The Sea Detective

by Mark Douglas-Home

  ‘And you’ve been living rough since then?’

  ‘There’s nowhere I can go. The men who own me will be looking for me – and the police will send me back to India and my family and I’ll be put in the dhanda again by my uncle to pay my father’s debts.’

  ‘The police will want to know about Preeti and you. The men who have done this are criminals. They’ll want to find them and bring them to justice.’ Cal thought it ironic he’d turned advocate for the police.

  Basanti shook her head. ‘You don’t understand. I stabbed a man, when I escaped. I think I’ve killed him. Blood was coming from his neck. I can’t go to the police. I’ve got to find who killed Preeti.’

  ‘The police can do that.’

  ‘Won’t you help me?’

  ‘I’m not that kind of investigator.’

  After a pause, he said, ‘There was something you mentioned earlier – a hill and tree?’

  She unbuttoned her shirt at her midriff and slid her hand round to her back, pulling out a sheet of paper which had bent to the shape of her body. She put it on the floor and pressed it flat before handing it to him. It was her drawing of a hill with ridged flanks and a flattened top rising from a plain. Half way up its left side a tree leaned at forty-five degrees.

  Cal studied it. ‘This is what you saw?’

  ‘Yes. This is where Preeti and I were taken ashore. This is where I last saw her.’

  They talked for another hour, perhaps more, until the gap between his questions and her answers grew wider. Eventually, Cal said, ‘I must get some rest. Then I can think more clearly. It’s been a long day.’

  Rachel was on his conscience too.

  Basanti nodded.

  ‘There’s a bed,’ he said. ‘You have it. I’ll sleep here, in the armchair.’ He wanted to add, ‘You can wash. There’s a shower,’ but he was concerned she would take it wrong.

  She didn’t respond and Cal said, ‘Well I’ll let you think about it.’ He stood up and went to the other side of his table and opened a map. ‘How long was the car journey when you were taken to Glasgow?’

  ‘I don’t know. Two, three hours maybe. Maybe less.’

  ‘Let’s say a maximum of two forty or two fifty kilometres.’ He drew a circle with Glasgow at its centre.

  ‘And you were close to the sea when you started?’

  ‘Close; a short walk.’

  Cal studied the map again. The circle he had drawn included much of the Scottish coastline, west as well as east. Only the far north-west and north-east, Sutherland and Caithness, were outside the circle. The circumference ran south of the English border too. It included Blackpool on the west and Newcastle on the east. Her drawing – a hill and a tree growing from it at a peculiar angle – and 13-year old Preeti’s body were the only other clues. They pointed to Scotland, somewhere along the west coast. But where? Had Preeti also been sold again and taken to Glasgow before being drowned?

  While he’d been studying the map, he’d sensed Basanti moving but hadn’t paid her any attention, hadn’t even said good night, in case she became self-conscious about taking his bed. He turned off the desk light and sat back into his arm chair. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Basanti go from the bathroom up the spiral stairs. On the landing by the half door to the roof she lay down on the bare wood. What he didn’t see was his kitchen knife on the boards by her; her hand beside it, protection if she needed it.

  It was late morning when he was woken by his phone. He looked at the screen, didn’t recognise the number and let it ring. He stretched and coughed and glanced at the top of the spiral staircase. Basanti wasn’t there. He thought she might have used the bed when she’d seen him dossing down in the arm chair, but she wasn’t there either. Nor was she in the bathroom; the door was open. He went back to his chair. On the table beside it was her drawing and a scribbled note. ‘Thank you.’ Was she coming back?

  His phone rang again. It was the same number as before.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Am I speaking to Cal McGill?’

  ‘You are.’ He didn’t recognise the voice.

  ‘I’m Eleanor Ritchie, a nurse at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh. There’s a patient here who’s asking for you. Grace Ann MacKay.’

  ‘Is she all right?’ He hadn’t realised she was in hospital.

  ‘The thing is she says she hasn’t got any next of kin. …’

  ‘I’m not next of kin,’ Cal said in case that was what the nurse was checking.

  ‘It’s awkward when it’s like this … she’s most insistent that she sees you. She had your phone number with her.’

  ‘I visited her a few days ago. …’

  ‘She mentioned it. There’s something she wants to tell you.’

  ‘I’ve got an appointment this afternoon.’ He thought he wouldn’t say it was a visit from the police. ‘I can come after that.’

  ‘Good, I’ll tell her. It’ll calm her.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She’s had another stroke, a bad one. I wouldn’t leave it too long Mr McGill.’

  Chapter 20

  Detective Constable Helen Jamieson knocked once on Cal’s door. She heard the padding of his feet and pulled the sleeves of her jacket straight, one at a time with a precise jerk of the cuffs. The jacket was cerise with white stripes and a matching cerise skirt which was a little too tight. She’d bought it the night before, after announcing to herself in the changing room mirror ‘it’s time you were good to yourself Helen.’ She was an 18, but the skirt didn’t come bigger than a 16. The shop assistant said, ‘It makes you look very summery’ and it did. It’d give her a target, a reason for slimming, something to aim for.

  ‘Hi,’ Cal opened the door. His hair was wet and he was wearing a blue shirt which was hanging outside his jeans. He was barefoot. ‘Sorry, late start.’ He held the door open for her. ‘I was hoping you might be returning my computers.’

  ‘I might be.’

  ‘You don’t sound sure.’

  ‘Well, it depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Helping a police officer with her inquiries …’

  ‘Ok’. But it was a wary ‘Ok’, one that was waiting for the catch. ‘Sorry about the seating arrangements. Wait there a moment.’

  He went to the sleeping area (his bedding looked every bit as untidy to Jamieson as on her previous visit.) ‘It’s more comfortable than it looks,’ he said, returning with a plastic chair and putting it down near her.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Please, black.’

  Cal put the kettle on a camping stove. Jamieson would have been amused by his rudimentary kitchen equipment if her hips hadn’t been bulging over the moulding of the seat, making her feel fat when she wanted to feel attractive, for once.

  ‘Is this about the gardens?’ he asked, suspecting it wasn’t. Dr Tim Lenska, his director of studies at the Scottish Marine Institute, had emailed about a policewoman called Jamieson asking questions about the severed feet. He’d mentioned Cal’s name to her. He hoped Cal didn’t mind. Cal didn’t.

  Jamieson seemed startled by the question. She thought Cal had seen her trying to smooth away the bumps and ridges in her new skirt. But Cal wasn’t looking. He was spooning instant coffee into two mugs. ‘No, that’s still with the Crown Office,’ she said. It wasn’t her job to let him know he wouldn’t be prosecuted. Even the Environment Minister had refused to make a formal complaint.

  Duplicitous prick Ryan had called the minister.

  It takes one to know one sir.

  Jamieson shifted again in her seat, to make herself more comfortable and, well, thinner if at all possible.

  ‘So you want me to help you with the severed feet?’ Suddenly he was there in front of her, holding a mug out.

  The chair dug into her in all the wrong places.

  She managed to take the coffee without it spilling and sipped at it, waiting for composure, aching for elegance.

  Please. Just for a day, just for an ho
ur.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘Well, I imagine someone’s been going around the marine scientists in Scotland asking questions.’

  ‘So now you’re psychic too.’

  ‘Not psychic; Dr Lenska’s been in touch.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Cal went on. ‘You see I’m the only one doing this work in Scotland. There are some guys in the States, but their focus is mostly the Pacific. The best known is someone called Curtis Ebbesmeyer. By comparison to him I’m just a nerd.’

  Jamieson warmed to Cal’s chattiness and modesty. Men, in her experience, wasted few if any words on a plain woman. Her male colleagues – and some of her female, too – regarded her with lofty pity. They spoke to her as little as they could and spent as short a time in her company as possible within the boundaries of rudeness; and sometimes beyond them. After some of these encounters, she’d thought of preparing a stock letter of apology, copies of which she would keep in her bag for instant distribution. All she’d have to do would be to fill in the relevant name.

  ‘Dear so and so,

  ‘Someone of your stature is entitled to expect to be in the presence of beauty. I apologise for imposing my plainness on you.’

  Ryan was like that. Cal wasn’t. He had kind eyes without any hint of pity or contempt, or, she noted with regret, a hint of anything else. Still.

  ‘Isn’t Ryan in charge of the investigation into the feet?’ Cal had read his name in some of the press reports. His expression told Jamieson it was a big problem.

  ‘He doesn’t know I’m here.’ Jamieson watched his reaction. Was she being too trusting?

  ‘So why are you?’

  ‘Because we have a common interest. …’ Jamieson stopped mid-sentence.

  ‘Go on,’ Cal said.

  ‘Both of us would like to find out how those feet washed up in Scotland.’

  ‘Sure, yeah, ok.’ What was so difficult about saying that? ‘Is that it?’

  Jamieson hesitated.

  ‘And neither of us wants Detective Inspector Ryan to get the credit?’

  She didn’t need to tell him the risk she was taking. Her agitation did that.

  ‘Ok.’ He spoke slowly, keeping his eyes on her, letting her know he understood what she was saying, what was at stake.

  ‘So you want to screw Ryan?’

  ‘Yes, in a manner of speaking.’ She laughed nervously.

  Helen Jamieson screws Ryan. It was a sentence she’d never considered before.

  Cal shrugged. ‘Sounds good to me.’ He leaned across his table and grabbed a pad of paper. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  Jamieson relaxed. ‘Tell me where the feet started from.’

  ‘Oh that should be easy.’ His tone said it wouldn’t be. He turned to a clean page. ‘Ok, we’ll make some preliminary assumptions to narrow the search. We can expand it later if we have to.’

  Jamieson let a little smile of relief flicker across her mouth. Sweat beads had gathered on her top lip. She nodded. ‘Ok.’

  ‘Let’s take it these two men went into the sea same time, same place – both of them wearing trainers, two of the feet beaching in Shetland, the other in East Lothian. In view of the prevailing currents, we can rule out the east coast of Scotland as the starting place.’

  He began writing, talking to himself as he did. ‘Search area: Land’s End in the south, up the west coast to the north of Scotland.’ He glanced at the map behind him. ‘Then take a line from Duncansby Head by John O’Groats north-east to St Magnus Bay, Shetland.’ He looked up again. ‘Then extend across the whole search area to the 13th meridian west.’ He checked. ‘That should do it: it takes in Ireland and the sea to the west of the UK.’

  When he put down his pen he said, ‘It’ll have taken a minimum of two months for adipocere to have set in and for disarticulation to have happened. Then there’s the time these feet have been drifting at sea. Let’s start by going back a year, to last May.’

  He tore the paper from the pad and handed it to her. ‘It’s a lot of ocean.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Jamieson said.

  Cal responded to her amused sarcasm with a smile.

  ‘Oh and I’ll need trainers, like the ones that were found.’

  ‘We’re putting it out they were Nikes but they were counterfeit.’

  Cal’s eyebrows rose. ‘Really? I’ll need them, for buoyancy tests. How they float affects the speed as well as the direction of travel.’

  ‘I can probably let you have them for 24 hours, no more.’

  ‘That’ll do.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘My computers …’

  ‘They’re in my car.’

  Cal said, ‘Thanks’.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re thanking me.’

  ‘By the way,’ he said. ‘With these feet, all I can give you is a range of possibilities, the approximate direction of travel and some incidents worth examining in more detail. It’s an imprecise science, not like DNA or fingerprinting.’

  ‘A range of possibilities would be good.’ Jamieson stood up and brushed the sides of her skirt with the flat of her hand where the chair had left tracks in it. ‘Another thing. Can you keep in touch with me by email? I’ve set up a new account.’

  ‘What’s the address?’

  ‘It’s Bembo1@23comely.co.uk’

  They exchanged glances. Bembo was the New Zealand harpooner in Herman Melville’s book Omoo.

  ‘It can’t be my work email,’ Jamieson said. ‘Address me as Bembo when you’re emailing, don’t use my real name.’

  Cal said, ‘You don’t like Ryan, do you?’

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.

  He smiled. ‘And since we’re doing each other favours …’

  He took the cutting from the wall and let Jamieson read about the dead Indian girl. He explained why he was breaching a confidence – ‘it’s too big, someone in the police needs to know’ – and then he told Basanti’s story and showed Jamieson her drawing.

  Jamieson listened and at the end she said, ‘We’ll find them. You tell her that. Tell her she can trust me.’ Her voice was cold, determined. It was one thing men treating her badly; quite another them molesting children, even touching a hair on their heads.

  Cal said, ‘I don’t think she’s ready to trust anyone yet.’ Then, running his hands through his hair, he said, ‘God, I don’t even know I’m going to see her again.’ He showed Jamieson the note Basanti had left him that morning.

  ‘If she does come back see if you can persuade her; even if she’d speak alone to me, here.’

  He shook his head. ‘She won’t, not yet. She’s worried about being deported. She’s illegal. She thinks she’s killed a man.’

  ‘Tell her none of that matters …’

  ‘In a day or two perhaps, when she’s more settled, if she returns …’

  Cal went with Jamieson to the car and unloaded his computers from her boot. She helped him carry them to the lift. ‘You’ll send me a copy of that drawing of the hill,’ she reminded him.

  ‘I’ll scan it in now.’

  Jamieson nodded. ‘They’re scum.’

  ‘Who are?’

  ‘Men who treat young girls like that.’

  Jamieson was almost at the door when Cal shouted after her, ‘She’ll come back. I’ve just realised.’

  ‘Who will?’

  ‘Basanti.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She wouldn’t go, not without her drawing.’

  Chapter 21

  ‘Your visitor’s here.’ Nurse Eleanor Ritchie stroked the back of Grace Ann MacKay’s veined hand. It was resting outside her blankets on a book with worn black covers and faded gold lettering. Cal recognised it from his visit to her bungalow. It was her Bible. The nurse lowered her voice. ‘She won’t let go of it; she had it with her in the ambulance.’ Eleanor regarded her patient with affectionate indulgence. ‘She’ll be so relieved you’ve
come.’

  ‘Should I get a coffee or something?’ Cal asked, ‘And come back when she’s awake.’

  ‘She’ll murder me if you do. She was most insistent I woke her as soon as you arrived.’ She rubbed the old woman’s hand once again. ‘Grace Ann, your visitor is here. Cal’s here, Grace Ann.’

  Grace Ann stirred, opened her eyes and shut them again.

  ‘She’ll just be a wee bit disorientated’

  The nurse was jolly and small with blonde hair cut into points under her angular chin. ‘Just call me if you need anything. I’ll be over there.’ She indicated the nursing station in the middle of the ward opposite the four bed bay where Grace Ann was lying. The other beds were empty. Eleanor straightened Grace Ann’s bedding. ‘I’ll do her pillows if she wants to sit up. Just give me a call, ok.’

  Grace Ann’s throat rasped. ‘Cal, is that you?’ The effort of it made her cough. Cal noticed the skin below her eyes was puffy and black.

  ‘How are you?’ he replied.

  She coughed again. ‘It doesn’t matter about me,’ she croaked and the dryness caught at the back of her throat. Cal suggested a drink and she shook her head. ‘No.’ The rasp became stronger, setting off a sequence of hacking coughs. Her face turned purplish-grey and she began to choke.

  ‘Nurse,’ Cal shouted but Eleanor wasn’t there. He picked up the glass of water on the bedside table, hesitating before slipping his hand behind her head and lifting. ‘Here, have a drink.’

  Her neck was thin and bony against his palm. It felt fragile, breakable, and he worried about pushing too hard. When she’d taken a sip followed by a gulp which spilled out of her mouth, her coughing stopped and Cal lowered her head and removed his hand.

  She mouthed ‘thank you’, but no sound emerged. Her eyes were fixed on him. They were rheumy and pleading.

  ‘Rest for a bit, then we’ll talk,’ Cal said but she shook her head.

  She coughed again. ‘I have something you must see.’ She held up her Bible but the drip at her wrist prevented her from handing it to Cal and he took it from her. ‘Open it, inside the back.’

  Cal opened the leather back cover revealing a folded sheet of writing paper. He held it up to Grace Ann. ‘You want me to see this?’