turned. Walter gaffed the nearest with a pole and began securing the harness hooks to it.
Dennis and Howard climbed down a rope ladder from the spider deck and dropped onto the foredeck beside him.
‘What’s going on? What’s this all about?’ he asked them.
Howard eyed him coolly. ‘Natasha Bingham went missing yesterday. ’
Walter knew Natasha. She’d been one of Hannah’s best friends. Same age, same frizzy hazel-coloured hair; they used to look like twin sisters from a distance. Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
‘She’s missing?’
Howard nodded. ‘Yesterday morning, same time you left for shore,’ he said. The implication was right there in his voice.
Walter felt his face pale. ‘What?’ He turned to look from one to the other. ‘Howard? You’re not saying . . . ?’
Neither man said anything. Then Howard relented. ‘Sorry, Walter, we need to check.’
‘YOU THINK I TOOK HER!?’ he found himself screaming at them.
A shrill voice from the spider deck, twenty feet above him answered him. ‘If you’ve touched her, we’re going to kill you, you dirty old bastard!’
He looked up to see a row of faces, Alice Harton’s snarling. Beside her the girl’s young mother, Denise Bingham, her face mottled pink with grief and worry. Others either side of them, all of them grasping the rail, knuckles bulging.
‘I didn’t bloody take her! She’s not on my bloody boat!’
From the deck above he heard Latoc shout down. ‘Please check inside.’
Howard and Dennis stepped carefully along the side deck and dropped down into the cockpit. Howard ducked down through the hatch into the small cabin below.
‘There’s nothing down there!’ shouted Walter. ‘I told you, she’s not on my boat!’ He squinted at the railings above, shading his eyes as he tried to make out where Latoc was standing. He spotted the man’s dark ringlets fluttering in the breeze, sixty feet above him, and the outline of his dark, trimmed beard amongst a row of pale faces.
‘You!’ he shouted. ‘Latoc! It’s you! I . . . I worked it out last night!’
‘Oh, we can guess what you were doing last night!’ shouted Alice, from the deck beneath. ‘You dirty old bastard!’
Walter ignored her. ‘You made our generator blow up, Latoc! You did it! You killed Hannah and you covered it up with the explosion!’
Latoc shook his head. ‘God have mercy on you, Walter, if we find you’ve hurt this girl . . . as well!’
‘What?! You know I . . . I didn’t touch Hannah! I never bloody touched her! I—’
‘God have mercy on you if we find something, Walter, because I am certain none of these women will!’
Howard emerged from the cockpit, his face ashen and sombre. His rheumy pink eyes met Walter’s. He shook his head. ‘Jesus, Walt,’ was all he could mutter as he held up a small sky-blue plimsoll in one hand.
Denise Bingham screamed at the sight of it. ‘Oh, no!! Oh, God!!’
Walter stared at the plimsoll. It was Natasha’s all right. Sky-blue with a butterfly on the strap. She always wore shoes that colour. Every time her feet had outgrown another pair, it was on the ‘Needs and Wants’ list: Denise Bingham = pair of sky-blue shoes, plimsolls pref, trainers if not. Size 4 this time, please!
He shook his head. ‘I . . . I . . . don’t know why . . . I . . .’ he looked up at the rows of faces. He saw Denise’s face crumpled, broken and red. Beside her Alice and others, jaws set rigid in condemnation. Sixty feet up on the cellar deck he saw Martha standing next to Latoc, shaking her head sadly and crying. And further off, a hundred feet up, leaning over the railings of the main deck he recognised Jenny. Her head dipped slowly into her hands and he thought he saw her shoulders heaving.
‘I didn’t do anything!’ he called up to her. ‘JENNY!! I DIDN’T FUCKING TOUCH HER!!’
Chapter 58
10 years AC
O2 Arena - ‘Safety Zone 4’, London
Jacob had been transported to another world; a world of neon lights rushing past his car on either side leaving lens-burn streaks of colour, pinks, electric blues, aquamarine greens. Vertical billboards glowed dancing Japanese characters, and streets thick with whizzing brand names he vaguely recognised: Sony, Atari, Panasonic, Mitsubishi.
Flashing yellow chevrons appeared in the corner of the wide plasma screen in front of him; an early warning of a sharp right-hand turn coming up ahead. He eased back on the arcade booth’s accelerator pedal and prepared to make the turn as soon as he could make out where