Dark Tide

  “Fitz could buy Parliament,” he said slowly.

  “Exactly. And he likes me. What’s fifty grand to him? Nothing. He could give me that and he almost wouldn’t even notice. I’m just not brave enough to come out with it and ask.”

  The waitress appeared with Dylan’s second vodka. By the time she’d turned to go, he’d drunk half of it in one gulp, then inhaled and looked me straight in the eye. “Have you ever thought where he gets his money from?”

  “Of course I have; I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “And?”

  “I know it’s sketchy, if that’s what you’re asking. And I don’t care, personally.”

  He smiled—a slow smile, one of the ones that made him look beautiful. I felt as if I’d crossed some kind of line—as though I’d given the right answer, somehow.

  “And,” I added, “if he asks me to do another private party, I will. I know you think I’m a slut for what I did the other weekend; I don’t really care about that. I want my boat. I want to be away from London. I’ve had enough of it.”

  “I don’t think you’re a slut at all.”

  “Why were you so pissed off at me in the car on the way home, then?”

  He didn’t answer at first; when he did, he looked away. “I have my reasons.”

  “Anyway, why do you care what I spend my money on?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I think of you and me as friends,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t have many friends, to be honest with you. I like you. I think you’re clever, and witty, and you don’t sell yourself like some of them do here. When you dance, you do it as a job, and yet you look as though you do it because it’s all you want to do in the world. What I’m saying to you is, I respect you as a person who does a good job no matter what the circumstances. You’re committed. And you don’t interfere.”

  “Interfere?”

  “That party,” he said, leaning over the table again, “was a test. Did you know that?”

  “I thought I was just there to dance for his private guests,” I said.

  “It was a test to see if you could be trusted.”

  “With what?”

  “With Fitz’s business.”

  I was confused. “I wasn’t there when they were discussing business. What do you mean?”

  “Exactly. You did your job, you did it well, you put your heart and soul into it, and you weren’t nosy about what was going on upstairs, or what Fitz was talking about with his ‘private guests,’ as you call them.”

  Light was starting to dawn in my head, as well as through the windows to the street outside. “I don’t give a shit what he does,” I said.

  “Good,” Dylan said quietly. The bar was beginning to empty. We were getting near closing time. “Because the minute you do is the minute you start to become a risk. And that’s why I want you to be careful around Fitz.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “He’s going to ask you to do another private party,” he said.

  I felt a sudden rush of elation. I wasn’t sure if it was the money, or the thought of dancing in front of Fitz and watching his face as I danced, that was making me feel so excited.

  “You’ll say yes?”

  “Of course. What do you think?”

  “If you do,” he said, “ask for more cash. And now you’ve set a precedent, you’ll probably have to do more intimate stuff. You know that, though, don’t you?”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “So, if you do it, he’ll make it worth your while. But remember what I said about being careful.”

  “Will you be there?”

  He smiled at me again. I wished he smiled like that all the time. “If I have to.”

  The waitress appeared again. “Can I get you anything else, Dylan? We’re just starting to close . . .”

  “It’s all right, Tina. We’re going back upstairs.”

  I followed him up the carpeted stairs to the club, and when we got to the top he left me to go to the dressing room by myself. We’d spent long enough in each other’s company. There was no doubt it would have been noted, and it would get back to Fitz. My head was swimming. How could Dylan be loyal to Fitz and have told me so much about him?

  And yet, his smile.

  I made a start on tidying, beginning at the front of the boat and working my way back. I put all the spatulas, spoons, and various gadgets back in the KITCHEN STUFF box and set it back in its place at the very point of the bow.

  Some of the other boxes of tools I refilled and positioned around the box, a rather halfhearted attempt to disguise its significance. Where was the best place to hide a box but in among other boxes, after all?

  This wasn’t the ideal place for it, I knew that. In a few weeks’ time it would have to be moved, in any case, as Kev and I would be taking the roof off this section of the boat and my cavernous storage compartment would become a deck garden, plus another room at the end, which I could use as a junk room until I’d moved on to the final part of the project. Even so, it would be more exposed.

  What I should do, of course, was get the damn thing off my boat.

  What I didn’t understand in all of this was why the hell Fitz wanted Dylan’s package—unless Dylan had stolen it from Fitz in the first place. It seemed so unlikely. Dylan wasn’t a thief. He was a bruiser, an enforcer, but not a thief.

  So if Dylan had decided to branch out in business for himself, how had Fitz found out? And why would he believe he was entitled to come here and take something Dylan had left in my care?

  Unless it wasn’t about the package after all.

  What if they thought Dylan and I had some other scheme going? What if someone else had stolen something from Fitz, and they’d assumed, because we’d become friends, because he’d protected me, that I was in on it?

  All that time, five months, that I had no contact from Dylan and I’d so desperately wanted to talk to him, to see him again . . . He should have worked things out with Fitz—that was the plan, after all.

  Maybe Fitz assumed we were working together. If it wasn’t the package, what on earth were they looking for?

  My brain wasn’t functioning properly—I had a lump on the side of my head and a headache the likes of which I’d never experienced. I left the bow storage area. The paint that had been thrown over the wall could stay there. I was going to clad over it with wood paneling anyway, one of these days.

  The state of the kitchen and the cabin brought on a fresh round of tears. That, and my aching head. I picked up all the papers, rearranged them into some semblance of order. I replaced everything in the storage area under the dinette, then put the cushions back. Already it looked a lot better, more like my usual mess than an actual burglary.

  The only things that were broken in the kitchen were a mug from Dover Castle and the cabinet doors. I didn’t tend to buy many fragile things, since it would only have taken a rough spell at high tide for things to get knocked about in the cabin. Everything breakable was either behind a rail or, in the case of the television and music system, bolted to the wall. Most of my plates were melamine.

  In a pile on the floor I found some Tylenol that had been in one of the galley drawers. I took three and swilled them down with a handful of water from the sink.

  When Jim Carling called me, at eight thirty, I was already drunk.

  I’d finished the beer and most of a bottle of wine, sitting by myself in the main cabin waiting for night to fall. I thought it would be easier to deal with if I was wasted.

  I answered the phone the third time it rang, having ignored the first two. I couldn’t think of anyone I really wanted to talk to, except for Dylan, but his phone was still turned off. “Hello,” I said at last.

  “Genevieve. Why didn’t you answer the phone?”

  He didn’t say, “It’s Carling,” I noticed. He sounded pissed off.

  “I was out on the deck,” I lied.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’ve
had a few drinks,” I said, by way of explanation.

  “Ah. Sounds like a good state to be in. I need to catch up,” he said.

  I didn’t answer, my thoughts drifting away from the phone conversation.

  “So,” he went on, “I was wondering if I could come and see you.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Have you eaten?”

  I was going to say that I couldn’t remember, which would have been the truth. But that would sound as if I wasn’t taking care of myself, and I couldn’t face a scolding. “Um . . . not yet. Why?”

  “I could bring takeout.”

  “That would be great. Thank you.”

  “I’ll be over in half an hour or so, then,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere, will you?”

  As soon as he’d hung up, I tried Dylan’s number again.

  The number you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please try later.

  I tried to tidy up a bit more, halfheartedly, my senses dulled by the alcohol and by the exhaustion. My body still ached; everything hurt. If I had a real bathroom, I told myself crossly, I could be soaking in a nice hot bath right now. Instead, it was a choice between a shower in the shower room beside the office, and the hose.

  I took clean clothes over to the shower room with me. The sky was darkening, the lights across the river reflecting patterns on the water.

  The parking lot had filled up since I’d last looked this afternoon. Joanna and Liam’s Ford van was there, and Maureen and Pat’s Fiesta. I didn’t see any cars I didn’t recognize.

  I had a hot shower and it made me feel better, more awake, although I kept dropping things. There were marks around my wrists where I’d spent most of the night tied up, and when I washed my hair I felt the big lump on the side of my head, above my ear. I tried pressing it experimentally, but only once because the pain was sudden and sharp and brutal. Fortunately no blood, no broken bones. With any luck Carling might not notice.

  I had no idea how long I’d been in the shower, but when I came out it was completely dark. I waited for the light to come on in the parking lot, but it stayed resolutely off. Surely it should trigger, I thought, standing under the sensor in my sweatpants and sneakers. Maybe they’d cut it again last night. Maybe they cut it every night, and Cam repaired it every morning. Maybe he wasn’t bothering to repair it anymore.

  I started walking back to the boat, my feet unsteady on the moving dock.

  The lights were on in my boat. I tried to remember whether I’d left the lights on or not, and couldn’t decide. My brain felt as though it were full of cotton balls.

  I went down the steps into the cabin and nearly jumped out of my skin—Carling was standing at the kitchen sink, about to fill the kettle.

  “Fuck!” I said. “You gave me a heart attack.”

  “You should lock your door when you leave the boat.”

  “I only went for a shower.”

  He came up to me and took me in his arms. It hurt, and felt good at the same time. He kissed me after that. It felt slightly awkward, not like the kiss we’d shared before.

  For a moment, I thought about Dylan.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his expression concerned.

  “I’m still a bit drunk,” I said, as if this explained it all. “I’m sorry. I was feeling blue, and I felt like getting so drunk the world would go away.”

  On the table in the dinette was a big paper bag with two containers of french fries. I grabbed ketchup, salt, and vinegar from the kitchen cabinets.

  “I brought more alcohol,” he said. “I thought you might be running low.”

  Two bottles of wine, one white, one red. They looked very tempting. I smiled at him, my best drunken smile.

  “You open it,” I said, handing him the corkscrew. “I’ve completely forgotten how.”

  We ate our fries sitting at the dinette. It was only when I started eating that I realized how hungry I was. I ate all my fries, every one, scraping the remnants of ketchup from the paper. He ate his at a more sedate pace, sipping wine elegantly as though he were at a restaurant and not sitting on a worn velvet cushion in a half-finished Dutch barge on the Medway.

  “So,” he said at last, “why were you feeling blue?”

  I shrugged. I was feeling a little less drunk but still vulnerable. “I guess I felt alone, that’s all. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I don’t get lonely very often, but I did today.”

  “Well, not anymore. We can be alone together.”

  “Why are you looking so sad?” I said.

  He laughed, but without mirth, and topped up my wineglass. “I’m not sad. Just getting old.”

  “You’re not old.”

  “I’m older than you.”

  “So what?”

  “All right, then, I feel old today. Which is also a good excuse for getting drunk.”

  I smiled at him, starting to really enjoy his company. “We need shots,” I said.

  “Funny you should say that,” he said. From a gym bag that lay just beside the steps up to the wheelhouse he brought out a bottle of vodka. “I hope you like this stuff.”

  “Hell,” I said, “it’s better than rubbing alcohol.”

  After that, everything seemed funny, to him and to me, and we drank shots while listening to jazz on the radio, which neither of us really liked. Every time one of us grimaced at a discordant note, we had to drink. And so we both got drunker and drunker.

  The bag and the bottle of vodka told me he was planning to stay the night. He was going to stay the whole night, and judging by how much of the vodka he was downing he didn’t need to get up early tomorrow to go to work, either. And once that had filtered into my poor, drunken, battered brain, I realized that tonight, at least, I could relax.

  They wouldn’t be breaking into my boat again, not tonight. Dylan’s package was safe.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was a Friday, again, the next time Dunkerley stepped over the line.

  I was looking forward to dancing, and, although it had been an incredibly busy week at work, it was nearly over and I couldn’t wait to get to the Barclay later and loosen up.

  There was an afternoon performance progress meeting, one of the things Dunkerley had initiated that was universally unpopular with my team. On this Friday, to my great misfortune, nobody showed up except me. I’d been so busy during the day that I’d hardly noticed that most of the team was out of the office. Two of them were out sick. Gavin was in Tenerife. Lucy had taken the afternoon off to get her nails done. So that left me and Dunkerley.

  I think he’d been told to stay out of my way by Human Resources, while they investigated my allegations. Either way, I’d hardly seen him since that argument we’d had in his office. But now, here he was, sitting across the boardroom table from me, staring blatantly in a way that was making me feel increasingly uncomfortable.

  We waited in silence, until, ten minutes after the meeting was supposed to start, Dunkerley cleared his throat and said, “Well, Genevieve. Looks as if it’s just you and me today.”

  “Looks like it,” I said.

  “So, what have you got to report?”

  I looked down at the performance report I’d printed in preparation and passed it across the table toward him. I was top this month. It had nearly killed me, but I had never been so motivated in my life.

  He read over it quickly and nodded. “See,” he said, “what you can do if you try?”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t trust myself to speak.

  “Look,” he said, “I think you may have misunderstood my intentions toward you.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “Really? And what were your intentions, exactly?”

  “My intentions were to get you to sleep with me.”

  Whatever I’d expected him to say, it wasn’t that. I must have looked shocked.

  He laughed at my discomfort. “You can’t have been surprised. Not in the line of work you do. I mean, your other work, of course.”

&n
bsp; “If that’s the end of the meeting,” I said, “I’d really like to go and finish what I was working on.”

  “You’re a very hard worker, Genevieve.”

  “You know you shouldn’t be saying this. How do you know I’m not taping this conversation?”

  “Because you’re not as clever as you think you are.”

  I was getting angry now. I wondered if he realized that he had found the right button to push to get a reaction. “You’re a shit, you know that?”

  “Yes, probably. So, are you going to do it?”

  “Do what? Fuck you? In your dreams.”

  “Not that. Are you going to drop your complaint against me?”

  “No,” I said. “Why should I? If anything, you’re just giving me more to report.”

  “I think you should drop your complaint before everyone else finds out what you do on the side.”

  “You know what? Tell them. I really don’t give a shit. In fact, I might just tell them myself. I might just invite them all to the club as my guests and see what they think. Shall I do that? I’ll invite everybody—except you.”

  I stood up abruptly, the chair rocking behind me, and left the room, slamming the door behind me.

  We’d finished the first bottle of wine and were a quarter of the way through the vodka before he kissed me again. We were on the sofa together, laughing about something that wasn’t even funny, and somehow I collapsed against him and mumbled, “Sorry,” as he took my face in both his hands, as though he might miss otherwise, and that made me laugh, too, and then I couldn’t say anything because his mouth was on mine.