The Sea Detective (25 page)

‘Hi,’ Cal opened the door. His hair was wet and he was wearing a blue shirt which was hanging outside his jeans. He was barefoot. ‘Sorry, late start.’ He held the door open for her. ‘I was hoping you might be returning my computers.’

‘I might be.’

‘You don’t sound sure.’

‘Well, it depends.’

‘On what?’

‘Helping a police officer with her inquiries …’

‘Ok’. But it was a wary ‘Ok’, one that was waiting for the catch. ‘Sorry about the seating arrangements. Wait there a moment.’

He went to the sleeping area (his bedding looked every bit as untidy to Jamieson as on her previous visit.) ‘It’s more comfortable than it looks,’ he said, returning with a plastic chair and putting it down near her.

‘Coffee?’

‘Please, black.’

Cal put the kettle on a camping stove. Jamieson would have been amused by his rudimentary kitchen equipment if her hips hadn’t been bulging over the moulding of the seat, making her feel fat when she wanted to feel attractive, for once.

‘Is this about the gardens?’ he asked, suspecting it wasn’t. Dr Tim Lenska, his director of studies at the Scottish Marine Institute, had emailed about a policewoman called Jamieson asking questions about the severed feet. He’d mentioned Cal’s name to her. He hoped Cal didn’t mind. Cal didn’t.

Jamieson seemed startled by the question. She thought Cal had seen her trying to smooth away the bumps and ridges in her new skirt. But Cal wasn’t looking. He was spooning instant coffee into two mugs. ‘No, that’s still with the Crown Office,’ she said. It wasn’t her job to let him know he wouldn’t be prosecuted. Even the Environment Minister had refused to make a formal complaint.

Duplicitous prick Ryan had called the minister.

It takes one to know one sir.

Jamieson shifted again in her seat, to make herself more comfortable and, well, thinner if at all possible.

‘So you want me to help you with the severed feet?’ Suddenly he was there in front of her, holding a mug out.

The chair dug into her in all the wrong places.

She managed to take the coffee without it spilling and sipped at it, waiting for composure, aching for elegance.

Please. Just for a day, just for an hour.

‘What makes you think that?’ she asked eventually.

‘Well, I imagine someone’s been going around the marine scientists in Scotland asking questions.’

‘So now you’re psychic too.’

‘Not psychic; Dr Lenska’s been in touch.’

‘Ah.’

Cal went on. ‘You see I’m the only one doing this work in Scotland. There are some guys in the States, but their focus is mostly the Pacific. The best known is someone called Curtis Ebbesmeyer. By comparison to him I’m just a nerd.’

Jamieson warmed to Cal’s chattiness and modesty. Men, in her experience, wasted few if any words on a plain woman. Her male colleagues – and some of her female, too – regarded her with lofty pity. They spoke to her as little as they could and spent as short a time in her company as possible within the boundaries of rudeness; and sometimes beyond them. After some of these encounters, she’d thought of preparing a stock letter of apology, copies of which she would keep in her bag for instant distribution. All she’d have to do would be to fill in the relevant name.

‘Dear so and so,

‘Someone of your stature is entitled to expect to be in the presence of beauty. I apologise for imposing my plainness on you.’

Ryan was like that. Cal wasn’t. He had kind eyes without any hint of pity or contempt, or, she noted with regret, a hint of anything else. Still.

‘Isn’t Ryan in charge of the investigation into the feet?’ Cal had read his name in some of the press reports. His expression told Jamieson it was a big problem.

‘He doesn’t know I’m here.’ Jamieson watched his reaction. Was she being too trusting?

‘So why are you?’

‘Because we have a common interest. …’ Jamieson stopped mid-sentence.

‘Go on,’ Cal said.

‘Both of us would like to find out how those feet washed up in Scotland.’

‘Sure, yeah, ok.’ What was so difficult about saying that? ‘Is that it?’

Jamieson hesitated.

‘And neither of us wants Detective Inspector Ryan to get the credit?’

She didn’t need to tell him the risk she was taking. Her agitation did that.

‘Ok.’ He spoke slowly, keeping his eyes on her, letting her know he understood what she was saying, what was at stake.

‘So you want to screw Ryan?’

‘Yes, in a manner of speaking.’ She laughed nervously.

Helen Jamieson screws Ryan.
It was a sentence she’d never considered before.

Cal shrugged. ‘Sounds good to me.’ He leaned across his table and grabbed a pad of paper. ‘What do you want me to do?’

Jamieson relaxed. ‘Tell me where the feet started from.’

‘Oh that should be easy.’ His tone said it wouldn’t be. He turned to a clean page. ‘Ok, we’ll make some preliminary assumptions to narrow the search. We can expand it later if we have to.’

Jamieson let a little smile of relief flicker across her mouth. Sweat beads had gathered on her top lip. She nodded. ‘Ok.’

‘Let’s take it these two men went into the sea same time, same place – both of them wearing trainers, two of the feet beaching in Shetland, the other in East Lothian. In view of the prevailing currents, we can rule out the east coast of Scotland as the starting place.’

He began writing, talking to himself as he did. ‘Search area: Land’s End in the south, up the west coast to the north of Scotland.’ He glanced at the map behind him. ‘Then take a line from Duncansby Head by John O’Groats north-east to St Magnus Bay, Shetland.’ He looked up again. ‘Then extend across the whole search area to the 13th meridian west.’ He checked. ‘That should do it: it takes in Ireland and the sea to the west of the UK.’

When he put down his pen he said, ‘It’ll have taken a minimum of two months for adipocere to have set in and for disarticulation to have happened. Then there’s the time these feet have been drifting at sea. Let’s start by going back a year, to last May.’

He tore the paper from the pad and handed it to her. ‘It’s a lot of ocean.’

‘Is that all?’ Jamieson said.

Cal responded to her amused sarcasm with a smile.

‘Oh and I’ll need trainers, like the ones that were found.’

‘We’re putting it out they were Nikes but they were counterfeit.’

Cal’s eyebrows rose. ‘Really? I’ll need them, for buoyancy tests. How they float affects the speed as well as the direction of travel.’

‘I can probably let you have them for 24 hours, no more.’

‘That’ll do.’

‘Anything else?’

‘My computers …’

‘They’re in my car.’

Cal said, ‘Thanks’.

‘I don’t know why you’re thanking me.’

‘By the way,’ he said. ‘With these feet, all I can give you is a range of possibilities, the approximate direction of travel and some incidents worth examining in more detail. It’s an imprecise science, not like DNA or fingerprinting.’

‘A range of possibilities would be good.’ Jamieson stood up and brushed the sides of her skirt with the flat of her hand where the chair had left tracks in it. ‘Another thing. Can you keep in touch with me by email? I’ve set up a new account.’

‘What’s the address?’

‘It’s [email protected]’

They exchanged glances. Bembo was the New Zealand harpooner in Herman Melville’s book Omoo.

‘It can’t be my work email,’ Jamieson said. ‘Address me as Bembo when you’re emailing, don’t use my real name.’

Cal said, ‘You don’t like Ryan, do you?’

She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.

He smiled. ‘And since we’re doing each other favours …’

He took the cutting from the wall and let Jamieson read about the dead Indian girl. He explained why he was breaching a confidence – ‘it’s too big, someone in the police needs to know’ – and then he told Basanti’s story and showed Jamieson her drawing.

Jamieson listened and at the end she said, ‘We’ll find them. You tell her that. Tell her she can trust me.’ Her voice was cold, determined. It was one thing men treating her badly; quite another them molesting children, even touching a hair on their heads.

Cal said, ‘I don’t think she’s ready to trust anyone yet.’ Then, running his hands through his hair, he said, ‘God, I don’t even know I’m going to see her again.’ He showed Jamieson the note Basanti had left him that morning.

‘If she does come back see if you can persuade her; even if she’d speak alone to me, here.’

He shook his head. ‘She won’t, not yet. She’s worried about being deported. She’s illegal. She thinks she’s killed a man.’

‘Tell her none of that matters …’

‘In a day or two perhaps, when she’s more settled, if she returns …’

Cal went with Jamieson to the car and unloaded his computers from her boot. She helped him carry them to the lift. ‘You’ll send me a copy of that drawing of the hill,’ she reminded him.

‘I’ll scan it in now.’

Jamieson nodded. ‘They’re scum.’

‘Who are?’

‘Men who treat young girls like that.’

Jamieson was almost at the door when Cal shouted after her, ‘She’ll come back. I’ve just realised.’

‘Who will?’

‘Basanti.’

‘How do you know?’

‘She wouldn’t go, not without her drawing.’

‘Your visitor’s here.’ Nurse Eleanor Ritchie stroked the back of Grace Ann MacKay’s veined hand. It was resting outside her blankets on a book with worn black covers and faded gold lettering. Cal recognised it from his visit to her bungalow. It was her Bible. The nurse lowered her voice. ‘She won’t let go of it; she had it with her in the ambulance.’ Eleanor regarded her patient with affectionate indulgence. ‘She’ll be so relieved you’ve come.’

‘Should I get a coffee or something?’ Cal asked, ‘And come back when she’s awake.’

‘She’ll murder me if you do. She was most insistent I woke her as soon as you arrived.’ She rubbed the old woman’s hand once again. ‘Grace Ann, your visitor is here. Cal’s here, Grace Ann.’

Grace Ann stirred, opened her eyes and shut them again.

‘She’ll just be a wee bit disorientated’

The nurse was jolly and small with blonde hair cut into points under her angular chin. ‘Just call me if you need anything. I’ll be over there.’ She indicated the nursing station in the middle of the ward opposite the four bed bay where Grace Ann was lying. The other beds were empty. Eleanor straightened Grace Ann’s bedding. ‘I’ll do her pillows if she wants to sit up. Just give me a call, ok.’

Grace Ann’s throat rasped. ‘Cal, is that you?’ The effort of it made her cough. Cal noticed the skin below her eyes was puffy and black.

‘How are you?’ he replied.

She coughed again. ‘It doesn’t matter about me,’ she croaked and the dryness caught at the back of her throat. Cal suggested a drink and she shook her head. ‘No.’ The rasp became stronger, setting off a sequence of hacking coughs. Her face turned purplish-grey and she began to choke.

‘Nurse,’ Cal shouted but Eleanor wasn’t there. He picked up the glass of water on the bedside table, hesitating before slipping his hand behind her head and lifting. ‘Here, have a drink.’

Her neck was thin and bony against his palm. It felt fragile, breakable, and he worried about pushing too hard. When she’d taken a sip followed by a gulp which spilled out of her mouth, her coughing stopped and Cal lowered her head and removed his hand.

She mouthed ‘thank you’, but no sound emerged. Her eyes were fixed on him. They were rheumy and pleading.

‘Rest for a bit, then we’ll talk,’ Cal said but she shook her head.

She coughed again. ‘I have something you must see.’ She held up her Bible but the drip at her wrist prevented her from handing it to Cal and he took it from her. ‘Open it, inside the back.’

Cal opened the leather back cover revealing a folded sheet of writing paper. He held it up to Grace Ann. ‘You want me to see this?’

She nodded, her eyes never leaving his face. Now she looked fearful.

He unfolded the paper which was filled with writing, black letters sloping backwards. One word was at the top: Archangelsk. It was dated 25 September 1942.

‘My Dearest,’ he read it out loud.

‘I miss you more than I can express. My love, I am so proud of you and of our unborn baby. I think of you every hour and every minute I am away from you.’

Cal stopped and glanced questioningly at Grace Ann. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘Finish it.’ When he hesitated, she said ‘please’ again with such anguish that he continued reading to calm her.

‘The voyage here was dreadful for its loss of ships and men and, my love, I am apprehensive of the return. Five of our own crew were lost on the outward journey – though you will know of this by the time you receive this letter. By God’s grace Sandy is not among the dead. He has been my strength in all our difficulties, and I his. We share our clothes and our food and we are wearing each other’s watches so that if I die he will bring mine to you as a token of my enduring love, and if he dies I will bring his to Mrs MacKay and to Grace Ann. Knowing this gives each of us the strength and determination to survive. But if neither one of us returns we will have something precious of the other’s to accompany us to our deaths and to comfort us in our solitariness. I am writing you this letter to let you know that I am as reconciled to my fate as any man can be. The good Lord willing, it will be to spend the rest of my days with you and our child.

With all my love, my dearest,

Uilleam

Cal scanned hurriedly through the post script before reading it aloud too.

‘PS: I am giving this letter to the safe keeping of a Canadian pilot I have met here. He will send it to you when he returns to his squadron’s base in Yorkshire at the start of November. With God’s protection I will be home with you before it is.’

Cal said, ‘My grandfather wrote this?’ It was an accusation as well as a question.

Grace Ann flinched. ‘Don’t judge me, Cal. I was so in love with him.’

Dark shadows seemed to underscore the translucent grey of her skin. She had the same pleading expression which Cal noticed earlier. Now he understood it. She wanted his forgiveness.