The Accident Man

65

It took Bobby Faulkner a couple of minutes to get his drugged head around the fact that Quentin Trench was dead. Then he spent another couple shouting at Carver, his voice slurred, his thoughts disordered, blaming him for what had happened, calling him a murderer. He said his wife had been right. He said he should have stayed at home and gone to work. “Brother-officer my bloody arse!” he ranted. “You’re nothing but bloody trouble. Should’ve left you in France. Let you sort your own sodding problems out, none of my business. Now Quentin’s dead, best commander a man ever had. And it’s all your bloody fault.”

Carver let Faulkner say his piece. He considered his options as the other man ranted. He could either suck it up and say nothing. Or he could rip right back at him.

He thought about going for the strong, silent option. It would probably be the more mature response. But he couldn’t be sure Faulkner wouldn’t try something stupid as long as he saw Carver as a murderer and Trench as the innocent victim. Plus, he was tired and hacked off and he’d taken about as much as he could stand tonight – and the night before, and the ones before that. So he grabbed Faulkner by the neck, hauled him close till his face was just a few inches away. Carver stared into eyes still bleary with chemicals.

“Listen,” he said. “Listen very hard, because I’m only going to say this once. Quentin Trench was a lying, treacherous bastard who tried to kill me and would have killed you next. He stuck something in that hot bloody toddy you guys made, knocked you out. For God’s sake, you’re a big boy, you must know you’ve been drugged. And it couldn’t have been me, could it? I was up on deck, on watch.”

Faulkner shrugged noncommittally, unable to argue but unwilling to agree.

“He shot at me,” Carver continued, “but he missed. Look.” He pointed to the frame of the hatch. “There are the bloody holes. And none of this would have happened if you hadn’t got him on this boat in the first place.”

Carver let Faulkner go and moved across to the tiller, steering the boat north, waiting for the first faint glimmer of dawn.

“Why would Quentin want to kill you?” Faulkner asked. “He loved you like a son. Told me so himself.”

“He sent me on a mission I wasn’t supposed to survive. And when I did, he wanted me dead. Look, I’ve spent the past five years working off-the-books, black ops, jobs that never happened. I never knew who gave me the work. I didn’t think they knew who I was, either. Better that way, for both our sakes. Turns out I was wrong. One of my bosses knew exactly who I was, because he was Quentin. I’ve been working for him all along, I just didn’t know it.”

Faulkner frowned. “Hang on. It was you that called me first about Quentin. That’s why I thought of him when you called again about the boat.”

“That’s right. I thought he could help me. Pretty stupid, right?”

“So how did you find out he was out to get you?”

“Because he made some stupid crack about Alix, the girl I told you about, being a Russian mail-order bride. How did he know she was Russian? I didn’t tell you or him that. He had to be on the inside. All I needed to know then was whether you were in on it too. And I knew you were in the clear once I saw you lying there unconscious.”

Faulkner was trying to work it all out, struggling against the numbed synapses in his brain.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth, Pablo? How do I know you’re not going to kill me too?”

“Because I would have done it already. You’ve been unconscious or incapable for hours. I could have tipped you over the side anytime. Anyway, you know the truth yourself. What was the last thing you remember before you went out?”

Carver watched Faulkner squint up his eyes, trying to create a picture in his head. He took a couple of deep breaths, expelling the air through his nose. He muttered to himself. Then his eyes opened and he shook his head sorrowfully. “You’re right. It must have been him. We were down there. I was sitting down, thinking about getting some rest. He came over. There was a mug of something in his hand… I don’t remember anything after that.”

“He knocked you out. Then he came after me. But he forgot how good I am at my job. So he died.”

Faulkner leaned forward. “What, precisely, is your job, Pablo?”

Carver said nothing.

“Come on,” Faulkner insisted. “You turned my boat into a battlefield. I’ve got a right to know.”

“I told you already,” said Carver. “Black ops, accidents. Like, say, a veteran marine officer with years of experience at sea who runs into a storm on a night crossing of the Channel and gets fatally wounded by a distress flare. It goes off too early while he’s trying to warn an oncoming container ship of his presence and blows him overboard. That kind of thing.”

“So what was this job Trench sent you on, the one where you met this girl? The one you weren’t meant to survive?”

“Don’t ask,” replied Carver. “We’ll both be happier if we drop the subject right now. So, take the tiller for a while. I’m going down to the cabin to check a couple of things out. Do you want a cup of coffee to help you wake up?”

He went below. The ship’s radio was mounted on the wall of the cabin by the chart table a couple of steps away. Carver ripped the radio from its mounting and smashed it against the side of the table.

“What’s going on down there?” Faulkner called down from the cockpit.

“Sorry,” said Carver. “Think I might have knocked something over. Don’t worry. No harm done.”

He made the coffees and took them back up to the cockpit.

Carver stood with his mug in his hand looking at the southern shore of the Isle of Wight, which lay straight ahead of them a few miles off, a black outline against a dark gray sky, the bottoms of the clouds streaked by the first orange rays of the rising sun.

“What was that all about?” asked Faulkner.

“I was putting your radio out of action. When we get to shore you’re going to need a reason why you didn’t radio for help when you discovered your two crewmates were missing.”

“There’s only one lost.”

“I’ll come to that. Here’s what you’re going to do. The moment you get ashore, get the harbormaster to call the coastguard. Then tell the truth. You were drugged. You’ll still have traces in your bloodstream. The mug Trench used will still be rolling around the cabin somewhere.

“When you woke up, you clambered up on deck, and both your crew members, Trench and Jackson, were missing. So was the ship’s dinghy – don’t worry, it will be. Naturally, your first instinct was to call mayday, but the radio was kaput. They’re not going to know when that happened. Now you’re frantic because two of your oldest friends have disappeared overboard and you haven’t got a clue what happened. You certainly haven’t got a clue why there are bullet holes all over your boat. I mean, there’s no gun anywhere, is there? Now, think you can manage that?”

Faulkner considered for a while, then answered, almost reluctantly, “Yes, I suppose so.”

They weren’t far from the English coastline now. Poole lay on the far side of the Solent, northwest of the Isle of Wight, to the left as they were looking. There was just a chance Trench had ordered a welcoming committee to greet them, in case he hadn’t got the job done at sea.

Carver turned his head right, to the northeast, gazing at the horizon. Then he turned back to Faulkner.

“Change course,” he said. “We need another harbor.”