The Skeleton Coast Page 8

  ‘I’ll tell them that if they’re willing to be patient just a little bit longer, it’ll be worth their while,’ Essie said. ‘And I’ll make them believe it.’

  Will turned to Pod. ‘What do you think?’

  But Pod wasn’t paying attention. He was looking at the wide opening of Doria harbour, where a vast white shape had appeared and was moving in slow and stately fashion into the bay. A horn boomed out to announce its presence. ‘Pod?’ Will said again.

  Pod turned to them, trembling with excitement. ‘That writing—can you read what it says?’

  ‘You mean the name of the cruise ship?’ Will said.

  Essie read it for him. ‘It’s the Blue Water Duchess.’

  Pod let out a cry of joy. ‘That’s the one!’

  Essie twigged. ‘Your sister’s boat?’

  ‘Yes! Duchess! That’s the one! We have to go there—now!’

  ‘Wait—what?’ Will said.

  Pod looked at him impatiently. ‘My sister was on the Blue Water Duchess. I have to find her and get her back.’

  ‘What, now?’ Will said.

  ‘Yes, now!’ Pod said. ‘This is my chance!’

  ‘But what about Annalie?’ Will said.

  ‘We can’t do anything until we hear from my dad,’ Essie said. ‘Why shouldn’t he go?’

  ‘Because we need to be ready,’ Will said. ‘As soon as we know the money’s there, we’ve got to go, like, immediately! Annalie and the pirates are in Dio. We’re here in Doria. They’re calling us at 5 with further instructions, and you know there’s no way we can get back to Brundisi in time, even if we start sailing right now.’

  ‘Yes, but we can’t leave anyway, not until we’ve got the money sorted out,’ Essie argued. ‘The links are good here. If the pirates want cash, we’ll be able to get it here. Why shouldn’t Pod go to look for his sister, since we have to wait here anyway?’

  ‘But what if something goes wrong?’ Will said. ‘What if we have to go get her in a hurry, and he’s off running round a cruise ship?’ Will turned to Pod. ‘You don’t even know she’s on it any more.’

  ‘That’s why I have to go!’ Pod said. ‘I have to find out!’

  ‘They threatened to start cutting bits off my sister!’ Will said.

  ‘They’re not going to do that!’

  ‘You don’t know that!’

  For a moment, the two of them glared at each other.

  ‘I might not get another chance,’ Pod said. ‘It has to be now. I’ve come halfway round the world to help you find your dad. Now, I need to find my sister. If you got to leave without me, leave without me. But I’m going.’

  Pod turned resolutely and went to untie the dinghy.

  Will watched him go, simmering with frustration. ‘You’d better bring that back!’ he shouted, as Pod started the engine and drove away.

  The two of them watched in silence for a moment as Pod puttered off towards the shore. Then Essie turned to Will, frowning. ‘It’s the only thing he wants in the whole wide world,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ Will said crossly, because he did understand. ‘Did it have to be now?’

  It took a long time for the Blue Water Duchess to traverse the bay and arrive at the deep water dock purpose-built for giant cruise ships. Tugs guided her in, and then as soon as the great ropes had lashed her securely to the shore, hordes of vessels and vehicles came swarming up to begin the enormous task of servicing the ship while the holidaymakers were disgorged into town.

  Pod’s plan was simple enough: he would pretend to be a tourist. It had got him and Essie aboard the Blue Water Princess. There was no reason it wouldn’t work again. Impatiently, he watched the waves of cruisers as they came off the boat and fought their way through hordes of eager touts offering services, taxis, trinkets. Just act like you deserve to be there, he reminded himself. He walked up to a uniformed steward guarding one of the gangways and tried to sound rich. ‘Hi. I left my shell in my room. Can I just go back and get it?’

  The steward gave him one look and said, ‘You’re not a passenger.’

  Pod glanced down at himself. He never thought much about clothes, and now, too late, he realised he looked more like a beggar than a tourist. Last time he’d disguised himself in a souvenir t-shirt. He knew if Essie was here now she would have tried to brazen it out. But he didn’t have her confidence.

  ‘Go on, hop it, before I call the police,’ the steward said.

  Temporarily defeated, Pod slunk away.

  But he didn’t go far. He found a good vantage point where he could watch the boat while he thought about what to do next. He couldn’t walk on as a passenger. But could he try to sneak aboard as a crewman? He watched the boat’s operations and saw that there were surprisingly few people other than passengers coming or going, or even visible on board the ship. Stewards controlled the gangways, but where were all the other staff? The maids and the maintenance men, the hands and the sailors?

  He turned his attention to the goods being loaded onto and offloaded from the ship. Huge pallets were lined up on the dock ready to be loaded; a claw-like thing on a mighty mechanical arm lifted them up one by one and loaded them into a bay at the rear of the ship. Pod watched as the arm turned and lowered, grabbed and lifted. The whole process seemed smooth and efficient and was conducted without much intervention from actual people.

  This, he decided, was his way in.

  He stole out from his hiding place and crept towards the pallets. Most of them consisted of boxes of various sizes, packed in tight and swaddled with layers and layers of wrapping. There was no room on most of the pallets to squeeze in with the load. Then, at the far end of a row, he found what he was looking for: laundry, baled and tied. Wielding his pocket knife, he made a little slit in the wrapping, cut the twine holding one of the bales of laundry together, and pulled out enough towels to make a space for himself. Then he crept into the little gap he’d made, pulled the towels around himself, and waited.

  The smell of laundry powder was overwhelming, and the smothering weight of all that fabric pressing in upon him from every side started a flutter of panic inside him. Just breathe, he told himself. Think about Blossom.

  He hadn’t seen his sister for two years. He wondered, as he often did, how she might have changed. She had been a sweet-natured girl when they were together, silly and funny when they were among friends, although silent and fearful when their masters were around. He had made her a doll out of sticks once, a poor enough thing, but she loved it. It was lost when they were moved from the failed farm to the hulk; she’d been devastated by the loss. She would be too old for dolls now, he guessed. He hoped life hadn’t been too hard for her on the cruise ship. Boring, probably, with long hours. But not dangerous or frightening. At least he hoped not.

  Suddenly, his pallet lurched. The towels against him bulged inwards as the claw gripped them and he had to squeeze sideways to avoid being squished. Then the pallet lifted into the air, leaving Pod’s stomach behind. He felt an agony of fear at the unnatural sensation of floating free from the ground; then the pallet was descending. It landed with precision—barely a bump—and Pod let out his breath, grateful to have landed without mishap.

  He peeped out carefully from his screen of towels. He was in a huge hold stacked with pallets; now, at last, he could see staff. People moved about, checking lists and ripping open wrappings, moving supplies with hand trolleys. These people all wore uniforms, several different ones. If he was going to move about the ship unseen, he would have to get hold of one.

  Footsteps approached; he pulled his head back in behind the towels in the nick of time as someone walked right past him, but fortunately didn’t stop.

  When all was quiet again, he looked out. There was more laundry in some of the pallets nearby—some of it was sheets, but one contained bales of uniforms. He grabbed a jacket; he did not have time to look for pants. He pulled it on and hurried out of the hold.

  On a cruise ship, the nicest parts of the ship
were on the outside, where there was sunlight and views. All the working parts of the ship were tucked away on the inside, where the light never reached. The Blue Water Duchess was a floating island ten storeys high, and her service areas were correspondingly vast. Pod wandered for a time, trying to get his bearings. This turned out to be a little easier than it seemed at first; the crew on a ship like this spoke many languages, and like Pod, many of them couldn’t read. So while there were written signs on the service corridors, they were mostly accompanied by symbols which made it easy to sort out the engines from the plumbing, the kitchens from the laundry, and maintenance from housekeeping. Blossom had been taken on as a maid; if she was still working in the same division, housekeeping was where he was most likely to find her.

  He followed the symbols along metal service corridors and up and down clanging stairwells, all lit by the same harsh, unfriendly greenish light. No one really stopped to look at him as they went by; he guessed they all had something to do, and on a boat this large you might never get to know all the crew. The first time he saw a maid coming towards him, he stopped her and said, ‘Excuse me, I’m looking for Blossom. You seen her?’ The maid stared at him blankly, then shook her head and hurried away. He kept going, looking into service bays and storage cupboards and waiting rooms and dormitories, descending and descending through endless levels. He saw no one he recognised, and no one seemed to know Blossom. He descended another level and arrived in a wide corridor. Ahead of him, a maid was slowly pushing a trolley laden with cleaning supplies.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he began, but before she even turned around he felt a blaze of recognition, and he said, ‘Blossom?’

  She turned and her face brightened with joy, then she ran and threw her arms around him.

  Blossom

  Blossom looked both the same and different. The last time Pod had seen her, she’d still had a little girl’s face; now, she looked even older than Essie and Annalie, although he knew she was younger than they were. She was wearing make-up which made her look older than she was, and she was developing an adult’s bone structure. But more than that, the person behind her eyes was not a child any more. She was delighted to see him now, laughing and happy, but in the split-second before she recognised him, he’d seen a darkness that disturbed him.

  ‘Pod!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I got my freedom,’ Pod said. ‘I’ve come to get you out of here.’

  For a moment, Blossom stared at him blankly. Then she gave a startled, disbelieving laugh. ‘You messing with me?’ she asked.

  ‘Nope,’ Pod said. ‘I’m free, and I’ve come to rescue you.’

  ‘You’re messing,’ Blossom said again.

  ‘I’m really not,’ Pod said. ‘So, how do we get out of here?’

  ‘It’s impossible.’

  Pod felt a cold feeling steal through him. ‘There must be a way.’

  ‘If there was,’ Blossom said, ‘we’d all be out of here.’

  She explained that whenever the boat was in port, the crew was locked down to prevent them from escaping. All the access doors that connected the service areas to the passenger areas were kept locked; only the most senior crew members were allowed out at these times.

  ‘What happens if there’s a fire?’ Pod asked.

  ‘We put it out,’ Blossom said.

  ‘They wouldn’t even unlock the doors if there was a fire?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you could talk someone into letting you through the doors?’ Pod suggested.

  Blossom laughed. ‘Me? No.’ She looked at him. ‘How’d you get in here anyway?’

  Pod explained about the claw and the bay filled with pallets. Blossom pulled a face. ‘Once they finish loading the supplies they close the hatch,’ she said. ‘It’ll be closed now.’

  Pod pondered some more. ‘What about all the stuff they take off the ship?’ he asked. ‘If there’s clean laundry coming aboard, there must be dirty laundry somewhere too, right?’

  ‘There is,’ Blossom said, ‘but they lock it up so you can’t get at it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Pod asked.

  ‘People used to sneak out in the dirty laundry,’ Blossom said. ‘So they made it impossible.’

  ‘Isn’t there any way off this boat?’

  ‘Well, I did hear one thing—’ Blossom stopped.

  ‘Well? What did you hear?’

  ‘They say someone got out in the garbage,’ Blossom said.

  ‘What do they do with the garbage?’ Pod asked. The crew of the pirate ship he’d been on and the slave hulk before it had simply thrown all their rubbish overboard, although neither would have done it in port.

  ‘I heard there’s a barge,’ Blossom said. ‘They open a hatch and all the rubbish from the boat plops out onto the barge and they take it away. I heard that once someone dropped themselves down the garbage chute and escaped that way. But I also heard someone drowned in the garbage because there was so much of it.’

  ‘Maybe that’s it,’ Pod said. ‘Maybe that’s our way out.’

  A look of dark, antic mischief crept over Blossom’s face. ‘Through the garbage chute? You ever smelt one of those things? It’s like all the worst smells in the world got together in one place.’

  ‘If it’s our only option…’ Pod said.

  Blossom grinned wickedly. ‘Okay then. But I need to get some things first.’

  She abandoned her trolley and scampered off down the corridor, Pod chasing after her. She led him to a dormitory where many bunks were packed in tightly together, currently unoccupied as all the maids were working. The narrow bunks all had the same cheap bedlinen on them, but many of them were personalised with pictures and mementoes, scraps of coloured fabric, personal treasures. Blossom’s bunk was largely unadorned. She stripped the pillowcase off the one pillow, then glanced furtively around her and lifted up the mattress. She did not give Pod a chance to see what was under there; whatever she had hidden, she quickly swept it into the pillowcase and twisted it tightly closed. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  She led him through another maze of corridors, heading steadily down. After a while, a nasty smell reached him. It was a heavy, organic sort of smell that gradually grew more nauseating and intense. Blossom turned and grinned at him. ‘See?’ she said.

  She turned a corner, then quickly pulled back.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Pod.

  ‘There are guards on the door.’

  Pod stood there in silence for a moment, thinking. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said. ‘Can you act upset?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Try to look like you’re in fear of your life.’

  He hurried round the corner, Blossom following, and rushed up to the guards on the garbage bay door.

  ‘Hey, listen, we’re in serious trouble,’ Pod said. ‘My sister accidentally put a passenger’s jewellery in the garbage when she was cleaning up the room. It’s got to be in here somewhere and we’ve got to get it back before the passenger realises it’s missing.’

  The two guards stared at him. ‘Do you mean you want to go in there?’ the taller one asked.

  ‘You know that’s not allowed,’ said the shorter one.

  Blossom suddenly erupted. ‘Oh, please,’ she wailed. ‘I already signed the room off, if the passenger reports me I’ll be in so much trouble!’

  The guards exchanged looks. ‘It’s strictly forbidden,’ the tall one said.

  ‘We’re due for clearance any minute,’ the short one said.

  ‘If they think I stole the jewellery, it’s all over for me,’ Blossom wailed, wringing her hands. ‘Please.’

  Pod thought she was rather overdoing it, but the guards seemed taken in.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like in there,’ the tall guard said. ‘You’ll never find it.’

  ‘At least let us try,’ Pod said. ‘Please?’

  The guards looked at each other again, clearly considering it. ‘But what about the drop?�
�� the short one murmured.

  The tall one screwed up his face, then said, ‘You can have five minutes. Then you got to be out.’

  ‘And never breathe a word of this to anyone,’ the short one added.

  ‘Of course not,’ Blossom said eagerly. ‘Thank you!’

  ‘Be quick,’ the tall one said.

  The two of them unbolted the doors and cranked them open just enough to let Pod and Blossom slip through. They’d thought the smell was bad before, but when the doors cracked apart for the first time and the smell of the garbage hold breathed out over them, Pod felt like he was going to be sick. The reek was so foul and potent it could burn metal.

  ‘Five minutes,’ the guard warned.

  They stepped inside the hold.

  The doors clanged shut.

  They were trapped.

  The hatch

  It was perfectly dark inside.

  Luckily for them both Blossom carried a torch in the pocket of her uniform and she switched this on now. Garbage, loose and in bags, towered all around them in vast, slimy heaps. Things moved and scuttled around them, scampering away in the dark.

  ‘Rats,’ Pod said.

  ‘I hate rats,’ Blossom said.

  For a moment they both stood there, rigid with fear and disgust. The smell was overwhelming.

  ‘Now what?’ Blossom said.

  ‘I guess we try and find the hatch,’ Pod said.

  Together they began to climb over the mountains of garbage. It was a horrible experience. Bags squelched and slithered and sometimes split under their hands and feet, so they went sprawling into old, spoiled food and used tissues and bits of hair and all kinds of disgustingness. Rats squeaked at them and ran about. They kept hearing a slithering sound which grew louder and louder, followed by a brief period of silence and then a thump as garbage dropped down the chutes. Once, a bag dropped down right between them, almost taking them out, and then burst in a shower of rancid stink.

  They heard a clang; the doors had opened. ‘Oi!’ came the tall guard’s voice. ‘Five minutes are up! You’d better get back here!’

  ‘We’re still looking!’ Pod shouted. ‘Just one minute more!’ He turned to Blossom. ‘Keep moving,’ he murmured. ‘Hurry.’