Stormtide (4 page)

Carrick nodded and they started back the way he’d come. The dull cloud overhead was thickening, with
a hint of rain in the air, and they walked silently for a few moments.

‘Sergeant, we’ve our own interest in this,’ he said quietly. ‘What’s the story you’ve heard about this feud with Rother’s people?’

‘Feud?’ Fraser slowed and scratched his chin. ‘That’s maybe a strong word, Chief Officer. A few brawls, a middling-sized fire that was probably just an accident …’

‘And a patrol car you send over most nights,’ finished Carrick bluntly. ‘There was a girl in it, right?’

‘Aye.’ The policeman nodded a greeting to a passing figure. ‘So they say, anyway. Her name was Helen Grant. She … well, she went for a late-night stroll along the pier about three months back. They found her drowned the next morning.’ He shrugged. ‘Accidental death – she couldn’t swim, must have fallen over the edge.’

They were nearly back at the harbour. Sergeant Fraser stopped beside a small black Ford station wagon and opened the door.

‘I heard she was pregnant,’ said Carrick quietly. ‘Who was the man?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Fraser gruffly. ‘For a start, she wasn’t local – just a student lassie from Glasgow who came visiting to Portcoig a few times. But she had a family back in Glasgow. It was bad enough on them losing a daughter. The way I saw things they’d only have been hurt a lot worse if we’d built it up into a suicide.’ His mouth hardened. ‘Accidental drowning, Chief Officer. The rest of it is between her and her Maker. Agreed?’

He got into the Ford, slammed the door shut, and started the motor. Then, suddenly, he wound down his window.

‘If you want gossip, Chief Officer, there’s your best bet.’ Fraser thumbed out across the bay. Aunt Maggie’s small red and white launch was coming in again, heading towards the harbour from Camsha Island.

The station wagon grated into gear and the policeman set it moving in an angry way that sent gravel spurting from the tyres.

By the time the ferry launch nosed in, Carrick had positioned himself near her landing stage on the pier. He watched the spry, grey-haired woman who moved quickly along the boat from the tiller to tie a bow-line round an iron ring set in one of the massive timbers, then deliberately walked nearer as the ferry’s three passengers disembarked and came up the steps towards him.

Big Yogi Dunlop, the gunner from Dave Rother’s
Seapearl
, was built like a barrel, had dark, shaggy hair, and dwarfed the girl by his side. She was the redhead who had appeared from the shark-catcher’s wheelhouse. Trailing a yard or so behind, their companion was a tall, thin youngster in an old jersey and slacks. His face badly swollen, one eye blackened and half-shut, he walked carefully as if every step hurt.

‘Hello, Chief – seeing you is a bit o’ luck,’ boomed Dunlop happily, shoving his hands deep in the pockets of his leather jacket. ‘The boss gave me a message for you. He says you can buy him a drink at the White Cockade tonight.’

‘What time?’ asked Carrick. There were only two bars in Portcoig and the White Cockade was the more popular.

He was looking at the girl. Seen close-up, her sweater and trousers outfit moulded a figure which
might have been hand-carved for perfection. The tanned, lightly freckled face was strong on character, with calm grey eyes which were slightly amused as they met his own. She had a pert nose and a slightly dimpled chin and her copper-red hair, long and straight, was tied at the nape of the neck by a long white ribbon.

‘About nine, I suppose,’ answered Dunlop vaguely. ‘That’s his usual, right, Peter?’

The boy with the damaged face shaped a sound of sullen agreement and shuffled his feet as if anxious to get away.

‘Yogi …’ Carrick glanced significantly towards the girl.

‘Hell, I forgot,’ declared the gunner cheerfully. ‘Sorry, Chief. This is Sheila Francis, the new district nurse here. And the lad is Peter Benson, who – uh – well, he’s been workin’ with us.’

‘Was working with you,’ said Benson in a bitter mumble. His normally thin features twisted with an effort. ‘Why bother to cover up? I don’t damned well care. Not now.’

Dunlop sighed sympathetically. ‘You know how it is, boy. The boss gives the orders, not me.’ He switched his attention back to Carrick. ‘Do I tell the boss you’ll be there?’

‘Yes. But he can do the buying.’

‘Maybe.’ The gunner grinned, then beckoned to Benson. ‘Come on, then. Let’s get you fixed up like the boss said. An’ cheer up, for God’s sake. He’s doin’ you a favour.’

Benson scowled, but followed the big man obediently along the pier towards the village, leaving Carrick with the girl.

‘Yogi wouldn’t win prizes for introductions,’ mused Carrick.

‘I’ve had better,’ she agreed wryly. ‘But at least I know who you are. Dave talked about you.’

Carrick grinned. ‘Which makes a bad start. On your day off?’

She nodded. ‘Dave promised me a trip and this was it.’ Her smile faded. ‘It – well, it didn’t turn out like I expected. We heard the radio messages. I knew John MacBean – not well, but I’d talked to him.’ Glancing past him along the pier, she frowned. ‘That boy with Yogi – Peter Benson. Dave said MacBean’s two crewmen attacked him last night. Then there was some kind of general battle. Was that why MacBean was alone out there?’

‘It seems that way.’ A gull swooped down, landed near them with a quick wing-flutter, then strutted fearlessly. Carrick shrugged. ‘He was a damned fool taking a boat like the
Harvest Lass
out on his own. Did Dave say what started the fight?’

A sudden caution in her grey eyes, Sheila Francis shook her head. The white hair-ribbon brushed tantalizingly along her neck.

‘And now Dave has fired him.’ Carrick waited, saw no response, and tried a different tack. ‘Meeting Dave tonight?’

‘Not a chance,’ she said wryly. ‘Having a day off doesn’t mean too much in a place like this. I’ve some patients to look in on tonight.’

‘And afterwards?’

She shrugged. ‘Not the White Cockade. I’ve landed in enough hot water since I came here without looking for more. Portcoig’s view of a district nurse is that she should be above wanting a drink.’

‘And what does the nurse feel about it?’

Her laugh was a soft chuckle. ‘I’ll tell you some other time. Goodbye, Chief Officer.’

‘If Rother is Dave, then I’m Webb,’ he told her. ‘Otherwise I call you Nurse.’

‘I’ll remember.’ She smiled at him again, then left, strolling confidently along the pier.

Watching, Carrick gave a silent whistle of appreciation, then turned and made his way down the ferry steps towards the launch. All he could see of its owner was her trousered bottom and legs. The rest of Maggie MacKenzie was hidden under a raised engine hatch.

‘Hello, Maggie,’ he said mildly.

‘Go away,’ came her muffled voice. ‘Come back in an hour, whoever you are. I won’t be ready till then – there’s a fuel line needs clearing.’

‘I wouldn’t go out on your old tub if you paid me,’ said Carrick with a grin. ‘Come on out of there, Maggie.’

‘Eh?’ She did, wriggling out smartly, an adjustable wrench clutched in one hand. ‘And just what’s wrong with …?’ As she saw him, she stopped and sighed. ‘So it’s you, is it?’ Using her free hand she wiped her forehead and left a smudge of oil in the process. ‘Come to work or watch?’

‘To talk.’

‘I know what that usually means,’ sniffed Maggie MacKenzie. A small, neat woman, still with a reasonable figure, she was probably in her late fifties. Skin tanned dark by the weather, she considered him with a trace of annoyance. ‘Could that captain of yours not have sent Mr Pettigrew? I like my men mature.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ promised Carrick with a twinkle. ‘But coming here was my own idea.’

‘That’s even worse.’ She still looked interested. ‘All right, sit down somewhere. You’re too big to have standing around.’

Carrick settled in the stern thwarts. Maggie MacKenzie joined him, took the cigarette he offered, and cupped her hands round the flame of his lighter.

‘When you say “talk” you mean you want to hear the local gossip,’ she declared after a first puff of smoke. ‘Well, what do you want to know?’

Carrick lit his own cigarette first. ‘How much trouble John MacBean’s death could cause.’

‘A lot.’ Her mouth tightened at the thought. ‘No one here needs a crystal ball for that. Things have been heading from bad to worse as it is, ever since …’

‘Ever since Helen Grant drowned?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘If you know that, why ask?’

‘I’d like more of the story, Maggie. More than I could get out of Sergeant Fraser, though he practically admitted he covered up a suicide in his report.’

‘For the girl’s family.’ The woman nodded and considered the lapping water pensively. ‘Aye, as police go that man Fraser’s decent enough. And what’s your interest in it all? I’d have thought pregnant fish were more in your line.’

He ignored the thrust. ‘Who do people say the man was, Maggie?’

She frowned and flicked ash from her cigarette. ‘You never waste time, do you? Well, some say it was Dave Rother. Others say that lad I just brought over, the one that looked like he’d been hit by a truck.’

‘Young Benson?’

‘Him,’ she agreed dryly. ‘Maybe she liked mixing her men. I’d say Dave Rother was the one she really was set on, though he was older. But if Rother wasn’t around then she’d settle for young Benson.’

‘Then what’s your guess?’ he asked.

Maggie MacKenzie shook her head. ‘I suppose either o’ them could have rolled her in the heather. Or
it could have been someone else. Even her own uncle has no real idea.’

Carrick raised an eyebrow. ‘What uncle?’

‘Harry Graham – the Graham who is half-owner of the
Harvest Lass
,’ she said patiently. ‘You met him, didn’t you?’

He nodded, surprised.

‘I saw him going aboard after you came in.’ She rubbed a hand along the boat’s painted wood. ‘Mind you, before the girl began mixing with Rother’s sharkers she went around with a local lad, Fergie Lucas … the same Fergie who would have been on the
Harvest Lass
last night if he hadn’t started beating up young Benson then found himself with a lot more on his hands.’

Carrick swore softly, and she chuckled.

‘What you could call a tangle, isn’t it?’

‘A mess,’ he confessed. ‘Maggie, couldn’t Lucas have been the father?’

‘It would have taken some doing,’ she said with a dry amusement. ‘Fergie Lucas was away from here for nearly six months, working on some cargo ship on the Australia run. He didn’t come back to Portcoig until just weeks before she died.’

He shrugged, gave up, and thanked her.

Most of
Marlin
’s crew were already ashore. Almost the only sounds aboard were the background hum of the generators and the below-deck’s rasp of music from a transistor radio; the Fishery cruiser lay quietly at her berth as the evening wore on. Overhead, the dull cloud gave way before a freshening wind and the sky became blue, streaked with cotton-wool white.

Captain Shannon stayed in his cabin. The wardroom steward took him a meal on a tray, then made
another trip with a bottle of beer. In the wardroom Carrick found himself eating alone until Andy Shaw, the chief engineer, arrived. Shaw was unshaven, but was wearing a tie with his crumpled shirt, a sure sign he was going ashore.

‘Ach, there’s just the one trouble,’ said Shaw gloomily, poking at his plate with a fork. ‘A man getting decently drunk is one thing. But what happens wi’ that damned engine-room squad of mine? They get straight on the High Court cocktails – and after that they’re like bloody hospital cases for a day.’

Carrick grinned sympathetically. The engine-room squad were welcome to their choice. It amounted to a vicious half-pint mixture of sherry, cheap wine and cider, a mixture which could topple any ordinary man into near oblivion. Even a seasoned drinker could be launched into a trouble-making stupor after a few glasses of the stuff. Yes, ‘High Court’ was a sardonically appropriate name.

‘Next time sign on teetotallers,’ suggested Carrick between mouthfuls. ‘They’d be easier to handle.’

Shaw stared at him in horror. ‘An’ what the hell would a teetotaller know about engines?’ he demanded devastatingly.

That kind of argument couldn’t be won. Carrick finished his meal, collected his cap, and went on deck. Stopping near the gangway, he lit a cigarette and looked around. The sun was beginning to come low on the horizon, already casting lengthening shadows and turning the far edge of the sea to a reddish gold. Along the pier some of the seine-netters had sailed but new arrivals were taking their places.

He watched another boat come in and tie up. A truck was waiting for it and the fishing boat’s crew immediately opened the deck hatch and began to
unload their catch, already cleaned, boxed, and packed around with ice.

The truck would take that ribbon of road across the island then cross by vehicle ferry to the mainland. By the next night city families would be sitting down to eat that silver harvest.

Though their fish would cost them several times more than the fisherman collected for his sweat.

That was life. Carrick grimaced, glanced at his watch, and decided it was time he headed towards the White Cockade. He lit a cigarette and went ashore.

In the guidebooks the White Cockade, Portcoig, was listed as a tourist hotel. But in practical terms that came down to a sensible recognition of the priorities – a big, horseshoe-shaped bar with some fringe tables, a tiny dining room partitioned off in one corner, and a few token bedrooms vaguely located on the upper floor. The bar door lay open when Carrick arrived, but even so he stepped into an atmosphere which seemed compounded equally from smoke, liquor fumes and noise.

Several of
Marlin
’s crew were already elbowed up along the counter and he exchanged greetings with other faces he knew – a couple of seine-net skippers from the Mallaig fleet drinking with a prosperous-looking fish buyer, a local coastguard out of uniform and a garage foreman who’d rented him a car on previous trips. But the crowd thinned considerably at one side of the horseshoe and the reason was grinning in his direction from a table just beyond it.