One of a Kind, page 19
‘Come on.’ I hauled myself to my feet, pulling the still-weeping Sally with me. ‘We can at least go out fighting.’
Solemn as a suicide pact, we faced the least ominous end of the land slide and began trying to climb. It went about as well as my previous attempt, but being a few metres off the ground meant that we were at least not swept into the sea or pulverised, when the inevitable happened and the cliff overhang came barrelling down to obliterate the patch we’d been sitting on previously. It did, however, mean that the part of the slip we’d been hanging onto was swept further towards the sea as it came, and Sally and I found ourselves clinging to a few random sods while the sea licked at us like an affectionate dog.
We were plunged up to our waists in loose soil, fighting the sea and the land. I didn’t know about Sally, but my head was still banging in a routine that competed with the slamming of the waves against the shore.
But sheer bloody-minded determination not to let my body sink without trace kept me going. The thought of Ivo not knowing, and the need to alert him to what was going on; a desperate, driving urge to get to him before Mr Polite and Mr Thug; the fear that something may already have happened to him – it all kept me going in a blindly instinctive clamber and drag through the mud slide.
I reached a hand back, grey to the shoulder and what few nails I’d had now mere lines of black against my fingertips. We’d made about ten metres, but were now trapped in a kind of quicksand of mud, unable to move any further forward. The ground sucked like treacle and slid like butter. We were exhausted, and the best we could hope now was that we’d get bopped on the head by a falling boulder and it would be over quickly.
Sally found my hand and gripped it. I closed my eyes.
Rocks tumbled. Soil moved in a cascade alongside me and there was a sudden sensation of hands. Hands reaching across me. For a second I thought I was having a near death experience, and that the Other Side was going to involve a lot more groping than I’d been led to believe. Then I opened my eyes.
‘Who the fucking hell are you?’
13
The man dangling alongside me pushed a helmet onto my head, gave me a dazzling grin and buckled a final strap.
‘Haul away!’ he shouted, and suddenly the harness he’d fastened around my body went completely tight and I was yanked out of the mud and dragged along the surface of the landslide with my jeans ripping on the rough edges and my waist and armpits subjected to an incredible force. Metre by metre I bounced and scraped my way along until the gradient meant I could swing free and, suspended entirely by the harness around my midriff, fall up the cliff.
More scraping ensued, but this time it was grass and the occasional cowpat and I was so relieved to be moving in a forward direction that I could barely muster the energy to say ‘Ow’. Eventually I stopped, face down, and more hands came around me, this time helping me to my feet and unbuckling the harness so that I could step out of it in a far more dignified way than it had gone on.
Whereupon all strength left my legs and I collapsed against a large piece of whining machinery, which turned out to be an electric winch, powered by a Land Rover parked a judicious way from the cliff edge, just inside some impressive orange fencing. I looked up in time to see Sally slithering up over the edge like a monstrous birth. She was muddy to the eyebrows, a long shape of brown, with occasional flaps of fabric, and an incongruous white helmeted head. I imagined I looked pretty similar, but lacked the energy and willpower to check.
Radios crackled. Strong arms picked us up and supported us over the field and across the orange tape, past some large and impressive ‘Danger of Death – Keep Out – Cliff Subsidence’ signs, down to a road that had clearly not been used for some time. Weeds grew out of the tarmac, brambles were blurring its edges, and there, rotating with anxiety and paler than death, stood Ivo and Tony.
All inclinations towards being a Strong And Independent Woman went out of the window and I flung myself into Ivo’s arms, buried my face against him and cried. His normally slight body felt steady, secure and wonderfully permanent. It felt like coming home.
I knew he was in shock too, because he didn’t speak. Ivo, who never usually shut up, was a silent, solid presence, holding me close and warming me through the mud and wet clothes. When I eventually stopped sobbing and gasping, he put both hands under my arms and supported me over to the Volvo, which was parked in the overgrown roadway, where he sat me firmly down on the passenger seat with my legs out of the door and him crouched on the grass in front of me.
I gave another, stifled sob. ‘I’m all muddy.’
‘Yes, well, I don’t think we’ll worry about the upholstery just now.’
Behind us an ambulance bumped its cautious way over the rutted tarmac and two paramedics climbed out, eyes on the cliff edge about fifty metres away, as though we were about to be sucked down into the depths. Nearby I could see Sally being similarly embraced by Tony, and I was glad to see that she was at least as much of a blubbering wreck as I was.
‘We’re going to have you checked out now.’ One paramedic came towards me, while the other went to Sally. ‘We’ll take you down to St Mary’s.’
I clung to Ivo. ‘Come with me.’
‘Of course. I’m not letting you out of my sight from now on. You can expect stalker-levels of monitoring for at least the next six months.’ He gave me a shaky, but bright, grin. ‘It was a close-run thing there.’
I looked at him. Today’s cotton patchwork shirt was now obliterated by clay smears, his bleached denim flares were soaked to the knee and the ill-advised yellow cravat that he’d tied with such insouciance around his neck now hung in bedraggled soggy shreds down his chest. ‘And they didn’t get you?’
His knowing what the hell I was talking about was testament to his having put everything together far, far faster than me. ‘Evidently not.’
‘How?’ was all I could ask.
‘We’ll get to that. Suffice to say that I am a genius, and Tony is running me a close second. Get checked out first though. I’m not going to go through it if you’ve got amnesia and I have to do it all again.’
Hand in hand we went to the ambulance. Sally and Tony were in there already, and we were driven for what felt like hundreds of miles through the lanes, while I fell into a half-doze.
The hospital was bright and noisy, even compared to a landslide and the sea. My head still hurt, the sounds washed over me almost meaninglessly as I sat wrapped in a blanket and talked to doctors, nurses, watched lights, and was fed regular cups of terrible tea. Sally and I made occasional eye contact while it all went on around us. I was still 98 per cent relieved, but she was obviously having moments of terror as the implications of rescue and having to face some very awkward questions dawned.
‘Please,’ she hissed at me as we moved from one examination to another. ‘Let me tell them.’
‘As long as you tell the truth,’ I said. ‘Just be honest, Sally.’
‘It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?’ Her eyes were huge, pupils distended with fear and her skin the yellowy pale of old wax. ‘I’m going to prison, aren’t I?’
‘At least you’re alive to go to prison,’ I said. ‘It could have been worse.’
Those big eyes filled with tears again. ‘We nearly died.’
‘Yes. And I still have to get to the bottom of our rescue,’ I said, as I was helped away by a nurse, whose constant monitoring of my pupils was becoming wearing. ‘Ivo keeps hinting that he’s totally responsible.’
When I was eventually pronounced to have suffered little more than a touch of hypothermia, a wee bit of a concussion and some near-fatal broken nails, I was taken down to the waiting area, where Ivo was pacing up and down and speed-eating a packet of biscuits. Ruined wrappers dotted around on various surfaces told me this was probably not the first. There was a jaded-looking policeman in uniform stretching out over two of the seats and talking on his mobile phone, who raked me up and down with an acerbic look and carried on talking. He had an uneaten biscuit in his other hand, I noticed.
‘Cress,’ Ivo said, slumping with relief on seeing me. ‘Thank heavens. You’re all right?’
‘Keep an eye on the headache, keep warm, take it easy for a bit is all they’ve said. I can go.’
He slumped further, as far as one of the chairs. ‘I hate hospitals.’
‘Then we should go. I’m assuming we’ve missed the sailing?’
Ivo gave me a very direct look. ‘We can’t leave the island,’ he said. ‘For one thing, the police want to talk to you.’ He cast a meaningful glance at the extended form of the officer, who was still chatting away on his phone, although he’d now gone as far as eating half the biscuit.
‘Ah.’
‘And for another, all the sailings are cancelled, have you seen the weather?’ He stood up, brushed crumbs off his shirt, which caused flakes of mud to fly, and then sat down again.
‘Well, yes. I was in it.’
‘Oh, yes.’ For a second his eyes were very bright. ‘It was a wee bit touch and go there.’
‘Yes. And that has resulted in me having a lot of questions for you.’
He handed me the last biscuit, crumpled the packet and threw it in the bin. I ate the biscuit. It had been a long time since my last meal, and hunger was making itself known with a vengeance.
‘Let’s go back to the house. I’ve given it to the police as our address on the island, so we can’t really go anywhere else, even if we wanted to.’ He moved as though to leave the room, seemingly remembered me, came back, raised his arm and then lowered it again. ‘Do you need me to help you?’
‘I’m not sure.’ I tottered a few tentative steps. ‘No, I think I’m all right.’
‘Can I just hold your hand?’
I pondered. ‘I think that would be very nice, yes.’
With a surprising amount of resolution, Ivo took my hand, then put his other arm around my shoulders. ‘I don’t want you to ever do that to me again, Cressida, do you understand?’
I snorted a crumb-strewn half-laugh half-sob. ‘Don’t worry. I’m going to stay away from anything higher than a very small incline in future. Clifftop picnics are definitely out. I don’t think I’m going to fancy paddling much either, for the foreseeable.’
The pressure of Ivo’s arm increased. ‘Please don’t.’
We scuffled past the policeman, who gave us a curt nod, although what he could have done to have stopped us I had no idea, and Ivo called a taxi – ‘No Uber on the island, Cress, honestly, it’s practically primitive.’ – and when it arrived he helped me shuffle out of the hospital and into the back seat, solicitously adjusting the borrowed blanket so it covered my shoulders and also prevented the taxi driver from seeing the state of my clothing.
We got back to the treetop house with the rain still lashing down and the wind urging the tide high onto the cliffs below us. Curiously, the bleached wood and linen now felt far more homely and cosy, and when Ivo lit the fire in the classy modern grate, I started to relax.
‘You need a bath,’ he looked at me appraisingly.
‘I need to know what happened out there,’ I said, trying to find somewhere to sit that wouldn’t leave mud stains.
‘Have a hot bath, get changed, I’ll make us some food. When you’re looking a bit more… human, we’ll talk.’
I wasn’t used to Ivo being so… so in charge. But I still felt weak and a bit stupid from the blow to the head, so I meekly obeyed and had a long and soapy soak, after which I felt a lot better. There was still a crust of mud ground into my fingertips, and parts of me that had never been muddy before had had to have a thorough scrubbing, but at least I could move without cracking. I put on a pair of pyjamas and spared a quick thought for Sally. She may have been a complete idiot, thinking that drug smuggling was a get-rich-quick scheme, but she’d done it with the best of intentions, if anything to do with drugs could ever be said to have ‘good intentions’.
‘Are you done?’ Ivo tapped on the bathroom door. ‘Only I’ve made some food. Well, I think I’ve sort of made it. I put it on a plate. It smells nice.’
I opened the bathroom door and was confronted by Ivo, wearing a rainbow outfit of a metallic red and gold jacket, a scarlet T-shirt with ‘Hello, Sailor’ emblazoned across it and a pair of bright blue shorts, from which his legs protruded to end in Nordic knitted socks.
‘Good grief,’ I said, weakly. ‘I think I might have a relapse.’
‘Don’t. I found these clothes here. I’m not sure if it was someone’s wardrobe or the dressing-up box, but they’ll do for now. Everything else is wet.’
We faced one another for a few seconds, then we both started to laugh. It was the half-hysterical laughter of people who’ve been in a life-threatening situation from which they have escaped but are as yet uncertain as to the damage that has been done. We both had tears in our eyes when we stopped.
‘Food,’ Ivo said, eventually, hooking his hair back and sniffing. ‘Food and coffee, in front of the fire.’ He looked at one of the porthole-windows. ‘Best place to be.’
‘Look, you’re going to have to tell me.’ I settled myself in front of the driftwood coffee table, which stood stylishly in the middle of the room. ‘How did you find us? How did you even know to come looking?’
Ivo put down the cafetiere and a plate of leftovers from our picnic. I was now so hungry that I almost fell face down on the plate and just ate everything lower than my eyeballs, but I restrained myself to taking a plate and putting a careful selection of food onto it, watching Ivo as I did so. He was pouring coffee, slowly. Working on his reply, clearly.
‘When I’d dropped you off to meet Sally,’ he said, ‘I went down to the rehab unit and Tony was there. D’you know he does aerial photography? Fascinating thing, he’s had pictures on calendars of the island…’
‘Shut up, but go on,’ I said, folding ham into my mouth.
‘I showed him the picture of our Mr Williams. Now, after Sally had told you that she thought he was a friend of Tony’s, I was expecting – well, a reaction. I’d got my best ju-jitsu moves to bust out if he got violent.’
‘You did ju-jitsu?’
‘Until I was twelve. Once I went off to prep school I started fencing instead. With rapiers, I mean, not penning areas of land. Had enough of that from the ancestors, what with the Enclosures Act and all that, and I don’t think the peasants ever forgave us. Anyway. There I am, all braced, and Tony just stared at the picture and said that the guy was an old school friend of Sally’s.’
‘But she said…’
‘I know, Cressida, darling, and that’s what first gave me the heads up that something was amiss. Why would anyone need to lie? It’s just a man who took a squirrel, no biggie. So I started to wonder. If Sally lied about that, what else might she have lied about?’
‘Or Tony was lying,’ I added. ‘Trying to shift the blame onto Sally.’
‘Either way’ – Ivo picked up a sausage roll – ‘someone was telling porkies bigger than these rolls. So I chatted to Tony, who was still refusing to allow me to bring out my best take-downs and showing absolutely no animosity whatsoever, disappointingly. I told him what Sally had said about him having anger issues, and he laughed.’
‘Presumably not in an aggressive way,’ I put in.
‘Not at all. He said that he was the last person to have anger issues, and his ex-wife actually divorced him for being too placid. He and I have a lot in common,’ Ivo added. ‘So, together we worked out that Sally wanted us, that’s you and me, not me and Tony, to stay away. Two strikes to Sally, and by now those spidey senses that you told me I ought to develop are starting to twitch. Then I got the message from Ru.’
Ivo pulled his phone out of one of the pockets of the ridiculous jacket and flipped up the message.
Rufus
Look mate, this is all hush hush so don’t go plastering it all over the site yet, but wanted you to be in on the ground floor. Your dead body on the moor has been on the slab and our guy reckons it wasn’t an accident. Couldn’t have hit his own head, apparently, so we’re looking at a deliberate act. Being as it’s a murder, and you and your girlfriend are involved with returning the squirrel, best not to make any waves, and just get back home as soon as.
‘Girlfriend?’ I asked.
Ivo stared at me. ‘Really? Seriously? We’re in the middle of a murder enquiry, people are lying to us, anyone could have done anything – and your take-home is that Ru called you my girlfriend?’
I hid my face behind my coffee mug. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘It’s just a bit…’
‘Anyway, you are, aren’t you? I mean, I know we’re… that we’ve not… that it’s all up in the air, but can we just let that go for a minute?’
I remembered, as I sipped the wonderful hot and strong coffee, how I’d felt about Ivo when I’d thought I was going to die. How I’d been almost more worried about him than about myself. How it had given me the impetus to hold on and keep climbing.
‘All right. Glossing over that for now.’ I continued to look at him over the mug rim. ‘Now you know it’s murder.’
‘Yep. So I messaged you, but you never opened the message. There’s a little tick, you see, when a message has been—’
‘I do know this, Ivo.’
‘Sorry, yes, of course. I could see you hadn’t read the message. And I’m getting a wee bit worried now, because you’ve been an awfully long time looking at squirrels, or whatever you were doing, and you usually check your phone pretty often. So I started thinking, out loud, with Tony. There was the SUV, we saw it heading down towards the rehab unit – that lane only goes down to the forest, and then we saw it again down in that little cove.’
‘If it was the same SUV.’ I licked my fingers.
‘Of course it was. It’s highly unlikely there would be two white SUVs with identical damage to the front wing. And that little motorboat coming in just offshore – what were they doing down there? Both Tony and I could only come up with one solution – well, no we had a couple, but one involved jet skis – and that was drugs. Once we got that, everything else fitted into place and I knew you were in danger.’
