Ivory (18 page)

‘Don't scream, baby. You'll wake the neighbours.' Mitch laughed. ‘Let's not spoil the game. What I want you to do is to think, real hard, what it is I
might
want to know from you.'

He took a step closer to her and she felt the point of the blade touch her throat. Her shirt was split open, revealing her bikini top. She didn't dare look down, and the pressure from the tip of the knife forced her to look straight ahead as he reached around her and unfastened the clasp.

The delicacy of his touch, the feigned tenderness, made his actions all the more terrifying. He moved the knife and cut the shoulder straps so that the bikini top fell to the ground. Her chest heaved and she closed her eyes, tight. A tear squeezed from her closed lids. This couldn't be happening to her.

Mitch grabbed her face in one hand, squeezing her cheeks tight. ‘Keep your eyes open, darlin',' he whispered. ‘Ain't no fun, otherwise.'

‘Hurry,' Henri said from the gloom.

‘Shut the fuck up. Now, Jane, do you have anything you want to say to me? Look down, baby.'

He had sheathed the knife and picked up the discarded alligator clips from the wet concrete floor, where they had been sizzling and snapping away in a puddle. Mitch held one of the clips open in his right hand, its wicked serrated teeth now poised on either side of her left nipple.

‘Anything at all?'

She screamed in agony at its touch and couldn't imagine how much more something could hurt. He hadn't even started with the electricity.

‘Hush, breathe deep. The first shock will pass as the blood stops flowing to your nipple, baby,' he said, his lips almost brushing her ear. ‘In the navy they taught us to focus on something – a spot on the wall maybe – and just say nothing but our name, rank, date of birth. Why don't you try that? Come on, name . . .'

Tears rolled down her cheeks and her body started to heave with her sobs. ‘Mitch, please . . . I'll . . . tell . . .'

‘Shush.' He held the other clip up to her eyes and she writhed against the restraints, trying to move out of his reach. He grabbed her hair and pulled hard, yanking her back to the position he wanted her. The sudden sharp pain overtook the throb in her breast. ‘I'll let you in on a secret, Jane. I don't appreciate it when someone shoots me. I don't want you to tell me anything until I've hurt you some more – it's my version of payback.'

Henri moved into her sight out of the darkness. ‘Mitchell, don't be stupid. She was about to tell you, you stupid
cochon
! Let her speak before Alex –'

‘– arrives?'

The two men looked back, into the shadows, from where Alex emerged, the nine-millimetre pistol looking like a natural extension of his right hand. ‘Get that thing off her body, Mitch.'

The American started to protest, but dived for the floor when Alex pulled the trigger. He'd aimed high at the last second. Jane cowered away from Alex when he approached her, but he picked Mitch's knife up off the floor and used it to cut the rope binding her handcuffs to the wall. Realising she was now free, she pulled the clip from her breast.

Alex picked up her sarong and tossed it to her. She caught it and held it up to cover herself.

Mitch got to his knees and said, ‘Alex, she was about to tell us –'

Alex squeezed the trigger again and the next bullet punched a hole through the baggy sleeve of Mitch's Hawaiian shirt.

‘Holy fuck, you could have –'

‘Shut up,' Alex barked. ‘On the floor, face down, hands behind your back. You, too, Henri. I would have expected better of you,' he said to the Frenchman as he sent him sprawling from the kneeling position to prone with a kick in his rear.

Jane knelt beside Mitch while Alex covered him, then reached into the American's shorts. She found the handcuff key she had seen him slip in his pocket and unlocked the bracelets. She rubbed her wrists.

‘Put them on Mitch,' Alex said to her, and she nodded. When she'd seen the Chinese freighter and confirmed to herself that Alex was part of the pirate gang that had attacked the
Penfold Son
, she'd been terrified
about what he might do to her. Now he was her saviour – though for how long, she had no idea. The thought crossed her mind that this might all be part of some elaborate ruse to make her trust Alex.

‘Here,' he said, tossing her a long plastic cable tie. ‘Do the same to Henri.' She complied, although she needed Alex to press the hard black barrel of the pistol to the Frenchman's temple to force his silence and stillness. Jane's hands were shaking as she pulled the tie tight.

‘Alex, don't be a fucking idiot, man,' Mitch wailed. ‘She was going to spill the beans, and now you're going to let her get away.'

‘I'm taking her to the mainland, where she'll be free to do as she pleases.'

‘
Non
, Alex. Mitch is right this time,' Henri said. ‘She will tell the police and that will be the end of you and the island – of all of us.'

Alex looked at her, the pistol moving naturally with the direction of his dark eyes. He raised an eyebrow in silent question.

‘Jesus Christ! I don't know what's going on, Alex, and that's God's honest truth. God, please don't hurt me,' Jane said. Her hands still trembled as she wrapped the sarong around her and knotted it together between her breasts. ‘I just want to get out of this place – off this island. Please, Alex, please. If you let me go free I'll keep your secret.'

Her shoulders heaved involuntarily and she sucked in lungfuls of air as she fought to keep her composure.

‘Don't listen to her, man, or you're crazier than I ever thought. You'll ruin this for all of us, Alex,' Mitch whined.

‘No, Mitch, you've already done that. On your feet.'

‘Wait,' Jane said. Her body had stilled now and she glared at him.

‘What is it?' Alex asked.

Jane found the two alligator clips and knelt beside Mitch. ‘This is going to hurt you much more than it will hurt me,' she whispered to him as she placed a clip on each of his earlobes. He screamed.

Alex stood by, the pistol hanging loose in his right hand. A slow smile crossed his face as he watched Jane grip the handle of the field telephone and crank it.

A
lex lowered the binoculars and pointed. ‘Land.'

Jane kept her distance from him, at the far end of the bridge, and stood with her arms wrapped around her body. She looked across at him, then out towards the coast. She was biting her lip.

She'd been silent for most of the trip on board the
Fair Lady
, though she'd been curious initially about the menagerie lashed to the aft deck in cages, and wriggling about in safely tied hessian bags in the lounge cabin. He'd explained to her that on the way to taking her to South Africa he'd be finding a new home for the wildlife they'd captured from the
Peng Cheng
.

He'd deliberately refrained from asking her anything about the missing package, as it was clear to him she was still traumatised by her experience on the island. At one point in the voyage, when they'd crossed the wake of a speedboat, he'd reached for her elbow to steady her as the boat rocked, but she had snatched her arm away from him and moved to the stern. Even though she had returned to the bridge she was still wary of him. He couldn't blame her.

Mitch was the other passenger on board. He was in one of the staterooms below. Bound and gagged, though lying on a comfortable bed. Alex regretted the way things had turned out, but Mitch had been a
festering problem for some time. Unlike the rest of the gang, Henri included, Mitch was a felon who'd found himself a job as a military man – not the other way around. The American's avariciousness and aggressiveness had been an asset in some of the attacks they'd carried out, and a liability in others. Ironically, Alex had always feared that if anyone were to kill during a raid it would be Mitch. In fact, it had been himself, on board the
Penfold Son
.

The smart thing to do would have been to kill Mitch, tie him to one of Sarah's old Land Rover engine blocks and dump his body in the clear blue waters of the Bazaruto Channel. The other smart thing would have been to kill Jane.

‘Alex?'

‘Yes.'

‘What . . . what are you going to do with me, when we get ashore?'

It was as if she was reading his mind. ‘I'm taking you to Johannesburg, if you still want me to, that is.'

She nodded. ‘I think so. Aren't you worried, like Mitch and the others were, that I'll tell the authorities about you – about your secret life?'

‘I'm not going to kill you, Jane. If I'd wanted to I would have already done so.'

‘You haven't asked me any questions yet, either. So I'm going to ask you one. Why did you and your men raid the
Penfold Son
?'

‘The captain of the
Peng Cheng
, the Chinese ship you saw tied up in our harbour, confessed that he'd made a delivery to your skipper. He thought it could have been diamonds and that was good enough for us. We had no plans at all to take on the
Penfold Son
, but my guys and I were still on board the
Peng Cheng
when the drop-off took place. It was a spur of the moment thing.'

‘A spur of the moment thing? Just like that you decide to find a helicopter and hijack a huge cargo ship?'

He shrugged at her incredulity. ‘I am a pirate. How well did you know Iain MacGregor, the
Penfold Son
's captain?'

She bit her bottom lip and paused for a few moments while she thought about her answer. ‘Reasonably well – as much as you get to
know someone in two weeks. He was a bit dour for my liking, but professional, from what I could see.'

He could tell she was holding something back. ‘He was killed in the attack.'

‘What?' She recoiled from him and stared, as if seeing him in a new light.

‘It wasn't me, or any of my men. I'm a hundred per cent sure of that.'

‘You were shooting at us from the helicopter, Alex – right at the bridge. I was there.'

‘Yes, but that was just to keep your heads down. I knew that on a ship like that nine-millimetre bullets would just bounce off the armoured glass. It worked, too, as I saw you drop to the floor.'

She nodded. ‘You're right, he wasn't hit then. He . . .'

‘He what, Jane? Did he give you something, tell you something?'

Jane turned away from him and looked out to starboard, towards the coastline which was now visible as a low line of green through the shimmering heat haze. ‘I can't believe he was killed. Why should I believe you that you or your men didn't do it?'

‘When you get back on the mainland and read a paper or check the net, or talk to your boss, you're going to read that MacGregor was killed by pirates, and I want you to know, for your own safety, that it isn't true.'

‘What do you mean, for
my
safety?'

‘Who were those men on board who were firing back at us? They weren't ship's crew, obviously. They were too well armed and well trained.'

‘Why the bloody hell should I tell you, Alex? You're a
pirate
, for god's sake. This is all too unreal.' She started to walk aft.

‘Were they in on the transfer?'

She stopped, and though she didn't look back, he knew he'd made a breakthrough. ‘Alex, you've been good to me, and don't think I'm not grateful to you for rescuing me from Mitch.'

He stood at the helm, saying nothing, as she turned to face him.

‘Are you saying that . . . that those men killed MacGregor?'

Again, he let the silence hang there, waiting for her to answer her own question.

‘They didn't know anything, but perhaps . . .'

‘Perhaps they worked it out, or got the information from MacGregor by force? In that case, they'll be as keen to get their hands on the diamonds as I am.'

‘I presume you searched my gear?'

He nodded, feeling slightly embarrassed.

‘And me, Alex? While you had me drugged with that ‘saline', did you
examine
me?'

‘I swear to you, on the grave of my father, that I did no such thing, Jane, though . . .'

‘Yes, I'm sure Mitch wanted to.'

He nodded.

‘Well, thank you for that.'

‘You believe me, then?'

‘I do.'

‘Then trust what I say about MacGregor. My men didn't kill him. In fact, I'm rather ashamed to say we didn't get inside the wheelhouse as we were outgunned by a motivated, organised opponent. I expected a walkover. I did kill a man though, I think.'

She looked confused.

‘It was one of the men firing at us – security, mercenaries, whatever they were . . .'

‘A mix of both,' she said.

‘I've never killed in any of the crimes I've committed. I'm not proud of it. Whatever those men were up to, none of them deserved to die. I'm being honest with you, Jane.' He eased back on the throttle and checked the GPS. They weren't far from where he would make landing, a deserted stretch of sandy coastline south of Vilanculos. With his cargo on board – human and animal – he couldn't risk pulling in at the port.

She moved back closer to his side. ‘Why are we slowing?'

‘I've got some business to attend to.' He turned and walked back to the galley and unclipped and opened a drawer under the granite benchtop. He drew out a long carving knife, its blade curved from years of sharpening. He saw Jane's widened eyes and said, ‘Don't worry. I'm not going to give him what he deserves.'

Alex went below, drawing the pistol from the belt of his tan chinos, and dragged Mitch from the bed on which he lay. ‘On your feet.'

‘Going to kill me?'

‘You know I should.'

He pushed him up the carpeted stairs, using the gun to prod him along. On deck, with Jane standing by watching, he motioned for Mitch to walk towards the stern.