by Clare Carson
She pulled a book down from the shelf. An etching of a gothic tombstone filled its front cover. Death and the regeneration of life. She read the back. The common connection between funerals and fertility rites was, apparently, a classic paradox of anthropology. Interesting. She turned to Tom, intending to ask him what he knew about funerals. He was over by the desk, rummaging through books and more papers.
‘He’s a researcher of some sort or another,’ he said. He poked a heavyweight tome lying open on the desk.
‘Listen to this. “The expert skipper effect: fact, fiction or self-fulfilling prophecy? Folk models of catch success among the fishermen of Orkney. An anthropology thesis based on ethnographic fieldwork in Stromness. Submitted by Mark Greenaway to the University of London, December 1983.” Anthropology: sociology in peripheral places,’ he added dismissively. ‘Well, anyway, at least it gives us a name. Nobody ever reads anyone else’s doctoral thesis. So Mark Greenaway must be the person who lives here and, judging by the title of this,’ he said as he flipped the cover shut, ‘he’s a bit… wacko.’
‘Expert skippers?’ Sam said. ‘That’s funny. Nils mentioned something about a researcher. I wonder whether Mark Greenaway is the bloke he took with him on the trawler. That would be a bit of a coincidence.’
‘Maybe. Dunno. But he must be the owner of the blue car.’
He crossed to the bookshelf, scanned the spines. She edged over to the desk.
‘Don’t you think it would be fun to be an anthropologist?’ she asked as she pulled the thesis towards her.
‘Not really. I mean, what does an anthropologist actually do for a living? Not great career potential unless you want to end up as a waffly academic.’
She flicked her eye over the abstract, read that Mark Greenaway had spent a year with the fishing crews of Stromness, accompanying skippers and their crews on trips to the open sea.
‘He must be the bloke Nils took out on his trawler,’ she said. ‘I wonder if Nils knows he has written up his research.’
Tom didn’t respond. She shrugged, was about to push the thesis back to its original position on the desk when she noticed the edge of a card being used as a bookmark sticking out between the pages. She tugged it free, examined the watercolour violets on the front, opened it and read.
‘My dear Anne, I hope this card reaches you before you set off to see Mark. Happy Birthday and here is a small contribution so you can celebrate in style when you are in Orkney. Give Mark a hug from me and make sure he doesn’t sit up too late working on his book. See you when you are back in London, love Dad.’
She stared at the words, trying to work out what the inscription could tell her, apart from the fact that not all dads were mad dictators who never wrote in their daughters’ birthday cards. Was Anne the woman with the straggly blonde hair? Possibly. Probably. She must live in London. Her dad must have mailed the card to her home address because he assumed it would be quicker than posting it to Orkney, and she carried it with her on the journey north. She momentarily considered the possibility that Anne was Mark’s girlfriend, wife even. Then she dismissed the idea: the message from Anne’s dad was too caring and paternal towards him. So Mark must be Anne’s brother, she decided.
‘I reckon the woman in the café is called Anne and she is Mark Greenaway’s sister.’ She threw the card over to Tom. She turned back to the desk, and glimpsed a purple flash of paper in a woven raffia waste-paper bin. Jim’s first rule of detective work – always check the rubbish bin. She swooped, grasped the envelope, straightened, noted the name and address: Anne Greenaway, 24 Milton House, Railton Road, Brixton. South London. She shuddered. Brixton. Not so very far from their home. She knew Brixton quite well; she sometimes went to the market with Becky. There was a shop under the railway arches that sold cheap monkey boots. She stuffed the purple envelope in her coat pocket.
‘Maybe we should just have a quick look round upstairs,’ said Tom.
She was about to say no, enough, let’s leave now while the going is good, but there was no time for the words to form in her mouth. Above their heads the floorboards creaked. Footsteps. Her mouth turned dry. There was somebody upstairs. They must have been up there all along. She stared at Tom. He stared at her. Unable to move. They were about to be caught intruding in someone’s house, rifling through somebody’s possessions with only a feeble story about a glass of water as an alibi. Another creak. She wondered whether it was possible to be done for breaking and entering if the door was already unlocked. Footfall on the stairs. She collected herself, came to her senses.
‘Run.’
They chased down the hall. Shot through the kitchen. Out the back door. Cutting bishop-wise across the meadow. Forcing their legs to move faster. Battling the coarse grass. Pulling their feet from the mud sucking at their shoes. Straining every muscle. They reached the stile at the corner of the field, hearts pounding, wheezing. She paused. Don’t look back. Don’t turn around. But she couldn’t help herself. She twisted and saw the dark face in the upstairs window. The moustache. The sweep of his widow’s peak. The Watcher. She recognized now the fleeting image she had failed to identify earlier, realized she had guessed the Watcher had reached the house before them, saw now that she had known, in the pit of her stomach, that he had broken in and left the door unlocked. He was searching for something. The manila envelope.
Tom clocked the face in the window, froze for a second before he yanked her arm, pulling her back to the Cortina. He turned the ignition key, still panting and gasping for breath.
‘That was exciting,’ he said.
‘It was totally bloody stupid.’ He might have been carrying a gun, she realized now.
‘We weren’t caught,’ Tom said. ‘So no problem. Who do you think that was upstairs then?’
‘The Watcher from the woods.’
He sucked his top lip and she thought he was about to dismiss her assertion.
‘You know what, I think you could be right. It was the man we saw in the bar. The golfer. What do you think he was doing there?’
‘Same as us,’ she said. ‘Snooping.’
‘Hmm…’ He left his thought hanging, concentrated on reversing the Cortina.
‘Hmm what?’
‘Do you reckon he could be a private dick?’
She pulled an incredulous face.
He persisted. ‘Maybe your mum has hired an investigator to get the low-down on your dad, trying to find out whether he has another woman on the go, pulling together a divorce case. Maybe he was in there rummaging around for some evidence to give her the upper hand in the court proceedings.’
She hesitated, caught between letting Tom run with his irritatingly ridiculous story and having to provide him with another angle if she disputed his.
‘I don’t think he’s a private investigator,’ she said.
‘Why not? It makes sense to me.’
‘That’s because you don’t know Liz. She wouldn’t go out of her way to dig for dirt on Jim. She does the opposite; she avoids it. She gets on with her own life. She sticks her head in the greats of English Literature and turns a blind eye to as much of Jim’s stuff as she possibly can. It’s her survival strategy. And anyway, she asked me to keep an eye on him. She doesn’t need to hire somebody.’
He lifted his shoulders. ‘You don’t buy my theory. But you haven’t given me a more convincing one to take its place.’
He put his foot down, pulled away. A green car passed in the opposite direction, its male driver gawking at their rear-end as they accelerated noisily down the road.
‘What’s your survival strategy for dealing with Jim anyway?’ he asked.
She paused. ‘I take the piss.’
‘Really?’
‘Let’s go to the beach now,’ she said.
The sun was incandescent on the turquoise sea, the beach golden; a colour supplement photograph. She ran shoeless over the damp sand, leaving a trail of dark footprints behind her, sending dunlins and godwits fluttering. They trawled
the tide’s edge searching for cockle shells, driftwood, strips of red kelp to hang outside Nethergate and forecast rain. The incoming tide filled the moats of their sandcastles, cracked and toppled the water-browned battlements. For the first time since they had arrived she felt relaxed, straightforwardly happy. Like a kid, messing around on the beach. In the Oyster Catcher café they scarfed scones. Then they dawdled on the drive back to Nethergate, looking for excuses to stop. She spotted a bird of prey. Tom didn’t need much persuasion to pull over.
‘Definitely a merlin,’ she said.
‘Falconry,’ said Tom. ‘I don’t know about bird-watching but I could enjoy falconry.’
‘You couldn’t keep a merlin.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because merlins are for ladies.’
‘Oh that’s right. And kestrels are for knaves. How does the rest of it go?’
‘An eagle for an emperor, a saker for a knight, a merlin for a lady, a kestrel for a knave. Something like that anyway. So which would you choose, a saker or a kestrel? Knight or knave?’
‘I’d be happy with a kestrel. I don’t even know what a saker is.’
She took a sharp intake of breath. ‘So you’re a Knave,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
The sunlight caught the bright trail of the merlin arcing across the sky. She made a wish and crossed her fingers as it faded.
In Tirlsay they parked the car by the phone box, ambled to the pub where they were greeted by the fug of smoke and the sly glances of the old men at the bar. They took their drinks and settled at the corner table. She stuck her hand in her pocket, twiddled the raven’s feather she had picked up in Tirlsay. The possibility that the Watcher had been carrying a gun was playing on her mind. The disaster scenario. She had been so stupid to allow Tom to lead her on. It wasn’t worth it. She didn’t have to do it. She didn’t need to know what Jim was up to. She just wanted to have a normal summer holiday, a bit of fun with her mate.
‘I just want to forget about Jim and what he’s up to,’ she said. ‘I’m fed up with all his crap; he can keep his secrets, I don’t want to know. Let’s just go out tomorrow and enjoy ourselves again.’
‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘Two,’ he added.
‘Two what?’
‘I can think of two people Agatha Christie murdered on a train.’
She looked blank.
‘It’s what you asked me on the way up to Inverness.’
‘Oh right. Go on then. Tell me what you know.’
‘One bloke with multiple stab wounds in Murder on the Orient Express and one woman being strangled on a train travelling in the opposite direction to an old lady who is on her way to see Miss Marple.’
‘There’s a third. American heiress murdered on the way to the French Riviera in The Mystery of the Blue Train. I think she was strangled too. Poirot solved that one.’
‘Actually, I’ve never really liked Agatha Christie. Her books are too formulaic for me. I prefer a detective story when it’s a bit messier, a bit more realistic.’
‘Detective stories are never realistic. I mean, in the real world most cops never deal with a murder at all. Especially if they are stationed somewhere like Orkney.’
‘Or if they work for some peculiar part of the Force like your dad. Which bit of the Force does he work for anyway?’
‘It’s just an undercover thing that was set up ages ago,’ she said. Fuck it. Why shouldn’t she tell him? She was so fed up with all the secrecy rubbish. Just tell him and forget it. No big deal. He’d already guessed most of it anyway. ‘It’s run by this Commander bloke. I’ve never met him. I’ve just heard stories from Jim. Apparently he used to be in Intelligence. And then he moved and set up this funny lot. Half spies, half cops. Policemen who use spy tradecraft: fake ID, secret messages, that sort of thing. Jim calls them the Diggers.’
‘Diggers? What you mean like the seventeenth-century radicals? Why?’
‘Because they go underground, I suppose. Maybe because they are always trying to pass themselves off as road workers or builders. Easy identities to adopt. Deep cover. Drop the agent behind enemy lines and leave them there to work their way in. Except that in this case the enemy lines are domestic. The enemy within.’
She regretted telling him as soon as she had stopped talking, saw his eyes had registered interest, realized she’d said too much, given him too many juicy details. She felt slightly sick.
‘Half cop. Half spy. Now that could make quite a good story,’ Tom said.
Jesus. Good story? Her stomach churned. ‘I don’t see that there’s much of a story there,’ she said too quickly. ‘I mean, like you said, everybody knows already. Where’s the news? Undercover cops watching loony lefties. Nothing you couldn’t have guessed anyway. Cops with delusions of grandeur. Policemen with beards and dark glasses. Silly disguises.’
She told herself to shut up, she was making it worse. She turned her wrist slightly, checked the time. ‘We have to go.’
Jim was in the kitchen hovering by the kettle, still a little bit grey, a little bit hunched.
‘Feeling any better?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘I’ve been listening to the radio most of the day,’ he said. ‘Nothing but the miners’ strike. Sounds like it’s a bit of a mess at Orgreave. Violent clashes between the police and pickets. Injuries on both sides. Glad I’m up here.’ He winced. ‘So what have you two been up to while I’ve been lying on my deathbed?’ He eyed Tom suspiciously over her shoulder. She could sense Tom fidgeting, flicking his thumb against his finger.
‘Oh this and that,’ she said. ‘We weren’t short of things to do.’
‘No. I’m sure you weren’t.’
Jim glugged some milk into his mug of tea. ‘I’m going back to bed. I’ll be out and about tomorrow, if I survive the night.’
She asked casually, ‘Where are you going?’
He narrowed his eyes until they were little more than splinters.
‘I’m going to visit Bill, follow up on a couple of other people I need to see, find out what crimes and misdemeanours have been committed in my absence.’
She smiled, willed herself not to redden. ‘We’ll be out all day tomorrow as well.’
‘Will you now. And where are you going?’
‘Haven’t decided yet.’
‘Well, I’ll see you tomorrow then. At some point.’
‘If you survive the night, that is,’ she replied.
He stared at her, hard. ‘I’ve reviewed the situation. And I’ve decided that I’m going to make it after all. I’ll be alive tomorrow all day.’
‘That’s good news. I won’t have to waste any time making funeral arrangements for you then.’
‘No. You won’t.’ He paused. ‘I’ve made my own arrangements for that eventuality anyway. Or should I say inevitability. But you won’t have to do much when it comes to it. Not that much anyway. No more than a loyal and dutiful daughter should have to do.’
He disappeared into his room leaving her to listen to the clock ticking. She wondered whether he was serious about the funeral arrangements.
They sat huddled over their tea in the living room, the night’s silence punctuated only by the crow scrabbling on the roof, and the stiffening gusts of wind whispering down the chimney.
Tom leaned forward, ‘What was that all about? Do you think he suspects something is up?’
‘He always suspects something is up.’
‘Do you think we should say something to him about the man in the house?’
‘What, you mean like, Jim, we found out where that woman you were talking to in the café lived, we broke into her house and there was a strange man upstairs snooping?’
‘I see your point. Best not say anything then.’ He yawned. ‘I’m dropping off. I’m going to bed. See you in the morning.’
As he stretched, the metal spiral of his shirt-pocket notebook glinted.
‘See you.’
She wasn’t tired. She w
ent outside. Everything was quiet. The amber eyes of a cat glowed from the far side of the courtyard. She crossed to the garden, inhaled the perfume of the roses, circled her miniature stone monument glowing in the half-light, feeling comforted to be near it, her own shrine to the happily ever before and after. She gazed down at Tirlsay, followed the hill’s contours to the wood, searching for an amber flare, a movement, shadow. Nothing.
She stood quietly in the hall outside Tom’s bedroom. The door was open a crack, the light was still on. She caught a glimpse of him sitting in bed, writing in his notebook. She pulled back and waited silently for a moment, pondering. Knight or knave. Knave or knight. And then she pushed open the door, swung suddenly into the room. A real Jim manoeuvre. He looked up, startled, and jammed his notebook under the blankets.
‘Just thought I’d say good night,’ she said. ‘See you in the morning.’
She pulled the door shut again, left him looking guilty. Shit. That was a stupid slip-up. What an idiot she had been. Telling him about the Diggers. She was going to have to find out what was in his notebook. She retreated to her room, stretched out on the candlewick bedspread. In the distance she heard the low call of an owl. It was answered by another call, nearer. Then another. Up on the roof.
13
She sat up, startled awake by, what? It sounded like the blast of a horn. Perhaps it was the wind. It must have been the wind, surging out of nowhere, rolling in waves down the hillside, crashing on to Nethergate, howling, making the gale at Kitchener’s Memorial feel like a taster, a forewarning of the worse storm to come. Another blast, fusing with the growing rumble of approaching thunder, made her duck instinctively. A wailing rush of air pulled at the eaves of the croft as it hounded past. Debris hurled on to the slates. Clattering like hooves. Cries of crows caught up in the mayhem. And then she heard something else, closer, softer, almost drowned out by the raging of the sudden summer storm. She held her breath, trying to identify the sound below the turbulence. There it was again. Faint brushing. Not above but outside. Just beyond her window. The careful tread of a footstep. Nils? Had Nils come back to visit her again? It didn’t seem likely. This was somebody trying to disguise their presence, not attract her attention. An intruder. Her brain seized up. Stupefied with fear. Flat for an eternity of thirty seconds before her mind flipped into overdrive. Panicking. Flailing around inside her skull. Sending her brain spinning into frenetic activity, shooting urgent messages out to her limbs. She had to stay calm, be sensible. She needed to wake Jim. He could deal with it. He would know what to do.