They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story

74 Autumn 2011

Half an hour later, Bruno sat next to me at the Refectory table, messily shovelling Coco Pops into his mouth, from a bowl of them drenched in milk.

As I prodded my spoon at a bowl of granola, berries and yoghurt, with no appetite, thoughts about Nicos were swimming in my mind.

Or about Nicos not swimming at all.

I just could not stop thinking, wondering, what had happened out there in that dark ocean.

I was feeling terrible. Had he made his rendezvous with the Saul Brignell boat and been killed and dumped overboard when they’d found out how little cash he had with him? I knew it wouldn’t be good when they found out but I wasn’t thinking he’d be drowned. I was expecting either he would get a beating or the boat would be intercepted by Customs. It made me sick to think that what I’d done may have been the cause of his apparent death.

I went over and over it in my head, my anxiety going through the roof again. Yes, he deserved to suffer for all the shit he had done to me and Bruno over these past few years. But no one deserves to be sent to their death. Maybe it was that damned Lutheran background instilled in me in early childhood: Do the right thing. And putting Nicos in that situation wasn’t doing the right thing.

Or had Nicos cut a deal of some kind with the Brignell mob? He was persuasive enough to cut a deal with anyone.

Or had he simply, cunningly, faked his disappearance to escape from them?

And come after me?

I needed to re-read the newspaper article to see if it said anything about the Bolt-Hole’s lifeboat. Because if the lifeboat was missing, it could mean Nicos had used it. I knew from my times on Bolt-Hole that the lifeboat, a RIB, had a powerful outboard motor. It could reach any of the other Channel Islands, or even the French coast, in an hour or so in most weather conditions, and Nicos had told me he had on a number of occasions launched it off Bolt-Hole out at sea, at night, to collect or deliver drug consignments on remote parts of the French coast as well as Guernsey and Alderney, without fear of being picked up on a coastguard’s radar.

Had fisherman Adam le Seelleur, who had ferried me to Saint-Malo, done the dirty and snitched to Nicos? Or would he, when he saw that the police wanted to speak to me, go to them?

But that would be insane. What could le Seelleur have to gain from confessing he’d illegally smuggled us into France, other than risking his licence?

‘Hey, good morning!’ said a man with a gravelly American accent. I smelled the reek of tobacco — forbidden here of course like pretty much everything else that was remotely naughty — and looked up, to see Shambolic Hair looking down with a broad smile. ‘This your kid?’

I can’t explain what it was, but he instantly fired me out of my dark thoughts and put a smile on my face. ‘No, I don’t know who he is — I just found him under a rock.’ I winked at Bruno and he smiled.

Shambolic Hair grinned and held out a hand and in an American accent said, ‘I’m Stoker.’

‘Stoker? As in Bram?’

He looked puzzled, not getting it. ‘Bram? No, I don’t think so.’

I shook his hand back, and put him out of his misery. ‘Bram Stoker wrote Dracula.’

He beamed and nodded. Then he tapped the side of his head. ‘Yeah, well, you’re too sharp for me, at this hour. I just spent the night in a coffin, cut me some slack, lady!’

I laughed, I couldn’t help it. He had this face that was part impish, part handsome, part... rebellious. There was something wild about him. Something dangerous. ‘You need to grind those teeth,’ I replied. ‘They look too blunt — for a vampire.’

He nodded, as if he wasn’t sure I was joking, then stood awkwardly for a moment. ‘Actually, I’ve come to say goodbye, which is kind of a bummer, as I’ve not yet even met you.’

‘Was it something I said?’ I fired back. I don’t know what it was exactly, but I felt such an instant chemistry between us.

He shook his head. ‘I guess it was something you didn’t say. But, hey, who knows, if we’re meant to meet again, we’ll meet again. Until then, tschüss!’

‘Hasta la vista!’ I replied.

He made a gun out of his fist and pointed the barrel at me. ‘Hasta la vista, baby!’

Then he was gone.

There were more Coco Pops spilt on the table around Bruno’s bowl than remained inside it, along with ocean-sized puddles of milk, but he continued eating, oblivious to the mess. I turned and looked towards the door. Shambolic Hair was standing there, on the far side of the room, seemingly looking back at me. Our eyes met briefly — unless I imagined that — and then he really was gone.

Leaving my insides all shaken up. At least it stopped me racing through thoughts about Nicos.

I certainly wasn’t looking for a relationship at the moment. But to feel a flutter at a brief flirtation with this Stoker guy, along with the cold distance Hans-Jürgen had put between us, made me realize just how much I was missing the warmth I had always felt with Roy.

God, how stupid had I been to leave him?

Or was I just in a bad dip right now?

Stoker. Cool name. The American stranger. And now he was gone, out of my life. Ships in the night.

Although maybe that wasn’t such a great analogy at the moment.

I looked at my watch. 8.45. Time to take Bruno to Dr Borg and see what he would make of my son.

And afterwards, to see what the doctor would prescribe me. I had done a calculation and worked out I had just one more day’s supply of the tablets they gave me — dihydrocodeine — and I don’t think the schloss will give me any more tablets. They do keep my cravings for heroin at bay.

Perhaps I could go to a chemist to get my prescription. Maybe pick up a bottle of nice wine. How I missed those pleasures.

As I stood up, and was about to tell Bruno it was time for us to go, I saw Julia Schmitt striding anxiously across the room towards us, followed by another, young, friendly-looking woman, in the same schloss tunic. I wondered why she was in such a hurry. Had I misheard the time of the doctor’s appointment and we were late?

Then when she spoke, giving me a strange look as she did, I was seized with complete and utter panic.

‘Sandra, there are two police officers who would like to speak to you.’