“Then we understand each other.”

“Perfectly.”

“Get rid of the car when you’re finished with it.”

* * *

BILLY STRUGGLED and bucked, his heels clattering and then catching against the lip of the boot, but his shackles were secure and Edward yanked him out. Billy tried to scream, the noise muffled by the rag they had jammed into his mouth. He made himself a dead-weight, the toes of his shoes scraping muddy troughs into the grass verge as they dragged him onto the wooden jetty. Their boat was waiting for them, bobbing on the swells. Edward stepped onto the deck first and then, pulling hard, he dragged Billy after him.

Jimmy went into the wheelhouse and made the preparations for casting off. It was a small fishing skiff, fifteen feet from bow to stern, and powered by a small motor. It belonged to a friend who owed Jimmy a favour. He turned the ignition to switch on the engine and unknotted the mooring ropes. The rag must have dropped out of Billy’s mouth for he exclaimed, loudly, “What is this?” His voice was full of panic. “Who are you? Please, I ain’t done nothing to no-one. Come on, mate. Let me off.” Edward took him aft, hauling him down the shallow flight of steps into the room below where there was a tiny kitchen and store. He left him on the floor and went up on deck.

Jimmy started the engines. The noise seemed horribly loud but no-one came. They sailed out of the harbour, the engine chugging and then, when the navigation lights at the end of the harbour were at their backs, he opened the throttles and they picked up speed, cutting through the glassy water and leaving star-speckled froth behind them.

They sailed for an hour until the only evidence of the town were the pinpricks of light on the dark shoulder of land behind them.

“This is far enough,” Jimmy shouted. He cut the engines and the boat drifted, rising and falling on the swells, quiet save for the ticking of the engine and the soft slap of the waves against the hull.

Edward propped himself against the rocking of the boat and went back down to the kitchen. Billy was on his knees, his shoulders braced against the cooker. He heard his feet on the steps, his head turning in that direction. “Please,” he said, “Tell me what I’ve done. I’ll put it right, I swear I will.”

“Shut up, Billy.”

Edward went behind him and looped an arm around his waist and dragged him towards the steps.

“Fabian?”

Billy lifted his legs up and kicked against the wall, knocking Edward over and landing atop him. “Hold on,” Jimmy said, coming down to help. They took him at the shoulders and ankles and, together, they hauled him up the stairs. The sack bulged as he strained at his shackles but they were too tight. They dropped him in the middle of the deck.

“Fabian?” Billy pleaded from behind the burlap sack.

Jimmy handed him the carving knife he had brought from the kitchen. Edward pulled it back and stabbed Billy in the chest, two times. The knife cut a gash through his shirt and into the flesh beneath, filling with a line of blood as Edward watched. Billy fell back and bucked against the floor, writhing, twisting. He gave a roar that frightened Edward with its loudness and strength and he clambered atop his thrashing body, stabbing him with the knife two more times, into the neck, slashing with the edge of the blade, again and again. He stabbed downwards again, on his knees now, blood splashing from each fresh puncture, and, for an instant, he was aware of tiring as he raised and stabbed, and still Billy thrashed, his shoulders straining, his hog-tied legs jerking up and down. Edward freed himself, stabbing again and again, holding the knife in both hands, the tip pointing down, and plunged it, hard, right into Billy’s heart. Billy’s body suddenly went limp, relaxed and still. Edward shuffled backwards on his knees, straightened his back, tried to regain his breath. He looked down: Billy was motionless, and covered in blood. He stared at him, searching for a sign of life––a gasp, a bloody sputter––but there was none. He was afraid to touch him now, afraid to touch his chest or feel for a pulse, but he did, taking his wrist between his thumb and forefinger. There was a pulse, faint and indistinct, and it seemed to flutter away as he touched it, as if the pressure of his own fingers quenched it. In the next moment, it was gone.

He pushed up with his legs and stood, a little unsteady. He looked down at Billy’s wiry form on the floor and felt a sudden disgust. It was his fault that he had had to do this. Jimmy unhooked the boat’s anchor and attended to the body, feeding the rope through the space between Billy’s shackled wrists and his back, looping it three times and knotting it expertly. The rope was long, maybe fifty feet, but the sea was deep here. The anchor would drag the body down and hold it beneath the surface. It might drift, but they were far enough from shore that that wouldn’t matter. Jimmy heaved the rusting metal anchor onto the side and pushed it over. The rope unspooled rapidly until it grew taut on Billy’s body, and by that time they had manoeuvred his torso over the gunwale. Edward could tell from the buoyancy of the rope that the anchor was not yet at the bottom.

The sacking had worked free around Billy’s head and, as they hefted him up, it flapped loose. As his body balanced on the gunwale the clouds crept aside and moonlight was cast against the water. His face was lit, frozen, the lifeless eyes, the briny froth from a large wave crashing over his head. Edward thought of his leering grin, what he had seen and what he might have said. Fuck you, Bubble, he thought. Fuck you, and fuck you, and good riddance. He found a sudden surge of anger and shoved upwards, hard, flipping him at the waist so that his body inverted, his legs splashing as they slammed against the surface of the water. The body went straight down, sucked away into the blackness until there was no sign that it had ever been there at all.

It’s finished, he thought, suddenly filled with a wonderful happiness. Done. He laughed, as he had often laughed alone, with similar relief after awful moments.

Jimmy went back to the galley and returned with a bottle of spirits. He cleaned out two dirty tumblers and poured double measures. Edward drank his. He thought how stupid and unnecessary Billy’s death had been but how he only had himself to blame. He was a selfish, greedy, cruel bastard who had sneered at him and threatened his father, threatened his family, threatened his future and the rewards he had worked so hard to attain, threatened the life that he deserved. He looked out at the sea, the rain hammering a drumbeat against the roof of the boat, and he said, low and calm, the tightness in his throat gone: “Billy Bubble, it was all your fault.”

Jimmy went into the cab and the engines started again with a splutter. The boat lurched forwards and picked up speed. He spun the wheel and they carved around so that the coast was before them again. Edward went forwards and rested against the wheelhouse. He was soaked to the skin: he ignored the rain and the sprays of spume. The boat cut through the rising swells, ascending and descending, a long, easy pattern. He collected a bucket and mop and went back to start to clean up the mess.

Eventually, the buildings of Southend came into view again.

66

THE SUN HAD RISEN from behind grey, dispiriting clouds during the drive back to London but the gloom still persisted. Edward had taken Jimmy back to his flat where they had embraced quickly, arranging to meet later. Edward would have liked to have stopped, perhaps had something to eat or even to sleep for an hour or two, but there had been no time for any of that. He would have to manage without. He had been full of adrenaline during the drive and, now that things were drawing faster and faster towards the conclusion that he had engineered, he was alert with the anticipation of what was to come.