They turned back towards the crowd of terrified passengers, each of them trying to find a place on the remaining lifeboat. ‘My uncle and aunt,’ Billy said. In the light from the stricken ship his eyes looked huge.
‘There’s nothing we can do, Billy. They’ll have to fend for themselves.’
‘But they’ll drown!’
Egbert looked down into the boy’s face. ‘There’s nothing I can do,’ he said. ‘If you don’t get on this boat, you will die too.’
They reached the edge of the crowd. It was so tightly packed he could not see the lifeboat, just the cables holding it. Then he heard a terrible wailing as women were separated from their husbands and grown-up sons. He could see couples shoving their children onto the boat and stepping back. Then came the cries of the young ones as they realized their parents were not going with them.
‘Excuse me,’ Egbert called. No one noticed. ‘Excuse me!’ he yelled. ‘I have a youngster here.’
Still nothing. He let go of Billy’s hand for a second and grabbed the shoulder of a man in front of him, pulling him back none too gently.
‘Curse you!’ the man exclaimed, but Fortescue’s blood was up. He ignored the man, reached for Billy and squeezed forward. Together they made some headway, and in a few moments Egbert had forced their way to the front.
‘Sir… Hang on a second.’
Fortescue looked up and met the eyes of Third Officer Pitman. The man was clearly petrified but was doing a gallant job of disguising it.
‘Mr Fortescue. It’s women and…’ He looked down and saw Billy.
‘I’m well aware of that, Pitman!’ Fortescue shouted and shoved Billy forward.
‘But, sir, the boy’s from Third!’
Fortescue glared at the man. ‘Don’t you even dare think about it…’
‘Sir, I cannot allow…’
Fortescue let go of Billy again and raised his fist to within an inch of the officer’s nose. He hadn’t felt such rage for many years.
A middle-aged woman stood beside Fortescue. He recognized her as Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, whom he had been introduced to at Frieda Schiel’s party. ‘There’s no need for that, Mr Fortescue!’ she said loudly. ‘Mr Pitman, you shall let this little boy onto the lifeboat.’
‘But—’
‘Now!’ She was so aggressive it made Fortescue jump, and suddenly Billy was being pulled away and carried towards the boat.
Lady Duff Gordon, her face almost spectral, was close behind Billy and stumbling towards the others in the boat. Fortescue caught a glimpse of Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon off to one side, his expression wooden.
Billy found Fortescue’s face in the crowd. ‘I won’t fail you, Mr Wickins!’ He held up the bundle of papers and was about to lower them again when a gust of freezing wind swept along the deck. The top page of notes flapped, separated and flew up into the air. Billy went to grab for it, but it shot up, twisting and flapping out of reach. The lifeboat slipped down a dozen feet, shuddered to a stop, swung on the support ropes and began to slide towards the water again.
Fortescue looked on in disbelief. He pushed forward, but was met by a solid wall of humanity, a crowd four deep pressed hard up against the metal rails of the ship. ‘It needs to reach Professor Lewis!’ Fortescue shouted. ‘Department of Physics, University of…’
But Billy could not hear him. Egbert saw the boy’s lips move. ‘What?’ he was calling back. ‘What? Mr Wickins?’ The sound lost in the wind.
‘Professor Lewis…’ The words bounced straight back at him and the lifeboat disappeared into shadow.
Fortescue was groaning, a horrible note of despair deep within his throat, a tortured cry of pain. He barged his way back through the throng and eventually reached an open space on the deck close to the doors. Pausing, he drew breath. The pain in his back was excruciating, but he had to ignore it. Then he felt a new shot of agony along his left side. He lowered a hand and brought his fingers up covered with blood. Looking down, he saw that his shirt and jacket were soaked. He ran his fingers along his side and found the nexus of the pain. A solid object was protruding from his body — a piece of shrapnel had lodged there.
He started to feel sick and felt his face grow cold. He could not stop now. He still had one thing to do. He had to leave a record of where the other half of the notes were to be found, especially now Billy had the full set but had no idea who to take them to. Edging towards the door, he felt incredibly weak and noticed in the light from the ship that he was trailing blood along the deck.
As he reached the door, it swung outwards, almost knocking him off his feet. He managed to grip a handle with one hand and keep hold of the precious metal boxes with the other. A couple of young men charged out onto the deck.
Inside the reception area there was the same medley of human and mechanical sounds. He looked around and for a moment he could not work out which way to go. Totally disorientated, he found a chair and sat for just a few seconds. He remembered he was on C-Deck, close to his room. That, at least, was something.
He heard an incredibly loud crash, looked up and saw a wall of water rushing straight towards him across the reception area. Jolting to his feet, he turned and ran towards the corridor.
He reached it just as the water completed its sweep across reception. It flowed back out onto the deck through the main doors. Fortescue heard a cry and caught a glimpse of one of the young men who had slammed through the door a few moments earlier. The wave of water picked him up and propelled him over the rail.
Water slewed into the corridor and was spraying up the walls, bringing down paintings and signs. It rampaged towards him and he stumbled, falling face first onto the carpet. He twisted and turned under the three-foot-high swell, the icy water so cold it felt as though it was cutting through him. He felt the box containing the isotope start to slip from under his arm and just managed to catch the handle. And as the water lost some of its power he pulled himself up and let it rush over his lower half.
Wading through the torrent, Fortescue reached the door to his cabin. Water cascaded into the room and spread out across the plush carpet, lapping around the legs of the chairs and the bed. He watched as the seawater flowed hungrily under the bed where Charles Grantham’s corpse lay.
Rushing over to the desk, he wrenched open a drawer and tugged out a dry piece of paper. He found his pen in the inside pocket of his coat, leaned over the desk and scribbled something on the sheet of paper. It was in a code he had created for himself when he was an undergraduate at Cambridge; it described where missing elements of his work could be found — Security Box 19AS, Cargo Hold Number 4. He lifted the boxes to the table, pulled the briefcase from the larger of the pair, stuffed the note inside, returned the bag, slammed shut the lid of the box and locked it.