The Missing Twin

by Alex Day

  She pushed the cabin door open and stepped out onto the deck. Her muscles were tense, her heart pounding and now a different kind of sweat, the cold sweat of terror and dread, was running down her back and thighs. The ship’s wheel was right in front of her, positioned to give a clear sightline over the cabin roof and into the distance. Standing behind it, appearing perfectly calm and relaxed, was Vlad. On seeing Edie, the merest hint of surprise flickered in his eyes.

  ‘Edie,’ he said. ‘How unexpected. To what do we owe the pleasure?’

  Vlad’s laugh, falsetto, not in the least masculine, and tainted with undisguised hostility, rang out at the same time as she heard Vuk approach from behind. She spun round, not sure who she was most in danger from, and then back again to face Vlad, squaring up to him, determined that he should not see her cower.

  ‘Howdie, Vl—’ Edie had not managed to get the words out before her arms were grabbed from behind and a knee against the backs of hers caused her to crumple. Vuk propelled her body towards the ship’s wheel and held her, as if some kind of sacrificial offering, in front of Vlad.

  They began to speak in their language. A few words, here and there, Edie caught, words that she had picked up during her time on the resort. ‘Night’, ‘police’, ‘no good’ and ‘soon’.

  Vlad reached out his hand and clasped it around her neck. He looked into her eyes. She stared back, defiantly. She was up for the fight now, he wasn’t going to intimidate her, ugly little man that he was. His hand tightened. Edie gulped, involuntarily. Vlad snickered and Edie almost laughed; he was like the worst kind of cartoon villain. But she could not have imagined that such a small, weedy man should have such an iron grip. She was struggling to breathe in his stranglehold.

  ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid little girl.’ The cruelty in Vlad’s voice made Edie shiver. He dropped his hand from her neck.

  ‘I know what you are.’ Edie’s tone was rebellious. ‘People smugglers.’ There was a sense of triumph in her voice; at least she’d worked it out. Maybe she wasn’t so dumb as her school reports indicated after all.

  ‘That’s what you do, isn’t it?’ she continued, fired up now, not caring that neither Vlad nor Vuk looked the least bit impressed, on the contrary, seemed unconcerned about the fact that she had uncovered their secret profession. ‘I suppose we’re headed for somewhere in the EU, to Italy perhaps, where you’ll dump those guys and leave them to fend for themselves, when you can see that that poor woman is dying. Or maybe you won’t even bother to get them that far, just get rid of them anywhere that suits you.’

  The unearthly screech of her voice startled her and she fell immediately silent. Vlad turned and spat into the sea, and then looked back to meet her gaze, his poise stiff with menace, his eyes dark with fury. He resumed his grip of her throat, so tight that she choked. He laughed. Edie shut her eyes and then opened them again, looking in the opposite direction to where Vlad’s spittle had been directed. She could make out lights across the water; they were not as far from the shore as she had thought. But no one would take the blindest bit of notice of an expensive yacht on a night voyage; people did it all the time, it was normal. That was the whole point of the Radomira; she was the best cover there was. Wealthy people spending their summer cruising the Croatian islands – what could be more delightful?

  The boat lurched on a wave. Vuk was taken off guard and momentarily lost his balance, letting go of her arms as he did so. Vlad’s attention was on one-handedly steering the boat and he, too, slightly relaxed his hold on her. It was not much, but it was enough.

  Quick as lightning, she pulled the corkscrew from her pocket and stabbed at Vlad’s arm, smashing the sharp point into him with a blind fury. The surprise attack made him fully relinquish his grip on her, and Edie was off, across the deck towards the stern of the yacht. Vuk had recovered and grabbed hold of a long strand of her hair as she passed; the pain in her scalp was intense and blinding. Wildly, she stabbed into the air with the corkscrew and met flesh, stabbed again and again. She wrenched her hair free from his grasp, leaving a great clump of it in his hands, staggered to the end of the boat. Jumped.

  In the panic of it all, she did not take a big enough breath and, despite her terror and the desperate knowledge that she must stay hidden, she could not stay underwater. The waves slapped hard against her face as she surfaced to breathe and to assess where she was, where the boat was.

  It was just a couple of metres away. Vuk had the boathook in his hand and was aiming it at her, trying to catch it onto her T-shirt. Vlad was barking instructions; Edie was glad she could not understand what they were. She was sure they would not be comforting to hear. She swam away, but it was as if she were in one of those terrible dreams where you are trying to run but cannot make your legs move, or you’re desperate to get somewhere and never make it.

  ‘Edie, I’m trying to help you,’ Vuk called out to her plaintively. The innocence, the pleading in his voice was almost enough to convince her. But it was a lie, and she knew it.

  She felt the hook catch onto her top and almost immediately lose its hold, and then manage to latch on again so that she could not free herself and was being dragged through the water at speed, surging over the waves like some kind of supersonic mermaid. She was at the steps and Vuk was reaching out for her arm, at the same time as holding tight to the boat hook that was entangled in her T-shirt. Edie suppressed every instinct within her that was telling her to fight and let her body go completely limp, allowing Vuk to bear all her weight on the end of his boat hook. His grip was tight around her wrist but he could not get enough of a purchase on her to bring her out of the water. She made her breathing deep, slow, calm. She was a rag doll, inanimate. Vuk struggled to raise her from the sea, hauling on the boat hook and her arm, battling to lift the fifty-three kilos of dead weight hanging on the end of it.

  Edie took her final breath. With one swift, smooth, skilful movement she jerked her wrist out of Vuk’s hand, stretched her arms straight above her head and, using the fact that Vuk was pulling so hard on the boathook and therefore offering resistance, pushed herself backwards and let her body slip out of her T-shirt. Free once more, she continued her dive, down and down into the deep black water. She could stay under for around three and a half minutes. Would that be enough for them to give up on her, to sail on and away, to leave her for dead? Neither Vlad nor Vuk knew how well she could swim or anything of her dabblings in free diving; they would presume she had drowned if she disappeared for long enough.

  Edie focused everything on her mission, knowing that her life depended on it. She had seen the rope beside Vuk when he was reeling her in; far from rescuing her, his intention had been to make her drowning a certainty rather than a probability. In order to stay under for the maximum time, complete calm, a total absence of panic was a necessity. Edie forced herself to be so. She let the water bear her, and felt her heart rate slowing as she began to count. At three minutes thirty she knew she was near to her limit. She began to ascend, not wanting to but knowing she had to. Surely she was far enough away now? Her head broke the surface.

  And then it was over, because Vuk had caught her, a huge net had trapped her arms and was tangling itself around her head, her hair was all over her face and she couldn’t work out if it was the net or her hair that was throttling her. She was struggling frantically, using all her energy, wasting the oxygen that was still in her lungs and veins and blood and powering her heart. In her panic, she breathed in, and her mouth and nose and lungs filled with water. As she choked she began to sink.

  The liquid sea closed over her head as firmly as the solid lid of a steel box, impossible to escape from. The life was ebbing out of her but still she could not give in; she was too stubborn and bloody-minded for that. She gave one last huge kick, using every ounce of strength and life she had left even though she knew it was too late. The net closed in around her again. It pulled her down to her watery grave. Everything was over.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Edie


  It wasn’t over. Suddenly Edie was free, her head above water heedless of whatever enemy might be waiting for her. She was gulping down great heaving breaths of air and throwing up bitter, saline vomit as water streamed from her nose and ears. The net was drifting around her waist and she pulled at it, lifting it out of the sea and in front of her eyes so that she could see it only to find it was not a net at all but a bunch of dark green, thick-fronded seaweed. She shut her eyes and lay back in the water, floating in the black sea whilst her heart rate steadied, her pulse returned to normal and her breathing became light and easy once more.

  Opening her eyes, she saw the vastness of the sky above her, and the glittering multitudes of stars within it. Not one of them was going to help her. She would help herself or die.

  There was no sound at all, just the echo of the washing water in her ears. Righting herself, she looked around. Other than the far off galaxies there was nothing to see, either – no reflection of a yacht’s pale flanks in moonlight. And then, far in the distance, she spied an almost imperceptible glow that could be a white boat moving swiftly to the north-west. She turned herself slowly in a circle, her hands pushing aside the water’s resistance. Straining her eyes she made out, far away, a few sparse spots of light dotted randomly along what must be the coastline.

  Edie pushed her hair away from her face, instructed herself that she could do this and began to swim.

  ***

  Edie swam and swam and swam. She swam until her arms ached and felt heavy as iron. Her legs kicked at half-pace, then quarter and then she could hardly move them at all. But still she swam. There was no other option. As she propelled herself onwards, increasingly slowly, the sky clouded over in readiness for one of late summer’s occasional rainstorms and it became harder to see where she was heading. She carried on.

  If she died out here, at least she would have died trying. And then, just as she felt she could continue no longer, that she would rather drift away on a current and let the kind old sea take her where it would, something hard grazed against the toes of her drooping left leg. She stretched her foot out and it made contact with solidity. She lurched herself forwards and reached down again. Nothing. And then another great lurch and both feet were on firm ground and she could faintly make out the dark line of the shore ahead.

  She half-swam, half-waded further in, reaching rocks that rose out of the water and were backed by scrubby bushes and trees. There was no beach here, no welcoming resort with a bar and café and campsite where she could rouse someone and get help. Not help for herself; she’d be fine now, but for the people on the boat and that woman who was so very sick and didn’t look like she was going to make it to wherever Vlad and Vuk were taking them. The stench of flesh and decay that had filled the room still clung to Edie’s nostrils and festered in her mind, despite the ocean of salt water that should have washed it away. The woman was a mother and her children were there with her, watching her fade away, and Edie couldn’t bear the thought of it.

  She clung to some rocks, scrabbling for a handhold, her legs waving in the cavity underneath, trying to find something to push against to help her body upwards. Her foot hit rock, hard. A searing pain tore through her and she screamed, liberated by the thought that it no longer mattered who heard her, the more people the better, but also secretly knowing that there was no one remotely close enough to notice. Hauling herself onto the rock as the water swirled and eddied around her, Edie was oblivious to the scratches and grazes that she sustained. All she could think about was the throbbing agony of her foot.

  When finally out of the sea and sprawled on the clammy surface of the stone, she pulled her ankle towards her, not daring to touch the foot itself. It was too dark to see anything. She ran her fingers as gently as she could over the ball of her foot where it hurt the most but there was nothing to feel but pain. The only thing she could think of was that she had slammed against a sea urchin and that, despite how much the spines embedded in her skin hurt, it would not kill her.

  She had no energy to stand up, knowing that she would most likely slip and fall, but crawled to where the rocks gave way to sandy scrubland. Only there did she attempt to walk, gritting her teeth against the torturous throbbing of her foot whenever she put the smallest amount of weight on it. Limping onwards, she tried to focus on the positive. She was on land. She’d survived the swim. She must surely be able to survive a short walk, however long it would take to hit a road or a village or maybe a farmhouse.

  This country could hardly be described as over-populated but neither was it deserted and eventually, she would arrive somewhere. She had to. She hadn’t done all of this to fail now. She had been determined from the outset, but then it had been for Laura. Now it was also for the dark-haired woman on the boat, and for her children, for the man and the boy, for those people who needed help right now more than anyone she had ever met. She would not give up on this as she had given up on so much else in her life – university, modelling, boyfriends, friendships … the list was endless of everything she had not made a success of.

  What she was doing now was going to change all that; she hadn’t died in the sea out there and so she could have another stab at life and do it better this time. She could get some proper qualifications, train for a decent, worthwhile job; show all the doubters amongst her friends and family that she was capable of stuff. She had found something out about herself that she would never have believed – that she could be strong, in mind and body. Now she just had to do what was required to convey to the rest of the world that she could be worthwhile, that perhaps, just perhaps, there was a reason she had been put on this planet as the younger of a pair of twins, doomed to always feel second-rate. If she, Edie, could only raise the alarm in time, the Radomira might be intercepted and the people rescued and the woman taken to hospital and given whatever treatment it was that she needed. This could happen, if Edie was capable of doing what needed to be done.

  And that would be worth more than anything.

  ***

  Over the next hour of walking, Edie began to severely doubt that she was capable of it. She was exhausted, parched, covered in cuts and bruises from the rocks and her foot was getting worse not better, having swollen to twice its normal size and throbbing so hard it was making her feel nauseous. It was still dark from the cloud cover and so hard to see that she kept stumbling and tripping, her feet repeatedly getting caught in the tangled undergrowth. The only hopeful thing was that she was making her way steadily uphill and that meant that when she got to the top, she might reach a road or at least a path. Being high up would give her a vantage point and could show her the way forward. That’s what she focused on, anyway.

  She had almost reached the brow of the hill when the clouds opened and rain began. It wasn’t like British rain, that built up gradually from a few drops – this was a downpour from the very start. In moments she was drenched again, her bikini and shorts that had begun to dry out soaked through. Her wet hair was a ton weight dragging down her back; she had never, ever noticed it feeling so heavy before. But the rain water was fresh and pure and she knelt down on the sandy soil, threw back her head, opened her mouth and let the drops saturate her desiccated lips and tongue.

  She stayed like that until the rain stopped, as suddenly as it had started. By then she had begun to shiver uncontrollably. She was freezing, her teeth chattering, her skin covered in goose bumps. She knew she should get up and keep moving, that if she became hypothermic it would be extremely dangerous; they had learnt that on her Duke of Edinburgh training (although she had never done the actual hike, dropping out at the last minute as with so many things).

  But all she wanted to do was to curl up in a ball and nurse her poor, swollen, sore foot and wait for it all to be all right. Her head pulsed and her whole body ached with fatigue, every muscle screaming out its protest at what it had been through over the past few hours. Edie was about to give in to the overwhelming desire to sleep that was subsuming her when the fai
nt glimmer of dawn began to colour the horizon gold. It gave her the impetus she needed to get back up and keep going.

  The sight that met her eyes when she crested the hill was entirely unexpected. Below her was a precipitous slope created by wholesale excavation of the hillside, the exposed soil pale brown and raw-looking, ripped apart by the bulldozers and excavators that now stood silently by, lined up like a battalion of tanks ready for the next day’s battle. Edie knew that there was major construction going on along one of the seafronts; a new town complete with harbour and marina being developed for the high-class, high-spending tourists that the country was trying to attract. This must be where the stone was coming from to build it all, wrenched out of the countryside, leaving a scarred and decimated landscape behind. And then it occurred to her that finding the quarry was good news as, if she were right, it meant that she was still on the peninsula that extended westwards from the resort and therefore that she was not far from civilisation.

  Standing still and trying to focus her eyes in the half-light was making her feel light-headed and giddy; she had not eaten properly for many, many hours and although revived somewhat by the rainwater, she was finding it harder and harder to stop her head from spinning. She needed to circumvent the quarry and find the road that the dump trucks were using; this would undoubtedly soon lead to one of the many small villages that dotted the peninsula. The ground was sodden now, the grass wet and slippery, the earth beneath slicked like wet clay. She stumbled a couple of times and righted herself, each time having to pause and hold her head in her hands until it had ceased pulsating.

  She wondered what time the workmen turned up; perhaps it would not be long and she could hail one of them and ask for a lift. She wasn’t sure if she could make it much further. Her damaged foot shrieked every time it took her weight, her legs felt hollow, weak and empty from lack of food and rest. Something far below, down in the quarry, caught her eye – a lightning flash like the rising sun on a car windscreen – and she turned to look at it, raising both arms above her head in a desperate wave that begged someone to notice. As she did so, the heel of her foot slid on a clump of wet grass, her body flailed madly back and forth and for a few seconds she teetered on the edge of the precipice.