Journey to Death

by Leigh Russell

  ‘Are you all right, George?’

  ‘Is Lucy with you?’ George repeated.

  ‘No, I haven’t seen her all day.’

  Adrian glanced around as though checking to see if she was there.

  George clutched Adrian’s sleeve. ‘I don’t know where she is. I can’t lose her too.’ He was nearly in tears.

  He was loath to embarrass himself by giving way to his emotions, and was relieved when Adrian slipped off his stool and led him over to a corner table. They sat down together and George was grateful that Adrian waited patiently while he regained his composure. George explained the reason for his anxiety. There was not much to tell. Adrian was reassuring, but he did not know where Lucy was. All he could say was that he was sure she would return soon. He agreed she might have gone to look for her mother without telling anyone where she was going.

  ‘We have to find her, Adrian, we have to find her,’ George kept repeating.

  They decided they could cover more ground if they split up to search. George had the impression Adrian was not too concerned about Lucy going missing, and only offered his help on account of the stress George was under with Angela’s disappearance. They agreed that George would scour the Garden of Eden, while Adrian drove to a nearby hotel. Lucy had struck up a fleeting friendship with the American girls who were staying there and might have gone to visit them. It was difficult to believe she would have gone off without telling him, but it could have been spontaneous, if the Americans had turned up unexpectedly and offered to take her out with them. With no signal on her phone, she might not have been able to contact him straight away. It was unlikely she had forgotten to call, but possible.

  Once Adrian had gone, George set about searching the hotel again. He approached the task methodically. Already he felt calmer, embarrassed at having exposed his frailty to a stranger. But this was a time of unprecedented emotional stress. He checked at reception in case Lucy had left a message for him but there had been no communication from her. He asked a security guard if he had seen Lucy that afternoon. The security guard gave him a curious look. It was only a couple of days since George had been asking the exact same questions about his wife. Neither the receptionist nor the security had seen Lucy that afternoon.

  ‘The last time I saw the young lady, she was with you,’ the security guard said, his eyes narrowed suspiciously at George.

  After asking at the hotel entrance, George went back to search the pool and beach area. He checked the hire car was still in the car park then went back indoors to see if Lucy had returned to her room while he was out. He scribbled a note and slid it under her door, in case she returned without him seeing her.

  ‘Lucy, please call me right now.’

  But she did not call.

  25

  LUCY OPENED HER EYES. She was not sure how long she had been unconscious, or what had woken her. It came again, a surge of cool water caressing her feet, a relief from the stifling heat. She stirred. Her shirt was soaked with sweat. Her head was pounding. No one could survive for long in that heat. Panicking, she knew she had to move, but she was too dazed to stand up. Cool water washed her feet again, creeping up her calves. She realised she was lying on sand at the water’s edge. With a start, she remembered the body she had discovered on the beach the previous day. If she did not get up soon, she might be carried out to sea and drown.

  She did not know how long she had been lying there, nor how she had arrived there. She knew only that she could not afford to remain exposed to the burning sun. One of her toes hurt. With difficulty she raised her leg and squinted down at it. Her toe looked bruised. She lowered her foot and let her aching head fall back. She was feeling drowsy but, whatever happened, she knew she must not fall asleep. She had to get out of the direct sun as soon as possible. The throbbing in her toe seemed to worsen as she sat up. Frowning, she dragged herself up into a sitting position and looked around. The particular stretch of beach was unfamiliar, but she could see the road on the far side of a row of trees. Somehow she had to hobble up there, and find a bus stop. Maybe a taxi would go by.

  Grunting with exertion, she hauled herself to her feet and began limping across the sand towards the road. Reaching the shade of the trees, she sat on a stump to rest for a moment. As she perched there cooling down, a heat haze seemed to lift inside her head. When her mind cleared, she remembered hearing a message that she was to tell George her mother was waiting. A sob bubbled up into her throat. Her mother must have fallen ill, probably from the heat. Perhaps a local woman was tending to her. Her mother was alive. The family would soon be reunited. All they had to do was find her. That could not be difficult, on such a small island. But remembering how she had been pushed into the back of a van and driven away from the hotel, she felt afraid again. She did not understand why she had been given such a cryptic hostile message, when she could simply have been told where her mother was. Still there was no point in worrying about that for now. The pressing need was to find her mother. It was best not to think about what had just happened. The only explanation she could think of was that there was a lunatic on the island. She had a horrible suspicion it might be her.

  ‘Lucy!’

  She opened her eyes and saw a worried face staring down at her.

  ‘Adrian! What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was looking for you.’

  ‘But . . .’ She frowned. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘I didn’t. Your dad’s been going out of his mind with worry and I offered to take a look around. He said he was going to check the hotel grounds but he thought you might have gone to visit your American friends—’ He broke off, with a puzzled expression. ‘What are you doing out here on the roadside?’

  Lucy looked round but there was no sign of the battered white van. She had not seen the registration number, and there was no way of finding it out now. Clambering to her feet she hobbled towards the place where she thought the van could have been parked. There were tyre marks on the earth, but that meant nothing. They could have been made by another vehicle. Walking gingerly, she examined her injured foot. None of her toes were broken as she could wriggle them without difficulty, although her little toe was bruised. Adrian called out in alarm as she inched her way to the edge of the narrow clearing until she was able to look down the short incline. At the bottom, waves were washing up against the rock face. The water was shallow and clear. She did not know if she should tell him what had happened to her. The sequence of events was so muddled in her memory, she was not even sure she could relate her experience coherently.

  Adrian fetched a bottle of cold water from his car and she drank gratefully. When the bottle was almost empty, she poured the remainder over her head, squealing as the chilly water ran down her back.

  ‘Feeling better?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘You’d better call your dad and let him know you’re OK. He’ll still be looking for you.’

  ‘Oh God,’ she replied, aghast. ‘What on earth am I going to say to him?’

  ‘Good question,’ he replied. ‘What happened to you? Did you fall asleep in the sun? Are you OK now? You seem so drowsy.’

  Lucy tried to explain how she had been pushed into the back of a van, but her account sounded unlikely even to her ears.

  Adrian looked sceptical. ‘Are you sure you didn’t dream all that?’

  ‘There was a van, Adrian. I’m telling you, someone must have carried me down to the beach and left me there unconscious.’ She remembered a hoarse voice whispering to her, something about the beach.

  ‘Lucy, don’t take this the wrong way, but there’s no van here. I think you must have suffered another touch of heat stroke. Think about it, why would someone throw you in the back of a van and then let you go again? It doesn’t make sense. You must have fallen asleep in the sun. Don’t blame yourself. It’s hardly surprising. You’re bound to be exhausted, after everything that’s happened.’

  ‘It wasn’t a dream. Someone pushe
d me into the back of a van and I stubbed my toe. Look.’ She held out her foot, aware that her stubbed toe proved nothing.

  ‘We can get that looked at back at the hotel,’ he told her kindly, misunderstanding why she was showing him her injury.

  She could tell he did not take her garbled account seriously and decided to drop it. There was no point in her trying to convince him, if he was determined not to listen to her. Now that she had cooled down and was talking to Adrian, soberly and calmly, she was beginning to distrust her memory herself. Too much sun could have a powerful effect on the brain. She might have imagined the whole episode of the cryptic message in the van. If she had not been hallucinating, it might at least have been a dream. In her desperation about her mother, her mind could be playing tricks on her. Yet there was a chance she had just been given a message that would help her find her mother. Listening to Adrian’s doubts might lead her astray. Perhaps it was his scepticism that was misguided, and not her recollection of what had happened. She decided to stop trying to convince Adrian she was telling the truth. Instead she determined to rely on herself. Depending on other people had not helped her in her life so far.

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ she said crossly. ‘I’d better call my dad and let him know I’m OK.’ She glanced up at Adrian, without making any move to get her phone out.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine now, really. I’m feeling much better.’

  ‘Lucy, I’m not sure you are OK,’ Adrian replied hesitantly. ‘I don’t think you should carry on trying to cope with all this stress on your own. Lots of people need help to sort themselves out, and these hallucinations you’ve been having must be a cry for help. The point is you don’t have to deal with this alone, Lucy. There are – people – who can help you.’

  She understood what kind of help he meant. He thought she was losing touch with reality. Worse than that, she was afraid he might be right. With her mother’s disappearance coming on top of her distress over Darren, it was possible her mind had become unbalanced.

  ‘I’m not going crazy, Adrian,’ she protested vehemently. But she was no longer sure she believed that herself.

  Without responding, Adrian stood up and walked slowly to his car. She had two dozen missed calls and several messages on her phone. All of them were from her father. Without stopping to listen to any of them, she called him to reassure him that she was fine and would be back soon. She promised to explain what had happened when she saw him. Then she clambered to her feet and limped over to the car.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Adrian asked as she got in beside him.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. Thank you. I really am grateful. God knows how I would have got back if you hadn’t come along.’

  It would have been churlish to say that she could have phoned her father or called a taxi. Adrian’s explanation of his arrival on the scene made perfect sense. They had been spending a lot of time together, so she should probably dismiss it as coincidence, but this was the second time he had been around when her life had been threatened. She wondered if he knew more about the island’s secrets than he was letting on.

  26

  LUCY WENT STRAIGHT UP to her room to shower and change. She did not want her father to see her filthy and dishevelled, limping in one sandal with her shorts ripped. Uncomfortably self-conscious as she crossed the hotel lobby, she was relieved that no one paid her any attention and thankful when no one joined her in the lift. Unless it had been thrown away, her missing sandal would still be in the car park but she could not be bothered to go and look for it. In any case, her toe was too swollen for her to be comfortable in anything other than flip flops. They could not conceal her injury, but under loose summer trousers the bruising would not be visible. Before she went downstairs, she checked her phone again. Her mother had not been in touch. Disappointed, she slipped her phone in her pocket and went down to the bar to face him. She knew she had to tell him everything that had happened, and share the message she had been given. She hoped her father would take her account seriously. She needed his help to work out exactly what it all meant.

  Her father leapt to his feet, eyes shining, waving at her as soon as she walked in. He must have been watching for her to come through the door.

  ‘Adrian told me he found you but he wouldn’t say where. How could you go off like that without a word?’ he demanded as she sat down, his face wavering between joy and outrage.

  Carefully tucking her bruised foot behind her other calf, she said she needed to talk to him. As succinctly as she could, she reminded him how she had almost drowned, pulled under the water by some unidentifiable figure.

  ‘You must have been mistaken, in all the confusion and panic,’ he reassured her. ‘It’s only natural. I thought we decided it was the current.’

  ‘That’s what Adrian said.’

  Lucy took a deep breath. Her father looked so drawn, his face sunken, his shoulders bowed like an old man. She did not want to carry on, but she knew Adrian was right. It was time to come clean and tell her father everything. It was bound to come out in the end and the longer she delayed, the more hurt he was going to feel when he finally discovered the truth.

  ‘What do you mean, that’s not all?’

  Her father raised his eyes, searching her face. He listened attentively to her account of the rock that had fallen to the ground right in front of her.

  ‘There was a rock fall?’ he repeated, bemused.

  ‘Not a rock fall. It was just one boulder that fell a few inches in front of me.’ She paused. ‘I know it’s a lot to take in.’

  It was a relief to tell her father everything, even her suspicion that Judy might have been mistaken for her.

  Her father stared at her. He looked shocked. ‘But there’s no actual evidence for any of this, is there?’

  She ploughed on and told him how she had discovered Judy’s body that morning, and had been driven off in a van that afternoon after their visit to Victoria.

  ‘And I woke up, having been left, unconscious, in the sun.’ She paused. ‘I need to ask you something.’

  ‘Well, what is it? Fire away.’

  ‘Do you know anyone here?’

  Her father looked bewildered. ‘What?’

  ‘One of the local people said something about you knowing someone, someone unique. Does that make any sense to you?’ Her voice tailed off as she saw how confused her father looked. He seemed to have no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘What do you mean, someone? Lucy, what have you heard?’

  He sounded agitated, but she pressed on. She had to know. ‘Do you know anyone who lives here?’

  ‘No.’

  Her hopes dashed, Lucy bit her lip, fighting back tears. She had been so desperate to believe that a friend of her father’s was looking after her mother. Almost as bitter as the disappointment about her mother, was her growing fear that she was going mad. It was difficult to pinpoint exactly when she realised that her father was not taking her stories seriously. Like Adrian, he suggested she had just fallen asleep in the sun. On the face of it, that was certainly a more likely explanation. If she was to be believed, she had narrowly survived being drowned, crushed by a rock, shot and dumped in the sea, and left unconscious in the sun, all as the intended victim of an unknown enemy. The message she remembered could have been a product of her own feverish imagination.

  Adrian might be right when he said she needed help. Her father appeared to feel the same way. His face had gone very pale and he looked at her with a stricken expression. Yet she was not sure why she should trust her father and Adrian more than her own senses. Her memories seemed real. What if she was right, after all? She remembered how Darren had let her down when she had trusted him unquestioningly. Maybe it was time she took responsibility for her own decisions, and stopped relying on others to tell her what to believe.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ her father said as they parted for the night. ‘I’m going to be keeping a close eye on you from now on.’ He gave
a tense smile. ‘I’ll take care of you.’

  She did not think he meant that he intended to protect her from real physical danger. He was concerned that she was going insane.

  27

  AFTER A NIGHT’S SLEEP and a good breakfast, Lucy had another idea. The curious message she had been given suggested that her mother might be staying with a local woman who knew her father. She could be someone who had worked at the hotel thirty years ago. There must be a way of accessing records of past employees. Lucy was going to speak to Adrian. It was a long shot but as a local man, working at the hotel, he might be able to shed some light on the identity of the woman. She was not willing to wait until the evening to look for him. This was too important a lead.

  ‘I’m here to see Adrian, the accountant,’ she told the girl on the reception desk. ‘Where can I find him?’

  ‘Adrian? He’ll be at his desk, but—’

  The receptionist was chary of giving out the information Lucy wanted. ‘Guests don’t usually go up there. I can call the manager for you if there’s a query with your bill.’

  The front of house manager was more helpful when Lucy asked for Adrian by name. He led her outside, past the pool, around the back of the bar and through a door marked ‘Staff Only’, where he directed her to the far end of the corridor. She walked past several offices, opposite an air-conditioning unit, to the door at the end which was marked Accountant. She knocked and a woman’s voice invited her come in.

  Four desks were crammed together in an office, surrounded by grey metal filing cabinets. Two women and a man were seated at keyboards, at right angles to the door. They all looked up as she entered. In their thirties and forties, smartly dressed, they turned to gaze incuriously at her with gentle black eyes. To the left of them Adrian was visible sitting at a desk in an inner office, with the door wide open, facing his colleagues. He looked surprised to see her, and half rose to his feet.