Chapter 77 Elin

77

Elin

Parque Nacional, Portugal, October 2021

The signpost indicating the way to the river beach is rustic – a sawn-off plank tacked to a post, just above one for the town, pointing in the opposite direction.

‘The town's only five miles from here,' Elin says, glancing around her. ‘Didn't realise we were so close.'

Isaac looks back and forth, down the gravelled trail. ‘Must be a road somewhere, running through the forest.'

Following the sign, they move right, threading their way through a dense copse of pines. The ground is thick with a mat of dead pine needles, their footsteps muffled.

A few minutes later, Isaac stops. ‘Guessing this is one of those times when there's no beach.'

Elin slows, mesmerised by the vista that's opened up in front of them. The trees have abruptly given way to a huge expanse of water reaching right up to the roughly hewn stone wall a few feet away. It's a dark, limpid green, an almost perfect reflection of the colour of the trees on the hills opposite.

An easy swim across to the other side of the river, maybe a hundred metres or so, but nowhere to go from there, Elin thinks, looking up. The land rises steeply from a tiny semicircle of beach to a small peak blanketed with trees. Only a few small houses are visible, nestled high in the hills, their terracotta roofs standing out among the greenery.

‘Guessing that's the tree on the map,' Isaac says, pointing.

Her eyes flick up, following his gaze. Fifty metres or so to their right is a large oak tree slightly set apart from the others. Bent over by the wind, the tips of some of the longer branches are trailing in the water.

‘Looks like it.' She starts walking, but when they get within a few metres of the tree, she falters, her heart beating a little faster.

Moving closer, Elin catches Isaac's eye, appalled. She's not sure what she was expecting, but it wasn't this .

There are pairs of initials carved into the tree, yes, but it's not just that.

Initials scratched away, scraped, burnt, and everything in between.

A brutal erasure of love.

‘Surprised the tree's survived, looking at this.' Isaac runs a hand over the trunk, his fingers pressing into the shapes and grooves in the wood. ‘Luísa didn't tell us about this part of the story.'

‘No, she didn't.' Elin can see why. It's not only chilling but desperately sad. She tries to imagine the state of mind of someone taking the time to come here and violently remove what was once a symbol of their love.

‘So what do you think this means? For what Kier's painted on the map?'

‘That's a good question,' she replies, still studying it. While Kier's painting captures the tree perfectly, what it means for her time in the park, she isn't so sure. But then, nothing about the images Kier has painted on the map is straightforward, she thinks, frustrated. The viewpoint, the falls, the clearing. They all hold glimmers of answers, but nothing concrete, nothing tying them together to form a coherent narrative.

‘No hope of finding Kier's or anyone else's initials on there, is there?'

Following more pairs of initials swarming up the trunk, Elin shakes her head. Only the outlines remained of some. Fragments of letters. Nothing to put Kier definitively here.

But as she keeps scrutinising it, the outline of an idea starts to pull together. ‘I'm wondering if maybe Kier saw an echo of something in this. Related to it in some way.'

‘A failed relationship?'

Elin nods, and as Isaac meets her gaze, she knows he's thinking the same thing she is.

Ned.

The embrace they'd witnessed in the hard-drive footage.

If Kier's painting of the river beach and this tree on the map was related to Ned, something told her that how she'd painted it – the heightened way she'd depicted the letters – meant that whatever went on between them hadn't been the positive encounter she'd glimpsed on the video from Kier's van.

‘Want to stop off in town?' Isaac asks as they tramp back down the trail, leaving the swollen river behind them. ‘It's not much of a detour from here. We can take the path out the other side to get back to the Airstream.'

‘Good shout. I'm going to need to sit down soon.' A wave of fatigue crashes over her. It's not just the hike down to the river that's taken it out of her, but what they'd seen on the tree, the violence in the markings still playing on her mind.

Once they reach the outer edges of town, the red-roofed houses giving way to shops and cafés, Isaac stops, looking around. ‘Want to try the café there?' He nods towards the building opposite, its small terrace thronged with people. Tourists mainly, judging from the backpacks strewn across the floor. ‘Saves us having to go into the centre.'

‘Sounds good,' Elin's already easing her bag from her shoulders. Exhaustion was really setting in now, her pack like a lead weight against her back .

But before they cross the road, Isaac hesitates, glancing to his right. ‘Try not to be obvious,' he murmurs. ‘But look who's over there.'

Following his gaze, Elin glimpses a familiar face outside another café a few doors down, stood between a group of middle-aged tourists laden down with backpacks.

‘It's Maggie.' She lowers her voice.

‘Yeah, and she's with Ned.'

They're talking to someone working in the café. Elin can see right away that this is no normal conversation; they're stood face-to-face, only a few steps apart, speaking quickly, urgently, Ned gesticulating.

The conversation continues for a few more minutes before the man looks around him and then presses an envelope into Maggie's hand.

Elin's thoughts immediately shift to what she'd learnt about April Blake and her partner – the extortion charges.

Could the café worker be paying them off?

Silently, they watch as the man walks quickly into the café, not looking back.

Isaac shoots a glance her way, but Elin keeps her eyes locked on Maggie and Ned as they slip through a gap in the buildings ahead. Something about Maggie's rapid pace, her tight-lipped, slightly masked expression, hints at someone struggling to hold in their emotions.

‘Let's follow for a bit,' Elin says, starting to walk. ‘See where they go.'