The Malice of Waves

by Mark Douglas-Home

  ‘No,’ Cal replied. ‘I’ve changed the name to the Sea Detective Agency.’

  ‘I remember you saying something about that.’ She nodded with approval. ‘The Sea Detective Agency, that’s good. It does what it says on the tin.’

  At the next junction Cal turned into an industrial estate. They passed a picture framer, a company offering industrial lighting solutions and a laser engraver before the pickup stopped by a single-storey unit which appeared to be unoccupied.

  ‘This is it,’ Cal said.

  ‘Headquarters,’ Helen suggested.

  Cal smiled. ‘I suppose so.’

  He parked and Helen said, ‘No sign outside?’

  ‘I prefer not being known by my neighbours. Anyway, most of my clients contact me through my website or by email. I go to them – they don’t visit me.’

  Cal unlocked the door and preceded Helen inside. The strip lighting flickered on and off at first, providing Helen with a snapshot impression of familiar objects: maps and charts covering the walls, a table filling the middle of the room. Helen had seen them before, two years ago, when she’d raided his flat with Detective Inspector Ryan. Despite the circumstances being inauspicious, she’d taken to Cal from the start. Cal’s ‘offence’ had involved night-time excursions into the gardens of politicians and leaving behind a plant that survived the last ice age as a warning of climate change. To Helen’s amusement, Cal ran rings around Ryan before the case collapsed. Even the Environment Minister, one of Cal’s ‘victims’, had refused to give evidence for the prosecution because he was worried about enraging the green lobby.

  Ex-Detective Inspector Ryan, Helen grinned. How she had disliked him, another one of those officers who judged a clever woman by her looks and tried to put her down.

  ‘Since we’re here,’ Cal said, ‘would it be all right if I had a shower and found something clean to wear?’

  ‘Sure,’ Helen smiled. ‘Of course, go ahead.’ She wafted her hand across her face, as if dismissing a bad smell. ‘Sooner the better, if you want my opinion.’ She shouted after him: ‘No need to hurry, either.’

  While Cal showered, Helen looked around the office at the brick walls, at the gantry of metal shelves along one wall, at the disarray. Everywhere was a chaos of books and files and charts. She read some newspaper cuttings stuck to a noticeboard, reports of deaths and disappearances at sea, missing bodies. Beside the cuttings was a display of photographs. Helen scanned them quickly: bodies lying bloated on sand; bodies broken-jointed and sprawled on rocks; stripped bones protruding from white, bulging flesh. She had been involved in murder investigations where the condition of the victims had been more palatable.

  The photographs reminded her of two investigations where Cal and she had cooperated: the discovery of disarticulated feet encased in trainers which had washed up on beaches in Orkney and East Lothian, and the murder of Preeti, one of two Indian girls trafficked to Scotland.

  Turning her back on the photographs, Helen regarded the table. She remembered its disorder from the raid on his flat. Now the mess was worse, another two years of accumulation on display. Books and files were in leaning piles across its length and breadth. Helen thought it resembled a model of some endlessly expanding shanty town that had run out of available space and could only grow by extending upwards. Everywhere were jutting or leaning towers of paper in danger of partial or complete collapse. Some had already fallen, only to become the foundations for the construction of yet another unstable edifice.

  How could Cal work in such a mess?

  Towards the back of the room, away from the fluorescent glare of the overhead lights, she noticed a kitchenette in an alcove, with a kettle, a camp stove and two mugs on the sink drainer. Below, on the floor, were a camp bed and a sleeping bag. A large rucksack was propped against the wall. Clothes spilled from its open top. Helen registered the details one by one, like gathering the clues to a crime. Cal hadn’t brought the rucksack with him from the pickup. ‘God, Cal,’ she said in an undertone, ‘is this where you’re living?’

  A book was open in Helen’s hands when Cal returned from the shower. Its title was Waves, Tides and Shallow-Water Processes. ‘Finally,’ Helen said, looking up, noticing Cal’s wet hair, his white shirt outside his jeans and his bare feet. ‘I’ve found an explanation I understand.’

  ‘For what?’ Cal asked.

  ‘For waves, how the movement we see is energy passing through the water. How, overall, the water itself stays more or less in the same place.’

  Cal rubbed at his hair with his towel before hunting through the rucksack. ‘Like wind ruffling a barley field,’ he said.

  Helen returned the book to Cal’s table. She studied the room again, a look of concern on her face. ‘You don’t live here, Cal, do you?’

  ‘This place suits me,’ he said. ‘Anyway, it’s cheap. I can lock it and leave it.’

  ‘Really, Cal? This is home?’

  ‘When I’m in town, I stay here, yes.’

  ‘How often is that?’

  ‘Five or six days a month.’

  ‘When you’re not in town, what then? Where do you sleep?’

  ‘If the weather’s bad, in the pickup.’

  ‘If the weather’s good?’

  ‘A beach, the dunes, in a tent or my sleeping bag.’

  Helen laughed as though she didn’t know living that way was possible. ‘I thought you must be renting a flat.’ She looked around the room again. ‘I didn’t realize. Some friend I am.’

  Cal said, ‘It’s fine. I’m comfortable.’

  ‘When did you last sleep in a bed – one with a sheet, a pillow and a duvet?’

  ‘God, I don’t know.’

  Helen raised her eyebrows. ‘Try.’

  ‘A year ago, maybe more. A client booked me into a hotel.’

  ‘And the time before that?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Why didn’t I know?’ Helen said.

  ‘Not much of a detective,’ Cal countered.

  ‘No, hopeless, obviously,’ Helen said. ‘After all this time, I find out you’re living like a serial killer on the run.’

  The restaurant, an Italian, was bright, friendly and warm, the opposite of Cal’s office. The owner, Luigi, took Helen’s coat and winked conspiratorially at Cal.

  ‘Usually, I come here alone,’ Cal explained to Helen, after Luigi had shown them to a table.

  ‘Usually?’ Helen asked.

  ‘When I’m in Edinburgh. I have lunch or dinner here.’

  Helen said, ‘I can see why; it’s nice,’ but she was thinking how sad that he ate alone when more often than not she did too. And she felt a pang of guilt at why she had asked to see him. Cal, typically, had not mentioned her text message or wondered at her urgency. He had driven all that way and now he was allowing her to choose her time. As if Helen wasn’t a bad enough friend already.

  After Luigi had brought their drinks – white wine for Helen, beer for Cal – she decided to broach the subject. ‘What are you working on?’ she asked, hoping that Cal would think her awkwardness was caused by another of Luigi’s winks. ‘Didn’t I read in a newspaper somewhere that you were looking into the disappearance of Max Wheeler?’

  Cal looked up. ‘Do you know the case?’

  ‘Everyone knows that case,’ Helen said quickly and remembered what her boss, Detective Chief Inspector Richard Beacom, had told her. You’re not lying to him, Helen, and your intentions are honest. And so they were, she thought. Maybe she shouldn’t be feeling so bad.

  Cal looked surprised. ‘I thought that would be one case the police would want to forget.’

  ‘No,’ Helen said, ‘not a bit of it.’ She felt herself flushing again. ‘I read the case file a few weeks ago, my boss too. It’s always brought out at every anniversary.’

  ‘Anything you can share with me?’ Cal asked.

  ‘I don’t suppose it would do any harm to tell you the general conclusion.’

  ‘Which is?’
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br />   ‘Nothing much you can’t guess at: that Max Wheeler either died because of an accident or he was murdered. Escape has been ruled out – he wasn’t that strong a swimmer – and anyway he wasn’t the kind of boy who would run away. He wasn’t a misfit, moody or rebellious. Nor was he suffering from some teenage angst about the future.’

  ‘So he didn’t throw himself off a cliff but he might have fallen off one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Not quite.’ Helen seemed to be making up her mind whether to tell him. ‘It’s about the motive, why anyone would have wanted to kill Max Wheeler.’

  She hesitated, and Cal said, ‘I know there’s a theory that Donald Grant killed the boy to take his revenge on David Wheeler for buying Priest’s Island and bringing an end to the grazing lease.’

  ‘That’s what the senior investigating officer believed at the start.’

  ‘He changed his mind?’

  ‘Yes, after questioning Grant and talking to people in the township, at least those who would speak to him. Donald Grant being a killer just didn’t stack up.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He didn’t bear a grudge,’ Helen said. ‘He wasn’t angry with the Wheelers.’

  ‘He had cause to be.’

  ‘The loss of the grazing rights affected him in a different way. It broke him. In the end, the only person he was capable of killing was himself.’

  ‘He drank himself to death.’

  ‘Yes, eventually.’

  ‘So what happened to Max? If he was murdered, who killed him?’

  ‘Most likely it was Grant’s nephew, Ewan Chisholm.’

  Cal thought for a moment. ‘Ewan had to watch his Uncle Donald’s destruction, so he decided to take revenge, to destroy something that was as precious to David Wheeler?’

  ‘Forty per cent right, the other sixty per cent is where it gets interesting. A psychologist listened to Ewan Chisholm’s interviews. Remember, he was fifteen then. His emotional age was younger.’

  ‘Tough family background, parents always fighting …’

  ‘Yes,’ Helen said. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Oh, Wheeler has information on everybody. He used to send people to spy on the township, proper little intelligence operation, who’s sleeping with whom, everything.’

  ‘Honestly?’

  Cal nodded. ‘I’ve seen the file.’

  ‘What did it say about Ewan Chisholm?’

  ‘Probably the same as yours. Ewan had means and motivation. He was strong for his age, was able to use his uncle’s boat and knew the sound well enough to navigate at night. There was also mention of an earlier incident where he’d been caught damaging a holiday home owned by a couple from Newcastle.’

  ‘I read that too,’ Helen said. ‘Chisholm resented people from England buying into his adopted home. Wheeler’s treatment of his uncle turned that into something more dangerous.’

  ‘That seems to be Wheeler’s theory too.’

  ‘Well, the psychologist had a more interesting take on Ewan Chisholm,’ Helen said. ‘As you’d expect, he found the boy to be angry, but more to the point he also discovered him to be jealous. This wasn’t your usual green-eyed monster stuff but something more worrying. According to the psychologist, Ewan’s rage wasn’t directed where he expected, at David Wheeler. It was at Max, the boy who would grow up to take over Priest’s Island, the boy that Ewan had expected to be when he succeeded his Uncle Donald.’

  ‘Angry and jealous enough for murder?’

  ‘Yes, possibly. But in the psychologist’s opinion it wouldn’t have been tidy. Ewan wouldn’t have thrown Max into the sea. No, his was the kind of jealousy that would have been messy. There would have been blood. That’s what he wrote in the report. Don’t look for a body. Look for blood. Somewhere on the island there will be blood, lots of it.’

  ‘Not now, there won’t. Not after five years, not with that rainfall.’

  ‘No, but this was in the early days of the inquiry.’

  ‘So Ewan Chisholm was capable of murdering Max. It’s just that there isn’t any evidence that he did.’

  ‘That’s about it. The psychologist was persuasive about Ewan’s state of mind. Potential for great violence and a surfeit of grievance where Max Wheeler was concerned. Those were his comments.’

  ‘A dangerous boy?’

  ‘For Max Wheeler, potentially, yes.’

  ‘Did the psychologist have an opinion on whether Ewan would grow into a dangerous young man?’

  ‘Not really, though he said that Priest’s Island might continue to be a trigger for his anger. At a moment of stress, it could throw him back.’

  ‘Whoever replaced Max as heir apparent should watch out?’

  ‘I suppose that’s a conclusion you could draw,’ Helen said.

  ‘The psychologist doesn’t?’

  Helen shook her head. ‘Is there an heir apparent?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cal said. ‘It’s not exactly happy families on Priest’s Island. Joss, the oldest daughter, has separated out. She’s living in the township. Chloe and Hannah are still with their father but I don’t know how long that will last. Hannah’s relationship with him is tense.’

  He considered Helen’s question again. ‘Wheeler’s so obsessed with avenging Max’s death and honouring his memory that I wonder if he’s given any thought to the future of the island. Maybe he’ll leave it to one of his daughters. Maybe he’ll hand over the ownership to a Max Wheeler memorial trust or something like that. Who knows?’

  ‘Well,’ Helen said, ‘that could be a good thing – the uncertainty, I mean. Perhaps that’s what keeps the girls safe.’ She paused. ‘What’s your opinion about the township? Are the residents protecting Ewan Chisholm? The senior investigating officer had been certain they were.’

  ‘Do I think there’s a conspiracy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not to kill Max Wheeler,’ Cal said, ‘or one to cover up for Ewan Chisholm, no. It’s not like that. My sense is that there’s a circling of wagons, of the township protecting itself and one of its own.’

  ‘That person being Ewan Chisholm, the adopted son?’ Helen said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Catriona Mackinnon, Bella MacLeod’s niece?’

  ‘What about her?’ Cal asked.

  ‘Does Wheeler’s report say anything about her?’

  Cal thought back. ‘It doesn’t rule out her being actively involved in Max Wheeler’s death, but it’s certain that she’s been covering up for Ewan.’

  ‘She was known to be upset about what had happened to Donald Grant and, by extension, to Ewan,’ Helen told him.

  ‘Upset enough to have killed Max with Ewan?’ Cal sounded doubtful.

  Helen leaned forward. ‘For the sake of argument, let’s say they didn’t intend to kill Max. But once he was dead, if two of them were involved, disposing of the body would have been easier and quicker.’

  ‘Bella gave a statement that Catriona was at home all night,’ Cal pointed out.

  ‘Yes, she would, wouldn’t she?’ Helen said dryly.

  ‘Wheeler’s report says the same,’ Cal continued. ‘It doubts whether Bella would hold back evidence about Ewan’s involvement in Max’s death, but not if Catriona was involved.’

  They were interrupted by Luigi bringing their food: spaghetti and scallops for Helen, artichoke risotto for Cal. Once he had gone, Helen said, ‘The Wheeler case is the reason I sent you that text message.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Beacom asked me to meet you.’

  Cal nodded. He knew Beacom. He’d run the operation to round up a human trafficking gang – the case involving the two Indian girls that Cal and Helen had worked on together. ‘What’s on his mind?’

  Helen sensed Cal’s wariness. She kept to Beacom’s script. ‘He’d like to see if we could work in tandem.’

  ‘I don’t like doing that. It’s not good for my reputation.’

  �
�You’ve done it before.’

  ‘Because a fourteen-year-old girl’s life was in danger.’

  Helen nodded. ‘And yours, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘Are you saying I owe you one?’

  ‘No, Cal, I’m not saying that.’

  ‘But Beacom is?’

  ‘Something along those lines, yes. He’s been given the Wheeler case to review because of the anniversary. He’s put a team together.’

  ‘And he wants me to help him out.’ Cal shook his head. ‘Fuck, Helen. There’s no proof that Max Wheeler was even murdered.’

  ‘There’s no proof of anything. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying to find some. All we’re asking you to do is share information. Just do what you normally would – work out the currents, drop hints about progress, upset some people, stir things up.’

  ‘Where will your boss be?’

  ‘He’ll be here.’

  ‘So he expects me to do all the work?’

  ‘No, we’ll have our own eyes and ears on the ground. We’ll be watching and listening … I’ll be watching and listening.’

  ‘You.’ Cal seemed nonplussed.

  ‘Well, thank you for being so pleased.’

  ‘How will that work?’

  ‘I’m going to be staying at the Deep Blue’s holiday chalet. But don’t expect me to say hello when you drop by for coffee. I’m booked in my own name but they don’t know I work for the police. Bella MacLeod took the reservation. I told her I had to get right away from everything after the break-up of a long-term relationship and all I wanted was somewhere with sea views and to drink tea and eat cake.’

  ‘What did Bella say?’

  ‘She was very welcoming. She said I was coming to the right place. Cal?’ Helen tried to catch his eye. ‘Will you help?’

  For me, she added silently.

  Wouldn’t it be nice?

  Helen wished Cal would look at her in a different way. Sometimes. Even once. As though it was a possibility, whatever it was. Still, she couldn’t have everything. At least Cal didn’t put her down and she could talk to him. Before going to bed, Helen texted:

  Well?

  Well, what?

  Have you decided?

  Yes.