‘It’s a big island.’
‘I think I can help,’ said the priest, who seemed freshly animated. ‘I know the priest in Lamlash. Let me make a phone call.’ He was digging into the mysterious folds of his cassock as he spoke. He retrieved a small diary and flicked through the pages. ‘May I use your phone?’
Sam and I looked at each other as he dialled and got put through to his clerical pal on Arran.
‘Now that’s what I call divine intervention,’ I said sotto voce and got an admonishing look over her glasses.
The Arran priest was to call us back in the morning with news. Sam and I wandered back to her house, and en route I prevailed on her to let me buy supper, no expense spared. We picked up speed on the last leg of our journey so that our newspaper-wrapped feast was still warm.
In the posh dining room of her parents’ home, on the massive oak table, beneath paintings of rampant stags and highland skies, we made two paper pokes and divvied up the fish and chips. The irresistible stink of salt and vinegar perfumed the air and we licked our stained fingers like naughty kids. I don’t know if it was the carefree attack on the fish suppers or the glimmer of hope I’d brought, but Samantha Campbell cast off her glum schoolmarm air and looked positively girlish.
‘It must have felt strange going back to your old police station.’
‘Like using H. G. Wells’s time machine. Same faces, same low morals. It even smelt the same!’
Sam suddenly went quiet. ‘But that’s what we’re up against. Same dour policemen who’d rather see an innocent man hang than admit they’re wrong.’
‘So you really believe he’s innocent?’
‘Yes. And you sound as though you’re coming round?’
I sighed. ‘I was just checking that you did. That it wasn’t just lawyer’s platitudes.’
‘I didn’t know you then. And I’m not sure I do now. Well? Do you think Hugh did it?’
‘Nothing about the crime scene adds up. And where’s the motive? Saying that, I believe anyone is capable of anything.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
I sure as hell did but I didn’t want to explain. Didn’t want to drag the whole aching mess out on the table. My post-War special duties. Visiting the newly liberated camps. Using my language training to interrogate SS officers and camp commandants. Getting witness statements from some of the wretches who survived. Adding to my already swollen pack of nightmares. I slammed the barriers down and turned the question back on her.
‘I’m just amazed that in your line of work you haven’t become as jaundiced as an ex copper like me. How do you manage it?’
She thought for a bit, and daintily sucked the last traces of salt from her fingers. ‘My parents. They were always optimistic about folk. Always ready to see the good side. Even my father.’
‘Even?’
She looked embarrassed for a moment, then defiant. ‘He was Procurator Fiscal in Glasgow before the war.’
I smiled. ‘So this is a family business.’
‘Sort of. I thought it was time the Campbells supported the other side for a change. Even things out a wee bit.’
‘Do you mind my asking what happened? I mean…’
‘How I became an orphan, Mr Brodie?’
My big mouth. ‘Sorry, Sam. It’s none of my business. Forget it.’
She got up and left the room. I heard a tap running. I wondered how much I’d offended her. Was she off to bed? She came back, drying her hands on a towel. She flung me a warm wet flannel and a hand towel. I cleaned myself up.
She went over to the big sideboard and opened the front. She pulled out a bottle of Scotch and two cut-glass tumblers and placed them on the table. Then she went back and pulled out a drawer. She took out what looked like a family album and sat it on the table beside the whisky. She put her glasses on, opened the album towards the end and pushed it round so I could see it. There was a photo of a middle-aged couple smiling in front of a loch. They wore rough tweeds tucked into long socks, hiking boots and backpacks. The woman was simply an older version of Sam; fine white hair tied back, same intelligent eyes challenging the viewer. The man – her father, clearly – had bequeathed her his strong chin and mouth.
‘They were on a walking holiday by Loch Lomond. Dad’s favourite sort of holiday. Summer of thirty-five. I was minding the fort here. The day after this photo was taken they took a boat across to Inchmurrin Island and a squall got up. They were found two days later, along with the boat owner and his nine-year-old son. All drowned. You wouldn’t think you could drown in a pleasure boat on an inland loch, would you? Such a stupid waste. So stupid.’ She took off her specs and brushed her treacherous eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘Me too, Brodie. Me too. A bloody waste. And I’ve got all this.’ She waved her hand round the room. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. It’s none of your business.’
‘Look, Sam, it’s my fault-’
‘Shut up, Brodie, and pour the Scotch. We’ve got work to do.’
NINETEEN
We managed to leave some whisky in the bottle, so morning wasn’t too spiked with remorse. I followed Sam into her office to wait for news from our clerical spy across the water. I made use of my time by checking through rail and steamship timetables. Just before noon Samantha came through looking flushed.
‘Looks like we’re on,’ she said. ‘Lamlash. A new family arrived there in January. Mother and four kids. They’re renting a place. The priest there will take you to them. He’s been told to say nothing to them before you arrive. He’s expecting you off the first ferry in the morning.’
I took the slip. ‘Cassidy’s come up trumps. Let’s hope it’s the right family. And that they can be persuaded to talk. And, finally, that they have something to talk about.’
‘We’re desperate, Brodie. This has to be a lead.’
I nodded, wishing I hadn’t forced the optimism to retreat from her eyes.
‘Look, we can speed things up a bit. I can just about catch the last ferry from Ardrossan. I’ll be in Brodick by seven o’clock. I’ll stay overnight and catch the bus round to Lamlash first thing. It’ll gain us half a day.’
She was nodding, ‘Fine, just fine. Here’s some money for expenses.’ She handed me a big white fiver. ‘Go on. I can put it down as trial costs.’
I took it from her reluctantly, but glad enough for the contribution to my dwindling cash supply. In preparation for the possible jaunt, I stuffed a spare pair of socks, pants and a clean collar into the pockets of my coat. My safety razor and a toothbrush were in my jacket pocket.
I stepped out into a cloudy afternoon with a rain-tinged breeze blowing from the west. I thought I could smell the sea salt in the air but it was no doubt just smoke from the shipyards. The tram took me to Central Station and I caught the train to Ardrossan. The Glen Sannox was a turbine steamer, not a magical paddle steamer. But it reminded me of the Duchess of Argyll, that my dad took me on just after the Great War. The Sannox’s twin funnels and sleek prow made me every bit excited as the small boy of twenty five years ago. I half expected to hear my dad shout out to me to hang on to the railing as we eased our way out of the harbour and into the Firth of Clyde between the Ayrshire coast and the long hump of Arran island. This boat was quick too; its turbines sent the water racing away behind us in a long furrow. We were aiming straight across the firth at Brodick, bang in the middle of the east coast of the island.
By now the rain was whipping steadily into our faces from out of the Atlantic and the waves were slapping grey and white along our bows. The boat began plunging into the swell and I decided a cup of tea and a fag was called for to steady the stomach. I sat looking out of the splashed windows. Before the war the Firth of Clyde was thick with steamers, cargo ships and the occasional liner. Schools of grey warships would ply these waters: new ones fresh out of the yards or older ones being patched up and sent back out again to face the wolf packs that infested the waters around our coast and all the way across to America. The ferries themselves were clad in heavy metal and given popguns to defend themselves and sent off to look for submarines. I shuddered to think of dying in the slate-cold sea. Was it worse to be on a surface ship with its bows staved in by a torpedo? Or in a submarine with depth charges booming in the deep and blowing in the plates that kept the sea out? Drowning was one thing, but being trapped inside a metal tomb as it slid to the bottom of the Atlantic, water gushing in through sprung rivets, was my idea of hell.