Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
H ammer realised he was scowling when Winter whined. He forced himself to stop. ‘Ignore me, I’m being a grumpy bastard.’ He stroked Winter’s head and his soft ears until they both felt a little better.
In that moment when he had opened the door and seen Luke Taylor, his spirits had risen. He had thought that Luke was going to go looking for Tobias, that he would be asking to borrow a boat or for Hammer to take him across to àite Marbh. Hammer would have said no, of course, and called him a bloody idiot, but it would have felt like they were in the thing together. That it wasn’t just Hammer alone, the one who lost their mayor.
Esme hated that Luke had left, and she didn’t think she would be able to focus on the books she had borrowed from the shop. She didn’t feel like being alone, so even though she wasn’t hungry for lunch, she walked to The Rising Moon instead of going straight home. Seren greeted her with the news that Bee was calling an emergency meeting.
Sitting at the big table in the middle of the room, she checked her phone for messages, even though she knew Luke would have barely crossed the causeway at this point. Maybe he would change his mind, turn around and come back? She didn’t believe it for a moment. He had a real family, and they came first.
Fiona had left Hamish with Euan and was sitting between Matteo and Seren. Hammer arrived with Winter and Esme made a fuss of the dog, trying to distract herself, but he was more subdued than usual. Hammer sat on the other side of the table, and Winter pressed against his legs as if making sure he wasn’t going anywhere. The place at the head of the big table, the place that Tobias usually sat, was empty.
‘I swam out around the island,’ Fiona said. ‘I didn’t find him.’
Everyone looked at the table or away from Fiona, not wanting to catch her eye. Nobody asked anything about the form she had taken to swim that far, and nobody questioned her ability to trawl the sea for a single body.
The door opened, and Bee arrived. Her hair was as neatly braided as usual, but her face held a wild-look. Esme felt she could see something unravelled in the older woman. It was possible she was projecting her own feelings. Tobias’s absence had grown to a size and weight she couldn’t ignore.
Bee took a spare seat across from Esme. ‘Diana’s not coming,’ she said. She didn’t mention Lucy.
‘Did you look for him?’ Fiona asked Bee.
‘The future is no help to us,’ Bee said.
Nobody asked any follow-up questions. If Bee had seen something about Tobias in her mirrors, she would have said.
‘I looked in the sea,’ Fiona said, bringing Bee up-to-date on their conversation. ‘Nothing.’
Bee nodded. ‘That’s good.’
Esme knew that Bee didn’t need to spell it out. No body meant that Tobias might still be alive. She looked around the table. ‘Where is our Book Keeper?’
‘Gone,’ Hammer said. ‘Mainland.’
‘He didn’t want to leave, especially not now,’ Esme said, defending him. ‘It’s for his brother.’
Matteo wrote on his notepad and then pushed it to the centre of the table. Hammer took it first and then it was passed around until everyone had read what was written.
We need a mayor?
‘Do you mean we should name someone as acting mayor while Tobias is away?’ Esme asked. She refused to contemplate the possibility that Tobias’s absence was permanent.
‘Or are you asking whether we need a mayor at all?’ Bee’s tone was completely neutral.
Matteo shrugged, his face a question.
‘We need a mayor,’ Hammer said, surprising Esme. She would have assumed he would be anti-authority. He looked around. ‘What?’
‘Bee could do it,’ Seren said. ‘Just until Tobias gets back.’
‘Will he come back?’ Fiona asked the question that had been hanging in the air.
‘I can’t be mayor,’ Bee said, rolling right past Fiona’s question. ‘It’s not for me.’
‘I think we’ll survive for a few days,’ Fiona said.
Esme felt the others tense. She looked Bee dead in the eye. ‘Tobias will be back soon, won’t he?’
Bee’s lips compressed. She didn’t speak.
Luke made it to the Wetherspoons on Otley Road in under three hours. He drove past, scoping out the ample parking and the lack of any obvious threat. Not that he was sure what that would look like. A gang of headcases standing outside the pub, holding weaponry?
He drove to a garage and bought a takeaway coffee and a bottle of water. Hydrated and caffeinated, he went back to the Wetherspoons and parked facing the road. He was twenty minutes early.
Exactly twenty minutes later, a blue transit van pulled up on the main road. Luke watched the three men in the front of the van having a conversation. Then two of the men got out and stood on the pavement. One of them looked right at him and raised his chin. He had movie-star cheekbones, light brown skin and a sharp fade hairstyle. His white friend was taller, thicker-set, and pug-ugly.
Luke sighed. He got out of the car and locked it. Approaching the van, he wondered whether this was going to be the last stupid thing he ever did.
‘Luke Taylor?’ the well-groomed one asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Get in the back.’
Luke thought about saying that he had assumed the meeting was in the pub and that he wasn’t ‘on board’ with going to a secondary location. But he knew it would be pointless. That was exactly what he had been intended to think. And he doubted these men gave a flying rat's arse what he was and wasn’t ‘on board’ with. The man opened the back doors of the transit and Luke got inside.
It was lined with plywood, with boxed-in wheel arches, and completely empty. Luke sat on the floor, preparing himself for a nauseating ride. They hadn’t cuffed him or put anything over his head and he held onto these small mercies as the doors clanged shut, plunging him into compete darkness, and the van accelerated.
Luke was surprised they hadn’t taken his phone away, but he wasn’t going to complain. He texted Esme with an update and his current GPS coordinates. He didn’t think he could rely on his phone staying with him for much longer, but it was comforting to think there would be an accurate record of where he was, at least for the next few minutes. And the glow of his home screen was a little bit of normality. Just seeing Esme’s name made his breathing a little easier.
He was being, he knew, monumentally stupid, but he pushed that thought away. He was in it now. And he didn’t feel as if he had any real choice. Lewis was his brother. His twin. His other half. There had never been a choice. His time on Unholy Island was starting to seem dreamlike and unreal. He wondered if it was the wards that Esme set starting to work now that he’d been on the mainland for a few hours, or whether it was just the nature of the weirdness of the place. He wasn’t going to forget it, though. He was The Book Keeper.
The van took a corner and he had to brace himself. At that moment, a reply appeared from Esme. Come home . He stared at Esme’s text and conjured her face, imagining her expression as she had typed out the words. He wanted to be back on the island. He wanted never to have left.
The woman standing in the middle of the main street had long, dark hair and was wearing a leather jacket and jeans. In deference to the freezing weather, she had decent boots on her feet and was wearing a grey woolly scarf, thick gloves and a knitted beanie. She had her back to Esme, and she set off for the far end of the village with a determined stride.
As Esme looked at the woman, she realised that she was finding it increasingly difficult to focus. The figure was a dark shape and, for a moment, her outline seemed to judder and jump, as if she was moving at a different frame rate to the world around her. At that moment, she turned to the side, as if she had heard something. Esme caught the glimpse of pale skin and a determined mouth.
Hammer had come out of the pub with her, Winter between them. They had stopped with Esme and she reached out to pat the dog’s head.
‘Who’s that?’ Hammer’s voice seemed to be coming from far away.
‘No idea,’ Esme said.
‘Fog has cleared a bit,’ Hammer was saying. Had he asked her another question? She focused on his face. His eyes were worried.
‘You all right?’
‘Fine.’ Esme forced a smile.
‘He’ll be back before you know it,’ Hammer said.
‘You don’t have to sound so grumpy about it,’ Esme said. She couldn’t face having a serious conversation about Luke, couldn’t bear to make anything more real than it already was. She had been aiming for a teasing tone but didn’t feel entirely present in the conversation and was pretty sure she hadn’t managed it.
‘He’s upset you,’ Hammer said, brow furrowing. ‘I’m gonna have to have words.’
‘No you don’t. He’s our Book Keeper. And he’s not done anything wrong.’ Esme hoped that was right. She wanted Luke to come back from the mainland, but she knew the tie that had taken him away from the island wasn’t going to be undone. For as long as Lewis existed, Luke would run when he called. She looked back up the street to where the woman had been standing, but she had gone.