Tombstoning

by Unknown

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I was mates with him at school, so was Gary. And Colin Anderson, who I’m sure you know died at the cliffs back in 1988.’

  Bell’s impassive face was trying not to give anything away, but David could tell he wasn’t hearing anything new here.

  ‘Why bring him up now? Do you think he might have something to do with Gary’s death?’

  ‘Well, not really, I don’t suppose…’ David didn’t really know what to say next. Did he think Neil had something to do with it? Faced with the question out in the open like this, he began to realize that’s exactly what he had been thinking. But he also realized that he had no basis for that accusation, none at all.

  ‘I was just wondering if you could tell me anything about him. I wouldn’t mind tracking him down, for old times’ sake.’

  Bell eyed David suspiciously. It was clear he didn’t believe David wanted to find Neil for a pint and a chat about the good old days.

  ‘I don’t know anything about him.’

  ‘But he was in the police, wasn’t he? He did work here?’

  Bell looked uncomfortable being on the receiving end of questions.

  ‘He left not long after I joined.’

  ‘So you knew him?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘I thought he was your mate at school,’ said Bell, back on the offensive.

  ‘He was, but I was wondering what he seemed like by the time he worked here. He was in the Marines before he joined the police.’

  ‘I heard.’

  I’ll bet, thought David.

  ‘And he apparently had a bit of trouble there.’

  ‘No shit,’ said Bell.

  ‘So I was wondering what he was like when he was in the police.’

  ‘And I told you, I didn’t know him.’

  ‘But you must have…’

  ‘Look, Mr Lindsay,’ said Bell, ‘I think we’re done here, don’t you? I have your statement about Mr Spink’s death. Unless there’s anything else you want to add officially?’ He waited a second. ‘Thought not. If you want to track down Neil Cargill I suggest you do it elsewhere and on your own time.’

  David sat in reception waiting for Nicola to finish her stint with Bell, wondering how much the copper really knew about Neil. He had to make contact with the one person who knew himself, Gary and Colin on equal terms from all those years ago, if only to talk through what a stupid fucking thing these deaths were, if only to find out what had been happening in Neil’s parallel universe for the last fifteen years. If only to put his mind at rest.

  When Nicola emerged from the interview room, he looked at her smiling face and all thoughts of Neil, Gary and Colin left his mind completely.

  ‘Can we, Mum, please?’

  They were standing at the edge of the harbour with ice cream dripping from cones down their hands, like something out of an old-time seaside comedy film. The harbour wasn’t exactly picture postcard, despite the presence of a handful of almost quaint pink and yellow houses, a fish smokehouse puffing a thin trail of brownness into the shimmering air and a smattering of tied-up sailing boats clanking in the dock. Larger rusting hulks of fishing boats were scattered around the harbour, and the smell of diesel, rotting fish and woodsmoke made for a pungent aroma hanging over the oily water down below. Blue sparks wheeled into the sunlit air as a filthy man with homemade tattoos and a blowtorch tried to keep his boat in one piece. The boat in front of them didn’t look in much better nick. A small fishing vessel converted to take passengers, it rocked gently in the water, its ferric hull and peeling white paint appearing and disappearing below the water with the gentle bobbing motion. The boat was offering sightseeing tours up and down the nearby coast for a few quid. The guy in charge was like a Captain Birds Eye gone to seed, his beard was yellowy grey and unkempt, the uniform was greasy and faded and his gut was trying to burst some buttons at the front. Nicola had difficulty thinking of him as a captain, with the responsibility and seafaring knowledge that went along with such a title, although his leathery face had certainly seen enough time on the sea, a lifetime of fishing ingrained in the heavy lines under his eyes. For all that, he did have kind eyes and an endearing gummy smile, and she warmed to him. He was using his charms to gently work on them, claiming he only had three more spaces on the boat to fill. She looked at David, who smiled a little hesitantly and shrugged.

  ‘Why not?’ he said, and the three of them, David, Nicola and Amy, stepped on board.

  The thin phutter of the engine as it made its way out the harbour beefed up to a proper chug as they turned right (Was that port or starboard? thought Nicola, she could never remember) and headed out to sea. Nicola was immediately embarrassed by the sight, directly in front of them, of the Signal Tower Museum and, beyond it, Inchcape Park only a couple of hundred yards away. From here on the water, illuminated by beaming sunshine, it looked amazingly exposed to the elements, as well as prying eyes, and she couldn’t believe it was the place where she and David had sex last night. She sneaked a look at David who was doing a bad job of suppressing a giggle and she felt herself chuckle too.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ said Amy, a vision in coordinated bottle-green T-shirt, trousers and trainers today.

  ‘Nothing, love,’ said Nicola.

  ‘Tell me.’

  Just then their captain’s voice boomed through the small PA on board the boat, much to Nicola’s relief.

  ‘Up ahead is the Signal Tower Museum, and beyond it is Inchcape Park. The park doesn’t see much action through the year, just the occasional military display, circus big top or travelling show in the summer. As you can see there’s nothing to see there at the moment. The Signal Tower was originally built in 1813 as the shore station and family living quarters of the famous Bell Rock lighthouse, which lies eleven miles out to sea, built on a dangerous semi-sunken reef. The Bell Rock lighthouse was a tremendous feat of engineering, built by Robert Stevenson, founder of a dynasty of lighthouse engineers and grandfather to writer Robert Louis Stevenson…’

  Nicola tuned out. She knew all this stuff more or less off by heart from her time working at the abbey. Although the Signal Tower wasn’t run by Historic Scotland, all staff at their sites were encouraged to bone up on local history, so she knew the ins and outs of the Bell Rock lighthouse, the Stevensons and all the rest of it.

  She stared at the park bench where they’d been last night. Although drunk, she’d been very much in control, there’d been enough pissing about and it was time to get it on. The sex had taken the tension out the air, the strange tension of not having done something they both clearly wanted to do. The rest of the night had been like a bit of a weird dream, walking and talking and kissing and shagging in places she’d been a hundred times before but seemed to be seeing fresh. Then again, maybe she was just drunker than she thought. But she didn’t regret a minute of it. And the way David had been today, didn’t that indicate that he didn’t regret it either? He seemed to be one of the good guys, and Christ knows there aren’t too many of them around, she thought.

  By this time they were past the breakwater and had turned left (Port? No, starboard? Fuck it, she thought) and were heading past the tiny, squatting fishermen’s cottages in the oldest part of the harbour called the Fit o’ the Toon. Thick walls, tiny windows and narrow streets were all designed to keep the fearsome sea weather at bay, and despite a bright coat of paint the cottages looked like they had always expected, and received, a hard time from the sea.

  They were gathering speed now and heading east, out past Victoria Park to the start of the cliffs. Nicola had never seen the cliffs from this angle, and it was disorientating seeing a place you were familiar with from thirty years of visits, but from the completely opposite direction. If anything they looked more sinister than she had ever imagined them, more imposing, dominant and immovable. There were dark nooks and crannies everywhere, birds nesting improbably on tiny ledges, small partially-submerge
d rocks. It looked a long, long way down from the top, much further than it ever seemed from up on the grassy ledge. Even with the sun beating down and the water relatively calm, there was something ominous and unsettling about the place, or maybe she was just projecting the deaths of Gary and Colin on to her feelings about what was, after all, just a simple slab of sandstone rock.

  The captain cut the engine not long after they reached the cliffs and started a commentary about the geology of the area and the birdlife you were likely to find. A few of their fellow passengers whipped out binoculars. There were nine passengers apart from themselves, and as Nicola looked at them she realized that most of them were birdwatchers – there was just something about the way they dressed that gave it away, the geeky waterproofs, the shorts and hiking socks and boots, the insulated jackets with pockets everywhere. The captain was talking now about cormorants and shags; terns, oystercatchers and curlews; kittiwakes, razorbills and, if we were lucky, maybe the odd puffin. There seemed a slight flurry of excitement at the mention of the bird world’s comedy character.

  With the geology and wildlife taken care of, the captain quickly got on to what was clearly his favourite topic, the shady history of the cliffs. Every headland, bay, cave, den, rock and overhang had a name and a story to go with it. Here was Whiting Ness, then St Ninian’s Well, Steeple Rock, the Horse Shoe, the Elephant’s Foot, then, rather unimaginatively, thought Nicola, the Stalactite Cave.

  ‘… and the headland overlooking the Stalactite Cave is known locally as Monk and Maiden’s Leap,’ the captain said.

  At the mention of the word ‘leap’, David’s ears pricked up. It was somewhere around here that Colin’s body had been found. From this angle he couldn’t tell exactly where. There was no sign of the small memorial stone, but then they surely couldn’t see it from down here anyway. He didn’t know where Gary’s body had been found. Was it in the same place as Colin’s? He couldn’t believe he hadn’t asked the copper, he’d just assumed it was the same place.

  ‘It’s thought that the name relates to a local lass called Mary Scott who was commemorated in a poem by Arbroath poet David Balfour in the early eighteenth century. The story goes that when Mary’s mother died she was comforted by an abbot. Unfortunately he comforted her a little too closely, if you know what I mean, and she fell pregnant. The abbot arranged for her to be thrown from this point of the cliffs, then became insane with the guilt and jumped from the same spot. It’s said that both of them were buried near here, a wild rose blossoming on Mary’s grave while a stunted, gnarly thornbush sprouted from the abbot’s.’

  Probably a lot of old bollocks, thought David, but the idea that people had been chucking themselves off the cliffs for centuries gave him a strange sensation. How far back did the idea of suicide go? Did cavemen do it? What about the Bronze or Iron Ages? When did people start feeling so bad that they couldn’t go on? He imagined a time line stretching back into the far past and it made him feel tiny and insignificant. Then again, he thought, maybe it was this precarious bobbing up and down in a tiny boat on a colossal sea next to an uncaring cliff face that had something to do with that feeling.

  The boat’s engine started up again, and they were heading east along the cliffs. More quaint old names came booming through the PA: Needle’s E’e, Pebbly Den, Mermaid’s Kirk, then a small bay with steep sides and several stacks called Mariners’ Grave.

  ‘This was the site of a terrible shipwreck in 1800,’ said the captain, hamming it up. ‘But not all the seamen were lost, thanks to the initiative of some locals, who lowered a basket from the clifftop to pull up the sailors who were still alive. The incident was widely reported at the time, and Sir Walter Scott used it in his famous book set in Arbroath, The Antiquary, as did R. M. Ballantyne in his Bell Rock story called The Lighthouse.’

  Walter Scott wrote a book about Arbroath? thought David. Really? Why had he never heard of it? Then again, he wasn’t much of a reader. The Antiquary was the name of a boozer round the corner from his work. Small world.

  As they progressed north-east up the coast there were more and more sea caves, so many that a lot of them didn’t seem to have names. The captain assured them they had all been heavily used for smuggling in the past. Many of them had apocryphal tales linked to them, no doubt invented by the smugglers to keep superstitious locals away. There was Smuggler’s Cave (a bit obvious, that one, thought David), Lady’s Cave, Dark Cave, Mason’s Cave (which at one time had a door and was used by the local lodge for meetings), Forbidden Cave (which contained the ghost of a lone piper, allegedly) and a host of others. There were blowholes, ruined castles and forts, secret dens, a stack called the Deil’s Heid and a place called Gaylet Pot, David missing the explanation of its name, or even what it actually was, but catching the fact that Robert Burns had supposedly once visited it. Why on earth? he thought. They puttered up past Hermit’s Cave, where a lone elderly man used to live not that long ago, apparently, surviving on fish and cockles from nearby. David thought it was fantastic, somehow, that within living memory people had actually been able and willing to live in a cave and survive on what the sea brought them. As if the whole of the modern world had passed them by: the development of towns and cities, the improvements in transport and infrastructure, the concepts of leisure and entertainment – all of it happening to other people somewhere else, while you sat hunkered down in your cave next to your fire, waiting to see what tomorrow would bring in the way of flotsam, jetsam and food. It was scarcely believable, but somehow comforting in a strange kind of way. How had he lived an entire childhood in Arbroath and never heard any of this? But then again, when he was a kid he’d rather have had his teeth pulled than listen to some boring old fuck prattle on about caves.

  They tootled past another bay and headland with a handful of old cottages arranged on it. According to the captain these were formerly coastguard houses, but now in disrepair. A couple of steep paths led down the cliffs from the cottages to a secluded beach. Round the headland and they were confronted with the harbour of Auchmithie, little more than a ramshackle stone wall covered with seaweed and algae and crumbling into the sea, with a huddle of small boats lurking behind it. A couple of rusty old cars and vans were parked along the seafront, old timers working on upturned boats hauled out onto dry land. Behind them a thin road snaked up between cliffs to the village of Auchmithie, little more than a cottage-lined street running along the headland and petering out in an overgrown field. David had been to the village a few times before as a kid, but could remember next to nothing about the place, except there was a tearoom, a pub and that was it. They had been press-ganged into doing a sponsored walk once at school, and had walked the few miles out to Auchmithie and back, but they hadn’t used the cliff path – presumably because the kids couldn’t be trusted not to fall in the sea – instead tramping along the inland road from town. Pretty ironic, thought David, considering what had then happened to Colin.

  ‘And here we have the fishing village of Auchmithie,’ the captain was saying. ‘Although Arbroath is thought of as the home of the smokie, in fact the world-famous delicacy originated here in Auchmithie. Sometime in the early nineteenth century the fisherfolk migrated to the larger harbour of Arbroath, bringing their secret for smoking the haddock with them. Amongst the families who flitted were all the famous smokie names, the same ones that continue to produce smokies to this day, such as Swankie, Spink and Cargill.’

  David spotted Nicola looking at her. She had been keeping Amy entertained for most of the trip, pointing out seabirds and weird shapes and colours in the rocks, but now, at the mention of both Spink and Cargill, she was looking at David with raised eyebrows. He didn’t know exactly what the expression meant. Arbroath was crawling with Swankies, Spinks and Cargills, there had been hundreds of them at school, so it was hardly surprising that these names would come up now, he supposed. He thought of Neil again, and how someone had said that perhaps he lived out in Auchmithie. It seemed too remote, too far from civilizat
ion, almost, for anyone to bother living here, yet there was clearly activity both at the harbour and up in the village. Maybe some people liked the seclusion, the peace and quiet that living in a dead-end village gave them. Maybe there were more hermits in the world than David had thought. Maybe Neil was one of those hermits, driven to live here by whatever it was that he was running away from. Destroying a fellow marine’s life, for example. Or maybe more than that.

  He looked up at the village again, ridiculously hoping to get sight of a stocky figure with Neil’s rolling gait striding clearly along the clifftop. He knew it was stupid, but he felt that any minute Neil was going to come walking into view and clear up everything, every lingering doubt in his head.

  ‘Auchmithie also featured in Walter Scott’s tale The Antiquary as the fishing village of Musselcraig, where the Mucklebackits lived,’ said the captain. The fucking Antiquary again, thought David. I’ll need to get a hold of a copy, see what it’s all about. But then he’d started one of Scott’s books at school – was Ivanhoe by Scott? – and he’d got about five pages in and given up. He wondered idly if anyone had ever made a film of The Antiquary, maybe he could watch that instead.

  Their boat was already turning to head back south-east down the coast. This was apparently as far as their captain was willing to take them for a fiver. On the return journey the captain’s voiceover concentrated on the wildlife of the area, mostly the different seabirds on offer, although he did tantalize everyone on board by claiming that seals, porpoises, dolphins and even very occasionally minke whales could be spotted up and down the coast. Needless to say, they spotted none of those, but David managed to borrow an old pair of binoculars from the captain and spent the rest of the journey picking out guillemots, shags and kittiwakes and pointing them out to Amy, who was surprisingly excited by it all, although he still kept one eye on the sea in case Moby Dick or his pals showed up. At one point Amy spotted two puffins scudding across the sea surface, their tiny wings a blur and their chubby bodies struggling to get any height. She squealed as they crash-landed further along the coast, and David and Nicola smiled at one another. The sun was still on their backs and David looked at Nicola, picturing her naked astride him in the park, and couldn’t help thinking he was the luckiest bastard in the world.