Little Black Lies (7 page)

Just as I realize he’s most likely in Bob-Cat’s Diner, even as I’m thinking that I might actually – no, I’m not going to do that – I see him. Sitting at the counter, directly in front of the window. He hasn’t gone home yet, he’s in the same clothes he was wearing this morning. He isn’t alone.

There’s a small child, a child I don’t know, but one about two years old, leaning towards him, his little feet balanced precariously on the lap of the woman sitting beside Callum at the counter. A woman wearing pale-coloured jeans tucked into riding boots and a sweater that’s exactly the blue of her eyes. Callum is with Rachel.

Someone walks past me on the pavement. I have a feeling it’s Roadkill Ralph, but I can’t take my eyes off the diner window.

I haven’t been this close to Rachel in three years. In such a small community it would be impossible to avoid her completely, but on the few occasions I’ve seen her, I’ve always made myself scarce. If she turns now, she’ll see me. They both will.

I can’t move. Something is rooting me to the spot.

She looks great. Her hair is longer than I remember. She’s a bit plumper, maybe, but it suits her. And she’s laughing. She’s looking up at Callum and both of them are laughing, while the child hangs between them. They look like a family.

I’m going to be sick. As saliva floods my mouth, I turn and drag Queenie back down the street.

*   *   *

Later that evening, I can barely summon the energy to eat and clear away afterwards. I never sleep well, and it doesn’t take much exertion above normal to send me into a state of complete exhaustion. The search for Archie resumed in the afternoon, but in a less focused way. The police and military all left to search the various boats around the islands, leaving the population and the visitors to their own devices. I went to work, where the radio and a constant stream of visitors kept us up to speed with the day’s lack of any sort of progress.

Fewer than two days to go. Around forty hours. Tomorrow I’ll write the letter that will ensure Queenie is taken care of.

‘I moved on.’ All afternoon, I’ve had Ben’s voice in my head. ‘I found a way to deal with it.’ Ben dealt with the loss of our sons, who were as important to him as they were to me, by finding another woman to love, by replacing the family he’d lost with a new one. Could I have done that too? Should I have tried?

Too late now.

As the daylight fades, the wind picks up and the skeletons in the garden start to creak and groan. For a short while, Queenie rushes from the front to the back door, barking at phantoms in the dark. She’s quickly unsettled by my moods. It isn’t really cold enough to merit a fire, but I feel the need for its comfort, and Queenie loves nothing more than curling up on a scorching hearthrug. I pour a glass of red wine and tuck myself into the big armchair. Most evenings, if I’m not working, I either read or watch movies. We don’t have live television on the islands. Our programmes are courtesy of the British Forces Broadcasting Service, chosen for their likely popularity with serving soldiers. We have a thriving movie video library, though, and most of us make good use of it.

Not tonight. Were I to choose a romantic comedy, the faces of the leading actors would morph into those of Callum and Rachel. A murder mystery? Guess whom I’d be picturing as the corpse? The ticking of the clock seems unnaturally loud. The child has been missing for nearly thirty hours now and it feels as though the islands are waiting for something.

*   *   *

Queenie jumps to her feet as the banging resounds through the house. This is not the polite tap of a close neighbour. This is someone demanding entrance. My heart starts to thud in my chest. Queenie’s frantic barking doesn’t help.

There he is, Callum Murray, right there on my doorstep, claiming my attention in person just as he does, so much of the time, in my head. He has the grace to look embarrassed.

‘Sorry, I know it’s late, but I think someone should search the wrecks. We should start with the
Endeavour,
that’s the most likely, then the
Sanningham.
’

Remembering this afternoon, seeing him in the café, I want to hit him, but that would require too much in the way of an explanation. ‘What are you talking about?’ I say, instead.

‘I’ve been thinking about places he could have been taken.’ Callum steps back, as though not to crowd me. ‘Everyone’s checked their outhouses and their barns and their peat sheds. He isn’t anywhere obvious. He’s where no one would think to look.’

‘He’s at the bottom of a bog. He’ll float in a few days when his body fills up with gases.’ I know I sound heartless, but the last time I saw this man, he was grinning at the woman who killed my children.

‘The
Endeavour,
’ he repeats. ‘Catrin, are you listening to me?’

The
Endeavour
was an Antarctic supply ship that sits now on the seabed off the coast of Fitzroy. It will be the small hours before we’re back.

‘He can’t be on a wreck.’

‘Ask yourself where you’d hide a three-year-old,’ Callum says. ‘Somewhere he’ll be safe until you need him again, but with no possible way of escape and where no one else would think to look.’

There’s a time lag in our conversation. He speaks, but it takes me a second or two to process the content.

He doesn’t wait for me to answer. ‘The
Endeavour
isn’t much more than an hour’s drive from where he went missing. It’s largely out of the water, but too far out for wading or even swimming to shore to be a possibility.’

‘You’re saying someone grabbed him, drove him to the coast, put him in a dinghy, motored or rowed out to the
Endeavour
and stowed him in the wheelhouse?’

‘Or the
Sanningham,
but the
Endeavour
is more likely because you wouldn’t have to drive close to Stanley to get him there. Are you saying it’s impossible?’

I want to. Except … ‘Have you shared this with Stopford?’

‘He’s still tied up at the harbour with the cruise ship.’

I know about the police activity at the harbour. My own boat was searched earlier. The constable who stopped by the office to collect the keys told me that no boat, skippered by resident or visitor, will be allowed to leave harbour without police permission while Archie West is still missing. It is very much in my interests that the child is found quickly.

I give in to the inevitable and find my jacket and keys.

‘You can drive,’ I tell Callum as Queenie follows us to his Toyota. ‘I’m wrecked.’

He jumps in and starts the engine. ‘Yeah, I imagine Archie West’s feeling pretty jaded right now. Not to mention his mum and dad.’

There’s no real answer to that, so we head for the harbour in silence.

The town is busier than it should be, people on the streets, beer bottles in hand. We have a mild problem with alcohol abuse on the islands. Noise, skirmishes, minor vandalism. In all fairness, there isn’t a lot else for the younger people to do in the evenings, but it’s usually, if not reasonably good-natured, then basically harmless. Not tonight, though. I don’t like the purpose I can see in these groups. I don’t like the way people stop talking and watch us drive past.

We explain ourselves to the constable on duty who agrees to let Chief Superintendent Stopford know our plans. The boat is searched, quickly, once again and then we’re on our way out towards The Narrows.

Normally, there’s something rather magical about harbours at night-time. Even I’m not immune to the beauty of coloured light dancing on water, the playful sounds of water round hulls. Tonight, though, the tension hovers around the masts like gulls hanging on the air currents. The suspicion that arose when the child wasn’t found is spreading like an infectious disease.

We turn south around Cape Pembroke and the Antarctic wind hits us full on. Queenie shoots me a look of disdain and does her usual half run, half fall into the bow cabin, as I become conscious that this is the first time Callum and I have been alone, properly alone, in years. I wait for him to say something, make some comment about the search, or the plans of either police or military. He remains silent, and when I turn I see him sitting on the side couch, arms on his knees, head down.

The sea gets bigger. Both the wind and the tide are against us and it’s going to take longer than the usual hour to reach the wreck. The waves are five, six feet high. They hit the bow and droplets of water scatter like pebbles over the hull, running down the glass panes of the wheelhouse windows. Callum hasn’t moved.

‘If you’re not feeling too good, you’re probably better on deck.’

‘I’m good. I don’t get seasick.’

Seasick or not, something is bothering him. He’s the colour of the water that is splashing over the bow, a sort of sickly grey-green. Sensing me watching him, he lifts his head.

‘I know you don’t want to hear this, but there’s a killer on the islands.’

I’m conscious of my heartbeat picking up, of a chill that has nothing to do with wind or weather creeping up on me. ‘This isn’t Glasgow, or Dundee or London.’ I’m trying hard to keep my voice light, as though I’m half joking. ‘We only have a couple of thousand people. What are the chances of one of them being a psychopath?’

His stare hardens. ‘Well, I’m no actuary, but I’d say greater than the chances of three boys between the ages of seven and three disappearing in three years.’

It seems a good moment to concentrate on steering.

‘I was at Port Howard when Fred vanished. So was Stopford. I begged him to search all the visiting boats but he refused. He said the owners would check themselves, that if the little boy was hiding on any of them, he’d be found without a disruptive and distressing search.’

I don’t answer. No point. I can tell he’s far from finished.

‘Think about it, Cat. Two of our biggest events, Sports Day and the Midwinter Swim. Loads of people milling around. Kids wandering away from their parents. If you were a paedophile, isn’t that when you’d choose?’

I shake my head. He just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get that that sort of thing simply doesn’t happen here.

His raised voice is as shocking as a sudden cold wave. ‘Jeez, Catrin, what happened to you?’

I look at him then. I forget the boat completely. That he, of all people—

‘Sorry.’ He’s on his feet. ‘That was a stupid thing to say.’ He runs his hand over his face. ‘I haven’t slept in God knows how long.’

I turn back to the wheel. ‘Archie didn’t vanish during an event. He was just picnicking with his family.’

‘So maybe he’s becoming an opportunist. He could have been stalking Archie and his family for days.’

‘He?’ Callum is directly behind me. I can see him in the glass of the wheelhouse, not quite as tall as I would expect him to be. His feet are planted wide apart to give him balance in the rolling sea.

‘Paedophiles and child killers are usually male.’

If the boat pitches suddenly, he’ll fall into me.

‘When Fred vanished, some teenagers said they’d seen a young kid wandering off towards the beach. They followed but when they got down there, no sign of him. Which suggests to me, he didn’t make it to the beach. When Jimmy went, more than one person thought they’d seen him near the parked cars.’

‘None of them were sure, though, from what I can remember.’

‘Why do you think they all vanished near water?’

He’s not going to let this go.

‘If a child is going to come to harm here, the chances are it will be in the water.’

‘I think he’s got a boat. I think he lures the kids on to his boat, somehow, and then’ – Callum lifts his hands, spreads them wide – ‘there is no end to the places he can take them.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because the woman I knew would care.’

I can’t even look at his reflection any more. The woman he knew had two sons to protect. Of course I’d have cared had there been a killer on the loose when Ned and Kit were alive. As it is, I care so little I can’t even take what Callum is saying seriously. He’s right. What has happened to me?

*   *   *

We travel on, Callum resumes his seat, I stare at the sea. Some time later, when we’re still a little way from the
Endeavour,
I jump when he taps me on the shoulder. He’s looking out of the wheelhouse window towards land. On the beach and stretching back miles into camp, small fires have been lit. They dot the countryside like fireflies. I slow the boat almost to a halt.

We stand side by side for several minutes, letting the boat find its own course, watching the orange beacons sprinkled across the hillside like fairy dust. Then Callum unzips his jacket. ‘I’ll take the wheel.’ He steps to the helm. ‘You need to look at something.’

As we move again, faster than I would go given the size of the sea, I take the folded papers he’s holding out to me and then his seat on the side bench. It’s still warm from his body. He’s handed me three sheets of A4. It’s a spreadsheet, a list of names.

‘What’s this?’ I know most of these people. I see Rob and Jan Duncan, Rachel’s parents. Simon Savidge. My colleague, Brian. The Governor.

Callum pushes the throttle further and the boat starts to ride the waves. ‘These are the people who were at the Sports Day on West Falkland when Fred vanished and at Surf Bay when Jimmy did.’

I flick through to the second page, and the third. ‘Seventy-five in total.’

‘There were more. I took out those aged under sixteen and the elderly ladies.’

I make a point of raising my eyebrows as a wave crashes over the bow but he doesn’t take the hint. ‘And the ones in bold?’

‘Men, between the ages of sixteen and seventy-five. Able-bodied. Forty-one prime suspects.’

‘Mel’s on this list. You think because he’s gay he has to be a child molester?’

‘I’m on it too. So is the frigging Governor. Those names marked with an asterisk have a boat, although to be fair, most people here have access to one.’

‘How did you pull this together?’

‘I started with those I could remember, then looked at the sports teams I knew had taken part. It’s easy to get hold of team sheets. I asked other people who they could remember. Skye McNair helped a bit. Unofficially.’