‘You stupid man! You’re working with the duke. He’s going to sell us off one by one, isn’t he? You’ve been going around valuing our islands, asking questions, pretending to be writing your book—when did this happen; who lived there…vital research you called it. Then the bloody duke ‘iself comes down for an unexpected visit?—gathering the last of his rents, more bleeding like. Bleeding us dry a final time. They gone up seven thousand percent in the last few years! We’re having the life drained out of us! The new wife sneaks off to Benhar—that’s the next one they’re going to sell to you, isn’t it? Kick us all off and do up that old children’s home you were asking Arthur about—you going to turn it into a luxury hotel for your foreign friends? A health spa? You and your thugs went there, measuring it all up, overstayed your welcome and got caught by the tide, didn’t you? And your accountant, sitting bold as bloody brass in the sun doing calculations on ‘is phone—how much per square foot to put us all out on the streets? You think we don’t know you’re her ex-husband! You’re that German billionaire she’s supposed to ‘ave given up for duty! The one with the big yacht that’s gone missing. You must think we can’t read or think! Why did you kill poor old Jacob, eh? Why? He never did you no harm! He was all Spanner had after his mum left.’
Aleksey lowered the sword.
‘We know you’re still sleeping with her—theduchess. She’s the one egging this all on—getting the duke to sell it all to you. As if she’d leave someone who looks like you for that bald, chinless nothing of a waxed jacket. She crept over to you that afternoon, all secret like, and you took her to bed in Guillemot House. My God, you must think we’re all imbeciles.’
He pursed his lips then waved the sword a little at someone about to pick up a knife. ‘No, but I am beginning to wonder if I am. I am oddly…confused.’
Morwenna suddenly said to the young woman with the phone who was hovering a little nervously by one of the boxes, ‘Go get your gran, lovey.’ Then to him she snapped, ‘Gwensawyou. She were Jacob’s neighbour. Heard a terrible noise, looked out of her window, claimed she saw you leaving.Unmistakable, were her words. I knew who it were soon as you came into the shop with yourhouse of lightquestions. You beat him near to death. They flew him in that air ambulance thingy to Truro, but ‘e died—bleed on the brain, they said.’
It was slightly worrying being accused of two murders he hadn’t committed. Karma for all the ones he had?
A calm seemed to descend on them all when the girl slipped out the back. He allowed himself a quick glance to Ben who was now standing behind him, his face still pale, but more himself. The peacoat was looking worse for wear, and that, as much as anything else about this bizarre situation, really pissed him off. He stepped back a little so their arms were touching and murmured in Danish, ‘Balls?’
Ben clenched his jaw and replied in the same language, albeit Ben’s own unique version of it, ‘What the hell is going on? At least the last person who kicked me there had a reason—you’d just eaten her ear.’
‘I’ve told you many times—I spat it out.’
The workers were gradually going back to their trestle table, but as he wouldn’t let them retrieve their tools, they just hung around looking cold and mutinous. He knew how they felt. Morwenna Eames stood boldly defying him, arms folded, legs braced as if she’d take them both on, sword and all.
Ben continued in Danish, ‘Why are we waiting? She’s annoying me.’
Aleksey chuckled. ‘I don’t know…she’s quite entertaining. And some of what she said was true, wasn’t it, in a garbled way. True and not true. But some of it was completely wrong.’
‘I hope for your sake the still fucking Phillipa is one of the mistaken parts.’
‘I’m sorry, Ben, it’s what we were up to all that time in the attic.’
‘Ah, I wondered, but the scones were more interesting.’
He smiled, mainly at Morwenna’s furious expression, but also at the way Ben mangled the language and switched to English whenever he didn’t know a word. But he didn’t know the word for scone in Danish either. He wondered if they had one. He couldn’t really blame the bookshop owner: it was annoying and extremely uncivilised, in his opinion, when people spoke in a different language in front of you. He decided to annoy her some more. ‘So, just run this past me again—you don’t know who Billy is?’ Now Ben was fine, if smelly, he couldn’t resist. Between Madeline, Rachel and Morwenna, he was hard-pressed to say which woman he found more irritating.
She continued to glare at him.
Suddenly, the small door at the back opened once more, and the girl sent to fetch her grandmother came back in holding the arm of an elderly woman. She muttered to Morwenna, ‘Sorry, gran couldn’t find her glasses, and then she wanted to change her shoes and feed the cat before she left.’
Morwenna stepped a little to one side, and the old woman came closer. ‘Where is ‘e then? I’d a brought me rolling pin and given ‘im what for if’n this young un ‘ere would’a let me. Poor old Jacob!’
Morwenna wrinkled her nose. ‘Ah. So…it’s not him then?’
‘Who? Him? That big ‘un with the sword. Don’t be daft. This one were an ugly brute. Tall like ‘im though, and course he ‘ad one a those, but ‘is was a right ugly, nasty lookin’ thing, not like ‘is. That one’s right pretty.’ She suddenly fished the aforementioned glasses out of her cardigan pocket and peered at him. ‘Aye. If’n I were a few years younger and still ‘ad me own teeth, I’d go for ‘im, I would, scars and all.’ She had a palm laid on her cheek, and Aleksey’s hand crept unconsciously to his own face.
It hadn’t been the height, the attitude, the accent: this similarity which had pulled him into the whirlpool. It was the scar—the damage he never thought about, the terrible ruin which had healed so miraculously in the sanctified waters of Light Island. But Ben had told him—everyonesees you.
It defined him.
He knew now who it was they had confused him with.
His fears were confirmed when the old woman gave a shiver and pulled her cardigan closer. ‘T’other one was a dead man walking—seemed like to me, anyways. Dead behind the eyes. Stood wiping ‘is hands on his hankie, not a care in the world.’ She peered closer, inspecting his eyes and suddenly smiled broadly. ‘You can tell a lot ‘bout a man by ‘is eyes.’
Dead eyes. Shark’s eyes. Aleksey knew. Simon Raiden, the man who had been present when he’d bought the island.
Why this man was here asking his questions, however, he had no clue at all.
Yet.
He would. They were circling the same drain together now.
Suddenly casting his mind back to a recent conversation with Phillipa, it appearedThe Sparewas swirling there with them.
