Free Moriarty Returns a Letter by Michael Robertson Page A

was still a pint.
    And then, chugging along ten miles below the Tower Bridge, he saw it.
    Saw her.
    Moonlight on white skin in the dark gray water.
    It caught his eye and made him sputter the little boat closer.
    And now he could see her clearly, though it was such an unusual sight that he did not believe it at first.
    It was a woman. Her body was completely nude, floating vertically in the water, her black hair spread outward and upward, as though reaching for the surface.
    Cheeverton immediately shut off the motor and turned the rudder to bring the boat around.
    He reached over the gunwale and grabbed the woman under her shoulders. It was not an easy angle for lifting; she was light, relatively speaking, but the water was heavy. Still, he managed to lift her enough to get her into the net. He cranked the net to pull her out of the water and onto the boat, and then he got both arms under her and lifted her out of the net.
    He was certain that she must be already drowned. Almost certain.
    He laid her out flat on the long wooden board that was used for preparing bait.
    He’d been on or near the water all his life, and he’d seen CPR done more than once. He’d never done it before himself, but he knew how, and he did it now.
    And it worked.
    Her eyes opened—emerald green, glinting like scales on a live fish in the water—with an expression that Cheeverton would have described as astonishment. She immediately tried to inhale, on reflex, and then her upper body bent forward in spasmodic, painful jerks as she expelled river water from her lungs.
    He did his best to help, as she alternately threw up water and drew in air. And then, when the spasms subsided, he picked her up again, his arms under her bare thighs, her breasts within inches of his leathered face in the cold night air, and he carried her below.
    She had not spoken, hadn’t even tried. Neither had he. He could see her eyes darting back and forth in wild surprise, as though trying to understand where she was. He laid her down on the bunk.
    She looked to be in her mid-twenties. She had a perfect shape. Just for a fleeting instant, Cheeverton recalled an image of what life was like thirty years ago.
    He got a gray woolen blanket and threw it over her; she would freeze otherwise.
    “You are on my boat,” he said, as he tucked it in around her. “You are safe now.”
    She still said nothing, but she stared back at him, her eyes focusing, and her breathing began to even out.
    And then—because it was almost automatic, because he knew without having to think about it that it was the proper thing to do—he went to his band radio to call the Thames emergency patrol.
    It shouldn’t take them long to get there; he’d been seeing patrols up and down the river during the day, because of that thing on the Tower Bridge.
    But then he stopped. He had turned the radio on; he had tuned the dial past the static—but he didn’t place the call.
    He remembered the face he had seen on the telly back at the pub—the lovely female cabdriver who had plunged into the Thames.
    And he was pretty sure he knew who he had.
    He put the shortwave radio mike down and returned to the interior cabin where he had placed her on the cot. He looked in. She was breathing more calmly now. She was awake, and no longer in obvious distress. She propped herself up slightly on her elbows, and she stared back.
    To Cheeverton, those green eyes seemed to be looking at him in a way that no woman had looked back at him in a very long time.
    Or perhaps ever.
    He decided not to call the Thames patrol just yet.
    Instead, he started the boat’s engine and began motoring as quickly as he could through the night, heading for his home on Canvey Island.
    He made Earl Grey tea in the galley and took it below to his catch, and was glad to see that although she still seemed unwilling or unable to speak, she quite willingly drank the tea.
    He went back topside. They were almost home. He knew this, even in the dark,