by Lee Moan
Amazingly, she managed to right herself, and peered back up at him, her eyes like candle flames in the darkness. Seeing him, she reached out, the bubbles which streamed from her mouth racing towards him like silver bullets.
He tried to kick towards her, to descend, but he couldn't, he just couldn't. He couldn't even control his legs.
With the icy salt water stinging his eyes, he stared down at her helplessly, until the dark maw of the deep took her out of sight. He was aware of the ache in his chest, of having reached the point of being unable to hold his breath any longer, but he didn't care. He wanted to sink with his little girl.
Then, without warning, hands reached under his armpits and dragged him up, up, up towards light and air. Wrenched above the surface again, he took the much-needed breath, but there was no joy in it, no sense of relief at being alive.
Sam turned to find his saviour and discovered the ruined face of Ben Garrett. He was treading water, his features contorted in a perpetual grimace. Sam could see a trickle of blood running down his neck from behind his ear. A flesh wound, he surmised. The look in his eyes became more frantic as he approached Sam.
“Where is she?” he said.
Sam couldn’t bring himself to answer him. The concern on Garrett’s face for the fate of his daughter only enhanced his shame. Then, realising Sam’s state of shocked silence, the big man turned and looked around the nearby surface. It was then that Sam witnessed the extent of his ‘flesh wound’. About a quarter of his skull had come away. Sam could see the off-white brain tissue inside. The blood which was running down the back of his neck was a reddish-purple. Amazingly, he seemed unaware of his injury.
“Where is she?” he said again, turning back to Sam with an angry scowl.
Finally, Sam said, “She’s gone. She–”
But before he could explain any further, the big man leaped upwards, and with an efficient kick of the legs disappeared under the surface. It was in that moment that Sam saw the chains binding his arms to his legs, and his addled mind couldn’t understand what he was doing. Was he going looking for the key to his chains, or maybe even the missing piece of his skull? Then, when he realised his true intention, he was overwhelmed with guilt.
This complete stranger, who had met his daughter only minutes before the disaster, was now trying to save her. Despite the fact that Becky would be beyond saving now, Sam felt almost certain that this stranger—this murderer—with his awful head wound, would not survive. But, Sam told himself bitterly, at least he was trying.
The rest of it was a dreamy haze to Sam. He remembered a great deal of shouting going on above his head, much of it directed at him. When he failed to respond, he was hauled up by the captain and some of the other passengers and pulled him onto the edge of the decking. He recalled lying face down, clutching the strut of the barrier fence which ran around the edge of the ferry. He recalled a blur of feet darting around before his eyes. Someone was asking him if he could stand up, but he just lay there, his lower half still dangling over the side. He felt paralysed. Not physically, but mentally. In the end, he remembered finding the strength to look back over the side, to catch one last glimpse of the ocean below. Somewhere in his damaged psyche was the faintest stirring of hope: that the man with the broken skull had found Becky and would bring her back to the surface.
Alive.
But deep down inside, he knew it was an empty hope.
20
Garrett turned and plunged back under the water. The chains seemed to be gaining weight, and the pain in his head was like a knife tearing through the core of his being. And still he kicked downward.
There!
There she was, a tiny blue dot some twenty feet below. Sinking fast, still struggling, a ribbon of blood trailing in her wake. He kicked with all his might, fear tearing at his mind at the thought that he might not come back from this, that he might die chasing this redemption – but a part of him couldn’t help thinking that maybe God had placed this opportunity in his path. The world might not forgive him even if he did save the girl, but God was always watching, God was always keeping score. Wasn’t that what Father Joseph always said?
Ben Garrett descended into the darkness, his heart filled with hope. But by the time he realised he was past the point of no return, the weight of the chains, his burden, kept pulling him down, down, down into the cold black water . . .
21
The grandfather clock in the hallway of the Garrett house chimed four o’clock.
Where the hell were they?
Rachel got up from the armchair next to Cynthia’s bed and stormed out into the hall. She grabbed the phone and began dialling the number she’d been given by the prison service. Cynthia stirred from her half-sleep, mumbling a string of indecipherable words. Rachel paused in the act of dialling, waiting until the old woman fell back into her dreamless sleep before trying again. The last thing she wanted was to have to calm down a hysterical woman because her beloved son had failed to arrive.
She had to know what was happening before she told her anything at all.
“Hello, this is District Nurse Rachel Thorne on Scalasay. I’m tending to a patient, Cynthia Garrett, who’s expecting a visit from her son today. I’m calling because we were told he would be here around two-thirty. It’s now four. Can you tell me if the situation has changed in anyway?”
“Ben Garrett left Stoneway Prison early this morning. He should still be on his way to you.”
“Is there any way of contacting the guards who are transporting him? I’d really like to know for certain what time they’ll be arriving.”
A stony silence. “All right, I'll call them and we’ll get back to you.”
“Thank you.” She hung up the phone, then looked back into the bedroom. Cynthia let out a rattling snore.
It was a fair bet this was going to go on way past her handing over time of seven o’clock. She decided to phone Sam and let him know that she was going to be late home. He would probably moan at her about having lost a complete day’s writing, but she didn’t care.
She dialled his mobile number and listened for the ring tone. There was that familiar hiss before connection, then . . .
Nothing. A dull, dead sound filled her ears and she hung up the phone as if she’d heard the voice of a ghost. That was not an engaged tone. If his phone was off she would have got his voicemail message. Although she couldn’t be sure as she’d never heard the noise before, something told her that the noise she heard was that of a dead phone.
A new noise began to fill her head. The noise of panic.
Somewhere in the distance she heard sirens. Not police, not fire engines, not even ambulances, but a siren she’d heard only since they came to the island.
The coast guard.
She walked slowly back into Cynthia’s bedroom, her arms folded tightly across her chest as if to try and quash the rising tide of fear in her chest. As she stepped up to the large bay window which looked out on Port Farron, a voice in her head told her that something terrible, something catastrophic was taking place. She could see the red flashing lights of the coast guard’s boat out on the darkening waves, and that single red light fed straight into her heart like a dagger.
“What’s happening?” the old woman said behind her, so far behind her, as if calling across a giant chasm. “What’s wrong?”
Everything’s wrong, Rachel told herself, putting her hands over her mouth. Oh dear God, something awful has happened.
22
The dining hall of the Port Farron Hotel was in chaos. Transformed into a makeshift hospital for treating survivors, the former restaurant area was now teeming with medical staff, coastguards and volunteers, with tables turned into temporary beds and the waiting staff into temporary porters. The paramedic who checked Sam over told him he was ‘in shock’. That seemed such a colossal understatement. Yes, he was in a state of shock. Shock magnified by paralysing guilt. As fellow islanders and ferry passengers drifted by, he interpreted their sorro
wful condolences for his ‘terrible loss’ as accusations. Occasionally, someone came up, gripped his arm and told him how awful it must be to lose a child in such a way. But their words washed over Sam without settling in his mind. Their condolences were empty offerings to him.
At some point in the mayhem, Richard Ashworth appeared. Sam watched Ashworth and his six-year-old daughter approaching across the hotel dining room. He was weaving through the makeshift beds—dining tables, mostly—dragging young Heidi behind him. The look of concern on his perpetually ruddy face was more than matched by that of his daughter. She and Becky were good friends, a fact which caused another jab of pain in his heart.
“Sam,” Ashworth said, stopping beside him to catch his breath. “I got the news only ten minutes ago. I came down as fast as I could.”
He scanned the faces milling about the dining hall. Heidi clung to her father’s arm. Sam didn’t respond to Ashworth’s words; he couldn’t take his eyes off the living counterpart of his little girl. He’d never noticed before, but if it wasn’t for Heidi’s charcoal-black hair, they’d be the absolute spit.
“Sam,” he said, grabbing his arm. “Marine wasn’t on the ferry, was she?”
Sam stared back at him numbly.
“Sam,” he said. “Marine went to Edinburgh yesterday. She was due to come back sometime today. Sam, tell me, please. Was she there?”
He squeezed Sam’s arm a little tighter, and he quickly tuned in to the desperation evident in his eyes.
“No,” Sam said, shaking his head for emphasis. “No, Marine wasn’t on the ferry.”
The big man leaned back, closed his eyes and let out a huge hiss of relief. “Thank God,” he said, dabbing at his slick brow with a handkerchief.
“Where’s Rebecca?”
The child’s voice cut through the din with its simple power. Sam looked at Heidi with a mixture of wonder and sadness. He couldn’t understand how she knew that Becky had even been with him. He hardly ever took Becky to the mainland without her mother; but somehow, through some childhood intuition, she had deduced that something terrible had befallen her friend. Perhaps it was the pain on Sam’s face that her father had been unable to read. Maybe, Sam wondered, children can read the many shades of pain on adult faces the way clairvoyants can read palms. After all, children don’t shy away from pain the way adults do; they face it head-on because they don’t yet know any different. The sadness Sam felt was echoed in the girl’s eyes. Not only had he lost a daughter, but this girl had lost a friend. He knew then, in the face of that dark-eyed child, that the pain in his heart would still find many more avenues of torment.
In that awful pregnant silence, Ashworth’s face fell. He looked at Sam with growing horror, and again clutched his arm, this time for consolation.
“Oh dear God, Sam. Becky wasn’t . . ?”
Sam didn’t need to confirm or deny it. His silence was enough to bear out the terrible truth. At the corner of his vision, Sam saw teardrops fall from Heidi’s big dark eyes, flaring momentarily in the light from the overhead chandeliers. His heart was a dull ache in his chest. He wanted to grab the girl and clutch her to his chest, so that he might comfort her and, selfishly, for just a moment, imagine it was his own daughter he was holding.
“Sam?”
He turned, his head rolling stiffly on his neck, vision blurred as if viewing the world in slow motion. Rachel stood in the aisle of table-beds in her blue nurse’s uniform.
Ashworth placed a hand over his mouth, stepping backwards to allow Rachel room to approach. But she didn’t move. They stared at each other across that empty space for a long time.
Sam wanted to go to her, but found himself incapable of moving, as if he was being repelled by an unseen force field – but it was only his fear which kept him rooted to the spot.
Eventually, he said, “Rachel?”
She stared back at him, her eyes filled with moisture, not tears; not yet.
“Where’s Becky?” she said.
Hearing her say their daughter’s name ignited a searing ache in his gut. She didn’t know. She hadn’t a clue. Oh God. She must have switched on to his silence now, to his miserable demeanour, because she looked at him wild-eyed all of a sudden.
“Where is she, Sam?” she said breathlessly. Her eyes searched the air around her husband, and the space behind him. Finally, she looked him in the eye. “Where is she?”
“Rachel,” he said, “something happened—”
“Where is she, Sam?” she said, hysteria rising. She started backing away from him into the milling crowds of rescue workers. “Where’s my baby?”
“Rachel, there was an accident. The ferry . . .” His voice trailed away. He, Sam Thorne the writer, couldn’t find the words to describe the immensity of it.
But when he studied his wife’s face closer, he knew he didn’t have to. Her hands closed over her mouth, perhaps to stem the colossal scream of grief she felt welling up inside her. Her eyes opened and shut in rapid succession, in an attempt to shore up the burgeoning tears.
Sam expected her to crumble to the floor at that point, something he’d wanted to do himself since being pulled from the sea. But, like always, she defied expectations and, with a warrior-like scream, charged at him like a madwoman. She clattered into him, fists flying, teeth gnashing, calling him every name imaginable, some obscenities he never even knew she knew. Her physical violence was in some perverse way a small absolution for him, a relief. He felt he deserved far worse.
The force of her attack sent him crashing into the table adjacent to them. Amid Rachel’s screams, he heard wood splintering and groaning beneath him, heard Ashworth calling out for Rachel to stop, to calm down, but by then Sam was collapsing to the floor under the sheer intensity of her assault. She was on top of him, clawing, beating, punching.
“You bastard! You stupid son of a bitch! I hate you!” Her words were daggers and he felt every stroke. “Selfish bastard killed my daughter selfish bastard you killed my daughter . . .”
As her strength waned and her grief took over, Sam reached out to try and restrain her, but there was no more fight left in her. His defensive gesture turned into an embrace, and she let him. She was crying into his neck now, and he felt her warm tears rolling down his throat and chest. They sat there without moving for an unknown time. The crowds stood around them, shocked, embarrassed, not knowing where to look, or what to do.
“I'm sorry,” he whispered, the words lost in the tangle of her hair. “Oh God, Rachel, I'm so sorry.”
23
They moved through the hours which followed like ghosts in a storm. Sitting alone in the same house, Rachel in the bedroom, Sam in the lounge, alone with their thoughts, yet desperately trying not to think.
Then came the visit Sam had been expecting and dreading with equal measure. After several hollow rings of the doorbell, he descended the stairs and opened the front door to chief-of-police Pete Hammond. Pete was the only member of the law on Scalasay. He’d taken semi-retirement several years earlier, and supervised any legal matters which occasionally arose on the island. He had very little to do. There hadn’t been a real crime on Scalasay for ten years - since the Garrett attacks. Most of the things Pete dealt with now were minor disputes over land or parking rights. But this was different in every way possible.
The two men studied each other in silence.
“They’ve found her, haven’t they?” Sam said.
24
The search team, comprised of half a dozen men from Northern Star and a larger team from the South Hebrides Police Constabulary, had trawled the area of ocean around the scene of the incident for most of the night. It didn’t take long before they found Becky and Garrett. Their bodies were found close together, washed ashore on the western side of the island. The man in charge of the search believed the big man died in the process of trying to save her, but his head injury and the weight of his chains had done for him.
Pete asked Sam to accompany him to Doctor Rogers’ surge
ry where they were keeping the bodies. “I’m so sorry, Sam,” he said, “but we need a positive identification.” The old policeman’s moist eyes flicked to the shadows in the hallway behind Sam. “It only needs to be one of you.”
Sam nodded, thinking he should go alone, leave Rachel out of this awful duty – but his next clear memory was stepping into the lobby of the surgery with Rachel clinging to his side like a frightened animal. Pete showed them to a side room with a uniformed police officer standing outside. The room appeared to be a storeroom in more normal times; there were shelves running from floor to ceiling on either side, filled with medical supplies, everything from bandages to syringes. In the centre of the room were two tables. On the farthest table, Sam could make out the vast frame of a man. The white sheet obscured the body but failed to cover his boots; feet that size had to belong to Ben Garrett. The table nearest the door undoubtedly held Becky’s body. Compared to the giant bulk lying opposite her, the shape beneath the second sheet appeared too small to be their daughter – but it had to be her.
As they edged over to the table, Sam felt Rachel tensing by his side. She seemed to have been holding her breath for an inordinate amount of time and Sam was certain that when Becky was revealed to them, she would faint to the floor. Once again, she surprised him, standing tall and resolute, an oddly calm expression on her face. The young police officer, with just a movement of the eyebrow, asked them if they were ready, and when Rachel signalled that they were, he gently folded the white sheet back to halfway. Rachel let out a gentle sigh, the kind of sigh that all mothers make when their child has shown them a new facet of their personality. It broke Sam’s heart just a little more.
Yes, it was still their Becky; but what struck Sam was the lack of colour, not just in Becky’s face, but in her clothes, too. The yellow, white and green dress which she’d been wearing had been bleached of its vibrancy, until it was now a solitary grey hue. Her lips, which had once been full and pink, were now thin and grey. Even her blonde hair seemed to have lost its lustre.
