None but the Dead (40 page)

He’d told Muir to go home not long after they’d begun the search. Watching him struggle against the wind, Erling had realized that the stuffing had been truly
knocked out of the Ranger. Any sure-footedness was also missing, making him more of a liability than an asset.

Questioning Muir closely, map in hand, he’d had most of his questions answered before he let him go. Despite time spent here as a child, Erling wasn’t as familiar with the western
coast of Sanday as he was with the north. PC Tulloch, on the other hand, had professed to know this shoreline well, and they would meet up with his group soon enough.

Their own search had proved fruitless. Rough seas and deserted bays were all they’d found. They were less than halfway south when PC Tulloch had appeared out of the driving rain, striding
towards them, his rosy cheeks belying the weather he’d come through.

His news that they’d located the
Antares
had been welcome. That there was no sign of the child, not so good. Every bone in Erling’s body was screaming at him that she was
already dead. And the blood McNab had apparently discovered in the cabin pointed that way.

Dusk was falling, and he knew that would bring an end to the search. The latest forecast suggested the weather would deteriorate overnight. It was time to get everyone inside. Whatever evidence
lay on the
Antares
would have to wait until tomorrow.

Having delivered his message regarding the boat, PC Tulloch had made his way back to help guide DS McNab and Rhona up the cliff.

Bringing Ivan home to Sanday had proved to be the right decision, despite McNab’s concern about familiarity between police officers and the public.

On Orkney we will always be close to those we serve. Neighbours, friends, relatives.

He marshalled his troops and set them walking back the way they had come. Drenched, and disappointed at their lack of success, they needed to dry off and get something to eat.

The call reached him at the campsite. Rhona’s voice was broken in parts, but he picked up the gist of it. The girl was safe and well. Her report of Millar’s probable location brought
a chill to Erling’s heart.

He had come here to be with her and tell of their search. Show Claire that they hadn’t given up on her daughter. Weakened by his own guilt, he was losing any sense of
himself. Any notion that he had been part of this community.

It seemed to him in that moment that the Sinclair house stood at the edge of their world. At the edge of their sanity. He approached with trepidation, aware he wasn’t bringing hope, only
an indication of their continued determination.

Through the window he saw her, sitting there, as still as death.

A trickle of blood ran down from her mouth. She was tied, as he had tied up Jamie Drever. The sight of it reminded him of his own cruelty. Even as he stood transfixed at the window, she turned
her eyes slowly in his direction and, seeing him there, forbad him with a shake of her head to enter.

‘Get help,’ she mouthed, before a shadow crossed the path between them.

Millar was as big and powerful as Derek remembered. Claire was right. He couldn’t take him on his own. Derek stepped back into the shadows.

The police were all on the western seaboard, out of range.

He thought of the girl. Where was she, if not with Millar?

He stood hesitant. Everything he’d learned as a Ranger seemed to melt into indecision. He couldn’t go in there, and he couldn’t stand out here and watch Claire taking the
beating that had already begun.

He had hurt Jamie Drever in his anger. Twisting the rope tightly against the bony wrists, demanding to know the truth about his father. He had been capable of such cruelty, even found himself
empowered by it.

Just like my father.

Just like Millar.

And what of Inga? What had Millar done with the child?

I can’t let this happen.

There were three houses other than his own and Sam Flett’s within sight of here, and he knew a place he could get a signal.

It was time for Sanday folk to look after their own.

The first to arrive was old Mrs Skea’s grandson, Nele’s father. Nele might be a timid wee thing, but Rognvald was anything but. It had been he, together with
Millar, who’d given the Glasgow policeman a ducking, something Derek had chosen not to reveal. The surprise arrival was Torvaig. The younger man wore a determined expression.

‘This isn’t your fight, son,’ Derek said.

‘It is. We told him where Inga was. We believed his lies about Jones.’

Next up was Lachlan Dunlop’s dad, Fergus, and his younger brother, John.

Derek looked round the complete company.

‘He has a knife,’ he told them. ‘He was playing with it, flicking the blade. We’ll have to be careful.’

Creeping up on the building silently was a lot more difficult with five than one. Every step sounded loud in his head. The wind was on the rise. He could smell the impending gale, feel the
crackle of energy in the air. The faces around him felt it too.

Whatever happened tonight would end in a storm.

Derek motioned the others to stay back and moved to the window. He dreaded seeing her there, more blood on her face, her arms tied, reliving in that sight his own viciousness.

But the room was empty.

The chair sat in the same place. On its arms hung the rope used to bind her. But she wasn’t there.

The wind whipped his words away as he tried to tell them. Not believing him, they barged past and into the house. The kitchen where they’d met the night the child had gone missing was
empty. The floor was bloodied and the air smelt of fear, but Claire was no longer there.

Bellowing with anger, the men split up and began to search the place.

Derek sent two of them outside to check for Claire’s car.

If he’s driven her away in it . . .

He cursed himself for taking so long to organize her rescue. She’d seen him at the window. Waited in fear for him to come back with help. And he’d let her down.

Panic seized him. He felt himself drowning in his own indecision again.

Then Torvaig caught his arm.

‘Listen!’

The scream was grabbed by the wind, its impact splintered by its force.

‘Did you hear that?’ Tor demanded.

The others had gathered round them. Tense, listening.

The scream came again, high and piercing.

‘Where the fuck did it come from?’ Tor said.

‘The beach. It came from the beach.’

They all turned in that direction. Tor took off, followed by the others. Derek struggled to keep up. It was pitch black and now blowing a gale. The wind on his chest felt like a punch.

Before them the waters of the bay heaved, the white of the sand already consumed. In the distance the lighthouse blinked its beam only to see it swallowed in the dense sheeting rain.

They halted at the water’s edge, searching the dark mass of water for their prey.

Then he saw them. Two figures in the waves. Millar’s hand in Claire’s hair, jerking her head under the water, then out again. Derek imagined her holding her breath until the moment
she might scream.

And scream she did, though the sound was weaker this time.

She was drowning.

They plunged in en masse, the younger Tor making the biggest headway against the waves. Derek felt his boots fill, his clothes growing sodden, both becoming a weight to drag him down beneath the
waves.

Sheet lightning lit up the sky with a crack.

In it he saw Millar’s face, white, demonic even as he jerked Claire’s head back, exposing her pale neck. In his other hand the knife glinted, two-pronged, blade and spike.

He’s going to slit her throat.

The realization of this propelled him forward. Ahead of him, Tor lost his footing and Derek saw him disappear beneath the waves. They were beyond the sand now, in the place of the rocks. There
was no guaranteeing a foothold.

Derek threw himself forward. The others were strung out, their progress dependent on where they’d entered the water, and where the current, stronger now, had pulled them.

I’m the closest. If I don’t reach her in time no one will.

His fury and the undertow of an outgoing wave dragged him there.

Coming on Millar suddenly from behind, he hit his broad back with a thud.

Millar plunged Claire’s head back under the water and turned to see what had met him, but Derek had sunk beneath the surface.

Claire’s hair waved like tangle in his face and mouth.

As the next swell hit, Derek grabbed Millar’s ankles and swept his feet from under him.

Unbalanced, he crashed forward into the waves, arms flailing. The knife dropped from his hand. Derek didn’t let go of the upturned feet until he was encircled by the threshing arms and
legs of the others.

What happened next, he would never be sure of.

What he did remember was pulling Claire’s limp body away. Lifting her head above the water, murmuring words of encouragement and pulling her towards the shore.

The body was travelling further out and east with every wave. It would soon pass the northern tip of Start Island. It would come to land somewhere, eventually. Maybe months or
even years from now. After feeding a myriad of fish, what remained might appear on another shore.

But not here. Not on Sanday.

As a Ranger, Derek Muir knew that those swept away by the sea around Sanday were rarely returned there.

The others melted away, leaving him with Claire. Nothing was said. Nothing would ever be said. He helped Claire into the bathroom and heard her turn on the shower. He boiled a
kettle and made a pot of tea. He stoked up the fire. He took the incoming call on the landline and heard Inga’s excited voice. He carried the handset through to the bedroom and knocked on the
door.

When Claire opened it, he handed her the phone without saying why.

Then he watched her face light up. Saw the joy in her eyes. As he turned away she took his arm, her hand shaking, and said a silent thank you.

The letter lay on the kitchen table. The letter Millar had made her write before dragging her down to the beach.

It was to be Claire’s suicide note. The reason why she had given herself to the sea.

Derek screwed the note up and threw it on the fire. The dry paper blazed up briefly, then died.

McNab was the one to lead Inga inside, her hand in his. He noted Claire’s bruised face, the cut at the corner of her mouth. Inga loosened her grip on him and ran to her
mother, to be swept into her arms.

There were images that glued themselves to your brain. Images of death, but sometimes images such as the one before him now. McNab registered it, searing it into his memory, so that he might
recall it in place of all the others.

‘Thank you, Detective Sergeant McNab,’ Claire said. ‘Thank you.’

It was the silence that woke her. Rhona realized that on Sanday the absence of wind was as unique and compelling as the wind itself.

From the window, the beach, white and empty, was bordered by a sea that bore no resemblance to the frothing grey waters of the previous night. The sky arched above it, the palest of blues, a
dawn tinge kissing the horizon.

The cottage slumbered on, as did McNab.

He lay crushed on the sofa, under the duvet he’d taken from Chrissy’s room. Why he hadn’t chosen the bed, she had no idea. Except perhaps that he hadn’t expected to
sleep. Not after the previous night’s proceedings. When the adrenaline ran high, it was difficult to come down from it.

Despite his awkward pose, he looked peaceful. She studied the face that had gone through a gamut of emotions as they’d searched for the girl, from hope, through horror, to relief and
joy.

He never gives up.

Rhona left him sleeping there, an idea having formed during her view of the sea from the bedroom window. Her wetsuit, packed and unused, she brought out now, donning it quickly in case she
should change her mind.

Barefoot, she crossed the low grassy dunes that lay between the cottage and the beach.

Jumping down, she negotiated the dried seaweed that crunched beneath her soles before stepping into the softness of sand.

On Skye the water deepened swiftly, making submersion quicker. Here the approach took longer, the water creeping up your legs and thighs at a slower pace.

She’d reached the line of rocks that came together from east and west to form their own little bay. Stumbling a little as her feet met rock, Rhona dived below the surface and struck
out.

The cold water that crept inside the wetsuit was gradually warmed by the heat of her body. She swam purposefully, until she felt the current begin to drag her eastwards towards the lighthouse.
At that point she turned and, heading back into the shelter of the bay, bobbed in the flat calm and looked to shore.

From this location in the clear morning air, she could make out the grey stones of each of the dwellings in this northernmost part of the island.

Inga’s house, Sam Flett’s, Derek Muir’s, the cottage and the schoolhouse. The wider circle took in Inga’s little group of school friends. On land, this view hadn’t
been possible, but here, it was clear that, though not a village, what she looked on was a distinct community.

Feeling the cold start to penetrate, she struck out for shore. When she reached the shallow water, Rhona stood up and began to wade back.

Had it not been for the sun, she would have missed the knife. Glinting off the open blade, it acted like a mirror, the sparkle drawing her into the shallows to investigate.

As she reached for it, she instinctively stopped herself and, drawing back, looked around for something she might use to grasp it, other than her bare fingers.

A fern of green seaweed provided the answer.

Rhona extracted the bone-handled knife and headed back with her find.

McNab was making coffee when she appeared at the door. Rhona ordered him to bring an evidence bag.