mission with Peace Warrior, the anti-whaling group I’m part of. It was my fault.”
“How?”
“We met a whaling vessel in the mouth of a Norwegian fjord. They were hunting, and I saw a chance to set them up to look even worse than they are. I took one of our RIB launches and got myself between the whale pod and the ship. It was great—it looked like they were chasing me with their bloody harpoon. Alice and another crewman were in the other launch, filming me.” I stopped to draw breath. I wouldn’t have believed I’d be able to speak to anyone with this much detail and dispassion. But Vivian’s brow had smoothed again, and it felt like confessing to a white marble angel in a graveyard, to some being divorced from earthly concerns, immune from pain and beyond passing judgement. “I misread the weather, though. I don’t know how. I’ve been sailing with my dad since before I could walk. There was a storm, and Alice’s RIB couldn’t handle it, and she and the other guy went down, and… Wait a minute. Are you even listening ?”
“I am. I’m thinking about the problem with my wiring at the same time. I can do both.”
“For fuck’s sake.” I stood up. Bits of my last sober hours were coming back to me. What had Mackie told me in the bar—that there was something odd about the old laird’s son, something wrong? “Thanks for the toast. Enjoy the rest of your thinking—I’ll leave you to it.”
“They call you Mallory, don’t they?”
“What?”
“Down in the village. Not Kier—Mallory.”
“Yes. What about it?”
“Technically speaking, I’m not Calder the Younger. That’s a courtesy title to a laird’s heir apparent, and I’m not one, apparent or otherwise. And the lairdship isn’t an hereditary title, so now my father’s dead, I’m…nothing, really.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I like accuracy. Speaking of which, you’re welcome to use as much of my shower gel as you want, but would you mind putting it back in the exact place where you found it?”
“Whatever. I mean no. I mean, I won’t be using any more of it, so… Why is that important?”
“I’d just prefer it if you did. Isn’t that a good enough reason?”
* * * * *
I set out down the track. The broken stalks of the silver flowers were strewn across it, and I picked my way through them clumsily, the two remaining blossoms dipping and glimmering over my head. They’d been designed so that the wind would blow through each of them with a different harmonic note. The couple still standing were built for the lower end of the scale and lent a satisfying drama to my retreat. The gate to the dune path was rusted shut, so I clambered over it, landing with a grunt on the far side.
I hadn’t brought my rucksack with me, and nor had Vivian thrown it after me. Perhaps I’d find it waiting on the doorstep when I got back, nicely positioned in the centre, but there was no point in kidding myself that I’d walked out for good. No matter how hard I stamped and kicked my way into the dunes, I couldn’t convince myself that I was really angry. In fact his nonresponse had been soothing. To meet someone who was more concerned with where I’d left his shower gel than the fact that I’d murdered two people…
Murdered? That had escalated fast in my inner courtroom. Even the Norwegian police had accused me of nothing worse than fecklessness. I missed my footing in the tangled marram grass and slipped off the edge of a dune. Righted myself enough to slide down it on my backside, and arrived at the foot in a flurry of limbs and sand. Once gravity was done with me, I didn’t move—remained sitting there in my untidy heap. I didn’t deserve to be soothed. I needed people who would throw up their hands at me, recoil in horror, dump me or chuck me out of the house, precisely the reactions I’d met with so far, until somehow the cosmic scales of justice got themselves balanced again.
“Because I can’t live with
“How?”
“We met a whaling vessel in the mouth of a Norwegian fjord. They were hunting, and I saw a chance to set them up to look even worse than they are. I took one of our RIB launches and got myself between the whale pod and the ship. It was great—it looked like they were chasing me with their bloody harpoon. Alice and another crewman were in the other launch, filming me.” I stopped to draw breath. I wouldn’t have believed I’d be able to speak to anyone with this much detail and dispassion. But Vivian’s brow had smoothed again, and it felt like confessing to a white marble angel in a graveyard, to some being divorced from earthly concerns, immune from pain and beyond passing judgement. “I misread the weather, though. I don’t know how. I’ve been sailing with my dad since before I could walk. There was a storm, and Alice’s RIB couldn’t handle it, and she and the other guy went down, and… Wait a minute. Are you even listening ?”
“I am. I’m thinking about the problem with my wiring at the same time. I can do both.”
“For fuck’s sake.” I stood up. Bits of my last sober hours were coming back to me. What had Mackie told me in the bar—that there was something odd about the old laird’s son, something wrong? “Thanks for the toast. Enjoy the rest of your thinking—I’ll leave you to it.”
“They call you Mallory, don’t they?”
“What?”
“Down in the village. Not Kier—Mallory.”
“Yes. What about it?”
“Technically speaking, I’m not Calder the Younger. That’s a courtesy title to a laird’s heir apparent, and I’m not one, apparent or otherwise. And the lairdship isn’t an hereditary title, so now my father’s dead, I’m…nothing, really.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I like accuracy. Speaking of which, you’re welcome to use as much of my shower gel as you want, but would you mind putting it back in the exact place where you found it?”
“Whatever. I mean no. I mean, I won’t be using any more of it, so… Why is that important?”
“I’d just prefer it if you did. Isn’t that a good enough reason?”
* * * * *
I set out down the track. The broken stalks of the silver flowers were strewn across it, and I picked my way through them clumsily, the two remaining blossoms dipping and glimmering over my head. They’d been designed so that the wind would blow through each of them with a different harmonic note. The couple still standing were built for the lower end of the scale and lent a satisfying drama to my retreat. The gate to the dune path was rusted shut, so I clambered over it, landing with a grunt on the far side.
I hadn’t brought my rucksack with me, and nor had Vivian thrown it after me. Perhaps I’d find it waiting on the doorstep when I got back, nicely positioned in the centre, but there was no point in kidding myself that I’d walked out for good. No matter how hard I stamped and kicked my way into the dunes, I couldn’t convince myself that I was really angry. In fact his nonresponse had been soothing. To meet someone who was more concerned with where I’d left his shower gel than the fact that I’d murdered two people…
Murdered? That had escalated fast in my inner courtroom. Even the Norwegian police had accused me of nothing worse than fecklessness. I missed my footing in the tangled marram grass and slipped off the edge of a dune. Righted myself enough to slide down it on my backside, and arrived at the foot in a flurry of limbs and sand. Once gravity was done with me, I didn’t move—remained sitting there in my untidy heap. I didn’t deserve to be soothed. I needed people who would throw up their hands at me, recoil in horror, dump me or chuck me out of the house, precisely the reactions I’d met with so far, until somehow the cosmic scales of justice got themselves balanced again.
“Because I can’t live with
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