The Sea Detective (5 page)

Here lies Helen Jamieson, the only female detective constable who was safe with Inspector Ryan.

Jamieson reddened. ‘That’s not what I meant sir.’

Ryan shrugged. ‘Well, it’s what you
asked
, Jamieson.’

He ignored her and walked to the white Audi in front, banged twice on the roof and leant down at the open window. ‘Ok, let’s go.’

The front doors opened and two uniformed officers emerged. They wore helmets, with the visors up. The taller and squarer of the two carried a black metal tube enclosing a battering ram. Jamieson trailed five steps behind them. Two more officers, Detective Constables like Jamieson, were watching the front and back of the building. They were in jeans, trainers and sweatshirts.

It had been Ryan’s decision to go mob-handed even though McGill’s record suggested he was a small-time political activist who strayed incidentally into minor criminality. He had two previous convictions, both on the same day in 2003. He’d been arrested and charged with breach of the peace during a rowdy demonstration in Glasgow against the Iraq War. After a body search, the second charge had been added: possession of cannabis. The cases were heard together at Glasgow Sheriff Court. He’d pleaded guilty and was fined – £180 and £250 respectively – for each offence. He was 22 at the time and studying for a degree in marine science at the Scottish Marine Institute at Dunstaffnage near Oban. A mug shot taken then had provided the match for the face in the minister’s security camera.

The next entry in McGill’s file was July 2005 when he was described as a self-employed research student. He’d been arrested with a crowd of demonstrators who broke through police lines at the G8 Summit at Gleneagles Hotel, Perthshire. He was released without charge. There’d been no new entries for the past four years, nothing until last night. Which begged the question: had McGill changed from small-time agitator to something more worrying?

Ryan doubted it, but still. The Chief Constable was taking an interest. The media wouldn’t be far behind. Small-time or not Ryan had to arrest him, and quickly. If he screwed up, he knew what the headlines would be. There’d also be questions in the Scottish Parliament. ‘Does the Justice Minister have complete confidence in the Environment Minister’s local police force?’ Ryan’s application to transfer to the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency would be in jeopardy if this became a media circus.

As Ryan approached The Cask, one of the watching detectives left his position at the corner of the building and pointed up. ‘McGill’s flat is top floor right, sir.’

Ryan went in, crossing the tiled hallway, and checked the lift, opening the outer door to prevent anyone above using it. He motioned to the other officers to follow him up the stairs. ‘… in case he’s on the way down.’

On the landing before the top floor, Ryan held back and asked Jamieson, ‘All right, Jamieson?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Stick by me, ok.’ Ryan grinned.

Jamieson, reddening again, said, ‘Thank you, sir.’

Ryan went down the corridor first. The overhead lights flashed on as he approached McGill’s apartment. He glanced at the ‘Flotsam and Jetsam Investigations’ sign, arched his eyebrow and whispered, ‘Chris’sake, he’s a nut.’ Jamieson pointed to the key which was in the lock. Ryan turned it slowly and the door swung open on to a bright room filled with a long table, maps, books and assorted piles of paper. A young man with short dark hair, wearing a black tee shirt and white boxers jumped from a chair behind a group of computers. He let out a shout of surprise.

‘What the fuck …’

His hair was shorter than in the 2003 mug shot, but it was the same face, the same slanting nose.

‘Caladh McGill?’ Ryan said coolly, looking around. ‘Are you Caladh McGill?’

Cal nodded.

‘My name’s Ryan, Detective Inspector Ryan, and these are police officers. We need to talk.’

One of the uniformed officers ran past Ryan and ordered Cal to put his hands behind his back. He leant forward and the officer cuffed them.

‘See, what did I say?’ Ryan turned to Jamieson. ‘Harmless enough …’

‘Yes sir.’ Jamieson scowled.

‘Caution him, Jamieson.’

When she’d finished, Ryan held up Cal’s front door key. ‘Yours, I presume. Lucky no-one let themselves in with it.’

Ryan put it on the table which he walked around, the fingers of his right hand trailing across the books and files, leaving a line in the dust. ‘Flotsam and Jetsam Investigations; what does that mean, Mr McGill?’

Ryan studied the shelves containing Cal’s artefacts.

Cal shrugged. ‘It’s what I do?’

‘Well I’ll have to take your word for that Mr McGill. What does it involve?’

‘I work for environmental organisations tracking back on oil spills, containers which have gone overboard, fishing nets. They use me to find polluters.’

‘How?’

‘You can work it out from wind speeds and data on ocean currents.’

‘So …’ Ryan was now behind McGill, looking at the ocean maps on the wall. ‘What ocean current or wind took you to the Environment Minister’s garden last night?’

Cal said nothing.

‘Suit yourself.’ Ryan turned to Jamieson. ‘Show Mr McGill the search warrant.’

Ryan had seen the spiral staircase leading to a small landing and a half-sized door in the roof. ‘And try up there, Jamieson,’ he said, settling into the armchair in the corner under the window by the shelves. Beside it, on the floor, was an untidy pile of books. Ryan lifted two titles off the top and put them on his lap. The first was ‘Science of the Seven Seas’ by Henry Stommel. The other, by the same author, was called ‘The Gulf Stream: a Physical and Dynamical Description’.

Ryan held them up to Cal. ‘Who’s this guy, Henry Stommel?’

‘He’s an oceanographer.’

‘Anyone special?’

‘You could say that.’

‘In what way?’

‘For his work on the thermohaline circulation of the oceans …’

‘The what? ‘Ryan pursed his lips. ‘Help me out Mr McGill. I’m just an ignorant policeman.’ There was a sneer in his voice.

‘It’s the system of ocean currents which distributes heat around the globe.’

Ryan looked at the ocean maps. ‘So why does someone who reads ‘‘Science of the Seven Seas’’,’ he held up Stommel’s book, ‘spend his nights in someone else’s garden. That shouldn’t be so hard a question, should it now?’

Cal said nothing and Ryan watched Jamieson climb awkwardly up the stairs. She stopped at the top, red and embarrassed, feeling her senior officer’s unspoken disdain. Her skirt was too tight.

‘All right Jamieson?’

She heard the amusement in his voice.

Ha bloody ha, sir.

‘Yes sir. Why wouldn’t I be sir?’

Ryan stood up, putting the books behind him on the chair. From the table he picked up a buff-coloured file labelled ‘Flotsam/Jetsam 2006’. He flicked through its contents in a casual, uninterested way before replacing it. He walked along the shelves peering through them at Cal’s unmade bed when he noticed the open door of the bathroom. He went to take a look. Blood-stained tissues were strewn across the tiled floor. A bloodied section of tee shirt lay outside the shower.

‘That’s quite a lot of blood Mr McGill. What happened?’

‘I cut myself.’

‘Did you now? I wonder where.’

‘It was nowhere.’

‘It must have been somewhere Mr McGill.’

‘Nowhere special is what I meant’

Jamieson re-emerged on the wooden landing at the top of the spiral stairs.

‘Anything Jamieson?’

‘Some pot plants. There’s a kind of roof garden up there.’

‘Very nice too. Was there a fence up there Jamieson?’

‘No sir.’

‘Did you know that someone broke the Environment Minister’s new fence last night, Mr McGill?’

Cal shrugged.

Ryan sat on the edge of the table and reached into his pocket. He unfolded a copy of the security camera photograph of Cal and showed it to him. ‘You see we know you were there. We just don’t know why you were there.’

A slow smile spread across Cal’s face.

‘I was doing some gardening ok?’

‘Well that’s better Mr McGill. What time?’

‘About 11pm.’

Ryan looked at the print-out. ‘11.23 and 20 seconds Mr McGill. Is that where you hurt yourself?’

Cal nodded.

‘You’re under arrest Mr McGill.’

Ryan turned to Jamieson. ‘Get the doctor here. I don’t want Mr McGill moved until he’s been examined.’

‘That’s not necessary,’ Cal said.

‘It is, you know. I want your injuries recorded by the doctor before we move you. I wouldn’t want you claiming police brutality. So we might as well get to know each other while we wait, mightn’t we?’

Jamieson finished speaking into her mobile. ‘The doctor’ll be half an hour sir?’

‘That’s fine. Half an hour should be time enough for Mr McGill to come up with a good story.’

Cal didn’t react.

‘Jamieson, start going through his stuff,’ Ryan commanded. ‘See what you can find.’

He pointed to the computers. ‘We’ll want those … might as well take them away now.’

Cal began to protest. ‘I need them for my work.’

‘Well Mr McGill, you should have thought of that.’

Jamieson was beside Cal at his computers. She tapped return on one of the keyboards. The screensaver of waves crashing on a beach cleared away. In its place were seven pictures of trainers. They were in two rows, four on the top and three on the bottom. Each picture was captioned. The file name was ‘British Columbia: severed feet.’

‘Sir,’ Jamieson said. ‘Want to have a look at this?’

As Ryan walked round the table, Jamieson hit the return key on the other machine. Cal’s email inbox appeared on the screen. She clicked on Cal’s conversation with DLG. ‘Sir, you’d better look at this too.’

Ryan leaned across Jamieson to read the emails.

‘What do you know about the foot found at Seacliff?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It doesn’t look like nothing.’

‘I know a severed foot has been found. That’s all.’

‘Why did you ask if a shoe had been found?’

‘It might make the difference.’

‘To what?’

‘It makes it more likely the foot came ashore on the tide rather than it being dumped on the beach by someone.’

‘Would you like to explain?’

Cal told Ryan and Jamieson about the severed feet in British Columbia and the process of disarticulation.

‘So if the foot’s wearing a shoe, it floats away when the body decomposes,’ Ryan said.

‘If it’s wearing a shoe with a buoyant sole, like a trainer, it can do, yes.’

‘Who’s this guy DLG?’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘Come on Mr McGill. He’s emailing you. You seem on good terms.’

‘I know his email address, but I don’t know his real name.’

‘Well you know DLG?’

‘Yes, but it’s just a name he uses.’

‘What does it stand for?’

‘Doctor Long Ghost.’

Ryan put both hands on the edge of the table and lowered his head until it was at the same level as Cal’s. ‘Don’t screw around with me, Mr McGill.’ The menace was unmistakeable.

‘I’m not. DLG’s a member of a beach combing society. All the members have pseudonyms. I don’t know their real names. They help me out with my research work.’

Jamieson had resumed searching through Cal’s recent emails. ‘Is there a Mack?’ she asked.

The question irritated Ryan and he stared contemptuously at his subordinate. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

Cal didn’t pick up on Ryan’s annoyance. ‘Yeah, there’s a Mack. He’s the leader of the group.’

‘Like in the book,’ Jamieson said.

‘Can someone let me in on this private conversation?’ Ryan sounded exasperated. ‘What are you talking about Jamieson?’

‘Sir, we’re talking about Omoo, an autobiographical novel by Herman Melville who wrote Moby Dick, sir.’

‘Why?’ Ryan snapped.

‘Well sir, Doctor Long Ghost is one of the characters in it, so is Mack. Omoo is supposed to be the first book in the English language to use the word beach comber. But it’s Mr McGill’s story …’ Jamieson half bowed to Cal, thankfully passing him the baton of Ryan’s contempt.

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘the book’s an account of Melville’s time on whaling ships in the south-seas. Its title comes from a Polynesian word for a man who roves from one island to another. Mack was the leader of a gang of rovers or beach-combers described by Melville; and DLG or Doctor Long Ghost was the doctor on board a whaler called The Julia.’

Ryan shook his head in bemusement. ‘What’s that got to do with a foot on an east Lothian beach?’

Cal shrugged, ‘Only that Omoo is the name of the beach-combing group to which DLG belongs. It’s a kind of a listening post for anything interesting that washes ashore all around Scotland.’

‘And they get in touch with you.’

‘More often than not, they do. It helps me with my computer modelling and I can help them.’

‘How?’

‘Tracking back and finding out where any flotsam they discover might have started its journey.’

‘What’s your pseudonym Mr McGill?’ Jamieson asked. ‘Bembo?’

Cal smiled. ‘No. I’m not dangerous.’

‘The Environment Minister might disagree,’ Jamieson said.

‘Enough …’Ryan glowered with irritation. ‘Who or what is Bembo?’

‘Bembo,’ said Jamieson, ‘was the harpooner, who was ‘‘remarkably quiet, though something in his eye showed he was far from being harmless’’.’

It was clear to Ryan she was quoting from the book, a book what’s more he’d never even heard of. ‘I’m in a madhouse,’ he muttered under his breath but loud enough for Cal and Jamieson to hear. Ryan brushed the track of dust from his trousers where they’d rested against the edge of the table. ‘Well thank you for that little diversion around the South Seas Mr McGill but I’m much more interested in what you were doing in a government minister’s garden.’

Cal replied immediately and matter-of-factly. ‘I was planting a Dryas Octopetala.’

As if it was obvious and the question was unnecessary.

‘A what?’

‘It’s a type of arctic flower.’

Ryan looked at Jamieson for help. ‘I suppose you know what he’s talking about this time too.’

‘No sir. I don’t.’