The Far Side of the Sun (21 page)

Fear, sharp as an ice pick, pricked at her throat. She heard a low laugh that rolled towards her under the cover of darkness.

With the last dregs of moisture in her mouth, she spat on the sand. Not this. Not again. She fought down panic and tried to think lucidly. She could run. Her lungs started to pump in readiness. The men would give chase through the shadows but there was a chance she might be faster than they were.

‘Just leave my shoes and go.’

Her words sounded angry in the silence of the empty night. Only the sea whispered encouragement and heaved itself closer. The men moved a pace or two away from the shoes and the moon spiked a gleam on the spectacles of the shorter, stockier one. She could feel their gaze raking over her.

‘Come over here and get them,’ one shouted out, and the two men laughed.

They backed off another few steps to tempt her.

‘We won’t hurt you,’ the other called.

Like a cat won’t tear the wings off a bird.

‘We just lookin’, that’s all. No harm in that, is there? You a good-lookin’ lady in this moonlight.’

His accent was Bahamian.

The short one laughed. ‘Be nice, lady.’

‘You be nice,’ she answered back. ‘Throw me my shoes and get the hell away from me.’

‘That ain’t no way to talk.’

The Bahamian bent down to the sand, a slow deliberate movement, and scooped up the shoes. He tossed them in a loop towards her and they settled on the sand like a pair of black birds. They now lay midway between her and them. Dodie’s only thought was escape. She glanced off to the side. The sand up the slope was soft and slithery and would suck at her feet like wet cement. They would easily catch her there. Behind her lay the solid slab of darkness that was the sea.

She spun around and started racing towards the water, her knees as unsteady as rubber under her. Both men came tearing after her, yelling and shouting, frightened of losing her, and the tall Bahamian was fast. Too fast. His gasps snaked behind her and moonlight skidded under her feet as she ploughed into the sea up to her knees. She forced herself to pause. To think. To glance behind. Both men were at the water’s edge, stepping back from the surf, hesitating. Shouting to each other.

‘Come on,’ she jeered, kicking out at the waves and sending spray leaping towards the two men. She was tempting them in, using herself as bait. ‘Don’t be shy. The water too cold for you?’

With a curse the Bahamian yanked off his shoes and lurched forward into the sea. She stood her ground. Waited with her heart burrowing into her ribs until both men had their legs partially immersed, and when they hesitated, uncomfortable and wet, she laughed at them.

‘Scared?’ she jeered.

That did it. They launched themselves forward, charging straight for her, but she didn’t wait around. She was off, darting to her left, knees lifted high above the water like a hurdler. She skimmed over the waves and looped around the men to the shore. Too late they realised their mistake. But by then Dodie was haring up the beach to the trees. Frantic, she snatched up her shoes and vanished into the black shadows where even moonlight failed to find her.

She could still hear them. Their shouts. Their curses. Their threats. She kept weaving stealthily through the trees, keeping ahead of them, but only just. They scoured the area, poking into shadows, calling out and tramping through the undergrowth. It was when they fell silent that Dodie’s legs almost failed her.

Dodie was in her shoes and running up the hill, heading towards Bain Town.
Not far now
, she kept telling herself. She should be able to make it there easily.
Don’t panic now. They’re far behind you
, but still she shook.

Never before had this happened to her on a beach. So why now? What was going on? Her life seemed to have been slit open from top to bottom ever since that night she helped Morrell. What were you up to, Mr Morrell? For heaven’s sake, give me a clue, make it easy for me. Her lungs were pumping, sweat under her dress. She was running past a row of down-at-heel houses and a huge tamarind tree loomed out of the night sky. No street lamps here. Just moonlight and rats.

Yet she didn’t hear them. They came at her from behind, the same two men. How had they found her? One hand seized her hair, wrenching back her head, the other caught the belt of her dress and lifted her off her feet.

‘Bitch.’

She tumbled to her knees and opened her mouth to scream but a blow to the back of her head shut it for her and her teeth clamped down on her tongue. She tasted blood and saw splinters of light streak across the tamarind branches.

‘Did you think you’d got away from us?’ A grip like a vice twisted her hair. ‘Did you?’ Ripping it out. ‘Did you, Miss Wyatt? You thought you’d lost us?’

Dodie lashed out. With her feet and fists she fought them, terror giving her strength. It was the short one, the white one, the bastard one, who was tearing her head off. How they’d trailed her from the beach she had no idea, she’d been so careful. She tried to shout, to scream for help, but a hand clamped over her mouth. She bit it hard, right to the bone.

A screech. Then a fist landed hard in her throat and she couldn’t breathe. She kicked out, stabbed fingers at eyes and raked nails down a cheek, but the big Bahamian turned her like a toy, flung her face down in the road.

‘No!’

His heavy hands held her down. Her mouth pinned to the gravel.

‘No!’

They started to beat her back with their fists, pounding and thumping, pain scouring through her body until, with no warning at all, her mind abandoned her. It stepped away. Abandoned her to the beating. It looked down at her from somewhere high up in the tamarind tree and watched two thugs knock the hell out of her to their heart’s content and it told her again and again that she was a fool.

Fool
.

To think you could have it your way. Look what they did to Morrell
.

But a shout of anger suddenly exploded in her ears in a voice she recognised.

‘Get your fucking hands off her!’

There was a crack, followed by a scream, and the hands released her. Just like that. No argument. She was free.

Her head instantly rolled to one side, grabbing air into her lungs, and she spotted the small man, the vicious white one, rolling in the gutter. He was clutching his leg, which seemed to belong to someone else because it was sticking out at an odd angle. And the big man with blood cascading from his nose was rearing up like a great bear to attack a tall slender figure in front of him.

But the newcomer didn’t wait for the attack. There was a flash of movement, a hard leather shoe connected with the big man’s groin. He doubled over with a grunt that took the air out of him, and the slender figure moved behind him, drilling punch after punch into his kidneys. Then an elbow to the side of the head sent the Bahamian toppling to the ground.

The tamarind tree seemed to shake and Dodie could feel the vibration of it under her as she struggled to sit up. A dog barked and a light flared in a nearby house. Voices sounded in the street. The figure who had saved her was bending over her, saying something, touching her face, lifting her to her feet. Yet all she could see was the concern in his eyes and all she could hear was the rage hammering in her ears.

‘Tell me.’

‘Tell you what?’ Flynn asked. As if he didn’t know. As if he couldn’t see.

‘Tell me what’s going on.’

‘You should rest.’

They were sitting on the mattress in the shack in Bain Town. It was thin and lumpy on the floor and smelled of other people’s bodies. He had carried her here from the street where she was attacked and was carefully bathing dried blood from her chin. He wished he could bathe the memory of the beating from her mind and it worried him that her skin was cold despite the oppressive heat in the shack. She wasn’t shaking any more but the delicate bones of her face were looking flimsy, brittle as eggshell, as if they might break at his touch. In the half-hearted glow of the candle her eyes had taken on the colour of tiger’s eye with small fires burning fiercely within them. They were fixed on his face, not letting him go.

‘It’s not my blood,’ she told him. ‘It’s from the bite.’

‘Bite? You bit him?’

‘Yes. His hand.’

He looked at her jaw. At the amount of blood. ‘That must have been some bite.’

Gently she wrapped her fingers around his hand that held the cloth and pulled it down on to her lap. ‘With luck he’ll get rabies.’

He laughed. He wouldn’t have thought it possible right then, but it burst up from somewhere and seemed to startle them both.

‘Tell me what’s going on?’ she said.

Flynn knew only too well what it was that he was looking at. It was a controlled calmness. The kind that disguises acute fear. She had every right to be fearful. Every right to demand the truth. Every right to know. But the truth was buried so deep down in him that the words were hard to reach even when he
wanted
to give them to her. So he deliberately misinterpreted her question.

‘I came to find you,’ he said. ‘I came to the Arcadia tonight at eleven o’clock to walk you back to Bain Town after work.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t like the way you wander the streets alone at night.’

She made a sound. Then she lifted his hand and placed a kiss on the back of it. It was a thank you, open and honest, one that shocked him profoundly. He hadn’t expected it. That kind of trust. He was too used to a world of deceit and lies. He wanted to touch her, to smooth her hair, which was wild and disordered, as though by doing so he could quieten the wild-eyed creature within her.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

Something had changed in her since the beating. As if the blows she received had broken open the shell behind which she’d sheltered for so long and now there was a frankness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. It put its hand down his throat and started to drag the words up from the dark places where they were hiding.

‘At the hotel they said you’d checked out of work early, so I came up here to Bain Town. But,’ he shrugged as if it were nothing, ‘you weren’t here either.’

He didn’t tell her. About the dread when he saw the shack dark and empty at that hour of the night. How he had slipped a metal spike into the lock to click it open and checked that her body was not lying there, a rag doll on the floor. He didn’t tell her that.

‘I went to the beach.’

He wanted to shout at her. But all he said was, ‘You should take more care.’

She nodded.

‘I was coming back down the hill into town,’ he continued, ‘when I saw you…⁠’

‘Having fun with my two friends?’

There was a razor edge to her words and she rubbed her hand hard across his, chafing their skin together. ‘Thank you, Flynn. For your help.’ Her eyes were huge as she stared at him. ‘You fight hard.’

‘I’ve had practice.’

‘I imagine so.’

‘How bad is your back?’

‘I’ll live.’

He reached out and his fingertips brushed her throat where even by the muted candlelight he could see a livid bruise. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you’ll live.’

I’ll make sure you live
.

‘I’d be dead – or worse – by now, Flynn, if you hadn’t come.’

‘I don’t think so.’

He saw her eyes flicker.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I mean…⁠’

‘Tell me.’ Her hand slid up his forearm inside his sleeve, as if he were concealing the answers from her under his shirt.

‘I mean,’ he spared her nothing, ‘look at Morrell. If they wanted you dead, you’d be dead. They intended to make you suffer.’

He made her tea on an old oil stove he’d brought for her. He lay her down on her side on the mattress, careful not to touch her back. Her Arcadia dress was covered in dirt and her skin went from chill to hot, as though someone had lit a fire under it. He sat beside her on the mattress and fanned her with a palm frond to cool her and to keep the greedy mosquitoes at bay. She lay with her eyes closed but he knew she wasn’t asleep, as he listened to her breath whisper in and out of her lungs, a shallow snatched version of breathing to spare her bruised ribs.

Outside, as the night hours trickled past, a wind had blown in off the sea and rattled the tin roof, a sneak-thief trying to squeeze in. Flynn was growing used to the way the island seemed to shake itself loose and come to life at night, full of sounds and smells that drenched the air. Here the blackness was blacker, so black you could dive into it, and the stars brighter. A far cry from the hard grey streets of Chicago. It had unnerved him at first, set his teeth on edge, the strangeness of this island, but he was becoming accustomed to it now. He found he was even smoking less, so that he could smell its scents more.

He sat in the humid darkness, one hand clenched firmly between Dodie’s. It was how he knew she was awake. He could feel her grip on him become more persistent as the moon sauntered through the window and lay on the bed with her. Not just her grip on his hand. It was her grip on his heart that was growing tighter.

Dodie woke. Listening to strange noises in her head. She didn’t move. If she moved, everything would hurt. But she risked raising her eyelids and found Flynn there, sitting with his back against the door, barring entry. Watching her. Smiling at her. She smiled back at him and for a long moment that was all that filled the overheated space of the shack. The air felt grimy and smelled of tallow from the burnt-out candle. Early morning light filtered in, grey as a cobweb, but it brought with it the stark memory of the night before with its humiliation on the beach and its thrashing in the street.