Whale Boy Page 12

  Eugenia showed them the name Morne Diabolo on an old map in one of the dustiest books.

  Michael leaned over it to work out where the riddle meant. ‘To get Diabolo – Liberty – hidden behind Pierre,’ he said, tracing it with his finger, ‘you’d have to be right up here, almost due north of the island. Out in the channel!’

  Samuel and So-So nodded in agreement.

  ‘But what about the lion and angel part?’ asked Mr Joseph. ‘What kind of place is a lion’s bite?’

  ‘Sailors weren’t good at spelling!’ Eugenia said with the smuggest of smug smiles. ‘The bite is really B-Y-T-E . . .’

  ‘Right, ‘said Mr Joseph eagerly. ‘Like Josie’s Byte off the east coast, between Port Maron and Mariette Island!’

  So-So jumped up from the table and did a little dance. ‘I know this place!’ he cried. ‘The Lions’ Byte. Here, here . . .’ he said, putting a trembling finger on a stretch of sea north of the island, where tiny dots that might have been spots of mould spotted the page. ‘An old, old guy in Northport, he tell me one time of a fishing spot among rocks and tiny, tiny islands, called the Lions. Here between them is the byte!’

  Eugenia waited for the little wave of excitement around the table to die down.

  ‘But here’s the other part of the directions,’ she said, and laid another page on top of the map – a photocopy of dark handwritten words, with a passage underlined in red. ‘It’s a journal written by a man who came to the island on a whaling ship three hundred years ago.’

  She read out what the underlined words said: ‘The sailors have much lore and superstition, and notice stars and planets pertaining to their work and life. A harpooner on the ship The Marqui, one Silas Jaquard . . .’

  ‘Silas Jaquard?’ exclaimed Mr Joseph. ‘Could have been Josephine’s great-great-great-grandpa!’

  So-So nodded excitedly. ‘C’mon, girl. Let’s hear the rest of it . . .’

  Eugenia went on reading. ‘Um . . . one Silas Jaquard, told me of the three stars they call the Angels, which are much talked of, although they are but a faint spark in the sky, showing above the island’s horizon for a few days each year. When these stars are positioned correctly in the night sky is a portent of a great gathering of whales, which come to feed each year on creatures swarming from the deep.’

  ‘Angel on the lions’ bite,’ Michael said, ‘must mean when the star shines on that stretch of water.’

  Eugenia raised an eyebrow as if to say, So, more brain than I thought, Michael Fontaine.

  ‘Yeah, but that’s only useful if we know what the star is . . .’ Samuel said.

  ‘The librarian is pretty keen on stars and astronomy,’ she explained. ‘She knew about the Angels. They show above the sea for three days starting tomorrow night, the first night of Carnival. If we lined up the stars, Morne Pierre and the Lions, we’d be in the right place.’

  Michael’s eyes lit up. ‘So we’re ahead of JJ and Spargo!’ he said eagerly. ‘They can’t have worked this out yet?’

  Eugenia shook her head. ‘Sorry. There’s something I should have told you. The original journal had been stolen from the library. I think we can guess who was behind that.’

  ‘That explains why they wanted your half of the riddle,’ said Mr Joseph. ‘They already knew the when part; they just needed the where.’

  Michael sagged in his chair. He had given Spargo the last clue he needed to be able to find and slaughter Freedom’s family!

  ‘We have to stop them, Dad! We have to get Freedom released,’ he cried. ‘Can’t you arrest them?’

  Samuel shook his head, his face creased with worry. ‘The island police are already in Spargo’s pocket. Without their help there isn’t much I can do until I get back-up from London and Interpol. That’ll take a few days,’ he told him.

  ‘But what about this evidence?’ said Michael, pointing to the whale-meat pack that Eugenia had brought with her. ‘What about what they did to me?’

  His father shook his head again. ‘You can be sure the safe that pack came from will be empty, and JJ and Spargo will be on a plane to South America if they get even a hint that we’re onto them. We have to lie low for a couple of days and catch them with whale meat in packs, and even then, if the police and the government in Liberty don’t back us up, they could still get away with it.’

  Samuel’s face was grim and determined – the new undercover policeman dad; not the old dad whose face had brightened at the sight of dolphins and who’d invited Michael to think of the mysteries that whales might see at the bottom of the ocean.

  ‘But Freedom’s family will be killed if we wait!’ Michael stood up, fists clenched. His father didn’t seem to care that the whales would die.

  ‘I can’t risk Spargo and JJ getting away,’ Samuel said grimly. ‘I have to wait for back-up and catch them red-handed, or six years of undercover work goes for nothing.’

  Father and son stood glaring at each other.

  So-So put a hand on each of their shoulders. ‘Wait, wait, my star brothers,’ he said quietly. ‘These monsters have big friends – police, radio, newspaper, airport people so they can fly away. But there is one thing they don’t have: friends on the street, on the bay, on the water . . . ’ He gave a sly smile. ‘The ordinary poor man and woman, nobody bribe us, build us no road or headquarter, buy us no smart new uniform! Nobody bother to think of us. But we are very many, and we are everywhere, my brother and sister star. Nothing can happen unless we use the strength of our arm, the light of our eye. You know?’

  Samuel looked at him, his face still set and closed.

  ‘Samuel, my friend,’ So-So went on, ‘you must not break your son’s heart a second time. Trust me, trust your island, and these black-heart people will not escape you.’

  Samuel looked at his friend, at Michael, Mr Joseph and Eugenia. His face was set, firm – and then melted. ‘OK.’ He nodded. ‘OK. Let’s make a plan!’

  Michael thought his father’s smile was like the sun coming up over Morne Matin!

  23

  Carnival, the very thing that Spargo and JJ thought would help to cover their tracks so well, was busy doing just the reverse. That night, people were up late, making costumes, finishing floats, talking, drinking, eating, dancing, laughing, sharing, remembering, and just soaking up the atmosphere. It was as if the entire population were sharing a dream. And while they did, the news spread. Not through mobile phones or computers or faxes, not through orders or instructions – nothing written or printed. Just by word of mouth, from one person to the next, through a touch of the hand, a smile, a frown, a wink. Almost as fast as thinking, sure and true as a heartbeat.

  So that, by morning, everyone understood exactly what the new roads and schools and jobs that Spargo and his shadowy boss and the NME had ‘given’ them would cost. It was a very high price indeed, and they had very nearly been tricked into paying it. Quietly, without any fuss, people decided that being part of a chain of blood, wickedness and misery was not what they wanted. Was not a price they would pay. Not for anything.

  And some people looked at the big tank towering over the swanky new quayside and were sorry. And others looked around at the sea and the mountains, at the forest and the streams, and wondered why they’d ever wanted anything more anyway!

  All over the island, little things began to happen. First, very early, boats – mostly small, mostly old, mostly with outboards kept going through skill and patience rather than new parts – pulled away from little coves, and headed north on the dream-blue sea. All ready to go as far as they had to.

  Then, at telephone exchanges and mobile phone masts, essential wires became mysteriously unplugged, so that soon messages were only travelling in the good old-fashioned way: from mouth to ear. Calling from his whaling ship, the Ahab, as he headed north, Spargo couldn’t understand why JJ wasn’t answering her phone; why even the walkie-talkies crackled and spat but did not speak.

  Up at the airport, the shining silver jet, waiting on standb
y with Spargo’s favourite brand of whisky in its drinks cabinet and JJ’s favourite perfume in its bathroom, developed an engine fault that meant it was unable to take to the air.

  At the breakfast table in the Rathborne Hotel, the coffee that JJ poured was cold, and the toast was burned. When she demanded hot coffee and unburned toast, she was told, very politely, that there was no more. That she had used it all up.

  At the fish plant, a hundred women turned up for work two days early, with a big Carnival float. When the security guards tried to call for help, their phones didn’t work, and their guns had mysteriously disappeared, so they were completely helpless when the women loaded the whole safe containing all the new whale-meat packaging onto the float and trundled away down the quayside.

  When the Carnival parade finally began its outrageously noisy, joyous progress through the centre of town, JJ took her place on the balcony of the town hall, happy to be known as the head of New Marine Enterprises now that the Fontaines were all safely out of the picture. She smiled charmingly, still believing that everything was going according to plan. But when the NME float, with its free T-shirts and pens showing the NME logo in fluorescent yellow, was replaced by something she had most definitely not ordered, she began to realize that something was going horribly, terribly wrong.

  A huge sperm whale made of bamboo and paper filled the whole of the New Marine Enterprises float. Mr Joseph, sporting a white beard, stabbed the whale, and it bled red paper blood into buckets with dollar signs on the side; this was collected by friends of Eugenia’s dressed up as the fat mayor and the chief of police, with his curly moustache. Eugenia herself played the tall, skinny lady who owned the Rose Town Gazette and the radio station.

  The people on the balcony with JJ were first dismayed, then angry, then a little frightened, but the crowd below loved it. They cheered and whooped, but when a white sheet unfolded from the balconies of the Happy Flower Hotel and Bar, and a film was projected onto it from the Spice Lounge Café opposite, they fell silent. For the first time in the history of Carnival, the music stopped and everyone was still.

  It was a bit wobbly – it had been shot on Samuel’s mobile phone – but it showed Michael holding the medallions and the whale-meat packaging. He told the story of the medallions, and of how his own mother, Josephine Jaquard, and Spargo had tied him to a boat and holed her below the waterline.

  A microphone appeared in Eugenia’s hand.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she began. Her voice wobbled at first, but only for a minute. She told the crowd all about JJ and Spargo’s previous ‘businesses’, and about their plans for Rose Town as the whaling and smuggling capital of the world. About the whale and the whale boy, and the way he and everyone else on the island had been tricked and lied to.

  ‘We could get rich on this trade of blood,’ Eugenia shouted, ‘or we could turn away and say to the criminals, the murderers who run it just one word . . .’ She turned the microphone to the people, and they shouted that word: ‘NO!’

  JJ wasn’t there to hear it. She was making her way to the airport, not realizing that she would not be leaving on her private jet, but arriving in good time to meet some island police officers who had changed back into their rather unstylish old uniforms to arrest her.

  * * *

  Michael, Samuel and So-So left Cat’s Paw in Mr Dringo’s boat before first light. Samuel took the tiller, even though So-So joked that he had forgotten how to steer a boat. They had spare fuel, food and water, and were prepared for a long journey.

  None of them had slept, but they were beyond tiredness. They sat looking out on the grey dawn water, the scattered shapes of waking birds, and the line of the horizon materializing out of the dusk, So-So in the prow and Michael with his father in the stern.

  Samuel gave a long sigh. ‘I hope So-So’s right,’ he said, ‘or I’ll be putting you in danger again. We know that Spargo won’t think twice about sinking a boat.’

  ‘Will we catch up with them?’

  ‘I don’t know, son,’ he said. ‘If we’re on our own, I almost hope not. The Ahab is a big ship, and her crew will be armed and used to the worst kind of trouble.’

  ‘Look!’ So-So’s cry broke into their conversation; he stood in the bow, pointing. ‘See, Samuel, my brother, the good word always spreads fast!’

  All along the Rose Town waterfront, little boats were heading out towards them, pulling the silky sea behind them in pleats. One, faster than all the rest, scooted across the water and drew alongside them.

  ‘Samuel Fontaine!’ exclaimed the old guy at the tiller. ‘As I lives and breathes. Where you been, man?’

  Michael saw Samuel consider telling the man that he was Daniel Paul, on holiday from South London, but the thought passed, and he smiled his old smile.

  ‘Oh, you know – around!’ he said, shrugging. He looked at the young woman in the prow, holding a video camera on her lap. ‘I see your girl’s grown up!’

  ‘Hi, Mr Fontaine!’ said the young woman. ‘Remember me? Louise? I live in New York now. Work in TV. So-So promised me a good story!’

  Samuel and So-So exchanged a glance.

  ‘You know your course?’ So-So asked her father as he pulled away.

  ‘Line up Morne Pierre over Morne Liberty,’ the old man called.

  ‘. . . keep going and watch out for rocks!’ his daughter added.

  Later, as the sun grew hot, the flotilla of little boats rafted up, to share information, food and water. They were almost directly north of the island, and it was clear that their course lay out in the channel. The smallest and frailest craft would have to turn back at that point, but this still left fifty-two boats that would cope with rougher seas as long as the weather held fair.

  Louise filmed some of the fishermen talking. They were a little shy, but quite sure that they didn’t want a return to killing whales.

  ‘My grandpa told me all ’bout it,’ one old chap said. ‘Blood and guts and oil. Horrible. The world have moved on since those old days.’

  His son added, ‘Not many countries have whales. We should be proud that we stopped killing them so the whole world can come to Liberty and see them!’

  Louise’s dad insisted that she turn the camera on him. ‘We may not have skyscrapers and shiny cars,’ he said with a smile, ‘but we have a green island and a blue sea. What is better than that? We are rich already.’

  They set off again, more cautiously now. So-So and the riddle were right: the Lions were tiny islands; a mass of rocks too, hidden just below the surface. Around them the water sucked and eddied with unpredictable currents. The sun was sinking, and they were still navigating their way carefully through the maze, so busy keeping a lookout for obstacles that they nearly missed the big dark shape of Spargo’s ship on the horizon.

  ‘There they are!’ Michael yelled. ‘Quick! We’ve got to hurry!’

  But they weren’t yet out of the Lions’ mouth, and risked a holing, followed by a rapid sinking. The flotilla fanned out to find the best route through, but slow and steady was the only way.

  By the time they were clear of the rocks and islets and into the Byte itself – the stretch of deep water beyond the Lions – the light was almost gone, and Spargo’s monster ship had disappeared. Behind them, Morne Diabolo was obscured by the tall dark shoulders of Morne Pierre, as if this was the only mountain on the whole of Liberty. The flotilla drew together again and kept a straight course over the growing swells and the deep, deep water under their keels. Darkness flushed over the sky from the east, and as it seeped down into the western sky, a row of three stars showed, faint but clear, just a finger’s width above the horizon.

  They had found the place and the time: Peter hid Diabolo, and the Angels shone on the Lions’ Byte – the deep canyon of water that stretched under the stars for five miles in every direction.

  24

  The night grew still and calm. The long swells, which had previously rolled them up and down like carts on a fairground ride, died. The b
old little boats headed further and further out onto the starlit water, their sleepless, determined crews alert, scouring the darkness for a shape.

  Michael stood in the prow listening to the faint fizz of their bow wave as they moved forward. The sea was so calm that it felt as if they were standing still; only the dark mass of the island shrinking behind them gave them any indication of travelling.

  There was no sign of the Ahab, or of a whale. Michael began to wonder if they were all – little boats and the Ahab too – on a wild, hopeless search. He was almost asleep on his feet, so when the change came to the water around them, he thought at first that he was dreaming.

  Clouds of phosphorescent light began to billow and blossom under the surface. Michael knew it was no dream when the other crews began to call out to each other, exclaiming in wonder. One by one they stopped their engines and hove to, somehow knowing that this first gentle flushing of light was only the beginning of what the riddle of the medallion had foretold.

  The moving clouds became curtains, shimmering and waving under the water. Then the backdrop of pale light was shot through with intense lines of brightness that glowed for a second or two, then faded. More and more lines, from every angle and direction, shading in the sea with a cross-hatching of green light.

  Then, amongst these lines, wide paths appeared, glowed and faded – as if the artist of submarine light had put down the fine pen and taken up a broad, bold brush. The lines, both fine and wide, began to zigzag and bend, so that what had been a cross became a mass of wild, random scribblings.

  When the sea around the little boats was covered in gleaming threads and strokes, the whales came up. One after another, and another and another. Their black backs streamed with liquid light, and their spouts exploded into the darkness like fireworks as their breath carried the misted droplets of water and phosphorescence into the air. They rolled and bobbed in the water, showing tails and backs, flippers and flanks. In their jaws were huge squid, bright and glowing so that the whales’ eyes caught the light and shone like dots of starlight.