The Seal King Murders

by Alanna Knight

  Heading to his bedroom door, he almost tripped over the latest addition to the servants’ lodge.

  A small and very excitable black puppy slid along the corridor and gave him a rapturous welcome, head and tail wagging vigorously. He was soon to learn that Emil had decided Marie should have an animal which, when fully grown, would protect her in that unlocked Kirkwall house.

  He had found a stray puppy on the shore when he was out riding. It had decided to adopt him, and being an animal lover, however unlikely that seemed, he had brought it back as a gift for Mrs Faro after requesting Sir Arnold’s permission to keep it in the servants’ lodge.

  Sir Arnold had no objections. He shrugged and declared it most likely to be a mongrel sired by one of his two dogs, which accompanied him everywhere. ‘She may have it, by all means. If she decides not to take it back with her, there’s always room for a good retriever in the kennels here.’

  The puppy, appropriately named Beau, proceeded to gnaw Faro’s bootlaces, setting the pattern of mischief personified, with a remarkable taste for sharpening its teeth on anything visible at its own height, with a particular fondness for wood. In no time at all, the pup’s devoted slave, Mary Faro, obliging with sticks, reminded Faro when he went out of doors to bring back wood for Beau.

  Faro did not object. He was pleased, and decided that his mother needed an animal to fuss over. Beau was a good idea to ease the loneliness of her return home, not knowing when she would see her son again, and in the case of Emil, if ever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Faced with the almost novel prospect of having time on his hands at last, Faro decided to put from his mind the two insoluble mysteries which had engaged his attention and enjoy to the full the undemanding remainder of his holiday.

  He planned to rise early in the morning, and with three days ahead a pleasant blank, decide how best to fill them in. A day in Kirkwall, perhaps another visit to St Margaret’s Hope, and then Amos’s island cruise.

  His hopes of being refreshed by a good night’s sleep failed as he lay awake, his mind refusing to settle, and finally he decided to pick up Mr West’s kindly loan of A Tale of Two Cities once more. As a hopeful remedy for insomnia, it defeated its purpose, he became more wakeful than ever, desperate to know the fate of the characters, of Sidney Carton’s noble sacrifice in taking the place of Charles Darnay, his rival in love, and going to the guillotine in his stead.

  He concluded that novels make the success of such impostures – impossible in real life – so plausible, and when at last his eyes rebelled against the lamplight, he shut the book. But that question remained, of how Carton had got away with his deception undetected by Citizen Defarge.

  He awoke next morning, breakfasted with his mother, busy and shining-eyed and waiting on Emil. Faro smiled tolerantly, just wishing he liked the Frenchman better or could imagine him in the unlikely role of a future stepfather.

  Gathering up Beau, he decided on a brisk walk along the cliffs as a prelude to the day’s activities, in the forefront of his mind to show the puppy to Inga – a valid excuse, although he was by no means certain that she was a dog lover.

  The delighted puppy bounced along the cliff walk, sniffing happily at everything in this new world, and cocking his leg with a frequency that suggested a remarkable bladder for the necessary marking of his territorial claims.

  Inga’s door, alas, remained firmly closed, and disappointed, he set off on the return journey along the cliffs, where a sudden burst of brilliant sunshine tempted him to sit down by a large boulder while Beau, given a delectable piece of driftwood, gnawed happy and content at his feet.

  Stroking the dog’s head absent-mindedly, Faro regarded the seals, who now took a special interest in this new animal perched far above their heads.

  Faro sighed. What a holiday. He had turned from detective into dog-walker and seal-watcher in a visit which had become a missing persons enquiry, with himself the main suspect.

  He was inordinately pleased to have solved that mystery quite unaided, with a little observation and some imaginative deduction, to everyone’s satisfaction. Perhaps with the single exception of Sergeant Stavely.

  He opened his logbook, quickly closed it again, refusing to be lured into what was now stale reading with its unanswered questions, dull words and theories which he knew almost by heart. He thrust it back into his pocket and, determined to enjoy the warm sunshine, he took out Lizzie’s pocket telescope and gazed back towards the street of Spanish Cove with its bleak houses bordered by stables at one end and a shop at the other, as though firmly held together by a pair of mammoth bookends.

  They had a closed-in look: no curtains twitched at windows and each time he had passed through there had never been signs of life. No open door, or children in evidence. No washing hanging out, no smoke from chimneys.

  Which was Mr West’s home? He hadn’t seen the botanist again. Inga had mentioned Amos’s friend Rob, also a fisherman and his wife as neighbours, but she was not on social terms with them. As for the others, she had shrugged, ‘People come and go. Amos has a house next to Rob and brings Josh for a breath of sea air in summer. City folk rent for the fishing and shooting. Scarthbreck beaters need extra accommodation then. Divers often stay over as a convenient assembly place and there’s a coastguard, in case the lifeboat needs to be taken out.’ He had glimpsed it, rocking nervously at the water’s edge.

  Surveying the prospect from his sheltered spot above the high cliffs, Inga’s house must have appeared bleak before she put her magic touch to work. Had he not experienced the hospitality of the traditional Orkney home, he would have been inclined to regard Spanish Cove as a monstrous figment of the imagination, designed by an architect with a grudge against humanity, its solitude and desolation at the mercy of fierce weather, where every gale force wind struck a chord of sinister melancholy.

  He focused on the steep and narrow set of steps roughly hewn out of the rock, a stiff climb communicating with the shore. A tiny pier with no sign of solid anchorage, nor evidence of nets and fishing boats. Doubtless the permanent residents found employment in the peat fields or on neighbouring crofts.

  Faro shook his head. For him, there had to be a reason for everything, and Spanish Cove, a street which gave the impression of having been lifted bodily from the poor area of any big city, made no sense at all. He was forced to admit, however, that it was an improvement on the murky, overcrowded closes off Edinburgh’s High Street, whose residents would have loved a glimpse of that wild sea and benefited greatly from an abundance of the fresh health-giving air.

  Along past Scarthbreck was the Neolithic settlement far along the shore, a distant rubble of stones, which the telescope brought into focus, so close that he could almost reach out and touch the sparkling waves of the incoming tide, with the seals basking on the rocks near enough to be resting at his feet.

  And the seals reminded him that as well as failing to accomplish his mission for Macfie for his own satisfaction, he had not found a convincing answer to Dave’s wife’s legendary role as the seal king’s bride. But determined to enjoy the warm sunshine, he shrugged both issues aside, and regretting that he had not brought a book to read, his mind drifted back to Mr Dickens’ latest novel. The sun’s warmth on his eyelids was seductive and soothing. He closed his eyes, as his mind drifted towards sleep. Once again, something from the back of his mind clicked into place.

  He had it – the answer!

  A moment later it was lost. A shrill bark from Beau made him open his eyes to see that the puppy had slipped the lead anchored under a stone and was racing down the cliff face.

  Angrily, Faro stood up, whistled, and when that had no effect he yelled, ‘Come back, come back!’ Useless. Beau neither heard him, nor cared. He was in pursuit of something. The seals were indifferent, they regarded him enigmatically. The presence of a dog barking ferociously on land had no fears for them.

  Faro was exasperated. What to do? He called in vain and the tide was coming in fast
now, hiding the wretched animal from view. He took out the pocket telescope, impatiently scanning the shoreline. Boulders, smaller stones, perhaps they too had once shaped furniture, beds and shelves in the homes of the island’s first inhabitants, their history for ever lost.

  Suddenly he was aware that alongside the stones, in sharp focus, a boulder moved. It was Beau, tail wagging, bending over something that twitched.

  A dark shape – a dead seal? Or a bundle of abandoned clothes? His heart sank at the remembrance of that discovery.

  Beau had found his quarry. A glimpse of flesh. Pink, naked human flesh. An arm raised. Was it a man, alive and injured?

  With no thought but of how he was to get down there as fast as possible, he considered the descent to the shore. Steep, dangerous, with no certain footholds, the steps cut into the cliff at Spanish Cove. It was the only access but too distant; the landing beyond Hal’s croft too far.

  If the man was still alive, then this was a life-or-death emergency. He gazed over the cliff edge, took a deep breath and scrambled down, seizing whatever footholds existed, jutting rocks and clumps of coarse grass. Slipping, falling, sliding down on his backside, bruised and sore and aching in every limb, at last his feet touched solid ground and he ran towards the body.

  Beau looked up at his approach and gave a yelp of triumph.

  Faro knelt down. A man still barely alive, face down, not completely naked, wearing trousers.

  Who was he? Faro turned him over by his shoulders. He had a shattered, broken face. His bloody lips moved. The man was dying.

  He stared into Faro’s face, trying to speak. And Faro had seen too many dying men in his ten years as a policeman not to recognise that he was too late. Garbled, whispered words told of a murderous attack, but the words made no sense, choked out of the blood, lost in the wind.

  His eyes closed in death and Faro remained kneeling beside him. A youngish, strong-looking man, not much past thirty. Amos’s friend and fellow ferryman, Rob, glimpsed a couple of times as a resident of Spanish Cove.

  He had not been swept in by the tide, nor drowned. His trousers, coated with sand, were dry. So was his thick fair hair, and when Faro’s hand came away from his head, it was wet not from the sea, but from blood oozing out of a head wound.

  Faro physically restrained Beau from licking the blood which had doubtless alerted him to the scene. Thus reproached, the dog was no longer interested. His retrieving instincts satisfied, he lay down, gnawing happily at a piece of driftwood.

  Faro looked round. How long had Rob lain there, thrown down the cliff face? More important, how was he to be transported up again?

  Dragging him from the lapping water edge into the shelter of a large rock, safe from the tide, despite safety no longer being any earthly concern for this poor lad, Faro set off at a run along the shore. Beau was well ahead, believing this was another exciting game, while he clambered over rocks and leapt over sea pools and seaweed.

  Stumbling, falling and cutting his knee, he reached the steps at Spanish Cove and remembered that Rob lived alone.

  With Beau waiting, tail wagging, at the top, he arrived breathless. Gasping, his first thought was that Stavely must be informed. But of what use was urgency now?

  Then the sound of hoof beats, and from the direction of Scarthbreck, a man riding hard, his arrival greeted by a delighted Beau.

  Faro rushed forward waving his arms frantically.

  ‘Hello there, what’s the trouble?’

  It was Hal, Stavely’s brother-in-law. He dismounted. ‘God, what on earth’s happened to you?’ He glanced down at Beau preparing a slight repast on his bootlaces. ‘Clear off!’ And to Faro, ‘Had an accident while you were walking the dog?’

  ‘Found a dead man – down on the shore a quarter of a mile back there.’ Still breathless, winded by the steep climb, Faro pointed.

  ‘What?’ Hal looked him over in disbelief, taking in his dishevelled appearance but mostly dwelling on his bloodstained hands. ‘A dead man?’ he repeated. ‘Who killed him?’

  Faro shook his head. ‘How would I know that? I’ve only just found him.’

  A wry glance from Hal. ‘Wasn’t you killed him, then? Looks like you got into a fight.’

  ‘No!’ Faro shouted indignantly. ‘I saw him from the cliff top, he was moving, still alive. I scrambled down.’

  ‘From the cliffs,’ Hal said heavily, gazing along and shaking his head. ‘No one could do that. You must have been mad.’

  Faro took a deep breath. ‘Never mind me – ride into Stromness, get hold of somebody. Sergeant Stavely—’

  Hal nodded. ‘He’s at cousin Pete’s, down the road. Lily and him. Birthday party. I’m on my way to meet them.’

  ‘Get him, bring him and anyone else who can help.’

  Hal, aware of the urgency, leapt back on to his horse. ‘Right, you stay here. We’ll need someone to take them to the right place. Can you see it from here?’

  ‘No – just go, quick as you can.’

  Watching Hal disappear, Faro realised all this was going to take some time. He sat down, put Beau back on the rope lead, and with the aid of the telescope was able to keep an eye on shore and sea and the incoming tide. Nothing moved, no one came or went, and the eventual sight of Hal riding alongside a carriage with Pete, two slightly inebriated friends from the party and Stavely inside the carriage, was for Faro the most welcome sight in the world.

  It was a one-sided welcome. Stavely was not best pleased at being dragged away from an excellent celebration meal which was about to make its appearance on the table. He’d already had a few drams in preparation and now this crisis was too much.

  He was heartily sick of Detective Constable Faro, wishing he had never come to Orkney. Delighted to hear that he was going back to Edinburgh imminently, Stavely had breathed a sigh of relief, still smarting over the way he had effortlessly solved the Prentiss-Grant case with quick thinking that would have been such a feather in his own promotion cap. Lily was going on about it, wouldn’t let it drop. ‘Why didn’t you think of that?’ she demanded. ‘Only a man would have thought of pregnancy as the answer.’

  Now he stared at Faro’s woebegone appearance in disbelief. ‘God, what has happened to you? Hal told me you’d found a dead man.’

  Faro shook his head. He was suddenly weary, sick at heart and exhausted as he never remembered having been in his life before. ‘Down there. We can go by the steps, a quarter mile along the shore.’

  The sun had gone, dark clouds moved in from the horizon. A storm was on its way.

  As he prepared to lead the way, Stavely said to him, ‘You look awful.’

  ‘Try scrambling down a cliff face some time.’

  Stavely shook his head. ‘Incredible! Looks as if you’ve been in a right old tussle – and come off worst.’

  Faro ignored that and headed towards the steps.

  ‘You can leave the dog in the carriage.’

  ‘No, he comes with us. He’ll remember the place.’

  Stavely grunted and said doubtfully, ‘Hope you’re right. Give over, I’ll take him.’

  Faro needed all his efforts to concentrate on the steep uneven steps. Painful indeed, his bruises making themselves felt with a vengeance. At last, on the strand, Beau let off the rope, racing ahead, with Stavely and the other men running towards the spot where Faro had left the dead man.

  The sheltering boulder came in sight, Beau sniffing eagerly at what remained of it above water. But there was no body, living or dead. Nothing.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Stavely asked.

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’

  Hal’s comrades stared at him resentfully, wandered around looking here and there in a desultory fashion, finding nothing.

  Stavely joined them, giving directions. Grumbling, they walked back and forth, a hundred yards in each direction.

  Faro looked on helplessly, unbelieving. He sat down heavily. He had to think but his head ached more than his bruises.

  There had be
en a body, a dead man.

  ‘You knew who it was?’

  ‘The ferryman Rob; don’t know his second name, lives up there at Spanish Cove.’

  All heads turned towards the distant group of houses. ‘You knew him?’ Stavely repeated.

  He sounded quite eager, Faro thought, as he said, ‘I only met him once briefly, but yes, I’m sure.’

  The men watched him expressionless. Stavely sighed, ‘You could have been mistaken, he maybe fell from the cliff, only injured. Walked away.’

  Faro shook his head. ‘He was dead, I’m sure of that. I’ve had experience of dead men, Sergeant, make no mistake about that.’

  As he spoke, all heads swivelled upwards to the cliff face. Climbing up would have been even more impossible than scrambling down. An injured man bleeding profusely from a head wound could never have reached the Spanish Cove steps.

  ‘The only other way is the landing stage past my croft,’ said Hal.

  ‘That’s a mile away,’ Stavely put in, looking at the sea. ‘Tide’s coming in fast now, he could have slipped back again.’

  ‘He didn’t drown,’ Faro said sharply.

  ‘And how do you know that?’ Stavely’s flushed and angry countenance led Faro to decide to repeat Rob’s dying words.

  ‘His trousers were dry, covered in sand. He said he had been attacked, pushed down the cliff face.’

  Stavely stared at him. ‘He told you that?’

  ‘Yes, before he died.’

  ‘What else did he tell you?’

  Faro pretended not to hear and for Stavely alarm bells were again ringing. Another missing body brought bitter thoughts of Celia Prentiss-Grant. Was this the work of another practical joker? Or was Faro behind it, for some obscure reason of his own?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE