Dark Tides (21 page)

David drove us north beneath a featureless grey sky. Callum had bagged the front passenger seat, confining me to the rear. Punishment for the risk I’d taken by breaking into Edward’s room.

We didn’t talk much during the journey. Callum and David were pissed off with me and my mind was on other things. I spoke just enough to tell them how I’d lost my cool with Morgan and that I wasn’t any closer to uncovering the truth of what might be going on. I also explained to them about Bun-Bun, though his significance to me seemed to pass them by. In the years that had followed Mum’s disappearance, I’d sometimes wondered what had happened to him, aware that the only person capable of telling me was missing, too. Now I had my answer, but it was a half-answer at best, and the need to know more burned inside me like a fever.

Sitting there, holding Bun-Bun in my hands, I kept turning over thoughts of the last time I’d seen Dad. It had been a warm evening in August and I’d suggested that we go for a walk along the coast path at Scarlett Point. I’d hoped that talking to him on neutral territory might make things easier, which was a dumb idea, because the conversation I needed to have could only ever be hard.

‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ I began, which drew the kind of response I’d been expecting. Dad slowed and turned to me, eyes tightening into a wary squint against the sunlight reflecting off the mirror-flat sea. ‘It’s about Edward Caine.’

Dad released a gust of air, as if he’d been punched in the gut. He glanced away towards the three derelict brick limekilns positioned just along the shore.

‘I went to see him. I talked to him. About Mum.’

He clenched up, primed for another blow, and lowered his gaze to the folds of hard volcanic rock sloping down into the sea.

‘I asked him if he killed her.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ Dad’s voice was unsteady. So was his stance. He looked as if he might fall. ‘He’s dangerous, Claire. Especially after what you and your friends did to him.’

‘He doesn’t know about us. Only Mark.’

‘Your mother would never have been able to forgive what was done to him.’

‘Do you think I can forgive myself?’

He didn’t answer. He just breathed hard and fast through his nose, the air swelling his nostrils, expanding his chest.

‘He told me to ask you something,’ I said.

‘Don’t, Claire.’

‘I have to. I need to know.’

‘Please.’

His eyes were damp now. He looked stranded all of a sudden – lost and alone a very long way away.

‘The night Mum disappeared, the two of you were arguing.’ I gathered myself, talking through the sting in the back of my throat. ‘I remember it, Dad. And I want to know what you were fighting about. I want to know why.’

He looked at me then, from the far-off place where my words had taken him, the tears beginning to flow. He swallowed hard and he nodded, as if acknowledging a whispered voice only he could hear.

‘I’m sorry, Claire. I really am. But you asking me that . . .’ He broke off and took a moment to quell the tremor in his voice. ‘There are just some things that I can’t forgive, too.’

He placed a shaking hand on my shoulder and then he turned and trudged away from me, back along the gravel path to his car. He slammed his door shut behind him and he drove off in a hurry, abandoning me to make my own way home. But as I drifted along the shoreline, kicking pebbles and looking over the rocks towards the abandoned limekilns, I couldn’t help thinking about the one question he hadn’t asked me. I’d told him that I’d confronted Edward and had asked him whether he’d killed Mum. But Dad hadn’t quizzed me about Edward’s response. It was almost as if he hadn’t needed to know.

Back in the BMW, David interrupted my thoughts by clearing his throat. He lifted a hand from the steering wheel as we sped towards our destination. ‘Has it occurred to you that this could all be a huge mistake?’

I blinked at him. ‘In what way?’

‘If your theory is right, if somebody is taking revenge on us, we could be making it worse by trying to find out who it is.’

‘Worse, how? Than being killed?’

He found my eyes in the rearview mirror.

‘There is another possibility.’ Callum turned and looked between us. He had an eager expression, like a dog expecting a treat. ‘It could be one of us.’

He chuckled, but right then, it didn’t feel like a joke.

I kept my voice level and my gaze fixed on David as I asked, ‘What would be the motive?’

‘Who needs a motive? Maybe one of us is just a wacko.’ He grinned madly, tongue lolling from his mouth, eyes wide and roving. ‘Or maybe it’s both of us working together and we’ve tricked you into coming out here to the middle of nowhere. That’s how it’d be in a horror movie.’

‘I don’t watch horror movies.’

‘Yeah, and that’s your major weakness. You’d be vulnerable to any old stunt we wanted to pull.’

I finally broke eye contact with David to glance out of my side window at the rush of hedgerows and low fields speeding by at our side.

‘You shouldn’t talk that way.’

‘Just trying to lighten the mood.’

‘Well, don’t. And you can forget about coming inside with us, too.’

‘What? How come? That’s not fair.’

‘Three is too many. It’s too confrontational.’

‘
Too
confrontational? You’re going to accuse him of murder, Cooper.’

I nodded. ‘My point exactly.’

The atmosphere inside Jurby prison felt strained and charged. Maybe that was just me. Or maybe it was the vibes David was giving off. He was fidgeting in his chair, clenching his fists, jiggling his legs.

We were sitting next to one another in front of a reinforced glass screen that separated us from a small, walled-in cubicle. A waist-high laminated counter extended for a short distance on either side of the glass. In other circumstances, we could have been a couple waiting to speak to a teller behind a bank counter. Perhaps we were here to make a mortgage application or to request an extension of our overdraft. That would explain David’s nerves.

Not his outfit, though. For once, he wasn’t wearing a suit. He had on a blue striped shirt over a pair of light denim jeans and some blue training shoes. The shirt was open at the collar, revealing a hint of the muscles around his neck and chest.

‘Relax,’ I told him.

‘Oh, sure. I don’t know why I’m getting worked up. First time I’ve visited Mark and we’re about to accuse him of trying to kill us.’

I touched his knee under the counter. ‘I’ll do the talking. OK?’

He looked down at my hand and all of a sudden the gesture felt more intimate than I’d intended. I thought about pulling away but just then a door opened at the back of the cubicle and Mark shuffled through. He was wearing tracksuit bottoms, a faded blue T-shirt and a bright orange tabard. The door locked behind him.

‘The happy couple.’ He dropped heavily into his seat. The holes that had been drilled through the base of the glass screen distorted his voice, lending it a robotic quality.

I slid my hand away from David’s knee. ‘What’s with the booth?’

There were only two booths in the entire visiting room. It wasn’t until we’d been led inside with all the other visitors that a prison officer had taken us aside to tell us we couldn’t talk with Mark out in the open today.

‘That’d be because of this.’ Mark pointed to the livid swelling around his right eye. ‘And this, I guess.’ His bottom lip was crusted with blood and criss-crossed with surgical stitches. He looked like he’d gone a couple of rounds with a guy who was determined to remodel his face.

‘How about those?’ I indicated the nasty cuts and abrasions that littered his knuckles.

‘Sure that didn’t help.’

He smirked, as though acknowledging a private joke, then tapped his mangled fingers on the countertop. He tilted his shaved head to look at David and the harsh fluorescent light shimmered off the purple bruising around his puffy eye. His lip curled, exposing a chipped and jagged incisor.

‘Got to follow the rules. Isn’t that right, mate?’

‘It’s good to see you.’

‘Yeah? Maybe you should find a way of getting yourself locked up in here. We could see each other all the time.’

He lowered his chin into the doughy fat beneath his neck. He’d put on more weight since I’d last seen him. Lost even more hair. He looked ten years older than either of us, and if it was a shock for me to see him like this, then David must have felt like the witness to some bizarre time-travel experiment.

‘Happy Hop-tu-naa,’ Mark sneered at him. ‘So is this your big dare this year? Coming to visit me?’

I shifted around in my chair, trying to draw some of his venom. ‘Did you read my letters?’

‘I read them.’ He rolled out his bottom lip, the stitches straining to hold the severed flesh together. His attention was still fixed on David.

‘So then you know about Scott and Rachel.’

I hadn’t told him my theory about the connection between the two deaths. I hadn’t mentioned the footprints. But then, I didn’t really need to.

Mark smiled very slowly. ‘It must really blow to be you guys this year.’

At last, he turned to face me. There was a wet glint in the jet-black pupil of his good eye.

It was too much for David. He crouched forwards over the counter and lowered his mouth to the perforations in the screen. ‘Are you behind all this?’

‘Say that again.’

‘Were you responsible for their deaths?’

Mark lashed out and slapped his palm against the glass. The thickened panel wobbled and flexed. David flinched and backed away.

The room fell silent around us. Hurried footsteps approached, loud and percussive in the sudden hush. I waited for the prison officer to appear at my shoulder. I sensed him standing there, assessing the situation. He looked down at me, then at David, then at Mark.

‘Keep it civil, Quiggin.’

Mark’s fingers and palm were still spread against the screen, his skin looking jaundiced where it pressed up against the glass. He was breathing hard, nostrils flared, chest heaving. A beat or two longer and he peeled his hand away, leaving behind a sticky imprint.

‘First warning.’ The officer looked at each of us in turn. ‘If I have to come back, this visit is over. Understood?’

He lingered a moment more, then drifted away.

The room began to fill with the noise of murmured conversation once more. Mark rubbed at the hairs on his swollen forearms.

‘I know we haven’t stayed in touch all that well, Dave, but the truth is I don’t get out much these days.’

‘You could be paying someone.’ David’s voice was fast and low. ‘Someone you met in here.’

‘And why would I do that? I took the rap for you lot. I kept you all out of it.’

‘You were the one who
lost
it.’ David’s throat had flushed red. ‘None of us were involved in that.’

I glanced across at him but he didn’t flinch. Maybe he’d convinced himself it was true.

‘Funny, but I seem to remember you helped me plan the whole thing. Seem to remember it was your idea in the first place.’ He leered at me. ‘Trying to impress somebody.’

‘Sounds like you resent us,’ I told him.

‘Oh, I do. You most of all, Claire. You were special.’

I glared hard at him through the glass, scared he was about to betray me, willing him not to do it. He smiled and raised an eyebrow. He was enjoying the taunt.

David drilled a finger down hard into the countertop. ‘So maybe you decided to act on your resentment. Maybe you thought you’d take some revenge.’

‘By killing you one by one? By hiring a rent-a-psycho from this place? That’s your big idea?’

‘It’s possible.’

Mark snorted and scrubbed his hand over his bruised and swollen face. ‘Listen, this might surprise you, but I’d like to get out of here one day. I want a life of my own. Maybe meet someone, have kids. All the stuff I gave you a shot at. Not that you ever thanked me.’

‘
Thanked
you?’ David’s finger was bending so hard it looked like it might break. ‘You nearly wrecked our lives.’

‘Yeah? What’s so bad about your life now, David? Want to switch?’

I placed a hand on David’s wrist, pulling him back, his fingertip squeaking against the laminate.

‘So, just to be clear, you’re saying it’s not you.’

‘No, it’s not me. But you know that already. Or you should do, Claire, if we really understand each other like I used to think we did.’

Mark slumped back in his chair, his arms down at his sides, his legs spread wide. An open gesture. Hard to tell if it was genuine or not.

I didn’t look across at David, but I didn’t really need to. I could sense how bad his reaction was by the pleasure Mark took from it.

‘If it’s anyone, it’ll be old man Caine.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘He
saw
you, Claire. All of you. You really think that’s something he’s likely to forget?’

‘But we weren’t the ones who hurt him.’

‘Don’t kid yourself. It only happened because of you, Claire. It was all for your benefit.’ He sighed and stood up and sauntered to the rear of the cubicle, thumping a huge fist on the door. Then his shoulders dropped and he turned and looked back at me, a sorry pleading in his eyes. ‘David wasn’t the only one trying to impress you that night. You know that, right? Watch your back this year.’

The door was heaved open by a prison officer and Mark passed through without saying another word. Then the door was slammed and locked behind him and I found myself staring at the handprint he’d left on the glass screen. Crazy, perhaps, but it seemed to be reaching for me.

Callum had plenty of questions for us on the drive away from the prison but I didn’t feel much like answering them. He wanted to know what Mark looked like, how he’d reacted when he saw us, if he’d asked about him, whether we thought he’d send someone to target us this year.

I zoned out, leaving David to respond in a curt monotone. I was pretty sure he was shaken by more than just the prison experience and the shock of seeing how Mark had changed. He hadn’t said anything to me yet – not directly, anyway – but his attitude suggested a full-on man-sulk about Mark’s talk of the connection between us. It was true that Mark had given me something nobody else ever could – a form of retribution, no matter how squalid, for what I still believed Edward had done to my family. But even so, it wasn’t a subject I was eager to dwell on, let alone discuss with David, and especially not today.

Besides, I was too busy thinking back to the behaviour of the female prison officer when we’d returned to the visitors’ centre to collect our belongings. She’d looked at me a little too closely, for a little too long, as I’d scrawled my name next to the time out box in her ledger and slipped my watch on to my wrist. It wasn’t hard to guess why. They must have been extra efficient at running the visitor log through their computer this afternoon. My name must have been flagged. The officer, or one of her colleagues, must have called a centralised police number. My visit would have been noted. And, assuming my guess was right, it would have prompted another phone call, maybe two. Then the prison officer would have received a call back. She would have been asked a series of questions that would have been sufficient to arouse her curiosity.

I was pretty confident those questions would have come from DI Shimmin. There’d been a tension between us throughout the past year. On the face of it, he’d been supervising me closely and looking out for me because of the trauma of Rachel’s death, but it was more than just that. He was an intelligent man, a shrewd investigator, and it was obvious to me that he hadn’t bought into the idea that her death was a complete accident. He’d been aware of the significance of  31 October to me. He’d called me into his office on my first day back at work following the incident, on the pretext of checking how I was feeling, and he’d grilled me on whether the three of us had any enemies or knew of anyone who might wish to harm us. I’d evaded him, made out I was too upset to discuss it, and there’d been a distance between us ever since, a cool assessment in his deep-set eyes whenever he looked at me from across the squad room. And now here I was exactly one year later, visiting Mark Quiggin, the man Shimmin had put behind bars for the vicious attack on Edward Caine many Hop-tu-naas ago. He had to be intrigued by that. He had to want to dig deeper.

The one thing I could be grateful for was that Callum hadn’t joined us inside the prison. His presence, following his involvement in the climbing incident, would have been a coincidence too many. As it was, the doubts and concerns had to be stacking up in Shimmin’s mind, and I was certain to be summoned into his office for an explanation when I returned to work in two days’ time.

I reached for Bun-Bun and smoothed my thumb over his swollen belly. I could worry about all that then. Meanwhile, I had more than enough to contend with, starting with making sure I was still alive after tonight.