Mainlander

by Will Smith

‘Coat. Which means someone’s out there.’

  ‘Or they were. Or it got blown out there.’

  ‘It got blown from the shore all the way to the tower without landing in the water?’

  ‘It could have come off a boat.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to get to the bottom of this.’

  ‘Of course I do, but maybe tomorrow when the weather’s better. It’s been a long day.’

  The weather had got worse with every step. He tried to check the time but when he held up his wrist he couldn’t work his watch out from under his sleeve. He knew low tide was at nine, and they had about fifteen minutes after that before they’d have to turn back. At least the wind would be behind them then, but it would be blowing the water in too, and eight centimetres a minute was already walking pace. It was dark – they might take a wrong turn. He started to panic.

  He pulled Debbie to a halt, tugged her hood outwards so that she could hear, then yelled, ‘How much further?’

  ‘Nearly there! Couple of hundred yards!’

  Colin couldn’t make out anything, apart from the silhouettes of rocks that were more likely his eyes playing tricks. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. Come on! You’ve risked your job over this! Are you going to be put off by a bit of wind?’

  ‘This is a bloody hurricane!’

  ‘You wait here, then. I’m going on to the tower.’

  With that she staggered onwards, a tiny gutsy figure putting him to shame. He knew he couldn’t turn back without her, if only out of self-preservation: he was in her hands.

  The sand was soggy and his feet were sinking, making his thighs burn with each step. Suddenly his left boot refused to accompany his foot and he found himself pitching forwards, grazing his hand on a small barnacled rock and landing on his right side in a pool. Debbie came back, hauled him up and helped him hobble back to his boot. He looked down at her. Her eyes were set. There was still no turning back. He grabbed her hand and they went forward together.

  As he spun his torch around him, it seemed that the maze of rocks they’d walked through was flattening out, leaving them in the midst of sandbars. Debbie tugged his arm and pointed. Her beam picked out a large rock, above which loomed a structure with one white wall. Now it was his turn to pull her forward: they needed to get up there and down again fast. He didn’t bother checking the time: even if they had an hour’s grace, he didn’t want to spend a second longer out there than was necessary.

  The water-logged sand gave way with his weight so that he felt as if he was taking three steps to travel the distance of one, but he kept going, slipping and lurching forward.

  They reached the base of the huge rock upon which the tower was built, which sheltered them from the slam and slice of the wind.

  ‘How do we get up?’ he yelled, then realised there was now no need to shout.

  ‘This way,’ she said, leading him round to the right, where once more they were hammered by the wind and rain, coming at them in horizontal sheets. Large slabs of granite had been laid into a groove in the rock, making steps, slippery in the wet. They reached the platform at the base of the tower, which was shielded by a low L-shaped wall with an open end at the top of the steps. Debbie’s torch picked out a figure next to a rucksack, huddled in the far corner where the wall met the tower. Colin ran forward.

  ‘Duncan!’

  The boy blinked in the bright light, then shielded his eyes, which helped conceal the tears that, no doubt, were falling – heaving sobs jolted his body up and down.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Colin. ‘I got your letter too late. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I didn’t know what to do …’ he whimpered.

  ‘You need to go home. Everyone’s worried about you.’

  ‘Can’t go home. He’s going to tell them.’

  ‘About the drugs? Is that what he said?’

  ‘Yes. Unless I did stuff. Let him touch me. He tried. I ran. When you found me, you stopped me—’

  ‘Colin,’ shouted Debbie, her hand on his shoulder. ‘We need to go.’

  ‘Yes, come on,’ said Colin, pulling Duncan to his feet. The boy’s legs wobbled and they fell down together. ‘Are you okay?’ Colin asked.

  ‘Haven’t eaten for a few days’ – Duncan was shivering – ‘and I’m cold. Can’t feel my hands and feet.’

  ‘He could have hypothermia!’ Colin called to Debbie. ‘We need to go.’

  ‘I know! The tide’s going to start coming back in.’

  ‘Have you been here all week? Outside?’

  ‘I had a tent, couldn’t use guy ropes on rock, weighted it with some stones, blew away this afternoon.’

  ‘Here, put your arm round my shoulders.’

  Duncan clasped Colin’s neck. Colin stood up and put his arm round the boy’s waist, stooping so Duncan could hang on. The three of them staggered back towards the steps. Colin helped Duncan down sideways, bracing himself against the boy’s weight.

  ‘We need to hurry!’ he heard Debbie bellow.

  Colin reached the bottom and scanned the ground with the torch in his free hand. He couldn’t remember which direction they’d come from, so instinctively headed for the higher sandbanks to the left, that were less lapped by the water than the rocks and bars at the base. He heard Debbie yell something – to go quicker, he thought – as he dragged Duncan along. She yelled again. He turned. He saw her torchlight but couldn’t make out what she was saying. She waved the beam away from her. He couldn’t be going the wrong way: there was more water behind her than him. He plunged on. She sounded closer – good, she was following.

  ‘Wrong way!’ he heard. Shit, he was still walking into the wind. Unless it had changed direction, he was heading out to sea. But the sea wasn’t there. She caught up with them.

  ‘What are you doing? Didn’t you hear me? You’re going the wrong way!’

  ‘But it’s dry!’

  ‘It’s higher up. The tide fills up the side closer to the land first. We need the white side of the tower behind us.’

  Colin took off again – quicker to go right round the tower than double back.

  ‘Wait! We won’t get round!’

  Suddenly Colin realised that he and Duncan were walking through water, only ankle-deep but flowing so fast that it built up over the top of his boots.

  Debbie was upon him.

  ‘Can we get through this way?’ he yelled.

  ‘No! There’s a shelf about two feet in front of you, you’ll go up to your necks. This way! Quick!’

  She pulled them towards her and, with Duncan in the middle, the three lurched back the way they’d come, past the rock base of the tower. The sandbank they’d walked up from was now a spit. They hobbled along it, slipping into knee-deep water either side as the sand slid from under their feet.

  ‘We have to go back to the tower!’ Debbie screamed.

  ‘We’ll never make it!’

  ‘We won’t make it to the Island!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘For once in your life, Colin, just accept that someone knows better than you!’

  Colin swung Duncan round, they were now wading against a waist-high current and a blasting gale. The sand rose slightly as they reached the rock base, water flooding round from each side, then they rounded the corner for one last push against the water, fast-flowing and freezing against their knees. Colin pushed Duncan up the rocks towards the steps. Debbie followed the boy, then braced herself in two footholds and held out a hand to Colin. He kicked himself up the steps with her help and landed with his head on her crotch. They scrambled up behind Duncan, crawling up the steps on all fours, frozen by the wind as it lashed their sopping clothes.

  They reached the top of the platform in a shivering heap, cut off by the water and at the mercy of the wind.

  18

  LOUISE

  Friday, 16 October 1987

  ‘Jesus, Bill, that was another red light.’

  ‘I don’t see no bizzies.’

  ‘I told yo
u, they’ve got honorary bizzies over here. They’re just local twats given a badge to check the hedgerows don’t overhang, but they can stop you for traffic stuff.’

  ‘Burn ’em off in this bitch.’

  He speeded up, then braked sharply as he came upon an unexpected bend. ‘Fuckin’ hell! Where’s a good stretch of road in this place?’

  ‘Out west. Five Mile Road. It’s not even five miles. Just seems it to these inbreds.’

  ‘Is it on our way?’

  ‘No. Let me check where we’re at.’

  Louise turned on the interior light and peered between the open map and the passing turnings. ‘Can you slow down? I can’t see the names.’ He didn’t respond. ‘For fuck’s sake, it’s a thirty-mile-an-hour speed limit! You’re clocking fifty.’

  ‘You been here too long.’

  ‘Slow down.’

  ‘Wanna get there before he goes out for the night.’

  ‘We’re not going to get there at all if you don’t let me check the road names.’

  ‘How many times you been there?’

  ‘Once. To threaten him. His wife was there. He damn near shat his kecks when he saw me.’

  ‘What’s he gonna do when he sees me?’

  ‘He might not be there. Like you said, he might be out.’

  ‘Then we’ll wait.’

  ‘Okay, there’s a left coming up … here … Fucking slow down!’

  Billy wrenched the steering wheel and, as the car swung towards a lane, the back end slid round and clipped a garden wall. Billy gunned the engine and skidded off, whooping and punching the horn.

  Louise had originally hooked up with Billy for status and power. Being his girl meant she was somebody. She had thought they were equals, that in time she could control him. Before he’d been put inside that notion was already sliding away from her. Now it had vanished. Billy was living proof that prison was not a corrective, she thought. He was like a difficult dog sent off for training that had come back knowing how to rip out a throat. She had been sure he would get up to no good inside, and have his sentence extended to the point at which, when he came out, he couldn’t reasonably express any claim on her, preferably being a frail old man. But he was here now, next to her, desperate to prove himself the harder man, the bigger man, the richer man. But the really big men, Louise thought, the so-rich-they-couldn’t-spend-their-money-in-a-lifetime men, well, you never knew who they were. Billy was small-time, would always make too much noise to get away with anything bigger.

  ‘Take a right here.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here!’

  It had started to rain harder than the wipers could cope with. That, and the lack of streetlights, meant Billy turned too late and smashed the left headlight into a granite gatepost.

  ‘Fuck! These stupid fuckin’ pissy roads.’ He reversed back and carried on.

  ‘There’ll be nothing left of this car by the time we get there.’

  ‘He got nice wheels?’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘We should take a new ride, then.’

  ‘Let’s not push our luck, Bill.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘We don’t want to push him to the point he’d call the cops … bizzies.’

  ‘I thought you said he wants to keep his missus.’

  ‘Keep it to threats, don’t actually touch him. And, honestly, let’s not go too high. Maybe another ten.’

  ‘I told you, I need fifty. And another car.’

  ‘What if he comes after you? With the law?’

  ‘He won’t. I’ll know where he lives.’

  Louise realised this was not going to end tonight. Rob would never be free of Billy, which meant she would never be free of either of them. ‘Let’s think for a moment.’

  ‘I am thinkin’, and it seems to me you might still be a bit sweet on this guy.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What if it wasn’t a honey-trap? What if you’re his fuckin’ bit on the side?’

  ‘Why would he give me ten grand?’

  ‘Buy yourself a nice flat, set yourself up, so he can come and fuck you somewhere other than that shithole bedsit you’re livin’ in. Or does he take you to his hotel?’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘We’ll find out, won’t we?’

  ‘He’s not going to tell you anything I haven’t.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll play along with your story, but I’ll be lookin’ at your face when I open him up. See if you shed a tear for him.’

  Louise felt sick to her core. She knew that whatever she said, whatever Rob said, didn’t matter. Billy was going to half kill him. He would be hospitalised. His wife could be at home. There was no way to avoid questions and investigations, which would end where it had begun, with her and a blackmail charge. She’d thought Billy might scare Rob into upping the money, and she had no problem with him taking a few slaps – he was still a prick. But he didn’t deserve what was about to happen to him. And, crucially, neither did she.

  Rob’s house was coming up on the right. She recognised the ludicrous lamps that blazed over the too-short drive. Lights were on. Someone was home.

  ‘Keep going straight for a while.’

  ‘Me and straight don’t go too well!’

  They had passed Rob’s house and she could send Billy round in circles while she thought of what to do – she doubted he’d recognise the road when they came back on to it: he wouldn’t twig she’d played for time. No, they couldn’t come back on to this road. She had to get through to him.

  ‘Another right here, then keep going till I tell you.’

  He turned, this time without damaging the car.

  ‘Bill, you’ve just got out. I don’t want you to go back inside.’ She put her hand on his upper thigh and stroked it, hoping to disguise the shake that had set in.

  ‘Yeah, you were pinin’ for me big-time, over here suckin’ some rich man’s cock for money.’

  ‘I told you, it wasn’t like that.’

  ‘I were against you doin’ it again, but if it’s what you like, maybe you should. Maybe I should put you to work, suckin’ cocks. You like cocks, I like cash. We both win.’

  She mustered some of her old fire. ‘You don’t own me, Billy McCaffrey. You went away. What I did then is not your business. I don’t know what you did inside – for all I know you were sucking cocks for ciggies and taking it up the arse for an extra go on the table football. I don’t give a shit. What’s done is done. We’re here now. If you want me, you better treat me with some fucking respect.’

  ‘That’s better! That’s my Lou! You fuckin’ scared me back in your room. Folded like a little girl. Fine, you’re forgiven, but he fuckin’ isn’t.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? Watch it, girl, you’re still my old lady. I ain’t bein’ told what to do.’

  ‘They’re on to you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bizzies. They know you’re here.’

  ‘How the fuck d’you know?’

  ‘One of them came to see me.’

  ‘What? Why the fuck you tellin’ me now?’

  ‘Because I knew you’d be like this.’

  ‘What’d he say?’

  ‘That a Scouser stuck a knife in a bloke’s mouth. Jesus, Bill.’

  ‘This Island has one dealer – one! Imagine how easy it’ll be to take over.’

  ‘They won’t put up with it here, same as they won’t put up with you beating the shit out of some local businessman. They’ll come down on you like a sledgehammer. Best thing you can do is get on a boat in the morning, and get the fuck off.’

  ‘Best thing I can do? Thought we was back on. Thought you didn’t want me back inside.’

  ‘If I wanted you back inside I’d take you straight to Barney.’

  ‘Who’s fuckin’ Barney?’

  ‘The cop.’

  ‘You on first names with a bizzie? You fuckin’ him too?’

  ‘You’re paranoid.’

 
; ‘Go on, then. Take me to Barney. I don’t fuckin’ believe you. I don’t believe he exists. And you should be fuckin’ glad of that, because if I thought you were talkin’ to the bizzies, I’d put you under the fuckin’ wheels of this car.’

  ‘Yeah, ’cause it’s really easy to get away with a murder on an island this small.’

  ‘You just want me off so you can go back to your fuckin’ boyfriend ’cause he’s got money. Well, I’m gonna take his money.’

  ‘Calm down—’

  ‘Shut your fuckin’ whore mouth! Do not speak unless it’s to tell me where to drive.’

  Louise gripped the side of the seat to stop herself quivering. She was out of moves. She could direct Billy down to Rouge Bouillon police station. There was no way he’d drive in, but she might be able to jump out, run in and yell for Barney or anyone who was around. But then what? If they caught Billy, best-case scenario they’d confiscate the ten grand on the back seat and blame him. Worst case, she’d be done for blackmail, either because Billy would land her in it out of spite or because, knowing her luck and this spider’s web of an island, someone at the station would recognise the briefcase, the initials or both and call Rob in to have her stuck in a cell next to Billy’s, from which he’d find a way to get to her. She’d be the rat who’d landed Billy in jail: there’d be no shortage of volunteers to fuck her up.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘You told me not to speak unless it was directions.’

  ‘And you haven’t given me any for a while.’

  ‘There’s only about four roads on this place. You’re on the right one. Up to the top.’

  Rain, dark lanes, the outlines of trees waving, like a giant toddler had grabbed them by the root and was trying to shake off the last leaves of autumn. Louise eyed the lock on the door and wondered if she could unlock and open it before Billy guessed what she was up to. She didn’t have her seatbelt on, but neither did he – he’d be straight after her. Unless she jumped out while the car was moving. But if she landed badly she had no doubt he’d just reverse over her.

  ‘Where are we?’

  She had no idea. They were banking wildly to the left and the right on a downhill lane barely the width of the car. ‘Nearly there,’ she said. ‘He owns all this.’