On each side of the jetty brown wracks of seaweed draped the rocks in a slippery blanket. Tiny fish darted in the shallow pools left by the receding tide, and sea birds swooped and circled overhead, their strident cries cutting through the excited chatter of the crowd milling around me. None of them looked like puffins. The birds, I mean, not my fellow trippers.
I made a show of consulting the simple map provided with the ticket. Others, too, might not be as innocent as they seemed. It was important, therefore, to establish a harmless amateur profile, blend into the mass. Just in case.
I waved the pamphlet at a florid-faced man standing nearby. ‘Where’s the best place to take pictures of the birds?’
‘No idea.’ He pointed up the path towards a distant wooden building. ‘You might get some information there. Maybe get a drink, too,’ he added hopefully. He trudged off in search of something probably a bit stronger than a cup of tea.
The crowd were beginning to disperse. I’d better make a move myself. Yesterday, a study of the Ordnance Survey map had familiarised me with the topography of the island and its place names – the South and North Horns, Maiden Rocks, Pilgrims’ Haven, and Kirkhaven, the little bay where we had just landed. All had been just meaningless names on a map with no indication of how suited any of them would be to Spinks’s schemes. I’d have to do some reconnaissance on foot.
At a leisurely pace, camera dangling ready for instant use, as if I’d nothing more on my mind than to snatch a few bird photographs, I set off up the rough grassy path towards the South Horn. I hadn’t realised till now that the Horn really was a horn, a foghorn, that is. Standing on its concrete plinth, it looked remarkably like a giant re-creation of an old His Master’s Voice gramophone.
A stab of pain shot through my ankle. Caught up in this fantasy, I’d caught my foot on one of the tussocks of grass in the centre of the path. Paths like this would not be good for any reconnaissance in the dark. I hobbled on a few steps and rested for a moment at a gateway flanked by small stone pillars. In the small field beyond, a rabbit scuttered across the grass through wild flowers, campion, I think, growing as thick as daisies on a neglected lawn. Quite pretty things, wild flowers. I hummed a few bars of ‘An English Country Garden’. As I gave an experimental twirl of the affected ankle, a purple-topped thistle, asserting its Scottish identity, clawed viciously at my leg, piercing through my thin trousers with its barbs. Not all wild flowers are dainty fragile things, are they? Just like women.
Behind me I heard the quick patter of running feet and high-pitched childish shrieks, then a crescendo of howls. Ignoring the jab of pain, I sidestepped smartly through a gap between another two stone pillars on my left. Shutting my ears to the mayhem going on behind me, I took a deep breath of tangy salt-laden air overlaid by the more pungent guano of nesting sea birds. Weak rays of sun filtered through banks of cloud. Where once a road had run, grass and weeds ruled.
A deep slash in the cliff ran almost to my feet. I approached the edge with caution. The sheer black sides were splashed with brilliant white layers of bird droppings. Far below gleamed water, water so clear it was hard to tell where the rocks cut the glassy surface. A shallow cave, a darker shadow among the other shadows, broke the waterline. A slow swell nudged at a pile of flotsam, crunching it against the unforgiving rock. This would be ideal as one of Spinks’s collection points, if they used those long fishing rods as at Fast Castle, or sent in a small boat. But a bit risky if even the slightest swell was running. I aimed my camera at a shaggy black bird perched on a jagged outcrop of rock. The cave was nicely in the bottom of the frame. I pressed the shutter.
Where exactly was I on the map? It was hard to say. The basic outline of the simple guide leaflet wasn’t much help, but in the bay below, that stack shaped like the Old Man of Hoy should be a good landmark. I delved in my rucksack and pulled out the Ordnance Survey. That outcrop must be Maiden Rocks. I marked the map. Alongside I wrote, Possible sighting of cormorant, underlining the first two words. The map might fall into enemy hands. One couldn’t be too careful.
I seemed to have the cliff top to myself now. It was amazing how such a small island could swallow up a boatload of people. There was no sign of peevish, crying children, or anyone else. So why did I have that prickling feeling in the back of my neck? That unmistakable feeling of being watched.
Slowly, I folded up the map and slid it into the rucksack. As I heaved the strap onto my shoulder, I swung casually round, my back to the sea. Nothing. Nobody. Only a dead sea bird under a scrubby bush, its head tucked under its wing in a grim parody of sleep. Perhaps I was being observed from the sea through a periscope… I tried to smile at my feeble joke. I was just being twitchy. I trudged on along the cliff top.
Pilgrims’ Haven turned out to be a grey, stony beach disfigured by the usual rubbish thrown up by the tides: a rusty jerry can, a broken lobster creel, a couple of old tyres, a bit of green plastic sheeting. At the water’s edge, a yellow plastic canister grated noisily against the rounded pebbles as it rolled to and fro. That lump of rock on the horizon must be… I consulted the Ordnance Survey again…the Bass Rock. And Tantallon was more or less straight across. The Spinks Triangle.
A seal broke the surface of the sea. I watched its dark sleek head appearing and disappearing in the lapping waves. I gazed out to sea, teasing at the thread of memory…and I remembered…Gina. Gina floating face down below the red crags of Tantallon, and, bobbing beside her dark head, a yellow canister. The seal submerged. One minute it was there, the next, only a ripple marked the spot. Divers – they would be another way for Spinks to retrieve or deposit his packages, perhaps in a lobster creel. A lobster creel marked by a brightly coloured float…
Pilgrims’ Haven’s secluded beach, enclosed as it was in the arms of a little bay, would be an ideal collection point from Spinks’s point of view. On the map I wrote, Probable sighting of seal. I crouched down and took my second photograph, this one featuring in the foreground the broken creel.
‘A load of trash. Why’d ya wanna take a picture of a loada trash?’ The voice was nasal, oddly threatening.
When I looked up, he was standing there, a cigarette cupped in his hand, the Silent One from Fast Castle. To generate so many words, maybe that lobster pot was something special.
Crouching down again, I took a close-up. ‘Photo comp.’ I smiled up at him engagingly, searching in those dark suspicious eyes for that disastrous start of recognition. They remained mercifully blank. I straightened up and clipped the lens cover back on. ‘Fruit of the Sea, that’s the theme… You’ve got to interpret things to catch the judge’s eye, you know.’
‘Yeah?’ After this effort he lapsed into silence again. Those eyes were giving a thorough once-over to my powerful binoculars and the camera with its 400mm lens.
I forestalled the questions. ‘Bird photography, that’s what I’m really into. Do you know, it’s dead birds that earn me more money than a great pic of…say…’ under the unwinking scrutiny of those eyes, my mind searched desperately for a likely species, ‘…one of those cuddly puffins. Would you believe that?’
His stony expression indicated that he’d have a hard time believing anything.
I plunged on. ‘The Environmental Lobby can’t get enough publicity pics of oiled sea birds and that sort of thing. It’s a nice little earner.’
‘No sweat?’ The Silent One tossed the glowing butt of his cigarette into an advancing wave. He no longer seemed interested in me. I tucked the map into my belt, and with a cheery ‘’Bye’ crunched off up the beach to rejoin the path. Beads of sweat formed on my hairline as I relived those last tense moments. I had just reached the top of the cliff with its banks of white campion, when I heard quick steps behind me.
‘Hey there,’ he called. ‘Don’t I know you from some place?’
Every instinct shouted Run. I turned and waited for him to catch me up. I made a show of studying his face, then slowly shook my head.
‘We-ll, we were both on the
boat, weren’t we?’
He hadn’t been. I would have spotted him. I treated him to a disarming smile and prayed that he wouldn’t recognise in me that weedy artist on Fast Castle cliffs. His turn to shake his head. It was bothering him. Any moment now the connection might be made.
In a crisis I become wildly inventive. It’s a knack much admired by my colleagues. Self-preservation, I suppose.
‘I know!’ I cried with what I hoped was the right degree of pride. ‘You’ve seen my picture in the Guardian, yesterday’s paper. Page 7, or 8, or was it 17? I was the winner of their Wildlife Photo Competition.’ He definitely wasn’t a Guardian reader. ‘It was in the first edition. Do you know,’ I worked myself into a state of indignation, ‘I actually bought five copies of the second edition to send to my friends and it wasn’t there! What do you think of that?’
While I was gabbling on, my mind was racing. What if he made the connection – this wildlife photographer and the artist with the spiky yellow hair? Would he buy it that I had an artist brother? I didn’t think so. He lit another cigarette, cupping his hands over the flame, his eyes watchful. He wasn’t listening. His brain was searching its hard disk.
I smiled a ‘sorry can’t help’ smile and turned away. What could he do about it, anyway? He could hardly strike me down in broad daylight, in full view of anyone coming along. But no one was coming along. We were quite alone. ‘Amazing how such a small island can swallow up a whole boatload of people’, I’d thought only a short while ago. I’d been quite pleased to be away from the madding crowd. Now I was desperate for witnesses. The cliffs here above the bay were low, only about thirty feet high, but quite high enough for a fatal accident. A quick push and…
I forced my legs into a casual stroll. Not too fast, just keep it natural. I mustn’t look round. I strained my ears for the soft sound of running feet, braced myself for the sharp blow on the back. Or the rabbit punch to the nape of the neck. He would know how to kill silently. That wild soaring of the imagination I was boasting about just now has its downside.
I shouldn’t have been worrying about a rabbit punch. It was a rabbit hole that caused my downfall. Literally. I pitched headlong, nose-diving into the coarse turf. When I picked myself up and looked round, he was nowhere in sight.
I could see quite a distance along the cliff top. Had he gone down to the beach again? If so, why? Worth investigating, but risky. I trotted back along the path. At a spot I calculated would be just out of sight of somebody on the beach, I did another nose-dive, this time controlled and deliberate. I wriggled forward on my elbows, camera with telephoto lens at the ready. And there he was, doing a beachcomber act, getting those fancy shoes of his wet as he made a grab for the lobster creel. Before he turned my way, I raised the camera, snatched a quick shot and wriggled my way backward.
I made a low crouching run back along the path, slowing to an upright, less Neanderthal position when I felt it safe to do so. I consulted my watch. I had only an hour till the boat left, but there was time for a quick recce of the rest of the island. There must be other landing places and I needed to suss them out. I found another couple of possibilities. One was the oddly named Mill Door, a narrow finger of greeny black sea below a small dam (I cautiously marked it on my map as ‘sight of rare white-billed puffin’). The other was the North Horn and low-lying island of Rona, joined to the main island of May by a metalled bailey bridge (‘second sight of rare puffin’).
The sharp blare of the ship’s siren boomed across the island. That meant fifteen minutes to get back to Kirkhaven, or I’d be left behind. It wasn’t far back to the harbour, and the going was easy, an old metalled road, then a broad grassy track. I made it to the path leading down to the jetty with five minutes to spare. Already the boat was half full, the best seats commandeered, the jostle for places encouraged by the thin drizzle that had set in.
Another sharp toot from the siren encouraged stragglers to quicken their pace. Because of the tides, the ship couldn’t delay its departure. We’d been warned about that on the way over. Should I just slip behind that wall and allow myself to be left behind? I can’t deny I was tempted. What removed the temptation entirely was the sight of the Silent One standing, silently of course, at the top of the path. I noted the salty tidemark on his expensive shoes, and the damp patches getting damper on his expensively clad shoulders. He’d been there for some time in the drizzle, studying the faces of those embarking. I joined the queue shuffling slowly forward. I didn’t meet his eyes. That might betray the fact that I was taking a special interest in him.
There beside me was the florid-faced man, heaven sent.
‘Get your drink, then?’ I asked, conversationally turning my head.
The gloomy look gave me my answer before he replied. ‘Aye, I’d the choice of orange or cola.’
Suitable commiserations took me safely past that dangerous scrutiny. As we passed the Silent One, I sensed a sudden quickening of interest, then a relaxation of tension. That inquisitive photographer was leaving the island. The Silent One was satisfied.
But I’d be back. By night, when he was no longer watching.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘Something ghastly’s happened at the hotel!’ The voice on the phone was distraught. I recognised at once the rich fruity tones of Felicity Lannelle.
‘What—?’ I began. ‘Tell me—’
Several times I tried, Canute-like, to stem the flood of long drawn out wails and breathless gasps, but with as little success as that hapless monarch. Before one sentence ended, another began. From the incoherent babble the only really intelligible words were ‘my cooking project’, ‘Mrs Mackenzie’ and ‘ab-saw-loot disaster’. Had Mrs M, arms akimbo, refused to divulge the secrets of her larder, aborting the Cooking Experience before take-off? Yes, that must be it. Felicity had revealed to Mrs Mackenzie that she would be just one of many chefs to be featured. Mrs M would brook no rivals. Perhaps she had dictated that her kitchen, and no other, must be the star in Felicity’s great work. Perhaps in a fit of jealous pique, she had ordered Mr Mackenzie to make a bonfire of Felicity’s precious notebooks. All her research had gone up in flames.
But even a frantic Felicity Lannelle had to draw breath sometime, and when she did, I swiftly cut in, ‘Where are you? At the White Heather? Right. Be with you in about half an hour.’
I slammed down the phone before I could be engulfed by another tidal wave of lamentation. I’d help her out. It would be a chance to nose around the hotel. No matter how disapproving Mrs Mackenzie might be, she wasn’t likely to further upset a lucrative guest like Felicity by sending me packing.
I drew up in the White Heather’s car park. An ambulance, its doors flung wide, was drawn up to one side of the front door. Had Felicity’s woes precipitated a hysterical collapse? In the silence after I’d switched off the ignition, I heard the hum of a car engine coming up the drive behind me, and in the narrow rectangle of my rear-view mirror saw a police car. Its wheels crunched noisily on the gravel as it drew to a halt. Surely Felicity hadn’t… My stomach lurched.
The nearside door opened and Macleod clambered rather stiffly out. A pebble of ice formed in the pit of my stomach. I shouldn’t have been so abrupt with her. I should have foreseen that under extreme pressure her volatile personality might succumb to suicidal tendencies. If she couldn’t cope with the present moment, to wait half an hour for help would have seemed impossible. I could see that now.
I pressed a button and the car window slid smoothly down. I didn’t get out. I sat there allowing Macleod to come over the gravel towards me. It was silly, but it meant I wouldn’t hear the news I dreaded for another twenty…fifteen…ten seconds. He rested his hand on the roof and stooped till his head was level with mine.
‘I think that man of yours has been busy again.’ His face was grim. ‘Not that there’ll be any proof, of course. At least not at first, till we get Forensic to have a good poke around.’
The icy pebble in my stomach became a boulder.
Spinks must have stumbled across my link with Felicity, and been waiting for her to put the phone down before he struck.
‘Dead?’ My voice was a croak.
‘Definitely. Oh yes, definitely dead.’
Plump, unscrupulous Felicity, with her fruity tones, teetering pile of multi-coloured notebooks and excited plans for the future. Somehow, I felt it was all my fault. I looked away, not trusting myself to speak.
‘You seem a bit upset. Didn’t know he meant anything to you.’ Surprise sharpened Macleod’s voice.
It took a second or two for the pronoun to register. Then, ‘He?’ I said blankly, raising my eyes to his face.
‘Mackenzie. Who did you think it was?’ He stood up and held open the car door for me to get out.
‘I—’ Over his shoulder I caught sight of a large figure surging down the steps towards us.
‘It’s frightful! A calamity!’ Felicity’s face crumpled. She dabbed at her swollen eyes with a napkin-sized handkerchief.
Usually impassive, Macleod failed to hide his incredulity at this unexpected and public show of grief for the unfortunate, and not much lamented, Murdo Mackenzie. His face was a study – as, of course, was mine.
‘Felicity…!’ was all I could splutter before I was enfolded in her arms and crushed to her woebegone bosom.
Macleod’s authoritative, ‘Excuse me, ladies!’ accompanied by a loud clearing of the throat, rescued me from suffocation in the nick of time. I disengaged myself from her watery embrace.
‘If you’ll just go along and wait in the lounge with the others, I’ll send someone to take your statements as soon as we’ve finished at the garage.’ He fished a notebook out of his pocket. ‘If I might have your names, ladies…?’ Discreet as ever, he was being careful not to blow my cover.
‘Ms Smith. Ms DJ Smith.’
No Suspicious Circumstances Page 23