these days, but I was fervent in my hope that she was well on her way and that she’d checked the brakes on her car.
I lit another fag. As well as the plaid – which I had promised to drop off at the harbourmaster’s office – the fishermen had left me some fish-paste sandwiches and a pack of Woodbine.
I was steadily working my way though the last of the ciggies when I heard the sound of a big car coming down the hill to the village. The headlights flashed on and off as it swung round the curves and finally blazed down the little street that bordered the quay. I stumbled towards it in my bare feet, like a refugee from the Highland Clearances.
She was standing waiting for me with the rear doors open. As I got close I could see it was a Riley, a Kestrel Sprite by the looks of the big headlamps and the three panels of glass down the side. A nice twin-cam 1.5-litre engine and wire-spoke wheels. Was there no end to the surprises from Miss Samantha Campbell?
‘God, Sam, you’re a sight for sore eyes.’
‘I can’t say the same for you, Highland Laddie. Look at your poor wee face.’ Her eyes were full and she only just stopped herself touching my torn cheek and chin. I hate women weeping over me. It usually means I’m in deeper trouble than I think.
‘I can assure you it wasn’t the fishes.’
She turned and dug into the back seat. ‘Here, try these. My dad’s.’
She held out a pair of Harris Tweed trousers and a thick cotton shirt. I slid my now shaking legs in and found the slacks were an inch or so too long and too wide at the waist. But a pair of braces did the trick and this beggar wasn’t feeling choosy. The shirt went on and with it, some real warmth. She dipped back into the car and held out a pair of shoes and a fancy pair of argyle socks.
The socks were luxury and the shoes – solid, well worn and polished so much they shone in the moonlight like fish scales – were only a size too big. Tightened laces soon did the trick, and I stood there, a new man, comprehensively baptised and reborn. Hallelujah. She’d watched as I went through my transformation. She sized me up and nodded.
She started up the Riley. The neat but powerful engine thrummed comfortingly in the night. As we drove, I worked backwards with my story. I told her about the ferry incident, then my meeting with Mrs Reid. I watched her jaw muscles work in anger and then open in incredulity.
‘Father Cassidy! She must be wrong. She’s confused. It’s not possible!’
‘Aye, maybe. But how do you explain my burial at sea?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Who except you and Cassidy knew where I was going? And I assume you’re on my side?’
She was silent for a while then she hit the wheel. ‘This can’t be right. It’s just too stupid for words.’
I let her concentrate on a negotiating a tight bend near Greenock. In the moonlight, the big cranes stalked the landscape down to the Clyde. I made a mental note to look up Firth of Clyde currents and tides when I was next in a library. Then I turned to her. She was staring intently ahead, every so often pushing her glasses more firmly up her nose. A good profile, but too many worry lines.
‘Unless I was being followed, only you, Father O’Brien and Father Patrick Cassidy knew where I was going. O’Brien seems an unlikely mastermind and has no obvious motive. And I’m as certain as I can be that I wasn’t followed. I’m trained to spot them, especially a couple of ogres from Dermot Slattery’s gang.’
‘Are you really saying that Father Cassidy set you up, was in league with Slattery, and…’ She stumbled for words.
‘And arranged to have me killed. It looks like it.’
‘But why would Cassidy give us the contact in Arran? Why make it easy for you?’
‘I wasn’t supposed to meet Mrs Reid.’
‘Oh… You were supposed to catch the morning ferry not the night before.’
‘And Fergie and his pal would have thrown me to the fishes on the way out. They couldn’t change their plans in time.’
‘But I knew where you were going. Even if you’d… disappeared. I would have been able to follow things up. Wouldn’t I?’
‘If they’d let you.’
Her jaw tightened again. We sped on in silence.
‘You realise what this would mean for our appeal?’
‘If we can make it stick. Mrs Reid is scared to death of something or someone. I think they’ve threatened her kids. They may even have them now. That’s why I don’t want to get the police involved just yet.’
‘How do we prove it, then?’
‘Let’s drop in on the good Father when the sun’s up, and see how many “Hail Marys” he’s doing for having me murdered. I don’t know how they do their sums, but I reckon he should be on his knees till Christmas.’
We garaged the car behind the house. She made me have a bath. Then she gave me a slab of Dundee cake and insisted I wash it down with a glass of her finest malt. I did as I was told. All she had to do was tuck me up in bed to finish the job, but whether she did or not, I don’t know. I fell asleep as if I’d been felled.
I woke flailing from the embrace of seaweed, my arms encrusted and stiff with barnacles. As I gasped to the surface, I found the bedclothes wrapped round me like winding sheets, and even when liberated, my limbs felt like I’d wrestled with the Loch Ness monster itself.
I eased my way to the bathroom and stood staring at my ruined face. The cut on my forehead from my fight in the pub toilet had opened again. But the worst was the livid horizontal weal that ran from the back of my head round under my ear and across the chin. Part of it was just bruising, but two-thirds was lifted raw skin. It wasn’t bleeding or oozing, though; the salt water had been a good antiseptic. Fergie was going to pay.
‘Brodie! There’s breakfast on the table if you can face it!’ she called from the hallway outside my door.
‘I can face it. But can it face me?’
I found a heavy tartan dressing gown hanging behind the door. I slipped it on over my pyjamas. I smelt again the same old man’s smell that came with the tweed trousers: a lifetime of tobacco smoke and humanity. I presented myself at the kitchen door. She couldn’t help put her hand to her mouth. Her eyes were wide. I guessed it wasn’t just her father’s dressing gown.
‘You poor wee soul, you.’ She gathered her wits and busied herself. ‘Sit here. Start with the tea, and breakfast will be in front of you in no time.’
I sat down, picked up my teacup and raised it high. ‘To Lipton’s.’
That got a laugh from her, and then she was as good as her word. A great plateful of powdered-egg omelette, black pudding and tattie scones was served up with a flourish. She must have used up her ration coupons for a week. She sat there sipping her own tea, elbows on the table watching me proprietorially as I devoured the lot. Toast was grilled and buttered for me. All I had to do was wash it down with the steady flow of life-giving tea.
Then came the iodine for the wounds. We couldn’t work out any sensible way of bandaging the jawline without my looking like a bad advert for tooth decay. So we let the wound be. It was healing fast after the tender ministrations of the Atlantic.
I had another bath to ease the aches, and dressed for our Sunday outing. There was a jacket that matched the trousers. A good fit, if a bit dated. And with the plain brown tweed tie I looked as if I’d strolled off the heather after an encounter with a stag, said stag winning the first round.
‘You’ll do,’ she said, eyeing me at the door.
‘I hope the holy Father doesn’t decide to put up a fight,’ I said, wincing as I tried to free up the strained muscles in my arms and shoulders. ‘You’ll have to wrestle him to the ground. Then these fine brogues of your dad’s will come into their own.’ I pointed down at the slabs of leather that would certainly outlive their present temporary owner, as well as their last.
‘There’s one other thing,’ she said, walking over to the sideboard and picking up a cloth-covered lump in two hands. She placed it on the table in front of me. It clunked.
I walked over and unwrapped it. It was a big brutal Webley Mark VI revolver, standard officer issue in the Great War. Its cylinder took six bone-crushing. 455 shells; its 6-inch barrel gave it an effective range of about 50 yards. Accurate with each shot if you could hold the damn thing down each time. It kicked back in the hand like a mule.
