by Lin Anderson
Sugarboy gone, my only company is the black scorpion venturing out to meet the day. I greet him, savouring again the fact he is my way out of here, forever, if I so choose.
He chose the name Scorpion for himself, just as he’d given me Seven, Pete Sugarboy, Ben Mountain and Charlie Chucky. Not forgetting the dead, Mitch Stitcher and Gordo One Ball. I know now the nicknames weren’t bestowed on his brothers through affection and camaraderie, but to remodel them to suit himself.
His own choice of name was perhaps the most apt. While I dutifully sprayed the tent to dissuade the scorpions from entering, the human Scorpion captured a prize black specimen and ran bets on it. Sugarboy, the inveterate gambler, tried hard to find a suitable opponent, only to watch them all lose the fight and die.
The door scrapes open and in they come, the young one leading the way. He drags me to my feet, shouting something I don’t understand. In this moment I believe I am about to be executed. Shot or perhaps beheaded, like the Afghan women who displease them.
The sun blinds me as I exit, the mesh of my blue prison no protection for my light-starved eyes. I am not allowed to raise my head, to look on men, but I try, seeking the others. Are they to be executed with me?
I am led towards a mud building and thrust through a curtained doorway into dim light again.
I make out the white of their eyes beyond the veil, then as my guards depart, an excited babble explodes about me. A female hand touches me. Urges me gently forward. We all pass through a further curtain. In here there is a light of sorts. Suddenly all the blue burkas are discarded, including my own. I look on female faces, some bright and inquisitive, others frightened or disapproving, while they react to my blood-streaked nakedness with a high cry of ‘eeee’.
I find a robe thrust into my hand and I pull it over my head. Now we are all equally clad. Their relief meets in a concentrated sigh.
The hand that directed me is owned by a girl, barely in her teens. She points to a figure on a raised platform covered by rugs, whose moans are swallowed in the rag she has stuffed into her mouth.
I translate her words as ‘Please help.’
32
The road, a dark ribbon, wound out before them. Above, the sky hung grey and heavy, the quality of light suggesting dusk rather than day.
Skye has never looked more magnificently ominous, Rhona thought, as though we are headed into its heart without permission.
Despite the feeling of foreboding, she loved this landscape. If a dinosaur was suddenly to appear from behind a promontory, she wouldn’t have been the least surprised. As it was, an Arctic hare, foraging between the patches of snow, barely cast them a glance as the 4x4 drove past, headlights blazing through the gloom. A red deer lifted its head, but only for a moment before returning to its grazing.
We are insignificant. A moving dot on a landscape that belongs to them.
‘You okay?’ Alvis said, casting her a sideways glance.
Rhona murmured ‘fine’ in response, while registering the increasing frequency of Alvis’s enquiries as to her current state of mind. It seemed Alvis might be taking over from McNab as her minder.
‘Stop here,’ Rhona said, suddenly realizing what they were about to pass.
As a surprised Alvis drew in, Blaze gave a little yelp, perhaps in recognition of where they were.
Rhona unstrapped herself and stepped out of the vehicle. The wind, although not strong, was more than a little cold. Though no more snow had fallen overnight, temperatures had remained below freezing.
‘Is this where they parked the vehicle?’ Alvis asked.
Rhona nodded.
‘You didn’t go further than this?’
‘No. Blaze and I headed back in the direction of A.C.E Target Sports by foot, then Donald picked us up.’
The muddy lay-by was churned up even more than Rhona remembered. Lee had sent out a team here as requested, who’d attempted to take tyre-track imprints. Useful, but only if they came up with a vehicle to check them against.
‘We’re not far from the Sitka plantation.’ Alvis glanced up at the glowering sky. ‘Forecast’s for rain, though.’
‘Let’s go then.’
Rhona held the map open on her knees. From their research, she was aware that many of the marked plantations had been planted in difficult terrain in the seventies, when wealthy folk were encouraged to tax-dodge by putting their money into forestry.
Some of these forests had failed to thrive, their roots in boggy ground. Others hadn’t been harvested, because extraction had proved to be too expensive.
From the map, the B885 ran through the southern reaches of the plantation they were focusing on. Two tracks led from the tarred road to a summit named Beinn a’ Ghlinne Bhig. Separated by a hundred yards, both wound their way up through the Sitka plantation, the second looking more like vehicle access than a footpath.
Rhona said as much to Alvis.
‘If anyone wanted to take a vehicle off-road among the trees, the second track looks like the one they would choose.’
Alvis braked a little as the road curved suddenly westwards and started to climb. Soon they left the moorland and entered the plantation, a barrier of tall Sitka towering on either side of the car. Passing the first lay-by, Rhona spotted the wall of rock she’d noted via Google Earth, signalling the entrance they sought.
Alvis pulled into a good-sized gravelled parking area, just left of a double gate.
‘We’re walking from here?’ he checked.
‘Yes,’ Rhona said, jumping out and opening the back door for Blaze.
The uphill track was mostly clear of snow, although the densely packed trees alongside still wore a mantle from the last fall.
Blaze ran ahead, his nose to the ground.
Rhona held out little hope that the dog might locate the victim’s scent in the vicinity, although the dog had been eager to play that game again. Everything they did at the moment was a longshot, but it was worth a try.
They trudged upwards in silence, the big collie leading the way. The closely packed trees on either side suggested straying from the path wouldn’t be easy, or pleasant. This was further enforced when they reached a wide clearing hosting a small cairn that indicated a forest path to Beinn a’ Ghlinne Bhig off to their right.
Staring at the densely packed branches where the path was supposed to be, Alvis said, ‘I guess the sign went up a decade before this lot of trees matured?’
‘Shall we check, just in case?’ Rhona said.
As they crossed the turning circle, it was obvious one or more vehicles had been there in recent times. A deep set of tracks suggested one at least had sat for a while, its markings deep in the muddy ground.
‘It looks like someone’s had a go at the supposed path,’ Rhona said, indicating the churned-up bank that led down into the trees.
Blaze, realizing their intentions, took the lead again. The going was easier for the collie, as he made his way below the branches.
‘He certainly knows how to blaze a trail,’ Alvis joked. ‘It’s times like this I wish I wasn’t quite as tall.’
Rhona was already ahead, ducking in pursuit of the dog. Someone had definitely been there before them, the lower Sitka branches snapped off in their attempt to force a way through. Underfoot, there was a path of sorts, because she wasn’t stumbling over the ridges and troughs normally found in a planted forest.
Still, an ordinary walker would surely have given up, Rhona thought after only a few yards, and sought an alternative route to the trig point.
The air, she registered, was cold and still and soundless, and the deeper she’d penetrated, the darker the way had become. She halted for a moment and tried to breathe in what little oxygen seemed to linger between the tightly packed branches, increasingly aware of what was about to happen.
The sense of being suffocated rose, flirting with her at first, although she knew if she didn’t succeed in controlling it, it would swamp her. The fight was mental, yet her hands fisted t
hemselves in preparation for the fray. Memories assailed her, playing out in smell and sound and blackness. Invisible soil found her throat and closed it. She coughed, spitting out the imagined foe. Her fisted hands found the bark of the nearest tree and beat at it, as though it was her jailer.
And still she did not let herself scream.
The physical fight back seemed to reassert the rational in her brain. She wasn’t being buried alive, it told her. This episode will pass, like all the others before it. There was a sky up there, vast and endless, beyond the dense blanket of dark green.
Time, which had stretched out like an elastic band, sprang abruptly back into shape.
She registered where she was and that, thankfully, Alvis had yet to appear, so wouldn’t have seen her fight her way out of the recurrent nightmare that had haunted her since her last case in Glasgow. Feeling the warm trickle of blood on her hands, she noted the damage done to her knuckles.
Something that could be easily lied about, considering the terrain.
In the interim, Blaze, it appeared, had completely deserted her. Rhona was now besieged by the worrying thought that she might have lost Donald’s dog, something Chrissy would never forgive her for, never mind Donald.
‘Blaze,’ she shouted. ‘Here to me.’
An answering bark seemed to come from ahead and to her right, although in the thickness of the forest it was hard to tell.
Hearing Alvis’s approach, Rhona prepared herself, not wishing for another enquiry about her well-being. When he appeared from under a low-lying branch, she noted he too was bleeding.
‘What happened to your head?’
He reached up to where she’d pointed and wiped the blood away. ‘It’s like walking through a maze of sharpened knives,’ he said.
‘Tell me about it.’ Rhona showed him her own injuries.
‘What were you doing?’ he said, obviously taken aback by the state of her knuckles, which had begun to swell. ‘Punching the trees?’
She was saved further comment by a flurry of excited barking suggesting that Blaze might well have found something. This was quickly followed by a female voice indicating surprise at the dog’s arrival. Heading towards the sounds of their interchange, Rhona emerged into a clearing, housing a single-person tent and various bits of equipment, to find a young woman patting Blaze.
‘You came through the plantation?’ she said with a look of amazement.
‘It wasn’t easy,’ Rhona said. ‘Except for Blaze, that is.’
‘I came that way too, but I had to hack a bit to get here. Then I discovered it was easier to approach from the trig point itself.’ She gestured to a more obvious path on the opposite side of the small clearing.
Rhona introduced herself. ‘Rhona MacLeod, and this is Blaze.’
The dog was whining now, staying close by the girl in a protective manner. When Rhona gave the ‘Here to me’ command, it had to be said twice. Even then Blaze didn’t seem keen to leave the girl’s side.
‘I know Blaze,’ she offered as way of an explanation for the dog’s determined behaviour. ‘From the Isles bar and A.C.E Target Sports.’
‘You were there with the group of army medics?’ Rhona voiced what she’d suspected since finding the camp.
The girl looked surprised by the question. ‘Yes.’
At this point, she registered Alvis’s presence. The swift glance the girl threw him moved from surprise to recognition and Rhona realized she must have spotted Alvis the night of the drinking session.
‘The Portree police are keen to make contact with you and your colleagues,’ Rhona explained. ‘Check you’re okay out on the hills in this weather. They like to take care of their tourists on Skye,’ she added with a reassuring smile.
‘We’ve all served in Afghanistan,’ the girl said. ‘Believe me, we can take anything Skye throws at us.’
‘Sergeant MacDonald’ll be pleased to hear that. Are the others about?’
The girl shook her head. ‘We all split up. The plan was to do our own thing for a bit before we head back to Glasgow.’
It sounded plausible.
‘Where’s your vehicle?’ Alvis said.
‘The guys took it. Why?’ She appeared a little ruffled by the questions.
Rhona decided to tell her what had happened, as much to view her reaction as anything else. ‘A man’s body was found on the shore at Kilt Rock. It looked like he’d fallen from the cliff. No ID on him. The police are keen to eliminate any walkers or climbers on the island.’
‘Oh my God!’ The girl’s hand rose to her mouth in what looked like genuine distress. ‘When did this happen?’
She looked so upset, Rhona had to tell her the truth. ‘The body was spotted the day before yesterday.’
The girl’s relief at this news was palpable. She sat down abruptly as though her legs could no longer hold her, colour rushing back into an ashen face. ‘So it can’t be any of the boys. They all left here yesterday.’
Rhona almost believed her.
‘Are you something to do with the police? Is that how you know all this?’ the girl said.
‘MRT volunteers,’ Alvis swiftly told her. ‘Can you make contact with your colleagues? Check they’re still okay?’
‘We’re off-grid. That’s the rule when we’re practising survival techniques. Mobiles are switched off unless there’s an emergency.’
‘When do you plan to meet up?’ Rhona asked.
‘Three days’ time in the square in Portree.’
‘Will they come for you?’ Alvis said.
‘I’ll walk in. Portree’s not far.’
While they’d been talking, Blaze had moved back to the girl, sniffing her scent.
‘You’ve got a real friend there,’ Rhona said.
A flash of what might have been concern or fear on the girl’s face vanished as swiftly as it had appeared, causing Rhona to wonder if she’d imagined it.
‘Can I give you my number?’ she said on the spur of the moment. ‘So you can let us know when you’re back safely in town.’
The girl looked perplexed by such an idea. ‘Okay,’ she said finally, accepting the hastily scribbled number.
Rhona called Blaze to her side again.
‘We’ll tell Sergeant MacDonald we met you, and that the guys are okay too.’
‘Thanks,’ the girl said.
‘You didn’t mention your name?’
‘Seven,’ the girl offered. ‘The guys call me Seven.’
‘You’re their lucky mascot?’
She gave a half-smile.
Emerging from the trees, the heather-topped hill of Beinn a’ Ghlinne Bhig presented itself.
‘She was right,’ Alvis said. ‘That was easier.’
The rain came on as they headed down a narrow path that would take them, they hoped, to the main track.
Rhona, leading the way, didn’t attempt a conversation until they met the turning circle again and could walk side by side.
‘She never gave up her real name. Nor did she mention any of the others by name,’ she said.
‘And that bothers you?’
‘Why do you think they christened her Seven?’
‘Maybe there were seven in the group at one time,’ Alvis said. ‘Or else . . .’
When he didn’t finish, Rhona said it for him. ‘That was her fuckable rating among the men.’
33
McNab, fully suited now, took a final breath of fresh air before securing his mask.
Through the glass panels he could see that Dr Sissons was already at work. The second pathologist, required by Scots law, was likely Dr Walker, who’d processed the second victim in the sin-eater case.
The victim had already been stripped of his clothing by the two forensic assistants, who were currently taping his nether regions, every move of which was being photographed.
Being late to the party would be much frowned upon by Dr Sissons, who didn’t like McNab anyway, so his entry, however meek and mild, would still provoke i
re.
‘Fuck that,’ McNab muttered as he pushed the door wide and strode in.
The raised blue eyes told McNab he’d been right about the presence of Dr Walker, whose gaze conveyed a mix of sympathy and humour as they both awaited Sissons’s reaction to McNab’s arrival. However, the pathologist didn’t even acknowledge his entry, intent as he was on examining the victim’s head.
McNab, seeing they’d reached that stage in the proceedings, made his presence known and immediately set about relating Rhona’s queries.
‘Dr MacLeod said to say that she noticed what looked like an earlier wound on the back of the head, which may have been in contact with a birch tree.’
Sissons managed to ignore the fact that this statement had emerged from McNab’s mouth and said, ‘Her reason for thinking this?’
‘She collected forensic evidence of what appeared to be an altercation in a wooded location near A.C.E Target Sports, Portree, prior to finding the body on the beach.’
‘And she thinks the victim may be the recipient of this previous violence?’
‘It’s a possibility. Also she asked me to tell you that the rocks the victim hit on his way down the cliff are black basalt, but she’s concerned the face wounds may have obliterated an earlier wound, maybe from a knife or a tomahawk.’
The pathologist gave a snort at this pronouncement, which might actually have been laughter. Something McNab had never heard emerge from Sissons before.
By the looks of those in attendance, the sound was causing a bout of suppressed hysteria. McNab felt for them, since he too was seized by an overwhelming need to laugh. Dr Walker turned away in order to compose himself, and one of the forensics quickly excused herself to go to the toilet.
‘So we’re in the Wild West now, Sergeant? “Portree Kid” country.’
McNab had no idea what the pathologist was referring to, and also didn’t want to ask.
