He wished he were armed. The knurled stock of a 12mil Sig-Sauer automatic; its cold and solid weight in the grip of his right hand; he would have given anything at that moment for that reassurance. But he didn’t have a pistol. He didn’t even have a knife. He stepped forward and pushed open the cottage door. He didn’t have a choice. He was the man responsible for the Island’s security and he was not a coward and had never run from anyone in his entire life.
It was a little girl. She looked waiflike, standing there, with a shawl around her scrawny shoulders, wrapped in the embrace of her own thin arms. She was smiling at him and her eyes glimmered blackly. There was some weird trickery of light and shade going on in the cottage that made it look to Blake like the little girl’s feet did not quite rest on the flagged stone floor. They looked a good few inches above it, as though she floated or hung there. The top half of her seemed to drift back and forth, almost as if in the play of the wind, but the cottage walls stilled the air within, so that was impossible. Wasn’t it?
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Blake said. His throat was dry and he felt in the grip of something between despondency and dread. It delivered a sort of paralysis. He could not properly move. He could not even blink.
‘I like company,’ the little girl said, the voice gravelly and dragged out of her, like something only half-remembered from a long time ago.
Chapter Eight
Napier slept with a bayonet under his pillow. Old habits died hard and he had done it whenever he kipped outdoors since an attempt to kill him as he slept in Bosnia 15 years earlier. He’d awoken then because he couldn’t breathe, to discover a man straddling his chest and making a fairly good job of garrotting him. He still remembered how hard it had been to wrestle his way out of that predicament; to overpower and kill a strong and determined enemy in the confinement of a one-man tent with no weapon to hand.
His abiding memory of the incident was of the reek of Diesel coming off the man’s clothes once he was safely dead and Napier was able to breathe properly again. His attempted killer was one of the warlord Arkan’s bandit assassins and had spilled the fuel on his jeans siphoning it from one of the British military vehicles into a jerry can earlier in the day.
He’d been a thief as well as a murderer and Napier had felt no compunction at all about killing him. He just remembered afterwards the stink of Diesel and how long it took to accomplish a death inflicted with your hands alone. Thus the bayonet, whenever he slept under canvas, from that unpleasant evening on. He sharpened its edges on a whetting stone with the same unthinking regularity that he brushed his teeth before bed.
When he was rudely awoken on the island, he very nearly claimed another life. He had gripped the collar of the figure looming above him with the fingers of his left hand and held the bayonet in his right, about to draw it across the man’s throat. But in the glow from a dropped flashlight, he recognised the face of Malone, the least clueless of the Seasick Four, and stopped himself before the cut was made and Malone’s life bled away in an arterial eruption of gore.
It was some moments before Malone was capable of speech. The pause while he recovered from the shock enabled Napier to get dressed. Malone hadn’t woken him for nothing. This was far from a routine event, whatever it signified. He laced on his boots and exited his tent aware of the percussive drumming of rain on taut canvas and the howl of the wind as it scoured their rag-tag camp.
Malone stood, shivering.
‘Get over it,’ Napier said. ‘You’re not dead. You’d know if you were. What’s up?’
‘I heard a scream,’ Malone said. ‘I was patrolling the perimeter and I heard it over on the west shore, near the ruined cottage. I was heading for the cottage, for a break and a fag. And I heard a scream.’
Breaks and fags were very much what you had when you weren’t patrolling. Whatever Malone had heard had scared him into honesty. Napier was still sceptical, though. He said, ‘Could have been a gull or a seal. Could even have been a whale, in these waters.’
‘It was human and it was terrified,’ Malone said. ‘And when I looked there was no one around to do the screaming. And when I went to report it to Captain Blake just now, his sleeping bag was empty and cold.’
It wasn’t just blowing a gale. It was pissing down with rain. Malone’s pal Jarvis was somewhere to the north of where they stood, still patrolling. The rump of the Seasick Four, Smith and Cartwright, were fast asleep in their tents.
‘Who else knows?’
‘Nobody knows. I tried radioing Jarve for backup, but couldn’t get a signal. I came to tell Blake and he was gone. Then you nearly killed me.’
‘Stay here,’ Napier said. ‘Wake the others.’ He handed Malone his bayonet. ‘Sit tight. If anyone you don’t know approaches, if you’re attacked, use that. Do it. Don’t hesitate.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’ll wake up Troy and his team. They need to be warned and we need their help in searching for Blake.’
‘What do you think it is? What made Blake scream? Where is he?’
‘What do you think I am, Malone, the oracle of all fucking knowledge?’
‘I know who you are. We all do. I read about you in the paper after the thing in Afghanistan.’
‘Get Cartwright and Smith on their feet. Stick close and stay put. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
Alert to movement and sound, covering the distance to the project command centre, Napier refused to speculate in his own mind about what it was that was going on. He had no way of knowing. He didn’t think a clay pipe smoking phantom could have crooned Blake into a state of terror with an old folk song and he only had Malone’s word for it that the scream had been human.
Blake could have fallen badly somewhere or blundered into a bog or been swept out to sea by a freak wave. They were in a pretty elemental part of the world, all told. Speculation was pointless without some lead or clue. Waking Troy and his men was the imperative; doing that and then proceeding coolly and methodically.
Troy, once roused, fetched Brennan. The two of them told Napier about their earlier encounter with Blake. They told him Blake had drunk just the one can of lager prior to leaving them, sober and in good spirits, slightly preoccupied perhaps, but only with what his duties necessitated there on the island, if Troy was any judge.
‘Do you have any weapons?’
Troy and Brennan exchanged a look.
‘Level with me, boys.’
‘A couple of hunting rifles,’ Troy said, ‘bolt-action, small-bore, not exactly private army specification.’
‘Scopes?’
‘Night scopes on both,’ he said.
‘Good. Load both of them and give one to your lads here. Tell them to be vigilant. We’ll take the other one.’
‘Where are we going?’ Troy said.
‘We’re going back for Malone. Then you and me and Malone and Brennan here are going to go and take a look at that crofter’s cottage on the other side of the island. Then if necessary, we’re going to come back here and Brennan is going to establish radio contact with McIntyre’s people and we’re going to call this in.’
Brennan and Troy just stared at him and nodded.
‘Anyone have a problem with my taking charge over this?’
‘No,’ they said, together.
Lucy met Jane Chambers after her testosterone soaked encounter with the archaeologist Jesse Kale. Kale insisted on meeting her at the city boy boxing gym in Holborn he habitually used. He sipped at a high protein shake and teased the protective wraps from his hands and sweat smouldered off him photogenically. It was all a bit tragic, really, Lucy thought, since she hadn’t been accompanied as she might have in the old Fleet Street days by a photographer.
Kale was polite enough but not really engaging. Like most celebrity academics, he clearly felt as secured in his own myth as his hands were in the lint bandages protecting them from bruising harm when he threw his punches at the heavy bag. She couldn’t get past the wrapping to the f
lesh.
She thought Jane Chambers would be a relief. Not light relief, because she was an intellectually astute woman and hardly a lightweight as a personality. Her enthusiasms extended well beyond girly pastimes like gossip and shopping. But she had not been interested in emphasising her own credentials on the phone during their first conversation. She had been concerned only to try to provide a plausible scientific answer to the mystery of New Hope Island.
She had arranged to meet the virologist at a small restaurant with tables on the pavement in Lamb’s Conduit Street. It was conveniently near the hospital building housing Jane’s department. It was somewhere Lucy would be very unlikely to be seen by anyone connected to the paper.
Lucy got to the restaurant deliberately early. She found a table outside and ordered a small glass of Chablis and fired up an American Spirit. She inhaled the smoke gratefully, luxuriating in the guilt-free ten minutes she had to indulge her habit before Jane was due to meet her there.
The tables were Formica topped in a deliberately retro nod towards the continental style of the 1960s. The ashtrays were crimped little circles of metal foil. She was able to discard hers, along with the two butts it by then contained, in a street bin prior to Jane’s arrival. Her lunch companion was a medical doctor and Lucy liked to be approved of. It was a character weakness, she knew. But at least, she thought, seeing Jane approach along the pavement, svelte in a blue cashmere suit and sunglasses, I’m aware of it.
They were at the coffee stage before Jane finally confided what she’d come there to tell Lucy. Up until that point they spoke about the expedition generally and about Lucy’s earlier interview with the forensic archaeologist.
‘Does he have a theory of his own?’
‘He says he has an open mind. He says if your epidemic theory is correct, he’s confident he’ll find the mass grave. Kale actually thinks the explanation for the disappearance might be really mundane and so he’s checking meteorological data from the years immediately prior to the event.’
‘Why?’
‘He says because of the Island’s exposure to Atlantic storms. He believes that if the storms were particularly severe for a number of consecutive years, the Island community might have built a shelter underground to protect themselves from the worst ravages of the weather.’
‘And the shelter subsided or collapsed,’ Jane said. ‘And all the people sheltering were crushed or suffocated and perished.’
‘Pretty much.’
Jane smiled down at her plate. Her sunglasses were perched in her hair and there was a persistent frown line creasing her forehead. She looked pretty and troubled. She said, ‘Mundane enough, if a bit gruesome for the victims. But I don’t buy it.’
‘Neither does Kale, really. What’s bothering you, Jane?’
And Jane told her about Edith’s dreams and the song she had learned to play and sing in her sleep and about who Jacob Parr had been.
‘There must have been lots of men about then called Jacob Parr.’
‘It has to be Ballantyne’s Parr, otherwise it makes no sense at all. It can’t just be arbitrary. The chronology is right, Lucy. The song is of the period of the New Hope settlement. There has to be a connection.’
‘What do you intend to do about it?’
‘I don’t know, Lucy. I don’t even know why I’m telling you about it, really.’
‘A problem shared,’ Lucy said, with a bright cheer to her tone she didn’t really feel. What she really felt was slightly hollow and a bit numb.
Jane said, ‘I’d pull out of the New Hope project immediately if I thought for one moment Edith was in any physical or psychological danger. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.’
‘I’m not a mother,’ Lucy said. ‘This isn’t really my area of expertise. But maybe you should do that anyway.’
‘And risk antagonising Jacob Parr?’
‘You trust your daughter?’
‘I do, totally.’
‘Then I think you have to wait,’ Lucy said. ‘I think you have to wait until Parr gives Edith this warning he’s spoken of and Edith passes on the warning to you.’
Jane nodded. Lucy thought that she looked grateful and a bit relieved.
Jane wanted to split the bill, but Lucy put it on her expenses. All the way back, she thought about Jane Chambers’ curious confession. She didn’t have the slightest idea, really, of what to make of it. She had been fascinated by the New Hope enigma since devouring that Readers Digest article in her own childhood. She had never thought there to be anything genuinely supernatural about it. But she had a feeling, after her lunch with Jane, that the psychic chosen for the trip to the Hebrides might be in for a very interesting experience.
Lassiter looked different, to McIntyre. There was something new and unexpected about the body-language. The ex-detective usually had an air about him McIntyre would have described as apologetic; as though he was embarrassed about the space he took up and did not really feel his presence anywhere fully justified. There was usually something not just deferential but almost cap-in-hand about him.
But that air was conspicuous by its absence today. He looked smart and alert and full of confidence. This might have irked the newspaper magnate in another mood. But having heard what he had that morning, this afternoon he was actually reassured by his visitor’s demeanour. Lassiter did not know it yet, but McIntyre had plans for him.
‘Thanks for coming here at such short notice.’
‘You pay me pretty generously for my time.’
‘Not just for your time. Your talents are what I really pay you for. Did you put my proposal to Alice Lang?’
‘You could’ve asked me that over the phone, Mr McIntyre.’
‘I could have. But I asked you to come here in person.’
‘Which is intriguing,’ Lassiter said, ‘because I’ve always felt that you’ve deliberately kept me at arm’s length. You’ve always treated me a bit as though I might be carrying something contagious.’
‘When was the last time you had a drink?’
‘Three days ago. I ordered a large scotch in a pub in Liverpool.’
‘You remember the occasion?’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget it, Mr McIntyre. I didn’t drink the whisky, by the way.’
‘You saw the light?’
‘I saw something.’
They were on McIntyre’s sun terrace. McIntyre’s housekeeper had brought Lassiter there after opening the front door to him. So far, he had not been invited to sit. McIntyre sat in an armchair facing the view down the hill towards London. It was one of a pair titled in that direction. It was late afternoon and smog glazed the city and made its landmarks ripple slightly so that it made a person wince to stare at them too hard.
‘Alice says that she’ll do it, but she has a pre-condition.’
‘I’ll pay her generously.’
‘Money isn’t what’s on her mind.’
‘Sit down,’ McIntyre said. He gestured at the chair next to his own. ‘Forgive me, Lassiter. I’m forgetting my manners. What do I have to do for Alice Lang to get Ms Lang to go to New Hope Island?’
‘She’ll only go if I go.’
‘Very romantic,’ McIntyre said, smiling because he thought he understood suddenly the source of his visitor’s new-found self-esteem. ‘I’m touched.’
‘Would that be a yes or a no?’ Lassiter said.
‘How would you feel about going?’
‘Scared, frankly.’
‘Why?’
‘Take your pick,’ Lassiter said. ‘I didn’t like the look of that spectral urchin Shanks filmed. I’m not crazy about the way Alice Lang says Shanks met his death. I did not like having that film can under my own roof. It made me suddenly accident-prone. And the business with Ballantyne’s watch in that museum basement in Liverpool gave me quite a turn, as you know.’
‘Yet you’d go?’
‘It’s a mystery that wants solving, whatever happened on New Hope. The world has waited a bl
oody long time.’
‘And you need to be there if things take a hazardous turn, I suppose. You need to be there if your damsel encounters distress.’
Lassiter didn’t reply to this remark. McIntyre’s housekeeper wheeled in tea on a trolley and he smiled up at her in a polite expression of gratitude.
‘Funny,’ McIntyre said. ‘I’d never have cast you as the knight in shining armour before today. But now I think about it, the role quite suits you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Just don’t get drunk and fall off your horse.’
Lassiter reached for a slice of almond cake from a tiered arrangement on the trolley. ‘Does that mean I’m going?’
‘There’s been a spot of bother on the island,’ McIntyre said. ‘As yet, it’s unresolved bother. We’ll drink our tea and I‘ll tell you about it.’ He shuffled forward and reached for the teapot. ‘I’ll be mother,’ he said.
The head of McIntyre’s security team had disappeared from the island the previous night. A member of the security personnel, a man called Malone, claimed to have heard a scream in the vicinity of the cottage built on the island by David Shanks while on patrol at roughly the time of the disappearance. A second member of the security team, Jarvis, had been patrolling the opposite end of the island from Malone and was adamant that he had seen or heard nothing out of the ordinary.
The missing man was a former Royal Marine captain named Richard Blake. He was a veteran with plenty of combat experience and though weather conditions on New Hope had been severe the previous night, he was expertly trained in endurance and survival techniques.
Blake had not had a designated second-in-command among his team of five. But a former Parachute Regiment NCO called Paul Napier had assumed the role. Napier had requested and received the help of the construction experts building the expedition’s headquarters. He had requisitioned firearms they had with them. He had secured the perimeters of both their HQ and his own team’s camp and then organised a search for Blake. They had found nothing. In the small hours, after several hours of trying, they had finally patched through a radio message to McIntyre’s London office to advise them about events on the Island.
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