‘I thought you’d want that,’ she said. ‘I have it here; it’s Ailsa View, Dunglas Avenue, Wemyss Bay. It’s a long drive, mind.’
‘Nah, I can do it in a couple of hours.’
It was just after midday; I fixed myself an early lunch, ham slices and coleslaw in a couple of wholemeal pitta breads, then grabbed a Snickers bar and a bottle of water for the journey, and headed off in my still-wounded car, after making a mental note to dump the repair in the hands of my insurers, and let them fight it out with the owner of the BMW, whoever he might be.
Gullane to Wemyss Bay is a coast-to-coast drive, Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde, round Edinburgh and through Glasgow, motorway for all but the first ten miles and the last fifteen. I made good time; it was two fifteen and I was on the outskirts of Greenock, when my phone sounded.
‘Mr Skinner?’ It was Clyde Houseman.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I’m on the road and I’m alone. You can speak.’
‘Good. I have feedback for you on the man you asked about. It wasn’t easy to get, and I can understand why. I told you that the name rang a bell with me; it should have been an alarm bell. Yes, Petty Officer Hurrell was operational in the Special Boat Service, but not for long. He served in Iraq, in a different zone from me, up in the north of the country, chasing a cadre of Saddam’s old Revolutionary Guard who were taking revenge on civilians in and around his home town. He was part of a three-man team, who caught up with some of them in a house near Tikrit. By that time they weren’t much of a threat; there were only five of them left and they’d hardly any ammo. Hurrell’s unit was under the command of a Marine sergeant, a lad I knew. He was under orders to take prisoners back for interrogation, so he gave them the chance of surrender.
‘They took it. They threw their weapons out of the window and came out in a line, hands on head. One of them twitched; he scratched his ear, my friend told me. Whatever he did, it spooked Hurrell. He mowed the fucking lot of them down.’
‘Was he court-martialled?’ I asked.
‘In another unit he might have been, but not in Special Forces. He was kicked out, unceremoniously. They sent him back to his minesweeper. Six months later, he left the service and went to work for your man Higgins. His CO knew nothing about the Iraq incident, and wrote him an excellent reference. It’s still on file.’
‘The reference,’ I said. ‘Does it square with the rest of his service record?’
‘It does,’ Houseman replied. ‘His reports show him to have been an exemplary sailor.’
‘Apart from killing five unarmed men in cold blood,’ I chuckled.
‘We all have our off days, sir.’
I thanked Houseman and drove on, letting my navigation system guide me for the rest of the journey. One big difference between the Firths of Forth and Clyde is that ferries still run in the latter. Wemyss Bay is one of the terminals; a rail service from Glasgow delivers Rothesay-bound passengers all year round. My dad took the family there on holiday when I was six. God bless him, it was his idea of a good time.
Satnav took me straight to Dunglas Avenue, but Hodgson’s house wasn’t so easy to find. The street was a short cul-de-sac, and none of the dozen bungalows had numbers, only names. I looked at them all, one by one, but couldn’t see Ailsa View anywhere. Puzzled, I thought about calling Luisa to recheck the address, but before I could do that, I was hailed by a white-haired lady in a tweed skirt and heavy purple jumper, standing in the doorway of a little dwelling called Barrhead.
‘Excuse me,’ she called out. ‘You look lost. Can I help you?’
‘Possibly,’ I replied, walking to the end of her short garden path. ‘I’m trying to locate a house called Ailsa View and a man named Hodgson. I was told it was in this street, but I can’t see any sign of it.’
‘Not surprising,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty well hidden. If you go to the end of the street, there’s a house called Lindisfarne. It looks as if it has a double driveway, but in fact half of it leads to Ailsa View. It’s hidden behind it. Hodgson,’ she repeated. ‘That’s the chap’s name, is it? Funny,