Little Black Lies

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘She also found the body of Jimmy Brown, in a bay she’s known to frequent.’ Cathy’s a bit braver with Mabel to back her up.

  ‘What are you talking about? It was my idea to search that wreck.’

  A firm shake of the head from Cathy. ‘Not the story we’re hearing around town.’

  Rob has finished on the phone, so I turn my back on Cathy. ‘Do we know for certain the kid on the Endeavour was Jimmy?’

  He looks at me over Mabel’s head. ‘They did the initial examination yesterday afternoon. While you and Catrin were at Speedwell. It was definitely Jimmy. They had dental records.’

  I wait for him to go on.

  ‘His family have been told, obviously. Now we have to wait for a pathologist to arrive.’

  We have no one on the islands qualified to carry out postmortem examinations. When a death requires investigation, someone has to be flown over from the UK. It will be several days, maybe a week or more, before we know what happened to Jimmy.

  Rob pulls a face. ‘Not that we’re expecting to find out much more than we know already. According to what they found yesterday, there’s no obvious cause of death and the remains of clothes suggest he wasn’t interfered with. Bob says we’ll probably never know what happened to him, but there’s a lot to suggest that a child going into the sea at Surf Bay could easily have washed up in Port Pleasant.’

  The phone starts ringing. Unable to stop himself, Rob picks it up.

  I turn to Mabel. ‘So Stopford’s happy again. Archie found alive and well, poor wee Jimmy’s death an accident. No monsters on the Falkland Islands.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,’ says Cathy.

  Mabel glares at her to be quiet. ‘The best thing you can do right now is get Catrin out of Stanley for a while,’ she tells me. ‘Get on board that boat tonight, drive to New Island, or anywhere, and hole up till it blows over. This place will be crawling with journalists tomorrow and I really don’t think she can cope with that.’

  On my way out, I glance back at Rob, who is standing at the window, still on the phone, but looking up at the sky, down at his watch, back up at the sky again, and telling the caller to get a blinking move on or he’ll miss it.

  It’s five minutes to the Falkland Conservation, probably faster to run, so I set off and within two minutes know I’ve made the wrong decision. Catrin’s Land Rover comes hurtling towards me. There isn’t time to leap bodily into the road, which is probably just as well because I’m not convinced she’d have stopped. She speeds past, and I have no option but to turn and run back to my car.

  When I get there I’m winded, my breathing shallow, which is not a good sign. In me, an approaching flashback is similar to what other people might describe as a panic attack. My heart starts to pick up speed and lose its usual regularity. In other words, I get palpitations. My breathing gets a lot faster. I feel light-headed, get a sense of unreality, as though the world around me has detached itself. I’m getting all that now. Plus, the world around me is turning darker. I shake my head to clear it. It doesn’t work. I’m losing my grip.

  Normally, when I feel this way, I take myself off somewhere quiet, lie down and try to get my breathing back under control. If I catch it in time, I can sometimes prevent the onset. This is not a good time to be lying down. I need to find Catrin.

  I take a few deep breaths and jump into the car. She’s about eight or ten minutes ahead. I head east along a rapidly darkening Ross Road, and when I’ve driven past most of the town, turn inland to pick up the Airport Road. A few more minutes and I can head directly north towards her house. I tell myself to keep breathing, to stay calm.

  I’m almost at the point where I turn when I see her hurtling towards me again. She screeches to a halt, reverses a couple of feet, then mounts the verge at the side of the road to get past. As I watch, mystified, she doesn’t make eye contact, doesn’t even glance my way. It might be an empty truck she’s manoeuvring around. With a spray of mud, she’s off the verge and speeding away in the opposite direction. The world darkens again and I can’t go on.

  * * *

  The rain wakes me and I scramble to my feet. I have no idea how or why I’m outdoors but I know I’m not dressed for being out in camp. I’m wearing a light denim jacket, jeans, shoes that I’d normally wear to the pub or around the house. Not what I was wearing earlier in the day. Some time, in between chasing Catrin up the coast road and winding up here, I’ve been home.

  It’s punishingly dark. No stars, no moon, no glow from the imminent arrival of the sun. I press the illuminated button on my watch and the sudden spark of light becomes the flash of gunfire.

  I cry out, look round in alarm. Then take a deep breath and tell myself it’s over. That the flashback, and the events that sparked it, are over. Neither leave me that easily.

  Thirteenth of June 1982. The assault on Wireless Ridge. My company had already sustained heavy losses at Goose Green, we weren’t ready for another prolonged attack. We waited, in the mud. The guns fell silent. An order, one that I had to give: ‘Fix bayonets, lads! No prisoners.’

  The order comes and we go. A charge into a black nightmare. No way of knowing where the enemy is or what sort of land we’re crossing. Into the stinking mud of enemy trenches, to find them abandoned. On again, with mine the voice that pushes the lads on. ‘Keep going. Let’s do it. This is what we’re here for.’ The key to success in battle is to keep moving forward, regardless of personal cost.

  Calling up artillery support with disastrous consequences. Shells crashing down on us, losing more men in friendly fire. ‘Keep going, lads. This is what we trained for.’ As if anyone could be trained for this living hell. A terrified young Argie, jumping up in front of us, hands in the air.

  No prisoners.

  Impossible to explain to people who’ve never known combat, who can quote the Geneva Convention but have no idea what it’s like to be in a hostile situation, that in the heat of battle, you don’t take prisoners. Capturing and securing a single enemy soldier could tie up three of our guys in circumstances when everyone is needed for the forward push.

  This is a kid in front of us. A teenager, begging not to be killed.

  ‘Shoot him! Fucking shoot him.’

  ‘You shoot him!’

  Hope fading in the lad’s eyes. None of the men with the stomach to kill a frightened kid. A single bullet. A sharp upward stab of the bayonet. The kid falls to the mud. My bullet. My bayonet. Sometimes, the buck just stops.

  I’m sweating, in spite of the cold. Shaking in the aftermath of the flashback I always dread. For me, the worst night of the war, the night I killed a terrified, unarmed kid.

  When Catrin and I were together, she used to talk about a poem that her friend Rachel was keen on and such was my infatuation at the time with all things Catrin, I looked it up. It was long, I remember that much, and also that I didn’t understand most of it, but three lines stood out for me:

  For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky

  Lay like a load on my weary eye,

  And the dead were at my feet.

  I’d like to be able to forget those three lines. I can’t. I know what it’s like to be surrounded by dead men. To fall over them, to walk on top of them. There are times when it feels like the dead are always at my feet.

  I check my watch again. It’s after two in the morning. I reach into my jacket pocket and thank God my Swiss army knife is still there because it has a small torch attached.

  I’m by the stone run, the same one that crosses the road to Estancia. I can follow it down. It’ll be bloody miserable going, but I won’t get lost. I set off, keeping to the edge of the trail of boulders, flicking the light on to them every few seconds to make sure I don’t stray. Already the pictures in my head are fading. The tightness in my chest starting to uncoil.

  I try to call up the last real thing I can remember before the flashback kicked in. Catrin. Up near the Grimwood house. Following her back into town. Seeing her boat disapp
ear out of harbour and knowing there was no way I could follow. From the way I’m dressed, I know I went home briefly, showered and changed, and I can remember the Globe, not long after four in the afternoon. A few of the guys from the fishing fleet were in there. Also a couple of folk from camp. Some off-duty squaddies from the base. I’d learned that Stopford had managed to get the cruise ship to agree to stay another night, but after that, he was going to need a court order to keep it here.

  I’d started with beer, quickly moved on to Scotch. There’d been music playing and none of the bands ever start before eight. I have no idea what time I left the pub.

  Ahead of me, a shape is emerging more solid than the night, paler than the hillside it sits on. My Land Cruiser.

  I’m considered unconventional on the islands for a number of reasons, not the least of which is my choice of vehicle. The patriotic locals typically choose the British Land Rovers, occasionally Range Rovers or Land Rover Discoveries. My Toyota Land Cruiser, a 1974 FJ40 that I bought off a dealer in Texas, is the only one of its kind here.

  I climb into the front seat, pull my jacket off, find the rug – the same one that wrapped Catrin and Archie last night – and pull it around myself. Somewhere in my immediate future there is one hell of a hangover waiting its moment to pounce.

  The flashback has almost gone, the worst pictures faded. And yet something else, clinging on. Another memory, much more recent. I’m on the hills above Port Fitzroy. The sky is still light and I am looking at Catrin’s boat, far below me in the bay.

  Real or not? Why on earth would she head back to the place where we found a corpse a couple of nights ago? And if real, when? Before the pub or after I left? The light means nothing. It is light till nearly ten this time of year. And if I did look at Catrin’s boat, anchored in the bay, is she still there?

  At last I reach the road and set off towards Stanley. While I’m still half a mile out of town I know that something has happened and so self-obsessed am I right now that I’m convinced it’s something to do with me. I hurt someone earlier. Blinded by drink and dark memories, I ran into them and drove on, oblivious. I see blue flickering lights and know they must be looking for me.

  I head down towards the harbour, waiting for the shouts of recognition, for the police car to pull out in front of me. At nearly three in the morning, Bob-Cat’s Diner is open.

  There is a platoon of soldiers heading towards the police station.

  I park and tug my soaked jacket back on. If I’m really lucky, I might down a hot coffee before they take me.

  ‘Look what the cat dragged in.’ Bob-Cat puts a mug down on the counter and lifts the coffee pot, which I guess beats racing to the door and yelling, ‘He’s here, he’s in here!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ I grab the coffee almost before she’s finished pouring.

  ‘For your information, when a man offers to buy me a drink, he usually stays around long enough to pay for it.’ She slops milk into the mug and adds two sugars. I don’t take sugar. She knows that. ‘If I’d known I’d have to pay for my own drink, I’d have ordered half a lager.’

  There is some hope, I think, in Bob-Cat’s annoyance being primarily about being cheated out of a drink.

  ‘Can you remember what time I left?’

  ‘You left in between ordering my drink and paying for it. That’ll be five pounds sixty please.’

  Knocking off a pound fifty for the coffee, I guess I owe Bob-Cat for a large Bacardi and Coke. I pay up, thinking I might have got off lightly. And yet I can’t shake this feeling, the one that tells me that, whatever I’ve just been through, something worse is coming.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I ask her, when I assume we’re cool again. She gives me a look that says, And which banana boat dropped you off?

  ‘Seriously?’ I gesture outside. ‘This can’t all be about an unpaid bar bill.’

  Her eyes narrow. ‘We all assumed you’d got some sort of advance warning. That that was why you scarpered.’

  ‘Advance warning of what? Are the Argies on their way back?’

  Outside, a couple of squaddies look set to join us. They’re stamping their feet, shaking the rain off their jacket collars. The door opens and a blast of wet, cold air hits us. ‘Got some coffees, love?’

  ‘Coming up.’ Bob-Cat turns her back on me.

  I get up, swallow down the coffee and head out. Up the hill, outside the news office, Rob Duncan is holding up an umbrella. Beneath it, I can make out the form of a woman. He’s bundling her into the passenger side of a vehicle. She seems to droop, to be held up only by the man at her side. Then the door is closed, Rob bangs on the roof of the car and it heads away.

  This is all looking frighteningly familiar. I see it in the shocked faces of people hurrying from one inadequate shelter to the next. I see it in the hurried movements of the police officers, who slam car doors and jog from vehicles to station, holding up the flats of their hands to ward off questions.

  People seem to be converging on the town hall and I head up there. Inside, I see two distinct groups have formed. Over in the red corner, the visitors. I see Archie West’s dad with a gleam in his eye and an energy in his movements that were entirely missing last time I saw him. In the blue corner, by the serving counter, are the locals. There’s a group I don’t know particularly well and I wonder if they’ve come from Port Howard, whether it might be Fred Harper’s family. Everyone is wet. No one has thought to put the heating on and the air in here is almost as chill as outside. I have a moment to be thankful that, soaking as I still am, I’ll be mistaken for part of the search.

  How do I know there is another search going on? That another child has gone missing? I just do.

  I step up to a group I know. Terry from my football team. John who works with Catrin at the Falkland Conservation, Chad from the ironmongers. One or two more. All blokes.

  ‘Any news?’ I say, because it seems the safest thing.

  A couple stare at me. One bloke looks at the floor. Then one voice from the rear of the group pipes up. ‘I think we’re all hoping you and my ex-wife can work another one of your miracles.’

  I curse myself for not checking more carefully. I hadn’t spotted Ben Quinn. He’d been behind Chad, but steps out now and faces me. I avoid Catrin’s ex-husband if I can. It was a habit I got into even before I started seeing her. I avoid looking at him, speaking to him, even being in the same room as him. I can’t remember the last time the two of us made eye contact, as we’re doing right now. He hasn’t changed much. Spanish eyes staring out of sallow skin. Dark hair, where the grey hasn’t yet touched it. Little Kit is shining out of him, and I wonder how Catrin stood to be around him for as long as she did.

  He’s a slim guy. Fit enough, I guess, but a few stone lighter than me. Even half drunk, I could flatten him. The fact that I want to is because I’m half drunk. At least, I hope so, because what does it say about me otherwise? It’s not as though I can blame the guy for being an arse with me. I did shag his wife.

  What happened between Catrin and me has never been public knowledge, so far as I’m aware, but if rumours exist, there’s a chance he’s heard them. Whatever. In the end, he was the one who walked out.

  ‘I take it the feed shed where Archie West was kept has been checked.’ I don’t address this to Ben particularly, but I don’t drop my eyes. That would look as though I’m backing down and it’s suddenly very important that I don’t.

  ‘It was the first place they looked.’ It is Chad who answers. Ben and I are eyeballing each other like a couple of kids with more testosterone than sense.

  I still don’t know which child is missing. Not that it matters all that much. I don’t know most of the kids in Stanley.

  ‘If you know where Catrin is, we’re a bit worried,’ says John. ‘No one’s been able to contact her since this afternoon.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her since I dropped her off at home this morning,’ I say, which is stretching the truth – it was the early hours when I drove
Catrin home – but I’m enjoying winding her ex-husband up. As his eyes narrow still further I decide I’m being a dick. I nod my goodbyes and head out. As I step out into the night, I feel a hand on my shoulder. There is nothing friendly about the way it stops my progress forward. I turn and am not remotely surprised to see that Quinn has followed me out. Well, I guess this day was coming.

  ‘She blames you, you know. For what happened to the boys.’

  I’d been bracing myself for the punch, wondering how hard I’d be justified in hitting him back. I hadn’t expected that.

  I shake my head. ‘You’re wrong. She didn’t even know I was involved until a couple of nights ago.’ I wonder if I should tell him I’m sorry for his loss, that they were great kids. I decide if I do that, he’ll land me one for sure.

  ‘I’m not talking about your big rescue attempt. We all know what a hero you were that day. I’m talking about the fact that, as Catrin sees it, she was screwing around and the boys were killed as a punishment.’

  ‘That’s bollocks.’

  He has a way of blinking heavily, of closing his eyes for a fraction too long. ‘Course it is. But in my ex-wife’s messed-up brain, it makes perfect sense. What she did with you cost her her kids. So if you’re indulging in any sentimental daydreams about happy ever after, I’d forget it.’

  I can’t hit him. If I start I’ll never stop. Then she’ll blame me for killing her ex-husband as well.

  ‘Which kid?’ I say, because I have to move this on and it seems as good a way as any.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Which kid is missing? I haven’t been in Stanley all evening. Which kid has been taken?’

  He steps back, shaking his head, as though I’m not worth any more of his attention. He tells me though, calling over his shoulder as he heads back into the hall.

  ‘Peter Grimwood. Her friend Rachel’s youngest.’