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  ‘No, no,’ said Dougal, ‘we were all wearing boot socks when we went aboard.’

  ‘Then it must be one of the Boyd fellas.’

  ‘Dougal, whizz downstairs,’ said West, ‘not now, later, find out what size boot they take. Kay, what about the deck? I mean, McLeod seems to think that that’s where the bugger was sliced open.’

  ‘Aye, I’ll not contest that,’ said Grogan, ‘but what with the rain and the sea-spray, there’s nothing, I’m afraid.’

  West swung her feet onto the desk, sipped her tea, and stared pensively into space.

  ‘I’m not keen on liars,’ she said, ‘and it seems to me that those two boys have been telling porkies from day one. Give me a second while I buzz Duncan, he could do with this info.’

  ‘Hang fire,’ said Dougal. ‘You may as well load both barrels before you text him.’

  ‘Alright then, off you go.’

  ‘We found an EPIRB in a cupboard on the bridge–’

  ‘English, please!’

  ‘Sorry. An Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon.’

  ‘So, that’s what Jimbo was talking about! Explain, and keep it simple.’

  ‘Okay, there’s two types,’ said Dougal. ‘There’s the kind which crew carry about their persons, about the size of a mobile phone, and the bigger ones which are kept on the boat. Both devices are GPS enabled and once activated emit a signal once every forty-five seconds or thereabouts, so anyone in distress can be located by the emergency services or even any passing vessels.’

  ‘Don’t tell me.’

  ‘Correct. This one had not been activated, which leads me to believe–’

  ‘That there wasn’t an accident after all,’ said West. ‘That they were in complete control of the boat before it beached.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Dougal. ‘And that theory has been substantiated by the MAIB’s assessment of the Thistledonia. According to them she was perfectly sea-worthy and in good, working order but–’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘–the throttle had left been left open and, with no crew aboard, they’ve concluded that she was probably scuppered deliberately.’

  West, hankering after the days when a murder victim would be found flat on his back outside a chicken shop with a machete wedged in his neck, and the perp had the decency to stare directly into the lens of a security camera, stood up, slipped her hands into her pockets, and wandered slowly round the desk.

  ‘Could this be some kind of insurance scam?’ she said. ‘I mean, forget about the bloke in the hold for a minute, could they claim the accident on adverse weather conditions and pocket a few grand?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Dougal. ‘I’ve already checked with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency for the six hours leading up to the accident. Conditions for Hebrides and Malin were wind – southwest two to three – rain, then showers, visibility good to moderate. An eight-year-old in a paper boat could have sailed in those conditions.’

  ‘Okay, then help me out here, Dougal. We all think, that is, you, me, and the MAIB, that the boat was run aground on purpose.’

  ‘Undoubtedly, miss.’

  ‘So, tell me, is that an offence of any sort?’

  ‘Oh, aye!’ said Dougal. ‘Under the Merchant Shipping Act, it most certainly is. Whoever was at the helm could be hit with a hefty fine or even a custodial plus, a failure to report the incident to the MAIB would carry further penalties.’

  ‘So, at the very least,’ said West, ‘if we can prove that Jack Boyd was in charge of the vessel at the time of the crash, we could do him for that?’

  ‘Right enough.’

  A befuddled-looking Grogan leaned back, folded her arms, and stared inquisitively at West.

  ‘You alright?’ said West. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Sorry, I know it’s not my place to interfere, Inspector, but it doesn’t make sense to me. I mean, why run the boat aground? If they wanted to get rid of the body, could they not have tossed it overboard? Or even torched the boat, maybe?’

  ‘Good question,’ said West. ‘I’ll let Dougal answer that one.’

  ‘Well, for start,’ said Dougal, ‘if they’d lobbed the body overboard, chances are it would have washed up within an hour or two, and if they’d set the boat alight, blues and twos would have been there in a matter of minutes.’

  ‘Yeah, but we found him anyway,’ said West. ‘So, what difference would that have made?’

  ‘Time. Time for a getaway. Either that, or they wanted us to find him.’

  ‘And why would they want us to do that? We don’t even know who the poor sod is.’

  ‘We do now,’ said Dougal, grinning as he waved a wallet in the air. ‘In here is a driving licence and a couple of bank cards, and guess what, miss? He’s not Scandinavian at all. He’s an Icelandic national, name of Aron Jónsson. Forty-two years old, and he lives in Höfn.’

  ‘Iceland?’ said West. ‘Blimey, he’s a bit far from home, isn’t he? Have you contacted the embassy in London, yet?’

  ‘Miss, I’ve just the one pair of hands. I’ll do it later.’

  ‘Fair enough. Carry on, this is finally getting interesting.’

  ‘Okey-dokey. This is a wee bit techy, so don’t get the hump if you don’t understand.’

  ‘As if I would.’

  ‘I’ve downloaded all the data from the chartplotter and the AIS.’

  ‘Remind me.’

  ‘The Automatic Identification System.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘In basic terms, it monitors traffic in the area,’ said Dougal, ‘collision avoidance, if you will, and if the other boats are properly registered, it’ll identify them, too.’

  ‘Okay, I’m with you so far.’

  ‘According to the chartplotter,’ said Dougal, ‘the Boyds were en route for–’

  ‘Don’t tell me! Harris!’

  ‘You’re heading in the right direction, but you’re wide of the mark. Very wide. They’d plotted a course for the Faroe Islands.’

  ‘Where the flipping heck are the Faroe Islands?’

  ‘North of Scotland, miss, slap bang in the middle between Iceland and Norway, but they never got there.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said West, ‘surely you’d need the QEII to get up there. What happened?’

  ‘According to the AIS, they stopped in the Outer Hebrides, near St Kilda to be precise, and get this, it looks as though they might have been met by another ship called the Loki.’

  ‘Loki? What’s Loki?’

  ‘In Norse mythology, he’s the god of fire, and a wee bit of a mischief-maker.’

  ‘You never cease to amaze me,’ said West. ‘You’re a mind of useless information, you are.’

  ‘I can’t take all the credit, miss. Wikipedia helped me out.’

  ‘I admire your honesty, but where’s all this leading us?’

  ‘The Loki,’ said Dougal, ‘is an Icelandic vessel. A stern trawler, registration VE117. It was close by, I mean, really close. It’s impossible to be one hundred per cent accurate but it does look as though both boats stopped for a while, ten or fifteen minutes maybe, before the Thistledonia headed back south.’

  West, beginning to wonder if she was due any sick leave, ruffled her hair and gazed at Dougal with a look of bewilderment.

  ‘Tell me if I’m missing something,’ she said, ‘because I don’t know one end of a rod from the other, but isn’t that a bit far to go just to catch a few fish?’

  ‘It is,’ said Dougal, ‘especially as they were line-fishing. They could have been after lobster or shrimp, but they’d have needed a creel for any of the pelagic species.’

  ‘If you say so. Okay, so as far as we know, the skipper, otherwise known as the dead bloke in the hold, was Icelandic. And Jack and Henry Boyd sailed off to meet a boat in the middle of nowhere, which was also Icelandic.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Dougal, ‘but we don’t know for sure. It’s possible the Boyds saw the size of the Loki, realised they’d bi
tten off more than they could chew, and simply turned back.’

  ‘Oh, this is smashing!’ said Grogan. ‘I never get to see you fellas working close-up like this. It’s like watching one of those shows on the telly.’

  ‘Trust me,’ said West, ‘it’s nothing like the flipping telly. It’s all insomnia and headache pills washed down with a gallon of grief. So, is that it, then? Is this the end of the road?’

  Dougal glanced at Grogan and raised a subtle smile like a gambler about to reveal his winning hand.

  ‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘We know the Thistledonia docked in Troon, okay? And from there, according to the chartplotter, it was on a course for Kirkcudbright, but as we also know, she never made it.’

  ‘Oh, state the bleeding obvious, why don’t you!’ said West. ‘Of course she never made it, she ran aground!’

  ‘Right enough,’ said Dougal, ‘but just before that, she stopped for a second time, the co-ordinates were 55.1681° north, and 4.9361° west, which is roughly half a nautical mile off the coast of Lendalfoot.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘If I knew that, miss, I’d not be sitting here, but perhaps that’s where the crew abandoned ship.’

  ‘What about that sat nav thing,’ said West, ‘did it pick up any other boats when it stopped?’

  ‘None that we know of, but they could have been met by a wee pleasure craft, or maybe they even swam ashore.’

  ‘Swam ashore? Are you serious?’

  ‘They’d have been carried by the tide,’ said Dougal, ‘and if they wore a wetsuit, then it’s not out of the realms of possibility.’

  ‘I might try it myself,’ said West, ‘with a couple of bricks tied to my legs.’

  ‘Well, while you’re at the builders merchants fetching some rope, I’ll run Kay back to the office.’

  ‘Don’t forget to check on McClusky,’ said West, reaching for her phone. ‘I’m going to give Duncan a bell.’

  * * *

  Faced with a choice of interrupting his interview with a phone call or running downstairs to update him in person, West, filching a slice of sausage from one of the remaining rolls, opted to savour the serenity of the empty office instead and began composing a lengthy text message when the unexpected arrival of the ebullient DCI Elliot had her jumping in her seat.

  ‘Charlie!’ he said, his voice booming like a tenor in the opera house. ‘On your lonesome?’

  ‘Sir. You’ve just missed them. Duncan’s with a suspect and Dougal’s… on an errand.’

  ‘No bother! It’s you I came to see.’

  ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’

  ‘If it was, Charlie, we’d not be here, we’d be in my office! See here, the gentleman who found the boat you’re looking into, he goes by the name of Baxter, does he not?’

  ‘Spot on,’ said West. ‘Willy Baxter, why? What’s up?’

  ‘Uniform are in attendance now, apparently his daughter’s gone missing. I thought you might want to follow up, that’s all.’

  Chapter 8

  Unlike his younger brother who’d forsaken an education in favour of fraternising with the scallies and lowlifes loafing about the penurious streets of Dumfries, Jack Boyd, whilst lacking the sagacity to complete a crossword, was nonetheless blessed with a brain attuned to the art of cunning and deception. It was a talent which had, through years of orchestrating a string of petty but lucrative deals in the pubs and clubs of Lochside, brought him enough untraceable wealth to acquire a house in the picturesque town of Moffat where, behind the guise of a successful company, he’d continued to ply his trade as a purveyor of illegally sourced tobacco, alcohol, and the occasional BMW, completely undetected.

  Unfazed by the surroundings of the interview room, he sat with the relaxed demeanour of a koala on ketamine while Duncan, smiling smugly to himself, scrolled through a message on his phone.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, stabbing the voice recorder. ‘Just some business to attend to.’

  ‘No bother,’ said Boyd. ‘Is my brother not coming?’

  ‘No, no. I’ll have a chat with him after. Now, can I get you anything to drink? A tea, or a coffee, maybe?’

  ‘You’re alright,’ said Boyd. ‘If it’s all the same with you I’d rather crack on so’s I can get back to work.’

  ‘Are you busy, then?’

  ‘Aye, busy enough. It doesn’t help having to come all the way up here. Could we not have done this in Dumfy?’

  ‘Afraid not,’ said Duncan, ‘but you are here voluntarily, so you’re welcome to leave any time you like.’

  ‘Aye, okay.’

  ‘And you’re entitled to legal representation, if you want it.’

  ‘Do I need it?’ said Boyd. ‘I mean, you’re not arresting me, are you?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ said Duncan with a wry smile, ‘but you never know your luck.’

  ‘Then I’ll not bother.’

  ‘Okay. For the benefit of the tape, I am Detective Sergeant Reid. Would you state your name, please.’

  ‘Jack Boyd.’

  ‘Do you understand why you’re here, Jack?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Two reasons,’ said Duncan. ‘First of all, we’ve found the boat that you chartered, the Thistledonia. She was beached a couple of miles south of Girvan.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Boyd, ‘like I said yesterday, Erik the Viking’s probably the worst skipper we’ve ever had.’

  ‘What makes you think he was on the boat?’

  ‘Well, who else would have taken it?’

  ‘Fair point.’

  ‘So, what’s the second reason?’ said Boyd. ‘You said there were two reasons for me being here.’

  ‘Right enough,’ said Duncan. ‘I’m afraid your recollection of events has left us a wee bit confused so I just need to clarify a few points. Are you okay with that?’

  ‘No bother. Fire away and I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Good. So, what time was it when we arrived at your place yesterday? About one-thirty, is that right?’

  ‘I’d say so, aye.’

  ‘And you’d just got back yourselves. Do you remember when that was, exactly?’

  ‘About twenty minutes before you arrived. A half an hour, maybe.’

  ‘Okay, and you say it took an hour or so for you to travel from Troon back to Moffat?’

  ‘No,’ said Boyd, ‘I said it took an hour to Lockerbie, then the bus.’

  ‘My mistake. So, in that case, you must have left Troon, when? About eleven-thirty, twelve? Does that sound right?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And the train, was it a direct service, or did you have to change?’

  ‘No, straight through,’ said Boyd. ‘Is there a problem with that?’

  ‘Aye, there is,’ said Duncan. ‘You see, Jack, we’ve checked the timetables and there is no direct service from Troon to Lockerbie. You’d have had to change at least once, and the journey time’s two and a half hours, at least.’

  Boyd stared at Duncan, leaned forward in his seat, and pushed his spectacles to the bridge of his nose with his middle finger.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘how’s this? Maybe we did change, and I forgot, and maybe I was that tired, I fell asleep, so it seemed like an hour.’

  ‘Aye, that’ll be it,’ said Duncan, ‘I’ll check with Henry later but I have to say, I do find it surprising that someone like yourself can get those details so wrong.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, you’ve a head on your shoulders, Jack, you’re a smart fella, and you’re obviously good with figures if you’re doing all those tax returns by yourself.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not as difficult as they make out,’ said Boyd. ‘It’s the accountants who make it sound complicated so they can earn a few quid. If they came clean, they’d be out of a job.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Duncan, ‘being salaried, it’s not a problem I have to deal with. Your business, building and restoration, is it?’

  ‘Aye, all sort
s,’ said Boyd. ‘Building, roofing, driveways, you name it, we can probably do it.’

  ‘And would you say it’s lucrative?’

  ‘Aye, not bad. It keeps us in clover.’

  ‘I’m sure it does,’ said Duncan, ‘it must do, with a turnover like yours.’

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘A half a million.’

  Boyd smiled and shook his head.

  ‘See here, Sergeant,’ he said, ‘this is precisely what I’m talking about. This is precisely why accountants make such a good living. You’re confusing turnover with profit. If you must know, we actually made a loss last year.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Necessary expenditure to keep the business afloat.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ said Boyd. ‘It’s all legit. Take a look yourself if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘I will,’ said Duncan. ‘In fact, I’ve already had a word with HMRC.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  Unimpressed by Boyd’s deceptively cool, if not over-confident attitude, a trait he knew to be synonymous with cocky criminal minds, Duncan crossed his arms and proffered a half-hearted smile.

  ‘You’ve not been in trouble before, have you, Jack?’

  ‘With the law?’ said Boyd. ‘Not me. Never.’

  ‘I’m wondering, is that because you play by the rules, or because you’re good at covering your tracks?’

  ‘I’m a law-abiding citizen, me. I do everything by the book.’

  ‘Unlike your brother.’

  ‘Well, he’s not as smart as myself,’ said Boyd, ‘but he knows how to look after himself, I’ll give him that.’

  ‘So I hear. He’s still on a suspended sentence, is he not?’

  ‘He is, aye.’

  ‘And what did he do to get a slap on the wrist?’

  ‘You obviously know.’

  ‘I do,’ said Duncan, ‘but I’m asking you.’

  ‘He walloped some chancer in the pub.’

  ‘Which pub?’

  ‘Mulligans. It’s not there now. The place was a dive.’

  ‘And he was out for a few bevvies with a pal, is that it?’

  ‘He was meeting a client,’ said Boyd. ‘A prospective client. The fella was after a quote on a job.’