The Darkness and the Deep (11 page)

Luke was struggling fiercely. Ashley was a fit young woman but he was taller and stronger; it was only by using her bodyweight across his legs and clinging, almost upside down, to one of the iron grab handles on the boat’s side that she was able to stop him standing up. She couldn’t do that for ever.

‘For God’s sake, Rob, are we nearly there?’ she screamed.

Like an answer to prayer, Rob saw a row of lights high above sea-level. They were well past Port William, and Knockhaven, with its villas up on the cliff-top, was the next coastal village. ‘Five minutes, max,’ he said, easing back the throttle; no point in being in such a hurry you missed the harbour.

And yes, there were the harbour lights now, just visible through the drifting veils of rain: the green one flashing on the higher rocks to the south which encircled the harbour protectively, the red fixed light to the north on the side of the lifeboat shed.

‘I’ve got a fix on the harbour lights now,’ he announced, ‘We’re heading in. Two minutes.’

He heard Ashley gasp, ‘Thank God!’ followed by a cry of heart-rending misery and despair from Luke.
Poor lad
, Rob thought as he opened the throttle again and swept round the curve of the rocks into the harbour.

But where were the familiar, welcoming lights of the village? Where—

The waves, boiling to and fro in the seething cauldron of Fuill’s Inlat, seized the M
aud’n’Milly
, lifting her into the air with contemptuous ease to smash her down on the teeth of the jagged rocks beneath. Ashley’s scream of terror, the sound of the ripping of the nylon tubes and the rush of escaping air were the last things Rob heard before the shock of the icy water hit him and he too was snatched up, only to be tossed aside like a toy flung down in a toddler’s tantrum.

When Hamish Raeburn reached the punchline of his story about the farmer and the agricultural adviser from the Ministry – ‘I don’t mind you taking away one of my sheep if you want, but that’s the collie you’ve got’ – Marjory Fleming laughed heartily, a little more heartily than the old joke warranted, perhaps, but it was the laughter of happiness.

They were sitting having kitchen supper with their closest neighbours, whose farm, like Mains of Craigie, was just a few miles from Kirkluce. Nothing elaborate: beef raised locally followed by Kirstie’s Aga meringues. Just an ordinary, pleasant evening, like so many they had spent in the past in this cosy room, with the huge pine dresser which had belonged to Hamish’s grandmother and now displayed the Wemyss ware Kirstie’s mother had collected over a lifetime of finely judged auction bids at the local roups. Bunches of the dried flowers Kirstie grew to sell to the smartest flower-shop in Kirkluce hung from a pulley overhead and a couple of dogs were snoring contentedly in a big basket next to the dark blue Aga.

Yes, just an unremarkable evening with old friends – except that this was the first invitation Marjory had received to another farm since last year’s foot-and-mouth epidemic, when she had so wretchedly found herself enforcing a government policy which was seen as pointless, insensitive and wantonly destructive of rural life.

It was only now, with wounds starting to heal a little, that Marjory was finding acceptance again. Most of the farmers’ wives would actually speak to her when they met her in the street or the local supermarket, but friendships had been bruised if not broken, so Marjory had been deeply grateful for Kirstie’s somewhat tentative invitation. She’d accepted it, though, as if this were no more than the casual reciprocal hospitality which had been the basis of their long connection.

She had come tonight resolved to steer clear of all controversial subjects, but somehow the warmth of the familiar room, where they had talked through so many problems over the years, seemed to thaw any cold feelings. She found herself pouring out the pent-up misery of the last year, and found, too, that Hamish and Kirstie were still – or perhaps, once more – the understanding friends they had been. It was balm to Marjory’s wounded soul, and it was good to see that Bill was listening to her with the sympathetic affection she would once have taken completely for granted. She had begun to wonder if she would ever see that look on his face again.

The men embarked on some discussion of National Farmers’ Union politics. Helping Kirstie to clear, Marjory seized the opportunity to air her worries about Cat; the Raeburns’ three girls were some years older, and Kirstie, with considerable experience of teenage problems, had always been a source of comfort and sound advice. She chuckled at the story of the black bedroom.

‘This I have to see! But honestly, Marjory, girls at that age—’

She was interrupted by the ringing of her guest’s work phone. For a second Marjory made no move to answer it, wanting to wail like a child, ‘No! It isn’t
fair
!’ She had given instructions that tonight, for once, she wasn’t on call except in the direst emergency.

And already the mood was broken; everyone had stopped talking and in the silence she could feel the distance between their life and hers open up again. She fished the phone out of her bag, looking at the inoffensive object with loathing, said, ‘Excuse me,’ and took it to the far end of the room.

‘This had better be good,’ she said tersely.

‘Depends what you mean by good.’ It was Tam MacNee’s voice. ‘The Knockhaven lifeboat’s been wrecked.’

‘Wrecked?’ she said blankly.

‘Went into Fuill’s Inlat instead of the harbour. They don’t know why.’

She knew Fuill’s Inlat, the wicked little cove near Knockhaven whose approach from the sea mimicked the contours of the port’s harbour. Surely every local sailor knew too?

‘But the cox—’

‘Acting cox, apparently. Willie Duncan was stoned out of his mind, but maybe they’d have been better with him even so.’

‘Any fatalities?’

‘Two, definite. One still alive so far, but they’re not hopeful.’

‘That’s awful. I’m on my way. No, I don’t need a car – it was my turn to drive anyway.’ She clicked off the phone and turned slowly, her mind already on the job ahead.

At the table they had politely pretended not to be listening, but now the three faces turned to her expectantly. ‘Problems?’ Bill asked.

‘Grim. The Knockhaven lifeboat’s gone down, with loss of life. I’ll have to go.’

Kirstie looked stricken. ‘Oh no! How – how terrible! And there was me just doing some baking today to put in the freezer for your mother’s stall at the lifeboat coffee morning next week! Do they know who was on it?’

Marjory, already picking up her handbag, shook her head. ‘No information as yet. Oh, I am sorry, Kirstie. It’s been such a lovely evening – I hate to break it up.’ She looked wistfully round the pleasant domestic scene, at the coffee cups waiting on the table beside the crystal tumblers and the bottle of Bladnoch, at Bill getting reluctantly to his feet.

‘Bill, why don’t you stay?’ she urged. ‘It’s a bit fierce to walk back on a night like this, but we can rise to a taxi, surely?’

‘No, no. Now, if this had happened before we got to the meringues, it might be different, but . . .’ They all laughed, but their farewells were subdued.

Marjory started the car and drove off miserably. She had been so happy to have had the chance to be just another farmer’s wife again, instead of someone with a difficult, demanding and high-powered job. And she was dragging Bill away from the sort of convivial evening he loved, which, thanks to that job, had been denied him for so long. Was this going to set them back again, just when she had thought—

Bill reached across to cover her hand on the steering wheel with his. ‘I’m maybe wrong, but I just wonder if you’re worrying that I’m upset about having to cut the evening short? I’m not. This is a disaster for Knockhaven – for the whole area. There isn’t a community in Galloway that doesn’t feel the lifeboat’s special – look at the way even Kirstie, living the best part of twenty miles away, was baking to help raise funds. It’s going to be tough, and it’s you and your lot are going to have to pick up the pieces.

‘Listening to what you said tonight about what you went through last year, I was ashamed that you’ve never said that to me – I suppose, because I’ve been clinging on to some sort of stupid grievance as if it was a comfort blanket. You’ve a hard job and I’m afraid I’ve made it harder. I’m sorry.’ He picked up her hand and kissed it.

She felt a lump in her throat. ‘Oh, Bill,’ she said, and bit her lip. Then, because they’d never been the kind to wallow in sentiment, she went on lightly, ‘Didn’t someone once say love meant never having to say you’re sorry?’

‘Someone daft, then,’ Bill said darkly, and they both laughed, comforted and comfortable and at ease with each other once more.

‘Don’t wait up,’ she said as she dropped him, and in the rain and darkness set off for the winding coast road to the stricken town.

Luke Smith looked surprisingly tranquil. His eyes were closed and his face below the white helmet was unscarred; only the blue-grey colour of his skin and a trace of froth around his still soft, almost childish mouth suggested unnatural death. The odd angle of his head, though, and the smashed limbs visible through great rents in his weatherproof clothing were evidence of the brute violence inflicted on his body by waves dashing it on to the jagged rocks.

He was not, Tam MacNee noted, wearing a life-jacket, so the chances were that he had drowned before the worst of the injuries happened. The rescuers had laid him up here on the stony shore beyond the tide-line, but hadn’t taken time even to cover the corpse; they were battling now to reach another yellow-jacketed figure on the exposed rocks to the southern side, having to resist the sucking undertow of the waves sweeping over them as they groped desperately for handholds to cling to. It was agonisingly slow work.

MacNee was standing on the raised edge of the bay, looking down into Fuill’s Inlat. There had been a serious delay on the way down – an accident had been blocking the road a couple of miles north since early evening – but the ambulances were mercifully in place now, parked on the road at the top on the apron which had been newly surfaced to service Elder’s Executive Homes. A rough track led from it to an old tumbledown stone shed down at the shore and they had managed to get half a dozen cars down here, parking them so that their headlights were trained on the operation below.

It was close to high tide now. Waves were raging to and fro within the confined space of the cove, gaining force as they bounced off its sides. Shredded remains of the lifeboat’s orange buoyancy tubes had been pitched up on rocks and shore, incongruously cheerful against the dark boulders and the black menace of the swirling sea, and other debris – rails, broken plastic, ropes – was bobbing in the edge of the waves. The rigid hull of the boat was wedged upside down in the centre of a group of rocks towards the northern side, their knife-edged points showing above foaming water. There was a figure in yellow there too, limp as a rag doll, its helmeted head being submerged as the waves rose, reappearing as they fell back.

They had reached their objective now, were manhandling the sagging form rapidly back along the rescue chain they had established. MacNee saw a couple of the men bend over to check, then a shout went up. An unused stretcher was waiting just above the waterline; a moment later, the victim was strapped to it and four of them were rushing up the hill to one of the two waiting ambulances at the top. It took off at speed a few minutes later, lights flashing.

As they went past, MacNee caught only a glimpse of a man’s face, deathly pale above his dark beard, his eyes half-open, with scars and gashes still trickling blood. Rob Anderson; the last time he’d seen him, Rob had been playing the jovial host at the Anchor. ‘He was the lucky one, thrown clear,’ one of the bearers muttered to MacNee. It wasn’t, from the look of him, the word MacNee would have chosen.

They were firing a line across the narrow bay now, securing it midway up the rocks at the southern side and positioning it so that it ran close to where the wreck and that other body lay, dead for a certainty. At the other side, more willing hands fixed it to the landward side of the ruined shed. The tide was on the turn now and more rocks were beginning to show above the still-angry water, giving precarious access; clipped to the line, a man set off. He slipped once, managed to right himself, and then reached the wreck, establishing with some difficulty a secure foothold in one of the crannies between rocks. When he snatched the body from the water’s deadly embrace it looked as small as a child’s, and with it slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift he retraced his steps. The weight made balance more difficult and twice he slipped into the water, but secured by the line could scramble to safety and at last deposited his sad burden on the shore.

There was no haste this time. The rest of the rescue team came over, but with a brief glance averted their eyes. MacNee saw one of them double up to vomit into the sea.

They carried her up sombrely to lay her beside Luke. MacNee knew who Ashley Randall was but had never met her; even if he had, he would have been unable to recognise her, except perhaps from the curling wisps of saturated fair hair clinging round the face which was so demolished by the blows it had taken as to be nothing more than a bloody pulp. Despite having served his time in traffic, he had never got used to graphic demonstrations of the fragility of human flesh; MacNee turned away, his own gut churning.

Raised voices caught his attention and he followed the sound to the road at the top of the bluff where a big 4x4 was parked under a street light. The driver’s door was standing open and a tall, powerful-looking man was wrestling with two others who seemed to be trying to control him. MacNee set off at a run but almost immediately the struggle was over; the big man, his head bowed, was being helped round to the passenger seat while the other man got in and prepared to drive it away.

MacNee stopped. He had long ago learned that ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ is a wise motto for any policeman; he walked on again, slowly enough not to reach the top before the car was driven away.