Dead Spy Running

40

Paul Myers hadn’t been hit so hard since he was bullied at school. He could have put up with the pain of a broken nose if it wasn’t for his glasses, which had been knocked to the floor with the impact. They had been taken off him when he was blindfolded, and put back on over his hood, to the amusement of his attackers.

The sound of them being crunched under a heel hurt even more than the second punch, which split his top lip like a burst grape. Instinctively he curled up into the foetal position, but it was no good. There were at least three of them, and he was soon being kicked in the back. Their feet were accurate, targeting his kidneys. He had always been useless at fighting.

Myers had gone from one bar to another after Fielding had dropped him off in Trafalgar Square, hoping to drown his memories of Leila. He also had nowhere to stay (the friend’s flat in North London had been a lie). It was as he was wandering across St James’s Park at about 9 a.m. that the van had slowly pulled up, hazard lights flashing. The usual park maintenance markings were visible on its sides, but the men who jumped out of the back doors weren’t interested in sweeping leaves.

The journey lasted fifteen minutes. He had no idea where he was being taken, except that the sound of the van’s engine echoed shortly before it stopped, suggesting that they had driven into a garage. Somehow he thought Leila was behind it, but he blamed her for everything in his life since he had discovered her betrayal.

As soon as the van’s back doors were opened, the beating started. They dragged him out onto cold concrete, and the fall from the van should have hurt him, but he was so drunk that he didn’t feel their kicks. He didn’t even recognise the voice of Harriet Armstrong as she ordered his attackers to stop.

The three fishermen spotted the Westerner two hundred yards off the port bow of their wooden, fifteen-foot boat. The owner had told his son to alter course and pick him up. It wouldn’t be the first tourist they had rescued, nor the last. They were usually drunk, high on skunk or acid. He had a cousin in Goa who said it was even worse over there. But Westerners had their uses. They liked having beach barbecues, and would buy tuna directly from his boat for prices three times as high as he could get at the market in Gokarna.

This one was far gone, he thought, as he and his son hauled the heavy body over the gunwhale. He had been swimming with all his clothes still on. Once the Westerner was curled up in the bottom of the boat, he nudged his stomach with his foot. The man groaned and vomited some seawater.

‘He’s probably one of Shankar’s,’ the boat owner said.

Marchant woke before it was fully light, and for a moment he thought he was in his childhood bedroom in Tarlton. The mattress was so thin it had taken him back, in the minutes before he was fully awake, to the time when he and Sebastian used to sleep on the floor in their indoor tent. But as his eyes adjusted to the orange light of dawn, he realised that the cotton above him was not a flysheet but a mosquito net.

He knew that he was lucky to be alive. The sea had drawn every ounce of energy from his body, and then worked on his mind. He had no recollection of being rescued, but he could remember being carried into his tiny room, the voice of Shankar, the café owner, enough to reassure him that he wasn’t on board the American frigate.

He went outside, his legs shaky, and looked up and down the beach. It was empty except for the cows, which were standing in a group between the café and the sea, and a solitary squatting figure in the far distance. The sea was calm, lapping at the shore. And then he saw the angular outline of the frigate, still two miles off, slightly further down the coast. He knew he must find Salim Dhar today.

After retrieving his purse belt from the sand, Marchant came across Shankar at the front of the café, trimming a coconut husk with a knife before chopping its top off and inserting a straw. He placed it on a table next to a row of others, each with a straw sticking out. Overnight a turquoise fishing boat had been pulled up onto the beach, next to the chairs that were still littered across the sand. Its name, Bharat, had been painted in white lettering on the side, beneath the high-pointed bow. Something about the boat looked familiar.

‘Who do I thank for rescuing me?’ Marchant asked, sitting down next to Shankar. ‘The owner of this?’ He nodded at the boat.

‘He says you shouldn’t go swimming with clothes on.’

‘I need to find someone. Brother Salim.’

Shankar stopped cutting at a new husk for a moment, and then continued.

‘Can you help me find him?’ Marchant asked, watching the knife. He knew he was speaking to the right person.

‘So it was you the police were looking for?’

‘Can you help?’

‘The boat goes after breakfast.’

‘Shanti Beach?’

Shankar stood up and walked away, dropping one of the coconuts into his hands. ‘Breakfast. You ask too many questions.’