27 Evie

27

I should be frightened, but I feel a strange sense of calm, as if the worst has already happened. Perhaps I have been afraid so often and for so long that I've become inoculated against fear, and nothing has the power to make my heart race or my palms sweat or my throat close.

Angus Radford kicks a chair across the floor, telling Cyrus to sit. Then he pats the stool next to him and motions to me. I don't move. A sawn-off shotgun is resting across his lap. He drops his right hand to the trigger. I shuffle nearer, fixated on the weapon. I remember what a bullet did to Finn Radford.

When I reach the stool, Angus leans closer and he sniffs my hair. I snap with my teeth. He pulls away. Laughing.

‘I didnae recognise you at first,' he says. ‘What do they call yer now?'

‘Evie.'

‘You were just a scrap of a thing. Your sister was the looker. You missed out.'

‘Her name was Agnesa,' I say angrily.

He laughs again. ‘I know her fuckin' name.'

‘What happened to her?'

‘She died.'

I look for the lie, but it's not there, and my heart breaks along a familiar fault-line.

‘They all died except you,' he says. ‘I guess that makes you the lucky one.'

‘No,' I whisper.

The scar on his neck catches the light from the wall lamp and looks boil-like and seething, as though a snake is uncoiling beneath his skin, trying to burrow its way out. He turns on his phone. Makes a call. Talks.

‘They're here . . . No . . . They found me.' Laughter. ‘They just walked into the bar . . . yeah, both of them . . . made it easy for us . . . Get the boat ready.'

He ends the call and picks up his whisky, taking a sip, looking at me over the rim of the glass. From somewhere nearby comes the abrupt thud of a door slamming and the sound of footsteps receding.

Angus yells, ‘Isla! Where's my breakfast?'

She doesn't respond. He curses and takes another crisp from the torn packet on the table.

‘You killed them?' I say, wanting to claw out his eyes, picturing my fingers sinking into his sockets.

‘It was an accident.'

‘You should have opened the hatches.'

‘We were fighting a fire.'

‘We were trapped.'

‘You were already dead.'

‘Not all of us.'

Angus pauses and examines his empty glass. ‘Doesn't matter any more.'

‘I think it does,' says Cyrus. ‘I'd like to hear the story and I think Evie is owed.'

‘No, if anything she owes me,' he says. ‘I could have left her to die with the others.'

He walks behind the bar and pours himself another drink. Swallowing. ‘How much do you remember?'

‘There was a fire,' I say.

‘Yeah, well, we got that under control and then BOOM!' He opens his cupped hands, indicating an explosion. ‘It breached the hull. I dragged Cam's body out of the engine room and we tried to revive him, but it was too late. The pumps couldn't cope with the water coming in. By the time we opened the hatches, well, it was a fucking mess down there, nothing but smoke and bodies floating in water. I told Finn to close it up, but he wanted to be sure. He jumped into the hold and began pressing his ear to chests and feeling for pulses. I said it was too late, but he kept looking, with water up to his thighs, in darkness, with me yelling, "Get the fuck out! We're sinking", but then he found you. Still breathing.

‘"Leave her", I told him. Finn was holding you in his arms, lifting you up, begging me. The soft prick wasn't going to leave you behind, so I lifted you out. Both my hands were burned, my face, I was in agony, but I saved your skinny arse.' His face twists in disgust.

‘I told Finn to get out but he stayed down there, checking for more survivors. The stern was underwater. We'd launched the life-raft. The coastguard was coming. But he wouldn't fucking listen. What was I supposed to do?'

‘Save people,' says Cyrus.

‘How? The Arianna was lost, and we were a hundred miles from shore.'

‘You had life-rafts. Immersion suits.'

‘Not for everyone. And how was I going to explain someone like her to the coastguard?' He points to me. ‘It was better if none of you survived and the Arianna was never found . . .'

‘You condemned them to death,' says Cyrus.

‘They were already dead.'

‘Not me,' I say.

Angus grunts dismissively and there is a long silence. Ice cracks and falls in the icemaker.

His phone is ringing. He listens. ‘Two minutes. We'll be waiting out back.'

He rests the shotgun on the bar and bends to retrieve a roll of masking tape.

‘You won't get away with this,' says Cyrus.

Angus finds this amusing. ‘They always say that, don't they – on TV cop shows and in the movies? Does that make it a cliché or a trope?'

‘A cliché,' says Cyrus.

‘That's what education does – helps you come up with the right word at the right time.'

‘The police know we're here,' say Cyrus. ‘We've told them that you and your brothers were smuggling migrants.'

‘And what proof do you have? There is no boat and no bodies, and your only witness was a child. And we all know that children make up stories.'

He motions to me. ‘Give me your phone.'

‘Why?'

‘I won't ask again.'

I hand it over.

‘And yours?' he says to Cyrus. ‘Now your car keys.'

Angus twirls them around his forefinger.

‘What are you going to do?' asks Cyrus.

‘I'm going to put these phones in your car, and somebody will take it for a drive, proving that you left here, alive and well. Maybe we'll throw the phones off a cliff at some popular suicide spot and leave your car nearby.'

‘Nobody is going to believe we committed suicide.'

‘They'll believe whatever makes their lives easier,' he says, tossing the spool of masking tape at me. I drop it clumsily. He points at Cyrus. ‘Tape up his hands. Behind his back. Around his wrists. Do it properly or you'll be doing it again.'

I fumble with the spool, trying to find the end of the tape with my thumbnail. Cyrus stands and puts his hands behind his back. I'm close now.

‘If you get the chance, run,' he whispers.

‘No.'

More urgently. ‘Listen to me, Evie. Get away and call Carlson.'

‘I'm not leaving you.'

‘No talking!' says Angus, who is pouring Scotch into a hip flask. Spilling some. Cursing. Not cleaning up.

Cyrus is holding his wrists a little apart, as I wrap the tape, creating a gap that allows his hands to move. He pushes his wrists together when Radford checks my work.

‘Now you,' he says, putting down the shotgun and picking up the tape. I contemplate lunging for the gun, but I wouldn't know what to do. Does it have a safety catch, or do I just point and shoot?

The moment has passed. I hold out my hands. He binds them at the front and not the back, adding an extra loop around my waist to keep my hands tightly pressed against my stomach.

‘OK, this way,' he says, shoving me towards the kitchen. ‘Don't try to run, or I'll put a bullet through your spine.'

We pass through the kitchen and a storeroom before reaching the outer door. A car is waiting – a dark four-wheel drive. The doors are open. Another nudge.

‘Where are we going?' asks Cyrus.

‘To see a man about a boat.'