Stormtide (10 page)

Surging out of the waves, almost twice a man’s height in its size, a great tail lashed in a blind frenzy. The
Seapearl
’s hull gave an enormous shudder as it took a first then a second slamming blow just for’ard
of the wheelhouse, blows which would have demolished many a lighter craft.

Thrown violently, Carrick grabbed for support as Dave Rother toppled against him and a solid wall of water hit the wheelhouse glass. The boat was still pitching and twisting like a creature gone mad, line snapping out from her bow, a great boiling patch of sea marking where the basking-shark had dived. From the stern came a tortured, erratic whine as their propeller blades briefly hit empty air.

‘We’re in him. Fair and sure. Got him and …’ Dave Rother’s shout of triumph died as he watched the line still vanishing overboard at express speed while the shark continued its plunge into the depths. The spliced-on marker barrel tore free of its lashings and disappeared in the same way an instant later.

‘Where the hell’s he planning to stop!’ Rother scrambled to reach the helm again, suddenly tightlipped. But as he got there the remaining line gave a convulsive wriggle, stopped running, and the marker barrel shot out of the water some thirty feet ahead, splashed down again, then bobbed idly.

Swearing, Rother slammed the heavy gear lever to full astern and ignored the protesting machinery noises coming from below. Spinning the wheel, he almost broadsided the boat to avoid running over the slack line, then, as they lost way, rolling wildly, he shook his head disconsolately.

‘Gone, damn the thing. The biggest I’ve had the chance at, bar none.’

At the bow, Yogi Dunlop and Clapper Bell leaned sadly on the harpoon gun. A couple of deckhands were already hauling in the useless line.

The harpoon was still on its end. The steel barbs and half the head had snapped off clean, the rest was coated in black, evil-smelling slime.

‘The bastard,’ said Rother softly. ‘He’s down there laughing at us.’ He glanced at Carrick and grimaced. ‘Not my day, is it?’

Carrick shook his head with an answering grin then thumbed towards the compass.

‘He might surface again,’ said Rother hopefully; ‘Maybe if we hung around for a spell …’

‘Maybe, but we’re not,’ said Carrick positively. ‘Portcoig, Dave. You had your chance.’

He almost added that the great fish down below had earned a chance too. But he doubted if anyone else aboard
Seapearl
would have seen it that way.

By mid-afternoon, when they passed Moorach Island to starboard, the sea was still running high and, despite a brilliant blue sky, a strong wind continued to whip at the rigging. Bringing the shark-boat in close, Carrick saw that salvage work on the wrecked
Harvest Lass
was already under way. She was beached on the ridge of rock as before but figures were moving on her deck and the seine-netter
Heather Bee
, which was lying at anchor a hundred yards or so out.

The sight jogged Carrick’s memory. Turning over the helm to Logan, he went along to Dave Rother, who was lounging on deck near the stern.

‘Dave, I was to give you a message from Sergeant Fraser. He’d feel happier if you weren’t around Portcoig tomorrow afternoon. Not while John MacBean’s funeral is taking place.’

‘I don’t go looking for trouble,’ grunted Rother. ‘You can tell him I’ll keep my crews on Camsha. Or at sea.’

‘Fine – as long as you mean your other boats,’ warned Carrick. ‘This one doesn’t sail till Shannon lifts the arrest.’

Rother gave a cynical shrug and looked out towards the island. ‘Shannon doesn’t worry me. I’m a damned sight more concerned about Peter Benson. Maybe I can get an answer this time – do you think he killed your engine-room man?’

‘Let’s say it looks that way. I’d rather wait till we find him.’ Carrick rested his hands on the sharkcatcher’s low rail and considered her skipper’s thin, scowling face. ‘Some people might say that if Benson didn’t then you could be a candidate.’

‘They might.’ Rother took the reminder without concern then stuck a cigarette in his mouth and left it unlit. ‘But they shouldn’t say it too often – I’ve a high sensitivity threshold about some things.’ He switched abruptly. ‘Still seeing Sheila Francis tonight?’

‘Yes.’ Carrick raised an eyebrow. ‘Why?’

‘Old-fashioned curiosity.’ Rother tongued the cigarette to the far corner of his mouth, adding cryptically, ‘Have fun, laddie. Always have it while you can. Hell knows what’s round the next corner.’

Marlin
’s grey hull was already alongside Portcoig pier when the shark-catcher finally plugged into Camsha Bay. It was close on 4 p.m. and another recent arrival was tied up near the Fishery cruiser’s stern, a small-sized coaster with a green hull, white superstructure and a small black stub of a funnel aft. The Broomfire Distillery boat appeared to have kept to schedule.

Easing in towards the pier’s T-end, Rother let his fenders nudge the thick wooden piles just long enough for the Fishery cruiser’s trio to scramble over. Then the
Seapearl
’s engine rumbled, she spat exhaust, and her battered hull swung away, heading across for the island.

‘Not a bad character to know, that Yogi,’ mused Clapper Bell, scratching his stomach with one hand.
‘Funny thing he was tellin’ me, though. Just about every man Rother’s got is some kind o’ ex-navy – though a few o’ them finished their time in detention barracks.’

Beside him, the leading hand grinned. ‘Maybe he hand-picked them, sir.’

‘Maybe,’ said Carrick dryly. ‘Well, check back aboard – both of you. Tell the Old Man I’ll be along in a minute if he asks.’

He let them go ahead, then followed slowly, interested in the coaster. The
Lady Jane
, registered at Glasgow, lay with her hatches open and a radar scanner turning idly above the compact island bridge.

Loading was already under way. Her twin cargo derricks were manoeuvring a large stainless-steel tank aboard from a heavy truck waiting on the pier beside her. The yawning midships hold space gave a glimpse of stacked whisky casks below.

‘No samples available, Chief Officer,’ commented a dry voice above the clatter of the winches. Harry Graham’s tall figure stalked out from the side of the truck and came towards him. ‘If there were, you’d be in a long, long queue.’

Carrick grinned at the grey-haired distillery manager. ‘Let’s say I live in hope.’

Graham grunted, keeping an eye on the bulk tank as it lifted again. The winches stopped, the heavy tank swung gently for a moment, then the winch engines renewed their clatter and it began a slow downward progress towards the for’ard hold.

‘You came in on the
Seapearl
.’ It sounded close to an accusation.

‘That’s right.’

‘The whole village knows why, of course,’ said Graham, frowning a little. ‘What happens to Rother now?’

‘Captain Shannon’s decision,’ shrugged Carrick, then switched away from the subject. ‘We passed Moorach Island on the way in. Your salvage team looked busy.’

Graham nodded. ‘I had a radio talk with the skipper. They’re fairly hopeful about patching up the
Harvest Lass
but the rest is like you thought. They’re not so happy about refloating her.’ He shrugged. ‘I should go out myself – but I’m too busy here.’

‘You’re not wasting time,’ mused Carrick. The bulk container had reached the coaster’s hold and another truck was already bouncing its way along the pier. ‘Why all the rush?’

‘Tomorrow’s funeral.’ Graham watched the new arrival pull up. It was loaded with whisky cases and the man in the driving cab was Alec MacBean. ‘I’ve rearranged the whole loading schedule to have the job finished by midday tomorrow. They’d stop for John MacBean’s funeral anyway and afterwards,’ – he gave a faint grimace – ‘well, if mourning follows island tradition there won’t be much work done. Most of them will find it hard enough to stand upright.’

Climbing out of the driving cab, Alec MacBean scowled around then headed towards them, a cigarette cupped in one hand. He gave a curt nod in Carrick’s direction, then ignored him.

‘We’re runnin’ behind schedule, Mr Graham,’ he complained.

Graham pursed his lips apologetically. ‘Back to work, Chief Officer, I’ll see you again.’

‘Try and catch the murdering devil Benson first,’ suggested MacBean sourly. His mouth twisted. ‘Not that anybody did anything when my brother got killed. But then he didn’t rate – he wasn’t Fishery Protection.’

‘And he died in an accident,’ said Carrick wearily. ‘This is something separate. Anyway, finding Benson is a police job – and even then they’ll need proof. Too many people are forgetting that.’

Both men looked at him sharply.

‘You think there’s any doubt?’ queried Graham.

‘Let’s say I don’t like the old approach of “Hang him now, we’ll give him a fair trial tomorrow”,’ retorted Carrick with a degree of irritation. ‘They’ll find Benson. But I want to know more about several things going on here before I start shaping any opinion.’

Graham shrugged in silence. MacBean looked away, muttering under his breath.

‘You don’t have to agree,’ Carrick told them curtly. ‘Just remember I said it.’

He left them and went on down the pier.

Marooned aboard
Marlin
as officer of the watch, Jumbo Wills greeted his return gloomily while making a vain attempt to hide a magnificent black eye.

‘The Old Man’s gone ashore, Webb,’ he reported. ‘He left word he probably won’t be back much before midnight.’

‘We’ll survive.’ Carrick considered him with a twinkle. ‘But what the devil happened to you? Don’t tell me he hit you on the way!’

Wills glared at him balefully through the undamaged eye. ‘It happened while you and Pettigrew were still out playing at captains,’ he said bitterly. ‘There was a wholesale brawl on the pier just after we got back – a bunch of locals and a couple of Rother’s people who’d come over from Camsha. The Old Man sent me with some hands to break it up.’

‘And?’ Carrick inspected the eye more closely. It was a magnificent bruising, going from black through purple to a yellowed brown at the edges.

‘Well, the moment we tried to stop them everybody started knocking hell out of us.’ Wills’s young face screwed up in a painful perplexity. ‘Webb, do you ever have the feeling you’re having a bad week, the kind of week you could have done without?’

‘Like this one right now,’ agreed Carrick with a grin of sympathy. ‘Duck quicker next time. But what about the Old Man? He said he’d be here.’

‘He was, till a police car arrived with a note for him. Then he went off in it.’ Wills fingered the swollen eye tenderly then itched the skin below. ‘There’s a CID conference being held at Portree about Gibby Halliday’s murder and they need him. But you know how that’ll shape. Our beloved captain will end up having an expense account dinner with the Chief Constable.’

‘On the Chief Constable, you mean,’ murmured Carrick. ‘Where’s Pettigrew?’

‘Ashore too. He came in with the Mallaig boat half an hour ago, moaned about it, then took off for the village.’ Wills looked puzzled. ‘One of the hands saw him there, talking with Maggie MacKenzie.’

‘Then heaven help Pettigrew,’ said Carrick dryly. ‘If Aunt Maggie gets him on the hook he won’t find it easy to wriggle off again.’

The second mate considered the possibility with a hopeful malice then grinned.

‘She’d fix him,’ he declared hopefully. ‘Poor old Pettigrew.’

Early evening crept on with the wind moderating and the sun still beating down on the bay. Along the pier,
more truckloads of whisky arrived beside the coaster and were taken aboard amid a constant rumble of winch engines.

Most of the time Carrick stayed in his cabin. It was hot down there, but he stripped down to vest and undershorts, then lay on his bunk, smoking an occasional cigarette and trying to think. He had a growing, uneasy feeling that he now knew enough of what was happening to be able to put the pieces in some theoretical kind of order.

Peter Benson had vanished, leaving behind almost everything he owned. Then, while Dave Rother hinted at some mysterious deal just over the horizon, there was MacBean’s well-stoked hatred of the sharkmen, Fergie Lucas’ equal vendetta and the odd contrast of Graham’s refusal to be labelled. And so far two men had died. One by accident, another because he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

How much of it really went back to the dead girl, how much of it belonged somewhere else? Or maybe the whole feeling really came down to imagination and that thump on the head he’d taken.

At last, when the hands of his wristwatch were leaving six-thirty, he gave up and rose. Splashing water on his face from the cabin basin, he used a towel then glanced at the mirror. A tired-eyed face stared back at him, complete with a dark stubble of beard along the jaw-line. Grimacing, he reached for his razor.

Fifteen minutes later, feeling fresher and wearing an off-duty grey shirt and dark-brown slacks, Carrick went ashore. Things were quiet at the village end of the pier and he walked along a little, sniffing the peat-smoke in the air and watching the dozens of gulls parading endlessly along the rocks near the water.

An empty whisky truck clattered past on the road, heading in the direction of the distillery. Then, moments later, Sheila Francis’s little Austin saloon purred into sight and drew up beside him.

‘Been waiting long?’ she asked with a smile as he climbed in.

‘No, just arrived.’ He gave her a long, admiring look once he’d closed the door and settled back. Her hair was caught back by a ribbon the way it had been the first time they’d met. She wore a short blue linen button-up shirt dress, sleeveless, the open neck giving a glimpse of the swimming top below, the last few buttons left casually undone and showing her long, sun-tanned legs to firm perfection. ‘Where’s this place you’re taking me?’

‘Not far, but not many people know about it. I wouldn’t if Maggie MacKenzie hadn’t told me.’ She set the car moving and glanced at him oddly. ‘I didn’t expect you to turn up. With all that has been happening, I mean.’

‘Asking if I’m playing truant?’ He grinned at the thought, lit two cigarettes, and placed one between her lips. ‘Not particularly. Things are quiet for a change and there was nobody around to stop me. Have you seen Aunt Maggie today?’