Little Black Lies

by Sharon Bolton

  I shake my head. My responsibility.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Be my last line of defence. If the sergeant and his merry men can’t hold the crowd back, I need you to.’

  We’ve reached Pete by this stage. He has a case with the spare ammunition. He hands me the gun.

  * * *

  There is nothing neat, quick or painless about euthanizing a large mammal. The bullet tears into flesh, sending pieces of it flying in all directions. Blood spatters, just as it does at any crime scene, and it isn’t long before I’m covered in it. I could stand back, out of reach, but that would increase the chances of missing with the first shot. Even with a good, clean shot – and I am a good shot, I learn that day – the brain takes time to shut down. The animal emits a lonely, mournful cry as it feels itself dying, and that is echoed by those around it. Soon the beach is filled with the sound of whales singing their last. Pete is crying long before we’ve finished. I feel damp trickling down my cheeks and wonder if I am too, but when I put up my hand to brush the tears away, it comes back red. It’s blood, not tears, that is running down my face. The slaughter isn’t saddening me, I realize, before I’m halfway done. It’s adding to my rage.

  Callum remains untouched by it all, moving from one dying creature to the next, always shielding me from view, never stopping the accusations ringing in my ear.

  I come across a large female. As I step in close I can’t help but remember the pilot whale that Dad and I rescued all those years ago. The one who’d be fully mature now, of breeding age. The one I was supposed to name if I ever came across her again. ‘Hello again, Rachel,’ I whisper, a second before I shoot her in the head.

  9

  Rachel was charged with child neglect. Apparently, leaving two lively young children alone in a car on a clifftop for nearly fifteen minutes didn’t qualify as manslaughter. When the trial came around (a judge had to be flown in from the UK especially for it) she was six months pregnant. She pleaded guilty and was given a twelve-month sentence, suspended because of the advanced state of her pregnancy and her two young sons. Her driving licence was taken away for two years. If you were a kindly sort, you’d probably say that the guilt she had to live with was punishment enough.

  A week after she was sentenced, Ben took a good hard look at me, realized that what was going on in my head and body was more than grief and admitted me to hospital. I’d caught an infection, probably the result of four months of complete neglect and stress, and although I recovered, my son didn’t. He was stillborn, three weeks prematurely. When I held him for the first and only time, his body still warm from my own, I swear I heard a high-pitched twanging, like the sound of a guitar string breaking, and knew the only remaining cord tethering me to life had gone. I saw myself, a wrecked vessel, the last safety line frayed, drifting into the peril of the open sea.

  What followed after was entirely predictable. After eighteen months Ben had largely come to terms with his loss. He was still young, just thirty-seven and so much stronger than I, but he couldn’t deal with a wife who had ceased to function as a human being. Oh, I dragged myself to work each day, did my job competently enough. I managed to keep the house on the acceptable side of squalor. I bought food and did my share of cooking it. I walked and fed Queenie, and wrapped myself around her when I needed reminding that bodies are supposed to be warm and hearts to beat. I even let Ben have sex when I sensed he needed the comfort of physical intimacy and tried not to shudder as his hands roamed over me. But the woman Ben had married wasn’t there any more and neither he nor I knew where to find her. When he told me he was moving out, that he was going to live with a young radiographer from the hospital, I wasn’t remotely surprised. It was a relief, frankly, not having to try to be normal around him. I barely noticed he was no longer in the house. I cleaned less, ate less, spoke to no one not connected with work. The day I heard his son had been born I wept so long and so loudly that Queenie fled the house. After that the woman I’d become resumed the pretence of being OK.

  * * *

  Nobody leaves the beach. Even with the temptations of cake, newborn lambs and a penguin that does circus tricks, no one will follow Aunt Janey to the other side of the island and she won’t leave me in the face of so much hostility. They stay and watch, call ‘shame’ and take photographs as I walk from one animal to the next. ‘Murderer!’ they yell, as I take aim and send a bullet into the brain of a creature that is much more noble and beautiful and deserving of a place on this earth than its killer. I don’t look back or ahead, I just carry on going, walk to the next, aim and shoot. Over and over again I kill, and long before the daylight starts to fade there is little doubt remaining that I’ve become what they’re all calling me. A murderer.

  Only once do I stop. Mid afternoon, when around thirty whales are still alive and suffering. I stop because a group of newcomers bypasses the soldiers and gets right up to me. So engrossed am I in my grim task that I know nothing of their presence until they say my name.

  I turn and take a few seconds to clear the dark fog that’s been growing in my head since I started killing. Callum isn’t by my side. Occasionally, he’s been stopping to double-check the whales I’ve shot are properly dead. So he’s a couple of metres away, crouching by a young female.

  Seven people. All locals, although I can’t immediately think of names. Then I recognize Gemma Brown. Whose son’s body I may have seen on the Endeavour a few hours ago.

  ‘We need to know what you saw on the wreck last night.’ It is a man who speaks to me, most likely her husband, Jimmy’s father.

  ‘You’re going to have to talk to Bob Stopford, guys.’ Callum strides closer. They all ignore him.

  ‘We just want to know what you saw. Which one it was. That’s not asking too much.’ A different man, similar to the first, maybe his brother, the boy’s uncle. It doesn’t seem too much to ask, but how can I tell these families that the corpse I saw was unrecognizable? That the little boy they once loved no longer exists.

  ‘What was he wearing?’ Gemma, the mother, is the most practical. I think of the canvas trainer I saw, dark blue, with laces that might once have been cream. A few words from me would confirm her worst fear. Or prolong the agony. I can’t tell her, it would be shockingly irresponsible.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you. You need to talk to the police. I’m sure they’ll have answers for you as soon as possible.’ I try to turn away, someone catches hold of my shoulder.

  ‘What the hell were you doing there anyway? Who goes out to a wreck in the middle of the night?’ The man is in my face, tall and threatening.

  ‘Catrin, the gun.’ Callum, speaking softly, steps to my side. I relax my hold on the gun and let him take it, just as the group confronting me notice it too. A different emotion entirely creeps over their faces. A couple of them take a step away.

  ‘Going to the wreck was my idea.’ Callum tucks the gun into his waistband. ‘We were looking for the missing tourist kid. Catrin gave me a lift. Now, we are very busy here and you need to talk to the police.’

  Two of the soldiers have joined us. ‘Sergeant, these people need to leave the beach.’ Callum is standing for no nonsense but I’m the one who gets Jimmy’s dad’s parting shot. He looks around, taking in the dead animals, the crimson beach, the spatters on my clothes and skin.

  ‘Jesus, what is wrong with you?’

  He turns, and the others follow him from the beach.

  * * *

  By late afternoon, all the whales are dead. John, Brian and a police officer arrive and we start the collection of data. No one has the heart to say that every cloud has a silver lining but the information we’ll gather today will be shared with cetacean scientists all over the world.

  Slowly, at last, the beach empties, until it’s just Conservation people, the army and those few who are here for me. Aunt Janey brings sandwiches that no one can eat and hot coffee that we can’t drink fast enough. She also brings a change of clothes, for whic
h I’ll be grateful before the day is over. She presses me to stay, promises me my old room is always ready, but I have less than twenty-four hours now. I have to be back in Stanley tonight.

  When what little that remains to be done can be handled by John, Brian and Pete, I walk to the next beach, which is all but empty of living creatures. Every bird within a five-mile radius will be feasting on the dead whales by now. I strip down to my underwear and walk into the water. It feels cold enough to stop my heart. I walk further, submerge myself completely, rinse the gore away from my body, face and hair, and all the time I know that no matter how long I live, it will never leave the inside of my head.

  For a moment, I’m tempted to keep walking, start swimming, until the cold gets too much for me, because maybe I can appease the anger of the people who saw me kill today, if I give myself in payment for the whales.

  10

  Around a year ago, with no reason to go on living, I started to give serious thought to no longer living. My parents and my children had died, my husband had moved on, my best friend had become someone I couldn’t bear to have in my head, never mind in my life. There was Queenie, of course, and I felt bad about abandoning her, but I figured Ben would take her and she’d be fine with that. I started leaving extra food out for her, in case there came a day when I seized the moment and didn’t make it home, but she’s a greedy little beast and I had to stop when she got too fat.

  One Sunday morning, I kissed my little dog goodbye, straightened the house, and drove the boat all the way round the coast to New Island on the westernmost edge of the Falklands.

  Over the years, my family have owned a lot of land on the islands but New Island has always felt like home to us, because it was to New Island that my ancestors first came and established their whaling operation. A little way off the coast there is a wreck of a ship called the Isabella, that got into trouble carrying a cargo of mother-of-pearl. Decades later, fragments are still found on the shore, some cut into the little tesserae used in mosaics, some still attached to the shells. Rachel was enchanted by the place, renaming it Treasure Island. On my wedding day, I gave her a necklace and earrings made from Isabella’s mother-of-pearl and she cried for so long I had to redo her make-up.

  When our older boys were six, our younger two just four, we took them to Treasure Island. We lit fires, sang songs, watched penguins mooch about and the black-browed albatrosses sitting on their doughnut-ring nests and in an hour and a half on the beach, we collected twenty pieces of mother-of-pearl. I think it was one of the happiest times of my life.

  If anywhere could bring home to me what I’d lost, make the leaving behind of this empty life at all easier, it would be New Island.

  So the Sunday morning I decided to end it all, I didn’t bother with a wetsuit, figuring the cold would ease my passing. I attached a tank with only ten minutes of air and went down. I went in a diagonal line to take me away from the boat. By the time I hit the ocean floor I had roughly five minutes of air left. The water was nearly thirty metres deep and visibility poor. I thought about my sons and let the pain wash over me. I thought about the possibility of seeing them again, although I’ve never really believed in the afterlife. I heard the sucking, rasping sound of the air running out.

  I sat, glued to the sand. When my lungs began to fight, I pulled off the tank and ripped the mouthpiece from my face. My stomach was starting to pulse, my ribcage felt on the point of bursting inwards. I knew it was only a matter of seconds before the urge to draw breath became impossible to resist and when that happened water would flood in and the venture would no longer be within my control. And, at the moment when I think my vision was starting to blur, a beam of sunlight made its way down to the ocean floor. There, directly in front of me, was a small, iridescent fragment that wasn’t rock, or shell, although it was once created inside one. A piece of mother-of-pearl.

  Rachel. She was right there with me at the bottom of the sea. I saw her twelve-year-old self, face aglow with the shining, gleaming things washed up on the beach. I saw her, tearful and beautiful, on my wedding day. I saw her in the knife, fork and spoon set she gave Ned at his christening.

  Seconds later I was on the surface, clutching the shell fragment.

  I tried again, of course, I am not so easily dissuaded from a purpose. I stockpiled paracetamol, and succeeded only in making myself very ill. I took a sharpened kitchen knife into the bathroom and after several half-hearted attempts to make a dent in my own flesh, hurled it at the mirror. I read everything I could get my hands on about the psychology of suicide, trying to find out what it was that I was lacking. In the end, I got the message. I was too angry to take my own life. Unless, of course, I could take Rachel’s first.

  Standing here in the sea, letting the cold water wash over me, as if anything could ever make me feel clean again, I realize that any lingering doubts have finally slipped away.

  I’ve been wondering if I have what it takes to kill. Whether I can look a living creature in the eye and take the one irreversible action that ends a life. Asked and answered, I suppose. Nearly two hundred dead mammals on the next beach are testament to that. I have no difficulty in killing. I’m actually rather good at it.

  * * *

  It’s dark when Aunt Janey’s boat drops Callum and me back on the mainland. When I say goodbye, I hold her so tightly and for so long that I feel sure she must suspect something. I’m in luck though. She puts it down to the stresses of the day.

  Queenie greets Callum and me rapturously, leaping high into the air with excitement, but that could be because she hasn’t eaten for hours.

  ‘I can still smell blood,’ I say, as we set off across camp.

  Callum shifts in the seat. ‘Janey didn’t have anything to fit me.’ He smiles. ‘And I’m far too much of a wimp to wash in the sea.’

  Taken unawares, I smile back. We have a daft tradition here on the islands called the Midwinter Swim. On the day of the Winter Solstice, which occurs here in June, a couple of hundred foolhardy types gather at Surf Bay and – well, not swim exactly, more run into the water, dunk their heads and run out screaming. In the old days, Callum took part every year. The first time I saw him in swimming shorts, I thought a man from Norse mythology, one of the heroes of old that Rachel talked about, had stepped out of the sea. His hair was quite long then, and it shone strawberry blond in the winter sun. His skin was pale, freckled, and covered in fine, gold hairs. He was massive, magnificent, so very, very male. It was four years ago, a few weeks before I met him properly for the first time. I was a very different woman back then.

  I lost more than my sons, when Rachel’s car plunged over the cliff.

  11

  I wake suddenly, with no idea of the time or where I am. Then I realize I’m lying across the front seats of Callum’s Land Cruiser. His coat is below my head, a tartan-plaid rug over me. The car smells of the slaughter we left behind on the beach at Speedwell: blood, the shore, flesh already beginning to rot.

  Queenie is with me, not curled up between my stomach and thigh, as is her habit when we both sleep, but upright on her haunches, her tiny ears pricking. She’s alert, on the watch for something, staring out of the windows. Maybe she can see something out there. I can’t. Her breath, and mine, have misted the windows over.

  ‘Callum?’ I don’t expect a response. I don’t get one.

  I’ve been dreaming. Bad dreams of gunfire and flesh ripping apart. Of blood and bones exploding into the air. I was somewhere very dark. All around me was noise and I was very, very afraid.

  I sit up, wipe the windscreen, then the passenger window. Queenie jumps on to the driver’s seat to get out of my way, but she’s watching my every move.

  ‘Where’d he go?’

  She sticks her nose against the window then looks back at me. Her ears flatten. She doesn’t know either.

  There are no keys in the ignition.

  The night air, thick with the smells of gorse, peat and the sea, streams into the car as I climb dow
n. The stars look like droplets of ocean when the sunlight catches them but there is no moon. It’s too dark to see much beyond the Diddle Dee, the dense, woody shrub that grows along the roadside like the frayed edge of a ribbon.

  I find the small torch I always carry with me, and make my way round the car. There is a wide, deep ditch beyond the Diddle Dee to either side of the road which means I’m somewhere between Darwin and Stanley. I shine the torch as far as it will reach. No sign of Callum.

  A sudden explosion of sound and light in the distance has my raw nerves tingling. Fireworks. As the coloured sparks fade I’m remembering more of my dream. Mud and slaughter. Darkness and deafening noise. The battle for Goose Green.

  When I first got to know him, Callum told me many stories about the conflict, but only light-hearted stuff. He told me about stealing a sheep to make mutton stew, about the wine store in Stanley that took a hit and caused the streets to run with wine and beer. He didn’t tell me anything about the death, the mutilations. He shared nothing of the real horror of the Falklands war.

  So I found it out for myself. I read every account I could get my hands on. It wasn’t from Callum that I learned of his regiment’s five miserable days on Sussex Mountain after their landing, surrounded by bleak hills and lifeless slopes, trying to keep warm in the face of a ceaseless mid-winter wind. He told me nothing about that, but I knew all the same about their failure to dig trenches in solid rock or waterlogged ground, about their grasping at shelter of any kind, even a gorse bush.

  I know what he went through on this hillside.

  While I’m still undecided about what to do, Queenie takes off along the road.

  ‘Piglet, stay!’ Without thinking I use Callum’s old name for my dog. She pulls her nose out of the Diddle Dee and looks back at me. Then sets off again.

  ‘Did he go that way?’ Queenie is no sniffer dog but she could usually track down the boys when they were hiding.