The Going Down of the Sun by Jo Bannister

more built for it, physically or psychologically, than a bull-buffalo.
    While he was strolling round a Glasgow police station like a laid-back buffalo, and trying not to tell the local men how to do their job, I was planning a similar sortie to the hospital. I may not be much better at nonchalance than Harry is, but I’m easier to overlook. I doubted Neil Burns would resent my presence, as long as I refrained from telling him how to tie sutures, and anyway I wanted to return the clothes Jim Fernie had borrowed for me, which the hotel had laundered overnight.
    But if I’m less obtrusive than Harry, I’m a lot slower off the mark in the morning. I was still stumbling round the room in one shoe when the phone went and it was Harry, already well into his day’s work. He sounded at once content—to be free of this holiday nonsense, at least for now—and grim. Clearly something had come up.
    â€œBefore the storm struck last night they recovered some of the wreckage from the lagoon.”
    â€œWhat—the stove, the cylinder?”
    â€œNo, they’ll have to go back for those when the weather improves. But they found the gas detector and the bit of bulkhead it was attached to. It appears to have been switched off.”
    I felt my heart sink. Even after I’d accepted his sincerity, I hadn’t wanted McAllister to be right. “Shit.”
    â€œWell, it’s not conclusive,” said Harry, but from his tone there wasn’t much room for doubt. “Forensics will have to establish that the switch couldn’t have been tripped in the explosion. Or they may find it corroded up, in which case it’s been like that for months and has nothing to do with what happened. But …”
    â€œBut Mrs. McAllister was a careful sailor. She wouldn’t have had it fitted and then left it switched off.”
    â€œThat’s what I thought,” he admitted. “But I’ll talk to the boat yard, see if they know whether it was working. If it was off all winter while the boat was rested up—”
    â€œLaid up,” I said.
    â€œâ€”maybe she hadn’t noticed, or hadn’t got round to fixing it. She had other things on her mind when she left Oban.”
    But how much mental energy did it take to check she was safe? She’d check she had enough fuel; that her radio was working, that she had what provisions she needed and the gas to cook them. A careful sailor would also check the seals on her cylinders and her gas detector. It was possible that she had forgotten, and that the yard fitting out the Skara Sun for her had also forgotten, and that following those two bits of forgetfulness she’d been unlucky enough to get a gas leak. But there was a simpler explanation.
    â€œDamn,” I said. “I wanted him to be wrong—an accident, just an accident—” I sniffed and pulled myself together. “Oh well, at least now we know. Listen, thanks for calling. I’ll take this stuff back to the hospital but I won’t hang round. Meet me for lunch?”
    â€œI’ll try to get away,” he promised, for all the world as if he was at his own desk and the Mafia was moving in on Skipley.
    The hospital was no great distance, so I walked, my brown paper parcel under my arm. I greeted Ros in reception, showed her how I looked when respectably clad in dry clothes of my own, and asked if the head porter was about. But he was off duty, so I left my parcel with her to be passed on along with my thanks.
    I was going to leave then, but she had a message that Dr. Burns wanted to see me when I called in. I liked that “when”: my husband and I must have built up some reputation in the few hours we’d been in this city.
    Ros directed me to a ward on the same level as Curragh’s room. I passed his door at a brisk walk—I had no intention of seeing him again. But Burns wasn’t on the ward, and as I walked back to the lift I