Blood Tide

by Claire McGowan

  In statistics, two points are just two points. They signify nothing. But three points, that’s a line. That’s a pattern. And after the incident with Manus and Jimmy, I began to think about the thing at the primary school, and that awful business with the Sharkey baby, and I started to draw some lines. I wonder now, after the blood in the sea and the boat and the box full of dead things, whether I could have stopped it all that day. Pressed my fingers to it like I might have pressed them into Manus’s gaping neck. Or whether things were already too far gone by then. I don’t know, but I’ve written it all down anyway, at the very least so I can try to understand myself. To see what exactly it was I did wrong. For what it’s worth, I, Dr Fiona Watts, date the happenings on Bone Island from the date of Manus Grady’s death – 5th January 2014 – but if you look back, no doubt you will find that this was only the moment when the building wave began to crest.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Well, pet. That was a powerful gale last night. Are you all right?’ Paula’s stepmother Pat opened the front door, dressed in yoga pants and a lemon sweatshirt. The previous year she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer, and Paula tried not to take it for granted that Pat would be there every morning, up and about, well as could be expected. But she was. Even her hair had grown back after the chemo, soft as a baby’s.

  ‘We’re fine. No harm done.’ At least the house had just been renovated when everything went wrong. At least she didn’t have to worry about bits of it falling off in the storm – even if it had been done in the hope of selling the place, moving to a new house that wasn’t full of memories.

  ‘Graaaaaanny!’ Maggie ran over and Pat scooped her up, struggling gamely.

  ‘Oof. There’s my wee pet!’

  ‘A bad man was at my window.’

  Paula met Pat’s eyes over Maggie’s red curls. She shrugged. ‘Nightmares. Where’s Dad?’

  ‘Still upstairs. The ould wind makes his leg play up.’

  ‘I’ll leave him be, then. Saoirse’s getting her from nursery today, yes?’

  ‘Aye. I’ve my follow-up appointment.’

  ‘I know. Tell me how it goes, yeah?’ It was always a worry, that they’d find something else on the scans. Paula didn’t know what she’d do without Pat’s presence in her life – her own surrogate mother, and the only grandma Maggie had. So how could she ever tell her father about the note without destroying the two of them?

  Maggie’s head drooped against Pat’s shoulder, which wasn’t like her. Usually at this hour of the morning she’d be running round full of beans, while Paula would trail after her, hollow-eyed with insomnia. Pat jiggled her. ‘What’s the matter, pet?’

  Paula stroked Maggie’s foot in its little furry boot. ‘She was up in the night crying.’

  ‘Scared of the wind? Poor wean.’

  Yes, the wind, and imagined horrors Paula knew came from the real, terrible things this family had been through. Too many to bear, she sometimes thought. And yet they did bear it, somehow. She looked at Pat – her stepmother, almost mother-in-law, and many other things besides. She’d be going to see Aidan today after her scan; Paula was sure of it. But she could never bring herself to ask outright how he was, this man who had so nearly been her husband. And so for yet another day, she didn’t mention him, or the note, or any of the other stones that sat in her heart, weighing it down.

  ‘It’s a shambles, so it is. Half me gutters came down in the night.’

  ‘Bloody sea wall’s in bits, too – council are shite at maintaining it.’

  As Paula made her way to her desk in Ballyterrin police station, all talk was of the storm. Not one for chit-chat or office friendships, she steered clear, hoping for a quiet morning of emails and reports. She hadn’t slept again after re-reading the file, lying awake with her head full of questions and worries.

  ‘You didn’t get blown away, then?’ A fair-haired woman appeared, coffee cups in both hands, the seams in her grey trousers sharp as the folds of an envelope. DI Helen Corry, head of the local Missing Persons unit, had been Paula’s boss before a spectacular career plummet. Her punishment – for not realising that the man she was sleeping with had hacked her emails, derailing a murder case – had been harsh, slamming her back through the ranks she’d fought so hard to climb. But if Paula knew Corry at all, the other woman wasn’t going to stay down for long.

  ‘Maggie was a bit upset by the wind, is all.’

  ‘Poor wean.’ She handed over a coffee. ‘Here you go, you’ll need one when you hear what I’ve got for you.’

  ‘Do I have to? I’m propping my eyes open here.’

  ‘You’ll like it, I promise, or your money back.’

  Paula sipped the hot liquid, feeling it hit her bloodstream. She hadn’t even drunk coffee before Maggie was born, existing only on tea like a true Irish person, but these days she couldn’t seem to remember what it was like to not be exhausted all the time. ‘Go on then, tell me.’

  ‘Feel like a trip down south?’ said Corry casually.

  Paula arched an eyebrow. ‘Yeah, sure. Perfect time for a getaway, seeing as half the Atlantic coast’s busy falling into the sea.’

  ‘I’ve got a juicy one, though. You know you love a good missing persons’. We’ve had a request for you to consult.’ Corry was pushing her buttons, and Paula knew it, but she’d still bite.

  She sat down, as Corry leaned against the dividing wall of her cubicle. ‘So?’

  ‘So, there’s this English couple living out on some godforsaken rock in the Atlantic. Bone Island. You know it?’

  The name sent a ripple in her stomach like a stone falling into a well. Bone Island. The last stop, the last lighthouse in Europe, before the cold gulf of the Atlantic. The end of the known world, for a long time. It was narrow and thin like a bone, but the name didn’t come from the shape, rather from the Irish word for ‘white’. She turned to switch on her computer, trying to keep her voice light. Corry was nearly impossible to lie to. ‘Off the coast of Kerry, yeah?’

  ‘That’s right. Only a wee place, a few miles off the coast. Couple of hundred people. Lovely beaches. Anyway, these two are renting the old lighthouse out there. She’s the island doctor, didn’t turn up for her surgery yesterday. Fiona Watts. The fella’s Matthew Andrews, Matt. When the local Garda went out there to check on them the lighthouse was all locked up, no sign of them.’

  ‘Did they go away or something?’

  Corry shook her head, a faint gleam in her grey eyes. ‘Locked from the inside, Maguire. But empty. The Garda broke the door down.’

  ‘Empty. How?’

  Corry shrugged. ‘Yours to find out, if you want. I’ve cleared it with Willis. Inter-force cooperation is all back in style again. Next thing you know someone will suggest setting up a cross-border unit.’

  Paula didn’t smile. It was still a sore point that the cross-border missing persons unit – the MPRU – she’d come home to work at had been scrapped after a year. Leaving her in limbo, back in her home town, tied down once again by all the bonds of family and friends she’d managed to sever at eighteen. ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Your mate’s the one who asked for you. Quinn.’

  ‘Fiacra? Is he in Kerry these days?’ Detective Garda Sergeant Fiacra Quinn, once a fresh-faced recruit to their unit, was rising fast through the ranks of the Irish police, moving around the country on a fast-track scheme, different departments, different cases. Hungry for it, the way Paula used to be.

  ‘He must be. You’d go over to the island with him, if you want.’

  Paula began to consider it. She’d maybe go for a jaunt if Fiacra was there, catch up, have a look. But there were other things to think about. ‘How long would it take?’

  ‘Day or two. Just check it out, see if there’s anything untoward. The local fella thinks they’ve gone into the sea, but that lo
cked door is a bit off. Can someone mind Maggie for you?’

  ‘I suppose Saoirse would keep her, and maybe Dad and Pat . . .’

  ‘Right. You said she was doing grand after the last chemo?’

  Why did Paula ever tell Corry anything? The woman forgot nothing, stored it up to use when she needed a favour. ‘She’s not too bad.’ But the illness was not Pat’s only problem, of course.

  ‘Grand. Will I tell them you’ll come, then? They’ve only one Garda there, and I think he’s a bit out of his depth.’

  ‘I’ll have to see. This weather’s not the best – what if I get stuck out there?’

  Corry gave her a look. ‘Not you as well. Met Éireann says the storm’ll pass by over the Atlantic. Fly down tomorrow, get a boat out there to the island and just have a look. Your wee pal Quinn will meet you at the airport.’

  ‘All right, fine. But can someone else finish that O’Donnell report? I’m about to put myself to sleep with it.’

  ‘Fine, fine. Wright!’

  The young blonde detective came over when called, her own black suit pressed and neat. ‘Yes, ma’am? Hiya, Paula – sorry, Dr Maguire.’

  Corry said, ‘Can you help Maguire here finish her homework?’

  ‘If you like, ma’am. But the switchboards are going crazy. There’s a woman on the line thinks she heard, or so she says, “a loud bang, like a bomb going off”.’ Avril made air-quotes.

  Paula frowned. ‘A bomb?’ Although the Troubles were officially over, a handful of diehards refused to accept that, and it wasn’t entirely beyond the bounds of possibility.

  Corry snorted. ‘Honestly. It’s the wind taking their guttering off. You’d think these people hadn’t lived through an actual war. Send some uniform down and give them a bollocking about wasting police time, then you finish off this report. I’m sending Maguire over the border.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Avril turned, and Paula saw the flash of the ring she’d worn about her neck since she got engaged at Christmas. Paula’s own engagement ring sat in a drawer at home, stuffed away with all the rest of the things she wasn’t thinking about right now. She flexed her fingers over her keyboard. Now was not a good time for those thoughts. ‘Let me just check with Pat and Saoirse,’ she said. ‘As long as it’s only one night. Two tops.’

  ‘I promise.’ Corry understood. After all, she and Paula were both single parents now. She looked at her watch. ‘Right, time for my daily tête-à-tête with Willis, better get my garlic and crucifix.’ There was no love lost between Corry and DCI Willis Campbell, the Head of Serious Crime, a fussy stickler of a man who lived for the TV cameras. ‘God save us, here he comes.’

  DCI Campbell was striding across the office, throwing vicious looks at any members of staff eating cereal or rapidly minimising computer windows or still going on about the bloody storm. ‘If we could have some work around here, thank you, everyone. Ah, DI Corry, time for a little chat?’

  ‘Just briefing Dr Maguire here on the Bone Island case. I’ve said you’ve kindly agreed to let her consult.’

  Again the name stabbed at her. Bone Island. So many years since she’d heard it. The sound of it made her limbs cramp, remembering the grip of icy water around her. Waving back at a white sand beach, so far away.

  ‘Hmm. I suppose you can go, if all your work’s finished here?’ It looked good for the force if she was working on high-profile cases, but Campbell was not Paula’s biggest fan.

  ‘Of course, sir,’ she lied. ‘Intriguing case.’

  He tutted. ‘They’ll be in the sea, as any eejit could tell you, but just because they’re English the Guards have to make a fuss. The press over there have got hold of it already. I’ll be in my office if you need me. Monaghan! Can you join us, please?’

  He clicked his fingers, and a tall young detective stood up from his desk, buttoning an expensive-looking grey suit. Gerard Monaghan, another former colleague of Paula’s from the missing persons’ unit, and also Avril’s fiancé, was fast becoming Campbell’s right-hand man. ‘Do you think Willis took him shopping?’ Corry whispered to Paula. ‘He loves himself in that get-up, doesn’t he?’

  Paula stifled a laugh as she saw Gerard brush imaginary lint from his shoulder. Passing Avril, he gave her a small wink. Corry made a noise in her throat. ‘God save me from men in suits, Maguire. Come back soon from Bogtrotter land, OK?’

  As she went, Paula turned back to her computer, gratefully clicking out of a deadly dull report on a missing person from a month ago – the woman had clearly done a runner from her abusive husband, and well done to her – and googled Bone Island. Her mind was already whirring. A lighthouse locked from the inside? Had the couple fallen into the sea? Been pushed? She was itching to take a look, find the clues that had surely been left. But she couldn’t just go haring off any more. She had to make sure Maggie was OK.

  On the screen, pictures came up of bleached-white sand, deep green water, rocky cliffs. It could have been the Maldives or somewhere. But all the same Paula couldn’t help but feel it coiling in her stomach. Bone Island. She knew it, yes, of course she did. She’d gone there years ago, for a day trip, on her last ever holiday with her parents. The famous white sand of Bone Island was the backdrop to that picture where her mother stood, laughing into the wind, her red hair whipped about her. The very last picture ever taken of her.

  Fiona

  The first time I saw Matt, it was underwater. We were on a diving trip off Sharm el-Sheikh – a place it turned out we both hated for its plastic tourism and armed guards, but loved for the reefs that still darted and teemed, oblivious to all that. I’d been dragged on an over-thirties singles tour by my friend Karen. Karen was a lawyer then, doing something with trusts, and she was desperate, I mean desperate, to find a man. She was thirty-five, I was thirty-three, and uneasily starting to realise that maybe it wouldn’t happen for me either. Maybe singles holidays and book clubs and pottery weekends were going to be my future. Karen spent a lot of that trip, in between applying factor fifty sun cream and spilling it onto her self-help books, talking about ovarian reserves. Was it too late for us? Did we need to freeze our eggs? I scooped bacteria-ridden ice out of weak cocktails and worried. What if she was right? Karen’s now two kids and a banker husband up, living in Guildford and no longer working. We haven’t talked in a while. Funny how things turn out. On that Egypt holiday, I wouldn’t have thought it was possible I could ever feel jealous of Karen. But here we are.

  Especially after what happened on the dive trip on the fourth day. Karen wouldn’t come with me – the saltwater might mess up her hair, and she wanted to flirt with some bankers who sat by the pool all day drinking vodka with grim determination. So I was there, buddied up with some nervous girl from Swansea on her first dive, and I ran out of air. Twelve feet down on the reef. I actually didn’t check my tank quite as often as I should have, because my God, this reef. Turtles drifting by. Fish like Skittles spilling through the water. The sun playing round the coral, and now and again the light brush of a kelp or fish, like the touch of your lover tempting you to bed.

  We saw the shark about ten minutes in. Time seems longer underwater, of course. I was watching an eel poke out of some coral when the world darkened. I knew it. Somewhere deep in my reptile spine I knew and I froze. I’m not scared of them, of course – reef sharks, usually harmless – but my brain didn’t know that. And neither did that of Bethan from Swansea, who kicked for the top like a panicky seal, gurgling and shrieking. I heard her muffled voice – Shark! Shark! – and the shark, only a little thing, unaware of its terrifying shape, darted off into the gloom. That’s when I realised I was actually in danger, because the next breath I took was little more than spit and fumes. My buddy had swum for it. And the surface, the sparkling surface where people kicked and floundered, it suddenly seemed a really long way away.

  Some of us like near-death experiences. It
’s why we watch scary films and ride rollercoasters. But when your life is really in danger, that little pleasurable lurch of fear doesn’t go away. It just grows and grows, drowning your grown-up modern brain like a crashing wave. Help. Help. SHIT. I had no air. I began to kick up, which you’re not supposed to, the weights on my ankles feeling a hundred times heavier than they had before. The surface seemed to move away. I didn’t. My lungs began to burn and my reptile brain was screaming and my modern brain was thinking shit I’m going to die here and I never did anything with my ovarian reserve and maybe I should have married my ex-boyfriend Pete even though he was bad in bed and only ever talked about football and SHIT – and then I saw Matt.

  He just appeared out of the vast shadowed darkness of the sea, black-clad and flippered, and then he was shoving his mask in my mouth, almost violently, bruising my lips the way a hard kiss does, and I was sucking in that sweet air, that life, and he held my hand – I felt his warm skin even in the chill water – and we went up, step by step, sharing the mask between us, so I knew that I was breathing him. The feel of his mouth on mine. I could see his eyes through the water. I couldn’t even tell their colour, but I knew he wouldn’t let me go. And so even before we got out and I sucked some breath in and thanked him and saw his face and his stocky body under the wetsuit, and his sandy hair and blue eyes, I knew this was the man for me. Why else would he have saved my life? Already, even before we reached the surface, relief was popping into my blood like oxygen. I’d found him. I’d found my man and everything else was going to be OK.

  The next time I felt that fear, the one that grabs hold of your brain and hijacks it and tells you to for God’s sake run – your amygdala, we learned in Anatomy – it was on the island. And Matt was there again. But instead of feeling saved by him, his big, warm hands, his sure eyes, I was running from him. The part of your brain that tells you, phew, false alarm, everything is cool, now survive another day on the savannah – well, it never did kick in this time.