“What’s that at the bottom of the bag?”
“Not sure, it was complimentary. The girl called it a fritter, then one of the customers insisted it was a potato cake. Things got a bit heated, but I couldn’t tell you who won.”
“It doesn’t look too bad.” Emma reached for it.
“Wait! Let me test it first.” David grabbed it and nibbled the edge. He looked at the hole his teeth made in the flat brown oval for a moment, then moved it far away from the rest of the food without saying a word.
Emma pinched off a piece of the battered fish in front of her. It had a lovely flake, but pulled away in spurts, as if internal structures were tearing. She began peeling back the batter to see what was underneath, then thought better of it.
David laughed at her hesitation. “At least it's not another Korean pizza.”
“Oh my God, the one with corn and mayonnaise? I've never in my life seen someone send back a pizza.”
“Well what choice did I have, with you making a face like a sad bulldog? I had to do something.”
“And they say chivalry is dead.” She made an effort to put the slimy piece of meat in her mouth. “Mind you, we can never Google what this is. Ever. But it's not bad.”
They ate for a few moments in silence. Emma's mind raced, running through theories about Evan's death. David saw the wheels turning and offered a guess.
“Could it be blackmail?”
“Blackmail wouldn't explain memory loss. That distress on Steve’s face last night was real. We don’t have hard evidence that he was there when Ned tried to kill himself, so he could have played it cool and no one would have ever thought he was involved. But he seems to think he did something wrong.”
“It's not alcohol. Steve barely drinks, and Ned never did.”
“How do you know that?”
“Gossip. Seriously, why are you always surprised that I talk to people?”
“Then you’ve noticed people here have secrets.”
“By definition, interesting people have secrets. It doesn’t make them criminals.”
“I have a theory.” Emma shook a spongy wedge of potato in the air as she spoke.
“Shoot.”
“Hypnosis. We have two violent events, each involving two people. Those that survive have no memory of it. What if they're also the victims?”
“Victims of what?”
“Someone is using a technique to make people kill themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Either way nobody remembers. But what's the motivation?”
“Does there need to be one?”
“A motive for murder? Yes, David, I should hope so.”
“Maybe, maybe not. People do crazy things out of boredom. My Nan used to say when you're alone the Devil is with you. No one's more alone than a person trapped on South Alderney.”
“But there has to be some reason. Something.”
“There doesn't, and you know it. Besides, you're forgetting the main flaw in your hypnotism theory.”
“What's that?”
David lifted his nose in the air. “You can't make someone do something under hypnosis that they really don't want to do. If someone thinks murder is wrong, you can't hypnotize them into killing people. Hypnosis couldn't make someone kill themselves if they truly wanted to live. Everyone knows that.”
“It's hardly a stretch that people might be suicidal in a place like this.”
“Ha. I'm rubbing off on you. People on this island are suffering, but you're wasting your time if you're chasing evil-doers to blame it on.”
“It's not evil.” Emma searched her lap for the words she needed. “I'm not looking for some vague quality to blame for people doing bad things. No one blames a breakdown on ‘car badness.’ It's something more specific that goes wrong. Some small part of an otherwise perfectly operational human that shifts out of place. It's easy to miss. Even easier to hide.”
“Well then, if the solution to this problem is to get some NHS counselors to serve the population, that's a medical crisis not a crime wave. No bogeyman required.”
“It's pronounced ‘boogyman.’ Eat your fries.” This was a standard tactic when Emma lost an argument, and it signaled full retreat. It wouldn't be the worst thing if there was no mad mesmerist rampaging across the island. A systematic mental health crisis was at least more comforting than a crime without a reason. It was infuriating when David was right, but she knew that without him she would be checking under sheep for serial killers.
Something about the situation still bothered her. There was an order to things. Emma knew that there were precisely two kinds of people in the world: those who turned left at the fork, and those who turned right. Most people did good things, and some did bad.
A lot of people found this difficult to swallow. This was usually because they had taken a glance at the complexity of the human psyche and thrown their arms in the air, declaring the mind to be unknowable. In reality, when things went wrong there was always someone to be found loitering on the wrong side of the fork in the road. People didn’t turn up dead or dying for no reason. Anyone who insisted that sometimes there was no one to blame wasn't looking hard enough. That was how it was supposed to work, anyway.
The more she thought about it, the worse it seemed. All the people on the island watched, unmoved, someone who was on the brink of death. No one knew how he felt, or no one cared. Something about that was terrifying, but she couldn't explain why. She took another bite and found it went down easier than the first. “At least it's better than that black pudding in Leicester.”
“I'm sorry?”
“Remember the time we visited your friend in Leicester? Two years ago, maybe?”
David gave his usual good-natured smile. “Ah. Yes. Of course.”
“No, you don't. Where was it in Leicester?”
“Well, of course I don't remember the exact location.”
Emma tilted her
