Strange Tide Read Online Free Page B

towards it. As he drew alongside, he realized that Ismael’s head was facing down in the water. Turning him over, he saw that his friend had blanched in death. There was a blackened spear of wood protruding from Ismael’s neck, blasted into him by the igniting boat.
    Ali refused to release his brother. At that moment he wanted to join him; it was all that he deserved for failing to protect him. Even if he only lived for a few more minutes, it felt shameful that he had been spared.
    He spotted the crumpled yellow raft in the distance, floating just behind the handful of oblivious survivors. Holding on tightly to Ismael’s sweatshirt, Ali towed him towards it. He caught the raft’s edge and felt for the canister. He needed to swim away and inflate it some distance from the wreck-site. This was not selfishness on his part but expediency; he knew that the tiny raft could quickly be overwhelmed by those who remained.
    The starscape turned. The sea calmed. The moon disappeared behind clouds, forsaking them. Now that he could no longer hear crying, Ali inflated the little raft and clambered in, dragging Ismael’s corpse behind him. The little yellow dinghy finished plumping itself up, but was barely as long as Ali’s body. An old man spotted it and tried to swim near. Ali could not deny him the chance of survival and reached out a hand, but the old man had no strength left and suddenly raised his hands above his head, vanishing below the surface of the sea.
    Ali took the chain with the silver crescent moon from Ismael’s neck and fastened it around his own. He kissed Ismael on the forehead, whispered a prayer and released him to the depths. He watched the spot where his friend sank, but despite all his efforts to stay awake, he lost consciousness.
    The lights grew brighter as the patrol ship approached. He opened his eyes and saw something extraordinary: what appeared to be a bright orange plastic fence was floating above the water. Ali realized he was looking at the crew of an Italian naval vessel, lined along the deck railings in dayglo rescue jackets.
    Of the 197 refugees on board the Libyan cargo boat, just seventeen were pulled from the ocean alive. Ali Bensaud was thankful that Ismael Rahman had been returned to the sea he loved so much. If he had kept the body of his friend on the raft he would have been forced to leave it in the care of the navy, and they would have refused to tell him what would happen to it, for the simple reason that they could not know.
    Nobody knew what would happen to the survivors, let alone the fate of the dead.

3

RAGS & RICHES
    â€˜Piston rings,’ said Fred Tamworth. ‘I might have known.’
    â€˜You’re going back a long way,’ said Joan, his wife. ‘That was the old days. I thought there were some biscuits left.’
    â€˜What are you talking about?’ Fred took his eyes away from the windscreen for a second and watched his wife rooting about on the floor beneath the passenger seat. She always seemed to have her head in something: a handbag, a shopping bag, a kitchen cupboard, a washing machine. Sometimes it seemed as if he didn’t see the top half of her body for days. ‘Cars still need pistons otherwise there’d be nothing to power the engine. It’s all very well having motherboards and heated wing mirrors but you wouldn’t get very far without internal combustion. Ginger nuts. There’s a packet of them by your right foot.’
    The A2 from Dover was still misted with the remains of a thick grey sea-fret, but at least the traffic was light. Fred kept his speed down, partly because the more time they spent on the road, the less they’d have left to spend with Joan’s sister in Crawley. In the rear of their Fiat Panda were four crates of decent plonk from the Calais hypermarket that Fred insisted they needed for Christmas in case anyone popped round, not that anyone had ever shown the slightest