Chapter 39
Oxana wakes at dawn, and by the time she’s ascended to the main deck, the sun’s rising out of a molten, metal sea.
With the Medusa lying motionless at anchor, she dives from the stern and swims. Floating on her back she watches as golden light flushes the sky.
It’s as if the world’s hers, and hers alone.
Climbing back aboard, she squeezes the salt water from her hair, pulls on the towelling dressing gown from her cabin, and makes her way to the galley for a breakfast of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon with Feris and Andreas.
As Andreas makes coffee on the Gaggia machine, Feris allows her fingers to slip proprietorially down the back of his jeans.
She grins at Oxana. ‘You’ve caught the sun. ’
‘I know. I’m very fair-skinned.’
‘It looks good.’
Oxana shrugs. Although she doesn’t tan easily, like Defne and Buse, she’s slowly acclimatising to the Aegean climate. Where they’ve become olive brown, she’s turned a freckled blush-pink.
‘Your nose’ll be peeling by the time we get back to Athens,’ Feris says.
‘Probably.’
Andreas grins. ‘You got a boyfriend waiting for you?’
Oxana shakes her head.
‘I’m sure you meet someone soon. Some guy gonna be lucky.’
‘Doubt it.’ Oxana pulls a face.
‘Hey, you really pretty. For a nanny.’
Feris glances at him sternly. ‘Talking of getting lucky…’ she says.
Oxana flicks her a glance. ‘Go on.’
‘A certain young lady didn’t sleep in her cabin last night. Which is kind of tricky, because it’s a shared cabin.’
‘Ooof. Buse, I assume?’
Feris nods.
‘With Emir?’
‘Yes, she’s had her eye on him since last year, at least.’
‘What Buse wants, Buse gets,’ Andreas says.
‘I hope that doesn’t include you,’ Feris says.
‘She’s a child, moró mou.’
‘If you say so.’
‘What’s happening today?’ Oxana asks. ‘Anything special?’
‘There’s a schedule change,’ Feris says. ‘We’re cruising to Skila today, not Kalypsa. It’s a last-minute thing that the captain told me about less than an hour ago. Skila’s a tiny island, but apparently Mr Yilmaz has some kind of private meeting there today. We’ll be anchoring offshore.’
Without appearing too interested, Oxana questions Feris about the change of plan, and Tahir’s meeting on the island. They chat for a further ten minutes, then Oxana excuses herself. When she leaves the kitchen, Andreas’s razor-sharp boning knife is in the pocket of her dressing gown.
She returns to her room, hides the knife beneath her mattress, and changes into a swimsuit and cotton cover-up.
Then she makes her way to the dive locker on the main deck.
If anyone questions her, she’s ready to say that she’s looking for a mask and snorkel.
But no one comes. The wetsuits are hanging, undisturbed, on their hangers, including the one that she thinks will fit her best. Everything in the locker is as she left it, when she came here on her first day aboard. Except for one thing.
On that first day, there was a weight-belt laid beneath each wetsuit.
Six webbing belts in all, each fastening with a stainless-steel buckle and hung with neoprene pouches of lead shot.
Scuba divers wear weight belts to counteract the natural buoyancy of their bodies.
Without them they would struggle to swim beneath the surface for any length of time, especially when wearing a wetsuit.
Today, there are no longer six weight belts, there are three, and in that instant Oxana knows what happened to the young French deckhand.
I can see it all. The terrified boy killed by the silent Atlas, as Tahir looks on.
His neck broken, I’m guessing; boats and bullets don’t go well together.
Then the body hidden and disposed of overboard under cover of darkness.
But bodies float, so Noah would have to be weighed down to take him to the bottom and keep him there.
And what better way of weighing down a body than with something expressly designed for that purpose?
And just to be sure the body in question stays there, even when the flesh has fallen away and the bones have been picked clean, why not use three of them?
I won’t tell Defne that the boy who smiled at her now sleeps with the fishes, rocked by the dark Aegean. She’ll find out eventually that her father’s a monster, but she’s not going to hear it from me. Let her enjoy the last tattered fragments of her childhood.
Meanwhile, I have to clear my mind, and focus.
When the time comes, I have to be ready to move.
I’ve had plenty of time to consider the possibilities – all those hours on the sundeck – and while I wouldn’t say my plan’s watertight, it gives me a fighting chance.
I can feel it already: that crawl of excitement in my belly.
Eve always told me to be more respectful of danger, because she thought I wasn’t afraid.
But I was, and I am, just not in the way she thinks.
My training taught me to acknowledge fear, and to step away from it. To distance myself and then act.
Eve opens her eyes warily. Dusty sunlight is angling through her bedroom window, illuminating the clothes that she’s piled on the chair.
It’s 8 a.m. and the house is in silence.
With deliberate and methodical care, she brushes her teeth, splashes water on her face, dries her hands, and dresses.
She takes the stairs slowly, one by one.
Anything to put off whatever awaits her below.
The living room is perfect. The carpet is gone, revealing shining elm floorboards, and a couple of cushions are missing, but otherwise everything is in its place.
Nothing’s bloodstained, nothing’s broken.
Pye’s curled up on the sofa, silently asleep.
There’s no sign, of any kind, that anything untoward happened here.
The kitchen is equally pristine. No soggy bags in the teapot, no unwashed mugs to suggest that there have been visitors.
The only thing that wasn’t there before is a sprig of fresh rosemary on the kitchen table. Or was it?
Disbelieving, faint with relief, Eve slumps into the sofa next to Pye, who wakes with a start. She strokes him, and after an irritated quiver or two, he closes his eyes again. She’s about to get up and make herself some breakfast, when she hears the key turning in the lock on the front door.
Philippa steps briskly into the living room. ‘Eve, I…’ She hunkers down and takes Eve’s hands. ‘I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry you had to be…’ She shakes her head. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Mmm.’ Eve nods.
‘I mean, really all right?’
‘Weirdly, yes. I mean, last night was horrendous. Utterly terrifying. But I had no choice. I had to do what I… did.’
‘But… how? He’s a violent, dangerous criminal. Or was. How did you manage it?’
‘Pye saved my life. He flew at the guy, hissing and spitting and clawing. Ripped his face to shreds. It was like he was possessed.’
Philippa scratches behind the cat’s ear. ‘You were possessed, my Pyewacket, weren’t you?’ she murmurs proudly. ‘And then?’
‘And then I, um… used your sacrificial dagger.’
Philippa stares.
‘I jammed it into his guts, and then…’
‘Yes?’ she whispers.
Eve shakes her head. ‘I don’t want to think about it. But I finished him.’
Philippa gazes at her wonderingly. ‘When this whole business started, I asked the goddess for help. And she sent me you. An avenging angel.’
‘I’m pretty sure that’s not what I am. Angels don’t take the slow train from Waterloo.’
‘Maybe they do, though.’ Philippa unbuttons her rain jacket. ‘Shall we have some breakfast I’ve suddenly got an enormous appetite.’
‘Me too.’
As they busy themselves in the kitchen, Eve asks about the previous night’s visitors. Philippa’s answers are evasive. ‘It’s not really for me to talk about them,’ she says, pressing down the lever on the toaster.
‘But… All of them witches?’
Philippa gives her a faint, sideways smile. ‘What do you think?’