collar.
‘You don’t know who’s onboard or how many of them there are,’ she pointed out, the wind whipping her hair.
‘I know that someone on that ship helped kill Jennifer.’ He kicked his shoes off and stood up, looping the night-vision goggles over one arm. ‘That’s enough.’
‘Then I’m coming with you,’ she insisted.
‘You need to stay with the boat,’ he pointed out, handing her both the phones the croupier had given him and D’Arcy’s watch. ‘Otherwise it’ll drift and neither of us will make it back.’
She eyed him angrily.
‘I thought we were in this together.’
‘We are. But this is something I have to do alone.’
‘I could stop you,’ she reminded him in a defiant tone, standing in front of him so that he couldn’t get past.
A pause, then a nod.
‘You probably could.’ A longer pause. ‘But I don’t think you will. You know I have to do this.’
There was a long silence. Then Allegra stepped unsmilingly to one side. With a nod, Tom squeezed past her to the stern and lowered himself into the water.
‘Look, I’m not stupid,’ he said, with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll be careful. Just give me twenty minutes, thirty max. Enough time to see who’s on board and what they’re doing here.’
Lips pursed, she gave a grudging nod.
Turning, Tom kicked out for the yacht with a powerful stroke, the waves rolling gently underneath him. He was lucky, he knew. On a rougher day, they might well have tossed him from crest to crest like a dolphin playing with a seal. Even so, it took him five, maybe even ten minutes to cover the hundred and fifty yards he’d left himself, his clothes dragging him back, a slight current throwing him off his bearing.
Up close, the yacht was even larger than it had appeared from the shore – perhaps 400 feet long, with sheer white sides that rose above him like an ice shelf, the sea lapping tentatively around it, as if afraid of being crushed. Even though it was anchored, the yacht’s shape made it look as if it was powering through the waves at eighteen knots, its arrowed bow lunging aggressively over the water, its rear chopped off on a steep rake, as if it had been pulled out of shape. Tom counted five decks in all, their square portholes looking as if they must have been dynamited out of the ship’s monolithic hull, capped by a mushrooming radar and comms array that wouldn’t have been out of place on an aircraft carrier.
The launch had been moored to a landing platform that folded down out of the stern. Swimming round to it, Tom hauled himself on board and then carefully climbed across on to the ship itself. The landing platform was deserted, although he could see now that when lowered it revealed a huge garage and electric hoist, with room to store the launch itself, together with a small flotilla of jet-skis, inflatables and other craft.
Quickly drying himself on one of the neatly folded towels monogrammed with the yacht’s name, he buttoned his jacket and turned the collar up to conceal as much of his white shirt as he could. Then he slipped his NV goggles over his head and turned them on. With a low hum, night became day, albeit one with a stark green tint. The outline of the deck’s darkest recesses now revealed themselves as if caught in the burst of a permanent firework.
Treading stealthily, Tom made his way up a succession of steep teak-lined staircases to the main deck, which he had noticed on the swim across was the only one with any lights on. Finding the port gangway empty, he made his way forward along it, keeping below the windows and checking over his shoulder that no one was coming up behind him. Two doors had been left open about halfway along, the glow spilling out on to the polished hardwood decking and making his goggles flare. Switching them off, he edged his head round the first opening. It gave on to a walnut-panelled dining room, the table already set with china and crystal for the following morning’s breakfast. In the middle of the main wall he recognised Picasso’s
The second open doorway revealed the main sitting room. Hanging over the mantelpiece was a painting that Tom recognised as the
Turning the goggles back on, he continued along the gangway, wondering if he had chanced his luck long enough up here and whether he should head down below instead. But before he could do anything, a door ahead of him opened. Tom froze in the shadow of a bulkhead. A man stepped out, talking on his phone. Tom’s heart jumped. It was the priest, his mouth twisted into a cruel laugh, but recognisably the same man he’d faced in the casino – medium build, white, wavy hair, ruddy cheeks.
Even as Jennifer’s image filled his mind, he felt the anger flood through him, sensed his chest tightening and his jaw clenching. Before he knew it, he was clutching his gun, her name on his lips, and death in his heart.
SIXTY-ONE
It hadn’t taken Allegra long to decide to ignore Tom’s instructions and follow him on board. There’d been something dead in his eyes, something in the way he’d deliberately patted his pocket to check that his gun was still there, that had suggested he would need her help – not to deal with whoever was on board, but to protect him from himself.
Having approached from behind so that the wind would carry the engine’s breathless echo away from the yacht, Allegra had pulled alongside the launch and lashed the tender to it. Then she had paused for a few moments, waiting for an angry shout and for an armed welcoming party to materialise. But none came.
Climbing across the launch and on to the landing platform, she made her way up to the main deck, pressing herself flat against one of the aluminium staircases when a sentry walked whistling past above her. Unlike Tom, she had no night-vision equipment, so had to feel her way through the darkness, the distant flicker of the steeply banked shore providing only the faintest light by which to navigate. Even so, Tom was proving relatively easy to track, the deck still damp wherever he had paused for more than a few seconds.
Moving as quickly as she dared, she edged forward, ducking under windows and darting across the open doorways until she had almost reached the sundeck area which took up the entire front third of this level. At its centre was a helipad that she realised parted to reveal a swimming pool.
In the same instant she saw Tom ahead of her, crouched in the shadows of the side rail, his gun in his hand. She followed his aim and saw a man standing at the bow, looking out to sea, talking into his phone. Leaping forward, she placed her hand on Tom’s shoulder. He spun round to face her, a strange, empty expression on his face as if in some sort of trance.
‘Not now,’ she whispered. ‘Not here.’
For a few moments it was almost as if he didn’t recognise her, before his face broke with surprise, and then a flash of anger.
‘What…?’
She held her finger to her lips, then pointed above them towards the top deck. An armed guard was leaning back casually against the railings above them blowing smoke rings. Tom blinked and then glanced across at her, his eyes betraying a flicker of understanding.
She motioned for him to follow her, the second door she tried opening into a small gymnasium.
‘Are you trying to get yourself killed?’ she hissed as soon as the door had shut. Their shadows danced off the mirrored walls, the exercise equipment’s skeletal frames looming menacingly around them as if they were limbering up for a fight.
‘I…’ he faltered, staring at the gun in his hand as if he wasn’t quite sure how it had got there. ‘You don’t understand.’
