In Cold Blood (2 page)

He stopped off on the bridge to say goodnight and then climbed down into the accommodation area. They called it ‘the House’. It was a six storey superstructure positioned at the stern of the ship and it had everything that the crew needed to meet their minimum human requirements: their living quarters, the mess, and the hospital. At the top of the structure was the bridge. It was functional and far from luxurious, but Joe had seen worse facilities during his thirty-year career.

He stopped in the Mess Hall. The off duty crew were gathered at the dinner table, most of them working their way through a meal of burgers, fries and bottled water.

Joe took an empty seat and looked around the table at his crew. The chief mate was on the bridge and would stay there all night. The chief engineer, a doughty Virginian called Nelson, was joking with the third mate, the chief steward and the bosun. There were a total of twenty able seamen aboard, and six of them were in the mess room tonight.

There were another four men. They sat at the second table, picking idly and disinterestedly at the fries. He had briefly introduced himself to them when they had come aboard, as he was making his final checks, but he had had no contact with them since then. They were obviously not sailors and seemed to prefer to keep to themselves. They tended to eat alone and they didn’t socialise with the crew. They were big men, well built, with hard faces, and they all had short cropped haircuts. The epidemic of piracy centred around Somali waters had finally persuaded the executives back at HQ that it made sense to provide their ships with armed guards. They were ex-soldiers from a private security outfit called Manage Risk.

Joe went over to them.

“Evening, gentlemen,” Joe said. “We haven’t had a chance to speak properly yet.”

The men looked across at him with surly dispassion. “Evening,” the nearest one said.

He remembered their names from the crew manifest.

Joshua Joyce.

Paddy McGuinness.

Rafe Bloom.

Lee Anderton.

But that was all that he knew.

“Which one is Joyce?”

“Me.”

“You’re in charge?”

“That’s right.”

“Good to meet you.”

Joyce shrugged.

“How are you finding it?”

“It’s fine.”

“First time aboard?”

“I’ve been to sea before,” he said tersely. “Just not for as long as this.”

The crewmen were listening. “Was the sea like this?” the steward interrupted. “Trust me, fella, this couldn’t be easier.”

Joyce didn’t reply, but Joe could see that he, and the others, didn’t share that opinion. He could understand it. It wasn’t sea sickness. That would have passed by now, and the
Carolina
was so big that even decent swells would mean just a slight thud beneath the feet when the bottom of the ship hit. No. It was tedium. The crew had a hundred things to occupy them every minute of every day. There was a routine to follow and he had always found that to be an effective way to stave off the boredom and the loneliness of a long voyage. And for the crew, at least for most of them, this was a vocation. They were born to be on the sea and the monotony of the long days and the long nights were part of what made it what it was. These men were not sailors. They were military. They had nothing to do except check their weapons, keep up-to-date with the latest intel and watch whichever crappy films the men had donated to the ship’s library.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Joe said. He took out a folded print out and laid it on the table. “Just got this.”

“What is it?”

“We get a regular email from the Office of Naval Intelligence in Maryland. They give us a heads up of what we might need to look out for. You know we’re going into dangerous waters now, right?”

“Yes.”

“They’re reporting even more activity in the area than usual.”

Joyce read it. “Forty-five attacks?”

“And that’s just in the last week. That’s a new record as far as I can tell.”

The other men quietened down.

“Forty-five?” Nelson said querulously.

“Forty-five.” Joe raised his voice so that everyone could hear. It wouldn’t do any harm for them to know what they were sailing into. Keep them on their mettle. “A Danish ship was attacked yesterday. The
Danica White
. Sea was too rough and they got away. But it was close. They got a grapple up.”

“Where?”

“South. Not far south, though.”

If Joyce and his men were concerned, they didn’t show it. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

Nelson turned around so that he could see Joyce properly. “You ever been run at by Somali pirates?”

“I’ve had plenty worse than that.”

“You reckon? I don’t know. I was on a ship last year. Chemical tanker, Japanese, the
Golden Nori
. We had three skiffs come at us. They followed us for two days and then made their move. We sunk one of them with the water cannon and the other one broke down, but the third one, man, I’m telling you, that motherfucker kept coming on no matter what we did. They got their boarding ladders up the side, almost got them latched on, but we managed to fire a flare at them and set them on fire. It was a lucky shot. Nine times out of ten, it misses. And if it had missed, they would’ve boarded us.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is I’ve seen what those boys are like. They ain’t scared of nothing. Nothing.”

“Did you have guards on board?”

“No.”

“You do now. And we’ve got plenty of gear with us. We’ll shoot them out of the water if they’re stupid enough to have a go. We won’t need lucky shots with flares.”

Braggadocio? Maybe. “Glad to have you aboard, fellas,” Joe said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

HE SCARFED down a burger, found his way to his quarters on E Deck and slumped down onto his bed. He was all done in. He had been up since six and there had been one thing after another, so much so that he had hardly stopped. No use moaning about it, he chided himself. It comes with the territory. You make it to captain of a ship like this and you take the added responsibility that comes with it.

Didn’t mean he couldn’t be dog tired.

He took off his shoes and socks and lay with his back propped up against the bulkhead. He grabbed his laptop and fired it up. The screensaver was one of his favourite pictures: him, his wife Sheila and both his kids, Maisie and Richard, in the back garden of his mother-in-law’s house. It was a hot summer day during his last shore leave. He’d had six weeks off and he had squeezed every last drop out of it. Trips to see Richard’s t-ball team and Maisie’s violin recital, a short holiday in Maine, pizza night on Friday and trips to the movies on Sunday. It had been heaven and it had been even harder than usual to pack and go away. That was just the way of it.

Six weeks off, six weeks on. Being a merchant mariner wasn’t like a normal job. Even anti-social jobs, like those where you had to work nights, you could still get to see your kids. It wasn’t the same for Joe. When he was working he was thousands and thousands of miles away from the people he cared about most of all. Reading stories to the kids over Skype had been fun for awhile, but it had paled. Eventually, it had just highlighted just what a poor substitute it was.

He opened his email and drafted a quick message to Sheila. She knew that this route was a little more dangerous than others, but she had been married to him for long enough so that he didn’t sugarcoat his updates to her. He told her that they were just running past the coast of Somalia and that he would be glad when they were out of the way. Some captains had been detouring a hundred miles to the east to put decent distance between them and the coast, but that added days to the journey and Joe was nothing if not punctual. He was professional. Hitting his deadlines meant something to him. Sheila knew that. He signed off and pressed send, and then spent twenty minutes surfing the net until his mind stopped racing.

He undressed and got into the narrow cot. He was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

BEATRIX LEFT, heading north, making her way out of the square and into the network of roads and alleyways around it. The road was narrow between the shoulders of dilapidated buildings on either side and people fought for space with scooters and bikes that darted in and out of gaps. Taxis nudged impatiently up at those in the way and small motorised delivery carts whined along on two-stroke engines. It was prayer time and the mournful cries of the
muezzins
rang out from the speakers fixed to the tower of the nearby mosque, an ululation that clashed with the honking of horns and the animated to and fro of outmatched tourists bartering with grizzled traders. The air was freighted with smells: sweat, an array of spices from the market, the richness of leather goods that had cooked in the sun all day. It was a bewildering conflation of noise and motion and it would have been a disconcerting assault on the senses to those with no experience of it. Beatrix moved through the crowds with the confidence borne of experience. She had been here for a year and there had been visits before that.

Visits in the furtherance of a profession that she had long since given up.

She moved to the heart of the medina and then took a series of turnings that led her deeper into the heart of the Red City. She loved exploring this warren of back streets. Eventually the touristy shops made way for local market stalls selling everything from brass pots and pans, linens, colourful spices, local dresses and delicious food. The presentation was amazing, store owners painstakingly piling the produce as high as it would go. Lining the souks were two-foot tall containers of spices and bowls of olives infused with herbs. There were antique stores full of dusty artefacts. Occasionally, the lanes opened into courtyards where children kicked footballs, homeowners returned from a day of fruit and vegetable shopping, mobile sellers peddled past on their bicycles.

Beatrix turned off. A first left led into a narrow alley, the next right turned into a narrower passage, another left and she was into an alley so narrow that she could touch the walls on both sides without extending her arms. She passed doorways that led into shops and homes and darkened maws that led into even narrower tunnels that disappeared into darkness. The people were fewer and the sounds diminished. The final right turn would have been easy to miss, a slim passage that was cool and quiet, the surface beneath her sandalled feet uneven and worn, and, finally, she stopped at a battered oak door, studded with iron rivets, marked with a tiny sign on the jamb.

LA VILLA DES ORANGERS.

She took the large iron key from her bag, pushed it into the lock and opened it.

Stepping through the door was like stepping back two hundred years. The riad was once the home of Grand Vizier Madani El Glaoui and the previous owner had clearly relished its heritage. The door gave onto an open vestibule and then, beyond that, to a beautiful, peaceful space. The riad was three storeys high and set around a quiet and peaceful courtyard that featured four mature orange and lemon trees and, at its centre, a plunge pool of the clearest crystal blue water. The cooling effect of the courtyard was no accident. The courtyard’s open roof channeled the warm air that entered the riad, passing it over the pool and cooling it. The cool air then circulated back upwards, lowering the temperature in the rooms. The walls were decorated with
tadelakt
plaster and
zellige
tiles, with quotes from the Quran written out in beautiful Arabic calligraphy.

The sale had been something of an emergency. Beatrix discovered later that there had been something of a scandal and the owner had had to disappear quickly. As a result, he had been prepared to leave all of the fittings as well as two original Julian Schnabels, a collection of Andy Warhol prints, African sketches and Berber oils.

The ground floor offered space for the kitchen, dining room and an old-fashioned hammam; the second and third floors contained six large bedrooms and bathrooms. The roof was open, and furnished with sun loungers that were shaded with large parasols. The madness outside was muffled by the thick walls with the result that the space was a tranquil, calming oasis.

Beatrix hung the key on its hook on the vestibule wall and went through into the courtyard.

“Miss Beatrix,” said Mohammed. “How was the square?”

“Just as always,” she said, dropping her bag on the floor. “Crazy.”

Beatrix had bought the riad when she arrived. She had paid cash, using the money that John Milton had demanded from Control before they both had double-crossed him. She had always known that she would end up back here. She loved the city and the riads that were dotted around it, the stunning juxtaposition of peacefulness and clamour that one could access just by stepping over the threshold and turning a few corners. It was also the perfect city for someone who wanted to be off the grid. It was a simple matter to sink beneath the surface and be absorbed by the mad clamour and, should the circumstances ever demand it, the senseless array of thronged streets would be perfect for losing a pursuer.

Beatrix did not expect to be followed yet, but she had plans that, once set in motion, would mean that her targets would do anything to find her before she found them.

And since they were almost as deadly as she was, it made sense to settle somewhere she could disappear.

“Did you get what you wanted?” Mohammed asked her.

She indicated the bag. “I did. Where’s Isabella?”

“On the roof.”

“Good.” She took out the roll of silver wrapping paper. “I need some scissors.”

THE ROOF was a little higher than those around it. It offered a spectacular view of the city and, in the hazy distance, the dun brown of the desert and the Atlas mountains that rose up on the horizon. The roofs of the neighbouring properties accommodated air-conditioning units and satellite dishes, a couple of other riads set up much like this one: a series of sun loungers, large parasol umbrellas and low tables.

Isabella was lying on one of the Balinese loungers that Beatrix had bought. She was wearing cut-off denim shorts, a thin shift and a pair of Beatrix’s glasses that were too big for her slender face were propped on her forehead. There was a jug of orange juice and a stack of books on the table next to her.