by Matt Hilton
24
Harry felt like the proverbial spare prick at a wedding. Since accompanying them back to camp he’d been largely ignored by Ben and Jenna. They were supposed to be breaking down the camp and getting things loaded into their backpacks, but things weren’t happening as quickly as he’d like. Jenna was a girly-girl, and by that Harry meant she farted about too much in fear of breaking a fingernail, and kept on distracting Ben from his own work when she needed help to untie even a bloody knot out of a guide rope. Ben — desperate to please — completed each task delegated upon him, and then had to hug and kiss Jenna to reassure her she was in good hands. Shelley, his own girlfriend, although there was a question mark over their relationship at that time, could be a bossy bitch at times, but at least she wasn’t needy. If Harry offered to untie a knot she was struggling with she’d probably knee him in the nuts for being such a male chauvinist pig. He liked that Shelley was tough and independent, and her jealousy only told him that she liked him as much as he did her. He wouldn’t mind, but when he was caught eyeing up Annie, she’d misread his interest in her friend. He wasn’t admiring her willowy good looks the way she thought; he was actually comparing her to Shelley and deciding he had the best-looking girl in the bunch. He couldn’t tell Shelley that, of course, because she’d probably fall out with him for suggesting her friends were ugly. Of course that was not what he meant, but, well, sometimes it was best just to keep his mouth shut, endure the cold shoulder treatment and wait for her to warm to him again. Making up would be fun for them both. Shelley would come around, he was sure of it, but right then, as he struggled to pack a disassembled tent back into its bag while Ben and Jenna cooed and smooched, the last thing he could be bothered with was romantic stuff.
‘Could do with a hand over here,’ he finally called. ‘Ben, you got a minute?’
Ben had his hands on Jenna’s hips, making doe eyes with her. He glimpsed back over a shoulder at Harry. ‘I’m helping Jenna.’
‘I’m sure she can manage to stand on her own. Surely she doesn’t need you to friggin’ hold her up?’ Harry made a point of staring at Jenna when he spoke, but all he was rewarded with was a twist of the girl’s mouth and a toss of her head. She leaned in and whispered something to Ben, and he also curled his lip at Harry. He didn’t let go of his girlfriend. They crabbed a few feet further away.
‘This isn’t Strictly Come-fucking-Dancing, you know,’ Harry snapped. ‘We’re supposed to get everythin’ packed down and ready to go and you two are just pissin’ about like a couple of fannies. Get your bloody finger out, Ben, and come help me with this! Jenna, if you’re not going to help, go stand over by the steps and keep an eye out for Rob like we we’re told.’
Jenna whispered to Ben again, all the while scowling at Harry. She couldn’t even be snarky without her lover boy’s assistance. ‘You’re not the boss of us,’ Ben said, parroting Jenna’s instructions.
‘I’m not your boss, but I’m the only one with a fuckin’ clue. Now do as I bloody say!’
‘I’d better help him,’ Ben said, but in a tone that asked for Jenna’s permission.
‘You don’t have to do anything he says,’ Jenna pointed out. ‘And you shouldn’t let him bully you either.’
‘Bully you? I’m bullying you, Ben?’ Harry threw down the half-packed tent. ‘That’s fuckin’ charmin’ that is. I’ll tell you what, carry on kissin’ Jenna’s arse for all I care. You’d only get in my bloody way, you useless twat.’
There was a moment where Ben looked cowed, and suitably ashamed that he was perceived as useless, but then he stepped away from his girlfriend, and without any urging from Jenna, squared up to Harry.
‘Jenna’s scared,’ Ben said. ‘She doesn’t want to stand by herself near the steps. Not if there’s something weird going on here like Leah said.’
Harry felt a pang of regret. He’d spoken out of turn. The reason they’d returned to camp was because the girl had been afraid, and Ben was almost as nervous. To be fair, Harry had offered to chaperone them, to offer protection, not force them into labour. When Shelley was being bossy with him, there was a touch of affection behind it, as if Harry was in need of constant cajoling to get the best out of him, whereas he had been deliberately harsh. One day he hoped to work in the adventure tourism industry, so he must learn how to motivate without going over the top. He held up a palm to them both. ‘Look, I know. I’m sorry, okay? To tell you the truth I’m a little bit freaked out myself. It’s why I want to get this done and ready to go as soon as the others get back. If Rob has been hurt and we need to get help, we need to be ready, okay? I can’t do it all by myself, though, it’s why I need your help. Both of you.’
Including Jenna in his announcement would give her purpose. If she didn’t dwell on her fear, it wouldn’t trouble her as much and she wouldn’t need constant support from Ben. That was the idea anyway. It backfired on him. Jenna began weeping and clung again like a limpet to Ben. He stroked her hair, shushed her, kissed her eyes and chin. ‘You aren’t bloody helping, Harry!’ Ben sent him a scathing glare.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, I’ll do it then, you lazy sods,’ Harry wheezed under his breath and turned away in disgust. If you want something done right, do it your bloody self, he told himself. He snapped up the tent and bag and began angrily shoving in the rebellious material.
A yelp from Jenna fell on deaf ears. But then he caught Ben’s startled curse, and the clatter of their feet across the pebble-strewn campsite. They were either rushing to assist him, or they were about to jump him for swearing at them. Without halting his angry packing, he twisted at the waist to glare a warning at them. Sunlight struck greasy fingerprints on his spectacles. Ben and Jenna were murky figures, almost clambering over each other to reach his side. He swiped at his glasses, moved the lenses a fraction and could see better. A third figure moved rapidly after the youths, and Harry was initially stunned by what it carried, then as terrified as the couple was when realising its meaning.
The man ushering the young couple was a stranger to Harry. He was thickset, muscular rather than fat, with short-cropped grey hair. His face was ruddy, with pale eyes almost buried within pinched lids, his skin a network of coarse lines that were more eagle’s talons than crow’s feet. Alone the guy was intimidating, but the shotgun he waved at them made him petrifying.
He hollered something at them, voice thickly accented, and followed up with, ‘What the bloody hell d’you think yous lot are doing here?’
Harry faced him, mouth hanging open. He glanced at Ben and Jenna. They clung to each other as they crabbed towards him.
‘Stand still you wee shites!’ The man shook the shotgun for emphasis. ‘The lot of you, don’t bloody well move!’
Harry was supposed to protect his younger charges. But what could he do when threatened by a shotgun? He scrambled away, climbing over the equipment he’d piled, got a boot caught in the strap of a kitbag, and dragged it along with him. Ben and Jenna grabbed at him, hands pulling and shoving at the same time, their bodies slapping up against his, as if inviting him to a spirited ménage a trois. Harry tripped, the bag still trailing from his heel, and went down on his hands and knees, even as Ben and Jenna still clung to him. A sharp pebble dug deep into his left palm. He scrambled to rise, but was stepped on by Ben. Before he could right himself, the stranger was bent over him, the barrel of the gun too close for comfort. Harry rolled over on his back, arms uselessly outstretched to ward off the blast of shot.
‘Get away!’ He wasn’t sure if he shouted at the man or the young couple, perhaps both. Whatever his intention, Jenna sprinted off, bleating in terror, and Ben wasn’t more than a second behind her. The man with the gun paid no attention to Harry’s words.
A ruddy hand grasped his jacket front, began hauling him up. Harry yelled again but this time wordlessly, the heat of his breath blinding out the lenses of his glasses. In desperation he swiped his hands at his attacker, felt the impact of his inner wrist against the gun barrel.
> The shotgun boomed and Harry shrieked.
25
Becks was frantic.
The others were stunned into immobility. Leah’s mind was a gurgling pit, all sense draining away as she gawped at the young woman trying to support Rob Cooper. Becks had wrapped her arms around his waist, tried to lift him, but he was too big, too heavy and Becks too uncoordinated. She kept losing her grip, and jostling for position again, only to be thwarted. She hollered Rob’s name repeatedly, but getting through to him was impossible. She turned to them, screeched for assistance, and the desolation on her stricken features snapped Leah back to the moment. Leah knew that he was dead, and had been for hours. His face was lax, eyes bugging from their sockets, his tongue protruding from teeth that had gnashed it raw. The only reason his corpse hadn’t collapsed to the earth was because of the leather belt that dug deep into the flesh of his throat. Other vivid purple bruises stood out on the skin above and below the belt.
‘Stay here!’ Her command was directed at the girls, all of them as horrified and almost insensible as she’d been a second ago. She rushed to help Becks, aware of a rising chorus of alarm behind her. The girls ignored her, followed close on her heels.
Becks had got a shoulder under Rob’s left armpit, throwing her weight under him, trying to hitch him up. She reached for the belt, trying to tug it away, couldn’t find a gap for her fingertips between the leather and his constricted throat. She moaned in horror, doubled her efforts. Leah grasped her.
‘Help me!’ Becks keened.
‘Leave him, Becks,’ Leah said, ‘we can’t help him now.’
‘We have to get him free!’
‘We have to leave him alone!’
‘No…I’m not leaving him like this!’ Becks shook Leah off angrily, and threw herself into lifting Rob again. ‘Annie? Shelley? One of you help me, for God’s sake! Hayley! We have to…’
Leah got between the girls and Becks, shook her head at them in warning, and when they ignored her she pushed Shelley back, pointed a stern finger at each of the others. Immediately she turned back to grasp Becks, this time to tug her away. Becks again strained against her, and Leah rasped the truth into her ear. ‘He’s gone, Becks. It’s too late to help him. We mustn’t touch his body for when the police get here. We shouldn’t disturb the evidence.’
‘He’ll die!’ Becks wailed.
‘He’s already…’ Leah was about to say gone. But to get through to Becks she must be blunt. ‘He’s dead. There’s no helping him now.’
‘We can still get him down. He shouldn’t be left strung up like that…it’s…it’s not right.’
Shelley, leader of the trio of the girls as usual was first to approach. Her query was paper-thin. ‘Did he…hang himself?’
‘No,’ said Leah, as she eyed the configuration of the belt, and the way it had been looped around the tree trunk and hooked over the end of a broken branch. ‘It would have been impossible for him to do that. He was murdered.’
Leah felt Becks sink in her arms. The sturdy girl was a dead weight. Leah helped lower her to the forest floor, and was thankful now that Shelley was so willful. The girl helped to support Becks from total collapse. Hayley and Annie stayed back, Hayley weeping loudly. Annie looked as if she couldn’t claw in a decent breath, and was on the verge of collapse too. Leah went to her, assisted her to sit down. She got Hayley to crouch alongside her friend, to console her, though Hayley was in need of as much consoling. Leah returned to Becks and Shelley, bewildered that she had the fortitude to organise them when really she wanted to collapse in horror too.
‘Are you certain he didn’t do that to himself?’ Shelley’s bottom lip trembled.
Leah looked again at the belt so tightly cinched around Rob’s throat that it was buried in his skin. The buckle was at the rear of the tree, snug against the branch. There was no possible way that Rob could have fastened the belt and strangled himself, his arms simply wouldn’t reach the buckle, and there was no play in the belt where he could have fastened it loosely, inserted his head and then allowed the sinking of his knees to slowly throttle himself to death. ‘It’s inhumanly possible,’ she explained, ‘without arms twice as long. No, Rob was placed there like that. Maybe, I don’t know, but judging by the marks on his skin, he could have been strangled with the belt first then propped up like that.’
‘But who…?’
‘Someone stronger than any of us,’ Leah said quickly to stave off any finger pointing. Wasn’t it odd that Rob had returned with her to her cabin, only to turn up murdered the morning after? She knew exactly who would be blamed if she didn’t cut any suspicion at the quick. ‘It would take another man, one as strong or stronger than Rob.’
‘There’s only Dom,’ said Shelley.
Becks almost jack-knifed off the ground. Tears made dirty rivulets down her cheeks. She stabbed angry gestures at them. ‘Dom had nothing to do with this! Don’t dare say such a horrible thing!’
‘We could all see Dom was jealous of Rob,’ Shelley snapped back. ‘He was after Leah and was pissed off that Rob was moving in on her.’
Quantifying Shelley’s argument wouldn’t help. Initially she suspected that Dom and Rob might have argued, perhaps even fought over her — explaining Dom’s injury — but not this. Dom was a sleaze and an arrogant piece of work, but a murderer? Instead Leah said, ‘I don’t think Dom had anything to do with this.’
‘Then who else could it have been?’ Shelley demanded.
Becks glared in accusation at Leah, but then she snorted at her stupidity: even she could see Leah didn’t have the physicality to string up a guy that weighed half as much again. She stared at the ground.
‘I’ve suspected all along that there was someone else on the island,’ Leah offered, ‘and he’s been stalking me, spying on me, sneaking inside my cabin and moving stuff around. Someone capable of that creepy behaviour might be capable of anything.’
‘Who is it though?’ Shelley pressed for an answer Leah didn’t have.
‘I don’t know, but we have to warn the others. Has anyone heard Dom or Effie recently?’ Leah checked with Hayley and Annie, but they were too wrapped up in their own misery to have heard any distant shouts. ‘We have to get them and go back to camp and get off the island as soon as possible.’
Becks had gathered some strength by then. She stood directly before Rob, shaking her head morosely. ‘I don’t like leaving him hanging like this. I don’t.’
Placing a comforting hand on the woman’s shoulder, Leah said, ‘I don’t either, Becks, but we must. When the police arrive they’ll be able to tell more from the way he was hanged than if we lower him to the ground. Plus, we mustn’t disturb any forensic evidence.’ Before she had finished explaining, Leah was weeping. She liked Rob, but she barely knew him. She had been attracted to him, yes, but her emotional reaction was because of the horrible thing that had happened to him — it was a terrible way to die. Nobody should experience such violence, or the terror that he must have gone through as he was throttled to death. Worse than that, she knew he’d died because he had shown her a little attention. Some weirdo that had fixated on her over the last few days had murdered Rob through envy. Had he been killed because her admirer saw Rob as a threat, or was this more to do with exerting power and control over her? ‘Rob was killed because the stalker wants me to himself,’ she concluded, growing more desperate to leave by the second, ‘and he might hurt the others too. We have to get everybody away before anyone else gets hurt!’
Everyone was in agreement. Shelley helped her friends up, encouraging them away. Leah peered all around, hoping for a hint of where Dom and Effie had gotten to, dreading spotting a shadowy figure lurking among the tree trunks. Their tracks through the forest mulch showed their way back to the cabin. ‘Come on, let’s move!’
‘Wait!’ Becks strode towards Rob, and for a second Leah was afraid she was about to ignore her advice about not touching him. Before she reached him, Becks swivelled to face them. ‘Rob has the sa
tellite phone. If we find it we can call the police from here.’
Leah only wanted to leave. But Becks was correct. They had to retrieve the satellite phone, their only means of communicating with the mainland. It’d be best to call in help even before they set out to sea. A qualm shivered up her spine. She pictured the heaving, turbulent crossing, and for a moment wished she’d never come to a damn island: what had she been thinking? But the need to get off Shattered Rock overrode any irrational fear of open water. If she must she was prepared to dive in and swim back to Tayinloan. Better yet was if a helicopter was sent to evacuate them all.
‘Yes,’ she encouraged Becks. ‘Grab the phone.’
She was tentative at first, as if fearful she would disturb Rob from his eternal sleep. Odd when she had been so frantic to lift him out of the choking noose before. Her fingers played across the front of his jacket, touching pockets, feeling for a familiar shape. When the phone wasn’t in its usual location in his breast pocket, Becks ranged wider, but Leah already had a sense of what she’d find. Nothing.
‘It’s gone!’ Becks croaked.
‘Just like the transmitter from my cabin,’ Leah pointed out. ‘The crazy bastard doesn’t want to give us any hope of calling for help. Come on, the sooner we go, the sooner we’ll find the others and can get the hell off this island.’
There had been a shift in the dynamic between them. In part Leah had been a follower when it came to the decisions made by Becks, but now there was no debate about who was in charge. Leah ushered the younger girls before them, and Becks charged along on their heels. As they pushed through ferns and kicked a path through fallen twigs and branches, they added to the racket of their flight, calling for Dom and Effie. Since coming to the realisation that a murderer was loose on the island, Becks’s concern for Effie had manifested and she almost screamed for her girlfriend.