The Sea Detective (29 page)

The boat swung round the buttress of Cnoc a’ Mhonaidh and Cal searched the skyline for the site of his dismantled cairn. Red tapped him on the shoulder and pointed towards the mainland, at a small white house beside a banked crescent of grey sand. A high rampart of hills loomed behind it. ‘That’s where I live.’

‘It’s very pretty.’

‘I’ll be coming by first thing in the morning, an appointment with the physio.’ He rubbed at his back and pulled a face. ‘So if you’re at the old pier, eight-ish, I’ll take you into Eastern Township. Otherwise you can always catch the Rib later in the day.’

Cal said, ‘Appreciate it.’

Scores of kittiwakes and fulmars launched themselves off their nesting cliffs as the trespassing boat passed close by. Red pointed to a bay which was opening up. ‘Seal Bay,’ he shouted.

The boat slowed and Red said, ‘The path goes up that gully, do you see?’

Cal said he did.

Soon the boat, its sides protected by buffers of old tyres, was nudging against a natural rock breakwater. ‘See there, the mooring ring,’ Red shouted to Cal. ‘Put the rope through it.’

The ring was beside a line of footholds. Cal pulled the rope tight and knotted it. Red cut the idling engine. When Cal had scrambled out and was standing on top of the rock, Red squinted up at him. ‘It was the trawler that did for this island, the money it brought. Other islands had a sense of community. They needed it for survival. But Eilean Iasgaich was different. The boat made people greedy.’

Red paused. ‘It wasn’t right.’ Then he said, ‘We’re not all proud of our past, you know.’

Cal understood it as Red’s way of acknowledging his grandfather and the wrongs done to him. Cal inclined his head to signal his appreciation. ‘Thanks … and for the lift.’

Red shrugged again. ‘You’re welcome.’ He gestured for Cal to throw the rope back on to the deck. When he did, the boat drifted away from the rock. Red said, ‘Maybe pick you up tomorrow …’

Cal raised his right hand and turned towards Cnoc a’ Mhonaidh.

The path from the bay passed below an overhang before veering right and uphill. Cal followed it until he emerged on the north-west shoulder. From there he struck out across a grassy bank, taking care not to break the sky-line. After a hundred metres he settled into a patch of heather, hidden from the mainland, a place to watch the sun-set and to wait for night.

The sky to the west was tinged copper-pink when Cal stirred himself five hours later. Looking east, it was as if a sooty cloud had settled over the island, as dark as it got at this time of year, but sufficient in Cal’s view to render Douglas Rae’s telescope more or less blind. He stood, hooked his backpack over his left shoulder and climbed uphill through snagging stalks of heather. On the plateau of Cnoc a’ Mhonaidh he stopped, knelt and peered into the gloom until he was sure of his bearings. From there his descent to the westernmost of the ruined island houses took him no more than twenty minutes. He slipped a number of times on the steep gradient, finally reaching the bottom of the hill by sitting and sliding on the damp grass and bracken.

Once on the flat, he veered left along the bottom of the hill until he found the stone foundations of the grassed-over track. He followed it, passing the forlorn dark shapes of abandoned houses. At his family’s old home, he stopped and searched the debris by the doorway for a small stone. He found one which was rounded and rubbed it between his fingers before putting it in a pocket. Then he continued along the track, sometimes disturbing sheep which had taken night refuge in one of the ruins he was passing. Their hooves clattered against slate and corrugated iron as they ran off. Their lambs complained shrilly as they bolted after their escaping mothers.

Soon he was at the bottom of the slope by the museum. He worked his way around the building, pulling at the padlock, rattling the door latch, testing the two front windows for movement. At the back he found a small window with pebbled glass which was open a few centimetres. He heaved at it with both hands until he’d forced it down. He took his backpack off his shoulder, rummaged inside and removed a carrier bag which he stuffed inside his jacket. Then he hauled himself on to the sill and put his right leg through the gap. The rest of his body squeezed after it.

Inside, by the faint glow of his mobile phone, he made out a toilet to his right. He jumped down, pitching forward when his feet hit the tiled floor sooner than he expected. He swore, picked himself up, and using his phone again fumbled for the door and the light switch beside it. He flicked it on. When he opened the door a few centimetres, a shaft of light fell across the museum’s counter, the two display cases in the centre of the room and the window beyond them. Immediately he switched off the light. In the dark he walked towards the right hand display case and lifted the lid. He used the light from his phone to locate the logbook which was in the centre of the cabinet. Cal put his phone on it and slid one of his hands underneath the book, supporting its open covers with his splayed fingers. He removed it, closed the lid and went back to the toilet. Shutting the door he turned on the light.

He read the entry at the open page – it was the one he had seen before. Then he teased at the unopened pages with the nail of his index finger until one sprang clear. He turned it slowly until he could see all the writing on it. The entry was for September 18, 1942. It recorded the Eilean Iasgaich’s position and progress but nothing about the crew, or their recent losses.

Cal separated the next page, the next and the next, turning each one slowly. The entries were similar in each case: Hector MacKay recorded more details about the boat’s position and the weather but like the September 18 entry none made mention of the crew. After 12 pages he came to 29 September 1942, the entry he wanted to see. It was different, as he expected.

The skipper had written, ‘Please God, when will this ordeal end? This forenoon at 72° 30′N, 18°03′E we lost young Sandy MacKay swept overboard in the westerly gale which has been blowing hard all day. May God be with him and bless him. Uilleam Sinclair went with him, also lost overboard.’

Cal read it again, wondering why Hector MacKay had omitted to write ‘May God be with him and bless him’ after recording Uilleam’s loss when he had done so after Sandy’s.

The difference in the text struck him too. The writing recording Sandy’s death was large, as it had been in the earlier entries. But in the short final sentence, marking Uilleam’s, the writing was smaller; the ink blacker; as if it had been added later.

Cal photographed it with his mobile, checking it was in focus before returning the phone to his pocket. He lifted the next page which opened on to three short stubs. The neat edges suggested a knife or scissors had cut these pages away. After them were a dozen or more empty pages.

Cal turned them all before going back to the stubs. He ran his finger along their straight edges as if touching them might somehow reveal what Hector MacKay had written there and why they’d been removed. Then he closed the book slowly, trying not to force it. He took the carrier bag from his jacket and slid the book in, wrapping the plastic round it three times to protect it. He zipped the bag into his pocket and opened the toilet door wide letting the light flood across the room to the window which faced towards Douglas Rae’s telescope. Cal left the museum the way he had entered it.

The last remnant of the sun’s pinkness has gone from the undersides of the clouds; it has become night. What is happening to me, Basanti asks. Why do I feel this vulnerability, this dread, now? Why, of all times, now?

She is sitting on the roof, her legs folded at her side, her body tilted, her weight resting on her right hand, her fingers pressed against the lead flashing of the roof’s gully.

Why is she here when she should be inside, searching for the hill and the tree, in Cal’s apartment, at his table, with the only man she has met in this frightening place who wants nothing from her and who doesn’t regard her in that lascivious male way. Why now? Has her escape from the
dhanda
, wearing new clothes (she feels the texture of her linen trousers) somehow weakened her?

She considers the possibility, a flush of shame making her face suddenly hot. It cannot be, she says. Isn’t she the daughter of warriors? Blood and honour demand retribution. Isn’t this her Bedia obligation? She goads herself with what she believes is her heritage. Yet she feels a debilitating weariness, a sense that this has gone on too long, even though she knows it cannot end until she has avenged her friend’s death and the many crimes she herself has endured.

She stands, turns, and walks slowly towards the steps leading to the door into Cal’s apartment. She opens it slowly, now worrying that Cal will be offended by her delayed arrival. Night is more than two hours old. He will have been expecting her. Has he cooked for her? Does he think her ungrateful? Now she scolds herself for lacking consideration. So when she sees the room in darkness, she experiences a fluttering of relief. Thank goodness I have not let him down, she thinks. Her light-headedness lasts only until she reaches the bottom of the stairs. From here, in the glow of the street lights, she can see the note he has left, his handwriting in big legible letters. Some money is beside it resting on the keyboard she has been using. She walks towards it, reads the message and emits a howl of anguish.

The sound is as strange to her as the immediate and abject despair from which it has sprung. Why is she behaving this way when finally she is safe? She lets her head fall and covers her face with her hands, trembling. A flood of tears soaks her face and fingers. She has not cried at all since she laid her head in Preeti’s lap in the car taking them from their villages. Now her crying is for everything that has happened in between: the loss of childhood, the daily degradations, the vileness of the men, Preeti’s death; the unrelenting savagery. She has not allowed any of this to touch her until tonight. Didn’t Preeti tell her to be brave? Didn’t Preeti suffer the same, worse, for all Basanti knows, with uncomplaining fortitude?

She continues to weep beyond any consoling for twenty minutes, longer. After her tears have stopped, her sobbing and whimpering continue. When, finally, she exhausts these too she sits, eyes closed, the pads of her fingers pressing gently against her swollen face. She shakes her head as if she cannot believe what has overcome her. A small act of kindness, the first for so long – the clothes Cal bought for her – penetrated her emotional defences. Then his unexpected absence for a day or two, maybe more, (his message doesn’t make it clear) has dismantled them completely. She is dazed by it. After all the hurts she has borne with such resilience how has she allowed two such small events to devastate her so completely?

In her bewilderment, she feels more alone now than ever, more exposed to danger, though she is rational enough to know that neither can be true. Still, it alarms her because to avenge Preeti, she must be like those who killed her young friend, merciless, murderous. She must be the way she was when she was in captivity: without emotion.

She reads Cal’s message again, this time without tears. He has written down his mobile phone number, also his email address, with his password and instructions for logging on. ‘If you can’t reach me by phone – the signal is unreliable in the north of Scotland – send me an email instead. I will pick it up when there is reception.’ She turns on the desk lamp and the computer. While she waits for it to warm up she walks to the window and looks out into the darkness. She sees little apart from street lights and the silhouetted bulk of the deserted flour mill across the wasteland opposite.

What she cannot see is the man who is watching her. He is in the shadow of a wall on the other side of the road. As soon as he sees her he holds his cigarette in the cup of his hand in case she notices the burning tip. When she leaves the window he takes a puff from it, exhales, drops the stub to the ground, and grinds it with the toe of his boot. He flips open his phone and rings a number. ‘It’s her.’

Another voice replies. The tone is questioning.

‘Course I’m sure,’ the first man says. ‘The light went on and there she was.’

Another question.

‘I dunno. Only saw her. There could be others up there.’

Another question.

‘I dunno why she’s only turned the light on now. Maybe she’s been asleep.’

The other man replies and the watcher sneers.

‘Mind she’ll get a slap if she’s been giving it away.’

Both men guffaw.

Then the watcher asks, ‘How long?’ After the reply, he adds, ‘Soon as you can.’

The watcher puts his phone into his pocket and brings out a pack of cigarettes. He takes one out, puts it in his mouth, glances up at the window, and turns his back before lighting it.

Basanti is examining a photograph, the sixth in this folder that Cal has stored for her. The previous five were also of hills, but unlike this one they were the wrong shape: too rounded, too steep, too flat, too wooded or with different combinations of features she doesn’t recognise. The sixth one has a familiarity to it, though there is a single ledge on its right side where she remembers a ripple of descending ridges, like rolls of stomach fat. Also, there are occasional trees dotted across it but she recalls only one tree. Could her memory be faulty? She tries to imagine it at different angles. Could this be it? She begins to think so. She reaches for a copy of her drawing which is lying on Cal’s scanner and she holds it beside the screen for comparison. There are similarities but also differences. She reads the caption. Knoydart.

She goes to Cal’s map and looks for the name, tracing her finger up and down the Scottish coast line. There are so many strange names that she doesn’t find it, but she decides to tell Cal. Sitting back in her chair she reads his message again. She follows his instructions: first type ‘gmail’ in the search box; click on ‘gmail: email from Google’, enter ‘flotsamandjetsam’ in the username box and ‘caladh1’ in the password box. Then hit ‘return’. Cal’s inbox appears in front of her and she notices the most recent message is from someone she has heard Cal mention – DLG. The first line of his email begins ‘The hill. This is it.’ She hesitates but clicks on it. A photograph appears in front of her, of a hill and a tree.