Troubled Waters (19 page)

The picnic took only minutes to clear up. Tethering the rubbish bag with a fallen branch to stop the wind from snatching it, the man started walking towards the specks that were his children, his eyes cast down, gathering flat skipping stones as he went for them to skim across the water. He had Ivan by his side, the dog having
stayed by him as he cleared up, desperate to catch any leftovers. As he got closer to the children, amusing himself by jumping from one sandstone boulder to the next and feeling oddly exhilarated, he could make out their excited chatter. Their discarded nets lay criss-crossed by a tiny rock pool.

‘It’s a goat!’ the boy said, pointing with his finger towards the reef.

‘No,’ his sister replied, ‘it’s not. It’s a hippo – a hippo or, possibly, a badger. A great big, bald one.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ William said, looking disdainfully at her. ‘Hippos and badgers don’t float.’

‘Goats don’t float,’ she replied, equally authoritatively.

The dog had rushed ahead and was now dancing around the children like a dervish, overjoyed to see them, relieved that the pack was now reunited. Catching its paws as it jumped up on him, the boy started dancing with it. His father, breathing hard, came up to them and was immediately asked to adjudicate their quarrel.

‘What d’you think, Dad? It’s a goat, isn’t it?’ the boy said, raising his voice to be heard above the noise of the wind and waves.

‘No. It’s a huge badger. I can see its claws,’ his sister cut in, flicking her hair out of her eyes and flexing her fingers in and out as if they were claws.

At first the man could see nothing, but as he gazed at the incoming waves his eyes made out an object, something rolling with them, but incapable of keeping up with them or with their rhythm, something always left behind. The wind stinging his eyes, he put a hand to his brow like a sea captain of old, and stared hard at the thing. It was solid, pink in parts and surprisingly large.

Unable and unwilling to adjudicate between their
competing claims, he took out the skimming stones he had gathered and offered them mutely to them.

‘The waves are too big,’ the boy said, looking at them and then back at his father.

‘OK,’ the man said, ‘we’ll play a game, see who can hit the sea creature first.’

‘It’s not a sea creature,’ Kath replied firmly.

‘OK,’ he relented, ‘we’ll hit the sea creature, badger or goat.’

He himself took aim at the thing and missed, the stone falling a good two metres short. The boy, moving forward to make sure that he was standing exactly where his father had stood for his shot, flung his stone and let out a loud whoop as he did so. Once more, the stone disappeared into the water, far short of the target. Kath, now occupying the throwing zone, raised her thin arm and flung her stone. It flew over her head backwards, bouncing off the rocks, the noise it made attracting Ivan’s attention. Instantly, he set off to retrieve it, returning in seconds with it in his mouth.

‘Your turn, Dad,’ the boy said, solemnly. This time, the man thought, he might have a chance. The thing, still revolving in the waves, was undoubtedly closer. Looking hard at it, fixing its precise location in his head, he fired the stone at it, also mistiming the release and watching, powerless, as it rose upwards. Once again he failed to hit the thing but, as he focused on it, a slow realisation dawned. It was not a goat, a sea creature or badger. It was a human being, floating, with the back of its head and buttocks above the water. Kath, stone in hand, was already readying herself for another throw.

‘Stop, darling, now!’ he said, sufficiently gruffly for her to turn and stare at him, afraid she had done something
wrong. Seeing her serious little face, he could not think what to say. The picnic would be ruined. William and Kath would remember this day for all the wrong reasons, possibly have nightmares from now on simply thinking about it. Sarah would blame him, however blameless he was, maybe even use it as a pretext to stop him seeing them. Somehow it would all be his fault: for having taken them there, for having arranged a picnic in the middle of winter, for having been born. That thought galvanised him into action.

‘Hot chocolate time! The first one to reach the car gets to choose what film we’re going to see. Ready, steady,
go
!’

Forgetting about the stone-throwing competition they both ran off, the dog barking in their wake, forgetting their nets and everything else. He picked up the nets and stowed them under his arm, looking at the corpse as he did so, watching it bob about, now only five metres or so from his feet. Although he did not say anything out loud, he felt like cursing it. This strange, waxy, horrible thing, drifting towards him, had almost ruined the day. William and Kath would remember a carefree Saturday, see in their minds’ eyes the waves, remember the burnt taste of the gritty sausages, hear Ivan’s joyous barking as he raced into the sea. But not him. For him, William’s tenth birthday would be The Day I Found the Dead Body. Everything else would drift into the background, obscured, obliterated by the horror of it all.

Fishing about in the pocket of his coat, he brought out his mobile phone. Was this an emergency? Did one dial 999? Whoever was washing ashore was dead after all, and no amount of blue lights or sirens would alter that. In some ways, there really was all the time in the world.

11

As soon as the postie left, Dr Harry McCrae went into his kitchen and ripped open the wrapping of the small parcel that she had delivered. He knew what was supposed to be inside, and, in some ways, had been looking forward to its arrival. His already late lunch could wait. From the cardboard box he removed a small, white rubberised face mask and the spacer that went with it. Shu-shu, his companion, watched him. Little did she know, the man thought to himself, as he looked into the cat’s unblinking eyes, that its contents concerned her.

At last everything was ready. He had the treats, the inhaler and, finally, the mask and spacer. The YouTube video of ‘Fritz the Brave’ was still fresh in his mind. Now was the time. As if to stiffen his sinews for the task ahead, the cat began to cough, stretching her neck forward, her sides heaving as she gasped for breath, trying to draw it through her constricted airways. ‘Blessed asthma!’ he said to himself, fitting the inhaler into the spacer, ready for action.

First she must have a few treats, then, please God, she would associate the dosing with food, with a pleasant experience. Had the treats been made of dried goldfish, she could not have gobbled them up faster from the saucer. She ate each one, whole and at speed, expressing her delight by purring loudly and rubbing her flanks against his calves. While she was gazing up at him, licking her
lips, possibly trying to hypnotise him into giving her more, he grabbed her, sat her on his knee and jammed the mask over her short muzzle. At first, no doubt shocked by the novelty of the experience, she did not move. But the second he squeezed the inhaler, making it hiss like a snake as it released its metered dose, she began wriggling, scrabbling her back legs on his thigh, digging her claws in. Knowing she must take at least five breaths, he tightened his grip, speaking gently to her, trying to calm her and reassure her.

At that moment his phone went. Still grappling with his squirming, frightened pet he ignored it, but it was difficult for him to do so. He was on-call, and conscientious. Making sure she took a couple more breaths, he held her steady and then, the second he released her, threw down a whole handful of treats. She fell on them as if starved. Fortunately the phone was still ringing and, nerves jangling, he answered it.

‘Yes, it’s me, Dr McCrae. OK . . . a body in the water at Belhaven Bay, off the coast at Tyninghame? I’ll be there. I’ll get my things and leave in ten minutes. It’ll take me, say, an hour and a bit.’

It could have been worse, he thought, packing away the cat inhaler ready for the next time. Shu-shu had, hallelujah, had her first dose; and Dunbar harbour was a pleasant enough place to spend a Saturday afternoon, even if the only sightseeing he would be doing was of an expanse of dead flesh. Somewhere there, or at North Berwick, he might even pick up a fresh lobster. Shu-shu, now sitting a safe distance away from him, turned her head in his direction, a reproachful expression on her face.

‘You’d like a morsel of lobster claw, my darling, wouldn’t you?’ he crooned at her. He got no answer and,
in the silence, sniffed, his cat-allergy worsened by their recent proximity. ‘It’s for your own good, my sweet,’ he said, rising and hoping to resume cordial relations with a stroke, but finding only thin air as she dodged his hand. Implacable, holding her lightly banded tail upright as a mast, she strode through the kitchen door, without giving him as much as a backwards glance.

By the time Dr McCrae arrived, the corpse had been moved from the lifeboat to a disused shed nearby. A young constable stood guard at the door. Inside, the body had been laid out on a polythene sheet over the bare wooden floorboards for his inspection. Cobwebs draped across the only window, thick as a lace curtain, beaded with the desiccated remains of bluebottles. Waiting a couple of yards away was an ambulance with its engine running, the driver leaning against the bonnet, spellbound, watching the clouds racing across the grey sky.

The forensic medical examiner dropped his bag down on the only table, raising a cloud of dust and immediately holding his breath, unwilling to inhale anything. Already he had been hit by the overwhelming stench of creosote in the place. Hell’s bells! In minutes he would have a headache to add to his congestion after sneezing his way along the A1. He’d suffer an asthma attack himself, to put the tin lid on it.

Thinking that the sooner he started the sooner he would finish, he squatted down beside the body, his paper suit crackling as he did so. Bending over the boy’s face, its youthfulness struck him immediately, that and its loveliness. Caravaggio alone might have done such a face justice. His gaze travelled downwards to the bloated,
gas-distended torso. That aspect of the boy’s anatomy would perhaps be portrayed elsewhere, in textbooks seen only by students of forensic pathology. In their gruesome pages he would be accorded a figure number, not a name, and God help his parents if they ever stumbled across the plate.

Something, a crab perhaps, had nibbled away the edge of an earlobe. Continuing unconsciously in work mode, he registered the minuscule abrasions on the side of the boy’s face, and his hands with their thick washerwoman wrinkles. A rock, or maybe the barnacles on it, had cut into the loose skin on one palm, most likely as he drifted about in the shallows, scraping along the seabed. But it was not the slight, superficial striations on the skin that drew his eye, or kept his attention. When the body was turned over, to the left of the boy’s spine, opposite his heart, five large incisions were revealed. He had not died of drowning. Not with those white cuts. Days at sea, with water caressing every inch of his skin, cleaning him, leaching the blood from the wounds, might well account for their appearance. No, this was not rock damage, pier damage or even propeller damage. Dr McCrae bent further over the body, examining each wound minutely. The edges were the same in every case: clean and regular. Sharp force wounds. In all probability they were made by the same implement, a knife of some sort.

While the doctor continued his inspection, recording the precise extent and location of every injury, checking as far as possible beneath the victim’s clothes and hair for any other concealed damage, examining his airways, the young constable outside, guarding the door of the shed, was making a phone call. As he did so he was exposed to the full force of the wind as it howled through the gaps in
the red sandstone cliffs, buffeting the harbour walls and making the open sea beyond them boil. While he waited to speak to Chief Inspector Bell, the constable studied the horizon, tracking a squall as it made its way landwards, rippling and darkening the water as it moved across it, disfiguring it as a frown disfigures a face. Rain began to fall on the harbour, blowing horizontally, driving into his eyes and making his acne sting. Cold, and increasingly impatient to break his news, he fidgeted, fingering the coins in his jacket pocket and playing with the zip. Today, he knew, was his lucky day. Already he had rehearsed what he would say. He wanted to sound articulate and confident. Credit was on offer, and he intended to be the one to get it.

‘Chief Inspector Bell?’

‘Yes.’

Unable to hear her answer due to the background noise, he said, ‘Sorry. What did you say?’

‘Yes. It is Chief Inspector Bell,’ she confirmed, enunciating extra clearly.

‘This is PC Alan Learmonth,’ he gabbled, flustered by the tone of vague annoyance he detected in her reply. ‘It was . . . I just wanted to let you know we’ve got your man. He’s dead. Dr McCrae is with him now.’

‘I can’t hear you.’

He repeated what he had said, turning in towards the shed, trying to cut down the noise of the wind.

‘What man?’ came the irritable reply.

‘Hamish Evans? The one you’re looking for in relation to the Stimms murder case. I recognised him from the posters, the circulars. He’s the body the coastguard took out of Belhaven Bay.’