by John Burke
Whatever it was that Lesley ought to be asking, she realized she was in danger of being deflected by the tide race of his enthusiasm.
‘His music has obviously meant a lot to you,’ she said, ‘but —’
‘Too much.’
The voice was very quiet, just as the footsteps down the stairs in the far corner of the shop had been quiet — inaudible, in fact. The woman in the shadows looked diffident, almost immediately sorry that she had come down and had spoken. Already she was starting on an apology.
‘Sorry, Adam. I thought when I heard voices . . . this time of day, and being half-term, you’d need someone else down here.’
He went over and took her arm, leading her towards the others. ‘My wife, Nora. Detective Inspector . . . er . . .’
‘Gunn. And this is Sergeant Elliot.’
‘It’s half term, and the kids are home from school. They still function according to the break-time clock, and come out to wander round the shops. Lifting whatever takes their fancy. It needs two of us on the scene to keep our eyes open.’
Lesley looked at the larger instruments, trying to envisage a raiding party carrying off a guitar or a double bass.
‘Not the big stuff,’ said Lowther. ‘Just clarinet reeds, violin strings, a violin mute, anything they can slip in their pocket.’
‘Even though none of them would know how to play a note,’ murmured Nora Lowther.
Sergeant Elliot had been silent for a long time. Nodding towards the now silent speakers, he decided to contribute. ‘And they don’t come in to listen to this Daniel Erskine’s music?’
‘There aren’t many who care for it. Only Adam.’
It was said with a loyal but sly smile. Lesley sensed between the two of them something not bitter enough to be antagonism, but a sort of resignation — a marital weariness, just as when a husband or wife endures an incurable mannerism or a repetitive turn of phrase. You had to get used to it, but there was always a drag of disillusionment underneath.
She ventured: ‘Since you’re such an expert on Daniel Erskine, Mr Lowther, can you tell me whether, after he had left Kilstane, he came back from time to time? Or never?’
The shop door behind her squeaked open. Looking past her, Adam Lowther said: ‘Here’s someone who’s just been visiting him. Perhaps you’d better ask Sir Nicholas.’
‘Ask me what, Adam?’
The remembered voice sent prickles down the back of Lesley’s neck and all the way down her spine. She could hardly bring herself to look round.
At first she thought he looked older, but then saw the lines in his lean, predatory face as those of tiredness. That patrician chin and those high cheeks were for once unshaven, and the sweep of dark brown hair back from his forehead was ruffled and unkempt. He had obviously just come from the car against the kerb outside, and was wiping his eyes after what must have been a long journey, blinking to adjust to the interior of the shop.
‘Sir Nicholas.’ She forced the words out.
‘Detective Inspector Gunn. Or is it DCI Gunn by now?’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Oh, I thought . . . but anyway, I wasn’t expecting to see you here again.’
She caught Adam Lowther glancing shrewdly from one to the other. He might not have had her training as a detective, and might have spent some years away from Kilstane before coming back, but he had that Kilstane look of heavy-lidded speculation. And she wasn’t going to let there be any speculation about her and Nick. Sir Nicholas. She had nearly let herself drift in that direction once before, and she wasn’t going to let herself drift into anything like it again.
Chapter Six
Nick Torrance sat in the window seat of the first-floor hall in Black Knowe while Adam Lowther recited the renewed arrangements for The Gathering. Half slewed round on the seat, he feasted his eyes on the prospect of sunlight on the gleaming Leister Water and the braes and moors beyond. Over the last few years the sturdiness of his tower house and the beauties of the estate had become almost a physical part of himself. Or was he, rather, becoming a part of it? He felt the rise and fall of the hunched shoulders of the fells and the long groping arms reaching out towards the borders of Northumberland, where other pele towers and bastles still stood in mute memory of forgotten noise and bloodshed.
Adam Lowther was saying: ‘Well, sir, we can now definitely schedule the chamber concerts for the hall here?’
‘I made that clear from the start. But there’s no way we could cram the full orchestra in here. Not if we wanted an audience as well.’
‘That’s all right, sir. We’ve had safety clearance for the Academy hall. There’s only a minor subsidence on the tower corner, and that section was sealed off anyway. The public entrance is on the old playground side, the hall doors and windows have been double-checked, and the stage is as sound as a bell.’
‘More than can be said for the bell tower, hm? Well, that seems to cover everything. Song recital in the Tolbooth — all going smoothly? I mean, I gather your wife was a bit shaken up. If she’s not up to it yet —’
‘She’ll be up to it.’
It sounded like an order rather than a reassurance.
‘She has a charming voice. But I’ve always thought of her as rather shy. You must be quite a taskmaster, getting her to face up to a public ordeal.’
‘We get along fine.’
‘I’m sure you do. And your own lecture on Erskine’s music — word perfect, I imagine?’
‘I think I’ve got it in order.’ After a significant pause, Adam said: ‘And the main point, Sir Nicholas. Erskine himself. Still no word that he’ll be coming?’
‘None. Sorry, Adam, but I did tell you I couldn’t hold out much hope. I think we go ahead on the assumption that we feature his music, but not the man himself.’ To waken the devotee from what threatened to be a swift, gloomy withdrawal, he went on: ‘Right, then. I’m sure you’ll cope. The open-air installations, everything’s on track?’
Adam came closer, and looked over Nick’s shoulder, down on to the sparkling haugh where the rain-soaked grass was drying out.
‘Isn’t that Mr Kerr down there?’
Nick edged round a few more inches on the seat. ‘Sorting out some problem with a generator, I think. Worried about it making too much of a noise. Wouldn’t want to drown out the rap groups, would we? Maybe you’d better go down and have a word with him. If it’s going to interfere with music in the marquee or on the platform, I’ve no objection to them running a cable from my ground floor.’
‘I’ll go and check on it. And I’ll be back to you if there are any snags.’
‘Strikes me you’ve got it all under control, Adam.’
As he was about to leave, Adam pulled a CD package from his pocket and offered it awkwardly to his host. ‘Thought you might be interested in this. A new release. Very much in line with what we’re trying to achieve.’
It was a two-disc set of Scottish orchestral music. Some of the usual things — McCunn’s familiar Land of the Mountain and the Flood, then the more challenging Violin Concerto by Erik Chisholm, and James MacMillan’s The Trials of Isobel Goudie, concluding with Erskine’s suite, The Lady of Lawers. Nick grinned to himself. Adam was determined to convert him to the Erskine cause!
He slid the second disc into the player concealed behind a tartan drape, and selected the first Erskine track. The opening movement, The Ash Tree, started as he watched Lowther striding towards Kerr far below. Its opening bars were deceptive enough, but then some perverse force began to tangle with them. Nick fidgeted. There was an undertone of evil magic in the music. Not just like the silly superstitions around Paganini and The Devil’s Trill, or the crap talked by Hitler and his zombies about the decadence of Mahler’s music, but something deeper than that. A real decadence here, being struggled with by an elusive theme in a lilting, gypsyish rhythm. But all of it dominated by a throbbing as dangerous as a vibration that could crack a bone or shatter a building — a resonance threatening to shatter a
nd pulverize the mind.
He supposed he ought to persevere but, just as on that drive up into the wilds of Sutherland, he wasn’t in the mood. Opening the window to let the clear, tangy air in, he decided to clear his mind as well by sitting down at the keyboard and working his way into a Bach fugue. It never failed. Bach never let you down.
The second subject sparkled up like an undercurrent from the Leister Water, rippling over, mingling, clashing, and then separating and flowing blissfully away to make way for a mocking inversion. His fingers were beginning to move more and more supply, like the fingers of a man making love, when there was a discreet but incisive cough behind him.
Mrs Robson said: ‘Sorry, sir, but that young policewoman’s here to see you. If you’d like me to tell her you’re not to be interrupted —’
‘No. Show her up, Mrs Robson.’
He moved away from the piano and was waiting by the door as Lesley Gunn came in.
‘I’m not guilty. I’ve got an alibi. I was nowhere near the place at the time. It all happened years before I came here.’
‘I think we’ve already established that.’
He waved her towards a chair. ‘It’s lovely seeing you again,’ he said. And meant it.
She looked around the room, her professional eye sizing up the tapestries he had bought from the sale of a Roxburghshire manor, and the two high-backed Orkney chairs facing the huge fireplace. Obviously she remembered the clarsach and the cabinet with its historic quaich under a glass cover. Equally obviously, she was aware of what was missing.
Looking at the Raeburn above the piano, she said: ‘I see you’ve dismissed the Bareback Lass. Sent to the storeroom in disgrace?’
‘I felt it would be tactless to leave it there. Local visitors might have some embarrassing memories.’
And Lesley Gunn herself, he thought, might be embarrassed by memories of the trouble she had helped to stir up.
‘I hope your burglary precautions are better covered than they used to be. Window locks, and locked cabinets, that sort of thing.’
‘And a loud burglar alarm to frighten any passing pheasant?’ He couldn’t help adding: ‘There was a time when I hoped to rely on you covering all that sort of thing.’
‘That’s still my job. For the whole community.’
One thing seemed pretty certain from this matter-of-fact attitude of hers: she was still obsessed by her job, and whatever regrets she might have about turning down the position he had offered her, she was never going to admit it. Probably not even to herself.
She was such a contrast to the diaphanously clad horse-woman of that sensual painting. Although a plain clothes officer, she somehow presented the appearance of being enclosed in a strict uniform of her own — a crisp white blouse with a high neck, dark blue jacket and blue skirt, and darker blue stockings. Looking at the taut swell of cloth over her breasts, Nick felt an adolescent hunger to unbutton that jacket so that the shapes could flow soft and free, warm and inviting rather than armoured against any intrusive touch.
Once he had kidded himself that they were mutually telepathic. Now he was afraid, from the sudden sharp glance she gave him, that she could indeed read his mind. As if determined to chill his thoughts down, she said: ‘I’ve just been to the mortuary again.’
‘Ah. Any headway?’
‘They haven’t dared to make too rough an attack on the head yet. The parts of the body they’ve been able to get at . . . well, chipping away at that concrete casing is like chipping off bits of Kendal mint cake.’
Nick didn’t find the concept very appetizing. ‘And you don’t want to remove bits of the corpse at the same time.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And you still haven’t a clue who it is?’
‘Not so far. It’s not like a drowning or a bit of GBH. When a body’s been immersed in water for any length of time, or violently beaten up and disfigured, it’s possible with modern techniques for a forensic pathologist to do a theoretical reconstruction around the bone structure. But here the bones themselves have been crushed and distorted by the concrete setting. We don’t know what we’re going to be left with. They’re considering calling equipment in for a laser scan before doing too much demolition.’
She was so cold, almost callous, which was not how he remembered her — or how he wished to remember her.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’d be happy to help in any way I can, but I don’t see there’s much I can contribute to your investigations. It all happened long before I got here. I’m only an incomer.’
‘You’re the laird. People will talk to you — if you make them.’
‘We don’t have dungeons or thumbscrews on these premises any more.’
She was still staring at the Raeburn but no longer focusing on it. ‘Would you know exactly when Daniel Erskine left Kilstane?’
‘Before my time,’ he emphasized again. He waved out of the window towards the two figures plodding across the grass as if pacing out a cricket pitch. ‘Adam Lowther’s the one. The all-time expert on Erskine. Ought to have been on Mastermind. Apparently he applied some years back when it was at its height, but they turned him down. Told him it wasn’t a broad enough subject. He was pretty mad about that.’
‘Yes, I’ve had a preliminary chat with him. But then there’s the awkward question of his father.’
‘What about him?’
‘As far as I can make out, he seems to have left in a bit of a hurry. Not that there’s necessarily any connection. Erskine leaves because he’s making a name for himself as a composer, and can’t devote himself to teaching at the Academy any more.’
‘Plus he’s been seriously injured by a man whose wife has been having it off with him.’
She was well and truly focused now. ‘Is that how it was?’
‘A man was sent to prison for smashing Erskine’s hands. No more working at the piano. No more writing music down.’
‘But I thought he went on composing. Still does. And Lowther’s said there was some hope of him appearing at this festival of yours.’
Nick gave her a concise account of his trip to Altnalarach. Halfway through, she took out a notepad and jotted down a few figures, then frowned over them. When he had finished, she said: ‘I’ll have to compare these dates. When Erskine left Kilstane. When the Lowthers left. And when . . .’ She brooded, pursed her lips again in a way that caught at his breath. ‘When Erskine’s attacker got out of prison, and when — if — he came back to Kilstane. And where he is now.’
Nick felt a twinge of unease. He would hate to find himself having to relate what Adam had told him to what Lesley seemed to be working towards. He could only hope that when she had sorted her dates out, they would prove to be incompatible.
There was a faint clash of voices from below, and then a determined stamping up the stairs and into the room.
Captain Scott-Fraser took three paces forward and snapped to attention.
‘Afternoon, Sir Nicholas. Thought I’d show myself up. Know the way well enough by now, hey?’ He jerked his head towards Lesley. ‘Ah, our young policewoman, right’? Thought we’d run across one another sooner or later. Must have a confab, hey? I’m on the Police Committee, y’know. Ready to offer any support you need. A surly lot, some of the locals. You need advice, don’t hesitate to come to me.’
Nick made a belated attempt to introduce them. ‘Detective Inspector Gunn. Mr Scott-Fraser.’
‘Captain Scott-Fraser, Sir Nicholas.’
‘Of course. Captain Scott-Fraser.’
‘Well, officer.’ He looked Lesley up and down with a supposedly jovial, patronizing smile. ‘Must be difficult, operating at full blast these days.’ He switched his smirk to Nick. ‘The Force isn’t what it used to be, hey, Sir Nicholas? Needed to be at least five feet ten, and carry a damn big stick and stand no nonsense. Nowadays these kids . . . hooligans . . . drugs and God knows what . . .’
‘Did you have some particular matter to discuss with me, Captain?’
&nbs
p; ‘Ah, yes. Thought I’d better come to offer advice about crowd control and stopping gatecrashers and unruly elements. We know the sort of people who’ll show up, don’t we? Oh, we know damn well those sort.’
‘I think we’ve got matters pretty well in hand.’
‘And I’d be prepared to offer some administrative services in this festival,’ Scott-Fraser stormed on. ‘Just to make sure we get it right. Thought at one stage I might have been co-opted on to the committee.’
‘We do already have the services of Mrs Scott-Fraser.’
‘Surely, surely. The little woman’s doing her best, so I hear. But I might contribute. Used to be a Military Resources Administrator once they’d shifted me out of uniform, y’know.’
Meaning, according to one of Nick’s informants soon after he arrived in the community, that Scott-Fraser had been the civil service equivalent of a glorified corporal i/c stores. The same informant had slyly reported Scott-Fraser’s remark about the arrival of the newly created Sir Nicholas Torrance in the community: ‘Quite a fluke, a chap like that inheriting a title, eh?’
One thing was clear: in the captain’s mind the dissemination of music couldn’t be all that different from the orderly allocation of munitions or cap badges, and a bit of discipline would do all these longhairs a lot of good.
Before Nick could find some suitable comment, Scott-Fraser’s attention was distracted by the sight of the piano keyboard with the lid open.
‘Aha.’ He swung smartly towards it, played a few bars of Ain’t Misbehavin’, and glanced conspiratorially at his host in expectation of his approval. ‘Don’t write tunes like that any more, hey? Hey?’
They didn’t even write it like that in the first place, thought Nick. He had been accustomed to playing the piece in Fats Waller’s E-flat, but Scott-Fraser had managed his few bars entirely on the white keys.
