The Malice of Waves

by Mark Douglas-Home

  ‘A disagreement with Joss Wheeler …’

  ‘Some disagreement.’

  ‘She was doing all the disagreeing.’ Cal stepped ashore. ‘She was waiting outside the Deep Blue; launched herself at me, no introductions, nothing.’

  Helen looked closer at the wounds, twin welts running down his nose, more along the line of his jaw. ‘Nasty.’

  Cal shaped his hands into claws, his fingers pretending to rake at his face. ‘She’s got sharp nails.’ He shrugged. ‘Being unpopular seems to be an occupational hazard of working for David Wheeler.’

  ‘Well,’ Helen said, ‘you always did make friends easily.’

  After tying up the RIB, they sat with their backs against Cal’s pickup so they were hidden from the road. Cal told Helen about his night on Priest’s Island and the arrival of two unexpected and masked visitors and how, at daybreak, he had recognized Ewan Chisholm, the principal suspect in Max Wheeler’s disappearance. ‘What puzzles me,’ Cal said, ‘is why he put his balaclava back on when he went up the hill to look for the other man.’

  ‘Maybe he was cold,’ Helen suggested.

  ‘No, I don’t think it was that. He didn’t want the other man to see his face. That’s what it was.’

  ‘They didn’t know each other?’

  ‘They didn’t speak much when they came ashore. They didn’t behave as though they were friends.’

  ‘You think there’s a connection to Max Wheeler’s disappearance?’

  ‘Everything and everyone is connected in a place like this.’

  ‘But you don’t know how?’

  ‘No,’ Cal said. ‘But Ewan Chisholm wouldn’t go back to Priest’s Island under the noses of the Wheelers unless it was something important. The way he was pacing up and down the beach, waiting for the other man … he was worried about being caught there by the storm.’

  Helen stared again at the sea. Then she said, ‘Cal, there’s something I have to tell you.’

  ‘Go on,’ Cal said.

  ‘Wheeler isn’t paying you. Beacom is.’

  Cal swore.

  ‘He didn’t want me to tell you.’ Helen waited a beat before starting her explanation: how Wheeler was as good as bankrupt, how the Jacqueline and Priest’s Island were all he had left, his house in Southampton was on the market to pay off his creditors, and Beacom had seen an opportunity in his ruin. ‘Cal, Wheeler doesn’t have the money to commission another investigation – he hardly has enough to keep the Jacqueline in fuel. Beacom posed as a rich benefactor who had lost a son. He contacted Wheeler’s lawyer, saying he would pay for another investigation. The condition was the person would be selected by Beacom. And not one of the deadbeats and charlatans that Wheeler allowed to rip him off in previous years.’ Helen took a deep breath. ‘Beacom wanted someone who would stir things up. You, Cal – you were perfect because Wheeler hadn’t ever commissioned anyone to look at the sea. It was the only place left.’

  For once Helen found Cal’s silence uncomfortable.

  ‘Cal,’ she pleaded, ‘a fourteen-year-old boy is dead. A father has lost his son. Three girls have lost their brother. The township won’t cooperate with the police. Beacom’s got the job of finding out what happened. He saw an opportunity to try something new. He thought you’d like to help.’ She paused.

  ‘Good of him to let me know.’

  ‘Well, he did save your life.’

  Cal lobbed a stone into the sea, then another. ‘So you reminded me last night.’

  ‘Will you stay?’ Helen asked. ‘No one else needs to know.’

  ‘Tell Beacom I don’t want his money.’

  ‘But you’ll help?’

  Cal threw another stone. Abruptly, he stood up and opened the driver’s door. The engine coughed and started.

  ‘Wait, Cal.’ Helen stood too. ‘Cal?’

  17

  Whenever a storm blew in, Bella would lie awake listening to its delinquent rampaging and she would congratulate herself on her foresight. Thank goodness she had built her house and the chalet side by side in the shelter behind the Deep Blue. Old friends from Glasgow would come to stay in summer and express tactless disappointment at her sitting room’s restricted sea view but Bella would reply, ‘You wouldn’t say that if you were here in autumn or winter.’ She might also attempt a description of the weather’s capacity for violence once September turned to October. Usually, her guests would counter with their own experiences of ruined family holidays on Bute or Arran, as though they too had suffered the elements at their fiercest. Bella would bite her tongue before attempting to explain the difference between islands lying 200 kilometres to the south in the relative shelter of the Firth of Clyde compared to her northern exposure. Then she might recall her first December at the Deep Blue, how shocked she’d been by the weather. When she lived in the city, she regarded gangs in the same way as she now did storms: both capable of mindless acts of vandalism and of terrorizing entire neighbourhoods.

  Once light began to infiltrate her bedroom her thoughts would turn to the prospect of a busy day ahead. In wild weather, the Deep Blue was where the township gravitated. Crofts went untended, boats stayed at their moorings and washing lines flapped bare as the tea room filled and became fuggy. Before getting up, Bella would conduct a mental stock-take. Was there enough coffee? Would she run short of cake and biscuits? Should she leave a message for Jimmy the postman to pick up milk from the store by the ferry pier, in case sailings – and supplies – were disrupted for more than a day? With her ‘to do’ list already written in her head, Bella would put on her dressing gown and head downstairs to her own kitchen rather than brave the weather and cross to the tea room’s. She would make bread rolls and brownies. While they cooled, she would drink tea and listen to the radio, the presenters’ voices contributing to a restoration of calm after Bella’s burst of industry, as well as providing a contrast to the turbulence outside. Having washed, dried and tidied away the pans and trays, she would go back upstairs for her shower, leaving Catriona to sleep on – after all, why provoke another storm?

  This morning, however, Bella paused by Catriona’s room and decided to go in. It had an unhindered view of the sound, the only one in the house. She was agitated about Ewan, feeling she should have heard from him by now. He had promised to drop by or to ring once he’d brought Pinkie back from Priest’s Island. Parting the curtains, Bella watched Wheeler’s boat straining at its mooring by the harbour wall and, beyond, a hazy tumult of waves and spray. The sight made Bella feel sick. The thought of Ewan being out in that! Surely he had the sense to stay put, to wait for the next depression to clear, even if that wouldn’t be for another twenty-four hours. After all, with the Jacqueline held captive by the weather on this side of the sound, the risk of Ewan being discovered was slight. Bella clung to the notion as though to a life raft. Of course, she told herself with a certainty she didn’t really feel, wouldn’t that explain why Ewan hadn’t been in touch?

  Since it was past eight, she decided to open Catriona’s curtains. Perhaps the light would rouse the girl slowly and render her more or less civil when Bella knocked on her door at eight thirty, Catriona’s usual wake-up time. That would make a pleasant change. Bella studied her niece’s face, admiring her perfect milk-white skin – so like her mother’s and grandmother’s. She wondered how she was so peaceful in sleep yet so spiky and contrary awake. It seemed as if there had never been a time when Bella hadn’t worried about her. If there was, Bella couldn’t recall when. Every day arrived with a new concern: was Catriona depressed, was she on drugs, might she be suicidal? Bella was exhausted trying to find explanations and solutions. Perhaps she was guilty of over-analysing. All teenage girls were mysteries, her best friend Isobel had said with her usual common sense: ‘Weren’t you? Didn’t you have moods and secrets just like Catriona?’ Bella agreed she had, but her mother had possessed an instinct for her two daughters, an intuitive understanding. She would always know if Bella or Frances, Catriona’s mother, were in serious tr
ouble, when interference was required, when it wasn’t. Bella lacked that unconscious knowledge of Catriona. She was always trying to work her out. Over-analysis was one description, being in a constant state of defeat was another and the one that better described Bella’s experience.

  As if subconsciously protesting at being observed by Bella, Catriona began mumbling and flailing her arms. Her sudden restlessness dislodged the duvet, exposing bare shoulders, a black camisole and an exercise pad. It was lying on the bottom sheet close to Catriona’s right thigh. Bella rescued it in case her niece rolled over and crushed it, though when she saw the open page her brow furrowed in puzzlement. It was covered in pencil lines of different lengths, all fanning from the same point. Catriona had written letters and numbers at the beginning and end of some of the lines. Perhaps they were calculations, Bella thought, as she put the pad on the bedside table and sent a hair clip skittering across the floor. Bella flinched. How clumsy she was! She glanced fearfully at Catriona, hoping to find her undisturbed, but two open and hostile eyes were staring up at her, just what Bella had been trying to avoid. She steeled herself for Catriona’s usual complaint about being woken too early but her niece’s first words were an accusation: ‘You looked.’

  Bella felt her face reddening. ‘Aren’t you always so sweet and charming in the morning?’

  ‘You did, I know you did.’

  The usual wilting feeling of failure crept over Bella. ‘Anyway,’ she said, trying to summon up a put-down before Catriona warmed to hers. ‘Even if I did look, I wouldn’t have a notion of what I was looking at, all those lines, squiggles and numbers.’

  Rather than stay to be Catriona’s punchbag, Bella went along the landing to her room. She showered, dressed and, on her way down the stairs, knocked at Catriona’s closed door and shouted: ‘Are you up yet, my sweet-natured darling?’ She didn’t wait for an answer, another verbal assault. Back in the orderly surroundings of the kitchen, Bella felt less defeated. At least the baking was ready; she had done something right. When did Catriona ever thank her for that, for making a success of the Deep Blue, for being the caretaker of Catriona’s interests, of her future? She put the rolls into carrier bags, and the brownies into tins. Then she draped a coat over her head and, arms laden, hurried from the front door. Although the distance to the tea room was no more than a few steps, one tin was blown from her grasp. When she bent to pick it up, the wind almost knocked her over.

  ‘Mercy, what a day,’ she exclaimed when she was safely inside the tea room and shaking the wind from her hair.

  After checking the contents of the dropped tin for damage – thankfully, there was none – she turned on the main lights and wiped down the tables. At nine, she opened up the office and switched on her laptop to check on the weather. According to the BBC, wind speeds would be seventy miles an hour, gusting to ninety. The severe weather warning was expected to remain in force for another twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Travel disruption should be expected, especially in the Highlands and Islands. The Meteorological Office warned of a threat to property and life. She closed her eyes and thought again of Ewan, willing him to be safe on Priest’s Island. She went into the tea room and stood by the big window. Since she last looked, visibility had worsened, Priest’s Island reduced to a blur through the rain and spray.

  At least Ewan was used to riding out such weather. But Pinkie: how resilient was he? Just as Bella was scolding herself about taking on the worries of the world – Pinkie was not a legend for nothing; the man could look after himself, flabby waist or not – a running figure in a tracksuit, fleece and woollen hat crossed in front of the Deep Blue. Bella exclaimed out loud and watched as the figure – it was hard to tell whether male or female – went round to the side of the tea room. ‘Of course,’ she said under her breath. ‘Helen Jamieson.’ She’d forgotten all about her. What was the woman thinking, running in weather like this? Bella would give her a talking-to when she saw her later. The islands weren’t Edinburgh! Though, on reflection, having seen Helen in her tracksuit, she thought it would take an unusually strong gust of wind to knock her off her feet.

  Feeling at a loose end in the forty minutes before opening time, Bella returned to the office. She did her accounts, caught up with letters and left two messages for Jimmy to pick up some milk, the first on his phone and the second with Gill at the store by the ferry pier at the north end of the island. By nine thirty, her thoughts turned again to Catriona. The first customers would be waiting at the door in twenty minutes. Where was the girl? Bella toyed with chivvying her but decided not to. It would only cause more unpleasantness and give Catriona an excuse to be in a mood all day.

  Not that she ever seemed to need an excuse. No wonder Ewan had had second thoughts about her!

  Instead, Bella rang Joss to make sure she and the caravan had survived the night. The call went to answer and Bella left a message: ‘It’s Bella. Ring me.’ Where could Joss have gone? Surely she couldn’t be out in these conditions. Though there could be a simple explanation for her not answering. As with most of the island, phone reception at the caravan was at best temperamental.

  Bella wondered why she invested so much emotional energy in any of them: Catriona, Ewan and, lately, Joss. She was never done worrying. If it wasn’t one, it was another. This morning it was all three.

  As if to prove her wrong, Catriona appeared in the tea room, wearing a clean apron but, as Bella expected, a defiant expression. Rather than risk an argument, she asked about Helen Jamieson. What was she like? Catriona rolled her eyes and Bella found herself gabbling. ‘Was that her out running? I’m sure it was – about half an hour ago, going towards the chalet gate. She had a hat pulled down on her head so I couldn’t even see her hair. It must have been her, don’t you think? No one from the island would run in this weather, not if they were in their right senses.’

  Catriona snapped, ‘So I’m not the only one you’re spying on.’

  ‘I wasn’t spying,’ Bella said wearily. ‘I thought the exercise book might be precious. I was concerned about you rolling over and crumpling it.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ Catriona said. She stared at Bella, a withering look, as if examining some alien and disgusting life form. ‘What did you think you were doing, coming into my room when I was asleep?’ Catriona shuddered and put on an expression of disgust. ‘Watching me …’

  ‘I wasn’t watching you,’ Bella said. ‘If you must know, I was seeing whether the sound was rough.’

  ‘What did you think it would be like?’ Catriona slapped the heel of her hand against the side of her head. ‘Duh, there’s a storm, isn’t there?’

  Bella’s relief at Catriona going next door to the kitchen was short-lived. As usual, it turned to guilt, followed by a nagging desire to make things better between them. She went after Catriona. ‘I could help you with the napkins or put out some cakes.’

  ‘No.’ Catriona banged down a knife on the counter. ‘No.’ A fork clanged next.

  Cal clenched his left hand and hit the steering wheel. Once, twice and again, and each time he swore between clenched teeth, his lips stretching into a grimace. He braked before the turning to the road north which would take him to the ferry. Then he glanced in his mirror as if looking for Helen. A moment of decision: should he go or should he stay? Just when he wanted to indulge his anger at Beacom’s deception, he found Helen was on his conscience.

  He didn’t want me to tell you.

  If Cal drove north, would Helen be in trouble? Would Beacom blame her?

  ‘Fuck.’ He banged the steering wheel again, both fists.

  Instead of going north or turning round and driving back past Helen – he wasn’t in the right frame of mind for that – he went straight on, towards Grant’s Croft. He’d do what he always did when he was angry. He’d walk, let the wind blow his temper away and, since he was going in that direction, he’d check on Ewan Chisholm. Had he been able to leave Priest’s Island? Cal thought not. The next storm was closing in, the wind blowing h
ard, Ewan’s opportunity gone unless he’d found his companion soon after Cal made his escape. Driving along the single-track road, the sound a blur of spindrift and spray to his left, Cal realized he would soon pass Joss Wheeler’s caravan. Should he try to make peace?

  He was still undecided when he turned a corner, expecting to see the caravan two hundred metres ahead – an off-white eyesore with a thick rope hawser stretched across its dinged roof.

  Instead it was just below the road, lying on its side, buckled and broken, and being lifted up with each gust of wind.

  Cal braked hard and the caravan reared again, flipped over twice and crash-landed across a flooded stream, straddling the gully. He imagined Joss stumbling about inside the caravan, dazed, or too badly hurt to get away. He ran down the slope, his momentum carrying him on to the caravan’s upturned side. Cal grabbed at the rim of a broken window as another gust of wind lifted it and him up. Looking inside, all he could see was a splintered table, a jumble of bedding, clothes, books, tins and bottles from a store cupboard; no sign of Joss. Below him, across the caravan, was another window, similarly misshapen and with the glass missing. The stream rushed past below with a roar. Had Joss fallen out into the torrent?

  Cal shouted ‘Joss’ and was about to drop inside when the wind caught the caravan again. It reared up, almost toppling, before crashing back. Cal was thrown on to the ground. His flailing left hand glanced off a rock. His shoulder jarred against wet peat. His head pushed into heather. He was winded and for a moment he lay where he was. A metallic shriek sounded behind him. He turned to see the caravan standing on its end, and just then the gust of wind passed and it fell back. Cal climbed on again only to slide off as the caravan bucked. He fell into the gully, almost into the surging stream. He glanced up through the underside window. The caravan lifted again and Cal, fearing he would be crushed, scrambled out of the gully.