This Thing of Darkness (36 page)

He moves his controls. The response from below isn’t instant – it feels like there’s a half-second gap – and the movements from below are jerky and as much under the influence of deep ocean currents as anything sent down from above. But Eddie knows what he’s doing. Pokes the grappling tool right under the cable. Sends the signal that gets the tool to close over the line.

‘Good lad,’ says Connor.

But Eddie’s gaze is still fixed to the screen. He uses the grappling tool to lift the cable. Just a few inches, but a few inches is all he needs.

And in that slo-mo world, another tool slowly creeps into view. No mistaking what this one is. It has a pincer grip and steel fangs.

Eddie brings the cutting tool to meet the cable. Manoeuvres it until the tool has the cable in its jaws.

Eddie looks across at Connor.

‘Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bam’

Eddie hits a button on the control panel. Almost instantly this time, nothing slo-mo about it, the jaws of the cutting tool snap shut.

The cable spasms and falls. One end is secured by the grappling tool, the other end lies loose.

Connor says, ‘Let’s bring her up.’ And to me, ‘Don’t you have work to do?’

He’s right. I do.

62

Work that starts with Honnold.

Give him sandwiches. Bread, sausage and egg, smished together with plenty of butter and tomato ketchup. It’s a messy job, but the sandwiches, I think, are proper manly affairs. Huge and thick and oozing with fat and dead animal and sugar and vinegar. The sort of thing it takes two hands to eat and makes a mess even so.

Give him his sandwiches and the hacksaw blade and the hammer.

Tell him that Caff and the others will be on his side if he chooses to retake the ship. ‘I don’t think Connor’s guys will fight for him. I mean, Buys, yes. But Ryan and Eddie are just hired hands. I don’t think they care one way or another. And Wee Philly . . .’ I shrug.

Honnold laughs.

Wee Philly is the least of our worries.

Honnold taps the hacksaw blade against the iron rail that chains him. ‘Thanks for this.’

‘Nae worries,’ I say, in a loose version of his accent. ‘And take care with that,’ I add, indicating the hammer. ‘It could cause a nasty injury.’

Honnold grins.

‘I’m hoping so.’

Connor asked me to tell him how Honnold was, so I go to tell him: fine, sleeping.

They’ve winched the cut end of the cable up now. Pulled it out of the sea, like the head of the world’s longest sea-snake. Eddie, working with Caff, is sent to retrieve it from the stern gantry.

Oilskins, harnesses, lifejackets, safety lines.

The full works. Thirty minutes spent doing a job which would take two minutes in ordinary conditions. I’m wearing oilskins and a harness myself, because I don’t even like the minuscule trip from the top of the companionway to the door of the control room. I’ll only do it after attaching a sling from my harness to the steel rail that runs along it.

‘Tough work, seismology,’ I say.

Connor gives me a look which says, ‘Fuck off.’

Feed Wee Philly, who’s pale but ready for food. Feed Ryan, Caff and Pearson.

Then teas for the bridge. Caff swapping with Coxsey. Pearson seems OK, but the risk of concussion or mental fatigue means he won’t be putting in a shift until he’s clearly better or until the winds have subsided.

Stick my nose in on Honnold. He’s still wearing a metal bracelet, but that bracelet is no longer chained to anything.

‘Ready?’ I say.

‘Ready.’

I bring teas to the control room. They’ve got the cable end into the dry now, or what passes for dry on this ship. Eddie is trimming the end. Getting ready to splice it, I imagine. There’s a roll of identical cable – a few hundred yards of it, perhaps – lashed to the deck outside.

I hand out the teas. Tell Connor that Honnold is lying on his face. Didn’t wake when I called him.

Connor says, ‘Fuck,’ but doesn’t seem particularly bothered. Goes to look anyway.

Eddie – soaked, tired, but still going – looks up from his cable.

Says, ‘What a fucking job, eh? What a fucking job.’

I agree with him. What a fucking job.

Go down again. To Wee Philly’s cabin. Ready to finish this thing.

63

‘Hey Phil,’ I say. ‘You’re wanted upstairs. Your hour of glory.’

He nods.

Looks awful, but you don’t have to look beautiful to do what he needs to do.

Sits up on his bunk, feet on the floor, getting used to the ship’s motion in this new posture.

He’s wearing thick clothes, including thermals, but no boots, no oilskin. I tell him the control room is awash. Tell him he’ll need to suit up.

He nods. Stands. Gropes for his waterproofs, bright yellow, hanging from a hook in the door.

I sit on the bunk where he was. Hands holding the steel rail behind me.

A few breaths. Centring myself. Getting ready.

Wee Philly opts to go with the trousers first. Good move. Well-advised. The trousers are harder to put on if you have the skirts of the coat to contend with. The fishermen on board have all-in-ones. Jumpsuit-type affairs that are way better.

Still. Trousers, jumpsuits. It’s no biggie.

I wait till the computer man has one leg in his trousers, the other one poking around for the left trouser thigh.

That’s when I kick him.

Hard, really hard, in the back. Both legs lashing him just under the fall of his shoulder blades.

He flies forward. Head smacks hard into the iron wall. Hard enough that even with these shrieking seas, I can hear the impact.

He stumbles half-round, tottering one-legged. Blood falls from a cut in his forehead. I think he’s not sure what’s happened. Assumes – as I would have done – that some terrible thing has happened to the ship.

I arrange my face in a ‘Did you see that terrible thing that just happened to the ship?’ way. Then kick him in the crotch. Again in the face as he falls.

He lies on the floor, moaning. I stamp on his hands, until they retract, curled under his body like some lumpen sea-creature half emerged from its yellow rind.

‘Don’t fucking move,’ I tell him, ‘or I will fucking kill you.’

He nods.

‘That counts as moving,’ I say, and stamp on his ankles.

I go through his stuff.

He doesn’t have much. None of us do here. A good-sized gym bag, nothing more.

And in amongst his stuff: that army-style laptop. That thing and a little black box. A box with space for two cable connections, an in and an out. A box that looks like it’s been designed to be waterproof, even at depth.

A box that has killed two people. That took me to a barn near Rhayader. That has killed three people, indeed, if you include the Rhayader goon.

I take the laptop and the box.

‘Move, and I fucking kill you. Leave the room, and I fucking kill you. Do anything I don’t like, and I fucking kill you. OK?’

I don’t know why these interchanges have to feature the word ‘fucking’ so prominently, but they kind of do. They’d feel bare without it.

Outside in the corridor, I meet Honnold. Hammer in one hand, Connor’s gun in the other.

He says, ‘You’ve got blood on your face.’

‘Not mine. Wee Philly’s.’

I show him my booty.

He stares in puzzlement. ‘That’s what this thing is all about, eh?’

‘I assume so.’

‘You know what those things are for?’

‘No,’ I say, ‘but I assume that someone in law enforcement will be able to tell us.’

‘Aye, I’d say so.’

He stares some more. Wants to take the trophies off me – he’s the captain, I’m the temporary cook – but I don’t yield them, and he doesn’t force the issue.

He tells me about Connor. ‘He’s hurt, but alive. I’ve bound him up for the noo. He might get out of his bindings, but he’s no got a gun, and his right hand won’t be holding much for a wee while.’

Good enough.

Honnold looks at me.

I look at him.

‘Are ye making a brew? I could fair use a cup o’ tea.’

64

We assemble in the dining room, the urn heating in the galley.

Me, Honnold, Pearson, Coxsey.

Also, Eddie and Ryan. Not Honnold’s men, but both clearly relieved to see him back in command. Both quick to evince their loyalty to the new-old regime.

Coxsey and Pearson go to tie Connor properly. Proper seamen’s rope. Proper seamen’s knots.

They leave him in Honnold’s cabin, lashed to the cot.

I’ve hidden Wee Philly’s computer stuff down in the fish-hold. Honnold knows, at least approximately where it is, but no one else.

Honnold phones the bridge. Speaks to Buys.

‘Jonah? This is the captain. I’m back in command of the ship. Your man Connor has been subdued. I’ve got his weapon. The man himself is secured and will remain that way till we can release him to the authorities.

‘I’m asking ye noo to hand your gun to MacHaffie, then I want ye to come down to the mess, with yer hands where I can see them. Is that clear?’

Silence on the line.

No answer.

‘Jonah?’

‘Fuck you, Honnold. Fuck you.’

Honnold wasn’t expecting the resistance, but nor is he much perturbed by it.

‘Suit yerself. But it’ll be thirsty work up there before too long. And ye’ll want a peck to eat.’

Stalemate, kind of, but the sort of stalemate which can only run in our favour.

Buys can’t do anything except keep the ship afloat. Can’t run anywhere except to a port in Europe, where he’ll be arrested as soon as he steps foot on shore. There are, conceivably, places in Latin America, or Russia, or elsewhere, that might take a more lenient view of Western wrongdoers, but Honnold is right: hunger and thirst will force Buys off the bridge long before the ship can get any place like that.

Tea.

There’s a cake in one of my boxes. Frozen, but I whack it into the microwave, till it’s sizzling on the outside, albeit still icy within.

‘Like baked Alaska,’ I say, serving it.

Honnold gathers a harvest of congratulation. Me too. We all do.

Good old us. The team that beat the bad guys.

Mouthfuls of cake and lashings of tea.

And that’s when Wee Philly arrives at the door. A wild look on his eyes. A machine pistol in his hands.

65

The pistol subdues us, but so too does the look in Wee Philly’s eyes.

His gun can fire at ten times – fifty times? – the rate of Honnold’s but, just as significant, we none of us think that he’ll be able to maintain control of his weapon. Once Wee Philly’s finger closes around that trigger, there’ll be a spray of bullets which could go anywhere, hit anyone, kill who knows how many.

Wee Philly orders me to go and untie Connor.

I say, ‘I’m no good at knots. Sorry. Oh, and coming in here? That counts as moving.’

There is, for a brief moment, another kind of stalemate. An armed and dangerous one. Precarious. Enemy patrols facing off over a contested border.

At first, I think Honnold will win this one. His nerve is steadier, his support firmer.

But then the ship lurches and Wee Philly’s gun leaps in his hand, describing an arc that would have sliced most of us in half. And I realise that Wee Philly’s unsteadiness will win this one for him. The old nuclear age theory of mutually assured destruction relied on both parties being at least vaguely rational. When you get a genuine wacko – a North Korea, a Kim Jong Crazy – everyone else backs off because they have to.

Another lurch. Another terrifying sweep of the gun.

Honnold’s first duty is to protect his men. Law enforcement is not his concern. The fate of some screwed-up deep-sea cable project is not his business.

To me he says, ‘Fiona, please go and untie Connor. Cut the ropes if you have to.’

To Wee Philly, he says, ‘I’m not going to ask you to put your gun down, but I do ask that you lower it and keep it pointed at the floor.’

Moving slowly and carefully, he removes the magazine from his gun. Removes the chambered bullet. Drops bullet and magazine on the floor. With the gun pointed up at the ceiling, he ‘fires’ a couple of time, letting the hammer click on emptiness. Drops the gun on the floor too.

I get a knife. Go to untie Connor.

Find him in Honnold’s cabin. He’s a bit smashed about and his right hand is badly broken, but he’s in much better shape than he deserves to be.

I cut his bindings. Tell him there’s cake in the galley.

Me, I go downstairs. Retrieve the computer junk. Take them up on deck, where there’s a big orange plastic box containing lifejackets. Most of its contents are already in use. Not actually being worn – not downstairs anyway – but hanging on pegs ready for anyone setting foot on deck.

I take out the remaining kit. Throw it down the companionway. Put my computer junk in the big orange box. Close it. Close the mechanism which keeps everything sealed and watertight. Then cut the bindings which keep the box fixed to the superstructure wall.

The box starts to move instantly. Rides a sluice of bubbles across the desk. Hits the port handrail and bounces off. But the stern ramp is unprotected. If anything bounces around this deck for long enough, it will wash off the back, if a big wave doesn’t snatch it first.

I go downstairs.

The fish processing room. A big bucket of fish guts still there. Scales, fins, heads, livers, guts, eyes, anything. The last person on processing duty should have shoved the lot down the discards chute, but they didn’t. Unless it was meant to be my job, perhaps.

Anyway. I take the bucket.

Go down to the engine room.

Engine. Auxiliary engine.

Pumps. Boiler. Cooling system. Whatever.

I find the cap that lets you refill the cooling system. Wrestle it off. It’s hard to do, and I gash my left hand, but I get it done. My hand looks nasty, but it’s only a cut.

Shove the fish guts into the cooling system. Not all of them, but most of them.

Go over to the auxiliary engine.

Do the same there, using all the fish guts that remain.

Nothing happens. Nothing good, nothing bad, just the engines hammering away exactly the way they did before.

I wish I knew more about engines.

Sit down.

I’m feeling tired and hungry, I realise. One of those
doh!
moments when I understand the feeling that’s been nagging at me for hours now. It’s like it was always there, that feeling, and only when I turn my attention squarely to it, do I notice it.

Anyway. Stupid. Me being a cook, working in the galley all day and still forgetting to eat.

Stupid and typical.

The ship judders. It’s been juddering all the time, of course, but this one was different. A mechanical judder. Like the
ting
of a knife on a wineglass, only a
ting
loud enough to jolt a trawler.

No spark plugs with a diesel
, Iestyn told me.
You compress your mixture, your fuel and air, compress it so hard that the temperature rises and – bang! ignition. It’s a good system, but it gets very hot. If you don’t cool it, you’ll wreck your engine.

Stupid that. Wrecking an engine. Especially a nice big one like the
Isobel Baker
’s. One that’s worked perfectly fine for twenty years and more.

I wonder if I’ve thought it through, this plan of mine.

Don’t think so.

Hope Coxsey’s right about the damn life-raft, though.

I drag myself back to the galley.

Now that I notice my tiredness, I can’t help but notice it all the time. Heavy legs. Aching muscles. I just want to lie down, in a bed that doesn’t move, in a room that doesn’t shriek.

My damn hand hurts a lot as well. Drips blood, in this boat that has already seen enough.

Never mind.

Get to the dining room.

Buys in command. Wee Philly relieved of his machine pistol. Buys wielding it.

Connor and Pearson not present, but I assume they must be on the bridge.

Buys is talking. Something about who’s going to do what when.

Maybe he’s saying something to me. I don’t know.

I sit down. My harness jingles metallically on the bench. Nick a bit of cake, using my good hand.

The ship judders again, more unmistakably this time.

I say, ‘The ship is sinking. I think someone’s put fish guts in the cooling system.’

That causes a rumpus.

There’s a bit of a who-would-be-fool-enough-to-do-a-thing-like-that, but since it’s fairly obvious that the fool in question is me, that particular phase of things doesn’t last long. There’s also the question of whether I’m telling the truth. No one quite believes that I know my way round an engine well enough to sabotage it, but the jolts and shudders are coming continuously now, and the men on the bridge are phoning down to ask what the fucking hell is going on.

Honnold, calm beneath the gaze of Buys’s guns, witnesses the commotion with a quiet smile. A regretful one. When another bad shudder hits the ship, and when we can feel the ship’s rhythm start to sag – to become the plaything of the waves not the master of them – he stands up. Says, ‘Abandon ship. All hands to the life-raft.’

He heads for the door. Brushes the barrel of Buys’s machine pistol on the way out. ‘Jonah, ye can put that damn stupid thing away. Unless ye plan to row with it.’

We abandon ship.

Caff and Coxsey are master of ceremonies. The life-raft is packed in a big fibreglass container, like a tin of beans. It’s swooshed off the side and self-inflates. In theory, it should be possible just to step off the ship and into the raft. But the conditions are so fierce, the raft sometimes higher than the side of the ship and sometimes as many as four metres lower, that even the process of saving our lives seems fraught with peril. I only manage the manoeuvre at all, because Coxsey more or less throws me off the ship, with Caff catching from below.

The raft is circular, designed for twelve, and there are loops of nylon tape round the circumference where you can wind your arms in, to prevent yourself from being thrown around.

The others join me. The broken-armed Ryan. The head-bandaged Pearson.

Wee Philly, who enters the raft with as little dignity as I did, throws me a look of pure loathing.

Buys and Connor don’t look at me with much loving kindness either. I don’t think either of them is carrying a gun – them, or anyone else – but even if they were, Honnold was right. If you can’t row with it, eat it, or drink it, a gun’s no use here.

Honnold, whose ship I’ve destroyed, looks at me, and laughs, and shakes his head, but it’s a friendly shake, I’m pretty sure. Eddie, Caff and Coxsey all seem in good spirits. Joking and bright.

Coxsey does whatever you have to do to in order to free the raft from the davit that had suspended it. He closes the zip that seals off the outside.

We’re two things now. The ship and the raft. Nothing keeps us together and the winds and waters, I assume, whirl us apart.

We don’t hear the ship sinking. Don’t even know if it sinks or not. Hear nothing beyond the storm.

No conversation, not really. Each man lost in his own thoughts. The only talk that does go on is bellowed between Honnold and his guys as they inventory the raft’s equipment.

Hand-operated pumps? Check. Fully operative? Check.

Food and water? Yes, but not much. A day’s supply.

Flares? Yes.

A mini-EPIRB, yes, which Honnold activates, though the two EPIRBs on board the
Isobel
would have activated automatically if she has indeed foundered.

The floor of our pod is semi-rigid. The walls and ceiling not at all. When big waves break around us, we feel the surge everywhere. Our little roof flattens over our heads like an oystershell closing.

And that’s what it’s like, this raft in this storm. Like we have our own little oystershell kingdom – orange, nylon, flexible, evasive. We slip under and round and through the waves, at one with them in a way that the poor old
Isobel
never was.

I’m still tired. Very tired, probably. I can feel that quite clearly now. It’s easier without that damn engine always chuntering in my ear. But something else too. I think happiness. Or maybe its softer cousin, contentment. Like happiness but quieter. Sunlight softened by mist.

I say, ‘This is nice, isn’t it? I should have brought the cake, though. It would have been better with cake.’