Night Falls, Still Missing

by Helen Callaghan

  There was no way on earth she was going to be in a hotel room alone with him.

  ‘I’m in Kirkwall right now … perhaps we can catch a coffee …’

  ‘That’s no good for me. I have to go in and see the police in five minutes. What about later?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Fiona.

  He gave her the name of a café on Harbour Street, and the injunction to be there at six and not be late.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  ‘Hi, Hugo,’ she said, appearing at the door.

  He was not exactly how she remembered him. It had only been six months since that awful holiday on Cala Llombards, and already his jowls seemed pouchier and cheeks slightly ruddier with broken veins, his belly straining against his too tight belt, his mouth now sprouting the beginnings of straggling wrinkles from being constantly pursed.

  She saw instantly that he was now a haunted man, though what was haunting him was anyone’s guess.

  It was not clear whether he would hug her or shake her hand, but in the end, he did neither, instead crossing his arms at her and glowering as she approached him in the tiny café.

  She took a seat in the wooden chair opposite him.

  Within her was a mixture of surprise and relief at the idea of not having to touch him as she sat down.

  ‘Hi,’ she said again.

  He did not respond, instead continuing to glare at her. He was clad in smart trousers and a rugby shirt and had not even removed his coat. Undrunk coffee sat in front of him in a tiny espresso cup.

  She supposed he intended this to be a very short conversation.

  Some good news at last.

  She was, despite the dreadful circumstances, overcome with the sudden, desperate desire to let out a nervous giggle at his stagey posture, the pantomime drawing down of his brows.

  ‘Did you speak to the police today?’ she asked, deciding to forge ahead, talk anyway. ‘I saw them this afternoon. They wanted me to identify a … a piece of art for them. They wouldn’t say where they found it …’

  ‘How long are you going to keep this up?’ he snapped.

  Fiona froze. ‘Keep what up?’

  ‘I know you and Madison are in this together, somehow,’ he said, stabbing the table with his finger, very near her hand. She had the startling sense of how much he would have liked to hit her just then. ‘You might have persuaded PC Plod up here in the middle of nowhere that it’s an accident, you showing up on the very evening she “disappears”, but you don’t fool me, you dirty little scrubber.’

  There was some sense of deep satisfaction in him as he called her a scrubber, she saw. Her first instinct was to get up, leave.

  No. Do this for Mads.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, Hugo.’

  ‘Oh, come off it,’ he snarled. ‘I know she was texting you all the way up from Cambridge. The police told me.’

  ‘Of course they did,’ she said, and she realised she was shaking, both with fear, that residual fear she had of him, and now with something else, something alien, something like rage. ‘Who do you think told them that?’

  ‘Well, I can tell you what they did tell me – Madison’s phone hadn’t been used since Wednesday night and is probably in the sea. So God knows where these texts you had came from. If they ever existed. Did she get another phone? Is that how you’re in touch with her?’

  She couldn’t speak for a moment – she was too stunned. She had not believed for a while that the texts came from Madison, but she knew they came from her phone number.

  What else had the police told him?

  Was Fiona some kind of suspect now?

  ‘Hugo, what exactly is it you are accusing me of? Do you seriously think that Madison and I are running some kind of scam to … I don’t know what – get you to miss your weekend at the golf club?’ She could hear her own, ratcheting anger. ‘Give your mother a heart attack? What’s our plan supposed to be?’

  ‘Maybe it’s a plan to go on the run with a backpack full of gold doubloons or whatever the fuck they found out on that rock.’ His eyes blazed. ‘And maybe you’re in for a cut of it. After all, you’re the expert. You’d know where to sell it.’

  It was as if he’d punched her.

  Of course, she thought, he would immediately gravitate to where the money in this would be.

  ‘Who told you about the Valkyrie?’

  He didn’t answer, merely smiled, that unpleasant, gloating smile he’d had since being a boy, the one that seemed to bisect his face.

  ‘Okay, firstly, that’s crazy, and secondly, that’s completely crazy.’

  ‘Is it? It’s right up her street – she’s always been a failure,’ he snarled. ‘She was never able to hold on to a man, or any kind of proper job – just these endless studenty “gigs” digging with sweaty hippies in the back of beyond …’

  Something vast, and cold, and furious opened up in Fiona then.

  ‘Listen, you fatuous imbecile. Mads paid her own bills. She wasn’t the one being bankrolled by her mother while playing Fantasy Financial Advisor!’ She snatched herself up to her feet. ‘She was worth ten of you.’

  ‘How dare you, you little …’

  ‘Hugo, I did not come here to trade insults with you. I came here so we could try to work out what’s happened to your sister …’

  ‘Well, that’s just you all over, isn’t it?’ He was no longer looking at her, but his voice was raised, as though he wanted the room to hear him. ‘Always worming your way in to everything. You never change.’

  Fiona felt herself reddening. ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘I remember you,’ he said, his big round face gleaming with a malicious smile. ‘Always trying to get Mum and Dad to take you with us on holiday, angling to get invited to stay for dinner, trying to feed off us like a tick.’

  ‘What? You’re talking about this now?’

  ‘Poor little Fiona with her drunk father and her shithole stinky house and her school uniform so tight you can see her tits because she can’t afford to buy a new one …’

  Fiona picked up the coffee in front of him and threw it into his face.

  It made a tiny splashing noise, that somehow dwarfed every other sound in the café. Even as she did it she couldn’t quite believe it was happening.

  Her palm tingled, as though it longed to make contact with his pampered, ruddy cheek.

  Hugo didn’t seem to believe it had happened either. He simply stared at her, one hand coming up to his face in disbelief, as dark liquid dripped from his chin, his nose.

  ‘Take that,’ she said. ‘You’re owed it on account.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he said. ‘You threw boiling coffee at me!’

  Fortunately, or unfortunately, it had been little more than lukewarm.

  And furthermore, she could not even repent of it.

  ‘You’re mad!’ he shouted, growing more and more agitated. ‘You’ve assaulted me! You’re violent. Just like your fucking crazy mother.’

  ‘Yeah, and you’re just a sordid bully, as usual. Does your mother know you were here bothering Mads two weeks ago, angling for power of attorney over her, like the disgusting ghoul you are? And that Mads sent you away with her boot in your fat arse?’

  Under the streaming coffee he paled, then reddened.

  ‘Because I’ll be happy to tell her. She deserves to know what you’re really like. And what happened in the cellar. It would be my pleasure.’

  ‘I should call the police, you …’ he said, but the power had gone out of it, and mere bluster remained. His eyes became huge, wounded, and he glanced around the room, appealing for sympathy. ‘My mother is very ill …’

  ‘If you think I’m in it with Mads, tell the police that. If not, stop wasting my time.’

  The café door slammed shut behind her.

  35

  Nordskaill, Stromness, Orkney, January 2020

  ‘You think she stole it?’ Adi let out a long, slow breath. ‘That’s … wow.’

  ‘I don’t kn
ow if she stole anything. But this thing, Adi – this is very serious.’ Fiona leaned into her phone, huddled in her icy car, trying to keep her voice down. She didn’t want to be overheard.

  And she absolutely didn’t want to have this conversation back at the house with the other archaeologists around.

  ‘I mean, I suppose I could understand it,’ Adi said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look, Fiona, perhaps she got desperate. You told me yourself that the money in archaeology is terrible. It sounds like she has a taste for the good life. She kicked Caspar into touch – he was the one paying for all the little luxuries. If you were digging and found something like that, just lying in the ground – you have to admit, it must be tempting.’

  ‘Tempting?’

  ‘You know, pick it up, stick it in your pocket. It’s been lying there for a thousand years. It’s not like anybody’s going to miss it anytime soon.’

  ‘Except it isn’t tempting,’ said Fiona, taken aback by Adi’s attitude. ‘It’s actually a really stupid thing to do, especially for an archaeologist. And she would know this.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It’s treasure.’

  ‘Well, obviously it’s valuable …’

  ‘No, I mean it’s treasure – that’s the legal name for it. And you don’t get to just keep any treasure you find. There are all these laws to stop our cultural heritage being sold off to private collectors abroad. You’ve got to tell the coroner in the first instance, and straight away. The minute you don’t, what you have in your hands is stolen goods.’

  He laughed then, and again she was disturbed by his attitude. ‘Stolen from who?’

  ‘From us.’ She could hear the rising anger in her voice. ‘From the people.’

  ‘If I’m the people, I already own it. What’s to stop me from having it?’

  ‘Because something that belongs to everybody should be accessible to everybody! And not just sitting in the collections of Swiss banking fat cats like you go drinking with, which is where everything would end up if nobody stopped it!’

  ‘Hey, hey,’ said Adi, taken aback. ‘Easy, Fee …’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Fiona instantly, but something was growing inside her. She wasn’t sure she was sorry. But she said again, ‘Sorry. I’m just so worried. What was Madison thinking?’

  ‘As I was saying,’ said Adi, with a slight drawl, and she had the sense that her apology might not have gone far enough for him, and this too made her prickle with annoyance. ‘It could have been worth it to Madison. I was watching something on TV the other night where someone found all this gold with their metal detector, just out in a field, and it was worth hundreds of thousands of …’

  ‘It might be, but that’s money they’ve received after they’ve reported it and been paid for the find, and the objects end up in the British Museum or wherever. They didn’t steal that money, they had it legitimately.’ Fiona sighed, tried to sound conciliatory. ‘I mean, it’s all moot in Madison’s case. She wouldn’t get money for something that she found on a dig. Whoever is running the dig is responsible. But even then, it’s such an insane thing to do.’

  ‘Well, I could think of a few hundred thousand reasons to do it …’

  ‘But that’s just it. She’d never get anything like that, even if she did steal it. I did some consultation work a few months ago on some coins someone was trying to sell in the US. The finders never make the real money – the dealers do. They come up with the fake provenance and the pseudo-respectability. People don’t want to buy something that can be seized back from them by the government at any time.

  ‘And here’s the thing that really bothers me – that pendant is worth more to her professionally, to the power of ten, than she could earn selling it on the black market. If that came out of Helly Holm, then what with the boat and the bodies it’s a massively important discovery. She can be publishing things and writing papers on that, in partnership with Iris. Maybe get into Iris’s media work. It could be just the boost she needs.’

  ‘Fiona,’ he said, ‘listen to me. I think it’s time you came home.’

  She fell silent, shocked.

  ‘I can’t just leave …’

  ‘Yes, you can. You absolutely can. And you should. Her family are there now, and the police can get in touch with you whenever they want.’

  ‘Adi, I can’t …’

  ‘What are you achieving there? What’s happening, except that you’re being hurt and exposed to all these things you can’t fix, and on your own? I can see how this is affecting you. So I’m flying back home tomorrow …’

  ‘I thought you were there another two days …’

  ‘Nah, I don’t need to be. I’m just here to present and answer questions.’

  ‘But they expect …’

  ‘I don’t give a shit what they expect. I’ve been thinking about this all afternoon. I know I’ve not been there for you. I might not have had a lot of time for Madison, but I know she was a huge part of your life and you’re destroyed right now, running off the rails, doing and saying crazy things …’

  A mulish rebellion flickered within Fiona then – how do you know that I’m crazy?

  ‘Adi – I don’t … I feel like this is something I have to do.’

  Silence fell between them, except that she could hear his breathing, very quiet, very light. It filled her with a longing and a homesickness that hurt like toothache.

  But still, when she thought about it, imagined booking that ferry ticket, packing her things into her car – she felt a jangling sense of wrongness, of desertion.

  She had unfinished business here. It was that simple.

  Her silence was answer enough, it seemed.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I have to go now, there’s another dinner tonight. But I want you to think about this, Fee. I would really love you to come home.’

  There was a lump in her throat. ‘I would love to come home too,’ she said, and her voice was thick, stuffed with all the words they never spoke. ‘I just have to wait until they bring her up. Once I know she’s gone …’ It was hard to breathe, suddenly. ‘I’ll come. I promise.’

  ‘Are you sure? Because I would love to see you.’

  And the thought flashed through her mind then, ask him to come to you. Admit you are exhausted and grief-stricken and don’t want to do this alone.

  Her mouth opened for a second, then closed.

  It seemed too much, suddenly. He might downplay it now, but this trip of his was so important for his firm, his career. She just couldn’t ask it of him.

  She bit her lip. The moment was gone.

  ‘Me too,’ was all she said.

  A pause. ‘Okay. Sleep well.’ Another pause, and then, to her astonishment, he said, ‘I love you.’

  36

  Nordskaill, Stromness, Orkney, January 2020

  Fiona emerged into the living room at Nordskaill House with a beer in her hand and was somewhat surprised and a little alarmed to find Jack sitting on the couch, his own beer at his elbow, his vaper caught between his fingers.

  The rest of the house seemed oddly empty.

  He offered her a grin, but there were dark shadows under his eyes.

  ‘Hello there,’ he murmured. ‘You missed the expedition to the pub. If you hurry, you might catch them.’

  ‘Um, no thanks. I’m not really in the mood.’ Fiona looked around the room in alarm. ‘Why didn’t you go?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not in the mood either. I’m knackered. Tomorrow will be worse. Big gale coming, and we need to run in and secure the site first thing. It’s going to be a free-for-all.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, anxious. ‘So, how did the dig go?’

  Jack shrugged. ‘Just the two skeletons, in the end. We didn’t get a real good look, because we were in a rush. Ended up excavating things and packing them up in their soil. The bone people will pick it all apart. But very interesting. Iris was right again. We think the primary burial was a woman.’

/>   ‘The primary burial?’

  ‘Yeah. The person the grave was dug for.’

  ‘But you said it was a warrior grave.’

  ‘Yep. But it’s also her grave. She’s laid out on her back, and the grave goods – the sword, what we think is a bow and arrows, the helmet and armour, the coins – we’re pretty sure it’s all around her. The man is lying curled up, behind her head, along with the sacrificed horse. Iris reckons the second, male burial is a thrall – her slave. We couldn’t get a really good look, but it seems like there’s a peri-mortem slice injury to the vertebra in his neck.’

  ‘So he’s a sacrifice? He’s been killed to accompany her into the afterlife?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ he said. ‘But that’s how it looked.’

  Fiona paused, stunned. ‘That’s amazing.’

  ‘Well, there is precedent. The Birka warrior burial was genetically proven to be female, but it doesn’t necessarily make the woman in the grave a warrior. I wouldn’t get too excited,’ Jack said, with a rueful sigh. ‘As I keep trying to tell Iris.’

  ‘Still,’ said Fiona, considering this, ‘it’s all very suggestive.’

  Jack snorted. ‘Just because the warrior grave goods are lying in there with this woman proves precisely zilch. It implies she owns it, certainly, and has a right to it, not necessarily that she’s using it in anger.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ she said, steeped in doubt for a long moment.

  ‘You don’t seem convinced.’

  ‘Well,’ she sighed. ‘I’m a scientist. I go for the interpretation that makes fewest assumptions. And yet, here we are, presented with fairly straightforward evidence of a warrior grave with a woman in it, and somehow, all of these more abstract theories are suddenly more likely.’

  ‘And I would say,’ he replied, resting his hands behind his head, shutting his eyes, leaving his tattoos and the pale undersides of his arms exposed, ‘things are not always what they seem.’

  ‘They would have been what they seemed if the man had been the primary burial.’ Fiona shrugged, her voice hardened. ‘When we dig, after all, all we ever find is ourselves. Our own assumptions, our own prejudices. But you know, sometimes things are exactly how they look.’