by Matt Hilton
“Probably.” I laughed. “Welcome to my world, Sarge!”
“It’s not funny,” she snapped from the back seat. “Do you realise what we’re doing here?”
“Following a flamin’ crow,” both Broom and I said in concert.
“It’s insane.”
“We’ve already established that.” Rain splattered the windscreen and I flicked on the wipers. “But at least it’s something. As insane as it seems, it’s positive action.”
We passed Trowhaem. The site remained a hive of worker bees in yellow and black jackets. Somewhere among the activity were the reinforcements we required, but I knew there was no way Shelly was about to round up a posse of her colleagues to join the Great Crow Chase. In fact, she scrunched down so that no one would see her in the car with us. Already I’d noticed her playing with buttons on her radio. Likely she was turning it off so that she had an excuse for not reporting back to Inspector Marsh.
In many respects I couldn’t understand why she was with us. She thought we were both mad men. She - despite her current actions - was a dyed in the wool police officer, who staunchly followed the dictates and procedures laid down by her force’s policy. And I knew that she didn’t trust me. That was putting it lightly; not only didn’t she trust me, she feared me almost as much as she worried about jeopardising her career.
Bob Harris must have had a lot to do with it. “Bob told me I had to come with you,” she’d said. I wondered what else Bob said. Or, more likely, what had went unsaid between them. As his supervisor she wasn’t obliged to do his bidding. She wasn’t acting out of police duty, but something else. Were they an item? There was certainly something between them that went further than friendship. It was nothing to do with professional support when she’d leaned over him in the ambulance, brushing back his hair and kissing his cheek.
I was a bloke’s bloke. I liked sport and cowboy movies, a pint or two of beer when I could get it. I was never into the lovey-dovey stuff that women enjoy. But even I could see that Sergeant Shelly loved Constable Bob. Love makes us irrational and reckless. Against all training, all logic and sensibility, I decided that Shelly was along for the mystery ride simply because - male chauvinist pig that I am - the man she loved told her she had to come with us.
I supposed her motivation was no different than mine. I too was on that crusade because of love. Or, more rightly, fear of losing it again.
We passed Broom’s cottage. He still hadn’t got round to removing those stupid Halloween gimmicks from his garden.
Then we were on to the sweep of the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic. Beneath the storm clouds the ocean undulated like an uneasy beast and I could hear the boom of surf on the rocks. Beyond the curve of the island Ura Taing lay out of sight. Here the island was simply bleak, part of the expanse of the moor Bob Harris had warned me away from when first we met.
Our feathered pathfinder stopped. The crow perched on a fence post jutting out of the terrain like an accusatory finger. I might have missed it in the dark but its eyes flared in the headlights before it turned away and stared across the moor. I brought the Subaru to a halt. The crow ignored us. So I got out and walked around the front, the SIG pressed to my thigh. The crow glanced at me once and then launched into flight. It fought the breeze, hovering there like an overgrown kestrel.
Broom’s window whispered down. Without taking my eyes from the bird, I said, “It looks like we walk from here.”
Broom cursed. Not that I blamed him; it would be hell traversing the boggy earth with his dodgy leg. Still, he clambered out. I walked forward, stepped over a small wire fence and onto the spongy grass. Behind me there was a short conversation in hissed tones, but Shelly and Broom followed me on to the moor. Both their faces were fixed with stern expressions, each for their own brand of personal dissatisfaction.
The crow headed off. This time it didn’t wait for us slow coaches. Not that it mattered, through the gloom I could make out its destination. A tall, tapering spire etched itself against the clouds.
“Is that a church?”
“No,” Shelly said. “It’s a chimney.”
“A chimney? Looks too tall.”
“It’s from the old tannery,” she explained. “They built it tall so that the stench wasn’t as bad when they burned the spoiled meat.”
“I didn’t think Conn would need a tannery,” I said. “It’s not like you have an abundance of livestock, is it?”
“It wasn’t cows that were skinned here, Carter. Seals. It’s why the place has been abandoned all these years, since culling was supposedly banned.”
“Strange place to have a factory.”
“When it was in full swing, the stench was horrendous. Would you want that in the village where you lived? Want to smell death every given minute of the day?”
Lovely place, I thought. Blood and guts and bones. The ever-present spectre of cruel and violent death. Just the kind of place a Skeklar would hang out.
“We’ve already searched here,” Shelly pointed out.
“When?”
“This morning. Once the team finished up at Catherine Stewart’s I had them come here. It was one of the first places I thought of.”
“You must have missed something.”
Shelly sniffed. “Who’s going to argue with a crow?”
Ignoring her sarcasm, I pressed on across the moor. From a distance, the chimneystack stood out against the horizon, a black slash against the rain-swollen clouds. Approaching over the undulating land, the stack both diminished then grew in size, once fully lost from sight as we marched through a deep valley. We splashed through streams, stumbled on rocks hidden in the grass, but pushed on against the discomfort.
Rain hissed through the reeds beside a pool of stagnant water. The wind picked up, tugging at our clothing, just a regular bracing evening constitutional walk for the likes of me.
“We should’ve taken the service trail from Ura Taing,” Shelly muttered.
Broom groaned. His limp, I’d noticed, had become more pronounced these last few minutes. “You’re telling me that there’s a road we could have taken?”
“You don’t think that they hauled the seals all the way over the moor do you?” Shelly said equally bitterly.
“We’re almost there,” I pointed out. “A few hundred metres as the crow flies. It doesn’t matter now.”
“We could have taken the car,” Broom said petulantly.
“Better that we didn’t. It would have announced our arrival.” I lifted the SIG. “From here on in we’re going to have to be as quiet as possible.” I searched the faces of my companions. “We’re only going to get one chance at this. Are you both ready?”
Shelly racked her baton. “Ready.”
Broom was weaponless. He’d have a slugger’s chance if nothing else. He gave me a slow smile. “As I’m ever going to be.”
FORTYEIGHT
Near the old tannery
“Did either of you see that?” Shelly asked.
Spying out her unlikely comrades, she noted that the bigger shadow of the two was nearer to her. Paul Broom, crouching in the lea of a semi-collapsed wall. Rain pitter-pattered on his wide shoulders.
“See what?” he whispered.
“A light. Or else, I think it was a light. Could be my eyes playing tricks.” Using her baton as a guide, she pointed towards the blocky structure ahead of them. The two-storey building, squat and ugly next to the towering chimney gave back no hint of life. Aptly enough, it was known thereabout as the Death House. “Top window on the right. For one second-or-so, I’m sure I saw the flash of a light.”
“A torch?”
“Looked like it,” Shelly agreed. “As if someone switched it on and off again very quickly.”
Further away, Carter Bailey was moving in a crouch towards the entrance door. Not for the first time, Shelly had her misgivings concerning the man. Still, she had to admit, she was beginning to warm to him. According to the files she’d perused on the internet, Bai
ley had been a successful businessman prior to the horrific incident where he’d lost his fiancée, unborn child, and his brother. Nowhere did it give any hint that he had experience of hunting killers in the dead of night. Yet, there he was, entering the possible domain of a vicious murderer with hardly a backward glance. He was a brave one. And caring. The most endearing traits she found in men.
He was a lot like Bob Harris in that respect.
She had joined Bailey and Broom at Bob’s request. Even if Bob had argued against it, she’d have still clambered into Broom’s Subaru. In effect, she should be off duty by now - hours ago - but duty had figured largely in her jumping aboard this crazy adventure. There was still a small child missing, a woman kidnapped and a murderer on the loose. Which police officer wouldn’t try to save the innocents and bring down the killer? She had to prove herself. What better way could she think of than the route she’d taken?
Inspector Marsh wouldn’t approve. Likely a severe dressing down was in store for her, probably disciplinary action. But she didn’t care. “He’s a donkey’s arse,” Bob had said of their vaunted leader, and she couldn’t disagree.
She thought back to her heroic predecessor. What about you, Jack McVitie? Would you have joined Carter Bailey if you were still policing Conner’s Island? Would you approve of what I’m doing?
Once over she’d considered that Carter Bailey could be the killer they were looking for. He was her deus ex machina, as she recalled, her god from the machine. Bailey was the odd stranger with a strange caste to his eyes that simply must be guilty of something. Now she knew otherwise. His only crime was that he’d had enough gumption to run directly into the lion’s den to save his fiancée and unborn child. Yes, he’d killed a man. But Cassius Bailey was the kind who needed killing by anyone’s estimation. And now, here he was rushing into danger for the love of another woman. How could she not warm to him?
Broom whispered, “I don’t see anything. You’re sure it was a light?”
“No. I’m not sure about anything. It could have been nothing at all. I wasn’t looking directly at it; maybe it was just a play of the shadows on the windowpane.”
“We should warn Carter.”
“I’ll do it,” Shelly said, starting forward from her hiding place. She had to pass Broom to reach the doorway that Bailey disappeared through. The big man gripped her sleeve with a hand too massive to be the elegant fingers of a master of literature. It was a hand definitely suited to the bludgeoning prose of a horror maestro. She could imagine that hand squeezing throats and wielding a blood-clotted axe.
“I’ll go,” Broom said.
Shelly shook her head. “It’s my place to do this, Broom. Not yours.”
Broom twisted his mouth. “It’s better that you wait outside, Sergeant. You’re the only one with a radio. If anything happens to Carter and me, it’ll be down to you to bring reinforcements.”
Twisting free of his grasp, she said, “I appreciate what you’re saying, but I can use a radio wherever I’m at. In fact, I could leave it here with you for that matter. Using it isn’t rocket science; you just press the button and talk.”
“Yeah, but who’s going to take me seriously? If they hear your voice, they’ll come running.”
“Who’s going to take me seriously?” Shelly demanded. “I’ve royally fucked up. Don’t forget, Broom, we came here ’cause some old grungy man has trained a bird to fly back here. If I tell my bosses why I’m here they’ll laugh in my face. If anything, we should have locked the old man up and questioned him about what the hell part he’s playing in all this.”
Broom gave her a quizzical look. “You’d arrest that old grungy guy?”
“Yeah, that old tramp up at Burra Ness.”
Broom’s frown grew exponentially.
“What?” Shelly demanded.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“You only saw an old man?”
“Didn’t you? He was right there in front of the car. Before all the birds came. The crow we followed landed on his outstretched arm not ten feet from you.”
“Yes, yes,” Broom said. “I saw the old man. But he wasn’t just an old man. You do understand that…don’t you?”
“Bailey said it was the haugbonde,” she snorted. “But you don’t really believe that? Not an intelligent man like you?”
“I’m not sure if you’re insulting me or not, Sergeant.”
She strained out a smile.
Broom said, “Did it not occur to you that he was more than an ordinary old fellow when he materialised out of the mist? Or when he called down the birds from the heavens in their own voice?”
Shelly decided not to argue. She’d seen the mist, yes. Then she’d seen the man. It didn’t mean that they had to be one and the same. Maybe Broom’s eyes were failing after so many hours in front of a computer screen. Or maybe it was her eyes that had played tricks on her – because she’d be lying if she didn’t accept that, actually, she had been first to see him materialise out of the very mist. Perhaps she was suffering a mild concussion after the crash and she wasn’t remembering clearly. It didn’t matter. The important thing was finding Bailey and warning him about the light she’d spotted in the building. Unless that flash of light had been another effect of the drubbing her brain took as the car rolled.
“Wait here.” She began unclipping her radio off the front of her coat. “If I’m not out of there in the next ten minutes, just switch on the power.” She told Broom the code number to patch her radio into the network. “Then, like I said, all you do is press this button and talk.”
He accepted the radio from her, but then he stood up. “I’m coming in with you.”
“No. It’s not safe.”
“I don’t care. Carter’s my friend. I’m not letting him down.” He lifted the radio. “And, like you said, the radio can be used anywhere. Just press and talk.”
How could she argue?
“Okay. But you stay behind me.”
Broom shrugged. Then he stared at the open doorway of the building. When Bailey entered he’d left the door slightly ajar. It was like he was staring into the doorway of a haunted house. His whispered an acronym.
W.W.V.H.D? What the hell did that mean?
Whatever the meaning behind his enigmatic words, it seemed to do the trick. Broom sucked it up and stepped forward.
FORTYNINE
The old tannery
My impressions of seal culling had always been tinged with the cruelty and horror of the activity. It had been a number of years since I’d watched TV bulletins showing men clubbing to death harmless baby fur seals. Still, I had vivid memories of the soft, pleading eyes, the raining blows of heavy clubs, the splash of crimson on pristine snow. It was barbaric and horrific, and I’d tried to blot those images from my mind. My coping mechanism was to deny that such cruelty could possibly exist in this modern era. Like the thinking of an ostrich with its head in sand, it wasn’t happening if you didn’t accept it. Sad to say, but the slaughter had continued. Culling was a necessity, they said. And, contrary to what the uneducated thought, the culling was humane. The pups didn’t suffer.
Yeah, right.
Slaughter is slaughter however it was dressed up. Be it humane or otherwise. There was nothing in the practice of beating seal pups to death that I could accept. Maybe I wasn’t educated, but to me there was nothing kind about having your brains smashed in.
Horrified by the practice, I’d always dwelled on the act of culling. I never considered what had become of all those pups that were beaten to death on the ice. It was bad enough that their carcasses were left for the wildlife to feast on, but it had never occurred to me that a profit was gleaned from their pelts. I didn’t know that such places as the tanning factory on Conn existed.
As I entered the building, the gruesome reality hit me like a punch in the chest. The tannery was the most despicable place I’d ever been in my life, and my resolve to search it almost deserted me. I nearly retreated
outside again. Pushing down the urge to vomit, I told myself, “Janet is here. Little Bethany Stewart is here. There’s no turning back now.”
I went forward.
“You may as well put the gun in your mouth and get things over with quickly.”
Cash was back. Come to gloat now that things were about to get desperate. “Won’t that spoil your plans for me, Cash? I thought you only get your chance at me if I die a natural death?”
“Did I say that, brother? I don’t recall.”
“You said it all right. Said you were going to keep me safe so that you could have me all to yourself.”
“I think you’re misquoting me, Carter. Your death needn’t be natural. There’s no problem in you blowing out your own brains. In fact, it’s even better that you do. It practically guarantees that there’ll only be the two of us around. I’ll have you all to myself.”
“It isn’t going to happen.”
“Oh, but it will. Now or later, me and you are gonna get down to a little unfinished business.”
“I look forward to it. I’ll kick your arse whenever it happens.”
Cash’s laughter was like fingernails on a chalkboard. “You’re such an arsehole, Carter. Do you know that? I showed you. It was one thing pushing me around when I was the kid brother. Quite the opposite when I was standing in front of you, all grown up and pissed off.”
It was my turn to laugh. “So you say, Cash. But I’m the one walking around in the flesh. I fucked you up, smashed your spine and left your carcass belly down in the water. Believe me, when the time comes, I’ll do an even better job on your skinny arse.” Hoisting the SIG, I stepped into the tannery. Cash’s taunting had actually helped bolster me against what was to follow. “Now, if you don’t mind, shut the fuck up, and let me get on with what I came here to do.”
