Blood Tide (Paula Maguire 5)

by Claire McGowan

  He started the jeep. ‘Fi tried to refer her, but she didn’t go. The da’s not about and Michelle can’t get over to the mainland with all those weans in tow.’

  ‘So no one did anything?’

  ‘We’re looking after her. She’s in the best place she could be.’

  The best place she could be was a children’s mental health unit, thought Paula, but she remembered the notes in the glove box and closed her mouth again. ‘So what does this mean, Rory? Why did Fiona have this list of names?’

  He kept his eyes on the road. ‘I dunno. I think maybe . . . she’d spotted that Matt wasn’t well. That he was having problems. And so were a few other people. Niamh, and Jimmy, and Andrea.’

  ‘There was a link?’

  He shrugged. ‘Like I say, life can be hard out here. I don’t know what she was thinking. I wish I could ask her but I can’t.’ He glanced over at her. ‘You should go. Ferry’s coming in soon. You should be on it. Dunno if they’ll run after this.’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ muttered Paula stubbornly, even though she could feel the wind rock the car. ‘I need to hand over to whoever the Gardaí send.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  She said nothing. She didn’t trust him, not a bit. She didn’t trust anyone on this island. ‘No, it’s best if I do.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘Whatever. Mind if I drop you, then? I said I’d help with the search parties, see if we can do one last push before it’s dark.’

  She looked out the window, at the rain splattering on the glass. Another evening drawing in with Matt and Fiona gone, missing in this storm somewhere. She wasn’t sure anyone could survive in that.

  Down on the quay, Paula watched the boat come in. Rory had dropped her off with her bag and gone, with muttered goodbyes. Something primeval in her seemed to be soothed by him leaving, and by the sight of the ferry. A boat, that was something could carry you back to the real world. Rescue. Sanity. Bringing you to where things made sense, and there were doctors and police officers and people in white suits who’d take all the madness and put it in little boxes and bags, give it a name, label it.

  She could see on its deck a cluster of people in the rain. Hopefully bringing someone who could help with all this. And maybe then she could hand things over, and leave on the return journey herself, and go back to Maggie and her life. Her life with all its own problems and dilemmas.

  Paula shivered, and pulled her coat round her. Maybe the task in hand was easier than all that. Even if everyone on the island seemed to be hiding something and no one, including the policeman, could be trusted. Even as she stood waiting for the ferry she was thinking: just one more night, Maggie wouldn’t mind, she was being well looked after by her doting doctor godmother and her adoring grandparents just down the road . . . Slowly, very slowly, the ferry docked, and the burly ferryman leapt off, ushering out the passengers, shrouded against the rain in anoraks and hoods. She was waiting for someone who looked like a Guard. They tended to be strapping, hurling-player types who could wrestle a cow or a suspect to the ground, and so she almost didn’t notice the slimmer figure which had stopped in front of her, fair hair lifting in the wind. Grey eyes that matched the sea. ‘Paula.’ English accent.

  Paula blinked, pieces of her mind clicking and whirring into place like slots on a fruit machine. But what was he – how did he – why hadn’t someone told her for God’s sake – and she tried to smile. ‘What the . . . eh, what are you doing here?’

  ‘They sent me to help you,’ said Guy Brooking.

  Fiona

  There were lots of downsides about living on the island, sure. No mobile signal. Crap Wi-Fi. Hardly any TV channels and a social life that consisted of ‘trad night’ down in Dunorlan’s. Not to mention the fact I couldn’t even eat if the boats didn’t run. And the looks they gave me for having my crates of water and food brought over! Rory even said to me did I know their tap water was the purest in the world. I’m allergic, I explained. Any trace of the wrong thing and I could be dead. Especially as we’re so cut off.

  But aside from all that, I was looking forward to the change. For one thing, I didn’t imagine I’d have to deal with anything heavy at my surgery. A few cases of trench foot, maybe, from working in wet fields, or the odd farm accident (though those can be horrific enough). Not the rickets and inherited diseases and obesity and child abuse I saw in London, though. Peaceful and calm, like a latter-day Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, that’d be me. And of course, with all the extra time Matt and I would have to spend together, I’d soon be rounded and smiling, cradling my bump as the waves crashed behind me. It was bound to happen. Right?

  Wrong.

  Though I didn’t see the pattern at the time, the very first indication was that incident at the primary school, before Christmas. I got a call about ten on the Monday morning. It was the teacher, Lucy Cole is her name, a nervy blonde I always see flirting with Colm in the pub. She wasn’t making much sense. ‘Oh God, her eye! I think she’s – will you come, doctor, please come now!’

  I sped up the hill on foot – it’s only metres away – with my bag, and when I got there here’s this girl, ten or so, and Lucy is holding a bandage over her eye, which is about the worst thing you can do for a corneal injury, and she’s howling, and all the other children are screaming and crying, except for this one little thing – Niamh, that’s her name, I had Mum in to persuade her to vaccinate the littlest kid, an uphill struggle – and she’s sitting there, smiling to herself. I took the bandage off the injured girl – Mary – trying not to go pale in front of the kids. The poker, the one from the open fire in the classroom, had burned right through the girl’s cornea and short of a transplant, she’d never see out of that eye again.

  I saw right away there was nothing I could do, but of course I didn’t tell them that. Lucy Cole was almost hysterical herself. I called the air ambulance. It was the first time I had to do that – the Trust had told me till they were blue in the face that it must only be used in emergencies, each trip costs ten grand or something like that. I’d listened, so this was the first time. But it wasn’t the last.

  And Niamh – I referred her for counselling on the mainland, which she didn’t go to, and she was taken out of school. I remember being disappointed – London might have been stabby and awful, but I’d never seen a primary school kid put one of her classmate’s eyes out with a red-hot poker. Then there was Andrea, of course, and then Jimmy a few weeks later, and Manus, poor old soak that he was. Jimmy was sectioned, taken off the island. But I did start to wonder. What were the chances, two homicidal patients in a population of 276? And I went back to look at the other cases.

  I took a lot of flak for Andrea. It’s always the doctor’s fault, isn’t it? But I want to state now that the woman did not have post-natal anything, let alone psychosis. She was coping perfectly fine the week before she tried to kill her baby, a bit tired maybe, which is natural when you’ve a newborn and small child. I didn’t miss it, as there was nothing to miss.

  Of course, I missed the wider thing that was happening – or rather, I didn’t miss it, but I didn’t know what to call it, and it was almost too big to see, and I was too afraid to formulate the idea that the very ground we stood on was crumbling away beneath our feet. But you can hardly blame me for that. In that respect I’m just the same as everybody else.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It wasn’t easy, maintaining a professional demeanour. Not when the father of your child – who didn’t even know it himself – had just turned up, hundreds of miles from where he was meant to be in London.

  ‘They sent you all the way here?’ Paula was pacing in front of the fire in Dunorlan’s, unable to sit still. Why was he here? He was supposed to be gone, safe, out of sight and out of mind. Even if he rarely was that, not entirely.

  Guy was sitting at one of the tables, perfectly composed in jeans a
nd a thick grey jumper, sipping a latte which Colm had rather unexpectedly made from a machine. ‘I was in Dublin anyway,’ he said. ‘Conference on youth crime. The Met asked me to come over here, seeing as we have all this experience together, and since the missing couple are from London.’ He meant experience in missing persons, but they had other kinds too. Hey, Guy, you know Maggie, my kid? Well, funny story, you’re her dad.

  She folded her arms. ‘No offence, but I was kind of expecting a team. Detectives, forensics, search dogs, that sort of thing.’

  ‘They won’t risk it in this weather. Instructions are to secure the area as much as we can and wait it out.’

  ‘I was going to go home,’ she heard herself say. Knowing it was a lie, that she couldn’t leave this case now she’d started.

  ‘Of course, if you have to, you should.’ He was polite.

  ‘I would like to try and sort this out, though, before I go.’

  ‘What’s the story?’ he said. Meaning this case. Meaning, she needed to focus.

  She stopped pacing. ‘So, this is a bit of a strange one. They briefed you on it?’

  ‘Only the bare details. It’s true what they said – the door was locked on the inside?’

  ‘Yeah. And there’s blood in the kitchen that’s been wiped up, same type as Fiona’s. Fiona was pregnant, and also suffered from some pretty serious food allergies. Their boat is gone, and the lighthouse bulb is smashed.’

  He frowned. There was a very slight trace of coffee on his upper lip, like the foam you saw on the shoreline when the sea was rough. ‘I see. How can that be, that it’s locked from inside? They fell off or something? An accident?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But it’s even weirder than that. This island – you wouldn’t expect much crime, right? But in the past few months there’s been a murder, an attempted infanticide, and an attack that took a kid’s eye out. And everyone seems to have blamed Fiona – for missing the mother’s psychotic breakdown, anyway. So that’s one motive – revenge.’

  Guy’s frown deepened. ‘What else have you found out?’

  Always the way with them – straight to the crux of things. No time wasted trying to explain it away, or convince her she was wrong. He just trusted her, and she trusted him. She’d always trusted him, she realised. Unlike Aidan. With him, she had spent those two years with her breath held in. Checking the whiskey bottle in the kitchen cupboard. Sniffing his clothes for cigarette smoke. Feeling in his pockets. And she’d been right, hadn’t she? Eventually, he had done something to let her down, tear away the floor beneath them like a slippery rug. So why couldn’t she just let him go, as he’d asked her to so many times? Why did the thought of him in prison still fill her with cold pain, icy as the depths of the sea? She said, ‘Matt Andrews sent an anonymous report to Maeve’s paper – you remember Maeve Cooley, the journalist? – or at least, we think it was him. Saying that Enviracorp, this company with the processing plant here, they’re poisoning the ecosystem. Leaking chemicals, and it’s got into the food chain, started affecting the wildlife.’

  ‘You think it’s true?’

  ‘Maybe. We found a seal, dying, and it looked – weird. And Matt had this boatshed, and I—’ She would have to show him that one, so he could really take in the shiver of horror it sent down the spine.

  Guy was nodding. ‘So maybe he found something. The company messed up, now they’re trying to silence him.’

  ‘Maybe. But Matt – he seems to have been losing it. We’ve reports of him acting strangely, agitated, paranoid. So I don’t know if we can believe anything he thought he’d found out. And there’s more than that, Guy. The place just doesn’t feel right. The way people look at you. Pulling down the hatches, you know? Even the local Guard . . . I just don’t trust him.’ How to explain the missing medical notes? What possible reason could he have for stealing those? Paula felt that she’d already found a lifetime of strange things out here.

  He nodded. ‘So where are they, Matt and Fiona? What’s your current thinking? Are they dead? Did he kill her, if he was acting strangely? That would explain the blood in the kitchen.’

  Paula thought of it, wiped up, but still leaving that ghostly damning trail. Of the words smeared on the wall of the shed – BLOOD TIDE. But each of these neat explanations seemed to slide away from her, out of wet hands. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

  ‘I guess that explains why you’re still here, in the worst storm for a decade.’

  She shook her head, frustrated. ‘It was locked on the inside. How’s that even possible? And why did no one else tell us about these other attacks? Fiona saw a pattern, I think. She had a list in her office of the names. And like I said, she was blamed for missing a woman’s psychosis, the island had turned against her . . . what if they all know something and they’re covering it up?’

  Guy looked sombre. ‘What can we do? We can’t get a proper team out here till this weather dies down. And there’s no one to arrest, by the sounds of it.’

  The door opened, bringing in a gust of cold wind. Rory. Paula felt herself put her guard up, scanning the table for any papers or evidence, in a way she hadn’t with Guy. She hadn’t had time to warn him: don’t trust Rory.

  ‘Thought you were leaving?’ Rory said, frowning to see her.

  ‘I will. Later. Maybe. Rory, this is DI Brooking, he’s—’

  ‘Hi,’ said Rory briefly. ‘Listen, you better come. Both of you.’

  ‘What’s happened? We’ll need to go to the shed and—’

  ‘Later. The search party’s found a body. A dead one, this time.’

  Guy glanced briefly at Paula, and they both pulled on their jackets, and as they followed him out into the swirling air, she found she was thinking about Fiona Watts’s face in the picture on her office desk – smiling, tanned, happy. And seeing it beneath the waves, dead and cold.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Paula gritted over shells and hollowed-out crabs, the seaweed wet and stinking, surreally remembering the last time she’d walked on that solid sand. This was it. The beach she’d swum off, on the sunny, blowy day twenty years ago, plunging into the freezing water with her long, pale limbs goose-bumped. Her mother waving from shore, her red hair over her face. Sometimes it felt like that was the only way Paula could remember her. Far away, her face a blur. A stranger.

  Near the edge of the water, which was grey and foamy, lay a mass which at first glance looked like congealed blood. Then she realised it was a red raincoat, saturated with water. She remembered the picture in the lighthouse – one of them in a red raincoat, she was sure. But which one? Matt or Fiona? Why couldn’t she remember?

  As they drew nearer, she saw a man was standing over the body, arms folded, back rigid against the moaning wind. She brushed sand from her eyes. Seamas Fairlinn, the owner of Dunorlan’s. Seemingly unperturbed by being left alone with the body of . . . whoever it was.

  Seamas acknowledged them with that barely perceptible nod Irish men employed as greeting unless the occasion demanded more (wedding, funeral, drink having been taken). ‘We’ll need to get this moved before any weans come by.’

  Rory was looking down; he hadn’t said anything yet. Guy stepped forward, the wind blowing his fair hair over his forehead. ‘Sir, I’m DI Brooking from the Metropolitan police – you’re Mr Fairlinn?’

  He eyed Guy, whose English accent seemed even more pronounced here. ‘Aye. You’ve had a wasted journey, I’m afraid. Both of you.’ Meaning Paula too. ‘Anyone from round this way could tell you they’ve had some accident. No need for any police; it’s no great mystery. They drowned. We’ll find another body soon, no doubt, washed up.’

  Guy kept his voice level. ‘Nonetheless. Could you tell me what happened?’

  ‘Was out with my wee lad, and we saw it. In the water.’

  ‘And where’s your son now?’
asked Paula. No one else was visible anywhere on the shore.

  ‘Sent him home to his mammy. He’s no but thirteen years old, he doesn’t need to be here.’

  Sending a witness away from the scene – Paula knew how that would play with Guy. ‘Could you tell us what happened then?’ Guy said. He seemed to be assuming control, without anything being said. He was just one of those people. The type men would have followed to war, two generations before.

  Seamas cleared his throat. ‘We were going round the rocks, helping with the search, like. Thought if the storm had stirred anything up, that’s where it would be. We saw something sticking out of the wee cave down there, bobbing along in the tide.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Feet,’ he said succinctly. ‘So we thought we’d best drag it in and come back here.’

  ‘You touched the body?’ Guy was asking. ‘I take it you didn’t wear gloves or anything?’

  Seamas faced him down. ‘We don’t leave people to float in the sea here, officer. We bring them in, of course we do. Even if they’re not locals.’

  Guy nodded. You wouldn’t expect much else, not out here. Anyway, there was nothing they or anyone else could do now. The sea had taken everything away, leached out the person this had been. Paula was still staring at the face, trying to match it to the one she’d seen in the photos. The eyes swollen shut with water, the skin grey, looking almost nibbled-on in places. The hair dark and matted as seaweed. It settled in her slowly, the recognition, like stumbling into a patch of cold water. Yes, she knew who this was. No one she’d ever met, sure, or ever would meet now, but she felt it all the same, the settling loss that hope was all gone, squeezed out like the last breath in your lungs when you’re drowning. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rory turn away. Maybe he was upset again, trying to hide it. This had been his friend after all.

  The rain had started up again now, and the four living people on the beach looked up instinctively, pulling their coats around them. Drops pattered onto their hoods, making round, damp circles on the sand, and falling, unblinked off, onto the dead frozen face of Matt Andrews.