Dark Tides (23 page)

The food wasn’t great. Neither was the dinner talk. We ate beans on toast and drank more beer, sitting at the bare wooden table in the map room. I couldn’t help thinking about the friends who should have been here with us. Scott. Rachel. Even Mark. Go back ten years and we’d have been huddled together on the worn benches, sharing raucous tales and laughing at one another. Now our absent friends had become the stories none of us wanted to share and I didn’t feel like laughing any more.

It was closing in on eleven o’clock and the mist was pressing up against the windows of the cottage, smothering all noise. I got up and flipped on an external security light but it just illuminated the swirling grey miasma without penetrating it at all. Even my reflection was hidden from me. I turned the light back off and returned to the table, my scalp itching as if my skin was too tight for my skull. Was there a killer out there, watching us? Or was he inside with me?

David checked his watch. ‘One hour to go.’

I sucked air through my teeth. ‘I’m not sure you can rely on midnight being the cut-off.’

‘Sure you can. If your theory is right, it’s all about 31 October. In fifty-nine minutes we’re in November. We’re clear.’

‘It’s all about Hop-tu-naa.’

‘Same thing,’ Callum said.

‘No. I looked it up. The English translation of Hop-tu-naa is “This is the night”.’

‘Yeah, and night ends at midnight. After that, it’s morning. And we can go on with our lives.’

Callum bumped fists with David across the table. I didn’t share their confidence. I wouldn’t fully relax until we were driving away from here tomorrow morning. And supposing that happened, then what about next year? Would we have to take the same precautions again? When would we stop?

David drew back his arm, reaching behind me and resting his hand on my back. He kneaded the muscles at the base of my neck with his thumb. It felt good. Felt familiar. I leaned into him a little.

‘Really?’ Callum wagged a finger. ‘You two again?’

I parted a whole different finger from my beer bottle and showed it to him.

‘It’s separate dorms upstairs, remember? No funny business.’

‘You’re a moron.’

He smiled into his beer, shaking his head. David hadn’t removed his hand, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at him. Not yet, anyway.

Callum took a drink and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘Besides, even supposing someone does come for us, we’re ready for them.’

He gestured with his bottle towards the implements he’d spread out across one end of the table. His power drill was there, alongside his electric screwdriver, a hammer, a craft knife and a rubber mallet. They weren’t just tools any longer. They were weapons.

Weapons not unlike the 9 mm automatic I had fitted to my calf in a leather ankle holster. The holster was concealed beneath the boot-fit jeans I had on. I hadn’t told David or Callum about the pistol. I hadn’t told anyone.

A gun was overkill, maybe, and a risk, certainly, but arming myself had struck me as a sensible precaution. The difficult part had been figuring out how to do it. I’d considered taking the ferry to Liverpool and visiting an unmarked office above a betting shop in Toxteth where, I’d heard, two Polish brothers were capable of supplying a variety of unmarked guns in return for unmarked notes. But I’d been told about them by a colleague in CID, which suggested it wasn’t the most under-the-radar option, and with Shimmin keeping such a close eye on me, I’d decided it was a potentially terrible idea.

In the end, I’d opted for something much closer to home. One of the benefits of having worked in uniform was that I’d been assigned to multiple roles around multiple stations across the island. I’d had to cover for other officers when they were off sick or on vacation, and over the years I’d been an irregular stand-in for the constable who usually oversaw the firearms store at headquarters.

The store was secure and well organised but I knew exactly how the system worked. I knew where the keys to the gun lockers were stashed. I knew where I could find a scratched and dinged Beretta that had been seized from a small-time drugs peddler in Agneash. I knew nobody was going to be looking for the Beretta in a hurry and I knew how to return it without anybody knowing it had ever been gone.

The downside was if I shot someone, it would be relatively easy to cross-reference the Beretta’s characteristics, identify its origin and figure out who’d had access to it. But then, I wasn’t setting out to commit the perfect murder. I needed the Beretta for self-protection. Firing it was a last resort and if I
did
end up shooting someone with it tonight, I figured I’d deal with the fallout then. Assuming, of course, I was still alive.

Callum nodded at David. ‘Are you a hammer or a knife man? Personally, I’m sticking with the drill. Gives more bite.’

‘You shouldn’t joke about it,’ I cut in.

‘No?’

I shook my head.

‘Well, you’re the boss.’

‘I’m just trying to keep us all safe.’

‘From the mystery killer. The bogeyman out in the mist.’

‘
Callum
,’ David warned.

‘What? I’m just going along with Claire’s theory.’ He tilted his beer bottle towards me. ‘Speaking of which, you still haven’t told us who you really think is behind all this. Is it Edward Caine, or is it Mark?’

‘Could be either one of them.’

David’s thumb had stilled. His fingers pressed into me.

‘But if you had to guess.’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t think it’s Mark.’

David’s hand slid off my back. ‘He seemed bitter enough to me.’

‘Bitter, sure.’ I turned to face him. His eyes were baleful and downcast. Man-sulk territory. Again. ‘But killing someone is hard to organise from behind bars. And to do it twice over a couple of years, making both deaths look like accidents? That’s even harder. Who’d take the risk for him? Why would they do it?’

‘It could be like we said and it’s someone who served time with him. Maybe they owe him.’ Callum rocked back on the hind legs of his chair, fingers clawing into the table edge. ‘Maybe Mark protected them on the inside.’

‘Don’t kid yourself. He’s not that tough. Not compared to some of the scum he’s locked up with. You should have seen him today. He was all beat up. He wanted us to believe the other guy came off worse but I’m not so sure.’

‘So maybe he’s paying an ex-con.’

‘With what? Mark doesn’t have any money.’

‘Huh.’ Callum blew across the neck of his beer bottle, as if it was a flute. ‘Edward Caine, then.’

‘More likely. He has the motive. And the means to pay a hired killer.’

‘Or it could be Morgan.’

I shook my head.

‘Hey, I’m just putting it out there. He’s young. He’s got a lot of time on his hands.’

‘I told you, his Addison’s has flared up. I thought he was going to pass out just arguing with me this morning.’

‘So he’s faking it.’

‘I don’t think so. He looked really ill.’

David made a humming noise that suggested he wasn’t convinced. He reached absently for the craft knife and extended the blade, turning it in his hand.

‘He’s rich, don’t forget. Say he wanted to take revenge for what happened to his dad. He could pay someone to do that, right? He’d be removed from the nasty stuff. He’d be protected.’

‘Still stressful.’

‘So maybe that’s why he looked bad this morning. Maybe that’s why his medication needs adjusting.’

I thought about that. I supposed it was possible. What had he said to me again?
I manage the Caine millions. Investments, stock options. That kind of thing.

So perhaps one of his investments was way more personal. Perhaps he really had hired a killer.

‘I don’t feel like I know anything any more.’

I took the knife from David’s hand and retracted the blade, setting it down on the table. Then I reached for my beer and was just about to take a sip when the sudden sensation of being watched made me turn and gaze out the window once more.

But all I saw was darkness and fog – the writhing grey mists of things hidden and unknown.

You’ve done a lot of waiting and now you have to do just a little more. The timing has to be perfect. The sequence has to be right. Too soon, and you lose the benefit of surprise. Plus, right now their guard is up.

So you wait, which is not a problem for you, since half the thrill is in the anticipation. It’s like sex. In your experience, thinking about sex can be nearly as good as sleeping with someone. Ultimately, though, you have to have that payoff. The release.

But for now you wait and you occupy yourself with thoughts of what you’re about to do. You think about how scared they are. How anxious you’ve made them. How terrified they’re about to become.

Hop-tu-naa. Fright Night, some people call it. Which is perfect, really, for what you have in mind.

It was a little after two in the morning and I was lying awake in my sleeping bag with the entire girls’ dorm to myself. Nine iron bunk beds. Eighteen possible mattresses to choose from. I’d settled on a lower bunk, one away from the window in the end wall.

I hadn’t closed any curtains and the wisps of sea mist drifting by outside cast ghostly patterns across the ceiling. The ceiling was dimly lit by the glow from a green emergency exit lamp fitted at the top of the stairs. The door to my dorm was partway open. So was the door to the boys’ dorm across the way. Someone – maybe Callum, maybe David – was snoring. Someone kept tossing and turning. Restless, like me.

To begin with, we’d all started out in the same dorm together but once midnight had been and gone, Callum’s spirits had soared and he’d begun acting the fool – making dumb cracks about a threesome, farting like a teenager. I’d needed my own space. Some quiet to think.

Now I was drowsy, but I wouldn’t sleep. I wanted so badly to believe that we were safe. Wanted to be able to hold up my hands and say that I’d been mistaken, been paranoid, been flat-out wrong. But I couldn’t let it go just yet. Not until we made it safely through to the morning.

My mind turned back to Dad. My thoughts had rarely strayed from him all day. I wondered how he’d coped after finding my note and the flowers. I wondered how angry he was that I hadn’t had the guts to talk to him. I was afraid there might be no way back for us. How could I possibly explain away the toxic doubts Edward had planted in my brain? I still didn’t understand quite what I was feeling or why, so my chances of articulating it to him were beyond remote.

And what about Mum? Where was she right now? Was she dead, as I feared, or could she be out there somewhere, thinking of us?

There was a hidden truth I very rarely acknowledged, a secret I kept even from myself: a tiny part of me, buried very deep, still maintained the last faint hope that she was alive. And sometimes, when I lay awake late at night, I allowed myself to indulge in a fantasy of the three of us being reunited. Against all odds and logic, I would somehow pick up a remote trace of her whereabouts. I would track her down, I would find her, and she would walk into the arms of Dad and me in the concourse of a European airport, or on an exotic white-sand beach, or in a small-town bar in the middle of America, and we would hug each other close and we would cry and she would stroke my hair and wipe away Dad’s tears, and then she would whisper how sorry she was and begin to explain the terrible conspiracy that had forced her to leave.

But those visions only came to me in the small hours of the night, when I was half asleep and able to keep rational thought at bay. When hard reality, like the deaths of Scott and Rachel, could soften and take on new meaning and alternative explanations. When the sinister message I’d inferred from a couple of footprint symbols could become nothing more than meaningless tokens of chance and coincidence. When—

A sudden noise roused me from my thoughts. I heard a soft
pad-pad
from beyond the dorm, the suck of bare feet on lino.

My heart clenched and I held my breath, listening hard. I slid a hand up under my pillow.

Another footstep. One more.

I turned my head towards the doorway as my fingertips strained for the Beretta. A bed spring twanged and I froze, my body half twisted at the waist, my arm reaching across and above me.

The ranks of metal bunks hindered my view but I could see a shadow bleed across the ceiling. The head was grotesquely elongated, the torso stretched and thin.

The shadow loomed over me. It seemed to pause and stare down at me in my bed. Then a dark blade sliced through it and the dorm was plunged into utter blackness.

Someone had closed the door.

I whipped the Beretta out from under the pillow and switched it to my right hand, fingers twitchy and stiff.

I stared hard at my surroundings, my pupils straining to pick up every last vestige of light. Slowly, the absolute black began to fracture and disintegrate, becoming steadily grainy and diffuse, until I could just make out the frame of the bunk closest to me as a deeper black against the darkness all around.

I waited for my eyes to adjust further. My visitor did likewise.

I thought about calling out to Callum and David, but I didn’t want to give my location away, even supposing my visitor wasn’t one of them. And besides, I was so close to choking on my fear that I couldn’t be sure if my voice would work.

The footsteps started up again, slow and steady. My visitor was being very methodical. They were checking each and every bunk, one after the other.

Carefully now, I peeled back the cover of my sleeping bag. I’d left it unzipped in case I needed to get out in a hurry. I was still dressed for the same reason. Jeans and a vest top. No socks. No bra.

I could just about glimpse the outline of my visitor. Not clearly, but I was picking up their movement from the displacement of the darkness all around.

I straightened my creaking elbow and held the gun out ahead of me, impossibly heavy on the end of my arm. I worked my stomach muscles to raise myself up a little from my mattress. The top of my skull skimmed the bed springs overhead. A hair snagged and tore free from my scalp.

I waited, cold sweat leaking from my pores.

Legs appeared at the end of my bunk. I squeezed the trigger and kept squeezing.

‘Claire? Is that you?’

The gun jumped in my hand like a fish.

I slapped it down against the mattress, collapsing back against my pillow and blowing a gust of air through my lips.

‘Crap. I scared you, didn’t I?’

David shifted his weight between his bare feet. Then he bent at the waist and sat on the edge of my bed. He was wearing a dark T-shirt over loose-fitting trousers. Jogging pants, maybe.

‘Sorry.’

I didn’t say anything back. I was still catching my breath and experiencing the weird sensation of my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest.

‘I didn’t want to wake you if you were asleep.’

‘What do you want, David?’

This time, it was his turn not to reply. He reached for my hand, teasing the inside of my wrist with his fingertip. I recognised the move. I remembered it well.

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘I miss you. Don’t pretend you don’t miss me, too.’

‘Now? That’s when you decide to have this conversation?’

He started to walk his fingers up my arm, past my pulse point, towards the inside of my elbow.

‘We’re alive, aren’t we? Shouldn’t we celebrate that?’

‘Wow.’

‘What?’

‘That sounds like something Callum would say.’

His fingers stilled for a moment. My skin felt too sensitive under his touch. I wondered if he could tell.

‘You want me to stop?’

I kept quiet.

‘We’re safe, Claire.’ He swept his thumb across my bicep. ‘Safe.’

He leaned in then, ducking his head low, searching for my mouth. He would have missed altogether if I hadn’t lifted my face from the pillow.

We kissed, soft and slow to begin with, then with a little more urgency. His hand cupped the back of my neck, supporting my weight and lowering me back to the pillow. I grabbed a fistful of T-shirt and pulled him towards me. He kissed me harder, freeing his hand from behind me and stroking the side of my face. His hand slid downwards, past my lips and neck to my breast. I arched my back. His hand went lower, travelling beyond the hem of my vest top, his palm hot and smooth against my stomach.

I wanted it then. Wanted him.

A moment of letting go. A moment of not caring, of not being scared. A moment when I didn’t ask myself where this was going or why or whether it was a terrible mistake.

One moment.

I sucked in my stomach and he remembered and recognised that move, too. His hand slid down under the waistband of my jeans, and I shifted a little from my hips and kissed him deeper, my fist still knotted in his T-shirt, my other hand coming up and smoothing over the muscles in his lower back. I rolled my head to one side, offering him my neck, and opened my eyes for just an instant.

And that’s when I saw it.

‘Wait.’

He didn’t. Not right away.

‘Stop.’

I pinched him and he turned, his hand still down my jeans. I pushed myself up on to my elbows.

‘What is that?’ David stood up from the bed, the mattress springs bouncing and deflecting.

It was a light source, flickering under the base of the door.

I got out from the far side of the bed and held tight to the end of the bunk, staring at the pulsing glow. I already didn’t like what I could see but what I could hear was even worse. A fast, shrill beeping had started up. An alarm.

I let go of the bunk to cross the room, staggering to one side unintentionally and thumping into another bunk frame. The light behind the door glimmered. The alarm wailed. I felt the heat as I got closer and that’s when I knew things were really bad.

It was one of those moments – the type all of us experience at least once in our lives. I knew I shouldn’t open the door. I knew I wouldn’t like what I found on the other side. But at the same time, I was already reaching out, fingers grasping, because there was no way I couldn’t do it.

The handle was warm, something I didn’t process until I’d already let go. I flung the door back and two things happened very fast. The first was that a plume of flames rushed in at me, mushrooming against the ceiling. The second was that some sort of vacuum effect sucked all the oxygen from around me out into the blazing stairwell.

The cooked air I inhaled on instinct was no good to me. I might as well have swallowed a mouthful of sand. I reared back, clasping my throat, and David grabbed for my other wrist and yanked me away.

He tugged me so hard that I tripped over my heels. I backpedalled and crashed to the floor, the flames chasing after us.

The light and heat were beyond intense. It strained my eyes. Tightened my skin.

A thick cowl of blackened smoke swept in and an acrid smell jammed my nostrils. Odours of burning wood and heated chemicals and my own singed hair.

I rolled sideways until I was on all fours. Everything was chaos and confusion and fear. David lifted me to my feet and ran me past the bunks to the end wall. He grappled with the sash window but it wouldn’t budge. The lock Callum had fitted was preventing it from opening.

‘Where’s the key?’

I shook my head and waved a hand through the caustic smoke. I couldn’t speak to tell him that I didn’t know.

He fumbled all around the window frame, his movements rushed and careless. He looked back over his shoulder, as if he might shout to Callum, but the flames were tearing across the linoleum floor, eating up the mattresses, dripping from the ceiling. I could feel the heat from downstairs against the soles of my feet. The smoke was growing thicker and more toxic with every passing second.

We’d had fire training at work. I knew we should be keeping low, flattening ourselves against the ground, staying under the smoke until help arrived. But I also knew this was no ordinary fire. It was fast and aggressive. And we were in the middle of nowhere. The building’s isolation – the very reason we’d selected it – meant no help would be coming any time soon.

David had given up on finding the key. There was a chair against the facing wall. It had a plastic seat with metal legs. The legs had little rubber plugs on the end. He picked the chair up and stabbed a leg against the glass. The panels were double-glazed. They splintered but didn’t break. David yelled out in fear and panic, whacking the chair against the lower half of the window again and again. The glass smashed, but it was futile. The sash unit was small and the individual panels were tiny. We couldn’t possibly fit through.

I scrambled over to my bed on my hands and knees and felt around beneath my sleeping bag. For a terrifying second, I couldn’t find the Beretta. I flung the bag towards the flames and the gun clattered to the ground. I caught sight of it under the bunk, lit starkly by the flickering glow, and I grabbed for it and wheeled around, pressing my mouth into my upper arm as a series of hacking coughs took hold of me.

I barged David aside and lined up the muzzle of the gun with the window lock. Turning my head away, I raised my free hand to shield my face and clamped down on the trigger. The noise was like someone had stamped on my eardrum. The kick jerked my hand in the air. I fired twice more, obliterating the lock in a shower of wood and plastic and glass, unable to hear anything except a muffled swirling whoosh for several long seconds.

My eyes stung and watered but I couldn’t miss the shock and terror on David’s face. He blinked hard and shook his head, then hauled up the lower sash, scooped me off the floor and pitched me out into the foggy dark. I landed bare-footed on the sloping kitchen roof. The tiles were dewed over and blitzed with glass and window fragments. I slipped and crashed down on to my hip, then slid until I hit the plastic guttering. My legs dangled over the side and I thrust with my hands, launching myself off into knee-high grass.

I turned and looked up and watched David clamber out of the shattered window. Twirling jets of flames pursued him as he tottered down the roof tiles and jumped head first into the boggy ground alongside me.

Together, we gaped at the terrible inferno we’d left behind. Luminous flames spiralled out through the windows. The heat was burning away the fine mist from all around the house, tinting the heated vapour with shades of pink and red and orange, transforming it into a blurred, spectral corona of savage beauty.

I felt the weight of the Beretta in my hand, my finger still hooked through the trigger guard. I swung it through the foggy darkness in a fast, tight arc, then turned it on the heat and flames, and it struck me that I’d never been so scared in all my life. Stupid thought. Inaccurate, too. Because right then I thought of something else that frightened me a whole lot more.

Where was Callum?