‘Very nice,’ I nodded. Somehow my reaction didn’t seem quite enough. His face grew even more severe. He lifted the leg a little higher until it looked extremely uncomfortable.
Technical Woman held hers up for inspection too as if that might push my decision over the line. She had the raw-edged intensity of an estate agent driven to seal the deal. I nodded profusely. ‘They’re great,’ I said with a look of encouragement that didn’t impress either of them.
‘Hardly Louboutins, dear,’ Mother had settled herself in and taken up a large proportion of the bench. With Aunt Charlotte and Mirabelle occupying the entirety of the other bench, and Bridget and Mr Bojingles viciously guarding another corner, there was little room left for much more than the technical couple’s matching rucksacks.
‘You’re gonna need a bigger boat,’ I laughed.
No one else did.
‘It’s a quote. Where do we meet—
‘Sit down, girl,’ Bottlenose shouted. He spoke with a coarse voice, that made every word seem like a struggle. Unlike Spear and Nell, his Scottish accent was very concentrated as if he’d never stepped foot anywhere else in his life. ‘You’ve already walked across a parcel o’ropes and fishing gear before we was ’bout to set out to sea! Don’t you be bringing no more bad luck down on us.’ He turned back, shaking his head. ‘Women on board, always bad luck.’
‘Any views on drunk and incapable captains being on board?’ Mirabelle called. ‘How lucky is that?’
‘Sit down, Ursula,’ Mother said impatiently.
I turned and saw a thin section of unoccupied bench at the back next to the remaining member of the group. He hadn’t spoken to anyone but simply maintained the long smile of a man who had a lurid secret. He was the one notable exception to the full-combat look. He was dressed in a way that wasn’t ageing well, his black leather jacket and low-cut V-neck already offering a glimpse of the sad middle-aged man he would become. A large number of chains and pendants dangled from his neck and round his wrists. His boots had small Cuban heels on them. In spite of it all, there was something about the total disregard for any practicality that I admired, but he clearly wasn’t going to survive.
‘I see you eyeing my style there, lady,’ he sneered and winked.
‘I’m sorry, young man, but you need to move,’ Mother cast her disapproving eye over him.
He laughed at Mother, which is never a wise move.
‘I’m Ursula.’ I stepped forward quickly in an attempt to defuse the Motherbomb.
He hesitated before smiling. ‘Angel.’
I looked quickly towards Mother.
‘Angel?’ Aunt Charlotte whispered.
‘Yes, as in wings and God and all of that.’ He frowned. ‘It’s Puerto Rican, like my mother.’ His accent was pure Hackney. ‘So if—’
‘No, no, it’s not that,’ I stammered, ‘it’s just—’
‘We knew some people called Angel,’ Bridget interrupted. ‘They’re dead now, though.’ She was distractedly stroking her dog in the manner of a crazed Bond villain.
Angel’s mouth cracked open a little. I was growing increasingly aware of the rest of the boat’s attention.
‘Can we carry this on later, ladies?’ Spear stood with his hands on his hips and a particularly keen expression settling on his face. He had the look of a determined PE teacher who’s seen the calibre of his students but still refuses to accept defeat. ‘It’s time to start surviving!’ This last comment didn’t seem to create the buzz of confidence he’d been hoping for.
CHAPTER 7: COFFIN BOY
I wedged myself into the bench seat. Somehow, after Bridget’s comment, the technical couple had seemed happier to make more room for me, shuffling down the benches as far as they could. We’re used to this reaction now. As soon as anyone knows anything about us, or remembers why we’ve been in the papers, they back away as if we’re some kind of bad omen. Maybe we are. What happened in the next few hours certainly seemed to indicate that that might be a possibility.
Given how small the boat was, we were still squashed together pretty tight.
‘Hi.’ Technical Woman next to me spoke in a clipped, efficient way.
‘Hi,’ I smiled, ‘I’ve only been introduced to your shoes so far.’
She looked quizzically at me as if she was trying to work out if it was a joke or not. ‘I’m Jess.’
‘Ursula.’
Up close, she was softer, as if the severe outfit might just be a costume. The sharp edge of her seemed to blur. She had clear, pearl skin, and falling from her black beanie was a mass of rust curls. She’d enhanced the colour, making it just a shade too vibrant for the insipid pallor of the rest of her as if she knew she had to in some way compensate for everything else. It was as if she thought she could distract everyone from her shy, introverted nature simply by issuing one great big loud scream of colour. She was young, mid-twenties, but had such fragile, translucent skin that the area under her eyes was already a thin, bruise-like purple. There was a tiredness, almost an anxiety that hung about her like a new mother. This didn’t in any way seem like the kind of trip she was used to.
‘This is my partner, Ryan.’ She put her arm around the serious man next to her. The thick, dark-rimmed glasses dominated his face in a way that announced his specs before him. He nodded as if words were too much, his face already troubled, drained, with a sickly sheen to the skin.
‘Don’t mind him,’ she smiled. ‘Landlubber! We run a lifestyle blog.’ She said it as if that was all we needed to know about them. I gave her my look of intense interest, the one I reserve for Mother’s chats about her barre class.
‘We’re vloggers,’ Ryan added.
‘Oh dear.’ Aunt Charlotte looked concerned. ‘I suspect they’ll be able to cook you something though, if you’ve warned them in advance.’
Jess looked confused. ‘And you?’ She nodded towards me.
I pushed my hair back from the wind. ‘Oh, I’ve just finished university and I’m exploring a few different options.’
‘She finished five years ago. She’s unemployed and still living with her mother because of her issues,’ Mirabelle leaned back in her seat, her eyes fixed on me.
We banked sharply over another wave and Ryan the Vlogger’s face took on a deeply sour look. Jess didn’t acknowledge Mirabelle’s comment, or at least chose not to focus on it. ‘This is our engagement present to ourselves — this trip.’ She looked nervous, her eyes flicking from one of us to the next.
‘That’s nice,’ I said unconvincingly. I looked out at the morbid sky. ‘An interesting choice.’ The waves were becoming more insistent and I wondered just what exactly these two imagined they’d need to be prepared for in married life. I’m sure Mother would agree with the ‘nerves of steel’ approach, but then she always saw married life as a long campaign. When Dad was gone, there was only me to battle. It’s been a long war.
The boat was reeling more now. I looked back and the landing stage was far behind us. We were heading towards that distant part of the sky that seemed to be no more than a black stain. It was then that I felt the first spots of rain on my face.
Bottlenose cleared his throat over the side of the boat and began whistling a kind of tuneless sea shanty as he steered. We all sat on our rocking benches in silence watching the early light move across the distant iron hills. I looked out to the point where the horizon fell into the sea and felt my stomach lurch with the waves again.
‘Storm rising.’ Bottlenose nodded towards the thickening sky. The clouds hung low in a great wash of tin-grey that settled above us. ‘Grab my supplies, boy.’ He turned to a waif of a boy, huddled deep into the corner, on the floor. I hadn’t seen him until now. He couldn’t have been much more than sixteen and the nervous shadow that crossed his face suggested this was not the best career choice for him. There was already a livid bruise under his left eye and the rest of him looked frail, his hair an unkempt mess, his skin gaunt and knuckles raw from the seawater. He looked exhausted, afraid
even.
‘Come on, lad, snap to! No use regretting all that ale last night.’ Bottlenose laughed as if he might lose part of his lung in the process.
‘There’s no storm predicted. Don’t be ridiculous,’ Spear called over the wind. ‘I’ve checked the long-range weather forecast. No storms.’
‘All I know is that when them there geese are flying inland like that to the hills, ’tis a sure sign of snow and storm.’
We all looked towards the great millstone hills and sure enough, there was a cloud of birds rising over them.
‘Snow? I can’t be in the snow again,’ Mirabelle said.
‘Who’s got issues now?’ I looked at her and she watched me with her venomous little eyes.
Bottlenose emptied his throat over the side again. ‘The birds’ feathers be needed for snowflakes, you see.’
‘What?’
‘You should talk to Ursula about that,’ Mirabelle sneered. ‘She knows all about snowflakes.’
‘You can mock, missy.’
Mirabelle looked confused. She wasn’t accustomed to being called ‘missy’.
‘But there’s a truth in the old ways. When you’ve seen the sun turn backwards in the sky and faeries leap across the hill lights, when you’ve heard the kelpies dancing at dawn and the mermaids crying their salt tears, then you can tell me there’s no truth in my world.’
I think it was around about then that we first began to doubt the sanity of our captain and, to a large extent, the concept of the whole expedition. He steered round and a great wash of briny water, thick with seaweed, doused one side of the deck. My face was thrown to one side and as I opened my eyes and looked back round, a silver spark glinted above the ship. It was sitting on the top of the mast.
‘There’s something up there.’ I tried to sound calm. ‘It’s moving around! Look. On the top of the mast.’
The captain started with his full-throated laughter again, which inevitably ended in him emptying another mouthful over the side and wiping the back of his hand across his face. Everyone looked up to the sky, the mast reeling around like an old branch against the cold metal of that sky.
‘See!’ I pointed. ‘It’s glinting.’
‘I can see it,’ Aunt Charlotte said. ‘Perhaps it’s one of your wee sprites or faeries, Captain.’
His smile fell. ‘Course it ain’t, stupid witch-woman.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘’Tis a horseshoe from another witch who weren’t so lucky. Guards against evil agencies — witches, petrels, faeries and evil eyes. You know the sort of thing.’
‘No,’ Mother said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
He turned his eye on her. ‘You will, missy. You will before this is all done. I’ll tell you of a man who didn’t believe and he ain’t breathing no more.’
‘Really?’ Mother said. ‘Are you attempting to frighten me? I warn you, Worzel, the last man who did that ended up dead.’ She looked around the rest of us and saw our troubled faces looking back. ‘I meant the butler! Angel.’
‘Wait.’ Angel frowned. ‘You killed this man called Angel?’
‘No, no. I didn’t kill him. That’s why I said “ended up dead”.’
‘What you said was very misleading.’
‘At no point did I say I killed him.’
‘But I invite you to consider that you did encourage us to think you’d had a hand in his death in order to frighten this tramp captain into believing you might in some way endanger his life if he attempted to frighten you.’
Mother stared at Angel. ‘You have a very interesting turn of phrase for a . . . what exactly did you say you do?’
Angel shrugged. ‘I run a botánica. Health and well-being products for the spiritually inclined.’ He winked, which didn’t seem wise. ‘Anyway, all I’m saying is we need to be specific about our words if someone is going to get killed.’ Angel shook his head and the chains and bracelets jangled around him.
‘No one is going to get killed.’ Mother sighed. ‘I was simply saying . . .’
Another wave broke heavily into the side of the boat and again we plunged down into the sea. Spume rose up around us and fell, washing over the deck with the rain.
Bottlenose laughed. ‘Don’t you be worrying, now. The sea can get more evil than this.’ His voice had a vulgar sound to it. ‘Years back when men went on great voyages to new worlds, one ship was leaving for distant lands — Australia, if my old memory serves me.’ He paused to drink from a bottle and staggered as the boat mounted the sharp edge of another wave. He struggled to control the wheel with his one free hand. ‘Just as the anchor was lifting, a man, not much more than a boy, comes running and leaps right onto that ship. “Room for one more?” he says. Well, there was always room for more hands back then. So, they sets sail with him. Not long after, as they delve into deep waters and the waves rise up like Titans round the ship, up comes one mighty tower of water and spills its guts on the deck. What it leaves behind mystifies the crew.’ Bottlenose leaned closer to us and whispered, his mouth full of spit and liquor, ‘A coffin.’
‘Shit,’ I heard Jess say next to me.
I leaned closer to hear above the waves.
‘Well, those boys, they didn’t know what to do with that. It was so smooth and new and when they opens it up, they see it all lined with rich man’s velvet. But it was small, see. So small that it intrigued those men. And they gets to trying it out. One after another, laughing and joking, egging one another on. But no one can fit in it. Almost as though it was built for a child.’
Aunt Charlotte shifted in her seat.
‘Well, now they’ve all tried it. All except the young lad who almost missed the boat. He goes last and as he lays in it, the men sees he fits it as perfectly as if it was made for him and they all laughed, they did. He’s smiling away lying there until with a great smash—’ Bottlenose stamped his foot suddenly on the deck — ‘that coffin lid comes down and before anyone can move, another great wave covers the deck. And when it’s cleared, the coffin is gone, snatched back by the sea with the lad still inside it.’ Bottlenose paused to swig from his bottle. He staggered into the wind, watching our faces as if he was enjoying our fear. ‘Well, they searched those wild waves as much as they could but there was no trace of either the boy or the coffin.
‘When they gets to their port, the captain has to report the loss but he doesn’t want them thinking he’s gone stark raving mad so he makes no mention of that coffin. He just tells them this lad ran on and asked for work. Poor lad was washed overboard. The harbour master waits a moment and writes up the loss. Then he says, “Well, there be no loss there. That young lad who boarded your ship had murdered some poor gal in Liverpool. Happen he got his just deserts.”’
We stared in silence as the rain lashed our wide-eyed faces.
‘Devil took him, they do say.’ Bottlenose staggered again. ‘Got his special coffin all ready he did and sent it for the lad. Fit that murderer proper grand and—’
A wave rose and smashed over the deck. More than one of us screamed out. There was no coffin but Bottlenose laughed his thick laugh and turned the wheel hard into the rising storm.
CHAPTER 8: DON’T GO OVERBOARD
Lightning splintered out and left behind a black, stark sky as though it had been charred. A spent-match smell lingered in the briny air. Waves reached up to the sky with desperate hands and the white light fractured out across the sea again. The waves thundered down and battered us relentlessly. We were thrown as if we were already driftwood. Jess leaned over the side, her red hair fighting against the wind. She was quickly sick, closely followed by the young lad, his face sallow and drawn. Bottlenose just gave his thick, guttural laugh before swigging from his bottle wrapped in wet paper.
‘This be the Sound of Harris, girl,’ he called to Mother who looked confused. It had been a long time since she’d been called a girl.
‘A local band?’ Aunt Charlotte fell back into the bench.
‘Best be ca
reful those mermen don’t rise up from their sunken world and drag you down to their kingdom with all the other girlies they’ve snatched.’ Bottlenose turned and grinned to show his chessboard teeth. ‘There be monsters here.’ He winked.
‘I can see that,’ Mother shouted.
Another flare of lightning cut the sky into fragments and clouds swirled above us in dark mussel-shell colours. The reflection flashed in long shards across the black sea. We rose up on a wave and tilted into the water before being cast down again. Our eyes were raw with salt spray as the wind gathered and rolled over us. Each wave rumbled towards us, building in noise like a great rolling boulder before collapsing onto us again.
‘Ship disappeared back there in the Little Minch and never was found,’ Bottlenose called over the voice of the wind. ‘The Duffac.’
‘Enough now, Bottlenose.’ Spear waded through the buffeting wind and stood alongside him. He’d been sitting silently all this time, with a brooding look. ‘Enough of your tales. That was just a whale or some basking shark.’
‘Shark?’ Aunt Charlotte cried over the wind.
‘Or a mermaid,’ Bottlenose added.
‘That’s right, Bottlenose. Or a mermaid. Or a princess on a unicorn.’ Spear shook his head.
‘No unicorns in the sea, missy. Seahorse, more likely.’
Spear looked confused for a moment. He wasn’t used to being called ‘missy’ either.
The boat suddenly tilted, the wind spraying hard salt water into our faces. It was Ryan’s turn to hang precariously over the edge. Bridget was clinging to her dog and seemed for all the world like she was praying. She looked older, frightened. I looked around our group and it suddenly occurred to me that Mother, Mirabelle and Aunt Charlotte might not be suited to this either. This might actually be too much for them. It had all seemed so anodyne in the literature, a fun camping trip with a bit of camouflage and fire-making then home for some mindful tea. Certainly, that’s how it had seemed in the briefing. I looked around again. We’d not seen any sign of the boat with the others. Where were the fat City boys? In fact, where was Kemp? What had Spear said when we were on the pier? I couldn’t remember, but it had definitely seemed like we should be going with him. There hadn’t been any reason to question it — not then. We’d been where we should be, waiting for a boat. But this was a whole different league of technical clothing — more SAS than H&M, or, in Aunt Charlotte’s case, C&A circa 1982. We certainly didn’t fit here.
BODY ON THE ISLAND a gripping murder mystery packed with twists (Smart Woman's Mystery Book 2) Page 6
