Death

FORTY-TWO

Shaw had the sequence of the buoys leading out of Wells Harbour by rote. He’d been the pilot of the inshore RNLI hovercraft for nearly four years and he’d memorized most of the navigation along this stretch of the coast, from Lynn to Cromer. He knew that after the third green buoy on the port side he needed to look to starboard for the first red buoy, beyond which he should turn south-east to pick up the deep rip-tide channel which slipped past East Hills. So something had to be wrong because he was staring into the white mist, scanning a featureless seascape, when he saw two red buoys. Then three. Then none.

The blood drained to his heart so he blinked, trying to encourage the eye to water, his hands tightening on the paddle, which was poised in mid-air. He closed his eyes, the darkness full of strange cluster-bombs of blue light, then opened them to discover he had complete double-vision — everything in twos, one image slightly to the side of the other, slightly elevated. Nausea swept through him like a poison. The sharpness, the clarity, had gone, so that he was seeing a world with blurred edges, two worlds shadowing each other.

Valentine was looking at him. ‘Peter?’ he said. Ruth Robinson just looked into the mist, her head awkwardly forward, tensed to hear, to catch the first whisper of waves falling on the island beach.

‘You navigate, I’ll paddle,’ said Shaw, his voice strained, his eyes closed. Reason told him that if he robbed his brain of the evidence his eye was failing then it would stop flooding his bloodstream with adrenaline. Sweat, beaded on his forehead, fell into his blind eye. He put the paddle down then held his hands together, the fingers braided. Valentine was shocked by the thought that he might have done that to stop them shaking.

‘Peter?’

‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘Just do what I say.’ He picked up the paddle and dipped the blade expertly into the water, the sound as delicate as a trout taking the bait. He could do it blindfold, so he kept his eyes closed, feeling the boat slip forward in response to each stroke. ‘Over your right shoulder there should be a red buoy,’ he said.

‘Not a thing,’ said Valentine.

‘Right. We’ve drifted a bit. It’s OK. Look around.’ Shaw’s voice was light now, controlled, and it made him feel better to hear it.

Valentine turned and the shift of weight rocked the boat.

Shaw kept his voice matter-of-fact. ‘Just move your head.’

Valentine tried that but the vertebra in his neck cracked as he swung his bony, axe-like, skull from left and right. ‘There, I see it,’ he said. ‘It’s to our right — three o’clock.’

‘Take us past it — leave it on our right. Then look out for another, ahead, and do the same with that.’

Shaw felt the change approaching before his skin felt the sun. The temperature rose, the damp, almost sulphurous smell of the mist dissolved, but most of all the acoustic world came back in sharp definition, as if the ‘treble’ had suddenly been switched up on a gigantic sound system. A gull shrieked, the branches on the stone pines whispered, and he opened his eyes to see East Hills bathed in sunshine, the image pin-sharp.

Then his mobile beeped. It was a text from Twine. He didn’t want to strain the eye by reading it so he handed the phone to Valentine. ‘It’s Joe Osbourne,’ he said. ‘He died an hour ago. Tilly was there.’