While You Sleep

by Stephanie Merritt

  But the weight of responsibility returned with the awkward business of tugging up her jeans, turning to face him, remembering the discovery she had to share. He was staring at her from under his fringe, eyes bright with wonder and alarm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said in that very English way, his voice almost a whisper. ‘I didn’t expect—’

  ‘Shh.’ She laid a finger on his lips. His earlier confidence seemed to have ebbed away with his erection; he looked now as if he was waiting to be told off. ‘We both needed it. It’s fine.’

  He did not appear reassured; in fact, he seemed barely able to look her in the eye. Self-consciously, they straightened their clothes.

  ‘What did you want to show me?’ he asked, replacing his glasses.

  ‘Wait there.’

  She ran up the stairs to her room, where Iain’s phone lay on the bathroom floor. Here she paused to tidy her hair and wipe herself with a tissue. In the mirror she thought she looked more startled than blissfully post-coital.

  When she returned to the kitchen, Edward was hunched at the table, staring at his hands.

  ‘Zoe, I – I don’t know what happened there, I’m sorry. I don’t usually behave like that – I want you to know. It was as if – something took me over.’

  She laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘There’s nothing to apologise for. It was going to happen sooner or later, right?’

  He raised his head with a wan smile. ‘Well, I hoped, but now – in the middle of all this, with Robbie, it seems …’

  ‘Look, don’t feel bad. There are other things to think about.’ She set the phone down in front of him.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s Iain Finlay’s.’ He jerked his head round to look at her, eyes wide. She nodded confirmation. ‘Robbie tried to hide it in the cellar here. I guess he’s been keeping it different places all this time. I need your advice – I don’t know what to do about it. Watch the video – then you’ll understand.’

  He appeared surprised, and somewhat hesitant, but he touched the screen obediently, his brow furrowed in concentration. Zoe moved to the sink and stood with her arms clasped across her chest, watching the rain battering the panes of glass. She couldn’t bring herself to see it a second time, though she could tell, from the scratchy soundtrack, exactly what was happening. In the dark window she saw Edward press his hand over his mouth, just as she had.

  The shaky video shows three people having sex in the unfinished gallery of the house: two men and a young girl. The girl is bound at the wrists from a hook in one of the roof beams, though she appears to be participating willingly, her skin milk-white in the moonlit room. Empty bottles can be seen on the floor beside them. Though the quality of the film is poor and her hair half-obscures her face, you can easily identify the girl as Annag Logan. One of the men – the one behind her – is Dougie Reid, the other is Mick Drummond. The sex takes its course without much imagination, in the manner of amateur porn; what happens next, it seems, is that Iain inadvertently makes a noise. The actors in the squalid little scene snap to attention, looking around, conscious of an intruder. It’s Dougie who first sees and points; what he shouts is lost in the rush of Iain’s panicked breathing. At this point the film falters and pitches, to be replaced by fragmented images – of the stairs, upside down and jolting; a quick flash of a child’s white trainers as he runs; the ground outside, splintered glimpses of moonlit sand and seagrass; shouts can be heard, distantly, until the phone thuds to the ground and the screen goes dark. But it is enough to guess at how the scene might have ended; enough, certainly, to mean the three participants would have questions to answer about what had happened to Iain after they pursued him.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Edward said, barely audible, his head propped on his hand. He pushed the phone away as if he could distance himself from the images. ‘That was last summer. She would have been fifteen.’

  Zoe nodded. ‘Robbie told me he was scared. He said they would get him, like they got Iain. That poor kid’s been living in terror for the past year. They must have threatened him, don’t you think?’

  ‘They don’t necessarily know he’s got the phone.’

  ‘But surely they’ve guessed he saw something. And he’s run away now because he thinks I’ve found it – he’s afraid the secret’s out and he’s in trouble. What do we do with it?’

  He looked at the phone warily, as if it might make a sudden move. ‘Give it to Bill. That’s all we can do.’

  ‘Can he be trusted?’

  He turned to her with a questioning frown; she made an impatient noise. ‘I mean, everyone’s pretty tight here, right? And they don’t like a scandal. Bill’s not even the real police – they won’t get here until the storm’s over. What if he decides it’s better for the island if he makes this disappear?’

  Edward hesitated. ‘You mean we should hold on to it until the mainland police arrive? But that might be a couple of days. And if Dougie or Annag knows anything about what’s happened to Robbie, then we’d be withholding evidence.’ He paused, his mouth curling in disgust. ‘You don’t think they could have – not her own brother?’

  Zoe shrugged. ‘He told me she wished he was dead, so she could leave the island. I’m pretty sure she hits him.’

  He dropped his gaze to the table. ‘I thought so too. I went to see the father about it – Robbie would turn up with bruises whenever he was away on a job. Not an easy man to reason with – he said he’d send me back to England on a stretcher if I suggested anything like that about his family again. I should have reported it, I know, but it seemed to stop for a while after that. Annag’s hated me for it ever since.’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe you’re right. I could take the phone to Charles – see what he thinks is best.’

  ‘Good idea – you and Charles could call the mainland police before you give it to Bill, tell them you have it. He’d think twice about tampering with it then.’ She looked at the phone and chewed her lip. ‘Poor Kaye. Jesus. How’s she going to cope with this? Mick always seemed like a good guy.’

  ‘It’s this house,’ Edward said, with sudden animosity, lifting his eyes to the ceiling. ‘It has an effect on you. It’s not just that you forget your inhibitions – it’s more like something takes over, some spirit of – I want to say lust, but that sounds absurdly Victorian.’

  ‘It’s not the fucking house,’ she said, turning on him. ‘That’s two middle-aged men exploiting an underage girl – you can’t excuse that with folk tales.’

  ‘I wasn’t excusing it,’ he began, riled, but his defence was interrupted by a loud noise from somewhere beneath their feet. Both froze, looking at one another.

  Zoe pointed to the floor, mouthing the word ‘cellar’.

  ‘Someone’s down there?’ he whispered. She shrugged; the sound came again, a hard bang, like a door slamming. She cast around; in a panic she grabbed a carving knife from a block on the counter and handed it to Edward, motioning for him to go ahead. He swallowed, but dutifully pushed the cellar door; it swung open with a slow groan. She hovered at his shoulder as he flicked the light switch; the bulb fizzed into life and he let out a self-conscious laugh as he crouched to look around.

  ‘It’s only that hatch on the other side there – it’s blown open and the wind’s banging it, that’s all.’

  She heard the tremor of relief in his voice.

  ‘Robbie must have taken the padlock. I’ll go out and see if I can wedge the catch closed.’

  ‘A lot of rain’s come in,’ Edward called up, as he descended further into the shadows. ‘Why don’t I make a start on cleaning that up while you do the hatch?’

  She hesitated at the top of the stairs. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t. Bill told me not to touch anything.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He thinks—’ She stopped; the discovery of the video had temporarily allowed her to forget that she was under suspicion for Robbie’s disappearance. ‘There was blood on the floor where I cut myself. He thinks it’s connected with Robbie.�
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  ‘Well, there’s water all over the steps now. That’s not going to help anything.’

  ‘It will look like we’ve tried to clean up.’

  ‘Zoe.’ Edward sounded faintly impatient. ‘You’ve got nothing to hide, so what are you worried about? At least let’s get the hatch closed and the worst of the water up. I can explain to Bill, if I have to.’

  Zoe felt that was optimistic, but she lacked the energy to argue. She pulled on her jacket; it was a fight even to open the kitchen door. Outside, the wind and rain showed no sign of abating; a rumble of thunder rolled towards her over the sea. She tried not to think of Robbie as she battled the hatch against the gusts, finally forcing it shut and fitting the clasp over the metal loop that held the two shutters together, hoping it would hold without a padlock. Was he out in this somewhere, hiding on the moor or up on the cliffs? She remembered the dark shape she thought she had seen that morning in the churning water and bile rose in her stomach.

  By the time she returned to the cellar, squeezing out her wet hair, Edward had brought down a mop and bucket. But instead of clearing up the water, she found him crouched by one of the walls, stroking his fingers over the stonework.

  ‘Come and look at this,’ he called, his voice bright with excitement. ‘Bring a torch, if you have one?’

  She returned to the kitchen and rummaged in the drawers until she found the one Mick had shown her for emergencies. Edward pointed and she directed the beam to one of the pillars of the old chapel built into the cellar wall.

  ‘See that?’ His eyes were lit with childish enthusiasm, as if he had forgotten their present dilemma. The flashlight illuminated a series of overlapping circles carved into the stone, so that they formed a geometric shape like the petals of a flower. It reminded her of patterns she had drawn as a child, she thought, with a plastic gizmo you could spiral around with a pencil.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Witch marks,’ he whispered with satisfaction. She took a step back. ‘People carved them on to doorposts and windows to keep witches and their spells away. These must go back to the sixteenth century or earlier. This place is amazing. I’ve never seen down here before.’ He took the flashlight from her and shone it around the floor of the old chapel, showing up the worn inscriptions. ‘And look what else I found.’

  He led her to the corner where she had pulled out the old dresser the night before; instinctively she averted her eyes from the mirror. Even now, with Edward beside her, the memory of that reflection unnerved her. He was scuffing a patch of plaster on the floor with the toe of his boot.

  ‘See here? I think this has been covered up,’ he said. ‘Look at the shape of this plaster – it’s a perfect rectangle, like a tombstone.’

  ‘So?’ She felt a prickle along her arms.

  ‘There are graves all over this floor – none of the others has been plastered over. Ask yourself – why this one?’

  ‘I don’t know. Right now I’m asking myself what we do about that phone. Bill said he’s coming back here sometime tonight.’

  ‘Don’t you want to find out?’ His eyes shone up at her in the flashlight; he looked like a boy planning an adventure, and her heart squeezed again, with a pang of guilt, at his enthusiasm. ‘Why would anyone want to hide a grave, down here?’ He kicked at the plaster. ‘It’s old, too, you can see it’s cracking. We could chisel it off in no time.’

  ‘You can’t start taking the floor up,’ she protested weakly, but he had already sprung over to the scattered tools that had fallen from the shelf and pulled out a chisel and hammer.

  ‘Come on – hold the torch steady,’ he said, and she found herself crouching beside him while he chipped away at the ancient plaster in a kind of frenzy, sending up clouds of dust that stung her eyes and lodged in her throat.

  ‘Bill’s going to go nuts,’ she said, watching him, but he swept the fragments aside and continued with increased fervour.

  ‘You could get a brush if you wanted to help,’ he remarked, not looking up.

  She was grateful to return to the kitchen, though the sight of the orange phone in the middle of the table set her pulse skipping in panic. She drank a glass of water; by the time she returned with a dustpan and brush, Edward was white with dust and wearing a triumphant smile.

  ‘Check this out.’ He took the brush from her hand and flicked the piles of chipped plaster aside. She pressed her sleeve over her nose and mouth and peered down as he shone the flashlight on letters carved into the stone beneath.

  ‘I can’t read it.’

  He cast around with an impatient exhalation, before grabbing the mop and dunking it in a puddle of rainwater from the hatch. He ran it over the uncovered stone and the moisture caused the dust to settle, revealing the words that she had feared they would find:

  Zoe stared at the inscription, unable to speak. Had Ailsa been here with her, in the very foundations of the house, all along? She felt her blood had stopped moving.

  ‘Do you think she’s really buried there?’ she asked eventually, in a whisper. ‘Or did someone do that as a memorial? Was it Mick that covered it up?’

  ‘This was done long ago.’ Edward traced his finger over the letters. When he raised his head to her, his face was deathly pale with white dust, his eyes dark and solemn. ‘Don’t you see? The boy’s name,’ he said, pointing, when she shook her head. The words emerged as a croak.

  ‘Charles said there was no record of his name. Someone evidently knew it. Whoever put this stone here.’

  ‘Charles told you that?’ His voice sounded distant. ‘But look at the names.’

  ‘I can’t even pronounce them.’

  ‘They’re Gaelic.’ He read the boy’s names aloud, faltering on the consonants.

  ‘Yeah, I guessed that. What? What is it?’

  ‘Zoe.’ He sucked in his cheeks and looked at her as if she were being deliberately obtuse. ‘In English, her son’s name was Charles Joseph McBride.’

  Above them, the coal hatch gave a sudden rattle, as if someone were shaking it; a chill wind knifed through the gap. They shivered at the same time.

  ‘Could be a coincidence,’ she said.

  ‘Hell of a coincidence, though.’ Edward pushed himself to his feet and stretched his back. ‘Do you suppose he’s some kind of descendant? He must be, don’t you think? That would explain why he’s so obsessed with the story.’

  ‘They never found the boy’s body. It’s possible that he didn’t drown, I guess.’ She glanced at him for confirmation. ‘He could have been picked up by a boat. Maybe he survived to grow up and have kids of his own.’

  ‘It’s pretty far-fetched. And Charles would acknowledge the connection, surely?’ He frowned. ‘Why would he keep it a secret? Maybe it makes it easier for him to write about it, if he appears to be objective. Perhaps he shares Mick’s fear of being tainted by association with her.’

  ‘He’s got her necklace,’ Zoe said, remembering. ‘Ailsa’s cross – it was there in his cabinet. He told me it belonged to his grandmother, but I would have sworn it’s the one Ailsa’s wearing in the photographs.’ Another possibility struck her, but it was so outlandish, so clearly crazy, that she shook her head to rid her mind of it before she made a fool of herself by suggesting it aloud.

  She held Edward’s gaze; they watched one another for a long while, as if trying to read the other. It seemed absurd to think that half an hour earlier they had had frantic, urgent sex against the sink; when she tried to conjure the memory, it felt faded, like an incident that had occurred years ago. ‘I’ve had enough of this place,’ she said abruptly, turning for the stairs. ‘Let’s get back to the light.’

  ‘Come into town with me,’ Edward said, gathering up his waterproofs. ‘We can ask Charles together.’

  She peered out of the window by the front door; the wind continued to pummel the house and she thought she had seen a flash of lightning. ‘You and Charles need to talk about what to do with that video. Dougie should be arrested, at the ver
y least – I’d bet he knows where Robbie is. Anyhow, I don’t want to go back to the pub. Did you see the way they all looked at me? Even Bill thinks I’ve got something to do with it.’

  ‘Come back to mine, then,’ he said, laying a hand on her arm. ‘I don’t like to think of you being here alone. I’d like to be with you tonight anyway, after …’ He offered a shy smile by way of a reference to their earlier encounter.

  ‘I ought to stay here – Bill said I mustn’t go anywhere until he came back. I should probably do as I’m told for now, until he’s convinced I’m innocent.’

  ‘OK.’ He seemed reluctant to leave. ‘Well, why don’t you come over later, after Bill’s been? At least you’d be in town then, with a working phone, so we can find out any news. Better than being cut off out here.’

  ‘People would talk, wouldn’t they? If I stayed at yours?’

  He tilted his head. ‘Do you really care about that, now? Do you think I do?’

  His eagerness was touching, she knew, though at present she only felt wearied by it. But there was nowhere she could go, she realised, that would ease her restlessness or allow her to sleep; she may as well spend the night in Edward’s cottage instead of staying here, wandering from room to room like a wraith, worrying about Robbie and conscious of the uncovered gravestone beneath her.