No Stone Tells Where I Lie - Madeline Kalvis (easy books to read txt) 📗

No Stone Tells Where I Lie

Copyright © 2021 Madeline Kalvis

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

The author can be reached at: saavamailofficial@gmail.com

Cover by Giacomo Scandurra

Chapter 1

– I Am on the Island –

Emma was supposed to be the assisting constable, until word came during transit that she would be the island’s only law enforcement. Ned Sommers would be recovering from his wounds in England, leaving her to do the job alone. When she heard the news, she looked at the thousand miles of uninterrupted ocean off the starboard railing. No one back home understood what “alone” even meant out here. That suited her just fine. She was eager to get some useful work done for a change.

South Alderney, an isolated shield volcano peeking above the water, was a British Overseas Territory in the southern Indian Ocean. The one pier on the island served one regular boat that came every month, weather permitting. On a morning in April Emma Cambourne and her husband David stepped off the RMS Beatrice onto dry land. Such as it was. The ocean battered the shoreline and sent up green sprays of lingering fog. Through the gray and the mist, Emma couldn’t even tell if it was raining.

The welcome most people received on South Alderney was a smack of wet to the face. Emma was lucky in that, in addition to the drizzle and the ever-present smell of herring, she was greeted by a dour young man scrunched up in an orange anorak.

“You’re PC Emma Cambourne?”

“Right. Evan Finch?”

“That’s me. Good to meet you. Mr. Cambourne.” He nodded to the small man hunched against the wind in a thin jacket. “Decent trip I hope?”

Emma braced for pleasantries. “Could have been worse.”

“Think so? Follow me. We’ll get you checked in at The Rock.” Mercifully, he asked no more questions but turned and trudged up the street.

Next to Beatrice was a small fishing boat unloading an early morning haul. Plastic tubs of glittering silver fish were passed onto the men waiting on the shore. A young man picked bycatch out of the slithering mass of fish and tossed it into the water. A sea cucumber missed the water and popped on the stone sea wall like a bag of sick. The man caught Emma staring and waved.

Evan walked ahead. The small harbor was on his left, and a row of houses on his right. Over his head the steep massif in the center of the island emerged from the haze.

Beatrice was not known for her passenger comfort, and the island did little to give her back her land legs. She spent half her time looking down, placing each foot with caution on the uneven street. Mud squished around stones and gravel. She stepped over an upturned cobble and kicked it back into place.

Emma’s husband whispered in her ear. “I never thought I’d be more seasick on land than I was on that bucket.”

“Good behavior, David. We can’t foul this up on day one.” She sighed, took a deep breath, and met the smell.

What South Alderney lacked in color pallet it more than made up for in its rich landscape of aromas. Stepping off the boat, passing a small building selling fish and chips, standing downwind of the sea, sheltering in the eddies of air blowing in from a side street, all brought fresh blooms of aroma.

There was another faint, sour smell over top of the others, like burning chemicals crossed with the greasy, metallic smell of an empty tuna can left under the sink.

Emma had always hated the anonymity of smells. You could ask someone to describe a color or a texture. Mechanics routinely diagnosed a faulty engine from a description of the sound it made when idling. It was logical. It was convenient. But what is more, there was something comforting about it. Anything you saw or heard, you could share.

But ask someone to describe what they smell and half the time you got nowhere. Once in high school she had gotten a strong whiff of some bromine compound that sent her into a coughing fit. Since then, she could always bring it to mind, and she detected hints of it everywhere. Now the sea air brought her back to that incident. But she could never ask “Do you smell that? Commingled with the smell of seaweed and crab shit, that little brown vial in Mrs. Peterson's biology class?”

The irrationality of it nibbled at Emma's mind. It was a problem that could be solved. But mostly people solved the problem by ignoring it, and that bothered her more.

Through hood and stiff wind Evan shouted his way through a half-hearted tour.

“Chippy on the right there. Church up the hill in front of you. Post on the corner across from the church. I’d apologize about the wind, but it’s not going to get any better. You’ll see it only ever blows two ways. In the day, it comes off the ocean.”

The wind whipped past them, ocean fog swirling between the houses and sloshing back and forth like waves. It was the kind of wind that left salt in the streets, scoured the plaster on the corners of buildings, and made the air taste like brine. Up ahead on the higher slopes of the mountain the clouds of mist from the sea piled up at a certain altitude, forming a patchy ceiling. Evan pointed in that direction.

“Station’s further up the hill. That's where Ned used to set up.”

“What time do I need to be at the station?”

“Whenever you want. This isn’t London. Or wherever you’re from originally. America?”

“Pennsylvania.”

“Anyway, I mean this isn’t the Met. The worst sort of crime we get around here involves a misplaced cow or a broken fence. Or maybe you get both at once and the mystery solves itself. That road goes around the island, although it’s barely