Blood Tide

by Claire McGowan

  Seamas drained his tea. ‘No bother. Sure we can’t leave you out in that storm.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your pub. You must be devastated,’ said Paula.

  He grunted. ‘It’s insured. Electrics, like as not. The storm.’

  It likely wasn’t insured against arson, though. Paula kept silent, wondering who’d started the fire. It couldn’t be an accident, could it? So who? Enviracorp, trying to hide evidence? And where the hell was Rory?

  ‘Is there a generator somewhere?’ Guy was looking doubtfully at the lights, which flickered with each blast of wind. He’d borrowed a pair of boots from Fairlinn, which were too big for him.

  ‘Aye, community centre has one. We need it out here. I don’t reckon youse’ll be able to call through to the mainland till tomorrow, though.’

  ‘No?’ Paula’s eyes widened. They couldn’t be totally cut off, surely?

  ‘Phone lines are out – there’ll be a tree down somewhere – and there’s already no mobile reception, no power like as not soon, too.’ Seamas set the cup down with a slap. He seemed to be almost relishing the situation, one of those people who thrived on a crisis. ‘Listen to how that wind’s picking up.’ She could hear it, shrieking round the eaves, making the solid house rattle and shake.

  She looked at Guy, panicked.

  ‘A day won’t make any difference. She’ll be OK,’ he said quietly, and she was so grateful for it. He understood. But if they were really stuck out here, what was the procedure, if a crime had occurred and you couldn’t get on or off the island for days?

  Seamas put his wool cap back on. ‘I’m away out to see what we can salvage.’ His eyes flickered over Guy. ‘You’re a strong-looking fella, Inspector, would you lend a hand?’

  He hesitated for a second, looking at Paula. She shrugged infinitesimally. She didn’t want to be left alone, but it might give her a chance to talk to Grainne Fairlinn, and anyway he could hardly refuse to help out when they were being offered shelter.

  When the men went, wrapped in jackets and gloves and heavy stomping boots, Paula smiled at Seamas’s wife. ‘Thank you again for this. Will we not be in the way?’

  Grainne pulled at her dressing-gown sleeves. She had a nervous gesture of rubbing her hands together, as if they were dirty. ‘Oh no. There’s a spare room as well as the guest bedroom.’

  People had a lot of space on islands. ‘That’s handy. Have you any children?’

  Brief pause. ‘Sammy.’

  ‘And how old’s he?’

  ‘Thirteen.’ She turned to busy herself at the sink, washing up Seamas and Guy’s cups with a sort of nervous energy.

  ‘Oh yes, he was on the boat with Seamas, wasn’t he?’ When they’d pulled Matt’s body from the water, already compromising all the evidence. ‘Is Sammy about, Grainne? I just wanted to thank him for helping us find – the body. Not many kids would keep their heads in that situation.’

  She almost smiled, a flicker that was quickly replaced by her usual look of strained worry. ‘He’s a good boy. Sammy. Sammy! Come here, will you?’

  Sammy must have been in the front room, because he came at once, dressed in Star Wars pyjamas. Paula thought of Helen Corry’s teenage son. Connor Corry was a bit older than Sammy, but he had never been known to come willingly without a drawn-out sigh and a pained ‘Whhhhaaaaa?’

  ‘Hiya, Sammy.’ She noticed the drag of his left foot right away. Some kind of cerebral palsy, maybe? He was small for his age, with a pinched white face and milk-bottle glasses, and when he turned his head she saw he wore hearing aids on both ears. ‘I’m Dr Maguire, from the mainland. I was down at the beach today, after you went home.’

  He nodded. The same watchfulness she’d seen in Niamh and the other island children. ‘You came to find Dr Watts and her boyfriend,’ he said in a small voice. ‘She’s nice, Dr Watts.’

  Grainne Fairlinn gave a tut, which Paula didn’t miss.

  ‘Yes, we’re looking for her as hard as we can.’

  ‘Is she dead too?’ Sammy spoke quietly, as if he didn’t want his mother to hear. She was fussing in the porch now, tidying up coats and boots.

  ‘I hope not. It was very sad about her boyfriend, but I’m sure she’d be glad to know you found him and pulled him out.’

  ‘It’s not nice in the sea. It’s dark and cold.’

  ‘Did you touch him, Sammy? When you – got him onto the boat?’ Now was a chance to find out how much the body had been compromised. ‘Or did your dad touch him, or move anything?’

  He looked confused. ‘We touched him to get him in. He was all floppy, and there was all water coming out of his coat and his trousers – we put him in the bottom of the boat then we took him in to the beach.’

  ‘Nothing else? You didn’t maybe check to see who it was, in his clothes or anything?’

  ‘We knew who it was.’ A small voice again. She wondered if he was close to tears.

  So they hadn’t gone through his pockets, at least. ‘Right.’ She heard a silence from the porch, knew his mother was listening. ‘Is it nice living here?’ she asked brightly. ‘Do you go to the mainland for secondary school?’

  ‘If I’m well enough. On the boat. But it’s choppy so sometimes I stay here.’ He rubbed his ears. ‘I get sick.’

  ‘And are there loads of kids on the island?’

  ‘There’s forty-three,’ he said. He knew the number without counting. ‘There was Caoimhe too, but – well, she was grown-up anyway.’

  ‘Caoimhe? Who’s that, Sammy?’

  Sammy’s eyes flickered to the porch. He whispered: ‘Mammy’s sick, I think. Dr Watts could help her, maybe, but she’s gone. Can you help?’

  ‘I’m not a medicine type of doctor, Sammy, I’m sorry. What’s the matter with her?’

  He lowered his gaze again. ‘Never mind.’

  Grainne came back in, shutting the door. ‘Go and finish your game now, leave the lady in peace.’

  Damn. He went off as obediently as he’d come, and she heard the noise of a computer game start up in the living room. She looked at Grainne. ‘Caoimhe?’

  Grainne turned her back away again, fussing with the kettle, and for a moment Paula thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she said, ‘Our daughter. She went off to Australia. She was working over there. Loved it.’

  Paula waited. When people used the past tense like that, there usually wasn’t a good end to the story.

  ‘A man killed her.’ Grainne banged the cupboard door closed, staring fiercely at the kettle. ‘Followed her home from a disco, they said, and . . . We never even got her back. They buried her over there. Whatever he did to her, they said – we didn’t want to remember her that way. Didn’t even let us see her. I couldn’t even look at her face one last time. She’s half the world away from me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ She paused a moment, watching the woman’s back. ‘Sammy’s a lovely boy. Does he – has he some hearing difficulties?’

  Grainne nodded. ‘He got meningitis as a wee boy. My sister brought her weans over from the mainland, carried it with them. And Sammy got sick. He was lucky, they said – he didn’t lose the foot in the end.’

  Christ, they’d been through a lot as a family. She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Grainne. That’s awful.’

  Grainne’s back stiffened. ‘We should have just kept them here. They’d have been fine if they’d just stayed on the island! Seamas told her, he told our Caoimhe, it’s not safe out there, it’s not like this place, where you know every-one and no one would ever touch you, but she wanted to see the world. And I let her go. And Sammy got sick, and I nearly lost him too – so this is my penance. We’re all being punished, you see.’

  ‘Punished?’

  She was still turned away, so Paula could not see her face. Her voice was dry, cracked on the edges. �
��We never should have let them come.’

  Careful, careful. ‘Let who come, Grainne?’ She tried to keep her own voice light.

  Grainne turned around, a fierce glint in her eyes behind the smeared glasses. Her hands were held up in front of her, scratching at each other, the skin red and raw. ‘Outsiders. We never should have let them come here. They’re going to kill us all.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Paula didn’t know what to say to that, so she was almost glad when the door went and Guy and Fairlinn were swept back in by a gust of wind. ‘Foundering out there.’

  ‘Anything left?’ she said to Guy. Meaning of Matt. Meaning anything to prove what was going on here. He shook his head, looking sooty and bone-cold. She saw his hands were cut and bruised. ‘Need to put something on those? You’re hurt.’

  ‘I’m OK. I should wash them off, I guess.’

  Grainne was hovering. Her voice was normal again, that of an ordinary tired housewife. ‘There’s a wee bathroom down the hall.’

  In the hallway, Paula noticed several framed shots of a young girl, hair long and fair, with the soft, rosy skin so many Irish women had. She could hear Seamas talking in the kitchen, his voice a low rumble. She nodded to the photo. ‘Their daughter,’ she murmured to Guy.

  ‘Where’s she?’

  ‘Dead. Murdered, in Australia. Her mother says she shouldn’t have left the island. And Sammy, the kid – he caught meningitis from some mainland kids. They think this is the only safe place, or something.’

  Guy looked at the pictures, contemplative. Caoimhe, in her graduation robes. Caoimhe, smiling with her dad on a boat. Even through the framed glass she looked vibrant and happy, and it was hard to believe someone had deliberately snuffed that life right out of her. ‘So . . . you think they’d do their best to protect the place, or something like that?’

  Paula was almost whispering. ‘Maybe. And if Matt had found out something about the island, something bad – or this business with Fiona and the Sharkey baby . . . Guy, she said they were being punished, the islanders, for letting outsiders come here.’

  ‘Meaning Matt and Fiona?’

  ‘I guess so, but maybe also . . . What?’

  He was staring at another framed picture. ‘Look at this. Who’s that?’

  In the picture, Seamas was shaking hands with someone in front of the Enviracorp gates, the logo clearly visible. Paula kept her voice low. ‘Rainbow Monroe – I know, mad name, but don’t underestimate her. She works for them. The Head of Operations.’

  ‘And why’s Seamas with her?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe . . .’ She didn’t get to finish her thoughts – not that she was even sure what she was trying to say – because the lights flickered, casting crazy shadows over Guy’s face, and suddenly they were in darkness. For a moment her heart stilled, something deep in her brain shuddering in terror – and then she felt Guy’s hand on her arm, steady and sure.

  ‘Power cut,’ he said, close to her ear.

  ‘Fairlinn was right. I can’t even call through to the Guards – the lines seem to be down.’

  Guy put down the receiver of the community centre phone. The feeling of isolation was intense. Freezing night fog meant you couldn’t even see the mainland, and there were no phones, no internet, nothing. Paula wondered if the radio in Rory’s car was still working – but where was he? For now, they were in Bone Island’s community centre, with folding beds and a small manager’s office that they’d turned into their HQ. Outside in the main hall, which had a wooden floor painted in lines and hoops like a school gym, islanders were starting to gather, as their lights went off and heating packed up. Every few minutes another family came in the door, shrouded in thick coats and waterproofs, greeting each other with stoical nods. There were about twenty people out there now, eight of them children, and Paula could hear the low hum of their voices. The fluorescent lights were still burning bright thanks to the generator, and Paula had spots in front of her eyes from the glow and from sheer exhaustion. Dimly, she was aware that she hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since a mouthful of tea at the Fairlinn house, but shock and adrenaline were keeping her going. The community centre had a kitchen, and in the corner of this small, windowless room was a pallet of bottled water. She snapped one out, cracking the seal and gulping it down gratefully. As the coolish water soothed her throat, she asked: ‘So what are we going to do?’ Because they had to do something. It wasn’t in either of their natures to sit and wait for help.

  Guy, who needed order in all things, was scribbling on large sheets of a flipchart he’d found in a cupboard, and fixing them to the walls with a roll of duct tape. ‘We need to do something about the due process,’ he said. ‘There’s been possible arson, destruction of evidence, maybe a murder, and it’s all just going to get lost if we don’t start keeping some kind of log. So. What do you think is going on?’

  Paula was still wearing the heavy coat Guy had put on her at the pub – it wasn’t even hers. Her hands were sore and red, bits of soot drifting from her hair every time she moved. ‘A few possibilities. There’s the accident theory. There’s a storm, Fiona’s got these allergies, and so on. But I don’t really buy that. Then there’s revenge. We know Fiona wasn’t popular here, and Andrea Sharkey’s husband in particular hates her, blames her for what happened to his wife.’

  ‘You think he’s capable of hurting her?’

  She thought of the rage, coursing through him like it might split him open. ‘I do, yeah. But it’s Matt whose body we have, dragged out of the sea. Seems to support the accident idea.’

  ‘And yet the pub conveniently burns down with the body in it.’

  She shivered. The idea that someone had come and deliberately set light to the building, knowing they were in it – it made her want to run and run, get to the harbour and find a boat, as if even the dangerous sea was safer than here. ‘Then there’s this company – if Matt really did find something in the ecosystem, they could be covering it up. Rainbow was really keen to find those samples. And if she’s mates with Seamas, who’s leading the search . . . did they even want to find Matt and Fiona alive?’ And the company, they’d have the resources to burn the pub down, no doubt about it. They could easily have sent someone to do it. ‘So maybe Matt was right. Maybe there’s something in the food system here, the water, and it’s making people ill. That would explain why they’ve paid out money to the Sharkeys. Fiona knew something about it, I think. There’s that list I found in her office – the names of the people who’d sort of . . . lost it. Matt’s name had a question mark after it. As if she’d just started to worry about him.’ Paula sighed, realising how crazy it all sounded out loud. ‘Or maybe that’s too far-fetched. What if she confronts him about his behaviour – he’s violent already, maybe, losing it. That blood in the kitchen. And she’s pregnant, it’s a risky time. So maybe if they got into a fight, and he hurt her . . .’

  Guy thought about it. ‘What happened to him, then? Why have we found his body and not hers?’ He was speaking quietly, aware that just a flimsy partition wall divided them from the islanders.

  ‘I don’t know. Suicide, maybe, I suppose . . . but what if someone else killed him? They didn’t expect the body to wash up so soon, but the storm saw to that, and so they’ve set the fire to cover it up. Burn up the evidence.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, who’s conspicuous by their absence right now?’

  ‘Rory McElhone?’

  ‘Right. He’s been strange the whole time. Obstructive, even. Didn’t tell me about the earlier incidents of violence, or about Fiona’s allergies. I think he stole Andrea’s notes, too. He’s not letting us see the full picture, I’m sure of it. Who even knows where he is?’

  ‘And they can’t get anyone else out to us, not till tomorrow at least.’ Guy looked round at the claustrophobic little room. Pre-fab seventi
es walls, bits of tinsel from Christmas still Sellotaped to the ceiling, a box of costumes for a long-ago play piled in the corner. Outside the wind raged and tore at the island as if it might pull it apart. ‘So I guess it’s just you and me,’ he said. A small smile hooked his mouth. ‘Still, we’ve been in worse situations.’

  ‘True,’ she said, thinking of some of them. Knives to her pregnant belly and guns to her head. This was just a strange island, and she was only jumpy because she knew they couldn’t get off. But the storm would pass. She would leave, and get back to Maggie, and everything would be sorted out.

  Guy was still watching her. ‘What?’ she frowned.

  ‘It’s just . . . what are you wearing?’ He was looking curiously at the coat she had on, hanging so loose her hands were hidden. ‘That’s not yours, is it?’

  She looked down; she hadn’t really noticed. ‘No. You gave it to me.’

  ‘I picked it up from the coat stand at the pub door, but it was so dark.’ Guy was still looking at her strangely. ‘Paula, the coat – it’s the one Matt was wearing when they brought him in.’

  Paula didn’t move for a moment, but she felt her skin retract slowly, stipple into goose-bumps. ‘You mean – when they hauled him out?’ She was in a dead man’s coat. One he’d been wearing in the depths of the cold sea. One he’d died in. Suddenly she was tearing at the stiff red fabric. The lining felt damp, soaked and fetid. She couldn’t bear the idea of it, that this had touched his dead flesh. ‘Get it off me. I need it off.’