The Retreat: A Novel (Detective Elin Warner Series)

Prologue

Thea’s scream rips through the clearing, startling the birds from the trees in a flurry of flapping wings.

The sound isn’t human; it’s high-pitched and desperate, the kind of scream that turns your stomach inside out, makes your ears burn.

She should have waited until they got back to camp. He told her to wait.

But Thea had insisted. Half an hour and three beers since they’d snuck away from camp for some time alone, and she couldn’t hold it any longer: “Don’t look at me like that, it’s your fault for bringing so many cans. Shout if you see someone coming . . .”

Laughing, she’d walked a few feet away, carefully positioned herself so Ollie could see only the sandy tips of her white Keds, the thin trail of wet already winding through the dusty floor.

The scream intensifies.

Ollie freezes for a moment, but instinct kicks in: he lurches into action, pivoting toward her. But almost instantly, he comes to a halt, a cloud of dried soil and leaves kicking into the air.

A movement: someone stepping out from the tangle of branches.

The rock on the cliff above, the island’s namesake, is casting them in shadow, but Ollie can see right away that this person isn’t from camp. They aren’t in shorts and a T-shirt like the kids, or the cheery green of the camp leaders; they’re wearing something dark and shapeless.

Ollie’s eyes dart to Thea. He can now see her frantically thrashing in the dense underbrush.

He wants to move, to do something, but his body is locked. All he can do is stare, his heart lunging in his chest—hard, knocking thuds against his ribs.

A violent flurry of movement, and then a sound: the sharp liquid crack of something bursting and breaking.

It’s a sound he’s never heard before.

Ollie closes his eyes. He knows it’s Thea, but in his head, he’s turned her into something else. A puppet. A mannequin.

Anything but her.

His eyes flicker open and it’s then he sees it: the watery trail has become something darker, thicker.

Blood.

It splinters into a fork—the liquid tip of a snake’s tongue.

Another strike: this time harder, faster, but it barely registers, and neither does Thea’s second scream—blistered, cut off, like it’s clotted in her throat—because Ollie’s already running.

He darts into the woods, making for the cove he and Thea found yesterday while the others were building the fire. While they’d both pretended they had stopped there just to talk, to drink, it was obvious it was going to become something more.

His hand on the soft band of skin above her shorts, her mouth pressed against his . . .

The thought is too much; he speeds up. It’s as though he’s running blind—the setting sun flicker-flashing through the trees overhead, his eyes seeing nothing but a blur of shadowy green and the gray-brown carpet of leaves. His sneakers are slipping out from under him, the dry ground as slippery as mud.

Barbed branches pull at his shirt. One catches his arm, snags the soft skin on the inside of his wrist. Blood flares—a ragged line of tiny red beads bursting through his skin.

It feels like he’s done this before—a weird déjà vu, as if in a dream, one of those panicky ones where you wake up sweating and panting, the type that sticks with you for a while afterward.

A few yards on and the trees start to thin, the woodland floor giving way to sand, the rock beneath, flattened elephant-folds of dusty limestone. He’s reached the steps Thea found yesterday, nothing more than wooden treads knocked into the soil. Momentum tugs his body forward with each step and he’s forced to lean back to stop himself from falling.

When he reaches the bottom, he jumps onto the sand and runs toward the small overhang he and Thea had lain in last night, contraband bottles in their hands.

Ollie drops to all fours, hollowing his back to crawl under. Once he’s inside, he sits with his knees drawn up to his chin and concentrates on breathing. In and out. In and out. Being still. Staying quiet.

But his body won’t cooperate; he’s shaking with jerky spasms that he can’t control.

Ollie clamps his hands over his head as if the pressure will force away the scream still ringing in his ears. But now it’s not just the sound, it’s the sight: Thea’s body folding, collapsing—like a puppet master had violently jerked at her strings.

He bashes his hand against the rock above him. Bashes again and again until there’s ripped-back skin and blood.

Red smears across his knuckles, a sharp thread of pain pulling through him that he tries to hold on to, to distract him, but it doesn’t work.

The truth is still shouting.

He left her. He left her. He ran.

Ollie puts his head between his legs and takes a long, shuddery breath.

Minutes pass, but no one comes. It’s getting late, he can tell. The last of the sun is almost gone, the sand in front of him now in shadow.

He’ll wait a little longer, he decides, then he’ll try going back to camp. As time ticks by, Ollie half convinces himself that it was a joke, a prank Thea got roped into by the boys. He clutches at the thought: he’ll get back to camp and she’ll be there, laughing at him for running away like a kid.

A few minutes later, he drags himself from under the overhang. Straightening up, he glances carefully around him, but the beach is deserted; there’s nobody there.

As he runs back through the forest, he’s still clinging to the thought: It’s a joke. Thea is fine. But as soon as he enters the clearing, he knows. The dark trail from before is now a stream of blood forming a winding downhill path.

Ollie tries to look at her, but he can’t bring himself to see past her white Keds, now perfectly still and streaked with red.

It isn’t real. Not Thea. She can’t be . . .

He turns away, bile rising in the back of his throat.

It’s then that he notices something on the ground, sitting on top of the dusty leaf litter.

A large stone, about twelve inches long. The surface is mostly weathered, with tiny scuffs and dimples where it’s been battered by the waves and sand, but it’s also smooth in places, the outline softly contoured.

Crouching low, Ollie picks it up. It feels warm, gritty against his palm. Something about it is familiar, he thinks, slowly turning it between his fingers.

It hits him, and he holds the stone still.

Tipping his head, he glances up at the rock on the cliff face behind, then looks back at his hand.

Ollie looks from one to another until his eyes blur.

He realizes that what he’s holding isn’t just a stone.

The subtle curves and contours resemble the rock above him.

Reaper’s Rock.

THURSDAY, 10:00 A.M., 2021

@explorewildwithjo

“So here’s the update as promised . . . we’re at the beach waiting for a boat to take us to the retreat, but what I didn’t realize is quite how remote Cary Island actually is . . . I reckon it’s a twenty-minute boat ride from the mainland at least.” Jo flips the phone’s view from her face to show the sea, a glimpse of the island visible in the distance.

“I’ve had loads of people asking about LUMEN, so I’ll explain the vibe. LUMEN’s a luxury retreat on the gorgeous island you’ve just seen, off the South Devon coast. The architect was inspired by Mexican legend Luis Barragán, so we’re talking luxe, candy-colored villas nestled in woodland with views out to sea. There’s some pretty special stuff: an outdoor yoga pavilion, a glass-bottomed pool, and this crazy rope swing stretching out over the water . . . you can drop straight off into the sea. One of the most spectacular features is an amazing villa on a private islet—that’s for all you honeymooners. I couldn’t get my mitts on that one as it’s already booked, but it looks stunning.

“I’ll be taking you out on the kayaks with me later today, but to give you an idea of the wellness activities on offer, they’ve got paddleboarding, meditation, kayaking, hydrofoil surfing, and loads more.” She pauses. “Now for the creepy bit: I love the backstory to this place. The rocky outcrop on the side of the island, you can just about see it from here, it gives the island its nickname: Reaper’s Rock. Spooky, right? And according to a lot of the locals, the island is cursed. Apparently”—she lowers her voice to a hushed whisper—“the rock is said to be a manifestation of the Grim Reaper. During the plague, people were quarantined here and then left to die. So the story goes, their souls are still wandering and will only be at peace when the Reaper takes a new victim. Stay too long and you’ll be next . . .”

Jo flips the camera again to show her mock-terrified face. “Eerie, isn’t it? But that’s not the only thing. There was an old school on the island that burned down back in the day. Abandoned until it was used by the local council as an Outward Bound center in the late nineties. All fine and dandy until a group of teenagers were murdered at the hand of the island caretaker, Larson Creacher, in 2003.” She lowers her voice again. “Is it wrong to say all the spooky stuff kind of adds to the appeal?”

DAY 1

1

As Elin Warner runs, the air feels sticky like gum, catching in her eyes, hair.

Only six a.m., but the heat is already bouncing off the pavement, solid walls of it, with no breeze to sweep it away.

The route she’s taking is part of the South West Coast Path—houses on either side, lavish Victorian and Italianate villas that stud the wooded hillside. Gleaming pinpoints of sunlight are bouncing off the windows as her reflection shifts alongside her in the glass—cropped blond hair mushrooming up and out with each step before settling back around her face.

The exteriors of the houses seem flimsy in the heat, their edges blurred. The verges outside are parched yellow—grass not just suspended in growth, but withering and dying, bare patches opening up like sores.

Summers have been hot before, but none like this: weeks of sunshine; spiking, record-breaking temperatures. Newspapers printing endless images of cracking motorways, fried eggs cliché-cooking on the bonnets of cars. Forecasters had predicted a reprieve several weeks ago, but it never came. Just more sun. Nerves are fraying, people ready to snap.

Elin’s just about holding on, but her internal landscape is at odds with the external. With each day of blistering heat that passes comes the exact opposite inside her: the cold grip of fear creeping back.

It keeps her up at night, the same thoughts on repeat. With it, the control strategies: the running, relentless exercise. The past few weeks, an escalation—earlier runs, longer runs, secret runs. Self-flagellation.

All because her brother, Isaac, had mentioned her father had been in touch.

A few yards on, the houses on the left give way to a green. The coast path runs behind it, hugging the lip of the cliff.

Leaving the pavement, she darts into the opening for the path.

Her stomach lurches.

No fence, only a few feet of land between her and a hundred-foot plunge to the rocks below, but she loves it: it’s coast path proper—no houses between her and the sea. The view opens out: Brixham on her right, Exmouth to her left. All she can see is blue—the sea a darker, inkier shade than the chalky pastel of the morning sky.

With each step, she feels the heat from the ground rising up through the soles of her sneakers. She wonders for a moment what would happen if she kept moving: whether she’d eventually implode—an engine overheating—or whether she’d simply carry on.

It’s tempting to keep going until the thoughts stop, and she doesn’t have to try to hold on anymore—because that’s what it feels like sometimes: as though she’s having to grip too hard to normality. One small slip, and she’ll fall.

At the top of the hill Elin slows, her thighs screaming, thick with lactic acid. Hitting pause on her Fitbit, she notices a gray car cresting the hill. It’s moving fast, engine throaty, scattering the seagulls picking at a flattened carcass on the road.

Something registers as she takes in the shape, the color. It’s Steed’s car, she’s sure of it, the DC brought in to help her on her reassignment. It speeds past, a blur of dust-dulled alloy and flying gravel. Elin catches Steed’s profile: slightly crooked nose, strong chin, fair spikes of hair gelled into submission. Something about his expression pulls the last bit of breath from her. Elin immediately recognizes it: the quiet intensity of someone flooded with adrenaline.

He’s working. On a job.

The car stops at the bottom of the hill. Steed flings open the door, jogs in the direction of the beach.

Pulling her phone from her shorts, Elin glances at the screen. The Control Room hasn’t rung. A job, just down the road, and they called Steed instead.

Familiar worries resurface, the same ones that have consumed her ever since HR and Anna, her boss, decided that she wasn’t ready for full duties after her career break.

Steed’s a speck in the distance, moving toward the beach. Elin shifts from foot to foot. She knows the right thing to do is to stick to her plan—to run home to breakfast, to Will—but pride gets the better of her.

Running hard down the hill, she passes Steed’s car and crosses the road. No other cars; only a cat slinking across the tarmac, fire-striped undercarriage nearly touching the ground. She crosses the scrubby patch of grass to the empty beach beyond. No Steed.

Walking left, along the shore, she passes the restaurant jutting out on metal pillars above the beach. A rustic-looking shack, name emblazoned in driftwood above the door. The Lobster Pot. It’s shuttered. Last night, the terrace would have been heaving, strings of fairy lights illuminating wine bottles in coolers, baskets of shiny mussels and fries.

A few feet on, she finds him; there, beneath the overhang of the restaurant. He’s kneeling on the sand, muscles straining through the fabric of his shirt. The raw physicality is always the first thing Elin notices about Steed, but he’s a dichotomy: the hard, honed body belied by the softness of his features—heavy-lidded, sensual eyes, a wide, full mouth. He’s that rare kind of man: the type women simultaneously feel protected by and protective of.

They’ve slipped into an easy working relationship. He’s younger than her, late twenties, but there’s none of the thrusting bravado you sometimes get in men of that age. He’s astute, has a knack for asking the right questions, an emotional intelligence that’s all too rare.

A woman is standing beside him. She looks to be in her late forties, tall and muscular. Her blue swimming cap is still on, the same hue as her swimsuit, the thin layer of rubber emphasizing the shape of her skull. Despite the heat, she’s shivering, jiggling from foot to foot in a nervous rhythm.

Steed turns, and as he moves Elin sees it: a leg, splayed against the sand—a pale calf, lettuce-like fragments of seaweed suckered to the skin.

She finds herself stepping forward to get a better angle.

A teenager. Ugly wounds—slashes to the face, chest, and legs. The clothes are almost completely shredded, the polo shirt split down the seam, across the torso.

Closer again, and her vision blurs, the syrupy haze of the air giving the scene a sloppy focus. As she takes another step, reaction tips over into realization.

She sucks in her breath.

Steed swivels around to face her at the sound, eyes widening in surprise. “Elin?” He hesitates. “Are you—”

But the rest of his words bleed into the air. Elin starts to run.

She knows now why they’d called Steed instead.

Of course.