The Sea Detective (26 page)

‘Where did you get it? Do you know what this means?’

Grace Ann flinched again. ‘I do.’

‘My grandfather is buried in the Lofoten Islands, not your brother Sandy.’

‘I know.’ She swallowed. ‘Please Cal.’ Tears were beginning to tumble across her cheeks. ‘It’s been so hard for me to give him up. Please try to understand. I was so young.’

Cal’s exasperation was rising. ‘Who have you given up?’

‘Uilleam, your grandfather …’

Cal glanced behind him at the nurses’ station in case his raised voice had attracted attention. ‘How long have you known?’ he asked, repeating it with emphasis to make sure she heard him. ‘How long?’

Grace Ann closed her eyes and turned her head away.

‘Since 1943, when my mother received the letter from the Admiralty saying Sandy’s body had been found; I’ve known since then.’

‘This letter, where did you … get it?’ He almost said steal.

Still she couldn’t bring herself to look at him, to see his contempt. ‘A few weeks after the Eilean Iasgaich returned from Archangelsk in October 1942,’ she sighed. ‘I was collecting the island’s letters from Eastern Township and I recognised his writing on the envelope. I knew it was wrong but I couldn’t stop myself.

‘I was 18, Cal. I was desperate for something of his. Ishbel had everything else. Is it so hard to understand why I wanted his letter?’

Cal’s eyes met Grace Ann’s staring, willing him to forgive her teenage passions. ‘I loved him Cal more than anything else in the world. Ishbel had his baby. I had his letter. Was that so unfair?’

‘But it was written to my grandmother.’

Grace Ann didn’t reply immediately. ‘I’ve had it on my conscience for so long.’ She wheezed and her lips spread across her sunken face in a grimace of contrition.

‘Why didn’t you say something when the Admiralty letter arrived the following year? You knew my grandfather had been wearing Sandy’s watch when he died.’

‘I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that to my mother. I couldn’t tell her that it was Uilleam in the grave, not Sandy. His death destroyed her. Her only comfort was the knowledge he was buried.’

‘So you kept it to yourself.’

‘I had to. And afterwards too. …’

Neither of them spoke, then Grace Ann said, ‘When I saw your photograph in the newspaper I knew it was time. It’s been on my conscience so long. When you visited me I couldn’t tell you. Your eyes are so like Uilleam’s. To see them hating me. …’ Her head rolled back across the pillow.

He spoke slowly, trying to make her realise what she’d done. ‘My mother died not knowing her own father’s body had been found and buried . …’

Grace Ann cowered as though every word was striking her. The sight made him stop mid-sentence. Losing his temper with an old woman on her death bed wouldn’t make it right for his mother.

Grace Ann began to cough, a rasping dry noise and Eleanor, the nurse, arrived bustling at her bedside. She took the glass of water from Cal. ‘Have a wee drink, Grace Ann.’

She turned to Cal. ‘Maybe she should have a rest now.’ The nurse brushed Grace Ann’s cheek with the back of her fingers. The old woman’s eye lids fluttered and her lips stretched in a tired grimace. ‘The letter, take it.’

Eleanor whispered over her shoulder to Cal. ‘She’s tired, the old soul. I think it’d be better if you went now.’

Cal laid Grace Ann’s Bible on the bed and said his thanks to the nurse. On his way out of the ward he held the letter to his chest. His possession of it provoked a feeling of unexpected melancholy. His 19-year search for his grandfather was over: his constant and loyal friend since boyhood found and laid to rest; a collection of old bones in a Norwegian grave. Cal felt he had lost his companion.

Outside the ward was a rest area. He sat there, reading the letter once more, wondering how his grandfather had washed ashore on the Lofoten Islands and where he’d gone overboard. Wherever it was, it wasn’t to the south of Bear Island as his grandmother and his mother had been told. There was only one explanation. The Eilean Iasgaich must have steamed close to the Norwegian coast south of the Lofoten archipelago before he went into the sea. If it had, the boat would have been within range of German coastal batteries and air patrols. Why, he puzzled, would Hector MacKay, the skipper, have taken such a risk?

Was the answer contained in the log book, the page he hadn’t been allowed to see?

On the bus from the hospital, he read the letter again and thought about the gravestone which bore Sandy’s name. Should it be changed? Thinking of his grandfather’s fondness for Sandy he decided the inscription should remain as it was: Sandy’s name on the headstone; Uilleam’s body in the lair; the two of them together in death, as they had been in life.

The bus stopped at St Andrew Square in the centre of Edinburgh from where he walked along Princes Street, to a branch of
Gap
. He bought jeans, a pair of linen trousers, two white tee shirts, two cotton shirts and a cotton jersey. A female shop assistant helped him choose. As an afterthought, he also bought socks, two packs. The assistant saw him looking nervously at the underwear stand. ‘Is she about my size?’ she asked. ‘A little bit taller and slimmer,’ he replied and then worried he’d made it sound as though the assistant was short and fat. ‘About the same,’ he corrected himself. She reacted with good humour. ‘How many?’ she laughed. ‘They’re in packs of two.’

‘Three packs, I guess: how many do you think?’

He walked home through the New Town and then took a brief diversion to Inverleith Park where he watched after work football games, reflecting on his grandfather and Grace Ann. Had he loved her? Had he given her the impression they would be married? Had Ishbel been a coup de foudre for him? Cal thought of Rachel too, of how they’d been at the beginning. Could they be that way again?

By the time he was back at his flat, it was late evening. The door to the roof was open and Basanti was sitting there, half in, half out, resting against the jamb. She smiled at him and apologised for taking some of his paper. She was trying to draw the hill and the tree again, to make it a better likeness. ‘You’re welcome,’ Cal replied. ‘Anytime,’ he added, trying to let her know how relieved he was she had returned. ‘Really, make yourself at home.’ He left the
Gap
carrier bag on the bottom of the stairs. ‘Just a few things; I thought you could do with them.’

He turned away before she could say anything, hoping to make it easier for her to accept his gift. At the long table he switched on his computers and while he waited for them to flicker into life, he picked up the frame with his grandfather’s photograph. He regarded it thoughtfully before flipping it over and prising open the back with his thumb nail. Into the slender aperture he slid his grandfather’s final letter to his grandmother, resolving as he did so to find a picture of Ishbel from among his mother’s belongings to replace the photograph of the Ardnamurchan gravestone. Then he clipped the back shut, slid the two brass fasteners into place and returned the frame to its place on the table.

The sound of the bathroom door closing made him look up. He heard running water. Basanti had turned on the shower. The bag of clothes had gone from the bottom of the stairs. While he waited for her to emerge, he logged into his email account. There was only one new message in his inbox. It was from Jamieson. She had written ‘Nail the bastards’ in the subject box. She thanked Cal for scanning and sending Basanti’s drawing. Cal deleted the message and began searching through websites with pictures of the west coast of Scotland – Google produced 4,520,000 results. Then Basanti was standing in front of him, clean and in her new linen trousers and a blue cotton shirt. Her hair was wet and glistening.

‘Thank you,’ she said, breaking into a smile, which began uncertainly and lopsidedly at the edges of her mouth before widening into a grin of girlish pleasure. The instant it did she dropped her head, now shy in case he mistook her delight for immodesty.

Cal almost said something about how lovely she looked but settled for, ‘Are you hungry?’ Hadn’t she had enough unwanted attention from men?

Basanti nodded.

Cal went to the kitchen, put water into a pan and poured in a bag of easy cook risotto. After adjusting the heat he went back to his table. ‘Now …’

He pushed one of his computers across the table and swung it round to her.

‘Do you know how to work this?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and then more warily, ‘One of the men taught me – he used to bring a laptop when he visited me.’ Her eyes filled with sudden alarm. What would Cal think: that she had colluded with one of her abusers? She glanced at him, expecting to find a look of disapproval, but Cal didn’t react. He continued to open up pictures and discard them. ‘Think you can do that?’

‘I think so,’ Basanti replied, trying it herself.

‘If you find a photograph like your drawing let me know.’

Cal returned to the kitchen where he stirred the risotto, chopped parsley into the pan, and grated parmesan over it after the grains and water thickened like porridge. When he came back with the plates, he asked, ‘Recognise anything?’ She shook her head so he went to the other side of the table and sat opposite her. ‘Would you mind if I sent your drawing to some people I know? They might be able to help.’

‘If you think it is all right?’

She went back to searching the pictures, taking small mouthfuls of risotto as she did so.

Cal sent an email to his Omoo contacts. ‘Does anyone know this scene, probably west coast Scotland?’ he wrote, attaching Basanti’s drawing.

It was late when Basanti complained of tired eyes and asked if she could carry on going through the photographs the next day.

‘I’m sorry. You must be exhausted.’ Cal had put a key beside him, Rachel’s key. It was tied with a piece of blue ribbon. He slid it over to Basanti. ‘It’s for the flat. It means you can come and go as you want. Well I suppose you do anyway.’ She shook her head, refusing it. He didn’t press her. He’d leave it on the table and she could use it or not as she chose. ‘Have the bed, Basanti. I’ll be sleeping there.’ He nodded at the arm chair beside him. ‘It’s comfortable. I sleep there often when I’m working late.’

‘Thank you, but I prefer to be up there.’ She pointed to the door to the roof. She needed to be near an escape when she was sleeping, he realised. Being held captive for so long had done that to her.

‘Take a pillow at least.’

He went to the cupboard by the bathroom door, pulling out a sleeping bag and a pillow. He put them on the bottom of the stairs, apologising for not having a clean pillow slip.

‘It doesn’t matter, really.’ She sounded amused.

When Cal returned to his chair, she said good night. Cal grunted in acknowledgement. At the foot of the stairs, she stopped and turned back to him, self-consciously. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done …’ Her voice trembled with emotion.

Cal waved his hand dismissively. ‘No bother, really.’ Then he said, ‘You’re welcome.’

Basanti picked up the sleeping bag and pillow and carried them up to the wooden landing. She unrolled the bag on the boards and lay down on top of it in her clothes. She put the pillow under her head. Cal watched her briefly before an incoming email distracted him.

It was from Mack, the leader of the Omoo group. ‘Do you have any more clues?’

Cal replied: ‘Not really. I’m not even 100 percent sure it’s west coast?’

Mack: ‘What’s the story?’

Cal wrote two versions of his reply before settling on, ‘It’s a favour for a friend of mine. She wants to find the hill again. She’s in Scotland, revisiting her childhood holiday haunts.’

He dozed, lying back in his chair. At intervals during the night he woke to check on Basanti. Her back was to him; her face towards the roof door. Finally, he fell into a deep sleep which was broken by sunlight warming his face and the screech of gulls outside. The first thing he did was to look for Basanti, but she was no longer there. The sleeping bag was folded on the landing with the pillow on top of it.

He went to the table. She’d left him a scribbled note. His key was on it. ‘Thank you’ was all it said.

The counterfeit Nike trainers arrived by motorcycle courier after 9am. Jamieson emailed using her Bembo address. ‘Return them in 24 hours, quicker if you can. Use the same courier company.’ She gave its phone number and her account details. Cal filled his kitchen sink with some sea-water he had collected in buckets from nearby Granton harbour and put in the shoes, weighting each one with tide-smoothed stones he’d brought back from beaches around Scotland.

By late morning Bembo had emailed three more times.

The first email enclosed attachments from the Coastguards detailing emergency call-outs at sea for the relevant dates in Cal’s search area, 28 involving loss of life. Twelve bodies were still missing, all of them men. Two of them died sea kayaking, only one of whom was definitely wearing trainers. Two other men drowned after their fishing boat capsized, but neither was wearing trainers, according to the police. The remaining missing men died in two separate incidents off the west of Ireland, but there were no reliable reports about their footwear.

The second email listed double suicides. There had been six, pacts by desperate people throwing themselves into the sea together, but only one involving two men. One of the bodies had been recovered and neither had been wearing trainers. (They’d taken their shoes off. ‘Suicides do,’ observed Bembo, ‘and spectacles.’)

The third email listed estuary drownings: there had been 14 and all but four of the bodies had been recovered. Three of the missing bodies were men, two of whom had been wearing trainers. Both had drowned in the Clyde estuary, a day apart.

‘How do we know two night-time cockle gatherers weren’t swept away at high tide in Morecambe Bay and no-one saw them?’ Cal asked.

Bembo: ‘We don’t.’

Cal opened a can of tuna for lunch, tipped it into a bowl, mixed it with mayonnaise and toasted pitta bread. After his first bite he glanced up at where Basanti had left the sleeping bag and pillow. He took another bite then climbed the spiral stairs, apprehensive about her finding him there, on what was her territory, her sanctuary. He listened for her and pushed on the door. The roof was in bright sunshine. His plants were in the gully to his left. To his right, underneath a chimney breast was a cardboard shelter. Basanti was sitting at its entrance, drawing. She started when she saw him and Cal regretted his impatience.