A dark net tightens around a tiny fishing community. Fractures between various forces in Kildrumma are brewing, when a deadly chain of events begin to unfold. Exploring the tension between conservation and exploitation within the industry, you can read a preview of the thriller below.

Death of a Selkie
By D.P. Hart-Davis
Published by Merlin Unwin

Davie McTavish, who owned the former Chandlery fronting on Stairbrigg harbour just next door to Olympia’s Fish Bar, had long been a worried man. Wiry and skinny to the point of emaciation, he had deep wrinkles round his eyes and grooves between nose and mouth which made him look older than his fifty-two years. The nervous tic that twitched his left cheek signalled the stress of trying to make his business pay.

After a rackety youth in Thailand and the South Pacific, he had returned to his roots in Stairbrigg and transformed his father’s well-established Chandlery into a Marine Supply and Dive Shop. Modern sportswear instead of oilskins and sou’westers. Surf boards and scuba equipment to replace ropes, nets and sails.He hoped to capitalise on a new breed of marine sportsmen and promote the wild, remote beauty of the coast as a tourist destination, but after a promising start the business plateau’d and, with the increasing price and sophistication of the stock he needed, cash flow had become an urgent problem by the time Big Dougie’s predatory eye noted the signs of a struggle.

‘Call it a partnership, if you like, and keep your name over the door. It’s well respected hereabouts,’ he had said when he made his proposal. He surveyed the disordered racks of clothing and boxes of dive gear as yet unpacked that overflowed the long, scuffed counter. ‘There’s plenty of scope here for the kind of customer you’re needing. It’s just that they don’t know it yet. Once word gets about, you’ll have no difficulty paying me back.’

Sensing resistance, he had added in his easy, confident way, ‘I’ll not be wanting to take over from you. I’ve enough on my plate to keep me busy without that. Just call on me to give a hand with the donkey work – I’d enjoy that. It will keep me grounded to see how folk work now that I’ve escaped the Edinburgh bubble. Maybe I could take a look at your accounts and make some suggestions? I’ve contacts you might find useful. But as far as the world’s concerned, you’ll be keeping the business in the family. How does that sound to you?’

With bills piling up in his cluttered office, Davie had been in no position to refuse, however irked he felt at the way money seemed to stick to his former schoolfellow’s fingers as fast as it slipped through his own.

How had McInnes become so rich? Everyone knew that his father drank every penny he earned, and Wee Dougie had worn cast-offs from the charity shop, while the McTavish family paid their bills on the nail and were pillars of the kirk. Yet somehow while he, Davie, had been knocking about the world in search of the Perfect Wave, McInnes had broken through the barrier separating the Doing OKs from the Seriously Rich, and become the most powerful businessman in the area.

Swallowing his pride, he had accepted Big Dougie’s offer, and tried to convince himself that he had not sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.

As anyone who knew McInnes could have predicted, his involvement with the dive shop did not stop at lending a hand at busy times, nor casting a casual eye over the accounts. On the contrary, Davie was soon uneasily aware that Big Dougie and his accountant were virtually running the business, stocking new lines and cancelling non-performing ones, chasing up slow payments and offering discounts. As a result, McTavish Marine Supplies was making money hand over fist.

Once he was in a position to pay back his loan, Davie would have liked to take the reins again, but Big Dougie was in no hurry to hand them back. The suggestion that he might be surplus to requirement seemed to wound him.

‘Man, we’re doing great! I tell you, it’s no trouble to me. With the marina expanding as it is, trade is bound to increase so unless you want to take on an apprentice there’ll be too much for you to handle alone.’ He paused, then added casually, ‘Unless your own lads want to work with you?’

If only! Davie had sighed and rubbed his eyes. Neither Alick nor Hamish had ever shown the least interest or pride in the Chandlery, and his adored Elspeth was physically incapable of helping in the shop. Though only two years older than her sister Mhairi, Elspeth’s crippling arthritis had made her semiinvalid by thirty-six, even struggling with her own cooking. As teenagers, the sisters used to win cups and medals for sword dancing at many a Gathering, and their close harmonising was the highlight of local ceilidhs, but the steroids had blurred her pretty features and swollen her ankles and wrists, though her warm heart and generous nature were unchanged.

Just the luck of the draw, she’d think without rancour, as she limped about supported by two sticks.

‘Give me your shopping list and I’ll drop the stuff in on my way home,’ Mhairi sometimes urged, but Elspeth valued independence too much to burden her sister with extra chores.

‘No need, mo achroi, no need at all, ‘she’d say, laughing. ‘I’m doing fine, just fine,’ even when every joint ached and the larder was empty. It was no use relying on her sons. They would turn up for supper and eat enormously, but apart from scarred salmon from the cages, they made no contribution to expenses. Her boys were a disappointment and secretly she preferred the company of her nephew, Logan, who shared her taste in romantic fiction.

She was a great home-maker. ‘Give Elspeth four walls and a roof, and in two shakes she’ll have it fit to house a queen,’ her husband would boast, and Logan heartily agreed when he compared her snug, all-electric bungalow smelling of fresh cakes to his mother’s spartan croft where whiffs of ancient shellfish filtered under the kitchen door. ‘Helping Aunty Elspeth’ was one of the few excuses for absence which Mhairi accepted without question.

‘All she lets me do is work and study,’ he complained now to his aunt’s sympathetic ear. ‘I’m never allowed to have any fun.’

‘Wheesht, Logie. Don’t say that. It won’t be for ever and when you’re famous and publishers are fighting over your new book, you’ll be thankful she kept your nose to the grindstone,’ she said, offering a wedge of shortbread. ‘Put the tin back on the high shelf, there’s a love, or the boys will empty it when they leave the Clachan tonight.’

Wheezily, she settled back in her chair. ‘Now give me the craic from the Lodge. All I’ve heard is that a passel of lads have come in from the Isles, wanting to add Big Dougie to their salmon syndicate.’

That explained the string of 4x4s which Logan had seen driving down the single-track from Templeport that afternoon. Not for the first time, he was impressed by the way his housebound aunty kept up with the news. She got it, of course, from Uncle Davie, and it also explained the extra activity round the Moontide cages, where Yanis had been chivvying his team.

He asked, ‘What about the Smokery?’

‘Ah, that’s the big draw – and the sticking point, too. McInnes wants to charge the others to use it. Davie says they’ve asked him to chair the group, even though Moontide’s had a bad press lately.’ She leaned forward confidentially. ‘Some say Mrs Balfour had a hand in that, but don’t you go mentioning that at the Lodge.’

Remembering the interest his mother and Danna had shown in the Templeport Chronicle recently, and elliptical phrases heard through his bedroom door, he remembered Mrs Balfour’s connections with the media. Though he regarded Mr Balfour as a soft touch, his wife was a fighter, no mistake. From time to time he had caught the rough edge of her tongue himself.

So why was Mr Larsen sailing away when things were getting interesting? He said tentatively, ‘Mr Larsen’s asked me to crew for him when he goes up the Sound to the Viking festival.’

She had been staring at the fire but now her head swung round to face him directly. ‘And will you do that?’

Logan nodded. ‘If I do well, he’s promised me a job this winter. A trial, ‘he added hastily, sensing a change in her manner: a sudden coldness.

‘What does your mam say to that, laddie?’

‘I hoped you’d advise me, aunty. I – I haven’t told her yet, but I know she won’t let me unless… well, unless you help me persuade her. It’s a wonderful chance for me! I’ve lived here all my life, and now I want to see the world –’

‘I – I – I! Don’t you think of anyone but yourself? You should be ashamed, Logan Brydon! After all these years when your mam’s been working her fingers to the bone to keep you clothed and fed, you want to skip out of her life without a backward glance? How will she manage without you?’ said Elspeth angrily. ‘Have you given a thought to that? What about her hopes, her dreams for you? Are you going to throw that over for the chance of a dead-end job from a bletherskate. I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw him?’

Such an outburst from easygoing Aunty Elspeth was unprecedented, not only because it was exactly what he feared his mother would say, but also because as far as he knew his aunt never had anything to do with Mr Larsen.

‘Why, aunty? Why don’t you trust him?’

‘Never you mind. The world didn’t start when you were born, laddie, and there’s things I remember that are best laid to rest. There! That’s enough.’ She was still angry, and he sensed she had said more than she meant to. ‘You’ve come to the wrong place if you want me to back you against your mam, and if you’re hoping I won’t mention it to her you’ll be disappointed. Now gang yer gait, and dree yer ain weird, as my grandma used to say. Do you understand me?’

Logan was glad to escape.

Death of a Selkie by D.P. Hart-Davis is published by Merlin Unwin, price £14.99