And there he was. Ben.
She watched him approach the boat and tried to freeze-frame the moment, imprint it on her memory, the instant before she dragged the man she loved into this shitstorm. Maybe she should still protect him, turn him away, stop him coming on board. She hadn’t told him anything on the phone, just that she needed him straight away. She could force him to turn round right now but the truth was she needed him, she couldn’t do this alone.
She didn’t stop him climbing on board.
He frowned when he saw her face. ‘What’s up?’
She felt herself close to tears.
He looked at Sam and Libby. ‘That’s them?’
Ellie nodded.
He turned to them. ‘Hi.’
They didn’t reply, just nodded. Libby had a wild look on her face. She turned her gaze from Ben to the hatch of the cabin.
Ben spoke to Ellie. ‘I thought you were taking her to the police.’
Ellie shook her head. ‘Something happened.’
She walked towards the hatch.
‘Come on,’ she said, then turned to Sam and Libby. ‘Wait there.’
She took careful steps down the ladder, heard Ben’s footfall behind her. She got to the bottom and moved aside so he could take it in.
Jack was where she’d left him, blood blossomed round his body, draining through the floorboards and gathering in the hull below. His eyes were open, his lips already a little discoloured, skin greying. The blood flowing from the wounds in his neck and stomach had slowed.
‘Holy shit,’ Ben said.
Ellie didn’t look at him, kept her eyes on the corpse.
Ben turned to her. ‘Holy fucking shit, Ellie.’
The boat rocked in the water making them both spread their feet and shift their weight.
Ben rubbed at his head and stared at the body, eyes wide.
‘It was self-defence,’ Ellie said.
‘Is he dead?’
Ellie nodded.
Ben shook his head. ‘Oh shit. Fucking hell, Ellie.’
Ben pulled a hand down his face, scrunched his eyes then opened them. He peered at the wounds on Jack’s body. Part of the stomach a shredded mess, the gaping hole in the neck, livid strangulation marks on the throat.
Ben looked at Ellie. ‘Self-defence? Really?’
Ellie avoided catching his eye. ‘He tried to take Libby away. He was violent.’
‘Who did this?’
Ellie thought. Libby first in the stomach, then Sam in the neck, then her stopping him from leaving.
‘We all did.’
‘Tell me the truth,’ Ben said. ‘It’s me, Ellie.’
‘He attacked Libby. She panicked. She stabbed him in the stomach with scissors. He kept at her. Sam stabbed him in the neck. Then I did the throat.’
Ben shook his head and took a step back from the corpse. ‘This is so fucked up.’
Ellie put a hand out and touched the table in the middle of the room to steady herself. ‘What do we do?’
Ben looked at her, then at Jack, and shook his head. He walked round the body as if it might seem less dead from the other side.
‘Was it really self-defence?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then we go to the police. Tell them everything.’
‘They won’t believe us.’
‘Yes, they will, they’ll have to.’
Ellie nodded at Jack’s body. ‘This doesn’t look like self-defence.’
Ben shook his head. ‘But it was. I believe you.’
Ellie looked at him. ‘The police won’t. A jury won’t.’
Ben shrugged. ‘We have to take that chance.’
‘We can’t do that to Libby and Sam,’ Ellie said. ‘We just can’t. We have to protect them.’
Ben looked out the cabin hatch. ‘What the hell are you saying? Are you suggesting we cover this up?’
He stepped back from Jack’s body and stumbled over the scissors on the floor, recoiled from them. ‘Jesus Christ.’
Ellie looked at her husband.
‘We can do it,’ she said.
Ben stared at her. ‘Have you lost your mind? Think about what you’re saying for a minute.’
The only noise was the clank of the rigging against the mast, a coded signal beamed into the atmosphere, a proclamation of guilt to the world, like the conspiracy of Ben’s mobile-phone signals, poisoning the minds of locals.
‘I don’t think he would’ve told anyone he was coming here,’ Ellie said. ‘He didn’t want the police involved, for obvious reasons.’
‘So what?’
‘So if no one knows he was here, there’s nothing linking us to him.’
Ben snorted in disbelief. ‘Except the fact he’s lying dead in a pool of his own fucking blood in our boat.’
‘We can clear this up,’ Ellie said. ‘Make it go away.’
‘No chance,’ Ben said. ‘It’s insane.’
‘What’s the alternative?’ Ellie held a hand out to him. ‘We all get done for murder. Libby and Sam would be guilty of killing their own father. God knows what would happen to them. They’ve already suffered enough, I’m not putting them through that.’
Ben nodded towards the cabin door. ‘What about those two?’
Ellie followed his look. ‘What about them?’
‘If we try to cover this up, they would have to go along with it.’
Ellie shook her head. ‘I know.’
Ben stared at the corpse. ‘Self-defence or not, they’ve contributed to the death of their own dad. That’s a lot to handle. Didn’t you find Sam on the bridge?’ He waved his hand around the room. ‘How will he cope with this? And the girl is just a kid.’
‘Maybe we should ask them,’ Ellie said.
A long silence.
‘OK,’ Ben said.
He stepped carefully around the body and up the stairs, Ellie behind him.
Sam and Libby were sitting at the stern, arms around each other, looking out to sea. Gulls dive-bombed the breakwater, splashing at the surface with their beaks.
Ben stood over them as Ellie crouched down to eye level.
‘This is Ben, my husband. We have a decision to make.’
Her voice was level. Ben had always been the calm one with Logan. Ellie used to fly off the handle, shouting upstairs to the boy, but she never heard Ben’s voice raised in anger. Now it was her turn to be calm.
‘What decision?’ Sam said.
‘We need to work out what to do,’ Ellie said.
Libby’s eyes were wide with panic, her breathing erratic. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We have two choices. Either we go to the police and tell them everything, or Ben and I make this go away, but you two would have to play along. This never happened, you were never here, you haven’t seen your dad since the morning he was stabbed at your home.’
Libby scratched at the back of her hand, shot scared glances at her brother. ‘We can’t go to the police,’ she said. ‘We just can’t.’
Ellie put a hand on top of hers. ‘It wouldn’t be easy, but if we told them the truth, all of it, it might be OK.’
Sam shook his head. ‘You don’t believe that.’
Ben looked at Sam. ‘There’s a lot of uncertainty here. It would be rough, and we’d all get in trouble, but at least we’d be telling the truth.’
Their four faces were close now, huddling like conspiring witches.
Libby shook her head, swallowed. ‘No way.’
‘What’s the alternative?’ Sam said.
Ellie looked at him. ‘Ben and I can get rid of the body.’
‘How?’
‘We just will,’ Ellie said, her voice flat. ‘But that’s not the hard bit. The hard bit will be staying quiet about it. Forever. You can never tell anyone what happened here. Especially your mum. We’d need to come up with a story and you’d need to stick to it. That won’t be easy.’
Sam looked at his sister. ‘Lib?’
Libby stared at the cabin hatch. She looked like a fox caught in a snare, ready to gnaw her own leg off. She glanced at her brother, then out to sea. She chewed on her lip and rubbed at her wrist.