Night Falls, Still Missing

by Helen Callaghan

  He opened his eyes then, alerted to this change in her tone.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, and she knew he didn’t mean the burial.

  ‘Douggie Flett was absolutely convinced that you and Madison were seeing each other.’ She folded her arms, faced him. ‘He’s right, isn’t he?’

  His blue gaze settled on her and he hesitated, taking her in. For a second, neither moved, and then he sighed, looked away.

  ‘You asked the wrong question, Fiona,’ he said. ‘When you came up here you were looking for Madison’s secret boyfriend. I was never her boyfriend, secret or otherwise.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘We may, however, have had a fumble or two.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Because, in the nicest possible way, it was none of your business. And it’s most certainly none of Douggie Flett’s business.’

  ‘How could you say that?’ she asked, appalled at his disingenuousness. ‘I came all the way up here …’

  ‘I can say that very easily, Fiona. If it had been any of your business, Madison would have told you.’

  Her mouth dropped open. ‘For fuck’s sake, Jack!’

  ‘Ohhhh, I wouldn’t feel too abused,’ he said, with a snort. ‘I was a spectator, not a player. We talked about this, Madison and me. She’d already made up her mind to leave Caspar, she just didn’t know how to tell him.’

  ‘And why would she want that?’ asked Fiona, trying to stay angry, but feeling herself on increasingly shaky ground.

  ‘I dunno.’ He lifted his own bottle. ‘You knew her better. But I reckon that it was just all too sedate for her. Madison wasn’t into settling down. She was an agent of chaos. Everything had to be on fire and falling off a cliff in order to really matter. This was why she and I could never be a thing.’ He took a swig from the bottle. ‘I know her type, believe me.’

  Fiona stilled, and it was as if Mads’ ghost was in the room with them. She recognised Madison from this description.

  ‘That was how I saw it then, at any rate. I don’t have to explain everything to you. She is entitled to her privacy. Just as I’m entitled to mine. Anyway, this was all before her car showed up in the sea and everything turned on its head.’

  ‘Have you told the police about this yet?’ she asked, her anger fizzling out, to be replaced by a kind of bleak understanding.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What will they do to you?’

  He lowered his blond brows at her, cocked his head. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You didn’t mention in the first place that you and Madison had had this … this “fumble”. Won’t they think you have something to hide now?’

  ‘I think you’re not understanding me, Fiona,’ he replied with a certain cool forbearance. ‘I didn’t tell you about that, or Douggie Bloody Flett, who somehow has become Orkney’s Sex Police. I did, however, tell the actual cops in Kirkwall the day she was reported missing.’ He put the bottle down. ‘You may not believe this, but I’m not a complete idiot.’

  Fiona fought to hold on to her anger, her suspicion, but there was no escaping it – he was right. It was none of her business, nothing to do with her. How was she to extort confidences from him, when even Mads had not seen fit to share this secret with her?

  She licked her lips. ‘Did Iris know about you and Madison, or is that also none of my business?’

  ‘I don’t … I don’t talk about that stuff with Iris any more.’ He gave her a rueful look. ‘She owns enough of me as it is.’

  ‘What’s she like to work for?’ asked Fiona, intrigued by this unguarded response.

  He fell silent, and she wondered if he would answer her.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘this is the thing to remember about Iris.’ He let his head fall back as he sprawled against the sofa. ‘Either you’re in, or you’re out. And if you’re out, you’re gone.’

  He turned to look at her. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong. She’s amazing at what she does. She doesn’t just have a magic touch with choosing digs, but with people too. If you have something going on, some talent, some bright idea – then no matter what the world says, she’ll fight your corner. But if you disappoint her enough times – you’re history. Or prehistory, if you prefer.’ He offered her a quick grin and raised his bottle to his lips. ‘She might have this cosy girly affect from time to time, but she really missed her metier. She would have made an amazing CEO. Or general.’

  Fiona considered this, cold condensation from her own bottle chilling her hand.

  ‘So I’m guessing Becky is “out”.’ She glanced at him. ‘Right?’

  His head twitched into a single reluctant nod. ‘Poor Becks. Her PhD idea was amazing, right up Iris’s street.’ He shrugged. ‘But she’s not … she’s not mentally flexible, she’s not imaginative. And she’s difficult. Wading-through-concrete difficult. She isn’t long for the dig, to be honest. If we get an extension after next week …’ he lowered his voice, glanced towards the door, even though they were alone. ‘Becky is going to be replaced. It will not go down well.’

  Fiona swallowed, that stab of pity back again. Kicked off a dig like that, on the eve of the media attention on it too.

  ‘Wow – that’s … Is it common in this team?’

  Jack’s lips thinned. ‘It’s more common than I would like.’ He twisted his mouth downwards. ‘But I’m not in charge.’

  Fiona fell silent. Did Becky know, or suspect? She might. It would explain her bitterness, her rage. Had someone said something to her?

  Or, more likely, had she watched it happen before, and recognised the signs of her own impending execution?

  ‘Iris hinted to me Mads and Becky didn’t get on. But Becky seems to think they were best buds …’

  ‘Both things are true,’ rumbled Jack. ‘In their way. Becks resented Madison when she first joined. Becks wanted to be Finds Manager on this dig, though why she’d want that I’ve no idea. We can never keep a Finds Manager. It’s like the job’s got an ancient curse on it or something. We’ve been through three in two years.

  ‘And also, Madison was Madison. You know. Vibrant, attractive. Smart as a whip.’ He smiled at happy memories. ‘Smart enough to put some effort into cultivating Becks rather than just putting her down. Listening to her while she pissed and moaned. Becks never has a good word to say about anybody.’

  ‘Mads is generous when she wants to be,’ said Fiona, and her grief was a wraith that wrapped around her heart. ‘Very generous, or very mean. It’s all or nothing.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Jack, with some hidden feeling.

  She glanced over at him. ‘So was Madison “in”?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Jack, meeting her gaze. ‘She was in, all right. I remember Iris talking about her when she hired her. “I just met the most extraordinary girl at the bar at this conference,” she said. ‘“With more confidence, she could be incredible.”’

  ‘Madison, lacking confidence?’ Fiona snorted out a laugh.

  Jack did not laugh back. ‘She didn’t mean social confidence – obviously Madison had that in spades. She meant intellectual confidence. She meant that ability to have big ideas and to hold on to them and follow them, and then the courage to throw them away when they don’t work. It’s actually much rarer than you think.’

  Fiona was about to laugh again, paused. You know, maybe it was true. She herself had grown so used to academic success she had started to believe that perhaps Madison just wasn’t cut out for it.

  She remembered Madison’s cold eyes that day in the bar on the Strand – her spite. Her jealousy.

  Perhaps Madison had been cut out for it, but just couldn’t catch a break, unlike Fiona had with Maude. Perhaps Madison had just needed someone to believe in her.

  Iris had.

  With a flicker of shame, Fiona realised that she hadn’t.

  ‘Iris recognised some kindred spirit in Madison, I reckon,’ Jack continued. ‘She went to bat for her, even with the mistakes in
the sampling and recording, some of which were quite serious. I mean,’ and he shut his eyes, ‘I don’t know what was happening with Madison, but she was definitely taking her eye off the ball a little in the last ten days or so …’

  Yes, thought Fiona, she would be. She was being threatened on social media and her previous stalker had invited himself up to her cottage. Since she was already juggling her boyfriend with you, she had a lot on her plate.

  And she hadn’t seen fit to tell Fiona about any of it.

  She slumped down into the armchair at right angles to the couch, conscious of herself as deceived again, as taken in.

  Bloody hell. Madison.

  ‘You know, Fiona, you shouldn’t feel bad.’ Jack seemed to see straight through her. It was impressive, she had to admit. ‘Madison would have told you everything anyway, if she’d been here when you arrived. She was looking forward to seeing you, to having a good long chat. She said as much.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘She talked about you all the time. Whatever they find when they finally get that car up,’ he twitched his shoulders, picked up the vaper again. ‘You should know you did a good thing when you said you’d come up here.’ His mouth tightened. ‘Even if it didn’t make a difference in the end.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said hollowly.

  He shrugged. ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.’ She could hear the quaver in her voice, the defeat.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’ She shut her eyes. ‘I had a massive fight with Madison’s brother in a café in Kirkwall.’ She bit her lip. ‘I chucked a cup of coffee over him.’

  Jack was silent for a moment. ‘Interesting,’ he said eventually. ‘Did he deserve it?’

  ‘Not at that moment. Though he was being a complete prick.’ She kicked her boots off, let them fall on to the carpet. ‘But he … he did something unpleasant a little while ago which deserved worse than coffee, so I guess he had it coming to him.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Still, it’s a statement gesture. I can respect that. Delightfully retro and oddly feminine and yet still hitting all the whistles and bells of interpersonal violence.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Fiona laughed, despite herself. ‘I was shaking after, but I felt … I felt so good.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  There was a long pause, as he puffed in silence, blue light gleaming along the vaper, along with the lively bubbling of liquid.

  ‘Adi thinks I’m going “off the rails” and should come home.’

  He told you he loved you.

  Jack nodded, as though in thought. ‘And you?’ he asked, his gaze assessing. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I feel, very strongly, that I can’t leave yet.’ She rested her chin on her hand. ‘Not until I know she’s down there.’

  37

  Nordskaill, Stromness, Orkney, January 2020

  ‘Ah! There you are!’ Iris cried.

  Fiona glanced up as the door opened. She and Jack had been sitting in the living room, and together they’d made inroads into the beer stacked in the fridge. Dead soldiers were racked near their feet.

  In the midst of her unresolved grief, her loss, it was some comfort to just sit on the couch with someone who had also known Madison, someone else who had liked her. It didn’t make her feel any better, but also, it didn’t make her feel any worse. And Jack was very easy to get on with.

  Iris had a taut expression as she opened the door, like a woman spotting trouble up ahead. Behind her, Becky seemed to freeze for a second.

  Fiona suddenly felt uncomfortable, as though she had been discovered doing something sleazy. Callum seemed oblivious, and rather drunk. He threw himself on to the couch next to Jack and from the armchair Fiona could feel the cold radiating off him.

  ‘How was the pub?’ Jack asked them.

  ‘Freezing, then all right once we were there and thawed out, then freezing again,’ Callum said.

  ‘I told you not to go,’ said Jack mildly. ‘It’s miserable out.’

  Becky stormed past them all, vanishing into the kitchen. There was a moment’s eddying discomfort, everyone aware of her transparent unhappiness, and determined to ignore it.

  She’s in love with Jack, of course, Fiona thought. Jesus, what would Becky have done if she’d discovered he was sleeping with Mads?

  ‘When did you get in, Fiona?’ Iris asked loudly, hanging her coat up by the back door, as though enforcing normality again.

  ‘About sevenish,’ said Fiona.

  ‘Oh, I should have asked you to the pub,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks, but it’s all right,’ said Fiona. ‘To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have braved the pub anyway. It was … it was kind of a challenging day.’

  ‘I would have advised you not to go to the pub, anyway,’ said Jack to her. ‘Because it’s miserable out.’

  ‘You said,’ remarked Iris. ‘If it makes you happier, Jack darling, you were right about that.’

  ‘Yes. I expect I was. I made this derivation through the high-tech solution of Looking Out Of The Window.’

  ‘Lightweight,’ said Iris, plopping down next to him. She raised a dark eyebrow at Fiona. Her cheeks were still pink with the cold.

  She seemed to be thinking, and then coming to a decision.

  ‘Come with me.’ She rose to her feet, beckoned imperiously at Fiona. ‘I have something to show you.’

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Iris led her back up the stairs, not speaking, but there was some hidden, coiled feeling in her, something that made her hurry, for Fiona to have to rush to catch up.

  ‘In here,’ she said, opening a door.

  Fiona found herself in Iris’s room. It must be the master bedroom, judging from the size, and had a picture window with a view down the hill towards Stromness Harbour. It contained its own fireplace, no longer in use and with a board over it, an antique wardrobe, a scratched dresser and a large pine sleigh bed.

  ‘Oh,’ said Fiona, pausing, taking in the view, with the twinkling harbour lights, the massive glassy sea spread out in darkness. ‘That’s gorgeous.’ But still, it made her sad. She wished Madison was here, to say these things to, rather than Iris. And if you followed that thought, she understood, you would realise that Madison would probably never be here again, to say anything to, and …

  Iris, who had bent to the fireplace, craned back at her over her shoulder. ‘Oh yes, it is a nice view, isn’t it? But it’s not why you’re here.’

  To Fiona’s surprise, Iris was kneeling on the hearth, unscrewing the painted wooden board in front of the disused fireplace with her Swiss Army knife.

  ‘This is off to Edinburgh this week,’ Iris said, as the screw on the left popped out and she quickly captured it with her long fingers, placed it carefully on the mantelpiece. ‘Providing the planes are flying with the bad weather that’s coming in, of course. It doesn’t look very exciting at the moment, since it’s not been cleaned and sorted yet, but still … I think as a professional you’ll get a kick out of it. I did.’

  The other screw quickly came out, and Fiona drew nearer, curious.

  ‘After all,’ continued Iris, sliding her short fingernails under the board, lifting it away to expose the fireplace proper, ‘it’s not something you see every day.’

  Within was a plastic storage tub, about the size of a large sewing box. With great care Iris lifted it out, the tendons in her wrists visibly straining – the box was heavy.

  ‘Come here,’ she said. ‘Have a look.’

  Fiona approached, with a strange reluctance building within her that she couldn’t quite explain.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, kneeling down next to Iris.

  Iris merely smiled, a wolfish expression full of appetite and enthusiasm, and popped open the lid. ‘It’s not very glamorous right now. This is how the bag came out of the ground. But there might be something nice in it, once they sort through it.’

  Within, there looked to be nothing more than soil and rags, perhap
s pebbles or sea-smoothed glass shards, and dirty black discs. It took a few moments for it to resolve into what Fiona then realised to be a rotting leather bag, filled with silver coins, now tarnished, and here and there, peeking through the mud that still clung to everything, the tiny bright glint of gold.

  Fiona did not know what she had been expecting – the bones from the burial, perhaps, though this box was too small for that, or some other find from the excavation. Whatever it was, it was not this.

  ‘This is the silver hoard from the dig?’ Fiona’s eyes roved over it, taking in the designs on the coins, etched with whirling stylized animals and the heads of bearded men.

  ‘Yes.’

  Fiona blinked. ‘You keep this in the house?’

  ‘Just for a couple of days,’ said Iris. ‘Until we can fly it out to Edinburgh. I have to head back for another round of filming on Wednesday, and I’ll be killing two birds with one stone.’

  ‘But still, wouldn’t the police have taken this into the station for a few nights? If you’d asked?’

  Iris glanced at her, as if noticing her unease for the first time. ‘Well, probably. We never asked.’

  ‘But you must have asked. They must know this exists. When you told the coroner …’

  ‘They do. But they never asked where we were keeping it, and I … well, I might have neglected to tell them.’ Iris sighed.

  Fiona stared at her.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t trust them, or think they might steal any or anything that stupid – though you never know.’ She tucked a lock of her dark hair behind her ear, very deliberately not meeting Fiona’s shocked gaze. ‘It’s just that, well, people talk. And I don’t think we’ll be wrapping up on Helly Holm any time soon.’

  ‘I know … but Iris …’ Fiona began, scandalised. ‘What if someone stole it?’

  ‘That’s hardly likely,’ she said, waving this idea away as if it was a bothersome fly. ‘Here’s the thing – I don’t know what else is up there on Helly Holm, and I am desperate, and I mean desperate, to control the news of this find until we’re sure we have the scientific data. Otherwise, we’re going to be inundated with amateur treasure hunters, tearing through the site with their metal detectors, destroying evidence …’