The Far Side of the Sun (33 page)

Dodie didn’t talk much. Her mind was still caught up in the night before. But Flynn was determined to repair her mood and whistled with a cheerfulness that made her smile as they walked. He’d brought along a breakfast of fresh-baked rolls, goat’s cheese and mango, and they sat eating it on the gleaming white sands of Portman Cay. The grey sea blurred into the sky and its surface shifted like sheets of polished steel. It looked threatening. As though it wanted to play rough.

‘A storm tonight,’ Dodie commented.

He took a bite of cheese. ‘You love this island,’ he said. ‘You know its moods and its colours.’

The remark caught Dodie by surprise. It was true but she hadn’t realised he understood quite how much the island meant to her.

‘We could leave,’ she said quietly.

‘Leave the island?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought we agreed we owed it to Johnnie Morrell to find his killer.’

‘That was before.’

He didn’t ask
before what?
They both knew she meant before she learnt about the mob. He folded an arm around her shoulders and they sat in silence gazing out at the relentless roll of the waves. She was utterly aware of every part of his body next to hers. The bone of his ankle where he’d rolled his trousers back. The muscle of his shoulder. The clean scent of him. And she knew she would give up this island that she loved for him, if it would save him. But most of all she wanted to charge over to Sir Harry Oakes and tear his eyes out for what he’d done to Flynn, for the way he’d used him. But she didn’t tell Flynn that. She let it lie unspoken.

When she lifted her head, she caught him regarding her with a warm smile.

‘Why did you leave England, Dodie? You’ve told me nothing of your past.’

She thought twice about raking it over. It was behind her. She wanted it to stay there.

‘Beats me,’ he said, ‘why anyone would want to leave England. With men like your Mr Churchill running the place.’

She tilted her head back to rest on his arm.

‘It’s a short story. My father was a kind man but the fighting in the trenches in the Great War destroyed him. He took to the bottle.’ Two small words – the bottle – that hold so much power. ‘My mother died in an influenza epidemic when I was nine and that was the end of him. And of me. Things got a whole lot worse. He couldn’t work for long periods and I scratched around for odd jobs…⁠’ The surf was playing tag with the sandpipers and for a long time Dodie didn’t speak. Flynn kept his arm around her.

‘Anyway,’ she said with a shake of her head, ‘we came out here eventually to start a new life but he hated it. Hated himself. Three times he tried to kill himself. He would drive us to a beach, kiss me goodbye and set off to swim back to England.’

‘That’s one hell of a swim.’

‘Three times he came back. But the fourth time he didn’t. The next day his body was washed up further down the coast.’

Flynn lifted his fingers to her lips, as if to wipe away the sting of her words. ‘I’m sorry, Dodie. You had it tough.’

‘Everyone has it tough.’ She rose to her feet. ‘Come on, let’s walk.’

They fell into step together, soft-footed along the beach. It was a long horseshoe cay with a dense fringe of palms and pines, and a slope down to the water with a patchwork of rock pools at one end where crabs congregated like churchgoers.

‘What is it,’ Dodie asked, looking around her, ‘about this Portman Cay beach that makes somebody want it so much? It is nothing special. No different from all the other beaches.’

Flynn glanced along the sand thoughtfully and then back to her. ‘Tell me about your sewing. You’re good at it, I know.’

‘Oh, that was at the factory.’ The word
factory
tasted sour on her tongue. ‘I was a dress designer.’

‘Really?’

She laughed at him. ‘Doll’s dresses. There were thirty of us. The dolls used to arrive in huge cardboard boxes, a gross at a time, all pink and shiny and crying out for clothes. I must have sewn thousands of tiny dresses, before they were exported back to America. I enjoyed that work. It was —’ She stopped abruptly, frowning at him. ‘How do you know I’m good at it?’

‘I saw your quilt.’

‘In my hut?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘When I spoke to Morrell. I went into your hut to see him when you ran off to Mama Keel’s.’

Dodie stared. ‘I had no idea.’

‘He told me how grateful he was to you. Asked me to keep you safe.’

Her mind suddenly filled with images of Morrell. Of his big bear-like hands and the mulberry stain on his shirtfront. Of the toughness that he wore like a second skin and yet the Southern courtesy in his voice when he addressed her. So absorbed was she in these images that when a bullet slammed into the sand at her feet, she didn’t even realise what was happening until she heard the crack of the rifle a split second later.

‘What the…⁠’

She stared at the spot stupidly, her brain refusing to acknowledge that she was being shot at. But Flynn seized her arm and had her racing for the cover of the trees, zigzagging as they went. The sand was soft. The slope was steep. Her feet slid and stumbled. Her back jarred and it sounded as though there was a buzz-saw inside her head, so she couldn’t hear what Flynn was shouting, though she could see his mouth moving.

Flynn drew her into the trees. Jinking and darting. Dodging patches of sunlight, heads low, feet leaping over the sprawling undergrowth. A bullet thudded into a palm off to their left, splintering the bark, and the crack of it sent a flock of finches scrambling into the sky. Flynn yanked her behind a thick trunk, still gripping her arm hard.

‘Go,’ he ordered. ‘Keep running. I’ll hold him here. Go!’

She was shaking.
Calm down
. She had never been shot at before and wasn’t prepared for her body’s reaction.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Go!’

She focused her gaze on his face. It was composed and intent. His voice urgent, but no trace of panic. No sign of the terror in her own chest. Whatever he was feeling was under control. When another bullet whistled through the branches above their heads, Flynn didn’t even flinch, and her respect for him grew.

‘No,’ she said again.

In Flynn’s other hand was a gun. She stared at it, trying to make sense of how it got there. Black and blunt-nosed. Where had it suddenly come from? She clamped both her hands around its muzzle and held on tight.

‘No, Flynn,’ she hissed. ‘Put it away.’

‘I’ll stop him.’

‘You’ll get us killed.’

‘In case you haven’t noticed, that’s exactly what the guy is trying to do right now.’

She talked fast. ‘Listen, Flynn. You’ve forgotten how an innocent person would behave. We should talk to him, not shoot.’

‘Which would you prefer to be? Innocent and dead? Or guilty and alive?’

For answer, she turned her head to one side and shouted, ‘You out there with the rifle, what are you doing? We’re just here for a walk. Nothing more. There’s no reason to shoot at us.’

‘You’re trespassing.’ His voice was big and rolled through the trees like a bulldozer.

Flynn opened his mouth to respond but Dodie flattened her palm over it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she shouted out to the trees. ‘We didn’t know it was private. We meant no harm. No reason to shoot at us.’

‘Show yourselves.’

‘How do I know you won’t shoot us?’

‘If I wanted to shoot you, you’d be dead by now, missy. I was just warning you to clear off.’

There was a rustle of bushes and the harsh alarm cry of a parrot.

‘He’s circling us,’ Flynn whispered.

‘Stay here.’

She stepped out into a bright patch of sunlight that had fallen through the canopy of trees. She listened hard but heard nothing more and before she could open her mouth to shout again, Flynn was at her side, his body shielding hers. The gun had vanished.

‘You see?’ Dodie shouted to the man.

Flynn said nothing but held out empty hands.

A figure stepped into view from behind a pine tree, a heavily built man of mixed race with curly hair greased back from his face, and a dark shirt and tie. His hands were great knots of muscle wrapped around the rifle, the tip of its barrel aimed purposefully at Flynn’s chest.

‘What you doing here?’ he demanded.

‘I told you,’ Dodie answered. ‘Just walking.’

‘It’s a long way to walk.’

‘We like getting away from everybody to quiet places.’

The man laughed, a dirty raucous sound that in other circumstances would have fanned a blush to Dodie’s cheeks. ‘I bet you do.’

Flynn smiled amiably. ‘Know any other quiet places that don’t have guards?’

‘You want to go down to the south coast, man, where it’s real quiet. Plenty places down there and no one to bother you. Just you and the mangroves and the mosquitoes.’ He chuckled to himself.

‘So why shoot at us?’

The man dropped the smile. ‘I got my orders.’

‘What’s here that needs guarding?’

‘Nothing. Just sand and scrub. But it belongs to someone and that someone don’t want nobody trespassing on it.’

‘Who owns it?’

The rifle, which had been drifting downwards, jerked abruptly back to Flynn’s chest. ‘Man, you ask too many questions.’

‘We’re curious,’ Dodie said. ‘Wouldn’t you be if you’d been shot at? Scared us half to death, you did.’

The man scrutinised them in silence for a moment, trying to decide what to do next, and then he waved the rifle in the direction of the road.

‘Go on, beat it.’ He scowled at them, as though suddenly remembering how a guard was supposed to behave. ‘And don’t let me see you round here again or next time I’ll put a bullet in you.’

Dodie could feel Flynn beside her, eager to get his hands on the man and extract every last scrap of information out of him. But it was unlikely that he knew anything at all about the people who paid his wages and in the process someone would get hurt. She couldn’t bear it to be Flynn.

‘We’re going,’ she said quickly, took a grip on Flynn’s wrist and marched him away.

‘You’ll be hot in that blouse.’

Ella glanced up. She was seated at her dressing table and in its large oval mirror the elegant bedroom was reflected with its pale birds-eye maple modern furniture and its soft feminine colours. All of which she had chosen. All of which were tasteful. But for the first time they struck her as grossly pallid. She felt a gut-deep yearning for bold stripes and vivid colours.

Is that what Reggie thinks but never says
?

He was lying in bed, hands behind his head, hair tousled, regarding her in the mirror with curious eyes.

‘You’re up early,’ he commented.

‘I was restless. Couldn’t sleep.’

‘I noticed. Why is that?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She gave a light laugh and shrugged her shoulders. ‘The time of the month, fretting over the children at the hospital or when to get my hair cut and what to wear tonight. You know, the usual things.’

He smiled at her, an indulgent contented smile that normally would have pleased her but today felt like a sliver of glass in her skin.

‘You should wear something else. You’ll be too hot.’

She looked at her reflection in the mirror, at the blouse she was wearing. Purchased at Macy’s in New York, a subtle shade of eau de Nil that flattered her skin, with long sleeves buttoned tight at her wrists.

‘You’re probably right.’

She picked up her silver-backed hairbrush and was just lifting it to her head when her husband said, ‘Sir Harry has invited us over for lunch today.’

Her hand froze. She looked round at him sharply. ‘Both of us?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, Reggie, I can’t make it, I’m afraid. I’m working with Tilly at the clinic.’ She was speaking too fast.
Slow down
.

He pulled a face. ‘He won’t like it. He made a point of asking for you to be there. I think he likes you… and who can blame him?’

‘I don’t think he does.’ She turned back to the mirror and brushed the nighttime knots out of her hair with hard punishing strokes, forcing her long blonde waves to behave themselves. ‘I’m sorry, Reggie.’

‘That’s all right, my dear. Another time will do. At least you’ll be able to drive yourself today, now that Detective Calder has been recalled to normal duties.’

The brush didn’t stop despite the fact her fingers had become numb.

‘You’ll like that, won’t you, Ella? To have him out from under your feet.’

‘Yes.’

The word felt as dead as a stone in her mouth.

Ella hung up the telephone in the ward sister’s small office in the hospital. She looked at her hand. It was no longer shaking. She was back in control, but it frightened her how easily she had lost it. She had dialled the police station.

‘I wish to speak to Detective Calder, please.’

‘Who’s calling?’

‘Mrs Sanford. It’s urgent.’

‘One moment, please.’

A click. A silence. Then his voice.

‘Good morning, Mrs Sanford.’