Run Before the Wind (43 page)

Connie finished clearing the table, and we each took a cabin and went to bed.

We ate better at breakfast. Mark's brisk attitude, as he ran through a list of things to be done on the boat, seemed to buoy us a bit. If he could carry on, so could we.

"That's it," he said, making a check against the last of the items on his list.

"Those things and she'll be ready."

"Ready for what?" I asked. He had already taken himself out of the race, quite understandably. He couldn't just lose his wife on a Wednesday, bury her on Friday, and sail off into the sunset on Saturday. Besides, there'd have to be an inquest.

"I want you to do the race," he said.

For a moment I didn't get his meaning. Then I did.

"What?"

"You know this boat every bit as well as I do. You helped build her. You've sailed on her in all sons of conditions. I want her to do the race she was built for; I can't do it myself, and you're the only person who can in the circumstances."

"But I haven't qualified with the committee," I protested.

"Entries closed months ago; they'll never accept me at this late date."

Mark shook his head.

"When you sailed the boat from Cork to Plymouth singlehanded, you completed the two-hundred-mile qualifying cruise. When I made my final application to the committee after the Azores passage, I listed you as alternate skipper, just in case. You were accepted at that time. I didn't tell you, because I didn't think it would ever come up."

I could only stare at him.

"You do see this is the only way, don't you?"

I didn't feel strong enough to resist him. When I tried to picture myself in the race, it seemed a better alternative than moping around on shore.

"All right," I said.

"I'll do it if you're absolutely sure that's what you want." Even as I said it, I was overwhelmed with the idea. I had never even contemplated doing such a thing.

"Good." He grinned.

"I told the committee yesterday that you would."

I gripped the cold, brass handle of Annie's coffin and, with five Royal Marines, lifted it and walked down the stone aisle of the tiny village church. For a day and a half I had kept going, ticking off the items on Mark's list of things to do. Now the list was complete, I was where I least wanted to be, and everything was catching up with me.

Mark had been extraordinary, especially at the funeral. He had greeted each of the two hundred or so people who came--race competitors, marines, and other friends--putting them at their ease, thanking them for their sympathy and offering his. From the moment of Annie's death. Mark had seemed to accept that she was gone--unlike everyone else, especially Connie and me, who still couldn't believe it. I had been barely coherent and, at this moment, could hardly get one foot before another. We marched in step out of the church and down a path to the open grave, where we rested the coffin on planks across the hole in the ground and waited for the final words. As the vicar intoned them, we removed the planks and lowered the coffin with ropes. The obligatory handful of earth was thrown into the grave, then everyone began moving away.

Annie's mother was led away, sobbing, by her brother, to be driven back to London. She had been inconsolable.

Mark and I were left at the graveside, with her for one last moment. Our thoughts must have been similar. In this damp earth we were leaving one of those people who had had that rare talent of seeming the best possible person--a lovely young woman, not yet thirty who, in the brief time we had shared with her had imprinted herself indelibly upon our lives. Before I could burst into tears, I glanced up and saw Connie waiting down by the car and realized that there, with her, was where I belonged at this moment, not here. Mark belonged here. I left him and joined Connie.

At the marina, the crowd took up an entire pontoon. Mark was the perfect host, showing friends about the boat, seeing that everybody had a drink, putting everyone at ease, talking about Annie, avoiding no one's eyes. It was like a party at which Annie had not yet arrived. I was glad that everyone, including even me, with Mark's example, seemed to be bearing his grief well.

I was standing near the edge of the crowd, away from the boat, talking with Connie, when I looked up and saw a tall, bearded, rather seedy man in a rumpled, corduroy suit standing on the dock where it met the floating pontoon. He beckoned to me. I excused myself and walked slowly toward him. I was in no mood for a newspaper reporter or curiosity seeker.

As I approached, he extended his hand and said, "Hello, Will."

I had already taken his hand before I finally recognized him.

"Hello, Derek," I said.

"I'm glad to see you; you're looking well."

"It's good to see you, Derek, I .. ." I was at a loss for words.

"Forgive my appearance. I was .. . some distance from here when the news about Annie finally reached me. I ..." He seemed to be having as much difficulty talking to me as I to him.

"Do you think you could ask Mark to come and speak with me for a moment? I'd rather not go down to the boat, if you don't mind."

"Of course," I replied and went to look for Mark. When we came back, Derek offered a few awkward words of sympathy, then took an envelope from his coat.

"I'd like you to have this--please don't open it just at the moment. It's just .. . something I .. He foundered in embarrassment.

"Ah, Mark, I really must be going. I didn't want to intrude on such an occasion."

"Nonsense, Derek," Mark replied.

"You're very welcome here.

Come and have a drink."

"I ... hope you'll forgive me if I don't. Mark, ah, do you have a pound note about you?"

Surprised, Mark dug into a pocket and came up with the money.

Derek shook hands with us.

"Goodbye to both of you, then. I suppose we shan't see each other again ... for a time. Thank you both." Then he was gone, striding up the dock and up the stairs to the car park, where we could see a man waiting with the Mercedes door open. The car drove away in a cloud of dust.

"That was very odd," Mark said, opening the envelope Derek had given him. Then his eyes widened-. I looked over his shoulder at the paper in his hand.

"I, Derek Thrasher," it read, "do hereby sell to Mark Pemberton-Robinson for one pound sterling and other valuable considerations ..."

"Jesus," Mark said.

"He's given me Wave."

I was seized with a sudden conviction, one that I was later to look upon with regret, "Mark," I said, "you have to do this race.

It's your boat, now, and .. . well, I think Annie would be extremely annoyed if you dropped out because of something to do with her. She was part of this project, too, you know, and she wouldn't like to be the cause of aborting it." She had been more a pan of it than even Mark suspected, I thought, remembering how she had brought Derek Thrasher into it. Mark would never know about that.

Mark looked at the letter and the registration papers in his hand.

"You're right," he said. He looked back at me.

"Did you meet my solicitor, John Aslett?" He pointed at a large man with ginger hair in a blue suit, standing among the crowd down on the pontoon.

"Could you ask him to come up here, please? We're going to have to leave for a bit. Could you let the others know?"

I went and sent the solicitor to Mark, then watched them as they hurried toward the marina office.

MARK WAS GONE for the better part of two hours.

"You'd better hurry," I said to him when he came back.

"The skipper's briefing is at five o'clock at the yacht club. Where have you been, anyway?"

"Pulling some strings, at least John Aslett has. The inquest is tomorrow morning at eight o'clock."

"That's fast."

"John's a good man."

We squeezed into the back of the Royal Western's dining room and listened carefully for an hour as the skippers of the forty competing yachts heard a long-range weather forecast, a discussion of the location of the gulf stream, which was an important factor in the race, and instructions on finishing and docking at Newport, Rhode Island, the race's termination point. Afterward, we met Connie in the bar for a drink. She thrust a newspaper at us.

"Denny O'Donnell's turned up dead," she said.

"He actually had his own Irish driving license in his pocket."

"He was always a bit thick," Mark said.

"What about the girl, Maeve?"

"Still on the loose, according to this," I said, reading quickly.

"Denny was found with some other bloke."

"Poor Maeve," Connie said sadly.

"Now she's out there alone someplace. I wonder what'll become of her?"

"Probably the same thing that became of Denny," Mark replied.

The solicitor, John Aslett, appeared in the bar.

"All done," he said.

"I didn't know you were coming here so I left it on the boat."

"New will," Mark said to me.

"Seemed a good idea. John, why don't you have a drink and then come back to the boat and witness it."

"Jolly good," Aslett replied.

"A large, pink gin, please."

"I've got some laundry to do back at the marina," I said, getting up.

"Why don't I go ahead now? You and Connie finish your drinks and come in John's car."

"Fine," Mark said.

"We'll only be a few minutes."

I parked the car in the Marina car park and started toward the pontoons. It had clouded over and was beginning to drizzle. As I started down the ramp two people simultaneously started up it from the pontoon; I recognized them both, but was surprised to see them together.

"Hello, Peter Patrick," I said.

"What a nice surprise."

"Oh, hello, Mark," Lord Coolmore said, looking surprised, himself.

"Uh, this is my, uh, niece, Mary."

I stuck out my hand.

"We've met, at least, sort of. Last year over at Crernyl, at the boatyard."

"Yes, I remember," she said. She seemed nervous. So did Lord Coolmore, for that matter.

"I was just down to the boat to pay a call on Mark," he said.

"I read about Annie in the papers. Terrible business, that."

"Yes, well, Mark'll be along in a few minutes. Would you like to come back to the boat for a drink?"

"I'd love to, old fellow, but we have to catch a train for London in just a few minutes. Give Mark my best, will you, and tell him I'm awfully sorry."

"Of course," I said.

"He'll be sorry to have missed you." I turned to the girl, who was just putting up the hood on her navy blue parka against the increasing rain.

"Nice to have met----" I stopped in mid-sentence. She was drawing the string of her hood tightly under her chin and tying it. I stared at her. The shoulder-length auburn hair that had wreathed her head had disappeared under the hood, and now all I saw was a face, a face with no makeup, surrounded by dark cloth.

"Oh, shit," I said involuntarily.

I felt something hard in my ribs.

"All right, now, my lad," Coolmore said, "That's the barrel of a pistol. Just come along quietly, now."

I looked quickly about me. The car park was deserted. I could see the night watchman in the marina tower above me.

"No, no," Coolmore said, "You'll just get him hurt. Just move along a step ahead of me, there."

He pointed me toward the main gate. We walked quickly along, not speaking, through the gate, turning left, toward the water. There was a small boatyard down there, but it would be closed by now.

Jesus, I thought, they're going to take me down there and shoot me. I thought of running, then thought better of it. Maeve would surely be armed, as well.

"Look, Peter Patrick, what's this all about?" Talking seemed better than nothing, somehow.

"All in good time, my boy," he said in his upper-class drawl, "All in good time."

They marched me a couple of hundred yards down the road, to where it curved to the right. The little boatyard came into view.

No lights. Deserted. A car and trailer were parked in front of the main shed. Coolmore opened the trailer door and motioned me in.

The two of them followed, Maeve switching on a light.

"Now what?" Maeve asked, pulling her parka hood back.

"Now," Coolmore drawled, flopping in a chair next to the door and motioning me to a sofa, opposite, "we put an end to all this."

"Is that a good idea?" she asked.

"You yourself have told me how awkward that would be, considering who his father is.

Anyway, Robinson is one thing, he's got that coming for Donal, but this dumb kid may be the only innocent in this whole thing."

"Donal?" I asked, astonished.

"You think Mark Robinson killed Donal O'Donnell?"