Evil for Evil Read Online Free PDF Page B

to be the key word tonight. He said it several times, she said it several times, each politely laid claim to total stupidity, then he went back to the group with obvious relief.
    Christie’s heart was still pounding and her legs were shaky. Sheneeded to sit down before she fell down and made a fool of herself all over again. She headed for a window seat.
    ‘I’m fine now, thanks,’ she said to Andy, who was still holding her arm. ‘You go back to your mates.’
    ‘I’d rather talk to you.’
    They squeezed on to the narrow seat and he said, ‘Right. Tell me what all that was about.’
     
    When Matt Lovatt, his dog loping alongside, appeared on his way to the boat half an hour later, Lissa was still sitting there. He waved, not slowing down, but she scrambled to her feet.
    ‘Are you going to the island? I’ll come.’
    He groaned inwardly. He loved being alone on his island on a soft night, when colour had gone from the sky and it became a place of shadows and ambiguity, when his pretty dappled deer could slip into the trees and mysteriously vanish, when the offshore breeze died and everything went still.
    He knew, too, why Lissa wanted to go – she only ever had one reason, which always broke her apart all over again. Anyway, Matt would have liked to check before she did – he’d found a nasty little message sprayed on the headstone recently.
    ‘Won’t you be cold like that, Lissa? And it’s getting dark. I’m just dumping concentrate for the deer and coming straight back.’
    She shook her head. ‘No. I want to take him these. He’d like them.’ She bent to pick some harebells, making a dainty posy.
    ‘Fine,’ Matt said. She followed him to the jetty, walking on the grass verge in bare feet. At a gesture, the dog jumped into the motor boat, sitting like a figurehead in the prow. Matt helped Lissa aboard and started the engine.
    Her eyes were fixed on the island – wide, hungry eyes. Mattglanced at her, then glanced away. With hindsight, he’d been crazy: he could easily have said a burial on the island wouldn’t be allowed. It was unfortunate he’d remembered the consecrated ground around the tiny ruined chapel, with a couple of old headstones weathered to anonymity, and exploited that to get permission. Close by was the burial cairn and the Norse graves; Matt had liked to think of the child, who had never lived and now was little more than a scar on his mind, in the company of the old warriors.
    If he was honest, it had been a bid for permanence. For the first time in his life he had felt rooted; the island was his place. Lissa would never want to leave if the grave was there. It hadn’t occurred to him that his salvation might be his wife’s destruction.
    He swept round to bring the boat in, jumped ashore to tie up and held out his hand to help Lissa ashore. In her other hand the fragile flowers were losing colour, wilting already, dying in front of his eyes. The symbolism was deeply uncomfortable.
    Matt clicked his fingers and the dog came to heel. ‘I’ll go to the bothy then come back here. Don’t hurry – I’ll wait for you.’
    ‘Aren’t you coming?’
    In the deepening dusk he couldn’t see her face, but he knew the look – the one he had seen so often, asking for something he couldn’t give and filling him with guilt at his failure. If there was graffiti on the headstone, it was too late to do anything about it now.
    ‘No,’ he said gruffly.
    Lissa paused briefly then set off on the grass in her bare feet, ignoring the track which curved round the hill then ran from one end of the island to the other.
    Matt watched her go before he followed the track to the bothy. Sheltered by the trees at the seaward end of the island, it had housed a shepherd in his grandfather’s day. Matt had made itweatherproof with a storage area below and basic accommodation above where you could doss down if you had a sick animal or an orphan fawn.
    There were a couple of does moving about, browsing