Authors: Warren Slingsby
She nodded. Trying to listen to what he was saying, but at the same time, trying to keep her senses about her and figure out a possible way out of this.
“Janet, you have a letter which has details about this private study. Yes?”
She nodded but he paused awaiting a verbal answer.
“Oh, yes, I do.”
“Janet, where is the letter?”
It was annoying that he began every sentence with Janet…
“It’s in Barcelona.”
“Janet, why would it be in Barcelona?”
“That’s where my house is. It’s where I live.”
He shut his eyes for a second as if computing this information. He walked to a table at the side of the room, opened a drawer and took a pen and an envelope out. He gave them to her. “Janet, do you see that anchor out on the deck back there?” he motioned toward the door. She nodded. “The anchor is very heavy. Shortly, I am going to handcuff you to the anchor Janet and it is going to pull you to the bottom of the Mediterranean.” He paused as if awaiting a reaction.
She resolutely refused to give him one, apart from the fact her face was going hot.
“I’m not really sure what will happen to you after that.” he added. “Janet, you need to write your address down on this envelope. I will check you live where you say you do. If you write the correct address down for me. I will make this easier on you. I will do this by knocking you unconscious before I put you in the water. Do you understand? It will be much preferable to go into the water conscious.”
She nodded in agreement. Although she didn’t really want either.
Well there was no point to lie she thought to herself. She weighed up her options and there seemed to be very few. She wrote the address down on the envelope. He took the envelope and went out onto the rear deck locking the door behind him, caging her once more. He sat and made several phone calls over the course of fifteen minutes, then simply sat with the phone on the table and waited. He lit a cigarette and smoked it staring into the distance.
She weighed up her chances of escape. She thought about just trying to hit him or kick him in his balls and then getting into the study to call for help. Slim chance, but a chance all the same. Also, he probably knew how to get into the study. But if she could just make a call to the police. Or she could try to push him in the water. Again. Slim. She had to try. She decided when he came for her, she would act scared and defeated. Deflated. But then she could try to kick him in his balls. It was the one last defence women had against stronger men. If she could make contact, she knew he would go down. He would struggle to fight her for at least a few seconds. What else did she have? Nothing really.
His phone went. Terrible ring tone she thought to herself. Focus Janet! He walked in and she looked down at her feet. He stood over her.
“So I think you gave me the correct address. There is indeed a Janet who lives at this address. So thank you for that. I can now make this easier for you. But I’m afraid now is the ti…” She extended her right foot upwards towards his crotch and unbelievably made contact. She felt the soft flesh of his balls compact. She didn’t just make partial contact, she made full ball crushing contact. He dropped to his knees. His eyes shut tightly for a second. Then opened wide in disbelief, but she was up scooping herself to the side toward the open door. She pulled the door shut behind her and went to lock it, but the key was not in the door. She ran around the side of the yacht toward the rear to find another way into that central corridor. She ran as fast as she could, looking through the side window into the living space. She saw he was getting up off the floor. He was struggling and having to help himself up with the sofa. She ran through the door at the other end of the yacht and down into the study, pulled on the book and the book shelf opened. She slid in and pulled it closed behind her. She couldn’t believe her eyes, there was no phone on the desk. She was sure there had been a phone on there. Why would you have an office or study without a phone?
She could hear him in the outer study now. Muffled but she could hear the angriness in his voice. He obviously didn’t know which was the actual book. He was trying them all. She could hear him muttering loudly to himself about how he was going to enjoy drowning her. She searched frantically through drawers but there were no phones, tablets. There was nothing she could use to communicate with the outside world. She felt the small walls of the study closing in on her as he no doubt homed in on the book that would let him in. The book that would seal her fate. She turned to look at Rembrandt. He stared back at her once more, there was nothing that he could do for her, but his look said he felt her pain.
And then she heard the click. The wall swept outwards. She saw his face, hot and angry. His lips stuck in a snarl. He grabbed at the back of her neck. His grip was like a vice. It was almost paralysing her, her legs went half limp. She would never escape this now.
“There will be no more nice Dimitri Janet” he told her squeezing even harder “there will now only be pain for you. From here until you are at the bottom of the ocean. Gasping for air but only drinking salty sea water.”
He manoeuvred her toward the rear of the yacht. Her feet barely touched the decking. She simply saw it passing under her.
He pushed her to the floor on the low rear decking. Her world of pain had begun. He transferred his grip to her left hand and it was handcuffed within seconds. Then her right. She stared down at her fate. A shining, brushed steel anchor. She took some deep breaths. It would do no good.
Then she saw a movement toward her. A man in denim shorts. Running at the pair of them. Dimitri turned at the last minute and the man hit him at full force knocking him into the sea, but Dimitri grabbed his arm and pulled him with him and the pair were in the water. The man in denim shorts surfaced quickly and was on top of Dimitri. She felt she recognised him somehow. She couldn’t quite place him, but she immediately got a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. Was it Charlie from Edinburgh? That would not make any sense at all. She craned her neck to see. He was holding Dimitri under the water. It was Charlie. She wracked her mind to figure out how he could be here, but her mind was a mess right now.
An arm reached out from the water and hit Charlie around the side of the head. Then Dimtri’s head bobbed back up from the water. He sucked in air and went to head butt Charlie and contacted on his nose. His nose erupted with blood and Dimitri started swimming back toward the deck and Janet. He leaned up over the edge and grabbed at the chain attached to the anchor and Janet and started to pull it toward the edge. She knew if it went in, there would be little she could do to stop it pulling her down. She pulled back against him, but he was just stronger than she was. The anchor scraped across the deck shredding the varnish off the wood with its machined edges. He had his feet against the side of the yacht for purchase and leaned back. She grabbed onto a handle at the side. He managed to get the anchor onto the edge of the deck. Half of it dropped into the sea and the other half clung onto the edge. Charlie grabbed Dimitri around the neck with his left arm and pulled tight but this only helped Dimitri to get the anchor into the sea and it dropped with a huge splash yanking her attached arm toward the sea. The handcuff tore at her wrist hacking the skin off against her wrist bone. Blood poured down her hand and dripped into the sea. Waves splashed up at the wound with a salty sting. She clung on, but its weight was hard to work against and she could feel her grip loosening on the rail. Dimitri reached up toward the edge of the yacht and pushed upward against it shoving himself and Charlie down under the water. They disappeared out of view under the yacht. She felt faint as if all the strength had been drained from her and hung on to the handle as much as she could but her grip was sliding further down under the strain. She hooked her elbow around the rail in a final attempt to hold back. She tried to see where the two of them had gone but there was now no movement. They must have been under water for a minute. Then, something rising to the surface. It was the dark mop of Charlie’s hair. He shook his hair off like a labrador just out of a stream and pulled himself up onto the deck. He leaned back into the water and grabbed the chain attaching Janet and the anchor. He heaved it onto the side.
“Is he gone?” she asked.
Charlie was breathing deeply and covered in blood down either side of his face. “No, he’s right there.” He laid down flat on his back and pointed. Dimitri was floating face down a few metres out.
“Shit!” She jumped.
“I wish to fuck he wasn’t though.” Charlie added matter-of-factly.
“Turns out I can hold my breath for longer than him; I’m a good swimmer. That’s what it all came down to. Who was that?”
“Dimitri.”
“Who the fuck is Dimitri?”
“He’s someone who works for Nicolay Zestakova?” Janet came back. “Anyway, what the fuck are you doing here and why am I even speaking to you? Do you remember drugging me in Edinburgh by any chance?”
He turned to look at her. Regret in his eye. “Well you did steal two and a half million from the people I was working with.”
“Was?”
“Yeah, was.” he emphasised. “I’m no longer working for them. And don’t worry, I don’t want the money back. I did. That’s why I’m here in Nice, that’s what brought me to Nice. That’s not what put me on this boat though. That was worry about you. A gut feeling that you were in trouble on here. Which turned out to be bang on.”
“So confused. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“It’s a long story, but let me get you out of those hand cuffs first. Do you know where there might be a paperclip?”
“Drawers in the table in there possibly.” She gestured toward the living area.
He came back a minute later.
“I saw this on TV. Not sure if it works.”
He stuck the paper clip into the back of the hand cuff and the clasp pulled open. Janet pulled back away from the anchor. Charlie got up and dived back in. He swam to Dimitri and pulled his body back toward the rear deck. Then he held Dimitri’s hand up to Janet.
“Cuff him can you?” Charlie asked her. She snapped the cuff around his wrist. Charlie climbed back onto the deck and then pushed the anchor over the edge. Dimitri immediately begin heading wrist first toward the bottom. In seconds, he was inverted. His feet poked briefly from the surface of the water. Then his legs become two dark shapes. Then he was gone.
Charlie popped open the first-aid box that was attached to the side of the rear deck and gave some basic first aid. An alcoholic wipe, then gave her gauze to hold over the wound and then he wrapped a bandage around the wrist and secured it with tape.
“How did you get on this yacht?” she asked him.
“I paddled out here on a canoe I rented from Nice. Took me about an hour. I’m guessing I’ve lost my deposit by now.”
“Where is the canoe now?” she asked confused.
“It’s tied to the side of the yacht. Then I managed to get on board just a few minutes before Igor. Luckily I tied it on the other side of the yacht so he obviously didn’t see it. I managed to sneak on board whilst you were in there with the man and woman who locked you in. Was that Nicolay?”
“Yes. OK, right, start from the beginning please. I’m so confused by all this. I’m really thankful that you saved my life just now, but how the fuck did you end up here? On this boat: in Nice: now?”
“Depends what you call the beginning. If we’re gonna be straight with one another, where is the beginning for you? How did you come by the bag of cash? If you can tell me that then I can probably fill in some gaps for you too.”
There didn’t seem much point now to not tell him. She told him everything she knew about Joseph which wasn’t much. It felt good to get it all out. Purged. The reason she’d been in Edinburgh. The meeting with Joseph and going with him to Glasgow. She understood now why he was so keen to get out of Edinburgh. She explained how much drugs and drink they consumed and how she thought that was the cause of Joseph’s death. They came across her as she was leaving the hotel. The car was Joseph’s.
Charlie explained how he had come to be part of the gang and how they had managed to steal the painting from the auction house by posing as the secure courier company. How after Joseph had delivered the painting to the contact, Joseph had then double crossed them to take the money himself leaving other members of the gang at the motorway services.
He explained how they had tracked her down to Edinburgh using Joseph’s phone which she had and that he was talked into drugging her in Edinburgh by the gang, but how he regretted it. She just gave him a look which said ‘sure’ and nothing more for now. How they had followed the phone to Brighton. Then he went on to explain how he’d tracked her down to Barcelona.
“Again, I’m not proud of it but I tracked you down through your mum. Her email password is Janet1. She led me straight to you at Barcelona Airport.”
Janet came back, “Nice work. Hacking and following an old lady.”
“I’m not proud. I
did
really want that money back. At the time. But I’m over that now.”
He spied Dimitri’s cigarettes on the table and took one out and offered her the packet. She accepted. He dropped the lighter out from the packet and lit their cigarettes. Then laid back for a second, shut his eyes and inhaled. It all tasted more of salt and blood than tobacco but it gave him a hit he needed.
“I only smoke after sex and near death by drowning experiences.” Charlie quipped.
“So carry on.” Janet told him. She leaned back and breathed the smoke in deeply. It hurt her lungs but it felt good. This was the first cigarette she’d smoked since the night all this started.
“Where was I? Ah, yes. I was supposed to just keep an eye on you until Carl came out here.”
“He’s the bald one right?” Charlie nodded. “That fucker gave me a real slap. Nice guy.”
Charlie explained that something had happened back at home, delayed them and then she had started on her road trip to Nice so he’d been told to just tail her. He explained that another man was following her too and was watching the yacht on the mainland just outside of Nice. He explained he had no idea who he was or why he was following her. He told her what he looked like but she had no recollection of seeing him. Charlie missed out explaining how the man had been in her Barcelona house. None of this sounded good, but allowing her to have the stranger in her house whilst her mother was there was pretty inexcusable really.