Ian had little sail to aid his manoeuvrability and he was losing speed. In desperation, he let the foresail sheet fly and put the outboard astern. Lonely Lady stopped dead and even made a little sternway against the draw of the remaining canvas. Skoll glanced off her bow and circled to come in again, yelling unintelligible curses in broadest Northumbrian.
Ian gave himself up for lost and braced himself for the impact. Sheila waited confidently for whatever rabbit he might next pull out of the hat.
With a whoosh and a clatter the helicopter came overhead, flattening a disc of sea with its wind. Ian saw a stranger in the open doorway. Keith’s face, very white and with staring eyes, was visible through the perspex. A rock the size of a football hit the sea and a column of water shot up between the two boats.
Harry Skoll leaned on his helm and bore away. Even Dora could not expect him to continue his attack in the teeth of dive-bombing. He headed east, yawning enormously and shaking his fist. He knew of a secluded anchorage beyond Staples Island where he could pump out the petrol and restore his boat’s identity before heading for the Tyne to establish an alibi.
Lonely Lady’s keel grounded gently on the sand. Ian kicked the anchor over the side and they half swam and half waded ashore. The helicopter was down a hundred yards away, its blades still idling round, and two men were stepping down.
Ian turned to Sheila and put out his hand. ‘By God,’ he said, ‘we made it!’
Sheila took the hand, looked down and gave a squeak of horror. Ian saw for the first time that the sleeve of his oilskin jacket was burned away and that the skin of his wrist and forearm was blistered and charred.
It began to hurt. It hurt like hell.
Back at the helicopter, Keith produced his Browning from the belt holster, led Paul Cardinal out from under the circling blades and patted him over. If the American had a weapon on him it was only a tiny penknife.
‘No hard feelings?’ Keith said.
The American shrugged. ‘It wasn’t the first time I’ve been searched,’ he said. ‘Felt quite like old times.’
*
There was little said on the flight to Newton Lauder. Even if the noise of the engine and rotor had permitted conversation, Ian and Sheila were dozing, Keith was holding the machine in the air by sheer willpower, the pilot was busy and Paul Cardinal had lapsed into silence. But from the moment the helicopter touched down in the field near Briesland House, everybody seemed to be talking at once.
Chief Superintendent Munro, who had been warned by a radio message, was waiting with a uniformed sergeant beside an ambulance, his face split by an unaccustomed grin of delight. Molly was almost dancing around him in impatience to see that Keith had survived undamaged, but Ian Fellowes was first to descend carefully to the ground.
‘Into the ambulance,’ Munro said. ‘I’ll come up and talk to you at the hospital. Go with him, Sergeant Duffus.’ His words were abrupt and his face was sober again but Keith, knowing the Chief Superintendent well, could see the spring in his step and hear the lilt in his voice. Mr Munro was in the grip of overwhelming relief.
‘Yes, of course,’ Ian said. He allowed himself to be led in the direction of the ambulance but he was looking at Molly. ‘Where’s Deborah?’ he asked her.
Keith had followed him to the ground. He was marking time to reassure himself that he really was back on terra firma. ‘I gave her an errand to do, to keep her busy. And I told her that we wouldn’t be back here before midday, so that she’d stay out from under our feet. You don’t want to be fussed over. You’ll see her soon enough.’
Sergeant Fellowes would have liked nothing better than to be fussed over by Deborah, but duty called. ‘Sir,’ he said. Munro, who had been snapping orders at Sergeant Duffus, looked at him. ‘Miss . . . I’ve forgotten her surname.’
‘Blayne,’ Sheila said plaintively from the doorway of the helicopter.
‘Miss Blayne has a sketch of the American, presumably the client for the special weapon. And – Mrs Calder – you’ll look after her until some arrangement can be made?’
‘She will be looked after,’ Munro said firmly. ‘Now go.’
‘Yes, of course.’ But Ian stood where he was. ‘Is Superintendent McHarg on the way?’
‘Not yet.’
‘He’s been informed?’
‘He will be,’ Munro said blandly. ‘I have left a message asking him to call me back. No doubt he will do so, one of these days. If he cares to be discourteous, he can hardly blame me if he is the last person to hear the good news.’
Ian took two more paces towards the ambulance and stopped again. ‘Keith, the boat . . .’
‘Leave it to me.’
Paul Cardinal had been engaged in discussion with the pilot. Some paper changed hands. As the ambulance pulled away, the helicopter drowned all other sound and rose into the air. Molly clutched her hair. Sheila waved with the hand that held her note-pad. The sound began to die.
‘Now, Miss Blayne,’ Munro said. ‘You will come with me and make a statement.’
‘Couldn’t I have a bath and some clean clothes first?’ Sheila asked. ‘Please? Mrs Calder?’
Molly, who had at last accepted Keith’s assurance that both he and Ian Fellowes were sound in wind and limb – apart from some slight scorching of the Sergeant – recognised a cri de coeur. She quite understood that no woman could bear to venture into a man’s world unwashed and in quite the wrong clothes. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Come into the house. It needn’t take long,’ she told Munro.
The Chief Superintendent faltered. He knew Molly of old, and the fact that he was desperate to obtain the evidence, notify all other forces and then crow over McHarg would mean nothing to her compared to offering the necessary female comforts to another woman. ‘Well, be quick,’ he said weakly. ‘And give me that sketch before you go.’
Sheila handed over her note-pad. Munro looked down at the square face, drawn with so lucid a hand as to be more than photographically believable. It was alive.
Paul Cardinal was looking over Munro’s shoulder. ‘Hey! I know that guy,’ he said.
Munro looked up at him. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said repressively. ‘The policeman from Los Angeles.’
‘From the Anti-terrorist Task Force,’ Keith said.
‘I put him away,’ Paul said. ‘It should have been for life but it got plea-bargained down to near zilch. You’ve got a tough one there.’
Munro brightened. A positive identification of the assassin would be another feather in his cap. ‘Tell me,’ he said.
‘You can all stand here if you want to,’ said Keith. ‘I’m going into the house. I’ve got to do something about that bloody boat.’
*
Sheila Blayne, clean, rosy and very much refreshed, came out of the bathroom in a borrowed dressing-gown. Molly called her into Deborah’s bedroom where, laid out on the bed, was a selection of clothes, chosen not so much as being suitable for Sheila but as being unsuitable for Deborah, comprising dresses too young or too old or too revealing for one of Deborah’s years or unsuited to her colouring; and underwear which Molly condemned, in her own mind, as ‘tarty’.
When she heard the buzz of the hair dryer cease, Molly returned. ‘Do you mind if we talk while you get dressed?’ she asked. ‘Mr Munro’s itching to whisk you away and we may not get another chance.’
Sheila dragged Deborah’s brush through her hair and regarded herself unhappily in the dressing-table mirror. ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ she said.
Molly took a seat on the bed. ‘It’s a romantic story,’ she said. ‘If I’ve got it right, you were in the hands of these crooks and they were going to kill you, when Ian Fellowes came along like a knight on a white charger and rescued you. Is that what happened?’
‘Something like that,’ Sheila mumbled. She avoided meeting Molly’s eye in the mirror.
‘When I was’ – Molly nearly said your age but changed it quickly – ‘very young, I dreamed of something like that happening to me. I
was going to fall in love with my rescuer and live happily for ever after.’
‘And did it happen?’ Sheila asked her.
This question, arising from what had been no more than an oblique approach to a difficult subject, nearly threw Molly; but she recovered quickly. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I haven’t lived for ever yet. You could say that Keith came to my rescue once or twice, but I loved him before that. It would be natural for you to get romantic ideas about Ian. And for him to get ideas about you. The knight always fell in love with the maiden in distress. But it probably turned out to be a terrible mistake.’
Sheila’s hair looked like a dishmop but she put down the brush. ‘You don’t have to worry about that,’ she said. ‘Honestly you don’t. In real life, the knight was probably in love with his horse. I know that he’s sort of engaged to your daughter. He told me that.’ She decided not to mention that Ian had only made his revelation after their interlude on the cockpit sole.
‘I’m glad. They’re very well suited and very much in love. I couldn’t bear it if Deborah lost Ian just as life’s opening up for her.’
‘That won’t happen,’ Sheila said. ‘I saw his face when she didn’t meet the helicopter.’ She came over to the bed, clutching the dressing-gown together. ‘These are expensive clothes. Are you sure it’s all right . . .?’
‘Keep anything that takes your fancy,’ Molly said. ‘Deb always was extravagant about clothes but she never knows what will suit her. I . . . I saw your face while you were watching his. I accept what you say, of course, but something happened between you, didn’t it?’
Sheila clutched the dressing-gown tighter for a moment and then, as though deciding that the quicker she got dressed the sooner she could escape from this inquisition, she took it off and draped it carefully across the bed. ‘Nothing that matters,’ she said.
‘My dear,’ Molly said as if speaking to a child, ‘I haven’t brought up a daughter without learning to recognise whether something matters or not. I wouldn’t want to see any one of the three of you hurt.’
‘Honestly . . .’ Sheila choked.
‘Honestly?’
Sheila sat down again and hung her head. ‘It was my fault,’ she whispered. ‘It shouldn’t have happened. But we were cold after being seasick and it was all strange and quiet and sort of ghostly, rather like that poem about “Drifting across a sea of dreams to a haunted shore of song”. And I was still afraid. I only wanted somebody warm and strong to hold onto. I didn’t mean anything to happen and nor did he. But it seemed natural and inevitable at the time. And in a way beautiful. But now I think he’s ashamed. That’s the only bit of it that hurts.’ Her whisper faded away.
Molly was not shocked. She could not have been first Keith’s mistress and then his wife without learning more than a little about human frailty and the pains which it can bring in its wake. Keith in his day had been a notorious philanderer. She was fairly sure that Ian and Deborah had not yet established a physical relationship. From her knowledge of men in general and Keith in particular, she would not have expected Ian Fellowes to live the life of a monk. The question in her mind was whether Sheila was right and the incident ‘did not matter’.
‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Are you ashamed?’
‘No, I’m not,’ Sheila said after a moment of thought. There was both surprise and defiance in her voice.
‘That’s good. But what comes next?’
Sheila shrugged. ‘Nothing comes next. What happened is over. If things had been different . . . but they aren’t. I . . . I’m an artist. Well, an art student. I think I may be a real artist some day. In my year, most of the girls have affairs. They seem to break up and get over it. I’ll do the same.’
‘Your heart isn’t broken, then? I think you’re being very sensible. I shan’t say anything to anybody and I suggest very strongly that you do the same – with one exception. You’re the only person who could suggest to Ian that he must say nothing to Deborah.’
‘He wouldn’t, would he?’
‘He could, as a sort of confessional. Hoping to be forgiven, which he might not be. So you must be firm.’
Sheila sighed. ‘You’re right. Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Calder. I think that you’re the sensible one. It’s not every mother who could discuss things so calmly and reasonably and come to the right answer. My mother certainly couldn’t.’
‘I hope it really is the right answer. And now,’ Molly said, ‘you’d better hurry up. Wash your face with cold water and finish dressing. Mr Munro will be pacing up and down the hall by now. But come back when he’s finished with you. We can give you a bed, just until we can be sure that it’s safe for you to go home.’
‘But would I have to meet Sergeant Fellowes again? And your daughter? I’m not sure that I could face them.’
‘You can do it,’ Molly said. ‘You must. You’ll be amazed what you can do if you really try. If you rush off now, where would you go? Back to Dundee? Ian might be worried enough to chase after you and then the cat would be in the fire.’ Molly was going to say more but she had lost herself in her medley of metaphors. Enough was enough. She smiled vaguely and left the room.
Outside the bedroom door, she leaned her head against the wall and took several deep breaths.
*
Chief Superintendent Munro had finished for the moment with Paul Cardinal and was, as Molly had suggested, lurking in the hall. He was muttering rude comments in Gaelic about the time some women spent in prettying themselves. As soon as Sheila descended the stairs, he swept her off to Newton Lauder.
Keith, meanwhile, had managed to contact by telephone a sailing friend who could collect Lonely Lady, returning her to the Tay and coming back with the van. He hung up, after a lengthy wrangle over the costs of fuel and subsistence, and looked up to find that Paul Cardinal was standing in the study doorway.
‘Come and join me, if you aren’t in a huff,’ Keith said. He yawned. In his youth, a very few hours of dozing in an armchair would have sufficed him for a night’s sleep but he was getting older and, he told himself severely, softer. ‘You’ll take a drink?’
‘I certainly will.’ Paul lowered himself into one of the deep armchairs. ‘I never got used to your British beers. I could use a Scotch, if you keep it.’
‘I’ll join you. It’s early, but this isn’t an ordinary day. I don’t feel like settling down to work. I might take a gun out later and try for a few rabbits.’ An old shooting friend with Customs and Excise kept Keith supplied with a single malt which had never been subject to duty. He poured two large drams, added a touch of water and resumed his seat. ‘Try that for size.’
Paul sipped and then drank. ‘It fits,’ he said. ‘That’s really something. No, I’m not in a pet. I was expecting it. I knew you didn’t trust me all the way.’
Keith nearly spilled his drink. ‘What made you think that?’
‘You learn to notice things, like the way somebody never lets you get behind him, the shape under a coat and the way the weight of a pistol in a holster makes a man carry his shoulder different. Most of all, just the look in a man’s eyes.’ Paul’s face was still expressionless. ‘You’ve taken it off now.’
‘With both the witnesses now surrounded by police, it seemed to have become superfluous.’
‘When we were dropping rocks from the chopper, you had your hand on it. Earlier, when we’d seen that they were being hassled and we set down on the shore to look for rocks, and again when we put down just now, you stayed behind me until you’d given me a frisking. I had the feeling that you were ready to gun me down if I tried anything. Am I right?’
‘You’re not far off.’
‘I thought as much,’ Paul said. ‘I don’t mind. I just took care to do nothing sudden. I’d’ve thought less of you if you hadn’t been suspicious of a solitary American turning up here while there was an American hit-man on the loose. I don’t match Miss Blayne’s sketch, but you hadn’t seen that at the time and an
yways I could have been in cahoots with the assassin. But you reckon that I’d have made my move by now. Right?’
‘That’s right,’ Keith said. To have his mind read aloud with such precision made him uncomfortable. ‘Another dram?’
‘Sure. Don’t drop your guard too soon. They may have knocked off that gunsmith of yours, but we don’t know how much he told them before he died. Have there been any strangers around?’
Keith put down the refilled glasses and shrugged. ‘There are always visitors in summer, for the fishing. There’s been one phone-call for me from somebody who didn’t leave a message. Nothing out of the usual.’
Paul produced a faint trace of a smile. ‘So maybe we can put it out of our minds now and get back to what I came to see you about. Tell me some more about that old ancestor of mine.’
‘Give me time and don’t hope for too much,’ Keith said. ‘Records were badly kept in those days and sometimes they were deliberately falsified. But I can think of one or two people I could ask.’
‘I’d be grateful. If there’s any question of a fee . . .’
‘A bottle would be more than enough,’ Keith said.
They were interrupted by the sound of Keith’s jeep in the drive. It skidded to a halt on the gravel. The front door slammed and Deborah charged into the room. She had a parcel under her arm.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘Well?’
‘Your boyfriend’s back,’ Keith said. ‘Safe and sound except for a little scorching here and there.’
Deborah looked hard at her father. ‘This isn’t your way of breaking it to me that he’s already been cremated?’
Paul Cardinal choked on his whisky.
‘Nothing like that,’ Keith said.
A grin of relief spread over Deborah’s face. ‘Where is he?’
‘Munro took him up to the hospital.’
The grin vanished. Deborah paled. ‘I should be there,’ she said.
‘Relax,’ Keith told her. ‘He’s probably back at work by now, showing off a bandage or two to the girls in between dictating an interminable statement full of the kind of jargon he thinks will impress his superiors. How did you get on?’
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