Page 46 of Dauntless
Bloody cigarettes, more like, but I hummed in agreement.“Listen, Young Harry, did you talk to John Coldwell on Saturday night about that diary of Eddie Hawthorne’s?”
“Oh, yes,” Young Harry said blithely.“It’s a fake, he says, but I told him that you had it locked up like it were the crown jewels!”
My heart sank.It must have been John Coldwell who’d stolen the diary then.He must have seen at some point where I kept the spare key for the medical chest and remembered it.
“John Coldwell’s gone a bit mad, I reckon,” Young Harry said.“Foaming at the mouth over this Henry Jessup nonsense, and now running off for God knows what reason.”
I hummed again.
“Everyone knows that Henry Jessup died on the island anyhow,” Young Harry continued.“His name’s in the church.It’s just a lot of foolishness over nothing.”
“You were in the search party over at Seal Beach last night, weren’t you?”I asked.“Did you see any signs of Eddie Hawthorne?”
“Didn’t see a bloody thing.”Young Harry squinted at the sky.“And it won’t be much better today, I reckon.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, hope igniting in my chest.“I think you might be right.”
Wherever Eddie was hidden, I hoped he stayed there.
Nipper Will Harper shouldered his way through the crowd towards me.“Bad weather for a search,” he said.“And we’re missing a day of work.”
“Worse weather to be out on a bloody boat,” I said.
Nipper Will grunted, and his eyebrows tugged together.“You right?”
I didn’t know how to answer that, so I nodded and pulled on my gloves—at least I’d remembered them this morning.Then I looked around at the crowd.These people were more than my neighbours, they were my family.And one of them had killed John Coldwell.
It was a chilling thought.
This time last week I’d have trusted any one of them with my life.Now, I felt as though the ground was shaky beneath my feet, and that everything I thought I’d known about my history, about my home, and about the people I shared it with, might be a lie.
The sooner the police arrived and sorted this whole mess out, the better.
I looked up towards the point, to the lighthouse.It rose out of the darkness in the distance, ghostly and pale as a bleached bone.The flags I’d fastened there last night weren’t visible in the gloom.
“Be careful today,” I said in an undertone to Will.“Watch your back.”
He raised his eyebrows.“What the hell is going on, Joe?”
I shook my head.“Just be careful.”
Mavis stomped over to me, a heavy walking stick in her grasp.
“Bloody awful weather,” she said.Still, she was wearing her gumboots and her bright yellow puffer jacket, so I had no doubt she was here to lend a hand to the search.All the islanders were, apart from the young kids and those who needed to stay behind to watch them.Even the fishing boats wouldn’t leave the jetty until the search was done.That was the Dauntless way.
“Bloody awful,” I agreed.
“You think it’ll clear up later?”she asked, peering into the sky.
“Should do.Weather report said it would.”
“Good.”She looked around the crowd.“Who are we waiting for?”
Short Clarry bustled through, waving and nodding.
“Ah.”Mavis huffed out a breath.“No show without Punch.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to reply to that, and was saved having to by a sudden yell, which cut through the cold air as sharply as the call of a gull.
