Soft Summer Blood

by Peter Helton

  ‘About what?’

  ‘He said to say I hadn’t seen anything or heard anything. When the police asked me, I said I was in the wheelhouse facing the other way. No one asked me a thing after that and I wasn’t at the inquest, either.’

  ‘So what did you see?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing: it sort of doesn’t make sense. My dad was at the helm. I was beside the wheelhouse and they were near the stern where they had set themselves up to paint. Their things were lying all over the place, their paint boxes and stuff – quite dangerous, if you ask me. You don’t leave stuff lying about on a boat because you’ll go arse over tit and you’re overboard before you know it. The four of them were talking and I thought they were having an argument, but you couldn’t hear anything with the engine and the wind. It had turned a bit choppy and I wasn’t feeling great. But one thing I did hear, because it was shouted, twice. One of them shouted, “My daughter”, like it was a question. Twice.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Three of them had their backs to me; only Mr Kahn was facing my way, but I couldn’t see his face. A moment later he was in the water, with all his clothes on.’

  ‘With all his clothes on?’

  ‘Yeah, because of the wind. Before they all had their tops off and just wore shorts, but it had cooled down a lot. So he was fully dressed.’

  ‘Did he jump in?’

  ‘That’s what I can’t make up my mind about. His son kept asking me that over and over, but I really can’t say. There was a sudden—’

  ‘Wait! What do you mean “his son”? When did he ask you that? Back then?’

  ‘No, couple of weeks back. His name’s Elliot. Came down here. Don’t know how he found me – same way you did, I expect. Suddenly, he was there in the pub when I was trying to have a quiet drink, quizzing me about that day and about his dad.’

  ‘And he’d come here especially to find you and ask you?’

  ‘He said he was here for the weekend. He was with his girlfriend. I somehow had the feeling it was her who put him up to finding out more about his dad.’

  ‘What did his girlfriend look like?’

  Tigur’s eyebrows rose and his eyes widened. ‘Dark hair. Very pretty. Very.’

  ‘OK, tell me what you told him.’

  ‘As I said, they were all in the stern. There was a sudden movement. They all sort of moved but whether they were trying to stop him from jumping in or pushed him overboard I couldn’t say. And my dad never talked to me about it – just told me to shut up about the whole thing.’

  ‘What did everyone do next?’

  ‘I went to look. Mr Kahn was in the water, already quite a way behind the stern. We had a following wind and we were doing quite a few knots. I called to my dad and he stopped the engine. That made the boat pitch even more; it does that when you have no way on – you just bob like a cork. He threw a lifesaver in the water – you know, one of those red-and-white rings that float, but Kahn wasn’t going towards it.’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t see it?’

  ‘Oh, no, he was looking at us when it went in; with the swell he went out of sight, on and off, but he would have seen the boat.’

  ‘He would have known which way to swim.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, but that was just the thing. He was swimming the wrong way.’

  ‘What, away from the boat?’

  ‘Away from the boat but not just the boat. He was swimming away from the land, too. He was swimming out to sea.’

  ‘Could he have lost his bearings?’

  ‘How? We were a few hundred yards from the shore – you couldn’t miss seeing the cliffs. No, he must have known which way he was swimming. Dad turned the boat around and gave it full revs to go after him, but we never saw him. He had gone. Called the coastguard and all that, but they never found him, either. His body didn’t turn up – nothing. It bugged me for quite a while, that.’

  ‘I can imagine. And now it’ll bug me.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Why do you think your father wanted you not to talk to anyone about it?’

  Tigur leant back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest and looked past McLusky towards the sea. ‘The weirdness of it. I think he was mainly thinking about the business. You don’t want a reputation that weird shit happens on your boat, especially with a stupid name like Destiny. Death by misadventure was the verdict. And it never did the business any harm.’

  ‘Why was nobody wearing a life jacket? That would have saved his life, surely?’

  ‘The Destiny was a big boat, which meant it wasn’t compulsory. And it’s not popular with passengers. But yeah, that might have saved him. If you’re asking me, though, that bloke didn’t want to be saved. Either that or he was trying to disappear.’

  Tigur stuck an arm out of the window to give a wave as he drove off in his green-and-white VW van, relieved to see the detective inspector recede in his mirror. Until Elliot Kahn and his girlfriend had turned up, he had pushed the memory of that day away so that it had become like a tiny buoy, bobbing far out to sea, barely visible. He could never forget it entirely, with one of the men still owning the house above the village. Only last night he had seen lights at the house. Now it all felt again as though it had happened yesterday.

  Tigur left behind a pensive McLusky. He walked down the slipway on to the sands. The port at low tide looked messy. Cars were parked on the sand above the water line and fishing boats that had not gone out lay stranded on the sands further down. A couple of women were digging in the wet sand close to the water – for worms or cockles or something like that, he assumed. He looked up but could not see Rosslyn Crag from down here. Tigur had provided him with few answers and a lot of questions he had not asked before. He pulled out his mobile. ‘Well, what do you know?’ His mobile showed two bars. It also showed that it was almost flat; McLusky had forgotten to take his charger. He called Austin at Albany Road, let it ring a few times, remembered it was Saturday lunchtime and put his mobile away. All he really wanted was to run all he had just heard past the DS because it usually helped him make up his mind, but he would not bother him with it at the weekend. Perhaps he himself should not bother with it until Monday morning, either. He walked up to the water’s edge. Tigur’s account differed from that of Poulimenos. In Tigur’s version, all four men had been standing together in the stern when Kahn went into the water. Poulimenos’s version had him, not Tigur, beside the wheelhouse, unable to see what had happened. Was Poulimenos lying or had Tigur remembered it wrong? Or was Tigur lying even now? Did he know exactly what happened on the Destiny that day?

  Kahn plunged into the water. It was choppy and he swallowed a mouthful of cold seawater immediately and coughed. He cringed as he realized that the propeller of the Destiny might easily have caught him, but already the boat was drawing away from him, fast. The three painters were gesticulating, but he could not hear what they were shouting and he did not want to. He wanted to swim away from them, as fast as possible, as far away as possible, until he could never make it back to shore, could no longer change his mind to end it all.

  McLusky thought of the painting standing in his soon-to-be-sold flat – the lonesome swimmer in the empty bay. No boat, no lifesaver bobbing on the waves. Did Kahn swim away from the boat in order to kill himself or because he was afraid of staying on the boat? Did he swim away hoping to hide? Did he survive and come ashore somewhere? McLusky did not like dead people who did not leave their bodies behind. ‘Bastard,’ he said to the wind.

  He realized that feeling resentful towards everyone he came in contact with in the course of his work, whether dead, alive or missing, had become a normal state of being for him. His conscious effort later that day of ‘being in the moment’, as Laura would put it, was rewarded with a cosy, intimate evening over a bottle of probably quite expensive wine from the ample store in the pantry. Even the choosing of the wine, however, had engaged his brain in forensic speculation. There were at least six dozen bottles, p
robably all of vintage quality, like this 2009 Château Pontet-Canet he had chosen, purely because it was the youngest bottle there. None of the bottles he had pulled from the racks in the hope of finding something cheap and familiar-looking had the slightest speck of dust on them.

  ‘Would you dust bottles of wine?’ he asked when he poured the last drops into her glass.

  ‘Only if I felt more deranged than usual.’ Laura’s antisepticism, as he had termed it, had at times been irritating. ‘Not that I have a lot of wine standing around these days, as you know.’

  ‘If you were a cleaner – and I doubt Poulimenos came out here to dust in person – would you dust your employer’s wine bottles?’

  Laura shook her head. ‘Not even sure dusting vintage wine bottles is the done thing.’ With their limbs cosily intertwined in a corner of the sofa, they both sipped from the dark rich liquid. ‘What’s worrying you now, hon?’

  ‘We shouldn’t really be here.’

  ‘I had wondered.’

  ‘I have a sinking feeling that bringing you here was a mistake.’

  ‘Oh, thank you.’

  ‘I mean, for both of us to come here.’

  Laura sat up straight and looked at him closely. ‘Do you mean you being here, us being here, could be seen as illegal in some way?’

  McLusky sighed. ‘It could be construed as corruption, I suppose. If they didn’t know me and wanted to make something of it.’

  ‘Or if they did know you but wanted to drop you in it. This is grand but I’d have been happy with bed and breakfast, you know.’ She leant forward, rested her elbows on her knees and twirled her nearly empty glass between her fingers. ‘Wasn’t going to tell you. I didn’t want to spoil things. But while we’re busy spoiling things anyway, I might as well tell you. When I was out there sunbathing this afternoon, a gust of wind carried a sheet of notepaper off. I jumped up to catch it and there was the birdwatcher again. Definitely watching me this time.’

  McLusky was alert and businesslike now. ‘Where was he standing?’

  ‘Behind the dry-stone wall, just at the end where it curves out of sight.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘No, not really. Same waterproof, hood up – in the sunshine, mind – binoculars. I mean, she was further away than at the restaurant and disappeared as soon as I gave her the finger.’

  ‘Her? You said “she” and “her”.’

  ‘Did I? Couldn’t see the face. Could have been a woman. Something in the way she moved her body. Or her head.’

  ‘You didn’t see where he or she disappeared to?’

  ‘You’ve seen my bikini; you don’t go chasing after strangers in that.’

  ‘Ah, yeah, probably not.’ He paused, as if listening to the empty house. ‘If I hadn’t just drunk half a bottle of wine, I think I’d want to leave tonight.’

  ‘Really? OK, we’ll leave first thing. You don’t have any more people to see, do you?’

  Despite the wine he had consumed, he found it difficult to get to sleep. When he did, he found himself back at the window table at the Mote, alone, with the sea rapidly rising all the way to the windowsill. He could feel the house vibrating as the sea tore at its foundations. He woke to Laura shaking him and hissing in his ear.

  ‘Liam, Liam, wake up.’

  ‘What, what?’

  ‘Burglars. Someone’s breaking in.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Someone smashed a window in downstairs. How could you have slept through that?’

  McLusky swung himself out of bed and quickly slipped into his trousers. He found his pepper spray in his leather jacket and moved to the door. There were no more noises but he thought he could feel the intrusion, the changed atmosphere in the house as he opened the door a crack to listen again.

  ‘Be careful, hon.’ Laura had remained in bed under the doubtful protection of the duvet.

  McLusky gave an ironic grunt and tiptoed down the stairs, bracing himself between wall and banister to lighten his footsteps on the wooden stairs. He thought he could see a dim light now, probably a torch being moved back and forth. If it was a lone burglar, his appearance and a shout of ‘Police!’ might get rid of him. He really had no intention of complicating his situation by apprehending the intruder. He had not quite reached the bottom of the stairs when he realized that his situation had turned more than complicated. He could smell smoke. He hit the light switch at the bottom of the stairs and saw grey smoke seep from under the sitting-room door which they had left open but was now closed.

  Laura’s voice from upstairs pre-empted his own call. ‘Liam, I think the house is on fire, I can see it flickering on the lawn!’

  At that moment the varnish on the sitting-room door shrouded itself in flame like a demonic apparition, so quick was the progress of the fire. ‘Don’t come down! Jump from the window! Do it now! I’m coming up!’ Acrid smoke overtook him on his race up the stairs and he coughed his way across the bedroom. A splintering bang below his feet blew out the electrics and left him in near darkness.

  Laura was crouching in the open window, in her underwear. ‘I’m not sure I can do it. It’s the conservatory roof. What if I break through?’

  ‘Slide down carefully. The downstairs is on fire; we can’t get out any other way!’ He could feel the heat under his feet. Smoke rose from the floorboards. He ran back to where he knew his leather jacket lay. He stumbled over his boots, picked them up, grabbed blindly at clothes and, with a random selection, stumbled over to the window where Laura, with a small cry of dismay, let herself slide on to the sloped glass roof. He flung out of the window what he was holding and slid along the glass roof after her on to the fire-lit lawn.

  The entire downstairs was on fire. The flames danced most brightly behind the sitting-room windows which had blown out or been smashed in. Black smoke and flames licked the outside of the house. Somewhere behind them a car engine revved and receded. Unseen, another window blew out. ‘Let’s get further away from the house!’ McLusky scraped his belongings off the grass and stumbled away into the flickering darkness, with Laura beside him, moaning and muttering. He found his mobile phone. It had gone flat and was entirely unresponsive.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Laura. She had to speak loudly to make herself heard over the roar of the flames.

  ‘Oh, someone’s going to see the fire, surely. Probably already called the fire brigade out.’ McLusky was pulling on what clothes he had managed to grab, which, by some miracle, appeared to be all of them, bar one sock.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re all right for clothes!’ said Laura.

  ‘I thought you’d chucked yours out before you jumped. Here, take my jacket.’

  But Laura stood motionless on the lawn, her disconsolate face lit brightly by the fire. ‘All my stuff. My favourite summer dress. And my laptop. I’d left it downstairs.’

  McLusky hung his leather jacket over her shoulders but she shrugged it off.

  ‘My essay! My funeral rites. Cremated!’

  McLusky trod carefully. ‘Did you back it up?’

  ‘Yeah, but there’s no broadband so I stuck it on a memory stick. That’s also cremated. What the fuck happened, Liam? If this is your idea of a romantic weekend, I can do without it!’

  Another window blew out, this time at the front of the house. ‘The car!’ McLusky sprinted across to his car. It was parked close enough to the house for the paint to blister in the furnace temperatures on the driver’s side. Shielding his face from the ferocious heat, he climbed in, managed to get the overheated engine to start and reversed away on to the grass, leaving the path clear for the fire brigade.

  By the time the two fire engines arrived, blue lights flashing and their enormous diesel engines growling, the house was completely alight, an enormous beacon on top of the cliff, visible for miles. While the firefighters rolled out hoses and began to dampen down the blaze, one fire officer questioned McLusky and Laura, who had gratefully climbed into a paper suit and shoes the man ha
d offered her.

  ‘Anyone left inside? Anyone hurt?’

  ‘It’s just us and we’re fine,’ said McLusky. Laura, who was standing two paces away from him with her arms folded across her chest, managed wordlessly to convey that fine was an unwise expression. ‘We’re unharmed, anyway,’ McLusky modified.

  ‘Any idea what started it?’

  ‘I heard a window breaking downstairs,’ said Laura in a flat voice. ‘Two minutes later the house was on fire.’

  ‘Did you see anyone?’

  ‘No. But I did hear a car drive off after I landed on the grass.’

  ‘What kind of car engine was it? Petrol, diesel?’ McLusky asked.

  ‘I’m not an expert on cars, but it actually sounded just like an old Beetle engine. I used to have one – my first car, in fact. It was terrible.’

  ‘Possible Beetle engine – that’s useful.’ The fire officer made a note on his iPhone. ‘You suspect anyone?’

  McLusky shifted uncomfortably. ‘Not offhand.’

  ‘You’re not the owners, are you?’

  ‘No. Borrowed it from an acquaintance.’

  The flashing blue beacons reflected off Laura’s grey paper suit. ‘He will be pleased,’ she said, staring into what was now just the burnt-out shell of a house.

  ‘We have the owner listed as a Leonidas Poulimenos.’ He read the name slowly off his mobile. ‘Have you informed him yet?’

  ‘My phone’s flat.’

  ‘We’ll contact him in the morning for you. Do you have anywhere else to stay?’

  ‘Just get me home, Liam,’ Laura said.

  ‘That may not be possible,’ said the fire officer, ‘until the police have had a chance to talk to you. Especially if it turns out to be arson.’

  Just then one of the firefighters came over to report just that. ‘Strong smell of accelerant from one of the downstairs rooms – probably petrol, and plenty of it. We found the remains of a plastic petrol can.’ He nodded at the civilians. ‘Someone had it in for you, I’d say.’