by Louise Welsh
Magnus had thought the evening silent, but things moved everywhere in the wood, rustling the undergrowth, creaking in the treetops above. There could be people here too: canny survivors who hid in the troll darkness instead of making a show of themselves, cutting harvests that weren’t theirs, burning barns, lighting lamps in windows and inviting murder. Magnus had assumed someone from their community had done the killings, but what if it was an outsider, some silent watcher picking them off one by one like a bogeyman in one of the video nasties he and Hugh had been thrilled by as teenagers? Something big shifted up ahead and Magnus froze, catching his breath, until whatever it was – a deer, badger, escaped jaguar, all claws and hunger – moved away. Magnus forced his breaths into an even rhythm and walked steadily into the not quite pitch-dark. Ghosties and ghoulies were stories for children. Orkney was short on trees, but the islands had their own legends, stories of seal folk, beautiful selkies who beguiled mortals into the sea.
‘Do you think something drew him there?’ his sister Rhona had asked, not long after Hugh drowned. The two of them were in the Snapper Bar, both three sheets to the wind, though it was not yet dinner time. ‘Hugh was always sensitive, maybe something called to him.’ Magnus had walked away, out through the bar and down to the harbour for fear that he might slap her face.
There had been other nonsense spoken. ‘The sea demands her due,’ an old soak had said, his Guinness almost down to its last dregs of foam; low tide. Magnus had seen photographs in Tankerness museum of barrels of beer taken down to the shoreline and axed open. Men with waxed moustaches, flat caps and collarless shirts grinning as if the tradition was simply that and not a precaution; a nod to the old gods that they were not forgotten. When Magnus was around seven years old, his father had told him that in his grandfather’s time it had sometimes been a sheep they had foregone, rowing the poor beast out too far for it to swim back. Magnus had imagined the scene too well. The creature’s legs scrabbling as it was dropped over the side, the men careful not to upset the boat, the sheep trying to swim to shore, its head a speck of white above the water until the waves dragged it under. Magnus’s father must have enjoyed the effect of his story because he had gone on to say that in the days of the ancestors the sacrifice had been more vital; a girl or a boy taken out and drowned. The prospect had given Magnus nightmares for years after.
‘The sea demands her due,’ the old soak had said and Magnus had pulled back his fist.
‘The sea was not due my cousin.’
The quality of the light up ahead was different, the branches of the trees at the edge of the wood shifting against the brighter dark of the night sky. Magnus tripped in his haste to put the trees behind him. He righted himself and emerged into the edge of a field of yellow rape, looking down on to a low valley. Now that he was out of the shelter of the trees he could see the outline of the moon, a dim silver glow disappearing behind the clouds. He smelled rain on the air again and cursed himself for not stopping to grab a jacket. The crop of rape was beginning to rot. It added a sharp edge to the gunpowder scent of approaching storm. Raisha was somewhere ahead of him. Magnus started to walk. The fields beyond his were dark, but there was a patch of light further down the valley that might be a house. He would make for it and then, if Raisha was not there, turn back. The night boomed and he cursed again. When he was a young boy he had pictured thunder as giants’ feet pounding across the islands, flinging standing stones this way and that in a mighty game. It would be easy to return to the old suspicions now that the comfort of electricity was gone. Another rumble sounded. Magnus felt a drop of rain and picked up his pace. He dreaded the prospect of the house up ahead, the chance that he might interrupt Raisha in the act of tending some dead bairn. A fork of lightning jagged across the sky and he saw clearly for an instant the overgrown fields divided by neglected hedges and the white-painted house halfway down the valley. Magnus hurried on. Twice, three times he staggered and once he fell his full length. Rain stabbed his face, single drops that swiftened into a torrent, soaking through his T-shirt and jeans. Another bolt of lightning reived the sky and he knew that to turn back and make for the shelter of the woods would be foolish. He thought of Jeb listening to the thunder in the dungeon deep beneath the house and knew that the chance of proving him innocent was next to zero.
‘A fool’s errand,’ he whispered into the rush of wind and water, his face streaming with raindrops. ‘A fool’s bloody errand.’
The house was bigger than Magnus had thought from the glances the lightning flashes had granted him. It was more modern too. A barn expanded and converted into someone’s grand design. There were houses like it on Orkney, some of them barely used holiday homes, walls of glass juxtaposed with stones cut by the ancients and plundered from their sacred sites by Christian farmers. His father had made fun of them, but Magnus would have been happy to live in one; daylight streaming through an expanse of double glazing, a view of the Atlantic Ocean stretched out before him. There would be stylish homes for the taking now. The thought was no comfort.
The building was in darkness, his drowned face a miserable reflection in its glass wall. Magnus put his face to the glass, shielding his eyes. He could make out a long dining table, edged by chairs. Something moved within, or perhaps it was just a reflection of the driving rain.
‘Raisha?’ He tried to slide one of the doors open, but it was locked tight. ‘Fuck.’ Another lightning flash illuminated the night and Magnus saw his reflection again: slick-haired and wild-eyed; a seal-man. He stumbled to the front door and tried its handle. The door was made of heavy oak and Magnus thought it was not going to shift, but then it swung open and he lurched into the hallway. The floor was tiled in marble more suited to a metropolitan hotel. His feet slipped, but Magnus righted himself against a table, almost upsetting the withered remnants of an extravagant orchid display. The house smelled musty, but there was none of the foulness Magnus had feared. He shut the door gently behind him, feeling a sense of trespass. Water pooled from his clothes on to the expensive floor tiles. He was shivering and his jeans were waterlogged, but he resisted the urge to strip them off.
‘Raisha?’ Somewhere deep in the house he heard a sound. It was dark in the hallway and Magnus wished he had had the foresight to bring a torch with him. ‘It’s Magnus.’
There was a series of doors on either side of him, but the sound had come from up ahead. He walked slowly down the corridor, past framed photographs of the people who had once lived there, until he reached the family room. The noise was louder, a clicking sound too random to be code. A breeze touched his face and he noticed a small window that had been left ajar. The cord of its venetian blind was moving with the wind, tapping against the glass.
‘Shit.’
Magnus felt a lowering of the soul. He closed the window and the house became still. A dishtowel hung on a hook beside the sink. He mopped his face and neck with it and gave his hair a brisk rub. The room had been kitchen, dining room, sitting room and playroom. It was big enough to shelter a small herd of cattle. Magnus tried to picture his family sharing such a space when he was a boy, but the image eluded him. They had been close, but they had needed dividing walls to keep them together. Perhaps the family enshrined in the photographs had coexisted here, each with their own laptop, phone or tablet, in a small galaxy of virtual worlds.
Two large couches faced each other across a coffee table. One of the couches had a view of a garden equipped with a swing and a climbing frame. The other faced the kitchen area. The space was meant to be full of light and people, not this tomb-like silence. He wondered how Raisha could go on these expeditions and be reminded of all that was lost. Magnus had no appetite for searching the other rooms. He would dry off, wait for the storm to die down and then make his way back to the big house and see what was to be done about Jeb. Magnus kicked off his boots and peeled himself free of his sodden jeans, T-shirt and underwear. He hung his clothes over a couple of dining chairs to dry, shivering. A woollen blanket was drap
ed over the arm of one of the settees. His skin was wet and his bare feet left a trail of damp footsteps as he crossed the room towards it. Something moved in the shadows and a curse escaped him.
Raisha was hidden, curled in the nook of the couch that faced the garden. She cringed as if she feared he might hit her. Magnus grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around his body like a plaid. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you.’
Raisha sat up and drew her knees up until they almost touched her chin. ‘Did you follow me?’
Magnus pulled the blanket closer and sat on the couch that faced Raisha’s. It felt dangerous, sitting with his back to the countryside, but he could tell the woman wanted him nowhere near her.
‘It was an impulse. I saw you crossing the lawn.’
‘I didn’t know you’d come after me until I saw your face at the window.’
Magnus forced a smile. ‘That must have given you a shock.’
Raisha nodded. ‘You looked different. Then I saw it was you.’
‘You didn’t answer when I called your name.’ He tried to keep the hurt out of his voice.
‘I told you, I was scared.’
‘Of me?’ Magnus had been wedded to fear since Pentonville, but he had not expected Raisha to be afraid of him.
She shrugged. ‘Of everyone. We all saw things in the city. I thought it would be safer in the countryside but there’s killing here too.’
Magnus adjusted the blanket. The wool was rough and comforting against his bare skin. ‘Will said you voted to have Jeb locked up.’
‘I voted for law.’ Raisha looked at her knees. ‘Belle told me what he had done to that poor woman and her child, so I thought it must have been Jeb who shot Jacob, but later …’ Her voice tailed away.
Magnus said, ‘What did you think later?’
‘Later I thought it could have been anyone. We picked on Jeb because we wanted to find Jacob’s killer and make ourselves safe, but what if it wasn’t him?’
Magnus leaned forward. He realised that their conversations had always been conducted in half-whispers. ‘Jacob told me that he thought Melody and Henry might have been deliberately killed.’ He outlined the priest’s theory: the chair that had been kicked too far from the corpse, the wounds that were too sure to be self-inflicted.
Raisha buried her face in her knees; he thought that she was crying, but when she looked up her eyes were dry.
‘I’d already decided to leave. Now I know I made the right choice.’
‘You think Jacob was right?’
‘I don’t know.’ Raisha looked beyond him, out through the rain-spattered wall of glass and into the garden where children used to play. ‘Melody was sad, we all are, but I was surprised when she hanged herself; hurt too that she hadn’t come to me. Still, I wasn’t shocked the way that I would have been before the sweats. As for Henry …’
‘What about Henry?’
‘Henry was like us, a survivor. I knew he liked Melody, we all did. Her death upset him, but I never for a moment thought he would kill himself. He was too selfish for suicide.’
Magnus wondered if Raisha had slept with Henry and felt an unexpected stab of jealousy.
He said, ‘Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know.’ Raisha had taken off her boots. She wiggled her toes and looked at her feet, avoiding Magnus’s eyes. ‘I’ll travel on my own for a while, but I’ll probably join some other community eventually. There are others out there, you know. I’ve seen messages painted on walls and heard the sound of car engines in the distance. They can’t all be mad.’
‘You could come north with me.’
‘To Scotland?’ Raisha’s eyes met his. She smiled. ‘No.’
He wanted to ask why not but said, ‘Too cold?’
‘I need to be alone for a while. You should go soon though, before anything else happens.’
‘I need to get Jeb out first.’
‘Why?’
Her question surprised Magnus and he stumbled a little over his words. ‘There’s no proof that Jeb killed Jacob and I wouldn’t have got this far without him. I owe him.’
Raisha leaned forward and took his hand in hers, no longer frightened. ‘The sweats have put us on the edge of a new world. Maybe we don’t need people like Jeb in it.’
Magnus pulled free of her grasp. ‘We can’t start killing people just because we don’t like them.’
‘I don’t mean we should execute him …’
‘What do you mean?’ The scent of Pentonville was back in Magnus’s nostrils. ‘We should lock people up indefinitely without a trial?’
Raisha’s smile was chastened. ‘You’re right but …’ She left the sentence hanging in the air.
‘But what?’
‘It would be nice to be like Father Wingate and believe that there was some purpose to all this. The sweats took my family, but it left people like Jeb. He’s a child-killer.’
‘He denies it.’
‘And you believe him? He went to jail.’
‘Innocent people sometimes end up in jail.’
‘Including you?’
‘I didn’t get a trial, perhaps that’s why I’m so picky about it.’
‘Jeb got a fair one and the jury found him guilty.’
Magnus tried to conjure the words Jeb had used to recount the story of Cherry jumping from the balcony with her daughter in her arms, but it was as if the experience had become his own. He saw a red-haired woman teetering on a balustrade, a hysterical child reaching towards him.
‘Jeb’s no saint, but I don’t believe he killed his girlfriend and her daughter.’
‘I’d almost rather he had.’ Raisha gave an involuntary glance at the window. ‘If you’re right, then Jacob’s killer could still be out there.’
Magnus followed her gaze. The wind was making the plants in the overgrown garden dance, tugging at the untidy hedgerows and the trees on the ridge of the valley. The garden swing rocked on its frame and he reminded himself that he did not believe in ghosts.
‘You said Henry was fond of Melody and sad when she died. How were the others?’
Raisha hugged her knees. ‘Pretty much as you’d expect. Will never says much, but after Melody’s death he shut down. We all dug her grave together, even Father Wingate took a brief turn of the shovel. It was Jacob’s idea, an attempt at keeping the community together. We talked about Melody as we dug, what she had meant to us. I don’t think Will said a word.’
Magnus said, ‘What about Father Wingate?’
‘Old people are programmed to accept death; if they weren’t they’d go mad. Father Wingate got dressed in his full regalia and led the service. You could tell he was grieving, Melody had spent a lot of time with him, but the ceremony seemed to buoy him up. By the time we got back to the house he was almost his old self.’
Magnus nodded. ‘He was like that at Jacob’s funeral, sad but energised. As if something necessary had been accomplished and we could get on with things now.’
‘It’s not so unusual. My husband’s grandmother went to lots of funerals in her later years. She was a nice old lady, but she usually came back with a spring in her step and stories about who had said what to whom.’
Raisha sank into silence, as if the memory of her husband and his relatives had ambushed her.
Magnus went to the sink and poured them both a glass of water. He wondered how long it would be before the water system gave out and they had to resort to rivers and wells. There was so much he did not know. He set the glasses on the table between them.
‘You said Melody spent a lot of time with Father Wingate. What did they do together?’
Raisha sipped her water. ‘Melody became increasingly disturbed in the weeks before she killed herself. I wanted her to try anti-psychotic medication. Will and I even hatched a plan to scout chemist’s shops looking for drugs that might work, but she refused. Father Wingate was counselling her.’
‘Is he a qualified counsellor?’
Raisha shru
gged. ‘The rest of us were too stunned by our own losses to be much use to anyone else. Jacob gave Father Wingate his blessing and so the rest of us left them to it.’
‘How did Jacob react to her death?’
‘You know Jacob, he is … he was a practical man. Henry discovered Melody’s body, but it was Jacob who cut her down, tried to revive her and when he couldn’t, organised the funeral. I suppose his army training kicked in, but once she was safely in the ground he took to his room for a couple of days. I don’t think I fully understood the phrase “drowning your sorrows” until Jacob finally emerged. He stank like a distillery and looked like a dead man.’
The phrase recalled his cousin Hugh so strongly Magnus could almost feel him at his elbow.
‘Jacob’s beyond suspicion now.’
Raisha gave an upside-down smile. ‘The innocent dead.’
Magnus looked out at the garden again. The swing rocked to and fro, to and fro, and a shiver ran through him that had nothing to do with the cold. He asked, ‘What about Belle?’
Raisha’s smile died. ‘Belle was jealous of Melody. Belle’s pretty, but Melody was beautiful. Imagine how that feels, so few people left and even then there’s someone better than you.’
‘Better?’
‘More desirable.’ Raisha leaned forward. ‘Belle’s fragile. She needs men to find her attractive. Have you noticed how often she mentions her dad? Girls like her need a father figure, especially after their daddy dies. Belle might not know it, but she slept with Jeb because she wanted to make Jacob jealous.’
A laugh escaped Magnus. ‘Jacob was at least twice her age.’
‘Don’t sound so shocked, it happens. Anyway, it wasn’t on the cards. Jacob preferred mature women.’
The stab of jealousy surprised him again, warm in his stomach; a twist of the bowels. ‘Women like you?’
‘Not like me. Jacob’s sort wants a woman who will look after him. Mothers they can sleep with. I was a mother to my children, not to my husband.’ Raisha’s tone deadened again. ‘Jacob thought you were misguided, looking for your family. I think you are too, but for different reasons. As long as you don’t go home you can imagine they’re alive. The rest of us know we’ve lost everyone. We’re like people who have been so badly beaten we’re no longer certain which parts of us are hurting.’