Devil's Rock - Chris Speyer [11]
‘Yeah,’ nodded his father. ‘OK.’
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Chapter 4
Zaki now lay in Grandad’s bunk padded around with cushions. Its narrowness and his present immobility brought to his mind the image of a body in a coffin and underlined the narrowness of his recent escape.
Having got him back aboard, Zaki’s father had helped him into dry clothing and examined his shoulder. It was already turning interesting shades of red, blue and yellow with swelling over the collarbone which made his father think that, if it wasn’t broken, it was most likely cracked.
Of course there were more questions about where he’d been. ‘Why were you gone so long?’ his father wanted to know. ‘How did you hurt your shoulder?’
At first, Zaki’s own genuine confusion prevented him from saying much, but his father persisted. ‘We’ve been searching for you for hours. I’ve had Michael up and down the river a dozen times in the dinghy, then you turn up on that rock! Didn’t you realise we’d be worried?’
Zaki desperately wanted to talk about what had happened; to share his adventure; to ask his father for advice. But his promise to the girl made him hold back. Hadn’t she saved his life – dragged him out of the cave just as he was about to drown? Didn’t he owe her something? Maybe she was in some sort of trouble, some sort of danger, and he could make it worse for her by betraying her. Did she need help? Then, the ghastly thought hit him – had she killed the child in the cave?
After a moment of horrified contemplation, Zaki pushed this possibility from his mind – no she couldn’t have! Could she? The body had been there too long. And if she had, why would she save him, knowing he had discovered her secret? No – it must be more complicated than that. But where did she go? Where was she now?
Zaki decided that, for the moment at least, he would not say anything about the cave. It was obvious from his father’s questions that he knew nothing of its existence; that the tide had already hidden the cave entrance by the time the search for him began. Instead, he invented a plausible explanation for his long absence. He said that he had set off at low tide up the river, along the bed of the estuary, that he hadn’t noticed the time and been cut off by the incoming tide. He had then been forced to return through the woods; scrambled down on to the rock ledge, where he had slipped when trying to hail them and fallen onto the boulder, injuring his shoulder and bruising his shin.
He pictured this fabricated journey as he spoke and became half convinced that this really was what had happened. The real events were so much more bizarre; like a nightmare – a secret passage, a skeleton, the strange images that filled his head in the dark cave, three or more hours that were lost and couldn’t be account for, near-drowning and the mysterious girl who had rescued him and then vanished. If he did tell anyone the real story, would they believe him? He doubted it very much. He wished he still had the bracelet – a solid object to prove that it had all happened, something to hang on to. But the bracelet was gone with the girl and he didn’t suppose he’d see either of them again.
The story he told appeared to satisfy his father, who decided that Zaki’s shoulder needed to be seen by a doctor as soon as possible and this meant getting out of the Orme straight away, while there was still enough tide to cross the bar and clear the outer reef. So Zaki was tucked into Grandad’s bunk, where he would be in no danger of rolling out when Morveren was under way.
It was a relief to be left alone. He listened to his father and Michael up on deck making preparations for departure: the inflatable being packed away; the sailing dinghy being hoisted aboard; their footsteps crossing and recrossing above him. Then the diesel starting, thudding loudly in the engine compartment next to his bunk, and the rattle of the anchor chain.
The plan had been to spend two nights in the estuary before heading home to Morveren’s mooring off East Portlemouth. Normally, Zaki would have wheedled and begged, ‘Couldn’t we stay