Mosaic by Jo Bannister Page A

shore.
    But it had taken too long. Vanderbilt could see that as soon as he lifted Grant’s face to the surface, and when he hauled the drowned man out onto a little muddy spit where the sheep came to drink he knew for sure that Grant had won. In his thin face, fish-belly white and chill to the touch, the eyes were half open. Nothing moved under the hooded, translucent lids, no breath whistled past the bloodless lips onto Vanderbilt’s lowered cheek, and when he ripped the coat buttons open the narrow chest naked beneath was still.
    In weariness and frustration, and something else to which he gave no name but which could have been grief, Vanderbilt expended the last of his breath in a small and bitter epitaph. “Damn you, Joel Grant—you better like dead now you got it.”
    He went to get up and walk away and begin the long, depressing journey home, but his big cold clumsy body was heavy with exhaustion. He pushed himself off Grant with a hand on his bare breast. Under his palm fluttered a tiny movement that struck him momentarily rigid.
    Strength came from nowhere. Before he had worked out logically that where a heartbeat lingers death has yet to occur, Vanderbilt had yanked Grant’s head back, forced his jaws apart and clamped his mouth on Grant’s mouth in a strange parody of a kiss that had everything to do with life and nothing to do with love. Counting in his head, making himself take his time, Vanderbilt pushed big steady draughts of air into Grant’s starved lungs. His chest rose under Vanderbilt’s chest. He breathed for himself and then again for Grant; and again, and again.
    Finally he breathed into Grant’s lungs and Grant responded with a tiny choked cough in his mouth. Gasping, grinning, Vanderbilt rolled him onto his face and let him vomit away the bitter water into the mud. He pressed his hands against the heaving ribs under Grant’s bound arms and helped the water out. “Breathe, damn you,” he panted, rocking, letting his weight do the work; “damn you, live.”

Chapter One
    By the late afternoon, with no news of any kind, the tension in the terraced house had built up to such a pitch that Liz had said she could stand it no longer, she was going out for some fresh air. She took her car. Half an hour later Will Hamlin found the letter Sellotaped to the coffee jar. It was addressed to Nathan Shola. The African read it and then said, very quietly, “She’s gone.”
    â€œGone where?”
    Shola passed him the letter and Hamlin read.
    â€œThere’s nothing I can do here,” she had written, “except sit by the phone and dread it ringing, and fill my head with crazy pictures. So I’m going to Pretoria. If we’re right, and if the police can’t find them in time, that’s where Joel will end up. He’ll need one of us to be there.
    â€œYou wouldn’t get past Immigration, and though they might let Hamlin in they’d watch wherever he went. They won’t follow me. My papers are good, they don’t know my name and I’m the right colour. Maybe if I can find out what this is all about we can stop it.
    â€œI won’t contact your people there unless and until direct action is the only answer; and I won’t call you unless I need your help more than I need my cover. Don’t worry, I won’t do anything rash. Mostly all I shall be doing is listening. If Vanderbilt is stopped, or if Joel is dead, I’ll come out the same way I’m going in, as a good little tourist. But if they get him as far as Pretoria he’s going to need all the help he can get, and then maybe having someone on the spot will somehow make the difference. Anyhow, I feel I have to be there.
    â€œI know you won’t do anything crazy, like trying to stop me, or following me. You can do more for Joel’s safety, and to some extent for mine, by aiding the search here in England: remember, probably no one in the