by Gwen Moffat
He didn’t respond immediately, but stared into the night. After a time he sighed again and said, ‘No. Yes. Only in the first place, but I was terrified they’d come back. My life’s been a torment for weeks. I haven’t got the courage to kill myself, but I did consider … I thought about killing them. No, they’re not blackmailing me; I’ve got nothing they can take.’
‘You have a nice house.’
‘You know about that? I suppose you know everything about me. Those two didn’t want money; they took over a hundred pounds off me, but that was just for laughs. The object of the exercise was straight viciousness. They’d beaten an adult, a teacher. Authority, right? It was a put-up job; I worked that out eventually. That boy didn’t come on us by accident when he was out shooting rabbits; he was waiting for her to bring me to a place that they probably used over and over again with any other poor sucker she could entice into the woods—and who’d believe my story? I was trapped. God, I was glad when he got himself murdered, and I know exactly how he felt—the guy who did it. There but for the grace of God …’
‘It seems that Flora killed him, and you postulate a motive. His nerve cracked and she had to silence him.’
He shook his head. ‘She got someone to do it for her then. A child of twelve hasn’t the strength to kill a boy of sixteen. She’s only a little thing.’
‘How did you allow yourself to be seduced by a twelve-year-old, however charming?’
‘She said she was seventeen, she looked seventeen—’
‘She looked twelve,’ Miss Pink said firmly.
‘Jesus!’ He slumped in his seat. ‘You’ve got no proof, not even of this conversation. It’s not taking place; no one knows.’
‘Exactly. So tell me how they managed to relieve you of your possessions.’
‘I said—he had a gun. Didn’t they use a gun on the other victims?’
‘They had different methods, but a gun was used on one person—not to kill him, but as a threat.’
‘I saw through it eventually,’ he repeated savagely. ‘I’ve had nothing else to think about for weeks. She’s a better actor than him. She really did appear to be frightened of him. He can’t be her brother—different names, I suppose he’s her half-brother—it’s immaterial. And then, he saying he’d fetch his father and she saying he’d keep quiet if I gave him money. So I gave him everything I had and he was laughing. He was standing on my clothes and when he told me to run and lifted the gun, I ran. But I swear to you she told me she was seventeen.’
‘She was sixteen.’
‘But you said—he said she was twelve! His kid sister, he said: twelve years old.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘So that was the game: pick a victim, entice him into the woods, big brother turns up—after rabbits with a shot-gun—and tells the victim his sister is twelve years old. Child molestation; it’s a variation on the badger game.’
Miss Pink was home again, back in the sitting room at Feartag. A new carpet had been laid and the pane of glass replaced in the french window. ‘It’s good to be here,’ she said, looking round the room.
‘It’s good to have you back,’ Beatrice responded. ‘When do you propose to tell Pagan about this terrible double life of Flora’s?’
Miss Pink didn’t answer directly. She said, ‘I can see how Campbell’s murder was worked, but if Flora were alive she’d have an alibi for that night—probably a client in the Edinburgh flat, and it would be up to the police to prove he didn’t exist. On the other hand, they might unearth a record of a car stolen in Edinburgh that night, which reappeared later with five hundred extra miles on the clock. All the same, those records would be complicated if Flora left the car in a poor part of the city with the keys in the ignition, and it was then stolen by a petty thief.’
‘But there would be a record, even if the car was stolen twice.’
‘And the police are good on these meticulous time-consuming enquiries.’ But Miss Pink did not sound convinced.
‘What is the rest of the case against her?’
‘Them. They were in it together. The evidence is circumstantial—and how unusual is that? Campbell saw something, knew something—suspected the worst, being Campbell. I doubt that he was aware of the seriousness of his position until near the end …’
‘He came to me for a gun; if I’d let him have one, he could still be alive.’
‘We’re not responsible for other people. You thought he was paranoid, or playing a game. No one knew whether he was harmless or dangerous, but Hamish knew that Campbell could expose them—or thought he could—so he set fire to the cottage and then panicked—or his panic increased—and he sent for Flora, phoning her from Camas Beag. She came and destroyed the people who could expose her, first one then the other.’
‘Could they have sent Campbell an anonymous letter?’
‘No, his reactions were too unpredictable. In any case, they sent only one: to Esme. She was a sitting duck—as you were in a different context: the elderly lady deprived of the protection of a strong man. No wonder you got nasty telephone calls.’
‘You’re saying the only motive was to terrorise people.’
‘You need more? It’s adequate for all anonymous callers, heavy breathers. There’s a sense of power, a flouting of authority, thrills: heady stuff. Geddes understands: “It’s how they get their kicks,” he said. Hamish wasn’t so bad; he followed, she led—and no man can be as vicious as a woman.’
‘She wasn’t a woman. So Hamish was killed because he was weak.’
‘Because he was a threat. His nerve had broken, he forgot to wear gloves when he broke into Campbell’s cottage to try to find out once and for all what the man knew. Flora wouldn’t have allowed him to do that had she been here, but she’d gone off to Edinburgh after the altercation that I witnessed—when Hamish thundered away and rode down the poodle. With Flora gone, Hamish had lost his anchor, so he tried a spot of villainy on his own—to prove his value perhaps. Could I be right?’ Beatrice looked blank. Miss Pink went off on another tack. ‘But how did Flora kill the boy? She had alibis from Sunday breakfast time onwards, and Hamish was alive until late on Sunday night. Pagan might say she had the motive, so never mind the opportunity. Perhaps he’ll close the case.’
‘You said a moment ago she destroyed both of them.’
‘She was responsible for their destruction. She meant to kill Hamish. She’d set him up as Campbell’s killer. Campbell never returned to the island that night; they killed him on the shore and used his boat to reach the island. The fact that there were no prints on the dixies, the boat sunk in water that was too shallow—those weren’t mistakes but pointers, first to foul play and then to the identity of the perpetrator. Hamish was the fall guy, and by the time the police got to him he would be dead: a faked suicide perhaps—by drowning. You look surprised.’
‘I’m amazed—at how you’ve worked it all out. Why didn’t she kill Hamish, then, immediately after they’d killed Campbell?’
‘He ran away.’
‘But he had his father’s gun!’
‘He’d never use it on her; he was terrified, but if he wasn’t infatuated with her he was the only male that came within her orbit who wasn’t. Flora used sex as a weapon, and Hamish was immature emotionally; he must have been in a fine turmoil—and that would bother her. Like Campbell, Hamish would have become unpredictable; like Campbell, he had to go. He ran too fast that night, and she had to get back to Edinburgh to sustain her alibi. She ran the risk of his talking before she could get back and kill him, but it wasn’t much of a risk; they were now partners in murder.’
Miss Pink sighed and stood up. She crossed to the french windows and looked out at the bare birches. After a moment she undid the latch and stepped out on the terrace. Beatrice followed and they stood at the rail while the river talked busily below them.
‘How much did his father suspect?’ Miss Pink asked. ‘He knew Hamish was responsible for the prank with the police car, but—more than
that? At some point he locked his gun away. The night Hamish was killed, he was defenceless.’
‘He was always defenceless.’
‘Flora was going to return, so he had to find another gun; he was desperate: trying to equalise his position with a firearm. He entered a house with the intention of acquiring one. What I can’t understand is how he was persuaded to drink. He was the violator; how did his victim turn the tables?’
Beatrice smiled. ‘It’s a neat technical problem. Could it have been a variation on the Stockholm syndrome, where a bond is formed between terrorists and hostages? Hamish could have entered a house armed with some weapon—a knife, perhaps—but instead of killing his victim he was persuaded to talk, and then to drink. According to you he was confused: frightened of Flora, yet obsessed by her, knowing he must kill her or she’d kill him. He could have been aching to talk to someone and it wouldn’t matter; he meant to kill the person he was confiding in anyway. He’d talk a lot, he’d get thirsty, he’d drink—anything.’
‘It’s a reasonable hypothesis, but why was he suffocated after he’d been hit on the head?’
‘Because the first blow didn’t kill him? And a second could have resulted in blood on—what? The furnishings?’
‘You’re proposing one of his victims for the role of killer?’
‘Their victims,’ Beatrice corrected. ‘But we don’t know who those were, do we? There could be any number of people who kept quiet about victimisation. There could have been some motive for killing him that hasn’t crossed our minds. Self-defence isn’t good enough because, once he’d been knocked unconscious, the police could have been sent for—’
‘His own father?’
‘Why not, if the boy was only unconscious? There is no excuse; there was an intention to kill, and there was no remorse. The body was concealed.’
Miss Pink turned and surveyed the back of the house: grey stone laced with ivy except where a Virginia creeper flamed around the door of the log cellar. ‘He had to be kept close to water,’ she said. ‘So Flora was never a double killer.’
Beatrice changed the emphasis. ‘There’s no case against her. There’s no proof, there isn’t even circumstantial evidence, and all those people you approached over the last two days are going to deny everything. You obtained information by methods the police couldn’t use—and Geddes didn’t even know Flora was dead. If he had known, you wouldn’t have got a word out of him.’
‘If Pagan suspected the truth, I wonder what he might do about it.’
‘There’s a nip in the air; shall we go in?’
They returned to the sitting room and Beatrice closed the french windows. ‘You’ll tell him what you discovered?’
‘Of course. What I found out about Flora’s activities doesn’t exonerate you legally for her death, but morally you’re in the clear, and she killed Campbell.’
‘You don’t sound convinced.’
‘I know you’d never sleep with your window closed, so what kind of noise did you hear above the sound of the river that woke you and made you get up?’
‘The river doesn’t make much sound when the water’s low.’
Miss Pink ignored this. ‘And how did you get downstairs and into this room after she broke the glass? She’d have moved too fast. Either she’d have met you in the passage or she’d have hidden herself to wait for you to show up.’
‘Pagan was satisfied with my statement.’
‘You were waiting for her downstairs,’ Miss Pink went on. ‘The place was in darkness, the curtains drawn back, a faint glow through the windows from the light on the bridge. You’d have seen her approach the house and you’d picked on this room as the most likely point of entry.’
‘You’re making the assumption that I knew an intruder was going to come to my house.’
‘That’s what you might say to Pagan, and what policeman would believe that an old lady would use blackmail as a lure and herself as live bait? But Pagan didn’t hear you mention a badger and two thousand pounds.’
‘Nor did anyone else.’
They regarded each other without expression. Beatrice said, ‘Before capital punishment was struck off the statute book, we delegated justice to a judge and a jury and the public executioner.’
‘I’ve lived in states where capital punishment still exists.’
‘I haven’t forgotten. So you condoned it.’
‘You can’t blame legalised killing on me,’ Miss Pink protested. ‘I’m not responsible.’
‘That’s your choice,’ Beatrice said equably. ‘But someone has to be.’
THE STONE HAWK
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 1
Where she stopped on the mountain road the traveller’s vision was limited only by the curve of the earth – and most of the land looked flat. The ground was shadowless, without colour, dull under a low ceiling of cloud, but far to the west a pale lemon streak suggested that the sun was shining out there beyond the San Rafael Desert and the Dirty Devil canyons.
On closer inspection features could be distinguished that were not horizontal, or not completely. Long lines of cliffs might terminate in sharp prows, but these appeared diminutive above an expanse that could have been water reflecting the cloud. No forests were visible, no lakes or rivers, no roads.
The traveller walked back to her jeep and climbed into the driver’s seat. As she reached for the ignition the world brightened, like a stage at the start of a performance.
The sun had dipped below the edge of the cloud and its light came flooding eastward. The land took on substance but, streaked and scalloped with shadows, it was even more alien than when it had been horizontal and dull. This was a plateau – but not a tableland; pink, black, orange, white: every rent and pockmark in that tortoiseshell landscape was a declivity. Canyon edges were delineated by the light and their depths were black as a black cat’s fur. And then, turning her gaze to the long escarpments with their sharp prows, Melinda Pink (from the rural fastness of Cornwall, England) adjusted herself to the scale and decided, not without a thrill, that those headlands she had thought diminutive could be all of two thousand feet high.
⋆ ⋆ ⋆
She had not been prepared for this, but the lack of preparation had been deliberate. Miss Pink was a person who revelled in the initial impact of strange country. Years ago she had glanced at a coffee-table book on Utah’s canyon country: a crazy red rock wilderness of sandstone pinnacles and reefs and plunging canyons. She had been in the Mojave Desert of California at the time and she had put the book down with the feeling that if she remembered those images, then one day she would gravitate to the reality: would walk those sandy washes, feel the rough red stone, see new birds and strange flowers.
She went to the Montana Rockies, returned to Cornwall, wrote gothic novels through wet raw winters and dismal summers – and she pined for the clear soft air of the West where you might see for a hundred miles. And when, in response to a nostalgic cri de coeur, she received a letter telling her of the writer’s friend: a rancher in straitened circumstances who would be only too glad to rent her a cabin in a Utah canyon, those old images thrust themselves forward and she took the place unseen for a month.
Now, looking out over a space floored with stone that was nowhere level, in which, somewhere within view, must be her destination, she was awestruck. That was home for a month? What was it really like, outside the pages of a coffee-table book? She speculated and sighed and shook her head helplessly; there was only one way to find out. She switched on the ignition and eas
ed down the gradient, her mind washing clear of surmise, the cool notes of a Mozart concerto a gentle and civilised comment on the elemental exuberance below.
With every hundred feet that she descended, the country dropped a veil, not coyly but with blatant carelessness. Miss Pink was reminded of other spires, other towers, of the Cioch (that great lizard’s head on the Isle of Skye) all of which had remained unsuspected although in full view until one day the mist crept in behind the rock and threw the feature into prominence against its parent cliff. So her first impression of this land had been of a vast level; the second, of a dissected plateau. Now, with the slipping of the veils, the slow drift down the mountain became a descent into fantasy as buttes and mesas, spires and tusks and incredible cliffs rose like slow magic. From above she had seen only the crevasses; as she dropped a thousand feet, two thousand, she realised that, in the same way that crevasses are separated by séracs, so these canyons, many of them, were bounded by reefs some of which were so thin that holes had been eroded in the mighty walls.
She stopped and climbed down to stare upwards at one of these dizzy windows. At that moment a dark form detached itself from the lintel and plunged towards her. She lost sight of it against the rock but then, through the whisper of water close at hand, she heard a thin angry chattering and a scream. In the space above her head two shapes parted abruptly, one with a clumsy lurch, the other veering widely at high speed. A red-tailed hawk had come too close to the peregrine’s eyrie.
She drove on silently. In the face of this land and all its promise – peregrines too – Mozart would be gilding the lily.
Miss Pink did not look the kind of person who used music as background. Her eyes, behind the latest in designer spectacles, were extremely sharp (although she could assume a blank expression with ease). She looked like a solid, elderly lady, affluent – with her big jeep, the expertly layered grey hair, the man’s Rolex on her wrist – the modern traveller in Explorer trousers with bellows pockets, and a mulberry polo shirt. On the maps covering the passenger seat was an old but serviceable straw hat.
