by Matt Hilton
31
By the time Leah returned along the beach, accompanied by Becks and Effie, Dom had dragged Pete into a seated position in the lea of the cliffs. Pete was stirring, moaning pitifully and spitting out bloody drool. Dom jabbed him in the side with his boot, warning him against ‘tryin’ anything’. Pete was in no fit state to mount an escape, he was good for little more than bemoaning his aches and pains. It took a moment before he recognised Leah looming over him, her face and throat blotchy with colour. He made as if to reach for her, before realisation struck that his hands were tied behind his back. He squirmed, croaked out her name.
‘What the hell’s going on here, Pete?’ Leah demanded.
‘Leah?’ he repeated. ‘You’re here…’
‘Where else? You knew where I was coming.’
Pete took in the scowling ring of faces surrounding him, settled for a moment on Dom, and he flinched. ‘You’re with him?’
Even hurt, and not yet fully cognizant, Pete’s inherent jealous streak was still a mile wide. Leah didn’t answer.
‘That’s why he beat me up.’ Pete spat more blood for emphasis.
‘You came here to check on me, because you didn’t trust I was coming here alone.’
Pete snorted. ‘Was I wrong to distrust you?’
‘Friggin’ numpty,’ Dom snapped, and aimed another hefty jab with the toe of his boot, satisfied by Pete’s jerk of alarm. ‘I battered you ’cause you tried to smack me with a rock, after I discovered you with a corpse, not ’cause I’m with your bloody bird.’
Holding out a hand for silence, Leah crouched so she could fix gazes with her ex. She felt no lingering affection for him, could think of him no other way than with anger. ‘I told you I was coming here to write. I told you I wanted to be alone.’
Pete snorted again, and he didn’t have to point out he was only the latest of many people who had put paid to her wishes for seclusion.
Indicating the group, Leah said, ‘I didn’t know any of these people until they arrived on the island yesterday.’ Her words sounded too much like an apology, so she changed tack. ‘How long have you been here, Pete?’
‘What?’ He struggled against his bindings. ‘Untie me. This is…this is ridiculous.’
‘How long?’ Leah snapped.
‘I only just got here…I don’t know, an hour ago? How long have I been knocked out?’
‘Not long enough.’ Dom sneered at him.
‘You’re in big trouble, mate,’ Pete countered. ‘I’m going to have you done for assault.’ He again wrestled to get free. ‘I’m going to have you arrested for false imprisonment and—’
Leah grabbed his collar and gave him a shake.
‘You’re the one who’s in big trouble, Pete. Unless you can explain what the hell’s going on here, and why Dom found you standing over a dead man, and why you tried to hit him with a stone.’
‘And me,’ Shelley added for emphasis. She touched the spot where the rock had bounced off her.
Pete glanced sharply between his accusers, and back at Leah. ‘What was I supposed to do? I thought they killed McBride and I was going to be next! I found him in the sea, and was checking to see if I could help him when those two came running and screaming at me! Leah, for God’s sake! Do you think I’m capable of hurting anyone?’
Yes, she thought, yes, unfortunately I do. His jealousy had already proven he was on a knife-edge where his next accusation could be followed by physical violence. But was Pete capable of murder? She didn’t believe so. Intrinsically he was a coward: he’d slap a woman he deemed weaker than himself, but attack a sturdy man armed with a shotgun with only a hand held axe? No, that wasn’t something she could imagine.
Pointing along the beach, Leah asked, ‘Is that Mr McBride?’
‘Yes,’ he said, and frowned in misunderstanding. ‘That’s Jim McBride. He owns the island. He brought me here looking for you after he told me you failed to show up for your booking.’
Leah spread her hands in confusion. ‘Well, obviously I did show up.’
And then it struck her. She recalled arriving at the port and parking her car, and wandering down to the only boat in the dock. In hindsight, she had told the first person she met she was there for her trip to Shattered Rock. ‘Alone?’ the man had asked. ‘You’ve no husband or boyfriend with you?’
‘Just me,’ she answered, and stuck out her hand, offering her name. ‘You’ll be Mr McBride, I assume?’
When she thought about it now, he had only squeezed out a smile in response, while taking a lingering look out across the sea to where Shattered Rock was veiled in mist. ‘So you’ve booked to stay in the cabin have you, Miss Dean?’ he asked after a moment’s reflection.
She delved for her printed booking confirmation, a folded piece of A4 paper tucked into her pocket. He waved down the formality, said, ‘Well, if you’re ready, I’ll take you over the now.’
She had exhaled, then sucked in a deep breath. ‘I’m not looking forward to this part,’ she admitted. ‘I’m not the most confident when it comes to open water.’
‘Don’t worry.’ His eyebrows rose and fell. ‘I’ll be watching over you.’
Now that she thought about it, his words had been loaded with sinister promise. She told him she had a couple of bags, and he’d accompanied her to her car to help haul them down to the dock. She looped her laptop bag over her shoulder. When she caught his quizzical glance, she patted the bag. ‘Have computer will travel. I intend using the solitude to get plenty of work done.’
‘You’ll get plenty of that if it’s right enough and you’re not expecting company?’
‘Nope. Like I said when I made the booking, I’ll be the only one using the cabin.’
‘Right you are then,’ he announced, while dry-washing his ruddy hands. He indicated his boat. ‘Let’s get going while the going’s good.’
Foolishly she had made a dangerous assumption, and proclaimed her vulnerability to a complete stranger without even asking for evidence of his identity first. But who else would have done so? She’d made a booking, met whom she thought was her temporary landlord at the prescribed meeting place — albeit, she had arrived earlier than she’d originally communicated to the genuine McBride — and boarded the single vessel present: she’d deny anyone would have acted differently in her place.
Pete brought her back to the present. ‘I tried texting and calling you on your phone, but got no replies. I was worried for you, Leah, and how things ended last time we spoke. So, yes, I contacted Mr McBride to see if he could get a message to you. But he said you’d never arrived for your trip, and assumed you’d had a change of heart but neglected to cancel. He wasn’t fussed: you’d paid upfront so he wasn’t out of pocket. I got the first available train up to Glasgow, hired a car and drove to Tayinloan to find you. I arrived yesterday evening and met with McBride, but he told me the sea was too rough to sail over last night, but agreed to bring me over this morning. He was still of the opinion you weren’t here, but, well…’
‘Wasn’t my car at the port?’ Leah asked.
Pete shook his head. ‘There was no strange car. Those were McBride’s words. He said he knew all the vehicles parked at the dock and none but my hire car was from out of town.’
The last Leah could remember was tucking her keys in her pocket after considering them useless as a weapon. She felt for them and they were gone. Maybe on those occasions when her stalker trespassed in the cabin, he’d taken more than she’d realised. Had he returned to port and moved her car so that eventually when she was reported missing, it would be found elsewhere and throw off a search for her? She had to consider that the bogus McBride had planned for her to disappear as resolutely as Mary Jayne Kenner had all those years ago. Alone, cut off from the mainland, she would have been at his mercy. The stalking nature of McBride’s impostor had been bad enough — the sneaking, the spying,
the stealing, and not to mention the awful howling meant to keep her nerves on edge — and then Rob
’s party had arrived unexpectedly and thrown him off his plan to…to what? Rape and murder her?
He’d murdered Rob, and then the genuine McBride, and from what she’d learned from Effie, the kayaks had been scuppered: was the maniac’s plan now that nobody got off the island alive?
She stood abruptly. ‘We have to move right now.’
‘We have to find the boys,’ Effie reminded her, to which Jenna and Shelley both agreed fervently.
‘Yes. But we have to get somewhere safer than this beach, somewhere defensible. We’re too exposed down here in the open.’
‘So what are we supposed to do with him, then?’ Dom looked as if he’d happily leave Pete on the beach like a tethered goat.
‘We have to take him with us. We can’t leave him tied here like this.’
‘Oh, so now you trust him?’
‘I’ve no reason not to. Everything he has said rings true. Think about it Dom, if he’d really murdered Robert and McBride, would he have run from you instead of shooting you dead or worse?’
‘I didn’t kill anybody!’ Pete whined, and again struggled with his bindings. ‘Untie me; let me go right now!’
Dom’s fists curled at his sides, one of them still clutching his lock knife, and he hissed a warning at his captive. Leah interjected.
‘Pete…did McBride have a radio on his boat?’
‘Yeah. Plus he had a handheld walkie-talkie. It’s how he called me to come to the beach.’ He looked at the four younger girls briefly. ‘He left me at the boat while he checked things out after spotting their tents and stuff as we approached the bay. He said he’d had trouble with unwelcome trespassers getting drunk on the beach before…’ Pete closed his eyes and groaned. ‘When I arrived here, Mr McBride was already dead, and the canoes were all holed, and, well, I hadn’t a clue what was going on.’ His gaze lit on Dom once more, his mouth writhing. ‘And then he lost it with me.’
‘Oh, yeah? You really think that was me losin’ it?’ Dom snorted. ‘You tried to get first blood, mate, I only took it.’
The debate about whose response was right or wrong could have raged on, but Leah butted in. ‘Where’s McBride’s boat? We can use the boat’s radio to call for assistance.’
‘It’s just around the headland back there.’ Pete nodded over his left shoulder, towards the rocky outcrop up which the steps had been carved. ‘There’s a path up and over the cliffs — the way I came — or you could wade round the cliff, I suppose.’
Jenna shook her head. Her eyes were huge. ‘We shouldn’t go that way. That’s where the mad man appeared from…he could have gone back there and be waiting for us just around that corner.’
The tide was on the turn. White spume clashed over the huge rocks that had tumbled from the promontory into the sea. It’d be a tough slog fighting against the waves to go around the headland: Leah wouldn’t even countenance the idea of facing the sea. ‘We go up and over. Hopefully we’ll get some sign of where the boys are from up there.’
‘He’s chasing the lads,’ Effie reminded them, ‘so he’s probably gone further inland. Leah’s right. We need to get to McBride’s boat and call the police. Becks, me and you can run ahead and—’
‘No,’ Leah said sharply. ‘We have to stay together. There’s strength in numbers. If any of us get isolated, we’ll be at risk.’
‘Against a nutter with a shotgun, what difference does it make?’ Hayley had been a largely silent presence, so her sudden interjection held more strength. Everyone, even Pete who had to crane round to see, looked at her. The girl’s features were set with a sense of fatalism. ‘If we’re all bunched together we make too easy a target for him.’
‘He can’t shoot us all before we get him,’ said Dom, and waggled his knife.
‘Are you serious?’ Hayley croaked, bunching her dark hair in her fists. ‘How’s about you’re the one he shoots first? In fact, he probably will to get the only man in the group out of the way first. So he can kill the rest of us after doing who knows what first.’
‘He’s not the only man,’ Pete said, but received only glances of disdain from the girls and a scornful laugh from Dom. ‘I’m being serious,’ Pete went on. ‘Untie me. I can’t help if my hands are tied.’
‘Yeah,’ said Dom. ‘Let’s untie the wimp and send him out in front of the rest of us. That way it’s him who’ll get shot first: at least he’ll do us some good that way….by drawin’ fire.’
It surprised her, but Leah suddenly snapped to Pete’s defence. ‘Dom! For Christ’s sake, will you pack it in? It’s obvious that Pete had nothing to do with killing Rob or McBride. Fair enough, it might’ve looked suspicious the way he reacted when he first saw you, but under the circumstances it wasn’t unreasonable either. It makes sense to let him free now. We have to move fast and silently, and we won’t be able to do either trying to get him safely over the cliffs with his hands tied. Plus,’ she looked directly at Pete, ‘he won’t give us any trouble now we’ve straightened things out. Will you, Pete?’
‘Coming here, the last thing I had in mind was causing trouble. But,’ now it was Pete staring directly at her, ‘I’ll do everything in my power to defend you.’
Her mouth formed a bitter line, and she swallowed down a refusal. She glanced at Becks and Effie for guidance. ‘I’m right? He’s more helpful if he’s with us than our prisoner?’
Admitting as such placed an onus of blame on Dom and Shelley for beating up an innocent man: Becks only stared at the ground while Effie glanced at the offenders for their opinion. Dom sneered, Shelley appeared momentarily cowed, as it was only minutes ago she’d suggested crushing Pete’s skull with a rock. Again it was Hayley whose voice was heard loudest. ‘Let’s just make a bloody decision and get moving, before that maniac comes back.’
Jenna and Annie were firmly of the same idea, and a moment later Shelley joined them. There was a democratic split, but the ayes had it.
‘Cut him free,’ Leah said.
Dom growled a curse. But he obeyed, stooping sharply and hacking through the cord with his blade. Pete flopped forward, groaning as he strove to bring his arms round to his front: his period of constriction had tormented his already abused muscles. He flexed and curled his fingers, each small movement accompanied by a flinch.
‘Get up, you pussy,’ Dom snapped. ‘You’d think I gave you a real hidin’ or somethin’.’
Pete glared up at him. His bloody and bruised face was testament to his beating. Dom’s stance was still one of challenge. Leah got between them again, shielding Pete so he could stand. Her ex made the mistake of reaching for her, and she turned and stepped away from him. Her message was clear.
‘We should try to find weapons,’ Becks suggested. They’d already been over that, but she gestured towards where the kayaks wallowed in the surf. ‘The oars…we should gather some of them to use as clubs.’
Against a shotgun, or an axe, the oars would offer little more protection than the lock knives, but at least they’d offer a sense of comfort missing in them all. Effie was first to agree with her partner, and the quartet of younger girls weren’t far behind them. They moved en masse for the surf line, but had made it only a few ungainly steps in the deep pebbles before an ominous sound rang out from overhead. As one, they spun around, their heads snapping up. Mouths and eyes widened in alarm, a second before a loud roar of tumbling boulders had them cowering, or in Annie’s case lunging in panic toward the shelter of the cliff wall.
Leah cringed in horror at the sight of the beautiful girl smashed to the beach under a large slab of reddish stone.
32
In short order, Leah had witnessed the aftermath of a hanging, and another man axed to death, but on those occasions both victims were already dead. Terrible enough — other than her grandmother, who’d been in a coffin in a funeral home, she’d never seen a corpse before — but witnessing the sudden and instant demise of a living and breathing girl was horrendous. One second Annie was there, present, vital, with the hopes and desir
es of a young girl with a long existence ahead of her, and in the next…she was gone. Death was instantaneous, and perhaps it was a blessing, because the crush injuries sustained were terrible. Blood and viscera splashed a wide swathe of the surrounding pebbles.
More boulders and smaller rocks cascaded down, an avalanche of bouncing projectiles that scattered the group of women on the beach, Effie going down hard when a boulder struck her shoulder, Becks screeching in terror and clawing at her to drag her to safety – she too was buffeted by a flying stone and went down on top of her girlfriend. Shelley went face first in to the tide in a graceless dive, Jenna and Hayley galloping further along the beach, pursued by ricocheting stones. A curtain of dirt and debris almost obscured the scene of panic, and another huge slab tumbled, gathering momentum: struck by fatalism, Leah was locked in place.
‘Get back!’ Hands grasped Leah and yanked her clear of the falling rock. It slammed the beach where she’d been a moment earlier, sending up an explosion of pebbles and grit that peppered her, almost blinding her as she was drawn back against her savior’s chest. Pete twisted with her, forcing her up against the cliff, covering her body with his. A tumultuous shower of smaller stones and dirt found them, piling up on Pete’s head and rounded shoulders, and also finding Leah, invading her mouth after she gasped in…she was unsure if it was relief or continued shock.
The roar of tumbling stone, followed by their solid impacts on the beach, drowned everyone’s frantic yelps and shouts, but as it subsided to a susurration of trickling dirt, screams split the air. Names were hollered, answered, screeched and screeched again. Leah realised she was on her knees, Pete still shielding her with his body. She returned Dom’s incredulous blink. The team leader was on his back, covered in a layer of dirt and pebbles, his mouth hanging open in dismay, but he looked otherwise unhurt. A pall of finer dust hung in the air all around them.
‘Effie! Effie! Wake up, Effie!’ Becks, limping around her girlfriend, shook Effie vigorously, but got no reply. ‘Effie? Oh my God! Effieeeee!’