‘Mase?’ I said. ‘We need to go after them, Mase.’ I edged forwards, close enough that I could hear the raggedness of his breathing. ‘I swear to you, the stuff you were saying … it’s not true. None of it. But whoever’s out there … maybe they know what happened to Sadie.’
The bottle twitched in Mason’s hand. He looked at me, out into the darkness, then back into the recesses of the cave.
‘Fuck!’ he suddenly roared. And when he turned to face me, there was so much fury in his eyes, so much frustration, I could have sworn he was about to lodge that bottle in my throat.
And then he was gone, out of the cave and into the rain. Before I knew it he’d been swallowed by the darkness.
I only hesitated for a moment, and then I was running for the woods, too. And I don’t know about the others, but the only thing on my mind was to help my friends. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt, I swear it. All I can think now is that we’d have been better off remaining exactly where we were. In spite of Mason. In spite of the bottle.
We should have stayed and taken our chances in that cave.
DI Robin Fleet
Fleet was walking the estuary when he discovered the inscription. He hadn’t been looking for it. He’d had no idea it was there. He’d only come down here in the first place in an attempt to clear his head.
The promenade ran beside the water’s edge, funnelling the river into the sea. At some point in the past two decades, the council had scraped together enough money to lay some paving, paint the railings, install a few Narnia-style streetlamps – to put just enough gloss on the area, in other words, that any visitors might at first glance consider it a pleasant place to take a stroll. The local tourist board had even planted several pairs of coin-operated binoculars, perhaps in a half-hearted attempt to recoup the town’s investment. But just as the railings had started flaking, and every third streetlamp was out, the slots on the binoculars had all been blocked up with chewing gum. Now passers-by were denied the dubious pleasure of watching in close-up the tatty fishing boats setting out on the steel-grey water, or the golfers on the course across the river swatting their balls wildly into the wind.
Not that either option would have interested Fleet, even if there’d been enough daylight left by which to see. It had already begun to fade when he’d first come down here. To think, to walk. To make the most of the break in the weather when he’d finally left the station. Now, under cover of darkness, the rain had returned, and Fleet would long ago have gone back to his hotel if, in the dying of the light, his eyes hadn’t caught on the words that were etched on the bench.
In memory of Jeannette Fleet, loved and never forgotten.
The bench was the last on the harbour walkway, a final resting place for passing pedestrians before the river washed away into the sea. Fleet could see exactly why his mother would have chosen this particular location – and who else other than his mother could have been responsible? He imagined her sitting exactly where he was now, in the slight hollow he could feel beneath him in the seat. Early mornings, late evenings – it would be as private a spot as was possible to find in an area that was so exposed. The perfect place for Fleet’s mother to set aside her shame and, with her eyes on the point the heavens met the water, to quietly allow herself to grieve.
He’d misjudged her. For the best part of twenty years, he’d assumed she’d put religion over family, her god over her one and only daughter. He thought of the crucifix around his mother’s neck, as well as the mantelpiece devoid of Jeannie’s image – not to mention the accusations Fleet had hurled his mother’s way before, as a teenager, he’d stormed from his childhood home. Driven by guilt, undoubtedly, but anger, too. At the fact his mother, after Jeannie killed herself, had chosen to act as though she’d never been alive. If suicide was a sin, he’d challenged his mother, then what was that?
But it turned out things hadn’t been so simple. He thought of his mother now as being like the very river that had taken his sister’s life: cold, inscrutable, but with unseen currents swirling below the surface: her faith – her anger – tugging her one way; her grief – her love – the other. And he felt ashamed that, after watching her suffer the loss of one child, he’d forced her to endure the same thing all over again.
You heavens above, rain down my righteousness.
Standing, Fleet wiped the rain from his face. He moved to the railing and looked down towards the churning water – at the spot, by the final kink of the river, where Jeannie’s body had caught amid the reeds. He heard his wife’s voice: It isn’t the same … And it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t.
But it scared him how close he’d come to believing it might be.
As Fleet turned to walk back towards the harbour, the wind kicked the rain into his eyes. Perhaps if it hadn’t, he might have seen them, though it was hard to imagine afterwards how else things might have played out if he had.
‘Evening, officer,’ said one of the men. Tall, broad, gruff. Stepping from the darkness into the pall of a streetlight, like a performer laying claim to centre stage. There were three other men around him, hanging back
