The Darkness and the Deep

CONTENTS

Death is my Neighbour

Last Act of All

Past Praying For

The Trumpet Shall Sound

Night and Silence

Shades of Death

Cold in te Earth

Copyright © 2006 by Aline Templeton

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette Livre UK Company

The right of Aline Templeton to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Epub ISBN 978 1 84894 752 8

Book ISBN 978 0 340 83857 0

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

An Hachette Livre UK Company

338 Euston Road

London NWl 3BH

To Alison, Mark and especially Molly, the first of the next generation, with my love.

A donation is being made to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution

1

The sea haar came rolling in on an oily swell from the Irish Sea just ahead of the darkness. Now, to the melancholy lowing of the foghorn on the Mull of Galloway, it crept over rocks and bays and low cliffs, stealing light and feature from the landscape. It engulfed the small boat becalmed in the Bay of Luce, then, on its south-west shore, the ancient stone harbour of the port of Knockhaven.

Lights began to appear in the small deep windows of the white-harled houses huddled close along the curve of the shore and in the shops and small terraced houses on either side of the winding ribbon of the steep High Street. They shone from the sprawl of council housing and grey stone villas in the higher, newer part of the town and blazed from the ‘executive homes’ with sea views, whose picture windows would have found small favour with the original occupants of the little town. Those earliest fishermen derived no romantic satisfaction from gazing out at their workplace and their enemy – even if she was their mistress as well.

The High Street and Shore Street, bypassed by the main coast road which divided Knockhaven roughly into old and new, were quiet this evening after a still, damp day in late September. A couple of cars were parked outside the ‘8 ’til Late’ minimart and the chip shop was just starting on its evening trade, but the other shops were preparing to lock up and in the hushed, foggy gloom there was little to tempt last-minute shoppers to linger.

Suddenly, out of the murk a motorbike appeared at the top of the hill, the sound of its racing engine shattering the unnatural silence. It took the bends in the narrow High Street at speed, then, swinging dangerously round the sharp corner into Shore Street, skirted the harbour to stop abruptly where the road ended outside the lifeboat station. A second later its burly rider was running towards the entrance, the key ready in his hand.

Inside the vaulted shed he found the switchboard with the ease of long familiarity and a moment later the building was ablaze with light. He was opening the door to the slipway, blinking in the brilliance of the outside floodlights, when he remembered the new instructions and, swearing under his breath, went back into the secured locker where the maroons were kept. Before he could carry them outside to set them off he heard the squeal of brakes announcing another arrival, then another. Summoned by pager, they would all be on their way now, the mechanic, the second cox, the team on standby, the reserves, the officials.

He set up the first rocket and lit it. It shot into the gloom, its report muffled by the damp air and its light only a sullen, ruddy glow. Timing the interval, he set off the second a minute later.

A small crowd, alerted by the bustle, had gathered already and the sound of the maroons would bring extra onlookers. More cars were snaking down the High Street and along the shore, slowing as the dead-end road became congested.

None of their drivers, intent on the emergency summons, paid any attention to the car that drew up hastily on the main road near the top of the High Street and switched its lights off, waiting until the stream of vehicles turning down to the harbour passed. Then it took off in the opposite direction, heading north out of the town towards the headland which separated the safe harbour of Knockhaven from its treacherous neighbour, the rocky cove known as Fuill’s Inlat.

As the street lights came to an end and the car’s headlights bounced back off the white wall of the haar, only the light from the dashboard instruments illuminated the grim face of the person at the wheel, driving dangerously blind along the narrow road.

Dr Ashley Randall, her striking, pale blue eyes cold, looked with distaste at the fat woman wedged in the patient’s chair to the side of her desk, at her skin which was the colour and texture of oatmeal, at her sly expression and the slack, gossip’s mouth.

‘By rights,’ the woman was saying resentfully, ‘I should have stayed in my bed for a home visit instead of trauchling up here with my back giving me gyp every step I took.’

‘No, no, Mrs Martin, that’s quite the wrong approach to back pain. If you don’t exercise it, your back will only get worse. And of course your weight is imposing a considerable strain on it – have I given you one of the leaflets on tackling obesity?’ There was no percentage in tact where Aggie Martin was concerned.

Aggie bridled, adjusting her massive bosom. Her expression was mutinous as she said, ‘You’re aye giving me leaflets but they’ve never done any good.’

The doctor sighed, tapping slim fingers on the desk. ‘I don’t suppose they have, if you ignore what they advise. Now, all you need at the moment is regular gentle exercise and a couple of paracetamol if the pain’s bad, and I think you will find your back improves in a day or two.’

‘What about my prescription?’ the woman said belligerently. ‘I’ve a right to a prescription—’

‘Not if you don’t need one,’ Dr Ashley said crisply, getting to her feet as a signal that the consultation was over. ‘Now, Mrs Martin—’

An urgent ‘beep-beep’ interrupted her. With the familiar lurch in her stomach – part excitement, part nerves – she pulled a pager out of her pocket, glanced at it, then spun round to open a cupboard and grab the jacket hanging from a peg inside.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said with blatant insincerity, ‘I’m afraid I have to go – that’s a call-out for the lifeboat. I’ll have one of the receptionists show you out.’

Then she was out of the door, not giving Aggie the chance to protest that she’d also wanted to discuss the nasty pain she’d had in her stomach after her black-pudding supper last night.

Behind the desk in the foyer, a group of receptionists in their usual gossiping huddle turned to look at her – like cows in a field, Ashley thought contemptuously. She could almost see their jaws rotating. They didn’t like her, and she didn’t care.

Mobile in hand, she was scrolling to her husband’s number as she gave her orders. ‘Show Mrs Martin out, would you? It’s a lifeboat emergency, so put the rest of my patients on someone else’s list. If that’s a problem Dr Lewis will come in and help out.’

As the phone was answered, she said, ‘Lewis? I’m off on a distress call. They’ll phone if they need extra help with my surgery. All right? Bye.’

Then she was through the door, being swallowed up in the fog outside, but not before she heard the eloquent sniff of Muriel Henderson, the oldest receptionist (the one who belonged to the same coven as her mother-in-law) and the ‘Poor Dr Lewis!’ meant for her ears.

As she flipped on the fog lights and started the engine and her black BMW Z4 responded with its satisfying growling roar, exhilaration fizzed inside her, not only at the prospect of action with an edge of danger but because of the other dangerous hobby she was currently pursuing. Adultery – not a pretty word, but she savoured it as she ran her hand through her hair to fluff out her crop of strawberry-blonde curls. She bit at her lips, too, to bring the colour there; there was no time to stop and put on lipgloss when the target from summons to launch was less than ten minutes, and if she wasn’t there in time there were reserves who would jump at the chance to replace her.

Fortunately the Medical Centre, purpose-built in the newer part of the town to the landward side of the main road, was only 500 yards from the High Street in one direction and her own home, in an enclave of modern housing, was not much further in the other, so she hadn’t yet missed a launch when she was on standby. Earning her place in the three-man crew had been the only compensation for being stuck in this dismal hole, the only thing that had stopped her from using arsenic, or something more subtle, on Lewis and his mother. Jocasta, Ashley called her privately, and she knew who to blame when Lewis announced he was bringing her back to his childhood home since a vacancy for a GP and a part-timer had become available in the Knockhaven Medical Centre. She’d protested, of course; she’d had a job she’d enjoyed in a hospital in Edinburgh where he’d been in practice before, but Lewis, who gave the impression of being easy-going and amenable when it was anything that didn’t matter to him, was blandly implacable when it did.

So he couldn’t blame her for choosing to follow her own inclinations. Adultery: she formed the word again with smiling lips.

She was just turning down the High Street when she heard the sound of the maroon and chuckled. That was Ritchie’s idea: he’d gone to a meeting of lifeboat Honorary Secretaries and discovered that Fowey, having discontinued the outdated rocket summons years ago like everyone else, had improved the donations total by reinstating it. He’d met with stiff opposition from Willie Duncan, the cox, but he’d got his way. He usually did. Ashley smiled again, reminiscently.

There was a car she didn’t recognise in front of her as she reached Shore Street, so she put her hand on the horn and kept it there. With an almost visible start the car pulled aside and she reached the lifeboat shed only moments after the second maroon went off.

It was so gloomy outside that she couldn’t any longer see properly what she was doing. Detective Inspector Marjory Fleming stood up from the floor where she had been crouching, painfully straightening out her five-foot-ten frame, and stepped back to survey her work morosely. What a way to spend one of your precious days off! Still holding the paintbrush, she wiped her brow with the back of her forearm which, since it was already spattered with paint, neatly transferred several black smears to her face.