Dark Sky Island

by Lara Dearman

  The object of Fallaize’s attention was the beautiful woman sitting opposite him. Tanya Le Page’s long, dark hair was damp. Freshly washed. Michael could smell the shampoo, a clean, herbal scent, so pleasant, in fact, it was difficult not to obviously breathe it in. Her deep brown eyes were wide and frightened, just as her son’s had been that morning. Her powder-blue sundress, cut low, complimented her pale skin. There were two damp patches just below where her hair rested, which, Michael noted, with some discomfort, was just above her breasts. She had her feet tucked behind her on the sofa. They were small and bare, and seemed to add an air of almost painful vulnerability to the woman. He placed the mugs on the low coffee table in front of the sofa and sat next to her.

  ‘Right. Nice cuppa makes everything better.’ Not true, but there was something about the ritual of making tea that was soothing, and something about the drinking of it that undoubtedly settled the nerves.

  Tanya Le Page took a sip.

  ‘I can’t believe this is happening. Not here. I moved back so Arthur could have the sort of childhood I had. Not this.’

  ‘Local, are you?’ Michael was surprised. She had no hint of an accent.

  ‘This was my parents’ business. I grew up here, in this house. I went to boarding school when I was eleven. By the time I’d finished, Mum and Dad had moved to Guernsey. They kept the business—had someone else running it, but when that didn’t work out, I came and took over. It’s ideal for a kid. No cars, outdoors all the time. We’ve no TV, no iPad, none of that. Arthur loves it.’ She looked as if she was about to cry. ‘I can’t believe this. It’s horrific.’

  ‘We’re going to have to talk to Arthur, Ms Le Page. The sooner the better.’

  She nodded. ‘The doctor’s coming over as fast as he can.’

  ‘I completely understand you want him checked over. We recommend it, in fact, don’t we, Sergeant Gerard?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Emily nodded and flashed another one of her reassuring smiles. ‘Essential to have a doctor see him.’

  ‘But you see, Ms Le Page, this is time sensitive. There’s a chance Arthur might have seen who killed Mr Carré.’

  Tanya shuddered. ‘I understand, Detective. But I’m not risking my child’s health. He’s hardly said a word to me since he came home. He’s obviously traumatised. What makes you think he’ll talk to a complete stranger?’

  ‘Emily here, our FLO, she’s trained in this sort of thing.’

  Tanya sighed, eyes heavy with tears. ‘This is a nightmare.’

  ‘We’ll be out of your hair soon as we can speak to the boy.’

  ‘If we don’t speak to him now, love,’ Emily ventured, ‘we’ll have to speak to him later. Best to get it out of the way, while it’s all fresh in his mind. It might even help him, to talk about it. Chances are, he’s scared. He might feel responsible in some way for what’s happened.’ Emily noted Tanya’s incredulous look. ‘Kids can convince themselves of the funniest things. If we get him to talk, we can reassure him—tell him he’s safe, he’s not in trouble, everything will be OK.’ She smiled encouragingly.

  Tanya ran her hands through her hair. ‘Five minutes?’

  ‘We’ll be as quick as we can,’ Michael said.

  She nodded. ‘OK. I’ll get him. But first sign he’s distressed, you stop.’

  ‘Of course.’

  As soon as she’d left the room, Fallaize piped up. ‘Maybe we should wait for the doctor. She looks the type that might sue.’

  ‘What on earth makes you say that?’ Michael tipped his head back, tried to work a crick out of his neck.

  ‘Look at this place. Nice stuff. And she sounds, well, you know. Bit stuck-up.’

  ‘If you mean she speaks nicely, you’re right, Fallaize. Not an indication she’s going to be litigious as far as I’m aware.’ He had a point, though, Michael thought. She certainly didn’t seem the type to suffer fools. And too many people in the room would intimidate the boy.

  ‘I need you in the village, Fallaize. See how Marquis is getting on taking statements.’

  Fallaize frowned. ‘Might be better if I’m here. Verify what happens in case, you know, she gets difficult.’

  ‘I think Sergeant Gerard and I can handle it. Thanks anyway. Now get a move on!’ He shook his head as Fallaize left, obviously put out.

  ‘He’s very enthusiastic, isn’t he?’ Emily said. ‘Volunteered to come up with me. Talks a lot.’

  ‘All about himself, I suppose.’ Michael was sure Fallaize was angling for a promotion. He’d been ever so slightly less antagonistic towards Michael than usual. Seemed to have finally grasped who was boss. Michael moved to sit next to Emily just as the door opened. Tanya entered, her son trailing behind her.

  Michael sat forward. ‘Hello there, Chief. How are you feeling?’

  Arthur gave no sign he’d heard Michael but sat next to his mother, mimicking her position, arms crossed, legs tucked behind him.

  She put an arm around him. ‘It’s OK, sweetheart. The policeman needs to ask you a few questions. You just tell the truth.’

  ‘Nothing you say here is going to get you in any trouble,’ Emily said gently. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘First things first, then. How did you end up at Mr Carré’s house this morning? I’m guessing you were supposed to be at school, eh?’

  Arthur looked at his mother.

  ‘I hated going to school on days like this. Who wants to sit in a stuffy classroom when the sun’s shining, eh?’ Michael smiled. ‘And you walk to school by yourself, do you?’

  ‘All the kids do here.’ Tanya sounded defensive. ‘I’d just told him this morning that this was his last chance, that if he didn’t go straight there, I was going to start walking with him again. He’s been late a couple of times. But this is the first time he’s played truant. It is, isn’t it, Arthur?’

  ‘I get it,’ Michael reassured her. ‘Nobody is judging you. Or Arthur. That’s not why we’re here.’

  Arthur stared at the floor, hair covering his face.

  ‘You ended up at Mr Carré’s house, Arthur.’ Michael paused. ‘Did you see him? When you got there. Did he let you in?’

  Silence.

  ‘Did you see anyone else, Arthur? Someone you recognised?’ Michael pressed. ‘You shouted something when I found you. Do you remember? You shouted, “Beast Man.”’ He held his breath. Come on.

  Silence. The boy’s shoulders shook and he emitted a snot-laden sniff.

  ‘Tell them, sweetheart.’ Tanya nudged him gently, but it was as though she’d poked him with a cattle prod. He threw his head back, leaped from the sofa, screaming.

  ‘I didn’t see him! I didn’t see him!’

  ‘It’s OK!’ Tanya pulled her son towards her, wrapped her arms around him, rocked him, whispering, ‘It’s OK. It’s OK, baby.’

  She looked at Michael. ‘Enough.’

  He held his hands up. ‘Absolutely.’ Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  Tanya carried the boy out of the room.

  ‘Fuck. I thought we had a chance there. Now what, eh?’

  ‘You can’t question him anymore. Not now.’

  ‘I know. Poor kid. But what a pain in the arse.’

  Tanya returned. Michael was relieved to see she looked upset but not furious. She paced around the back of the sofa, chewing her thumbnail.

  ‘He just climbed into bed. Pulled the covers over his head.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love.’

  She shook her head. ‘I know you had to ask him.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, children recover from this sort of trauma far more quickly than adults do,’ Emily reassured her. ‘We’ve an excellent counsellor—we’ll arrange for her to come and speak with you as soon as possible.’

  Tanya didn’t seem to hear her. ‘I kept asking him what he’d done—he’s always getting into scrapes—but he wouldn’t say anything. I thought he’d hurt himself. But when I washed the blood off, there was nothing. Was it Reg’s? The blood?’

  ‘I
presume so.’

  ‘You probably wanted to test it. Sorry.’

  ‘You’ve nothing to be sorry about.’ He paused. ‘Do you have any idea why Arthur might have been at Reg’s cottage, Ms Le Page?’

  ‘No. No. We didn’t know him. Well, we knew him, of course. But not really. Except . . .’ She hesitated.

  ‘Please, go on.’

  ‘It’s going to sound awful. When I was a kid, we used to follow Reg. It was a game. To see who could get closest to him without him noticing. He was such a grumpy man, complaining to our parents even when we weren’t doing anything wrong. He drank a lot too, and would yell at us when he’d had too much. We were a bit scared of him. But that was what made it so much fun. You had to see how close you could get without him catching you. It’s probably my fault Arthur was there this morning. Reg shouted at him a few weeks ago—Arthur was going too fast on his bike, something like that, and he came back scared. So I told him what we used to do. I was trying to make Reg seem less scary, make a joke of the whole thing. I think he told his friends at school and they started playing the game again. I’ve seen them whispering in little groups when Reg walks past.’

  ‘He wasn’t a well-liked man, then?’

  ‘He was difficult. Bad-tempered. Between you and me, I think his mental health was suffering recently. Dementia, perhaps. He’d been behaving even more oddly than usual. I’ve seen him walking around muttering to himself.’ She looked embarrassed. ‘Probably should have checked in on him, shouldn’t I? He’d been on his own for years. His wife left him. Left the son, Luke, here with Reg. It must have been hard for him.’

  ‘You knew him, the son?’

  Tanya nodded. ‘He’s a few years older than me. He lives in Guernsey too. Left Sark before I went away to school. He must have been about sixteen. He was never happy here. Not after all the stuff with his mum.’

  ‘What stuff with his mum?’

  ‘Her disappearing.’

  ‘Disappearing?’

  ‘Well, leaving them both. Not very often you hear of a mum walking out on her family, is it? I can’t even imagine it. I saw him a couple of days ago.’

  ‘The son? Here? In Sark?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t speak to him. He was on his own, reading a book. I didn’t want to disturb him.’

  ‘He come over often?’

  ‘Yes, to visit his dad.’ She stopped, frozen to the spot, a sudden realisation apparently dawning on her.

  ‘If Arthur saw something, are we in danger? What if whoever did this saw him and wants to keep him quiet?’

  Emily moved over to Tanya and put her hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s very likely that Arthur arrived on the scene after the murder was committed. The blood on his hand certainly points towards that. And nobody else knows he was there. Just us.’

  ‘There was a woman. The one who brought him home?’

  ‘I’ll be speaking with her shortly,’ Michael said. ‘She’s an acquaintance of mine. I trust her not to say anything. But regardless, we’re going to keep you safe. We’ll post someone here. For your peace of mind.’

  She nodded, seemed to relax, just a little.

  ‘Tanya, what Arthur shouted this morning, before he ran off, “Beast Man.” Does that mean anything to you? Perhaps it was something the children called Reg?’

  She shook her head. ‘Oh God. No, no, that’s nothing to do with Reg. It’s . . . You’re going to think we’re all crazy.’

  ‘Of course not,’ he reassured her. Although, at this rate, he thought, she was probably right.

  ‘You have to understand it’s different here. Kids have to make their own entertainment. They tell stories, make up games. One of them is the Beast of Sark.’

  Michael furrowed his brow. ‘Like the Beast of Jersey?’ It was the name the press had given the notorious sex attacker who had terrorised the neighbouring island of Jersey in the 1960s, creeping into people’s houses at night in a rubber mask and nail-studded wristbands.

  ‘That must be where it came from originally. The story’s been doing the rounds since I was a kid. Someone probably heard the news stories from Jersey at the time and then it got passed down. Now it’s a bit of an urban legend. Or an island one, I suppose. We didn’t know anything about the real Beast of Jersey stuff, not back then. Just that if you were naughty, or mean to your friends, the Beast would come and get you. Arthur and his friends are always chasing each other, and whoever gets caught is the Beast Man and has to chase everyone else. It’s just a game.’

  ‘And what does he look like, this beast?’

  ‘Well, like I said, he’s not real, Detective. Just a story kids scare each other with.’

  ‘Of course. I understand. But Arthur seemed to think he saw this Beast Man this morning. What might he think he looks like? From the stories?’

  She sighed. ‘He dresses all in black. And according to the legend, his features are twisted and stretched beyond all recognition. That’s why he’s so scary. The Beast of Sark has no face.’

  Michael was used to a room going quiet when he entered—years spent as the subject of gossip after Ellen’s death, his subsequent fall from grace and, later, his public calling-out of unscrupulous colleagues had made sure of that. It felt different here, though. The stares of the Sarkees as he made his way to Jenny at the bar, the whispered ‘Copper’ from somewhere at the back of the room as he sat next to her.

  ‘Everything all right here?’ He spoke quietly.

  ‘Brilliant.’ Jenny’s tone was dry. ‘Best hour and a half in a tiny bar full of potentially hostile people I’ve ever spent.’

  Michael motioned to the barman and ordered a lemonade.

  ‘Spoken to anyone interesting?’

  ‘Maybe. How about you?’

  ‘You know the drill, Jenny. Ongoing investigation, waiting for forensics, post-mortem, et cetera, et cetera.’

  ‘I heard there was a lot of blood.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘From who?’

  ‘Someone in the corner. Over there.’

  He followed her gaze. ‘Bloke in the metal T-shirt?’

  She nodded. ‘But everyone’s been talking. It was a frenzied stabbing according to one account. Another woman said she’d heard it had all the marks of a professional hit job.’

  ‘Why the bloody hell would anyone think that? Bloody gossip. I bet that constable’s been running his mouth.’

  ‘So was it?’

  ‘Was it what?’

  She shrugged. ‘A frenzied stabbing? A hit job? Listen, Michael, this place is ten times worse than Guernsey. Unless you tell people what’s going on, there’s going to be panic. There already is. You need to set the record straight, and soon.’

  He tugged at his chin. ‘You’re probably right. But I can’t say anything until I’ve cleared it with the super.’

  ‘Course not. Anything I run with at this point would be from an anonymous source.’

  He nodded. Lowered his voice even further. ‘Knife wound to the throat. Police are following several leads. That’s all I can give you now. I’ll organise a press conference as soon as practical. Need to set up a space here first. Write that every available resource will be directed to this inquiry and we won’t rest until we found who did this.’

  ‘What about the bones on the beach?’

  ‘Reg Carré’s murder is a priority, but every effort will be made to identify the remains found on Derrible. Once we’ve established who it is, we’ll try to figure out what happened to them. That do you?’

  Jenny nodded.

  ‘Right. What have you got for me, then?’ If he knew Jennifer Dorey, and he thought he did, she’d have more than just pub gossip to show for sitting here.

  ‘There’s a friend of Reg’s over on Little Sark.’

  ‘Name?’

  Jenny looked down at her notes. ‘Len Mauger. Thought I might go and talk to him. Just for a bit of background.’

  ‘Who gave you his name, then?’

  ‘A Mr Malcolm Perré. You might
want to speak with him. He was a bit strange.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, there didn’t seem to be any love lost between him and Reg Carré.’

  Michael wrote down the names she had given him. ‘You’re not going to see this Len now? Not by yourself?’ As much as Michael trusted Jenny’s instinct on a story, he was less sure about her instinct for self-preservation.

  ‘He was a friend of Reg’s.’

  ‘Jenny, how many people do you think get killed by strangers?’ The look on her face said she knew the statistics. Reg Carré was likely to have been murdered by someone he knew. ‘The police boat leaves at eight. Stay out of trouble for the next couple of hours, will you?’

  He left her sitting at the bar. If he’d had any spare resources, he’d have been tempted to have someone watch her, make sure she didn’t do anything daft. But that would be overstepping. It wasn’t his place. Even if it had been, he’d not proved himself particularly adept when it came to protecting young women. He tried to shake off the thought but it jabbed at the corner of his brain. Seeing Reg Carré’s body had been disturbing, but Reg had been an old man. There was something so much easier to digest about a death in old age, even a brutal one. It was the scene down at Derrible that was playing on Michael’s mind. Those bones laid out like that, brittle and dry, all that was left of a young woman. She’d been young, Michael felt sure of it. And now she was just bones. It had shaken him to the very core. Because it had been nearly twenty years since Ellen had died, and he knew, beneath the well-tended grave, that was all that was left of her.

  12

  Rachel

  1978

  She refused to sit, even though he found her an empty seat. She stood in the open doorway, looking out at the lashing waves as they battered the back of the boat. Cases and packages had been thrown off the seats onto the floor, sticky and wet from the spray that washed in. Most of the other passengers had been shopping. It was the last ferry service from Guernsey before Christmas. She was shunted from side to side as the boat swayed, and her hand fluttered to her aching belly.

  Three times she’d made this journey, and each time she’d left something behind. It was hard to recall the joy she’d felt on that first sailing to Sark. Summer. Only six months ago. How happy she’d been to say goodbye to her childhood. Ironic, then, that her second journey had been made at the behest of her father, the very man whose tether she had tried so desperately to escape. She’d thought he might kill her when he’d found out. But when he’d calmed down, he’d made her pray with him. Said she would go back and marry him, whoever he was, and if she needed persuading, she could come with him to the centre and talk to some of the girls there. And then he’d packed her bag and thrown her out. If she hadn’t felt so sick, so alone, she would have laughed at his hypocrisy.