LITMIR.BIZ

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and focussed on the road. Concentrating on the green Renault half a mile ahead, he wondered whether either of them would actually pluck up the courage when faced with the opportunity. Regardless of the wares in the window, they’d probably be disappointed to discover one knocking shop to be much like another. The visual “sizzle,” he guessed, would lure them to a steak cut from a tough old cow. Their ardour would be dimmed almost immediately by the request for cash in advance, and, having paid, and not before, would they discover the Venus in the window was unavailable—taking a break between rounds of sexual wrestling. Finally, after choosing an inferior model with a puritanically grim face and blubbery breasts, the fifteen minute performance would take place on a creaking bed in a room lit only by a couple of cheap candles. No amount of scent from burning wax would mask the chalky odour of spent semen from a thousand previous temple worshippers. The eternal triumph of hope over experience, thought Bliss, remembering his days on the morality squad and the universal sense of dissatisfaction. “You think I enjoyed it?” they would ask—pimps, whores and Johns alike.

      “You lot make me sick,” he said, turning on the two detectives accusingly.

      “You make me sick,” shot back Wilson, unable to come up with a sensible response.

      “You catch some poor hooker in Brixton with a few ounces of grass,” countered Bliss, “and you think you’ve cracked the world’s drug problem. Then off you go to Holland to get blasted, and get your leg over some whore young enough to be your daughter. You’ve got the morals of a tomcat in heat.”

      “Tomcats don’t get in heat, Guv. Thought you’d know that. It’s only the females that get in heat. Tomcats are good for a screw anytime.”

      “Precisely,” replied Bliss, turning back to the road, his point made.

      Sergeant Jones had stayed out of the argument, and Bliss had no doubt he would be with the others when the time came.

      “I’ll take you to the captain now,” the deck officer was saying, but Bliss was miles away, still worried about LeClarc, and listening to the tannoy blaring overhead.

       “Attention all passengers. If there is a doctor on board would you please report to the captain’s office, ten deck for’ard, immediately. Thank you.”

      “Somebody must be pretty sick,” he said as he followed the officer to the bridge.

      “I bet the guy in the water isn’t feeling too great either,” replied the officer.

      Roger was definitely not feeling great, he really wasn’t feeling much at all. Numb from the cold, abandoned, hopeless, he’d retreated to his inner world and more or less made up his mind to die. Drifting into unconsciousness had been easy—managed without even trying—but the fierce winds and wild sea conspired to keep him alive, flinging him around like flotsam in the surf. The wind was his lifesaver, tearing apart the waves that bore him, surrounding him with fizzing foam—more air than water—penetrating every crevice in his coat, turning it into a balloon.

      A heavy weight crashed on his head and sent him under for the umpteenth time. This is it. I’ll go quietly, he decided, then fell out of the side of the wave as it exploded into a billion droplets and tumbled into the gulley below. He surfaced back to consciousness in time to feel the following wave pick him up—the uphill climb at the start of yet another roller coaster—and he’d almost reached the top when he felt the heavy weight crushing him down again.

      “Get it over with,” he shouted, but no words came as he slid back down; this time the weight stayed with him, pressing firmly against his left shoulder.

      What’s happening? he was yelling inside. What’s happening to me? Look. But his eyes, stung once too often by the lashing salt spray, wouldn’t open. Fear and the absolute blackness spun his thoughts back to his teenage years. He was fifteen or sixteen playing with himself in the bathroom with the curtains drawn, lights off, eyes shut tight, sitting on his hand until it went numb, then pretending it belonged to another—a girl perhaps.

      “What’ye doing in there, our Roger?” she called, creeping up to the door unheard.

      Oh shit! “Nothing, Mum.”

      “Liar! What are you doing? Open this door now.”

      “No.”

      “D’ye wanna clout?”

      Tears welled. “No, Mum—please don’t.”

      “Come on out then—hurry up.”

      “I love you, Mum,” he cried, opening the door.

      “Humph,” she grunted, going back downstairs to Dynasty. “You’ll go blind.”

      He stood at the top, pants round his ankles, watching her, hating her. Why had he said that? Why had he said, “I love you?”

      “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” he screamed inside. “I bloody hate you.”

      The painful memory reminded him he was still alive and he forced apart his eyelids, but a wash of blue-black Indian ink had painted the sea and sky into one. Then the huge weight shoved again and, spinning his head, he saw a phantom—a large patch of lighter coloured space, twisting and turning right behind him. The ghostly patch was misty, indistinct, but it had substance, he could feel it nudging and bumping into him. Intrigue overcame fear and he timidly reached out. “It’s solid,” he said to himself in disbelief, feeling resistance against his hypothermic fingers.

      The ghost was tugging at his sleeve. This must be Death, he thought, trying again to get free, feeling his arm being pulled once more; Death’s spectre coming to carry me off.

      “Stop it,” he yelled. “Stop it. I don’t want to die— I’m sorry Mum. I’m sorry. I love you.” But the ghost kept pulling, dragging him through the water, dancing in the wind, skipping over the waves.

      Then, in an instant something changed—logic took control, as the spectre smacked him heavily, bringing him to his senses. Suddenly conscious it was real, not part of some elaborate nightmare, he grasped for the smooth, slippery object. Understanding slowly filtered through his doziness. It’s a life raft, he realized, amazed, as he was flung repeatedly against it, the sleeve of his left arm trapped by one of the many ropes looped along its side.

      A hundred or more times, Roger and the life-raft were dragged up and down the watery hillsides as he desperately searched for a way to clamber aboard; then fate took a hand and he found himself on the crest of a wave, the raft in the valley beneath, and he flopped effortlessly onto it. Exhausted, yet relieved, he dropped back into unconsciousness, totally unaware that the SS Rotterdam was less than half a mile away, with a hundred and forty-three pairs of eyes straining into the darkness, seeking any trace of the raft or him.

      “Something off the port bow—about ten o’clock,” cried a female officer, catching a fleeting glimpse of lightness. Tension on the bridge instantly turned to excitement, men frantically adjusted binoculars and swung them from starboard to port, all eyes focussed in Roger’s direction, but the huge waves conspired to keep him hidden. He and his ghostly chariot, wallowing from trough to trough, trapped under one breaking wave after another, would have been invisible even in broad daylight.

      “Nothing,” sighed the officer a few moments later, her disappointed whisper easily heard in the tension filled darkness of the bridge. “Sorry—my mistake.”

      “No problem,” replied the captain. “We’re well beyond maximum range anyway. He couldn’t have drifted this far in thirty minutes.”

      The officers wandered back to their stations on the bridge, some taking the opportunity for a quick slurp of cocoa and a bite of doughnut. A couple made a dash for the washroom. The suspense was dissipating and everyone was grateful for the excuse to take a break, falsely justified by the apparent sighting.

      “Captain, I’ve got a police inspector outside who reckons he knows the victim,” the deck officer was saying to the captain’s shadow in the gloom.

      “That’s

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