Aleksey felt a roiling of emotion deep within him. He had not wanted to feel anger like this again, had resisted it when it had surfaced over a smashed car and a sense of resentment that Ben had not listened to him. But this was different. This was from a whole new depth of pure fury. If buildings could absorb emotion, then the walls of the lighthouse were feeding a savage need for revenge back to him. It had been violated; it had soaked up all the pain and anguish of being torn and despoiled, and it was handing it to him freely as a gift—an oblation to him: The Lord of Light Island.
Ben was toeing the shattered shards of glass. ‘Do you think he found them and it’s over?’
‘No. I think this last desecration was done in spite because he couldn’t find them. He appears to enjoy destruction for destruction’s sake.’
Ben’s neck suddenly whipped around. ‘Oh, God, Harry.’
Once more, Aleksey felt blood drain from his head, and he saw a vision of a spilled jigsaw, and beaten, aged flesh.
They stumbled down the sleep stairs, ran out of the door and leapt off the base. Ben was faster. Aleksey shouted at him to run like the wind.
Ben was already in the garden when he arrived.
He was struggling with something by one of the trees.
‘Help me! For fuck’s sake, Nik, help me!’
It was Snodgrass. He’d been strung up by his neck, and Ben was desperately trying to prop him up at the same time as work the knots holding him. Aleksey slashed the twine with one humming swing, thrust the sword at Ben and urged, ‘The dock. Run, Ben. Go.’ Ben tore away towards the house. He got the little dog free of the twine still around his neck. Snodgrass was spindrift in his arms, so light and fragile that he was afraid to hold him too tight, but the dog suddenly wiggled. He was nothing but a scrap, a scrapofnothing, and this very quality appeared to have saved him—he’d had no weight to tighten the noose around his neck.
He tucked the astonished little dog inside his shirt next to his warm skin and went to the shed. It had been destroyed as thoroughly as the lighthouse. It didn’t matter. As he’d said to Harry: things could be replaced.
But Harry was gone, and Aleksey knew in his heart that the old man had not gone willingly. He should have left the ageing sailor to live out his life as Homeless Harry. Who was he to pluck people from one existence to another to fulfil his needs? To play their parts in his little re-enactments of his failed childhood.
He had put this old man in danger. He was nothing more than a roiling storm on the vast horizon of other people’s lives. If they saw him moving thunderous across the ocean, they would be wise to set sail and fly down the wind away from him.
He was about to turn to go when there was a clink. He spun around, his heart pounding against the warm, furry body pressed against it.
The grinning, red-lipped monkey hopped and clapped again.
It was sitting right in the middle of the dog’s basket.
He knew with certainty that it had been wound up for the fun of hearing its maniacal accompaniment to the destruction of this little home. The hanging of the helpless little dog in front of the old man had been applauded and jiggled to in glee. And it still had a few claps left. Or it did until he pointed at it and shouted, ‘I warned you!’ then seized it up and tore its head off.
Ben was sprinting back towards him. He wasn’t even out of breath. ‘Is he okay?’
‘I think so. Harry?’
‘Gone. I heard an engine. He’s not that far ahead of us.’
He showed Ben the ripped off, grinning head. ‘He’s taken him to the asylum. This was left as a message for us.’
Ben held out his hands for the dog—he could run with him more easily, and Snodgrass was transferred to the inside of Ben’s shirt. He sneezed, and they both managed weak smiles. The dog could not have commented on the odd smell any better.
They ran back to the headland and went down to the boat. Once more, Snodgrass was transferred. Ben laid the sword carefully beside the bear and did a slightly better job thanhehad with the boat on the way out.
It was full dark now, and the moon had gone behind some clouds. Ben was navigating carefully on instruments. Aleksey would have given almost all of his wealth to be back sitting in the warmth and comfort and security of the Bentley, watching Ben playing with all his new switches, and to be turning away from this and not towards it.
When Ben had the course for Benhar set, he turned to him where he was sitting on the wooden bench, the dog back inside his shirt under his warm coat. ‘This man, yeah, the one with the scarred face you say is called Simon Raiden, he’s not leaving anyone alive until now. Why take Harry and not just kill him?’
‘He wants me. I think when he could not find the letters in the lighthouse, he decided on an easier way to get them. He saw us in the asylum. He knows we’re looking for Billy—Oily must have told him we were just there. But this has never been about Billy, but about what’s in those letters. Billy unfortunately got mixed up in it because he kept them. A blackmailer has no power without proof, so even if someone has read them, they can do nothing without them. He will offer to trade them for Harry.’
‘But we don’t have them.’
‘No. We don’t have them.’
‘Nik?’
Aleksey looked up from rubbing the little dog’s ears, almost enjoying the sound of the old, affectionate name.
