28 Cyrus

28

My face is pressed into the nylon floor mat of the car and Angus Radford is resting his feet on the small of my back. Evie is next to him, leaning as far away as possible, braced against the door. Another man is driving. I recognise him. The jeans, the gelled hair, the crooked teeth, the face like a ferret – he's the man who offered to help me change a tyre, moments before he clubbed me and bundled me into the boot of the Fiat and abducted Arben Pasha.

I try to slow my breathing and to think rationally, but my mind keeps wanting to review rather than plan. This is my fault. I have put Evie in danger. My arrogance. My carelessness. My mistaken belief that I could fix her if she confronted her past and remembered what had happened to her mother and sister.

Evie has been right all along. She's not broken. I'm the one with the missing pieces. I left a part of myself in the kitchen next to the body of my slain mother, and another piece in the living room, where my father lay dying, and two more upstairs with my dead sisters. That's why I became a psychologist. It's why I visit my brother Elias, every fortnight, in the secure psychiatric hospital. And why I punish myself in my weights room and run like I want to never finish. It is my survivor's guilt – not hers.

The car is moving. ‘What happened to Arben?' I ask, trying to appear calm.

‘We didn't touch him,' says the driver. ‘He fell into a coma.'

‘You could have saved him.'

Angus lifts one foot and rams his boot heel into the back of my head, telling me to shut up.

‘Hey!' protests Evie, lunging at him. I try to warn her, but it's too late and he knocks her head against the side window. She cries out in pain. I struggle against the tape around my wrists, wanting to protect her, but the boot heel presses against my neck.

I decide to conserve energy and to concentrate on the journey, feeling my body weight shift through each corner and estimating how far we have travelled from St Claire. Eventually, the car bumps over a grate and comes to a halt. Radford and the ferret get out. Evie and I are alone.

‘Cruden Bay,' she whispers. ‘I saw a sign.'

I twist myself around and straighten, until I'm sitting next to her. We are parked on the edge of a small concrete harbour, which is three hundred feet long and half as wide, with low concrete walls and a narrow channel separating it from the sea. The parking area is dotted with boats which are covered and wheel-clamped. More boats are moored in the still water inside the break-wall. The only dwellings I can see are two cottages with pebbledash exteriors overlooking the parking area, and a smaller building with a blue-painted door and matching window frames that could be some sort of harbour office. Closed today.

Angus points out to sea. A sleek-looking boat appears from behind the headland, bouncing over the swells. Within minutes it has reached the inner harbour and pulled up alongside a set of stone steps. I know this boat. It's where I met Willie Radford when he summoned me to St Claire Marina. The name is painted on the stern: Watergaw.

The two men return to the car and drag me out. Evie follows, walking next to me, close enough for our shoulders to touch. I look around, hoping there might be witnesses, but the harbour looks deserted and the cottages are empty.

A figure appears on the gangplank. Willie Radford is wearing a rain slicker and bib and braces. He steps back and sweeps his arm across his chest, welcoming us on board. The boat moves under my weight. Evie stumbles. Willie reaches out to help her, but she knocks his hand away.

‘Welcome on board, Dr Haven,' he says. ‘And you also, lassie.'

‘Have we met?' she asks.

‘Aye. Many years ago.'

Willie points us to a bench seat at the stern. Evie sits next to me. My hands are bound behind me and hers in front, tight against her stomach.

Mooring ropes are cast aside and the twin engines engage, churning up the oily water. The cruiser pulls away from the dock and turns towards the harbour entrance. A swan glides past, rising and falling on the ripples.

Angus takes a seat near the ladder, resting the shotgun between his spread knees. His father has the helm, steering us into open water. The ferret has stayed behind to clean up and remove any trace of our visit to the Waterfront Inn.

‘What does Watergaw mean?' I ask, trying to engage Angus in conversation.

‘It's a Scottish word,' he says. ‘You ever seen a broken rainbow – one of those wee patches of colour that disappear into clouds and don't have a beginning or an end? That's a watergaw.'

Looking back to shore, I can still make out the gorse and the nettles and the stunted trees and the outlines of buildings. Sheep dot the pastures. Farmhouses are the same chalky white.

Angus takes out his hip flask and unscrews the lid, taking two swallows. A gust of wind blows his fringe across his eyes.

‘You once proudly told me you were a fisherman,' I say. ‘Fourth generation. And now look at you. Aren't you embarrassed?'

A spark of anger. ‘You know fuck all about me.'

‘I talked to Finn. He did a lot of whinging about fishing quotas and illegal catches and bureaucrats in Brussels. What's your excuse?'

‘Did he tell you that forty years ago there were nearly five thousand fishermen working the trawlers in Scotland? Now there are nine hundred. The smaller boats have been forced out. Young people are going off to the cities, leaving behind empty shops and abandoned houses and closed schools.'

‘You think you're the first industry to have to change. Talk to coal miners, factory workers, garment makers. It's always been the same – you adapt or you die.'

‘Yeah, well, I decided to adapt.'

‘By exploiting the vulnerable.'

‘By offering them a new life. We got 'em jobs and houses. We helped arrange visas. Some of them are married now and have kids at the local schools. We saved our community.'

‘We've seen the accommodation,' I say. ‘Tents, caravans, pit toilets, bucket showers.'

‘Short-term solutions,' he says, taking another swig from his flask.

‘Where was my job, my house, my visa?' asks Evie.

Angus shrugs. ‘You were too young.'

‘You sold me.'

‘We had you adopted.'

‘Do you know what happened to me?'

‘You're alive. Can't have been that bad.'

Evie tries to launch herself across the space, but I manage to hook my legs around her, stopping her progress. Angus laughs and calls it ‘touching'.

‘What about Arben Pasha's sister and the other woman? Have they been sold or offered a new life?' I ask.

Angus doesn't answer.

‘Where are they?'

More silence.

‘So, tell me, Angus, when did your philosophy change?'

‘What d'yer mean?'

‘The people who died off the coast of Cleethorpes. You deliberately rammed their boat. You ran them down. You watched them die.'

‘They hadn't paid.'

‘Who were they supposed to pay?'

He doesn't answer.

‘Are you the Ferryman?' I ask.

He laughs and shakes his head.

‘Is it your father?'

‘He's an old man.'

‘David Buchan?'

‘Ye're gettin' warmer.'

What does that mean? Someone close to Buchan; in his circle? A right-wing agitator or disrupter. Another thought occurs to me. Someone closer still. David Buchan described his brother Simon as the nation's biggest people smuggler. He said it facetiously because Migrant Watch provided weather reports and tidal charts and navigation advice to small boats crossing the Channel. It was labelled as humanitarian work and registered as a charity – but could also be brilliant cover for the Ferryman – a means of making money at both ends of the journey: charging migrants for safe passage and using them as cheap labour when they arrive in Britain.

My mind races, putting together the pieces and making the connections. When we dined together, Simon Buchan asked me about Arben, pumping me for information. He offered to provide him with clothes, accommodation, a phone, an education. He said that he would fund his asylum application. And then he gave me a bullshit narrative about the perils of philanthropy, and I ate it up with a spoon and washed it down with an expensive French pinot noir. I admired him. I wanted to be him. And I felt sorry that he had a brother like Lord David Buchan.

I couldn't have been more wrong. At least Lord Buchan spoke up for what he believed. Yes, it was reactionary and xenophobic, but I didn't doubt his sincerity, even if I disagreed with his arguments. And I'd rather deal with an articulate, honest bigot than a fake progressive like Simon Buchan, who creates charities and good causes so he can hide his true nature, profiting from desperate people.

The boat is still motoring eastwards, and the shore has slowly receded to become a dark outline. The sea is all around us now, the hiss and rush of it, the collapse of waves into white water. Even the seagulls have deserted us, blown back towards the land.

Angus takes another slug from his hip flask and gets to his feet. He takes two paces to the stern of the boat and undoes his trousers, pulling out his penis to urinate.

Evie turns her face away.

‘Nothing you haven't seen before,' he says grinning, as a stream of urine arcs towards the waves. His shotgun is propped against the bench seat.

In that instant, I charge forward, head down, and ram him in the small of his back before he can step away. He cries out in surprise and fights for balance, but neither of us can defy gravity. We're falling, over the railing, into the churning wake of the Watergaw.

The cold hits me like a slap, and I immediately inhale a mouthful of water. My hands are useless, bound behind me, but I kick with my legs to keep my head above the surface, coughing and snatching a breath. I roll beneath the waves again and fight to free my hands, twisting back and forth, feeling the tape cut into my wrists. Exhaustion is slowing me down. My legs are burning and my arms aching and panic squeezes my heart. This can't be how it ends?

Thrashing to the surface, gasping for breath, I kick off my shoes and try to rip my hands out of the bindings. My chest spasms and water spurts from my mouth and nose. The Watergaw is already a hundred feet away. Angus Radford is closer, yelling for his father, waving his arms. He's not interested in me – he's more worried about saving himself.

His head goes under. He surfaces again, looking distressed. Coughing. Spluttering. Drowning.