Offshore: A short story collection Read online

  That’s when I hear it. A dog barking. Very distant and it’s coming from behind me. I’m almost faint with relief. Now we have something to head for. ‘This way!’ I shout it so loud that it echoes around us.

  But Vicky doesn’t seem to hear. She’s pulling me out towards the mouth of the river. It’s as if she’s flying, like one of the wading birds that swoops over the sandbanks at low tide, leaping the channels and tugging me after her. I let go of her hand. ‘No. It’s this way.’ But she takes no notice and hurries on.

  I’m a coward. I’d told her that I wanted to stay with her forever, but I don’t care enough to put my own life in danger. I turn round and follow the sound of the yapping dog. Occasionally I look back, but there’s no sign of her. I know that I’ve probably left her to drown, but she was so mad and so wild out there that perhaps it was what she wanted all along and she saw our meeting as a strange suicide pact. After ten minutes I hear more sounds, car engines and a woman’s voice. The shadows in the mist become solid. I stumble ashore at West Kirby. It’s mid-afternoon in a suburban town. People are shopping, and a couple of teenage girls are walking along the pavement giggling. Everything is normal. Except me. I’m shaking with cold and the remains of the terror I felt out there in the fog. I find a phone box and dial 999 and tell the coastguard that I think there’s a girl on the shore in the fog. I don’t give my name or hers. I’m ashamed that I turned back without trying to save her.

  In the train on the way back to the chaos of my home I think that Vicky Macfarlane will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  ‘Good day, son?’ my mother says when I walk into the house.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say and go to my room. Another sort of betrayal and more guilt, but I can’t face her questions.

  Time moves on. I pass my O levels, and my mam has a party for me to celebrate. I’m more settled at school now. The older you get, the easier it is to be different. The posh boys try to talk like me, which is laughable really, and I’m considered bright, possible Oxbridge material, so the teachers suck up to me too. I haven’t been back to Hilbre since I got lost in the fog with Vicky. I tell myself it’s because I’ve grown up, but really it’s because I still have nightmares about that day and I don’t want to be reminded that I left a girl to drown. I hope the nightmares will fade with time, but two years later when I’m coming up to my A levels they become even more intense. I realize that we’re approaching the anniversary of the incident and I decide that I have to face my anxiety. Perhaps Vicky survived and I’m going through all this angst for nothing.

  I look up the Macfarlanes in the phone book and there they are, living in one of the big houses in Hoylake, close to the golf course, just as Vicky described. I get the bus there after school and stand in the street, looking in. The building isn’t as smart as I’d expected. It could do with a coat of paint and the garden is overgrown. I walk up the path and knock at the door, wondering what I’ll do if Vicky answers. But the woman who opens it is middle-aged. She’s dressed in a faded print dress that my mother wouldn’t be seen dead in and she looks tired and distracted.

  ‘Mrs Macfarlane?’ I assume this is Vicky’s mother.

  ‘Miss Macfarlane,’ she snaps back.

  ‘I wonder if I could speak to Vicky.’ I’ve learned to speak properly and my voice is polite.

  She looks horrified, as if I’ve hit her. ‘There’s nobody of that name here.’ Then she seems more curious than angry. ‘Who told you about Vicky?’

  I’m starting to think that this woman is crazy and I back away from the door. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you. I’ve obviously made a mistake.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Come in. I want to tell you the story. Nobody remembers her now but me.’

  She steps aside and I follow her in. We sit in a room at the back of the house and there on the wall is a photo of two young women. I recognize one of them as the girl I made love to on Hilbre. ‘That’s me and Vicky,’ Miss Macfarlane says, ‘just before she died in 1950. She drowned, you know, and our family was never the same again. It seemed so unfair, when we survived the war.’ And she goes on to tell me the story that’s already familiar, of the wild and sparky girl who tried to cross the estuary from Hilbre too close to the tide as a fog was rolling in. ‘Her body was never found,’ she says. ‘I imagine Vicky on the island, just as she was that day.’

  I imagine it too. A young woman, dead for nearly thirty years. Stranded and lonely. Looking for company. Desperate for me to join her.

  The Soothmoothers

  I always take more than a professional interest in the guests who stay in the Ravenswick House. Partly it’s a matter of pride. I manage one of the best hotels in Shetland and our visitors deserve more than a perfunctory welcome. It’s an effort to get here and, after thirteen hours on the ferry or a bumpy flight, the least they should expect is a pleasant smile and a cup of good tea by the fire. And partly of course it’s curiosity; I’ve always been inquisitive by nature.

  These particular visitors fascinated me from the moment they walked in. They’d run down the steps from the car park through one of those gusty showers that come out of nowhere in the islands and arrived in the lobby shaking the rain from their clothes. A woman and two men, all soothmoothers. Confident English. You know the sort. Voices slightly too loud, expensive shoes, good haircuts. I could tell they were in Shetland on business, not pleasure.

  It was hard to read the relationships. More than just colleagues, I was sure of that. There was an emotional charge, sexy, edgily flirtatious. But who was flirting with whom? It was hard to tell. I wouldn’t even have been surprised if the men had turned out to be lovers and the woman a voyeur or a fixer. They’d booked single rooms and I put them on the same landing, with views over Mousa. They continued their conversation as they followed me up the stairs. ‘A quick shower, then we’ll meet up in the bar, shall we? A large G&T before dinner? At least we don’t have to drive anywhere tonight.’ That was the woman, and she looked at the younger man hungrily, as if she wanted him to take her into his arms. She was well preserved, but ten years older than him. Perhaps I’d found the cause of the sexual tension in the group. But I thought there were other secrets holding them all together. Of course they took no notice of me. They treated me like a servant, as if I was invisible, and they didn’t realize I was listening.

  The Ravenswick was built in the nineteenth century by an English gentleman and the hotel keeps the atmosphere of a country house. There’s a library with leather chesterfields, and the lounge has slightly faded Persian carpets on the polished floor. An ancient rocking horse stands on the landing. Only the perpetual sound of wind and water brings Shetland into the place.

  I saw them again in the bar when I took their orders for dinner. They were the only people there. By now a force-ten north-easterly had blown up and the locals were staying at home. The hotel is so close to the shore that in a storm from the east it’s like being in a ship; when waves break on the rocks below the spray rattles the windows and there’s the smell of salt indoors. I stood for a minute watching, before I approached them. That curiosity again. My daughter Edie always said I should be a writer. The woman sat between the men. She’d changed into a dress, something clinging, and wore diamond earrings. Her eyes glittered more brightly than the jewels. She’s had more than one large G&T, I thought, before turning my attention to the men.

  The older was called Jefferson, obviously the boss, but desperate to be liked. He called to Stan at the bar for another round of drinks. Although he must have been fifty, he wore jeans and an open-necked shirt. He had a good body for his age. I guessed he played squash, took a run every morning. The young one – the object of the woman’s desire – was blond and boyish. Still wearing the suit he’d arrived in, he seemed uncomfortable, over-dressed. He pulled off his tie and stuffed it in his pocket. The woman’s attentions discomfited him too. Occasionally I saw him shoot an embarrassed glance at Jefferson and the older man would smile back in an almost encouraging
way. It was as if he hoped his colleagues would end up together before the evening was through. As I watched, the woman left to go to the Ladies and Jefferson said, ‘Look, Larry, just keep her happy. Mel’s an attractive woman. What harm would it do?’

  I went off shift while they were eating their meal, so I don’t know what Larry made of his boss’s advice.

  When I woke the next morning my first thought was that the wind had dropped, then that it was very early and my sleep had been disturbed. Someone was screaming in a high-pitched tone, which verged on the hysterical. That would be Jenny Jamieson, who works in the kitchen and is one for a drama. Last time it was a dead rabbit that the cat had ripped apart. I pulled on my clothes and went downstairs. Jenny had gone into the bar, where we serve breakfast if the hotel is quiet, and she stood there, her mouth wide open.

  ‘Will you shut up,’ I snapped. ‘You’ll have the whole house awake.’ She clamped her mouth together and nodded towards the fireplace. There, slumped on the rug, was the Englishwoman, Mel. Her face was blue and her eyes were swollen. Tight around her neck was a gentleman’s tie. She was as dead as the rabbit that had caused Jenny’s last screaming fit.

  ‘Go and lay up for breakfast in the dining room!’

  Jenny nodded and left the room; I went to the bar and phoned Jimmy Perez. I was at school with Jimmy. Shetland’s that sort of place: Jenny was at school with my daughter. Jimmy’s a Fair Islander, and the story is that he has the strange name and the dark looks because his ancestors were washed ashore from El Gran Grifon, an Armada ship that was wrecked there. He had a crush on me when we were at the Anderson High, but he was too shy to do anything and I ended up marrying Tammy Leask. More importantly now, against everyone’s expectations Jimmy Perez went on to join the police, working first in Aberdeen, then back in Shetland as detective inspector.

  He arrived before the two Englishmen came down for breakfast, and I was grateful for that. I wouldn’t have known how to break the news of the woman’s death or how the matter should proceed. I was standing at the door of the bar when Perez came into the hotel. He always looks kind of scruffy. This morning I suppose there was some excuse: he must have come straight from his bed or from that of his woman, who lives up the bank in Ravenswick. He stared at the body and for a moment he said nothing. He’d left the outside door open and I could hear the suck of the tide on the shingle.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘She signed the register as Melissa Forbes. Home address in Surrey. The rooms were booked on a company account. Jefferson Systems. I thought maybe they had a contract at Sullom Voe.’ Sullom Voe is where the oil comes ashore and it pulls in lots of southern workers.

  ‘Has she stayed here before?’

  I looked up at him, but it’s always hard to tell what Jimmy’s thinking. ‘I don’t remember them as guests in the hotel.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Wanting more from me. A different answer.

  ‘No, I can’t be sure.’

  ‘Anything stolen?’

  ‘Her bag’s still there under the chair.’

  He nodded as if that was just what he expected. You’d have to be pretty dumb to commit a theft in Shetland. It’s hard to escape from here.

  ‘Recognize the tie?’

  I shook my head. ‘It could have belonged to one of her colleagues, but I couldn’t swear to it.’

  I expected Perez to approach the body. His stillness unnerved me. I’d always felt skittish in comparison to him, too talkative. Today, though, was not the time for chatter.

  ‘Tell me about her companions,’ he said at last.

  ‘Peter Jefferson and Laurence Jones.’ I paused. I wasn’t sure what more there was to say. My thoughts about the three were pure speculation.

  Perez smiled and for a moment I wondered how I could have chosen Tammy Leask instead of him. ‘Come on, Margaret. You can do better than that. You’re as good at the gossip as I am.’

  So I found myself talking about what I’d seen the evening before. How the woman’s eyes glittered in a feverish way as she looked out at the world over her glass; how Jones had shrunk away from her advances, as if even the brush of her arm against his sleeve disgusted him; how his boss had seemed to want to bring them together. Perez listened intently, as if the answer to this violent death lay in the pictures I was creating with my words. ‘I had the feeling that Jefferson would have liked to see them in bed by the end of the night,’ I said at the end. And that was true. I’d thought it at the time.

  ‘Literally?’ Perez asked. ‘You mean he would have wanted to watch?’

  I shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Yes, I think that would have excited him. But perhaps he just wanted to keep her sweet.’

  ‘Why would he want to do that?’

  ‘Come on, Jimmy, you’re the detective, not me. I’d only be guessing.’

  ‘Guess away then,’ Perez said, with the smile that made me jealous of his woman still lying in her bed. ‘You’ve seen them together; I haven’t. Detection is all about what if.’

  ‘Maybe she knew something about him, about his business practice.’

  ‘Blackmail, you mean,’ Perez said. ‘Aye, maybe. This looks like a crime of desperation.’ He paused. ‘Whatever the men had planned between them, she never did get to her bed, did she? She’s still dressed. It looks like they left her here with her bottle of wine, the fire low. They escaped whatever it was she wanted from them.’

  ‘Then one of them came down and killed her.’

  He didn’t answer that. Perhaps it was so obvious that it needed no answer. Perhaps.

  ‘So,’ he said at last. ‘Let’s play the game again. What if. We have a woman who drinks too much, who needs comfort at the end of a working day. Not so unusual. But why might she be unhappy? Maybe there’s something on her conscience, something that haunts her, so she hates being alone after dark.’ He looked up at me and his voice took on a sharper edge. ‘You can tell where I’m going with this?’

  I nodded. He must have worked it out already.

  ‘You tell it then, Margaret. You tell the rest of the story.’

  So I told it, the words cold and hard. Perhaps, from the start, all I’d wanted was to be listened to. ‘They were in Shetland on business a year ago. They weren’t staying here, but they came for early dinner. Paid by cash, and I never knew their names. Drank too much, especially the woman, and she insisted on driving back to the airport. My daughter had been out with her friends in Lerwick, got the bus back, started walking from the main road. She never arrived home. I found her body by the side of the road. Hit-and-run.’

  ‘We investigated.’ Perez’s voice was quiet. ‘Checked all the hire cars. Everything was clean. It could have been a Shetland boy. They do drink-driving too.’

  I shook my head. ‘Mel was sitting on her own by the fire after the men had gone to their beds. She thought sex would make her forget; when that wasn’t on offer, she was glad of someone to talk to. She told me what happened.’

  ‘Mel. So you were on first-name terms.’

  ‘I gave birth to Edie,’ I said. ‘That woman killed her. It made us kind of intimate.’ I paused. I had to be fair to the woman. I owed her that. ‘She wanted to stop after she hit my girl, but the men made her drive on. In a couple of hours we’ll be away from the place.’

  ‘And the tie?’

  ‘Jones left his jacket in the dining room. I took it from his pocket. The men were involved. I wanted them charged with murder.’

  Perez looked up. For an instant I thought he would put his arm around me. I would have liked that.

  ‘You should have gone south with Tammy,’ he said. ‘Escaped when you had the chance.’ And he turned away, leaving me to follow him.

  Hector’s Other Woman

  On impulse Vera took herself off to Holy Island. She had a sudden craving for crab sandwiches and a blast of sea air. Of course she hadn’t stopped to check tide times, but arrived at Beal just in time. Hector’s Land Rover made it across the causeway as the water was blowing in
and the last tourist cars splashed back to the mainland. It was a big tide of the autumn equinox and a blustery north-easterly wind carried sharp showers of rain. As she arrived at the Snook there was a rainbow, and Lindisfarne castle in the distance like an illustration from a child’s picture book.

  The hotel looking over the harbour had rooms free and, again on impulse, Vera chose the grandest. It was a little shabby, but large with windows on two sides, one facing the priory and the other the Herring Houses and the castle beyond. The receptionist made no comment. The island was used to visitors of all sorts: trippers and romantics and pilgrims. Perhaps she thought Vera was a nun in mufti, a nun with expensive tastes.

  Vera left her bag in her room and walked out. She hated the island when it was full of visitors, but midweek in November once the tide came in there were only locals and the occasional mad tourist. Walking through the village, she saw there was a house for sale right next to the pub. Perhaps she should retire here, once they forced her out of the police service. But she knew she’d never leave the house in the hills, the house where she’d grown up, where she’d lived with Hector. Her father, deceased. The man who most haunted her dreams.

  She strode briskly down the straight lonnen, north towards the sea. In the distance there was a lone birdwatcher at the end of the track. He must have disappeared into the dunes because when she looked up again he’d gone. She was heading for the triangular stone that marked Emmanuel Head, for no reason other than that it gave her somewhere to aim for. She wasn’t in the mood for wandering without purpose. She lost sight of it occasionally as she followed random paths through the sandy land, but then she emerged at the top of a dune and she was almost upon it and there was a view along the beaches on either side of it. Gannets were diving not far from shore and a group of scoter bounced in the choppy water. There was nothing to break the wind here and she found it hard to breathe.