Little Black Lies

by Sharon Bolton

  Made wet by me, I imagine, when Queenie and I crashed the other morning. I can corroborate that. Also the rabbit I found on the Endeavour. I’m going to need to talk to them soon. I check my watch again. I’m not sure how long they can hold someone without charging.

  Savidge moves on to talk about our trip to the Endeavour on Tuesday night. About why we went, what we found. Catrin answers everything put to her with brutal honesty, except that she makes no mention of my attacking her. She does, though, admit something I wasn’t aware of. That she often anchors in Port Pleasant and the adjacent Port Fitzroy overnight, that she knows the bay, and the wreck of the Endeavour as well as anyone.

  I need to talk to them. Searching the Endeavour was my idea, not hers. If anything she was pretty reluctant to take me out there.

  Savidge, in the transcript, is asking Catrin what she dumped overboard in Port Fitzroy this morning. She’s denying she dumped anything. He’s insisting she was seen doing so. She’s challenging him to say who it was. He can’t. Or won’t. She’s claiming that if she did want to dispose of a body, she wouldn’t pick that bay because the water isn’t deep enough. She says there are any number of other spots around the islands where the chances of a weighted body being found are tiny. I’m willing her to shut up, even though I know the conversation is already over in real life, because that sends Savidge off on a whole new tangent. Where would she dump a body? Is it something she’s given much thought to?

  When he gets nowhere, he moves on. Did she see anyone else on the Airport Road? No, she didn’t. Did she take Peter Grimwood from his home yesterday? No. Did she take him on to her boat? No, she left him safely in his garden. Where was she three days ago when Archie West was taken from his family? At home, working. No, no one can confirm that, she lives alone.

  She breaks his flow to ask what will happen to her dog. Savidge doesn’t know. He presses on. Does she think it coincidence that Archie West was kept in a hut belonging to her, one that relatively few other people would know existed? She has no opinion on the subject. Did she take Archie West from his family? She’d never seen Archie West before finding him on the Darwin Road the other night.

  It goes on, until even I’m exhausted. The interview takes a little over an hour. I search for more but can’t find it. If she’s been interviewed again since, no record has been made on the system.

  I pick up the phone and eventually get through to Neil at the police station. I make an appointment for later in the day. With a bit of luck, I can get the toy rabbit discounted as evidence against Catrin.

  Archie was taken by a man and a woman? He isn’t making a lot of sense, according to Skye. If the kid’s confused, the man and woman he’s talking about could easily be me and Catrin. A man and woman took him away from his family? Or a man and woman took him back? Christ, all we need is for some half-arsed attempt at an identity parade, Archie to recognize Catrin, as he almost certainly will, and the frigging wheel falls off.

  I get on the phone to a firm of solicitors in Stanley who confirm what I was already pretty sure of. In a serious case such as child abduction, Catrin can be held for up to four days without being charged. If the search for Peter Grimwood doesn’t start properly for four days, the kid will be dead.

  I call up people I know at Mount Pleasant and learn, to my huge relief, that a search is already underway. That a platoon of soldiers are searching the ground round the feed hut where Archie was held. It’s a start, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope. If the same person has taken Peter – and what else is possible? – then he, she, they, will have somewhere else to take him.

  With no idea what to do next, I go back to the Grimwood house. When I arrive I find two police cars parked outside and crime-scene tape around the turning area. People in white overalls are working it. Better late than never, I suppose. I draw close and clear my throat.

  ‘Found anything?’ I know they shouldn’t answer me. I also know they probably will. I’m not disappointed.

  ‘Footprint.’ One of them is pouring some sort of pale-coloured liquid into a hole in the ground. ‘Just the one. Rain must have washed the rest away, but one is enough. Someone stood here recently. Big bloke, from the size of his feet.’

  Catrin’s feet are tiny.

  I leave them and push open the garden gate. Christopher and Michael are both on the swing seat not far from the house. They jump up when they see me and head my way.

  ‘Hi, you two. Any news?’

  ‘Dad’s plane’s been delayed,’ Chris tells me. ‘He can’t come back till tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s a shame. You must all want him back pretty bad.’

  When Michael’s eyes start to look pink around the edges, I regret not saying something more uplifting, like how their mum is lucky to have two such sensible, grown-up boys helping her out, or some such bollocks.

  ‘Where’s your mum right now?’ I ask.

  ‘She’s lying down. Gran says she needs to sleep.’

  Christopher is the one who needs to sleep, if you ask me. I’m not sure I really understood what shadows beneath the eyes meant until now. It’s as though someone has rubbed their thumbs in purple paint and drawn them down from the corner of Chris’s eyes diagonally across his cheeks. ‘Have you come to look for Peter?’ he asks me.

  ‘We can look together, if you like.’ I suggest this because I know that families in these situations often feel an overwhelming need to be doing something, anything, that feels productive. ‘We can go down to the beach.’

  ‘We’ve been already.’ Chris reaches out and takes his brother’s hand. ‘We went first thing this morning. Before anyone else was awake.’

  ‘We looked yesterday too.’ Michael is still wearing pyjamas. He’s pulled a fleece on top to stay warm and there are trainers on his feet, but otherwise he hasn’t bothered with clothes. ‘As soon as Mum couldn’t find him, we looked everywhere.’

  ‘She did the house, we did the garden,’ says Chris. ‘He’s been taken away. He isn’t anywhere here.’

  ‘People think Auntie Catrin took him.’

  I crouch down so I’m on a level with Michael. ‘Who’s saying that, buddy?’

  ‘We overheard Gran and Granddad talking this morning.’ Chris answers for his brother.

  ‘She’s in prison,’ chips in Michael. ‘Gran says she’s sick in the head because her own sons died and now she wants to hurt Peter.’

  I take the boys gently by the shoulders and walk them over to a group of upturned barrels arranged in a circle.

  ‘Guys, did either of you see Catrin at your house yesterday? About four o’clock? Just before Peter went missing?’

  Their eyes fall; first Christopher and then his brother shake their heads.

  ‘Did you see anyone? Any other cars?’

  More headshakes. And yet these two were in the garden when both Catrin and I each drove past. I guess when kids are in their own little world, they see and hear nothing beyond it.

  ‘Have you noticed anyone else near the house? Not necessarily yesterday, but in the last few days? Maybe even the last few weeks? Anyone you don’t know that well? Maybe someone watching you?’

  ‘The policeman yesterday asked us that,’ Chris says. ‘I told him no one. No one apart from Auntie Catrin.’

  ‘Gran says she hates us.’

  ‘Catrin doesn’t hate you,’ I tell them. ‘She’s just very sad.’

  ‘Mum’s sad too,’ says Michael. ‘She cries a lot. Not just about Peter. She cries about everything.’

  ‘Sometimes it seems like everyone’s sad,’ says Chris. ‘They always were and always will be.’

  Well, ain’t that the truth?

  20

  Queenie’s tail is banging against the passenger door when I get back to the car and it occurs to me that if she’s going to be my house guest for the next four days, I’m going to need dog food. I have another hour and a half before I’m due at the station. Shopping is as good a way as any to kill time, I suppose.

  ‘Call
um!’ Someone calls my name as I close the car door. John, Catrin’s boss, is hurrying towards me. I wait, let him get close, conscious that there are still too many people on the streets of Stanley and that a lot of them seem a little too interested in me.

  ‘How you doing, John?’

  He gives me that sly, almost furtive, smile of his. I’ve got nothing against John but I never feel entirely comfortable around him. Big men often don’t around small men. Small men have a lot to prove. Small men can take you by surprise. You’d be surprised by how many small men carry long, sharp knives.

  ‘Have you seen Catrin at all today?’ he asks me, and I resist the temptation to answer no, on account of her being under arrest on suspicion of child abduction. I shake my head.

  ‘She needs to talk to a solicitor.’ He steps from one foot to the other, looking down. ‘From what I can get out of Neil at the station, she’s refusing one. I tried to talk to her, but she won’t see anyone.’

  ‘They’ve got nothing on her,’ I say with more conviction than I feel. ‘They’ll have to let her go in a couple of days.’

  ‘That’s just it, they think they’ve got a pretty solid case.’ He leans closer. ‘Neil told me they’re confident of being able to charge her later today.’

  This will be about the rabbit. Without that, and the purely circumstantial evidence of her being at the Grimwood house yesterday afternoon, what do they have?

  ‘They have fingerprints, apparently.’ John answers my unasked question.

  ‘Whose fingerprints?’

  ‘The little boy’s. Catrin was wearing a sort of leather shoulder bag yesterday. His prints are on it.’

  I tell myself it means nothing. Peter’s fingerprints will be on Catrin’s bag for the same reason his hairs might be on her sweater. She found him in the road, picked him up and put him back in his garden.

  I don’t like it, though. If Peter’s hairs were on Catrin’s sweater, they may be in her car and on her boat too. There is a chain of evidence building that, while bogus, is looking more and more convincing.

  ‘And fingerprints on that gun she keeps on the boat. Fresh ones, apparently, although how they can tell that is beyond me. She’s handled that gun recently.’

  She handled that gun when she and I were on the Endeavour. Thank God she didn’t fire it, and not just for my sake.

  ‘She really needs some sensible advice,’ John is telling me now.

  What she needs, I’m thinking, as I say goodbye and walk up the hill, is for Peter to be found and the real abductor identified.

  ‘Callum!’

  John has followed me. ‘Look, there’s something else. I didn’t want to say anything but I have a feeling no one’s looking out for her and whatever problems she might have, she needs support.’

  ‘She needs Peter to be found and for this crap to be over with.’

  ‘Callum, did you know the other two boys who went missing? Jimmy Brown was local, you probably saw him around. The other family, the Harpers, they came over from time to time. Did you know them?’

  I shake my head. ‘Sorry, pal, why’s it important?’

  ‘The library will have old copies of the Penguin News. Both boys had their photograph in the paper when they vanished. Take a look. I don’t recommend you go to the Duncans direct on this. They’ll probably have pictures at the police station too. People are starting to make the connection, my friend. You need to as well.’

  He shakes his head, as if wishing there were more he could do, then he turns and walks back down the hill.

  Still an hour before I’m due at the station. The library in Stanley is in the community centre so I head over there and dig out the archived copies of the Penguin News.

  Jimmy disappeared in June 1993. I find his story on the front page of that week’s issue and take a photocopy.

  My attention is caught for a moment by a story about both boys, or more specifically, about the impact their disappearances will have upon the islands. According to Rob Duncan, the author, they’ll pop up in our folklore in a few decades’ time, as kids who were whisked away by the fairies. And within a year, he claimed, there would be ghostly sightings of them on the islands’ beaches.

  I remember reading it before, wondering if it hadn’t been a bit insensitive, although it had been written in the context of we’re all still praying for Jimmy’s safe recovery. Rob was right about one thing, though. There really is nothing worse for a community than a missing child. I’m not sure this one will cope with another.

  Knowing I can’t afford to be distracted, I leaf back through to August 1992 and copy the story about the missing Fred Harper. I put the papers away and take my two photocopies to a table by the window.

  Oh no.

  I sit down and pull them towards me, hoping the fleeting first impression won’t stand up to closer scrutiny.

  Jimmy was seven years old and lived with his family in a house in Stanley. Fred was five, from a settlement on West Falkland. There is nothing to suggest the two families knew each other particularly well. They had nothing especially in common. Except that the two boys were alike enough to be brothers.

  Dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, both showed the Spanish influence that colours much of the population here. Both looked a hell of a lot like Catrin’s two kids.

  No one has argued louder, or with more passion than me, that there is a killer on these islands. No one has claimed more frequently than me that three missing kids, never mind four, goes way beyond coincidence. Finally, the rest of the population is coming round to my way of thinking.

  Jesus Christ, what have I done?

  * * *

  Several hours later, I wonder if I’ve achieved anything at all. To say the police weren’t convinced by my story of finding the rabbit on the Endeavour is an understatement. They wanted to know why we didn’t say anything at the time and, while the discovery of the dead child wiping the rabbit temporarily from our minds makes perfect sense to me, it doesn’t seem to impress them in the same way. Neither does my insistence that it was my idea and mine alone to search the wreck in the first place.

  I was even shown a copy of my own frigging list. With Catrin’s name added. When I tried to argue, they told me that Catrin had been seen, by more than one person, at the Surf Bay swim. She was on the clifftop, apparently, watching the swimmers through binoculars. And while nobody can claim to have seen her at the Sports Day, according to the harbour master’s records, her boat was in Port Howard harbour at the time.

  By the time they let me go, it’s clear they have Catrin and me labelled as a very odd couple and I’m a short spit from being under suspicion myself. Only when I get home do I remember I should have bought food for Queenie. She turns her nose up at the can of tomato soup I open for myself, and isn’t impressed by an offer of cornflakes. It’s too late to go back into Stanley and my only choice seems to be to get something from Catrin’s house.

  I can kill two birds with one stone though, collect some clothes and take them to the station in the morning. It will give me an excuse to ask to see her again.

  I don’t drive. Catrin’s house is only four miles from mine across country and I’m ridiculously tense. Nothing calms me like walking, which is odd, if you think of it, given that my first experience of crossing Falkland countryside on foot was one of the shittier episodes in my life.

  But there is a world of difference, I’ve discovered in the intervening years, between crossing a strange land in the dark, wearing soaking-wet kit, heading towards an imminent and violent death and, on the other hand, hiking over moors I’ve learned to know, under a golden moon, with the scents of the sea mingling with those of the land.

  As the sun disappears, just a gleam of silver on the horizon gives me a direction to aim in, but it’s enough. In about fifteen minutes I’ll hit a narrow river and that will take me more than halfway. At that point, I turn my back on the sunset, if any of it’s left then, and tab directly east to Catrin’s place.

  I make good pro
gress, Queenie trotting along at my side, getting sidetracked now and again by scents and scufflings, but pitching up again when I whistle. The wind starts to pick up as we near the airport and from here I can see the lights of Stanley.

  As the white outline of the house above Whalebone Bay comes into view, Queenie knows she’s nearly home. She’s running ahead as we find a thin, trodden path that takes us down to the garden edge. The night is so dark I can barely make out those bloody fish skeletons, even when we’re close. God, the press will have a field day when they see Catrin’s house. To anyone who bothers to look, the message is clearly anti-whaling, but a few carefully chosen camera angles and a bit of clever editing will tell a different story. They could easily give the impression she lives in a graveyard, make her out to be some sort of ghoul.

  People here rarely lock their houses. I lock mine, but old habits die hard. Catrin never used to, but when I check the back door it doesn’t move, so I find the stone planter under the dining-room window and sure enough, the key is in its usual place.

  Inside the house, Queenie runs around as though all sorts of stuff has been happening in her absence. She sniffs the floor, the walls, cupboard doors, races upstairs and comes thundering down a minute later. While she does that, I stand in the kitchen, getting my bearings. I’ve never been in here without Catrin. Without Catrin, it feels like a very different house.

  I find Queenie’s food in the utility room, load up my rucksack then head upstairs. At the end of the corridor is a room with a white door. Closed.

  I’ve never been in Catrin’s bedroom. On the few occasions we met here – usually it was at my house or on the boat – she took me into the spare room. As gestures of loyalty go, it always struck me as too little too late. I’d been inside his wife, for God’s sake, it was hardly going to matter if I went in his bed too, but if it was important to Catrin to preserve the distinction then I was happy to go along with it.