The Island of Dragons (Rockpools Book 4)

by Gregg Dunnett

  “We can still do this, without the drone. Just go in and film as much as you can with the infrared camera. It’ll still work from ground level. It might even be better.”

  I want to say no. To tell him to go to hell, but I tell myself to remember why I’m here. What we’re actually trying to do, even if I suddenly don’t much like my co-conspirators.

  “What about the security guards?”

  “There aren’t any.” James replies.

  “What about the signs?” My voice is indignant.

  “They’re just signs. We’ve done this before Billy. It’s easy. That’s why we’re here so late when it’s cold. If there are any security guards – which is unlikely – they’ll be tucked up somewhere nice and warm. Probably watching porn.”

  I look at the hole. There’s a flat area on the other side, and in the distance, the dark shapes of buildings. It does look deserted, but I still don’t want to go in there. I turn to James and Oscar, and they’ve both staring at me. Both bigger than me too. I don’t really have a choice. This plan, it’s not going to work, that’s obvious now. To me at least.

  “This is stupid,” I say.

  “Why?”

  “It’s not going to work. There probably isn’t even a leak to find.”

  “There might be. And we’ve come all this way.” James stares back at me.

  “Without the drone, we’ll never find it.”

  “We’ve come this far. I’m paying for this Billy. The ferry, the rental car. We’re doing it for you. I don’t want to leave without even trying.”

  I stare back at him, feeling how I’m angry now. Then I turn away, and hold the camera up at the fence, pointing it towards the distant buildings. But they’re too far away. I pull it back down again.

  “Come on Billy. You gotta take this shit seriously. Think why you’re here. You wanna do something good in the world? Huh? You’ve come this far. Don’t let yourself down now.”

  I don’t believe him. I don’t believe he cares about this, but I don’t have much choice. So I’ll go in. I’ll get some footage, to show them both this is a waste of time. Was always a waste of time.

  I get down on my hands and knees, and I crawl through the fence. Then I start walking towards the dark buildings in front of me.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  It all goes crazy. It all goes madly, horribly wrong. I don’t even know what. I don’t even know what to say.

  I can’t even hear. I don’t know if you’re talking to me now. I don’t know if you can hear me. My ears are screaming at me. It’s like when you’re doing scuba and you dive too deep without equalizing. Only you can’t swallow to make it go away. I might even be deaf.

  There’s been an explosion. I know that much. Not from the noise – there wasn’t any – but from the light, and the pressure wave. They came, not at the same time, but a split second apart – like the way you can measure how far away a storm is by timing the difference between the lightning and the thunderclap. I can’t say how close it was this way though. But I was close.

  I saw a man. Twice. The first time he had no flashlight, and I flattened myself against the wall I was by. I was terrified. But I don’t think he saw me. The second time he was on the other side of me. He had his light on this time. And that’s when the blast happened. Right where he was. Right on top of him.

  I pick myself up, I’ve fallen over in the snow, like I’m making a snow angel – I’m not, it’s just I can’t even stand, I’m so disorientated. I can’t hear – the crump when I take a footstep is gone. I don’t know what to do. What the hell exploded? Are James and Oscar OK? I’ve got to get out of here. Before someone comes, to see what the explosion was. I don’t know what to do. What the hell happened to the man I saw? Is he… is he dead?

  I turn, to see if he’s maybe there, lying in the snow like I was, only actually injured. If so maybe I can help? But what if this is just the first explosion? I don’t know what’s happened! Maybe the whole site is going to blow up? And I shouldn’t be here. I’ve broken in. And there’s security guards. They’ll come to check what’s happened. And they’ll have first aid supplies. I’ve got nothing. I make a decision. A coward’s decision. I turn again, and I run for the hole in the fence.

  I expect to see James and Oscar there. It’s like I can visualize them, helping pull me through the small gap in the fence, so when they’re not there I can’t make sense of it. Their bags are gone. They must have heard the explosion. They must be back at the car. So I struggle through, and I press on, back to the car. But they’re not there either. What the hell?

  It’s quiet now – silent again, with the snow coming thicker and harder than ever. And it’s dark too. There’s no glow from a fire, coming from inside the compound. Whatever blew up was just that, an explosion, but not a fire. Did James and Oscar go inside the compound? To check on me? I stop, dead still in the snow. It’s the only answer that makes any sense. And I’ve left them there.

  I retrace my steps, before I can change my mind. I have to get them. To get us all out of here. I get to the fence, and crawl through again, and once again I set off across the snowy open ground before the buildings. But it’s quiet. I can’t see James or Oscar.

  I call out to them, but I don’t hear anything, not even my own voice. I come closer to the building from where the explosion seemed to happen. And that’s when it happens. I come so close I almost kick it. Even in the darkness I can see what it is, just from the shape. It’s an arm. A human arm.

  I stare at it. Blinking, shocked, for a long while. I don’t know how long. Then my brain starts working again. It’s not James’s nor Oscar’s. I know because it’s wearing a watch. A big silver watch, and the sleeve looks different. It looks like the sleeve of one of those reflective jackets that workmen wear. Or security guards.

  I step forward again, terrified now about what I’m going to find. Expecting to see James and Oscar dying in a pool of blood and melted snow – but no, they were waiting at the fence. Why would they be here? OK then, the man whose arm that was, it’s possible he could be alive still, that he might need help.

  But he’s not. There’s other bits of him. Like hunks of meat in the snow. I feel sick, but I don’t throw up. My head’s spinning. Everything hurts.

  The next thing I know, I’m back at the car. Still no James and Oscar. I almost kick myself when I think to call James on his cellphone. Why has it taken me so long? But then he doesn’t answer. It goes to voicemail – I can only just hear it – and then, when I ring back a second time – to leave a message asking where the hell they are – it doesn’t even go to voicemail anymore. I just get a weird tone that I don’t understand.

  I go back to the fence – and there’s movement inside now – a guy with a flashlight. A truck, so I know it’s not James and Oscar. Then the lights come on. All inside the compound, in the buildings. An alarm starts blaring out. I can see the site of the explosion more clearly now. It doesn’t look big, not as big as it looked when it happened. Not as big as it felt, close up.

  I go back to the car. Still no sign of them. Could they have been captured? By the security guards? And if so, what should I do? There’s no point waiting here. I’ll just get caught as well. But if they have been caught, then I’ll have to give myself up too. Or should I?

  I’m cold. I’m tired. I’m shaking. Maybe I’m in shock. Definitely I’m in shock. But I can’t just stand here, out in the snow, waiting until the police pick me up. I try James’ phone again. I still get the same strange tone, but this time I wait longer, and a woman’s voice comes on – the sort you get from the telephone company – telling me that number isn’t valid. Isn’t recognized. I check the screen of my phone. I didn’t type it in, I just used the number dialed. It can’t have changed.

  I know I have to leave. The place is lit up like a football stadium, and there will be police coming. A man died. And I was right there. I don’t know what this means. But I get in the car, and I start the engine, and then the noise of i
t freaks me out, even though I still can’t hear it properly, I can feel it, vibrating my head, and I know that other people will be able to hear it, and I might as well be advertising where I am. So then I start moving, keeping the headlights off. Four hundred meters down the road, I turn them on, because otherwise I’m going to wipe out into a tree. Then I drive further away. Two miles down the road, a trio of police cars come toward me, their beacons flashing red and blue against the snow of the road surface. They scream past me, one after the other, and even though I can’t make myself not look across at them, no one from inside the cop cars pays me any attention.

  Somehow, without really even meaning to, I get away.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  I drive home. I don’t mean to, but there’s nothing else I can do. Nowhere else I can go. And this time I don’t bother about trying to hide, I just drive up to the house, expecting to see Dad’s truck on the drive, and the lights on – but it’s late, so the house is dark. And then I realize Dad’s truck isn’t here after all. He must be staying over with his girlfriend.

  When I realize I’m still on my own, I want to cry.

  I go inside, and put the heating on, because I’m seriously cold. I look on Dad’s computer, for news reports about what’s happened, but there aren’t any, not yet. I make coffee, and then don’t drink it. I pace up and down. It truly feels that none of this is real, but then why is my hand shaking so much? Why, when I look outside, is there a rental car – taken out in the name of Hans Hass?

  I force myself to drink the coffee, and tell myself I have to make sense of this. And slowly I do. There’s been an explosion at the site. The chances of it happening when I was in there are incredibly slim, because I wasn’t doing anything to trigger one – but there’s no other explanation. An industrial accident. And when it happened, James and Oscar must have thought I was caught in it, maybe they even thought I was killed. I had the keys to the car in my pocket, which is why they didn’t go back there – they thought it was useless to them, so they tried to escape on foot. Or maybe they were caught by the security guards, I can’t really make sense of it.

  I try to work out what to do. Coming here was smart. James and Oscar were here with me, earlier in the day, so they might come here, if they think I’m still alive, so I should stay here, stay awake, in case they turn up. They’ll be cold.

  But that’s crazy – they left the car – so they won’t think I’m here. They think I was blown up. Maybe they’ll be in that bar we waited in. No – that’s closed, it’s what, four in the morning now. I have a horrible fear about them, stuck out in the snow, all night, but I don’t know what to do. I ring James’ number again. Still the same dial tone. I don’t have a number for Oscar.

  Somehow I sleep. I have to. I wake super late – about eleven, and everything comes rushing back to me, and abruptly I’m sick. I just about get to the toilet in time. After that I decide I have to work out a plan. Somehow James and Oscar must have made it. They must have. They’ll be on the boat, headed back to Boston. I’ll do the same. I’ll catch the ferry back to college. I’ll tidy up here, so that Dad doesn’t know I was ever here. And hopefully I’ll see James and Oscar on the ferry, and all of this will be OK again. Well not OK exactly, because we’ve had the incredible misfortune to break into the Fonchem site just when it happened to blow up. But it wasn’t our fault, and everyone will see that.

  And if they don’t. Thank God we were careful, with the false papers and everything.

  A half hour later, and the house looks like I left it. I even take the time to put the drone back, and pick off the gaffer tape from the vent holes, so there’s nothing to show I was here. Apart from the tire tracks in the snow outside. I suppose Dad might think it was just a delivery, or a sales call, when he sees them, and my footsteps going up to the door and back again. Either way, I can’t do anything about them, it would look worse if I tried to rub them out.

  I lock up and walk back to the rental car. When I try to start the engine it protests, because of the cold I suppose, but eventually it catches, and I turn around to drive away. I expect to see Dad’s truck coming in the opposite direction the whole time I’m driving, away from Littlelea, and out to the Silverlea turning. But I don’t.

  Then I head north again. Back towards Goldhaven, and the afternoon ferry.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  I’m here early, the first car in the queue to board the boat. I have to show my ticket at the booth, the man there gives me a strange look, when he sees my name. I notice too, they have a camera pointing at the cars as they come through. I can’t avoid it, but I wish I’d thought to put a hat and sunglasses on. I could have taken some from home, if I’d thought of it. I wish I hadn’t used a foreign name now too. I should have been David Smith or something, no one would look twice at a name like that.

  Then, while I wait to be allowed to board, I walk around, and check all the other vehicles. I have this crazy hope that somehow James and Oscar might have managed to get a car, and that everything will be alright. I walk up and down, and stare inside all the other cars, and some of the other drivers look back, like they’re angry at me for staring at them, but I don’t care, because none of them are James or Oscar, not even disguised. And it’s not even hard to be sure. The sailing is only about a third full, the dock bleak and cold. I run over to the foot passenger waiting area, in case they’ve somehow managed to walk here, but they’re not there.

  I go back to my car just before we get called forward. I’m not very comfortable, driving onto the ship, even at the best of times. I don’t like the way the metal plates clank under the tires, and it feels like you could easily drive off the side by accident and then the car would sink in the black, cold water before you’d have a chance to get out. But now it’s worse. There’s a finality to it, that suddenly closes in on me, like the steel hole I’m driving into. I’m leaving. I’m getting off the island, leaving James and Oscar here. And I’ve no idea what happened to them. I just left them. I left them in the freezing cold, in the middle of the night, miles away from anywhere. I killed…

  “Hey! Lookout!” I’m shocked back to reality by a bang on the hood of my car. Then the ferry worker that did it, comes to the side window, angrily gesticulating for me to roll it down. I do what he says.

  “You look where you’re going!” He tells me. “Nearly ran into me!”

  I mumble an apology. Eventually he grudgingly accepts.

  “Over there. Carefully.” He points to where he wants me to park the car. I nod, and roll the window back up. When I get there I sit still for a few moments, my stomach is cold as a block of ice. I realize I’ve just accepted something. Something awful. And something obvious, I suppose. Something you’ve probably already worked out, but I haven’t, not till this moment.

  James and Oscar are dead. They must be. They would have realized they couldn’t escape in the car, because the keys got blown up with me – or that’s what they thought. And they couldn’t stay, because the police would have caught them, so they tried to get away on foot, on a freezing night. But they weren’t dressed for it. They had no equipment. They would have got colder and colder, probably they would have thought they could flag down a car, or find an outbuilding to shelter in, but there’s nothing, up there in the north of Lornea. No one goes there, there’s nothing.

  I think of how cold I was, driving back, even with the heater on full. We were out in the cold for ages. It wouldn’t have taken long for the cold to get to them. They’d have got disorientated. Hypothermic. I’ve seen what it does to people, we learned about it in the Surf Lifesaving club. How it makes people go mad, they think they’re hot, they take off their clothes, and that just kills them faster.

  No. That’s crazy. I’m just over-tired and stressed. They’ll be here. On the boat. Somehow, they’ll have found their way, and they’ll be on this ferry. Suddenly I’m in a hurry. I grab my things, and get out the car, and hurry onto the passenger deck of the boat. I take a seat in the café, by
the window, so I can watch the foot passengers come aboard. I’m just in time, because they haven’t let them on yet, so I can see them lining up and then boarding. There’s only a few people. The same ones I saw before.

  None of them are James and Oscar.

  And then my eyes turn, as if pulled by an invisible wire, to the TV screen, playing in the corner of the café. I hadn’t paid it any notice before, but now I can’t ignore it. Because it’s got my face playing on it. The volume is down but it has subtitles on, delayed from the pictures a bit.

  Island police hunt Billy Wheatley over murder of Fonchem Security Guard

  I feel my heart rate scream upwards. I feel everyone in the café suddenly staring at me, making the connection. They don’t, they ignore me, but I stumble up anyway, knocking over my chair in my rush to get out of there. I don’t know where to go, I push open the heavy sea-door, out onto the deck. My mouth’s hanging open, my eyes filling with tears at the biting cold wind. They think I’m a murderer. But I’m not. I had nothing to do with the explosion. I didn’t kill that man.

  But… I watch below me, as the last the of the foot passengers climb on, and the ferry workers take the passenger gangway down. I feel the deep throated judder of the ship’s huge engines. I look down, at the black, freezing water, where I could hide away from this, where no one would find me. Where this wouldn’t be real.

  Because I didn’t kill that man… but I did kill James and Oscar.

  Part II

  Chapter Forty-Nine