The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea (9 page)

In the sitting room, she found a telephone directory. She started at the back, going through the ‘Y’s, searching for ‘Yellowlees’, the name of the detective in charge of the investigation into Megan Bates’s death.

On the bus to Poltown she had rung police headquarters in Inverness. Her inquiry caused the switchboard operator some amusement because ‘Mr, rather Chief Superintendent, Yellowlees retired nine months ago’. Violet found four Yellowlees in the book: two in Inverness, one in Ullapool and the last in Mallaig. She rang the first Inverness number. There was no reply. The second was answered by a man and Violet asked if his name was, by any chance, Mr Robert Yellowlees. He replied that he was Iain but had a brother called Robert. Had she confused the two? Violet said the Robert Yellowlees she was attempting to contact had been a doctor and lived in Glasgow until his retirement.

‘Oh,’ Iain Yellowlees replied, ‘that couldn’t be my brother because he was a policeman, a chief superintendent, and he’s never lived in Glasgow, never lived in a big city, not even one the size of Inverness. No, he always liked the great outdoors when he wasn’t apprehending villains. He lives in a cottage at Ullapool now.’

Violet apologised for taking up his time. In the dimming evening light, she found Yellowlees again, circled the Ullapool entry and dialled it. A man who sounded cross answered and Violet said, ‘That’s not Tom is it?’ The man said no and Violet replied, ‘Sorry, wrong number.’ Hanging up, she ripped the page from the phone book and went to the kitchen where she had left the information leaflet given to her by Alexandra Hamilton. Half way down the list of useful numbers she found what she was looking for: ‘Turnbull’s Taxis’. The woman who answered her call said a return trip to Ullapool with a wait of an hour would be £36. Before confirming the booking, Violet checked the tide tables. ‘So that’s 8.30 tomorrow morning at the causeway to Orasaigh,’ the woman repeated. ‘Cash up front, mind . . .’

Violet collected her backpack from the porch and locked the door behind her. She shuddered as soon as she was outside, a reaction to the cottage’s gloomy spaces. Going along the path to her small tent, she watched black clouds gathering to the west. She wondered where her mother’s remains were lying, what little of them were left. Were her bones buried by sand and seaweed? Were they lying together or dispersed across the sea bed, scattered over the years by storms like the one that was gathering? The thought of them kept her awake, that and the showers which thrummed on the sides of the tent.

* * *

Beyond North Bay, there was no path, just the worn tracks of deer and sheep. The rain slanted in from the sea. The wind drove it hard against the left side of Cal’s face until he was numb. He walked quickly, his pace determined by exhilaration at heading out into wildness, of being alone, of a storm breaking around him. He had another five kilometres to go before he reached the part of the coast where he would wake up at dawn and look out over sea to south, west and north. Or if the storm was as spectacular as it promised to be he would sit through the night and enjoy its raging.

Intermittent squalls of rain rattled against the bathroom window in Orasaigh Cottage. Violet had showered to wash away the overnight chill of the tent, and was dressed and running her fingers through her wet hair when a knock sounded at the front door. It made her jump. She was on edge anyway, being back within those four walls, on edge as well as in a hurry to meet the taxi which would soon be arriving on the other side of the causeway. She crossed the landing to the front bedroom – its window overlooked the porch and garden – and on the gravel path below was a woman wearing a waterproof hat which covered her face. She had on a rain-jacket, a skirt which flapped in the wind and wellington boots. Violet backed away into the room hoping her visitor, whoever she was, would go away, but instead she knocked again, once then twice more. ‘What does she want?’ Violet said irritably before going to see.

When she opened the door, the woman lifted her head. Under the hat Violet recognised Alexandra Hamilton from Brae. ‘Oh, hello,’ Violet said, ‘I was just getting ready to go out. A taxi’s coming for me. . . .’

A squall blew against the cottage. Alexandra turned sideways to it, the rain striking her back. Reluctantly, Violet stepped back to allow her into the shelter of the porch, and apologised for having to abandon her there while she went upstairs for her coat and bag. Coming back down, Violet found her visitor in the sitting room. She had taken off her hat and was peering out at the weather, warning Violet the worst was still to come. They would be better waiting for it to pass. Violet protested weakly about her taxi, aware she had time to spare, a quarter of an hour, and it wouldn’t take her more than five minutes to go along the track and cross to the mainland. Her objection was more about having to talk to Alexandra, even if it was a confinement lasting only a few minutes.

An uneasy silence followed until Alexandra asked Violet if she was comfortable in the cottage. Violet let her think she’d spent the night in it. ‘Fine,’ she said, and added a compliment, the only one which occurred to her, about the shower and the hot water. Alexandra inspected the room, as though it might prompt a topic of conversation, and Violet checked in her bag for her purse. Neither looked at the other. ‘I really have to be going,’ Violet insisted.

‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ Alexandra countered, now examining the fireplace. ‘I should have said it yesterday. A woman called Megan Bates did live here.’

Violet watched her.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pretended otherwise but there was a reason for it.’

Violet waited, her heart thumping.

‘I did meet her a few times. I didn’t know her very well,’ she went on, now looking at Violet. ‘I didn’t acknowledge her name yesterday because it was just such a shock to hear it after all this time . . . it’s a name from the past and to be honest I’d have preferred it to stay that way.’

‘Why?’

The question hung unanswered for a while.

‘Do you really want to know?’

Violet nodded.

‘Because Megan Bates made my mother’s life hell. She was unscrupulous. She was manipulative. She was dishonest. She liked to take what wasn’t hers. She didn’t have any family of her own and tried to take someone else’s.’ She paused and looked around the room as if some trace of her might have survived. ‘And yes, my father . . . my step-father . . . allowed her to live in this cottage and for the three years she was here there was never a second my mother didn’t wish her gone. As far as I’m concerned drowning herself was the only decent thing she ever did.’

For the last sentence she held Violet’s stare, and when it was finished Violet said quietly, ‘I’d like you to leave now.’ She turned away from Alexandra, trying to conceal the dreadful shock she had received.

The porch door banged shut, but Violet barely heard it. Nor did she move. In all her many imaginings about her mother, she had never considered the possibility of her being as Alexandra described. Part of her wanted to rush to her mother’s defence – to run after Alexandra and protest that it was lies. Another part of her was apprehensive: what if other people told Violet the same; what if it was true? She was still immobilised when her phone rang. She dug into her bag to answer it. ‘Would you be planning to cross this low tide or the next?’ It was a man’s voice, her taxi driver, sounding impatient at having to wait.

‘This,’ she said, resenting yet another intrusion.

The taxi turned out to be a silver people carrier. The driver was a middle-aged man wearing trainers, white socks, olive green shorts and a Celtic shirt stretched across a prodigious belly. He said his name was Graham and as he opened the rear sliding door for Violet he explained that such a big taxi was useful for picking up parties of hill walkers at the end of a day and returning them to their cars. ‘The state some of them are in after a few hours on the hill being eaten by midges,’ Graham exclaimed, wiping a fat hand across his face, ‘Oh my goodness me.’ His belly carried on wobbling jelly-like after his mirth had died away. Graham, it seemed, was the talkative kind so Violet asked whether he would mind if she sat at the very back because she had a phone call to make. A private phone call was her implication. Graham shrugged as if to suggest it was her loss, missing out on his patter. ‘You sit wherever you like love; the taxi’s all yours. Sit at the back going this way and at the front on the return journey. It’s up to you.’

After this speech, he made a little bow. Violet rewarded
him with a fleeting smile. No sooner had she sat
at the back than he asked if she was car
sick ‘at all’ because the road was nothing but twists
and turns. ‘There’s more swing at the back,’ he
said. Graham, she gathered, would prefer to have her company
in the front, but she wasn’t in the mood
. She’d never been car sick, air sick or sea
-sick, she assured him, and immediately concentrated on her phone
, keying in Hilary’s number. Graham, she prayed, would take
the hint; a hope that was accompanied by a wash
of indignation. Why did every ugly middle-aged man imagine
he was irresistible and interesting to any young woman travelling
alone?

When Hilary picked up her call, Violet made her promise to stay on the phone ‘forever’ or else, she whispered, ‘a fat bloke in his fifties will try to have his way with me’.

Hilary laughed. ‘How are you?’

Before Violet could answer Hilary told Anna ‘it’s Mummy’ and handed over the phone. ‘I’ve painted the house but it’s got a crooked door,’ Anna announced.

‘That doesn’t matter, darling,’ Violet replied. ‘Will you paint another picture for me?’

‘Not a house.’

‘No, not a house, what about painting Granny?’

Anna considered the new commission. ‘Was she very pretty?’

‘Yes, I think she was . . . don’t you remember the photograph of her?’

‘Kind of,’ Anna said before asking, ‘what clothes should she have?’

‘Let me see,’ Violet said. ‘What about a summer dress, a white one, and she should have a raffia hat which is sort of like a straw hat? And the hat must have a big brim, wide enough to shade her face from the sun and with a broad red ribbon around it.’

After Anna had gone to tell Izzy, Hilary asked, ‘Well, how are you really?’

‘Frightened that the more I discover about my mother the more I might dislike her.’

‘Wow, where did that come from?’

Violet sighed. She told Hilary about Duncan Boyd’s reaction to Megan Bates’s name and about Alexandra Hamilton’s description of her – ‘unscrupulous and dishonest’. Hilary tried to cheer her up, saying, ‘God, I wish my mum had had a fling.’

As they were saying goodbye Violet asked Hilary to put the phone where Anna and Izzy were, so she could listen to them for a while. Hilary made Violet promise to ring again at any time of the day or night.

Violet heard Anna telling Izzy what a ‘pretty woman’ looked like. She had long brown hair which shone in the sun, big eyes which were as big as the moon, and lips as red as a tomato.

* * *

‘You’d better come in.’

Robert Yellowlees was tall and stooped. He had steel grey hair, brushed neatly and parted on the left, a large fleshy face and the put-upon expression of a man who had something better to do. ‘Before the wind takes this door off,’ he added.

Violet apologised for dropping by unannounced but she was only in Ullapool for an hour or two and it seemed like an opportunity. He raised an eyebrow (
an opportunity for whom?
) and led her along a broad corridor with beige carpets and bare white walls. ‘Well, you’ve certainly brought the bad weather with you.’

They passed a sitting room in which there was a large screen television. The sound was off but the picture showed a golfer on a fairway somewhere lush and sunny. Violet said she hoped she hadn’t disturbed his viewing.

‘I don’t imagine a short break from it will do me any harm.’ He put the emphasis on ‘short’. By the time they reached the kitchen at the end of the corridor, Violet had formed an unfavourable impression of retired Chief Superintendent Robert Yellowlees.

She sat at the chair he pulled out from the table for her and refused his offer of coffee, tea or biscuits. She didn’t want to put him to any trouble.

‘Any more trouble,’ he corrected her and stood across the table from her, his back to the cooker. He had only caught half of her story at the door. The remainder was lost in the wind. ‘So, what is it you want?’

Violet explained again how her mother was a childhood friend of a woman called Megan Bates, how Violet had grown up hearing stories about her, how she had become fascinated by her life and, more particularly, the manner of her death. She had read in old newspaper cuttings references to an Inspector Robert Yellowlees and had found this address in the phone book. Had she got the right Yellowlees?

‘
You have,’ he replied with a resigned look, as if
he knew from experience where this was going and how
it would end.

‘I was wondering,’ she carried on, ‘if you remembered the case and whether there was any clue why a woman who had gone through nine months of pregnancy would kill herself and her baby. Didn’t you think it odd at the time, Mr Yellowlees?’

He let out a single snort of laughter at her naivety. ‘I don’t remember thinking it odd, Miss Wells. Policemen spend their entire careers seeing and dealing with things that don’t make any sense at all.’ He shrugged. The gesture meant there was nothing much else to say. In case she hadn’t understood it, he added, ‘You’d be better advised speaking to force headquarters about this. I am retired, after all.’

But he didn’t do what she’d been expecting, end the conversation and ask her to leave. He kept watching her, trying to work out why she was really there, his policeman’s instinct for possible trouble still strong. What else could it mean when an old case turned up unexpectedly on your doorstep? So he waited for Violet to say something.

‘Do you remember the investigation?’ she asked while she still had his full attention.

His eyes narrowed but he didn’t answer.

‘I’ve seen the newspaper reports,’ she went on, ‘but there’s nothing in them to explain why the police decided there were no suspicious circumstances.’

‘From memory,’ he spoke slowly, still watching her, ‘Megan Bates wrote a suicide letter.’

‘She left it in the cottage where she was living?’

‘No,’ Mr Yellowlees replied in a despairing tone which suggested she was beginning to exhaust his patience. ‘She posted it. If I remember correctly, it arrived a day or two after she was reported missing.’

‘Who was it addressed to?’

Mr Yellowlees let out another snort. ‘Oh come on Miss Wells, you don’t honestly expect me to remember the name do you?’

‘Well, can you remember what it said?’

‘As far as I can recall it was addressed to her married lover, who was the father of her unborn child. In the letter she expressed her distress at what she regarded as his betrayal. Apparently he couldn’t make up his mind whether to abandon his wife. Megan Bates threatened to make it impossible for him to see her or the child.’ He paused. ‘I think that answers why she did it, don’t you?’

Violet said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘What more would you like, Miss Wells?’

‘A body, I suppose.’

‘Well, we’d all have liked a body, but there was an eye witness who saw her going into the sea, and some of her possessions were washed ashore later.’

‘A hat and a bag, yes.’ Violet reached into her pocket for Mr Anwar’s newspaper cuttings. She found the one she wanted and read it out. ‘Inspector Yellowlees said all the evidence pointed to a terrible tragedy, an unhappy young woman who felt she had nothing left to live for.’ She looked at the former policeman. ‘Do you still think that?’

‘Well, I haven’t thought about it at all for many years, but since you ask, yes of course I do.’

‘You considered every possibility?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you at any time consider whether Megan Bates might have given birth to her child and
then
killed herself?’

He shook his head as she spoke but she carried on. ‘Let’s say she abandoned the child at a hospital somewhere and then returned to Poltown where she drowned herself. If your memory of the letter is correct isn’t that possible? That way she would have deprived the father of the child – wasn’t that what she said? – as well as carry out her threat to kill herself.’

Mr Yellowlees said, ‘There were no records of Megan Bates having given birth to a baby. We checked.’

‘What if she delivered the baby herself or someone helped her?’

‘What if, what if . . . where’s the evidence? We had evidence. She was seen going into the sea. We had her letter. We had her hat and bag from the beach.’

‘What if . . . ?’

Mr Yellowlees threw back his head in exasperation. ‘Enough,
enough Miss Wells. This is fantasyland.’ He went towards the
kitchen door, opened it wide and stood beside it. ‘Now
if you don’t mind,’ he added unnecessarily. ‘As I
said you’d be better speaking to someone at police
headquarters.’