The cold air rushed over me and was fresh in my pounding head. There was an energy in this astringent air, a vibrancy in the white foam on the end of each wave. But there was also something quite terrifying to this isolation, the remoteness of it all. A real danger. I just wasn’t sure where that danger was.
There were no paths, so we made a decision to hug the shoreline on our journey round the island. We skirted the beach, through long scrub grass and over dunes. Every step away from the house felt like we were casting ourselves adrift into a wild, unforgiving no man’s land.
As we journeyed on, our sense of purpose started to flag quite quickly. We’d fallen into an uneasy silence, each of us looking around the undeniable beauty of it all but also its ferocity. The sea battled at the edges of the landscape. There was no part of it that was sheltered. The hills of far islands stood defiant. With every step, I began to feel even more that we were such insignificant moments in this island’s history. Mists flowed down like grey water running from the hills. The sands lay in such sea-dark shadows that there was no telling where the land ended and the water began.
Those strange, moving lights I’d seen before perforated the sky, droplets of light appearing then vanishing in a moment.
‘The witch lights are back again,’ I said.
No one responded. As my mind wandered, the idea began to rise up that perhaps not everyone could see them. Was it just me? I quickly banished the thought.
I listened to the wind playing again with that strange tune. It rippled through the grass, over the dunes and across the surface of the beach, raking up a fine dusting of sand. A flock of birds took flight as if something had scared them.
A dark outline lay across the beach.
It moved.
As we drew closer, it formed into the shape of a seal that lazed and pulled its head up before looking in our direction.
‘Wildlife now as well.’ Mother sounded appalled. ‘What next?’
‘Some people think this is heaven,’ Spear said.
‘Dead people, presumably.’
We continued to shuffle through the bone-white sand. In fact, as I looked closely around my feet, there were white bones in the sand. I stopped and bent down. What looked like a long femur bone was poking out. I turned it over with my foot and more bones began to move to the surface. And then a skull. A human skull. There were bodies all around us, sections of them poking through the sand.
My hand went to my mouth but it didn’t stifle the scream.
‘What now?’ Mirabelle blew out in frustration.
The rest of them had stopped and were standing there, watching me.
‘Have you thought for a minute that if it wasn’t one of us who murdered Angel,’ I spoke slowly, carefully choosing each word, ‘then it has to be someone else, someone here on the island?’
‘Oh my God.’ Mirabelle turned to Mother. ‘I thought you’d explained to her that this sort of behaviour isn’t acceptable outside the house?’
‘There could be a killer, on this island who—’
‘Wait.’ Aunt Charlotte looked down. ‘What the hell is that?’
I stood back to reveal the skull. ‘Look at the sand,’ I said. ‘It’s full of them! Bones! Human bones!’
Aunt Charlotte stared at me wild-eyed. ‘Oh God, we’re all going to die!’
‘Be quiet, Charlotte.’
‘No, you be quiet for once, Pandora. Look at this place, it’s . . . it’s . . . the Hebridean Chainsaw Massacre!’
Spear was shaking his head. ‘No, no, you don’t understand—’
‘Oh, I think I do! I see it now. This is your lair. You’ve brought us here to kill us. It’s you! You’re disposing of the bodies here. You’re the Leatherjacket.’ Aunt Charlotte stood pointing at Spear.
He sighed and shook his head. ‘You need to calm down.’
‘What, so you can kill us without a fuss?’
‘Oh you’d make plenty of fuss.’ Mirabelle started to look more closely at the sand.
Spear closed his eyes as if trying hard to keep his patience. ‘Firstly, it’s “Leatherface”, not “Leatherjacket” and secondly, no, I’m not bringing people here for some sort of killing sport. This is an old burial ground.’ He pointed to a battered sign nailed to a wooden board. ‘It’s where the skulls come from. The skulls in the house. Bottlenose explained it to me.’
‘When? Not to us, he didn’t.’
‘Oh my God, what is it with people building on old burial grounds? Have they not watched Poltergeist? Have they learned nothing?’
‘Aunt Charlotte, no one’s built on it.’
She took a moment to digest this, turned her mouth down and shrugged. ‘Not yet, dear.’ She had that look as if she’d said something profound. She calls this her ‘Aramis face’ — she means ‘Amis’.
‘The sign explains it.’ Spear turned to look out at the sea.
I looked around. There was, of course, a very large and obvious sign by the edge of the sand. We read it in silence.
This is the ancient burial ground of the island, year by year more exposed by erosion. The area has been registered by the authorities in Edinburgh as an Ancient Monument of considerable importance and therefore may not be excavated without permission.
Every year human remains become exposed and, since 1966, are regularly rescued and cared for by Professor Miles of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. The building at the centre came to light in 1971 and is a chapel, thought to be of the fourteenth century, which became buried by sand blows in the sixteenth century.
Please do not move any bones or pottery that may be exposed and please walk over the site with care.
‘Oh.’ Aunt Charlotte looked down at the bones. ‘I suppose that does seem to explain it quite fully.’
I tried to carefully reposition the bone I’d moved with my foot.
‘Sorry,’ Aunt Charlotte called over to Spear sheepishly. ‘I thought—’
‘I know what you thought.’ He looked round at her, then at all of us. ‘First, you thought my wife was hiding out somewhere and killing people. Then you thought I was a serial killer using an uninhabited island as my lair.’
It was fairly undeniable that these allegations had all been laid against him.
Aunt Charlotte leaned closer towards me. ‘He does seem to be taking it all a bit to heart, doesn’t he?’
‘Grief can make people see things in a very odd light.’ Mother was scanning the horizon trying to look distracted. This was a strange comment from Mother. Mother doesn’t do empathy, not usually. I watched her and Aunt Charlotte share a look. It was only for a moment, but it’s rare that Mother would do this too. It was all becoming very disorientating.
The lights still flickered out in the distant mist. But they seemed more than just random. There was a purpose to their movements as if they were being guided by something or someone. My exhausted mind was too quick to settle on the idea of some sort of hand moving those lights. I watched them flare and float with a new vigour.
The wind had picked up again. It was growing increasingly frantic and cold against our skin. Rain dappled our faces. Every step was a trial for our weak legs now. We dragged our fatigued bodies through the sand and grass. The ground was becoming more loamy beneath our feet as we moved further away from the shore, a thick mixture of sandy soil, wet and clinging to our feet. The land rose steeply into the cold steel sky and as we stumbled over the top edge of the hill, we saw it — another building. Another light. Another life. Someone else was here with us on the island.
CHAPTER 22: AN UNEXPECTED GUEST
Visitors can be disturbing at the best of times and there was nothing best about these times. Mother, of course, has her own unique way of dealing with guests, or ‘intruders’, as she calls them. She has many mottos that she uses in place of offering any real guidance in life, one of which is, ‘Always be visitor-ready.’ This basically means keeping your home spartan so it looks like nobody lives in it. Some guests admittedly might fin
d it disorientating that there are no personal items or photographs whatsoever. It can also be confusing that Mother doesn’t know where any cups are because she always gets a takeaway coffee, but then they discover that there’s no tea or coffee in the house anyway, or milk, or a kettle.
Our house is always kept clean and ready for the estate agent pictures to be taken. But Mother never gets around to calling them. She’s not even started looking for a new place to live and Dad’s been dead a long time now.
The main thing Mother was quick to strip out of our house was Dad’s existence. After he died, she scrubbed every inch of it as if he’d left a residue of himself there or something she didn’t want reminding of. I’d always assumed that we’d just move. She’d said we would often enough. But something seemed to keep her there.
At least she could say we were always visitor-ready. It didn’t matter that the only visitors we ever had were Aunt Charlotte and Mirabelle.
This new visitor to our island, however, was even more disturbing than them. Ever since our arrival, Bottlenose had talked endlessly about witches, faeries and evil spirits and here stood the very embodiment of a fairy-tale witch’s house.
It was a small and gnarled, weathered stone building no bigger than a shed, with a single room. There was no glass in the dark hole that served as a window and the door was cut from crude wood, not finished or painted. No one could possibly live here in such conditions. Both Spear and Bottlenose had told us this was an uninhabited island. Yet, a thin trail of smoke curled out of the chimney and there, moving inside that black window, was one of the lights I’d been seeing: the witch light.
‘I thought you said no one lived here.’ Mother angled herself aggressively towards Spear.
‘They don’t. That’s a bothy, a kind of place for travellers to shelter in for a night maybe. No one lives in them. I didn’t even know there was a bothy on this island. I doubt many people do.’
‘Well, there’s certainly not a lot of passing trade,’ Mirabelle sniffed.
Slowly, we walked towards the small building. My thoughts quickly tumbled with all the impossible images of witches and supernatural horrors. I knew it was nonsense, but here, now, with the waves rolling round us and the world so far away, anything seemed possible. Perhaps there really was a woman with horseshoes nailed to her or a small man in the Devil’s coffin riding out there on the waves.
All these strange, bewildering images were quickly dismissed when a face appeared at the window. Neatly framed by the damp grey stone, was the stodgy, grinning face of . . .
‘Kempmobil!’ I said in disbelief.
‘Who?’
‘It’s the man, Aunt Charlotte, the guide . . . the man with the whip belt.’
‘Brendan?’ Spear’s face rippled with confusion.
‘Oh, hi!’ Kemp called and waved as if it was the most natural thing in the world that he would be in a tiny stone hut on this uninhabited island we’d been shipwrecked on.
All those strange, impossible thoughts I’d had of us being watched, of there being someone else here, an outside presence that had stalked us from our very first moment on the island and maybe even killed one of us, were all starting to look a little less far-fetched.
Suspicion spread through each of our faces in turn. In the background of the hut, just behind Kemp, I could see small candles flickering, their wax dripping on the floor below.
‘You’re the witch,’ I whispered.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The witch lights I kept seeing, it’s you.’
‘Witch lights?’ He stepped forward out of the door and we all instinctively took a step back.
I looked at Spear, then Mother. ‘Ever since we got here, I’ve been seeing the lights in the hills. I thought it was just the witch lights Bottlenose told us about.’
Kemp paused, looking dishevelled in khaki — his signature look. ‘But I’ve only just arrived.’
‘Really?’ Mirabelle looked at him in disbelief. ‘We’ve all seen how long it takes you to light a fire.’
‘It was already lit.’
The weak smoke rose from the chimney and I could see past Kemp that there was a smouldering fire that looked like it was burning down.
‘What are you doing here?’ Spear asked, unconvinced.
‘I was . . . looking for you guys. I can’t believe I’ve found you!’ Kemp’s enthusiasm seemed a little contrived. He frowned. ‘I might ask, though, what you’re doing here, ladies? I wouldn’t have had you down for jumping ship onto the hardcore trip — or were you shanghaied?’ He laughed and looked over at Spear.
‘We’ve been here all along, over the other side of that hill. How much looking did you do?’ Mother folded her arms. ‘The island’s the size of a playground with one big house on it. We were hardly difficult to find.’
‘Like I say, I only just got here. I was about to start up my reconnaissance mission.’ Kemp started to walk towards us again and we all took another step back.
‘Hey!’ He held up his hands. ‘I thought you guys would be pleased to see me. I’m the rescue party.’
We couldn’t have looked less thrilled. We stood there in a dissolute line, exhausted, hungry and desperate with fear. Even Kemp could see that his announcement hadn’t quite created the excitement he’d been hoping for.
He tried to placate us. ‘Look, by the time I got to the harbour, I realized you guys had gone. We checked your rooms and you weren’t there either. I tried your phones — no luck. I figured from the way you’d been the day before that you’d gone home and couldn’t hack it.’
‘Couldn’t hack it? You must be joking!’ Mother rolled her eyes.
‘I had to get my tour off. So I took them to the first island but we had to come straight back because of the weather. When they told me there’d still been no sign of Spear’s boat and they’d lost communication, I said I’d come out and take a look for them.’ He looked round at our dubious faces. ‘I know Spear, he likes to go off-grid a bit. So I told them I’d scout around and get back to them. The boys back at Leverburgh were happy with that. I’ve done it before. They weren’t worried. There’d been no distress call lodged from The Terror. I figured you must have been forced to land on one of the islands in the sound for a bit, so I started searching.’
‘Alone?’ Spear’s voice was quiet. ‘You didn’t think to bring help?’
‘I’m a survivalist! I didn’t need help. Anyway, how come you stole my clients?’
‘I didn’t realize they were your clients. As far as I knew, they were standing there waiting for the boat.’
‘What? You’re kidding me right, mate?’ Kemp snorted. ‘Look at them!’
Aunt Charlotte looked confused. ‘Whatever do you mean, young man?’
Spear looked ruffled. ‘I don’t keep the list of clients, Nell did all that sort of thing and handed it to the captain. He’d have the list, not me. It’s how we always work. Worked.’ He looked at the ground.
I watched him closely. Was his wife really past tense to him now?
‘Look, I’m sorry, mate, but this is what I’m always saying about you guys who aren’t locals doing these trips. You sail here once in a blue moon, you’ve no idea about the local conditions or our systems or our ways and look what happens. Chaos, that’s what.’
‘You’re kidding me now, right?’ Spear pushed his face towards Kemp. ‘We should just step aside for jokers like you with your Boy Scout courses? I bet you’re still skinning your pet rabbits on day one.’
We all raised our eyebrows, but no one wanted to interrupt this.
Kemp held his chin up as if he was daring Spear to punch it. ‘We’re very cutting-edge. We’ve got mindfulness, yoga, life skills. It’s blue sky thinking.’
‘It’s been nothing but grey,’ Aunt Charlotte sighed.
Spear stepped closer towards him. ‘Mate, we are the real deal. We’re a survival course. People don’t want your old-fashioned Carry On Camping crap anymore.’
‘What’s wrong
with Carry On Camping?’ Aunt Charlotte looked genuinely insulted.
‘Weren’t you in it?’
‘No, Mirabelle, I wasn’t in it.’
‘Anyway, we’ve got that useless beer sack Bottlenose to add a bit of local colour.’ An aggressive smile spread across Spear’s mouth. ‘People like you, your days are numbered, mate.’
These were not the words anyone wanted to hear on this rock in the middle of nowhere with a murderer on the loose.
‘Oh,’ Kemp said, ‘is that right? Look at the state you’re in! You come along and wreak havoc on small communities and you’ve got no idea of the mess you leave behind. It’s us who are left holding the baby . . . trying to clean up what you lot leave behind.’
Spear watched him. There was definitely more than an undercurrent here. Something else was going on. It seemed like a very inappropriate moment to speak, so Mother did. ‘When you two have finished playing at Rambo, can you just explain to us why you didn’t make any effort at all to tell us you were here? Perhaps you could have dropped in to say hi, have a cup of tea like a good new neighbour.’
‘We haven’t got any tea.’ Everyone took a moment to look at Aunt Charlotte again.
‘I’ve explained this! I was starving.’
‘Look, Brendan, mate, there’s no need for us to fall out,’ Spear sighed, ‘but this makes no sense. You’re telling us you’ve come to the rescue, but you’ve not even searched the island for us and we’re pretty easy to find. I don’t mean to sound—’
‘I think you should know, there’ve been deaths,’ Mirabelle announced in a flat voice.
‘I . . . what . . . deaths?’ Kemp looked between us in turn as if trying to get confirmation.
BODY ON THE ISLAND a gripping murder mystery packed with twists (Smart Woman's Mystery Book 2) Page 19
