Flotsam and Jetsam

Title Page
Dedication
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
By the Same Author
Copyright

He had risen at three, well before the dawn came creeping. Time enough to prepare his porridge and drink his first dram of the day. The fact that he took it with hot water and a teaspoonful of Cascara Sagrada in the guise of a medicinal tonic for his bowels was his way of soothing his conscience and denying the fact that he had a drink problem.

With his tonic by his side he set about preparing his telescope to scan the horizon. The tide would have turned half an hour ago, making it a perfect time to see what fruits and treasures the sea had brought in.

‘I will take the
Sea Beastie
out later and check out the Cruadalach Isles. I am feeling in my bones that it will be a good day for beachcombing.’ He scratched his grizzled beard and glanced with a grin at the calendar on the nearby desk. ‘It should be today, at any rate.’

He sipped his drink then straddled the high stool in eager anticipation.

The darkness began to recede as the rising sun broke the horizon.

As usual the heaps of assorted seaweeds became visible. Then the rocks began peeping above the surf as the departing waters went out quickly. It was then that he saw it at the water’s edge, half in and half out of the water. It was long and light coloured. At first he thought it was just another piece of flotsam or jetsam. Timber from a crate or some sort of packaging. Then by the shape he thought it could be a dead seal.

‘Bloody hell! Why can’t they go and die on someone else’s beach!’ he grumbled, swinging his telescope round and peering through the eyepiece.

‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed, adjusting the focus. ‘That’s no dead seal, but it looks dead enough.’

Through the telescope he saw the naked body of a young woman lying face down, her long blonde hair ebbing too and fro in the puddle around her, the receding waters still playing over her buttocks and legs.

He straightened up and frowned as he pulled a ready-made roll-up from behind his ear and casually lit it with his old Zippo.

‘I suppose I had better make sure she is dead,’ he grunted to himself. ‘Bloody inconvenient, that’s what it is.’

He poured another dram, but omitted the Cascara Sagrada this time. He reconciled it with his conscience that this was not a normal occurrence so he would permit himself some leeway. He smoked and drank for a few minutes then stubbed the cigarette out and drained the glass.

‘Sorry, lassie,’ he said, rising and stretching his aching muscles. ‘One thing is sure: I can’t have you cluttering up my beach. You’ll have to go.’

He wheezed as he laughed. Then he felt a spasm of pain in his chest. It shot up into his neck and down the left arm.

‘And this bloody angina is inconvenient too!’ He groaned. ‘Oh not now! Not now!’

The pain tightened and he reached for his phone. ‘Must – get – help!’ he said through gritted teeth. He glanced back out of the window at the body and the effect of the receding surf. It was just as if a frilly white dress was being peeled off her to leave her naked body on the beach.

‘Damned – fool – of – a woman!’ he gasped. ‘Gah!’

Inspector Torquil McKinnon, ‘Piper’ to most people on West Uist, had been practising his pipes in St Ninian’s Cave. It was something he tried to do at least once a week. On those days, although not normally an early-riser, he would get up with the first light, have a frugal breakfast then ride down to the cave before he went in to the police station in Kyleshiffin. He found it an excellent way of problem-solving.

For ten minutes he ran through his repertoire of warm-up exercises, to get his finger movements right. He played a string of ever more complex movements – leumluaths, taorluaths, gracenotes and birls. Then he played a strathspey and reel, then a hornpipe before concentrating on the piobaireachd, the pibroch.

The great basalt columned St Ninian’s Cave had been used by generations of island pipers, including Torquil’s uncle, the Reverend Lachlan McKinnon. They had lived together in the old manse ever since Torquil’s parents had died in a boating accident when he was a youngster and Lachlan had been appointed as his guardian. He remembered the day when Lachlan had taken him and his pipes and introduced him to the
cave’s special magic. The young Torquil had hoped that he would one day follow in his uncle’s footsteps and become a champion piper and winner of the Silver Quaich. Much to their mutual pleasure he duly did, just a year before, so that there now resided a Silver Quaich on each end of the mantelpiece in the manse’s sitting-room.

Nature had carved this sea cave beautifully, so that it seemed to hold a sound perfectly for a moment so that the piper was able to hear the correct pitch of his playing. It was a natural tape recorder for a musician.

Suddenly a sour note from a faulty fingering grated around the cave.

‘Och! It is all rubbish that you are playing, Torquil McKinnon. You are playing like a constipated crow today,’ he chided himself as he let the blow pipe drop from his lips then gave the bag a sharp chop so that it was instantly silenced as the reeds closed, rather that producing the amateurish moaning as the bag slowly deflated that bagpipe loathers likened to the death throws of a dying sheep. He shook his head and bit his lower lip.

‘Too much on my mind, that is the trouble.’

He was a tall twenty-nine year old man with coal-black hair, high cheekbones and a slightly hawk-like nose. He had been the youngest inspector in the whole of the Western Isles and to many a West Uist lass he had been considered a desirable and eligible male. That had changed relatively recently when he lost his heart to Sergeant Lorna Golspie. Things had been so good between them over the last few weeks until his superior officer had thrown a spanner in the works.

Torquil felt his temper begin to rise, but he suppressed it quickly. He stood for a moment and reverently bent his head, much as he would in his uncle’s church.

‘Tapadh leat
! Thank you!’ he said to the great columned chamber, itself like a church. The Padre himself had taught him to show respect to St Ninian and his cave for in a way it was the best teacher a piper could ever have.

With his pipes under his arm he left the cave and crunched up the kelp-covered shingle beach towards the lay-by above where he had parked his classic Royal Enfield Bullet 500.

‘Damn Superintendent Lumsden!’ he said to himself. ‘Why could you not just let us have some time together instead of seconding her to the Lewis station. As if they didn’t have enough—’

He stopped short when he heard the moan. It sounded like a dog whimpering.

He spun round and looked in the direction of the sea. The tide had turned some time ago and was going out, exposing heaps of seaweed-covered rocks and leaving countless pools.

Floating in one such pool was a piece of timber. To his horror he saw that a young three-coloured collie, little more than a puppy was lying sprawled on the timber, lashed to it with several loops of thick cord. Its fur was soaked and spiky and it looked exhausted. Its weary eyes were fixed on him and it raised its head and whimpered pitifully.

‘Creideamh!
Faith!’ Torquil exclaimed, laying his bagpipes down on the shingle and sprinting over towards the pool where the timber-bound dog was bobbing up and down. ‘Who would do such a thing. They meant to drown you?’

Without hesitation he jumped into the pool despite his heavy-buckled Ashman boots and waded over to retrieve the timber and the animal. He hoisted the timber and the dog out of the water and waded back. Once he had climbed out, he examined the cord, observing as he did that it had been looped around the dog’s body several times and tied with knots that
he was unfamiliar with. They certainly did not seem to be common seamen’s knots, yet they had been competently formed and were intended not to slip.

‘It looks like someone knew what they were doing, my wee friend,’ he said. He pulled out a penknife and sliced the ropes distant from the knots. He had half expected the dog to make a bolt for freedom, but it just lay on the timber and continued to moan. Then it started to shiver.

‘You are too exhausted to move, I think. And you must have been in the water a long time judging by the state of you. I am surprised that you have survived the cold.’ And after reassuringly stroking its coat and trying to get some of the excess water from its fur, he pulled off the navy-blue Arran jumper that was the only concession to a uniform that he made and wrapped the dog in it. Stuffing the ropes into his pocket he carried it and the timber back up the beach. Then he tossed the timber above the high water-line and picked up his pipes.

‘A good thing I have two panniers on the Bullet,’ he told the shivering creature a few moments later as he stowed first the dog into one, then his pipes into the other carrier. He pulled on his gauntlets, wrapped his McKinnon tartan scarf about his neck and pulled on his Cromwell helmet. He grinned at the steadily rising sun.

‘And a good thing that you are there to warm us up, master sun, otherwise I would not relish riding to Kylshiffin in my
T-shirt.’
Then, nodding at the dog, ‘We’ll have a better look at you back at the station, my wee friend. I would like to know who your owner is and why he or she tried to murder you.’

He kicked the Bullet into action and moments later he opened up the throttle and was accelerating along the snaking headland road past Loch Hynish on his way to Kyleshiffin.

 He had been cross about Superintendent Lumsden, but
attempted murder in any form, even of a dog, made his blood boil.

Ordinarily the Padre, as Torquil’s uncle, the Reverend Lachlan McKinnon, was known by most folk, was careful about the times he played golf in the summer. While the early hours after dawn were a good time to play in the autumn and the spring, he tended to tee-off later in the day during the summer months. But when one had a guest priest in the parish it was another matter. One had to be hospitable and play nine holes when they wanted to. When the guest played off a suspiciously high handicap and was well known for liking a bet on a game there was even more reason to be accommodating. Lachlan was a canny player himself and he hoped that his local knowledge of the course would come in useful.

So far the match was all square. They had teed off at 6 and played seven holes before 7.15.

‘Sure, it is a real golfing paradise that you have here on West Uist, Lachlan,’ said the Reverend Kenneth Canfield, the chaplain to the University of the Highlands as he lined up a six foot putt then gently stroked the ball into the hole. ‘Par four,’ he said with glee, nimbly bending and collecting his ball.

He was a slim, wiry man in his late forties, a former Scottish Universities squash champion. He had a good eye for a ball, but had only been playing golf for about five years. Lachlan thought that his middle handicap belied his ability and suspected that he ‘protected it’ at his home club. The collection of trophies that he had seen in his study when he had last visited him in Inverness seemed to support that.

‘Aye, it may not be St Andrews, but it is a fair test of golf, Kenneth.’ He lined up his own putt and similarly tapped the ball in. ‘And a par for me too. Still all square. Now for the long eighth. I warn you, it is a wee tester.’

Lachlan was proud of the ten-acre plot of undulating dunes and machair that he and several other local worthies had years before transformed into the St Ninian’s Golf Course. Using the natural lie of the land they had constructed six holes, each with at least two potential hazards. The fairways were tractor-mown once a week, the greens were sheep-grazed to near billiard table smoothness and the bunkers (in the beginning at least) had been excavated by generations of rabbits. Each hole had three separate tee positions, each one giving its route to the hole a special name in both English and Gaelic, thereby allowing players the choice of playing a conventional eighteen holes or any combination they chose.

The Padre had tended his flock for more years than he cared to think about. He was now sixty-four years of age and especially proud of the fact that he played off a golf handicap exactly one eighth of his age, having been a single figure handicapper all of his adult life.

He was a tall man, with a mop of shaggy white hair that seemed to defy the application of brush or comb, who sported a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. He was dressed in his usual attire which he wore both on and off the golf course; a green West Uist tweed jacket, corduroy trousers, black shirt and a dog-collar.

They crossed from the green to the eighth tee. A stone marker had a plaque, proclaiming that the hole was called Carragh, the Pillar, because of an ancient standing stone that rose out of the rough on the left of the fairway.

‘You will see that the hole plays entirely differently from this
tee, Kenneth,’ Lachlan volunteered as he shoved a tee peg in the ground and pulled out his trusty two wood. ‘You will need to keep to the fairway if you want to make sure that you avoid the Pillar.’

He addressed the ball then swung freely and effortlessly. There was a satisfying click of wood on ball then he held his follow-through and watched the ball start out right then slowly draw back towards the middle of the fairway. It bounced then ran on for another forty yards, rolling just beyond the Pillar.

‘I don’t know how you manage to hit the ball so far and so accurately with those old wooden-headed clubs of yours,’ Kenneth said, with an admiring shake of the head. ‘Good drive!’

‘Thank you, Kenneth,’ Lachlan replied. ‘The truth is that I have never fancied those newfangled metal woods. It sounds like you are hitting the ball with a tin can.’

The Reverend Canfield teed up his ball. ‘But at least they are quite forgiving. They have a bigger sweet spot and I think they make a difference in length.’ He pulled out his huge-headed driver. ‘In fact, I am going to ignore your advice and try the tiger line. If I can cut off a bit of the dog-leg I could maybe get my trusty eight iron to the green with my second shot. Then with the stroke you are giving me on the hole….’

He winked meaningfully then addressed his ball. He swung fast and hard, fairly relishing the noise that Lachlan so scorned. The ball shot off in the direction of the Pillar, easily clearing it to land in the short rough near a thicket of yellow blossomed gorse bushes on the left of the fairway, a good thirty yards further on than Lachlan’s ball.

‘Excellent shot,’ Lachlan enthused. ‘Fortune favours the brave. You should have an easy shot to the green with your second. Just watch your footing because it tends to be pretty
damp over there.’

He pulled out a battered old briar pipe from his breast pocket and started stuffing its bowl with tobacco from a dilapidated yellow oilskin pouch. He struck a light and grinned with amusement as he watched the Reverend Canfield striding after his ball.

You are going to need a bit of good fortune, he mischievously thought to himself. We’ll see if you are as fast as you used to be on the squash court.

He ambled on in the direction of his own ball, keeping an eye on his playing partner. He saw him tramp into the rough to find his ball. Then he selected a club from his bag and stood behind the ball with his club held dangling at arm’s length, like a plum-bob to get the line to the green.

And, just as the Padre had suspected, it happened. A dark hazy cloud rose from the rough, moving outwards from the gorse bushes towards the Reverend Canfield. Within seconds it engulfed him.

‘Gah! Midges!’ he cried, frantically scratching his exposed skin. Then he let forth a stream of invective quite unbecoming to one of his cloth.

Despite himself, Lachlan chuckled. Fearful that Kenneth Canfield should hear him he puffed harder on his pipe and soon had billows of smoke around him. ‘Are you being attacked, Kenneth?’ he called rhetorically.

Kenneth was swiping at the swarm of midges to no avail. In despair he lashed out at the ball with his club and foozled it a few yards ahead. With a scowl he shouldered his bag, ran on to the ball and swiped again, with similar result. Eventually, after three more such attempts, he made it to the fairway, finally leaving the midge swarm behind him.

Lachlan knocked an easy five iron into the heart of the green.

‘I wish I had known that you had a midge problem over on that side of the course,’ Kenneth said plaintively.

Lachlan noticed the suspicious glint in his eye, but feigned surprise. ‘Oh well, Kenneth, you are in the Outer Hebrides. The whole of the west of Scotland has a midge problem as you know. All you can do is try to avoid them.’

‘Or keep them away with a foul-smelling pipe!’

Lachlan laughed. ‘With all these new anti-smoking laws the golf course is about the only place left where you are allowed to smoke. The fact that the
meanbh-chuileag,
the “tiny fly” doesn’t like my tobacco is quite fortuitous.’ He watched as Kenneth selected a seven iron and addressed his ball.

‘Maybe you should have checked on Dr Digby Dent’s Midge Index before coming out this morning?’ Lachlan suggested.

To his surprise Kenneth glared at him, and then took a wild swipe at his ball. The result was inevitable. He hit a duck hook that sent the ball arcing viciously in the direction of the rough and more gorse bushes on the left. It disappeared into them.