Authors: Clare Carson
‘What are you playing at?’ she whispered.
He ignored her, knocked sharply on the back door. No response. He knocked again, louder this time. Nothing happened.
‘See,’ he said. ‘Nobody home.’
‘What would you have done if someone had answered?’
‘I would have asked if it was possible to have a glass of water because you were feeling faint and we didn’t bring anything to drink with us.’
He tried the handle of the back door.
‘Don’t,’ she said.
‘Just testing.’
The handle moved down freely, the door swung inwards.
‘There must be somebody inside if the door is unlocked. Maybe they are dozing upstairs,’ she said.
‘Course not. They would have heard us by now and come down. People leave their doors unlocked around here when they go out.’
She frowned. A dark image flitted across her brain, a fleeting impression; the first bat in a fading summer evening.
‘Let’s take a quick look inside,’ he said.
‘What if someone comes back?’
‘We’ll hear them coming.’
‘What if we don’t have time to get away?’
‘We’ll use the glass of water excuse. One of us was feeling faint, we knocked, nobody replied but we were desperate so we tried the handle, found the door was unlocked and we came in to the kitchen for a glass of water.’
‘We need a fall-back position.’
‘The glass of water is the fall-back position.’
‘No. That’s the first line of defence.’
‘You’re quibbling,’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘You’re scared.’
‘I’m not. I’m sensible.’
‘Since when? Come on, Sam. Quick shufti round the ground floor, then we’re out.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Five minutes.’
Inside, she felt the exhilaration of cold sweat, the adrenalin kick of rule-breaking. Policeman’s daughter. She surveyed the scruffy kitchen, looking for giveaway signs that might reveal the identity of the inhabitants, but there were no obvious clues: no photos, no notes. Only a pile of dirty crockery left in the sink. Tom walked over to the far door.
‘Wait.’
He didn’t. She skipped after him. Out of the kitchen and into a gloomy hallway, a room on either side.
‘Let’s try this one,’ said Tom, diving through the nearest door. She followed. It was homely, familiar even, like a student’s den; as if they were hanging around at a mate’s house waiting for them to turn up. Book-lined shelves covered the walls and stalactites of cassette-tapes reached up from floor. A worn leather armchair was sitting comfortably in a corner with an acoustic guitar – a Taylor – propped against one arm and lying across the other, an atlas open at a map of North America. Her eye was drawn to the land spit of Baja California. It reminded her of Tom’s girlfriend, au-pairing on the west coast of the States. She had almost forgotten he had a girlfriend. She picked up the atlas, flicked to the index and searched for Shinkolobwe. It wasn’t there.
She pulled a book down from the shelf. An etching of a gothic tombstone filled its front cover.
Death and the regeneration of life
. She read the back. The common connection between funerals and fertility rites was, apparently, a classic paradox of anthropology. Interesting. She turned to Tom, intending to ask him what he knew about funerals. He was over by the desk, rummaging through books and more papers.
‘He’s a researcher of some sort or another,’ he said. He poked a heavyweight tome lying open on the desk.
‘Listen to this. “The expert skipper effect: fact, fiction or self-fulfilling prophecy? Folk models of catch success among the fishermen of Orkney. An anthropology thesis based on ethnographic fieldwork in Stromness. Submitted by Mark Greenaway to the University of London, December 1983.” Anthropology: sociology in peripheral places,’ he added dismissively. ‘Well, anyway, at least it gives us a name. Nobody ever reads anyone else’s doctoral thesis. So Mark Greenaway must be the person who lives here and, judging by the title of this,’ he said as he flipped the cover shut, ‘he’s a bit… wacko.’
‘Expert skippers?’ Sam said. ‘That’s funny. Nils mentioned something about a researcher. I wonder whether Mark Greenaway is the bloke he took with him on the trawler. That would be a bit of a coincidence.’
‘Maybe. Dunno. But he must be the owner of the blue car.’
He crossed to the bookshelf, scanned the spines. She edged over to the desk.
‘Don’t you think it would be fun to be an anthropologist?’ she asked as she pulled the thesis towards her.
‘Not really. I mean, what does an anthropologist actually do for a living? Not great career potential unless you want to end up as a waffly academic.’
She flicked her eye over the abstract, read that Mark Greenaway had spent a year with the fishing crews of Stromness, accompanying skippers and their crews on trips to the open sea.
‘He must be the bloke Nils took out on his trawler,’ she said. ‘I wonder if Nils knows he has written up his research.’
Tom didn’t respond. She shrugged, was about to push the thesis back to its original position on the desk when she noticed the edge of a card being used as a bookmark sticking out between the pages. She tugged it free, examined the watercolour violets on the front, opened it and read.
‘My dear Anne, I hope this card reaches you before you set off to see Mark. Happy Birthday and here is a small contribution so you can celebrate in style when you are in Orkney. Give Mark a hug from me and make sure he doesn’t sit up too late working on his book. See you when you are back in London, love Dad.’
She stared at the words, trying to work out what the inscription could tell her, apart from the fact that not all dads were mad dictators who never wrote in their daughters’ birthday cards. Was Anne the woman with the straggly blonde hair? Possibly. Probably. She must live in London. Her dad must have mailed the card to her home address because he assumed it would be quicker than posting it to Orkney, and she carried it with her on the journey north. She momentarily considered the possibility that Anne was Mark’s girlfriend, wife even. Then she dismissed the idea: the message from Anne’s dad was too caring and paternal towards him. So Mark must be Anne’s brother, she decided.
‘I reckon the woman in the café is called Anne and she is Mark Greenaway’s sister.’ She threw the card over to Tom. She turned back to the desk, and glimpsed a purple flash of paper in a woven raffia waste-paper bin. Jim’s first rule of detective work – always check the rubbish bin. She swooped, grasped the envelope, straightened, noted the name and address: Anne Greenaway, 24 Milton House, Railton Road, Brixton. South London. She shuddered. Brixton. Not so very far from their home. She knew Brixton quite well; she sometimes went to the market with Becky. There was a shop under the railway arches that sold cheap monkey boots. She stuffed the purple envelope in her coat pocket.
‘Maybe we should just have a quick look round upstairs,’ said Tom.
She was about to say no, enough, let’s leave now while the going is good, but there was no time for the words to form in her mouth. Above their heads the floorboards creaked. Footsteps. Her mouth turned dry. There was somebody upstairs. They must have been up there all along. She stared at Tom. He stared at her. Unable to move. They were about to be caught intruding in someone’s house, rifling through somebody’s possessions with only a feeble story about a glass of water as an alibi. Another creak. She wondered whether it was possible to be done for breaking and entering if the door was already unlocked. Footfall on the stairs. She collected herself, came to her senses.
‘Run.’
They chased down the hall. Shot through the kitchen. Out the back door. Cutting bishop-wise across the meadow. Forcing their legs to move faster. Battling the coarse grass. Pulling their feet from the mud sucking at their shoes. Straining every muscle. They reached the stile at the corner of the field, hearts pounding, wheezing. She paused. Don’t look back. Don’t turn around. But she couldn’t help herself. She twisted and saw the dark face in the upstairs window. The moustache. The sweep of his widow’s peak. The Watcher. She recognized now the fleeting image she had failed to identify earlier, realized she had guessed the Watcher had reached the house before them, saw now that she had known, in the pit of her stomach, that he had broken in and left the door unlocked. He was searching for something. The manila envelope.
Tom clocked the face in the window, froze for a second before he yanked her arm, pulling her back to the Cortina. He turned the ignition key, still panting and gasping for breath.
‘That was exciting,’ he said.
‘It was totally bloody stupid.’ He might have been carrying a gun, she realized now.
‘We weren’t caught,’ Tom said. ‘So no problem. Who do you think that was upstairs then?’
‘The Watcher from the woods.’
He sucked his top lip and she thought he was about to dismiss her assertion.
‘You know what, I think you could be right. It was the man we saw in the bar. The golfer. What do you think he was doing there?’
‘Same as us,’ she said. ‘Snooping.’
‘Hmm…’ He left his thought hanging, concentrated on reversing the Cortina.
‘Hmm what?’
‘Do you reckon he could be a private dick?’
She pulled an incredulous face.
He persisted. ‘Maybe your mum has hired an investigator to get the low-down on your dad, trying to find out whether he has another woman on the go, pulling together a divorce case. Maybe he was in there rummaging around for some evidence to give her the upper hand in the court proceedings.’
She hesitated, caught between letting Tom run with his irritatingly ridiculous story and having to provide him with another angle if she disputed his.
‘I don’t think he’s a private investigator,’ she said.
‘Why not? It makes sense to me.’
‘That’s because you don’t know Liz. She wouldn’t go out of her way to dig for dirt on Jim. She does the opposite; she avoids it. She gets on with her own life. She sticks her head in the greats of English Literature and turns a blind eye to as much of Jim’s stuff as she possibly can. It’s her survival strategy. And anyway, she asked me to keep an eye on him. She doesn’t need to hire somebody.’
He lifted his shoulders. ‘You don’t buy my theory. But you haven’t given me a more convincing one to take its place.’
He put his foot down, pulled away. A green car passed in the opposite direction, its male driver gawking at their rear-end as they accelerated noisily down the road.
‘What’s your survival strategy for dealing with Jim anyway?’ he asked.
She paused. ‘I take the piss.’
‘Really?’
‘Let’s go to the beach now,’ she said.
The sun was incandescent on the turquoise sea, the beach golden; a colour supplement photograph. She ran shoeless over the damp sand, leaving a trail of dark footprints behind her, sending dunlins and godwits fluttering. They trawled the tide’s edge searching for cockle shells, driftwood, strips of red kelp to hang outside Nethergate and forecast rain. The incoming tide filled the moats of their sandcastles, cracked and toppled the water-browned battlements. For the first time since they had arrived she felt relaxed, straightforwardly happy. Like a kid, messing around on the beach. In the Oyster Catcher café they scarfed scones. Then they dawdled on the drive back to Nethergate, looking for excuses to stop. She spotted a bird of prey. Tom didn’t need much persuasion to pull over.
‘Definitely a merlin,’ she said.
‘Falconry,’ said Tom. ‘I don’t know about bird-watching but I could enjoy falconry.’
‘You couldn’t keep a merlin.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because merlins are for ladies.’
‘Oh that’s right. And kestrels are for knaves. How does the rest of it go?’
‘An eagle for an emperor, a saker for a knight, a merlin for a lady, a kestrel for a knave. Something like that anyway. So which would you choose, a saker or a kestrel? Knight or knave?’
‘I’d be happy with a kestrel. I don’t even know what a saker is.’
She took a sharp intake of breath. ‘So you’re a Knave,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
The sunlight caught the bright trail of the merlin arcing across the sky. She made a wish and crossed her fingers as it faded.
In Tirlsay they parked the car by the phone box, ambled to the pub where they were greeted by the fug of smoke and the sly glances of the old men at the bar. They took their drinks and settled at the corner table. She stuck her hand in her pocket, twiddled the raven’s feather she had picked up in Tirlsay. The possibility that the Watcher had been carrying a gun was playing on her mind. The disaster scenario. She had been so stupid to allow Tom to lead her on. It wasn’t worth it. She didn’t have to do it. She didn’t need to know what Jim was up to. She just wanted to have a normal summer holiday, a bit of fun with her mate.
‘I just want to forget about Jim and what he’s up to,’ she said. ‘I’m fed up with all his crap; he can keep his secrets, I don’t want to know. Let’s just go out tomorrow and enjoy ourselves again.’
‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘Two,’ he added.
‘Two what?’
‘I can think of two people Agatha Christie murdered on a train.’
She looked blank.
‘It’s what you asked me on the way up to Inverness.’
‘Oh right. Go on then. Tell me what you know.’
‘One bloke with multiple stab wounds in
Murder on the Orient Express
and one woman being strangled on a train travelling in the opposite direction to an old lady who is on her way to see Miss Marple.’
‘There’s a third. American heiress murdered on the way to the French Riviera in
The Mystery of the Blue Train
. I think she was strangled too. Poirot solved that one.’
‘Actually, I’ve never really liked Agatha Christie. Her books are too formulaic for me. I prefer a detective story when it’s a bit messier, a bit more realistic.’
‘Detective stories are never realistic. I mean, in the real world most cops never deal with a murder at all. Especially if they are stationed somewhere like Orkney.’
‘Or if they work for some peculiar part of the Force like your dad. Which bit of the Force does he work for anyway?’