Still Water (43 page)

The car took the route towards the point, which avoided going back through town. Only the driver’s head was visible as if Charlie was keeping his head down to avoid any chance of being seen. Matt wondered how long this had been going on. He felt sorry for Ruth Thorne having to learn that she was right about her husband cheating on her, but he thought that she seemed like the kind of person who would deal with the situation and put it behind her, then get on with her life. It occurred to him that maybe he could learn a lesson from her.

He pulled over when the car in front turned off the road and vanished along a track between the trees. He sat thinking for a while, and then he got out and started walking towards the house that was set back in the woods.

It was past one a.m. by the time Matt arrived back at Ruth Thorne’s house. He’d been home and called her from there so she was expecting him. There was a light on in the window and she opened the door before he could knock. She wore a robe wrapped around her, her hair looked as if she’d quickly dragged a brush through it, her face was scrubbed pink and shining. There was no sign of the slumped shoulders or resigned weariness that characterized defeat. Matt knew as soon as he saw her that she would be okay, and he thought she’d been right when she’d said once that she deserved better than a husband who cheated on her.

“Come on in,” she said. “Coffee’s on. You look like you could use some.”

They sat at the kitchen table and Matt told her what had happened after Charlie had left the house, and though she appeared stoically unsurprised to have her suspicions about her husband confirmed, when she learned the details she was angry.

That bastard better not show his face around here again.”

Matt doubted that he would. He allowed her time to give vent to her feelings, but she wasn’t the type to feel sorry for herself. Before he’d drunk his coffee she was questioning him about the practical details of obtaining a divorce, and he reassured her that it would be a simple process.

“I want to thank you for your help,” she said when eventually he rose to leave.

She showed him to the door, and the way she was handling all this made him decide to tell her something he’d been planning to leave until the morning. “I found out something else tonight.” He related what he’d discovered, and as she listened she realized the implications, including the fact that before long the entire island would know about Charlie.

“Well, at least something good will come out of it,” she said finally, which Matt thought was a pretty good attitude for her to have under the circumstances.

After he left he drove home with the intention of trying to snatch a couple of hours’ sleep before it was time to go and meet Ben Harper. By the time he got there it had started raining. Fat heavy drops hit the windshield, exploding like small bombs, and when he got out the car he could feel that the wind had changed. The breeze was cool and quickly gathered strength. One minute there was a rustling sound in the tops of the trees,

and the next a strong gust came up the hillside whipping up dry debris on the woodland floor and then the tops of the trees were buffeted and began to tremble as if in fear of the approaching storm.

Matt raced for the porch as the rain came down in earnest. Great drops of water hit the dusty track making small craters, and then as he hit the steps the heavens opened and in minutes the track was a mass of surface puddles. It was impossible to see more than twenty yards from the house even with all the lights on. The sky was dark with cloud and on the ground the rain turned everything grey. The wind picked up and shook the trees like a giant hand. Inside Matt lay down on his bed and closed his eyes, listening to the storm outside. He tried to sleep, but his mind refused to shut down, and a constant parade of images and questions kept him awake until in the end he gave up, and spent the next couple of hours sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee while the storm blew itself out. It built to a rapid crescendo, the wind howling through the woods, rain lashing the walls and roof like some furious creature trying to gain entry, then as quickly as it had begun it abated as the front passed through.

“You look like shit,” Ben announced when Matt arrived at the dock in the morning. The sky was turning from black to midnight blue, the stars fading as night gave way to another day. The wind had changed again, and the air felt thick and warm. Steam rose from the wet ground and evidence of the ferocity of the storm lay all around. Crates and lobster traps and assorted debris had been picked up and tossed randomly about.

“I didn’t get a lot of sleep,” Matt said, eyeing the scuba gear already laid out on the stern deck. Ben unhooked the bow line and stepped aboard.

“You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

Matt climbed aboard, and other than the half second it took him to notice that he didn’t break out in a cold sweat or fall in a quivering heap on the deck, he hardly registered the fact that he’d left behind the comfort of dry land. Rejoined Ben up top as he swung the launch away from the dock and headed for the mid-channel marker, and when they were clear he opened the throttle. The motor growled and as the stern settled back into the water the bow rose and they quickly gathered speed, planing over the placid harbour until they hit the swell beyond the heads.

As the sun came up and the sky lightened, the sea was coloured with a shifting palette of blues and greens. It took them just a few minutes to reach the entrance to the cove, where Ben used landmarks that he’d noted from the previous day to position the launch in roughly the spot where he’d last dived. He checked on the depth sounder until he found where the seabed started to drop away at the edge of the channel, and then he hit the button that dropped the anchor.

This is it.”

Matt helped him get into his scuba gear, and while he was sitting on the edge of the boat cleaning his mask Ben looked towards the shore several hundred yards away, his expression creased into a thoughtful frown.

“What is it?”

“Look on the rocks there. That driftwood was all washed up by the storm last night.”

The rocks were covered all along the shore with a mess of seaweed and rubbish that had been dumped high above the current water line. As well as driftwood Matt could see plastic containers, floats and the odd broken lobster trap. All the detritus lost or dumped by fisherman in the waters around the island. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but there was always a lot of debris after a storm.

“What of it?”

“Whatever it was I saw down there yesterday,” Ben said. “It’s likely to have moved and we’re right by the edge of the channel here.”

They exchanged looks, but it seemed there was nothing else to say until Ben went down to take a look. He slipped over the side, and when he was in the water he pulled his mask down and put his regulator in his mouth, then gave the thumbs up sign and a moment later he vanished.

Matt could only wait.

He was unable to keep still, and he paced back and forth across the small space of the stern deck, repeatedly checking over the side to see if there was any sign of Ben returning, but the water was murky from all the sand and silt that had been stirred up by the storm and he couldn’t see beyond a few feet below the surface. He felt a mixture of dread and anticipation. One thing that had become inescapably clear to him after saving Ella from the wreck of the Santorini, was that he was in love with her. But whatever the consequences might be, before there could be any hope for a future between them, Matt had to know what had happened to Bryan. Perhaps then they could talk and she could explain her side of it and then maybe, just maybe they could move forward from there. But if Ben came back empty handed and Ella maintained her silence, there would be no answers and this would remain between them forever, a barrier they could never hope to cross.

He had to wait an agonizing twenty minutes before Ben finally surfaced. Matt helped him into the back of the boat and waited impatiently while he took off his mask.

“Did you find it?”

Ben shook his head. “It’s gone.”

Somehow Matt thought, he had known this would be the outcome. Despite everything he experienced a glimmer of relief that had nothing to do with the law, or with himself and the way he felt about Ella, but was purely about her. This was the evidence that could have convicted her of a serious crime and earned her a long prison term, and it was gone. He felt suddenly tired.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I took a good look around. The storm must have carried it into the channel.”

“It couldn’t have just been moved somewhere else?”

Ben shook his head. “It was too heavy. It felt like it had been weighed down with something. The currents couldn’t have moved it more than a few yards, and I’ve looked in every nook and cranny down there. It’s gone Matt.”

As if he had an inkling of what this meant to Matt, Ben allowed him a few moments to himself while he busied himself taking off his scuba gear. Matt stared across the ocean, surprised at the depth of the hollow emptiness that he felt.

“What now?” Ben said eventually.

“I guess we look for Jake.”

They raised the anchor and headed for the point to begin the search along the shoreline. As they motored along at a slow pace they scanned the rocks and tiny bays for any sign of a body amidst the flotsam. They tried the other side of the reef, staying well clear of the cliffs and finally when they hadn’t found anything they went into the cove.

At one point Ben thought he saw something caught up in a sunken tree trunk twenty feet down and he put on a snorkel and mask to take a closer look.

Matt watched him swim down then lost him among the mass of shadows and half defined shapes that lay beneath the surface. He sat on the rail to wait, nursing the sense of defeat and melancholy that had descended over him. Though the launch was anchored close to shore he felt as if he were all alone, St. George some deserted island he’d happened upon. The only sound was the call of gulls and the pounding roar of the sea as it thundered over the reef and crashed against the rocks at the foot of the cliffs on the other side of the cove. Out in the bay the water lay unruffled like a sheet of glass, the reflected woods so real that after a while the senses began to be deceived by the illusion and it was almost possible to believe land and water had merged as one. In the distance lay the dark finger of the jetty, and behind it the squat shape of the boathouse. Matt was mesmerized by the motion of the swell, by the hypnotic images around him, and slowly without deliberate thought or effort, something that had bothered him, but which he hadn’t been able to put his finger on, took shape.

He was startled when Ben broke the surface just a few feet away.

“Shit, don’t do that,” Matt said, his heart leaping. “You find anything?”

“Just a rotting log.”

Matt helped him back on board and pointed to the jetty. “Take us over there. There’s something I need to look at.”

Ben steered for the beach and cut the motor as the launch drifted towards the jetty. Matt stepped ashore and tied the bow line. The strip of beach was littered in both directions by the mess of driftwood and other rubbish that had been washed ashore. Across the bay the dark shape of the dead orca was visible, though it looked sunken now, as nature absorbed it slowly back into the earth.

Matt went back to the old boat shed, and pushed open the door, though he already knew what he would find. He stared into the empty space for a few moments, and when he turned around Ben was watching curiously.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure.” Twenty yards away, he spotted a chunk of wood lying on the sand. When he reached it he saw that it was in fact not just a piece of wood and he bent down to examine it. One side was painted white, and the boards it was made up of were jagged at either end where they’d broken.

“What does this look like to you?”

Ben gave it no more than a cursory glance. “It’s part of a boat. Maybe a crabber.”

“That’s what I thought.” Matt looked out at the bay, and then back at the boathouse. “Every time I came here something bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was until now. It’s the boathouse. It’s empty.” Ben looked at him uncomprehendingly. Think about it. Bryan lived just back there in the woods. This is his jetty, that’s his boathouse. So where’s his boat?”

“Maybe he didn’t have one.”

“He was a fisherman. What fisherman have you ever heard of who didn’t have a boat? Besides, what else would he keep in there.” He gestured back towards the old wooden structure at the end of the jetty. Matt felt as if he had an itch he couldn’t scratch. Something about this was important. He didn’t know how or why, but he felt that he was right. He looked down at the piece of wreckage, and then his gaze turned out to the cove as if the answer might be there.

An image of the Seawind took shape in his mind as she had followed the orca into the cove. And now Jake too was gone. His gaze travelled back around the shoreline to the remains of the dead orca along the beach.

An idea began to take shape.

“What is it?” Ben asked, watching his expression.

“I want to run something past you,” Matt said.

Matt turned back to the beach where a small group of people stood waiting, and started towards them. Out in the cove, where the mirrored images of the surrounding hills and trees were painted on the surface, Ben Harper’s launch lay at anchor close to a dragger that had been brought in from the harbour following Matt’s call to Baxter earlier that morning. Judge Walker and an officer in the uniform of the St. George police department stood alongside Ella. Her mother was also there, as well as Anne Laine who had insisted on being present to look out for her patient.

As Matt wondered how much longer Baxter would be, his cruiser appeared at the end of the track that led through the woods to the road. He got out, and Kate Little emerged from the passenger door. Ella watched as they approached, her attention fixed on Kate, her expression difficult to interpret.

Further back a small knot of onlookers had appeared, curious to see what was going on after news had spread in the harbour, and they gathered together where they’d parked their vehicles at the edge of the trees. Another of Baxter’s officers stood close by to keep them back as yet another truck appeared and a man and a woman climbed out.