The Sea Detective (18 page)

‘What else do you call it?’

‘I’m making a programme, Cal.’

‘Well go on. Tell me you don’t want to use my grandfather’s story.’

‘Cal, I wasn’t ringing to ask you for anything.’

‘Well, what else is there?’ Cal regretted the question. It gave her an opportunity to open up the conversation, to talk about their marriage split. Before she had a chance to reply, he said, ‘Can’t you see it from my point of view? You doing a programme about Eilean Iasgaich … my family …?’

‘Why is it always about you Cal?’

‘Well, tell me you’re not doing it.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know the answer.’

‘You’re being unreasonable, Rachel.’

‘I’m doing my job.’

‘Where are you?’ he asked, suddenly suspicious.

‘I’m in Eastern Township, at the hotel.’

Cal said nothing, another brooding silence.

‘I haven’t exactly made a secret of it, Cal. I’m researching the programme. So, I’m in Eastern Township. Ok. It’s not big news.’

‘Oh, of course you’re not ringing about that.’ Cal laughed. ‘Course not.’ Now he was angry again.

Rachel sighed. ‘Do you really know want to know why I’m ringing?’

‘Ok. Go on.’

‘It’s because I can’t get to sleep and I thought you might like to talk to someone about Grace Ann MacKay and your grandfather.’

‘Oh come on, Rachel,’ he said. ‘You know what this is all about.’

‘Yes, yes I do. It’s about you. It’s always about you.’ With that she ended the call.

‘Fuck.’ He fell spread-eagled on the bed. ‘Fuck.’ After a while, he rolled on to his side, flicked the switch by the side of the headboard which turned off the overhead light. He was still fully clothed. Sometime during the night he remembered the bath he’d run.

It was after 2am and the lane running along the side of The Cask was dark. A slender, girlish figure ran quickly to the back of the building. She rounded the corner and stopped by a rusted iron ladder. She clambered up it to a wooden landing from which whisky barrels once were lowered to the backs of waiting carts and, in a later era, lorries. She paused there, crouching, listening, before climbing the old industrial fire escape which rose from the landing. Near its top was a gully in the slate roof. She crawled into it. The gully was wide, with lead flashing in the bottom, which made walking easy. There were rows of plants there. They were all the same, in little plastic pots. Beyond them was a stairway with an iron handrail up to a small wooden door which was recessed into the roof. She listened at the door, pulled on it, opened it a fraction, then more until it was wide enough for her to squeeze through. Inside, she waited again, the whites of her eyes flashing as she searched the room. She was certain as she could be that nobody was there. She’d seen Cal McGill leave and the lights had been off all night. Still, she had a fear of being trapped. She paused, to calm her breathing, before descending the spiral stairs. The map she’d seen in the newspaper was on the far wall. It was lit dimly by the light from the street. The newspaper cutting was there too, in a shadow. She reached for it, easing it from the wall, taking it to the table behind her, beginning to feel nauseous with anxiety for Preeti. She clicked on the desk lamp and read the cutting quickly before turning it off. Now she was in blackness; her eyes still dazzled with the glare of the bulb and filling with tears. She fell to the floor. ‘No, Preeti.’

Her beautiful friend, her gentle protector, had been dead three years and Basanti hadn’t even known. Her sweet, lovely face had been cut by a boat’s propeller blades. Basanti cried, curled up where she’d fallen, her body shaking with sobs. From the very first day they met, in the car with the blackened windows, Preeti had been her support. Even after their separation she knew Preeti would be brave and it made her brave too. Weren’t they the most beautiful girls ever born to Bedia? Wasn’t their blood warrior blood? Even apart they were together; strong, resilient. Except it was a fiction: Preeti was dead. Basanti’s imagination flipped from one image to another: the fright in Preeti’s eyes; her face luminous and lost in a vast ocean; the livid propeller slashes across Preeti’s cheeks. Gradually the sobbing stopped. But she continued to lie there until her emotions turned cold and determined. Now she had to avenge Preeti. Now she had to be brave again. Wouldn’t Preeti accompany her, just as she had these last three years?

The early morning train from Inverness to Lairg arrived on time. The Postbus which travelled the remaining forty miles to Eastern Township was waiting at the station. Cal was the only passenger. He sat behind the driver, a woman in her mid-40s with a wind-beaten ruddy face, hoping it would discourage her from talking. She had other ideas. Her name was Sally ‘and yes, I’m English before you ask’. He wasn’t about to but he could hardly cut her dead now.

‘What brought you this far north?’ he said, as the Postbus gathered speed.

‘Oh, a fellah, of course …’ She erupted with laughter. ‘It’s always a fellah for a girl. But no sooner had I come up here than he went south. I was done with chasing him so I stayed.’

He grunted in sympathy.

‘Where are you from?’ she asked.

‘Edinburgh.’

‘A lowlander: the English are more welcome here than lowlanders …’ She giggled. ‘… That’s not saying much, mind. The English are the Poles around here. We drive the taxis and the buses; run the shops and the cafes. We’re the builders, the carpenters, the plumbers and the electricians. I don’t know what they’d do without us, and all we get is resentment and called names like white settler. Huh.’

Cal watched the scenery go by for a few minutes hoping his silence would end the conversation. But Sally wanted to chat. ‘What brings you up here?’

‘My mother’s family came from Sutherland.’

‘Oh, where?’

‘Eilean Iasgaich, do you know it?’

She glanced at him in the mirror. ‘The brave men of Eilean Iasgaich, the MacKays and the Raes?’

‘You’ve heard of them.’

‘Who hasn’t?’

‘My grandfather was born there, though he’s dead now.’

‘All the men were killed in the war weren’t they?’

Cal said they were. ‘His family name was Sinclair.’

She considered for a bit. ‘I thought it was only MacKays and Raes.’

A long expanse of water opened up on their right. Cal watched the glistening water. Sally said, ‘Loch Loyal. It gets its name from that,’ and pointed to the left of the road where a mountain with multiple peaks loomed. ‘That’s Ben Loyal … it and the memorial to the men of Eilean Iasgaich are the big draws around here. Not forgetting the sun, the beaches and the blue seas. …’ She let out a long suffering laugh. ‘… Though maybe not the sun.’

‘Today’s good,’ Cal said.

‘It is indeed. This’ll be summer, all of it.’

A narrow channel connected the northern end of Loch Loyal to another loch which Sally said was called Craggie. ‘And along here a bit you should be able to see Eilean Iasgaich.’

The road crossed open moorland until a gouge of sea running inland – the Kyle of Tongue – revealed itself. It sparkled with greens and blues in the sun. Sally pointed out the landmarks. Below them and to their left was the village of Tongue. Further along the Kyle (Sally said it was two miles, though it appeared closer in the clear air) was Eastern Township, the old crofting settlement, and between the two settlements were tidal flats of sand and mud banks crossed by a curving causeway and a bridge to the Kyle’s far shore. Beyond, where the Kyle widened and became open sea, there was a collection of islands. ‘Your island’s the one broadside to us, with a hill at either end.’

Cal hadn’t given Eilean Iasgaich much thought since waking at 7 with an uncomfortable morning-after feeling. On the train from Inverness to Lairg, a cup of coffee chased away his sleepiness but the feeling hung on. If anything, it became worse as he preoccupied himself with Rachel, replaying the conversation of the night before, hoping for justification but not finding it; aware his bad temper then had as much to do with his guilty conscience about her as her documentary on Eilean Iasgaich. So when he saw the island it took him rather by surprise. He hadn’t known what to expect: if not a dark, sinister place inhabited by ranks of black cormorants then certainly not a pleasant green splash in a bright blue sea. When the surprise passed, it was replaced by lingering resentment. A place which had caused his mother’s family so much suffering and injustice had no right to look like this, enticing, pretty even.

Sally said, ‘It’s not always like this, of course.’

Cal asked, ‘Where do I go for the boat?’

‘By the slipway, at the causeway,’ Sally said. ‘It goes at noon and costs £12.50. You can walk along the road by the shop. Won’t take you more than five minutes.’

Cal thanked her.

‘I’ll point you in the right direction … Oh and buy something to eat because there’s nothing but sheep and birds on the island.’

A few minutes later the Postbus slowed and turned left. ‘Well this is almost the end of the line,’ Sally said. ‘Welcome to Eastern Township.’

The Postbus entered the village, a collection of one and a half storey houses scattered along a single-track road. Cal watched for the hotel where Rachel was staying but Sally pulled up before he could see it. She parked on a tarred apron by a low-slung building. Outside it were two tables, some chairs and a rack of grey-blue Calor gas canisters. ‘Rae Family Stores’ announced the sign above the door.

‘This is as far as I go.’ Sally turned off the engine. ‘It’s the store, Post Office, café, you name it … You’ll find the boat along there.’ Sally pointed to a road which went between two large sycamore trees.

Cal thanked her again. ‘Where’s the hotel from here?’ He opened his door, debating whether he’d try again to explain his reservations to Rachel about her documentary now, or later.

‘Another couple of hundred yards, you can’t miss it.’ She pointed straight ahead. ‘If it’s full and you need a room there’s a B&B opposite.’

Cal nodded acknowledgement and followed her into the shop where he bought rolls, tomatoes, ham slices, cheese, crisps, chocolate biscuits and a two litre bottle of water.

When he was at the counter paying he asked the shop assistant, a teenage girl with jet black hair and purple nail varnish, ‘Is there another shop in the village?’

‘Not really, not like this … There’s the Sea Shop down the road. It does fishing gear as well as surfing and diving equipment.’

‘Do you know if it used to be the general store?’

‘A long time ago; before the Raes opened this. I don’t know much more about it.’

‘My mother was born here,’ Cal said, ‘and her grandparents used to run a shop here, during the war and after it.’

‘Is that right?’ The girl looked bored at the prospect of another tourist trip down family memory lane.

‘Who owns the Sea Shop now?’

The girl arched her eyebrows as if the answer was obvious. ‘The Raes of course. They own the village.’ Cal thanked her for his change and went to the door, waving goodbye to Sally, who was at the Post Office counter at the back of the shop.

He looked at his phone. It was 11.34. Rachel would have to wait. The boat left in 26 minutes.

The road to the slipway curved left beyond the sycamore trees. A stone wall on his right soon gave way to fenced pasture and a view across the Kyle. The tide was coming in. There were fewer sandbanks showing now than when he’d first seen it from the Postbus. It was an observation made from habit and didn’t occupy his thoughts. Those were concerned with Rachel and to a lesser extent with his own family’s association with this road (was this where his grandmother walked, an outcast from the island, widowed and pregnant with his mother?). The road sloped gently towards the water and soon he saw the causeway curving across sand and scrub to the bridge which spanned the western sea channel, a fast flowing ripple of blue. A fishing boat was tied up close to the bridge, in a calm deep backwater by the stream. Someone in a red hat was lifting boxes on to the side of the road. As Cal continued walking, a stone slipway came into view on the near shore. A rigid inflatable boat was moored there. It was orange and a man wearing a bright yellow jacket was leaning over its twin engines.

Eight passengers were waiting in a queue by the ticket booth at the top of the slipway. Cal studied them looking for Rachel but didn’t see her. A small woman with greying blonde hair, a strained white face and a satchel over her shoulder asked him if he was taking the island tour. He nodded. ‘That’ll be £12.50,’ she said. He slipped his rucksack off his shoulder, unzipped a pocket and took out his wallet.

With his ticket, she gave him a flyer announcing ‘the opening of an island cafe/ restaurant later in the summer’. There was also news about an appeal fund for restoring the house of Hector MacKay, ‘the famous skipper of the brave men of Eilean Iasgaich’. Cal wandered away from the booth reading about the various public grants the development projects had already attracted when he saw Rachel. She was sitting by the shore on the other side of the causeway, her back to Cal. He folded the flyer, put it in his pocket and crossed the road to the path which led to where she was. His feet slid on the gravel, but she didn’t turn. Cal stopped a dozen paces from her.

‘Rachel.’

She turned and looked at him through sunglasses, before turning away. ‘It’s such an amazing day isn’t it?’ There was no animosity in her voice, or none that Cal could detect.

He looked where she was looking, towards the mouth of the Kyle. Eilean Iasgaich was rising on the horizon. ‘Yes, it is.’

She turned back, scrutinising him again, saying nothing.

He wished he could see her eyes. Her dark lenses reflected the causeway behind him.

‘Can I just enjoy it?’ Again, there was no hostility but neither was it a question.

He nodded.

‘Yeah …’ He scuffed some stones. He kicked at them again. ‘Sure. Are you going on the boat?’

Her back was still to him when she spoke again. ‘No arguments Cal. Not today.’

He took that to mean ‘yes’.

‘Ok,’ he said. There’d be time to talk later, make her understand how difficult it was for him, without it becoming a shouting match.