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Prologue
I’m way past scared. Panic’s roaring through my veins like the first fix. Some punters like to see that you’re feart. They get off on it. Sick. Does my head in. But this evil bastard’s not a punter. He’s a psycho, screaming at me to tell him stuff I don’t know. I keep saying, it isnae me you want, but he doesnae listen. It’s dark, the car moving fast. Me in the back seat, his arm around my throat choking me, and the fucker’s got this knife inching towards my eye. Blood and piss on the leather seat, I’m slipping down. I try to call out to the driver for help, to stop the car, but then the cold metal of the knife touches my cheek and I freeze.
He picked me up from the squat in Carlisle. Flash car, a fourbie with tinted windows. Nice clothes, expensive aftershave. I’ve seen him around. Shaved dark hair, face like a skull. Said he was an old pal of Buckie’s, but Buck didn’t seem too pleased to see him. You’ll be compensated for your time, that’s what he said. Like I was doing them both a favour. Like I had a choice. Like my time was worth something.
I thought, this’ll be class, I can squeeze some cash out of him. He said he just wanted to talk to me. We’d have a wee drink. I could tell him what my friends were up to. Well, that’s a joke. Someone like me has no friends. When I laughed he hit me hard in the face, couldn’t see the funny side. I wanted to shout at the bastard. My only friend is the next fix.
He won’t be the only man to send me to oblivion. My father was the first. He belted me cos I gave him the cracked plate instead of the only good one in our house. I was about seven years old at the time. I’d spent hours making mince and tatties for his birthday cos I knew it was his favourite. Then he said I could give him a different present. I didnae know what he meant. I had no money for anything, none of us ever did. He showed me though.
Sometimes, when I read stories in magazines about women who were abused by their fathers, I laugh. There was never any of that ‘you’re my special girl’ stuff or ‘it’s our little secret’, not for me. He never threatened me, muttering in his beery breath what would happen if I told. He didnae need to. Everyone knew. My mother, my sister, the teachers. They all knew. Kept their heads down, did nothing. When they let me out of hospital the second time, bandages on my wrists like twin bracelets, I went south. But it was too late. Change of scenery, but really it was just the same old scene. Old habits die hard, as the nun said to the junkie. At least my kid is a boy. He might stand a better chance. You get big enough, you can hit back.
From the rear seats of the car, I can just see the bent flowerheads of the motorway lights. Bright blobs swimming through my tears. Watching over me. Flicking past like seconds counting down to the end. Skirt rucked up and a hole in my new tights. Snot and blood bubbling out my nose like I’m a wee girl. Car’s slowing down. The fucker still got hold of me, but I’m not daft. If I see a chance, I’ll run. For a moment a blue square with a white cross fills the window and I know where I am. I’m northbound on the A74. I’m going home. I know the sign. I know what it says. Welcome to Scotland.
Chapter 1
The call for assistance came into Kirkness Lifeboat Station on the Solway Firth on Saturday morning. Shona Oliver’s pager sounded just as she was placing the teapot down in the dining room.
‘Shout!’ she called to husband Rob. She dashed into the kitchen, gave him a quick kiss, grabbed her car keys and ran from the house. The two B&B guests stared open-mouthed after her.
‘Lifeboat. She’s on call,’ Rob explained as he entered the room a moment later and set down full Scottish breakfasts before the astonished guests, a husband and wife walking duo from Edinburgh.
‘Oh, that’s grand,’ said the woman, thrilled to have acquired a nugget of holiday colour. Just the ticket for the postcards she’d already purchased. ‘You must be very proud.’
‘Actually, it’s a bit of a pain,’ Rob replied, glancing at his watch. Seeing his guests’ uncertain expressions, he rolled his eyes and offered his most charming smile. ‘Means I’ll be doing the washing up.’ They laughed nervously, invited to enjoy a joke they didn’t quite understand.
‘Oh, that’s grand,’ the woman muttered again, picking up her knife and fork. No one knew if she meant Shona’s dedication to public service or the black pudding on the plate before her.
Shona was second in, behind coxswain Tommy McCall and just before Callum Stewart, the village’s twenty-one-year-old postman. Within nine minutes of the alarm sounding, the Margaret Wilson was flat out at 25 knots heading up the Solway Firth, the green arms of Scotland and England stretched out on either side of them, hazy in the early light. Later, it might turn into a fine day.
‘The maintenance boat from Robin Rigg Wind Farm reported seeing someone in the water,’ McCall shouted to Shona and Callum over the noise of the wind and the outboard motor. ‘The coastguard thinks the casualty has been washed up on Midton Bank.’ He pointed to the chart on the screen of the lifeboat’s electronic navigation console. ‘With the tide running down they can’t get any closer in with the big boats.’
Callum knelt in the bows and looked ahead, searching for any sign of their target. McCall, on the helm, nudged Shona. When she turned to look at him he mouthed, unconfirmed delta. She knew what that meant. Unconfirmed death. It wasn’t looking good for the casualty. Tommy touched just beneath his eye with two fingers then indicated Callum. She knew what that meant too, keep a watch on Callum.
McCall was right. It was often difficult for newer crew members to deal with the recovery of a dead body. She remembered some of the fatalities she’d encountered when she’d lived in London and first volunteered at Tower Lifeboat Station on the Thames. She’d known nothing about boats, joining the RNLI with a yacht-loving boyfriend. He’d gone. She stayed, finding common ground with fellow volunteers from all walks of life – salesmen, drivers, plumbers. With police training she was better prepared than most for the deaths but it was still heart-breaking. The drunks, the accidents, the ‘deliberate attempts to enter the water’, as they termed the suicides, both successful and unsuccessful. Sometimes, without a living human being to return to the lifeboat station or hand over to the ambulance services it was easy to experience a sense that, on some level, you’d failed.
Saving a life was what it was all about. The feeling you got from that made it all worthwhile; the cold, the danger, partners left in restaurants and at parties or just at ho
me with the washing up. The flash of irritation on Rob’s face this morning, when the pager sounded and she’d kissed him goodbye, came back to her. Well, he could handle it. It was the end of the summer season, only a couple of guests. It had been his idea to move back to his home patch of Dumfriesshire, after he resigned from the bank two years ago. The B&B was supposed to be his thing. Their daughter Rebecca had been thirteen at the time, but already getting into trouble at school. It seemed a good idea to move out of London, a fresh start for them all. And it had been. The beautiful setting, the community. She’d fallen in love with it from day one.
The Margaret Wilson, named after the Solway Martyr, a young woman drowned for her religious beliefs, slowed as they approached Midton Bank. The Admiralty chart on the nav console screen now showed large areas of blank space where no attempt had been made to record this shifting, fluid world, neither land nor sea. Tide-washed sands in the middle of the estuary shone metallic grey against the low sun. Morning mist hung over the Cumbrian shore, making it difficult to pick out detail or judge distances. The locals said the tides here travelled faster than a horse could gallop. And if the tide did not catch you, the sinking pools of quicksand, invisible to the eye, would. Navigation was by local knowledge and respect. Shona was glad Tommy McCall, one of the most experienced skippers on the Solway Firth, was in charge.
Shona turned to Callum, handed him the binoculars, and motioned him to swap places. ‘Keep an eye on the far shore,’ she said as the engine noise dropped. ‘Someone might be foolish enough to attempt to walk or drive out to the casualty across the sands.’
The tall, powerfully built postman gave her a thumbs up.
‘I’ll do a first pass up the length of the sandbank,’ McCall said. Shona knelt in the bow and shaded her eyes from the sun. It wasn’t long before she spotted a pale shape lying on the sands. At first, she thought it might be one of the grey seals who came into the Solway to pup in the autumn, or perhaps a length of driftwood. She looked away, then back again to check. A swag of blonde hair drifted, mermaid-like, in the shallow water.
Shona stuck out her arm. ‘Target sighted, fifty metres.’ All she had to do now was keep pointing firmly at the target as Tommy manoeuvred the lifeboat closer.
The shallow draft of the D-class inshore lifeboat made it perfect for the Solway sandbanks. Callum leaned over the side of the inflatable craft, calling the depth as they edged closer, until McCall judged they were as near as they could get without risk of stranding themselves in the falling tide.
‘I’ll go in and make a first assessment,’ Shona said. McCall nodded.
At 5ft 4in in her stocking soles, the sea came up past Shona’s knees, but the sand was firm beneath her boots as she waded through the shallow water. The body, partially clothed and probably female judging by the hair, lay on its side. It was tangled up in ghost gear, discarded or lost fishing net and lines. Crabs and other sea creatures had been at work.
Shona walked back to the waiting lifeboat shaking her head. ‘Confirm life extinct,’ she said. ‘The casualty’s been in the water for some time. Significant loss of definition to the face and hands. Identification will be difficult.’ She looked at Callum. ‘You up for this, pal?’ When he nodded, she continued, ‘We’ll use the yellow stretcher. We’ll also need to preserve what evidence we can, just in case. Tommy, can you make a note of our exact position?’
McCall indicated GPS fix on the screen. ‘Already done. It’s a tricky one. We’re bang on the border between Scotland and England. Never come across that before.’
‘Call the coastguard, ask them where they’d like us to bring the casualty in.’ Shona turned back to Callum. ‘First fatality?’
‘Yes, but don’t worry. I’ll be fine.’ His pale blue eyes showed a calm determination.
‘I know you will.’
They walked together up the steepening curve of the sandbank. Already the distance between the casualty and the receding sea had lengthened. They needed to work fast, before the risk of grounding the lifeboat became too great. There was no way Shona would leave the young woman to the mercy of the next tide.
‘There’s a chance the body will break up when we lift it onto the stretcher. It’s entangled in fishing net so that will help us, but all remains must be retrieved, understand?’
‘Aye. I understand.’
Shona placed the flat plastic stretcher beside the prone figure. ‘We’re going to lift and turn her so she’s on her back on the stretcher.’ She looked down at the slight, pale woman, wrapped in her blanket of seaweed and netting curled up on the sand. ‘I’ll lift under her shoulders and head, you take her legs. One hand above the knees and one below. The joints may be loose. Okay, when you’re ready.’
Shona noted the remains of jeans. One hand was gone, but on the other wrist there appeared to be a metal bracelet embedded in the discoloured skin. The criss-cross web of the ghost gear bit deeply into the greenish, bloated flesh, reminding Shona of a grotesque version of fishnet tights.
As they lifted her, a seabed miasma of rot and decay rolled heavily into their noses, mouths and lungs like an oily wave, coating the tongue and throat. Callum gagged but did not let go until the body was on the stretcher. Then he walked to the edge of the sandbar and vomited. Leaning forward for a moment, hand on knee, he took big gulps of fresh air. He returned, pale but composed. ‘Sorry about that.’
