Man Overboard Read online

  “Aye, I’m sure she will.”

  While he waited for the kettle to boil, Slade thought about their forthcoming mission. They would sail to Jacksonville in a few weeks’ time to position themselves for the hurricane season as part of the British support to the overseas territories in the Caribbean. He was looking forward to the trip across the Atlantic. Apollo would have a skeleton crew, just enough merchant sailors to crew the vessel for the ten days or so. It would be an excellent opportunity for him to really get to know the ship before the actual mission started. In Jacksonville, things would change as the ship was loaded with aid supplies, materials to repair damage and clear blocked roads, and aviation support.

  The only part he wasn’t looking forward to was the arrival of the Royal Navy personnel. There was an uneasy relationship between the merchant sailors, who considered themselves proper mariners, and the Navy. Most of the uniformed personnel had little time at sea under their belts, and according to Palmer, when they were on board made every effort to prove themselves as salty old sea dogs. But Apollo was Slade’s ship. He was the captain, which meant he was in charge, and he was pretty sure he could maintain command with no problems.

  Slade made two cups of tea and handed one to Palmer. The two men stood side by side on the bridge in silence, gazing down at the foredeck below them as sailors had done for generations. There was a hive of activity going on as the ship was prepared for the dry dock to be refilled in a couple of days’ time. Men and women in high-visibility jackets scurried around, performing maintenance, painting panels and preparing stores.

  Once the dry dock was filled, they would set sail for sea trials before heading for the ocean proper. Slade smiled as he regarded the activity on the deck. Apollo might be old, she might need some tender loving care, but she was Slade’s ship. That was all that mattered to him.

  4

  Adams parked his car, a battered silver Vauxhall Astra with a large dent in the passenger wing, courtesy of a tree that he’d somehow managed to not notice when parking, and blipped the locks. He made his way to the supermarket entrance, where a young woman was standing by the entrance doors. She had possibly the worst job in the world, Adams thought as he approached her. Being paid to do nothing else than say hello to people when they arrived.

  “Excuse me, I’m looking for someone called Tim?” Adams asked the woman who, according to her name badge, was called Erin and was happy to help.

  “Oh, sure,” Erin replied with a smile. “He’s the assistant manager. Do you want to come with me?”

  He followed the young woman into the supermarket, and she led him toward the rear of the store. She seemed relieved to have something else to say than good morning, and they chatted about the weather as they walked.

  “Just in here,” Erin said, gesturing to a door at the back of the store with the words Colleagues Only on it.

  “Thanks very much,” Adams said as he knocked on it from force of habit and walked in. Through the door was a large room that appeared to be half office space, half crew room. On a tired sofa next to a noticeboard full of Health and Safety posters, Adams saw Lizzie sitting with a young man in a suit. When she saw Adams, Lizzie got to her feet and almost ran over to him. “Are you okay?” he said, looking at her closely.

  “I’m fine. Can we just go?” She glanced over her shoulder at the man in the suit. “Thanks, Tim.”

  “Hey, no problem,” the man replied, raising a hand in the air. “Lovely to meet you.”

  Adams felt Lizzie pulling at his arm.

  “Come on, can we go?” she said.

  Adams opened the door he had just walked through and stepped back to let Lizzie through it. He had to hurry to catch up with her.

  “Hey, Lizzie, wait up for a second,” he said in protest. Lizzie ignored him and carried on walking. It wasn’t until they were sitting in his car that she said anything else.

  “What happened?” Adams asked. He knew she would be talking to him since they weren’t going anywhere until she had. He looked at her while he waited for her to reply. She had light brown hair cut into a bob, the ends highlighted blonde, and a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose that he loved.

  “Nothing, I just had a bit of a moment, that was all.” She turned to look at him, and he thought he saw a deep sadness in her pale blue eyes.

  “What sort of a moment?” he asked softly.

  “The bloody fire alarm went off. It sounded just like the Giant Voice back in Kandahar.”

  “Oh, that happened to me a while ago in a shop in the city. Made me jump, for sure.”

  “I’m guessing you didn’t try to take cover under a freezer full of chicken nuggets.” Lizzie said. Adams felt the corners of his mouth twitch and he pressed his lips together. She stared at him defiantly. “And if you start laughing, I will kill you.”

  “Oh, is that what happened?” He looked at her again and saw the ghost of a smile on her face. It didn’t last for long, though.

  “It was like I was there, Adams,” she said in a quiet voice. “I could even smell the bloody cordite. When Timmy boy in there put his hand on my shoulder to see if I was okay, I nearly peed myself.” Adams couldn’t help but smile at her words. “What did I just say?” Lizzie said, but to his relief, she was smiling as well. They sat in silence for a moment. Adams was waiting to see if Lizzie would say anything else about what had just happened, but it didn’t appear that she wanted to.

  “You’re having nightmares again, aren’t you?” Adams asked after a while, careful to keep his voice light.

  “Nope,” Lizzie replied, shaking her head slightly.

  “So how come you woke up the other night screaming?” He thought back to her waking him up with a shriek a few nights ago, and him holding her for ages until she stopped sobbing. When they’d got up the next morning, she had denied anything was wrong.

  “That was because I remembered having sex with you,” Lizzie replied as Adams looked at her. At least her smile was still there.

  “Very funny, but you need to see someone, Lizzie,” Adams said as he started the car. She didn’t reply, but just stared at her fingernails. “Lizzie?”

  “I will, Adams,” Lizzie replied with a sigh, putting her hands down in her lap. “I’ve got an appointment anyway to talk about the pill thing.”

  “Only if you’re sure about that, Lizzie,” Adams said. He glanced both ways and pulled out of the car park. “There’s no pressure from me.”

  “No, I’m sure. It’ll be one less thing to worry about. Besides, I know how much you hate condoms.”

  “I quite like what they’re for.”

  “I’m sure you do. Mind that tree!”

  Adams put his foot sharply on the brake, causing the driver of the car behind him to do the same.

  “Where?” he said, looking from side to side. Behind them, there was a short beep of a horn.

  “There,” Lizzie replied, pointing at a tree that was at least a hundred yards away.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Adams muttered with a grin as he raised his hand to apologise to the driver behind him. “You want to go back to the base?”

  “Can we?” Lizzie replied, sighing. “I’m exhausted. I just want to curl up in bed and pull the covers over my head.”

  “Okay, no problem.”

  They drove in silence for a while. Lizzie was just staring out of the passenger window, and Adams was desperate to ask her what she was thinking about. But at the same time, he wanted to give her space to think. He’d been worried about her for a while, knowing that something wasn’t quite right. But perhaps he had underestimated what was going on in her head?

  “You okay?” he said softly as they waited at a red light. Lizzie wriggled in her seat and pulled a piece of paper from the back pocket of her jeans.

  “I’ve got something for you,” Lizzie said, holding the folded piece of paper up. Adams regarded it curiously.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s my shopping list,” sh
e replied with a smile as she handed it to him. “Can you grab these bits while I’m having a snooze?”

  Adams couldn’t help but laugh at the look on her face.

  “I am such a mug,” he said with a grin. Lizzie reached across the car and ruffled his hair.

  “I know you are,” she replied. “That’s why I like you so much.”

  5

  Rebecca Lewis was, for once, grateful that she was wearing her formal Royal Navy Uniform. The sky above the parade ground at the Britannia Royal Naval College was dark grey and full of rain, which hopefully wouldn’t start until after the graduation parade was finished. It was only the senior officers who were in attendance that were under cover in a small blue and white tent that overlooked the parade ground. The visitors and the other naval cadets who were graduating with her were all exposed to the elements.

  Her double-breasted, navy blue reefer jacket kept the worst of the cold out, and wearing trousers instead of a skirt also helped keep the bitter March wind at bay. Rebecca’s long, dark brown hair was tied up in a bun that sat just below her peaked hat. She was standing at attention, having just marched onto the parade ground with the other cadets and into her allocated position at the end of the row. She knew she’d been put there on purpose for a photo opportunity with the second sea lord, the most senior officer who would inspect them in a few moments. Rebecca didn’t need to be told that she was an attractive young woman because she knew she was. Not in a conceited way, but she’d been approached on more than one occasion by people supposedly working for modelling agencies. She had deep brown eyes, high cheekbones, and a button nose over full lips that had sent more than one person crazy about her.

  In front of Rebecca was a black cadet, also positioned for a photo opportunity with the second sea lord. It seemed that the Royal Navy’s media department wanted every inclusivity and diversity box to be ticked in their latest promotional material. Neither Rebecca nor the cadet standing in front of her minded in the slightest, but a few of the other cadets had rolled their eyes when the positions had been announced.

  Making sure that she didn’t move her head an inch, Rebecca looked at the crowd standing in front of the large red and white brick building that had been the Royal Navy’s officer training school for the last hundred or so years. Somewhere in the sea of expectant faces was her mother, who would no doubt be thinking of her husband and his father, both of whom had graduated from the same parade square Rebecca was about to. Only they were both dead, whereas Rebecca wasn’t.

  In front of her, with a quick glance at the sky, the second sea lord made his way from his tent down the steps to the parade square. According to the directing staff, he would ask her some inane question like what was her most memorable ‘first’ during her officer training. Rebecca pressed her lips together to stop herself from smiling at some of the things she could tell him she’d never done before arriving at the distinguished college.

  There was the drunken night in the cadets’ wardroom that had eventually resulted in her first ever threesome with two male cadets. There was the slightly less drunken but no less memorable evening she had spent with a cadet called Anne, which had also resulted in the exchange of bodily fluids. Not as much fluid in terms of volume, but equally enjoyable. Anne, as it had turned out, had been quite the teacher and had shown Rebecca the ropes in more ways than one.

  In front of her, the second sea lord made his way along the rank of cadets, pausing every four or five yards to say something to one of them. She watched as he reached out and brushed a speck of imaginary dust from the shoulder of one cadet.

  Eventually, the second sea lord reached Rebecca. He was a vice-admiral called Ian Kennedy who had, according to the biography the cadets had all had to memorise, served on submarines for most of his career. He stood in front of her, their eyes almost level, and smiled with kinder eyes than she had been expecting. Next to him was the commandant of the college, a dour-faced captain by the name of Skipton, who Rebecca had never spoken to.

  “Hello there, young lady,” the second sea lord said. “And you are?”

  “Officer Cadet Lewis, sir,” Rebecca replied as a photographer clicked away behind the admiral.

  “Soon to be Sub-Lieutenant Lewis. What trade are you?” Rebecca could see the commandant glaring at her for some reason.

  “Environmental health officer, sir,” Rebecca said, trying to keep her eyes fixed on a point just over the admiral’s shoulder.

  “Excellent, excellent,” the second sea lord said, although from the look on his face, Rebecca wondered if he had the faintest idea what an environmental health officer was. “Well, congratulations on your achievement.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Rebecca said as he moved on to walk down the line of cadets. She sighed with relief. At least she’d kept a straight face and not said anything she shouldn’t have.

  One of the best things about being at the college had been that she had finally been in charge of her own medication. Prior to that, her mother had administered it with an iron fist, ensuring that she took enough of the pills to at least appear normal. In her words, not Rebecca’s. They had gone to great lengths to make sure that the reason she took the pills didn’t feature on any of her navy medical records. People with extensive psychiatric histories like hers didn’t get very far in any of the armed forces, but private doctors could—for the right amount of money—be persuaded to dispense prescriptions without making too many notes about the reasons for them. Besides, Rebecca thought as the second sea lord made his way back up to his little tent—just in time to get under cover before it started raining—she’d not had a proper psychotic episode for years.

  Eventually, the parade was nearing completion. Safe from the elements, the second sea lord was making a speech about how proud the families and friends present at the event should be of the young men and women on the parade ground. About how they were the future of the Royal Navy, and what a future it promised to be.

  Rebecca looked up at the steps that in a few short moments she would be marching up. Once she walked through the large double doors set into the centre of the building, she would have achieved the same goal as her father and his father before him.

  She would be a commissioned officer in the Royal Navy. And the first part of her plan to get her revenge for their deaths would be complete.

  6

  Lizzie lay back in her bed and stared at the ceiling. It was just after eleven in the evening and, although she was still exhausted, she knew there was no way she could get to sleep soon. But she had to be up at seven in the morning, so her required eight hours in bed started now, even if she was going to spend half of them looking at the cracks in her ceiling. Maybe when she saw the doctor about getting the contraceptive pill, she should ask her about sleeping tablets as well? Ignoring all the advice she’d ever been given about insomnia, Lizzie reached for her phone to tap a text message out to Adams.

  You still up? It only took him a few seconds to reply.

  Yep, watching the news on telly. You all tucked up? Lizzie sighed at his question. She would rather be tucked up in his bed in the officers’ mess, not hers in the warrant officers’ and sergeants’ mess, but they’d both agreed a few weeks ago that they would only stay together on a Friday and a Saturday night.

  “If you get caught doing the walk of shame out of the officers’ mess on a weekday morning,” Adams had said, “I’d be up in front of the station commander for an interview without coffee.” But on a Saturday and Sunday morning, the base was almost deserted, so the chances of being seen were slim.

  “I prefer to call it the stride of pride,” Lizzie had replied. She smiled as she remembered the conversation. Adams had asked her if she’d done the stride of pride many times. She hadn’t, not even once, before staying over with Adams for the first time. But she’d made out that it had been a regular occurrence, keeping a straight face for ages as she wound Adams up about it.

  “Just because you’re sexually repressed,” Lizzie had tol
d him, “doesn’t mean that I have to be as well.”

  Yup. Can’t sleep, Lizzie tapped out on the screen. Got a busy head. A few seconds later, Adams replied.

  Try and get some sleep, the message read. You’ll not get much tomorrow night. He followed the text up with a smiley face emoji.

  Lizzie smiled as she put the phone down. Their plans for tomorrow evening were to go for an Indian meal and a few drinks, and then go back to his accommodation. The officers’ mess rooms were larger than the one she was currently in, and Adams also had his own bathroom. At some point, there was supposed to be some new SNCO accommodation being built at RAF Brize Norton, but according to one of Lizzie’s friends who had been at the base for a few years, they’d been saying that since before he’d arrived there. Lizzie couldn’t wait for tomorrow evening. None of her other boyfriends, although there hadn’t been many, made her feel like Adams did. Either emotionally or physically.

  She closed her eyes and tried some of the mindfulness breathing exercises she’d read about on the internet. Twenty minutes later, she was still just as awake as she had been.

  “This is ridiculous,” Lizzie muttered, swinging her feet out of the bed and placing them on the floor. She stood up and crossed the room to get her laptop before turning it on and getting back into bed. Using a computer in bed was another one of the rules that she had read about things you shouldn’t do when you couldn’t sleep. But she had to do something.

  Lizzie opened up a password protected folder on her laptop and navigated her way to a folder with a bunch of images on it. She had password protected the folder only to make her pause before opening it. The incident in the supermarket had really got to her, even though she had downplayed it to Adams. When she had called him to collect her, Lizzie had been on the verge of a full-blown panic attack, but just the knowledge that he was on his way had calmed her down. Much to Tim’s relief.