FRIDAY THE 13TH – APRIL 2018There is a bang – plastic hitting wood, a phone being thrown down with some force.
Viola stands swiftly, yanked from her deliberations. Dot stands to attention too, skittering sideways to avoid the blanket that falls from Viola’s shoulders.
Saul curses in the back office and kicks out at something. A table leg? Silence.
Viola barely has time to share a questioning glance with Dot before Saul is there, wresting up the hinged counter and slamming it down in his wake, muttering curses into the stiff collar of his reflective jacket as he zips it up and makes a grab for the door handle.
‘Wait, where are you going?’ Viola chases him, out into the cold air, Dot following, the end of her red lead carried hopefully in her mouth.
Saul stops abruptly on the cobbles and Viola almost crashes into the back of him. She retreats as he turns, his grey face orange in the early light. The sun has pulled itself free of the sea and burned the worst of the fog away. The boatmen will be there soon, retrieving their pots set the night before.
‘They want to know who it is,’ he tells her. He grinds his teeth against his lips, flexes and clenches his papery hands.
‘But that’s their job, isn’t it?’ She trips over her sentences. ‘To find out who it is. Once they get here, start a proper investigation, then we’ll know who –’
‘The body, stupid!’
She feels the spittle of his exclamation land on her face. ‘Oh.’
‘They need positive ID of the body. From me.’
He makes a break for the Land Rover. Viola goes too.
‘But I told you who it is!’
‘And we’re to trust the word of a ginger fucking coycrock, are we?’ He means to hurt her and he does. Viola takes a moment to rebound. Saul gets behind the wheel.
‘But you looked at it yourself,’ she implores.
‘Not the face, I didn’t,’ says Saul. His tone is sarcastic, self-punishing, and now she understands where this fury has come from – he’s messed up. The people on the other end of the line have pointed it out. You’re not a real policeman.
He slams the door.
‘Wait!’
She runs around to the passenger side. She must go with him. He could do anything – move the body, hide it, make it look different. Saul could change the story. Viola scoops up Dot and tries the door. Locked. He starts reversing.
‘Wait!’
She bangs on the window, bringing him to a halt. He leans over and slides the glass across, just enough for them to speak.
‘You stay here,’ he tells her.
‘I need to come too.’
‘Why?’
‘Because…’
He revs the engine.
‘Because…’
‘You don’t need to come.’ His foot itches at the clutch. ‘You’ve already seen who it is.’
It strikes her again, that blood-spattered image. The feet. She’s seen the feet. The boots, the legs, the coat – the right coat – but if she had trampled into the ferns to see anything more, she’d have spoiled the scene. And anyway, she didn’t need to. Because she knows who it is. She knows.
‘I know who it is,’ she says meekly, to avoid telling a lie.
‘Well, there you go.’
He goes to slide the window back across, but she thrusts in a fist, a last gasp.
He sighs. ‘You just need to wait here, cherub.’ His voice is coaxing, parental, tired. The cherub soothes Viola. He doesn’t hate her, not really. She removes her hand.
‘I’ve told them you’ll be waiting in the Customs House,’ he says.
‘But…’
Too late; she is behind glass.
‘Told who?’ she yells, banging at the window once more. ‘Told who?!’
No one will be arriving in the short while Saul Cooper is at Cable’s Wood. The ship doesn’t arrive until lunchtime, and Viola has seen the way the islanders cluster on the cobbles waiting for their deliveries; the ship is always late.
The Land Rover reverses, swings to point north.
Unless, Viola reasons, there is a quicker way to get to Lark, and always has been, some covert system of speedboats and helicopters impervious to the conditions out there, some method not available to mere mortals.
She steps out of the path of the Land Rover and drops Dot back onto the cobbles, retrieving the lead from her mouth.
Of course not. It takes days to reach Lark.
Then it dawns on her, seizes her like a hand to her throat. She has messed up too. Failed in Geography and Mathematics all over again. She really is a dunce.
This whole thing has been orchestrated to coincide with the arrival of the April ship, but that’s no use. It needed to be timed to coincide with its departure from port, three days before, so the mainland police would know to board the ship in the first place and be on their way now. Viola’s stomach lurches; she is sickened by her own stupidity.
‘They won’t keep you hanging around for too long,’ Saul calls before driving away. ‘They’ll be here any minute.’
The Land Rover kicks up dust on the road above the East Bay.
Viola snatches her head around towards the Counting House, then the other way, up towards the estate, the chapel, the school.
Then, knowing what she knows, Viola runs.