Текст книги "The Jump"

Автор книги: Doug Johnstone

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19

She prayed no one said anything. She was walking back along the pontoon towards the Porpoise, this time with Ben at her side, only half an hour after she’d been going the other way with Sam.

Ellie had placed herself at the side where more people were on deck, so she could ward them off, prevent Ben from stopping and chatting. She nodded and waved and turned away each time, Ben giving her a funny look.

‘Are you OK?’ he said.

‘Fine.’

He looked at the sky then out to the Forth. ‘Perfect day for it.’

They climbed on board. Ben began sorting through the rigging, checking ropes and sails.

Ellie went straight below and had a quick check to see if there was any sign that Sam had been here. She couldn’t see anything.

She poked her head back up from the cabin. Ben was loosening off the boom ties, inspecting the main sail, going through the checklist, assessing the electrics and GPS. Beyond him, Ellie could see the warehouse where she’d left Sam. She’d driven straight home, met Ben in the kitchen in front of the laptop. He’d asked about her shopping, she said she was trying on clothes, couldn’t find the right sizes. It wasn’t like her, she wasn’t a fussy shopper, or much of a shopper at all, but he accepted it.

Ben wanted to head out to the new bridge foundations. This stupid idea that they were using some chemical in the building process that somehow caused depression, hallucinations and suicide. She had a quick look at his evidence, making air quotes in her mind around that word. It was garbage. He’d gone on about the technical stuff of building, using engineering and construction lingo like caissons, piles and cofferdams, and she hadn’t really followed, especially when he got on to the dubious chemistry of the theory.

But she was here now and going out sailing with him, partly to show him how ridiculous he was being. She pointed out that if they went to the new foundations and came back without suffering hallucinations or feeling suicidal, that would surely be proof he was talking rubbish. Well, not feeling any more suicidal than usual. But he would find a way round that, reasoned argument didn’t hold sway, it always came down to ‘that’s what they want you to think’.

Ellie wondered about hallucinations. What if she was hallucinating this whole thing? What if there was no boy on the bridge, no body in the kitchen at Inchcolm Terrace, no little sister and drunk mother? Maybe the grief had finally got to her.

She went to the bin and opened it. The evidence of Sam’s presence, a Wispa wrapper and a banana skin.

He was real. This was real.

Ben poked his head in as she closed the bin lid.

‘Ready to cast off?’ he said.

‘Sure.’

Up on deck, he pointed to the stern. ‘Want to take the tiller, steer us out?’

He yanked the starter cord on the outboard and it rattled and thrummed. Ellie unlocked the tiller and throttled a little in reverse, just to get a feel for the power under her hand. Ben scurried portside and began unhooking the mooring lines, wrapping them round the cleats, keeping everything in place. He jumped on to the pontoon and untied the final rope, threw it on to the boat and scuttled back on deck, pushing away from the edge as he did so.

The bow moved to starboard and Ellie corrected for it. The boat alongside theirs was an expensive SEPA motorboat, it wouldn’t do to leave a dent in their hull.

The boat edged away from the berth into the shallow water behind. When it was clear of the pontoon Ellie switched to dead slow forward and headed towards the breakwater.

They picked up speed and headed past the low wall at the entrance to the harbour. Ben ducked into a storage box and pulled out two life jackets. He strapped one on and threw the other to Ellie. She caught it and put it on. It was standard practice to wear a life jacket, compulsory for sailing school and some races, but she didn’t know how much use it would be. She could swim better without it. When she was fit she could swim back to shore in calm weather long before a coastguard boat would make it out to rescue them if the Porpoise capsized.

Not that there would be any capsizing today, conditions were calm.

Ben undid the final hooks on the boom.

‘Coming round,’ he shouted.

Ellie was nowhere near the arm, standing at the stern, but it was good practice to shout it out. If it came round and someone was standing in the middle of the deck they’d be over the side of the boat with concussion before anyone knew what’d happened. She’d seen it once before, not on the Porpoise, but a racing boat she and Ben had crewed years ago. Some novice with a sickly pallour stood up at the wrong time as half a ton of plastic and metal came swinging, the full sail whipping the arm as the boat changed tack. He took the brunt of it on his shoulders rather than his skull, which was just as well. They fished him out the water after barely a minute, but had to return to dry land because of a broken collarbone. The rest of the crew were furious at missing a day’s racing, and the kid never appeared on the boat again.

The water today was royal blue. The colour of the sky always made a big difference, the sea mirroring what was above. On a dreich day the water was a mucky grey-brown, but today it was clearer.

The main sail was unfurled now and they tacked into the breeze. Ellie cut the engine. They would sail for a bit out to the bridge foundations, then pull the sail in once they were there, easier to control the boat that way.

Ben looked at the cofferdam around the nearest of the new bridge legs. There were three foundations stretching across the firth, one near each shore and a third one splitting the gap between them in the middle of the Forth. They’d had to remove a historic lighthouse from Beamer Rock in the middle of the waterway so they could build the foundation there. For almost two hundred years it had marked the way to Rosyth and upriver, and they’d carefully taken it down then blown the rock up to make way for twenty-first-century engineering.

As they got closer to the foundation Ellie felt the presence of it. In today’s world everything seemed smaller, more contained, lives played out in front of computer screens, the scale of everything diminishing. But this was gargantuan, human endeavour writ large, millions of tons of material shaped into an object that would be seen for miles, seen from airplanes, that would serve an actual, physical purpose. It made Ellie feel connected to the world, this harnessing of nature, even though nature could never really be harnessed, you just had to look at the billions of gallons of water under their hull to know that.

They sailed on for a while, Ellie staring at the cofferdam and the two crane-barges alongside. They passed the yellow navigation buoys that had appeared recently, a thin attempt to keep unwelcome visitors at bay. As they got closer the size of the thing became overwhelming, even though it was hardly even out the water yet. Ellie tried to imagine what it would be like when the bridge was finished.

She’d had a few close encounters with large ships in the past, but never right alongside. The girth of the oil tankers downriver was staggering. They filled up at the terminal on the other side of the rail bridge, and she and Ben had come within a hundred feet once or twice, close enough to know they would crush you in a second and not even notice.

She felt a throbbing through her body. She turned. Ben had pressed ignition and was locking the boom arm, furling the sail up.

She unlocked the tiller and aimed for the bridge leg, the propeller churning the wash at the stern. She looked back to shore but the old warehouse was tiny now, just a red dot in the distance, almost hidden against a backdrop of trees. It was amazing how little time it took on the water before you got that perspective, the insignificance of everything on shore. That was one of the things she loved about sailing, leaving the land and all the problems waiting there.

Ben had his phone out and was taking pictures with the zoom fully extended. The pictures would be fuzzy, what was he hoping to gain from this? Someone else to blame for Logan’s death? There was no one else to blame, and this was the worst of his excuses. Even the phone mast was better than this, and the school vaccinations or drug taking were far more likely.

Ben brought a gizmo out his pocket and held it up. A small red light flashed on the front as he looked at the digital display.

‘What’s that?’ Ellie shouted over the thrash of waves.

Ben waited a moment, taking a reading of some kind, then turned.

‘Measures air purity, amongst other things.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘There are websites.’

There are websites for everything, Ellie thought. That wasn’t the answer. None of this was the answer. She looked at the bridge leg. The cofferdam was fifty feet above sea level, the colour of rust. It was made of thick corrugated metal with a walkway round the top, a platform hanging over the side nearest them with four orange generators on it. Half a dozen men in hard hats and hi-vis jackets milled about on the walkway, and as the Porpoise got closer they all turned to watch.

Ellie waved to distract them from Ben taking pictures and holding the gizmo in the air. She was used to this, making excuses for her crazy husband. She knew what the guys on the cofferdam thought, wondering who this lunatic was, bringing his wife out to look at some anonymous piece of engineering. A nice, romantic day out.

A speedboat emerged from behind one of the barge-cranes and headed their way. The Porpoise was fifty yards from the cofferdam when Ellie cut the power, and the other boat continued straight for them. In the speedboat were two chunky guys in black waterproofs – bridge security. Ellie had seen them in Karinka’s before, private company logos on their jackets, crew-cut hair, chowing down on full Scottish breakfasts. Rumour had it they were ex-army and mercenaries, but they didn’t look like trained killers.

The guy at the bow of the speedboat had a loudhailer and was telling them not to get any closer.

‘No problem,’ Ellie shouted back, as Ben continued taking pictures. Was there a law against that? If so, what could the security guys do about it? If they really gave a shit they could follow them back to harbour and try to confiscate the phone, but by then Ben could’ve emailed the pictures to himself or posted them online.

‘Go round,’ Ben said, turning to her.

‘What?’

‘I want to see the other side.’

‘I’m sure it’s just the same as this side,’ Ellie said.

She started the engine and guided them round the south side, feeling the stares of the security guys as she steered. The guys in hard hats turned away and began chatting amongst themselves as the Porpoise did a slow circumnavigation. There was a big enough gap between the cofferdam and the barge for the Porpoise to slip through. Ellie looked at the crane above their heads and felt dizzy. It was lifting a grey concrete pipe across to the bridgeworks.

Ellie imagined the bridge collapsing on opening day. She’d seen footage of badly designed bridges, there was something about setting up resonances with the wind that could destroy a bridge in seconds if it got going. Did that still happen?

They were away from the crane now and round the other side, which was lower in the water. She could see inside because of the slope, pipe supports keeping the whole thing together, keeping the weight of the water out.

She heard shouts from the walkway and looked up to see two figures waving and pointing to the water next to the Porpoise. She looked and spotted a rock poking through the waves. She checked the depth gauge and it was almost at zero, stupid she hadn’t noticed earlier, she’d presumed the water was deep all the way round.

‘Hold on,’ she shouted at Ben, then swung the tiller hard to port to send the boat away from the rocks.

Ben was thrown to the deck with the sway of the boat as it pitched in the water. The hull was part way out the firth as they banked steeply, the other side of the deck almost under the surface. Ben was on the wrong side, hanging on. If they’d been sailing he should’ve been on the starboard side, feet over the edge for ballast and balance, arms wrapped around the guard rails. But as it was he was clinging on to the jib sheet for the smaller sail, and if they didn’t right themselves soon he’d be in the water.

Ellie kept turning the boat, leaning over the edge to see if she could spot rocks under the surface. She waited for the sound of ripping, the scream of stone through hull, but it didn’t come. She’d experienced it once before, a sickening lurch in her gut as her frame of reference got torn apart, but this time it didn’t happen and the Porpoise glided away past the outcrop.

Ellie straightened the steering and the boat righted itself. She turned and saw Ben holding the jib sheet, shaking his head and looking into the water.

‘You OK?’ Ellie said.

‘Lost my air monitor into the drink,’ he said.

It was a small price to pay for not being shipwrecked, but it was Ellie’s fault in the first place, she hadn’t checked the readings, hadn’t been watching things as closely as she should.

20

Ben was fumbling with his key in the front door when Ellie felt an overwhelming rush of sorrow wash over her. She reached for him as he pushed the door open and wrapped her arms around him from behind. The sudden hug threw his momentum, making him stumble and put an arm out against the door jamb to balance. She couldn’t even cuddle right.

‘Hey,’ he said.

She held on tight. He tried to turn and face her but she strengthened her grip. He squirmed round, keys still in his hand, and put his arms round her waist. She was surprised to hear sobs coming up her throat, then felt tears in her eyes.

‘It’s OK,’ Ben said, rubbing her back. ‘Shhh.’

He dropped his kit bag on the ground with a thud. Ellie buried her head into his chest, scared to look at him, afraid to let him see her crumpled face. She squeezed his body tight, trying to get comfort from the heft of him. He felt so solid compared to her, she was a ghost drifting through her own life, a lost spirit. Ben felt real, made of flesh and bone and muscle. She pictured him on the boat earlier, almost overboard because of her stupid mistake, because she wasn’t paying attention. But how could you pay attention to the world when you were barely in it?

She imagined Ben tipping over the side of the Porpoise into the same sea that took her son. But that was wrong, that’s not what happened, the water didn’t take Logan, he went willingly into it, gave himself to it.

She was aware of how awkward this was, standing in the doorway, hugging and crying. She sensed people walking past in the street, felt Ben acknowledge them with a look and a nod of the head. She didn’t care. Let them all see what the world can do to you. Eventually her crying began to subside. She felt like she wasn’t in possession of her own body, she’d lost all control.

Ben gave a final rub of her back then eased himself from her grasp.

‘You OK?’ he said.

‘Not really.’

‘Come inside, I’ll put the kettle on.’

In the kitchen, everything looked like it always did. Same scuffed table, same worn worktops, same bridges skulking outside the window. She felt like an impostor in her own house, like the real Ellie would ring the doorbell any minute and claim her house and husband and son back.

She scratched at her arm, that damn tattoo. She pulled the shoulder of her cardigan down, examined it. Red raw still, angry. Was that pus, was it getting infected? She dug her nails into the skin, felt relief with the pain, then covered her arm up.

They’d walked back from the marina in silence. They hadn’t spoken before that either as they brought the Porpoise back to berth, pressed the kill button on the outboard and switched on the bilge pump under the floorboards of the cabin. They’d taken on a fair amount of water but nothing too dangerous, the level was quickly down. After securing the boat they got changed out of their wet gear in the locker room, then began the walk back. Ellie glanced at the deserted warehouse and imagined what Sam was doing inside.

‘I thought you were overboard,’ she said.

He filled the kettle. ‘Is that what this is about?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘It was my fault, I was in charge of the boat and I wasn’t paying attention. You could’ve died.’

Ben put the kettle on. ‘Nobody died.’

There was silence as those words hung in the air like poison.

Ben turned. ‘I meant . . .’

‘I know what you meant.’ Ellie’s tone was gentle.

She thought of sitting at this table, talking to Sam yesterday morning. Trying to bring him down from the edge, keep him alive. She preferred being the one doing the comforting, it was a million times easier. She rubbed at the surface of the table where Sam’s cup of tea had been, wiped away imaginary biscuit crumbs, just as Ben placed her own tea in the same spot.

‘I need to tell you something,’ Ellie said.

Ben sat down opposite. ‘What?’

He had his mug in his hand. Ellie stared at it. It was from the high school up the road, picked up at a spring fair the first year Logan was there. It had the school crest on it, an abstract thing with a yellow cross and three red flowers. It said Mente et Manu underneath – ‘with mind and hand’. That had always seemed so vague as to be almost meaningless. She knew what they were getting at but it was hardly inspirational. She stretched her fingers out in front of her and stared at them. Her hands seemed so disconnected from her mind, as if she had no power over them. She imagined her hands slapping her cup of tea on to the floor, or rising up to her own throat and squeezing, or picking up a kitchen knife and burying it in the belly of a child abuser.

She should tell Ben, she knew that. Now was the time, before things unravelled. But they’d already gone too far, she couldn’t imagine starting this conversation now. She tried to think of all the different ways into this story, what had happened since yesterday morning, but in the bleached autumn light coming through the window they all felt ridiculous. What seemed like a simple case of doing the right thing had become more tangled. She’d wanted to help someone in trouble, and she still wanted to help, but her possible courses of action were disappearing. As long as she didn’t tell Ben she had a sliver of control over this whole situation.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

He blew the steam from his tea and stared at her. ‘Are you sure?’

She knew he wouldn’t force it; that was one of the million little things she loved about him.

‘Yeah,’ she said.

‘OK.’

She lifted her own mug, blew on the tea and tried to smile.

21

She checked the local news app on her phone as she strode back to the marina. The grumble of traffic overhead as she walked under the bridge made her feel insignificant as always, the thick bridge legs seemingly growing out of the earth.

There was nothing new on the story, the police still appealing for witnesses. She thought about how she’d been at that house twice now. No, three times. She’d been to Inchcolm Terrace three times, hadn’t she? God, she was losing it. And the police were still seeking to trace the whereabouts of Sam McKenna, the victim’s seventeen-year-old son. ‘Seeking to trace the whereabouts’ and ‘appealing for witnesses’ – why did the police succumb to their own clichés of language, their own verbose patterns? It was a unique and awkward vocabulary, as if the public couldn’t handle the truth of crime delivered to them in plain language. There was a hint of Orwell about it. Maybe it wasn’t sinister, just that the organisation found it easier to fall into that language as a comfort, a code handed down from generation to generation of copper, sticking to their own obscure linguistic rules.

While she still had her phone out she stopped walking and opened Facebook, went straight to Logan’s page. Nothing new. She sent a quick message, just Love, Mum xxx. She flicked to Sam’s page, then Libby’s, then back to Logan and swiped through the pictures. Touched her thumb to the screen, zoomed in on one he was tagged in with her and Ben. He’d said it was embarrassing, talked about untagging himself so his friends wouldn’t see it, but he never did. They were in France, sitting outside at a table next to a vineyard, three glasses of red wine raised in a cheers. The owner of the vineyard had taken the picture, a fat, happy man who insisted on pouring a glass for Logan even though he was only thirteen. Logan had that weird mix of embarrassment and excitement about alcohol, and they let him drink it. He sipped and winced at first, but kept drinking. She zoomed in as far as possible on the photograph until it was just a grainy blur of colour, the burgundy of the glass, the green of his T-shirt, the paleness of his skin. She rubbed her finger on the screen as if trying to get a stain out.

She closed Facebook and stared at the icons on her phone. Her thumb hovered over Video. She pressed it. Just the one clip on there, from the bridge. She pressed play, stared at the grainy screen, the grey, blank bridge, then the figure of Logan coming into shot, his back to the camera. She wished he’d been facing the CCTV. He stopped at the railing, looked up and down, then faced out to sea. Flicked at his hair. Waited for a moment. Ellie paused the video and raised a hand to her forehead. Closed her eyes then reopened them. Pressed play. Logan hoisted himself up and over the railing, stood on the ledge. She paused it again. Touched the screen. Play. A short wait then her son stepped off the edge and the bridge was empty again. She wiped a tear off the screen and closed the app. She bent double where she stood, and put her hands on her thighs, trying to breathe. She felt something come over here and puked into the grass verge at the side of the lane, her throat convulsing three, four times. She spat sick out her mouth and wiped tears from her eyes. Waited like that, crouched over, for a few moments then straightened her back and put her phone away.

She began walking, stumbling at first like an old woman unsure of her footing. She skirted round the back way to the warehouse, avoiding the likely huddle of activity at the marina this time of day. The wind was fresh and the leaves were beginning to fall from the trees in the woods opposite as the branches swayed in the breeze. They rustled in competition with the bridge traffic and the faint shush of the water. Things were never quiet around here, she couldn’t remember a time of peace and tranquillity.

She heard voices and her shoulders tensed. They were coming from inside the warehouse. She crept to the window and listened. Two voices, both young. One a girl, the other Sam. She looked through the empty frame and saw Sam and Libby standing together next to a decrepit workbench in the corner of the room.

‘What’s she doing here?’ Ellie said, clambering through the window.

Sam and Libby turned as Ellie landed in a scuff of rubble.

‘I could hear you arguing a mile away,’ she said. ‘That’s not exactly safe. She has to go home.’

Sam approached her, Libby behind.

‘I was just telling her that,’ he said.

Libby folded her arms. ‘I’m staying here.’

Her body language was full of exaggerated, pre-teen melodrama, hip stuck out and pouting.

‘You have to go,’ Ellie said.

Libby threw a thumb in her brother’s direction. ‘He’s here, why not me?’

Ellie tried to keep her voice calm. ‘Because you’re an eleven-year-old girl.’

‘I’m almost twelve,’ Libby said.

Ellie held in a laugh. ‘Your brother is technically an adult, but a missing eleven-year-old girl is an entirely different story.’

Sam turned to his sister. ‘I told you, Lib.’

‘This is bullshit,’ Libby said.

‘Does your mum know where you are?’ Ellie said.

Libby shook her head. ‘She thinks I’m at school.’

‘But they have an automated system. If you’re not in registration, the parents get a text and a call.’

Libby was thrown off. ‘I forgot about that.’

Sam raised his eyebrows. ‘You forgot?’

Ellie spoke to her. ‘We have to get you home right now.’

‘No.’

Ellie raised a finger at her, the nagging point. ‘Do you want to get your brother into more trouble, is that what you want?’

‘Of course not.’

‘You’ve got a funny way of showing it.’ Ellie hated how her voice sounded, like her own mother’s when she told Ellie off. Falling back on familiar patterns of speech, she was no better than the police.

Libby looked uncertain.

‘What’s the plan?’ Sam said, flicking his hand through his fringe.

Ellie stared at him. ‘I still need to work that out. In the meantime we have to get Libby home.’

She turned to Libby. ‘Does anyone know you’re here?’

Libby made a face like she was talking to a toddler. ‘Of course not.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Have you texted anyone today, posted anything online?’

Libby stuck her bottom lip out. ‘I texted my mate Cassie.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘Just that I was meeting Sam, that’s all, and I’d see her later.’

‘When was that?’

‘I don’t know, an hour ago?’

‘Text her now, tell her to delete it and not mention it to anyone.’

‘What?’

Ellie moved her face closer to Libby’s. She could see clumps of concealer on her face, trying to cover the spots. ‘Do you realise how fucking serious this is?’

‘Of course I do.’

Libby shuffled her feet in the dirt and Ellie could see tears welling up in her eyes.

Sam moved between them. ‘Take it easy, she’s only a kid.’

Ellie sighed. ‘I’m sorry, but you have to understand. I promise I’ll take care of both of you, but you have to do what I say. The best place for Libby at the moment is at home, that way the police won’t be looking so hard for Sam. Your dad’s still in hospital, so there’s no danger on that front. We can’t arouse any more suspicion.’

Sam was rubbing Libby’s arm. ‘She’s right, Lib. Mum will go mental when she realises you’re not there.’

‘I suppose.’

‘And I’m always on the phone, I’ve got a battery charger now, so I won’t run out of juice like yesterday, Ellie sorted it.’

The tone of his voice had a calming effect on her. Ellie wondered how Logan would’ve been with a little brother or sister. Would he have been caring and considerate, or would they have been at each other’s throats like so many siblings?

Libby looked at her brother now. ‘We can meet up again, yeah? It’s weird in the house, just me and Mum.’

Sam gave her a hug. ‘Of course we can. We just have to be careful.’

He pulled away as Ellie looked at her watch.

‘We need to get you back,’ she said to Libby.

The girl looked at Sam for a long moment, as Ellie held out her hand. Then she began walking, dragging her feet, following Ellie.

Libby stopped at the window and turned to Sam. ‘See you.’

‘See you soon,’ Sam said.