I close my eyes, feel a small desperate relief for the little prick Frances must have felt as they put her to sleep. But my comfort is short-lived. When I open my eyes there is red spilling – bright scarlet in the light, blacker in the shadows. Frances was thirsty but her thin body was filled with blood. My stomach hurls me over my knees. I vomit into the shark pit. A trail of bile sails into the churning sea.
‘Stop it,’ Romano whispers.
But Tamba’s father misses it. He pats his plump colleague on the back. I see his lips, full like Tamba’s, form the words, ‘Thank you.’
Shitting bastards. Frances wanted to live!
I stare at the red water fading to a less terrible shade. I lock my eyes onto the horizon, where the sun has become a bare, blunt orange.
I am not afraid.
I heard her say, Daddy.
Even though they murdered her, I don’t care what anyone says. There is no such thing as death.
* * *
The doctors pick up their empty stretcher, disappear into the rig. The steel door shuts behind them. Romano is crying openly now.
I set my volume to loud. ‘They kill the prisoners. Don’t they?’
Romano is rubbing his eyes like he wants to pluck them out. ‘I hate them. I hate them.’
‘Some of them are innocent.’
‘Frances,’ he groans. ‘She begged me, Malachi.’
‘I know. I know. She trusted you.’
‘She begged me to get her black box off her boat.’
‘Where is the yacht?’
Romano points at the huge metal leg to the right of the shark pit. I make out a dark hatch in the cylinder shafting into the sea. ‘I winched it up. Meirong’s orders.’ Romano snarls, ‘I hate her!’
I bend over and vomit again into the pit. Wipe my mouth. I sit with my phone loose on my lap and watch the sun rise in its yellow battle-dress. My heart is emptied out. My mind is very clear as to what I must do next.
‘Let’s get the black box. Let’s call for help.’
Romano shakes his head wildly. ‘No. Tomorrow I bomb the boat.’ He grabs something from an inside pocket. ‘Look.’ He thrusts it through the convoluted piping of the pump. It is a glossy photo of a child, her pink dress too loose for her stick figure. ‘My baby, Milja.’ An ocean of love glows from the eyes in the photograph. ‘She calls me Chefe Sol. Sun Chief. She trusts I will save her life.’ Romano stares at me through the tangled machinery. ‘Meirong says they will send a heart from this harvest.’
‘Do you believe her?’
Romano taps the space between his eyes. ‘Meirong knows I will put a bullet here if she lies to me. For then I have nothing to live for. Nothing.’ He climbs out and grabs my hand, jerks me back onto the narrow ledge. My phone flies from my grip. I snatch it from the air, drop it into my pocket. Romano shuts the sliding panel with astonishing strength. He walks the plank above the shark pit, still streaked with hungry fins. I clutch the railing, follow him to the door.
As Romano lifts the key card, the sewage pump starts up. Brownish fluid pours from a round opening below where we were sitting, flies into the shark pit. The anus of the rig. Three sharks rise to receive the prisoners’ overnight excrement. The others slash at them with vicious envy.
I hope they shoot me. The thought drills through my head like keyhole surgery.
Let them shoot me rather, if they catch me.
I raise my hand to Romano’s neck, as hard as iron. He flinches at my touch. I pull out my Samsung.
‘I am sorry about Frances. You tried your best.’
Romano buckles, drops his heavy head to my shoulder. I sling an arm around his back, hold him tight, like a father. Romano begins his terrible, strange keening again. I take the key card from his fingers, turn the light green. I kick the door open and nudge Romano inside the rig. I follow him in, shut the metal door behind us. This time I raise the key card to just below the contact zone. The green light stays on but I sling the lanyard around Romano’s neck, usher him into the pitch dark. Romano shrugs me off violently, bounces on the balls of his feet. He snatches for his torch, slices at me with his stream of red light.
‘You are not my friend, Malachi!’ He stabs two fingers towards his eyes. ‘From now on I am watching you.’ He bounds up the stairs, powerful, ready to do anything, anything to save his daughter’s life.
THURSDAY
This time the feline hinges shriek loudly. Twice. I hustle into the maintenance wing, pass the women’s quarters, my ears reassured by the engine sound of a snore. Could it be Olivia?
I crash into our bedroom, snap on the light. I haul out my suitcase, try three zips before I find my paper notepad and my old roller-gel plastic pen. I poke Tamba’s naked chest with it.
He smacks at the pen, misses. ‘Hey!’
I write in large, extravagant letters: They killed the solo sailor.
Tamba stares at my dishevelled white outfit. ‘Where have you been?’
They threw her in the shark pit.
Daddy, I heard her say.
I tear off the page, write in gigantic letters: THE GIRL SAILOR IS DEAD.
Tamba jerks to a sitting position, gasping. I wait mercilessly. He rubs his knees compulsively, as if this might ease the agony of the truth.
‘These people are not human,’ he says.
I slay him with my roller-gel weapon: It was your father.
‘Oh God.’ Tamba clutches his head. ‘Basta-a-a-rd . . .!’ He leaps up and charges at the metal wall, smashes his forehead against it. A red rivulet trickles towards his eyebrows, so very, very much like Doctor Mujuru’s.
I tear my eyes from the blood.
It’s slaughter. This whole thing.
Tamba shakes his head, paces the tiny room. ‘It’s not the same, Malachi. That girl was innocent.’
I hold up
