The Visitors (30 page)

Duncan was nodding. ‘What happened when you saw him, not really to talk to, on the night he disappeared?’

‘Nothing. He was drunk. He asked us out again. I told him no, again. He went on his way, and I went on mine.’

‘Can anyone corroborate this? Was your pal there? Anyone else?’

‘My friend had already gone. I was walking back from the pub. Alone. If it helps, Lachie was quite …’ I looked directly at the DC. ‘He was quite insistent, if you understand me, Tom.’

Now it was Duncan’s turn to blush.

‘I think I understand, aye.’

‘So, no,’ I concluded. ‘I don’t know anything else.’

‘Where did he go?’

My mouth formed the words before my brain knew what to say. ‘To the sea,’ I said. ‘He walked towards the beach.’

‘The beach,’ he mused, ‘very good. Well, I think that’s enough of your time for now, Flora. Thanks for talking to me.’

‘No bother.’

‘It’s been grand to see you. When all this is done, I’d love to see you again, you know? Catch up on old times.’

‘Can I go now?’

‘Aye,’ he said, grin fading. I turned to leave. ‘Actually, wait, there is something else. Who was your pal in the Bull? Would I know her?’

‘She’s new at school. Her name is Ailsa Dobie,’ I said. ‘She lives on Dog Rock.’

‘Where?’

‘You forgotten? The wee islet off Bancree. Opposite Grogport.’

He smiled, remembering, and looked again at the floor. ‘Of course, aye. Dog Rock. We used to go out there drinking. She never lives by herself?’

‘With her father. John.’

‘John Dobie. OK, grand. If you think of anything else, we’re always here. If you need us. I’m always here.’

He smiled, turned and walked back into the depths of the station. The Pole had gone. I waited until the door clicked shut, and then I let my mask slip.

‘No,’ I whispered, ‘you’re not.’

I lied to my mother about the police. I told her it was a perfectly routine enquiry, because I’d been in the Bull that night. Everyone was being interviewed. Standard procedure, Mum. She apologised for yelling, and I’d accepted it with all the wounded grace I could muster, Lord help me, chalking up another notch of guilt.

Outside, the day was cool and dry, gusting strongly. There was an edge in the air, too, something draped across the island like a veil. I followed my feet up the coast road, out of Grogport and towards Tighna. Dog Rock watched me go. As I walked further from Still Bay, thinning birch trees obscured the black islet, and soon I could see nothing but the slender silver trunks.

I walked and thought of selkies, of Lachlan, of the sea, of Anders. And of John and Ailsa, too. She still hadn’t returned to school. Without her, the ferry felt emptier, the schoolyard louder and more crowded. That dreadful night had put a barrier between us, and there was no getting around it. This made me sadder than I could bear.

I walked about halfway to Tighna. On the right-hand side of the road, the interlocking birches opened onto scrubby pasture. This was where we’d come out from seeing Izzy. Through the slight gap, across the fields, I could see the open space that hung above the Bancree Sound, the black and white dots of
gulls. They made me think of Anders. Where was he now? Underwater with the crabs, or drinking in a bar somewhere?

There was a faint line of smoke from Izzy’s campfire, quickly stripped to nothing on the wind. I needed to see the shennachie, too. Walking across the field, the sheep ignored me.

‘Hello, lass,’ he said, quietly. ‘Have you come for another selkie story?’

He was cooking sausages. The buckled frying pan rested on a grill, smoking and spitting fat. I plumped myself down beside the fire pit. Without really knowing why, I ignored my usual crate. Instead, I perched on the same old tyre that Ailsa had used, that night we’d come to see Izzy. I liked the thought that we’d shared the same space, as though my ghost could inhabit hers. Ghosts in high heels. It didn’t work. I still felt lonely. I kicked my foot into the ground, scuffing sand. The land underneath was darker.

‘Not this time,’ I said.

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘maybe not. Doesn’t feel quite right, does it?’

I shook my head. He shoogled the pan, turning the sausages. They blazed fat in protest.

‘How are you?’

I chose my words with care.

‘Part of me,’ I said, ‘will never be all right. I don’t think ever. But it’s only been a fortnight, and already I can’t remember some of it.’

Izzy nodded.

‘That’s a healthy reaction. It’s how you cope with trauma,’ he said.

The dark ground I’d scuffed up was lightening, the exposed moisture evaporating into the afternoon. Soon it would be gone altogether. I dug deeper with the toe of my
shoe, turning over new dark soil. Would it get ever darker, the deeper I dug? I imagined the water table welling with Viking blood. Shapeshifters. Selkies.

‘It gets better, lass. I promise you.’

‘You’ve been through this before?’

He nodded. ‘I have. More than once. I know what it means to be close to death.’

‘Who died?’

He sat hunched in on himself, a big man made small. ‘People I loved,’ he said. ‘And people I didn’t.’

‘But it gets easier?’

‘You forget. Forgetting is how the brain heals. Plenty of things are better off forgotten.’

I pursed my lips, thinking about his stories. When Izzy died, his stories would die too.

‘Some things need remembering,’ I said, quietly.

He tended his pan. I don’t know if he heard me. Out to sea, the gulls wheeled in dark hooks. Hanging immobile, gliding on the wind, they soared and slid in mean streaks. Clouds curdled on the horizon. The puffs of wind gusted cool, pregnant with rain.

‘There’s another gale coming. You battened down?’

‘As much as ever,’ said the beachcomber, without looking up from the fire. ‘That’s the trade-off for living like this. I always expect collateral damage from a storm.’

‘You’ve seen a few, I guess.’

He grunted a laugh. ‘More than you know, lass. What choice do I have, moving to the islands? You live with the weather, and pick up the pieces afterwards.’

‘How long have you been a beachcomber?’

He leaned forward and poked the fire, loosing a burst of salty smoke. His lips were moving as he counted. Then he shrugged.

‘As long as I care to remember. Years and years, anyway.’

‘So how old are you now? When’s your birthday?’

‘I’m not completely sure,’ he said, halfway to a grin. ‘I stopped counting when people stopped giving me presents.’

‘When you started beachcombing?’

‘I suppose so, aye. I wanted to see more of the world. Beachcombing and stories became the means to the end.’

‘Do you ever regret it?’

‘No one’s ever asked me that,’ he said with surprise. ‘I don’t know. That’s a good question.’

He frowned, and went back to shaping the coals. I thought he’d dropped the subject until he spoke again.

‘There are things that I regret, for sure. But those same things brought me to this road. They are not the road itself. If I’d turned off somewhere else, I wouldn’t be here now. Does that make sense?’

I turned it over.

‘Maybe.’

‘What I mean is,’ he said, ‘I don’t regret what I do now. I’ve found my calling. I know who I am, and what I do. It’s all part of the same journey. That’s true of every person on the planet.’ I went back to the clouds, the gulls. I imagined the turbines on the Atlantic side of Bancree, stood immobile despite the wind. Sentinels, totem poles. Izzy leaned back in his makeshift throne.

‘But you didn’t come here to discuss my regrets, did you? And if you’re not here for selkie stories, why are you here?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, miserably.

‘I’ll tell you, then. You’re here because you can’t talk to anyone else about Lachlan.’

I kept my eyes on the ground. The scuffmark was gone, faded to nothing without me noticing.

‘Have you told your pal? That Ailsa?’

I didn’t say anything. The dirt was all the same sandy colour. I couldn’t see the scuff at all. It was gone.

‘Aye, I thought as much,’ said Izzy.

Out to sea, the clouds were growing denser and darker. I held my hand to my eye, and pinched the clouds between my fingertips. From here, they were tiny. They weren’t storm clouds at all. They were cotton pads, stained blue with old mascara.

‘Do you ever,’ he continued, after a moment, ‘wonder who moved Lachlan’s body?’

‘Every minute of every day.’

‘Me too. I wonder, Flora …’

‘What?’

‘Don’t you think it’s rather suspicious,’ he said, ‘that islanders have been disappearing since Ailsa and her father moved to Bancree?’

‘Bill and Dougie vanished before they arrived.’

‘But they were there the night Lachie vanished?’

‘They left the pub well before he grabbed me.’

‘Could’ve doubled back,’ said the beachcomber.

‘They could have,’ I admitted, tiredly, ‘but I don’t think so. John was angry. He took Ailsa straight home. Look, this is daft. He came to look for missing people, not to make more folk vanish.’

Izzy frowned. ‘Is that right?’

‘Aye, he’s been tracing the disappearances for years.’

The beachcomber was baffled. ‘Why would he do a thing like that?’

‘I’m not supposed to tell anyone,’ I said, ‘but his wife is one of the missing people. Years ago. After she vanished, he started looking for other people who’d gone missing the same way. So it’s not John. He’s a damaged soul, but that’s it.’

Izzy stared to sea, lips moving, then turned back to me. ‘What about Ailsa, then?’

‘No way. She was a baby when her mother disappeared. This trail goes back decades.’

‘Decades?’

‘All over the islands.’

Izzy frowned and let out a low whistle, moving the frying pan to a cooler part of the fire. The buttery foam around the sausages subsided. Deep in thought, he ripped a chunk of bread from a loaf. He poured the pan butter onto the bread, and started munching.

‘Is this why you thought to put Lachlan in the sea?’ he asked through a mouthful of crumbs.

‘Aye. I wanted him to disappear, and figured if it was the same as the others, the police wouldn’t look as hard. Would have been a different story if they’d found Lachlan in the pipes.’

Izzy’s chewing slowed to a stop.

‘But that’s not public knowledge, lass. Only a few folk know about it. Tell me,’ he said, urgently, ‘how many people knew enough to make Lachie disappear just like the others?’

The police knew. I knew. Izzy knew, since I’d told him.

John and Ailsa Dobie.

The killer.

No one else.

‘There have been rumours,’ I said, weakly.

‘Come on, lass,’ said Izzy. ‘There’s not that many folk to choose from. And riddle me this. What are the chances of the killer being right there on the night, just in time to save your skin?’

‘The Dobies had already left,’ I whispered, but my skin goose-bumped.

‘It had to be someone in the area. It had to be John.’

‘John’s looking for the killer himself.’

‘What a great cover story. It’s the perfect excuse to go wherever you like.’

I thought of the boat ride John had given me. That bag of his, stowed at the stern, and whatever heavy thing he kept hidden in it. What had looked like hair. His reaction, the fury in his eyes when I’d touched it.

‘Bill and Dougie vanished before they came to Bancree,’ I protested, fighting against the weight of Izzy’s theory.

‘So maybe he came here early, scouting round, and did it then. Or maybe they were just accidents, pure and simple.’

My head reeled. It couldn’t be. The man had spent almost half his life searching for his missing wife. Or had he? Izzy was right. It would be the perfect story. And Ailsa, too. Did she know about this? Or was she part of John’s act? She was hiding something. Just like me, she was keeping something secret. In my mind, jigsaw pieces began to fit together.

I just want him to stop, she’d said.

Then I recalled my fantasies in the bathtub, and that hot, stirring passion, the way I’d let myself melt into those dark eyes, the way they’d filled my vision, filled my world. I blushed with shame. Izzy was watching me closely.

‘They’re my friends,’ I said, suddenly bold. ‘I don’t want to hear this.’

‘Ach, it’s probably nothing. It’s just an idea. There’s a chance this is two and two making five. There’s not enough to tell the cops.’

‘No,’ I said, feeling relieved. Even with all the signs pointing towards John, I clung to that fact that there wasn’t actually any proof against him, and tried to ignore whatever lived inside his kit bag.

‘But I tell you this, Flora.’ Izzy leaned closer to me. He smelled strongly of old clothes. ‘Be canny. Be very, very careful. I think you should stay away from him. And from Ailsa too.’

‘I won’t do that,’ I said, quiet and fierce. My hands were shaking.

‘Because if it is him, and he discovers you know something, there’ll be another disappearance.’

Up this close, Izzy’s eyes were pale, blinding blue. The corneas tinged a buttery yellow, laced with minute, fragmenting blood vessels. An echo of the black eye, the faintest violet ring was buried in his skin.

‘And it’ll be you, lass.’

On the ferry, I flicked through my report one last time, rereading words and phrases and thoughts from weeks ago, a lifetime ago. They felt lifeless. Suddenly, I resented what I’d done. I’d stifled the selkies, squeezed all the life from them. I buried the report in my bag and gazed into the Sound, searching for selkies in the choppy sea.

Even in the school corridors, I could smell the ocean.

Miss Carlyle sat at her desk, marking first-year jotters. I watched her from the doorway. She was in her late forties, probably, or maybe early fifties. She cycled through the same half-dozen outfits each week. She’d been an inspiring teacher, but seeing her, here, working by herself, made me feel melancholy. Seeing things as they were. Growing up.

Grow up, Flora.

She looked up, though I hadn’t knocked, and a smile lit her face.

‘Flora!’ she said. ‘Come on in.’

I wandered over to the desk, hefting my report.