Free The Going Down of the Sun by Jo Bannister Page B

Sultan of Sauchiehall Street. I watched him sitting there watching me, and somehow it seemed he was moving away from me, growing smaller and more remote, the damaged face setting in a basilisk mask, the unwinking regard of an ill-forged bronze idol.
    I leaned towards him in the open door. “Look, if you want to talk again, Baker’ll know where to find me.”
    He almost smiled. “If I want to talk to you, I’ll know where to find you.”
    Probably. He probably owned half the hotels in Glasgow. I nodded. “Will you be all right?”
    I think he was surprised at that. Perhaps rich men aren’t used to people feeling anxious about them. His jaw came up arrogantly. Then a little of the proud disdain in his eyes melted and a small warmth kindled there, enough to show the sadness again. He said, “Aye, I shall be all right. I have my son to care for.”
    I nodded and turned away, and the long car drove past me down the service road as I walked, waving, towards Harry.

Chapter Seven
    The sensible thing would have been to go home. I had told Baker everything I knew, and a lot I could only guess. Harry had stayed at Tayvallich until a senior detective arrived on the scene to take over. Neither of us had anything more to contribute. The sensible thing was to tell Baker where we could be contacted and get away home, and write it off as just another holiday gone wrong.
    So we booked into an hotel—McAllister didn’t own it; I checked—changed our clothes, had a meal, got a night’s sleep and awaited developments.
    The first development was nothing less than an act of God. One of those late spring storms that make the prudent Scot delay his summer holidays blew in from the Atlantic, a ripping south-westerly that still smelled of shamrocks when it tore up the moorings of the police launch at Loch Sween and sent the entire task force racing for cover in the Tayvallich pub.
    Judging by the weather forecast, it would be forty-eight hours before the divers would go down again—before then the bed of the loch would be so stirred up they wouldn’t be able to see well enough to work. The bottom there is a deep silty mud that sticks like treacle to an anchor-chain and smells like a sewage-farm.
    Harry and I had breakfast in our room and listened to the shipping forecasts on the radio. The report for Malin told us what was happening at Loch Sween; Rockall and Shannon told us what would be happening there soon. None of the news was good. The last time I was caught out by a storm like this I spent four days of a six-day holiday at anchor in some little back-of-beyond bay, watching the spume-lashed rocks circling the boat with each tide, listening to the wind shriek in the rigging, wondering if I dare risk a half-mile dash up the coast to the next little bay just for the change of scenery. If this storm had come forty-eight hours earlier it would have ended not only this holiday but any prospect of future holidays with my husband, and quite possibly our marriage as well.
    We had already exchanged notes on the previous day. If the highlight of mine was that rather benign kidnapping, the most memorable feature of Harry’s—at least the one he kept harking back to—was getting hemmed in behind a wagon-train of travelling tinkers on the single-track road through the Knapdale Forest. The map shows about five miles of it between Tayvallich and the B-road flanking the Crinan Canal, but to hear him tell it he drove for hours, eating the tinkers’ dust and fuming, through a forest of Tolstoy proportions. The third time he told it I expected him to add in wolves for colour.
    As soon as he felt he decently could—i. e. about a quarter of an hour later than he’d have been at his desk in his own nick—Harry wandered nonchalantly into DCI Baker’s office to see how the investigation was progressing. Actually, nonchalance is not something Harry does well—he’s no