“I-I don’t know,” she said, her speech slurring a little. “I don’t—”
“Charlie,” Sean cut in. I caught the urgent tone and glanced up. He was over by the seating, kneeling over something – or someone – hidden from my view behind one of the tables.
“I’ll be back in a moment, Jo,” I told the woman with what I hoped was a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Just lie still. We’ll get you some help.”
I hurried over to Sean. As I rounded the end table the first thing I saw was a pair of bike boots, leading up to leather-clad legs. The sight filled me with a sense of deep foreboding. If the state of an innocent bystander like Jo was anything to go by, I knew what I would see at the other end of this wasn’t going to be good.
I was right.
Paxo lay on his back on the polished wooden decking with his hands spread slightly out from his body, palms downwards like he was having to hold on to stay there. A pool of blood haloed his head from some unseen wound. There was a lot of it, spreading fast.
“Paxo,” Sean was saying calmly, not letting alarm leak into his voice. His self-control always had been better than mine. “Martin, can you hear me?”
Paxo’s eyes opened, very slowly, but he didn’t move his head. His breathing was shallow and seemed to require conscious effort.
I started to turn. “I’ll get someone,” I said. “They must have a medic on this damned ship.”
Sean glanced up at me and shook his head, just once.
At that moment the door opened and Daz and William walked in, jerking to a stop as they spotted Jo just inside the doorway.
“Go find a medic,” I snapped at them. “
“Come on, Martin,” Sean said. “Don’t give up. Stay with me, man!” Paxo didn’t seem to hear him. He was gasping now, the gaps between inhalations growing longer, more laboured. I could see his skinny chest vibrating with the stress every breath was causing him. His limbs began to shake, one heel dancing.
I looked at Sean again, helpless, my vision blurring.
I heard movement and then William dropped to his knees alongside me.
“Aw Jesus,” he muttered, raw pain in his voice. “What
Paxo’s lips moved and Sean leaned closer.
“I guess,” Paxo whispered, “you better keep that lighter . . .”
And then he simply stopped breathing.
“Oh, no. No you don’t,” Sean growled, and I felt his anger rising like my own. He twisted to rip open the zip on Paxo’s leathers, exposing the front of his T-shirt, and brought his clenched fist down hard, twice, on Paxo’s sternum, trying to shock his heart back into action. “Come on, you little bastard, you don’t give up on me that easy!”
With a kind of controlled violence, he linked his hands and began cardiac massage on Paxo’s chest, the force of each compression making the smaller man’s body jerk and twitch. I took over while Sean pinched Paxo’s nose and tilted his head back in a desperate attempt to breathe life back into him.
We kept going like that right up until the ship’s doctor arrived at a run and told us, gently, that we were wasting our time. The back of the skull had been fractured like an eggshell, causing catastrophic damage that even a fully-equipped hospital would not have been able to deal with.
Paxo was dead.
***
Daz took it hardest. Despite their differences on this trip, he’d been Paxo’s oldest friend. He slumped down on one of the corner seats, put his head in his hands, and wept. William had gone back over to Jo, who had also been moved onto the seating and was having her head wound dressed.
I stood with Sean, feeling sick with despair and guilt. That we’d left Isobel with Jamie and so left both him and Paxo unprotected. But we’d thought the danger was over, hadn’t we?
The ferry’s crew quickly decided to herd the rest of us out of the lounge and close it off, leaving Paxo’s body undisturbed for the police when we docked in Troon.
We were ushered out into the corridor outside with our gear. Our names were taken and then we were left almost to our own devices. We were almost ignored in the general air of controlled panic. This was not, I surmised, an eventuality for which the crew had received much training.
William came out, giving Jo his arm to lean on, then handed her over to a couple of the crew who led her away. He watched them go, then came back over to us with his face grim.
“She says she walked back in on it,” he said quietly. “Pax was already down and this guy was just about to belt Isobel. Jo thought he was using a walking stick, but it sounds like one of those extending batons.”
“Did she describe the man?”
William shook his head. “The only thing she noticed about him was he had plaster across his face, like his nose was broken . . .”
The shrill warbling tone of a mobile phone started up and I realised we must still be close enough to land to pick up a signal.
Daz had sunk down onto the nearest row of seating as soon as he’d come out of the lounge, still looking
