The Visitors (34 page)

A tiny voice in my head told me to stay calm, to stay steady, to use the currents, to monitor my breathing. Weed licked my ankles as I kicked. Each time I came to the surface, I gulped in air, took stock, and dived again. With each surfacing, the islet crept closer. With each dive, my strength failed a little more. The voice in my head cooed at me, hummed and crooned, stay calm, stay calm. My movements were becoming
sleepy and weak – I realised with fright that it was not my voice. I’d heard this voice before, humming Gaelic nursery rhymes.

These are my hands.

Even under water, it sounded deliriously clear and real, and this was the moment I knew I was going to die. All burning sensation left my skin. I felt icy sickness, dicing to the marrow. In the dark-blue water, life began to leave my limbs. I no longer owned my arms. When my hand drifted in front of my face, I felt only a detached curiosity. I was not moving. I thought of baby Jamie. I thought of finches in the dune grass.

I started drifting downwards.

I was leaving the island.

These are my hands.

My eyes played tricks. Dreaming and hazy, a ghost flickered in the murk, clarifying as it came closer, gaining depth and focus. It was a face. Ailsa’s face swam into focus. In those slow-motion moments, she swam directly to me, and it felt the most natural thing in the world. In lazy movements, she came closer, until her face drew level with my face. She gazed into my eyes and then, at last, lurching madder, I saw the truth of it, round and dark and full of ink.

The eyes, the dark eyes that reeled me in. They weren’t John’s eyes. They belonged to her. Those inky, peat-black eyes that haunted and watched me. The eyes I couldn’t fathom, couldn’t understand.

They belonged to Ailsa.

Even dreaming, the last flame in me flared bright with such a crush of understanding. Ailsa moved in close to me. She drew her face to my face – her mouth to my mouth. My lips thawed, slaking off the ice. There was a burst of fire in my throat. Air …

Air!

I jolted in the water, awake and aware, alive with oxygen. Ailsa hung suspended in front of me, her face inches from mine, bubbles hung on silver threads around us. She tried to smile at me, cautious and curious, and I stared back, rushing with fear. In the dark water, our hair floated and tangled, tossed and bound together, becoming one, inhaled and exhaled on the currents of the sea. She drew closer, pressing tight against me, and closer still, the contours of her body merging with mine, her fingers stitching fishbone with my fingers.

The last thing I remembered was the feeling of something close and tight being drawn around my head, my throat – of my limbs being gathered and moved, drawn inwards, wrapped up tight with hers. My chest crushed as I dropped deeper in the water. I let myself sink.

Washed on the currents, I let go of everything.

Stars. Sparks. Campfire sparks. The rain had stopped, the storm blown out. The sky was ludicrously clear and clean, the stars cast in shimmering bands. I looked over. I was lying flat beside a fire.

Burning logs collapsed against each other. I pushed myself to sitting, feeling an ache deep inside my chest. Dizziness swam through me in a burst, and then my vision settled. A figure sat across from me, lurching out of focus. Holding myself still, the images resolved into one person, leaning forward to tend the fire.

Izzy. A flood of relief crashed through me. The beachcomber poked at the fire with a thin stick. He looked up when he saw me stir.

‘How now, Flora.’

‘Izzy,’ I said, and my voice sounded not my own. ‘What am I doing here? Where’s Ailsa? Is she here?’

‘She’s down on the beach,’ he grinned, ‘waiting for her father. The police are looking for them, so she couldn’t take you home.’

‘She told you about the police?’

‘I’m no friend to the Northern Constabulary. Don’t worry about that.’

He fed the fire with sea-washed logs. It was roaring fiercely now, throwing out a thick, welcome heat. At the edges, the salt-soaked wood coughed with sparks and thin green flame.
My throat and lungs felt ragged. Even wrapped in the blankets, I felt cold to my core, but the strength of the fire started to take the chill off my bones. When I moved my head, a rush of nausea washed across me.

‘I feel sick.’

‘So I should think. She said you nearly drowned. Didn’t I warn you to stay away from John Dobie and his girl? I knew you were in danger.’

‘But the police wanted them. Ailsa is …’ I said, pausing to think. What was she? Izzy was watching. ‘She’s the best friend I’ve ever had. I had to help her.’

‘You had to help her. Aye, of course you had to help her.’

There was something in his voice. His usual, friendly tones sounded strained. He couldn’t take his eyes off me. Something stirred in the fringes of my mind.

‘You all right there, Flo?’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, not feeling fine at all. Each breath throbbed in my throat.

Izzy reached into his pocket, and pulled out Lachlan’s pocket knife. He spun it gently on his fingers, and it glistened in the firelight.

‘I thought you’d got rid of that,’ I said, thickly.

‘Ach, I know. I should have. But that’s the beachcomber in me, Flo. The hoarder. I never throw away anything that might turn out being useful after all.’

‘It’s evidence.’

He offered me the knife. ‘Aye, of course. Here you go. Off and take it to the pigs. Give it to Detective Constable Thomas Duncan. Be sure to tell him where it comes from.’

I didn’t move.

‘No. I didn’t think so.’ He slipped the little knife back into his pocket. ‘I wish you’d left it alone. I wish you hadn’t got involved.’

Izzy stared at me. The vertigo felt worse every time I turned to look at him. I couldn’t hold his gaze.

‘I know about the selkies,’ he said.

For a moment, I was sure I’d misheard him. I forced a recovery.

‘We’ve been talking about them for weeks.’

‘Not my selkies. I know about your selkies. The Dobies. Dog Rock.’

‘No,’ I said, and my voice caught on my teeth. ‘Selkies aren’t real.’

‘That’s why you halfway drowned yourself, aye?’

I was silent.

‘I won’t tell anyone,’ he laughed. ‘They’d never believe it anyway. They don’t listen to me. They never have, no matter where I go, whether it’s London or the Isle of Lewis.’

I stared at him.

‘London?’ I whispered.

‘Nasty place,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t even stick a year. I missed the clean air.’

One of the things stacked against John Dobie was his pattern of movement about the islands, following the path of the murders. Suddenly, plainly, I was sharply aware of someone else who’d moved around the islands for years. Someone I didn’t know enough about. Someone who told stories about wicked selkies. I looked up at Izzy.

I’d been so stupid.

‘You’re Mutch,’ I said, wearily. ‘You’re M.I. Mutch. You wrote the book.’

‘Clever girl,’ he said, grinning, his teeth all crooked. ‘The ‘I’ stands for Isaac. I don’t go by that name any more.’

Isaac. The man I knew as Izzy turned his head to gaze into the fire, and the flames reflected in his eyes shone yellow and orange and black, black, black.

‘You wrote that terrible book.’

‘Someone had to. People had to know the truth about selkies.’

He spoke calmly, with certainty. I felt so tired.

‘But you hate books. You can’t stand books.’

‘My book is the reason I hate books. That book left me a laughingstock. It haunted me for years. Kenny and his vampire lawyers chased me for money. I vowed to keep it all in my head. So I changed my name, and became a shennachie.’

He leaned forward, offering me a mock bow.

‘You’re insane. Selkies aren’t real.’

Izzy closed his eyes.

‘You have no idea,’ he said, ‘of the damage they can do. They don’t care about us. They take us. They use us. And then they leave us, empty and alone.’

Baffled, I studied his face, trying to work out what was going on. Another tumbler clicked into place. Something my grandfather had said. I remembered the sadness in his face when he told me the story about his selkie. The thought that she might have followed him to sea, every day of his life, her love burning unrequited. Grandpa had seen the abyss of what it was to love a selkie. With a rush that flooded me from hips to head, I lurched again to think of Ailsa in trouble.

She’d saved my life. The oxygen, so raw in my lungs. She’d kissed me. I didn’t know what that meant.

Oh, Ailsa.

‘You were in love,’ I whispered.

Izzy’s eyes squeezed shut.

‘I found her by the sea,’ he said, ‘when I was a young man.’

His eyes opened. He turned to me.

‘She was mine, and I kept her. That’s how it’s supposed to work. That’s what all the stories say. And I loved her, truly.’

His face was blank, but his eyes leached tears. In the racing
firelight, they fell in fat and flashing drops. When he spoke, he had to force the words out.

‘That’s how it works. That’s how all the stories go. The selkie loves you back. She gives you children. That’s how the story always works.’

‘But not for you,’ I said, barely breathing.

‘No. She was … listless. She was useless. She sat slumped against a window, looking out to sea. She didn’t speak. She wouldn’t tell me her name, so I made one up. She didn’t eat, so I had to make her. And she cried, she always cried. She cried herself raw.’

‘So why didn’t you let her go?’

‘Because it wasn’t fair!’ he exploded, and pounded a fist against his knee. ‘I know how it’s supposed to work. She should have loved me back, and she wouldn’t even touch me. I had to – I had to force her.’

‘You forced her,’ I repeated dully, and pictured what he meant. The horror of it crept over me. The poor woman, held against her will, aching for escape, trapped by Izzy’s delusions.

‘But don’t you see,’ he said to me, suddenly pleading, ‘that I had no choice. She was mine. Mine. That’s how it always works. I loved her, Flora. I loved her. I only wanted the fairy tale for myself.’

‘You let her go, right? You let her go.’

Half his face flickered orange. The other half was black. He had shadows deep inside him.

‘Let her go,’ he said, and there was something dreadful in his voice, something cracked and always broken. ‘Let her go. Yes, I suppose I could have let her go.’

I couldn’t breathe.

‘But I didn’t.’

His face crumpled, lips a curling rictus, all his teeth on show. His eyes squeezed with sadness. It was a terrible thing to see.

‘I was in my studio. I was painting. I was so used to her crying by the window, I’d forgotten she could do anything else. I heard a smash. She’d thrown herself through the window. By the time I realised, she was outside the house and heading for the shore.’

I imagined the woman, stumbling on bone-thin legs. I could see her eyes, red with years of crying.

‘I dropped my brushes,’ said Izzy, ‘and I chased her.’

Desperate, even as the salt spray touched her skin. I could sense the weakness in her, strength sapping as she hobbled for the surf, daring to hope.

‘She was slow, and I caught her. I didn’t know myself. I was mad with rage. I picked up a rock.’

I imagined the poor girl, laid flat on the beach, sobbing and coughing, crawling for the sea, reaching out for water, one hand gripped tight to her skin. I imagined Izzy, younger, paint-smeared, flushed with fury, lifting the rock above his head.

‘And I smashed her head in. I smashed her pretty selkie skull to pieces.’

Stretched out on the shore, light dimming in her bloodshot eyes. I could see her. The tide coming in to find her, each wave pushing closer than the last, the water reaching out and washing over her outstretched hand, bringing her back home. Blood seeping into sand, flushing pink where it met the sea, and sluicing clear back into the ocean.

We listened to the sea. We listened to the fire, shifting hotter in its cradle.

‘She stole my heart,’ he said, voice hoarse. ‘Even when she was gone, she took my heart with her. And afterwards, I wrote my book. People had to know. I only wanted to help. You understand, Flora. You know what it means.’

It jolted me to see that he was pleading. A vein pulsed in his temple.

‘What about the others? All the disappearances? Why would you kill them?’

‘Selkies,’ he said, and madness boiled inside him. ‘They’re all selkies. I knew there was one on Bancree. I could smell it. Where there are islands, there are selkies. It was only a matter of time before I caught them.’

‘Who? Was it Dougie?’

Izzy snorted.

‘Dougie loved nothing but his bottles. He just got in my way. I didn’t know the old sot was living with Anders Tommasson.’

‘Anders?’ I said, incredulous.

‘Aye,’ said Izzy, and gestured at his sliced ear. ‘It was him that did this.’

My stomach bottomed out.

‘You said that was Lachlan.’

‘I lied. Anders fought like hell. Smashed a lamp upside my head.’

I imagined him sneaking up on Anders’ house, spying through the windows. Bursting in, and the two of them brawling, the house trashed by the fight. Izzy was big, but Anders was bigger. Uncle Anders, who told me that bad things happen to good people.

Anders, who was in love.

‘You couldn’t beat him,’ I said, faltering. ‘He was too strong.’

‘Oh, he fought like a devil. But I winged him before he even knew I was in the house. He landed some good blows. He gave me that shiner, bruised a couple of ribs.’

That black eye, that ragged ear. I’d washed the blood away, and wept tears for poor old Izzy. Another piece fell into place. When I’d accused Lachie of attacking the beachcomber, he’d been genuinely puzzled.

‘Did you do Lachie, too?’

‘Not me,’ he said. ‘Though I think we know who wants you keeping safe, don’t we?’

Ailsa.

‘You said she was on the beach.’

Izzy smiled but didn’t answer. He stoked his fire, piling more logs onto the furnace. The embers churned red hot, but chills crawled through my stomach. I thought of the void inside John. Always chasing ghosts because no body, no crime. I dreaded the answer, but I needed to know.