Blood Tide

by Claire McGowan

  Footsteps approached, and Paula heard voices carried on the wind. She tried not to flinch as the door of the lighthouse opened and someone came in. Seamas Fairlinn, swinging a large torch, stomping in wellies. He looked around in a cursory fashion, shining the torch into the kitchen and up the stairs. Paula didn’t breathe. ‘Not here,’ he shouted back.

  Another voice called from outside, almost indistinguishable on the wind, but enough to hear an American twang. Rainbow. The two of them, working together? Finally, they went, shutting the door behind them, and the car started up a moment later. Paula let out all her breath.

  ‘We can’t stay here either, I guess,’ she said, resigned. ‘They were looking for us.’

  ‘Yeah. Not a good idea. Was there somewhere else you had in mind?’

  ‘Maybe. There’s someone who might not be part of this, if we’re lucky.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Mary O’Neill’s small cottage was on the north shore as she’d said, the walls studded in sharp pebbles. But there were no signs of light or movement inside.

  ‘You say she might know something?’

  ‘She knew what Matt was working on. I think she’ll understand what’s happening here – and maybe not be as badly affected.’

  ‘About that.’ Guy’s too-big boots crunched on the sand. His arms were folded over his chest, and he must be cold, even though he’d made no word of complaint. ‘Have you eaten much, since you’ve been over here? Anything to drink?’

  She thought back. ‘Just those sandwiches really. And tea and water and stuff. Like you had. Why?’

  ‘I just wondered – at the pub, you seemed a bit confused.’

  She thought back to it, that strange sense of lassitude. Knowing the pub was going up in flames around her, but somehow unable to act. ‘The smoke, maybe.’

  He was watching her. ‘Just be careful. Tell me if you feel sick.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m going to flip?’ She tried to say it lightly, but heard the note of fear in her own voice. ‘Come on. This must be it.’ She swung open the gate that led from the beach to Mary’s neat front garden. The curtains were open, the windows dark. Guy nudged her and pointed – the front door was ajar. Paula felt a thrill of fear in her blood, thinking of the woman with her fussy measured voice, her big glasses and racking cough.

  Guy eased it open, taking up the stance she’d seen him use in raids. All that training, years of learning how to deal with situations like this. You might face danger every day as a police officer in London. This was nothing, she told herself. It was only that they couldn’t get off the island. That was what made it feel so frightening.

  ‘Mary?’ The door creaked as Guy advanced, talking in a low voice. ‘Are you here, ma’am? It’s the police.’

  Nothing. In the living room, everything was dark. A half-drunk cup of tea and a Jaffa Cake sat on the wooden arm of an easy chair, glasses folded on top of a book. Guy flicked the light switch – also nothing. The power was off still, hardly out of the ordinary on this island. So why could Paula not quell the waves in her stomach, the uneasy tide going back and forth?

  She tried: ‘Mary? It’s Paula here, Dr Maguire. Are you OK?’ At Guy’s nod, she put her hand on the banister. The carpeted stairs creaked. ‘Mary?’

  Paula wasn’t sure what happened next. She took in a breath, and then there were thundering footsteps and someone was rushing past her, a figure in a black jacket and balaclava pushing against her so she fell backwards in the hallway. Luckily she caught at the banister – steadied – and the figure was out, rushing out the door and onto the beach with big, crunching steps. Guy had shot out from the kitchen and was in pursuit. ‘Hey. Hey!’

  She righted herself, vision swimming, heart hammering. Guy was back, panting. ‘Can’t catch him. He’s bloody fast.’

  ‘He?’ She caught her breath.

  ‘You don’t think?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She felt again the weight of the push, strong arms and legs, heavy breathing. A smell of aftershave, something familiar that she couldn’t grasp. Definitely a man. ‘Where’s Mary?’

  ‘No sign. I’m pretty sure that person had the Enviracorp logo on their jacket, by the way.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Together, they looked up the stairs, and Guy moved into position again, creeping sideways up the stairs as he’d been taught. Paula followed, cautiously. At the top the landing was quiet, a window looking out on the moonlit bay. Ornaments, china cats. One had been pushed over and broken, the smiling face smashed. A bedroom door stood ajar. Guy pushed at it. Paula saw patterned carpet, a dressing table with more ornaments. ‘Mary! Shit!’ He hit the floor suddenly as something sailed past him and into the hallway, breaking. Another ornament biting the dust. Paula heard him call out. ‘We’re the police! We’re the police!’

  She wrenched the door aside, only to see Mary O’Neill crouched up in the corner of her room like a trapped animal, a small arsenal at her side – china ladies, a hairbrush, a pot of cream. She stood up, seeing Paula. ‘Is that you, Dr Maguire?’

  ‘It’s me. This is my colleague. You’re safe now.’

  Mary looked down at her collection. ‘Thank God. I was going to have to throw the orange seller next, and she’s my favourite.’

  Paula wrinkled her nose. ‘What’s that smell?’ A sour, oily reek filled the room.

  ‘Petrol.’ Mary dusted off her hands. ‘They had a can of it. Soaked the place. I expect they were going to barricade me in here.’ Her bedclothes – chintzy pink – were drenched in the stuff, oily rainbows catching the light from the bay.

  Paula blinked. ‘They were going to set the place on fire?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mary calmly. Just like at the pub. What was going on here?

  Guy moved his foot aside, crunching on a broken figurine. Mary’s bedroom was in disarray, a wooden crucifix snapped, her creams and perfumes scattered. ‘Who would do this to you?’ he asked, half to himself. Who indeed? Paula was sure she’d recognised the aftershave, if only she could place it. But her mind was a storm of fire, and blood, and wailing. She couldn’t think straight.

  Mary stepped forward, her foot snapping the neck of a porcelain figure. ‘Any number of people. The whole island. Surely you’ve figured that out by now, Dr Maguire?’

  ‘What’s causing this? You know, don’t you?’

  They were now in Mary’s living room, where sure enough they’d found a plastic can of petrol, filling the place with its stink. ‘We were just in time,’ Guy said, moving it outside with gloves on. ‘If they’d had time to chuck this round, the whole place would have gone up.’

  Paula was watching Mary as she looked round her wrecked living room. ‘Why is this happening, Mary? Can you tell us?’

  Mary straightened a picture, a black-and-white shot of the island. It looked beautiful, peaceful. ‘We noticed it about two months ago. Everyone was so snappy – flying off the handle at the smallest thing. And there were fights all the time, physical fights sometimes in the office. A punch-up in the canteen queue. Scuffles in the pub, that sort of thing. And people were starting to be . . . paranoid. Convinced they’d be cast out if they spoke up about anything, complained about the company. That made things a lot harder to see. It took me longer to work it out than I’m proud of.’

  Paula said nothing – she’d thought Mary paranoid too, with her talk of being listened to. Same thing Andrea Sharkey had said.

  ‘You’re saying this is some kind of poisoning?’ Guy asked.

  She nodded. ‘Something’s got into the water supply, I’d say.’

  ‘And it comes from the factory? The seaweed processing?’ Guy spoke calmly, as if he’d already figured this all out.

  Another nod. ‘I believe so.’

  Paula said, ‘Was it the company? Were they trying to cover it up?’

 
‘I think so. Matt, as I told you, reported it to Dr Monroe, though he hadn’t connected his own behaviour to the deaths among wildlife he’d uncovered. People never do, of course. Not when they’re in the grip of it. I tried to persuade him to watch what he ate – there are certain plants which absorb fewer toxins, and of course the further up the food chain you go, the more concentrated it is. Fishermen were especially affected. The water is also contaminated, of course, but we can filter and boil it. I thought it would pass – these things generally do move through the food chain and out.’

  Paula was bewildered. ‘But . . . why didn’t you do anything? Why didn’t you warn people?’

  ‘I tried. But I was – I was afraid they’d come for me. After Matt disappeared. But I reported it, of course I did. And Matt did too, but by that stage he’d had too much exposure. He couldn’t exactly formulate his thoughts. It was too easy for them to pretend he’d gone mad.’

  ‘Exposure to what?’ Paula asked. The power was still off, so Mary had lit some large church candles. In the wavering light, everything looked unsure. Melting into the air.

  Mary rubbed her eyes, then put her glasses back on. ‘Well, it’s fairly technical. We were using corrosive chemicals at the plant to extract minerals from the seaweed. We make food supplements and that out of them. Not very scientific, really, but there’s a market for it. Seaweed, as you might know, is a big source of iodine, and also makes good fertiliser. People have been using it on the fields for years – nothing grows out here otherwise.’

  Guy nodded. Paula was frantically thinking back to school chemistry.

  ‘It’s been known for a long time that heavy metals – mercury is one example – can bio-accumulate in marine organisms. Shellfish are quite vulnerable – they extract it from the water along with their food, and then it gets into the food chain, and carries up and up until it reaches us. When I worked as a research chemist in America, from time to time we’d get reports of towns that had gone – strange.’

  ‘Strange?’ said Guy. In the flickering light, his face was full of hollows.

  ‘People acting oddly. Forgetfulness, vomiting and sickness, rashes, that kind of thing. A sort of mass poisoning. The thing is, fish and especially shellfish are not very good at avoiding toxins. Hard to, when it’s all around you in the water. So it’s usually seaside towns that experience this kind of . . . event. Something similar happens when people ingest ergot.’

  ‘Barley fungus.’ Guy was nodding. Paula was lost.

  Mary looked at him approvingly. ‘Spot on. Shellfish amnesia is another example. Very common, as I’ve said. Communities in Japan suffer quite often. Now, we aren’t stupid at Enviracorp – we know these processes happen, and we were at pains to stop it. That was the whole point of Matt’s job, in fact.’

  ‘But – it did happen?’

  She nodded, sifting through the remains of a smashed vase. ‘Something happened. I think it was a one-off chemical spill, and we stopped at once, but the damage was already done, a huge surge dumped into the ecosystem. We began to see the effects quite quickly in marine life. Fewer offspring, more birth defects. And then of course it’s in the soil, and getting through to the sheep and cows.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Guy. ‘Mercury?’

  She shook her head absently. ‘A lead compound, I believe. The pipes on the island, you know, they’re very old. And with such harsh chemicals – we had some nasty burns, at the start. The migrant workers. Hushed up, of course.’

  Paula was making the connections now. Andrea, who collected eggs from her chickens. Fiona Watts had been right – Andrea wasn’t psychotic at all. Niamh, who liked to beach-comb. And Jimmy Reilly – hadn’t Rory mentioned he was a farmer? All of them exposed to it. ‘So there’s lead in the food chain?’ Paula was trying to think back to what she’d eaten. Cups of tea. Water. She felt sick. ‘What are the symptoms of lead poisoning?’

  Mary said: ‘Confusion. Tiredness, lethargy. Rashes. A metal taste in the mouth. Sickness, nausea, loss of appetite . . . then after a while you start to get headaches, you feel sick all the time, your muscles hurt. You might even be paralysed. In children, there’s often cognitive deficits. It actually affects their IQ. And the effect on pregnant women is even worse. Very toxic to the foetus – it could even cause miscarriage or still birth. Low sperm counts, too.’

  Guy was looking alarmed. Paula tried to think – had he eaten much? No, they’d been rushing about all day, and she’d seen him drink from water he’d brought with him. But she hadn’t been so careful, had she? She remembered the cups of tea she’d had at the plant and the commune, leaving such a metallic taste in her mouth, like when she’d been pregnant and everything was off.

  ‘There’s another effect too,’ said Mary quietly. ‘It’s caused by more acute poisoning – when there’s a sudden spike in the concentration levels of the toxin. I believe that’s what may have happened.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Violence,’ she said. ‘There’s good evidence that ingesting lead causes violent and aggressive behaviour. It affects the part of the brain that helps regulate how we act. Studies suggest worldwide rates of violence dropped dramatically when it was taken out of petrol.’

  Guy nodded grimly. ‘So people are being poisoned. And it’s making them violent.’

  ‘Violent, paranoid, withdrawn . . .’ She sighed. ‘I saw it happening, of course. But the scale of the outbreak – well, I didn’t expect that.’

  ‘And you think that Matt had it?’ asked Paula.

  For a moment her face twisted in pain. ‘I knew when I read that report. It wasn’t – oh, it wasn’t even a report. It was crazy stuff. Ravings about how the blood tide was going to get us all. We’d be drowned in blood, he said.’

  Paula shivered. ‘A blood tide. Matt wrote it on the wall of his shed. What does it mean?’

  ‘I think he was worried about an algal bloom. It happens when you pump the sea full of nutrients. Very bad for the environment – but what he wrote made no sense. I tried to hide it – he’d have been fired if they saw it, and maybe sectioned too. That Fiona. She’d have had him sent away. I could see it in her eyes. She thought he was crazy. He tried to tell her what was going on, but she wouldn’t listen. She always had to know best, of course.’

  Paula and Guy exchanged a look. ‘We went to Matt’s boatshed earlier and his samples are missing.’

  Mary stood up and went behind the sofa, tugging out the plastic box they were looking for, with Matt’s laptop neatly bundled on top of it. ‘I got it. It wasn’t safe. They’re after it.’

  ‘Who’s they? The company?’

  Mary nodded, distractedly. ‘But I just keep thinking – if only I’d known. If only I’d seen how bad it was going to get. Maybe I could have helped him.’

  ‘Why did you do it, Mary?’ Paula was pretty sure she knew the answer. ‘Why did you hide his samples, and why didn’t you tell anyone how sick he was?’

  ‘Because,’ she said, matter-of-factly, ‘I was in love with him. I thought I could help him, get him better. I thought Enviracorp were going to deal with the problem, quietly, and it could all be hushed up.’

  So it was her who’d hidden the evidence. Not to cover it up, but to save the man she loved. Loved futilely, and with no happy ending. Matt was dead, his life sucked out by the sea, his body burned to a crisp now.

  Paula was thinking hard. ‘So if someone only ate food that came from off the island, and only drank bottled water, is it possible they would be safe from this? Whatever it is?’

  ‘They would certainly show much lower levels of contamination. Vegetarians too – it’s in the fish, you see, and that’s what starts it off. But by now – oh, it’s in everything. Even if you brush your teeth. I’ve been very careful, but it was too late by the time I realised. It will be in me too.’ Still, she was so calm.

  �
�And someone who never ate anything local?’

  ‘They’d be all right, I imagine. But why would someone do that?’

  Paula knew someone who had their reasons. On an island full of people going slowly mad, Fiona Watts had perhaps been the only sane one.

  Mary clasped her knees. ‘So you see, Matt was afraid. He was right to be, I realise that now. They were after him – do you know where they might have taken him? I think he’s still here on the island somewhere.’

  Paula looked at Guy again. ‘Mary . . .’ Her voice faltered. But then, who would have told her? The islanders had closed ranks, and no one knew she loved Matt, and Rory, whose job it would have been to inform people, was clearly not about. ‘I’m so sorry, Mary. I thought you would have known. I’m afraid Matt is dead.’

  Bob

  1993

  ‘I need your help, Bob.’

  Margaret Maguire was in his office. Red hair in a bun, neat grey dress like she’d just come from work. Bob blinked slowly. Looked about him. ‘Are you wanting PJ or . . .’

  ‘He’s out on patrol,’ she said impatiently. Bob was a sergeant now, with his own office. PJ, now his junior, was polite, but both of them knew a bad decision had been made and things would never be right with them again. ‘I’m wanting you.’

  ‘Right, right. Er – have a wee seat there, Margaret.’ What could she want with him? Maybe she’d a parking ticket or something. No, Margaret wasn’t that kind of person, who’d ask for favours and short-cuts. She was like her husband, believed in the black and white of it, the right and the wrong, even though here they were living in the kingdom of grey.

  ‘I need your help,’ she said. She was speaking briskly, but he saw her knuckles were white as she gripped the edge of the desk. When she lifted off her hands, her prints left whorls and lines on the wood. Her mark. Unique to her, in the whole world. ‘I’ve done – something. These. I’ve taken these.’ She fumbled a file out of her bag, photocopied documents.