Little Black Lies (18 page)

‘I’m going out there again on Friday.’ She ran a finger through a water splash on the wood, as though her mind was loose and carefree. I wasn’t fooled. Her other hand was shaking like a maraca in a salsa band. ‘I need to collect some samples. You could come, if you want.’

I pretended to think about it. ‘I have a call I need to take Friday morning,’ I said. ‘I can probably rearrange it though. Thanks, that’d be good.’

For the three days that followed I barely slept. I lived on soup because my constricted throat wasn’t letting solid food through. On Friday I waited at the little-used jetty in Whalebone Bay, not far from her house. When she’d suggested picking me up there, rather than be seen leaving Stanley harbour together, I’d known. Shit, I’d known from the moment I laid eyes on her. It had never been a question of if. Just a question of when.

She was ten minutes late. At five minutes I decided she wasn’t coming. She’d got cold feet. It had all been a big wind-up. She was, at that moment, in one of those girly coffee mornings, giggling with her mates about the gullibility of blokes. Stupid ex-squaddie blokes, at that. I honestly wasn’t sure how I was going to live through the next hour. Then her boat appeared around the headland. I couldn’t see her. The sun was glinting off the windows of the wheelhouse, but I could make out that fat little dog of hers at the bow.

She threw me the rope, I caught it, jumped on board and pushed us off.

‘That’s not the way the health and safety people prefer us to moor up.’ She put the engine into reverse to clear the jetty then swung it round and we headed out to sea.

‘The wind’s getting up.’ I wrapped the rope around my lower arm and made it off. ‘If it gets too choppy you might not want to go down with an amateur like me, and I’d hate to miss the chance to see the
Mary Jane.
’

I was a fucking liar. I couldn’t give a toss if we didn’t dive. In fact I’d prefer it. All I cared about was getting on her boat and getting far enough out to sea that nobody could get in our way. We were halfway there already.

We did dive. Catrin was determined to keep me at arm’s length for as long as she could and if she wanted to keep up the pretence of coming out here to explore the wreck, I was prepared to go along with it. We pulled on wetsuits and tanks, masks, snorkels and fins and jumped over the side.

The water was cold enough – almost – to cool me down. The sun had more or less gone behind the cloud by this time so visibility was poor. I followed Catrin’s hard-kicking fins and the beam from her head-torch deeper and deeper, and wondered if anyone had ever had sex at the bottom of the ocean before. I followed her into the hull of the old whaling ship, brushing the tickling kelp out of the way, sliding between iron plates, sometimes feeling my way when I lost sight of her torch beam. Periodically, she’d stop, wait for me to catch up, and direct the beam on to a brass plaque or a pile of harpoons. I pretended to be interested, when all I wanted to do was catch hold of her hair, drifting round in the water like it was alive, and pull her to me. I could see the glint of her eyes behind her mask. She was fast down there, much faster than me, a strong swimmer. Down there she wasn’t afraid of me.

When we’d been everywhere accessible on the wreck, we swam out through a hole in its starboard hull and she turned to make sure I was following. I reached out, took hold of her hand.

We floated, in the swirling shadows at the bottom of the ocean, our weight suspended in the water, her face on a level with mine. I pulled her closer, spat out my mouthpiece and kissed her hand.

She panicked then, reaching for the mouthpiece, pushing it towards me. I smiled, took it from her, and slowly, to show her I wasn’t worried, put it back. When I gave the thumbs up, the signal to swim to the surface, she nodded.

Back on the boat, we chilled down fast. Shivering, we pulled off our equipment. She let me peel off her wetsuit and wrap a towel around the black swimsuit she wore underneath. Her hair hung down to her waist, dripping on the cockpit floor. When I was naked but for swim shorts, I took her through the wheelhouse and into the cabin at the bow.

Being in the Parachute Regiment, I’d made dozens of jumps, but I’ve never forgotten the first. The near-paralysing terror as the plane soared high and I knew there was only one way back to earth and that was free-fall. The realization that the moment was upon me, that I was going out of the airplane now. The certainty that death was seconds away. And then the mind-blowing joy of being in the sky, speeding like an arrow, that sense of absolute, infinite power, the feeling that anything was possible. That’s how it was for me the first time with Catrin.

To this day, I only have to close my eyes to remember the ice-cold silk of her skin against mine as she pressed closer, seeking warmth at first, and then because she couldn’t pull away. Or her hair, clinging like wet string. The heady thrill of having the woman of my dreams become the woman biting at my neck, running her hands down the backs of my thighs, taking me between her hands and letting her fingers play until I could barely think straight.

She was so deliciously naïve. She’d only ever known Ben and he clearly hadn’t been the adventurous type. She gasped and squeaked and told me no, but she wriggled like an eel, bucked like a new-born foal and clung to me with a strength that surprised me.

When it was over, when I was flat on my back in that tiny bed, looking up at the wooden panelled ceiling, and she was curled up against me, her head on my shoulder, arm possessively across my chest, I told her I loved her.

She didn’t say it back for some time. It didn’t matter. What I felt seemed to be enough for both of us. By the end of the first month I was begging her to leave Ben. I carried on doing it, right up until the moment when he left her and she looked back at me with those empty eyes. I think that was the moment I gave up.

*   *   *

I go home and start work. The west coast of the US, where I do most of my business, is five hours behind us and it’s getting to the time when people I need to talk to will be at their desks.

Tonight I’ll hit the town and get hammered, I decide. Stanley will be in a good mood, the worries over the disappearance of Archie West put to one side. The Globe will be packed, with locals and visitors alike. The band will play and the ladies won’t be averse to a bit of mild flirting. Sapphire is right. Catrin is not the only woman on the islands and maybe a warm, willing woman is exactly what I need right now.

I rattle off an email to a mate called Sam in Palo Alto. I have an ISDN line in the house that my employers arranged when I moved here and staying in touch with the outside world isn’t a problem for me. Bar the military, I probably have the best IT system on the islands. Which is why I’m the first to hear about the storm breaking back in the real world, just as the one over Falkland releases its might on the land around me.

It starts innocuously enough.

You’ve been in the news a bit,
writes Sam.

Huh?
I reply. My fingers are too big to make keyboard work easy and I rarely waste words.

You’re all over the papers. Here and in the UK. South America’s having a field day.

Again,
Huh?
I’m still not that interested. John Major will have sent the Argies a yah-boo message and they’ll have a cob on. It happens from time to time. Or the Governor might have made some entirely premature announcement about oil reserves around the islands.

I’ll see if I can attach a pic. Stand by.

I stand by. Or rather, I get up, make coffee, have a piss, stare at the rain bucketing down outside and come back ten minutes later to see an email with image attachment has landed in my inbox. I click it open, see the scanned image of the front page of the
Daily Mirror,
and realize that Catrin’s part in the safe return of little Archie West will make no difference to how she’s viewed on the islands. Her part in the discovery of Jimmy Brown’s body, and putting to rest seventeen months of agonized unknowing for his parents, won’t make the slightest impression on how she appears on the world stage. Even I, ignorant ex-Para that I am, know a golden story when I see one.

The picture is one taken by one of the tourists on a pretty good-quality camera. The definition is excellent. He must have used a zoom lens because I don’t remember anyone getting that close. I’m in the shot, although you’d have to look hard to spot me as I’m half turned away. Pete, the other person in the foreground, is looking down, as if sickened. It’s in colour, so I get the full impact of the blood around the beach, in the water, running down the face of the woman who takes centre stage.

It is a picture of Catrin, her flying hair giving her the look of an avenging fury, standing beside a six-metre male pilot whale. The gun is in her hand. She’s looking down at her kill. The faintest whiff of smoke floats around the gun muzzle. The animal’s jaw opens in what isn’t, but looks like, a scream. The headline says it all:

Killer Quinn

16

The rain has slackened by the time I reach Stanley. It’s a temporary respite though. Out to sea, more cloud is banking up. I’m relieved to see Robert Duncan’s car parked outside the offices of the
Penguin News.
Tracking him down would have wasted more time. The counter from which the paper is sold once a week is empty, so I lift it and in the back room find all three regular staff of the
News
in the office, all on the phone. Robert sees me, holds up a finger and carries on talking.

I do not want Catrin seeing that photograph. I don’t want anyone here seeing that photograph. I’m pretty certain that, if I have to, I can shut down email correspondence in and out of the islands for a couple of days. I can’t get near the military’s comms, of course, their security’s too good, but all civilian traffic is well within my capabilities. People will just assume there’s a problem with the telephone connection. They’ll get on to their suppliers, who wouldn’t give the Falklands top priority, and after a day or so, I’d let it all trickle through again. A couple of days, maybe three, might be enough time to let the storm die down. People soon forget and in a couple of days the world will have something else to outrage about.

What I need to know is whether the news is already out. Whether Rob and his team have already seen the story currently in my jacket pocket.

‘Well, I’m sure they’ll get back to you as soon as they can.’ Cathy, Rob’s chief (only) reporter, is looking frazzled. ‘The Conservation only have a very small staff and I imagine their lines are quite busy at the moment.’

Looks like I’m too late.

‘Callum, what can I do for you?’ Rob has finished his call. He steps around his desk. I take his outstretched hand in my right and with my left pull the picture from my back pocket. ‘Have you seen this?’

He only needs to glance. ‘Phones have been going mental for an hour. Friggin’ tourists.’

‘Does Catrin know?’

He nods again, unhappily. ‘She must do. I had to tip John off when we got the first call. We haven’t been able to get through to them so I imagine they’re taking more calls than we are.’

‘And that’s saying something.’ Mabel, Rob’s mum and the office junior, has finished her call. ‘News International are chartering a plane, Rob. We can expect them early tomorrow afternoon.’

‘For a bunch of fucking dead whales?’ I’m incredulous. ‘Sorry, Mabel, Cathy.’

Rob’s phone rings again. He grimaces an apology and turns away to talk. I hear him say ‘expected environmental disaster’, and know he’s going to be some time.

‘It’s not just the whales, Callum.’ Cathy’s phone is ringing but she’s ignoring it. ‘They’re making a connection between her shooting the whales and the disappearance of Archie West.’

For a moment, I’m stumped. ‘How the hell are they managing that? There is no connection.’

Deep frown lines appear between Cathy’s brows. ‘Of course there isn’t. But you have to see their point. We have an abducted British child, and an island woman instrumental in a mass slaughter.’ She holds up a hand to stop me. ‘Yeah, we know it was for the right reasons, but try telling that to people whose experience of whales is limited to watching
Free Willy.
Added to that, the woman in question, who has a history of emotional instability, drove into town last night with the same abducted kid.’

‘Catrin is not emotionally unstable and she found the fucking kid.’

Mabel stands up and crosses to the kitchen.

Even easy-going Cathy is starting to look put out now. ‘Maybe, but that’s not how the early news bulletins are telling it. According to them, she disappeared from the beach, covered in blood, and turned up in Stanley several hours later with the kid in her arms.’

‘Fuckin’ bullshit! I was in the car with her. She was asleep for most of the journey. It was sheer bloody fluke we saw him when we did.’

Mabel is back, standing directly in front of me, holding a bottle of washing-up liquid. I look down. At it; at her.

‘Mind your mouth, young man, or I’ll wash it out,’ she tells me. ‘This might be a newsroom but we’re not on Fleet Street and we’re not the ones writing this crap.’

Mabel is half my height, probably a quarter my weight and yet I have a feeling that, were I to smile right now, I’d regret it. ‘But I’m allowed to say crap? Right?’

She waves the Fairy Liquid in my face. ‘No, I’m allowed to say crap because I’m ninety-two and I don’t give a shit. You can say yes ma’am, no ma’am, sorry to give offence ma’am, but if I were you I’d be out of here and trying to find Catrin.’

‘She also found the body of Jimmy Brown, in a bay she’s known to frequent.’ Cathy’s a bit braver with Mabel to back her up.

‘What are you talking about? It was my idea to search that wreck.’

A firm shake of the head from Cathy. ‘Not the story we’re hearing around town.’

Rob has finished on the phone, so I turn my back on Cathy. ‘Do we know for certain the kid on the
Endeavour
was Jimmy?’

He looks at me over Mabel’s head. ‘They did the initial examination yesterday afternoon. While you and Catrin were at Speedwell. It was definitely Jimmy. They had dental records.’