Free Vanished by Jordan Gray

”
    Looking over his shoulder, Michael repeated silently. Had someone threatened him, or had the scene at his flat scared him? Or both?
    Dylan’s eyes were bleak. Michael knew his friend was thinking the same thing he was. Willie had found his gold coins, his nest egg, gone. Michael felt a pang of guilt. If Dylan hadn’t called him and Molly to the flat, if he himself hadn’t found the coins, if Fotherby hadn’t taken them… Then Willie’s attacker would have.
    â€œIt wasn’t fair,” Naomi went on. “He wanted to make an honest sale of honest goods. Leastways they were honest by the time they reached him.”
    â€œThe coins he wanted to sell to Hopewell,” Michael said.
    Naomi peered at him, her makeup so smudged her eyes reminded him of a badger’s. “Yeah. That prat Hopewell was going to make him a rich man. Save he couldn’t getto Hopewell, could he? That’s Willie for you, all bark and no bite.”
    â€œWhere did he find the coins?” Rohan asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” said Naomi. “He’d only had them a few days.”
    The boat rocked and rolled. The sound of the band came faintly over the water. Above the town rose cliffs honeycombed with secrets, and beyond them the peat bogs that isolated Blackpool from the rest of Britain. No surprise its inhabitants would dig into the hillsides like prisoners trying to escape a dungeon.
    â€œThere was no reasoning with Willie,” Naomi finally said. “There was no reasoning with you, Dylan. But I’m sorry I didn’t phone.”
    Dylan didn’t point out that reason had very little to do with the situation. “Thomas Clough told me you’d bought two bacon rolls and two cans of lager last night, but he didn’t know where you’d gone with it.”
    â€œBack here. I was afraid to go home, Dylan.”
    Dylan flinched at that.
    â€œWe ate and drank the beer, and I had me a Valium or two and went below deck. I fell asleep and dreamed, really strange dreams, Dylan. I thought I heard you calling for me—”
    â€œI was calling for you.” Dylan tightened his grasp of her slender shoulders.
    â€œâ€”and then it wasn’t your voice at all, but Willie’s and another one. I could barely hear them from where I was in the cabin, and they weren’t shouting but talking low and urgent like, with a sort of snarl. Then it was quiet, and when I woke up again I wondered why the boat was rocking so bad, being at the dock and all, and I came up here. It was an accident, wasn’t it? The boat lurched and he hit himself on something…”
    Once again she buried her face in Dylan’s jacket. It was Rohan who looked over at Willie, curled into a fetal position, beyond all hope and care. “I don’t know how he was hurt, Naomi, but it was no accident.”
    Michael checked Willie’s vital signs again. They were even fainter now, but his wounds were so extensive, Michael had no idea how to help him. By the looks of it, Willie had probably been stabbed or shot. He’d bet on the former, since the sound of a shot would have carried across and someone would have noticed.
    Whatever it was had happened on the deck where the bloodstains started. Willie had staggered to the wheel and collapsed, his life’s blood leaking, pooling, draining away, leaving his eyes sunken, his complexion gray and his breath shallow as Blackpool’s beach at high tide.
    Or… Michael followed the blood droplets to the railing of the boat. Perhaps Willie had collapsed where he was wounded, and his attacker’s weapon had left the trail of gore. “The boat was tied up at the pier when you went to sleep?” he asked Naomi.
    Rohan stepped forward, leaned over the railing and pulled a rope on board. He held it up. “It’s been cut, not untied.”
    â€œAny blood on it?”
    â€œThe end’s been dragging in the water…