Peter James - Dead Tomorrow

‘Blimey, Glenn,’ said Arf. ‘We didn’t realize you were a telephone scientist as well as a master mariner.’

‘Piss off!’ he retorted with a big grin. Then, continuing, he said, ‘So this is what was happening here. After the boat left Shoreham Harbour, the first location update was picked up by this Shoreham base station and this Worthing one.’ He pointed at the ones marked A and B . ‘Twenty minutes later, the second signal home was also picked up by these two. But the third one, approximately one hour after leaving harbour, was picked up by this third one as well, just east of Brighton Marina.’ He pointed at C . ‘That tells us Towers was steering a south-easterly course – which we’ve marked, as a best guess, with this green dotted line.’

‘Good film, Das Boot ,’ Gonzo said.

‘Now here’s where it gets interesting,’ said Glenn, ignoring him.

‘Oh, great!’ WAFI said. ‘We’ve been waiting for it to get interesting, because it’s been pretty boring so far!’

The DS waited patiently for them all to stop laughing.

‘The timing advance can be anything from zero to sixty-three for a given link with a phone,’ Glenn went on, ignoring their barracking. ‘So if the maximum range is about twenty miles, then divide that into sixty-three slots and you can work out distance to within about eighteen hundred feet.’

‘OK,’ Gonzo said. ‘If I’m understanding this correctly, you said this shows the direction the boat was heading. So this is its last known position before it went out of range?’

Glenn Branson shook his head.

‘No, I don’t think it went out of range.’

He looked up. The others all frowned.

‘This is where the fourth and last signal – the last location update – was transmitted from,’ he continued. ‘Now, the seaward range from standard base stations is about twenty miles. But I was told that the mobile phone companies, where possible, build their coastal masts exceptionally high to increase range, so they can pick up lucrative roaming charges from foreign ships passing, so the range here is probably quite a bit further than that – could be as much as thirty miles.’

Gonzo scrawled some calculations down on a notepad.

‘Right,’ Glenn said, ‘you all know the Scoob-Eee. It’s not a fast boat – its maximum speed is ten knots – roughly twelve miles an hour. When this last signal was picked up, she had only been out for less than ninety minutes – and she was sailing at an angled course, putting her approximately ten miles out to sea – well within range.’

There was a few moments’ silence while they all reflected on this. It was Tania Whitlock who broke it.

‘Perhaps his phone battery died, Glenn?’ she suggested.

‘It’s possible – but he was an experienced skipper and the phone was one of his lifelines. Don’t you think it’s unlikely he’d have put to sea either without a charger or with an uncharged battery?’

‘He could have dropped it overboard,’ said Gonzo.

‘Yep, he could,’ Glenn agreed. ‘But again unlikely for an experienced skipper.’

Gonzo shrugged. ‘Yeah, Towers knew what he was doing, but it’s easily done. You think something else happened?’

Branson stared at him levelly. ‘What about the possibility that it sank?’

‘Ah, now I get it!’ Arf said. ‘You want us to go out there and take a look for it, scan the bottom?’

‘You guys are catching on quick!’ Branson said.

‘She’s a solid boat, built to take heavy seas,’ WAFI said. ‘She’s unlikely to have sunk.’

‘What about an accident?’ Branson said. ‘A collision? A fire? Sabotage? Or something more sinister.’

‘Like what, Glenn?’ Tania asked.

‘The voyage doesn’t make sense,’ Branson said. ‘I’ve interviewed his wife. Friday night was their wedding anniversary. They had a restaurant reservation. He had no clients booked for any night fishing trip. Yet instead of going home, he got on the boat and headed out to sea.’

‘Yep, well, I can sympathize with him,’ Arf said. ‘The choice of dinner with your missus or being out at sea on your own – no contest.’

They all grinned. Tania, who was newly married, less humorously than her colleagues.

Gonzo pointed out of the window. ‘There’s a Force Nine hooley blowing out there. Do you know what the sea’s like at the moment?’

‘A bit choppy, I should imagine.’ Glenn looked back at Gonzo quizzically.

‘If you want us to go out there, mate, we’ll go,’ WAFI said. ‘But you’re coming with us.’

Lynn sat impatiently at her desk at the Harrier Hornets work station with her phone headset on. She glanced at the calendar, tacked to the red partition wall, to the right of her computer screen.

Three weeks to go till Christmas, she thought. She had never felt so unprepared – or uninterested – in her life. There was only one Christmas present she wanted.

Her friend Sue Shackleton had told her she could come up with £10,000 quickly. That now left a shortfall of £15,000.

Right at this moment, Luke was at his bank, setting up everything for the wire transfer of 150,000 euros to Marlene Hartmann at Transplantation-Zentrale. But he would not actually make the transfer until they’d checked out all the references.

So far it was so good on that score. She had spoken to the woman in Manchester, whose name was Marilyn Franks. Her daughter’s liver transplant had been done at a clinic in Sussex, near Brighton, and it had been a complete success. Marilyn Franks could not praise Marlene Hartmann highly enough.

It was the same with the man in Cape Town. He’d had initial complications, but the aftercare, he assured Lynn, was far more thorough than he had imagined was possible. The Swedish woman in Stockholm, whose husband had had a new heart and lungs, was equally emphatic in her praise. With both the last two cases, the operations were carried out in local clinics.

It was still too early to phone America, but in her own mind, from what she had now heard, Lynn was already convinced. Still, she owed it to Luke, especially, to complete the checks. And there was not going to be any second chance.

Hopefully, some time this afternoon, or tomorrow at the latest, after she had spoken to the other two references, the transfer of the first half of the money would be done. The remaining 50 per cent would have to be handed over, cash on delivery, on the day of the transplant. Which gave her days, at most, to find the last £15,000.

She had tested the German woman out on what would happen if she had a shortfall and Marlene had been firm. It was all or nothing. She could not be more clear.

Fifteen thousand. It was still a lot of money to find – and even more so to find inside a week, maybe less. Further, the exchange rate of the pound against the euro was predicted to worsen. Which meant the shorfall might get even bigger.

From the moment Luke made the transfer, the clock would start ticking. At any time in the following days, Lynn could get a phone call from the German woman, giving her and Caitlin as little as two hours’ notice before they were picked up and transferred to the clinic. As Marlene had explained so clearly, you could not predict when an accident was going to happen that would provide a suitable matching organ.

She glanced around. Christmas cards were starting to appear on desks in the office, and tiny bits of tinsel here and there, and sprigs of mistletoe. But the company had a number of Muslims working for it and there was an edict that Christmas was not to be openly celebrated by employees for fear of offending the non-Christians. So yet again there would be no proper decorations going up – nor an official office Xmas lunch.