Night Falls, Still Missing

by Helen Callaghan

The light wind ruffled her hair as it poked out from underneath Madison’s trapper hat while she produced the key for the cottage and let herself in. The smell of the sea wrack fluttered in and out over the quiet murmur of the waves.

  She breathed it in, closed her eyes, tried to pull herself together. She needed to pack, and quickly. As desperate as she’d been for a little peace, Fiona had no real desire to be alone tonight. She would stay with the archaeologists, and in the morning try to come up with a plan. Perhaps the police would need her.

  And tomorrow she would steel herself to try to approach Hugo, find out how Judy was doing.

  Find out what the police intended to do about Madison’s car.

  Find out if they had caught up with Dom Tate yet.

  She let herself into the little house, quickly switching on the hall lights, throwing her jacket on to a chair in the hallway, swiping off Mads’ hat.

  The bedroom was exactly as she had left it – strewn with clothes and books, the striped blue duvet hastily pulled over the exposed sheets. The mirrored wardrobe doors with their shattered central panel greeted her as she let herself slump down on the bed, suddenly unable to move, to act.

  The spiderwebbed cracks threw her reflection into a thousand splinters.

  You know, a cozening voice murmured to her, you don’t know Mads is … is gone. She might be being held captive somewhere. That crazy, fucking, obsessed bastard may have her trapped. He may have got rid of the car because he couldn’t hide it or take it off the island.

  There still might be a chance she was not gone forever, gone into the deep, vanished into the roaring abyss of the Atlantic.

  Some faint, impossible chance that she was alive.

  Fiona looked down at Mads’ hat in her hands. The soft feel of the dappled grey fur beneath her fingers, the smoothness of the leather, seemed to throw wide some ancient doors of undisclosed grief that held back a vast, impossible tide.

  She did not even attempt to resist the tears, letting her anguish rage through her like a river in spate, wet and ugly and with jagged, painful sobs – grief for her lost father, grief for her absent, stunted, inadequate mother, and finally grief for this, her one constant, Madison – who despite her reckless selfishnesses and little storms of envy, had always been there for her when it truly mattered.

  The men in Fiona’s life had come and gone. Even now she and Adi shifted uncomfortably around one another, like teenagers at a dance. But she had never once doubted that Madison loved her.

  And in the wake of her grief came fury, molten-red and hot like the iron she worked with, and it pulsed through her like hammer blows.

  He is going to pay for this, she thought, her fingers scything into the furred hat on her lap, her teeth clenching, the backs of her hands soaked with her own tears.

  He’s going to pay, and how.

  And then, above her, the floor creaked.

  She froze.

  Utter silence reigned. Not even the weather or the sea was audible.

  She dropped the hat beside her, stood up. She strained to listen, but the sound was not repeated.

  What was up there? Just the guest bedroom with its stripped beds, and the en suite shower which she’d used that morning, before rushing out to meet Judy’s plane.

  All of that seemed a lifetime ago, to have happened to another Fiona.

  She’d been sure she’d switched everything off when she left.

  She swiped at her hot, wet face with her sleeve, still listening, but there was nothing more. A velvet quiet lay over the whole house like a cloak.

  But Fiona was not fooled. Her breath hitched in her chest.

  Get out, she told herself. Get out and wait for Iris. Better yet, start running up that hill to the Fletts’. I don’t care how it looks. I don’t care how dark it is. Just do it. Grab your phone out of your jacket as you go.

  Yet she felt a terror, a reluctance – within the house she was in the light at least, but outside there was only freezing darkness, the nearest building at least ten minutes away.

  Whoever was up there had not confronted her. They must know she was here, have heard the front door being opened, but they hadn’t moved.

  At least not yet.

  Could it be Madison? she wondered suddenly, with a throb of hope.

  Do you want to bet your life on that?

  She swallowed hard, thinking, trying to be rational in the face of her rising panic. There was nothing in the bedroom that could remotely function as a weapon – even her aerosol deodorant was upstairs, lying on one of the guest beds where she’d thrown it after her shower.

  Through the open bedroom door, the hallway was exactly as she’d left it, with its innocuous carpet and pale walls, the chair half in shadow, her jacket lying over it. But the stairs were dark. She had an impulse to change this and she raised her hand to the light switch, dropped it again.

  Better to just go. Go now. Just walk, quickly and quietly grabbing the jacket, and head out of the front door, and then the minute she was out to start running. She’d be halfway up the hill by the time they – he – realised she’d flown.

  Because that was the answer. It could only be Dom up there.

  That was it. Walk, don’t run. Do nothing that will set him off. Not until you get outside, at least.

  She never made it as far as the hallway. Sudden, clumping footfalls, someone heavy, someone coming down the stairs fast. She knew it was him before she even saw his face.

  He was running at her.

  A spike then, of hatred, of pure adrenaline. She screamed as she lashed out at him, backed into the bedroom, stumbling over the edge of the bed and falling gracelessly on to her back in her shock and terror.

  ‘Fiona …’ he shouted.

  ‘Stay the fuck away from me!’ she shrieked, scrambling backwards over the fawn-coloured carpet, until her head struck the little oak night table by the bed.

  ‘Fiona … Fiona, stop screaming …’

  ‘People are coming!’ She was hysterical, gibbering with fear. ‘Iris is going to be here any minute – don’t you dare come near me!’

  ‘Shut up! FUCKING SHUT UP FOR A MINUTE!’

  He stood at the foot of the bed, his hands raised high, but his palms outwards, as though she was the aggressor, as though she was about to shoot him. His face was mottled, pale, and his eyes red. His thin hair was greasy and he had not shaved in days.

  ‘CALM. DOWN!’

  Silence. Nothing but the sound of both of them breathing hard in the little room, as Fiona wrestled with her growing confusion.

  And then he said, the whites of his eyes shining with terror:

  ‘I have to talk to you.’

  27

  Grangeholm, Orkney, January 2020

  ‘Talk to me?’

  Fiona sprawled on the bedroom carpet, staring up at him.

  Dominic Tate looked terrible. Also, he stank like an unwashed animal – of sweat and damp clothes, his sneakers filthy and stained, his eyes wild and bloodshot. If she had had to conjure up the picture of a deranged murderer, Dom Tate would have fit the bill.

  His hands were still raised – a gesture almost of supplication, at odds with his wild appearance.

  ‘Dom,’ she said, swallowing, trying to keep her voice even, but incapable of leaving the question unasked. ‘What have you done to Madison?’

  ‘Nothing!’ he wailed. ‘I don’t know where she is! I swear to God! On my little boy’s life, I don’t know!’

  Fiona blinked, in the midst of everything still astonished that she had the capacity to be surprised by how despicable he was. You have kids? she wanted to hiss. Pretty sure Mads didn’t know that.

  But no, no. It was irrelevant right now. It was merely a reminder that she had to remember, no matter what, that he was a compulsive, manipulative liar.

  She mustn’t believe a single thing he said.

  Somehow she had to calm him down, persuade him to leave, before Iris arrived. Who knew what he would do if he felt threatened?
>
  Oh no, what if he hurts Iris? We’re alone out here. We’re …

  She tried not to look in the direction of her jacket where her phone nestled. It might as well have been on the moon.

  Instead, she focused on him, despite her loathing and dread. ‘Dom, they found Madison’s car in the sea.’

  ‘I know they did! It was on the news here. I swear to God I had nothing to do with it!’

  ‘Dom,’ she said again, her mouth dry, aware that she was treading a very thin line here, ‘you must know you’re going to have to hand yourself in to the police. They’re going to want to talk to you …’

  ‘DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!’ he bellowed suddenly, his teeth bared. She shrank back against the carpet. He loomed over her as she cowered on the floor, his finger pointing into her face. ‘This is ALL YOUR FUCKING FAULT!’

  Fiona fell silent, paralysed with fear.

  He had begun to pace back and forth in front of the bedroom door. She watched him, a cornered animal.

  ‘I mean, it looks bad …’ he trailed off. ‘I’m not thick. I know how it looks.’ He was shaking. ‘I should never have come back here. This was such a fucking mistake …’

  Fiona did not speak, terrified of angering him any further.

  ‘I should have stayed away like I promised. Oh fuck,’ he said, dropping his head into his hands, his shoulders heaving. ‘Oh fuck. Oh, Madison. Madison.’

  He seemed about to weep.

  She swallowed. ‘What do you mean, you promised?’

  ‘What?’ He raised his head, peered at her.

  ‘You promised not to come back here?’

  He blinked at her, as if she’d confused him. ‘I was staying here.’

  ‘You were staying here? In this house? With Mads?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Her face must have made an impression on him.

  ‘Don’t fucking look at me like that! It’s true. I was going to come back after you’d gone. She said I had to stay hidden. That you’d never understand.’ His eyes turned cold, and he stilled. ‘You’re not very understanding, apparently.’

  All of this story was palpably untrue, though she was unsettled by the realisation that Dom appeared to know of her arrival. An idea shot through her mind, then, and with it, a tiny cinder of hope. ‘Wait – why did you come back now? Did you hear from Mads?’

  He shook his head miserably, but there was something taut and suspicious in his expression, as though she was laying a trap for him. ‘That was just it. I didn’t. After Wednesday night she stopped answering the phone. I just got these texts – these texts that weren’t like her. All … I can’t describe it. Just not … her. At first,’ he said, and that coldness was back in his grey eyes. ‘I thought it was you, trying to give me the runaround.’

  Fiona merely stared at him, her spine crawling. When he focused on her, all of his jittery, anxious animation stilled into menace.

  She stirred again, aware that she had to get off the floor, out of this vulnerable, subservient position.

  The moment had passed, though, and he was back into his story.

  ‘So I thought, “No, I’m not getting messed around like this. I’m going over there and that judgemental little bitch Fiona is just going to have to live with it.”’ His eyes narrowed at her. ‘So I caught the ferry over yesterday. I know she said not to, but she should answer her fucking phone, then, shouldn’t she? I’m already breaching my restraining order. I’ve been nothing but nice … I helped her. I came all the way up here, took time off work – you know?’

  His gaze searched hers constantly, looking for cynicism, treachery, doubt.

  ‘Helped her?’ she asked, puzzled.

  ‘Yeah, helped her.’ He drew himself taller. ‘With her stalker.’

  Fiona could not restrain the amazement that flitted across her face.

  ‘You … you helped her with her stalker?’ she asked, managing at the last minute to make the final word sound less accusatory, less surprised.

  ‘Yeah. See, she texted me. Out of the blue.’

  This was, on the face of it, so absurd, that Fiona could make no reply. She was about to be told some vacillating, self-justifying story, she saw, and that was fine, so long as she didn’t anger him. With any luck, Iris would see him through the undrawn curtains, and know to call the police.

  Fiona just had to keep her head.

  But there was something in his expression, a hard glint of triumph, as though he knew he was surprising her with knowledge about Madison that she did not have.

  It gave her pause.

  ‘She texted you,’ said Fiona, neutral and straining for calm.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She was all annoyed at first. She said that if I didn’t stop being vile on the internet about her, she would go back to the cops and tell ’em I violated my order.’

  Fiona did not speak, waited.

  ‘I had no idea what she was going on about. None. I thought she was trying to stitch me up, trying to get me to message her back and get me into trouble. So I ignored her at first.’

  From his pacing, jittery agitation, it was clear he wouldn’t have been able to ignore her for very long.

  ‘Apparently it was tweets, and since I knew she went off Twitter and Facebook after the court case, I didn’t get what her problem was.’ He held up his palms, helplessly. ‘And then I thought later, well, maybe she’s thought better of it all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Maybe she’s looking for a way to make friends, now the dust has settled some – who knows?’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘Yeah, you know. Get back together.’

  Fiona bit her tongue against the acid sense of contempt this filled her with.

  ‘So I texted her back, saying that whatever problem she was having, it was nothing to do with me. Then she sent me this – well, a link to this tweet that got sent to her work’s account, and said, “Well, who sent this? Sounds like you.” And it was pretty nasty stuff. I mean, I know I said some bad things to her earlier in the year when I was angry, like. Only I’d never sent this.’ He held up his hands again, as if appealing to Fiona to see reason. His face was shiny with sweat. ‘I mean, it had been six months! Why would I suddenly be sending this stuff to her work out of nowhere?’

  ‘What did it say?’ asked Fiona.

  ‘What did it say?’ He gestured dismissively. ‘It doesn’t matter what it said. Not nice things. Like about throwing acid on her and … look, it doesn’t matter.’ He grew angrier, as if the acknowledgement of the link between this and his previous behaviour infuriated him. ‘It doesn’t matter what it said, all right?’ He was almost shouting, a little drop of spittle landing on his lip.

  Change the subject, thought Fiona. Now.

  ‘So what happened?’ she asked.

  He paused, derailed, and then seemed to remember where he was, what he was saying.

  ‘Yeah. So I said it wasn’t me. But I was – whoever this was, right, was obviously trying to pretend to be me, to get me into trouble, right? But they’d made a mistake. They forgot to switch the location data off on their phone when they sent the first couple of tweets – so I knew it was someone on Orkney doing it. And I was eight hundred miles from Orkney and could prove I was. So I texted that to her, and told her it was her problem and not mine.’

  Fiona waited, gripped despite herself.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Then she rang me, you know, didn’t text, and we properly talked about things. And she told me, I swear on my son’s life, Fiona, that she’d had a feeling it wasn’t me. That there was someone here who’d got it in for her. Someone who was jealous of her.’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘She wouldn’t say. She said she wasn’t sure. But would I look into it for her? I mean, she didn’t ask it like a favour – I knew she still had the hump with me a little.’ He smiled, as if at a warm memory. ‘But she also knew that this was, like, my area of expertise. And you kn
ow, I could tell she’d missed me. That old flirty spark was back.’

  Oh, Madison, thought Fiona. You idiot. You charmed him to get him to do what you wanted.

  But you’ve never quite mastered the spell for un-charming any of them.

  ‘You looked into it for her?’

  ‘Yeah. But I didn’t get very far. Whoever it was didn’t make the same mistake twice.’ He shrugged. ‘And in the UK anyone can buy a phone and a SIM, and if they pay cash …’ His face was thoughtful now, matter-of-fact, and she had a glimpse of what he was like in normal life, what most people saw. ‘They can track the phone itself through mobile phone towers, but they have to catch you with it if it’s not registered to you. Anyone can get a burner phone.’

  Fiona considered this, stunned. Someone was pretending to be Dom? Here on Orkney? That was an absurd lie, obviously. Obviously.

  Wasn’t it?

  ‘She wouldn’t say who she thought it was?’

  ‘No. She reckoned it would be more effective if she didn’t “lead me”, if you know what I mean – give me clues. Anyway, I looked into it, and I thought, you know, it would be too complicated to explain over the phone. I needed to see her in person.’

  You explained it to me in a couple of sentences, thought Fiona, feeling her face harden, but she said nothing.

  ‘I decided to surprise her, you know, come up rather than call. I got her address out of someone at her office …’ he paused, as though editing his memories before he offered them, and she sensed that this acquisition of Madison’s whereabouts had involved some kind of fraud. ‘She was so happy to see me – once she got over the surprise, like.’

  Fiona schooled her expression into neutrality.

  ‘I had a hotel booked but they’d made a mistake, and I’d nowhere to stay, and she said no worries, you have to stay here.’ He gave Fiona a defiant look, face flushed, and Fiona recognised it from the court hearing. It was the one he used when he was mixing a lie with truth. ‘Before long we was just like we used to be.’

  He smiled at Fiona, both beatific and triumphant.

  She glanced away, unable to control her feelings for a second. Oh, Mads, how did you not see it coming? He’s obsessed with you and you gave him an in. Then he was off and running.