The Malice of Waves

by Mark Douglas-Home

  Well?

  It’s up to me what information I share …

  With you, Cal, is there any other way?!

  There was a gap before his next message.

  OK, will head off now. Sleep at the ferry terminal. First sailing’s at seven thirty.

  Helen read his text twice, trying to work out whether he was being brief or terse, whether he felt manoeuvred. She decided on brief and replied:

  I’m heading up tomorrow afternoon. Where are you staying?

  Along the coast, east of the Deep Blue, not far, by an old slipway. It’s marked on the Ordnance Survey map. Don’t miss your ferry. A storm’s forecast for later.

  For Cal, that was fulsome. After all, he’d told her where to find him. She replied:

  See you there.

  She signed it HXX and, on reflection, deleted one X.

  Then she rang DCI Beacom. ‘Cal’s going back,’ Helen said as soon as he answered.

  ‘Good. That wasn’t so hard, was it?’

  ‘Sir, that doesn’t make it right.’

  ‘What doesn’t?’

  ‘Not telling him about the money …’

  ‘We’ve discussed this, Helen. If you tell McGill the police are paying his bill he’ll walk, won’t he? Isn’t it more important that we find out how a fourteen-year-old boy disappeared?’

  ‘Of course, sir, but …’

  Beacom interrupted. ‘When we’re done, Wheeler’s lawyer will hand over his fee and McGill will be none the wiser. He doesn’t need to know it wasn’t Wheeler’s money.’

  ‘With respect, sir …’ Helen found she was speaking to an empty line.

  11

  She was asleep that first night, when the rocking started. The caravan tilted one way then the other, the frame creaking and the rope hawser rubbing against the roof. It was like being in a storm, except that in a storm the wind usually pushed and pushed from one direction before relenting. The motion was so violent and the noise so loud she almost wondered whether the hawser holding the caravan down had snapped and the wind had carried her away, whether Atlantic rollers were crashing about her.

  Joss fumbled in the dark for her phone. She was about to turn on the light when the rocking stopped and the shouting began: ‘Slag, clype!’ How many voices? Two or three. She found Constable Dyer’s number when, suddenly, there was silence. Had they gone? She waited, hardly daring to breathe, wondering whether she should ring and deciding she wouldn’t. Not if it was all over. Not if they’d gone. She was shaking so much she had to lift her thumb away from the phone, in case she pressed ring by mistake. If she did, everyone would know. In the township, everyone knew everything.

  Everything except how Max died.

  Hours later, she went to sleep.

  The next night Joss took precautions. She roped the door and covered the windows with cardboard. She checked the phone signal. Two bars. Then she waited. The longer she sat the more she worried. She’d made a prison for herself, one that didn’t offer easy escape. If they broke in through the window, she wouldn’t be able to run out the door. If they kicked down the door, she wouldn’t be able to jump from the window. What if they threw in a burning rag doused in petrol? She thought about removing the web of rope by the door, but wouldn’t that make it easier for them to break in?

  Indecision meant she did nothing, and then it was too late. She hadn’t heard a sound when the rocking started, the caravan tilting back and forth. Then there was shouting. ‘Bitch, whore!’

  When it stopped, Joss found she was breathless. She calmed herself by saying it was all over. She lay back against her pillow and closed her eyes. Sometime later, how long she wasn’t sure, there was a bang at her door, a single rap. ‘Next time,’ a male voice said. Then silence. She didn’t hear him going away.

  She screamed into the dark, ‘What?’

  And again, ‘What, next time?’

  She tore at the ropes and opened the door. Outside, she shouted again ‘What, next time?’

  A sharp breeze was blowing and everywhere Joss looked there was movement: the clouds, the sea, the grass. Were they still out there? Was he still out there? Next time: when would that be? She hurried back inside and roped up the door. Being inside a prison would have felt safer.

  At daylight she ventured out, sitting on the step of the caravan. She remembered Max, how nasty, brattish and spoilt he’d been. Usually, thinking of him left her confused and guilty. But this morning, it made everything clear.

  It had to stop.

  Everyone’s lives had been blighted.

  She didn’t blame those who were trying to frighten her away. She would have done the same, rock a caravan in the night, if she thought the person inside was passing on information. Those who did that to her were scared too, terrified her father would find his culprit irrespective of guilt or of what had happened to Max. Everyone was caught up in the same nightmare.

  Even little sister Hannah, her adolescence ruined.

  Everyone’s lives affected by her father’s obsession for gilding Max’s memory. In death, Max had become the perfect boy, a cherub, whereas in life he’d been unpleasant and disobedient. My fault, she reminded herself sharply. She should have gone to the island with him.

  Later, she collected wood from the shore. There and back she kept on looking at her mobile. Two bars. One bar. Two bars. Three bars where the ground rose. She didn’t stop in case someone was watching but she counted her steps back to the caravan so she would be able to return to the same place that night. She spent the rest of the afternoon indoors. At dusk, her nerves started again. She checked her phone. No bars. No bars anywhere in the caravan. She panicked. Were they coming? Were they watching? But, she told herself, she had to wait until it was dark before going outside. If she went now they might see where she went.

  ‘Next time,’ he’d said.

  Next time, what? The question kept going through her head. Would they attack her? Would they kill her? Would they rape her? Would they burn her?

  At last it was dark enough. She took a brown rug from her bed and slipped from the caravan. She closed the door quietly behind her and held the rug to her face to prevent her skin flashing white. Her hiding place was eighty steps away. At sixty, she felt safer. At seventy, she hurried. At eighty, she found a dry place to sit, a patch of heather. She checked her phone, shielding the screen with the rug. Three bars. She looked in her contacts for Constable Dyer’s number and waited. The shingle track to the caravan made a pale pathway through the night. The road beyond was invisible, though not the headlights. One moment they were there, blazing, the next they were gone. Was the car free-wheeling in the dark to the parking place by the track? Soon after, Joss saw a movement – or thought she had. Next she heard someone knock at the door of the caravan. Like the night before, the knock came first. ‘Are you there?’ It was a male voice.

  ‘Joss.’ He opened the door and went inside.

  She heard him say her name again. A flickering light went on, a match or a lighter, and she watched him moving around inside. ‘Thank God,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Thank God. Thank God.’ Anything might be happening to her now.

  After a few minutes, he appeared in the door. ‘Joss,’ he called. He went back into the caravan. The light went out and Joss saw him again, now an indistinct outline. ‘Joss, are you there?’

  He closed the door and waited, as if he could sense her. Why else would he keep repeating her name?

  ‘Joss, if you’re there, it’s OK.’ He took a few paces towards her. ‘Joss?’

  She stopped breathing. Now she thought his voice was familiar. But whose?

  ‘They’ll not be coming tonight.’

  Joss saw his shadow move towards the track. She dared to take a breath. Had he heard her because he waited and spoke again?

  ‘They were some young guys from the north of the island. They won’t be coming back. I’ve warned them off.’

  After a while she saw the car lights going away. How did she know it wasn’t
a trick? Was he one of them? Were others watching, waiting for her to break cover?

  At dawn, she looked for unfamiliar shapes or movement. She stared at darker patches of heather until she was sure they didn’t conceal a threat. Eventually, shaking with cold and fright, she went back to the caravan. She checked her phone. Two bars. Her thumb was on the call button. She opened the door and on the floor inside was a note.

  Joss, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Ewan.

  He left his number.

  Ewan, of all people. Ewan.

  She ate some dry bread and drank a mug of tea while she stood in the doorway of the caravan, looking across the sound at Priest’s Island and the Jacqueline at its mooring in the bay. Her jaw tensed as she thought of Hannah, how unhappy she would be. She took her anorak from its hook and closed the caravan door. ‘This has to stop. Today.’

  12

  It was past ten in the morning when Cal drove up to the Deep Blue. After his early start from Edinburgh, he longed for coffee. Three cars were parked outside the tea room and a white minibus by the harbour. A group of hikers was milling about, putting on coats, boots and backpacks. Cal noticed the flap of sleeves and the flutter of maps, the stirrings of a light wind. He looked at the sky, at the clouds to the west, at the sea. There would be time, he thought as he got out of the pickup, a few hours yet before the storm.

  Inside the Deep Blue, two tables were occupied, seven people in all. Cal was aware of heads rising, of conversation stopping as they saw him.

  Catriona, who was standing behind the counter, caught his eye. What did you expect, she seemed to be saying, a welcome? What she said was, ‘Same as last time?’

  Cal nodded. ‘I’ll take it with me.’

  ‘Large or medium?’

  ‘Large.’

  While Catriona busied herself at the coffee machine, a man shouted out, ‘Ye’re never serving that man, are ye?’ When Catriona paid no attention, he shouted again, ‘He’ll be paying with Wheeler’s dosh.’

  Cal didn’t turn round, nor did Catriona. ‘So long as he pays,’ she said in a soft voice, as though she didn’t care whether anyone heard her or not.

  She put Cal’s coffee on the counter. ‘Thanks for that,’ he said, handing her a five-pound note. ‘Wheeler hasn’t paid me yet. This isn’t his money.’

  She shrugged. It didn’t matter to her.

  He picked up the cup. ‘Anyhow, I haven’t taken sides. I’m doing a job for the man, that’s all.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Catriona said. ‘Split any rock on Eilean Dubh and that’s not what you’ll find written there.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Cal said before turning for the door.

  Outside, the walkers were moving away. Only when they’d gone did Cal notice a young woman standing on the harbour wall. She was tall and wore an anorak with a fur-trimmed hood. Her back was to him. She seemed to be looking across the sound, towards the Jacqueline and Priest’s Island. He paid her no more attention until he was by his pickup. A movement caught his eye. He looked round and saw she was walking towards him. Her hood had fallen on to her shoulders and he recognized her from the day before, her scraped-back blonde hair, her thin face and high forehead. Up close she reminded him of the photograph of Max Wheeler. The way she moved was familiar too: the turn in her hip, the twist to the right when she placed her left foot on the ground. Hannah, her younger, prettier sister, also walked that way.

  His immobility seemed to spur her on. Her walk turned into a run.

  He supposed he could have prevented what happened next. He could have held Joss Wheeler’s arms by tightly wrapping his own around hers. He could have ducked or pushed her away. Instead he let her punch him and claw at him with her nails. He did little apart from parrying some of the blows to his face. He recalled his own rage, the times when he would have punched anyone who took his father’s side; how he might still. And he waited for the tempo of Joss’s attack to slow, until all she could do was to beat feebly against his chest, one clenched hand following the other. Then he held her by her wrists. ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘That’s enough.’

  Her head hung, her arms went limp, pent-up rage spent.

  ‘I can explain why I’m here,’ he said, ‘if you’ll let me.’

  Her arms tensed and she tried to break away. When she found she couldn’t, she screamed, ‘Get off me.’

  As Cal held her, he became aware of people behind him. The tea room’s customers had come out to watch. Catriona was standing at the window. A car drove up, a white Ford with rust around the wheel arches. A stocky young man with a florid face and stubbly blond hair got out. Cal recognized him from Wheeler’s dossier.

  ‘Leave her,’ Ewan Chisholm said. ‘Let go of her.’

  A woman shouted. Cal turned to see Bella MacLeod at the tea room door. ‘Take your hands off her.’ Cal remembered the description of Bella, ‘a mother hen to strays’. Now, as she hurried towards Joss, her cardigan ballooned like half-raised wings and her skirt billowed as though extravagant leg feathers were being ruffled by a gust of wind.

  ‘Get off her,’ she shouted at Cal. ‘Leave her alone.’

  He released Joss’s wrists and stepped back.

  Bella wrapped the young woman in her arms. Fussing over her, she took her towards Ewan. ‘Take her home, will you?’ She hugged Joss again, then waited for the car to drive off before turning to Cal. ‘You’re not wanted here, Dr McGill.’ She went towards the tea room. ‘No, you’re not wanted at all.’

  For a while, Cal sat in his pickup, the door open. The tea room’s customers waited inside and watched through the window. His neck and arms were sore from Joss’s blows. He touched the nail scratches on his face, feeling for blood. He found himself thinking of Rachel, his ex-wife. She was the first woman who had clenched her fists in rage at him. Unlike Joss, Rachel had hit him softly on his arm. He’d felt no more than a push or a nudge. But in the restraint of that blow he knew the force of her anger. It was typical of Rachel’s control, her way of letting him know how disappointed she was with him, for running away to the coast so often there had been no marriage left to save, and for his infidelity. If she’d punched and clawed at him like Joss he would have let her. It would have been his punishment. He’d been in the wrong then and he wondered if he was now, whether he was on the wrong side.

  Mary-Anne Robertson was the first to speak after Cal had driven away. She had the oddest feeling, she said. ‘Something else is going to happen, something awful.’ She said it again when Bella sat down with a cup of tea. Didn’t Bella sense it too? Mary-Anne pressed her lips together, making her face look more pinched. ‘What do you think it could be? What can we do to keep out of harm’s way?’ Bella found herself disagreeing if only to inhibit her friend’s imagination.

  ‘Don’t you think we’ve had enough excitement for one day?’ Bella replied, wishing Mary-Anne had more to occupy her mind since her retirement from teaching.

  At least Mary-Anne didn’t respond indignantly. Sometimes she did, implying that Bella didn’t have her sensitivity because it was God’s gift to those who were regular in their church attendance and in saying their prayers. Bella was irregular at best, but Mary-Anne still made a habit of sharing her premonitions with her. It was as if she thought that Bella, being without divine protection herself, required help, otherwise she would stumble blindly into danger. For Mary-Anne, giving Bella warning of future events was akin to an act of charity, one for which she expected gratitude rather than a put-down. For Bella, it was becoming rather tiresome.

  Having finished her tea, Bella went round the tables taking orders. She sensed a peculiar atmosphere. At first she thought the low murmur of conversation was a delayed reaction to the shock at Joss’s attack. Later on, the tea room still subdued, Bella detected a hushed expectancy as though something worse was about to happen, just as Mary-Anne said. Did the tea room’s regulars imagine that by speaking quietly they would draw less attention to themselves and so place themselves less at risk?

  From w
hat? Bella wondered.

  Bella also found herself being unsettled by another discovery. Going from table to table, she was concerned by how often she overheard insulting or antagonistic comments about Joss. The young woman was being blamed for having set in train a sequence of unstoppable events, though what they might turn out to be no one was sure beyond the general mood of foreboding. There was also scepticism about her assault on Dr McGill – a put-up job, some said, to make it appear she was on the side of the township when she had been spying for her father all along. Thank goodness, Bella thought, she had asked Ewan to take Joss home. Better a cold caravan than expose Joss to hostility in the tea room.

  After her rounds, Bella realized Joss had few supporters left. Once or twice she heard people express concern about what the young woman might do next. Bella silently agreed. That was her fear too. How often had she warned Joss about drawing attention to herself? Fit in, don’t stand out and you’ll be accepted. Be patient; let the township come to you. Bella and Mary-Anne had both advised discretion but Joss had displayed the opposite since the arrival of her father’s boat. Everyone was tense. Joss’s behaviour at the memorial service, dragging Isobel and Mary-Anne away, hadn’t helped. Now this.

  Bella glanced through the window at the lowering bank of black cloud on the Atlantic horizon – a storm was building – and then at Catriona’s glum face as she served behind the counter. Problems always come in threes, Bella thought. ‘Didn’t anyone tell you a smile is worth more than a month of scowls?’ she remarked to Catriona on her way to the office to check on the forecast. No sooner had she sat down and opened her laptop than Catriona was standing in the doorway.

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  If she wasn’t mistaken, Catriona seemed close to tears.

  ‘Do what?’ Bella replied. ‘Tell you off for looking miserable?’

  ‘No, asking Ewan to take Joss home …’

  Bella watched Catriona pick at her fingers. ‘For goodness’ sake,’ she snapped. ‘You can’t be serious.’