The Merciless Dead

by John Burke

  ‘Well I’ll be damned. But this is … I really must get on to Mr Hunter about this. Let’s see, what’s Canadian time? I think he’ll be fascinated. Fascinated.’

  He bustled off. Beth was trying not to meet Luke’s gaze.

  He said: ‘You went round that place with him, didn’t you?’

  ‘What makes you think —’

  ‘Come off it, Beth. I know you well enough by now.’ He repeated it very slowly: ‘You went round the Ferguson place with this character.’

  ‘You’re not going to tell Ogilvie that?’

  ‘What the hell do you think of me?’

  ‘Sorry, Luke.’

  ‘And that’s all there was to it?’

  ‘What else should there be?’

  But he knew her so well. Sensed things about her still. No reason to feel resentful. But such a short time ago he had been thinking nostalgically of Beth in bed, and now he wasn’t at ease with the certainty that she had been to bed with someone else.

  10

  Black Knowe, a stark grey tower on its knoll above Kilstane, could look forbidding under grey skies, but to Lesley Torrance it was a warm, welcome sight as she drove home that Friday afternoon and saw it coming into view beside the familiar road ahead, climbing towards her own front door. When she reached it, she would have some days to organize things in a leisurely way that suited her. Morwenna Ross and Ogilvie would be away early next week in Inverness, sorting out a tough surveillance programme with a security firm. She was glad not to be present at negotiations where Morwenna and Slimy Simon would surely be treading persistently on one another’s toes and on everybody else’s.

  Nick was waiting in the open doorway.

  ‘Welcome back. Working woman returns after exhausting week.’

  She kissed him, and held him tight, and his arms went round her and they clung together for a long time until he said: ‘You feel as though you’re glad to be home.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Sad to tell you, though, that your work isn’t over yet. There’s a sheaf of illustrations from your book to go through. Came yesterday.’

  ‘That can wait till tomorrow.’

  They had a glass of Chablis from a bottle which Nick had had chilled in readiness, and continued with the bottle over dinner while they talked. Talked about life in Kilstane, because when he asked her about news from the Ross empire she said, again, ‘That can wait till tomorrow.’ So he brought her up to date with the week’s goings-on in the town and around the shire.

  ‘A big fuss about the proposed windfarm. Our local democrat —’

  ‘Rhuaridh the Red?’

  ‘None other. Thinks the logical place for six windmills is a hundred yards to the west of us. About eighty metres tall — would overshadow our humble dwelling. Old Doctor Elliott, though, is all for setting the whole cluster on the other side of Carrach Rigg.’

  ‘And the final decision?’

  ‘When did our dear representatives ever reach a final decision? Further plans have been called for, one councillor suggests we bring in a consultant —’

  ‘That would be Cameron, whose son happens to run a business consultancy in Peebles?’

  ‘Glad that the hurly-burly of the great city hasn’t dimmed your memory of real life in the outback.’ Nick reached out to refill her glass. ‘And then there’s Sheriff Brown. He really is getting a bit past it. Admonished young Garvie for driving dangerously and using threatening language to the local police sergeant.’

  ‘Admonished? High time that one was fined and given a hefty chunk of community service at the very least.’

  ‘And of course Brown added his usual regret that he can no longer authorize the use of the birch.’

  By the time they were sitting by the west window, the twilit sky was streaked with bronze-tinted streamers of cloud that nudged Lesley back to Achnachrain. But here she was so much higher, above the world in her tower, remoter than on those stark moorlands. Nick’s arm went round her, and she rested her head on his shoulder and was happy to be there until all the light faded and left the sky grey and then darker, until a few stars came alive.

  ‘I’ve just had an idea,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’ She snuggled closer. ‘Let’s try it.’

  ‘No, I mean an idea about the Ross project.’

  ‘The only projection I’m interested in at the moment is —’

  ‘I’m way ahead of you.’

  They hurried to bed, and coming luxuriantly to life in his arms she wondered why she had been silly enough to let herself be lured into working for the Ross fantasies, too far away from the home where she belonged. With Nick’s hand still caressing her, she heard herself let out a little moan of repletion before drifting off into sleep.

  At breakfast he said: ‘Right, now it’s your turn. What’s going wrong in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Who says anything’s going wrong?’

  ‘You’re saying it. I can tell. That’s what I was going to bring up last night, only we sort of got distracted. So let’s be having it.’

  ‘But I don’t know. I … that is, I get on well enough with the folk involved, and they don’t expect me to come up with a dozen miracles every day. Right now, it’s agreed I’ll stay on here for a few days and check up on some leads through the internet, without distractions in the office or the hotel or anywhere. Can’t complain about the working conditions.’

  ‘But …?’

  ‘Well, it’s hard to put a finger on it. In spite of all the to-ing and fro-ing, we don’t really seem to be getting anywhere.’

  ‘And where exactly are you meant to get?’

  ‘It all seemed straightforward on the surface. But now I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s all becoming one of those inflated PR things. Somebody had an idea, and at once everybody had to start brain-storming. Maybe old man Ross himself did genuinely start out wanting to leave some sort of memorial to his generosity in his old homeland. Something sentimental but genuine. Only, now the whole Ross machine has gone into overdrive and nobody’s really steering properly or knows when to stop.’

  ‘I thought you said this Mrs Ross was a pretty powerful operator.’

  ‘Yes, but oddly I’m beginning to feel that she’s … well … really thinking of something else. Aiming at something else.’

  ‘No idea what that could be?’

  ‘None. Just that … well, there’s something out of true. All this collecting stuff and digging into history. It’s not from love — it’s from hatred. As if something’s waiting to go off bang. Or is it just going to be a feeble little splutter?’

  ‘Do I detect the suspicious mind of the one-time CID girl looking for suspicious goings-on where there aren’t any? Looking for clues when there hasn’t actually been an incident yet?’

  ‘That’s what worries me — that ‘yet’.’ She began clearing the table, wanting something mundane to get her back to reality. ‘There are too many things that … well, I’d say weird was the word.’

  ‘Way out in the wild?’

  ‘Especially out in the wild.’ She told him about Mrs Aird, and tried to laugh about it. ‘A type-cast old crone. Going on about me being one of them, or close to it.’

  ‘One of what?’

  ‘With the second sight, or whatever.’

  He caught her arm as she was carrying a tray away from the table. ‘All right, sit down. Nothing there to worry about, surely? You always were sort of psychic. All those hunches helped no end in your old job.’

  ‘No, this is different. Scary. As if that old woman knows what’s going to happen, because of what did once happen somewhere in the past, and —’

  ‘And she’s trying to tell you something?’

  ‘No. Acting as if I didn’t need telling.’

  ‘Then tell yourself to quit now. If it’s going to get on your nerves like this, then pack it in.’

  ‘I couldn’t. Not really.’

  ‘You’re going to stick there until it blows up in your face, aren’t you?
Because you’re so bloody-minded.’

  ‘I think it’s time,’ said Lesley firmly, ‘to deal with some realities. Like settling down with those pictures.’

  Nick caught her arm and kissed it as she was moving past him. ‘Reality? Pictures of art fakes — that’s your real reality?’

  She acknowledged the absurdity of it; but looked forward to spending the first hour in what she had come to regard as friendly company. Just as a crime squad officer couldn’t help admiring the handiwork of a really professional burglar or con man, she had always appreciated the craftsmanship of the Keatings, van Meegerens and John Drews of this world.

  ‘One thing occurred to me when I skimmed through your page proofs,’ said Nick. ‘What about your own work on the Brigid Weir case? That deserves a chapter, surely? And maybe with a passing reference to Alma Tadema and the Bareback Lass.’

  ‘Not important enough.’

  ‘Considering that between them they brought us together, I’d say they were important.’

  ‘Not to the sort of reader I hope’ll be buying this book.’

  She spent a leisurely morning checking the juxtapositions of original paintings and brilliant copies. Three of the colour separations would need to be re-set, but otherwise they had made a good job of it. She was sorry to come to the end of the job and knock out a letter to the publishers; and reluctant to contemplate work on the Ross project which would occupy her afternoon.

  After a light lunch she took a cup of coffee into her study. Nick had gone into town for a Probus luncheon which was to be addressed by a long-retired sanitary engineer who would, Nick predicted, bore them with self-congratulatory tales of saving whole townships from nauseating plagues and disturb their digestion with airy references to excrement and sewage treatment of various kinds.

  Early in the afternoon Lesley turned her attention to the lists she had brought with her about supposed Ross mementoes. Here, too, was a fine collection of fakes. Morwenna’s TV programme and reports in the Press had brought in a tide of memorabilia, all of it supposedly what the researchers were looking for, and each item worth a great deal, the owners were sure.

  Genuine items had been few and far between. The best specimens were those she had taken to the croft at Achnachrain, and which Luke Drummond had then packed up and taken safely back to Queen Street. Sorting out her notes on helpful suggestions from various folk museums and family records from the Scottish Archive Network, she settled herself by the phone and began ringing round.

  Her old friend Dr Smutek protested that Scottish history — ‘Or speculation,’ he added in that crackling Czech accent which he had never shaken off — was not one of his specialities. And when she pointed out that he was known for his expertise in Bohemian and other Central European tapestries, and suggested he must at some time have heard of the Ross Tapestry, he said: ‘Peasants’ — the word was not used contemptuously but sceptically — ‘making a tapestry of any value? With what materials? And how would they have acquired the techniques and artistry? No, it is so unlikely, my dear lady.’

  One dealer sarcastically suggested that to get really convincing material she ought to get in touch with some of her old pals. ‘Toddy Maxwell ought to be out of stir by now. Probably he’ll forgive you for putting him away if you shove some work his way now. Just the man to lift a few olde-worlde stockpots and milking stools from private collections.’

  An undertow of unease surged back. Could the whole operation itself be just a scam to collect artefacts, choose the best, and then ship them to one of the Ross Museums in Toronto or Winnipeg? Was she being just a stooge, collecting Scottish memorabilia not for Scottish preservation but for export?

  She shook it off. Nick was right: these were just the stock reflexes of a ‘one-time CID girl’.

  Next day, after they had driven into Kilstane to post her final corrections, he said: ‘Right. For the next few days you do no more than an hour’s fretting and phoning each morning, and then we go out visiting.’

  ‘Visiting what?’

  ‘Local beauty spots. And hostelries. A couple of days away in Melrose pottering around the gardens will clear your head marvellously.’

  Each morning she checked on antiques dealers and historic collections, and set up various dates for the following week; and without fail Nick arrived at the end of an hour and insisted that she stop immediately, switch that bit of her mind off, and come out into the open air.

  As she was packing, ready to drive back to Edinburgh, he perched on the end of the bed. ‘Look, my love, are you sure it wouldn’t be best to get out of the whole thing here and now?’

  ‘I can’t just give up with the job half-finished.’

  ‘I’d say you’ve probably given them their money’s worth. Politely leave them to shove it into whatever shape suits them.’

  ‘And give loudmouths like that Ferguson character a chance to make snide remarks about the team cracking up?’

  ‘Ah, yes, Ferguson.’

  ‘When we were at Achnachrain he spoke as if he knew you.’

  ‘And not favourably, I’ll bet. No, it’s all right. Don’t tell me.’

  ‘Seemed to think you ought to be on his side about things. But you’re not.’

  ‘Decidedly not. One of the old style of landowner. Thinks the entire country should be manipulated for the benefit of his pocket and pastimes. I’ve been at the most godawful meetings of the Caledonian Estates Protection Association, with Ferguson and his cronies plotting to stymie every little bit of legislation in favour of crofting tenure reform and the work of nature conservationists. I was one of those who had the nerve to challenge his manoeuvrings.’ Nick grinned. ‘Never was much agreement between Highland lairds and the Lowlanders. As bad as the Scottish and English riding families along the Border — always at one another’s throats. Though, mark you, this Ferguson character is more bluster than genuine indignation. Very few of those estates of his and his friends were ever handed down by families native to the region. They’ve all changed hands over the years for sums no real local could afford, with all sorts of tax dodges built in.’ He half closed his eyes. ‘What was it I read somewhere — ‘A rural economy dependent on tweedy gentlemen coming from the south to slaughter our wildlife.’ The last thing they want is a symbolic re-creation of the real world they thought they’d successfully crushed.’

  ‘The intensity of it,’ Lesley marvelled. ‘And all over things that happened so long ago.’

  ‘You should be in the crowd at an Old Firm match in Glasgow. None of the past is really over yet.’

  *

  She had just reached the reception desk to collect her room key when she knew, without even looking round, that Morwenna was coming towards her from the cocktail bar. When Morwenna was in a room, she was instantly, vibrantly, in it.

  She was not alone. As she came to greet Lesley, she was gesturing with her left hand towards a tall man at her side.

  ‘Lesley, this is Mr Hunter. Jacques Hunter, from Toronto.’

  Was that respect in her voice, or a challenge?

  ‘Jacques, this is Lady Torrance. Lesley Torrance. She has done invaluable work for us.’

  ‘So I’ve heard.’ His handshake was firm, almost fierce. ‘Lady Torrance, a great pleasure.’

  His voice was deep and confident, with what Lesley supposed was a Canadian accent, though she had never had any cause to make comparisons between American and Canadian intonation. Or was there something faintly French running through it? He was a couple of inches taller than Morwenna, with dark parchment skin and slanting lozenges of sloe-coloured eyes suggesting Red Indian blood not very far back.

  ‘Jacques arrived on Wednesday.’ It ought to have been a simple, matter-of-fact statement; but Lesley had become familiar with Morwenna’s different intonations by now, and in those clipped words could feel a cool wariness. ‘Descended on us like an avenging angel.’ Was she resentful of a senior figure suddenly showing up to take charge? ‘It seems that Mr Ross is getting impatient.’


  ‘Perhaps, Lady Torrance, you’d care to join us for a drink while I put you in the picture?’

  ‘If I could just go up to my room first and —’

  ‘But of course. Stupid of me. Too anxious to make your acquaintance, too quickly. Please, whenever you are ready to come down.’

  Lesley went up to her room. Her case was brought up two or three minutes later. As she unpacked and went into the bathroom, she wondered about the new arrival. He and Morwenna — rivals within the Ross hierarchy, or manipulative accomplices?

  When she got down to the bar, the two were talking amicably enough; but there was a stiffness in Morwenna’s shoulders. In contrast, Jacques Hunter was relaxed and in full control. On his administrative level, he must have learnt to be a skilled manipulator. Every move was graceful and unhurried, one arm sweeping Lesley towards a chair, stooping a few deferential inches to ask what she wanted to drink, smiling as the drink arrived and he could begin to explain his presence as a courtesy rather than a necessity.

  ‘Mr Ross’ — the name was like an incantation — ‘is anxious to come over much earlier than was planned. As well as his chronic muscle problems, he has over the last six months been having serious trouble with his eyes. Macular degeneration — a slow process, but recently there has been a complication with posterior capular opacification. Mr Ross has undergone laser treatment, but his eyesight is now deteriorating rapidly. You’ll understand that he is anxious to see the fulfilment of his dream before it’s too late.’

  ‘So Big Chief Jamie is getting impatient.’ The flippancy was awkward, unlike Morwenna. Were she and Hunter used to joking amicably together, or was this a snide provocation? ‘And Jacques the mighty Hunter is here to arrange a big pow-wow. Right?’

  ‘I’m here,’ he said to Lesley, ‘to speed things up so that Mr Ross can come over just as soon as possible.’

  She glanced at Morwenna. ‘It’s not going to be easy to rush things, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  Decidedly not, thought Lesley. Skimping the job just in order to put on a dramatic charade for the sake of a feeble old man.