The Token

Prologue

The bow of the boat reared like an angry horse; a second later it plunged deep beneath the surface. As a great wave surged towards her, Holly Baker realised she might have made the worst mistake of her life. She could die out here. And never see her son again.

The water hit her full in the face, a foretaste of what drowning would feel like.

Gasping, Holly struggled to keep upright on the drenched seat. Beyond the sails, she saw the swell of the ocean, mustering its strength, getting ready to throw them into the night again. Each time they slammed down into water that felt solid as rock, she felt sure the hull would shatter.

She clenched her eyes shut and tried to picture her son’s face. Pale skin, big dark eyes, curly hair that he hated getting cut.

Closing her eyes didn’t help. With her eyes closed the sounds of the Atlantic at night amplified.

The sea sucked at the boat, as though trying to eat it whole, and the wind was a constant presence: racing through sails, dancing around the mast, tormenting the numerous ropes until they rattled like old bones.

‘Big one,’ muttered the skipper. He was a man in his mid-fifties called Thomas, with fading red hair and a faint Cornish accent.

Holly had met him hours earlier, had handed him her life with a brief shake of the hand.

He’d promised them his boat, a forty-foot sailing yacht called Gemini, which was more than capable of taking eight people to St Helen’s on the Isles of Scilly.

The night crossing would be dull, a bit cold, but he had to be back in Plymouth by midweek.

They’d set out on water still as a mill pond, gleaming gold in the setting sun; the storm had come from nowhere.

An experienced sailor might have spotted the cumulonimbus clouds on the western horizon and known that severe weather was imminent.

Holly had not. Which rather begged the question – why hadn’t the skipper?

From Plymouth Sound, Thomas had aimed for Lizard Point, the most southerly tip of Cornwall, informing his crew that the wind was a steady northwesterly, sixteen knots, perfect sailing conditions.

Tug, one of the other passengers, who didn’t seem affected by the rolling, rocking motion, had cooked supper.

All had been well. But then the wind had strengthened, tipping the boat over at what felt like an impossible angle and most of their small group had been unable to keep their food down.

A relentless darkness had fallen, and the land became a series of distant lights.

Rain fell and the wind started to gust. Those not required on deck had gone below.

And now, somewhere between two and three o’clock in the morning, three people were on watch: Holly, the skipper and a man called Craig who’d spoken little since the storm broke. He sat beside Holly on the starboard cockpit seat, his gaze fixed on the ocean.

The two-metre wave, the promised ‘big one’, rolled beneath the hull and then they were roller-coasting down the other side. Almost immediately, the next wave broke over the bow, surging up the side decks, cascading over the cabin roof. Holly turned her head to avoid taking it full in the face.

Some way behind the boat – impossible to judge distances at night – she caught sight of two tiny lights, one red, one white. Thomas had told her to keep a look-out for other vessels; the big ships moved fast. She was on the point of mentioning it when both lights vanished.

‘It’s pushing thirty-five knots,’ Thomas said. Craig answered with a grunt.

There was something up with these two. Hours earlier, Holly had begun to suspect they didn’t get along, and that made no sense, because if it hadn’t been for Craig’s old friend Thomas, who owned a boat, the trip wouldn’t have been possible.

But she’d seen none of the ease in each other’s company, heard none of the banter, that signified old mates.

They’d spoken together rarely and only then in hushed voices.

‘Where are we?’ she asked, finding her voice.

Thomas didn’t look her way. ‘About five miles further west than when you last asked.’

He hadn’t struck Holly as being a talkative man, but he’d grown increasingly silent, even sullen, as the night passed. She wondered, and it wasn’t a comforting thought, whether he too was alarmed by the turn the weather had taken.

‘Holly.’ Thomas turned her way. ‘I’m getting odd readings from the chart plotter. Could you go below and check what position the instruments are giving you? You’ll find paper on the chart table. Write it down.’

Below was the last place Holly wanted to be. Going below made the nausea twice as bad. But she did need the loo. She got to her feet, bracing herself against the tilt of the boat.

‘You can put the kettle on if you want,’ Craig said.

He was joking. She hoped. There was no way she was handling boiling water.

‘Close the hatch behind you,’ Thomas warned.

The cabin was even darker than the last time Holly had been below.

In fact, pitch black. It smelt of sweat and vomit, of diesel and the remains of supper that only Tug, Craig and the skipper had been able to keep down.

Two indistinct forms lay on the two bunks: Tug would be one, Robin the other.

One of them was snoring in a steady, rhythmic fashion.

Tara and Sabri, two of the other women on board, were in the starboard stern cabin, while Cheryl, too large to share, was in the bow cabin by herself.

When the current watch ended, Tug and Robin would go up top with Sabri and Tara. Cheryl had been excused watch duty.

Using memory alone, Holly found the door of the toilet, or the heads, as she’d been taught to call it.

The tiny cabin stank like the public lavatories in Exeter city centre.

The light switch didn’t work for some reason, but she could hear liquid sloshing about on the floor.

Refusing to speculate about its nature, she tugged off her lifejacket and coat.

The boat bounced, throwing her against the fibreglass wall.

Bracing herself, she pulled down her jeans and managed to land on the tiny toilet.

Back in the main cabin, a figure made her jump, but it was only Tara, in fleece pyjamas, fluffy socks on her feet, which she’d regret if she was heading for the loo. She carried a tiny torch that shone a beam of bright light in the gloom. A loud snore rang out.

‘I can’t believe they can sleep in this.’ Tara kept her voice low. ‘I heard Tug say the wind was a force six gusting seven.’

‘Is that bad?’ Holly asked.

Tara shrugged; she didn’t know either.

‘How’s it going up there?’ Tara glanced at the hatch. ‘Still raining?’

‘Hard to tell where the water’s coming from.

’ Holly groped her way towards where she remembered the chart table being.

There’d been a series of tiny lights on it earlier, but they all seemed to have gone out.

As though the boat had lost all power. Tara’s next words stopped her. ‘I hope we’re doing the right thing.’

Holly opened her mouth to reply and found herself flying through the air.

She crashed into the chart table and for a moment was conscious of nothing but pain.

A deafening crashing sounded from above, followed by the scraping of running lines.

In the cabin, crockery rattled in one of the cupboards and the cutlery tray flew open, scattering utensils across the floor.

As the boat righted itself, Tug sat upright.

‘What the hell?’ He seemed fully awake. ‘Who’s on deck? And what happened to the frigging lights?’

‘I’m on deck.’ Holly had no memory of getting to her feet, but she was clutching the companionway rail, heaving herself up the steps, pushing aside the hatch as the boat tipped again.

Chaos. A sea-soaked, bewildering scene of chaos.

Water was surging over the port deck. The boom, the huge, reinforced tube of aluminium that held the main sail in place, was swinging from one side of the cockpit to the other.

There was no sign of either the skipper or Craig.

Ignoring the pain in her ribs, Holly stretched up to look over the cabin roof towards the bow. Both men had vanished.

The boat swung again, tipped again, and a torrent of water came racing along the starboard deck.

‘Skipper!’ she yelled. ‘Craig!’

The guard rail was under water. They were going over this time, and there was nothing she could do to prevent it. She clung hard, could feel herself falling.

Holly slid along the cockpit floor, could see the ocean beyond the stern, a great, gaping maw, greedy to claim her, and came up hard against the wheel. As she clung on, thinking of nothing but survival, the boat straightened and veered round, bringing the boom crashing across the cockpit again.

‘What’s happening?’

She twisted round to see Tug, his coat unfastened, no life jacket, yelling at her from the cabin steps.

‘Craig and Thomas are gone.’ Holly had to shout to be heard. ‘They’re not on the boat.’

Muttering a curse, Tug pulled himself into the cockpit, ducking low to avoid the swinging boom.

‘Hold her steady,’ he called. ‘Put the engine on.’

As Holly fought her way round the wheel to the engine controls, she saw Tug grab the main sheet, the rope that controlled the huge sail, and haul it in.

She pressed the On button. Nothing happened.

There was a Start button too, so she pressed that.

Nothing. The buttons seemed dead. She noticed, then, that the electronic instrument panels had gone dark.

Tug, behind her now, pulled her to her feet.

‘See if you can see them,’ he yelled into her ear. ‘Keep hold of something. Robin, get up here!’

The other man, Robin, appeared on the cabin steps.

‘We’ve got a man overboard.’ Tug was still bent over the engine switches as he yelled at the new arrival. ‘Get to the radio. Press that red button, the one with the plastic cover. Hold it down for five seconds then release. Holly, can you see them?’

Holly had both arms wrapped tight around the back rail. ‘Nothing,’ she shouted back.

‘The life jackets have lights,’ Tug yelled. ‘You’ll see them. What the fuck is wrong with this engine?’

So much black water. Holly blinked. Was that …?

She felt Tug grab her hand, then close it around a rope. ‘Hold this,’ he told her. ‘Let it go when I say so. I need to reduce the jib.’

There was something in the ocean, but it was so hard to judge distances at night.

‘OK, release it slowly,’ Tug was saying. ‘Keep your eyes on the water.’

The rope burned through Holly’s hand as Tug wound half the big sail away. Behind her, in the cockpit, she heard Tara’s voice.

‘Tug, Robin says he doesn’t think the radio is working. Can you come and look at it?’

Something that could have been a light. There it was again. Gone in an instant, but this time, she was sure. ‘I saw a light. Tug, I saw a light.’

She glanced up at the tall man by her side. In the darkness, his face seemed frozen in terror.

‘Tug!’

He seemed to pull himself together. ‘Point to it,’ he told her. ‘Don’t take your eyes off it. Not for a second.’ To Tara he called, ‘Get Robin up here. I need someone on the helm.’

Holly turned back to face the stern. The light was gone.

‘I’ve told Cheryl to stay in her cabin!’ Minutes later, Tug was at the helm, the only one capable of stopping the boat from being swamped by waves.

His fingers clutched the wheel like claws.

Even with his strength, every gust, every rogue wave, threatened to spin them out of control again.

‘She’s not mobile enough to move around the boat right now. ’

Holly, Tara, Robin and Sabri were squeezed together on the starboard cockpit seat, holding on for dear life and staring down into churning black water. The relentless pounding of the waves against the hull seemed to have intensified.

Tug wiped salt water from his face. ‘OK, it looks like something happened, maybe a freak wave, maybe the boat hit something in the water, and both Craig and Thomas went overboard. They’re both wearing life jackets, so should still be alive, and our first responsibility is to find them.’

Holly glanced sideways, from Robin to Tara to Sabri. Three faces, all looking as terrified as she felt.

‘On top of that we’ve no electrics,’ Tug went on.

‘I can’t begin to explain how that happened, but there we are.

I’ve switched batteries, but it makes no difference.

We can’t put the engine on or radio for help.

We’re out of phone range and will be for hours yet.

With this cloud cover I can’t even use what little astral navigation I once knew.

On the plus side, the boat looks sound, the conditions are challenging but manageable and we can use the sails.

And we know roughly what heading we were following.

We have to retrace our course and look for our two lost crew members. ’

A shock of fear rippled through Holly. Go back? They couldn’t go back. They had to press on, as fast as they could.

‘Shouldn’t we launch the life raft?’ Tara called.

‘Not while the boat is safe,’ Tug replied.

‘And let’s all pray it stays that way. Right, that’s your job, Tar.

I need you to poke your head below every five minutes.

Any sign of water on the cabin floor and we rethink.

The rest of the time, both you and Sabri look out for anything in the water. You too, Holly.’

There had been water on the floor. In the heads.

‘How could they both go overboard?’ Sabri looked as though she suspected Holly of sabotaging the boat. ‘Did neither of them say something? Call for help?’

‘Not that I heard.’

‘Likely one of them slipped and grabbed the other,’ Tug replied. ‘Either way there’s a good chance we’ll spot them.’

‘What if we don’t?’ Sabri asked.

‘We’ll find them,’ Tara said.

‘And if we don’t?’ Sabri insisted.

For a second, no one replied. Then Robin spoke up.

‘I guess we split the money six ways.’