She could still hear Acharya shouting at her for fouling up his case. She ignored his threats to send her to RPU to clean up after unlicensed lorry drivers. She knew she wasn’t wrong. She needed one good chance to back the suspect into a lie. Next time. This time.
“Sarah... Sarah lost her job at the cannery some days ago. It's not something a bloke likes to brag about, is it? Don't hold a little stubborn paternal pride against me.”
Shit.
“Is anyone especially close to Steve? More than usual?”
Red and Darren looked embarrassed and shook their heads.
“And no one knows if he’s left the house since she saw him?”
“Not that I know of.”
“And has anyone thought to check that area for him?”
Darren chuckled, like he had remembered something very funny. “Have you met His Excellency? He's one of your lot. Foreign. English, I suppose, but for some reason his first language is French. He's the only person on the island who speaks French. One day I got a video from our Deb in Perth, and it was all in French. One of those old films, artistic, you see. There's this young man who quits school to go run on a beach or something. Damned if I could follow it. But I said to His Excellency, I said why don't you come over and we can make a day of it. Well, I put the tape in and we're watching the film. There's subtitles for all the good that does me, still can't follow the thing. So I'm asking him little things, why's he say that, what's that swear word really mean, you know just making conversation. It's not every day I get a French lesson straight from the frog's mouth. And then, do you know what happened?”
Emma stared. After a pause, it became unclear whether the question had been rhetorical. “Do I know what happens next in your story?”
“I don't even remember what I asked him, but he got dead quiet. I turn to look at him, and he's crying. His Excellency, if you can imagine! He says it's been so long, he's forgotten everything. A grown man, crying in my good chair. Now I guess there aren't any French speakers on the island after all!”
Emma held still, hoping the world would deign to make sense again if she didn't antagonize it. The air shifted, and the movement of wet, yeasty air felt like someone was breathing on her face.
Red leaned in again. “You were telling us where Steve's got off to.”
“That's not quite how I remember it. You were just telling me whether anyone has thought to look for him around the downs. I assume that's the first place someone would think to look if it's a dangerous place to be.”
Red made a dismissive gesture with both hands, sloshing his beer in the process. “Oh yes, you don't ever find what you're looking for on the downs, or The Culley. Last year, Sarah's cousin went looking for a goat that wandered off that way, all he found was a steep hole and a broken ankle.”
That was a world speed record for solving a missing person case. Missing man known to frequent remote area no locals will search? Not exactly rocket science. Now for the best part. Getting the hell out of The Rock.
“Thank you, gentlemen, I've got a wilderness to comb. Please check in at the station if you think of anything else about Ned.”
“You're not going out there at this hour, alone?”
“No, no. Of course not.”
David made it nearly ten minutes, where the top of the village street opened into a dirt path that ringed the mountainous center of the island, before complaining. It was a personal best.
“Let me get this straight. We're going to search the creepy moors at night by ourselves?”
Emma didn’t look back. “He could still be alive, if he has water.”
“I wonder, will they say the same about us in the morning? Oh, but of course the twist is that we're the only people barmy enough to come out here, so...”
“Watch where you step and you'll be fine.”
“I just want to know the rescue party hierarchy. Local recluse goes missing, recent interlopers go searching. Interlopers go missing, it's what... the sheep come to find us? Who rescues the sheep, Em? Did you think of that? By morning it'll be a team of badgers trying to find a plucky but foolhardy albatross.”
Emma used her ears to listen for more important sounds, but it was impossible to tell where anything was coming from in the howling wind. There was the rustling of the low grasses and heather, the whistling of wind through her own clothing, and always the crashing of the sea.
With nightfall the wind had reversed its direction, and the fog came down the mountain in ghostly avalanches. Looking uphill she could see it coming over a mile away. It was impossible not to feel that she ought to get out of the way, that it would crush her or hurl her into the sea.
In the opposite direction, the fog crashed into the shoreline where it could go no further. Great billows steamed and snarled, obscuring the sea and any approach to the island. The outline of a boulder teetered on the edge between land and water. In the gaps between the plumes the horizon was visible as the line where the stars ceased to flicker.
The slope from the central massif to the sea was broken by a radial network of canyons and crevices. David told her that each one had a name, but no one at The Rock seemed to know what the names were. A large one separated the village from the downs. Another crevice, shaped by volcanic forces rather than erosion, ran perpendicular to the others, wide and deep enough to shelter a stunted copse of trees. This was known in the village as The Culley, whatever that meant. It was not recommended to navigate The Culley at night.
In the dark she picked out a thick fog bank rolling down the mountain slope, bound to obscure what little visibility they had in a matter of minutes. It was hopeless trying to find someone out here at night, but she knew it was better than sitting in moldy rooms listening to people prattle on about each other. In the dark and the quiet, it was peaceful. Here David punctuated a snide remark with “am I wrong?” She ignored him.
Emma could see the grass rustling around her, and at a distance she could make out the occasional glint of a waving tuft that reflected the moon light. Keeping her eyes on the movement of the grass, she could follow a gust by the disturbance it made in the grass, as if a mole was burrowing under the surface. The rustle and murmur would travel in a straight line downhill for a while, then turn and whip itself into little circles before returning to its seaward course, slightly faster than a person could walk.
A pressure on the back of Emma’s neck made her turn around. David was a few feet to one side, bracing against the wind and trying to find a dry place to put down his foot. In front of her the wind stirred the grass until leaves and dirt made little swirls in the air, but she did not feel it on her skin. The movement in the grass came to within a few feet, then parted around a stationary patch of mud close to where she stood. Then the still patch was gone. The cold wind rushed in to fill the gap, and she realized how warm it had been a moment ago when the wind was blocked.
The chill didn’t bother her. In the quiet and the dark it was peaceful, even pleasant. Emma took a moment to enjoy the feeling of being completely alone. She was not prepared to see someone coming towards them over the tussock grass.
She caught a glimpse of a figure out of the corner of her eye and jumped. She tried to focus on what she saw but couldn’t find anything that looked like a person.
Emma turned to her husband and gave him a pointed hand gesture. “Be quiet, there's someone up there and I can't hear a thing with your complaining.”
She turned back to shout at the figure, but there was no trace of it. She looked to the left and right, but aside from the mountain and the sea there were no obstructions around, nothing a person could hide behind in a hurry.
“David, did you see a person up ahead just a moment ago?”
“Where?”
“Up ahead, I just told you. Don't do this to me right now.”
“If there was anyone close, we'd see them. There's nowhere to hide. And if they're far away, we could never hope to see them in the dark.”
Very reasonable. R
easonableness did not suffer such things as disappearing figures on foggy nights. David could always be counted on to shine a dentist's light directly into the eyes of irrational fear.
Emma sighed, which was David's cue to start being useful.
“How do we know Steve's here?”
“Well, he would have routinely gone through this area to get to the village from his house.”
“But nobody checked this area.”
“Right.”
“But what if he's in his house?”
“Well, surely someone would have checked on him if he were at home.”
“But to get there, they have to go through...”
“Jesus Christ if I were any stupider, I could run for office. Of course nobody came out to check on him. The only person who ever came out here was Ned, and he's indisposed. Come on, it's not far down this road.”
Emma stared with laser focus at the point where the horizon ought to be. She was not looking at the ground when her foot landed on a loose rock, ground smooth and slippery by the rain. It slipped out from under her. With half her weight on the crumbling rock, her footing gave way.
The rock disappeared into a narrow crevice she hadn’t even noticed a moment before. It was a few feet wide and snaked parallel to the route they had been walking as if it were stalking them. She couldn’t see the bottom, but she could see the jagged edge, lined with jutting rocks under a thin veneer of glittering slime. Emma had just enough time to feel her body tip toward the ravine when a tug at her arm pulled her back.
She whirled her body around and grabbed David with her free arm. To reach her he had bent over at the waist and was struggling to pull her back from the edge. His own feet were a few inches from the edge of the crevice. Emma heard pebbles crunch as he tried to shift his weight. It only caused his shoes to slide closer to the drop off.
Emma grabbed both of his arms and launched herself toward solid ground with the leg still on good footing. It flew out from under her and hung over empty space, but not before pushing her onto the flat, mossy ground. The movement pulled David with her, and they collapsed in a pile, their arms painfully braided by the uneven impact with the ground.
A moment went by in which Emma did not dare open her mouth or her eyes. Eventually she peeked at David. He was breathing heavily and staring back at the crevice.
“Jesus, that cunt came out of nowhere!”
“Get up. We have to move.”
He stared at her.
“Don’t give me that look, David. We’re no safer staying here all night. Just keep your eyes on the ground like I told you.”
“But you-” David’s anger faded into exhaustion. “The least you could do is give a man the opportunity to say ‘I told you so’.”
Steve's ranch had been neglected since long before he disappeared. The gate gave way with such infirmity that Emma had to support its weight as she moved it. In the yard there were tractors in varying states of disrepair. She stepped around a tire that had fallen onto the path.
“This is a lot of equipment for a place like this.”
“Steve moonlights as a handyman. People who have given up every alternative pay him to pretend to fix their digger.”
“How do you know that?”
“Everyone around here knows that.”
The cinder block farmhouse blended into the turf. Its advanced state of dilapidation gave it an organic contour. The eaves of the peaked roof nearly reached the tops of the grass, and more grass poked up between the shingles. The fog from the mountain had reached the edges of the ranch. If a witch ever decided to rough it, this is where she would go.
“After you, Em.”
“Coward.”
“It's pronounced 'civilian,' I think. Off you go.”
The untidy living room looked like it had been abandoned without warning. An old cigarette butt curled at the bottom of an ashtray. An empty glass balanced on the arm of an overstuffed chair. A clock on the bookshelf ticked. Next to it was a medical encyclopedia. There was a thin film of dust, but no more than the usual amount of bachelor detritus.
The encyclopedia was in order except for one volume. L-N was after O-R. This could prove to be a crime scene, so it was best to make note of the slightest detail. Equally important not to disturb anything from its current position. She realized that she had lost track of David.
“Where are you? Do you hear anything?”
“I’m in the kitchen. And nothing. Come smell this.”
She turned the corner into the next room, slipping the misplaced volume into the proper spot on her way.
“Smell what?”
“Exactly.”
There was no smell of rotten food, only a faint note of lemon cleaning solution above the usual earthy damp.
It didn't take long to determine that the house was empty. There was only one other place she knew to look.
“The shed, David. Come on.”
Behind the house was a squat, tilted shack made of corrugated metal, peeking around a small outcropping of black basalt. She crossed the short distance without making a sound.
Emma opened the door. Steve was curled into a ball on the hard ground. He was roused with the advanced police technique of poking with a stick. Once he came to, he retreated into the corner.
“Go away! What do you want from me?”
“Stephen? It's OK. I'm PC Cambourne. I'm working with Ned.”
“Ned! Jesus Christ, Ned!”
“Sir, we're here to help you. Can you try to stand up?”
“Get away! I'll fucking kill you like I killed Ned.”
“What? Ned Sommers attempted suicide. And he's not dead. You didn't kill him.”
The man looked up at her for the first time and she squinted at his face. In the thin light she could see the outline of a long, gaunt face and two dark eyes. He studied her face for a moment, then slammed his eyes shut.
“I killed him. I know I did. I feel it so clearly.”
“I promise you no one has killed Ned Sommers, not you or anybody else. He is as alive and well as anybody ever is in Carlisle. If you want to talk about it, we should do that back at the village. When was the last time you had anything to eat?”
The man allowed her to pull him to his feet. Every movement in the small space scraped the walls, causing render to chip away in splinters. He took a moment to convince himself that his legs would hold him up and stepped out into the gloom.
“Constable, is this man with you?”
Emma had forgotten to keep an eye on David during her exchange with Steve. Her husband was standing in the field between the house and the shed, breathing so fast the air caught in his lungs.
Emma approached him like a bomb technician. “No, no, no.”
He was emitting a high-pitched whine. He stared through her, his eyes snapping left and right. He looked at the mountain, and toward the sound of the ocean in the opposite direction.
“David. David you're OK. It's me Emma. Think about where you are.”
“Where the fuck am I? Who are you?” He backed away when she tried to approach him.
The sight pulled Steve out of his own thoughts. On unsteady legs, he walked toward the two of them.
“It’s alright, Mate. Listen to the nice lady. She’s a police officer.”
Emma resisted the urge to glare at Steve. She wanted him to look away, wait for her, go back and have another breakdown, anything but help.
“She doesn't sound like a police officer. Where the fuck is this?” David’s legs were shaking, and his voice was unsteady.
Emma moved slowly toward him, keeping a calm tone and gradual movements. “We're on South Alderney, David. David, look at me. It's me. Look. It's Emma. Do you understand? We're on an island, and everything is OK.”
David's voice gave way to squeaking sobs, but he did not retreat any further. He let Emma hold onto his arms and look him in the eye. His breathing got quieter. She could feel through his sleeve that his racing heart was returning to normal.
“I want to go home now.”
“I know, David. We're going home right away. We're taking our friend here with us, and we're going to get you a good night's sleep.” She motioned to Steve, who hesitated before coming closer. They each offered an arm to David. He accepted their help without protest. As they made their way back across the Downs, Emma tried to make sense of the situation.
“How long were you in there, Mr. White?”
“It’s Steve. I don't know. A day. Two maybe.”
“What happened to Ned has affected a lot of people. It's normal.”
“There's nothing normal about any of it.”
“I think you should stay in the village for a while, just until-”
“My home is here, Miss. I'll be fine, honestly. Could be worse.” His eyes flicked toward David, then back at the rocky ground.
Chapter 2
– I Am Waiting –
In the morning Emma sat on the edge of the bed, or at least the general margin where bed became not bed. She listened to her husband's snoring and the dripping sound of the faucet. When the tapping noise began to sound like rocks falling on a bass drum she got up and walked to the bathroom. There was no drip. The sound continued from some other room on the other side of the wall.
In the bedroom, the early morning light hit David on the horizontal plane. The beam was choked with spiraling dust. For some reason it reminded her of the time in her first criminal investigation when she used a black light in a hotel room. They always made the rookies do that. It wasn't part of any forensic technique, but it was fun to see the new girl try not to be sick.
She took the sweaters out of the drawer where she had shoved them the day before and started folding them neatly on the desk. From the desk she got a good view out the window.
The little houses hadn’t changed. The narrow street wound between the houses and down to the sea like a drainage canal. Fog obscured the waterline while the winds changed direction, giving the impression that the village was built on the edge of an abyss. A quiet mind would love this scene, a cute tumbledown village scrubbed clean each night by wind and water. She tucked the sleeves of a dark green sweater into a fold and set it aside. Looking at the pile again, she couldn’t be sure she hadn’t folded the same sweater three times already.
No Stone Tells Where I Lie Page 3