Chapter 43

Going door to door, I checked every conceivable place that Cain could have hidden Jenny, but I had no luck. Part of me was relieved, because if she was in any of those rooms, then she would be dead already. No, Cain must have taken her with him. I was positive that it was his face I’d seen through the porthole just before the crazy man with the meat-cleaver attacked me. Seeing his opportunity, Cain must have ushered her away to another part of the ship. I doubted he’d go deeper into the bowels, now that he realised a rescue party was on board. A stronger likelihood would be that he had taken her up; to use Jenny as a hostage. That was the theory, but I’d still to continue my search.

A set of double doors opened into a galley. The place stank of spoiled food and unwashed bodies, and nicotine-laden stains coloured everything a deep tan. Though not somewhere I’d like to sit down and eat, it was still one of the cleanest rooms I’d come across on the Queen Sofia. My vision flashed to a stain on a distant table. Moving quickly, I went to check and saw something that brought bile into my throat. There was a fan of blood on the table, punctuated at the narrow end by a shallow nick in the tabletop. I could guess what had happened there, but didn’t want to think who had lost a digit to Cain’s blade. I had the sudden urge to kick the table over, to demolish it beyond recognition, but what purpose would that serve? Better that I go find the bastard who had made Jenny suffer.

My boot scuffed something: a severed finger. I scanned the floor and there was another. Over by the wall was yet another, and something tiny that could have only been a toe. In my time I’ve seen many horrific sights, but there was something so disturbing about the presence of those scattered digits that I almost vomited. I headed for the nearest door and was surprised to find a narrow vestibule, and a set of stairs leading upwards. On the third stair up there was a droplet of blood, more blood on the next step. It appeared that Cain had taken Jenny that way, and that she was still bleeding. The son of a bitch had hacked off one of her fingers, and my only grateful thought was that the other digits on the floor had been too thick and long to have belonged to her.

I went up the stairs warily, my SIG held poised to shoot. Last time we’d fought Tubal Cain he’d been in hiding and had ambushed Rink. Only Rink’s supercharged reactions had saved him from having his throat opened wide by Cain’s knife. The scar on Rink’s chin was a sore reminder of how close he’d come to death, though.

The droplets of blood led me upwards, like the breadcrumbs in some insane version of the Hansel and Gretel tale. In that story there’d been a cannibalistic witch plotting to devour children, but even the old hag was nowhere near as much of a monster as Cain. Throwing caution aside, I went up the stairs three at a time and banged out of a door and on to a rain-swept deck.

In front of me were the towers of stacked containers, behind me the aft of the ship. I swung round, seeking movement, but the downpour made it difficult to see far. I headed forward, following the wall of the steel containers along the starboard rail. Any second, I thought, and I’d find Cain. My nerves were strung taut, and adrenalin began to flood my senses. I had my game face on.

‘Where the fuck are you, Cain?’ I whispered, confident that I wouldn’t be heard over the drumming of rain and the groaning of the shifting containers.

Then, a second thought struck me. What had become of Ray Hartlaub?

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