The Murder Hole

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “It was before the boat blew up,” Hugh said. “Kettering marched us all away to hear the pipe band and view the fireworks, and I escaped back to the bus in good time to see the explosion. Bad business. No accident, I take it?”

  “It might not be, no,” Jean said.

  They stopped at the side of the pavilion, Hugh looking over the proceedings with a critical eye that belied his cherubic smile. “This Roger Dempsey chap, he’s ex-university like yourself?”

  “No, not really, although I first met him at an academic conference. Basically he’s a businessman and engineer with a yen for exploration. His companies build all sorts of remote-sensing equipment.”

  “Radar, sonar, and the like? It’s all a mystery to me.”

  “Me too, although I learned a little bit about it when I was married to Brad. He was—well, he still is, funny how you say was—a professor of mechanical engineering. Every now and then he’d do some outside consulting, design work and such. Once he actually paid good money to go down in a submersible and see the Titanic. Me, I’d have stayed on the ship and watched everything on a computer screen, via remote sensing equipment. But that’s Brad, he has a taste for scientific inquiry as strong as Roger’s, just a lot more . . .” She was wondering whether “conventional” or “dull” was the right word, or whether she should just drop the subject—the man was her private version of Marley’s ghost—when she was interrupted by a male voice speaking in a mouthful-of-marbles English accent.

  “How are we getting on, then, Hugh?”

  Jean looked around and up—the man was a head taller than she was. His lean body wore a three-piece suit and striped tie that might just as well have included a neon sign flashing I am important. His hair was slicked back in stiff, gelled strands, and his smile was broad, over-whitened teeth seeming to melt together into a crescent of glare like oncoming headlights.

  “Hullo,” he said to Jean. “Peter Kettering, Starr PLC.”

  “Jean Fairbairn, Great Scot.”

  “Ah, Great Scot, is it? I sent along a press release about our new products, vitamin-enriched spring water and low-carbohydrate beer.”

  Hugh winced. As far as he was concerned, beer was one of the basic food groups, not to be improved upon by marketing departments. “Ah yes,” Jean said noncommittally. “Thank you.”

  “If you’ll excuse us, Jean,” Kettering went on, “I’m needing a bit of a chin-wag with Hugh here.”

  “Cheers,” said Hugh, and patiently suffered Kettering’s hand on his arm steering him through the crowd toward the stage.

  Jean was beginning to miss how Alasdair had called her “Miss Fairbairn” not only when they first met, but well beyond. They’d gone through multiple alarms and excursions together before they began using first names. Which, she thought, meant that they were either out of touch with contemporary usage or wary of even the most superficial intimacy.

  Alasdair. She could dawdle around all day, but eventually she was going to have to go to the police station and make her statement. The longer she stalled, the more likely Sawyer would be there, too. On the other hand, the police people would be dealing with Jonathan’s body for a while yet. After lunch, she’d go after lunch.

  She turned around and bounced off something large and pleasantly soft. “Oops,” said Patti Duckett. “Sorry, I was in your way.”

  “No problem,” Jean replied. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  Behind Patti, Dave was returning his wallet to his pocket. “Great stuff they’ve got here.”

  “Look what we found for the grandkids.” Patti opened one of several plastic bags so that Jean could see inside. It was filled with toys, from squeaky rubber Nessies to plush stuffed ones, a long-haired Highland cow and a black-faced sheep keeping them company.

  Somewhere in China, Jean thought, a factory was working overtime. “How many grandchildren do you have?” she asked.

  “Three,” said Patti, “Two boys and a girl.”

  “Do they live in Illinois, too?”

  “They do now, yes. They were born in Florida but they came back last year after they lost their father . . .”

  “Look,” Dave said, gazing toward the main tent, “there are some guys in kilts. You’ll never get me in one of those things. A bit breezy for my taste.”

  Since Dave understandably didn’t want to dwell on what might have been anything from a divorce to a tragedy, Jean answered him, not Patti. “Scots are tough. Still, it’s not surprising they go to Florida for winter vacations.”

  Patti closed her bag of toys and peered into another bag, this one holding a bright tartan blanket, but she didn’t seem to be actually seeing it. “Have you heard anything more about the boat blowing up? How about the boy who’s missing? A real shame about him being caught in the explosion and everything.”

  Might as well spread the word. “They found his body in the loch.”

  “That’s a real shame,” Patti said once more, her voice cracking.

  “It sure is. Accidents happen, but sometimes people can be damned careless . . .” Dave still stared into the distance, the light reflecting off his glasses making them seem opaque. “I guess no one knows what happened yet?”

  “No,” said Jean. She turned one way and the Ducketts turned the other, making their way toward the chairs set up in front of the stage.

  The Ducketts seemed to be nice salt-of-the-earth people. How sad that crime and mortality had scratched the glossy coat of their holiday. And how funny an American accent sounded now. It was flat, almost whiny. Jean’s ears had adapted to the variety of local lilts. Before long she’d be talking like Rebecca, the plateaus of her native voice broken by the hills and valleys of Scotland.

  Speaking of the Campbell-Reids, little Linda provided a dandy excuse to buy a stuffed animal or two. So did Jean’s nieces and nephews back in the States.

  She toured the tables and booths, acquiring a plush Nessie wearing a tiny tartan tam and a couple of the appealing woolly sheep. The ratio of quality goods to dreck, she discovered, was a good one. For every plastic doll dressed in Day-Glo tartan was a hand knit Aran sweater. For every Nessie refrigerator magnet was a piece of Rennie Mackintosh design jewelry or cut-glass whiskey decanter. And one vendor had—oh happy day!—piles and piles of books.

  Hitching her bag of toys up her arm, she assessed the display. A stack of Great Scot magazines sat beside a selection of history and travel guides, including Ambrose’s Pictish Antiquities. She picked up a book titled Hidden Treasures of Scotland and leafed through it, pausing to admire photos of the Traprain Law hoard. A picture of Bonnie Prince Charlie headed up a chapter about his missing gold coins. Been there, done that, worn the T-shirt so many times the logo had washed away. Jean turned several pages at once.

  A photo of Tobermory Bay on Mull illustrated a chapter about the Armada ship that sank there in 1588. Except for a cannon, its contents had never been recovered, although not without repeated efforts. Maybe if and when Roger admitted defeat at Loch Ness he’d take on the Tobermory galleon. The actual identification of the sunken ship—which had also mysteriously blown up—was still a question, and whether there was any treasure to be found on it was an even bigger one, but there was no doubt it actually existed.

  She put the book back on the table, thinking that while, traditionally, dragons guarded treasures, here at Loch Ness the dragon was the treasure. No surprise that most of the books on offer were Nessie books, ranging from Ambrose’s The Water-Horse of Loch Ness through Whyte’s More Than a Legend to Binns’ The Loch Ness Mystery Solved, which if it didn’t solve anything to the high standards of, say, Alasdair, at least debunked quite a lot.

  An old copy of Ambrose’s biography of Crowley was wedged between two travelogues. She pulled it out and fanned the pages, catching a faint whiff of mildew and something else, something sweet. The flyleaf was autographed in flowing script: To my dear E., remembering the good times, Ambrose Mackintosh. The trailing end of the faded sepia “h” coiled int
o a serpentine flourish on the yellowed paper. E for Eileen, Jean supposed, but what an ambiguous sentiment to inscribe to one’s wife.

  The dealer, an elderly man as tall and straight as a Doric column, scented a live one and came strolling over. He saw what she held and recoiled, his seamed face registering distaste verging on disgust. “Och, where did you turn that up?”

  “It was right here,” she told him.

  “My assistant brought it along, then. Tis of local interest, make no mistake, but Crowley, he was a nasty piece of work. Lived just across the loch, there.” He gestured toward the southwest, where the clouds were building into gray ramparts. “Mind you, he raised demons. People would go round, miles and miles, to avoid passing by his house at Boleskine, and even so, terrible things happened. His lodge keeper went mad, his butcher accidentally sliced open an artery and died . . . Well, no need to go on. Two pound and that book is yours.”

  Terrible things happened a long way away from Crowley, too, but most people didn’t revel in them, like he had done. Even Ambrose had allowed that the man, while more sham than evil, was not a healthy influence. Ambrose, though, rationalized that Crowley had been driven to his excesses by the taunts of an unappreciative public.

  Jean dropped two pound coins into the dealer’s huge, callused hand. In his youth, he could have picked up a tree—and probably had, in the Highland sport of caber-tossing. And she thought Alasdair had large hands. “I see you have Ambrose Mackintosh’s other books here.”

  “Ah well, Ambrose was a fine scholar. Daft, mind you, and perhaps wicked, but Scripture tells us to judge not, lest we ourselves be judged. In any event, folk hereabouts didna trust him. Keeping bad company disna help your reputation, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Jean tucked the book into her bag beside the toys. Maybe they would sap some of what the dealer obviously felt was its evil aura. “I bet the disappearance of Ambrose’s wife didn’t help his reputation any, either.”

  “No, that it didna. Too much like Crowley he was, with the women and all. Poor wee Iris, my mum always said, no mother and her father off his head, perhaps a murderer forbye. No wonder she’s a bit of a loony herself.”

  “How much do you want for this?” asked a man at the end of the table. Jean recognized the scrawny form of Martin Hall, without child, and smiled a greeting, which Martin returned distantly, as if he wasn’t quite sure who she was. Or as if he’d seen her looking up at Tracy’s bedroom window a little while earlier. Although, now that Jean thought about it, it could just as well have been Peter Kettering in that room, discussing promotional fees, perhaps.

  The dealer turned toward Martin. Jean, scenting a source, picked up a business card from the pile on the table. It read Gordon Fraser, Highland Books and Maps, Fort Augustus.

  An arm like a side of beef landed around her shoulders. She jerked away and spun around, ready to do battle.

  D.S. Andy Sawyer was looking down at her with small squinting eyes set close together beneath a forehead like a cinder block wall. Broad lips smirked at her below a lank blond moustache. So he’d shaved off his beard since last month. Bad move. His receding chin was now exposed to innocent eyes. “Well then, lassie,” he said, his sarcastic voice relishing the diminutive, “avoiding us, are you now? Strange, how you keep turning up, like a bad penny, eh? Cut along now, D.C.I. Cameron’s waiting on your pleasure.”

  Oh, for the love of . . . And she thought she’d been able to read Alasdair. She’d thought they were on the same side. But he’d sent his henchman to get her. And she hadn’t had time to fortify herself with a sandwich, or a lousy cup of tea, even, although straight whiskey might have improved her own temper. Or loosened her tongue, which wouldn’t have helped a bit.

  She spun away from Sawyer, stumbling and adding embarrassment to anger. Damn! He had a police car waiting at the edge of the field. People were staring. At least it was D.C. Gunn who was holding open the door of the back seat for her, his mouth set in a wobbly line a la Charlie Brown, chagrin and nausea combined.

  Head up, back straight, Jean walked over to the car, offered Gunn a version of his own expression, and climbed inside.

  Chapter Twelve

  In the five minutes it took to drive to Drumnadrochit’s miniature police station and ease through the scrum of reporters outside its gate, Jean’s head of steam began to dissipate. Her encounter with Alasdair on top of the tower had been cordial. Comradely. They’d understood each other, albeit in a duck-and-cover sort of way. He hadn’t sent Sawyer to get her.

  Sawyer, unimproved temper and all, sat beside her, not twirling the ends of his moustache. And not razzing her any more, either, which meant he had some minimal level of perception.

  When the car stopped. Jean piled out and beat Sawyer to the door of the office—if he opened it for her, he’d imply she was a prisoner, not a free agent. She stepped into the tiny room with its informational posters, filing cabinets, and computer-topped desk, and looked around, poised for action. But no one, least of all Alasdair, was there.

  A door on the far side of the room stood open on a narrow slice of domesticity, now filled with all the computerized paraphernalia of an incident room. Even as she headed toward it, propelled by Sawyer’s battering-ram entrance, Alasdair stepped through the opening and shut the door behind him. In his left hand a plastic tray held one complete half of a tomato and cheese sandwich and a bite of the other half. Turning toward Jean, he scooped that up and inserted it between his elegantly curved lips.

  “Here I am to make that statement,” Jean said, and, with a glance behind her, “The sergeant decided he just couldn’t wait to see me again.”

  Cameron chewed. His gaze moved from Jean’s truculent expression to Sawyer’s scowl. He swallowed. His eyebrows lifted and then tightened, minimally. His lips thinned. Without having blinked once, he looked back at Jean.

  He might be at his most inscrutable, but she knew that he was irritated with Sawyer’s presumption. He wasn’t going to show it in front of anyone, though, least of all her. She went on. “I was going to have lunch and then come in, you know, blood sugar and stuff like that.”

  Alasdair extended his remaining sandwich half toward her.

  No way was she going to do something as personal as share his food in front of—well, in front of anyone. “No, no thank you. I’m okay.” She’d told the teacher on the bully. It was time to shut up before she sounded so lame they sent out for crutches. Jean plopped down in the hard wooden chair beside the desk and tucked her shopping bag beneath it, hoping no one would notice the cutesy stuffed animals.

  Sawyer leaned against the outside door, ostentatiously blocking her escape. Gunn settled across the room, hunched defensively over his notebook. That was odd. Jean remembered him being deferential to his superiors, not afraid of them.

  “Right,” Alasdair said, although his frosty glance at Sawyer suggested otherwise. He sat down behind the desk, wiped his hands on a napkin, then pulled a small plastic bag from inside his jacket and held it out to Jean. “This is yours, I reckon.”

  With a queasy feeling of deja vu, Jean took the bag. It contained one of her business cards, the cardboard puffy and the ink blurred but legible. She felt its cold dampness through the plastic. “Where did you . . ? Oh. It was in Jonathan’s pocket, wasn’t it?”

  “Got it in one,” said Sawyer from the door.

  So that was why he’d taken it upon himself to come after her. Reasonable enough, on the surface. It was what was below the surface, some sort of strain not in the plot but in the cast of characters, that made her feel there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. And it wasn’t just the tension she always felt in Alasdair’s presence, either.

  Jean handed the card back to him. “I gave this to Jonathan when I arrived at the Water Horse boat and he challenged me. I had an appointment for an interview.”

  “You’re a chum of Dempsey’s, then,” said Sawyer.

  “No, I’m not,” she told him over her shoulder. “We met briefly se
veral years ago is all. I hadn’t heard from him until his press release landed on my desk last week, and he must have sent one, little Nessie and all, to every reporter in the UK.”

  “Nessie?” Alasdair asked.

  “The toy Nessie that came with the press release.”

  “None of the other reporters we’ve interviewed said anything about a toy.”

  “Why should they? They—we—get that sort of promotional gimmick all the time.”

  “Aye.” Alasdair laid the plastic bag out on the desk blotter, his sturdy fingertips smoothing it down as delicately as a fortune teller laying out Tarot cards. “The preliminary report is that Paisley has no wounds other than cuts, bruises, and burns from the explosion, and that he drowned. Just now we’re thinking that he was killed by accident. Even so, we’re looking into his background.”

  Jean didn’t want to know whether Jonathan had been conscious when he went into the water. Setting her jaw, she met Alasdair’s cool, correct expression with one of her own.

  “The bomber might could have meant to kill Dempsey,” he continued. “Mrs. Dempsey tells us he has a habit of working late and losing track of time. This is assuming the explosion was meant to kill anyone at all, not merely to stop the expedition. Just now we’ve got no evidence the one way or the other.”

  “Tracy was insisting he get to that dinner on time,” Jean agreed. “What about Brendan and Jonathan trading places? Could someone have wanted to kill Brendan?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Hugh Munro said he saw Brendan with Iris’s niece Kirsty at the Tourist Authority dinner last night.” A snort from behind her back wasn’t exactly that of a bull, but still she felt like a matador. She didn’t turn around. “Maybe what Jonathan traded with Brendan was his place at the dinner. Brendan could have thought he’d make points with Kirsty by taking her to a posh function.”