The Darkness and the Deep (14 page)

And then the door opened and Tansy did not need the jerk of the nurse’s head indicating that she should make herself scarce to tell her that the doctor standing behind her in the doorway was bringing the news that would kill that hope stone-dead, as dead as Katy Anderson’s husband.

‘
Nairra-nebbit
?’

She had surprised Tam into laughter, as she had hoped she would; that was a good start.

‘For God’s sake, Marjory,’ he went on, ‘why could you not just have said at the outset that if I pit the heid on him for being English you’d have my guts for garters, same’s you usually do?’

‘It’s what I meant, right enough. I just thought I’d try for a wee bit more delicacy.’

‘Did I never tell you the story about the fella from Maryhill who was asked why he punched his pal in the stomach instead of the jaw? He said, “I was tryin’ to be subtle, ken?” That’s what we call delicacy in Glasgow.’

‘That’s fine. Next time I promise I’ll begin by saying, “See you, you Weegie bastard . . .” OK?’ It was good to be back on insult terms again. ‘Now listen to this.’ She told him what Cammie had said and he pursed his lips in a silent whistle.

‘That would figure, eh? They’ve not found him yet, have they, so I’ll maybe take a wee shufti round the Anchor in case he’s there but keeping his head down.’

‘Good idea. I’ve got Ritchie Elder to see at the lifeboat shed and I’ll have a word with anyone else who’s there. Then I want to go to Fuill’s Inlat – see how they’re getting on. You’ve been dealing with Willie Duncan so you’d better go and see him. He could be rattled enough by what’s happened to be vulnerable to your unique brand of persuasion.’

‘That’s supposing the effects have worn off by now. He’ll maybe still be so relaxed he doesn’t care.’

But Willie was anything but relaxed. When he opened the door of his house, his eyes red and watery, he reacted to MacNee as if he had seen Old Nick himself.

‘Get away from me, MacNee! I’m having nothing to do with you! Now leave me alone or I’m making a complaint.’ He was yelling like a madman.

A second later, an astonished MacNee was staring at a slammed door. It had been so unexpected he hadn’t even reacted fast enough to put his foot in to stop it closing; indeed, he could count himself lucky not to have lost the end of his nose. He took a step back and stood surveying the situation, pondering his next move.

He could hear that Willie was still on the other side of the door; was that even sobbing he could hear? Well, it wasn’t dignified, but . . .

MacNee dropped to his knees on the doorstep and pushed open the letter-box. On the other side the brushes of a draught-excluder blocked his view but he called in the voice of sweet reason, ‘Willie, you know fine we’re going to have to talk to you about what happened yesterday. Why not do it the easy way instead of the hard way? If you give me a voluntary statement now we won’t have to send someone to bring you in for questioning.’

‘Do what you like. Just get off my doorstep.’ There was the sound of retreating footsteps, then an inner door slammed. Standing up self-consciously, MacNee bent to brush the knees of his jeans and heard a mocking titter behind him. He swung round, his face reddening as he recognised the man who had recognised him. He was one of the local stringers for the
Scottish Sun
, a thin youth with acne and a weasel face. Pond-scum.

He was smirking. ‘I knew things were bad but I didn’t realise the Busies were having to resort to prayer,’ he sneered.

‘You’d be better putting up a wee word or two yourself.’ MacNee was fully signed up to the principle of getting your retaliation in first. ‘I’ve been hearing rumours about your leisure activities and if I decide to look into them a little more closely it’ll be you needing divine assistance to stay out of trouble.’

He walked away, the journalist looking uneasily at his jaunty, retreating back. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good story after all.

Fleming was early for her appointment with Ritchie Elder but Jason Channell, the lifeboat’s chief mechanic, seemed almost desperate to talk to her; indeed, from the way he was pouring out his version of the previous night’s events, it probably counted as therapy. He was unshaven and hollow-eyed, clearly grieving for his comrades and exhausted from his efforts of the night before. She suspected he hadn’t even gone to bed.

Much of what he said had been covered by Tam’s report to her, but clearly since then there had been a lot of talk and speculation about the mystery surrounding the fate of the
Maud’n’Milly
, and the curiously uncontrolled behaviour of the Hon Sec as well. This last was, presumably, irrelevant to the main issue, but she was interested nevertheless. She knew Elder’s reputation, and in any new enquiry jarring elements were worth investigating, even if only to get them out of the way. She’d definitely want to put that to Elder when he arrived, and almost on that thought the door of the shed opened.

Ritchie Elder this morning was a different man from the ranting wreck of the previous night. He was wearing a pale grey cashmere polo-neck over dark grey trousers, having obviously made a similar sartorial judgement to Marjory’s own. His striking blue eyes did, indeed, look somewhat puffy, but he was perfectly calm and immaculately clean-shaven, with not a hair of his thick, iron-grey crop out of place.

‘Inspector. How do you do?’ He didn’t look pleased to find her there already, deep in conversation with Channell. She thought she even caught a flicker of anger, but he favoured her with a nicely judged smile: pleasant enough, though of course constrained by the atmosphere of tragedy. ‘You’ll forgive us if everything is a little disordered this morning. Last night’s disaster has left us all reeling, I’m afraid, and the phone’s going mad – reporters, head office, the chair of the Friends of the Lifeboat, the coastguard . . .

‘Still, come into my office – it’s just a cubby hole, but I can unplug the phone so we won’t be disturbed and you can tell me how best we can help you get to the bottom of all this.’

Feeling as if she had been deluged in treacle, Fleming followed him. The room in question had been partitioned off from the main shed and was indeed, as Elder had indicated, very small, with room only for a desk with a swivel seat behind it, a filing cabinet and a couple of upright chairs. A shelved wall held file boxes, manuals and untidy piles of reports and brochures. He waved her suavely to a seat, then, taking up his place in the swivel chair, leaned back and said, ‘Now, shoot!’

It was a good performance of the ‘great-man-being-gracious-to-humble-copper’ role, and it riled the hell out of her. She’d been wondering where to begin; now, at his invitation to shoot, she took aim squarely below the belt.

‘Mr Elder, perhaps I can start by asking about your affair with Dr Ashley Randall, who, I understand, is one of the victims?’

She failed to rattle him. The only visible reaction was one of sardonic amusement. ‘Dear me, Inspector, don’t tell me you’ve been listening to local gossip?’

‘That’s how we get some of our most useful information.’

‘And a great deal of misinformation, as I’m sure you would be the first to acknowledge.’ He smiled ruefully, then, putting his hands on the desk, palms upward in the classic gesture of openness, went on, ‘Actually, as I said to my wife this morning, I was expecting this. You were bound to hear it somewhere and I’m glad it’s cropped up right at the start so that I can knock it on the head.

‘If you’ve ever lived in a village, Inspector, you’ll know what it’s like. Ashley Randall is – was,’ he corrected himself, with what could almost have been a trace of human emotion, ‘a very attractive young woman. She and I, through our lifeboat work, were naturally enough thrown together and of course the tongues started wagging. It only takes one person saying, “I wonder if . . .” and the next person says, “Mrs So-and-So says . . .” and on it goes.

‘I’m not going to deny I got on well with Ashley. We’d a lot of interests in common and if you were accusing me of having the occasional flirtatious conversation I’d have to put my hands up. Flirting with a pretty woman is surely one of life’s innocent pleasures.

‘But!’ The steel in his voice reminded Fleming of his business reputation. ‘If I hear that allegations are being made about our relationship, allegations which would of course deeply distress my wife and Dr Randall’s husband, I shall sue – the Press, you, whoever. So if you are planning publicly to pursue that line, you’d better have convincing proof of something beyond normal social activity. Is that clear?’

‘Perfectly.’ It had been a side-issue anyway and it was never wise to charge in without an army of facts at your back. Still, there was nothing to stop her using such evidence as she did have. ‘I understand that you were distraught last night and had to be restrained?’

Fleming thought she saw the muscles in his jaw tighten but he said lightly, ‘Guilty as charged on that one, I’m afraid. Perhaps you can imagine what it feels like to be responsible for giving an order which sends out friends and fellow-workers to their death?’

‘Of course. But it seems you were uncontrolled earlier, when you heard that Willie Duncan was unable to go out with the boat?’

This time there was no mistake about the tightened jaw. ‘I was very angry, yes. Intemperate, even. Willie and I go back a long way and it was a serious betrayal of trust. As I believe I said at the time, if I could have got my hands on him, I would probably have killed him.’

He was covering all the bases and there was nothing more to be gained by pursuing that line either; she changed tack. ‘You were unhappy about Rob Anderson’s capabilities as acting cox?’

As he paused, weighing his words, Fleming had the sense of someone regrouping after a hard-fought skirmish. Which was interesting.

‘Rob Anderson,’ he said slowly at last, ‘was a thoroughly good man and he’s done all the appropriate training. But as a naval officer you don’t have to fly by the seat of your pants, whereas Willie has the sea in his blood. He used to fish out of Stranraer, until the quotas came in, but he still goes out with a creel two or three times a week. He knows these waters like the back of his hand.

‘This was the first time Rob had had to take the helm. It shouldn’t have had to be on a night like last night, at a moment’s notice.’

‘Were you aware of the situation as it developed last night?’

‘Naturally.’ She saw him run a finger round the neck of his sweater as if to loosen it. He was finding it hard to talk about this, which again was interesting; it hadn’t bothered Jason Channell.

‘I was by the communications desk, listening in as usual. It had been, in the event, a perfectly straightforward operation and we were all just chatting among ourselves as we waited for them to get back. Then all hell broke loose – you know about Luke Smith?’

Fleming nodded and Elder went on, ‘He was another of my worries last night, but only because the boy was inexperienced. He was totally dedicated – never missed a call-out, worked to pass every course he needed, been on a dozen training exercises – there was no reason why he shouldn’t go.

‘To be honest with you, I have to say he never struck me as particularly impressive, and someone said he wasn’t making much of a fist at teaching. But frankly, the way kids are today I couldn’t blame him. How they can get anyone to go into teaching beats me, with the yobs they’re dealing with, all snarling, “You can’t touch me!” I’d touch them, all right!’

She wasn’t up for digressions about the state of modern education. ‘So this came as a shock to you? He had no history of depression?’

‘A shock not just to me. It was clear that this was a bolt from the blue for Rob and Ashley as well. She was hanging on to him, screaming, and Rob was trying to get in as quickly as possible. Presumably that’s how it all went wrong, though I still don’t understand—’

‘How did you discover what had happened?’

‘Rob said he’d picked up the harbour lights and was on his way in. Some of us hurried out, ready to help restrain Smith, if that was needed, and I remember thinking it was odd we couldn’t see them yet. Then they started yelling from inside the shed – they’d heard Ashley scream . . .’ He was sweating as he described it, Fleming noticed clinically.

‘The coastguard got a fix on them and of course we realised then . . . I jumped into the car and got out there immediately – it was terrible, terrible!’

He bent his head, shuddering, and for the first time Fleming felt real pity for the man. This, for whatever reason, was going to haunt him for the rest of his life. ‘I’m sorry to have to take you through all that,’ she said, getting up. ‘I won’t trouble you further at the moment, sir, but thank you for your cooperation.’

Elder visibly pulled himself together. ‘There were one or two questions I was hoping to have answers to before you go, Inspector. I would like some indication of the direction and present progress of police enquiries. I shall need to know exactly what went wrong—’

‘Of course,’ Fleming said smoothly. ‘The investigation at the site is going on at the moment – in fact, I’m on my way there now to check what’s happening. But as you will understand, we’re not yet in a position to give any answers. Thank you for your time.’

Elder didn’t get up to show her out. He looked drained and exhausted, almost like an actor after a demanding performance, and as she shut the door she saw him bend down to open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. She would bet that what was filed there came in a glass bottle.

So what was that all about? It was natural enough that in his position the loss of the lifeboat which was technically in his charge would be a devastating blow, and natural too that if he was having a clandestine affair he would be worried about scandal. But was there something more to it than that?

Of course, it was probably a line that would never need to be pursued, once they had got hold of Nat Rettie, but she was thoughtful as she left the shed.