The Sea Detective

by Mark Douglas-Home

  Underneath, after leaving a space, he scratched, ‘Known unto God,’ the inscription he found in the Ardnamurchan cemetery 19 years before, a form of words originally devised by Rudyard Kipling for marking the graves of unidentified First World War dead.

  Cal propped the slate against the bottom of the cairn and wedged it there. By the time he’d finished adjusting the stones and removing heather debris from the area around the cairn, the gloom of evening had set in. As the last sprays of sunlight glinted copper against the underside of the clouds, Cal pulled his anorak around him.

  For the hours of darkness he sat beside the cairn, sleeping fitfully, listening to the constant motion of the waves on rocks below him, peering half-blind into the night which dropped an opaque shroud of sooty-grey over the ocean. Twice he stood and stamped his feet to warm himself and to get rid of cramps. He ended the night as he’d started it: sitting, knees pulled up to his chest, arms wrapped around them, each exposed hand tucked into the other’s sleeve.

  When the sky to the east lightened, he pulled his rucksack towards him and took out the bag of food he’d bought at Rae’s shop. He broke open a bread roll, put two tomatoes into it and squashed the two halves together. He ate it quickly, washing it down with gulps of bottled water. When he’d finished, he zipped his rucksack and rose stiffly to his feet. The place seemed to hold him for a minute or two: a grandson bidding farewell to a grandfather. Then he turned away, his rucksack hanging loosely from one hand, and descended the hill. Every so often he stumbled, partly because the detail of the ground was indistinct in the dawn light, partly because his stiffness made him clumsy and heavy footed.

  At the bottom of the hill he found the grass track past the houses and followed it, glad at last of a level surface. The light was now coming quickly though not so bright that there was colour to the grass or the sea. The greyness combined with the stillness lent ghostliness to the dereliction he was passing. At number 14, his grandfather’s home, Cal struck out over rough ground, across the grazings. In the improving light, his limbs loser, his stumbles less frequent, he was able to cover the ground quickly. Soon he was at the cliff overlooking the bay, watching out for the Rib, hoping it would come soon to take him from this hateful place.

  Basanti yelped when her mother told her; the sound a wild animal makes when it is caught in a snare and it cannot make another because the wire has already tightened. Her mother, alternately sobbing and pleading, begged Basanti to understand. What choice did a sick woman with a dead husband and two daughters, one crippled, one beautiful, have? Basanti’s father had only been gone a week and every day another creditor visited their door demanding money.

  ‘But Mama,’ Basanti said, ‘you will have rupees when I am married next month. Can’t it wait until then?’

  Basanti had been promised in marriage for almost a year now. The wedding had been delayed because the groom required time to save for the bride price. He was a Bedia man who had gone to work in the city, who had noticed Basanti when he returned to the village to visit his bed-ridden father. At first he assumed a pretty girl like Basanti would be in the dhanda. When he heard she was not, not yet, he sought out Basanti’s father offering 80,000 rupees and three goats for her hand in marriage. Her father had driven a hard bargain. ‘My daughter Basanti is a beauty, the loveliest girl in this village, who will bring her family many rupees.’ He took a sip of his drink and studied this city boy. ‘It is the custom,’ he said in the serious voice he kept for business, ‘to compensate the bride’s family in some small way for the loss of a daughter’s earnings. In this case those earnings would be substantial, as you can see for yourself.’

  After much negotiating, and some more drinking, they settled on 100,000 rupees and five goats. Ten thousand rupees and the goats had to be paid within seven days, the rest one year later. The two men drank to the deal, with the groom-to-be seeking assurances from Basanti’s father that Basanti would be kept from the dhanda, that she wouldn’t be used to procure clients for the older women, and that she wouldn’t dance in the provocative way Bedia girls were taught to dance. The older man had taken some minutes to reply. He’d wanted this city boy to think he was making a concession when really he was making none. Basanti’s father, whose business was bootleg liquor, was prosperous, or had seemed to be during his life, and he’d decided long before to keep Basanti from the dhanda. At length, he said with an air of reluctance, ‘I suppose that too is the custom when a Bedia girl marries. I agree.’

  Basanti had been so happy when she was told. It didn’t matter to her she had not yet spoken to her husband-to-be. She was to be married. She would live with him in the city and work in an office. Wasn’t this what she had been brought up to expect? Wasn’t this why she had been having English lessons? She would have children who would know their father. Few Bedia girls who went into the dhanda knew the fathers of their children, if they had children at all.

  Then it had been stolen away, ripped from her.

  Her dead father’s prosperity had been built on the loans of investors who wanted their money back. His debts were rising every day – 287,000 rupees was the latest total – and still creditors came to their door.

  After Basanti cried out, her mother wailed, ‘What else can I do? Your sister is crippled and weak. She would earn a few rupees at most. I am sick and old. Your uncle, who is a generous and wealthy man, says he will pay off your father’s creditors immediately and keep us safe from their threats. But his condition is that you give up your marriage and go into the dhanda to repay our family’s debt to him. Basanti, I wish there was another way but there isn’t. The money from your husband-to-be won’t be enough. A good-looking girl like you can earn many hundreds of thousands.’ Basanti had not spoken to her mother or sister again, even when they readied her for the roadside.

  She watched the rising sun lighting up the sky to the east of Edinburgh. Where would she go since she couldn’t go home? It was a question for another time, after she’d found Preeti’s killers. Here, now, sitting by the entrance to the cardboard shelter she’d built on the whisky bond’s roof, the light came quickly and Basanti felt her fear subsiding. Ever since her escape, when it was daylight, she made sure she could see to the horizon and the sky above. Her claustrophobia was the legacy of those months and years in underground rooms, trapped and at the mercy of abusing men. Now, only when it was dark outside could she venture inside. She’d spent last night in Cal McGill’s apartment. She’d spend the rest of the day here, by her shelter. When darkness came again she would go scavenging and she would once more climb the wooden stairs to the roof door. She’d wait inside for him. Another night. And another. And another. Until he returned.

  Cal took out his phone and checked his emails. He had one from DLG.

  ‘Cal, can you solve this one? One of the Shetland feet matched the one which beached in East Lothian. There was 250 miles between them, crazy or what?’

  Cal replied, ‘Not necessarily crazy at all.’

  The sound of a distant engine took his attention. The Rib’s wake was beginning to spread across the Kyle. It would take another 10 minutes before reaching the pier below him. Cal packed his rucksack, put his phone in his pocket and went to meet it.

  Chapter 17

  Douglas Rae held up his raw-red paddle of a hand. ‘Howdy doo.’ Then he stepped back as though retreating behind an imaginary line of refuge. He was a big man, six feet five in his boots, with a square box of a head, a lopsided grin, and a mat of brown hair.

  Cal said, ‘Hi, I’m Cal McGill’.

  ‘Howdy doo,’ Douglas repeated, fidgeting. Everything about the man was uncoordinated motion. His boots scuffed at a mussel on the pier, his fingers wrapped and unwrapped round themselves like animated raw sausages, and his mouth twitched. ‘Fine day, fine day …’ Suddenly he was lost for words. The only immobile things about him were his eyes. They were fixed on Cal.

  ‘Yes, it’s a wonderful morning.’ Cal continued the weather theme wondering whether his ov
ernight stay had provoked the older man’s curious behaviour. If it had, Cal wasn’t about to apologise for it, not to a Rae.

  ‘Indeed it’s as fine a day as you’ll ever want to see.’ Now Douglas pulled at his ear and scratched at the hair above it. He took another step back along the pier. ‘Let’s be getting aboard then, if you’re all ready.’

  The Rib had a smart black and red livery. As Cal stepped down into the boat, he commented on the newness of its appearance.

  ‘It’s for the day trippers,’ Douglas said following him in. When he was at the wheel and about to start the engine, he added, ‘The summer season’s getting busier every year.’

  ‘I noticed the plans for the cafe.’

  Douglas’s little eyes darted at him then away. ‘Aye, and for that too …’ He patted the wheel affectionately. ‘She’ll do the job all right.’

  The roar of the twin engines brought their brief conversation to an end. Going back to the mainland Douglas pointed out landmarks and shouted their names. Just beyond the Rabbit Islands, the Rae family’s other Rib passed them going in the opposite direction. Mike was at the wheel. Another, younger man accompanied him. Douglas waved at them and when the boats had crossed he shouted something inaudible in Cal’s direction. Something about sheep, he thought.

  When they were back onshore and walking up the slipway, Douglas resumed his fidgeting. It was accompanied by a succession of pronouncements, about the weather (again), the state of the roads, the best place for May bluebells, to all of which Cal replied with polite acknowledgements. He had the feeling Douglas was being voluble to deter Cal from talking to him. The only occasion when Douglas asked Cal a question was when he was unlocking his Toyota pick-up and Cal had said, ‘Thanks for the boat ride,’ and raised his hand as a preliminary to bidding him goodbye.

  Douglas’s brow creased. ‘Well, what about a bite of breakfast?’ he said. ‘Ellie, that’s my wife, has eggs and bacon in a pan. She’ll have put them on when she saw the boat going past.’ All of a sudden his nervousness seemed to go away. ‘Any way, there’s something you should see.’

  Until that moment Cal had wondered whether Douglas knew he was Uilleam Sinclair’s grandson. Now it was obvious he did. It was in his tone of voice. Cal considered Douglas’s invitation for a moment, shrugged and said, ‘Why not?’ managing to conceal his misgivings at accepting hospitality from a Rae. Perhaps Douglas wanted to show him something that would shed more light on his grandfather’s death.

  He texted Rachel. ‘Coffee. 10am. The hotel?’ It was just before eight thirty. He had time.

  They settled into the pick-up, Cal’s thoughts distracted by what he would say to Rachel, when she replied. ‘Look forward to it.’

  Cal asked Douglas, ‘Where’s your house from here?’

  Douglas rattled the car keys and wound down the window before answering. ‘Do you see that hill over there? Below it is New Iasgaich township.’

  ‘It was named after the island?’

  Douglas seemed not to hear Cal’s question. He turned the ignition, busied himself looking up the road for approaching cars and took off with a spray of gravel.

  Cal tried again. ‘How many of the original island families live there?’

  Douglas again ignored him. Instead of answering, he pointed out an inlet where he used to fish for mackerel as a boy. Next he showed Cal the best piece of land for growing potatoes followed by the cliff where peregrine falcons used to nest until egg thieves raided their clutch two years in a row. When they drove past a sign for New Iasgaich, Douglas said, ‘There was no road here before the evacuation. The Norwegian government built it, as a thank you.’

  ‘I thought they’d paid for the land only,’ Cal said.

  Once again Douglas didn’t respond. Cal began to wonder if he had hearing difficulties. Just as he was about to try again, the Toyota breasted a rise and Douglas pointed to a settlement which consisted of eight houses built in a line along a single track road.

  ‘There you are, New Iasgaich’.

  Each house had its back to the hill and its face to a sward of green which sloped away towards a curve of beach. Beyond it, across the sea, was Eilean Iasgaich.

  ‘So it is,’ Cal acknowledged.

  Douglas drew his attention to the last house in the line. It was, he said, where the widow of Hector MacKay, the ‘best skipper the islanders ever had’, lived until her death, ‘a fine age too’.

  The house, like its neighbours, was similar in design to the larger ruins on Eilean Iasgaich: two windows and a door downstairs and two dormers and a skylight in the slate roofs. The difference, as far as Cal could tell, was the glazed storm porch with a pitched roof around the front door. All the houses had one, and all were clad in grey harling which gave them a drab, unwashed appearance even in sunshine. Cal thought it looked a forlorn place.

  Douglas turned off the road at the third house along which had a double garage at the side and a single storey extension at the back. Lobster pots and buoys were stacked along the short driveway. ‘Time for breakfast I think.’ Douglas opened the door and swung his legs out. ‘Let’s see what Ellie’s got cooking.’

  Douglas loosened his boots on the boot scraper and Cal waited for him in the back doorway. The porch was pungent with the smell of bacon cooking. ‘There’s a hungry man here wanting his breakfast,’ Douglas shouted towards the open kitchen door before propping his boots on the step. Cal dropped his rucksack beside them and followed Douglas inside.

  The kitchen was a long bright room with a wood burning stove at the far end and an arm chair either side of it. An elderly woman with grey hair and dressed severely in black sat in the one nearest the window. She lifted her face and dropped her eyes when Cal entered giving her an appearance of watchful disapproval. To the left of the door was the cooker. Beside it was a small woman in her mid 40s, wearing blue jeans, belted, with a yellow shirt. She was standing over a frying pan of bacon and eggs. Her hair was greying blonde and caught up with a tortoiseshell comb. Her skin was white and stretched, and her manner similarly strained. Cal recognised her from the ticket booth at the slipway.

  ‘Let me introduce you,’ Douglas said to no-one in particular. ‘Here we have Cal McGill and here we have two Mrs Raes; my wife Ellie and my mother.’

  Ellie looked up from her frying pan. ‘Oh there’s only one Mrs Rae here. I’d rather you called me Ellie.’ Something passed between wife and husband; a warning look from her; evasion from him. Cal registered it and Ellie saw he had. She gave him a reassuring smile of encouragement. ‘Come on in. You must be hungry.’

  Douglas was hovering in an alcove leading to another room. He waved one of his large hands, beckoning Cal to him. ‘Come and see. There’s a telescope here. The detail you can pick out on the island is a wonder.’

  Old Mrs Rae looked away from Cal as he approached, her lips tightening in hostility. It was then he saw what was hanging on the wall behind the wood burner. It was a squared off piece of weathered timber. In its centre were two black shadows; two numbers, 1 and 4. It had been cut from the door of 14 Eilean Iasgaich. Cal stared at it. His grandfather’s front door had become a decoration, a sentimental relic, in the house of his family’s persecutors. Cal thought of his pregnant grandmother Ishbel closing it when she left the island to return to her parents in Eastern Township, of his great grandmother Margaret shutting it behind her when finally she abandoned the island, ending generations of Sinclair occupation. The dismay showed on his face.

  ‘Here’s what I want you to see.’ It was Douglas beckoning him again; this time insistently. The man’s great bat of a hand waved Cal into a sitting room. Caught off guard, he kept walking towards Douglas whilst glancing back over his shoulder at a piece of his family’s history. ‘Here, take a look,’ Douglas said. He motioned Cal to the telescope at a broad window which overlooked the sea and Eilean Iasgaich.

  ‘Have a gander through that.’

  Cal bent to the eyepiece, hesitantly, his thoughts still on the remnant of door.
The telescope was trained on Cnoc a’ Mhonaidh where two men were in the process of dismantling his cairn. He watched as one, then the other, threw a stone over the cliff. ‘Is that what you wanted me to see?’ Cal pushed the telescope away in anger and Douglas observed him with a delighted oafish grin.

  On his way back through the kitchen old Mrs Rae turned her severe face to Cal. There was a glint of triumph in it. ‘So you’re Uilleam Sinclair’s grandson?’

  Her voice rasped.

  ‘Yes I am.’

  She looked him up and down. ‘Sinclair bad blood isn’t welcome here.’

  Ellie, who was at the table slicing open and buttering breakfast baps, cried out, ‘Leave him be.’

  Mrs Rae smirked at her daughter-in-law’s naivete. ‘What and have his trouble-making ruin the business we’ve built? All our hard work?’

  By now Douglas had followed Cal into the kitchen. Ellie glared first at him then his mother, ‘How dare you abuse my home like this. I warned you about it, both of you.’

  Douglas was still smirking, a broad lopsided grin across his face.

  ‘I think you’ll find,’ old Mrs Rae shot back, ‘it’s not your home and if Douglas has any sense in his head it never will be.’

  The matriarch stared coldly at Ellie and then at Cal who by now had retreated to the end of the kitchen by the back door. Her look of contempt was the last thing he registered before exiting the house.

  He walked briskly along the road, occasionally breaking into a run. At the end of the new road, he paused for breath and a car approached slowly from the direction he’d come. He stepped onto the grass verge which was chequered white, with daisies, and pink, with clumps of thrift. The car stopped beside him, instead of passing by as he’d expected.