9,59 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: DI Marjory Fleming
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
In a sea-cave on Lovatt Island, just off the west coast of Scotland, a skeleton is found shackled to the rocks. A victim of unparalleled brutality, the skeleton seems to belong firmly in the past, and DI Marjory Fleming anticipates a straightforward case. But when a modern watch is discovered on the skeleton's wrist, Fleming realises the crime may be far closer to home. Meanwhile, a series of escalating crimes arise in the nearby village of Innellan. The villagers, with their own enigmatic pasts, are reluctant to speak out. Fleming, sensing a pattern she cannot clearly discern, becomes increasingly desperate to prevent more violence. Are the skeleton and the current spate of crimes connected? If so, what evil act could have motivated such a deadly, merciless design?
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Seitenzahl: 707
Ähnliche
EVIL FOR EVIL
ALINE TEMPLETON
For Xander with fondest love
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Contents
I think I’ll go mad if I can’t confess my guilt. But whenever I’ve tried to speak about it, the terrible pain from the acid that rises in my throat takes away the breath to form the words. My hand’s cramping now just thinking about writing it down, but for my sanity I have to try, one agonising page at a time. If I’m only writing it for me, not to show to anyone, perhaps I can do it – but even so I’m scared, knowing what it’ll cost me to live through it again. I’ve got to get it out of my head, tip it out into written words. Then burn the paper, destroy the memory? I wish – oh, I wish! But could it give me any relief, when there’s no chance of forgiveness? I can only try …
He came from the sea, and in my nightmares he’s dripping wet, draped in fronds of seaweed and with shells crunching under his feet. His eyes, glinting in the dark, are fish eyes, glassy and blank, and the hand he’s holding over my sister’s mouth – or my own mouth, sometimes, since in my dreams I am often both of us at once – has glittering scales. I’m paralysed; I can’t do anything, even scream as he carries her – me - across the room to the door and opens it on unimaginable horror.
Then I wake up in a sweat of terror. And I always wonder: how much of that is dream, and how much memory?
CHAPTER ONE
The island. He stood at the window in the half-dark, looking out to where it lay in the bay, no more than a shape in the early mists.
The landscape was all grey: dark-grey land below his window, then smooth pale-grey sea and sky which had just a hint of silver there in the east where light was dawning.
It was so near! Only five hundred yards away in distance, but in reality … He chewed his lip in frustration. It might be all grey, but what he was seeing was gold, gold, among the cold, ancient stones.
The island. She turned in her sleep, crying out, but only a muttered groan emerged. She started awake when his hand touched her shoulder.
‘All right?’ he said, half asleep himself.
‘Fine. Sorry.’
She waited for his breathing to become regular then slipped out of bed in the darkened room. She dared not risk going back to sleep again.
The island. She watched the light strengthen as she lay in bed, looking out at it through the window whose curtains were never closed.
Its outline was becoming clearer as the early mist lifted to hang in the tops of the trees at the blunt seaward end; from there it sloped down to a tail of rocks, covered by the incoming tide. Its image was etched in her mind and she could see it even when her eyes were shut.
Tears gathered, gathered and silently spilt over. She made no attempt to wipe them away as they trickled down the side of her face and soaked the pillow. It was always hardest in the morning when she woke from sleep and remembered with a fresh shock of despair the tiny grave that lay over there across the water.
The island. He glanced at it as he passed in his boat, on his way out to check the pots for crab and lobster. Just another of the Isles of Fleet – Ardwall, Murray, Barlocco and this one, Lovatt, though the locals knew it by its old name, Tascadan. He didn’t like thinking about it, and mostly he succeeded. But recently …
He grimaced slightly, then headed out into the bay.
The island. She was there, in her dreams, the peace weaving magic around her, the only sounds whispering waves and the soft rustle of a gentle breeze shivering the leaves on the trees. She walked on soft turf, her feet barely touching its surface, and as she went towards the wood a dappled fawn stepped out of the shadows, unafraid, and walked beside her. She stroked its soft ears and smiled in her sleep.
The island. The swelling tide rose into the little cave on the seaward side, the waves sweeping round in the confined space, scouring away at its walls, breaking below one of the rocky shelves up at the back. Only at the highest tides could the spray reach it, to continue the cleansing work on the skeleton that lay there, leg and arm bones still shackled to the rock.
It was a milk-opal morning now: the sea still, pearly, shot with sparks of fire from the sunrise; the sky palest blue, with low clouds tinged pink and apricot. The bulk of the island was still shadowy in the dawn light.
The man swimming from there to the shore in an arrowhead of spreading ripples, his dark head sleek as a seal’s, powered his way across the shallow channel to the sandy bay. Above, on the springy turf beside a tangle of bracken and briars, his dog watched him.
Beside the little jetty where a couple of boats and a flat barge were moored he waded ashore naked, brushing water from his shoulders and arms and shivering in the morning chill. His last swim of the year, he decided. Though the forecast was for a few more days of this golden September, there had been a vicious hint of autumn in the water temperature this morning.
The dog bounded to his side and he fondled its thick ruff, then picked up a towelling robe from the jetty, rubbing his dark hair with it and wiping his face before he shrugged it on. The smooth, plastic feel of the burn tissue under his right eye gave him the usual tiny shock of distaste. He tied the belt round him then stood looking towards Lovatt Island. His island.
The air seemed full of memories today. It had been a morning just like this three years ago when Matt Lovatt had taken his first swim across the narrow strip of water that isolated Lovatt Island except at low tides. Then, though, it had been late spring, the perfect weather an early promise of summer; today the trees in the wood on the island were showing red and russet, the bracken was brown and dying and the later sunrise spoke of the journey into long, dark nights, of endings not beginnings.
Melissa had been sitting on the jetty like a mermaid on a rock with her long brown wavy hair. She was singing, and as he came out of the water he saw the round heads of two or three seals bobbing about in the bay.
She smiled over her shoulder but didn’t stop singing: ‘I am a man upon the land,I am a silkie in the sea …’
The seals turned their great mild eyes on her, then when she finished the plaintive ballad submerged again with breathy sighs and a whirl of bubbles.
Lissa’s own eyes were lit with happiness. ‘I didn’t believe it, you know. I thought it was just a pretty myth, that they liked music. Oh Matt, this is an enchanted place! It’s paradise – I could be happy here.’
He had agreed, laughing at her shining face. It was all he had hoped for, but even then he had misgivings. Lissa was so volatile, so fragile! He had seen that unhealthy excitement before, that enthusiasm so quickly quenched by cold reality. Happiness wasn’t a natural state for either of them.
And it didn’t take long for the serpent to show itself in Paradise: a crude daubing in whitewash on a wall saying, ‘White settlers go home’. They had shrunk into themselves, like snails at a sprinkling of salt; they were oversensitive, perhaps, seeing general hostility in places where there might only be shyness or indifference, but the petty persecutions left them with little will to struggle for local acceptance.
Paradise turned to purgatory. The tragedy of a stillborn child, now in his little grave on the island, might have brought them together but instead drove them into separate grief. When they did talk, the words seemed weighted with too much significance, and the mourning silence spread and spread until there was nothing between them any more but echoing space. Matt could see the destructive darkness drawing closer and closer around her once more, and this time he could only watch, powerless.
Kerr Brodie’s arrival had been a relief. There were, to quote, three people in their marriage now, but if it hadn’t been for him there would have been no marriage at all. For all that stresses were inevitable in any relationship involving three people, they could have conversation and even laughter over the kitchen table, before they went to their separate rooms to wrestle with their individual demons.
The dog, digging aimlessly in the sand, grew bored and loped over to its master, looking up at him expectantly.
‘Yes, I want breakfast too,’ Matt said, shoving his feet into broken-backed deck shoes and heading off up the hill.
He wasn’t looking forward to the day. In fact, he decided, he’d take off somewhere till it was all over, go for a long walk. He’d agreed to the TV interview after they’d somehow heard about his rehab idea but he wasn’t going to appear himself, like some sort of freak show. He was unconsciously fingering the disfigured side of his face as he let himself in through the gate to Lovatt’s Farm.
The woman talking to camera was standing in front of a backdrop that looked as if it had come straight out of the VisitScotland Galloway tourist brochure. The sky was blue with dinky fluffy clouds, just like it should be, the grass was implausibly green and out in Wigtown Bay the Isles of Fleet looked as if they were auditioning for the precious-jewels-set-in-a-silver-sea cameo part.
A stocky grey-haired man, with soldierly bearing but an awkward, limping gait walked beside the reporter, saying, ‘So Major Matt and I discussed it and felt that what this place had done for me, it could do for others.’ He had a strong Glasgow accent.
The camera swung to a square-faced young woman with tousled light-brown hair, smiling as she stroked a red deer hind that was nuzzling her with what came across to the viewers as affection rather than greed for the carrot she was holding out of shot. Then it closed in again on the reporter.
‘So here on the deer farm, amid all this tranquil beauty, courtesy of Major Matt Lovatt – and with Dancer’s help, of course,’ she smiled as the camera panned back to the deer, nudging impatiently now, ‘—troubled former soldiers like Christie here can find peace, and healing for the wounds, visible or invisible, which have poisoned their lives.
‘Carla Brewer, News at Six, Innellan, Galloway, south-west Scotland.’
Eddie Tindall was studying his wife, under cover of reading his evening paper. Even after eight years, she still seemed a marvel to him and when they were in the same room his eyes were irresistibly drawn to her. He knew she hated being watched, though, so he had developed a range of subterfuges: a mannerism of putting his hand to his forehead to shade his eyes, looking up under his brows with his head bent over paperwork or, as now, pretending to read a newspaper.
The Six O’Clock News was showing on a huge plasma screen above the marble fireplace of their Salford Exchange Quay penthouse. The polished floor was honey-gold, the soft leather sofas were biscuit colour and the most expensive interior designer around had used a palette of warm, creamy shades for the paintwork with a feature wall of glowing bronze and gold wallpaper. Even Eddie had blinked at the cost of that wall.
He had bought the flat for Elena three years ago. They had been living until then in the house where he and his ex-wife had brought up their family, still unchanged from the day Debra and his son and daughter had left, hurt and angry, for a new life in London. Naturally, he’d told Elena she could gut the place if she liked, but she hadn’t liked – nor even, apparently, cared – that nothing in it was her choice.
Her indifference began to bother him. Eddie had no confidence in his hold on her heart and without material things she cherished to anchor her, she might just walk out of his life as randomly as she had come into it. Choice, too, was personality given concrete form and he had offered her the Exchange Quay flat as a blank canvas, in hope if not expectation that her decisions would give him an insight into the mystery that was Elena, even after all these years. If he understood her better, he might obsess about her less.
Elena’s one decision had been the designer, picking him, Eddie guessed sadly, purely on the basis of his reputation among the Salford ladies who lunched – you couldn’t call them Elena’s friends – and giving him a completely free hand. Looking round the room, Eddie could not see a single object she had chosen herself.
She was sitting watching the news. Elena never fidgeted; she had a quality of stillness which to Eddie seemed to permeate the room, so that coming back from a bruising day he felt his cares slipping away as he stepped into the pool of tranquillity she created. Just at this moment, though, he noticed tension.
Not that it was obvious. Her slate-blue eyes didn’t blink, her manicured hands lay folded in her lap, her long, slim legs in the well-tailored black trousers were crossed, just as they had been five minutes before. But there was a tiny pulse flicking just at the corner of her eye and now she put up her hand to try to quieten it.
She turned her head, as if she had felt his eyes upon her. Eddie leant forward hastily to pick up the remote control as the music for the end of the news came on, switched it off and stood up.
‘Drink, doll?’
‘Please.’ Elena smiled up at him and he smiled back, his heart as always skipping a beat at her loveliness.
He had bought it all, of course – the neat, tip-tilted nose, the shining caramel bob with its subtle highlights, the white, perfectly aligned teeth. But those had been her decision, not his; he had seen beauty in the Elena he had first met as one of her clients, when the hair was peroxide and stringy and those eyes had looked too big for her pinched face and had bruised-looking shadows beneath.
She had been suspicious as some little feral cat, happier in the familiar gutter than with the promise of a silk cushion and a saucer of cream, because in her experience any change was a threat. Eddie had bought hours and hours of her time, taking her out to feed her, to talk to her, to amuse her, until at last she trusted him – as much as she ever would trust anyone.
He would never know just what had at last brought her to agree to marry him – the ugly death of another prostitute, perhaps. In a rare, treasured moment of closeness, she had quoted a favourite story from her childhood, the childhood she would never discuss: ‘I am the cat who walks by himself and all places are alike to me.’ She was that way still.
The thirties drinks cabinet had a mirrored interior and as Eddie got out the triangular glasses to make vodka Martinis he caught sight of himself: a balding middle-aged man with a roll of fat forming round his neck and a face like Les Dawson on an off day. How could someone like Elena love that?
She never said she did, and he never asked her. It was enough that she was there, that she was his. She had cost him his marriage and his children, who had not spoken to him for ten years. But if her smiles were bought, they were sweet even at that price.
He brought Elena a glass. She was pressing her cheek again, and he felt a sense of disquiet. He needn’t bother asking her what was upsetting her; she would laugh and say it was nothing. But he would be watching nervously to see if the wide cuff bangles that covered her wrists would appear again.
The Smugglers Inn was quiet this early on a Friday evening. Most of the visitors had gone, though the belated apology of a mellow September after a disappointing summer was drawing back some owners of the many chalets and caravans tucked into the rising ground above Fleet Bay for the weekend. The sun was warm enough during the day, but the evenings had a chill which was already bringing autumn livery to the trees, and lengthening nights were a reminder that the decline into the long dark winter had begun.
The inn, once the Innellan Arms, had been rechristened by a romantic previous owner to reflect the time when excisemen like Robert Burns – that champion of freedom and whisky – policed the Solway Firth where the free traders brought in goods from the Isle of Man.
The little village of Innellan, looking out over Fleet Bay towards the islands, was at the end of a narrow road: no more than a couple of dozen houses, some outlying farms and cottages, an abandoned church and a graveyard. Georgia Stanley, the licensee, claimed the Smugglers was a local where the dead outnumbered the living by ten to one.
She was here because she’d fallen in love. She and Barry both had, seduced by Innellan’s beauty. Each year after their fortnight in a caravan it became harder to go back to Walsall until they started asking themselves why they should. Then the Smugglers came up for sale with a price that made them burst out laughing, and they couldn’t wait to begin the adventure.
Then Barry had died. Who dies, without warning, at forty? It was hardly his fault, but in some complicated way Georgia sort of blamed him that here she was, alone, five years older and in an unsaleable property, with the shadows lengthening towards another long winter. They’d never seen winter here, from their caravan.
Not that she’d go back to Walsall – never! But Kirkcudbright, now – with its pretty houses and the bustle of its shops and friendly folk who smiled and said hello; unlike this weird, secretive little place with its mysterious alliances and feuds going back generations, so as an incomer you kept putting your foot in it because no one would tell you who was on speaking terms and who wasn’t. She’d learnt tact the hard way, and she was tolerated now – though of course you couldn’t expect to be accepted until you’d had your own fifty-year feud.
Not that it would be hard to start one. It would be a luxury not to have to be pleasant to some people, but luxuries had no place in Georgia’s life now. She sometimes thought her tongue must be scarred from keeping it between her teeth, but she always managed to smile. As long as the pub was a going concern, there might be a bedazzled summer visitor who was as naive as they had been, and then she’d be out of here. That dream kept her going when each night she came through from the adjoining house to open up.
Georgia took a pride in polishing the mahogany bar counter and brass fittings and the wooden floor, hollowed with the traffic of years. She kept a fire burning in the cast-iron fireplace, even in summer, since the white building with thick walls and small windows was always cool. Soon she’d be drawing the red curtains and switching on red-shaded lamps; the pub looked at its cosy best during the dreary winter months, though six customers then was a busy evening. Once the nights drew in and everyone retreated into their houses, she barely saw her neighbours. It was, well, creepy.
Tonight, though, it was cheerful enough, with low sun streaming in and the back door open to the view and the soft sea air. Georgia was polishing glasses and watching the Six O’Clock News on the TV at the end of the bar. They’d all been agog when the film team arrived at Lovatt’s Farm and she was expecting a gossiping influx later. At the moment, though, there were only two regulars sitting up at the bar and a couple wearing shorts and hiking boots drinking lager at a table.
Derek Sorley made small, explosive noises all through the item, like a kettle that might blow its lid off once it built up steam. He was one of Georgia’s leading feud candidates: rat-faced, bald at the front with straggling grey hair at the back caught into a ponytail, an unfortunate style suggesting the whole lot was gradually sliding off backwards.
Sometimes she could almost see a miasma of spite and envy around him. He had a grudge against anyone with ‘advantages’, which seemed to mean anyone who hadn’t lost several jobs through rudeness and idleness as he had, to her certain knowledge. Still, he was good for a couple of pints every evening, and Georgia couldn’t afford to be choosy.
When the report finished, Sorley burst out, ‘Oh, great! And how did St Matt arrange that little piece of PR? Our wounded hero, healing “our boys” – and girls too, you notice. Could be on to a good thing there! Wonder how Mrs Matt feels about his brave little soldier?’ He gave an unpleasant snigger. ‘And what chance now of an enforcement order for access to the island? He’s only to say they need peace and quiet to recover and he’ll have everyone sobbing. Oh, I never said he was stupid!
‘Right to Roam – that’s a joke! Bloody government promises access all over Scotland, but they just roll over for the landlords.’
Georgia had no special brief for Matt Lovatt. Bit of a moody sod, and she could count the number of times he’d come in here on one hand – but then, the locals had hardly made him welcome after he’d refused Steve Donaldson a tenancy agreement so he could farm himself. Pub etiquette meant a non-committal response, but she heard herself saying, ‘Well – he’s got fallow deer there. They’re shyer than the red deer – maybe they’d panic if tourists went tramping around.’
The man at the other end of the bar had watched without comment. Cal Findlay had a prawn boat working out of Kirkcudbright, but lived here with his mother in an isolated croft house on the hill behind the village. He came in most evenings, but sat mainly in silence, his eyes – so dark that they looked almost black – watching with what looked like a cynical contempt for more sociable beings. She rather fancied him, actually, but he’d never shown any interest.
Now Findlay said coldly, ‘You’ve got it in for him because he caught you with a metal detector and threw you off his island.’
Sorley bridled, his face turning red. ‘You’re a liar!’
Findlay, infuriatingly, did not answer, only raising one eyebrow and taking another sip of his whisky.
Sorley began to swear at him, but Georgia cut in crisply. ‘I don’t have language like that in my pub, Derek. There’s the lifeboat box – that’ll be two pounds.’
He opened his mouth to argue, but a steely look from her changed his mind. He put the money in the box with a bad grace, getting to his feet and downing the rest of his pint.
‘You could ask him,’ Sorley pointed a shaking finger, ‘who tipped Lovatt off when I was just taking a wee walk on land that by rights belongs to every Scot?’
Findlay didn’t respond. He went back to watching the news impassively as Sorley stormed out, though Georgia could swear he wasn’t hearing a word of it.
The small TV in the corner of the Mains of Craigie kitchen was tuned to the news, but neither Janet Laird nor Catriona Fleming was watching it.
Janet was making skirlie, gently cooking onions and oatmeal to go with the chicken already roasting in the Aga – one of their own plump birds. In her basket beside it, Meg the collie was giving small sighing whines, tormented by the delicious smell.
Cat was peeling potatoes. She was eighteen now, strikingly attractive with fair hair and blue eyes like her father and her mother’s long, slim legs. She looked dubiously at what she had prepared.
‘Do you think that’ll be enough, Gran?’
Janet Laird was in her seventies, but she was still active and cheerful even if her brown eyes were a little faded and her shoulders more stooped. She was as busy as ever with her good causes, one of which was ensuring her daughter Marjory’s culinary inadequacies did not deprive her family of good Scots home cooking. Together with Karolina, the wife of Rafael who worked the farm with Bill, she saw to it that household chores didn’t add more stress to her daughter’s already stressful job.
Janet assessed the pile of potatoes. ‘You’d better do a few more, pet. You know Cammie’s just a wee terror when it comes to roast tatties.’
‘Only you could describe Cammie as a “wee” anything,’ Cat protested. Her brother Cameron, at sixteen, had reached six foot two and showed no signs of stopping. ‘He’s just a greedy pig.’
‘Och, he needs to keep his strength up with all that rugby training. What time’s he back tonight?’
‘About seven. And Mum said she wouldn’t be late – if you can believe her.’
Going back to her task Cat sighed. It was somehow terribly important that all the family should be together tonight. She’d chosen her favourite supper – creamy cauliflower soup, roast chicken and Gran’s special lemon meringue pie – because tomorrow she was leaving home. Her stomach gave a nervous jump at the thought.
Oh, she was up for it, excited about her place at Glasgow Uni to read veterinary science, and her boyfriend Will Irvine was there already in his second year studying medicine. They’d be together in the same place at last – she’d hardly seen him this summer, when he’d been working as a hospital porter in Glasgow.
Oh, it would be great! Living in the big city instead of a boring backwater would be brilliant.
But this evening Cat felt shaky. She couldn’t imagine opening her eyes in the morning in a room without any of the evidence of her life so far – stuffed animals she couldn’t quite bear to give to the church jumble sale, children’s books she still reread sometimes, the wall of photos of everything from her thirteenth birthday party to the school prom in June. Without her past, among strangers, she could become someone totally, excitingly different – or be utterly overwhelmed and lost. Tonight she was favouring lost.
The phone rang and was answered before Cat could dry her hands to pick it up. Her voice was flat as she said, ‘I bet you anything that’s Mum, saying she’s held up.’
‘Not necessarily, dear,’ Janet said, but without conviction, and a couple of minutes later Bill Fleming appeared.
He was a big, solidly built man, fresh-complexioned, with fair hair imperceptibly going grey and thinning as his waistline expanded, but his eyes were still as blue as his daughter’s.
As the women turned questioning looks on him, he pulled a face. ‘Yeah, I’m afraid so. That was Mum.’
‘Oh, don’t tell me. She’s delayed. As usual.’
‘She’s really upset, Cat,’ Bill defended his wife. ‘She says just to go ahead without her.’
Cat looked at him sharply. ‘Go ahead without her? You mean she won’t be back for supper?’
‘Seems unlikely, apparently. You know how it is, love – she’s no option. It’s just the job.’
‘Oh, I know all right! The rotten job – the rotten, rotten job!’ Cat felt humiliating tears springing to her eyes. ‘I’m … I’m just going to do some more packing.’
She hurried out and up the stairs. Big Ted, her comfort in childhood miseries, still sat on a chair beside her bed; she grabbed him, burying her face in his worn pile, and flung herself down to sob.
The bar, in one of Glasgow’s seedier backstreets, was run-down and unappealing. The paintwork bore the scars of pub brawls and the frosted glass of the dirty windows still had the name of a long-forgotten brewer etched into it. Smoke wafted in from banished drinkers clustered round the open door and its clientele was almost entirely male. It was doing good business this evening and already there were pools of spilt beer on the floor.
The TV on the wall, ignored except for football, was showing the news, barely audible above the raucous voices. The only person looking at it even idly was a gaunt young man on his own, ill-shaven and in scruffy clothes that looked as if he might have slept in them. He was taking sips of the cheapest lager on the slate as if seeing how long he could spin it out.
When the item from Galloway came on he suddenly sat up, stared, then got off his stool and pushed through to the end of the bar where he could hear. He listened with painful attention and when it finished turned to the barman.
‘Hey, pal! Got a pen?’
The barman glanced round, then found one by the till. ‘There you are, mate. OK?’
‘Cheers.’
The young man drained his glass in two gulps, wrote something on the palm of his hand, put the pen back and hurried out.
The sun was going down now, meeting the golden path it had made across the still waters of Wigtown Bay. As the little boat with its outboard motor chugged across on the seaward side of the Isles of Fleet, ripples shivered the reflection into splinters of light, but the glories of the autumn sunset were wasted on its occupants.
The boy steering was a tow-headed lad of thirteen, his frame bulking up into adolescence already. The glow on his face came only partly from an afternoon of sun and sea; there was also satisfaction at the blue-silver mackerel in the bottom of the boat beside the fishing tackle. Reluctant to see the day end, he throttled back the engine and called to his companion.
‘Here, Jamie! How about we check out the cave there? The tide’s right.’
They were passing near the western shore of Lovatt Island and he was pointing towards a small sea cave, halfway down its length. There was warm light still on the cliff, just, but it was fading fast and the cave mouth looked black and forbidding.
Jamie, younger, slighter, dark and with a sensitive face, covered his shiver with a look at his watch. ‘Naw,’ he said. ‘Dad said to be back at seven or he’d kill me. It’s near enough eight already.’
‘So he’ll kill you anyway,’ Craig pointed out with pitiless logic. ‘It’ll only take a minute. There were smugglers used these caves.’ He leant forward to open the throttle.
Suddenly, the sun was gone. The cliffs were grey not gold and shadows were gathering in the rock clefts.
Jamie couldn’t conceal a shudder this time. ‘It’s … it’s too dark,’ he muttered. ‘We’d not see anything.’
Craig eyed him with contempt. ‘There’s a torch in the locker. You’re just feart!’
‘No, I’m not. Well … it’s haunted. You shouldn’t go on the island at night.’
Unimpressed, Craig said, ‘Oh aye – ghosts! That’ll be right. Oooooh!’ He waved his hands, waggling his fingers.
But Jamie was stubborn. ‘There is. My mum told me – crying and wailing. Heard it herself, years ago. She wouldn’t go near it if you paid her.’
It suddenly seemed much colder. The boat rocked on a rippling wave, and Craig, unsettled by his friend’s nervousness, glanced at the cave, a gaping darkness now.
‘Trying to wind you up, that’s all,’ he said, but he sounded uncertain.
‘But I heard it too. That’s how I know. I was out one night a while ago, down on the shore, when it was like this, just getting dark, and I heard it – screams and groans and stuff. And you know there’s a dead baby on the island.’
It was a telling detail. Craig gulped. ‘What did you do?’
‘Went back home. But I tell you, you’ll not get me going there at night.’
Always the leader in their ploys, Craig was reluctant to give way. ‘I still think it’s bullshit. Probably just the deer. They make noises you could think were ghosts if you were daft enough. It’ll only take a minute.’ He headed for the opening.
‘We’re not supposed to go too close inshore where there’s rocks. Dad’ll go, like, mental,’ Jamie said in a last desperate attempt. ‘He won’t let us have the boat again.’
‘We’re not going to tell him, are we?’ As Jamie sat straining his ears for untoward noises, Craig steered in through the entrance.
It was almost dark now, but it was clear immediately that it was a very dull cave – just a shallow hollow worn in the cliff, with no tunnels leading off or anything. Disappointed, Craig shone his torch round as the boat bucked in the swell of the waves in the confined space.
‘See? There’s nothing here,’ Jamie said with some relief. ‘Come on, let’s go before you cowp the boat and we’re in real trouble.’
‘Oh, all right,’ Craig said sullenly, giving one last sweep of the torch round, then up across the roof. ‘Here – what’s that?’
A wide shelf, high above. Something white. Bones. A skull, gleaming in the light, gaunt and grinning, its blank eye sockets seeming to stare directly down at them. The gasp of horror from the two boys came as one breath, then as Jamie set up a terrified wail Craig found reverse and they shot back out into open water.
‘What’ll we do?’ Jamie said, when he was able to speak. ‘We’ll need to tell someone.’
Craig was pale, shaking but more composed. ‘They won’t let us out in the boat again if we tell them. It’s probably just some old smuggler or something, hundreds of years old – nothing to do with us.’
‘Not say anything?’ Jamie was torn. It seemed the sort of thing you ought to tell about – but his dad would really rip him up for going in there. And it was so gross, maybe if they didn’t talk about it Jamie could just forget they’d ever seen it.
Neither of them spoke as they headed back to Innellan.
What can I clearly remember of that night? Being wakened by moonlight shining on to my face, certainly. One of the curtains, which had been closed at bedtime, had been roughly drawn back and as I opened my eyes, still half asleep, I could see a great white full moon against a black sky, and a man silhouetted against the darkness.
He was bending over the other bed, picking her up – my sister. He had his hand across her mouth and I could see her eyes, wide and terrified. He had, I think, a stocking over his face – or was it a mask? So much is still unclear, so much confused and dreamlike.
I know that he saw me watching. I know that he snarled under his breath, ‘Keep quiet. Say nothing, or it’ll be you tomorrow night – or the next, or the next …’ The words are burnt into my brain.
He carried her out of the door, struggling, moaning – my sister, my twin – and shut it silently.
I didn’t My hand – I can’t
CHAPTER TWO
The paramedics were kneeling in pools of blood on the kitchen floor of the council flat as they worked on the young woman, trying to staunch bleeding from stab wounds to her throat, chest and arms. She was battling against them drunkenly, flailing her arms and groaning obscenities.
‘Oh God, she’s going to be sick again,’ one of them exclaimed. ‘Pass me that bowl.’
DI Marjory Fleming left them to it and went through to the lounge, her stomach churning. The scene of crime team were standing by. The woman could die later – or even before they could get her out.
Just another domestic. Fleming realised with revulsion that the lounge carpet was so disgustingly filthy that the soles of her shoes were sticking to it. It was actually an effort to move them when DS Tam MacNee came in.
A hard-faced Glaswegian, MacNee was wearing his invariable uniform of jeans, white T-shirt, black leather jacket and trainers. His expression was grim.
‘They’ve picked him up. He’s about paralytic, blood everywhere, and it looks as if she chibbed him too. Didn’t seem clear about what happened, but any decent brief will tell him to cop a plea.’
‘Oh, I suppose so.’ Fleming sighed. She was several inches taller than her sergeant, a fit-looking woman with a neat chestnut crop; clear bright hazel eyes were her most striking feature. In her smart trouser suit she looked out of place in these squalid surroundings.
She was breathing through her mouth, not her nose. The plastic trays bearing evidence of half-finished, rotting takeaways, the empty bottles, discarded clothes and battered toys were the least of it: there was also a pile of soiled nappies and what looked like dog messes on the floor. She didn’t want to think what she was carrying on the soles of her shoes.
‘The paramedics are trying to get her stabilised. It shouldn’t be fatal, but she’s so drunk they won’t make predictions.’
MacNee shrugged. ‘Frankly she’d not be much of a loss.’
Fleming’s pent-up anger, which had been seething as she dealt with hysterical neighbours, organised an investigation, liaised with social workers about the two toddlers, the baby and the two Staffies and issued a press statement, burst out.
‘Why the hell do we do this job, Tam?’ she raged. ‘Such a sodding waste of our time and the taxpayer’s money! Two worthless people drink themselves stupid and belligerent, then think it’s smart to involve a carving knife in the row they’re having. They terrorise the neighbours and apparently she’s worse than him. Sometimes I think we should leave them to get on with it.’
MacNee raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s not like you, boss.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Fleming said tiredly. ‘It’s this place that’s getting to me.’ She gestured at the rubbish-strewn room. ‘They’re living in a midden and it’s not as if they had anything else to do – even ten minutes with a black plastic bag would help. And now there’ll be three poor bloody kids who didn’t ask to be born to parents like that – at least, she’s presumably their mother, though how many he fathered is a whole other question. They’re going into care, and we know what that means.’
‘Aye. Not that they’d be better off left here. Just another generation of neds in the making.’ MacNee paused. ‘Only we’re not to call them that now, are we?’
Fleming gave a faint smile. ‘Glad the directive’s had some effect. They’re “youngsters in need of choice and chances”, Tam.’
MacNee snorted. ‘Or chancers, for short. Anyway, what more is there we can do tonight?’
Fleming grimaced. ‘I’m waiting to see what happens with her, then I’ll have to go back for the formal bit. Oh, it’s the job, but this is so damn depressing! And I can’t see any hope it’ll improve.’
‘Ah, you need what I heard some guy on the radio describe as Presbyterian optimism – we’re all doomed, but we’re not letting it get us down.’
MacNee grinned hopefully, exposing the gap between his front teeth. Fleming was surprised into a half-laugh.
‘Sorry, Tam. I suppose I’m pissed off anyway because it’s Cat’s last night before she goes off to uni and we were to have a special supper.’
‘You’ll not be back in time, will you?’
‘No. I told them to go ahead.’ Fleming sighed. She’d been doing a lot of sighing this evening.
Christie Jack was feeling cheerful as she came down the drive from Lovatt’s farmhouse on her way to the Smugglers. Today had been a good day, with the excitement of the news team, and seeing herself on the telly too. Matt was pleased, said they’d done really well. It gave her a warm glow, Matt’s approval.
When she saw Melissa Lovatt sitting on a grassy knoll, staring out across Fleet Bay, she checked, pulling a face. She’d have to say something, but it would probably turn out to be the wrong something. Lissa was the sort of woman Christie despised – droopy, a bit weird, either sick as a parrot or over the moon, and if you didn’t get the tone right, she’d a genius for making you feel uncomfortable. Poor Matt spent his life on tiptoe.
Christie liked to think she was tough. She’d had to be. The only way to get respect was to fight for it and she’d no truck with people who whinged. You needed to put it all behind you and get on with life, that was all. Which was perhaps why she’d been so totally poleaxed when everything fell apart.
It came out of a clear sky, a bleached sky with a blistering white sun and air that was shimmering with heat. Just an ordinary day, as ordinary as a day ever was when there were towelheads out there trying to kill you and you were in a Snatch Land Rover that offered about as much protection from roadside bombs as a frilly nightie. But you didn’t let yourself think about that, any more than you worried about personal freshness when your whole body was permanently bathed in sweat.
Just an ordinary convoy, just the commute to work, except it never followed a regular route. Just an ordinary Afghan village they were driving through, with its street of ramshackle houses and the men standing talking in groups who turned their heads as the vehicles passed. No waves this morning. Sometimes they waved, sometimes they didn’t.
Then a movement in a dark doorway, caught a fraction of a second before the grenade came arcing through the air, slowly, slowly, as if it were floating, and yet too quickly for the officer standing on recce in the hatch to duck, and the world exploded. A hell of gunfire, primitive yelling and whooping, then tearing groans – groans right ather side, and the smell of terror and hot blood as her comrade bled to death. Her own hands slippery as she tried futilely to staunch the flow. An animal scream, which she recognised as her own voice …
It was a sound that became familiar over the next weeks and months. The first flashback hit a week after – and again, and again and again. Without warning she would be right back there, and a quivering wreck wasn’t much use as a soldier.
They’d given her treatment, but in the end she had been given a medical discharge, feeling an abject failure and impossible to live with. She was so angry – angry with herself, angry with everyone who crossed her path, angry with the whole world. She’d dumped her boyfriend before he could dump her; he hadn’t protested and getting through the day took so much energy she barely noticed he’d gone. And all sorts of things had started crawling out of the woodwork, too, things Christie thought she’d banished long ago. Her coping strategies simply weren’t working any more.
It didn’t help that she was skint, going without proper food to pay rent for her lousy bedsit, living with the ‘what-if’ terror. She’d been homeless before, until the army took her in; they’d washed their hands of her now.
The chance encounter with her former CO was a sort of miracle. He’d served with Matt Lovatt in Bosnia and heard his plan of offering a bolt-hole for soldiers needing peaceful R and R.
‘A working holiday for as long as you need it,’ he had explained, ‘though the work’s meant to be therapeutic rather than a quid pro quo.’
Christie wasn’t entirely certain what a quid pro quo was, but she could understand all about a roof over her head and food she didn’t have to pay for. She could hack it, whatever it was like.
Yet she’d actually considered leaving, the first couple of days. It was kind of a weird household, for a start, with odd relationships – a job lot of emotional cripples, though Kerr was the only one who actually had a missing leg. And it was so effing quiet! No music, except sometimes the classical stuff with no proper tune, no banter, no outlet for the aggression constantly bubbling below the surface as Christie was politely grateful and on her best behaviour. The nightmares were worse than ever.
That second night, sweating and trembling, she went down to the kitchen to escape them. It was July, one o’clock in the morning, and the darkness was lifting already. In the cool grey light she made tea and found a handful of Hobnobs; she was still perpetually hungry, craving the comfort of starch and sugar. When the door opened she jumped guiltily.
Kerr Brodie limped into the room. He was a thickset man with grizzled grey hair; he smiled a lot but Christie noticed the smile seldom reached his hard grey eyes. He was fully dressed; he obviously hadn’t gone to bed yet. He grinned at her startled movement.
‘At ease, soldier. Heard you moving about.’ He sat down at the table. ‘Got the heebie-jeebies, then?’
The silly term got her on the raw. Digging her nails into her palms, she said, ‘I’m fine.’
‘That’ll be right,’ he said sardonically, then took out some keys and threw them across. ‘The major’s orders. These are for the small motor boat. There’s a shack on the island with bedding and blankets. Get across there and yell for a bit. He’ll leave food till you’re ready to come back.’
Being there alone might just push her over the edge, but she was past caring. She took the keys and went.
After three strange days when Christie spoke to no one, screamed, cried and hurled rocks into the sea, she felt spent and peaceful. The fourth night, she slept like a baby.
Back at the farmhouse, she still had bad days, but could believe now that eventually the horrors would recede. With hard physical work she slept more soundly and on bad days she could go to the island and let the murmur of wind and waves which was somehow part of a deep, deep silence wrap itself all about her.
She seriously owed Matt, and by extension Lissa too, though it was hard to see what she’d contributed. Christie pinned on a big smile now as she approached.
‘Hi, Lissa!’
It was much colder now the sun was only a line of gold down on the horizon, but Lissa didn’t seem to have noticed. She’d pulled her cotton print dress over her bent knees and was clasping them, her blue eyes dreamy. She was small, with a faded prettiness, brown curling hair and fine, pale skin, but her cheekbones were too sharply defined in her thin face.
She looked round. ‘Isn’t it a perfect evening? And look!’ She reached down to delicate blue flowers growing by her feet, cupping one tenderly in her fingers. ‘I love harebells. Witches’ bells – that was the old name. Hares are witches’ familiars, you know, and they were meant to ring to warn them if the fox was around.’
‘Mmm.’ Christie tried not to wince. ‘I’m off to the pub. Fancy coming?’
Oh God, she’d done it again. ‘You know what they’re like,’ Lissa said, blue eyes tragically reproachful.
‘Mmm,’ Christie murmured again. ‘Well, see you later.’
Yes, she knew what they were like. A few poisonous characters holding a grudge, and the rest absorbed in their own lives and indifferent to strangers. But once you’d hung out for a bit the regulars were mostly friendly, and during the summer there were all the holidaymakers too. If she was still here come the winter, she couldn’t quite see herself walking along to socialise with the bizarrely awful Derek, but towards the weekend even now there was usually quite a jolly crowd. Matt and Lissa were making a big mistake in cutting themselves off, even if neither of them was exactly sociable.
As Christie reached the Smugglers, a group of young men appeared from the opposite direction. They were in high spirits, one with a helium balloon tied to his wrist, wearing a T-shirt with messages scribbled on it, mostly obscene.
They arrived just as she did, but the one in front stepped back to usher her ahead of them. He was seriously fit – big and broad-shouldered, with close-cropped dark hair and brown eyes. Christie smiled a thank you.
The pub was quite full now and Georgia was being kept busy, but when she caught sight of Christie’s new acquaintance she called, ‘Andy! Didn’t know you were around. Come and give us a kiss, then.’
Andy, grinning, obliged. ‘I’ve borrowed the family caravan for a weekend with some of my mates. Can you do us a jug of beer?’
‘Course I can, my love. Having a party?’ She began pulling pints into a large jug.
‘Wake, more like. This guy’s getting married.’ Andy jerked a thumb at his sheepish-looking friend.
‘Should be you, by rights. Your mum and dad were saying you needed to find a nice girl and get settled.’
‘Plenty time for that. I’m still young …’
Georgia wiped off the jug and set it down. ‘Getting older all the time, petal. Still, make the most of it.’
‘Trust me.’ Andy winked, then noticed Christie was standing patiently beside the bar. ‘Oops, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘This young lady was ahead of us, Georgia.’
‘Sorry, dear,’ Georgia echoed. ‘What’s it to be?’
Christie saw ‘Andy’ was looking at her properly for the first time. ‘Put it on my slate, Georgia,’ he said. ‘An apology for queue-jumping.’
He had a great smile. Christie smiled too. ‘No need. But … oh, just a Becks, thanks.’
‘Cheers!’ he said, pouring out beer for himself and passing the jug to one of his friends, but he didn’t rejoin the group. They introduced themselves: he was Andy Macdonald, from Kirkluce, and his mates, after sidelong looks and some pointed remarks, settled at the end of the bar, with a bit of good-natured jostling.
Then the bomb went off. Christie screamed, a piercing, full-blooded scream, looked wildly about her, then dived under the nearest table with her hands round her head. An absolute silence fell.
Then Andy’s arms were round her. ‘It’s all right, Christie, it’s all right. One of these idiots just burst Dave’s balloon, that’s all.’
Half dazed, she sat up, then felt a hot tide of embarrassment flood right through her, turning her face puce. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘Oh God! How humiliating.’
Conversations began again, with sympathetic murmurs and glances. Some people had obviously seen the TV programme, though Andy clearly hadn’t. As he helped her up, her face still aflame, one of his friends who looked almost as uncomfortable as Christie felt came to apologise for bursting the balloon.
‘Sorry’ seemed to be the key word tonight. He said it several times, she said it several times, each politely laid claim to total stupidity, then he went back to the group with obvious relief.
Christie’s heart was still pounding and her legs were shaky. She needed to sit down before she fell down and made a fool of herself all over again. She headed for a window seat.
‘I’m fine now, thanks,’ she said to Andy, who was still holding her arm. ‘You go back to your mates.’
‘I’d rather talk to you.’
They squeezed on to the narrow seat and he said, ‘Right. Tell me what all that was about.’
When Matt Lovatt, his dog loping alongside, appeared on his way to the boat half an hour later, Lissa was still sitting there. He waved, not slowing down, but she scrambled to her feet.
‘Are you going to the island? I’ll come.’
He groaned inwardly. He loved being alone on his island on a soft night, when colour had gone from the sky and it became a place of shadows and ambiguity, when his pretty dappled deer could slip into the trees and mysteriously vanish, when the offshore breeze died and everything went still.
He knew, too, why Lissa wanted to go – she only ever had one reason, which always broke her apart all over again. Anyway, Matt would have liked to check before she did – he’d found a nasty little message sprayed on the headstone recently.
‘Won’t you be cold like that, Lissa? And it’s getting dark. I’m just dumping concentrate for the deer and coming straight back.’
She shook her head. ‘No. I want to take him these. He’d like them.’ She bent to pick some harebells, making a dainty posy.
‘Fine,’ Matt said. She followed him to the jetty, walking on the grass verge in bare feet. At a gesture, the dog jumped into the motor boat, sitting like a figurehead in the prow. Matt helped Lissa aboard and started the engine.
Her eyes were fixed on the island – wide, hungry eyes. Matt glanced at her, then glanced away. With hindsight, he’d been crazy: he could easily have said a burial on the island wouldn’t be allowed. It was unfortunate he’d remembered the consecrated ground around the tiny ruined chapel, with a couple of old headstones weathered to anonymity, and exploited that to get permission. Close by was the burial cairn and the Norse graves; Matt had liked to think of the child, who had never lived and now was little more than a scar on his mind, in the company of the old warriors.
If he was honest, it had been a bid for permanence. For the first time in his life he had felt rooted; the island was his place. Lissa would never want to leave if the grave was there. It hadn’t occurred to him that his salvation might be his wife’s destruction.
He swept round to bring the boat in, jumped ashore to tie up and held out his hand to help Lissa ashore. In her other hand the fragile flowers were losing colour, wilting already, dying in front of his eyes. The symbolism was deeply uncomfortable.
Matt clicked his fingers and the dog came to heel. ‘I’ll go to the bothy then come back here. Don’t hurry – I’ll wait for you.’
‘Aren’t you coming?’
In the deepening dusk he couldn’t see her face, but he knew the look – the one he had seen so often, asking for something he couldn’t give and filling him with guilt at his failure. If there was graffiti on the headstone, it was too late to do anything about it now.
‘No,’ he said gruffly.
Lissa paused briefly then set off on the grass in her bare feet, ignoring the track which curved round the hill then ran from one end of the island to the other.
Matt watched her go before he followed the track to the bothy. Sheltered by the trees at the seaward end of the island, it had housed a shepherd in his grandfather’s day. Matt had made it weatherproof with a storage area below and basic accommodation above where you could doss down if you had a sick animal or an orphan fawn.
There were a couple of does moving about, browsing and nibbling at low scrub. Dawn and dusk were their times; they were happier in half-light, like all prey animals. One raised her head as he passed, pricking the ears that looked far too large for the neat head, her tongue going out to moisten the shiny, plastic-looking nose. Then she went back to her bushes. They were used to him, and even to the dog at his heels, though sometimes it sniffed the air as if some atavistic memory stirred.
Matt did his errand, then returned to the boat. He had no idea how long Lissa might be and with the dog again in the prow, he settled down to wait.
From across the water he heard a brief, strange, coughing roar, and his head came up, listening. It wasn’t repeated, but Matt smiled. They’d have to bring in the stags tomorrow and isolate them; the rut was beginning. It wouldn’t be long before the buck on the island was barking his intentions too.
It was only minutes later he saw Lissa coming back down the hill, pale dress glimmering like a ghost in the gathering darkness. He bent to start the engine. It meant he didn’t have to see the tears he knew would be trickling down her face.
From the wooden chalet above Fleet Bay, Derek Sorley trained binoculars on the island – the island he now refused to call Lovatt. He had only recently learnt the old name – Tascadan. It was Gordon Lovatt, Matt’s great-grandfather, who’d changed it in 1883, and the locals still hadn’t forgiven him for his arrogance.
The sound of the motor boat had brought Sorley to the picture window which was about the only good thing about this shabby, gimcrack place, with doors that had warped and gaps round the ill-fitting windows that the draughts whistled through and sometimes even the rain, with the wind in the wrong direction. And there was the dirt-cheap rent too, admittedly – modern holidaymakers demanded standards his landlord was too mean to provide.
Sorley would have preferred to live in Kirkcudbright where he had a job at the moment driving a van for a stationery company, but with a piddling wage, docked anyway by the Child Support Agency for that vampire bitch, his ex-wife, all he could afford was a room in someone else’s house and having got rid of one nagging woman he’d no wish to acquire another. At least here he’d the place to himself.
Seething with loathing, he watched the Lovatts and the devil dog heading for the island. It was the dog had sniffed him out that day, all but given him a heart attack, staring at him as if sizing him up for attack – shouldn’t be allowed, having an animal like that. Then Lovatt had come to see where his precious dog was and lost it completely, yelling at him, making accusations, ordering him off his land. With the dog growling, Sorley wasn’t going to stay to argue.
He’d been so careful, too. He’d checked that Sunday: he’d seen Lovatt make a visit and return before he tackled the causeway of rocks and shingle which made the island accessible at low tide. There was no reason Lovatt should have come back unless he’d been tipped off – and strangely enough, Cal Findlay’s boat had been in the bay earlier.
What made Sorley sick was he’d just had a reaction from his second-hand metal detector, there by the burial cairn. Gold, it had signalled – gold! His heart had flipped, then turned a couple of
