She fingered her bruises. ‘No the pain has eased off. No permanent damage, though, I think.’
‘What about your front tooth? Doesn’t that hurt?’
‘Oh that. That was knocked out years ago. The cap’s just fallen off.’
‘Would you like a drink,’ he asked.
‘What? Alcohol, you mean?’
‘Yes, I’ve got some gin, or scotch.’
‘Hell, yes; a scotch would be great, thanks.’ She sat down carefully, clearly in some pain and watched him retrieve a bottle of Glenfiddich from its stowage and pour out a couple of glasses.
‘Cheers,’ he said as she took a glass from him.
He sat down on the opposite side of the cabin and took a sip. ‘So, you were going to tell me what happened to you,’ he said.
‘Yes. I was on a yachting trip across the Atlantic with a friend called Joe Johnson. He’s an American who comes from Dover. Our boat sank in a storm and you found me in a life raft. You took me to Bermuda and we checked into a hotel. You paid for my room. The next day when you came to find me, you found that I’d checked out of my room. You’d no idea where I’d gone.’ She drank some of her scotch. ‘There; that’s the bare bones of the story. We might flesh it out a bit later.’
He stared at her for a moment. ‘But that’s all crap!’
‘Of course it is. It’s for the best. I’m grateful you pulled me out of the water, so to speak, but believe me, you don’t want to be involved any more than you are already.’
‘So who was this Joe Johnson?’ he asked.
‘No idea. Johnson’s one of the most common surnames in the States, Anglo surname anyway, and I believe there are more than twenty places called Dover in North America. I learned that from Mash, the novel. Hawkeye and Trapper called themselves the pros from Dover.’
He frowned into his glass of Scotch, not having a clue what she was talking about. ‘So is your name actually Emily?’ he asked after a while.
‘Yeah, Emily Smith.’
‘Not Brown?’
She set her glass down with a sharp rap on the table. ‘Look Steven, it might seem a bit of a bloody joke to you now, but there might come a time when you’re grateful for it.’
‘Ok Miss Smith; I’ll remember that. I’ll also try and forget the joke of you knocking me out, trussing me up and threatening me with a gun!’
The yacht heaved over at the crest of a wave and she had to grab the table to steady herself. The glass began to slide towards the edge but she seized it and took another drink. ‘Yeah I’m sorry about that, but when you’ve been floating about in the middle of the Atlantic for days, you might get a little paranoid yourself. It was your gun,’ she finished.
‘Does that make it alright then?’
‘No, it was sort of a way of asking you why you have one on board.’
‘To deal with any nutters I might come across during my voyage.’
They stared at each other in silence for a while.
‘How long before we reach Bermuda?’ she asked.
He gazed up at the wind read out on the navigation display on the bulkhead. ‘Hard to say. It’s still over five hundred miles, nautical miles away. Could be five days with a favourable wind, but it might take twice as long.’
‘What do you do at night?’ she asked.
‘How do you mean?’ he said, somewhat taken aback.
‘Well you can’t stop the boat while you’re asleep, can you?’
‘Oh I see. Well, there’s an automatic steering system. I set an alarm to wake me every hour and I have a look around. Also if the weather forecast is poor, I shorten sail and my navigation system alerts me if there is a sudden change in the wind, or if the course alters for any reason. There’s also a radar scanner which will alert me if there are any other boats or ships around.’
She nodded. ‘Sound’s tiring.’
‘Well there’s plenty of time to nap during the day.’
‘I could do with some sleep now. Have you got a spare bed somewhere?’
‘Through there’s the aft cabin. You can sleep in there. Sorry if it smells of unwashed male. I’ll sleep in here. Let’s at least find you a clean sleeping bag.’
‘Thanks. Maybe you can teach me something about sailing, on the way to Bermuda, as part of my cover.’
‘More than Joe Johnson did, perhaps.’
To his surprise, she gave a brief chuckle. ‘Yeah, he turned out to be a useless bastard.’
‘I’m going to cast off the raft now. I retrieved your shoes; they might dry out after a few days in the sun. Do you want to bid it a fond farewell?’
Her expression darkened. ‘I never want to see it again,’ she replied.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Gerry stared up at the cabin roof enjoying the miracle of being alive and safe. She had slept deeply despite occasional nightmares about her abduction, the plane journey and the fear she had felt as the raft was tossed about in the storm.
She remembered the joyous relief when she saw the flare burst overhead and heard the chugging of the engine as the yacht approached. She wondered why she had been so paranoid. How could they possibly have known that she had survived the crash, realise that she had been drifting in a raft for five days and then arrange for a yacht to pick her up just before she died of thirst when her death was what they had desired? But then she had a sudden anxiety that perhaps they had secretly been tracking her and arranged her rescue as part of the conspiracy and she had decided not to take any chances.
Her treatment of Steven Morris had been unnecessarily harsh, but in fact it was partly a weird over-reaction to her impulse to hug him. His obvious distaste for her appearance was understandable considering that she looked and smelt awful and had violently assaulted him on his own yacht. Despite his apparent lack of any deeply felt resentment she had locked the cabin door from the inside, although they had been bolts designed merely for privacy rather than security, and she had slept with one of his kitchen knives under her pillow.
Bright sunlight now cast patterns around the cabin that swooped and circled as the yacht pitched and heaved with each successive wave.
She heard Steven clambering about in the cockpit, occasionally muttering to himself, sometimes humming in a rather tuneless fashion. She thought over what she had found out about him from the internet. He was aged forty-seven; he had completed a short military career, achieving the rank of Major in the Royal Marines. He had served creditably in the Gulf war, but resigned a few years afterwards. His subsequent career in the property trading business had been successful and his ownership of this yacht and the free time to sail it across the Atlantic suggested that he had ample means. She had also found a two year gap between his departure from military service and his property business which had been spent on some lucrative but clandestine overseas mercenary adventure, which perhaps she should investigate further. Apart from that, she knew that he was widowed five months ago and had one daughter aged twenty two.
She needed to pee. She unbolted the door and peered out. Across the way was the door with the brass letters WC affixed. Not bothering to cover her nakedness, she stepped quickly and quietly inside. She managed to supress a gasp of pain and was washing her hands when she heard Steven jumping down the steps and into the saloon. Damn.
‘I’m in here,’ she called out.
A silent pause. ‘Er…right,’ he replied.
‘I’m not wearing anything,’ she said only too aware of how her naked vulnerability of today was in stark contrast to her naked aggression of yesterday.
‘Ok, I’ll go back up while you get dressed, then,’ he said, and shortly after she heard his tread on the steps and the door close.
She stepped back into her borrowed cabin and quickly pulled on her borrowed clothes. She spied an elastic band around some rolled up papers. She remembered the simple pleasure of combing out her newly washed hair yesterday as she now swept it up into a pony tail and secured it with the band. There was a mirror on the back of the door and she gazed at her reflection. God, she looked a sight; hollow eyes, one surrounded by greeny yellow bruising and her lip still swollen. She carefully pushed up her lip and inspected the peg where her cap had fallen off. She shook her head in disgust at her appearance and clambered up into the cockpit.