Stephen Irwin - The Darkening

‘Key under. .’

‘I can’t hear you, Pritam.’

‘. . key under the mat,’ he whispered.

Nicholas understood. At the presbytery. ‘Oh, that’s clever.’

Pritam gave a weak smile.

‘Computer. Last search.’ He licked his dry lips. ‘’kay?’

Nicholas nodded.

Pritam’s eyes folded shut. He sank back under his shroud of writhing ghosts.

Nicholas watched the steady rhythm of the coloured lines on the monitor. He departed as fast as he could.

It took the taxi driver three-quarters of an hour to negotiate the rain-worried traffic and get to the Tallong Anglican Church. On the way, Nicholas dozed.

‘We’re here,’ said the cabbie.

Nicholas paid with a credit card. As the cab drove away, he looked at the road where Pritam had been hit this morning. There wasn’t the tiniest sign anything had happened. And that is how she works. Accidents and scapegoats. Even her murders are neatly explained and easily forgotten.

The presbytery key was, indeed, under the rubber and coir mat. Nicholas entered. A half-cup of cold tea rested beside the computer; the screensaver scrolled shots of sunsets, mist over placid ponds, light streaming through trees, silhouettes of praiseful people on cliff tops arching to the heavens. He touched the mouse. ‘Connection timed out’ read a message box. He shut it and clicked the ‘refresh’ arrow. The modem whistled.

He stared as the page updated.

The manifest from the County Durham . Female convicts. Eighth on the list was Rowena Quill.

Nicholas sat heavily and for a long while did nothing.

‘Rowena,’ he whispered to himself.

What a fool. As much a fool as Gavin Boye. As Elliot Guyatt. Sucked in and played like a fiddle. A pretty smile and a laugh and he’d been chumped.

He unplugged the modem and rang Suzette.

Suzette made sure Quincy wasn’t in the room before she hissed, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to fucking wait a few more days and call back then?’

Her brother astonished her with an apology.

Then he stunned her into aching silence with his news. He told her about finding Hannah Gerlic outside the woods. About the plover with the rune head. The meeting with Pritam and Laine. His detainment by police. Discovering Pritam was shattered like a hated toy in hospital, and Laine collapsing into a slumber like Nelson’s.

Suzette realised she could see the pulse in her wrist hammering like a tiny creature trapped under her skin.

‘A cut on her cheek?’ she asked. ‘How, do you think?’

Then he told her what he’d found on Pritam’s computer. That in 1850 a female convict transported from Trim, Meath County, arrived here, and her name was Rowena Quill.

‘Rowena,’ said Nicholas quietly. ‘The name of the young girl in the health food store is Rowena.’

Suzette sat down heavily. ‘Oh,’ she whispered.

Neither said anything for a moment.

‘How’s Nelson?’ Nicholas asked.

‘Okay. Still sick, still. .’ Her voice sounded as dry as paper. ‘I don’t know, Nicky. I think she’s keeping the pressure on.’

‘Will he be okay?’

She nodded, then realised he couldn’t see that. ‘I think so. Hey, are you wearing your necklace?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then keep it on. Keep it on and catch a cab to the airport and fly down here. A strategic retreat. Fly down and we’ll make a plan. We’ll figure out a way to get Mum down, too.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

‘Nicky-’

But she was left listening to electric space. He’d hung up.

The walk to the Myrtle Street shops was the most exhausting of Nicholas’s life. Every step felt nightmarishly slow, as if he were wading through tar. By the time he was near, all he wanted was to collapse and fold into a black sleep.

The thought that she was in there kept him moving.

The rain had slowed, but oyster-coloured clouds still mumbled darkly and low, and the hills in the west were hidden by a grim curtain of heavier rain approaching.

Muddy ruts cut by the postman’s motorcycle ran through the grass of the footpath. As Nicholas’s eyes wandered over the hacked, intersecting tracks, his leaden feet slowed and stopped. At one point the wheel marks diverged from the deeper track and ran out in a V to a letterbox and back. A line flanked with an arrow. Thurisaz.

Distant screams made him look to the sky.

A flock of birds turned overhead, their wings winking black topsides and grey undersides at him as they wheeled, so they were one moment a cloud of almost invisible grey flecks, the next a dark flash of black in the sky. There and gone. Visible, invisible. Dark, light.

Without thinking, Nicholas knelt and pushed his index and middle fingers into the mud. It was cold. With his left hand he lifted his jumper, exposing his white chest to the chill. With his muddy fingers, he drew on his chest a vertical line and then a truncated diamond off its side.

He looked at the sky. The birds flew over the green and red tin rooftops and away. He lowered his shirt, washed his fingers in the gurgling gutter, and stepped under the heavy-lidded awning of the Myrtle Street shops.

‘Hi,’ he said.

Rowena looked up from a vitamins catalogue. She wore a plain shirt and jeans. She smiled. ‘Hi, yourself.’

Nicholas nodded, wiped his feet on the mat, shut the door, and slid the catch that locked the deadbolt. He turned back to Rowena.

She frowned, the smile still caught on her face like an afterglow. ‘What are you-’

‘ County Durham ,’ he said.

She watched him for a long moment. Then she lifted her shoulders in a curt shrug. The change was subtle and horrifyingly fast. The sunny innocence that lit her pretty face was suddenly switched off as if its power cable had been severed. An invisible mantle fell over her pretty features, making them somehow sharper, more feline. More sleek and womanly and knowing. She stood up. Her brown eyes seemed to grow wider, darker. She smiled.

‘That was a long time ago,’ she said. An accent, now: an Irish lilt.

Nicholas looked around. ‘Where’s Garnock?’

Rowena smiled wider. She wasn’t just pretty. She was beautiful. Pale and long and slender and beautiful.

‘Away,’ she replied. ‘Your friend was here this morning. She’s attractive. Less so now, but cuts heal.’

‘Tell Dylan Thomas that. Tell Tristram Boye that.’

Rowena cocked her head and watched him.

Nicholas suddenly wondered what the hell he was going to do. He felt vulnerable, and wondered if locking the door wasn’t a mistake.

‘I’m surprised you’re here,’ she said, and stepped around the counter to lean on it. ‘And pleased.’ She uncrossed her ankles and placed her feet a hand width apart. Her legs were long and her jeans were tight. He looked into her eyes. They sparkled like polished chestnut.

‘You’ve done some work on me,’ he said. ‘On my nephew. On Pritam Anand.’

Rowena raised her eyebrows coyly, a compliment taken. She reached to the shelf behind the counter, her arms lifting her shirt high so it revealed a section of tight belly and pressed the thin cotton against her breasts. He could see she wore no bra. He felt himself hardening. She found what she wanted and straightened; in her hand was a small wooden box. She opened it, but its lid disguised its contents from his view. She smiled at him over the box and his breath caught. Earlier today he’d thought Laine’s profile was classical, but Rowena’s smile sent a jolt through him, starting behind his eyes and travelling like warm fire down to his groin. It was a smile that promised a knowledge of flesh, of deep shiftings. He understood now how Helen’s face had launched a thousand ships.