Dark Tides (28 page)

‘. . . Remember this?’

I flinched and he poked the knife into my throat. My skin tightened, then broke. I stilled instantly, but when he squeezed my nipple, I had to fight hard to stop myself from reaching up to break his wrist.

‘Do you think about it often, our time in the woods? I know I do.’

He sniffed my neck, then moaned faintly.

‘Oh, I remember that smell, Claire. Fear.’

He pushed his face so close to my own that his eyelashes brushed my skin.

‘I imagine you’re scared because you know what I’m capable of. At least, you think you do.’

He wiggled the knife and a thread of hot blood seeped down my neck. He maintained the pressure on the knife as he lowered his hand from my breast and freed the can of CS spray from my grip. He tossed the can away into the unlit fireplace, then did the same with the torch. He was wearing plastic disposable gloves. They worried me a lot.

‘Wouldn’t want another accident, would we? Now, where’s your phone?’

I didn’t answer him. He patted me down until he located my mobile in the front pocket of my jeans. He plucked it free, dropped it to the floor and stamped on it.

‘Where’s David?’

‘Oh, that’s better. I was hoping you’d ask me that.’

Morgan stepped away, teetering a little, almost as if he was drunk. The whites of his bulging eyes were pinkish and gelatinous, his lips plump and wet. The knife was bigger and more terrifying than I’d imagined. The blade was curved and serrated, the steel glinting with the same dark light that shone in his enlarged pupils.

‘But we’ll get to David. We have so much to talk about first.’

He crossed to a window and pulled aside the grimy net curtain, peering out at the squally twilight.

‘I hope you listened to me and came alone, Claire.’

I didn’t say anything to that. But then, Morgan didn’t seem to expect a response. I had the strangest feeling that he wasn’t interacting with the real me, here in this room. I got the impression he’d been rehearsing all of this for so long that it didn’t matter what I said or did.

‘Do I look ill to you, Claire?’

‘I think you’re sick. Does that count?’

He released the curtain and turned back to me with a puerile smirk. He was thin and pale, his chest almost concave, his stomach oddly bloated. The jeans he had on sagged from his angular hips, and his black cagoule, slick with rain, looked at least two sizes too big. He’d raised the hood up over his head, pulling the drawstrings so tight that the material had puckered around his pinched and sunken face.

‘Father always liked to tell people I had this fabulously rare condition. When I was a child, he told everyone I had to play by myself so that I didn’t suffer from shocks or emotional turmoil.’

‘Your Addison’s.’

‘Yes, but it was only halfway true. I have the disease – just not the polyglandular strain. My symptoms are a little more mundane. The truth is Father didn’t make me play by myself to protect
me
. He did it to protect other people. You, in particular, Claire. I wanted so badly for us to play together.’

Morgan extended his hand, as if I was a rare painting he wanted to caress from across the room. I sensed that now might be a good opportunity to charge him. If I could wrench the knife away, I’d have a shot at taking him down. He didn’t look to be in good shape.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that, Claire.’ He tipped his head on an angle and clucked his tongue, then reached into a pocket of his cagoule with his free hand and removed a mobile phone. It was David’s. ‘You want to know if you can save him, don’t you?’

I held myself back. I didn’t know if David was alive or even if he was close by. It was possible Morgan was bluffing, but then again, he had David’s mobile, his BMW was parked outside and the cottage did belong to him.

‘Why did Edward lie? Why did he isolate you?’

‘Oh, because I like hurting people.’ He tapped his forehead with the hilt of the knife. The nylon of his hood crinkled and deformed. ‘It’s my
thing
.’

‘You killed my friends?’

He smiled widely, his teeth jarringly white and perfect in the dim-lit room. When he spoke again, his voice took on a jeering, sing-song lilt. ‘Not only them, Claire.’

I stared into his eyes and finally – after all these years, after all the wondering and the hurt and the doubt – I knew.

‘Hop-tu-naa,’ he sang, in a faint whisper. ‘My mother’s gone away.’

‘No.’

‘Ask me,’ he said, and I was reminded in that moment of his father demanding the same thing of me.

You want to ask me about your mother, Claire . . . You’d like to ask me if I killed her . . . Ask me, Claire. Ask, and I’ll tell you.

So Edward and Morgan shared more than just genetics. They also shared the cruel desire to taunt.

I shook my head slowly, trying to deny it to myself, even as I sensed in my gut that it was true.

‘She should never have come back that night, Claire. She shouldn’t have shouted at Father. She said such terrible things.’

‘You killed her?’

‘My first time using a knife.’ He swivelled his blade in the air, admiring it, until he caught the appalled look I gave him. ‘Oh, not this one, Claire. It was a kitchen knife. Quite blunt. I went to your mother after she finished yelling at Father and I told her I couldn’t sleep. I asked her to make me some warm milk. I still smell the burning saucepan sometimes. It reeked so badly that Father came in before I was quite finished. He wept, you know, when he saw her down on the floor. I never did understand why.’

‘But you were just a boy.’

He contemplated his reflection in the blade. ‘She wasn’t my first, Claire. Does that make it any easier to believe?’

His mouth formed itself into a crooked smile that might just as easily have been a sneer. He was goading me. Testing me.

I thought about what he’d said, and in my mind I pictured Edward’s young wife, Marisha, falling from that high balcony, her white nightgown billowing out around her. But in the vision she was no longer alone. She hadn’t fainted, I realised. And she hadn’t jumped. She’d been pushed by her son.

‘Your own mother? Why?’

‘Because she knew me, Claire. She understood my true nature. She wanted me taken away. She kept urging Father to have me locked up somewhere in England – an institution of some kind. I scared her.’

‘So you murdered her?’

‘I hadn’t planned it. Not exactly. She woke up in such a state that morning. I’d let myself into her room while she was sleeping. She was so terribly vain. She loved her hair much more than me. I knelt by the side of her bed and set fire to the ends with a lighter. She was woken by the smell, I think. She screamed and flailed quite wildly. She slapped me very hard. Then she fled from her room. She was running to Father, screeching about how he must have me taken away. I chased her on to the balcony. She thumped into the banister. I didn’t have to push her as hard as you might think.’

‘And Edward let you get away with it?’

‘He didn’t see what happened. Only what followed.’

‘But her hair?’

‘He said she’d done it to herself. That she’d been depressed. He lied for me.’

‘And Mum?’ The words shook loose from my trembling lips. ‘You killed her just for arguing with Edward?’

‘Not only that. It was what she said to him. She was raving at him, threatening to tell everyone the truth about his child. About me. I couldn’t have that. I wouldn’t risk being separated from Father.’

I took a moment to process what he’d said.

‘But you hated Edward.’

The blood drained from his face. His musculature slackened, skin sagging as if it was melting, and for a fleeting second, with the black hood pulled taut around his face, he looked just like the macabre ghost mask Callum had worn on my first Hop-tu-naa with the group.

‘Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. I loved him.’

‘You confined him to your childhood bedroom. You left the windows open. He was cold. He was bored.’

‘I protected him. Like he protected me. I made sure he was safe.’

And perhaps, I thought, that was love to Morgan. Or perhaps it was as close as he could get. He took pleasure in tormenting people and I guessed that isolating Edward was part of that. But it was a twisted love he’d learned from his father. It was a pattern repeating itself.

‘I used to keep you safe, too, Claire. I came to you in those woods because I knew you were afraid. I could see how alone you were. You needed me then.’

A cold note of fear chimed deep inside of me. I squirmed at the memory of his touch – at the way it had stayed with me all these years.

‘You frightened me.’

‘But you didn’t scream. Why didn’t you call out?’

I didn’t have an answer for him. I hadn’t understood my response back then. I still couldn’t all these years later.

‘Was that the only time? Or did you watch me at other times, too?’

‘I watched you as often as I could. Especially at Hop-tu-naa. I knew how difficult it must be for you. Back then you were my friend. You were special. The only one.’

He said those words with the deepest sincerity, and I heard in his voice that they were true for him, that he’d never seen it any other way. I thought of the card he’d delivered to me that first year after Mum had disappeared. The careful crayon note inside.

I’M SORRY ABOUT YOUR MUM. I KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE BECAUSE MY MUM IS GONE, TOO. SHALL WE BE FRIENDS?

I’d never answered him and, foolishly, I’d believed it was a request that needed my assent. But it hadn’t been that way for Morgan.

‘Then why kill the others? Why put my life at risk and bring me here now?’

‘Because you attacked Father. You hurt him very badly. You were my friend, Claire. You betrayed me.’

‘
Mark
attacked him.’

‘But the rest of you were there. You were all part of it. Father didn’t tell me there was more than one of you for years. I think he was afraid of what I might do.’

‘But that changed?’

‘You left him paralysed, Claire. He’d be so sad sometimes. So frustrated.’

And once, I guessed, when the despair really took hold, he’d given in to his blackest desires, his need for revenge, and he’d provided Morgan with just enough information to set him on us.

After that, there was no stopping him, even supposing Edward had wanted to. His only sure option would have been to hand his son over to the police but he’d already protected Morgan after he’d killed his own mother, after he’d murdered Mum. So I hadn’t been completely wrong about Edward. He had been complicit in Mum’s death.

‘I knew the six of you always got together on Hop-tu-naa because I used to watch you. I knew you blamed Father for your mother’s death.’ He was speaking as though it was a simple statement of fact – an equation that was always destined to result in an inevitable outcome. ‘You shouldn’t have done. You should have blamed her.’

I let the taunt go. There were so many more questions I wanted to ask. But then I realised that there were no explanations he could provide that would satisfy me. None of it could ever make sense. He’d killed my friends because he wanted to, the same way he’d set fire to his mother’s hair just to see it burn.

‘Where’s David?’

‘He’s secure.’

‘Is he alive?’

Morgan tugged back the sleeve of his cagoule. He raised his wrist and consulted his watch. ‘He should be. Just.’

I tried not to think too hard about what that might mean.

‘Let him go, Morgan.’ There was a hitch in my voice that I couldn’t quite control. ‘For me.’

‘I might. It depends.’

‘On?’

‘How much you want it. You need to prove how much he means to you, Claire.’

‘How?’

‘I’ll show you.’ He motioned with the knife towards the door. ‘Come.’

Morgan followed me outside, the knife held in front of him. I lifted my hand to my neck. When I lowered my cupped palm the rain pelted the slick of blood I found there, diluting it into rivulets that streamed down my wrist.

The wind knocked me sideways, gusts of sea spray blasting against me until I could taste salt on my lips. I trudged on towards the garage, the big timber doors rattling ahead of me.

‘Inside.’

Morgan was standing next to the BMW and for a moment I asked myself if David could be in the car. The windows were tinted, making it difficult for me to see into the rear. Perhaps he was in the boot.

‘Inside,’ Morgan said again, and this time he pressed the flat of the knife between my shoulder blades.

I raised my hands.

‘Stop delaying.’

I grappled with the bucking doors, forcing one of them open against the wind. I’d left the lights on inside the garage. The interior looked just the same as before, except this time the wind followed me in, catching hold of the heavy rope noose and swaying it above the stepladder.

The door slammed behind Morgan. Rainwater dripped from his cagoule on to the concrete floor.

I watched him standing there, panting hard, that peculiar giddy light in his swollen eyes, and I asked myself what had changed for him this year? Why had events accelerated? Was it because he’d had to hire somebody else to murder Mark, meaning he hadn’t quenched his lust for violence? Was it because Shimmin was now actively looking for a murderer and he sensed his time was short? Or had his father’s death triggered the response? Maybe Edward had exercised some warped form of restraint over Morgan – restricting him to one killing a year – and now that he was gone, Morgan was free to wipe out the rest of us.

I could have asked him, I supposed. But right then, I had more pressing concerns.

‘Is David close?’

A smile tugged at his blued lips. He motioned with the knife for me to step further into the room.

I circled the noose and the stepladder.

‘I heard you were in hospital near Manchester.’

Looking at him now, I could well believe that he was suffering from some kind of severe kidney complaint that had made his Addison’s much worse. It would explain his pale complexion and his weight loss.

‘Not hospital.’ He shook his head, slow and steady, keeping time with the noose either by accident or design. ‘That comes later. For now, I’m a patient in a private clinic with a specialism in rehab. I’m addicted to painkillers, Claire. I used to filch them from Father.’ He showed me his teeth. ‘My therapist says I have an obsessive personality.’

And the rest.

‘But the clinic will keep patient records. Those records will show that you were discharged. And passenger manifests at the airport or on the ferry service will prove you came back to the island. If you’ve harmed David, if you kill me, the police will come for you this year.’

‘Like last year?’ His grin spread and I could tell he was relishing this. ‘I’m rich, Claire. It’s like you said to me once – money can buy you so many things.’

‘Shimmin’s at the prison right now looking into Mark’s death. If you think you can bribe your way out of a murder charge, you’re insane.’

He shook his head, water dribbling down from his hood into his eyes.

‘Then what? You paid somebody at the airport or the ferry company to remove your name from a passenger list? If that’s your solution, you’ve wasted your money. Somebody on your plane or your sailing will have recognised you. We live on a small island, Morgan.’

‘Maybe not as small as you think.’

I was edging backwards from him, each tiny step giving me a little more space, a fraction more time. A burst of wind slammed into the wall behind me with such force that I whipped my head round.

‘Plenty of empty fields in the north, Claire. If you know where to look, you can find one that’s flat enough for a small plane to land. And if you have enough cash, you can pay a pilot to fly wherever you like, no questions asked.’

‘Someone will still have seen.’

‘Seen what? A two-seater coming in to land? Maybe. But they won’t have seen me. And that’s all that counts.’

He ducked under the noose, advancing on me fast. I widened my stance, raising my fists in front of my face.

He stopped and curled his lip, weighing the knife in his gloved hand.

‘Where’s David?’

‘You’re getting warm, Claire.’

I glanced behind me at the lawnmower. There was an old watering can next to it on the floor. It was metal and scabbed with rust and could maybe function as an improvised weapon.

But not yet.

I looked over towards the opposite wall, at the empty peg board and the chest freezer.

The freezer was one hell of an old thing, off-white and boxy. A frayed electrical cable connected it to a discoloured plug and socket on the wall. The freezer was humming. Every ten seconds or so, it shuddered and shook.

There was also something else very noticeable about the freezer. Something that made my stomach flip.

The hasp of a padlock had been slipped through the metal catch that was holding the lid shut. The padlock was a heavy-duty brass item, the metal corroded as if by years of rain and wind. It was the lock that had been missing from the garage doors.

I felt my knees flex.

‘Warmer,’ Morgan said.

My feet carried me towards the freezer, my shoe prints wet against the concrete floor.

‘Warmer.’

I reached out with my hand, then pulled back momentarily. I gently rested my fingers on the cool plastic.

‘You’re hot, Claire. Very, very hot.’

‘Let him out.’

‘Relax, Claire. He has enough air for another few minutes, at least. Plenty of time for you to save him.’

I glanced back at Morgan. He was standing perhaps ten paces away with his arms at his sides, the knife held loosely in one fist. Behind him, the rope was barely swinging, the noose beginning to still just above the top of the stepladder.

‘Only one way to save him, Claire. You know how this ends.’

I looked at the noose, then the stepladder.

‘Climb the ladder and all of this is over. I’ll let David go. You have my word, Claire.’

Standing there, fingers spread, an earnest cast to his colourless face and probing eyes, he looked as if he really believed that would mean something to me.

‘So what’s the plan, Morgan? You want to frame me? That’ll never work. Shimmin won’t buy it.’

But right now, I wasn’t so sure about that. I was a suspect in Mark’s death. I’d attacked a police officer and fled the scene. If Shimmin found me hanging here, with David dead in the freezer, then maybe it would be enough.

‘David?’ I thumped my fist down on the freezer lid, then stood very still and listened hard.

No response.

‘David. Answer me, David.’

I kicked at the base of the freezer. I pummelled it with my palms.

Nothing.

I turned, unsure what to think, and a ripple of concern passed across Morgan’s face.

‘Move back.’ He sliced the knife through the air. ‘Step aside.’

I staggered clear until the backs of my legs butted up against the lawnmower. Morgan kept a wary eye on me as he slipped one hand inside a pocket on his cagoule and removed a small brass key. He checked my position again, then unlocked the padlock with the barest click, wedging the heel of his left hand under the freezer lid and standing poised with the knife bunched in his right fist.

‘Stay right where you are.’

I didn’t. I couldn’t. I went up on my toes to peer over his shoulder. He eased the lid open, releasing a puff of dry ice.

Until that moment, I still believed David could be alive. I thought he might have decided he only had one possible gambit – to stay very still and very silent until Morgan opened the freezer to check on him. I reached down for the rusted watering can.

But David didn’t rear up. He didn’t attack.

Morgan wafted at the haze of chilled air, then peered down.

I caught a glimpse of David, eyes shut, mouth parted. His skin was blued, his lips mauve. His face was speckled with blood and his hair and eyebrows were frosted.

Morgan slammed the lid closed.

‘Oops. My mistake. I really thought he’d last a little longer.’

I looked from him to the freezer, and back again. Then I moved on instinct. I moved very fast. I yelled out and turned sideways on, faking with the watering can in my left fist, stamping down with my right foot and lashing out with my right hand, aiming for Morgan’s Adam’s apple with an abrupt slashing movement.

Maybe I was too slow or too clumsy. Maybe Morgan just got lucky. Either way, he dodged my blow and used my momentum to whirl me round and twist my arm up behind my back. He slammed my face against the freezer. I dropped the watering can. It felt like my arm would break at any moment. I struggled, but I stopped when Morgan pressed the knife against my cheek.

He was deceptively strong. Much tougher than I’d given him credit for. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by that. He’d already overpowered David and dumped him in the freezer.

I squirmed away from the knife and he levered my arm a fraction higher. I felt tendons strain and pop.

‘Tell me, Claire. Did he ever confront you about the time you cheated with Mark? My guess is he didn’t. Too weak. But I made sure he knew about it. I was only a few rows behind you in the cinema that day. I saw the two of you kiss. Saw you go into his filthy hovel together. I called and left a message for David at the airport. I couldn’t leave my name, of course. But I really thought he should know.’

‘You’re hurting me.’

‘I can hurt you a lot worse. Believe me.’

The freezer juddered and shook again. Some kind of temperature sensor must have kicked in and the cooler pump had started up in earnest. The ice that had leaked from the freezer lid to form an overhanging crust pressed against my midriff where my sweater had ridden up.

I clutched my hand to my iced belly, as if I could somehow contain and deny the swell of grief that was growing inside of me. I wanted so badly to go to David, to cradle him in my arms.

‘Enough.’

Morgan jerked my arm up even harder, tilting it to one side until I was forced to turn. I thought about kicking back at his shin but the pain was too intense. Any sudden movements from either of us and my arm would surely break. He twisted my wrist, forcing me to bend even lower, and then he led me towards the stepladder and the noose.

He waited until I was within touching distance of the base of the ladder and he yanked my arm once more.

‘You’re going to climb.’ His words were hot and breathless at my ear. ‘You’re going to put your head through the rope. Then all of this will be over for you. There’ll be no more pain.’

‘I won’t.’

‘I’ll kill you anyway. I’ll cut you with this knife. Just like I gutted your mother.’

‘Then do it. Stop talking and do it.’

‘You’re not listening to me, Claire. Pay attention.’ He rotated my wrist another quarter-turn. Something twanged deep inside it. My elbow popped. ‘If you climb the ladder, that’s it for you. It’s over. But if you make me cut you, if you refuse, I’ll make one more trip today. I’ll call round to your father’s house and I’ll kill him, too.’

A low moan escaped my lips. I rested my free hand on the bottom rung of the stepladder. He’d do it. I knew that.

But just as I desperately wanted to protect Dad, I also knew I couldn’t trust Morgan. If the idea of killing somebody was inside his head, what was to stop that idea from taking root and growing into something he felt compelled to do? Maybe not today – maybe not even this year – but some time in the future, Dad would be at risk no matter what I did.

‘OK,’ I whispered, ‘I’ll climb.’

Morgan didn’t loosen the pressure on my arm right away. He waited, as though testing my words, searching for the trap inside them.

‘Climb fast.’

I felt a sharp sting in my wrist as he let go and shoved me into the ladder. I snatched my arm around, unknown muscles and tendons snagging and unravelling as a searing pain lanced up towards my neck.

Blood coated my palm. It trickled through my fingers. I didn’t know how deeply he’d cut me. There was no spurting jet. But it was bad enough to scare me.

I grasped for the ladder with my good hand, cradling my ruined arm and my bleeding wrist in front of me. I clambered up the first step, then the second. The noose awaited me, hanging strong and still at the top of the ladder.

Three steps to go.

Then two.

One.

I grasped the aluminium handle. The noose skimmed my forehead. My crooked hand seemed to pulse with an irregular heartbeat all of its own.

‘One thing.’ I bared my teeth and turned back to look at Morgan. The hood of his cagoule was pulled tight around his bloodless face, his tongue creeping out the corner of his mouth. ‘The man you just threatened to kill isn’t my father. The truth is we shared one of those.’

He jerked back, then took a puzzled step forwards, and I tugged hard on the handle, throwing all my weight backwards. The ladder tipped and kept tipping, and as it pitched towards Morgan, I freed one foot from the ridged treads and kicked him in the face.

I felt the crunch of bone and heard a dry snap. Morgan folded from the knees and I collapsed on top of him with the ladder clattering after us. I pushed the ladder away and scrambled clear, then bounced on the balls of my feet and kicked him very hard: twice to the gut; once to the side of the head. I lashed out fast and mean, just like Mark had attacked Edward all those years ago. Then I turned and ran for the doors, barging through with my shoulder and bursting out into the storm.