Follow the Dead

by Lin Anderson

  ‘What wrong?’ McNab tried again.

  When Rhona quickly told McNab about Isla’s call, he admitted he’d encouraged it.

  ‘I called her after Olsen told me about the sighting. She sounded okay about it, but I thought if the press got onto the story, they might turn up on her doorstep. I said to speak to you if it all got too much for her.’

  Rhona recalled the girl’s voice. Her quick rejection that Rhona might come to her. Then the abrupt ending of the conversation, as though she may have changed her mind.

  ‘It’s been an hour since she planned to catch a cab from Byres Road. I think we should check she’s okay.’

  McNab glanced upwards as they drew alongside the red sandstone building. ‘Isla’s flat’s on the top floor, and there’s a light on. I suggest you give her another call. At least warn her we’re here.’

  Rhona did as asked, listening to the number ring out before switching again to voicemail.

  She opened the car door. ‘I’m going up,’ she said.

  Checking for the appropriate button on the entry phone, Rhona realized that the main door wasn’t shut to. When pushed, it swung back, the bottom scraping noisily over the concrete floor as though the door had fallen on its hinges, or been recently forced open.

  Reaching the upper landing, the first of the two doors indicated a Ms Taylor lived there. Rhona made for the second door. Painted a bright blue, the plaster plaque that stated both their names had the image of a snow-topped mountain as its backdrop.

  Rhona pressed the bell a couple of times, hearing it echo noisily beyond the door. If Isla was in there, she couldn’t fail to hear that.

  When there was no response, Rhona pushed open the vertical brass letter box and shouted Isla’s name.

  McNab appeared beside her and added a heavy knock to her efforts.

  ‘Could she be asleep?’ McNab’s expression suggested he was clutching at straws.

  ‘The noise we’re making could raise the dead.’ Pulling out her mobile, Rhona tried the number again.

  There was a moment’s silence, then what she dreaded might happen, did.

  ‘Listen,’ Rhona said. The ringing is coming from inside.’

  93

  Isla was frightened, but no more so than when she’d been buried in the ice cave, or worse still, in her prison on the tug boat. She understood why Michael had urged her to go to Rhona’s if she needed a place to hide out for a bit, but the thought that he could be so close had made her change her mind.

  It was all she’d thought about on that boat, all she ever thought about. How she might replay what had happened that night on the mountain. Reverse their positions, so that he was the one to suffer. He was the one to die.

  As soon as she was told he was in Scotland (maybe even looking for her), everything changed. That terrible feeling that there was nothing she could do, no way to feel different, to feel clean and whole again … all those thoughts were swept away.

  That night on the tug boat when she’d sliced Brodie with the mirror glass, she’d known exactly where the point should go, where the artery was. But at the last minute she’d failed and he had lived.

  She wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  Lying in that bunk, the camera eye watching her, she’d made her plan, never thinking it might, just might, be possible to carry it out.

  She smiled as she remembered how surprised Michael had been by what she was capable of. What anyone could be capable of given certain circumstances. He’d insisted that he would take the blame for the attack on Brodie. She hadn’t agreed, but she hadn’t disagreed either.

  He thought I did it because I was in shock, because of what happened on the boat.

  But what she’d done to Brodie had been a practice run for what she might do to the Iceman, if given half a chance. Her resolve had begun in the ice cave, even as she’d descended into delirium. It had been there when she’d woken in the hospital, but the need for revenge against the Iceman then had been only for herself.

  Then they told her about Lucy and Malcolm and then Gavin, and some part of her knew that the bastard who’d pushed her down the mountain had killed them all.

  And she had told him where they were.

  At first her fear had been larger than her resolve. She’d been frightened that he would come for her too, so she hadn’t admitted to what had happened up there, hoping he would leave her alone.

  I’m sorry, Gavin. So sorry.

  But he hadn’t given up. He’d come looking for her in Aviemore, because she’d been a coward the first time, and during that trip in the van she found she was no longer frightened of him. Hate had replaced fear.

  The walk-in cupboard in the big old-fashioned kitchen used to be a coal store. That’s what Gavin had told her when they’d bought the flat. He’d even pointed out the large hook on the stone wall outside the kitchen window, where, he said, they used to hoist up the bags of coal.

  Even as she thought this, the echo of Gavin’s voice in her head brought tears to her eyes.

  The cupboard, he said, would house all their climbing gear, plus the sleeping bags and the tent. He’d arranged everything in there, the crampons, the ice axes, the boots, the copious ropes, all hanging up so that it was possible to walk in, switch on the light and choose what you needed.

  The cupboard had been where she’d chosen to stay when she’d returned to the empty flat. She’d rolled out a mat and a sleeping bag on the floor and pulled the door closed. Surrounded by their gear, and with only the light from her head torch, she could imagine herself back in their tent …

  Or even at the Shelter Stone.

  Now, a skein of rope brushed her head and as she reached up to push it aside she realized her hand was wet and sticky. The stickiness was, she remembered, also on her face and hair. She glanced down and in the light from her head torch noted that the same mess covered the front of her sweater.

  I should have been naked, like on the boat.

  Isla contemplated standing up, but knew that was impossible, unless she could move the heavy weight from her legs.

  I’ll wait, she thought. Michael will come and rescue me.

  94

  Olsen lay on the bed, not seeking sleep. The last time he remembered sleeping all night had been at the Cairngorm Hotel. The whisky of course had played its part back then, but that hadn’t been the real reason for his night’s rest. Lying with Rhona, he accepted, had brought him peace that night.

  Through the open curtains, the sky was brightened by stars and a full moon. It was strange to see a night sky that appeared better lit than during the daylight hours.

  On the way back to the flat, he’d taken a stroll round the harbour, noting that the Mariusud had left her moorings. They were, of course, monitoring her route, which appeared to be heading northwards. Tor ran his empire from aboard his yacht, and was, it seemed, always on the move.

  Their exchange of words on board the Mariusud had been informative. Hopefully more to him than Tor, who’d sought very hard to distance himself from the scandal of his ship, just now hitting the headlines, while promising rewards for the capture of the former employee who had committed such atrocious crimes.

  And yet …

  Olsen recalled the aspects of the now expensively dressed and smooth-talking businessman that weren’t so obvious, some of which they shared. Both had been mad on motorbikes as teenagers, both had had tattoos done in defiance of their parents.

  As for Tor’s father … Olsen’s own dad hadn’t liked ‘that man’, as he’d called Bjarne Hagen. The distaste had only grown when Tor’s father had moved from fishing into supplying the oil industry and got rich in the process, but that hadn’t been the prime reason for his father’s aversion. Bjarne Hagen had Nazi sympathies, and hadn’t been afraid to say so.

  The sins of the father …

  Olsen, his top half bare, placed himself in such a way that he could view his back. The skull and crossbones he’d chosen as a rebellious teenager had been anarch
ic, a railing against conformity. Tor’s, he recalled, had been as openly neo-Nazi as his father.

  He watched as his mobile lit up. Seeing the name on the screen, he quickly answered.

  They’d used the ringing of the mobile to find her, Rhona eventually following it into the kitchen, which like all the other rooms was freezing cold.

  Already unnerved by the emptiness, McNab became even more so, as Rhona had approached a door in the kitchen. Before she opened it, he’d already noticed the thick viscous pool of blood that crept from under it.

  Rhona had initially blocked his view, and McNab had hardly dared ask what was in there.

  Then he’d registered the beam of the head torch and Isla’s blood-splattered face.

  Rhona watched as the stretcher bore Isla away.

  ‘She’s alive,’ she told a silent McNab. ‘Confused, maybe delirious, like in the ice cave, but alive.’

  The other body lay bunched up where they’d shifted it to allow access to Isla. The cupboard, he could now see, was festooned with climbing equipment.

  ‘She’s been living in here since she got back?’ McNab said, indicating the roll-out and sleeping bag and the scattered remains of food.

  ‘She said she was waiting for him. She knew he would come,’ Rhona said.

  Nilsen’s face wore a look of surprise, the ice axe deeply embedded between his eyes. That hadn’t been the only weapon Isla had used against him, although the other injuries, Rhona said, might be postmortem. A crampon had been used to score his cheeks and eyes, and a razor-shaped ice saw had been used on his neck.

  ‘Jesus,’ McNab whispered. ‘How do we save her from this?’

  Rhona moved into the practical. ‘I’ll call Chrissy. It’s late, but she’ll want to be here to help me process the body.’

  95

  There was an apology to be made. For him, there would always be.

  His excuse for not doing it had been the business with Isla, swiftly followed by Margaret’s funeral.

  McNab shut his eyes at the memory of that day. The boss, the two kids, grown teenagers now, but each with the crushed expression of a small child who’d just been told that Father Christmas was an elaborate lie.

  The boss had been stoically calm, but then he’d always been like that, even when I was throwing shit at him. Yet anger, McNab suspected, beat under that solid exterior; he just wouldn’t show it in front of his kids.

  McNab couldn’t begin to imagine what it must feel like to lose someone you love that much.

  The place had been full, and pretty well everyone there had been a serving officer.

  Funny, how even out of uniform, you could still tell.

  He’d been to see Isla, he’d managed that at least. She’d seemed calm and less concerned about her predicament than McNab had been comfortable with. I’ve evened things up, she’d told him quietly.

  It was a sentiment McNab was familiar with.

  Emerging from his reverie, he checked where exactly he’d walked to, knowing full well that he was back where he started.

  Mannie threw him an inscrutable look on entry, or maybe it was just the piercings.

  ‘She’s here but not sure she’ll see you,’ he offered.

  ‘I’ve come to apologize.’ McNab gave his opening gambit.

  ‘You’re an arse, Detective Sergeant. I know that, you know that, but I’m not sure she does.’

  ‘So there’s hope?’ McNab tried.

  She was seated in a booth, waiting, he assumed, for her next appointment. She didn’t register his arrival at first because she was deep in a magazine which, by its cover, contained all things Harley-Davidson.

  He took that brief moment before she looked up to remind himself why he should stick with this girl, if she would have him.

  Those blue eyes were observing him now. McNab imagined that they were reading his soul and finding it wanting.

  ‘D’you ever have a holiday?’

  Her unexpected question flummoxed McNab. ‘I get holidays,’ he offered. ‘I don’t always take them.’

  ‘D’you fancy a trip up the A90?’

  ‘To Aberdeen?’ McNab groaned internally.

  ‘Not that far. Just Brechin.’

  McNab didn’t fancy going anywhere on the A90, but wisely didn’t say so.

  ‘Netherton Cottage is where Sandy and Margaret Davidson lived before they emigrated to the States. They’re the parents of the Harley brothers,’ she said. ‘The cottage has been restored by enthusiasts, like me.’

  A dozen sarcastic put-downs occurred to McNab in that moment, but he fought them all, and tried instead to imagine holding tight to Ellie, for miles and miles and miles.

  ‘I’d be up for that,’ he said with a smile.

  Some Months Later

  Olsen had indicated he would be happy to walk in to Loch A’an on foot. Rhona, on the other hand, thought that a helicopter ride, no matter how she felt about flying, would be preferable. Olsen had conceded, indicating that once they’d examined the deposition site, and what CMR had found there, then he should be left behind. He wanted, he said, to spend some time in the mountains.

  With memories of Marita, Rhona thought, glancing across at Olsen. There had been a change in his demeanour since January. Something had happened. Many things had happened.

  He feels alive, maybe even content to be so.

  The weather was clear, the sky vacant of clouds. As they’d passed over the funicular and the neighbouring ski slopes, Rhona had noted the gradual retreat of the snow. The ski fraternity hoped that the season might last into Easter, Kyle had told her; ‘But, in Scotland, no one ever knows what the weather might offer.’

  As it was, the vast quantities of snow that she remembered had gone, leaving only the deep gullies and the managed slopes. But that wasn’t to say another fall might not happen at any time.

  Loch Morlich was as slick and shiny as a mirror, much like the day she’d walked along its shores with Sean. Among the trees, caravans and tents clustered, indicating that those who loved this place would come regardless of the weather, or even because of it.

  When she could make herself heard over the noise of the chopper, she’d asked Kyle after Annieska. He’d told her how upset she’d been about Isla, knowing that something similar could well have happened to her. ‘Annieska would have fought him off like a tiger,’ he said.

  Which is what Isla had done.

  ‘What will happen to her?’ Kyle had asked.

  Rhona could only offer words of encouragement, although the exact outcome of the eventual trial she couldn’t foretell. Isla had defended herself. That was all. Hidden in the cupboard, she’d used what was available to prevent being killed. As a result, her attacker had died.

  Kyle was gesturing below. This time, they didn’t have the luxury of landing on the relatively smooth surface of a frozen loch, but would come down as close as was possible to the shallows where they’d discovered the hidden cargo.

  Rhona, this time with the bulk of Olsen beside her and not Harald, closed her eyes as the helicopter began to descend. When the feet finally settled, she felt the familiar rush of relief.

  The landscape is so different from the last time I was here, she thought as she descended from the chopper. Then, snow and ice had defined everything, but now the bones of the mountain were exposed, all the softness of snow cover gone.

  The loch was a long thin line of open water rather than an ice rink, the edges and beaches defined. Rhona remembered feeling her feet on the ice, the fear that it would not hold her. Now she walked along the loch’s banks, across boulder-strewn slopes and coarse sandy stretches.

  She recalled how they’d left the loch at its western end to walk to the Shelter Stone that fatal day. How, through the thinner ice, she’d viewed long tendrils of plants waving in the moving waters of the stream as it entered the loch. How they’d talked of the possibility of someone burying the cargo under the ice, how in the strategy meeting she’d disputed the likelihood of that.

>   She’d been wrong, of course, because she’d forgotten that the ice wasn’t uniformly thick, especially close to constantly moving water.

  ‘A group of walkers spotted something sticking up from the melting ice near the shore,’ Kyle told them. ‘At first, they’d thought it was a foot and, horrified, called the Rescue Centre.’

  The wrapped bundle didn’t require opening in order to make out that its contents consisted of a dozen tightly packed latex-clad kilo packages of what they assumed was cocaine.

  The second item, a small white cool box without embellishment, Rhona did open. Inside was a spherical-shaped object.

  ‘What is that?’ Kyle said.

  ‘I suspect it’s an orb,’ Rhona told him, ‘a specially designed container for the transfer of human organs for transplant.’ She turned to Alvis. ‘Look at the name on the handle.’

  The blue handgrip that lay embedded in the upper sphere of the white orb wore the name HAGEN CORP in raised lettering.

  ‘Whether there’s something inside there or not,’ Rhona said, ‘Nilsen wouldn’t have wanted to leave this on the plane as evidence of the Hagen connection.’

  They’d already talked of how far down the road of prosecution they’d gone with Hagen. Nilsen’s death had complicated matters, but Olsen had assured her that they had a case against Hagen. ‘And we won’t give up.’

  Once they’d transferred the evidence to the helicopter, Olsen collected his walking gear and said his goodbyes.

  As Rhona watched him trudge off, a flicker of concern must have shown on her face, because Kyle said, ‘Don’t worry. Alvis knows the hills round here well.’

  ‘You met him when he climbed here before?’ she said.

  ‘We rescued him from the hill, when he lost his wife.’

  In the walk to the village, Kyle had told Rhona the story of Marita’s death. She and Alvis had been climbing on Cairngorm over the Christmas period. There had been an avalanche and Marita had been swept away.

  ‘We were called out to search for her, but we never found her body until the following spring. She was under the ice on Coire an Lochain, carried there by the avalanche.’