Page 47 of Dauntless
“Dad!Dad!”The soles of Jemmy Finch’s shoes slapped against the ground.“Dad!”
Jemmy Finch, Fisher Harry Finch’s second eldest, was a scrawny kid of thirteen, all long limbs he hadn’t figured out how to grow into yet and hair like wet straw.
“Dad!”he yelled again, puffing and panting in the gloom of the dawn.“Under the jetty!John Coldwell is floating under the jetty!”
* * *
The islanders crowded the edge of the harbour at the jetty.I was given room at the front of the crowd alongside Short Clarry as Fisher Harry Finch and Sea John Barnes waded into the black water underneath the jetty and rolled John Coldwell out like a seal.
They dragged him up onto the shoreline.
He was white and bloated.The sea wasn’t kind to the dead.
Fisher Harry Finch shone his torch over John’s head, making a hissing sound when he found his cracked skull.“Aye.There it is.”
I thought of the rack of postcards and brochures in the museum and wondered if John had even seen it coming before it connected with his head.
“Oh,” Short Clarry said, shaking his head.“Oh no.”
“I reckon that maybe he didn’t run off at all then,” Young Harry Barnes said.“Huh.”
“I knew it!”Mavis said.“I knew no good could come from a Hawthorne on Dauntless.Didn’t I say it, Red Joe?Didn’t I say to mark my words?”She crossed herself.
“I reckon,” Young Harry Barnes continued, puffing on a cigarette, “that the young Hawthorne bloke up and killed him!”
“Stop that,” I said.I spoke loudly, hoping my voice would carry to everyone.“That’s for the police to decide, not you, and not me, and not anyone on this island.”
I wondered if George Hawthorne had ever felt like this—staring down his crew in a last futile attempt to maintain order.Of course, I had the advantage over George Hawthorne, didn’t I?I had a police boat on the way.
“The police are coming,” I said.“Leave them to do their job.”
“Righto,” Short Clarry said.“Red Joe is right!Though, if it was the Hawthorne bloke who did this to poor John Coldwell, are any of us safe right now?”
A murmur of unease went through the crowd.
Thank you, Short Clarry, for trying to douse that fire with petrol.
I wished I could tell them that Eddie hadn’t done this, but the last thing the islanders needed right now was the awful truth: that one of our own had put John Coldwell’s body down in the old icehouse, a place Eddie couldn’t have known about, and come back later to dump the body in the harbour.That one of our own was a killer.
Dauntless had proven itself a powder keg in the past.I didn’t want to be the one who lit a match today.
“The police are coming,” I repeated loudly.“In the meantime, the search is off.”
“What?”Short Clarry asked, his brow creasing.“Red Joe, there’s another man missing!”
Yeah, and the last thing I wanted was for him to meet his end on Dauntless the way his great-great-great-whatever-grandfather had.
“The search is off,” I repeated.“Let the police look for Eddie Hawthorne when they get here.”
Short Clarry pulled his shoulders back.“I’m the mayor, Red Joe, have you forgotten?I’m in charge of searches!”
I stared back evenly.“And I’m Josiah Nesmith.Have you forgotten that?”
The crowd shifted and murmured restlessly.Mavis’s jaw dropped.Young Harry Barnes puffed on a cigarette, owl-eyed.
I heard Eddie’s voice in the back of his mind.“So you’re like royalty or something?Holy shit.You are.You’re like the true king of the island, aren’t you?”
Or something, I’d told him, playing it down.
