The Desert Run Page 22

  “Anyone there?”

  Breathing sounds. The light playing around the edges. Like the guy was considering what he was looking at. The hiding places were only supposed to work with a casual inspection. We were playing the odds again. No one was expecting this yacht to be carrying cocaine, so no one would ever have any reason to look too hard. Only now, someone was looking. Looking for me. He was inches away with a gun in his hand.

  Something hit the wood by my head. Somehow I knew it was the tip of the gun, he was using the muzzle to test the wood. I trembled, doing everything I could to hold it still.

  “I said is there anyone there?” Aussie Mick called out from the saloon.

  “No. It’s clear.”

  “Then let’s get this shit on-board and get out of here.”

  I heard the footsteps go back to the saloon. I lay drenched in sweat, shaking with fear. For the next ten minutes, I listened to the sounds of the coke being carried out onto the deck and, presumably, passed across and onto the fishing boat. They moved quickly. I guess they must have tied alongside us. And they didn’t talk much. I couldn’t think, lying there in the darkness. My brain was replaying the image of Paul’s head burst open, and I imagined what had happened to Ben and to Julia, what they’d been thinking as the bullets hit them. And every few moments, my mind came back to me. I tried to think if there was anything on display that would show them there was still someone hiding on the boat.

  A voice interrupted the sounds of footsteps and grunts: “Last one’s on-board.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. What now?”

  “We’re gonna sink her. She’s going already from the bullet holes. We’ll get the bodies in here and we’ll shut the hatch so they don’t float out. Water’s deep here, no one’ll find her for years, maybe never.”

  I remembered looking at the rendezvous point on the chart plotter. I’d noticed the depth then, although thought nothing of it. There was nothing else said, but a moment later, just aft of me, I could hear the footsteps again, and the sound of dragging, which must have been them pulling Ben’s body back to dump it in the saloon. It was obvious that it wasn’t easy. They were moving slowly.

  It wasn’t a big chance, but I figured it was the only one I had left. If I could get out into the cockpit before they got there, and perhaps when their attention was on Ben’s body, then maybe I could get into the water before they saw me. It was two miles to the shore from here, and in the mist, I wouldn’t be able to see which way to swim, but the idea of drowning, trapped in the cabin with the bodies of my friends horrified me.

  I pushed the false floor off me and sat up in the darkness, cracking my head hard on the side of the yacht. With tears flowing from my eyes, I pulled myself out of the forward cabin, through the now empty saloon and cautiously back up the steps that led up to the cockpit. Paul was still there, or what was left of him, but I couldn’t see the men who’d done this, and I risked looking out, to see where they were. There was a noise I couldn’t identify, but I didn’t have long to try. That was when they saw me.

  Aussie Mick dropped Ben’s body to reach for his gun.

  “Fucking hell, there’s another one! I thought you fucking checked?” I ducked back down. There really was nowhere to go now, but I ran anyway into my stern cabin, where less than three weeks before, I’d spent those perfect nights with Jenny. Maybe something told me that if I had to die, it might as well be here?

  I slammed the door shut and grabbed the mattress from the bunk to try and jam against it. I don’t know what I hoped to achieve. There were all sorts of noises above me now as both men scrambled to get back and kill me. But one noise above all the others had grown stronger. It had been muffled by the fog but now it was clear, almost drowning out everything else. The roaring thud-thud-thud-thud of blades chopping through the air. Then the sound of a voice over a loudspeaker, and through my cabin window, I could see the world outside had been lit up.

  “Drop your weapons and put your hands on your heads. This is the police.”

  I don’t know what those fuckers thought about that, but with a helicopter hovering just over their heads, I guess they didn’t have much choice.

  48

  Well how did you think all this was going to end? Ben and Julia were going to disappear into the sunset? Paul and Jimmy were going to shift ever-bigger loads until they retired and tended roses in their gardens? We weren’t just bringing in a little bit of dope by then. We had over two hundred kilos of cocaine, worth over twenty million pounds. How do these things always end?

  Mick was getting a fortune for his part, we all were, but the thing about money is you can always have more. It was like Jimmy said when he offered us our jobs. The hardest part is getting the staff.

  I guess there’s an irony that Mick found this out for himself so early on. It was his hit on Jimmy where it all went wrong for him and his guys. He wanted Jimmy and Paul taken out at the same time so neither could warn the other, or figure out what was going on, but that meant having to delegate the hit on Jimmy. He gave the job to two young guys, I met them once. I could have told Mick they weren’t up to it.

  I learnt about it later. Apparently they followed Jimmy’s car, pulling alongside at some traffic lights and shooting him three times through the window. So far so good, but the silly fuckers didn’t manage to kill him right off, and what’s worse, in their excitement one of them blurted out that Paul was going to get it too, when he tried to unload the coke. I don’t know, it was like the guy wanted Jimmy to die knowing how clever their plan was. I guess he’d watched too many films or something.

  But as they drove away Jimmy was able to get straight on his mobile and call his contacts in the police. He told them exactly where and when the rendezvous was and what was going to happen. He phoned them before he even phoned for an ambulance.

  That act of selflessness cost Jimmy his life, but it saved mine.

  I didn’t get bail. The judge agreed there was a significant risk I would try to escape justice. I was sent to the remand section of Edinburgh prison while the repercussions of what we’d done washed through the Scottish police service. While Jimmy’s network of contacts did their best to cut themselves off from their worst nightmare. I had my own room, with the door locked twenty three hours a day. The other hour I walked around a dusty yard with thirty guys in for everything from stealing cars to murder. They told me it got better when you actually got convicted.

  I didn’t know who to trust. Every time the police sat me down to ask questions I didn’t know if they were Jimmy’s guys or not. Sarah came to see me a few weeks after it all happened, she told me to tell them everything, that it didn’t matter any more, I just had to do what I could to reduce my sentence. I’d already decided to talk anyway. The only people I would have protected were already dead. She told me to stay strong. I’d only get a few years. That I had to come and see her when I was out. I promised I would.

  I wasn’t allowed to use the internet. I couldn’t check my emails to see if Jenny had tried to contact me, but I was allowed to write a letter to her, and a prison officer would type it in and send it on my behalf. I spent hours on that letter, trying to find a way to say what I wanted. But it was impossible, it was hopeless. Maybe I could get her to overlook me not telling her about the drugs, maybe I could even get her to think it was somehow exciting, it wouldn’t matter. She wouldn’t wait for me, not for years. A girl like her was going to get plenty of offers in the meantime. In the end I gave up. I didn’t even have the email sent.

  Instead I wrote this, waiting for my trial. Staring at the brick wall of my cell, painted prison grey, a locked door to my left, a high barred window to my right. The whole story of how I got into smuggling drugs, and got out again the other side.

  Really, how else was this going to end? Come on. You’ve seen the movies. It was always going to end this way. It always does.

  EPILOGUE

  The taxi pulled up in the small square next to the inner harbour i
n George Town, the capital of Grand Cayman. A cluster of former colonial buildings crowded the waterfront, their paint faded and peeling in the hot sunshine. Amongst them a few modern steel and glass buildings tried to fit in, trying not to advertise how they sat on the hidden wealth of the world. A pontoon was crowded with glass bottom tourist boats, locals trying to make a living from the cruise ships that stopped here. Further out a few small yachts nodded up and down at anchor in the calm blue water. It looked a nice enough place to disappear.

  I paid the taxi and looked around. There was a café there, a few tables outside where men smoked and drank, and an interior that looked dark in the midday sunshine. I went in and ordered a coffee, then added a rum as well. I pulled out my phone and sat looking at it.

  It took nine months for the trial to be scheduled and organised. Nine fucking months. They told me at first it would be nine weeks. Then the trial took nearly two months. For what I’d done I should have been facing charges with a life sentence, but because I co-operated it was reduced to five years. With time served that meant maybe a year in prison.

  And then what?

  When I took stock of what I had left in life, it boiled down to one thing. It didn’t make any sense but there it was. Not much in life makes sense when you stop to think about it.

  I finished my drink and went back out into the sun, checking my watch. My eyes went once again to the bay outside the harbour. One yacht in particular caught my eye, its mast towering above all the others. There were people on deck, but it was too far away to see who, perhaps a head of blond hair?

  I looked at my phone again, the screen hard to see in the brightness. I walked over to a palm tree and leaned against the trunk, using its brushy foliage to shield the sun. I scrolled through the contacts. There weren’t many to choose from, but it still took me a while to select the name I wanted. My finger hovered over the button, my hand didn’t feel my own when I finally pressed the call button. I saw it begin to ring.

  I put the phone to my ear, still watching that figure on the foredeck of the yacht, a woman perhaps. It was too far away really but I fancied I could see her pulling out a phone, looking at the screen.

  The phone rang, for a long time the figure didn’t move. No one answered. Then I saw movement on the yacht. A voice answered.

  “Are you here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’d best come ashore then.”

  “OK.”

  “Come down to the landing slip.”

  “OK.”

  I didn’t move at first. Just watched the yacht where the figure was now climbing into an inflatable dinghy tied onto the stern. Then I shouldered my backpack and walked the few metres down to the slip. It was too hot to sit in the sun so once again I sheltered under a palm. I watched the little grey inflatable buzzing through the water towards me. It was close enough now that I could see who it was. I was tempted to raise a hand in greeting, but the young woman driving the boat wasn’t looking, she was concentrating on her task.

  A few months into my remand, my lawyer suggested that he access my email account to deal with any outstanding issues which might have come up. Apparently that’s fairly standard. One of those issues was the few people who had written to me since I’d been arrested, asking what was going on. My lawyer printed them out and delivered me the messages, so I could reply if I wanted to. Mostly I didn’t want to. Except for a string of messages from one person.

  The woman steered the boat expertly to the quayside and cut the engine a few meters short so that the rubber nose of the boat bumped the concrete. She reached out and caught hold of an iron ring, then threaded the painter through it, tying it off neatly. She looked around, not seeing me. Her hair shone in the sun. I pushed myself forward off the wall and stepped into the sunlight.

  “Hello Jenny,” I said.

  For a long time she didn’t move. Her lips were set thin, her expression not angry but unsure.

  “So. You still want to buy that yacht?” I said.

  She stared at me, trying to read my face, then she looked down at the water and shook her head. Then looked at me again. And smiled.

  “I think you’d better buy me lunch first,” she said, and reached out a hand for me to help her from the boat.

  What if your best friend was a killer…

  And you didn’t notice?

  Fourteen-year-old Jesse is shipped half-way round the world after the death of his father. He struggles to adapt to life on the Welsh Atlantic coast but eventually befriends John, a popular, charismatic and outwardly charming boy. But as their friendship grows, a darker side to John emerges. Will Jesse notice before it's too late?

  Newly-qualified psychologist Natalie's life falls-apart when her husband Jim is reported missing. Is it a tragic accident, or something more? A mysterious phone call sets Natalie on a path to discover the truth, but as she delves deeper her own demons come back to haunt her.

  Get set for a page-turning ride as these stories crash together with a twist that's been described as mind-blowing, shocking, and unmissable.

  The Wave at Hanging Rock is the debut novel from British writer Gregg Dunnett. Since publication in September 2016 it’s been downloaded over a quarter of a million times and shortlisted for the Chanticleer Award for the best mystery/suspense novel of 2016/17.

  Find out today what all the fuss is about.

  Click to read now!

  What if you witnessed a terrifying crime, but were too young to remember?

  Almost too young.

  A teenage girl disappears from a beach town at the end of the summer season. Two months later the police investigation has stalled and eleven-year-old Billy Wheatley decides that only he can solve the crime.

  Billy lives a strange existence, roaming the beaches of Lornea Island, largely ignored by his distant father. He dreams of becoming a marine biologist and studies the creatures in the cliffs, dunes and rockpools that surround his home. He uses his local knowledge and scientific skills to unravel the mystery of the missing girl. But he soon realises that someone close to him is the guilty party, putting his existence, and ultimately his life, in terrible danger.

  Get ready for a gripping, page-turning read as Billy follows the clues left behind from a shocking crime. Can Billy survive as he uncovers the final, terrible truth?

  Coming Winter 2017. Read on to get your copy FREE…

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gregg Dunnett worked as Staff Writer and Photographer for the best-selling windsurfing magazine Boards for nearly ten years. He was sent around the world testing equipment and reporting on competitions and locations. Eventually Boards went bust, which wasn't entirely his fault, and he eventually turned to writing novels instead. His first to be released was The Wave at Hanging Rock in 2016 and in 2017 he released The Desert Run.

  He lives on the UK’s south coast with his partner Maria and their two young children.

  Gregg on why he writes:

  "I’ve always wanted to do two things in life, to write, and to have adventures. When I was a kid I imagined grand affairs. Kayaking across Canada, cycling to Australia. Whole summers in the Arctic. Did it happen? Well, partly.

  I’ve been lucky, I spent some years abroad teaching English. I worked in sailing schools in Greece and Spain. I really lucked out with a job testing windsurfing boards for the magazine I grew up reading. I made a questionable decision (OK, a bad decision) to buy a windsurfing centre on the edge of
the Sinai Desert. I’ve also done my fair share of less exciting jobs. Packing and stacking potatoes on a farm, which got me fitter than I’ve ever been in my life. A few years in local government which taught me that people really do have meetings that result only in the need for more meetings, and they really do take all afternoon. I spent a pleasant few months in a giant book warehouse, where I would deliberately get lost among the miles of shelves unpacking travel guides and daydreaming. I’ve done a bit of writing too, at least I learned how to write. Boards Magazine isn’t well known (it doesn’t even exist today) but it did have a reputation for being well written and I shoe-horned articles in my own gonzo journalism style on some topics with the most tenuous of links to windsurfing. But the real adventures never came. Nor did the real writing.

  Then, in 2015, my brother announced he was going to become the first person to windsurf alone around Great Britain. I don’t know why. Apparently it was something he’d always wanted to do (news to me.). It was a proper adventure. It was dangerous, it was exciting. Before he even set off he got on TV, in the papers. Some people thought he was reckless, some thought he was inspirational. Lots of people thought he’d fail.