Dark Tides (29 page)

I ran for the lighthouse. Of all the places to go, I chose the one with no exit. But then, I didn’t have a lot of options. I’d abandoned the car too far away to reach in a hurry. The keepers’ cottages were small and unlikely to offer much in the way of hiding spaces. Other than that, I’d be out in the open. I had the beach and the sea in one direction, the road in another, the low mossy grasslands and the dunes and the distant woods after that.

Maybe I was driven towards the lighthouse by my fear of the woods. Maybe panic and adrenaline swamped my brain, clouding my thinking, and I reacted to some instinctive need to get in out of the storm. Or maybe, even then, I had some vague sense of what was to come, of how this would all end.

The steel gates and wooden doors at the base of the lighthouse were secured with a bolt and padlock but a key safe was fitted to the wall alongside. The safe was a small, flimsy device with a combination dial on the front. It wouldn’t budge when I yanked on it so I stooped down and gathered a sturdy, quartz-like rock that I guessed was normally used to prop the doors open. It took three hard blows to loosen the key safe from the screws holding it to the wall and another four until the little plastic door sprang open.

I fished out the key and unlocked the padlock, then wrenched back the gates and the doors and stumbled inside. The interior was dim and unheated. There was a pair of wellington boots on the floor and a torch was stuffed inside one of them. A ratty old towel was hanging from an electrical circuit box on the wall.

I grabbed the towel and wrapped it round my wrist as a makeshift bandage, then made for the stairs that wound up around the tapering walls. The treads seemed oddly spaced and I kept stumbling and losing my rhythm. It occurred to me that maybe the problem wasn’t the stairs. Maybe it was me. I was bleeding. I was scared. I was in shock and in pain.

The treads curved on and on, winding higher and higher. I passed a slotted window, a small stone ledge, then another rectangular opening for a window that had been bricked up. The noise of the wind and rain grew louder the further up I went.

I didn’t dare glance down or behind me. I doubted that I’d kicked Morgan hard enough to disable him for long, and I knew that if I saw him the panic would only slow me down.

I leaned into the curving wall and cradled my arm as I tramped on. My wrist felt as if a shard of glass had been thrust deep inside it. My lungs ached. My thighs burned. I felt dizzy and nauseous and close to collapse.

I tripped again and nearly fell. But I was close to the top now. I passed a thick glass porthole, then another, the whitewashed ceiling pressing down on me from above.

A flight of near-vertical steps lay ahead, looking more like a ladder than a staircase. I clawed my good hand around the cold metal treads and hauled myself up.

I found myself in the lower portion of the lamp room. It was a cramped, circular space, with another set of steps leading up to a perforated metal walkway just above. The walls were painted breeze-blocks, lined with yet more metal circuit boxes and rubber cabling, another torch and a fire extinguisher. The rain beat furiously against the cocoon of diamond-shaped glass panels overhead.

The centre of the room was dominated by the massive rotating lantern mechanism, two large electric lamps, and a bank of glass lenses. There was a constant electric groan, the muffled whir and mesh of hidden motors and gears, and then, quite suddenly, the beam swooped round, brighter than a thousand flashbulbs, filling my head with a blinding white light.

I dropped to one knee and crooked my good arm in front of my face. The blazing beam spun away from me, carving through the misty rain and the low grey clouds, racing over the churning sea.

I blinked and pinched my eyes. The wind and rain pummelled the glass dome. The lantern mechanism hummed. But there was no mistaking the footsteps I could hear from below. The footfall was heavy, the tempo uneven.

I snatched the fire extinguisher down from the wall and carried it one-handed to the top of the steps. I listened to Morgan drawing near. He was getting closer.

His hooded head appeared in the gap at the bottom of the steps and I let go of the extinguisher just as he lifted his face. The metal canister plummeted fast, clipping the side of his skull and striking his shoulder with savage force. He yelled and clasped his head and staggered backwards out of view.

I waited, breathing hard, listening to him curse and shout. But it hadn’t worked. He was still conscious. He was still coming for me.

I looked around but there was nowhere to hide. There was only the powerful lantern, the giant glass lenses, the upper platform and the windowpanes.

And a small metal door.

It was secured with two large bolts. I slid them both aside, leaned on the door and it flew open in the wind.

The breeze funnelled in, fast and frigid. I lowered my head and forced my way out, my hair flailing wildly, the rain slicing my skin. The hazardous catwalk was slick underfoot and tilted towards slanted metal railings. The rain and wind pushed me towards the edge. I looked down. Bad mistake. The ground was sickeningly far away.

The door had been flattened against the curved exterior wall by the driving wind. I tried forcing it closed with my good arm but the breeze was too strong. I gave up and the door slapped back against the painted brick. A small ladder was bolted to the domed glass canopy above me but it led only to a weathervane that was twirling crazily at the very top.

The dazzling lantern beam swept round again. I saw it coming and crouched low, the door shaking behind me as if the wind might tear it from its hinges. I used my good hand to grab for the railings and crawled around to the opposite side. There was no respite from the wind and the rain. It was coming at me from all directions.

I slumped down, pressing my back against the wall, the railings trembling before me. The narrow road that led away from the lighthouse was empty of all vehicles. There was nobody in sight.

I gazed across to the isolated woods and shuddered at the thought of how I’d allowed Morgan to touch me there. The massed trees should have seemed so small and insignificant from up here. But as I stared at them they blurred into a sinister dark mass, a black crater in the middle of the land, a bottomless chasm from which I felt sure now that part of me would never emerge.

Then Morgan yelled out to me, his voice a defiant scream against the violent gales.

‘I know you’re up here, Claire. That hurt, by the way.’

I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I dragged my feet back from the edge and it felt as dangerous to me as standing on the uppermost railing. I hadn’t been so high since the afternoon Rachel had been killed.

Morgan came stumbling around the dome, listing to one side as though he had a gimpy leg. He was panting very hard. His nose was swollen, his nostrils and his upper lip slick with blood. More blood was dribbling out from his hairline and threading across his temple. There was a grazed welt on his left cheek.

‘It isn’t true.’ His trousers flapped in the breeze, the knife gripped fiercely in his gloved knuckles. ‘What you said.’

I looked at him then, leaning forwards into the wind, the wild gusts tearing his hood from his head so that it flickered behind him like a dark flame, and I saw that he could defy the storm but not my words. They’d shaken him badly.

He wasn’t alone in that. I’d been devastated by the revelation, too. I’d only known for certain a few weeks ago when I finally summoned the courage to take a swab from one of the silver envelopes Dad had licked and slipped inside a Jiffy bag containing a customer order. I’d sent the swab with one of my own to a paternity-testing service that I’d found online. There were legal forms for both of us to fill out, but I’d completed the forms myself and had faked Dad’s signature. The results came back five days later. He wasn’t my biological father.

I hadn’t wanted it to turn out that way, but if I’m honest, the results just confirmed what I’d already begun to suspect in my heart. It all came down to Bun-Bun. I’d reclaimed him from Morgan’s childhood bedroom because I’d been sure the toy belonged to me. But I’d been mistaken. Months ago, when I first moved back to Dad’s place, I’d needed to store some belongings in the attic. I’d climbed up there with a few boxes one evening and I’d chanced upon a wooden crate in a far corner. As I moved closer, I saw that the crate contained some of Mum’s old clothes. Dad must have kept a few pieces. He’d folded the garments very carefully. I’d taken them out and stroked the fabric. I’d inhaled their smell. Each item had triggered a host of memories but the clothes also gave up one last surprise. Bun-Bun was stashed beneath one of Mum’s old jumpers.

I reached for him, jolted by panic and confusion, and I saw right away that this was my true childhood companion. His pink cotton nose had been worn away from where I used to rub it against my upper lip. The label on his back was shrivelled from when I used to suck on it.

So why did Morgan have the same toy? Coincidence? It was possible, I supposed, but then a new and terrible thought occurred to me. When I’d first found the rabbit in Morgan’s old bedroom, I’d wondered if perhaps Mum had given it to him, but what if it had been the other way round? What if Edward had given me the same toy that he’d given his son? And what if the reason Mum had been so upset in the weeks before she disappeared, the reason why she and Dad had left the island before I was born, and the reason why she’d been so keen for me to sing for Edward on Hop-tu-naa had all been the same? What if Morgan and I were siblings?

‘It’s true,’ I shouted at him now. ‘I wish it weren’t. It sickens me to think of it.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘No, Morgan. You got it wrong. You heard my mum threatening to tell the truth about
me
. I was the child she was talking about. Not you.’

He came at me then, surging forwards against the pelting rain with the knife raised high. But his timing was bad. The lantern spun round. The beam lit up his face and got right in his eyes. It blinded him and he squinted and turned.

I launched myself at him, thrusting up from my knees, driving my shoulder into his chest. His feet left the ground and he thumped into the quivering railings, his upper body pivoting backwards. He flapped his arms, dropping the knife, but his balance was gone. I could have saved him, I suppose. I could have tried. But I thought of my friends. I thought of Mum.

His shin struck my chin as he fell.

I didn’t look down after him. I just clutched the railings and stared towards the horizon, watching the blue emergency lights pulsing through the rain at the far end of the road, sirens drifting faintly towards me.

They were too late. I’d thought they’d get here sooner. All Manx police cars are fitted with tracking devices in their radio systems and GPS would have told Control where I’d beached the squad car the moment they started searching for me.

But just then, I wasn’t quite ready to be found.

I waded out into the raging sea until I was waist-deep in the freezing waters, my fingers trailing behind me. Hidden tides coiled round me, tugging at my legs, dragging me out from the shore.

I fixed my gaze way beyond the foaming plumes. I scanned the ruptured waters, pitted and dimpled by the falling rain, smelling thickly of seaweed and salt. I searched for the drowning girl I’d pictured out there once. I looked for her pale arm, hooked above the giant cresting breaks, beckoning desperately to me. She was there, I was sure. She’d been waiting all this time.

‘Cooper.’

My name sounded so shrill that it might have been a misheard cry from one of the wheeling gulls.

‘Cooper, come back.’

I turned and saw Shimmin striding through the low waves towards me, the water kicking up in fans from his feet, his trousers soaked above the knees. His tie snapped in the breeze and he swung his arms from side to side in an exaggerated arc, the tails of his mackintosh skimming the waves. A phalanx of uniformed officers slid down the banked pebbled drifts behind him. The lighthouse beam sparkled above.

‘David’s alive. We found him, Cooper. The paramedics are with him now.’

I stared at him a moment, stumbling in the sea, the icy currents gnawing at my legs, and I lifted my bad wrist in the air.

I wanted to tell him that I’d only come out here to wash the blood from my skin, to rinse myself clean of all the horror I’d experienced. But when I opened my mouth to speak, no words would come. I stilled and looked up at my arm, held aloft in the streaming gales, and I finally understood that I was the one who’d been drowning all these years, and I wondered if, at long last, I was ready to be saved.

Sunshine in November. The air was crisp and clear and filled with the scent of pines. I was holding David’s hand. We did that a lot now. We’d become one of those nauseating couples who are always touching each other, always smiling coyly as if communicating in some secret lovers’ code. I guessed that would change over time but right now I kind of liked it.

I rested my head on his shoulder, careful not to put pressure on the dressing on his chest. He was wearing the cable-knit sweater I’d bought for him on the day he was discharged from hospital. The wool was soft and warm.

‘I have the strangest feeling, being here.’ David stopped for a moment and inhaled deeply. ‘It’s almost as if I can hear them.’

‘I get that.’

‘It’s like they’re watching us.’

‘So maybe they are.’

David gave my hand a squeeze and led me deeper into the woods, guiding me over a fallen tree trunk that was slowly rotting into the ground.

He’d spent just over a week in hospital. He would have been out sooner but the doctors had been extra cautious, something I could understand given the bizarre circumstances in which he’d been found, not to mention the intense media interest our story had attracted. The English tabloids were calling Morgan the Halloween Killer, which was pissing off the local islanders no end – not because of the notoriety of having a possible serial killer living among us, but because the concept of Hop-tu-naa seemed to have got lost in translation.

The tabloid frenzy was probably one more reason why the consultant in charge of David’s care had run so many tests to determine exactly what Morgan had done to him. It turned out that Morgan had injected a powerful sedative into his system, a type of drug more commonly used to calm patients with acute mental health issues. When DI Shimmin checked with Morgan’s rehab clinic in Manchester, they found that a batch of the drug was missing from their supply cupboard.

It took several days before David felt able to tell me what he remembered of Morgan’s attack and mere seconds for me to understand that the trauma of it would stay with him for a lot longer. He spoke in fits and starts, and he broke down more than once, but the basic facts were that Morgan had hidden in the boot of David’s car before somehow forcing his way through the rear seats just as David parked outside the cottage. Morgan had stabbed David high in the right-hand side of his chest with the same knife he’d held on me. He’d also used his left hand to punch a syringe into David’s neck.

The sedative had taken hold quickly, and after that we could only speculate about what had come next. It seemed a safe bet, though, that Morgan had used the sedative to disable David and drag him into the freezer. We’d never know for sure what Morgan had planned to do with him if I really had hanged myself. My instincts said that he would have left him to suffocate or bleed out. Luckily for David, the cold inside the freezer had amplified the effects of the sedative, slowing his heartbeat, which could explain why Morgan had believed he was already dead when he lifted the lid to check on him. It was also why David hadn’t bled out before Shimmin’s team located him.

At least, that was the accepted theory. To be honest, part of me wondered if Morgan had known all along that David was still alive. My guess is that when he found himself inside the garage with me, he couldn’t resist seeing the horror on my face when he told me David was dead.

We’d been advised that the sedative would have no long-term effects on David’s health and that he was fortunate the knife blade had hit mostly tissue. His right arm was weakened, and he lacked some feeling in his fingertips, but the doctors had assured him it would return in the weeks to come.

Other than that, David had some chafing on his cheeks, nose and fingertips from what could have turned into a nasty case of frostbite if he’d been in the freezer too much longer, and he’d always have a pretty impressive scar. I matched him in that. My wrist and neck were branded with permanent reminders of Morgan’s handiwork, but those cuts would heal. There were others that ran much deeper.

Mark’s killer was identified as a prisoner by the name of Quentin Kneale. The forensic tests on the insoles of Mark’s shoes had been fast-tracked and they’d come back showing traces of Kneale’s skin cells and body hair. Shimmin’s team had also been able to establish that Kneale had received two visits from a blonde woman in late September and mid-October. The woman had provided a false name and address but CCTV footage enabled me to identify her as April, Morgan’s nurse. Under questioning from Shimmin, April confessed to passing instructions to Kneale on Morgan’s behalf and to making arrangements to deliver the sum of twenty thousand pounds in cash to Kneale’s mother. Kneale was already serving one life sentence for murder and he was currently being held in isolation awaiting trial and a likely transfer to a UK institution. His five associates had been punished with a loss of privileges but Shimmin didn’t hold out much hope of any additional charges being made against them.

Meanwhile, a DC in Shimmin’s unit had succeeded in tracking down the Manchester-based pilot who’d flown Morgan back to the island. Under caution, the pilot also confessed to flying Morgan to the same small field in the north of the island the previous year. For now, it was too early to say if Shimmin would be able to prove that Morgan had laid the fire that had killed Callum, though there was little doubt in my mind and plenty of speculation in the press.

As for Rachel and Scott, Shimmin was working with the prosecution services to determine whether the investigations into their deaths should be reopened. Based on what he’d said to me so far, I doubted it would happen, not least because it was hard to identify the positives that would come out of a process that was certain to distress their loved ones.

I hadn’t spoken with the families of Callum, Rachel and Scott yet, and I still didn’t know if it was a good or bad thing to do. Maybe I’d leave it to Shimmin. Maybe David and I would talk with them at some point in the future. Either way, the hard truth was that no amount of answers could bring our friends back, and nothing could alter the reality that Morgan would never face justice for their murders. He’d died in the fall from the lighthouse and I couldn’t help acknowledging a final, warped synchronicity in the fact that he’d suffered the same fate he’d visited upon his own poor mother.

As far as Mum was concerned, Shimmin had flown in a forensic scientist with a speciality in archaeology to help locate and recover her remains. Her body was found beneath the patio in the Caine grounds where the disfigured statues of the female nudes had once been displayed, and it was hard not to draw the conclusion that Morgan had probably been responsible for the mutilation of the statues. Perhaps not surprisingly, I hated to think of Mum lying there and it was something I was doing my best to shut my mind to. I chose to focus instead on the day to come when I’d finally be able to accompany Dad and Nan down to Port St Mary to scatter Mum’s ashes in the sea and lay some flowers on the promenade in her memory.

I’d had a lot of contact with Shimmin during the past fortnight. He’d first come to talk with me at the hospital when I was keeping a vigil at David’s side and he’d phoned me most days since. Things were difficult between us. I’d let him down, no question, but I had the strangest feeling he believed it was the other way round. I owed him for finding David, for believing my version of events, and I couldn’t deny feeling a slight hitch in my chest whenever I thought of never working with him again. The honest truth was that I missed being a detective. I missed my colleagues. I missed the work. But the profession was lost to me now for countless justifiable reasons, and at some point I’d need to find something else to do with the rest of my life.

I’d already taken one small step in that direction. Just yesterday, I’d written a letter to Deputy Governor Kent, offering to volunteer as an adult literacy assistant at the prison. I had no idea if he’d agree. Somehow, I doubted it. But if he surprised me and said yes, my one condition would be that I couldn’t possibly work with any of the five men who’d assisted in the attack on Mark. And sure, it was a long way from the academic career I used to covet, but I hoped that Mark would have approved.

Then there was David. I loved him. I woke up early beside him every morning now just to watch him sleep. Whenever he finally stirred and opened his eyes, I’d be hit with a sudden flush of warmth that left me in no doubt that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. Perhaps it had taken nearly losing him for me to see that. Perhaps I just needed all the fear and hatred that had stricken me for so long to come to a conclusion before I could truly move on.

But even so, I couldn’t escape the feeling that there was something lurking just out of sight, some hidden danger that might yet ruin everything for us. Perhaps that’s normal for anyone who’s been through an experience as extreme as the two of us had shared, but I was afraid it might be something more. The distance between us in the weeks leading up to Hop-tu-naa, the detachment I’d sensed in David and which, to my shame, had made me start to believe he could be a killer, was somehow still there. It wasn’t as pronounced to begin with. It took several days to resurface. But I couldn’t pretend it had gone entirely. And, as it turns out, neither could David.

He’d woken as usual to find me watching him this morning. His eyes had crinkled and he’d smiled a slow, contented smile. I’d stroked his face and he’d pushed himself up on to his elbow on his pillow.

‘We need to talk,’ he’d said, clearing a strand of hair from my eyes.

‘I know.’

‘But not quite yet.’ He’d slid a hand over to my hip, pulling me towards him, kissing me slow and deep.

We’d made love. We’d showered together and eaten breakfast. And afterwards we’d driven out here to the Ayres, within sight of the beach and the lighthouse and the ramshackle cottage that I would never set foot in again, and that David had put up for sale just the previous afternoon. The renovation was a complete bust, and as far as David was concerned it would stay that way. Given what had happened there, he was bound to take a big hit on the property market, but really, that was the very least of our troubles.

We hadn’t planned to walk towards the woods. We hadn’t even discussed it. But we’d linked hands and we’d set off across the heath and we hadn’t said a word to one another until we’d stepped in under the trees.

David led me by the hand to the big pine in the middle. The trunk had grown thicker in the past decade or so. Amazing to think it was here that Callum had handed us our blindfolds and sent us off to find a tree to stand beside.

‘I love you,’ David said, and this time he held both my hands and squeezed them as he looked deep into my eyes.

‘I love you, too.’

‘But there’s something I have to tell you. Something I can’t get past.’

He squeezed my hands once more, as if in apology for what he was about to do. ‘The night Edward Caine died. I saw you, Claire.’

My heart stopped. ‘Saw me?’

‘Climbing out of his window. I’d made a decision. I was going to confront him with what we knew and I was going to ask him not to come after us any more. But on the evening I went to visit, I saw your car parked outside the church. I was standing in the shadows when you came out, Claire. I saw the mask you were carrying.’

‘You think I killed him?’

‘Didn’t you?’

I told him the rest then. I explained it all. You see, I told you I had secrets, and despite what I’d said to Morgan, the DNA tests hadn’t been enough for me. They’d told me that Dad wasn’t my biological father but they couldn’t confirm who was. I had my suspicions. I thought it might be Edward. But I didn’t know for sure. And just like David, I wanted to talk with Edward. I wanted to scare him and warn him off us.

So I waited until dark and then I climbed in through his window with a mask on my face – the same androgynous robot mask, as it happens, that I’d kept hidden among my things since the night of the break-in nine years before. Edward lay before me in his hospital-style bed, lit by the dimmed halogen of a standing lamp. He was wearing a set of headphones over his ears that were connected to a portable stereo.

He didn’t seem surprised to see me. He wasn’t alarmed in the slightest when I entered his room. He slowly removed the headphones and set them down on his bed sheets, then knitted his long, pale fingers together across his pyjama top. He stared intently through the eye-holes cut into my mask, his own eyes bulging from their sockets.

‘Hello, Claire,’ he said, in his wheezing rasp. ‘I was wondering when I might expect to see you.’

I stood very still and gently pushed the mask back from my face. I knew then what I should have known all along. He’d recognised me all those years ago. He’d seen through my mask to my eyes when he’d disturbed the group of us in his study. He’d known that I’d been the one standing by as Mark attacked him.

But he’d never identified me to the police or the prosecution services, and that should have been confirmation enough for me. He’d protected me just as he’d shielded Morgan, and I should have known then, without a shred of doubt, that I was his daughter. And yet I still pulled up a chair when he asked me to. I still listened to him tell me how his affair with Mum had been brief, how he hadn’t known until some months after I was born that I was his child. He said that he’d had no contact with me at all until Mum and Dad came back to the island, although there had been just one interaction before that. When I was still an infant, he’d sent a package to Mum containing a single item – Bun-Bun, the same type of toy rabbit that had comforted Morgan as a baby.

I’d left him without saying much in return. It had been an awful lot to take in. My head was still reeling from it all when I climbed out through his window and scrambled over the fence and made my way back to my car. Perhaps that was why I hadn’t spotted David.

‘He was still alive when I left,’ I told David. ‘I don’t know how much later he had the heart attack. So I didn’t kill him – not in the way that you might have thought – but I can’t say I wasn’t the trigger for it.’