Blood in the Water by Oliver Davies (book club reads .TXT) 📕

“Alright then, Mads can put you through. I’ll see you down there after.” He flashed another grin at me before bouncing off again.

Yeah, my cousin was in a really good mood, alright. I turned to Nielsen, who was watching me a little nervously. He was probably worried that I might decide to react badly to whatever had happened the night before. I gave him a friendly, approving nod, and he relaxed visibly. If Shay liked him, which he obviously did, then I didn’t have any problem with him at all. It could have gone the other way. If Nielsen had hurt my cousin, I’d have ripped his fucking balls off. This was all far more civilised.

I made my call, informing Jack Morrison that we’d secured the hostiles but had four people who needed to be flown back for medical observation. His acknowledgement sounded appropriately relieved.

I picked up all my discarded gear to dump on the main deck and then Mads and I headed on below to see how Shay was getting on. He’d already cut Daniels and Verity loose, and they were both sitting on the bed gulping thirstily at bottles of water. Shay straightened up from examining the fourth and last of his line of sleepers, the Italian girl, Gioia.

“Nice, steady heartbeats and no sign of respiratory depression in any of them. It doesn’t look like they’re due to come round again for a while yet.” He turned to Daniels and Verity. “Did either of you see what they were given?”

Daniels nodded. “Jordan had a tub of pills in his pocket. He made them take two each, with water. I don’t know what they were.”

“I’ll go and check Jordan, see if he’s still carrying them,” Shay offered.

“May I come too?” Mads asked. “I’d like to see how much damage you’ve done to my father’s yacht.”

“What damage? Some soot stains in the engine room? But by all means, do come and see for yourself.”

Daniels stared at me curiously as they went off. Well, I wasn’t exactly conventionally dressed, standing there wearing nothing but a t-shirt and a pair of loose, button-up black boxer shorts.

“I’m guessing that Mr Keane was still on board this whole time, Inspector, but I’m damned if I know where you sprang from. I didn’t hear any other boats or aircraft anywhere near us all morning.”

I explained about Shay’s message, the helicopter drop and my little swim. From the way I put it, he could have used his phone to send the message and then shut off the engines manually, once the course plotter told him it was time to do so. Daniels and Verity might be very grateful to see us, but Nielsen senior was their employer. I wasn’t about to mention that my cousin had probably taken over their entire system.

“Benzodiazepine,” Shay announced as he reappeared and tossed me the tub. It was half full of little light green pills with the distinctively dyed blue powder inside.

Rohypnol. Well, it could have been something far worse, as far as possible side effects went. I doubted these four would remember much of what had happened, though. A point in Jordan’s favour was that he hadn’t laid a finger on any of the hostages in his care. It was a point in ours too; there was no way in hell Shay could have stayed quietly in the control room, doing nothing, if he’d seen any sign of that sort of thing going on.

“Come and give me a hand with Jordan, Con. We’d better get him up to the bow deck.” That was the logical place to get everyone lifted from. It was by far the largest of the exterior decks.

It was chilly in the control room. The air conditioning was still going at full blast in there, clearing the last of the smoke away. I stared down at the well trussed Jordan, noting the extensive skin burns as I crouched to take hold of his shoulders

“What did you do to him?”

Shay pointed at the foot of the ladder, and I saw the wires trailing away. Oh, that was just diabolical! I grinned at my cousin approvingly, and his face lit up with quiet glee.

“It worked much better than I thought it would,” he told me happily as he grabbed Jordan’s legs, and we both straightened up again. “His muscles must have gone into spasm, and he was just stuck there, halfway down the ladder, until I turned the control switch off. Then he sort of shouted, dropped like a rock and promptly passed out. It was pretty cool.”

I wondered what sort of internal burns Jordan might also have sustained. Well, that would be a problem for the hospital to deal with.

Mads emerged from his examination of the engine room and came jogging after us to slip past me to take some of the weight himself by lifting Jordan’s midsection. It certainly made getting our hefty, awkward burden up the stairs a far less arduous task.

“You were perfectly correct, Shay, nothing to complain of but a few soot stains. Father will be very pleased.” We got Jordan out onto the bow deck and put him down. “Shall we go and bring his associate down too now, Inspector?”

“We can manage, but thanks for offering. Could you lower some of this furniture out of the way and clear some more room out here?”

The built-in seating didn’t look like it was movable, but sinking those tables would give us a lot more space to work in. By the time we’d got back down with Phelps, Mads had seen to that. We laid Phelps down and moved Jordan over next to him to clear the centre of the deck for the winchman.

“When these two first came aboard, Mr Jordan was carrying a small black backpack,” Mads told us, “I haven’t spotted it lying around anywhere yet.”

Oh? We’d need to find that.

“Did you see it, Shay?” Surely he’d have mentioned it if he had. He shook his head.

“I was curled up in a cupboard