Finally, Tony lifted the paddle onto his knees and let the boat glide soundlessly for the remaining yards to the jetty. When they drew parallel to the little wooden platform, he reached for the camera bag and hauled it safely onto the jetty first before scrambling out of the boat and helping Rachel to do the same. He kept the torch switched off until they were past the boathouse and shielded by it and the trees. Even then, he used it only intermittently — just enough for Rachel to be able to lead the way to the crime scene.
She’d never been there before but had seen enough aerial shots and online maps to know where to take them. The ground was hard with frost beneath their feet and it crunched as they walked, frozen leaves crackling and brittle twigs snapping, the noise echoing off the remains of the priory walls and sounding big in the still night. No one could possibly hear them from the shore, even if anyone was still awake, but they moved without speaking, the enormity of the place suffocating them.
They wound their way through the ancient arches, taking a haunting tourist trail past the south wall of the priory church, then the cloister with the remnants of its warming house and kitchen. Whatever ghosts still lingered there were whispering at them from the shadows and following them past the chapter house and towards the darkest corner of the island.
Rachel slowed to a halt and waited till Tony was by her side. She stretched out her arm and he followed her point with the beam of the torch.
‘There,’ she whispered.
It was an unremarkable spot compared to the dramatic ruins they had just passed through, an ordinary junction of low wall and frozen ground. They both stood and contemplated it in silence, the intervening nineteen years slipping away before their eyes. Slowly, Rachel knelt and traced the air with her hands, drawing shapes of where the girl’s body had been discovered years before.
‘She was on her back here,’ she said, both her father’s words and Bobby Heneghan’s coming back to her. ‘They said there were weeds up to this height. Heneghan and Conway had to part them with their hands to see what was lying here.’
Tony took his camera bag from his shoulder and took out his Canon EOS-1D, fixing on a flash as he listened to Rachel.
‘Her legs were here… and here, this one tucked under the other…’
Winter was photographing nothing except memories and dirt but his mind’s eye was well practised in capturing death’s final throes even long after life had been extinguished. The lack of a body and the gap of nearly twenty years didn’t stop his imagination from running riot.
He saw the weathered red jacket, faded from its original candy red the same way Lily’s blood had lost its vital colour after leaking from her battered skull. He saw her dark blonde hair flecked with blood and dirt as she lay back on a pillow of snow, her head battered, one eye gone and the other shrinking in fright, her mouth wide open, screaming for help that never came, pleading for mercy that wasn’t offered.
She was so young, forever young, laid out on a snowy altar with the monks of Inchmahome standing over her weeping. He saw her skin and flesh, a winter feast for the island’s wildlife, its surfaces pulled back to expose everything below, her body shrivelling day by day as it lay lonely and abandoned.
Tony fired off shot after shot, his finger hammering at the shutter release even though the girl, her jacket, her blood and her battered skull fragments had long since gone. Rachel looked up at him, seeing him lost in his moment and knowing what he was seeing through his lens. She had seen the collection of gory photographs that filled a wall of his flat in Charing Cross and wondered if this image of what-had-been would find a place among them. His fascination being what it was, she knew it could fit in his collection even if the substance of it existed only in his mind. She realised it already had a place in hers.
‘You feel it?’ she asked.
Her words broke the trance Winter had drifted into, causing the murdered girl to fade from his sight, her beseeching mouth and pleading eye the last things to disappear as the flame from his final flash shot petered out.
‘Yes, I feel it.’
His camera arm fell to his side, his job done. Rachel took his free hand and gently led him away from the murder scene and back towards the jetty, every step guarded by Inchmahome’s mournful monks as they saw their uninvited guests safely off the island again.
CHAPTER 11
He looked smaller but she knew he couldn’t be. It had been only a week since she’d last seen him but it was the first time since he’d moved into this bloody place. Could a man really shrink in a week? Rachel took advantage of being able to watch him, knowing that he didn’t yet realise she was there. They’d told her it would be better if she left it a bit before she went to see him, give him time to settle in without being embarrassed about her seeing him there. So she’d waited, much as it hurt. Christ, he looked sad. People around him chatted away but it seemed as if he’d rather be anywhere else. He appeared older too. There was no getting away from it. Maybe he had done for a while and she just hadn’t seen it but now the bloody home was showing it up.
Someone was saying something to him and he looked up, confused, as if he hadn’t heard them properly. She hoped that’s all it was. He was shrugging at the man who’d been speaking to him and turned away. She’d seen that faraway look sometimes when he was still at home with her mum — seen it but not noticed it.
Deep breath. Now go speak to him.
‘Hi, Dad,’ she managed as brightly as she could.
There it was: the half-second deliberation as he looked up and didn’t immediately recognise who she was. That part of a second could range from almost instant to drawn out, every extra tenth of it meaning so much and so little.
He knew her now though and the smile lit up his face and warmed her heart. He got up and held his arms wide for her like he always did. She knew this time the smile hid awkwardness but she ignored it. She needed the hug at least as much as he did — more.
Now that she was closer, she could see there were a couple of bits of stubbly grey on his chin that he’d missed while shaving and a button undone about halfway up his blue checked shirt. Not much maybe but her dad was always a stickler for being neat and tidy. It worried her to see him letting his standards slip.
‘How are you, love?’ he was saying. ‘How was the traffic?’
‘Oh, not too bad at all,’ she replied, even though it had been awful. ‘How are you more to the point? Settling in?’
He lied too. She could see it in his eyes, clear as day.
‘Och, yes. You know me. I can make myself at home anywhere. This place is fine. The people are nice enough.’
‘How’s the food?’ she whispered conspiratorially.
‘Bloody terrible,’ he whispered back. ‘Not a patch on your mother’s.’
‘What have they given you today?’
The moment the words were out her mouth she regretted them. The look of loss in his eyes cut right through her.
‘Who can tell?’ he laughed eventually. ‘It all tastes and looks the same anyway.’
Typical Dad. He would always do anything he could to save her from hurt of any kind. If only she could do the same for him.
‘Seriously, Dad,’ she persevered. ‘What’s it like in here?’
‘It’s okay. It probably sounds silly but I can’t take the fact they all know my name but I can’t remember theirs. They’ve all been here forever so when I come in they’ve only got one name to learn while I’ve got to try to remember all of theirs. And I’m not doing very well.’