The Girl on Shattered Rock: A gripping suspense thriller

by Matt Hilton

  ‘I’ll be able to work it out. Thanks, Mr McBride, but I’ll let you get back to your boat now.’

  Leah adjusted the bags on her shoulders, before reaching for the handle of her suitcase. McBride laid his hand over hers, and Leah tensed at the unwelcome intimacy. She looked up sharply at McBride, and he eyed her with wisps of smoke leaking from the corners of his mouth. He nodded, indicating a point beyond her left shoulder. ‘Just thought I should mention,’ he said, ‘the terrain over thon side of the island’s pretty wild, untouched for years, you might want to avoid going that way while you’re here. Could be a wee bit dangerous for you.’

  Leah waited and he got the message. He slowly withdrew his hand.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and not necessarily for the warning. ‘I’ll make sure I don’t. But you mentioned something about a radio…’

  ‘Simple thing, it is. Switch it on, press the send button and speak. Let go of the button to hear my reply.’ McBride nodded, then withdrew his cigarette and eyed the embers. ‘Last chance. I can tell you’re not completely comfortable with the arrangements. There’s nae harm if you decide to go back to the mainland with me.’

  ‘Funny way to run a business,’ she said with a forced smile, ‘trying to talk your customers out of staying.’

  He shrugged. ‘Money’s not that important to me. But if you’re happy to stay, then I’m happy to have you here.’

  She looked over the bay, watching the sea surge and roll. She was reminded of the recurring nightmare that had troubled her lately, and felt as breathless as she always did when she woke gasping for air. She was positive she couldn’t face her fears again today.

  ‘I’m staying,’ she said.

  3

  The cabin was more spacious than it looked in the photographs she’d viewed when making her on-line booking. It was also older and scruffier than the touched-up images promised, but she hadn’t really expected luxury anyway. From what she’d learned the cabin was built in the early 1970s by marine biology conservationists, using it as their base while they studied a colony of seals that made a reef off the southern edge of the island their home. Therefore, it wasn’t so much a log cabin as it was a glorified work hut, but over the years subsequent owners had made it more comfortable with the addition of – as McBride had promised – all the mod-cons necessary. There was an open plan living room next to a kitchen. French doors opened onto a suspended balcony where she found a metal table and chairs: a nice place to sit with a glass of wine, she thought. Walking through the living room took her into a short corridor, and to the right was a bathroom, with sink, WC and small shower stall.

  Two bedrooms filled the remainder of the cabin, one fitted with a double bed, the other with two sets of bunks. Leah had no need of the bunkroom, so closed the door on it, better to conserve the warmth in the other rooms she’d regularly inhabit. She’d found the list of instructions that explained in minute detail how to work the generator in an adjoining shed and she’d already got it running, as she had the multi-fuel stove that needed little explanation. Her suitcase was now in the bedroom alongside her bags of sundry items, but she’d set up her laptop on the kitchen table, from where she could see north out of the French doors and across the meadow to the trailhead she’d entered by. She was nursing a coffee laced with plenty of sugar but the overriding taste was of the long-life milk. She liked the flavour. Perhaps a little too much, because she was concentrating on it instead of the blank page she’d opened on the computer screen. It was weeks since she’d written anything, and she felt that she might be slightly out of practice. A few right hand taps at the keyboard felt awkward, but she knew it was down to her frame of mind rather than through loss of trained motor skills. She deleted the letters she’d typed. Erasing the name of her ex-fiancé. If only it were that easy, she thought.

  She closed down the document without saving any changes, and lowered the screen. Sat drinking her coffee and staring out at the couch grass and encroaching trees. After a while her gaze lowered, and she was staring instead at her left wrist without consciously doing so. As she grew aware the colours of her injury filled her vision. The bruise was purple, turning yellow at its edges. Darker spots of the deepest blue marked where fingertips had dug painfully into her skin. There was very little pain in her wrist now, but her hand felt cramped, folded as it was around her coffee mug. She set the mug down and worked her fingers, easing away the stiffness. When she thought about it, she felt stiff and sore all over and little wonder considering the effort it had taken to cart her belongings here. The island was barely a mile long and half a mile across at its broadest point, but it felt as if she’d made a journey of epic proportions while struggling along with her luggage. Rather than bemoan her aches and pains the best antidote was to get up and move. A quick exploration of her surroundings beckoned. She was making excuses to get away from work, but convincing herself she needed the exercise was easy. She got up, pulled on her coat and a knitted hat, and left the cabin without a backwards glance at the computer.

  4

  On her way from the boat Leah followed Mr McBride’s instructions, and hadn’t deviated from the narrow dirt path. There was little chance of her doing that when encumbered by all her bags, but now she was free to roam. So she didn’t head for the trail, she struck out south from behind the cabin, walking through knee high grass for the woods back there. It was mid-afternoon in late September. The sun wouldn’t set for a few hours yet, but she made a mental note not to go too far afield, because finding her way back in the dark might prove troublesome. She hadn’t brought a torch on her walk, her only source of light being the one on her mobile phone, which was still in her pocket. McBride had no reason to lie to her, but he could be misinformed about the lack of reception. She pulled out the mobile and checked for a signal.

  ‘Not a dicky bird,’ she said as she eyed the screen.

  There wasn’t even a red cross in the corner, or a warning that meant that the phone could only make emergency calls: out here the phone was as good as useless. She put away the phone for now, conserving its battery life.

  At its crown Shattered Rock was thickly wooded. Further north the Western Isles were more barren, predominantly moorland glens and farmed woodland plantations, but she suspected that Shattered Rock owed more to the nearby mainland topography than it did the island chain. Once – hundreds of millennia ago – the island was probably the tip of a larger promontory jutting out from the Scottish mainland, but its central portion had been battered by the elements, torn down by the rising seas, so that only this last piece of high ground still resisted the eternal sea. She wasn’t knowledgeable enough to name the species of trees she pushed past, other than they were a mix of pine and fir trees, with the occasional oak or sycamore dominating their own plots in the landscape. Underfoot the floor was spongy with shed needles or moss, or rocky with dark red stone where the bedrock thrust skyward as crags and ridges. Occasionally she kicked through patches where ferns dominated the undergrowth, now brown and brittle as autumn approached. It felt like an ancient landscape, prehistoric and untamed, and she could easily believe hers were the first human feet to traverse the wild terrain. She’d sought someplace where she could escape from it all, and the island certainly delivered. It was the remedy she required, an antidote to the hassle, the hustle and bustle, of London where she’d called home the last four years, and an ideal bolthole from the demands of her work, and an overbearing ex-fiancé.

  There damn it. She’d gone and thought about Pete again.

  As equally as her trip was about clearing her head and delivering her next book untroubled by the clutter of modern life, coming to Shattered Rock was also about escaping the overpowering relationship she’d endured these past few months with Pete Langston. It was odd how her fiancé had been full of encouragement and support when she’d been an aspiring author, but as soon as she’d struck it lucky and her book had become a summer bestseller – a sizzling beach read as the tagline said – he’d changed. It
was almost as if Pete felt challenged by her success; maybe his self-esteem took a battering when suddenly she was at the centre of adoration by her fans, and he felt that he’d been displaced in her affections. Whatever proved the cause for his change, it wasn’t nice. He had grown jealous, demanding of her attention, and downright surly about the entire business of writing. He was pretty much to blame for setting her back. Getting on with her second novel was nigh on impossible when he would barely spare her a minute’s privacy.

  Things had grown exponentially worse when she’d completed a publicity tour and Pete was forced to stay at home. She was certain Pete thought she was enjoying an affair with her publicist, even though Jerry Redmond was flamboyantly gay, and he’d often quizzed her about their respective hotel sleeping arrangements. After Pete had followed them to one venue, and later cornered Jerry in the men’s bathroom, warning him to keep his hands off her, she’d had enough. They’d had a blazing row, but as usual she’d relented from throwing his engagement ring back at him, and had followed him home. She was embarrassed by the incident, more on Jerry’s behalf than her own, and her next contact with her editor had been tentative. She was fearful that her publisher would pull her from the tour, but she needn’t have worried. Apparently publishers were used to dealing with flaky authors and their equally flaky partners. She completed the tour, but it had been with some trepidation, wondering if Pete was going to show up at one of the bookshops or libraries and throw another fit. Thankfully he hadn’t, but she couldn’t be certain he hadn’t been lurking in the wings watching and judging her every move. On her return home his constant questioning had been loaded, and designed to trip her up. Their rows had been monumental.

  When she told him about this solo trip to finish her book…well!

  She looked down at her bruised wrist, rubbed it with her other hand. Jesus, when she’d announced their relationship was over she thought Pete was going to kill her. He’d grabbed her, refusing to allow her to leave, begging her to stay. She told him to let her go, but that was like pleading with a pit bull, and his grip had only tightened. She thought he was going to break her arm, or worse when he raised his fist under her nose. Screaming in her face, his saliva spraying her eyes, he’d cocked the fist back and that was enough for her. She’d never struck anyone in anger in her life, but she had then, and her palm had left a satisfying glow on his cheek. Stunned, Pete released her and she’d ran for it, and thankfully hadn’t seen him since, though that wasn’t the end of his unwelcome attention. Perhaps having no mobile reception out here on the island was a blessing, because in the intervening week since she’d run out on him, he’d been constantly ringing and texting to a point of desperation. At least here she could be certain that Pete wouldn’t be a problem. As soon as she could get him out of her bloody head that was.

  5

  As if the extra effort would help exorcise Pete from her memory, Leah began a jog, swiping aside brittle limbs as she pushed through the woods, and before long found she was climbing. The massive crag she’d spotted from the boat exposed jutted much taller than the trees, and it was just what the doctor ordered for clearing her mind of a troublesome ex. She scrambled upward, hopping from rock to rock, then swarmed up some loose shale and onto a large blood red boulder mottled with lichen. There she forgot all about Pete as the entire world was laid out before her. If she was looking for inspiration for a grand and epic tale, then she couldn’t deny this view was it.

  From her perch above the treetops the sea surrounding her on all sides wasn’t as threatening. It shimmered with sunlight on a million undulating peaks, colours that were green or blue or grey shifted and moved lazily: it was stunningly beautiful, and for that one view alone she could understand why holidaymakers would base themselves on Shattered Rock. She could make out the Isle of Gigha, and the smaller Cara Island, dead ahead, while Islay and Jura were simply mist-smudged blurs on the horizon to her left. She turned on her heel and searched the expanse of sea but couldn’t make out the coastline of Northern Ireland for the thick clouds gathering in the southwest. The Kintyre peninsular on the Scottish mainland looked almost close enough to touch, the nearest rugged crags twins to the ones on the island. A small private airplane labored its way into the heavens over Campbeltown Airport, a tiny pinprick of white against the sky that at once turned eastward and reflected the sun like a spark of flaring diamond. It was the only indication that the modern world existed out there, and soon even it disappeared against the greyer backdrop as it climbed higher.

  Leah realised she was holding her breath. She exhaled slowly, and felt that the simple act was enough to expunge some of the pent up frustration she’d contained for months now. But it also made her woozy and she had to perch her bum against the rocks or else she might tumble down the crag. It was a genuine fear; hurt herself now and she’d be in real trouble. McBride promised to look in on her mid-week, but this was only Friday and if she fell and broke a leg out here she could be dead before she was ever discovered. She gathered herself, breathing slowly, allowed the wooziness to subside, then began picking her way down the crag with more care than she’d taken climbing up.

  Back on the forest floor she decided that she should think out future explorations and not leave herself so vulnerable. She started heading back towards the centre of the island, following her own path through the undergrowth where it was still visible. Unsurprisingly it was darker than on the way out, but she could see where she’d trampled a path through the groves of ferns and kept to the correct route. But following a climb over a ridge she must have taken a different path down because there was no longer a hint from where she’d come. She was unconcerned, because she was heading in the same general direction, on an animal track more or less parallel to her original route. She passed a small pond of standing water. It was murky, the surface dotted with decomposing leaf matter and scum. A sluggish stream, almost as murky and uninviting, fed the pond. She veered left, knowing that she’d seen neither on her way out, and had to traverse more rocky ground. Something screamed distantly. She didn’t know if it was a bird, or some other denizen of the forest. It was the first proof that she shared the island with another living creature, but she assumed there were many and varied critters out there. None of them particularly dangerous, she reassured herself. But then again, what did she know of the fauna of a remote island? There was a colony of grey seals on the southern side of Shattered Rock and for all she knew something predated on them. Like what? One thing she was certain of was that the largest predators on the island were likely to be foxes, feral cats or birds of prey and she had little to fear from those. Feral dogs might be another matter entirely, but what were the odds of any prowling the woods? It wasn’t even a consideration, she decided.

  But in the next minute she was forced to change her mind.

  She had found her way back on to spongy terrain, kicking loosely through a carpet of needles as she proceeded.

  ‘What the hell?’ Leah croaked, as her right boot got entangled. She stumbled before her foot snapped loose, going down on her hands and knees, the fir needles jabbing her palms. She swore softly, pushing up and wiping the adhering needles from her hands and trousers, and glanced back at what had brought her down. Initially in the dimness she thought it was a branch. ‘What is that?’

  She raked more needles aside and immediately reared up. Her digging had disclosed a weathered bone. It was more than a foot long, discoloured brown, and thicker than both her thumbs. She was no student of anatomy, but even she could tell it was a femur from a large animal. It was old enough that she shouldn’t be concerned, but suddenly she found herself glancing around, scanning the deeper pools of shadow for any lurking ambush predator. Whatever animal the thighbone belonged to, it had been brought down and feasted upon, because she could see where it had been gnawed at one end. Her best guess was that the femur was that of a deer. She doubted deer were indigenous to the island, but previous settlers could have brought them here as game years ago. If deer had bee
n imported what other animals had also been brought here? As dusk began creeping over Shattered Rock she assumed that the predators were stirring, and that realisation added a sinister edge to the distant scream she’d heard. This wasn’t the best place for a lone, unarmed woman.

  Leaving the bone exposed on top of the needles, she turned for the cabin, and for a brief moment felt panic surge. It was so easy to lose your sense of direction when surrounded by the uniformity of trees. She pushed down the fear, though, because a quick check showed where she’d just approached, and all she needed to do was stick to the same line. She set off, tripping slightly in her haste. She almost missed the dull glint, and even when it did catch her eye she was going to ignore it, eager to get home. But inquisitiveness halted her and she crouched, fingering what was undoubtedly a slim metal chain looped over a tree root. She gently tugged the chain, and found it was partly buried in the dirt. It must have been fully buried at one time, with the root forcing it to the surface as it grew and thickened over the years. She rubbed the chain with her thumb, dislodging the dirt and needles sticking to it and was surprised when she caught the sheen of gold. How ancient was this treasure? She was breathless as she dug with her fingers, feeling under the root so that she could loosen the chain without breaking the flimsy links. Finally she exhumed it in its entirety and found it to be about eight inches long with a dirt-clogged clasp at each end, and a simple gold lozenge-shaped plate as its single adornment. Standing, she held it up, allowing what was undoubtedly a bracelet to dangle over her palm, catching a stray beam of afternoon sunlight through the canopy that she played over the lozenge.

  Her writer’s brain was immediately fired. Who did the bracelet once belong to? How did it end up buried in the forest floor? How long had it lain undisturbed here? She had no idea, but was pleased to find that her mind was begging the kind of questions necessary for penning her next story. Could she use this find to stir a plot in her mind? Maybe, maybe not, but the discovery certainly served a good purpose. She turned it over in her hand, rubbing again at it with her thumb tip. A patina of dirt was on the gold, but a simple clean and polish would bring back its original luster, because gold wasn’t prone to tarnishing like baser metals. The back of the lozenge was slightly discoloured though, some brown substance staining it. She scraped at it with a fingernail, and some of it flaked away. There was an inscription, but in the dimness she couldn’t make it out. All she could identify of the wording were three final initials: M. J. K.