The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea (30 page)

The scene which began to play was one Cal had seen in various guises before, in films, or a thousand television crime dramas.

A guilty man was slumped disconsolately at a table, picking at his stubby fingers, a smart young female lawyer sitting erect beside him. Her demeanour spoke of prospects and achievements; his of disappointment and failure. Jim Carmichael looked a broken man as he started mumbling, telling of the terrible things he’d seen, his father dying of cancer, ravens hopping across a bog to peck out the terrified eyes of a floundering horse, and the evening he drove to Orasaigh Island with Megan Bates’s weekly grocery order.

Jim glanced up, full of self-pity.

‘Go on,’ a voice off camera said. It was Macrae.

The delivery had been his last of the day, Jim said. He had put it into the tin box on the mainland shore as he usually did, but when he looked across the causeway he saw Megan over by the island, lying on the sand. He had run to help her and saw blood coming out of her. The baby was beside her, ‘still attached’.

Jim glanced up, the bewilderment of that evening on his face again. What could he have done? He’d never even held a baby before.

‘Was anyone else there?’ Macrae again.

‘No.’

‘What did you think had happened?’

‘She’d gone into labour waiting for the tide and in the end she couldn’t wait.’ Jim shook his head. ‘Half dead she was, she’d lost that much blood.’ All she’d been able to do before losing consciousness was throw her cardigan over the child.

He hadn’t known what to do – that look of bewilderment once more – whether to move her and risk making the haemorrhage worse, or leave her and the baby and go for help. He sighed heavily.

‘What did you do?’

‘The only thing I could.’

He had wrapped Megan’
s cardigan tight around the baby and secured it with
her brooch – ‘flowering violets’. He always remembered them because everything
else that night had been so ugly. Then he drove
to Brae, the nearest house with a phone in those
days. He had hoped for Mr William, but Mrs Ritchie
had come to the door. He was uncomfortable telling her
because everyone in the village had heard the rumours about
Mr William’s affair. He was worried about her reaction,
but she was calm and practical, going back into the
house to ring for an ambulance and returning with towels,
a flask of water and scissors.

‘What happened next?’

They drove to the causeway.

Jim paused, as if he needed to summon up strength for what was to follow.

After he parked the van, she ran ahead of him. He followed with the towels and water. When he caught up with her, she was already kneeling beside Megan. He thought she must be comforting her. But she wasn’t. ‘She was saying Megan was a slut, a bitch who deserved to die.’

Jim still looked shocked.

‘What did you do?’

‘I asked her to stop but she went on and on saying terrible things.’

The baby was crying and Jim wrapped it in a towel. Afterwards, Mrs Ritchie turned away from Megan and started talking about all she’d done for him.

‘She said she’d paid off my debts as well as giving me work at Brae. She’d stuck by me and now I had to stick by her.’

Jim lifted his eyes to the camera, his lids seeming heavy with the burden of guilt.

‘Mrs Ritchie said Megan would be dead soon, and I had to dispose of her body, as if she was ordering me to do some job for her at the house.’

When she said the best place for burying bones was with other bones he knew she meant his sheep pit. He’d disposed of diseased livestock carcases from Brae in the past so Mrs Ritchie was aware of it.

He tried to resist her, to make her see sense.

Jim glanced again at Macrae and the camera, pleading.
Believe me.

‘So what did you say to her, Jim?’

‘I told her she wasn’t thinking straight and anyway the ambulance would be arriving soon. But she smiled again. “Poor Jim, there you go again, never quite understanding how things work”.’

There wouldn’t be an ambulance, she said. She hadn’t called one. She told him to look after the baby ‘while the slut dies’.

If he did as he was told
she’d help him out again, as often as he
needed, stop him falling into Turnbull’s clutches again, keep
him from getting another beating or worse.

‘Did she help you after that?’

Jim dropped his head. ‘Aye, a few times, what with the drink and everything else. I was never that good with money.’

‘How much Jim?’

He mumbled.

‘I can’t hear you Jim.’

‘A few thousand, six or seven.’

‘What happened next?’

He had tried to comfort the baby. He cut the cord and cleaned her up a bit. Mrs Ritchie kept talking about Megan, things he would never forget. How her baby would have no father because he would never know she had been born. How Alexandra was the only child William Ritchie would ever have and ever wanted. Then she looked over at Jim and said, ‘She’s dead, the slut’s dead.’ Then, a few moments later: ‘You let it happen too, Jim. Never forget that.’ And again: ‘You owe me.’

‘And you did
as you were told. You got rid of the body
?’

Jim nodded. He had carried Megan to his van and buried her that night.

‘Was she dead?’

He believed so. He hadn’t liked to touch her skin. He had wrapped her up in a blanket he kept in the back of the van. ‘She wasn’t moving. She never moved.’

‘What happened to the baby?’

Jim rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth, again and again, as if trying to wipe away a bloody stain. Mrs Ritchie had taken her, he said. He hadn’t known where.

‘Did she go to Mrs Anderson?’

She might have. He didn’t know.

‘Mrs Anderson never said anything to you?’

‘No.’

‘Nor Mrs Ritchie?’

Jim shook his head. She’d instructed him never to talk about it. She had never spoken of it again. Not to him. Not a word.

‘When you heard that someone dressed in Megan Bates’s clothes had walked into the sea the next morning didn’t you wonder who it was?’

Jim looked sullen. ‘Who else could it have been but Mrs Ritchie?’ She must have collected Megan’s things from Orasaigh Cottage during the night. The door was usually left unlocked but even if it hadn’t been Mrs Ritchie had a key.

‘Mrs Ritchie could swim?’

Jim nodded. Before Megan Bates’s arrival at Poltown, she used to swim at South Bay, Mrs Anderson joining her on the beach with a picnic. Jim had seen them there often in the summer months. He remembered Mrs Anderson saying she was a strong swimmer.

‘Strong enough to swim from South Bay to North Bay?’

From what Mrs Anderson had told him, yes.

‘Wasn’t there a danger of her running into Duncan or someone else?’

Jim shrugged as if he didn’t think so. Duncan’s habit was to collect flotsam straight after high tide so that by the time Megan was able to cross the Orasaigh causeway the beach at South Bay would be clean. No-one else went there at that time in the morning, apart from Mrs Armitage who kept to the beach road walking her dog.

‘Mrs Ritchie would have known that?’

‘What?’

‘That Mrs Armitage would be a witness and could report what she had seen to the police?’

Jim nodded. ‘Mrs Armitage walked past the Brae driveway every morning before eight.’

Macrae waited before asking another question. Jim’s head sagged and he picked at his fingers. After the sound of pages turning, Macrae said, ‘Did Duncan Boyd confess to killing Megan Bates?’

‘No.’

‘Why did you say he had?’

Violet Wells was asking questions. He’d been worried where they would lead. When Duncan hanged himself he had the idea of passing on the blame. Wasn’t it what the police had thought anyway?

Macrae said nothing, and Jim began to mumble, working himself up into a last attempt at self-justification. Suddenly he looked up, his eyes shining with indignation. Jim Carmichael had given his loyalty, he told Macrae as though reading a citation from a roll of honour. And Mrs Ritchie had taken advantage of him so that Alexandra would get an inheritance she didn’t deserve.

‘
Given
your loyalty?’ Macrae snorted. ‘You sold it, Jim.’

* * *

The screen went blank and Macrae said, ‘Some things we’re never going to know.’ His voice and expression said he wished it wasn’t so. He knew it would be harder for Violet to accept the police had done all they could if there were loose ends. For what they were worth, Macrae had a few theories about what happened but with Diana Ritchie and Mrs Anderson both dead there was now no possibility of proving them. He was as good as certain that Diana Ritchie had taken the baby to Mrs Anderson after Jim had removed Megan’s body as that was the only way she could have known its hair colour. His hunch was that Mrs Anderson drove the baby to Raigmore Hospital because she was the one who had written the anonymous letter, perhaps out of guilt at what she had done. Everything else was informed guesswork, apart from the identity of the woman who walked into the sea. That must have been Mrs Ritchie but he was sure she must have had help from Mrs Anderson.

‘There’s an estate road through the forestry which runs close to North Bay. Mrs Anderson could have gone there in her car with a change of clothes.’ The lack of footprints on the beach, apart from Duncan’s, was easy to explain. Diana Ritchie was a strong swimmer and more likely than not she had swum in from South Bay to maintain the illusion of Megan Bates being swept round the headland. She put the hat and bag at the high water mark and went back into the sea, coming ashore again among the rocks. That way she would have left no footprints because high tide was soon after and it would have washed them away. As for Megan’s letter, it had probably been intercepted by Diana Ritchie. Since Orasaigh was close to Brae, Megan would have hand-delivered it to the mailbox at the end of the Brae drive. All Diana Ritchie had to do was seal it again, put on a stamp and post it. ‘More likely than not Mrs Anderson took it to the Poltown post box for her.’

Violet was talking about Mr Anwar, how he had visited her in hospital, how pleased she had been to see him, how worried she was about him still. In his self-effacing way he had deflected all her questions, so she didn’t know whether he was all right or not. Hilary had lent her £200 so she could repay his gift and although he had refused the money he did take the card Anna had made inviting him to visit them in Glasgow. Violet hoped he would.

‘If he doesn’t Anna and I will just have to go and see him in Inverness.’

She was sitting in the back of Cal’s pickup, her leg stretched out across the seat, as her consultant had instructed. She had fallen quiet when Cal pulled in at the side of the road high up on the ridge above Poltown. He asked what she felt being back there again. Violet stared through the window, at the spectacle of an October storm hurtling ashore, a tumult of blacks and greys. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel anything.’

The landmarks of her mother’s life and death lay below her: Brae, Orasaigh Island, the coastal path, Boyd’s Farm, South Bay, North Bay, all blurry in the squalls of rain.

‘No, that’s not right,’ she corrected herself, everywhere her eye fell stirring an emotion. ‘I do feel something. I hate it, the way it can be like this, you know, wonderful and extraordinary when you’re up here. But when you’re down there, it’s different. It’s why I wanted to see it again, just to be sure.’

She looked away to the left, towards the church, the green of the mound on which it sat appearing dull and drab in the rain in contrast to the vivid rush of feelings the graveyard now evoked – her father’s last resting place, and now Mrs Anderson’s. On the drive to Poltown, Cal told how she had been found dead, slumped on a graveyard bench. Violet heard the news in silence. After staring at the distant church, she said, ‘It must have been her, mustn’t it?’ Violet said. ‘Mrs Anderson must have written the letter, the one Mr Anwar brought to me.’

‘Yes,’ Cal replied. DI Macrae had told him the same. The police had found identical writing paper in Gardener’s Cottage. The theory was that Mrs Anderson had abandoned Violet at Raigmore Hospital.

‘Why would she write after so many years?’

‘Guilt maybe? Perhaps she felt she couldn’t while Diana Ritchie was alive, but after she was dead, well . . . Perhaps your birthday was the reminder.’

‘I guess.’ A shaft of sun slanting through a break in the clouds claimed Violet’s attention. It lit up the hillside above the sheep pit where her mother had been buried and painted it briefly with vibrant russets and greens. The intensity of the colours affected her. ‘Cal . . .’ Her voice caught with emotion. ‘How could Jim Carmichael put her in a place like that? How could anyone?’

‘I don’t know,’ Cal replied. Only a partial skeleton had been found: the remainder probably scavenged over the years by foxes or badgers. Cal hadn’t told Violet. Nor had he mentioned DI Macrae’s comment that Megan Bates might still have been alive. It was unproven and likely to remain that way, though the remains were still being analysed. He glanced in his rear-view mirror, hoping she hadn’t detected concealment in the brevity of his response, and found she was looking at him.

‘It does matter,’ she said, their eyes meeting.

‘What?’

‘Having a body, even half a body.’ She held his gaze.

‘I don’t feel…’ She hesitated, uncertain of finding the word. ‘That
responsibility
any more. Not closure. Something else.’ She was anxious he understood what she was trying to tell him.

‘Your work – finding bodies for the families – does matter.’

‘Yeah’ was all he said, looking away, keeping to himself the email received two days before. It was from the parents of the five-year old boy who had been swept off the pier by a freak wave. Could Cal McGill help them find ‘our missing boy?’ Cal’s reply? He was busy, regrettably, and would be for a while, the draw-back of a one man operation. He’d email again when his workload allowed him to commit to another investigation.

Violet allowed the view to preoccupy her for a while. ‘That’s what I dislike about Poltown,’ she said eventually. ‘Everyone and everything is like Jim Carmichael, seeming to be benign but really being the opposite.’ She found Cal’s eyes again in the mirror. ‘There’s nothing for Anna and me here. Nothing.’

‘Ok,’ he said. ‘That’s why you wanted to see it again, before BRC’s bulldozers changed it forever. To be sure that’s how you felt.’

‘It is,’ she replied. ‘Can we go to Glasgow now? I’d like to go home.’