Cold Fusion (2 page)

So much for that. I’d done what I wanted. Thirty seconds was all we would need. Beyond me lay sunlit blue water.

I hadn’t looked there yet. I hadn’t dared. Minke whales didn’t breach often, but they too had enjoyed their game with God and the baby storm. I hadn’t wanted to look and see the joyous flare of leaping bodies in the sun.

I didn’t want to act out of pity or love. That was too fucking hard. It would crush me. I’d tried it that way, and all I’d done was throw up and weep for most of my first voyage with the
Hawk
—they’d wanted to send me home. I’d been packing my rucksack when the rage had hit, a hot wire of connection between here and now and the miserable reception I’d get from my dad when I crawled back to Kerra a failure. I’d taken that fury and let it burn. Since then I’d barely thought about the whales at all. Just the whalers and what I’d do to stop them.

Anything, anything. I slowed up a little. The
Halmøya
was trying to heave to, a last-ditch evasive manoeuvre that would probably drown me in her wake. I’d fulfilled my mission. The minke were moving out fast, one last gleam of a fluke catching my eye as I turned. All I had to do was get back to the
Hawk
with Oskar and Alice and clear us all out of here before the Norwegian captain came in search of payback. The tail end of the squall was passing over us now, battering my face with icy rain. The stretch of water dividing me from home was smooth, only pitted by the downpour’s billion dancing feet.

I wiped the rain from my eyes. It looked as though the
Sea Hawk
was coming towards me. Through the lowered roar of the RIB’s motor I could hear hers, her throaty trawler’s boom. She wasn’t meant to come and get me.
No, no.
I tried to signal to Sarah, her bright hair now visible in the wheelhouse. The
Hawk
had to stay where she was, ready to winch the launches back up and give us our clean getaway.

I signalled once more, and Sarah pointed. I thought she was trying to draw my attention to the other RIB, and I looked round, afraid that Oskar hadn’t got his footage and wanted me to make another run, as if I could magic the minke pod back out of the ocean, reset us all to our starting positions for an opportunity that would never come again. But when I surveyed the rainswept seascape between the whaler and the
Hawk
, there was no sign of the second RIB at all.

* * * * *

“Mallory. Mallory! Stop fighting. Let me get you on board.”

I wasn’t fighting. I just didn’t want the down-stretched arms in their bright waterproofs to interrupt my search. I’d driven the RIB straight back to the place where I’d signalled Alice to stop. All my seamanship had deserted me, and I’d skimmed the
Halmøya
’s hull by a cat’s whisker. I’d got away with it, but her bow wave had swamped me, knocking me clean out of the RIB and into the fjord’s churning water.

That was fine. If Alice and Oskar had gone down here, here was where I would find them. If they were in the water, so was I. A wave smacked me hard in the face, sending me under, out of reach of those starfish hands from the world above. I didn’t mind that either. If my crew were under the water…

No. They were both strong swimmers. If they’d capsized or had to ditch, their life jackets would have popped them to the surface like corks anyway. Mine would do the same thing any second.

If I’d taken the time to put one on. If I’d given them time.

My mouth cracked open in protest. Someone would have stopped me. Alice and Oskar would have had more brains than to obey a nutcase activist going off half-cocked because he thought he could save the planet on his own.

Och, save the planet my arse,
my father said in my ear, his voice thick with Cutty Sark.
The planet’ll be here long after you twats have finished buggering around with it. You only want to save yourselves.

I didn’t. The water filled my open mouth, and I breathed it. I wanted to save the minkes and orcas and sperm whales and blues. Dolphins and porpoises and every other creature at least as bright as I was, everything in these oceans that squeaked and clicked an unknown language or sang vast ultrasound symphonies across the globe. Most particularly I wanted to save my crew. Something seized my collar at the back of my neck, and I twisted round savagely, lashing out to be rid of the grip.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Mallory!”

I stared up through scarlet streaks at Alan Frost. He had me in a meaty farmer’s grip. My lungs were full of seawater, and I couldn’t speak or begin the choking reaction that would save my life. He hoisted me like a sheep out of the dipping tub. Other hands went into my armpits on either side and dragged me up and over the gunwales.

They must have recovered the RIB I’d capsized. As I slithered onto the deck, I saw in a tumbling flash the
Sea Hawk
, at anchor about fifty yards away. My RIB’s motor was silent, but I could hear another one in the distance. That prompted me to shove up onto my elbows and cough until I could speak. “Alice! Oskar! Where…? Where are they?”

Alan thumped me between the shoulders. “They went down.”

“No. I can hear their boat.”

“That’s the launch from the
Halmøya
. They’re helping us search.”

I struggled over onto my back. I grabbed Alan by the front of his expensive windcheater. “They went down? How?”

“How do you think? Little boat, big sea. No fucking life jackets. I told you not to do this, Mal.”

I couldn’t drag my eyes off him. What did I think—if I held his stone-grey gaze for long enough, his words would start to mean something different? That I could get him to tell me something else? He wasn’t holding me. I was holding myself up by my grip on him. His hands were braced to the deck, as if he disdained to touch the thing I’d become.

Someone in the background said, “Don’t be so hard on him, Alan.” The words bounced in and out of my mind like seagull cries, but his face changed.

“All right,” he said roughly, reaching down for me. “You’re hypothermic. Come here.”

“Water’s not that cold.”

“No, but you were in it for nearly ten minutes before we tracked you down. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

I resisted. I didn’t deserve shelter, and I didn’t want a fucking pity hug. I wanted to be back in the water, diving down and down to wherever my crewmates had gone. I was confusedly sure I could still find them, if only Alan would let me go. I made one last-ditch effort to jerk to the side and escape, and he seized me and fetched me a slap across the face that broke up my world into shattered-mirror stars. I stopped trying to climb overboard and instead lay down on the RIB’s rubber deck. It stank, but its black confines expanded and ran into the gaps between the fragments, and the glittering dark folded over me and ate me whole.

* * * * *

I lay in my bunk aboard the
Sea Hawk
. I was warm now, but everything seemed very far away, or maybe I was. I didn’t mind that Sarah was fussing over me with blankets. She was our medical officer as well as our pilot. With a tiny crew like this, most people had to double up on jobs. Oskar had been a fully trained navigator as well as our cameraman, and Alice…

Alice had just been a sweet girl from Kerra, a couple of years behind me in school, a rebel who’d made me and the Peace Warrior mission her cause. Pain struck me so hard in the chest that I wondered if the
Halmøya
’s gunner hadn’t hit me after all, and I tried to sit up, groaning.

Sarah pushed me back. “Lie still. You’ve got to let the blood come back to your extremities slowly.” She glanced over her shoulder. “He’ll be all right. But go easy on him, okay?”

She squeezed her way out between two burly figures in the doorway. A tang of fish, oilskins and outdoors filled the cabin as the two men entered. Someone had stripped me of all my protective layers, and I felt like a child during a doctor’s visit, cowering under the bedclothes in my underwear. I blinked away salty grit and recognised Alan, who avoided my eyes and went to lean on the far wall, folding his arms. My other visitor was the Norwegian captain. He glanced at the foot of the bunk, said gruffly, “I may?” and sat down heavily before I could reply.

You could’ve cut the silence with a flensing knife. The captain didn’t seem troubled by it. He took off his cap to reveal close-cropped grey hair. Eventually he seemed to choose a spot in midair to address. “Lars Folstad of the
Halmøya
. My crew have searched the area where your boat’s RIB went down. There is no sign of wreckage or survivors.” He tapped his cap off one knee. His English was heavily accented but a hell of a lot better than my Norwegian, and he was carefully weighing what he had to say next. “We have to assume lost at sea. I have radioed the Skatvik police, and because there have been deaths, I must explain to them that my men and my vessel were not liable for the sinking of your launch. Do you understand?”

I wasn’t sure which one of us he meant. I understood perfectly, but I couldn’t get my mouth open to tell him so. After a moment Alan cleared his throat and looked up—past me, through me. “Yes,” he said flatly. “We’ll tell the police the truth when they arrive. We were intending to get some anti-whaling footage for our campaign, and Kier Mallory ordered the RIBs to be launched during a storm.”

For a second I was distracted by hearing my first name. I hadn’t been entirely sure Alan knew it. Everyone called me Mallory or Mal. Then the sensation of being thrown under the bus caught up with me. “Alan, for God’s sake…”

Folstad cut me off with a small gesture. “For the record, I would say your RIBs were good enough to ride that storm. But inexperienced sailors, poor equipment… Is not my problem, however. All I must do is protect my crew and vessel. You admit liability?”

“It was Mallory’s fault. Yes.”

The trouble was, I’d started to love him. Otherwise none of this would have mattered to me—I’d have lain down under Sarah’s piled-up blankets and quietly died. It had taken me a lot to fight through my own barricades, months of friendship and a week or so of fucking, but I’d got there. I’d started to love Alan Frost. The pain and indignity of that made me sit up straight in the bunk and stay that way.

Folstad accorded me one long look, then turned again to Alan. “What will you do now?”

“After we’ve spoken to the police, we’ll take our vessel home. This mission’s over.”

“It isn’t.” My own voice surprised me. It was rough with the seawater I’d swallowed, painful as razor blades in my throat. I didn’t care anyway. This was just one last burst of miserable rebellion. “That’s not your decision to make.”

“Actually it is. I never made a big deal of it, Mal, but my family put up most of the funding for this trip. I don’t like the way it’s going—don’t like the direction the whole Peace Warrior movement’s taking, to tell you the truth. We’ve gone too far this time, or you have, anyway. It’s over.”

I hadn’t known about the money. I didn’t know much about Alan at all, now I came to think about it. I’d taken him at surface value, vaguely assumed our funding drifted in from the PW coffers. The sum of things I didn’t know began to gather round my bunk and bay at me like wolves. I drew my knees up, put my brow on them and covered my head with my arm. Alan made a sound of impatience or disgust, and I felt a jostling disturbance in the air as he left the cabin.

The weight on the mattress didn’t shift. There was another long silence, and then the
Halmøya
captain asked, “How old are you?”

I didn’t want to tell him. But presumably there were legal reasons why I should, boxes he had to fill on his report. “Twenty-five.”

“Hm. Boy.”

The blankets had slipped. I raised my head in alarm as he reached to jerk them back up. He was missing two fingers from his left hand. “Harpoon,” he explained shortly. “You would say I deserve. But in forty years at sea, I only kill beasts, not men.”

I had no words. I sat mute and immobile while he levered himself to his feet, jamming his cap back into place. If you’d asked me yesterday, I’d have said a harpoon through the heart was the least such a bastard deserved. I didn’t know what I believed now, but if there’d only been two boats left in the world—Alan Frost’s and his—I’d have been scrambling aboard the
Halmøya
.

Folstad shook his head. “I have four children, many grandchildren. I live in little town outside of Skatvik. I don’t excuse myself—I would not take other work, even if other work is there. This is how I best care for my family. You and I will never be friends, boy, but as the years turn, you maybe understand we’re not so different.”

He was gone. I listened to the clank of his footsteps receding up the metal stairs to the deck. The baying wolves closed in, and I sprang out of bed to avoid them, stood swaying for a moment then staggered out to follow him. I grabbed at the stairs and scaled them on all fours, bare feet slipping. “I’m nothing like you,” I yelled, but it came out as a whisper. I tried again, bursting out onto the deck, and this time managed a fractured shout. Folstad, Alan, Sarah and most of the rest of the crew—with two appalling gaps, screaming holes that could never be filled—turned to stare at me. “I’m nothing like you! We’re nothing alike. We never will be.”

My legs folded. To save myself from hitting the deck in my vest and boxer shorts, I whipped round to grab the rail. I stared down into the emerald-grey fjord waters, where one Icelandic-knit fingerless glove was drifting away.

Chapter Two

I set off back to North Kerra alone. I wanted to talk to Alice’s parents. Of course they’d been informed of her death by the police, but I wanted to face them, tell the full story. The Norwegian authorities were inclining to a verdict of accidental death. Misadventure would have put me and PW in the line of fire, but I didn’t want to be out of it. I wanted to look Mr. and Mrs. Maguire in the face and explain my responsibility, my part.

I didn’t know what I thought this would accomplish, because I’d already stood in Oskar’s mother’s living room and explained my part to her through an interpreter, and she’d only sat and wept. She was a widow, so there’d been no outraged father to make me feel better by beating the crap out of me on the beautifully manicured lawn. Only the Norwegian copper who’d accompanied me seemed to take a kind of pity, pointing out that Oskar had been twice my age and more than capable of making his own decisions. I’d been deaf to him. I hadn’t wanted to be absolved.

By the time I landed at Wick airport after the rough flight from Stavanger, I was no longer sure what I wanted at all. The brief summer that graced this far northeastern corner of Scotland was over. I stood in the sleet at the bus stop, my rucksack weighing on my shoulders. September scents of leaf mould and cooling earth tugged at deep-laid memories. It was a time for going back to school, for college terms and night classes and ordinary life to resume. I had no place amongst these changes anymore. I’d packed in everything for my last Peace Warrior trip. And I could tell myself whatever I liked about coming home like a good soldier to make a clean breast to the Maguires—the truth was that I had nowhere else to go. There’d been a letter waiting for me at the hostel in Stavanger, a rare hard-copy communication on PW letterhead, asking me not exactly to drop off the map and disappear, but as close to that as manners allowed.

The bus dropped me at the Kerra road ends after a five-hour westbound ride. North Kerra village occupies a far-flung headland off the 836, the sole road—single-track for much of its length, impassable through snow most winters—that crosses the country’s last bleak mainland reach. I’d tried to sleep out the journey, oblivious to the green-gold alchemy transforming the roadside bracken, the berries on the little hawthorns that produced their jewels in the teeth of the gale. I’d seen it all before, and the ongoing rattle of hail against the bus window had told me all I needed to know about coming home to the ends of the earth in autumn.

I was the only passenger to get off, and I was in luck—the one-man-band taxi service from Bala, our nearest town, had parked up to lurk in hopes of a fare. I knew Eddie, and in spite of everything, a familiar face was comforting. He was a dour type, and I didn’t take much notice when he left me alone to deal with my rucksack and his old Honda’s rusty door. He gave me a nod, and we set off down the track to Kerra.

My heart would have had to be stone not to respond to this terrain, sleet-whipped or not. It was tundra country, cut down by the wind to bare bone, but here granite bedrock began to give way to the clean clay and sand of the machair, and I wasn’t too late to catch the year’s final show. The turf was still starred with pale harebells and buttercups. There wasn’t a building in sight, and outside of Kerra village itself, there probably never would be. Here time stopped, and those who’d created a niche for themselves hung on to the farming and fishing traditions playing out their last songs, while their children fled in search of prosperity elsewhere.

Prosperity, or a last kick of the heels before adulthood. That was all Alice had wanted. She’d been devoted to our cause, but she’d talked to me lovingly about her dad’s croft, never had serious plans for any life other than taking it on for her own.

I leaned my brow against Eddie’s window. He hadn’t said a word to me in the last mile, and just as well.

The tarmac developed a median line of weeds and ochre sand. Eddie negotiated one pothole then another, then drew to a halt on the verge. I glanced at his forbidding profile for news of a flat tyre or engine problems, but he was staring straight ahead.

“Is something the matter, Ed?”

He switched the engine off. “I can’t say as there isn’t.”

Oh God, Celtic obscurity at this hour. Sunlight had begun to pierce the veils of rain, and the sky would stay bright until late up here on the world’s shoulder, but I was tired enough to die. “Could you say one way or the other? Just to help me out?”

“My suspension’s no’ what it used to be. I am no’ sure I can risk taking you all the way to the village.”

I was fairly sure he meant the Honda’s suspension, not his own. I glanced around at the car’s litter-strewn interior. Chip wrappers, crumpled tins and empty packets of Highlander crisps. Nothing had changed that I could see. The road wasn’t materially worse. “It’s three miles, Ed.”

“Aye, which makes six for me and this old girl.” His brow rucked. “So I’d rather not, Mal. That’s all.”

I got out of the car. Eddie didn’t restart the engine. He sat there frowning like a bulldog, so I went round to the driver’s side and gestured to him to crack down his window. “Eddie, have you heard what happened while I was away?”

“I can’t say as I haven’t.”

“For God’s… Okay. The truth of it’s bad enough. If anything worse has reached people here…can’t you tell me what I’m gonna be facing at the end of that track?”

“Only the truth of it, if seeing’s believing.”

“You saw something? Was it on the news?”

He drummed his fingers on the wheel. He was a good guy, prone to robbing himself by giving old ladies free rides. He didn’t want to be judging me. Something incontrovertible had forced him to a verdict. “Aye, it was on the news. I take all that with a pinch of salt, but everyone saw the film.”

The wind slapped my hood against the back of my head. One of the toggles caught me a stinging blow on the eyelid. “There was no film. That’s just it—Alice and Oskar were filming for us when their boat sank.”

“Well, someone was recording it all. It must have been from your damned
Sea Hawk
.” He broke off, suddenly glaring at me. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m a Friend of the Earth and as big an old hippie as you like. But you were on this film, and the whaling ship, and our poor Alice and that other lad, and everybody here saw them drown.”

* * * * *

There are pretty north-coast villages—places where old men sit and mend their nets on the harbour wall, and white-painted cottages gleam in the sun—and then there’s Kerra. We have a few of those cottages, but they stand empty fifty weeks of the year until their wealthy London owners come up on holiday. Everyone else lives in the maze of pebble-dash terraces that sprang up to house the workers who came here during the brief fishing boom and never managed to escape when it was over. There’s a small industrial harbour—no wall for the old men—a scatter of flat-roofed factory shops, a Co-op whose opening hours you’d need a mariner’s almanac to predict, and that’s about it.

Oh, and a pub called Mackie’s, which sets off the Co-op by never seeming to close at all. By the time I’d tramped the turf track over the outlying dunes and down into the village, I could barely set one foot in front of the other. I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten or slept. The terraces rose up on either side of me, channelling me helplessly back to my roots the way they’d always done. Sucking me in. I’d heard the place once described as an arsehole’s armpit, and had thought that harsh, but tonight, with grey dusk coming down and salt wind bleaching out the last of the colour from dying geraniums in grim little dead front yards, I couldn’t disagree. Mackie’s frosted windows were the only ones alight.

I was soaked to the skin, my feet scraping on the cobbles. I gave serious thought to walking straight into the pub. A shot or two of the local distillery’s best, and I’d feel more equipped to deal with my starring role in whatever fucking footage had made its way to the last bloody outpost of humanity before you fell into the Atlantic.

Who the hell had been filming? I could understand if one of the kids in the crew, overexcited and wanting something for Facebook, had pulled out a mobile and started, but when the second RIB got into trouble—no, at that point everyone would have scrambled to the rescue. We weren’t a professional crew, but that rule had been drilled into all of us. Had it been Alan? I dismissed the thought with a mix of nausea and rage.

And, when it came down to it, was I angry because the film had been made, or because it had been broadcast, and everyone here—including, I had to assume, Alice’s parents—had seen it? Why should that bother me? I’d been coming home to tell the truth, condemn myself far more thoroughly with words than any images could do.

I slid to a halt by the pub door. The sleet had changed to hail, making the cobbles treacherous. Above my head the village’s sole phone wire began to cut the wind. My childhood bedroom in the house down the street had opened right onto the telegraph pole, and I’d grown up with that low, forlorn wail. Kerra didn’t run to cable, so all our shaky Internet access came down that frail wire. No doubt the video was online too.

Shit. Was it too late for me to run? Maybe if I burst my heart slogging back the way I’d come, I’d catch the return bus bound for Wick.

A door across the road flew open. I glanced at the pub steps, but I’d missed my chance to duck in there. “Kier! Kier Mallory!”

Not a loud voice. She could throw it like a grappling hook, though, and I stood at bay while my ma, the last woman in the north Highlands to wear carpet slippers and a flowered overall in the street, shot out through our garden gate. We weren’t much of a family for hugging at the best of times. She crossed the road, tugged her hair back in its ponytail as if about to handle a messy job, and fastened a kind of wrestling hold on me. Her cheek bumped bonily off mine. “Kier! Come in the house, quick.”

“Nice to see you too, Ma.”

“Aye, in a minute, in a minute. Come indoors.”

Before anyone sees you.
That was the message loud and clear. In the past it had sparked me to angry rebellion, made me clutch my boyfriend’s hand tighter or whip off my hat to reveal that I’d been all the way into town for a decent haircut instead of letting the local barber lawnmower me. Now the narrow hallway with its bare yellow bulb seemed like a refuge even to me, and I allowed her to tow me off the street.

She closed the door behind us and barely stopped short of leaning her back on it. I wondered what kind of time she’d had of it since the news broke about Alice Maguire. Strands of hair were escaping from her ponytail, and she had the air of a woman besieged. “I didn’t think you’d come home just now, Kier.”

“Why wouldn’t I come home after something like this?” From years of habit I glanced down to check I was properly positioned on the plastic runner that protected our godawful swirly hall carpet. She hadn’t snapped at me to take my boots off. Nor had she relieved me of my rucksack or wet coat. “I can go if you like. Don’t worry, I’ll keep my head low.”

“No. No, you’re here now. But—”

“Ma, please tell me. What did they say in this damn news report?”

“You mind your tongue.” Her eyes flashed. “It said that a lad from this village—and they said your full name at least three times, in case any deaf bugger here might have missed it—put his friends in danger by launching those wee dinghies in a storm. That’s what it said.”

Not a word of it was slander. That was exactly what had happened. I bowed my head. “Okay. Well, that’s why I’m back. I want to see Alice’s parents and talk to them, and—”

“And what?”

I jerked round. My rucksack was heavy with rain, the blasted plastic runner slick under my feet, and I almost fell on my arse. There at the end of the hall—like a thundercloud made flesh, a tattooed childhood nightmare in stained T-shirt and sweatpants—was my father.

I was so, so tired of being afraid of him. I’d stared right down the throat of my worst adult nightmare now. He was massive, but I was no slender reed myself anymore. I carefully laid down my rucksack. “I want to talk to the Maguires.”

“You’ll no’ go near those people. You hear me? Joe Maguire’s got a shotgun ready for you if you do. He was kind enough to tell me that in the middle of Mackie’s bar. I told him he didn’t need worry—I’d snap your wee neck for you myself next time I clapped eyes on you.”

Christ, he meant it. He was three sheets to the wind, of course—sober, it would take him an hour or so to work up to outright violence. The reek of cheap whisky hit me. It stripped years off me. All my adult graces fled. I stopped him because I had to, because my ma was behind me, blocking my way to the door. It wasn’t that triumphant moment I’d read about when battered kids grow big and lairy enough to give as good as they get. It was clumsy and shameful, and it nearly sprained my wrist, throwing out my hand to catch him flat in the chest, like slowing an oncoming train. “No. Pack it in!”

He laughed. I didn’t blame him. I’d sounded about ten years old. He knocked my hand aside and drove me back against the wall, gathering up the front of my coat. I didn’t stand a chance. Maybe if I came back in another ten years’ time, having spent that decade on a fishing boat yanking up nets and pulling ropes… He was slightly off balance, that was all, and I used that to spin him round and knock open the living room door. My ma was cowering in the hall, only stifling screams because the one thing worse than a family brawl was letting the neighbours know.

“All right!” I rasped into his face. “Do whatever the hell you want. But not in front of her.”

We lurch-waltzed into the room. I managed to bang the door shut behind me with my foot. I’d always been ashamed to let her find me after a beating—that I’d caused it, that I’d earned it, that I hadn’t been able to stop it from happening again. He never laid a hand on her. He was good old Dave Mallory, life and soul of Mackie’s, a hardworking, church-on-Sundays fisherman of the old school. It had just been me.

It still was. I’d destroyed my parents’ domestic peace from a distance, and now I’d had the balls to come home and do it firsthand. I could almost see his point, as he shoved me across the floor, overturning a coffee table and sending his bloody throne of a swivel armchair into a spin. The TV was blatting out a high-octane game show, and the neighbours would put down the sounds of my humiliating death to that.