by Marjorie Orr
‘Upstairs is damp,’ he whispered as he joined her. ‘He must have turned the sprinklers on as soon as we were locked in. Bastard. Bit of a mess, mind you. He clearly didn’t care what happened to the house.’
‘Or us,’ she replied with feeling.
He gave a short laugh. ‘Oh aye, he did. Just the wrong sort of caring. Let’s get out of here.’
The long stone corridor with dull green walls led into a vast kitchen with barred windows and a sturdy outside door, strapped with metal flanges. There was no key.
‘I’m afraid it’s the coal hole,’ he beamed, opening a cabinet door beside the range, and starting to haul solid fuel logs out onto the floor. After ten minutes, he had cleared enough space to wriggle through and kick open the lid of the outside log box.
‘See, what’d I tell you?’ he said as he pulled her through. ‘There’s always a weak spot.’
Out in the fresh air she breathed deeply, leaning against the wall for support. The night sky was pitch black, apart from a few stars twinkling in gaps of cloud. A tawny owl broke the silence, its call echoing round the hills skirting the valley. Another wailing wheeze in the distance made her frown in concentration.
‘That’s odd,’ she said.
‘What?’ Herk looked concerned.
She chuckled and put an arm round his shoulders. ‘Nothing ominous. It’s a shearwater, I think. But strange to find them inland. They’re normally island or cliff birds.’
The owl ‘kewicked’ loudly again, close at hand. ‘That’s a female,’ she said. ‘Different call to the tu-whit tu-whoo of the male.’
‘Fancy,’ he said, pulling her towards the front of the house. He took off his jacket and crawled under the Range Rover with his torch to check the underside. Once satisfied, he climbed in and started it. The engine noise shattered the stillness and the headlights tongued an enormous beam of white across the darkness. Tire shivered involuntarily, then felt foolish. Stone would be long gone.
‘Now, tell me,’ he said, turning left out of the lodge gates onto the single-track road.
‘I’ve no idea what we do next?’ she said, hunching her shoulders.
‘Oh, that. Nah. Wait till we’ve eaten. I think better on a full stomach. Those birds?’
In spite of herself she broke down into giggles as the pent-up tension of the past few hours let loose. Gasping for breath and wiping the tears streaming down her face, she said: ‘Herk, you’re incorrigible. Do you think the birds’ll tell us what to do next.’
‘Nah, I’m just interested, that’s all,’ he replied equably. ‘They’ve been right so far, as has your astrology. I like to keep the whole picture in mind.’
‘You mean the alternative universe? The one that’s on a parallel track to the real one?’ She blew her nose, hooted quietly and settled back into her seat. ‘Owls are birds of wisdom and of Athena, the warrior goddess.’
‘Well, that makes sense. And the other?’
‘Shearwaters?’ She sighed. ‘Souls of the damned and the voice of the devil.’
‘Oh, cheery then.’ He braked suddenly to avoid a sheep on the road.
She sat lost in thought, remembering childhood nights spent on the cliffs watching the Manx Shearwaters coming back into the burrows to feed their young. Their asthmatic croaks as they approached land had never sounded satanic to her. More comforting and familiar, as she lay wrapped up in a sleeping bag in a crevasse sheltered from the wind, welcoming the fluttering of their wings.
They turned left onto the coastal track with not a car or human habitation to be seen. Fifteen miles further along the twisting, constantly rising and falling road, the small isolated hotel she had booked was a welcome sight, its lights flaring out from a glass-walled front room across a stony beach.
The owners, dressed casually in jeans and identical checked shirts, a slim wife and tubby husband, were standing together behind a reception desk as they went in and introduced themselves as Maggie and Donnie. They were unfazed by the lateness of their guests, but insisted they eat immediately.
Tire marched straight for the table beside the fire in the empty dining room and sat gratefully warming her hands as the logs sent flames leaping up the chimney. The car heater had been on, but she was still chilled through. Herk refused to discuss plans until he had eaten his fill of an entire basket of homemade bread with vegetable soup and a sizeable plate of haddock and chips, followed by sponge covered in syrup and cream. Coffee and a malt whisky arrived as he was polishing off cheese and biscuits.
The walls of the dining room were covered in watercolours of mountain and sea scenes so Tire passed the time chatting to Donnie, who had served their meal, about local artists and her childhood holidays on the islands. After a while he pulled up a chair and joined them in a whisky. Taking a deep breath, she said: ‘Do you happen to know Paul Stone from Suairceas Lodge?’
He looked at her doubtfully, gave a non-committal smile and said: ‘Not really.’ After a pause, he added: ‘He’s not much liked locally. Odd man from all accounts. Not too friendly.’
Herk choked on a cracker and Tire leant across to thump him on the back. Another round of whisky was poured from the bottle sitting on the adjoining table.
‘He’s doing up another property, I gather,’ she said.
‘Ach. Daft as a brush, some of these foreigners.’ Donnie tapped a stubby finger to his head. ‘It’s north of Stoer Lighthouse on the cliffs. A half-ruined keep built to withstand invaders three centuries ago. Lord alone knows what he wants with that. More money than sense. My wife’s cousin Neil did some building work and there are a couple of rooms habitable. Who would know why? There’s not a decent track up to it. They had a terrible job getting materials in. Then he just fired him, with the job only a quarter done.’
Herk stared grimly at the fire. Tire drummed her fingers on the tablecloth, wondering what Stone’s obsession with a historic fort was. He was hardly the type to opt for a hermit’s death.
‘Neil never found out why he wanted it?’ she asked.
Donnie cocked one ear to the door, where his wife’s cough was summoning him. Heaving his bulk up from the chair, he said: ‘To be honest, he thought he was going wrong in the head. He called him the Earl of Hell.’
They sat contemplating the fire and their whisky glasses until the bottle was nearly finished. Neither raised the subject of tomorrow.
CHAPTER 49
A cacophony of birds calls eased Tire into the morning. Refusing to think about what came next, she lay on her back and ticked them off in her head. The noisy peep-peeps of the red-legged oystercatchers were easy. An agitated, black-capped tern kee-yahing almost drowned out the low, rasping croak of a shag, no doubt standing poised on a shore-side rock. Suddenly there was pandemonium, as herring gulls arrived with squealing catcalls and raucous laughter to plunder for spoils.
Sunshine filtered through the floral curtains, bathing the room in a comforting glow. Deciding not to decide for five minutes, she wrapped the quilt round her, padded barefoot across the floor to pull back the curtains, and tucked herself onto the window seat, to survey the stony beach outside. The sea slapped lazily against the grey boulders and pebbles on the beach, heaving a weighty blanket of brown kelp on the surface as the waves rolled forward and slid back. The rhythm of the tide always calmed her down, a reminder of a constant world that rolled on undistracted. A black guillemot, with a splash of white, bobbed on the water just offshore beside several white eider ducks with dark heads.
A knock on the door interrupted her reverie. She called ‘yeah’, and Herk came in carrying two mugs of coffee. He sat down on a small armchair and looked questioningly at her.
She chewed a fingernail and stared at the sea and sighed. ‘You reckon we’ve pushed our luck too far? Three near misses,’ she said.
He scratched his ear and gave a neutral grunt.
‘Oh, dammit,’ she said, jumping to her feet and starting to pace up and down the small room, with the quilt draped down to her feet. ‘
We’ve come this far and I need to know who had Erica killed. I can’t give up now.’ She looked beseechingly at him.
‘Well, that’s the decision then,’ he said evenly. ‘We leave in an hour. You’d best move if you want breakfast. You’ll need your walking boots.’
A blustery Atlantic wind had got up by the time she dressed and made it to the dining room, tossing up foamy waves and smashing them against the shore. Herk was munching through a full fry-up of bacon, eggs, black pudding and potato scones. She winced. Donnie brought her scrambled eggs and coffee, hovered for a moment and then sat down. His bushy grey eyebrows were pulled together in a frown, forming a continuous shaggy mass.
‘I assume you’re going to see Mr Stone at his keep?’ he asked cautiously. ‘Not my business, of course,’ he said putting a reddened hand onto the table and drumming his fingers. ‘But I phoned the wife’s cousin this morning, Neil, and he said to watch your step. He said he had been instructed to install a couple of things that worried him.’
‘What?’ Herk’s head shot up and he stopped chewing.
‘A metal grill that would block the room nearest the cliff off completely. It was fixed below floor level, so you’d never get it open if you were inside. Like a medieval prison, he said. He had to get a blacksmith in Perthshire to construct it in iron. There was also a trapdoor through the floor at the window which overhangs the drop; that opened directly onto the rocks below.’
‘Instant rubbish disposal,’ Tire murmured.
‘This is on the floor above the room he has as an office. So I would watch your step. Neil said there were times he looked completely mad. The devil shone through his eyes, was how he put it. That was when he asked why he was putting these things in. He doesn’t like being questioned.’
The windows rattled in the sea breeze and the oystercatchers’ alarm calls were ratcheting up as gulls swooped down.
‘I don’t suppose you know anything about a journalist, Davey Campbell, who was killed in a car crash near Lochinver, eight years ago?’ she asked, pushing the rest of her scrambled eggs to one side.
There was a pause as he looked thoughtfully at her, then he nodded. ‘Yes. He was up here asking questions.’ He scrunched a napkin in one hand before continuing in a rushed whisper: ‘None of this is certain. But the local policeman, he’s the brother of the postmistress in Ullapool, had his suspicions that it was not an accident. And one of Mr Stone’s jeeps was taken to Aberdeen to be mended shortly after that. Why would he do that? It’s nearly four hours away. There’s a perfectly good body repair shop in Inverness. That only came to light months later, when a mechanic from there came home to visit his aunt.’
They took their leave half an hour later, promising to phone in after they had seen Stone, to reassure Donnie they had got out safely. A low mist hung over Loch Vatachan as they skirted round it, grey merging into the dull russet of the bracken and sombre green of the coarse grass on the flat land surrounding it. Round a bend on the single-track road, another loch sat glacially still, its chrome surface reflecting the rain clouds above. Mountain peaks jutted out of the horizon like watchful sentinels. Across the River Polly, a meandering stream that took its name from the giant pimple that was Stac Pollaidh behind, were scattered crofts hinting at a village. The remote hamlet of Invercraig came and went without leaving an impression.
‘We’re just winging this, are we?’ Herk’s question pulled her away from her concentration on the scenery.
‘I dunno. Doesn’t feel good,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t leave it. Yet I feel we’re being sucked into a spider’s web.’
‘Yup.’
‘OK,’ she said firmly, as much to herself as to Herk, folding her hands primly on her lap. ‘Bare minimum, we need photographs. Just rattle as many away as you can. We can tidy them up later.’
‘There are some from yesterday,’ he said. ‘Taken on a button camera in the house, not great, but passable.’
‘Great,’ she said, giving him an amused and surprised glance.
‘And,’ he said with emphasis, ‘I suggest we don’t put a foot inside this time.’
‘Agreed.’
Her attention was caught by the distinctive soaring crag of Suilven, its steep scarred sides rising to a long, peaked and rounded ridge. A majestic island of prehistoric sandstone rising out of a tawny surround, relic of an ancient battle for supremacy between the volcanic core and the land itself. She missed his sceptical shrug at her assurance.
By the time they reached Stoer Lighthouse on the cliffs above the entrance to the Minch, the tension in the car was rising. The clouds had lifted, deepening the blue of the sea, although the wind was still strong, sending muscular ripples of water far out towards the horizon. Twenty minutes later they turned left off the single-track road onto an even narrower, unsurfaced trail. It headed out towards the furthermost point of the peninsula. A padlocked gate barred their way, with a prominent ‘Private’ sign on it. To her surprise he reversed a hundred yards down the track and parked in a dip behind a clutch of boulders.
The keep was not visible because of the rise of the land, although Herk was convinced they were in the right place. He gestured to her to put on boots and jacket while he collected two cameras from a bag in the boot. One he hung round his neck and the other went into a capacious pocket. At his insistence they did not return to the gate, but walked eastwards keeping the fence in sight until they reached the land’s end. Only then did he climb over, reaching back to give her a hand.
There was half a mile of rough grass, heather and some black peaty holes between them and a crumbling rectangular tower with narrow slit windows that was now in view. It was built onto the cliff edge, rising up a hundred feet straight out of the natural stone into a manmade fortress. The roof had partly disappeared but one section nearest the sea had been re-slated.
The wind was gusting strongly and they had to bend into it to make headway. There was no cover, so Herk kept a watchful eye on the keep although there was no sign of life or any parked vehicles.
The terrain was heavy going, with clumps of heather giving way to swampy bog in places, with no sheep tracks to make it easier. Tire was concentrating on her feet, trying not to think about what was ahead. The westerly blast was obliterating all sounds, so she did not hear the swoosh behind her just before she was sent flying into the ground by a hefty dunt on her shoulder. Herk swore and ducked down beside her. A huge, heavy-headed, brown bird with flashes of white striped on its wing tips was circling round a hundred yards away to make another pass over them. She clutched onto him.
‘It’s a great skua. We must be near its nest.’
‘It’s the size of a bleeding eagle,’ he hissed in her ear.
‘Not quite,’ she chortled, not clear why she was so amused. ‘You need a walking stick and a hat. Wave it above your head and it’ll get bamboozled.’
She bent her head as the bird came flying low over them, its powerful wings drumming through the air. Once it had skimmed over them again she moved her position to get out of a damp patch and glanced up at the keep. Herk was searching around for stones and pulling at clumps of vegetation for ammunition.
‘Christ. Look. He’s there.’ She pointed to the highest point in the tower where it was open to the elements. A figure in a long, loose, white shirt was standing facing out to sea, his arms raised. His hair was dishevelled, standing out in clumps and being whirled by the strong breeze. Herk, now lying on his front, put up his binoculars.
‘There’s blood on his robe,’ he said. At that point Stone turned. There was an extensive red stain extending from below his throat to his knees. Herk handed her the binoculars and started clicking away with his camera. For several moments her journalistic brain was awestruck at the dramatic image. Stone turned to stare directly ahead to the mountains beyond, impervious to their presence.
The skua prepared for another divebomb, so Herk rolled over and threw a hefty clod of heather that caught its underside and sent it veering out to sea. He haul
ed her to her feet and said: ‘C’mon, the fence and then stick close to the walls.’ They ran for the building, losing sight of Stone on top.
Leaning against the rough stone walls, sheltered from the sea blast, Tire became aware of music thrumming out of the slit window way above their heads. It was playing at full volume: shrill, dissonant, with a wailing soprano soaring above clashing brass. Herk looked at her with an eyebrow raised.
She thought for a moment and said: ‘‘Elektra’, Richard Strauss.’
He shook his head in exasperation. ‘Not that. What next?’
‘He’s gone completely crazed, maybe dying.’ She chewed her bottom lip.
‘Or he’s staged it all to entice us in,’ he answered shortly.
Before she could answer he pulled out a small handgun from a back pocket, checked it and then indicated she should follow him. Round the side of the tower, up some broken steps, the heavy oak door, strapped and studded in iron, was ajar. The music gushed down the worn circular stairs ahead of them like a river in spate, bubbling and frothing, searing at their ears as the singer raged at high pitch.
They crept round and round the spiral steps upwards, until a landing opened out with a room to their left, its glassed, slit windows looking out to the Atlantic. There was a desk, a few books on a shelf and a single bed with rumpled, blood-stained sheets and a duvet on it. Herk walked across and turned off the stereo, which brought a blissful silence. They waited. Five minutes passed. Then a faint thud of footsteps came down from above. Paul Stone stood at the door, his hair on end, his face and hands bloodless and blue in contrast to his smeared shirt. His sunken eyes were glittering, constantly shifting their focus.
‘You will have to forgive my appearance. My condition induces nosebleeds,’ he said, waving a hand across his chest, not looking directly at either of them. ‘You got out,’ he remarked. ‘Pity. Anton set up the fire trap for me some time ago for such an exigency.’ A sardonic smile crossed his face. ‘I thought there might have been a pleasing symmetry in you dying imprisoned like your father.’
