4 Death at the Happiness Club

by Cecilia Peartree

  The people on the top deck had been all right, as far as she could tell. Had the cabin-dwellers been drinking? Or was something else wrong. Diesel fumes from the engine? What else could it be? She sniffed the air.

  Sean appeared, opening a little door that seemed to lead behind the bar.

  'Have these people been drinking?' Amaryllis asked him, thinking as she did so how much like a dowager duchess she must sound.

  He shrugged his shoulders. 'Maybe half a pint or so.'

  'A few of them don't seem very well,' she said. 'Do you think it might be the diesel fumes?'

  'There's no knowing with boats,' he said. 'Some people are just very susceptible to sea-sickness.'

  'That's ridiculous,' she said. 'It's the middle of July and we aren't even out at sea. And why should all the people in the cabin feel ill and nobody on the top deck?'

  'Look,' he hissed. 'Keep your voice down - you'll get the rest of them started. If there's one thing I know about, it's mob psychology. Do you want to start a panic in here?'

  'No, of course not,' she snapped. 'Do you want people poisoned by fumes? Why don't you get them all up on deck in the air just to make sure?'

  'We're nearly there anyway,' said Sean. 'They'll get more air than they know what to do with on the island, or so I've heard tell.'

  He was right about that anyway, Amaryllis reflected as they went ashore.

  For some reason she wished Christopher were here. She had texted him earlier in the day to let him know where she was going – not that he had been showing much interest in her movements lately, and she despised texting as a form of communication, but she wanted to show she wasn’t just sitting waiting for him to get in touch. He wouldn't be all that impressed by the scale of the ruins or the hype that now surrounded the island, but she could just picture his amusement about what Sean had to say. It was rather light on history but heavy on romance.

  'Of course everyone knows about the background to the ruins on this island,' he said, raising his voice to be heard above the chatter of his own and other tour groups, and the noise of the omnipresent sea-birds. 'Something you might not know, though, is that it's possible to get married here, so as you have a wander round, just see if you can choose the perfect spot for a wedding, and then have a look at your companions and choose the perfect person to be with on that very special day!'

  'You've got half an hour,' he added. 'Make sure you're back in time or you may find you spend longer here than you want.'

  'Two minutes is longer than I want,' grumbled Jock at Amaryllis's side. She smiled at him with mock sweetness.

  'Don't you want to go and find the perfect place for our wedding, then, Jock?'

  'That's the spirit!' said one of Sean's sisters, over-hearing. Was it Dilly or Dee? Amaryllis had trouble with their voices, which were very similar. She hadn't seen either of them on the boat. Maybe they too had been incapacitated.

  They all wandered away from the boat, forming smaller groups as they went. Jock and Amaryllis fell in with Jemima and Dave.

  'I don't think I'd want to get married here,' said Jemima. 'It's a bit too bracing. And those birds are too loud.'

  'I expect Sean would scare them away for you on the big day,' said Amaryllis.

  Jemima gave her a look. 'I wouldn't let that man near any big day of mine.'

  'Hold on a minute,' said Jock, who had been rummaging in his pockets. 'I think I've left my pipe on the boat.'

  'You don't need it just now, do you?' said Jemima disapprovingly.

  'Wait there for me. I'll just be a minute.'

  Jock left the group and hurried back towards the boat. They watched as he clambered aboard.

  'It's a bit disrespectful to smoke here anyway,' said Jemima. 'What do you think, Dave?'

  'Oh, yes, a bit,' he said with a grin. 'But you know Jock.'

  They all knew Jock.

  As they watched, he emerged from the cabin and waved something at them triumphantly. He waited until he was back on the jetty to get out some matches and light the pipe. Walking away from the boat, he tossed the match casually over his shoulder.

  First there was a whoosh, then a boom, then flames were shooting out of the boat, and Jock was nowhere to be seen.

  Amaryllis took to her heels at once and ran towards the jetty as the others watched, helpless.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid, she was saying in time with her footsteps, and she wasn't referring to Jock McLean but to herself. Why hadn't she guessed the cabin was filling up with gas? The signs had all been there. If anything happens to Jock, she told herself, Christopher will never forgive me. I'll never forgive myself. Nobody will ever forgive me.

  The flames had turned to plumes of black smoke curling up into the sky by the time she got there. It looked as if the jetty itself was more or less undamaged, but where was Jock? Amaryllis had been involved quite closely with explosions during her security services career, and it was unusual for someone to be completely vapourised. Certainly the force of this fairly minor blast, though destructive and frightening, wouldn’t have been enough to do that.

  She heard a groan from under the jetty. When she peered over the edge, Jock McLean’s face stared up at her.

  ‘What am I doing down here?’ he asked plaintively.

  ‘I was just going to ask you that,’ she said. Well, he was still alive anyway, even if a bit confused. She had a closer look. He was lying half on rocks, half on sand, under the jetty. ‘Can you move your legs?’

  ‘Yes, I think so – is that a good sign? What happened?’

  ‘Oh, nothing much. You’ve blown up the boat, that’s all. Stay where you are and I’ll come down.’

  She jumped lightly on to the sand and hurried over to Jock. One of his legs was twisted at an odd angle, presumably because it had hit the rocks as he had fallen or jumped down. He didn’t seem to want to stand up, either, which wasn’t like him. She wondered if he felt dizzy. There was smoke all over the place, which wouldn’t do either of them any good if they hung around here. She glanced around. There were spectators by now, unfortunately. The rest of the Happiness Club group had drifted back down to the shore to see what had happened. Sean Fraser was standing at the point where the jetty met the path that led to the abbey, staring in disbelief at the remains of the boat which had brought them to the island. His sisters stood just behind him, a step or so back like the wives of some unreconstructed sheikh.

  ‘Better get a bit of wood or something and move him,’ said Dave, who had come up behind Amaryllis without making a sound. ‘He won’t want to lie around here.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Jock, coughing as a cloud of smoke enveloped them.

  Dave went off for a few moments and came back with some planks he had unceremoniously ripped off the jetty, and a length of wire he had picked up on the beach. Together he and Amaryllis fashioned a kind of stretcher and somehow rolled Jock on to it. Inspector Smith appeared as they were about to lift it, moved Amaryllis bodily out of the way and took over as a stretcher-bearer with Dave. They carried Jock up to the main path, where Penelope Johnstone and Jemima had cleared a space among the spectators, and set him down there while they discussed what to do.

  ‘I’ve called the emergency services,’ said Inspector Smith. ‘They won’t take long to get here… Hey!’ he shouted at some of the onlookers. ‘Don’t get too near the boat. It’s dangerous. Stay well back.’

  As they seemed to be taking no notice, he went back to the jetty himself to take control of things. Amaryllis had to admit that he was quite a useful man to have around in an emergency, although she knew she could have helped Dave carry the stretcher herself if she had had to.

  ‘Did something catch fire?’ said Jock woozily. ‘Have I been asleep long?’

  All this woozy haziness wasn’t like Jock. He must have hit his head as well as injuring his leg. Amaryllis hoped he didn’t have some sort of blast injury too, but maybe he had fallen off the jetty just before the boat went up. She wished the emergency services would h
urry up, although realistically she knew they couldn’t be there instantly.

  Was Jock warm enough? She glanced round to see if anyone looked as if they might be able to lend him a spare coat or something. Dave and Jemima had been well wrapped up today in waterproofs and Penelope was wearing her usual camel-coloured body warmer. Amaryllis commandeered all these and wrapped them round a reluctant Jock. She considered requisitioning Jemima’s woolly hat but decided against it on the grounds that it might be dangerous if Jock had some sort of head injury. That took up a few minutes. Once Inspector Smith had shooed the onlookers back up the path a bit, he had a word with Sean, who then took the Happiness Club group further up towards the abbey, presumably to make the most of the time by viewing all the romantic wedding spots. Maisie Sue, who had been last to appear at the scene, gave them anxious glances over her shoulder as she left. Zak Johnstone seemed transfixed by the scene: he stood there, impervious to anyone's attempts to move him on. Amaryllis heard him breathe, 'Awesome-sauce.'

  ‘I wonder how we’ll get home,’ said Jemima.

  ‘We’ll maybe be marooned here for the night,’ said Dave. He grinned. ‘Romantic or what?’

  ‘Definitely what,’ said Amaryllis firmly. She refused to picture Dave and Jemima snuggled up together in a niche in the rocks. ‘They’ll send a spare boat for us.’

  Jock groaned. ‘Never going on a boat again…’

  ‘You’ll probably have to be airlifted out,’ Amaryllis told him, ‘so I’d stop complaining about boats if I were you.’

  Chapter 12 Latecomer

  Christopher was very pleased with himself as he left North Queensferry station after putting Caroline on the train.

  They had abandoned the idea of walking the Fife Coastal Path in favour of Christopher's alternative suggestion that they should take the ferry from Rosyth to Zeebrugge and spend a couple of days in Belgium, eating chocolate and visiting the odd war memorial. Fortunately one of the few useful items in Caroline's silly beach bag was her passport. He wasn't sure if she had imagined she might need it to get into Fife. He had nipped home quickly for his, managing to get in and out of Pitkirtly without being accosted by one of his friends. He had taken the backpack with the tent and sleeping bags, and they had spent two nights at a Belgian camp-site, where they hadn't offended anyone by arguing about large or small concepts, and the chips were almost as good as at home.

  Fleeing the country without telling anyone was Amaryllis's specialty, and he looked forward to breaking the news to her about where he had been.

  As he switched on his mobile phone to see if there were any urgent messages from the Cultural Centre, not that he had even thought about it for a moment while he was away, he heard a booming sound from somewhere out in the Forth.

  He frowned. It sounded almost like an explosion. He remembered there were old quarries just off the Coastal Path near North Queensferry, but it seemed unlikely anyone would be blasting there after all these years.

  He followed the other people who were now suddenly running down the hill from the station towards the harbour.

  '… smoke… flames leaping up… big black cloud…' he heard as they went past him. He paused to read the new text that had popped up on his phone. It was from Amaryllis.

  'Going to Inchcolm for day with Happiness Club ha ha a x' it read. Happiness Club? Was that meant to be a joke?

  Wait a minute. Inchcolm. Wasn't that out in the Forth in the same direction as the explosion? He speeded up a little. Why had Amaryllis sent him the text in the first place? Did she think he would be impressed by a trip to Inchcolm? Was she trying to make him wish he was there with her? Each possibility seemed more unlikely than the previous one. But the possibility that there was a connection between Amaryllis and an explosion was much too likely for comfort.

  He started to overtake some of the people who had rushed past him earlier. Before long he had pushed to the front of the crowd on the quayside, and was staring out to sea with everyone else as if they were all auditioning for bit parts in a re-make of 'The French Lieutenant's Woman.'

  'It's Inchcolm. It's on fire,' said someone in an apocalyptic voice.

  'Nonsense - it's a wee boat out there in the middle of the Forth,' said someone else.

  After an agonising ten or fifteen minutes when nothing happened but during which everyone had their own idea about what had actually happened, ranging from a German U-boat from World War Two either exploding under water or unexpectedly surfacing and then exploding, to a speed-boat spontaneously combusting because a sea-gull had flown into the engine, a police-car arrived at the quayside in a great hurry, siren blaring. The police attempted to disperse the throng, but without much success. They did manage to clear the quay itself. A helicopter flew overhead.

  The man next to Christopher entertained the crowd with his theory that Inchcolm Abbey was actually an alien space-ship which had blasted off into space in response to a summons by its owners, inhabitants of a galaxy far away. Christopher experienced a strange urge to turn and punch him on the nose, but he restrained himself. Getting arrested wouldn't help, no matter what had happened.

  He had a brainwave, and rang Amaryllis's mobile number. There was no answer.

  A television news crew arrived. He shrunk back into the crowd, dreading being captured on film. Jemima and Dave had still not let him forget the last time it had happened. He strongly suspected they had recorded the moment somewhere and were planning to bring it out at his funeral as part of an ill-judged tribute to his life.

  Why was he thinking about funerals? It was too early for that. He didn't even know if Amaryllis was currently on the island, still on her way there or even at home, having completed the excursion before any of the excitement kicked off.

  He caught sight of a blackboard that served as a noticeboard for the trip boat company. 'Private charter - Happiness Club' it said in big letters at the top. 'Thirteen hundred hours.' He glanced at his watch. Two o'clock. The chances were that Amaryllis was still on the island.

  He gritted his teeth and keyed in her phone number again.

  'Amaryllis Peebles,' said her voice calmly.

  'Amaryllis! Are you all right?'

  'Christopher! Yes, I'm fine. Jemima and Dave are fine. Maisie Sue and Penelope and Zak are fine. Sean and Dee and Dilly are fine. Chief Inspector Smith's fine.'

  'I don't know who half these people - wait a minute! What aren't you telling me?'

  'Promise not to panic,' she said.

  'I won't panic. When did I ever panic?'

  'Do you really want me to remind you?'

  'What is this Happiness Club, anyway?'

  'Jock McLean is hurt a bit,' she said.

  'Jock? What's the matter with him? When you say hurt, what do you mean? Is it a euphemism?'

  'When did I ever use a euphemism?' she asked. 'He fell off the jetty. They're just about to winch him up to the helicopter now. I'm not a doctor but I'm guessing he's broken his leg. It serves him right though.'

  'What about the big bang?'

  'Some sort of financial thing, isn't it?' she said and rang off.

  He felt like throwing his phone on the ground and jumping on it. She was just about the most infuriating person he had ever met.

  And what did she mean by saying Chief Inspector Smith was fine? What was he doing visiting Inchcolm with the Happiness Club - a dodgy name for an organisation if ever Christopher had heard one. What was Amaryllis doing joining it? Didn't she have enough happiness in her life?

  A policeman started to address the crowd through a loud-hailer.

  'We need to clear the area. Would anyone who doesn't have to be here please leave now. Anyone who's worried about friends or relatives can call our special help-line…Come on, folks, you'll be able to see it all on t.v. later.'

  Christopher, not quite so worried about friends now that he had spoken to Amaryllis, retreated up the hill with most of the others in the crowd. He wasn't going to leave North Queensferry, however, until he had actually se
en them all with his own eyes. He knew Amaryllis wasn't above telling outright lies to gain some temporary advantage.

  Unsure of what would happen when they finally came ashore, he called her again. This time it went straight to voicemail. He left a message telling her where he would wait. Ten minutes later, he received a text from her telling him not to wait but to go home to Pitkirtly.

  'We could be here all night,' was how she ended the text. 'CU 2moro.'

  Reluctantly Christopher agreed it made sense. After all, he didn't know what was actually happening on the island. The police might have decided to question everyone onsite. There might not be another boat immediately available. A boat could theoretically convey the party straight home to Pitkirtly, landing at the old harbour.

  He got the next bus along the coast and was at home in time for tea. The house and even the town seemed oddly empty. It was one thing to get irritated with his friends for interrupting him when he wanted some peace and quiet; another thing to know there was no chance of Jock calling round to persuade him to go down to the Queen of Scots for a quick pint or five, or Jemima recalling some ancient Scottish delicacy she hadn't yet taught him to make. Or of Amaryllis breaking into the house with some unpredictable demand.

  He hoped Jock was all right. He was a good, if extremely annoying, friend. Christopher knew he might be even more annoying once he had been in hospital for a while and not permitted to smoke his pipe.

  He rang Caroline on her mobile and told her the news.

  'We saw the smoke and flames from the train,' she said. 'Some old woman thought it was the Germans.'

  'The Germans?'

  'She was on a train that was crossing the Forth Bridge in the war when the Germans bombed it.'

  'Oh.'

  'Thank you, Christopher. I feel much better after our holiday.'

  'Maybe we should do it again some time,' he said. 'Not the coastal path bit but the rest.'