Читать книгу Dirty Little Secret - Jon Stock - Страница 21

The captain of the thirty-two-foot yacht was relieved they had finally reached Portsmouth. He didn’t much care for Spinnaker Tower, but it was good to be drawing close to it at last, having seen its sail-like profile on the horizon for what seemed like an eternity. In a few minutes they would moor for the rest of the night in Gosport Marina. It had been a tiring crossing, taking longer than it should have done, and both he and his future son-in-law, brewing tea below, were exhausted. They should have arrived before sunset, but the wind had been against them, making them miss the tide coming around the Needles.

But at least the trip had been a success. Jacana, an old Seadog ketch he had owned since the 1970s, was lower in the water than normal, thanks to the haul of wine that was stacked up in boxes below decks. His daughter’s wedding was in a few weeks, and she thought it would be fun to buy the wine in France. He had spent far too much in the cellars of Saint-Vaast, where the prices were inflated for British visitors, but they had enjoyed tasting the wines, and the trip had been ‘a chance to bond’, as his daughter had put it.

It was as he adjusted his woolly bobble hat, the butt of many family jokes, that he heard the call. How far away the person was, he wasn’t sure, but he knew at once that someone was in the water, on the port side.

‘Hello?’ he called out, cupping his hands. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Over here!’ the voice shouted. Then he saw a waving hand and a figure clutching to a yellow racing buoy, fifty yards away.

‘We see you!’ he called back, turning the wheel hard to port. ‘Coming across now!’ He leant in to the cabin. ‘Forget the bloody tea, and get yourself up here! There’s a man overboard!’

Daniel Marchant watched the yacht as it adjusted course and headed towards him. He had spotted it from the shore fifteen minutes earlier, and timed the hundred-yard swim out to the buoy. He didn’t think he had been seen by the two security cameras mounted high up on steel poles either side of the beach. As he had slid off the rocks and into the sea, the cameras had stayed pointing to the left and right, scanning the public footpath that ran along the shoreline. He reassured himself that they were set to detect people trying to breach the Fort’s defences, not to escape from them. Lakshmi, too, must have kept her word. He was worried about her.

Now, though, he had to concentrate on his escape. There had been no opportunity to create a cover story. Instead, he would have to improvise, judge the mood. The boat was bigger than he had thought, and he hoped there wouldn’t be too many people on board, too many questions.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ the captain asked, manoeuvring the yacht alongside the buoy. A younger man had already lowered a rope ladder over the gunwale and was holding out a boathook for Marchant to grasp.

‘Long story. Bet someone I could swim across to Portsmouth.’

‘Are you drunk?’

‘Not any more,’ he said, hauling himself up onto the rope ladder.

‘We can take you into Gosport Marina, but then you’re on your own.’

‘Suits me.’

Five minutes later, Marchant was in the cockpit with a blanket wrapped around him, cradling a mug of steaming tea. He wasn’t as cold as he looked. There seemed to be only two people on board, a father and son perhaps. Their bags were packed, but the older man, who spoke with a faint Glaswegian accent, had explained that they were going to spend the night on board, as they were too tired to drive home. Marchant needed to establish only one thing: the whereabouts of their car keys.

After finishing his tea, he climbed down into the cabin and placed the mug on the draining rack beside a tiny sink. He paused a moment, looking around at the cupboards, the foldaway table and a bank of electrical equipment on the other side of the cabin doorway. An old leather Morris Minor key fob was hanging next to the depth finder. His father used to sail a Westerly 22 out of Dittisham when Marchant was young. He too had kept the car key hanging up in the cabin, beside an ancient VHF radio. Marchant slipped the key off its hook, slid it into his jeans pocket and returned to the cockpit. Just his luck that they drove a car even older than their boat.

‘Thanks for the tea,’ he said. They were decent people, and he regretted having to steal their Morris Minor, but he needed to reach Dhar before dawn.