Tombstoning (29 page)

She sat up and started guiding the boat. Ahead of her she could still see the other boat, slowly edging its way around the next headland. She headed straight out to sea rather than follow it around the bay, giving her a better angle to keep it in her sights. She wondered about David. Was he all right? Was he even still alive? Surely he must be. Why would Neil be taking him anywhere if he was already dead? But then maybe he was just going to dump the body out at sea. The boat was small on the horizon, but it looked as if the two figures in it were sitting upright. She couldn’t believe she was thinking as logically and calmly as this about someone’s possible death, but then she’d become used to thinking about death since David had come back into her life. If only she hadn’t emailed him that day, asking him to that stupid school reunion, she thought. But then if she hadn’t, they would never have met up again. And if they hadn’t met up again… She realized that she loved him. Not in the sappy love-song meaning of the word, but she clearly felt strongly enough to be chasing a bloody maniac around the Angus coastline in an effort to save his life. That would do as a definition of love, wouldn’t it?

She noticed it was getting a little darker. The skies were still full of grey, drizzling clouds, but whatever sorry excuse for a sun was lurking behind them, it was thinking about giving up on the day. She noticed as well that she was having to navigate between strange little flags bobbing on the surface of the sea. Probably the sites of lobster pots strung out along the seabed, she thought. She momentarily imagined herself as a lobster, scuttling along down there in her big shell without a care in the world, only to find a trapdoor snapping shut behind her. Within twenty-four hours she would be some posh bastard’s dinner. What a way to go.

She looked at the boat in front of her, hugging the coastline. Where the hell was Neil heading? She urged the puttering engine on her own crawling vessel to crank itself up and push her onwards through the sluggish mass of indifferent water between her and David.

15
The Cave

David couldn’t really believe what he was seeing. He was sitting in the prow of the boat and for the last few minutes had been stealing glances backwards as the small dot on the horizon resolved itself into a boat. They were being followed and Neil hadn’t noticed. He could only assume that Nicola had managed to flag down help sooner than Neil imagined, and the thought exhilarated him. He was simultaneously thrilled that Nicola was coming to help him and appalled at the thought of her putting herself in danger again after having escaped. Mostly he was thrilled. He wanted to fucking marry that woman right now. He was trying as hard as possible not to make it obvious he was looking at the distant boat, but the allure of the curved shape on the water behind them transfixed his mind, and he felt even more self-conscious if he didn’t look.

They had been on the sea now for something like twenty minutes. He had continued to quiz Neil about their destination, but Neil just navigated onwards stony-faced, steering the boat south-west along the coastline. David tried to distract himself by examining the cliffs and bays as they passed by. He had been along this stretch of coastline only a week ago with Nicola and Amy, but the looming, blood-red sandstone monsters that paraded past now seemed to bear no relation to the relatively benign cliffs of last week. The sky was pressing down on the land, the clouds felt low enough to reach up and touch, and the rain was beating heavily down, spotting the sea around them and draining down in rivulets from the clifftops. The water at the base of the cliffs was swirling, foamy and dangerous-looking, rolling and bashing against the rock face like relentless enemies at the gates of a castle, gradually wearing down the defences to infiltrate their way in and take over. They were closer to the land than they had been last weekend, and now David could see all sorts of detail he hadn’t been able to then – precarious nests lodged into cracks in the cliff, dark, tiny, ominous caves lurking around the base, the swell and chop of waves tumbling over a barely-submerged jagged rock, boulders like giant pebbles scattered around inaccessible bays, strange holes, gulleys, stacks and blowholes appearing everywhere, giant slabs of slanting red stone stacked unstably one on top of the other like biscuits on a plate. The cliffs seemed an altogether more sinister, more dangerous and more deadly place than they had a week ago in the gentle sunshine. It was amazing what being kidnapped by an insane killer can do for your mood, thought David as he winced at swirling, dizzying waves crashing against an isolated stack. A few more years of that kind of abuse and the stack would crumble into the sea, yet another slice of seemingly immovable land succumbing to the relentless, torrential and utterly oblivious power of the sea.

David looked out to the open sea and saw the boat was getting bigger on the horizon – they were being gained on. He wasn’t sure how many people were on the boat: he could make out at least one, but there surely must be more than that, he thought.

To David’s horror, he noticed Neil slowly following his gaze. With his back to David, Neil sat motionless at the stern for a few seconds, taking in the situation in the hardening rain.

‘Jesus fucking H Christ.’ He turned and gunned the engine a little more, egging the boat on through the roughening waters. ‘How the fuck did she get help so quick?’

David was gutted. The other boat was catching up on them, so it wasn’t going to remain a secret forever, but he couldn’t believe that his gormless gawking had led to Neil noticing Nicola and the rescue party. Fucking idiot. But he was still massively relieved that there even was a boat out there following them. That changed everything. At least he wasn’t on his own, it wasn’t just him against Neil, there were others on their way to help, and that gave him renewed strength.

‘Surely there’s no point in going on with this,’ he said.

‘Fucking shut the fuck up.’

‘But they know. Everyone knows. It’s all over.’

‘It’s over when I say it’s over.’

‘But they’re bound to catch us. And the coastguard will be on their way.’

‘Fuck the coastguard, fuck your girlfriend back there and whoever she’s roped into this, and fuck you. They’re not going to catch us because we’re nearly there, and we’ll lose them round the next headland.’

‘Nearly where?’

‘That’s about the tenth time you’ve asked me that. You’re an inquisitive little shit, aren’t you? Here’s an idea – why don’t you shut the fuck up?’

David looked beyond Neil at the other boat. It didn’t seem to be getting any bigger, but it was impossible to tell in the rain. He still couldn’t make out how many people were on it. He wondered if the coastguard really were on their way, and if so, how long they would take to get here. He wondered what Nicola was thinking on the other boat.

Damn it.

She had been gaining on them for a while, but something seemed to have changed, and they were now travelling at about the same speed. Just as she had been confident about catching them up, they seemed to change direction a little, heading right in towards a headland that from here looked a little like a human head in profile. Then suddenly they were round the headland, staying tight to the contour of the coastline, and she’d lost them.

Nicola tried not to panic as she urged the engine forward. She felt frustration at her slow progress through the waves, shouting ‘Come on!’ to no one, her voice disappearing into the rain all around her. She kept her eye on the last place she had seen their boat; that was all she could do, stay concentrated and focussed and hope that they’d reappear in front of her once she’d made some way round the headland.

Within five minutes she was at the profiled head where she’d lost them, peering keenly into the rain, the sound of gulls squawking from their nests on the cliff in her ears. Two minutes later she rounded the promontory and… nothing. Fuck! She couldn’t see another boat anywhere. She frantically scanned along the coastline, and out to sea as well, realizing that this latter effort was pointless – they couldn’t have headed out to sea without her seeing them. The light was fading fast, and the rain seemed heavier than ever. She gazed intently ahead along the coast but all she could see was the white fuzz of waves breaking over rocks here and there. For several minutes she scanned backwards and forwards, desperate for something to catch her eye. Nothing.

Think, Nicola. If they’re not ahead of you, and they’re not further out at sea, then they must have landed somewhere. But where? There didn’t seem to be anywhere to land at this part of the coastline – no bay or inlet or anything. She slowly steered the boat in close to the land, the waves rocking her as they rebounded from the bottom of the cliff, forcing her to hold on tight to the side of the boat with one hand. To her left was open sea; to her right, looming so close that it felt like it would topple over onto her, was the cliff, a craggy, dark red terrifying expanse. She continued on for a few minutes until she saw what she thought was a fold in the rock, running vertically for about fifteen feet. As she got up close she realized it wasn’t a fold but a crack, about ten feet wide, with a kind of overhanging flap that sheltered it, like a natural sea wall, from the abuse of the waves. It was a sea cave, almost undetectable from the water except when you were really close in, and certainly hidden from view from the land. She looked around again, up and down the coast, and could still see nothing, no boat, no sign whatsoever of Neil and David. They must have gone inside the cave. But it would be dark. She wouldn’t be able to see a bloody thing in there. Then she remembered the small built-in box nestling under the boat’s motor. It was locked, so she had to boot it open with the heel of her shoe. Inside were a basic first-aid kit, a flare gun and a torch. She lifted the torch and tested it, and a strong beam of light pierced the rain in front of her, playing across the rough sandy rock above the cave entrance. Good enough. With one hand holding the torch and the other steering the motor, she guided the boat slowly into the cave mouth, her pounding heart suddenly becoming loud in her ears as the noise of the rain and the waves outside the cave receded into the background.

‘You live in a fucking cave?’ David was laughing despite himself. ‘You live as a fucking hermit, in a cave?’

Even in the torchlight he could see from Neil’s face that this was not something to be laughing about, unless he wanted another taste of Mr Torch. Nevertheless, for some reason he found this incredibly funny. He imagined hermits as mad, old grizzly guys, with matted beards and fishbone necklaces, going slowly insane in the darkness of their hovel, eating whelks and drinking rainwater out of an old hat. Now that he looked at Neil again, he could see him fitting that description in a few years’ time, although he had clearly already done the going insane part. This all fitted together nicely, thought David. Sitting here in a dark cave, brooding over your life and all the mistakes you’d made, with nothing else to occupy you except the odd echoing splosh and the distant sound of the sea, well that would send anyone fucking mental, wouldn’t it? And if you were halfway to being a violent lunatic anyway, as Neil obviously had been, this sort of sensory deprivation environment was pretty much guaranteed to send you tumbling over the edge.

He looked again at Neil’s face and abruptly stopped laughing. Gazing into the hollow eyes of his former schoolfriend, he felt sorry for him, as if life had dealt him a particularly shitty hand, and even then he hadn’t handled what he’d had dished out to him at all well. Circumstance had been against Neil from the start, thought David, and really he was to be pitied, not feared. Just then Neil produced the knife from his pocket and angled it pointedly towards David. It would probably be easier to feel sympathy for the guy if he wasn’t threatening him at knifepoint, with, presumably, a view to killing him at some point in the not too distant future, he thought. Then he reminded himself Neil had pointlessly killed an old schoolfriend, and – even giving him the benefit of the doubt – he’d been present at the death of another friend, and had been at least partly responsible for that. Fuck sympathy, he thought.

‘Get out the fucking boat.’

They had puttered into the cave and onwards for about five minutes in almost complete darkness, just the beam of the torch guiding them as the damp, stone ceiling above their heads gradually descended until they had to crouch in the boat, making David shudder with claustrophobia. But then the ceiling seemed to disappear and a quick coolness to the air and the echoing of their boat engine heralded a wide-open space, a cavern of a place, although David couldn’t actually glean its dimensions in the dismal light. He noticed that there was some additional light coming in from somewhere, more than there had been when they entered the cave, so presumably there was another way out. David was briefly proud of himself for noting this instinctively, but then was thrown into depression again when he thought of Neil, the knife and his hand ties. Then he thought of the rescue boat coming, and brightened up again. His feelings were all over the fucking place, he realized.

‘I said get out the fucking boat.’

Neil gave him a shove and he stumbled out, splashing up to his knees in the water which was lapping at the edge of a clear area of sloping shingle. He slowly trooped up the incline away from the boat. Behind them David could hear nothing. No boat, no engine, nothing. Maybe the other boat hadn’t seen them come in here, or they hadn’t been able to find the entrance to the cave. He felt the beginnings of a panic attack creeping up on him, so he tried to breathe deeply as he sat down on the shingle.

‘Get up. Fucking move.’

Neil booted him hard in the ribs and, despite the pain and the mounting panic and claustrophobia, David rose and trudged on. Following Neil’s directions they walked on to a smaller sheltered area, like an ante-room off the main cave, which was full of crates covered in tarpaulin. A mattress lay in the corner and a pot sat over a rough fireplace in the middle. It looked as if Neil was set for life here, thought David.