Without speaking, the American flicked his eyes towards the room next door.
Dora smiled. ‘Dear Charles,’ she said, heaving herself to her feet. ‘He may have outlived his usefulness. But, for the moment, we need his services. Mike and Foxy can keep him here and put him down if the worst comes to the worst. But I’ll tell you this, his prospects aren’t good.’ She turned back from the door to collect her handbag.
In the large room, Mike and Foxy were playing a game with matches. There was no sign of Hanratty.
‘Where’s he gone?’ Dora asked.
‘To the crapper, he said.’
‘Its door was open,’ said the American, ‘but we didn’t hear it flush. He’s run for it.’
Outside, an engine started. The car moved away in a hurry.
‘I can catch him,’ the American said. He raced down the stairs, pretending not to hear Dora calling after him. Outside the front door, he threw himself into his own car; but when he had the engine running he did not go after Hanratty. Instead, he headed for where he had left his caravan. The modified rifle was safely locked in the boot of his car. By the time Dora discovered that the money he had paid her was missing, the car would have been replaced, the caravan dumped and his appearance subtly changed. If Mary Bruce froze her other assets, the word would soon go around that Dora could not afford to pay for information.
Old favours are no substitute for new currency.
*
Lonely Lady lost time during the night. The breeze had fallen away to light airs and Ian had decided to reserve that last inch of petrol in the outboard’s tank for emergencies.
It was mid-morning before he lowered the mainsail, hooked the main halliard to a rope knotted into the approximate form of a bosun’s chair and made his third trip up the mast. The reviving breeze, which had cleared the mist away at last, pressed the big genoa and held the boat steady enough to let him use the rusty but efficient binoculars which her owner had left aboard Lonely Lady.
His first visit to the masthead had shown that his dead reckoning was out and that they were still opposite Burnmouth. On his second attempt he had seen the buildings of Berwick, the high bridge over the Tweed and even the clock on the Town Hall, but the harbour-mouth had still been below the horizon. But now he could see the small lighthouse on the end of the pier. He waited for the boat’s motion to steady and took a long look through the binoculars.
He let himself down the mast in a hurry. ‘Come round to the south again,’ he said.
‘We aren’t going in?’
‘Not in there,’ he said. ‘Not this trip.’
‘I’m hungry,’ Sheila said plaintively.
‘So am I. But there’s a van parked right at the pier-end. We’d have to pass close by it or risk going on the sand at Spittal Point. It may be quite innocent. It may belong to a fisherman or to somebody maintaining the lighthouse. On the other hand, one of Dora’s friends may be sitting in it with a rifle. You want to take a chance on it? Or shall we go on to Holy Island?’
Sheila weighed her hunger against her fear. Fear won. ‘How far is Holy Island?’ she asked.
‘About two hours, with luck.’ Ian spoke from the foot of the mast where he was re-setting the mainsail. ‘By my reckoning the causeway will be covered soon. I’d like to get in and out before it uncovers again.’ He glanced at Sheila and, seeing her incomprehension, took pity. ‘The reason I fancy Holy Island is that, weather permitting and if your keel isn’t too deep, you can get in and out by boat at any time; but you can only get over from the mainland by car or on foot when the tide’s down. It’s not much of an advantage but at least we can shade the odds in our favour. With a bit of luck, if they sent somebody he missed the tide. Or if they have somebody there, the knowledge that he can’t get off for a few hours may cramp his style.’
Sheila was tired and her face was burning from the salt and sun. The whole trip was beginning to resemble a dream in which she kept struggling on and on, only to find that Journey’s End came no closer. ‘From Holy Island, do we go home?’
‘We think about it.’
‘I’m already thinking about it,’ she said sadly. ‘Do people really do this sort of thing for fun?’
Chapter Five
In Glasgow, Grotty stopped feeding papers through the shredder to answer the telephone.
Nicknames are often humorously inappropriate, but whoever had first given Grotty his soubriquet had found the mot juste. He was ugly, dirty and scruffy and his breath smelled. In the severely functional study of Dora’s austere flat, he looked as out of place as a cowpat in a dairy. But he was loyal and he would have been loyal to Dora even if she had not had a vice-like hold over him.
Grotty’s loyalty to Dora sprang from admiration rather than affection. He admired her ruthless courage. Grotty himself could be ruthless at a distance, although he lacked the nerve for direct action. But, as Dora had said, he was an efficient organiser and she had given up trying to remedy his failings.
‘Aye, lass,’ Grotty said into the phone. ‘I’ll accept the charges.’ He glanced up at the wall, where a large map was copiously annotated in black felt-tip.
‘Go ahead, caller.’
‘Dora? You there, hen?’
‘This is Grotty.’
‘Jimmy Jay here, Grotty.’
‘Chrissake, Jimmy, I bloody know it’s you. How could I no’, with you reversing the charges? What in hell you doing at Beal? You’re supposed to be on the island.’
‘Got me car drowned, didn’t I? First it was fog an’ then I picked up a nail, bloody miles from anywhere. An’ then my spare was flat.’
‘You stupid sod!’ Grotty said.
‘But it was your mate Foxy used my car last. He must’ve had a puncture an’ not said.’ Jimmy Jay’s voice, already plaintive, came close to tears. ‘So there I was, not a soul around or even a light to be seen. I walked miles an’ miles until I found a filling station. All locked up, of course, an’ no bugger around except a couple of Alsatians just waiting the chance to chew my balls off. I’d to wait until the feller turned up, an’ then twist his arm before he’d help. Then we got back to my car. Still no bugger for miles around, but hadn’t somebody pinched my battery?’
Grotty deferred telling him to come to the point. He was enjoying the story. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘He wouldn’t take a cheque, not after the way I’d gone on at him, an’ by the time I’d paid for the tow an’ the punctures an’ some petrol I couldn’t pay for a new battery.’
‘You could’ve duffed him up and taken one,’ Grotty suggested.
‘Not when I’d got to hang around just a few miles off I couldn’t,’ Jimmy Jay said reasonably. ‘He fixed me up with a second-hander that’d done a million miles an’ gave me a jump-lead start, but by the time I got here the causeway was just being covered an’ the tide coming up fast. I tried it anyway, but the car drowned an’ I waded back to shore. I don’t reckon I can get on to the island for another couple of hours. Even then, I’ll have to walk across. Unless you want me to hitch into Seahouses an’ steal a boat?’
Grotty consulted his map and sighed. There was a breach in the defences and no way to seal it. Even now, the phone-lines from Holy Island might be humming. ‘That’d take you longer,’ he said, ‘and while you’re farting around off the Fame Islands they go ashore over the causeway. You did save your shooter from the car?’
‘Surely. Will Dora pay for the car, do you think?’
‘You’ll be lucky, fucking it up like this. Listen. It’s locking the stable door, but you go and watch the end of the causeway. If those two come ashore – a red-haired bloke in his thirties, built like he’s played rugby, and a stringy bird, around the same age, light brown hair, brown eyes and a figure like a lamppost with knockers – you deal with them. If they don’t come after the causeway uncovers, you go out to the island. They won’t be there, but you can find out if they’ve been. Phone me.’
‘Not my fault, running over a nail. An’ if I
waste them both, how do I get away with no car?’
‘That’s your problem,’ Grotty said, ‘and you’d better have an answer. Or do you want to look over your shoulder some day and see Dora behind you, smiling?’ If those two slipped through, Grotty thought to himself, Dora would be too busy to exact petty revenges, but there was no point just yet in laying down the stick.
Jimmy Jay’s sudden shiver came audibly over the wire.
*
In Briesland House near Newton Lauder, Keith was at his workbench. He was making poor progress with the restoration of the German wheel-lock which he wanted to prepare for inclusion in his forthcoming catalogue. His every attempt to resume work was foiled by a fresh outburst from Deborah.
‘Dad,’ she said for the umpteenth time, ‘you’ve got to phone Mr Munro.’
Keith was as anxious as his daughter, but he was more capable of taking a realistic view. ‘He’ll let us know as soon as there’s any news,’ he said.
‘But he won’t do anything. And Ian may be in some awful danger. He may be in desperate need of help.’
‘Not much Munro can do until something happens,’ Keith said.
‘But he’s police,’ Deborah said, as though that endowed the Chief Superintendent with magical powers. ‘He can spread the word, have people watching, all that sort of thing,’ she finished lamely.
‘You phone him.’
‘He treats me as though I was still twelve years old.’
Keith knew only too well that any precipitate action by Munro before Sergeant Fellowes surfaced, preferably in possession of valuable evidence, would put the Chief Superintendent in the untenable position of admitting that he had sent a subordinate, who was not one of his own team, into possible danger without any help or back-up. But Keith had never been able to withstand sustained nagging by either of his womenfolk. With a last, sad glance at the wheel-lock he spun his stool around and picked up the phone.
Chief Superintendent Munro picked up his extension phone on the first ring. When he recognised Keith’s voice, the hope in his own died away. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No news yet.’
‘We’re very anxious,’ Keith said. ‘More than anxious. Frantic would better describe one or two of us.’
‘And you think that I am not . . . frantic? I have never been so worried.’
‘It’s been more than twenty-four hours now,’ Keith said. ‘Worrying isn’t enough any more. I know how you’re placed and I sympathise; but while you play it close to your chest some bobby may be in a position to give Sergeant Fellowes the help which might save his neck, but doesn’t know it. You’ve got to warn all forces.’
Deborah put her cheek against her father’s. ‘If you don’t,’ she said, ‘I’m going to the newspapers.’
Keith pushed her away. There was a stunned silence at the other end. ‘Keith?’ said Munro’s voice at last.
‘Yes?’
‘For the love of God do not let her do any such thing. What you were saying is just what I have been telling myself, but I have been putting off admitting my sins.’
‘I understand all that. If you can produce Ian Fellowes, complete with evidence that your bête noire McHarg refused to act on information about a planned assassination – information which turns out to be valid – you’ll be the hero of the hour and McHarg the villain, whereas—’
‘Do not even say it aloud,’ Munro begged. ‘It is all just as you say, but I could not stand hearing the words. Give me just a little longer.’
‘How little?’
‘The morn’s morn?’ Munro asked hopefully.
‘Too late.’
‘Until midnight, then?’
Keith avoided his daughter’s eye. ‘If there’s no word from Ian Fellowes by midnight, you’ll set all the wheels in motion? All of them?’
There was another hiatus while Munro wrestled with himself. ‘I promise,’ he said at last. ‘And you’ll keep the lassie away from the media?’
‘If you keep your word. In fact, there’s no question of her ringing the press.’
‘I am relieved to hear it.’
‘Because,’ Keith said firmly, ‘it would be very much more effective if she just phoned Superintendent McHarg.’
He hung up on the Chief Superintendent’s indignant squawk.
‘But, Dad,’ Deborah said, ‘something could happen to Ian between now and midnight.’
Keith could not deny it. Nor dared he point out that if Sergeant Fellowes was destined to meet terminal trouble he had probably already done so. With relief, he heard the sound of the front doorbell.
‘Is your mother home yet?’
‘No.’
‘See who that is.’
‘Shall I send him away?’ Deborah asked. ‘Unless it’s a customer, of course.’
‘Bring him up, whoever it is,’ Keith said. Any interruption would be better than being forced to take a share in Deborah’s agonising.
He gained a minute or two in which to drill holes in the chain-links which he was fabricating for the wheel-lock. Then he heard the sound of two sets of footsteps on the stairs.
Deborah arrived in the doorway. ‘It’s a Mr Cardinal,’ she said.
‘Paul Cardinal,’ said the newcomer. ‘Call me Paul.’ He was a large man, tall and barrel-chested. Greying hair was cropped close on his round head. His face was keen but otherwise expressionless. His clothes were for leisure but they were spotless, of good quality and nearly new. He glanced around the big room, which had been made by throwing together two large bedrooms, and his eyes widened as they took in the neat racks of antique guns. ‘Hey, this is some den you’ve gotten here!’
Keith pulled out the visitor’s chair for him and resumed the stool. Deborah hopped up onto the end of the workbench.
‘Ah, come on!’ Cardinal said. ‘Let the young lady have the chair. I’m tall enough, I can sit on the bench and stand, both.’
‘Not in those trousers, you can’t,’ Deborah said more cheerfully. The small courtesy had eased her tense mood. ‘My jeans won’t take any harm.’
‘She seldom sits anywhere else,’ Keith said.
Paul Cardinal shrugged, produced a hint of a smile and sat. ‘I was recommended to come to you,’ he said.
The faint, American accent jogged Keith’s memory. ‘I think you spoke with Chief Superintendent Munro,’ he said.
Cardinal’s impassive face lengthened in surprise. ‘That’s right,’ he said.
‘I assume that his recommendation didn’t bring you here?’
‘He told me that you don’t get to carry a side-arm over here for self-defence.’
‘He was telling the truth,’ Keith said. (He almost added ‘for once’.) ‘They think that the total number of deaths comes out lower that way. Of course, it may be the wrong people who get killed, but the statistics look better. Mr Cardinal—’
‘I’m not used to that mode of address. Call me Paul. Please.’
‘Very well. But first name terms still won’t persuade me to sell you an off-register hand-gun. You’ll find one easily enough if you ask around in the rougher bars. Of course, there’s nothing to hinder you from buying an antique pistol. You’d be breaking the law if you loaded it, of course, but I wouldn’t know about that.’
‘It’s a thought. But I can look after myself, with or without a pistol. That isn’t at all what I came to see you about. Somebody at the hotel told me that you know everybody in these parts and all the local history.’
‘I wouldn’t put it like that,’ Keith said. ‘I know a lot of people. And you can’t make a lifelong study of weapons without picking up some of the history that goes with them.’
‘What Dad means,’ Deborah said, ‘is that he’s read every book in the world about old wars and things.’
‘You flatter me,’ Keith said.
Paul Cardinal was nodding. ‘That’s the sort of history I’m looking for. I’d better tell you the story, if you can spare me the time.’
Keith glanced at Deborah. ‘We have time t
o fill,’ he said.
Paul Cardinal looked at the unfinished work on the bench but made no comment. ‘I retired kind of early,’ he said. ‘I was a detective with LAPD. Los Angeles, you know?’
‘Like Colombo?’ Deborah said.
‘Yep. Only it was never just like that. I enjoyed the work, but there’s no denying it’s a three-ulcer job on a two-ulcer salary. Then, a few years back, I could afford to get out; so I thought what the hell? No, I wasn’t taking graft,’ Paul added quickly, recognising an expression which Keith had been slow to mask. ‘I had a big win on LOTTO – that’s the California State Lottery. You pick six two-figure numbers. It can pay out big bucks.’
‘Big enough to retire on?’ Keith asked doubtfully.
‘If nobody’s guessed all the numbers and the main prize isn’t won, it gets rolled over to swell the jackpot for next time. The biggest win so far was sixty-two million dollars, split three ways.’
‘I’m almost afraid to ask—’ Deborah began.
‘Mine wasn’t quite that big and it was split between five, but it was big. I didn’t retire right away. I’ve always enjoyed a gamble, so I used the money to back inventions. Three times a hunk of money went down the drain. Then we hit the jackpot again with a new-type all-weather tennis court. It’s a good product but I guess our slogan helped – “Play in the rain without getting your balls wet”. I came out with twice my original win.
‘A gambler I may be, but putting my life on the line several times a week for a monthly wage was getting to seem like poor odds, so I got out.
‘My mother was an Elliot and her folks came from hereabouts. I’d spent some time in Europe and I thought I’d like to find out more about my ancestry over here. To start with, I employed professionals. It cost but it was great value. They traced the family back and back until they came to a “Laird’s Tam Elliot” who was one of the Border reivers. He was hanged at Carlisle Castle in seventeen thirty-five.’
In Camera Page 7
