Night Falls, Still Missing

by Helen Callaghan

  ‘No, no, no. None of that.’ They were both shaking their heads at her, Douggie with the heavy solidity of all Scottish patriarchs, and it seemed useless to resist. ‘We’ve got a spare room up at the house,’ he said. ‘It’s nae trouble. And it is all very strange,’ he rumbled. ‘Very queer indeed.’

  ‘It is that,’ agreed his wife.

  ‘Come on now,’ he said. ‘Have you got a bag with you, at least?’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The owners, who Fiona quickly learned were called the Fletts, ushered her in. Maggie showed her into a small, neat room with posters of footballers lining the walls, and that faint but unmistakable smell of hormonal teenaged boy. (‘This is Lachy’s room,’ Maggie told her. ‘He’s just gone back to college on the mainland now.’) A towel was quickly found and placed at the foot of the bed.

  ‘I’m so sorry to put you out like this. It’s practically morning …’ stammered Fiona.

  ‘Not at all.’ Maggie waved this away. ‘We’re glad we found you. Sleep tight.’

  And she was gone, the door gently closing, leaving Fiona alone with the footballers who gazed down upon her, larger than life, like Greek gods.

  She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. According to the little alarm clock on the nightstand, it was 2:54 in the morning.

  Any prospect of sleep seemed unthinkable. Through a gap in the curtains, the stars of Orkney were white and impossibly numerous.

  Glancing up at them, she felt a sharp tug of loneliness. She wanted to talk to somebody, anybody, about these shocking developments, but what she was realising, with a kind of bleak hopelessness, was that the go-to person she would call about this was … Madison.

  You could call Adi. I mean, I know it’s late and he’s been travelling and got clients and all …

  She sighed.

  For a little while now she’d been growing aware that it was always she that called Adi, and not the other way around – and that in the four months they’d been together, this had rapidly become the pattern.

  Of course, once she had registered this, she could not stop noticing it. She told herself that perhaps she was being too needy, he was too busy at work, he was simply not the chatty type.

  They were both hard-working, overachieving people, and how could she expect him to understand her desire to succeed if she didn’t give him free rein to be the same way?

  He was happy enough to ring you all the time when you first started seeing him, Madison had observed shrewdly as they met up for drinks in her tiny Clapham flat.

  Madison had been excited then, almost ecstatic – she’d been selected to dig with Iris Barclay’s team on Helly Holm in Orkney, and it promised to be a very important, perhaps career-defining excavation – a Viking ship burial. She was to be Finds Manager, cataloguing and tracking all of the on-site finds and samples.

  Of course, Fiona had heard of the site director, Iris Barclay, who like herself had started out in ancient metallurgy. Iris had shot to fame after finding a fabulous golden necklace while supervising her first-ever dig up in Northumberland – the dig had been an unpromising couple of ploughed-down Bronze Age barrows, reputedly foisted on her when her boss had been too busy to bother with the site himself.

  The find, a priceless artefact now named the Jesmond Hill torc, had ended up in the British Museum. Fiona had often found herself in front of the case containing the torc – a kind of necklace made of solid twisted gold, open at the front, with exquisitely detailed decorated ends – whenever she had business at the museum. She could never resist stopping there for a few moments, just to admire its gleaming beauty.

  Iris herself, in the resulting media frenzy, had been discovered as a feisty, charismatic personality during interviews about the find, and as a direct consequence had been offered the job of fronting Discovering the Past, a big-budget, location-based archaeology television show that was now in its third series.

  She had, in short, arrived, and Madison was hopeful that some of that glittering luck might rub off on her. Iris had a reputation for trying to help women’s careers. Rumour had it that this was because of how her old boss had treated her. It was said that her ex-supervisor, Professor Hearst, who’d fobbed the job of excavating Jesmond Hill on to Iris, was now unable to hear her name mentioned without throwing objects across his office.

  Fiona remembered that night at Madison’s. They’d toasted each other with flutes of chilled Krug. It was a brilliant opportunity, perhaps a sign that Mads’ luck was changing at last.

  She’d been so happy, thought Fiona with a pang. Things had been going well for her on a personal level, too. Her surgeon boyfriend, Caspar, had bought her a Bulgari bracelet that flashed in the candlelight.

  Madison affected to despise his wealth and status, but her cat-like green eyes glittered with suppressed excitement while she did so, almost as brightly as her new jewellery.

  At any rate, with this success under her belt – the first relationship she had had in years that had lasted longer than six months – Madison was now inclined to view herself as something of a love guru. You know, Fiona, she’d said, tilting her head with a mischievous smile, her lips painted a deep carmine red, if I was you, I’d give Adi the chance to miss you.

  Fiona sighed, resting her hands beneath her head on the pillow.

  Now her panic and bewilderment were receding, but they were being replaced with something else – a nameless dread, the sense that something was desperately wrong with her best friend.

  Why would Madison not tell her anything of what had happened? Why had she fled? And why not tell Fiona? Was she embarrassed over the money Fiona had spent on ferries and hotel rooms in response to her begging, her need?

  But then, how embarrassed would she be when Fiona got here and found her gone?

  The more Fiona looked at it, the more she couldn’t understand it. They were friends, best friends. Why would she just keep texting and leading Fiona on? Was Madison still furious at her for some reason, and this was all some elaborate revenge? Why would she do this to Fiona?

  Indeed, had she done this to Fiona?

  Madison had not answered the phone in person since Wednesday, before her supposed flight. All Fiona had had was a series of slightly off messages.

  This is crazy, Fiona told herself. These people said that they saw her packing. Whatever you are imagining, you are being over-dramatic. She’s done plenty of more thoughtless things in her time, though, admittedly, usually to men and not to you.

  When you get over to the dig in the morning she’ll be there in her wellies being snappy and defensive and trying to make out this is all your fault.

  Fiona shut her eyes, tried to sleep.

  Tried to squeeze out her memory of that smashed mirrored door, and her growing fear that something terrible had happened to Madison.

  And that Dominic Tate had had something to do with it.

  SATURDAY

  * * *

  5

  Grangeholm, Orkney, January 2020

  There was a tentative knock on the door, startling Fiona awake.

  ‘Hello, love, are you awake? Did you sleep?’ It was Maggie. ‘I’ve brought you up a cup of tea.’

  ‘Oh, thank you!’

  She was in Lachy’s bedroom in the Fletts’ home. A pale light had replaced the stars, but it was not quite morning. That meant nothing, though. It was January, and this far north daylight kept office hours.

  A kind of panic came over her as she remembered. Madison.

  That cracked mirror with its blood-laced edges …

  Maggie, fully dressed, set the cup on the bedside table next to Fiona.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m getting up now …’

  ‘There’s no rush,’ Maggie replied. ‘Douggie’s just gone to see to some jobs, and when he gets back we’ll have some breakfast.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, you’re too kind, but I think I need to speak to Mads’ colleagues on the dig straight away …’

  ‘Maybe you do, but you�
��ll need to wait till low tide to get over to Helly Holm, and that’s not for another hour,’ Maggie said, pausing on the threshold. ‘You may as well have breakfast first.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Thanks, then. That would be lovely.’

  Maggie nodded. ‘The shower’s at the end of the corridor.’

  After she’d gone, Fiona snatched up her phone, which she’d left charging overnight, and tried Madison again, fruitlessly. The desperate text she’d sent last thing was still unanswered.

  Now she’d slept on the matter, she realised that none of this would do. Something was very wrong.

  There was one more call.

  ‘Fee?’

  ‘Hey. Sorry to call at work. It’s just – well, I don’t know how to …’

  ‘Listen, I’m presenting to the client in ten minutes …’

  ‘I know, I know, but there’s an emergency. Madison’s missing.’

  ‘She’s missing? What do you mean, she’s missing?’

  ‘Got here last night, and the cottage was empty. I’m at the landlord’s house. They tell me she moved out in the middle of the night. Wednesday night.’

  She could almost hear the cogs in his brain working, his confusion mirroring her own. ‘Wait – she moved out? And didn’t tell you?’

  ‘Yeah. And it looked like there’d been some kind of fight in there. Someone had smashed the wardrobe mirror …’

  ‘A fight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve heard nothing from her?’

  ‘No. Nothing since last night.’ Fiona sat back down on the bed, the cup of tea at her elbow.

  ‘But you said people saw her moving out?’

  ‘Yes, so it seems.’

  ‘So, is she in trouble or not?’ asked Adi, incredulous but distracted.

  ‘I don’t know! Part of me thinks I should talk to the others on the dig first – who knows what she’s said to them? And the owners here too,’ she lowered her voice, glanced towards the door. ‘They’re definitely leery of her. They’re holding back on something they know about her.’

  Adi’s only reply was a low whistle.

  ‘Bloody hell, Fiona.’ He seemed to be thinking. ‘Look, I have to go in now. Phone me the minute you find anything out.’ There was a pause. ‘I’ll be worrying about you until you do.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Bye.’ She nearly said, I love you.

  But she didn’t.

  Then he was gone.

  She scrubbed her teeth, bracing herself for the day ahead, and washed quickly in the surprisingly luxurious shower.

  Maggie was frying not only eggs, but Scottish square sausage, bacon and potato cakes when she came down the stairs to the kitchen. This hissed and spat on the stove, and Fiona’s mouth started watering at the smell. ‘Sit down,’ Maggie said placidly, waving away Fiona’s offer to help out. ‘Did you sleep?’

  ‘A bit, as well as I could. I’ve got to be honest, now I’ve thought about it, I’m really quite worried about my friend. None of this makes any sense.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Maggie with a sharp, thoughtful inflection that told Fiona instantly that something was wrong.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Well,’ said Maggie, turning the sausages in the pan. ‘Douggie and I were talking about this last night, and we’re not entirely sure that we could swear it was herself packing the car. Someone was there, but you know, we’re halfway up the hill here, and it was the middle of the night.’

  ‘What time?’ Fiona asked, feeling sick.

  ‘One, two in the morning. The wind was low. I could hear the car idling up here, which is why I looked – it’s very quiet.’ Maggie popped white bread into the toaster. ‘You notice things out of the ordinary.’

  There was something about this phrase, out of the ordinary, and the clipped way it was spoken, that again had that shadow of disapproval. Maggie, though she was being perfectly nice, had had some kind of problem with Madison, so much was clear to Fiona.

  ‘Did Madison owe you rent?’ she asked, aware she was being cheeky.

  Maggie looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘Well, she didn’t owe us any rent. The company – the archaeologists – pay us for that,’ she said, putting a teapot on the table, just as Fiona heard the back door open behind her, the sound of masculine huffing, boots being scraped on the mat.

  Again, that sense that this house was run like a well-oiled machine.

  ‘But she did owe us for the wardrobe door in the bedroom. Not much, mind, it’s easy enough to put a new one in – but himself had to order it in from the mainland.’

  ‘So Madison had already broken the mirrored door?’

  ‘She says she did,’ replied Maggie, shrugging.

  ‘It was just that I saw a bit of blood in the cracks last night and thought … I don’t know what I thought …’ said Fiona, knitting her fingers together on her lap. Relief flooded through her.

  ‘Bless your heart,’ said Maggie, with a little laugh, before she moved forward to the stove again. ‘Oh no, no, no. That happened Monday. She told us about it straight away,’ she said, then added after a moment, ‘To be fair to her, she was always good that way.’

  It was an accident, thought Fiona. Just a random accident. Her shoulders unknotted a tiny fraction.

  ‘Is breakfast ready?’ Douggie was standing in the doorway.

  Turning to greet him, Fiona saw that he had a slightly hard expression, as though displeased, and she instantly subsided, wondering what she had done wrong.

  But he wished her a cheerful good morning as he pulled up a chair at the table, without acknowledging his wife, and asked her again how she had slept, and Maggie dispensed fried meats and potato cake with a spatula, adding in an almost rebellious little flip of the utensil each time.

  Somehow, Fiona had wandered into one of those silent rows married people occasionally conducted, and she wondered what it was that had caused it as she tucked into her sausages. Had she done or said something wrong?

  But neither appeared to bear her any personal ill will, asking her polite questions about where she lived and what she did for a living.

  ‘Oh, I’m a scientist and a lecturer. I work with metal.’ She sipped her tea, feeling more fortified, ready to face the archaeologists. ‘My specialty is the construction of ancient weapons. Swords, mostly.’

  ‘Swords?’ They exchanged a look, and instantly she saw the tension between them ease in their shared curiosity. ‘You don’t look the type. Is that what you’re here to do? At Helly Holm?’ asked Douggie.

  She shook her head. ‘No, not at all. Madison asked me up for … for a holiday.’ The Fletts didn’t need to know that Madison had been in trouble of some sort. ‘Though I was hoping to have a look at the dig too. They say it’s a great site, from the sounds of it.’

  Maggie nodded, dispensing more tea. ‘The boatmen were saying that it was all a lot grander than anyone was expecting.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a really nice Viking boat burial. There was a person in it – a warrior, they think, or at least someone buried with weapons, that kind of thing.’ Fiona bit into her toast and marmalade.

  ‘So tell us, Fiona,’ Douggie had bent once more to his breakfast, ‘do you ken how to fight with a sword, like? Do you do that reconstruction stuff?’

  Fiona laughed, despite herself, despite her anxiousness. ‘Not at all. I’m not very fighty.’

  ‘So you just dig the swords up?’ Maggie offered her more bacon, and Fiona shook her head.

  ‘No, thank you. And I don’t even dig them up. The metalwork arrives at the lab pre-dug, and I just analyse the wear patterns.’ She grinned. ‘I love the past, but I don’t really do the outdoors if I can help it.’

  Husband and wife looked at one another then and laughed, their tiny spat forgotten.

  ‘You’ve come to the right place, all right. And you’ll love Helly Holm,’ said Douggie, mopping up the last of his egg yolk with a slice of buttered bread. ‘There’s outdoors, and there’s outdoors.’
<
br />   ∗ ∗ ∗

  Douggie drove her back to the house and her car, waving away her protestations. The house was only ten minutes away on foot, if that.

  This felt very strange to Fiona, and she wondered about it as they trundled down the farm track to the main road. The Fletts had been very generous – so much so it made her uneasy in some strange way, and she glanced sidelong at Douggie’s face, trying to read something into his laconic expression.

  At the hill’s foot, Langmire in daylight seemed very small and bleak, surrounded by waterlogged fields on three sides, and on the other, the sea.

  The little quay, its sides padded with old tyres, stretched out into the dark blue water.

  However, the boat was gone.

  ‘They’ve gone out, I see,’ Douggie growled suddenly, breaking the silence.

  ‘I’m sorry, who?’ asked Fiona, distracted. She’d been checking her phone. No messages from Madison.

  He flexed his eyebrows at her. ‘The archaeologists. They use a boat to get back and forth to the site.’ He pointed to a muddy white Ford Transit parked on a patch of tyre-churned earth near the quay. ‘That’s their van.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’

  ‘You see, if they sail,’ he sighed, scratching delicately at his bald head, ‘rather than using the causeway, it means they can take advantage of all the daylight.’ He smiled briefly at her. ‘Or what passes for daylight around here. It’s a funny time of year to do a dig.’

  ‘It was an emergency, Douggie,’ said Fiona. ‘There was a huge storm a few weeks ago, and it knocked off some soil, exposing human bones and part of a boat.’ She shrugged. ‘They had to contract someone to dig it. Or they’ll lose it.’

  He nodded, gazing fixedly out to sea.

  ‘I remember that storm,’ he said.

  Silence fell between them.

  ‘You were probably wondering,’ he said eventually, ‘what Maggie and I were at odds about, up at the house.’

  This was such a perceptive remark that Fiona visibly started.

  ‘I …’

  ‘Don’t bother pretending you didnae notice,’ he said, with a sideways glance at her.