The Ghost of Helen Addison

by Charles E. McGarry

  ‘Poor George,’ said Fordyce, quite affected by their encounter. ‘And poor, poor Robbie. He looks dreadful. Simply dreadful.’

  ‘This McKee fellow – George said he’d been in some sort of trouble in the past?’

  ‘It was years ago. He was only fourteen, for goodness’ sake. And he was never charged with any offence.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The story goes – and it is just a version of events – that he got a bit rough with a local girl, after a date. Apparently, it took him a while to take no for an answer, if you take my meaning. Which would have been very wrong, of course. But there was no suggestion that he actually, you know . . .’

  ‘Forced himself upon her?’

  ‘Precisely. What he did do, and this is beyond doubt, is stalked her for a while after that. He camped out in the woods behind her house, spying on her. I know because I saw it with my own eyes and suggested to him that he go on home. But he wasn’t to be dissuaded and the police had to have a stern word with him.’

  ‘What was the upshot of it all?’ asked Leo.

  ‘The family were moving away anyway, down south, so the whole business just blew over.’

  ‘I wonder if DI Lang knows about this.’

  ‘He does – he probed me extensively about it when I was being interviewed. I’m afraid the police seem to be taking a keen interest in Robbie. Now, I believe – I know – that he has had certain mental problems: he gets depressed and suffers from anxiety. But I don’t believe Robbie is capable of this. Not for a moment.’

  Leo didn’t answer as he pulled the ripcord on the outboard and fired up the motor first time.

  9

  THE islet Innisdara took its name from the Irish hermit saint who lived there in glorious contemplation for twenty years during the seventh century. Its main features were the remains of Dara’s cell and the ruins of a twelfth-century chapel dedicated to him. It was here that Fordyce and Leo visited first. They half-beached the little dinghy on a pebbled southern shore and secured it to a nearby tree. Scrub and young woodland bordered the little bay, and a burn ran into the water.

  ‘We can follow this stream up to the chapel,’ suggested Fordyce.

  A little track took them up a steep incline, and the burn tumbled through a mossy gorge a dozen or so feet below to their right. Despite the time of year there was still enough coniferous foliage to obstruct their passage and they had to be careful not to slip on residual patches of snow and ice. They happened upon the remains of the odd man-made fire, one of which was strewn with rusted lager cans, evidence of teenage tippling. Leo tut-tutted in disapproval, and scooped the cans into a neat pile with his shoe.

  Further on, the track flattened out and the trees cleared. Down a gentle slope of rough grass sat what was left of the chapel, and beyond that what Fordyce would identify as Dara’s cell, which was merely a scattering of white stones.

  ‘The church was in use right up until the Reformation,’ Fordyce said. ‘If you look inside you can see the Latin inscriptions on what was the altar stone.’

  The nave was muddy, and clotted with heather and blackened bracken. A large Celtic cross, about eight feet in height, was propped up against the northern wall. A plaque explained that it was one of the finest examples of late Dalriadan carving in existence, and that it had originated in Kintyre. At its centre was a raised spiralled boss, from which low-relief knotwork stretched out through the limbs with no beginning and no end, because all things belong and are interconnected.

  Leo wondered aloud how they had managed to transport it all this way north and across the water. ‘It must weigh two tons!’

  According to the plaque, the cross had been broken maliciously during the time of Knox and brought here for safekeeping. Leo ran his fingertip along a jagged scar of cement, where the fracture had been.

  ‘Anything?’ asked Fordyce.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I mean regarding your powers . . . are you feeling anything, any vibes about this place?’

  ‘It doesn’t always work like that.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’

  ‘I do think that this is a sacred place, Fordyce.’ Leo smiled. ‘I think Saint Dara was a good man; he imbued this island with good feelings.’ And you are a good man too, Fordyce Greatorix, Leo thought to himself about his newfound companion. They wandered past some ancient graves and through a charming little meadow, then through a screen of pines and onto the northern shore. Leo’s attention was arrested by the sound of a horn emanating loudly from the other side of the loch. He glanced up to see a diesel locomotive, which was hauling two dozen empty timber wagons, carefully negotiating a sharp curve in the line which led into the great pass he had noticed upon his arrival.

  ‘That’s Stob’s Bend,’ explained Fordyce. ‘It’s the only point at which the railway skirts Loch Dhonn, as it enters the Lairig Lom. It’s a blind corner, so the trains have to go dead slow in order to enter it safely. They always sound their horns.’

  They walked a complete circumference of the island, before returning to the boat by crossing via a different, lonelier path than the original one.

  Leo launched the Fairy Queen by planting an oar on the loch bed and pushing downwards. ‘Right. Now for Innisdubh,’ he declared.

  Fordyce started the engine and took the tiller, and steered the boat round Innisdara and towards Innisdubh, about a half-mile away. Leo looked over at the mainland, noticing an ugly scar of stubble on the hillside above the village where commercial forestry had recently been harvested. A mood of nautical whimsy overtook him and he couldn’t resist making a series of light-hearted references to the ‘aft’ and the ‘foc’sle’. A snell wind suddenly whipped up the strait’s surface and the little outboard protested, whining like a buzzsaw as they rode the waves. Leo and Fordyce instinctively pulled their headgear down to shield their faces, and hunched their shoulders to keep warm. Leo produced his hip flask and unscrewed the cap. Fordyce, who was still hungover, took a tentative swig; Leo took a long draught.

  Other than Innisdara, Innisdubh was the only island of significant size on Loch Dhonn. It was slightly the larger of these two and sat rather by itself to the north, whereas Innisdara had the close companionship of several calf isles, some of which were virtually linked by sand spits. Innisdubh was a forebidding prospect. Unlike Innisdara it was surrounded by rocks, which made the waters there treacherous, and it took an experienced helmsman to negotiate a landing at the only possible place, at the south-eastern corner. Much of Innisdubh’s coast comprised steep slopes of black quartz, and at its western end the land came to an ugly jagged peak which jutted out pugnaciously over a sheer drop below. It was no accident that the ancient chieftains of Caradyne chose this for their citadel, Fordyce told Leo, such were its natural defences. The medieval keep was the chief man-made feature of the place, which was more thickly wooded than Innisdara. Dotted around these woods were tombs and mausoleums of various dead lords and their kin. The islet was also notable for several Iron Age standing stones.

  Fordyce had to take care to avoid a colony of ill-tempered Canada geese, before cutting the outboard and skilfully ferrying them to shore using the oars. They landed at a small strand of dull flint which was fouled by decomposed vegetation and aquatic weeds. Leo stood upright in the bow, scanning the ground in front of him. A little apron of dark sand between the water and the flint was disturbed by different human visitations, footprints and also the marks left by various boats.

  ‘Looking for something, old stick?’ enquired Fordyce.

  ‘Yes: an indentation similar to the one we just saw on the mainland. An indentation made by a boat – the same boat – having been hauled ashore. And behold – there it is!’ Leo announced excitedly, pointing at a groove which bore the distinctive tramline pattern. He leapt ashore, withdrew his little tape measure and bent down to confirm the match. He then produced his phone and took a photograph of the evidence. ‘However, there are no shoeprints on this sand which match the one we saw e
arlier, the ones the police had taken a cast of.’

  Leo and Fordyce had to get their shoes wet again in order to drag the dinghy beyond the waterline and away from the hazard of the rocks. Leo withdrew a box of miniature Cohibas, a little luxury to compensate for his cold extremities, and offered one to Fordyce.

  ‘No, thank you. I can’t seem to take to the things.’

  Leo lit his and set off through the trees into the dark heart of Innisdubh, his flesh creeping at the ancient malevolence that seemed to inhabit the place.

  The keep was in remarkably good condition considering its antiquity. A portion of the inland-facing wall had collapsed, affording one a partial view of the tower’s interior.

  ‘It was built by the Green Lord in the thirteenth century.’

  ‘Pardon my ignorance, Fordyce, but who was the Green Lord?’

  ‘Sorry, old stick. He was a notoriously cruel clan chieftain who, legend has it, impaled several of his enemies and left their bodies to rot on the stake for months on end, as a warning to folk to toe the line. One day the locals turned against him and hanged him from the rafters of the keep. First, they slit his belly open so that his innards would spill out when the rope tightened.’

  ‘Why was he called the Green Lord?’

  ‘Because it is said that they left him hanging up there so long that his face turned green. It was their means of revenge. You see that stone over there?’ Fordyce indicated a large, rough-hewn slab. ‘That’s where he’s buried. As I mentioned, all the chieftains and barons of Caradyne are buried around here.’

  They walked over to the slab, and Leo examined the faded Latin inscriptions and rudimentary caricatures of gargoyles, serpents, griffins and dragons.

  ‘It’s really odd,’ said Leo.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Why they chose to be buried over here, rather than on Innisdara, where the church is. A holy place.’

  ‘Perhaps the locals didn’t want the Green Lord buried on consecrated ground.’

  ‘Good thinking. And in doing so started a tradition, such that all his descendants were laid to rest on Innisdubh.’

  Next to the Green Lord’s grave was a hideous modern tomb of black marble and granite which stood about seven feet tall. It was devoid of Christian markings, and upon the frontage was carved a long and complex series of runic lettering, surrounded by occult symbols including fylfots, trapeziums and skulls. Leo was intrigued, and traced his fingers over some of these strange hieroglyphics. A couple of them were similar to ones described to him by Helen, which had been on her killer’s robes.

  ‘That, I believe, is where the thirteenth baron is interred,’ said Fordyce in a low voice.

  Leo took several photographs of the engravings. He realised that some of the symbols were Masonic, and he wondered what degree of the Craft the old baron had attained and what dire initiations he had fulfilled.

  A little further on was the most impressive sepulchre of all, a proper, walk-in mausoleum belonging to the tenth baron who had died in the year 1801. Fordyce hesitated, then followed Leo down a short flight of stairs and stepped into the vestibule which smelled of dampness and old masonry. Leo tried the iron double doors that sealed off the main chamber, but they wouldn’t budge. He withdrew his pencil torch from his detective’s kit, which revealed a padlock on a hasp.

  ‘The lock looks recent: late twentieth or twenty-first-century,’ he noted. ‘Oh well, nothing ventured.’

  Fordyce exhaled and hurried back up the stairs, secretly relieved that Leo’s quest to enter such a ghastly place had been frustrated.

  They walked further round the island, through some woods which opened into a stagnant little heath. Towards the loch the ground fell away sharply, and below there was a grove of melancholy ash trees, flooded by water which was brown with deposits. A deep fungal smell assailed the men’s senses and Leo took in an impressive circle of druidic standing stones.

  ‘Innisdubh indeed has a dark past,’ said Fordyce. ‘If Innisdara is the island of the blessed then this is its delinquent sibling. Archaeologists have speculated that it was used by the Celts as a place for human sacrifice. They excavated a part of the shore which was once below the waterline and found human bones. The ancients believed that where land met water was a mystical place, a junction between this world and the other world.’

  The largest stone had long since collapsed and lay on its side like a mammoth building block. Leo stooped to examine its surface. He withdrew a little plastic bag from his detective’s kit and picked the item up with a pencil.

  ‘What have you got there, old stick?’

  ‘Signs and wonders, dear boy, signs and wonders.’

  ‘It’s just a dead toad,’ observed Fordyce, crouching down alongside Leo to examine the item dangling from the end of the pencil.

  ‘Not quite. It is part of a dead toad,’ said Leo, dropping the thing into the bag and slipping it into a pocket before again scanning the huge stone. He noticed something else, withdrew a magnifying glass, and held it between his eye and the face of the rock.

  ‘Et voilà!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘What’s that? It’s just a blob of tar.’

  ‘Wrong again, I’m afraid. It’s candle wax. Someone’s been dabbling in things they shouldn’t be dabbling in.’

  ‘Gosh, it must be hellishly ticklish to be a dick!’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You know, a dick – a private eye, a detective.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, it is rather,’ said Leo a touch smugly, as he stowed away his glass and sealed the wax in another little plastic bag.

  ‘And you do resemble Sherlock Holmes somewhat with that eyeglass and that deerstalker. Anyway, what do you mean when you say someone’s been dabbling illicitly. Dabbling in what, pray tell?’

  Before Leo had a chance to explain, a distant, angry voice arrested their attention. They both looked northwards, out over the loch, where a sailing dinghy not dissimilar to the Fairy Queen bobbed upon the swell. There were two men on board. One, a florid-faced character wearing the tweedy outfit of the country gent, shouted over urgently. Leo strained to hear.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I said you, arsehole, what are you doing on my island?’

  So affronted was Leo that he was rendered speechless. And so he turned his back to his antagonist, unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his waistband, unzipped his fly, peeled down his trousers and underwear, and bent over, to provide a full and magnificent view of his arse. He even patted his white rear cheeks as though to further establish the point.

  Leo resumed his dress and his dignity, a little shocked by his own ungentlemanly riposte. He placed his binoculars to his eyes and gazed out at his slack-jawed antagonist. Now it was his turn to be rendered speechless. The other man, however, a heavy-set, middle-aged, evil-looking customer with shadowy jowls and deep eye sockets, looked quite impassive. Amused, even. He grinned malevolently at Leo as he gripped the oars in his enormous hands.

  Fordyce’s initial astonishment gave way to mirth, and he dunted Leo on the back to congratulate him on his unorthodox victory. They watched as the sinister man pulled the oars inside the boat, started the engine and steered the vessel in the direction of the boatyard.

  ‘You do realise that was the fifteenth baron of Caradyne?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No prizes for guessing which clan his house is liege to.’

  ‘I am glad for having offended this man. I have heard of the Caradynes; they owned land in Glasgow. They grossly insulted my family, more than a century ago. Of course his people wouldn’t record a slight against a bunch of ignorant Micks, but our memories are more enduring.’

  After a further inspection of the area proved fruitless, they headed back towards the boat. On the way Fordyce filled Leo in about the feudal baron.

  ‘He lives in the great house above the village of Caradyne, which is a few miles south on the other side of the loch. He still owns much of the land over there, but he only thinks he owns the is
lands. In fact, they were sold to the MacArthurs – the so-called Grey Lady’s lot – by the thirteenth baron. Yet the Caradynes think themselves the rightful masters of all they survey and have been trying to wangle out of it ever since, saying that the deal was only for the walled parkland and gardens on the eastern bank – where we were earlier. The baron has powerful blood allies, but they haven’t been able to trick the islands back into their possession.’

  ‘Why are they so keen to keep folk off?’

  ‘Family pride, I suppose. He’s always hated the fact that Lady Audubon-MacArthur granted the public free access to the islands, even in the days before the right to roam Act.’

  The return crossing, rather choppy due to the squall, combined with the whisky from the hip flask, the cigar smoke and the excessive portions he had consumed at breakfast, made Leo feel slightly dizzy and a little nauseous, and he was glad to step back onto terra firma. He took a few minutes to rest by the lochside. The baron’s boat, Argus, was already fettered to the jetty, and there was no sign of its owner or his manservant. Leo helped Fordyce reinstall the Fairy Queen in her shed and then stated his intention to provide DI Lang with an update. Fordyce said he would take the opportunity to finish some tasks at the boatyard. Before he left, Leo turned to his companion.

  ‘Fordyce, one thing: this hermit fellow . . .’

  ‘James Millar.’

  ‘Yes. How did his wife die?’

  ‘It happened in Turkey, while they were on holiday. It was in the papers and everything. She was murdered.’

  10

  ‘IT looks like a piece of a frog,’ said DI Lang, when Leo showed him his first evidence bag at the incident room.

  ‘Wrong. It is a piece of a toad. The question being: where is the remainder?’