THE SOUL FIXER (A psychological thriller)

by D. M. Mitchell

  ‘You forced me to help you…’ he mumbled, closing his eyes as the end of the barrel moved a few inches closer.

  ‘You think they’ll believe that? Think about it, son; every last year of your life locked up in some stinking prison. But it doesn’t have to be like that.’

  ‘You said there would be no more…’

  ‘Maybe I changed my mind.’

  ‘Let the boy go, Douglas,’ Helen said, reaching out and putting her fingertips on the barrel, gently pushing it down. ‘Finish your breakfast.’

  Douglas grunted, rested the gun against the table and sat down to his food. ‘Do it,’ he ordered his son.

  ‘Take the dish, please, Hector,’ said Helen. ‘It’s in the kitchen. ‘Tell them that Douglas will be coming over in the trap to pick them up, about eight.’

  ‘What if they don’t want to come?’ he said.

  ‘They will,’ said Douglas. ‘And if they don’t then I’ll go over there and finish it once and for all.’ He looked up at Helen. ‘I don’t care one way or the other.’

  They waited till Hector had left the house with the dish of food, then Helen sat down opposite Douglas. ‘Why did you shoot him, Douglas? He was your brother. We could have talked things over.’

  ‘We talked, he didn’t listen.’

  ‘Don’t you feel anything? You killed your brother, Douglas.’

  He smiled; a cold-blooded smile. ‘Once we’ve dealt with the Carmichaels I’m going to take care of Silas. Poor unsuspecting Silas; you never thought about him when you were screwing me behind his back, did you? Or is that different?’

  She averted her eyes. Her breathing shallow. ‘And once they’re dead, is this going to be over, like we agreed it would be?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

  ‘That wasn’t the deal.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you giving me lip, woman?’ She smelled the sickening stench of alcohol hot on his breath. He waited for a reply. ‘I didn’t think so. Have that freak of a daughter of yours all ready for tonight and leave the thinking to me.’ He waved his fork for her to go away and she left the table and went into the kitchen.

  ‘Why won’t you talk about it?’ she asked.

  ‘Leave it, will you, Susan?’ Paul snapped. ‘Just don’t go there, OK?’

  ‘You saw her last night? You saw Becky?’

  He nodded, his eyes troubled pools. ‘I saw something that looked like her…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I didn’t expect it. It freaked me out.’ He closed his eyes, rubbed them with a balled fist. ‘I thought it might be some kind of fraud, but I saw her…’

  ‘How did she look?’ she asked.

  ‘Alive,’ he said, choking on the word, a tear being forced from his eyelid. But when he looked up at her his expression was one of resentment. ‘She looked alive. She was wearing that summer dress – you know, the one with the weird ‘60s pattern on it that she loved like crazy. She was wearing it the last time I saw her alive. I told her the weather was too cold for it, but she ignored me and put it on anyway. I loved her mule-like independence. That’s how she appeared to me. That’s what she looked like. And you know, I wanted her back so desperately I wept like a kid. But want to know something else? I also hated you for the fact she wasn’t there anymore.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault, Paul…’

  ‘No? If you hadn’t left her then she’d still be alive.’

  Susan shook her head. ‘That’s not fair, Paul.’

  ‘But guess what? You’re alive and she’s dead. My little angel is dead. Why her, I thought? Why not you? What fucking God can do that to me? Well there ain’t a fucking God, that’s why!’

  She went to him and tried to place a hand on his shoulder but he shrank back as if her touch had been icy cold. ‘So you believe what you saw?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t fucking know what I saw!’ he said. ‘But it made me think about things, Susan. Made me wonder why Becky and not you.’

  She was desperately cut up by what he was saying, but knew that the sharp knife-edge of his anger was a product of the emotions he’d experienced the night before. ‘I’m not so sure that what we saw was real,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean? I saw her there, right in front of me.’

  ‘Yes, we both saw what we wanted to see, don’t you understand? Annabel gave us what we needed.’

  He shook his head as if trying to dislodge unwanted thoughts. ‘Annabel’s got the mind of a kid. I doubt she even knows she’s in the goddamn room with us at times. Are you saying we’ve been manipulated by a retard?’

  ‘Don’t call her that, Paul. It sounds so cruel. I think she’s special, in some way, but I also think she’s being used…’

  ‘No shit. Now’s a fine time to get a conscience.’

  Susan Carmichael reached into her pocket and pulled out Iris’s pendant. ‘There’s something very strange going on, Paul. I found this while you were at the house last night.’

  He frowned. ‘It looks familiar. Where did you get it?’

  ‘It belonged to Iris Donovan. I found it in their cottage.’

  ‘What the hell were you doing there?’ he said. ‘Have you been snooping around?’

  ‘It means something, Paul…’

  ‘It means you’ve lost the plot. What are you trying to say this time?’

  ‘She would never leave this behind. Remember, her daughter gave it to her and it was so precious to her.’

  ‘So she dropped it, lost it. It happens.’

  ‘Something happened to them,’ she said coldly. ‘Something terrible. I don’t think they ever left the island.’

  He regarded her with incredulous eyes for a moment or two, then shook his head heavily. ‘This was a bad fucking idea,’ he said. ‘I can’t be playing these fucking mind games anymore. It’s all screwing with my head.’

  ‘What if I can prove it?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t care.’ He turned away from her, releasing an exhausted sigh.

  ‘Do you hate me so much?’ she said quietly.

  ‘I don’t know what I think anymore, Susan,’ he said.

  She grabbed her coat. ‘I’m going out. I’ve got to find someone.’

  ‘Where the hell are you going now? Have you seen the weather?’

  ‘What do you care what happens to me? You’d prefer it if I were dead.’

  He sighed. ‘OK, sorry, I didn’t mean it. Come back here.’

  A knock came at the door before she reached it. Hector was standing there, his dark hair whipping around his face like a nest of crazed serpents. He had the dish in his hands. ‘Breakfast,’ he said dully.

  Susan took the dish from him, placed it on the table. ‘Where are Alex and your father?’ she asked.

  Hector hesitated, as if he’d been asked a trick question. ‘Doing stuff,’ he said.

  ‘So they’re both busy?’ she asked.

  He nodded dumbly. ‘Busy,’ he said flatly.

  She looked at Paul. ‘I’ll see you in a couple of hours.’

  He lifted his shoulders. ‘Yeah, sure. Do what you have to.’ He pointed at his bandaged foot. ‘I’m not going far. I’ll be here when you get back. Hopefully.’ He let the last word linger in the air.

  Susan closed the door on him, zipped up her coat against the rain. ‘Hector, are you OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, but his voice sounded distant, as if he hadn’t really heard her at all. ‘They want you to come to the house tonight,’ he said. ‘You and your husband. Together.’

  There was a film over his eyes that spoke of deep regret. ‘So soon? Helen said it could be another few days to a week before we would be able to have another session with Annabel.’

  ‘That’s what they told me,’ he said shortly, and made as if to walk off.

  ‘Something wrong, Hector?’

  He paused, glanced at the bruised sky, shook his head and strode silently away, his boots splashing on the rain-sodden earth.

  The dart-like
streaks of white terns mottled the dreary sky. They fought against the stiff wind that strafed the tops of the stone circle, their shrieks lost to the noise of the rushing air and rain; they wheeled, rose, fell, and then dipped over the headland and made for the open ocean.

  Susan stood against one of the towering shards of rock in the vain hope of finding a little shelter. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, she thought, feeling drained with her battle against the elements just to get to the stone circle. The rock appeared to look pityingly down on her.

  But she steeled her resolve and with a backward glance over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t being followed she found the hole in the fence that she’d passed through the last time she was here. There’d been a crude attempt to repair it but with her gloved hands she managed to rip aside the tortuous barbs and creep into the field beyond.

  It was empty. But what was she expecting? To see the same figure she’d seen before? In fact, what was she really expecting to get out of this escapade? What was she hoping to confirm? And what was she going to do about it if her worst fears were realised?

  She left the questions behind at the fence, scrubbed her mind clear of everything except the mission to find the bay where she’d seen the wreck of the boat.

  Except she didn’t quite expunge what Paul had said to her from her perturbed mind. Perhaps the hollow feeling that his tormented eyes had caused; eyes that accused, eyes that seemed to be filled with loathing. Or perhaps the loathing was her own creation, because no one could blame her as much as she already blamed herself for not being there by her side on the night when Eddie Hull had murdered her daughter. Those few fateful minutes when she had been venting her anger at another man in order to protect Becky was all that it took to lose her daughter for good. If only she’d not left her alone; if only she’d been there then perhaps things would have been so different…

  No one hated her as much as she hated herself.

  The wreck of the boat was a distinct white splash against the graphite-black rocks far below her. The wind rocked her, and the sight of the boiling cauldron that was the ocean beating against the shore a hundred feet down caused her to feel dizzy, the world starting to reel.

  She clambered down the narrow gully, rocks and stones being dislodged as she half-climbed, half-slid down the steep-sided, winding fissure. Eventually she almost tumbled the last few feet onto the pebbled beach, glad of the firm footing, but in awe of the size of the green waves that rushed towards her to dissolve with a thunderous roar before they reached her, flopping onto the beach and dragging stones back to the sea with a sibilant hiss.

  Susan struggled over wet and slippery boulders, having to wait every now and again while waves receded before she could move forward. With some effort she reached the wreck of the boat, grabbing the hood of her coat and holding it in place as the wind sought to tear it from her grasp. It was a little larger up close than she had first thought; it didn’t look old, in fact it was quite new. The outboard motor was still in place and this, too, looked relatively new and expensive. She climbed inside and immediately saw the jagged hole that had been smashed into the boat’s bottom. Frowning, she traced the edge of the hole with her gloved hand.

  This hadn’t been done by rocks, she thought. Quite obviously this had been done from inside the boat, heavy blows with some kind of sledgehammer that had forced the wood downwards. This wasn’t an old wreck, tossed onto the rocks and destroyed as part of some natural calamity; this boat was relatively new and had been deliberately holed by someone to stop it from ever being taken out to sea again.

  She turned at the sound of a particularly large wave breaking near her. She was horrified to see that in the short time she’d been inspecting the inside of the boat the tide had come in and was about to cut her off. The boat had been here some time, she thought, so the tide didn’t come up this far, but if she didn’t get out soon she could be stranded here for hours and with the weather being so cold and treacherous she began to panic and fear for her safety. You fool, she chided herself when it became apparent that there was no way she’d ever get back the way she came without being washed into the ferocious sea.

  It was when she was looking upwards at the steep cliff of almost sheer rock searching for another route up, that she saw the small cave. Not one, she realised, but two, each of them circular as if artificially cut into the rock. She felt compelled to try to reach them, and even though in her head she thought it was just about the most ridiculous thing she could do, she started to climb, finding precarious handholds on the rock, hauling herself steadily upwards. OK, so maybe there was some twisted sense in this, she thought, not wanting to be stuck in an unprotected cove bearing the full force of the wind and the cold for a few hours, which in this weather could even prove fatal, but still it struck her as an odd thing to be doing. Especially when the gale seemed to want to tear her from the rock face at one moment, then flatten her body against it the next, as if it were playing some kind of malicious game with her.

  Then there appeared to be no way forward, and with a quick glance over her shoulder, no way down. Oh, Christ, she thought. This really wasn’t such a good idea. She wasn’t a damn mountain climber. She’d climbed nothing bigger than a tree, and that was thirty years ago! Despair began to creep over her, seep into her soul as keenly as the icy wind that screamed around her.

  ‘Give me your hand,’ said a man’s voice.

  Blinking, she looked up. Incredibly, a hand was reaching down to her. She held out her shaking hand, and fingers closed tightly around it. The next second she was being hauled upwards to the lip of the cave, and she clambered over it, gasping in sheer relief as she crawled away from the edge, the sting taken out of the wind once she was protected by the crude walls of earth and stone.

  The figure backed away, his face hidden by a coat hood. ‘That was a foolish thing to do,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said breathlessly. She sat down, chest heaving, looking about her. ‘I like what you’ve done with the place,’ she said.

  * * * *

  19

  A Private Vision of Hell

  ‘How did you know I was here?’ he said warily, crouching down to his haunches. The roof of the cave was only a few inches above his head.

  ‘I didn’t. I was trapped down there in the cove. I saw the caves…’

  ‘Did they send you?’

  Susan Carmichael began to shiver. Perhaps it was the cold seeping into her bones; or the shock hitting her that she might have put herself in grave danger by climbing down to inspect the boat and that if it hadn’t been for the cave she would even now be battered by the worsening weather.

  ‘I wasn’t sent by anyone. And who exactly are they? Do you mean Helen Blake and the MacLeods?’

  The man pulled down his hood. He was young, in his early thirties; his deathly-pale face was framed by a mass of tangled dark hair that had not seen a comb in a long while; a short-cropped beard edged and emphasised his sharp chin; blistered lips worked at silent words, and his eyes were almost feral in their intensity. It was then, as her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, that she saw the sticky-looking black stain on his arm.

  ‘Is that blood?’ she said. ‘Are you hurt?’

  The man put a hand to his arm, then snapped his attention back to Susan, as if he were afraid to let her out of his sight even for an instant. ‘Yes. I’ve been shot.’

  From the way his head was nodding, as if it were too heavy for his neck, from the way his thin body wavered, she knew he was dreadfully weak. ‘How long have you been here?’ she asked.

  He gave a shrug. ‘Nearly two months, maybe more.’

  ‘And have you been living like this all that time? And what about that wound, have you had it looked at?’

  ‘You ask a lot of questions, lady,’ he said tiredly. He sat down, placed his back against the wall and stared beyond her out of the cave, the ocean and the sky having become welded into a blank expanse of metallic grey. He closed his eyes, put
his head back against the harsh stone and damp earth, appeared to fall asleep. ‘I saw you the other day, by the stone circle.’

  ‘You ran away,’ she said.

  His chuckle was decidedly anaemic. ‘I didn’t know if I could trust you,’ he said. His eyes opened. ‘They tried to kill me, and they will, if they get the chance. I’m hoping they think I’m already dead.’ His hand went to his wounded arm lying limp by his side.

  ‘Was it you that came snooping around our cottage on our first night on the island?’

  ‘Snooping?’ he said. ‘I was looking for food. Sometimes they leave a little in the cottages. I didn’t realise the cottage was occupied.’ He closed his eyes again. ‘I wanted to warn you, when I saw you at the stone circle, but I guess I was too afraid they’d find me before I could get off this damn island. It’s not safe here now. Not if you’ve told them about me.’

  ‘I never said a word about you.’

  He blinked. ‘You never thought to tell them you’d seen someone up here on the headland?’

  It was her turn to shrug. ‘I don’t know why. I just didn’t. You say you wanted to warn us, of what?’

  ‘They’re going to kill you,’ he said without emotion. ‘They wanted to kill me, because of what I’ve found, and they’re going to do the same to you.’

  She shivered again, but this time it wasn’t the cold that caused it. ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because that’s what they’ve done to the others.’

  ‘Others?’ She stared at his manic eyes, his irises as grey and as forbidding as the sky outside. She ran a trembling hand through her wet hair. ‘Maybe it’s all in your imagination…’ she put forward, aware she was sounding a lot like Paul when she said it.