Eggs

I thought I’d share the Cass story included in the latest Westside Writers anthology with you … imagine it taking place somewhere between The Trowie Mound Murders and A Handful of Ash.

I thought I must have misheard.  ‘Who’s stealing your eggs?’

            ‘Trows,’ Magnie repeated.

            We were sitting around the formica-topped table in Magnie’s cottage, drinking the stomach-turningly strong tea which had replaced his former tipple of whisky.  If ever I ended up living ashore, I’d want it to be in a cottage like Magnie’s.  The hearth was dominated by a silver-painted Modern Mistress, circa 1900, radiating heat, and with doors for every conceivable temperature of oven.  There was a red-striped couch occupied by two beige-striped cats.  The faded-paper walls leaned towards each other, held apart by the smoke-dark beams, and the door wouldn’t quite shut.

            The table between us was filled by what I’d been invited round to admire: the keel and first beams of a five-foot long model of the Oceanic, made entirely of matchsticks, with Magnie’s well-worn clasp knife sitting beside her like a tender.  His father had been involved in rescuing her crew when she’d gone aground off Foula in 1914, and Magnie himself had driven the back-up boat for the 70s salvage team. The coil of copper wire that would support the three slender masts was scranned from the original.

            Magnie had taken up model-making when he’d given up the drink.  Instead of going out like a light under the influence of a half-bottle, he’d found himself pacing the floor till the small hours.  I’d suggested jigsaws, and got an old fashioned look. ‘Lass, dat’ll tak fifteen year off my eyesight.’

            ‘Learning poetry, then.’

            ‘I’m learned aa I need in fifty years at sea.  Naa, I’ll tink o someting idder.’

            The Oceanic was what he’d thought of.  Now, instead of the peaceful dark of oblivion surrounding the white cottage tucked into the corner of Muckle Roe, with grandstand view of the marina, each night the Burgastoo was lit up by a blaze of lights from the in-by room as another boxful of decapitated matches was put in place.  At this rate, I reckoned, he’d be well through his seventies by the time he needed the tins of red and black paint ready beneath the sideboard, even without the distraction of egg thievery.

            ‘But why,’ I said, not sure this wasn’t a wind-up, ‘would trows steal your eggs?’

            Magnie gave me a withering look.  ‘To eat, o coorse.’  His blue-green eyes seemed perfectly serious.  He rubbed a square hand back over his sandy hair, making it stand up.  ‘Dey’re taken every last eygg da hens hae laid dis twa weeks.  An I’m fan something.’

            His round, ruddy-cheeked face still showed no signs of joking.  He led me out into the garden, and around the back.  I coveted Magnie’s garden too.  When you live on an 8m yacht, a collection of sheds that includes an old bus, a portaloo and a WWII Nissen hut is the kind of luxury you’ll never have.  They leant against each other for mutual support, with a hedge of blackcurrants and gooseberries running riot around them.  The path to each was exactly the width of Magnie’s borrow, and edged in white beach-stones.

            The hens lived right at the back of the Nissen hut, in a Bedford van converted into a nesting pen.  They got into a total panic when we loomed up in front of them, scurrying under their van, leaping on top of it, and flapping down into the space between it and the bushes.

            When I got to the van I realised why they’d got such a fright.  Here, under the cliff, all outside noises were cut off.  I took an experimental step back and the chug, chug of someone’s compressor, the screag of terns squabbling, the wind rattling the cover of the peat stack, all flowed again.  A step forwards, and there was dead silence, as if someone had chopped off the sound with a knife.

            Magnie ignored the hen squawks.  ‘There,’ he said, pointing down.

            I looked, and didn’t believe it.  There, in the chicken-scrabbled mud, was a set of small footprints, bare feet, with disproportionately large toes.  Left foot, right foot, left foot again, striding towards the hen house, and right foot, left, right coming back out.

            Magnie sat down on the step of the van.  I joined him, setting my feet fastidiously away from a pool of blood with three white feathers stuck to it.  The silent warmth enclosed us.  ‘Now, you see,’ Magnie said. ‘I towt at first it wis a whitteret.  I axed Andy Robertson, next door, if he’d had ony taen, but he said no.  He said what I’d need to do was bide up aa night, with a shotgun under me airm.  I set a trap, but I’m had naethin atil it. Just those.’

            It certainly hadn’t been a whitteret left these.  I considered an otter pawprint, and shook my head.  ‘Nor a draatsi.’

            ‘Naa, these are human.  Noo, Cass, du’s a clever lass. I’m no wanting to fall out wi onyeen, but dis canna go on.  I’ll hae nae eyggs left at this rate. Can du no tink o a wye to stop dis?’

            ‘I’ll try,’ I said.

            I phoned Gavin Macrae once I was back at the marina. His Highland drawl was less pronounced than usual, and there were the clicks and rattles of computers behind him, and radio muttering.  It was odd trying to imagine his face against the background of a busy police station, surrounded by uniformed officers.  After we’d said hello, I explained the situation as I saw it.

            “Somebody, probably Andy Robertson, is up to a night-something involving a boat from the Muckle Roe marina.  You could put-put out, but to steam under the bridge against the current and past the Burgastoo, you’d need more power, and now Magnie’s awake all night doing his model, he’d hear it.  The only place you could get him to where he wouldn’t hear it is the henhouse.  Hence the stolen eggs.’  I was still uneasy about those footprints.

            ‘Landing drugs probably,’ Gavin said.  ‘Leave it with me.  I’ll see if I can get a patrol out.  Now, Cass, you keep away.  You don’t want to tangle with dealers.’

            Naturally I was there just after dark, sitting quietly on a rock by the water.  I saw the first whisper of ripples that told me somebody was out and about, and heard the throb of an expensive engine setting out towards Papa Little.  I saw the rendevous too, the flash of light, quickly dimmed, and thirty seconds later I heard the megaphone echoing as the Coastguard cutter told everyone concerned to come out with their hands up.

            Magnie came up behind me as the searchlights blazed out.  ‘Lass, you should gie that policeman a definite no or yes, instead of phoning him every time you need help.’

‘Phoning’s an equivocal maybe,’ I said.  A shot was fired, then another.  I looked over my shoulder at him. ‘The footprints were pushing your luck a bit.’

Out on the water, in the white light, there was police-style shouting.  The Customs men began climbing into the motorboat.

            ‘Bringing drugs into da place,’ Magnie said.  ‘I dinna hold wi dat.’

‘What really happened?’

            ‘It looked like a whitteret attack,’ he conceded, ‘but I made dat pen mesel, lass, and there was no way even a whitteret could get in.  I kent someen was wantin me oot o da hoose, oot o hearin and seeing what geed on ida voe.  But wha’d believe an old alcoholic?  No even dee. It had to look suspeecious. Du, now, du could pull strings if I gied dee raisons.’  His gnarled hand fished in his pocket and pushed something wooden into mine.  ‘Besides, I was getting tired o matchsticks.’

            It was a carved foot, small, with disproportionately large toes.