Close to the Wind by Jon Walter Page B

sliced through it. Papa lurched forward but then regained his balance and stretched out a hand, half rising to his feet, too weak to properly stand.
    He flexed his fingers at the men. ‘Let me have it.’
    Vex hesitated, seeming to weigh it one last time before he put the tooth into Papa’s hand.
    Papa closed his fingers round the diamond. ‘There,’ he said, and he held it up to his eye to see it glisten. ‘There,’ he said again. ‘Now we have done it.’

    The morning sun rose quickly, dispatching the long night that hung across the bows of the ship down at the dock. The sunlight lifted the gloom from the cracks between the cobbles of the street. It brightened the colour of the doors and windows in the cottages and crept around the half-shut curtain of the upstairs room and across the wooden floor.
    Malik opened his eyes when the sunlight warmed his face. Papa’s head was lying close to his own. He was asleep on his back, his body slung across the bare floorboards, his mouth wide open. A line of saliva dribbled from the corner of his lips, which had swollen into patches of purple, red and blue, and he was breathing heavily.
    Malik sat up and looked around the room. He was alone with Papa. He got to his feet, walked to the window and pulled the curtain back to make the room brighter. The street was empty. Above the opposite cottage he could see thin white clouds in a pale blue sky. A coil of dark smoke rose into the air from the back of the town.
    Malik stepped into his Wellington boots and stood over Papa, expecting him to wake. He thoughtPapa looked older when he was asleep. The bright sunlight showed blood, like tiny flakes of rust, still clinging to the hairs of Papa’s white beard. Hector had helped Papa wash himself, using water that Malik had brought up in the bucket, and in the dim light of the candle they had thought his beard was clean. Papa’s shirt still lay in the corner of the room where Hector had thrown it, saying, ‘You’ll never get the blood out of that, but don’t worry – now you have the money to buy as many shirts as you want.’
    Malik decided to let Papa sleep.
    He went downstairs, expecting to see Hector and Vex. He thought they would be in the sitting room but found it was empty. They weren’t in the kitchen either. When he turned the handle on the back door, he found it unlocked. That was strange. He put his head outside. In daylight, the yard was smaller than he had imagined and empty, with the exception of a wooden planter, with four yellow pansies that crouched close together in the dry soil.
    Above the wall of the yard, Malik could see the other cottages and, above them, the dark blue funnel of the ship. To the right of the funnel was another building that he hadn’t noticed last night – a warehouse that must be on the quayside, with bright redwooden doors for windows. A groan of engines came from the dock behind it. Perhaps Hector and Vex had already left for the dock?
    Malik went to the back gate and opened the latch. He stepped into the alley and looked both ways. What had seemed so frightening last night had now become the most ordinary place in the world. He heard a rustle, looked down and saw a cat tug at the head of a fish that poked from a rusted hole in the upturned rubbish bin they had stumbled on last night. Malik knelt and watched the cat, but when it sensed him it let go of the fish and retreated, its body crouched and tense. It was a hairball of a cat, black with a white sock on each paw and a triangle of white under its chin that reminded Malik of Papa’s beard.
    He stretched out his hand and rubbed his fingers together. He made the smooching noise that cats couldn’t resist and the cat, which looked only just old enough to fend for itself, stretched out its neck and sniffed, but it wouldn’t come closer.
    Malik took three careful steps and knelt by the bin. The fish head smelled bad. He waved away some flies and prodded it. The flesh was soft and the dead