Page 9

Eight

“I’m sorry about your dad.”

Two hours later, I was standing in the car park at the Reach with Craig Aspinall, the man who had spoken with my father here, and who had then noticed his car was still here the next day. Aspinall was in his seventies, his complexion weathered by a lifetime spent out in the elements. There was a watery gleam to his eyes as he spoke. He was trying to keep himself together on the surface, but the emotion he was feeling was clearly visible underneath.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry too.”

“I just keep thinking…”

But then he trailed off and shook his head. He took a sip of coffee from the lid of the thermos flask he was carrying.

There was no need for him to finish. It was easy for me to imagine what must be going through his head. Some variation of what if? What if he had done things differently that day? What if he had paid a little more attention and noticed that something was wrong? It was an almost ubiquitous reaction to trauma, and right now he was wearing the guilt as plainly as the wax jacket he was pulling around himself against the cold.

“I understand,” I said. “But it’s important to remember that my father chose to do what he did. It wasn’t your fault. ”

“It feels like I should have realized.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But however you or I might feel about it, it was his decision. And there’s another way of looking at it too. You knew him, right?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Pretty well.”

“So you know the kind of man he was.”

“Stubborn as hell.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Which means that it wouldn’t have mattered what you said or did, because once he’d made his mind up about something, there wouldn’t have been any changing it.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

He hesitated.

“Do you have any idea why—?”

“No,” I said quickly. “I don’t.”

Which remained true, but the question had taken on additional nuance since Fleming had asked me it yesterday. I glanced at the footpath that led away from the car park toward the Reach itself. I knew a little more about my father now. I knew he had been keeping a secret. But whether that had played into whatever happened here remained a secret in itself.

“How was my father when you saw him?” I said.

“Pretty much the same as always.”

“Did it seem to you like he was… troubled by anything?”

“I don’t know.” Aspinall frowned. “When I look back on it, all I keep thinking is that it seemed like he wanted rid of me. Like I was interrupting something, or holding him back. But maybe that’s just me overthinking things because of what happened.”

“Maybe,” I said.

I glanced over at my father’s car, which was the only vehicle parked here right now. Aspinall was a walker; like me, he had arrived here on foot. He followed my gaze and took it as a prompt.

“Ah, God, sorry. You’ll be wanting these.”

He got the keys out of his pocket and passed them to me.

“There’s no need to apologize,” I said. “But yes, I do. Thank you. ”

“I locked it for safekeeping. I’m sure it would have been okay, but you get kids up here messing around sometimes.”

“I remember.”

I unlocked my father’s car and eased myself into the driver’s seat. Out of habit, I started to place my hands on the steering wheel— ten-to-two, my son —but that conjured up a memory of him attempting to teach me to drive, and I released my grip. Our growing frustration and impatience with each other back then had quickly put a stop to those lessons.

Pay attention.

Was that his voice or mine? I glanced around the car. My father had driven to his death in this vehicle, and yet it was as clean and well maintained as the house. There were no signs of disarray. Nothing that suggested a distressed state of mind. Nothing that—

Aspinall tapped on the window.

I wound it down.

“Look.” There was an awkward expression on his face. “I’m not sure if this is the right thing to tell you or not, but if I don’t then it’ll just bother me until I do. And I don’t know when I’ll get the chance again.”

“Then you should do it now,” I said.

“When your father and I were speaking… well, I asked about you. Just casual conversation, you know? The way you do. And he said you were doing great.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah.” Aspinall paused. “He said he was very proud of you.”

“Well,” I said. “It’s a shame he didn’t tell me that, isn’t it?”

Aspinall blinked quickly.

“God. I’m sorry, Dr. Garvie. I just—”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s just…” Aspinall trailed off, looking sad and wounded. “It’s just what a father would want their son to know.”

“Thank you.”

And I was about to close the window, but he was still hovering there, unwilling for some reason to end our encounter.

“What are your plans?” he said .

“I’m sticking around for a while.”

“That’s the thing about this island, right?” A note of bitterness entered his expression. “You think you’ve got away, but the place keeps dragging you back.”

“No,” I said. “Just until things are sorted.”

He nodded to himself, as though that was what everyone said.

“So what are you going to do now?”

I looked out through the windscreen. What was I going to do? I had been turning that question over in my mind ever since finding the makeshift campsite up on the crag. It would have been possible for me to overlook the photograph, or fail to understand its significance, but it was much harder to ignore what it had led me to. My father had decided not to go to the police, and so far I had respected his wishes, but whatever duty I still felt to him, others were beginning to press on me now.

And yet perhaps there were still a few of his footsteps I could follow in first.

I put my hands back on the steering wheel. Thinking about the name Darren Field, and the address I’d read on the driving license that had been left so conspicuously in the tent. Like a breadcrumb on a trail.

“I think I might go for a drive,” I said.

I arrived at the terminal in time to catch the midday ferry.

After parking in the hold, I stood out on the passenger deck above, watching the empty sea ahead as I left the island behind. After my previous visits here, it had always been a relief to do so. But this time, I knew I would be returning later, and any prospect of escape was tempered by the thought of what I might discover in the hours ahead.

I suppressed the anger that had surprised me back at the Reach, and imagined my father standing behind me.

Did you make this journey, Dad? I thought.

He offered no response to that. Any reply he gave could only come from my own subconscious, and that wasn’t a question I was capable of answering. Time would tell. One thing I was sure of was that, if he had done, he would have been standing out where I was right now. Whe never we journeyed off the island together, he insisted on doing so, even when the weather was bad and I tried to persuade him to sit inside where it was warm.

What? I imagined him saying now. And miss this view?

I smiled.

“Plus it’s bracing, right?” I said quietly.

That’s right.

He sounded pleased that I remembered.

Keeps the senses sharp, my son.

When the ferry reached the mainland, I returned to the car and joined the steady stream of vehicles rolling slowly down the ramp. Within a few minutes, I was away from the terminal and driving along country roads. I had Darren Field’s address programmed into my GPS. The town I was heading to was about an hour’s drive away. I turned the radio on. I didn’t recognize the name of the station my father had it set to, but it turned out to be the kind of gentle conversation that was exactly what I needed right then. As I drove, I listened to people talking about nothing, allowing their voices to wash over me, until it was almost a surprise when I realized I had arrived at my destination.

The address was in a nice neighborhood. Detached houses curled around horseshoe-shaped streets, with trees spaced out neatly along the grass verges. I parked and looked out the window. Field’s house was as well maintained as the ones around it, but it seemed to have a melancholy air, as though someone had stopped taking care of it, but too recently for the cracks to have begun to show.

I tapped the steering wheel.

Doubting myself now.

What was I hoping to achieve by coming here? The idea that it might be dangerous to do so had been lingering at the back of my mind throughout the journey. The worst-case scenario, I supposed, was that I was parked outside the home of a manipulative killer. But that didn’t make sense to me. In my experience, murderers did not tend to leave clues that led directly to their front door. If there was a link between this address and the body my father had found in the woods, I was sure the connection would be more oblique than that. But it was hard to imagine what it might be.

There’s only one way to find out.

My father’s voice, from the seat behind me.

What did you do now? I thought.

What do you imagine I did? Don’t overthink things. Just go and knock on the front door and see what happens.

I nodded to myself.

After locking the car, I made my way up the drive. But my arrival must have already been noted, because the front door opened before I reached it. Only a little though. Whoever was inside had kept it on the chain. As I drew closer, I saw a woman there, standing back from the slightly open gap.

She looked suspicious. Nervous, even.

“Can you stay back, please?” she said.

“Of course.”

I stopped a short distance from the door and smiled lightly. She was maybe a few years older than I was, but it was hard to be more precise, as both her pale skin and the shadows beneath her eyes suggested she wasn’t sleeping well or taking care of herself. There was a restlessness to her too. Her body was moving slightly, as though there was some energy inside her that wouldn’t allow her to keep still.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Is this a bad time?”

She considered that.

“It is a bad time,” she said. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry to bother you then. I was hoping to speak to Darren Field?”

“He’s not here.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s kind of why it’s a bad time.”

I was about to reply but then the woman glanced over my shoulder, and the look of suspicion on her face deepened.

“Wait a minute—is that your car?”

“Yes,” I said. “Sort of.”

She pointed at it. “That’s the car the man was driving. I’m sure of it.”

“The man? ”

“The weird old man who came to talk to Darren.”

I didn’t think my father would have appreciated that description much. But at least it cleared up one question. He had followed the trail this far. At the same time, it raised others. Presumably he had come here looking for Darren Field, and now Field wasn’t here, and from the woman’s demeanor there was clearly something very wrong about that.

“It’s my father’s car,” I said. “ Was his car, I mean. He died a few days ago.”

She didn’t seem in the mood to offer condolences.

“Why did he want to speak to Darren? Why do you , come to that?”

“I found Darren’s name and address in my father’s files,” I said. “I don’t actually know who Darren is; I’d never heard of him before. And I don’t know why my father came to see him. I suppose the reason I’m here is that I’m looking for answers myself. When was this?”

“A couple of weeks ago. The day before Darren left.”

“Darren’s your husband, right?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” She held up her hand, showing her wedding ring. “I don’t know if he’s still wearing his. All I know is that your father—if that’s who it was—came to see him, and then everything went to shit. The day after that, Darren was gone. I haven’t seen him since.”

The information sent a ripple of alarm through me.

My father had a strong sense of justice, but he was also an impulsive man who struggled with his temper. Given the reason for his visit here, I hoped he hadn’t done something stupid. The idea seemed ridiculous, and I tried to tell myself that. Except it was clear that he had kept this investigation to himself, and equally obvious that I had no real idea what had been going through his head these past few weeks. Perhaps the answer to why he had taken his life was that he’d snapped and done something his conscience wouldn’t allow him to live with.

But I didn’t want to believe that.

“So you don’t know where Darren is now?” I said.

“Probably with her , whoever she is.”

“What do you mean? ”

“You got a sister?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“I just wondered. The two of them went off into another room to talk, and I couldn’t hear any of that. But your father said something about an island, and that he wanted to talk to Darren about a woman. He was too old to be someone’s angry husband, so I thought that maybe Darren might have been messing around with his daughter.”

I didn’t reply.

The island. The woman.

I knew exactly who my father had been referring to, but of course there was no way I could explain that to Darren Field’s wife. A moment later, she mistook my silence for awkwardness.

“It’s fine, by the way,” she said. “I don’t give a shit about that. I’ve got used to it over the years. Don’t ask, don’t tell. A part of me always knew what I was getting into when I got involved with him, but I never thought the bastard would actually leave me. Although I should be glad he’s gone, shouldn’t I? Strike that, actually—I am glad he’s gone.”

She was too hurt for that to be true.

“Did my father seem angry?” I said.

“Not really. The two of them were both very serious, though. When they came out of the room, they both seemed kind of grim . Darren wouldn’t tell me about it. No surprises there. We hadn’t been talking much anyway. He was a bit shaken about something, though, and I was worried about him.” She laughed without humor. “What a fucking idiot, right? He was just building up to making his decision. I see that now.”

“I’m sorry.”

People come up with explanations based on the facts they have and, in terms of Darren Field’s disappearance, it was clear to me why his wife had settled on the one she had. But she didn’t have access to the same facts that I did. My father had come here to talk to Field about a murdered woman.

And then Field had vanished.

If my father hadn’t seemed angry, then that was something to cling to, at least. And Field had not left with him that day, which was probably something else. But the feeling of alarm had not lifted .

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“Don’t be.” She shook her head. “I already told you. I’m glad he’s gone.”

“Well, then. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

I turned away.

“But you’ll tell me if you hear from him?” she said quickly. “I mean—you might right? Because if your father knew him, he might get in touch? About the funeral, or whatever?”

I looked back.

The suspicion on her face had been replaced by quiet desperation now, and her fingers were clutching the edge of the door. I felt slightly sick inside. She needed reassurance I was in no position to give, and she was asking me to make a promise that I might not be able to keep.

And yet it seemed unfair to leave her with nothing.

“I’ll try,” I said.