Sabrina & The Secret of The Severn Sea Read online

  ‘I’m sure the police are doing their best but, as you may be aware, around 200,000 people go missing in the UK every year. Okay, most turn up again after two days but that doesn’t mean we should give up on him just yet.’

  Ellie stared at Sasha’s bloody fangs in another attack of numbness.

  ‘It’s the helplessness I can’t stand. I simply don’t know what else to do. Jeremy feels the same.’

  Jorge loosened his black tie at his throat to breathe deeper.

  ‘I understand, I really do. The thing is, I need to piece together your brother’s state of mind. There had been genuine concerns for his mental health according to a report that the Church was compiling just prior to his disappearance. His work as prison chaplain had tailed off to virtually nothing while his sermons in St. Mary’s in Berkeley became wilder and wilder. He’d begun to shun his parishioners. Since neither phone nor computer have been found so far, it is difficult to estimate what most occupied his mind in his final days. He seems to have become friends with the Welsh shipping magnate Sabrina ap Loegres, but so far her office won’t forward my enquiries. Apparently she’s on vacation abroad. Can’t be disturbed until she returns. Was Luke stressed? Happy? Ill? Got any ideas?’

  Ellie’s eyes narrowed, but as she closed and bolted the cowshed door she suddenly remembered something else.

  ‘Luke convinced himself that Sean, our drowned grandfather, came back from the dead a few months after Rex was jailed for murder in 1981. How strange is that? He had a theory that Sean visited his son in prison, that he was charged by Rex to safeguard the stolen antiques while he saw out his sentence. That would be a minimum of fifteen years. Who else could Rex trust if not his own father? But Sean simply vanished again.’

  ‘It’s the man, not the treasure, I’m after.’

  ‘Find one and you’ll most likely find the other, Inspector.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Luke showed me a gold pocket watch and swore it was Sean’s.’

  ‘Is this it?’ said Jorge, producing watch and fob from his pocket. ‘I found it in a drawer in the vicarage.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. When pressed, Luke told me that someone had simply walked up to him and given it to him at the site of the old railway bridge at Sharpness.’

  ‘This person have a name?’

  ‘It was Ian Grey.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I’m just not sure there’s much more to say, Inspector. All I know is that Luke became a different person as soon as he acquired that watch. He took to wearing it on his waistcoat as a reminder of the one person in whom he had always believed so completely: the brave grandfather he never met but hoped to emulate. He kept saying that Sean must have died a hero on the night of the 25th October 1960 when the railway bridge fell into the river and he would prove it. Luke trusted no one. Never truly loved man or woman, I don’t think. Sean was his answer to all that fear deep within him, proof that people could be generous and good despite their upbringing.’

  ‘Did he have any other reason to think Sean faked his own death?’

  ‘Eva Greene certainly encouraged him to think so.’

  ‘I haven’t been able to find her, either.’

  ‘She’s the one who helped Luke investigate his family history. Without her and Sabrina things might have been very different, believe me.’

  ‘You sound as if you disapprove of them both.’

  ‘Hard to believe it was a random and selfless act when they showed up, Inspector. You want someone to blame? In Eva’s case I think she was after something for herself and Sabrina decided to help. Since then they’ve both skipped town in a hurry.’

  ‘I’m interested to hear that.’

  ‘You should be.’

  ‘Got any more ideas?’

  ‘Here’s what I think. Eva Greene offered my brother something he couldn’t refuse.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The truth. In return I think he told her something he would never tell me.’

  ‘That’ll be the ‘secretiveness’ to which you just alluded?’

  In the absence of all the evidence Ellie found it hard to be rational, an emotion which did its best to elude him, too. He felt as hurt as she did. Had Luke turned to him at the eleventh hour might he not have been the one to save him?

  ‘Please, Jorge, I’ve begun to think that it all has to do with something from his own boyhood.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  43

  Those two Captain Jack Sparrow lookalikes were advancing his way again, Luke noted, as he turned his back on the Amatheia’s ghastly figurehead and its mocking skull.

  They were definitely following him through the noisy crowds on Gloucester Docks’ busy quayside.

  Meanwhile, children cheered peelers who pretended to catch their thief, mothers pointed out boats’ pretty flags to their babies and a sea shanty rang out over a loudspeaker in the carnival atmosphere:

  ‘What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

  What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

  What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

  Early in the morning?’

  The pirates amused him with their ridiculous, black leather boots and greasy hair in rat’s tails. Each marched along with his hand clasped firmly on the handle of his cutlass on his belt.

  When they finally drew level with him, Luke heard a laugh. Some unthinking impulse caused him to turn his head.

  At once he saw one pirate smear a black gauntlet across his twisted grin.

  It shocked and disgusted him.

  The swashbuckler’s kohl-blackened eyelids narrowed cynically.

  ‘Reverend! You look troubled.’

  ‘Just enjoying a day out, that’s all.’

  ‘Too bad it’s at our expense.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Surely you recognise two of your old shipmates?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You know that very well.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  ‘How am I? Oh, thanks for asking.’

  To anyone else, they were simply acting out a costumed role like those peelers in plain view just now. Perhaps it really was all part of the day’s fun after all? He had already seen other fearsome looking muskets and pistols and noticed nothing inappropriate or untoward about them. Yet something in the shape and size of these buccaneers’ firearms now – something in the brace of fancy flintlocks tucked into their colourful sashes – suggested to him that they were not mere toys and surprise turned to alarm.

  He ordered Sasha to be still.

  ‘I don’t know you, I tell you.’

  ‘It’s been a few years, reverend. We last spoke at your father’s funeral, remember.’

  ‘That was years ago.’

  ‘Seriously. You still acting stupid?’

  This pirate wore more than a few piratical embellishments to help him blend in with the day’s re-enactments, but fixed to his ear beneath his mane of false black hair was a familiar glass bauble on a chain. Also, a serpentine tattoo slid down his neck.

  There was no mistaking the man that he had seen outside the barbershop. It was one of The Severn Sea Gang.

  ‘I really can’t imagine what you want with me, Mr McAtree.’

  ‘That’s funny.’

  ‘I mean it. I’m no criminal any more.’

  ‘Get this,’ said Mel. ‘We know where your sister Ellie lives on Floodgates Farm. You wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her little boy, would you? Personally, I’d hate to raise a child so close to a river, it’s so fucking dangerous.’

  ‘The hell if I know what Randal has to do with you.’

  ‘Don’t you, my old friend? Don’t you really?’

  To the other, taller man, it was no joke.

  ‘Time to cut the crap, Mel.’

  This other pirate appeared particularly ill-suited to his false beard as he pulled his pistol from his sash and held it wrong way round by the muzzle.

  It was now more club th
an gun.

  At the same time the gap-toothed buccaneer wheezed terribly. Such a lean, pale veteran looked unwell. There was a hole through his nostrils into which a ring could easily have fitted, except this was no piercing for any jewellery but something more serious – snorting cocaine had destroyed his septum long ago.

  Those crow eyes belonged to Slim Jim Jackson.

  Mel McAtree laughed.

  ‘Now that we’re officially all mates again, what can you tell me about your father’s stolen antiques?’

  The question stuck in Luke’s craw.

  ‘Not my call.’

  ‘Come now, reverend, tell us your plan.’

  ‘Yeah, what is it?’ snapped Slim Jim.

  ‘God knows. You’re the ones doing all the talking.’

  ‘But we’ve seen you digging!’

  ‘Someone hid the treasure near Berkeley, I’m sure, but that was the year I was born. How can I possibly know where it is now?’

  ‘Because Frank Cordell has given you a clue.’

  ‘Cordell is a fantasist. Anything he has told you is untrue.’

  ‘We don’t believe you.’

  ‘He’s a blabber and a boaster.’

  Mel leaned closer.

  ‘You and Cordell intend to divide the loot and cut out us of it. Do you?’

  ‘I don’t have it, that’s the truth.’

  ‘Then how are you going to pay for your sister’s wedding?’

  ‘Who says I am?’

  ‘Never mind that. It’s Cordell we want to know about. He says he’s going to be a rich man when he gets out of jail. You and he have done a deal. Am I correct?’

  ‘What if we have?’

  ‘So you admit it?’

  Slim Jim turned his head and spat in the dock.

  ‘Didn’t I fucking tell you? He’s planning to go off with it all.’

  The unhealthy, dished cheeks, the mean lips, the soulless eyes, lent this washed-up crook the hue of some pathetic bird.

  ‘Suppose my father did inadvertently tell Cordell something in his drug-addled dreams?’ said Luke. ‘What is it you think I have, exactly?’

  ‘A fucking map. What else?’

  He played dumb, while into his head there floated a frantic scheme.

  ‘Seriously? You want to play pirates?’

  ‘Running out of patience here, Luke.’

  As soon as he saw his chance he scooped Sasha under his arm. He did it for her own safety.

  ‘For real?’

  Slim Jim weighed his pistol in his hand.

  ‘You’re massively disappointing me, Luke. You and I used to be, like, so close.’

  ‘How can I forget?’

  ‘We know Frank Cordell gave you something, reverend. We think it might have been one of his paintings. Or a book? We’ve searched the vicarage once already and we’ll do so again, so why don’t you save us and yourself a lot of trouble? Tell us what he told you.’

  ‘What happens if I don’t?’

  ‘Ellie’s little boy fails to come home from school.’

  Sasha barked. She wanted to go for both men’s throats. Obviously such a meeting could not end well.

  ‘You stay away from that child.’

  Slim Jim smirked.

  ‘But you and I know how gentle and caring I can be, don’t we, Captain?’

  ‘Don’t you dare touch him, do you hear? Nobody loves that boy like I do.’

  Not nearly all of Slim Jim’s leer did Luke rebuke at first, faced as he was with such a sly, lascivious and malign expression.

  He was going down – he was a sinking ship as inky black water closed over his head.

  Disarmed briefly, he felt tears well in his eyes. He was back in that boatshed near Berkeley Castle, listening to the dark waves slap the piles beneath the rocking floorboards. If he had always felt guilty about what had happened in that riverside shack it was because he had sometimes had an erection, too. If he had sometimes had an erection, then there must have been complicity on his part, he must have somehow wanted it to happen?

  Then came the anger. That sense of being at the bottom of the deepest ocean where even the fish swam blind.

  ‘Why don’t you simply fuck off and leave me alone?’

  Mel objected.

  ‘You don’t think you can rat on your best mates, do you, reverend? Are we not all family, so to speak?’

  ‘Not to me.’

  ‘Just tell us where to dig, Luke and we’ll leave you alone.’

  ‘You know I can’t do that.’

  Slim Jim was scathing.

  ‘You heard him, he’s lying.’

  Luke narrowed his eyes.

  ‘That’s the way it is, fellas. Now bugger off, both of you.’

  It seemed impossibly unfair that this wanton, lustful man should have power over him still, but he did, he half crippled him with shame and regret.

  He shook in every limb. Hot beads of perspiration chilled his skin as he screamed inside with dismay.

  He was not scared exactly – he was utterly devastated.

  This was his chance to confront his tormentor, this was the face-to-face meeting that he had envisaged ever since he had grown old enough to contemplate murder instead of self-harm.

  Yet he could scarcely move a muscle, he was nine years old again, somehow, as if this decrepit thief still exercised all his former control over him with impunity.

  Slim Jim frothed at the mouth.

  ‘I don’t think he’s getting the message.’

  Mel agreed.

  ‘Do yourself a favour, reverend, tell us everything about the river and its likely hiding places.’

  ‘Keep working on it.’

  Suddenly Sasha leapt at Slim Jim and bit his shin. Luke had his arms free, even as the whole quayside, with its Devil’s ship, did a spin.

  A fist slammed into his stomach.

  The next fast undercut struck his jaw.

  ‘Hit the bastard, Mel! Hit him!’

  Shock met pain. Back in the day, he would have shot them both dead in a flash, except that would be no plan at all.

  ‘I can’t… won’t... tell you a thing.’

  ‘Fuck you, reverend. Here’s what I think,’ said Mel. ‘Somewhere there’s a clue to millions of pounds’ worth of clocks, china and snuffboxes. Make the choice that Rex Lyons never did.’

  Sasha entered into a perilous tug of war with the fractious Jim at the edge of the quay.

  ‘He’s right, you know, Luke. Give us the treasure that we helped your father to acquire, or never get to enjoy your share.’

  ‘Oh, so its ‘share’ now, is it? And what about my sister, Ellie? Doesn’t she deserve something, too?’

  ‘Very well, we’ll cut her in. Just get this damned dog off me!’

  ‘And Jess? My mother helped steal those antiques. She was one of the gang. Or are you doing all this behind her back, too?’

  ‘Whose idea do you think this is?’ said Mel.

  ‘So my own mother aims to sell me out, after all? I thought so. But I haven’t said I know where any treasure is.’

  ‘No, but you’re on its trail. We need to know what you know so far. And you’re going to tell us.’

  ‘You think?’

  Advancing along the quay, Slim Jim gave Sasha a vicious sideswipe with his boot. A yelp and the awful sound of splashing water ensued; the horror and disgust of it turned Luke’s stomach.

  He rushed to the edge of the flooded basin and grabbed Slim Jim’s cutlass from his hand. Then he turned with a wail like a banshee. He was going to use the side of its short, broad blade as a cudgel.

  ‘No one hurts my dog.’

  Then his world exploded. He swayed and toppled like a tree. Fell flat on his face. Lay prone.

  Next he felt himself being dragged backwards. He dug his fingernails in vain into the quay’s cobbles; he slid along inside his bloodied black coat, even as the surrounding festivities beyond the Amatheia sounded close by, but with an alien medley of distant voices.
r />   The cries of actors and audience completed their own peculiar drama, but no longer for him, apparently. Their shouts were filled with hideous, demonic gabble like the sudden rush of water in his ears.

  He opened his eyes to see a man’s face meet him eyeball to eyeball. His cutlass had gone flying.

  ‘As soon as you have the treasure, Luke, dear boy, make sure you tell us. Or you get more of the same.’

  ‘Son of a bitch…’

  Mel had come at him from behind…

  ‘H’m, yeah, I would urge you to worry about Ellie’s son from now on. You have until the end of the week, max. Come up with the map or I can’t answer for what will happen to Randal.’

  …that blur was a brick.

  Next second Luke closed his eyes.

  Someone else was screaming obscenities at them?

  But everything was so painful and dizzy – he was in a long, downward plunge, with never a chance of recovery into darkness deep, unfathomable, extreme.

  That new voice was not a man’s, yet sounded familiar.

  It could have been the Devil himself, if the Devil had long red hair and the face of an angel.

  *

  Beneath his blood-soaked face lay solid ground. He hadn’t been thrown into the dock, after all, Luke realised.

  He was somehow off his knees and staggering through the crowd. Children and parents alike hardly gave him a second glance as peelers chased more vagrants and buxom women clad in long cream dresses reeled about giving everyone drunken embraces.

  He was a good act at which to scream and laugh as he winced at every move he made.

  He was at the door of a building that stood in the shadow of the looming gables of Reynolds Warehouse. Wherever he was, he was being sat down inside a pale stone, Gothic archway as a fresh set of hands closed firmly round his shoulders.

  He was in the cool, white interior of – what, exactly? He opened one bruised eye but not the other and there came into focus a white oblong board that was fixed to the wall just above some pews:

  GOD IS OUR REFUGE AND STRENGTH

  A VERY PRESENT HELP IN TROUBLE

  Then the world turned bloodier and blurrier.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m here to help you, reverend. My name is Gabriela Meireles.’