Dead Tomorrow

into sixty-three slots and you can work out distance to within about eighteen hundred feet.’
    ‘OK,’ Gonzosaid. ‘If I’m understanding this correctly, you said this shows the direction the boat was heading. So this is its last known position before it went out of range?’
    Glenn Branson shook his head.
    ‘No, I don’t think it went out of range.’
    He looked up. The others all frowned.
    ‘This is where the fourth and last signal–the last location update–was transmitted from,’ he continued. ‘Now, the seaward range from standard base stations is about twenty miles. But I was told that the mobile phone companies, where possible, build their coastal masts exceptionally high to increase range, so they can pick up lucrative roaming charges from foreign ships passing, so the range here is probably quite a bit further than that–could be as much as thirty miles.’
    Gonzo scrawled some calculations down on a notepad.
    ‘Right,’ Glenn said, ‘you all know the Scoob-Eee . It’s not a fast boat–its maximum speed is ten knots–roughly twelve miles an hour. When this last signal was picked up, she had only been out for less than ninety minutes–and she was sailing at an angled course, putting her approximately ten miles out to sea–well within range.’
    There was a few moments’ silence while they all reflected on this. It was Tania Whitlock who broke it.
    ‘Perhaps his phone battery died, Glenn?’ she suggested.
    ‘It’s possible–but he was an experienced skipper and the phone was one of his lifelines. Don’t you think it’s unlikely he’d have put to sea either without a charger or with an uncharged battery?’
    ‘He could have dropped it overboard,’ said Gonzo.
    ‘Yep, he could,’ Glennagreed. ‘But again unlikely for an experienced skipper.’
    Gonzo shrugged. ‘Yeah, Towers knew what he was doing, but it’s easily done. You think something else happened?’
    Branson stared at him levelly. ‘What about the possibility that it sank?’
    ‘Ah, now I get it!’ Arf said. ‘You want us to go out there and take a look for it, scan the bottom?’
    ‘You guys are catching on quick!’ Branson said.
    ‘She’s a solid boat, built to take heavy seas,’ WAFI said. ‘She’s unlikely to have sunk.’
    ‘What about an accident?’ Branson said. ‘A collision? A fire? Sabotage? Or something more sinister.’
    ‘Like what, Glenn?’ Tania asked.
    ‘The voyage doesn’t make sense,’ Branson said. ‘I’ve interviewed his wife. Friday night was their wedding anniversary. They had a restaurant reservation. He had no clients booked for any night fishing trip. Yet instead of going home, he got on the boat and headed out to sea.’
    ‘Yep, well, I can sympathize with him,’ Arf said. ‘The choice of dinner with your missus or being out at sea on your own–no contest.’
    They all grinned. Tania, who was newly married, less humorously than her colleagues.
    Gonzo pointed out of the window. ‘There’s a Force Nine hooley blowing out there. Do you know what the sea’s like at the moment?’
    ‘A bit choppy, I should imagine.’ Glenn looked back at Gonzo quizzically.
    ‘If you want us to go out there, mate, we’ll go,’ WAFI said. ‘But you’re coming with us.’

79
    Lynn sat impatiently at herdesk at the Harrier Hornets work station with her phone headset on. She glanced at the calendar, tacked to the red partition wall, to the right of her computer screen.
    Three weeks to go till Christmas, she thought. She had never felt so unprepared–or uninterested–in her life. There was only one Christmas present she wanted.
    Her friend Sue Shackleton had told her she could come up with £10,000 quickly. That now left a shortfall of £15,000.
    Right at this moment, Luke was at his bank, setting up everything for the wire transfer of 150,000 euros to Marlene Hartmann at Transplantation-Zentrale. But he would not actually make the transfer until they’d checked out all the references.
    So far it was so good on that score. She had spoken to the woman in Manchester, whose name was Marilyn Franks. Her daughter’s liver transplant had been done at a clinic in Sussex, near Brighton, and it had been a complete success. Marilyn Franks could not praise Marlene Hartmann highly enough.
    It was the same with the man in Cape Town. He’d had initial complications, but the aftercare, he assured Lynn, was far more thorough than he had imagined was possible. The Swedish woman in Stockholm,