‘What was it exactly?’ Thóra resisted the urge to cross her fingers.
The detective dislodged the gum from under his lip and began to chew with renewed vigour. ‘The captain asked the British ship to report the discovery of a body on board to the Icelandic authorities because their own long-range radio was broken and their satellite phone was out of action. From what the English mate could understand, the body was female. Their conversation touched on some other matters too, which I’m not presently able to divulge. Going by what was said, it seems unlikely the woman was Lára, though we can’t completely rule it out. And whoever it was, we have absolutely no idea how she died.’ The policeman stopped chewing and regarded Thóra levelly. ‘In other words, since we’ve found no trace of the dead woman, we may be dealing with not seven but eight missing people.’
Chapter 12
‘It’ll have to wait till morning.’ Thráinn hauled himself back on deck after leaning so perilously far over the rail that Ægir moved instinctively closer to grab him if he fell. ‘I can’t get a good enough view. It looks like it’s that sodding container, or at least part of it. You should have called me sooner, Loftur. When there’s debris like that in the sea you’re lucky if it shows up on the radar, as you should know. We might have been able to avoid the collision if we’d spotted it at the point when it became visible. This isn’t what we need right now.’
‘It was too late.’ Loftur looked shamefaced. ‘We hit it almost immediately after the radar picked it up. I was keeping an eye out but then he came in and distracted me.’ He indicated Ægir, his expression distinctly unfriendly.
‘Don’t try and blame it on him.’ Thráinn wiped his hands on his trousers.
Ægir ignored them, not wanting to create trouble between the two men. The outcome was inevitable; sooner or later they would make up and then they would both resent him even more than they did before. He bent over the rail and peered into the gloom below, where he could see the gleam of water but little else. ‘Won’t it have drifted free by morning?’
‘Maybe. That would be the best outcome.’ Thráinn turned to Loftur. ‘I think we should let her drift tonight rather than trying to hold our position. But Halli had better keep watch with me in case there’s any more wreckage about. You go to bed and we’ll take it in turns to keep an eye on the bugger and see if we can get any sense out of the VHF. The transmission you heard was probably someone repeating a warning about the container.’ He looked over the side again. ‘With any luck it’ll break away during the night; if not, we’ll sort it out by daylight.’
Loftur nodded, still looking sullen. The moment they spotted the container he had sent Ægir to wake the captain. The thud when they struck it had not been loud, nor had it noticeably checked the vessel’s progress, but Loftur was alarmed and insisted on putting the engines in neutral until Thráinn had assessed the situation. The captain had taken it seriously too, which did nothing to reassure Ægir. If Thráinn was worried, there was every reason to be afraid: he didn’t seem the type to make a fuss about nothing.
‘If we’re just going to idle, I could take the watch with you.’ Ægir let go of the rail and instinctively stood up straighter. ‘Wouldn’t that make more sense? Loftur and Halli need their sleep and this may be the only time on this trip that you can trust me with a night watch.’ The two men said nothing; their expressions were hard to read. ‘If it turns out that you do need to sort it out tomorrow, wouldn’t the sleep do them good? We can always wake them if anything happens.’ Still neither man broke the silence. Loftur was apparently waiting for Thráinn to come to a decision, but it was unclear whether he hoped the captain would choose Ægir over Halli, or vice versa.
A wave drove the flotsam against the side and another low boom broke the silence. Ægir couldn’t help wondering how strong the hull was and how many blows of that magnitude it could withstand. Perhaps his idea of taking the watch was foolish; if the yacht was holed his presence on the bridge would be worse than useless. Even as these reservations occurred to him, Thráinn accepted his offer with a decisive nod. ‘If anything goes wrong, Loftur, we’ll wake you or Halli. With any luck the current will carry it away and solve the problem for us, so there’s no need to have two men on watch. It’s probably an unnecessary precaution, but you never know when it comes to junk like this.’
‘No problem.’ It wouldn’t be the first time Ægir had stayed up all night. ‘I’ll just nip below and fetch my book.’
Lára was asleep in the cabin with the duvet bunched up around her. Her breathing was heavy and her eyelids flickered as if in a dream. Ægir perched gently on the side of the bed and whispered that he would be on the bridge for the rest of the night. She murmured something incomprehensible and turned over. He doubted she had taken in the message and wondered if he should wake her, but then she might not be able to get back to sleep and would lie awake for the rest of the night. On his way out he stuck his head into the girls’ cabin and saw that they were lying oddly entwined in the middle of the double bed. Sigga Dögg beamed at him from the headboard as if to reassure him that everything would be all right; she would watch over her twin sisters while he did the same for the yacht.
He closed the door, plunging their cabin back into darkness.
Ægir hesitated and considered opening the door again, either to turn on the light or at least to leave it open a crack so that the blackness would not be so profound. But neither was a good idea. If he turned on the light, the girls might wake up, and the constant motion of the yacht would make the door bang if he left it open. After a brief pause he set off down the corridor, only to stop by the door at the end. Everything looked as it should; the ceiling lights glowed dimly and all the doors were closed. They fitted so tightly that not a sound could be heard from the cabins and even the drone of the engines seemed more muffled down here than in any other part of the yacht. Even so, Ægir couldn’t rid himself of the unsettling feeling that he was abandoning them somehow. Perhaps it was instinct warning him to make the most of every second he could spend with them while they were on board this boat. As if the future was measured in minutes, not years.
Thráinn was waiting for him in the pilot house. His back was turned and Ægir had the impression that he had been speaking into the radiotelephone but was now trying to hide the fact. ‘Was there another message?’
‘What?’ Thráinn frowned as if he didn’t understand the question. Then realising what Ægir was referring to, he said: ‘You mean on the VHF? Oh, no.’ He ran a hand lightly over the screen. ‘It seems to be buggered – at least, I’m having trouble getting through. It’s a pain in the arse that the long-range radio’s playing up as well. I expect what you heard before was the result of a short circuit. Maybe a fuse has blown and affected both radios. On the plus side, it means you won’t have to worry about them. You won’t hear a peep out of them, not until I’ve given them the once-over tomorrow with the boys. The problem’s too complicated for me to fix tonight.’
‘I won’t mind that.’ Ægir stared at the VHF, fervently hoping the captain was right; the last thing he wanted to hear when he was alone was that sinister voice echoing through the bridge. The captain’s explanation struck him as a little odd, though; how could a short circuit cause the ship’s name to be transmitted over the loudspeaker? But the man must know what he was talking about. Ægir couldn’t afford to start doubting his expertise at this stage.
He watched as the captain checked the screens, and wondered about the man. He still hadn’t come to any conclusion about his character; one minute he was friendly, the next gruff. Even his age was hard to guess. His appearance offered only vague, contradictory clues; thick, dark hair contrasted with a lined or weather-beaten face, and his powerful frame made his height even more striking; Ægir only reached up to his ears. His arms were tanned a dark brown and the back of his right hand was criss-crossed by a network of mysterious white scars. Perhaps they were an accumulation of many different small cuts. Ægir was too ignorant about life at sea to know whether they went with the territory. As he stood beside this big, strong man it occurred to him how sheltered his own life had been – how different from the life of a sailor. Every morning he went to the office where the greatest peril he faced was paper cuts, while this man wrestled with unpredictable currents and ferocious storms. There must have been times when he doubted he would make it home alive. Nothing like that had ever happened to Ægir in his line of work. He cleared his throat. ‘Do you want me to start outside or inside?’