Death on Lindisfarne

by Fay Sampson

  Lucy digested the information. She looked more doubtfully at David. “Could you do that? It’ll be a hard slog over the dunes.”

  David looked pointedly down at his polished brown shoes. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

  To her relief, the antipathy Aidan had shown the day before had been swept aside for the moment by concern for Rachel.

  “Let’s get going,” he said. He chucked Melangell under the chin. “Sorry, partner. I’d love to take you. But Peter and David and I need to cover the ground as fast as we can. We’ve some serious walking to do.”

  Lucy watched Melangell’s lips press together in a mutinous line. She turned her eyes to Fran’s. “Thanks for staying with her.” Lucy managed a smile. “I hope you get along OK. I really need Aidan.”

  “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine, won’t we, love?”

  There was no answering smile from Melangell.

  Lucy folded up the map and slipped it into her pocket. She held out leaflets of Holy Island with smaller maps to the others. “There. I’ve marked off roughly how we’re doing it.”

  The front door opened on a rush of cold damp air. Aidan had been right about the storm passing over, but the yellow sunlight that replaced it had a cold, watery gleam. It glistened off wet roofs and leaves.

  Lucy tried to sound more confident than she felt. “Right, folks, we’ll give it two hours. Back here for supper at seven o’clock. We mustn’t let Mrs Batley down. Between us, we’ve a good chance of finding Rachel.”

  “If she’s on the island.” Melangell’s voice came from behind them.

  Lucy was leading the way down the steps towards the road when she halted suddenly.

  A figure came staggering through the gate. He seemed to be having difficulty walking in a straight line. He was holding his hand to the side of his head, but through his fingers Lucy could see the bright blood trickling down the side of his face.

  “James!” she cried.

  She ran forward to catch him.

  Peter was on the other side of James, helping to take his weight. Together they steered him up the step into the house.

  Mrs Batley rose to the occasion. Lucy was afraid she would complain about this rain-soaked figure dripping blood and trailing wet and mud across her floors. But she gave one look, turned away and then came bustling downstairs with a pile of old towels.

  They sat James down on a chair in the hall. He seemed to be semi-conscious, looking around him vaguely.

  Lucy turned back the hood of his anorak. “Get me some water, please.”

  She wiped the mud away gently and patted the head wound dry. There was a sizeable area of broken skin and bruising. Blood still seeped from it. Without the rainwater, the flow was slowing. It looked darker, more vividly red.

  She was assessing swiftly whether this could be the result of a fall, or whether something had hit him.

  “What happened?”

  James frowned. His blue eyes tried to focus. “I don’t remember.”

  His voice was shaky, unlike the confident assertion with which he had challenged her this morning.

  “Did you hit it, or did it hit you?” Elspeth’s decisive mind had gone straight to the vital question.

  James tried to shake his damaged head and winced.

  “Shouldn’t somebody tell Sue?” Valerie’s voice came from the edge of the group. Everyone looked round, but there was no sign of the pastor’s faithful assistant.

  “As far as I know, she hasn’t been back since lunch,” Lucy said. “Aidan saw her going away from the castle.”

  “And I did.” Melangell had appeared from the lounge with Frances.

  Lucy turned her face up to Mrs Batley. “Is there a doctor on the island?”

  She guessed the answer before it came.

  “No. You need to get to the surgery on the mainland. But they won’t be open on Sunday.”

  Lucy felt her security receding. She had always thought of Lindisfarne as a place of sanctuary. Somewhere she could come for healing when she was in trouble. Now the practical reality came home to her. With only a few hundred residents, there was no doctor, no police officer. The only emergency service based on the island was the Coastguard and Rescue Service.

  “He’s almost certainly got concussion. He needs to be seen to.”

  At the back of her mind was still the thought that this head wound might not be an accident. If only James would come round enough to tell her.

  “You could ring for an ambulance,” Mrs Batley told her. “The causeway’s open. Or drive him to Berwick Hospital yourself.”

  Her own responsibilities and the possible options were chasing themselves round Lucy’s head. What were her priorities?

  A firm voice spoke behind her: “You don’t need all of us milling round. Why don’t the rest of us go off and look for Rachel, as we planned?”

  The warmth of gratitude flowed through Lucy as she raised her eyes to the red-haired photographer. Of course she had to stay with James now, however keenly she wanted to find Rachel. But that didn’t alter the fact that the teenager had now been missing for – what? She looked at her watch with a start – nearly six hours.

  “Thanks, Aidan. I’d be really grateful.”

  She turned to the pair of older women. “Do the best you can. There are only a few hours of daylight left. If nobody’s seen her, I really think we’ll have to turn out the coastguards before the light goes.”

  The others were moving off to begin their delayed search. David Cavendish hovered indecisively for a while, then took off after Aidan and Peter.

  Lucy was conscious of the mobile in her pocket. Were her suspicions about James’s wound strong enough to ring the police on the mainland, as well as to summon an ambulance?

  James lurched suddenly forward in his chair. Lucy caught him.

  “She was running away,” he said thickly. “I tried to stop her.”

  He passed out.

  Chapter Twelve

  AIDAN THREW AN ANXIOUS LOOK over his shoulder at Melangell in the lounge doorway.

  “I’ll be back,” he promised. “Before seven.”

  “Don’t you worry about her. We’ll be fine. Won’t we, Mel?”

  Aidan saw the curl of distaste in Melangell’s face at Frances’s shortening of her name. Oh well. He would just have to hope it went OK. The best thing he could do now was to take the search for Rachel off Lucy’s hands.

  He strode after Peter. The low sun of early evening was gleaming aslant along the puddled road. Beyond the houses, he could see a breeze was whipping up white curls on the crests of the waves.

  He caught up with the solid figure of Peter, who was looking at the four cars parked in front of the house.

  “Which one?” the student asked.

  Before Aidan could answer, the raincoated figure of David walked towards a red Honda four-wheel drive.

  “This is my little beauty. All aboard.”

  Aidan thought for a second time that the all-terrain vehicle looked out of keeping with the Cavendishes’ urban clothes and polished shoes.

  “Thanks. It’ll give us a head start. We’ll have enough ground to cover as it is.”

  They drove along the coast. Rain and tide had left pools beside the road, but the sea was still some way out. David stopped the car where the road bent round towards the causeway.

  “Is this far enough?”

  “Thanks, that’ll do fine. We can cut across to the North Shore from here.”

  Peter and Aidan got out. David stayed where he was. His gloved hands still rested on the steering wheel.

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  “Thought I’d drive a bit further round. Spread the net.”

  He lifted his hand in farewell and drove on.

  Aidan stared after him. He shrugged his shoulders and turned to Peter. “You know Rachel better than any of us. What do you think has happened to her?”

  Peter kicked a Coke tin into the blown sand at the sid
e of the road. “You tell me. She’s totally unpredictable. Chatting away like a magpie and blasting out grunge music one day. Next thing, she’s curled up inside herself and as difficult to get through to as a hedgehog. I told Lucy she was taking on more than she could handle, bringing her up here. Not that Rachel doesn’t deserve a break. If anyone needs one, she does. But Lucy’s got all you lot to worry about as well.”

  “I know what you mean.” He winced. I wasn’t exactly helping yesterday, he thought. “And that was before James had what looks like an argument with a double-decker bus.”

  “You and Melangell were at the castle, weren’t you? You said he and Sue were having a row. Was it, like, physical?”

  Aidan tried to remember the approach to the castle entrance, the view from the roof, the voices of Sue and James somewhere below.

  “I didn’t exactly see them. There are steep grassy slopes around the rock. And there’s a cobbled ramp. It was wet. He could have slipped.”

  Into his mind came the venom in Sue’s normally conciliatory voice. He kept the possible implications of that to himself.

  Peter and Aidan found a path that would take them across the narrow neck of the island to the northern shore. The traffic from the road to the causeway fell behind them, screened by tall dunes. The wind whipped harder as they approached the open North Sea.

  “How shall we play this?” Peter asked. “Shall I take the beach, while you stay up on the dunes? You can see further from there, and I guess your eyesight’s better than mine. Plus, there may be all sorts of hiding places in among the sand hills. That way, we’ll cover as much ground as we can, though we can’t look everywhere.”

  Aidan stood, poised on the higher ground, while Peter ploughed his ungainly way down to the shore.

  The tide had turned. Further out, a channel carved across the sands was widening. The sea would come in fast over this gently shelving beach.

  Could Melangell be right? Might Rachel have fled the island?

  He looked back across the dunes towards the mainland. In the distance, he caught the stocky figure of David Cavendish beside his red car, gazing forlornly across the causeway.

  Aidan watched him stand irresolute. Then, as Aidan had, he climbed the nearest dune.

  The level light was grey under the clouds. It was high time to begin his search.

  It was hard-going through soft sand. After a while, Aidan came across a trodden path between the grass-grown hummocks. It was easier walking now, but he was out of sight of the beach. There was a strange sense of disorientation. In every direction the dunes looked the same. There were no landmarks to give him a sense of distance. Only the poorly defined path told him he was going in the right direction, eastwards.

  From time to time he left it to climb a dune. From there, Peter was a lone dark figure on the pale beach. No one else was out walking.

  At other times, Aidan delved between the dunes, looking for one of those sandy hollows where Rachel might be curled up out of the wind, away from the world. He met only the mocking whistle of the tall grass.

  At first he thought it was the distant scream of a gull. He trudged on through the clinging, rain-soaked sand. Time was slipping away. A glance at his watch told him it was nearly six. The sun had long since retreated into an ominous dusk. He had lost all sense of how far along the sandy isthmus he had come.

  With an effort, he climbed another dune. The twilit water widened around him. Grey sea, ghostly sand, the hardly perceptible line of dusky mainland.

  The cry came again, clearer and more human now. “Aidan!”

  He could just make out the broad figure of Peter much further along the beach. It had been easier for him, walking along the compacted sand below the high-tide mark. The sea was swinging in a line of seaweed, marking the edge of the mounting tide. Aidan strained his eyes. Was that a clot of something larger, more solid than strands of weed, where Peter was standing?

  Aidan gave an answering shout. He broke into a slithering run down the seaward side of the dune.

  “No!” he was praying as he stumbled out onto the beach. “Please, no!”

  Lucy put James’s head between his knees. She dialled 999. This was only her second day on the island, and the situation was escalating out of hand. She had a sudden homesickness for her manse in Devon, and the comforting familiarity of her Sunday routine.

  She asked for the ambulance service and outlined James’s condition. A voice assured her that a paramedic car would be on its way as soon as possible to assess his condition. If necessary, they would transfer him to a hospital on the mainland.

  “The tide will be over the causeway in two or three hours,” Lucy warned them.

  “That’s all right, madam. We’ll be with you long before then.”

  The call ended. Lucy stared at the open mobile in her hand. Should she make another call, to the police?

  She was aware of Mrs Batley and Frances still watching her and listening for what she would do next. After a moment’s indecision, she knew she did not have enough evidence to report James’s injury as anything more than accidental. She would have to wait until he came round and hope that he could give more coherent answers to her questions.

  The paramedics would surely want to know how it had happened – if James regained consciousness soon enough to tell them.

  Still the phone lay in her hand. She had meant to ring Simon, hadn’t she? He had been a rock of strength when she had fled to Lindisfarne seeking sanctuary five years ago. She had wanted to get him to help her search for Rachel around Snipe Point. It still wasn’t too late, but the light would soon be fading. She should have called him sooner.

  She made the call. There was only his voicemail.

  James stirred. At once, Lucy’s thoughts flew back to his injury.

  She wished that Sue would come back. She might be able to explain his head wound.

  “She was running away. I tried to stop her.”

  That could only mean Sue, couldn’t it? A scuffle? An accidental fall? But why would the infatuated Sue have left him alone and injured, to stagger back to St Colman’s House on his own and bleeding?

  “James? Can you hear me? How are you?”

  “My… head… hurts.”

  “I’m sure it does. You’ve taken a nasty whack. Don’t worry, I’ve called an ambulance car. We’ll get you to hospital. Can you remember anything about what happened?”

  “I… I was lying on the ground in this garden. It was wet. I couldn’t find anybody to help me. So I started to walk back.”

  “Didn’t you meet anyone?”

  James tried to shake his head and cried out in pain.

  “It’s OK. Keep still.”

  “It was raining. I had my hood up. I just kept looking at the ground, putting one foot in front of the other.”

  If anyone had passed him, they would have seen a hunched figure, head down, his bloodied head hidden in the folds of his waterproof. No reason to stop and ask if he needed help.

  “Could you manage a cup of tea?” Mrs Batley asked. “You’ve had a nasty shock.”

  “Yes… please,” he said faintly. He was starting to shiver.

  “Why don’t you get him to lie down in his room?” Mrs Batley suggested. “Get a duvet round him. It’ll be a while before that ambulance car gets here. I’ll bring his tea.”

  “Can you stand?” Lucy asked.

  She helped him shakily upright. Mrs Batley had gone to put the kettle on. Lucy looked rather impatiently at Frances. “Could you give me a hand?”

  “Well, I’m not sure if I’m strong enough. He’s quite a big man.”

  Lucy got one of James’s arms round her neck. Frances, unwillingly, did the same. Melangell ran ahead to open doors for them.

  Together they got him to his room, beyond Lucy’s.

  “Key?”

  James looked blank. Lucy patted the pockets of his anorak and found it.

  They helped him to the bed and Lucy took off his shoes. Melangell had picked up th
e spare towels Mrs Batley had provided and laid one of them across the pillows with a self-important air. Lucy and Frances lowered James to rest on it. He sank back with a sigh, and they lifted his feet up.

  Horizontal, and with the duvet over him, he looked more relaxed.

  But there were bloodstains already on the protective towel.

  Lucy looked around the room. Like hers and Rachel’s, it was spacious. It contained a double bed and a single. She wondered again why James should think it necessary to book such a room just for himself, when Sue was upstairs in a single.

  She ought not to be judging him. If he had the money from his successful pastorate, it was his to spend as he liked. Wasn’t it?

  She tried to put her personal animosity out of her head. James was one of her group. She had a duty of ministry to him, as to all the others.

  “Please, Lord, bless James and make him whole,” she murmured.

  “Amen,” came Melangell’s unexpectedly clear voice.

  Lucy’s mobile rang. Simon calling back? The ambulance? She checked the screen. Her heart was suddenly beating painfully fast.

  “Yes, Peter?” It was a cry of alarm more than a question. She could hardly bear to listen to the news he told her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  AS HE RAN, WILD THOUGHTS OF DENIAL were chasing through Aidan’s mind.

  Rachel had been taken ill and fallen on the beach. Peter had found her just before the tide reached her.

  It wasn’t a human body at all, just a pile of debris washed in by the surf.

  The body wasn’t Rachel’s. Sue had gone from the castle towards the northern shore. She hadn’t come back.

  He almost tripped when he realized the implications of what he was thinking. Did he really want it to be Sue rather than Rachel? He hardly knew either of them. He had been moved to compassion for Rachel because of her hunted look, like a wounded animal. But what about plump, plain Sue, so admiring of James, who was almost certainly exploiting her?

  Peter was tugging the figure clear of the advancing waves. A dark, three-quarter-length jacket obscured the head. There was a trail of long dark hair.