The hand holding the OTs-27 Berdysh handgun, which lay with such resolve on a small wooden table, was the steadiest hand ever.
Motionless.
The illumination in this small deckhouse settled dim, and someone turned the setting on the angled table lantern down until only a faint swathe of yellow fell on the scratched table, severing the arm off at the cuff.
Beyond the pool glow, I half perceived the dark outline of a figure leaning back against the wall, head tilted to one side, the white gleam of unwinking eyes under the peak of a hat.
My eyes went back to the hand. The angle of the Berdysh stayed the same.
I sensed something evil, unnatural, and wrong, and foreboding in the man's stillness and silence, and cold-blooded cat-and-mouse indifference.
I smiled, what I hoped was a friendly and encouraging smile, and ambled to the side.
The Berdysh is immovable as ever. I moved across the chamber; the barrel pointed at the spot where I stood milliseconds before.
I straightened, checked the windows, and pulled the curtains. Locked the door and switched on the overhead light.
By touching the corpse, I made out when rigor mortis set in, but not long enough to wear off.
I inspected his body. I pulled him upright, and once erect, he fell over to the left of the table, the right arm pivoting around and upwards, the Berdysh accusing finger pointing at heaven.
I moved away from the body and gazed at the interior door leading to the sleeping compartment. I slid my little fountain-pen torch from my breast pocket, turned off the light, did the same for the reading lamp, and lingered.
How long? I couldn't be sure. Perhaps two minutes, almost as long as five. Why did I wait? I told myself until my eyes became adjusted to the almost total dimness inside the confines.
I waited for some sound, the slightest imagined whisper of stealthy sound. Waiting for something, anything to happen -- or too terrified to go through the inward door.
Frightened for me?
Perhaps. Or I feared what I would find behind the door. Taking a deep breath, I wrapped my fingers round the knob of the inner door.
I took twenty seconds to open the door, the twelve inches necessary for me to squeeze through the gap. The last half-inch. The hinges creaked.
A tiny hum, but with my steel-taut nerves, a shotgun going off would sound muffled. I halted, petrified as any graven image. The dead man by my side, no more immobile than me. The thump of my heartbeat sped up, and I wished for quiet.
If someone stood anyone inside, waiting to dazzle and shoot me, knife me, he took his time. I treated my lungs to a little oxygen, stepped through the doorway. I held my flashlight at the full outstretch extent of my right arm.
If the ungodly intend to kill a person shining a source of light at them, they aim in the near vicinity of the genesis of light, as the unwary does in front of them.
I pushed forward the switch.
Someone rested still all right, but I didn't worry about his reactions. Face down on the bunk, huddled and shapeless. I made a brief traverse of the room with the pencil shaft. The dead man, the saviour on the cliff only a mere twenty-four hours earlier, and as in the blockhouse, no sign of a struggle.
I didn't manage to determine the cause of death. The amount of blood seeping from the small incision in his spine wouldn't fill a teaspoon. I didn't expect to find more; when the spinal cord becomes severed, the heart doesn't pump long enough to matter, leaving little more internal bleeding, but not much.
With nothing more for me here, so fixed, calm, and precise, I went outdoors, waving my hand at Clarissa in a motion, shouting something, which I expected she wouldn't comprehend.
Because of what I witnessed, I took several deep breaths before asking Clarissa to borrow her mobile phone and moved to one side. I dialled the number of the local constabulary. A voice answered. A young constable.
I told him my name, my location, and what I found.
The voice said something. Static in my ear.
"No, not regional. Two males murdered. I believe they might be the exact men who the Reverend spotted trespassing in the church tower the other week. Yes, of course."
With a blue milk crate discarded nearby, I sat down on the cold plastic while she made some coffee. Black with a drop of whisky to warm us both from the inside.
As the tide rose, slapping against the hull, the light fell. The authorities only needed to come from the village and would be here soon, a few minutes at most.
In the meantime, guarded over two dead men in this twilight world. The flat, bleak landscape around me shrouded in an indeterminable grey. All colours faded, impossible to judge where the breakers ended, and the solid ground began.
I wondered and who killed them.
A hit?
Random killing?
A cold, ghastly dread overwhelmed me, so I couldn't move or breathe. I thought about their puffy cheeks and blue lips, and the straight cut, where blood-serum started and congealed.
Clarissa returned with the coffee, and I left the platform and crossed the narrow girder. She presented me with a chipped mug, the aroma of the whisky, grabbing my attention.
"Find anything?"
I gave her phone back.
"Two dead men."
The features didn't change, but her face changed: her green eyes darkened, the muscles on her face tightened.
"The two Russian men?"
I nodded and again surveyed her expression. Her face paled.
She lifted a hand to cover her lips, but stopped halfway, standing for a moment in an action like a frozen salute, or as she repelled me from getting too close.
I stood still, not taking my eyes off her face.
"How did they die?"
"Assassinated. I recognized one of them. Bumped into him when I first arrived at Cape Ore. In fact, he stopped me from falling off the bluff in the fog when I first got off the bus."
Her hand went to her mouth. She shut her eyes, her long lashes flickering like butterfly wings.
"Called the law?"
Fear filled her voice.
"Yes. Be here any minute, but ahead of them getting here, take a peep for me, please."
"I never encountered them, I said earlier!"
"Won't do any harm to check!"
I held her by the forearm and steered her to the wood.
"Let me go first, but wait till I cross, otherwise we'll both fall in."
I walked across, arms akimbo, and at the other side turned to her.
Clarissa mounted the beam and started with erratic equilibrium, but before she got to me, she slipped and stumbled. Her foot shot out, and for a second, she wavered, hands flailing. She half fell, catching herself, so she flopped along the plank, legs dangling, cheek thrust into the slimy pine. She manoeuvred herself and shifted, gazing at me. Her eyes, black holes in her mud-streaked, sallow face. Her dungarees smeared with grey, and her shoes scummy.
"Here. A few more feet."
She put her thin, shivering hand into mine. I guided her closer, and she clambered to rejoin me.
"In here."
I pulled my sleeve over my hand, shoved the cabin door, and went in. Clarissa, her breathing coming in gasps. I squatted beside the two bodies.
"We mustn't touch them."
A noise behind me, like a door creaking open after decades of disuse, and a shadow fell over their empty faces. Clarissa bent over in the opening, one hand pressed into her stomach. Her mouth half opened, and an unusual, rusty groaning emanated from the back of her throat.
"Take a quick peek."
She jerked her face upward in a sharp jerk and stared.
"No."
She ran across the deck, vomiting. I took a last glimpse, laying so still in the obscurity. I held my breath.
I went out into the icy air to join Clarissa, who crouched by the side of the boat, holding on to its railings and staring out at sea. She shrank away as I approached her.
"Here."
I handed her a tissue. Her eyes bloodshot and the hair damp against her forehead.
"Seen them before?"
"No."
She closed her eyes.
"What happened?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Meet anyone else around in the last day?"
She shook her head, but with doubt.
I stood by the gangplank and raised my hands as the vehicles appeared, their headlights cutting into the gathering darkness.
"The police. Two cars."