by Lee Moan
So he’d made the decision to move away. In his guilt-ridden mind, he reasoned that leaving London, and all the shit that went with that unhappy town, would make things better in a number of ways. A new beginning might help shake him out of the block which had set into his writing – and it might help put his mistake behind him for good.
Looking back now, he couldn’t believe he’d been so naïve.
15
“Daddy, can I go for a walk on the deck?”
He turned to Becky, who was sitting sideways in the passenger seat, flicking through her Girl magazine with little interest.
“Well, it’s safer to stay in your vehicle,” he said.
Becky looked at him sharply for a moment, a withering glare that was way beyond her years, one she had clearly picked up from her mother. “Daddy, it’s you who’s afraid of the water, not me.”
He looked back at her with a stung expression. “All right, sweetheart. If you want to have a walk, you have a walk.”
She threw her magazine onto the back seat and he thought there was anger in that throw. He studied her face as she climbed out of the cab, saw an unhappiness in it he didn’t like.
“Becky, sweetheart?” he said. “Is everything okay?”
She froze with her hand on the door, ready to slam it closed. When she looked back at him, the anger in her face held for only a moment, before her eyes filled with tears and her lower lip began to tremble.
“I don’t know, Daddy,” she said, “you tell me.”
Without waiting for him to reply, she slammed the door with a shuddering bang.
“Becky!” he called, but she was already stalking away from the Land Rover. His first urge was to jump out and chase after her, but his phobia held him in his seat. He lowered the passenger window and shouted out after her: “Becky! Don’t go far. Stay where I can see you!”
But it was no use. He felt helpless, trapped in his own car, as his daughter disappeared into the crowd.
16
In the holding compartment of the prison van, Ben Garrett sat hunched over, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose. He felt faint from the intense heat. He hadn’t had a drink of water since leaving the prison and that was over eight hours ago. He knew he should have kicked up a stink a long time ago, but the part of him that controlled his own sense of self-punishment had held out. But right now he felt like he was going to pass out from dehydration.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Knox!”
No answer. The low murmur of the guards’ voices which had been constant on the journey was now absent.
“Hannon! Knox!” Panic in his voice now.
Silence.
He hammered on the steel wall behind the driver’s seat.
“I’m dying in here!” he screamed.
Still no response.
Where the hell were they? Probably taking another smoke break outside. Garrett edged along the bench to the rear door and used both hands to pound on the door. He kicked at it, pounded his fists some more, threw his shoulder against it.
“Hey! Can’t you hear me?”
“I can hear you.”
He was startled by the tiny voice. He watched as a small face appeared in the window, a young girl, no more than six or seven, blonde pigtails, top front teeth missing.
“Are you trapped?” she asked. “Can't you get out?”
Garrett was so stunned he was unable to reply.
“What happened to your face?”
“What?” Garrett said.
“Your face,” she said.
He reached up with his right hand and touched the ruined skin of his deepest scar, feeling suddenly, overwhelmingly ashamed. The girl was so beautiful, so innocent, so unspoilt by the ravages of the world; how could he possibly explain those scars—really explain them—to her?
“A bad man did it,” he said.
“Why? Did you try to hurt him?”
He shrugged. “No. He just . . . didn’t like me.”
The girl appraised him silently for a few seconds, then said, “Are you a bad man?”
“What do you think?” he asked, his heart gripped with an intense, irrational fear.
“I think you have a kind face,” she said.
Garrett stared at her, and without warning the girl’s words hit him like a balled fist.
He began to cry.
17
With the welcome sight of Port Farron less than a mile away, Sam finally found the courage to go looking for Becky. He opened the driver’s door and stepped out onto the deck. The gentle rolling motion of the ferry instantly seemed magnified now that he was sensing it with his own feet, and he felt his stomach lurch. He almost climbed back into the car, where it seemed a lot less rocky, but he remembered his daughter’s fearless attitude and told himself to stop being such a shrimp. Breathing deep, he slammed the door shut.
He wandered across the deck, weaving through the small clusters of fellow ferry-riders. Most of the people were locals, some were not. A few of the locals he knew by name, but the vast majority he only knew in passing. After all, he’d only been a resident of the island for just over a year. It usually took a lifetime to get to know everybody, so the islanders said. He wasn’t doing so badly.
He leaned on the nearest section of the rail to steady himself and studied the distant outline of Scalasay as it loomed closer. He wondered if the extended period of writer’s agonies were directly related to, even caused by, the endless unsettled nature of his married state.
What would happen if he told Rachel now? Telling her he’d had an affair would only be the start of it. That would be devastation enough. But to follow it up with a sucker punch like ‘and it happened a year ago’. Well, what effect would that have on their situation? Things weren’t great between him and Rachel anyway. Her resentment over his decision to remove them to a remote Hebridean island still hung around their relationship like a dark cloud. And he knew that Rachel had an unbending, unforgiving nature. That was what frightened him most of all. People divorced over things like this every day. He knew that. But that was something he could not bear.
And yet he couldn’t go on lying. What if Rachel found out about it from someone else? From Kelly? He shivered at the thought. Better to come from him. Yes, he had to tell her. Today. Unless he thought of another way . . .
He looked over the lower deck of the ferry, and there, amongst the assembled cars, he saw Becky’s tiny figure, standing on the tailgate of a prison van.
A cold hand gripped his heart.
Ben Garrett was in that prison van.
“Becky!” he called out. She didn't hear him.
There were steps down to the lower level, but they were roped off at the top; normally, passengers weren’t allowed to ride down there. Becky had obviously ducked under it. In defiance at him?
He stood at the top of the steps for a few moments, observing his daughter and the murderer. He could make out Garrett’s features through the bars of the small window. Garrett's appearance would have been frightening to most children. His chin was heavy with stubble, his hair unkempt. A map of scars covered the left side of his face. His eyes, from what Sam could see, were red-rimmed and deep set, with dark circles underneath them. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in days. And yet, there was Becky chatting away to him without a care.
He could reach through those bars at any second, Sam thought. Grab Becky by the throat and choke the life out of her before I could even get down the steps.
“Becky!” he called out. She mustn’t have heard him. No wonder—his voice sounded thin beneath the noise of the ocean, devoid of all authority. “Becky!” he shouted again, this time cupping his hands to his mouth.
She turned and looked up at him, her face frozen in an expression of anger and petulance.
Seconds later, with the ferry less than half a mile from port, the white light of an explosion filled his vision.
18
Ben Garrett knew nothing in the first few moments after the explosion. T
he images which passed before him were chaotic and devoid of meaning. It was like watching a series of unrelated pieces of film being cut together in half-second clips which make up an incomprehensible and confusing whole: the solid walls of the security van ripping apart in a maelstrom of light and noise; the deck of the ferry pushing away from him at a rapid pace; glimpses of the island on the horizon turning over and over; the wrecked van hitting the water, sending him crashing into first one wall, then another, followed by the all-consuming shock as freezing cold water began to rush in through the huge gash in the floor. In a matter of moments, the linear orderliness of everyday life was shattered.
The sea water flooded the van in seconds, giving him just enough time to snatch a breath before he was completely submerged. The van immediately began to sink and he knew he had to get out. Fast. He quickly studied the floor of the van, where the explosion seemed to have originated, and saw the gap where the steel plates had been ripped apart. He tried to judge the gap, wondering if it was wide enough to squeeze through, but he had no time to think about it. This was his only chance of getting out of the van before it sank to the bottom of the ocean. He reached down and grabbed the twisted edges of the opening, pushing his head and shoulders down into the gap. It seemed to take minutes to squeeze through, but he knew that was impossible; he only had a minute of air in his lungs, if he was lucky. He felt the jagged burrs of the blast hole tearing at his prison uniform and then his skin. His ribcage snagged on a sharp knife-like protuberance, and it took all of his strength to force his body on, despite the sickening feel of his own flesh tearing in the process.
Finally he was free and he quickly steadied himself in the water, reigning in his fear and panic. Below him he saw only dark waters and the destroyed prison van sinking slowly down and down, and then, above him the bright surface, darkened only by the hull of the ferry.
His first instinct was to find air. He began pushing for the surface, sensing a sharp pain in the back of his head which seemed to spike with every upward stroke.
When he broke the surface he gulped in air and looked around. The ferry towered above him, a giant hole in its port side just beneath the lower deck. Yellow flames glowed within, smoke pouring out and over the deck.
What the hell had happened?
He’d been talking to the little girl . . .
“Daddy!”
He followed the girl’s strangled screams and found her tiny blonde head bobbing above the rolling waves about twenty metres away. Thank God she’s alive, he said to himself. But he could see the pool of red staining the water around her, and realised that if nobody went to help her soon she wouldn’t be able to stay afloat. He began to swim towards her, ignoring the excruciating pain that filled his head. But the chains which bound his hands together made it hard-going.
Without warning his head filled with white-hot pain, causing an immediate and total loss of co-ordination, and he went under. It lasted only a few moments, panic washing over him, before he kicked back to the surface. When he reached the spot where the girl had been, she was gone.
He didn’t hesitate. He leapt up and plunged under the water. His wounded eyes searched the gloomy jade waters and found nothing. Where was she? She couldn’t have travelled that far in those few brief seconds.
He had to save her!
Why? an unfriendly voice asked. For her benefit, or for yours? Do you think that saving this little girl will somehow repair all the damage you did? Do you think saving one girl’s life, one act of heroism, is going to equal taking the life of that other girl? And what about the other girls, the ones you raped? How do you pay back for that?
Stop it! he scolded inwardly.
He wanted to save this girl because in those few moments before the explosion they had made a connection. He couldn’t explain it, but she had made him feel human for the first time in a long while. She was the first person, child or adult, not to see him as a monster. She knew nothing of him, of his past, of what he’d done. To her, his past was inconsequential. In her eyes, he could have been anything. What had she said? ‘You have a kind face.’ A kind face! That, more than anything else, was worth risking his life for. One person in this miserable world thought he had some good in him.
19
Sam’s last clear memory was of standing at the top of the iron staircase which led down to the lower level. His hand was on the thick rope barrier which barred the way between himself and his only child.
Oh, Becky . . .
In those last few seconds of peace, he saw her expression change to an angry scowl. The look on his little girl’s face—anger aimed directly at him—would haunt him forever, tearing like a jagged blade through his heart. He should have been with her all along. He should’ve kept her in the Land Rover. He should never have let her out of his sight. Not even for a second.
After that, everything went crazy. The light of the explosion blinded him. The deafening noise followed immediately after—raw firepower and sheering metal—filling his world with its authority.
Sam was aware that the explosion, the impact of it, came from the section of decking below the prison van. Blinded by the flash of the explosion, he felt the stomach-churning sensation of the vast bulk of the ferry turning over. The grip he had on the rope barrier was the only thing which kept him from falling into the water. He remembered tumbling through the air, hanging suspended in limbo for an interminable time, before slamming down on a flat hard surface. Only the surface did not break after impact like the water did. He discovered he was lying flat against the side of the hull. Completely disoriented, he gripped the barrier rope with all his strength. At the corner of his vision he saw a tower of fire and smoke reaching high into the sky from the point of the explosion, and the terrifying sight of the security van tumbling over and over against the cobalt sky. At the heart of that funnel of water he saw a tiny figure spiralling through the air, a ragged scarecrow figure tossed into the maelstrom without mercy.
Becky!
Sam tried to scream, but his vocal cords were paralysed. Just then, all around him, he heard a chorus of screams, both male and female voices, above, below, behind him—everywhere, the screams of Dante’s inferno. The ferry seemed to be rolling over now. He could see the horizon becoming a vertical line at the edge of his vision. He was vaguely aware, amid the cacophony of noise, the sound of two objects hitting the water below. He assumed it was the van followed by Becky, finally released from the pillar of fire which hung in the air above the ferry.
In that moment, a strange calm came over the scene. The deafening barrage of noise fell to a whisper; the activity of everything and everyone around him came to a momentary stop. He glanced around quickly. The ferry listed heavily on its starboard side. As he looked along the hull to his left, he saw a gaping hole in the port section where the explosion had happened. He could see the inner structure of the hull, and could make out large sections of broken machinery inside. Then a tiny voice cut through the stillness.
“Daddy!”
Sam glanced down between his legs into the black heart of the sea. There, in the shadow cast by the ferry upon the surface, he could just make out his daughter’s tiny blonde head above the waves. His heart soared in the knowledge that she was still alive. He felt sure that the explosion had–
“Daddy, help!” she screamed.
In that moment, the instinctual part of his mind froze, and the rational mind took over. He remembered thinking: Becky’s a good swimmer. Rachel’s been taking her swimming virtually since she was a newborn; because, Rachel said, she didn’t want her ending up ‘like me’. She can tread water. She can keep her head above the surface.
What he was going to do, what any father would have done, was to let go of that damn rope and drop into the sea next to her. That’s what instinct was telling him to do. But that other voice told him to think about it.
You can’t swim, Sam, it said. You can’t tread water. If you let go of that rope, you’re going to sink to the bottom. And y
ou’ll probably take your daughter down with you. What good would that do?
The choices made in these moments of crisis define who we are in life. How we arrive at these choices is irrelevant; what matters in the end is what we did.
Sam closed his eyes and let go. There was a moment of oblivion—no sound, no air—before he hit the water with a hard slap. The water flowed over his head and filled his nose, ears and mouth. Immediately he began to thrash blindly. He opened his eyes and saw a whirl of white foam. Then, thankfully, he broke the surface and sucked in the air greedily. When he looked round, he found Becky’s flailing form just meters away.
“Becky!” he managed to shout, before more water poured into his mouth.
“Daddy!” she cried, before slipping beneath the surface, her head vanishing into the sucking sea. Sam made out the swathe of scarlet which danced on the surface around her vanishing point. He cried out then, a scream of naked horror. In that moment, he understood that Becky had not survived the blast unharmed. Yes, it was true that she could tread water like a champion, but not with a wound like that.
“Becky, no!”
He took a hurried breath before forcing himself under. In the few protracted seconds of his submergence, he opened his eyes. It was like waking in another world, a landscape of misty darkness seen through emerald glass. He spotted his daughter immediately, the only discernible object in that bleak underwater world. She was twisting and rolling with tragic grace, spiralling down into the darkness. It was then that he saw the trail of blood flowing from her shattered left leg. He tried to tell himself that the wound was only superficial, his brain clearly in denial at the sight of his daughter sinking to her doom.