I
Time had been a torment for Rebecca. After half an hour, she’d begun to fear that something dreadful had happened to Daniel. After an hour, she was sure of it. She paced back and forth on deck, checking on Pierre and doing purposeless things in the bridge and cabin, just so that she wouldn’t have to think. But she thought nonetheless, berating herself for putting Daniel at risk on such a futile errand. She’d never forgive herself if he came to harm while She heard his voice, gave a sob of relief and ran to greet him. She was going to throw her arms around him, but the way he pulled a face and spread his hands, she knew at once. For a moment, she felt unsteady on her feet, but then she forced herself to be strong. ‘Where?’ she asked.
‘I want you to listen carefully,’ said Daniel. ‘Your sister was trapped by a rock-fall. She’s been underwater several days now. It shows. I don’t think you should see her like this. I don’t think she’d want that.’
‘She’s my sister,’ said Rebecca. ‘I don’t care how she looks. Where is she?’
‘Nearby. Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
She watched him climb back into the sea, take hold of a shapeless form. When he returned to the ladder, she couldn’t help herself, she gave a cry and looked away. He brought Emilia aboard by himself, then took her to the cabin. Her left arm spilled from his hold as he did so, a digital camera around her wrist dragging along the deck. He had to turn around to carry her down the companionway steps, but they were so steep that he missed his footing anyway and both he and Emilia tumbled to the floor. Rebecca gave a low sob. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Daniel, the strain in his voice betraying how hard he was finding this. Rebecca waited on deck until he climbed back up and out. ‘I’ll get us back to Eden, okay?’ he said, touching her elbow in sympathy.
‘Yes. And thank you. I know how hard that must have been.’
‘It’s okay. I’m just so sorry.’
She went below. Daniel had laid Emilia out on one of the beds and covered her with a thin white sheet that was already translucent with moisture, the button of her denim shorts showing through, along with fragments of some bold slogan on her T-shirt. For the second time that day, Rebecca pulled down a makeshift shroud to reveal a member of her family. She glanced at her sister’s ravaged pale face, then looked away again, only able to bear the horror of it in blinks.
– I’m so sorry, Emilia.
– There was nothing you could have done.
– I should have been here.
– There was nothing anyone could have done.
She pulled the sheet down to expose Emilia’s ragged T-shirt and bare arms. She noticed something odd then. The camera strap was still biting into Emilia’s left wrist, but the camera itself had gone. She searched the cabin, on and under the bed, but she couldn’t find it. Had Daniel taken it? He must have. But why? Was he trying to protect her somehow? Was there something on the camera he didn’t want her to see? But why then wait until Emilia was back aboard? Or had he simply not noticed it until he’d brought her down here and arranged her body on the bed?
The engine started up. It was louder down here than she’d expected. The light grew stronger and the boat shuddered and then began to move. She remembered, suddenly, all the troubling unresolved questions she’d asked herself these past few days about Daniel: how smoothly he’d fabricated and then kept up his coverstory; how he’d tried to dissuade her from coming out here tonight, then had insisted on being the one to dive, perhaps to make sure there was nothing down there that could incriminate him. She remembered how he’d assaulted Pierre before he could have a chance to explain himself, then had trussed him and gagged him to keep him quiet. She remembered what Andriama had told her about those two men killed at a meet with a foreigner, one of whom had been stabbed just like her father. Daniel had a knife; she’d watched him strap it to his forearm before making his descent. And the blunt truth was that he’d been only a few miles north of here when Adam and Emilia had disappeared; and he’d known that there was a shipwreck here, and that it was valuable too.
She shook her head at herself. She was letting the horrors of the night get to her. Maybe Daniel hadn’t told her the full truth about himself, but he’d explained everything to her satisfaction. Besides, telling a few halftruths were a long cry from being a killer. He’d have to be made of stone to have behaved as he’d behaved towards her these past few days if he’d murdered Adam and Emilia. But that gave her pause. She’d read the literature on psychopaths and so knew that they had certain traits in common, for example how plausible they were, how charming and completely without guilt or remorse, how famously hard they were to distinguish from the surrounding population, until they’d been caught and had their basements searched.
There was one other trait that psychopaths typically had in common: the capacity for rage. It was a valuable attribute, rage, an anger so intense that it overrode the instinct for self-preservation. Animals had a keen sense for it in others. They placated it, flattered it, steered clear of it. Because if they triggered it… For her father hadn’t simply been murdered, Rebecca realised. He’d been butchered. Savagery like that wasn’t a crime of greed. It was a crime of rage; a psychopath’s crime.
She covered Emilia once more, climbed the companion-way steps. Daniel was in the bridge, steering them towards home, but his dive-bag was against the port locker. She kept low, beneath his line of sight. Maybe Daniel would have simply tossed Emilia’s camera overboard. But maybe he wouldn’t have risked that, lest it be found by some future diver. So maybe he’d have packed it away in his bag for later disposal instead. She crouched to unzip each of the side-pockets in turn. In just the second, she found a handgun. She felt hollow as she pulled it out, turned it around disbelievingly in her hands. Those two dead men in Morombe had been gun dealers. Was that where Daniel had got this? She could see no other explanation. At least it gave her a way to defend herself; but then she saw that it had no magazine and so was functionally useless. She searched his bag for it but without success. She did find the empty sheath of his diving-knife, however, which made her wonder whether he’d ditched it lest it be matched against her father’s wounds.
If she couldn’t use the gun herself, she could at least deny it to Daniel. She hid it in one of the lockers, then searched his bag again, just in case. Her fingertips brushed something cold at the bottom of a side-pocket. She fished out a medallion on a silver chain and remembered that first night back at Eden, watching Daniel as he’d showered in the storm, the way the links had glinted in a burst of lightning. She looked down at the inscription.
MATTHEW DANIEL RICHARDSON
She closed her eyes before she could read any more. She clutched the medallion so tight she could almost feel it imprinting on her palm. The blood Andriama had found on the Yvette had been AB negative. It had belonged to a foreign male, but not Pierre. It was too rare for coincidence. If Daniel had AB negative blood, then he’d been on the Yvette before, whatever he claimed, whatever her heart told her. She lifted each finger in turn.
Not AB negative, she prayed silently. Please God, not AB negative. She took away her last finger.
It was AB negative.
I
Rebecca put back the medallion and was zipping up Daniel’s bag when she heard him coming out of the bridge. She stood up and turned, but not quickly enough to escape his notice.
‘Looking for something?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she told him.
He shrugged, let it go. ‘I’m taking us south-east,’ he said. ‘We’ll be back at the pass soon.’
