The Going Down of the Sun by Jo Bannister

me point out the relevant places. He pored over it now. “That’s on a direct route from Oban to Crinan?”
    â€œWith a motorboat, yes. She’d have no trouble getting through the Clachan Bridge.”
    â€œHow long would it have taken her from Oban?”
    â€œDepends how fast she was going. That isn’t exactly open sea—tootling along at ten knots, say, she’d have made Shuna in two hours, which fits with the time she left the yard.”
    The impeccable moustache bristled, the neat (and matching) eyebrows climbed. “Does it? How do you know?”
    I despise women who can’t have their say without backing it up with their husband’s authority. “John always says …” “Martin doesn’t believe …” It’s pathetic. I said, “My husband told me.” It was true and unavoidable, but I still winced.
    I think DCI Baker may have despised women like that too. He regarded me down his nose. “And what does your husband know about it?”
    I nettled. He wasn’t offensive enough to challenge, but only because he knew how not to be. “What he was told, I presume. The local police called the yard in Oban.”
    Baker smiled, like a fish on a slab. “Yes, well, Mr. Marsh would be better leaving the business to the professionals.”
    I had him, and I took a moment to enjoy it. “Detective Superintendent Marsh is a professional. Anyway, the time the Skara Sun left Oban won’t be covered by the Official Secrets Act.” Of course, you couldn’t be sure of that.
    Surprise jolted through him like a small amount of electricity. He’d thought it a coincidence that Curragh was fished out of the water by an erstwhile doctor. He didn’t know what to make of the fact that there was a detective involved as well. Finally he remembered official police policy towards inconvenient facts—ignore them—and moved on. “And you reckon Mrs. McAllister was alone on the boat then.”
    â€œThe yard in Oban”—I couldn’t resist reminding him—“said she left alone. I didn’t see anyone else on board, and she could certainly have managed on her own.”
    â€œWhen would she have reached Crinan?”
    I glanced at the map to confirm my recollection. “Shuna’s about halfway, but she could do the second half faster. She might have made Crinan about six-thirty.”
    â€œWhere she collected Curragh.”
    â€œI don’t know that, of course, but it seems likely. I do know they were both on board when the Sun anchored behind us at the Fairy Isles last night.”
    â€œThat was the next you saw of her?”
    â€œYes.”
    Baker unfolded his map to display all the islets and inlets of the glacial west coast. “So there was a day—from Saturday evening until Sunday evening—when you saw nothing of them. How far could they have got in that time?”
    I remembered the big flared bow of the Skara Sun , and the big twin diesels shoving her along, and tried to imagine the range of the big tanks feeding them. “She could have got to Ireland and back if she’d wanted to.”
    Baker worried about that for a minute before moving on again. “So the next you saw of them was at the Fairy Isles.”
    â€œWe didn’t actually see him. We saw the woman and heard a man’s voice.”
    â€œWere you talking to them at all?”
    â€œNo.” That must have seemed odd to a landsman, that you could anchor a hundred yards apart, your two crews maybe the only living souls for miles, and still make no gesture towards neighbourliness, not so much as a shouted greeting, let alone rowing across for cocktails. It is a bit odd, but it’s how it’s done: you need to have met someone regularly before you even exchange weather reports. Perhaps it’s because more people sail to get away from other people than do so to meet them. The ideal anchorage is