The Malice of Waves
Page 27
‘Was uninhabited,’ Catriona corrected him. ‘The man you met is the owner. He’s called David Wheeler. He lives there now.’
‘By himself?’
‘It’s a sad story. His wife and two of his children were killed and the other two … well, they’ve had to go away.’ Catriona wondered if she should tell the man: Chloe was serving a life sentence in a women’s prison on the mainland; Hannah was at a special school somewhere in England, having been released after six months.
The kayaker frowned. Instead of commiserating, he said, ‘Surely, no one can live there. How can he? There isn’t a proper house, only a little shed.’
Catriona laughed. ‘We call that a shieling. It used to be occupied during the summer when sheep or cattle were taken over to the island for the grazing. That’s where David Wheeler is living.’
The kayaker seemed almost offended at the idea. ‘I wouldn’t want to spend a single night on that island. It doesn’t have a good atmosphere. It’s a creepy place. Look at this.’ He opened his backpack and withdrew the stiff body of a small black bird. ‘I found it lying by the ruined chapel. I was going to ask that madman what it was but he just shouted at me.’
‘Wait there.’ Catriona went to the office and rang Bella. ‘Can you come over? There’s something you should see.’
When Bella saw the dead bird, she exclaimed, ‘Oh my goodness, it’s a storm petrel.’
Catriona and her aunt exchanged glances.
‘What?’ the kayaker looked from one to the other. ‘What?’
Acknowledgements
For their time, knowledge or assistance, I am grateful to Bob McGowan, Senior Curator, Birds, at National Museums Scotland; Toby Sherwin, Emeritus Professor of Oceanography at the Scottish Association for Marine Science; Dr Gail Anderson at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia; Moira Forsyth, Pete Moore, Willa Straker-Smith and Vicki Clifford. Any factual errors are mine. I would also like to thank Emad Akhtar, my editor at Penguin; Maggie Hattersley of Maggie Pearlstine Associates, my agent; and Colette, my wife, and Rebecca and Rory, my children: all for their encouragement and help.
In my research, I read a large number of books. Among those that informed me were Sea Room by Adam Nicolson; Atlantic by Simon Winchester; The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane; The Scottish Islands by Hamish Haswell-Smith; The Raven by Derek Ratcliffe; The Birds of Scotland, published by the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club; the Collins Bird Guide; The Egg Collectors of Great Britain and Ireland by A. C. Cole and W. M. Trobe; and the Clyde Cruising Club’s Sailing Directions to the Outer Hebrides. I also made use of the article ‘Erythrism in the Eggs of British Birds’ by The Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain and Clifford Borrer, which was published in British Birds in 1914.
As with the previous books in this series, the places I describe are mostly fictional. That includes the two islands which feature in this story – Priest’s Island and Eilean Dubh. Although there are other Scottish islands with similar names, these are not them. My reason for inventing places is to avoid imposing a fictional plot on an island community that has a rich and interesting history of its own.
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN BOOKS
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
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First published 2016
Copyright © Mark DouglasHome, 2016
Jacket design: Ghost Design
Photo credit: landscape © Adrian Theze Arcangel Images; man © Tim Robinson Arcangel Images.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-1-405-92360-6
Table of Contents
Title Page
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Maps
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
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Copyright Page