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Sam grew up in the shadow of the secret state. Her father was an undercover agent, full of tall stories about tradecraft and traitors. Then he died, killed in the line of duty.
Now Sam has travelled to Hoy, in Orkney, to piece together the puzzle of her father’s past. Haunted by echoes of childhood holidays, Sam is sure the truth lies buried here, somewhere.
What she finds is a tiny island of dramatic skies, swooping birds, rugged sea stacks and just four hundred people. An island remote enough to shelter someone who doesn’t want to be found. An island small enough to keep a secret...
For Rosa, Eva and Andy
‘These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air.’
—PROSPERO IN THE TEMPEST, ACT IV SCENE 1
Welcome Page
About The Dark Isle
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Author’s Note
About Clare Carson
Also by Clare Carson
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
Orkney, August 1976
‘BLOODY HOY,’ JIM shouted. He wasn’t going to that poxy island again tomorrow or the next day or any other day ever. He’d had enough of Hoy. He stomped across the shingle to the saltmarsh at the head of the bay and left his family sitting on the beach. They had arrived there early. The heatwave had spread far enough north to transform their usual dank and windy summer break into a Mediterranean beach holiday. Helen and Jess, at least, were determined to make the most of it. They had badgered Jim to drive them over to Waulkmill Bay again because they hadn’t been there for a couple of days and he had eventually conceded even though, he had said, he wasn’t in the mood for swimming. The tide was in, the cove deserted. They clambered over seaweed-matted rocks, parked themselves on the lip of sand and watched the ocean retreat, run-off channels glistening in the sun. The rise of Hoy’s mountains was dark and hazy, a sleeping giant guarding the horizon. It was Liz who had pointed across Scapa Flow, said perhaps they should all take the ferry to the island the next day and have a look around. She seemed perplexed by his bad-tempered reaction, although she didn’t respond to his tirade. Helen was less restrained.
‘Miserable git. What’s got his goat?’ she asked as they watched him disappear over the ridge dividing beach from midge-infested marshland.
‘God knows,’ Liz said.
Sam said nothing, eyed the island that had sparked Jim’s fury.
‘Let’s go for a swim,’ Jess said. She nudged her younger sister. ‘You too, Sam. Come on.’
Liz told them not to go too far out, then stuck her nose in a book. The three sisters ran across the sand, chased the tide, jumped the waves, searched for crabs in the kelp tendrils undulating in the currents of the crystal water. Their bodies adjusted to the chill and they swam further out to sea. Sam was enjoying herself, floating on her back, the surface calm, the sun on her face; she wasn’t a bad swimmer, she reckoned, for a ten-year-old. She drifted. The splash-landing of a cormorant made her look up and she saw she was on her own, Helen and Jess far away, their heads black and round like distant seals. She put her feet down. There was no bottom. She was out of her depth, going under, water closing over her head. She panicked, splashed and flailed, seaweed tangling legs, swallowing brine, couldn’t breathe. She was sinking. Drowning. Lungs bursting. Head pounding. She’d had it. Everything went black. And then a light exploded, and for a second she thought she was dead before she realized she had surfaced. She spluttered, gulped air desperately, waved her arms, almost sank again, bobbed back and forced herself calm. She wasn’t going to die. Not then anyway, not there in Waulkmill Bay. She trod water until she could breathe normally, flipped on her back and headed to the shore.
She was halfway home when she heard shouting. Jim. She looked around. He was right ahead, between her and the beach, water lapping at his abdomen. She put her feet down, toes touching sand this time, head and shoulders above the waves. In the five minutes it had taken her to realize she was out of her depth, panic and recover, Jim had run across the bay, waded through the shallows, met her halfway. He was angry. Face twisted, jabbing his finger in the air, yelling. She was stupid, swimming so far out. What the hell did she think she was playing at? He swung the flat of his hand at her, made her flinch, but the water broke the force of his movements anyway, converted whacks to splashes. His tirade stopped abruptly and he dived headlong into the waves and swam off to the open sea. She watched him do his purposeful front crawl, passing the spot where she had panicked and believed, for a moment or two, that she had copped it. She wanted to cry. Not because of going under, but because of Jim’s reaction; his shouting had been far worse than the near drowning. She waded back to the beach, trudged across the sand, wrapped a damp towel around her shoulders, wiped her nose on her forearm, and sat next to Liz.
‘Not waving but drowning,’ Liz said. ‘That’s us. That’s this family.’
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s a poem by Stevie Smith.’
‘Oh, well, I was not drowning but waving. I was OK until he started shouting at me.’
Liz was staring at her page and Sam thought she wasn’t taking any notice, then she rested the book on the sand, open with the pages face down. Liz was always telling them they should never do that with books, it would break the spine. It was usually Jim who failed to practise what he preached. Liz gazed across the sea, the sun catching her pretty features in a troubled configuration, and raised her hand to her brow, searching until she caught sight of Jim, a buoy floating far away. She waved at him and Sam could see with her eagle eyes inherited from her father that he was waving back.
‘So is he waving or drowning?’
Liz heaved a deep sigh. ‘Why ask me? I’m just his wife.’
Orkney, September 1989
SAM STROLLED THROUGH the graveyard to the shore, hoping to escape the sense of being watched, but the shifting outline of Hoy made her uneasy. She stared at its treacherous north face of stacks and caves, shrouded by spray where the towering cliffs plunged into the sea and met the breakers rolling in from the Atlantic. The twilight made the isle appear more cloud than land, a storm gathering across the water. She trailed the high tide mark, her eyes still drawn to the island rather than watching where she was placing her feet, and almost tripped over the rusty corpse of the seal among the bladder wrack, starbursts scarring its abdomen where the body had bloated and exploded leaving the brine to preserve its hide. She leaned and stroked the leathery skin then parked herself by the dead creature. The still presence gave her strange comfort. She waited. A pipistrelle flitted past. The mountains of Hoy blurred with the darkening sky. The North Star gleamed. Surely he would have disappeared by now. She decided to risk it, stood and retraced her steps inland along the burn. The sea breeze buffeted her from behind and she tried to hold the gusts in her mind, but the wind slipped away, rattled the deadheads of the cow parsley lining the path. Left her with a knot in her stomach.
She reached the graveyard and heard the hurried footsteps of somebody retreating as she pushed the gate. She cut through the grey tombstones, past the yellow walls of the Round Church, surveyed the Earl’s Bu and the field beyond for signs. The Norse Earls had made their home here in Orphir on the southern edge of Orkney’s Mainland, the settlement recorded in the Orkneyinga Saga. A place of deaths and ghosts. There had been dusky evenings when she had stood here and thought she’d glimpsed the shadows of pissed Norsemen fighting among the ruins of their great drinking hall, but this evening she saw nothing apart from a hooded crow pecking among the stones. He was there, though, she could tell. Watching. She had been aware of his presence all summer. She had tried to ignore the constant prickle at the back of her neck as she grappled with the gradiometer, the new-fangled piece of kit they were using to try to locate the buried remains of the Norse settlement. They couldn’t dig because the ruins ran under the cemetery and they didn’t want to disturb the graves. Geophysical surveys were a good way of detecting sub-surface features without excavating and causing damage, the archaeologist in charge of the site had said. Like water dowsing, she replied. He laughed and said if they didn’t find anything with the equipment, perhaps she could have a go with her hazel divining rods.
The initial results were not promising. Too many anomalous spikes in the data, either because the ruins lay too deep to be detected or, as the archaeologist suggested when the monitor went haywire, there was some strange force buggering up the readings. He had looked at Sam when he said that and accused her of having supernatural powers that interfered with the magnetic fields. It had taken her a couple of seconds to realize he was joking. She was the one who had mentioned water dowsing after all. The archaeologist had invited her to come back the following summer to help with another survey, if they could find the funding. She had recently finished a history degree and now, at twenty-three, was about to start a doctorate. She would love to write her thesis on the Earl’s Bu, she had said. It would be a relief, she had added – four years of academic study. He had raised an eyebrow. A relief? She had corrected herself. More of a retreat than a relief. A retreat from what, he had asked. Her father’s dodgy legacy, she had wanted to say; Jim had been a police spy, killed five years before, and she’d never quite escaped his shadow. She shrugged instead of speaking. He had eyed her shrewdly and said retreating was fine as a temporary strategy but eventually you had to turn and face the ghosts, assess the ruins that lay below one way or another. She wasn’t so sure. She had volunteered for the archaeological project in Orkney, drawn back by the happier memories of childhood holidays here with Jim, the darker recollections buried deeper. The presence of the watcher made her fear that somebody else was digging in the murkier corners of her family’s history, unearthing events best forgotten. Her return to Orkney had disturbed ghosts of a more solid and ominous kind, she feared, than the spectres of long dead Norsemen.
She spotted a merlin perched on a fence post beyond the Bu, its gold-flecked belly bright in the gloom. Something startled the bird and it fled. She scanned nearby for the cause of the disturbance and her eyes locked on the figure in the mauve shade of the sycamores at the end of the path, facing her as if he wanted to be sure he could be recognized. He waited, turned and hobbled away. Her heart hammered. She had never seen him close up, but she had little doubt about his identity. Lanky. Military bearing. Limp. Tradecraft – picking his moment to reveal himself. She had known in her gut all along it was him. Pierce, the wounded hero. The Fisher King.
She sprinted past the ruins, along the track and reached the lane just in time to see the rear end of an ancient navy Volvo estate driving towards Stromness. Still the same car. She ran to the derelict pig shed where she had parked the crappy Honda 50 she’d borrowed from the archaeologist, squashed the helmet on her head, wheeled the bike on to the pitted tarmac, swung her leg over, twisted the ignition key, kicked the start pedal. The engine spluttered and died. Fuck. Idiosyncratic, the archaeologist had said, but useful for island hopping because it was light enough to lift on and off the passenger ferries. Borrow it for the summer, he had added; he’d bought a second-hand car. She kicked the pedal again. The engine chugged, the bike leaped forward and she found herself driving in the wrong direction, away from the croft that was her temporary home, following the Volvo’s trail.
She came to the Houton turnoff, spotted the Volvo parked by the jetty, dumped the Honda on the verge, sidled down the hill, breathless for no real reason. A lighthouse blinked its distant warning. He stood beside his car, facing the water. The ferry docked. Ramps clanked, incoming cars and vans drove past. Engines revved. Cars edged forwards. The Volvo last in line. He turned and stared straight at her again before he clambered into his car and drove aboard. She stood rooted, watching the ferry as it crossed Scapa Flow, heading to the dark isle. She had resolved not to dwell on her own history and yet here she was unwinding the past, drawn back by the lure of the Fisher King. Was he still lying low in Hoy after all this time? How many years had he been exiled in his far-flung hideaway?
She had seen him twice before, both times in the summer of ’76; that was thirteen years ago when she was ten and Jim was – Jim was forty-six when he died in 1984, which made him thirty-eight in ’76. Grumpy old man, she had thought at the time, but now thirty-eight seemed almost young. Not old anyway. Grumpy maybe – he’d been in one of his deeper troughs that summer, his bleak mood cranking up the pressure, adding to the edginess of the sweaty, rainless days. The summer of the heatwave had left a dark mark in her memory and, although she had only ever glimpsed him briefly, the figure of Pierce coloured those troubled recollections. The first time she’d seen him hadn’t been here in Orkney but in south London, standing outside her childhood home. Funny word – home. The place she grew up was still home in her mind, despite the fact she no longer lived there and it was furnished with the memories she wanted to leave behind. Perhaps it always would be home for her, that ordinary suburban house. Jim had billed Pierce as his colleague, a fellow member of the secret state’s shadow family. A spook. Did all spies park their families in the suburbs, she wondered, the bland domestic surroundings part of their subterfuge, a cover for their cloak-and-dagger lives? He had arrived in a navy Volvo, dropped his wife and his daughter Anna on their doorstep then disappeared because, it turned out, his life was in danger. And he had left Sam to befriend Anna in the relentless sun and heat.
London, July 1976
THERE WAS NO shade and it was way too hot for a bike ride. She wished she’d stayed at home – but her sisters had told her to eff off when she had stuck her head around Helen’s door to see if she could join them. Liz had taken their side, urged her to find something to do by herself. She pressed her weight on the pedals, calf muscles aching, throat dry, forced the Raleigh up the hill, past the Rock and Fountain, the line of mock Tudor piles with long drives and high privet hedges guarding green lawns. Rotten Row, Jim called it. How come the hose restrictions didn’t apply to them? That was the worst thing about the drought as far as she was concerned: no sprinkler in the back garden, no running through the cool spray, squelching wet grass between her toes. It wasn’t fair. The front wheel wobbled. She was sweating but she didn’t want to take her hands off the handlebars to wipe her face, she had to keep going until she reached the top. She couldn’t give in. Under the pylon cables, sighing in the still air, past the donkeys looking sad in their makeshift animal rescue centre. Out of breath, jelly legs. Finally, the summit. The very end of London, the dirty rim; the silver stream of the bypass heat-hazy in the distance and beyond that, the green belt. But this was still the edgelands, the neither here nor there.
She turned the bike around and hurtled down the hill, faster and faster, freewheeling, almost losing control around the bends. She reached the bottom, the bike slowing as it hit the far slope of the dip, and wondered whether she could be bothered to cycle back to the top so she could repeat the exhilaration of the descent. She couldn’t. She pootled along the level, swerved right into the road that led back home. A car overtook. Brown Cortina. Jim. He had been away for months. He often disappeared, doing whatever stupid things it was that he did for his secret job that they weren’t supposed to talk about, but he had been gone for longer than usual this time, leaving them to swelter. And now he was home without warning. He pulled in ahead. She cycled up beside the door. He wound the window down, his wiry black hair plastered to his forehead.
‘Do you want to get yourself killed?’
‘No.’
‘Why don’t you use hand signals then?’
He hadn’t even said hello. ‘I do use hand signals.’
‘You didn’t just then.’
‘I didn’t realize there was a car behind me.’
‘Exactly.’
He swerved away. She waited until he had disappeared, turned her bike around and pedalled furiously back up the steepness of the hill.
*
THE TARMAC WAS still sticky despite the dusk. Jim’s Cortina parked on the verge. Liz’s car not in the garage. Liz was often out these days too; she had been appointed as a lecturer in the English department of one of London’s colleges at the beginning of the year and Roger, the head of the department, was always calling meetings. Jim had said that meetings were for poseurs and procrastinators. Liz had replied she wanted to make a good impression in her new post, so she went.
The tinny notes of Helen’s transistor radio whined through her open bedroom window. Jess and Helen had spent the afternoon smoking and doing the tarot, she reckoned. Helen was fifteen and in the last six months had taken to thick black eyeliner, punk and anything to do with the occult. Jess was thirteen and followed Helen’s lead. Helen had bought a pack of tarot cards from Martin, the hippy, who sold joss sticks and bags of weed to those in the know from his poky shop behind the shopping mall. Helen entertained her mates to tarot readings in her bedroom – the Devil, the Hanged Man, Death – Jess her willing assistant.
Sam entered the kitchen, grabbed a glass, crossed to the sink. A presence behind made her turn. Jim.
‘It’s like the Sahara out there,’ he said.
Her tongue clammed in her mouth, thick from the exertion of cycling. She filled her tumbler, took a sip, savoured the water, eyed him over the rim.
‘I spotted a camel wandering down the High Street when I was driving home this afternoon.’
He was trying to be friendly, making up for shouting at her about hand signals. She wasn’t sure she was prepared to play along. He did sometimes take her side in arguments with her older sisters, though, which was more than could be said for Liz.
‘One hump or two?’
‘One. Never trust a camel.’
Never trust anyone or anything, according to Jim.
‘Do you think it will ever rain again?’ she asked. The drought. Neutral territory.
‘I hope so.’
‘But why hasn’t it rained for so long?’
He gazed out the window at the wilting garden, the yellow grass. ‘It’s the Fisher King. He’s sitting wounded by his dwindling stream, hoping somebody will help him break the curse.’ Jim often talked like that – answered questions with stories instead of facts. She was used to it. Accepted it as part of the way he was, his secrecy, his background she supposed, growing up with the joshing of the Glasgow bar where his father was the publican. Or, at least, that was the story he told about his childhood. She had no way of knowing whether it was any more truthful than any of the other stories he told; she’d never met any of his family and he didn’t have much of a Scottish accent so for all she knew he could have been making it up.
‘Who is the Fisher King?’
‘An ancient Celtic lord.’ He stepped to the sink, twisted the tap. The pipe spluttered. Jim caught some water in a glass, held it to the light. Brown particles whirred. Dirt from the bottom of the reservoir. Or were they insects? He sipped, swished the water around his mouth, swallowed.
‘He was guarding the ancient treasures of his clan. But he was attacked and wounded. Then his enemies stole the treasures and his land was cursed, and it became a barren wasteland.’
Like water-restriction south London.
‘How did he break the curse?’
‘He didn’t. He’s still sitting there fishing, because he’s too badly hurt to hunt. He’s waiting for help. Hoping one of his children will come along and give him a hand.’
She scowled when he said that, sensing he was manipulating the story, nudging the conversation around to some favour he was after, something he wanted to tell her. There was an awkward pause. She wanted to retreat to her room and read a book, but she felt obliged to stay. He asked, ‘Do you want a friend to do stuff with over the summer?’
Why was he asking her that? She looked down, examined the cracked lino, a column of black ants marching across the floor with captured sugar grains clamped in jaws.
‘I thought you might like to meet the daughter of somebody I know.’
What was he on about? She could find her own friends; she didn’t want anything to do with any of his arrangements. Although Helen and Jess weren’t much fun these days.
‘What’s her name?’
‘Anna. You’ll get on with her. She likes doing the kind of things you like doing.’
How did he know what she liked doing? He was never there.
‘She’s the same age as you. She’s twelve.’
‘I’m ten.’
‘Close enough. She might be staying for a couple of weeks.’
‘Why?’
She suspected she was more likely to get a thick ear for impertinence than a straight answer.
He replied, ‘Her dad has to go away. Anna and Valerie, her mum, need somewhere to stay.’
‘Why do they have to stay here?’
‘I want to help them.’
‘Why?’
‘Because her dad is a colleague. We’re all part of the same family.’
The way Jim said family made her shudder.
‘Which family is that?’
He hesitated. ‘The shadow family.’
God, her own family was bad enough, she didn’t want a shadow family too.
‘Pierce. Anna’s dad. He’s always been a bit of a hero.’
‘Hero?’ That was a funny word to use and it didn’t seem quite right coming from Jim’s mouth.
‘That’s what I said. Hero.’ He was beginning to sound irritated. She’d better try a different tack.
‘Why does her dad have to go away?’
‘Because he’s damaged.’ He reconsidered the word he had used. ‘Injured. Wounded.’
‘Like the Fisher King?’
He took another glug of water.
‘Yes, I suppose so, like the Fisher King.’
That was why he had told her the story; he wanted to let her know she had to be nice to this girl Anna because her father was sick. What was wrong with him anyway? Car crash? Cancer? Well, she didn’t care if Anna’s father did have bloody cancer, she still didn’t want her staying here, with them.
‘Anna’s got a bike. You can go cycling with her.’ He drained the last drops from his glass, pulled a face, spat in the sink. ‘Jesus, that tastes disgusting.’
‘I think it has insects in it,’ she said, but he was already sauntering away, left her feeling cross. Anna and Valerie. The names rattled around in her head and she played with the story Jim had told her; Anna’s father was the Fisher King and his wound had caused the heatwave. The drought. The grittiness in the air, the bugs in the tap water, the yellow grass, and the hose restrictions that meant they couldn’t even use the sprinkler. All because of Anna and her damaged father. Their fault.
*
THEY SHUFFLED AROUND to make room for Anna and Valerie. Her sisters weren’t happy with the arrangements. Jess had only just moved out of Helen’s room and now she had to move back so that Valerie had somewhere to sleep. Sam had to jam all her things in the corner cupboard of her box bedroom to make space for a mattress on the floor. Liz was indifferent. If they needed somewhere to stay, she said, they needed somewhere to stay, but she hoped nobody expected her to hang around every evening cooking. Jim said he didn’t expect her to do anything. It was a favour, a temporary fix while Valerie and Anna looked for something permanent. The sisters huddled in Helen’s bedroom to discuss the situation; the reek of hairspray and fag smoke tickled the back of Sam’s throat. Helen laid the cross of the tarot on the floor.
‘I don’t get why they have to stay here,’ Jess said.
Helen said, ‘Because of Jim.’ She reached over, plucked the top card from her arrangement. ‘The Magician.’ She waved the card triumphantly. ‘The player of tricks. The deceiver. That’s Jim. He’s behaving like a right tosser at the moment.’
‘Maybe it’s because of the heat,’ Sam said.
Helen pinched her bare arm. ‘Why are you making excuses for him?’
*
ANNA ARRIVED TWO days later. Sam skulked behind the window and watched the navy Volvo estate ease along the verge. She didn’t know much about cars but she knew that a Volvo estate was better than a crappy Cortina. If Valerie and Anna could afford a Volvo, why couldn’t they pay for a hotel? A titchy woman clambered out of the passenger seat. A pair of long legs ending in shorts and plimsolls emerged from the back. Anna was lanky. Sam glanced at her own muscly calves. She looked stumpy in her shorts, not elegant. Not willowy. There was something confident about the way Anna slouched on the pavement, hands in pockets, and surveyed their house as if she were deciding whether it was good enough. She must have seen Sam’s face in the window because she stuck her tongue out. Sam’s stomach fizzed with anger. Sam returned the gesture, gave her a two-finger up-yours sign. Anna mirrored her V. Sam was about to intensify the hostilities, go for the one-finger salute when she realized Anna was laughing, which made Sam feel silly. She smiled too, although the anger was still bubbling away inside. Jim’s whistle heralded his descent from upstairs; one of his jovial tunes.
‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ he said. ‘You can’t leave them standing outside on the pavement.’
Sam opened the door, came face to face with Anna; porcelain skin, freckles bridging her nose, big front teeth with a gap between, unlike Sam’s overlapping fangs. Anna’s hair was short, dark and curly and her eyes were blue, like Jim’s, with black eyelashes and thick eyebrows. Sam’s eyebrows were pale and sandy, almost invisible in fact, which Jess said made her look like an alien. Or a Midwich cuckoo according to Helen, because her khaki eyes gleamed golden in certain lights. Maybe Sam was a cuckoo and Anna was the real daughter of Jim. She was being stupid. That couldn’t be right anyway because Anna was tall and lanky and Jim wasn’t. Neither was Valerie. She was a sparrow, a twitchy mouse. Jim took the case Valerie was holding. He waved the guests inside.
‘Jess, put the kettle on.’
Anna and her mother edged through the porch, dragging their bags.
‘There are still a few things in the car, I’m afraid,’ Valerie said.
Sam couldn’t help feeling sorry for her; she sounded so apologetic. Unlike Anna.
‘My bike is in the back,’ Anna said as if she expected somebody to fetch it for her. Bloody Princess.
Jim directed. ‘Go and have a drink in the kitchen. Sam, help me with the rest of the cases.’
She trailed after Jim, scuffing her plimsolls along the floor, hating Jim for ordering her around in front of Anna. She hung back at the top of the front steps, skulked underneath the twisted laburnum tree that was already dropping its poisonous seed pods on the pavement, the stress of the drought speeding up its natural cycle. The door on the driver’s side of the Volvo creaked. A tall and wiry figure appeared. He had to be Anna’s father. Pierce, Jim had called him. He walked around the back of the car to greet Jim. He was limping. Perhaps that was why he didn’t help with the cases. Was it the wound Jim had told her about? The damaged Fisher King. And he was like a king, Sam reckoned as she watched them talking; Pierce commanding, looking down on Jim. Her father stood at ease, sharing a few pleasantries, she supposed, with his colleague from the secret state.
She crouched, tickled their cat that was sunning itself on the shrivelled marigolds and edged down a few steps, close enough to identify Jim’s voice, if not quite close enough to hear everything he was saying ‘...whatever I can do... until it’s safe...’ Pierce nodded, made some reply in a low voice she couldn’t hear and she guessed that was the end of the conversation, but then Pierce leaned over Jim and started talking in a sharper tone that struck her as out of order when her dad was obviously doing him a favour. She snatched at a couple of Pierce’s words. ‘...problem... not sure how...’ He must have caught Jim by surprise too because he shrank away. ‘It wasn’t...’ Jim said. Pierce interrupted. ‘I’m not saying...’ his voice dropped again ‘...whose fault...’ Her stomach lurched. I’m not saying... whose fault... She couldn’t tell whether he was warning her father about something or pointing the finger at him, accusing him of something for some reason. She strained to hear. ‘...used water...’ Pierce continued. Water. Was it something to do with the drought? The curse of the Fisher King? The cat purred, untroubled by the exchange. Pierce placed a hand on Jim’s shoulder in what looked to her like a friendly gesture, as if the concerns he had voiced had evaporated in the evening heat. Perhaps she had imagined the tension. ‘Thanks... I know I can rely...’ Jim didn’t reply. Or if he did, she didn’t hear him. She repeated Pierce’s words to herself and the sounds bounced around her brain. Water, fault, water, fault. They didn’t make much sense.
‘Sam.’
Jim’s call startled her.
‘Come and take this bike.’
She stood and smiled at Pierce but he had already looked away, limped back to the car without a smile or a hello and left her feeling invisible. Jim heaved a racer from the boot of the Volvo, plonked it on the pavement.
‘Come on, you dozy lummox. I don’t want to stand here all day.’
She had a sudden urge to kick the bike and run away. She hated Jim. Hated his mates. Hated the way he treated her when he was in a bad mood, when he was with other people. Hated him full stop. Helen was right, she shouldn’t be making excuses for his behaviour. She took the bike, wheeled it up the drive and through the garage, the pedals catching her ankle, making her madder. A proper racer, with dropped handlebars and loads of gears, the saddle way too high for her short legs, she noted enviously.
*
JIM WAS IN the kitchen, making Valerie a cup of tea. Jess had ignored his order to boil the kettle.
‘Sam, show Anna her room,’ Jim said.
It wasn’t Anna’s room, it was Sam’s room. Jim shouted for Liz to come down. No response. The door of Helen’s room remained firmly shut as they passed along the landing. Sam opened her bedroom door at the back of the house.
‘You’ve got the mattress.’
Anna dumped her bag on the floor. She farted. ‘That’s a smelly one.’ She wafted the air with her hand.
Sam suppressed her giggles, unwilling to reveal she was amused by Anna’s lack of stuffiness.
Anna asked, ‘Does your dad always do that funny whistle when he answers the door?’
‘Yes.’
‘So does mine.’
‘What’s happened to your dad?’
‘Pierce? He has to go away.’
Sam perched on the edge of her bed. Anna sat down next to her. Sam noticed the side of Anna’s thumbnail was bleeding where she must have nagged the skin.
‘Does your dad work for the police?’
‘No.’ Anna’s blue eyes glinted through her black curls. ‘He works for the Firm.’
‘The Firm?’
‘That’s what he calls it. Intelligence. MI6. He’s a spy.’
The statement caught Sam off guard; she wasn’t allowed to talk about her dad’s work, and yet here was Anna casually mentioning that her father was a spy. She couldn’t decide whether she was annoyed or impressed by Anna’s brazen disregard for the rules.
‘My dad’s a spy too,’ she said. ‘He works for the Force.’
‘He can’t be a proper spy if he’s a policeman. That’s different.’
Anna’s comment riled her. ‘My dad is a proper spy. He works for some secret part of the Force. He’s always going away on missions. Sometimes he grows a beard and I asked him once whether it was his disguise and he said it was. Actually, he said the disguise was when he shaved it off. But he said I wasn’t to tell anybody.’
She’d never revealed so much about her dad’s work to anybody before; it left her with a hollow in her stomach. Still, Jim had said they were all part of the same family, so why should it matter if she shared their secrets with Anna?
‘Who does he spy on?’ There was a note of disbelief in Anna’s voice.
‘I don’t know.’ She dug around, searching for something to say, retreating from her openness. ‘He told me once he tries to stop people who use violence. He said that was why he did it, to stop innocent people getting hurt, and that’s why I shouldn’t say anything because otherwise we might get hurt.’
A wood pigeon cooed in the back garden.
‘Who does your dad spy on then?’ Sam asked.
‘Arms dealers, terrorists. That kind of thing.’
Sam wanted to say that was what her dad did too, but she wasn’t sure whether it was true. She said nothing.
‘That’s why Pierce has to go away. We’ve moved out of our house because it’s too dangerous to stay there. We don’t know where he’s going.’
Anna lifted her thumb to her mouth, chewed her nail and Sam felt bad for being cross about her staying.
Orkney, September 1989
THE AIR WAS chilly beneath the clear sky, stars dusting the moonless night. She batted away the crane flies, torn between retreating to the cosiness of the croft and sitting here in the meadow a little while longer, making the most of the last few evenings before she returned to London. Peewits called from the shore below, waves gently lapped the shingle; the sounds of dwindling summer. She stared across Scapa Flow to Hoy, followed the beams of a car travelling north and attempted to identify the source of the magnetic pull. Was it Pierce or his daughter Anna? Or something deeper. She hugged her knees. Introspection made her edgy. Her father’s long absences, filled with anxieties about when and whether he would return, had taught her to cauterize her emotions – focus elsewhere; nature, school, protests, music, the best way to roll a spliff, anything other than her feelings. Be like a spy, keep your true self hidden. Her father’s sudden death had blown the lid off her cover and she had lost it for a while, swamped by grief and anger before she had regained her balance. She liked to believe, though, that she had emerged from the turbulence with a maturity that enabled her to reflect on the depths without sinking in sheer panic. And now, when she analysed her desire to follow the Fisher King, she could identify a shadow – a mark like a bruise inside herself. A fear about her father. Water. Fault. Had he done something wrong? Was he the cause of Pierce’s damage? She shuddered. She might have matured, but still she was gripped by unease when she thought about that summer. The tense conversations. Anxieties intensified by the heatwave. She pushed herself to her feet, trod the soft grass to the croft.
*
SHE ROSE EARLY, drank her coffee outside, the cool breeze clearing her mind. The sky overhead was sapphire, but in the far distance she could see the cumulus gathering. Showers later, she reckoned. She found her cagoule, stuffed it in her backpack, kickstarted the Honda and drove to Scapa Pier – the car ferry to Lyness took a different route on alternate days. She clanked over the gangplanks, parked the bike at the side of the car deck and went to sit on the passenger walkway above, kept her eyes fixed on the choppy water, blanked her mind, fearful of dredging up confusing emotions which might discourage her from seeing this through.
The emptiness of Lyness surprised her. She had expected something more – a shop, a post office, police station, a sign that the people who lived on the island had a visible means of support. But there was little beyond the remains of the old army barracks. How many people had been stationed on this island during the Second World War? Thousands. Hard to believe. She rode through the straggle of houses and turned right, heading north. Hoy was separated from Mainland by a narrow stretch of water, and yet it felt as if it was part of a different archipelago. Mainland was an emerald glowing in the ocean. Hoy was dismal; wind-lashed crags littered with boulders and scree. But as the road dipped to the lush green and gold of Pegal Bay, she was reminded that the barren mountains nurtured unexpected fern-fringed burns and coves where rowan and ash trees flourished. There was something bewitching about these glens, enchantments that could easily blind the unwary to the dangers of the waves and wind and cliff-edge drops to the water.
She left Pegal Bay behind, passed the solitary headstone marking Betty Corrigall’s grave, the story of her sad death playing on her mind as she crossed the moor. A buzzard circled overhead, searching for rabbits in the ling and moss. She took the road to Rackwick, an inland cut through the mountains, kept her eye on the tarmac – the vertical walls of the valley made her dizzy – and breathed a sigh of relief when the moraine gave way to the wild tangle of Berriedale. The view ahead brightened; a hollow of blue sea and sky caught between soaring cliffs. A scattering of crofts littered the dip and the northern slopes of the bay; ruins, most of them, left to crumble. The road became a bumpy track then dwindled to a dead end in the middle of the deserted hamlet. She wheeled the Honda into a roofless bothy, parked it among the rosebay willow herb that had colonized the interior, returned outside and leaned against the wall. Sight of the Volvo parked beside the highest croft knotted her stomach, although now she had satisfied herself that he must still be living here, she wasn’t quite sure what to do. She needed an excuse, even though she knew he would see through any casual deception. She surveyed the low building, with its whitewashed walls and blank windows staring warily from underneath the turf roof. She had the feeling she was being watched. Was he waiting for her? She fished an apple from her rucksack, crunched, spat the pips, rested the back of her head against the stones. The autumnal sun warmed her face. She closed her eyes and pictured the cumulus clouds hanging over the Atlantic, drew them nearer, imagined their colour shifting from white to mercury and lead. The pounding of the waves and mews of gulls lulled her. She was startled by a spit of water on her face. She squinted; the sky above was overcast, threatening rain. A sudden shift in the weather. She willed the clouds to dump their load on Hoy.
She followed the path winding through the crofts. One or two were occupied, wood smoke curling from chimneys, gardens fenced and ordered. A few more people living here, she reckoned, than there had been in ’76. But not many more. She reached the final bend before the track became steeper and climbed the cliff. She was level with the whitewashed croft. She paused, turned and surveyed the bay below; fulmars gliding over a garnet crescent of sand, a copper burn burbling through the peat. She detected a movement in the furthest corner of her vision. He was standing at his door. He had been waiting. Watching. Her head swivelled when she felt his gaze on her face, too late to pretend she hadn’t seen him. Even from here, she could tell he was attractive in the same way as Anna; the couldn’t-care-less-what-anybody-else-thinks confidence, hands in sagging jeans, baggy jumper, the ease that made him seem as if he belonged anywhere and everywhere. He did the same head scoop as Anna as well, a movement that gave the impression he was looking up at her even though he must be nearly a foot taller.
‘Good day for a stroll,’ he said; the bantering tone she recognized from her encounters with old Etonians at Oxford.
‘Do you think so? I was worried it might rain.’
He twisted his eyes in an exaggerated movement, looked at the sky. ‘Oh that’s nothing. If you worried about a few clouds here in Hoy you’d never get anything done.’
‘Right.’ She mimicked his body language, stuck her hands in her pockets.
‘Just here for the day, are you?’
‘Yes.’ She wondered which of them would blink first, acknowledge they knew the other’s identity.
He made his move. ‘Did I see you yesterday at the Earl’s Bu?’
‘Yes, I was there.’
‘The Earl’s Bu. And the Round Church, built by Earl Hakon to atone for the murder of St Magnus, a place of penance for past sins I always think. Are you a penitent?’
She smiled; the spy’s ability to put you on the back foot, bypass any small-talk and ask a barbed question as if they were asking the time of day.
‘No. Not a penitent. I’ve been helping with an archaeological survey. How about you? What were you doing in Orphir? I thought I recognized you from somewhere.’
‘Indeed.’ He raised one eyebrow. ‘You thought correctly. And I think you’re after something more than a glimpse of the Old Man. Am I right?’
She bit her lip, wondered whether she should back off now, leave it while she could, finish her walk. Keep her distance. A raindrop splattered against her cheek, then another and another, hammering the path.
‘Well I never, you were right about the rain,’ he said. ‘That came out of nowhere.’ He pulled a bamboozled face, and she remembered Anna’s comedic flair, her lanky limbs made for slapstick. ‘Perhaps you’d better come in until it’s passed.’
He stepped back, held the door.
*
OVER THE THRESHOLD into a gloomy space that served as kitchen and living room. The darkness surprised her after the brightness of the day. There was only one window, overlooking the bay. The floor was stone flagged, a wood burner nestled in the hearth, armchairs either side, a bookshelf in one corner. He lived here alone she guessed, a hermit. A simple life.
‘Have a seat.’ He gestured at a chair in what Sam suspected was as much an attempt at confinement as an offer of hospitality. She perched on the chair opposite the one he had offered; a small act of assertion. He strolled to the sink, filled a kettle, placed it on the hob, leaned back against the kitchen table, folded his arms. He had a prominent Adam’s apple which bobbed as he swallowed and was the only sign she could discern that he was even slightly apprehensive about her visit.
‘Let me guess.’ He paused, nodded. ‘You’re Jim Coyle’s daughter.’
‘How did you work that one out?’
‘You’re taller, but you haven’t changed that much.’
He had taken some notice of her then, that day in 1976.
‘Sam,’ she said.
‘Good to meet you properly after all these years. And as I’m sure you know, I’m Pierce. Anna’s father. So, Sam... what brings you to this remote spot?’
He spoke in a jocular voice, the knowing tone of double bluff she remembered Jim using – the refusal to be serious because he wasn’t going to pretend that he was entirely straightforward and, because he had acknowledged the shadiness of his persona, he was, in effect, suggesting he was honest. Conversation for a spook was, she suspected, always a game of stealth. And here he was tipping the conversation around, implying she was the one with a hidden agenda, even though he had been watching her all summer. Although now he was asking, she realized she hadn’t prepared an answer. What did bring her here? The rain pounded the window.
‘I suppose... I suppose I was curious. I wanted to find out what had happened to Anna.’
‘Anna.’ He rubbed his stubbled chin. ‘Well now...’ The kettle rattled on the hob. ‘Tea? I’m afraid I can’t offer you coffee. I don’t drink the stuff myself. Gives me palpitations.’ He scoffed when he said palpitations, as if he were deriding his own frailties; she suspected the display was a diversion, an attempt to head her away from the subject of Anna.
‘Tea is fine. Thank you.’ She wasn’t that fond of tea, but in the absence of proper coffee she would drink it. ‘Milk no sugar.’
He messed around with a mug and some tea bags, handed her the brew, sat in the chair opposite, stretched his long legs, crossed them at the ankle.
‘You picked the best chair. The one with the spectacular view.’ Her small act of defiance hadn’t gone unnoticed. ‘At least, it’s spectacular when you can see it.’ He gestured at the window, the downpour curtaining the cliffs. ‘Rackwick Bay wasn’t exactly where I expected to end up, but there are certainly worse places to be confined.’
‘Are you confined here?’
‘Ah. Like your father. Cut through the crap.’ He was buttering her up for some reason. ‘Confined is probably the wrong word. I suppose I am my own gaoler. I prefer to stay on Hoy. I take the ferry to Stromness every couple of weeks, do some shopping, make a few phone calls...’
‘Don’t you have a phone?’
‘No. No phone. I still rely on the telephone box in the valley. No television. No electricity.’
He pointed to a flickering paraffin lamp on the table. ‘The old crofts were built to keep the heat in, so there aren’t many windows. Sometimes I have to light the lamps during the day.’
The lamp cast a pale arc, failed to dispel the murk.
‘To be honest, nothing much has changed since I washed up here in ’76. A couple more neighbours in the summer. Running water, which is a blessing. I have a radio for company. The World Service. Thank god for the BBC.’
He nodded his head at a battered Bush radio with a red dial sitting on a desk. ‘But I live a solitary existence. I make the trip to Stromness, then I return here and pull up the drawbridge, draw the curtains.’
She wasn’t entirely convinced; ex-spies never completely retreated. If there was one thing an old spy couldn’t bear to relinquish, it was the inside track on information. They always had to be in the know, share their whispers and conspiracies, enjoy the feeling of superiority over lesser mortals who were oblivious to the conversations behind closed doors. He rapped his fingers on his mug; his nails manicured – short and clean. He lived this simple life in a deserted fishing village without the basics that most people took for granted, but he still managed to exude this sense of good living. Perhaps it was in his genes, the air of the upper classes.
‘Doesn’t it get lonely here in the winter?’
He flashed a well-maintained smile. ‘Oh, I’ve lived in worse conditions.’ His irises gleamed, the same cornflower blue as Anna’s, although his eyeballs bulged more than hers, which made him seem more intense. He leaned forwards, caught her gaze. ‘I heard Jim... died.’
‘Yes.’
She shrugged, nothing more to add. She didn’t want to go into the details, she assumed he had heard anyway – the stories, official and unofficial. He furrowed his brow and nodded sympathetically; an acknowledgement of bereavement, an indication that he would keep a respectful distance from her feelings about her father’s passing. He leaned down, rubbed his ankle. The old wound perhaps. She cast her eye to the window, the deluge easing enough for her to spot the dark wings of a skua gliding over the valley, and she wondered why she had come here. Anna. Stick to Anna.
‘Biscuit?’
He offered her an unopened packet of Digestives. She shook her head. She tried again.
‘Anna. How is she?’
He winced when she said her name.
‘Anna, yes. Being a spy doesn’t always sit comfortably with family life. I’m not sure many people have successfully combined the two. As you may know, Anna and her mother went their own way.’
Her mother, that was an odd way of describing Valerie. They’d obviously drifted apart, as marital partners often do. Especially if one of them goes into hiding on a remote, windswept island. But surely his daughter was different. She persisted. ‘You keep in contact with Anna?’
He sighed, stood, crossed to the window, locked his hands behind his back, shoulders sloping. She found her gaze flitting around the room, alighting on the shelves, searching in the gloom.
‘It seemed better to make a clean break at the time.’ He was talking to a point on the other side of the rain-splattered pane, halfway up the sandstone cliff.
‘What, you mean you haven’t seen her?’
‘Not since the day I drove her over to your house. The summer of ’76.’