And then, there, right on the edge of the centre tank, he saw it. A full glass of whisky.
He stared at it, wondering if he were hallucinating. He advanced cautiously, picked it up, and sniffed it. Malt whisky! And, by the smell of it, one of the best malts.
Well, it was only one drink, he reasoned, and stuck out here, he couldn’t get any more. One drink never did anyone any harm.
He picked up the glass and took a sip. He took another, larger, sip and the tension of the past week began to leave his body. He’d soon finished the glassful. He felt happy and warm and confident. A few more wouldn’t matter. It was Saturday night. The Clachan would be warm and full of company and noise. And he had money.
He would lock up the office, but there was no need to lock the sheds. Jamie never locked them; he was more worried about his filters packing up than he was about crime. Half an hour at The Clachan and then he would come back and settle down and read that romance. A gust of wind howled around the buildings like a banshee. He thought briefly of the haunting of the Mainwarings. That new copper had been questioning an awful lot of people in that innocent-seeming, I-have-just-dropped-by-for-a-gossip way of his, but whoever had frightened Mrs. Mainwaring, it hadn’t been criminals. The Mainwarings deserved to be driven out of Cnothan – well, him, anyway.
Feeling better than he had in a long time, Sandy drove carefully down into Cnothan. He decided that if Hamish Macbeth was in the bar, then he would buy a packet of cigarettes and take himself off. It was still early evening. There were only a few youths in the bar, all looking remarkably Dickensian in their skin-tight trousers and short jackets. They had pinched white faces and lank hair. Most of them were drunk already, and the giant of a barman, Hector Dunn, was wondering whether that new policeman knew it was part of his duties to turn up at The Clachan on Saturday nights and remove the car keys of anyone who had drunk over the limit.
He tried phoning the police station, but there was no reply. He phoned Jenny Lovelace in case Hamish was there, the gossip about Hamish’s visit and attempted visits having spread around the town like wildfire, but she said she hadn’t seen him. Her voice sounded funny, as if she were crying.
Hamish was, at that very moment, speeding fast out of Cnothan. A report of an assault on one of the customers at a fishing hotel some thirty miles out of town had just come in.
Sandy drank up a double whisky and ordered another. He immediately became sentimental. When Hector asked him why he wasn’t ‘minding the store,’ Sandy said that Jamie Ross knew nothing would happen, and hadn’t Jamie in the kindness of his heart left a glass of good whisky on the edge of one of the tanks in the lobster shed for Sandy? It all went to show Jamie knew he, Sandy, could handle his liquor. He put some of his change in the jukebox and selected a Frank Sinatra record and sat down. ‘I did it my way,’ sang the famous voice. How wise, thought Sandy, nodding his head up and down. Story of my life, he thought.
He began to sing along with the record. The youths jeered and catcalled and Hector threw them out.
The bar began to fill up with the locals, men at first, and then later their wives, come to curb the expense of a Saturday night’s drinking.
Faces swam in front of Sandy, and voices offered to buy him a drink. The locals were violently jealous of Jamie Ross. Not only did he make a great deal of money, but he did not hide the fact. His new white Mercedes had caused a great deal of heart-burning. To a number of the locals, it seemed like a good joke to get Sandy drunk. Nothing would happen to Jamie’s business, of course, but he would be furious when he got back to find his watchman away sleeping off another drinking bout.
Sandy became dimly aware that Hector was demanding his car keys, and with the cunning of the drunk, he said he had walked and did not have his Land Rover with him. Then Hector was calling ‘Time!’ and Sandy was aware of the sharp cold outside the pub, of people laughing and teasing him.
He climbed into his rusty Land Rover and then his mind went blank. He drove home in a total drunken blackout.
Sandy Carmichael awoke at noon the following day. His mouth felt like the bottom of a parrot’s cage. He drank great gulps of cold water and splashed his face. It was then he remembered his job.
He was still wearing the clothes he had worn the night before. He scrambled out and drove to the Cnothan Game and Fish Company.
His mind worked feverishly. Jamie and his family would be back on the last train. He must get the second half of his wages from Jamie, before Jamie learned, as he surely would, that he had been drinking in The Clachan on Saturday night.
He unlocked the office and then began to calm down. Of course, everything was just as he had left it. He went over to the lobster shed and looked around. The whisky glass was still there. He slipped it into his pocket. He sat down on the edge of the main tank and sighed with relief.
Then he blinked. The water seemed to have a strange pinkish tinge. He slowly scooped a handful of water into the palm of his hand.
Pink.
Then, as he stared at the tank, a piece of torn and shredded jacket slowly rose to the surface and turned over and over in the bubbling water.
He got to his feet and looked down into the lobster tank.
There, underneath the busy, crawling black lobsters, lay. a white skeleton, grinning up at him.
Sandy fainted dead away with shock.
When he came round, he staggered up, gloomily deciding he had had a bout of the horrors. But another look into the depths of the pool showed him the skeleton was still there.
Sandy sat down on the edge of the pool. Now fear and shock were sharpening his wits. He thought about that glass of whisky. Jamie couldn’t have left it. Some friend of Jamie’s must have been sitting in the shed drinking, got drunk, and fallen into the pool and had his body picked clean by the voracious lobsters. But if he called Macbeth, Macbeth would call in a forensic team, and all the lobsters would be taken away along with the skeleton. The whole shed would be sealed off. Eighteen thousand pounds’ worth of lobsters! Sandy began to cry. You couldn’t insure lobsters, could you? No one would ever trust him again. Jamie wouldn’t pay him the second half of his wages and so he would not be able to get a drink to blot out this nightmare. He scrubbed his eyes with his dirty sleeve.
The self-pity of the habitual drunk gripped him. Life was always playing him dirty tricks. Well, he, Sandy, was going to fight back!
He saw a long pole with a net standing in the corner and carefully began to scoop out every bit of clothing. He found a garbage bag and put each shredded piece into it. With his whole body screaming for a drink, he began to search the water to make sure nothing was left. Gold glittered faintly in the light. With mad patience, he fished out the object. It was a gold watch with a few shreds of leather strap still attached to it. He took a deep breath and searched again, poking and moving the crawling black lobsters to see if there was anything left underneath. His search was rewarded. He brought up remains of a leather wallet and scraps of plastic credit cards and pound notes. After that, he found some silver and pennies, which he retrieved by donning a thick pair of work gloves. Shaking and exhausted, he had just decided that must be all when his eyes caught the shine of gold again. Swearing horribly, he resumed his macabre fishing and at last brought up a gold pen. He looked at it curiously, wondering where he had seen it before, and then slipped it into his pocket. A last frantic hunt revealed a pair of false teeth. Shivering and sick, Sandy put them in his pocket as well. Then he eased the net under the skeleton and raised it to the surface. He seized one arm bone and pulled it out. There was a black monster of a lobster clinging to the skeleton and he screamed and tore it off and threw it back in the pool. His brain had become sharp and clear. The water filters would soon turn the water clear again. The work gloves were nearly in tatters from the claws of the lobsters, so instead of putting them back on the edge of the sink in the comer where he had found them, he added them to the wet and ragged clothes in the bag. He went out and got his Land Rover and backed it up to the shed. He put the bag of clothes and the skeleton in the back and threw an old travelling rug over them.