Tidal Rage by David Evans (best big ereader .TXT) 📗

trip to the waste room was uneventful after that, and Sebastian set about disposing of the bodies.

His original plan was he would have returned sometime later for the disposal, but he could not wait, as the engineer would be missed, and his last whereabouts were on this deck. He opened the access hatch on the port side of the hull slightly and looked out. He could see they were navigating the Suez Canal. He knew it was the canal, as the banks of the canal side were only some six metres away from the hull hatch. The bank was two metres above him, but he could see there was no one in the vicinity looking down on him.

Sebastian slid her body out first, and then after a little struggle, he dropped the engineer into the water. As with Melissa, the engineer was immediately sucked down beneath the massive hull and into the spinning bronze blades of the propeller.

The other vital lesson Sebastian learned on that trip was that the cruise company investigates the loss of an employee far more thoroughly than that of a guest. It may have something to do with death pay-outs, but the cruise liner sent company representatives to the Port of Suez to investigate.

Due to the depth of the Suez Canal and its position, it was not long before both bodies had been recovered. The bodies were surprisingly intact due to the nature of the canal structure. There had obviously been a propeller strike on the female body, as her left arm and head were missing, stated the post-mortem carried out by a local Egyptian pathologist.

The local police took several weeks to conclude their report. They said it was a clear case of murder. It could not be an accident, as post-mortem showed that Melissa had been killed before she hit the water as there was no water in her lungs.

The engineer had a previous conviction back in Romania for putting his hand up a waitress’s skirt on a drunken night out. His conviction had been noted down as a sexual assault, and this had emerged during the investigation. He had lured and attacked Melissa down there in the depths of the ship; she had died during the attack. When the engineer tried to get rid of her body, he had slipped in and been dragged under the steel hull.

The owners of Bonny Prince Charlie paid out a sizeable sum to Melissa’s husband. The story got six lines on page nine in the pages of a tabloid in England, and page two in the main broadsheet in Romania, which had a readership of less than five thousand.

Sebastian realized that it was not that he was fearless, it was just a matter of expediency. He would kill anyone who got in his way; woman, man, boy or girl.

He carried on his killing spree. Jane was dumped into the Pacific off the coast of Hawaii. Helga in the deep Atlantic Ocean west of Madeira; Serena in the waters of the Persian Gulf; Deborah in the English Channel; Corby in the Aegean Sea; Crystal in the Bay of Biscay; Ulrika in the Bay of Islands in New Zealand; and on and on.

Sebastian was a most proficient serial killer, probably one of the leading serial killers at large in the twenty-first century, he thought.

Chapter Thirteen

The months that followed seemed to pass by in a haze for Cutler. In some respects, he felt guilty because he was happy that his parents had died together, and he had what was left of his parents’ bodies there to bury. The same could not be said for Elisa. After months had gone by there was still no evidence of her body. Still nothing had washed up on shore, and the longer it went on, the less likely it was that he would ever have some part of her to bury.

Cutler’s parents’ funeral went as well as a funeral can, but what should have been an occasion to celebrate their lives turned into a barrage of non-stop questions from family and friends concerning Elisa.

A few days later, he attended the funerals of the pilot in Vancouver and the paramedics in Frazer Island, as a mark of respect.

Cutler had thought long and hard about a memorial service for Elisa but could not quite get around to organizing one. This was due to the finality of the process; Cutler still hoped as each new day dawned that news would come about Elisa. He was not naïve and knew she was not coming home alive, but to have a body to bury would help him come to terms with his loss.

As would be expected in any walk of life, the escalating bad news and tragedy had affected Cutler’s work. He had done what needed to be done to keep the loose ends of his inquiries to a minimum.

A week after the funeral, Cutler took the US flight from Seattle to Chicago, where he had boarded a United Airlines flight to Geneva to visit Richter. The plan was to use the money Richter had fled with to force Werner’s partner’s hand. Cutler’s goal was to bring down the silent partner who hid behind the scenes. Cutler knew it was a delegate in the government, but it could have been any one of three, and Cutler needed to know who.

Richter had been panicking; he had no idea what was going on in Cutler’s life, nor did he care. The money was placed in a Swiss bank with Cutler as the signatory, less one hundred thousand euros, which would keep Richter in house and home for the next few years.

Cutler had brought a whole new identity along with him for Richter. He had a bona fide English passport and driving license for him, courtesy of his English counterparts. They flew into Glasgow Airport from Geneva, and as Cutler expected, had