The Visitors (25 page)

I found some courage. I tried to be firm.

‘Let me go. That man needs help. You can’t bully me, like you bullied Izzy.’

He thrust his face in at me, sudden and close. Whisky breath, lemons. Half-lit streetlamp orange, he studied me curiously.

‘That old tinker on the beach? What’s he got to do with anything?’

‘You beat him up,’ I faltered, ‘you cut him.’

Lachlan grinned broadly. ‘Now, where would you hear a thing like that?’

There was a cord of something animal in him, frayed and pulled tight. I’d seen it snap when he fought the Pole, and now, up so close to him, I saw it in his eyes, the cord taut and twisting under strain.

‘Listen,’ I began, and the word came out a whisper.

‘Do not,’ he smiled, ‘say another fucking word.’

Then he tried to kiss me. His stubble scratched my cheek, his tongue hot against my lips. I felt movement at my waist. Pressed against me, he was touching himself through his trousers. He was rubbing himself, but never took his eyes off mine. He never even blinked. I tried to ease away from him, pushing back into the wall, but he only pressed closer. I turned my head to one side and sucked in a lungful of air. I was halfway through a scream when Lachie clamped his
hand across my mouth, pushing into my mouth and nose, stifling my cries. The scream reverberated through the pipe. He reached down with his other arm and hauled up my skirt. I was sobbing, flapping magpie frantic, beating at his arms, but his weight, his proximity, crushed me. With one rough hand at my mouth, the other groped between my legs. I felt his hand push between my teeth, slide into my mouth. As hard as I could, I bit his finger, broke the skin. He jerked his hand away.

‘Fuck,’ he howled, ‘fucking bitch!’

His voice detonated in the pipe. He looked at me. With a steady, measured swipe, he drew back his hand and cuffed me, striking me high on the cheek. My head rang with the slap, clouds and bright stars floating, tingling in my eyes. I tried to raise my arm, but could barely feel my fingers. After that, he made no mistakes. I was vaguely aware of him dismembering my clothes, tugging at the fastenings. Hot breath on my shoulder, hands on my skin. There was a tearing noise, and a rush of cool night air. Buttons skittered in the pipe. I could feel a dim pain in my back where the skin ground into the concrete. Lachlan fumbled at me. I felt the material tauten, bunch and gape as he ripped my tights. Rough fingers groped between my legs, and my knickers rubbed sore where he yanked at them. I twisted and flapped, trying to scream. Lachlan cursed and punched me with a short, hard jab. There was a moment of searing, blinding agony, and then the colour red, pounding in my head, the sound of hurried footsteps, footsteps clattering concrete in the pipe and fading, rebounding ever quieter, dulling through a billion shades of crimson into black.

A dull pulse. Concrete, pressing hard against my skull. The feel of it beneath my fingers, both crinkled and smooth, cool to touch, the slow curve of it lifting my neck into a painful angle. Streetlight fell into the pipe, a shaft of orange cast deep into the darkness. After a while, it occurred to me that Lachlan’s breathing had calmed. He slumped over me, his weight pinning me down, his head lolled against my neck.

Something fluid glued his hair to my face. It was getting cold, now. I recalled the echoes of voices I half-recognised. As though it was captured in a shell, I could hear the faintest grinding of the sea. Everything about me felt numb and blunted. I tried to ease myself out from underneath him, but he wouldn’t move. I tensed, then shoved and shrieked, expecting violence. But Lachlan didn’t move. I pushed him away and he slithered off me, half-lolling on his side. As he rolled, his hairs ripped from where they’d been glued to my cheek. I put a hand to my face and felt a crust of something. He must have broken the skin.

He lay on the ground.

I was puzzled. Something wasn’t right. My clothes were in rags. I pulled my ruined top down over my chest and felt in the shadows for my skirt. I was still wearing my knickers. Realisation dawned that I didn’t hurt down there. Just about everything else was bruised and sore, but nothing had
happened. For some reason, he hadn’t gone through with it. Relief flushed through me. I gathered my clothes.

‘Lachlan,’ I said, then wondered why. My voice rang dully in the pipe.

I looked again at him. In the stark lamplight, he looked asleep. Something glistened in his curly hair. I reached out a hand. It was damp, and came away dark on my fingers. In the streetlight it was black. I raised the finger to my lips, tasted.

Blood.

Lachlan wasn’t moving. I stretched a foot and pushed him onto his back. He tumbled over with a low thunk. His arm slithered horribly across his body and crumpled to the ground. His eyes were open. He was looking at me, as though this was my fault. I kneeled in the pipe, dumbly wondering what had happened. He had brought me in here. He’d assaulted me, and tried to do worse. And now …

How had this happened?

The concrete radiated cold, and I shivered. There was one button left on my skirt, and I fixed it as best I could. My tights were shredded and useless. I tried to put them on but they were impossible. A sob escaped me and for a few minutes I wept, sitting on my haunches in the pipe, arms wrapped around my knees. Ideas flashed through my brain like slow accidents, like the pulse of a life-support machine: I was with him. Who did this? I was with him. It could have been me. Someone did this. Someone knows. Someone knows I was with him.

This last thought stuck on repeat. I’d heard footsteps. Someone knew about me and Lachlan and Lachlan being dead, because someone had killed him, and someone had left me here.

His legs curved sideways up the slope. I had to force myself to recognise he was dead. He was dead. Lachlan Crane
was dead. Maybe it was the shock, but I didn’t have much of a problem with it. I couldn’t feel bad about it, or summon any sorrow. I had bruises and cuts all over my body. He would have done worse if he’d had the chance. Whoever attacked Lachlan had saved me. But I couldn’t understand why. If they’d meant to rescue me, why wouldn’t they hang around to help? The police would understand. Why would they leave me?

Strangely compelled, I kneeled beside him, the concrete pressing at my knees. I bent low to examine his head. Peering close, I saw his skull stoved in. There was a dent the size of half an orange. It was a stupid image, but it stuck. An orange. His hair was clumped into bloody ringlets, catching slivers of the streetlight.

Lachlan looked back at me, head crocked at a horrible angle, mouth in an obscene half-smile. Someone had struck him, very hard. I couldn’t remember. His penis hung from his open trousers, limp and small in a nest of hair. His eyes gleamed.

Thoughts fell into place. Surreal, logical, lucid ideas. What I had to do next. I couldn’t be caught here. I couldn’t be the one who was found with Lachlan. No one would believe me. If I was caught with his body, I’d be arrested. I tried to imagine my defence. It would be manslaughter at best, and murder at worst. The awful beginnings of a solution swam towards me from the back of my brain.

Lachlan had to disappear. Like all the others, he had to go away.

I stood up, head reeling, and peered outside the pipe. The hotel lights were out, and the only sound came with the calling of the ocean.

The ocean.

I stooped, then, and tried to grab Lachie. I tried to pull him, to push him, to carry him out of the pipe, but his body
was rigid and his clothes floopy and his wrists were covered in blood and everything stuck.

I couldn’t move his body by myself.

I took another long look at Lachie, committing everything I could to memory. And then I left. There was only one person I could go to about this. I couldn’t tell the police, and telling my parents would have the same end result. I wanted to tell Ailsa. She was the only person I completely trusted to keep it to herself, but there wasn’t enough time to get back to Grogport, bring her from Dog Rock and deal with Lachie. But more than that, more than anything, I didn’t want to disappoint her. What had happened made me toxic. I didn’t want her to ever know.

That left me with no choice but to gamble.

Cautiously, checking round me every step of the way, I left the old construction site. The Bull stood quiet and empty. All the windows were dark, and there was no traffic on the road. I didn’t know the time – I could have blacked out for minutes or hours. The sky was a deep, dark indigo and the Milky Way a glowing band of light, but I fancied there was a thin line of dawn on the eastern horizon. Maybe not. Either way, I had to hurry. Crossing the island road, I passed through the children’s playground, the climbing frame and swingset rusting ghostly through bright paint, then down onto the beach. I took the low tide line. The sand here was firmest and best for walking, but it held the chill of the night and the sea, and my bare feet became very cold very quickly. I wrapped my arms around my chest and pushed on, shivering and scared. Further down the beach burned a low red light. It wavered and guttered the closer I came, until it resolved into the remnants of Izzy’s campfire. His shack was quiet. There were no sounds but the rustling embers, the breathing of the sea and the faintest click of the wind chimes.

This was my last chance to find another solution. My clothes were in shreds and I was covered in bruises. I felt gangling and naked, exposed and embarrassed. Maybe I should find the police after all.

No. I had no choice.

I stepped around the fire and knocked quietly on his driftwood door. The noise was barely audible and I rapped again, harder. After a moment, a string of grunts and curses sounded from the guts of the ramshackle hut.

‘Izzy?’ I hissed.

The curses continued. The door began to open.

‘This had better be good,’ he growled, and then the door opened fully. A torch shone on my face, blinding me.

‘Flora?’ he said, astonished. ‘What the devil happened to you?’

I’d held it all together until then. I’d thought I was doing OK. But his surprise and concern threw something inside me wide open, and I fell against him, needing the warmth of touch. I sobbed. He put a reluctant arm around me, and for a moment I simply cried. Eventually I gathered my wits and drew away from him, sniffing and wiping my streaming nose.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘sorry, sorry.’

‘Come in. You’d better tell me what’s going on.’

He turned back into his hut. There was a clang and some rustling, then the room was illuminated by a flickering lantern. He turned up the oil and steadied the flame. He started delving into his trunks and boxes.

‘Here. Take this. You’re freezing.’

He held out a pair of overalls, spattered with streaks of paint. Grateful, I took them and dressed, zipping to the chin. Instantly I felt a little warmer. Izzy threw a blanket on the floor, and I wrapped it around my feet, rubbing them together
for warmth. His shack seemed very different by lantern light. The shadows gave depth to the walls, and it seemed bigger. The tarpaulin breathed with the sea breeze. Izzy hefted a crate down across from my seat, plumped himself down and turned to face me.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘it’s half-past three in the morning. What the fuck is going on?’

This was my gamble. No turning back. I took a deep breath, and told him about Lachie. I told him everything – when I related how he’d punched me, Izzy leaned in with the lantern and studied my face. I continued, explaining that I’d banged my head, and woken to find Lachlan dead beside me. Tears streamed from my eyes, almost without pause, but I scarcely noticed them. When I’d finished, the beachcomber leaned back. He didn’t seem that perturbed. He wriggled a finger in his ear.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve had some shit nights out in my life. But this takes some beating.’

I stared at him. Then he grinned, and a burst of hysterical laughter shook from me. It didn’t lighten my mood, but it grounded me, gave me focus. Telling Izzy had been the right thing to do.

‘All right, Flo. So when are you going to call the good officers of the Northern Constabulary?’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t, I can’t. They’ll think I did it. And I don’t want them to know what happened.’

Lachlan’s hand, fumbling at my legs.

‘You have to tell them, lass. A man’s been murdered. And Lachlan was a bastard, aye, but he’s been murdered nonetheless.’

‘They’ll blame me.’

‘They have … forensics and things, these days. There must be a way of working out who did it.’

‘I’ve already thought about this. If it was murder, I mean premeditated, and if it was Lachie they wanted, then whoever did it will have taken care of that. There was no rock there.’

‘What?’

‘There was no rock, or stone, or whatever it was they used. No weapon.’

‘They used a rock?’

He seemed suddenly pained. This was more the reaction I’d expected when I’d first told him.

‘His head was cracked in,’ I said. ‘There was a dent the size of an orange. I could see the bone.’

A sharp white shape.

‘Jesus,’ said Izzy, clearly shaken. ‘You saw that?’

‘I can see it right now.’

It sat plainly in my memory, ugly and real, but still divorced of meaning. I couldn’t associate that hollow with Lachlan being dead. That part of the night, the moment when Lachie passed from life into death, that part lurked somewhere in the back of my brain. Every time I thought I could see it clearly, it was gone, and I was left to stare at tiny details all over again. The way his hairs tore from my face, glued on with dry blood. The way his ringlets glistened in the orange lamplight. The curved chill of the pipe, creeping higher up above us.

Details. Tiny details.

‘Flora,’ repeated Izzy. ‘Flora, can you hear me?’

I snapped up. ‘Aye. I can hear.’

‘What do you want me to do, hen?’

‘I want you to help me move the body, Izzy.’

Beneath the wan cone cast by the lantern, he smiled and shook his head from side to side.

‘I can’t do that. No, I can’t be doing any of that.’

‘You said if I ever needed a hand. If I ever needed help, I had to come and talk to you.’