“How long until they reach her?” Not long, surely? The Coastguard had two Sikorsky s-92s based here, and they weren’t just big. They were also fast. They could hit two hundred miles an hour if they needed to.
“It’s a short flight. It just depends on how quickly they can get in the air. Fifteen to thirty minutes, tops.”
“We’ll come up in a few minutes then, if that’s alright.”
“Good, thanks. No need to knock. I’ll be expecting you.” Shay waited until she’d gone before beginning to work through all the other tabs he had open. “I don’t want to shut any of these down. I’ll just hide them and silence all the alerts temporarily.”
“Alright. I’m going to nip to the loo before we head up.” I collected his tea things and the empty box to take out while I was at it. If Jeanie had suffered a mechanical failure, why hadn’t anyone appeared on deck to see what the problem was? I flattened the box and put it in the recycling bin. Maybe Butler had taken ill? Was he alone on that boat after all? I hoped not. There had been a good chance that he was giving Jordan and Phelps a lift out of here, or so I’d thought.
I put the last of our little batch of washing up into the draining rack and dried my hands. Had Phelps even reported his sighting of ‘Sean Osborne’ at the distillery to Butler? From the reading material I’d gone through on Malcolm Locke, their boss didn’t seem the type to order a hit on anyone. Given his chosen profession, Locke appeared to be unusually non-confrontational and non-violent. It seemed far more likely that he’d just shut the operation down for now and watch and wait. Well, one thing at a time. Our first priority right now was dealing with the recovery of the boat and anyone on board her. I made my quick pit stop and went back to collect my cousin.
Upstairs, Trish pulled her chair round to our side of the desk so she could watch the drifting boat with us. Her VHF relay to the Coastguard station crackled into life long before we saw any sign of the approaching helicopter on Shay’s screen.
“CGOC Stornoway, this is Rescue 948. We have our drifting vessel in sight. We are not receiving any distress signal from her. We’ll try to reach her on the open channels. Over.”
“Acknowledged Rescue 948. This is OIC Randall. We’ll await your next communication. Over.” There was nothing but white noise on our frequency for a minute after that.
“She’s not responding, Randall.” Our bird came into view, flying in from the West, and took up a hovering stance above the Jeanie. The Sikorsky looked enormous to me. She was a seventeen metre long red and white helicopter with a bulging fuselage that was over five metres wide. She dwarfed our little police airbuses. We couldn’t see much of the boat sticking out beneath her hovering bulk now. “No sign of movement onboard. We may have a medical emergency down there. Do we have authorisation to board? Over.”
“That’s a go, Rescue 948. Over.” Trish stirred slightly.
“They’ll winch two of the team down to assess the situation. Let’s just hope they aren’t met with a hostile reaction when they hit the deck. A thought that had not even occurred to me, although it certainly should have. I waited nervously for the next communication to come through, which wasn’t for several, stretched out minutes.
“We have one adult male, deceased. Attempted CPR resuscitation failed. He must have cut the engines before he collapsed. No signs of external trauma. Possible coronary failure. We’re sending down a stretcher to winch him up. Over.”
Had they found Butler or someone else? Well, we’d find out soon enough.
“Acknowledged Rescue 948. We’ll have an ambulance standing by. Is there anyone else on board? Over.”
“Negative. No other people on board.” I heard some indecipherable background noise. “Signs of recent occupation by at least one other person. Over.”
Shay and I exchanged equally puzzled looks. If Jordan and Phelps had been hiding out on the Jeanie, why had they abandoned their free ride to the mainland? None of this seemed to be making any sense. We caught a brief glimpse of the loaded stretcher being winched up, steadied by one of the two men who’d boarded, and another of him being lowered again.
The Coastguard team on the boat confirmed that there didn’t seem to be a problem with the engines, and there was plenty of fuel onboard. It was agreed, during a three-way conference with Trish, that they’d bring her back into Stornoway, touching as little as possible and keeping their gloves on the whole time.
“I’d better get out to the airport to meet the helicopter,” I told Trish, getting up again. “I want to see if I can identify the body they’re bringing in as quickly as possible.” It might not even be Butler. “I’ll be back long before they bring the Jeanie in.” Shay got up too and picked up his laptop.
“Alright, then.” Trish wheeled her chair back into its proper place and sat down. “It’s after four now, and I doubt they’ll make port before half five. It was nice to see you again, Mr Keane,” she added as she saw Shay edging impatiently towards the door. “Thank you for obliging me by coming up here, I can only imagine how busy Conall’s been keeping you, and I must say, the results you two have obtained so far are very impressive.”
Shay snorted softly at the unvoiced query in her tone and flashed his teeth at her.
“Just following my usual, routine procedure, Inspector Morrison. Nothing out of the ordinary.” As Shay’s routine procedure was to poke into whatever he liked or whatever I asked him to,
