Peter James - Dead Tomorrow

Cosmescu didn’t like the way that smelled.

He had long believed in the old adage: Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

And at this moment Jim Towers could hardly be closer. He was bound up so tightly with duct tape that he looked like an Egyptian mummy, lying securely in the rear of Cosmescu’s small white van. The van was registered in the name of a building firm that existed but never traded, and he normally kept it parked out of sight, inside a secure lock-up.

For the moment, it was parked in a side street, just off the main road behind him. Just a couple of hundred yards away.

Quite close enough.

Twenty minutes later, after a slow journey through the lock, the boat headed out of the shelter of the harbour moles into the open sea. Almost instantly the water became rougher, the small boat pitch-poling through the waves in the rising offshore wind.

Glenn was seated on a hard stool, under the shelter of the open cabin that was little more than an awning, next to Jonah, who was at the helm. The DS held on to the compass binnacle in front of him, checking his phone every few minutes as the harbour and shoreline receded, in case there was a text from Ari. But the screen remained blank. After half an hour he was starting to feel increasingly queasy.

The crew took the piss out of him relentlessly.

‘That what you always wear on a boat, Glenn?’ Chris Dicks, nicknamed Clyde, asked him.

‘Yeah. Cos, like, usually I have a private cabin with a balcony.’

‘Get well paid in CID, do you?’

The boat was vibrating and rolling horribly. Glenn was taking deep breaths, each one containing exhaust fumes and varnish and rotted fish, and occasional snatches of Jeyes Fluid – the smell that every police officer associates with death. He was feeling giddy. The sea was becoming a blur.

‘Hope you brought your dinner jacket,’ WAFI said. ‘You’re going to need it if you are planning on dining at the captain’s table tonight.’

‘Yeah, course I did,’ Glenn replied. It was becoming an effort to speak. And he was freezing cold.

‘Keep looking at the horizon, Glenn,’ Tania said kindly, ‘if you feel queasy.’

Glenn tried to look at the horizon. But it was almost impossible to tell where the grey sky met the grey roiling sea. His stomach was playing hoopla. His brain was trying to follow it, with limited success.

Between himself and the skipper, Jonah, who sat on a padded seat, holding the large, round wheel, was the Humminbird sidescan imaging sonar screen.

‘These are the anomalies we picked up yesterday, Glenn,’ Tania Whitlock said.

She ran a replay on the small blue screen. There was a line down the middle, made by the Towfish sonar device which had been trawled behind the boat. She pointed out two small, barely visible black shadows.

‘Those could be bodies,’ she said.

Glenn was not sure exactly what he was meant to be looking at. The shadows looked tiny, the size of ants.

‘Those there?’ he asked.

‘Yes. We’re about one hour away. Coffee?’

Glenn Branson shook his head. One hour , he thought. Shit. A whole hour more of this. He wasn’t sure he could swallow anything. He tried staring at the horizon, but that made him feel even worse.

‘No, thanks,’ he said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Are you sure? You look a little peaky,’ Tania said.

‘Never felt better in my life!’ Glenn said.

Ten seconds later he leapt off his stool, lurched to the side of the boat and threw up violently. Last night’s microwaved lasagne and a lot of whisky. As well as this morning’s single piece of toast.

Fortunately for him, and even more so for those near him, he was on the leeward side.

Some while later, Glenn was woken by the rattle of the anchor chain. The engine died and suddenly the deck was no longer vibrating. He could feel the motion of the boat. The deck pushing him up, then sinking down beneath him again, rolling him left and right in the process. He heard the creak of a rope. The whine of a winch. The pop-hiss of a canned drink being opened. The crackle of radio static. Then Tania’s voice.

‘Hotel Uniform Oscar Oscar. This is Suspol Suspol on board MV Scoob-Eee , calling Solent Coastguard.’ Suspol was the nautical call sign for Sussex Police.

He heard a crackled response. ‘Solent Coastguard. Solent Coastguard. Channel sixty-seven. Over.’

Then Tania again. ‘This is Suspol. We have ten souls on board. Our position is ten nautical miles south-east of Shoreham Harbour.’ She gave the coordinates. ‘We are over our dive area and about to commence.’

Again the crackly voice. ‘How many divers with you, Suspol, and how many in the water?’

‘Nine divers on board. Two going in.’

Glenn was dimly aware that he had a blanket or a tarpaulin over him and he was no longer so cold. His head was swirling. He wanted to be anywhere, absolutely anywhere, but here. He saw Arf peering down at him.

‘How are you feeling, Glenn?’

‘Not great,’ a disembodied voice that sounded like his own responded.

The stink of Jeyes Fluid was even stronger suddenly.

Arf had a kindly, avuncular face, shaded by the peak of his black baseball cap. Wisps of white hair blew loose on either side, like threads of cotton.

‘There are two kinds of seasickness,’ Arf said. ‘Did you know that?’

Glenn shook his head feebly.

‘The first kind is when you are afraid that you are going to die.’

Glenn stared back at him.

‘The second,’ Arf said, ‘is when you are afraid that you are not going to die.’

Around him, Glenn heard laughter.

There was a third kind, Glenn reckoned, which was the one he was experiencing now. It was when you had actually died, but you weren’t able to leave your body.

Tania, in her drysuit, was snipping the corners off the white body bag she was taking down with her, to allow the water to flow out in the event of a recovery. Like a lot of police equipment, these bags were not suitable for underwater work, so they had to be adapted.

With her umbilical plumbed into the surface supply panel and comms system, attended by Gonzo, she tested her suit and mask for leaks, and then the breathing and comms lines of her three-core umbilical. When they were both satisfied, she checked her watch.

For all trained divers, awareness of the risk of the bends, or decompression sickness, was a vital part of their operating procedure. The bends was caused by nitrogen particles building up in the blood. It could be excruciatingly painful, sometimes fatal, and the way to avoid it was by taking frequent stops on the way up from the seabed, some of them for long periods, depending on the length and depth of the dive. Dive time began the moment the diver left the surface.

She looked once more at her umbilical, checked the position of the pink marker buoy a few yards from the boat, then launched herself backwards, jumping clear of the boat, and plunged into the turbulent sea.

For a moment, as she went under the surface in a maelstrom of bubbles, she experienced the beautiful calm that lay beneath. Total silence, except for the hollow, echoing roar of her breathing. Then she bobbed up and, instantly, waves broke over her. She gave Gonzo the thumbs-up.

Although she had dived countless times, both for her work and at every opportunity on holiday, entering the water gave her a fresh adrenalin rush each time. No two dives were ever the same. You didn’t know what you were going to find or experience. And she still could not quite believe her luck that she had landed this job, with this unit, which gave her the opportunity to dive somewhere almost weekly.