Troubled Waters

by Galbraith, Gillian

‘I know – Trish and Liz are there now, plus some uniforms. I understand that one resident is still on holiday in France, camping in the wilds, incommunicado, but we should be able to speak to the rest of them.’

  ‘Surely to God one of them will have seen something, heard something, now we can jog their memories just a little bit. Mrs Stobbs can’t have been the only one. And why,’ the chief inspector demanded, continuing her patrol, the thudding of her feet a rhythmic background to their talk, ‘the hell didn’t you check the whole building on day one?’

  ‘Because . . .’ Alice replied, at a loss for words, her mind racing in search of an acceptable response. Her boss’s ceaseless activity did not help her to concentrate.

  Fortunately for Alice, Elaine Bell failed to follow up her own question, her swinging arms and marching feet distracting her as well as her inspector. Instead, she remarked as if it was a logical progression, ‘I gather you’ve tracked down a missing person report about Hamish Evans now, one from a squash partner. That’s all well and good, but why have there been none for this Anna character? She’s disappeared without trace too, hasn’t she? Did she not have a job, a friend in the world? Parents? Do we know what she looks like yet?’

  ‘Yes, we’ve a horribly blurry photo of her with the deceased. Unfortunately she’s wearing a hat in it, but Margaret Stobbs confirmed that it was her. It’s being circulated everywhere. That’s almost all we’ve got, though. With luck someone in the building may produce something else, some other snippet about her this morning. Maybe she’s currently going to her job, phoning her parents, staying with a friend. As I said, we know so little about her.’

  ‘What about the body? Have we any idea yet where it was dropped off?’ Elaine Bell asked, suddenly feeling a little woozy. She settled her buttocks gratefully on the edge of her desk. Perhaps a slice of Ryvita in the morning provided insufficient fuel for brain and body?

  ‘No, not really. Ranald Sharpe’s been looking into that. He was in touch with the Forth Ports Authority but they said to talk to the Leith Harbour Master. So far, he’s not been able to help much, as he says there are too many variables to give any meaningful answer – tides, weather, clothing, even the deceased’s physical state.’

  ‘Yet another bloody blank then! What about DNA? Are we making any headway there?’

  ‘No, not yet. The lab’s slower than ever. We’ve buttered them up, twisted arms, begged, all to no avail. There’s a long queue, what with the hiatus resulting from the reorganisation, but we are, supposedly, moving up to the front. It’s only been four days, remember.’

  ‘Alice,’ the DCI said, now raising and lowering her arms like a bird flapping its wings, ‘a murderer is still on the loose. This is your first case as an inspector. Let’s get a result, eh? Four whole days! Time is ticking past. If you’ve any ambition to join the Leith Major Investigation team you’d better get this one under your belt, and ideally PDQ. There will be immense competition, I imagine. Incidentally, your predecessor, now in Kerala, supping, I’ll be bound, with maharajas and maharanis, sends his “salutations”. I got another of his cheeky postcards today. That’s somewhere I would like to go. On your way out, send in Ranald, he wants to talk to me about something.’

  ‘Planning to fly there yourself, are you, Ma’am?’ Alice said, marvelling at her boss’s eccentricities, sidestepping to avoid a collision with the DS as he barged into the detective chief inspector’s room.

  At Tyninghame beach that same morning the sun was not shining. Clouds scudded across the slate-coloured sky, pursued by a wind which seemed to have taken possession of the world, making free with the sea, raising huge waves and, as they crashed forwards, blowing their crests off, unbalancing any birds foolish enough to be on the wing, and whistling through the leaves of the grey-green buckthorn bushes. Behind a large concrete cube, a man, wearing three coats and a striped scarf, crouched. He was determined to succeed in lighting his penultimate match, and shielding the wavering flame from the wind. The cube was a relic from the last war, designed to protect the homeland from a German invasion by sea. On the barbecue tray in front of him sprawled a row of pallid sausages, naked and sand-specked, looking like sunbathing tourists who had recently arrived at their resort. Ten or more spent matches littered the ground by the tray. As soon as he struck the new one, the wind carelessly extinguished it. He tossed it over his shoulder, picked up his tin of Tennent’s lager, took a swig, held it in the pouches of his cheeks, and looked out slowly across the bay. There was no point in getting cross.

  In the foreground, his children were playing amongst the labyrinth of scattered rocks, dodging to and fro, engaged in some kind of chase. His dog, Ivan, a black and white collie, raced after them, barking wildly, ecstatic at being included in their game. Their buckets, he noticed, lay abandoned further up the shore. He must not forget them, as they, assuredly, would. Sarah would not forgive him.

  The town of Dunbar was visible, though over four miles away, reminding him that if all else failed they could retreat there, find a café and have their lunch inside, in the warmth. It would not be the same, though. And, please God, it would not rain, and he would manage to light the barbecue. He pulled his legs up to his chest, hugged his coats about him, and sighed contentedly. William, when he was an old, old man would remember this birthday, remember this winter picnic, remember his old dad. And Ivan would be part of that memory, too, with luck, though he would long since have turned to dust. Kath, thankfully, seemed to have forgotten about the cold, darting all over the place in pursuit of her older brother. All that running must have warmed her up nicely. A buttered roll with a couple of sausages in it would be the perfect tonic, the perfect lunch.

  Remembering suddenly how long barbecues take to heat up, he got onto his knees on the sand, opened one side of his coat over the tin tray as a windbreak, struck the last match and prayed. Eureka! It caught, and he stayed motionless, tending the tiny flame, despite his fear that his coat might catch fire too, until one end of the mesh began to glow. Certain, now, that everything would be fine, he looked out again at his children, congratulating himself on the whole adventure.

  Three-quarters of an hour later they appeared, huddled themselves by the barbecue, sniffing the air and looking hungrily at the blackened sausages. Ivan, wet and bedraggled, sat down beside them.

  ‘They ready?’ Kath asked, bending down to inspect the sausages. At that moment a blister of hot fat burst, splashing her right hand and making her leap away.

  ‘You alright, darling?’ her father asked.

  Mouth turned down, but nodding, she inspected her hand; then, as if suddenly appreciating the danger, she pulled the dog away from the spitting sausages.

  Spearing a charred one with a stick, the man placed it in a buttered roll and handed it to the birthday boy.

  ‘No ketchup?’ the child said, tossing paper cups, a tin, napkins and packets of crisps out of the nearby carrier bag, before alighting with glee on the sought-after bottle. Patiently, before the wind dispersed them, the man gathered the items up and restored them to the bag.

  Kath, giggling at the thought, tore a bit off her buttered roll and threw it for the dog to catch. Instantly, Ivan leapt off the ground, jaws agape, twisting in mid-air in his desperation to secure the morsel. For the next few minutes nothing was said, the man watching his children as they ate, pleased that he had not allowed the weather, or Sarah, to put him off his plan. He might not see them often, but he knew what they liked.

  After he had, ceremoniously, handed each of them a slice of the chocolate cake that he had made with his own hands, he said, ‘Well, William, want your present?’

  Cheeks too full to speak, the boy nodded repeatedly, holding out his hands. Kath, chewing busily, edged closer on her knees, determined not to be left out of the celebration. On the boy’s outstretched hands the man placed an envelope. Looking a little crestfallen, William said, ‘Is it money then, Dad?’

  ‘Open it.’

  ‘Yes, go on, William. Open it. I
want to see what you’ve got,’ Kath said, bending towards him, her head at his shoulder and her long hair blowing across his face. With unexpected precision the boy tore through the flap and extracted the contents of the envelope.

  ‘Keeper for a day,’ he read; then he repeated the phrase excitedly as its meaning sank in. ‘Keeper for a day – at Edinburgh Zoo! In the Reptile House! Unbelievable, that’s unbelievable! Dad, thanks, that’s great! I’ve always wanted that, since I was little.’

  After lunch the pair sped off, shrimp nets in their hands, skipping across the sand towards a promontory of rocks which reached northwards and terminated opposite the end of the headland. A little further out, line after line of breakers were being formed, the rows of foam-streaked parallel lines warning those in the know of the presence of a reef.

  The picnic took only minutes to clear up. Tethering the rubbish bag with a fallen branch to stop the wind from snatching it, the man started walking towards the specks that were his children, his eyes cast down, gathering flat skipping stones as he went for them to skim across the water. He had Ivan by his side, the dog having stayed by him as he cleared up, desperate to catch any leftovers. As he got closer to the children, amusing himself by jumping from one sandstone boulder to the next and feeling oddly exhilarated, he could make out their excited chatter. Their discarded nets lay criss-crossed by a tiny rock pool.

  ‘It’s a goat!’ the boy said, pointing with his finger towards the reef.

  ‘No,’ his sister replied, ‘it’s not. It’s a hippo – a hippo or, possibly, a badger. A great big, bald one.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ William said, looking disdainfully at her. ‘Hippos and badgers don’t float.’

  ‘Goats don’t float,’ she replied, equally authoritatively.

  The dog had rushed ahead and was now dancing around the children like a dervish, overjoyed to see them, relieved that the pack was now reunited. Catching its paws as it jumped up on him, the boy started dancing with it. His father, breathing hard, came up to them and was immediately asked to adjudicate their quarrel.

  ‘What d’you think, Dad? It’s a goat, isn’t it?’ the boy said, raising his voice to be heard above the noise of the wind and waves.

  ‘No. It’s a huge badger. I can see its claws,’ his sister cut in, flicking her hair out of her eyes and flexing her fingers in and out as if they were claws.

  At first the man could see nothing, but as he gazed at the incoming waves his eyes made out an object, something rolling with them, but incapable of keeping up with them or with their rhythm, something always left behind. The wind stinging his eyes, he put a hand to his brow like a sea captain of old, and stared hard at the thing. It was solid, pink in parts and surprisingly large.

  Unable and unwilling to adjudicate between their competing claims, he took out the skimming stones he had gathered and offered them mutely to them.

  ‘The waves are too big,’ the boy said, looking at them and then back at his father.

  ‘OK,’ the man said, ‘we’ll play a game, see who can hit the sea creature first.’

  ‘It’s not a sea creature,’ Kath replied firmly.

  ‘OK,’ he relented, ‘we’ll hit the sea creature, badger or goat.’

  He himself took aim at the thing and missed, the stone falling a good two metres short. The boy, moving forward to make sure that he was standing exactly where his father had stood for his shot, flung his stone and let out a loud whoop as he did so. Once more, the stone disappeared into the water, far short of the target. Kath, now occupying the throwing zone, raised her thin arm and flung her stone. It flew over her head backwards, bouncing off the rocks, the noise it made attracting Ivan’s attention. Instantly, he set off to retrieve it, returning in seconds with it in his mouth.

  ‘Your turn, Dad,’ the boy said, solemnly. This time, the man thought, he might have a chance. The thing, still revolving in the waves, was undoubtedly closer. Looking hard at it, fixing its precise location in his head, he fired the stone at it, also mistiming the release and watching, powerless, as it rose upwards. Once again he failed to hit the thing but, as he focused on it, a slow realisation dawned. It was not a goat, a sea creature or badger. It was a human being, floating, with the back of its head and buttocks above the water. Kath, stone in hand, was already readying herself for another throw.

  ‘Stop, darling, now!’ he said, sufficiently gruffly for her to turn and stare at him, afraid she had done something wrong. Seeing her serious little face, he could not think what to say. The picnic would be ruined. William and Kath would remember this day for all the wrong reasons, possibly have nightmares from now on simply thinking about it. Sarah would blame him, however blameless he was, maybe even use it as a pretext to stop him seeing them. Somehow it would all be his fault: for having taken them there, for having arranged a picnic in the middle of winter, for having been born. That thought galvanised him into action.

  ‘Hot chocolate time! The first one to reach the car gets to choose what film we’re going to see. Ready, steady, go!’

  Forgetting about the stone-throwing competition they both ran off, the dog barking in their wake, forgetting their nets and everything else. He picked up the nets and stowed them under his arm, looking at the corpse as he did so, watching it bob about, now only five metres or so from his feet. Although he did not say anything out loud, he felt like cursing it. This strange, waxy, horrible thing, drifting towards him, had almost ruined the day. William and Kath would remember a carefree Saturday, see in their minds’ eyes the waves, remember the burnt taste of the gritty sausages, hear Ivan’s joyous barking as he raced into the sea. But not him. For him, William’s tenth birthday would be The Day I Found the Dead Body. Everything else would drift into the background, obscured, obliterated by the horror of it all.

  Fishing about in the pocket of his coat, he brought out his mobile phone. Was this an emergency? Did one dial 999? Whoever was washing ashore was dead after all, and no amount of blue lights or sirens would alter that. In some ways, there really was all the time in the world.

  11

  As soon as the postie left, Dr Harry McCrae went into his kitchen and ripped open the wrapping of the small parcel that she had delivered. He knew what was supposed to be inside, and, in some ways, had been looking forward to its arrival. His already late lunch could wait. From the cardboard box he removed a small, white rubberised face mask and the spacer that went with it. Shu-shu, his companion, watched him. Little did she know, the man thought to himself, as he looked into the cat’s unblinking eyes, that its contents concerned her.

  At last everything was ready. He had the treats, the inhaler and, finally, the mask and spacer. The YouTube video of ‘Fritz the Brave’ was still fresh in his mind. Now was the time. As if to stiffen his sinews for the task ahead, the cat began to cough, stretching her neck forward, her sides heaving as she gasped for breath, trying to draw it through her constricted airways. ‘Blessed asthma!’ he said to himself, fitting the inhaler into the spacer, ready for action.

  First she must have a few treats, then, please God, she would associate the dosing with food, with a pleasant experience. Had the treats been made of dried goldfish, she could not have gobbled them up faster from the saucer. She ate each one, whole and at speed, expressing her delight by purring loudly and rubbing her flanks against his calves. While she was gazing up at him, licking her lips, possibly trying to hypnotise him into giving her more, he grabbed her, sat her on his knee and jammed the mask over her short muzzle. At first, no doubt shocked by the novelty of the experience, she did not move. But the second he squeezed the inhaler, making it hiss like a snake as it released its metered dose, she began wriggling, scrabbling her back legs on his thigh, digging her claws in. Knowing she must take at least five breaths, he tightened his grip, speaking gently to her, trying to calm her and reassure her.

  At that moment his phone went. Still grappling with his squirming, frightened pet he ignored it, but it was difficult for him to do so. He was o
n-call, and conscientious. Making sure she took a couple more breaths, he held her steady and then, the second he released her, threw down a whole handful of treats. She fell on them as if starved. Fortunately the phone was still ringing and, nerves jangling, he answered it.

  ‘Yes, it’s me, Dr McCrae. OK . . . a body in the water at Belhaven Bay, off the coast at Tyninghame? I’ll be there. I’ll get my things and leave in ten minutes. It’ll take me, say, an hour and a bit.’

  It could have been worse, he thought, packing away the cat inhaler ready for the next time. Shu-shu had, hallelujah, had her first dose; and Dunbar harbour was a pleasant enough place to spend a Saturday afternoon, even if the only sightseeing he would be doing was of an expanse of dead flesh. Somewhere there, or at North Berwick, he might even pick up a fresh lobster. Shu-shu, now sitting a safe distance away from him, turned her head in his direction, a reproachful expression on her face.

  ‘You’d like a morsel of lobster claw, my darling, wouldn’t you?’ he crooned at her. He got no answer and, in the silence, sniffed, his cat-allergy worsened by their recent proximity. ‘It’s for your own good, my sweet,’ he said, rising and hoping to resume cordial relations with a stroke, but finding only thin air as she dodged his hand. Implacable, holding her lightly banded tail upright as a mast, she strode through the kitchen door, without giving him as much as a backwards glance.

  By the time Dr McCrae arrived, the corpse had been moved from the lifeboat to a disused shed nearby. A young constable stood guard at the door. Inside, the body had been laid out on a polythene sheet over the bare wooden floorboards for his inspection. Cobwebs draped across the only window, thick as a lace curtain, beaded with the desiccated remains of bluebottles. Waiting a couple of yards away was an ambulance with its engine running, the driver leaning against the bonnet, spellbound, watching the clouds racing across the grey sky.

  The forensic medical examiner dropped his bag down on the only table, raising a cloud of dust and immediately holding his breath, unwilling to inhale anything. Already he had been hit by the overwhelming stench of creosote in the place. Hell’s bells! In minutes he would have a headache to add to his congestion after sneezing his way along the A1. He’d suffer an asthma attack himself, to put the tin lid on it.