Maya seems to get smaller as Jo speaks, her shoulders drawing together as if her body is contracting in on itself at the core. Hana realizes that this is the perfect example of what Jo does—makes people feel small in order to make herself feel big.
Even cornered, she’s capable, and Hana knows why she’s doing it now; Jo’s deflecting. It’s her who’s lied—about Bea, Seth’s link to the island, and so much more besides—yet she’s picking up on something Maya’s done to shift the focus from her.
Hana stands, turns to face Jo. “Before you start accusing Maya, I think you’ve got some explaining to do. Talk about deceiving people—the day we arrived, a note fell out of your bag on the jetty. You’d started writing to me, apologizing for something—I still haven’t heard what that is.”
A beat of silence. “Oh, that . . . ,” Jo says quickly. “I wrote it a few months ago. Like I said, I was feeling bad about not being there for you after Liam died. I thought about writing to you, but then we arranged this holiday. I was going to talk to you about it here, a proper conversation, face-to-face.”
Hana listens as Jo continues, her expression contrite. While she’s saying all the right words, laced with all the right emotion—she is somehow not quite hitting the right note.
She’s lying again. She’s just found out her boyfriend’s dead and she’s lying.
46
It’s only when the boulder is a few feet above her that her body finally jerks into action, a clumsy flailing of limbs as she propels herself sideways. Elin twists and lands half on her palm, half on her breastbone, the jolt pushing the breath from her lungs in one gasping exhalation.
Elin clamps her hands around her head, bracing for impact, but nothing comes. She doesn’t see the rock land, only hears the dull crack of the impact followed by skittish sounds of smaller pieces scattering.
She tips her head, her eyes darting upward, but no other rocks follow. All that’s visible is the looming expanse of cliff, a stripe of blazing blue sky above it.
The thud of her heart in her chest seems out of time with her gasps.
If she hadn’t been able to move when she had . . .
Once her breathing settles, she slowly pulls herself to standing.
Her eyes come to rest on the boulder lying a few feet away. It’s larger than she thought, roughly split in two by the fall, fresh cleave marks revealing the darker, smoother stone of the interior. Her first instinct is to step back, to try to see where the boulder has come from, but there are no obvious signs of fresh rockfall.
A cliff fall, she tells herself. A piece of rock that’s come loose after expanding and contracting in the heat. But as she walks away, Elin glances up at Reaper’s Rock. Despite her earlier dismissal, for a moment she can’t help imagining that the rock was responsible; as if it had thrown a piece of itself down in anger.
Once again, the island is letting her know, loud and clear.
We don’t want you here.
47
Back on the beach, Elin’s phone is loudly trilling.
She’s half expecting it to be Will, wondering why she hasn’t gotten back to him, but it’s a number she hasn’t seen since before her career break.
Mieke, one of the forensic pathologists. “I’m finishing up Bea Leger’s PM. Wounds are consistent with a fall from that height and cause of death is from the head injury, as you’d probably guessed, but there are a few things that might be of interest. I’ve found something a little odd: a trace residue of a powdery substance in her mouth; it’s collected around her gumline, very small amounts on some of her teeth.”
A powder.
Elin tenses. There’s no way of knowing if it’s the same substance she saw near Seth’s mouth, but if it is, then it definitively links his death with Bea’s. “Any idea what it is?”
“Can’t say until we get the analysis back from the lab, but it looks to me like limestone powder. I’ve seen it before, a quarry worker. His machinery tipped over and took him with it. We found something similar on him.”
“Could she have picked it up in the fall?”
There’s a pause. “I’d say no. The powder is specific to the quarrying process, working directly with the limestone itself. It implies it hasn’t been processed, so it can’t be from a post-production environment, such as a factory.”
“Right,” Elin says, and as Mieke speaks, something occurs to her, something she hadn’t given a thought to until now.
The quarry on the island.