Fault Lines Read online

  Fault Lines

  Doug Johnstone

  For Andrew and Eleanor

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  The moment she set foot on the Inch she felt something was wrong. She tied the three-seater RIB to a mooring post on the jetty and turned. The island looked the same, black sand shimmering in the low summer light, the sun’s rays bouncing down the Forth and hitting the island in a low-slung blaze. Beyond the beach hardened lava flows billowed down from the volcanic vents that dominated the island. Scraps of moss and sea grass cut green through the black and grey of the rocky terrain, over the years they’d brought life to the newborn land and clung on.

  It was too quiet, Surtsey realised, that was the problem. Where were the gulls and crows? Scientists had been coming to the island since it emerged in a giant plume of volcanic ash twenty-five years ago. The birds knew that humans meant possible food and usually greeted their arrival with a flurry of squawks and shrieks. But she was alone, just the low ruffle of waves on the beach, the hollow thud of her rigid-hull boat bobbing against the jetty.

  And where was Tom’s boat? He didn’t always moor at the jetty, sometimes he landed round the coast, paranoid about them being seen together even out here in the middle of the firth. But that was such a hassle and he’d been relaxed about it recently, so Surtsey was surprised not to see it tied up.

  She did a slow three-sixty, the salty bite of the sea air in her nose, and wondered what she was missing. Inchkeith to the northwest, its lighthouse and derelict battlements silhouetted against the setting sun. Behind it Burntisland and the three bridges, a mess of struts and cables, supports and towers. Round to Granton and Leith harbour, the beaches of Portobello and Joppa hidden by the island’s peaks from this side. It was deliberate that they met on the north side, in case of prying eyes with strong binoculars. Surtsey looked up at the twin volcanic peaks, brooding in the dusk. Surtsey had been up those slopes, explored every scrap of the Inch over many visits since she began her studies. So lucky to be a volcanologist and have this on her doorstep, the best laboratory in the world with Edinburgh University leading research.

  She looked to the east, the flat expanse of East Lothian. She got a flutter of unease at the missing Cockenzie power station chimneys. They’d been a landmark of her childhood in Joppa, and their recent demolition left a flicker of longing in her heart. Further east was Berwick Law then open sea, tankers drifting out there, wash glittering in the light.

  Where was he?

  She checked her phone. No new message, just the text from earlier:

  Fancy a picnic tonight? Usual time and place. Tx

  ‘Picnic’ was a stupid euphemism, Tom trying to be careful. Unnecessary, since it was from the phone he only used for her, the phone his wife didn’t know about.

  It had been going on for six months. The first time was after a drinks thing at uni, celebrating a new grant award for the research group, money that would keep everyone coming back to the Inch for years. After cheap Prosecco in the Grant Institute at King’s Buildings a handful of them moved on to beers at The Old Bell. Surtsey was drunk enough to flirt with him and to be flattered by his attention. He was twenty years older and married, but he was sharp, had authority and a certain charm, still handsome and trim. And he was ridiculously grateful, one reason she kept it going, the look in his eyes when she undressed in front of him. He was getting to fuck a firm twenty-five year old for the first time since his wife had been that age, and he was like an excitable puppy. It was so different to sex with Brendan, ages with her, cute and skinny, innocent and uncomplicated.

  She hit reply on her phone:

  I’m here. Where r u? x

  She walked off the jetty and jumped onto the beach. Even though she knew the geological processes that made it she was still amazed by the black sand, glistening like oil where it was wet, more like iron filings above high tide. She lifted a handful and let it run through her fingers, then brushed her hand on her dress. She wasn’t really a summer dress kind of person, vest tops and jeans usually, but she like to play the young ingénue with Tom, actually enjoyed the stereotype. They both realised the cliché of the situation, older academic having an affair with young PhD student. Surtsey imagined she was in a Richard Curtis film or a corny novel by some middle-aged Oxbridge guy.

  There were no footprints in the sand. That didn’t necessarily mean anything, Tom could’ve landed round the coast and come over the ridge. But something about the blankness of the sand unnerved her. And the birds, where were the birds?

  She walked up the beach onto the patchy grass and called him. She wasn’t supposed to do that even though he kept it on silent, but something didn’t feel right.

  Maybe he got caught up with Alice and the kids at home, unable to make excuses. That went with the territory, of course. He wouldn’t have just forgotten, that wasn’t like him. One of the things Surtsey liked about their set-up was that she was at the forefront of his mind throughout the day. She liked that compared to Brendan, who occasionally treated her like an afterthought.

  The phone went to voicemail. She didn’t leave a message.

  She walked round the coast towards the scientific hut, its white walls and blue corrugated roof stark against the black landscape. The hut was little more than a bothy with a bed, some basic lab and storage equipment, and a stove in the corner. He wasn’t likely to be there, they never used it, scared of leaving a trace that other department members would find. They always chose somewhere outdoors but sheltered, on their own little island paradise only a couple of miles from Edinburgh. That was part of this whole thing, their shared love of the Inch, the violence of its creation, its settling and erosion, the spread of life across it. An Eden for them to share.

  Surtsey had been obsessed with the place her whole life. Just as the Inch was being spewed from the bowels of the earth, a new volcanic island created from an unknown fault line in the Firth of Forth, Surtsey’s mum was in the back of a taxi on the way to the old Royal to give birth to her. Hence the weird name, Louise naming her daughter after another new island born from the sea, the Icelandic island she’d visited as a young volcanologist herself.

  Surtsey was at the hut now. She hesitated with her hand at the door then swallowed and pushed it open.

  Empty. A blanket stretched across the bed, the stove cold, equipment untouched.

  She left and looked around again. Further west was a rise in the rock, dipping down to a small cove. A seagull came out of the darkening sky, a bluster of wings, then landed out of sight behind the mound.

  Surtsey walked towards it, her stomach tight. She checked her phone again, no message. She picked her way over the cracked surface, careful in her Converse. She liked t
he way the trainers looked with the dress, made her feel less prim.

  As she approached the edge of the lava flow two crows burst up from behind it, cawing and flapping, a flurry of black feathers. They descended behind the bank, out of sight again.

  Surtsey reached the edge of the outcrop. Thirty yards below, on the sand of the cove, a dozen gulls and crows were gathered on a single low rock, a blur of squawking activity, pecking at each other. Surtsey watched for a few moments trying to make sense of it. Gradually she realised they weren’t pecking each other, they were pecking at the rock beneath them.

  Then she got it.

  It wasn’t a rock it was a body, and they were feasting on it.

  2

  She looked around as if someone might appear with an answer. She scanned the horizon for any activity apart from the chaos of birds. Nothing. The air was full of caws and screeches and she couldn’t concentrate.

  She looked at her phone then back at the birds. She picked her way down the rocky escarpment, sharp stones jabbing the soles of her shoes. Her dress snagged on a ragged edge and she pulled it free. She felt hot, blood in her cheeks with the effort.

  The sound of the birds grew louder as she got nearer, the tussle at the beach in full flow, gulls lifting into the air then settling back down. Surtsey saw clothing, a light jacket, jeans, brown shoes. Clothes she thought she recognised. The birds were concentrating on the exposed head and hands, where they could get better purchase.

  She stumbled onto the sand, the birds ignoring her, but as she walked closer the nearest crows began shuffling away from her. She hesitated, hand to her mouth. She looked back up the way she’d come, then out to sea. The sun was setting now, just a few strands of pink between the slats of the bridges in the distance. It was still light, though, would be for a couple of hours yet at this time of year.

  She turned back to look at the body. She was twenty yards away. She saw a seagull pick something from the face, flap up into the air chased by two others. It evaded them, switched back beyond high tide and landed, pulling whatever it was between its beak and feet.

  Surtsey’s stomach lurched. Acid rose from her stomach, but she swallowed it down. She took a breath and strode towards the body, waving her hands, shooing the birds away, clapping and shouting. They flustered into the sky but didn’t go too far, circling above her, a mass of black and white darting and skipping through the air, eyeing her.

  She stood over the body and felt another rush of blood, heart clattering in her ribs, fingers tingling.

  Tom.

  She closed her eyes, kept them closed for a long time.

  She opened them and looked away, up at the vents towering above her, over at the spread of dried lava tumbling down the hillside from them. Out to sea. Then eventually she turned back to his body, made herself look.

  His head was caved in on the right hand side, blood soaking the sand and making it shine. His scalp was a mess of skin, bone and hair on that side, his ear mangled and hanging off, eyebrow collapsed, cheekbone flat. His eyes stared up at the sky.

  She’d seen those eyes earlier today back at the office, glancing at her in a team meeting, something passing between them, a little spark. Nothing profound, just a look.

  She fell to her knees, felt the roughness of the sand on her skin. She thought about Alice, the girls. How would they cope? She thought about the reaction in the department, the professor no longer there to guide them.

  She reached out to touch his hand but hesitated. The wedding ring, a simple platinum band. He never hid it or took it off when they were together, and she’d never asked him to.

  Above her the crows and gulls suddenly stopped fighting and flew higher into the sky. She put her hands to her face, covered her eyes. Sat on her knees for a moment, then felt a vibration, subsonic, a sensation she recognised. It grew stronger and the sand shuffled around her knees. She felt a ripple through her body from the land beneath. An earthquake, a pretty strong one. She tried to get up but a judder pitched her forward and she rested her hand on Tom’s chest for balance. She pushed up and eased herself to her feet, spread her weight as she’d been taught, looked at the gulls way overhead. The ground kept shuddering, no rhythm to it, creaks and tilts. Even though she’d lived a lifetime with them, she never got used to it. She tried to imagine a time before the Inch, before the new fault line had opened up, when Scotland never had an earthquake worth mentioning. But it seemed impossible, they were as much a part of life as breathing.

  The world trembled on, vibrations in her legs, thrumming in her pelvis and womb, her stomach, spreading up her spine. There was a lurch to the right and she stumbled, caught herself. She heard a ripping noise from above and saw a cascade of small boulders tumbling from the side of the vents, clattering down the rock face, kicking up grit and dirt as they rolled, then settling a few hundred yards away.

  She was OK, that’s what she kept telling herself. Unless the earth actually opened up and swallowed her right here on the beach, she was safe. It was buildings you had to watch for. That and tsunamis, but they’d never had one here yet in twenty-five years, and while this quake was sizeable it wasn’t the biggest she’d experienced.

  The throb beneath her feet began to ebb away, echoing down into the mantle, the earth settling back. The whole thing had lasted maybe thirty seconds. She wondered what number it was on the scale.

  Then she thought of Tom. Alice and the girls. And herself. The slut, the mistress. The home wrecker.

  The silence after the quake was ominous, forbidding.

  If she called the police she would have to explain what she was doing here, what Tom was doing here. Then it would all come out. His wife and family. Her mum, Brendan. Everyone would know.

  She spotted something in the sand beyond his right hand. The old Nokia, the phone he used just for her. She looked around at the shore, wondered where his boat was. The birds were returning, getting closer above her head. She picked up his phone and stared at it, wiped it on her dress to get the sand off. She felt ridiculous in this dress now, a piece of fakery. She had been living a lie with Tom.

  She looked at him.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, and started walking back towards the jetty.

  3

  The spray from the prow dampened her dress and felt like a slap in the face. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to the salty tang of the sea stinging her skin. The outboard motor was at full throttle, the whine of the engine filling her ears as the boat bucked over the waves. She headed east towards the widening mouth of the firth, refusing to look at the island behind or the coastline to either side. If she kept going all the way to Scandinavia she would never have to deal with any of it.

  The motor strained and she became aware of the clamour of it out here on the empty water. She cut the engine and the silence pressed down on her, the slap of wave on hull the only sound. She sat for a long time listening to that noise, trying to find a pattern in it, but it was disjointed and random.

  Eventually she turned back to the Inch. It looked like a cancerous growth on the skin of the water, the two volcanic lumps of the vents rippling down to the stark southeastern cliffs. The northern beach and jetty were invisible from here. The same for the cove where Tom lay.

  She looked south to Joppa and Portobello. The sun had set but the sky was still eerily bright, that unsettling paradox of Scottish summer-time. In this light the beach seemed smeared across the land, thick painted brushstrokes in front of the precise sketch lines of the houses behind.

  She tried to pick out her own place from the row of low tenements at the eastern end of the shoreline. Some lights coming on in the front rooms, but she couldn’t see which was hers. She wondered if Halima was in the kitchen knocking together something spicy with a large glass of Rioja in her hand. Or Iona, throwing clothes around trying to decide what to wear for tonight’s shift. People she loved going about their lives. She stared at the stumpy, flat-roofed houses and wished she was inside, sharing department gossip with Ha
lima or shouting at Iona to pick up after herself.

  She looked at the bigger Victorian properties along the prom. She could pick out St Columba’s easily with the observation tower poking up from the sprawl of dark stone. Her mum would be there. She was diminishing every day, retreating from the world one breath at a time. So much life reduced to a bag of bones, half her stomach cut away, growths in her pelvis and liver, tangled up her spine. Only a matter of time.

  Surtsey thought about Tom. She pictured his slender fingers on her hips that first time, a reassuring touch to her elbow in the office, his goofy smile whenever she walked into the room.

  She’d been pushing them away but now the thoughts slipped in. How had it happened? Maybe he fell and hit his head. But where was his boat? It could be moored beyond the cove, but why do that? If his boat wasn’t there, that meant someone else had taken it or it had drifted away. If someone else took it, how had they got to the island themselves, where was their boat? Did they come with Tom, was it someone he knew? Was it murder?

  Maybe he fell and hit his head on a rock, staggered forward onto the beach. The hardened tephra and palagonite tuff were razor sharp in places, an edge to the wrong part of your head and you’d be in trouble. She hadn’t examined his wound closely, hadn’t looked around for rocks or boulders, too keen to escape.

  It must be lonely back there on the island. When eventually it got dark in the early hours and the wind picked up along the Forth, he would need a blanket to keep warm. Stupid thoughts, chewing her up.

  She trailed a hand in the water, cold against her fingers, and shivered as a breeze stirred around her.

  Too quiet, too much time to think. She needed to be moving, active.

  She started the engine and pointed the boat towards shore, opened the throttle and picked up speed, flecks of spray in her face. She opened her mouth and tasted the salt.

  She was at the east end of Portobello beach in ten minutes. She angled the prow alongside the last groyne and drove the boat as close as she could, then cut the engine, flipped off her shoes and jumped out, pulling the boat in on the towrope. She heaved it onto the trailer she’d left sitting in the wash and fastened it, then hauled the whole thing up the sand to the gap in the low seawall, then onto the prom.