Safe House by Chris Ewan Page B

corroded railings.
    Menser fed his arm through a metal stanchion on the exterior of the wheelhouse. The frigid water lashed against his bare scalp and hands. He watched the plastic patio chair skitter across the slanted deck. The noise was fast and frictionless, like stiff wire bristles on the surface of a mirror.
    ‘See you gagged him.’ Menser nodded at the swatch of tape across the man’s mouth. ‘He say much before you did it?’
    ‘Lots.’
    ‘Anything useful?’
    ‘Nothing we didn’t know already. Except for the stuff in Dutch. But I don’t think that was for my benefit. I think maybe he was praying.’
    Menser tipped his head on to his shoulder and considered the man.
    Pieter – if that was his real name – was pleading with him. He could tell. It was in his eyes. The bulging white.
    Menser shook his head. Wanting to communicate with him. Wanting to let him know that he should focus on himself now.
    The man was naked, hunched forward against his restraints, his chemical-blond hair knotted wetly against his brow. His pale skin, where it wasn’t covered in tattoos or coated with gaffer tape, was speckled with goose bumps and flushed red from the water and streaking wind. His muscular arms had been taped behind him, hands bound knuckle to knuckle. More tape had been wrapped around his chest and his elbows. More still had been coiled around his neck, looped beneath his chair, and up through his groin to his shoulders. His ankles had been secured to the chair legs, feet pointing outwards, suspended a few inches above the deck. He was stretching with his toes, trying to steady himself.
    He couldn’t reach.
    Menser supposed he was meant to congratulate Clarke on his inventiveness. A pat on the back for something that was seriously messed up.
    He leaned back, feeling weak with fatigue. Rested his head against a rivet in the metal panel behind him.
    There was land on the horizon. Some green fields. Some tan. The blurred outline of distant buildings.
    Whitecaps rolled in. The vessel tipped. The chair skidded left.
    Menser held fast to the stanchion with his elbow. Watched the chair skate towards the rear of the deck, where Clarke had slid aside the railings, leaving a gap perhaps two metres wide. The man screamed from behind his gag, nostrils flaring, until the boat levelled out. There was a pause, and then everything dipped to the right. The chair veered off and the man clattered into the lobster pots. He tried to tangle his head in the netting. Didn’t work.
    ‘Corner ball, back pocket.’
    Clarke grinned as the swell pitched the nose of the vessel up and the chair edged away from the netting and careened towards the gap. It seemed, for just a moment, as if the momentum might abate. But no, a second wave rolled in and the chair slithered backwards, tipping the man called Pieter and his pleading eyes overboard.
    Into the blackness beneath.

Chapter Thirteen
     
     
    Lukas watched the cottage through the trees. He should have trusted his instincts. He’d had his doubts about the man. Questioned if he was really who he’d claimed to be. But he’d taken a chance. Indulged Lena. She’d wanted hot water. Demanded it. And Lukas couldn’t face more of her whining and sulking. So he’d talked Pieter around. Agreed to make the call on her behalf and hire a repairman.
    The dog. That was what had convinced him. If the man was a threat, Lukas couldn’t see why he’d have a canine with him. And he had fixed the water system.
    But then he’d taken Lena away on the motorbike. And afterwards the others had arrived.
    Pieter had planned for something just like it. He’d schooled Lukas on how to defend the cottage. Taught him to fire a pistol against targets he’d rigged up in the trees. But the men who’d come had known what to expect. They’d anticipated Pieter’s position and disabled him before Lukas could react. They should have thought of that. The man with the dog must have briefed them. Told them how many men