They were close to the coast again. It was impossible to walk for any distance without coming up against the edge of the sea. Lyndsey felt a twinge of claustrophobia, and realised what Sonia had meant the day before, when she talked about how hemmed in she felt. Despite the rolling emptiness of the waves and sky, Lyndsey was trapped. The island was effectively a prison, like a police cell.

  Lyndsey spotted a patch of greyish-white feathers scattered across an area of grass. In the middle were the remains of a seabird. It lay with its wings spread, its thorax ripped open, the wind ruffling its stray feathers. Its head was missing. Under other circumstances, she would’ve guessed it’d been attacked by a cat, but there weren’t any on the island.

  Polecats, she remembered. Again, she wondered about the scream they’d heard the night before. The seabird certainly looked like it’d been killed quite recently.

  ‘Over here,’ Juliet said. She’d stepped off the path – which had more or less disappeared now anyway – and was heading to an outcrop of rock that jutted up from the ground like a broken tooth.

  From there, the land sloped down at a careless angle until it met the sea. The coastline here was a lacework of jutting promontories and intricate coves, carved out of the limestone. Somewhere along here was an impressive natural arch which Juliet had intended to make them climb down to that weekend. Lyndsey remembered Juliet saying that there were a number of pretty beaches along that stretch of coast as well, but it couldn’t be proved right then. The waves were smashing themselves to pieces right up against the rocks.

  Juliet walked around the jutting stone in the middle of the field. In the leeward side, out of the full force of the wind and rain, there was a gap in the rock, about three feet high. It looked like there was a small, dry space inside.

  ‘This is what I found. Look.’ Juliet pointed out a darkened circle on the grass next to the rock. ‘Someone made a fire here.’

  Even the pelting rain couldn’t eliminate the evidence of a small campfire. Someone had cleared an area of grass, building up the edges with stones. The ground in the centre was scorched and blackened.

  ‘Do you think it’s recent?’ Lyndsey asked.

  ‘Not a clue. It can’t have been from today or last night; it’s been too wet to make a fire.’

  Lyndsey’s stomach rolled at the suggestion that the fire could’ve been set so recently. ‘It could be from a month ago,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t mean anyone’s been here this week.’

  ‘But it does mean people come here.’

  ‘We knew that already. It wouldn’t take a lot of effort to kayak across the water.’ Although, looking at the sea right then, the thought made Lyndsey quail. A person would have to be crazy to brave those waves.

  Juliet took her headtorch out from her pocket. ‘There’s a shelter of sorts in there,’ she said, nodding to the gap in the rocks. ‘It goes back further than you’d expect. I might not have thought it was anything at all, if not for this firepit outside. I didn’t check it out properly this morning. I just put my head in to make sure Bobbie wasn’t there.’

  Lyndsey nodded. Maybe if Bobbie had come this way, she would’ve found this shelter… She would’ve been safe and dry… Maybe it would’ve been enough to keep her alive till we found her. She shook the thought away. There was no telling what might’ve made a difference.

  ‘Let me take a look,’ Lyndsey said. She took the headtorch from Juliet and shone it inside.

  As Juliet had indicated, the shelter was larger than the entrance made it seem. Lyndsey had to crouch to get inside. The ground was cold beneath her palm but, once she moved further inside, it wasn’t damp. It wasn’t a bad little shelter. It reminded Lyndsey of the dens they’d used to make in the woods.

  The memory had sharp edges. Seven teenage girls, crowded into the dubious shelter of overhanging rocks or roots, giggling as they attempted to toast marshmallows on a campfire that threatened to sputter and die at any moment. The smell of woodsmoke and damp earth. A moment in time when everything was ideal. Strange, to look back at it that way – because at the time, it’d definitely been chilly and uncomfortable and very little gain for the effort they put in. Also, there had almost always been far more spiders and crawling insects in those dens than Lyndsey would’ve liked. But, in retrospect, it was one of the best times Lyndsey could remember. A tiny oasis before things fell apart, when there were still seven of them instead of six, before Cherry was gone from their lives.

  The cold ground beneath Lyndsey’s fingers brought her back to the present. She swept the beam of the torch around the interior of the shelter. There wasn’t much to see. A space just big enough for her to stand up, if she kept her head ducked. Bare stone walls. Certainly nothing to suggest when the shelter had last been used. The air was cold and damp.

  Her searching hand struck something hard that rolled away from her. When she turned her torch on it, she saw a glass bottle. Although the label was faded and tattered, she recognised the logo of a Stolichnaya vodka. Instinctively, she flinched. Another reminder of a bad memory, doubly unnerving for appearing so close on the heels of the first memory. That particular brand of vodka was the one Cherry had been drinking on the night she died.

  Lyndsey turned, flashing the light into all the corners of the shelter. Tucked into another wide crack in the rock, something reflected back at her.

  Lyndsey crouched to check it out. It was a thick orange bivvy bag, wedged tightly into the crack, streaked with condensation. She pulled it out, surprised by its weight. It felt like it was full of rocks.

  Cautiously, she opened the bag and shone the light into it. Inside were a dozen cans of food. Beans, tinned meat, spaghetti hoops – all things that could be reheated easily or, if necessary, eaten cold. There was also another bag underneath, wrapped tightly around something.

  ‘There’s a cache of food in here,’ Lyndsey called to Juliet. She reversed out of the shelter, dragging the bags behind her.

  ‘Where the hell was that?’ Juliet asked. ‘I didn’t see it when I was here.’

  ‘It was shoved into a crack. It just looked like an old plastic bag.’

  Juliet picked out a can and peered at the label. ‘It’s in date. Someone must’ve put it here quite recently.’

  Recently was a relative term, of course. The food could’ve been left there a week ago, a month ago, or longer. Lyndsey dug down to the bottom of the big bag and tried to lift out the plastic-wrapped item in the bottom. It was bigger and heavier than expected, at least three feet long, narrow and tapering at one end.

  ‘I guess it could’ve been a kayaker,’ Juliet said. ‘Someone who likes coming over here, having some time alone, making a campfire… It’s probably nothing more sinister than that. I mean, it’s quite nice, in a way. Your own private island hideout.’

  Lyndsey didn’t answer, because she’d unwrapped the heavy item from its plastic covering. The glint of metal made her stomach contract. She pulled the plastic away, unwilling to touch the item itself.

  It was an air rifle.

  ‘Oh, heck,’ Juliet said.

  The plastic bag had done a good job of protecting the metal from the elements. The air rifle was obviously old, and much used, but it’d been looked after over the years. In the bottom of the plastic wrapping was a round tub of metal pellets, which rattled when Lyndsey shook it.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ Juliet said. She sounded breathless.

  It occurred to Lyndsey that Juliet had mistaken it for an actual firearm. ‘It’s an air rifle,’ she told her. ‘Look. It’s cranked up by operating the lever here. That increases the air pressure so it can be fired.’

  ‘Are you sure? It looks real.’

  ‘My uncle in Glasgow had one. He used to let us put holes in the trees in his back garden with it.’ Lyndsey unscrewed the lid from the tub of pellets. ‘It fires these. They’re just metal. No explosives. You could probably kill a rabbit, or put someone’s eye out with it.’ She remembered reading a news story about someone who’d accidentally killed themself with their father’s air pistol, but she opted not to mention that.

  ‘Why would someone bring it here?’

  ‘Probably because it’s not legal. You used to be able to buy these as toys, but I think they’re better regulated now. Whoever set up this shelter … well, maybe they brought it here because it might’ve been confiscated if they’d kept it at home. Or, I guess, maybe they wanted to take potshots at rabbits.’

  Juliet shuddered. ‘Horrible. What’re you doing?’

  Lyndsey had started to wrap the weapon up. ‘I’m putting it back where we found it.’

  ‘You can’t leave it here.’

  ‘It’s not ours. It belongs to someone.’

  ‘Who does it belong to? Huh? Someone put it here, and maybe they’re just a random person who likes sea-kayaking and animal cruelty, but what if—’ Juliet had to take a breath before she could continue. ‘What if they’re here now?’

  In all the drama about the water tank, Lyndsey had forgotten her early certainty that someone other than themselves was on the island. She glanced at the shelter. ‘This wouldn’t be a very comfortable place to bivouac,’ she said.

  ‘But it’s evidence that people do come here, and have been here recently. Someone could have used it yesterday.’

  Lyndsey raised her gaze to the sea. With the waves as they were at that moment, it looked impossible to land a boat on this side of the island. But she knew that was deceptive. In calmer weather, someone could’ve brought a boat or a kayak all the way into the little coves on the coast here, and walked up to the shelter. An experienced sea-goer might even risk it now. There were probably places on the coast where it was safe to make landfall in any weather.

  ‘They would’ve needed to drag the boat up from the shore,’ Lyndsey said aloud. ‘If they’d left it down on the beach, it would’ve been smashed to pieces by now.’

  ‘There are a dozen places they could’ve hidden it though. Down by the sea, in one of the sea caves … or up here on the land. All they would’ve had to do is drag it into the bracken or throw a tarp over it, and we’d walk right past without knowing it was there.’

  ‘Who would do that?’

  Again, the question hung in the air. The simple fact, the one Lyndsey couldn’t get past, was that no one hated Bobbie enough to go to so much effort to hurt her.

  ‘I can think of one person,’ Juliet said. ‘Her husband.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  SATURDAY

  11:40am

  Lyndsey shook her head. ‘Her husband loves her,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.’

  As she said it, she realised that Bobbie’s husband had no idea what had happened. He doesn’t know she’s dead. The thought punched her hard in the stomach.

  ‘Her marriage wasn’t as great as she let on,’ Juliet said.

  Lyndsey wrapped the air rifle back in its plastic covering, mostly to give her something to concentrate on. ‘Oh?’ she asked.

  ‘She said – well, you know how it is. Sometimes it’s not what people say, it’s what they don’t say. Bobbie’s marriage wasn’t great. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not projecting?’ Lyndsey asked without thinking.

  Juliet’s expression froze. ‘What d’you mean by that?’

  ‘Just … you’ve had a really tough time of it this year. But, I mean, just because your husband was a complete jerk, that doesn’t mean everyone’s as bad as him…’ Lyndsey trailed off, her cheeks burning. She wished she’d kept her stupid mouth shut.

  Juliet stared at her for a moment longer, her lips thin, then abruptly turned away. ‘Let’s get back to the bunkhouse,’ she said.

  Lyndsey bundled up the bag of tins and took it back into the shelter. On the off-chance the cache did belong to some innocent visitor to the island, she didn’t want to steal their food. The air rifle was a different matter. Juliet’s words had rattled her, and now she wasn’t sure at all about leaving the weapon where she’d found it. Unsure what else to do, she rewrapped it in the plastic bag and tucked it under her arm. It was an uncomfortable weight.

  Then she hurried to catch up with Juliet, who was striding away up the hill. Lyndsey quietly cursed herself. She knew better than to mention Juliet’s break-up. It was still an extremely sore point. And now, because of a few poorly chosen words, Lyndsey had offended her friend.

  She let the silence stretch until they reached the brow of the hill. ‘I always thought Bobbie’s home life was okay,’ Lyndsey said at last, in as conversational a tone as she could manage. ‘She never said anything different to me.’

  ‘She also didn’t talk to you very often.’

  Lyndsey winced. Juliet’s tone had been intended to sting. ‘No, I guess not. But I saw her quite a few times this year. I went round to her house when she – she helped me pick out what climbing gear I needed for this trip. She never gave me the impression that things weren’t fine between her and Darren.’

  ‘Are you sure? Perhaps she dropped plenty of hints, but you didn’t pick up on them. It wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘Hey, that’s not—’

  ‘Yes, it is true. Like how everyone except you knew things were going south between me and Gary. You’re the only one who was surprised when we broke up. You’ve always been too wrapped up in your own stuff.’

  Lyndsey shifted the plastic-wrapped package to her other arm. It was heavy and awkward to carry. She’s upset and angry. She doesn’t mean to be personal. ‘Look, you know I’m not great with relationships. They’re just weird and confusing and I don’t understand them at all. But that doesn’t mean I don’t listen. If you’d told me what was going on, I would’ve listened. And I would’ve listened to Bobbie as well.’

  It hurt that Bobbie hadn’t confided in her. Lyndsey had thought they were good friends – and this year in particular, Bobbie was the one person Lyndsey had felt closest to. Lyndsey had poured out her troubles to her, about losing her job and falling into debt, and how she was going to get evicted if she couldn’t turn things around. It’d felt like they could talk about anything. But, looking back, Bobbie hadn’t shared much in return. Lyndsey had assumed it was because Bobbie’s life was going fine.

  She probably did tell you things weren’t great. More than likely, you weren’t listening.

  Juliet laughed, but it was soft. Her annoyance was already melting away. She could never maintain a bad temper for long. It would flare up then die away just as fast. ‘If she’d spoken to you about it, you would’ve just told her to dump her husband. That’s always your advice.’

  Lyndsey threw her free hand up in exasperation. ‘That’s because it’s good advice. And I only ever suggest it if the person isn’t happy with how things are. If you’re that unhappy, leave. I genuinely don’t get why people are so scared of it. It beats the crap out of staying with someone who’s lousy for your mental health. I mean, look at Sonia and—’ She bit her tongue before she could spill anyone’s secrets. ‘Sonia’s got a terrible track record when it comes to dating,’ she finished instead. That at least wasn’t a secret. ‘Everyone’s advice to her was always to dump them.’

  Juliet smiled. She slowed down so Lyndsey wasn’t having to speed-walk to keep up. ‘To be honest, I wish I could’ve given Bobbie the same advice,’ Juliet said. ‘I never liked Darren. Do you remember how he tried to stop her coming on my hen weekend with us?’

  ‘He did? I never heard about that.’

  ‘Yeah, that was when he had that nebulous ill-health thing. Every time she wanted to go out, he suffered a sudden relapse – nothing serious enough to call a doctor or anything, of course, just bad enough that she had to stay home with him and couldn’t possibly go out with us. He played that card all the time. For my hen weekend, he flat-out told her she couldn’t possibly go away; he needed her at home to look after him.’

  ‘Then she went anyway.’ Lyndsey had trouble picturing Bobbie putting her foot down like that. She’d always been so easy-going.

  ‘That’s why she made us promise not to tell him anything that happened while we were on the hen do.’

  Lyndsey half-laughed. ‘The worst that happened was when Bobbie was so hungover she threw up on the metro, and that guy made her take his seat because he assumed she was pregnant.’

  ‘Exactly. Bobbie didn’t want her husband to know she’d drunk that much.’

  ‘What, really? She was worried he’d be mad at her for getting wasted, on a hen weekend? That’s literally the point.’

  Juliet spread her hands. ‘That’s what I mean. Things weren’t great in her marriage. It’s why she hardly ever came out with us after that. Her stupid husband kept insisting he needed her to stay home with him.’

  Lyndsey did remember that happening a few times, but she hadn’t given it much weight. Bobbie had always been a bit flaky when it came to making plans. It felt dishonest to think that about her now, but it was true. She’d often used ill-health – either her own or her husband’s – as an excuse not to go out with her friends. Lyndsey had never really thought about it. She figured sometimes people just wanted to stay home and be antisocial. Lyndsey had used it as an excuse herself, plenty of times.

  ‘He really didn’t want her to come on this weekend with us,’ Juliet said. ‘He’s been giving her grief about it for months. I kept expecting her to give in to him, to be honest. She changed her mind so many times. Even yesterday, I wasn’t completely certain she’d turn up for the boat. I guess, in the end, she really wanted to do this trip.’

  ‘We all did.’ Lyndsey said it automatically. She still didn’t want to admit to Juliet that they’d all had second thoughts.

  To her surprise, Juliet’s eyes filled with tears. ‘It’s all my fault,’ she said. ‘If I hadn’t pushed so hard for us all to come here…’ She sniffed. ‘It just felt like … I so wanted to show you this place. There was an article in the Guardian last summer about the top climbing spots in the UK, with a big section about Shell Island. It reminded me… How long ago were we first planning this trip? Eight years ago?’

 

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