Death Surge Read Online Free PDF Page B

RIB her sense of adventure would have communicated itself to him. She’d be fun to be with, and he hadn’t had fun for a very long time. Neither did he have time now with Johnnie missing. But he found himself saying, ‘Yes. I sail.’
    ‘Thought so, you look the type.’
    ‘You mean laid back and relaxed?’ he suggested, tongue in cheek.
    ‘No.’ She laughed. It was full throated and infectious. Despite himself he found his body responding to it. ‘The complete opposite, I’d say.’
    ‘Mad and competitive.’
    ‘You bet.’
    Once, maybe. But who was he kidding? He still was competitive and maybe mad too, he had to be to pursue his mother’s disappearance. But Sarah Conway’s enthusiasm suddenly filled him with a desire to return to competitive sailing; with whom though? He could enter single-handed races, he supposed … and suddenly he recalled the identity of the man Harriet Eames had greeted so warmly. It was Roland Stevington, one of the most successful single-handed sailors of all time, having won the gruelling Around Alone, and then the Velux 5 Oceans round the world yacht race, and who, he’d read, was gearing up to try for a hat trick. Horton thought
he’d
prefer to have company though. Harriet Eames? But she was off limits. Dr Gaye Clayton sailed, perhaps he’d ask her. And Sarah Conway? Did she sail? He’d only seen her on the RIB, but he knew she must sail.
    ‘Can you find me a couple of shots of Johnnie Oslow?’ he asked, pushing the thoughts aside.
    ‘Yes, hang on.’ She scrolled through her pictures. He noted there were no rings on her fingers. In fact she wore no jewellery at all. He guessed it would only have got in the way of her job. ‘There he is,’ she cried triumphantly, calling up one picture from a gallery.
    Horton studied the photograph of a confident, bronzed Johnnie Oslow, a white visor shading his eyes. He was wearing navy shorts and a white polo shirt, the same as the rest of the crew, who were all hanging off the side of a white hulled yacht with white sails, racing through a choppy sea that was so blue it almost hurt his eyes. Behind them were about a dozen yachts. Johnnie’s team were in the lead. He was much more strongly featured than Horton recalled from the boy he had taken out sailing seven years ago and who he had placed in the sailing charity, Go About. Although he’d seen Johnnie in January when he’d returned to Portsmouth for his grandfather’s funeral, Horton had only caught a glimpse of him in one of the funeral cars. Horton hadn’t gone to the committal or the wake. But this was clearly Johnnie’s natural habitat, and it showed in his enraptured expression.
    ‘I took these at the St Maarten Heineken Regatta in the Caribbean in March,’ Sarah explained. ‘There were lots of different types of boats racing. I used a long telephoto lens to compress the fleet and slightly blur the background to make the lead boat stand out using a Nikon D200 three hundred millimetre lens … I’m losing you, aren’t I?’ She laughed, then seemed to remember why he wanted the picture. ‘Sorry, I get carried away.’
    ‘Please, don’t apologize. Could you email those to me?’ He could get the station to print them off. ‘And perhaps you could send one to my mobile phone.’
    ‘Of course.’
    He handed her his card.
    ‘I’ll crop into Johnnie on one of them and enhance it; that’ll give you a good close-up shot of him.’
    He watched as she did so, seeing Johnnie’s young suntanned face fill the screen and become more defined. He’d matured a lot in the last seven years. Horton could see, by the set of his jaw, that Johnnie had blossomed under Xander Andreadis’s patronage. He was far more confident, and determination was etched on his dark, good-looking features.
    Sarah emailed the picture to the address on his card and sent it to his mobile phone where it appeared a couple of seconds later. He studied it. It was a very clear image. He’d got what he’d