Read Online The Far Side of the Sun by Kate Furnivall - Free Book Online Page A

under his shirt. A great wave of sorrow hit her square in the chest. It knocked the breath out of her. She cradled his heavy hand between hers, as if she could bring warmth back into it and persuade blood to flow through its veins once more. Tears seeped from her.

She couldn’t believe that Hector Latcham was responsible for this. It was unthinkable. Yet even as a tremor shuddered through her, she thought the unthinkable.

Ella. Where was she?

She tore off the scarf tying back her hair and carefully bound it around the face of Detective Calder to keep it safe from the scavenging gulls. She had to move quickly. She examined the footprints in the sand, but they told her little because the tide and the wind had been at work. She checked that the beach and the rock pools held no other surprises, then scoured the undergrowth under the trees, poking it with sticks, disturbing lizards and a nest of hutias.

She found nothing. She stood wiping sweat from her eyes and stared up and down the beach. ‘Ella, where are you?’

A breeze rippled the gleaming surface of the waves, sending darts of sunlight to dazzle her eyes. It was a world that dozed as peacefully as the cormorants on the rocks.

‘You’re here, Ella, I know you are. His car is still parked up on the road.’ A big black Buick, a lawyer’s car, had been tucked away in the shade.

That was when she saw the boat. She had been too absorbed by the beach and the lifeless body of Detective Calder, too focused on what was under her feet, but now she swore at herself and tore off her Arcadia dress.
     
    The yacht loomed up above her, as white as a wedding cake. With silent strokes Dodie circled it, noting the tender tied alongside, and lifted herself out of the water on to the ladder.

A wave slapped the hull of the boat, making it rock, and she rolled over the side, crouching on the deck. Just to her right she could see the entrance to a companionway. Dodie wasn’t used to boats but she knew enough to remember that you descended a companionway ladder backwards and that seemed a bad idea. A very bad idea. Whatever was waiting down below would get first crack at her before she could turn. Her breath came fast and shallow.

Flynn. Help me
.

She tried to think like him. To move in that alert way he had and to make no sound. She edged up to the companionway and listened. Silence and heat drifted up to her.

What if she was wrong?

But the tender was tethered to the boat and that meant someone had to be on board. A sudden noise started up below and startled her, the mechanical sound of pumping. If Hector was busy with something, now was the time to climb down. Instantly she slid down the companionway ladder, her pulse pounding, and was hit by the heat and the gloom. Hatches closed. No air. She’d stepped into a narrow saloon of varnished teak and brass with a long thin table and fixed padded benches on each side of it. Slumped on one of them and facing Dodie was a woman.

‘Ella?’

The corn-coloured head shot up. Huge bleak eyes stared at her.

‘Dodie! No, leave quickly. Don’t —’ Her head was shaking back and forth as Dodie moved towards the table.

Just as Dodie registered with shock the handcuffs that chained Ella to a brass rail behind her, a tarpaulin descended over her own head. Strong arms forced her to the floor. She kicked. Screamed. Fought for air. But it wasn’t enough.
     
    The world came back to Dodie in pieces. Blood in her mouth. A pain in her chest. The metallic click of a lighter. A swaying motion that was not just in her head. A hand hot on her cheek.

‘You bastard, you’ve suffocated her.’ It was Ella.

‘She’ll come round.’ Hector Latcham’s voice.

‘Let her go, I beg you, Hector. Just leave her somewhere on the beach. She hasn’t seen you yet, so doesn’t know anything.’

He said nothing, but must have shaken his head because Ella burst out with sudden anger. ‘Haven’t you killed enough? Are you dead inside? Don’t you care