Edging Flyer out through the doors, Shaw flipped down the visor on the helmet as the sand began to fly, a cloud drifting, so that when he got clear of the old beach huts he couldn’t see his house along the beach. They crossed the tidal sands in a cloud of sand and noise, Shaw juggling the joystick to balance the ailerons behind the two spinning propellers which drove the Flyer forward. The sea, when they reached it, was like liquid mercury, an unruffled expanse which looked oily, almost syrupy. Shaw swung her east, accelerated to top speed at 30 knots, and hugged the coast. Onshore he saw a pair of horses skittering near Thornham as the engine noise hit them. Off Brancaster they cut through a sailing race, scattering twelve-footers, as Shaw took a short cut across the sands off Scolt Head.
Ahead he saw the incoming haar, a wall of phlegm-white mist, as unbroken as the white cliffs of Dover. They’d ride into it, settle her on dry sand, and try to find the yacht on foot.
Shaw slowed to 10 knots as Flyer slipped out of the Flyer in a loop, tracing the edge of a bar of sand dried golden before the mist had swept landward. Then he cut the engines, the skirt sank, and they landed with a kiss.
One crewman took the navigator’s seat and monitored the radio while the rest climbed over the skirt. A turning halogen beacon was activated on the cabin roof, the beam cutting into the mist, sweeping around them like a lighthouse beam.
Driscoll was out on the sand last. ‘Right. Let’s do north, south, east, west. Don’t lose sight of the light. Take a hailer — ping it if you see her. You OK?’
Valentine was watching the water form a moat round his black slip-ons. ‘Sure.’
‘That way,’ said Driscoll, pointing north. ‘There’s a compass on the cuff of the jacket.’
Valentine looked at the little needle, then set out. Shaw went east, encountering only the skeleton of a conger eel in the first fifty yards. He stopped, looking down at the plastic cartilage, then back at the distant light. He walked another fifty, his eyes beginning to lose any sense of proportion or relative distance. It was like being lost in a giant sauna.
The single electronic ping, when it came, was eerie, echoing round him. He ran back to the hovercraft and then saw the others heading north, along Valentine’s trail. Monkey Business was blindingly white. A light shone from one of the cabin windows on the first deck. Somewhere they could hear the crackle of a radio on an open frequency.
Driscoll threw a weighted rope ladder up and over the deck rail so that it hung down uninvitingly. Shaw climbed first, then held it still for Valentine, who fought to hold on as it corkscrewed under him. The deck was clean, sluiced, spotless; the brass fittings managing a dull gleam despite the gloom.
‘Dr Peploe?’ Shaw felt an idiot shouting, and was unnerved by the echo bouncing back off the impenetrable fret. The first deck was largely enclosed in smoked brown glass. He walked to a glass door, tried to slide it across, but it was locked. He pressed his eye to the glass but could see nothing within except a fly on the inside: a bluebottle, then another.
They climbed to the second deck up a teak staircase with brass runners. Half of this deck was open at the sides and housed the cockpit. It looked like the flight deck of a 747: a sonar pattern in vivid green on black, the radio signal mapped out in decibel bars.
Red warning lights flashed on the engine monitor display.
There was a hatch down into the deck below which opened with an expensive click. Four carpeted steps led
A central corridor led aft from the saloon, teak doors on either side, one into a dining room, another into a Jacuzzi. Another at the far end led to the master bedroom, the bed itself filling most of the cabin, the ceiling a single mirror. In the corner was a spiral staircase leading up to a perspex hatch marked SOLARIUM. A small electric illuminated sign read IN USE.
Shaw climbed until he could get his shoulder up against the hatch. Then he paused. There was a sound, and he looked up through the perspex. Bluebottles, hundreds, wheeling in a demented reel, the iridescent colours making them look like creeping jewels.
Shaw took a breath, pushed the hatch, and the hinges creaked. He climbed another step, bending at the waist, using his body as a lever. Another step, then all his strength applied to unfurl his body. He felt the air-pressure pop in his ears. Then he felt the flies, pouring past him, thudding off his skin in tiny percussions, probing his eyes, his nose, his lips. Forcing his legs to climb, he stumbled into the solarium. The roof was a tinted green-glass bubble, dotted with flies, the hum of the insects amplified in the bowl of the room.
Suspended in a semi-circle were four sun lamps, like operating-theatre lights, the panels emitting a soft cherry-red glow.