Monday, 27th of November
Alastair Patrick did not say much to the three men. They said nothing to him; he was a package for delivery. A few curt words passed between them. Tonka cleared his dry throat.
How far?
A few klicks.
Where?
You’ll see.
They were following orders. They didn’t know any more than they were saying. They were being polite and they didn’t have to be. They were tooled. Alastair Patrick had noticed the guns in the quick dash from the front door of his house to the vehicle. It was important to notice these things, the sort of things that made only stupid men argue. Even in the noise of the wind, he had clocked the thrum of the 2.5 diesel engine; he’d been struck by the dull reflection of the street lamp from the resin composite shell of the vehicle. He saw the protection over the front grille and the lights, the lack of number plate. Christ, it even had a snorkel.
A snorkel.
He almost smirked as he climbed in. Boys and toys.
It was black beyond dark once the vehicle pulled out of the street. Rain poured down making visibility difficult even in the bright glare of the Land Rover’s headlights, the rapid thumping of the wipers on full throttle filled the vehicle. Once out of Port MacDuff, they were winding their way along the single track road to Applecross, the driver switched on the roof-mounted spotlights to aid visibility. He drove quickly, skilfully. His position was relaxed and comfortable, not leaning forward to peer through the windscreen. The demister set on screen roaring loudly, the Landie banging and heaving like a boat. This guy, the Glaswegian, was a professional. He knew exactly where he was going. He drove with confidence as if he had driven this road before, many times in darkness.
Patrick knew they were skirting the coast, even with the blacked-out windows in the back of the Landie. As the vehicle swung round, he could see the sea out the front window, the sweeping beam of the Rua Reidh lighthouse between the swish thump of the windscreen wipers. He began to have suspicions as to where they might be going, and why, but he tried to dismiss the thought. Surely not even these three, the Glaswegian and his two gorillas, would be that stupid.
Patrick felt a tremor of controlled fear run down his spine, images darting across his eyes, ball bearings flashing past in strobing light. A sledgehammer thumped in his heart at the intense memory of his mate Zorba, caught between the crags, screaming at his missing legs. Patrick blinked the image away, wiping his lips with the back of a gloved hand, removing a telltale smir of nervous sweat. Never show them that you are scared, once they know that, they own you. Some things don’t change. Even now, helpless, he couldn’t help planning how to take them. Some things, like old habits, die hard. And he believed that he also, would die hard.
He hoped it wasn’t tonight.
He looked ahead, examining the back of the men’s heads. Identical thick necks, short haircuts, the dark blue and black jackets invisible in the hours of darkness, the pattern varied to disturb any outlines. Their woollen hats were pulled down, the rim tucked up. Rolled out, their faces would be covered, save for two round holes at the eyes.
As they turned inland, Patrick tried to work out what to do as the windscreen wipers battered across the toughened glass. He wondered how the Glaswegian could see where he was going, even with all the extra light that dazzled on the tarmac in front of them making spotlights dance on the road as rocks swerved, slid past and then vanished to darkness. The Landie occasionally bumping slightly as it impacted something unseen.
He looked at his watch. It was half one. Zero One Thirty Hours.
Instinct, training, made Patrick strap himself in tighter as the vehicle really began to bounce around with more force, the driver taking out the corners of the twisty road, moving faster than was safe. He tried to take in as many details as possible. He was sure he didn’t know any of the three men. The Glaswegian, his Gorillas, the brains and the brawn, but he knew the type.
Holding on to his seatbelt with both gloved hands, he looked round the vehicle: military, operational. He swore as it veered a sharp right, he heard the gears grind in protest but the driver didn’t let up as the incline suddenly steepened. Patrick gripped the seat belt tighter, trying to secure himself in the seat, his boots bracing against the brackets. It got darker outside as if the headlights had died and he could only see the small lines of prickly skin between the hat and the collar of the gorilla in front of him. He closed his eyes, wrapping himself in his waxed anorak, a thick woollen scarf, knitted by Wilma, pulled tight round his Rohan hat and his hill walking boots. He had put on his warmest Thermawear jumper.
He was freezing.
The Land Rover jolted again, a teeth-juddering, bone-shattering jar.
‘You have got to be joking,’ he muttered, looking right at the back of the head of the Gorilla, as the vehicle tackled a hairpin bend. The Glaswegian’s black-gloved hands on the steering wheel pulled to the right, letting it slip through to return to neutral. Calm. Controlled. Then Patrick realized he recognized the road; he thought he caught another glimpse of the shimmer of water to his left; the Inner Sound, the deepest territorial water in the UK. He thanked a God he didn’t believe in, that the Landie had turned further inland. There was a flash of domestic light ahead, engine screaming as it tackled another ascent. The driver had taken a left turn out of Applecross. And that could only mean one thing.
They were going up the Bealach Na Ba.
‘No. No way. Are you ripping the pish?’
‘Nobody’s laughing,’ growled the Glaswegian, moving the armour-plated Landie, an all-terrain vehicle, as if it was a Ford Focus.
There was no point in asking why, they wouldn’t tell him, mostly because their orders only took them so far. After that, something else? Someone else? But the driver knew exactly where he was going, Patrick just wished he was in a bit less of a hurry.
He fell back into his own silence, memories coming back, how easy it had been to slip back in harness. Even after all this time to drop into automatic mode. ‘Claymore’. His activation code had unlocked the door to the ghost world, a path to slip back into this way of life, a life of hard men and hard choices. No compromise. He decided to stop being brave, he was no longer a young man. He had left those days far behind him.
Or so he thought.
He shut his eyes and waited for it all to stop.
The Landie side shifted with the strength of the wind. They must be high up now, nearing the peak. This vehicle weighed tons yet it was being blown about like a toy car, buffeted by the wind as if the hills were pushing them away, they were not welcome here. Only a mad man would be up here at midnight driving around at altitude, in the dark, in fifty-mile-an-hour winds and driving rain.
He concentrated on the back of the heads of the two silent men in front, as they bobbled and lolled as the vehicle bumped and bounced. He was in the company of mad men.
It took one to know one.
It was past one in the morning when Colin Anderson let himself into his own house, the big house up on the terrace. He had left his own car in town, too drunk to drive back, so he immediately noticed the white Volvo parked in his space at the kerb. George Haggerty’s car. Here to see his grandson.
Anderson closed the front door quietly behind him and let out a long slow breath. This was a difficult situation, and one that Anderson, while sympathetic, was getting more than a little fed up with. He slipped off his jacket and hung it up on the stand. Nesbit came running from the direction of the kitchen, looking innocent of any charges of fraternizing with the enemy. Anderson bent down and patted the velveteen fur of the dog’s head as Nesbit leaned against his leg and twirled round and round, looking hungry. Anderson ignored him. It was an old ploy.
Anderson was sorely tempted to creep upstairs and go straight to bed, but that might be construed by his family as weak, or rude. And there was plenty of chatter coming from the kitchen, so somebody was up. He followed the noise and the dog’s wagging tail, gritting his teeth slightly. The dimmer lights were on, the room was illuminated by a gentle amber glow more suggestive of a high-end café. His daughter Claire, and her friend Paige, were sitting round the table with George Haggerty, in between them was Moses, fast asleep in his basket on the kitchen table, snoring gently.
The first thing Anderson saw as he entered the room was George’s little finger clutched in the baby’s tiny, chubby hand. It was difficult to pull his eyes away from his grandson. If he had been slightly drunk when out with Archie, gently floating on a little sea of beer, he was grounded now.
‘Hello. Do you three know what time it is?’ Anderson said, consciously keeping his voice friendly.
‘George popped in to see Moses, and to collect his drawing.’ Claire waved a wine glass that seemed half empty of a full-bodied red, towards the parcel. Colin looked at it, then her. She was too relaxed to notice the dangerous glint in his eye, the one she called his ‘look’, the one that said wait until we get home young lady. He noticed the remains of Doritos, olives, bits and bobs of dips on saucers. Paige had a glass full of wine, the empty bottle beside her. Her peroxide hair was buzz cut, emphasizing the narrow snaky eyes that normally glowered at Anderson with suspicion and something that bordered on loathing. Now she was almost smouldering at him through her false eyelashes. Anderson ignored her, as he was trying to ignore that uncomfortable feeling he had about Haggerty sitting in his kitchen, pouring alcohol down the throats of two seventeen-year-olds. And then he felt guilty, as Haggerty stretched out an arm and shook him warmly by the hand. The man had lost Mary Jane, a young woman he had brought up as his daughter from the age of seven to twenty four, so maybe this round-the-table girlie chat was usual for him. Although, should the girls not be in their bed, or studying? Anything but drinking. Maybe he was old fashioned.
‘Sorry, Colin. Once again I have interrupted.’ George Haggerty, contrition glowing from his deep brown eyes, shrugged. ‘I was about to go back up north to see Dad but I haven’t heard anything and wondered if you knew of any developments. Anything at all, about Abigail …’
A huge tug on his heartstrings, then Claire joined in.
‘Yeah Dad,’ said Claire, her words slurring slightly. ‘About Abigail? Surely they must have some news.’
‘They are telling me nothing. And they will tell me nothing. I have a personal link to the case. Him.’ He pointed to Moses.
‘The case. The murder of my wife and child. The case?’ George Haggerty ran his fingers down Moses’ chubby cheek.
Anderson wanted to tell him to leave the baby alone. ‘And that’s why it’s not allowed. If I don’t think of it as “a case” and a job to be done, it would become personal and that can lead to mistakes.’ Like Costello, he nearly added, then remembered who he was taking to, a man Costello believed responsible for the murders. He wished she was here now, smashing a wine glass across the table and stabbing him in the throat with it. At least then it would be over with. She would have the courage of her belief, not constrained by legality, decency and a lack of self-courage the way he was.
Anderson was aware that he smelled of drink so he walked round the table and switched on the kettle, feeling absurdly guilty. The man was innocent. He himself had been out socializing when George’s wife and child had been killed and they had no idea who had done it, Police Scotland seemed to be doing nothing. He was aware of Claire’s eyes watching him, wanting him to come up with something to comfort the man.
‘Claire, have you not got uni tomorrow?’
‘That’s a polite way of telling me that I have to get up in the morning. Bloody hell, Dad!’ She stood up, swaying slightly. ‘And Paige’s staying the night, if that’s OK.’
Yeah, turn the house into a hotel why don’t you? ‘Why would it not be OK? There’s plenty of room. And it’s very late.’
Paige stood up as well, taking the last Dorito from a plate and slowly placing it on her tongue, seductively.
‘You’ll both want paracetamol and black coffee in the morning,’ said Anderson, holding the kitchen door open, ushering them through.
George gave them both a smile, as they retreated to the hall. ‘That Paige is worth the watching.’
‘Indeed. She didn’t have the best start in life so she’s here getting some stability, if you can call this madhouse stable. You do what you can.’ He watched as George closed his eyes, biting his lip a little.
‘Nice thought, nice to try and make a difference.’
Anderson needed to be careful here. He kept reminding himself that this man had lost his wife and his child, and tried to wish him well. But somehow, he just couldn’t empathize without immediately feeling a churning anger that it might have been him who killed them.
‘Do you want a coffee? I’m having one,’ said Anderson.
George shook his head, his arms out. ‘No, no, I didn’t want to interfere with your night. I popped in to see Moses and the girls invited me in. I had brought you a nice Rioja. They have drunk it. And I had a game of Zombie Gunship with Peter. He beat me, he absolutely wasted me.’
Anderson made an empathetic noise as if he knew what Haggerty was talking about, trying to hide the increasing unease that Mr George Haggerty was becoming so familiar with his own children. And a rage of jealousy that Peter had never, ever, asked his dad to play Zombie Gunship with him.
‘Yet again I have abused your hospitality, but I did want to know if you had heard anything.’ He sat back down, waiting and cautious, keen for any details. ‘In case you didn’t want to say in front of the girls.’
‘I’m sorry, George, but honestly, you probably know more than me. DCI Mathieson is good. She will be working away but keeping it from public attention. The exact time of death is causing problems. The pathologist thinks very early in the morning, you know, around six a.m., so why were they both dressed. They should have been in their night clothes.’
George nodded. ‘They asked me about that. They were dressed when I left the house. That pathologist told me they had to reposition the bodies at the mortuary so they could line up the wounds; some blows from that knife had gone through both bodies …’
Anderson was sure O’Hare had said nothing of the sort. ‘Mathieson wants to trace the CCTV, try and get a vehicle check. There’s a lot about the case that doesn’t make sense.’
‘They keep asking me if Abigail had another man in her life. She didn’t, just so you know.’ He turned to look at Moses, running his fingertip up and down the baby’s chubby cheek.
Anderson wanted to ask him not to do that, but had no reason to, apart from that vague dislike. He had no reason for that either.
George turned and looked up, as if he had read Anderson’s mind. ‘I hope you don’t mind me being here.’
‘Well,’ Anderson struggled to be honest, ‘the circumstances are a little weird.’
‘I like to talk to Claire; she is so very like Mary Jane.’
‘Well, they were half-sisters,’ said Anderson mildly.
George was staring at the door, watching the space where Claire had left the room. ‘Claire has got such brains, concentration, focus. She’s so talented. Have you seen this picture of Moses?’ He patted the unwrapped package beside him, smiling.
‘She gets that from her mum,’ muttered Anderson, pouring in the boiling water to the coffee.
‘They have the same gestures and the same …’ Haggerty paused, a wry smile played around his lips.
‘Attitude?’ offered Anderson.
‘Well maybe, in your daughter, it’s a well thought out …’
‘They were both my daughters,’ corrected Anderson, then softened it with, ‘but I know what you mean, something in that DNA that you cannot deny. Claire is an artist, Mary Jane was a singer.’
‘Mary Jane thought she was a singer, that’s not the same thing. She couldn’t sing, no talent at all, but wouldn’t be told. What a disservice we do our youth by letting them believe that everybody is owed their fifteen minutes of fame. And Mary Jane was nowhere near as intelligent or as instantly likeable as your Claire. This portrait of Moses shows a maturity beyond her years.’
Stay away from my children. Anderson pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Claire has been through a lot, far more than somebody of that age should be, but I’d like to think that she regards Brenda and I as constants in her life. No matter what she does, we will always be here. Mary Jane might have felt rejected by her birth mother, then her adopted Dad died, and then she was rejected again, maybe that coloured her whole life. If she knew it could be as precarious as that, why shouldn’t she go and try to achieve what she wanted? I’m sure you didn’t want to dash her dreams.’
‘And then she dashes every dream she had by getting herself pregnant. And not a word to her mother or me.’ George’s eyes narrowed, as if not being told was the bigger issue.
‘You didn’t know?’
‘Not until … no, I didn’t. I do wonder if Abigail knew though. But she would have told me.’ He placed his hands behind his neck. ‘Mary Jane was twenty-four, she should have been able to cope with it on her own. I suppose she was drawn to having the baby adopted, as she herself had been.’
Anderson did not know how much George knew. Mary Jane was not having her child adopted; she had sold it just as her own mother had sold her. Mary Jane had sold her baby to a couple who had really wanted a child, just as, twenty-four years before, Anderson’s old girlfriend Sally had got pregnant with Mary Jane, not told him and sold their baby to Abigail and Oscar Duguid. Nobody knew who Mary Jane’s baby had been destined for as Moses had been born Downs Syndrome and had been deemed not fit for purpose.
And that made Colin Anderson very angry.
He presumed that there was a strange kind of karmic synergy in that. Did George really not know that; had Abigail kept the pregnancy secret from him? That would have rattled a control freak like him. Anderson sipped his coffee wondering how hurt he would be if Claire kept something like that from him. But she never would. Or would she?
No.
Anderson looked at the man sitting at his kitchen table, drinking his coffee, talking about his daughter and his grandson. He could see how easy it would be to paint him as prime suspect, as Costello had done. His mouth opened before his brain could catch it.
‘Did you report DI Costello for harassment?’
George had not expected the question. He had thought they were having a friendly father to father talk, not cop to witness, or cop to suspect. His dark brown hair fell over his forehead, giving him the appearance of a guilty schoolboy. His eyes darted around, he was thinking too long to answer truthfully. ‘I think I did, I didn’t mean to. I was sort of saying to somebody, one of your colleagues, that Costello was parking outside my house, watching me, when I had already been spoken to, my statement had been taken, my alibi confirmed.’ He raised his finger to Anderson making his point. ‘I had been cleared. Costello was annoying me for no real reason. It was Diane Mathieson I spoke to and she said to stop Costello, I really had to make it official, so yes in the end I did report her for harassment.’
Anderson nodded, imagining how that conversation would have gone down. He was about to ask if Costello had left him alone after that but Haggerty returned to talking about Mary Jane. Anderson had thought he had caught a moment’s hesitation, when Haggerty had considered lying, lying as an afterthought. Haggerty was here to talk his own conversation; the mention of Costello had made him a little uneasy, scared even.
Had she been onto something?
He sipped his coffee, watching as George Haggerty rubbed Moses’ head and for the first time Colin Anderson felt a little fearful of what might have become of his sidekick.
He dragged away the chair, pulling Moses’ cot with it.
The Casualty officer had taken one quick look, checked the chart where the patient’s vital signs were being recorded and then taken a closer look at the occipital wound. While noticing it was remarkably clean, he saw it was also very deep. Any pressure with his fingers caused the patient to pull away but not before he had felt a degree of cushioning under his fingertips. He needed an X-ray to confirm what he already knew: there was a fracture in there. The woman was sitting on an examination couch. Hannah had patted the pillow, and gestured in every way that she could think of, but the woman remained sitting.
‘She might not want to lie down with a head wound like that, and I don’t blame her. Can you get an X-ray organized? It takes a hard blow to fracture an occiput, but I don’t like the feel of it. If we see a fracture, we will MRI. Or if her neurologicals start to decline. They are fine at the moment but her comprehension’s slow and she’s not verbalizing. Not in any language. Weird. Keep her under close observation. Stay with her, go with her to Radiology. Let me know if anything changes.’ The woman was co-operative but he noticed she had latched onto Hannah, her eyes flicking back and forth. When he asked a question, the woman would look to Hannah for an indication as to whether the answer was yes or no. And then let Hannah answer for both of them.
The doctor left, Hannah heard him talking to the cops, then heard them ask where the nearest vending machine was.
Hannah talked constantly, explaining to the patient that she needed to undress in case they needed a scan later and offered her a gown so she could examine her for other injuries, old scars, stitch marks that might show the site of a metal implant. The woman was co-operative, not really following instructions but not resisting as Hannah opened the zip of the anorak and slipped the woman’s arms out. It was soaking wet and stank of alcohol. She held it under her nose, the smell was overwhelming, leaving Hannah to wonder if somebody had smashed a bottle of plonk over the back of her head. She’d seen that before.
Hannah leant over the patient to slip her arms out the wet jumper; had she got wet through the anorak? Had she been somewhere without her jacket? Hannah breathed in over the patient’s hair. It smelled of shampoo, coconut shampoo. She sniffed at the patient’s breath as she looked into her eyes. No alcohol.
Hannah leaned forward again as she undid the top buttons of the black jumper, checking. Definitely no smell of drink on her breath. She stood back and looked at her, something here wasn’t right. Then she put her head out the cubicle and requested a plastic bag for the woman’s belongings. The woman watched as her arms were revealed from the sleeves of the jumper, cold, pink skin with lacerations, cuts on the lower forearms, defensive wounds. The arms had been held up to ward off an attack to the head. Yet the clothes were intact? No tears in the fabric of the T-shirt, jumper or anorak.
‘Good God,’ said Hannah, now thinking about sexual assault and that the victim had been undressed then redressed. ‘What the hell has happened to you?’ She looked into the grey eyes. They stared back at her, something was rumbling around in there at the back of the patient’s head. ‘Can I take your T-shirt off?’ There was no obedience, but no resistance. Hannah rolled up the T-shirt, starting at the waist. The patient winced, flinching a little so Hannah apologized and leaned forward to look over the patient’s shoulder to her back.
‘Shit!’ She let the T-shirt fall back down and hurriedly stuck her head out the curtain to get hold of the two cops. Their seats were empty.
Anderson eventually guided George Haggerty on to the terrace, the elegant façade lit up in bright amber, two windows already showing the sprinkling lights of early Christmas trees. Anderson breathed in the cold night air, the rain had stopped.
‘How long does it take you to drive up there? Up to Port MacDuff.’ He looked at his watch.
‘Five and a half hours? Thereabouts. The A9 is forty miles longer but six minutes quicker, if I don’t get stopped for speeding. I thought the average speed cameras had put an end to that. Bastards.’ Then George remembered who he was talking to. ‘Sorry.’
‘They are bastards. Even we can’t stand them.’
‘Well, look on the bright side, if I hadn’t got nicked for speeding you would still think that I was involved in my wife’s death, my son’s death.’
‘Every cloud.’
They had reached the back of the Volvo, but George Haggerty made no attempt to unlock the car. ‘Have you not heard from Costello?’
‘Nope, not at all.’ Anderson shook his head, hands in his pockets.
‘I saw her on the 8th. She called me on the 11th …’ Haggerty rubbed his chin. ‘Friday? Saturday? Definitely Saturday. Didn’t say much, just told me that I wouldn’t get away with it. Must have been Saturday. I was talking to the estate agent when she phoned.’
Anderson couldn’t hide his curiosity. ‘Did she say anything else?’
‘Just the usual abuse,’ Haggerty said, good-naturedly.
‘Estate agent? Are you selling the house?’ Anderson’s shiver was nothing to do with the chill of the night air.
‘Oh, there’s no way I can go back and live there, not after that. I’ve said to Valerie to go out and see if she wants anything, but me? No.’ He shook his head. He got his keys out his pocket and beeped the boot open. ‘Do you think it got to your colleague in the end, the way she found the bodies? The scene was brutal.’
It was on the tip of his tongue to say, well she has seen worse. But he didn’t know if that was true, but Costello felt guilty, and had ranted about the way Malcolm, according to her, had been so desperate to get away from his father he had tried to climb out the window. Anderson could see both sides. Children can cultivate anybody who will listen. Malcolm had lost his elder sister, he must have known about the attack on Valerie. His life was already unsettled and then … well. Then what?
Haggerty nodded. ‘Well, if you see her …’ he laughed. ‘Tell her I’m innocent, OK?’ The smile switched off as fast as it had switched on. ‘I know she’s your colleague, ex-colleague.’
‘I know you have complained, but she hasn’t been sacked.’ Anderson nodded; the chill of the night was starting to gnaw at his bones now. ‘You got your picture?’ he asked, pointing to the package under Haggerty’s arm.
‘Yes. My dad will be thrilled. He can’t believe it. A great-grandson.’
Except he isn’t, thought Anderson, nodding. Good manners made him provide the expected response. ‘Well, if he is ever down this way then give me a call, and we can get them together and he can see Moses for himself.’
Haggerty opened the boot of his car, the light came on and he swung his bag and the picture into the boot. The back of the car was illuminated to show it crammed full of bags and boxes, piled on top of an offcut of orange carpet, a tarp covering the back of the boot so it was kept very clean. Of course, he was clearing out his house. He reached for something packed safely at the back.
‘I hope you don’t mind but I came across this and I thought you might like it. Just one of those things.’ He handed over a flat package wrapped in bubble wrap. Anderson unpeeled the padding and as he did, his fingers felt the regular squares, the widened border. It was a photo frame and as he unwound the wrapping, the photograph came into view. He didn’t need to ask who it was. The girl in the picture looked very like Claire, lighter colouring, but the same smile, and though Anderson knew Mary Jane had been seven years older than Claire, in this picture, she looked so much younger.
Fresh faced, hair uncoloured and falling naturally round her face. The rain spotted the glass as he held it there, she became more interesting behind the pinpoints of rain water, they added an ethereal quality to her smile.
‘Mary Jane, about sixteen or seventeen then.’
‘Yeah, a good kid before she lost her dad,’ said Haggerty. ‘My good friend Oscar. And that was horrible. He sailed off, he drowned. All the coastguard found were bits of burning wreckage. The dinghy was still tied to the Jennifer Rhu. And if the wee boat was still tied to the yacht, he didn’t get off the burning boat. You can understand the effect that had on Abby and Mary Jane, seven years of wrangling to get him declared dead, as there was no body. It was a horrible time, absolutely bloody awful. Mary Jane grew up through all that.’
It was the most animated Anderson had ever seen him.
Haggerty said, opening the door and climbing into the car, ‘She didn’t have a father, you know. She had three and none of us were there when it mattered.’
And with that he indicated and pulled out into the terrace.
She didn’t have a father, you know.
What did Haggerty actually mean by that?
Oscar Duguid had died years before Anderson had any idea that the girl had even existed so there was no way that he could have stepped into the breach. It was Haggerty who had done that. He was the one who had married Mary Jane’s mother, Abigail, and then gone on to have Malcolm and make the picture of the perfect family complete. He did a quick mental calculation. They must have met, got together, married and had Malcolm very quickly.
Anderson made a note to find out how they met, exactly, out of idle curiosity as Haggerty spoke of Oscar as if he was a close friend.
Anderson couldn’t imagine losing Brenda and Peter, and being able to have a conversation that only barely mentioned them. As if they were completely something of his past, talking about the horror of the scene without giving a thought as to what his loved ones had gone through.
He had never once asked, ‘Did they suffer?’
Alastair Patrick closed his eyes and waited, he didn’t know these men. But he sensed that they shared one thing.
A history.
After a couple of weaves left and right, the Landie came to a halt, skidding jerkily to a standstill as if the driver had suddenly realized that they had arrived at their destination. The driver and the others got out; the cold wet air snaked into the vehicle. He saw another identical vehicle, the door opened as another man, dressed exactly as the others, dark blue and black got out. That made four, the perfect sabre. There was no light except for the beams of six spotlights that shone uphill into the infinity of the night, picking up nothing but the rain slicing like tracer fire in the beam. That and a few barren stone stacks, standing like wraiths, waiting.
Then one gorilla walked briskly back to the vehicle and opened Patrick’s door. He took the hint and got out.
The Gorilla and the Glaswegian climbed back in the Land Rover and drove off without a word, leaving Patrick standing in the pouring rain that bit at his neck and face, he felt its sting and recoiled, the cold air snatched at his hood, pulling it from his head, then he felt the wind tug at his hat. Watching the three other men walking around. One then walked away and climbed into the other Landie. The other came towards Patrick, and he felt himself stiffen, rising on the balls of his feet, bracing himself, his fists clenching. Ready. Patrick scanned the face behind the black mask, looking for targets. Another old habit.
‘Captain Patrick?’ The voice came from somewhere behind the wool. ‘Claymore. I am your commander, and as of now you are under my orders. Now, time to get about the night’s business.’
Patrick recognized his reactivation command, and again that one word pushed unwelcome memories into his head, the smell of cordite, the sound of tracer fire. Faces flashed across his vision, bodies sprawled in bloodied heaps over the machine gun.
He pushed the fear away. ‘Your business is none of mine, not now.’ Patrick said to reassure himself.
‘Shut it, Tonka, your file’s about a foot thick. Don’t ask, just obey.’
‘It’s a long time since somebody called me Tonka. I presume I don’t know you.’
‘No, but I know you by reputation.’
‘Then we are not mates, so Captain Patrick to you.’
‘Captain Patrick then. You are a police officer, you need to do your job, so we can do ours.’
For a short moment they stood a metre apart. Two men regarding each other, separated by a generation or more. One unit bonded them and that would be with them both until the day they died. No matter how hard Patrick tried to leave, he would still be one of them. Their blood was his blood, their fight his fight, even to the end.
There was a grunt, a nod. He walked away.
Patrick called after him. ‘What are my orders?’
The boss turned and pointed. ‘Up that gully. Fifty metres.’
The spotlights crashed off plunging him into total dark, his eyes dazzled by kaleidoscope images on his retina. He closed his eyes and waited, heard one vehicle depart and opened one eye. If it wasn’t for the near invisible outlines of the vehicle that remained, he’d have thought that he was alone up here on the Bealach. Alone with the silent sentinels of the cairns and the ghosts howling in the wind. He saw the headlights of the departing Land Rover, the beam from the headlights consumed by the darkness, the noise of the engine eaten by the wind.
They were gone. He was alive but with no idea what he was doing here.
Qui audet adipiscitur.
Fifty metres. What the hell did that mean? Had they accidently killed somebody?
He was truly, completely alone. And the Land Rover was sitting, waiting, engine running. Left for him. He couldn’t see anybody inside.
‘But I can see that we still use Her Majesty’s money to play silly buggers, always money for shite,’ said Patrick into the wind, as he was bloody sure there was nobody there to hear it. Well, nearly sure. He faced uphill and now he had his night vision back and began to quarter the hillside in visual sweeps. He smiled. It had been a long, long time since he lived in a world where nobody knew your name because if you saw them as a person, then you might hesitate, and that could be fatal. He remembered the killing house, blacked out, and being told one man with a knife who kept his nerve could kill lots of people in the dark. Why? Because without hesitation he could murder every single one he met, while his enemies whispered, ‘Is that you Frank?’ You were given a nickname the minute you walked in the door, the second you signed up and became one of them, one of the ten percent. The nickname meant you ceased being a person in your own right, you became one of them, one of the team. And he had been one of that team, he had been on a hillside like this many a time, cold and wet, pumped with adrenaline listening to the noise of gunfire and following the pattern of tracer fire back to its source. Four men going where an army couldn’t. Small strong men, the four of them moving like an insidious, venomous little beast, working towards the heart of its prey.
And they had. Patrick closed his eyes for a moment and he was back on a hillside, clouds of smoke, the smell of cordite and burned flesh filling his nostrils, pushing on and up, climbing, running over rough ground and pushing through, going in where angels failed to fly for fear of being shot down. Slotting everyone in front of them.
He breathed deep in the air that was fresh and cooling to his lungs, air untainted by the death of those like him, born in a different belief system, in another country.
Like the past.
Valerie was hanging, swinging back and forth like a pendulum inside a clock, the tightness around her neck getting worse. She was back in the cupboard at the Blue Neptune, somebody was strangling her. She passed out, a tangle of colours appeared before her eyes, red bursting into yellow that faded to black as she lost consciousness. She waited to die.
But didn’t.
She was being strangled. She reached up to her throat, clawing at the noose, her fingertips tugging at the soft fabric that was winding round and pulling ever tighter.
Then it all went dark.
She opened her eyes. It was actually dark.
Valerie was back in the cupboard, panicking. She lifted her other hand and slipped, hitting her head on the tiled floor. She could see in her mind’s eye the noose tightening, constricting her throat until she couldn’t breathe. She choked, rolling on the floor, her eyes closing. Then she realized she was lying down and not choking.
She was lying in the dark.
She walked her fingertips up to her neck, wondering what she would find. Unable to get her arms free, she tried to calm herself. She shuffled out the door of the bedroom, aware of something sticky under her. But she kept going, she had to get out of here. Shouldering the door open, she twisted her body and waited for her vision to clear so she knew what was on the other side of the door. She recognized this room, but had no idea where from.
She could make out movement on the opposite wall, somebody lying low and trying to stay hidden, somebody like her, tied up and kept captured.
She closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall, waiting for a noise or some clue. Her thoughts were all over the place. This was her worst nightmare all over again, he had found her and put her back in the cupboard. She needed to get out and help the other woman. Looking up she saw the woman was looking back at her. She edged her way forward as she came forward to meet her halfway.
She was looking at herself.
She was there, in the mirror of the hotel room. She stared into her own eyes for a long time wondering if she actually recognized that woman who looked back at her. She looked so much older and more tired than Valerie.
She was old. On the floor after another blackout. Time had slipped somewhere, a few minutes or hours lost, a little bit of herself had escaped. She had no idea.
Then she heard footsteps on the corridor outside. Valerie’s eyes fixed on the door, willing it to open. It seemed a long time before there was a very quiet double knock.
She thought she saw a light, thinking that she might be dying now. All that bloody effort and now dying when she wasn’t ready. But God smelled familiar and said something, a voice she recognized as if he was far away down a tunnel, shouting at her. She presumed that, as she knew the voice, God has been talking to her before her final breath.
She reached her hand out, ready to meet her maker.
Her mouth was dry. It hurt to move her tongue. She thought she was forming the words correctly, she hoped she could be understood, but from God’s uncomprehending face, which blurred and danced in front of her, she was making no sense at all.
She tried again. ‘You need to help me.’
The Bealach was a terrible place to be in winter. It was like the surface of the moon but slightly less hospitable. Bealach Na Ba the locals called it, which meant the pass of the cattle or, as it was sometimes translated, the stink of burned-out clutch. Until recently, within Patrick’s memory, it had been the only road that connected Applecross with the rest of the country. Up here, two thousand feet above sea level on an exposed summit, the wind was so strong, it whipped at his jacket, almost pushing him over. Reminded him of the screeching winds on South Georgia, the Fortuna Glacier, where they had to creep about like German snipers.
He took cover behind the shelter of the Land Rover, crouching against the body on the lee side where the wind and rain came under the Landie trying to get a bite at him. Once he got his bearings, he gave in to the aching in his knees, stood up and climbed into the shelter of the vehicle, fumbling to check the keys. He set the demister at full, thinking.
He moved the vehicle, pulling it forward and repositioning it so the lights shone right down the gully, but back enough from the edge to allow him to getaway easily without reversing.
This was not a place for him, this was home for deer and sheep, this was where city folk and hill walkers died of exposure. Well, in the past that was true, but now the National Park had built access roads everywhere, the hills belonged to everybody. Now there was an invasion of mountain bikers, motorhomers, stupid people who had seen the North Coast 500 drive on the TV and thought they liked the look of it. Puffer fish looked nice too, but they were still fatal to the ignorant.
So, there was something out on that hillside that was his business, or at least what Intel thought was his business. He’d no sure idea what his monosyllabic friends had been getting at but there was only one way to find out. Coming up with the story of how he came to be here might be more of a challenge, he thought. He could always tell the truth, no bugger would ever believe that, but that truth would already be being manipulated now, by faceless men in good suits, with no blood on their hands.
He picked up the torch, turned it on, flashing it a few times to make sure the beam was strong and that it was waterproof, rolled into the rear and out the back door behind the glare of his lights. He did a quick grid search in the darkness, making sure he was alone.
Then he walked quickly across the parking area till he was in the shadow again outside the arc of the lights and began to walk uphill, rolling silently on the outside of his boots, stopping at each perspective change and checking the ground. From the dark he could see every rock bathed in stark light. Forty metres or so up he saw it. Pale and white, out of place, waving at him in greeting. He crouched and scanned the dark above the lights. He pulled his mobile but there was a better signal on the moon than up here. He had to hurry. Throwing caution to the wind he rushed towards the movement in the heather.
It was a hand, hanging from the sleeve of a jumper caught in a whipping gorse bush, the fingers caught in the wind, waving.
Two hours after he found the body, Patrick was alone again at the top of the pass, waiting for the circus to come to town. He had rather enjoyed the drive to the north, going down the Bealach, until his phone told him he had a signal. Then he had contacted his DC, Morna Taverner, getting her out her bed at four a.m., and gave her a list of instructions, checking the local hotels for guests who hadn’t returned tonight, then check the list of young men reported missing, in Scotland for starters. Then any abandoned or burnt-out vehicles within a twenty-mile radius. It might be a long list, but she was a good police officer, despite that idiot she had married and a constant lack of a reliable babysitter. As an afterthought. He called the number of Lachlan McRae, who lived next door to Morna in Constance House, one street from the seafront at Port MacDuff and got him out his bed as well.
Then he turned around and drove back up, slower than the Gorilla had driven but still bringing back an old thrill.
The body on the hill had no ID on him, Patrick was not convinced of the most obvious answer; that the young man had been a rough tourist, not an extreme runner with the jumper he was wearing. Maybe more of an extreme walker, the big knitted jumper and border collie brigade, not the Rohan Craghopper super fit lot. They were both tough, both more than a little mad according to the mountain rescue. The real answer would be more tragic, brought about by human hand.
The Bealach was isolated and high but it wasn’t steep. The road up twisted and turned, gaining height over nine kilometres, meandering its way up and over the pass. Who was he? Who took his ID and why he was dressed the way he was? And how did he end up here on a night like this when the road had been closed for a couple of weeks now. The uncomfortable answer to that was he was either somebody who knew the place, or he had been placed here by somebody who knew the place and whoever did that, well, that vehicle would be covered in blood and that vehicle would have been spotted somewhere along the way. At this time of year, strangers stuck out. Patrick had a slight rethink there. The North Coast 500 was far too popular. Tourists were driving it all hours of day and night, the holiday season now lasted twelve months. Everybody thought they knew the road because they had read about it in a magazine in a Sunday supplement, everybody and their uncle. Folk with 4×4s sat in pubs in the West End of Glasgow and talked about it, boasting about how they had driven it in a gale in October, a snowdrift in January, backwards at midnight while whistling the theme tune from The Great Escape. That was all very well until one vehicle missed a turn and plunged down into the glen, killing everybody on board. Then it would be his fault.
Four hours after he found the body, Patrick was watching the circus. There was no daylight up here in the middle of the bleak wilderness, it was all spotlights and headlights, shadows dancing over bleak rocks and cairns.
The scenes of crime team had pegged out the stony ground, fine puddles lying on top of the moss and grass. The vehicles were on the hard standing at the viewing point, there had been a decision, made by Patrick, to leave the civilian vehicles at the bottom of the hill. The road was closed anyway and probably would remain so until early in the new year. The forestry commission ATVs were doing the running up and down, safe and sturdy.
Despite the weather things were going well; the lights were on, the plates were up. The body lay there, now bathed by light, a young man with dark hair that took a deep ebony sheen in the neon glow, a slight burnished copper tint when caught by the harsh glare of the spotlights.
Alastair Patrick had taken one look at the man and knew he had been beaten to death. It looked like somebody had danced on his head, never mind the obvious wound across the front of the man’s throat which to Patrick’s expert eye was both amateurish and non-fatal. There may have been torture, but looking too closely would involve adjusting clothing, and maybe losing trace evidence, so he left it. A quick look through the pockets of the baggy jeans revealed nothing.
This was no accident.
Somebody had pulled him from a vehicle and rolled him into the gully.
No rush. The victim wasn’t going anywhere.
They could wait until they had him on the slab over at the mortuary, wherever he ended up. There was talk of taking him all the way down to Glasgow, and that could take another six hours or so. Maybe he could insist on Inverness.
Patrick looked round to see the photographer in the spotlight, clicking away, the crime scene officer was helping with the video. Two CSIs were on their knees searching the ground, getting soaked and finding nothing but doing the job anyway. He had instructed that the body be taken off the hill ASAP, they would find anything they needed to find once the sun was up. He looked at his watch and that would be another three hours away.
One of the CSIs shone her or his torch in the face of the young man, eyes closed, a pink, fresh face, as if he had decided to shave when he looked in the mirror on the day he died. His face was bloodied red, the rain running over it, giving him the look of both life and perspiration. He looked at peace in this desolate place.
After dying a brutal death.
The police surgeon turned up eventually, ignoring Patrick, picking his way over the ground, dressed in a huge downy anorak, and a woollen hat pulled far over his ears. He snubbed the group as he went about his business, then he stopped. Suddenly.
The two CSIs and the photographer ceased to move, stilled exactly where they were, turned to stone.
‘Who is in charge here? Is that you, Patrick?’
‘Yes,’ he shouted over the screaming of the wind.
‘Well, you’d better get a chopper here right now. He’s not dead.’
Alastair Patrick’s mind swiftly moved up a few gears. Oh, so he was not dead, so why was he here? Why had they thought he was dead? Had they checked? Had he checked? Of course he had, he had placed his bare fingers over the jugular and found nothing.
Alastair Patrick walked back to the Land Rover with greater purpose than he had left it, he was ready to drive back down the pass to get a phone signal as a stretcher, aluminium blankets, an oxygen tank and mask ready, was making its way back over to the body.
The paperwork just got problematic.
He was thinking of the long drive to Inverness as Patrick watched the body being placed on a stretcher, and placed into the back of the Land Rover, resting it on the top of the seat. There was no way a normal ambulance was going to get up here. They’d take him down to the coast and the Paraffin Budgie could meet them there.
That would be safer, in this night sky, this weather, this visibility.
He called the Multi Agency Briefing.
It was someone else’s decision.