by Matt Hilton
She cast around, seeking a rock large enough to crush his skull with. But it wasn’t in her to desecrate a corpse. She sunk down on her knees, her abused hands clutched at her middle and she stared at him. His unblinking eyes were fixed on hers, and she hoped the image of his slayer was imprinted on his mind as he’d died.
The surface rippled, first reflective like the darkling of a mirror, and she caught a fleeting image of her pale face juxtaposed with his. In the next roll of the current, the water grew as opaque as mud, concealing the face of the murderer. Still, Leah averted her face as she kicked through the surf towards the narrow strip of beach, where she finally sank down on her backside, and wept into her palms.
40
Wrung out of emotion, Leah finally pushed to her feet, knocking clods of sand and gravel off the seat of her soaked pants as she stared at the figure wallowing in the surf. The sea had rolled the murderer over, so that he was face down in the foam. She was grateful for that small kindness because she couldn’t bear to look at his lax face. Slowly, she scanned either side, noting the tall boulders bookending the tiny cove. The cliffs soared above her. She could, she supposed, wait there for rescuers to arrive, except she couldn’t trust the mobile phone to have done its work. When she trapped it between the rocks, she was unsure if she’d reached a point where it would receive a signal. Her frequent nightmares had made her fearful of the sea; the thought of plunging back into its embrace again curdled her innards. But why should she fear it? In her most dire moment the sea had been her saviour, and not the nemesis she’d dreaded.
She stepped in ankle deep water, allowed the surf to wash over her boots. It didn’t burn like acid, or try to rise up and enfold her and drag her to some watery doom. She waded in, now thighs deep. Averting her face, she reached blindly and snagged the killer by a foot, and then trawled him with her as she forced against the surging tide. She dragged him with her as she pulled for the higher swells rushing around the western most edge of the cove. The effort strained her, and her arms were already leaden from their earlier abuse, but she gritted her teeth and swore with each stroke and finally worked around the headland.
A boat bobbed on calmer swells in a second natural cove. She recognised it as the battered old cabin cruiser she’d made the trip over to Shattered Rock on. How long ago had she made that crossing? It was only a couple of days, but it seemed a lifetime ago. The boat was moored alongside an old jetty formed from railroad sleepers and red bricks, now mostly a uniform green from an encrustation of algae. Years ago, she guessed, the marine biologists had used that jetty when coming and going between the seal colony and Shattered Rock. She dragged her burden as she rolled over on her back and kicked for shore. Soon she drew up on the beach, and yanked the corpse further so he laid spread eagle, but face down, on the gravel. She dropped to her backside again, but was all cried out. She gasped for air while brine sluiced from her clothing. She shivered, and the tremors grew seismic. The bogus McBride once told her not to fear drowning in the chilly sea because hypothermia would take her first. She was damned if she was going to allow him to be proved right.
She stood, stamping her feet and flapping her arms to get some warmth into her extremities, even as she checked out a steep column of stairs cut through a niche in the cliffs. The path Ben had been following down must lead to a juncture with those steps. She should go and find the boy, check that he’d survived the beating from the killer’s gunstock. But first she’d something else to do.
She tiptoed along the jetty, watching for movement. Even though she didn’t give it much credit, it would be supremely ironic if she’d misread everything and the killer had not come alone to the island to torment and then abuse her. The bench on which she’d once crouched, dreading the surging tide so close to her was bare, as was each corner of the deck she checked. The cabin was open at the rear to the elements. She could see inside, and it was empty. She stepped down onto the deck, feeling it rock slightly underfoot. Moving to the cabin, she halted at its threshold. If she believed in ghosts she might imagine the spectre of the killer at the wheel; she was beyond the supernatural fancy her imagination had once conjured now. She ignored the discomfort of entering his domain, and instead reached to touch some of the objects he’d stolen during his reign of terror. Parts of the radio from her cabin lay disassembled on the console beyond the wheel, and also she found the sat-phone stolen from Rob Cooper after he was strangled to death in the forest. There were other sundry items, some of them making her realise how sickeningly pathetic her would-be rapist and murderer was: she saw the underwear she’d stripped out of after her first night and thought was later lost in the fire. He’d been in and out of her cabin on more occasions than she’d first thought, and must have raided her dirty laundry while she was attending the party on the beach.
Those items were the killer’s trophies. Well to hell with him, she decided, because now they were the evidence that would incriminate him. She dug in her pocket, found the small bunch of links and drew out Mary Jayne Kenner’s bracelet. She dangled the lozenge before her eyes, again reading aloud the initials inscribed upon it, both Mary’s and hers, then hung the bracelet over a protrusion on the wheel, for the police to find.
She considered using the sat-phone, but instead reached for the on-board radio. She didn’t understand protocol, but didn’t care: once she mentioned murder and killing she’d raise a response. In a rush she turned on the radio, and keyed the hand-mic and bleated into it.
When she again staggered across the deck and alighted on the jetty, it was with a sense of grateful euphoria. Help was coming!
Ben stood at the foot of the stairs, supporting his head with both hands. He looked dazed, his eyes puffy and swollen, and blood had dried on his lips and chin. Obviously he was in pain, but he mustered a smile when he saw the lifeless body on the beach. Leah didn’t tell him what happened, it was best perhaps that nobody ever knew she’d had a hand in his slaying, and only went to Ben instead. She supported him to sit, assuring him that she would go and fetch Jenna now that they were safe. He thanked her, but not with words: his jaw was broken. He returned the hug she’d briefly given him on the cliff top.
Cries of disbelief and joy preceded others down the stairs. Becks and Effie came down first, Becks wielding an oar, the latter with her arm in a makeshift sling. The team leaders must have rounded up the others, and despite the obvious danger to them all had come to help rescue Leah. They had arrived too late, but Leah appreciated their selflessness. Jenna was mindful of Effie’s injury, but as soon as she spotted Ben huddled against Leah, she howled his name, threw aside the oar she carried and thundered down the steps past the women to throw her arms around them both. Hayley followed, and behind them all Shelley drew Harry downward with her. The youth dragged his feet, trepidation in his body language. Leah recalled how he’d been peppered by shot from the killer’s gun as he’d fled across the glade, but that was not the meaning for his discomfort. With the killer dead he now had nothing to keep his mind off the terrible accident that’d killed Pete.
While they waited for their rescuers to arrive, Leah concocted a narrative that would keep them all safe from prosecution.
41
In a knitted scarlet dress and clashing aquamarine scarf, Allison Bronstein nodded sympathetically as Leah admitted that despite it now being a week past her deadline, she was still short by thirty thousand words of completing her novel. ‘But don’t worry, I’ve got my muse back,’ Leah added. ‘I’m on a roll now and expect to have a rough draft with you within the next fortnight or so.’
‘I can only hold off your editor for so long, Leah, but I’m sure that under the circumstances Jenny will be happy to extend your deadline.’ They were seated again in Ally’s unofficial second office above the famous celebrity haunt in London’s Covent Garden. Ally sat back on the leather settee, making it creak and squeak as she shifted her backside. She adjusted her spectacles, and tucked her mop of curls back so they didn’t interfere with her sharp ga
ze. ‘Personally I think you should reconsider and write about what happened on that island. I’ve lined up several publishers eager to print your story.’
Leah shook her head. ‘It isn’t something I want to revisit, not at this time, not while all those deaths are still so raw in my memory.’
‘Now’s the best time, while they’re so raw, it’ll help you convey the emotion, the fear, the loss…the struggle against adversity, your ultimate triumph!’
Leah looked down at her hands folded on her lap. She still carried slowly healing abrasions on her fingers from her fight for survival. She’d beaten the killer, but it didn’t feel like a victory. Not when Pete, Rob, and the others had died before she could stop him. ‘I’m not ready.’
‘You could be missing an opportunity, Leah. Another of those survivors might get in ahead of you and write the story…’
‘Good luck to them if they do, they all have valid tales to tell but I doubt that’s going to happen.’
‘Their stories are not as interesting as yours is, Leah. You were the one that Brian Curry fixated on; you were central to his madness and the killing spree that followed.’
Brian Curry. Leah still struggled to equate the innocuous name with the murderous beast that’d caused so much murder and mayhem on Shattered Rock. The ex-marine biologist had been quickly identified during the police investigation following his death, and it came as no surprise to her that he’d been a person of interest in the case of Mary Jayne Kenner’s disappearance years ago. Back then the search for Kenner had concentrated on the sea, and her remains had gone undiscovered until Leah accidentally blundered through them during her first trek across the island. It was no secret that Curry had eyes for Mary Jayne, but she had rejected his advances and offers of unsolicited gifts, and some of their colleagues had mentioned such to the investigators at the time. It was suspected that he could’ve hurt the woman in a fit of pique, and set the scene where her overturned dingy had washed to shore and her body to the bottom of the sea. Without a corpse though, and no evidence he was last to see her alive, there was no hope of charging Curry with any form of foul play towards her. He’d slipped through the net, moved away from the coast and left any suspicion behind him. Finally, years after the case had grown cold, he’d returned to Tayinloan, to ply his trade as a boat skipper to accommodate day-trippers, anglers and water sports enthusiasts – and probably to keep an eye on the island to ensure his secret remained buried, if the evidence of his camp was anything to go by. It had been Leah’s misfortune to meet him that day at the dock, where she inadvertently mistook him for Jim McBride, the owner of Shattered Rock, and recognising a single woman’s vulnerability some spark of old had ignited in him, and he’d carried out his ruse to seclude her at his mercy. Who knew if ultimately he’d planned to kill her, but if Rob Cooper hadn’t led his party ashore, it was feared that Leah could’ve turned up missing and there’d have been no connection made between Curry and her. Having a fertile imagination, Leah pictured her unmarked grave alongside the remains of Mary Jayne Kenner’s, with the bracelet hanging on a branch between the two. She squeezed her eyelids tight to push the image aside.
‘Some people,’ Ally continued, as she noted Leah’s distress, ‘sometimes feel that unburdening themselves on the page helps them get over a trauma sooner. Narrating their stories is a means of catharsis for them and—’
‘I don’t want to write it. Besides, cathartic to write or not, it isn’t exactly the follow up to Sorting Jennifer that Diana Leigh’s fans are expecting. How would you ever sell it, as Sorting Leah’s Insecurities?’ She laughed without humour at her own joke, earning a pursed mouth from Ally.
‘We would brand it as separate from your identity as Diana Leigh; we’d have to, to avoid reader confusion, and to capitalise on the publicity you’ve recently garnered from the press and the media. Leah, if we approach this correctly, this could be huge.’
They stared at each other. Ally meant in regards the monetary return, and her fifteen per cent. Leah could see how penning her story would be lucrative for them both, but she had no intention of profiting off other people’s misery. A step removed from what they’d endured on the island, Ally might not see how hurtful writing the story could be – especially when some parts of it would have to be fabricated to protect some of the players in the drama. In the version of the story known to the world, Brian Curry had stabbed Pete Langston to death not Harry, and Curry had died from his injuries immediately having plunged from the cliff, where he’d struck the submerged rocks and drowned, not been held under by Leah to finish him off. She had faced her greatest fear, and in doing so found the strength to fight back against the worst kind of abuser, but somehow she didn’t believe that her actions would be deemed heroic if anyone knew the truth, despite Curry getting his due. When Leah didn’t flinch, Ally threw up her hands, but not in defeat.
‘I suppose we could copyright the idea with a view to delivering your memoir later; that’d stop any of the others writing for the competition.’
‘No, I want no part of that either.’ She thought of Effie Spelling and Becks Howell, and how they’d the resolve to throw themselves back into leading kayaking adventures, their way of honouring the deaths of their business partners Robert and Dominic. Of the others that survived, they were little more than kids who’d hopefully better experiences ahead of them than to dwell on the horror they’d endured on the island. ‘Ally, I don’t think you need worry about any of the other survivors writing about the event. There’s nothing to say you can’t use another of your authors to write an unauthorised version, it just isn’t something I want to do. Can’t you respect my wishes on this?’
Ally continued to muse. In the end, she was business-minded but not a total bitch. ‘Of course I will. It’s up to you, Leah. I only hope you don’t regret your decision later…it will be old news before long, and if you’ll excuse me the horrible pun, you’ll have missed the boat.’
The mobile phone she’d left up on the crag had continued to ping its message to the emergency services, and before that had sent a garbled text from Ben to his father to save them, but Leah knew, despite her previous dread of the sea, she had to make that swim to where Brian Curry had moored his boat to ensure the alert went out. Thankfully, all of the survivors, including her, had subsequently been evacuated from the island via helicopter.
‘That’s fine by me, Ally,’ she said. ‘If I never catch another boat in my life then it’ll be too soon.’
Thanks
My gratitude goes to Tony Forder, Dominic Adler, and Diane McCarogher for their invaluable feedback on an earlier draft of this book; your eye for detail and good storytelling helped me immensely.