up on the stainless steel. ‘Pass me three of those, will you?’
I placed three glasses on the breakfast bar. ‘Denis Chakrabarti wasn’t your fault.’
‘Yes he was. You know it, I know it, and the six little boys he raped and dismembered know it. Philip Skinner’s widow knows it too.’ Henry slugged a generous measure into each tumbler, then held one up. ‘A toast: to new beginnings. May Dr McDonald not make the same mistakes I did.’
She stared at the glass in front of her. ‘It’s not even eight o’clock yet, I mean it’s a lovely offer, but I don’t know if—’
‘If you’re going to climb inside the mind of the monster, you should really go prepared, don’t you think?’ A smile pulled at his cheeks; the glass trembled in his hand.
I put a hand on his shoulder, it was hard and knobbly beneath the jacket. Just bones and whisky in a funeral suit. ‘Look … talk it over with Dr McDonald, OK? Be a sounding board – you don’t have to do anything.’
‘I don’t—’
‘We need your help, Henry. If you’re still blaming yourself for Chakrabarti, maybe this is your chance to redeem yourself.’
‘He doesn’t want to help, he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the case, what am I supposed to do, I mean I can’t—’
‘Talk to him. Work whatever freaky mojo you did on the ferry crew.’ Outside, through the shattered lounge window, Scalloway harbour glittered in the sunshine – a bright-red fishing boat chugged out to sea, stalked by a cloud of whirling seagulls. ‘Look, we don’t have time to dick about up here, OK? Flirt with him, flatter him, dazzle him with your brilliance, I don’t care: get him to help.’
‘But he doesn’t want to—’
‘Top of your class, remember?’ I pulled on my jacket. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’
She sagged, stripy arms hanging by her sides. ‘But, Ash—’
‘God’s sake: you’re worse than Katie, and she’s twelve.’ I grabbed Dr McDonald’s shoulders and spun her around, so she was facing the kitchen. Gave her a push. ‘Now go.’
She scuffed her Hi-tops across the carpet.
When she’d closed the door behind her, I headed outside. Royce was waiting in the patrol car with the engine running. I squeezed into the passenger seat – at least it was nice and warm in here. ‘Tell me about Arnold Burges.’
The constable pursed his lips, leaned forward, voice turned down to a whisper. ‘Came up here from London four years ago: been hassling Dr Forrester ever since. We’ve got him … God, what, about twenty, thirty times for public nuisance and destruction of private property. But the Doc never wants to press charges. Daft, eh? I think he feels sorry for him, you know, after what happened to his daughter.’
I pulled on my seatbelt. ‘Drive.’
‘… and the time before that, he took a sledgehammer to Dr Forrester’s wife’s headstone. Smashed it to bits … Here we go.’ Royce pulled the Fiesta into the side of the road. Mountains surrounded a slash of water, glowing green and blue in the early morning sun. A handful of white cottages dotted the landscape, looking out across the sea loch to the village of Calders Lea. ‘That’s the cages there.’ He pointed at a collection of three wide, wheel-like things lying in the middle of the water, made from a framework of black pipes. Some sort of large floating shed was moored between them.
‘You sure Burges is there?’
A shrug. ‘It’s Wednesday, so he should be … Less he’s got a day off, or something.’
Royce drove on another couple of hundred yards, then took a narrow road on the left, down the hill towards a collection of bus-shelter-sized offshore containers in various shades of rust-flecked blue with a logo painted in white on the side – three salmon swimming in a circle around the words ‘CALDERS LEA AQUACULTURE LTD ~ DA FISH FOR DEE!’
A wooden hut sat next to a concrete slipway that disappeared into the water. Royce parked alongside it. ‘How’s your sea legs?’
‘He going to have friends?’
‘Depends how drunk Benny got last night.’ Royce squinted, held a hand over his eyes – shading out the morning sun. ‘Talk of the devil …’
A wide boat with a small wheelhouse was brrrrr-ing its way through the sapphire blue water, making for the slipway. Two minutes later it bumped against the concrete and a stick-figure of a man in blue overalls and black wellington boots hopped out, holding one end of a thick rope. His eyes were sunken and pink, underlined with heavy purple bags, a threadbare woollen hat perched on top of his head. Long arms, short legs, big ears and a wild mess of ginger hair.
Royce held up a hand. ‘Benny.’
‘Constable Clark!’ A lopsided grin and an almost impenetrable Shetland accent. ‘Whatever it was, me darlin’, I didn’t do it. Was home all night with ma sister.’
‘Yeah, I bet. You busy?’
‘Never aff o’ da go, you know?’
‘Arnold about?’
‘On da barge.’ He tilted his head to one side, contorted his eyebrows. ‘He do it again?’
‘Yeah.’
Sigh. ‘Less an dule … Give us a minute to load some feed, and I’ll gie dee a hurl.’ He clomped over to one of the containers and unlocked the padlock, then creaked the door open. It was stacked full of paper sacks – like the ones tatties came in. A smell, like cat biscuits, wafted out of the container.
Benny hefted a bag onto his shoulder and shuffled back to the boat, hauling up the droopy backside of his overalls. ‘Du can lend a hand if du wants.’
The boat clunked against the floating platform. It was about the size of a boxing ring with a big wooden shed taking up almost all of the available surface area, barely enough room around the edge for a walkway and handrail.
Benny switched off the engine, then threw a line around a cleat in front of the shed doors, wrapping it tight. ‘I lichtit til him: leave the poor auld fart alone, but dis he listen til me? Course he doesn’t.’ Benny dragged a sack of feed from the bottom of the boat and thumped it down on the walkway. ‘Arnie? ARNIE, DU’s GOT VISITORS!’ Benny hefted another sack. ‘ARNIE?’
Nothing.
It was still and silent out here in the middle of the sea loch; sunlight glinted off the water all around us.
I clambered up onto the walkway. The shed door was lying wide open. A metal hopper took up nearly half of the building, attached to some sort of engine and a length of pipe that disappeared out through the wall. A small table and a couple of folding chairs. A wee diesel generator, portable TV, kettle, mugs, microwave, and other assorted bits and bobs. Not exactly luxurious.
