Gently with Love

by Alan Hunter

  ‘I was there later. I did not go up to watch the fight.’

  ‘How much later?’

  ‘It was not long. I had nearly finished when father rang.’

  ‘Shall we walk up there now?’

  He hesitated. ‘You ken we’re away on the tide before noon. I am willing to give you what help I can, but I have a few small things to see to.’

  ‘I would like you to walk up there.’

  His grey eyes measured me. ‘Ach well. If nothing else will suit. But I doubt it will get you no forwarder, and it is like to put me behind.’

  He took his serge jacket from a nail and led the way along the quay. I glanced towards the house and, sure enough, James Mackenzie stood in his porch, watching us. For the rest Kylie seemed deserted; the road was empty of traffic and people. Yet I had a strange feeling that other eyes were upon us as we began to climb the steep path. Kylie seemed almost to be holding its breath on that still and brilliant morning. We reached the point nearest the cut-off to the beach.

  ‘I would like to stop here,’ I said.

  Iain halted agreeably. There was nothing but casualness in his sauntering manner, his enquiring glance.

  ‘Was it from here you caught sight of the body?’

  ‘It was maybe not from this precise place.’

  ‘From where then?’

  ‘I did not keep the path. I strayed over to take a view of the beach.’

  ‘To see what?’

  ‘Ach, nothing special. You ken I am a wandering sort of man.’

  ‘But through that tangle of heather?’

  ‘What is heather to me? I tramp it for miles when I’m after a grouse.’

  ‘Show me where it was.’

  Without any reluctance he kicked his way through the heather, and brought us to the spot where he had seen me standing earlier.

  ‘This will be about it. Yon is the rock where he was spread out like a starfish. His head was battered, they telled you that? The blood has been washed away since.’

  ‘Look up the cliff.’

  ‘Aye, I’m looking.’

  ‘You can see the parapet from where he fell.’

  ‘You can well see it. Had I been here sooner I would have seen who was whirling him off.’

  ‘There is nobody to say you were not here sooner.’

  ‘There is nobody to say I was.’

  I stared into his eyes and he stared back; he wasn’t going to give me an inch.

  ‘It is a difficult question for you, man.’

  ‘Is that all you have to say?’

  ‘You ken that I’m for helping you, but this is a matter you must take or leave. I cannot answer fairer.’

  ‘I think you were here sooner.’

  ‘But you have not a witness.’

  ‘What makes you think that Sambrooke saw nothing?’

  He rocked his head. ‘If Sambrooke’s your witness, you have not made much of him up till now. Ach, no. It is the way I am saying. You will have to believe me or you will not. There was no witness, and if there were you would not hear a whisper of him in Kylie.’

  The thrust direct. I kept my face blank. But now I was certain that there had been a witness. I was talking to him. What I had to decide was whether it ended there, or not.

  ‘Let’s go on.’

  ‘Aye, if you will. Just bear in mind that I’m catching a tide.’

  ‘We’ll take the short cut up to the bend.’

  ‘It is what I was about to recommend.’

  He plunged away across the heather in a direct line for the cleft. His familiarity with it was obvious and he was careless if he showed it. He was secure, that was the message. I could suspect but I could not prove. I could run with my suspicions to Sinclair, but never would the Sheriff get a sight of Iain Mackenzie. I came up close with him as we entered the cleft.

  ‘This is a way you’ll often be using.’

  ‘Aye, if I have any business with Robbie. I’m not one for ever jumping in a car.’

  ‘You’ve been using it lately.’

  He halted. ‘Who says so?’

  ‘The track shows evidence of recent use.’

  ‘And why would that be me?’

  ‘It’s a short cut to your cousin’s. Your crew members seem to prefer their cars.’

  He hesitated, his face expressionless: then his powerful shoulders twitched. ‘Aye, it’s true. I’ve been going there lately. But you must not think I’m a hard drinker, for that.’

  ‘The House of Reay has other attractions.’

  He hesitated again. ‘And what would they be?’

  ‘Social attractions. The company in the bar. Your cousin and his wife. Their daughter.’

  ‘Ach, well. We are close kinsmen.’

  ‘Your cousin was worried about his daughter and Fortuny.’

  Iain stood still. ‘He talked to you of that?’

  ‘Perhaps I rather forced the confidence upon him.’

  ‘More than like.’ His eyes were keen. ‘And doubtless you’ll have gripped the wrong end of the hawse. The lassie is a flirt, that’s certain, she is fond of trifling with the laddies’ attentions. But it would go no further than that. Beattie Mackenzie is nobody’s fool.’

  ‘Your cousin thought it went further.’

  ‘Ach, Robbie talks. You must not heed him. It is as like that Beattie would take up with me as she would with that southron blackguard.’

  ‘With you . . . ?’

  ‘That’s a manner of speaking!’ For a moment his expression was fierce. ‘You have got it wrong, that’s the short and long of it. But I shall be having a word with Robbie.’

  He turned abruptly and strode out of the cleft: I felt the tingling thrill of a successful shot. The dart had fleshed. I had found a target that Iain could not conceal was sensitive. I followed him quickly. He came to a stand on the rough ground in the bend: I caught him measuring with his eye the distance between it and the parapet.

  ‘Say twenty yards.’

  ‘Aye. It needed a strong laddie to haul up the body.’

  ‘Or a desperate man.’

  ‘You may say that. He would need to make a spang at getting rid of it.’

  ‘If it had gone in the sea he would have succeeded.’

  ‘It would not have beached this side of the Minch.’

  ‘Since it didn’t, his best move was to report it. To get Sambrooke arrested and to confuse the issue.’

  Iain merely shrugged. He led off again and went to stare down from the parapet. His burly figure stood out firmly against the moving sea and the bright sky. He looked as much at home there as an eagle, his feet planted firmly on the broken rock, the sea light playing on his bold features and on the bruised scar that disfigured his forehead. Here he belonged. Kylie had made him, and Kylie would preserve him. What had he to fear?

  ‘Were you at the hotel last night?’

  He paused before replying. ‘Why do you ask me?’

  ‘I heard Beattie in conversation with someone. Someone other than her parents or Sergeant Robertson.’

  ‘Ach, the place is open for custom.’

  ‘There were no customers present at the time.’

  ‘Then it will have been one of her beaus from the village.’

  ‘The conversation was taking place upstairs.’

  ‘And you are thinking it was me?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking.’

  ‘And why would I be holding conversations with Beattie? Or if I did, what would be strange, she being my own cousin’s bairn?’

  ‘You don’t wish to answer?’

  ‘I cannot see the need for it. If you wish to believe it was me you will. I was abroad last evening. I do not deny it, but only to work on the Kylie Rose.’

  ‘Alone.’

  ‘Quite alone.’

  ‘You seem never to work on that boat in company.’

  He was silent for a while, his grey eyes staring unmoved at the slanting waves. ‘It may be that I did take a turn yonder.’


  ‘While I was at the hotel.’

  ‘It was not long after.’

  ‘You went there to eavesdrop.’

  ‘I am not admitting that. And you yourself have placed me above stairs.’

  ‘Where Beattie joined you.’

  ‘That would be her privilege.’

  ‘What did you have to say to Beattie?’

  ‘It may be some words of admonition.’

  ‘Such as to keep her head, and to stay away from me?’

  Iain swayed his shoulders. ‘Just listen,’ he said. ‘While I’ve been standing here I have been thinking. It is Inspector Sinclair’s notion that whoever killed Fortuny got rid of the knife by pitching it into the sea. Now I am not precisely of that opinion. You ken that a good knife is not a cheap toy. The laddies will pay plenty for a handsome blade with a stag’s-horn grip and a fanciful sheath. I am following my own feeling – I would not part easy. I would be for wiping the knife on the heather. And down below there are tags of heather, and I recall seeing blood on them when I first got here.’

  ‘You are saying . . . the killer still has the knife?’

  ‘Just so. He’ll be wearing it this very moment.’ With a sudden movement he swept up his jacket and the slop beneath it. ‘Even like myself.’

  I gazed at the weapon he had revealed. It had the stag’s-horn grip that he had referred to. It had a sheath of shagreen mounted with silver, and a silver monogram: I. M. I looked from it to him.

  ‘It’s just a theory, you ken.’ His eyes had a gruesome sort of relish. ‘But I thought that Sinclair may have gone astray there, him not being so advised on the ways of us fisher-laddies.’ He made to move off.

  ‘Wait!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Ach.’ He shook his head. ‘I cannot. The knife I need, you must seek another. And the tide, you ken, waits for no man.’

  He strode away, and I let him go; if I wanted that knife I must fetch Robertson. But what would be the use? If indeed it was the murder weapon it would have been well cleansed by now. And could I swallow that anyway? There was a false ring to it, to the theatrical way the knife was introduced, to the way he had been feeding my suspicion, as though he were quite content to be its mark. A put-up job! For an indignant moment I wondered whether he was in cahoots with Sinclair: whether this pair of wily Scots had conspired to bemuse the inconvenient southron. Well, I would find out. The weak link was Beattie. Beattie alone I was sure I could crack. I set off up the road to the hotel resolved to get the truth from at least one Mackenzie.

  Robbie met me on the steps; his mien was welcoming but wary. ‘You have missed Robertson, Superintendent. He is away having words with Cousin Andrew.’

  ‘I wish to speak to your daughter.’

  ‘Ach, if you had but given us a ring! She and Ailsie have driven over to Ulla – it is about new clothes, you can depend on that.’

  My stare was not friendly. ‘When will she be back?’

  ‘I cannot well say, Superintendent. It may be that they will have lunch in Ulla, and visit kin on the way home.’

  ‘Wasn’t this trip a little sudden?’

  ‘Aye, isn’t that just the way with the ladies?’

  ‘It seems to be the way with yours,’ I said bitingly.

  Robbie Mackenzie smothered a grin.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I WENT BACK down towards the village but I did not return to the house. Instead, I squatted on the slope amongst the heather and watched the trawler prepare for sea. I was being over-reached, that was plain, and I could think of no way to counter it. I was a policeman, but I was shorn of my powers: I couldn’t take a policeman’s grip on the problem. I couldn’t interrogate. I could ask questions but I couldn’t apply pressure. I couldn’t commandeer evidence and I couldn’t isolate my suspects. I couldn’t build up that psychological tension in which events develop and clarify, I was a paper tiger. I could watch, and guess, and try to keep face.

  I lit my pipe sombrely. At the quay below me preparations were quietly building in tempo. A hose had been run from the storage tank to the trawler and I could hear the soft moan of a pump. Then the crew arrived in their cars, which they parked with care between the sheds, and in ones and twos they went aboard to stow their kit in the deckhouse aft. They did not come alone. Other cars decanted wives, sweethearts and parents, and people strayed down from the village to stand watching and chatting. The trawler’s sailing was an event: I wondered if her docking had been one, too. It might be that I was staring now at witnesses who had vital information to communicate. But that was all I could do. I had no brief. I couldn’t grab them for a session in the sweat-box. And if Sinclair had done so they must have defeated him, along with the crew and Tom Cobley and all. I caught some of them staring at me, it seemed to me with triumph, and then turning away with a laugh or a swagger.

  A car pulled up above me and Robertson joined me in the heather. One glance at his doleful face told me that he had nothing fresh to contribute. He squatted beside me, frowning down at the lively scene on the quay. They had finished refuelling now and were coiling the hose in its stowage.

  ‘So they are away, sir.’

  I nodded. We both recognized it as a defeat. They were away, and we had learned nothing, and except from them we were never likely to. If I could, would I have stopped this sailing? If I could, I would have picked up Iain. But Sinclair had to live here afterwards, and there were no solid grounds for doing one or the other.

  ‘What was your business with Andrew Mackenzie?’

  ‘Just a point in his statement, sir. He was outside fiddling with his car for a while before he joined the others in the bar.’

  ‘Anything in it?

  ‘Ach, no, But I thought it was worth going over again. He was not out there above five minutes. Or if he was he will not say so.’

  And nobody else would, that was certain. Add Andrew Mackenzie to the list of possibles. But if he had voluntarily admitted his absence there was little reason to doubt his account.

  ‘We’re left with Sambrooke, then.’

  ‘Aye. The inspector must just make up his mind.’

  ‘I doubt whether he should charge him.’

  ‘That is my opinion, sir. But I cannot speak for the inspector.’

  There was no more to say. We sat on silently, tasting the dregs of our failure, watching the scene below that seemed to symbolize it, to draw a line across the account. The last goodbyes were being said, the last fond kisses exchanged. Behind us, in the garden of the Mackenzie house, stood James Mackenzie and his wife, Verna, and Anne, with Helen in her arms. The crew went aboard: Iain stood in the wheelhouse: there was a faint, distant rumble of diesels; then the warps were cast off, the water stirred beneath her stern, and she began to ease away and to turn towards the sea. I saw Iain’s hand move. The siren hooted thrice. Those left on the quay raised a cheer. Then she was fully turned and driving away from us and beginning already, insensibly, to shrink. Exit in triumph the Kylie Rose, mission accomplished. The drama was over. Aboard her, the crew began to vanish into the deckhouse, except for the fair-haired mechanic, who stood gazing over the rail. I got up irritably.

  ‘When is Sinclair arriving?’

  ‘I’m expecting him this afternoon, sir.’

  ‘Let’s go up to the hotel and have a drink.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I feel I could use one.’

  We got in his car and he turned in the driveway. Below, people were trailing away from the quay. The Kylie Rose had reached the passage between the islands: I could still see the mechanic standing lonely at the rail.

  ‘Last night at the hotel – did you see Iain Mackenzie?’

  Robertson hesitated, his hand on the gear lever. ‘I cannot say I did, sir. To the best of my knowledge, you were the only visitor there last night.’

  ‘I heard someone in conversation with Beattie Mackenzie.’

  ‘Ach, that would be the southron laddie, Collins.’

  ‘The what?’

  Robertson looked sta
rtled. ‘The southron laddie. He bides there, you ken, when the boat is in port.’

  ‘An English crew member?’

  ‘Just so. The mechanic laddie, James Collins.’

  I jerked my finger towards the Kylie Rose, where the fair head was yet visible. ‘Him?’

  ‘Aye – that’s him. His home is awa in England, you ken. So he just bides here with Robert Mackenzie. It would be him you heard with Miss Beattie.’

  There is a school of Zen called Rinzai that sets its students insoluble problems. The problems do not appear to be insoluble but in point of fact they are. And answers are demanded: the student must answer: he may be beaten if he fails. He is set to meditate on his problem until it drives him into a condition bordering on lunacy. Then he is ripe. The watchful Master, judging the moment, throws him a hint: enlightenment follows. Because there was an answer, though not that which the student had been desperately seeking. And so it was with me at that moment; the insoluble problem was saturating my brain; I had every fact and aspect of it before me with the solution in every way blocked. And then the hint was dropped, and like the bewildered student I had my moment of intoxicating enlightenment. I could yet be wrong, but I refused to believe so; and proof was waiting at the end of a telephone.

  ‘This Collins – did you take his statement?’

  ‘Aye, I did,’ Robertson nodded.

  ‘Did you ask him his home address?’

  I knew what he must answer, and so he did:

  ‘The port of Lowestoft.’

  CHAPTER FORTY

  THERE WAS A pay-box in the hall in the House of Reay and I wasted no time using it. The call took a minute or two to go through and I stood tapping my fingers impatiently. While we were waiting Robert Mackenzie appeared. He began to advance with his ingratiating smile. I made a peremptory sign and the smile froze; he turned aside into the bar, with an offended expression. And still they were sorting out lines to Lowestoft.

  ‘What else can you tell me about Collins?’

  ‘He seemed a decent sort of laddie,’ Robertson frowned. ‘He signed on with the Kylie Rose at Wick. He told me that the East Coast fishing was almost done for.’

  ‘Was he often with Beattie Mackenzie?’

  ‘He was, but I think there was a tiff between them.’