by Ken Lussey
‘We should perhaps head that one “no bloody idea”,’ said Bob. ‘There will inevitably be men, possibly a lot of men, who we don’t have enough information about to place on any of the first three lists. Once you have done that first sift, and I have no feel for how long that will take, we can discuss what to do next, and whether there is any point approaching those men’s home units to fill in gaps or help assign them to one list or another.’
‘Will the staff here be expecting us, sir?’ asked Sergeant Potter.
‘Well, they don’t seem to treat Sundays as a day of rest here,’ said Bob, ‘and I discussed our need to look at staff records with Lieutenant Colonel White last night. So yes, if they’ve not actually been told, they should be able to quickly confirm with the colonel that you can look at the records. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Dixon, could you and Petty Officer MacDonald meet the divers from Fort William and show them what we want them to do around the pier?’
‘How big an area do you want them to search, sir?’ asked the lieutenant.
‘I think it might be best to tell them what we’ve found so far and ask for their advice on how widely they need to look. Finally, and in case you are wondering, I’m not planning on putting my feet up. I intend to track down the most senior officer I can get hold of in the 1st Belgian Fusilier Battalion and get him to find out all he can about Private Hannes Lambrechts.’
‘I’ve got Private Lambrechts’ application form here, sir,’ said Sergeant Potter. ‘We asked for it on Friday. You might find it helpful to know the name of the senior officer in his unit who recommended him.’
‘Thank you, Gilbert,’ said Bob. ‘I doubt if I will get any answers immediately, but given we are investigating Private Lambrechts’ murder, I would hope to get some worthwhile background today. Right, let’s get moving. Lieutenant Dixon, when I’ve made my phone call, I’ll come up to the pier to see how things are going there.’
‘You did tell us not to go anywhere on our own, sir,’ said Dixon.
‘Yes, I did, but unless we are going to get embroiled in some sort of real life “fox, goose and bag of grain” puzzle, I don’t see a simple way around that and to be on the safe side I will come up in one of the cars. It shouldn’t take longer than a couple of minutes.’ As Lieutenant Dixon started to say something else, Bob held up his hand. ‘Don’t worry, Lieutenant, I had a good session on Friday on the firing range at RAF Turnhouse with the pistol they’ve issued to me. It would short circuit things nicely if I had cause to use it in anger.’
Bob pulled the car off the track near the southern end of the White Bridge, behind the lorry he assumed had brought the navy divers up from Fort William. He walked to the stone pier, where Lieutenant Dixon and Petty Officer MacDonald were talking to three other men. Two were wearing heavy diving suits on which were hung assorted gas bottles and other pieces of equipment whose purpose Bob couldn’t guess at.
‘Hello, sir,’ said Lieutenant Dixon. ‘Can I introduce Petty Officer Johnson and Petty Officer Heal, who will be going down to see what they can find, and Able Seaman Pym, who is providing support. We’ve agreed that they should take an initial look around the west side of the pier and under where the boat was moored to see what turns up. We can then consider the east side of the pier, and widening the search on the west side, if time permits. As you can see, we’ve pulled the boat around to the east side to help with the initial search.’
‘Thank you for coming, gentlemen,’ said Bob. ‘How long can you dive for?’
‘We’re pleased to be able to help, sir,’ said Petty Officer Johnson. ‘It will be a pleasant change to be looking for something that isn’t explosive. The rebreather units we use are good for a maximum of 90 minutes, and we’ve got spares in the lorry. I’m guessing, though, that 90 minutes ought to be long enough. We’re going to go in at the shoreline on the west side of the pier. If we’ve not found anything by the time we get to the end of the pier, we’ll surface and agree how to proceed from there. Are you happy with that, sir?’
‘Yes, that sounds fine,’ said Bob.
The two divers walked to the landward end of the pier and waded into the loch. The able seaman kept a close watch on proceedings from the pier itself.
‘Did you get anywhere with the Belgians, sir?’ asked Lieutenant Dixon.
‘I hope so,’ said Bob. ‘It seems Private Lambrechts was never likely to be the life and soul of any party, but he was a good soldier and they recommended him very highly when he volunteered to join the commandos. The officer I spoke to, a Major Leclercq, knew nothing about Lambrechts having come to Britain to look for someone, but it seemed to me that he understood the importance of what I wanted to know. When I ended the call I was confident that if anyone back at Lambrechts’ home unit knows anything of use to us, then Major Leclercq will find out and pass it on to me pretty quickly. Meanwhile, a first look at the service records and applications forms suggests that Sergeant Potter has got a huge job on, and I’m no longer convinced it’s going to get us very far. I hope I can take a decision about that after I hear back from the Belgians.’
‘Let’s just hope we come up with something here,’ said Lieutenant Dixon.
Bob watched as the able seaman leaned over the side of the pier. ‘How do you know where they are?’ he asked.
‘You get occasional flashes of the torches they are carrying, sir, as visibility seems fairly good. Otherwise the rebreathers leave no signs on the surface. No bubbles or anything like that. The water isn’t very deep immediately around the pier but according to the Ordnance Survey map it falls away steeply as soon as you get any distance from the pier. It goes down to over a hundred feet deep quite close to the shore on this southern side, and to over three hundred feet deep when you get out into the centre of the loch. The suits and rebreathers are designed for fairly shallow water, so they can’t stray too far away from the pier.’
One of the divers surfaced about two thirds of the way along the pier, a little past the stone steps built into its side. He held something out of the water with one hand.
‘Hello, he’s got something,’ said Lieutenant Dixon as the able seaman clambered down the stone steps. He came back up with a pair of very wet binoculars on a leather strap.
‘May I?’ said Bob, taking the binoculars, which he turned over in his hands. ‘These are made by Carl Zeiss, and I’m guessing that the army doesn’t normally stretch to issuing quite such good binoculars?’
‘The Royal Navy certainly doesn’t, sir,’ said Dixon. ‘We’d need to check with Sergeant Potter, but I imagine that those are just the sort of thing a keen ornithologist might own.’
‘A keen ornithologist like Lieutenant Bell?’ asked Bob. ‘That was my thinking too.’
The two divers surfaced at the end of the pier, then swam round to climb the stone steps.
After they had climbed out and taken off their masks. Petty Officer Johnson said, ‘Sir, I think we now need to decide whether to try round the other side of the pier, which would mean moving the boat back round to this side, or whether to have a second sweep on this side. From what Lieutenant Dixon had told us, I was half expecting to find a knife down there. But it would be easy to miss, and on our first sweep we didn’t want to risk stirring up too much muck from the bottom. As you know exactly where the captain was killed, it might be worth spending a couple of minutes taking a closer look at the bottom of the loch next to that part of the pier.’
Lieutenant Dixon said, ‘It was here, at the top of the steps, though most of the blood got washed away by rain on the first night, leaving just these traces. The problem is that the stern of the boat was at the bottom of the steps. If someone tossed the knife into the water after killing Captain Bell with it, and I’m not convinced they would have done as they’d already used the knife to kill once before, then I guess they’d have tossed it down there, beyond where the rear of the boat was positioned.’
‘Well,
it will only take a few minutes to check, sir, and I’d like to think we are doing a proper job. Then we can look round the other side.’ Petty Officer Johnson looked at Bob for a decision.
‘That sounds fine,’ said Bob.
The two divers climbed back down the stone steps that led into the waters of the loch and disappeared beneath its surface.
Able Seaman Pym leaned over the side of the pier again. ‘You can tell from the quality of the torchlight that they are feeling their way along the bottom, sir, just down there, and the visibility is decreasing because of muck being stirred up.’
This time there was no triumphant raising of an arm when the divers surfaced and no sign of a knife as they climbed back up onto the pier. When Petty Officer Johnson removed his face mask, Bob said, ‘Never mind, it was worth a try.’
‘It certainly was, sir,’ said the petty officer, holding out his right hand. ‘We may not have found a knife, but we did find this.’ There, nestled in the palm of his gloved hand was a coin that looked to be about an inch in diameter.
‘That’s gold, isn’t it?’ said Bob.
‘It looks very much like it,’ said Johnson. ‘When, in years to come, my grandchildren ask me what I did in the war, I can tell them I once found gold treasure. Even if it was just the one coin. And before you ask, sir, I’m pretty sure there are no more of them in the same area.’
Bob said, ‘There’s a woman’s head on it, with some Latin text around the edge.’
‘I think that may be a man, sir,’ said Lieutenant Dixon. ‘There’s a definite Adam’s apple there in the throat, even if the hair does look distinctly feminine.’
The petty officer moved his hand to turn the coin over. Bob said, ‘The other side’s got two oval shields under a crown. And there’s a date, 1742.’
‘Do you think it’s related to your captain’s murder?’ asked Petty Officer Johnson.
‘I’m sorry, petty officer, but I think it’s too much of a coincidence that it should turn up where the captain was killed. I don’t think you’re going to be able to keep it.’
The petty officer grinned. ‘I’d worked that out for myself, sir. But I’d love to know what its story is when you find out. You know, so I can tell the grandchildren when I have some.’
‘I can promise you that,’ said Bob. ‘In the meantime, Petty Officer MacDonald, you seem to know about fingerprints. Is there any chance that there could be any on the coin?’
‘Well we know it’s been in the water for at least 36 hours, and then there’s the contact with the loch bed and with Petty Officer Johnson’s glove. I’d say the chances are slim, sir, but it’s worth a try. The fingerprint kit is in the boot of the car.’ He pulled an envelope out of an inner pocket, removed the letter from it, and held it open for Johnston to drop the coin into.
Petty Officer Johnson said, ‘That’s this side and the end of the pier done and I’m quite keen to look on the other side now, if that’s alright with you, sir. You never know what we might find!’
Bob and Lieutenant Dixon helped the able seaman pull the boat around the end of the pier and moor it back where it had started.
The two divers entered the water again from the shore just to the east of the pier. This time the star find was a badly corroded cigarette lighter that looked as if it had been in the loch for some years. ‘I bet you are going to say we can keep that, aren’t you, sir?’ said Petty Officer Johnson, grinning again.
Just then, Petty Officer MacDonald returned from the car. ‘Sorry, sir. As I thought, there were no usable fingerprints on the coin. Do you want to hang on to it for the moment?’
He handed the coin over to Bob, who turned the beautiful object over in his fingers before carefully wrapping it in a handkerchief and putting into one of his breast pockets.
Lunch with Lieutenant Dixon passed without Bob really noticing the food. Monique joined them, part way through.
She sat next to Michael, and when she spoke, she addressed herself to him. ‘I spent my morning tracking down and interviewing six of the group of German and Austrian trainees who initially attracted Captain Bell’s attention. I just went for those I could find first. I was able to conduct reasonably thorough interviews with each and will produce a report as soon as I can.’
‘Did you find anything of value?’ asked Michael.
‘No, though I suppose it is of value that we can say with reasonable confidence that none of them, nor, probably, those few I couldn’t talk to, were involved in Private Lambrechts’ murder.’
Bob started to say something, but Monique interrupted. ‘Yes, I know that was fairly obvious already from the work Captain Bell and Sergeant Potter had done. But as the presence of the German contingent was what got me attached to this investigation, I felt I had to make the effort. It wouldn’t look very good, would it, if I were to assure my department head that the Germans had nothing to do with it, then have to admit that I’d not actually bothered to talk to any of them myself. Remember, I was able to talk to them in their own language and I might have picked up signals that would have been missed by Captain Bell. As I’ve said, there were none.’
The rest of lunch passed in slightly uncomfortable silence, despite Michael’s efforts to start a conversation about the odd mix of people at Achnacarry. Monique was still eating when Bob stood up, announcing he had to see Lieutenant Colonel White. He asked Michael and Monique to see how the sifting of the personnel records was going when they’d finished lunch.
‘Come in, Bob,’ said White,’ and no, I don’t live in this office. As you saw last night, I do get out occasionally. What can I do for you?’
‘I thought you might like to look at something the navy divers found in Loch Arkaig, next to the pier this morning.’ Bob reached across the lieutenant colonel’s desk and placed the gold coin on the desk’s leather inlay.
‘My, that’s rather pretty,’ said White.
‘It’s dated 1742,’ said Bob. ‘I’ve no idea how it came to be where it was, but I get the feeling it’s tied into Captain Bell’s death somehow.’
White picked up the coin, turned it over, then replaced it on his desk. ‘Can you wait there a moment, Bob?’
He got up and walked out of his office, returning a few minutes later, followed by Captain Sanderson. White turned to the captain and pointed at the coin on the desk. ‘What do you make of that, Clive?’
Captain Sanderson picked up the coin, looked at both sides, then held it up so the light from the window reflected from its surface.
White said, ‘I should tell you, Bob, that before the war Clive was a historian, and has enlivened a few otherwise dull evenings in the mess with his stories of Clan Cameron’s role in the 1745 Jacobite rising.’
‘Ah,’ said Bob, ‘the reason why the old Achnacarry Castle was destroyed?’
‘That’s right sir,’ said Sanderson. ‘Which makes the date of 1742 on this coin very significant.’
‘Do you know what it is?’ asked Bob.
‘I think it will turn out to be what they call a “Louis d’or”, one of a series of gold coins minted in France between the 1600s and the 1800s.’
‘How would a two-hundred-year-old French gold coin find its way into Loch Arkaig?’
‘Would you mind coming with me to see someone, Group Captain?’ asked Sanderson. ‘There’s an old gentleman called Archibald Cameron who you might find helpful. He used to be the estate factor who looked after the day-to-day running of the estate here, on behalf of the Chief of Clan Cameron of Locheil, who owns the place. I think Archibald retired some time before the war, but he is an absolute mine of information on the history of the area, and especially about the Jacobite connections. He lives in an estate cottage in a hamlet called Clunes, on Loch Lochy, a couple of miles north east of here. I met him when I went to apologise after one of our volunteers passing through Achnacarry thought it would be a fine idea to go hand g
renade fishing in the bay up at Clunes. As it turned out the volunteer passed through Achnacarry rather more quickly than he anticipated and was returned to his unit the following day. Anyway, I think Archibald Cameron will be able to tell you all you need to know about this coin and its significance.’
Bob had intended to collect Lieutenant Dixon en route to the car, deciding it would make more sense for him to hear what Archibald Cameron had to say first hand, saving Bob the need to tell him afterwards. On hearing what was proposed, Monique opted to accompany them. Bob felt helpless to object. He was deeply anxious not to let the rift between him and Monique become visible to his team. He felt that both his professional and personal credibility depended on it. He’d hoped that after her pronouncement at lunch about the German trainees that she’d decide she could decently return to Glasgow, but she was showing no sign of doing so, and he was in no position to ask.
Chapter Fourteen
On the Ordnance Survey map, Clunes was no more than a tiny collection of black rectangles near the shore of Loch Lochy and close to the point where the road running up its western side turned sharply left to head for Loch Arkaig.
Lieutenant Dixon pulled the car off the road not far from a small but beautifully-kept cottage whose smoking chimney was the obvious source of an aroma of burning peat.
‘It looks like he’s in, anyway,’ said Captain Sanderson.
Sanderson knocked on the door seconds before it was opened. ‘Hello, Mr Cameron. I hope it’s not inconvenient, but I’ve brought you some visitors. The two gentlemen are Group Captain Sutherland and Lieutenant Dixon, and the lady is Madame Dubois. They are all from the War Office.’
The man who had opened the door looked to Bob to be in his seventies. He wore a baggy green jumper over a check shirt. He also wore a kilt, of the same tartan used by the instructors at Achnacarry to back their cap badges. The man was slightly stooped with age, but his eyes seemed as sharp and as alive as any Bob could remember seeing.
