Night Falls, Still Missing

by Helen Callaghan

  ‘Yeah, but they’re all the same thing, aren’t they? Technical information exchange in ferrous metallurgy, it just rolls off the tongue.’

  ‘Well, that is my specialty,’ said Fiona, putting her own glass down. She didn’t want to drink any more. ‘What’s got into you?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘This is huge for me, and you don’t seem very happy.’

  Madison shrugged. ‘Of course I’m happy for you. But they were always going to push you up on the fast track.’ She drained her glass. ‘You play their games and say the things they want to hear. You’re their type.’

  Fiona’s blush was turning into a true hot rage. ‘You’re always doing this.’

  ‘Doing what?’ Madison still wasn’t looking at her.

  ‘This. Whenever I achieve something, it’s like it doesn’t matter or I didn’t deserve it or I did something sneaky for it. Only you don’t come out and say it, you just make these snide, snarky asides and don’t look at me while you say them.’ Fiona seized her coat. ‘I worked my arse off for the last five years and now I’m finally getting recognised, and all you can do is sit there and undermine me.’

  ‘I didn’t say that or anything like it. Now you’re just being paranoid.’ Madison’s eyes were hard. ‘You never even mentioned to me that you were applying for this thing …’

  ‘What was the point? I didn’t think I was going to get it.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Madison. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Whatever,’ snapped Fiona, jerking to her feet. ‘Enjoy Prague.’

  32

  Grangeholm, Orkney, January 2020

  After DI Gillespie left, pressing his card into her hands with the request to call him if she thought of anything else in the meantime, Fiona let herself back into her car. She should, she realised, be heading over to the dig on Helly Holm and the causeway was at low tide now. It was an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a spectacular site being unearthed.

  However, no matter how she tried, she could work up no enthusiasm for the prospect. She had all the proximity to death she could possibly want; right here, right now. She felt trapped in this liminal space where her world was about to change forever, and for the worse, and the one person that she would rely upon to support her through such changes was no longer here.

  Nor could she even begin mourning Madison. She was waiting for that most elusive of boons – closure. She let her head fall on to the steering wheel for a moment, while the cries of seabirds, like squeaky joints, floated in from over the ocean. No man is an island – was it Donne that had said that? Well, now she was an island – a rock alone in freezing, pounding waters.

  She sat up once more and felt the pinch of cardboard in her jeans pocket. Oh yes, the package. Maude’s books. She’d better get them before she drove away, as she had no plans to ever return to this house again.

  The shed was unlocked but the wooden door latched shut. The package was bigger than she expected, sitting on top of the green recycling bin, and when she picked it up, heavy.

  She carried it back to the car and was in the process of ripping it open when she noticed, with a flutter of horror, that it was actually addressed to Madison. She dropped it back on the seat, with a little cry of fright.

  Where the box had been torn open, silver glinted within from a secondary covering of bubble-wrap.

  ‘Shit.’

  She was so crushed, so stressed, she was making stupid mistakes. She turned the box over and saw that the sender was actually a computer repair company. She stilled, her thoughts bubbling, then crystallising – of course, Callum had told her that Mads had blown up her own laptop and borrowed a company one.

  And hadn’t she thought that was strange at the time? It was brand-new, after all. Madison had bought it in her presence.

  At least she hadn’t opened the whole box, she thought ruefully, starting the engine. She would give it to the police this afternoon, try to explain herself, but a little lump of dread was forming in her throat at the mere idea.

  She took a deep breath, tried to clear her head, fight off the incipient tears. For now, she would head over to Helly Holm and see what all the fuss was about.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Careless talk may cost lives, but it had drawn a tiny crowd. About half a dozen people and two dogs were milling about at the foot of the causeway, chatting amongst themselves, peering under shading hands towards the islet. Above them, clouds raced across the sky.

  On the island itself, rising out of the sparkling sea with its lacing of froth, Helly Holm was once again distant and imperious, its lighthouse a pale spike. The archaeologists’ boat was tied up by a little spit of land that jutted out at the side of the islet. A large white tent had been erected somewhere over the central trench, and it was billowing angrily against its poles.

  Someone had emerged from it, but it was too far away to see who it was.

  ‘What d’you think it is?’ a man was asking a couple with a Cairn Terrier nosing around their feet. ‘Think they’ve found something?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said the woman, sporting a bright pink anorak and an Orcadian accent. ‘We were going to walk over and ask them, but the causeway doesn’t look too good this morning.’

  Fiona threaded her way past them and instantly understood what was meant. The first morning she had attempted the walk, the low tide had exposed rock pools and algae but the sea had not been much in evidence.

  This was very different. She could see it now, much closer, and every so often it sent forth forceful, slapping wavelets that in places looked likely to wet her ankles.

  She wanted to turn around and go. The sea frightened her. The sky was blue, but what cloud there was, was in brisk, sulky motion.

  Do this, she told herself.

  She wanted you to look at something.

  Go and look.

  About halfway across the causeway she paused, anxious, aware that she did not want to be trapped here, but up towards the tent she saw Jack and Callum emerge, notice her. Jack gave her a big wave, while Callum turned on his heel and went back into the tent, presumably to tell Iris she was coming.

  Fiona realised she was committed.

  She managed to reach the steps without incident, ascended the dried yellow grass. Patches of snow still remained in places where the sun could not touch them, in ditches and nooks in the flanks of the islet. As she gained the top Jack reached over and hauled her up by the hand, so she would avoid standing on the open trench that yawned before her like a grave.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. His eyes were kind but tired.

  ‘I’m … the same.’ Looking at him, his easy compassion, the way he was always the one who asked how she was, who betrayed any interest in her quest without being remotely pressing, it was hard to believe that he was lying about his relationship with Madison.

  ‘How’s the morning gone?’ she asked.

  ‘Good. The email with the licence was here first thing. We’d prepped the burial chamber beforehand so we’re going to try and get as much of the work done today as we can.’

  ‘Exciting,’ she said, trying to inject some enthusiasm into it.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, as Becky stomped out, heading past them, up the hill. ‘The weather is going to be rotten tonight and absolutely bollocks starting from tomorrow, so we want to get the first skeleton out and ready to ship, if we can. It’s in danger otherwise.’

  The wind ruffled her hair, as if to underscore the point.

  ‘Come in,’ he said, gesturing at the tent, over Callum’s head, who was kneeling down to grab a mess of small plastic bags out of one of the big storage lockers. He appeared to be studiously ignoring her. ‘You can see for yourself.’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  ‘This is the centre of the boat, with the burial chamber,’ said Jack, as they stood inside the tent. ‘Most of the stern has been excavated already.’

  Within, three big spotlights were turned on to the grave, being run by
the mobile generator which she could hear chugging happily away to itself.

  Iris kneeled near the top, wielding a trowel with extreme care around the exposed dome of a human skull. Her expression was one of utmost concentration. She glanced up at Fiona and offered her a short nod before returning to her work.

  Everything smelled of freshly turned earth.

  ‘Wow,’ said Fiona. ‘How far back does the boat go?’

  Jack gestured forward to the front of the tent, past Iris’s head, to the outside. ‘The prow is out there somewhere. We haven’t even touched it yet. It’s got more soil coverage, so it’s less endangered than the rest. But the stern was already exposed by the time we started digging, with the cliff erosion and the bad weather. You were practically climbing over it to get up here.’

  ‘A nice big boat.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ He nodded. ‘We’re very lucky.’

  The trench itself was square, about eighteen inches deep. Besides the skull, Fiona could see the end of a long bone poking up, and the shadow of what must have been a beam of wood at some point, now reduced to little more than a stain.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Not really. We’ve all got our orders. You’re not insured to do any delicate excavation anyway.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t see how we’re going to do this by the contract end, to be honest. Iris has been in touch with Historic Environment Scotland, to see if we can get more resources. Today will be busy, though – the county archaeologist will come through, HES will come through, and I think, once they do, things will start to really take off.’

  Fiona nodded. ‘It’s a great site.’

  ‘Iris thinks we might even be able to get a production company on board.’ He grinned. ‘I think we’d need to be a lot more sexy before we could depend on that. You’d want big, glamorous finds – something photogenic.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Fiona, trying to nod, to be interested, but as her gaze lowered to the skull, its single exposed eyehole packed with soil, as though blinding it, she felt nothing but horror. The dirt looked like a brown bath, with this skeleton drowning in it, its jaw half open in a scream.

  The similarity to what could be happening to Madison was suddenly unbearable.

  ‘I have to get out,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ asked Jack.

  ‘I have to get out,’ said Fiona, trying to master her panic, her fear. Even Iris had looked up again, peering hard at her. ‘I have to … give me a minute.’

  And suddenly she was outside and striding through the wind, to the edge of the islet, where the sea was, and she was breathing, trying to inhale that biting wind and take some sustenance from it while the lighthouse flashed at her every twenty seconds, like a warning. She should not have come here.

  She should not have come here.

  ‘Is something up?’

  Someone was there, holding a mug of hot tea in her hand.

  It was Becky.

  ‘I’m … I’m … I’ll be fine,’ said Fiona. ‘I was just looking at the lighthouse.’

  This would have seemed patently untrue to Fiona, but Becky accepted it without demur. Fiona again had the sense of Becky as someone who didn’t quite know how to handle herself around humans.

  ‘Yeah, it’s cool. It just runs on solar power.’ Becky shrugged at her, held her gaze, appeared almost friendly.

  Fiona glanced at her. She didn’t want to deal with Becky’s moods now, but somehow, today, there was a change, something almost hungry at work in the other girl.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Fiona, and noticed again that she was always doing this. What was she apologising for? ‘It’s just that …’

  ‘It’s Madison, isn’t it?’ Becky asked.

  Cautiously, Fiona nodded. ‘I shouldn’t have come here. To the dig.’

  Becky sat down heavily on a nearby boulder. ‘I know. It’s just so wrong, just carrying on as normal while …’

  ‘While what?’

  Becky fixed her with a glowering brow. ‘They’re all so economical with the truth, you know.’

  ‘They …?’

  ‘Callum. Jack. And Iris. Especially Iris.’ She snorted. ‘It’s disgusting, when you think about it. Obviously, something bad has happened to Madison, but everyone’s so fucking desperate and ambitious that they’re pretending it’s not happening. It might interfere with their precious careers. Like, she just “went away”.’ Becky gestured parodically. ‘As if.’

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  Becky blinked at her, those small eyes hugely magnified by her glasses. For a moment Fiona thought she was about to bark something out, but then she shut her mouth with a snap. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said after a moment, shrugging dismissively, her eyes closed. In that instant, she looked like a mulish little girl.

  More than one person was being economical with the truth, obviously. Becky definitely had some notion of what it might be.

  Perhaps it could be drawn out of her, somehow.

  ‘See,’ Fiona said, ‘I just can’t shake the idea that Madison was in some kind of trouble. And I can’t go home until I find out what it was.’

  Becky shrugged again. ‘Well, she might be down there in the car in the sea, she might not. But I do know one thing – no way did Madison just wake up and bugger off one day.’

  Fiona looked at her. ‘What makes you say that?’

  Becky rolled her eyes. ‘Common sense. Why should she? She was getting loads of great site experience on a really exciting dig; a fucked-up dig, yeah, but a career-making, important dig. She was filling in for Iris half the time, even helping out with research for Discovering the Past – doing stuff well beyond her pay grade. It would look great on her CV.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I don’t have to think,’ Becky said contemptuously. ‘She knew it would. We talked about it for hours. We knew that not all of us have the advantages of dreaming spires to back us up – we have to graft.’ She threw Fiona an arch look and crossed her thick legs angrily, her huge, muddy boots spattering her jeans cuff as she did so. ‘If anyone was going to quit this shithole first, it was me.’

  Fiona felt a low heat rising in her cheeks. Who did this girl think she was? Becky didn’t know anything about Fiona, and how she’d worked and …

  We knew that not all of us have the advantages of dreaming spires …

  Maybe Becky thought she knew something about Fiona. Fiona remembered Madison’s joyless congratulations when she’d told her about her promotion at the department to senior lecturer, her backhanded compliments about Fiona’s research work.

  Maybe, she thought uncomfortably, Madison had been saying something along these lines to Becky. The thought made her feel nauseous.

  Stop it, she thought. You don’t know that.

  Stick to the task at hand.

  ‘You know, Iris implied to me that you two didn’t get on.’

  ‘Me and Iris?’

  ‘No. You and Mads.’

  ‘That’s completely ridiculous.’ Becky made an annoyed harrumphing noise. ‘We’re digging in the most challenging, fraught conditions, a person down a lot of the time, and carrying quite a few of the others too, the idle bastards.’ She let out an arch little sniff. ‘It’s not like Callum’s much use. Running around with your camera taking pictures for Instagram isn’t exactly hard labour.’

  Fiona crossed her arms. ‘I suppose not …’

  She had guessed that Becky and Callum were probably rivals. Had Madison and Callum been rivals, though?

  Dominic Tate had said that Madison thought she was being stalked by someone jealous of her …

  ‘You try staying all upbeat and happy-go-lucky with that going on in the background,’ Becky muttered. ‘And the foreground. And around the sides.’ She folded her arms. ‘Felt like we two and Jack were the only ones getting our hands dirty.’

  ‘It must have been insanely stressful,’ said Fiona, wondering at this recasting of the past. ‘So much pressure to get
everything right. You know, Iris mentioned that Mads had messed up some C14 samples …’

  ‘Did she?’ snarled Becky, with an impressively sarcastic swoop in her voice. ‘Did she really? You’d have to prove that one to me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Becky flicked a dismissive hand. ‘Madison always looked to be doing everything right when she and I were processing the finds. Jack has been stretched six ways to Sunday, and Iris – she has no idea what’s going on. She’s barely here.’

  ‘But she says there’s only been a couple of trips …’

  ‘Let’s just say,’ said Becky, stealing a quick look around the empty site before turning back to Fiona, ‘that I’ve come into the tent and found Iris asleep over the laptop before today. Found her that way more than once, in fact.’

  ‘You think Iris was tired with all the travelling, and she messed up and blamed …’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Becky, snorting again. ‘I’m just saying what I saw.’

  Yes, you keep doing that, thought Fiona. You insinuate, loudly, then never have the courage of your convictions and state your conclusion. You are perhaps the most overtly angry passive-aggressive person I’ve ever met.

  Fiona kept her voice calm, soothing. ‘It does sound very stressful.’

  ‘You’ve no idea,’ Becky grunted.

  ‘The thing that gets me is why would Mads invite me up here and then …’ She sighed. ‘I just don’t get it.’

  Becky scowled at her.

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate. She was counting the days until you came.’

  Fiona glanced up in surprise. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, really. It was all she could talk about in the days before you arrived. How you and she were going to go visit the other islands and she’d booked you in for a night’s stay somewhere as a surprise.’ Becky rolled her shoulders. ‘I forget where it was. Somewhere nice.’

  Fiona was stunned, as though, without meaning to, Becky had buried a knife in her heart, not with malice, but with kindness. Had flighty, difficult Madison really been that excited to see her?

  Oh, Mads. I wanted to see you too.

  ‘She kept banging on and on about it.’ Becky’s lips pinched together, grew white. Her voice was getting louder. ‘It was very annoying after a while.’