by Lara Dearman
They had failed to hear his footsteps above the storm. Fallaize’s hand was wrapped in bloody bandages, and in it he no longer held a shard of glass but a knife, the wide blade glinting in the trembling light from Langlais’s phone.
34
Jenny
She struck solid rock again. This time, she grabbed at it wildly, managed to get a hold. Pulled herself close to it. She was numb to the pain but knew that her body was covered in scrapes and bruises. It was only luck that she hadn’t been dashed to pieces—luck and the fact that the water was calmer here, in the relatively sheltered channel between the two islands. The wind had dropped too. Not much, but enough that the waves were now only smashing into her face, not totally immersing her as they had when she’d first jumped in.
The jetty on Brecqhou was tantalisingly close. Two security lamps stood like sentries at the end, beacons in the darkness, throwing an eerie, silver glow on the surrounding water. In daylight, she might have had half a chance of reaching it overland—scrambling over the rocks, clinging to the coast or clambering up onto the headland—but under the cloak of night, it would be impossible. She had no way of knowing how high the cliffs were here, for a start. If she fell, she might break her neck, tumble into the sea, sink into the depths, fragments of her bones washed up with the sand in centuries to come.
She tightened her grip on the rock, not wanting to let go, instinctively feeling that the water was far more dangerous than the land but knowing that she had to get back in. No one was coming to rescue her. The only person who knew she was in trouble was Luke. And she was pretty sure he wasn’t going to send out a search party. If he even could. She strained to see behind her, back out towards the open water, looking for any sign of his boat. She’d listened to his shouts, heard the engine splutter, but the sounds had soon been drowned out by her gasps, her ragged breathing, her pounding heart.
Her fingers ached with cold. Maybe if she screamed, they’d hear her at the Mansion. Maybe. But what if Luke was floating out there, lights off, engine cut, just waiting for her to do exactly that? The more she strained her ears, the more she became convinced that she could hear the creaking of wood, the slapping of the waves against a hull, the faint, rhythmical clinking of cleats and carabiners. As she stared out into the blackness, she thought that yes, she could see him—there was movement out there, coming towards her, closer, closer now, a rush of warm air, the lightest touch, an unearthly, strangled cry—and then she did scream, a pathetic, rasping scream, her throat burned by seawater, and it was far fainter than that of the gull that brushed her as it flew by and, no doubt terrified, broke into hysterical screeching and chattering.
She shook herself. So long as she kept up momentum, she could make it. With as much force as she could muster, she threw herself away from the rock, back into the channel.
The water aided her now. She felt it pulling her through the passage between the two islands. She just had to get herself out of it before it swept her back out to open sea. She started towards the jetty, but the current was too strong; it carried her, rushed her into the pool of light and through to the other side. If she didn’t get out soon, she was done for. Already her strokes were weak and ineffective, barely keeping her head above water. She should have stayed on the rock, or better still, she should have stayed on Sark until morning. She should have left the pub without drinking too much, without leaving garbled messages on Michael’s phone, without agreeing to a boat ride with a virtual stranger. And as she weakened further, she made a silent plea, sent it out into the night, that if she got through this, she would do something with her life, something good.
She slipped under. Held her breath. Water in her nose, pooling at the top of her throat. Chest aching. Pressure building.
Drowning was supposed to peaceful—that’s what they said—but this was chaos and panic and pain. She thrashed and gagged, surfaced, just for a second, just enough for a gasp, half air, half water, then under again, deeper, darker, and it was like her soul was fighting to break out of her body, pushing from the inside out, and every part of her burned and ached until she had no choice but to open her mouth, to set it free.
35
Michael
‘Walk.’
There was no way they could take him on: Michael was too weak, his hands still tied behind his back, and Langlais was too much of a chicken shit. They’d both end up dead.
‘What are you doing, Fallaize?’ Michael rasped. ‘You must know your only hope now is to turn yourself in. Failing that, just run, man. Go on, just leave us. Let Martin get me to the doctor. We won’t raise the alarm, will we, Martin?’
Langlais shook his head.
‘Where’s Tanya, eh? What has she told you? That you’re all going to play happy families? She’s going to try to pin all this on you—you know she is.’
‘She won’t need to. There’ll be nothing to pin on anyone. Not once you and Langlais are gone.’
‘You think the police force are going to stop a murder investigation just because I disappear? You know better than that Fallaize. They’ll get to the bottom of what happened to Reg, with or without me.’
‘I had nothing to do with that. Neither did Tanya.’
‘Like hell she didn’t.’
‘I’ve no reason to lie to you. Tanya went to Reg’s house that morning. Presume that’s how the kid ended up there. He’s always following her around. Reg did a lot of work for the business, going years back. He was losing his marbles, she was worried he would talk. But he was dead when she got there.’
Michael shook his head. ‘She’s got you right where she wants you, doesn’t she? How do you know she was telling you the truth? And what do you mean Reg worked for her going back years? She been running this since she was a kid, has she?’
‘It’s a family business.’
Michael tried to process what that could mean. ‘Family? Like who?’
Langlais whimpered. ‘Please, stop. Let me go, Richard. I won’t say anything, I swear. You can trust me. Years I’ve kept quiet about all this—’
Fallaize’s fist came out of nowhere. Langlais cried out, fell to the ground, dropped his phone, clutched his nose.
A whisper. ‘That’s how much I trust you, Langlais. Now get the fuck up and walk.’ He stamped on the phone, crushing it under his foot, then took a flashlight out of his pocket and shone it on the road ahead.
Langlais went first, cradling his face in his hands. Michael followed, dragging his feet, slower and slower until he felt the prick of sharp steel in his back.
‘Hurry up.’
‘I’m going as fast I can.’ He coughed, struggled to catch his breath. ‘I was done in already by the time you got here.’ It was true. It took all the energy he could muster to stay upright, never mind move, but Fallaize dug the knife a little deeper into the small of Michael’s back, and from somewhere, he gathered the strength to put one foot in front of the other.
He tried to get a proper measure of where they were. Fallaize kept the light close to the ground. A rough pathway. It was flat and straight. He saw glimpses of grass on their right and felt, instinctively, that the land there was open. A field. Damn cloud cover. On a clear night, the light from the stars, a crescent moon would be enough to see by.
‘What’s that?’ Langlais sounded congested. Michael suspected a broken nose. Or perhaps he’d been crying.
‘What’s what?’
‘I heard something up ahead.’
They stopped. Fallaize lifted the torch. Shone it left and right. There were trees. Woodland. Michael knew where they were. The path to Port du Moulin. The Window in the Rock.
‘Nobody there. Keep moving.’ Fallaize moved on.
Langlais stayed still. Michael slumped forward, onto his knees.
‘There’s nobody there, I said—come on!’
‘I can’t.’ Michael’s shoulders ached with the strain of being twisted behind him. The rope round his wrists burned. The wound in his side still bled. And his head. The
throbbing in his head, like the waves pounding the shore, relentless, all-encompassing. He closed his eyes. Drifted.
Pulling. Dragging. Langlais had one of his arms, Fallaize the other. They manhandled him into the woods, where the trees closed in around them so the path became more uneven, gnarled and knotted with roots, dislodged slate and granite shifting underfoot. Was it really so quiet, Michael wondered, or could he no longer hear? It was so peaceful. Or it would be, if not for the pain. It filled the silence. Each stab of it like the cracking of a twig inside his head. One, then another and another, until it was all around him, a cacophony of cracking twigs, and he wanted to put his hands to his ears, but he couldn’t, so he closed his eyes, gave in to the darkness.
36
Jenny
Charlie didn’t feel like swimming today. He hadn’t felt like going to the beach, complained of too many grockles and too much sand, said he spent all week on the water, had had enough of it by the weekend. But Jenny had nagged him, and Margaret had said she wouldn’t mind a couple of hours to get the house sorted, so he’d sighed, tried to persuade Jenny a walk at the reservoir would be more fun. She’d begged and pleaded for the beach and sensed his resolve weakening, so she’d run and put her bathers on before he could change his mind.
Now he was standing ankle-deep, newspaper tucked under one arm, the other hand shading his eyes, watching her, calling her back whenever he thought she was going too far out, which was often, even though she was a good swimmer, the best in her class, better even than the best boy. Not faster—he could beat her in a race—but she could go further. Ten lengths of the pool without stopping. She was the only one who could do that. And now she wanted to try to swim the length of Pembroke. It was much too far, she knew that, but if she was going to do it before she was ten, she needed to start training. But Charlie wouldn’t let her go deep enough.
She stood and looked longingly out at the grown-ups, bobbing about way out to sea, where their feet definitely couldn’t touch the bottom, which was much better, Jenny thought, because you never knew what you were standing on out here, and one of her friends had got spiked by a weever fish last week and said it hurt more than when she went to the doctor for her jabs, so Jenny definitely did not want to do that.
She waved to Charlie. Perhaps he would come in after all and play sharks and minnows with her. But there was someone with him now. One of the friends he played cards with. They were talking. They weren’t watching her. She looked back out to sea. It would only take her a few seconds, thirty maybe, to get out to the proper swimmers. One lady, wearing a bright yellow swimming cap, was cutting through the water like scissors, arms like blades, up and down, head twisting shoreward every other stroke, so that Jenny saw a quick flash of her face, eyes covered in goggles, nose clipped. Jenny could follow her. Copy her movements. See if she could keep up. Just for a minute or two. Just while Charlie was talking.
She lifted her feet. She was standing in a warm patch, but her body had dried in the sun and the water was icy against her chest and shoulders. Cold on top, warm on the bottom. It felt funny. She went under to get her face and hair wet so she would be more streamlined. She opened her eyes. The water here was supposed to be very clean, but it looked murky, a soupy green with little bits of seaweed and sand whirling around in it. She peered at the seabed. She wished she had goggles so she could see properly. No sign of weever fish. She wasn’t sure what they looked like, in actual fact, but imagined they must have sharp fins, like tiny sharks, which they stuck out of the sand waiting for a poor child’s foot to spike.
The water stung her eyes, so she surfaced. Checked Charlie was still distracted (he was) and then looked for the professional swimming lady. (Jenny had decided she must be at least a Guernsey Swimming Club champion, if not a Channel Island one, with all that kit and such a confident technique.) She found her. She’d already swum quite far in the few moments that Jenny had been underwater, so Jenny wasted no time trying to catch up. She put her head down and did front crawl, but found it was quite difficult to keep in a straight line, much more difficult than in the pool. It was because of the currents, which Jenny knew all about: Charlie was always going on about them and how if you knew where they were, it helped you to find the fish. They could be dangerous too. People got swept away in them. She felt a tingle then, in her tummy. A little wriggle of nerves. She twisted in the water. She was further away from the shore than she’d ever been. Further, even, than the lady in the yellow swimming cap, who seemed to be heading back to the beach now. Charlie still hadn’t spotted her, thank goodness. She would swim as fast as she could and get dried, and they would get an ice cream, and she would do some more training in the pool before she tried anything like this again.
She pushed forwards, arms nice and streamlined like her teacher had shown her. Head down. Straight to shore. Five strokes. Ten. Twenty. She didn’t seem to be any closer to shore. In fact, if anything, she thought she might be a little further away. She put her head down again. Thirty strokes. Forty. Tired. She stopped again. And now Charlie had seen her. He was waving. But not in a friendly way. In a frantic way. She was too far away to make out his face, but she could tell he was cross. He wanted her to come back in. Charlie was pointing towards the tower on the headland. He was shouting, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying, and now there were more people with him, and Jenny’s cheeks burned and her eyes watered because everyone could see she’d messed up and that her dad was angry with her, and she hated making mistakes. She would act like everything was fine when she got back to the beach. She would keep swimming now until she got there.
Head down. Arms aching. Water tickling her nose. She needed a clip, like the lady. And goggles and a swimming cap. Then she would be fine, she was sure of it. She started to cry with the frustration. That was when she gulped down her first mouthful of seawater, and that was when she really panicked, started thrashing and yelling, until, out of nowhere, she felt a weight against her, like some great sea monster had attacked her, only instead of eating her, or dragging her down to its watery lair, it threw an arm round her neck and pulled her, sideways, parallel to the beach, towards the loophole tower, and suddenly they were floating. The water had lost its power over her.
Charlie let her go. They bobbed about for a few seconds. He looked furious, she thought. And terrified.
‘Can you make it back?’
‘I think so.’ Her throat was thick with mucus and salt.
‘Follow me.’
He swam in front of her, slowly, deliberately, turning his head to check on her every few feet. It was only when he got out that she realised he was fully clothed. Someone wrapped a towel round her; it was thin and scratchy and smelled of other people’s washing powder. Someone got them both a cup of tea, the first one she’d ever had, milky and sweet. It made her feel sick, but she didn’t say anything, because she’d caused enough trouble already.
That evening, Charlie explained what a rip current was. Told her that even the strongest swimmer would struggle against one. That the first thing you should do if you found yourself trapped was yell for help. If nobody came, you had to swim out of it, one side or the other. Never try swimming against it. You couldn’t win and the tiredness, that’s what would kill you. If it was really strong, he said, if you couldn’t escape it, you had to let it carry you. It might be fifty feet long; it might be a thousand, but eventually, it would come to an end. You’d feel it lose its grip on you. Then you could find another path back to the shore.
He bent over her. ‘Not a word to your mother,’ he whispered.
She nodded. They both knew that Margaret would probably stop Jenny swimming for good if she found out about this, never mind the fact that Charlie would have hell to pay for taking his eye off her.
‘And you’ll remember what to do if it ever happens again?’
She nodded. ‘I’ll remember.’
He brushed her nose with his knuckle. Kissed her on the cheek.
‘I’ll have a few mo
re grey hairs tomorrow because of you, Jenny Wren.’
The grip loosened. She felt the pull subside, the movement slow, the din quiet.
Underwater.
Seconds. Minutes.
Calm. No fight left. This must be the peace they talked about. There was nothing left to fear. The worst had already happened.
Pictures. Bright colours. A flood of images, of memories. Walking in the woods. A Sunday roast. A bedtime story. Leaving for university. Mum crying. Wet streets. An abandoned car. A bunker.
Black. Black. Black. But no panic. Just acceptance.
And then a light in the darkness. A speck at first. She thought of the anglerfish with its lure. But this was bigger. Brighter. Coming towards her. An angel, come to save her. She told her legs to move. To kick. They responded, half-heartedly. She drifted towards it.
Not an angel.
A ghost.
She reached out to touch him. To stroke his cheek. Cold fingers on cold flesh. He smiled. She closed her eyes.
And suddenly they were standing at the water’s edge on a warm summer’s day, breathing the sweet, fresh air. She saw a bright yellow swimming cap. Felt a rough towel. Swallowed a mouthful of sweet, milky tea.
You’ll remember what to do?
She nodded. I’ll remember.
She opened her eyes. He still smiled, but as she stared at him, his face seemed to bloat, his skin to loosen, and she pulled her hand away, and with it, a chunk of his flesh, exposing pale bone beneath, and his eyes were empty sockets, gaping black holes, and she could see inside his skull and it was filled with tiny, wriggling fish, which burst out in a stream of silver, darting around her, working their way under clothes and through her hair, and she screamed, soundlessly, endlessly, kicked and thrashed until she felt a weight against her, an arm round her neck, and it dragged her, still screaming, up, up into the sweet, fresh air.
Corey Monroe looked different. Less threatening. Perhaps it was the fact he was wearing checked pyjama bottoms and a loose-fitting T-shirt, his hair ruffled as if he’d been sleeping. Perhaps it was because he’d picked her up off the jetty, shouting a string of confused expletives, and carried her into the house, setting her down on a sofa, wrapping her in a thick white towel.