, the tight little breasts, not stretched like Merrily’s by children, the bulge of the hips, the surprising tuft of blackness between her legs. He felt distaste for what he saw.

  But her eyes mattered more, and they were still rolling with satisfactory drowsiness.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she repeated.

  Time for a bit more of the abject act. ‘I just thought it might relax me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve been lying there awake for hours, after. . you know, after I couldn’t. . we didn’t. .’

  ‘I told you not to worry.’ It was automatic reassurance; she was still very sleepy.

  ‘It’s different for a man. It makes you feel. . I don’t. . I don’t know how long I’d been lying there.’

  ‘It’s about quarter past three now,’ she slurred.

  Wonderful. How kind. She was doing his job for him. He’d had visions of having to wake her and draw her attention to the time.

  ‘Well, I was just feeling so awful, so strung up, I thought maybe if I had a bath, calmed down, it might be better.’

  ‘Let’s have another try when you come back to bed. Eh?’ Her wink was meant to be provocative, but it gave Graham a stab of anger, again for her likeness to Merrily.

  ‘Just have a pee and see you in a minute,’ she mumbled, and disappeared.

  He didn’t hurry out of the bath and when he got to the bedroom she was, as he had hoped, once again deeply asleep.

  Just as well. Behind the curtains the sky was beginning to lighten.

  Graham’s hand was now steady. With the buttons of the clock radio he corrected the time to 5:52.

  Then he lay back and thought of his victim. High tide at Bosham that morning was round quarter to seven. Knowing his rival’s enthusiasm for sailing, he reckoned it wouldn’t be long after that that Robert Benham boarded Tara’s Dream.