What We Did In the Storm, page 20
‘Were you with her? Was it the same man? The one in the balaclava?’
‘It must have been him. I was so scared …’ Her son, her lovely boy … She pats his hand.
‘Did you see Hannah anywhere up there?’
‘No, darling.’
‘Not at all yesterday?’
‘No.’ A shooting pain through her jaw makes her flinch.
‘Where were you? What happened exactly? Could you tell who it was?’
Kit holds her hand. It hurts, but she doesn’t pull it away.
‘No, darling. No. He was wearing that thing over his face. But I didn’t see Charlotte. I did go to look for her. I was worried because she was out … in that awful weather. But I didn’t see her. Or Hannah. Did he hurt Hannah too?’
‘Hannah’s missing,’ he says. ‘She’s out there somewhere and there’s a madman prowling the island!’ He bursts into noisy tears.
‘It will all be alright, darling. I promise,’ soothes Beatrice. ‘But how is poor Charlotte? What did he do to her?’
Kit tells her the little he knows and then uses his mother’s phone to call the Old Ship, despite her protests that she doesn’t need help.
‘But you do,’ he says. ‘And we need to warn people. He’s still out there.’
When he’s told Alison what’s happened to his mother, and asked for medical help and police assistance, he makes Beatrice a cup of Earl Grey, spooning in some honey to help with the shock.
Beatrice considers asking for a little brandy but thinks better of it.
They wait for a first-aider to come round to check over Beatrice’s injuries and for Sergeant Jack Moore to arrive from St Mary’s.
And as soon as he opens the door, before the policeman questions his mother, Kit reports Hannah missing.
Omens
May, After the Storm
The first washed up on Porthcressa Beach. A dozen more in the following days – mangled corpses dotted around the island’s shores; others spotted floating out at sea.
The wildlife team put on the protective gear that strikes fear into the hearts of visitors. Over the next two weeks, the apocalyptic white walkers will be spotted removing carcasses of more and more dead seabirds: fifty, sixty. The remains are sent on to Defra.
Bird flu. The word pandemic triggers painful memories. Panic that it will spread to chickens, ducks, livestock. Dogs! Humans!
‘It’s a curse,’ pronounces Miss Elisabeth, ‘It’s the maid’s revenge,’ although no one listens to her.
Perhaps they should. Perhaps it is.
VII
The Accounts
56
Bobby
The pub is full to the gills, visitors and islanders gathering there for snippets of news, while also spreading rumours, sharing opinions, dissecting reputations. The music is kept at a low level as a mark of respect. Some are out searching still, but only in daylight hours. There’s no hope now. She’s been missing for days.
Bobby smiles sadly and shakes the hands of the new guests as they arrive, saying, ‘Yes, terrible business,’ and then he swiftly moves the conversation along. Tragic accidents happen everywhere where the sea adjoins the land, more so when alcohol is involved. The intimation is that only the drunk and foolhardy are victims.
And somehow, thankfully, the panic about the attacks flared, blazed, and is now already ebbing. It is now almost universally agreed that the man who assaulted Charlotte Howard-Dormer and Beatrice Wallace must have been someone over for the gig championships last week, who slipped away with the hundreds of other visitors. A one-off. It was not an islander; it couldn’t possibly be someone who lived here.
Mercifully, the victims of the attacks only suffered superficial injuries according to police and both will be going home to recuperate. Bobby hasn’t seen the women’s faces, but even he wonders at the word superficial. It must have been terrifying.
Most people, including Bobby, think the barmaid’s disappearance was an accident, an unrelated incident. They may never know.
Taking his drink outside to the pub garden to make the most of the sunshine, Bobby closes his eyes for a moment. He needs a few minutes to himself; a quiet pause where he doesn’t have to manage the endless questions from tourists and locals alike. But there’s no peace here on the island – the wind sighs, the birds cry, and the waves slap incessantly against the granite of the rocks and the concrete of the quay.
As if reading his thoughts, the sky above the sun umbrella is suddenly filled with a shriek as two gulls swoop, dispersing the smaller sparrows and thrushes mooching about for treats from the visitors who constantly ignore the signs not to feed them. The gulls settle on a nearby table, hangrily eyeing Bobby and the visitors drinking outside.
Bobby’s taking the first sip of his invigorating G&T when Old Betty plonks her glass of half a Guinness on his table and plonks herself down next to him. She sets about cleaning her specs like she’s scouring the roast pan.
‘Have you heard the latest?’
‘What?’ asks Bobby, sighing heavily. There are so many theories swirling around at the moment and he’s probably heard most of them, including the more flamboyant: Hannah was involved with international drug smugglers; Hannah took Kit for a mug and did a runner with that Frenchie sailor; Kit did away with Hannah in a jealous rage and covered it up by rowing out to sea and dumping the body; someone saw Hannah swimming over to the Eastern Isles; Hannah was spotted at Gimble Point, hovering over the sea in a halo of light, although that was probably a Brocken spectre, an illusion, a mirage.
Not a grain of actual evidence. Chinese whispers. He catches himself – is that racist?
Old Betty leans in to say, ‘John from the garden and his Mary-Jane from the café? I heard they were closer than husband and wife, if you get my drift.’
‘I’m aware of that. I was the one who had to inform The Family and the police.’ Bobby feels responsible for starting this particular strand of gossip. ‘I’d rather you not go spreading that around,’ he warns.
‘Please yourself,’ sniffs Betty, getting up and flouncing away in a huff, although it is an incremental flounce, such is the state of her hips. ‘You’ve opened a can of worms there. Now you have to lie in it.’
Bobby takes a large gulp of his drink. And blushes.
Unfortunately, after one or two drinks the night he discovered the husband and wife were actually brother and sister, he confided in Alison. He needed to talk it over with someone in order to make sense of it. He blames the shock for his indiscretion. He shouldn’t feel guilty because Alison is obviously the source of this leak, but it doesn’t sit easily with him. He should have known better. He trusts Alison, but she probably told someone she trusted too, who passed it on to just the one person, in strictest confidence, naturally, who passed it on … That’s how it works here.
And there has been another worrying snippet doing the rounds. The vet has been shifting ketamine according to one of the chambermaids, who heard it from Isak Mensah, who has refused to reveal his source. The man has been asked to leave. Bobby thinks the fact that he didn’t fight to stay says it all.
When this information spread, it spawned one of the more popular theories – that the barmaid slipped into the sea whilst off her head on drugs, although a few folk, like Kit, believe that whoever attacked Beatrice and Charlotte was also responsible for Hannah’s disappearance.
However it happened, Hannah is now missing, presumed dead. Water closes over the heads of the drowned soon enough. Put it out of your mind, Bobby tells himself. Guests have shelled out for their holidays in paradise, and while they might pay lip service to the missing woman they still want to be shown a good time.
He’s about to head to the bar for a refill when he pauses.
There’s something else niggling at him. Before he came to the pub today he helped Fiona prepare for another gallery party. Something caught his eye and he’s just realised what it was.
Fiona and her assistant were hanging a new work, a whimsical picture of sheep tombstoning off a cliff, so Bobby set about unloading crates of wine from the golf buggy, carrying them through to pile them in the store cupboard. He’d just noticed a glimpse of pink right at the back, but at that very moment, Fiona and her assistant both screamed. He rushed through to find the ladder had almost toppled, but luckily no harm done. He then had to take a call from The Family, so that had further distracted him.
It’s only now he wonders if it could possibly be his own pink waterproof, mislaid months ago during an unfortunate week of advanced tipsification (one of many jokey words and phrases he uses – along with sozzled, a little worse for wear, a tad out of it – to make his drinking seem less worrying).
It is now common knowledge that someone reported seeing Hannah up at the North End on the day she went missing – arguing with someone who was wearing a pink coat, presumably a woman. If it was Bobby’s own coat abandoned in the art gallery’s back room, anyone might have used it. It is probably not the time to say he owns one, or to claim it.
He’ll leave it where it is. Why would he put himself under suspicion.
He makes his way to the bar, where two of the mainland police officers stand drinking together – the one with the closely cropped grey hair, well-built, hard eyes, terribly sexy in that super cocky manner possessed by those in uniform, indeed most straight white men, and the woman.
They admit to Bobby that they are bewildered. They seem to be getting nowhere fast. This is like no investigation they’ve ever been on. Usually, the police are treated with suspicion; usually they have to work hard to prise information out of interviewees. But on this island they are welcomed. Drinks are provided and people are keen to engage them in conversation. There is not so much a reluctance to help as a tsunami of scandal and gossip and rumours, which only serve to muddy the waters. They talk and talk, these islanders – mainly the women, but men sidle up in the bar to offer opinions too – about the guests who were attacked, about the barmaid:
‘Put it about a bit…’
‘Polish mafia …’
‘She was a witch, that one …’
‘I heard she did a runner with one of the sailors …’
They have also interviewed dozens of islanders and visitors alike but they’re still no closer to clarifying what happened.
57
Sam
‘Yes she hit me that afternoon, gave me a right shiner.
‘What did we argue about? You’d have to ask her. Oh no, you can’t.
‘No, I don’t think it’s a joke. I think she’s a scheming little cow, that’s what. She’s disappeared somewhere with some bloke, not caring what mess she leaves behind. She’ll have found some sailor boy and be off with him on his boat.
‘No, I do not think she’s come to any harm. She’s a survivor that one.
‘Yes, I know several people heard me threaten her at Vlad’s on the poker night. I’d had a few. We all had. She’d taken a bloody great hunk of my wages, cunning little cow. It was a joke, what I said, about wanting to kill her.
‘No, I don’t make a habit of wanting to kill people – that’s why it was a joke.
‘Yes, after she hit me I went looking for her.
‘I didn’t go immediately, no. I needed a piss first.
‘Up at the North End, yes. Old Betty, I mean Miss Elisabeth, told me that’s where she was headed. I cycled up after her. I heard someone say later that she’d took Alison’s bike, so I guess I would have got there around ten minutes or so after her.
‘No, I don’t know the exact time because I had no bloody clue I’d need to know the time, did I.
‘No, I do not own a balaclava.
‘No, I didn’t see Beatrice Wallace or Charlotte what’s-her-name.
‘Christie? No, she didn’t go after her as far as I know. If my wife was out searching for anyone, she’d be after me, not Hannah. She didn’t find her, even if she had been looking for her. She’d have told me if she found her or if anything happened up there.
‘Why did Christie have beef with Hannah? Oh, you’ve heard about that have you? She thought me and Hannah had a fling. We didn’t.
‘Yes, I might have suggested we did at one point. But we didn’t.
‘It was just a laugh, bar talk. Teasing. Hannah didn’t mind. You can ask—
‘Can’t see that’s any of your business what happened with me and her. It had nothing to do with this. It was well in the past, all that.
‘No, Christie has never had a pink coat as far as I know; not much one for fashion, me.
‘Yes, I said something like it was a pity that bloke with the balaclava hadn’t found Hannah rather than those visitors he attacked, but I didn’t know she was really missing then, did I? It was meant as a joke. Yes, another.
‘Yes, I did see Hannah up there at the North End, very briefly that day. She was round the other side of the rocks, high above me. She was with someone. No, I don’t know who. I couldn’t make them out. I didn’t see exactly what they were wearing, or if their face was covered. It was only a glimpse. They had their back to me.
‘It was tipping it down by then, so I decided to get back home.
‘Yes, just like that. Changed my mind. I hadn’t got the right gear on to be out in that. I imagine anyone up there would hotfoot it down as soon as they could in that weather.
‘No, I didn’t go near her. I didn’t touch her. I don’t know what happened to her.
‘Look, I didn’t have to tell you I’d seen her, did I?’
That’s what Sam told them. None of it was a lie.
He understood why he was one of the first people they wanted to talk to.
It was bloody freezing in the community centre, where the coppers had set up shop. He was glad to be out of it when they’d finished. He wanted to go straight to the pub, but he had to finish work first. And he’d promised Christie that he’d get back early today to tell her how the interview had gone.
There was stuff Sam didn’t tell the police.
He could hardly tell them what he wanted to do to bloody Hannah. The little cow proper walloped him. She might have had his eye out when she punched him, and he was steaming. And he’d had enough of bloody women bloody hitting him, thank you very bloody much.
They asked if Hannah was with someone up there. There’d been a witness who’d told them they saw her arguing with someone who was wearing a pink waterproof. And sure, Christie might have had one of them pink coats. She once said that she was going to buy one. But Sam never saw it, that much is true. He could swear on the bible about that.
As far as he could tell.
Because he couldn’t see it. It’s a condition. Bang to rights, protanopia. Christie would joke it was more to do with him being blind drunk.
She’s the one who sees red. Vicious if provoked. But …
His bloody wife irritates the hell out of Sam. Nag, nag, bloody nag. But he loves her. He loves her with all his heart. The boys love her. She’s a good mother. She’d never hurt the lads. And he couldn’t risk her getting banged up and depriving them of their mum, could he?
So, just in case …
He didn’t mention the other stuff. Her nasty streak. She-Hulk, his missus. Can lash out if provoked. Apparently, he’s always provoking her.
So, he told the police she didn’t have a pink coat as far as he knew. That wasn’t a lie. It’s the least he could do.
And he could hardly tell them that he might have done something to the bloody barmaid if he’d found her first, but someone else was doing it for him by the looks of it. On the rocks high above him – Hannah and someone else fighting up there. He couldn’t see who it was. He only got a glimpse. Perhaps … it might have been Christie. Someone wearing a waterproof at any rate. But he legged it before he saw what happened. Deliberately turned away. He couldn’t make out much because of the rain anyway. Mental it was, that afternoon. He got himself out of there as fast as possible. He couldn’t afford to see for sure … just in case. Walked all the way round the bloody island and stood on top of Tommy’s Hill watching the storm, the sea a huge churning mirror, until his ears screamed with the wind; until he was shaking and soaked and sober. Call him a coward if you like.
No one needs to know anything about that.
It’s not that he’s frightened of his wife, not at all. He loves her. She’s a good mother.
58
Miss Elisabeth
‘No, I don’t want a cup of tea, thank you. Rubbish stuff from that bleddy urn here. Need a new one if you ask me, only the estate manager disagrees, penny-pinching so and so. I’d like to see him deal with all the complaints when we do the bingo and the tea parties for the—
‘Yes. Back to the points in question. I don’t have all day either.
‘No, I wasn’t on a walkabout that afternoon. Only bleddy idiots would be out galivanting in that. You could smell the storm coming in. And they were all caught out in it weren’t they, Sam and Christie, and that John from the gardens – his missus, and Maisie Willis who used to come with her mother, and that blonde maid who was staying at Falcon and—
‘No, of course I didn’t see them all. I’ve not got eyes in the back of my neck. It’s just what people have been saying in the pub, that’s all. But I tell you what I think. I’d look to that youth from Falcon if I were you. Kit.
‘Because most murders are committed by lovers, them’s the facts. And it’d not be an islander. I’d lay my life on that. I know everyone who works here like my own family. Inside and out. Not one of them – couldn’t be. Not even one of the young ’uns. Bound to be one of the blow-ins.
‘Definitely not an accident, no. She was just too canny that maid, that’s why.
‘No, there’s nothing espercifically he did that made me suspect him. But he was her boyfriend. I’ve seen all them programmes about it. Crimes of passion they calls ’em. Was always that way. And they’d had a big falling-out the night before, Hannah and her bloke, so they says. I saw some of that, what she was up to. Kissing sailors in the Old Ship. The usual. Then she’d been with young Vlad all night by all accounts.
