“Yes, darling,” she shook her head at him, smiling, “but only about half a dozen times so far.” His enthusiasm when he’d returned from his business trip around the islands the week before had been impossible to contain, and Vanessa had quickly agreed to this spur-of-the-moment holiday booking. He’d found himself unable to stop talking about the deer, otters, sea eagles, dolphins, and so many other birds and animals. It had been psychological torture for him, having to drive past everything on a schedule, with hardly a chance to get his camera out.
But now? Now they’d have a whole week to spend as they pleased. It was going to be wonderful. He looked longingly out of the windows, half expecting to see an Orca sporting alongside in the gentle, sun-sparkled swell. He wouldn’t have been surprised. By the time he’d torn his gaze away to grin excitedly back at the wife he adored, Vanessa had finished her coffee.
“Shall we go up to the outside deck to watch our approach from there?” he asked eagerly. “You won’t believe how many seabirds you’ll be able to spot, and it’s not cold today at all.” About fourteen degrees, good weather for May up here.
“I’ll join you up there in a few minutes,” she promised. “I want to pop in at the gift shop and pick up some of those lovely cookies first.” Vanessa liked to have something to nibble on in whatever hotel they were staying at, ‘just in case’ she got peckish, and she’d always had a sweet tooth. They abandoned their table and split up with a kiss as they left the restaurant and headed for their respective toilets. Damien was just about to go into the gents when one of the crew smoothly intercepted him, a copper-haired hulking Viking of a fellow in a high visibility yellow jacket.
“Mr Damien Price?” he asked. “Dark blue Toyota Avensis?”
“Yes?” Oh no, had something happened to the damned car?
“Could you just pop down to the vehicle deck and let me in, Sir?” the enormous crewman asked. “Your car’s had a bit of a slip. Not to worry, it hasn’t banged into anything, yet, but we’d like to shift it back and re-engage the handbrake, before it does anything more drastic.”
“Of course,” Damien agreed readily. Nobody wanted that to happen! He’d put the handbrake on properly, hadn’t he? Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t be entirely sure. “I just need to nip in here first, if you don’t mind? Nature calls.”
The man was clearly torn about whether he thought the delay advisable or not, but Damien himself wasn’t. The sea was calm enough today to reduce any sense of extreme urgency. After he’d finished and washed his hands, he fired a brief text off to Vanessa, so she wouldn’t worry when she couldn’t find him outside, and then hurried back out to accompany the crewman down to the vehicle deck.
“This way, Sir.” His Viking held a ‘Staff Only’ door open for him, and Damien found himself at the end of a corridor a little less attractive than the public areas of the ship. They turned left a few metres further on and clattered down a metal stairway to the next deck, and then the next.
From the top of the last flight, Damien could just see his car. It was, as he’d been told, slightly askew and looking rather out of place among its neatly ordered neighbours. Bother! He hadn’t made sure of the handbrake then! It was a good job they’d sent someone to find him. Wait? How had they found him? You’d expect them to call him over the public address system, wouldn’t you? How very odd.
He started to turn to ask his guide how he’d recognised him, but Damien never got to complete the turn because, at that very moment, the man rammed into his back with all his considerable weight. Damien found himself tumbling uncontrollably forwards and down the unforgiving steel steps.
Shocked and battered, he landed hard on the deck below, cracking his head as he did so. It bounced before settling. Only seconds had passed, although that somersaulting, out-of-control fall had seemed to last forever. His descent had not been a gentle one. Damien was pretty sure he’d badly bruised his spine slamming into the edge of a step, and when he raised a tentative hand to the side of his wildly throbbing head, his fingers encountered a sticky wetness.
What? What had just happened? Had that man tripped, somehow, and instinctively pushed against Damien to break his own fall? He tried to move his legs and push himself up, but his left knee screamed in protest, causing him to gasp breathlessly at the ensuing white-hot agony that shot up the nerves in his thigh. Through tear-blurred eyes, he saw a second figure hurry towards him from the shadows under the stairs. The man bent down to take Damien’s head in his work-gloved hands, and he found himself blinking up at an unfamiliar yet hate-filled pair of angry brown eyes.
“Remember me?” the stranger asked, incomprehensibly. He must have read Damien’s utter bewilderment as he stared up at him, frozen by sudden terror. “No? Well, I certainly remember you, you sneaky, lying bastard!” The hands gripped more tightly, and Damien felt the sharp twisting motion with horrible clarity as he registered the unthinkable sound and sensation of his own neck breaking.
All further confused thought and deeply distressed feeling had fled Damien’s body before his attacker carefully laid his head down again. The Viking came down to join his companion, glanced briefly into the corpse’s glassy, unseeing eyes, and both men walked away.
Two
It had been a quiet Wednesday in the middle of a quiet week, but I wasn’t complaining. If things were a bit dull at work at the moment, at least I no longer went home to an echoing emptiness at the end of the day. The Cabinet Secretary for Justice, alerted to my cousin Shay’s situation back
