Josie Burke cleared a space on her desk and pulled a fresh notebook from the drawer. She turned back the cover, clicked a section of lead from her pencil and began scribbling a list of names, telephone numbers and contact codes. Top of the list was Ben Urquhart, owner and skipper of the dive-boat "Ark Angel". An old friend of Bill Jardine and the hub of an informal group of friends and former comrades with a longer and darker history than most would admit too, who now spent happy hours dotted around the coasts being curious. Jardine tagged them duffel coats after the Navy's functional overcoat and insisted they were a bunch of salt stained anoraks. Ben had roared with laughter and said it took one to know one. Always on the lookout for an unusual angle for his corporate facility, Jardine worked on the idea that nobody noticed granddad, often with a grandchild in tow, they could pick up bits and pieces which others overlooked. He was about to prove his idea and Josie was kicking off the process- Check him at home first, then go through Ship-to-Shore - She finished jotting, keyed in the speaker-phone and flipped her pencil around in her fingers and used the end as a punch to tap out the numbers. The receiver gave its double ring as she listened and counted. She reached ten and the answer-phone cut in. "You know what to do, so get on with it." It said gruffly and Josie smiled. The machine bleeped. "Anorak wants to speak to duffel-coat." She said and put the phone down. Ben would know it was the Grange, but not necessarily Jardine himself. She waited until the phone on her desk rang three times and stopped, before she rang again. This time there would be no answer-phone. Ben would be on the line and after the third ring she heard his voice. "Urquhart speaking,"
"Ben, it's Josie, Bill asked me to call and have a chat with you."
The gruffness softened. "Any news?"
“No Ben,”
"Sorry to hear that."
“Bill's wondering if there's anything else your lads might be able to help with." She heard Ben scratching his head, his fingers rubbing the hair against his scalp.
"I don’t know lass, I put the word out on the West-side when Bill first asked, but I've heard nothing, which means they’ve found nothing, if they had someone would have called in" he explained, "and I don't bother them over-much, trust them to do the job and they generally do it. Besides, they never did take much notice of me, even then. Bloody bus driver I was, take them out and bring them back." He grumbled.
"Which route?" She asked with good-humoured interest.
Ben replied. "Shetland." He said. It meant nothing to her, so she let it go and got back to the job in hand. "Ben," she took a deep breath and braced herself to say the words she dreaded. "If there is any, it will be the very worst we could hope for. At the moment we don't know if he's alive or dead." Josie said desperately and he heard the catch in her voice.
"Alright lass, leave it with me, I'll see what I can do. Ring me in tomorrow. I'll put a respond tag on the signal."
"Thanks Ben, I'll speak to you tomorrow night." She said and hung up. Ben Urquhart laid the receiver gently back in its cradle and turned towards the windows of the conservatory along the seaward wall of the cottage and gazed through the double glazed Solarplex towards the dark sea and the sweep of the light from St. Abb's Head. He spoke softly and directed his words towards a silver gilt framed picture on the table beside the two-inch telescope mounted on a tripod and levelled on the horizon. "Maggie, it looks like a boat load of trouble." His grey eyes became cloudy, as the first storm clouds gathering out to sea. "I shan't be long." He said and lifted a donkey jacket from the hook by the front door, checked the keys were in his pocket and dropped the latch as he left. He unlocked a battered Ford Escort van, slipped behind the wheel and started the engine. The tappets were noisy and the gears crunched as he jammed the stick into first and drove away from the cottage. He left the lights on, but he often did that, it was the least he could do. During the day the distinctive red roof of his cottage was visible out to sea and provided a useful mark for sailors. He reckoned leaving the lights on now and again might do something similar. The car ground its way down to the main road, crunching over the gravel and broken stones covering the track and when he reached the road he turned towards Berwick, where Ark Angel was moored in the Royal Tweed Dock. Three quarters of an hour later he drove on to the quayside and pulled up alongside the old trawler. The light from the halogen floods on the dockside buildings threw her buff coloured upper-works into highlight and plunged her deck and black hull below the quayside into dense shadow. He locked the van and walked briskly towards the rusting iron ladder fixed to the stone work. Swinging his leg over with an agility that belied his years he climbed down to the deck and let himself into the wheelhouse. With the familiarity of having rebuilt the boat from a hulk he reset the fuses and swung open a hatch in the deck. Still in darkness he dropped down the hole, pulled the cover shut behind him and then turned on the light. It was a game, he knew that, but it made keeping in touch with his lads a bit more fun. He moved through the engine space to a greasy toolbox bolted to the forward bulkhead and fastened by an old padlock. He picked the key from the bunch and opened it. A Bakelite Morse key sat beside a battery box and a small light. He tuned the transmitter frequency to a short wave band and hoped that at least one of the lads would be listening. He switched on and sent CQ Angel and repeated it twice more then sat back and waited. Four, five minutes, he sat in silence, listening to the sound of the Angel as she eased against her springs. He checked his watch, after five minutes he repeated the signal and waited again, two minutes this time and the light glowed in the box. He watched the flickering light and saw, CQ Angel, Westering Home, repeated twice. Ben confirmed the receipt of the signal with Westering Home and conjured up a mental picture of the forty-foot, Ketch-rigged sailor and followed up with a request for its present position. The reply told him she was by Corran Narrows on Loch Linnhe. Ben nodded thoughtfully and began transmitting the gist of Jardine's request; he followed it up by adding that if Westering Home knew of any other duffel coats in the area, could he pass the message on. He finished with the rider that this was a twenty-four-report signal and signed off GNOC. Goodnight Old Chap and closed down the set. Carefully retracing his steps Ben worked back through the boat and left it as he had found it, finally climbing back up the ladder on to the quay. He drove back to the cottage, listening to the radio as he travelled and humming along when they played something he knew. He parked the van and let himself back into the cottage. He knew the place was empty, but that didn't hurt as much as it had at first when Maggie passed away; almost two years had gone by since then and he was settled. He had the Ark Angel and Maggie had been with him the day he had first seen her, blackened and scabby with rust as a burnt out shell moored in the Oban Roads and she had seen the gleam in his eye. Once more she would have to share him with his first love, the sea and the sensation felt good inside, a counterbalance to the tumour growing there. Still in its early stages, but she knew that he had a reason for going on and his contact with the sea gave her back the dashing lieutenant she had married thirty five years ago. His head of fair hair, still thick despite his years and sprinkled with a dusting of salty white strands, plucked at by the wind as he stood and gazed out to sea. He had brought the ruin home to the Northumberland coast and had restored her to seaworthiness. The job had taken longer than expected as he broke off to nurse Maggie through the bad days but she had lived long enough to see the Ark Angel, it was her name for it, through the first summer of charters. She grew weaker as the days lengthened to high summer and then shortened towards the autumn, her life drew in too. She died on the threshold of a New Year and he brought her ashes home to the cottage and scattered them when the wind blew offshore on a crisp winter morning. Finally the two he had loved most of all were united and he was content. Now when the waves crashed against the shore he would listen for her voice in the corners of his mind. The Ark Angel had brought him through the darkest days of his life and she carried him through the transition to his new life as a widowed sea captain. We'll see how it goes. He hung his jacket on t
he rack by the door and went through to the conservatory. The incandescent lance of the lighthouse punched a hole in the darkness as it swept across its arc. They wouldn't need the lights in the cottage tonight and he switched them all off except a small table lamp beside the picture. Ben Urquhart settled himself in an armchair with a good shot of whisky. The amber liquid in the bottle was almost gone and he sipped carefully from the glass. He reached for the telephone and rang the Grange.
The telephone on the desk rang and Josie waited. It rang three times and it fell silent; she lifted the receiver, tapped in the last number recall and listened to the electronic voice repeat Ben's number. She hung up and waited. The phone rang again and she lifted it at the second ring. "Active Corporate Enterprise, Grange office." She said.
"Anorak, this is duffel." Ben replied.
"Hello Ben," said Josie. Ben outlined his message to the boat in Scotland and told her to expect a reply between twenty four and twenty six hours from now and she should listen on the Morse set, switched to short wave. Josie nodded her agreement, "OK, I'll get one of the signallers on it."
"I'll talk to you then." Said Ben and hung up. Josie scribbled rough notes on her pad and swept it up as she left the office to find Jardine. She paused outside the oak-timbered door and knocked, waited for a half a minute and hearing nothing she went in. Jardine was out, his pipe cold on the ashtray with the tobacco pouch and the matches beside it. She reckoned that he had already gone to the pub with Langhers. She sat down and wrote him a detailed note with a sheet from the drawer on the right hand side of his desk, found an envelope in the left-hand drawer, signed the note, sealed it and left it propped beside his pipe. If he wanted more information he would have to wait until morning, but then he might just be downstairs in the bar. Either way, he would find the note.
*****
Chapter Five
Iceline Page 4
