The killing stones, p.28
The Killing Stones, page 28
This felt unreal again, a nightmare Alice in Wonderland world of strange creatures and vanishing characters, where nothing was quite as it seemed, where everything was shifting.
Perez stood for a moment to watch the action. The dark athlete might have been fast, but he wasn’t strong and a muscular uppie lad had wrestled the ba’ from him and was heading back up the street towards them. The uppie supporters started cheering. The progress of the game had changed again, and this was going better than they’d expected. Then Lawrie, a doonie, appeared out of the pack and snatched the ba’ back. He turned, and head down he charged in the opposite direction, wrong-footing the opposing players. He was big, but he was fast too. He’d put clear space between himself and the following crowd.
Perez suspected that Lawrie was always going to win. He was always going to be the person who seized the ba’ and ran with it towards the harbour. The committee and the other doonie boys might have planned it – Let’s give the lad his moment of glory, eh? In his father’s memory – or it might have happened on the day. Once Lawrie got the ba’, nobody would have thought it right to challenge him. But maybe he’d got there on merit, because he was strong and swift, sprinting along the streets, quite alone now, the following crowd a little way off cheering him on. With his blond hair and muscular stature, he could have been a Viking hero, the subject of a saga.
Through the thinning crowd, far away, Perez thought he caught a glimpse of his son. A blue jacket and a knitted hat. Someone had hold of his hand and was leading him not towards the harbour where it seemed the game would end but away from it. They appeared to be running. Perez had the impression that the boy was being dragged against his will, stumbling. This wasn’t what he’d expected at all.
‘Vaila will have made her way to the water,’ Willow said, ‘to see Lawrie’s moment of triumph. Perhaps she went straight there, knowing that this was how it would end.’
‘No!’ Perez was shouting. ‘Look!’
Before Willow could answer, Perez had already set off in pursuit of the boy, through a series of lanes, pushing his way past the stragglers who were moving in the opposite direction, following the flow of play.
He lost sight of the boy almost immediately and wondered even if James had been there at all. All morning he’d been conjuring ghosts and monsters from his subconscious, twisting the facts to form more outlandish tales: first Barbara Johnson, then Miles Chambers and now his son. He turned a sharp corner, and in the distance, at the end of a residential street of grey terraced houses, he caught another glimpse of blue.
He’d stopped for a moment to catch his breath but started running again, his chest heaving. When he approached the end of the street, he saw he was in an area of the town unfamiliar to him. Everything was quiet. The noise of the Ba’ seemed a long way off. The street was empty.
‘Hey!’ Perez shouted. ‘Where are you?’ Anger was making his head throb. He could feel a nerve pulsing in his neck.
He’d reached a cul-de-sac of small semi-detached homes, grey render and grey slate roofs. No sign of the boy or the adult with him. Now, Perez was doubting his vision again. He must have seen another child with a parent or grandparent, and they must have gone into one of the houses. If he had seen anyone at all. He’d have to go back to Willow and tell her that he’d made a mistake, and that James was still missing.
Then, as he moved closer, he saw a narrow footpath leading past one of the houses. It led away steeply, high walls on either side, a shortcut towards the harbour. He set off down it. And there they were, moving more slowly now, and Perez could make them out more clearly: James and Miles. Miles still had his back to Perez and hadn’t seen him.
‘Hey!’ Perez bellowed again. ‘Let him go! What the hell is going on here?’
Then the pair did stop and turn. The tall man and the small boy, still hand in hand, standing very close together because the path was so narrow, caught in a shaft of sunlight as the clouds parted briefly.
At that moment, Perez saw that James was laughing, giggling as he did when something had suddenly amused him.
‘You’re as red as a berry, Dad.’ The boy shouted because Perez was still some distance away. ‘You’d be no good at the Ba’.’
There was a sudden moment of relief, but Perez could still feel anger and adrenaline as stress in his body. His muscles tense and tight. He loped up to the couple and stood, fists clenched, face to face with Miles, and repeated the same question. But it was James who answered as though this was all some sort of joke.
‘Miles thought we’d get to the water quicker this way. We wanted to be there at the end of the game. I knew the doonies would win and that’s where they’d be. But I got a stitch, so we just had to wait and that slowed us down.’
Perez started to breathe again. He bent and took James in his arms.
‘There’s nothing worse than a stitch.’ Miles’s voice was serious and affectionate at the same time. Perez still had an irrational urge to hit him.
‘Miles said you and Mum would be there too.’
‘Mum will be there.’ Perez kept his voice calm. ‘But I wanted to find you. We were worried.’ He looked over the boy’s head and spoke to Miles. ‘We didn’t know what was happening.’
At last, Miles must have sensed something of Perez’s fear, the fading anger. ‘I couldn’t tell you that I’d found him. You know that I don’t have a mobile these days. And really, I thought this would be the quickest route to get to you. That’s why we were running. I’m sorry.’
‘No.’ Perez smiled. But still he asked Miles to walk ahead of them, while he took James’s hand. He wanted some space between them. ‘Thanks for finding him.’
James, unaware of the anxiety he’d caused or the tension between the men, tugged Perez on, wanting to be there quicker, to see the end of the game. Perez made him wait for a moment while he texted Willow to say that the boy was safe and until he’d seen that the message had been read.
It seemed that Lawrie’s progress to the finish line had been less straightforward than they’d expected, because he hadn’t yet reached it. He’d been challenged by an uppie, a big lad with an incipient moustache who looked older than sixteen. There was a tussle for the ba’. None of the other players intervened. This was a combat between two individuals now.
Perez thought that if Barbara was back in her hotel room, she must surely be hearing the noise. If she’d had a room looking out at the harbour, she’d be able to watch the scene below her. Perhaps though she was still in the crowd, watching the finale play out.
He was distracted by the thought, and by the sight of some Westray folks at the front of what had become an audience, a semicircle of admiring people. Willow saw him before he noticed her. She rushed across the street to crouch and put her arms around her son.
Just as Willow joined them, Lawrie managed to get a grip on the ba’. He raced to the harbour wall. He stood for a moment, the ba’ above his head, challenging an opponent to seize it at the last moment. Then, instead of hurling the ball into the Basin, he jumped with it, and other boys joined him. Every year, somehow one boy or man ended up there if the doonies won. A traditional end to the sport. Lawrie’s head appeared above the water, lifted by the others, and the crowd cheered. This year, at least, there was no discussion about who was the winner.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
WILLOW COULD FEEL TEARS ON HER cheeks as she held out her arms to the boy. Tears of gratitude and relief, as if the emotion was so great that it had to spill out. She saw Lawrie leaping into the sea with the other boys, was aware of the splash that their entrance made, reaching even to where she was standing, the salty droplets on her cheek mixing with the tears. The sound of cheering that might have been waves crashing. Or thunder. Something inhuman at least. A monster roaring. But in this moment, none of that mattered.
‘Miles found him,’ Perez said. His voice sounded rather forced. It was as if he could hardly believe the boy had been found. ‘He says they were on their way back to us.’
James was on the ground again, pulling his mother’s arm, wanting to add his congratulations to Lawrie’s family. Perez held Willow back, just for a moment.
‘I’m going to end this now,’ he said. ‘I know we planned to wait until the afternoon, but this is the time, and we have all that we needed. Lucy Martindale confirmed it. Don’t you agree?’
She thought for a couple of seconds, running the possibilities through her head, rational now that she was holding James’s hand, not letting her eyes stray from him again.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I agree.’
She watched the rest from a distance, looking over James’s head. He was babbling about the adventure he’d had, how he was heading towards her and Vaila, but then there were too many people in the way, and he was too small to push through them, and there was the throw-up, and he wanted to see Lawrie win, so he’d kind of forgotten what he was doing and followed the crowd. Then he’d got a bit lost, and Miles had come and found him.
Willow was listening to him, and answered in the right places, saying how scary that must have been and how he’d been a brave peedie boy. She wondered if she should give the lecture about not going away with strangers, but this wasn’t the right time, and anyway sometimes strangers weren’t the most dangerous people. All the time though, she was watching intently everything that was happening across the road by the harbour.
The Westray folk were all there by the water now, and Willow saw that Miles had gone to join them. The boys’ Ba’ had finished earlier than it sometimes did, and the Kirkwall crowd were wandering away, to get something to eat or drink, or prepare for the men’s throw-up at one o’clock. The big event. But for Westray people this had been the main event, and they’d gathered to congratulate Lawrie. Again, she saw Nat Wilkinson, hovering on the edge of the crowd, unsure whether he should be there at all. Rosalie Greeman brightly coloured, standing out from the crowd, laughing at some joke she’d been told by the person standing next to her. Godfrey Lansdown, still with his binoculars around his neck, his attention apparently distracted by some bird on the water.
Lawrie was climbing out of the harbour by a metal ladder built into the wall. The blond hair looked dark now that it was wet, oily, like a seal’s fur. He was shivering. The air might be warmer than it had been the week before, but the water would still be freezing. James tugged her towards Lawrie, so he could congratulate the boy too. Vaila was there, holding a towel for him. The winner’s jump into the sea was traditional and she’d come prepared. Bill and Annie MacBride, Tom and Evelyn Angel formed a semicircle around Lawrie as he pulled himself clear of the water. They clapped and he gave a shy grin.
‘Your father would have been proud of you.’ Tom Angel put his arm around his grandson, unbothered, it seemed, by the boy’s wet body.
‘Come away, man, and leave the lad alone.’ Despite the words Evelyn’s voice was affectionate. Proud. ‘You’ll get soaked.’
‘We should go now.’ Willow lifted James into her arms, so he couldn’t resist her suggestion that they leave Kirkwall and head back to Harray. ‘Let’s get you home and find you some Christmas treats.’ Because she didn’t want James to see Jimmy Perez arrest his hero.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
THEY SAT IN THE INTERVIEW ROOM in the police station. Tom Angel was there as Lawrie’s responsible adult. Vaila had said she couldn’t face it. Perez thought she might have had her suspicions about Lawrie all along. Images of violence crawling into her head like worms. She’d have tried to push them away. Of course she would. She’d have believed that she was crazy with grief, that her imagination was thrown out of kilter. Who could believe that a son would kill his father? Then kill again to hide his tracks. In a place like Westray where nobody locked their door and where they left their keys in their cars. Where strangers were made welcome.
‘This is a mistake, Jimmy.’ Tom’s words were firm and certain, breaking into Perez’s thoughts.
But perhaps the grandfather had worried about Lawrie too. About the boy’s temper. His obsession with violent computer games. His secret social media posts, that might occasionally have surfaced or been talked about by other kids in the community. Had one of the parents of the girls that Lawrie had bullied online shared their anxiety with Tom? Had he believed that when Lawrie left school, moved back to Westray and worked the farm, when he found a bonnie young island lass to wed and have his bairns, all would be well?
Lawrie said nothing.
Ellie was sitting next to Perez. She’d started the recording and given their names and the time. It was just past midday. In the market square, the crowds would already be gathering for the men’s Ba’.
‘I’m going to tell you what I think happened that night of the storm on Westray.’ Perez hoped that the recording would pick up the sorrow in his voice, the kindness. He’d known Lawrie since he was a baby. Maybe the fiscal would mock him for that. But now, the sorrow might not be a bad thing; sympathy might help Lawrie to talk. Perez could use it to his advantage.
He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, so he was speaking directly to Lawrie. The other two adults might not have been in the room. ‘George Riley came to Westray that day to work on his book, and to confront Tony Johnson about the theft of Magnus’s research around the story stones, but he had another reason too. He wanted to talk to your father about some troubling events that had surfaced in school.’ For the first time, Perez looked into Lawrie’s eyes. The lad’s face was red. Perhaps that was because of the exertion of the Ba’ game, the chill of the water when he’d jumped into the harbour. But perhaps it was embarrassment. Awkwardness because he’d been found out. Shame. Perez hoped it was shame, that Lawrie was sufficiently human to feel wretched about what he’d done.
‘George Riley was a pastoral care teacher. He enjoyed working with troubled youngsters. Students felt able to talk to him, when they’d never be able to confide in their parents. Because of that, he’d discovered that you’d been behaving inappropriately with some of the girls in school. A kind of grooming with the lasses in the hostel. Persuading them to take sexual images of themselves and send them to you, then threatening to make them public. A horrible kind of blackmail.’ He paused for a moment and looked across at Lawrie. ‘Did it make you feel strong? Powerful?’
Lawrie said nothing. He couldn’t meet Perez’s eyes.
‘We won’t use their names. They deserve a little privacy. But you know who they are. You’ve shared classes with them since you were thirteen. One of the lasses is self-harming. Another has just started being treated for depression. Both were too scared to tell their parents what was making them so miserable. Besides, they both came from the more remote islands where they couldn’t always easily get home. And kids from those communities are expected to be tough. To survive. They were lonely and homesick, and you preyed on them.’
There was silence. Perez turned towards Tom Angel and spoke quietly adult to adult. ‘George thought he’d be able to manage the situation himself. The head teacher only found out what had been going on after George’s death, when she had access to his files. At least he kept decent records. I had a long discussion with her this morning.’
Angel was white with shock and disgust. It was as if he’d been slapped very hard in the face.
Now, Perez turned back to Lawrie. ‘Mr Riley didn’t follow proper procedures. Perhaps he was a little overconfident, a little arrogant, though I think he had your best interests at heart. He believed that, with the support of your family, he could help you to change. He persuaded the lasses that you had meant no harm, that you would never have spread those images. They probably had the impression that they were partly to blame for taking the photographs. Of course, he should have notified the head teacher and the police immediately. But he didn’t want you branded as a sex offender at such an early age. It was a mistake, and it caused the deaths of three people. But you killed them, Lawrie. You have to take responsibility for that.’
There was silence in the room. The boy glared across the table at him. Perez continued in the same tone.
‘Bullying at the grammar school isn’t a new thing. I’ve talked to other people who suffered it to one degree or another. Especially those staying at the hostel. A bunch of kids away from home for long periods, trying to find their place in the system, it’s hard.’
Lawrie stared at him. He remained silent.
‘Unfortunately, Mr Riley couldn’t always make things right.’
He hadn’t helped Nat Wilkinson, for example, Perez thought. Or the lass who served me in the cafe next door to the gallery in Stromness and she wasn’t even resident in the hostel. George had thought he could help both of them too. In Nat’s case he’d made things worse. And when it came to the new head teacher, he’d believed that he knew best. That the rules around safeguarding didn’t apply to him. The worst kind of arrogance.
‘I understand what it’s like to be staying away from home, an outsider, not fitting in.’ Perez wondered if he could make out a flicker of recognition in the boy’s face, but Lawrie turned away and when he looked back, his face was as blank and impassive as before.
‘But that was the same for the girls you abused. They trusted you. They thought you cared about them, that they were special. I’ve seen the messages. You told them that you loved them.’
Perez waited for some response from the boy, but none came, and the detective continued:
‘On the day that he died, your father met George at the ferry, and they talked. He wanted Archie to know what was going on at school and hoped that together they could help you to confront the behaviour. Maybe you’d have to leave the school. The situation had reached a point where the lasses’ parents would have to be told, even though the girls hadn’t wanted them to know. They’d be home over the holidays. The families might have wanted to press charges. It must have come as a terrible shock to your father.’
Perez imagined what that would be like: having to face the fact that a son had done something so unforgivable but knowing that in the end you would have to forgive him.
