'One of the old guys who felt sorry for you?' she said, smiling. Playing a game, wondering if it was really getting to him.
Igor pulled on his coat, waved at Keanu. Keanu saluted.
'A fisherman,' said Barney. 'Old guy right enough. Said he was just stopping off for supplies.'
He hadn't thought about it all day. Just saying it now, though, it sounded strange.
'A fisherman?' she asked. 'From a trawler?'
'That's what he said,' replied Barney. Felt the shiver work its way down his spine. He'd believed him. Why not? Maybe it had just been some old guy with a story to spin. But what difference did it make? The guy had blagged a free haircut. No big deal. Why the shiver? 'Said he was heading off again last night.'
'In that fog?' said Carmichael. 'Sounds pretty weird. D'you tell the police?'
Barney turned and looked at her, as if at last fully engaging the conversation.
'They haven't been in here.'
'They're next door.'
'What am I going to tell them? It was some old guy, it wasn't any of our three from the boat.'
'Barney,' she said, tone starting to drift into the one she used with her kids, 'one guy's dead, two missing, and you get a mysterious fisherman on a dark and foggy night, looking for a haircut at seven o'clock in the evening.'
'Seven-thirty,' said Barney, mind wandering back to the night before. She was right. Why hadn't he thought to go to the police?
There'd been something about the old guy that had made him want to file the thought of him away, to relegate him to some dark recess of his mind and leave the thought to stagnate.
'Seven-thirty,' she repeated. 'Whatever. When you found out about the Bitter Wind this morning, didn't it set some little bell ringing? Are you scared of the police or something?'
Barney looked at the floor, rummaging through his head, trying to work out what it had been that had stopped him from making the connection.
'I don't know,' he said eventually, looking up. 'I didn't make the call, that's all. Just a guy getting a haircut.'
She puffed out her cheeks and shrugged. Glanced at Igor, who was feeling a little excluded.
'You'll go to them now, though,' she said.
Barney held his hands out in a conciliatory gesture. 'Sure.'
'Men are such muppets sometimes,' she said, giving her bag an unnecessary hoik over the shoulder.
'Arf,' said Igor, with raised eyebrow.
'Yes,' she said, 'you 'n' all.'
She opened the door, Igor in tow, and turned back to the others.
'See you, guys. Go to the police.'
Keanu saluted again. Barney nodded.
'Did the old guy give a name at all?' she said, leaning on the door frame. Igor hovered at the exit.
'No name,' said Barney, shaking his head, 'though he said the boat was called the Albatross. Seemed an odd name for a boat.'
She stepped forward, Igor giving her room. Igor was eager to leave.
'I thought the albatross was bad luck for that lot,' continued Barney.
'Isn't it like, if you see an albatross your boat explodes?' ventured Keanu from the sidelines.
'Something like that,' said Barney.
'Or you get eaten by a giant sea serpent.'
'There's only ever been one boat called the Albatross around here,' said Carmichael, cutting through the banter.
Barney shrugged. 'Makes sense. You know the old guy then?'
'The Albatross was a trawler working out of Millport,' she said. Her tone was peculiar and the light-heartedness that Barney had felt from his short exchange with Keanu left him.
'And he moved to Ullapool,' said Barney. What was it that was making his stomach crawl?
The silence from outside seemed to creep into the shop. Keanu leant forward, getting the vibe. Igor shivered under his hump and stared at the ground. He knew what was coming.
'The Albatross was captained by a man called Judah Bennington. He worked out of Millport, but he'd had a couple of bad years around here and he decided to move to Ullapool. Three days after he left, his boat was found deserted at sea. All hands missing. Except for a small dog.'
'When?' said Barney.
'Over a hundred years ago,' she said. '1895 or thereabouts.'
Barney shrugged, a movement which suggested he was much more relaxed than he actually felt.
'Must be another Albatross,' he said.
'Come on,' said Igor, shuffling towards the door, 'we should go.' Although, sadly, it came out as arf!
Carmichael nodded, pulling her jacket more tightly around herself. Feeling the chill of a darkening late afternoon in November.
'There's usually an explanation,' said Barney.
Carmichael smiled weakly and held the door open for Igor, who threw a farewell hand at the others and walked out into the dusk. She exchanged a glance with Barney and then headed out into the cold.
Barney watched them go and then turned to look at Keanu, who was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees.
'Pretty creepy, man' he said.
Barney looked at the clock and decided that it was time to shut up shop for the night. Not yet five, but what did it matter? And he could see the police in the morning. What exactly was he going to tell them now that would make any sense?
'There'll be something,' he said. 'Nothing's ever truly interesting in life. Always something mundane.'
Keanu nodded and drummed his fingers on top of his laptop. Thinking of how this might read on the blog, although he was slowly realising, like an overwhelming majority of bloggers, that he was wasting his time.
'Like a guy in a mask,' said Barney without conviction.
'We've all seen Scooby Doo,' said Keanu.
'Exactly,' said Barney, walking to the rear of the shop to close up the back room.
'Of course,' said Keanu, standing up and making for his jacket, 'that would mean there was some kind of smuggling operation going on. And it won't be drugs, it'll be gold or diamonds or something. That'd be really cool.'
Barney stared at him for a second, then shook his head.
'No,' he said simply.
Keanu stood at the door, jacket on, laptop under his arm, ready to rock 'n roll.
'Yeah, you're probably right,' he said. 'Likely just some dumb-ass ghost or other.'
He saluted, opened the door and was on his way.
Barney watched him go and then stood alone in the shop. Felt the silence of the empty workplace. It was a feeling he had always enjoyed, but not this afternoon. Suddenly felt something very uncomfortable, a feeling that could only have been fear.
Nothing scared him, not after all he'd been through, not after all the death and bloody carnage that he'd been witness to in his life. That's what he'd thought these last few years. Too cool, or maybe just too old and tired to be afraid.
He pulled on his jacket, opened the door, turned off the lights and walked quickly out of the shop. A glance along the street, the smell of the sea. Locked the door, turned and looked out at the waves and the darkness coming in quickly from the east.
He could see the Arran ferry in the distance, moving silently and slowly towards Ardrossan. Another small boat, indistinguishable in the dark, was coming round the headland of Little Cumbrae.
Barney Thomson turned to his right, and decided that tonight he'd eat his dinner in the Incidental Mermaid halfway up Cardiff Street. Maybe he'd talk to Carrington for a while if he was in, and maybe he'd spend the evening watching whatever European football happened to be showing on the TV.
The Frankenstein Forensics Phobia
Erin Proudfoot hit the off-switch on the computer, then took her feet down off the desk. An incident room for one dead and two missing fishermen. She hated incident rooms. The very fact of one being there suggesting the seriousness of the incident which had preceded it. You didn't get an incident room for non-payment of parking tickets.
'Still in the wrong job,' she muttered, as she shuffled a couple of pieces of paper, inadvertentl
y glancing at notes she'd made from the investigation so far. A day of talking to islanders who knew nothing, or at least, nothing that might be of use. Lots of detail on the lives of the crew members, nothing that would even remotely point to a reason for their disappearance.
The door at the back opened and Frankenstein walked out. She'd heard him on the phone, the low drone of his voice, talking to someone in Glasgow. She thought maybe the pathologist. He looked miserable, but then he always looked miserable.
'Where are you going?' he said.
'I want some dinner,' she replied. 'It's late.'
He glanced at the clock. 7.30.
'Don't say it,' she said. 'I think it's late. There's nothing else doing for the night. I'm hungry. You should eat something,' she added. 'Come on. You can tell me your favourite jokes.'
'Just spoke to pathology,' he said. 'Had a long chat.'
'Go on,' she said. 'After twelve hours of searching for the cause of death they found a knife in his back?'
Frankenstein settled back against the edge of a desk. Proudfoot recognised that he wasn't happy with what he was about to tell her.
'They say he died of fright,' muttered Frankenstein grudgingly.
Proudfoot stared at the floor and then smiled.
'That's, em, very Sherlock Holmes,' she said.
'It's Scooby fucking Doo,' said Frankenstein, 'that's what it is.'
'No one ever dies in Scooby Doo.'
'Whatever.'
'How did they come to that conclusion?' she asked, enjoying the look of cantankerous gloom which was rampaging across her boss's face.
Frankenstein shook his head and grumbled some more.
'Jesus knows,' he said. 'Jesus knows how that lot ever come to any of their decisions. Some baloney about how the heart had stopped, the constriction of his blood vessels, the muscles in his face. Bullshit, but I never understand these guys. They're all a bunch of weirdoes, even Semester. I mean, he looks like an OK guy, but really, who grows up thinking that when they're older they want to work with dead bodies? Is that a sane person? Seriously. Nutjobs the lot of them. So how did they decide he'd died of fright? God knows. I don't understand anything they do, and they don't understand how I manage to live a normal life without cutting into putrid flesh with a scalpel every day.'
'They have any idea of what time the dying of fright might have taken place?'
He thrust his hands into his pockets and grumbled some more.
'Between seven and nine last night, that's their best offer. Try and pin 'em down, and before you know it they've run off claiming they have to dissect another fifty stiffs in the name of forensics.'
'I have this theory that you used to go out with a forensics student and she dumped you.'
Frankenstein raised himself from the desk intending to rise to the bait, and then shook his head and walked towards the door.
'Weren't there like fifty constables in here earlier?'
'There were three. The two from Largs who you sent home for the night, and the local guy, Gainsborough, who's out and about still. We've got them and another eight coming down from Glasgow tomorrow.'
'Eight?' said Frankenstein incredulously. 'Fuck's sake. Eight. I presume from that, the press have started taking a bit more of an interest?'
'Right again,' she said. 'You've got the chief pegged.'
'He's a complete twat 'n' all. Let's go and eat.'
He opened the door, pulling the collar of his jacket tight as he did so.
'Bloody freezing. And you can bet the locals will probably all shut up the minute we walk into the bar. We're not the ones who are weird,' he muttered, as he wandered off along the road, although the end of his romantic soliloquy was lost on Proudfoot. Smiling, she brought up the rear, closed and locked the door. Then she fell in a few paces behind him and looked out at the dark sea, a single light shining on a small boat out beyond Little Cumbrae.
The Tempest
The storm came up out of nowhere, sudden and violent. After the calm of the day, the night had welcomed an edgier sea. Still, there had been no sign of the brutality of the squall which rose up and attacked the island at some time after two o'clock the following morning. The winds hurtled up the Clyde from the south, the sea rose up in anger, and the island of Cumbrae was battered by the most brutal storm in memory, living or otherwise.
Trees were levelled. Anything lighter than a car was lifted up and thrown against a wall or through a window. Roofs creaked, slates tumbled. The cover on the small beach shelter at Kames Bay was blown off, ending up lodged in the front window of Thomas Peterson's Victorian semi, a hundred yards along the road from Barney Thomson's house. The few boats anchored in Newton Bay were all wrecked and battered. The boats in the yard round by the Millerston and the helicopter pad did not fare much better. High seas battering the coast and a wind that wreaked havoc. A road sign, which had been hanging loose for three months, flew through the stained glass window at the bottom end of the cathedral.
And the boat which was tied up at the pier, the cause of all the attention, and which was due to be towed up the Clyde to Glasgow the following morning, was utterly laid waste. Thrown against the pier, the slender ropes and chains twisted and broken, the shattered remnants of the vessel blown out to sea and lost to the swirling waves and crashing tempest.
The Bitter Wind was gone, finally lost to its namesake.
***
Old Ward Bracken, 74, widowed, part of the great ageing male Millport collective, tossed and tumbled in his bed, unwilling to rise and face the storm. Worried about what damage might be getting done to his roof and his garden, but too scared to go and check. Had the absurd security of lying inert under his duvet, the quilt pulled in tight at his neck.
Ward Bracken had not lived long on the island of Cumbrae, but on his arrival a couple of years previously he had blended in seamlessly, just another old face in an old town. But not by chance had he come to Millport.
He lay under the protection of an IKEA feather duvet, one of the few men on the island with some idea of why the old trawler Bitter Wind might have come upon tragedy at sea. That knowledge, and the storm, chilled him to the core.
There was a sudden loud bang in the sitting room downstairs. A window crashed open. A tumult of noise as lamps and books were knocked over. Bracken sat bolt upright in bed. Heart thumping, breath coming in gulps.
'The wind,' he breathed. 'Just the wind.'
He shuddered. The window continued to bang downstairs, back and forth, clattering off the wall. Bracken began to whimper. Glanced at the digital clock. Not yet three a.m. He couldn't let the window crash all night. He had to stop being so silly, cut off his imagination and go down the stairs. Put on a couple of lights, make himself some hot milk. Horlicks, maybe. Turn on the TV, watch some of that American sport Channel 5 always showed in the middle of the night.
He finally extracted himself from bed, to the soundtrack of continuing banging down the stairs. He'd likely have the neighbours round if he didn't stop the racket. Slid his feet into his slippers, wrapped his old dressing gown around him. Stepped out into the hall, fumbled for the light switch in the half-dark. He flicked the switch, the light didn't come on.
'Shite,' he muttered. Tried to keep his composure, but the fear had returned.
The window clattered against the wall again, a double bang, swung back, whacked noisily into the frame.
Bracken stepped down the stairs, steeling himself against the fear, gripping the banister. Into the hall on the ground floor, tried the light switch, again nothing. The wind must have taken out the electrics, he thought. Mind on the prosaic. Not a big deal. No TV, he thought, trying to keep his mind straight, but he could still heat some milk on the stove. Light a couple of candles. Do some sudoku.
As he put his hand to the door into the living room, suddenly the noise stopped. Silence. The window was still. All that was left of the whirl of the wind was from outside.
Bracken felt the fear creep up his body, like he was b
eing frozen solid from the feet up. He stood still in front of the door, petrified. Mouth slightly open. Barely breathing.
The door to the sitting room opened slowly. A tiny squeal from the hinge. Bracken was immobile. His body was capable of no more fear.
He looked at the man who had just opened the door. He looked at the latex mask pulled tight over his face, then at the axe held high above his head. And the short phrase 'oh my fuck' escaped Ward Bracken's inert lips.
'Power,' said the lisping voice from behind the mask, 'is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it....one must have the courage to dare.'
Bracken looked confused.
The axe fell.
***
Barney Thomson woke up at just after six o'clock. It was still dark, the very beginning of the dawn of the day lost in the hill behind him. He looked out over the bay, past the town and beyond, to Bute and Arran. The sea still churned, every few seconds spray being thrown up from the rocks just down in front of him. The street lights were out along his stretch of road, all the way round Kames Bay, but they still shone along Glasgow Road and Stuart Street.
He had not slept through the storm. Standing by the window on restless feet, he had watched it unfold, listening to the sounds of persistent destruction. Wondering if anyone would be harmed, watching the few people who dared venture out into the storm to try to rescue something, including two police officers wrestling with the ropes of the Bitter Wind, as if that might possibly make any difference. They had been a long way off at the other end of the town, but he could see them struggling and floundering on the edge of the pier, waiting for one or both of them to disappear into the water.
Gradually, its job seemingly accomplished, the storm had subsided, the sea had stopped snapping so angrily at the land, and only then had the rain started, a heavy downpour to add water and misery to the desolate town.
Barney had gone back to bed at just before four, but had not slept well. Now finally he forced himself out of bed, shivering, aware that the heating had gone off with the rest of the electricity in the house, and sat down by the window, to watch the town wake up. Wondering how much damage had been done to the shop, hoping there would be enough hot water in the heater for him to have a shower, fearful of how many of the townspeople might have died in the storm.
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