Well of the Winds

by Denzil Meyrick

  ‘That’s a very serious accusation. I hope you’ll be making that official, because if you don’t, I most certainly will.’

  ‘Now, hang on—’

  ‘No, you hang on!’ shouted Harris, his face only inches away from the senior policeman. ‘If you’re insinuating that I have something to do with this, I want that accusation followed through. The government can’t have that sort of thing hanging over its head now, can it?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . just circumstances. I’m not saying I suspect something, just that it looks suspicious.’

  ‘I’ll raise your concerns with my line manager. I’m sure they’ll want to make sure that this is all whiter than white. I’ll also mention it to the local officers when they get here.’

  ‘Local officers?’

  ‘Yes, this is their domain now. There’s nothing for you boys to investigate, is there? It’s all up in flames. In fact, if I were you, I’d start winding up the operation. Once you’ve given your statements and put everything you have to bed, I imagine it’ll be back to the Big Smoke for you tomorrow.’

  ‘Very well, I’ll put those wheels in motion,’ replied Bale coldly.

  ‘That fireman, him over there,’ said Harris, pointing at one of the members of the island brigade.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Didn’t I see him in a police uniform earlier?’

  Jean McAuley wasn’t used to the quad bike, and riding in the dark with the big headlight shining its bright beam along the rutted path made it even more difficult, but soon she drew up outside the Glenhanity croft.

  She struggled off the machine and hesitated, searching in the deep pocket of her anorak for the powerful little Maglite torch. She took a deep breath and pushed open the rickety door.

  The smell was overpowering. She knew that the owner was still lying dead in the kitchen, but she wasn’t interested in that.

  She cast the beam about, first onto the couch, then up onto the mantelpiece. She looked at the painting in the torchlight. The woman smiled down at her, cheeks pink against a pale complexion. He’d been a good painter, she thought. Could have made something of himself if he hadn’t been marooned on this island, struggling to make a meagre living from root vegetables, chickens and whatever fruits of the sea he could glean. The life of the crofter in those days – before grants and encouragement – was a tough one. Life was just bloody tough anyway; even now, she reasoned.

  She directed the beam along the mantelpiece. There it was, just what she was looking for. She picked up the bottle, went into the kitchen, where she poured the contents down the drain, and tucked it into her pocket.

  It was strange to think that the woman she’d known for so long was on the floor, dead. She wondered how far they would take the investigation of her death. After all, everyone on Gairsay had been predicting it for years – it was a miracle that she’d lasted so long. A life of loneliness and drunkenness had reached its natural conclusion, regardless of how unnatural the final moments of that life had been.

  She cast the beam about one last time. The torchlight flashed off the brass of a small photo frame. She walked across to the mantelpiece and picked it up in her gloved hand, squinting at the image of a little girl in a white beret. It was an old monochrome photograph that had been coloured at a later date. The little girl’s cheeks were too pink – a bit like the painting above – and the lock of hair which curled from under her hat was red too.

  She replaced the photograph and left the house, the old front door creaking in protest as she closed it behind her.

  She tramped through the heather, cursing in Gaelic as she stumbled over clumps of thick grass and rocks in the darkness, the only light that of her torch and the pale moon. She could hear distant voices carrying from Achnamara, across the hillside, on the still night air.

  She thought of her husband. His panic when he’d returned home, desperate to change from his police uniform into that of a fire-fighter, off to tackle the blaze caused by the explosion at the farmhouse.

  He’d asked her to call in Glenhanity’s death at the Police Office at Kinloch. She would do it when she got back home. With everyone’s attention focused on the Bremners’ place, she’d have plenty of time. First the family, now the house had disappeared.

  She remembered how much she’d loved old Mrs Bremner. How the woman had always taken an interest in her, teaching her how to bake, what to read, how to think, and how to hate.

  Her traipse through the heather was over. She stood at the edge of the small, dark loch and took a deep breath. The moon was a limpid disc, the reflection rippling on the black water. She was momentarily startled when an oystercatcher swung low over the water, its piercing cry echoing across the hillside.

  She pulled the empty whisky bottle from her pocket, swung her arm, and propelled it far into the water, watching as it bubbled away into the Well of the Winds, like the votive offerings of old.

  Glenhanity would no longer be a problem. The old woman was silenced for good.

  42

  Daley stood on the deck of the ferry as it made its way across the narrow sound towards Gairsay, Scott at his side, shivering in the cold night air. Even from this distance, he could see the flashing blue lights of the emergency services as they attended to the incident at Achnamara Farm.

  They’d been pulled from the cosy conviviality of the quiz night at the County Hotel, which pleased him, in a way. In his current state of misery, nights lasted for ever. They were long, lonely, silent times, with only the beat of his heart in his ears for company. He couldn’t concentrate to read, watch TV, listen to the radio – all the things that normally acted as a balm for his racing thoughts.

  Recently, only the journal of Inspector William Urquhart offered any kind of solace; an absorbing, intriguing break from the heartbreaking reality of his life.

  He’d reached the last part of the journal. Looking out across the dark waves, he remembered the words written in the inspector’s neat hand.

  There is always a time in one’s life when the need to know is greater than the need to be safe. I have experienced this before, and it is as much of a surprise to me now as it was then.

  All of us have the capacity to hasten our own end – the conclusion of our lives. But what are these lives, if lived only as a battle against the forces that will bring about our demise? There must be something more important – something greater than that.

  I have seen good men – and at least one good woman – die in this way. Better specimens of humanity than me have made the journey from what we know to what we don’t.

  This war – as did the last – has taken so much hope, promise and youthful potential away. We will never know what those who have fallen may have done with their lives. It would be naïve to think that none of these poor souls had the capacity to change the world for ever – for good, or bad; so, where does that leave us now?

  We are living in a world that isn’t what it could be – or even what it should be. Each death is a personal tragedy approximating calamity, not for the one, but for us all.

  All we – I – can do is carry on the struggle to save lives and right wrongs.

  Why the philosophy? I don’t honestly know, but, in a strange and totally unexpected way, I feel as though, having witnessed so many endings, it is time for my own.

  I will do what I have always done. Fight against the darkness.

  Kinloch, 1945

  Inspector Urquhart took the coast road out of Kinloch, along the bay and towards the island. The car’s headlights, mere slits to comply with blackout regulations, gave only the barest glimpse of the road ahead. Wispy clouds scudded across a full moon. The warships on the loch appeared as one solid, dark mass, dotted here and there by a light on a mast or the spark of a cigarette on deck.

  He wondered what Kinloch would be like in peacetime. The war had brought the world to this remote Scottish coastline – sometimes welcome, sometimes not – and had changed the community irrevocably.

&nb
sp; He fought a wave of sadness. He had made mistakes – should have done things differently. Maybe there was still time. He’d always favoured prevention over cure; most of the time, though, this was an impossibility. The people with whom he was now dealing had their roots in the highest echelons of society. They had witnessed the events of Britain in the thirties and not liked what they had seen. The levers of power had begun to grind in a different direction.

  He found it hard to imagine that some of his countrymen would take up arms against their own nation, but the reasoning was sound. How deep had this gone? He knew there were many who favoured reconciliation with what was left of Germany, rather than staying in bed with Stalin and the mighty Russian bear.

  His mind slipped back to France and the weeks before the Armistice. As a young officer – Wellington would have called him a galloper – he was tasked with taking a sensitive missive from the front line to command HQ, located in the relative luxury of a bombed-out château, almost five miles back. He wasn’t irked by the fact that colonels, major generals and the ranks above quaffed wine and ate fresh meat while their men were slaughtered in the trenches – it was the privilege of command. Why on earth would any army risk the lives of those who directed its course? No, he was reconciled with that notion. What shocked him was a chance meeting.

  He had been asked to remain seated in a corridor, and he was looking up at an ornate plaster ceiling, waiting to be called. He could hear laughter emanating from the dining room, a few yards away, and smell the pungent aroma of cigar smoke.

  Two mirrored doors swung open. A general – identifiable as such by his red-and-black formal uniform – tumbled from within, his right arm draped around a companion, who was guffawing at something, chattering away in a language Urquhart did not then understand.

  The man’s uniform was grey-green, and he carried a spiked helmet in the crook of one arm. It was Urquhart’s first sight of a German officer at close quarters, and the experience unnerved him. It wasn’t that the man scared him – no, it was the camaraderie that clearly existed between this man and the English general. Young privates – many of them his friends – were being blown to smithereens, yet here the enemy was welcomed with open arms and a fine cognac.

  The German gave him a withering look, then the two continued on their merry, companionable way.

  Urquhart wasn’t naïve – certainly no more than most at his then tender age. He knew that communication between enemies must take place, back-channels to peace. But the feeling of revulsion had never left him. It made him feel as though the whole war had been some sort of hellish prank played upon millions of innocents.

  Why could disputes amongst nations not be decided over the dining table at the outset, thus avoiding the need for a murderous entrée of tragic, unnecessary death? If that was how things were ultimately resolved – old men blathering over wine and canapés around a large table, why not just skip to the dessert?

  As Urquhart neared his destination, he supposed that this was, in some small way, what he was trying to achieve.

  ‘I never thought I’d be back here a few hours after I left,’ Scott grumbled. ‘At least the boss didnae make a fuss when you said it would be better for her tae hold the fort.’

  ‘She was pissed,’ said Daley with a laugh.

  ‘What’s the scoop when we get there? Glenhanity or Achnamara?’

  ‘I’m guessing we won’t be able to do much at Achnamara. By all accounts, there’s bugger all left of the place and Special Branch are still in charge. We better make Glenhanity our priority.’

  ‘Carrie’s dying tae get her teeth stuck intae Special Branch tomorrow. Tells me she’s going tae pull together what you found oot fae this diary, and what this professor has for her. You never know, we might solve this yet, Jimmy boy.’

  ‘You never know, and none of us have been shot at, half drowned or impaled – that makes a nice change.’

  ‘Aye, but I’m still on a boat,’ grumbled Scott.

  43

  Kinloch, 1945

  Inspector Urquhart pulled into the layby above the causeway. He could see its dark serpentine shape meandering through the waves, revealed intermittently by the moonlight. All was quiet, save for the distant calls of sailors across the loch. As he reached into the pocket of his raincoat for his torch, the faint notes of an accordion melody were carried on the air. ‘Clair de Lune’ – the tune made him smile and feel melancholy at the same time. It had been her favourite.

  As he opened the gate and made his way across the machair and down onto the rocky strand, he thought of her. Somehow, she seemed nearer now than at any time since her death. She’d been cut down by a carelessly discharged round fired by an inebriated soldier celebrating the end of the war. How ironic, his commanding officer had said, to have survived the conflict, only to be killed on the first day of peace. It hadn’t felt ironic to him; it had felt horrific, and something good had ended that night.

  He heard something scurrying across the pebbles and pointed the torch in the general direction. He could make out the figure of a man, the cut of his expensive raincoat instantly recognisable, despite the shadows.

  He walked nearer, directing the beam straight at the man. ‘What in hell’s name are you doing here?’ He sighed, wishing that, for once, someone would heed his advice.

  There was no reply, and he turned to face the water’s edge to stare across the black loch. He needed to do this on his own.

  As he grabbed at his trilby to stop it being blown into the sea, he felt an arm snake around his neck. Before he could react, a cold, agonising pain shot through his chest. He tried to draw breath, but could only hear a rasping noise in his throat.

  Suddenly, lights flashed across his vision: white, green, red, in vivid patches and patterns. His panic mounted and he felt himself falling backwards. The lights faded, and the last thing he tried to do was call her name. He felt such profound sadness that he couldn’t give it voice.

  Hans Neyermeyer read and re-read the document in front of him. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever written: not one of the myriad memos, instructions, press releases, blanket communications to bureaucrats across the continent, or advice to members of the commission, council, or parliament. No, this was more akin to a death warrant for the men he had known; figuratively, if not literally. Yet he suspected many would take the route that he was about to tread, rather than the alternative – the shame, censure and prosecution that was inevitable.

  One line was etched in his mind: ‘That from evil, good can spring.’

  It was a bastardised quote from Saint Augustine, his Enchiridion: musings on faith, hope and love. He hoped it would lend the missive some kind of scholarly respectability.

  Good could and did spring forth from bad. However, when bad remained at the heart of something good, it sullied it.

  It was ironic that the European Union was now facing the most challenging time since its inception. Member states were in a clamour of discontent, with threats of referendums across the continent. Old rivalries, hidden for years behind a façade of peace, unity and shared interests, were re-emerging. Germany at its heart was struggling to maintain order, to keep the dream alive.

  He felt a sudden surge of pride for the nation of his birth. His homeland was Europe – soon they would all see this and fall back into line.

  Then he thought of the old woman in Linz. After all these years, she was still sitting at the centre of the web, twisting and controlling the strands of their existence, keeping her dream – the nightmare – alive. She’d survived everything: the assassin’s bullet, exposure by the press – even the revulsion of an entire people – but still she prevailed.

  He looked again at the document flickering on the screen. This would end it – finish her off for sure. Not just her, either. The future would no longer be assured. The continent would roll on – whichever way – but all the ghosts of the past, and present, must be put to rest. The present must be left to take care of itself.

  He
reached over to the large tankard he kept on his desk, flipped open the ornate lid, and extracted a Cohiba cigar. He ran it under his nose, smiling at the way the aroma already made him feel, before it was even lit.

  He reached into his pocket, feeling the heft of his father’s silver lighter, and looked at the inscription: Oberst Neyermeyer, mit bestem Dank, Adolf Hitler.

  He lit the cigar and inhaled deeply.

  ‘You’re in for a treat here, Jimmy,’ said Scott from the back seat of the Land Rover. They were being driven by a Forestry Commission worker, bumping up the muddy track that led to the smallholding that was Glenhanity. The dawn was breaking cold and grey across the island.

  Daley, huddled into his jacket, looked out of the passenger window at the glistening lochan beside them.

  ‘That’s the Well o’ the Winds. Me and the gaffer were up here for a wander.’

  ‘You and the gaffer seem to have had a great time,’ replied Daley.

  ‘Aye, well, it wisnae a’ fun and games.’

  ‘No, your face is testament to that. Do you ever intend to tell me what happened?’

  ‘Nope, and I don’t think it’s fair for you tae keep pressing me, neither. Fuck me, it’s no’ as though I haven’t kept a few o’ your secrets o’er the years.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘That’s us here,’ declared Scott.

  Perfect timing, thought Daley. ‘Looks pretty run-down – the house, I mean.’

  ‘Run-doon? This place makes run-doon look like the Ideal Home. I’m telling you, there’s creepy crawlies in there that thon Attenborough wid be shocked tae see, an’ that’s before there was a stiff lying in the hoose.’

  The Land Rover pulled up in the yard, and both detectives got out.

  Scott swore profusely as he stepped straight into a puddle. He pulled off his shoe to drain off a dribble of filthy water. ‘See what I mean? And we’re no’ even in the hoose yet. When dae you think the SOCO boys will arrive?’