The Island of Dragons (Rockpools Book 4)

by Gregg Dunnett

  There was no clear moment when Amber Atherton knew that Billy had died, no before and after, only a growing sense of awareness and understanding of what was known, and what was not. But if there was one point that served as a divide between the two realities, it was when Billy’s father, Sam Wheatley, phoned to invite her to the memorial service.

  “I was thinking you might like to,” Sam’s voice was low as he spoke, he sounded broken, exhausted. “Maybe say a few words. You knew him better than anyone.”

  Amber clutched the phone tightly in her hand, the only thing she could do to reduce the feeling of vertigo. It was as if just below her there was a spinning black vortex that threatened to swallow her up. This couldn’t be real. And yet it was.

  “I don’t get it,” Amber replied. “This still doesn’t make sense.”

  On the other end of the line, Sam was silent for a long while. Then he began again, explaining how every other possibility was now exhausted.

  “He’s gone Amber. I know it’s hard. The police know he got on the ferry that afternoon, and he didn’t get off. It only leaves one option.” His voice was firmer now, but still filled with pain. Pain that he would live with for the rest of his life. They both would.

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “They think he saw the TV news on the boat. They’d issued the appeal for information by then, and there were pictures of him all over it. He’d have known the police were on to him. They believe he thought it was his only way out.” Sam continued.

  Amber was silent. Feeling the frustration bubble back to the surface.

  “But out of what? What did he do? You’re not telling me you believe he killed that guy?”

  There was another silence, a long one, before Sam spoke again.

  “They have his fingerprints on the bomb parts, Amber. I don’t think they’d lie about it. I don’t think they can.”

  Amber felt the vertigo again. She remembered the story Billy had told her about when he was a baby, and Sam had been falsely accused of drowning his sister. The police, together with Billy’s mother’s wealthy family, had joined forces to protect her, the real culprit. It showed the police could lie. But she didn’t bring it up. Why add to his pain? And why would they in this case. It didn’t make sense. But then none of it made sense, the whole thing was crazy. Madness. Billy would never make bombs.

  Or would he?

  She said nothing, but thoughts and memories about her friend chased each other around her mind. Billy was… impulsive, careless. He acted according to his own moral compass of what was right and wrong, which had little to do with the actual law. And certainly he was bitterly opposed to the expansion of the chemical plant – he’d pushed for much harder wording on those posters. But it was a giant leap from a poster campaign to a bomb. And why – what would be the point? There was no question that he could build a bomb. That he knew how to do it, and could find the resources. Of course he could. Billy was brilliant like that. He could do it as a lunchtime project.

  She wanted to hang up. To somehow turn off this madness. But she knew that wouldn’t end anything. The pain, the questions, they would still be there.

  “Billy would never blow up a security guard,” she said in the end, more firmly than she really believed.

  Another pause, and Amber knew that Sam was chasing the same twisted thoughts around his mind as she was.

  “I know that. Not deliberately.”

  There had been no search and rescue operation. By the time it was thought Billy had gone into the water, too much time had passed. The water temperatures were too cold, and no one knew where he’d entered the water, meaning the potential search area would be far too large. Nevertheless, Billy’s father had put to sea, along with almost the entire fleet of fishermen from Holport, and tried to conduct their own search – both as that cold afternoon turned to black night, and from the freezing dawn the next day. But nothing was found, and everyone out looking knew by then it was only a body they were looking for.

  In the days that followed, Amber was simply numb. Believing there must be some mistake and waiting for the confirmation. But when the FBI agent came to interview her – a woman, who claimed to have known Billy years before – she told Amber she had been at the ferry port herself. Had directed the search of the ship when it came in, and that there was no possible way he could have gotten off. And yet there was still something she was able to cling onto – one of the agent’s questions was whether Billy had made any attempt to contact her, since that day. It proved they too were not 100% sure, at least not at that point. And in the days that followed she sensed – rather than saw – the presence of other agents, waiting outside her apartment, following her to work. Keeping watch. If they were watching her, then they weren’t sure. They wanted to be certain he was dead.

  But the days flowed rapidly past, and there was no contact with Billy. And either the FBI watchers got better at hiding, or they left her alone. And the slim chance that a mistake had been made seemed to contract further into nothingness. It was winter, cold and bitter. Billy wasn’t at home on the island. He wasn’t on his father’s boat. He wasn’t at his college apartment. He wasn’t anywhere. And though she checked her phone hundreds of times a day, near-panicking if it ever fell below thirty percent battery, for fear she might miss his attempt to contact her. He never did.

  A week passed. Then two. Then three weeks. And still nothing. Except the call from Sam.

  “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.” Sam repeated. “Say something I mean – at the memorial service. But please come. I don’t know if many will.”

  Chapter Fifty

  In the end the little church was two thirds empty. Almost certainly it would have been fuller, had Billy Wheatley not been painted in the island media as a cold blooded murderer in the weeks before – after all a dead person cannot sue for libel. But perhaps it might not have been much fuller anyway, Billy was not a boy who went out of his way to make friends.

  But it was an odd affair, with no casket on show, no body to bury or dispose of. And the subjects of how he died, and the still unresolved mystery of why he decided to bomb the chemical site were both off-limits, by unspoken resolve. Amber had initially rejected Sam’s call for her to speak, but as she traveled over on the ferry – the same boat that Billy had apparently jumped from – she changed her mind, and wrote something as she sat in the café, perhaps in the very same seat he had occupied as he discovered the police knew what he had done. She fingered the edge of the paper now, wishing she had had more time to consider what she wrote, had not penned it in such an emotional place, in such a dazed frame of mind. She barely listened to Sam as he spoke, nor to the priest who led the service. But when he said her name they cut through, and she found her legs working on their own, pushing her to her feet.

  There was a microphone, a thin metal wire that stuck up from the wood of the pulpit. At first she leaned in, too close to it, and her first words warped and echoed around the little church. She shrank back, shocked, for the first time looked out at the audience. Most of the seats were empty, the ones that weren’t were mostly working people – fishermen from Holport, whom Billy had pestered, and grown to know, through asking what they were catching and where, so he could map it on his species charts. There was her own mom and sister of course, poor Grace was taking it worse than anyone. Billy’s old science teacher from high school had come. It was he that recommended Billy skip a year and attend college early, that he was getting bored with the too-easy work of high school. Had that decision been the one to condemn him? Or was Billy’s downfall all his own doing? The police were there too, sitting at the back, watching. Still watching. Wanting to be quite sure. She turned around, seeing what they were seeing. The backdrop of the church, the little altar. Father Evans standing with his hands folded in front of him, waiting for her. She unfolded her paper, began to cry, and began reading.

  After it was over they went to Sam’s house in Littlelea. Some of the fisherman�
�s wives had cooked, and there was far too much food for the dozen or so people who turned up. The whole time Amber kept wanting this to be a mistake. That somehow this still couldn’t be real, but the evidence of her eyes and ears couldn’t be ignored. And when she knew she wanted to leave it felt somehow disrespectful, that she should stay to the very end, but Sam sensed how she was feeling and suggested to her mother that she take her home. And so Amber left, sitting on the back seat with Gracey, so she could let the little girl rest against her side as they drove away. And when she got back to her childhood home, where her bedroom was still just the way it always was, she cried and cried and cried, until there were no more tears inside her and she felt empty and bereft.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  There was little point in hanging around, so the day after the memorial she booked a place on the ferry back to the mainland. She’d been given compassionate leave by her firm, and had no fixed day when she was expected back, but there seemed no reason to delay it. If anything she preferred the idea of being at work, alongside people who hadn’t known Billy and therefore wouldn’t be mourning his loss. Let their carelessness and concern for other things rub off onto her.

  She took the bus from Newlea to the ferry terminal in Goldhaven, and when it dropped her off she sat, shivering from the cold, in the breezy foot passenger shelter on the harbor side. The ferry was late getting in, she saw it appear on the horizon and slowly grow larger. She remembered the last time she had caught the ferry off the island, that time it had been her and Billy who were late, rushing in with Sam in his truck, and dashing aboard at the last minute. Now she watched the ferry slow as it came through the harbor walls, its great engines churning up sediment from the bottom. It edged closer to the dock, thin mooring lines were thrown ashore, then reeled in by the dock hands, until the much-thicker lines were hauled up. The gangway was hoisted into position, and after a few minutes the departing passengers began trickling out, while the huge bow doors of the boat disgorged cars and trucks. Still she thought of Billy, of what he had said to her, about Fonchem, and their campaign to stop them. Still it nagged at her, the idea that he might do something as radical as bombing it, as stupid. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.

  There was an idea, a thought in her head. It didn’t make sense either. Sam would have said something, Billy would have said something, if it were true, if he wasn’t gone. But – but if there was just a chance, then shouldn’t she check? Before she went back to her life, before she tried to forget about him and move on? The flow of vehicles leaving the boat eased and stopped, and the reverse happened, new vehicles drove in, ready for the return voyage. The other foot passengers around her were lining up now, ready to go aboard. But Amber wasn’t among them. Inertia glued her to the plastic seat as she watched the line shuffle forward, and then disappear altogether, as they went aboard. She was alone now, the last foot passenger in the shelter. She felt like the last person on Earth. An announcement came over the tannoy, the final call for foot passengers to board. Finally, Amber got to her feet. She shouldered her backpack, and walked towards the gangway. But just before she stepped on it she stopped.

  “Fuck it.” She said, to no one but herself. And she turned around.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  There was a bus back to Newlea, but it wasn’t due for a half-hour, and she waited in the desolate shelter until it arrived. The lurid colors of a tourist map stared back at her from the glass of the shelter, printed to help tourists orientate themselves with the island, and decorated with cartoonish images. A pair of children playing on the Silverlea Sands, two more searching for silver at Northend. Cartoon men fished from the pier at Holport, as an oversized, friendly-looking image of the ferry sailed past, white smoke puffing from its funnel. But she didn’t look at those. Instead she searched the gaps between the cartoons, between the towns and the places where the visitors flocked. Thinking.

  When the bus finally arrived she sat right at the back, even though it was almost empty. She used her cell phone to call her old school friend and near-neighbor, Kelly. Amber had never been popular in school, but her and Kelly had become relatively close, mainly as a result of how they lived in the same street. Amber explained very little about the situation, but begged if she could borrow Kelly’s car, just for the day. Luckily Kelly didn’t need it that afternoon, and agreed. Amber thanked her, and hung up the call.

  A half-hour later, and Amber was walking back into her old street. Grace was at school, and her mother at work, so the house was empty. Even so, she found herself going up the drive. She let herself in, went upstairs and dumped her bag on her bed. But as she left the room she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the wall. She stopped, frowning deeply at her reflection. Then she sat down on her bed and pulled off her boots. She inspected them, one after the other. They looked perfectly normal, and she nearly put them back on. But something stopped her. Instead she yanked open her wardrobe, and fished around in the bottom until she found another pair, an older pair that hadn’t made the cut when she was packing to move away to her new life on the mainland. Suppressing the sense that she was actually going crazy, she pulled them on, then threw her newer boots back in their place. Then she considered. If this was worth doing, it was worth doing properly.

  She checked quickly around her old bedroom for a second, then dropped back down the stairs and into the kitchen. She rummaged around in the crazy drawer – the place they kept for the little stuff that didn’t live anywhere else, and eventually she found what she was looking for, the little metal spike for removing the SIM card from her cell phone. She had to concentrate to use it, but soon she had the little rectangular chip in her hand. She wasn’t sure if that was enough, so she found some silver foil, and wrapped it up in that, finally putting it carefully into her purse. Then she thought again, and decided she was satisfied.

  She was as vague as she could be with Kelly, saying she just had some things to do before she left the island. Kelly wasn’t suspicious at all – they’d each lent their cars before, the island’s less than regular bus network tended to encourage such generosity – nevertheless Amber promised to have it back by the evening at the latest, when Kelly had to get to work. And with that she set off.

  It would have taken her far longer than one afternoon to search all the island’s creeks and coves – the east coast was riddled with cliffs and caves, and the west coast mired with swampy inlets, but Amber had an advantage. There was only one place she needed to check. She didn’t really believe she would find anything there, but nevertheless, she wanted to look.

  Forty minutes later she turned off the proper road and onto a muddy track. The temperature was warmer now, the snow long gone, and replaced by deep brown puddles, that she had to steer around for fear of leaving Kelly’s car sunk up to its axles. As she drove she couldn’t help but reflect on the previous times she’d been here. The first, in the back of a panel van, with the kidnappers who had taken her sister. That seemed several lifetimes ago, and was understandably something she had tried to forget. The second, just under a year ago, with Billy, after he’d finally revealed his latest, ‘secret’ project.

  And for once it was actually a cool project, at least as she saw it. It wasn’t about rescuing some crustacean population, or counting seagull eggs, but actually something genuinely neat. A few years before the two of them had helped Billy’s father set up a whale watching business, and one of the – admittedly fairly major – perks, was they were able to use the boat when it wasn’t needed for the business. That boat, the Blue Lady, was sadly no more and its replacement, the Blue Lady II, was too large and expensive for general leisure use. That had been a particular blow to Billy, who always seemed to have some reason to need to be on the water. And for weeks and weeks she had known he was up to something, Billy and his Dad, behind her back. Eventually they’d let her in on what it was.

  She remembered the gleam in Billy’s eyes as Sam drove them both here. There were puddles then too, but he threw
the truck through them without concern, and they emerged at the end of the lane with muddy water streaming off the sides. But Amber had barely noticed. She’d known exactly what it was she was supposed to be looking at. Bishop’s Landing was one of the smallest named places on Lornea Island, and consisted of precisely one small wooden boathouse/workshop, one rickety wooden jetty stretching out into one of the island’s innumerable creeks, and the long, lonely lane they had just driven down. There was nothing else, and no other buildings for miles. Except that now there was something else. A small wooden yacht sat tied to the end of the pier. A wooden yacht that needed a ton of work.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s my boat.” Billy beamed. “She’s called Caroline.”

  Amber couldn’t help smiling at the thought. Even though it was madness, the boat was about twenty seven foot long, and once upon a time would have been a real beauty. But now the paint was peeling off, what rigging it had hung limp and damaged from blistered spars. Many of the porthole windows were smashed or missing, and the cockpit was covered with black, oily tarpaulin. Seemingly oblivious to this, Billy led the way down the jetty and jumped aboard. The yacht didn’t move, its keel was lodged in the mud.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “She was abandoned. I found the previous owner online, and he said I could have her. For nothing. Isn’t that incredible?”

  Amber had looked around, it needed so much doing, you’d have to pay most people to take it away. “I guess. But why’s it here?”

  “Well that’s why it’s a secret. You know how much berthing costs are. We can’t afford to keep her anywhere else. But no one knows about this place. No one ever comes here, so it’s free, and there’s a workshop. It’s perfect.”