Chapter 86 #2
If the weather hadn’t been so appalling, Tug might have laughed. Whichever way he looked trouble was staring him in the face. Why the fuck hadn’t he left earlier?
‘We’re not going to take it out of the harbour,’ he replied. ‘We’re just moving it from the town pontoon to one of the floating ones. Maybe a mooring buoy. Technically it’s probably not even stealing.’
‘Technically, I think it is.’ The brown-skinned girl, with longer legs than the other two, had caught up with the boys.
‘You a lawyer?’ Tug asked.
‘Nope.’ Both were shouting to be heard above the wind.
Tug looked her full in the face. ‘Got a problem with commandeering a dingy?’ If she had, she was off the team, simple as that.
‘Not really,’ she replied. ‘I’ll say you told us it was yours.’
Tug found himself grinning. ‘I like you. What did you say your name was?’
She raised heavy black eyebrows. ‘I didn’t.’
His grin held. ‘We stay anonymous as we commit a felony. I like your style.’
A few yards back, the other two girls were struggling to talk as rain lashed into their faces. ‘Do you think we’re doing the right thing?’ the plump one asked the blonde, whose name was Tara.
‘Depends how much you want to get back to Plymouth,’ Tara replied.
She’d been asking herself that same question since they’d left the pub.
The boy who’d joined them at the last minute had been eyeing her up for most of the weekend.
He was a serious lech and the drunker he’d got, the less he’d tried to hide it.
She had a feeling he’d only asked to come along because of her.
The plump girl said, ‘I’ve never been on a boat before.’
Tara turned to her in surprise. ‘Really?’
‘Well, there were some row boats in the park when I was growing up. My dad used to take me on them when I was little. This won’t be the same, though, will it?’
Tara looked over the thin line of trees to the river. The few boats she could see were pulling at their mooring lines like tethered animals. ‘No,’ she said, ‘this won’t be the same.’
The pontoon rocked as the group made their way to where dozens of small dinghies and rowing boats were tied up. The fireman, whose name was Craig, glanced back at the blonde girl, but she kept her eyes on the swaying wooden platform.
‘Which do you fancy, girls?’ the big bloke called back.
‘How about the one with a kill cord attached?’ Craig snapped. If this twat thought an outboard engine would start without one, he’d been lying through his back teeth about being in the navy.
The bloke squared up to him.
‘Wait up! Guys! Hold on a second.’
Craig turned round to see a small, skinny man in his late twenties heading their way at speed. He was breathing heavily when he reached them. Even in the dim light around the harbour, Craig could see that his face was gaunt and his skin bad. The guy was a user.
‘I’ve got a RIB,’ he announced, gasping for breath. ‘I can take you.’
‘What’s a rib?’ the plump girl whispered to the blonde.
‘Rigid inflatable boat,’ Craig told the girls.
The new arrival was looking from one face to the next. ‘I’m Steve,’ he told them. ‘I can take you to Plymouth. That’s where you all want to go, isn’t it?’
Craig found himself exchanging doubtful glances with the big guy, who’d obviously seen the same tell-tale signs he had. On the other hand, the kid’s eyes looked OK. No dilated pupils, and they held steady. He might not be high.
‘For real?’ the blonde asked.
‘Fifty quid each, in advance,’ the boy, Steve, went on. ‘I can’t risk the boat for anything less.’
Fifty quid. No girl was worth that. Craig was going back to the pub. On the other hand, did he really want to get sacked?
‘No one here’s got fifty quid, mate,’ the navy bloke said. ‘And there’s no risk to the boat, not if you know what you’re doing.’
If the guy actually had a boat. Especially one big enough to take all of them. He looked as though he’d struggle to fund his next meal.
‘It’s a tricky navigation out of the Yealm at night,’ Steve argued. ‘Even in a RIB. And we have to go soon. The wind’s getting up and we’re going to have wind over tide when we reach open water. I can do it for forty quid each. Best offer.’
‘Maybe this isn’t a good idea,’ the blonde said.
The big guy turned to the others. ‘Can you lot stretch to twenty-five?’ he asked them.
They nodded, the plump girl last of all.
‘I guess,’ Craig admitted.
‘That’s a hundred and twenty-five quid for two hours’ work,’ the big guy told Steve. ‘Now, what I want to know is, how big is this RIB of yours, what sort of engine and can you deal with big seas?’
‘Ribcraft 5.85 metres, ten-seater, one hundred horsepower engine. And I’ve been boating since I could walk. She’s this way.’
Eager now the question of money had been settled, Steve hurried them along the pontoon.
Robin took up the rear, keeping a close eye on the plump girl, who didn’t look too steady on her feet.
He didn’t need to get back to Plymouth, not really, but the tent he’d been sleeping in the last three nights had gone home with his mates, who’d caught an earlier bus, and he didn’t fancy a night in the open.
Besides, a sea voyage in a storm sounded fun. Robin was easily bored.
At the head of the column, Steve dropped to his knees and pulled on a thin, wet rope.
Gradually, one boat out of the mass tied to the pontoon could be seen making its way towards them.
One of the larger ones, it had a rigid black hull and a big outboard engine.
As it came closer they could see its floor was awash. Only three seats.
‘It’s leaking,’ the blonde said.
‘That’s rainwater,’ said the bloke whom Robin was calling to himself the Able Seaman. ‘It’ll be safe enough. As long as this lad knows what he’s doing. You got life jackets for the ladies?’
‘Why only for us?’ the brown-skinned girl snapped. ‘Are we less capable than you?’
The Able Seaman held up both hands in mock surrender. ‘Just trying to be a gentleman.’
‘I didn’t know I’d be carrying passengers,’ Steve said.
Robin felt the first pang of misgiving. You were supposed to wear life jackets on a boat, weren’t you? On the other hand, it was only a couple of miles to Plymouth and boats like the one at their feet crossed rough seas all the time and came to no harm. He couldn’t wimp out now.
‘In you get, girls.’ The Able Seaman grasped the bow of the RIB. ‘Two of you take the rear seats. The rest of us will have to hold on to the sides.’
One by one, the group boarded. Able Seaman, in spite of his weight, managed it easily, as did Fireman Sam.
The plump girl, on the other hand, almost upturned it, before collapsing down onto one of the seats.
The blonde took the other. Robin made his way to the front and sat on the hull, opposite his naval pal.
Steve had taken his place at the driver’s seat when they heard footsteps running along the pontoon.
‘I need to come with you,’ the boy called when he was still twenty yards away. ‘Me and my girlfriend. She’s pregnant. I need to get her to hospital.’
The boy was painfully thin, in his twenties like the rest of them.
His hair had been cropped short above a widow’s peak, but his thick brows suggested it would be dark brown, maybe black, when allowed to grow.
His eyes looked enormous in his gaunt face.
A fake diamond earring gleamed in his left ear.
‘Mate, we’re not the ambulance service.’ Able Seaman gave the boat a gentle push, taking it away from the pontoon. ‘If you need medical attention you have to wait for the proper authorities.’
‘Who can’t get here,’ the brown-skinned girl reminded him. ‘The road’s blocked, remember?’
By this time, they could see the girl moving slowly along the pontoon in her boyfriend’s wake. She looked young and, apart from the swollen stomach that she clutched with one hand, very thin. The look on her face suggested she was in pain.
‘She might be losing the baby.’ The boy looked distraught. ‘I have to get her to Plymouth.’
Robin opened his mouth to offer them his place; he’d changed his mind; a night in the pub didn’t feel like too bad an idea at all.
‘We can fit them in,’ the blonde girl said. ‘Ten-seater, you said, Steve. And I’m a nurse. A student nurse, but still. We can look after her. She can have this seat.’
‘I think we should take them,’ Fireman Sam said.
The Able Seaman gave a heavy sigh but didn’t push it.
Steve pulled the boat back to the pontoon, the boy and his pregnant girlfriend climbed aboard, and they set off across the water.
As the lights of the harbour faded and darkness closed around them, Robin had a sense of leaving one world behind and slipping into another.
Don’t do this, a voice in his head told him. Go back, while you still can.
But the pontoon had already faded into the gloom and the lights of the harbour looked a million miles away.
A wave washed over the bow. The Able Seaman didn’t flinch and so Robin bit back the yell of disgust as the cold water soaked right through his clothes to his skin.
Behind them, he heard squealing and scrambling among the girls.
‘Sit still and shut up.’ Able Seaman twisted round. ‘This will be tricky enough as it is and, frankly, if we go in the water, I don’t fancy anyone’s chances but mine.’
Robin told himself he was going to sit very still until he got off the boat at Plymouth.
Shelley held tight to her boyfriend’s hand and closed her eyes.
An hour ago, giving birth in a tent felt like the worst thing she could imagine.
Now, a tent didn’t seem too bad at all. The droning of the boat’s engine was making her headache worse, the continual bouncing had brought her to a breath away from throwing up and she couldn’t seem to stop shaking.
She figured they’d been on the water for fifteen minutes.
They’d left the lights of Newton Ferrers’ harbour behind and were travelling between tall cliffs.