Paradise Island Read online

  PARADISE ISLAND

  PETER GUTTRIDGE

  ‘When from our better selves we have too long been parted, how gracious, how benign is solitude.’

  William Wordsworth

  “… do the monkey, do the pony, do the slop, do the boogaloo twist ...”

  Loudon Wainwright III

  Prologue

  1978: Six months earlier

  Ruth thought the cat had woken her. In the middle of most nights he would clatter through the flap in the back door, yowling either because he wanted attention or because he had caught something and was heading upstairs to eat it beneath the bed. Ruth was used to the sound of her pet’s midnight feast directly beneath her. The slathering and the tiny bones crunching.

  But as she stirred she was conscious of a weight on top of her. Her cat was here, asleep. Something else had disturbed her.

  Ruth was lying on her side, her hand pressed between her thighs. She turned on her back, reached across and patted David’s side of the bed, though she knew he wasn’t there. Her cat jumped off the bed, landing with a soft thud on the uncarpeted floor.

  Ruth strained her ears. There were noises downstairs.

  Ruth loved this South Downs cottage in the summer, hated it in the winter when the blackness fell. It was only five miles from Brighton but it might have been fifty, it felt so remote, so cut off. She always felt ill-at-ease, always slept badly, when David was away on business, or what he claimed was business.

  David was here tonight, though he might as well not have been. He’d come home so drunk he could scarcely see straight. She’d packed him off, sweating alcohol, to the spare bedroom across the narrow landing.

  She heard movement downstairs.

  For a moment she hoped it was David, gone down to the fridge for some juice. But she could hear his laboured breathing across the landing.

  Lately they’d been bothered by a new neighbour’s cat coming through the flap. Her cat was hopeless at defending his territory, didn’t seem to understand the concept. But this didn’t sound like the cat flap, or a cat. This sounded like someone moving through the house.

  Ruth and her female friends had a roster of nightmares. Some were trivial, others more serious. The worst was…this.

  Someone was walking up the stairs. Adrenaline jolted her body. She sat up, her heart hammering. Whoever was on the stairs was making no attempt to hide his progress. Their progress: she was certain she could make out two people.

  Maybe they thought the house was empty. Her car was at the garage and David had come home by taxi so there was no indication that anyone was home.

  Or maybe they didn’t care.

  Oh god. She wanted to get across the landing to David, rouse him before they got to the top of the stairs. But she couldn’t move.

  The bayonet. David kept a Victorian bayonet in its sheath by his side of the bed. He’d bought it in the Laines in Brighton on a whim. He’d brought it upstairs once as a joke but had left it here.

  By an enormous effort of will, she rolled over to his side of the bed, reached down, groped for the bayonet.

  The bedroom door creaked open.

  Ruth was sprawled across the bed, her fingers scrabbling on the wooden floor, when she heard someone try the wall light. She carried on scrabbling.

  The light switch didn’t work. Ruth hated centre lights so when they moved in the electrician removed it and put wall lights above the bed with separate pull switches.

  The intruder – she could hear breathing now, raspy and choked – stepped back onto the landing. Ruth’s hand closed round the leather sheath of the bayonet. The sheath had a metal tip so scraped on the floor as she lifted it. She twisted onto her back to pull the blade from the sheath.

  The landing light came on, flooding the bedroom. Panicking she tugged at the bayonet but it was jammed in its leather sheath. Wild-eyed she looked towards the door. A man in jeans and bomber jacket filled the door-frame.

  She drew a ragged breath, clawing helplessly at the bayonet, more frightened than she could ever remember being. He knelt on the bed. Reaching over he wrenched the bayonet from her and threw it behind him. It cracked against the wall and clattered to the floor.

  It occurred to Ruth – finally – that she should scream. But as the man grabbed her roughly by her shoulders and she caught the sour stink of his sweat all that came out of her mouth, a feeble, dying fall, was David’s name.

  And then it began.

  Chapter One

  ‘Welcome to Paradise.’

  Sheriff Wilson muttered the toll-booth mantra as he watched the white car move along the slender causeway linking the island to the mainland. The sun glinted off the car’s windscreen as it glittered on the blue, blue water that stretched away either side of it.

  Wilson was grateful for the three mile-long length of causeway. A number of the barrier isles – this string of narrow islands that protected the Georgia coastline from the buffeting of wind and storm – had no link to the mainland except by ferry. Some islands limited visitors anyway on account of their fragile ecosystems.

  Wilson didn’t care about ecosystems. Although he was born in the country he’d become a big city boy who now missed the fug of urban living. But he did care about crime prevention. Those other islands could control visitor numbers through the ferry system but where a ferry could go, a smaller boat could come and go.

  Paradise Island – he winced every time he had to say the name – was fringed by swampland and rocks that made it pretty much impossible to reach by boat. Except for one small private harbour on the northern tip of the island the causeway was the only way in or out. If a crime occurred all he had to do to catch the perpetrators was close it.

  Not that he had needed to but once in the five years he’d been here. Paradise Island was only seven miles long by two wide and had so little crime the locals rarely locked their doors. When they did they put a notice up to tell callers where the key was.

  But there had been that one occasion, the previous year. A car-load of teenagers with attitude from Brunswick, come over for a day’s drinking. Got boisterous in Harry’s, along with The Catalyst one of the hippest bars on the island. Had words with the proprietor. Come closing time they shot Harry dead in a drive-by as he was out front locking up his premises.

  When Wilson got the word, he immediately closed the causeway. Pissed off not a few civilians wanting to get back to the mainland but he picked up the perpetrators at the tollbooth.

  Wilson had taken no risks. He and his team were ready for a gun-battle, the three of them kitted out in bullet-proof vests and armed with pump-action shotguns. But the youngsters were less drunk now, with a lot less attitude. They had nothing but a single handgun. They gave up without a shot fired, claiming they’d just wanted to frighten Harry not kill him.

  Wilson was relieved. He’d been there before and didn’t want to experience it again. Nobody on the island knew this – and he wanted to keep it that way – but eight years earlier he’d been on the wrong end of a judgement call. He still hadn’t learned to live with the consequences.

  Before then his mantra had been: some people you shouldn’t try to restrain; some people you should just set free. After, he wasn’t so sure.

  The car slowed as it reached the tollbooth. Wilson could see it was a rental, could see the man behind the driving wheel and the woman in the passenger seat. He was only here to say Hi to his guys on the tollbooth but the woman was beautiful, he could see that at a glance. What the hell.

  He leaned into the driver’s window, flashed his movie star smile:

  ‘Welcome to Paradise.’

  Natasha Innocent watched her boss over by the window of the car. Must be a pretty woman in there for him to pay so much attention to it. Harr
y Wilson was quite something but he had a tragic flaw, if flaw it was: he couldn’t keep his pecker in his pocket.

  She remembered her own encounter with him, just after she’d become his deputy. She knew he’d make a pass and sooner rather than later. She expected something clumsy. Growing up on the island, as she had, some guy took it into his head to stick his tongue in your ear rather than down your throat, he was regarded as a sophisticate.

  Wilson, however, proved to be surprisingly deft.

  It was on the tiny, sandy dance floor at The Catalyst, the music joint on the beach. The band had come over from Myrtle Beach on the mainland to play some old time Carolina shag. Wilson was a good swing dancer, light on his feet for one so big.

  He was leading her round the room one moment, the next they were out on the veranda and he was pressing her very gently to his manly chest. Manly chest. She smiled at the phrase as it popped into her head but that’s exactly what he had. She could understand why he was so successful with women.

  She eased herself away from him. She said, as gently as she could, nervous that this might be the end of her nascent law-enforcement career:

  ‘I don’t think Josie would approve.’

  Wilson smiled down at her.

  ‘Your roommate?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, holding his gaze. ‘My roommate.’

  It took him a moment and she allowed that he surprised her again when realisation dawned.

  ‘Ah.’ He released her gently, stepped back. ‘Well then, perhaps we can simply finish our dance?’

  As they were heading back inside, his arm still loosely draped around her waist, he leaned down.

  ‘But if you ever decide to dance on my side of the ballroom I hope you’ll let me know.’

  She laughed.

  ‘You’ll be the first, Sheriff Wilson. That I guarantee.’

  He grinned down at her.

  ‘I consider that a deal.’

  And that was that. He never referred to it again, although he was punctilious about asking how Josie was. Which was as it should have been but so rarely was in this state and among policemen.

  He’d confused her mightily when those three boys had shot Harry dead. When they were laying for them near the tollbooth, Deputy Johnny Finch had been coming on all Mr Machismo. It was a hot, humid day and in her body armour she was dripping sweat and worried about fainting.

  Wilson stayed beside her, talking quietly about this and that. But it wasn’t long before she realised he was as nervous as she was. He was pale beneath his tan.

  ‘I hope to God they don’t start shooting,’ he said at one point, his voice a little quavery.

  She wondered for a moment if he was a coward – was that why this big city cop chose to work down here in the back of beyond? Then she felt ashamed when she saw the way he approached the car when it pulled up to the tollbooth. He kept his gun in his holster when he strolled over, leaned in the driver’s window, and talked quietly to the boys inside. A few moments later he took receipt of the driver’s handgun and the whole thing was over.

  Wilson was quite something.

  ‘Welcome to Paradise,’ the cop with the movie star looks drawled, adjusting his sunglasses. ‘You’re here just for the day?’

  The cop was straight out of central casting: big, broad-shouldered, wavy-haired. Confident. Ruth knew David, sitting behind the wheel of the rental, had clocked the way the cop was giving her the once-over.

  ‘You can do Paradise in a day?’ David said, unable to keep the edge out of his voice.

  The cop took off his sunglasses, looked down at David but didn’t say anything. Piercing blue eyes.

  ‘We’re staying on the island for a little while,’ David said, holding his look and forcing a smile.

  ‘I’m guessing by your accent you’re maybe staying at Barbara’s place?’

  David nodded.

  ‘You obviously know her.’

  ‘Hell, yes. That English lady has made quite an impression here.’ He smiled at Ruth, his eyes lingering on her appreciatively. ‘But then English ladies seem to have a knack for doing that.’

  Ruth looked away, hunched lower into her seat.

  The cop put his sunglasses back on, switched his attention to David.

  ‘We’re going to be neighbours,’ he said. ‘I live right down the block from Barbara. I’m Harry Wilson. I’m the sheriff of Paradise Island.’

  David took a hand off the wheel and waved it vaguely in the direction of the tollbooth.

  ‘You’re the sheriff but you have time to meet and greet all the visitors – that’s nice.’

  The sheriff looked at David for another long moment.

  ‘Oh I do other things,’ he said softly, ‘but I’m just checking in with my boys on the causeway here.’ He stood straight and patted the roof of the car. ‘Y’all have a real nice stay now.’

  David nodded, put the car into drive and moved past the tollgate.

  ‘Is it a good idea to piss off the locals quite so quickly?’ Ruth said, staring straight ahead. She was uncomfortably hot, wanted just to lie down in a cool room. They’d got lost coming across the State, finally found the turn-off for the island south of somewhere called Brunswick on Highway 17. She’d loved crossing the causeway. But she and David hadn’t said a word to each other for over an hour.

  David rolled up the window and boosted the air conditioning.

  ‘The guy was an asshole.’

  Ruth looked down at the map of the island in her lap.

  ‘And you’d know, of course.’

  ‘No one better,’ he said, itching to go a little faster but conscious of the irritatingly slow speed limit and the fact that the sheriff was watching them depart.

  Ruth waited a beat. In her acting days she’d been known for her timing.

  ‘That’s for sure,’ she said.

  Chapter Two

  The favourite part of Luke Hanson’s yoga practice was the breathing exercises at the end. When all the stretches and twists were done, dripping in the humid Georgia heat, sweating out the toxins, he sat cross-legged on his deck looking out through the swamp to the breakers on the rocks beyond. And for twenty minutes breathed these long, calming breaths. That was about as good as it got.

  At least, that’s what he told himself. Oh it was true enough, much of the time, but he knew that sometimes, even with the breathing, it was all he could do to hold down the rage.

  His temper had always been his problem. His temper and a shitty childhood casting a long shadow. Nothing unusual in his story: it was commonplace, banal. Bullying, drunken father, cowed, exhausted mother. After his father abandoned her, his mother took refuge in religion. She attended Mass three times a day, dragging Luke along to kneel for what seemed hours on the cold, clammy marble floor in the local Catholic church.

  Poverty, hardship and, soon enough, crime. Luke was a career criminal by the age of 14. Burglary, mugging, boosting cars. Then there were the street fights when the rage was on him. Young as he was, he was feared in his neighbourhood because word got round this kid did not give a shit. You got in a fight with him, the only way he’d let up is if you gave in or he was dead.

  He should have been dead when he was 15 on account of his ill-judged venture into drug dealing. Fortunately the Italian whose territorial rights he had unwittingly infringed was drunk when he tried to pop Luke at point blank range. The bullet that should have gone into his brain missed altogether, splintering a cheap plaster Virgin Mary. The second one, fired as Luke was running away, took a lump out of his ear.

  He steered clear of drugs after that, except as a sometime user of marijuana. But just after his mother died, when he was 20, he fell into bad company. Three men who did things that made him seem like the altar boy his mother had always hoped he would be.

  He knew deep down that he wasn’t like them. Despite the beatings he’d inflicted on men who’d often done little more than look at him the wrong way, he didn’t feel he was a cruel man. A subtle distinction maybe,
but by then he was clutching at straws.

  His problem was that, tough as he was, he didn’t have the guts to get clear. These men scared even him. He looked into their eyes and he knew he was looking into the abyss.

  But one day they did something so vicious, so evil, he knew he’d be damned for all eternity if he didn’t act.

  He dropped a dime on them. The city put him into its own Witness Protection Programme with disgust at the horror of the crime he’d witnessed but not prevented.

  They brought him into court by boat and mail van, hunched under a blanket. He gave evidence from behind a screen, his voice uncertain, then couldn’t wait to run like hell. The city passed him over to the US Marshal Service, which had just set up WITSEC, the Federal witness programme. The service gave him a new identity and housing on the other side of the country and paid him his basics.

  After the first few months he only had to keep in touch with his contact officer once a year. For the next three years it coincided with his moving. The bad boys might be in prison but he knew they were as persistent as he was himself. They wouldn’t stop looking until they found him. And when they found him they’d kill him.

  Hanson hid in the straight life but tried to stay off the grid. He didn’t stay long in one place. He didn’t much sleep nights. Rootless, wandering, unsure what to do with his future, if he had one. Thinking a lot. Loathing himself mostly for the terrible things he’d done and the terrible things he was capable of doing. Trying to figure out if he was a bad man with good impulses or a good man with bad ones.

  He got a new identity and then another as he criss-crossed the country. They found him twice in the first six years. Somebody, somewhere was leaking information. They were following his paper trail.

  He finished the last of his breathing exercises and lay down on his back, reaching out for his sweatshirt and draping it over his bare chest. He closed his eyes, breathed softly, let himself drift.