The Malice of Waves Read online

  Catriona stomped away and Bella wondered at her niece. As if she didn’t have enough worries without concerning herself with Catriona’s notions. Ewan and Joss? She couldn’t imagine a more unlikely combination.

  Force ten. Gusts of eighty mph. Torrential rain. The storm would reach landfall after dark. It would moderate around dawn before another storm blew in, the wind switching from west to north-west. Severe weather warnings had been declared for the Hebrides and north-west Scotland. Bella read the highlights and wished she had time to fill her head with nonsense like Catriona. Instead she had two storms to worry about and a female raven that had laid her eggs more than a week earlier than the previous year, which meant the Wheelers were moored in the bay, a complication she hadn’t anticipated.

  Now she had a meeting in a quarry with a man called Pinkie Pryke.

  13

  Ewan lit a cigarette, his sixth. The stubs of the others lay discarded at his feet. As soon as one had been reduced to a stained filter, he began the next. Doing something, anything, was his way of keeping his thoughts and emotions under some kind of control. It was why he preferred being occupied. Whether feeding his sheep, mending his uncle’s old tractor or carrying out odd jobs at the Deep Blue, his mind was on his work. Having time for other thoughts made him jangly, the way he was now.

  Lighting and smoking the cigarettes stopped him from knocking on the door of Joss’s caravan, but they hadn’t taken away his desire or his turmoil. If anything, since he’d been standing there, the feelings had become stronger and so had the contradictory voices. Do it; don’t do it. She’ll want to know; she’ll laugh at you. Each emotional call to action was followed by a warning of bad consequences as well as that most insistent and immobilizing of questions: Who do you think you are, Ewan? He was confused about why he felt this way. Why was it, why was he, so complicated, when all he planned to tell Joss was that he would keep an eye? His croft was close by. They were on the same road. It made sense, Ewan watching out for her as he’d already done.

  It would be no bother, no bother at all.

  What would Joss hear: a neighbourly offer or an unspoken declaration of something else, and recoil from it?

  Ewan was still in a muddled state when Joss appeared in the doorway of the caravan. ‘Can I join you?’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Ewan replied, too quickly. ‘Free world.’ He was irritated with himself. He sounded as if he didn’t care, when the opposite was the case. Free world. What was he thinking?

  As she reached him, she said, ‘I don’t want to be shut in.’

  He offered his pack of cigarettes. ‘Thanks,’ she said, taking one. He lit it for her, noticing the length of her fingers and the colour of her skin. Catriona’s were stubby like his own and her skin was pallid. Joss’s were slender, her skin honey-coloured.

  ‘You OK?’ He looked shyly at her before dragging on his cigarette.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think so. Now.’

  For a while they smoked. Ewan was oblivious to everything apart from Joss and the battle going on inside him. Tell her; don’t tell her. You’ll never get a better chance. The right side of his face, the side on which Joss was standing, felt as if it was burning. He was sensitive to her every movement, the lift of the cigarette to her lips, her inhalation and exhalation, the arc of her arm, her lips, wondering how it would be if he kissed them.

  ‘Thank you, by the way,’ she said and laughed nervously. ‘Not by the way at all. Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done otherwise.’

  ‘It was no big deal driving you back,’ Ewan answered. ‘Beats working at the Deep Blue …’

  ‘No,’ Joss said, ‘I meant last night. It was a big deal, really. Thank you.’

  ‘So you were here,’ Ewan said.

  ‘Yes, over there.’ She nodded towards the dark patch of heather which had hidden her in the dark.

  ‘I thought so.’ He stopped himself from going further in case he alarmed her with a tumble of words that he couldn’t control. He’d known she was there, somewhere. He’d been so certain he’d spent the rest of the night in his car so that if the McCann boy and his pals had tried something on he would be nearby.

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘One or two of the boys … balloons.’ His expression made it clear she was better off not knowing names. ‘Idiots,’ he translated, ‘from the north of the island. I had words with them. They won’t be back.’

  ‘I owe you.’ Her voice wavered and she touched him on the arm. ‘Thank you.’

  The contact was enough to stop the warning voices. The words blurted out just as he feared they would. ‘I’ll look after you if you let me.’ He didn’t look at her. He addressed the distant horizon. He was shaking with emotion.

  ‘Why would you want to look after me?’ she asked. ‘Me of all people?’ It was a reference to everything that had happened since her father bought Priest’s Island: the ending of the grazing rights, Max’s disappearance, Ewan’s arrest, Ewan’s uncle drinking himself to death, the unpleasantness. ‘I thought,’ she hesitated. ‘Well, I thought you didn’t like me very much.’ She made a snorting sound. ‘Who could blame you?’

  Before he could stop himself he said, ‘I’ve always liked you, Joss, always. What’s happened, that wasn’t your fault, none of it.’ Then he paused and looked at her. ‘You’re special, different. I don’t want to see you hurt any more. Let me protect you.’ Each word was clumsy but a declaration of something more eloquent and emotional than he could express.

  ‘You and me,’ she said, ‘against the world.’ She smiled but Ewan heard her with renewed confusion. Was she laughing at him now? If only he could explain himself better.

  ‘Max and me …’ He had her attention again. ‘We were friends.’

  ‘Were you?’ She sounded surprised. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘I used to go to the island in my uncle’s boat. We would meet up.’

  ‘Did you? Really? Were you Max’s age?’

  ‘I was older.’

  ‘What are you now?’

  Rather than admit to being two years younger than her, he carried on talking about Max. ‘We spent days together, exploring the island. Sometimes I’d sleep over in the shieling, sometimes in Max’s tent. Nobody knowing was part of the fun, nobody suspecting.’

  ‘The night he went missing?’ Joss asked. ‘Were you on Priest’s Island?’

  ‘No. The tide was strong that night. My uncle caught me leaving the house and stopped me. For once he wasn’t drunk.’ Ewan sounded regretful about that.

  ‘Max was expecting you?’

  ‘No, I’d just turn up when your father’s boat was there. It wasn’t regular.’ He paused. ‘I wish I had been with him.’

  Surely now she could see the bonds between them. Max connected them. Each knew he might still be alive if one or other had been with him that night. Both had paid the penalty for the last five years. Joss had lost a brother and now her family; Ewan, his friend and his uncle, the only family he recognized. People might look at him and Joss and see differences but he saw similarities, coincidences. Their lives had been brought together by fate.

  ‘You’re the only one I’ve told,’ Ewan said.

  Joss nodded. ‘I’m glad you were Max’s friend.’ She touched him again on the arm. ‘And now you’re mine.’

  ‘Yes.’ He dared to look at her. She smiled at him, quickly, reassuring him. He felt light-headed. The sensation was as unexpected as it was liberating. Joss hadn’t laughed at him. She had touched him. At last he could talk about Max. The words rushed out. ‘Max and me used to make a bonfire and then catch food to cook – prawns, velvet crab and pollack. I showed Max where to fish and taught him about the tides, when it was safe to walk at the bottom of the cliff. I showed him how to climb …’

  Ewan’s voice cracked, the unspoken guilt of five years and these new emotions undoing him, the impulse to tell Joss everything overcoming his reticence. ‘Max and me didn’t start out as friends. To begin with I’d
been angry about what had happened, the loss of the grazing, your family owning the island, but I knew its secrets, the hiding places, the best pools for swimming, where to catch fish … Max wanted to know all that.’

  He stopped and Joss said, ‘Go on.’ She touched him on the arm again. ‘It’s interesting.’

  Ewan stared at the ground. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. I should be the one apologizing for my father accusing you of murder …’

  ‘No, you don’t understand.’ Ewan seemed cross, frustrated, as though there was something he had to get off his chest now that he had the opportunity and Joss was encouraging him. ‘The inside of my head was all wrong. I took it out on Max …’

  ‘Why, what did you do?’ Joss asked.

  Ewan heard the alarm in her voice. Had he ruined everything in his tongue-tied way, when all he was trying to do was to show Joss how intertwined they were?

  ‘I made him do things in exchange for teaching him about the island.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Stuff … like climbing down to a ledge on the cliff and swinging on a rope over the sea. I wouldn’t let Max back until he’d swung ten times.’

  ‘That was you,’ she said accusingly. ‘You made him do that.’ Her voice was brisk. The softness, the gratitude, had gone. ‘You.’

  Confusion rushed back in where certainty had so recently been.

  ‘And now, you’re mine.’ Ewan and Joss: weren’t they friends, more than friends? Hadn’t she said so? Yet he was losing her, had lost her, in the time it took to take a breath, and he wasn’t sure why.

  Nor did he know what to do, so he gabbled, ‘I was a mess … my uncle losing the island … his sheep being sold off … It wasn’t Max’s fault … I was angry … I lashed out and Max was in the way … I’m not like that now … Give me a chance and you’ll see that I’ve changed.’ He looked into her eyes, saw them slide away and the next thing he knew he was holding her, pulling her to him. His hand touched one breast, then the other. His lips pressed against hers. His tongue searched for a way inside. Instead of warmth and wetness, he met hardness. Her teeth were closed against him. It was the same wherever their bodies touched. Instead of the give of flesh, Joss was bones and hard edges. Every part of her seemed to resist him. When she twisted her head away he panicked and put his hand over her mouth. Then, as suddenly as he’d grabbed her, he let her go. He was aware of her moving away, of the door of the caravan closing, of the awful mistake he had made.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he moaned. ‘I’ve waited so long. I couldn’t help myself.’

  Linda Pryke rested at one of the benches by the pond. Yesterday, she had done the same, and the day before. It was a habit of hers, whenever the weather was fine, to go for an afternoon walk across Meadow Park and to sit for a while. She would watch the children playing, dogs chasing balls or mothers talking. She liked to see the world go by, or the part which strayed inside the park railings. Always, before returning home, she would feel more at one with life, as though something missing had been replaced. Today, however, was different. Today, she sat uncomfortably on the edge of the bench, as if at any moment she might jump up again. Today, when anyone new came through the gate, someone she hadn’t seen before, she gave them an accusing look before dropping her eyes or turning away. Today, she didn’t watch and wonder about the lives of the people who passed her by. Nor did she say hello or exchange comments about the weather. Today, it was all she could do to sit still for twenty minutes.

  Today, she wasn’t the watcher but the watched.

  Somewhere, in the park, at one of the windows of the surrounding houses, in a passing or stationary car, he would be observing her. ‘Get there at four,’ he’d said when he rang her back, ‘like you did yesterday. At four twenty, the same time as yesterday, get up and put the bag into the bin beside the bench. Then go home and think about what you’ll cook when Pinkie arrives back from Carlisle or Glasgow or wherever he told you he was.’ She hadn’t really listened as the man reminded her about the consequences for Stanley if she didn’t follow his instructions. All she could hear was ‘like you did yesterday’. Yesterday, she thought she’d been alone watching others. But he’d been watching her.

  Watching as she locked her front door.

  As she went down the lane.

  As she entered by the park’s gate.

  As she walked across the grass.

  As she rested on the bench.

  What had happened yesterday was why she was frightened today. She’d had no idea, no sixth sense of being observed.

  ‘No doubt we’ll talk again,’ he’d said, ‘the next time Pinkie goes on his travels.’

  At four nineteen she stood up. She dropped the bag of money in the bin beside the bench. She walked quickly towards the gate. She didn’t catch anyone’s eye. She didn’t look up until she was at her front door and then only to insert the key.

  After locking up behind her and attaching the security chain, she hurried first into the sitting room then the dining room, closing curtains. The front having been secured – she imagined him circling the house looking for a corner of a window through which to spy on her – she hurried to the kitchen. She lowered the blind, tugging at the right-hand side where it snagged, before drawing the curtains. Afterwards, she stood in the windowless hall and listened to the wind outside. Where was Stanley?

  The question was a reflex. Now she didn’t care.

  14

  Cal splashed his face with water. The salt stung where he had been caught by Joss Wheeler’s nails. Twin lines of torn skin ran down the right side of his nose. Two more extended from his right ear along the curve of his jaw. He felt for their rough edges with his fingertips while he studied the sea’s surface. It appeared restless, as if the water was anticipating the storm and limbering up, as though some charge was travelling unseen through it. A few moments ago the waves had seemed to be regular, rhythmic: lulling. Now they were shifty-looking, unreliable. There was that sense of something about to happen, a foreshadowing. Even the land, Cal noticed, exuded an aura of preparation. Whereas the sea seemed to be readying itself to react to the wind’s power – to churn, rear and plunge – the land appeared braced for defiance, for stubborn, unmoving resistance. Wherever he looked Cal had an impression of impending violence. As he pushed the RIB into deeper water, he thought about the Max Wheeler case and the people who were caught up in it – Joss Wheeler, Catriona, Ewan Chisholm and Bella. Unlike the sea, they would not all be able to bend. Unlike the land, they would not all be able to brace against its force.

  Cal climbed into the RIB and started the motor. Looking out for Millie and her buoy, he set course for the middle of the sound before veering to starboard. In the half-hour it took him to reach the ocean edge, passing the Jacqueline at anchor, the sky at the horizon became lowering and black. Opposite the west of Priest’s Island, where a soaring cliff fell sheer into the sea, he throttled back and turned to port. The RIB rose and dipped while he emptied the contents of a canvas bag at his feet. Three packets spilled out. They were identical apart from their colour. Each pack contained twenty cards made of thin wood. Each card was eight centimetres by thirteen, individually numbered, covered in non-toxic paint, and bore an identical message addressed to the finder.

  Thank you for recovering this biodegradable drift card and for helping with important research into the movement of ocean currents. Please email Dr Cal McGill at [email protected] to let him know the following information:

  Where you found this drift card

  On what date

  Its colour

  Its number

  Thank you for your assistance.

  Cal took a card from the yellow pack. He checked its number – twenty – before dropping it into the sea. Throttling ahead, he dropped the other cards at regular intervals until he was below the cliff. The last card in the sequence was numbered one. Before distributing the next batch – they were painted red –
Cal steered the RIB along the north coast of Priest’s Island to the bay where the Jacqueline was moored. From a distance, he saw figures moving around the deck. As the RIB drew closer, the boat started to move, going towards the harbour on Eilean Dubh. Cal guessed Wheeler was seeking shelter while he still had daylight and time, while the sound was calm enough to navigate with safety. He slowed the RIB until he was behind the Jacqueline. Then he dropped the first of the red drift cards overboard. It was numbered one. Keeping his distance, he tracked the Jacqueline across the sound, releasing cards as he went.

  After watching the last red one – the twentieth – become caught in the RIB’s bow wave, he looked up to find David Wheeler standing at the stern of the Jacqueline. He was staring in Cal’s direction but seemingly blind to his presence. His gaze, Cal realized after a while, was fixed on Priest’s Island and the chapel, the pain of separation evident. The greater the distance between him and his son’s shrine, the more he appeared to lean towards it. Even though Cal disliked the man, he found his agony compelling. Not once did Wheeler acknowledge Cal as the two craft crossed the sound. Nor did Cal acknowledge Wheeler. It would have been like intruding on private grief.

  For a moment, because of Wheeler’s behaviour, Cal wondered whether news of Joss’s attack on Cal had reached the Jacqueline. Was Wheeler deliberately ignoring him? What version of the story might Wheeler have heard – that Cal provoked the confrontation? But no, Cal decided, Wheeler’s obsession with Max was sufficient to make him blind to the world around him. Would Cal be the same if he lost a child? Would he be as damaged, as oblivious to the needs of his other children, even after five years? He hoped not, though maybe Wheeler had been right. Perhaps Cal didn’t understand, since he didn’t have a son. He turned the RIB to starboard, going along the south coast of Eilean Dubh towards the old slipway. In the distance were the grey waters of the Minch. He turned to starboard again at the eastern entrance to the sound. As before, he began dropping off cards – this batch was orange. Number twenty went into the sea closest to Eilean Dubh; number one by the eastern end of Priest’s Island. After watching the final card float away, Cal steered into a sheltered inlet. With the Jacqueline departed, he could explore Wheeler’s island undisturbed and enjoy being alone and storm-bound for the night.