Chapter Twenty-Seven

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Glasgow

May 2024

CLEM

Clem and Quinn sit in silence long after Stephanie leaves, both slightly shell-shocked. Clem downloads the TikTok app and tries to find Erin’s account, then spends a long time silently watching her clips. Her mind feels like it’s cartwheeling, the fragments of information colliding. Beltane. Paul. Who is he? What did he do to help Erin?

And why did she join this group? The Triskele?

“Erin’s TikToks are mostly like diary entries,” Quinn says, scrolling through the content on his own phone. He turns the screen to her. “Look. This one’s from last October.”

He shows it to her. It’s Erin and Arlo in the living room of the flat, letting Freya put face paint on their faces. She keeps giggling, adding more and more colors to Arlo’s face with her fingers.

Clem tears up, her voice catching. “It’s lovely,” she says.

“Ah, but the detective wasn’t interested in wholesome family content, was she?” he says bitterly.

“She was part of a weird group,” Clem says. “I think they’re only interested in the stuff that might explain why she’s in the hospital.”

“All teenagers are into weird stuff,” Quinn says. “And so what if she joined this group?”

“She mentioned a fire ritual, Quinn,” Clem says. “It makes her look as though she’s responsible for Arlo’s death.”

“Well, we contact this Paul person. Or the group she was part of. Find out what they know.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Clem says. “She never mentioned any of this to me.”

Her voice breaks, and she realizes how hurt she feels about it. How wounded she is that Erin held something like this from her.

“Look,” Quinn says. “This is from March this year.”

He plays her a video of Erin with her hands cupped to her face, her cheeks wet with tears. She’s in her bedroom, and it’s dark. In the background, Freya is sleeping. Erin seems too stunned to speak.

“He’s dead,” she says flatly. “Oh my God, he’s dead .”

The clips ends, and Clem scans the comments from Erin’s followers, all asking who she’s referring to. One of them asks, Is Arlo dead? But there’s no reply from Erin.

Clem gets to her feet, unable to stay seated any longer. “I want to show you something,” she tells Quinn.

She settles Freya into her cot before heading into Erin’s bedroom and fetching the notebook with the owl cadaver on the front.

“What is this?” Quinn says when she sets it on the dining table.

“It’s Erin’s notebook,” she says. “There’s a mention of the Triskele in there. Look.”

She turns to the page where Erin has written Triskele = scholarship . Quinn stares at it.

“What does it mean?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But I think it’s all related.”

“There’s a page missing, here,” Quinn says.

Clem chews her nail. Debates with herself and then decides to trust him.

“I tore it out.”

Quinn’s mouth gapes. “Why?”

She sighs. “Erin had written something in it that I didn’t want the police to see.”

“Which was?”

“She wrote the words ‘Arlo’s hands need to be bound.’?”

“Was that it? Nothing else?”

She nods. “Obviously, the fact that Arlo’s hands were bound when he died makes me feel sick to my core.”

He draws a sharp breath, processing that. “Okay. So, you think this whole Orkney trip was about Erin and Senna killing Arlo?”

“No! God, no. Of course not.”

His shoulders lower. “Then—what?”

“The police think that. That’s the angle they’re going to take.”

Quinn clicks his tongue against his teeth. “I suppose her telling that detective that she didn’t care that Arlo was dead didn’t help.”

“Well, no.”

“But then why say it if she doesn’t mean it?”

“I think she’s messed up from the fire,” Clem says. “And whatever happened to cause it.”

“Maybe it was a fire ritual, and it went wrong. And that’s why she’s so traumatized.”

“I think we have to go there,” Clem says.

“Where?”

“Orkney.”

Quinn doesn’t answer, but picks up his phone. The light from his screen casts a glow on his face.

“I’m just googling ‘Triskele,’?” he says. “Some interesting stuff here.”

“Show me?”

He passes her the phone and she sees the Wikipedia page, which is a stub, but nonetheless the words ancient clan and Orkney draw her attention. She googles on her own phone, the pair of them sitting for a few minutes clicking through the links. Clem googles “Fynhallow” and finds a page with drawings of a witch trial, right on the bay where Erin was found. She thinks of the book she saw in the hospital toilet, and the strange scene she saw of a woman being burned. She imagines the crackle of fire, and a scream, as though the image comes alive in her mind.

As though she knows that scene.

She turns to Quinn, the words almost tumbling out of her mouth. She knows she can’t tell him that. She can’t tell him what she saw, no way. He’ll think she has lost her mind.

“Check this out,” he says, turning his phone to her. “It says here the Triskele meet in Orkney. It’s from last year. It says they meet on the mainland. So, not Fynhallow.”

They stare at each other, the silence stretching out.

“We need to go to Orkney,” she repeats. “You up for that?”

“What about Erin?”

“I mean, I don’t want to leave her,” Clem says. “But I think we need to get some answers before the police decide Erin murdered Arlo and Senna.”

“It’ll look, you know, heartless. Both Erin’s parents up and leaving her while she’s in hospital.”

“We’ll be quick.”

“And Freya?”

“I’ll see if Josie can watch her while we’re gone. She likes playing with Sam. And it’s better to keep things as normal as we can for her.”

···

The flight from Glasgow to Kirkwall, Orkney’s capital, takes a little over an hour. Clem downloads as many of Erin’s TikToks as she can, making notes of what Erin talks about, and when. She mentions weekenders, and she remembers Erin going away with Senna every weekend for about six months. That was three years ago, not long after Erin and Senna first met, but long enough that the two girls were inseparable. These trips were always “camping with friends,” but the weekenders Erin refers to in the videos seem more than that. Erin mentions Paul again, about his expert knowledge, and Clem feels sick. She can’t quite shake the thought that Erin was seeing someone else. What if Paul made her do this, and Arlo got killed?

She can’t bear it.

The plane lowers through the clouds toward Kirkwall airport, the North Sea meeting the Atlantic and the Orkney mainland coming into view. Night is falling, but she can make out a vivid patchwork of neat fields and rolling hills in shades of emerald and purple heather, dotted with freshwater lochs and fringed by colorful coastal towns. For a moment, she thinks of Erin, and how excited she was to come here. How beautiful she said it was.

···

In Kirkwall, they rent a car and head straight to the ferry terminal, determined to head straight to Fynhallow.

“I’m going to ask these men questions,” Quinn tells her, nodding at a group of ferry workers by the dock. She watches as he pulls out his phone and shows a screenshot of the blog post he found earlier about the Triskele meeting, but they shake their heads. He shows them photographs of Erin, and they shake their heads. Then Senna.

“Oh yeah,” one of them says. “Over there.”

The man points behind Clem, and she turns sharply. Behind her are posters of Senna’s face, the word Missing in stark red letters, and a phone number asking for information.

None of the men know anything about either the Triskele or Senna, but Quinn isn’t deterred from asking everyone in earshot.

They buy tickets for the Gairsay ferry, but the last sailing has already crossed. They’ll have to wait until morning.

They check into a B and B for the night.

“You’re here for some sightseeing?” the owner asks. She’s an older woman with a friendly manner, short hair dyed vibrant pink with matching magenta glasses. Erin would love her, Clem thinks.

“We’re here to visit Fynhallow,” Clem says, and the woman’s face falls.

“Oh my,” she says. “I don’t think that’ll be possible. Terrible tragedy there recently. It’s hard to get to at the best of times, but police are all over the place.”

“We’re one of the teenagers’ parents,” Quinn says. “Our daughter is in hospital. She was lucky. But we want to do our own investigating.”

The woman nods. “I’m so sorry about your daughter. I heard a boy died, too.”

“Arlo,” Clem says, choking up again. “Sorry. He was my daughter’s boyfriend. We really, really want to know what’s happened. Particularly as a girl, my daughter’s best friend, is still missing.”

“It’s been all over the news here,” the woman says. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything, but we get visitors here all the time, and you never know what folk hear. Do you want to leave a number?”

Clem writes hers down quickly. “Please. Anything at all, ask people to call me. And perhaps I can ring you, too, to chase up.”

“Of course.”

“Actually,” Clem says. “Our daughter mentioned the Triskele. Do you know about that?”

The woman’s smile fades. “Oh, I’m not sure I’ve much to tell. They’re an odd lot, from what I hear.”

“Do you know where they meet?” Quinn says.

She shakes her head. “I’m afraid not.”

“We’ve heard there’s a low tide between Gairsay and Gunn,” Quinn says. “I don’t suppose you know the times of the tide?”

The woman nods, writes down a name and number on the back of her business card.

“There’s a local man with a boat who has been taking the police directly to the bay, so you don’t need to wait for the tides. You tell him who you are, I’m sure he’ll help.”

···

Clem’s dreams are fierce. She sees towering orange flames rising against black night, the sound of frantic screaming. Her daughter’s voice. But she can’t see her. She runs and runs, feeling the heat of the flames and hearing the screams, calling Erin’s name. But she can’t see her, can’t help her.

She wakes, her heart pounding so fast she feels nauseous. With a trembling hand, she takes two pills, then a third, gulping them back with a glass of water from the bathroom tap in dawn’s early light.

When she checks her phone, Josie has sent a WhatsApp video of Freya saying “Good morning” and waving at the camera. Clem’s heart rate slows, and she sends a message back.

Good morning, Freya. Grandma loves you. Mummy loves you too! Have fun at nursery, my darling.

She thinks of Erin, how she hasn’t once mentioned Freya.

People can have secrets, for sure. But she knows Erin loves her daughter. She adores her. Whatever happened on Orkney has affected her more than anyone can fathom.

“Morning,” Quinn says when she meets him in the café. “How did you sleep?”

“Terrible. Nightmares all night.”

“Me, too,” he says. “Dreams of fire.”

“I suppose that’s par for the course when you’ve a child in a burns unit.”

“Shall we contact this guy with the boat?”

“I’m doing it,” she says, pressing send on the text message.

An hour later, they meet Ivan at the jetty. A retired ferry worker, he brings them aboard his sailboat and greets them warmly.

Quinn pulls out his phone, shows him the photos of Erin and Senna, then the posts about the Triskele.

“You’re sure you didn’t see three teenagers asking for a boat to take them to Fynhallow?” he says.

“No,” Ivan says. “But I’ve got friends who do a lot of sailing in their free time. I can ask around.”

“That would be amazing,” Clem says. “Thanks.”

The sea is calm today, vivid blue, Ivan’s boat cutting through the waves. The rugged silver cliffs of Gairsay rise up beside them, then Gunn, the rise and fall of its green braes and thick forests.

And then, Fynhallow, its half-moon bay, milky sand leading to ultramarine ocean.

“This is it?” Clem asks as the boat pulls up to the jetty.

“It is,” Ivan says. The jetty is muddied with footprints below her feet as she clambers out. Remnants of blue and white police tape flutter in the wind, a macabre reminder of the tragedy that happened here. Clem had expected to be met with police at the scene, perhaps the forensic team still sweeping for evidence, but the work is evidently completed, the beach deserted.

“I’ll stay here for one hour,” Ivan says as Quinn follows her off the boat.

“Two,” Quinn says, handing him a wad of notes, but Ivan shakes his head.

“I’ve an errand to run. It’ll have to be one.”

“Do we know where the fire took place?” Quinn asks her as they head down to the beach.

“One of the caves,” she says, and they turn to look over the cliffs. No caves are visible, at least not from this angle, and so they head closer, their backs to the tide. Clem finds she feels less closure than she had expected to feel, now that she’s here. She discreetly checks her location on her mobile phone to make sure they really are on Fynhallow, for there is no sign, or indeed anything but Ivan’s word that this is the right place. Only when the name appears on her phone next to a dot marking her location does she feel assured—but still, she feels unsettled. It is hard to reconcile such a beautiful place with the horrors that have unfolded in the last nine days.

They are almost within touching distance of the cliffs when she spots it—an opening. Drawing a sharp breath, she strides toward it and steps inside.

The smell of burning is overwhelming. It catches her so unawares that it feels like someone has grabbed her by the throat.

“You okay?” Quinn asks.

“You don’t smell that?” she asks in a hoarse voice.

“Smell what?”

She swallows hard, directing her attention to the size of the chamber, to the wet floor and the slimy walls behind Quinn. Is she imagining the burning smell? Maybe it’s not fire at all but something littoral, a confluence of kelp and calcium deposits.

Quinn scythes a torchlight along the walls and deep in the chamber, searching for anything that might remain. They both know the police will have searched this area, but it makes her feel purposeful, examining the place where their daughter almost died. She looks up and sees Quinn kneeling on all fours, lifting his hand to his nose.

“You found something?”

He pulls a face. “It smells like fire,” he says. “I think this is where the fire was.”

She stares down at the black sludge on the ground, a flash of something passing across her mind. An imagined scene of a terrible fire erupting. The walls of the cave turning bloodred. Arlo’s clothes setting alight. His screams.

“Do you think it might be?” he says.

She nods. “It could be.”

They share a long look. It holds paragraphs of meaning, all the terror and uncertainty of the past week held within it. They both know that it changes nothing, finding the remains of the fire. It doesn’t bring Arlo back, and it shines no light on the mysteries surrounding Erin and Senna. And yet, by being here, it feels as though they are both a step closer to understanding what led to the tragedy.

Clem lowers the light of her phone to the spot at Quinn’s hand, finding nothing solid, nothing but charred wood and ash. But then, as she swings the light to the ceiling, she seems something that looks out of place.

On the ceiling of the cave, about ten feet directly above Quinn and the charred wood, is a picture.

“Quinn,” she says.

“What?”

“Look up.”

He moves his own torchlight up, and she uses the camera on her phone to zoom in.

“Stay there,” she says, moving close to him to show him what her zoom is picking up. Without torchlight, the image would be concealed. But with the white glare, she is able to pick up a large spiral, then another, another. Three of them, clustered together.

“What the hell is it?” he asks. “A trinity?”

Clem nods, a shiver passing across her. The cave suddenly feels cold. It didn’t feel cold before.

“Who would go to the trouble of carving that into the ceiling?” she asks, trying to imagine the logistics of it. A ladder would be needed. Not an easy task. And you’d have to chip away at solid granite while angling backward, or perhaps lying down.

But why?