by Unknown
'It's true. I see people every day with spinal injuries and deformities and I'm sure there's a very simple operation you can have.'
'To make me normal?'
'I can help you. My friend's a neurosurgeon – the best in the country. Would you like that? Would you want him to look at you?'
'I – I ...' She pressed her palms to her cheeks, taking a few deep breaths, looking from me to Oakesy and back again. She was trembling so hard her teeth were almost chattering. 'I don't know. I don't know.'
Oakesy stood up and switched on the light. He rustled through the carrier-bags we hadn't unpacked yet and pulled out the bottle of Jack Daniel's he took everywhere with him. He went through the cupboards until he found a child's plastic cup with Spiderman on it, filled it half full with JD and pushed it in front of her.
'Oh,' I said. 'Alcohol – I don't think that's a very good—'
She picked up the drink and without even sniffing it, or questioning it, swallowed it in one. I closed my mouth and watched her, amazed. She pushed the beaker back across the table to him. He filled it again and she drank another two beakerfuls down in one. Well, I thought, someone's done that before. Oakesy kept filling it up, watching her face as she drank. A slow flush spread long fingers up her neck towards her chin and by the fourth beaker she'd stopped trembling. Instead of knocking this one back, like the town drunk, she took one or two sips and returned it to the table. Then she straightened a little and wiped her nose, gathering her courage, her eyes going nervously from me to Oakesy and back again.
'You all right?'
'Yes.' She paused. 'Have lots of people seen it? The video.'
'Lots,' Oakesy said, not meeting her eyes, the way he does when he's embarrassed. 'Lots of people know about it.'
'The police? The one that said "devil". In the police station he said devil.'
'Yes. The police. They know too, I suppose.'
She took a long breath through her nose, letting this sink in. She looked up at the laptop screen and seemed to be putting it all together in her head. 'And – and that's why you were on Cuagach in the first place? To write about me?'
He looked awful now. Really guilty. 'Uh, yeah,' he admitted. 'That's why I was there.'
'Dad didn't know that.' She shook her head and gave a short laugh, staring at her hands on the table. Her fingers were pale and bitten, with red tips. 'He thought you'd come back to haunt him.'
'To haunt him? What does that mean? Why would he think that?'
She closed her eyes and opened them, as if it were a trick question and she needed to think about her answer. She glanced over at his camera sitting on the kitchen worktop. Then she looked at the laptop, then back at him. 'Um – because you're Joe Finn?'
He stared at her, his mouth open a little.
'You are? Aren't you?'
'Yeah,' he said hurriedly. 'Yeah, I ... How did you know?'
She looked surprised – as if to say, 'Didn't you know this already?' 'But I've always known about you,' she said. 'I've known about you all my life. I've always known one day I'd meet you.'
9
There comes a time in every person's life when an opportunity presents itself. The test of character is how one chooses to respond to the challenge...
Downstairs Oakesy was watching the news and Angeline was in bed, the door to her room closed tight. I was in the front bedroom, sitting on the damp, lumpy bed with Oakesy's laptop open on my knees, tapping at the keys. The curtains were open with the orange streetlight coming through and falling on the computer screen. The police car was still out there – I'd checked, and a man was sitting in the dark watching us. According to Danso, we didn't really need him: he was just there to make us feel secure.
Today I find myself in just such a position [I wrote]. Today I have been presented with a riddle, an opportunity. And the challenge is – do I attempt to solve the riddle myself, or do I pass it to someone I trust, someone whose professionalism and skill is better suited to deal with it than mine? Someone who will benefit enormously from involvement in this fascinating, high-profile case...
I'd titled the email 'Unusual Spinal Abnormality. High Media Interest' and sent it under an anonymously set-up Yahoo account, because I knew if I used my real name that that witch of a secretary would leap on it and rip it out of Christophe's inbox in a flash. I still blame her for what happened. I mean, who was it who tried to make something sinister out of my relationship with him? Turning it round, telling people I was making a nuisance of myself? That I'd 'bombarded Mr Radnor with correspondence on the clinic's intranet'. Which is a wild exaggeration, of course, because I'd sent little more than a few good-luck messages when he was off on one of his overseas trips, once for the tsunami and once to help a little spina bifida boy in the Ukraine. Oh, and a couple of copies of my CV. It was probably those CVs that did it. She knew I was a good contender for her job – she knew she'd need to pull up her socks with me around. And there was that poisonous little comment I overheard her whisper on the day I'd announced my resignation: 'Jumped before she was pushed.' It was probably her who dumped all the photos I'd framed. I found them – did I tell you? – in the clinic's waste along with all the shredded office documents and Pret à Manger sandwich bags.
'In my opinion,' I wrote, trying hard to remember the language of the referral letters I'd seen at the clinic, trying to combine it with the article in the journal, 'this anomaly will almost certainly prove to be associated with spina bifida and therefore of great interest to you. In order to decide what can be done for the patient it will be vital to assess how much "tethering" there is in the spinal cord. To that end I suggest we make an appointment to meet as soon as possible.'
I nibbled my cuticles, wondering if I should say anything about Cuagach, about what had happened out there. But in the end I decided 'high-profile' would be enough to pique his interest. I finished the email: 'I very much look forward to working with you on this, a case that can only cement your reputation as a surgeon of repute and integrity.' I clicked send and sat back, waiting for the out-of-office acknowledgement to pop up on the screen.
My head was tingling. I was going to be back at the clinic by the end of the year.
Oakesy
1
I dreamed about Pig Island. Cuagach Eilean. I dreamed of dark clouds trailing long fingers down to stroke the cliffs, I dreamed of helicopters flying over the gorge in the moonlight, of tree branches, like hands, reaching up to grab them. I saw a police launch bouncing across the waves, blue lights flashing, I heard the words 'improvised explosive device' over and over again, echoing from the mouths of women and men, a chorus of moving lips.
I woke with a jolt on the sofa – dry mouth, stiff neck and a whisky stain on the carpet where the glass had dropped in my sleep. The curtains were drawn, the TV was on, flickering across my face – replaying my dreams: Pig Island in daylight, pictured from above, a shoreline rising up from the sea, familiar grass-covered cliffs, white tents dotted around the village. The words 'improvised explosive device' again. The helicopter banked and dipped above it, then the shot switched to show a small ferry bobbing in the waves close to a shingle beach. An aluminium pontoon connected it to the land. Two soldiers were winching an army truck up it.
I pushed myself upright, blearily, my body creaking, shaking myself out of the dream. On screen Danso appeared seated at a trestle table, a directional mic on the table in front of him, another on his lapel. A blue thistle, the Strathclyde Police logo, was projected on to the backdrop behind him. 'Crinian is one area we're looking at closely and—' He lifted his chin to listen to an inaudible interruption from the press floor. 'That's right – from the car park of the Crinian Hotel ...'
'Shit, shit, shit.' I pushed myself upright and staggered to the kitchen, hating the way it all had to come back – had to force itself back at me. I hung my face over the sink, waiting, wondering if I was going to puke. I thought of the senior identification manager, a short guy called George who'd spent two hours with
me in Oban carefully filling in his yellow 'misper' forms, one for each missing PHM member, thirty in all. Yesterday I'd made a promise to him – a poxy promise when I thought about it: I'd promised I'd go out to Cuagach today to identify bodies. The thought of it made my head ache – like there was something hard and egg-shaped inside it.
I turned on the tap and stuck my face under it, letting the water splash in my hair, my face, my mouth, staying there for more than a minute, getting colder and colder. By the time the mobey rang in my back pocket my face was numb with cold. I straightened, fumbling for it.
'Yeah?' I lifted the hem of my T-shirt to rub my face. 'What?'
'You're alive, then?'
'Finn,' I said. 'Hi.'
'Thanks for calling to tell me you're still breathing.'
'Why wouldn't I be?'
'Why wouldn't you be?' He sighed. 'Switch on the TV, Oakes. That fucker Dove, he's all over the fucking headlines.'
'Yeah,' I said, scanning the miserable little kitchen for a kettle. I needed coffee. 'I know.'
There was a moment's silence. 'You know?'
'Yeah. I was there.'
'You were there? What? On the island?'
'Yeah. It was me called the police.'
'Shit, Oakesy – you serious?'
'As a heart-attack.'
'Holy fucking Christ.' There was a long silence while he took this in. I could picture him in his World's End office at his leather-topped desk. When we did the States together he'd been pure Seattle Sound: prison jeans, flannel shirt and Soundgarden T-shirt, one of the first people in the world to wear Converse sneakers. Now he was establishment: he was losing his hair and every day he went to work in a suit he hated. 'What're you going to do with it? The nationals are popping veins trying to figure out what was happening on the island—'
'That's easy.' I tucked the phone under my chin and carried the kettle to the sink, sticking it under the tap. 'He had a harassment order on them – I showed up, he put two and two together, figured they were trying to get him into the court of protection. Which they were, by the way.' I plugged the kettle in, went to the window and opened the curtains. It was a bright, blustery day, a cold sun glinted off the police-car windscreen and the broken windows in the house opposite. I looked to the right, out across the playing-fields, all blistered and brown-looking, a stiff cold wind blasting across it. A good day for viewing dead people. 'But,' I said, 'I can't sell it.'
'Why the fuck not?'
'No. Can't put my head above the parapet.'
'Why not?'
'Did you see them on TV say they've got him? They've found him?'
'No.'
'And who do you think he's got the horn for now? Me. They've got us in emergency accommodation. Strathclyde's answer to an Amish village.'
He was quiet again, thinking. 'Oakesy?' he said cautiously, like something was just coming to him. 'Listen ... I think this is ... I don't think it's bad. I think ... I think it's good. Yes, you know what? It is. In fact it's ...' He must have jumped up then and almost dropped the phone, because the line got muffled for a moment. When he came back on he was shouting. 'It is. In fact it's unreal – fucking unreal.' He took a few breaths and I knew he'd be standing now next to the arched window above the King's Road traffic, moving his arm up and down to calm himself. 'Right – cool thinking, cool thinking, Finn. Oakes, if you don't sell it to the papers, right, if you can keep the story down until it's all over, there's a book in it – OK? As long as you keep it from the papers.'
'You're my agent now?'
'Yes. Yes! Listen, Oakesy, listen ... This is what we do. I'm going to have a natter with some interested parties and in the meantime I want a two-page synopsis and the first fifteen K words. It's so fucking easy. I'm telling you, you can write an article, you can write a book ... You can do that – can't you?'
I opened the window and breathed in the cool air. I didn't blame him – you have to see the reality of death before you understand the chill weariness that comes over you. Thirty-six hours ago, the moment I saw a pig dragging Sovereign's foot into the trees, my work head had switched off, powered down. But I'd had a night's sleep and now Finn was making it twitch again. Old Gorgon Joe-journalist inside me was waking up, giving a sleepy kick, and lifting its ugly, sticky head. I was thinking about the story that was out there in the sunshine. I was remembering why I'd come to Cuagach in the first place.
'Can't you? Tell me you can.'
I dropped the curtain. 'Yeah,' I said. 'I can do it.'
'Dude. We're model We. Are. Made. Get it?'
While he talked I got myself ready. I went to the hallway, got my digital camera from my jacket pocket and put it on to charge. I made coffee in the kitchen, and listened to him plan-making. This was the project we were always meant to do together – we were going to celebrate with a slammer party; we were going to pay off our mortgages.
'So,' he said, 'before the crap hit the fan did you get to the bottom of it?'
'The bottom of what?'
'Y'know – the video and shit. The hoax. The devil of Pig Island. Did you figure out what it was?'
I paused, the coffee cup half-way to my mouth. 'Yeah,' I said. 'I did.'
'Well? Well?'
I didn't speak for a moment. I lowered the cup and turned my eyes to the stairs, thinking of the door to Angeline's room – closed so tight it was like a statement.
'Oakes, come on! I'm waiting. I want to know what you're thinking ...'
'It was a kid,' I said, tipping the coffee down the sink and turning on the tap. I didn't want it now. I wanted tea. 'Just some local kid got himself out to the island in some outfit he cooked up with his mates. Like I always said.'
2
'Have a look at this for me,' DS Struthers shouted, above the boat engine. He was sitting wedged up against the cabin bulkhead of the chartered pleasure-boat, his legs crossed, one arm resting along the gunwales, the other holding up a Polaroid. 'Might be interesting.' He sat forward and pushed it under my nose. 'Might be very interesting.'
I had to raise my hand against the sun and squint to see that the photo showed an outboard motor-boat pulled up at an angle on a beach.
'Recognize it?'
I took the photo from him, ducked into the cabin out of the sun, studied it and knew immediately: it was the orange-striped dory, a bit battered, resting on the beach, its bow line trailing in the shingle. I stepped back on to the deck and handed him the Polaroid. 'Where d'you find it?'
'Ardnoe Point. An off-duty woolly pulley out walking her pooch. Naughty lass – spends her days off fiddling with the police scanner if you ask me. Some people just can't leave their job behind, can they? What I think is, she's heard about it last night on the scanner and then, six o'clock this morning, she's walking her dog and finds she's staring at it in the flesh. So what's she going to do? She's got to phone it in.'
'And Ardnoe Point is ... ?' I turned and looked back at the mainland.
'That way.' He waved a hand to the south. 'It's making our missing car look a little nicer because it's not far from Crinian where the car disappeared on Saturday. A long way. It's where you'd drift to with the tide they had that night, so maybe he was heading there. Or maybe he just didn't know how to drive the thing.'
'Near Crinian ...' I murmured, gazing at the coastline. In the morning sun it looked fresh and cold, the granite fingers on the shore eerie and architectural. The trees billowed like they'd been melted down and poured across the landscape. What are you doing out there, Dove baby? I thought, staring south at the firth glittering in the distance. Where are you heading? What's in Ardnoe Point, then? I like that you went south and not north towards the bungalow ...
'I think you can relax,' shouted Struthers, behind me. 'You're not going to see Pastor Malachi Dove again.'
I turned. He had put the Polaroid away and was leaning against the bulkhead, his head back, his eyes scrunched up, scanning the mainland.
'I'm not going to see him again?'
'
No. Too close to the edge now, isn't he? He'll be a suicide.' He nodded, wiping salt spray from his face. 'Aye – in my professional experience he's going to be a suicide. Some hill-walkers'll find him, all maggoty and shit. Or he'll be dangling off some bridge, or bumping around in a weir with his face all smashed to fuck. Yes. That'll be the next time we see Malachi Dove.'
'In your professional experience?'
He tapped the side of his nose and smiled. 'Got a copper's nose. Always have had, since I was a bairn. I'm telling you he'll be a goner by now.'
I gave him a cold smile. As an undergraduate, when I was getting the chicken-liver article finished, I had a fantasy, or a fear, that I knew Malachi Dove as well as I knew my own bones. It came back to me now that I was connected to him in a way that none of the others were – maybe even Angeline – and I knew Struthers could have no idea what was really in Dove's head. He was right: Dove was thinking about how to end it all. But it wasn't going to be that easy. I will, Joe Finn, in the final hour, run rings around you ... When he'd said he'd fuck with my peace of mind he didn't mean what he'd done in the chapel.
'Aye. Lost the plot, hasn't he? If you ask me—' He broke off and licked his lips. 'If you ask me, that lass is an orphan by now. As if she hasn't got enough problems.'
I looked thoughtfully at Angeline. She was sitting in the stern, arms crossed, chin lowered, staring into the middle distance and pulling sullenly at her lower lip. The bits of skin you could see through her patchy hair were red and chapped.
'Hey,' Struthers whispered, leaning close to me so I could smell his breath. He was squinting at her, taking in the faded football shirt you could just see peeping out from under the coat, the worn-out trainers. 'Something I wanted to ask you.'
I didn't meet his eyes. I knew what was coming.
'She told the boss she had polio. That's what she told him.' He licked his lips again. 'But it's not polio, is it? It's something else.'
I closed my eyes slowly, then opened them.