The Hollow Mountain E-Book

Douglas Skelton

• Herausgeber: Polygon
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: The Rebecca Connolly Thrillers
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 481

Beschreibung

'The Hollow Mountain is possibly the best yet' - S.G. MacLean The Tunnel Tigers were an elite group of construction workers who specialised in a lucrative but hazardous profession – blasting tunnels through mountains and under rivers, in dangerous conditions few men could endure. Alice Larkin, the headstrong daughter of a millionaire and former news reporter, claims her lover, a Tunnel Tiger, died in mysterious circumstances many years ago, and she wants journalist Rebecca Connolly to investigate. Intrigued, Rebecca throws herself into investigating the story, but she soon comes face to face with an old adversary. Family legacies and influential reputations are at stake – and danger is shockingly close to home.

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR DOUGLAS SKELTON AND THE REBECCA CONNOLLY THRILLER SERIES

‘Skelton writes grittily authentic crime novels’

The Times

‘Atmospheric . . . with an ironic sense of humour’

Sunday Times

‘A Rattle of Bones is an intriguing Highland mystery peopled with quirky characters and peppered with wit’

Times Crime Club Pick of the Week

‘A page-turning novel in a fine series’

Scotland on Sunday

‘An intricately plotted thriller . . . lyrical and thoughtful’

The Library Journal (US)

‘Exquisite language, credible characters and unrelenting suspense’

Publishers Weekly (US)

‘Dark humour, a fast pace and gritty plot’

LoveReading

‘Highland history and dark humour . . . drips with tension’

Press and Journal

‘Skelton’s talent is casting his descriptive eyes on the familiar and rendering truthful characters with a believable backstory’

The Scotsman

‘Rich in both characters and landscapes.

Skelton remains a writer to watch’

Publishers Weekly

‘If you don’t know Skelton, now’s the time’

Ian Rankin

‘Immersive, compelling and shot through with Skelton’s pitch-black humour’

Neil Broadfoot

‘Pitch-black depiction of the competition between the police, the press and the powers-that-be . . . Skelton’s first-hand experience of real-life crime enriches his writing’

Dundee Courier

‘The plot is compelling . . . savour some of the gorgeously lyrical prose that’s sitting in there amongst all the drama’

Crime Fiction Lover

‘A layered, intelligent plot that captures both the heart and the mind. Absolutely unmissable’

Live and Deadly

‘A master of his craft’

Scots Whay Hae

‘A stand-out thriller’

Scots Magazine

A note on the author

Douglas Skelton was born in Glasgow. He has been a bank clerk, tax officer, taxi driver (for two days), wine waiter (for two hours), journalist and investigator. He has written several true crime and Scottish criminal history books but now concentrates on fiction. Thunder Bay (longlisted for the McIlvanney Prize), The Blood Is Still, A Rattle of Bones (also longlisted for the McIlvanney Prize), Where Demons Hide, Children of the Mist and The Hollow Mountain are the first six novels in the bestselling Rebecca Connolly thriller series.

Also by Douglas Skelton

The Davie McCall series

Blood City

Crow Bait

Devil’s Knock

Open Wounds

The Dominic Queste series

The Dead Don’t Boogie

Tag – You’re Dead

The Janus Run

An Honourable Thief

Death Insurance (novella with Morgan Cry)

Springtime for a Dead Man (e-short story)

The Rebecca Connolly series

Thunder Bay

The Blood Is Still

A Rattle of Bones

Where Demons Hide

Children of the Mist

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by

Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.polygonbooks.co.uk

1

Copyright © Douglas Skelton 2024

The right of Douglas Skelton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978 1 84697 663 6

eBook ISBN 978 1 78885 684 3

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Typeset by Biblichor Ltd, Scotland

For Sarah, who not only reads them, but sells them.

Prologue

Murder on the Mountain:The Personal Testimony of Alice Larkin, regarding theevents of 1964 in and around the Cruachan project

I’m writing this because it’s time the truth was told and, frankly, I’m the only one who can write it. Or who will, I suppose. Very few remain who can remember the events of sixty years ago, and nobody is willing to speak out.

What occurred that summer has never been spoken about in any great detail since. There is a mention here and there – a single line in a report, no more than a paragraph in the books I have read about the Cruachan project. But nobody has expanded on it, not even me.

Until now.

What follows is the truth, at least the truth as I see it. You will make your own inquiries and decide how much of my truth is fact and how much is opinion or faded memory.

As I will have already explained to you, my story will be delivered to you in instalments. I wish you to read these words and then make your own minds up as to who you need to speak to. Further pages will be released as you relay your findings to me. That is the way I wish to go forward with this, and there will be no negotiation. As you know, there are no ground rules to uncovering facts. You turn over every stone along the way and hope to find something wriggling in the glare of the sun. But that is my ground rule. This testimony will be released gradually, and you will watch the events unfold again in these printed pages and glean from it, and whatever else other witnesses might reveal, what you will.

But two unambiguous facts remain:

Murder was committed.

And I know who was responsible.

The former I believe will become clear to you as you go along. The latter I will reveal in the closing pages. Nobody else knows what those last few pages contain, for I have kept their contents to myself.

My late husband, Dennis, was fond of an American television show called Mission: Impossible. They have made films from it more lately, I understand. Personally I found the series tedious, but a phrase from it has entered the public consciousness:

‘Your mission, should you choose to accept it . . .’

You can choose to hand these first few pages back to me and walk away from this, and there will be no harm done. However, I don’t think you will. I have been, in my professional life, an astute judge of character. In my personal life, less so. I judge you both to possess that one thing good reporters must have – curiosity. The need to know.

So, Elspeth McTaggart, Rebecca Connolly, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to follow the facts and reach a conclusion.

1

The sun shone from a clear blue sky and that meant it was time for the young men of Glasgow to follow the tradition of ‘taps aff’. The divesting of upper garments was called for whenever there was the slightest blink of sunshine, but this was a full-on solar stare and so those tops were tossed aside with the abandon of a Chippendale who loved his work.

Rebecca Connolly emerged from Queen Street station into the sunlight and was immediately greeted by the sight of three such individuals, their chests bared, their football tops either carried or tied around their waists to flap at their skinny-jeaned legs like loincloths. She wouldn’t have minded if they had bodies like Ryan Gosling, but one was lean to the point of emaciation, while another looked as if he had imbibed somewhat too freely on cans of Tennent’s lager – one of which he carried in his hand. The third had possibilities, but he would need to commit to more exercise than bending his own elbow. Their skin was pale but in fairness it was still the early summer following a particularly dull winter and spring, so if she was charitable, she might tend to think that the pallor would be burned away by exposure to the old ultraviolet. She suspected, however, that no amount of potentially harmful rays could relieve the unbearable whiteness of their being.

They barely looked at her as she wheeled her suitcase to the edge of the kerb. They were deep in conversation, a fragment of which seemed to relate to a political scandal, which surprised her as she really thought they would be talking football, or sex, or football and sex. She realised she was guilty of profiling, and that annoyed her. The fact that they didn’t give her an appraising glance was something of a relief, and perhaps showed that there was some progress being made in the modern male. Unless they had somehow engineered to disguise it. As she crossed the road, she pursed her lips, conscious that once again she was being judgemental where no such judgement was needed. Was that a sign she was getting older, she wondered. After all, she could see thirty on the horizon.

The sight of the three young men sans upper garments was certainly a sign that some things in her home city never changed – unlike the railway terminus she had just left, which boasted a shiny new concourse, trendy coffee counters and a general feeling that it had been dragged kicking and screaming into a bright new age of transport. It all looked clean and tidy and, well, spruce, which was a word she never would have thought applied to a station in Glasgow. But spruce it was, and she was strangely proud.

That feeling of unexpected orderliness extended to George Square itself, which stretched to her left. It still had its statues and benches, but such immaculacy seemed somehow alien to her, although if she searched her memory, she really couldn’t recall it ever being particularly cluttered, unless there had been a demonstration, an Old Firm fixture or, in the case of the movie World War Z, which used the square as a filming location, an outbreak of zombies. The grand edifice of the City Chambers still loomed at the far end, granite hard like the city around it, the classical frontage screaming of the city’s Victorian prosperity. The road at the western end was now pedestrianised, or it was as far as pedestrians could walk before they were brought to a halt by tables and chairs set out by one of the large pubs that had been hewn out of a former bank headquarters.

The external seating area was already busy with patrons keen to enjoy the summer for however long it lasted – Glaswegians seeing summer as something to be grabbed with both hands and held down, for it could be as fleet of foot as Usain Bolt in a hurry. Her mouth was shaped for a coffee, and perhaps a scone, and she would have enjoyed the opportunity to take a moment to watch the foot traffic because it had been – she made a quick mental calculation – two years since she had last visited Glasgow. Guilt washed over her with the sun. Two years, good God. She had felt the city pull at her while she was in Inverness, but she had never made the journey back. Things just got in the way. Life. Work. Love. All that jazz.

Her phone rang so she stopped, propped her suitcase up on its wheels and fumbled in her jacket pocket. She thumbed the screen to answer it. ‘Hi,’ she said.

‘You landed in the metropolis?’ Stephen’s voice, calling from Inverness.

‘Train just got in, heading to meet Elspeth.’

‘I thought it was tomorrow you were being interviewed?’

Rebecca was in Glasgow to be interviewed for the first of two documentaries based on Elspeth McTaggart’s books about cases on which she had worked. ‘I am, but Elspeth messaged and asked me to meet her this afternoon. Something about a story.’

‘You’re supposed to be on a break.’ Stephen’s voice was even, but she knew there was a note of caution there somewhere. ‘Taking time to see your mum.’

She held the phone with one hand and trundled her case behind. ‘And I will see my mum, but Elspeth is my boss and when the person who transfers money into my bank account every month wants to meet, I’m duty-bound to agree. I’ll head home afterwards.’

She heard him laugh. Or growl. It was difficult to tell with the rush and roar of the city around her. ‘What’s the story, Balamory?’ he asked.

‘She didn’t say. Just that she wanted me to meet someone in a Princes Square café.’

She heard a wince in Stephen’s voice. ‘Ouch, I hope she’s paying, Princes Square ain’t cheap.’

‘If she doesn’t, I may have to wash their dishes for a week. They . . .’ She stopped talking and pursed her lips. ‘Aw, that’s a shame.’

‘What’s a shame?’

‘The Duke of Wellington is still coneless.’

She stopped before turning into Royal Exchange Square to stare at the bronze statue of the Duke of Wellington astride his horse, which was unadorned by its customary traffic cone. Some writer had posted on Twitter about it the day before and she had half-expected the unofficial headgear to have been replaced overnight, but there he was, still bareheaded. Even the horse seemed perplexed by the turn of events.

‘You Glaswegians and that traffic cone. I’ll never understand the affection for it.’

‘It’s a tradition.’

For as long as she could remember there had been a traffic cone on the Iron Duke’s head, occasionally with one on his steed’s for good measure. At times the colours of the cones would change, during the Scottish independence referendum, for instance, or in support of Ukraine when Russia invaded. Seeing it in this condition was, to her eye, all kinds of wrong. She knew there were people who saw the cone as something akin to vandalism, but she didn’t. For her it was an example of the Glasgow she loved – cheeky, even cocky, unabashed and showing a lack of deference.

‘How are things in the Sneck?’ she asked. ‘How was court?’

‘Inverness is sunny and warm. Court was dull and boring.’

‘You didn’t get to be Atticus Finch, then?’

Amazingly Stephen had never read To Kill a Mockingbird when she met him. That should have been sufficient for Rebecca to end the relationship right there, but she had set about educating him instead, not only ensuring he read Harper Lee’s book, but also watching the film with him. Luckily for him, he loved them both. Gregory Peck always reminded Rebecca of her father, not because he looked like the actor but because she saw John Connolly as being as wise and as caring as Atticus Finch.

‘Not today,’ Stephen said. He never talked about his day in court. It used to bother her, but not so much now. ‘Will you still be back in time for the dinner at the weekend?’

It was his parents’ wedding anniversary and a family dinner had been arranged at a luxury country house hotel overlooking Loch Ness. Rebecca wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, but she would attend. She had learned that give and take was the name of the game in relationships.

‘Of course I’ll be there,’ she said. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

Little lies were also part of the game.

He laughed, also playing along. ‘Yes, sure.’

Stephen knew she didn’t particularly relish the idea of the gathering, not because she didn’t like his family but because she was uncomfortable with anything remotely formal. She was a jeans-and-comfy-shoes kinda girl, and for this event she would have to smarten up.

She turned into Buchanan Street now, the foot traffic increasing in the busy pedestrian retail area. She skirted round a crowd clustered in front of a street magician doing something wondrous with cards. From somewhere further down came the skirl of the pipes and the beat of a drum. ‘I’m almost there, can we talk later?’

He said of course and the call ended. She put her phone back in her pocket and weaved between the shoppers towards the iron canopy over the entrance of the Princes Square shopping centre.

If the traffic cone headgear was an illustration of Glasgow’s cheeky side, then Buchanan Street – known as the Style Mile – and Princes Square were prime examples of its constant reach for upward mobility. It had ever been a thrusting city, a scrappy urchin determined to make something of itself, keen to cast off – or, at best, ignore – its grubby past. Rebecca had met people who had either never visited the city, or who had spent little time there, but who believed the image of violence and deprivation. Both existed, of course, but just as the new look Queen Street station was bright and shiny, so was this street and the adjacent mall, situated in an enclosed Victorian square. Here were designer stores, top-class restaurants, coffee shops and even a boutique cinema, whatever the hell that was. Rebecca had never visited it, so thought that it was some sort of arthouse venue, but she passed a poster of attractions and saw that it was running the mainstream flicks of the day, including one where a Hollywood star wanders through the cast shooting dozens of people in the head with some ease because every other person with a gun is a lousy shot. Rebecca decided she’d give that one a miss. She’d had enough of real-life gunfire, thank you very much.

A series of wood-panelled escalators criss-crossed the interior of the shopping centre like classy kisses on a page and Rebecca found Elspeth already in situ in a café on the next floor, her canes propped against the table, a large cup of tea already half-finished. Her close-cropped hair was dyed a red so bright that it seemed like a warning. Diminutive of stature if not girth, she needed to lose a little weight, for in the time Rebecca had known her she had ballooned, perhaps thanks to lack of exercise after damaging her hip in a fall a few years before. The knee on her other leg also gave her trouble, which was why she needed two canes to get around. Elspeth knew she should get both attended to, but she harboured a mortal fear of surgery and would brook no suggestion of going under the knife. There was no sign of Julie, her partner, which didn’t surprise Rebecca one bit. Julie was no lover of cities and would have chosen to remain behind in their home in Drumnadrochit, on the shores of Loch Ness, tending to their own café-cum-bookshop in a converted barn.

Elspeth’s fingers drummed on the tabletop, a sign that she craved a cigarette but knew she couldn’t fire up here, a legislative restriction that did not sit well with her. Rebecca had endured many a diatribe about the draconian anti-smoking laws in this country and the way they seemed to be intent on choking the life out of any kind of pleasure. As Rebecca stepped off the escalator and waved, she knew the first words out of Elspeth’s mouth would be a rant.

‘I’m beginning to wonder if there’s any point in getting myself out from under the eagle eye if I can’t spark up a Woodbine when I want,’ she said. Julie was doing her level best to curtail her partner’s nicotine habit but, like stemming the tide of idiocy on social media, it was a losing battle.

‘Hello, boss, and nice to see you, too,’ Rebecca said, sitting down and tucking her suitcase out of the way of passers-by. ‘I had a lovely journey, thanks very much for asking.’

Elspeth briefly nodded a hello. It was grudging but it was something.

‘And can you still get Woodbines?’ Rebecca asked, trying to figure out if there was table service.

‘Turn of phrase,’ Elspeth said. ‘Don’t get literal on me. I’m an artist, darling.’

She waved with practised ease at a dark-haired and impeccably tanned young woman who made a simple white blouse and black skirt look like they were the epitome of high fashion.

‘I’ll have another of these,’ Elspeth said to the waitress, indicating her cup, because she could drink enough tea to refloat the Titanic.

‘For sure,’ the young woman said before turning to Rebecca. ‘Can I get you something?’

Her accent was American, or perhaps Canadian, or even affected, Rebecca couldn’t tell. Maybe she should get her to say a sentence with the word ‘about’ in it. If it came out aboot, then she was Canadian. Or she could be Scottish. Damn it, there was a flaw in her thinking.

‘I’ll have a white coffee,’ Rebecca said.

‘For sure. Is that a latte, a cortado, a mocha, a café au lait or an Americano with milk?’

Rebecca sighed inwardly as the young woman outlined the choices. Her friends mocked her impatience with the growth of coffee variations, which she deemed pretentious and merely a means of gouging more cash out of her pocket. She had been brought up in a house where coffee was spooned from a jar and the only choice you had was whether to drink it or not. However, it was not this woman’s fault.

‘An Americano with milk,’ she said. ‘And a scone, if you have them.’

The woman smiled, showing teeth on which Elton John could have rattled out a tune. ‘We sure do. Is that a fruit scone, plain scone, cheese scone?’ She pronounced it to rhyme with ‘own’. Rebecca’s preferred pronunciation sounded like ‘on’.

‘Fruit,’ she said.

‘With butter, butter and jam or cream and jam?’

Dear God, Rebecca thought. ‘Just butter,’ she said, hoping that there wasn’t a choice between butter, it-calls-itself-butterbut-it-really-isn’t or something veggie that pretends to be butter but is really butter-adjacent.

But the waitress simply flashed her luminescent ivories again. ‘For sure. Be right back, folks.’

Rebecca decided to divert Elspeth from her hankering for carcinogenic vessels. ‘So, who am I meeting?’

‘An old pal from the dailies,’ Elspeth said. ‘He’s retired now.’

‘And why am I meeting him?’

‘He has a story we can work on.’

‘We?’ Rebecca smiled, knowing she would do the bulk of, if not all, the work.

Elspeth grimaced. ‘There you are, being literal again.’

‘What’s the story?’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘A bit mysterious, is he?’

‘Old school, likes the face to face.’

Rebecca bit back a suggestive retort. Given the surroundings, it felt out of place. ‘So, who are we meeting?’

Elspeth’s lips twitched in what was her approximation of a fond smile. ‘An old friend called Forbes MacKay.’

‘His name is Forbes?’

‘Yes.’ Elspeth’s eyes narrowed at the little smile flitting across Rebecca’s lips. ‘Is there something wrong with that?’

Rebecca shook her head and didn’t tell her that the name had conjured up someone in tweeds with his trousers tucked into long socks. Probably carrying a shooting stick. And wearing a deerstalker. ‘What kind of journalist was he?’

‘He was an editor kind of journalist.’

‘He was your boss?’

‘He was everyone’s boss. He was well respected and even loved.’

‘Unusual for a boss,’ Rebecca said.

‘Hey,’ Elspeth objected.

‘Present company excepted, of course,’ Rebecca said, laughing as she watched the dark-haired waitress making her way towards them carrying a tray.

They fell silent as the cups were set before them, and a plate with two wrapped pats of butter and a scone big enough to be hurled at a besieged castle wall.

‘There you go,’ the waitress said. ‘Is there anything else I can get for you today?’

‘No, that’s fine,’ Rebecca said. ‘Thank you.’

‘For sure.’

She headed away in search of fresh victims to irradiate with her smile.

‘Canadian or American, you think?’ Rebecca asked.

Elspeth drained her first cup. ‘Norwegian.’

Rebecca tilted her head. ‘Really?’

‘Yup.’

‘How do you work that out?’

‘It’s obvious to anyone who has an ear for dialects and who can detect the influences of language and culture in slight hitches in pronunciation. If you listen carefully, you can hear the song of the fjords in her voice.’

‘The song of the fjords?’

‘That’s right.’

‘The influences of language and culture?’

‘Correct.’

Rebecca opened one of the butter packs. ‘You asked her where she was from, didn’t you?’

‘Just before you arrived.’

Rebecca felt a broad smile spread. She enjoyed her interactions with friends such as Elspeth. There were others: Chaz Wymark and his husband, Alan; Val Roach, a Detective Chief Inspector in Inverness; even Bill Sawyer, a former Detective Sergeant. The bond with those last two had taken a little while to develop, but it was there, and she was thankful. She was grateful for all her friends because she knew she had a tendency towards the melancholy, and they often seemed to conspire to drag her out of it. And now there was Stephen Jordan, a solicitor in Inverness. Her boyfriend. She winced inwardly as that word came into her mind. She was nearing thirty, for God’s sake. Women nearing thirty don’t have boyfriends. They have . . . what? ‘Significant other’ was so nineties. ‘Partner’ was too touchy-feely, and Rebecca didn’t do touchy-feely. They were dating. They were lovers – boy, were they lovers. But no matter what she came up with, it all seemed lame.

‘So, have you popped the question yet?’

Startled from her brief deliberation on the correct way to describe her relationship, Rebecca gave her boss a quizzical look. Elspeth smiled knowingly. ‘You had that faraway look in your eye that you take on when you think about him.’

Rebecca frowned. ‘I have never had a faraway look in my eye.’

‘Please, you were over that heart-shaped bridge and gambolling in the sunlit uplands with the cherubs and the unicorns.’

Rebecca pulled a disbelieving face. ‘Aye, that’ll be right.’

‘So, have you?’

The first butter pat had barely covered the scone, so Rebecca opened another. She knew what Elspeth meant, but she decided to be obtuse. Faraway look, her arse. ‘Have I what?’

‘Popped the question?’

‘No. What makes you think I’m going to do anything like that?’

‘You told Val Roach you were going to do it.’

Rebecca was momentarily thrown, then she recalled making a somewhat rash comment a few months earlier in the aftermath of a stressful time. ‘I inferred I might do it. I didn’t say for certain.’

Elspeth stirred some sugar into her second tea. ‘Just get it done, girl.’

Rebecca smeared the butter on the scone. ‘I’m not sure I’m ready to be married.’

‘Nobody is ever ready to be married. It just happens.’

It was time to turn the tables. ‘Then why don’t you marry Julie? You’ve been with her far longer than I’ve been seeing Stephen.’

‘We’re too long in the tooth for such things. We don’t need a bit of paper to support our relationship.’

‘But I do?’

‘Marriage is something everyone should experience at least once. Twice, at a push, but three times is more likely a triumph of hope over experience.’

‘How do you know if you’re making the right choice first time round?’

Elspeth studied her intently, and Rebecca realised that she had asked the question seriously. ‘You don’t, that’s the thing. You can go out with someone for years, marry them and then discover they are not the person you thought they were, or that you’re not the person you thought you were. Look at me, I didn’t realise I wasn’t into men until I’d been married for years.’

Elspeth had been with her ex-husband for a decade before it occurred to her that she preferred sleeping with women. A period of sexual abandon had ended when she settled down the Julie, who was ten years younger and strong-willed enough to keep her under control. Elspeth’s former husband had been unhappy with the marriage, too, because he preferred women to be at home waiting for him with his pipe and slippers while overlooking his string of infidelities. Elspeth could do the latter, but she wasn’t a pipe-and-slippers kinda woman. She wanted to continue with her career. She had spent some time in daily newspapers, even a stint on what they used to call Fleet Street, but eventually took the job of editor at the Highland Chronicle, based in her hometown of Inverness.

‘Life is all about leaps of faith, Becks,’ Elspeth continued. ‘Sometimes you just have to risk it.’ She sipped her tea and stole a piece of Rebecca’s scone from her plate. ‘Anyway, as the saying goes, you have to get married. You can’t go through life just enjoying yourself.’

Rebecca smiled but felt suddenly uncomfortable at the direction the conversation had taken. She loved Elspeth and all her friends to bits, but she had never fully embraced the idea of sharing personal thoughts. She had indeed suggested to Val Roach that she might ask Stephen to marry her, but it had been off-the-cuff. At the time, Rebecca herself was unsure if she had been serious. She remained unsure. She had feelings for the man, that much was certain, but were they strong enough to merit a commitment? And did he have strong enough feelings for her? Life could be very difficult to understand. Love, damn near impossible.

Time to change the subject. ‘Was I early, or is this old boss of yours late?’

‘Forbes works to his own clock, always has.’

‘That must have been difficult, come deadline.’

‘Professionally he was right on the button, but personally, time for him is an abstract concept. He’ll be here, don’t worry.’ She looked towards the escalator, where a tall, slim man wearing absolutely no trace of tweed had just appeared. ‘In fact, here he is now.’

Forbes MacKay must have been in his late sixties at least, given he had been Elspeth’s boss and she was no spring chicken – though her exact age was the kind of secret that was normally protected by armed guards, attack dogs, piranha fish and possibly a curse, for good measure. However, the tall, trim man who strode towards them with a wide and genuine smile might have passed for ten years younger. His grey hair displayed no sign of thinning at all, his skin was so smooth she suspected the involvement of Botox, and he was elegantly dressed in casual clothes that he very likely bought from the kind of designer stores that demand a credit reference just to window-shop.

‘Elspeth,’ he said and leaned down to kiss a cheek that she had already raised to him. She returned the favour. Rebecca was, frankly, gobsmacked. She had never seen Elspeth do the cheek-kissing thing and wasn’t sure if she should look away, for the sake of decency. Forbes turned to Rebecca and for a moment she feared he might want to do the same to her, but he held out a hand. ‘And you’ll be Rebecca.’

‘“I’d better be, I’ve got her bank cards in my bag,”’ she said, quoting a line she’d read in a book. His grip was firm but not a test of strength.

He smiled. ‘I’m Forbes MacKay.’

She certainly hoped so, otherwise Elspeth had allowed a complete stranger to kiss her. She was finding that kiss difficult to get past, to be honest.

He pulled up a chair and caught the eye of Miss Norway 2021. ‘Can I get you ladies anything?’

‘We’re fine thanks, Forbes,’ Elspeth said before Rebecca had the chance.

He looked at the half-eaten scone on in front of her and said to the waitress, ‘I’ll have a latte, please, and a scone with jam and cream.’

‘For sure,’ the waitress said and moved away.

He settled back and smiled at Elspeth. ‘God, Elspeth, it’s good to see you. You’re looking well.’

‘I’m a decrepit old hag, and you know it. I’ve got a dodgy hip and a buggered knee, I eat too much and smoke too much and I drink too much of this stuff’ – she pointed at her tea – ‘and more besides. I look like shit and feel like it half the time, but life goes on. You, though, look as good as ever. You got a portrait in the attic or something?’

‘I live a pure and unsullied life, as you know.’

‘Forbes MacKay, you’ve been sullied more often than I’ve had hot dinners, and I’ve had way too many of them. What’s your secret?’

He laughed. ‘Retirement and a good hydration regime.’

‘You don’t miss the job?’

‘Hell no! It was changing before I took my pension, and none of it was for the better. God knows chasing circulation was hard enough in our day, but now it’s like trying to catch a moonbeam in a jar. You know it’s there somewhere, but you just can’t get a hold of it. People would rather get their news from online sites that speak to their own prejudices. It’s easier for them to handle than true objective reporting.’

‘We weren’t always objective, it has to be said. Depending on whoever owned us at the time, there were stories that leaned heavily in one direction or another.’

‘Yes, but back then we fought them, and the NUJ fought them, but these online sites don’t even make a pretence at fair reporting. The same can be said for certain titles, too.’ His eyes flicked towards Rebecca. ‘Sorry, Rebecca, this must be dull for a young person, talking about the way things were.’

‘No, I understand. I saw it in the weeklies.’

‘You worked with Elspeth on the Highland Chronicle, right?’

‘Yes, but she jumped ship and left me alone to watch the bosses race to the bottom.’

‘I saw the writing on the wall,’ Elspeth said, ‘and knew the future was not for me.’

‘They were interested only in sensation, not real news,’ Rebecca explained. ‘I remember one editor telling me to go out and find a paedophile story that week. Go find one. It wasn’t news, it was pandering, and any attempt to properly reflect life in the area was ditched in favour of headlines. I didn’t sign on for that kind of journalism.’

This interested him. ‘What kind of journalism did you sign on for?’

‘I want to report the news, without fear or favour. To use the cliché, I want to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, not support special interests or parrot political mantras. Obviously we have to cover the nuts and bolts, the court reports, the human interest—’

Elspeth snorted. She hated human interest.

‘—and I’ve learned that there has to be an element of commercial realism. Elspeth has bills to pay and my salary to cover, after all. But now and again we get to do a story that speaks to injustice, that deals with an issue at its heart. What’s the phrase? “The news is something that someone somewhere doesn’t want printed. All else is just advertising.”’ She felt a bashful smile coming. ‘Sorry, I’m ranting.’

Forbes smiled. ‘No, you have passion, and that’s a rare thing in journalists today. Too many want to merely report on sport or celebrities or get into PR.’ He turned to Elspeth. ‘You taught her well.’

Elspeth shrugged. ‘Not my doing, she dropped fully formed into my newsroom. All I did was smooth off some rough edges.’

Forbes looked across the table to Rebecca again. ‘So, where did you develop this zeal?’

Rebecca had only just met this man, but she felt he understood her. ‘My father.’

‘He was a journalist?’

‘No, a police officer. A DCI.’

One eyebrow raised. ‘In Inverness?’

She shook her head slightly. ‘Glasgow.’

‘Retired now?’

Elspeth shifted in her seat as Rebecca paused, just slightly, and swallowed. ‘No, he died. Cancer. A few years ago.’

The humour in Forbes’s eyes faded. ‘I am so sorry, Rebecca.’

She raised a hand in a gesture that conveyed it was fine but looked away to study the other patrons walking, talking, browsing on the different levels, moving up and down those aesthetically pleasing escalators, as if she thought she might see John Connolly standing among them, smiling at her. But she didn’t. She used to see him and hear him, even though she knew he wasn’t really there. She hadn’t seen him for some time, or heard his voice. It wasn’t fine, but that sense of loss was part of her now.

‘So, Forbes,’ Elspeth said, moving the conversation along, ‘what’s this story you want to talk about?’

Forbes gave his perimeter a quick recce, then edged his chair closer to the table and hunched forward, his voice dropping to just above a whisper. ‘I take it you’ve heard of Alice Larkin?’

Elspeth tilted her head, a sign that she was already intrigued. ‘Of course I’ve heard of Alice Larkin.’

Rebecca asked, ’Who’s Alice Larkin?’

Her boss’s lips thinned, then she tutted. ‘Young folk nowadays, don’t know anything beyond Take That and the Cardassians.’

‘Take That, really?’ Rebecca laughed. ‘And it’s Kardashians. Cardassians were aliens on Star Trek.’

‘Although used more extensively in Deep Space Nine, to be precise,’ said Forbes, then shrugged when Elspeth frowned in his direction. ‘What can I say? I’m a Trekker.’

Elspeth’s eyes rolled slightly, then she explained to Rebecca. ‘Alice Larkin was a bloody legend in the industry. Began as a reporter on a weekly, moved to the dailies in the late sixties, then became a presenter on Reporting Scotland on the telly. She helped pave the way for the likes of you and me. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of her.’

Rebecca had felt some memory stirring. Nevertheless, she smiled. ‘Sorry, my head’s too full of nineties pop music and aliens on social media.’

Elspeth snorted again. She liked to snort. ‘So, what about Alice Larkin?’

‘She’s a cousin of mine,’ Forbes replied, then amended. ‘Well, by marriage. She married Dennis Holmes in the early seventies.’

‘Dennis Holmes QC?’ Rebecca asked.

Elspeth’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve heard of him, but not Alice Larkin?’

‘My dad spoke about Dennis Holmes – said he was the Rottweiler of the criminal courts and he could make even the hardest cop or crook weep.’

‘He was fierce, certainly,’ Forbes said, ‘and unremitting when it came to anyone lying to him in the box.’

Elspeth said, ‘You kept this family connection quiet.’

‘I wanted to make my way without any hint of nepotism. A breath of a family connection to Alice Larkin and you know what would be said, that I only got where I did because of her.’

Elspeth accepted that. ‘Okay, so what is it you want from us?’

‘She wants to meet you.’

‘She’s still alive?’

Forbes’s face turned serious. ‘Yes, though she’s in her eighties and doesn’t get around much.’

‘So, what does she want to see us about?’

‘She has read your books, Elspeth, and some of your stories, Rebecca.’

Elspeth had written two books on cases that had involved them both: one about a murdered man whose body was found on the battlefield of Culloden in full period Highland dress and a claymore through his chest; the other on a miscarriage of justice concerning the death of a lawyer and political spin doctor. She was now working on a third about the curious death of a woman on the island of Stoirm. For all three books, Rebecca had done most of the legwork, but Elspeth had gathered further information and pieced it all together into highly readable works of non-fiction. Both published works were being prepared as TV documentaries for Netflix.

‘Alice Larkin has read my books?’ Elspeth’s voice was awed. Rebecca had never seen Elspeth awed before. If she kept a diary, she would have noted it immediately.

‘She’s a fan of your work,’ Forbes said, and Rebecca smiled as Elspeth’s jaw dropped further. ‘She wants to talk to both of you about a story.’

Rebecca grew more interested. ‘What story?’

‘What do you know about the Hollow Mountain?’

‘Ben Cruachan, over in Argyll?’ Rebecca asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I visited it once with my mum and dad, years ago. It’s part of the hydroelectric network, right? They carved this massive power station out of the centre, like something from a James Bond film.’

‘That’s right. Back in the early sixties it was a huge project for Scotland, and Alice was in the middle of it. She worked for the Argyll Sentinel at the time, just starting out in newspapers.’

Elspeth had picked up her jaw and self-respect from the floor. ‘I think there have been books and documentaries about the Cruachan project already, Forbes, you must know that.’

He nodded. ‘And so does Alice.’

‘So, what does she want to talk to us about?’

‘I want to let her fill you in, Elspeth. But take my word for it that it’s right up your street.’

‘In what way?’

He smiled. ‘Because it’s about a murder.’

2

When documentary makers, even those from Glasgow, made something about Glasgow’s history, they never showed places like Milngavie. They wanted the mean streets, the slums, the violence, the gangs – not neat streets, neat houses and neat cars. Rebecca had been brought up in a semi-detached villa set back from a quiet road by a mature garden skirted by a high hedge. It was as far away from blades, bottles and bullets as you can possibly get without actually disconnecting the TV.

As she climbed out of a taxi and wheeled her suitcase up the gravel driveway, noting the lawn needed to be cut, she was suddenly transported back to her teenage years, coming home from school and trudging up that same driveway, her thoughts on homework, friends and boys. Not necessarily in that order. She still expected to see her father’s face at the window, depending on what shift he was on. He had been based in Stewart Street in the centre of the city and if he was home when she arrived, he would always, in his words, put his finger to the kettle and butter a fruit scone or a pancake, or even gingerbread.

But there would be no face at the window today, for John Connolly was gone.

She used her key to open the front door and caught the aroma of home baking hanging in the air like a sweet memory. Good old mum, she thought.

‘In here, Becks,’ her mother’s voice reached her from the kitchen at the end of the hallway. Rebecca left her case at the foot of the stairs and followed the delicious smell to the back of the house, where Sandra Connolly was pulling a tray of freshly baked scones from the oven. Rebecca smiled. It was good to be home.

Her mother placed the tray on the dining table and opened her arms for a hug. Rebecca obliged, even though she was not by nature a hugger, something she had inherited from her father. Sandra, however, was always open for an embrace, and both Rebecca and her father learned to accommodate her.

‘You’ve lost weight,’ Sandra said as she stepped back and gave her daughter her customary survey. ‘It suits you.’

‘Are you saying I was fat before?’

Her mother’s lips twitched. ‘Pleasantly plump, perhaps.’

‘Alliteration aside, I’m not sure that’s as complimentary as you think it is.’

The smile broke out. ‘I’m teasing. You were fine. I’m just saying that you’re looking well.’

Rebecca knew her mother was having fun. The one thing she had never been was overweight. ‘Thank you, and so are you.’

It was true. For a time after her husband had died, Sandra Connolly had looked . . . slumped, was the only way Rebecca could describe it. It wasn’t that she walked around like a half-shut knife, she just appeared to be weighed down. His death had affected them both, but grief, as they say, was a process, and Sandra had managed to come out of it far faster than Rebecca, although her mother had never known the true extent of her daughter’s mourning. She knew nothing of the visions of her father perched on the edge of her bed in the night, or the conversations she had with him. Or rather, with herself, for Rebecca was hard-headed enough to know that these were no visitations from beyond the veil. These apparitions were extensions of her own consciousness, her own reasoning powers, manifesting a man she both loved and respected.

But there were other times, flickers of something beyond reality, that she could not quite explain so readily. She had never told her mother about those, either. There were many things Sandra didn’t know because Rebecca had never told her, might never tell her.

Now, however, the only word to describe her mother was radiant. Her eyes sparkled in a way Rebecca hadn’t seen since her father died. Her hair was immaculate: the grey that had crept across the auburn Rebecca had inherited was now concealed under a professional dye job. She had also somehow managed to contrive the lifting of years from her face – exactly how, Rebecca could not say. Or was it that her smile was now easier than it had been before?

‘You look great, Mum, what’s the secret?’

That smile faltered a little as Sandra’s gaze slipped away. ‘I’ll get some tea going and we can have a scone. You still eating scones? Or is that how you’ve managed to shed some pounds?’

‘Had one this afternoon, in fact, when I met Elspeth in town.’ She breathed in the warm, cosy smell of fresh baking. ‘But it wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as yours.’

‘Damn right,’ said Sandra as she turned towards the kettle. ‘Sit yourself down, help yourself – there’s butter and jam on the table there – and we’ll have a catch-up.’

Rebecca did as she was told but watched her mother intently as she filled the kettle. She knew an evasion when she saw it and had sensed one when she’d asked what Sandra’s secret was.

Alice Larkin lay in her bed, her phone clutched to her chest, a smile playing on her lips as she looked vacantly towards the large flat-screen TV on the wall, aware of the lights of the quiz show flitting across it but not really taking it in. The sound was muted because she found the stupidity of many of the contestants excessively irritating, but the early evening news would be on in a few minutes so there was no point in switching channels. She watched the news every day, sometimes leaving the TV on the news channel for hours on end, often with the sound muted as she read, occasionally flicking her eyes towards the ticker tape headlines at the bottom of the screen. Old habits die hard, she thought. So do old reporters. She was eighty-five now and her body was failing her, but her mind was sharp. Perhaps not as sharp as she once was, but she was far from being a doddery old fool. Dennis had lost his faculties towards the end, which was dreadful to witness. He’d had such a fine mind, not a bad body either in his day, and she had enjoyed both. She’d loved him for both. He had died two years before and she missed him every day.

The news she’d received by text was most welcome. Forbes had done as she had asked, had hooked those women. They would visit later that evening, with him.

Her eyes strayed to the bedside table and the thin pile of pages there. It was time for it all to come out. Those pages were only the beginning, a teaser, just enough to finally land them. She had dictated the bulk of it into a small voice recorder, to be transcribed, but had typed the final few pages herself. It hadn’t been easy sitting in this damn bed. Forbes had suggested using a laptop, but she much preferred a desktop. She was unable now to reach the office on the top floor of the home she had shared with Dennis, so the old electric portable typewriter had been unearthed and, my God, that took her back. She had only a handful of pages to type, but it took her three days.

She used to be such a swift typist, but arthritis had taken its toll on her joints, and she was reduced to stabbing at the keys with only her two index fingers. She had seen many old hacks back in the day battering out their news reports in that way, often with a cigarette wedged between their fingers like some sort of growth, but she had been trained to touch type, so when she made the transition to the daily paper she was often called upon to input other people’s stories as they dictated over the phone with deadlines looming. She didn’t mind doing it at first, but eventually she realised that some of the men were treating her like a secretary and she didn’t like that.

She remembered one hardened journalist taking extreme umbrage when she refused to take a story down the line. She could hear boozy voices in the background and realised he was in the pub. She referred him to a copy taker, saying she had stories of her own to write. He made some disparaging comment about the women’s pages having to wait, this was real news, but she cut him off before he could continue. She had never allowed herself to provide copy for the women’s pages, point blank refused to be pigeon-holed as a lifestyle reporter, and what was more he knew it. Naturally he complained to the news editor about her attitude, but she didn’t care. The news editor, himself an old-fashioned reporter who enjoyed a dram and a fag and chewing the fat with the boys, suggested that she tread more carefully around the more experienced journos. She knew he was struggling to be diplomatic, wording his lecture as delicately as he possibly could, given that he was more used to barking out orders and insults, but it wasn’t out of deference to her gender. Normally he didn’t care whose feelings he hurt – he was an equal opportunities offender who would terrorise men or women, and his caustic remarks were known to leave scars. No, he was slightly – only slightly – more deferential towards her because of her father, and for that reason she could very easily have simply told him to fuck off right to his face and would have got away with it, but that wasn’t her way. Instead, she remained calm. She apologised for any upset caused and told him that she was willing to help when she could – when a reporter was unable to return to the office in time and a copy taker wasn’t available, she had happily taken stories over the phone – but she would not be treated like an office junior simply because someone couldn’t be arsed leaving the pub. Nothing more was said after that, and the reporter in question never again asked her to take his copy, though he did often mutter disparaging things under his breath – that, if it could be bottled, would go well with ice and soda.

She had many stories to tell of the old days in print journalism and then broadcast news – of stories told and untold, of sexual discrimination, predation, infatuation and fornication. She was unlikely to do so now. The only story she wanted to tell was the one that began on that thin bundle of pages on the bedside table. The rest of the pages were tucked away in a drawer and would be produced over time. Not too much time, though.

No, those stories about the days of print and TV would never be told now.

This one, the one about the hollow mountain and the men who worked it, would be the last story she’d ever tell.

Rebecca lay on the bed of her old room, staring at the wall opposite. There used to be a poster of Robbie Williams up there, but the space was now taken up by a large, framed print of a shepherd tending his flock on a snowy field at sunset. Or maybe it was sunrise. Without a compass, or a sign saying, This Way is West, there was no way of knowing. She had a feeling she had seen that field in Perthshire earlier in the year but could not be certain whether it was actually a Highland scene. Neither did her mum, who said she bought it because she liked the colours and the atmosphere. Rebecca understood. Despite the fact that it was a winter setting, there was a warmth to it, the shepherd and his dog little more than spectral figures in the background, the sheep in the foreground, the sky shades of pastel behind the dark, skeletal trees. There was something deeply restful about it.

Or were they ghosts of a shepherd and dog past, still standing sentinel over their charges?

She took a deep breath, let it out, and let her eyes drop to the laptop open beside her, the screen having gone to sleep. She knew if she activated it once again, she would see the article she had half-read about Ben Cruachan, the Hollow Mountain. Her mind was more intent on what her mother had told her over tea and scones. To be truthful, she was having trouble processing it and didn’t really know why.

She had known her mother was building up to something but, as usual, she’d filled the conversation with small talk.

‘How’s work?’

‘It’s fine, Mum, always busy.’

‘Is Elspeth well?’

‘Yes, but still having trouble walking.’

‘She should get that seen to.’

‘Yes, she should.’

‘Are you being interviewed together?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll find out tomorrow, I suppose.’

‘And Stephen, how is he?’

‘He’s doing well. Very busy. Crime never sleeps.’

‘You should hang on to him, he’s a good man.’

Rebecca didn’t say anything further on that subject for fear that Sandra might also urge her to propose to him. After all, it was she who had told her many times that if a woman wanted something she should go out and get it, don’t wait for a man to make a move.

The small talk exhausted, there then followed a silence before Rebecca saw her mother reach a decision. Whatever it was she had avoided saying earlier, she was going to say now. Rebecca had seen that look before, when her mother had told her that her father was dying. John Connolly, a strong man, a brave man, a man who had delivered more than his fair share of bad news in his professional life, could not bring himself to tell his own daughter that the cancer treatment hadn’t worked and he had perhaps months to live. So, Sandra Connolly had sat Rebecca down at that same kitchen table, took her hand in hers and gently relayed the news. Rebecca wept, then ran into the sitting room where her father waited and threw herself in his arms, held him tighter than she had ever held him before. Neither of them was a hugger, but they clutched one another as their separate tears became one. In the end it wasn’t months but weeks before John Connolly was gone.

This time, Sandra hadn’t taken her by the hand, but all the same Rebecca steeled herself for bad news.

But it wasn’t bad. Not really.

Sandra Connolly took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been seeing someone.’

Rebecca blinked a couple of times. She was relieved it wasn’t something about her mum’s health but remained unsettled. ‘Seeing someone, as in . . . ?’

Sandra’s lips compressed. ‘Don’t be obtuse, Becks, it ill becomes you. You know what I mean.’

Feeling slightly shamed, Rebecca forced a smile. ‘So, who is he?’

‘His name is James. James Wilton. He’s a chartered surveyor.’

‘And how did you meet him?’

‘At a party.’

‘Whose party?’

A slight smile from Sandra. ‘Your Auntie Ginny.’

Ginny Reynolds, not actually related, but an old school friend of Sandra’s who Rebecca always called auntie. She conjured up the image of a woman with a perma-tan, thick brown hair and a tendency to call her three ex-husbands ‘Losers One, Two and Three’. So much for hope over experience. ‘How does she know him?’

The smile began to grow. ‘She’s a surveyor, too, remember.’

Rebecca remembered. ‘How old is he?’

‘Two years older than me.’

That made him fifty-seven, maybe fifty-eight, depending on how flexible her mother was regarding her own age. She was fifty-five but had a birthday in three weeks. ‘What is he? Divorced? Widowed?’

‘Divorced.’

‘Any kids?’

The laugh that had been building in her mother’s throat finally broke free. ‘Good God, Becks, do you want to get a spotlight out and shine it on me? This is like being on Mastermind.’

Rebecca had to laugh, too. ‘Sorry.’

‘If this is how you interview people, then I have to say, it’s somewhat daunting. I half-expected you to produce an old phone book.’

Rebecca frowned. ‘Why a phone book?’

‘It could be used a cosh and didn’t leave marks. You needed the old, heavy ones, not the flimsy things you get these days.’

‘How on earth do you know about that?’

Sandra gave her a look that told Rebecca it was obvious. ‘I read books. I watch telly. And I was married to a police officer. Not that your dad ever used one in that way, but he had heard of it.’

Mention of her father brought Rebecca back to the subject in hand. ‘Sorry about the interrogation. It’s just that I’m a little surprised.’

‘Why?’

Rebecca opened her mouth, made a little noise in her throat, then closed it again. Sandra understood.

‘Because of Dad, right?’

Rebecca didn’t answer but for some reason she felt tears burn.

Then Sandra did take her hand. ‘I get it, Becks, I really do. But, you know, I think he wouldn’t want me to be alone.’

‘You’re not alone.’