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RED JOE

“J ohn?” I called, tugging Hiccup back towards the door of the museum. I pushed her outside and pulled the door shut, ignoring her whines of protest. I walked back to the counter, careful not to step in the blood on the floor.

I’d thought it was a spatter pattern at first, but, as I drew closer, I saw a darker patch on the floor under the counter and a hand-shaped smear on the counter itself.

The postcard rack, lying on the floor, was dented, and I couldn’t help but imagine John Coldwell standing behind the counter and someone—why did it look like Eddie in my mind?

—picking up the rack and swinging it into John’s head.

“John?” I called again, moving out of the main room into the one behind it.

This one held ink portraits of HMS Dauntless and her crew and a piece of the spar salvaged from the wreck site. The story of the mutiny was told in framed text around the walls, like a mutineers’ Stations of the Cross.

The room looked undisturbed.

A third room, covering the island’s history since the mutiny, also appeared unscathed.

“John?” I unhooked the piece of rope at the bottom of the stairs and ignored the sign that said ‘Private’. I climbed the steps. “John?”

John lived upstairs. He had a bedroom, a bathroom, a tiny kitchen, and a spare room that was overflowing with books and old newspapers.

“John?”

There didn’t appear to be anything disturbed in the bedroom. In the bathroom, the rust-stained old basin had smears of blood inside it, and a bloody towel lay discarded on the floor.

I didn’t know what I was looking at. I didn’t know if John had come up here and cleaned himself up, or if his attacker had.

“John?” I called again as I made my way back downstairs.

There was no answer, but I wasn’t expecting one by now. John Coldwell was clearly gone, and so was whoever else had been here.

My stomach clenched.

Eddie had been here. Eddie, who was distraught at losing his diary. If he’d thought John Coldwell had taken it—and why wouldn’t he think that? The whole island thought John was responsible for attacking Eddie, so why not this as well?—then could he have snapped and hurt him?

I wanted to say it was impossible, but I’d known Eddie for three days.

Knowing someone for three days was the same as not knowing them at all, surely.

As hard as it was to think of Eddie’s smile, to think of Eddie’s kisses and the way he gasped as he came, to think of Eddie as anything apart from someone that I liked —and maybe even more than liked—I’d be a fool not to consider the possibility that Eddie might have done this.

Except I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t imagine Eddie ever being violent.

It was like trying to force a piece of a jigsaw puzzle into a space that it just didn’t fit, and never would, however hard you tried to bash it in.

I stepped outside the museum, pulling the front door shut so that Hiccup couldn’t get inside.

I looked up and down the street.

Emily Barnes was walking up from the jetty, dragging a plastic tub on wheels behind her. The tail of a skipjack tuna jutted out one end.

“Have you seen John Coldwell today?” I called out to her.

“Not today,” she said, stopping. “But I was fishing round the point with Little Harry on his dad’s boat.”

More like canoodling in the wheelhouse. “If you see him, tell him I’m looking for him.”

“Okay,” Emily said, and continued on her way, the wheels on the tub squeaking.

I dragged a hand through my hair.

Where the hell was John Coldwell? And did Eddie have anything to do with his disappearance?

Jesus. It was all such a mess now. I should’ve headed back to the lighthouse and got on the radio to notify the police.

Except even if they headed straight out, they’d still be hours away, and I needed to find some answers before then.

I looked down the street towards the statue of Josiah Nesmith, and the church just beyond it. I drew in a breath to steel my resolve, then headed for the church with Hiccup beside me.

* * *

T he last time the church bell had rung out in warning across the island, I’d been in Sydney and my dad’s boat had been smashed on the rocks out from the point.

The islanders had pulled two men out of the water that day, but lost three.

At least I’d had a body to bury; my best friend Will Harper hadn’t got his father back from the sea that had drowned him.

I’d listened to Amy recounting the story, days later and in choking sobs, of how the first she knew anything was wrong was the ringing of the church bell.

Katrina Finch was the first person to run to the church now, followed closely by Short Clarry and Mavis Coldwell, and then the men who’d been unloading at the jetty.

Will Harper was with them, his face drawn, and I knew the sound of the bells was as awful to him as it would have been to Amy, if she’d been here today.

For once I was glad she was still on the mainland.

“What’s going on, Red Joe?” Short Clarry demanded. “What’s happened?”

“There’s blood in the museum,” I said, “and John Coldwell is missing. Has anyone seen him today?”

It turned out that Mavis had been the last to see him, when John Coldwell had stopped in for a cup of tea.

“Was this before or after you sent Eddie Hawthorne down to see him?” I asked.

“Before,” Mavis said. “About an hour or so before.”

My heart sank. “Has anyone seen Eddie Hawthorne?”

John Dinsmore had caught a glimpse of someone on Seal Beach on the western side of the island, but he’d been out in his boat at the time and couldn’t say who it was. The bloke had been in a red jacket though, and that must have been around lunchtime.

“I knew no good would come of a Hawthorne on the island,” Mavis announced, clicking her tongue.

The bell brought more of the islanders over the next hour or so, but none of them had seen John Coldwell or Eddie Hawthorne since earlier in the day.

Even Young Harry Barnes, who’d hiked into the village all the way from his shack, hadn’t seen them, and Young Harry Barnes usually knew where everyone was even before they knew it themselves.

I led a small delegation of islanders to the museum, Short Clarry and Young Harry Barnes among them, to show them the blood and the evidence of a fight.

Short Clarry scratched his thinning hair and sucked in his lower lip in consternation. “What on earth is going on lately, Red Joe? What on earth?”

I couldn’t have summed it up better myself.

“Someone took the diary from my house,” I said.

“Mmm,” Short Clary said, nodding. “Young Hawthorne must’ve come looking for it, and hit John Coldwell over the head!”

“No,” I said, sharply enough that Nipper Will gave me a raised-eyebrow look and Mavis looked delighted. I cleared my throat. “Eddie was angry, but he wouldn’t do this, even if it was John Coldwell who stole it.”

I didn’t mention Eddie thought I was the thief.

I wasn’t, so they didn’t need to know about that.

And perhaps I also didn’t want them to look at me with pity—at least those of them with the sharpest gazes, like Mavis and Nipper Will—if they knew he’d accused me.

What would that say about me, about the man I was, if Eddie could think so badly of me?

I ignored the twist in my gut and the weight in my lungs and tried to work through what might have happened here.

It must have been John Coldwell who’d taken the diary, just like he’d intended to the night he’d attacked Eddie in his tent.

Had Eddie realised it too? Had John taunted him with it when he’d come into the museum?

It might have made sense, except I came up against the same rock wall I had when I’d first seen the blood: Eddie was not a violent man.

And even as I thought it, I felt a bitter stirring within me, laced with a faint thrill of self-righteousness. It was unfair that here I was, thinking the best of Eddie, when he thought I was a thief. He might have walked out, but I was the better man.

I didn’t like the angry satisfaction I felt. I didn’t like the spite behind the sentiment. I didn’t want to be right; I wanted to make it right.

“Hmm.” Short Clarry clicked his tongue. “But what if it wasn’t just stolen? What if it was ripped up or thrown in a fire?”

Well then. I hadn’t considered that, but I could see that other people might think that would make Eddie angry enough to strike John Coldwell.

A crime of passion over a dusty old book seemed ridiculous to me, but it wasn’t just a book, was it?

Not to Eddie, who was making it his life’s work, and not to whoever had attacked Eddie for it in the first place.

“It wasn’t him,” I said, again.

Another knowing glance from Nipper Will.

“We can ask them what happened when we find them,” I said. “For now, we need to send out a search party for John Coldwell, and also for Eddie Hawthorne. And we need to call the police.”

Short Clarry looked for a moment as though he was going to argue, but then he nodded and squared his shoulders. “Righto, then. Let’s get this started.”

The last time the islanders had formed a search party it had been for Verity Barnes’s youngest, Baby John, who’d wandered off in the night when he was three, leaving nothing but an open door behind him.

He’d been found hours later curled up asleep with one of Big Jim Corporal’s goats.

Lost John was now eight years old, and the new nickname had stuck.

Still, when he was an old man, he might prefer it to Baby John.

Dusk was settling over the island by the time the search parties were ready to start out, and it promised to be a cold night.

I stood back while Short Clarry issued instructions.

“We don’t know what’s happened, though it looks bad,” Short Clarry finished up with. “Mind you all remember that if you find him, Hawthorne or no, he’s still a tourist , even if he is descended from a bloodthirsty tyrant.”