Well of the Winds Read online

  35

  ‘Haud your horses,’ mumbled Glenhanity as she heaved herself out of the chair where she’d been fast asleep. Someone rapped on the door again. Though her first step was unsteady, she got into her stride after the third, and was soon opening the front door – more to berate her visitor than bid them a good afternoon.

  ‘Oh, it’s yourself? I don’t often see you at my door. In fact, I canna remember when I last set eyes on you.’

  That had been two hours ago, and since the visit she’d stared greedily at the bottle of cheap whisky that now sat on her mantelpiece. It wasn’t often she was gifted something. She eyed the bottle again and scanned the room. Sure enough, an old enamel mug was sitting on the carpet next to the couch. It was the one she’d given to that cheeky detective the other day. The contents appeared untouched. She considered giving it a rinse, but on reflection, couldn’t be bothered going to the kitchen. She merely tipped the mug upside down and emptied the cold tea onto the carpet before running her dirt-engrained forefinger around the rim.

  Glenhanity then shuffled over to the fireplace, mug in hand, unscrewed the bottle and poured herself a generous measure of whisky. ‘Miserable soul,’ she muttered, replacing the bottle on the mantel. ‘Leaving the bloody price on – Greeks bearing gifts, so yous are.’

  The bitter taste of the whisky hit her tongue, followed by the familiar burning sensation in her throat as she swallowed. She took another swig. There was a scorching feeling in her throat, an agonisingly intense sensation. She coughed to try and clear her throat, cursing the cheap spirit, but within seconds her eyes were streaming and she was struggling for breath.

  Glenhanity let out a howl as she staggered towards the kitchen for some water, reaching desperately for the old brass tap, but a convulsion shook her body and she collapsed on the floor. A bright light flashed before her eyes, then dimmed for ever.

  Kinloch, 1945

  They had left young Hamish with an aunt before taking to the sea in Ranald’s skiff . The water was calm as they got underway, though Urquhart felt a chill he hadn’t expected as they passed the island at the head of the loch. He could see one of the area’s famous wild goats making its way steadily up a precipitous slope, stopping only to gaze down on them from a narrow ledge. The animal was chewing vigorously, but appeared unfazed by the chug of the old diesel engine as the vessel made its way out into the sound.

  As they neared Paterson’s Point, Ranald caught the inspector’s attention by pointing ahead. ‘That’s the lifeboat,’ he called above the rattle of the engine. ‘They’re likely on their way back fae the accident.’ He stood at the prow of the boat and waved his arms.

  The blue lifeboat with the small wheelhouse angled her course towards them until the vessels were almost touching, side by side, held in position by the skill of the mariner at each helm.

  ‘How ye, coxswain?’ shouted Ranald. ‘I’m hoping things aren’t as bad as I’ve been telt.’

  The coxswain, dressed like Ranald in a thick fisherman’s sweater, dungarees and a flat cap, puff ed on his pipe as he leaned on the gunwale. ‘No’ good at a’, Ranald. I’ve got Glenhanity aboard, deid – poor bastard.’

  Ranald removed his cap, prompting Urquhart to do likewise with his hat. ‘Och, whoot on earth happened?’

  The coxswain drew deeply on his pipe and stared at Urquhart as he answered. ‘I’m no’ right sure, but I’ll tell you this, Inspector: if you’re investigating this, you’ll need tae have your wits aboot you – aye, an’ someone wae a good knowledge o’ the sea at your shoulder. There’s something jeest no’ right, but it’s no’ my job tae have an opinion.’ The other crew members looked on, subdued. ‘I’ve failed at my job. Make sure you succeed at yours. Noo, I’ll need tae get this poor soul tae Kinloch, if you’ll excuse me.’

  The lifeboat’s engine growled into life, and the powerful vessel made her way back to Kinloch.

  ‘Dae you want tae carry on or go back tae the toon, Mr Urquhart?

  ‘I think we’ll keep going, Ranald. I’d like to see what happened.’

  ‘Very good,’ replied the fisherman, as he steered a course around Paterson’s Point and headed for the Isle of Gairsay.

  *

  Daley was glad he’d seen his friend, and relieved that his injuries hadn’t broken his spirit. The doctor had intimated that he would likely make a full recovery and should be able to come home soon. He’d watched Hamish’s reaction to this, noting something he hadn’t seen in the man before – fear. He thought about what Hamish had told him as he flew back over Goat Fell on Arran in the police helicopter, heading back to Kinloch.

  He now had the familiar, almost comforting, feeling that accompanied his immersion in a challenging case. It was as though his mind was becoming cold and analytical – divesting itself of any peripheral worries and concerns to dedicate itself to solving what confronted it.

  He remembered the first time he’d experienced this sensation. It had been not long into his career in the CID. He had stared at the body of a dead girl lying on her bed. The child’s face had been porcelain-white and her eyes had stared in horror, the imprint of the last moments of her short life etched for ever upon her features.

  There was a tiny chair, like the ones that parents are forced to sit on when visiting a primary school, a splash of colourful cartoon characters across the wallpaper, a bright red bedside light, plastic dolls scattered on the floor, the wrapper from a chocolate bar discarded on the carpet; all of which fitted, were meant to be there in a child’s bedroom, but were heart-breakingly at odds with the lifeless body on the rumpled bed.

  It was then he’d felt his heart harden for the first time as the need, the desperate need to bring the person who had done this to justice, rose in him.

  As the loom of the Kintyre peninsula appeared, he had that feeling again. All thoughts of Mary, Liz, his son, his future, his self-induced misery, faded away. He could see the board in his office, the cellar at Achnamara, the face of the Bremner family’s matriarch, the swastika on the notepaper with the neatly typed German script – ‘H.H.’, then a scribbled signature at the end.

  H.H. He berated himself. The conclusion he’d come to was too obvious, lazy, in fact: Heil Hitler. What if it meant something more than just an empty salute to a madman?

  ‘We’ll be landing in five minutes, sir,’ announced the crackling voice in his headset. He didn’t reply. ‘Sir, are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, I’m okay, and, yes, I heard you.’ He didn’t care how terse he sounded. He was now determined to solve this case. The future – his future – could take care of itself.

  He could barely make out the causeway, now almost submerged beneath the waves. But, in his mind’s eye, the stern face of Inspector William Urquhart was as plain as day.

  Gairsay, 1945

  Urquhart studied the tall, powerfully built man. He had a chiselled face, tight blond curls cropped close to his head, and grey-blue eyes. His wife was younger, petite, dark-haired, and waspish in appearance, very much the more vocal of the pair.

  ‘You were on his boat, Well of the Winds, yes?’ asked Urquhart.

  ‘Yes. My husband has already made this clear, no?’ Mrs Bremner fixed him with a steely look.

  ‘This is the first chance I’ve had to talk with your husband, Mrs Bremner. So the answer is no, he hasn’t made this clear – to me, at least.’

  Mr Bremner spoke. ‘I apologise, Inspector. This has been a shock to us all. Glenhanity was our friend, as well as our employee.’ His accent, like his wife’s, was distinctly German, but less shrill.

  ‘You had been out in the bay attending to lobster creels?’

  ‘Yes, I am learning this. Since we came here, we are trying to make a living as best we can. Support ourselves and help the community. This is uppermost in our thoughts. We are most grateful to this island, its people. We have our farm now,’ he continued, holding out both hands as though showing off his property. ‘It doesn’t look much now, but we have a second chance in o
ur life, yes?’

  ‘Back to this morning, Mr Bremner.’ Urquhart ignored the man’s description of their family circumstances, much to the annoyance of his wife, who snorted in derision and spoke to her husband in rapid German.

  ‘No, Mrs Bremner, I don’t work for the army or the government intelligence. This is Scotland, not Germany.’

  ‘You speak German, Inspector.’ Mr Bremner seemed calm, but his wife’s face betrayed a sudden flash of panic, rather than the irritation she had displayed since his arrival.

  ‘I fought in the last conflict. I became a liaison officer just before the Armistice.’

  ‘So you hate the Germans as much as we do!’ blurted Mrs Bremner.

  ‘No, not true. I have great admiration for the German people. I was disgusted by some of the punitive measures placed upon the country by the Allies. The sanctions were, in my opinion, a mistake, and have led to the tragic situation in which we find ourselves.’

  ‘I see,’ replied Mrs Bremner, doing her best to look unimpressed, but remaining watchful. ‘But the situation, as you call it, will not last much longer, I think.’

  Urquhart ignored her, turning his attention back to her husband. ‘You were attending to the creels, then what happened?’

  ‘We could not get the creel from the water. It was stuck – the rope had become caught. We couldn’t free it. Glenhanity said we should fetch his boat, we would pull from both ends, try and free the rope.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘I took him across the bay. He boarded his vessel and we returned to the creels.’

  ‘So how did he end up trapped underneath your boat?’ Urquhart spat out the question, deciding to speed things up, catch Bremner off guard; it was a technique he’d learned in the military police.

  ‘He disappeared. I looked around and he was gone.’ Bremner swallowed hard. ‘The boats had come together. I think he’d been trying to push off my boat while I was busy with the creel. He must have lost his balance.’

  ‘And what did you do?’

  ‘I-I looked over the side, the space between the boats. Though it is a calm day, there was a swell, so the vessels were drifting apart.’

  ‘When did you see him?’

  ‘His hand, I saw his hand first. His fingers were gripping underneath my boat. I only noticed them because he moved. He was trying to bring himself up to the surface, but he was stuck.’ Bremner’s face crumpled.

  ‘How long did it take you to pull him up? Surely it was just a case of grabbing his hand and pulling him up from the water?’

  ‘No, no, he had become trapped. I did manage to catch his hand, but I couldn’t get him to move.’

  ‘Did he grip back?’

  ‘Yes, I think he did. I don’t know!’ he shouted, standing to emphasise the point, his wife shushing him at his side.

  ‘Can’t you see that my husband is upset by this? How can you carry on with this questioning?’

  ‘I want to see his boat,’ said Urquhart, ignoring her pleas.

  ‘I will take you.’ Bremner was calmer now.

  They walked along a path between fields, Bremner taking the lead, his wife by his side, holding his hand and talking to him quietly. Urquhart followed behind, Ranald at his side. The fisherman hadn’t spoken since they’d arrived at Achnamara, though Urquhart noted that he was absorbing everything, his face a picture of concentration under the peak of his cap.

  Two small boats were tied to a small stone jetty which consisted of a collection of large rocks that sat proud of the water. The larger of the two vessels was painted bright blue, well maintained, brass rowlocks shining. A pile of lobster creels was stowed neatly at the stern.

  The smaller boat looked shabby in comparison. The varnish covering the wooden planks of the clinker-built hull was patchy and in need of retouching. The vessel was a shambles of nets and white buoys. One thick glove, greasy-looking and missing a finger, sat on a bench seat beside a penknife and a bodkin, which was used to maintain the boat’s nets.

  Urquhart stood at the stern, Ranald by his side.

  ‘Can you take a look, please, Ranald?’

  ‘This man isn’t police,’ said Mrs Bremner sharply.

  ‘He is working under my instructions and on my authority, Mrs Bremner. Carry on, Ranald.’

  The fisherman looked at him, about to ask a question which Urquhart silenced with a shake of the head. Expertly, he jumped from the jetty onto Glenhanity’s boat, then rifled around under nets and fish boxes.

  ‘Yente,’ said Urquhart quietly, though loud enough for the Bremners to hear above the lap of the waves, the squawking gulls and the noise made by Ranald’s rummaging. He paused, looking at the couple. Their gaze remained fixed on Ranald as he ran his hand along the floor of the vessel.

  Urquhart pursed his lips.

  At the prow, in peeling paint, the name of the small boat was still legible: Well of the Winds.

  36

  Iolo Harris was sitting alone outside a little restaurant on Gairsay, a converted boathouse overlooking the bay. He had intended only to have a light lunch, but had enjoyed the starter of smoked mackerel pâté on rye bread, served by the chef no less, so much that he was now indulging himself with a dressed crab salad.

  He was enjoying the sights and sounds. The ferry, which plied its trade back and forth all day between Gairsay and Kintyre, was roughly halfway through another outward journey. A bespectacled middle-aged man and a scruffy old Jack Russell terrier were making their way along the white sandy beach. The little dog was snuffling and pawing at the sand. As the dog went about its business, the man read passages from the paperback he was carrying.

  Only feet away, a great black-backed gull eyed Harris intently, the end of its yellow beak a splatter of red. As the pair stared at each other, Harris amused himself with the notion that they were in silent communion: the intelligence officer and the intelligent bird. He tossed a bread crust, which the bird caught in mid air and gulped down greedily.

  A seal, its head just visible above the grey water, looked about, sniffing the air, as the raucous laughter from a couple of fishermen on a small boat out in the bay carried across the calm sea.

  Harris’s phone vibrated and he reluctantly pulled it from his pocket and clicked on the email icon.

  Though his face remained impassive, what he read surprised him. Timothy Gissing had left a mountain of problems behind, dating back to the previous incumbent, by no coincidence, his father, the late Sir David Gissing.

  Harris often puzzled over the behaviour of the English upper class. Though things were changing – very slowly – the country, by no means an international minnow, despite the loss of empire and influence, was still controlled by the Establishment. These men – and they were largely men – were the product of a handful of schools and universities, a privileged elite who stretched back over generations and centuries, families who treated access to prestigious positions as a matter of right.

  David Gissing had been Her Majesty’s unofficial conduit between the fledgling Common Market, the trade organisation that had sprung from the ruins of Europe to become what many thought would eventually be a superstate, with the ability to challenge the USA, or even the seemingly unstoppable economic powerhouse of China.

  Reading this email, it appeared that the Gissings had not only seen themselves as mere functionaries, but pivotal decision makers. One other name stood out: Hans Neyermeyer, who was known as ‘The Father’. The Father. Harris allowed the title to echo in his head. He was an old hand at reading between the lines – especially the subtle ones placed there by Civil Service mandarins. There was something hidden in all this, he was sure of it.

  As Harris took his final mouthful of crab, he ruminated on the fluctuating nature of the world, and, more pertinently, his place in it. He clicked off the email and scrolled down his contacts until he found the name ‘J Daley’.

  ‘You’ve got tae wonder what goes through their heids.’ Scott was leaning over the side of the ferry as Symington too
k pictures on her phone. They were approaching the mainland.

  ‘Who?’ replied Symington, still focused on the moving tableau as the ferry slid through the waves.

  ‘Fish. What dae they think aboot? Swimming away a’ day, a’ their lives, come tae that. Must be a right bugger – don’t think I could cope.’

  Symington looked at him askance. ‘I wouldn’t worry too much, Brian. You know the chances of your being a fish, well, they’re pretty slim when you think about it.’

  ‘Ach, it’s just a’ this time I’ve got on my hands, you know, wae me off the bevy. Your mind starts working overtime.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I understand that. But you’ve done the right thing – saved your life, most likely.’

  ‘Aye, you’re probably right, ma’am. Takes a bit o’ getting used tae, mind you . . . Fuck me, I used tae drink like a fish, noo I’m wondering what they get up tae a’ day.’

  Symington studied him for a few moments. He had a nasty bruise over his right eye, a lump under his left, and his lip was split. He’d certainly taken a battering.

  ‘Jim will want to know what happened to you.’

  ‘I wouldnae worry too much aboot that. I’ll just tell him I got intae a wee argument wae one o’ they Special Branch boys. It’s no’ as though it’s the first time.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t want you getting a hard time for helping me. Which I’m still very grateful for, but not very comfortable with, incidentally.’

  ‘Why? What’s the problem? If you’re worried that Harry will spill the beans, I don’t think you’ve anything tae worry aboot.’

  ‘You seem very certain about that.’ She eyed him with suspicion.

  ‘Aye, och, just my instincts,’ he said, clearing his throat.

  ‘I think I’m going to tell him the truth – Jim, I mean. I’m going to tell him about Harry and the whole sorry business.’

  ‘I wouldnae dae that, ma’am,’ replied Scott in a rush. ‘Oor Jimmy’s no’ himself, you know that. No telling how he’ll react tae something like that. You’ve got tae understand, he’s no’ like me – he thinks too much. Though he’s made his fair share o’ mistakes and a’, mind you.’