Peter James - A Twist of the Knife

After half an hour, she suddenly saw two tiny specks, high in the sky, heading towards her. For an instant her hopes rose. Helicopters? But then, a few minutes later, her spirits sank again; she could see from their motion that they were birds.

And as they got closer still she could see their masked faces. Was it the one she had seen before returning with a friend? Keeping one eye on the compass binnacle, she watched the birds circling, soaring around in a wide loop, then a tighter loop. Then a tighter one still.

She felt a sudden prick of anxiety as they began to circle her husband’s body. Tighter and tighter, showing increasing interest.

‘Sod off, birds!’ she called out.

Then one darted at his face, made a pecking motion and flew away. Then the other flew in and pecked.

‘Sod off! Go away! Don’t touch him!’

Suddenly she saw more dark specks on the horizon. She counted five, six, seven, eight, ten?

Within minutes there were a dozen gulls swarming around her husband, all pecking at his face.

‘NOOOOO!’ she screamed. She swung the helm wildly left and right, heeling the boat over to port then to starboard. But it made no difference to the birds. They were crying out, a hideous caw-caw-caw shriek, batting each other with their wings, darting in, pecking at Tony’s eyes, lips, nose, ears.

‘NOOOOOOOOOO!’

She locked the wheel and hurried down below, opened the locker where they kept the six emergency flares, unclipped them and clambered up on deck with them. There were even more gulls now, hideous creatures with demon faces, all fighting each other for a morsel of his face.

She held up one flare, trying to read the instructions, but her hands were shaking so much the tiny print was just a blur. Finally she succeeded, aimed the flared directly at them and pulled the small plastic ring. There was a sharp whoosh, and it fired, sending something like a firework rocket shooting up, well wide of the gulls, high into the sky before exploding in a sheet of red light. They took no notice at all.

‘GO AWAY YOU BASTARDS!’ she screamed and seized another flare.

She aimed again, pulled the loop, and this time scored a bullseye, sending it right into their midst. It hit one gull in the belly, then arced down into the sea, exploding as it struck the water off her port beam. The gull spiralled downwards, helicoptering, unconscious or dead, and landed motionless on the water. As if in wild panic, all the other gulls, cawing in anger and confusion, scattered and flew off towards the horizon.

She was shaking uncontrollably. The motionless gull passed by the port side and soon was way behind her. ‘Bloody serves you right, you ghoul,’ she muttered.

Ten minutes later the gulls returned, some singly, others in groups. Now there seemed even more than before. She fired off another flare, but she was shaking so much she missed altogether. Ignoring it totally, the gulls were now on a feeding frenzy.

Tears were running down her face, blinding her as she fired off another flare, then another, with no effect. She realized now she had only one left. She couldn’t fire it, she needed to preserve it in case she saw a ship on the horizon. It would be her last hope, she knew. The nightmare of Tony dying, which she could not have imagined getting any worse, now had. She had to stop these vulture birds, but how?

She clambered forwards, gripped the mast and desperately, using all her strength, tried to climb the narrow aluminium pole. She felt a splat of bird shit on her forehead. Then another. The din of their cries above her was almost deafening.

She screamed at them, again and again and again. Gripping the mast with her arms and her legs she made it up a few feet, but then, obstructed by the rigging and parts of the ripped sail flapping in her face, she could get no higher.

She slid back down, weeping uncontrollably, and returned to the cockpit. They were heading wildly off course. She turned the wheel and watched the compass needle slowly swing back round. She shouted at the birds until she was hoarse, but it made no difference.

The gulls stayed until there was nothing left of his face to peck, and then, as dusk began to fall, they gradually, some singly, some in pairs, flapped away into the falling darkness.

High up above her, swinging in the bosun’s chair, was her husband’s skull, with a rictus grin and patches of hair on the scalp.

Her stomach was burning, but the rest of her felt numb. Totally numb. She prayed. Prayed that she would wake up and find this had all been just a nightmare.

The gulls returned soon after dawn. Now they were pecking through his clothes, bits of fabric from his orange Henri Lloyd yachting jacket fluttered in the air as they greedily found the flesh beneath it.

By the end of the third day, Tony resembled a scarecrow.

It was twelve more days and nights before, in the early afternoon, she finally saw the lighthouse, the long, welcoming concrete harbour arms of the port of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and a speed limit sign. She was utterly exhausted, almost out of her mind from lack of sleep, and during the past two days she had started speaking out aloud to Tony, holding imaginary conversations with him. The gulls had long departed, having, she presumed, picked his carcass clean. Some bits of his clothes still clung, raggedly, to his skeleton.

There was no wind on this searing hot afternoon, and fortunately, the strip of sail had once more furled around Tony, almost completely covering him. She was motoring, the fuel gauge on empty, praying there was enough left to get her to a berth in the yacht basin that she had found identified on the harbour chart and marked in red by Tony. She was thankful, at least, for his meticulous planning.

Through bloodshot eyes, behind sunglasses that were long fogged with salt, she watched the bunkering stations pass by, cranes, a huge lumber warehouse and an endless line of berthed container ships and tankers. Then finally, to her relief, she saw a whole forest of yacht masts through a gap to starboard and headed towards them.

Fifteen minutes later, passing a refuelling station, she saw a sign for visitors’ berths and, slowing her speed to a crawl, scrambled forward and removed a bow line from its locker, then pulled out several fenders and hung them over the side. She wasn’t sure how she was going to manage the actual berthing, though.

Then, to her relief, an elderly man in a battered peaked cap, with the appearance of a port official, suddenly appeared, signalling to her with his arms. She threw him the bow line, which he caught expertly and secured around a bollard. Moments later he caught the stern line and secured that, and steadily, as if he had done it a thousand times before, reeled her in alongside the pontoon.

Sobbing with relief, she did not think she had ever been so happy to see another human being in her life.

She jumped ashore and then, pointing towards the top of the mast at Tony’s remains, tried to explain what had happened. But he spoke no English and failed to take any notice of her gesticulations, nor did he look up. All he kept saying, repeatedly and insistently through a sparse set of yellow teeth, one gold and several missing, was ‘You Passeport? Passeport? You papers? Papers, documentation?’

She went below, found the boat’s papers and her passport and handed them to him. Signalling he would be back, he hurried off. She stood on the deck, watching him head towards a cluster of buildings, shaking with relief that she was no longer at sea. As she had sailed in, she had passed several yachts flying British flags. If she walked along, with luck she would find someone who could tell her where to find the British consul, or at least let her use their phone.

But before that, she badly needed a drink. She went below and pulled one of the bottles of rum that Tony had been fond of drinking at sea out of the booze cabinet. Just as she was pouring herself a glass, she heard a female voice above her, calling in broken English, ‘Hello? Tony? Hello?’