Ten Word Game by Jonathan Gash Read Free Book Online

compulsory, isn’t that so, Marie?”
    “Yes, m’lady.”
    “Did Cal get left behind, then?” I knew pilots went ashore in a little boat once big ships got clear of, what, coral atolls, sand bars? My nautical lore came from pirate ship stories in Boys Own Annuals.
    Or was Cal a copper, also after me? I realised you could easily lose a person overboard, if that person wasn’t very, very careful. I moaned aloud.
    “You’re really not very bright, are you, Lovejoy?” Lady Veronica said testily. “There is no such person as Cal. It was a ruse. Please go to your cabin. I’ll send for you. How long do we have, Marie?”
    “Thirty minutes, m’lady. Your steward and luggage are in your cabin, sir.”
    “Thank you,” I said mechanically, then thought, here, hang on. Luggage? Cabin? Steward, for God’s sake?
    “Please remember your life-jacket. F Deck is down, centre lifts.” Marie handed me a card for Cabin F 188.
    I found myself saying thanks, like I was here for the duration and everybody wanting to make me welcome. I could hardly feel movement, but when I looked out of the window – was it a porthole now? – it seemed to be going at a hell of a lick. I blundered about a staircase, quite lost, until a steward ushered me into a cabin.
    “I’m Emil. Anything you want, sir, it’s that button on the phone. Life-jacket talk in twenty minutes.”
    The cabin was a mere nook compared with Lady Veronica’s. Shower, bed, cupboards, drawers, a little television, a miniature armchair, a place to write, and a safe. No Blue John fruit bowls here. I wondered aboutEmbarkation. I hadn’t seen the forms or documents in that folder. The grim nurse had done it all.
    “Champagne, sir?” Emil beamed at me. “It’s traditional .”
    Them and their bloody tradition. “No, ta.” I sat on the bed. The suitcases I’d seen Gloria buy stood there, rainbow ties on them labelled F 188.
    He handed me an orange life-jacket, telling me he’d wait outside to take me to the muster station for safety practice.
    They’d finally caught me. Fright made me feel queasy. It wasn’t from bobbing on the briny. Some tannoy system made the ship quiver, warning about life-jacket practice. I took my orange thing and trooped among a cast of millions to a lounge. There, pretty stewardesses taught us to strap ourselves into the cumbersome things and told us to blow a whistle if the ship sank. Everybody in the crowd was laughing. I felt silly. No sign of Gloria.
    After the talk, we dispersed. I went to the cabin and fell on the bed and slept. I dreamed horrors.

Chapter Four
    The worst dreams are real ones, dreams of what’s actually happened. I knew I was dreaming, even felt the ship thrumming slightly, but couldn’t stop.
    * * *
    Dawn broke over the Fenland. I was dangling from a gargoyle praying the night would last until I got clear. Robberies always make me sweat. I hate doing them. Other blokes in antiques never feel half as frightened.
    In the gloaming below, I could just make out Belle’s huge four-by-four vehicle, a toy with a glittery roof from this height. The sky’s early pallor reflected in the ornamental pond, showing me which way to run if I ever made it down. I had tied the stolen painting round me. In theory, women should be the best burglars because they have a waist. I’m basically cylindrical . The painting had started to slip.
    Belle’s pale face looked up from in the box-hedge maze. She never shuts up. She was endlessly whispering on a cell phone.
    “You okay?” she kept saying. I should have lobbed her damned phone into the Koi carp pool. It kept pinging like a death knell.
    The painting belonged to the Marquis of Gotham. (Please don’t write and complain; it’s a real place in Nottinghamshire, not just Batman’s nickname for New York.) It wasn’t an Old Master, simply a forgery done by my own lily-whites. A superb work of art, though I say it myself. I shouldn’t have been in this mess. It was not fair.
    I clung