The Sea Detective (8 page)

The intruder was apparently ‘some sort of eco terrorist’ who left behind a plant which had something to do with climate change. ‘Now,’ Sam reported in anticipation of Rosie’s wowed reaction, ‘the police have discovered he’s done the same thing in dozens of politicians’ gardens.’

Rosie’s police contact provided the rest, reluctantly. ‘It’s the talk of the steamie at the Parliament,’ Rosie exaggerated. ‘It’s going to get out. You’d just be giving me a head start.’

He growled, grudgingly. ‘You owe me a pint, Rosie.’

Rosie made a mental note to send him a bottle of malt whisky; something tasty. It was a good story. Sam was right, for once. His reward was a kiss and the promise of more when she returned from work.

Now the doubts were setting in.

Had her police contact given her the wrong address? Why would an eco-warrior live on the top floor of a made-over warehouse converted too late for more-money-than-sense-metro-executives? It didn’t figure and it wasn’t the only thing that didn’t. The rummaging noise had become louder, like furniture being moved. There’d been a crashing sound and after it silence. Rosie took another step forward, head still tilted. Her new shoes – grey and white Converse with a yellow trim and matching yellow laces – let off mouse-squeaks on the shiny laminate flooring. The door was three metres away. Holding her breath, she approached it on the sides of her feet to muffle the noise of her soles. She glanced twice at ‘Flotsam and Jetsam Investigations’ on the notice by the door, disbelieving it the first time. In one way it was reassuring: at least she seemed to be at the right address. Still, it was weird,
seriously
weird.

Her hand hovered, about to knock at the open door. Instead, she put her head through the gap. The room in front of her was large, bright and in chaos. Papers and books were strewn across a plank floor; not that much of it was visible. A map hung by one corner on the wall opposite. Untidy didn’t normally faze Rosie, but this was, well, something else. There was a large table in front of her, filling the middle of the room, and the rummaging noise came from underneath it.

‘Hello.’ Rosie knocked. ‘Hello, anyone at home?’

A head appeared from below the table: male, dark brown hair, cut short. He was as surprised to see Rosie as she was to see him.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked.

He looked friendly enough, Rosie thought. A least he wasn’t sleazy or a creep. In fact, on second glance, he was rather cute in a modern eco-chic kind of way: jeans, tee shirt, day-old stubble and a wide face made more interesting by the slight crookedness of his nose. Her heart beat slower.

‘God, what happened here?’ She stepped inside the door.

‘You’d better ask the police.’ His voice was educated, like a school teacher’s.

‘You’ve called them, have you?’ He snorted as though that was the last thing he intended to do.

She seemed to be getting off on the wrong foot with him so she tried, ‘Are you Cal McGill?’

‘I am.’ He looked at her fleetingly before resuming his search of the mess around him.’

Rosie found it oddly disconcerting. Men usually paid her more attention.

‘Has anything been stolen?’

‘God knows.’ He sounded irritated.

Rosie walked to the table and peered over the edge. ‘Can I help?’

He spun round looking down at the hurricane trail of papers and books. ‘There’s a photograph frame …’

He didn’t need to tell her it was precious.

‘Has it gone?’

‘I don’t know; it’s hard to tell.’ Cal began collecting up papers. ‘If I can just clear up some of this. …’

‘Who did it, Cal? Do you mind me calling you Cal?’

Get on first name terms. It was a card Rosie liked to play as quickly as possible.

Cal shook his head. Rosie wasn’t sure whether the gesture meant he didn’t mind or that he was still distracted looking for the photograph frame.

She knelt down as if to help him and picked up a book which was splayed open on the floor. It was called ‘Essentials of Oceanography’.

‘I see you go in for light reading.’

‘Sorry, who are you?’ His attention strayed from her again almost as soon as the question was out.

‘I’m Rosie,’ she held out her hand.

Cal brushed the back of his left hand against her fingers. She noticed him wincing. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘It’s nothing; I gashed my side and had some stitches.’

‘Gosh, you have been in the wars.’

Sympathy was the other card Rosie liked to play quickly.

‘Well Rosie, it’s nice meeting you but I’m not quite sure why you’re here.’ He gathered up a file which was spilling paper out of its ruptured spine.

‘I’d like to talk to you.’ Rosie made a show of rescuing another book. ‘Heavens it’s going to take you ages to clear all this up.’

‘You want to talk to me. Why?’

‘Didn’t I say? Oh I’m always doing that.’

This was disarming ditzy Rosie. She handed Cal the book and said, ‘Hi, I’m Rosie Provan. I work for The Reporting Factory.’

This was how she liked to do it. First, get over the doorstep. Second, establish a first name relationship. Third, say the name of the freelance agency but not its business. Fourth, say it’s a news agency. In Rosie’s experience the fourth stage was the trickiest. Some people reacted to it as though they’d been punched. Cal’s expression, she was relieved to see, didn’t change. ‘What’s The Reporting Factory?’

‘Oh it’s a news agency. We supply a lot of the London papers. You know The Times that sort of thing.’ Top of Rosie’s list of Don’ts was: don’t say ‘sell’ as in ‘Oh, we sell stories.’ Next was: don’t say red-top.

Cal just mumbled ‘Mmmh’ and resumed lifting up the debris.

Rosie said, ‘What about me helping you and putting this here and then we can clear this mess up and talk at the same time?’

She balanced her digital recorder on the pile of books she’d tidied and switched it on.

Cal wasn’t looking and didn’t seem to register the recorder. Did he think she was just putting down another book? Well, she’d been upfront about it. What else was she supposed to do, draw his attention to it again? She might as well invite him to clam up.

‘So, Cal, you’re the talk of the political classes.’

‘Am I?’ He didn’t seem surprised.

Rosie said, ‘The world’s in a real mess. We’re ruining it for the next generation. It’s people like you who force us to think about it.’

Cal stopped what he was doing. ‘Oh come on, you don’t really think that.’ Her earnestness seemed to amuse him.

Rosie replied, put out. ‘Sure I do,’ straining for emphasis, ‘Of course, yes. Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Yeah, sure you do.’ Cal went back to his searching. Rosie was about to tell him she had enough to write a story whether he cooperated or not – it was a tactic that sometimes worked – when he stopped what he was doing.

‘Look, Rosie, there’s only one reason why I’d talk to you.’ He looked her straight in the eye.

For the first time she realised he was fired up, angry.

‘What’s that?’ Was it something she’d done?

‘If you can promise it’ll be published in a newspaper with more than half a dozen readers.’

‘I think I can do that for you,’ Rosie said.

‘I want it in one of the big tabloids.’

‘Ok.’ Big tabloid suited her fine. It meant more money for the agency; more kudos for Rosie. At last he seemed interested by her. His restless searching for the frame had stopped. Now she realised his expression wasn’t just anger. Rosie said, ‘You look like you want to settle a score.’

He shrugged, ‘Or something.’

Rosie shrugged too. His motives didn’t matter to her.

‘What about the Daily Record? It isn’t the biggest – The Sun is – but the Record’s got more clout with the political class, if that’s what you want.’

The edge of his mouth flinched. ‘I just want to make it difficult for people. …’

‘Which people?’

He looked at the mess in the flat as if it might contain the answer. ‘It doesn’t matter who …’

Rosie didn’t want him drifting off so she said, ‘I’m pretty sure the Record would be interested. They take my stories all the time.’

Pretty sure? They’d tear her right arm off for it. This guy didn’t realise what big news he was about to become.

He stared again, briefly, making up his mind about her. Then he carried on tidying. She thought she’d lost him again but suddenly he said he ‘might as well’ start at the beginning, with global warming and how it had the potential to trigger devastating climate events; how he’d wanted to draw attention to its dangers in a new way. He’d bought some Dryas Octopetala, the plant associated with the big freeze which began about 13000 years ago, propagated others, and found the home addresses of MPs, MSPs and leaders of industry (all easier than he’d expected).

‘You must have been good at it not to get caught for so long.’ Rosie now had to keep him talking.

‘I watched the Parliament channel and read the papers. I went to their homes when I knew they were somewhere else.’

‘Still it was a risk … their wives or partners.’

‘After the clocks change in October it’s dark early. Once or twice I was challenged but I just said I’d got the wrong address. It’s less suspicious when it’s dark at 5pm and you go in the front gate. There’s usually a bit of garden by the front path or the drive.’

‘So how did you get caught?’

Cal told her the story, how his bus had taken longer than he expected, how it was late when he found the Environment Minister’s garden, how he’d triggered the alarm, how he’d escaped and boarded a bus the following morning only to find the route took him back through the village.

Rosie laughed. ‘So you didn’t have the Mission Impossible team working with you.’

‘No, not exactly.’

‘Is that how you injured yourself, on the fence?’

‘Yeah …’

‘I couldn’t help noticing the door, Flotsam and Jetsam Investigations. Is it serious?’

He nodded and smiled half-heartedly at Rosie’s incredulity. It was the expression of someone weary at answering the same question many times over.

‘How does that work?’

‘Let’s say there’s an oil spill … I can track back on it using wind, tide and current data and match it to shipping movements.’

‘Find the oily fingerprints?’

‘Kind of. … Usually I provide a list of suspects: tankers that were in the right place at the right time.

‘Does it pay?’

‘Not very much; but it keeps me going. It’s funding my PhD.’

‘About?’

He stared at her again, narrowing his eyes, as if he was deciding whether to tell her. She was about to try the standard journalist’s line – ‘the publicity might help’ – when he said, ‘I’m developing and trialling a program for tracking back on flotsam and jetsam; anything that’s floating in the sea. I’ve focused it on the North Atlantic for the PhD.’

‘And when you’ve finished it?’

‘I’ll compile data bases for other oceans using the same computer program. Marine labs and meteorological departments around the world are gathering information all the time.

‘My ambition …’ He paused, smiling self-consciously at the word.

‘No, go on, it’s interesting.’

‘Well, I’d like to extend my work to other oceans with data streaming into my computers 24/7. I’d be able to work anywhere, track back on any objects anywhere.’

Cal picked up a jumble of papers to his left and dropped them in front of him. Rosie took the opportunity to check the time on her mobile. It was 4.20 and there was one missed call. It would be the news editor: an hour and twenty minutes late for her shift tested even the limits of his indulgence. Rosie thought it was time to go. Her interview was better than she’d expected. ‘Can you just spell the name of that plant again for me?’

After Cal had done so, she said, ‘One last thing and then I must leave you. Deadlines, you know.’

Cal said, ‘Sure.’

‘Would you mind …’ Rosie feigned embarrassment, ‘having your picture taken? It’s been so interesting talking to you.’

In Rosie’s experience this was always a difficult bit. She delved into her bag, bringing out a small silver digital camera. ‘I’ll just do it quickly now.’ He hadn’t answered her, but nor had he said no. She took two pictures. ‘Perfect,’ she said examining the viewing screen. ‘Sorry I can’t stay longer and help.’

She was about to stand up when something caught Cal’s eye. ‘Ah; at last.’ He extracted a double photograph frame from under a file.

‘Found it?’ She leaned over. ‘Who’s that, an ancestor?’

‘He’s my grandfather. His name was William but spelt in the Gaelic way – UILLEAM. He died long before I was born, lost at sea.’

Cal turned to the map hanging off the wall. He stood up and pushed on the corners to stick it to the adhesive gum. ‘Somewhere here.’ Cal planted his finger in the blue expanse between Norway and the Arctic. ‘His death was what got me interested in all of this.’

Rosie hadn’t really taken any notice of the map or the newspaper cuttings which surrounded it. Now she saw they were reports of unidentified bodies washing up around Scotland. String led from each cutting to a pin on the map. Cal was pressing two of the pins back in place and tightening the string when Rosie said, ‘Is that right?’

This had the smell of a story. Rosie went to stand beside Cal and began reading about an unidentified Indian girl, only 13 or 14 years old, whose body had been caught in the nets of a trawler off the west coast of Scotland. The police had released a computer-generated likeness of her because her face had been damaged by a propeller. ‘Pretty girl,’ Rosie said.

‘Her body was recovered three years ago. She drowned. Could have been an accident or suicide,’ Cal said. ‘The post-mortem showed she’d lost her virginity. There was vague talk of it being an honour killing.’

‘I remember it,’ Rosie said. ‘Sort of … I was at journalism school three years ago.’

Cal said, ‘No-one came forward to claim her. The theory was the Indian community in Glasgow knew more than it was saying. The police reckoned her body had gone into the water some way south of where it was found. The prevailing flow of the current did the rest, carrying it further up the coast.’ He paused, looking at the map, checking the pin indicating where her body was found. ‘Probably happened that way … yeah, it makes sense. I keep records of them all in case I come across something in my research which might help … some quirk in a current, anything.’ Now he scrutinised the mock up of the dead girl’s face. ‘What’s going on when a 13-year-old drowns and nobody claims her?’