The Gilgamesh Conspiracy (28 page)

‘So you’re Steven Morris, ex Royal Marine officer and owner of this yacht and a property company based near Chichester.’

‘That’s near enough. And who are you?’

‘I’m Emily.’

She stared down at him. He suddenly realised that she held a gun in her hand, and he did not feel inclined to question her further.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Look I only tied you up as a sort of precaution. I’ll cut the ropes now. I know I owe you an explanation but just in case you are a vengeful person I’m going to hold this gun on you until you have heard my explanation.’ She paused and then showed him his own small automatic pistol which she must have found in its locker in the saloon. ‘In case you think I don’t know how to use your gun, I can tell you that this is a Smith and Wesson double action .45 semi-automatic compact. Barrel length is three point five inches and weight not including six rounds in the chambers is twenty three ounces.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘I won’t try anything.’

‘Good. You may be an ex-commando, or something, but I’m sure you know when you’re not in control. Now I‘m going to cut the rope holding your hands and then you can untie the rest. Ok?’

‘Understood,’ he replied.

‘Roll onto your stomach.’

He did so. She put her foot on his back high up between his shoulders. He felt the vibration through his wrists as the knife sawed through the rope, and then he heard her walking back to the saloon and he set about untying the other ropes that bound him.

A few minutes later Steven was seated in the saloon of his yacht with the woman who called herself Emily opposite him. He had borne the indignity of relieving himself while she watched him and now they both sat down with a bottle of water each and stared at one another under the cabin lights. Steven decided that she must be between thirty and forty, but her face was bruised and swollen and it was difficult to judge her age. She was tall for a woman, probably about the same as his own height of five feet ten inches. She wore a yellow weatherproof jacket from his deck storage, dark trousers and a pair of his best Timberland shoes. Her hair was matted on one side of her head and Steven wondered if she had been lying in a pool of her own vomit. She still held the small gun in her hand, but in a rather more negligent manner with the barrel pointing towards the deck. Steven had the impression that she seemed unaware that she was holding it,

‘I stink, don’t I.’ she said.

‘Yes, you do!’ he replied.

‘I didn’t dare swim off that raft to clean up. It’s quite difficult to climb back on again when you’re knackered.’

‘So how did you come to be in it?’ He saw that Emily was staring intently at him, but her gaze did not appear to be focussed on him. Her eyes were wide with an expression of barely suppressed anger. Her mouth twitched; her grip tightened around the gun

‘It’s a slide raft from a freighter aircraft. We came down onto the Atlantic…four…no, five days ago, I think. Since then I’ve just been living off a very little water and my own fat, hoping some miracle would turn up. You did, and I’m very grateful.’

Steven stared at her, wondering what she would be doing on a freighter aircraft unless she was a pilot, and if this was the only explanation she would give him. ‘Why did you hit me and tie me up,’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t you just call out when you saw my yacht?’

She did not answer, seeming to be lost in some inner contemplation. Then she blinked several times and gazed at him with a more natural expression.

‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’ he asked.

She began to run her fingers through her hopelessly tangled hair, looked at her fingers and wrinkled her nose.

‘Perhaps you’d like to have a shower. Clean up.’

‘You have a shower on this boat? With fresh water?’

‘Well no, it’s sea water actually. I don’t have the fuel to spare for running the desalinater except for drinking and cooking.’

‘Is there any chance you could lend me some soap and shampoo?’

Somewhat incredulous, Steven stared at the woman; she had attacked him, tied him up, threatened him with his own gun and was now calmly requesting the loan of bathing sundries.

‘By all means. Let me show you the way.’

‘Thanks. Here you are.’

She held the Smith & Wesson out in the palm of her hand. He took it from her in silence, and then placed it in a locker under the seat.

She nodded her understanding while he explained the operation of the bathroom facilities to her and then he left her in private. He looked around the cabin. Nothing had been moved, but there was a nearly empty plastic two litre water bottle which he did not recognise as his own and a box of cereal bars newly opened and three of them had been eaten. He wondered how long she had gone without food and if she had enough sense not to eat and drink too much too quickly after a period of extreme deprivation.

He climbed back out to the cockpit and gazed around the yacht. It was pitching gently on the swell, its drift still restricted by the raft attached to the stern. He found his flashlight in a corner where he must have dropped it when she hit him, its bulb now giving out nothing more than a dim glow. He changed the batteries and then stuffed it in his pocket. He pulled the raft close in to the stern and clambered aboard it. As it heaved over a wave he lost his footing and rolled over in the bilge water.  He crawled towards the far end where the bundle of cloth lay in a disordered heap and began to inspect it with his flashlight. Underneath he found a waterproof bag that contained some leak stoppers, a hand pump and a pair of woman’s leather shoes sodden with water.

He stuffed everything back into the bag except the shoes and gazed thoughtfully at his yacht. He could see her, a vague shape moving about in the light of the saloon windows. Perhaps she would cut him adrift when he was in the life raft. In a moment of panic he began to crawl back to the yacht before he remembered that already she could have killed him and shoved him overboard.

He took a deep breath and crawled more carefully back to the yacht, threw her shoes on board and then climbed over the stern and peered in through the window. She was sitting on the saloon wrapped in a couple of towels gazing down at the cabin floor. She had washed her hair out and combed it into a damp curtain that hung across her shoulders. He wondered what she looked like when she was not bruised and suffering from exposure. She had a straight nose, a hint of cheek bones a wide brow with the lines of early middle age etched across it. Her shoulders and arms reminded him of the Russian pole vaulter from the Olympic Games. He opened the door and she turned round and gave him a faint smile that was spoilt by the missing front tooth and abruptly turned into a wince; she fingered her cracked and swollen lips.

‘Do you feel better now?’ he asked by way of starting off a conversation.

‘Yes, thank you. I look awful, though, but it’s mostly superficial. This is your yacht then?’

He realised that this statement of the obvious was her way of inviting him to continue the conversation.

‘Yes it is. I’m sailing it across the Atlantic to Florida, and then I’m thinking about going on all the way round. A circumnavigation.’

‘You obviously don’t mind being alone then.’

‘No I don’t.’ He paused a moment. ‘Not now, anyway.’

She nodded as if she understood what he meant. And then with an embarrassed reluctance to meet his gaze she added, ‘I looked you up on the internet I found out your wife died five months ago…but don’t you miss your daughter?’ She stared at him curiously as if the answer was important.

‘I will miss her, but not her ghastly boyfriend.’

‘Oh! What’s wrong with him?’ she asked, eyebrows raised.

‘I don’t like the way he makes his money.’

She considered him for a moment. ‘Does he approve of the way you made some of yours? Or perhaps he doesn’t know.’

Steven stared at her in silence, wondering if she had discovered his past as a mercenary after he left the marines.

‘So why is your boat called
Surprise
?’

‘Patrick O’Brian is my favourite author,’ he replied, glancing toward the shelf of books where the familiar twenty-one book spines were lined up.

‘Never heard of him,’ she said with a dismissive shake of her head.

‘Well we won’t make Fort Lauderdale for a few weeks, so you’ll have plenty of time to read him…On second thoughts we could go to Bermuda first. I could leave you there.’

‘Ok. Thank you. That would be fine. British territory,’ she added after a moment.

Steven stared at her. She seemed strangely uninterested in their possible destination, and how long it would take for them to reach it. But he had much more to be curious about. ‘So how come you were floating in a life raft in the Atlantic?’

‘Do you mind if I get dressed first? Then I’ll tell you.’

Steven summoned up a mental inventory of the clean part of his wardrobe. The weather was warm enough for her to wear shorts. He had some fairly new ones that had not been repeatedly washed in salt water, and he had some new tee shirts and some sweaters of various degrees of cleanliness. He could punch some extra holes in one of his belts. ‘Come on I’ll show you what you can borrow.’

He waited on the deck while she got changed in the main cabin. The sky had largely cleared and he looked around at the familiar constellations and glanced at the navigation system. He felt the lump on his head where she had hit him. The swelling was painful, but the associated headache had eased off, so presumably there was no underlying injury. The time was coming up to 0200 hours GMT, approaching local midnight in the western Atlantic. The cabin door opened. ‘I’m ready,’ she called through the gap.  He climbed through and fastened the storm latches, and when he turned round he saw her studying her reflection in the mirror above the bookcase. He saw her feeling around her missing tooth with her tongue.

‘I’ve got some painkillers if you like; paracetamol, ibuprofen, or something stronger from the emergency kit,’ he offered.

She fingered her bruises. ‘No the pain has eased off. No permanent damage, though, I think.’

‘What about your front tooth? Doesn’t that hurt?’

‘Oh that. That was knocked out years ago. The cap’s just fallen off.’

‘Would you like a drink,’ he asked.

‘What? Alcohol, you mean?’

‘Yes, I’ve got some gin, or scotch.’

‘Hell, yes; a scotch would be great, thanks.’ She sat down carefully, clearly in some pain and watched him retrieve a bottle of Glenfiddich from its stowage and pour out a couple of glasses.

‘Cheers,’ he said as she took a glass from him.

He sat down on the opposite side of the cabin and took a sip. ‘So, you were going to tell me what happened to you,’ he said.

‘Yes. I was on a yachting trip across the Atlantic with a friend called Joe Johnson. He’s an American who comes from Dover. Our boat sank in a storm and you found me in a life raft. You took me to Bermuda and we checked into a hotel. You paid for my room. The next day when you came to find me, you found that I’d checked out of my room. You’d no idea where I’d gone.’ She drank some of her scotch. ‘There; that’s the bare bones of the story. We might flesh it out a bit later.’

He stared at her for a moment. ‘But that’s all crap!’

‘Of course it is. It’s for the best. I’m grateful you pulled me out of the water, so to speak, but believe me, you don’t want to be involved any more than you are already.’

‘So who was this Joe Johnson?’ he asked.

‘No idea. Johnson’s one of the most common surnames in the States, Anglo surname anyway, and I believe there are more than twenty places called Dover in North America. I learned that from Mash, the novel. Hawkeye and Trapper called themselves the pros from Dover.’

He frowned into his glass of Scotch, not having a clue what she was talking about. ‘So is your name actually Emily?’ he asked after a while.

‘Yeah, Emily Smith.’

‘Not Brown?’

She set her glass down with a sharp rap on the table. ‘Look Steven, it might seem a bit of a bloody joke to you now, but there might come a time when you’re grateful for it.’

‘Ok Miss Smith; I’ll remember that. I’ll also try and forget the joke of you knocking me out, trussing me up and threatening me with a gun!’

The yacht heaved over at the crest of a wave and she had to grab the table to steady herself. The glass began to slide towards the edge but she seized it and took another drink. ‘Yeah I’m sorry about that, but when you’ve been floating about in the middle of the Atlantic for days, you might get a little paranoid yourself. It was your gun,’ she finished.

‘Does that make it alright then?’

‘No, it was sort of a way of asking you why you have one on board.’

‘To deal with any nutters I might come across during my voyage.’

They stared at each other in silence for a while.

‘How long before we reach Bermuda?’ she asked.

He gazed up at the wind read out on the navigation display on the bulkhead. ‘Hard to say. It’s still over five hundred miles, nautical miles away. Could be five days with a favourable wind, but it might take twice as long.’