alive …’ Royce grabbed the handrail with both hands and closed his eyes, then bent forward until his forehead rested on the rusty metal. ‘Oh thank God …’
‘Where du been, Arnie? Poor Constable Clark was worried: thought du’d gien da lang gaet.’
Burges grinned. ‘I got him.’
‘No.’ Benny’s mouth fell open, showing off more fillings than teeth. ‘Du got the greedy bugger?’
A nod towards the shed. ‘Inside.’
‘Ha, ha!’ Benny did a little dance, then scampered in to see for himself.
Royce straightened up, wiped a hand across his forehead, then turned and peered into the shed. ‘Bloody hell …’
The seal’s body hung, head down, over a sheet of tarpaulin, split from tail-flippers to throat, innards piled beneath it – steaming in the chill morning air. The smell of rancid fish was strong enough to make Royce gag a little. Couldn’t blame him.
He cleared his throat. ‘You shot it …’
‘Big bastard, isn’t he?’ Burges squatted by the pile of offal and cut free a slab of purple, about the size of a large hot-water bottle. He slapped the liver onto a chopping board. ‘Guess what’s for lunch.’
‘Ha!’ Benny loped out through the doors. ‘I’ll get the beer.’
Royce stuck his chest out. ‘Arnold Burges, I’m arresting you for violation of the Marine Scotland Act, 2011, making it illegal to shoot seals without—’
‘It’s OK.’ I put a hand on the constable’s shoulder. ‘I’ve already done this bit: he’s got a licence.’
Burges pointed at an official-looking letter pinned to the shed wall, beside the feed cage. ‘We’ve tried exclusion nets, tensioners, sonic scarers and the greedy bastard kept coming. Had about three thousand fish off us.’ He squatted back down and hacked out what looked like a kidney. ‘Got what he deserved.’
Burges and I sat on the walkway with our backs against the shed, out of the wind, bathed in sunshine. The view on this side of the barge was spectacular: mountains on both sides, sweeping down to the sparkling water, islands in the middle distance like emeralds on blue silk, the Atlantic Ocean a line of hazy sapphires beyond.
A rattling whoosh came from inside – Benny and Royce tipping bags of fish feed into the metal hopper. It was warm, in the sun. And the smell of cat biscuits wasn’t that bad once you got used to it. Better than disembowelled seal at any rate.
Burges looked out at the rippling water, his eyes swollen and pink. ‘Can you believe we actually thought the cards would stop when we moved?’
‘I’m sorry you had to find out like this. Someone should have told you yesterday when we … identified Lauren.’
He drained his can of Stella, scrunched it in his car-crusher hand and dumped it on the wood beside him. Cracked open another one. ‘Been out here since yesterday morning, trying to catch that frigging seal …’ He bent forwards, head hanging over his gut. ‘Does Danielle know? Did someone tell her?’
‘I don’t—’
‘Can’t get a mobile signal out here. Should phone her. See if she’s OK …’
We sat in silence.
Burges knocked back a mouthful of lager. Wiped a hand across his eyes. ‘How? How does he find us? How are we supposed to …’ A sniff. Another drink. ‘Can we bury her? Our Lauren: do we get her back, can we bury her?’
‘They’ll release the remains soon as they can. You’ll get her back.’
He nodded and a tear plopped onto his bloodstained T-shirt. ‘We thought she’d run away from home. Thought we’d done something. Danielle still blames herself. Spent months searching every street in Edinburgh, London, Glasgow – posters in shop windows, pestering the papers to print her photo, talking to every homeless bastard and junkie we could find.’ He gave a little laugh, then bit his bottom lip. ‘Thought she’d just come back one day. Then that first card arrives: happy fucking birthday …’
‘Yeah.’ I stared out over the water. ‘My daughter, Rebecca, went missing five years ago. She was nearly thirteen … Never heard from her again.’
Burges nodded. ‘Hurts, doesn’t it? Wondering if it was your fault.’ He stared at the tin in his hand. ‘At least you still get to hope.’
No. That died four years ago with card number one.
I took another mouthful of luke-warm coffee. ‘I meant what I said: Henry Forrester did everything he could. We all did. Still are.’
The diesel generator chugged and rumbled into life, then a clunk came from inside the shed, followed by a deep rattling sound. A pipe jutted out of the shed wall, connected to a thick plastic hose that disappeared into the loch. It shivered and shook, then out in the middle of one of the salmon cages a spray of food leapt into the air, then pattered down on the water. The surface boiled with fish.
Burges finished his second can and cracked open a third. ‘She was our little girl …’
‘Henry did his best, he really did. Lauren was missing for over a year before we even found out she was a victim. Twelve months for everyone to get hazy on the details. Even the CCTV footage gets erased eventually. It’s not his fault.’
Burges rested his arms on his knees. ‘Every year we get another card, and it’s like a knife: gouging … How are we supposed to deal with that?’ He drank, chugging back at least half the can in one go. ‘Henry Forrester doesn’t deserve to forget. And neither do you.’
A dirty blue van sat outside Henry’s house, the legend ‘DAVIE’S DA JOINER!’ painted down the side in Gothic script. A little man was hammering a large sheet of plywood over the lounge window, whistling as he battered in the nails.
I let myself in, not bothering to wave goodbye to Royce, and followed the sound of voices into the kitchen.
Henry leaned back on his stool, sleeves rolled up, one hand resting on top of his little pot belly, the other wrapped around a tumbler. Sheba wheezed and twitched on the floor by the oven, dreaming old dog dreams.
Dr McDonald was hunched over her glass, elbows on the table, fingers drumming a random beat on the wooden surface, curls hiding her face. Her glasses were sitting beside an open bottle of Isle of Jura, the lenses almost opaque with fingerprints. ‘I think … I think Amber O’Neil’s the moss important, he picked … picked her because she looked like Her, I mean whoever it was hurted him … have … have you ever been hurted by a thirteen-year-old girl?’ Then a belch. ‘Oops …’
Henry took a sip and smacked his lips. ‘Yes, but have you considered the possibility that she was a cipher?’
‘Ooh.’ McDonald’s head snapped up. ‘I han … han thought of that, a cipher …’ A little crease formed between her eyebrows.
