Dead in the Water

by Aline Templeton

  ‘Oh, but he was clever – he fixed it so no one would ever know. You didn’t catch him out, did you? It’s only now he’s getting what he deserves, and another man had to die first.’

  ‘He wasn’t the father, Mrs Grant.’

  ‘If it wasn’t him, why wouldn’t she tell me? We were close, up till then.’ Disbelieving, Jean glared at Fleming, demanding an answer she believed she wouldn’t get.

  ‘Because,’ Fleming said gently, ‘the man was married. She believed, I think, right up to the end, that if she kept quiet about it, when the moment came he would leave his wife and marry her.’

  Jean’s face went blank for a moment, her body rigid with shock.

  Fleming went on, ‘When he told her he wouldn’t—’

  Jean interrupted, eyes suddenly bright with anger. ‘Who was it? I want to know, who killed my daughter?’

  Before Fleming could answer, Stuart leaned forward. ‘You did,’ he said. ‘You and my father. You made her life – look, she says here –’ he snatched the paper back from Fleming and pointed, ‘ “a living hell”. Once he’d let her down, what could she do?’

  And Fleming suddenly understood. You have left me with no alternative, Ailsa had written in her tragic, tear-blistered letter. My hands are tied.

  And she had tied them so that she wouldn’t struggle and would die more quickly, poor, poor sad girl, betrayed on every side, hungry for a life with excitement and warmth and colour. Yet, when it had come to the moment, as she was in free fall flying through the tempest to the cruel sea below, she had fought to release herself – and succeeded. But she had changed her mind far, far too late, when her only destiny was Death, the lover she had spoken of in her last, haunting words to her mother – ‘He’s waiting for me now. I must go to him.’

  Badly shaken, Fleming drove away from Balnakenny, but at the end of the track, paused. Her work here was done; perhaps Ailsa Grant’s troubled spirit could find rest now the truth about her passing had been told.

  She could turn left, go back to Kirkluce, where despite her suspension she would get a warm welcome from Donald Bailey. His reputation would be preserved when the case was quietly closed, and it might even do Fleming herself a considerable amount of good, given her discretion in handling it.

  But somehow . . . She turned right, parked the car at the lighthouse and got out.

  It was a beautiful afternoon now, with a clear sky and a soft breeze. In the far distance, she could see the other coasts – England, Ireland – and hear below her the sounds from the nurseries: the demanding brays of seagull chicks and the screaming of their parents as they filled the day with their domestic duties.

  Fleming walked on along the headland, heading for the spot where Ailsa had most likely jumped to her death. Her father had been right all along in his stubborn refusal to accept the official view, and she had no need now to imagine dramatic scenarios, only the drama of a young woman who could see no future she cared to live for.

  She looked down. She couldn’t imagine the sort of despair that would drive you over the edge to the sea below, still foaming round the foot of the cliffs even on this calm and peaceful day. Poor, poor Ailsa.

  At her feet, sea pinks were growing in tufts out of the springy turf, beautiful, surprisingly delicate, in this harsh, salt-sprayed environment. Marjory picked handfuls, collecting them from across the headland, then went back to the edge. She threw them into the offshore breeze.

  So light, they were! But they drifted down, down, some falling on the edge, some blowing back into the cliff-face, and just a few reaching the waves below, though by that time, they were too far away for her to see.

  Marjory wasn’t really in the mood for the full array of scones, cakes and biscuits, but there they all were, laid out for her, so she had to do her best.

  Heather Fairlie had greeted her warmly. ‘I’ve heard such a lot about you! How’s your mother? I was so sorry about your poor father, but Janet will cope – she always does. Never happy unless she’s busy.’

  ‘Oh yes, she’s amazing,’ Marjory agreed uncomfortably. She hadn’t been exactly sensitive to her mother’s need to be needed – not to mention other things.

  ‘Anyway, my dear, how can I help you? Just start with some of that tea-loaf – the dried fruit gets boiled in tea first, and though I say it myself, it gives a lovely rich flavour.’

  ‘Delicious,’ Marjory said, though she would hardly have known if it had been boiled in washing-up liquid. This was her last chance to find out why her father had risked his professional reputation for a girl whose loose behaviour he would most definitely have deplored.

  She took a deep breath. ‘Heather, you know when Ailsa’s body was brought ashore, that my father agreed to let the Grants have her home until the ambulance arrived? It wasn’t correct procedure. Do you have any idea why he did that?’

  Heather hesitated. ‘Well, yes, I do. It surprised me, I have to say, for you’d never have said your father was exactly a sympathetic man. You maybe won’t like it, mind – I don’t know.’

  Fleming steeled herself.

  ‘He said, “If that was my daughter, and this had happened to her, I wouldn’t want her lying there. I’d want her at home.”’

  Marjory never knew how she had got out of there without breaking down. She had finished the tea, had a slice of coffee and walnut cake, then pleaded urgent business.

  She drove from Drummore to a point where she could park by the shore, and then got out. It was classic April weather: the rain had come on again, glancing silvery showers. Bareheaded, she scrambled down on to the stretch of beach, with its view across Luce Bay.

  The rain misted her hair and bloomed on her cheeks. She picked up a smooth stone and skimmed it across the water, but after three skips it puddled and sank.

  Marjory’s throat was tight with tears. Her relationship with her father had always been complicated. She had spent her life striving for his affection, his respect, and, she had always felt, failing because he demanded perfection, and on his terms. Yet, when Ailsa Grant, a ‘fallen woman’ to him, had been brought ashore and laid on the ground, Angus Laird had risked censure to spare her lifeless body indignity.

  He and his daughter had both set aside rules and procedure. His punishment had been a black mark on an unblemished record; hers, she didn’t yet know. He – rigid, uncompromising, puritanical in his daughter’s eyes – had acquired his for too much humanity. While she . . .

  As she gazed blindly out to sea, Marjory’s shoulders drooped. Where did that leave her? She had always seen herself as compassionate both personally and professionally, but by her own standards, she had failed.

  She threw another stone as hard and as far as she could, into the sea, then, sick at heart, went back to her car and drove away.