 
#

#

# LAZARUS ISLAND

## LEE MOAN

Copyright © 2011 by Lee Moan

Cover art copyright © 2011 by Lee Moan

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Lee Moan.

Smashwords Edition: October 2011

**Smashwords Edition, License Notes**

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Lazarus Island

Author's Note

About the Author

Also Available

Exclusive Preview: The Door in the Sky

## 1

Sam Thorne had never been a superstitious man. He did not believe in omens, or providence, or the tired old philosophy of 'what goes around comes around'. He prided himself on being a practical man, rational and thoughtful. And yet, when he awoke that morning, he found himself paralysed by a clear and palpable dread. It hung in the air above his bed, a nameless, shapeless thing, whispering to him, warning him of the events to come.

Guilty conscience, he told himself; that's all.

Once he was on his feet, he put it to the back of his mind – but the grim, uneasy feeling stayed with him for a long time after.

## 2

He stood at the French windows and watched the sun come up, drinking hot, strong tea from his favourite mug. The gulls were restless this morning, swooping and swaying on the currents of the North Sea, hundreds of them clustered around the top of the old lighthouse which marked the skyline like an exclamation point. After a fitful night's sleep, the spectacular view of Port Farron and Scalasay's eastern shoreline never failed to revive his spirits.

This was why he'd come here. That view, so refreshing after the cluttered, claustrophobic skyline of London, soothed his soul. He had no regrets about coming to the island. He just wished Rachel felt the same. She never said a word about it, not anymore, but she didn't have to; he could read her discontent in everything she did or said. But things would get better, he kept telling himself. Given time, she would come around.

"Sam, I need you to do me a favour."

He turned to find his wife crossing the wood-panelled floor in her navy blue nurse's uniform, holding her hair above her head in clumps, hairclips clenched between her teeth like masonry nails. She stopped in front of the mirror and set about creating a French plait.

"What?" he said.

"I need you to have Becky today."

He threw his head back and sighed. "Today? Why today?"

Rachel stopped working on her plait and turned to him. "Sam," she said, head cocked to one side. "You know why. Ben Garrett is coming today."

Sam closed his eyes.

Ben Garrett. The convicted rapist of three young islanders ten years back. He murdered his last victim, a thirteen year-old girl, slitting her throat and pushing her off a cliff. Ben Garrett was a monster, and yet the authorities were letting him out to visit his dying mother. There'd been much debate in the press over the ethics of letting someone so dangerous out of prison, even for one day, even under the strictest security escort.

"I thought they weren't going to give him his day release?" Sam said.

Rachel shrugged. "Soon as they threw the Human Rights ball into the argument, the Government caved in. They're calling it a mercy trip."

Sam snorted in disgust. "Mercy trip? That's rich. Where was Ben Garrett's mercy when he threw that girl onto the rocks at Pierre Point?"

Rachel didn't answer, her attention focused on applying her lipstick. "So will you have Becky so I can be there with Cynthia?"

"Aren't there more deserving people on this island who need you?"

"Sam! Don't you dare try and take the moral high ground over this. There are only a hundred and twenty people on this island. I have to go where I'm needed. It's not like–"

"Not like London," he finished wearily. He had heard the argument so many times. She'd been a district nurse back in Bushey Heath where they'd spent the first few years of married life. There'd been an abundance of sick and elderly people there, providing her with full-time work, a good wage and self-esteem. Here, on this tiny Hebridean island, the work didn't justify a full-time waged district nurse. No wonder she resented coming here.

"I did warn you this might happen," she said.

Sam turned away again, looking out to sea. "Well, I wasn't planning on doing any writing today anyway!"

He saw Rachel roll her eyes in the reflection of the glass. "Sam, please. You told me yesterday you haven't written anything in weeks. Don't tell me today was going to be any different."

The accusation stung like a blade between his ribs, but something made him bite his tongue. Probably, he admitted, because it was true. He hadn't produced anything, not in weeks but months. He'd managed to grind out a couple of short stories, but before trying them on the usual markets his agent had sent them back, requesting rewrites. 'Lacking inspiration', was the attached comment, and Sam thought that just about summed up his entire situation. After three prolific years, in which he'd produced three best-selling mystery novels, everything had come grinding to a halt. The only thing coming out of the Sam Thorne literary stable now was a stony silence.

He tried to think of an acerbic response to Rachel's cutting remarks, but even that seemed beyond him.

So he said, "I'm not sure I like the idea of you being at the Garrett's house when this _murderer_ turns up."

"Sam, he's going to be in chains, and under armed escort. I'll be quite safe." She paused, staring out at him from the mirror whilst her hands busied themselves with her hair. "Jesus, Sam," she said. "For a moment there it sounded like you cared."

Sam looked round at her. She pursed her lips, avoiding eye contact. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he said.

Just then, he heard the side door slam shut. Seconds later, a small figure in a denim skirt and pink blouse raced across the garden outside. She skipped over to the small vegetable patch which Rachel had started up, blonde pigtails bouncing, and crouched down to examine something she had planted days before.

"Well?" Rachel said.

"All right," he said. Watching his daughter soothed the brooding beast in his heart. "I'll have her."

The phone burst into life, ringing like a klaxon through the house. After three rings, Sam realised his wife was not going to answer it.

"Rachel?"

"I'm doing my hair," she said.

Sam charged across the room and snatched up the receiver.

"Hello?" he said.

"Hello, Sam."

The voice was female, husky, pronouncing his name with an overtly sexual drawl.

"It's Kelly."

He tensed, turned away from Rachel, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece.

"Sam? Are you going to talk to me, Sam?"

He was paralysed by a sudden irrational fear: that if he said the girl's name out loud he would invoke her like some angry djinn, causing her to materialise in the room, and in so doing reveal the secret he had fought so hard to conceal. For those few protracted moments he didn't know what to say or do – but if he continued to remain silent, that would raise even more suspicion. He drew in a deep breath, composed his face, and turned to his wife. Rachel had frozen mid-plait, an inquisitive look on her face.

"Who is it?" she asked.

He pressed his hand down tighter on the mouthpiece. "It's Ronnie," he told her. "Ronnie Gibson from the publishers."

He told himself that, as Kelly worked for his publisher, it was only half a lie. Rachel resumed her hair maintenance, her expression unreadable.

"I'll take it in the study," Sam said. He transferred the call and then hung up the receiver before walking briskly out of the room. He felt Rachel's eyes watching him all the way.

In the relative solace of his study, with the door firmly shut, Sam spoke with an angry hiss: "Jesus, Kelly, what the hell do you think you're doing calling me here?"

Her sing-song voice drifted out of the phone like a phantom. "Oh, Sam, I know I promised not to contact you anymore, but . . ." She sighed. "Something's come up. I need to see you."

Sam crouched low over the phone, trying to project his anger into the mouthpiece without having to shout. "No! No way! That's a really bad idea. What happened between us . . . It was a mistake, Kelly. A big mistake."

Kelly said nothing for a long time, as if his stinging words had stunned her into silence. When she spoke again, it was in a flat, humourless monotone: "Sam, it's about your next book."

Sam sat up straight, thrown momentarily by this unexpected curve ball. "What?" he said.

"Hayden-Mills sent me. There are some issues we need to discuss with you."

"Well, why didn't you say that in the first place, Kelly?" He felt like such an asshole jumping on the offensive so quickly.

"You didn't give me a chance to explain."

"And this can't be done over the phone?"

"No, it can't."

He sighed. "And where's Ronnie? I thought he was my personal advisor now?"

"Ronnie's off work sick. Stress."

Sam sat in silence for a long time, allowing his head to droop, as Kelly's voice continued in his ear:

"Sam, I wish it were possible to erase the past, but sometimes that's just not possible. I really don't want to upset you, honestly I don't. If you'll agree to see me, then maybe we can settle this quickly and painlessly."

Sam shook his head, the hot, sick sensation in his chest rising to fill his head. He felt delirious.

"If I catch the next ferry I can be on Scalasay in about three hours–"

"No!" he barked, louder than he'd intended. "No. Not on the island. Please."

"Sam, why ever not?"

"You know why, Kelly."

There was a deep silence. Eventually, she said: "Rachel?"

"Yes, Rachel," he said, bitterly. "Now listen to me. Don't come here. I'll come to you." He ran his free hand over his face, shocked at the layer of sweat covering his palm. "Where are you now?"

"Oban. I'm at the Station Hotel."

"Right, listen to me," he said, his tone businesslike. "I'll meet you there in the lobby at noon. Okay?"

Silence.

"Okay?"

"Yes, Sam." After a pause, she said, "Sam, I am looking forward to seeing you again."

"I wish I could say the same."

He slammed the phone back in its cradle and hung his head in his hands. He had barely a moment alone before the door to his study rattled open and Becky came bounding into the room. She was holding a tiny plant pot, cupped in both hands, and the expression of pure glee on her face lit up the room. She fell into his embrace, planting a big kiss on his stubbly cheek.

"Daddy, look! My geranium has three leaves."

Sam appraised the tiny pink petals. "Wow, sweetheart, that's very impressive."

"Mummy says you're looking after me today," she said excitedly. "Can we go to the lighthouse again? I love the lighthouse!"

Sam stared at her for a long time, everything crashing together in his mind like a motorway pileup. He'd already agreed to have Becky for the day; Rachel would not let him wriggle out of that one. If he tried, there would be a row. A big one. And he couldn't cancel his meeting with Kelly in Oban. He knew that if he didn't meet her where he'd arranged to, she would simply come to the island, and that would be worse for everybody. He felt like a man standing in quicksand, whose only escape route was through a field of broken glass.

"Not the lighthouse, today, sweetheart," he said, his voice deliberately low so as to avoid being overheard.

Becky's eyebrows arched in disappointment, and her mouth stretched into a little 'O' as she prepared to voice her unhappiness.

"But," he said, silencing her with a finger over her lips. "But we will be going somewhere else, somewhere just as exciting." He put his mouth to her ear. "On the ferry."

Her eyes bulged. "Where we going, Daddy?"

He shushed her again, whispering in that conspiratorial tone. "It's a mystery tour," he said. "But you have to promise not to tell Mummy where we went."

Later, when the initial shock of the tragedy had finally begun to fade, he would look back over the events of that morning, turning over every word, every decision, every change of circumstance, in a desperate bid to find some meaning in what was to become the darkest day of his life.

## 3

Scalasay was an island community of one hundred and twenty-three inhabitants, most of them second or third-generation Scots, with a healthy sprinkling of newcomers who were either adventurous or affluent or both. Unlike some island communities, Scalasay was renowned for welcoming new blood with open arms. Many of the newcomers were retired couples who had worked hard and made their money and were seeking out a quiet, peaceful refuge in which to enjoy their golden years. Needless to say, they never caused any trouble. Young families were much rarer, and therefore welcomed with even greater enthusiasm. Without new blood, the residents were fond of saying, communities died; and there was nothing 'dead' or dying about Scalasay. Far from it.

Nestled in the cup of the island's natural valley were fifty rows of uniformly white houses lining the five streets that made up the 'Town', as it was known. The houses had to be repainted every winter after the gulls and puffins and cormorants had done their worst during the summer months – although this was not such a bad thing as it gave the islanders a common grievance with which to while away the long winters, when the summer people had dwindled to a memory and the bitter winds began to roll in from the North sea.

A long esplanade dominated the valley, where retail trades old and new sat side by side: the grocer next door to the internet café, the butcher next door to the mobile phone shop, an unusually easy alliance which gave the impression that the island was one big, busy shopping precinct. It wasn't, but the islanders were happy with the impression.

At the eastern end of the esplanade a wide flight of a dozen stone steps rose to a town square bordered by facades around an ornate fountain with a stone representation of a Viking boat resting at its summit. This was not unusual. The Vikings laid claim to Scalasay back in the dark ages, when they ruled most of the Hebrides, and signs of their legacy could be found all over the island.

Overlooking the fountain was the town hall, the biggest building on the island. It had been designed and built for the sole purpose of town meetings, but as these gatherings had become less and less frequent, the building had been used to accommodate other things such as the bridge club, the annual summer fete, countless dinner and dance events for the golden years set; anything to prevent the building falling into disuse and disrepair. As the islanders were quick to point out, nothing on Scalasay was allowed to die. The unofficial motto of Scalasay was that it was 'the most vibrant of all the Hebridean islands', a claim no one had ever disputed.

The mayor was Richard Ashworth. Fifty-six years old, large and round with fine black eyes and a Roman profile, Ashworth was undoubtedly the wealthiest man on the island, although this was not the reason the islanders had elected him mayor for three consecutive terms. His grandfather was Earl Ashworth, the man who had done more for Scalasay in the last century than any other. People on the island liked the sense of continuity and tradition that Ashworth's appointment as mayor brought. And he was good at it, up to a point, although the community mostly ran itself, leaving Ashworth with very little to do on a daily basis, an arrangement which suited him just fine.

On the morning of September fifteenth, as the sun climbed steadily into the eastern sky, the town hall doors rolled open, and a great procession of people streamed into the main hall. The call had gone out: there was an emergency meeting, a meeting which required every islander to attend. But there were few surprised faces in the gathering crowd. Everyone knew what this meeting was about. The horror which had ripped the island apart ten years earlier was returning and, as mayor of Scalasay, Richard Ashworth wanted to know what the islanders intended to do about it.

## 4

When Rachel stepped through the open doors of the town hall the meeting was already underway. Angry voices echoed around the wood-panelled walls. The strength of passion in the crowd was understandable, but it also made her feel particularly vulnerable. She deliberately avoided taking a seat in the main auditorium and slipped unnoticed into the back of the hall.

On a raised stage at the far end of the hall, Richard Ashworth sat in the centre of a table, hammering his gavel, a throwback, no doubt, to his days as a judge at the Old Bailey.

"Please everyone," Ashworth said, raising his hand. "This meeting will not achieve any kind of resolution if we are all going to shout over each other. Now let us all just listen to Ted for a moment while he reads out the letter we received this morning."

A murmur of disgruntled acceptance fluttered around the hall, but silence eventually resumed. The man sitting on Ashworth's right was Ted Sheldon, also on the island council, retired accountant and leader of the community choir. As he stood up, he carefully placed his reading glasses on the end of his large, blotchy nose, straining to read the letter he held in his trembling hands.

He cleared his throat noisily. "It's from the Prison Service," he announced gruffly. "Addressed to the island council. 'Dear community leaders, it is with some regret that we must inform you of our decision to allow Benjamin Garrett the day release he has requested. This decision has been made in accordance with Human Rights laws which permit such visits in cases of this nature. It is our understanding that Mr Garrett's mother, Cynthia, is only days away from death and that if Mr Garrett is to visit her then that time must be sooner rather than later.

"'We have taken into full consideration the strong views expressed by yourselves on the council, and the island community of Scalasay as a whole, with regards to Mr Garrett's return to the island, albeit for one day, and fully understand the feelings of all concerned. However, we must stress that Mr Garrett will be escorted to and from the island by prison van under armed guard. Under no circumstances will the community of Scalasay be at risk. We have made every provision possible to ensure that the day release of Mr Garrett passes without any unnecessary complications. We hope that this decision is acceptable.'"

Sheldon lowered the letter abruptly and yanked off his glasses.

"Ladies and gentlemen, as a member of this council and the community it serves, I say that this decision is wholly _unacceptable_!"

The crowd erupted in cries and jeers as Sheldon sat down, an expression of bitter resentment on his face.

Ashworth held up his hands, pleading for calm. When the hall settled, he pointed to a man in the front row. Everyone sat down to allow him to talk.

"How can they say they 'fully understand our feelings'? If they did they wouldn't allow that monster to set foot on this island for one second!"

Impassioned cries of "Hear! Hear!" echoed around the four walls. The man sat down.

"I agree," Ashworth said gravely. "What Ben Garrett did ten years ago was appalling. It would be appalling in any part of the world, even the roughest slum or inner-city area, but here in our peaceful community its effects are bound to be magnified. The ghosts of Garrett's actions cannot be easily laid to rest. We accept that. And in an ideal world we would rather not see Ben Garrett ever set foot here again—"

Sheldon shot to his feet again, pounding the table with his fist. "It would be better for everyone if Ben Garrett just stayed in his prison cell until he rotted. Even that would be a mercy for him."

Rachel saw anger flash across Ashworth's face at the interruption. He'd clearly been building up to a point, a diplomatic solution to the quandary they all faced. He raised his arm and beckoned for Sheldon to resume his seat.

Reluctantly, the older man did.

Ashworth exhaled heavily. "Nobody wants this," he said, holding up the letter Sheldon had just read out. "Nobody wants Garrett back on the island. But the simple fact is: he's coming. Today. My question is not whether or not he should, but what we can do to stop this."

Silence filled the hall. Ashworth's eyes drifted over the faces of his community.

"Nothing," he said quietly. "Not a thing. We can all go down to Port Farron this afternoon and stage a protest, maybe, but what good will that do?"

Silence. Ted Sheldon shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

"I propose we let this pass, let Garrett have his day release, let him visit his dying mother one last time. Then we can all get on with our lives again. Fighting this any further is only going to make things worse."

Sheldon turned and looked at Ashworth with anger flashing in his eyes. "Let it pass?" he hissed. "You know full well my daughter died at that maniac's hands, Richard! Holly had her future, a bright future, snatched away in a moment. How can I ever let that pass?"

Sheldon stood up abruptly, sending his chair skidding across the raised stage. He stormed away from the table and disappeared through the side door, slamming it shut.

Ashworth watched him go, a miserable, pained expression on his damp, round face. When he turned back to the assembled islanders they began shouting their agreement.

Realising the meeting was lost, that there would be no real resolution, Rachel turned to walk out through the doors into the cool morning. But one voice broke through the noise of all the others.

"I'm surprised you showed your face here this morning, Mrs Thorne."

Rachel stopped. The hall descended into silence as she turned slowly round to face them. There were so many faces staring at her that she didn't know where to look. In the end, she sought out the owner of the voice who had called out to her.

It was the third island councillor, Reggie Jones. He sat with his hands locked together on the table in front of him, a judgemental squint on his face.

The silence was almost unbearable. Ever since Sam dragged her here, she'd never felt part of this community. Sam had always tried to reassure her that she was simply being paranoid, that the community of Scalasay welcomed newcomers. But that was all inconsequential in the face of this wall of hostility.

Hesitantly, in a broken voice, she said: "If you're talking about me nursing Cynthia Garrett—"

"Of course we are," Jones snapped. "How could you nurse the mother of a murderer?"

Her embarrassment fell away instantly, consumed by a sudden swell of anger. "Cynthia Garrett has done nothing wrong."

"Apart from raising a monster!"

"Someone has to look after her. As a nurse it's my duty."

"Oh, really?" Jones said. "And what about ethics? What about your duty to this community? As a newcomer to this island . . ."

This time it was Ashworth's turn to interrupt. He raised his hand, silencing his colleague in mid-flow.

"Reggie, please, I don't think this is any way forward. Rachel Thorne is simply doing her job, nursing a very sick woman on her deathbed."

Sam had become fast friends with Ashworth when they first arrived on Scalasay, but Rachel had never liked him. She found him condescending, not just to her in particular, but to all women. A man with a trophy wife like Marina Ashworth was bound to hold a certain opinion of women that was not, in her mind, entirely healthy. But right now, she wanted to plant a kiss on his big ruddy cheeks. In this nest of vipers, he was her only defender.

"So?" Reggie Jones went on. "There are plenty of people outside this community who could have done the job. If she was looking to be accepted into this community she should have left it to them, instead of—"

"Reggie," Ashworth said, his voice hard and full of warning. "That's enough."

Rachel expected Jones to continue, but to her surprise he acquiesced, looking down at his hands with the air of a schoolboy who has just been reprimanded by the principal.

Ashworth held Rachel's gaze for a moment and in that moment she saw his unspoken apology. She offered a small nod of acknowledgement, then turned to leave. As she stepped towards the open doorway a dark figure blocked her way.

It was Lawkins, Ashworth's handyman and gardener.

She stumbled back a step, unable to withhold a gasp at the man's disfigured face. He was dressed in fisherman's oilskins, his face ruddy and unshaven, and his right eye was missing. He stared at her with his one good eye, but she saw no kindness there.

She stepped to the left and pushed past him, out into the welcome fresh air.

Damn you, Sam, she thought. Why did you bring me to this god-forsaken place?

## 5

On that bright September morning, Ben Garrett sat in the back of a Securi-T prison van with his eyes closed, a set of black glass and silver rosary beads running though his thick, calloused fingers, lips trembling as he intoned his second sextet of Hail Mary's.

He was a big man, and the heat in the steel-walled compartment was stifling, his face and neck glistening with sweat. The triumvirate of jagged scars which ran diagonally across the left side of his face throbbed incessantly, but he welcomed the pain. A fellow inmate named Dick 'Bull' Jaggers had given him those marks in an attempt to blind him. He very nearly succeeded. Garrett felt that the scars were well deserved and long overdue. After all the things he had done in his miserable life, he was only disappointed that his eyes had not been permanently ruined in the attack.

He felt the van rumble to a stop, and the engine died. He continued to recite his prayer, but his ears were fixed on the sound of footsteps crunching gravel outside the van. Moments later, the rear door was unlocked and yanked open. Warden Damien Knox stood in the blinding rectangle of light, chewing gum with open-mouthed arrogance.

"All right, beautiful," he said. "Last cigarette break before we reach the island."

Garrett refused to acknowledge this offer, instead closing his eyes and finishing the Our Father he had just begun.

"Come on, Garrett," Knox said. "You've got another twenty miles to say your prayers. Cigarette break now or I shut this door."

". . .world without end, Amen," Garrett finished. He slipped the rosary beads into the pocket of his tunic, then lifted the heavy leg and arm chains in both hands before shuffling sideways out of the compartment.

"You're such a prick, Garrett," Knox chided, stepping back to allow Garrett's exit.

Stepping out onto the gravel was a truly exhilarating feeling. The fresh highland wind rushed into his oxygen-starved lungs, so precious it actually tasted sweet to him. Like honey. He inhaled deeply and then looked around the Scottish countryside. They had parked on the gravel verge of a winding cliff road. The jagged hills of the coastline fell away below them, white foam crashing leisurely at the base. Garrett felt the finest spray of seawater on his face.

Knox stepped up to his left shoulder, an open cigarette tin in his hand. Chains clinking, Garrett picked out one of his own perfectly manufactured rollups (a skill he'd learned in prison) and slipped it between his dry lips. When Knox put his flame to it, the sensation was like ecstasy. He inhaled deeply and then let out a long, steady breath.

"What time will we get to the island?" he asked.

Knox, who was drawing on his own filtered cigarette, glared at him for a moment. "We're hoping to catch the two o'clock ferry. Why? Afraid your mother will pop her clogs before we get there?"

The jibe was cruel enough for Garrett to tear his eyes away from the mesmerising scenery. He held Knox's gaze, grappling with that inner beast, the one which had led him down this terrible road. He tried to tell himself that Knox was inexperienced, filled with all the arrogance and prejudices of youth. Men like Knox saw Ben Garrett and just saw KILLER. For young men like Knox the world was a much simpler place. They couldn't accept that people could change, that murderers could turn their lives around. Or, perhaps, they didn't want to accept it. For people like Knox, the world was better, simpler, in black and white.

Knox held his gaze for as long as possible, but just as he faltered, his colleague Frank Hannon appeared at his side, stretching his aching limbs after the middle leg of a very long journey.

"Give us one," he said, pointing at the pack of Benson and Hedges in Knox's hand.

"What do you reckon, Frank?" Knox said, the cruel gleam returning to his eye. "D'you reckon he'll make it to see his dear old mum before she shuffles off her mortal coil?"

Lighting his own cigarette, Hannon let out a braying laugh. "Wouldn't that just be poetic justice? 'Sorry you came all this way, laddie, but your mother just snuffed it as you were coming up the garden path.'"

The two men collapsed against each other, giggling like excitable schoolboys. Garrett stared at them through an emotionless mask. Eventually, he turned away, needing the soothing scenery of the Scottish coast to calm the smouldering fire in his chest.

God would not let that happen, he told himself. God was good. And God welcomed the repentant sinner. Father Joseph had told him that countless times during their long talks in his cell. No one was beyond God's forgiveness, the old priest had said. Murderers, rapists, pederasts: God could forgive the worst thing that a human being could do if the sinner was repentant enough, if they truly felt sorry for what they had done. For God's justice was not done here on Earth, but in the life afterwards, as long as we made amends here and now, in this life. Seeing his mother, Garrett had decided, was his path to true repentance.

"She won't die," he said. "God would not allow it."

Hannon and Knox exchanged a cynical look.

"Before she leaves this world there is something very important I have to tell her."

Garrett looked at them sidelong, enjoying the puzzled looks on their faces for that briefest of moments.

"What?" Knox said. "Tell her what?"

But Garrett just turned back to the ocean and kept on smiling.

## 6

If he had believed in such things, Sam Thorne would have seen his first meeting with Kelly Burnett as a bad omen. But, in truth, the girl was just trouble, trouble which came into his life at exactly the wrong moment – or the right moment, depending on your point of view.

His publishers had run a short story contest in the back of his second book, inviting aspiring writers to pen a tale 'in the style of Samuel Thorne'. Ten lucky souls, whose work had been deemed good enough by the judges, would win a place on a 'once-in-a-lifetime', one-day workshop hosted by Samuel Thorne. In their wisdom, Hayden-Mills had appointed him a personal assistant for the day, a bright young woman with a bright career in publishing ahead of her: Kelly Burnett. He'd complained at the time at not being allowed to choose his own PA, which would have saved him an ocean of heartache later on. But that was just another fruitless voyage into the world of 'what-ifs' and 'yeah-buts'. As it happened, Kelly Burnett was bloody good at her job.

Sam had never really enjoyed workshops. The few he'd attended in his own early years had seemed dry and filled with awkward moments. But there was no getting out of this one. He was the host, and it was also part of the book contract. He didn't really mind. It gave him a night in the Gleneagles Hotel, all paid, that was not to be sniffed at, and a healthy down payment for the use of his considerable literary expertise. As it turned out the workshop was a big success, which was all down to Kelly Burnett.

During that first session in the hall of the Gleneagles, he had met the ten hopefuls, had spoken to them one-on-one, had engaged in ice-breaking activities with them, and yet, even now, he couldn't remember a single face from those ten. The only thing he could remember was Kelly Burnett. From the first moment she stepped in the room, glossy curls of russet hair falling in waves over her shoulders, clothes and accessories from the leading London stylists, bright blue eyes flashing like fireworks on meeting each new face, she dominated the workshop with the force of her personality. She laughed, she told silly anecdotes, revealing moments in her life which ranged from the truly outrageous to the deeply affecting. But she was good. She led the workshop with textbook precision: keeping things bubbling along, filling in any embarrassing silences Sam might have left after one of his fumbling speeches, but most of all, making Sam Thorne look intelligent. For that alone he had been grateful to her.

Much later, he recalled how she seemed to keep him in her line of sight, as if he might disappear in a puff of smoke if she dared take her eyes off him. But even with all of this going on, Sam never for one minute believed that she had any real sexual interest in him. And, conversely, he entertained no private fantasies about illicit rendezvous with excitable young women. Not on a short story workshop. That sort of thing happened to rock stars and footballers. Not to happily-married, Sunday Times best-selling authors.

But that's what did happen. And no one was more surprised that it happened than Sam Thorne.

## 7

"Please join me for a drink upstairs," he'd told the group as they were packing away their things at the end of the day. He didn't have to extend this invitation, he told himself later. He could have wished them all well with their respective stories/careers and slinked off to the luxury of his room, there to drown himself in whatever liquor he fancied for the night. But, no. The workshop had gone far better than he'd imagined, thanks to Kelly, and he wanted to continue the good feeling just that little bit further. He felt also that talking to these aspiring authors in a non-structured setting might be beneficial to him. Some part of him liked the fact that these kids wanted to be him. It was egotistical, he knew, but it was also interesting. He'd never imagined himself as someone to look up to, someone that people might aspire to be. And practically, he was having trouble coming up with a concept for the elusive Novel Number Four. Perhaps a few drinks in the company of these 'Sam Thorne wannabes' might ignite some creative fireworks under his muse. She'd given him nothing for a long time now, and he'd learnt that slapping the old girl did not make her any more responsive.

As it turned out, half the students had trains to catch, which was understandable. But when he came back down half an hour later, after freshening up and putting on a new shirt, he was horrified to find only one person from the workshop sitting in the bar area. Kelly Burnett. He had only a moment on the stairs in which to take the coward's way out, to retrace his steps to his room and tell the management that he was not taking any calls or visitors for the rest of the night. But that moment's hesitation was his undoing. Her big dark eyes found him across the lounge and she beckoned him over with an ostentatious wave.

Arranging his features into a gregarious grin he walked over, telling himself over and over: _Half an hour, then make your excuses. Half an hour, no more._

"Hi, Sam," she said. "Is it all right if I call you Sam now?"

"You've been calling me Sam for the past twelve hours, I don't see why you should change now."

He sat down at the table opposite her, and she pushed a large scotch in his direction. "I took the liberty of getting you a drink," she said. "Scotch and soda. That's right isn't it?"

"That's fine," he said, taking a sip. Had he disclosed his alcoholic preference during the workshop? He couldn't remember doing so. Perhaps the publishers had this vital information on file at the office. Whatever, the girl had certainly done her homework. "What happened to the others?" he asked, glancing around.

Subconsciously, Sam noted her body language. The fierce eye contact she had maintained during the workshop faltered and she looked up to her left. He couldn't remember if that meant she was about to lie, or if she just wasn't sure.

"Oh, Pauline and Gavin had to make headway. They'd just heard that traffic was going to get bad and they wanted to get a head start. Long drive and all that. And as for the two Johns, well, I don't know where they've got to. Maybe they couldn't afford it, felt embarrassed. You know how poor, struggling writers are." She let out a high-pitched giggle, which was infectious in its way, and not unattractive. In fact, seeing her alone in this setting, he was beginning to think she wasn't a bad-looking young woman.

But was she lying? If he accepted that she was, what did that actually mean? That she had somehow driven the other group members away, just so that she could have him all to herself? Wasn't that absurd, and just the least bit paranoid?

"So," she said, leaning across the table and gazing into his eyes. "It's just you and little old me. What shall we talk about?"

He drank four scotch and sodas that night. Kelly had six Black Russians. Their conversation, which Sam had prayed would dry up within the hour, ran to topics as diverse as the Great American Novel ("Oh, God, I LOVE American prose," she'd gushed at one point) to the poetry of Keats and Shelley. He'd only drunk so much because her company had actually been scintillating. After his fourth drink, his face had gone numb, just as it always did, and he'd barely noticed how the last time she came back from the bar, she sat next to him, bumping her hip against his as she fought for more purchase on the comfy seat. Despite his drunken stupor, he remembered laughing with her about something, some awful joke she'd told which wasn't funny at all, but oh, you had to be there. They were laughing, laughing like silly kids, and he knew he shouldn't have let himself get like this, this drunk, but it was so nice to have female company.

That was when she stopped laughing, leaned in close, her wet lips touching his ear, and said: "I want you."

The laugh died in his throat. He could only stare down at his glass, grinning stupidly.

"I want to go upstairs with you." Her hot breath on the side of his face, that sweet perfume. "I'll do anything you want."

He remembered being afraid to look her in the face, as if she held some gorgon-like power, that looking into her eyes would somehow turn him to stone or some other lifeless material. But when he finally did, his head rolling stiffly on his neck, he'd found just a pretty face, a pouting mouth, a pair of lustful eyes. He didn't care to see or know what lay underneath.

"I'm a happily married man," he'd whispered. "Why would I want to do something like that?"

"No one ever needs to know," she had responded, dropping her eyes demurely, an act which caused the secret lustful beast in his chest to lurch up in excitement. She was reeling him in with every trick in the book.

No one ever needs to know . . .

## 8

"Daddy, why couldn't we tell Mummy where we're going?"

His daughter's question cut through the reverie like an electric knife. They were sitting in the cab of the Land Rover Discovery, both of them lost in different parts of the horizon as it drifted by. The water was incredibly calm, the crossing as smooth as it had ever been. He'd still taken a couple of Sea Legs capsules before they boarded the ferry. His fear of the water had never left him, even after a year on the island. Becky, however, had never needed seasickness pills. He envied her for that.

"What, sweetheart?" he said, turning down the volume on the CD player.

"Why do we have to keep this a secret from Mummy?" she said.

They'd sat in the living room waiting for Rachel to leave the house. When she'd closed the front door behind her, the two of them had run over to the window, following her figure as she walked the short distance into town. Once out of sight, they had wordlessly climbed into the Discovery and headed for the port. This was the question he'd been dreading since Rachel's exit. He did not want to start lying to his daughter, too.

"Well, honey, it's a little complicated. You see, Daddy has to meet someone in Oban. A woman."

He saw the candle of horror appear in Becky's eyes. As much as a six year-old could understand the dark deeds of adults, Becky seemed to be putting together two numbers which gave her a result she didn't like at all.

"What woman?" she said.

"She's from the publishers."

"The people who make your books?"

"Yeah," he said, momentarily enchanted with her description.

"What does she want to see you about?"

"Just boring business stuff, I expect."

Becky's usually open expression took on a guarded edge. "Why do you have to go to the mainland? Why can't she come to the island?"

Sam felt himself slipping deeper into that quagmire. "Sweetheart, I'll tell you more about it after, okay?"

She nodded sullenly. "Grown-up stuff?" she said.

"Yeah, grown-up stuff," he agreed, grateful that she had let him off the hook. For now, anyway. He would have to come clean later on – but right now he just needed to get through this morning. After today, he vowed, he would no longer have to lie to the two people he loved most in the world.

## 9

It's over.

Those two words had been haunting Rachel's subconscious for as long as she could remember, at least in recent memory anyway. She knew deep down what that simple phrase referred to, and she knew why it was dogging her mind, but a large part of her refused to accept those words into the forefront of her thoughts. In doing that, she believed, she would be committing a form of emotional euthanasia on something that was already close to death; and in some perverse way, that larger part of her, the medically-minded side of her brain, could not allow herself to perform that merciful, terminating act. For her, the Hippocratic Oath extended further than just her everyday professional duties.

As she approached the Garrett house along the winding path above Henna Hill, she purposefully pushed those bleak thoughts to the furthest corner of her mind. Cynthia Garrett was only days away from death; she did not need a gloomy nurse to see her through the valley of darkness.

Before she could reach the doorbell, the front door flew open and the face of Cameron Gray, Cynthia's sleep-in carer, filled the frame.

"Have you heard?" he asked in a strained whisper.

Rachel didn't have to ask what her colleague was referring to. She nodded.

Cameron pulled the door behind him and huddled up close to Rachel.

"I haven't told Cynthia he's coming yet. I felt it might be best left as a surprise. You know what I mean? In case things changed, you know?"

"It's all right," Rachel said. "I'll tell her." They deftly switched positions in the doorway. "How is she?"

Cameron shrugged. "Distant. But then she usually is in the mornings. Listen, do you want me to stay? For the visit, I mean?"

Rachel shook her head, patted Cameron's arm. "No, I'll be fine."

"It's a lot to take on, Rach. I'm more than happy to stick around."

"Cameron, I'll be fine. The prison service said he wouldn't be arriving until late afternoon anyway. You get on home to that girlfriend of yours."

She knew that Cameron would have stayed if she'd asked; he was that sort of guy – but she also saw the relief on his face that she'd declined his offer.

"Okay," Cameron said. "I won't pretend that Sally's enjoying all these nights alone. If I have to do this much longer she might start looking elsewhere, know what I mean?" He smiled brightly, but there was a shade of concern beneath it which Rachel knew all too well. "I'll see you tomorrow, hopefully."

Cameron turned away from the door, swinging his night bag over his shoulder. He stopped halfway down the path and turned back. "Rachel, she's been pretty bad these last couple of days. Do you think she'll last long enough to see him?"

Rachel thought for a moment. "To be honest, Cameron, I think it's the one thing she's holding on for."

## 10

Entering the old woman's bedroom was like walking into a death chamber. The combined smell—vomit, urine and something else, something black—never seemed to leave the house. Cynthia Garrett had clean sheets every day, a bed bath every morning and was toileted with a bedpan as and when it was necessary; she and Cameron cleaned the working parts of the house day and night with a religious zeal, and yet still the house reeked of death. The smell of it, the _feel_ of it, hung over the Garrett house like a shroud.

Cynthia was asleep as Rachel approached the side of her bed. No, not asleep. That was too pleasant a term. Cynthia lolled in a twitching, restless state that never seemed to stop for more than a few minutes. Her eyes rolled back and forth beneath her purple eyelids. Her mouth, wrinkled and wet at the edges, drooped open and a low moaning sound escaped into the dense air. If she did dream, Rachel wondered, what terrible dreams they must be.

Rachel knew only the bare facts about the Garretts and her son's infamous crimes. Benjamin Garrett had grown up here in this house, an only child whose father had died in a suitably grim fashion. On his son's tenth birthday, Jock Garrett put a Remington rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The blast blew most of his brains out through the top of his skull. The rest of his head was burnt to ashes in the still, silent aftermath, as Garrett's whisky-soaked head caught fire from the flash of the muzzle. Jock Garrett did this knowing that his son, a happy, excited boy rushing back from school on his birthday, would be the first one home. That gruesome discovery alone must have been enough to turn the boy's world into a nightmare kaleidoscope. God alone knew what other factors were involved in Ben Garrett's inexorable decline into rape and murder.

No one had ever believed Cynthia Garrett to be the perfect mother, but for the next ten years she did the job of raising her son as best she could. Ben was in and out of trouble with the law in his late teens, but nothing more terrible than speeding and drunken and disorderly behaviour; nothing a lot of normal young men hadn't gotten up to at one time or other. In his early twenties Ben Garrett started working in Inverness as a shipbuilder, blending into the thousands who came and worked the shipyards year after year. He brought money home to his ailing mother (she had early onset breast cancer in her fifties and although she beat off the first attacks, the cancers kept coming back until now, in her sixtieth year she was riddled with breast, lung and pancreatic cancers), and to all intents and purposes appeared to be the perfect son. Then, in the bitter winter of 1998, they found the first island girl, raped, unconscious, barely alive, and Ben Garrett's reign of terror began . . .

"Who's that?"

The old woman had snapped awake, her eyes darting around the dimly lit room.

"It's all right, Cynthia," Rachel said. "It's Rachel."

Cynthia glared up at her through red, rheumy eyes. She let out a harsh, hacking cough and her face screwed up into a web of tight lines. "Dear God, I thought it was him. My boy."

She began to cough again, deeper and longer this time, the coughs turning into painful prolonged retching. Rachel grabbed a kidney bowl from the store beside the bed and held it underneath the old woman's chin. Thick yellow-brown mucus flew from between her lips into the cardboard plate. Rachel fought back the surge of nausea she always felt when someone was vomiting; it was something she had never grown used to as a nurse, but it was something she had at least managed to control.

"God have mercy," Cynthia Garrett cried when the attack had passed. Her head collapsed back into the pillow, her cheeks and forehead gleaming with sweat. Rachel sat down on the edge of the bed and placed a cool flannel against Cynthia's brow.

"Hello, Cynthia," Rachel said, trying to sound bright and humorous. "How are you today?"

Cynthia closed her eyes, her head shaking back and forth in a despairing way. "Can't do this much longer. So tired. So bloody tired."

Rachel felt like an idiot for trying to brighten the woman's mood. The cancer had a chokehold of the woman's soul. There could be no reason for laughter in her life. Not now, maybe not ever.

Cynthia's eyes snapped open suddenly and she turned her head so that she was looking directly up at the ceiling. "What day is it?" she asked urgently.

"Sunday," Rachel answered. "The fifteenth."

Her eyes settled on Rachel's, staring, wild with excitement. "Sunday? Have you heard anything about Ben? Is he coming? Have they let him come to see his old mum?"

Rachel looked away, folding the flannel in different shapes while her internal judge tried to decide what to tell her. When she looked back, when she saw the desperation in the old woman's eyes, she decided she deserved the truth.

"The prison service called late last night. Ben's been granted a day release on compassionate grounds. He should be here sometime this afternoon."

Cynthia Garrett pushed her head back, chin raised high, eyes tight shut, and a solitary tear squeezed from the corner. "Oh, thank you, thank you, Lord!" she sighed. "I knew you wouldn't let me down. I knew you wouldn't let an old woman die alone in her bed without seeing her son one last time."

Rachel stared at the old woman, unable to hide her personal and private contempt for her rose-tinted view of her son. Cynthia's eyes snapped open suddenly, catching Rachel's judgmental frown. Her smile faded.

Rachel stood up quickly and crossed the room, chastising herself for letting her guard drop so carelessly. She'd been a nurse all her adult life, and she was anything if not professional. Perhaps her mind was on other things lately. She was fumbling with the care pack on the dresser when the old woman's voice cut through the dead air.

"You think he's a monster, don't you?"

Rachel froze, her shoulders tensed. She didn't turn to face her, speaking over her shoulder. "If you're talking about your son, Cynthia, it's not my job to think anything of him. It's my job to care for you."

"Oh, please. You're going to be rolling my eyes shut any day now, so at least do me the service of being honest with me. I don't need a professional nurse right now, I need a human being."

Rachel turned around slowly, meeting Cynthia's gaze. "A mother should love her son, no matter what. No one could blame you for that."

"Aye," Cynthia said, "you're right, my love." Her eyes flashed, her face filled with animation for the first time in days. "That's a powerful love. Mighty powerful. A love that knows no boundaries. I could forgive him anything. _Anything_."

Rachel stepped back towards the bed, placing a clean towel on the top of the sheets. "Then you're a better woman than I am," she said. "I don't have a very forgiving nature."

"Why not?"

Rachel stopped what she was doing, a bitter memory running through the theatre of her mind. She shook her head, focusing on the present again. "I had judgemental parents," she said. "I suppose I get it from them."

"Forgiveness is key, my love. That's what Ben needs right now. Not being locked away in some prison for the rest of his life. No one is born evil. No one. Certainly not my boy."

_Try telling that to the parents of those girls_ , Rachel thought. But she held back, recognising she was in danger of crossing a clear boundary here between nurse and patient.

"He took after his father, unfortunately," Cynthia said in a slow, wistful drone. "Jock was a devil. He had a black streak in him. Slept with every woman on the island. And he knocked me about. Oh, yes. The week after our wedding he knocked my front teeth out. When Ben came along, he started taking it out on the boy. At least Jock had the decency to blow his brains out before he did _too much_ damage. But I forgave him, my Jock. Even after all, I forgave him the affairs and the beatings. That's the way it is in our family."

Rachel started preparing the woman's medicine. "Like I said, Cynthia, you're a better woman than I am. I don't think I have that kind of forgiveness in me."

The old woman stared at her for a long time. "I hope to God that you never have to find out."

## 11

When Sam stepped into the lobby of the Station Hotel, he spotted her immediately. She was sitting at a table near the bar in a chair which faced the entrance. Her eyes lit up on seeing him, as if they were two great friends, _lovers_ , reuniting after some tragic parting. Her smile was like a knife turning slowly in his gut.

Sam turned away from her and crouched down to Becky's eye-level. "Now, sweetheart, I need you to do something for me. I want you to sit over there, by the window. Daddy's just going to talk to Kel- Miss Burnett, and then I'll be right over. I promise I'll be as quick as I can."

Becky pouted. "Why can't I sit with you?"

"I told you, honey," he whispered, "grown-up stuff. So, please, will you sit there for me?"

Becky looked down at her scuffed pink sandals, nodding solemnly as if she were making a great sacrifice. As far as Sam was concerned, she was.

"Do you want me to get you a drink?" he asked, but she shook her head.

He watched her walk slowly over to the window table and flop down on the leather bench seat, resting her forehead against the frosted glass. Cursing himself once more, he turned and went to face the enemy.

"Hi, Sam," Kelly said as he stepped up to the opposite side of the table. "I didn't expect you to bring Becky along. She's growing into a beautiful little girl, I must say. Not surprising really, considering who her father is."

"She gets her looks from her mother," Sam replied.

Kelly offered a thin-lipped smile, her eyes communicating that she understood the barbed undercurrent to his retort. She gestured to the seat opposite. Sam glanced down and found a glass of scotch and soda sitting on a coaster. The sight of it, the echo it caused, sent a shudder through his upper body. He took the proffered seat, but pushed the drink away.

"I didn't come here to socialise," he said. "And I don't want this to take a second longer than it has to."

Kelly leaned across the table towards him. "I understand," she said. "Down to business, eh, Sam?"

He nodded. "Yeah, down to business."

She lifted a smart leather briefcase into her lap and unclipped it, removing an embossed maroon folder from within and placing it on the table with great care.

"What's this?" he said.

"Proofs."

"Proofs? Proofs for what?"

"Take a look," she said, a playful smile on her lips.

He exhaled heavily, turning the folder to himself. He untied the ribbon and pulled out the contents. Three sheets of glossy paper, each one bearing an illustration and three titles in garish red block letters: DROWNING IN PIECES, THE ARRANGEMENT, and DEADLINE, the titles of his first three novels. His name was on each cover, bigger than the titles of the books themselves.

He looked up at her, an inquiring expression on his face.

"As agreed, Hayden-Mills are reprinting your first three books in mass market paperbacks," she informed him. "What do you think?" she asked brightly.

He studied the pictures once more. "Wonderful," he said. "When are they going to print?"

She sat forward, her open expression darkening just a shade. "They'd like them to coincide with the release of your next book."

"What?" he said sharply.

"Sam, you should be pleased. You're a brand now. Look at your name on the cover. It's huge! When Book Four comes out in hardback they're going to have a box display of your first three right next to it. In every bookstore. Can you imagine it, Sam? In every bookstore in the country!" She paused. "They're looking at next November for the release, just in time for the Christmas rush."

Sam slumped back in his chair, a look of quiet desolation on his face.

"What's the matter, Sam?" She looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Is there something wrong?"

_Wrong?_ he thought. _What was wrong was a complete lack of even a single page of text pertaining to Book Four._

"The delivery date for the first manuscript is December nineteenth. You are going to make the deadline, aren't you?"

December nineteenth. That was two months away. He'd been trying to block it out, but the deadline hung in the closet of his mind like a ghost that refused to go away. The thought of it caused something to tighten in his gut. And, of course, the person delivering the wake-up call made all this one hundred times worse. In some perverse way she seemed to be enjoying it, as though this was payback for his rejection of her.

_A woman scorned_ , he thought bitterly.

"You're blocked, aren't you?" she said.

"No," he said, sitting up again.

She shook her head. "You're blocked. I can tell. I've worked with lots of writers, and you're a classic case. It's written all over your face, Sam–"

"Don't try and make out that you know me," he said, glaring at her. "I'm . . . I'm just going through a period of silent renewal, that's all."

"Sounds like writer's block to me," she replied with a smug shake of her head. "Now I wonder what could be causing that, Sam? Everything all right at home?"

"I'll deliver the script on time," he snapped.

There was a long silence. She grinned. "Good," she said.

Sam glanced around, before leaning in close. "You didn't need to see me in person to do this, Kelly. Why did you drag me all the way here–"

"I offered to come to the island," she interjected.

"You know what I mean. What's this really about?"

The mask of playfulness fell then. Her eyes took on a dreamy glaze, her entire body changing to a softer, more alluring posture.

"Oh, come on, Sam. You're the mystery writer. It's not hard to work out."

Something snapped inside him then; the bone which kept him calm, reasonable, suddenly splintered. He lunged forward, yelling into her face: "Don't play games, Kelly! Tell me what you want!"

He realised immediately that his outburst attracted a lot of attention. An elderly couple nearby scowled in their direction. The barman froze momentarily in the act of passing a drink to a customer.

Becky was looking over, her forehead creased with concern. Sam offered her a brief reassuring smile. She returned her gaze to the smoky window, entranced by the blur of movement on the street outside.

"She really is quite beautiful," Kelly said in a dreamy voice.

Sam sank back into his seat. "Leave my daughter out of this, Kelly. She wasn't meant to be here. Just tell me so that we can end this right here and now, and I won't ever have to see you again."

"Sam, I'm afraid that's just not possible," Kelly whispered back. "I'm afraid you and I are . . . irrevocably linked."

"What?" Sam snapped.

She reached across the table with both hands, but Sam snatched his out of her grasp. She faltered, but after a brief moment, continued: "You must see it, Sam. We're meant to be together. What we had that night. Remember what you said? You told me Rachel didn't get you, that she didn't understand the writer's way. I do, Sam. I understand it completely."

Sam closed his eyes in a desperate attempt to shore up the anger. But the memory of that night, of him saying those words, ran through his mind. He had said those things. But that was then . . .

"I can be good for you," Kelly said. "I can be everything you ever dreamed of."

He pulled his cheque book from the inside pocket of his coat and began filling it in. He didn't look up until he had signed the cheque. With a flourish he tore it out, placed it face up on the table and shoved it towards her.

"Is that enough?" he said in a strained whisper. "For that, you leave me and my family alone, and I never see you again. Don't think of it as a buy-off; think of it as an apology. We both agree that it was a mistake, don't we? So this is my way of saying sorry."

Kelly looked down at the hastily scribbled cheque for a long time. Her expression was unreadable. When she raised her eyes to his, there was a strange smile on her face.

"Oh my God," she said. "Is that what you think I'm worth, Sam?"

She was playing for sympathy, but he was having none of it. "Well, you can probably get more if you go to the newspapers, but not a lot more. I'm no celebrity, no millionaire footballer, so maybe only the gutter rags would buy your story. Even then it wouldn't make more than page five, I'll bet. Think of this as a kiss-and-tell payment without the ignominy of having your face plastered all over the tabloids. This'll save us both a lot of heartache."

She was staring at him, her mouth hanging open, eyes filled with pantomime indignation. "Sam, Sam, Sam, I am so hurt that you think me so . . .so _low_."

Sam leaned back in his chair, shaking his head at her theatrics.

She pushed the cheque back to him. "Sam, I don't want your money."

He felt an uncomfortable heat around his heart. Once again, he found himself in uncharted territory. The truth was she frightened the shit out of him.

"Then what do you want?" he said.

A teasing smile, a coy shrug. "I just want you."

Sam leaned in close. "Listen, Kelly, and listen very carefully: I love my wife, I love my daughter, and I love the life we have together. I made a mistake last year, something that could have derailed all that, but I did what I had to do to keep us together." He stood up, shoving his chair away.

Kelly kept eye contact as he walked around the table, a smile dancing on her full, red lips. "She must really love you, Sam. I mean, to stick with you after our affair."

Sam stopped. He glared at her for a moment, then his gaze fell on Becky's silhouette across the lobby.

"Oh my God, Sam. You did tell her, didn't you?"

He hesitated. He thought of lying. That would have been the easiest option, the most convenient – but right at that moment, he'd had a bellyful of lying. Before he could change his mind, the delay in answering was too long.

"You never told her, did you?" Kelly said. "She doesn't know . . ."

Sam refused to look at her. "This meeting is over," he said bitterly, and left without looking back.

## 12

Becky knew the moment she laid eyes on the lady that she was TROUBLE. She didn't look like a very nice person at all. She had a pretty face, framed by shoulder-length red hair, but she remembered Mum telling her how people can be pretty on the outside but ugly on the inside. That was why Mum had always encouraged her to be A GOOD PERSON, because she didn't want to spoil her beautiful looks from the inside. Her mum had probably forgotten that conversation, but Becky hadn't. It had left an indelible mark on her ever since. Being A GOOD PERSON was always uppermost in her mind. But what good did it do, she asked herself, suddenly overcome with that horrible black feeling. What was the point of her being A GOOD PERSON if her mum and dad hated each other?

Maybe hate was too strong a word, but she knew there was something wrong. She sensed it in the house like an invisible mist. Mum and Dad carried on as normal every day, trying to pretend to her that everything was fine, but she knew it wasn't fine. The BAD FEELING had begun before they moved to the island. The sudden and inexplicable move itself had never been fully explained to her. She knew Mum wasn't happy about the move, but after so many arguments she stopped talking about it and then it just happened very quickly. Now, though, Becky thought she understood what it was that was causing this BAD FEELING between her parents. Looking at her dad now, sitting at a table with a strange, pretty woman, she realised that there was only one explanation for all this upheaval and heartache.

It's all my fault, she thought to herself. Mum and Dad are splitting up because of ME.

Megan Bellingham, her best friend at school, had told her that her daddy had left her mummy because of Megan and her sister. Her daddy COULDN'T HANDLE THE KIDS. He'd moved out and was now living with a woman from his work who was nineteen and had NO CHILDREN. Becky had gotten the impression from Megan (who was simply passing on information from her mum) that this sort of thing happened all the time. Daddies always left mummies once they'd had children because daddies couldn't handle being around children all day.

At the time, Becky hadn't understood how this scandalous news applied to her and her own family situation. But now, seeing Daddy talking to a woman much younger than Mummy, it all made sense. It was only a matter of time before Daddy told Mummy he was leaving and that he would be going to live with the horrible woman over there. Daddy had said it was GROWN-UP STUFF. He obviously said that to try and keep it a secret. But she saw straight through it. That was why he never wanted to spend time with her, why he always locked himself away in his study. That was why he always shouted at her. Daddy had had enough of her, and in no time at all, he would be leaving for good.

Tears sprang into her eyes just as Daddy got up from the table and started walking over, so she turned to look through the smoky bevelled glass. She didn't want him to see her crying because then he would ask her what was wrong and she would have to tell him and then it would all be out in the open. And that would only mean one thing: that Daddy would be going even sooner. And the thought of that made her heart ache like never before.

## 13

Kelly Burnett sat in the lounge of the Station Hotel for a long time after Sam's departure. Over the course of an hour the bold, bright façade of the professional young woman gradually fell away in strips, until all that was left was the real Kelly Burnett, naked and exposed, and then the tears began to fall. One of the hotel staff came past and asked if she was all right, if he could get her anything, but she told him to leave her alone. She didn't need sympathy right now.

_No one feels sorry for Kelly_ : that was her motto. She was tough, a woman of the world. And yet . . .

"Oh, Sam," she whispered to herself.

This was, without a doubt, the hardest thing she'd ever had to face in her life. Seeing Sam talk to her the way he did earlier, with so much anger, revulsion, hatred in his eyes, it hurt her worse than any mortal flesh wound. The only thing that made it bearable for her was that he didn't understand, that he was trapped inside the protected world of his marriage and he was too afraid to let that go. He couldn't see the opportunity for limitless happiness that she offered him. That was the tragedy.

She had never felt this way about anyone, especially a man. She'd never truly been in love, if she understood that term at all. But she had always believed in fate. Her mother had been a keen astrologer and had encouraged Kelly to check her stars every day. Everything that happened in her life had been predicted, accurately, in her opinion, by the stars. She still recalled the prediction she'd read on the day she first met Sam Thorne:

'What you need right now is to be loved. You are about to meet someone very special who you idolise and are immediately attracted to. Be proactive. This opportunity will not come again.'

The words had burned into her brain as though written in fire. That same day she'd been assigned the PA job at the workshop, but never imagined that he was the 'idol' she was looking for. She'd heard of Sam Thorne, he was one of Hayden-Mills' brightest lights, but she had never read any of his books. She didn't even like mysteries. But when she finally met him in the lobby of the Gleneagles Hotel, so ruggedly handsome and endearingly humble, her heart had skipped a beat and she'd fallen for him like she'd never fallen for any man before. Right then, she didn't care that he was married with a child. He could have been a Catholic priest and it wouldn't have mattered to her. She felt a strange sense of destiny come over her, a destiny that had led to their one night of passion which she simply could not forget and move on from. It was not supposed to end that night. But then, that decision had been taken out of her hands. It had been Sam's choice to end it so abruptly, so cruelly. Because, he said, he loved his wife.

"Well, I just wonder if she loves you enough to survive _this_?" she said to herself. She pulled her iPhone out of her pocket and began scrolling through the client numbers. Sam's home phone number appeared in the display. Would Rachel Thorne be home now? What would she be doing? Her thumb hovered over the dial icon.

What was worse, she asked herself: waiting for destiny to unfold, or taking steps to form her destiny, but in the process, risk losing him completely?

## 14

At that precise moment, Sam and Becky were sitting in the cab of the Land Rover at Oban port, waiting to board the ferry which would take them back to the island.

Sam winced at the memory of the meeting, the entire conversation rolling through his mind like a spiked ball, jabbing and slashing at the inner walls of his conscience. What stung most was that, right at the end, she had pinpointed his true failing in all of this. The affair itself was a grave error, people separated and divorced over such things all the time, but he had compounded it by not telling his wife.

He had tried. More than once. The morning after, as he made his way to Victoria Station, he had been so stricken with guilt that he'd actually made the call from the back of the taxi. He remembered the sensation he'd felt as Rachel answered their home phone, that feeling of dream-like stasis, as though he was outside his own body, watching this wreck of a man about to own up to his mortal sin. But the sound of her voice had killed the intention right there. That sweet voice that he knew so well, telling him she'd missed him and that she'd hoped the workshop went well and that she was baking him his favourite lemon meringue pie. _Come home soon, honey. Becky misses you, too_.

Later, after a week of seeing him walking round the house in a morose, almost catatonic state, Rachel had handed him another opportunity like a gift.

"Sam?" she'd said, and he'd picked up that horrible tremor in her voice straight away, the kind of tremor that comes from asking a question you really don't want to know the answer to. "Is there something you want to tell me about? Did something happen to you in London?"

_Happen to me?_ he remembered thinking. _Yeah, honey, Kelly Burnett happened to me._ But he had simply shaken his head, and retired to the darkness of his study.

And it was there in that study that he'd begun receiving the calls. He only ever answered the first one, that sultry voice leaking out of the phone like some poisonous gas—

Saaaammm

—before slamming the handset back in its cradle. He'd screened all the calls after that, and lost count of how many times Kelly Burnett's mobile number flashed in that LED display. A dozen? Two dozen? Each time he'd been there to divert the call but, sooner or later, he'd be out and the call would come through to Rachel, or even worse, Becky, and he wouldn't put it past this woman to lay down the terrible truth about who she was and why she was calling to either one of them. There was a spiteful streak in Kelly Burnett; he'd seen it after their fateful night together when he'd asked her to leave. He'd seen the look of scorn in her mascara-smudged eyes, saw the seed of revenge planted in her heart as she stormed out of the hotel room. Oh, he knew that she would not stop calling. Kelly Burnett was revenge personified, and she had made it her mission in life to make him pay. And, he kept reminding himself, she worked for his publishers. This meant that she could, if she wanted to, find out his personal details. If that happened, it would only be a matter of time before she paid a visit to the house in person.

So he'd made the decision to move away. In his guilt-ridden mind, he reasoned that leaving London, and all the shit that went with that unhappy town, would make things better in a number of ways. A new beginning might help shake him out of the block which had set into his writing – and it might help put his mistake behind him for good.

Looking back now, he couldn't believe he'd been so naïve.

## 15

"Daddy, can I go for a walk on the deck?"

He turned to Becky, who was sitting sideways in the passenger seat, flicking through her _Girl_ magazine with little interest.

"Well, it's safer to stay in your vehicle," he said.

Becky looked at him sharply for a moment, a withering glare that was way beyond her years, one she had clearly picked up from her mother. "Daddy, it's you who's afraid of the water, not me."

He looked back at her with a stung expression. "All right, sweetheart. If you want to have a walk, you have a walk."

She threw her magazine onto the back seat and he thought there was anger in that throw. He studied her face as she climbed out of the cab, saw an unhappiness in it he didn't like.

"Becky, sweetheart?" he said. "Is everything okay?"

She froze with her hand on the door, ready to slam it closed. When she looked back at him, the anger in her face held for only a moment, before her eyes filled with tears and her lower lip began to tremble.

"I don't know, Daddy," she said, "you tell me."

Without waiting for him to reply, she slammed the door with a shuddering bang.

"Becky!" he called, but she was already stalking away from the Land Rover. His first urge was to jump out and chase after her, but his phobia held him in his seat. He lowered the passenger window and shouted out after her: "Becky! Don't go far. Stay where I can see you!"

But it was no use. He felt helpless, trapped in his own car, as his daughter disappeared into the crowd.

## 16

In the holding compartment of the prison van, Ben Garrett sat hunched over, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose. He felt faint from the intense heat. He hadn't had a drink of water since leaving the prison and that was over eight hours ago. He knew he should have kicked up a stink a long time ago, but the part of him that controlled his own sense of self-punishment had held out. But right now he felt like he was going to pass out from dehydration.

"Hey!" he yelled. "Knox!"

No answer. The low murmur of the guards' voices which had been constant on the journey was now absent.

"Hannon! Knox!" Panic in his voice now.

Silence.

He hammered on the steel wall behind the driver's seat.

"I'm dying in here!" he screamed.

Still no response.

Where the hell were they? Probably taking another smoke break outside. Garrett edged along the bench to the rear door and used both hands to pound on the door. He kicked at it, pounded his fists some more, threw his shoulder against it.

"Hey! Can't you hear me?"

"I can hear you."

He was startled by the tiny voice. He watched as a small face appeared in the window, a young girl, no more than six or seven, blonde pigtails, top front teeth missing.

"Are you trapped?" she asked. "Can't you get out?"

Garrett was so stunned he was unable to reply.

"What happened to your face?"

"What?" Garrett said.

"Your face," she said.

He reached up with his right hand and touched the ruined skin of his deepest scar, feeling suddenly, overwhelmingly ashamed. The girl was so beautiful, so innocent, so unspoilt by the ravages of the world; how could he possibly explain those scars—really explain them—to her?

"A bad man did it," he said.

"Why? Did you try to hurt him?"

He shrugged. "No. He just . . . didn't like me."

The girl appraised him silently for a few seconds, then said, "Are you a bad man?"

"What do you think?" he asked, his heart gripped with an intense, irrational fear.

"I think you have a kind face," she said.

Garrett stared at her, and without warning the girl's words hit him like a balled fist.

He began to cry.

## 17

With the welcome sight of Port Farron less than a mile away, Sam finally found the courage to go looking for Becky. He opened the driver's door and stepped out onto the deck. The gentle rolling motion of the ferry instantly seemed magnified now that he was sensing it with his own feet, and he felt his stomach lurch. He almost climbed back into the car, where it seemed a lot less rocky, but he remembered his daughter's fearless attitude and told himself to stop being such a shrimp. Breathing deep, he slammed the door shut.

He wandered across the deck, weaving through the small clusters of fellow ferry-riders. Most of the people were locals, some were not. A few of the locals he knew by name, but the vast majority he only knew in passing. After all, he'd only been a resident of the island for just over a year. It usually took a lifetime to get to know everybody, so the islanders said. He wasn't doing so badly.

He leaned on the nearest section of the rail to steady himself and studied the distant outline of Scalasay as it loomed closer. He wondered if the extended period of writer's agonies were directly related to, even caused by, the endless unsettled nature of his married state.

What would happen if he told Rachel now? Telling her he'd had an affair would only be the start of it. That would be devastation enough. But to follow it up with a sucker punch like 'and it happened a year ago'. Well, what effect would that have on their situation? Things weren't great between him and Rachel anyway. Her resentment over his decision to remove them to a remote Hebridean island still hung around their relationship like a dark cloud. And he knew that Rachel had an unbending, unforgiving nature. That was what frightened him most of all. People divorced over things like this every day. He knew that. But that was something he could not bear.

And yet he couldn't go on lying. What if Rachel found out about it from someone else? From Kelly? He shivered at the thought. Better to come from him. Yes, he had to tell her. Today. Unless he thought of another way . . .

He looked over the lower deck of the ferry, and there, amongst the assembled cars, he saw Becky's tiny figure, standing on the tailgate of a prison van.

A cold hand gripped his heart.

Ben Garrett was in that prison van.

"Becky!" he called out. She didn't hear him.

There were steps down to the lower level, but they were roped off at the top; normally, passengers weren't allowed to ride down there. Becky had obviously ducked under it. In defiance at him?

He stood at the top of the steps for a few moments, observing his daughter and the murderer. He could make out Garrett's features through the bars of the small window. Garrett's appearance would have been frightening to most children. His chin was heavy with stubble, his hair unkempt. A map of scars covered the left side of his face. His eyes, from what Sam could see, were red-rimmed and deep set, with dark circles underneath them. He looked as though he hadn't slept in days. And yet, there was Becky chatting away to him without a care.

_He could reach through those bars at any second_ , Sam thought. _Grab Becky by the throat and choke the life out of her before he could even get down the steps._

"Becky!" he called out. She mustn't have heard him. No wonder—his voice sounded thin beneath the noise of the ocean, devoid of all authority. "Becky!" he shouted again, this time cupping his hands to his mouth.

She turned and looked up at him, her face frozen in an expression of anger and petulance.

Seconds later, with the ferry less than half a mile from port, the white light of an explosion filled his vision.

## 18

Ben Garrett knew nothing in the first few moments after the explosion. The images which passed before him were chaotic and devoid of meaning. It was like watching a series of unrelated pieces of film being cut together in half-second clips which make up an incomprehensible and confusing whole: the solid walls of the security van ripping apart in a maelstrom of light and noise; the deck of the ferry pushing away from him at a rapid pace; glimpses of the island on the horizon turning over and over; the wrecked van hitting the water, sending him crashing into first one wall, then another, followed by the all-consuming shock as freezing cold water began to rush in through the huge gash in the floor. In a matter of moments, the linear orderliness of everyday life was shattered.

The sea water flooded the van in seconds, giving him just enough time to snatch a breath before he was completely submerged. The van immediately began to sink and he knew he had to get out. Fast. He quickly studied the floor of the van, where the explosion seemed to have originated, and saw the gap where the steel plates had been ripped apart. He tried to judge the gap, wondering if it was wide enough to squeeze through, but he had no time to think about it. This was his only chance of getting out of the van before it sank to the bottom of the ocean. He reached down and grabbed the twisted edges of the opening, pushing his head and shoulders down into the gap. It seemed to take minutes to squeeze through, but he knew that was impossible; he only had a minute of air in his lungs, if he was lucky. He felt the jagged burrs of the blast hole tearing at his prison uniform and then his skin. His ribcage snagged on a sharp knife-like protuberance, and it took all of his strength to force his body on, despite the sickening feel of his own flesh tearing in the process.

Finally he was free and he quickly steadied himself in the water, reigning in his fear and panic. Below him he saw only dark waters and the destroyed prison van sinking slowly down and down, and then, above him the bright surface, darkened only by the hull of the ferry.

His first instinct was to find air. He began pushing for the surface, sensing a sharp pain in the back of his head which seemed to spike with every upward stroke.

When he broke the surface he gulped in air and looked around. The ferry towered above him, a giant hole in its port side just beneath the lower deck. Yellow flames glowed within, smoke pouring out and over the deck.

What the hell had happened?

He'd been talking to the little girl . . .

"Daddy!"

He followed the girl's strangled screams and found her tiny blonde head bobbing above the rolling waves about twenty metres away. Thank God she's alive, he said to himself. But he could see the pool of red staining the water around her, and realised that if nobody went to help her soon she wouldn't be able to stay afloat. He began to swim towards her, ignoring the excruciating pain that filled his head. But the chains which bound his hands together made it hard-going.

Without warning his head filled with white-hot pain, causing an immediate and total loss of co-ordination, and he went under. It lasted only a few moments, panic washing over him, before he kicked back to the surface. When he reached the spot where the girl had been, she was gone.

He didn't hesitate. He leapt up and plunged under the water. His wounded eyes searched the gloomy jade waters and found nothing. Where was she? She couldn't have travelled that far in those few brief seconds.

He had to save her!

_Why?_ an unfriendly voice asked. _For her benefit, or for yours? Do you think that saving this little girl will somehow repair all the damage you did? Do you think saving one girl's life, one act of heroism, is going to equal taking the life of that other girl? And what about the other girls, the ones you raped? How do you pay back for that?_

_Stop it!_ he scolded inwardly.

He wanted to save this girl because in those few moments before the explosion they had made a connection. He couldn't explain it, but she had made him feel human for the first time in a long while. She was the first person, child or adult, not to see him as a monster. She knew nothing of him, of his past, of what he'd done. To her, his past was inconsequential. In her eyes, he could have been anything. What had she said? 'You have a kind face.' A kind face! That, more than anything else, was worth risking his life for. One person in this miserable world thought he had some good in him.

## 19

Sam's last clear memory was of standing at the top of the iron staircase which led down to the lower level. His hand was on the thick rope barrier which barred the way between himself and his only child.

Oh, Becky . . .

In those last few seconds of peace, he saw her expression change to an angry scowl. The look on his little girl's face—anger aimed directly at him—would haunt him forever, tearing like a jagged blade through his heart. He should have been with her all along. He should've kept her in the Land Rover. He should never have let her out of his sight. Not even for a second.

After that, everything went crazy. The light of the explosion blinded him. The deafening noise followed immediately after—raw firepower and sheering metal—filling his world with its authority.

Sam was aware that the explosion, the impact of it, came from the section of decking below the prison van. Blinded by the flash of the explosion, he felt the stomach-churning sensation of the vast bulk of the ferry turning over. The grip he had on the rope barrier was the only thing which kept him from falling into the water. He remembered tumbling through the air, hanging suspended in limbo for an interminable time, before slamming down on a flat hard surface. Only the surface did not break after impact like the water did. He discovered he was lying flat against the side of the hull. Completely disoriented, he gripped the barrier rope with all his strength. At the corner of his vision he saw a tower of fire and smoke reaching high into the sky from the point of the explosion, and the terrifying sight of the security van tumbling over and over against the cobalt sky. At the heart of that funnel of water he saw a tiny figure spiralling through the air, a ragged scarecrow figure tossed into the maelstrom without mercy.

Becky!

Sam tried to scream, but his vocal cords were paralysed. Just then, all around him, he heard a chorus of screams, both male and female voices, above, below, behind him—everywhere, the screams of Dante's inferno. The ferry seemed to be rolling over now. He could see the horizon becoming a vertical line at the edge of his vision. He was vaguely aware, amid the cacophony of noise, the sound of two objects hitting the water below. He assumed it was the van followed by Becky, finally released from the pillar of fire which hung in the air above the ferry.

In that moment, a strange calm came over the scene. The deafening barrage of noise fell to a whisper; the activity of everything and everyone around him came to a momentary stop. He glanced around quickly. The ferry listed heavily on its starboard side. As he looked along the hull to his left, he saw a gaping hole in the port section where the explosion had happened. He could see the inner structure of the hull, and could make out large sections of broken machinery inside. Then a tiny voice cut through the stillness.

"Daddy!"

Sam glanced down between his legs into the black heart of the sea. There, in the shadow cast by the ferry upon the surface, he could just make out his daughter's tiny blonde head above the waves. His heart soared in the knowledge that she was still alive. He felt sure that the explosion had–

"Daddy, help!" she screamed.

In that moment, the instinctual part of his mind froze, and the rational mind took over. He remembered thinking: Becky's a good swimmer. Rachel's been taking her swimming virtually since she was a newborn; because, Rachel said, she didn't want her ending up 'like me'. She can tread water. She can keep her head above the surface.

What he was going to do, what any father would have done, was to let go of that damn rope and drop into the sea next to her. That's what instinct was telling him to do. But that other voice told him to think about it.

_You can't swim, Sam_ , it said. _You can't tread water. If you let go of that rope, you're going to sink to the bottom. And you'll probably take your daughter down with you. What good would that do?_

The choices made in these moments of crisis define who we are in life. How we arrive at these choices is irrelevant; what matters in the end is what we did.

Sam closed his eyes and let go. There was a moment of oblivion—no sound, no air—before he hit the water with a hard slap. The water flowed over his head and filled his nose, ears and mouth. Immediately he began to thrash blindly. He opened his eyes and saw a whirl of white foam. Then, thankfully, he broke the surface and sucked in the air greedily. When he looked round, he found Becky's flailing form just meters away.

"Becky!" he managed to shout, before more water poured into his mouth.

"Daddy!" she cried, before slipping beneath the surface, her head vanishing into the sucking sea. Sam made out the swathe of scarlet which danced on the surface around her vanishing point. He cried out then, a scream of naked horror. In that moment, he understood that Becky had not survived the blast unharmed. Yes, it was true that she could tread water like a champion, but not with a wound like that.

"Becky, no!"

He took a hurried breath before forcing himself under. In the few protracted seconds of his submergence, he opened his eyes. It was like waking in another world, a landscape of misty darkness seen through emerald glass. He spotted his daughter immediately, the only discernible object in that bleak underwater world. She was twisting and rolling with tragic grace, spiralling down into the darkness. It was then that he saw the trail of blood flowing from her shattered left leg. He tried to tell himself that the wound was only superficial, his brain clearly in denial at the sight of his daughter sinking to her doom.

Amazingly, she managed to right herself, and peered back up at him, her eyes like candle flames in the darkness. Seeing him, she reached out, the bubbles which streamed from her mouth racing towards him like silver bullets.

He tried to kick towards her, to descend, but he couldn't, he just couldn't. He couldn't even control his legs.

With the icy salt water stinging his eyes, he stared down at her helplessly, until the dark maw of the deep took her out of sight. He was aware of the ache in his chest, of having reached the point of being unable to hold his breath any longer, but he didn't care. He wanted to sink with his little girl.

Then, without warning, hands reached under his armpits and dragged him up, up, up towards light and air. Wrenched above the surface again, he took the much-needed breath, but there was no joy in it, no sense of relief at being alive.

Sam turned to find his saviour and discovered the ruined face of Ben Garrett. He was treading water, his features contorted in a perpetual grimace. Sam could see a trickle of blood running down his neck from behind his ear. A flesh wound, he surmised. The look in his eyes became more frantic as he approached Sam.

"Where is she?" he said.

Sam couldn't bring himself to answer him. The concern on Garrett's face for the fate of his daughter only enhanced his shame. Then, realising Sam's state of shocked silence, the big man turned and looked around the nearby surface. It was then that Sam witnessed the extent of his 'flesh wound'. About a quarter of his skull had come away. Sam could see the off-white brain tissue inside. The blood which was running down the back of his neck was a reddish-purple. Amazingly, he seemed unaware of his injury.

"Where is she?" he said again, turning back to Sam with an angry scowl.

Finally, Sam said, "She's gone. She–"

But before he could explain any further, the big man leaped upwards, and with an efficient kick of the legs disappeared under the surface. It was in that moment that Sam saw the chains binding his arms to his legs, and his addled mind couldn't understand what he was doing. Was he going looking for the key to his chains, or maybe even the missing piece of his skull? Then, when he realised his true intention, he was overwhelmed with guilt.

This complete stranger, who had met his daughter only minutes before the disaster, was now trying to save her. Despite the fact that Becky would be beyond saving now, Sam felt almost certain that this stranger—this _murderer_ —with his awful head wound, would not survive. But, Sam told himself bitterly, at least he was trying.

The rest of it was a dreamy haze to Sam. He remembered a great deal of shouting going on above his head, much of it directed at him. When he failed to respond, he was hauled up by the captain and some of the other passengers and pulled him onto the edge of the decking. He recalled lying face down, clutching the strut of the barrier fence which ran around the edge of the ferry. He recalled a blur of feet darting around before his eyes. Someone was asking him if he could stand up, but he just lay there, his lower half still dangling over the side. He felt paralysed. Not physically, but mentally. In the end, he remembered finding the strength to look back over the side, to catch one last glimpse of the ocean below. Somewhere in his damaged psyche was the faintest stirring of hope: that the man with the broken skull had found Becky and would bring her back to the surface.

Alive.

But deep down inside, he knew it was an empty hope.

## 20

Garrett turned and plunged back under the water. The chains seemed to be gaining weight, and the pain in his head was like a knife tearing through the core of his being. And still he kicked downward.

There!

There she was, a tiny blue dot some twenty feet below. Sinking fast, still struggling, a ribbon of blood trailing in her wake. He kicked with all his might, fear tearing at his mind at the thought that he might not come back from this, that he might die chasing this redemption – but a part of him couldn't help thinking that maybe God had placed this opportunity in his path. The world might not forgive him even if he did save the girl, but God was always watching, God was always keeping score. Wasn't that what Father Joseph always said?

Ben Garrett descended into the darkness, his heart filled with hope. But by the time he realised he was past the point of no return, the weight of the chains, his burden, kept pulling him down, down, down into the cold black water . . .

## 21

The grandfather clock in the hallway of the Garrett house chimed four o'clock.

Where the hell were they?

Rachel got up from the armchair next to Cynthia's bed and stormed out into the hall. She grabbed the phone and began dialling the number she'd been given by the prison service. Cynthia stirred from her half-sleep, mumbling a string of indecipherable words. Rachel paused in the act of dialling, waiting until the old woman fell back into her dreamless sleep before trying again. The last thing she wanted was to have to calm down a hysterical woman because her beloved son had failed to arrive.

She had to know what was happening before she told her anything at all.

"Hello, this is District Nurse Rachel Thorne on Scalasay. I'm tending to a patient, Cynthia Garrett, who's expecting a visit from her son today. I'm calling because we were told he would be here around two-thirty. It's now four. Can you tell me if the situation has changed in anyway?"

"Ben Garrett left Stoneway Prison early this morning. He should still be on his way to you."

"Is there any way of contacting the guards who are transporting him? I'd really like to know for certain what time they'll be arriving."

A stony silence. "All right, I'll call them and we'll get back to you."

"Thank you." She hung up the phone, then looked back into the bedroom. Cynthia let out a rattling snore.

It was a fair bet this was going to go on way past her handing over time of seven o'clock. She decided to phone Sam and let him know that she was going to be late home. He would probably moan at her about having lost a complete day's writing, but she didn't care.

She dialled his mobile number and listened for the ring tone. There was that familiar hiss before connection, then . . .

Nothing. A dull, _dead_ sound filled her ears and she hung up the phone as if she'd heard the voice of a ghost. That was not an engaged tone. If his phone was off she would have got his voicemail message. Although she couldn't be sure as she'd never heard the noise before, something told her that the noise she heard was that of a dead phone.

A new noise began to fill her head. The noise of panic.

Somewhere in the distance she heard sirens. Not police, not fire engines, not even ambulances, but a siren she'd heard only since they came to the island.

The coast guard.

She walked slowly back into Cynthia's bedroom, her arms folded tightly across her chest as if to try and quash the rising tide of fear in her chest. As she stepped up to the large bay window which looked out on Port Farron, a voice in her head told her that something terrible, something catastrophic was taking place. She could see the red flashing lights of the coast guard's boat out on the darkening waves, and that single red light fed straight into her heart like a dagger.

"What's happening?" the old woman said behind her, so far behind her, as if calling across a giant chasm. "What's wrong?"

Everything's wrong, Rachel told herself, putting her hands over her mouth. Oh dear God, something awful has happened.

## 22

The dining hall of the Port Farron Hotel was in chaos. Transformed into a makeshift hospital for treating survivors, the former restaurant area was now teeming with medical staff, coastguards and volunteers, with tables turned into temporary beds and the waiting staff into temporary porters. The paramedic who checked Sam over told him he was 'in shock'. That seemed such a colossal understatement. Yes, he was in a state of shock. Shock magnified by paralysing guilt. As fellow islanders and ferry passengers drifted by, he interpreted their sorrowful condolences for his 'terrible loss' as accusations. Occasionally, someone came up, gripped his arm and told him how awful it must be to lose a child in such a way. But their words washed over Sam without settling in his mind. Their condolences were empty offerings to him.

At some point in the mayhem, Richard Ashworth appeared. Sam watched Ashworth and his six-year-old daughter approaching across the hotel dining room. He was weaving through the makeshift beds—dining tables, mostly—dragging young Heidi behind him. The look of concern on his perpetually ruddy face was more than matched by that of his daughter. She and Becky were good friends, a fact which caused another jab of pain in his heart.

"Sam," Ashworth said, stopping beside him to catch his breath. "I got the news only ten minutes ago. I came down as fast as I could."

He scanned the faces milling about the dining hall. Heidi clung to her father's arm. Sam didn't respond to Ashworth's words; he couldn't take his eyes off the living counterpart of his little girl. He'd never noticed before, but if it wasn't for Heidi's charcoal-black hair, they'd be the absolute spit.

"Sam," he said, grabbing his arm. "Marine wasn't on the ferry, was she?"

Sam stared back at him numbly.

"Sam," he said. "Marine went to Edinburgh yesterday. She was due to come back sometime today. Sam, tell me, please. Was she there?"

He squeezed Sam's arm a little tighter, and he quickly tuned in to the desperation evident in his eyes.

"No," Sam said, shaking his head for emphasis. "No, Marine wasn't on the ferry."

The big man leaned back, closed his eyes and let out a huge hiss of relief. "Thank God," he said, dabbing at his slick brow with a handkerchief.

"Where's Rebecca?"

The child's voice cut through the din with its simple power. Sam looked at Heidi with a mixture of wonder and sadness. He couldn't understand how she knew that Becky had even been with him. He hardly ever took Becky to the mainland without her mother; but somehow, through some childhood intuition, she had deduced that something terrible had befallen her friend. Perhaps it was the pain on Sam's face that her father had been unable to read. Maybe, Sam wondered, children can read the many shades of pain on adult faces the way clairvoyants can read palms. After all, children don't shy away from pain the way adults do; they face it head-on because they don't yet know any different. The sadness Sam felt was echoed in the girl's eyes. Not only had he lost a daughter, but this girl had lost a friend. He knew then, in the face of that dark-eyed child, that the pain in his heart would still find many more avenues of torment.

In that awful pregnant silence, Ashworth's face fell. He looked at Sam with growing horror, and again clutched his arm, this time for consolation.

"Oh dear God, Sam. Becky wasn't . . ?"

Sam didn't need to confirm or deny it. His silence was enough to bear out the terrible truth. At the corner of his vision, Sam saw teardrops fall from Heidi's big dark eyes, flaring momentarily in the light from the overhead chandeliers. His heart was a dull ache in his chest. He wanted to grab the girl and clutch her to his chest, so that he might comfort her and, selfishly, for just a moment, imagine it was his own daughter he was holding.

"Sam?"

He turned, his head rolling stiffly on his neck, vision blurred as if viewing the world in slow motion. Rachel stood in the aisle of table-beds in her blue nurse's uniform.

Ashworth placed a hand over his mouth, stepping backwards to allow Rachel room to approach. But she didn't move. They stared at each other across that empty space for a long time.

Sam wanted to go to her, but found himself incapable of moving, as if he was being repelled by an unseen force field – but it was only his fear which kept him rooted to the spot.

Eventually, he said, "Rachel?"

She stared back at him, her eyes filled with moisture, not tears; not yet.

"Where's Becky?" she said.

Hearing her say their daughter's name ignited a searing ache in his gut. She didn't know. She hadn't a clue. Oh God. She must have switched on to his silence now, to his miserable demeanour, because she looked at him wild-eyed all of a sudden.

"Where is she, Sam?" she said breathlessly. Her eyes searched the air around her husband, and the space behind him. Finally, she looked him in the eye. "Where is she?"

"Rachel," he said, "something happened—"

"Where is she, Sam?" she said, hysteria rising. She started backing away from him into the milling crowds of rescue workers. "Where's my baby?"

"Rachel, there was an accident. The ferry . . ." His voice trailed away. He, Sam Thorne the writer, couldn't find the words to describe the immensity of it.

But when he studied his wife's face closer, he knew he didn't have to. Her hands closed over her mouth, perhaps to stem the colossal scream of grief she felt welling up inside her. Her eyes opened and shut in rapid succession, in an attempt to shore up the burgeoning tears.

Sam expected her to crumble to the floor at that point, something he'd wanted to do himself since being pulled from the sea. But, like always, she defied expectations and, with a warrior-like scream, charged at him like a madwoman. She clattered into him, fists flying, teeth gnashing, calling him every name imaginable, some obscenities he never even knew she knew. Her physical violence was in some perverse way a small absolution for him, a relief. He felt he deserved far worse.

The force of her attack sent him crashing into the table adjacent to them. Amid Rachel's screams, he heard wood splintering and groaning beneath him, heard Ashworth calling out for Rachel to stop, to calm down, but by then Sam was collapsing to the floor under the sheer intensity of her assault. She was on top of him, clawing, beating, punching.

"You bastard! You stupid son of a bitch! I hate you!" Her words were daggers and he felt every stroke. "Selfish bastard killed my daughter selfish bastard you killed my daughter . . ."

As her strength waned and her grief took over, Sam reached out to try and restrain her, but there was no more fight left in her. His defensive gesture turned into an embrace, and she let him. She was crying into his neck now, and he felt her warm tears rolling down his throat and chest. They sat there without moving for an unknown time. The crowds stood around them, shocked, embarrassed, not knowing where to look, or what to do.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, the words lost in the tangle of her hair. "Oh God, Rachel, I'm so sorry."

## 23

They moved through the hours which followed like ghosts in a storm. Sitting alone in the same house, Rachel in the bedroom, Sam in the lounge, alone with their thoughts, yet desperately trying not to think.

Then came the visit Sam had been expecting and dreading with equal measure. After several hollow rings of the doorbell, he descended the stairs and opened the front door to chief-of-police Pete Hammond. Pete was the only member of the law on Scalasay. He'd taken semi-retirement several years earlier, and supervised any legal matters which occasionally arose on the island. He had very little to do. There hadn't been a real crime on Scalasay for ten years - not since the Garrett attacks. Most of the things Pete dealt with now were minor disputes over land or parking rights. But this was different in every way possible.

The two men studied each other in silence.

"They've found her, haven't they?" Sam said.

## 24

The search team, comprised of half a dozen men from Northern Star and a larger team from the South Hebrides Police Constabulary, had trawled the area of ocean around the scene of the incident for most of the night. It didn't take long before they found Becky and Garrett. Their bodies were found close together, washed ashore on the western side of the island. The man in charge of the search believed the big man died in the process of trying to save her, but his head injury and the weight of his chains had done for him.

Pete asked Sam to accompany him to Doctor Rogers' surgery where they were keeping the bodies. "I'm so sorry, Sam," he said, "but we need a positive identification." The old policeman's moist eyes flicked to the shadows in the hallway behind Sam. "It only needs to be one of you."

Sam nodded, thinking he _should_ go alone, leave Rachel out of this awful duty – but his next clear memory was stepping into the lobby of the surgery with Rachel clinging to his side like a frightened animal. Pete showed them to a side room with a uniformed police officer standing outside. The room appeared to be a storeroom in more normal times; there were shelves running from floor to ceiling on either side, filled with medical supplies, everything from bandages to syringes. In the centre of the room were two tables. On the farthest table, Sam could make out the vast frame of a man. The white sheet obscured the body but failed to cover his boots; feet that size had to belong to Ben Garrett. The table nearest the door undoubtedly held Becky's body. Compared to the giant bulk lying opposite her, the shape beneath the second sheet appeared too small to be their daughter – but it had to be her.

As they edged over to the table, Sam felt Rachel tensing by his side. She seemed to have been holding her breath for an inordinate amount of time and Sam was certain that when Becky was revealed to them, she would faint to the floor. Once again, she surprised him, standing tall and resolute, an oddly calm expression on her face. The young police officer, with just a movement of the eyebrow, asked them if they were ready, and when Rachel signalled that they were, he gently folded the white sheet back to halfway. Rachel let out a gentle sigh, the kind of sigh that all mothers make when their child has shown them a new facet of their personality. It broke Sam's heart just a little more.

Yes, it was still their Becky; but what struck Sam was the lack of colour, not just in Becky's face, but in her clothes, too. The yellow, white and green dress which she'd been wearing had been bleached of its vibrancy, until it was now a solitary grey hue. Her lips, which had once been full and pink, were now thin and grey. Even her blonde hair seemed to have lost its lustre.

Rachel let go of her husband and edged slowly around to the far side of the table. She found a stool and sat down by her daughter's side. Shakily, she took Becky's hand from beneath the sheet and clutched it to her own lips. Sam caught a glimpse of her blue plaster—now a faded pastel blue. He took a deep breath, his body's attempt to hold back his raging emotions.

Pete cleared his throat gently, deafening in the silence, but enough to catch Sam's attention. "Sam," he whispered, "is this your daughter?"

Sam looked to Rachel at that point. He wasn't sure why. Perhaps he was just looking for support. But she closed her eyes, head bowed. Sam turned back to Pete.

"Yes," he said, "this is our daughter."

Pete gave a slight nod. "I'll leave you both alone," he said, and before Sam knew it, he'd slipped from the room.

Sam's legs felt too weak to support his body for much longer, so he dragged another stool over and sat down opposite Rachel. He was trying to think of something to say, something to help comfort his wife at least, but what could he say in that moment?

In the end, it was Rachel who broke the silence.

"Is that him?" she said, her voice cracking. She was looking over her shoulder at the small white landscape created by the stranger beneath the sheet. "Ben Garrett?"

"Yes," he said. Sam studied the man's shape for a moment, noting the reddish-pink stain around the head area. He shivered at the memory of his injury. Without thinking, he added, "He saved me. He saved me and then he . . . tried to save Becky."

Rachel turned slowly round to face him now, and her red-rimmed eyes fixed on his without flinching. "What were you doing, Sam?" she said. "What the hell were you and Becky doing on the ferry?"

As the silence stretched out, Sam debated telling her the truth. The weight of his burden was now threatening to crush him inside. But as he examined the look in Rachel's eyes, saw the unforgiving beast that nestled there, he decided that if there was ever a right time to reveal his terrible sin, this was not it. He broke eye contact and, finding some shred of inner strength, finally reached out and touched his daughter, taking her fragile hand in his own. All the years he'd hugged the girl close and basked in that simple sensation of warmth were gone in a second, obliterated by the unearthly chill of her skin.

## 25

Sam had a vague recollection of being driven back to the house and both of them entering the cottage in silence, drifting to different corners of their home without even looking at each other. Rachel went straight to Becky's bedroom at the top of the stairs, shutting the door behind her, an act which spoke volumes to him. After what seemed like hours sitting in front of the dark screen of his MacBook, Sam remembered clearly realising that he hadn't yet cried. Not a single tear had been shed. He studied his distorted ghostly reflection in the dark monitor, finding new levels of self-hatred and disgust. He couldn't even cry for the daughter he'd abandoned, he thought to himself with a sneer. What was wrong with him?

You're just in shock. That's what the paramedic said. But surely I should have cried by now?

He had a sudden urge to see Becky's room. Perhaps looking over her living space, her toys, her keepsakes, perhaps these memories of her would bring him out of this terrible zombie-like state. Perhaps then he could weep for his daughter. He stumbled out into the hall and up the stairs, wondering what he was going to say to Rachel when he opened the door, but he needn't have worried. As soon as he reached the landing, Becky's bedroom door opened suddenly. His heart tripped in his chest as a sudden irrational thought raced to the forefront of his brain: that it was Becky, yanking the door open the way she always did, with all the recklessness of youth, and racing out onto the landing without looking to see who was coming . . .

But it was Rachel. She paused in the doorway as they faced each other, her features half in shadow, her eyes like two dark wells. She was clutching Becky's favourite bear, Stinky. She called him Stinky because she couldn't bear to wash him. She'd had that bear since birth, and had taken to him instantly, and never let him go. Like all comforters, Becky's smell was embedded in that bear's very fibres, and she had liked it that way. Rachel looked at her husband guiltily for a moment, opened her mouth slightly as if to offer an explanation, but decided against it. She pushed past him, leaving the door to Becky's room open, before disappearing with her stolen treasure into her own bedroom. She shut the door firmly behind her.

Sam stared at the closed door for a while, wondering what her true feelings were. They had hardly spoken to each other in the last twenty-four hours, so he was completely in the dark.

He looked back to the open door of Becky's room. He could see her bed and part of her dresser. He made out pictures of various young male pop stars on her walls. He didn't know their names, and as he stood there on the landing he realised that he probably never knew them. He'd never bothered to find out, or take an interest. What Rachel had accused him of so often was patently true.

It was this thought which paralysed him, and stopped him from going in. He suddenly felt barred psychologically from his daughter's most private world. He had no right, he felt, to go in there. He had all but ignored her in life, and his interest in death seemed almost like an intrusion.

Sam's mind was so full of mental static that he couldn't tell if this was just craziness or whether it was true. Whatever the case, he reached out, took the handle in his trembling hand, and pulled the door shut.

## 26

It was too much. Her mind was unable to fix on a single coherent thought. Losing Becky was like a massive blind spot in her psyche, a rent that had blinded her to the event itself. Without the ability to deal with Becky's death head-on, her mind kept returning to Sam. Sam was now the target for all her anger, her frustration, her fear. At times she hated him—yes, real _hatred_ —but it was inconstant. At other times, like when they drove to the doctor's surgery to identify Becky, she held onto him tight, wanting him to be the strong man she had met seven years earlier, the man who had changed her life and made her believe that miracles could happen: the dreamer, the artist, the enigma wrapped up inside a mystery writer. But he could never be those things—not now, not anymore.

He was suffering now, too, she knew that. And his guilt must be consuming him, just as her guilt—guilt at leaving Becky with him to nurse a sick woman—was eating her from the inside out. And yet there was another side to her guilt—that she had been thinking of leaving Sam, walking out on him and their marriage.

She sat upright in the bed, wiping away the tears from her cheeks. Was she really thinking of abandoning their marriage? She had made her promise before God: 'til death us do part. When she stood on the altar and made that promise to Sam, she had meant it, had envisioned only one future for herself—a future with Samuel James Thorne until the very end. How had it come to this? What had brought her to the point of abandonment? They had simply drifted apart, that was all.

She was convinced that Sam was trying to rebuild things, too, but she couldn't help her feelings. She couldn't change the direction of her heart.

She told herself often that the only thing that helped her to remain within the marriage was Becky: she was the glue that had kept them together this past year. Dear, sweet Becky.

But now Becky was gone.

What did that mean for the future?

The bedroom door creaked open a couple of inches and Sam's face appeared in the gap.

"I need to change my clothes," he said softly.

She said nothing, found herself incapable of even speaking to him in civil tones. Instead she moved into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, her back to him. She heard him move across the carpet to the wardrobe. By the time he turned back to the bed with fresh clothes, she had left the room.

## 27

Later that night, Sam slipped into bed alone and exhaustion finally overcame him.

He fell into a troubled, fitful sleep, the dreams black and ugly and filled with menace.

He was with Rachel on Rook Hill. He couldn't tell if it was the past or the future, but he knew that they were happy together. Becky was not there, but that fact didn't occur to him immediately. Rachel was studying the huge ancient stones, trying to take rubbings from them with her huge sheets of tracing paper. But Sam noticed that as she rubbed she was grating the skin off her knuckles. He tried to tell her but she kept on, and her rubbing got harder and harder, and the blood was soon running down the backs of her hands, over her wrists and smearing the tracing paper. The rubbings were illegible. He ran forward to grab the rubbing kit off her, but when he reached her she winked out of existence. One second she was there, the next he was standing hugging one of the monolithic stones. He couldn't understand why he was actually hugging the rock. It was cold and mossy and ugly. Then he felt a hum within it, like a heartbeat, deep down at the centre of the rock. When he stepped back from it, he saw that Rachel was somehow embedded within the body of the stone. Her arms reached out claw-like from the sides, and her face, fixed in an eternal scream, protruded from the front facing. He screamed her name, the scream so loud that it burned his throat, and then–

Then he was back in bed in the cottage, safe in Rivendell like Frodo Baggins. He opened his eyes just barely and saw Rachel's slender shoulder, her faultless skin washed in silver-blue by the moonlight, a few renegade strands of blonde hair spilling over the pillow by his face. His heart burned with joy. She was back. She had joined him in bed. There was still hope for them.

He took a deep breath, the scent of his wife so invigorating and comforting.

Then the smell altered.

A malevolent, salty smell replaced the sweet aroma of apple shampoo, a stink that invaded the room like a malevolent spirit. Just then, Sam sensed movement at the end of the bed. His heart burned with fear. Someone was in their room. Someone or some thing which had brought the smell of the grave with it . . .

And whatever the thing was, it was waiting there at the end of the bed, and it would wait for as long as it took . . .

In one swift movement he sat bolt upright, his hands pulled into fists, his body tensed for action – but what he found there, standing at the end of his bed, robbed him of all his courage.

It was Becky.

" _Daddy?"_ Her voice, dry and hollow, filled their bedroom, filled Sam's ears, stole away his breath. Her face was as white as bone, the skin drawn taut across her pallid cheeks and forehead. Dark circles ringed her eyes. The stitches that the doctor had carefully sewn into her scalp and neck had run loose and the flesh was blackened and curling at the edges. Bloated white maggots squirmed in her tangled hair.

" _Daddy, why didn't you save me?"_ she shrieked. _"Why did you let me die?"_

Sam woke up with a breathless scream. When he realised it was a dream, and that he was alone in his bed, he descended into uncontrollable, wrenching sobs.

He knew it was a nightmare, but he also knew with dull certainty that it would not be the last.

He didn't sleep again that night.

He could barely bring himself to close his eyes.

## 28

CONVICTED MURDERER BEN GARRETT DIES IN FERRY TRAGEDY

MYSTERY AUTHOR LOSES DAUGHTER

Kelly Burnett sat at her breakfast table in front of her laptop, scanning the Yahoo! News headline over and over. She realised she had been holding her breath for a very long time and sucked in air before exhaling slowly.

'Sam Thorne,' the article said, 'the bestselling mystery writer, has lost his only daughter in the Northern Star ferry tragedy. Rebecca Thorne, six, was with her father aboard the ferry on Saturday when it experienced engine difficulties which resulted in an explosion. It is believed that she drowned after receiving injuries in the blast. . .'

Kelly read the article a second time, slower, taking in each word, trying to comprehend the significance of the event. Her heart pounded in her chest. She felt that strange but familiar sense of destiny come over her, a destiny that she had not seen clearly back when she had first fallen for Sam, but which only now was becoming apparent.

This opportunity will not come again . . .

Sam had lost his daughter. He had lost the very thing which turned him and his wife into a family. That little girl was the only thing holding them together. If she was gone, how would that affect their relationship? It was common for marriages to collapse after the death of a child. Everyone knew that. And if that was to happen, if Sam was to leave his wife, where would he go? Who would he turn to first?

"Me," she whispered.

But no, she reasoned, her mind racing now. No, he would never come looking for her. There had still been some bad feeling after their last meeting. Sam still didn't understand that she, Kelly Burnett, was good for him, that she was his destiny and vice versa. She had to go to him now, to show him the future.

Yes, she thought, her thoughts slowing down, settling on a single goal. The thought of it made her whole body tingle. Was it just madness, or was this what she was supposed to do right now? She had to know for sure.

She flicked through the newspaper to the centre pages, slapping the paper flat with an open palm on the _Your Stars_ section and drawing a finger down to the Scorpio section.

'Plans you have been putting in place for some time are in danger of coming to nothing if you don't act now. Take an unplanned trip to an exotic location and make your dreams come true . . .'

Before she had finished reading the rest of the paragraph she was reaching for her mobile.

## 29

As the sun struggled over the horizon, Sam lay in bed listening to the muffled noises coming from Becky's bedroom. Rachel, it seemed, was getting less sleep than him. If that was possible.

He slowly rolled himself to a sitting position and sat on the edge of the bed, blinking into the grey morning light. He was acutely aware at that point of the sensation of thinking nothing. He remembered it because he had never experienced it before, this trance-like absence of creative thought. For as long as he could remember, his last thoughts at night and the first thoughts he had in the morning were almost always to do with a story or a book he was working on. The creative juices were always working in the Sam Thorne cerebrum, the synapses snapping from first light to last. But not now, not anymore. The period of writer's block he had recently been suffering now seemed a trivial blotch on a much larger, emptier canvas.

Yesterday, he told himself, I lost my daughter. Yesterday, I lost myself.

He heard Becky's bedroom door close and then Rachel's footsteps on the landing. He felt a horrible tightening sensation in the middle of his chest at the thought they might meet in the house. But then Rachel seemed to change direction, and he heard her footfalls on the stairs, followed by the sound of the French windows in the lounge sliding open. He went to the window and saw Rachel's slender frame step up to the edge of their swimming pool. For a brief second, he felt a sharp stab of panic— _She's going to throw herself in!—_ but it quickly passed when he realised she had a broom in hand, and began to brush away the dead leaves from the edge of the pool. She performed this action as if she was drugged, soporific.

Sam took a deep breath, then pulled on his jeans and a sweater and followed her out through the sliding doors. She didn't look round when he approached. She just kept on sweeping, her once lustrous golden curls now grey and lifeless and clinging to her ashen cheeks.

"Cup of coffee?" he said.

She shook her head.

"I'll fix you some breakfast if you like."

"Not hungry," she said.

That was it. End of conversation. The defences were up.

He stared into the pool. After a few seconds, Rachel stopped sweeping and leant on the top of the broom. She joined him in studying the harlequins of sunlight dancing on the water. The call of the early morning cormorants down by the quay filled the silence.

"Do you remember when we came to view this place?" Rachel said. "We argued over the pool, remember? I said that if Becky was going to live on this island she had to learn to swim, and the best place to swim was in her own pool. But you didn't want the pool. You said it was a crazy idea to have a swimming pool with a child around. You were terrified that she would . . . drown." The last word dropped out of her mouth, and the shock on her face was palpable. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "God, Sam," she said, staring out at the horizon. "You were so passionate about protecting your daughter from the dangers of the world. Just remembering the fight we had over this pool reminded me how much you cared back then."

"Jesus, Rachel, I still care," said Sam, trying not to raise his voice too much, containing the anger. "I always have."

She looked at him now, her once bright hazel eyes red-rimmed and swollen from all the tears. "Really, Sam? Well, I'm not so sure. You've been so self-absorbed recently, lost in your own private battle with a goddamn word processor–"

"It's more than that, Rachel–"

"–and I really think that did a lot of damage with Becky. I think—no, I know that she felt you didn't care about her."

The bubble of anger burst within Sam now, and he said, "How the hell can you possibly know that?"

"Because she told me," Rachel replied quickly.

Whatever Sam was going to say next was obliterated. "What?" he said.

"The day before she died, she came to me in the kitchen bawling her eyes out. She said she went into your study to show you a story she'd written and you shouted at her. You told her to come back later."

Sam recalled the incident and bit down hard on his back teeth as self-recrimination and simmering anger fought for supremacy. "I didn't shout," was all he could say.

"You didn't have to," Rachel countered. "Your message to her was loud and clear, Sam."

Sam exhaled loudly, and suddenly felt the need to sit down. He slumped into one of the patio chairs and rubbed his face with his hands.

"You don't even realise what you've been like, do you? You don't realise what it's been like living with you. You spend hours stuck in that study, and when you do come out you're in a foul, _foul_ mood."

"I was blocked, Rachel," he said wearily. "It was a just a bad patch, that was all. I never expected–"

"Never expected to lose her? No, of course, you didn't. But the truth is, Sam, that's how she'll remember you."

"Rachel, please," he said, his voice thick with emotion.

"I tried to warn you, Sam. Remember? I said I didn't care anymore that you ignored me, but not to shut your daughter out. Becky didn't want a prolific author, Sam. She just wanted her dad."

He turned away, tears welling in his eyes.

"Oh, Sam," said Rachel, a trace of softness in her voice now, "I don't mean to drag up every bit of your behaviour over the last year. God knows, if you feel anything like what I'm feeling, you don't need any more guilt."

Sam felt a bitter laugh rising in him, but he held it back.

"It's just that, today of all days, I need you, Sam. We lost our daughter yesterday, and I'm looking at the one person I should be turning to for support, the one person who can help me get through this, and . . .I don't know if our love for each other is strong enough."

Sam looked up slowly. "Rachel, you know I love you. Ever since we moved here I've been here for you, but you're the one who retreated into yourself. I've not been able to get through that emotional blank wall you put up. I–"

Rachel came over quickly and sat beside him. "Yes, Sam, I admit that. It was selfish of me. It was confusion, I guess. I just didn't understand why you wanted to move out here, away from everything. You've been so distant lately. I was afraid it was because deep down you didn't love me anymore, and hadn't loved me for some time."

Sam felt an ache in his heart, the pain of being so misunderstood by the woman who was supposed to know him best in the entire world, and then the soaring sensation of hope that they were making steps to reconciliation. He realised then that he needed her today as much as she needed him.

"I've always loved you, Rachel. I still do."

She smiled now, and that smile ignited something in Sam's heart. "But if we're going to get through this, Sam, we have to start over. We have to be totally open with each other, totally honest. No secrets, no lies."

He held his arms open tentatively, and Rachel moved into his embrace with similar hesitancy. Sam held her so close he thought he might crush the life out of her. But as he held her, he thought about what she had said, about truth and honesty, about secrets and lies. A stab of pain sliced through his joy at the prospect of telling her about Kelly Burnett, about the affair. Rachel had handed him an opportunity to confess, had given him such an open invitation that it seemed insane not to tell her now, whilst they were on the brink of a new understanding.

Maybe this was the time . . .

The distant, muted sound of a telephone broke the silence.

Sam searched Rachel's face but the bright, open expression had closed to him, her eyes dropped.

"You'd better get that," she said. "It's probably important."

He hesitated, wanting to ignore the damn telephone and just tell her the truth.

The ringing became more insistent.

"Sam?" she said, a tiny nod towards the house.

He turned and slipped back through the patio doors, picking up the receiver.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Sam, it's Richard. How are you, my friend?"

"Not good," Sam said.

"Of course, Sam. I just wanted you to know that we're thinking of you. God, this must be impossible for you right now."

"It is." Sam paused. One thought kept running through his mind. _Why did Becky die? Why?_

"Richard?"

"Yes, Sam?"

"Are you still a shareholder in Northern Star Ferries?"

A pause. "Yes."

"Listen, would you be up to a little visit? I'd really like to talk to you about something. About the accident."

"Of course, Sam. Anything I can do to help."

Sam glanced at Rachel who was still outside. He didn't think she was ready. Not yet.

"All right. Do you mind if I come over now?" Sam said.

"Of course not," Ashworth said. "Come whenever you're ready."

## 30

Martello, the Ashworths' glorious mansion, was situated on the island's south coast. The Ashworth Estate was a magnificent piece of land. Fourteen acres of lush grassland, surrounded by a perimeter of spruce saplings and juniper bushes. The mansion itself was raised on vast stilts on its eastern side, as the land sloped down to the craggy rocks of Salt Bay. There was a small jetty at the water's edge, with a small sail boat moored to the end.

Sam drove up the long gravel driveway to the mansion and parked outside the front door. After locking the car, he wandered round to the rear of the building. He found Ashworth sitting on his enclosed patio, an area he liked to call his 'beer garden'. For a late September day it was quite pleasant, and Ashworth was wearing his immaculate cricket whites, which made his ruddy complexion all the more striking. He was lounging in a plush garden chair and had his feet up on the bench opposite, sipping a gin and tonic from a tall glass. When he spotted Sam, he leapt from his seat and came to greet him across the patio. His face, which was normally full of warmth and joviality, greeted Sam with a grave demeanour.

"Samuel, it's so good to see you," he said, pumping his hand, sincerity etched into his broad features. "Can I just say, I am so sorry for your loss. Becky was . . . well, she was a little angel." Rare emotion passed over him. He cleared his throat. "I hope your coming to see me hasn't made things awkward with Rachel. How is she?"

Sam thought quickly and answered with diplomacy. "She's got a lot to sort out . . . with her relatives. You know how it is."

"Of course, of course," he said.

Ashworth led Sam over to the patio furniture and gestured to a chair opposite his own.

"Scotch and soda?" he asked, already pouring the drink. He handed it to Sam as he sat down, but the big man remained standing. He tapped his own glass thoughtfully for a few moments, before sitting down himself. Before he spoke, he smoothed over the few remaining hairs on his scalp, an act which seemed to help formulate his words. "Sam," he said, "I understand you didn't just call in for a friendly drink." He studied Sam's features for a moment, trying to gauge his reaction, but Sam only stared back numbly, without discernible emotion.

"Richard," Sam said. "I lost my daughter yesterday. What the hell happened, Richard? What happened on that ferry?"

"My good friend," Ashworth said. "Northern Star will be releasing their report next week, but I've already been in touch with them. As a member of the Northern Star governing board, I am privy to certain things. In this instance, I was quite forthright in garnering some information from them. It's early days you understand, but . . ."

"But?"

"I wanted to let you know what they're saying before anyone else—as a friend."

Sam nodded and finally took a sip of scotch. The drink rolled down his throat, burning like paint stripper.

Ashworth took a deep breath and then went on. "Northern Star initially thought the disaster was the result of an engine malfunction. However, early indications show that there was no motor malfunction on the ferry that day. True, after the explosion, damage was certainly done to the engine and the motor compartments—but the explosion came from the lower deck, not from inside . . ."

"A bomb?" said Sam, the question slipping out involuntarily.

Ashworth nodded solemnly. "Attached to the underside of the prison van, most likely."

"Shit," Sam said, sitting up straight in the chair. "We're talking about . . . murder?"

Ashworth did not reply.

The silence was filled with the sound of a child's laughter. It was thin, echoing, as if heard through the corridors of time. It sounded so much like Becky that Sam's heart almost stopped completely. The laughter seemed to fill his mind, and for a second he believed that's where it was—in his head—but then he saw the look on Ashworth's face. He was looking past Sam, down towards the pool area, and a big dopey grin spread across his face.

Sam followed his gaze. The Ashworths owned a swimming pool that could have catered for several coach loads of school kids at once. By late September, most people who could afford a pool had covered it for the Winter, but the Ashworths' pool was heated and fresh chlorine was added every two weeks by a guy who came over from the mainland.

The sight of young Heidi dancing around the poolside made Sam suck in a sharp breath as a wave of memory flooded through him. She was wearing a cerise all-in-one swimsuit, the same swimsuit she had been wearing the last time Becky had come over to play with her. He remembered sitting on this same patio not so long ago, drinking with Ashworth and looking down at the two young friends sitting by the poolside, their pale white legs dangling in the water as they chatted about whatever six-year-old girls chat about.

"Hello, sweetie-pie!" Ashworth cried, jolting Sam out of his reverie.

Heidi continued skipping around the edge, followed the sound of her father's voice and offered a big wave and an even bigger smile. Her two front teeth were missing, Sam noted. Just like Becky.

"You be careful, young lady," Ashworth called down to her. "Don't go slipping on them tiles."

"I won't," she called back, dancing gaily over to the diving board. She scrambled up the small steps and then fearlessly ran to the end of the board, hopped, skipped and then plunged bum-first into the water. For her slight build, she made a sizeable splash, which rose out of the water like a tongue and then came crashing down on a sun-lounger resting by the pool. There was a high-pitched shriek and then a pair of bronzed adult legs came kicking out from behind the sun-lounger. It was Marine.

Marine Ashworth was a good-looking woman, with a body to die for. She took a lot of care over her appearance, Sam could see that. And there were times when he'd been over for dinner that he'd found himself (after a few too many of Ashworth's scotch and sodas) looking at her—no, _ogling_ her—and wondering what it would be like to take her to bed. Rachel was not a sex-mad person, something they had both come to accept, and their love-making, when it had been a regular feature in their marriage, was largely mundane and unadventurous. But in Sam's private thoughts, Marine Ashworth was every man's fantasy female. No one would have put her with a balding, overweight retired judge like Ashworth. Sam could understand where she got the reputation as a gold-digging tart from, but for the most part, he personally found her quite pleasant.

"Heidi!" she shrieked, brushing the water off her tanned midriff.

Heidi's dark head of hair reappeared above the surface. She rubbed the water from her eyes. "Sorry, Mummy!" she said.

"If you do that again," her mother scolded, "you're going inside."

"Marine," Ashworth called down, "she's just playing. Why don't you move your sun-lounger?"

Marine looked up at him, glaring over her Burberry sunglasses. There was something deeply malevolent about her look, and after a moment even Sam looked away. Then she returned to her sun-lounger without moving it.

Sam looked at Ashworth, who was in turn looking down at Marine with a range of emotions on his face—anger, embarrassment, sadness.

"You all right, Richard?" he said.

The old judge bowed his head momentarily before answering. "Marine and I, we're having a tough time at the moment, that's all. Nothing you want to hear right now, I assure you." Before Sam could offer a shoulder to cry on, Ashworth patted Sam's forearm and gave a thin-lipped smile. "You've enough worries on your mind," he said.

The two friends remained silent for a time, both of them staring at a different part of the scenery. Then, finally, Sam said: "So, that's it? That's what they think happened?"

Ashworth nodded solemnly.

"Who would have done that, Richard?"

"I wish I knew."

Sam took a deep breath, fighting the surge of emotion. "So my daughter died as the result of some act of vengeance on a child killer?" Sam was shaking his head as he voiced his thoughts, but the words made no clearer sense when out in the open air. "What does that mean, Richard? What . . ."

Ashworth stared into his glass, disturbing the ice with a gentle swirling motion. "I know, Samuel, I know. It's madness. If you want philosophical answers, I'm afraid I've none to give you. As soon as I hear more, you'll be the first to know." He reached out and clasped Sam's shoulder. "I'm truly sorry."

Sam squeezed his eyes shut to stem the sudden sting of tears, and in that moment he saw his daughter as he had seen her in the last moments of her life, standing on the lower deck of the ferry, her bright-blonde hair blowing in the breeze. This news was more of a blow than he'd expected. Hearing that the entire disaster was the result of a revenge attack by some pissed-off islander—that seemed to him like the ultimate insult. In essence, this news was telling him that his daughter died for absolutely no reason at all.

## 31

TELEX REPORT FROM EDINBURGH METEOROLOGICAL CENTRE:

DATE: 23RD SEPTEMBER

REGION: NORTH HEBRIDES

FORECAST FOR THE AFTERNOON IS FINE, WITH A BUILDUP OF PRESSURE AROUND 17:00 HOURS. MOST ISLANDS WILL EXPERIENCE SOME LIGHT DRIZZLE IN EARLY EVENING, BUT THE OVERALL WEATHER PICTURE IS GOOD.

## 32

At three-thirty on that Sunday afternoon, Rachel slipped off her robe and stepped into a steaming hot bath. It was hotter than she normally liked, but that was good. She needed to feel things right now, even if it was just the heat of a bath. She sucked in a series of quick breaths as she lowered herself into the water, surprising herself how quickly she adjusted to the temperature. Slowly, she rested her head against the curve of the bath and closed her eyes.

She had not come here to think, but by voiding her mind of everything else that cluttered her daily routine—housework, cooking, Sam—she was left with no choice but to turn over various thoughts in her mind. Naturally, it wasn't long before they touched on her relationship with Sam—where they were going, if they were going to stay together.

The truth was she needed Sam right now. But that was a very different thing to loving him the way she had loved him in the beginning. They had just been through a trauma that was still echoing like thunder in their daily lives, and those echoes would go on for a very long time. The memory of Becky and of losing her would always be with them. As long as they stayed together.

That was really the question, wasn't it?

Which was worse? Staying together, rebuilding a family life with the memory of Becky ever present in their thoughts, in every decision they made, her face reflected in their eyes each time they looked at each other? Or split, go their separate ways and try to build new lives from scratch with new people, new lovers. Of course Becky would go with them, both of them, into whichever avenues they explored. But would her—God, she hated the word _ghost_ , but it seemed to be the only word to describe it—would her ghost haunt them as deeply in a new life with new concerns and new challenges? That was the real choice here, she thought. And what an awful, soul-wrenching choice to be faced with.

The doorbell chimed, dragging her out of her reverie. Who could be calling now? Sam had his key and wouldn't be back for a while anyway. She thought of ignoring it; she had the right to. She was still grieving, and anyone who was a friend would understand that. But something niggled at the back of her mind. The fact that she wasn't expecting anyone to call made her curious as to who it was at the door. She climbed from the bath and grabbed her bathrobe.

When she opened the front door she was surprised to find a complete stranger on the doorstep. She was a young woman, perhaps twenty, wearing a long leopard skin overcoat that looked as though it had come from some London fashion house. Her entire appearance did not fit with the general look of the islanders.

There was a strange empty moment in which both women appraised each other in silence, before the visitor extended a perfectly manicured hand.

"Hi," she said. "You must be Rachel. My name's Kelly Burnett."

## 33

_My son, my son_ . . .

Cynthia Garrett lay on her bed in a cold stupor, her waxy skin damp from the unexpected and unseasonable heat that had built up in the past few hours. The medication monitor which periodically pushed 3mg of morphine into her system had malfunctioned earlier that morning, and the brief delay in keeping her sedated and dulled from the pain had lifted, providing her with this strange, surreal surfacing sensation, a feeling of almost total clarity of thought and emotion. Pain came with it, of course, but she didn't care. She had only ever known pain in one form or another. She could suffer this pain for a while if it allowed her to experience the true meaning of what had happened to her one and only son.

_Ben was dead_.

Her son was dead and she—this cancer-ridden husk of a woman—was still alive. She should have been dead a long time ago. She had wanted to die a long time ago. One last visit from her Ben and then . . . oblivion. Yes, that would have been perfect. But things had changed. It was one more cruel twist in which the rug she had placed down herself had been yanked from beneath her. She had lived badly. She couldn't even die well.

But she was still here. Why?

When she'd finally been told the news—when that silly young male nurse had finally had the nerve to tell her this morning—she had fully expected her body to give up the fight within hours. But her withered body still clung onto life.

No one could understand how or why. Even Dr Rogers had come to the house and, although he hadn't told her out straight ("You shouldn't be here, Cynthia.") she could read it in his sad old eyes.

_You shouldn't be here, Cynthia_ , she thought to herself.

What is it you're waiting around for?

## 34

"I work for Hayden-Mills, Sam's publisher," Kelly explained. Sitting primly in one of the large lilac armchairs, she sipped the tea Rachel had given her, and glanced around the plush living room. Everything in this place had been paid for by Sam's books. That thrilled her and made her heart ache even more for him. She couldn't explain exactly why.

"When we heard of the tragedy," Kelly explained, "we were going to send flowers, but I suggested it might be better if someone made a visit in person."

Rachel stood in the archway which led to the kitchen. Kelly couldn't help but notice that she hadn't made herself a cup of tea, and her body language was very defensive. She also noticed that there were grey pockets under her eyes, suggesting a serious lack of sleep. No wonder, she thought with a small pang of sympathy. She's been through a lot. But, she had to admit, she's still here. They're still together. Or are they?

"Sorry," Kelly said, "where is Sam?"

"Oh," Rachel said, "Sam went out this morning. To visit a friend."

"Do you have any idea when he'll be back?"

Rachel shook her head. She seemed distracted, irritated by something. "Sorry, what was your name again?"

Kelly tensed. "Kelly Burnett."

"And what is it you do at Hayden-Mills?"

Kelly already had her answer prepared. "I'm a publicist."

Rachel's eyes narrowed to slits. "Kelly Burnett. I don't recall Sam ever mentioning you before. I thought his publicist was Ronnie Gibson –"

Kelly put her cup down with a clink. "Yes, you're right. Ronnie Gibson is in the South of France. I'm his right-hand woman, so to speak. Ronnie called me and asked me to come here on his behalf."

There was a deep silence. Rachel stared at her visitor.

"I thought you said it was your idea to come here in person?" Rachel said.

Kelly maintained the smile for as long as she could, but after a while she realised it was pointless to continue. Rachel Thorne was not the dope she thought she would be. In the embarrassing silence which followed, Kelly tried to rearrange her plans again. She had already had to adapt things once, when she encountered Sam's wife at the door instead of the man himself, the man she had really come to see. The man she had come to try and win over.

Kelly sat in the armchair, brushing imaginary crumbs from her dress, trying to decide which way she should go.

She arranged another smile, one that was not filled with good-natured brightness.

"Mrs Thorne, there's something your husband hasn't told you."

## 35

The combination of drinking so early in the day and the lack of restorative sleep contributed to Sam's mild stupor. As he drove up the drive to his house, narrowly missing a bollard and clipping the fence, he felt a little foolish at having allowed himself to get this way. Back in London, he would never have driven after a drink. Never. But here on the island, certain rules didn't apply—or, at least, they were ignored with a cough behind the hand. The chances of hitting anyone on these wide-open island roads, even when inebriated, were extremely unlikely. God, how irresponsible did that sound?

He parked the Land Rover in front of the garage and climbed out, a goofy grin on his face. _I'll put her in the garage later_ , he told himself. _After a few coffees._

When he fell in the front door, the smile evaporated instantly.

Two large suitcases rested in the hall at the bottom of the stairs. Rachel appeared from the kitchen, the phone pressed to her ear.

"Sorry, Mum," she said into the mouthpiece. "Sam's just come in. I'll speak to you later."

Sam closed the door slowly, the pleasant buzz of his lunchtime drink rapidly evaporating as his brain tried to adjust to the events unfolding before him.

"What's going on, Rachel?" he said.

"Kind of obvious, I thought." She hugged herself, unable to meet his eyes.

"You're leaving me?"

"No, Sam. I'm going to live with my mum for a while. I just need to be alone right now."

Sam sat down on the lower stairs. "That sounds pretty much like you're leaving me."

She looked at him, her eyes narrowed. "She was very pretty."

Sam looked at her guardedly. "Who?"

"The young woman who came here today. Kelly, is it?"

Sam found it impossible to mask the shock. It was so overwhelming, so raw, that he found himself robbed of breath. In the end he looked away, afraid that the truth was written too large in his eyes.

"I can see why you would want to risk it all for a girl like that. I hope it was worth it."

He raised his hand, trying to keep his shoulders from shaking. "Rachel, listen–"

"No, Sam, you listen: I've done a lot of thinking—nothing else _but_ think, actually. The truth is Becky was the only thing keeping us together. Now she's gone, I don't see any future for us. Especially not now." She shook her head. "I can't believe you kept it a secret for so long."

"Rachel . . ." He paused, suddenly aware of the precipice he found himself on. "Rachel, I did it for us. I did it to keep us together."

"Don't try and turn it into an act of heroism, Sam!"

His heart was burning. But he felt as though he had stepped out over the precipice now; the abyss beckoned.

"Just this morning, I said if we were to stay together we had to be honest with each other, no more secrets, no lies. So why didn't you tell me then, Sam?"

Sam breathed in and exhaled slowly through his nose. "Because I knew you would never forgive me. It wouldn't matter how it happened, or why it happened—not to you. I know how unforgiving you are. Maybe if I thought for one minute that there was a chance you might forgive me, I might have told you the truth a long time ago. God knows I wanted to. I really did."

Rachel fell against the wall, knocking one of the Degas prints askew. Her hands were trembling. "So this is my fault?" she said.

"No, that's not what I'm saying. She was just interested and I – I was stupid, I let her move in, when I should have turned and ran, but–"

"Am I really so bad, Sam? Am I really that cold you had to run into the arms of the first woman who showed an interest?"

Tears stood in Rachel's eyes.

Sam stared at her, unable to say the words. In the end, he didn't have to. Rachel bowed her head, tears slipping down her face.

"Rachel, it was one night, one big mistake. I have never regretted anything so much–"

"Well, it doesn't matter now, anyway." She wiped away the tears and stood up straight.

"Rachel, I don't want you to leave."

She shook her head slowly. "This isn't about what you want this time, Sam. I need to get away. I'll see you at the funeral."

"So, that's it? Nothing I say will make you stay?"

"No."

"We had something special," he said.

"Yes," she agreed, coolly. "Yes, we did."

She brushed past him and started up the stairs. "I'm leaving here at five to catch the last ferry. I would appreciate it if you could be somewhere else."

Outside, a single fork of lightning touched the horizon.

The first of many.

## 36

On Scalasay, it was said, they buried their dead above ground.

The original cemetery had been on the land on which the Ashworth Estate now stands. In 1918, Richard's grandfather Earl Ashworth bought twenty-five per cent of the island, including the mile-square plot reserved for Scalasay's past, present and future dearly departed. Having more money than was healthy, Earl Ashworth set about having the cemetery moved to Rook Hill, which was on the opposite side of the island. This huge and costly operation was done so that he could build the twelve-room mansion which now dominates the skyline in the north-west. The only problem with Rook Hill was that the plateau was made up of hard slate bedrock (as was almost eighty per cent of the island), which naturally made interment almost impossible. Ashworth's solution to this was to erect a community mausoleum, a beautifully sculpted series of chambers that would not only house the previous deceased, but generations of Scalasay to come.

Naturally, these plans caused outrage amongst the island's inhabitants, but Earl Ashworth knew how to appease angry mobs. His years as a captain of industry had proven that. Earl Ashworth pumped so much money into the island – into the newly-built school, the shopping arcade, as well as improving the sewage and drainage systems and paying for the resurfacing of all the island's main roads – that the locals' protests were quickly reduced to muted cries of general dissatisfaction. By the time of his death ten years after the completion of Ashworth house, Earl Ashworth was regarded by the island community as one of its most revered citizens and benefactors. A bronze bust of the old man was erected in the town square, beside the water fountain which he had added to the shopping arcade in its centenary year.

Oddly enough, Earl Ashworth was not buried in Rook Hill Cemetery. He, like so many other Scalasay residents, chose to pay a little extra after his demise to be buried on the mainland, in a traditional plot in a beautiful cemetery in the North of Scotland.

The mausoleum which now stands on Rook Hill was designed by a young architect in Ashworth's employ called Joseph Farmer. His only design specification from the old man was to make the mausoleum—which could quite easily become an eyesore and enrage a community already smarting from the plans—blend in with the surroundings, and that included the thirteen mysterious stones which lined the outskirts of Rook Hill plateau. The stones were made of a dense metamorphic rock, completely alien to the island's geological structure. And so, following Ashworth's instructions, Farmer used a dark rock known as quartzite in the construction of the mausoleum.

The stones stand over ten feet tall, and even though they are now covered in moss and lichen, and are chipped and broken, they are still a formidable set of figures in the landscape. The Bruin stones are carved with intricate Celtic runes which predate anything that modern linguistic experts can understand. Some believe that the stones were used by some of the Norse armies which invaded the islands in the seventh Century, and it may have been the Norse ships which brought these strange rocks from Eastern Europe.

As the storm gathered, the Bruin stones looked on.

## 37

Father McNamara slipped into the chapel to extinguish the half dozen or so candles which were now burning down to their wicks, and was surprised to find a solitary figure sitting in the shadows below the small organ loft, a single shaft of moonlight falling across his neck and shoulders. For a split second, he imagined it was Ben Garrett. The troubled young man had often come into the church alone late at night, but whenever McNamara had tried to approach him or offer him counsel, he fled. The idea that this was him sent an icy shiver through his bones.

He peered into the shadows. "Hello?" he called. "Are you all right back there?"

The figure moved, and when the moonlight fell across the features, he saw that it was Sam Thorne. "Hello, Father."

McNamara walked down the aisle and stopped a few feet from Sam's pew. "Hello, Sam. I can't say I'm surprised to see you here after what happened yesterday."

Sam exhaled wearily. "I suppose I came for the quiet, the solace, maybe to seek some answers."

"From me?" the priest asked with a jocular edge.

"I don't know, Father. Got any?"

McNamara grinned and took the seat beside Sam.

"You know, I'm a little bit psychic," the priest said.

"A little bit?"

"Aye. I bet I can tell you what you're feeling right now."

Sam regarded the old priest with a humorous squint. "Go on then, give it your best shot."

"Okay, laddie." McNamara looked to the heavens for a few moments. "You're thinking, Why me? That's a dead-cert." Sam said nothing. "You're also thinking that if there is a God, why does he let things like this happen? Why does a so-called loving God let six-year-old girls die in freak accidents?"

The old priest fixed his rheumy eyes on Sam's own, but the humour had drained from them. Sam felt a tremble of emotion in his jaw at the way the discussion was going, but he was intrigued as to where the priest was taking him.

"Am I close?" asked McNamara.

"Pretty close."

McNamara cleared his throat with an echoing cough. "May I be so bold as to tell you, the author, a little story?"

A smile tugged at Sam's lips. "Okay."

"Ever heard the story of the Third Ant?" he asked.

Sam shook his head.

"A colony of ants came under attack from a killer bee. A soldier ant went out to face this terrifying foe, believing in his heart that he would win because he had the cause of Right on his side. But the ant did not win. He was squashed, and tossed aside. A second ant came forward to defend his colony, employing a different tactic to that of the first ant. He, too, believed he would win, but he also perished under the bee's merciless onslaught. And then a third ant stepped forward. He had observed the idealistic bravery of his two fellow ants, but he was more of a realist. He understood that an ant can never beat a bee. Not alone, at any rate. So he summoned his forces and the colony attacked the bee as one, and drove it away, never to return." The old priest looked into Sam's eyes. "You see, Sam, the third ant learnt from the mistakes of those first two ants and the cause of Right won out in the end."

Sam leaned forward. "So, you're saying that life is a game of trial and error?"

The old priest shook his head. "I think the idea is that no death is meaningless. We may not realise it at the time, or agree with it, but every death has its place in the grand scheme. Every death _eventually_ has some significance."

The two men sat in silence for some time, and in those quiet few moments, Sam tried to consider what the priest was telling him, but his mind was filled with mental static.

Eventually, Sam stood up to leave. "I'm sorry, Father," he said. "All I know is that I lost my daughter yesterday. Where's the meaning in that?"

Silence fell over them. Sam felt tears threatening. He took several deep breaths to keep them at bay.

McNamara grabbed Sam's shoulder then and gave it a manly squeeze. "I know what you could use, Sam. A stiff drink." He smiled. "We both do."

## 38

"You just get yourself to Oban safely," her mother's reassuring voice told her through the handset, "and I'll be waiting there for you."

"Thanks, Mum," she said.

"And Rachel?" she said, her tone deepening, growing cold. "I was right about him, wasn't I?"

Rachel pressed her lips together hard. She wasn't ready yet for that kind of talk. "Mum, I'll see you at the ferry port," she said. "Love you."

She hung up, exhaled a long, trailing sigh and then saw something catch her eye in the garden outside.

She stepped out into the night air—humid for this time of year, as if the atmospheric pressure was building up to something—and crossed the garden to the small flowerbed by the shed. She crouched down and found that the yellow glint she had seen was the pot containing Becky's very own geranium. It was still in bloom, a miracle as she was certain it hadn't been watered once since . . . since Becky last watered it.

At that moment a twin set of car lights swept across the front of the house and a horn beeped. The taxi was early. But that didn't matter. She was packed, ready to go. She had everything she needed.

She looked back at the geranium and tears filled her eyes.

"Goodbye, my angel," she said.

## 39

Sam and Father McNamara sat in front of a crackling fire at the Lighthouse Inn, sipping silently on their respective glasses of Scotch. The barroom was surprisingly quiet for a Sunday. A young couple sat in a cosy booth, looking too exhausted to enjoy each other's company. A pair of giant backpacks rested at their feet. Day-trippers, Sam concluded. Scalasay got a lot of them in the summer, only a few in the autumn and winter months.

He glanced at the clock on the mantel. Five-fifteen.

Rachel would be leaving the cottage around now, would be loading the luggage into the back of a taxi and listening to her mother on the phone telling her only daughter that she'd been right about the good-for-nothing writer all along.

He'd been a fool. Some idiotic part of him had really believed that in withholding the truth of his indiscretion he had been protecting the fragile unit of his family. Instead that secret had become the final nail in the coffin of their marriage.

She would never come back to him. Maybe she was talking about a temporary separation, but he knew in his heart, had seen the cutting truth in her sad brown eyes, that something had died, something fundamental which they could never get back.

The past few hours had been a torture chamber of past memories. He found himself dwelling on particular memories that had once seemed so bright and filled with hope, but which now seemed designed to cut deep into his heart with maximum damage. Their first meeting was an unlikely collision on a university campus between an English Literature student and a medical student who had hated each other on first sight. He recalled that feeling of extreme dislike with a new intensity now. Oh, how he had despised that uptight, spoilt girl with the glossy blonde hair and the brown, heavily-lidded eyes. But he remembered the turn of his heart when she had softened, shown her vulnerability over the death of a mutual friend. He remembered the growing feelings of desire and unbound passion which burned deep within him, and the fear—yes, real fear—that she was beyond his reach because of their initial dislike. But the storm had broken one night, when he had been invited back to her dormitory and there in her tiny bed they had stripped each other bare in every sense, had made love again and again, as if their passion for each other was a beast which they could only put to rest through physical love – but by the end of that night they had barely troubled the beast.

He lay in her bed that following morning and looked into her coffee-coloured eyes and realised he had found his soul mate. He remembered clearly thinking that the beast—their passion for each other—would never go away. Nothing could kill it.

And now . . . now she was leaving. Leaving the island. Leaving him.

"I know what you're thinking," McNamara said suddenly. "That it's all your fault. About Becky, I mean."

Sam cleared his throat. "To be honest, Father, I don't know what to think right now. I woke up this morning and realised the centre of my universe is gone."

McNamara nodded understandingly. "I can't imagine what it must be like to lose your child." McNamara toyed with his glass for a moment. "I almost had children," he said. "Before I became a priest."

"Really?"

McNamara nodded. "I was married. Married young. Too young, really. Beth, her name was." He took a healthy swig of the scotch and returned his gaze to the heat of the open fire. "When we first married, neither of us wanted children. We were both agreed on that. For ten years we just enjoyed each other, and I, for one, felt absolutely at peace with our decision. I assumed Beth felt the same. But things change. People change, right under your nose."

"She wanted children?" he asked.

McNamara nodded slowly. "Apparently she'd wanted them for a long time – years, in fact. I asked her why she never said anything to me about her change of heart and she said she'd tried to tell me countless times, but had only been met with a blank wall. I just wasn't listening, she said. I never really listened, that was my downfall."

Sam saw tears standing in the old man's eyes. "Hey, she didn't mean it."

"Oh, she did, Sam! The woman never said anything she didn't mean. I can attest to that. She was damned right. I didn't listen, not really. Too wrapped up in my work, too much a slave to the daily grind." He sighed heavily, a tear slipping down his cheek, which he swiped at with the back of his hand. "Beth died of a brain haemorrhage six weeks after we had that conversation."

"God, I'm so sorry," Sam said.

McNamara managed a tight smile. "I decided to join the priesthood after that. But for years I had to live with the guilt. I still do. If I'd listened to her sooner, maybe . . ."

They sat in silence for a while, listening to the crackle of the fire.

The door opened and a strong gust of wind blew through the sleepy barroom. Sam watched two locals walking in, two of the old fishermen who lived and worked on the north shoreline, catching turbots and hake in their tiny two-man boat.

Lily, the barmaid, who was sitting on a bar stool reading a battered old copy of _Hello_ magazine, visibly brightened on seeing them. "Harry! Lionel!" she cooed. "How's the sea treating you?"

Lionel, tall and bearded, slapped his cap on the bar. "Been kind most o' the morning, Lil. But it looks like it's goin' to turn unfriendly."

Harry confirmed this with a nod of his shining bald head. "Aye, there's a storm in the air. A big 'un, too."

Lilly had begun pulling them two pints of ale with expert ease. But on hearing this news, she paused and regarded them as if they were both losing their marbles. "Storm? What storm?" she said. "It's as calm as a vicar's bed out there today. The weather forecast says fine for the evening."

The two men sat down on bar stools which evidently had their names on them, shaking their heads sagely at this conflicting report. "I'm sorry, Lily," Harry went on, "but there's no more accurate weather forecast than the one made by men who work out in it. And I'm telling you, there's a killer storm coming."

"If I were you," Lionel added, "I'd close up early, Lil. Just for safety."

Sam, who had been listening to all of this with keen interest, downed his drink and looked across at his friend, the priest. They exchanged a look of mutual concern.

A storm was coming. A big one.

## 40

Sitting in the safety of her Jeep, Kelly Burnett watched Rachel Thorne climb into the taxi as the driver loaded her suitcase into the boot. Her heart soared with each passing moment. If she had ever doubted the power of fate before she certainly didn't now. Everything she had wanted to happen was now coming to pass. To be here to witness it was scintillating. As the taxi's headlights disappeared down into the cup of the valley, she settled back and took some long, deep breaths. The hard part was still to come. She hadn't seen Sam yet since she'd arrived on the island. And she knew he would not be best pleased when he discovered it was her who had told his wife the truth about them. But that was his own fault for not having the guts to do it himself. She had only been doing what fate demanded, clearing a path for them.

The clock read five-twenty.

Now all she had to do was wait for Sam to come home. Then, she would make her bid for his heart.

## 41

The clouds above Rook Hill cemetery were slate grey and fat with rain. Forks of electrical discharge hissed on the underside of the cloud bank, a deep-throated cough of thunder periodically punching a hole through the fabric of night.

The pressure was building, filling the air above the cemetery with an unnatural heat. Unseen by any human eye, two discarded cans of cheap lager cracked and imploded as if crushed by invisible hands. Lengthy blades of grass pulled taut, stretching skyward. The cormorants and heron gulls and puffins had fled from the sky, taking shelter in the cliffs on the far side of the island. The goats on the Nightingale Farm bleated a mournful lament into the hot night air.

The pressure building, building.

Then, a blanket of white light flashed brilliantly for a half-second. A heartbeat later, thunder filled the night. Harsh, deafening thunder. Jagged forks of lightning reached down into the unforgiving earth of Rook Hill, tearing into the asphalt and granite, sending up pillars of smoke as grass and stone and earth were singed in the attack.

Amethyst fingers of electricity rolled over the gravestones of the deceased—as if searching for something . . . or _someone_ —trembling over the intricate stone carvings, pressing in through the cracks and seams, violating the consecrated flesh within. Finally, the forks of lightning moved away from the cemetery, drifting in the direction of the town, scorching the earth as they went.

As the lightning did its work, the pregnant clouds released their rain in an untamed downpour.

The storm had broken.

The island shook with the screams of the dead.

## 42

"She'll come back," McNamara said, apropos of their recent talk about absent wives, one living, one dearly departed.

Sam, his eyes fixed on the blurred network of lights outside the pub windows, shook his head. "No, she won't."

"I can understand how it feels like that right now. Feels like your heart's been ripped out. But in time, she'll come back to you. She has to. You have a history together."

Sam sipped his scotch. "I wish I could believe that, Father. But I'm all too aware of the statistics for couples who lose a child. Especially an only child."

"With all due respect," McNamara said, leaning forward and lowering his voice, "fuck statistics. They can be used to say whatever you want them to say. What matters is the human heart. It's the _only_ thing that matters. You and Rachel had something. When I first saw you two together I thought, man, there goes one lucky couple. I envied you. It was in the way you looked at each other. I saw a friendship that went beyond any normal platonic friendship. To find that kind of special relationship inside a marriage is unique and cannot be tossed aside. It's special. That is why she'll be back."

McNamara sat back and took a healthy swallow of his drink. Sam's eyes watered with emotion at the old man's speech. He stirred his drink. "You're right that we had something. But . . . I screwed it up, Father. I screwed it up just like every man who's ever had something special. He feels the subconscious desire to kick it to hell, to destroy it. Whatever we had, it's dead now."

"No, not completely. As long as you're both breathing, there's still hope."

Thunder rolled outside, followed by a flicker of white light. There was a large bay window at the back of the bar and the two fishermen and Lily, the barmaid, stood in front of it, watching the growing storm.

"Do you know what they call this island?" McNamara said.

Sam looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"Ever heard the locals refer to it by its true name? Lazarus Island. Centuries ago the Norsemen ruled these islands. There were a lot of Viking settlements here, usually as a midway point between pillaging the Scots and trying to overthrow the Celts in Ireland. Many battles were fought on these shores. These islands have seen a good deal of death and mayhem down the ages, most of it long forgotten. But there's one story which has survived, one that's been passed down for centuries."

McNamara turned his glass around on the table repeatedly, gathering his thoughts before beginning.

"Erik Uldammer was a great Norse king. He defeated many of the Saxon armies back in those days. He was leading his army against the Angles when he died in battle aboard his boat in the North Sea. His men carried him to Scalasay—well, it was called something else back then, obviously—and buried him up on what we now call Rook Hill. Legend says that the Norse gods were unhappy with Erik's death. He'd died before his time, before he'd completed the work they'd set out for him. So, one night, they sent down a great storm, and during that storm a bolt of lightning struck Erik Uldammer in his grave and brought him back to life. For one night, the dead king returned to his defeated army and rallied them for one last battle. They defeated the Angles at sea, and in the early hours of the following morning, Erik Uldammer, his mission accomplished, returned to his grave."

Sam smiled broadly. "A good story," he said.

The old priest nodded. He looked at Sam with a serious expression. "Don't give up hope, Sam," he said. "Never give up hope."

## 43

Darkness.

The hiss of rain.

And the cold. The bitter, numbing cold.

His first thoughts are fragmented, unconnected. There is a period of waiting, of searching the empty black space of internal consciousness.

Is this consciousness?

Or dreaming?

This is followed by a heightened awareness of simple motor functions: his eyelids blinking with great effort—heavy, dry eyelids raking across dry eyes. Aching fingers twitch and contort, the muscles awakening from a form of paralysis.

His brain tells him to draw breath. But after a painful first attempt, he finds he cannot. Deep within his chest, in the centre of his being, there is a dull, bitter ache, a pain like nothing else he has ever experienced. The heart which once pumped like a car piston and fed his powerful body with life-giving blood is a cold dead thing in his chest. Lungs which had only recently enjoyed the sweet air of the Scottish highlands are now two lifeless lumps of tissue. But he is awake. He is aware. He knows these things with a dreadful clarity that defies the beliefs he has spent his life forming. His eyes are open, but his body is a dead vessel.

He tries to scream, to cry out his rage and fear, but no real sound escapes him except a dusty, hollow sigh, the expulsion of dead air. The muted scream dies in his throat, replaced by the distant roll of thunder.

He raises his head from the soft cushion beneath and the sheet covering him falls away. He is in what appears to be a storage room. In the darkness he can just make out shelves of supplies. Medical supplies? He is sitting on an examination table, the type found in hospital wards or doctor's surgeries. To his left is another examination table with a white sheet covering what must be a child's body. He has a vague recollection of a little girl. Pigtails. Missing front teeth. But the memory is painful to him. The figure beneath it is absolutely still.

He senses a strange tingling in his hands and lifts them up. Tiny circles of blue electricity flitter over his skin. They rise up his hands to his fingertips and then discharge themselves in the air in front of his face.

He does not fully understand it, but a spark of terror ignites deep down inside.

He sees the outline of a door straight ahead and swings his legs off the table. The sensation of movement, of simply being able to make his limbs move again, is strangely invigorating. He drops down onto his booted feet and, after a moment of extreme dizziness, finds his balance. He approaches the door, boots squelching, and then stops.

He fumbles in the dark, his fingers finding the door handle. He turns the handle but the door is locked.

Panic sets in.

No! I have to get out! I have to get out of here!

Summoning his strength, he begins to yank at the door handle. Then he raises his leg and kicks at the door, again and again and again.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Eventually, the door splinters. He kicks some more and the door breaks into pieces. He is about to push his way through when an explosion of thunder shakes the walls around him. The ceiling in the centre of the room shatters as a terrifying bolt of amethyst lightning punches through it. He covers his eyes from the blinding light, then dares to peek. The lightning forms itself into a rod, crackling and spitting in all directions, before its central shaft begins to move around the room.

It seems to sense the table with the child's body laid on it and leaps over to it. The shaft of lightning flows over the white sheet and seconds later it stops as suddenly as it had arrived.

In the silence which follows he is left with the hiss of smouldering roof tiles and the smell of singed cloth.

The figure beneath the sheet twitches.

He watches as the child sits up on the table, the sheet still covering her face, and a high-pitched scream fills the room. She screams and screams and screams until he thinks he might go insane from the sound.

His sluggish, paranoid mind struggles to ascertain why this child is here with him in this nightmare. But then the sheet slips from the girl's face and he recognises her—the little girl with the blonde pigtails and the missing front teeth—and he begins to put together fragments of memories: a ferry crossing, the ocean, the journey in the prison van, an explosion . . .

A new set of images flood into his mind, images which had haunted him in the space between life and death, images he couldn't possibly have witnessed himself, but images which seem real to him nonetheless. He finds himself floating above the doomed ferry like a ghost, an omniscient spirit, seeing everything and everyone. He sees the prison van alone on the lower deck of the ferry. The rear door is shut, which tells him he must still be inside. This is minutes before the explosion happened. His vision swoops higher into the sky for a moment before descending back towards the lower deck of the ferry. He hovers over a man in fisherman's bib and overalls as he approaches the van. He glances around furtively as if sensing the new presence above him. Then, after a muttered curse, the man crouches down near the rear of the vehicle. That's when Garrett sees the device in his hands. Some form of grey explosives strapped to a clock, just like in the movies. The man sets the timer. He reaches under the van and attaches the device to the underbelly.

Garrett feels his vision blurring, as if his shock and anger are distorting the view. He controls himself, knowing this vision may end at any moment, and he forces himself to move around so that he can see the man's face. His spiritual body shifts forward at his command and he sees the man. Mid-fifties, rough features, large moustache . . . one eye missing. No eye-patch, just a swirl of scar tissue around the missing right eye. Garrett has the vague sensation of knowing this man, but the knowledge evades him.

Who are you? _Who are you?_

As the man gets up to leave, the vision comes to an abrupt end.

He finds himself back in the dark store room.

The little girl's screams fill his mind.

Thunder rumbles overhead, the murmur of watchful gods.

"Stop screaming," he says.

The girl stops. "Where am I?" she asks, eyes wide, searching. "What's ha-happening?"

"I don't know," he tells her. "I'm sorry, I just don't know."

Before she can ask any more questions, he slips out the door and is gone.

## 44

At ten minutes to six, the taxi pulled up in front of the Garrett house. Rachel stared out through the wind-lashed glass at the orange square of light in the old woman's bedroom, asking herself if it was a good idea to come here at all. She had not come to say goodbye to Cynthia, her first and last patient during her unhappy time on the island, out of any kind of affection for the woman. She had always formed strong bonds with her patients in the past, but had found it almost impossible to do so with Cynthia. She had questioned her reasons for this lack of affinity, but in the end she could only put it down to the history of the Garrett family—and in particular what her 'beloved son' had done. Rachel knew now what it was like to lose a daughter to a random, incomprehensible force; and for the families of the three girls Ben Garrett raped, that was very much the same. In the same way that God or Nature or the Incomprehensible Turn of Events had snatched her little girl from her, so Ben Garrett had snatched those girls from those mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, choosing those particular girls with no more reason or motive than that their hair colour was right or the dress they were wearing was wrong. Perhaps what people hated most about people like Ben Garrett was the fact that they had turned themselves into an illegitimate force of nature. Like a tornado or an earthquake or a dead ship beneath the waves, men like Ben Garrett chose who was to die on that particular day for no discernible reason. The only difference between the two was that the fury and grief of the human race cannot be vented on an earthquake or a tornado. But a man like Ben Garrett can become a target for that hate.

"You all right, love?" the taxi driver said.

Rachel nodded, shaking her head. "Yes. I won't be long," she said. "Keep the meter running."

The driver threw her a look in his rearview mirror which said, _You bet your ass I will, honey._

She held her clutch bag on top of her head and then jumped out of the car. Slamming the door behind her, she skipped up the path to the relative shelter of the door eave. She rang the doorbell and waited.

The door eventually opened and Cameron's face appeared. He looked tired, pale. He managed a smile when he recognised it was her.

"Hey, Rach," he said, opening the door wider. "Good to see you. Thought you'd left already."

She stepped into the warmth of the hallway and shook off most of the rain from her overcoat. "How is she?" she asked.

Cameron shook his head in disbelief. "Hanging in there. I don't know where she gets the willpower."

"Is she awake now?"

"Yeah. She's been sleeping most of the day, but I've just given her a bed bath and she's talking like her old self."

Rachel walked into the bedroom, that cloying scent of piss and perfume and sterile things filling her now with a melancholic feeling. Cynthia's pearl grey eyes found her instantly, and a polite smile creased the lines in her face.

"Hello, Cynthia," Rachel said, approaching the bed and sitting down gently at the old woman's side. "I wanted to see you, to say goodbye."

Cynthia searched Rachel's face for a moment. "Leaving?" she croaked. "Leaving the island?"

Unexpected tears sprang into Rachel's eyes. Perhaps it was the sad expression on Cynthia's worn face, or perhaps it was the stating of exactly what she was doing that brought it on. Whatever it was, she couldn't hold back the tears which fell onto the crisp white sheets.

"It's too painful for me to stay here, Cynthia," she whispered. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" Cynthia said. Her usually slack face became animated, eyebrows arched in mock anger. "Don't you apologise for nothing, you silly girl," she rasped. "You have done me a world of good. You may think we never had anything in common, but we do. At least, now we do. I've lost a son, you've lost a daughter."

Rachel bowed her head.

"I can see in your eyes that you've lost hope. Lost hope in everything. And that's no way to go on."

"I lost my little girl, Cynthia, my baby. She was everything to me."

"And your husband?" she said. "You're going with him, aren't you?"

Rachel shook her head.

"Oh, girl, why ever not?"

Rachel thought of Sam's infidelity, of an already dying relationship, but decided against pouring all that out onto the shoulders of a dying woman. But she didn't want to lie. Not now.

"My husband did something," she whispered. "Something I can't forgive."

"What did he do? What could be so bad that you can't forgive the man you love?"

Rachel was about to tell her, but Cameron stepped back into the room, and for some perverse reason, she didn't want him to hear it. She shrugged.

"Where does this lack of forgiveness come from, my dear?" Cynthia said, her expression full of wonder. "How did you get to be so unforgiving?"

"My father," she said, "was an alcoholic. On the rare occasions he was sober he was the best dad a girl could ever have. But when he drank . . . he was mean. Meaner than you could ever imagine. He was violent towards my mum, then as I grew older he would take it out on me, too. And every time I would pray that my mum would kick him out, tell him to go to hell, but every time he would apologise, say all the right things and convince her it would never happen again. But it did. He never stopped. Well, until the heart attack stopped him." Rachel blinked back tears, the dark memories flashing across her mind. "That much forgiveness? It's just something I can't do."

Cynthia shook her head slowly in admonishment. "But, Rachel, dear, where there are two people, there is always hope. Don't you know that?"

Rachel shrugged. "I need to get away from this place, Cynthia. Everything about this island is death to me now." She realised what she'd said, but it was too late to take the words back. She'd let down her professional guard once more. "Oh, Cynthia, I'm so sorry."

Cynthia looked away, a misty glaze falling over her eyes. "He's coming," she whispered.

Rachel looked at her, eyes narrowed. "What did you say?"

"He's coming."

Rachel glanced round at Cameron, who shrugged. "Who, Cynthia?" she asked.

Cynthia looked her in the eye, the glare of madness flaring brightly, like a twin set of candles. "Who do you think?" she said. "My boy. My boy. He's coming to see me."

Rachel studied the woman's features for a long time, undecided on which approach to take. The delirium had usurped her mind again. What good would it do to point out the awful truth?

Rachel smiled and patted Cynthia's bony wrist. "Try and rest now," she said.

Without warning, the lights winked out in the house. She gasped as they were plunged into total darkness. She looked out through the bay window and saw that the entire village and the Port were drowned in blackness.

"Oh my God," she said.

In the silence which followed, the only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock.

## 45

"Here they are," Lily said, emerging from the room behind the bar with a handful of loose candles. "I always keep some for times like this. We used to have a lot of blackouts years back, didn't we, boys? Before they put the new power lines down."

She handed them out to the bar customers. Sam took one, thumbed his Zippo and put the flame to the wick. McNamara lit his candle from Sam's, a wry smile on his face.

"Feels like I'm in church and it's the Easter Vigil."

Lily approached the bay window, her candle raised. She squinted into the darkness. Thunder rumbled on the horizon.

"We haven't had a storm like this in years," she said. "Looks like you boys were right."

"Aye," the fishermen said in unison. "Shame on you for doubting us, Lily Hartman," Lionel said with a wink to his colleague. "I think a round of free drinks is in order."

Before she could respond, a flash of lightning lit up the grassy area at the back of the pub. The old barmaid gasped and dropped the lit candle onto the carpet.

"Jesus, Lily!" Harry scalded, dropping to one knee and scooping up the candle. But Lily said nothing in response, seemed hardly aware of having dropped the candle at all. She was staring out into the pitch black at the rear of the house.

"Everything all right, Lily?" Lionel asked.

She said nothing, her hand clamped over her mouth.

Sam peered over her shoulder, searching the blackness outside. "Lily, what is it?"

"Someone's out there," Lily said in a hoarse whisper. "I saw . . ." She turned slowly and looked at Sam. "Sam, it was a little girl."

"What?" Sam said.

"A little girl. Walking across the playing field. I swear."

Sam decided to withhold any cynical questions until he'd had a good look himself, and so he stood there in absolute silence, staring into the night, waiting for the next crack of lightning. McNamara joined him, followed by the two fishermen. Time seemed to expand in the gloomy quiet.

"Lily, are you sure–"

Lightning flickered, flooding the world outside the window with light. Sam held his breath as the figure of a child appeared in the half-light, walking over the brow of the hill. The treacherous light was too ephemeral to gain a clear picture of the person, but it was definitely a girl. A little girl. She was walking away from the pub, but in that brief period of light, she turned her head to face the window. Her eyes were glowing orbs of silvery light. Then total darkness again.

Sam felt a chill invade his body. McNamara was staring at him, but Sam couldn't meet the older man's gaze.

It looked so much like Becky, but that was insane. What the hell was happening here? Was he seeing ghosts now?

Thunder broke the silence with devastating force, and a lightning strike bigger than anything before lit up the night. Something exploded on the street at the front of the house. A crunching sound followed, glass shattering, then a car alarm.

Everyone ran to the front door and Sam yanked it open. Wind and rain lashed his face and he raised an arm for protection. A telegraph pole lay across the roof of an old Ford Escort, blinding sparks of white light flashing in the dark.

"Oh, bloody hell!" Lionel exclaimed. "My baby! I knew should have left her at home tonight."

Another flash of lightning exploded above the Lighthouse Inn, blinding everyone momentarily.

"Mother of God," McNamara said.

"Lionel?" Sam said. "Can I borrow your waterproofs?"

"What?" the old fisherman said. "Why?"

"Please?" Sam said with an insistent hand gesture.

"All right, young man," Lionel said, taking off his weather-proof overcoat, and handing it to Sam. "I hope you're not thinking of doing anything stupid, son."

"Actually, I think I am." Sam pulled the coat on and raised the hood.

"Where are you going?" McNamara asked.

"To find that little girl," Sam said. "She's out there in this storm. God knows why, but she's out there and someone has to find her."

Before McNamara could say anything in response, Sam rushed off down the windswept street. Everyone looked at each other. The old priest raised his head and said a silent prayer, then pulled up the hood of his coat and followed him into the night.

## 46

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The force of the blows made Rachel flinch. From where she was sitting in the armchair in the bedroom she could see the front door bowing inwards with the impacts.

Cameron appeared at the far end of the hall, his face stricken with fear and alarm.

"Who the hell is that?" he shouted to Rachel.

Before she could answer him Cynthia sat bolt upright in the bed, her arms outstretched towards the front door, her eyes wide, piercing.

"It's him! He's here!"

Rachel grabbed the old woman's shoulders and tried to wrestle her back down onto the bed but she fought back, fired by a previously absent strength.

"I told you he would come! I told you, didn't I?" she screamed.

"Cynthia! Calm yourself!" Rachel yelled back.

Without warning the old woman's open hand came up, connecting with Rachel's cheek. The force sent her toppling backwards and onto the floor. Dazed, Rachel lay there on her back, staring up at this strangely animated cancer victim who looked to the hallway with all the zeal of a lover reuniting with her long-lost Romeo.

Cameron rushed down the hall, preparing himself for an encounter with who knew what.

Then the front door exploded inwards. Cameron's body flew backwards against the hall wall, the impact leaving a shallow crater in the crumbling plaster. Horrified, Rachel watched Cameron's body slump to the ground, unable to tell if he was unconscious or dead. But she had no time to wonder. A hulking figure stood in the empty door frame. All she could make out were two huge, deathly-white hands, clenching and unclenching. Then the figured stepped into the hall, bringing the lashing rain with it. After a momentary pause, the dark shape moved towards the bedroom, huge booted feet leaving shallow puddles on the hall carpet.

"My boy," Cynthia Garrett was saying in a strange sing-song voice. "My boy, come to see me."

Rachel realised that the she was lying in the stranger's direct path and frantically scrambled round to the far side of the bed. She grabbed the leg of the armchair and cowered there, her eyes transfixed on the towering figure now standing on the threshold of the bedroom. The lack of light made it hard to make out the man's features, but the pallor of his skin was unmistakable. It was bone-white, devoid of all life, a mask more than a face. The eyes were sunken deep into the brow, more whites than pupils. Then came the smell, hitting Rachel's nostrils like a noxious gas. She clamped her hand over her mouth, more to stifle the rising scream in her throat than to protect herself from the stink. She wanted to scream because the smell, the stink of death, told her absolutely and unequivocally who the dark figure was, even before he spoke to the dying woman in the bed.

"Hello, Mother," he said.

"Hello, Benjamin," she whispered, and tears fell from the old woman's eyes.

## 47

Scared. So scared.

What was that? Lightning. This rain is so heavy, but why can't I feel anything? I don't even feel cold. Why don't I feel cold? Need to get to Mummy and Daddy's house. Mummy will make me feel better. Mummy will make me feel warm again.

Oh God! What was that?

Thunder. Just thunder.

Which way is home? It's so dark. The lightning will help. Come on, lightning. I'm not scared of you anymore. I need you now.

What happened to me? How did I end up in the doctor's? Why did Mummy and Daddy leave me in the doctor's all on my own? And that man. Who was he? I remember his face, but . . . how? Where have I seen him before?

What was I doing there with him?

Wait, why can't I breathe? I'm not breathing. I can't breathe! But I'm all right. Why am I all right?

Oh, Mummy. I'm scared. I'm trying to be brave but I'm not brave, I'm so scared.

I need you, Mummy. I need you.

## 48

The bed groaned as the giant lowered his huge frame onto the mattress.

Rachel watched the reunion with wide-eyed horror. She kept her hand over her nose and mouth as a defence against the rotting-meat stench that had pervaded the room. Then Rachel noticed the back of his skull was missing, exposing pale brain tissue to the air. Cynthia Garrett, inches from the abomination that had entered her home, seemed not to notice the smell. At least, she showed no signs of being affected by it. Her eyes were wide and glassy and clear, as lucid as she had been in weeks. But behind it, Rachel saw something not quite right, something that was bubbling just beneath the surface.

"Oh, Ben. It is you," she whispered. "I waited so long for you to come to me, Ben. So, so long. I thought I would never see you again."

The hulking figure remained silent, staring at the old woman through dark, cloudy eyes. Tiny halos of blue lightning skittered over his face and hands, discharging in the air with an audible _snap_.

"I wanted to tell those men, those people who kept you prisoner, that they were wrong to lock you away." Tears filled Cynthia Garrett's eyes, and she went on through a storm of emotion. "My boy was no monster. I wanted to tell them that you didn't kill that girl. My son is no rapist. My son is no killer—"

"Mother," the man replied, his voice a rumble in the darkness, the sound of sand falling on stone, "I am a killer. I am the man who raped those girls. I did throw that girl off the cliffs. And I am what I am because of you."

Cynthia stared back at him, eyes wide with surprise. Her hand recoiled from his arm, touching her own lips absently.

"Because of me?" she whispered. "Ben, what do you mean?"

"Don't you remember, Mother?" he said. "Don't you remember the night on the beach?"

## 49

For years he had buried the memory like a rock in the earth, buried it so deep in his subconscious that for years his conscious mind had forgotten it even existed. But, like anything rotten which lies buried beneath the earth, eventually it putrefies and begins to infect the soil around it, eventually rising to the surface . . . one way or another. The memory had risen, slowly at first, like an animal rising from a long hibernation. Now, in this strange form of life he had been given, it sat in the front of his mind and there was no avoiding it.

And it began like this . . .

The sun had sunk below the horizon, sapping all the heat from the world. The remaining partygoers drew around the fire which burned on the beach, drinking and laughing and playing adult games which the young Benjamin Garrett did not understand. He was only twelve, a lonely child in a world of adults. He sat on the periphery of the party for the entire evening, sipping from his bottle of Coke and watching his mother flirt like a whore with all the men at the party. If Dad had still been around, he thought, he'd have killed her. But then there wouldn't have been a party like this. There had never been parties when Dad had been alive. His mother's parties were in some way a celebration that the old man was dead. Ben hated that. His dad had been pretty hard on him when he was alive, but he was still his father and he missed him.

For most of the evening, his mother had ignored him. She was drunk-happy and lounging in the arms of a young fisherman. Lucian, or Lucan, or something. Big muscles and big, stupid, floppy hair. Ben had stayed out of her way, sitting on the sand beneath the jetty and drawing detailed pictures in the sand. He loved drawing. Drawing helped him forget about the unhappy things. He was thinking about going home to bed when a shadow fell over his sand-picture. When he looked up his heart skipped a beat.

It was Emma Foster. They were the same age and attended the island's tiny school together. Ben had been in love with her forever.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," he replied, trying to hide the trembling in his fingers.

"What you doing?" she asked. She was wearing a summer dress with yellow flowers and she looked so beautiful to him, more beautiful than ever before. Her dark eyes seemed huge in the moonlight.

"Drawing," he said.

"Wow," she said. "Cool. You always were good at drawing."

He laughed. It was his attempt at shrugging off one of the most amazing compliments he'd ever had in his life. This girl was like a drug to him. Whenever he was around her or near her or even in the same classroom, he felt sick with excitement and anxiety – and yet, after the feeling had passed, he wanted to experience it again, couldn't wait for the moment. He didn't realise it at the time but this girl gave his life meaning.

The sound of gentle waves slapping against the jetty filled the silence. Emma swayed to-and-fro, holding the sides of her dress as she did so. His heart soared.

"Who are you here with?" he asked, surprised at his newfound ability to initiate conversation.

"Mum and Dad," she said. "They're over there. Dad's drunk, and Mum's cross with him. Mum's always cross with him these days."

Ben laughed again, but he was fascinated by the dynamic of her family. Her mum angry with her dad. He had only experienced the opposite side of that equation.

"Emma!"

They both looked across the beach. Emma's mother stood on the path leading up to the village, her husband slumped against one of the beach huts.

"Emma, we're going, darling!"

Emma looked disappointed. She made a big sigh and waved at her mum to let her know she was coming.

"I guess I'll see you at school," she said, backing away across the sand.

Something snapped inside him in that moment.

No, he didn't want to just see her at school. He wanted more. He wanted to be around her all the time. Every second of every day . . .

But she was walking away across the beach, her bare feet – her beautiful dainty bare feet – kicking up little flurries of sand as she went.

He stood up, his heart pounding in his ears.

"Emma?"

She stopped.

"Emma would you . . . would you like to be my – my friend?"

Her forehead wrinkled. "Your friend? Benjamin, I'm already your friend, aren't I?"

"No," he said. "I mean, would you like to be my boyfriend?"

She laughed out loud, a chuckle that created a tingle deep down in his soul. "Your _boyfriend_?"

"Oh God, I meant girlfriend. I-I . . ."

She rushed forward, skipping over the sand towards him. Then she stopped, her face inches from his, and planted a kiss on his lips. "I know what you meant," she said. She smiled before dancing away.

He felt delirious, as though he might pass out at any second. In just a few short moments his entire world had changed. Everything seemed brighter, not so hopeless anymore. He watched her go, not caring that she didn't look back. Girls did that sort of thing, didn't they? But then his bright happy feeling turned sour when he met his mother's gaze.

She was still in the arms of the fisherman, but she was looking directly at Ben. Her expression had been strange, filled with malice. Her pupils seemed unnaturally large, like an animal. She made him feel uncomfortable and he looked away. Wanting to hold onto the glorious feeling Emma had left him with, he turned and headed home across the beach.

Despite his delirium, Ben fell into bed and was quickly asleep. He dreamed of Emma, her face, the taste of her lips. Then his mother's voice jolted him from his pleasant slumber.

"Benjamin?"

He sat up, rubbing at his eyes. "Mum?"

She stood at the end of his bed, a narrow sliver of darkness amongst the greater shadows.

"I'm sorry, Benjamin."

"Mum, what–"

Before he could finish, she grabbed his ankles, grabbed them roughly, her nails digging into his flesh. Then she was pulling him off the bed. He tried to grab for her but it was impossible.

"Mum! What are you doing?"

"Shut up, Benjamin!"

His upper body dropped off the end of the bed, his head striking the bare boards. He screamed, pleading for her to stop, but it was as if she was possessed. She refused to even look at him as she dragged him out of his room and across the lounge. He reached for something, anything, to stop his journey, catching a leg of the coffee table, but he only succeeded in pulling the entire thing with him. Out through the lounge door they went, into the kitchen, the coffee table jamming in the doorway. She continued to drag him across the kitchen tiles towards the pantry.

_Oh God, the pantry_.

Horrible intuition told him exactly what she was going to do, and his heart burned with fear. At the end of the pantry was the trapdoor which led down to the cellar.

The cellar . . . where his father had often locked her away for days on end. He had a sudden clear image of sitting at the breakfast table with his father, his mother's muffled cries rising up from the cellar below. 'Don't worry, son,' his father had said. 'Everyone has to learn a lesson now and again. Even your mother.'

She reached the cellar door and he saw then that it was already open. _Ready for him._

"Mum, please," he said, tears streaming down his face. "Please, please, I'm sorry. Whatever I've done, I'm sorry."

She looked down at him then, her usually kind eyes now cold and stretched wide open, piercing into his soul. " _Whatever I've done?"_ she said, mimicking him. "You don't even realise, do you? You're exactly like your father. A little man-whore, that's what you are. A dirty, filthy little man-whore!"

She moved closer to the edge of the cellar. Her fingernails had drawn blood where they gripped his ankles.

"Mum! Don't put me down there, Mum. I'm begging you!"

"Shut up!" she screamed at him, spittle flying from her lips. "Just shut up!"

With one huge effort, she threw him into the open cellar. The drop was perhaps ten feet. He hit the wooden stairs badly, feeling his collar bone crack and an explosion of pain in his right wrist. He landed face down in the earthy floor, mashing his lips. He rolled onto his back and let out a howl filled with pain and horror.

His mother stood in the square of light above him, one hand on the top of the trapdoor.

"I'm sorry, Benjamin," she said, her voice calm now. "One day you'll realise I did this because I love you. I won't let you turn out like him. I love you too much."

"Mum?" he sobbed. "Mum, I promise I won't . . ."

She lowered the trapdoor, her face devoid of emotion.

"MUM!" he screamed. "MUM! NOOOOOOO!"

## 50

"You did that to me," Garrett told his mother. "To your own son."

"Oh, Benjamin," Cynthia said, her eyes filled with moisture. "That night on the beach, I saw you with that girl, and . . . I saw so much of your father in you, and I was afraid. I didn't want you turning out like him."

"You didn't want me turning out like Dad?" he said, his hoarse voice rising to a frightening level. "You tortured me, Mother. You left me down in that hole for weeks, sitting in my own piss and shit, bleeding and passing out from the pain of my broken bones, and I cried out for you over and over but you never came. That night, Mother, what you did to me, _that_ set me down this road. I did those things to those girls because of that night. Because of you! You turned me into a monster, Mother. _You_."

"Oh, Benjamin, I was ill. Don't you realise that?"

Lightning flickered across his brow. "You knew what you were doing."

Cynthia Garrett's expression hardened, the light in her eyes dimming to a dark fury. "Blame? Is that what you came here for, Benjamin? To blame me for what you did?"

He said nothing.

"That makes me very sad, Benjamin. Very sad." She looked around for a moment and then produced a small red velvet box which had been resting by her pillow. "I kept this for you, Benjamin," she said. "For when you came to see me. It was going to be my final gift to you."

She opened it, and inside was a gleaming silver blade, about three inches long. "Your father's hunting knife," she said, lifting it out carefully with her arthritic fingers. "It's for you."

The hurt which had lined her features vanished in a heartbeat, and blind fury rushed to the surface. She held the knife high above her head and lashed out at her son.

"You are not my son!" she shrieked. "You are not my son! He is a good boy!"

The blade punctured the dead skin of his cheek and tore downward, ripping open a flap of white flesh which came away from the jaw. His teeth were exposed in the dim light. Ben Garrett barely flinched. He stared at his mother, then reached up and tore the hanging lump of flesh away from his face, letting it fall to the floor. His big hand closed around hers, crushing it until the knife dropped harmlessly to the floor. Her eyes filled with horror. In that moment she understood as much as she could understand anything that this was not really her son, that this was an aberration from beyond the grave.

"What are you going to do now? Kill me?" she shrieked, panic in her voice. "I'm going to die soon anyway. What use is that?"

"I know that," he said, fetid air escaping through his open cheek. "But I want you to die knowing one thing."

"What?" she said, her eyes frantically searching the eyes of the monster bearing down on her.

"I was coming here to make my peace with you, to ask your forgiveness for what I did, for the shame I brought on our family, and to forgive you, too. _But not now_. I want you to know, Mother, that I hate you. I am your son. I am your boy and I hate you with everything that is in me. Do you understand that? I hate you more than you could ever know."

Cynthia's face crumpled, her eyes growing wet with fresh tears.

He leaned close to her, forcing her back onto the bed. She must have sensed the stench of death now, because she grimaced and tried to turn her face away. As he leaned over her, a pinkish fluid leaked from the exposed brain and ran down his cheek. The fluid dropped onto her cheek, causing her to whimper. Eventually she found the courage to open her eyes and look into his. He placed his hand around her scrawny, wrinkled throat and began to squeeze. Cynthia Garrett's eyes bulged and she began to choke.

"Stop!" Rachel clambered to her feet. "Stop!" she said again, but Garrett seemed not to hear her.

"Goodbye, Mother," he said. "I hope you rot in hell."

Cynthia Garrett spluttered as the grip tightened, tightened. Rachel rushed over to try and pull him away, but his free hand came up and shoved her back across the room. She clattered into the dresser.

"Please, stop!" she screamed.

But it was too late.

He released his hand and a long, painful gargle escaped from the old woman's throat. Her hand dropped limply at the side of the bed. Her eyes remained open and staring.

Then silence. Rachel suddenly remembered the situation she was in. The way to the hall was free now; she should make a run for it, take her chances out in the storm. She didn't know what this undead monster was going to do next. He had just murdered his own mother, had possibly killed poor Cameron who still lay slumped in the hallway. Would he kill her, too?

She was just getting ready to run when the man's arm shot out, blocking the doorway. Rachel took a double step back, fear burning in her chest.

"You," he said, looking at her for the first time. "There is a man on this island, a man with one eye. Who is he?"

"What? I don't know—"

Garrett stood up suddenly and slammed his fist against the wall, spraying plaster against the side of her face. She raised her hands protectively.

"Don't lie to me. You would know a man with one eye."

Despite the panic choking her mind, she remembered the man who had blocked the doorway of the village hall at the meeting. The man who had stared at her with his one good eye. Yes, Ashworth's gardener and handyman.

Oh God, what was his name?

"Tell me!" Garrett growled.

"I-I think his name is Lawkins."

"Lawkins? Where is this Lawkins?"

"He works at the . . ." She trailed off, suddenly overwhelmed with guilt that she was betraying this man, even though she hardly knew him.

"Where?" Garrett demanded, pulling his fist back, ready to strike again. Rachel wasn't sure he would punch the wall this time.

"The Ashworth estate. He works at the Ashworth estate."

"Take me there."

"What?" she said. "But I can't. We can't. I have no car, and the storm is—"

He lunged forward, slamming his fist into the wall. She had only a split second to move her head before he struck. More plaster rained down on her. Slowly, she straightened up and faced him. His face was inches from her own and she gagged on the smell of decaying flesh.

"Take me there," he said. "Take me there now."

## 51

This is insane.

The words kept repeating in Sam's head as he ran through the lashing rain and wind. _Everything_ was insane. Not only was he out in the worst storm in Hebridean history, but he was chasing a ghost. A ghost which looked very much like his own daughter.

Had he imagined it? No.

Was this the effects of drink? He didn't think so.

Was this the kind of post-traumatic stress people talked about?

"Sam! Sam, wait!"

He paused on the brow of the hill and looked back. Father McNamara struggled up the embankment, his old legs slipping on the wet earth.

Damn it. He wished the old priest had stayed behind. It was bad enough that he was out here risking his life; he really didn't want to be responsible for causing McNamara's untimely demise.

McNamara reached him, breathless and bedraggled. "Son, you do realise this is completely suicidal?"

"Yes," Sam said.

"Good, as long as we're clear on that."

Sam scanned the shallow valley below them, hands raised against the insistent rain, but the entire area was covered in darkness.

"Did you see where she went?" McNamara asked.

Sam shook his head.

"Where was she headed?"

"Down towards the village, I think," Sam said.

Lightning flashed briefly, illuminating the residential area below: the small cluster of houses and shops nearby. There, on the edge of the boundary surrounding the first row of houses, was the tiny figure.

"There she is!" McNamara said.

"I know," Sam said, but something gripped his heart.

McNamara started down the hill, pausing when Sam remained behind.

"Sam?" he said. "Sam, what is it?"

The words came with difficulty. "My house," he said. "I think she's heading for my house."

## 52

Rachel felt as though the wet and the cold had somehow seeped through her skin and into her bones. Her sweatshirt and jeans were so heavy with rain that part of her wanted to take them off, to help her walk through this grim night.

The figure of Ben Garrett lumbered along behind her in silence, occasionally shoving her forcefully between the shoulder blades. She squinted through the slicing rain and saw the gates of the Ashworth House up ahead.

What was she going to do once they got to the house? What was the monster behind her going to do? Would he kill her once she'd served her purpose? And what did he want with Ashworth's handyman, anyway?

"What is your name?" Garrett said.

"What does it matter?" she shot back. "You're going to kill me anyway, aren't you?"

There was a long silence before Garrett answered. "I asked your name," he repeated.

"Rachel."

"Rachel," he repeated, as if tasting the name on his decaying tongue. "I don't know why I've been brought back. I don't understand this time I've been given any more than you do. All I know, all I feel, is that there are things which need to be put right."

"Like murdering your own mother?" she said before she could stop herself.

"Do you believe in hell, Rachel?

She didn't answer. At that moment, she felt like she was living it.

"I did," Garrett said. "I found God in prison, and I realised, because of the things I had done, that I already had one foot in hell. I decided to turn my life around, to try and find redemption here on earth, to try and save my eternal soul. But I had a long way to go. Father Joseph always said the road to redemption is a long and difficult one. Part of that path was coming back to the island to forgive my mother. But someone decided to take that chance from me."

"What are you talking about?"

"What happened on the ferry was no accident. You must know that. Someone set out to kill me . . . and they succeeded."

Rachel felt her head spinning. This was all too much . . .

"My chance at redemption is gone," Garrett said. "It ended when my life ended out there on the ocean. Someone on this island decided I was a monster and that I didn't deserve to live, that I didn't deserve redemption." He came to a stop on the road. Rachel glanced back and watched Garrett raise his face to the sky, letting the rain splash over his face and into his mouth. Rachel could see the rainwater running from the gaping hole in his cheek. "They wanted a monster," he said after a while. "Then so be it."

"It might not be too late for you," Rachel said. "Maybe that's why . . . why you've come back."

He shook his head.

"How can you be so certain—"

"Shut up now," he said. "Keep walking. I don't know how long I've got."

## 53

A bark of thunder rolled across the sky, filling Kelly with a deep chill. The storm was the worst storm she had ever experienced. Sitting in her Jeep she had begun to doubt the efficacy of her plan to wait for Sam, and more than once she had contemplated decamping to her lodgings for the night and waiting until the morning, but it was her belief in destiny that kept her here still. The lightning seemed to have eased off to intermittent flashes. But the skies were still choked with clouds, mostly gathered around the cemetery on the hill.

There was a brief flicker of lightning, silent, but pregnant with power, which lit up the Thorne house below. In that brief moment of illumination she swore she saw a figure in the garden at the rear. It was a small figure, but then she was quite a distance away. She squinted into the darkness, but there was nothing she could make out. The after image floated in her mind's eye: a small, frail figure. A child? She couldn't say. Then there was another flicker of light – but this time it was not from the sky. The rear porch light had come on, creating a small pool of orange light in the vale of darkness. A shadow extended from the rear of the house, a long thin shadow of a person moving. Then she heard a door slam, a small noise in the night.

Sam was home, she thought. The time has come.

She released the handbrake and let the car coast down the slope towards the Thorne homestead. She pulled the car into the side of the house and then got out. She was protected from the rain in the lee of the house and was able to walk around to the back without getting drenched. The security light was still on. The back door was ajar, banging against the doorjamb with the occasional gust of wind. She stopped, peering through the back window into the dark interior of the house. A shape moved stealthily across the living room, a silhouette that she could not make out until the figure crossed the path of the security light outside – and in that moment Kelly Burnett almost screamed because for a brief flicker of time she thought she saw the face of a little girl, a face so deathly pale as to be that of a ghost. But when she blinked and looked back she saw nothing but shapes and shadows.

Still, someone was inside, and she had to find out exactly who.

She put her hand on the creaking back door and let herself inside.

## 54

The gates of Ashworth House loomed out of the rainy dark, filling Rachel with a heightened sense of dread. Beyond the gates she could see squares of light in the upper floors of the mansion gleaming in the darkness. The Ashworths were at home on this terrible night, and God knew who else.

This was the end of the line.

She had known all along that she could have made a run for it. The shambling hulk at her shoulder was not quick or nimble enough to catch a young fit woman such as herself. She could have taken off into the boggy stretches of marshland either side of the road in a vain attempt at escape, but deep down she knew that this monster of vengeance was not going to be stopped by losing his guide. He would continue on towards his goal, would probably spend the rest of the night searching the island if he had to, and would eventually come to this place. No, she told herself, she had stayed with him to give herself time to think about what she could do to stop him. But now here they were, on the doorstep of the Ashworth's home, and her astute brain had failed to come up with a single plan.

The truth was she didn't much care for the Ashworths. Sam was friendly with Richard, but on the few occasions that she had met them, Rachel felt no affinity with Marine, and found Richard to be a pompous boor. But still, she wished them no ill. They had never been anything but friendly since the Thorne family arrived on the island, and they certainly hadn't done anything to hurt them.

"Stop."

Garrett's voice cut through the air like a hammer blow. She halted obediently, her feet coming to rest in an ankle-deep puddle. She didn't care. She was so wet and cold she could hardly feel her extremities any more.

Now was her moment. She either chose to run or—

Before she could even debate her choices, the huge, icy hand of Ben Garrett gripped the back of her neck. He turned her around slowly, so sure of his grip on her, taking his time. His eyes, deep and soulless, peered into hers for a long time. Then he looked over the top of her head to the house beyond the gates.

"You know them?" he asked.

She hesitated. If she told the truth and said yes, would that mean she was on their 'side'? Would that immediately mark her as an enemy and incur his wrath and summary execution? If she said no, would that mean she was no more use to him, a response that would also carry a death sentence?

Her hesitation angered him and he shook her, only gently, but enough to almost choke the air from her lungs. "Answer me!"

"N-no," she said, the answer forced out of her for good or ill. He stared at her again, his dead, expressionless eyes poring over her face. She waited for the snap of her neck vertebrae. It would be quick and hopefully painless.

"Tell me, Rachel, why I shouldn't kill you right now?"

He was toying with her, her life so unimportant to him. After all, he now existed in a strange state of limbo, somewhere between life and death, where death was not the permanent force humanity had always believed it to be. What was life to him now? His mere appearance here on this dirt track outside the Ashworth estate, walking and talking, was an abomination, and turned the concept of life and death on its head.

His fingers tightened, pressing into the soft flesh around her windpipe. She began to splutter, clutching at his fingers.

"Tell me why?" he whispered.

"Because," she began, but her words were choked off. Still enjoying the game, Garrett relaxed his grip only a fraction. "Because . . . my daughter died on that ferry. Same as you."

Thunder boomed directly above them, its ferocity sending a wave of deepest chill across her shoulders. When she managed to meet Garrett's eyes she saw something there in the black pits, something that looked like shock, maybe even pity. His hand, which she had been certain was about to crush her windpipe, suddenly flexed open and she dropped to the floor. She landed on her ass in the wet earth, the puddles of rain quickly soaking through her jeans and into every corner of her lower body. But she only sat there, rubbing her throat and looking up in wonder and fear.

He stared back at her, his face a shadow in the glare of moonlight.

"Go," he said.

"What?"

"Go. Leave this place."

He stalked past her over to the gate, and she watched him all the time. His hands grabbed both sides of the electronic calling box and wrenched it from the brick pillar. Sparks glistened in the dark, lighting up the nightmare figure. He dropped the box in the dirt then turned his attention to the gates themselves.

A sudden awful realisation began to dawn on her as she watched him tearing and hammering at the wooden gates. In her mind's eye she saw two coffins. Two victims. Garrett and her own sweet Becky. If Garrett was here, resurrected by some supernatural force, did that mean . . .?

Garrett tore the last of the left hand gate into strips of kindling and turned, rage flashing in his bone-white face. "Get out of here, woman! Find your daughter. I don't know how long you have."

Rachel felt the world around her swimming like a whirlpool of dark images. Her head felt light, empty of any substance. What this man had just said was insane. Wasn't it?

"Yes. Your daughter's alive," he said, turning and disappearing through the shattered remnants of the gate and into the shadows beyond.

Slowly, shaking uncontrollably, Rachel got to her feet. In that moment she didn't care about Lawkins or Richard and Marine Ashworth. She didn't care if they met their deaths at this murderer's hands.

If what Garrett had said was true—and there was no reason to doubt it given the circumstances—she had no choice about what to do next.

Turn and run in the direction of home . . .

But she hesitated. She watched the giant for a moment, rain running down her face. "What are you going to do?" she shouted.

Garrett stopped and looked at her. His eyes were pinpricks of light. "Find Lawkins," he said. "Put things right."

She knew what he meant; saw the boundless malevolence in his dark eyes. She looked up at the dark house. Ashworth always held parties on weekends. She'd turned down numerous invites in the past. She could see three cars parked in front of the house. Almost everyone from the island council would be in there. If Garrett made his way inside . . . it would be a massacre.

She looked back in the direction of home . . .

Becky . . .

But Becky was dead.

Even if she had been resurrected like Garrett, it didn't change the fact that she was dead. The people up there were alive. But not for long, if Garrett carried out his mission.

Slowly, in a trance, she reached down and picked up one of the broken wooden posts. She rushed up behind Garrett and struck him across the shoulders with all her might. To her surprise, the giant went down on all fours, shaking his head and cursing under his breath.

Seizing the moment, she bounded over him, slipped through a gap in the fence and rushed towards the big house.

## 55

Kelly stood in the hallway of the Thorne house with her foot on the bottom step for several minutes, staring up at the rectangle of light which splashed across the landing wall. A strange snuffling sound occasionally drifted down to her, and a couple of times she thought she heard a sob. Every fibre of her being told her that she should leave right now. She was actually trespassing now, and if Sam came back now he would not be pleased to find her in his house uninvited. But her curiosity was too great. Who was it up there? It certainly wasn't Sam or his wife. If it was an opportunistic burglar, then he was very quiet in his work and was certainly taking his time about it.

She decided to try a compromise. She would call out.

"Hello?" she said. She meant to have been louder, but it came out like a whimper. Still, she waited for a response.

Nothing.

"Hello?" she called out.

The rustling noise stopped abruptly. There was a period of absolute silence in the house. Kelly felt her heart thudding in her throat. Then:

"Mummy?"

A cold wave washed over Kelly, crawling up her back and over her scalp. She wasn't entirely sure that she had heard correctly, but a voice had definitely spoken, a splintered, croaking voice. And the word had sounded very much like Mummy.

A child? It had to be a child, but that made no sense. Whose child?

She waited for more but nothing happened. The silence began to fill her ears like the hiss at the end of old cassette tapes. Slowly, she climbed the stairs, her eyes fixed on the light spilling from the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. On the landing she edged closer to the door like a stealthy assassin, holding her breath, mentally clearing her mind of all preconceived notions of who or what lay on the other side of the door.

Nothing could have prepared her for what she found inside.

## 56

The girl sitting on the bed was Becky Thorne. Kelly knew it was her without a shadow of doubt, even though the only time she had seen her she had been sitting on the other side of a crowded hotel lobby, her face turned away from her for most of the time. But the likeness was undeniable, and she had to force herself to admit it deep down in that personal place, even though her rational mind was screaming inside her head like a warning siren: IF YOU ACCEPT THIS AS TRUE YOU ARE GOING INSANE!

And yet, there she was, sitting on the bed which she had once called her own, an ordinary bed with a _Bratz_ bedspread, pop band posters lining the walls and ceiling above it, and on the dresser to the left a selection of soft toys. Only there was a gap in the arrangement, a single toy missing from the carefully placed line up. There, in her hand, the girl was holding a battered brown moose.

It was a long time before the girl raised her eyes to meet Kelly's. They were still a bright blue, but deep black circles underlined them. Her skin was as white as a china doll's. There was a moment of recognition. The girl's brow knitted in confusion and sadness.

"I remember you," she said, her voice not sharp and light as it had once been, but dull and rough-edged. "The lady in the hotel."

Kelly didn't know what to say or even how to reply. The fact of this strange apparition talking to her was paralysing in every sense. She wanted to recoil, to take a step back or run from the room, but she couldn't. She felt rooted to the spot in the doorway. Powerless.

"Are you with my daddy now?" the girl asked.

"What?" Kelly said, barely a whisper, an exhalation of breath. Answering the girl's question sounded even more absurd.

"You must be," the girl said, her voice tinged with anger. She looked down at the moose doll, stroking its soft fuzzy yellow antlers. "You're in my house. And mummy's not here."

She glanced around the room, as if seeing through the lilac-painted walls to the rest of the house.

"I only wanted to see mummy," she said dreamily. "I was scared when I woke up in the doctor's. I can't remember how I got there. I was so frightened. The noises in the sky. The flashing lights. So frightened. That man was there. The big man. I wanted him to stay but he didn't. He walked away, and I was alone. I just wanted Mummy." She hugged the tiny doll to her chest, brushing her cheek against its soft antlers. "Mummy would tell me what's happening. Mummy would make it all right."

The girl's words, so nakedly open, brought tears into Kelly Burnett's eyes. She crouched down to the girl's eye-line, her knees popping noisily in the momentary still. There was a lull in the storm.

"Becky?" Kelly said, using her most gentle voice. "Do you remember what happened to you?"

Becky looked at her, eyes blank, marked only with a taint of bitterness. "I was on the ferry. With Daddy." Her gaze drifted to the left, eyes narrowing in remembrance. "I fell into the water. Daddy let me drown. He didn't save me. He let me drown."

Kelly was momentarily stumped by this accusation. No father would surely allow their child to die.

"Honey," she said softly, "your daddy –"

She was interrupted by the sudden banging from downstairs. At first she thought it was the storm starting up again, but when she turned her head to listen she heard muffled voices, men's voices, one of them unmistakable to her, and then heavy feet on the stairs.

Kelly's heart rate jumped into high gear. She stood up, drew in a deep breath, then faced the open door, preparing herself for the imminent meeting with the man she adored more than any other in the world. The man she was destined to be with.

## 57

Sam stopped on the landing directly outside his daughter's bedroom. The landing light was blinding to him after so long in the dark, and he had to raise a hand to protect his eyes. He squinted, trying to make out the figure standing in the corner of Becky's room. His first thought was that it was Rachel, Rachel come back to make things right again, to build the bridges that he had single-handedly brought to ruin.

But it wasn't her.

It was Kelly Burnett. His heart plunged in his chest. Her hair was wet and matted from the rain, her plain white dress clinging to the contours of her stomach, but she still looked stunning. People like her always did, Sam thought dolefully.

"You," he said. "What are you doing in my house?"

Kelly could only stare back at him, an expression of fear and anxiety on her face. Then she reached out, placing her hand on the door which was half open and obscuring the part of the room with the bed in it, and she gave just a gentle shove, enough to send it swinging slowly and soundlessly to its full extent. Sam watched it glide, his eyes drawn to the vision sitting on his daughter's bed.

The anger and malice in his face vanished in an instant, and his eyes became wide and filled with moisture.

"Becky?" he said.

He stumbled forward, legs suddenly feeling fat and heavy, his breath running short in his chest. He knew that she was not the true Becky, the Becky who had been with him on the ferry that day. He didn't understand what was happening but he didn't care either. In that moment, he forgot the grief that had consumed him since the ferry tragedy. He wanted to throw his arms around her and hold her tight for as long as he could. He dropped down on one knee in front of her and lifted his arms for the embrace. That was when she looked up, eyes filled with hurt and anger and she shuffled down the bed, hugging the doll close to her in a show of resentment.

"You let me die, Daddy," she said. "I remember. You let me die."

## 58

Rachel reached the large oak door of the mansion and grappled with the handle. It turned, the big door swinging open. She glanced behind her and saw Garrett's bulky form at the gate, climbing to his feet. She slipped inside and slammed the door. She found bolts at the top and bottom of the door and slammed them both home. Momentarily safe, she backed away into the large entrance hall. She fumbled in her soaking wet pocket and found her mobile phone. She'd been too terrified to use it in front of Garrett. Muddy water dripped from the Motorola as she held it up. She shook it out and wiped away as much as she could before pressing the on switch and waiting for the display to light up. The green light came on.

"Yes," she said to herself. "Come on."

Then she saw the words NO SIGNAL flashing in the upper left-hand corner.

"No, no, no!" she screamed.

Noises outside. Footsteps in wet earth.

She sucked in her breath and looked at the glass panels in the door. A tall shadow passed across them. The shadow paused in front of the door. Rachel moved further back in the darkness until she bumped into the bottom rail of the staircase.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Rachel let out an involuntary scream. The door shook in its frame. Lightning flashed outside, sending cruel shadows through the tiny glass portals.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The door shook violently but miraculously held against the attack. Garrett's curses filled the night, the voice of an angry beast.

After a few seconds, his shadow moved away from the door.

Rachel allowed herself a moment of relief. She looked at her phone again. Two bars on the signal!

Would that be enough? Enough to make one phone call?

## 59

"Why didn't you try to save me, Daddy? Why did you let me die?"

It was almost too much to bear. Sam's mind seemed to waver, teetering on the edge of a knife blade, one tiny push being all it needed to send it crashing down one side or the other – or be sliced straight down the middle.

"Becky, no," he started to say, but she buried her face in the crook of her arm, nuzzling close to the moose doll. "Becky, that's not true at all. I tried to help you, sweetheart, I really did. But I can't swim. I –"

"Was it because of her?" Becky's eyes flicked over to Kelly standing out in the hallway. "Did you want me gone so you could be with her, Daddy?"

Sam's mouth fell open. He shook his head, trying to find the right words. "Becky, no. Never. Why would you think that?"

"I – I thought you didn't want me," she said.

"Why would I not want you, baby?"

"You stopped loving Mummy. I thought you'd stopped loving me."

"Sweetheart, that's not true," he said, and inside his heart was breaking.

"But you didn't save me when I fell into the water. You were angry with me. I thought you didn't love me anymore."

He shook his head, tears filling his eyes. "No, sweetheart," he whispered. "I wasn't angry with you at all. I told you I couldn't sw—"

The phone downstairs screamed into life, filling the house with its power. Sam didn't move. He was still lost in the moment, a prisoner of his daughter's shocking resentment. Resentment she had carried beyond death into this abomination of new life.

The phone rang twice, three times, four. McNamara placed his hand on his shoulder and then ran down the hall, snatching up the extension in Sam's bedroom.

"Yes?" Sam heard him say. "Jesus, Rachel, where—"

The sound of his wife's name shook Sam from his reverie. The girl on the bed refused to look at him, refused to acknowledge his presence. His heart felt like a tattered ball of flesh in his chest.

"Sam?"

McNamara calling him from far away.

"Sam, it's Rachel."

Rising slowly on unsteady feet, Sam stood over the sad figure for a moment then reluctantly left the room. He was barely aware of McNamara's presence as he snatched the receiver from him.

"Rachel?" he said.

"Oh, Sam, something . . . Something's happening, something I can't explain."

"Where are you?"

"Ashworth's place. I don't know how long I'm going to have signal, so listen. I need you to get over here. Remember the parties Ashworth always invited us to? Everyone's here, Sam and . . ." She trailed off, rearranging her words in her head for a moment. "I think they're in danger."

"Danger? What danger?"

"You wouldn't believe me, Sam."

"Really," he said, looking down the hall into his daughter's bedroom. "Try me."

"I . . .this is going to sound crazy, Sam, but . . . it's Ben Garrett." She paused. "He's walking around, talking just like you and me. Don't ask me to explain it. Just . . . I need your help, Sam. You have to get here. I don't care how, just get here."

"I will," he said. "I'll be there, I promise. But, Rachel, there's someone here, too."

"What, Sam? I can't hear you. What did you—"

The line went dead. Her mobile had used up the last of its battery power. Sam slowly hung the receiver back in its cradle.

That was when he heard the sound of a car engine turning over outside.

## 60

"All right everyone," Ashworth said. "Drink up. Let's not let this miserable storm ruin the evening!"

"Now we wouldn't want that now, would we?"

The chatter of the guests dwindled into silence. Everyone turned towards the owner of the voice. Lawkins stood in the doorway, dripping wet, with an overnight bag over one shoulder and a stony expression on his face. The flesh around his missing eye looked red and swollen.

Ashworth stepped forward. "What are you doing here?" he said in angry whisper. "You should be a long way from here by now."

He grabbed Lawkins by the elbow and led him out of the room onto the landing, pulling the door closed behind him.

Lawkins shrugged off Ashworth's grip, straightened his rain-soaked coat. "Actually, Ashworth, I was a long way from here," he said. "Got as far as Aberdeen before I realised you'd screwed me."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"The money, Ashworth. You said it would be in my account. But it's empty. Can't get very far on empty, Ashworth."

Ashworth turned away and paced several steps before coming back at Lawkins with an angry finger wagging. "You messed it up, Lawkins. You messed it up big time!"

"I said I'd kill Garrett. Garrett's dead."

"And so is a little girl!"

Lawkins stiffened. His good eye darted back and forth for a few moments. "I regret that. Of course, I regret that. The bomb wasn't supposed to go off until the prison van hit the island."

"You're blaming the bomb?" Ashworth said. "Seriously?"

"All right. So I made a mistake. I still did what you all wanted. I still carried out the task you and the others couldn't. I deserve my money."

"Deserve?" Ashworth said. He flexed his hands several times, wanting to punch his groundkeeper in his one good eye, punch him hard. He sighed heavily, smoothing the hair at each side of his head. "After what you did, I don't think you deserve a penny."

Lawkins surged forward, nostrils flaring. "I want my damn money, Ashworth. I need it! Now you better give it to me or I won't be the one taking the wrap for this. I'll tell everyone who was behind it."

Ashworth raised his hand, patting Lawkins on the chest. "All right. Calm down. Just calm yourself." He took a deep breath, making a quick mental assessment. "I have about ten grand in cash in the safe. I can give you that now."

"Good. And the rest?"

"I'll have to wire it to your bank, but not now. It's too soon. It won't be long before the police start asking questions. When the heat dies down, you'll get your money."

"How do I know you'll honour that?"

"All I can give you is my word."

"Your word, huh?" Lawkins sniffed. "Well, your word better be good, because if it ain't, I'll be coming back. Do you hear?"

Ashworth nodded. "Wait here. I'll get your money."

They stepped past each other. Before Ashworth opened the door, Lawkins said, "Who was she?"

Ashworth looked back.

"Who was the girl?"

"Sam Thorne's daughter."

"The writer?"

"Yes, the writer."

"That's too bad."

Ashworth sniffed and slipped back into the room.

## 61

By the time he reached the ground floor, Lawkins had finished counting the money. Ten grand exactly. He knew in his heart that it was very likely all the money he would ever see – and part of him felt that was more than he was due. He'd shown a hard face to Ashworth over it, but it pained him that an innocent child got caught up in the blast. After all, the entire reason behind the plot had been to avenge the girls who had suffered at Garrett's hand, not to create another young victim.

He opened the side door and a sudden flash of lightning made him jump and curse out loud.

Lawkins had experienced bad storms before, but nothing like this. As a young fisherman he'd been exposed to some of the worst weather conditions known to man, but this . . . this was another level entirely. It was almost unnatural. For such a sudden build-up of pressure to appear without showing up on any weather forecast was unheard of, and the lightning bursts at the beginning had seemed to be coming down with unrelenting fury. He'd been in a number of tight spots in his life and survived, but right now he was as scared as he'd ever been. He couldn't quite put his finger on why.

He glanced round the Martello grounds, grounds he had kept in good order for almost a decade, and sighed. He'd enjoyed his time working here, and the Ashworths had been pretty good to him. A shame it had to end this way. He knew the investigation into the ferry disaster was bound to eventually point in his direction, but he planned to be very far away from Scalasay when it did. He just hoped this delay wouldn't be his undoing.

He pulled up the hood on his oilskin coat. It was a short run across the lawn to the place where he'd parked his car. He made sure he had the key ready and then charged out into the night, pulling the door closed behind him. Thunder rumbled overhead as he trotted across the grass. Large puddles dotted the lawn so that his boots sent up splashes of rain as he went.

The car was only metres away when something huge and powerful stepped into his path, a figure so large that for a moment he thought he was being attacked by a bear.

Huge hands grabbed him by the neck and knocked him to ground. Muddy water splashed over his face, blinding him for a moment and filling his open mouth. He spluttered and coughed, trying desperately to see who had attacked him. Then the same rough hands grabbed the hood of his coat and began dragging him back across the rain-drenched lawn, back towards the house.

"What the hell are you doing?" he shouted. "Let go of me!"

The man-mountain said nothing, continuing to drag him through the rain and the mud. Finally, they were at the basement door. The giant kicked it open and threw Lawkins through the opening. He tumbled down the steps, jarring his lower back and twisting his arm almost to breaking point. He landed on the basement floor and let out a cry of pain.

Lawkins looked up at his attacker. The strip light above his head made it difficult to see the man's features. All he could see was that the man was huge.

"Please, I don't know what you want, but—"

The giant reached down, his huge hand closing around his right arm, his other arm gripping him around the neck. Lawkins screamed, expecting those monstrous hands to pull in two different directions, snapping his neck like a chicken bone, but instead his attacker spun him around in the air. The lantern cast dense shadows over the giant figure, obscuring his features. He knew that the man was bigger than the average, and there was a power in the limbs that filled Lawkins with acute fear.

Before he could even form a question, the giant slammed him against the open diesel tank, sending the cool liquid spilling over the rim and down the back of his neck.

"P-Please," Lawkins tried to say through the fear. "Don't hurt me."

The attacker pushed his face close, so close that Lawkins could smell his breath, and it was the worst smell he had ever experienced. He started to retch. He wanted to block it out, but the attacker had complete control of his hands. He knew the smell all too well. The smell of death.

"Do you know who I am?" the man said.

Lawkins froze, mouth hanging open. He studied the dark face in front of him and shook his head. "No, no, it can't be you."

"Yes, that's right, Lawkins. I'm the man you tried to kill."

Lawkins stopped trying to breathe. The words stopped him from struggling. "I – I don't know what you mean –"

"Don't waste my time," the big man shouted. "I saw you on the ferry just before the explosion. I know it was you who placed the bomb under the prison van. Tell me the truth!"

The hands shook him violently and Lawkins screamed again, a strangled cry for mercy.

"Yes, yes," he said. "I did it. And I'm glad I did it."

"What?" Garrett said, cocking his head to one side. "I don't even know you . . ."

"Oh, really?" Lawkins said, with a snarl. "You don't remember taking out my eye with your knife? I suppose you don't remember slitting Freya's throat, either, and throwing her off Pierre point?" Lawkins managed to gather enough saliva in his mouth and spat into Garrett's face.

The big man didn't flinch, but his eyes drifted away for a few moments. "You," he said eventually. "You were with the girl that night. You tried to stop me."

"Oh, all coming back to you now, is it?"

Garrett's reverie ended abruptly, and the malevolence returned to his eyes. He tightened his grip on Lawkins throat.

"You planted the bomb on the ferry. Were you working alone? Was it just you?"

"What does it matter?" Lawkins said.

"That all depends on how you want to die, Lawkins. Was it just you?"

Lawkins paused. Where was the sense in remaining loyal to people who, let's face it, hadn't paid him that much? Not for the damage he had caused, for the chaos he had wreaked.

"If I tell you," Lawkins said in a trembling monotone, "will you let me go?"

The man holding him was silent for a moment, then, in a blur, he lifted Lawkins high in the air and brought him down with great force, slamming his head into the diesel. The liquid streamed up his nose and down his throat before he had a chance to catch his breath. The powerful hands held him under for what seemed like an eternity, until he thought he was going to pass out and drown in a four foot tank of diesel.

Just when he thought it was over, the big man pulled him free, allowing a few precious seconds in which to gulp air. Garrett waited patiently until his coughs and cries had slowed to a stop.

"Was it just you?" he demanded.

"No," Lawkins said, spitting diesel. "No, I did it for everyone."

"Everyone? What does that mean . . . everyone?"

## 62

"Did you hear that? I'm sure I heard someone screaming."

It was Ted Sheldon who spoke, standing alone at the window, nervously tapping out a rhythm on the window frame with his unlit pipe. The rest of the party sat in a huddle around a cluster of candles on the coffee table: Richard and Marine, Ted's wife, Carol Sheldon, and Denise and Reggie Jones. No one said anything in reply. They continued to sip their drinks in quiet anxiety.

"Nonsense," Ashworth said. "It must be the storm."

Ted turned and faced the group. "Did anyone else hear that scream?"

Carol put a trembling hand in the air. "I think I did, dear."

"Me, too," Reggie said.

"Something's seriously wrong, Richard," Ted said.

The two men stared at each other.

"Ted," Ashworth said in a low, commanding tone. "You're making everyone nervous. This is supposed to be a pleasant get-together."

"I'm going down there," Ted announced, sticking out his considerable jaw.

Immediately, his wife began to protest, quickly followed by everyone else.

Ashworth shot to his feet, palms facing out in a gesture of placation.

"Please, everyone. Calm down. Ted, no one needs to go downstairs. Please, it's just a wild, stormy night and everyone's nerves are frayed."

In the silence which followed, everyone heard the distinct cries of a man drifting up from somewhere far below.

"That settles it!" Ted said. "Something is going on down there. Someone needs to go and check it out. And if you won't, I will."

"No!" Ashworth barked.

The room fell into silence, and everyone turned to the new arrival standing in the doorway.

"Mummy," Heidi said, clutching the sides of her nightshirt. "I can't get to sleep. I'm scared."

Marine rushed over and crouched down, putting a comforting arm around her daughter's shoulder.

"What are you scared of, honey?"

"The storm. The thunder sounds like someone banging on the front door, someone trying to get in."

"Don't be silly, love. You're perfectly safe here." She stood up and took her daughter's hand. "Come on, I'll take you back to bed."

"I want Daddy to come, too."

Marine looked at Ashworth. He took a breath, masking his frustration for his daughter's sake.

"All right, all right," he said, marching to the door which led onto the east wing. "I'm coming." He pulled the door open and paused, his gaze fixed on Ted. "Do not go anywhere until I get back."

Then he was gone.

## 63

"It was the island council," Lawkins stammered. "All of them. When you were on your way to the island, they had a meeting with the islanders to decide how to deal with your return. Nothing was decided. Then, afterwards, Ashworth got together with the others on the council and I overheard them plotting, planning to . . ." Lawkins gulped. "You know . . ."

"Kill me." He slammed Lawkins hard against the diesel tank again, knocking the wind from his lungs. "Go on."

Lawkins regained his breath. "Yeah, well, as it turned out, none of them had the guts to carry it through. They were all too afraid to risk their own necks. Even Ted Sheldon was too chicken-shit and he lost his daughter."

"Freya," Garrett said. "The girl I killed."

"Yeah," Lawkins said bitterly. "The girl you murdered. _My_ girl."

" _Your_ girl?" Garrett said. "You were old enough to be her father, Lawkins."

"So? I loved that girl, and she was the only girl who ever loved me, but I guess you wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Garrett?"

The big man tilted his head, but said nothing in response.

"I would have done anything for her," Lawkins said. "Anything. When I heard Ashworth and Sheldon and Jones plotting, I . . . stepped in and offered my services. I told them I'd do it, that I'd get rid of you, for a price."

"A price?" Garrett said. "How much?"

"Enough to start a new life somewhere. And I gave them my word that if the heat ever came our way I would take the blame for it. After all, I had the motive, didn't I?"

"Where are they?"

"What?" Lawkins looked up. "They're all upstairs right now. Having a party."

"Really?" Garrett said, and Lawkins had never heard the word said with such malevolence, such naked rage.

"Please," Lawkins began, realising suddenly that he had just given up the only information that he could have used as a bargaining chip to save his own skin. "Please let me go. We're even. Aren't we?"

The man lowered his eyes to meet Lawkins own, and without a word he released his grip, letting him drop to the floor of the basement. Lawkins scrabbled around in the dirt, momentarily relieved but watching the dark figure closely to see what he was going to do next.

He ambled to the open door of the basement, stooping low to avoid colliding with the top of the door.

"Where are you going?" Lawkins asked.

The big man looked back menacingly, his eyes drawn to the fire axe secured to the wall. He grabbed it and yanked it free of its moorings. "To kill them all." He paused, looked down at the lantern resting on the nearby shelf.

"How much did they pay you?" he asked.

Lawkins blinked rapidly, feeling strangely embarrassed by the question. But that, he told himself, was absurd. The man he had been paid to kill—the man he had killed—was asking the question.

"Fifty thousand," Lawkins answered finally. "Sorry."

Garrett stared at him for a long moment. "It wasn't enough."

With one swing of the axe he swatted the lantern from its resting place, sending it crashing onto the floor at Lawkins' feet. As the glass shattered and the gas inside ignited, Lawkins let out a yelp that sounded alien to him, as though it came from somewhere outside his body. He watched as his legs caught fire and then very quickly the flames engulfed the rest of his body. The rubber oilskins began to melt against the skin of his arms and legs and then he was in too much pain to scream.

As the fire spread over the soaking floor and filled his nostrils, his lungs, his vision, the last thing Lawkins saw was the dark figure in the doorway, a phoenix that had risen from the grave to wreak its terrible vengeance.

His final thought was of the love of his life, beautiful Freya; and he realised with terrible irony that his attempts at avenging her death had failed in the most bizarre manner imaginable.

I'm sorry, my angel. I'm so sorry.

## 64

The situation was hopeless, Kelly admitted as she sat behind the wheel of her Jeep. As hopeless as it had ever seemed. And yet, she didn't feel that it was 'over' in the harshest sense of the word. Fate had guided her here, to this moment, to this place and time. She still fully believed that her destiny was unfolding. Her heart belonged to Sam Thorne. She saw the anger, the hatred in his eyes when he confronted her up there, and whilst seeing such naked malice was painful to her, it was also a rite of passage, a stage she knew she had to get through to finally come out on the other side. And there on that plain, a plain filled with hope and love and forgiveness, she would make him her own.

She put the key in the ignition and turned it, the Jeep firing up first time. She would return to her bed and breakfast room at the Tavern and sleep on it, let this storm pass, both the real one and the metaphorical one.

As she fastened her seatbelt, she took one last look up at the Thorne house, allowing herself a rueful smile before releasing the handbrake and pulling onto the dirt road that led into town. She had barely driven more than a few feet before a dark shape leapt into her path. She stabbed the brake with her foot, jolting the Jeep to a stop. The figure in front of her slammed his hands on her bonnet. The headlights lit his face from beneath, accentuating the lines and wrinkles of his advanced age: it was Sam's friend, the priest.

She looked to her right, in the direction of the front door of the house, and there was Sam, the little girl cradled in his arms, a desperate, pleading look in his eyes. She pressed the button that lowered the electronic windows, blinking as rain splashed her in the face. She didn't care. Her heart was beating fast. The voice of destiny that had reassured her only moments earlier was whispering in her ear. She had been right to believe the situation wasn't totally hopeless. She just hadn't bargained on a second opportunity coming along so soon.

Sam bent down to speak to her through the window. He spoke through tightened lips, his eyes dimmed from humility. "Kelly, we need your help," he said. "We have to get to the other side of the island, and fast."

She tapped her finger on the steering wheel, looking out into the stormy night. "Tell me you're sorry for chucking a young woman out into the stormy night, and I'll take you anywhere you want to go."

Sam stared at her, a hangdog expression on his face. He sighed heavily, shifting the weight of the girl in his arms. "Kelly, please, this is an emergency."

"Apology," Kelly sang brightly.

Sam shook his head in disbelief, but she almost thought she caught the faintest flicker of a smile on his lips.

"Kelly, I'm sorry," he finally managed.

"Get in," she said.

## 65

The sound of breaking glass was distant, muted by the many floors of Ashworth House. But everyone in the upper room heard it. Ted Sheldon stood up.

"That's it, I'm going down there."

The group of friends erupted in disapproval. His wife Carol was the loudest among them.

"No, Ted, it could be anyone!"

He prised her fingers from his arm. "I don't care. I'm not sitting here waiting for whoever it is to come and find us." He stopped by the open fireplace and grabbed a good-sized poker, hefting its weight in his hands.

He opened the west door, checked that it had a key in the lock. Then he turned to the group huddled behind him. "Lock this door, and keep it locked. If I'm not back in ten minutes, call the police."

Carol was sobbing, tears creating blotches of mascara on her pasty white cheeks. "Ted, please, Richard said not to go."

"Well he's not here right now, and he's not man enough to check it out himself. Leave it to me, everyone."

He slipped out the door, slamming it closed behind him. He paused on the far side of the door, waiting to hear the turning of the key.

"Lock it," he urged.

Reggie stepped up and twisted the large brass key in the lock. Satisfied, Ted started down the echoing hall, and then to the spiral staircase.

As he descended he tried to imagine who might want to break into Ashworth House on this stormy night. Scalasay was a quiet island, like many of the Hebridean islands. The crime rate was virtually non-existent. It was a simple fact of island life that the people who chose to live on them did so out of a desire for a peaceful, honest existence. Criminal elements were almost always drawn to cities and towns where the pickings were rich and varied, where the chances of being caught were much less than it would be in a smaller, close-knit community. Criminals of all types—murderers, thieves, rapists—used the shadows as a tool in their dark deeds. Yes, there were people in cities, more chances of witnesses, but there were also many more dark alleyways and unwatched places.

So who could be breaking into the mansion on this night?

He reached the bottom swoop of the staircase and paused, looking around the dark, silent lobby. A patch of moonlight shone through the rectangular window above the front door. By its eerie silver light he could see chunks of broken glass scattered across the oak-panelled floor of the lobby. The door suddenly creaked inward a few inches, a whining windy noise blowing through it for a few moments, before it swung shut again, banging noisily against the frame.

Ted's heart-rate suddenly increased. He gripped the poker with both hands, eyes darting left and right. His ears were poised like a hunting dog. And in the breezy silence he heard the tiniest shuffle of feet. He whirled around, poker raised. Nothing. He turned to his left, his right. He couldn't see anything, and there were so many shadows here at the bottom of the stairs, so many places for a person to hide. He skipped into the middle of the lobby, twirling around in a constant circle, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his arms feeling heavy and cold.

"Whoever is in here," he shouted, trying to sound fearsome, but succeeding in only sounding anxious, "you better get the hell out. We've called the police. They're on their way."

He listened for a response, verbal or otherwise, but nothing came. Then there was a sharp clap behind him, and he spun on the soles of his shoes to find that it was only the door clicking shut behind him. But in that moment he had his back to the rest of the lobby, to the wall of shadow. He saw only the briefest flicker of movement in the dull reflection of the glass panel to the right of the door, a hideous vision of wide eyes and white, livid features floating towards him like an apparition, full of malice, full of rage.

There was a gust of wind by his right ear and then the thud of something sharp slicing through dense meat and bone. As the island's butcher he knew what that sounded like, what it felt like to do, but in that unreal moment of time he knew what it felt like to have the hard blade cut down through his body. The force of the blow knocked him to his knees. He closed his eyes and screamed, more out of shock than pain. The pain was yet to come. When he opened his eyes and looked down at his chest he saw the top half of an axe blade protruding from the top of his ribs. Its path to that point was clearly marked, and as the poker dropped noisily to the floor he realised that the entire right shoulder and his arm was separated from the rest of him in a narrow 'V'. His guts felt full of chunks of ice. He swooned, realising that the axe, and the person still holding it behind him, were the only things keeping him upright.

He felt a boot being pressed against his back, then the yanks—one, two, three—of the axe being pulled free. True enough, without its support Ted collapsed sideways onto the varnished wood floor, the smell of rose varnish filling his senses before the full extent of the pain bloomed in his head. He opened his mouth to scream it out, but it was too much and he could only exhale a long, trembling sigh. He managed to turn himself onto his back, some part of him desperate to know who had done this, what madman would do such a thing.

The figure looming above him was a nightmarish vision. Tall, white-faced, mad eyes staring, lips curled in a mask of bestial rage. But the face was unmistakable. He knew that it was impossible, but at the same time he sensed that this was a night like no other, a night in which undreamt of things could come to life, when the dead could rise from their graves and the island could right certain wrongs.

"Garrett," he mumbled, and he hated the fact that he'd even spoken the bastard's name because he knew that would probably be his last word on this earth, because the pain was paralysing him now.

The figure holding the axe stared down for a moment, the weapon poised in both hands ready for another strike. The monster seemed to be communicating a silent message to him, a message he understood very clearly.

Then Garrett raised the axe above his head and Ted Sheldon closed his eyes, waiting for the final blow. In the instant before it came, he tried to picture the face of his wife in his mind to give him comfort, but he realised right then that Carol was now alone and defenceless upstairs, along with the others.

Ted Sheldon's final thought was that he had failed his wife completely. A madman was in the house, and there was no stopping him.

## 66

They all heard the scream.

Carol shrieked in response and ran for the locked door. Reggie grabbed her, carefully at first but then forcefully as she fought to be free of him.

"We have to stay here!" Reggie bellowed in her ear.

"Oh dear God, what's happening to my Ted!" she wailed. "What's happening?"

"Is somebody calling the police?" Reggie yelled over his shoulder.

Denise was already standing at the phone table, the receiver pressed to her ear. But her face was a picture of horror. She tapped the cradle several times.

"The line's dead," she said. "Oh, God."

Then they heard a noise in the corridor outside, and all eyes fixed on the wood panelled door. Everyone held their breath. In the silence they heard slithering footsteps along the hallway outside. Then the door handle suddenly creaked, the handle dropping and rising in three quick movements. Then:

"Shit!"

Everyone looked at each other. It was a woman's voice.

"H-Hello?" Reggie called out.

"Hello? Jesus, is there somebody in there? Please let me in."

Reggie let go of Carol, who had stopped struggling, and moved towards the door. Now it was her turn to restrain him, grabbing his elbow. "No, Reggie," she hissed. "Ted said not to open it until he came back."

Reggie stared back at her, then looked to Denise.

"But it's a woman."

"So?" Carol whispered. "She's an intruder."

Reggie faced the door. "Who are you?" he called out.

"Rachel Thorne."

Everyone gasped.

"Please, I'm begging you. Let me in. He's coming!"

## 67

Rachel hammered on the door. "Open up!"

"You said 'he's coming'," the man said. It sounded like Reggie Jones. "Who's coming?"

She was wondering how best to answer when she heard a crash somewhere below. A surge of white hot fear filled her. She listened intently for a moment. Where was he?

After making the call home to speak to Sam— _Sam, oh Sam, where are you when I need you?_ —she had lost track of Garrett. His silhouette had disappeared around the side of the house. There could be half a dozen ways into this place. She'd heard the smash of glass as Garrett broke in. It sounded like it was somewhere on the basement level. Then she'd heard the screams shortly afterwards. The chances were very good that Garrett was in the house, somewhere.

She slammed her open palms on the door again. "Unlock this door and I'll explain. I swear I am not your enemy. I'm trying to help you."

"I –" The man was hesitant.

"Don't open it, Reggie," a woman's voice demanded.

Then there was a sudden bang from the room beyond the door and the people in there all screamed. It sounded as though a door on the opposite side had been kicked or hammered open. The screams were shrill, constant, deafening even through the hardwood door. Rachel could do nothing else but listen. She heard a guttural cry of rage, then the wet thud of a hammer blow or some other instrument. The man's screams ceased instantly. The women – she thought there were two – shrieked in a terrible harmony. They must have been huddled together, clutching each other for comfort. She heard that awful grunt of animalistic rage and then the shrieks of the two women were silenced. Rachel heard a double thud of heavy bodies hitting the floor.

Then silence. Utter, terrible silence.

Rachel felt as though the blood had ceased flowing in her veins, frozen in midstream, her heart ceasing to pump.

"Oh God," she breathed.

Footsteps, heavy and deliberate, on the far side of the room, heading towards the door.

She backed away from it, scared to breathe, her heart now working double-time, filling her head with its beat.

The key turned slowly in the lock.

She turned and fled down the shadowy hall.

## 68

Kelly's Jeep skidded in the mud and came to a stop in front of the gates to Ashworth mansion. Sam, seated in the back with Becky, leaned forward and surveyed the smashed gates. Occasional sparks of electricity flashed out of the darkness.

"Are we too late?" Kelly said.

"I hope not," McNamara said.

"Don't go any further, Kelly," Sam said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "You'll burst your tyres getting through there."

Sam climbed out of the car, followed by the priest.

"What are you doing?" Kelly said. "You're not going to leave me here?"

Sam leaned on the open window, looking in at her. His gaze moved to Becky.

"Daddy's just going to find Mummy now, sweetheart," he told her. "I want you to sit tight here with Kelly. Kelly will look after you." He met Kelly's eyes. "Won't you, Kelly?"

She stared at him, her eyelids fluttering for a moment. "Yes, of course," she said.

Sam paused a moment, looking back at his daughter. He wanted to reach in and kiss her, hug her . . .

A volley of screams filled the night air. Coming from the mansion.

"Dear God!" McNamara said.

Sam turned and ran through the gates, the priest following close behind. His heartbeat hammered in his ears.

_Oh God, please don't let that be Rachel. Please . ._ .

He reached the front door and yanked the handle. To his surprise, he found the door was open. The bolts were broken and the wood of the door splintered where it had been forced in.

The flames had broken through the lower floors. The lobby was filling with smoke. . Sam covered his face with the crook of his elbow. McNamara found an old handkerchief and covered his nose and mouth.

"Looks like the fire's started in the basement," McNamara said. "The fire's going to spread through this old house like a tinderbox. Good, old fashioned hard wood."

Sam looked at him helplessly.

"Leave it to me," McNamara said, and disappeared back out through the door to the side of the building.

"Rachel!" Sam called out. No response.

Sam rushed towards the spiral staircase, tripping over something large and heavy on the ground. He looked down to find Ted Sheldon. His eyes were still open.

Fear gripped Sam's heart.

## 69

Rachel ran up a flight of stairs onto another landing, running blindly now, looking for some kind of refuge and trying to keep her panic under control.

Then a sound made her freeze in her tracks. She stood in the middle of the shadowy landing and listened. Lightning flickered outside.

Yes, the sound of a child crying.

A little girl.

Goosebumps ran across her back. She looked down the dark landing to a door at the far end.

"Mummy . . ."

God it sounded so much like Becky . . .

"Mummy . . ."

She walked forward, almost tip-toeing, wondering what more strange events awaited her on this insane night.

It couldn't be Becky. Could it?

She gripped the handle, turned it slowly and opened the door.

Richard Ashworth lunged towards her, a child's chair raised above his head. Rachel recoiled at the unexpected attack.

Ashworth stopped and lowered the chair. "Jesus," he said. "I thought you were . . ."

Behind him, his wife and daughter huddled together on the child's bed, their eyes filled with fear.

"We heard screaming," Ashworth said. "We thought there was an intruder."

"There is," Rachel said.

Ashworth sniffed. "Can I smell burning?"

As if in direct answer to his query, the fire alarm burst into life.

Heidi screamed and clutched her mother even tighter.

"It's all right," Marine said.

"It's really not all right," Rachel said. "We have to get out of here. Now."

Marine picked up Heidi and all three of them swept out of the bedroom. As they ran out onto the wide landing, Ashworth stopped in his tracks. A dark figure stood in their path, a tall, hulking figure carrying a fire axe, dripping with blood. Marine screamed, clutching her husband.

Ashworth's face was a mask of confusion. This was Ben Garrett. This was the very maniac they had tried to rid the world of. Here he was, in his home, standing on his top floor landing, a murderous look in his dead eyes.

"Richard!" Marine cried out, pulling at his arm. "Let's go!"

But he remained where he stood, transfixed by the apparition in his path. There was a sudden flurry of footsteps on the stairwell to their right, and Sam Thorne appeared, looking wet, exhausted and smoke-ridden. He halted at the top of the steps, his eyes flicking from Ashworth to the grotesque figure standing between them. Garrett turned and looked at Sam, no acknowledgement of threat registering there. He turned back to Ashworth.

"Why?" Garrett said.

Ashworth stared for a long time, and he knew there was no point stalling, feigning ignorance. This creature, be it real or supernatural, knew the truth, the whole truth.

"Why?" Ashworth repeated. "Because you deserved it. Look at you," he said, his lip curling in disgust at the bloody axe. "You're a monster. You didn't deserve time to rot in prison. That was a mercy. And after what you did to those girls, you don't deserve mercy."

"So you say," Garrett replied. "Who are you to judge? I changed in prison. I was . . . rehabilitating."

"I don't know why you've come back, Garrett. It makes no sense–"

"For revenge," Garrett spat. "What you did, that makes you as bad as me. Worse."

Ashworth's eyes went to Rachel then, and a pleading, sorrowful look came over his features. "Oh, Rachel, the bomb wasn't supposed to go off on that ferry. Lawkins told us the bomb would go off when the van reached the island. Not the ferry. I . . . I am so sorry."

Rachel stumbled back a step, covering her mouth with both hands as if to stop the scream that was building within her.

"I only hope you can forgive me. We were trying to right a wrong. That was all. People like Ben Garrett don't deserve to live."

"And neither do you," Garrett said. He hefted the axe in his huge hands and charged forward. Ashworth remained frozen to the spot. Heidi screamed as the giant approached, but to him it was a distant scream, a hundred miles away.

Ashworth stared into the face of death and waited for the killing blow.

## 70

Sam threw himself into the giant's path. Garrett was rushing forward at an incredible pace, axe raised ready to strike. They collided heavily. Sam felt his nose crunch under the impact. His vision exploded with white light for a second. The next thing he knew he was on his back, blood gushing from his nose. Garrett stumbled back, smashing into a large, ornate mirror. Sam raised his arms over his head as the shattered pieces of mirror rained down around him.

"Run!" Marine Ashworth yelled. "Richard, we have to get out of here!"

But Ashworth remained frozen to the spot.

Sam tried to sit up when Garrett's mud-encrusted boot struck him in the chest and forced him back down. The impact pushed the air from his lungs. He stared up at Garrett.

"You shouldn't have done that," the big man growled. He raised the axe.

Out of the corner of his eye Sam caught a blur of movement. It was Kelly, creeping across the landing. His heart filled with hope and despair. What could she possibly do to stop this maniac?

In a flash, Kelly scooped up a large shard of the broken mirror glass and charged at Garrett with a banshee-like scream. She leapt onto his back and plunged the glass into his neck. Garrett let out a roar, more from anger than any pain he may have felt.

Kelly struck him in the neck again, and again, and again.

## 71

_Stay in the car,_ Sam had told her. _Look after my little girl_.

Kelly had felt a strange mix of feelings at Sam's instruction. As insane as the situation was, essentially Sam was entrusting the safety of his daughter to her. How things had changed in the past forty-eight hours. Hell, in the past half-hour! And she had so wanted to do as Sam asked, to show that she could be trusted in this most trying of circumstances. But after several minutes sitting in silence with Becky, something told her not to obey this time. Call it instinct, call it fate, but she had a strong feeling that, at some point, Sam would need help in his suicide mission. So she left the little girl in the car, asked her politely to stay put and not to worry, and headed into the house.

When she had reached the landing and found the raggedy giant standing over Sam with an axe raised ready to strike, she felt that sense of fate coming to fruition. Yes, this was meant to happen. This was the deciding moment in all of this, this whole journey she and Sam were on. This was the moment she saved him—saved him in a physical sense, so that he would warm to her and allow her to save him in another, more fundamental way.

This was meant to be.

She rushed forward out of anger at first, no plan, no logic to her actions; then she saw the fragments of shattered mirror on the carpet and instinctively grabbed for the most dagger-like of them. Then she pounced, letting out a warrior-woman yell that would hopefully delay Sam's attacker long enough to allow her to close the gap.

It worked. Before she knew it she was on the big man's back and she was stabbing, stabbing, slashing and gouging, all fear gone as she went to work fulfilling her destiny.

Then she noticed there was no blood. Dust and dried flesh flew from the giant's neck and her heart froze for a split second as she realised that this was Ben Garrett and that he was dead, dead like the girl, like Becky, and that stabbing him with anything was going to have little effect. She continued stabbing him anyway because she didn't know what else to do.

Then the giant backed her into the wall with great force, knocking the wind out of her. The glass flew from her hand, turning over and over in the air and that was when she noticed it was covered in blood – but it was her blood. As she slid down the wall, she looked at her hand. The shard had sliced so deeply into her palm that she could see the sinew and bone.

She hit the floor and looked up, feeling a strange sense of delirium as her eyes fixed on Sam. Her Sam. He was still alive, staring over at her. She had saved him. Then everything seemed to slow.

She had a moment to relish the sight of him – then the axe struck, thudding into her chest. Blood rushed up her throat and into her mouth. She tried to say something, tried to at least scream or curse, but nothing came.

Her eyes filled with water and she looked up through the mist of tears into the killer's face.

_This isn't how it was supposed to end,_ she told herself.

She looked at Sam, reached out for him with a trembling hand.

His face was a mask of sorrow.

It was the last thing she knew.

## 72

Sam stared at Kelly's slumped figure. Blood dripped from her mouth, her eyes fixed on nothing. He felt a terrible wave of pity for her now. She had just given her life to save him. What did that mean?

"See!" Garrett roared, pulling the blood-soaked axe from the young woman's chest and whirling on Ashworth. "See what you've created! You wanted a monster. Well, you've got one!"

Garrett was about to charge again and Sam realised the giant had forgotten about him after Kelly's surprise attack. He forced his aching body up and charged at Garrett. He caught him around the waist and forced him back, back towards the large window halfway down the hall. Garrett had just enough time to thump Sam hard in the middle of his back— _Jesus, the pain!—_ before they both crashed into the window. The glass gave way easily and the wind and rain rushed in. Garrett was going through and Sam was going with him. As the window disintegrated they both tumbled out into the wild night, and in those few frantic seconds Sam grabbed onto a piece of window frame. Garrett's huge frame fell away from him and Sam watched as the big man plunged, clawing at the air, screaming his anger and hate into the night.

Sam held onto the broken window frame, dangling there with the wind and rain tearing at him from all sides, not caring that the glass was cutting into his fingers, just praying the piece of timber would hold.

## 73

The plunge seemed to last an eternity.

Garrett expected the impact of hitting the water would be the end for him, that it would rip his body apart and that would be it. But he punched through the rolling waves into the murky depths and after several seconds of frantic flailing found he was still conscious and still in one piece. The axe remained in his grip.

Still alive! Still alive! Why am I still alive?

He hit the sandy seabed and began to climb up the gentle gradient. Once out of the water, he lay face down in the sand. He still felt no desire for breath, only exhaustion like he had never known, and that terrible cancerous feeling of anger in the core of his being, a raging need for revenge on those who had sought to remove him from this world.

They had failed, though, hadn't they? For whatever reason, and he had no desire to try and understand it now, he was still here and still aware. He raised his head from the sand and looked up at the huge house towering over him on stilts.

They had failed to stop him. He was still here. Why?

_Because your work here is not yet done, Ben Garrett_.

He managed a grin and climbed to his feet. It seemed to take forever. Finally, he stood there on the beach before the house on stilts, stood there with the fire axe in his hands – and then, slowly, he marched forward to finish his work.

## 74

_You did it_ , Sam told himself. _You stopped him._

Then his grip slipped, the glass shredding his fingers a little more.

Rachel's face appeared above him, beautiful Rachel, her hair floating around her face in the wind. She clutched at his wrists, naked fear in her eyes—fear for him, he supposed, even after all he'd done.

"Sam, hold on," she said. "Just hold on." Then, over her shoulder, she screamed: "Ashworth! Help me!"

But Sam knew it was too late. His grip was failing. He was going to fall at any second.

He looked into his wife's beautiful big brown eyes and wondered how in hell he could ever have betrayed her.

"I love you, Rachel," he said. "I'm sorry."

Then his grip failed and he fell.

## 75

There was a terrible moment of being in space, that awful sensation of falling, before a hand grabbed his wrist and halted his descent.

He stared up into Richard Ashworth's face and even though the man was trying to save him, he felt an overwhelming rush of hatred for the man. Ashworth had been behind the plot to kill Garrett right from the beginning. He offered the money for the job to be done. It didn't matter that the contract had misfired. In effect, Ashworth's actions had led to Becky's death. He thought Ashworth was a friend, but looking into his eyes now, he realised he didn't know the man at all.

"I've got you, Sam," Ashworth said, the light of hope in his eyes. "It's going to be all right. I've got you."

Did Ashworth see some sense of redemption in what he was doing now? Did he really think that saving Sam's life would make everything all right?

"Reach up, Sam," Ashworth said. "Reach up with your other hand and I'll pull you in."

Sam hesitated. He didn't want Ashworth to save him. It was twisted logic but he felt it strongly. He did not want the man responsible for killing his daughter to have the pleasure of saving him. That was wrong, so wrong. But did he really want to sacrifice his own life to deny Ashworth that chance?

Before he could decide, the entire house shook violently.

THOOM

Rachel and Ashworth looked around, terror in their eyes.

THOOM

"What the hell is happening?" Ashworth said.

Sam knew. He didn't need to look down. He knew what was happening down there on the beach.

The noise came again and the house shuddered.

THOOOOOM

## 76

Garrett swung the axe with every ounce of his strength and the sound of the stilt wood splintering filled his mind like a narcotic.

Yes, this was his revenge. He felt certain that whatever forces had brought him back had done so to bring him to this place, this moment.

He struck the stilt again, chunks of timber flying in all directions, and watched the house tremble and creak above him.

A laugh escaped his throat. Not a joyful laugh, but a dark laugh, filled with bitterness.

He raised the axe and resumed his work.

## 77

"Sam! Sam, speak to me!"

He blinked, focused. Rachel was reaching out a hand to him.

"Sam, the house is collapsing! Please reach up! Please!"

THOOOOM

The sound of Garrett swinging the axe against the stilts.

The sound of vengeance.

"Sam!" Rachel screamed.

He reached up, trance-like, and Ashworth and Rachel grabbed his arm, yanking him up and through the broken window.

But as he savoured the feeling of being on sure ground again a new sound filled his senses: the noise of wood splintering beneath them. The house lurched forward and the landing on which they were sitting disintegrated. Rachel screamed and dropped to the floor to find a hold, but the entire top half of the landing ripped free with frightening ease, wooden splints ripping from the upper landing like rotten teeth being pulled from diseased gums. Sam felt the floor sway beneath him and he turned to grab onto something—anything—to stop himself from falling into the collapsing crevice, but there was nothing to hold onto and he felt his feet sliding towards the gaping hole in the building.

Rachel was crouched on the other half of the landing, her eyes full of terror.

Then everything froze. The house creaked, but everything remained in position.

"Rachel," Sam said. "Just . . . just stay where you are. I'm going to get to you."

She looked at him, tears in her eyes, saying nothing.

Then the worst noise he had ever heard:

THOOM-THOOOM

The landing carrying Rachel lurched violently and slipped from view, pirouetting down into the inky blackness of the night. Her screams dwindled quickly, swallowed up by the howling wind which filled the upper floors of Martello. Sam pitched forward as the house twisted on its remaining stilt, and as he slid down the sloping floor he reached out and his fingers closed around a jutting broken balustrade. The force yanked his arm painfully and he grunted with the impact.

Then everything stopped.

Sam lay there on the burning landing, staring out through the chasm which had appeared in the wall of Martello House. Rain swept into the opening, heavy drops touching Sam's face and neck, but not enough to shake him out of his shocked trance.

She's gone she's gone she's gone

The words repeated in his mind like a mantra, and all he could think of was that everything he'd tried so desperately hard to hold onto was lost. Becky. His marriage. Now Rachel herself. He felt an all-consuming numbness, an absence of all thought or feeling, as though he was a powerless plaything of spiteful, uncaring gods who had decided to move all the chess pieces of his life around with no other reason than to see how much he could take, how far he could suffer before he gave in.

He was only vaguely aware of Ashworth on the landing behind him, only vaguely aware that he was speaking to him, imploring him to climb back towards him. But he didn't care. In that moment, he felt empty. In that freeze-frame moment he understood that everything he had ever needed, everything that gave his life meaning and purpose had just fallen to the rocks below.

In that moment of stillness he cursed himself for not allowing Ashworth to rescue him when he had the chance, before the entire landing gave way. He cursed himself for not being quick enough to save Rachel, and even a part of him wished he'd been able to stop Kelly from dying . . .

But in the stillness another voice spoke up, the same voice that had whispered in his ear on the day of the ferry disaster. He saw himself dangling uselessly from the edge of the ferry, clinging onto that rope—clinging onto his own wretched life—before the world, before fate, before whatever forces really controlled the universe decided his fate, and that of his daughter, for him. He remembered that feeling of utter powerlessness in the face of impossible odds, impossible choices being demanded of him. He was the only one who could have saved her, but he couldn't swim. Why did Becky have to die?

Why did Becky have to die?

Now, with flames above him and roiling waves and jagged rocks below, Sam felt that same powerlessness. It was almost as if the choices were being made for him.

Should he let go now, plummet down into the dark waters and pray to whoever might listen that he didn't dash his brains out on the rocks for a start, and then pray that somehow Rachel was not dead? Should he let go? Should he?

He shut his eyes, only for a second, listening for that voice, listening for direction.

_Yes,_ it said. _Jump_.

He opened his eyes, and jumped.

He expected his life to flash before his eyes as so many people had testified to in human history. He expected the fall to be slow, like in a film in which the falling victim gracefully paws the air. But none of that happened. The fall was quick, graceless, and terrifying.

When he hit the water, there was a period of oblivion which could have been seconds or minutes to him. When he came out of it, when his eyes opened, he found that he was spinning slowly downwards in the water. His lungs were filled with air, although the impact had knocked some out of him. As he blinked in the underwater world he saw shapes being partially illuminated by the intermittent lightning up above. Wreckage from the house – bricks, mortar, wooden planks, joists – floated in the water around him, slowly tumbling down towards the sea bed.

Then he saw the seabed itself and a large section of the landing which had come to rest there. He saw a tiny figure struggling beneath it, saw the fan of blonde hair which even in this unearthly alternate world he knew instantly belonged to Rachel. He saw movement besides the flow of her hair, and instantly kicked downwards in that direction.

Rachel was stuck fast. The heavy section of landing was bigger than a car and on quick examination he saw that her lower left leg was pinned beneath one of the heavy joists. The area was surrounded by a small cloud of red mist. He scrambled over the wooden structure trying to find a hand hold, knowing his breath was not going to last forever, trying not to panic, trying to hold onto his nerve. But then Rachel was touching him, punching his arm, and when he looked at her, when he saw how hopelessly she was pinned, his heart broke. Because he saw it in her eyes, too. His breath would run out long before he was able free her. She knew this and must have made a decision. She pointed past Sam's shoulder, towards the surface.

Go, she was telling him. Save yourself.

And she was right. He should. No point them both dying.

But he couldn't. He had lost his daughter that way. He couldn't do it again.

Sam looked back, shook his head vigorously, then continued to heave at the wood with all his might. Rachel hit him again, and he saw the stricken look on her face, and although she couldn't talk he knew what she was trying to say, that she was insisting the way she always did when he was being pig-headed over something. He didn't want to listen to her because he knew that her suggestion meant her certain death, and that part of him which had realised minutes earlier just how much he needed her—desperately needed her—to complete his stupid, aimless existence, wasn't ready to say goodbye to her. Not yet.

He wanted to stay with her, to be with her as the strength in her body gave out and the water rushed into her lungs, wanted to hold her head as her life came to an end, but he didn't have the luxury of time. His own lungs were beginning to burn. He estimated he had maybe thirty seconds before he lost the fight and gulped water into his lungs.

Thirty seconds to save a life.

Make a choice.

Sam reached down and grabbed the section of landing holding Rachel in place and heaved with all his might. He felt it give, the heavy section beginning to rise in the water. Rachel struggled to wriggle out of the new gap. Sam gave it some more, but the exertion forced the last of the air from his lungs.

A long stream of bubbles flew from his mouth. His head felt light, his body numb.

He had no breath left and when he looked down he saw that Rachel hadn't managed to completely escape her trap. She had slipped her body through the gap but her bleeding leg was still caught.

He had failed.

In that frozen moment, his mind filled with rage at the universe, at whatever forces had placed him in this nightmare of impossible choices. It couldn't be God, any god. Gods could not be this cruel, surely. His lungs were aching now, burning from an internal pressure, the desire to breathe in. He looked up, wondering if he could still make it to the surface . . . But it was such a long way off. So far . . .

His vision blurred, his head became impossibly light as if it had become intangible on his shoulders. Then he opened his mouth and inhaled and the water invaded his body. He jerked violently against the terrible, alien feeling, and his mind spiked with terror at the certainty of his own death.

He had only a few more seconds of consciousness before everything faded, his vision dwindling to a perfect black.

## 78

Garrett stood on the bank which sloped down to the water and watched as another section of the Ashworths' house hit the water with a deafening crash. The churning waves were now thick with wreckage, carnage he had caused with his own bare hands. And the axe, of course.

He had seen human figures tumbling down through the air when the first section of the house broke away and he had not seen anyone regain the surface. He hoped Ashworth was one of them.

_But what if it was his wife and daughter?_ a voice offered.

"What do I care?" he said to himself.

Really? An innocent woman? An innocent child?

"Ashworth brought them into this when he ordered my execution. That's just the price he has to pay." He paused, a bitter smile on his lips. "And if they didn't die in the house, I'll find them and do the job myself."

_Then the real Benjamin Garrett is truly dead,_ the voice replied.

Garrett froze for a moment, trying to understand the pain that voice caused in his heart.

## 79

In the last few moments, before it all turned to a grey haze, Rachel Thorne tried to remember the best of everything. She felt a sadness that threatened to overwhelm her, sadness at having to die alone this way, at having to watch her husband die in front of her, and at not even being able to tell him she loved him or that she was sorry. That surprised her. Until that moment she never believed she had anything to feel sorry about. Sam had strayed, Sam had broken the trust between them, Sam had lied and withheld things that made the breach of trust even bigger, worse even than the transgression itself.

So what did she feel sorry for?

She was sorry that she had not forgiven him. Yes, she had been angry, angry enough to want to leave him. But she had never thought for one second that she would be facing death so soon afterward. She did not want to die with Sam thinking he was unforgiven. She had no illusions that beyond this difficult, painful existence lay the heaven she had always imagined, a place of peace and light for those lucky enough to get there. What she couldn't bear was that her lack of forgiveness would have been the last thing on Sam's mind, that he went to his death believing that she hated him. Because she didn't. She loved him, and that fact had been made crystal clear in these last few minutes of madness and chaos and destruction. She loved Sam Thorne. She loved his mind and his soul. He was insecure, sometimes petulant, but often kind and generous and thoughtful. He was a good man, and a brilliant man. He just wasn't perfect. Nobody was.

Her breath was almost exhausted now, and she looked up to the surface far above, wondering—hoping, praying—that Ashworth's wife and daughter had managed to get out of the house before it collapsed completely. Little Heidi, Becky's friend. Yes, even if her actions saved her, that was enough. No one should have to lose a child . . .

In that instant, as her thoughts converged on Becky—beautiful Becky—who had never known the world in any way she would have been able to fully comprehend, she thought she saw something, another dark shape moving through the water above her: small, frail, straggly. She blinked in the gloomy water, squinting into the middle-distance.

_I must be dead_ , she told herself. _I must have died already. Maybe a few seconds ago, maybe as much as a minute._

Because descending through the water, surrounded by a halo of light from above—maybe lightning, maybe not—was a little girl, maybe six years old, blonde and beautiful, floating down towards her.

They sent Becky. An angel has come to collect me, and it's my Becky. Oh, thank you, God. Thank you.

## 80

That woman had left her alone in the car.

That _selfish_ woman had left her alone in the car!

The last words Daddy had said to her were 'Look after Becky', and she couldn't even do that. But what did she expect? The woman didn't care about her. She only cared about Daddy and being with Daddy and taking Daddy away from Mummy.

So after the woman had left her alone, she had sat in the back seat of the car and waited, watching the big old dark house as the smoke began to rise from the basement. She watched as the house began to collapse, falling away out of sight to the sea below.

Daddy had been in the house.

Mummy, too.

So she had climbed out of the car and headed down the overgrown path at the side of the house to the water's edge. She had been shocked at the sight of the Ashworths' house floating on the waves, the debris filling the entire bay. And there she had found the old priest standing in the water up to his knees with an oxygen canister in his hand. Why he was standing there and not doing anything, she didn't know. Maybe he was trying to find the courage to go into the water. Or maybe he thought it was too late for everyone.

He turned and started at the sight of her, then relaxed.

"They're down there," he said. His eyes were wet. "I saw them fall. I saw them go into the water but . . . they haven't come up yet. I think . . ."

She stepped closer then, and touched the oxygen cylinder with the small breathing mouthpiece attached.

"Where did you get this?" she asked.

"Found it in the basement."

"Let me have it," she said.

"But you can't—" He stopped himself, as if he was ashamed of what he was going to say. "You don't need to breathe."

"I know," she said, taking the air cylinder and rushing forward into the noisy surf.

## 81

It was like a dream.

Once her daughter had given her the scuba tank and she began sucking in good sweet oxygen, she felt as though she was inside a dream. These things do not happen in waking life, she told herself. This is a dream and when you wake up you will be back in the cottage with Sam, sitting in his office making that oh-so-sweet sound of clicking word processor keys, and Becky will be out in the garden attending to her geraniums and begonias and pansies and humming to herself like the sweet contented child she had always been.

A dream.

Or was it a nightmare?

She glanced round and found Sam's lifeless body in the murky water above her, and she watched as he turned slowly, his eyes open, staring at nothing.

She tore her gaze away and looked down at Becky as she busied herself moving the wreckage from Rachel's trapped leg, one small piece at a time. She watched her daughter closely, mesmerised and petrified at the same time. The one thing she wanted more than anything in the world was to see her daughter alive and well again. And yet, this figure before her was not breathing. She was not holding her breath. No bubbles of air escaped from her parted lips.

If this was her daughter, then what did this mean? Had she come back to life?

Before she could think about it anymore her leg suddenly sprung free. A length of metal pipe scraped down her shin, drawing more blood. She screamed, emitting a stream of bubbles into the water around her head.

Control yourself, woman. Control yourself and get to the surface.

She looked at Becky and saw that she was standing on the wreckage and looking at her with a resigned look.

Of course, Rachel considered. She can't go up. She was able to get down here, but without air in her lungs she won't rise.

She grabbed her daughter's freezing cold hand and began to push for the surface. As they neared Sam's body, she made a conscious decision. She was not leaving him down here. She took one deep lungful of oxygen and let go of the cylinder. With her free hand, she grabbed Sam under the right shoulder and raised her face toward the light.

## 82

They broke the surface together, Rachel collapsing onto the sand and gasping for breath. Sam lay on his back beside her. Mercifully, his eyes were now closed. Her entire body felt numb, except for her lungs, which burned with a searing pain.

Becky emerged from the water on shaky legs and dropped onto her knees.

Rachel gave herself a moment to regain her breath before turning to Becky.

"Are you . . . are you okay?"

But her little girl was just staring down at her father's body, her face a mask of misery. "Mummy, save him," she said. "Please save him."

She hesitated. How many minutes had he been underwater? How many minutes had it been since he drowned? Was it even possible?

"Mummy, please," Becky sobbed.

"I don't think I can, honey," she said. "It's too late."

Becky shook her head. "No, you have to try." An arc of blue lightning flickered over her face and down her chest. "You have to try!"

Rachel nodded. "All right, honey. All right." She crouched over her husband, desperately trying to recall her first aid training. God, when was the last refresher course? A year ago? Two?

But to her surprise, she went into auto-pilot and started the process, tilting his head back and opening his airway. Two breaths. Then she began the chest compressions. How many chest compressions?

Oh, Christ, does it matter? Just do it, woman!

As she pumped his chest, a trickle of saltwater ran from the corner of his mouth. Oh God, his lungs will be full of water.

She put her mouth over his again, breathing deep into him, trying to force that water out of him somehow.

"Come on, Sam," she said. "Come on. You can do this."

She started the chest compressions again, remembering the dream-like feeling when she'd been trapped underwater and wondering if this entire night might have a happy ending. Could she really bring her husband back from the dead? This was the night for it, wasn't it?

Two more breaths, more chest compressions.

"Mummy? Is he coming back?"

She stopped pumping for a moment and looked down at her husband, studying his pale features for a long moment. There was nothing, no sign of life. The trickle of water running from his mouth had turned a shade of pink. Without warning, a bolt of overwhelming sadness filled her, so powerful it threatened to destroy her.

Sam Thorne. The only man she had ever loved. The man who had brought meaning into her life way back when. Beautiful, brilliant, flawed Sam.

And he was gone.

"Mummy?"

## 83

No.

Daddy can't be dead. No. No. No.

Becky folded her arms on her raised knees and bowed her head. This was not how it was supposed to end. Mummy and Daddy had to be together. It was what made the world all right. Her world, anyway.

She had saved Mummy so she could save Daddy. Mummy was a nurse. She should be able to save Daddy! Oh God, why couldn't she save him?

She sobbed, but no real tears came. They didn't work anymore, but the ache in her chest was real. It was the same kind of ache she'd felt when she had been drowning in the sea and Daddy didn't come to save her.

Why didn't he come to save her?

I tried to help you, sweetheart, I really did. But I can't swim . . .

She glanced up at him now, at his body. Mummy was hugging him now, crying uncontrollably. He had died trying to save her. In that moment, the love she felt for her daddy was like a raging fire in her chest.

"Oh, Daddy," she whispered.

How long did she have? She knew this strange after-life had to come to an end for her. She didn't know much in the grand scheme of things, but she knew that people couldn't exist without breathing, and they couldn't exist if their heart had stopped beating.

She lifted her hand in front of her face and watched as a ball of pale blue lightning ran across her palm. It reached her fingertips and stayed there, fizzing and popping, quite beautiful in the moonlight.

Then an idea exploded in her mind, an idea which filled her with excitement and hope and terror all at the same time.

She shifted position in the sand and edged forward on her knees. The lightning continued to dance on her fingertips. When she leaned over her father's body, she felt a stab of fear at what she was about to do, but she brushed it aside.

"What are you doing, Becky?" her mother said.

Becky hesitated, looking down at her father's pale, lifeless features. "I think . . . I think I can save him, Mummy."

Her mother must have worked out her plan, her eyes fixing on Becky's fingers. "No," she said, urgency in her tone. "Don't do that, Becky. Do you hear me? Don't!"

"But I can bring him back."

"And you could die in the process!"

"Mum, I'm already dead." Her eyes filled with tears. "Aren't I?"

Her mother started crying again, huge tears falling from her eyes. "I don't know, baby, but right now you're alive and I can't bear to lose you again. Please, I'm begging you, don't do it."

Becky started crying now. "But I have to. I can save him. I can save Daddy."

"Becky, no!"

But Becky couldn't hear her mummy anymore. She leaned over, closed her eyes for a moment and made a silent prayer.

"Wake up, Daddy," she whispered, and placed her hand on his chest.

The ball of electricity flared brightly, accompanied by a sharp crackling sound. Sam's body convulsed violently for several seconds, his hands drawing into balled fists. His back arched, his chin pushing towards the sky.

Then he began to scream.

## 84

Sam sat upright, the veins in his neck standing out as he screamed into the night sky. Then, when the scream died, he rolled over onto all fours and coughed up a mouthful of water, then another, and another.

"Sam!"

A woman's voice, calling his name.

He looked round and found his wife looking down at him.

"Rachel?" he said.

"Oh, God, Sam!"

He opened his arms and she fell into his embrace, crying uncontrollably, great tearing sobs that drifted into periods of empty silence as she struggled for breath. Sam held her, tighter and tighter, the sensation of water soaking into his clothes so life-affirming, so vibrant. He cried too. They collapsed back onto the sand and time didn't matter. Sam could have stayed in that embrace for eternity.

Finally, he said: "I don't understand. How did you get free?"

They looked at each other, Sam searching the deep wells of her eyes, eyes he knew so well.

"Becky," she said, wonder and amusement on her pale features.

He opened his mouth to repeat their daughter's name in the form of a question, but he saw in her face that this was no mere fantasy, no delusion.

Becky.

Becky saved her, helped her get free. She had done what he could not.

Oh God, he thought, little Becky swimming down to save her mother. It was insane, but it also made perfect sense.

Then, he saw Rachel's expression become grave.

"Rachel?"

She turned and looked over to her right, and Sam followed her gaze to the tiny figure lying there on the sand. Her small, pale body lay on its side, facing them, eyes closed as if she was just sleeping.

"Becky?"

He crawled over to her and put his hand on the side of her face. So cold.

"Becky?" he whispered.

She didn't move.

"What happened, Rachel?" he said.

"She . . . she brought you back, Sam. She saved me and then she brought you back."

"What? How?"

"The spark. She used her spark to save you."

Sam fell back in the sand. "No," he said, shaking his head. "No! No! No!"

"Sam, I tried to stop her."

Sam doubled over. He felt nauseous, dizzy, and the cold heat of despair rushed into his heart.

"I tried," Rachel sobbed, hugging herself. "But she wouldn't listen. She wouldn't listen."

Sam looked up at the sky, tears welling in his eyes as the grief threatened to overwhelm him. Above his head, lightning flashed behind a bank of dark clouds. Thunder rumbled.

In an instant, Sam's sorrow turned to anger.

He stood up, walked a few paces on shaking legs, searching the brooding sky.

He recalled McNamara's story, the Viking warlord brought back to life for one night to right a wrong, to finish what he started, to complete the plan the gods had made for him.

In those few moments, his mind rushed through this night of insanity and mayhem, death and revenge, trying to find some meaning in it. If there was any kind of intelligent force behind this strange resurrection night, then it had achieved something in bringing back Ben Garrett. The people on the Island Council had committed an act equal to, if not worse, than the crimes Garrett himself had been found guilty of. They had acted as summary executioners, and in their act of botched justice they had taken the life of his daughter, an innocent victim—a child as innocent as Garrett's victims. Garrett, for right or wrong, had brought a different kind of retribution to the island.

But Becky? Why had she been brought back? To allow him this chance to make his peace with her? This chance to say goodbye? To beg her forgiveness? Or was it to save his relationship with Rachel? No, he told himself. Surely not. But maybe it wasn't as mad as it sounded. Rachel should have died tonight. Sam had run out of air trying to free her from the wreckage. But Becky . . . Becky had been able to swim down there unencumbered by the constraints of lung capacity. From what he understood she did not breathe. Couldn't breathe. Didn't _need_ to breathe. She had time that he did not.

"Why?" he said, addressing the sky. "Tell me how this is fair. Tell me so I can understand!"

As if in answer, thunder rumbled far above. Rachel stood up slowly, watching the skies.

"I thought this all happened for a reason, that you were righting a wrong. At least I thought that's what was happening. Am I right?"

A few moments of silence followed, and then a brief crackle of lightning lit up the clouds.

Sam felt a rush of adrenalin. Something was answering. There was some greater power at work here. He climbed up a small sand bank, his eyes searching the clouds.

"The men on the council shouldn't have killed Garrett—anyone can see that was wrong, wrong to exact your own justice—so you brought Garrett back for revenge. Right? Becky, my little girl . . ." He turned and looked at Rachel. She had both hands pressed to her lips, her glistening eyes fixed on him. He had never seen such love in her eyes. He looked skyward again. "Our little girl shouldn't have died, either. But children do. Children die all the time, sometimes for no reason at all. But Becky, you brought her back for a reason. You must have! If you brought a murdering rapist like Garrett back for a reason you must have brought our girl back for a reason, too!"

Sam waited for a response. The silence stretched out. Then a cough of thunder from behind him, out over the sea. Rachel gasped.

Sam continued, a fire growing in his gut. "If the reason you brought her back tonight was to save us, to save me and Rachel, to bring us back together, then . . ." He looked at his wife again for a lingering moment. "Then there's no point," he said. "If this whole night was about redressing balance, then I want you to take me. Do you hear that? Take me! I'm thankful, so thankful, that our little girl saved Rachel. But I can't accept my daughter giving her life for mine."

Rachel bowed her head and sobbed.

Sam faced the clouds. "I want you to take me!" he roared. "BRING HER BACK AND TAKE ME!"

He watched the skies closely, from the east horizon to the west. For a long time, there was nothing.

Then . . . thunder and lightning exploded together, filling the sky above the cloudbank. The sky lit up like a firework display. The noise was deafening and both Sam and Rachel covered their ears. Rachel ran over to him, blinking rapidly against the blinding flashes of light.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the storm ceased. Rachel and Sam let their hands drop, and slowly, their fingers intertwined as they continued to look above.

A single fork of lightning, a brilliant blue, reached down out of the clouds and touched the earth some way up the beach. Sam and Rachel watched as the lightning bolt began to travel across the sand, feeling its way like the fingers of some elemental god. It passed Sam and Rachel and moved towards their daughter's lifeless body. The lightning hovered at her feet for a moment, hissing and popping and covering her little form in a heavenly glow. Then it began to move over her, rising from her feet to her legs and finally to her chest. There the brightness reached its zenith, so bright Sam and Rachel had to look away.

A moment later, the lightning vanished.

Sam looked back at his daughter's body, then at Rachel. They were still holding hands. Now Rachel added her other hand to the embrace. They watched each other for a long moment. Sam expected something to happen, that the powers above would do exactly as he had asked and take his life in exchange.

But nothing happened.

They both breathed again, sharing a wistful smile.

Hand in hand, they walked towards Becky's tiny figure and knelt down beside her.

"Becky?" Rachel said.

Her skin was still deathly pale, her lips grey. She showed no vital signs.

Sam leaned over, and watched the side of her face. Then he put his ear over her mouth. Not even a hint of breath.

"Becky, sweetheart?" he said. "It's Daddy."

He took her hand and squeezed it.

"Becky, Mummy and Daddy are here," Sam said. "Wake up now."

Sam looked up. Above them the storm had ceased. The brooding sky had cleared. Stars twinkled in the black velvet night.

"Sam?" Rachel said.

He continued to stare at the stars.

Rachel touched his shoulder. "Sam, look."

Slowly, not daring to believe, he looked down at his beautiful daughter.

She opened her eyes.

## 85

On Rook Hill, a sigh of wind drifted between the bruin stones.

It was over.

Almost.

## 86

Ashworth found the edge of the jetty in the darkness and pulled himself up. His body was exhausted, and it took a long time to finally find safety. But he was alive. Still alive!

He lay on the boards of the jetty, gasping for breath, savouring the sensation of heavy rain hitting his face and neck. After a time, he sat up and stared at the stormy water. His house, the Ashworth mansion, was in ruins. The waves were choked with the detritus of his family home, but in a strange way he didn't care. Perhaps that was the price he had to pay . . .

"Ashworth."

A cold hand clutched at his heart. That voice. That terrible voice.

Slowly, reluctantly, he looked round.

Standing on the jetty several feet away was the ragged figure of Ben Garrett. He held the axe loosely in his hands. The big man looked even more exhausted than himself. He didn't think the monster had much life left in him, if you could even call it life. A single spark of blue lightning skittered from his left hand, up his body to his neck, before discharging in the air above him

"Get up," Garrett said.

Ashworth shook his head, raised his hand in a pleading gesture. "Please, don't."

Garrett hefted the axe and took two faltering steps forward.

"Get up!"

Confused, fearful, Ashworth did as he was told, climbing to his feet and facing Garrett.

"What – what is it you want from me? You want to kill me, is that it? Have your revenge? What good will that do, Garrett? I have a child. I'm a father. Are you really that bent on revenge that you'd kill me just to satisfy your need?"

Garrett said nothing. He stared at him for a long, long time, and Ashworth sensed some battle raging within him.

He stretched out his arm to Ashworth, the arm holding the axe. "Take it," he said.

"What?"

"Take it," Garrett said. "Take it now before I bury it in your fucking head."

Ashworth reached out and took the proffered axe.

Then Garrett dropped to his knees, the boards of the jetty creaking under his weight.

"Do it," Garrett said. "Do it now before I do it to you."

Ashworth gripped the axe handle tightly, confused and terrified by this unexpected turn of events.

He tried to visualise himself burying the axe in the big man's chest, his neck, his head – but the idea of it made him feel physically sick.

"I – I can't."

Garrett roared at him. "DO IT NOW OR I WILL KILL YOU AND YOUR WIFE AND YOUR DAUGHTER!"

Ashworth stumbled back a step, tears stinging his eyes.

"Do you understand?" Garrett said in a calmer voice. "You have to do this. Because I won't stop. Do you hear me? I won't stop until you're all dead."

Ashworth closed his eyes and with a wavering yell he swung the axe. He felt the strike as the axe head buried itself in Garrett's neck.

Ashworth opened his eyes, dreading what he would see. Garrett's head was partially severed. Ashworth saw veins and muscle and cartilage in the yawning wound, but no blood. Thank God there was no blood. A small mercy.

Still conscious, Garret's eyes rolled towards him. "Again," he said in a breathless whisper.

Ashworth pulled the axe free and swung again, not quite as blindly as before, striking near enough the same point. With a cry of anger and disgust and horror, Ashworth struck Garrett again and again.

After the sixth blow, Garrett toppled sideways towards the edge of the jetty. The waves lapped and sucked beneath him like a hungry beast. His arm gave way beneath him and he fell forward, dropping into the churning foam.

Ashworth stared at the water, at the place where Garrett had fallen in, and felt an overwhelming sense of self-loathing. He dropped the axe, and fell to his knees and began to sob. He raised his face to the sky and let out a cry to the heavens, words he could barely comprehend himself, words which came from the very core of his being.

Something about forgiveness.

##  Author's Note

The very first novel I ever wrote, at the tender age of thirteen, was a delightful tale entitled _Carrion_ , a super-charged epic horror about recently deceased loved ones coming back from the dead. Written free-hand in a series of exercise books, the novel was an absolute joy to write but being a first novel it was doomed to remain hidden away from human eyes (probably a good thing, too!) Flash-forward twenty years and I found myself rewriting the story as _Lazarus Island_. I've often referred to _Lazarus Island_ as the novel that simply wouldn't die. I wrote the first draft back in 2003 and then abandoned it because I didn't like the ending, which was very different from the one you have just read. But every now and then I'd get it back out of the drawer and give it a good going over, often to no avail. But I always believed in the story and I loved the mythology of the island. The entire project simply refused to lie down. And I'm glad it didn't. _Lazarus Island_ is all about things which refuse to die, things like love and dreams. The history of this project stretches right back to my youth when I dreamed of being a writer. This book means a lot to me. I hope you like it. I'd like to thank Faye Lawlor for her time and effort in giving the story a second set of eyes and also Nick Ambrose at everythingindie.com.

##  About the Author

Lee Moan grew up in the English seaside town of Torquay, birthplace of the 'Queen of Crime', Agatha Christie. He now lives in the neighbouring town of Paignton. His stories have been published in numerous print and online magazines including _Hub, Dark Recesses Press, Murky Depths, Jupiter SF, Twisted Tongue_ , and a forthcoming story in _Realms of Fantasy_. In 2009, Wolfsinger Press published his first book, 'The Hotel Galileo', the first volume in an alternate-history mystery series. In 2005, he was a finalist in the first Aeon Award with his story 'Juju', which appears in his collection, _The Midnight Men and Other Stories_. More recently, he reached the finals in L Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest. He recently graduated with a degree in Literature from the Open University. Visit the Steam-powered Typewriter Blog at: http://leemoan.blogspot.com/.

##  Also Available

Forever

Symbiosis

The Midnight Men and Other Stories

The Barclay Heath Mysteries

The Hotel Galileo

The Vanished Race

Now read on for an exclusive preview of Lee Moan's forthcoming novel...

#  The Door in the Sky

The hansom cab arrived at the Deptford wharf just before eight o'clock under a dismal olive and silver sky. The horses' hooves clattered noisily on the waterfront cobbles, startling a flock of gulls which had settled on the bell post. With a brisk tug on the reins the driver brought the geldings to a halt.

"Here you are, Inspector," he said.

Darknoll opened the cab door and climbed down onto the creaking boards of the jetty. Despite his heavy overcoat the cold quickly penetrated his bones. A fine spray from the water fell on his skin with a tenderness he found unsettling. At the far end of the pier a group of dark figures moved about in a shifting screen of grey mist.

"Murder, is it, sir?" the driver asked. "Nasty one, I'll wager, judging by all them bobbies."

Darknoll looked up at him.

"Thank you, driver," he said, with heavy emphasis on the last word.

The young man wilted under Darknoll's gaze and shook the reins, leading the cab away without another word. Darknoll watched the hansom vanish into the swirling fog; in no time at all, the sound of hooves had faded to an echo.

A pale face emerged from the mist. It was Sergeant Lampshire. His deputy had sent the cab to collect him at his home, dragging him away from a hearty meal and the promise of a pleasant evening by the hearth with Louise.

"Evening, Inspector. Apologies for sending a taxi to collect you. All the police carriages are out on duty this evening. It's an eventful night I'm afraid to say."

"No matter," Darknoll said. "I only hope this is worth my while."

Lampshire did not answer immediately, pulling up the collars of his overcoat and peering into the wall of mist. Something about the younger man's hesitancy alerted Darknoll to an unspoken fear which had reared up the moment the cab driver rapped on his door.

"I think you should take a look for yourself, sir," Lampshire said.

Perhaps the curious driver had been correct in his assumption, Darknoll wondered. Perhaps this was not just another case of accidental manslaughter or crime of passion . . .

They walked briskly down the jetty together, the click-clack of Darknoll's cane providing a rhythmic accompaniment to his turbulent thoughts. Out in the bay, obscured by the low-lying mist, a tugboat bleated its horn with a mournful timbre. At the end of the pier they found several constables in greatcoats bearing portable lanterns. They peered out of the mist with the gaunt masks of ghosts.

Lying on the boards at their feet was the body of a young woman. The face did not appear to be beaten or bruised, although the eyelids and cheeks were heavily painted in a manner most commonly associated with women of disrepute. The victim was fully clothed, her arms and legs splayed, positioned in such a way as to resemble an X-shape. A brief examination of the victim showed no tethers binding her hands and feet. No signs of bruising about the neck. No cuts. No blood.

"Who discovered the body?" Darknoll asked.

"The wharf master's son," Lampshire said.

"He's been taken into custody?"

"No, sir, we sent him home with his father."

Darknoll's eyes flashed. "Why?"

"Because he's eight years old, sir."

"Oh, I see."

"We took statements from father and son," Lampshire said, "but they knew very little."

Darknoll scanned the surrounding area, the edges of the jetty cloaked in seeping mist. On the boards around the body patches of rainwater glistened in the moonlight.

"The boy didn't touch anything did he?"

"He says he didn't. He said it was all he could do not to vomit. He looked pale as a nun when we spoke to him."

Leaning on his cane, Darknoll crouched down on one knee and studied the still figure.

How did you die, my girl? he wondered. What caused your young heart to stop beating?

Lampshire leaned over, hands on knees, to address the corpse directly. "Somebody has done for you, young Henrietta, haven't they? You'll be sleeping with the Devil himself tonight, won't you now?"

"Hold your tongue, Sergeant," Darknoll said in a controlled tone. "Have some respect for the dead."

Lampshire took the chastisement without a flicker of remorse. "Respect?" he said, with a snort. "She was a whore, sir. The only thing she respected was money for you know what."

"All the more reason to pity her, Sergeant. Now, let that be the last word on the subject."

Darknoll felt Lampshire's eyes upon him, but he continued to study the dead girl.

"So, Sergeant, what do we know about the child?"

"Not a great deal," Lampshire said. Darknoll noted the tightness in his voice. "Henrietta Swan. Twenty-one years old. She worked the streets in the Portland district. Word was she would do anything for any man. And she liked the rougher kind."

Darknoll appraised the victim once more in light of this. Studying the girl's painted face, he felt a sudden bolt of empathy, a deep and abiding sorrow for the victim. He imagined a mother, a father, an older brother, perhaps, all of them heartbroken and praying, daily, for this young woman's redemption.

Then he saw her with her killer in the shadows of a filthy alleyway somewhere. He could almost imagine the man's face, but it had no features: just a face-like blur, smudged by an artist's thumb. Perhaps he was a client and she entertained his deviant desires at first; perhaps he asked her to indulge him in some obscene act, an act which quickly got out of hand. Perhaps, even near the end, she never suspected this night would be her last, and that the redemption her family prayed for would be stolen away forever . . .

Darknoll felt emotion rising up inside him and tried to shake it off. Most police officers became hardened to the victims they encountered, especially in a turbulent, overcrowded city such as London. Sorrow was a luxury they could not afford to indulge in. Empathy was a curse.

"Have we established cause of death?" Darknoll said, pulling a leather glove over his left hand.

"You could say that, sir," Lampshire said. He gestured over his shoulder to a spot on the boards a few yards from the body. An object about the size of a fist rested on the boards, but it was impossible to see it clearly from this distance. Darknoll and Lampshire moved over to it, two of the constables following with lanterns. When the light fell on it, Darknoll grimaced.

It was a human heart, the major arteries severed neatly, almost surgically. A small amount of blood had congealed on the boards beneath it. Surrounding the organ was a simple diagram made from what appeared to be a white powder. The diagram consisted of a circle around the heart with twelve branches leading off from the central circle to twelve smaller circles.

Darknoll crouched down and dabbed his right forefinger into the powder. He sniffed it, then tasted it.

"Salt," he said.

"What do you make of this, Inspector?" Lampshire said, indicating the diagram. "Constellations, perhaps?"

Darknoll shrugged. "It looks like no constellation I've ever seen." He pulled out his notebook and quickly sketched the strange symbol. "Has anyone examined Miss Swan's body to confirm that this is her heart?"

"No," Lampshire said. "No one has touched her. We were waiting for you, sir. Inspector's privilege."

A hiss of suppressed laughter went round the group of constables. Lampshire turned his face away in an attempt at masking his smile.

Darknoll stared up at Lampshire, irritation and anger burning in his gut. He waited for his deputy to meet his eyes, and when he finally did, the smile vanished from his face.

"Right, Sergeant Lampshire," Darknoll said. "Let's have it, then."

"Sir?"

Darknoll indicated the body. "Come on, Sergeant, I would dearly like to hear your analysis. In your own time."

Lampshire glanced at the other constables with an expression of complete surprise. After some hesitation, he crouched down and began to study the dead girl.

"Well," he said, "obviously no signs of external trauma. Neck and wrists free of bruising."

"So what does that tell us?" Darknoll asked, one eyebrow arched in anticipation.

"That . . . that she was not restrained? She was a willing participant up until the moment of her death?"

Darknoll nodded. "Very good. Now, unbutton her blouse."

"Sir?"

"We found a human heart, Lampshire. We need to determine that it does indeed belong to Miss Swan."

Lampshire frowned before crouching again. He gently lifted the small brown cardigan which covered her upper torso. The fabric of the dress underneath was sodden with blood. The deep red blotch was concentrated around the heart. Lampshire clumsily unfastened the hook and eye buttons until her entire chest area was exposed. Every man cursed aloud when they saw the result.

The victim's ivory-coloured brassiere had been cut down the centre and now hung to the sides of the chest. In the place where the woman's heart should have been there was a gaping hole, a rude red cavity in the lower half of her chest. Blood had dried to a dark crust on the pale skin of her breasts.

Darknoll knelt down on the other side, removed his derby and smoothed his hair with a gloveless hand.

Lampshire looked at him, and Darknoll thought his deputy had grown pale. It made a welcome change to see the arrogance go out of the man's face.

Darknoll studied the hollow cavity, noticing another bloody mark just visible beneath the fabric of the open blouse. He reached over and pulled the shirt down an inch to reveal a definite shape, but one hard to define in the low light.

"You," he said to one of the nearby constables. He appeared to be the youngest. "What's your name?"

"Thacker, sir."

"Hold your lantern above me, Thacker. I need light."

The constable stumbled forward, holding the lantern directly above the pale corpse; at the same time half a dozen other beams of light fell on the area surrounding the body, creating an intense, almost ethereal, glow to the scene. The dead girl looked almost angelic.

Darknoll examined the ornate symbol carved into the skin. Three wavy lines crossed through by a single jagged scar.

He unfastened the remaining buttons and folded back the two halves of her blouse to reveal more symbols carved across the girl's stomach and groin.

"Dear God," Lampshire said.

Darknoll pored over the other symbols: a cat's head with a solitary eye in the centre, a triangle with a star at its centre, a gate with a crescent above it. There were thirteen in total, covering the torso in a rough circular pattern.

Eventually Darknoll sat back on his haunches, staring into the wall of mist.

"I know what this is," Lampshire said. "I've seen this before."

Darknoll said nothing, his lips pressed tight together.

"Witchcraft," Lampshire said, standing up abruptly and moving some distance away from the circle. "Saw something similar up in Winchmore Hill back in ninety-two. Animals with their organs cut out. Weird symbols painted in blood. Black magic." He sniffed dismissively. "It's the blackies bringing it over from Africa. Bloody mumbo-jumbo if you ask me."

Before anyone could respond, the silence was shattered by a loud inhalation followed by a piercing scream.

Darknoll flinched as a hand flailed out and grabbed hold of the lapel of his coat. It took a few seconds for him to register that the hand belonged to the girl. Her eyes were open and staring, filled with panic and naked terror. The young woman was trying to pull herself up into a sitting position, but ended up pulling Darknoll down towards her.

"Cass-ku nuo-shi!" she stammered. "Barra-nokk! Vestanji!"

A thousand thoughts rolled through Darknoll's mind, every one of them obfuscated by his shock and confusion. He was looking at a girl who, until a moment ago, had been stone cold dead at their feet; now that same woman was looking into his eyes and screaming.

Oh God, her eyes.

He had never seen such fear.

She can't be alive, he kept hearing himself say. Her heart is missing. She can't—

"Help me," she said, her face an inch from his. Her breath smelled like cold meat. "Please help me. I'm so frightened. I can see them. Dark shapes moving beyond the silver sea. Hideous monsters! Oh God, it's so dark . . . so cold."

She trailed off, sobbing, choking. Her grip on his collar relaxed.

Darknoll recovered his senses, grabbing the girl's slackening hand. Her skin was so cold.

"Henrietta," he said hurriedly. "Henrietta, listen to me. Everything will be . . ."

A horrible gargling sound in her throat. She was slipping away.

What was he going to say to her? Everything will be all right? He couldn't bring himself to say that. The girl was dead.

What could he say?

A moment later her hand smacked against the boards and her eyes fluttered closed. Darknoll stared at her still form for a long time, his head filled with a dull, muted buzzing.

The sound of waves lapping against the wharf struts filled the silence.

"Sir?"

It was Thacker, the young constable. His lantern was visibly trembling. Darknoll looked up and found tears in the young man's eyes and a pained, questing look on his face. The boy needed reassurance, answers.

"Sir, what just happened?"

Darknoll stared at him for a long time, then looked at Lampshire. The sergeant's features were drawn into a tight frown. He sensed Darknoll's eyes upon him and shook his head, for once at a loss for words.

