‘Grim. The Knockhaven lifeboat’s gone down, with loss of life. I’ll have to go.’
Kirstie looked stricken. ‘Oh no! How – how terrible! And there was me just doing some baking today to put in the freezer for your mother’s stall at the lifeboat coffee morning next week! Do they know who was on it?’
Marjory, already picking up her handbag, shook her head. ‘No information as yet. Oh, I am sorry, Kirstie. It’s been such a lovely evening – I hate to break it up.’ She looked wistfully round the pleasant domestic scene, at the coffee cups waiting on the table beside the crystal tumblers and the bottle of Bladnoch, at Bill getting reluctantly to his feet.
‘Bill, why don’t you stay?’ she urged. ‘It’s a bit fierce to walk back on a night like this, but we can rise to a taxi, surely?’
‘No, no. Now, if this had happened before we got to the meringues, it might be different, but . . .’ They all laughed, but their farewells were subdued.
Marjory started the car and drove off miserably. She had been so happy to have had the chance to be just another farmer’s wife again, instead of someone with a difficult, demanding and high-powered job. And she was dragging Bill away from the sort of convivial evening he loved, which, thanks to that job, had been denied him for so long. Was this going to set them back again, just when she had thought—
Bill reached across to cover her hand on the steering wheel with his. ‘I’m maybe wrong, but I just wonder if you’re worrying that I’m upset about having to cut the evening short? I’m not. This is a disaster for Knockhaven – for the whole area. There isn’t a community in Galloway that doesn’t feel the lifeboat’s special – look at the way even Kirstie, living the best part of twenty miles away, was baking to help raise funds. It’s going to be tough, and it’s you and your lot are going to have to pick up the pieces.
‘Listening to what you said tonight about what you went through last year, I was ashamed that you’ve never said that to me – I suppose, because I’ve been clinging on to some sort of stupid grievance as if it was a comfort blanket. You’ve a hard job and I’m afraid I’ve made it harder. I’m sorry.’ He picked up her hand and kissed it.
She felt a lump in her throat. ‘Oh, Bill,’ she said, and bit her lip. Then, because they’d never been the kind to wallow in sentiment, she went on lightly, ‘Didn’t someone once say love meant never having to say you’re sorry?’
‘Someone daft, then,’ Bill said darkly, and they both laughed, comforted and comfortable and at ease with each other once more.
‘Don’t wait up,’ she said as she dropped him, and in the rain and darkness set off for the winding coast road to the stricken town.
Luke Smith looked surprisingly tranquil. His eyes were closed and his face below the white helmet was unscarred; only the blue-grey colour of his skin and a trace of froth around his still soft, almost childish mouth suggested unnatural death. The odd angle of his head, though, and the smashed limbs visible through great rents in his weatherproof clothing were evidence of the brute violence inflicted on his body by waves dashing it on to the jagged rocks.
He was not, Tam MacNee noted, wearing a life-jacket, so the chances were that he had drowned before the worst of the injuries happened. The rescuers had laid him up here on the stony shore beyond the tide-line, but hadn’t taken time even to cover the corpse; they were battling now to reach another yellow-jacketed figure on the exposed rocks to the southern side, having to resist the sucking undertow of the waves sweeping over them as they groped desperately for handholds to cling to. It was agonisingly slow work.
MacNee was standing on the raised edge of the bay, looking down into Fuill’s Inlat. There had been a serious delay on the way down – an accident had been blocking the road a couple of miles north since early evening – but the ambulances were mercifully in place now, parked on the road at the top on the apron which had been newly surfaced to service Elder’s Executive Homes. A rough track led from it to an old tumbledown stone shed down at the shore and they had managed to get half a dozen cars down here, parking them so that their headlights were trained on the operation below.
It was close to high tide now. Waves were raging to and fro within the confined space of the cove, gaining force as they bounced off its sides. Shredded remains of the lifeboat’s orange buoyancy tubes had been pitched up on rocks and shore, incongruously cheerful against the dark boulders and the black menace of the swirling sea, and other debris – rails, broken plastic, ropes – was bobbing in the edge of the waves. The rigid hull of the boat was wedged upside down in the centre of a group of rocks towards the northern side, their knife-edged points showing above foaming water. There was a figure in yellow there too, limp as a rag doll, its helmeted head being submerged as the waves rose, reappearing as they fell back.
They had reached their objective now, were manhandling the sagging form rapidly back along the rescue chain they had established. MacNee saw a couple of the men bend over to check, then a shout went up. An unused stretcher was waiting just above the waterline; a moment later, the victim was strapped to it and four of them were rushing up the hill to one of the two waiting ambulances at the top. It took off at speed a few minutes later, lights flashing.
As they went past, MacNee caught only a glimpse of a man’s face, deathly pale above his dark beard, his eyes half-open, with scars and gashes still trickling blood. Rob Anderson; the last time he’d seen him, Rob had been playing the jovial host at the Anchor. ‘He was the lucky one, thrown clear,’ one of the bearers muttered to MacNee. It wasn’t, from the look of him, the word MacNee would have chosen.
They were firing a line across the narrow bay now, securing it midway up the rocks at the southern side and positioning it so that it ran close to where the wreck and that other body lay, dead for a certainty. At the other side, more willing hands fixed it to the landward side of the ruined shed. The tide was on the turn now and more rocks were beginning to show above the still-angry water, giving precarious access; clipped to the line, a man set off. He slipped once, managed to right himself, and then reached the wreck, establishing with some difficulty a secure foothold in one of the crannies between rocks. When he snatched the body from the water’s deadly embrace it looked as small as a child’s, and with it slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift he retraced his steps. The weight made balance more difficult and twice he slipped into the water, but secured by the line could scramble to safety and at last deposited his sad burden on the shore.
There was no haste this time. The rest of the rescue team came over, but with a brief glance averted their eyes. MacNee saw one of them double up to vomit into the sea.
They carried her up sombrely to lay her beside Luke. MacNee knew who Ashley Randall was but had never met her; even if he had, he would have been unable to recognise her, except perhaps from the curling wisps of saturated fair hair clinging round the face which was so demolished by the blows it had taken as to be nothing more than a bloody pulp. Despite having served his time in traffic, he had never got used to graphic demonstrations of the fragility of human flesh; MacNee turned away, his own gut churning.
Raised voices caught his attention and he followed the sound to the road at the top of the bluff where a big 4x4 was parked under a street light. The driver’s door was standing open and a tall, powerful-looking man was wrestling with two others who seemed to be trying to control him. MacNee set off at a run but almost immediately the struggle was over; the big man, his head bowed, was being helped round to the passenger seat while the other man got in and prepared to drive it away.
MacNee stopped. He had long ago learned that ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ is a wise motto for any policeman; he walked on again, slowly enough not to reach the top before the car was driven away.
‘Aye, aye, Tam! Bad business, this!’
Turning his head, MacNee saw Jason Channell, one of the Anchormen he had recently played at darts and chief mechanic to the lifeboat, coming up the track behind him in one of the ca
rs which had been supplying light. He had stopped and rolled down his window.
‘Bad, right enough.’ MacNee jerked his head towards the disappearing car. ‘What was all that about?’
‘That’s the Honorary Secretary. Elder – you know, him that’s built these.’ Channell indicated the five new houses, still blazing light. ‘He went clean gyte this evening when he heard it was Rob taking charge instead of Willie. He was like a hen on a hot griddle all evening and when the news came through he was out the shed and along here with the rescue party, yelling and swearing and getting in the way. Then he kinda collapsed and we got him back in his car but it looks like he maybe took another turn just now.’
MacNee frowned. ‘I’ve never come across the man, but surely he’s a reputation for being a bit of a hard man?’
‘Aye, well, there’s a story going round that him and the wee doctor were having a carry-on. He maybe wasn’t keen about his fancy piece going out on a night as fierce as this with just the acting cox.’
‘Rob? Good man, wasn’t he?’
‘I’d have said he was probably safe enough. But maybe Elder knew something we didn’t – I can’t see Willie being such a gomeril as to go into Fuill’s Inlat.’
‘But Rob obviously was.’
Channell scratched his head. ‘Beats me. There’s something funny about all this. They’ll be able to tell you better along at the shed. I wasn’t by the radio when it all went wrong – just there was a gey lot of shouting and we were on our way along here.’
‘Fine. I’ll have to phone my inspector anyway. She’s on a night out – she’ll not be pleased.’
The other man nodded, and drove on. The cortege bearing the bodies on stretchers, covered now, was plodding wearily up the hill to the second ambulance; other dispirited, silent men were getting back into the minibus that had brought them along. The cars which had been at the bottom of the track were lurching slowly up it now.
MacNee made his phone call, looking back down into the cove as he spoke to Fleming. Two of the team were packing up equipment; another had gone to reclaim the line from the higher side of the narrow bay. Watching him idly as he detached it, MacNee’s eye was caught by something.
Out at the point of the rocky ridge, behind and above where the man had been working, there was a flash of green light, then a moment later, another, and after the same interval, another. Whatever was emitting it was concealed by the bulk of the rocks – was it some sort of warning beacon visible from the sea, perhaps, to mark the danger of this entrance? He had finished his call and was still watching it when one of the men carrying equipment reached him, and he was curious enough to ask him about it.
‘That green light flashing there –’ he indicated it, ‘is that a warning light that the cox should have seen?’
The man followed the direction of his pointing finger, then said blankly, ‘There shouldn’t be a light there at all. Drew! Tommy!’ he shouted to the men below. ‘What’s that light out on the end of the rocks there? Come up here and you’ll see it.’
The two men climbed up to join them. ‘My God!’ one exclaimed. ‘Green, flashing light! That’s what you look for, coming into Knockhaven harbour!’
They took off at a run, heading in opposite directions, two along the flattish top of the ridge towards where the light was coming from and the other to the farther side beyond the shed, to see if he could get a view across. He reached his objective first; MacNee heard him shout and wave to recall them, but couldn’t hear what he said. He hurried down to the edge of the retreating sea himself and reached it just as the three men came back together.
‘What did you see, Tommy?’ one demanded.
Tommy’s face was grim. ‘Some bastard’s done this deliberately, Drew.’
‘Done what?’ MacNee demanded.
‘There’s a fixed red light on the end gable of that shed. There’s a green flashing light higher up on the other side. That’s the pattern of leading lights that tells you you’re on course for the entrance to the harbour at Knockhaven.’
Drew said slowly, ‘I thought it was queer – Rob’s a wise-like man. Though you’d expect to see the lights from the houses on the cliff before Knockhaven on your way in – you’d have thought he’d have maybe wondered about that.’
‘Look up there.’ MacNee gestured to the little development fringing the bay. ‘They’ve only just opened this up. It’s probably the first time they’ve had the lights on like that. You could easy mistake them – forget there were houses here at all.’
There was a heavy silence. ‘Right enough,’ one of the men said.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ MacNee warned them. ‘I’ll get someone down to secure the site.’
‘I’ll radio the coastguard to put out a warning to shipping,’ Drew said. ‘We’re not wanting anyone else landing in here.’
They fetched the line and coiled it up, then, with the last of the equipment, plodded tiredly up the hill. MacNee, summoning some unlucky constable for a cold, unpleasant night of duty, looked down at the sad remains of the Maud’n’Milly. ‘“On Life’s rough ocean luckless starr’d,”’ he murmured, then, ‘Control? I’ve a rare job here for somebody.’
By the time Marjory Fleming arrived after the twenty-minute drive down the coast, it was raining only fitfully and the wind was dropping. By half-past midnight on any normal night, most of the douce folk of Knockhaven would be either preparing for bed or in bed already, but tonight lights blazed from the windows and the streets were thronged with people, talking in sober groups or, as Marjory found when she reached the brilliantly illuminated lifeboat shed, just watching in silence. As she wound down her window to speak to the constable controlling access to the pier, she could hear a woman sobbing.
There were two patrol cars parked there already, blue lights revolving, and she spotted MacNee in earnest conversation with a couple of uniforms. He detached himself and came towards her.
‘I got a slightly fuller briefing on the way down,’ she told him. ‘Any relatives here?’
‘No. Luke Smith’s parents have been informed, but they live in Edinburgh. Ashley Randall’s husband was at the scene with his mother, apparently, but they didn’t hang about after the body was recovered. Rob Anderson’s wife’s gone to the hospital, but he’s in a bad way.’
‘If he made a mistake as crass as that I doubt if he’ll have the will to live,’ Fleming said crisply. ‘So who do I need to see? The Honorary Secretary, I suppose, since he’s technically in charge.’
‘That’s Ritchie Elder – local boy made good, so-called self-made man. God likely wouldn’t want to take responsibility.’
‘Must be in quite a state, with an accident like this happening on his watch.’
‘You could say that,’ MacNee said dryly, then, as Fleming made to go into the shed, went on, ‘but hold your horses! It’s a wee bittie complicated. They’ve packed him off home. Seems there may have been a touch of the hochmagandy going on with Ashley Randall and he’s not himself just at the moment.’
‘Ah. Difficult situation.’
‘That’s not the half of it. I noticed this green light flashing when I was over at Fuill’s Inlat and when they investigated they found someone had rigged up lights at the entrance to the cove.’
‘You’re not telling me this wasn’t a tragic mistake?’
‘They’re the same as the lights that lead you into Knockhaven harbour.’
Fleming stared at him, aghast. ‘You mean we’re looking for someone who deliberately tried to wreck the lifeboat?’
‘Hard to see what else it could mean. And with the way these things happen, the cox radioed that the teacher laddie was in a state, wanting to throw himself overboard, so they were distracted trying to restrain him just as they headed in.’
Fleming groaned. It was almost a truism that if things were bad, something else would happen that made them worse. Experience should have hardened her by now, both to the cruelty of fate and human wickedness, but the lifeboat! Pe
ople die tragically every day, but in any locality with towns and villages where men go down to the sea in ships, the lifeboat service has a special place in the community’s heart and the loss of two, or perhaps three, lives in this context would have a particular resonance. The thought that this could have been the result of a deliberate act was hugely shocking.
‘Vandals, I suppose,’ she said bitterly. ‘We’ve become the sort of sick society where kids get their kicks out of trying to derail trains and dropping rocks off bridges on to passing cars.’
‘Could be. I was having a wee word with some of the locals,’ MacNee nodded to the group by the police cars, ‘and it seems they’re looking for Rob Anderson’s stepson. His mother reported he’d taken her car without permission and he’s under age. He’s a young tearaway and there’s no love lost between him and Rob. You might just wonder . . .’
‘Aye. You might. Tell them to take him in for questioning when they catch up with him. I’ll go and have a word with them inside but I doubt there’s much we can do before morning. Is the accident scene secured? Thanks, you’ve done a good job here.
‘Now away and get your beauty sleep, Tam.’ She smiled at him hopefully, but he just touched a finger to an imaginary forelock.
‘Right. I’ll be off then. Goodnight, boss.’
At least he hadn’t called her ma’am. With a sigh, Fleming went over to the open door of the shed.
It was a long, cold, boring night when you were sitting in a patrol car by yourself in the darkness in a deserted bay, looking out over a bare shore with only the eerie flashes of a green light for company, and around three in the morning even that stopped. There hadn’t been a sign of movement since PC Keith Ingles came on duty and he only realised he’d fallen asleep when the sound of a car’s engine wakened him.
He had parked the car at the further end of the area in front of the little row of houses, in darkness now. Still fuddled with sleep, he turned and saw a car’s headlights sweep round the corner and had to shut his eyes again as the beam caught him full in the face. The car braked sharply, and when he could see again it had disappeared back round the corner. A moment later he heard it take off fast towards the main road.
The Darkness and the Deep Page 9