BODY ON THE ISLAND a gripping murder mystery packed with twists (Smart Woman's Mystery Book 2)

by VICTORIA DOWD

  ‘Christ,’ Mother breathed. She and Mirabelle had run from Angel. Both of them could not have been less impressed by Bottlenose’s salvation.

  ‘The Good Lord has had his fill of souls today,’ the old captain gasped.

  ‘Let’s hope so, Mr Bottlenose.’ Aunt Charlotte panted as she heaved him further up the dark, wet sand, dragging his legs out of the surf. ‘Now, breathe deeply. Come on, man.’

  ‘I need sustenance, woman. I need some of that burning liquor.’ His eyes were round with fear. They jittered at the edges as if the nerves behind them were burning. ‘You know what I mean, sad-eyed girly!’ He flicked his gaze to me. I looked away.

  ‘Missy . . .’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t have—’

  He laughed. ‘Believe in thy God and he will provide for thee.’ He reached into his vast, heavy coat and from the inside pocket pulled out my Bible. My dad’s Bible.

  ‘Really?’ Mirabelle sighed.

  He held the sodden leather book out and I instinctively grabbed for it. He pulled it back fast and flicked it open, smiling. The hip flask lay naked inside the cut-out pages and this filthy man with his dirty, crusted fingers, half-moons of black beneath each nail, circled the neck of the flask before lifting it out and up to his mouth. I could have thrown him straight back into those angry waves. His cracked lips pulled back over the nicotine teeth, his laugh crude and teasing. I closed my eyes. This had been my talisman in many a dark hour, now it was no more than liquor in an old man’s hands.

  ‘Aye, the Lord provides well for his children, don’t He, missy?’

  I saw Mother turn away, presumably the same way that she had every time my dad had opened those old pages. Aunt Charlotte looked down with ashamed eyes.

  ‘Secrets, eh?’ Bottlenose winked. ‘Always useful to someone.’

  I opened my eyes and settled them sharply on him. ‘Keep it. I just want the book.’

  His eyes pared down into two small curves, assessing me, weighing up the worth of what he held.

  ‘Give her the Bible,’ Mother snapped.

  He looked between us, his face greedy with amusement. ‘What it is to have something you bastards want, eh?’ He laughed and sucked on the flask.

  Aunt Charlotte’s hand shot out and grabbed the neck of his coat, gathering him in close to her face. ‘Give her the Bible or I’ll drown you. No one will know it wasn’t natural. No one will know you just didn’t drown when the ship went down.’ She stared into the two black grains at the centre of his eyes. His eyelids were lacy with red veins, flickering constantly.

  ‘Have it.’ He threw the empty Bible into a puddle in the sand but held on to the hip flask. I scrabbled for the book, smoothing away the splatter of dirt across the worn, wet leather.

  Aunt Charlotte dropped Bottlenose’s collar like he was an empty bag and he fell back into the thin trickle of water heading back out to the sea.

  ‘Someone! Anyone, please.’ The voice was fractured — panicked and weak. The small outline of a woman was bent double at the shoreline further down the beach. She pulled at a body rolling on the water’s edge.

  Bottlenose made no attempt to move, the brandy still pouring into his mouth.

  ‘Hey, Nemo—’

  ‘Who?’ Aunt Charlotte looked bewildered.

  ‘Not now, Charlotte!’ Mother turned her attention back to Bottlenose. ‘Aren’t you going to help us, man? You’re our captain.’

  He watched us with weary eyes, the rim of the flask resting on his bottom lip. ‘Bad luck to rescue a drowning man.’ He took another swig and breathed out the brandy fumes. ‘Death’ll come for another if you save that one.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ I started to move away. ‘Perhaps we should have remembered that when you were drowning.’

  ‘I wasn’t drowning, foolish girl. You should learn to use those sad eyes. I was floating my way into shore. You people will never understand the—’ His voice fell into the wind behind us as we ran towards the two figures.

  The long stream of wet hair pulled back, some embers of colour still streaked through the damp strands. It was the woman from the boat. Jess, I remembered. But I couldn’t dredge up the name of the man who lay below her now.

  ‘He’s . . . he’s not breathing.’ She looked at us with such wild, vulnerable eyes. ‘He’s not breathing,’ she repeated, her voice hurried and quiet, as though she was trying not to wake him up.

  I bent down and placed my Bible on the floor next to him. She looked at me for a moment, bewildered.

  A thin plank of wood trailed in on a wave and clipped his ankles. He didn’t move. It struck him again, but he didn’t flinch. The plank seemed to pause, like a child who’d tried to wake someone, watching, waiting, before floating away aimlessly, turning back to sea.

  The woman, Jess, carefully touched the man’s damp, cold neck and her head fell again.

  ‘God, no!’ She seemed to crease at the middle as if her body was hinged, her hair falling in a dark amber wave across his unmoving chest.

  The man looked so different without his glasses, like he’d been hurriedly woken in the night by some emergency and had had no time to grab them. But he wasn’t awake. Like watching a stranger sleeping, this felt wrong, a kind of violation of his privacy. He wasn’t sleeping either. His eyes were open and unfocused on some high point past me in the sky. They didn’t squint against the sharp, wet wind.

  ‘There’s no pulse.’ The woman’s voice seemed drained of life. ‘Why does he have no pulse?’ She looked up at us with a childish innocence in her face and laid herself across his body as if she was protecting him. She cried as though she didn’t care if she stopped breathing. Her lungs filled themselves up with pain then let it out again. She fell back onto his chest as if she was holding part of him down, part that might try to float away.

  I tried not to look at her eyes. It would be real for her then. My sad resigned look would make it real. When Dad died, it wasn’t real until one more person confirmed it, until they’d looked at me with those defeated eyes of acknowledgement. They were Mother’s eyes. When it had just been me and no one else knew, it was nothing more than a thought in my head. It wasn’t real until Mother made it real.

  ‘Ursula?’ Aunt Charlotte’s hand was on my shoulder.

  The plank of wood swam in on another wave, insistent and jostling at the man’s legs again. I still couldn’t remember his name.

  I watched the woman and saw the fear flooding her face, the grief being born. The loneliness was taking her, spreading through her with the cold water, washing away any warmth or comfort. A dark light was growing up through her that would never leave. I wanted to run, to not look at her, to not be the person who made it real.

  The woman curled up like a leaf about to fall, as if she wanted to gather in on herself so tight that she would fold and fold until she disappeared. After Dad died, I remembered all too well trying to make myself disappear, just imagining myself as an empty outline where I lay in the bed.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered. But no one can truly apologize for death. Death remains unapologetic, defiant in the face of all misery and grief. It is ambivalent to all our suffering. It inspires so much outpouring in others, but remains, itself, utterly emotionless. Unmoved. No matter how much you beg, it won’t ever relent or change its mind. But that doesn’t stop us pleading with it for mercy.

  The woman let out a thin howl, rain falling into her open mouth. She barely knew me, but she would never forget my face. I looked away as if I could hide myself. Chalk clouds drew out across the wet-slate sky. Above us on the lip of the dune, I could just define the shape of a stone building, a thin dark outline sculpted against the black scrub of the land. The cross on top of the spire pierced the sky. I watched the clouds travel over it, casting it further into shadow. ‘We should take him there,’ I said. Her red-veined eyes followed mine towards the chapel. She nodded with an empty face.

  We carried the young man’s body in silence, the woman beside us. I could sme
ll the salt on him, the seawater mingled with the last of his sweat running through his damp clothes. The rain misted our faces and the wind swallowed the sound of our sombre footsteps as they slapped on the puddled sand. The desolate chapel watched us through its solemn windows. They were such dark, neglected eyes, reflecting those eel-black waters.

  An ancient damp ran through the chapel, a smell of aged, wet stone thick with lichen. It was stale, heavy. There’d been no breath in here for many years, its still, dank air undisturbed by life. We set the young body to rest at the side of one wall without any words. We said no prayers. I still could not remember his name.

  CHAPTER 10: A LOST NIGHT

  The first night on the island was not the worst. There were far greater fears and horrors to unfold in this place. But as the darkness took hold that first time, we watched the mist fall as if the hills themselves were breathing down on us. The fields and valleys were soon caught in a smoke-like fog. Thick, wet vapour clung to our skin and settled a dampness into our clothes that weighed heavily on us all. Our fear gathered and the hours bled into one another as if the night would never end.

  I couldn’t stop turning over the image of those green eyes out there. The sea is different at night. Angrier, more frightening. Depthless.

  I looked out across the water, as black as the sky now. What had I seen? A woman, her desperate green eyes. Did someone push her under? Were there hands? I felt the water — how it had filled my throat, how it was in my eyes, blinding me with salt. The overwhelming memory was of being unable to breathe. Everything else was a mess of thoughts. It had to be the woman, Nell. There was no one else it could be. There’d been no sign of her or her husband yet. We’d scoured the shoreline until there was no more light. We’d called out into the wind. What more could we have done? When we’d finally collapsed here, it still felt like we should have done more. But no one had had the strength, perhaps the will, to carry on.

  The green eyes wouldn’t leave me. There were no other women, other than those huddled around me, were there? Jess’s eyes were green. Was it her I had seen in the waves, grappling with someone? Struggling with a man? Her dead fiancé?

  I looked over at her now, shocked by grief. Surely she hadn’t been fighting with him in the water before he died, had she? Had he tried to push her under and then she’d got the better of him? Jess glanced across as if she’d heard my thoughts. I looked away.

  We had taken refuge by the chapel wall, the stones slippery against our backs, the ground damp and thick with the coppery smell of peat.

  ‘Should we try some sort of signal?’ I mumbled. ‘A beacon?’

  ‘No one out there but the ghosts to see it.’ Bottlenose’s words were heavy with drink.

  ‘What about the other islands? A boat?’

  ‘Too far and no one out there in this foul night.’

  ‘Well, we’re freezing.’

  We lit a small fire, our hands shaking with cold and fear. What little survival training we’d had was instantly thrown out in favour of Bottlenose’s water-spluttering lighter and whatever stray branches we could find near us. When it was finally lit, no one dared venture beyond that weak pool of light. I looked around at the eyes wide with shock and disbelief.

  ‘We should be sitting inside. We should be in there,’ Bottlenose nodded towards the tiny chapel where we’d laid the man to rest. ‘The living should be inside. It’s for the dead out here.’

  I felt the coarse wind on my neck as if someone had breathed out near me. The cold bloomed across my skin.

  ‘No,’ Mother stated. ‘We’re not moving tonight.’ She didn’t look for agreement.

  Bottlenose stood up but reeled and stumbled. He fell back against the chapel’s stone wall. Mother looked away in disgust.

  ‘I say we should be in there, watching the body all day and night. The soul’s still in there,’ he slurred.

  ‘How very convenient,’ Mother said. ‘The answer’s still no.’

  I looked at Jess, but either she hadn’t heard or she was far beyond any words. Angel was by her side, speaking in a low voice that she didn’t acknowledge. He was making an effort to be respectful, showing her his charms and pendants in gravely slow detail.

  ‘And this one, of course, is my best seller — azogue. It’s very, very spiritual, you know. In my botánica.’ He paused and looked at her unmoving face. ‘Oh, did I not mention I have a shop? A botánica shop.’

  Aunt Charlotte leaned into me. ‘A few times, I believe. Nonsense — spiritual hocus-pocus. Didn’t protect him out there, did it?’

  Angel frowned at her but continued to speak to Jess. She didn’t respond to a word.

  ‘I sell many, many azogue charms. They have ancient powers. Here, let me give you one.’ He leaned over and put the pendant around her neck. The silvery charm hung lifeless on her jacket. It had an old, familiar quality to it, like bracelets and necklaces in an old aunt’s jewellery box, seen again through adult eyes. I looked at Aunt Charlotte. She’d let me play with her charm bracelet so many times as a child. I’d single out each charm for inspection — the iron, a key, a cross, oblivious to the raised voices far away in some other room of the house.

  Jess seemed equally oblivious to the world. She stared ahead, unaware of anything, the firelight flickering in her green eyes. Had she fought with him? Was there something more to her broken look? She had sprawled across his chest when we found them. I’d taken that to be love. Was it the remains of something else?

  ‘This azogue will keep the evil spirits away, the Evil Eye at bay.’ Angel leaned closer and placed a hand on her knee. ‘My belief in Espiritismo comes from my Hispanic mother. She was a deeply spiritual person and she taught me all the magic of her religion. I take the powers of that great ancestry, the powers and charms and this—’ he tapped the little silver phial he’d hung around her neck — ‘this can be a very potent love potion. I wear mine every day.’ He winked at the grieving woman.

  Bottlenose swayed into them, staggering over Angel’s outstretched legs.

  ‘Hey, watch—’

  ‘Like to see it keep the evil spirits at bay here, boy.’

  ‘Where exactly are you from, Angel?’ Aunt Charlotte called over.

  Angel looked up, somehow startled to be asked the question. He looked evasive. ‘East Croydon.’ He offered up no more information.

  * * *

  We burned the damp wreckage and wood from the boat that had found its way ashore. The fire pothered in bitter clouds across the darkness. It smelled of wet earth. A sharp scent of smouldering wood filled the air and caught in our dry throats.

  There was a silence cut only by the rhythmic breathing of the sea. The waters had fallen into a heavy sleep. The storm had calmed, but a fine drizzle still left the air wet and cold. We stayed quiet and kept our movements small and cautious as if trying not to wake somebody, or something. Beyond the circle of light from our fire, there was a smothering darkness, one that dragged everything under. We were drowning again.

  I looked around the faces. In the dark amber light of the flames, they were haggard, their eyes sunken and staring into the fire. I glanced occasionally at Jess, who sat slightly separate from us clutching her knees as if she would fall into pieces if she let go. Her face had already settled to that haunted look of grief. Angel had given up tempting her with various trinkets and edged away along the wall. He was nodding in and out of sleep, his hand clutched to his chest as if guarding the collection of chains.

  A band of light slipped through the thick sky. I watched a glimpse of the moon appear through the clouds, grey and smooth as an oyster. Then it was gone, covered again by a blue-black veil of low cloud. There was a sense that we were waiting for . . . something. We didn’t know what — something in the darkness.

  The salt wind rubbed against our faces and dragged through our hair. Each time my eyes began to fail with exhaustion, I felt the cold infecting me, damp fingers slipping down my back. I jolted awake more than once and my eyes were quick t
o travel across the black fields. Shadows flitted in and out of my view. The grim tiredness was playing tricks on my eyes now, inventing small violet motes of light that skittered across then disappeared. This was like no darkness I’d ever known before. It seemed almost alive as if it was moving, or something in it was.

  ‘You see ’em.’ Bottlenose spoke too close to my shoulder and swigged again on my flask. ‘Don’t you? You see ’em.’

  I cleared my throat dismissively.

  ‘Witch lights,’ he whispered softly into my ear. His words had a wet quality to them. ‘That’s what the locals call ’em. They rise from the marshland out yonder.’

  More eyes were open and on him now, his face lit by the small fire. ‘They sense a soul departing.’

  I glanced quickly at Jess, but she was still locked in her own world, oblivious to everything.

  ‘Shhh,’ Mother hissed, ‘it’s most likely peat fires.’

  ‘Who?’ Aunt Charlotte had given every indication that she was asleep, but she does often look unconscious, so it’s hard to tell.

  Bottlenose spat out a laugh. ‘Aye and you’d know. You’d know all about our islands from down in that London.’

  ‘That’s not what I said.’

  ‘Oh no no no, missy, you know there are no witches, no faeries or kelpies. You know there’s nothing out there in the darkness and no shadows to be afeared of.’ He leaned closer towards Mother and moved his mouth around as if he was chewing the words first. He wiped a greasy hand across his lips. ‘And yet you’re still afraid, aren’t you, missy?’ he whispered.

  She flinched.

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t be sitting here on this north side of the church — the Devil’s side.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Mirabelle snapped, ‘you wouldn’t know one end of a compass from the other.’

  ‘Is that right, lassie?’ He looked around. ‘Well, this’ll be Orlon by my reckoning. No one lives here now but it did house a great and terrible witch not long ago.’