Will Adams - The Eden Legacy

‘Looking for something?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she told him.

He shrugged, let it go. ‘I’m taking us south-east,’ he said. ‘We’ll be back at the pass soon.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘And thanks.’

He gave her a slightly puzzled look. ‘You don’t have to keep thanking me, Rebecca,’ he said.

She nodded, aware she was behaving strangely and was bound to arouse his suspicion; but it was hard to stop herself. ‘Maybe I should check on Pierre,’ she said.

‘He’ll be fine.’

‘He took a blow to the head,’ she said.

Daniel shrugged. ‘As you like,’ he said, returning inside the bridge.

The roll of the deck threw her a little. The breeze had grown strong, rousing the sea with it. She unbolted and opened the main hatch. It was dark inside, but the decklights were strong enough to see Pierre lying on his side, still securely trussed. She lowered herself into the hold. ‘Are you awake?’ she murmured. He gave a grunt of acknowledgement. She put a finger to her lips to ask for quiet. He nodded. She untied his gag.

‘Please, Rebecca,’ he begged. ‘You have to believe me. I didn’t do anything to Adam or Emilia. I swear I didn’t. They were my friends, my closest friends. I loved them both.’ He was weeping and snuffling piteously. She found his protestations unnervingly convincing. ‘Please, Rebecca,’ he said. ‘You can’t trust that man. He’s the one! He’s the one!’

He was hog-tied, his ankles and wrists separately bound, then knotted together behind his back. She examined the knots more closely. By undoing one knot, she could leave his wrists and ankles securely bound, just not to each other. It would make him more comfortable and enable her to release him quicker in an emergency. In the half-light, with the wet rope, unpicking the knot was hard. She was so concentrated on it that she didn’t even hear Daniel approaching across the deck above until he appeared at the hatch. ‘What are you doing?’ he frowned.

‘I was just making sure his knots were secure,’ she told him.

‘And?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not very good at this kind of thing.’

‘Let me have a look.’

‘It’s okay. I can-’

‘Come on, Rebecca. If there’s something wrong with his knots, I need to see for myself.’

The hold was too small for them all. Daniel helped Rebecca out first, then lowered himself down. He knelt beside Pierre, looked up and around at her in surprise. ‘Did you untie this?’ he asked.

‘I told you it was getting loose.’

He shook his head. ‘I know knots, Rebecca. No way he did this himself.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘Rebecca?’ asked Daniel. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

She moved as quickly as she could, slammed closed the hatch before he could reach it, shot the bolts. ‘Rebecca!’ he yelled, pounding the underside of the hatch. ‘Let me out!’

‘You’ve been on this boat before,’ she said.

The pounding stopped. ‘Of course I have. I sailed it up from Tulear with you.’

‘No. Before then.’

‘Rebecca, I was never on this boat before then. I swear it.’

‘The police have proof.’

‘They can’t. It’s not possible. What kind of proof?’

‘The incontrovertible kind.’

‘No! I swear to you. They’re lying. They must be.’

Rebecca thought of Andriama. ‘No,’ she said. ‘They’re not lying.’

There was silence. ‘Don’t do this, Rebecca. You’ve got to trust me. This is madness! Let me out!’ He began hammering again on the hatch. It was a sturdy piece of work, two planks of cassave held in place with steel hinges and bolts, but it wasn’t designed as a brig, it wouldn’t hold him forever. She needed to get back to Eden before he broke free. She’d be safe once back inside the lodge. She hurried to the bridge. The Yvette rose on a swell. She saw, to her left and right, the white lines of breakers on the reefs. The pass was directly ahead. Compass, sonar, GPS, charts. But they weren’t second nature to her, as to Daniel. She had no confidence in herself.

Behind her, the pounding increased in intensity. A splintering noise came from the hatch. She looked around as a pale yellow crack appeared in the cassave. It wouldn’t hold him much longer, and once he was out, she’d be at his mercy. She needed to subdue him while she still could. She remembered the anaesthetics in the cabin’s medicine chest. She hurried down the steep steps, opened it up. Yes. A full bottle of ketamine, now a party drug of choice, but originally for anaesthetising mammals in the wild. It was perfect for dart-guns because it was so fast-acting, even if not injected directly into a vein. She tore a new syringe from its plastic wrapping as she hurried back up the steps. She’d used ketamine plenty of times herself over the years. Dosage was proportional to body-mass. She made an estimate of Daniel’s weight, sucked up the requisite amount. The wood splintered. Daniel reached out an arm and fumbled blindly for the bolts. The Yvette pitched over a wave. Rebecca stumbled and went sprawling. Daniel found the first bolt, slid it back. She scrambled on all fours along the deck as Daniel found the second bolt. She stabbed the needle as high up his arm as she could reach, plunging the ketamine into his system with her thumb. He yelled as the hatch flew open, slammed back on its hinges. She fled to the cabin, down the steps, pulled the hatch closed above her, shot the bolt just as Daniel arrived, stamping down hard on the wood. ‘What have you done to me?’ he cried, fear in his voice. ‘What the fuck was that stuff?’ He stamped down again, harder. The wood splintered, his foot came rushing through, catching her on the forehead, throwing her sprawling backwards, tripping over the medicine chest, falling against the cot, knocking a pole out of its slot, bringing Emilia tumbling down on top of her, cold and clammy, and the sound of her own voice screaming, screaming, screaming at this waking nightmare, pushing her sister off her, brushing at her tainted skin.

It was a while before she stopped screaming, and noticed the silence.

Rebecca looked up. Daniel’s leg was still plunged through the hatch, but he wasn’t moving. The ketamine had worked. She got to her feet, pushed his foot up and out through the gaping hole, unbolted the hatch. Daniel had fallen across it, so she had to heave to clear him away. Her heart played all sorts of tricks on her as she looked down at him. Sorrow and fear; love and hate. But she had no time to second-guess herself. Ketamine was a temporary solution. It would buy her maybe twenty minutes. She needed to make the most of that time.

There was plenty of rope left in the lockers. She tied his wrists together behind his back, then his ankles, emulating as best she could what Daniel had done to Pierre. But Daniel knew knots; she didn’t. She gagged him and tied him to the rail, so that she could keep an eye on him from the bridge. Then she went to check on Pierre too. He begged her to release him, but she shook her head. One of these two men was a murderer, but she still wasn’t sure which. Get back into the lagoon, raise reinforcements, then Pierre and Daniel could plead their cases all they liked.

The sea was growing rougher. There was no obvious direction or pattern to the waves. Each time the Yvette rose on the swell, she’d glimpse the pass and steer back towards it; but then they’d pitch into a trough and it would corkscrew her all over the place, so that whenever she next rose, they were off course again.

Daniel raised his head a little, looked around. He caught her eye and froze for a moment, as if his memory had returned. He started rubbing his hands and ankles back and forth to gain some play. ‘Stop that!’ she shouted. But he didn’t stop. ‘Please!’ she cried. ‘Just let me get us home. Then I’ll let you free.’ But he looked at the turbulent sea and shook his head. The bottle of ketamine rolled across the deck. She picked it up; there was still a little left. She went down into the cabin for a fresh syringe, came back up to find Daniel working furiously at his wrists, getting some decent play in them now. She sucked up the last of the ketamine, plunged it into his arm. Blood bubbled on his skin. They both looked at each other for a moment, before Daniel resumed his frantic efforts to escape. Rebecca took a step back. One hand free, two hands, pulling off his gag, scrabbling at his ankles. But then his hands stopped obeying him, his movements slowed, he groaned and was out again.