reach and even round the Cape of Good Hope. Sailing along unfamiliar coasts had been a painfully slow business, however. If you stayed in sight of land, you increased exponentially your risk of running aground, so you had to go slow, take constant soundings, find a new safe harbour every afternoon, because sailing at night that close to land was suicide. If a Chinese treasure fleet had crawled in this manner all the way down Africa’s eastern coast, the crew would doubtless have been restless for home and impatient of a slow retracement of their route, so it was entirely plausible that their navigators would have set a course directly for China. Draw a line between the Cape and Beijing, and it would run pretty much straight through these reefs here. Just as easy for the coral to snag two ships as one.
Ahead of him, mangroves were being slowly ducked by the incoming tide, like a village of elders undergoing baptism. Knox turned and headed back along the beach, past the Yvette and Eden and on to Pierre’s cabins and beyond, still searching the shore as he went. The sand became infested with tiny flies; he set off blizzards of them with every step, cascading ahead of him down the beach. He went down to the sea’s edge to avoid them, small waves splashing timidly around his ankles before withdrawing like unctuous servants, his feet leaving shallow imprints that quickly filled with water and then faded into nothing. It was there in the wash that he saw the shard of porcelain. He crouched to pick it up. It was perhaps an inch long, its edges abraded smooth, white with just a trace of blue upon it, the exact same shade he’d seen on the porcelain fragments on the Morombe sea-bed. He tossed it up and caught it, thinking through what it might mean. Then he tucked it away in his pocket and headed back to Eden.
II
Rebecca’s cuts had healed enough overnight that every small movement was an agony when she woke. She didn’t intend to waste her morning feeling sorry for herself, however, so she gritted her teeth and swung out her legs and used gravity to help herself up, then hobbled through to her father’s office, hoping to guilt Daniel into making coffee and breakfast. He was already up and gone, however, but at least that gave her the opportunity for a more methodical search of her father’s desk than she’d been able to give it when rummaging around for the Yvette’s insurance documentation.
His desk had filing-cabinet-style drawers, with multicoloured hanging folders inside, each tagged with the name of a bank, insurance company, tax authority, stockbroker or friend. One of the tags bore her own name. She pulled a thin sheaf of letters from it, read through them with growing dismay, so obvious was it how absent her heart had been from her words. There were two postcards of London landmarks that she didn’t remember sending. She turned them over and with a jolt recognised Emilia’s handwriting. She must have gone ahead with her forestry training course after all.
– You came anyway? You didn’t tell me?
– You didn’t want me there.
– No! Don’t say that!
– You’d moved beyond me.
– Never! I made one mistake. How could you ‘Is something wrong?’ She looked up to see Daniel at the door. She feared her voice would sound strained if she spoke, so she shook her head instead. He came inside the room. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Better, thanks.’
‘You want me to change your bandages?’
‘It’s okay. Therese is coming by.’
‘How about some breakfast, then?’
‘That would be wonderful.’
He nodded and went out. She returned her letters and her sister’s postcards to the folder, began on Adam’s finances instead. They proved astonishing. She’d known he had money in England, for he’d paid her Oxford allowance from an English bank account. But he’d always been so careful, she’d assumed it had been a constant struggle. He’d built the Yvette himself, for example, and the Jeep was decades old. Yet these folders told a completely different story.
Daniel reappeared with a tray of coffee and fruit salad, toast and jam, set it upon the desk. ‘Is there anything else I can do?’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t think of anything.’
‘What about searching the reefs?’
She smiled and showed him her bandages. ‘I can’t exactly go diving, not like this. And I’m hopeless at doing boat things.’
‘Then maybe I could take the Yvette out, see if I can’t find something.’
‘By yourself? Is that safe?’
‘I know what I’m doing.’
‘Then thanks. That’s really kind.’
‘No problem.’ He shouldered one of his bags. ‘See you later, then.’
Rebecca watched him leave, feeling bad about shutting him out like this when he so clearly just wanted to help. But it wasn’t only the kidnappers who’d insisted on her silence; Mustafa had, too. She resumed totting up her father’s assets. Without even taking Eden into account, he had over three-quarters of a million pounds invested in British bank and share accounts, and he still owned a house near Oxford. He had more income than she’d expected too, and not just from rent, dividends and interest. The Landseer Trust ran at least two expeditions a year here, each made up of twelve to twenty volunteers paying through their noses for the privilege of collecting data from the reefs and forest. He’d also written several journal articles, had conducted field trials on a new GPS tracker system, had acted as an agent for local craftspeople, selling their works to dealers in London and Munich. And now that tourists had started visiting this coast in greater numbers, he’d begun taking in paying guests too, offering day-trips on the Yvette, even the occasional deep-sea fishing expedition. Everything was scrupulously documented and declared, kept here in these drawers. And it occurred to her then that anyone with access to the lodge could easily have found out about her father’s wealth; and that would have made him a very tempting target indeed.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I
Boris sat bolt upright in his bed as he remembered last night’s gunfight. It wasn’t remorse for the two men that had pricked him, but the belated memory of a mistake he’d made. He’d gutted that tomato with his knife before the Raging Bull had taken his face off, but then he’d wiped off his knife and put it back in its sheath and taken it away with him. How could he have been so stupid? The Malagasy police wouldn’t be up to much, from what little he’d seen of them, but even they would have to wonder where the knife had disappeared to. And that would surely lead them to conclude there’d been someone else at the scene.
He threw back his sheet, pulled on trousers, went over to Davit’s cabin. The big man was still fast asleep, Claudia snuggled against him, holding hands like teenage lovers. He gave their bed an extra-hard kick.
‘What time is it?’ grunted Davit.
‘Time we got shifting.’
They dragged the boat down to the sea’s edge, stowed their camping gear, food and other supplies, fixed the outboard. Davit helped Claudia to her seat, then he and Boris pushed it out beyond the breakers and clambered aboard either side to make sure it didn’t capsize. With all that weight, however, it sank low in the choppy water.
‘Maybe we should leave Claudia behind,’ suggested Davit.
‘Maybe we should leave you behind,’ grunted Boris.
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
