Come Death and High Water (George & Molly Palmer-Jones)

by Ann Cleeves

  “Wonderful,” he said. “Most efficient. Now I feel like a drink. You must have one too. I insist. Do sit down.”

  He poured drinks. Elizabeth guiltily and John gratefully accepted.

  “Well, Charlie,” John said. “ How did you manage it?”

  “What do you mean?” He was enjoying his role of host. He had turned up the Calor-Gas fire and was looking to see if he could offer them anything to eat.

  “How did you manage to knock over the tilly?”

  “Oh no,” he said. “I didn’t knock it over. I was sitting here, you see, in front of the fire. Even if I had moved in my sleep I couldn’t have reached the lamp. It was on that table.”

  “I can see that. Something must have knocked it over.”

  “Perhaps it was the wind. Or it might have been Tomo.”

  Tomo was the island cat. He was supposed to live in the observatory out-buildings and keep down the mice, but Charlie had adopted him.

  “I suppose it might have been, although it doesn’t seem very likely. Tomo’s only a kitten and the tilly is quite heavy.”

  “All the same,” said Charlie, looking at John with strangely blank, blue eyes, “I think that it must have been Tomo. There’s no other explanation, you know. And really there’s no harm done.”

  When John and Elizabeth returned to the observatory, in the common room Jasmine Carson was pouring cocoa from a jug, and everyone was there. Cocoa at ten o’clock was an observatory tradition, served usually by Elizabeth. When it had not arrived Paul Derbyshire had become petulant, and had gone to look for her. When he could not find her it had not occurred to him to make the drink. Mark and Nick had returned. Their woollen socks were hanging on the fire guard to dry. They had found the brooding atmosphere in the common room oppressive. Pamela and Jerry were silent, the doctor was muttering trivial complaints and Jasmine had returned to the log, treating the entries with as much scorn as if she were marking a mediocre exam paper. So they had offered to make the cocoa, and on their return with it everyone made some attempt at ordinary, polite conversation.

  When John and Elizabeth came in and told them about the fire in the Wendy House, nobody was very surprised. Charlie was appallingly absentminded. Things like that were always happening to him.

  Chapter Three

  They woke, next morning, to a storm. The wind penetrated the building, rattling windows, making the solid-fuel boiler burn so furiously that the water boiled in the pipes. The thick walls could not shut out the sound of the gale, but John was used to the weather, and was woken not by the wind but by the telephone. It was a quarter to seven. He put on Elizabeth’s dressing gown and went barefoot to the telephone extension in the sitting room of their flat. As he had expected it was the coastguard with a routine cone message. He stood, shivering. The coastguard wanted to chat. At last he returned to the bedroom, dressed and went out on to the island. The wind was blowing from the north-west, dragging the shore into ridges, driving the surface water into grey and white waves. He pulled the canvas cone from the generator shed. The wind filled it and made it unwieldy. He carried it to the mast on the Beacon, fastened ropes and shackles and hoisted it: an anachronistic and unnecessary statement of the obvious, a warning to shipping that there was a gale from a northerly direction. The tide was not full in, but already the waves were breaking over the flat rocks at the north of the island, and had reached the stilt legs of the sea-watching hide. The flaps of the hide were shut and that surprised him. It should be a good day for seabirds and he had expected Nick and Mark to be there already. When he got back to the flat Elizabeth was being sick.

  He wished that he could be outside waiting for the seabirds, but breakfast was at 8.30 and he had promised Elizabeth that he would help her to cook it. Eventually she looked so uncomfortable in the kitchen that he sent her outside for fresh air. He was surprised when she went, without argument, pleased when she came back exhilarated.

  “It’s an amazing storm,” she said. “ I can’t remember one like it before. The seawatching hide is completely cut off. I hope that Charlie and Jerry managed to get out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jerry arranged to meet Charlie there before breakfast to discuss work.”

  “There was no one in the hide when I raised the cone at seven o’clock. If they are there they’ll be quite safe. They’ll only have to wait for the tide to go out.”

  “I suppose that Jerry might be late for breakfast. Charlie usually has his in the Wendy House.”

  But when they went to the dining room everyone, except Charlie, was there. They were talking about the weather. It was impossible to ignore it. The windows were streaked with salt spray and there was a background noise of wind and water. Occasionally there was the sharp crack of a slate being lifted from an outhouse roof.

  “You cowards,” John said to Nick and Mark. “I should have thought that you’d be in the hide on a morning like this. The birds could be pouring up the coast. It’s brilliant seawatching weather.”

  He was rather annoyed. He would have liked to be there—he was doing a special study of shearwaters—but someone should have been counting the seabirds. It was the first big storm of the season.

  “We would have gone,” Nick said resentfully, “ but we thought that Jerry was meeting Charlie there and we didn’t want to intrude. By the time we realized that no one was in the hide, the tide was so high that we couldn’t get across. We’ve done a count from the west cliffs but we must have missed a lot.”

  Jerry was pale and miserable. “ I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I meant to get up to meet him, but I overslept. I hope that Charlie didn’t wait for me.”

  John watched Nick and Mark exchange glances laden with schoolboy significance. Jerry had overslept on previous weekends and had been seen to emerge from Pamela Marshall’s bedroom. There had developed a story, which had started as a joke and become half-believed myth, concerning Pamela’s sexual appetite and her seduction of Jerry. Later, John thought, the boys would snigger together, the myth would become more elaborate. He felt oddly old. Pamela Marshall was ignoring Jerry and the boys. She had brought her own expensive brand of marmalade, and she was spreading it on to toast. He realized that he was staring at her and turned away. As he did so he caught Jasmine Carson’s eye. She had seen him staring. She smiled maliciously. He no longer felt old, but painfully adolescent. He noticed that Jasmine’s hair was damp, and to relieve his embarrassment he said:

  “Where have you been this morning, Miss Carson?”

  She looked at him as if he were a fool. “I always take a walk before breakfast.”

  Mark joined the conversation: “Did you do any seawatching? We didn’t see you on the west cliffs.”

  “What I have been doing, young man, is my own business. Now, perhaps you would be kind enough to give me an accurate account of the birds you have seen.”

  After breakfast John, Mark and Nick went out to seawatch. John did not stay to help Elizabeth to clear the plates. She understood the urgency. It was his work, his passion. He had missed the best stage of the tide, but it was possible that birds had been blown further into the estuary and that they would fly back past the island, towards the open sea as the tide ebbed. It was not only that he was anxious that he might miss some rare or beautiful bird; it was a matter of principle that everything should be counted and recorded.

  His sense of urgency, almost of desperation, made him intolerant, increasingly irritated by Mark’s flippancy. As he had expected they were speculating about Jerry’s relationship with Pam. Nick’s pomposity suited his mood more closely. John had hoped that Jerry would come with them. He took his birdwatching seriously and had a flair for identification which seemed instinctive, but Jerry had said that he must apologize to Charlie and had hurried off towards the Wendy House. There was only enough room in the hide for four people to sit in comfort. This was Doctor Derbyshire’s usual excuse for the infrequency of his expeditions from the comfort of the obser
vatory common room, and he had used it again today, saying at breakfast that he was prepared to sacrifice the opportunity of a place in the hide in favour of younger, more skilled observers. He had waited for the last statement to be contradicted, but it was not. John would have been happy to have had Jasmine Carson as a fourth companion in the hide—she was meticulous, yet enjoyed the birds—but Nick said that she made him feel as if he were still at school, so they had escaped immediately after breakfast.

  Although the tide had started to ebb the wind was still strong. They had to turn their heads away from it to speak, and then they had to shout. They were all wearing wellingtons, and on the low, rocky part of the island just south of the hide the water was only calf deep. They waded through. Further out to sea white spindrift was blown across the surface. Nick and Mark stood aside to let John climb the ladder to the hide first because they knew that the door would be locked. John balanced at the top of the sturdy ladder, reached in the deep pocket of his oiled jacket for the key, then tried to fiddle it into the big, brass padlock.

  “Damn,” he said at last. “ It was open all the time. I must have forgotten to lock it last time I was here.”

  He pulled open the door and climbed in. Despite the light from the door he could not see at first. The glare from the sea had been bright and his eyes had not adjusted to the darkness. He was at home in the hide though, and felt without hesitation for the stiff and rusty bolts of the big, front flap, and pushed it open. The light and a fine wave of sea spray seemed to blow in together. He wiped the water from his eyes. It’s like being a part of the sea, he thought. This is what they mean by being at one with nature. He felt intensely emotional, close to tears, and the experience had little to do with the prospect of leaving the island. Then he smiled at his romanticism and thought that they would have to sit well away from the flap, or their binoculars would be covered with spray and quite useless. By now the others were coming up the ladder. He turned to speak to them, to share with them his excitement, and he saw then the body in the corner. Lying on his back on the floor, his legs still hooked round the bench seat, was Charlie. His eyes, pale and blank as when they had last met, stared at John. Charlie was unmistakably dead.

  At first John only felt the panic of responsibility. What should I do? Should I call a doctor, or an ambulance? An ambulance would never get here. Should I try to move the body? Because he felt that he should, he felt for a pulse, listened for a heart beat, but he was quite sure before then that Charlie was dead. It was Nick, standing on the ladder, looking into the hide, and watching in bewildered silence, who saw the thin, green nylon rope, like a trickle of green blood around Charlie’s neck, so it was Nick who forced him to accept the reality of the scene. His voice was high-pitched with hysteria.

  “Somebody’s killed Charlie Todd,” he said, and in the enclosed space of the hide it seemed to John that he was shouting.

  “Somebody’s killed Charlie Todd.” Nick was gasping for breath as he pointed at the convulsed body. “It’s one of the mist-net guys. He’s been killed by a mist-net guy.”

  Then he looked ill, and half climbed, half slipped down the ladder to the rocks. He caught on to Mark’s shoulder to steady himself, held on to it longer than he needed for comfort, was stifling sobs. Nick’s hysteria surprised John. It occurred to him that the boy was over-reacting, and he felt suddenly calm, mature and sensible. He shut the flap and bolted it, climbed out of the hide, fitted the padlock and carefully locked it, then descended the ladder to the rock. Nick was already becoming more controlled and began to apologize. John knew exactly what must be done now. There had never, really, been any question.

  “I’m going to telephone the police,” he said. “ You two stay here. I expect that Charlie’s key is in his pocket, but you two stay here, just in case. While you’re here,” he added, partly serious, partly trying to relieve their tension, “you might try to count some seabirds.”

  As John walked down the island towards the observatory he saw that someone was on the shore, following the tide out towards Gillibry. Although the figure was a long way off, he recognized the tall, thin silhouette and the shape of the old army rucksack which the man carried high on his back.

  It’s George, he thought, and he felt the relief, the release of shared responsibility.

  George Palmer-Jones was not quite sure why he retained his membership of Gillibry, nor why he had allowed himself to be elected to the committee. He had first become involved through his friendship with Jerry Packham. They had met on the Scilly Isles one October. Everyone who was at all interested in rare birds tried to spend some time on the Scillies in the autumn, but George found many of the obsessive birdwatchers tedious and blinkered. Jerry had been quiet, a little over-awed by the fanatics and the number of birds, and the two men, quite different in background and temperament, had become friends. At that time Gillibry had been owned still by an elderly, reclusive lady who had allowed the ringing group to operate from there and to store their equipment in her barn. Soon after, she had died. Charlie, erratically, had been a member of the ringing group, though he had never applied for a full licence. He had been at the height of his success. His accountant had been in favour of him buying the island, but he had been uncertain, uncommitted. Paul Derbyshire, chairman of the ringing group, had asked Jerry Packham to call in George Palmer-Jones to help to fire Charlie’s imagination. George had long been an advocate of a west-coast bird observatory to replace Lundy. George Palmer-Jones was a respected figure in British ornithology. He was a member of the Council of the RSPB, he had once been on the British Birds Rarity Committee, he appeared, occasionally, on BBC natural history programmes. Charlie had listened to George, the island was bought, and Gillibry Bird Observatory Trust had been formed. George had felt that it would be churlish to withdraw immediately. He had paid his subscription, intending to visit the island a few times during the first year, to remain a nominal member for another couple of years, and then to resign: Gillibry was a long way from his home, after his retirement he had become increasingly interested in rare birds and there was little chance of a rarity turning up in North Devon. But he had come to appreciate the autumn weekends on Gillibry, and though he seldom visited the island more than once a year, he had not resigned. He admired John Lansdown’s abilities as warden and as a birdwatcher, and there was something sedate and old-fashioned about the committee weekends which contrasted with the frenzy and chaos of hunting rare birds. It was like a return to the days when natural history was the pastime of eccentric gentlemen, of elderly parsons and retired dons. He could imagine Jasmine Carson as one of the Victorian ladies who had founded the RSPB to prevent the import of exotic birds to provide feathers for fashionable hats, and Doctor Derbyshire, with his love of order and meticulous detail and lists, as one of the originators of the theory of taxonomy. Even the young men seemed different from the rest of their generation. They did not bring girlfriends to sunbathe in bikinis in the observatory garden, they did not get drunk on the doctor’s whisky, take drugs, sniff glue or decide to become vegetarian. He was not sure that such an anachronistic organization was healthy, or that it would survive, but for one weekend a year he could enjoy it.

  He was walking out against the wind. It was as if nothing else existed—not the mainland where the people at work hardly recognized that there was a storm, certainly did not know which way the wind was blowing, nor the island ahead of him. Nothing mattered but the effort of walking against the wind, the sand stinging at his eyes and the surface water blowing around his boots. He stopped once, on his way across, to catch his breath. He turned his back to the wind, almost leant against it to rest. Then he saw the two navy-blue Land Rovers leaving the shore. They were not driven slowly across the sand, as John would have driven the observatory Land Rover to save it from the salt spray, in a fruitless attempt to slow down the inevitable corrosion, but frantically, at speed. He realized that something must be wrong on the island. He turned back into the wind and continued his walk.

/>   As he walked through the gates into the observatory compound John saw Paul Derbyshire coming up the path from the south of the island. It was so unusual to see the doctor away from the common-room fire that he almost waited, to find out what had prompted the older man to face the gale. Then he decided that he could not face explaining why he was not seawatching and he hurried in to the ringing room and the telephone. There he hesitated, unsure whether he should make a 999 call or phone straight to the police station in Gillicombe. He was quite certain that Charlie was dead, so there was little urgency, and he decided on the police station. Then he dialled, and he noticed with surprise that his hands were shaking. He wished that George had already arrived. The policeman who answered was slow and calm, and took his name and address, then passed him to another officer, whose name and rank were given, but immediately forgotten.

  Superintendent Savage was at home. It was his weekend off. He had slept late and was nursing an unobtrusive hangover. He had spent the night before in the Catholic Club. It was the only place in Gillicombe where he felt really at ease. Most of the members were incomers, Irish, or Mersey-siders like himself. His wife never complained about his evenings out. Her lack of complaint was a kind of repayment. He had moved to Devon because of her. She had always been emotionally frail and had found it impossible to live with his work in Liverpool. If he was late home from a shift he would find her a neurotic wreck, peering through the curtains, waiting for the sound of his car. She had settled well in Gillicombe, and was happy. Despite his boredom he had never regretted the move and wished that she could forget his sacrifice, would stop being quite so grateful. They were having breakfast together when the telephone went. They had no children, and it was a calm, unhurried meal. Mary answered the telephone.