And the deep blue sea

five seconds.’

There was another searing flash that illuminated the cabin as though an arc light had been turned in the porthole, with a simultaneous crash of thunder. He saw her wince. She really was afraid of it, he thought. ‘I can’t stand it, on a ship,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing else for it to hit.’

‘It’s perfectly safe,’ he reassured her. The darkness was impenetrable after the flash. ‘Sparks grounds his antenna, and it acts as a lightning rod.’

‘Thank you, Dr. Faraday,’ she said. A groping hand brushed his arm, and then she was against his chest. ‘Who the hell needs science?’

He took her in his arms; if she needed comforting, why be a churl about it? She felt very slender and soft inside the nylon robe, and her arms came up around his neck. In the next jagged flash of lightning he could see her uptilted face with the eyes closed, waiting to be kissed. He kissed her. Her mouth opened under his, and the arms tightened, and he noted with a detached sort of interest that he apparently wasn’t impotent after all. At the same moment the squall struck with a wild shriek of wind and horizontal rain that came slashing through the porthole. He broke free, slammed it shut and tightened one of the dogs. Thunder crashed, and another searing flash of lightning left him blinded as he turned back to her.

They brushed together, and she was in his arms again, as adhesive as a Band-Aid. ‘We might be more comfortable,’ he suggested humorously, ‘if we sat down.’

‘I’m sure you would,’ she murmured with her lips brushing his. ‘And I feel guilty as hell about it.’

He unbelted the robe and slipped it back over her shoulders. It dropped, and was followed by the pajama top. She guided his hand to the zipper at the side of the remaining garment and helped him slide it down over the rounded hips. He picked her up and carried her to the bunk.

There was no holding her back or pacing her, and she had no need for subtlety of finesse in her headlong flight to throw herself shrieking over the precipice. She came to climax three times, crying out and digging her nails into his shoulders as though driven by some kinship with the demonic force of the squall battering at the ship. He would have timed his own release to coincide with this final paroxysm as a matter of simple courtesy and the obligatory gesture of appreciation under the circumstances, but his attention had strayed and he was thinking of the time the Shoshone had been knocked down in a squall that had caught her lying dead in the water, with the result that he was late and the act ended on a note of anticlimax. He expected to be taken to task for this wooden performance, but apparently she hadn’t even noticed. Male flesh and willingness were all she demanded; she’d furnish the fire herself.

‘In these days of instant everything,’ she murmured, ‘it’s refreshing to meet a man who takes his time.’

He lit a cigarette for her. ‘I thought you were afraid of lightning?’

‘Afraid? I expected to die every second.’ She sighed. ‘But what a way to go. Men have no monopoly on that old barracks joke.’

The Leander was beginning to roll a little now as wind continued to howl around her. Rain drummed on the bulkhead beyond their heads. There was another simultaneous white flash of lightning and explosion of thunder. She gasped and pressed against him, and at the same time a hand slid down his body and began its seductive manipulation. He wondered idly if Freud had never considered the phallus as a symbolic lightning rod.

* * *

There was no one else in the passageway except the young Filipino carrying a plastic cup of milk and a sandwich on a paper plate. Lind unlocked the door of the hospital and they entered. A single light was burning over the desk. The portholes were dogged against the fury of the squall outside, the deadlights closed down over them. Krasicki lay on the same lower bunk, motionless, staring blankly up at the bottom of the one above him. He gave no indication he was aware of them at all.

‘He has closed the deadlights,’ Gutierrez observed as he exchanged the sandwich for the stale one still untouched. ‘You think he is afraid of the lightning?’

‘No,’ Lind said. ‘Probably the portholes are eyes looking at him.’

The youth shook his head. ‘Pobrecito.’ He went out, closing the door behind him.

Lind stepped over and bolted it, and turned. ‘Okay,’ he said softly.

Krasicki sat up and grinned with a display of yellowed teeth. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ Lind replied. He pulled a chair over and sat down, leaning forward so they could converse in low tones covered by the tumult of the squall. ‘Hugo sends his congratulations.’

‘And what about our audience? Still no complaints about the performance?’

‘No,’ Lind said. ‘They feel very sorry for you.’

‘And the rendezvous? You’re in contact with the boat?’

Lind nodded. ‘It’s directly on our course, waiting. Five hundred and fifty miles away at eight p.m. Rendezvous is two a.m., two nights from now.’

‘We’ll make it all right?’

‘Yes, with several hours to spare. The timing will be adjusted by another engine room breakdown if necessary.’ Lind smiled. ‘And of course there’s the other stoppage. For your funeral.’

Krasicki chuckled. ‘Put on a good show for the sentimental sheep.’

‘The rope’s ready?’ Lind asked.

‘Yes.’ Krasicki stood up and pulled back the blue bedspread of the upper bunk. Strips torn from one of the sheets had been braided into a length of thin, strong rope. Lind examined it. He nodded.

‘Make one end fast to an overhead pipe,’ he said. ‘Stand on a lower bunk and put the noose around your neck. Tie it so it won’t tighten, of course. Five minutes after one bell strikes at eight thirty you’ll hear me unlocking the door. Goddard or the captain will be with me, but I’ll come in first. When you see the door start to open, step off the bunk, but support your weight with your hands on the rope until I’m all the way in. I’ll have you cut down in less than five seconds, so there’s no danger.’

‘And what about the witness?’

‘He won’t have a chance to touch you. I’ll send him for the first-aid kit. He just sees you, that’s all.’ ‘And the materials for the artwork?’

Lind tapped his pocket. 'I have them here, and you can use the mirror to put them on. You know how the bruises look, and the congested face?’

Krasicki smiled coldly. ‘I have seen many men who danced upon the air, Herr Lind.’

Lind stepped over with his back against the door and appraised the angle of view. He came back to where Krasicki was standing, and pointed upward to the pipe. ‘I think right there, beside the flange. The witness will see you the second I throw the door open and jump in, but I’ll block his view of any details in case you move.’

Krasicki looked up. Lind flipped the rope over his head from behind, tightened it around his throat, and twisted. Krasicki’s eyes appeared to bulge, going wide with horror, and his mouth flew open in a silent scream. Hands clawed futilely at the rope for several seconds, and then dropped with a grotesque flapping motion. His body sagged and went limp. Lind eased him to the deck, but knelt beside him, the big muscles of his shoulders and forearms still corded with the brutal strain on the garrote. The whole thing had been done in total silence, like some ghastly ballet performed without music on a soundproof stage.

After another minute the big mate relaxed the tension on the rope, fashioned it into a slip-knot about the dead man’s neck, and passed the other end over the pipe above them. He hoisted Krasicki up with the ease of a mother picking up a baby, held him clamped in his left arm while he used the right to take up the slack in the rope, pass it around the pipe again, and tie it off. He let go. Krasicki’s feet dangled a few inches off the deck, and his body began to swing slowly back and forth with the gentle rolling of the ship. Lind went out and relocked the door.

* * *

Madeleine Lennox made one final hoarse outcry, and a flash of lightning revealed the mask of ecstasy now become pain as it approached the unbearable, the face twisted and distorted and the eyes clamped tightly shut as her head rolled from side to side. The writhing body strained upward against Goddard’s as though in some dying effort to engulf and devour this instrument of her torture, and then collapsed and went limp with the suddenness of a snapping spring. The ragged exhalations of her breath were hot against his naked shoulder where a moment before the nails had gripped and dug.

Insatiable, Goddard thought, and wondered what her husband’s life had been like when he was at sea,