“Fuck off.” It was a feeble defiance.
He was still braced against the stern, one hand on the derrick, the other holding the knife. He gave the sea rapid glances, waiting for a calm trough of the waves to give himself a moment’s peace during which he could kill me. Peel was clinging to the stern, unable to haul his huge weight over the transom.
“You didn’t kill me before,” I tried to goad Garrard, “and you won’t now.”
He laughed. “We weren’t meant to kill you the first time, just scare the shit out of you.” He edged forward, but a surge of sea water made him stagger back to the derrick’s security.
I wondered if he’d been telling the truth, and that the attempt on my life in Cullen’s yard had been nothing but a scare tactic. “So why kill me now?”
“Why ever not?” He was amusing himself.
“Whatever Elizabeth’s paying you,” I said, “I’ll double.” I was not planning to make any deals, just to kill him, but I wanted to distract him for a few seconds.
Instead I had amused him. “Your sister’s paying me nothing. We’re partners!” He was mocking my ignorance, but behind the mockery I detected an odd tenderness.
“You’re lovers!” I said in astonishment, and understood at last why she trusted him with the money.
“And partners. It was I, after all, who discovered the picture, and it was I who graciously allowed your sister to invest in that discovery.” He glanced astern and I saw a smooth trough approaching behind a steep crest, and I knew that when that smooth water settled the pitching hull he would come for me.
“What do you mean,” I asked, “discovered it? Elizabeth and you stole it!”
He laughed. “Proclaim your innocence to the end, my lord, and much good may it do you.” He looked behind again, judging the wave’s approach, and, while he was looking away from me, I charged. He must have sensed the attack for he looked back quickly, saw me stagger as the wave heaved Mist-Spinner high, then, as her bows dropped, he let go of the derrick and came at me.
He lunged with the knife. I swung the fish-box, but his lunge had been a feint. He danced away, but I had released the box so that it hit him a glancing blow on the hip. Mist-Spinner tilted backwards on the wave’s crest and the violent motion together with my small blow gave me just enough time to twist away and scramble on to the narrow walkway beside the wheelhouse. Garrard followed me, but he wasn’t so nimble about a boat, and his desperate slash at my right thigh missed.
I was defeated and fleeing. I wanted to reach the foredeck from where I would dive overboard and swim after the drifting Marianne which I’d last seen off Mist-Spinner’s bows. I was too cold and weak to defeat Garrard, but I could leave him here, stranded and helpless, while I sailed away to fetch reinforcements. It wasn’t brave, but it was sensible.
Garrard clambered desperately after me. I limped forward. The searchlight was still switched on, aimed blindly forward to where the waves shattered about Les Trois Grunes. Marianne was thirty yards off the port bow and rolling violently in the shoal water. It would be a tough swim, perhaps a killing swim, but better to die in the sea’s cold cleanness than from Garrard’s knife. I took a breath, then, in the fogged beam of the searchlight, I saw the second shotgun. It was Peel’s shotgun; the weapon he must have discarded on the foredeck when he had first boarded Marianne. The gun now lay in Mist-Spinner’s bow scuppers, trapped there by the pulpit bars.
I threw myself at the weapon. A lurch of the sea made me trip on the forehatch rim; I fell, but the boat’s motion slid me on my blood-slicked belly to where the gun waited. A steel cleat ripped at my thigh. Garrard saw the weapon and jumped desperately from the small platform beside the wheelhouse. His knife was raised. Mist-Spinner corkscrewed in a sudden upsurge of the sea, then thumped down into a trough. My cold hands could not grip the weapon and, when the boat lurched to starboard, I almost let the gun fall into the water. I half slid off the deck after it, only saving myself by grabbing the pulpit rail with my left hand. White water seethed and broke under me. Garrard shouted as the deck heaved back up and I imagined his voice was shouting in triumph and I almost screamed because my imagination felt his blade’s deep slash. The gun was precarious in my nerveless right hand. The knife still didn’t strike. The shout had been Garrard’s protest as a roll of the deck jarred him back against the wheelhouse.
I twisted on to my back. Life was counted in fractions of seconds now. If Garrard could reach me, then I would be dead, but if the boat’s violence in the shoals made him clumsy and gave me time, then I would live. I turned to face him and could see nothing except the blinding white brilliance of the searchlight beam. I was still half overboard, clinging to the pulpit with my left hand. I tried to sit up, but an upward surge of the bows drove me down. I could not see Garrard. I was blinded by light, paralysed by weakness, and terrified. Mist-Spinner hammered off the wave crest and a spout of breaking water exploded up beside me.
I was tempted to let myself fall and to strike out for the drifting Marianne. I did not even know if this gun was loaded, let alone cocked, but then a slice of silver light dazzled from the great white blinding flood of the searchlight. It was the knife blade, raised to strike, and beside it was a ghost of a face, mouth open, teeth showing, shouting, then the light was blotted out by Garrard’s body as he hurled himself towards me.
My thumb groped for the gun’s hammers. No time. I was screaming defiance and fear. I barely had time to pull the triggers. My right hand was round the narrow part of the stock, the gun’s butt was against my ribs, and the barrels were pointing somewhere at the shadow above me.
I pulled both triggers. I was still screaming, now in anticipation of the knife’s strike.
The gun had been cocked. The butt drove into my ribs like a kicking horse. Noise filled the chaotic air.
Garrard’s head simply disappeared. Blood fountained in a halo about the searchlight beam. I watched, appalled, the first strong colour of this black night. His knife clattered down to the deck and lodged against my right ankle while his body twitched back as if plucked by strings. It slammed against the sloping wheelhouse windows, then slid down on to the foredeck.
I closed my eyes. I was still half overboard. My ribs hurt. I was cold and shaking. I pulled with my left hand and, slowly, very slowly, I inched myself aboard. White water broke at Mist-Spinner’s stem and drenched the foredeck and, when I opened my eyes, I saw Garrard’s diluted blood flooding the shallow scuppers. I rolled on to my side, safe now inside the pulpit rails and slowly, very slowly, knelt upright. I still clutched the gun.
Garrard’s expensive tweed jacket was soaked in blood. The cloth of the jacket had snagged on a cleat and the motion of the boat was twitching him from side to side in a sick parody of life, but he was dead. I’d blown away his knowing, confident face. All that was left of his head was a butcher’s mess of blood, brains and bone.
I just stared at him as if I expected the headless corpse somehow to stand and come back to the attack. I was shaking. I’d never killed a man before. I’d promised Jennifer to kill this one, but making the promise was one thing, fulfilling it was quite another. Blood gurgled in the scuppers and drained overboard.