Jack said goodbye at the check-in desk; the hugs were extra tight and extra long, and everyone said those underrated, underused words: “I love you.” The things that we assume go without saying but that should be said every day.

Charlie took Penny by the hand and her thumb automatically stroked the back of his hand. Penny would be Charlie’s rock . . . until the day she came home alone, and Jack would then be her rock. Penny kissed Jack’s cheek and led Charlie onto the cruise ship.

From the dockside, Jack searched the thousands of faces across all of the open decks. Eventually, he saw them. Charlie and Penny were leaning close to each other against the rail, with a glass of champagne in one hand and a tiny Union Jack in the other.

Jesus Christ. Jack laughed to himself. They’re going to be pissed before they’ve left Southampton.

Suddenly, his laughing turned to crying and he had no idea how to stop. Safe in the knowledge that he was surrounded by strangers, he let the tears roll. The maniacal, mass waving went on for at least forty minutes until the ship’s horn finally blared and, painfully slowly, the ship started to move away from the dockside. Penny blew a thousand kisses down to Jack, and Charlie repeatedly gave him the thumbs-up. Jack walked the dockside as far as he could, waving and smiling. He could no longer distinguish his parents from the people around them, but he hoped they’d be able to spot him—seeing as he was the only person following the ship out to sea.

Jack checked his ticket to the Isle of Wight for the umpteenth time.

“Shit!”

He turned tail and raced for the ferry . . . which turned out to be the second ship that day he watched disappear without him.

Chapter 8

The facilities on the Isle of Wight ferry came a very poor second to the cruise ship that was currently heading toward St. Lucia with Charlie and Penny. Jack imagined that, by now, they’d be in an open-deck restaurant eating as much shellfish as they could—the extravagance of it would be too much for Penny to resist, and as long as Charlie had a drink in his hand, he’d do whatever kept her happy. Jack smiled at the thought of his parents trying to “fit in” with the other posher passengers . . . then he wondered how many more passengers had gone to sea to die. And his smile disappeared.

Jack had researched the Fisher brothers, using various police databases and Google. The name of Fisher had been slurred by Ken Moore toward the end of their evening together; the mention had been brief, but it was the only lead Jack had for now.

Arnie and Tony Fisher had run a club in Soho, which had been the subject of numerous failed drug, gambling and underage prostitution raids. Arnie Fisher was clearly the smart one, keeping his criminal activities well concealed. He was slick and charming with a penchant for young men, but he was also known to be ruthless and brutal when the mood took him. Arnie was a slimy character, with eyes like a shark—unreadable and terrifyingly soulless. He never got his hands dirty but, throughout the seventies and eighties, the police suspected his orders had resulted in numerous unsolved robberies, assaults and murders. Tony Fisher, on the other hand, was an out-and-out thug. He loved being hands-on, loved fast cars and tarty women, loved terrorizing and torturing—Tony was a dangerous psychopath and had a rap sheet to prove it. Jack had to scroll three times on his mobile screen to get from the top to the bottom of Tony’s police record.