by Lin Anderson
He’d laughed then. ‘I went to a Catholic school, remember? It was all about the conversion of Scotland.’
She was almost at Sconser and the ferry terminal for Raasay. Her favourite view of Raasay was from Portree, but it was here that her most lasting memory of the island began. It had been earlier in her career. Not long after she’d found her son, Liam. Or he had found her.
A fishing boat had netted a severed male foot in Raasay Sound, a month after another fishing boat had gone down in the vicinity. Tempers had been running high among the locals since it hadn’t been the first time a submarine on manoeuvres on the west coast of Scotland had snagged a net and sunk a boat. The forensic trail on that investigation had led Rhona to Raasay via Santa Monica, USA, uncovering a conspiracy that had gone far beyond a clumsy attempt by the Ministry of Defence to shut down the story of the foot.
Today, the ferry was halfway across the Sound, and seeing its steady path to Raasay, Rhona thought she might like to revisit the island sometime during her stay on Skye. Perhaps call in on Mrs McMurdo who’d run the post office back then, and given her a place to stay.
The long length of Loch Sligachan travelled, she now passed the large family-run hotel at its head, then began the steep climb up towards the intermittent plantations that lined the road leading into Portree. The best views on this road were undoubtedly in the opposite direction because of the exciting glimpses of the Cuillin. Something she could enjoy on the way back.
After she got this meeting over with.
Checking her watch, Rhona realized she was going to be late. Something that was entirely down to her reluctance to set out in the first place. As luck would have it, the Dunvegan Road was this side of Portree and she soon spotted the sign for Am Fasgadh. Sweeping into the small car park outside the one-storey building, Rhona swiftly abandoned the jeep and hurried inside.
‘Dr MacLeod?’ a voice called her name on entry.
The man who stood at reception had his hand outstretched, as though certain that she was the person he sought. When Rhona indicated that he was right, he introduced himself.
‘Dr Mike Bailey. I was beginning to think you might have got lost,’ he added with a smile. He waited for a moment, as though expecting an explanation, which Rhona had no desire to give. When this became obvious, he said, ‘If you’d like to follow me through, Dr MacLeod.’
Moments later Rhona found herself in a pleasant room with an equally pleasing view of the surrounding woodland.
‘Welcome to The Shelter,’ he said as he offered her a seat.
‘I know what Am Fasgadh means,’ Rhona heard herself answer testily.
‘Ah.’ Her belligerent tone had seemingly left him unmarked. ‘So you have the Gaelic?’
And that smile again.
‘A smattering,’ Rhona said, as annoyed by her own behaviour as Dr Bailey’s irritatingly kind manner. Gathering herself, she settled back in the chair, at the same time wondering just how much Dr Bailey had been told about her experiences during the sin-eater case. Whatever it was he knew, Rhona had no intention of expanding on it.
She’d turned up here, as requested. No, ordered. That was enough.
Rhona now began her evaluation of Dr Bailey.
He was Irish, by the accent. Probably Dublin, because he sounded a little like Sean, although that was where the likeness ended. No black hair, no blue eyes and probably no saxophone.
‘Where are you from?’ she said, keen to be first in the conversation.
‘Dublin,’ he confirmed.
‘My adopted parents were from Skye, but I’ve spent more time in Glasgow than on the island. Are you based here?’ she asked, before he could get in with a question of his own.
‘Inverness. I do a surgery in Portree once a week.’
‘So you’re kept busy?’
He nodded, beginning to look a little put out by her string of enquiries.
‘So,’ Rhona said, ‘why am I taking up your obviously valuable time?’
‘You tell me,’ he offered.
‘Because I refused to follow procedure and go to Castlebrae. I preferred a holiday here on Skye instead.’
‘So your stay here is a holiday?’
‘Yes,’ Rhona said with certainty.
‘I understood from DI Wilson that you’d recently had a traumatic experience.’
‘I process and analyse violent death for a living, Dr Bailey. Some would say that every day could be considered traumatic.’ She waited, wondering where that remark would take him. Eventually she learned.
‘But you’re not often a victim yourself.’
Rhona took her gaze to the window and thought herself outside again, with the air blowing in her face. With the smell of the sea. With a view of the Cuillin.
‘I am not a victim. A young man and a young woman died on the case I’m assuming you’re referring to. I did not. I’m a survivor and the only reason I’m here now is because I was given no choice.’
‘I see.’
Rhona followed his quick glance at the clock above the door. She suspected he was registering how little had been achieved in the last fifteen minutes.
‘I have to meet someone. So if we’re finished here,’ she said, rising.
Rhona thought by his surprised expression that Dr Bailey might dispute this, but wisely he did not.
‘Same time next week, Dr MacLeod?’ he offered instead.
Rhona gave a brief nod, although she had no intention of ever coming back. To her mind, she had done what was required of her.
They shook hands again. His was warm and dry. Her own, she noticed, was cold and damp.
Registering the increased beat of her heart and her trembling hand as she unlocked the jeep, Rhona took a deep breath and fastened her gaze on the mountains to remind herself that she hadn’t been buried alive again in Dr Bailey’s questioning eyes.
Now outside the funeral director’s, which was minutes away from Am Fasgadh, Rhona was counselling herself against going inside, the meeting with Dr Bailey having stirred up memories of a certain Glasgow undertaker’s and what had happened there.
Which was why dwelling on the past was not a good thing.
When Rhona rang Jamie’s number, he answered immediately.
‘Are you on your way?’
‘I’m here already.’
‘Great. I’ll be right out.’
He was as good as his word. Rhona watched as his tall figure emerged and felt her heart lift at the sight of him. With Jamie she could relax because he wouldn’t ask her how she felt and why she was here.
Rhona climbed out of the driver’s seat. ‘I think you should drive. It’s your jeep after all.’
Jamie took her place behind the wheel, while she buckled herself into the passenger seat.
‘She’s running smoothly for you?’
‘I really like her,’ Rhona assured him.
‘I didn’t want to use one of the funeral cars, not where we’re going.’
‘And where is that exactly?’ Rhona said as they set off.
‘A.C.E Target Sports to book a stag do for my mate. I’m the best man so it’s my job to organize it all.’
‘Okay . . .’ Rhona said. ‘But you don’t need me to tag along. I can walk into Portree. Have a coffee.’
‘I want you to try out some of the weapons.’
‘Weapons?’
‘Axes, knives. That sort of thing.’
‘You are joking?’
‘Nope.’ Jamie grinned. ‘It’s just up the road a bit. In this weather it’ll be muddy. How’s your footwear?’
‘Sturdy.’
‘Good.’
He headed towards Portree before turning right into the Struan Road.
‘And how are you with dogs?’
‘Fine . . .’ Rhona ventured, somewhat puzzled by the question.
‘Then you’ll enjoy meeting Blaze. He basically runs the place.’
4
Stavanger, Norway, the previous day
Inspector Alvis Olsen wa
tched the snow-dusted coast of Scotland approach from his window seat. They said that whatever weather you left behind in Stavanger, you met it again in Aberdeen an hour later.
On this day, the saying was proving to be true. Rising early this morning, he’d found the sky still heavy with snow clouds from an overnight fall, the picturesque wooden buildings of old Stavanger draped in white.
By the time he’d set off for the Commissariat de Polis on Lagårdsveien, the snow underfoot had already turned to slush, though the brightly lit giant winter cruise ship tied up in the harbour still glistened like a frosted, tiered Christmas cake.
His usual route took him from his apartment on Kirkegata through the park at Breiavatnet and along the western flank of its shallow lake, after which the pedestrian walkways gave way to cars as he crossed the road to Lagård Gravlund.
Just as every other day, Alvis entered the graveyard and, turning left, made his way to the quiet rear of the cemetery. Here the usual cypress trees and grey headstones had their own frosting of snow although underfoot the path was clear.
Reaching his wife’s grave, he sat down, ignoring the fact that the bench too had been exposed to the elements. Composing himself for what he wanted to say to Marita, he remained silent for a moment, wondering when or if the urge to speak to his dead wife would ever be satisfied. It was verging on three years now since she’d died in the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland.
Since that time he’d managed to revisit the place of her death, even made a sort of peace with it. In fact he’d planned to go back there today for a week of winter walking, had it not been for the phone call he’d made yesterday to Scotland.
Calm now, the words ready, Alvis explained why he wouldn’t be going where he had planned, but somewhere else entirely.
‘Remember how much you loved the Isle of Mists, Marita? Although in truth during our short time there we didn’t encounter mist. Rain, yes, and wind. Remember when we walked to the Coral Beach and you could hardly stand up against the wind?’
Alvis laughed, as though he were joining the tinkling laugh he had known so well.
Her silent why drove him on.
‘I called to tell Rhona I was headed back to Scotland and would likely visit Glasgow, but she wasn’t at the lab and apparently hasn’t been since her last case. Chrissy said she’s gone back to Skye.’ He halted, remembering Chrissy’s voice as she’d tried to explain why Rhona wasn’t at work. Why she hadn’t been at work for some time.
‘So I thought, rather than Cairngorm, I might head back to Skye, walk a bit there instead, say hello to the island for you. Check on Dr MacLeod.’
For a long time after Marita’s death on that mountain, he could hear her speaking to him, all the time wondering why no one else could. Now the voice had become internal, almost like a thought, but Alvis still knew what her message was.
He nodded, satisfied with her silent reply. ‘Of course,’ he answered in return. ‘Of course, I will.’
Alvis rose from the seat and, with a swift nod to the neighbouring child’s grave, acknowledged that he hadn’t been able to tell Marita that during the darkness of her incarceration Rhona had suffered a miscarriage, because even now the memory of his wife enduring the same loss was still raw in his mind.
The drive from Aberdeen to Inverness passed uneventfully. The fields were white, but the road a glistening black. He was aware that the majority of the snowfall had visited the west coast of Scotland, something unusual in itself, and that the roads into the west from the capital of the Highlands might not be as clear. And according to the weather report, Skye too had had a heavy fall.
Immediately after he’d ended the conversation with Chrissy, Alvis had set about cancelling his previously booked accommodation in Aviemore and then phoned the hotel he and Marita had stayed at before in Portree, only to discover it was shut for the winter season.
Checking online for an alternative, he suddenly remembered a pub, the Isles, in the main square where he and Marita had spent a great evening, listening to live traditional music. According to the webpage it also had rooms and was open during the winter months.
A quick call there set him up with a place to stay. According to the address Chrissy had given him, it was about an hour away from Rhona’s cottage. He’d already decided to play his visit to the island as though it was nothing to do with Rhona’s situation, something Chrissy had strongly advised.
‘If Rhona gets wind that you’re there because of what’s happened, you’ll be lucky if she even agrees to see you.’
‘That bad?’ he’d queried.
‘That bad,’ Chrissy had said.
Alvis had picked up food in Inverness and, checking the weather and road conditions, headed off by way of the Great Glen. Snow accompanied him en route, but more of a benign presence than a threat, falling softly and intermittently. The great expanse of water that was Loch Ness made him feel at home, although the sides were definitely not fjord-steep.
Passing the Cluanie Dam, he entered the golden pass of Glen Shiel. Alvis had experienced it all before, but his breath still caught in his throat at the sight of the white-topped river, the nearby crags carved during some prehistoric era, and the sadness of the tumbledown ruins of its past inhabitants, in many cases driven from their homes.
As the jagged pinnacles of the Five Sisters of Kintail rose before him in their snow-covered splendour, Alvis decided that one day he would return to climb the classic ridge walk that took in three Munros.
But not this week.
Loch Duich followed as the west coast opened up before him. Looping through the lovely village of Dornie, he spotted the much-photographed Eilean Donan Castle. Arriving where the bridge should be, he found it mysteriously hidden in a thick mist, causing Alvis to mouth his surprise to Marita as he ventured across the hidden arch to re-emerge on dry land again.
The journey had taken just over the statutory three hours from Inverness, and during that time he had thought carefully how he might approach any meeting he would have with Dr MacLeod. They had previously worked well together on the joint investigation between his office and Police Scotland, but that too hadn’t been without trauma.
Alvis flinched at the memories it had left behind, some of whose scars still ran deep in his heart. It had begun with his discovery of the bodies of two small refugee children, frozen in the ice on Norway’s northern border with Russia. Things had only got worse after that and Dr MacLeod had been his mainstay in all of it.
Now it was his turn to be hers.
5
The dog was observing Rhona with large, intelligent eyes. A big black-and-white Border collie, it looked very much the proprietor of the place, just as Jamie had suggested.
‘You must be Blaze?’ Rhona said.
Approaching, the dog sniffed at her proffered hand.
The collie’s deep bark had greeted the jeep’s arrival and had also alerted the human inhabitants of the centre, one of whom now introduced himself as Donald McKay.
Rhona ruffled the collie’s ears. ‘Are you his owner?’
‘I suspect he believes he’s mine,’ Donald said with a bemused grin.
Next up was Matt, who, spotting Jamie, gave a whoop of success. ‘I thought you’d bailed on bringing the stag do here?’
‘No way,’ Jamie said. ‘Although it took a bit of negotiation on my part.’ He rattled off three guys’ names. ‘Who,’ he said, ‘spent a lot of time in the pub last night discussing how exactly they planned to kill one another.’
‘Nothing gets killed here, except the male ego,’ Matt said, smiling at Rhona.
Jamie obligingly introduced her. ‘Rhona is a Skye MacLeod, although currently residing in MacDonald country.’
‘Ah,’ Matt said, with a knowing look. ‘You’re based in Sleat?’
Rhona smiled a yes, knowing full well the turbulent history between the MacDonalds and the MacLeods of Skye. ‘My parents’ cottage is there, where I spent most of my summers. That’s when I got to know Jamie.’
‘I heard our Jamie was a bit of a lad during his teenage years?’ Matt raised a questioning eyebrow.
‘He most definitely was,’ Rhona agreed.
‘With a little help from you, Dr MacLeod,’ Jamie added, before throwing Rhona an apologetic look, realizing he’d let the cat out of the bag.
‘Dr MacLeod,’ Matt said with a look of surprise. ‘So, you’ve moved back home to look after our health?’
‘I’m not that sort of doctor,’ Rhona said. ‘And I’m only here on holiday.’
Matt and Donald exchanged glances which Rhona couldn’t interpret, although she suspected they thought her extended stay might be about Jamie. Something she made no effort to contradict.
Let them think that. It saved her an explanation.
‘So, do you fancy having a go at one of the target sports while you’re here?’ Matt said.
‘What’s on offer?’ Rhona said, glad to change the subject.
‘How about trying your hand at axe throwing?’ Matt suggested.
‘I get to throw an axe at a target?’
‘Not a human one, but yes.’
‘Bring it on,’ Rhona said, feeling her mood definitely lifting. She might not have a human target but there was one face she might like to visualize as one.
Blaze, who’d seemed to be intently absorbing their conversation, now set off towards a nearby sheltered range.
‘He knows the routine?’ Rhona said as they all trooped after the collie.
‘Blaze effectively runs the place,’ Donald told her.
Matt selected an axe from a stand and offered it to Rhona.
‘It’s really modelled on a tomahawk,’ Matt explained. ‘Lighter than what most people think of as an axe and the head isn’t fixed to the body.’
Rhona liked the shape of it, the pattern on the handle and the weight of it in her hand. It didn’t feel heavy and nothing like the wood-chopping axe at the cottage.
‘Throwing this type of axe is not about strength,’ Matt told her, ‘but technique. At the right distance, and thrown in the correct manner, the axe should turn once in the air before meeting the target head-on.’
He showed Rhona how to hold the axe, then swing it back over her right shoulder.
