Storm Warning. Jack Higgins

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СКАЧАТЬ morning?’ Murdoch wiped peat from his hands on to his thighs and produced his tobacco pouch. ‘Will you take tea with me, Admiral?’ he enquired with grave Highland courtesy.

      ‘And a little something extra?’ Reeve suggested hopefully.

      ‘Uisgebeatha?’ Murdoch said in Gaelic. ‘The water of life. Why not indeed, for it is life you need this morning, I am thinking.’ He smiled gravely. ‘I’ll be ten minutes. Time for you to take a turn along the shore with the hound to blow the cobwebs away.’

      The mouth of the inlet was a maelstrom of white water, waves smashing in across the reef beyond with a thunderous roaring, hurling spray a hundred feet into the air.

      Reeve trudged along in the wolfhound’s wake at the water’s edge, thinking about Murdoch Macleod. Thirty-two years coxswain of the Fhada lifeboat, legend in his own time – during which he had been awarded the BEM by old King George and five silver and two gold medals for gallantry in sea rescue by the Lifeboat Institution. He had retired in 1938, when his son Donald had taken over as coxswain in his place, and had returned a year later when Donald was called to active service with the Royal Naval Reserve. A remarkable man by any standards.

      The wolfhound was barking furiously. Reeve looked up across the great bank of sand that was known as Traig Mhoire – Mary’s Strand. A man in a yellow lifejacket lay face-down on the shore twenty yards away, water slopping over him as one wave crashed in after another.

      The admiral ran forward, dropped to one knee and turned him over, with some difficulty for his left arm was virtually useless now. He was quite dead, a boy of eighteen or nineteen, in denim overalls, eyes closed as if in sleep, fair hair plastered to his skull, not a mark on him.

      Reeve started to search the body. There was a leather wallet in the left breast pocket. As he opened it, Murdoch arrived on the run, dropping on his knees beside him.

      ‘Came to see what was keeping you.’ He touched the pale face with the back of his hand.

      ‘How long?’ Reeve asked.

      ‘Ten or twelve hours, no more. Who was he?’

      ‘Off a German U-boat from the look of those overalls.’ Reeve opened the wallet and examined the contents. There was a photo of a young girl, a couple of letters and a leave pass so soaked in sea water that it started to fall to pieces as he opened it gingerly.

      ‘A wee lad, that’s all,’ Murdoch said. ‘Couldn’t they do better than schoolboys?’

      ‘Probably as short of men by now as the rest of us,’ Reeve told him. ‘His name was Hans Bleichrodt and he celebrated his eighteenth birthday while on leave in Brunswick three weeks ago. He was Funkgefreiter, telegraphist to you, on U743.’ He replaced the papers in the wallet. ‘If she bought it this morning, we might get more like this coming in for the rest of the week.’

      ‘You could be right,’ Murdoch crouched down and, with an easy strength that never ceased to amaze Reeve, hoisted the body over one shoulder. ‘Better get him into Mary’s Town then, Admiral.’

      Reeve nodded. ‘Yes, my house will do. Mrs Sinclair can see him this afternoon and sign the death certificate. We’ll bury him tomorrow.’

      ‘I am thinking that the kirk might be more fitting.’

      ‘I’m not certain that’s such a good idea,’ Reeve said. ‘There are eleven men from this island dead at sea owing to enemy action during this war. I would have thought their families might not be too happy to see a German lying in state in their own place of worship.’

      The old man’s eyes were fierce. ‘And you would agree with them?’

      ‘Oh no,’ Reeve said hurriedly. ‘Don’t draw me into this. You put the boy where you like. I don’t think it will bother him too much.’

      ‘But it might well bother God,’ Murdoch said gently. There was no reproof in his voice, in spite of the fact that, as a certificated lay preacher of the Church of Scotland, he was the nearest thing to a minister on the island.

      There was no road from that end of Fhada, had never been any need for one, but during the two abortive years that the Marconi station had existed, the telegraph company had laid the narrow-gauge railway line. The lifeboat crew, mostly fishermen from Mary’s Town, travelled on it by trolley when called out in an emergency, pumping it by hand or hoisting a sail when the wind was favourable.

      Which it was that morning, and Murdoch and the admiral coasted along at a brisk five knots, the triangular strip of canvas billowing out to one side. The dead boy lay in the centre of the trolley and Rory squatted beside him.

      Two miles, then three, and the track started to slope down and the wind tore a hole in the curtain of rain, revealing Mary’s Town, a couple of miles further on in the north-west corner of the island, a scattering of granite houses, four or five streets sloping to the harbour. There were half-a-dozen fishing boats anchored in the lee of the breakwater.

      Murdoch was standing, one hand on the mast, staring out to sea. ‘Would you look at that now, Admiral? There’s some sort of craft coming in towards the harbour out there and I could have sworn that was the Stars and Stripes she’s flying. I must be getting old.’

      Reeve had the telescope out of his pocket and focused in an instant. ‘You’re damned right it is,’ he said as the Dead End jumped into view, Harry Jago on the bridge.

      His hand was shaking with excitement as he pushed the telescope back into his pocket. ‘You know something, Murdoch? This might just turn out to be my day after all.’

      When the MGB eased into the landing-stage a woman was sitting on the upper jetty under an umbrella, painting at an easel. She was in her early forties, with calm blue eyes in a strong and pleasant face. She wore a headscarf, an old naval-officer’s coat, which carried the bars of a full captain on the epaulettes, and slacks.

      She stood up, moved to the edge of the jetty, holding the umbrella, and smiled down. ‘Hello there, America. That makes a change.’

      Jago went over the rail and up the steps to the jetty quickly. ‘Harry Jago, ma’am.’

      ‘Jean Sinclair.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m bailie here, Lieutenant, so if there’s anything I can do …’

      ‘Bailie?’ Jago said blankly.

      ‘What you’d call a magistrate.’

      Jago grinned. ‘I see. You mean you’re the law around here.’

      ‘And coroner and harbourmaster. This is a small island. We have to do the best we can.’

      ‘I’m here with dispatches for Rear Admiral Reeve, ma’am. Have you any idea where I might locate him?’

      She smiled. ‘We have a saying in these islands, Lieutenant. Speak of the devil and you’ll find he’s right behind you.’

      Jago turned quickly and got a shock. When he’d received his Navy Cross from Nimitz at Pearl, Admiral Reeve had been one of those on the platform, resplendent in full uniform with three rows of medal ribbons. There was no echo of him at all in the small, dark man with the black eye patch who hurried towards him now wearing an old reefer coat and sea boots. It was only when he spoke that Jago knew beyond a doubt who СКАЧАТЬ