Donna was still behind, grimace on her face, hammer clutched in her fist.
Surtsey had a few more yards in the deep sand then she was at the jetty. She pitched round the blind side and stared along its length.
No boat.
She looked at Donna, still a distance away, then out to sea. Maybe it was anchored further out. But why would Donna do that if she had to bring supplies ashore? Didn’t make sense. It had to be pulled up on the shore somewhere else. Maybe she didn’t want it at the jetty in case anyone saw.
Donna was gaining fast. Surtsey had to move. She had to find the boat, but which way? Up the coast towards the research site or double back to the right, around the hut to the cove where she’d found Tom?
Donna was almost on her. So close that Surtsey could hear her breathing.
She checked one more time along the length of the jetty then turned back.
Donna was smiling, thirty yards away.
The cove.
Surtsey began running but only got a few yards when the ground shook violently, throwing her forwards. She staggered on but another jolt made the earth come up to meet her feet before she expected, and she tipped onto her knees. Three more huge shudders threw her onto her back as the ground shifted and grumbled. Another earthquake. Much, much bigger than any of the previous ones. There was a massive bang and crack, a noise Surtsey had never heard before, that resonated through her body. She shuffled backwards and propped herself up on her elbows, looked back. Donna was lying on her stomach in the sand, looking around, holding onto the earth as if it was the last solid thing in the universe. But it wasn’t solid at all.
Beyond Donna’s prostrate body a cascade of rocks were tumbling down the hillside from higher up, heading east of them towards the cliffs. The noise of the boulders tumbling over each other was excruciating, she felt it in her gut and bowels. She looked further up the slope. Smoke was shooting out both volcanic vents, billowing clouds of it, as the earth continued to shake and judder, throwing her around.
Then a crack and a growl of pure power, something deep beneath them but all around them too. The saddle of land between the vents exploded into the air, huge plumes of debris flying into the blue sky, rock and dust and smoke. Through it all, Surtsey saw red.
Lava. The Inch was erupting.
‘Jesus Christ.’
Thin ash was already falling around them as the earth shook, a giant crack appearing from the remains of the western vent, spreading downhill like a lightning bolt, cutting solid rock and prising it apart, reaching its fingers down to the scientific hut which was torn in two like freshly-baked bread.
Crimson lava sprayed into the air high above the peaks, thicker rivers of the stuff leeching over the lips of the vents and slurping towards them.
Surtsey saw Donna lift her head and look behind. She turned back and they held each other’s gaze for a few seconds, as if sharing this unstoppable moment.
Donna wiped ash and sand from her eyes and pushed herself onto her knees.
The earth gave another series of shrugs but she didn’t lose balance.
Surtsey saw another crack jolt into existence behind Donna, one side lifting suddenly to make a giant step a hundred feet long and ten feet high, dust and sand and rocks falling in the chasm between, sliding into the bowels of the earth.
Donna said something while looking at her, but all Surtsey could hear was the rumble and thrum of the earth and the volcano erupting and rocks falling.
She lurched to her feet as another jolt burst through the ground, throwing her off kilter.
Donna was on her feet as well.
Lava sped down the hillside in their direction, two hundred yards away. Dust and ash filled the air, black and grey, coating everything, stinging Surtsey’s eyes, settling in her hair. The sulphur stench of rotten eggs was everywhere. Stones thudded into the sand from above, and more rocks bounced down the slopes further up, heading east.
‘It’s over,’ Surtsey said. ‘Look around.’
Donna didn’t take her eyes off Surtsey, just stared, shaking her head.
Surtsey began to run round the coast.
The ash cloud towered over the island now, cloaking them in darkness. The sky behind was still blue in the east where the sun would be coming up soon above Berwick Law. But overhead was blackness, dark snow falling over the land, clogging her nose and throat. Surtsey tried to pick her way over the rocks but more tremors threw her balance every few seconds. It had been going on so long now it felt like the world would never be stable again.
A boulder bounced down the hill to her left, clipping the edge of the torn bothy and crushing one wall to nothing. It bounded on, five, six bounces then tumbled into the sea. Surtsey turned to see Donna getting closer, then she set off again, trying to find the hard, smooth ground she needed to get her speed up. But the judders kept coming, and now she saw a lava flow spreading westward, a river throbbing down the hill from the nearest vent, red pushing through the black crust as it tumbled over itself. Up above, sparks and ash were still spilling into the sky, volcanic lightning bolts dancing inside the towering black cloud.
The earth still shook, the equilibrium of the land shifting one way then the other. Surtsey lost her balance as she clambered around more rocks then found the bottom end of the crevice that had split the hut in two. She ran to the narrowest point and jumped, just a couple of feet but the fissure into darkness beneath made her sweat.
Her eyes and nose stung and she coughed up dirt from her lungs as she heaved more air in, tried to catch breath. She looked behind and Donna was still following, it was easier for her, able to follow in the path Surtsey had cleared.
Surtsey ran on, soft sand under her feet now sucking at her ankles. She kicked along, the beach to her right frothing and slapping against the shore. The earth tilted and the slab of land she was on swung upwards to her left, pushing her towards the water which flipped up and slapped the land in retaliation.
Visibility was low now as Surtsey rounded the corner into the cove. Thick ash rained down on everything, bloody rivers cascading down the steep corrie surrounding the cove. She had a flash of Tom’s body lying over there, the gulls pecking at his eyes, then she stumbled and fell, smacking her temple against a jagged rock, blood dripping onto the sand. She wiped at it, dizzy, then staggered on.
She felt the air leave her lungs as Donna crashed into her from behind, a tackle to the ground, sand cramming into Surtsey’s mouth and eyes as her face planted in it.
She spat and tried to shake Donna free, managed to wriggle herself onto her back, blinked the ash out of her eyes and saw Donna sitting astride her, smiling. Donna lifted the hammer in her hand and began swinging it down when a shower of scree hit her in the head, knocking her over, the hammer dropping somewhere to the side.
Surtsey staggered up, heart crashing, gasping, and turned again.
The lava was fifty yards behind and heading towards them.
She looked past it. The shape of the vents was different now, much lower and wider. Another blast of rock and dirt launched into the sky above her head, billowing upwards. The ash drifting down on her now was hot, singeing her clothes and skin, and she could feel the heat from the lava like an open oven door. She turned to look at Donna lying on the sand, then beyond that to the sea.
Then she saw it.
Her boat.
Pushed up just past the waterline in the corner of the cove. It was a few hundred yards away across a channel of clear sand, but Donna’s body lay in the way. She seemed out cold, pebbles and dirt sprayed across her back. Surtsey couldn’t see the hammer, but Donna’s hands were empty.
Another jolt and Surtsey’s knees went from under her. The land to her left sank away as if it had melted, black rock disappearing into a widening rift. The tilt of the ground threw Surtsey towards the chasm, but she righted herself and ran.
The crevice was spreading to her left, narrowing her way forward. A boulder thudded in front of her. She stepped around Donna’s body but felt a hand gr
ab her ankle and pull her to the ground. She kicked out behind, saw Donna clawing at her, the lava pouring down the hill behind them, the heat from it shimmering the air like a furnace. She kicked her other leg into Donna’s face, caught her in the eye with her heel and felt the hand let go of her ankle. She scrambled backwards then dragged herself downhill, away from the lava and cracked earth, towards the beach and the boat. Another boulder thumped into the sand to her right and the ground shuddered, the air seemed to expand and contract. Surtsey stumbled and threw a hand out, pushing herself off an outcrop and downwards.
She risked a look back. Donna was running behind, head down, one foot after the other, blood streaming down her cheek.
The waves in front of Surtsey were churning with the shaking earth, slapping against the corner of the cove, splashing on the sand in random torrents. The boat was being thrown about on the shore.
Another shower of pebbles landed all about her like bullet holes in the sand, some of them striking her head and back, making her wince and throw her hands up for protection. But she didn’t stop, kept running straight to the boat, heaving it into the water and kicking up spray, salty mouthfuls of it, the cold shock to her body as she waded in behind, then suddenly no ground underfoot and she was swimming, gripping the rope that ran around the side of the boat, pulling herself against the hull, flopping over the side like a landed fish.
She lay exhausted for a second trying to get her breath back, then sat up and looked back.
Donna was sitting on the edge of the beach, water slopping at her feet, ash and dust cascading all around her, huge pillars of cloud pouring from the vents at the peak of the island. The lava was fifty yards behind her and moving fast in her direction, spreading tendrils out along every path, some into the new gaping cleft to the right, some onto the sand, throwing up sparks as the sand sizzled in the heat.
‘Come on,’ Surtsey said, beckoning her into the water.
Donna looked at Surtsey and shook her head.
Surtsey stared. ‘Get in the boat.’
Donna glanced behind her. The lava was thirty yards. Twenty. Surtsey could feel the heat from here. She reached for the starter. Another quake sent a huge rock fall tumbling away from the vent down the eastern side, and Surtsey saw a chunk of the cliffs slide into the sea. Away to her left the rocky edge of the cove crumpled like paper and fell into the water. The chasm to the right of Donna was wider, spreading to the shore then underwater. A surge of water almost tipped the boat over as Surtsey pulled on the chord and got the motor running.
She watched as Donna just sat there. The lava was fifteen yards, ten, chasing little flames of burning sand towards her. She lay down on her back just as the lava reached her and swept over her body, spreading over her like treacle, swallowing her in a few seconds before it reached the water’s edge and threw plumes of white steam hissing into the air. The heat from it scalded Surtsey’s face and she fell back into the boat. The stench of ammonia burned at her eyes and throat. She pulled her T-shirt over her nose and mouth and sat up. She looked at the place where Donna had been but all she could see were vivid red rivers spilling into the sea, creating billowing steam clouds that sizzled over the surface of the water then upwards.
An explosion from the highest vent threw rocks skywards, ash and black smoke everywhere, boulders and pebbles raining down all around her, thudding into the water as another quake spread the cracks in the island deeper and wider, the surging water rocking the boat.
Surtsey gunned the engine and angled the rudder in a turning circle away from the island, the noise of it thrashing behind her, the rumble of rockslides, the crash of volcanic explosions, the hiss and sizzle of lava sucked under the ocean, the steam and smoke and ash filling the sky and her senses.
She was fifty yards away now, seventy, a hundred, heading east, the most direct route away from the chaos behind her, Musselburgh and East Lothian in her sight, Portobello to the right.
She slumped back against the stern of the boat, the throbbing engine eventually drowning out the noise from the Inch. She coughed and coughed, spat black phlegm into the boat, her eyes painful, her skin raw.
She was away now, several hundred yards, halfway to the coastline and safety.
She turned back to look. The ash cloud stretched into the atmosphere, lava pumping out of the vents. The edges of the island were crumbling and slipping into the sea, new lava flows crawling over them and crashing into the boiling water.
She sat looking at it for a long time as the boat got further away. Eventually she turned and looked at the prom. Hundreds of people were on the shoreline watching the Inch tear itself apart. She steered the boat towards them.
46
Traces of high cloud in a thick blue sky. Surtsey wriggled her toes in the sand as she sat on the beach soaking up the sun. The tide was halfway out leaving stretches of wet sand, strewn with lines of seaweed, gulls and terns slapping through the wash looking for sandworms. Dog walkers were coming and going, a golden retriever lolloping towards them then away. She sat with Iona on one side and Hal on the other, the three of them silent. Fifty yards to their left an old woman stood on her own, staring out to sea. And beyond her a thin ribbon of steam rose from the water.
The Inch was gone.
It was ten days since the eruption started. It had gone on for four days, not quite as dramatic as those first few hours, less spewing lava and fewer rockslides. But the ash cloud continued, closing northern European airspace for a week. As the clouds streamed into the sky and dissipated into the upper atmosphere, the Inch was sinking. Great fissures had opened up along the fault line under the firth, and a chain of earthquakes saw the cliffs, beaches and slopes of the island gradually disappear. For several days there were fears of extreme waves, but tsunamis need space to get momentum, hours of open water to build up energy and height. It was lucky, in the end, that the firth was so enclosed. A couple of super-high tides had soaked the promenade, and in the East Neuk and North Berwick they kept people away from the shore for a day or two, but no real damage was done. Except to the Inch.
Surtsey stared at the thread of white linking the sea to the sky. It was a calm day, the steam lazy in the heat.
‘You OK?’ Hal said.
Surtsey turned and smiled. ‘I’m fine.’
Hal handed her the hash pipe and lighter and she inhaled. Just a little, her lungs were still delicate. She passed it to Iona who sucked on it in silence.
Surtsey had spent two nights in hospital. Concussion from a knock to the head, burns to her face and hands, the ankle and wrist cuts from being restrained, lots more cuts and bruises, plus severe smoke inhalation.
Once she was considered fit to leave there were two full days at the police station answering questions. The concussion hadn’t damaged her memory, so she gave as clear an account as she could of everything that happened on the island and before.
Yates and Flannery were highly sceptical. It was a bit too handy that the person responsible for the murders was dead at the bottom of the ocean, literally petrified, along with all the evidence. So they kept asking and Surtsey kept telling them. The fact that she told the whole truth for the first time, including finding Tom’s body, helped. She couldn’t get her story mixed up because it was true.
And the evidence began to back her up. The police didn’t have Surtsey’s phone, or Tom’s or Donna’s, but they got records for all three and the calls and messages bore out what Surtsey told them.
Once they began looking into Donna Jones more evidence appeared. She disappeared at the time of the eruption, just as Surtsey explained, and hadn’t turned up for work. The police got a warrant to search her house and found medical supplies taken from the hospice plus receipts for boat hire that matched the date of Tom’s murder. They also found notebooks full of Surtsey’s movements and Donna’s own ramblings. There was a heap to go through, but the initial impression was one of unhinged obsession.
Once they knew to look for Donna, they found more. She was sp
otted in CCTV footage taken from King’s Buildings, close to the Grant Institute at the right time for Brendan’s death. Surtsey told them about Tom’s boat at Fisherrow, how Donna was going to plant DNA evidence in it. They found the boat there right enough, and when they checked the harbour security footage there was Donna, taking her hire boat out on the evening of Tom’s death and returning with Tom’s boat in tow later on. They found hair samples from Surtsey in a small bag on Tom’s boat, she hadn’t planted it yet. They also found Surtsey’s hair on the quartz that killed Brendan, clumsily planted according to forensics.
And there was the drugged wine, plus Iona and Hal’s evidence. Two empty bottles showed traces of diazepam in large quantities. Iona and Hal couldn’t remember much, but they spoke of feeling unwell and being helped to bed by Donna. By the time they woke up Surtsey was in hospital and the Inch was on fire.
The police requested a post mortem of Louise. The embalmers hadn’t done her yet at the funeral home so she was cut open and tested, and there were large amounts of morphine in her system. It didn’t prove Donna had killed her or forced her to take them, that would always be unknown. Surtsey would never know if her mum wanted to die when she did.
She looked at the box in her lap. The funeral director called it an ashes casket, but that seemed too fancy for a simple wooden box.
Iona reached across Surtsey and handed the pipe back to Halima.
The three of them hadn’t really talked about what happened. What could they say? Iona and Hal had eventually received garbled phone messages from a concussed Surtsey to say she was at hospital and the police wanted to speak to her. Groggy themselves, they went to visit and she explained what Donna had done as best she could.
The police were still investigating and Surtsey wasn’t off the hook, but Donna was the focus of their enquiries. How that would work in terms of the law, Surtsey had no idea. She had no wish to keep in touch with the cops and was trying to forget the whole thing.
But of course they could never forget. Surtsey looked at Iona. They hadn’t spoken about their mum’s letter. Again, what else was there to say? Iona had just learned her dad was dead along with their mum. And that she had two half-sisters. The police had apparently informed Alice that Donna was their prime suspect now. Surtsey wondered if that made any difference in the face of her grief. And they told her about Louise’s letter too, that her girls had a half-sister. That her dead husband had been lying to her their whole marriage. Surtsey tried to picture a future where Iona would have a relationship with Alice’s girls, but she couldn’t conjure anything up.
Fault Lines Page 20
