The Malice of Waves

by Mark Douglas-Home

Grey, who was the other side of Bella, replied, ‘That’s Detective Chief Inspector Beacom.’

  This exchange was followed by the sound of chairs being pushed back. The tea room’s regulars went to stand at the window. ‘Well,’ Isobel said, ‘he doesn’t look like a chief inspector or even a policeman, come to think of it. He looks more like one of that lot.’ Everyone watched as Beacom held up his hand to the approaching reporters. Microphones were extended towards him. Cameras flashed. ‘He’s talking to them,’ said Mary-Anne.

  ‘No, he’s going to the Jacqueline,’ said Isobel as Beacom kept on walking.

  ‘Something must have happened,’ Mary-Anne said, offering up a silent prayer.

  When Beacom reappeared after what seemed an age, the media again gathered round him. As before, his hand went up. He said a few words. ‘What’s going on?’ Ina demanded.

  Beacom pointed towards the Deep Blue. ‘He’s coming in here,’ Isobel said.

  Everyone turned to the door.

  ‘It’s Ewan.’ Bella’s hands went to her face. ‘They must have found him.’

  ‘You don’t mean he’s dead, do you?’ Mary-Anne gasped.

  The door opened and there was a distinct movement in the tea room air: a recoil, a pulling back, or shrinking away, as Mary-Anne would later describe it. Beacom stopped after a few steps inside. He planted his feet apart and pushed back the peak of his baseball cap. His raincoat fell open to reveal jeans and a leather jacket buttoned across. He coughed and introduced himself. ‘I’m sorry about all this,’ he went on to say. ‘I’m sure it’s upsetting and disruptive for you. But a young woman’s been murdered so it’s necessary.’ He paused and looked around. ‘Nice place … I hope you won’t be disturbed for too long.’ He shoved his hands into his raincoat pockets. ‘I’ll do what I can to keep you informed. That’s why I’m here now. You probably know I’ve visited the Wheeler family. After this, I’ll be holding a news conference outside. But it’s important that you’re the next to know.’ He looked from face to face. ‘At three forty-seven this afternoon a single male aged twenty was arrested in connection with the murder of Joss Wheeler. That’s all I can say at the moment. Thank you.’ He nodded, pulled down his cap, fastened a button of his raincoat and went outside.

  Silence.

  Everyone in the tea room had the same shocked expression. Words were unnecessary. They were all thinking the same thing. Isobel, being practical, said, ‘He’ll need a lawyer.’ There was an exchange of looks: a lawyer and a miracle.

  Mary-Anne said, ‘Look, he’s talking to them,’ and drew attention back to the scene outside. The reporters were gathered around Beacom. Cameras flashed.

  Isobel said, ‘He’s answering questions.’

  Grey complained, ‘He didn’t let us ask questions.’

  A murmur of discontent. More shared glances. The police aren’t to be trusted. They weren’t when Max Wheeler disappeared. Nothing has changed.

  According to the Deep Blue’s clock, seven minutes passed before Beacom walked back in the direction of his makeshift headquarters. A uniformed policeman stopped some reporters from following. One, a fair-haired young man, peeled away from the pack and entered the tea room.

  Isobel was at the counter with Bella, trying to cheer her up. The young man – Dominic, he said his name was, from the Sentinel – ordered coffee, large and black.

  Isobel said, ‘Let me do this one, Bella. Why don’t you go into the office and put your feet up?’

  When Isobel turned to attend to the coffee machine, Dominic said to Bella, ‘How about we swap. You tell me what Beacom said to you and I’ll tell you what he said outside?’

  Bella didn’t reply.

  Dominic shrugged. ‘I’ll go first.’ He glanced over his shoulder to check no other reporters were queuing behind to hear what Bella or Isobel might say. ‘OK.’ He lowered his voice. ‘They’ve arrested this bloke everyone’s been talking about, Ewan Chisholm. The cops were waiting for him up at a place called Grant’s Croft. They got him when he was tying up his boat.’

  Bella asked, ‘Was he alone?’

  The reporter raised his eyebrows. ‘Dunno, to be honest, but that’s what the detective chief inspector told us: one bloke, one boat.’ He took out his notebook and checked. ‘Yes, that’s what he said all right. Now, it’s your turn.’

  Isobel said, ‘He didn’t even tell us that much.’ She looked at Bella, who was looking most peculiar. Isobel put the coffee cup on the counter. ‘Bella, are you all right?’ She put her arms around her friend, as if ready to hold her up. ‘You’ve been on your feet too long.’ Isobel turned to Dominic. ‘I’m sorry, it’s been a difficult day. It’s all been a great strain.’

  ‘Another time then.’ He put a five-pound note on the counter. ‘Keep the change.’ He winked. ‘Maybe it’ll buy me some goodwill.’

  Isobel took Bella into the office, tutting at her stubbornness. ‘You look terrible. Let me take care of the tea room while you and Catriona rest.’ She frowned. ‘Bella, why did you ask that reporter if Ewan was alone?’

  Afternoon sun slanted across Priest’s Island. It crept over a hillside. It penetrated a gully. It lit up a rock. It appeared to be making suggestions: here is where he might be hiding, look here or here. Cal swore. He’d searched everywhere. He’d checked the ruined chapel and the shieling. He’d covered the high ground from east to west. He’d walked the south shore and now he was walking the north. Was there another living creature on the island? It seemed inconceivable that someone could hide in this landscape, flattened by storms and stripped of cover. How could two people simply disappear there – first Max, now Ewan’s companion?

  Among torn-up kelp and wrack at the tideline, a carpet of purple-brown, Cal spotted a flash of yellow. It was one of his drift cards – numbered four, he saw when he bent to pick it up. He’d dropped it north-west of Priest’s Island on the Atlantic side. Straightening up, he spotted another in a pool of sea water nearby. Approaching across a shingle beach, he stepped over some washed-up moss or seaweed and saw a line of stitching. He bent to discover a cloth bag. On further investigation, he found it was separated into compartments set in a circle. The first four contained broken pieces of eggshell. The fifth was empty. From the sixth and last he tipped an intact egg into the palm of his hand. The shell was clammy cold, light pink and covered with red-brown blotches – the same patterning as some of the broken pieces. Because of the size, about five centimetres by three, Cal thought the egg a seabird’s, perhaps a kittiwake’s or guillemot’s. On reflection, he couldn’t remember seabirds being on their nest sites as early as March. Usually, when he saw them, it was late spring or early summer. He returned the egg to the pouch and collected the second drift card – it was numbered one and had been dropped below the sea cliff. Then he thought of the ravens he had seen flying above the island, of the ravens’ nests he had seen on other sea cliffs and, in the past, being surprised to find ravens at their nests as early as February. Had the bag and the drift card been driven ashore from the same place?

  He returned to Wheeler’s jetty where his RIB was tied up. For safe-keeping, he put the bag and its undamaged egg in a locker. From another, he removed a rope and set off across the island towards its western buttress. Ten minutes later he breasted the plateau, and two ravens lifted into the air. They wheeled to watch him. When he was at the cliff’s edge, they settled and began a chorus of rasping, croaking calls. In protest, he thought, at his being on their territory. He stopped by a wide crack – a diagonal gash in the cliff face – and studied the rubble of rock which filled it. At some time in the past it might have been climbable; not any more. Then, a short distance ahead, he saw a place where the grass looked freshly worn and flattened. He knelt to press his fingers against a patch of scuffed earth. Next he went to the boulder that was perched back from the edge, as if in some distant time a giant had lugged it towards the cliff edge to repel seaborne invaders only to run out of strength. The boulder was more cylindrical than round. Cal noticed more
signs of friction about the base. He unwound his rope, tied a large loop at the top and fitted it over the rock. When it had slipped down, he yanked the loop tight before tying another, with an overhand knot, further along the rope. He tested the loop for size with his foot, untied it, made it bigger and made more of similar size about forty centimetres apart.

  When he was finished there were forty-three loops. He went to the cliff, knelt and gripped a loop in each hand and pulled the rope tight against the boulder. Then he scrambled inexpertly over the edge until he was hanging. He put one foot into a loop, then the other and began to descend. He went slowly, releasing one hand at a time and looking down to find the next foothold. The wet rock face grazed his knuckles as he gripped tight to the loops. He kept on going until the rope below him seemed to be hanging in mid-air. When he looked down, he found he was at an overhang. Hand, foot, hand, foot, one loop after another. Now he could see a ledge below him. On it was raised a large platform of sticks and branches, a raven’s nest. In the middle, as though shaped by a bowl, was a lining of sheep’s wool. The nest was empty.

  Suddenly he started spinning.

  On his first turn round, he saw what looked like a crust of human vomit on the rock beside the nest.

  He spun again. Cal saw how some branches hung over the ledge. Others looked as though they’d been torn away. Then, on his next spin, he noticed how the nest platform had been pulled away from the back of the ledge where it abutted the rock face and, dimly, in a crevice there, he thought he saw a wood-handled boathook.

  Helen’s eyes flitted from Ina’s bony fingers digging into her arm to the sideways slump of the old woman’s head. ‘Sorry,’ she said to Mary-Anne at the next table before glancing at the clock. The minute hand was at two minutes to six. Helen pulled a face which meant she knew the tea room should soon be left to the locals, but what could she do? If she got up to go she would waken Ina.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, you’re fine,’ Mary-Anne smiled in understanding. ‘Isn’t that right?’ She addressed the question to Isobel, who was returning from checking on Bella. ‘Nobody’s going to fuss if Helen stays on after six, are they?’

  ‘Please. Stay! You must.’ Isobel lowered her voice. ‘If Ina wakes up and you’re not here she’ll want to tell us one of her stories.’ Isobel rolled her eyes.

  ‘I could listen to her all day,’ Helen said. ‘What an amazing life she’s led.’ She glanced at Ina before opening her book, a Hebridean travel guide. ‘Trying to work out where to go next.’

  She made a show of reading while Isobel and Mary-Anne talked about Bella.

  ‘She’s determined to come back to the tea room,’ Isobel said. ‘You know Bella when she’s made up her mind. Stubborn isn’t the word.’

  ‘She’s her own worst enemy. She’ll make herself ill.’

  ‘She’s ill already if you’re asking me. Grey had to drive her home last night because she was so exhausted. This afternoon, with that reporter, I thought she was having a stroke. Honestly I did. She didn’t look right.’

  ‘I know,’ Mary-Anne replied. ‘What an odd question to ask – was Ewan alone?’

  ‘You should have seen her afterwards. She couldn’t move. She looked dazed, far away. Do you know what she said? “Oh Isobel, I don’t know where I’ve been.” And I said, “Bella, if you don’t look after yourself you won’t be coming back the next time”.’

  ‘Watch out,’ Mary-Anne whispered, ‘here she’s coming now.’

  Helen turned the page of her guidebook.

  Isobel asked, ‘How are you feeling, Bella?’

  Helen heard Bella’s footfall and felt a movement of air against her neck.

  When she turned and looked up, Bella was standing with her hands on her hips, staring down at her. ‘It’s after six,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be in the tea room.’

  ‘Oh, that’s our fault, Bella.’ Mary-Anne sounded nervous. ‘We didn’t think anyone would mind. After all, Helen’s done so much to help, making sandwiches and sitting with Ina.’

  ‘Well, she can’t stay.’

  Helen noticed Mary-Anne and Isobel exchanging glances. ‘We thought an exception could be made,’ Isobel said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Helen interrupted. ‘Bella’s quite right. I shouldn’t be here …’ She looked at Ina’s collapsed and sleeping face and then at Bella. ‘I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.’ She put her book in her bag and loosened Ina’s grip on her arm. The old woman’s eyelids sprang open. She looked around her with a bewildered expression. When she saw Helen, she said, ‘Have I told you about the time my Neil’s boat ran aground in a storm?’

  ‘Not yet, you haven’t, Ina.’ Helen patted her on the hand. ‘There’s always tomorrow.’ She looked out of the window. ‘Before it gets dark, I think I’ll take some exercise. Run off all that cake.’

  Helen wondered at herself. What was she thinking? A young woman had been murdered. Not just killed, but terrorized at night in a storm and stabbed, and Helen was worried about her face becoming red. But she couldn’t stop jogging because she was still in view of the Deep Blue. Bella could be watching. That was Helen’s job, watching people. Now it seemed she was being watched.

  ‘Nosy old besom,’ Helen said out loud. She stopped running and bent over as if catching her breath so that Bella could see how unfit her holiday tenant was. Helen walked for a bit before carrying on jogging. As soon as the upstairs windows of Bella’s house were out of sight, she stopped. Now her cheeks felt burning hot and Cal’s pickup was only a couple of minutes away. There was no chance her face would subside. She walked disconsolately on and issued silent warnings to Cal if he dared mention her grey tracksuit, if she detected the beginnings of a smile. ‘Huh, after all that …’ she complained when she arrived at his pickup. He was nowhere to be seen. His RIB was gone. ‘Typical.’

  She wrote in the dirt on the side of his pickup:

  NEED TO TALK. I’LL TRY AGAIN IN THE MORNING.

  She didn’t write her name in case anyone passed by and read it. But it looked a bit odd on its own. So she wrote ‘H’.

  ‘Cal, where have you gone?’

  Sometime, she thought. Even once would be nice.

  22

  Bella was making scones and biscuits, baking determinedly to distract herself from thinking about Joss. Tears dropped on to the hot trays and made a sizzling sound. Joss dead and Ewan arrested for her murder! She couldn’t accustom herself to what had happened no matter how often the words turned around in her head. Every time was still a shock.

  The phone rang, causing her to start. What now? She remembered her mother’s adage about no good news ever arriving before breakfast.

  It was Isobel.

  ‘Bella, I thought I should ring you straight away so you were warned. A body’s been washed up on East Skerry. Another body, isn’t that terrible? Who could it be?’

  It was like a punch to Bella’s ear. She fell against the dresser and dislodged one of a set of floral cups from the top shelf. It smashed on the kitchen floor and Bella found herself kneeling among the fragments. A pale yellow primrose was on the piece nearest to her. She stared at it with a bewildered expression. Such a pretty thing, she thought, and broken too. Just like Joss. Like everything. Shattered.

  ‘Are you all right, Bella?’ Isobel sounded alarmed. The phone lay on the floor among china fragments. Bella picked it up. ‘Bella?’ Isobel inquired. ‘Are you all right? Bella, speak to me.’

  ‘A body?’ Bella managed to say, but her head was spinning so much she could only hear Isobel’s reply in fragments: ‘Appears to be human … fleshy … pale skin … not had a close-up examination … police going out … no one local reported missing.’

  Bella laid the phone beside the broken pieces of cup while Isobel was still talking. She went upstairs to Catriona’s room.

  When she looked from the window and saw skuas, gulls and crows wheeling and quarrelling above the skerry, she knew it was Pinkie. The symmetry of that distant scene made perfect sense. T
he creatures that Pinkie had preyed on in life were tearing him apart in death. In Pinkie’s fate, she saw a glimpse of her own. Her flesh would be stripped for bringing him to the islands. Other sharp beaks would expose her bones for being Ewan’s protector, for being Joss’s. Bella surrendered to self-pity – had good intentions ever been more cruelly rewarded? Everything was spoilt and broken. Nothing could be mended. Now Pinkie too! How was he dead? What could have happened? If only she could talk to Ewan.

  The next she knew, Catriona was getting out of bed and standing at her side, dark eyes peering into Bella’s face. ‘Auntie Bella, what are you doing in my room?’ She looked out of the window to where Bella was staring. ‘Are you watching the birds?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘Why? There are always birds out there. Why are you looking at them this morning?’

  Bella said, ‘They’re feeding on a body.’

  Catriona glanced at the birds and back to her aunt. ‘Are you sure? A body?’

  ‘Isobel’s been on the phone,’ Bella said. ‘I’m sorry, Catriona. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘What did Isobel say? You’re sure she said a body?’ Catriona jerked back her head in puzzlement. ‘Really?’ She watched her aunt’s face. ‘Whose body?’ She took her aunt’s hands in hers. ‘Why are you sorry? What have you done?’

  As she always used to when Catriona was a child and she would be too inquisitive or nosy, Bella pulled her niece towards her and held her tight. She rested her chin on Catriona’s head so she could no longer search into her eyes. Then she said, ‘You’re better than all of us, Catriona. You’ve never thought Ewan capable of murder, have you? Not once.’

  ‘Auntie Bella!’ Catriona said. ‘Why are you saying that? Has Ewan got something to do with that body? Tell me.’

  But Bella held her tighter and said nothing.

  Helen peered round the side of the Deep Blue. News of the washed-up body had not yet reached the media encampment – the only sign of conscious life was a policeman standing on the harbour wall by the Jacqueline. If Helen had to put on tracksuit and trainers to go running in the early morning, she’d rather do so without an audience of reporters and photographers. For that small mercy she gave thanks. She did likewise when she saw the tea room was dark and empty. Thank goodness Bella wasn’t up and watching. The woman had a suspicious nature. Helen jogged across the tarmac towards the rocky pathway leading uphill to the road. As before, she kept on running until she was out of sight of the upstairs windows of Bella’s house. Life was unfair, she thought: with Cal, events or time were always conspiring against her looking her best.