by Jeff Gulvin
‘Mr McKenzie?’ Johnson looked into his wide, flat features. He was heavily bearded, red with grey flecks. His hair was red under his wool cap and red where it curled like fur on the exposed muscles of his forearms.
‘Aye. What d’you want?’
Johnson carried a small leather satchel and, opening it, he took out a report with a photograph of the dead peregrine pinned to it. ‘I’m from the RSPB,’ he said. ‘And this is Imogen Munro.’
‘I can see that.’ McKenzie scowled at the white Land-Rover. ‘And I ken who the lassie is.’ He looked her up and down. ‘The weird one with the horse.’
Imogen shook her head sadly. ‘Now I know what happens when cousins marry,’ she muttered.
‘What was that?’
‘Nothing, Atholl. I didn’t say a thing.’
Johnson showed the paper to McKenzie. ‘This is a peregrine falcon, Mr McKenzie. Ms Munro found it on your land the day before yesterday. She brought it to us and we tested the carcass. Our veterinary pathologist found traces of strychnine. The bird had been poisoned.’
McKenzie ignored the proffered sheet of paper and looked Johnson right in the eye. His gaze was stiff and glassy and, from a man of his build, unnerving. ‘And?’
‘It’s illegal to poison birds of prey, Mr McKenzie.’
McKenzie took half a pace forward. ‘Are you suggesting it was me?’ He poked his own chest with a fat thumb, looking from Johnson to Imogen and back again. He took the paper then and shook it out, inspecting the report before slapping it back into Johnson’s hand. ‘That bird could have come from anywhere. It could’ve flown onto my land.’
‘Yes, you’re right. It could.’ Johnson folded the report away. ‘Nobody’s accusing you of anything, Mr McKenzie. The bird was on your land, and I’m just informing you that we know about it, that’s all.’
McKenzie was ignoring him again and looking at Imogen. ‘This is your doing, isn’t it. Interfering wee—’
‘Mr McKenzie.’ Johnson plucked his attention back again. ‘The other reason I’m informing you is that it’s come to our attention that you have a pair of very rare eagles nesting here.’
Now McKenzie thinned his eyes. ‘Eagles?’
‘White-tailed sea eagles.’ Imogen spoke now. ‘They’ve built an eyrie above the coire.’
McKenzie looked sourly at her for a moment and then frowned. ‘Sea eagles. What’re they doing this far inland?’ Then the light of comprehension dawned in his eyes and he looked sideways at the loch. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I see.’
‘You stocked the loch,’ Johnson said.
‘Aye. Rainbow trout.’ McKenzie flapped one gnarled hand at the hillside. ‘You think a man can scrape a living out of just the sheep?’ He snorted. ‘Not a cat in hell’s chance.’ He glanced at his men. ‘Did any of you know about this?’ They shook their heads collectively and McKenzie looked back at Johnson. ‘Are you telling me you expect me to share my fish with eagles?’
‘They don’t eat much, Mr McKenzie. There are only two of them.’
‘Sea eagles maybe. But they’re not all, are they? D’you have any idea how many lambs I lose to kites and hawks and golden eagles over a year?’
‘They’re all protected species, Atholl.’ Imogen stepped in front of him. ‘They’ve a right to be here.’
‘Pay rent, do they? Pay land taxes?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. Listen to yourself. Why don’t you think of it differently? You’re the only farm in the highlands with a pair of white-tailed eagles from Norway nesting by your loch. It’s an added attraction for your fishermen.’
‘She’s right,’ Johnson said.
McKenzie just snorted. ‘Fishermen like to fish,’ he said. ‘They’re not interested in looking at birds, especially ones that scare the fish.’
They drove back to the main road, both of them quiet and thoughtful. ‘What d’you think?’ Imogen asked him when he dropped her back at her Land-Rover.
‘I don’t know. McKenzie knows we know, which is important. Not only that, but he doesn’t know the exact location of the eyrie. He’ll think twice, Imogen. Apart from mounting an armed guard that’s all we can hope for. He knows that if he does try to poison them, we’ll prosecute him.’
Imogen stared through the windscreen at the silent black crags. ‘They’ll still be dead,’ she said.
She tried not to think about the eagles, working in her studio on the large oil of Redynvre under the crag. He truly was a magnificent beast, alone on the hillside, the heather and shadows of the short cliff above him. The phone ringing in the lounge distracted her. She ignored it, but she had no answer-phone, and whenever she let it ring off she regretted it. In the end she went through and picked it up.
‘Hello?’
‘Imogen, this is Morag Ross from Dickinsons.’
‘Hi, Morag. How are you?’ Morag was her greetings-card publisher: they knew each other from art-school days in Edinburgh.
‘I’m fine. Listen. We’ve had a call from a shop in Dunkeld. Apparently some American has been asking about your cards. The shop thinks he might want to buy an original painting. Can we tell him who you are?’
Imogen thought for a moment. ‘I don’t sell my originals, Morag. You know that.’
‘I know. I just thought I’d ask.’
‘Did he give his name?’
‘I don’t think so. No.’
Again Imogen thought about it. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Thanks anyway, Morag. But I don’t want to sell any paintings.’ She hung up, reminding herself that the point of not signing her work in the first place was to maintain the privacy she had cultivated so carefully.
Late that afternoon Jean Law phoned her. Her husband had taken the two boys on an all-night fishing trip and she was at a loose end—sudden freedom wasn’t something she experienced very often. She suggested a drink at McLaran’s bar in the village, where they had an Irish folk band playing. Imogen agreed, albeit reluctantly. It wasn’t often that Jean got a night off.
They met there and Imogen was first to arrive, which irritated her. She hated going into pubs on her own, especially the local ones, but she was damned if she was going to sit in the car park and wait. It was already crowded, with fishermen, hatchery men and foresters thronging the place. Patterson was there with Tim Duerr from school, obviously both having a night off from their wives. Imogen wondered if Patterson had thought she might be there and arranged it specifically. He spotted her immediately, as if he had been watching the door, like a cat sitting at a mousehole. After the other night she wanted to avoid him, but Tim was with him, so she couldn’t really do so without it being obvious. Andy McKewan, the fisherman from Kyle, was standing at the bar with his crew. He saw her, grinned like a wolf and asked to buy her a drink.
‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m waiting for a friend.’
‘So? does that mean I canny buy you a drink?’ McKewan was big and bearded, his hair permanently greased with fish oil and his teeth inky black at the edges. Imogen stood back from his breath. ‘No, but thanks all the same, I’ll buy my own drink.’
Mercifully, Jean walked in and Imogen grabbed her. ‘Can we go somewhere else?’
‘Why? This is where the band’s playing.’
‘I know, but the atmosphere stinks.’
‘Why?’
Imogen jerked her head towards McKewan.
‘Och, just ignore the big jerk. Don’t let him spoil the evening.’
Imogen took a cigarette from her handbag and fumbled for a lighter. There was the flash of a zippo and the smell of petrol under her nose as McKewan offered the flame to her. She had no choice but to accept and she blew a steady stream of smoke at the ceiling.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ McKewan asked, suddenly smiling at Jean.
‘Thanks very much. Gin and tonic, please, Andy.’
‘Imogen?’ The smile said it all, lips lifted over blackened teeth, showing the red of his gums.
‘Go on then. I’ll have a Glenlivet. Double. No ice
.’
They found a table to themselves, the way to Patterson’s mercifully barred by groups of people standing. In the far corner the three-piece fiddle band was preparing to play. Imogen sank gratefully into the seat with her back to the rest of the bar. Jean sat opposite her and smiled over her shoulder at Andy McKewan. ‘You know, he’s not bad for a fisherman.’
‘Good God, Jean. Have you been married that long?’ Imogen stared at her. ‘His hair looks like it’s washed in a fryer and his teeth could be piano keys.’
‘Aye, but he’s dead rugged with it. He’s big, too. I like big men.’
‘Then why did you marry Malcolm?’
Jean laughed then. ‘I’m just teasing, lassie. Trying to lighten you up. I wouldn’t touch him with a bargepole.’ She sipped her drink. ‘It’s just good to be out without Malcolm or the kids. I feel young again, Imogen. You’ve never been married. You wouldn’t know what I mean.’
Imogen sipped her whisky and thought about that. Never married, no children, barren. What chance was there of children when she was single, and what chance of the right man coming along in a situation like hers. Maybe that was how she wanted it. Why she had really settled out here in the middle of nowhere. Maybe it was nothing to do with painting and the land and wildlife; maybe that was just an excuse for the inadequacies of her emotions.
‘Did you ever want children?’ Jean asked, as if guessing her thoughts. Imogen stared at her. ‘What d’you mean, did ? I still could. I’m only thirty-seven, Jean. Women have kids well into their forties these days.’
‘Yes, but not their first one.’ Jean looked awkward all at once, as if she had struck a nerve and regretted it.
Imogen sat back. She did want children. She just hadn’t met the man she wanted to have them with yet. She had always told herself that, when she did, she would know. She knew it hadn’t been Peter, which was another reason to call off the ill-fated wedding plans. And she knew it hadn’t been any of her infrequent lovers since. ‘I need the right man. I don’t want just anybody,’ she said aloud.
‘Och, everyone says that.’ Jean swallowed gin and swirled the ice in her glass. ‘We settle for what we can get in the end.’ She looked beyond Imogen then and half smiled. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound sharp just now.’
Imogen shook her head and laughed then. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not a major issue. If I really wanted children, I daresay I’d have settled for someone by now.’
In the morning she was wakened by the sound of Charlie Abbott crowing from the henhouse. It was five o’clock and the sun was already up. She slipped out of bed and crossed to the open window, where she bent to look at the loch. The light was perfect and she settled on the stool and picked up a size seven brush. Holding it at the very end of the shaft, she began to work on the patterns the sun spread on the surface of the loch. She worked till seven, lost completely in what she was doing; melding landscape with water and sunlight and the shadows cast as it shifted. Meticulously, she painted exactly what she saw, everything coming together with an ease she recalled from her student days. She had lost none of it: the passion, the desire, the way an image gripped her and held her attention, while allowing her mind to roam and wander across the landscape, drawing in emotions that other people didn’t seem able to sense. Depth. She had been told many times that she brought out the depth in the land. Not just the physical depth; somehow she got to grips with the soul of things, the essence of the lives that had mingled with it: animals, plants, people. She captured the history in a piece of stone, a mountain, a loch.
She laid down the brush at seven thirty and wandered downstairs. Making coffee, she stood in the open doorway and sipped it. Still naked, she crossed the yard, delighting in the freshness of the morning against her skin. She picked her way between the chicken droppings and opened the latch on the henhouse. Morrisey was on the water in his red-hulled boat, but he was too far away to see her as anything but a blob. Back indoors she ate a bowl of muesli and thought about the previous evening—how she was viewed and lusted after by a bunch of men who knew nothing about her. Then, all at once she was reminded of the phone call from Morag and the interest of the American. Was he, she wondered, just one of those Americans who wanted to take bits of Scotland home with them? Or did he, perhaps, see in her work what she might have seen when first she sat down to paint? At nine fifteen, she did not know why, but she picked up the phone to her publishers. ‘Morag,’ she said when she got through, ‘that shop in Dunkeld. If the American comes back they can tell him who I am.’
Fourteen
CONNLA SPENT THREE DAYS in the company of Harry Bird Dog Cullen, and together they visited a further four farms within a radius of 100 square miles. They talked to various farmers, shepherds and gamekeepers, who claimed to have seen tracks or patches of hair or the animal itself. They always gave the same description: four to five feet long, with a tail the same length again, always from a good distance and always the same colour. Bagheera the black panther. Connla figured it would be the same one, given the size of the territory. They spent the nights in the hotel in Tomintoul, and a local skiing and climbing guide told them he had come across what he thought were a big cat’s paw prints not far from the Shelter Stone in a boulder valley a few miles to the south-east.
Connla figured that three days was enough of Cullen and his slavering dog, which only seemed to not attack him because Cullen didn’t actually order it to. They returned to Perthshire and he paid for the three days and dropped him back at Cullen’s truck.
‘Are you leaving now?’ Cullen asked as he hefted his rifle case from the Land-Rover. Connla shook his head. ‘No. I want to stick around for a bit longer, see if we hear of anything. Maybe we’ll luck out and get a lead on a spoor.’
‘We’ll be lucky up there at this time of year.’
‘I know.’ Connla laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘But I’ve tracked cougar in the Arizona desert, Bird Dog. I know you think I’m just some dumb-assed yank, but I know my stuff. Believe me.’
Cullen regarded him dispassionately. ‘We’ll see, eh.’
Connla left him then and went back to the hotel. There was one message for him on email when he checked his laptop: Holly, with a reminder of the semester start dates and a list of meetings he needed to attend first at GWU. Connla shook his head with a smile; his phone call must have really unnerved her.
With hot water falling on his head and hair plastered against his neck and shoulders, he thought about Holly and, even now, the crazy aspirations she seemed to have for him. Their relationship had been a contradiction, and it was still that way. None of it made much sense. He was thirty-nine years old and she figured it was time he thought about growing up. But what was growing up when you felt seventeen inside. He was lean and fit; no gym necessary when you spend half your life hiking through the Rocky Mountains. Growing up made him think about his parents, long gone now, but their faces still clear in his mind. He had no need of photographs.
His mind wandered to the greetings card he had bought and, switching off the shower, he wrapped a towel round his waist and took the card from the cabinet by the bed. The windows were open, late afternoon sunshine pouring in, and he rested his elbows on the sill and studied the picture again. A Scottish window scene, and yet with a beautifully carved figure of a ghost dancer set upright on the sill. Shoshone; he was pretty certain it was Shoshone. They were from the basin area and probably moved as far north as the east fork of the Salmon in the summer. It was either that or Nez Perce; possibly Bannock, but he doubted it. The Shoshone had sent warriors to Walker Lake and had been part of the ghost dance phenomenon: the last great insurrection against the incursion of the white man at the end of the last century. So many warriors from so many tribes, whole nations coming together in one united cause. He stared at the right hand held aloft, one eagle feather where once there had been two.
Holly and her sanitized life had known nothing of this, nothing of his folks or what had happened to them. She knew nothing o
f the Boys’ Club in Rapid City, where night after night he had lain in fear of crawling fingers, a spider’s walk between his thighs. Dark memories, all of them. He stepped away from the window and placed the card back in the cabinet. Fetching a fresh shirt from the closet, he pulled on his jeans and field boots and went down to reception.
The same thin-faced girl with auburn hair was behind the desk. ‘Excuse me, Dr McAdam,’ she said. ‘You have another message.’
‘I do?’
‘Yes. Well, I think it’s for you anyway.’ She fumbled amongst the paperwork in front of her. ‘The craft shop. McCleod’s in Dunkeld. They called and asked if we had an American staying here. The description sounded like you.’
Connla leaned on the desk. ‘It is me. I never left them my name.’ He smiled. ‘What did they want?’
‘They asked if you could pop in when you get back.’
‘That was kind of them.’ Connla glanced above her head to the clock on the wall.
‘What time do they close?’
‘I don’t know. About five thirty, I’d imagine.’
He thanked her and stepped outside. It was five fifteen already. A brisk walk and he was outside the little shop, and then he went in, the bell tinkling above the door as he opened and closed it. The same elderly woman was sitting behind the counter, knitting what looked like a child’s sweater. Connla smiled at her and recognition fired in her eyes.
‘Ah,’ she said, laying down the knitting, ‘you got the message then. I wasn’t sure. You didn’t leave me your name.’
‘No, or where I was staying.’ He laughed. ‘Great piece of detective work on your part.’
‘I got on to the publishers myself in the end and they contacted the artist.’
‘Did they give you his name?’
‘Aye, they did. They phoned me back with it.’ She smiled. ‘He is a she, actually, and she lives in a village called Gaelloch up by the Kyle of Lochalsh.’
Connla felt gooseflesh on his cheeks. ‘What’s her name?’ he said.
