He’d said he would help Maddie but now, away from her spell, the look in those eyes, he wasn’t quite so sure

Finn read out the list: “John Tolbert, Mary Tolbert, Evan Reilly, Brian Dean, Graham Wallace, Stephen McDonald, Derek Drennan, Sean Bayliss.” His voice was a low murmur, an incantation of the dead. He knelt in the dirt and leaned forward, rubbing his thumbs and forefingers against the order of service in his hands.

“John Tolbert, Mary Tolbert, Evan Reilly, Brian Dean, Graham Wallace, Stephen McDonald, Derek Drennan, Sean Bayliss.”

He began rocking backward and forward. The tomb was freezing cold, his breath billowing out into the raw earth inches from his face.

He looked up at the skulls. Only five of them, and now eight names on the dead list in his hands.

It wasn’t perfect but it would have to do. The skulls stared down at him from through the centuries with empty eye sockets.

He rocked on his haunches until his knuckles were scraping the earth. He held the order of service on the ground and placed his forehead against it.

“John Tolbert, Mary Tolbert, Evan Reilly, Brian Dean, Graham Wallace, Stephen McDonald, Derek Drennan, Sean Bayliss.”

Hopes and dreams

This time from memory, not reading it. It was working, he was absorbing them into his mind, his body, he was keeping them alive in his synapses.

He remembered the widow kicking him in the back as he lay on the ground.

He would find out about her and her dead husband, find out which one he was, everything about him, his hopes and dreams, the little disappointments in his life, the compromises, his secret guilty pleasures, all of it.

And he would do the same for all of them. He would dedicate himself to their stalled lives, their brief blips of existence on earth.

He would keep their candles flickering in the darkness.

He clutched the order of service and sat up, faced the skulls, his chin raised as he stared back at them and their grimaces.

“John Tolbert, Mary Tolbert, Evan Reilly, Brian Dean, Graham Wallace, Stephen McDonald, Derek Drennan, Sean Bayliss,” he said, louder this time.

He slipped into bed next to Amy, his feet freezing. The bedside clock said half three and his mind buzzed. He reached out and touched Amy’s back and she muttered under her breath.

He could feel grit in his fingernails. He lay on his back and listened to the wind outside, erratic gusts, unpredictable and unknowable.

He’d said he would help Maddie but now, away from her spell, the look in those eyes, her body next to him, he wasn’t so sure.

If he drove her to the boat he was helping a fugitive. More importantly, he was likely driving her to her death. Taking a boat all the way across the Pentland Firth was insane at any time, let alone winter.

If the wind was up she would get blown off course, end up in swells the size of oil tankers.

A Polish cargo ship had sunk recently in just a few minutes out there as the wind fought against the tide, the ship hit from all sides.

Maybe he should go with her. But he didn’t know any more about boats than she did.

Perhaps there was another way to help her escape. In the boot of the car all the way to Stromness, then on to a ferry.

But they would be watching the port, and he wasn’t allowed off the island.

Unless he could somehow persuade Ingrid or Amy to drive, without knowing Maddie was in the boot. No, that was impossible.

Option

Then there was the other option. He didn’t have to go along with any of this. He didn’t have to help her at all. Just one call to the police and she would be gone from his life.

A handful of words down the line to Linklater and Maddie would be taken into custody. Arrested for murder, for evading the police, whatever else they wanted to charge her with for the crash.

Was she capable of stabbing her husband? He tried to picture himself in that situation.

Imagined coming home to find Amy in bed with some big builder or squaddie or firefighter, someone more of a man than him.

He pictured the scene in his mind but all he felt was relief. Relief that he didn’t have to pretend to love his girlfriend any more.

Relief that his own terrible behaviour had been cancelled out.

Relief that she’d finally found someone to satisfy her in a way Finn couldn’t.

So there it was. He didn’t want Amy, he wanted Maddie and all that came with her. But he couldn’t have her either.

If he took her to the boat and she somehow got across the sea, what then? He couldn’t figure out a happy ending for her, let alone any scenario where the two of them were together.

Unless maybe he handed her in to the police and she got off on all charges. So maybe he should give her up for the sake of them both. But she would never forgive him, there was no way round that. And she would never get off anyway, she was right about that.

And Amy and Ingrid would know he’d been with her. It would all come out, and his betrayal of his family and girlfriend would be in every newspaper and on every website.

There was no answer. There was no right or wrong.

Still dark

“Finn, wake up.” Ingrid was shaking him. He scrunched his eyes then tried to open them, squinting at her. The room was still dark.

“What time is it?”

“Half eight.”

He’d slept in. Amy wasn’t next to him. “Did you move the car?” Ingrid said. He pushed up on his elbows. “What?”

“My car,” Ingrid said. “Have you been out in it since I went to bed last night?”

“Of course not.”

Ingrid opened the curtains. Still dark out there too, just the purple spread of pre-dawn in the east. “It’s gone.”

“What?”

Ingrid looked at him as if he was stupid. “It’s not there. Someone’s taken it.”

Finn rubbed at his eyes. “Where”s Amy?”

“In the kitchen.”

“And she doesn’t know anything about it?” “No.” Ingrid stared out the window. “Who the hell would steal my car all the way out here?”

Finn shook his head.

More tomorrow.

Crash Land is published by Faber, paperback priced £7.99. dougjohnstone.co.uk