DEDICATION
For Thin Lash Connolly:
we’ll always have the informesa.
THE TURNING TIDE
BROOKE MAGNANTI
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
THE TURNING TIDE
PROLOGUE
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Also by Brooke Magnanti
Copyright
PROLOGUE
Of all the things that Daniel Wallace had hoped to do on holiday, finding a dead body was not one of them.
The kayak trip from Skye to Raasay was perfect. It was his girlfriend’s first visit to Scotland and he wanted to make it a weekend she would never forget. Daniel had planned this leg of the trip carefully: a journey starting on Skye, going up the long east coast of the island of Raasay. Winter weather in the Highlands was tough to predict but although the water was cold, there was little wind and the only snow was on the mountaintops. They would paddle past the steep cliffs and fossil beaches with views over to the mainland and lunch on the cobble beach below castle ruins he knew well, then continue on to a romantic night at a bothy inaccessible to walkers and unlikely to be occupied at this time of year.
Maya teased him for being such a list maker, but as the day went on he was pleased at having planned it so well. There was a slight chop on the water as they left Skye and late winter light on the wavelets sparkled like sequins. It changed to perfect glass as they rounded the tip of Raasay and turned north. There was a superpod of dolphins spanning the sound between the island and Applecross on the mainland, hundreds of them leaping and squealing for the sheer fun of jumping around. He could tell Maya was nervous about the large mammals at first. She clutched the shaft of her paddle tightly, but was soon laughing with the joy of it all.
They landed on the northern tip of the island. Maya pulled her kayak above the tide line onto the shingle beach while Daniel hung back. ‘Something wrong?’ she asked.
‘I think there’s something caught in my rudder,’ Daniel said, ‘bit of seaweed, maybe. You go on ahead and find the bothy, I’ll catch up.’
‘Sure,’ she smiled. Daniel watched her buttocks cased in her kayaking drysuit disappear along the path. Three years in and he still fancied this woman as if they had just met. That had never happened to him before. A good sign, right? That she was a keeper. The One.
So far, so perfect. Tonight they would watch the sunset from the beach and share a bottle of whisky. He would make them a simple meal of bacon and tuna pasta on the gas camping stove. The bothy had a fireplace to ward off the cold but there wasn’t much wood on the island, so Daniel had brought peat bricks and coal in a thick blue rubble bag.
Then there was the ring, tucked safely away in his dry bags. He planned to pop the question after dinner: maybe on a moonlit walk, maybe sitting by the bothy fire later. With the day going so well he could afford to play that part by ear.
They had met on a kayaking course Daniel was teaching at a leisure centre pool in Croydon. Normally he didn’t date students but Maya had caught his eye. That would have been where things ended, but to his surprise she asked him out after the course was over. It didn’t take him long to realise that she was, not to put too fine a point on it, the love of his life. Even more so than kayaking.
The best part was that Maya wouldn’t be expecting him to propose. It was as close as he had ever got to being spontaneous, and she knew that wasn’t his usual style. She probably thought he would pop the question after a long discussion, then they would shop for rings together. She hadn’t known that he figured out that the diameter of her finger was the same size as the plastic ring pull on the orange juice he always bought.
That was tonight sorted. Tomorrow? Tomorrow they would paddle around the smaller nearby isle of Rona before heading back down the other coast of Raasay and back to Skye. He had already booked a table and room at an inn that specialised in fresh local seafood and folk music, and they could toast their engagement with a pint of local ale.
He stood waist deep in the water and tugged hard on the rope deck lines. The boat would not budge. Daniel took off his gloves and felt along under the boat to the rudder. Something was caught on it, as he’d suspected. He pulled but it wouldn’t give way. So it was not seaweed then. It felt a bit like rope. ‘What on earth . . .’ he murmured. Maybe a belt? Someone’s old climbing gear? The cliffs further down the island were popular with climbers and the waters were trawled by fishing vessels. You never knew what could wash up on the beaches here.
He gave one last pull and felt something come loose. Daniel crossed to the bow and, with some difficulty, dragged the kayak up the shore. He flipped the boat on its side and saw what looked like a holdall caught underneath with one long strap that must have caught on his boat when he paddled over seaweed in the shallows. He sighed. Maybe the bag fell off a hiker on a hill somewhere. ‘Someone wasn’t having a great day,’ he said to no one in particular. Still, stranger things had happened. He chuckled at a memory of the time Maya once left her bra on a sandy beach in Cornwall after a little al fresco romance. They were half a kilometre away by the time she realised.
Daniel unwound the strap. A sports bag, all right. He leaned over and unzipped the top. Probably there would be a wallet inside, or a tag perhaps, and they could get this back to its rightful owner. He didn’t relish the thought of carrying someone else’s luggage around for the next day or two, but he liked to hope someone else would at least have done the same for him.
The zip came unstuck with a little effort. Inside it looked like – well, he wasn’t sure what, exactly. Something the size of a melon poked out, round. It had a slippery, translucent quality rather like a jellyfish. But it was far too early in the year for jellyfish. He poked at it with the toe of his neoprene boot. The stench hit him at the very moment he realised exactly what it was he was looking at. Not a jellyfish at all, but a head. A bald human head.
The contents of Daniel’s stomach bubbled into his throat as a wave of shock ran up his body. He collapsed on the ground.
He blinked, lifted his head from the pebbles on the beach. He looked up the path where his partner had disappeared. ‘Maya!’ he shouted. ‘Maya!’ He tried to clamber to his knees, but his legs felt rubbery and uncertain.
Maya was only seconds away but to Daniel those moments felt like hours. She knelt by him and put her hand gently on his shoulder. ‘Are you OK?’ she said. Daniel did not often lose his cool, not even the time they went out for a routine outing that turned into force eight gale conditions off the Isle of Wight. Her paddle had snapped and he had to tow her to shore, battling wind against tide, both of them swallowing facefuls of sea foam. Maya had been in bits afterwards – it was her first open water crossing – but had never felt like Daniel wasn’t in control. Even then he didn’t raise his voice or
anything. No, Daniel wasn’t the sort who freaked out at any old thing. This had to be something serious.
Daniel closed his eyes and shook his head. He tried to raise one arm and point back to where his boat was pulled up on the beach.
‘What is it?’ Maya asked.
‘You tell me,’ he said.
Maya spotted the bag next to his kayak and crouched down to get a closer look. The sight and smell knocked her back for a moment, but she recovered quickly and leaned in to see what was in there. There was a body inside the bag. No doubt about that. Three years of a forensic science degree had prepared her, but only just, for something like this. She had seen plenty of specimens in the lab or in the morgue but that was different. Those were lifeless, static things that looked more like oversized dolls than anything else.
This however was . . . well, it was kind of great, actually. Her first cold one in situ. ‘It’s dead,’ she said. She picked up Daniel’s paddle and poked the remains with the end. ‘Human.’ There was a retching sound behind her. ‘Daniel?’
He was sitting upright, head between his knees. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure it’s dead, or sure it’s human?’ No reply; only the sound of more heaving. ‘Yeah, I’m sure,’ she said.
Maya frowned at the remains, trying to puzzle out what she was looking at without removing anything from the bag. The back of a head, bald. A shoulder and arm pulled back, maybe tied? A slender elbow joint poked through the grey, gelatinous scraps of flesh and connective tissue. If the body hadn’t been in the bag, odds were the rest of its extremities would have fallen away from the trunk by now. Whoever this was had been in the water for some time – weeks, at least.
Daniel flopped back onto the ground above the cove. His chest rose and fell heavily. ‘What now? Do we radio this in? Pull the GPS beacon?’ His voice was uncharacteristically panicked. Of all the emergency situations he had prepped for over the years, this was not one of them.
Maya inspected the outside of the bag for clues. It was covered in black algae. There was no sign of ID, no nametag that she could see.
‘Pulling the beacon might be going too far,’ she said. ‘Whoever it is, he’s already dead.’ If someone was dead it was a collection job, not an emergency. And the fishing boats wouldn’t want to get involved. No point getting the lifeboats and helicopters out for this.
Was it an offence to leave a dead body unattended? She couldn’t remember. Maya surveyed the horizon in all directions. There was the tiny island of Rona to the north and six miles of heather bog to the south; Skye on one side, mainland Scottish Highlands on the other. No place within walking distance of where they were unless she fancied a four-hour yomp to Raasay’s only village in wet boots. And while under normal circumstances Daniel would have no problem going out in the kayaks again once darkness fell, Maya didn’t fancy it.
Even if they wanted to go find help on their own, Daniel didn’t look in any shape to do it. She popped the covers open on his kayak and rifled through his dry bags for a phone. ‘Do you have reception? We could call the police station in Portree.’
‘No reception here.’
‘I’ll get on the VHF and radio the coastguard, then,’ Maya said. ‘Ask them to pass it on to police. Looks like we might not be staying the night here after all.’
Daniel’s five-star instructor’s course had offered no guidance on what to do if you ended up having to haul a sack of decomposing human remains on a sea kayak. ‘Please tell me we’re not paddling this – this thing – to shore.’
‘No,’ Maya said. ‘Best not to move it more than necessary – in case there’s any evidence to be found at the site.’ She sat down next to her boyfriend. ‘We’ll see if we can get a lift off the coastguard and grab a B&B on Skye tonight,’ she said. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’
Daniel nodded weakly. Maya repacked his bags. She spotted a tiny jewellery box among his things and her heart skipped a beat. ‘Oh my God! Daniel . . . is this what I think it is?’ She tugged off her gloves to slide the half-carat sparkler on her left ring finger. ‘And it’s a perfect fit!’
Her fiancé rolled to one side and chucked a mouthful of foamy spittle on the grass.
: 1 :
Today. She was going to leave him today.
Erykah leaned into the catch of her oar as the low-slung rowing boat slid along the Thames. She squinted against the icy rain that raked her face and tried to concentrate on the back of the rower in front of her, synchronising her movements to Nicole’s movements. There was nothing but the sound of their blades hitting the water in unison, the rush of the river underneath, and one word in her thoughts. Today. Today.
The rhythm of the pair was constant and strong. Catch, drive, recover. Catch: two oars dropped into the water together. Drive: the push as two pairs of long legs stretched out, the blades snapping out of the water at the finish. Recover: slide forward, square up, get ready to repeat. Catch, drive, recover. The racing shell sliced through the water like a knife. Today, today, today.
Early-morning outings were the best part of Erykah’s day. Nothing else intruded on the physical pleasure of being competent, of getting something done. She indulged a glance at the water where the wash of their strokes bubbled up. The whirlpool puddles of her oars chased Nicole’s upstream, equally deep, equally strong.
The London suburb of Molesey was always quiet at this time of morning but today it was eerily still. Sleety rain from the February sky flattened the water and dampened all outside noise. The gardens were still bare of leaves, the pleasure boats tied up on the bank still shrouded in canvas for the winter.
On one side of the river were the reservoirs and nature reserve, beginning to rustle with the first stirrings of the dawn chorus. On the other side, in the houses facing the water, a few lights flickered in Erykah’s peripheral vision. The exodus of commuters from the suburbs into London was an hour or more away.
The rain soaked her clothes, ran down her arms and washed the sweat off her skin. Droplets hit the water, each sphere hopping like quicksilver before being swallowed by the river. Erykah turned her thoughts to the handbag in her locker and how much she might be able to pack into it.
She thought about the cash she had been withdrawing since last year, odd amounts here and there, so that it wouldn’t raise suspicion. She had sold a few pieces of jewellery, including two Swiss watches her husband hadn’t worn in years. She didn’t know yet how she would tell him: Rab, we’re done. Rab, I’ve had enough. Maybe she would walk in the door, the light framing her from behind. His face would crumple, maybe he’d wail, but he would be unable to stop her.
Today. Today was Valentine’s Day.
It was Erykah Macdonald’s twentieth wedding anniversary.
The anniversary was a date on the calendar, a silent odometer showing how much of her life she had wasted with her husband. Her unemployed husband, she reminded herself, not that he would admit it. He was still leaving the house and pretending to go to work in the City every morning, paying their bills on loans and credit. Credit that couldn’t cover his debts for much longer. And the longer the situation went on, the more obvious it became that he was hiding things from her. His darting eyes when he left the house and when he came home, the far-too-casual questioning of how her day had been. He didn’t know she knew, but she knew. She was not born yesterday.
She had watched Rab fossilise his morning routine over the course of months until it was a ritual. He prepared the same pot of coffee and soft-boiled egg every morning, cracked and ate it using the same egg cup and spoon, washed them up – he had never done his own washing-up before, not that she could remember – and left them in the draining rack. Left at the same time, to the minute, every day. She recognised the signs. He was secretly trying to keep things under control. Wasn’t it what she had done, as a child, primly lining up the few possessions in her mum’s flat as a talisman against future fail
ure? Hoping that if everything on the shelf was neat, maybe everything else would be OK too? It was play-acting, a way of keeping up appearances.
Catch, drive, recover. Catch, drive, recover. Without saying a word Erykah and Nicole both fell into a longer, more languid rhythm. The boat responded and picked up in the water, raising the bow like a goose’s neck in icy air.
Most club members gravitated towards the team camaraderie of rowing in an eight, or the solo achievement of bashing up and down the river in a single scull. But Erykah loved the pair. The days when their eight was broken up into fours and pairs were her favourite training sessions of all. Without the constant staccato demands of a cox sat in the front broadcasting instructions to the crew, Erykah could really lose herself in the feel of the boat.
The secret to the pair was syncing your movements perfectly with the person in front of you. Not that it wasn’t important in any other crew, but in a pair there was nowhere to hide. Pull too hard or too light, or be a fraction of a second too fast or slow in the water, and the boat would pull around, throwing the rhythm off and slowing them down. Nicole kept time like a perfect metronome; it was Erykah’s job to mirror her. But it was as much chemistry as physics. They knew each other, could read each other’s mood in the boat, often without even having to speak.
Nicole raised one hand off her oar as they reached the landing stage. Erykah squared her blade, slowing the boat and swinging it around. Nicole tapped her oar backwards through the water, bringing them parallel to the wooden dock outside the boathouse. Erykah held on to the planks while Nicole got out and steadied the boat for her. They took the oars out of the riggers, then crouching together, lifted the boat over their heads and dropped it to their shoulders.
They were smooth; from the minute the boat was lifted off the rack to the last stroke before they came up to the landing stage. They fitted together, with the boat, with each other, like a key in a lock.
Erykah didn’t want to jinx anything, but it had been a long time since a boat she was in had felt this good. Years. They had squeaked into the top twenty at the Pairs Head before Christmas. She hoped the coaches would put them together again once head season was over. There would be a few cups at the regattas to be won this summer – maybe national championships. Maybe more.
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