The Malice of Waves

by Mark Douglas-Home

  ‘Yes, quite well, thank you, and you?’

  Stanley managed to sound breezy and the woman said with an apologetic laugh that her children were always telling her off for interfering, but wasn’t it better to be safe than sorry? When he saw her again, she was reunited with her male companion and he was taking a camera from his backpack. Stanley turned quickly away and spotted a seal basking on a rock thirty or so metres from where he sat. As soon as he saw it he realized he’d probably jumped to a wrong judgement. Instead of the man trying to sneak a photograph of Stanley, wasn’t it more likely he was taking one of the seal?

  The couple’s subsequent behaviour supported this idea. As the ferry steamed on, they walked quickly towards the stern, trying to keep abreast of the creature, the man taking photographs as he went. Earlier, instead of the man recognizing Stanley, perhaps he had been registering an urgency in his bladder. The toilets, Stanley now saw from the sign, were through the door that led to the stairs to the bridge. Self-recrimination followed. Stanley hated uncertainty even if he was right to be wary. The first time he’d been caught, hadn’t the police acted on information supplied by an informant who’d been paid after Stanley’s conviction? The memory was a worm that wriggled around in his head after the ferry docked and as he walked inland.

  So by the time he was hacking impotently at the peat, he was in an odd mood. One moment he would convince himself there was something suspicious about the man on the ferry (had he rushed off to fetch a camera to snatch a picture of Stanley?), the next he would be adamant that everything was all right. The man was going to the toilet! Stanley’s outburst of temper at the bluntness of his trowel was a sign of this crisis of confidence, not just about the events on the ferry but about the rest of the trip. He accused himself of having gone flabby and soft in his years off, like his stomach. He kicked at the heather, frustrated at his fearfulness about the climb as well as the returning thoughts that he had been identified on the ferry and there were people who would know how to make money out of such information. There had been eight years before. Prison loomed in his imagination, black, terrifying and echoing, the metallic bang of a cell door shutting.

  Stanley’s face was clammy with cold sweat. He wondered if he should bow out, admit defeat, live off his memories. What, after all, did he have to prove? His collection was better and had a wider range of species than any of those mentioned in Cole and Trobe’s book, The Egg Collectors of Great Britain and Ireland. Stanley had multiple clutches from successive years of rook, blackbird, magpie and rock pipit and single clutches from fifteen other species. One more would make it twenty, and raven was the gap he still dreamed of filling. He’d waited years for this moment to arrive, an investment of effort and money. The weekends he’d spent scouting in Cumbria or the Highlands and Islands of Scotland; the risks he’d taken as a young man scaling cliffs and tall Scots pines to check ravens’ nests – all too many to count.

  Here he was on the brink of greatness, of achieving his life’s ambition, and look at him, a bag of nerves at the thought of being caught, at the prospect of the climb he had to do.

  Stanley stopped kicking. Now he berated himself for letting his nerves get the better of him. Wasn’t he Pinkie Pryke, the field man? No matter the obstacles didn’t he always collect his own eggs? Wasn’t it his badge of honour? Not for him the lazy ways of those Edwardian ‘Cabinet men’ who sat in their drawing rooms showing off their collections and paying others to take the risks.

  Stanley calmed himself by closing his eyes and imagining the raven’s eggs. Each would have a background washed in a shade of pink, some as delicate as a young woman’s lips, and the markings would be darker, richer. He hoped for blotches of hellebore red. The more he considered their beauty, their sensuous shape and colour, the more they pulled at him. Of course he had to go on: wasn’t this his crowning achievement, his last adventure?

  He kicked at the ground again, no longer a gesture of frustration but one to stiffen his resolve. In another year, the ravens might have been shot or poisoned and he would be older and fatter, the cliff even harder to negotiate. There were those who accused him of leading a charmed life, having been convicted only once, but charm had nothing to do with it. No one had seen his preparations, the mapping of nests, the excursions in autumn and winter or the effort he had put into finding informers who were knowledgeable as well as loyal.

  No one realized the work involved in identifying erythristic eggs and not getting caught in the process.

  He stared at the trowel and the shallow scrape he had made in the ground. He began digging again, working methodically. Rather than stabbing wildly, he inserted the blade of the trowel into the cracks in the peat, prising them wider. Fragments broke away, then lumps, and soon he was staring into a hole at the bottom of which was a large square biscuit tin. Stanley took it out and stripped away the waterproof tape. Inside were packages of varying sizes. Each was wrapped in sealed food bags secured with rubber bands.

  The first contained a cardboard box with reinforced metal corners. Stanley lifted off its lid, examined the six compartments inside and squeezed the felt padding between his thumb and forefinger. His father last used the box twenty-eight years ago. On that occasion it held four kestrel eggs. Stanley, aged sixteen, had been there. In fact, Stanley, being lighter than his father and able to climb higher, had scrambled up the tree to collect the clutch.

  The second polythene bag Stanley opened contained a drill. It was four inches long, with a wooden handle. The metal shaft had a cone-shaped corrugated tip. Stanley pressed the point against his hand. The prick was sharp enough, he thought, to chip an eggshell. The corrugations also appeared sufficiently well defined for the grinding process to make a neat, small hole.

  The blowpipe was unpacked next. It, too, was about four inches long and made of brass tubing. One end was curved for inserting into the hole made by the drill. In the same bag was the hook. Wooden-handled like the drill, it had a thin metal shank bent at the end into a not-quite-closed circle for dragging out an embryo bit by bit. Stanley regarded the hook with distaste, seeming to be in two minds whether to take it with him or not. His father always carried it, a reminder, he always told Stanley, that ‘no field man worthy of the name should ever resort to one of these diabolical things’. Stanley put it into his backpack for the same cautionary reason, knowing he would not need it since incubation had only just started.

  The fourth bag contained six padded pouches in a mossy-green material. They were stitched together and configured like a whorl so that each one resembled an opening petal of a large flower. A loop of material was fastened to the centre like a grossly enlarged pistil. Stanley pulled at it to test its strength. Then he held it between clenched teeth and imagined climbing the cliff, both hands holding on to the rope, the dangling pouch keeping the raven’s eggs safe. His worry was a strong wind – one was forecast. Would the pouch swing too much? He inspected the loop again. Making it shorter might reduce its free movement but would mean it hanging right under Stanley’s chin. If for some reason he jerked his head down, his chin could break an egg. Stanley decided to leave it as it was. It had stood the test of time with his father.

  The last bag he opened contained three rolled-up bundles, all of fifty-pound notes.

  Stanley put the money into his backpack with his father’s equipment. Then the empty biscuit tin was returned to the hole. Stanley buried it with as much of the crumbled peat as he could gather. Soon there was nothing to see apart from a depression and a scrape that an animal’s hoof might have caused. Stanley slung his backpack over his right shoulder and returned the trowel to the base of the boulder a few metres up the hill. He’d put it there the previous November after an unusual meeting with a prospective tenant at one of the flats he managed in Glasgow. Would Mr Pryke, Mr Pinkie Pryke, like to know where he could collect a clutch of erythristic raven eggs? she’d asked. The price for the exclusive option would be one thousand pounds, in cash.

  Bella MacLeod had come s
martly dressed in a camel coat and patent shoes, apparently to view a flat. In her gloved hand, she held some letting particulars, a nicely authentic touch, Stanley thought later. In the passage between the lounge and the kitchen, Bella stopped and asked whether he had received some photographs in the post. Stanley pretended puzzlement. Not that he could remember, he said. Were they photographs of a property, a flat perhaps? Photographs of eggs, Bella prompted: particularly rare eggs. Stanley said he hadn’t, or didn’t think he had. Maybe she had the wrong man. Bella asked if she was speaking to Mr Pryke, Mr Stanley Pryke, Mr Pinkie Pryke? Stanley agreed that Pryke was his surname but it wasn’t uncommon. He was sure there would be another Stanley Pryke. Maybe she had the wrong one. He didn’t know of a Pinkie Pryke. Without further sparring, Bella showed him her driving licence. ‘This is who I am,’ she’d said. ‘This is how this deal is going to get done. We’re going to have to trust each other.’

  ‘What deal?’ Stanley asked.

  ‘How would you like to buy an option?’ Bella asked.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘A clutch of raven eggs to be laid next spring. They’re pink eggs with red markings. You would call them erythristic eggs. The photographs I sent you show this spring’s clutch. They’ve hatched now but, as you know, once a raven lays one clutch of pink eggs it will do so again.’

  Stanley had received the photographs, of course. As soon as he had opened the envelope his mind had been racing. He’d waited years for something like this. Inside were two photographs of the same clutch of five raven eggs. In the days before the meeting in the flat, Stanley had examined the photographs over and over, cross-referencing their colouring, size and markings to his records of erythristic raven eggs in private or museum collections. He was alert to a hoax or a trap, but a grand passion, awakened, had him in its grip. Of all birds, the raven!

  Now, standing in a damp passage of a third-floor tenement apartment (two beds/one reception/GCH), he was lost again.

  Bella told him the story of the eggs’ discovery. They had been found by two young Australian climbers holidaying in the Hebrides. Their interest was scaling sea cliffs and stacks, not birds. They didn’t know that raven eggs were usually shaded green or blue with brown or black blotches, though Bella did. When they showed her their photographs of the large nest platform, which she recognized to be a raven’s, she asked if she could have copies. Although she had known something about erythrism before, she had learned more since: how extraordinarily rare such eggs were, and how collectable, how valuable.

  Stanley listened and said little. Bella proposed a deal: since it was October, she was offering Stanley first option for the following spring. He would have to pay one thousand pounds. It was not returnable in the event of one or both of the ravens being killed. If they nested again he would pay another thousand for being delivered to the site. Once he had the eggs in his possession he would pay two thousand more: four thousand in total, in cash. Apart from the eggs, the money would buy him confidentiality. Bella was the only one who would know his identity and it would stay that way. There would be no further auction of eggs in subsequent years, the risk of gossip reaching the police or wildlife charities too great. This was Mr Pryke’s opportunity, his only opportunity. There could be no negotiation on terms. The money would ‘set up a young man who had had something unfairly taken from him … put him back on his feet’. In a manner of speaking, Mr Pryke would be contributing to a deserving cause.

  If he wished to go ahead, they would meet again at the same flat in two days, enough time for him to check out Bella and to withdraw the first instalment.

  At the next meeting, Stanley watched from the flat above. Bella arrived alone. No one followed her or looked on. After letting her in, he asked a number of questions and set conditions before handing over the thousand pounds. He needed to know where the nest site was so he could move equipment to within a day’s walk the following month, November, when no one was looking out for collectors. Bella gave him a map reference that was within six kilometres of the site; there were at least seven nests in that area or close by. If Pinkie – by then she had dispensed with Mr Pryke – tried to find it on his own, she would be informed. The deal would be off. Pinkie would lose his money.

  In turn he insisted there must be no disturbance of the nest site. When had the photographs been taken? The second week of March, Bella replied.

  ‘Contact me again when the ravens are back at the nest in the spring. Let me know the first day the female starts sitting. Then I’ll come immediately.’ He emphasized the point. ‘The clutch must be complete. You must call me as soon as incubation starts so that the embryos don’t grow.’

  ‘Yes, I understand.’

  ‘And no witness, no assistance after I’ve been taken to the site.’

  Bella agreed.

  All winter Stanley dreamed of the ravens being poisoned or shot, of his opportunity being lost. Bella made contact in the middle of February to report the ravens putting on aerial displays, flying side by side and making synchronized rolls above the nest site. Two weeks later she reported the hen raven sitting for longer periods: incubation seemed to have started, although it was at least a week earlier than the previous year. The bird had not been disturbed. Stanley could be reassured of that. The observations had all been made from a boat.

  After walking in the wrong direction for half an hour, his usual precaution, Stanley found a rock for cover. He waited and watched until he was certain he had not been followed. Then he relaxed his guard and unpacked his father’s egg-collecting equipment from his backpack. As he inspected it again he thought how fitting it was that it would be used for his last clutch, for his final expedition. With evening, the clouds picked up speed. The wind would follow. The air seemed to come alive with anticipation of the storm, and a change of mood came over Stanley too. He thought of his rendezvous with Bella MacLeod the following afternoon and felt a surge of exhilaration.

  No, he wasn’t too old and unfit for this after all.

  10

  With men, a fear of running out of conversation unnerved Detective Sergeant Helen Jamieson. She would cast around for something interesting or witty to say and wonder afterwards why she’d bothered. In her bruised experience, they hadn’t.

  With Cal, it was different. She was different.

  Take this moment, for example. Here she was sitting in Cal’s pickup while he drove her across Edinburgh to Leith, the port district. Neither had said anything for a while, yet Helen wasn’t experiencing a compulsion to speak. Nor did she regard his silence as an unspoken accusation about her looks or some other personal failing. As she watched the streets go by, she wondered why this was. Why was she so comfortable with Cal when, if anything, she should have been more on edge, since with him she had a thing? She played around in her head with that word: thing, thing. She decided she liked its lack of definition. She enjoyed its utilitarian quality.

  Often when she was at work or lying awake at night she would wonder what Cal was doing or where he was. Usually, a question would pop into her head, as it did now: Wouldn’t it be nice? She wasn’t clear what it involved: sex, marriage, a date or even a kiss? It could include any or none of these, or a combination. Helen thought the reason it remained as undefined as thing was because Cal had the role of ideal male in her life; anything or nothing was possible with him.

  Sometimes, for example, she would pretend he was accompanying her to functions where she expected to feel insecure – because of her size eighteen figure, her hair which was thin and unruly, her face which was prone to flushing at awkward moments. Mostly these were police events or conferences where male officers routinely regarded her appearance as an affront, as if being in the company of females prettier than Helen was one of rank’s privileges. With Cal her invisible companion, she managed to endure their slights and condescension. Occasionally, she’d look up and imagine Cal across the room, the two of them exchanging conspiratorial glances. It was, she acknowledged, a little peculiar and
not something to be confided in her best friend, if she had a best friend, but surely harmless enough, a survival mechanism. Though sometimes she wondered at herself: a detective sergeant with an IQ of 173, a first-class law degree and a Masters in criminology – behaving like a social incompetent. What was that about?

  With Cal, she felt accepted. Solitariness and silence were his everyday companions. Helen regarded it as a compliment when she was invited in.

  Crossing Newhaven Road in east Edinburgh, Cal spoke again. ‘Would you mind if we went to my office? Just for five minutes. The restaurant’s nearby, walking distance.’

  ‘Why should I mind?’ Helen replied, being curious to see where he was living. Usually, when they met, he would pick her up as he had tonight and they would go to a bar.

  ‘Are you still trading under the same name?’ Helen asked, remembering the first time she’d come across his company, Flotsam and Jetsam Investigations, and imagined Cal to be some odd eco-nut. Then, he’d worked for environmental organizations or charities, hunting down polluters. At that time tracking missing or dead bodies, calculating where – if – they might come ashore, had been his area of specialist research, his hobby. Later on, from what she’d heard and from the bits and pieces he’d told her, he did little else. The drawback, she supposed, of Cal’s media profile and the desperation of families. He was their last chance of finding their son or daughter, their father or mother. Helen knew it was difficult for Cal, a dilemma of his success. He’d talked about it the last few times they’d met, how he didn’t think he could take on any more cases involving recently lost children. He’d described the parents’ appalled expressions on those occasions when he’d found a washed-up body, a sweet son or daughter rendered unrecognizable, a horror story of decaying flesh, not ‘closure’ but the stuff of continuing nightmares.