Ingram was sitting in the London pub, with a pint of brown and mild as he waited for his old mate, Hutch. They had served together in the war, and now both worked for the Security Services, with Hutch working as a bugging specialist. Ingram had found a cosy corner in the saloon bar where they could talk privately and he was reading the Evening News story headlined, Russians Put First Man in Space.
Hutch came in, a chunky East Ender. His last big job had been helping clear up the Portland Spies fiasco last year in 1961. He sat down muttering, “Sorry I’m late, Inky. Another cock-up at the office with our bloody boss.”
Ingram nodded. “He’s a right pain, particularly as something seems to be agitating him currently.”
“How’s your knee?”
“Still hurts a lot after they removed the cartilage.”
“So where were you last week?” said Hutch.
Ingram took a long sip of his drink. “That’s a story and a half.” Taking another drink, he said, “I got summoned upstairs and the old brown-noser said, “Your family’s from Skye,” which was a quarter-true and we used to go there for summer holidays and sing “Over the Sea to Skye” and it was great fun in spite of the sea being freezing and everything closed on a Sunday. Anyway, they’d intercepted a message from some secret source. This said—and I quote—“A whale will be seen shortly off the Point of Sleat,” which they thought meant a Russian submarine would land there.
So, eight weeks off my retirement, I was sent to investigate, with a van from Inverness Police Special Branch. It turned out the Police had suspicions about a crofter, a Communist Party member, called MacPherson.”
“What’s a crofter?” said Hutch.
“A small farmer. Someone had this weird idea that a Russian submarine might land on the Isle of Skye. I had to go up by night train, drive from Inverness, go across on the ferry and stay in this little hotel, pretending to be a travelling salesman.
Inverness Special Branch briefed me a little, but not much. And they didn’t given me anyone intelligent to work with. Instead, I had this local policeman, who hardly said a word. And I was pretty sure anything I told him would be all round the island in no time, as everyone knows everyone else’s business.”
“Yeah,” Hutch nodded. “It’s always like that in the countryside.”
“I hardly used him. I hoped they were going to send you to work with me and you could have bugged him but they said you were busy and they were running out of budget. Macpherson just used public phones but if you had bugged his house, I’d have wrapped up the case really quickly.”
“Was his post being intercepted?” said Hutch.
“Yes and his wife’s, but it took forever to be copied and sent onto me. The roads up there are dreadful - half of them are single track with passing places. So, the next day I go up and have a look at their house and then see where they work. He had a second job as a roadman with the local council. And she worked in the local shop. But, it’s really difficult because you can’t follow suspects too closely because there are so few cars up there, and it’s very obvious if you’re shadowing them.
The first morning, I got up early, put on some overalls and stuck the Post Office Telephone stickers on the van and drove up to their house. Then I hung around in the van near their house next to a telephone pole, waiting ‘til they left and went after them at a distance to check up on them. He dropped her off at the shop and then went off cutting the grass on verges. I did the same the next day but couldn’t keep doing that in case it was too obvious.
The next day I decided to break into their house which was down a side road yet still in sight of the neighbours. So, I got there at 4pm when they were still at work but it was dark. I parked on the top road near a telegraph pole and walked round the side of the house to the back. As I came out in the yard, the hens started to cackle loudly in their hut. I almost had a heart attack.
I waited to see if anyone came looking. The hens went quiet. I went carefully up to the back window, got out my torch and checked it over. I tried to ease the lock with my pen-knife. It wouldn’t move. I tried a second time. Nothing doing. Finally, I managed to lever up the window, thinking, “Thank the fuck for that.”
Climbing through, I did a quick recce. I searched for radio equipment or anything suspicious but could find nothing. I heard a vehicle coming on the top road. Rushing out of the window, I closed it and hid behind the hen house, with the hens cackling again.
Crouched down, I listened as it drove along the road. The motor came closer but didn’t stop, driving onto the next croft house half a mile away. I waited, then went back and lifted the window. Just as I did that, I heard another vehicle so put the window down and retreated, crouching behind the hen house again. There was a pong from the pigs.
This time the car was the Macphersons coming home as it drove straight to the house. I climbed over the fence into the field behind the house, trying to move gently round to the road and reach the van. But I scratched my hand on the barbed wire and stepped in a cow pat, though I managed to swear under my breath.
In the house the lights came on. I crouched to see if anyone emerged. A figure came out of the back of the house in the dark with a torch. I froze, waiting to see where he’d go.
The hens cackled. My heart stopped. Someone banged a bucket and a pig snorted. He’s feeding them, I thought and started off back. Then I drove to the hotel for a piss, a drink and a hot bath, in that order
The day after, I went to check on them and saw Macpherson wasn’t working on his regular stretch of road. What the fuck’s happening, I thought. Is he on the run? Did someone tell him about me? I phoned the shop where Mrs Macpherson would have been working but she was also missing and they had no idea where she was. I was starting to get worried. That evening when I drove past their house, the Macphersons” lights were on dimly, as they used paraffin lamps, so they were definitely home. I phoned up the local policeman, Campbell, and asked him to come and help the next day.
The next day I started earlier, with Campbell in the van, and briefed him as we followed the MacPhersons, who went to work as usual. A big slow-speaking man, he said very little.
At eleven o”clock, MacPherson stopped work, picked up Mrs MacPherson from the shop in their car and drove west. We followed them from a distance.
MacPherson and his wife parked, walked towards the south western tip of Skye, with a white lighthouse, and started looking out to sea with binoculars. There were two grey shapes on the horizon, but they were just islands.
We parked discreetly some way off and walked to the top of a small grassy knoll, lay down and watched.
“What are they looking for?” muttered Campbell
“Presumably, that Russian submarine,” I said.
Nothing happened. We moved away carefully so the MacPhersons wouldn’t see us as we were exposed. Leaving the two looking out to sea, we drove back to the Post Office to use the phone box. Here I had to go via the operator to telephone our boss to give a report. He said, “Shall I upgrade the operation? Or see if I can deploy the Special Boat Squadron?”
I replied, “You can’t be serious,” and managed to persuade him what a waste of time and money that would be.
When I got back to the van, Campbell joined me, looking rather smug and clearly dying to tell me something.
I asked him, “What’s up?”
“Well, I was chatting to the post-mistress. And she knows all about what you’re up to.” He stopped and looked at me.
“Ok. So what?”
“Well, she could help us.”
“How?” I said.
“Listening to the Macphersons’ phone calls and checking the mail quicker than your lot.”
“Would you trust her?”
“Yes of course” he stammered, blushing.
“She’s your mistress?”
“Well, I don’t use that word but…”
“What can she tell us?”
“Yes - she says everyone knows Mrs Macpherson has had letters about protecting whales from Peter Scott and this new organisation called the World Wildlife Fund.”
“OK, I’ll think about it,” I said.
Campbell got out of the car, returning with the local paper, with a front-page item that whales had been seen at sea. The report stated it was the MacPhersons who had seen the whale.
Later the phone tap reports arrived, with the transcript of a call for Mrs MacPherson from someone from the charity telling her this was top secret but there could be a whale near Skye, but she must say nothing, because there were boats out there wanting to catch whales. I thought, This has turned out to be a wild goose chase. A complete bloody waste of time.
I phoned our boss, explained the situation and we stood down. It was a damp and overcast day. I started driving back to the mainland and Inverness.”
#
Ingram stopped talking and downed his beer.
“Wow,” Hutch said, “what a bleeding cock-up. Just like an Ealing Comedy. I’ve just thought up a new song, “Under the sea to Skye”.
“In the end it was pretty obvious,” Ingram said. “Or d’you think the Russies’re trying to make us think any such intelligence reports will always be whales, not submarines?”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” said Hutch.
“And the whole event was a preparation for a real landing?”
“Yes, like the Riddle of the Sands,” said Hutch.
“But that was all fictional,” said Ingram, “Wasn’t it?”
Bio:
I was brought up on Air Force bases, with numerous security scares. In my first teaching post after University, I found many children preferred practical projects to reading. Next, I worked with some delinquent youths setting up a school project and writing bespoke stories. I moved into staff training, writing articles in the Guardian and management books,
After taking classes, a draft of my thriller was shortlisted for the Nashville Dagger Award. and I published a short memoir online about my grandmother. I now support adults starting non-profit organisations for the University of East London and paint landscapes and seascapes.