“Tell me!”
Her eyes were wide, her throat stretched back so her lips parted. A stifled grunt came from her throat. He gave a quick yank to her hair again.
“Please,” was all she could whimper.
He released her hair and her wrist, grabbed her shoulder and swung her around. He grabbed the wrist from behind and, holding her by the hair again, brought her wrist behind her, lifting it towards her shoulder blade.
“Please, Steven, please!” she cried.
With a gasping sob, she continued, “Please, I can help you! It’s Marcel who is in charge. He will kill both of us.”
Cullen panted, from sudden anger as much as from his exertions.
“Talk!”
He let her hair go, pulled the arm down from behind her back, flung it from him and pushed her forward. She stumbled a couple of steps, reaching the dais on which the bed stood. She leaned forward on one arm, the one he had not twisted. Her head hung and she took in air in deep, rapid breaths.
Cullen watched and waited.
“Come on! Talk! Tell me what I need to know.”
She swivelled, then let herself fall in a sitting position. She took the hurt wrist in her good hand and massaged it. She looked at him. The shock was gone. All that remained was resignation. Another disappointment. She spoke in a flat tone, disinterested in her words and their consequences.
“Before I met you on the deck, we got a message to return to Ireland. It was urgent. I was in the wheel-house with Marcel. You were still down here at the time. Marcel said I was to entertain you, keep you occupied.”
An unwilling sob shook her voice. She swallowed, sniffed and swallowed again, giving a brief snort of derision at her own show of feeling. She took a breath, let out a sigh and continued,
“I waited until Marcel had finished his talk with whoever it was, Larry someone-or-other.”
She shrugged.
“I don’t know him. Never heard of him before. Marcel makes and drops friends as business demands.”
Cullen tensed.
“Larry? Are you sure he said Larry?”
A shiver of fear started in his gut.
“Maguire? Was it Larry Maguire?”
He took a step towards her.
“Is that who he was speaking to on the radio?”
He checked himself, hearing the tremor rise in his voice.
“I don’t know. Do you know him?”
Her voice had changed. A note of concern had come into it.
“Is he dangerous? You do not work with him as you do with the one who brought you here?”
“If Larry Maguire is getting me back to Ireland, I’m dead anyway.”
His voice was steady. All she had done was put his worst fears into words. He had been half expecting it. He was annoyed with himself for dallying with Elaine when he could have been doing something about his position. But what? What could he have done? He would have shown his hand, let Gustav know his suspicions, placed himself in a worse position. No, as it happened, he saw he had made a lucky choice in his decision. A lucky one, he told himself, not a wise one. You can’t depend on indefinite luck. Time to think. Time to get himself together and see what he could do for himself. The first bit of luck was in the bathroom, when he had realised they were returning to Ireland. The second bit of luck was finding out who was behind it. He had a very good idea why.
Elaine homed in on his train of thought.
“Why does he want you?”
Cullen raised his eyes from the floor and looked at her.
“Money. What else?”
She was still sitting on the bed, her right hand absently massaging the other wrist. Her voice was quiet, but tinged with a note of worry.
“You know this man Maguire? You have done work with him before?”
Cullen turned and began to pace the room. He was trying to collect the facts he had. He knew there was a conclusion which could help him. For a start he realised that Gustav and Maguire were already acquainted. That was not surprising, he thought. Gustav had ferried arms for a number of years — even if at irregular intervals — to the Organization. It was hardly surprising that Maguire, an active smuggler if there ever was one, would be known to Gustav. Only now the situation had a particular slight to it. It meant, if his conjecture was anywhere near the truth, that Maguire was in charge of Gustav. It also indicated that Maguire was involved in getting the cargo of drugs to Cullen. It was beginning to look to Cullen as if Maguire had prepared the whole episode. A further implication became apparent. If Maguire had planned everything, had set Cullen up as the carrier of the drugs, it was because he thought Cullen would be bringing the money with him, that Cullen would arrive in France with $115,000 on his person. But someone along the line had indicated to Maguire that Cullen didn’t have the money, so it must still be in Ireland. That was why they were returning. But who would have said? Elaine? Gustav? He could have had Cullen’s things checked at any time. Another thought came to Cullen. That would hardly be the case, because Maguire would not trust Gustav with $115,000. The drugs were different. There was a certain independence where trafficking was concerned, while cash had the habit of disappearing in the best of circles, especially if it was a bank haul. So, Cullen considered, Maguire wanted him back because someone else had informed Maguire. Who? Doyle? He doubted it. He didn’t see Doyle and Maguire together. One of the crew? Could be. He knew none of them well and they all seemed like cocky little bastards. He could see all of them under Maguire’s spell. They showed a certain indifference, if not hostility, towards him. Of course there was that little fucker O’Brien. He’d sell his mother. He would plainly be pleased to see Cullen get it in the neck from Maguire and his crowd.
The main point came to him. That was that Maguire obviously knew that the money was in Ireland and that he was in command of Gustav, who was now bringing Cullen back to face Maguire. That was the immediate problem. He could unravel the rest later.
He stopped in the centre of the room. Still thinking, he came to the clear idea that his immediate survival depended on him taking the initiative. He looked at Elaine and asked,
“Has Gustav been in contact with Maguire for long? Have you heard him talking about him before?”
“Once or twice, but only recently.”
She frowned, focussed her concentration and said,
“I think — I think he spoke of him in Marseille. We were there last week. There were some Italians and an American on board. The American spoke of ‘Larry.’”
She shrugged.
“But I can’t be sure. I’ve no idea what they spoke about.”
She added, with a feeble smile by way of explanation,
“I rarely listen when business is discussed. It means nothing to me and Marcel says the less I know, the better for myself.”
Cullen was checked in his train of thought. It occurred to him that he didn’t know Elaine’s true relationship with Gustav, nor did he know where she came from. She was watching him, a smile somewhere back behind her face, but wary, hesitant. Looking at her, he felt a strong, stabbing regret at his treatment of her. He saw her as some kind of trusting innocent, a person who would go through life thinking well of everybody, and being brutally abused because of it. She seemed helpless, with as much control of her life as a leaf in the wind.
“What are you to Marcel Gustav?” he asked.
She did not answer, but blinked tears away and shook her head slightly.
“Are you his mistress?”
Her lips quivered. He wondered whether it was the preface to crying or speaking.
He asked again, this time letting a note of mockery into his voice,
“Are you his girl? Is that why he brings you around from one port to another? Or just a junkie? Someone he can use to test his drugs and give the odd bang when he feels like it?”
She looked deeply into his eyes and blinked some more. The tears rolled silently and profusely down both cheeks. The mouth was steady as her tension left wit
h the tears.
Cullen felt annoyed with her stony silence. He was doubly annoyed because, whatever the answer to his question was, it was causing her grief.
“Well? What are you to him?”
Her mouth twisted slightly to the side and quivered for a moment. Her eyes watched him intently. She took a quick sharp breath as she made her decision. In the quiet of the room, her face lit only by the bedside lamp and the bright light falling out from the bathroom door, her whisper came out as clearly as if she had shouted in his ear drum.
“His wife.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
For a moment he was silent. He was not shocked, but surprised.
“Why?” he asked.
Her answer came in a flat monotone.
“Eight years ago, I met Gustav again in Cannes.”
“Again?”
“Yes. I had known him when we were both very young. He was a wild, but amusing boy. He went his way after school. You know how it is. I went to University. For some years I didn’t see him, until that summer. He had grown tall, was as sure of himself and his life as ever. He was a breath of fresh air from the students, the businessmen, the professional nobodies who were the men in my life.”
She stopped and looked at him challengingly.
“They wanted to fuck me, and then they wanted me to conveniently disappear while they returned to their studies, or their wives, or their businesses.”
She continued with a wry smile.
“I usually did. I used them as they used me. It suited us all. But sometimes I just wished one or two of them could have seen that, and not been so bloody conceited about it, so sure that they were not only irresistible, but clever as well.”
She sighed then, letting the annoyance pass.
“So here was this man in Cannes.”
She brightened at the memory.
“He was beautiful, and he was free. Free from any woman or man, and free from the things which turn men and women into the mean and spiteful beings they can become. He fished from his boat. Made money. Oh, he did other things too, but it didn’t seem to matter. He ran contraband, sold guns, even people. Twice he brought frightened diplomats from Tangiers. He didn’t care what he did or what happened. Then, after we had been together for a while, I told him I was going to have a baby.”
She stopped talking then, looked at the floor, remembering.
“God, it changed him entirely. He stopped smuggling, dropped his friends, went fishing six days a week and still made good money.”
Her face, torn between the memories and the present, smiled sadly.
“He put me in an apartment. It was a lovely place. Then he came home one night and told me we were going to be married. As simply as that. And so we were three months later. For three months, life was absolute heaven. We were friends, we were lovers, we were husband and wife, everything that anyone needs to be and everything that anyone needs to have.”
She paused again with a long sigh, as if that was enough and the futility of the memory wasn’t worth the effort. Her voice became quieter, her words softer.
“It came to the time of the birth. It was difficult. There were complications. As the birth neared, things got worse.”
She shrugged, looked up for a second to Cullen’s eyes. He nodded, enough to show he was listening.
“The doctors and nurses, they did all they could.”
A sob broke through and her head fell forward, throwing her auburn hair down straight. She cried for a short while and raised her head again, gathering herself to continue the story.
“Our baby, a boy, came into this world at five past three on that afternoon.”
She spoke the time precisely, almost happily, as if that was the one thing in her life that had been an occasion of joy. Then her features tightened, in resistance to the following thoughts as relentless and as inevitable as the fact which made it an excruciating memory.
“By four o’clock he was dead.”
She shrugged again.
“For me, it was touch and go for a while, but I pulled through. I wanted so much to live. To see our baby, to be with Marcel. No one had told me of the death. When I was well enough, it was Marcel.”
She gave a bitter little laugh.
“I told Marcel that I wished it had been me who died, and not the baby.”
She wore a twisted smile, looked at Cullen again.
“Marcel agreed with me. He said that he wished it too.”
She stopped, letting the thoughts flit through her mind, those thoughts and wishes with which she’d lived and puzzled and fought over the past eight years. It got her nowhere. Cullen’s voice was a welcome interruption to her nightmare.
“And now? Who are you to him? What’s he to you?”
She raised her eyebrows, slowly shook her head, spoke as if she was offering a suggestion rather than an answer.
“The woman who killed his son? Who told him life was different? Worthwhile? Then failed to make the reality of the dream she promised? I don’t know. Maybe I’m not even that to him.”
Cullen nodded quietly. He remembered the other evening when Gustav had effectively raped her in his presence.
“Why don’t you leave? Why doesn’t he let you go? Let you get on with your life? And he with his?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve left before — twice. He brought me back. Another time I left and came back myself.”
Her eyes were on the floor, unseeing as she spoke. She looked to him again, as if for clarification.
“He believes that death is too good for me, that I don’t deserve life. I suppose, in my way, I believe that too.”
She became quiet.
It made sense to Cullen now. She was a tool of Gustav’s, just like a gun, or a piece of equipment on the boat, or a lace in a boot. That was all. Her summing-up of Gustav’s judgment of her fitted the man. From what Cullen had heard, Gustav was capable of any act under the sun. Judgment of Elaine and her condemnation to lifelong slavery to his whims was what Gustav would be pleased to consider a fitting punishment for being unfortunate to have been ill, and to be the mother of his dead son.
Cullen was glad he had made love to Elaine. He was glad she had some love and a show of affection, however basic. He could only think of one thing to say.
“You’re a good woman, Elaine.”
He saw her look at him, searching for the irony, the insult, waiting for the word to knock her climbing hopes to the ground. But he held her gaze, saw a glimmer of the light that had been in her features earlier, and said in a low, sombre tone,
“I mean it. You’re a good woman.”
She lowered her gaze and rubbed her twisted wrist.
“I’m sorry about your arm,” he added.
She was about to speak, but he hushed her with an upraised hand.
“No, listen. I’m going up. You stay here. I don’t want you involved.”
He looked into her eyes and said,
“Promise me you’ll stay below. This has nothing to do with you. It’s between Gustav and me. What we have to is compromise, both of us.”
“He’ll kill you,” she said.
“No, he won’t. I’m going to talk to him. He wants money. I’ll offer him a good share of what I’ve got hidden in Ireland, if…” he stopped and raised a hand for emphasis, “if he will take me ashore and off again at some point other than where he’s supposed to meet Maguire.”
She didn’t jump and protest that Gustav would kill him and go to Maguire anyway, so Cullen thought that what he had said made sense to Elaine, and it might sound fine to Gustav. The next words he said surprised him only in that they came out so clearly.
“And if Gustav goes along with it, I’m taking you with me when I leave.”
He didn’t say it as a request, but as a fact.
He watched her eyes. She understood. He could see that she needed, and wanted, to be told that. Until someone told her she was worthwhile, she was going to wallow in the guilt and punishment which lay
so heavily on her. The idea had only been forming when he spoke. The words crystallized it. They gave him the vision clear and simple. He felt alive again. It was as if the words and flash decision recharged his life with meaning. He was grinning when he said, “Stay here. I’ll be back. I’m saying nothing of us, just about the money.”
Her face looked as if there was life in it again. Her head nodded and her mouth moved in a slight smile. He knew the eyes would soon show life. It took time, he thought, that’s all. Time.
He turned and moved to the door. He did not look back. He turned the knob and eased the door in a fraction, then listened. All he heard was the throb of the engine. Pulling back the door some more, he squinted up the corridor. Nothing. He opened it more and eased his head out. Not a soul. He stepped out and closed the door gently behind him. Quickly he moved along the corridor, reaching the steps in seconds. The black night filled the space over the steps. There was no sign of life there. He thought he heard a voice. He listened, not moving, not breathing, concentrating his total energy on any sound. His hands grasped the rail on the stairs. The hum of the engines seemed slower. The boat was making very little headway.
He climbed fast to the opening at the hatch. Stopping again, he squatted on the top step, his body still protected by the casing on the hatch. He couldn’t see much — odd shapes, some reflections. He would have to wait for a while to accustom his sight to the dark. He heard a voice again. Not loud, just a couple of words. Foreign, French. Turning his head to the side to avoid the draught, he listened. It spoke again from the direction of the stern. He couldn’t make the words out. Suddenly a loud, authoritative voice exploded. Gustav. At the stern as well. Cullen recognised him by the resonance and the finality of the command. The voice sounded rough, barely in control. He could be either angry or drunk, or both.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Though he could not see anything, Doyle knew there was something terribly wrong. He’d often woken before, registered the dark, and resumed his sleep. But something had set this wakening off. It was only when he moved, blinked his eyes before focussing, that he felt the presence. The presence became a shadowy figure by his wife’s side. It had a grim and evil strength to it, a force of malice.
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