The Malice of Waves

by Mark Douglas-Home

  Sometimes, when her friends discussed their husbands, someone would comment that Linda didn’t know her luck, not having to barter sex for a bigger allowance, new clothes or a car ‘since you’re well off, since you hold the purse strings’. Linda sensed their envy and something else that would be unspoken, as though money was Linda’s compensation for an absence of beauty or children, the attributes that allowed a woman to negotiate life with a man.

  No one ever said so but Linda was sure her friends thought Stanley had married for money. Occasionally, she thought that too, though he’d never shown any interest in her wealth – the residue from the sale of her father’s engineering business. When she’d bought their house, after that first time, Stanley insisted the deeds were in her name alone. When she’d bought him the new business after changing their names to Pryke, he’d promised to repay her, and so he had.

  Not love, not money. What?

  Tears started rolling down her face as Linda realized that marrying her had been another example of Stanley’s meticulousness, like leaving his mobile phone at home or devising codes and burying his clutches of eggs in different places. Linda was protection for him because she had been brought up to believe there was value in reputation and would do almost anything to protect her father’s good name, her good name. Respectability had been her matchmaker as well as Stanley’s insurance policy.

  7

  The night was black, pitch, impenetrable. The only light that Cal could see was a weak glow from the saloon of the Jacqueline. It shimmered yellow on the sea, catching the top of one wave, seeming to jump to another. Cal watched from the old slipway, a mile east of the Deep Blue. He couldn’t sleep nor, it seemed, could the Wheelers, the strain of the anniversary keeping them awake. Cal reflected on his encounter with the family the previous afternoon and contrasted the tension with his childhood experience. In Wheeler’s temper, Hannah’s tears and Chloe’s jealousy he had seen emotion that had been absent from his relationship with his father. Was that the clue to the puzzle of their estrangement: had there been none of that strain with Cal, even in his teenage years, because his father hadn’t cared that much?

  Not for the first time Cal arrived at the only explanation that seemed to make sense: that James McGill had loved his wife, Eilidh, during her life but not his son, Caladh.

  In the moment, the surrounding dark acted as sly encouragement for thoughts Cal would normally have kept unexplored. He found himself wondering why he’d agreed to work for an obsessive like Wheeler who spied on a township and was driven by a determination to blame someone, anyone, for his son’s death. Might it be because Wheeler, for all his faults, regarded his son as an indivisible part of himself, even after death, and Cal had wanted to witness that? The thought suddenly irritated him: he was thirty, for Christ’s sake, why couldn’t he break the link as his father had done, jettison the baggage?

  What was wrong with him?

  As if to get away from the thought, he started to run along the shingle beach beside the slipway. The thump of his feet and the shifting of the stones cleared his head and provided a distraction. After a hundred metres or so he almost fell. He stopped and stared into the dark. As though the night had been to blame for his stumble as well as for raising the matter of his father, and his own motivation in taking on this assignment. No, he told himself defiantly, there was nothing complicated about why he was there. After five years the police and so-called experts had failed to find a solution to the mystery of Max Wheeler’s death: didn’t Cal always accept a challenge like that?

  8

  On Bella’s urging, Catriona opened the tea room fifteen minutes early. ‘They’ll start arriving now that Wheeler’s collected the minister from the harbour,’ she said and so they did, turning out in their Sunday clothes. By ten twenty the tea room was full, the women seated at tables, the men standing at the window and keeping watch across the sound for the family party going ashore on Priest’s Island. Better to be waiting and ready, they agreed, than run the risk of David Wheeler holding the memorial early to deny the township the opportunity of displaying its humanity in public. Implicit in every muted conversation, whether the women’s or the men’s, was steely defiance: how dare Wheeler continue his persecution; what evidence had there ever been of murder?

  They talked too of their sorrow for the boy (the death of someone as young as Max always to be regretted) and with sympathy for Chloe and Hannah, the younger siblings. How hard must their adolescence have been, one loss following another, the mother then the brother. There was also curiosity about Joss, the oldest child, who had come to live in the township four months earlier, renting the caravan below the road on the way to Grant’s Croft. Would she be attending the service? Had anyone seen her that morning? Curiosity was mixed with wariness: opinion of Joss divided the township, her actions and motives still matters for argument. Had she taken sides against her father by choosing to live in the township, as some believed, or had she, as many suspected, come to spy? Talk too of Fergie McCann’s son: would the father pass on Bella’s warning to him to stay away; would the boy, as wild this year as last, pay heed? There was no disagreement on whether a memorial service was the time or the place for protest: it wasn’t. Attention next turned to Dr Caladh McGill, who had been seen that morning asleep in the back seat of his pickup. He was parked by the old slipway. Had McGill slept there all night? Was that where he planned to stay while he was on Eilean Dubh? As with Joss, there were questions but few answers.

  At ten forty-five, discussion was interrupted when Wheeler’s dinghy was spotted crossing from the Jacqueline to the wooden jetty on Priest’s Island. The tea room emptied, followed by an orderly procession across the car park to the harbour’s west wall.

  Collars were raised against the chill breeze, feet shuffled in an attempt to find a comfortable place for standing, and then, like a ripple moving across water, heads dipped and rose as news passed from one to the other about Joss. Someone had caught sight of her on the slip road, walking towards the Deep Blue, tall and thin, hands thrust into the pockets of her jeans and blonde hair scraped back, her face cast down in anticipation of the attention she was now receiving. She arrived at the tea room door just as Bella was leaving.

  Bella asked, ‘Would you like to walk across?’

  Joss glanced towards the harbour at the turned-up, white faces.

  ‘Don’t let them put you off,’ Bella said. ‘You’ll be all right, if you’re with me.’

  Joss shook her head.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Bella watched Joss’s eyes and mouth and noticed the tightness with which her hair had been pulled back, the stretch of her skin, the strain.

  ‘Oh, you poor girl, you don’t know where you belong, do you, with us here or over there with your sisters?’

  Joss shook her head again.

  ‘Why don’t you go inside,’ Bella suggested. ‘Make yourself some coffee and we’ll talk later.’ Going to join the others, Bella listened for a car horn. All she heard was the breeze. Thank goodness that McCann boy had stayed away.

  For a while, they were lost from view. The small chapel contained them. Joss watched from the tea room window and remembered the dankness of the place, the hollow, echoing sound of the minister’s voice, the atmosphere of ruin and desolation, of Max being absent. She closed her eyes and when she opened them four figures were proceeding towards the raised spine of the island, on the other side of which Max had pitched his tent: Chloe and Hannah folded mournfully into one another, their father leading and the minister in close attendance.

  A Wheeler family version of the stations of the cross.

  Max a new messiah.

  The thought made her angry. Enough!

  She left the tea room and crossed towards the dark-coated huddle at the harbour wall. She stopped behind Mary-Anne Robertson, who was small, pinch-faced and at the back of the group, her lips moving as she said a prayer. The retired schoolteacher felt a hand on her arm and looked round to find Joss prising her away. M
ary-Anne went without protest because of the strength of Joss’s grip and because she thought Joss might be over-wrought and not entirely in control. When she was out of earshot of the others she asked what was wrong.

  ‘Go, go away,’ Joss replied as she turned back. Next to be prised away was Isobel Macrae, a fifty-year-old spinster who had a kindly manner and intelligent eyes. Joss took her to where Mary-Anne was standing, once again spinning away after telling her to leave. ‘Just go away, please.’

  By now the others were watching. Their staring, quizzical faces seemed to unnerve Joss. She looked from one to the other. ‘What are you all doing?’ she said. ‘Why are you here?’

  No one replied until Bella said softly, ‘We’re here because a boy has been lost, your brother. We’re paying our respects.’ Bella made it sound as simple as night following day or as unchanging as the rocks that formed the hills. There was a note of reproach in her voice. Since you’ve been living amongst us, you should know that. ‘And we stand here every year,’ Bella added, ‘so people can see we’re not as we’ve been portrayed.’

  Isobel, in her practical way, gave the others a look to suggest they allow Joss and Bella some space.

  A murmur of agreement was followed by a shuffling of feet and the wafting smell of mothballs from rarely worn old tweed coats. The group retreated along the harbour wall and gathered in front of the tea room. Once again heads lifted respectfully in the direction of the memorial across the sound.

  ‘Are you all right, Joss?’ Bella said. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

  Joss still seemed to be in search of an explanation. ‘Why don’t you people give up? For five years my family has accused you of murder.’

  ‘Well, your father, but not you.’

  ‘Every year it starts up again, the whole thing, another inquiry and another memorial.’

  ‘And every year we stand here because we haven’t done anything wrong and Max is still missing.’ Bella took Joss’s hand in hers. ‘Would you have us behave as if this was any other day, go about our normal business and be accused of cold-heartedness on top of all the other names we’ve been called?’

  Faintly, Joss shook her head.

  ‘Well, then,’ Bella said. ‘Come here.’ Joss leaned in and rested her cheek on Bella’s shoulder. She was stiff and angular, Bella registered, the opposite of Catriona, who was small and rounded. Bella and her niece fitted together, Joss not at all. The same, Bella thought, could be said of Joss and the township. ‘You’re all mixed up, aren’t you? Are you sure you’ve made the right decision?’ she said. ‘Coming to live here, with all the memories it has for you and your family, all these emotions? Not being able to stay away because it’s where Max died, not being happy when you’re here.’

  Joss said nothing.

  Bella tucked a wisp of blond hair behind Joss’s left ear and glanced across at Priest’s Island. Two small dark figures, Chloe and Hannah, were walking back to the jetty. The priest and David Wheeler were silhouetted against the sky, standing, rigid, like old-fashioned preachers calling down God’s hellfire and damnation on sinners. Bella pressed Joss closer so she couldn’t see her father. The movement acted as a prompt to Joss. ‘Where else would I go?’ she said.

  ‘Anywhere,’ Bella said.

  ‘I can’t. You know I can’t.’

  ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.’ Bella had had this conversation with Joss before. ‘You’re not responsible. It’s not your fault, whatever happened. It’s …’

  ‘I should have gone with Max,’ Joss interrupted. ‘I should have spent the night with him on the island. If I had, none of this would have happened.’

  ‘The responsibility of the oldest child,’ Bella said, ‘the big sister …’

  Neither spoke, the bond between them making words unnecessary. Bella’s younger sister, Frances, had died too. Joss knew the story: how Frances had gone with Kenny, her husband, to lift his creels, how he couldn’t manage the boat on his own because of an injury to his hand. Bella, visiting from Glasgow, had been babysitting the Deep Blue and Catriona when a storm had blown up. Kenny’s upturned boat and two bodies had been found the following morning. Sixteen years later Bella was still looking after the tea room and the child. Every morning the sight of Catriona made Bella think, ‘If only.’

  If only she had listened to the weather forecast.

  If only she had inquired more about Kenny’s injury. If only she’d known how incapacitated he was.

  If only she’d realized how short of money Kenny and Frances had been – the Deep Blue was a struggle in its early years, the prospect of a catch of lobster and crab the difference between paying the bills or not.

  ‘If only,’ Bella said. ‘You can’t live that way, Joss. Not at your age, not you.’ It was Bella’s way of saying it had been different for her. She had been older, thirty-three, divorced and childless. ‘I had Catriona to look after and the Deep Blue. But you, this is tearing you apart, tearing you away from your sisters, living here, being with us. It’s not right.’

  Behind the Deep Blue a hill reared towards the sky. Its summit was a grassy knoll where, in another age, a lookout waited for a signal from the headland to the west. On seeing a white flag – a torn sheet tied to a boathook – he would shout to the fishermen in the harbour below, alerting them to a shoal of approaching salmon, flashing silver in the water. The boats would put out into the sound, the nets would be thrown and the fishermen would hope for a catch. For Cal, the hill also served as a lookout. He approached from the east, a walk of fifteen minutes from his pickup by the old slipway. Arriving early to avoid breaking the skyline while the memorial was underway, he searched with binoculars for Millie. He found the orange buoy near the middle of the sound, towards Wheeler’s boat, further to the west than he expected, which indicated the strength of the west-flowing stream from the Minch.

  Then, he watched the human drama of the memorial. Once the people of the township had gone inside the tea room, the only actors left on stage below him were Bella and a tall, blonde young woman – her looks and colouring identifying her as a Wheeler: Joss. After Bella had hugged her, the two separated, Joss walking slowly away, head down. For a while Bella watched Joss’s back before going inside the Deep Blue. Cal thought it had been like attending the performance of a play in a vast natural amphitheatre and he was the only person in the audience.

  Except he was an actor too, wasn’t he?

  Before going down the hill, he checked to see if his phone had a signal. There were two unread messages. One was from Mr Close early in the morning reminding Cal not to carry out any work on the sound that day because of Wheeler family sensitivity. The other was from Detective Sergeant Helen Jamieson.

  Hello, Cal, I haven’t seen you for a while. Drink? There’s something I’d like to discuss with you, ASAP if convenient.

  Cal replied:

  I’m in north-west Scotland, on an island. Not going to be able to do much here for a while without causing offence. If I caught the afternoon ferry I could be in Edinburgh by nine. What about dinner tonight? Tell you about it then.

  9

  Stanley Pryke muttered and cursed as he hacked at the dried peat. What use was a garden trowel when he needed a spade or a peat-cutter with a sharpened blade, something he could put his boot on? Angrily, he stabbed at the peat and the trowel recoiled on impact. The heel of his hand was beginning to hurt. He stared at the reddened skin and cursed ill fortune. A blister would make the climb more difficult. Wasn’t it dangerous enough already – a sheer sea cliff slicked and slippery with salt spray, the nest guarded by an overhanging sentinel of rock?

  Frustration finally got the better of Stanley. He threw down the trowel. It made a clanging sound against the hardened peat, as though it had struck rock. Stanley muttered to himself about climate change deniers. Here was all the proof anyone needed, in this modest depression slung below an outcrop of Lewisian Gneiss. At no time in the past fifteen years, at no time in the past hundred and fifty years,
would it have been as dry as this, the ground as hard, as impenetrable.

  It seemed to Stanley that bad luck was dogging him at every turn.

  The stubbornness of the peat, his nascent blister and his unsettled state of mind made him wonder whether he’d paid too little regard to the passage of time and to the extra inches around his girth. For a year or two he’d noticed a decline in his strength and his stamina, some breathlessness in ascending steep flights of stairs. In this, his forty-sixth year, having been out of practice for so long, was he past it?

  An incident on the early morning ferry had started this corrosive train of thought.

  Stanley had been on deck when an older, balding man and a younger blonde woman approached. Like him, they were foot passengers, practised walkers by the look of their worn boots and weathered backpacks. The woman said ‘lovely day’ and Stanley thought he saw recognition in the man’s eyes, an involuntary double-take. ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Stanley replied with enthusiasm before wandering further along the deck. When next he glanced in their direction, the man, Stanley saw with alarm, was hurrying away in the direction of the bridge. The prospect of the police waiting for him when the ferry docked, of being detained or questioned, brought on a kind of panic attack. He thought he might collapse, but to avoid drawing attention to himself, he sat on a bench, hoping the impression he gave was of a traveller letting go of life’s stresses, gulping invigorating Hebridean sea air. The next he knew, the woman was standing over him, her face set in a worried expression. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.