Page 25 of Lawless (Dauntless Island #2)

DOMINIC

D auntless Island getting decent phone reception wasn’t the earth-shattering event I’d thought it would be, because hardly anybody had a phone.

Some of the younger residents did—those who’d been at school on the mainland recently enough that their phones hadn’t bricked themselves in the months or years they’d been switched off—but most of the residents weren’t on the network yet, and possibly never would be.

It gave me an idea for a community policing, though.

I printed out flyers with the station phone number—which diverted to my mobile—and Triple Zero, and made it my mission to deliver one to every house on Dauntless.

It also gave me the chance to work on my map of the island, so that, in an emergency, I’d know where I had to be.

Eddie promised to help me figure out if I missed anyone on my map, as long as I promised to look for his anti-aircraft gun station when I was up near Mayfair Bay and Seal Beach.

I said I would, even though I had no idea what the hell an anti-aircraft gun station looked like.

What getting phone reception did mean was that suddenly I had a bunch of texts from my family and notifications from social media that I hadn’t been able to access from the station’s computers.

They even struggled with basic email before the network upgrade.

Attachments, videos, gifs? Fucking forget about it.

Paradoxically, the fact my family and friends were now only a few taps on my screen away made me feel even lonelier.

The digital closeness brought the physical distance into sharp relief.

And I was acutely aware that the one person I really wanted to talk to, either in text or in person, lived one house over from mine and was avoiding me like the plague.

I came back one morning from a foot patrol of the village to discover my grass had been cut.

Had Natty been watching for me to leave, whipper snipper primed and ready to get started the second I was out of sight?

He should have waited until I got back, so he could at least kick me in the balls properly.

Message received, loud and clear.

At least the weather was nice the afternoon I set out on the dirt bike.

There was a stiff breeze coming in off the ocean, but the day was bright and the sunlight glittered on the water.

I took it slow though the village and didn’t speed up much as I cleared the last of the houses.

To get to Mayfair Bay I had to cross through the middle of the island where the farms, with their associated goats and cows, were.

I was pretty sure I wouldn’t make any friends if I collected a goat with my dirt bike.

I was also pretty sure nobody would call the air ambulance for me either, even if I happened to crash in front of one of the rare islanders who had a bloody phone.

This place.

It was crazy. Not in a ‘charming BBC series set in a small English village’ way.

It was crazy in the ‘I have fallen into an alternate dimension where nothing makes sense, and I can’t get out’ way.

I’d liked it a lot more when Natty was still talking to me—and a lot more when he was kissing me—but yeah, getting ghosted by the one guy who’d made me like waking up on Dauntless had really soured me on the place. Again.

I stopped for a goat on the track that led past Robbie Finch’s farm.

The goat didn’t move. It stared at me with its creepy rectangular pupils, and eventually I gave up waiting and went off the track to get around it.

I expected it to run at me and headbutt me off my bike, but apparently even my luck wasn’t that bad; it continued to stare at me balefully as I rode off.

Mayfair Bay was as gorgeous as the rest of the island, though it appeared wilder here than the southern side of Dauntless.

The shoreline was rocky, and instead of a gentle slope down to the water, there was a bluff that dropped off sharply to the beach below.

Overlooking the beach, on the eastern side of the bay where the bluff was less pronounced, there was a ramshackle sort of house that looked as though it had been built out of shipping containers and blue tarpaulins.

There was a tinnie pulled up onto the rocky beach, and a boat of some sort was anchored further out in the bay.

I might not have had the vocabulary to describe it accurately—it was a boat with an enclosed cockpit and an engine instead of sails—but I recognised it as Young Harry Barnes’s.

Since his boat was here, I presumed Young Harry Barnes was too.

I parked the bike near the house. There was a lot of what looked like random junk strewn over the rocky ground in front of the place—buckets, rope, rusted bits of metal, driftwood, crates full of empty plastic bottles—but I suspected everything had a use, even if I couldn’t tell what it was.

I knocked on the front door—well, I knocked on the metal wall beside the front door, because the front door was a piece of canvas.

“Hello? Young Harry Barnes? It’s Dominic, the copper.”

For a moment I thought I wasn’t going to get an answer, and then, abruptly, the canvas was pulled back and Young Harry Barnes peered out at me.

He was big, bearded, and grizzled, like Santa had been left out too long in the sun.

He smelled of salt and cigarette smoke. He was clutching a packet of cigarettes in his meaty hand when he opened the door. “What do you want?”

“Hi,” I said, with my dumbest, friendliest smile plastered on my face. “I’m just doing the rounds of the island and introducing myself to everyone. Can I come in?”

He tucked his cigarettes into his shirt pocket. “Do you have a warrant?”

“No,” I said. “Would that make a difference?”

“No,” he said. “I still wouldn’t let you in.”

“That’s what I figured,” I said. “I was just hoping to get out of the sun.”

He stared at me.

“Anyway,” I said, pulling a flyer out of the cargo pocket of my uniform pants, “I printed these up. They’ve got the station number on them, if you ever need to call me.”

He looked genuinely baffled. “Why would I ever need to call you?”

“Well, in case of an emergency, or a crime, or something.”

He snorted. “We don’t need some government man from the mainland sticking his nose in. We’ve looked after our own for two hundred years, without your help.”

“Well, the thing about that,” I said, still with my dumb smile on my face, “is that just because you haven’t needed help in the past, you might need it in the future. And that’s what my number is for.”

“I won’t,” he said, and pulled the canvas shut again.

I walked back to my bike.

Hey, a job posting for Dauntless Island. The photos look beautiful! I should throw in for it and see how I go. How amazing would it be to live somewhere like that?

Thanks, past me, you fucking idiot.

I followed the track west along the top of the bluff for a while, looking out for something that might be an anti-aircraft gun station.

But unless anti-aircraft gun stations had been built of salt couch and pebbles, there was no sign of anything.

Then again, if there had ever been a gun station here at Mayfair Bay, I was pretty sure Young Harry Barnes had already used it to build his ramshackle house.

The bike bounced over the track that linked Mayfair Bay to Seal Beach in the west. Seal Beach was less rocky than the beach at Mayfair Bay, and Eddie had told me it was a good swimming beach. I left the bike leaning on its kickstand and followed a sandy path partway down to the beach.

Yeah, it was a good swimming beach, all right. Six hundred seals couldn’t be wrong.

Okay, so six hundred was an exaggeration, but there were probably between twenty and thirty of the animals basking on the shoreline. And I didn’t want to swim with them. Were seals vicious? I was adding that question to the list of things I’d never thought I’d ask until I’d moved here.

Are seals vicious?

Is it illegal to refuse to sell milk to someone?

Are the Dauntless Islanders legitimately going to murder me just because I’m a copper?

And, most importantly : What the fuck is going on with Natty Harper?

“It’s fine,” I told myself as I looked at the seals. One or two of them got interested enough to open their eyes and look at me. “It’s not a big deal. Maybe he’s not even avoiding you. Maybe he’s busy doing... whatever the fuck there is to do on this island.”

The nearest seal barked, as though it was disagreeing with my assessment. Then again, it was probably just disagreeable in general. It gave off that vibe. It was at least twenty metres away from me, but I took the hint and retreated to my bike, dry sand squeaking under my boots.

I made my way back towards the village slowly, hoping the fresh air and incredible views would kill my bad mood. The island itself was gorgeous and pristine, and the salt air and sunlight were invigorating. But the people? Jesus, no.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Eddie was a good bloke, and so was Red Joe.

And Amy always stopped to talk when she saw me.

I was still getting milk on the sly from Robbie Finch, so if we weren’t friends exactly, we at least had an understanding.

But I was a talkative guy, and I always had been—my mum said I could talk underwater with a mouthful of marbles—so the fact that I was reduced to chatting with Frank the cat at the end of every shift was hard.

Frank was a great listener, and she even contributed to keep the conversation going with meows and rumbling little ‘breep’ sounds, so no shade on her, but I would have preferred a conversation with a species that could speak English.