Manny’s voice in her memory: ‘I heard too that he was paying the police off tae look the other way.’
Murdo Campbell making sure that they stayed one step ahead of the drug squad. Their get-out-of-jail-free card.
She moved the long, slim craft through the water with ease, taking long, slow strokes with her double-ended paddle, not losing momentum so the muscle usage on her arms was kept to the minimum, steering the kayak with firm but gentle pressure from her legs on the foot rests.
She found her heart lifting with pleasure. She was feeling happy. It wasn’t something that happened a great deal. It wasn’t that she was temperamentally depressed or bowed down by the weight of the world, she just rarely experienced joy. It didn’t worry her; it was one of those things. But right now, she was enjoying the kayak tremendously. She suddenly realised for the second time that she loved being out here in the wilds, that she had had more than enough of London. Here with rock, water, sea and air, she could be content. I’ve had enough of people, she thought. I need places like this.
There was a disturbance in the water. At first she thought it was a rock, some underwater outcrop that the sea was breaking on, but then a sleek grey head, round as a football, appeared, a seal, curious as to what was happening. She looked at its whiskers and eyes, whose doggy look recalled Wemyss. The seal stared at her, then gracefully dived; she watched its streamlined body power under her boat.
You don’t get that in Hampstead Bathing Ponds, she thought.
She recalled her night with McCleod. It had not only been highly enjoyable, it had made her realise how lonely she had been. To doze off and wake up next to another human being was something very pleasurable that she hadn’t experienced for a long time.
Then part of her mind whispered, ‘Don’t get too close, don’t invest too much, it’ll end in grief.’ Shut up, she told her mind. Am I not entitled to some happiness?
Now she could sense the current starting to tug at the kayak. She could feel the powerful muscles in her shoulders work as she moved parallel to the current. She felt a momentary twinge of unease at the fact she’d come out without a buoyancy aid. Donald had offered her his life jacket. But he weighed about eighteen stone. Fat bastard, she thought, and smiled again. Donald: sleazy, avaricious, eye perpetually on the main chance, was strangely endearing. His life jacket was far too big for Hanlon, so she’d left it behind. She was beginning to feel maybe she had been overconfident, always one of her weaknesses. Now she was starting to regret it.
You don’t mess around with the sea. Eva had found that out, so had Franca. She didn’t want to end up like them, fished out of the cold, fatal embrace of the Atlantic. I’d better not get too close to the whirlpool, she thought.
She could feel a breeze starting, scudding across the surface of the loch and agitating the water. She put the skeg, the daggerboard for the kayak, down, to give her greater control. The sleeve of her cagoule caught in the loch and cold water splashed down over her as her arm came up to paddle. It was a reminder, had she needed it, of how chilly the seawater was. In the kayak, the plastic apron taut over the cockpit, she was warm and dry. Let’s keep it that way, she thought to herself.
Now she could see the three buoys that marked the hotel lobster pots more clearly. Donald had told her they would help as a marker, as a pointer, in the direction of where the Corryvreckan was. Seemingly there was an undersea shelf around here before the bottom of the sea abruptly plunged to two hundred metres or so underneath the surface of the whirlpool. The thought of the vertiginous drop beneath her was dizzying, unsettling. So much water!
She paddled alongside the nearest bright orange buoy and held onto its mooring rope with one hand as she rested, stationary on the sea. On the horizon she could see a large yacht, its white sail taut. It reminded her of the smuggled cocaine that Kai and Murdo had been discussing. She had hazarded a guess at either yachts crossing the Atlantic from the Caribbean or drugs imported into the Republic of Ireland, shipped north and then a quick hop across the sea to Jura. Drop the drugs off at the buoys. You could then transfer them to a local boat, a boat like Big Jim’s. The smuggler’s craft could sail on with no cargo aboard, as clean as a whistle. HMRC alerted by harbourmasters, kept a keen eye on yachts sailing in from abroad. It would be a neat way to go about things.
It was then that she heard the engine.
She turned her head and saw the blunt bow of a small boat heading towards her. Her eyes picked out the JA letters visible on the white fibreglass hull, a local boat from Jura. She let go of the buoy and paddled away from it.
The sound of the engine grew nearer, ominous, throbbing. She could smell its fumes on the breeze, noticeable in the pure sea air.
She looked around and her heart sank. Big Jim standing by the side of the boat and Harriet at the wheel.
She remembered Donald’s words.
‘He went raj. He’ll be spending today getting absolutely pished… I’d avoid him if I were you.’
Big Jim had been aggressive enough when all she had done was relieve him of his car keys. He had an ugly temper, fuelled by alcohol. God alone knew what he would be like now that his head chef had left him in what would be the middle of the season. He’d probably blame her for
