Dark Tides (12 page)

Rage is a lifelong companion for you. It never goes away. You’ve felt it pulsing inside you every moment of every day for as long as you can remember, as real as the beat of your heart. It’s more than simple emotion. More than a chemical reaction in your brain. It’s a physical condition, a hot and itchy sensation concentrated in the middle of your chest.

Lately, as your plans have developed, things have got worse again. The itch has spread like a contagion. It’s taken root inside your kidneys and your groin and, worst of all, deep inside your head. You need a release very badly. And now you have a target. The choice is by no means arbitrary. It’s fully justified.

Better than that – it’s only the first.

I drove to the Ayres. It wasn’t far from the prison. Fifteen minutes, maybe less. I don’t remember much of my journey there. I was thinking about Mark and the things he’d said. Thinking about my life and the turns it had taken in the past six years. Was I happy? Was I fulfilled? Was I sure that I was doing the right thing with my career? Not even close. But I was doing something, at least. And that was some kind of achievement, because there were still plenty of days when even getting out of bed was a struggle.

I’d had regular contact with a psychologist for years now. It didn’t take a specialist to figure out that I was suffering from some kind of survivor guilt – not just because of what had happened to Mark, but also because of what had happened to Mum – but it did take a therapist to help me to come to terms with my condition and find a strategy for coping with it. I was following a regimen of cognitive behavioural therapy and I was on a cocktail of meds to keep my anxiety and depressive moods under control. The meds had plenty of side effects. Poor appetite, low sex drive, excessive fatigue. But none of them prevented me from doing my job, and all of them were better than battling with the constant dark voices whispering in my ear, urging me to wade out into the sea and keep going. And the therapy and the pills had enabled me to confront my demons and visit Mark today. They’d given me an outside shot at healing myself.

I hadn’t been to the nature reserve in years. I’d avoided it deliberately. Now, trundling into the car park, I saw that little had changed. Maybe the roof of the visitors’ centre had sagged just a touch. Maybe the information signs fixed to the walls outside had been faded by the sun and eroded by the abrasive salt wind. But one thing was new. A raised timber platform – a bird observatory, I guessed – had been constructed among the dunes.

Stepping out into the gusting wind, I wrapped a scarf round my neck, stuffed my hands into the pockets of my jeans and made my way to the observatory. The wooden steps were dusted with a fine layer of sand, and when I reached the platform at the top I found that the wind was much stronger. It blustered against me, making my eyes sting and stream.

I knelt down and propped my wrists on the lip of the waist-high timber boards, looking out to sea. The torn waters crested and dipped, the steel-blue surface pocked and blistered by the scouring wind. The tide was out, exposing a wide, snaking band of shingle beach where flocks of birds had gathered to peck at the ground.

My hair was getting in my eyes. I tucked it behind my ears and held it there, then turned and looked inland towards the lonely stand of pines. I thought about hiking across the mossy grassland and the lichen heath. I pictured myself bowing my head and stepping in under the knotted boughs, creeping forwards between the gnarled trunks, hunting out the lingering memories of my friends. I could almost hear their voices, calling to me from the past. Could almost catch Rachel’s playful shriek or Callum’s holler on the hurling breeze. But I didn’t go. I slumped down on to my backside instead, wedging myself into a corner of the platform and hugging my knees to my chest.

Had I really betrayed Mark? I hadn’t thought of it that way. I’d joined the police for other reasons. Reasons that had to do with trying to make amends for the terrible thing I’d been a part of, for my failure to intervene in Mark’s attack on Edward Caine, for my guilt at being given a second chance at a life I didn’t feel I deserved.

Three years ago, I’d graduated from university with a degree in the subject I loved and plenty of opportunities to pursue it. My grades hadn’t suffered in the wake of Mark’s attack. If anything, they’d only improved in the months after I’d left the island and Mark had been arrested and charged. I’d needed something to throw myself into. Something that could absorb me. Literature had given me that and it had rewarded me in equal measure.

But when my final semester was over and I found myself returning to the island to spend the summer with Dad, I also found that I had nothing more to distract me. I couldn’t ignore what I’d done and what I’d failed to do. In my own way, I was to blame for the attack on Edward every bit as much as Mark. He was in prison, paying his debt to society, and I felt that it was time for me to pay mine.

My solution was to join the police. I remembered the officers who’d come to our home in the days and months after Mum had disappeared. I remembered the kindness of Jennifer Knox in particular. She never did find Mum, and over the years her contact with us had gradually dwindled away, especially once she took maternity leave following the birth of her first child. But she’d tried. She’d been sincere in that, at least. For Dad. For me. And I began to think that maybe I could do the same for other people. That maybe I
had
to. I couldn’t find Mum. She was lost to us for good and I understood that now. But maybe I could find someone else who was missing. Or perhaps I could assist someone in trouble. I’d done a bad thing and perhaps I had to commit myself to doing good things to compensate for it, even if I didn’t particularly want to, even if it meant denying myself a future I’d dreamed of for so long.

It never occurred to me that Mark would view it as treachery. To be honest, it never occurred to me that he’d even find out. I hadn’t thought of visiting him back then. I hadn’t faced up to the need I had to look in his eyes and tell him how sorry I was. But I’d been naive. I hadn’t considered how the guilt would take root inside me. And I hadn’t been wise to the workings of the criminal community on the island. Of course Mark would hear that I’d become a police officer. Yes, he was in prison, but from the moment I made my first few arrests, my name was bound to crop up at some point inside. My reputation would be gauged and assessed and decided upon. Perhaps Mark had contributed to that process. Perhaps he’d reached his own devastating verdict long ago.

It was different for the others. They went about their lives in an entirely separate world. Some of them I hadn’t seen for years. A few – like David – I’d run into occasionally. But any contact I’d had was always fleeting, awkward and painful.

Take Rachel. She was recently divorced from a session musician she’d married and had lived with in London, and now she was back home running her mother’s hair salon. She’d taken over last year following her mum’s diagnosis with (I’d heard) chronic MS. Six weeks back, I’d summoned my courage and made an appointment for a cut and blow-dry, giving the girl on the phone my first name only. Rachel was chatting to a colleague behind the counter when I arrived. She looked pretty good, considering. A little too thin, perhaps. The skin a touch dark and swollen around her eyes. But she was dressed in a stylish black outfit that showed off her gym-honed figure, her blonde hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and her make-up was flawless.

I could see that she was startled when I showed up but she recovered soon enough. She touched my arm and smiled warmly, then settled me in a chair, rested her hands on my shoulders, and stared at my face in the mirror with an expression that made her look as if she’d been gripped by a sudden tide of nausea.

I told her I was sorry about her mum. She said how much she appreciated that and then she took a deep breath and began fussing with my hair, talking about how we might update and rework my style, just as she always used to. And for a few precious minutes, I began to believe that perhaps I’d been wrong. Perhaps things could get back to how they used to be. But once my hair had been washed and shampooed by one of the trainees and I’d returned to the chair, I found that another stylist was taking over. Rachel sent her apologies. Apparently she’d received an urgent call from her mother’s care assistant and had had to leave.

All of us still lived on the island. All of us were getting by. But the truth was that none of us had moved on and I guessed that maybe we never would. It seemed hard to believe we could be friends again. Seemed even harder to imagine that we might ever speak about the night when everything had changed for us. And now another Hop-tu-naa was here. Another reminder of what we’d done. Another anniversary of Mum’s disappearance.

People say that time heals but they lie about that. Take it from me, the best time can do is numb you. The most you can hope for is that you might begin to forget for just a little while. But time is circular. The same dates come around again and again, year after year. They never lose the power to hurt. They never fail to take another little piece of you. I was living proof that one night can torment you for ever.

You’ve given the task you’ve set yourself an enormous amount of thought. You’ve considered every possible angle in every conceivable detail. To an average person, the process you’ve gone through would have been daunting in the extreme. Even for you, it’s been highly frustrating.

So perhaps the most remarkable thing is how simple everything has now become. It seems counter-intuitive to you. When you started, you believed the solution would have to be very complicated. The nature of what you had planned seemed to demand it and you’re a highly intelligent individual, capable of generating a vast number of alternative scenarios.

But of course you were wrong. After evaluating and testing all of the options, you discounted any that contained a flaw. And the more options you dismissed, the fewer that remained, until eventually, there was only one possibility left to you.

Everything begins and ends with your target’s car.

I used my key to let myself into Dad’s place. Strange how I thought of our family home in that way now. I couldn’t say for sure when the transformation had taken root in my mind. Was it when Mum disappeared? When she was declared officially dead seven years later and Dad used the life insurance pay-out to buy the house from our landlord? Or was it when I moved into my own starkly modern apartment in the first few months of my policing career?

It wasn’t as if Dad had redecorated. The chintzy wallpaper and curtains were the same as always. The downstairs carpets had been refreshed but Dad had stuck with the familiar brown-beige weave that I’d scrambled over as a kid. And although he’d replaced the sofa and armchair in the living room, the floral fabric was just the kind of thing Mum would have chosen.

Stepping in through the front door, I decided the difference was marked by two things in particular. One was the funky man-scent that permeated the house. The other was the general clutter and mess.

I entered the front room.

‘What do you reckon?’ Dad was supporting a large picture frame on the dining table, holding it up in front of his chest, an aerosol can of spray glue set down beside him. The poster inside the frame was slightly wrinkled and bubbled. It featured a photograph of a guy on a motorbike. The bike and the rider’s leathers were plastered in gaudy slogans and brand names. The image had been signed across the bottom right-hand corner in permanent marker. ‘A hundred quid.’

‘You high on glue, Dad?’

‘Oh, come on. It’s Guy Martin.’

‘It’s a con. I should arrest you under the Trade Descriptions Act.’

‘It’s his signature.’

I lifted one of the plastic grocery bags I was carrying and pointed a finger towards a black permanent marker on the table next to the glue. ‘
Really?
’

‘His signature, reinterpreted by me.’

‘Reinterpreted how many times so far?’

Dad glanced behind him at the array of signed prints scattered around the room. They were propped against the walls and the display cabinet. They were balanced on chairs and lying face-up on the floor.

‘Nineteen.’

‘And which one is the original?’

‘See, that’s the clever part. Can’t tell, can you, officer?’

I pushed my mouth to one side, scanning the possibilities. I skirted the table and circled the room, getting down on my haunches a couple of times. Then I moved over to the right-hand corner and nudged a frame with my toe.

‘This one.’

Dad scowled. ‘How did you know that?’

‘Easy. You always place the original furthest away from the door.’

The framed prints with counterfeit signatures weren’t the only items of TT memorabilia in the room. There were also boxes of baseball caps, T-shirts and key rings, as well as plenty of scale-model bikes in perspex cases. Not all of the merchandise was signed but a lot of it was. Every June, Dad set up a market stall at the TT grandstand. He spent the rest of his spare time throughout the year compiling his stock.

‘What do you think Mum would make of all this?’

It was something I’d asked him before, though the question held more weight today.

‘She’d tell me to get busy.’ It was the answer he always gave. ‘She’d tell me I could take her on a nice holiday once all the suckers have given me their cash.’

His voice became pinched at the end and he turned from me to lower his latest framed print to the ground. I could see the bald spot on the crown of his head. A year ago, it had been a speckled disc of callused skin about the size of a ten-pence piece. In another twelve months, I guessed, it would be more like the circumference of a tennis ball.

‘I got you some fruit, Dad.’ I dumped the grocery bags down on the table. ‘It’s a new kind of miracle food. You don’t even need to microwave it.’

He grunted.

‘And some vegetables. You remember what those are, right?’

‘Uh huh. Funny-looking things. They make the bottom of the fridge smell bad.’

‘You’re supposed to take them out and boil them.’

‘Not me. Sounds cruel.’

I sighed and smoothed my hand across the protective foam cover Dad had laid over the dining table. It was the same cover, now cracked and peeling, that Mum had rolled out across the polished surface whenever I’d wanted to do some arts and crafts. We’d sat next to one another right here working on my witch’s costume and, for a moment, I could almost visualise the two of us huddled side by side with Mum stroking my plaited hair as I bent low over a cardboard star, sprinkling glitter from a tube.

What had she been thinking, I wondered? Did she have any sense that she would be leaving me?

It hurt to think that I’d never know.

Dad held his arms out to me and I moved in for a hug, burying my face in his chest. His cardigan needed laundering.

‘Thanks for bringing the flowers. She always liked lilies.’

‘I remember.’

The bouquet was poking out of one of the grocery bags. Dad would be taking the arrangement down to the promenade at Port St Mary later. Nan would be going with him.

‘You could come.’ He rested his chin on top of my head.

‘I have to work, Dad. I told you, it’s the shift patterns.’

‘Strange things those shift patterns. They seemed to fall on this date last year, too.’

‘Dad . . .’

He leaned back from me and smiled in that particularly sad way of his, as if the world was conspiring to meet all his sorry expectations yet again.

‘It’s OK, love. You don’t need to explain. I understand.’

I rocked back, unsure, at first, if he’d used the words deliberately. But his attitude hadn’t changed. His cheerless smile hadn’t faltered. He didn’t know what he’d said. I could see that now. He mightn’t remember, but I did.

Back a little under six years ago, to a frenzied afternoon just a handful of days after we’d fled from the Caine mansion. I was in a terrible state by then. I hadn’t slept or eaten properly for way too long. I was light-headed and sickly, my thinking jumbled, my nerves jagged as barbed wire beneath my skin.

I’d tried speaking with David a bunch of times but he’d told me, becoming increasingly testy as my phone calls racked up, that we had to forget the whole thing. He wouldn’t discuss what had happened, except to say that just thinking about it made him want to retch. He claimed that he’d been unable to get hold of Mark and wouldn’t know what to say to him even if he could. I doubted he’d tried particularly hard. I was the only one who knew that David had also kicked Edward. Neither one of us had mentioned it to the others.

Rachel was even harder to contact. Her mum said she was feeling ill whenever I rang. In desperation, I walked all the way to her parents’ bungalow in Onchan very late one night and raked my nails down her window, waiting until she pulled her curtain aside. She stood before me, her beautiful hair askew, her faded
Dirty Dancing
T-shirt knotted and sweat-crumpled. She wouldn’t let me in, so I whispered in hushed tones through a crack in her window, Rachel looking to me like a doomed patient who’d been struck down by some mystery illness and was trapped in an elaborate quarantine. I asked her what we should do, asked her over and over, but she just shook her head as though mystified, her face slackened and aged, eyes haunted and lost. The answers were beyond her. Beyond me. The question remained unresolved.

Then, early on an afternoon a day or so later, I glanced out through my bedroom window to see a face from my past – Jennifer Knox (now a detective sergeant) was approaching the front door of our house with a male colleague just behind. Knox was heavily pregnant with her second child by then, her belly low and swollen, her walk verging on a waddle. She must have sensed me watching her because she looked up and saw me behind the pane of breath-misted glass. The world around her slowed and blurred until there was only her face – her eyes – before she looked down and the spell was broken.

I listened to Dad’s footsteps in the hall; to the note of surprise and confusion in his voice when he answered the door; to the low, serious monologue from DS Knox.

I knew then that the moment she came upstairs, the moment she walked into my bedroom, I would tell her everything. Forget what it would do to my friends. Forget the profound and confused sense of gratitude I felt towards Mark, my utter hatred of Edward Caine. Forget, even, what had happened to Mum. When Knox considered me with those kind green eyes of hers, when I heard the soft purr of sympathy in the back of her throat, I would confess every last part of it. This woman who’d cared for us – for Dad and for me – she wasn’t someone I could deceive.

I almost welcomed it then, almost rushed towards the door and down the stairs to embrace DS Knox and my certain fate. I wanted it over. Wanted it done.

But I wasn’t prepared for what happened next – for the sound of the door closing and the vision of Dad being led away down the path to the marked police car and the cruel wait after he’d been driven away.

Four hours crawled by. I spent them all in my room. By the time Dad got back, tramping upstairs and standing slump-shouldered and slack-faced before me, I thought I would pass out from exhaustion and fear.

‘Edward Caine was attacked.’ His voice was distant and wretched. ‘It happened some time after 11 p.m. on Hop-tu-naa. Jennifer wanted to talk with me because of the coincidence with the date. One of her colleagues got the bright idea that I might have carried out some kind of misguided retribution attack.’

He looked at me then, grey-skinned and beaten-down and sadder than I could ever have imagined, and I saw that he knew. Saw that he could see the guilt oozing out of my pores.

‘He’s in hospital. In a coma. They don’t know if he’ll wake up. They don’t know if he’ll remember. He has some spinal injuries, apparently. They think he could be paralysed even if he does come round.’

I felt myself slump down on to the corner of my bed. Felt myself sink so much further inside.

‘I told Jennifer that I was here with you all night. I told her we were flicking through some old family photos of your mother until you fell asleep some time after midnight and I pulled a blanket over you on the sofa. She’ll want to talk to you about it at some point, to corroborate everything I’ve told them. But I don’t think that’ll be for a day or so. I said you had a fever. Said that’s why you’ve been in your room so much just lately.’

I gazed up, my head feeling almost too heavy to lift, my lungs emptied of air, and the room seemed to spin and dip and whirl. Dad’s face was blurred by the tears in my eyes.

‘You don’t need to explain,’ he told me. ‘I understand.’

And those were almost the last words he ever said to me about it. He never mentioned it directly again. Not even when Mark was arrested. Not even when the trial was taking place and the verdict came through. There was just one thing he added – a final coda after Mark was sentenced, unaware that it wasn’t necessary at all.
It’s good that you won’t be meeting up with your friends on the island any more
, he wrote in the middle of a letter he sent to me at university.
I know it’s a hard decision, but it’s the right one, Claire. I know your mother would think so, too.

But no matter how sickened with remorse and guilt I felt whenever I thought of Dad being taken away and questioned by DS Knox – a woman I’d sometimes felt, in a parallel world, might just have been able to make him happy again – if there was one thing I could cling to from that day, it was that remarkably, unexpectedly, Dad had come back to me. The morning after he was questioned, I woke to find him cooking me breakfast. He sat me down at the kitchen table, held my hands and told me in a tone of deep sincerity that there was a job he needed my help with. He said it was finally time for us to box up the last of Mum’s clothes and take away any of her possessions we no longer wanted. It was time we moved on.

And so we had, in a fashion. Not completely, perhaps. Never that. But enough to make a pretence at getting by. Enough so that I could find myself standing with Dad six years later, a jumble of faked merchandise surrounding us, and he could say those same words to me, unwittingly, and without the faintest awareness of how much they would twist inside my gut.

‘Gotta go,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll be thinking of you later.’

I went up on my toes and kissed his unshaven cheek, and then I hurried out of the room and away from the house, my car keys held tight in my fist, the metal teeth biting into my palm with just a hint of the pain I needed so badly to feel.