The mysterious and beautiful missing woman, that was much more newsworthy

She stepped back and wiped her nose. “Ever since I laid eyes on you people have been dropping dead around us. You’re a curse. Yesterday morning my life was s***, but at least I knew what to expect. Then I walked in on Kev and Claire and decided that was it. Even then, I thought I knew what I was doing. But now look at me.”

“Take it easy.”

She fixed him with a stare. “Don’t you dare say I went with you so that you’d do what I want. I did it because I wanted to, because I’m scared and lonely and don’t know what the hell to do.”

“Come here.” He pulled her into a hug, sobs against his chest, throbbing pain through him, his hands at her back. He closed his eyes and smelt her hair.

She lifted her head up. “I can’t stop thinking about the plane. Every time I close my eyes the cabin is breaking apart, you’re back there, I’m up front, and I think it’s the end. We fell out of the sky, Finn, we fell out of the sky and lived. Sometimes I wonder if that means something.”

“I know.”

“But it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just luck. Why did the others die and not us? I don’t deserve to live ahead of them.”

“It’s not a matter of deserving it.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“It’s just chance.”

Maddie looked at him and something flitted across her face, something like shame. “I’m glad it was them and not us. Isn’t that terrible?”

“No.”

Her voice lowered. “I feel like I can do anything now. We lived, we’re indestructible. I know it sounds crazy, but if anyone can understand it’s you. You understand, don’t you?”

“I understand.”

Pummelled

He stood with a skull in his hand, aware of what it looked like if anyone could see him. Not that anyone would be around at this time of night, this time of year, way out here.

The Tomb of the Eagles was freezing, his fingers numb as he replaced the skull next to its compadres. He thrust his hands into his pockets and stamped his feet to get the blood flowing. On the walk up here in the dark he’d been pummelled by the westerly and imagined himself being carried over the cliff into the sky, blissfully swept into the upper reaches of the atmosphere above the clouds where aeroplanes still flew, criss-crossing the planet with their vapour trails.

He had told Maddie he was heading back to Ingrid’s but instead had turned right when he left the Lewis place. He needed quiet and this was the quietest place he knew. The torch on his phone threw a thin beam of light up from where he’d placed it, enough to see by, but the corners of the cairn were shrouded in darkness.

He pictured the dead rising, zombified bodies of the seven crash victims clawing their way out of the gloom towards him, dragging their feet and moaning. Each one a husband, father, wife, mother, daughter or son to someone. Each person leaving the deepest hole where their life had been, an absence as shocking as any explosion.

Finn kicked at the floor and disturbed some dirt. He coughed, his lungs straining in pain. The cough escalated, he couldn’t shake it out, each new spasm making more daggers slide between his ribs. His mouth filled as he coughed something up, then spat it on the floor. He grabbed his phone and pointed the torch at the ground.

Chain reaction

There was darkness amongst the phlegm. Blood. Had they mentioned that in hospital? Maybe he hadn’t escaped death after all. Maybe death was stalking him, waiting for its chance to take him like the others.

Perhaps he and Maddie were on borrowed time, the whole thing a chain reaction that would still claim them both.

He thought about Maddie’s idea to steal the boat and sail it across the firth. He couldn’t picture it, but then he couldn’t picture saying no to her either. The more he thought about her the less he understood. Maybe she killed her husband and took the money. And yet Finn had just made love to her in his neighbours’ bedroom. Maybe she walked away from the dying and injured on the airfield, yet he went to the cowshed and saved her, hid her from the police, from everyone.

His phone rang. Ingrid. Her fourth call in the last two hours. Always wondering where he was. He didn’t blame her, he would be the same in her position. But he didn’t answer the call. The truth was, he didn’t know what to say to her.

“Switch it off,” Ingrid said.

But Finn couldn’t. He sat forward in his seat watching Sky News, unable to look away. The glossy young presenter was in the car park of Kirkwall Airport, the runic lettering of the terminal building behind her.

The crash story would’ve been enough to bring them here and keep them for a couple of days anyway, but the mysterious and beautiful missing woman, that was much more newsworthy.

Only Finn knew that she had walked away unharmed. At the moment they were still just describing her as unaccounted for, but something in the tone of the reporting suggested they suspected.

One of the air crash investigators held a press conference explaining that if a body had been thrown clear during the crash, it was highly unlikely they wouldn’t have found it by now. The possibility had been raised of Maddie leaving the scene and the investigator hadn’t ruled it out.

He was a reedy man in a short-sleeved shirt, buttoned-down collar, thin oblong glasses. The press jumped on his refusal to deny it and ran with the idea of a hunt, the search for a pretty young woman, possibly injured or suffering from amnesia, in the vicinity of the airfield.

Searching

There was a lot of space in Orkney. The police had brought in reinforcements from mainland Scotland and roped in half the population of Kirkwall to trek through the adjoining fields searching for Maddie as well as wreckage. It was as if the world needed to find her to make sense of it all.

She was the missing piece of the puzzle, the resolution they needed for the crash to finally go away, so they could move on to the next terrible trauma that the world would throw at them.

But Maddie was no missing jigsaw piece, no easy closure, Finn knew that.

And then there was the media’s treatment of Finn. The BBC, ITV and Sky hadn’t found him on South Ronaldsay yet, but it was only a matter of time. The tabloids would be here first, the girl from the Orcadian was right.

They would rip him to shreds because everyone loves a scapegoat. Finn, the fist-fighter on the plane, the abuser of the crew, would fit perfectly.

More tomorrow.

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