Something Fishy Blovel

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But I soon had the answer.

“We get the hell out of here and go to the police.” I got up. “We can leave Yann out of things. We can say it must have been a poacher or someone who fired the shots at the boat. We can say we’d heard shots on other nights. But everything else we come clean about.”

Fi nodded agreement.

“Now, I’m going to try and break the door down. You carry on with the hole, please Fi. I’m going to beat the crap out of this cabin.”

Fi set to with the tubing. I began to systematically batter the door on the side with the lock. Christ, but it was tough. Every time I smashed the gas bottle into it, the effort made me feel faint and the shock was making my head want to explode.

“Let me have a few goes,” I heard Fi say gently behind me. I hadn’t realised but I’d been leaning against the wall with one hand over my face for quite a few minutes.

“Hmm? No, no it’s OK. I’m good.”

I steeled myself for the next onslaught. “ ... fourteen ... fifteen ... sixteen ...” I wanted to crawl away and die with the pain in my head and the tiredness. “ ... seventeen ... eighteen ...”

I took a brief pause and then slammed the bottle even harder against the door. “Nineteen.”

I’d do one more and then have a rest.

“Twenty!” I bellowed as I swung the bottle. This time when it made contact, the door flew open. There was a cry of pain and surprise from behind the door. Someone was there!

My momentum catapaulted me out of the doorway. The gas bottle went spinning one way, and I went another. But my judo training instinctively cut in and I rolled neatly, if a little painfully, out of this fall back onto my feet.

A man was struggling upright beyond the door, clutching his hands to his face. It was Aidan. Fi was standing in the doorway, a piece of tubing in each hand. I was aware of another figure to my right. I swung round. It was Tony. What the hell was he doing here? But he was staring at me, clearly wondering exactly the same thing.

I recovered first. Adrenalin surged round my whole body. I took a few running strides and retrieved my gas bottle. Then brandishing it as a weapon I backed towards the cabin.

“Get behind me Fi,” I ordered.

She slipped in between me and the cabin wall, still brandishing her gougers. Attagirl.

Aidan staggered round to stand next to Tony, his face covered in blood. From what I could see of it, his expression showed puzzlement as well as pain.

“So. You came to retrieve our bodies, did you? Frank told you to, I suppose?” I snarled.

“What?” Aidan and Tony looked at each blankly and then back at me. Aidan took a step forward.

“Keep the fuck away from me, you bastard,” I warned.

“What the hell are you doing here, Radley?” he spluttered. His nose was the source of all the blood. It was well and truly broken.

“Like you don’t know!” I growled.

“No. I don’t bloody know.” He was getting angry. Well, he’d been smashed in the face. Hardly surprising.

“Your fucking brother tried to drown me at Malval. Fi saved my butt. Then Julian and Penny came to supposedly rescue us but brought us here and left us to suffocate in this sodding little tomb of a cabin.”

“Oh Christ!” he groaned. “Frank’s at it again.”

“At what?” exclaimed Tony. He looked completely baffled.

“At murder,” I told him. “Frank had an angler called Clive killed, possibly with the help of Aidan here and Julian. They’ve got some carp smuggling scam going on. Yesterday it was meant to be my turn to meet my doom, and then Fi’s. Only it went wrong.”

“Holy shit! Aidan, is this true?” Tony turned to him. “Why would you want to kill Marcus?”

“Who’s Marcus?” Aidan was the confused one now. “And I never killed anyone.”

“I’m Marcus, not Radley,” I told him. “Long story.” I looked back to Tony. “So ... you didn’t tell Frank who I really was, then?”

“No I didn’t. I keep my word. Yeah, I know you think that’s not worth much, but to me it’s important. If I say I’ll do something, I do it. I never renege on a promise.”

I frowned at him. Did I believe him? Yeah. Yeah, I think I did.

“Yes, but why are you here now, then?” I need to know.

“I left my silk scarf here yesterday when Aidan was showing me round. I’m heading back home tonight and the good Mrs Frobisher won’t be pleased if I lose the bloody thing. She gave it to me for our silver wedding anniversary.”

I don’t know which was more surprising - Tony wearing a silk scarf or staying married for so long.

“Whoops!” said Fi, unwinding the bloodstained scarf from her badly cut arm. She’d found it in the cabin earlier. “Um, I didn’t realise what it was. I hope it’s not stained.”

She leant round the side of me and handed it to Tony, who took it gingerly. He walked over to the car and chucked it onto the back seat.

“I was just unlocking the door when you must have hit it with that gas thing,” Aidan concluded.

Was I meant to apologise?

“We didn’t know you guys were there,” I shrugged. “I’d been battering at it for ages.”

“Yes, we heard something and thought there was an animal stuck inside,” Tony added.

This was all very interesting, but I wanted to get me and Fi the hell out of this place before Julian and Penny came back to deal with our remains. I took control.

“OK. No more talking. We need to get to the gendarmes. Now. Will you take us or do I have to beat you to a pulp with my gas bottle in order to get your car keys?” I managed a weary, wry grin.

“No one’s going anywhere,” came an icy, female voice. Penny stepped out from behind the cabin. She was holding a gun. I recognised it as Julian’s Browning Buchmark.

“The Botox Bitch again,” I heard Fi groan behind me.

“Where the hell did you come from?” demanded Aidan in amazement, speaking for all of us.

“You were all so busy not believing each other, you didn’t hear us coming,” Penny smiled coldly.

“Us?”

I glanced up the path. Julian was driving slowly down it. For whatever reason Penny had come on ahead. Maybe because they’d caught sight of Aidan’s car parked by the cabin? She’d come to investigate.

“Aren’t you pleased to see me, Dad?” She addressed that remark to Aidan. All eyes swivelled to look at him.

“You’re her dad?” Fi was aghast.

“Step-dad. And ex-step-dad. I wasn’t married to her mother for long before I realised she was a mean, miserable bitch. Just like her daughter.”

“That’s not a very nice thing to say,” Penny pouted.

“Now grow up and give me the damn gun,” demanded Aidan. He moved towards her, hand outstretched. There was a loud bang and a cloud of leaves exploded into the air centimetres away from Aidan’s left foot.

“Holy fucking shit!” he yelled.

“Next time I’ll bloody well hit you,” hissed Penny.

Julian had parked and got out to join his gunslinging girlfriend by now.

“So, you betrayed me to Frank. And got us to do all this dirty work for you. You’re a lying, conniving, two-faced son of a bitch,” I yelled at him. “You’re a complete and utter fucking arsehole. And that’s just for starters.”

Julian wouldn’t meet my eye.

“Look at me, you piece of shit.”

But he wouldn’t.

“He’s pretty wet, I’m afraid Marcus,” shrugged Penny. “But he was useful for a while. Sadly, no longer. I’ve gone off him.”

And with that she turned and shot Julian in the chest at point-blank range. Fi screamed. The rest of froze in horror. Fi made to go to Julian but Penny pointed the gun at her so I dragged her back and shoved her behind me again. Penny was a psychopath, that much was obvious.

“Noble Marcus,” sneered Penny.

“Fi’s worth protecting. Unlike you,” I told her.

Julian writhed on the ground in agony, clutching at the huge hole in his chest. There didn’t seem to be anything we could do for him. Did she really intend to murder the lot of us? But no, hang on. The Browning’s clip held five bullets. Penny had used two. Only three left. And there were four of us.

“Penny, for God’s sake, stop this!” cried Aidan. “It’s all gone too far!”

“I’ll call an ambulance,” offered Tony, reaching for his phone.

“I’ll shoot you if you do,” warned Penny.

“You can’t win,” I told her. “You can’t kill all of us before you need to reload. Whoever of us is left will get you then.”

Penny did look slightly rattled at that. But she quickly recovered. “I don’t need to. I can blackmail step-daddy to stay quiet, so bye-bye the rest of you! Now, who first?”

At that moment Julian, lying just behind Penny, caught my eye. He had the look of a man who realises he’s been a complete and utter idiot. Somehow or other Penny had dragged him into all this mess. Julian was back on my side. So I took my chance.

“The hell you will!” I challenged.

“Marcus!” Fi gasped behind me.

Penny levelled the revolver at me.

“Here, catch!” I was still holding my bottle. I lobbed it, and as I did Julian, and God knows how, raised his legs and kicked Penny in the back of her knees. She stumbled forwards and the gas bottle hit her in the head and chest. She crumpled and the gun went flying. We all leapt into action. Tony launched himself onto Penny and pinned her down. He was my height and twice my weight so Penny wouldn’t be going anywhere fast. Fi and I went to Julian’s side. There was blood everywhere. I pulled my hoodie off and tried to staunch the flow from the huge wound. Fi dashed back to the cabin to get towels. Aidan was on the phone. That was pretty noble given that he was almost certainly going to end up in a truckload of trouble since he knew about Frank murdering Clive.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Julian gasped, gripping my arm.

I looked at the guy who had been involved in trying to kill me twice. Could you realistically forgive someone who’s done that? Maybe some people, much nobler than me, could. I couldn’t. But I could acknowledge his words.

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“Tell Lou I love her,” was his next request.

Christ, he was dying. I couldn’t let him die in an atmosphere of hatred, although God knows, I had nothing but contempt for him any more.

“Jesus, Jules!” I exclaimed, forcing a smile. “You’ve been an unbelievable dickhead, haven’t you? You ditch your amazing wife and then try to kill your friends. Talk about screwing up! Anyway, you can tell her yourself.”

“Won’t make it.”

“You bloody well will. You’re a stupid, stubborn git. You’ll last for donkeys’ years. And good work with decking Penny like that.”

We looked at each other in almost friendship again.

Fi was back with towels. I practically rammed one into the wound to stop the blood. Other than that I didn’t know what to do.

Fi laid the other towel over Julian. He’d begun to shiver violently.

“He’s going into shock,” she said. “We need to keep him warm.”

She went back for our clothes and laid them over him too.

“Hurry up ambulance,” she urged.

Julian was as white as a sheet and his breathing was shallow.

“Carla ...” he panted.

“Phone,” I said to Aidan. He’d finished his call to the ambulance and cops and was helping to sit on Penny now. He threw it across. Resting the phone on my knee, I tapped in Julian’s number with my left hand, keeping the pressure on Julian’s chest with my right.

“Bonjour?” came Carla’s voice.

“Carla, it’s Marcus. Look, I’m sorry. Your dad has had an accident. He’s very ill. Please talk to him.”

I held the phone to Jules’s ear. I could faintly hear Carla’s voice. Poor kid, what a phone call to receive. But she sounded calm. Julian managed a few words. And he smiled. Then he lost consciousness.

“Dad? Dad?” Carla was calling.

I took over.

“It’s Marcus. An ambulance is coming.” I couldn’t think what else to say.

“Leave me on the line, please,” she cried. “Tell me which hospital.”

“OK.”

I passed the phone to Fi. She began to chat to Carla.

Julian was still breathing. And despite what he’d done, I willed him to hang in there. One death due to this still partially unexplained affair was more than enough.

“So. Were you involved in killing Clive?” I asked Aidan.

“No. No. Frank did that all on his own.”

“But why?” Fi wanted to know.

“We had a scam going,” Aidan sighed. “We started out supplying small quantities of fish which we bought when owners netted their lakes to sort their stock out. We found a lot of old farmers had some damned good stock which we could get at knockdown prices. We made a lot of money out of it. But that’s when I met Penny’s mother, who quickly became very expensive, and Frank got into gambling in a big way. We needed more money. Julian had cottoned on to what we were up to and he approached us to get involved too. That’s when he hooked up with Penny, poor sod.”

“Poor sod is an understatement,” I observed grimly, looking at the near-death Jules.

“So we got more ambitious and extended our client base. We moved into selling lakes too. There’s huge demand for carp lakes in France. So we worked on making them available the cheap way by planting instantly recognisable fish in them. We knew when they were pulled out and photographed it would cause a lot of trouble. There’d been a few cases over the last few years. We encouraged certain people to sling allegations around and bingo, we had pissed-off lake owners who couldn’t wait to sell up and get the hell out of the damned business.”

“Just like Malval’s previous owner,” I remarked. “Des someone.”

“Brown. Des Brown. Yes.” Aidan sighed. “It was a shitty thing to do, I realise that now. I was a fool.”

“I’d say,” snorted Fi.

“Anyway, a few months after Des sold his lake - to us - we cleared the stock, and then started to try and sell the lake on. And that’s when Des’s son came sniffing around. He ...”

“What?” I interrupted. “Clive was Des’s son?”

“Step-son. Des married his mum a couple of years ago.”

So that was how the pieces fit together. I shook my head.

“Clive had done some detective work and didn’t trust what we were up to. He booked himself into our lakes under a false name - like you did, Marcus - and poked about. We got nervous. Frank said he’d go and put the frighteners on him and scare him off, only he got carried away. I got a call from him asking me to come and help me get rid of Clive’s body.”

“Holy shit,” muttered Tony.

“There’d been a fight. Frank ended up bashing him on the head with a rock. We panicked, but Julian suggested we make it look like an accident by dumping him in a stretch of river he knew about close by that had a very rocky bottom. We seemed to get away with it.”

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing.” Fi stared at Aidan incredulously.

“That was it with Frank, though. I couldn’t look at him any more. We went our separate ways. Julian stuck with me. He was disgusted too.”

“You should have gone to the gendarmes,” Fi pointed out.

“I couldn’t hand my own brother over to the law, even though I hated him now. I mean, could you?” He looked directly at me. “You said you were close to your brother. Frank and I were inseparable since childhood. Could you denounce your brother, even if he did something so bad? Could you?”

I shook my head. “No,” I replied honestly.

“Neither could I.”

“But why the hell did you put your common into Julian’s lake, when you two were allies? What was the point of that? Did you hope to drive Julian out of business so he’d move on and not be a threat? I mean, because of what he knew?” I grilled him.

“My what?” Aidan was surprised now.

“Your common. It was in Julian’s lake. Fi caught it three weeks ago during our fishing holiday there. Jules went ballistic when he saw it! We came back over this week to put it back.”

“I knew he’d gone!” exclaimed Aidan. “He’d never broken his habits before.”

“That motor you heard wasn’t my vibrator,” Fi confessed. “It was the air pump in the tank the fish was in.”

Aidan laughed, despite the circumstances. “Thank God for that.”

“So - who did put the fish into Julian’s lake?” wondered Fi.

“Me, you dimwits.” Penny entered the conversation suddenly.

“You wanted to devalue your partner’s lake?” That didn’t make any sense at all.

“Yes, so that bitch Louise didn’t get as much money in the settlement. She kept badmouthing me to Julian, the witch. I mean she was right, I began an affair with Frank pretty much as soon as I hooked up with J, but that’s what I do.”

“We’re supposed to be impressed?” snorted Fi.

“You’ve been sleeping with Frank?” Aidan sounded disgusted. “What’s wrong with you?”

Penny ignored her ex-step-dad. “But Julian, the idiot, thought it meant Aidan and Frank were back on good terms again and were ganging up on him, trying to drive him out of business. God, he was so pissed off about that! It was so funny! I let him carry on believing that.”

What on earth had possessed Jules to get involved with this nasty, twisted piece of work? Thank God I hadn’t succumbed to temptation.

Well, that seemed to tie up the various loose ends that had been flapping around. Jesus, what a sad, sordid tale of greed and murder. We all sat quietly with our thoughts. All except Aidan. He walked over to his car. I imagined he might be going to get some cigarettes or something, but instead, flashing something of a triumphant grin at us, he jumped in, started the engine and floored it up the track, swamping us in a huge cloud of dust. There wasn’t a damned thing any of us could do about it since we all preoccupied with restraining and trying to save villains.

“Bloody hell!” exploded Tony. “He’s gone off with my scarf. The missus will get to kill me after all!”

“He’s making things worse for himself by running away, isn’t he?” asked Fi.

“Only if he gets caught,” I replied.

Blast it. With him gone, our version of events leading up to me being attacked would all be hearsay. The gendarmes would take us a lot less seriously I imagined. But there wasn’t anything I could do about anything so I concentrated on looking after Julian. The bleeding seemed to be slowing down but he’d lost a hell of a lot of blood.

Then at last we heard engines. An ambulance hurtled down the driveway, stirring up another tornado of dust, closely followed by two police cars. I handed Julian over to the paramedics who had him on drips within seconds it seemed, and then I sat down on the ground, letting it all go on around me. I was totally and utterly drained. Fi did all the talking while Penny mainly screamed and swore. Then Penny was handcuffed and shoved in one car and driven off. The ambulance left next. Fi spoke to Carla on Tony’s phone and said we’d meet her at the hospital later on. And then the remaining gendarmes turned their attention to us.

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For a moment I almost agreed with her. My head was so fuzzy and I felt so weak, it was tempting to give in to despair. But then reality took a grip.

“No, we’re not, Fi,” I said firmly. “We can make some holes in this thing.”

I bashed the cabin wall. It sounded disconcertingly solid.

“What’s it made from?” Fi was pulling herself together too.

“Aidan said he used refrigeration panels. So, some sort of metal coating on each side with a fairly dense foam in between, I imagine. Nothing we can’t handle.” I attempted to give her an optimistic smile. It came out more of a grimace.

“OK. What do we need?”

“Sharp things. Any knives in the cupboard?”

“I didn’t see any earlier,” replied Fi. “I’ll check though.”

While she looked, I did a mental calculation. This cabin was what? Four metres by two, and say, three high? That was near enough. Paul had once been shut in a cupboard by some gay bashers at secondary school, and he’d been convinced he’d nearly suffocated in there. Dad had told him how to calculate how long you’d last. That meant working out how soon the concentration of carbon dioxide would get to around 3%, roughly the highest safe limit. A few numbers floated around in my head. I remembered that Dad had said a stressed person produces 1.7 cubic feet of carbon dioxide an hour, so ... I frowned hard, trying to convert metres to feet and do some long division in my aching head. It came out somewhere near ten hours for one person, so five hours for the pair of us. Minus a bit since we’d had the gas heater on.

“How long have we been here Fi?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant about it.

Neither of us had watches. We relied on our phones, which we didn’t have. Mine had been drowned with me, and Fi’s had presumably been in her bag, which Julian still had.

“Hmm. I’d say about three hours. Is that good or bad?” She knew why I was asking.

“Good,” I said firmly. “But the sooner we get some air coming in, the better.”

“No knives, I’m afraid. There’s only plastic cutlery. But there is a corkscrew!” She brandished it triumphantly. “And, whoops.” She purposely dropped a mug on the concrete floor. “Some broken crockery too with nice pointy ends.” She picked up some bits.

“Clever girl!” She came over for a hug. “Now, the seal round the door should be a weak point,” I told her. “How about you try and gouge holes through it, and I’ll attack the walls. Your best bet would be at the bottom of the door.”

“Cool.” Fi lay down and began prodding at the black foamy seal with an implement in each hand. Then she looked up. “Oh, what are you going to use? Do you want the corkscrew?”

“I’ll make my own tools,” I winked. “But I’ll try this first. Not sure it’ll work, but we’ll see.”

I stumbled over to the gas heater, heaved the gas bottle out and disconnected it. Although empty, it was still a weighty object. I rolled it over to the far wall, lifted it up and whacked it against the panel with all my strength. It made a mighty clang and a bit of a dent, and also dragged me over with it as it bounced off. I smacked down hard on the floor and saw stars for a second.

Fi was next to me within seconds. “Jesus, Marcus! Be careful, baby.” She helped me sit up. Now my head really hurt.

“Damn,” I muttered crossly, cursing my current physical weakness.

“Think you should go with Plan B,” Fi advised.

“In a minute. I’ll try a couple more whacks first. I’ll be ready for the ricochet this time. Look, I’ll give the door a few clouts too. Maybe the lock’s not that strong.”

“If you’re sure.” Fi was unconvinced.

I got up slowly and rearmed. I crashed the bottle repeatedly into the door, but the lock held firmly. Damn, but this cabin had been well made. I battered the wall a few more times too, but all I produced were more dents and no real, helpful damage. And I felt totally exhausted but somehow I kept going.

Fi was right. On to Plan B. I dumped the gas bottle and turned the bedchair over. It was a pretty decent make, but even so it didn’t take me that long to rip the metal frame off the canvas. I got the gas bottle again and smashed it down hard on the lightweight alloy tubing. This squashed it down so I had several nice, sharp bends in the tubing now. Some firm working backwards and forwards in a couple of places and the tubing sheared through, leaving me a 50 cm length or so with two satisfyingly jagged ends. I manufactured a couple more and gave one to Fi.

“We’re in business,” I told her.

She paused from her gouging to give me a thumbs-up. Then she picked up her new tool and returned to work with that. I took a few swigs of my cold coffee for a caffeine boost and set to. I dug one corner of the sharpest edge of the tube into the metal panel facing and began to twist it, pushing as hard as I could. It took a few moments, but soon I broke through into the foam layer. Slowly, slowly I enlarged the hole in the metal coating and dug deeper and deeper into the insulation. I kept catching my hands on the jagged edges of the hole I was creating and there was blood everywhere, but I took no notice. There wasn’t time. It was noticeably stuffy in the cabin now. Fi was aware of that too. She turned the lamp down to its lowest setting. I nodded approval but didn’t have the energy to talk.

We worked on and on. It was taking longer than I’d anticipated, but we were making progress. I just hoped we’d make enough before we passed out. Then Fi gave a shout.

“Hey! I can see moonlight. I’ve got through! And I can feel cold air coming in.”

“Way to go, sweetheart,” I panted. I’d reached the outside metal coating of the panel. A good few grunts and some concentrated probing, and yes. I was through too. I rested my head against the wall and allowed myself a couple of minutes’ recovery time before I worked at enlarging it. Soon I had a five-centimetre wide ventilation shaft. Fi, meanwhile, had been working her way along the length of the door seal. She had a shallow but sizeable opening there.

I started on a second hole. I angled this one downwards. Fi sat back to take a break and watched me.

“Is it more effective when it’s sloping down like that?” she asked, interested.

“No,” I confessed. “This one will double as, um, the toilet. I really need to pee,” I told her.

“Good thinking,” she nodded. “’Cos now you mention it ... “ She fidgeted uncomfortably. Well, it had been a long time since either of us had been to the loo. “I’m guessing I’ll have to use my noodle pot as an intermediary.” Practical as ever. But she had limits. “You’ll have to close your eyes and cover your ears when the time comes,” she warned me.

“OK,” I acknowledged.

We laboured on until the infrastructure was in place for a comfort break. Then we had more coffee. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall and my arm round Fi.

“OK. We have air,” Fi summarised. “We have half a container of water, and two Pot Noodles. How long will we last on that cos I’m really thinking Julian isn’t coming back?”

“Long enough to make a hole big enough to get out of,” I told her firmly.

We were both quiet for a while. I was thinking how we’d been left here to suffocate. Julian hadn’t reckoned on the gas supply running out. If it hadn’t, well, we’d almost certainly have been dead by now. We’d have been happy to snooze on in the warmth and increasing toxicity until it killed us.

“Why did Julian try to kill us?” Fi suddenly burst out. She’d obviously been thinking along exactly the same lines as I had.

“He has to be in with the Hodgkiss brothers,” I shrugged. It didn’t make any sense, though, and I was too tired and hungover to try and fit the pieces of the puzzle together. But that’s what it had to be.

“Marcus. What happens if he does come back, expecting us to be, you know, dead?” was her next question. “Perhaps they’ll all come back.”

That wasn’t such a good thought. I was hardly up to taking on one man, let alone three. And four, if Penny tagged along too. Five if Tony suddenly appeared out of the woodwork. There was still the possibility he’d betrayed me to Frank.

“We’re not out of the woods yet, are we?” she smiled sadly at me. “Why does everyone want us dead?” Then she crumpled. The collapse I’d seen coming all night arrived. She was clinging to me, sobbing her heart out. All I could do was hold her and tell her I loved her.

Suddenly she threw her head up. “Marcus, I thought you were dead at the lake. When I got to you under the water, I was sure you’d drowned. God, I was useless, useless! I saw them throw you in and I froze. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think at first. You could have died. I could have let you die!”

She was hysterical.

“No, Fi, no. You saved me. You were brilliant.”

“Only after I thought about what you would have done in my place. Then I remembered the piping and Daphne and ... and ...”

She was in pieces again. She was doing the drowning now, in her distress and her crazy self-recriminations.

“Sweetheart, sweetheart.” I hugged her and soothed her, hoping her misery would pass soon. “Shh.”

Her grief tortured me, but, bloody hell, it turned me on too. Her body repeatedly convulsing against mine was getting me all stirred up. I felt like shit but I was ready for sex. I pulled her closer to me. Fi climbed onto my lap, straddling my legs, and I pressed my erection against her. Next thing her lips were on mine. I had her head between my hands as I kissed her frantically. We were alive. God, we were still alive when we were both meant to be dead. We had to celebrate that.

“I want you, Fi,” I gasped, surfacing for a moment.

I pushed myself away from the wall, and lay flat on the floor. Fi, still crying, was pulling my trousers down. She half rolled off to undress and then she was back across me.

“Ride me, baby,” I begged her.

And with her face still wet with her tears, she slid onto me. I clamped my hands on her swaying breasts, and from somewhere dredged enough energy to bring us both to a sweating, shuddering, groaning climax. It was so intense it was almost unbearable. This wasn’t just about our love for each other. This was about life and living. About seizing the day.

We both cried afterwards as we lay in a tangle of limbs and clothes on the chilly concrete floor. The horror of what I’d been through in the lake was only now beginning to dawn on me. Being trapped in the cabin seemed as nothing compared to that, but it was still a serious situation. As Fi had said, we weren’t safe yet.

I looked at Fi. She was watching me through her tears. She gave a little smile and wiped my eyes with her finger.

“Come on,” she said, sitting up and getting dressed. “We’ve got an escape tunnel to make.”

“Slavedriver,” I teased. But she was right. I was very keen on getting out of here before anyone unfriendly arrived.

We worked together on the first hole I’d made, enlarging it gouge by gouge. Our hands were covered in blisters and cuts, but we kept going.

“It’s getting light, look,” Fi remarked, eventually. Sure enough, there was daylight out there now. The sun was rising, so it must be about eight o’clock. I had a horrid feeling we might be getting company soon.

“Breakfast,” I announced. We’d need our energy and wits about us.

“Good call,” yawned Fi. “I suggest coffee and a shared Tomato and Beef Pot Noodle. Or would Chicken and Mushroom be more breakfasty?”

“It would,” I confirmed. I was actually looking forward to it. I was hungry and, I realised, feeling slightly more with it. My head was still pounding, but I’d kind of got used to that since it had been going on for so long. But I could describe myself as human again.

Things were looking up, ever so, ever so slightly.

But an hour later I was disheartened again. It was becoming obvious that it was going to take another five or six hours to make a hole big enough for even the slender Fi to slip through. It would be even more work to enlarge it to accommodate my big frame. The problem was dealing with the metal. We had nothing to cut it off with so we were having to squash it down as best we could as we went along. We were both cut to ribbons. My energy levels fluctuated wildly. One moment I felt almost OK and could carry on for ever, the next I was a wreck again, hardly able to struggle on for another minute.

“Coffee,” decided Fi. “And ten minutes of rest.”

I nodded. It must be heading for nine o’clock I reckoned. We’d been trapped in here around ten hours. Even by the most conservative estimate, we should have been well and truly dead by now. But Julian was playing safe and leaving plenty of extra time to make sure.

I slumped down against the wall. There was nothing left to sit on. I’d disassembled both bed chairs and the stools for replacement tubing gougers. They weren’t lasting very long, getting bent or blunted more rapidly than I was happy with. We could be running into trouble soon, but I preferred not to think about that for the time being.

Fi placed a mug of coffee next to me. I smiled and stroked her arm.

“Hey!” she cried. “I’ve got something for you.”

I winked at her. “I like what you’ve got,” I smirked feebly.

“Nah-ah. No time for any more of that,” she smiled. I pulled a sad face. She laughed and ruffled my hair. “I found this thing at Malval, when I was scooting off to get Yann.” She began searching through the pockets of her wet jeans on the floor. “You never said you’d lost your identity bracelet. Is it new? I don’t remember seeing you with it before.”

She turned and saw me looking puzzled. “Isn’t it yours?”

I shook my head. “No, I’ve never been a silver jewellery guy,” I shrugged. It was true. I had a small collection of gold earrings, a gold chain, a gold ring and a shark’s tooth surfer necklace that Paul had given me and a couple of woven leather thong friendship bracelets.

“Some other angler must have dropped it then,” concluded Fi.

“What does say on it?” I enquired.

“Here we are.” She found it at last in her pocket. She squinted at it. “It says: Classy Fishing Expert. That’s why I thought it must be yours. I thought perhaps the lads had given it to you sometime.”

“What? Andy and Derek?” I chuckled, despite everything. “They’d have put Crappy Fishing Eejit, or something like that.”

A thought crossed my mind. Why words starting with C, F and E? That combination of initials sounded familiar. Why? I forced myself to think. Then I groaned. Clive Ellis’s Twitter name had been @ClassyFishingExpert to match his initials. CFE.

“That was Clive’s,” I told Fi. “So he was at Malval before he died. Possibly when he died.”

“Oh God.” She looked up at me, clearly upset. She fingered the bracelet. Then she exclaimed “Ow!” and frowned. “Drat, I’ve cut myself on it. Look. One of the links has been torn open.”

She came over to me with the bracelet so I could inspect it. Sure enough, one of the thick, chunky silver links had been wrenched apart, leaving a sharp edge.

“Now that didn’t happen accidentally,” I observed. “There must have been a fight.”

“Oh God.” Fi went pale.

“It’s looking more and more certain that Frank killed Clive at his lake for the same reason he tried to kill me. We knew too much. At least now we can make that connection and definitely place Clive at Malval, as well as give him a motive for being there. He must have been dumped at that river by Frank. And maybe Aidan.”

“Julian too?” wondered Fi.

“Who knows?” I shrugged.

“What do we do now?” asked Fi.

It was a good question.

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We drove in silence for a while. Fi looked out of the window.

“Julian, where are we going? We have to get Marcus to hospital. God knows what he was drugged with.”

“We’re going home,” said Julian firmly.

“No, we’re bloody not,” snapped Fi. “Hospital. Now!”

“We can’t,” exploded Julian. “We’d have to explain what happened, and the police would get involved. Your friend with the gun would get dragged in, and so would all of us.”

“We don’t need to mention Yannick,” Fi told him sharply.

“Yes we do, because we’d have to tell the cops where it all happened, and they’d go and check it out and find the boat riddled with bullets. And us smuggling carp wouldn’t go down well.”

“We can say we were at a rave and Marcus took something,” suggested Fi.

“Marcus is soaking wet. He’s covered in silt and has got pondlife in his ears, I expect. They wouldn’t buy it. I’ve got a back-up plan.”

“Hospital,” Fi insisted.

“Home,” Julian countered.

“Actually, you’re both wrong,” piped up Penny. “We can’t go to the house, Jules. Your goody two shoes of a daughter will insist on calling the police. Why the hell she had to turn up today, I don’t know.”

“Good for Carla. We have to tell the police,” cried Fi.

“No we don’t. And hospital is out for all the same reasons,” summarised Penny.

“The hell it is,” fumed Fi.

I didn’t have the strength to get involved in the argument but I gave her hand a squeeze to thank her for standing up for me.

“So where do we go then?” asked Julian.

“The lodge at Bellevue. Aid’s away, and I’ve got a key.”

“Bellevue?” Fi was incredulous. “But it was Aidan’s brother who’s just tried to kill Marcus! We can’t go there.”

“Aidan had nothing to do with that.” She sounded very definite about that. “He and Frank don’t have anything to do with each other anymore.”

“We are NOT going there,” Fi yelled. “Julian, take us to a hotel or something. Now!”

My stomach lurched again.

“Gonna hurl!” I warned them.

Julian screeched to a halt and I managed to open the car door before I threw up dramatically again. Most of it went outside the car.

“OK, we’re going to Aidan’s,” decided Julian. “There aren’t any hotels for miles, Fiona, and Marcus is no fit state to wheel past a receptionist without causing a commotion, is he?”

If I looked as awful as I felt, then no, I wasn’t.

“How come you’ve got a key?” Fi asked suspiciously.

“Long story,” Penny snapped back.

“I’d love to hear it,” retorted Fi.

“Some other time, Barbie.”

Not a good move on Penny’s part.

“What do you mean by calling me that?” she demanded icily.

I hoped to hell I’d never hear Fi talk to me in that tone of voice. It clearly meant serious trouble.

Penny turned round in her seat to sneer. “Well, you’re a bit plastic, aren’t you pet? Plastic brain and plastic boobs. Or rather, silicony.” She looked pointedly at Fi’s chest which her wet clothes were clinging to tightly.

“Fuck you, bitch!” exclaimed Fi. She was furious. I’d never seen her so mad, but then this evening had been kind of stressful. “These are all my own work! I’m 100% natural, all over, unlike some round here.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s obvious you’ve had your lips done. They look ridiculous. And you’re all botoxed up. The top half of your face doesn’t move!”

“Well, my arms do. I’ll fucking slap you if you don’t shut up, you tart,” hissed Penny.

“And I’m a damn sight smarter than you, you cow,” Fi fumed. “I seem to be the only one who wants to do the best thing for Marcus.”

“He’s not the only one involved in all this,” Penny shot back.

“Girls, girls!” interrupted Julian sharply. “For Christ’s sake, Penny, get a grip and shut the fuck up.”

That was an odd way for an uncle to talk to his niece, wasn’t it? Fi noticed that too.

“You’re not related,” she announced triumphantly. “The pair of you are screwing. Jesus, Julian. Haven’t you got any taste in women?”

She might have put it in a more dignified way, but she was right. Bloody hell. Penny had wanted to screw me too a week ago, when her lover was asleep. I didn’t see a long-term future for that relationship.

“Shut it, Fi,” ordered Julian angrily.

“Watch it, Julian,” I managed to snarl, summoning up the energy to join the fray at last.

A strained silence fell. You could have cut the atmosphere in the car with a knife. We drove along for a few minutes, everyone quietly seething.

“So where are we going?” I croaked a few minutes later. I was feeling really sick again. “I can’t handle much more travelling.”

“Don’t you dare throw up in here again,” Penny instructed. “Car stinks, thanks to you.”

“Thanks to him?” screeched Fi. “Thanks to the murdering bastards who drugged him and tried to kill him, you mean, you stupid shit.”

“Now just you ...” Penny began.

“Stop the car. Stop the damned car, Julian. You bloody let us out here. I’ll look after Marcus from now on,” blazed Fi.

“Can’t do that, sorry Fi.” Julian activated the child lock. We heard a clunk in the doors. Fi started to shake and thump the one next to her.

“What the hell’s going on, Jules?” I asked.

“Nothing. Nothing’s going on,” he soothed. “Some of us are getting a bit worked up, that’s all. Now, we don’t need any more pointless arguments, ladies, and we certainly don’t want Fi jumping out of the car. OK?” Fi muttered angrily under her breath. You could feel the hate radiating off Penny, but she stayed quiet.

Julian smiled wanly. “That’s better. We’ll be at Aidan’s lodge in ten minutes. Marcus, can you hang on that long?”

“I’ll try.”

“Good. We’ll make you comfy there, and then I’ll call a friend of mine who was a doctor in the UK before he retired and came here. I’ll ring him when we get there. We can trust him to keep our secret.”

“Well, I bloody well hope so. And if he says Marcus has to go to hospital, then you sodding well take him, OK?” Fi demanded furiously.

“Yes, Fi. If he says so, I will.”

“Think I’ll be OK,” I managed to croak. “Paracetamol will sort me.” I tried to smile.

“You need more than paracetamol, you nitwit,” Fi chided me, softening.

She leant close to me. I felt her shivering. I was cold too. We needed to get out of our wet things and try and make sense of everything that had happened tonight. Oh God, this whole thing was a nightmare. I groaned.

“Hold on, Marcus,” Julian cried, thinking I was about to chuck again. “We’re there now, see?”

We turned off the road and bumped down the drive.

“I still don’t understand why we’ve come here,” Fi whispered to me.

I shrugged. To be honest, I didn’t care where we were, so long as we weren’t moving and so long as I could stretch out somewhere and sleep. I was exhausted and my head was threatening to explode. I wanted to be still and quiet.

We pulled in outside the cabin. Penny hurried out and unlocked the door. She opened it. Fi and Julian helped me inside, heaving the block and chain in behind me. It was as claustrophobic as I remembered it when we’d stuck our heads inside with Aidan on Sunday and told him we wouldn’t be using it. But this time I didn’t care about that. I could stand there being no windows now. There was light, a gas heater, a couple of bed chairs leaning up against the wall and two camping stools, a sink and a hot plate. It would do as a temporary refuge until I recovered. I crumpled onto a stool while Julian opened out a bed chair for me. Fi supported me and stroked my hair.

“We need our stuff,” Fi told Julian. “Marcus and I have to get changed.”

“No problem. I’ll get it.” He disappeared outside. Penny hadn’t come in. Presumably she’d stomped back to the car.

“I need to lay down, Fi.” My head was swimming.

“Two seconds, honey. You’re soaking. We need to dry you off first.”

“OK,” I agreed, but I really couldn’t have cared less about being wet.

Julian bustled back in, his arms full of an assortment of clothes and towels.

“What on earth did you unpack those things for?” Fi cried in surprise. “We need all our gear. Julian, get our bags please.”

“OK,” he shrugged. “Two ticks. I’ll just put the gas heater on for you. Soon be nice and cosy.” He dropped his burden on the floor and fiddled with the heater. It woomphed into life.

Julian stepped quickly outside.

“Weird bugger,” frowned Fi, picking up our clothes from the floor.

But weirder buggerdom was to come. Julian turned and slammed the heavy door shut on us. We heard the key scrape in the lock.

“What the ...?” Dopey as I was, I looked at Fi in alarm.

She jumped up and began hammering on the door.

“Julian! Julian!” she bellowed. “Open the goddamn door. What the hell are you playing at?”

The cabin was a heavily insulated refrigeration unit. It was unlikely Julian could hear us, but even if he could, something told me he wasn’t going to unlock the door. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but it wasn’t good.

Fi carried on her battering. “Let us out. How dare you lock us in? We’re not your bloody prisoners!”

“Fi.” She was wasting her time. “Fi, baby. It’s OK.”

It wasn’t, but I had to say something. She turned towards me, tears streaming down her face.

“Marcus, I don’t understand? What’s going on?”

“Come here.” I just about managed to stand up.

She was in my arms in seconds. We clung to each other desperately for a few minutes.

“I’m sure he’ll come back. He said he’d get that doctor, remember?” I said finally.

Fi wiped her tears. She nodded and tried to smile. “Yes. Yes, he did. You’re right. But why he had to freak me out by locking us in, I don’t know.”

Most likely because he thought Fi would go off and call the police or an ambulance. All the same, it was rather a drastic move.

“OK, OK.” Fi shook herself into action. “Clothes. You undress and I’ll find you some dry stuff.”

Half slumped against the wall, I began to remove my hoodie and tee-shirt. They got stuck over my head and I almost started panicking in my muddled state so Fi helped me ease them completely off. She rubbed me down quickly with a towel.

“You should really have a shower, but looks like that’s a no-no for now,” she tutted. Then she dragged a sweatshirt over my head and forced me into my padded roomy checked shirt. “OK, fun part now.” She half-grinned up at me. She’d been severely rattled by the evening. I steadied myself as she undid my jeans and pulled them and my boxers down. I stepped out of them clumsily while she towelled me down. She pulled my socks off.

“Oh my God, Marcus. Your ankles!”

I looked down at them. Shit, they were a mess, all bruised and swollen. There were some raw patches too. But there wasn’t much we could do about them for the moment. Fi helped me into my jogging trousers. I collapsed gratefully back onto the stool while she rammed socks onto my feet.

“There. That’s better.” She opened out one of the bed chairs and dragged it over next to my stool. “Come on, park your bones there, baby.”

I wriggled onto it and lay down. It didn’t feel as good as I’d hoped it would, though. My head was spinning and my chest was feeling tight again.

“Better?” asked Fi, anxiously, quickly undressing and pulling some dry things on.

I nodded. “Much,” I fibbed. There was nothing she could do to help me, so it was pointless worrying her with the truth about how I felt.

“Omigod, you never got any paracetamols. There were some in my toiletries bag.” She began rifling through the pile of our belongings on the floor. “Oh for heaven’s sake! I don’t know what possessed him to just bring clothes in. He had no bloody right. He should have brought our bags as they were.” Her voice was getting higher and higher. My poor girl was about to lose it, and she’d been so strong tonight. I had to get in quick.

“Fi, angel. Don’t worry. It might not be a good idea for me to have any more drugs right now anyway. I could murder a coffee though. Is there anything in the cupboard there?” The thought of coffee actually turned my stomach but it would keep Fi busy.

“Of course. Oh, why didn’t I think of that?” She had a quick rummage. “Aha! Yes, everything we need. And there are even some Pot Noodles. Do you fancy chicken and mushroom, original curry or beef and tomato?” She triumphantly brandished the three pots.

“I think I’ll pass on those, thanks. Just coffee please.”

“Okeydoke. There’s even creamer and sugar so we can spoil ourselves.”

Fi fired up the gas ring and put the full kettle on it. She came over and sat next to me.

“I know I keep asking, Marcus, but how do you really feel? I’m worried.”

Would ‘like shit’ be acceptable? Probably not. Fi wanted specifics.

“Weak. Woozy. Sick. Chest sort of tight. Head hurts. Crappy.”

She stroked my hair again.

“Next dumb question. Any idea what they gave you?” she enquired.

I frowned. Was there anything I could usefully tell her? That coffee had tasted weird.

“It was in a drink. Sort of salty,” I managed.

Fi pulled a face. “I’d make a guess they slipped you a roofie. Someone did that to my friend Tiff, only luckily I turned up at the pub in time and got her home before she was date raped. She said looking back the drink had been a bit salty, but she didn’t think anything of it at the time. It took her a good 48 hours to get it out of her system, I’m afraid. But she couldn’t really remember anything that happened. You seem quite with it.”

“I guess,” I agreed. “Everything feels remote, though. I know what I’m saying and doing, but I’m not sure I have any control over it. Sort of like it isn’t really me. But that could just be the whiskey.”

I smiled wanly.

“Poor baby,” sighed Fi. “Maybe they didn’t give you very much.”

She stood up to turn the boiling kettle off. “Oh God, Marcus. This is all horrible. I don’t understand what’s going on at all.”

I didn’t either, not totally. All I knew was that Frank had tried to have me drowned and that Julian had gone strange. Neither were comforting realisations.

Fi made herself the curry noodles and then came over with a mug of strong, sweet coffee for me. I managed a couple of sips.

“Any better?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Liar!” she grinned, and ruffled my hair.

I closed my eyes and listened to her moving around and eating her snack. I felt her lay something over me. Then she began pacing around. I sensed her stop close to me.

“Marcus? Honey, I’m sorry, but can you talk to me for a second. I’m going crazy trying to sort out what’s happening.”

I forced an eye open. “Of course, Fi.”

“Right. Frank has tried to kill you. Why? Because we know about his fish smuggling scam. But how does he know we know?”

“Aidan told him,” I suggested. “He worked out we had a fish tank in the car and not a jet-powered vibrator!”

“Maybe,” agreed Fi. “But Aidan and Frank have fallen out. Supposedly. Most likely Tony told him who you were and he worked out you were here to check up on him and didn’t like that idea.”

I nodded, but wished I hadn’t as my head began to throb. I winced with the pain. Fi began to massage my temples. Gradually the pain eased a little.

“Now, how does Julian fit in to all this? I mean, he came to rescue us but now he’s locked us up.”

“He’s panicking? He’s scared Frank will be onto him, now that he knows who I really am. He’s also worried you’ll go to the police so he trapped us in here for now.”

“Why did Penny have the key for this place - Aidan’s unfinished cabin?”

That one I couldn’t answer easily.

Fi posited a theory. “She’s been snooping around for Julian. She’s his bit of totty after all. My God, Julian is an idiot. She’ll chew him up and spit him out in no time. They weren’t exactly warm and cuddly with each other tonight, were they?”

“Nope. Jules is a fool. Lou was a smashing woman. I can’t believe he threw her away for Penny.”

“The other possibility is that Penny has links with Aidan. Related? Exes?”

That was the puzzling connection.

“And what happens next? We’ve been here about an hour or so and Julian hasn’t turned up with a doctor yet. Is he going to? Is he going to come back at all?”

“Of course he is,” I assured her. I’d known the guy eight years. He was a pratt with women, true, but he’d always been OK with me. Up to now, anyway.

“Yes. Yes, of course. Carla wouldn’t let him abandon us, would she?” Fi was persuading herself. “OK. OK. Look, you have a sleep. I’ll wash up.”

Fi planted a kiss on my forehead and then marched up to the sink to do thirty seconds’ washing up. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my head, but it was swimming again and jumbled images kept crashing through my brain. I heard Fi’s voice a couple of times but it was too much effort to focus on what she was saying. And then I either slept or passed out. Next thing I knew, Fi was trying to turn the gas heater on.

She became aware that I was watching her. “Oh, I’m sorry. I woke you. It’s just the heater went out and I didn’t want you to get cold. You’re shivering. But - I think we’re out of gas. Bloody hell.” She thumped the gas bottle inside the heater crossly. It echoed hollowly.

Fi was right. I was shaking, but not with cold. Drug and alcohol induced.

“Yup, sounds empty,” I said. “I’d say we’ll be warm enough. If it gets cold, we can block off the ventilators so there isn’t a draught.”

I looked groggily around for where they were. But I couldn’t spot them. I frowned and looked again. Shit. There weren’t any.

Fi saw my worried expression. “What is it, Marcus?”

There was no point lying. “There isn’t any ventilation coming into this cabin. We’re airtight.”

And we’d been merrily burning the gas fire and the gas ring and using up a lot of our oxygen.

“Oh God,” said Fi faintly. “We’re screwed.”

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Fuck.

This was so not good. I decided to act cool, but that took a lot of effort. I was severely rattled.

“I don’t know. Should you?” I took a bigger sip of whiskey. I needed it for my nerves now.

“I believe so,” said Frank carefully, looking at me steadily. “That’s what a little bird told me. What’s this all about then?”

I was fuming inside. Damn and blast Tony. The shit had split on me after all. He’d broken his worthless fucking word.

“As in?” I prevaricated, having another drink.

“As in pretending to be Radley the moron.”

I laughed, and had another sip. Thank God I finally thought of what to say.

“OK. Yes, I’m Marcus Summers. I want fish for my fishery. I’ve done it the above-board, old fashioned way all these years and spent a fortune while other fisheries buy in cheaper stock and have much better profit margins. Your mate Frobisher has made that a popular trend. I’m getting sick of always losing out. But since I’m known for being an uptight bastard with high standards, it seemed a better idea to pretend to be a rookie lake owner. I also thought you might not deal with me if you knew who I was, and that I wrote for a magazine. You might have thought it was a sting.”

Frank shrugged. Then he nodded. “Yes, I can see that. And don’t worry. We’ll deal with you, all right.”

He smiled. I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t look like a nice smile. I couldn’t tell because my head suddenly began to swim a little. I also felt my heart racing. Jeez, that concentrated caffeine shot had packed a punch. I could normally drink espressos all day and still sleep like a baby. I had a high tolerance for caffeine, but not this time.

I drained my whiskey glass, under the inverse logic that since coffee counteracted the effects of alcohol, then surely alcohol would damp down the effects of too much coffee.

But it didn’t. My head felt worse. I blinked hard a few times.

“Are you OK?” asked Frank, apparently full of concern.

“Dunno.” God, suddenly I was having trouble getting words out. “Norreally.”

“Must be the coffee. I told you it was bad at making it. Here, have another drink.” He filled my glass.

“Nosshure thassa goodideer,” I protested, feebly it had to be said.

“Oh, but I think it is,” insisted Frank. “Drink up.”

I frowned. I was finding it hard to think. I was also finding it hard to remember exactly what I was doing here. Having a drink with these guys? Yeah, that was it. So I should be sociable. I gulped half of the whiskey refill down. Momentarily I felt brighter.

“So. Let’s talk fish,” said Frank.

I nodded, grateful for the reminder. That’s what this meeting was about. How could I have forgotten that? I was Radley, or was it Bradley, someone, wanting to buy fish. I had to remember that.

“Fisssh,” I agreed slurrily.

Frank began to talk, and I began to listen, but within seconds I was woozy. I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. I couldn’t even look at him. The room was spinning and I felt sick. I clutched the edge of the table, trying to keep myself upright.

At that moment, my mobile rang. The familiar, rousing ring tone cut through my confusion. It was a snatch from Linkin Park’s ‘Bleed it out’. I had a burst of lucidity. I was Marcus, and my companions knew I was Marcus, which they weren’t meant to. I was drugged and I was in trouble. Big trouble. I had to get the hell out of here while I still could. I suddenly thought about Clive Ellis, the drowned fisherman, the guy who had contacted me, saying he might have a really big story soon about carp from France. I realised, with dread, that he must have been onto the same thing that Julian and I were. God yes! Clive had mentioned brothers. How could I have forgotten that? Hodgkiss’s heavies had killed him. And now they were going to kill me.

The hell they were.

I leapt to my feet and with all my strength tipped the table and hurled it to the right, to take Heavy One out of the picture. I saw Frank leap back. Heavy Two came for me. I grabbed his arms as he lunged towards me and did a textbook Osoto Guruma which thunked him down onto his back. Heavy One was still struggling up. I squared up to face him but the sudden outburst of physical energy sent the whatever it was they’d given me coursing round my system again. I felt faint. I desperately tried to keep myself upright but my legs began to give way beneath me. I staggered forwards, then a terrific blow from behind sent me sprawling. Frank had broken a chair across my back and neck. As I hit the floor, something heavy fell across me and thumped me hard in the face.

“Stop it!” yelled Frank. “No obvious marks, remember.”

Whatthefuck? I was losing it big time now, but I made one last attempt to get up. I had nearly raised myself to my knees, despite someone battling me, but then all my strength seemed to vanish. I slumped back down heavily. Then I was rolled onto my back.

“Thirsty?” sneered Frank, a few inches above my face.

I tried but I couldn’t say anything. I summoned up some saliva to spit at him, but before I could, one of the big guys had raised my head and clamped my jaws open. Something was poured into my mouth. Whiskey. I tried to spit it out but that didn’t seem to work. In a panic I swallowed some down, rather than choke on it. I tried to fight again, to roll and kicking, but nothing seemed to work. My body wouldn’t do what I wanted it to. The tremendous weight on top of me was too much. I was a helpless as a kitten. More whiskey went down, and then some more I think, and then everything went fuzzy and grey. One last clear thought snapped across my brain. Fiona. Thank God she wasn’t here. Then it went black.

I crashed down onto something hard. I opened my eyes. I was in the bottom of the rowing boat. Weird. Everything was spinning and kind of wavery, but I could suss out where I was, and work out that I was tightly trussed up. Both the big guys were in the boat with me. We must have been riding low in the water. We were all around the hundred kilo mark. It was a bit like I was in a dream. It didn’t feel like it was me that things were happening to, but unfortunately it was. However, I was completely powerless. I couldn’t move at all. I could only watch and breathe, but that was becoming a bit of struggle. My chest was heaving but I couldn’t seem to get enough air. I’d have panicked if I’d had the energy too.

“You know what to do, don’t you lads?” came a voice. Frank’s. “You had your trial run with that other interfering git. Drop him in. You’ve attached the marker float, yeah? Ok. Give it half an hour while you clean up the cabin, then drag him to the bank. Get the chain and block off, and then leave him floating for his girlfriend to find. Then you know where to contact me. Ya me despido.”

The boat began to move. It was dark now, apart from a bright, full moon. I could see a few stars twinkling blurrily above me, not giving a damn about what was happening down here. I mulled over what I’d just heard in my spinning brain. It confirmed everything. They had done this before. ‘Interfering git’ had to mean poor Clive. It hadn’t been an unfortunate accident, after all then. And the same was about to happen to me. And I couldn’t do a damn fucking thing about it. It’s like I was paralysed. My panic tightened my chest. My breath was rasping in and out now.

“Better breathe air while you still can, arsehole,” leered one of my companions.

“Yeah, pity you ain’t got gills like the stupid fish you catch,” added his pal.

Come on, do something, I told myself. But uselessly. I had no control over myself. Shit.

Then there was a sharp crack, and a splash.

“What the …” began one of my travelling companions.

There was another one, this one followed by a splintering sound rather than a splash.

“Fuck, someone’s shooting at us!” the other guy realised.

“Then shoot back!” snapped the first man.

“But I can’t see anything,” whined the second.

Crack, thwack.

“They’re shooting fucking holes in the boat, you moron!” roared first guy. “Just shoot, fuck it, to cover me while I get this bastard into the water. Then we’ll get the fuck out of here.”

I don’t know if I resisted or not as he wrestled me over the side of the boat. I was trying to fight him, but I don’t think that took a physical form. It was just my addled brain sending futile messages to my non-responsive body. But as I fell into the cold water, the action shocked a bit of reaction and sense into me, at least temporarily. I started to wriggle, but my arms wouldn’t come free. I battled to get my head above the water for a last lungful of air. I gulped it down. I had the sudden hope that I could somehow thrash my way through the water like a dolphin and get to the bank. Bodies floated, right? But then there was a second loud splash, and with a jerk I was suddenly dragged downwards. Oh hell. That lump of concrete and chain I’d noticed and thought must be for mooring a second rowing boat. It had been waiting for me. Like it had waited for Clive maybe? I vaguely remembered that his body had been found on a river not so far away from here.

Crap. So this was it. I was about to die. Damn it. Just when I’d finally found the woman of my dreams, and was looking forward to spending the rest of my life with her, this shit had to happen. It wasn’t fair. Couldn’t I have had a few months of the domestic bliss I was so late finding?

How much longer did I have, I wondered. Probably not long, given the trouble with breathing I’d been having. I’d be out of oxygen very soon. So what should I do? Say a prayer? No. I’d never believed in God and I wasn’t going to start now. Tell Paul I loved him. Yeah. We had our one-way telepathic twin thing. I sent him a mental message telling him he was a really great brother. I decided to spend the rest of my time thinking about Fi. Fi smiling. Fi naked. Fi smiling and naked. Yeah, that was a good image. That was a nice thought to go out on.

All this time I’d been struggling, just in case I miraculously managed to slip my ropes or lose the chain that was round my ankles. Waste of bloody time. I was screwed.

Then something brushed against me. Were there fish in the lake after all? But no, this wasn’t a fish. It was much larger. Visibility was practically nil in the water, but some light was trickling down from the bright moon. I gazed at the thing, which was right in front of me now. There were pale patches and darker patches, and it was almost as big as me. It was a person. Oh God, not another body, surely. How many poor buggers had this crowd shoved into lakes? But then this one touched my face and brushed its lips against mine. Holy shit! It was Fiona.

I wasn’t going to die alone. She’d come to be with me. That was brave. And that was love. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. I didn’t want to die, no way, but I didn’t mind it so much now Fi would be there. However, I was roused from my maudlin meanderings by Fi shoving something hard into my mouth. I explored it with my tongue. It felt round, hollow. A tube. It was the tubing from the jeep. My girl was going to save me! Fi was holding the tube. She nodded at me. But I hesitated to take a breath. What if it didn’t work and I breathed in water, sooner than I needed to? I was good for another minute or so I reckoned, and I wanted to live for that minute. I wanted to spend it with Fi.

She stroked my face, still nodding. Go for it, Marcus, I told myself. You know can trust Fi. So I finally allowed myself to expel the breath I’d been holding and then sucked air in. A very little water came into my mouth. I almost panicked but clamped my lips tighter round the tube. It worked. Holy shit. It worked! I was going to live. It was hard going, though. I was getting dopey again. I’d livened up since I’d been in the water, but my head was heavy and thinking was an effort. My mind was drifting in a drug and whiskey induced haze.

Fi stroked my cheek again and then swam round behind me. I felt her tugging at my hands behind my back. I guessed she must be trying to cut through the rope. Then she stopped. I wriggled my arms but they were still tied. I realised Fi had gone up to the surface to breathe. I could see her feet just above my head. The water wasn’t very deep, but deep enough to die in.

She came down and carried on working on the rope. Then suddenly I felt the pressure round my wrists lighten. A few more seconds and Fi pulled one of my hands free. I immediately brought it round to hold my breathing tube firmly in place. I felt safer like that. Then the other was free too. Fi slipped her hand into it and swam round in front of me. Then she lifted my hand to her mouth and kissed it. I could only peer at her through the dark, murky water. I could barely see her now. She’d stirred up a lot of silt.

Then she was gone again, this time swimming underwater away from me, not up to the surface. I stared after her, longing for her to come back. In the meantime I fought to stay conscious. I was feeling drowsy and drunk and breathing was hard. Where was Fi? What was happening? I tried swimming with my one free arm, but I didn’t have much strength, and it was a hopeless thing to do anyway. I couldn’t make myself budge.

And then she was back. She touched my hand again. I clung to hers for a precious second. Then she opened my hand and laid something in it. It was a piece of rope. Was I to hold it? I gripped it. But no, Fi tugged it gently away and pulled herself down my legs towards the chain. I felt some slight jerking as she did something. She was tying the rope onto the chain. Then she floated up, kissed my cheek, and shot up to the surface for more air.

When she came back down, she put my other hand onto my breathing tube. I wondered why, but only for a second, because then I began to move as the chain and block that anchored me to the lake bottom started to creep sideways. A great cloud of silt rose up around me, matching the confusion that was enveloping me mentally. I clung onto my tube and let it all happen. I was too far gone to work out who must be helping Fi. Who cared anyway, just so long as they got me out of here? Slowly, slowly I was dragged along. Very gradually it got a little lighter as we moved into shallower water, closer to the bank. Fi popped up and down between me and the surface. She put her arm behind me as I moved along to help support me.

I don’t know how long it took – it might have been minutes or hours. I focussed on keeping my lungs working and hanging onto that precious tube. And then suddenly the top of my head felt colder as it broke the surface of the water. A few more tugs and my eyes were above it too. I blinked hard and stared around me in the moonlight. Fi’s face bobbed up just in front of me. She was smiling happily but looked tired and strained. I looked to the right and could see someone hauling a rope, which had been looped around a tree to act as a pulley. It was Yannick. Looking the other way, I saw my air tube lying on the surface. At the far end, it was attached to something. I’d have smiled if I could have managed it, despite my predicament. The tube had been lashed onto Daphne to keep that end out of the water. Good old duck. The best fifteen quid I’d spent for a long time.

“Encore un peu, Yann!” Fi called.

I watched as Yann heaved hard. Fi pushed me at the same time, and at last my whole head was above the lake surface. I pulled the tube out and gulped in oxygen in the open air again. But it wasn’t any easier than breathing through the tube. There was something wrong with my chest. I couldn’t speak as I battled for breath. But I managed to hold out my arms. Fi swam into them. I pulled her close to me briefly and managed a quick kiss before I felt myself sinking. I was feeling overwhelmingly tired now. I let go of Fi and began to tread water feebly with my arms. Fi put an arm firmly around my chest from behind, and helped hold me up as Yann carried on pulling. They must both have been exhausted but they kept going.

Then Yann stopped.

“Voiture!”

“Julian, j’espère,” Fi called back.

I hoped so too.

But Yann wasn’t taking chances. He quickly lashed the long end of the rope around another tree to keep the tension. Then he picked something up. His gun. So it had been him shooting at the thugs as they’d rowed out to drown me. He slipped into the line of trees.

Fi probably held her breath as the vehicle came closer, but I couldn’t. I rasped and rattled, with increasing urgency. But I still felt permanently short of oxygen. Fi tightened her hold on me. She pulled the breathing tube up close to us, in case I had to go underwater again.

The vehicle swept the lake with its headlights as it pulled in by the cabin. A door opened. A voice called.

“Fiona? Marcus? It’s me, Julian!”

“Thank God! We’re here,” yelled Fi, waving one arm with all her might.

Julian saw her in the lights. He jumped back into the car and bumped along the lakeside path up to us. Yann had come out from his hiding place, and began to drag me in again. Julian leapt out and helped him and I began hurtling towards the bank, relatively speaking. Fi kept a tight hold on me. I was starting to lose it again. My head was feeling heavy and I could hardly hold it up. I lost control and lolled forward, and my face splashed into the water. Fi’s hands were under my chin straight away, pulling it up, but she couldn’t have had her feet on the lake bed yet so she was doing all this treading water, and it was too much.

I heard her shout in panic. I was tugged even faster, but then there was also a loud splash, followed by smaller ones of someone swimming, and then Yann had his arms round me. I rested on his shoulder, gasping for oxygen and fighting the greyness that was trying to smother me. Fi’s terrified, exhausted face was white and taut in the moonlight. I kept my eyes on her as my rescuer dragged me to the lake edge. Fi held me as best she could while Julian jumped in to help Yann heave the block onto the bank. Then they dragged me out. And then I was laying on the grass, sobbing, retching and asphyxiating, all at the same time. I locked my eyes onto Fiona’s. I took a few deep breaths to try and speak a couple of times, but I couldn’t stop my chest from heaving convulsively. I couldn’t get a word out.

Julian looked at me in horror. Penny was hovering behind him.

“Christ, I’m so sorry, Marcus,” he said quietly. He looked haggard in the flickering light.

It was a good job I couldn’t move or I’d have floored him. I was so fucking mad with him, but I didn’t have the energy to express it. I turned my head away.

“We have to get out of here,” announced Fi. “And bloody fast. Those guys could come back.”

Julian just sat there. I think he was in shock.

“We need to get Marcus and the block into your car, Julian, and head for hospital,” Fi told him firmly. “Now! I’ll grab our personal stuff while you and Yann get him in, OK? OK?” She added the second one extra loud.

But it was me rolling over and vomiting noisily over Julian’s shoes that shook him into action. He sprang up swearing.

“Bloody hell. God, yes, of course.”

I watched Fi shoot off along the bank as the two blokes helped me up. It was only then Julian noticed I was chained to the large concrete block.

“We’re not putting that bloody thing in the car,” he muttered angrily. “How’s it attached?”

He left me leaning against Yannick and the bonnet of the jeep while he squatted down to inspect it.

“Eet eez lock?” Yann peered down too.

Julian gave the chain a hard tug and rattle. Damn, but it hurt my sore ankles.

“Ow,” I grumbled woozily.

Julian ignored me and tugged some more. Then he grinned up at me.

“It’s just been tied on, not padlocked or anything. Should get it off easily enough.”

He was a touch over optimistic. It took a good five minutes of swearing and battling to untie the tight knot in the chain. It was a painful five minutes too. I could feel myself gradually slumping down. Yannick did his best to hold me up, but I was a lot bigger than he was, plus I was pretty much a dead weight with no self-control.

Finally Julian got me freed up. As soon as the tension went off the chain, the block, which had been teetering rather precariously on the bank, slipped back into the water with a splash, the chain following. Good bloody riddance. Then Jules and Yann manhandled me into the car somehow. Poor bastards. I was heavy and unable to help. I sort of crumpled along the back seat. Fi was back by now. She spoke to Yann quickly and hugged him. I heard her thanking him and promising him we’d keep his name out of things. He wouldn’t get into trouble for shooting. Then she clambered in next to me and hoisted my head up onto her lap.

“Drive as fast as you can, Julian.”

We set off. The car lurched every which way. I felt ghastly. My head throbbed, my vision swam, I felt incredibly sick again.

I looked up at Fi. She was crying. The night’s events were catching up with her. I felt tears on my cheeks too. She leant forward and kissed my forehead.

“I love you,” she smiled.

I couldn’t manage a smile. But I kept my eyes locked onto hers. I began to shiver, and it wasn’t just from the cold. Plus I had the world’s worst headache. But thanks to my incredible girlfriend, I was still alive. If only Clive had had someone like her, he’d still be here too. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He’d sounded a pleasant, regular guy on the phone. Not that different from me.

Shit. I was crying again. What a wally. But what did it matter? Only Fi could see me, and why shouldn’t someone should cry for Clive?

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Chapter 23 Found Out

We eventually got up very late on Thursday morning, after entertaining ourselves very enjoyably for a nice long time. But we still had a lot of day to fill. I got busy with my Humminbird for an hour or so, just to make quadruple sure the lake really was devoid of carp. Fi did some spinning and caught one tiny perch. By lunchtime the empty lake was depressing us.

“Let’s go out for lunch somewhere,” I suggested.

Fi pulled out the map. There were a few fair-sized towns not too far away. Any one of those was bound to have a restaurant. We set off for the interestingly named St Loup Bas Le Roc, but driving through a small, picturesque village, amazingly we spotted an auberge that was open. The menu looked inviting, and it was very reasonably priced, so we spent the next couple of hours chatting happily over delicious food.

We both ate too much - it was impossible not to with food this good and this cheap - so we opted to go for a long walk to fill the afternoon. Another look at the map and we found a footpath that ran along the base of a steep gorge. It was breathtakingly beautiful. The walk involved a bit of minor mountaineering in a couple of places, as huge outcrops of rocky blocked the path. Ropes and rails had been provided to help you heave yourself over these large natural barriers.

We had a great time. Fi took a million photos of the scenery, and a lot of me too, which I was secretly very flattered by. Not many people seem to think I’m photogenic, including Angling Talk magazine. When I started my column with them all those years ago, I’d sent them a selection of mug shots, and a few other photos, and they’d gone for one that had me as a distant speck on a river bank doing some fly fishing.

“So, ready to meet up with the frightful Frank again?” I asked Fi as we climbed back in the car, rosy-cheeked and tired from our strenuous antics. “It’ll be interesting to see who this buddy is. Julian will definitely want to know about him. Or her.”

“OK,” yawned Fi. “Let’s not stop too long, though, eh? I really don’t like being around that guy.” She shuddered.

“We’ll stay long enough to be polite, then scarper,” I confirmed.

“Thanks.” Fi smiled gratefully. “If it’s not too cold in the tent, I’ll give you an all-over massage,” she tempted me.

“Five minutes with Frank should be way more than enough!” I grinned.

Fi laughed as I started the engine and we drove to Coussac. We found the hotel Frank had mentioned and went in. Frank was at the bar. He waved in a friendly manner as we came in.

“Drink?” he asked.

I went for a Pastis while Fi asked for a kir. Then she excused herself and headed off to the toilets. She was back a minute later with a disgusted look on her face.

“I’m going to nip out to the public loos in the square,” she whispered to me. “Now I’m no snob, but there is no way I can use that festering Turkish thing over there.” She jerked her head crossly toward the corner of the room where the bathroom was.

“OK sweetie. Don’t be long.” I patted her shapely butt as she left me. I smiled. Fi was happy to pee behind a hedge if that’s all that was available, but she had a total thing about Turkish loos and refused point-blank to use them.

Frank raised an eyebrow.

“Off to get something from the car,” I ad-libbed. He didn’t need to know about her toilet hang-ups.

He nodded.

“Oh, here’s my colleague now,” he added as the door from the restaurant opened and someone came in.

I turned round - and there was Tony Frobisher. Oh shit.

“Good heavens!” he exclaimed, as surprised as I was. “Whatever are you doing here M...?”

“I’m sorry,” I butted in loudly and quickly before he could say my name. “I think you have me mistaken for someone else. We’ve most certainly never met. I’m Radley.” I offered him a hand to shake. I would have told him my surname too, but, in the heat of a stressful moment, I’d forgotten it.

I looked him squarely in the eye. Tony frowned slightly, scrutinising me hard. I held my innocent gaze. Then he smiled.

“Seems I’m mistaken. I do apologise. It’s an incredible likeness, though, to this bloke I know in England. I’m Tony Frobisher.”

“Delighted. They do say we all have a double, don’t they,” I remarked lightly.

“Usually an evil twin, I believe,” Tony added pointedly.

We looked at each other a while longer. Had he bought it? Did he really think he was mistaken?

“So, er, do you two know each other?” Frank was puzzled, and suspicious.

“No. No we don’t,” Tony told him firmly. “It’s the lighting in here. That or my eyes going. Radley reminded me of someone, that’s all.”

Frank smiled. “Sounds like you need a drink to sharpen you up, mate!”

He turned to the bar to order a Pastis for Tony. Tony winked at me and then turned away too. So. He was playing along. Or was he only pretending to play along while I was around? He’d probably blow my cover the minute I was gone. Shit. This wasn’t good.

A man came in and ackowledged Frank with a nod.

“Excuse me a minute, please, gentlemen,” said Frank. “I need to have a quick word with Maurice.”

Frank stalked across to the new arrival. They shook hands.

“So, Radley, tell me about yourself,” said Tony, jovially and loudly, throwing an arm around my shoulders and pushing me into a corner of the bar, away from Frank who was now deep in conversation with Maurice.

We sat down at a small table.

“Marcus, I’m insulted,” he said to me quietly, a twinkle in his eye. “You trash my carp supply business but you’re happy to buy fish off this lowlife. Hodgkiss makes me look like a saint. And what the hell is this Radley business all about?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I answered dismissively. “And lowlife? I thought he was your friend?”

“The hell he is,” hissed Tony, genuinely.

“So what are you doing here then?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Tony laughed quietly.

“OK. Touché.” I managed a small smile. “You have your agenda and I have mine. Can we agree to keep them secret?”

“Sure thing. I’m not bothered what you’re up to. I’m assuming Adam doesn’t know you’re here, wheeling and dealing?”

“He knows I’m in France,” I answered truthfully enough.

“Planning to set up on your own?” Tony couldn’t help probing.

“I thought you said you weren’t bothered what I was up to,” I reminded him.

“I lied. I’m a nosy bastard.”

“Let’s say I am, then.” It was my turn to lie. “You know as well as anyone that Adam and I don’t get on.”

“Everyone knows that,” Tony nodded. “So. You’ve got balls going it alone. I wouldn’t have thought you’d got the funding to last long, though.”

“I have contacts,” I said evasively, wishing that was true.

“Well, don’t worry. I’ll buy you up when you go under,” Tony promised.

“That’s a very philanthropic gesture,” I parried. “I’ll drink to that.”

I raised my glass to Tony then drained my absinthe. Tony did the same.

“I like you, Marcus,” he smiled. “Despite everything. You’re not scared of me, and you don’t pussyfoot around. My kind of bloke. What’s it worth for me not to tell Adam I bumped into you here in the company of Hodgkiss?”

I wasn’t fazed.

“The same that it’s worth for me not to tell Hodgkiss that you think he’s scum.” I had to hope he hadn’t been lying about that too.

“OK. Mum’s the word. You get on with your skulduggery, and I’ll get on with mine. Deal?”

“Deal.”

We shook hands.

I heard the door to the bar open behind me.

“Well, hello! What have we here?” smarmed Tony. “Talk about a cutie!” He smiled in the direction of the new entrant.

I didn’t need to look to know it was Fi who’d just walked in.

“And she’s coming this way,” gloated Tony. “I can still pull a bird.”

Now I turned to see, and winked at Fi. So, back at that meal in Ronaldo’s, Tony had just been putting the frighteners on. He’d made out he knew who Fi was when he’d called her my biker chick girlfriend, but he’d obviously only heard rumours about her. He didn’t recognise her tonight, that was for sure.

“She’s not your type,” I told Tony loudly, turning back. “She needs a guy like me. You’ll see.”

Fi was at our table now. She guessed I was up to something and was happy to play along.

“Bonjour ma chérie,” simpered Tony.

“Bonjour,” replied Fi, smiling at him and running a finger down his cheek. If Tony had been a cat, he’d have purred.

Handily enough, and very appropriately, Fi had taught me a lot of dirty French this week. So I looked at her and said “Je bande comme un tigre pour toi.”

“Tu veux je te fais la pipe?” she replied.

“Volontiers!”

I stood up and took her hand. “Excuse me, Tony, I have to go.”

I noticed Frank beginning to move our way now. Maurice had gone.

“What’s going on?” Tony demanded.

“Well,” I shrugged. “I said I had a hard on for our little French friend here, and she said she’d give me a blow job. So, nice meeting you, Tony, but her offer is too tempting to refuse.”

“Bloody hell!” Tony was gobsmacked. “You pulled that quickly? Fucking impressive.”

“You’re a mug, my dear Anthony,” announced Frank, joining us, laughing. “This is Radley’s girlfriend, Phoebe.”

“What? Your girlfriend?” Tony looked at me incredulously. “No way. She’s miles out of your league.” He was rude because he’d been fooled.

“It’s true, I am Radley’s girlfriend,” admitted Fi. “Forgive me.” She offered Tony her hand.

“Bloody hell,” he said again, shaking it. Then he chuckled. “You had me there. And Phoebe, you say?” He put a lot of emphasis on the ‘Phee’ bit.

“Yes, Phoebe,” I confirmed, keeping my face blank.

I needed to get out of here, and not just because I wanted that massage from Fi. Either Tony would let something slip or Frank would rumble us if we hung around too long.

“Yeah, well I’m not joking about the hard on,” I fibbed crudely, pulling my jacket down so it looked like I was covering something up. “So, you’ll forgive me, but I have somewhere else I need to be. Nice to meet you, Tony. See you tomorrow, Frank.”

I slipped my arm around Fi and steered her out of the bar. I hurried her to the 4x4, and collapsed into the driver’s seat.

“Christ. That wasn’t fun.”

“What’s going on?” Fi wanted to know.

I filled her in about Tony.

“So that was Tony Frobisher. I’ve read and heard so much about him, none of it very nice apart from what he wrote and said himself. He was gross.”

“Well, he liked you!” I grinned.

“Ugh!” she shuddered.

I got serious again. “So, the question is, will he shop me to Frank? And, in case he does, do we bug out tonight?”

“Aren’t you seeing Frank tomorrow, though?”

“Yes, but if he knows I’m not Radley by then, it could get awkward.”

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel anxiously, thinking hard. Then I relaxed a little.

“No. No, he won’t. Tony seems to be pretty narked with Frank over something. He won’t give me away, I’m sure. And I did promise Julian that I’d talk to Frank and see what I can find out about the fish he has on offer. If I don’t, he’ll never forgive me and he can’t half whine. He’ll drive me nuts!”

“I’m afraid that’s probably true,” sighed Fi. “And we’ve invited Yann round for tea tomorrow at seven, remember? It’ll be nice to see him again.”

“You’re right. I’d forgotten that. But I haven’t forgotten about that massage you mentioned.” I leant across and kissed her hungrily.

“In that case, drive us home - fast!”

We had another lie-in on Friday morning and a rerun of the previous night’s all-over massage, which was even better second time around. We did some half-hearted spinning for perch but caught nothing. Over a cheese sandwich, we decided that we’d head off tonight once we’d had our rendez vous with Yann, no matter how late it was. We’d check into a cheap hotel again and get back to Julian’s on Saturday.

Fi started to pull her stuff together about two.

“Should we take presents back for people?” she suddenly said.

“Like who?”

She shrugged. “Graham, Andy, Derek, your most loyal customers. Your brother?”

“Nah.” Then I reflected. “Actually, yeah, I could see if I could pick up something typically French for Paul and Patrick for Christmas. I never know what to get them. They’ve got everything already.”

“Cool. Let’s go and shop then,” smiled Fi. “I can’t bear hanging around this place. It’s eerie. An empty fishing lake is so unnatural.”

“We can only be a couple of hours though,” I warned her.

“No problem. We have to be back for what - five?” she answered.

I nodded. “Better be early. About half four. You can carry on packing while I talk to Frank the thug then we’ll head off once he’s gone. It won’t take us long to get the bivvie down. We can just throw it in the boot.”

So we drove into Coussac, spent five minutes looking around it and realised we wouldn’t find anything there. We headed off to Grandes Pierres, a much bigger town twenty kilometres further on. We found a pretty good hypermarket on the outskirts and moseyed round, chucking French biscuits and pottery and tinned snails into the trolley. Fi talked me into buying a couple of long sleeve tee-shirts with silly French slogans on them. In retaliation I steered her into the lingerie aisle.

“No good,” she told me. “I can’t get my size in supermarkets. I have to go to small expensive underwear boutiques that cater for freaks!”

“Fi, don’t say that,” I frowned. She was a bit hung up about her breast size at times. “They’re boutiques for fantastic feminine forms, not freaks.”

Fi smiled slightly self-consciously but gratefully.

“Look, this will fit you, won’t it?”

I held up a cream silky, lacy negligée sort of nightie against her.

“You know I don’t wear anything in bed,” she chided.

“Yes, but couldn’t you put it on every now and again, so I can take it off you?” I pleaded.

Fi hesitated. She looked at the price tag.

“Not at thirty euros. It’s not worth it,” she said firmly. “Plus, it’s not really my colour.”

She hung it back up.

“Please let me buy you something nice,” I urged.

“I don’t need anything. But thanks, that’s sweet. Anyway, it’s nearly four. We need to get back.”

She was right. I sighed. I’d already been fantasising about slowly pulling that floaty, satiny garment over Fi’s head and revealing those sumptuous breasts. Or would ripping it off be sexier?

“Marcus?”

Fi was halfway along the aisle. She looked back at me, daydreaming.

“J’arrive!” I replied, guiltily.

We paid at the check-out then put our purchases on the back seat and headed to the fishery. Fi yawned loudly about five minutes into the journey.

“Jeez, I’m wrecked,” she admitted.

We both smiled since we knew why, and it was a nice reason. I was pretty knackered too.

“Crank your seat back and have forty winks,” I suggested.

“Good idea.” She fumbled for the right lever and eased the seat back into reclining mode. I ran my hand up and down her left thigh a couple of times. She giggled and pushed it away.

“Both hands on the wheel, please,” she instructed.

I laughed. “Bossy boots!”

On the outskirts of Coussac, as I turned onto the road to Malval, I noticed a couple of black 4x4s parked in a layby. They caught my attention because they were both like Frank’s - very flashy and posey, with the tinted windows. Someone up to no good, I thought to myself. I wasn’t completely sure, but as I was rounding the bend further down the road, I thought I caught a glimpse of one of them indicating and pulling out onto the highway behind us.

When we got back, I couldn’t resist tickling Fi for five minutes or so. Laying back on the seat like that she was too irresistible a target. But we were pushed for time, so we reluctantly stopped messing around and got out, retrieving our bags of shopping from the boot. I unzipped the bivvie and pulled the door flap up out of the way. Fi crouched down and went in with the afternoon’s loot.

“Someone’s been in here,” she observed.

I glanced inside. It looked about the same as far as I could remember.

“Are you sure?” It was a dumb question. She wouldn’t have mentioned it if she wasn’t.

“Yes I am,” she said grimly.

I ducked down and looked in.

Fi pointed to the three reading books she’d brought and which were piled up on the cool box. She pulled a wry face. “One of my little things is that I always stack my books in alphabetical order. I’m a frustrated librarian, I guess! I did it this morning after I’d sorted the bed out. Michael Wright was at the bottom, Peter Mayle was in the middle and Bryce Corbett was on top. They’re out of order now.”

Maybe she’d forgotten to order them properly this morning?

She was frowning and unzipped the holdall with her clothes in. She had a quick rummage.

“He, she or it has been through this too. I had my clean undies at this end and the stuff for washing at the other. They’re all muddled up now.”

She was starting to get to me. I looked into my bag. Yeah, I was pretty sure I hadn’t left my jeans at the very top. And the bags of bait weren’t exactly where I’d left them either. Two bags of grape and garlic were halfway under the bedchair now. I rubbed my forehead.

“What’s going on, Marcus?” Fi asked anxiously.

“I think they might be onto us,” I realised. “Tony blabbed. Shit.”

Why else would someone poke through a tent full of fishing gear? They wouldn’t have found anything incriminating though. I had my driving licence and credit cards on me. There was nothing lying around with my name on it, nor with Fi’s. But all the same, I had a bad feeling about this.

We looked at each other.

“Come on,” I said. “Grab your personal stuff and we’ll get the hell out of here. I’ll cover Julian for his tent and equipment. Actually no, I won’t. I shouldn’t have let him talk me into staying for this extra day. Sod him.”

“You think this is serious?” Fi’s eyes were wide.

“It might be, sweetie,” I sighed. “Or it might not. But I’m not taking any chances. We’ve done what we came to do on this holiday. The rest of it wasn’t so urgent. Let’s split.”

Fi looked scared. Had I overdone it? No. We knew we were dealing with underhand scum here. It was sensible to err on the side of paranoia.

I picked up the bag of shopping to take back to the 4x4. As I straightened up out of the tent, I heard engines. I looked along the track. Fuck. Two vehicles were coming along it, and fast, leaving clouds of dust in their wake. And if I wasn’t mistaken, they were the two vehicles I’d seen in that layby. I found it hard to believe that the damn things went around in pairs all the time.

“Fi, we’ve got company. And more than just Frank.”

“Oh God.”

I made a decision.

“Get out of here Fi,” I instructed. “Go to Yannick’s, and if I’m not there in an hour, call the police. And call Julian too. Let him know things are getting dodgy.”

“Aren’t you coming too?”

Believe me, I was tempted. But if we both ran, they’d come after us. It was me they wanted. If Fi disappeared on her own, they wouldn’t waste time and energy trying to find her. They thought she was a braindead bimbo who’d sit and panic. And anyway, maybe we were reading it wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a dangerous situation. If I played it cool and stuck to my story, hopefully they’d believe me. Yeah right. But if push came to shove, I was big and I had a black belt. If it came to fighting I could handle myself. I actually felt a surge of adrenalin. I’d always been a ‘fight’ rather than ‘flight’ guy.

“No. But you’re leaving. Now, Fi. I’ll cover for you.”

She hesitated. She didn’t want to desert me.

“Hurry, Fi.” The SUV was nearly here. “Run!”

“Christ, be careful Marcus.”

She kissed me.

“You too.”

She turned to go.

“I love you,” I added.

Of all the times to suddenly find the ability to say those three words that had refused to come out until now, this was the one I had to choose.

Fi swung round and looked at me, delighted and surprised.

I winked at her. “Now run!”

Fi hared off along the bank and was safely into the woods at the far end of the lake before the SUVs screeched to a halt by the cabins. Stay safe, I begged her silently, as I squared up to face the two blokes who’d got out of the first car. Frank got out of the second. These guys were evidently his heavies. OK, so they were my size, but I had my judo. They didn’t give me the impression of being very bright or subtle.

“Radley!” called Frank, jovially. “Good to see you again, mate. And I’ve got interesting news.”

“Cool,” I smiled. My heart was pounding but I was in control. Possibly we’d panicked. Possibly they’d checked our tent out to make sure we were kosher before we started negotiations. They wouldn’t have found anything to the contrary. Possibly I’d get out of this unscathed.

But possibly not.

“Let’s talk,” invited Frank. “In the cabin.”

“Who are your friends?” I asked.

“Business partners,” he assured me pleasantly.

“What sort of business?” I pushed it.

“My business,” he replied, a tad less pleasantly this time.

We were facing each other now. I glanced at each of the bruisers. I had a horrible feeling they were armed. Their jackets seemed to bulge unevenly on one side, a sort of pistol-sized bulge. Fuck. If I tried to run now, they’d shoot me. I might as well play along. Well, I had to now.

“So!” I grinned. “Let’s talk!”

“What about your girlfriend?” asked Frank. “She can come too and have a drink.”

“I left her in town,” I lied. “She wanted to buy some clothes, but she couldn’t make up her mind – you know women. Huh!” I shrugged. “I got fed up waiting, so I told her I’d meet her in a couple of hours.”

Would they believe me? They must have been watching for us to come back, knowing that wherever we’d been, that was the road we had to take for the last few kilometres to the fishery. Had they spotted Fi in the 4x4? No, I consoled myself. She’d been below window level.

“That’s convenient,” observed Frank. “We can get our, um, negotiations over in her absence.”

“Only if the price is right,” I reminded him.

“Of course,” Frank smiled. “Of course. Now. These aren’t the carp I’d originally earmarked for you, which would have been available fairly soon. We have a technical hitch there.” The fact that no one had caught Aidan’s common in Julian’s lake? “Let’s go to the cabin.”

Frank turned round and I fell into step next to him.

He unlocked the door and we went in. We hadn’t been in here, only using the separate shower room. It was basic but perfectly adequate as a cabin for anglers to use for cooking or in wet weather, very much along the lines of Julian’s. There was a table with four chairs, an oven, small fridge, gas heater, sink and cupboard. It had electricity and water, a step up from Julian’s for the time being.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“Please. Black, no sugar.”

He put the kettle on and motioned for me to sit down. The heavies sat down, one at each end of the table. Frank got out some cups and coffee powder and busied himself with the drinks while the rest of us sat in suspicious silence and surveyed each other critically. Yeah, they were big but they definitely looked dumb.

“How’s the fishing?” Frank asked, half turning to look at me.

“Slow,” I replied truthfully. “Like you said it would be. Mind you, it’s so slow, I’m beginning to think there’s no fish in there!” I smiled brightly as if it were a joke.

Frank’s face didn’t give anything away.

“End of season,” he shrugged.

He bought a tray with four tiny espressos on and plonked one in front of each of us. The two heavies downed theirs in one, so I didn’t want to be shown up as a wuss. I knocked back mine too, but then wished I hadn’t. Holy shit, it was the most disgusting coffee I’d ever tasted. It was bitterly strong and almost, I don’t know, salty? And that was despite the sugar that Frank had put in, ignoring my request for none. I must have grimaced.

“Sorry,” apologised Frank. “I make dreadful coffee. Look, have a whiskey chaser. Clear the taste away.”

I shouldn’t really because I was supposedly going to be driving later to collect the allegedly shopping Fi, but Christ, I needed something. That coffee had made me feel sick.

“OK, but only a small one,” I accepted gratefully.

Frank nodded to Heavy One. He got up, scraping his chair back noisily and fetched a bottle of Aberlour, a decent enough Scotch, and some large cut-glass tumblers out of a different cupboard. This was a very impressively stocked fishing cabin. Frank sloshed generous portions into each glass. Again, my companions knocked it back in one go, but I preferred to sip slowly. I wanted to at least give the impression of being a responsible drinker and driver.

“Drink up Radley,” Frank urged me. “Or should I say … Marcus. Marcus Summers. Manager of Adam’s Fishery.”

Fuck.

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“So. Shall we have one last go to try and catch Aidan’s common then?” I asked.

It was Wednesday morning. We were finishing breakfast, standing outside our bivvie and watching the mist rise from the lake. We both had a pain au raisin in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other.

“Damn, if only we’d thought of taking a photo of one of us holding it before we put it back in the water,” I shrugged.

Aidan had called by on both Monday and Tuesday, early afternoon, to see if we’d seen his fish. He did genuinely seem to be worried about it.

Fi wrinkled her nose. “I dunno. I’d fancied stalking up at the shallow end again.”

We’d had a great stalking session the previous evening and caught some fairly decent carp. Monday hadn’t produced much. To be fair, we hadn’t done a lot of fishing. It had poured in the morning so we were more than happy to stay in bed. We’d only just surfaced when Aidan had arrived. We hadn’t expected him at all. Quite possibly he’d been hoping to catch us busy with Fi’s jet-powered vibrator. He had kind of snuck up on us after all. We went shopping in the afternoon so it was evening before we did some baiting up and spodding, and put the rods out. Not surprisingly we hadn’t caught overnight, but we got plenty of bites during the day. But not from the common. It was probably lying low to recover from its ordeal.

“You go and stalk, Fi,” I told her. “I’ll watch the rods down here. I’ll chuck the rest of our maize and parti mix in, and spod some halibut boilies to try and tempt him. We should make the most of today. It’s not as though we’ll be catching much the rest of the week.”

We both knew Malval was almost certainly an empty lake.

“Just for a while then,” Fi acquiesced. “Then I’ll come back and keep you company.”

“Like you kept me company last night?” I queried, hopefully. We’d had a lot of fun with that spray dairy cream stuff.

“No, not like that,” Fi said firmly. “Just ordinary company.”

“Shame,” I grinned.

She smiled too. “You’re a dirty old man, Marcus Summers.”

“Which is precisely why you’re crazy about me!”

“Yeah right!” she laughed, picking up her rod and heading up to the far end of the lake.

I watched her go, smirking happily to myself. It had been an amazing few days. I was up on cloud nine and I had no wish to come down any time soon. So, of course, Julian chose then to text me, to make sure we were going on to Malval that afternoon, as planned. I didn’t want to especially. I had been thinking about heading off with Fi for a few days’ sightseeing and a few nights’ rampant sex in a comfy hotel somewhere. That was much more appealing than meeting Frank Hodgkiss and messing around with an empty lake. We could probably check the lake out fairly quickly with Daphne and the fishfinder. We could slip away tomorrow afternoon. Yeah, I could take Fi off for 48 hours before reporting back to Julian. Nice thought.

I didn’t get the common, but I landed a 2 lb roach, a 24 pound grassie and a 31 lb mirror. I saw Fi bring in a couple of fish too. Then I noticed her crouching at the water’s edge, taking photos of something in the water. It wasn’t long before she hurried back down to me, looking pleased with herself.

“Here he is!” she smiled triumphantly. She called up a photo on her camera. And sure enough, you could see the ghostly outline of a hefty common just below the surface.

“That will make Aidan happy,” she announced proudly.

“What will?” came a voice behind us. We both spun round. It was the man himself. Jesus, but he was good at creeping up on people.

“I’ve seen your fish,” said Fi, showing him the photo. “He’s safe and sound.”

Aidan’s face lit up. “That’s him all right. Great! I really was starting to think something had happened to him.”

Fi caught my eye. We were both convinced that he’d known nothing about the fish disappearing from his lake.

“We’ve had a good couple of days here,” I told him. “Thanks. Nice lake and smashing fish. Very healthy.”

“Cheers,” he acknowledged. “What have you caught so far?”

We reeled off our catches.

“I’ll email them to you when we get back if you like,” I offered. “And send some pictures?”

“I’ve brought my laptop,” Aidan replied. “Can I take copies off your camera card now? And I’ll note down those catches too.”

He bustled off to his car and then came back with his Mac. It had one of those fancy covers on it. No shortage of money in the Hodgkiss household evidently. He typed in our fish and downloaded the photos. We began to bring our gear in.

We chatted with Aidan a bit more and then he shook our hands.

“Got to run,” he said. “I hope you do OK at Malval. I’m heading off somewhere a bit more to my liking for some paella and sangria.”

And with that he turned and left.

“I imagine anywhere else is more to his liking than his hated brother’s lake,” observed Fi. She hesitated, then added: “I kind of wish we weren’t going to Malval.”

“Me too, babe. I’ve already planned to bunk off tomorrow, just as soon as we’ve sussed the fish situation out. We could take in some sights and find a nice little romantic auberge to stay at.”

“Oh, let’s go down to the Cantal,” Fi urged. “It’s not so very far. That’s where my Mamie was from. I love it there. It’s, well, kind of rugged and bleak in places, but it’s beautiful. St Flour is a lovely old city.”

“Sounds good to me. We’ll go there,” I agreed.

Fi glowed happily. And so did I. I’d amassed a few handy brownie points there and I knew exactly how I intended to redeem them.

We packed up the car, checked the directions to Malval and set off. It had been a bright, sunny morning, but just as we reached the turning for the lake, the sun went firmly behind the clouds. Something told me this wasn’t a good omen. The lake stretched grey and cold before us. It looked dead.

Like Aidan’s lake, this one was a few kilometres from the owner’s house. Frank must have been keeping an eye on the time, because our two jeeps drew up at the lake side at pretty much the same instant.

Frank gave me the creeps from the word go. He had piercing, light blue eyes, and he didn’t blink a lot. It looked like he was staring at you the whole time. However, he did the jolly host thing, plastering a big smile on his face and delivering a large helping of bonhomie. He strode round his lake, pointing out the odd snag and telling us about his fish, all the while throwing his arms around energetically. I hoped I looked like I believed him when he gave us facts and figures about the stock in his lake. He really meant his ex-stock.

“You’re selling up, I hear,” I remarked when we got back to the 4x4.

“And you’re buying?” he countered. Julian had filled him in on my mythical status as a wannabe fishery owner.

“Not in France,” I smiled. “I’m not adventurous enough to want to live over here. Holidays are OK.”

“But you’ll want to buy stock, I assume?”

“I expect so. I don’t have a lake yet, but I intend to stock densely so punters are sure of catching something. I imagine whatever lake I buy will need topping up.”

God, I couldn’t believe I could say such a thing so convincingly. It made me feel sick as it ran so counter to everything I knew about sustainable and humane fishery management.

Frank nodded sagely. “Good policy. Stick the fish in. Nothing pisses off a customer more than not catching anything. You won’t get them back and they’ll slag off your lake.”

“Jeez,” I heard Fi mutter very quietly.

“Yeah, no one can ever believe they’re a bad fisherman. They always blame the fish,” I agreed.

“That’s who you’re dealing with,” shrugged Frank. “You have to keep them happy.”

He and Tony Frobisher would get along like a house on fire, I decided.

“Look, before you go, how about we have a chat? I can bring you some numbers,” offered Frank. “I have access to some excellent fish and I’m sure we can cut a good deal.”

“Sure. Why not?” I nodded. “I’ll ring you when I get back home.”

“I don’t like doing business by phone,” Frank informed me. “I’m a face to face kind of guy. I’ll drop by around five on Friday evening to talk it through. OK?”

Shit. There went my hopes of bunking off with Fi. I guessed I’d have to stay now to keep appearances up. Bloody Julian and his ideas.

“Thanks. That’ll be great.” I forced a smile.

Fi suddenly began limping.

“I’ll catch you up,” she said. “I’ve got a stone in my boot.”

She crouched down to unlace it and deal with the problem. I continued sauntering along the bank with the creepy Frank.

“Oh, and if you happen to be in town on Thursday evening,” he went on, “I’m having a drink with a colleague you might be interested to meet. Eight thirty at the Café du Commerce. Does good food there. You could wine and dine your young lady.”

He glanced back appreciatively, bordering on lecherously, at Fi.

“I’ll bear it in mind, thanks.”

I wanted this guy to go. He didn’t give off good vibes. I could easily see him forcing harmless lake owners out of business with his underhand ways. But he showed no sign of leaving imminently.

“How’s the fishing been lately?” I asked. Maybe I could make him feel awkward.

“A little slow, it has to be said,” he replied, his expression immobile. So, he wasn’t a blatant liar, just a liar. “My fish like a lot of ground bait, and I mean a lot. If you don’t whet their appetites, you won’t bring them in.”

“I haven’t got a great deal,” I confessed. “I’ll do a lot of spodding and hope for the best.”

“You may be lucky,” he shrugged.

Hardly encouraging, but then I wasn’t supposed to know that there were no fish in his lake. And he didn’t bother offering to try and sell me any bait.

“Could we use that boat?” My eye had fallen on a smart wooden rowing boat at the cabin end of the lake, moored by a chain to a concrete block. If we could row round the lake, we’d soon get our detective work done with the fishfinder. I idly noticed there was a second concrete block and chain next to the first. Frank kept two boats here then?

“Sorry,” shrugged Frank, but not especially looking it. “Can’t get insurance for punters to use that.”

“Oh well, don’t know if you don’t ask,” I replied nonchalantly.

Frank said ‘goodbye’ and headed off.

“That looks like your tractor,” noticed Fi, who’d joined me again. There hadn’t been anything in her boot. She simply couldn’t stand being around creepy Frank.

“The Beast?” I studied the machine in the field. “Hey, you’re right. Impressive, Fi! It’s a Fordson Dexta too.”

“And about as temperamental as yours,” she added, as with a crunching sound that we could clearly hear, the tractor suddenly stopped moving.

“They must be twins,” I remarked.

“Why don’t you go and give helpful advice?” she suggested. “I’ll translate.”

The chances were this guy knew way more about Fordsons than I did. But I’d been battling the Beast for fifteen years and I’d learnt a trick or two along the way.

“Oh, I don’t know, I’d rather get the bivvie up,” I shrugged. “And then warm the sleeping bags up?” I nuzzled into her neck.

“Come on, Marcus,” laughed Fi, pushing me away. “Five minutes, that’s all. Just see if you can help. I’d love to have a proper French conversation again. I’ll make it well worth your while later.” She winked.

“In that case, what are we waiting for?” I grabbed her hand and we jogged to the edge of the grassy field.

“On peut vous aider?” called Fi.

“Volontiers! ” came the grateful reply.

We joined the tractor driver. He was a young guy, in between me and Fi agewise, maybe thirty or so. He already had oily hands from fiddling with the engine so offered his elbow for us to shake. Fi chattered away, telling him who we were, and how I had a tractor exactly the same and so we wondered if we could give him a hand. He gushed back at machine-gun speed. I only caught the odd word or two, including that his name was Yannick, but Fi was in her element.

“OK.” Fi turned to me. “Yannick thinks one of the pistons has seized.”

“Tell me about it,” I said sympathetically to Yannick. “One of mine does it all the time. I heat it with a blowtorch, then drive it down with a bit of wood and a hammer, and then I can drive it back up again. And one time I was out of propane, so I followed the advice in the ancient manual that came with the tractor and burnt a bit of oily rag on top of the piston to warm it up.”

Fi translated.

“Vraiment?” Yannick looked to me for confirmation. I nodded. “Chouette,” he smiled. He pulled a cotton hanky out of his pocket, lifted the oil can out of the tool tray on the tractor and soaked the hanky in it. He shoved it into position, then out came a lighter. Wumpf. The rag lit quickly and flared.

“Merde!” exclaimed Fi, stepping back in alarm. “It’s not going to blow up, is it?”

Yannick and I, the seasoned vintage vehicle engineers, both laughed at Fi’s reaction. When the flames finished, Yannick bashed the piston a couple of times and it moved. He soon had it mobile again.

“Impec,” he nodded, impressed, and thumped me happily on the shoulder.

He pulled out a packet of Gaulois cigarettes. I hated the things, and even more so since the airport, but it was a gesture of gratitude and solidarity, so I stoically took one. He and I smoked and talked tractors while Fi translated at breakneck speed. Yannick told us how he’d recently taken over his small farm with the intention of being as self-sufficient as possible. He’d been some sort of sales executive in Paris, but had had a breakdown, so chucked in the corporate lifestyle. He was here on his own, scraping a living from his land. As far as we could make out, he was living on eggs from his chickens, vegetables his neighbours were giving him and his share of the local hunting club’s trophies every weekend. He laughed as he explained that at 33, he was less than half the average age of the members of the hunting club. And since he’d joined, their success rate had increased exponentially. I’d liked to have invited him to join us for fishing, but since we knew the lake was empty, that seemed an equally empty invitation.

“If you’re free, drop by one mealtime,” I said. “We’ll give you something other than eggs and veg, but it won’t be as exotic as wild boar.”

“How about Friday night, then?” suggested Fi, first in English to me, then in French to Yannick. “We’ll have all our leftovers to get through. And we seem to have overcatered so there’ll be plenty.”

We parted well pleased with each other, arranging for Yann to come over around seven. Since I was going to have stick around to see Frank, then we might as well make a night of it.

We unpacked the car, but not very enthusiastically it had to be said. We put up the tent and had a late lunch. We were fairly apathetic until Fi reminded me that she owed me a favour. I was about to carry her into the bivvie for payback time, but then we both felt our lake checking duty looming over us like a black cloud.

“Shall we get the fish hunting out of the way first?” I suggested. “Yann’s not around and there’s no reason for Frank to turn up. It’s kind of hanging over our heads, isn’t it? Get it done, then we can have some fun?”

“God, yeah. Let’s do it,” agreed Fi.

“We’ll start with Daphne,” I suggested, “and, depending on results, I’ll give the Humminbird a go too.”

We rigged up Daphne as best we could. I tied a band round her neck, then Fi took her to the opposite side of the lake from me. I cast out right across the water. I messed up first time and landed in the water, but reeled in and tried again. It went against every instinct to be purposely trying to reach the far bank. Second time round I landed it right at Fi’s feet. I had to admit, I was a very accurate caster. I smiled smugly. Fi gave me a thumbs up. She put the hook into the band around Daphne’s neck and dropped the plastic duck into the water. I reeled in slowly, watching the reading on the receiver at the same time. The sensor picked nothing up. No real surprise. Fi trotted round to collect Daphne and then took her back.

We repeated the process a couple more times but still nothing. But then we reached a stretch of bank that was heavily treed. Fi slipped in between two of them but I got caught in the branches casting across. It took Fi ages to free it. And then, on the way across the lake, Daphne must have snagged on some weed or something we couldn’t see. The hook came loose as I tugged. There sat Daphne in the middle of the lake. I did a dramatic shrug across to Fi. This was going to be a much bigger deal than I thought. We might need till Friday night to complete the task. Good job we’d given up our plan to cut and run.

OK. How to get Daphne? I ran my hand through my hair as I began to think what we could do. But then, to my amazement, Fi pulled off her jacket, jumper and jeans, and hopped into the lake. While I was always delighted to see Fi with not very much on, this was risking pneumonia.

“Fi, don’t!” I called. “You’ll catch your death of cold!”

“Not me,” she yelled back. “I have antifreeze for blood. Besides, the water’s warm. Well, relatively.”

She swam strongly over to where Daphne was bobbing up and down.

“Yeah, there’s some weed growing up here,” she called. She freed Daphne and pushed her over the water towards me.

“Get out, you ninny!” I told her when she got to the bank. “Seriously Fi. This is madness!”

“No. I’ll carry on till we’re done,” announced Fi firmly. “I could do with a good swim and we need to check this lake out. You can warm me up when I’ve finished,” she grinned wickedly.

“Well, when you put it like that, OK!” I smiled in reply. I’d make sure I did a good job.

And so for the next half hour, Fi swam up and down the lake while I watched the receiver, but I did keep half an eye on that lovely bum that kept breaking the water’s surface. But fishwise - nothing. Not one single fishy shape came up on the screen. Julian was onto something.

I helped her out of the water. She was shivering, and she was covered in fine silt.

“You’re a hero,” I smiled, wrapping a towel around her. “Didn’t pick up a thing. Julian isn’t quite as paranoid as I thought he was. Now. Hot shower for you.”

“You coming?” she asked.

“Did you even need to ask that question? It’s obvious your back needs scrubbing,” I smirked.

We kissed and hurried to the shower block, where the hurrying stopped at once. It was a good three quarters of an hour before we emerged, looking extremely pleased with ourselves. I’d been more than compensated for going along with her idea of talking to Yannick, and judging by Fi’s rosy cheeks, I hadn’t scrimped on my warming her up promise.

Over supper I reviewed our week so far. We’d put the fish back at Bellevue and had some good fishing. Then we’d come here, been creeped out by Frank but made a friend in Yannick and confirmed the lake was empty. And we’d had plenty of truly amazing sex every day. So far, pretty damned good. But now we were venturing into murkier territory with me posing as a potential buyer of dodgy carp and meeting up with Frank and his shady colleagues. I felt peeved about doing Julian’s dirty work for him. Sod it, what he ever done for me? But in for a penny, in for a pound. We’d come this far, we might as well keep going. When you’re going through hell, keep going, Churchill advised. We hadn’t got to hell yet, but I had a nasty feeling we might reach it fairly soon.

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We both woke up about 6. I was starving. Not surprising really. I’d burnt off thousands of calories since my last meal, what with that mammoth session of energetic lovemaking with Fi. I think my rumbling stomach must have woken Fi up. She snuggled up to me. I put my right arm round her and turned on the bedside light with my left hand. I fumbled for the menu on the bedside shelf.

“Drat, breakfast doesn’t start for another hour,” I grumbled, squinting at it.

Fi yawned, then smiled wickedly at me. “I know how to pass the time!”

“Oh no, I don’t have the energy,” I protested feebly as she rolled onto me. But we both knew I did.

Fi ran her fingertips over my stubble.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” she suddenly said.

“And which yesterday is that?” I asked, grinning. “The yesterday in the shower, the yesterday on the floor, or the one on all fours? The several yesterdays in bed? They all seemed fine to me!”

“No, the yesterday when we first got here.” She was toying with my chest hair now. “I kind of freaked out in the bathroom. Sorry.” She planted a kiss on my nose.

“Fi, I was as nervous as hell too,” I confessed. “I really was.”

“Yeah?” Fi didn’t look like she believed me. “Nah. You were ice cool. Weren’t you?”

I shook my head. “I was terrified!”

“Well, you shouldn’t have been. You were phenomenal!” Another nose kiss.

“Yeah?” It was my turn to do incredulous.

“Yeah,” Fiona affirmed.

I grinned goofily, basking in self-glory. That didn’t happen too often.

“Um, was I …?” she began.

God, I hadn’t returned the compliment. My in-bed etiquette was rusty. All I needed to do was tell the truth. So I quickly did.

“Fi, this has been, well, still is, the most amazing night of my life.” It really had been and was. “You are everything I ever dreamed about. You are awesome.”

So we were respectively phenomenal and awesome several more times before breakfast.

We rolled up at Julian’s late morning.

“Goodness, that plane was late,” he observed drily, letting us in.

I realised I hadn’t been in touch with him since a text early on at the airport yesterday evening.

“Wasn’t it!” I smiled. “It turned north instead of south leaving Stansted and went the long way round to France. Didn’t get in till this morning.”

Julian rolled his eyes. He didn’t need to give us a knowing look because I had my arm round Fi and she was leaning happily against me. I’m pretty sure there was a post-coital, glowing aura around us.

“OK. Let’s get you loaded up for Bellevue then. I said you’d be there by midday.”

That burst my bubble a little. I didn’t want to do Julian’s dirty work any more. But we had to get that fish back where it belonged.

Julian had rigged up a large plastic tank in boot of the hired 4x4. It was half full of water, and firmly wedged between large blocks of wood. Several straps helped hold everything in place. I estimated that when the fish was in there, there’d be six or seven centimetres of water over his back when he was resting. That was a good margin. There was a battery attached to a motor that was already pumping oxygen into the water through plastic tubing. It was fairly noisy, but wouldn’t be heard when the engine was running.

“Pretty neat,” I nodded approvingly.

“I’ve got some tarpaulin to cover the tank up with, and if we pack the bivvies and rods and stuff all round, no one will guess what’s in there.”

I hoped he was right. France was starting to get prickly over carp smuggling. I could find myself in a lot of trouble.

“You’ll have lunch before you go, won’t you?” Penny had come out to join us. She raised an eyebrow when she saw me entangled with Fi.

“Yes please,” Fi and I said.

“No time,” Julian announced sourly. “You’re running late.”

“Of course there’s time,” Penny overruled him. “An extra half hour won’t make any difference. You’re being mean.”

He sighed, but Penny won. We had soup, salad and a lot of coffee, very quickly. Then Julian barged in and asked me to help him get the fish into the tank. He’d netted the small stock pond earlier that morning. I could see the common swimming slowly around in the poche, totally unconcerned. Hopefully he wouldn’t be too stressed out by his imminent journey back home. He’d survived the ride here, and the chances were that it hadn’t been in such luxurious conditions as Julian had created for him. Julian was in waders and jacket so he went in and scooped up the fish. I laid out the sling. Julian struggled with the huge fish to the bank and carefully, and gratefully, positioned him gently on it.

“Shame to see him go. He’s a smasher,” said Julian ruefully.

We fastened the ends of the sling, and carried the common between us to the 4x4. I took the full weight while Julian climbed into the vehicle, then passed him up, helping to support him. Julian got the sling into the tank, without too much water slopping out. Then he undid the sling and pulled it out from around the fish. The carp was momentarily spooked and thrashed hard for a second or two, but luckily calmed down before he hurt himself or emptied the tank. Julian folded the sling and laid it down next to the tank, then pulled the small square of tarpaulin over.

“Let’s load up,” he ordered.

The equipment was lined up along the wall outside the back door. I dutifully fetched it over and Julian stashed it around the hidden tank.

“I’ll shove this in too, just in case.” He pushed a roll of the plastic air tubing in. “I bought too much of the bloody stuff.”

He faffed around for a few more minutes.

“All done,” he said finally. “And now you really must go, for the carp’s sake.”

We said our goodbyes, and then Fi and I drove off. I took it very steady up the drive, and for the first twenty kilometres until we got to a major road. I made plenty of enemies out of other road-users during that distance. But tough. The fish’s well-being came first.

“Bit young for Julian, isn’t she, that Penny?” remarked Fi en route.

“She’s his niece,” I explained.

“And I’m a neurosurgeon,” scoffed Fi.

“What, seriously? You think they’re an item?” I was incredulous.

“I know so,” nodded Fi.

“Shit. Well, I can’t see it lasting long.” I told her about Penny groping me at the restaurant and trying to get into my room. “My God, if we had got up to something, he’d have killed me!”

“No he wouldn’t,” Fi contradicted me with a grin, “because I’d have killed you first! I’m the jealous type, so be warned!”

“Duly noted,” I acknowledged.

“Bloody bitch,” muttered Fi crossly and put a possessive hand on my thigh.

I smiled inwardly. It was kind of nice being fought over.

Fi navigated us flawlessly to the entrance to Bellevue. The fifty kilometres had taken us about an hour and a half. That was even longer than it would have taken my Fiat!

“Here goes,” I observed to Fi. “Time for CRAP.”

Fi raised an eyebrow. “CRAP?”

“Carp Repatriation And Prison,” I explained grimly.

I was uptight as hell. What had seemed so easy at the planning stage, now seemed an impossible nightmare.

“We can do this, baby,” Fi reassured me brightly. “Piece of cake.” But her smile looked forced.

We bumped down the long drive to Bellevue.

“Wow, it’s a super lake,” admired Fi.

She was right. It was much smaller than Julian’s, being around seven acres, but tree lined for the most part, and in a shallow valley. It was shaped like a figure eight, with a bulge at each end and a narrower central section. And it had an island. Everyone had islands in their lakes except me, it seemed.

As I swung to the left to pull in outside the small wooden cabin at the bottom of the track, a red, shiny 4x4 was parked there. Fi and I looked at each other. This was a complication.

“Damn,” I frowned. “I hadn’t expected company.”

“Can you turn the pump motor off?” Like me, Fi was worrying that Aidan would hear it from outside.

“Not without unpacking some stuff. I’ll leave the CD on loud. That might do it.”

I cranked up the volume on Sum41 before I turned off the engine and opened the door to climb out. A short, red-haired man came out of the cabin and waved cheerily. Fi and I climbed out and we all shook hands.

“Radley and Phoebe I assume?” smiled Aidan, as the shaking was going on.

“Phoebe?” hissed Fi quietly in my ear, very disapprovingly.

I assumed a look of innocence. I hadn’t told her about the false identities Julian and I had cooked up. I’d chosen Phoebe for her, rather lamely, since it meant I could still call her Fi. Listeners would misinterpret it as ‘Phee’ for Phoebe. But it was also a sensible choice. I’d be struggling enough to remember I was Radley.

“That’s us,” I confirmed. “Great lake. Tell me what I need to know to catch your fish.” I strode purposefully away from the car, and its hidden carp. “I’d say this would be a good spot.” I stood at the head of the lake, looking down towards the island. “Good feature to fish to.”

“Actually,” Aidan told me, “the far end does best. The lake is stream-fed from that end, so the water’s richer in nutrients. The fish prefer the other side of the island.”

“That makes sense,” I conceded.

“Any particular boilie flavours better than others?” asked Fi.

“Not really,” shrugged Aidan. “The fish aren’t pressured, so they’ll take whatever’s going. They like plenty of groundbait though. Maize and pellet work best.”

That was predictable enough.

“OK. Anything else?”

“How do you fancy catching a 60-odd pound common?” queried Aidan.

How Fi and I managed to keep straight faces, I don’t know, but thank God we did.

“I’d love to!” chirped Fi brightly, after only the tiniest pause. “That would be my PB.”

“Well, I’d love you to as well. I haven’t seen him for about a month now, and usually he came out at least once a week. He’s a real clockwork fish. He has his regular hunting grounds, and regular routines. And he loves halibut. He used to get pulled out between 11 and 12 in the morning on a halibut boilie without fail.”

That sounded like Fi’s fish all right.

“He’s gone quiet?” I asked.

“Yeah. No sign of him lately, like I said. Could just be it’s the end of the season and he’s slowing down for winter. But, you know, it would be good to see him come out again.”

“We’ll do our best to find him for you,” promised Fi.

Aidan walked us round the rest of the lake, motioning to a few snags at the top end, and talking about the lake generally. I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that either he was a very good liar, or he wasn’t involved in the fishnapping business at all. He struck me as a genuine guy, an enthusiastic angler and, well, plain nice.

We ended up by the car. Damn. It had one of those nanny-state settings that don’t let you leave the CD player on for too long after the engine has stopped. You could clearly hear a whirring noise of some sort of motor coming from the vehicle.

“Is your fan running?” frowned Aidan, noticing it, and cocking his head to listen to the engine.

“No, I don’t think so,” I said breezily, wishing he’d go.

“Air conditioning maybe?”

“Possibly,” I shrugged. “I might have left something turned on. Unfamiliar dashboard.”

Before I could stop him, Aidan had pulled open the driver’s door. Shit.

“No, seems to be coming from your luggage,” he observed.

Fi let out a loud giggle and put a hand over her mouth. We both looked at her, slightly alarmed.

“Uh-oh!” she chortled. “I think something’s knocked the switch on my vibrator!”

Aidan’s eyes bulged. “That’s, um, quite a motor on it,” he observed in some concern.

“I need a big motor, honey,” she winked.

It was my turn to start acting.

“Phee,” I sighed and rolled my eyes dramatically. “You said you weren’t going to bring any sex toys with you this time. You know I want to fish. I told you, no distractions.” I pulled a cross face at her.

Aidan looked at us incredulously, but definitely enviously.

Fi frowned and pouted. “But sweetie-pie, it’s our holiday. It’s meant to be fun. And you know you enjoy them as much as I do.”

I cleared my throat. Things might get out of hand in a moment. “Run along and start unpacking, angel.”

“I’ll help,” offered Aidan, still slightly dazed.

“No, no,” I said hastily. “Thanks but no need. Phee likes to organise everything. Has to be done exactly so, you know what women are like.”

“Not women like Phoebe,” Aidan murmured, under his breath.

We both watched Fi for a moment as she sashayed off to undo the boot.

“Well. I’ll be off, then,” announced Aidan.

Finally.

“You’ve got my phone number. Give me a ring if you need anything. I’m not far away, only about two kilometres. I’ll call by definitely before Wednesday lunchtime, when you leave. Shame you can’t stay longer.”

“Well, I fancied taking in a couple of lakes,” I smiled apologetically. “Testing them out. I’ll be back here for longer next time, that’s for certain, and earlier in the season too.”

“Where are you going on to?” Aidan asked.

I was surprised he didn’t know, as it was his brother’s lakes. I’d have thought they’d talk about their bookings to each other.

“Malval,” I informed him.

Aidan’s face clouded.

“Oh, not a good lake then?” I said.

“The lake’s fine, the management’s lousy,” he scowled.

“There’s a family connection, isn’t there?” I knew damn well there was, but I needed to probe. “I noticed the same surname, Hodgkiss.”

“My brother Frank runs Malval,” said Aidan bitterly. “We don’t get on.”

Now that was news. Julian’s photos showing them smiling together were only a couple of months old. What had happened? Something to do with the fish? Or, I shuddered as the thought suddenly occurred to me, something to do with Clive? No. His death had been an accident.

“I’m sorry. I’m very close to my brother.” I wasn’t sure why I felt compelled to add that.

“We were close. Once.” Aidan sighed. “Anyway. I must get on. Tight lines.”

“Thanks. Bye.”

Aidan strode off, looking rattled at having to talk about his brother. Fi was faffing around at the back of the 4x4. She waved to Aidan who managed a thin smile back.

Once his car was out of sight up the drive, she scuttled up to me.

“I heard all that,” she exclaimed. “So him and Frank have fallen out?”

But I thought of a far more interesting question. I pulled her close to me and kissed her nose.

“You haven’t really brought a vibrator with you, have you? Any truth in your lie? Oh, and good thinking, by the way. I’d gone completely blank.”

“I noticed. And no. Sorry!”

I pulled a sad face. Fi laughed. “Come on. Let’s get that poor fish back home.”

Glancing over our shoulders every now and again, to make sure Aidan didn’t suddenly reappear, we pulled out the bivvie, sleeping bags, bedchairs, bait boxes, bags of food and the other stuff that was packed around the tank. I left it covered with the tarp for now. I hit the motor switch and a blessed silence fell. Or was it a bit too silent. Shouldn’t there be a bit of sloshing coming from the tank? Fi had the same thought. Our eyes met in panic.

“Quick, see if he’s all right,” urged Fi.

I tugged the tarpaulin off and prised off the lid from the tank. Then I smiled. Looking up at me was the huge carp, seemingly not the slightest bit bothered by his recent ordeal. I gave Fi a thumbs-up.

“Phew!” She wiped her hand across her brow in an exaggerated way.

“I’ll get into waders and then get him into the water,” I said.

“I’ll help.”

We kitted ourselves out quickly. I assembled a couple of rods too and leaned them on the bank. I felt desperately guilty and was sure Aidan was going to appear out of the blue to check up on us. If he found us in waders with a wet carp sling, he’d be a mite suspicious if there was no sign that we’d been fishing. While Fi checked up the drive for the hundredth time, I dug out the sling. The common livened up considerably when I tried to get that round him in the tank. He was quite happy where he was. But I persisted, getting well splashed, and eventually had him safely ensconced. Fi laid our carp mats out in the back of the 4x4. I was grateful for that. I had a soft spot to rest him on briefly after hauling him out of the tank, and before I heaved him to the lake. Belatedly I realised that I should have backed up to the lake’s edge, or at the very least driven as close as I could. I had twenty metres to lug him. But I made it. I lowered the sling into the lake. Fi steadied it while I hopped in and released the stunning fish into the water. He shot off like a scalded cat. Maybe he knew he was back home.

“Mission accomplished,” grinned Fi, as clearly relieved as I was. “Maybe I’ll stop feeling so guilty now.”

“Me too,” I agreed. “I’m not cut out to be a criminal.”

I climbed out of the lake and sat on the bank. Fi sat beside me. I put my arm round her.

“Been quite an exciting twenty-four hours, hasn’t it?” I remarked.

She laid her head on my shoulder. “I’d say.”

“Which bit was the most exciting?” I wanted to know.

“The bit we’ll re-enact just as soon as we get the bivvie up,” she smiled. “If I can wait that long, that is …”

With that she turned and pushed me firmly onto my back. Then she rolled on top of me and did her tiger kissing thing again. I began to share her feeling that putting the tent up was going to take way too long. But the noise of an engine had us both up on our feet in seconds. It wasn’t Aidan, but a hang-glider in the not too far distance. It was enough to shake us though.

“Bivvie,” I said decisively. “Then sex. Then fishing.”

Fi and I grinned happily at each other.

“Do we fit food in somewhere?” she asked.

“After more sex and before more fishing,” I told her.

“This is going to be an awesome holiday,” she sighed contentedly. We had a quick smooch and then obediently followed the agenda we’d just set ourselves, with the exception of adding ‘yet more sex’ after the ‘more fishing’ bit of it.

“So,” said Fi eventually. “What do you think is going on with Aidan and his brother?”

I shrugged. “I can only guess. I think they were in this discrediting a fishery thing together to start with, but maybe Aidan got cold feet about it. He had a blazing row with Frank about it. Rift time?”

Fi nodded. “Yeah. But I find it hard to think of Aidan as a criminal at all. He seems genuinely OK.”

I had to agree. “Maybe he didn’t even know about the fishery thing.” I sighed. It was getting complicated. That, or I was too trusting of everyone.

We were both quiet for a while. Then Fi yawned loudly.

“Come on, bed,” I ordered. “Bring your rods in and let’s get a full night’s sleep tonight.” I began to reel mine in.

“A full night?” Fi raised an eyebrow.

“OK. Fairly full will do,” I conceded.

“That’s better,” she smiled.

Holy cow! I’d certainly met my match with Fi. Thank God.

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I hurried into the terminal building and joined the small crowd milling around outside the arrivals lounge. There was a grumpy, resigned atmosphere. I glanced up at the board. My heart sank. The plane was going to be three hours late. How the hell had they managed that? The weather was good, no Icelandic volcanoes were erupting, and to all intents and purposes everything was perfectly normal. Had they mislaid a plane or a pilot or something? What else could make a plane that late? Damn. It would be after midnight when Fi got in, and after two when we got back to Julian’s. I was dog tired after a bad night last night and a physically exhausting day. But worst of all, what the hell was I supposed to do for three hours? That was, well, three hours. Ages.

The shop was open so I moseyed over. I needed cigarettes. There wasn’t a vast choice, so I went for some Gaulois. There were a few English language papers and magazines, including a couple of fishing ones I hadn’t read. So I forked out well over the odds for those and went back out to smoke and read in the 4x4. An hour later I was bored. The contents of the mags had been predictable and uninspiring and the fags were foul. I passed the next forty-five minutes wandering around the car park and down the nearest road, then decided to go in for a coffee. But of course the café was shut now, so I got a coke from a machine. One more hour to go. I lent my head back against the wall behind me and sighed. And dozed. That took care of another half hour so things weren’t too bleak now. I paced around agitatedly for fifteen minutes, went outside for a smoke but then remembered that a) the fags were awful and b) Fi didn’t like me smoking, so she wouldn’t be that impressed if I greeted her reeking of tobacco smoke. I wanted nicotine but I wanted to make a good impression on Fi a lot more. So I carried on pacing.

And then at last, at long last, the Murphy Air plane touched down. Thank God. All of us who’d been gloomily waiting around perked up at the prospect of imminently welcoming our loved ones. But it was another ten long minutes before the first passengers appeared. They looked tired and jaded but raised weary smiles as they were greeted. Hugs, kisses, and then they left. Where was Fi? I fidgeted impatiently. Every time the doors swished open, I hoped it would be her walking through. But there was an endless procession of other people.

Then suddenly, there she was. I could have sworn the place seemed brighter. She appeared at the doors, looking fresh and glowing. She was surrounded by smartly dressed French women, yet, in jeans and my baggy jumper, she made them look dowdy. She saw me and her face lit up with one of her amazing smiles. She was simply, stunningly, beautiful. And as I knew by now, hers wasn’t skin-deep. It went to her soul.

That was my road to Damascus moment. Standing there in the unromantic, harshly lit, functional surroundings of the airport, I realised just how much I loved this incredible human being. There was no future for me without her. I wanted her in my life for ever. I couldn’t be without her. She was walking quickly towards me, still smiling. But I don’t think I was as I strode towards her. I was too overwhelmed by my feelings. Her smile faltered slightly but only for a second, because after that second I had my arms round her and I was holding her as tightly as I could. And I was kissing her like I’d wanted to kiss her for a long, long time. She was momentarily surprised and tense, but then I felt her relax and she leant into me. Her mouth softened and our tongues touched.

Then she drew slightly back from me, and looked at me. I couldn’t read her expression. Oh shit. I’d blown it. I’d come on way too strong. But she raised her left hand and stroked my cheek. We gazed at each other. Slowly she slid her hand round the back of my head and gently pulled my face towards hers. Our foreheads touched.

“Have you any idea how long I have waited for you to kiss me like that?” she asked softly.

So, while she’d wanted me, I’d wanted her, but neither of us had done a damn thing about it. What a pair of idiots!

“No more waiting now,” I smiled, and we carried on where we’d left off.

Eventually I noticed that it had got quiet. The magazine shop had turned its lights off, as had the café. The airport was closing up for the night.

“Time we left, I think,” observed Fi.

I took her bag and we walked, hand in hand, to the 4x4.

“Oooh, swish machine,” admired Fi. “Nice colour.”

“Yeah, it’s OK,” I nodded. “Gets through a lot of fuel though.”

I walked round to open the boot to put her bag in.

“Wow, and it’s roomy. Plenty of space to make out in there!”

Phew. My temperature went up a couple of degrees. My mouth went dry.

“I think we can find somewhere a bit classier than the car.” I tried to sound calm. “How about we, um, book ourselves into a hotel for tonight?”

“Sounds perfect,” Fi smiled, running her hand lightly across my butt.

I looked around. Where the hell was the nearest hotel? It had better be bloody close! Then I saw a green Campanile sign shining through the night, just the other side of an industrial estate. That chain of hotels was OK. Not the place kind of place you’d chose for your honeymoon, but spot on for a dirty weekend. Or night.

“I see one,” I told Fi, pulling her close for a long, smoochy kiss.

“OK, let’s go,” she said, when we surfaced.

Oh boy. My heart was thudding as I climbed into the driving seat. I was in a euphoric state of a mixture of nervousness and excitement and straightforward lust. Fi looked very calm next to me, smiling quietly.

I shot out of the airport carpark and took a wild guess at how to get to the hotel. I messed it up and we ended up flying past it, along a ringroad with no exit.

“Shit,” I muttered crossly.

“It’s OK, Marcus,” laughed Fi. “We’ll get there soon enough. Look, there’s a roundabout coming up. Hang a right and I think I can see how to reach the hotel.”

Sure enough, there was a Campanile sign at the roundabout. We hurtled down the small road leading to it, well above the speed limit.

“I hope you’re not always in such a rush,” teased Fi, as I pulled into a parking place in front of the hotel. “Some things are better done slowly.”

Oh God. My erection was straining uncomfortably against the zip of my jeans as I climbed out of the 4x4 and got Fi’s bag out for her. I walked as normally as I could to the door. Since it was after 11, the reception was closed and we had to make the room booking through the machine there. Once it had cleared my credit card, the front door clicked open, and armed with the printout of the code for our room, we hurried up the stairs to it.

I punched the code in, but the door didn’t open. I tried again. Still no luck. The red light shone firmly at me from the locking mechanism.

“Fuck,” I swore.

“I’ll try,” soothed Fi. She took her arm from round my waist, and pressed the keys smartly. There was a small click, and the green light came home. I bashed the door open in triumph.

Fi flipped the lightswitch.

“Nice room,” she said appreciatively.

Was it? I hardly cared, but I glanced round. Double bed, couple of chairs, dressing table sort of thing with a mirror, and a bathroom off to one side.

I pushed Fi’s bag into the alcove just inside the doorway, then took my jacket off. I had a slight moment of panic. How should I handle this? I wanted to throw her onto the bed and ravage her right here and now, but that was a bit unsubtle. I was out of practice at seducing. I’d had too many Chantelle experiences lately. They weren’t subtle at all.

I turned to smile at Fi. She smiled back, but a bit less confidently than earlier. She slipped her coat off and I kissed her. I began to run my hands down her back, but she stepped away.

“I just need to nip to the loo,” she explained.

She darted into the bathroom. I took the opportunity to retrieve the pack of condoms from my jacket pocket and give my armpits a quick sniff. I smelt OK. I pulled off my jumper and undid a few buttons on my shirt to make undressing easier when the time came. For the same reason I took my belt off, then my socks and shoes. I turned back the quilt on the bed and perched on the edge, waiting for Fi, planning what to do and when.

Five minutes crept by, and another five. I was pacing up and down by now. No-one took that long on the loo. Something was up.

I lurked outside the bathroom door a few more minutes, but I couldn’t wait any longer.

“Fi, can I come in? Please?” I called quietly.

There was no reply. I took a deep breath and slowly pushed the door open. Fi was standing, butt naked, facing the mirror over the sink, which was opposite the door. She seemed to be trembling and I was sure I saw tears in her eyes in the reflection. Oh hell, what had gone wrong? Had she suddenly realised she’d made a hideous mistake. Please no, no, no. Anything but that.

She looked up and saw me watching her in the mirror.

“Fi, baby, what’s up?”

She turned slowly round. Oh God. What a sight. I’d had that glimpse of her in the shower at Julian’s, and her clothes generally left little to the imagination, but this was all of her now. She was completely and utterly beautiful. Perfect. Please let her still want me, I prayed. Not to have her now would kill me.

I tried to lighten things up.

“Wow!” I smiled.

“Is that ‘wow’ in a good way or ‘wow’ in a bad way?” Fi gushed tearfully. She was in a complete tiz. “Because, you know, people say ‘wow, that was a ghastly accident’ or ‘wow, that’s the nastiest meal I’ve ever had’ or … or…” She stopped to wipe her eyes.

So she was even more nervous than I was! My little feisty Fi wasn’t so fearless after all.

“It’s ‘wow’ in the most incredibly, amazing, stunning way,” I reassured her.

I walked over to her and tilted her face up and kissed her gently. Then I put my hands on her shoulders and turned her to face the mirror. I moved behind her. I watched her anxious eyes in the mirror. I suddenly felt more confident, more powerful, in control. That was what she seemed to need from me at the moment.

“Look at yourself,” I told her.

We looked in the mirror together.

“Marcus, I’m all out of proportion,” she burst out, distraught. “My boobs are too big and my legs are too thin and I’ve got too many freckles and I … I… want to be beautiful for you!”

I was shocked. Her self-esteem must have been trampled on in the past. She was genuinely unsure of herself.

“You are beautiful,” I said, kissing her neck. She sighed and leaned back against me. “Beyond beautiful. Christ, you’re just unbelievable! Oh Fi!”

My hands left her shoulders and found her amazing breasts. They were warm and soft and heavy. I nearly had a meltdown. Fi gasped as I touched them. I groaned quietly with desire. I kissed her hair and neck again, but I kept watching her in the mirror as I continued to fondle her. Then she reached up and pulled my right hand down her body, to exactly where I was wanting it to go. She was warm, silky, moist and welcoming. It was the moment.

“Let’s do this, Fi,” I whispered. “It’s going to be so bloody good.”

She beamed up at me, a sex goddess again. We bundled clumsily out into the bedroom, unable to stop touching each other now. We fell onto the bed, Fi pulling off my shirt and shoving my jeans and boxers down, and me kissing her, well, everywhere. And then I rolled onto her, my hands and tongue exploring, searching.

It was all a bit chaotic to start with, we weren’t in synch, and I was really pent up, but we soon tuned in and things just got better and better. We had silly, giggly, soapy sex in the shower, and slow, serious, smoochy sex in bed. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, except, maybe, that sort of stuff isn’t allowed in heaven.

About three o’clock we snuggled up to sleep and Fi was soon gone. But I couldn’t sleep. I was ecstatic. Fi was more adventurous and imaginative than I’d dreamed any woman could be, even in some of my wilder fantasies, and she’d blown my mind tonight. Holy shit! I lay still for as long as I could but I was getting fidgety and I didn’t want to disturb Fi. I crept out of bed and headed for the mini bar. I needed a drink and I needed a smoke. It was that kind of night. I intended to indulge all my vices.

There was a small bottle of a Scottish malt whiskey, fiendishly expensive according to the price list, but what the hell. I had a couple of cigarettes left so I opened the window a crack and leant out to light up, hoping, belatedly, that there wasn’t a smoke alarm in the room. I was in luck. I puffed away peacefully. Bliss.

About 4 o’clock Fi woke up, while I was having my second cigarette. I watched her moving sleepily. She stretched out an arm and felt that I was gone. For a moment she seemed confused, then she sat bolt upright in alarm.

“Marcus?” she called, clear panic in her voice.

“Here babe, just here,” I soothed.

Fiona clicked on the bedside light. We both blinked in the sudden brightness. She looked at me, fag in one hand and almost empty whiskey bottle in the other.

“Hey, Mr Artificial Stimulants,” she said lightly, getting up. “There you are!” There was real relief in her voice. She came over. I chugged down the last of the whiskey, and put my arms round her. I kissed her.

“Of course I’m here,” I smiled. “As if I’d walk out on you!”

“Yeah, well someone did once when we were in a hotel,” Fi sighed. It was obviously a painful memory. “He took my clothes, my shoes, my handbag - everything. It was a complete nightmare. The police got involved and …” She trailed off and shuddered at the memory.

Fi certainly hadn’t had much luck with her men in the past. I was intrigued but it wasn’t the time to probe. Well, not for information.

Then she looked at me searchingly.

“Everything is OK, isn’t it?” The nervous Fi was back. “I mean, me in bed over there, and you smoking and drinking over here. Um, maybe that isn’t a good thing?”

“No, no, no!” I cried in horror. I pulled her closer. “No, babe, it’s a totally, wonderful, good thing. I couldn’t sleep – I’m just blown away at the moment. And being feeble, I needed a drink and a smoke. I was thinking.”

“What were you thinking about?” she asked.

“Sex mainly,” I confessed.

Fi laughed.

“But a bit of work snuck in,” I added. I sighed. I hated thinking about work but I always did.

“I could take your mind off things,” Fi offered, tiptoeing her fingers down my groin.

“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed, doing the same to her.

“Back to bed then?” she asked.

“And quickly!” I grinned, hurrying her over and pulling her onto the bed with me.

I got busy with her breasts.

“32 E,” I smiled, fondling them. “32 Enticing. 32 Exciting. 32 Enormous. 32 Erotic …”

“Hey!” she interrupted. “How do you know my bust size?”

Oops.

“I guessed?” I hazarded.

“No way. Blokes are useless at guessing bust size. Now, I want the truth.” She gave me a hard look.

“Well, um, OK,” I admitted. “Some of the lads had a book going during the fishing trip on your upper vital statistics.”

“What!” Fi sat up and glared at me. “Bloody cheek! And when you say ‘some’ of the lads …”

“All right, all of us did,” I confessed, sitting up too.

“And what was your money on?”

“38D.”

Fi looked at me in horror. “38D? 38? Me?”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m useless,” I sighed, palms up.

“How exactly did you lot find out what my bust size is, then?” she wanted to know.

“Derek snuck in your bivvie when you were off for one of your walks,” I told her. “We reckoned you’d have a spare bra in your bag. Which you did.”

“And I suppose the rest of you stood around giggling while he rummaged through my stuff. And then, of course, you passed my bra round, holding it up against your chests and sniggering. Am I right?” She had her arms folded now and looked annoyed. The prospects of more glorious sex seemed to be fading fast.

I sighed again. “You’re right.”

Fi frowned. Then she suddenly laughed. Thank God!

“You’re a sad human being!” she teased me, pulling me down with her as she lay back on the bed.

“Not any more!” I grinned, getting back to work, now that I was forgiven. “I’m happy, happy, happy. 32 Exhilerating. 32 …”

“Oh shut up and screw me,” she told me.

So I did.

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“OK. What are you doing?”

It was six o’clock on Thursday morning. I had the decoy duck and a selection of electrical items spread on the table in front of me.

I looked up at Fi. She was smiling at me, intrigued. She looked cosy and very huggable in a pair of lavender striped pyjamas and a familiar looking baggy grey jumper.

“Isn’t that my jumper?” I asked.

“Sorry. You left it in the shop on Tuesday. I brought it over to give back to you, but I sort of started wearing it instead. It’s lovely and warm. I’ll wash it for you today.”

“It’s OK. It looks better on you than me,” I acknowledged. I was secretly chuffed she was pinching my clothes. That had to be a good sign. “Anyway, why are you up so early?”

“Starting to get nervous about tomorrow, and excited about our France trip,” she admitted.

How excited, I couldn’t help wondering.

“You’ll ace it tomorrow, Fi,” I smiled.

She pulled a face. “I don’t know. I don’t have many qualifications. You need to be brainy to work in a bookshop probably.”

“Nonsense. They’ll love you.”

“We’ll see. Anyway, you haven’t told me what you’re up to.” Fi put the kettle on and then perched on the chair next to me.

“Well, I am turning this duck into a fish finder!” I announced. “I told you I had a cunning plan.”

“Yup, that’s cunning,” she nodded. “But why?”

“Malval doesn’t allow baitboats, which, following Rob’s lead, would be the obvious device to shove a fishfinder in,” I explained. “I need to get an accurate idea of how much stock is in that lake for Julian. So, it occurred to me to use a decoy duck.”

“Awesome idea!”

“It came to me a bit late, though. I’m not sure I’ll get it finished. It’s going to be harder than I thought.” In fact, that was an understatement. I was going to have to cut holes in the duck, which might well mean it would become a sinking duck, rather than a sitting one.

“I’m free this morning so I can run the shop and café for you. You have to get Daphne done.”

“Daphne?”

“The duck of course,” she grinned.

“Daphne Duck it is,” I confirmed.

“Will you get it through airport security, though? Won’t they be suspicious of a duck with wires in?”

I looked at Fi in admiration.

“Drat. I never thought of that. Good job one of us is a genius!”

“Don’t be silly,” Fi shrugged the praise off. “It’s just airlines are pretty paranoid these days.”

“True. OK.” I sighed. It had been a brilliant plan, though, hadn’t it? “I’ll just pack the duck and my fish finder. I can attach the sensor onto Daphne at Julian’s. I’ll have to pull it around on a length of line instead of driving it around. The lake’s about four acres so it’s not too huge. It’ll be doable.”

“Do you have one of those rod end fishfinders?” asked Fi.

“Yeah, I’ve got a Humminbird RF35. It’s really smart – the receiver is a watch. The editor of Angling Talk gave it to me to try out and review for the mag a while ago. It’s good, and I’ll bring it, but there’s always the worry that casting it in scares away the fish from where you are. If I use that and Daphne then we should get an OK idea of what stock levels are like.” I yawned. “Darn! I got up early for nothing.”

“Not for nothing,” Fi contradicted me. “I’ll make you some pain perdu as a treat.”

“Sounds good. What is it?”

“Delicious!”

I cleared the table and put the coffee on while Fi did things with slices of bread, milk, eggs and sugar. Soon we were sitting down to a very French breakfast.

“It’s French toast,” Fi explained. “The French call it ‘lost bread’ cos it’s a way of using up spoilt, or lost, bread. You dip it in milk and eggs mixed together with anything else you’ve got lying around pretty much.”

“Well, it’s great Fi,” I said appreciatively.

“De rien.” She blushed happily.

We talked and ate and talked and ate. I told her about the meal with Tony, and she told me that she was seriously starting to think about setting up her own business. She made two more batches of French toast and I made a lot more coffee. And we talked some more. We both jumped when there was a bash at the door. It was Graham. It was eight o’clock and I hadn’t unlocked the lodge. He grinned knowingly, seeing us both in our pyjamas, as I opened the door to give him the key. He also recognised my sweater on Fi.

“Clothes borrowing stage, eh?” he whispered to me. “Getting serious.”

“Go away,” I instructed, shutting the door firmly in his face.

Graham’s visit spurred us into action. Fi left the house to carry on varnishing and I attempted to get everything organised for going away, with my usual lack of success. But Graham would be fine, and Adam would be appearing from time to time to do, well, whatever he actually did do.

I left taxi money for Fi on the kitchen table, and then loaded my suitcase, which contained as many warm waterproof clothes as I could fit around Daphne, the fish finder and my tackle box, into the car. We would be borrowing all our fishing and camping equipment off Julian so we could travel relatively light. I went to find Fi, who was still busy. She was a hard worker, that was for sure.

“I’m off then,” I announced. “Good luck tomorrow. And I’ll see you at Limoges on Saturday night.”

“Great. I’m looking forward to our week of fishing skulduggery.” She smiled. “Safe journey.”

“You too.”

Our eyes locked. I hesitated. I suddenly didn’t want to go. But I had to. I wanted to hug her but she was all varnishy. Should I kiss her? Would that be OK? I stood there dithering. But before I could decide, she’d stretched up and kissed me very lightly on the lips. Then with a wink she turned away and got on with her work.

Grinning like a moron I floated back to the car. What had that kiss been about? Was it just a goodbye kiss? Was it a hint of what was to come next week? God, I hoped so. A frisson of excitement tingled through me.

The journey was uneventful. As an unattached male, I was plonked in a seat next to the emergency exit over the wings. Airlines harboured the optimistic idea that we lone travellers would selflessly and nobly help our fellow passengers in a crisis. Given the choice, I preferred to travel at the back of the plane. I’d read somewhere that you were more likely to survive in a crash if you sat there. OK, by the slimmest of margins, but that was good enough for me. I was a pretty nervous flyer.

And, still being an unattached male when we disembarked, I was top of the list for stop and search. I took great interest in my finger nails when Daphne was unpacked. The man searching my case didn’t seem surprised. I guess he’d seen it all before, and then some. He checked the fishfinder out thoroughly, spread my other belongings all over the counter – allowing me to notice that I’d forgotten to pack the pile of clean undies that I’d put out ready – and then wished me a nice holiday. I was glad I’d thought to post the microchips, scanner and gun to Julian rather than bring those through. They might have proved tricky.

I stuffed everything back in my case, and then collected the 4x4. It was a classy vehicle. My suitcase looked lost in the back. But by the time we set off for Bellevue from Julian’s, though, it would be all filled, what with a large tank full of large fish as well as cold weather camping gear. My heart sank slightly as I thought about the main goal of this trip. I wasn’t good at being a criminal.

I got to Julian’s about half past ten. He offered half-heartedly to feed me, but it was too late to eat and anyway, a couple of whiskey and gingers were all I really wanted. Then I turned in. Tomorrow was going to be a heavy day.

Julian was off early to collect a niece of his, Penny, from the train station. She was coming to stay for a few days and would be helping out with the chipping side of things. She’d be useful. We needed all the pairs of hands we could get.

I got up and had breakfast around eight. Blanchard’s team arrived shortly before nine. I was ready in a borrowed wetsuit from Julian by then. I’d be spending a good bit of time in the water today. The water shouldn’t be too cold and at least the sun was shining, if weakly.

Julian and Penny rolled up as Blanchard’s lads were unloading the net from the truck they’d come in. I hadn’t met Penny before. In fact, Julian had never mentioned her over all the years I’d known him. She was a stunner. Tall, slender, long black hair, curves in the right places. She looked good, and she knew it. She stood around looking bored while all the blokes pitched in with the netting. First up we had to lift the enormous length of net onto the rickety looking rowing boat. Then Blanchard’s boys set off round the perimeter of the lake in it, incredibly low in the water, letting out the net behind them. Even with the level dropped and the surface area reduced, the net barely made it all the way round.

Then the really hard work began. Slowly and painfully we hauled the netting towards the dam wall end of the lake. There was a winding mechanism on the back of the Blanchard’s truck, but it was better for the fish to do the operation by hand because that way was slower and more sensitive. Gradually the net grew smaller. Bobbing behind it was the poche or pocket, where all the lake fish would end up as they found themselves gradually squeezed out of the larger net into there. After about an hour of pulling, we had the poche in front of us. I took a break to thaw my hands out, have a quick smoke and get ready for chipping. Blanchard’s crew got back in, and staked the poche out around its perimeter with six or seven metal poles to hold it steady.

Then it was time to chip. Henri, in the water, would grab a fish and pass it to Sylvain who carried it over to me. I had the gun preloaded with a chip, the details of which the sulking Penny had noted on the sheets on her clipboard. Julian held the fish steady while I shot the chip into it, carefully following the training I’d had with Harvey. I was a bit slow and dithery at first, but after I’d done a few fish, my confidence soared and we worked fairly steadily. I only knocked one scale off a particularly feisty mirror, so I felt very pleased with myself overall.

We took a quick break for lunch, and then got going again. Another hour and a half and all the fish were done. We left Fi’s rogue common with the tell-tale tail till last. It was good to see him again, despite the fact he was leading me into a life of crime. He was a fantastic fish. The Blanchard lads whisked him off to Julian’s stockpond near the house. The first part of our mission was accomplished.

Penny began to thaw out in the afternoon. Possibly it was due to the several glasses of wine she’d knocked back with the French lads over the buffet. I’d stuck to water as I didn’t want to damage any fish with unsteady hands. Or chip myself by mistake. Penny was quite witty, and we chatted away happily enough. I noticed Julian kept a close eye on her. He didn’t seem to trust one or other of us.

She disappeared once the chipping was finished, but I stuck around to help the lads bring the net in. Then we talked, smoked and joked until it was late afternoon and I began to shiver after being damp for most of the day. Blanchard’s team headed home and I went up to the house with Julian. I showered and changed, then made myself coffee in the kitchen. Julian was busy on his website, getting the photos up he’d taken during the netting and chipping. Penny was watching TV. I watched with her for a while and checked for texts on my phone, hoping there wasn’t one along the lines of ‘Fishery destroyed by earthquake’ from Graham, or ‘You’re fired’ from Adam, or ‘I’m running off with Andy and Derek’ from Fi. There were a couple from her, happily not involving eloping. ‘Finished fence J’ was the first and ‘Found pile of yr undies on kitch table – do u wnt me 2 bring them?’. Oops, that was embarrassing, but luckily I’d treated myself to new underwear when Fi moved in and thrown out all the old stuff that was long overdue being put out of its misery. I figured we’d come across each other’s washing as housemates and I didn’t want her cringing. I texted back saying yes please re the smalls and thanks for doing the fence. She didn’t text back. I sent one more wishing her luck for the interview, and then it was time to eat.

Julian had booked a table at a rather nice local restaurant as a ‘thank you’ for me. I appreciated good food so it was a nice gesture. But Penny put a bit of a damper on things. She was rather whiny about the menu, and frankly pretty rude to her uncle on several occasions. But worse was to come. I was sitting next to her at our table. She was across from Julian. A couple of times during the entrée I’d thought I’d bumped my leg against a table leg, and told myself not to be so clumsy. And then I felt something on my foot. It was probably the small, ratty dog that had come into the restaurant with the only other diners there tonight. I managed to restrain myself from kicking it.

But it soon became clear what was really going on. I was midway through taking a generous sip of the excellent St Emilion wine Julian had ordered for us, when something clamped itself hard on my right thigh, only inches from my groin. It was Penny’s hand. I gasped in shock, which of course meant I choked, and I splattered the table cloth and Julian with a fine rain of red wine. I coughed till I went bright red and could hardly breathe. Penny whacked me cheerily on the back, and Julian poured out two glasses of water for me. I gulped them both down gratefully.

I glared at Penny when at last I was back under control.

“Sorry, Jules,” I croaked. “Went down the wrong way.”

He looked slightly pained. “Not a problem, Marcus,” he fibbed, dabbing his now-spotty yellow silk tie. Penny was grinning.

I rapidly became a nervous wreck as Penny’s hand found its way onto my leg several more times during the meal. Each time I removed it firmly. I couldn’t wait for the beautiful meal to end.

At last Julian got up to pay. Once he was out of the room, Penny laughed and ran her hand down my arm.

“Cut it out, Penny,” I growled. “I made a right bloody fool of myself with the wine.”

“Oh, don’t be so grumpy,” she wheedled. Her hand was back on my thigh, sliding upwards fast.

“Stop … it.” I knocked her hand off crossly. “I’m not interested.”

And I wasn’t. Pre-Fi, well, yes, I might have been. She was pretty and very curvy which made you ignore the moodiness aspect of her. Once I would have been quite happy for a quick, no-strings romp with a girl like her. But not any more.

“Course you are. You’re a handsome guy. I’m a good looking girl. We both want what the other’s got. How about we get together tonight once the old codger’s asleep?”

“No thank you,” I replied icily.

“Go on,” she coaxed.

“I’m … I’m too old for you,” I protested.

“Nonsense. I’ve been with a guy who was 57,” she purred.

“Well, in that case I’m too young for you,” I riposted.

“I don’t worry about age limits,” she smirked.

“I do, and I’m not interested, OK?”

“Whatever,” she shrugged. But she was still smirking. I wasn’t out of the woods yet.

Julian came back in and I was safe, for the time being.

We drove home and had nightcaps before we all turned in around midnight. I was in the one upstairs bedroom and it didn’t have a lock on the door. I felt dangerously vulnerable. Luckily there was a chair in the room. I dragged that over to the door and wedged it under the handle. Then I went to bed.

About ten minutes later, I heard a scuffling outside. There was a gentle knock on the door. I ignored it. Another knock and a whispered ‘Marcus’. Then the handle wiggled a little. The chair held firm. The handled wiggled for a fair while longer. Then there was an angry hiss of ‘fuck you’ and Penny stalked off. I heaved a sigh of relief, and then thought about sex. It had been quite a fortnight. I’d had two women after my body, but because of Fi I’d fought them both off. If me and Fi didn’t work out, I would definitely feel hard done by. No. It was going to work. Wasn’t it? I finally drifted off to sleep, full of self-doubt and frustration.

I was still flat out when Julian thudded on my door around nine the next morning. I woke slowly and crossly, and pulled the sheets over my slightly sore head, muttering rude things about my host. But Julian kept bashing the door.

“Go away!” I croaked optimistically.

“Come on Marcus, lazy git!”

And with that he tried to open the door. He couldn’t, of course. The chair kept it shut. Oh shit. Now he’d want to know the story behind that.

Julian kept shoving.

“Hang on.” I rolled out of bed and shuffled over to the door. I pulled the chair out of position and opened the door.

“Why have you jammed the door shut?” asked Julian, puzzled.

“I have this thing about bogeymen,” I fibbed, yawning.

Then Julian sussed the reason. He looked furious. “Bloody Penny!” he snarled.

I was slightly shocked by his reaction. But maybe having a nympho in the family was a hard burden to bear. I couldn’t tell him the truth.

“No, honestly, I just like to lock my bedroom door at night. Bogeymen. Ugh,” I shuddered.

Julian rolled his eyes but still looked cross. “Come and get breakfast. I’ll take you shooting and then I thought we could do some fishing.”

So long as Penny wasn’t anywhere close by, that would be the ideal day. Apart from the breakfast bit and the shooting bit, given the current state of my head. The fishing bit sounded OK though.

I dressed and had two mugs of black coffee and a generous helping of paracetamols. I hoped they’d kick in before we got to the shooting range. I enjoyed shooting. One of the few good things about my relationship with Suzie had been meeting her dad. He was a decent bloke and we’d got on well. He had a small armoury at home – about ten different guns and pistols. He was addicted to shooting and was president of the local club. I often used to go along with him to the Saturday night sessions. Well, it wasn’t as though Suzie and I got up to anything exciting then. I turned out to be a good shot, surprisingly, and I felt comfy around armaments.

The day passed pleasantly enough. Shooting was just about bearable, although it took a quick slurp of an unidentifiable strong spirit from some French guy’s hip flask to make me feel completely human. I’ve always believed in the hair-of-the-dog remedy. And the day brightened more when we got back to find that a friend had called round and whisked Penny off with her to some fête or festival somewhere. I hadn’t been looking forward to being around her. We had a quick lunch with several beers and then fished for a few hours. I tried my Humminbird out. Every time I cast out, it showed several fish. So that was what I should be seeing at Malval, if it were still populated. The fish began coming in around four. I landed two grass carp and a 33 lb mirror and soon became engrossed.

I only stopped when the party of suspicious anglers turned up around 7. They’d told Julian they’d be latish arriving. They seemed pleasant enough to me, but I only chatted with briefly in bad French. Julian scowled at them ferociously. They didn’t seem to notice, luckily.

I was dangerously close to being late for Fiona. I had the pedal on the floor for most of the journey to the airport. Even though, as an angler, she’d have understood my getting carried away fishing, I didn’t want to be late for her. I couldn’t wait to see her.

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“Bet you have,” I persisted, thinking she was being modest.

“Dad was the guy who brought me up, but he wasn’t my biological dad.”

I looked up at her in surprise. This was news. Fi was going to have to explain things.

“OK. My mum got pregnant when she was eighteen, shock horror at the time, but had a miscarriage. Anyway, she came on holiday to England when she was twenty-two, met Dad and they got married. Eight years later, still no baby. Well, Mum knew it wasn’t her, and she knew Dad would never believe it was him, so she told Dad she was run down and needed to spend a couple of months in France. He assumed she was going to her mother’s but she stayed with one of her old schoolfriends and picked up guys! And when she was pregnant, she came home. I arrived a little prematurely, shall we say, after they were reunited!”

“Wow!”

“I didn’t know till I was 21. Mum had given me a letter when she was dying, which she asked me to promise not to open until my twenty-first birthday. I kept my promise, and so, two years after Dad died, I found out he wasn’t my natural father.”

“How did you feel about that?” I asked. That must have been a total bombshell.

“Surprised, probably even a bit shocked, but it didn’t change anything. Dad was the guy who brought me up and was there for me. And he was a good dad. This other ‘dad’ was just a name. George-Frederic Mossard.”

“You know his name?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to try and find him or anything. He’s nothing to me.”

Good grief. That was a huge revelation.

“And Mum admitted that he was a kind, good looking guy, but as thick as two bricks. And I inherited the bricks, not Dad’s business acumen. I honestly don’t think I’m bright enough to be a businesswoman.”

“Nonsense Fi. You’re very smart. It’s not that hard, bookkeeping. They do courses at the tech. But anyway, Gloria would help you to start with. She’s brilliant.”

Fi looked tempted. “I’ll think about it,” she nodded.

“Do, because at the rate we’re picking up fly-tying clients, you’ll need to be official fairly soon.”

“Oh God, will I get into trouble for today?”

“Nope. You did that for free, remember?” I winked.

“So I did. Thanks for the seventy-five quid you just happened to give me out of the goodness of your heart.”

“That’s the spirit!”

Normally I’d potter off down to the pub to meet up with friends if I wasn’t still at the office on a Sunday night, but it was another night in. Fi was looking up stuff online about business start-ups and I had a reading backlog. I regularly got fishing books sent to me in the hope I’d review them favourably in my column or blog. I had four sat on my desk now, and they’d been waiting a month or so for attention. It wasn’t fair on the authors not to do them as quickly as I could. So I set to.

Monday and Tuesday were ridiculously busy. It was starting to seem like we were getting too good a reputation. New clients were turning up all the time. Tuesday evening was Jordan-free at judo, not a bad thing, and I wouldn’t be here on Thursday now, so that awkwardness could be put aside for dealing with for a while longer.

And then suddenly it was Wednesday. Graham had had a good break so he was full of energy. He was very excited about the evening out with Tony. He’d never been invited along before. Fi and I were meant to be going to France the next evening. But Fi called me mid-morning to say she was at the accountants again, still trying to get her P60 off them, and they’d told her there was a creditors’ meeting on Friday morning, which she really should be at. I got Julian to get her a seat on the Friday flight out. Half an hour later I got another call from Fi. The bookshop manager she’d just talked to wanted her to come back late on Friday afternoon for an interview. She wouldn’t be able to get the Friday night flight now either.

“No problem, Fi. I’ll get Jules to change your flight to Saturday. You can get a taxi to the airport this end and I’ll collect you from Limoges.”

“OK.” She sighed. “I’d really wanted to help with the netting and chipping, but I can’t turn down this interview. Sorry to be a pain.”

“Not a pain, babe. I’m pleased you’ve got good news.” But I wasn’t. I wanted Fi to end up working for me.

“Oh Fi,” I remembered quickly. “Could you get something for me in town? If you have time.”

“Sure,” she replied good naturedly.

“Do you know Tanner’s, the hunting and fishing shop on Spender Street? Could you buy me a decoy duck please?”

“You’re not going to start shooting ducks on the lakes, are you?” she sounded worried.

“No, of course not!” I reassured her. “I have a cunning plan that I need a plastic duck for!”

“OK then. Male or female?”

“I don’t think it matters. Oh, and um,” I was pushing it now. “I’m nearly out of fags …”

“Which sort shall I get for you?” she enquired sweetly. “The ones that kill you or the ones that make you dead?”

She had a very good point.

“Tell you what, don’t worry about the fags,” I back-pedalled.

Fi sighed. “Look, I’ll get you some if you really want me to. It’s just I’m not a fan of cigarettes. Both my parents died way too young of smoking-related diseases. The damn things should be banned in my opinion.”

I had to give up smoking – I just had to now.

“I’m sorry, Fi,” I apologised. “Please, forget them.”

“No, I shouldn’t preach,” Fi said. “You’re an adult, you know what you’re doing. I’ll get you your usuals.”

“Thanks.” Phew. Unintentional nicotine withdrawal averted. “I’ll pay you back tonight.”

“No problem. See you later.” She hung up.

I got onto Julian and he rearranged Fi’s ticket. We were sorted.

I was last to arrive at the restaurant that evening. The others weren’t hard to spot. Tony Frobisher had plumped for the table slap bang in the middle of the restaurant, so that everyone could see him. He was a big, loud man with a red face, so he was hard to miss anyway. They were drinking prosecco, the closest the Italians get to champagne. The waiter took the glistening bottle out of the ice bucket and poured me a glass. That would be all the alcohol I drank tonight till I got home. Adam never scrupled about drinking and driving, but then he had a vast expanse of hyper-fortified BMW bodywork around him in case he had an accident. My Fiat’s bodywork would come out the worst if a fly flew into it.

Adam looked smart in some designer label suit or another, while Graham looked strange in a shirt and tie. I hadn’t seen him dressed like that, not since his interview with me all those years ago when his Mum had obviously forced him into something smart. Presumably she’d done the same thing tonight.

I nodded to Adam and then reluctantly shook Frobisher’s sweaty hand. Then I offered to shake Graham’s.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” I teased.

Graham rolled his eyes but smiled. “You clean up nicely,” I told him.

Now that the party was complete, the waiter brought us the menus and we browsed.

“Where are the pizzas?” hissed Graham in alarm under his breath to me, as Tony and Adam talked about the wines on the wine list.

“This isn’t Pizza Hut, Graham,” I whispered back. “They don’t do pizzas here.”

“But it’s Italian!” protested Graham, horrified. “I wanted to have pizza and garlic bread and then tiramisu. Now I don’t know what to have!”

“I’ll find something for you,” I promised.

I leafed my way through the huge menu. I hadn’t been feeling that that hungry, despite a hard day’s work and not much lunch. But on seeing the descriptions of so many beautiful dishes, suddenly I was ravenous. I was spoilt for choice but eventually I settled on a prosciutto, melon and fig starter, followed by an intriguing black squid ink risotto with lobster, prawns and green onion vinaigrette. I was more conservative in my choice for Graham. I opted for a beef antipasto platter for him, followed by tagliatelle with cream of walnuts, hazelnuts, pistachios, olives and prosciutto de parma. Graham was a bit of a nut freak. Adam chose the most expensive dishes he could find, on principle, and Tony did the same to show off. He ordered two bottles of a very nice red wine, Barolo Acclivi 2005 DOCG, at something like sixty quid a bottle. I asked for San Pelligrino mineral water.

Conversation was general for the first half of the evening. Tony was a surprisingly entertaining dining companion, with lots of amusing anecdotes and a wide general knowledge. It was while we were tucking into our main courses that Tony turned to business.

“I think four million is a fair price for your fishery,” he suddenly said.

Graham choked on his mouthful of tagliatelle. I whacked him sharply on the back.

“We’re not for sale,” replied Adam firmly.

“Everything’s for sale,” retorted Tony. “Everyone has a price.”

“Not us.” That was Graham, now recovered and emboldened by too much Barolo.

We all looked at him in surprise. He’d been keeping fairly quiet up to now, apart from the coughing fit, just enjoying being in classy surroundings.

“Cocky sod,” remarked Tony drily, looking at Graham. But then he smiled. “I like that. You’ll have a job at the new Frobisher’s fishery.”

He looked at me and Adam.

“Four and a half.”

“We’re not worth that,” I pointed out matter-of-factly. “And you know it. What are you up to?”

“Marcus! Marcus! Always so sceptical,” he guffawed.

“When you’re involved, yes,” I shrugged.

Tony wiped his mouth.

“As you know, I’m doing rather well with my fisheries. I’ve pretty much got a monopoly in the south-west. All nice little earners. So, I want to spread into this area. But you’re the fly in the ointment. You’ve got such a good reputation round here, I don’t think many people would give a Frobisher’s set-up a look.”

“Good.”

“So, I’ll take you over and have your place as my flagship fishery,” he announced coolly.

“Oh, no you won’t,” I replied evenly. “You’ll most likely flog my beautiful fish to the highest bidder, fill the lakes in and sell the land for building. That’s the only way you could justify offering us so much.”

Graham was watching us, eyes wide. Adam had an amused sneer on his face. He was happy for me to deal with Tony on his behalf. We were both self-made businessmen. Adam had been born into the rich, business-owning class, but Tony and I had got where we were today the hard way. Admittedly Tony was doing orders of magnitude better than I was, but he’d lost his morals on the way. I liked who I saw in the mirror when I was shaving every morning.

Tony looked at me hard. He smiled, but it was forced. He didn’t like that I could see through him.

“Nonsense,” he scoffed.

But it wasn’t. I knew it, he knew it, he knew I knew it. I hadn’t worked for fifteen years to have the beautiful lakes I had managed all that time to disappear under an overcrowded housing estate. Or have my cottage bulldozed.

“Supposing it is nonsense,” I went on. “So, you’ll keep the lakes. I’ve got them at an optimum stocking level. They’re healthy, they’re thriving, they’re quality fish. You’ll stuff a couple more tons into each lake and stress them to their limits. You’ll have huge losses, they’ll be stunted and miserable. The only reason your average Frobisher’s customers, fishing elbow to elbow, will catch them is because they want to commit suicide. God knows your clients are too stupid to catch them otherwise. Plus you’re into trout. We’ve got a strong carp element, and now I have my cats.”

I returned to my meal.

“I’m diversifying,” Tony told me. “I’ll have five carp lakes on stream – excuse the pun – by next spring.”

“Full of cheap crap Eastern European carp, no doubt,” I predicted.

“Actually, French carp. I have connections with the continent.”

I snorted. That didn’t sound very likely. Tony wouldn’t bother investing in French carp, which were acknowledged to be the best out there.

“And I see you don’t have a very high opinion of my clients,” remarked Tony edgily. “And that’s strange, because you’ve never met any.”

“Oh yes I have,” I told him.

“I doubt it,” he sneered.

“I’ve fished at two of your so-called fisheries,” I said.

“Impossible!” he declared. “You’re on my blacklist. I’m not having you snooping around and writing about me in your precious column.”

“Check your records. You’ll find that I signed in as Charles Tennant at your Applethorpe and Highgreen fisheries. I can’t remember the exact dates, but it was sometime last June and October.”

Tony snorted. “My staff wouldn’t have let you in without your rod licence.”

“Oh yes they would,” I shrugged. “I told Applethorpe I’d forgotten it and slipped the guy a twenty not to mind too much, and I handed in a really crap forgery at Highgreen. Your man didn’t suspect a thing. Well-trained staff you employ.”

Anger flashed across Tony’s face, but then he gave a short bark of laughter.

“You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that, Marcus. So you got in. Why?”

“I needed to check out the opposition. Plus I’d heard plenty of stories about what goes on in your fisheries. I wanted to see for myself. I was going to visit one more and then do an exposé. Probably still will.”

I finished my risotto and pushed the plate a few inches away from me.

“And what will you say?” Tony wanted to know.

“The truth. Which stinks.” I selected a small, poppy-seeded roll from the bread basket and began to wipe the last of the juice from my plate.

“How about I raise my standards?” offered Tony.

“You won’t. You’re just after profit.”

Tony smacked his hand down on the table hard. It made the plates rattle and all of us jump.

“And you’re not?” he demanded. “We’re all in this business to make money. End of story. I make money and I make thousands of customers happy,” he declared firmly.

“And tens of thousands of fish miserable,” I retorted. “Your stock turnover is through the roof. I’ve done some sniffing around. I know what stock losses you’re incurring. I know what quantities you’re buying. And I know that you’re buying in from dodgy substandard suppliers abroad and not giving any business to our own struggling fish farms.”

“You know a lot,” observed Tony acidly.

I shrugged and finished my roll.

Adam caught my eye and gave me a short nod of approval. He was on my side for once. Graham was still wide-eyed at my brashness.

“I admire your candour, Marcus,” Tony said eventually. He’d been contemplating his glass of wine for several minutes. “And I admit you work to very high standards. Very.” He twizzled his wine glass around in his hands. “But, boys, I’m going to get your fishery. It’s just a question of time. Salute.”

He raised his glass and drank it, and winked at Graham. Then he summoned the waiter over and asked for the dessert trolley. The waiter cleared the table then trundled it over to us.

“So what would you like, gentlemen?” Tony asked us. “Have what you want, and as much as you want. Money no object.” He wasn’t upset by what I’d said to him this evening. He’d heard it all before, and chose to ignore it.

“Nothing for me, thanks,” I said, looking over the creamy, calorific puddings. They were tempting, but I needed to keep in shape for Fi. I was almost 38. I couldn’t risk going to seed just yet, not if I wanted to get me a hot chick like her. Plus I was pretty well stuffed.

Graham began to quiz the waiter as to what all the confections were. I got up and went to the gents and wasn’t that pleased that Tony followed me in.

“We may not see eye to eye, Marcus,” he said as we peed, “but I’m prepared to offer you a very good deal to get that fishery of yours.”

“I’m only a ten per cent shareholder,” I shrugged.

“Maybe so, but you have a lot of influence. You persuade Adam to sell, and there’s a straight million for you.”

“Yeah right!” I laughed, but then saw Tony’s face. “Bloody hell, you’re serious, aren’t you,” I realised with alarm, as I did up my flies.

“Deadly serious,” confirmed Tony. “I need that property.”

“There’s Liam Woods too,” I pointed out. “He has a big share of the fishery.”

“Liam’s a pushover. He’ll do whatever Adam says.” That was probably true. “Get Adam to do the right thing and you’re a rich man. Everyone knows you do all the work and get treated like dirt. You could get your own place with a million, plus your share of the sale proceeds.”

That was also probably true. My own place. I allowed myself to daydream for a moment. That would be brilliant. I could get used to that idea. Summers’ Fishery. Awesome. But then I got a grip and brought myself back to reality.

“Not gonna happen, Tony,” I said. “We won’t sell.”

“OK. Million and a quarter for you, if you do. Cash in hand. No-one need ever know, especially not the taxman. Think about it, Marcus. That’s a lot of money. You could buy that pretty biker chick you’ve got your eye on some nice sparkly things. Girls like that sort of thing. They’re very grateful, if you know what I mean. And for God’s sake, you could get yourself a decent car. You’re still driving that Italian heap of shit around I believe.” Tony knew a bit too much about me for my comfort – namely about Fi and my Fiat. “Thank God their food is better than their cars. Think about it. Think hard about it.”

I shot him a sceptical glance. But he looked squarely at me. “I’m relying on you to do the right thing, Marcus.” He turned and left. “It’ll be for the best.”

I stared after him. Was that a threat? No. Surely he knew he couldn’t buy me. I mean, after I’d had a good go at him tonight about the appalling fishery mismanagement that went on in his venues. Weird though.

I glanced at my watch. Five to ten. Time to be off. I’d had enough of Tony’s company. I joined the others at our table.

“Coffee?” offered Tony calmly, acting as though we’d never just had that surreal conversation.

“I’ll pass thanks,” I replied. “I need to get back. Things to do. Thanks for a nice meal.”

I forced myself to shake hands with the slimy bastard.

“We’ll keep in touch,” he called after me.

I rather hoped we wouldn’t.

I climbed into my car, and realised I felt slightly spooked by what had gone on in the rest room. Tony Frobisher was a business shark, everyone knew that. But was he a criminal too? Was he in the mafia? Could he really lean on me and make me do what he wanted?

“Pull yourself together,” I said loudly and firmly. For fuck’s sake, I was big and broad and a black belt in judo. If anyone came to break my fingers, they’d be in for a shock. I wasn’t scared of anyone.

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