‘Would you have agreed to work for Wheeler if you had?’
Cal shook his head.
‘You owed me.’
‘Yeah,’ Cal said.
21
Bella had to be doing, had to be busy. Shock took her that way. She couldn’t sit. She couldn’t be on her own. Nor could she be spoken to. Staying polite was the hardest thing. The expressions of concern as she went around the tea room were getting to her. Was she sure she was well enough, strong enough? Shouldn’t she be in bed resting? Couldn’t someone else help Catriona behind the counter? At every table someone or other mentioned Joss’s murder, how shaken and upset Bella must be. Her reactions varied from gratitude to cold civility. Eventually, her irritation showed. ‘Isn’t there enough to worry about without me being added to the list?’ she said tartly. ‘Anyway, I’d prefer to be working and busy than doing nothing and fretting.’
Still they wouldn’t take the hint.
Later, she snapped back. She couldn’t help herself. She shouted, ‘Stop looking at me, stop talking to me!’ The tea room went pin-quiet. ‘Please.’ At least her voice was calmer now. ‘Please, can’t you let me go about the tea room without commenting? Can’t I just get on and do my work?’ When she noticed the shock on their faces, she added, ‘Sorry. You mustn’t mind me. I’m upset about Joss.’
Of course, the cure was worse than the disease. Instead of people staring at her less, they did so more, though warily, when they thought she couldn’t see them. Instead of talking to her – since they expected their heads to be bitten off if they did – they worried about her when she was out of earshot. It all became too much, so she escaped to her office. The silence there made her even more ill at ease, that and the lack of room to move around. Tears filled her eyes and her hands shook. What a disaster it all was, so much misery and sadness. Why hadn’t she taken Joss in the first night of the storm? So many regrets and worries crowded in she began to feel dizzy. Just when she needed to think straight she found she could hardly think at all. One moment she imagined Joss running frightened in the dark, the knife plunging into her side, blood gushing from the wound; the next she felt weak at the talk of Ewan being her killer. Where was he? If only she could speak to him. Should she go to the police and tell them about Pinkie, about Ewan taking him to Priest’s Island? Should she confess the lesser crime to exonerate him from the bigger? She didn’t know what to do. She’d interfered too much already, taking both Joss and Ewan under her wing. Look where that had got them.
Bella was so muddled even she wondered whether Ewan was guilty. Everyone else thought so, which made her stop and think. She’d been wrong about so much else. Had she been wrong about Ewan? At first, she batted the notion away. Wasn’t McGill a more likely suspect? Why didn’t anyone else think so? Of course it wasn’t Ewan. At the time of Joss’s death he’d been with Pinkie. Only Bella knew that. But her conviction slipped the more she turned the last two days over in her mind. Ewan was expert at navigating the sound, even in the dark and in bad weather. What if he’d returned to the township during the night? What if he’d killed Joss and gone back unseen to Priest’s Island? If Bella told the police about Pinkie’s boat trip, would that be enough to clear Ewan of Joss’s murder? Perhaps not, and she might just be guaranteeing a jail sentence for Pinkie and a day in court for herself. There was nothing to be gained by confessing. She should wait to see what transpired when Ewan reappeared, if he reappeared.
The scrap of paper Alistair had found blowing away from the upturned caravan had also unnerved Bella. The tea room had been agog at Ewan’s message to Joss. Obviously, something had happened between them. Why else would he have apologized to her in a note? Bella had never known Ewan put pen to paper, so it must have been important. Whatever it was, it must have been bad.
If only she could look into Ewan’s eyes. If only she could talk to him. Of course Ewan didn’t kill her. What was she thinking? Oh dear. Oh dear.
‘Stop it,’ she said out loud. ‘Stop it.’ She was becoming hysterical. In such a mood, she wasn’t any help to herself or to Ewan. Taking a deep breath, she decided to return to the tea room. The distraction of other people, even their unwanted attention, was preferable to spending more time on her own.
Just as she was steeling herself, Catriona came into the office. She started to cry as soon as she closed the door. Bella held out her hands and, when Catriona took them, Bella said, ‘You’ve been so good. Everyone’s said so. You’ve worked so hard, done everything right.’
Catriona knelt and rested her head against her aunt’s knees.
Bella stroked her hair. ‘I’m so proud of you, Catriona. Just like your mother, calm in a crisis.’
Catriona looked up into Bella’s face. ‘Ewan didn’t do it, did he, Auntie Bella?’
‘Of course he didn’t.’
‘Then where is he?’ Her voice rose with emotion. ‘Why isn’t he here?’
Bella put her hands over Catriona’s. ‘Perhaps he’s just gone somewhere in his boat and got caught by the storm. There’ll be an explanation. There’s bound to be.’
‘But what?’
‘I can’t say, darling.’ She ran the back of one of her fingers down Catriona’s right cheek, wiping away a tear. ‘I wish I could.’
For a while, neither spoke. Then Bella said, ‘You didn’t take to Joss, did you?’
Catriona shook her head.
‘I thought not.’
‘Ewan liked her. That’s why we broke up.’
Bella let out a long sigh. ‘And you’d think in a small place like this you’d know everything that was going on.’ She kissed Catriona’s forehead. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.’ She closed her eyes. ‘You won’t tell anyone else.’
Catriona mumbled, ‘No.’
‘I mean no one, Catriona.’
‘Not even if it helps Ewan?’
‘It won’t.’
‘Why not?’
Bella watched her niece, as though making up her mind to confide in her. ‘Joss was too messed up to have any kind of relationship – she said so to me a number of times. She didn’t want a boyfriend.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘She’d have turned Ewan down. Perhaps that’s why he wrote the note because he’d reacted badly. It won’t help Ewan if the police know he liked her.’
Catriona buried her head into the folds of Bella’s apron.
‘Say nothing,’ Bella insisted. ‘Promise me.’
‘It just doesn’t seem fair,’ Catriona said. ‘What they’re saying about Ewan.’
‘I know.’
Bella found a paper handkerchief in her sleeve and blew her nose. ‘I haven’t cried so much for … years.’ She almost said since Frances, Catriona’s mother, died. ‘I’m not going to be able to get back through that door into the tea room with all those people looking at me unless you come too.’
‘OK,’ Catriona said.
‘Here, dry your eyes.’ She gave Catriona another handkerchief. ‘And let’s go before we change our minds.’
As it happened, she was wrong. Only one person looked up: Helen Jamieson from the chalet. While Bella went to table one to start taking orders, she noticed Catriona going to table six, where the Jamieson woman was sitting. They exchanged a few words before Catriona returned to the counter.
‘What was that about?’ Bella asked.
‘What?’ Catriona replied. ‘Oh, Helen, she wants a skinny latte.’
Although Bella was pleased that Catriona seemed to have made a friend, she was also uneasy. Who was Helen Jamieson? All she seemed to do was hang around the tea room, listening in, and go for runs. The thought was interrupted by Mary-Anne saying in a loud voice, ‘Look, they’ve stopped moving.’ Everyone turned and Mary-Anne pointed at the bushes on the bank above the harbour. ‘Look,’ she said.
‘What?’ Bella asked.
‘The bushes,’ Mary-Anne said. ‘They’re still. The wind’s gone.’
There was a pause while everyone looked.
‘So it has,’ Bella said.
The tea room became noisy with similar exchanges and exclamations. Why had no one noticed? How caught up in their worries they’d been. How distracted. Afterwards, the stillness outside seemed to affect the mood inside. If anyone talked it was in an undertone or in whispers. Mary-Anne muttered a prayer, another one, while Bella went to stand by the window. ‘The calm before the next storm,’ she said. Heads nodded in understanding. By evening the ferry would be operating again. By nightfall the township would be invaded. The parking area between the Deep Blue and the harbour would be where the media gathered, as it had been the last time. For a while no one would be safe from the prying of police or reporters.
‘Whatever happens,’ Bella said in a louder voice, ‘we’re a community. We’re stronger when we stick together. That’s what we did when Max disappeared. That’s what we’ll do again. If you’re worried about anything, come here. We’ll open late until this is over. Between six and seven every night will be for residents only.’ A murmur of gratitude was followed by relief that the tea room would again be the township’s evening rallying place in a time of crisis and that its matriarch’s strength had been restored.
Helen apologized. She thought she would never be able to get away. Ina Gillies had been telling her stories about the township – ‘Like a story for every one of the eighty-four years she’s been alive! I’m not exaggerating.’ She glanced at Catriona, who was standing against the tea room door frame, holding a cigarette and staring dismally at the harbour wall and at a policeman keeping guard on the Wheelers inside the Jacqueline. ‘What is it, Catriona?’ Helen touched the girl’s arm. ‘Tell me. You said you had something to show me.’
Catriona removed a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of her apron and handed it to Helen.
‘Can I?’ Helen opened what seemed to be a page from an exercise pad. It was covered with pencil lines. She looked up, asking for an explanation.
‘See the three crosses,’ Catriona said.
‘Yes, yes, I see them.’
‘The top one is Ewan. The two at either side of the bottom are me and Joss.’ Catriona waited before carrying on. She let Helen study them again. ‘See how many marks there are here.’ She pointed at the neat lines between Ewan’s cross and Joss’s. ‘And how few there are here.’ She pointed at the left-hand side of the page, between her cross and Ewan’s. ‘Recently, Ewan only hung out in the tea room when Joss was here. I kept a log of how often he looked at her and how often he looked at me. Just to know where I was. Sometimes he’d look at me, but he’d look at Joss six, seven times more often. Most of the time he looked at me he was just checking to see if I was watching him.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Catriona,’ Helen sympathized. ‘It’s hard when you catch them out.’
‘But I didn’t, that’s just it.’ Catriona closed her eyes and tears squeezed out between her lids.
Helen studied the page in case she had missed something. ‘If he’d been my boyfriend, I’d have thought the same as you. I’d have wanted an explanation. Any girl would.’
Catriona breathed in deeply. Her whole body lifted and fell with the effort. ‘Joss didn’t want a boyfriend. She was too messed up. Auntie Bella told me.’ She stared at Helen.
‘Did Ewan know?’
‘What does it matter? He didn’t cheat on me.’
Helen thought the girl was clutching at straws. ‘Catriona, cheating doesn’t only mean going to bed with someone.’ She held up the page. ‘By the look of it, he wanted to cheat. Isn’t that what matters?’
Catriona’s face was puffy, her eyes red.
‘You poor girl,’ Helen said. ‘You’re miserable. I’d have done the same as you. I’d have asked Ewan to explain himself.’
Catriona closed her eyes as if she couldn’t bear to think about it.
Helen continued, ‘What do you think happened, that Ewan tried it on with Joss again, and she rejected him and he lost his temper?’
Catriona didn’t reply.
‘Did he ever lose his temper with you?’
She shook her head.
‘Never? Were there ever times when you said you didn’t feel like it – sex, I mean – when you said no?’
This time, a nod.
‘And that didn’t make him angry?’
The head-shake again.
‘Do you think he might have been angry with Joss if she said no?’
Catriona spoke in a whisper. ‘I don’t, but everyone will say she was prettier than me and he wanted her more.’ Her voice trembled. ‘But Ewan isn’t like that.’ Saying it aloud used up the last of her self-control. ‘Even if he did love Joss and not me,’ she wailed.
Helen touched Catriona’s hand. ‘You’re a good friend to him, aren’t you?’
The door opened behind her and Helen found she was being pushed aside. Bella put her arms round Catriona. ‘What’s wrong, my darling? What’s wrong?’ She glowered at Helen. What did you do to her? What did you say?
Helen replied coolly, ‘She’s upset over that young man everyone’s been talking about, Ewan Chisholm.’
But Bella wasn’t listening. She was fussing around Catriona, taking her inside.
Isobel Macrae, returning from the heritage centre at the north of the island, brought news of the mainland ferry. It was already at sea, she said, aghast. The tea room reacted with similar shock, as though something precious had been taken away. ‘Two hours before its scheduled departure!’ Isobel exclaimed. ‘When has that happened before?’ No longer would the invasion of police and media begin in three or three and a half hours; it might be outside the Deep Blue in one. Not even a last afternoon of being able to look out on to the harbour and pretend that nothing much had changed.
Mary-Anne waited for Isobel to sit beside her before expressing her opinion. She spoke into her friend’s ear. ‘The captain will have been under terrible pressure to sail.’ She looked nervously around, wondering whether her habit of trying to understand the other person’s point of view, her Christian duty, was on this occasion misplaced. On every face was the same expression of apprehension. ‘Oh,’ Mary-Anne said in a tremulous voice. Now she understood. ‘Oh.’ Even the ferry company was against them now. Was anyone left on their side?
She was about to ask Isobel that question when Bella clapped twice and called for silence.
‘Would you like the tea room to close early before the police and media arrive? Everyone here is welcome to remain inside.’ She looked around. ‘A last afternoon to ourselves, well, what do you think?’
There were noises of appreciation at Bella’s suggestion but Grey rose unsteadily to his feet and gave voice to another point of view. ‘We can’t expect Bella to turn away customers. None of us wants these people but they’re on their way. Who knows, they might leave in a day or two. The Deep Blue is important to the township but we spend little enough here. Bella has a business to run. If she stays open, then someone will benefit.’
‘Aye, it’ll be the only windfall that’ll do any of us any good,’ Alistair put in.
There was a murmur of agreement. ‘Well,’ Bella said, glancing around. ‘Are you certain? That’s what we’ll do then.’
It was like waiting for the arrival of bad news, no one being able to think of anything else but no one wanting to discuss it either. Ina took advantage of a gap in conversation to ask Helen, ‘Have I told you about Max Wheeler’s soul returning to Priest’s Island three months after he disappeared? I haven’t? Well, it was brought ashore by a seabird called a storm petrel. And, wait till you hear what my Neil always used to say about storm petrels …’
Fortunately for Helen, Ina was distracted by the arrival of the first cars. There were three of them followed by two vans, then two more. Soon there were two dozen vehicles of different shapes and sizes including six, Isobel counted, with satellite dishes. Police, photographers and reporters milled about. A flow of strangers made their way to the tea room, starting with a woman radio reporter. Ordering c
offee, she held her microphone towards Bella. ‘How worried are you,’ she asked, ‘about the killer being free?’
Bella replied, ‘You’ll get nothing out of me except this.’ She put a take-away cup of coffee on the counter.
‘What about anyone else?’ The woman surveyed the tea room tables. ‘I mean, is there anyone here who would like to say sorry?’
‘Sorry for what?’ Bella said sharply.
‘Why,’ the reporter looked at Bella as if she was simple, ‘for protecting a murderer for five years, for making it possible for him to kill again. Don’t you feel guilty? In your shoes, I know I would. Don’t you think an apology is owed?’
Bella pursed her lips and watched two more reporters going from table to table. ‘Come on, just a few words,’ one said in exasperation to the whole tea room. ‘Didn’t you know he was violent?’ At every table, heads went down or backs were turned. ‘Do you sleep at night knowing what he’s done, knowing you’ve protected him?’
‘I get it,’ the radio reporter said to Bella, ‘the natives are hostile.’ Picking up her cup of coffee she went to the door.
For half an hour or so that was the pattern of Bella’s exchanges with new arrivals: sparring at the counter around orders for coffee and cake. When respite came, Bella crossed to the window to check what was happening outside. The reporters and cameramen were waiting in a group. Although they were talking, they were also glancing towards the slip road. ‘What do you think’s going on?’ Bella asked Isobel, who had quietly been taking everything in.
‘They’re expecting something,’ Isobel said.
‘Yes, but what?’ Bella replied. ‘What could it be?’
‘Who could it be?’ said Isobel as she caught sight of a man walking down the road. He was small and wore black wellington boots and an olive-green raincoat that appeared too long and too big for him. A blue baseball cap covered the top half of his face. ‘Who’s that?’ Isobel asked when the reporters began to move towards him.
The Malice of Waves Page 18