The Ghost of Helen Addison

by Charles E. McGarry

  21

  THE brief sunset was intense, casting Ben Corrach in the most vivid garnet. The entire Munro glowed in the most extraordinary way, like a colossal ember. Leo felt a mixture of unpleasant emotions as he sat in the lounge, morosely chasing a large J&B with a glass of Irish stout. Further down the bar Lex Dreghorn kept a safe distance, sensing that he would not be made welcome in the Glaswegian’s company. Leo had been rather curt in response to George Rattray’s couthy anglers’ humour, and the fishing enthusiast seemed to take the hint and sauntered over to where Shona Minto had arrived, perching herself on the other side of the bar like Queen Bee, turning not a stroke of work. She laughed affectedly at Rattray’s sycophantic chatter. By now Leo reckoned – correctly – that the locals had an inkling as to his purpose at Loch Dhonn. If they had not become aware of his mystical abilities then they at least suspected that he was there in some form of investigative capacity. It was in the way he caught them regarding him, or now avoided engaging in conversation with him about the murder.

  Part of Leo felt that he had intruded upon the Addisons’ grief, and that he had possessed no right to knock upon their door empty-handed, without so much as a clue as to who had brutally killed their beloved daughter. Another part of him felt a glimmer of the immensity of what the Addisons were enduring. He also felt a not entirely unfamiliar gnawing at the edge of his faith, such was the senseless and appalling nature of the crime.

  Eventually, Fordyce joined him from the dining room; Leo had earlier turned down his suggestion that they dine together because he had no appetite. As far as Fordyce could tell, Leo was sober. If he had asked Paul the barman, a pleasant, conscientious fellow aged approximately twenty-five with the dark hair and handsome features typical of the Glasgow Irish, he would have discovered that his friend had already drunk his way through four pints of Guinness and two gills of Scotch. If he had asked Lex Dreghorn, he would doubtlessly have received a more modest and less truthful estimate, such was his preciousness at maintaining champion-drinker status in Loch Dhonn.

  ‘During a dark time,’ Leo confided to Fordyce, ‘when I was struggling to cope, I went to stay in a monastery for a while. As a guest, you understand. Looking back, it was there that I started to heal, within my soul. One of the monks there, this Brother Francesco, he was sort of my buddy, my consigliere. He had been a psychotherapist prior to taking Holy Orders. Anyway, one day we were chatting about where I was in my life and what I had been through, and he said something that I always remember. He said that God never asks more of us than we can endure. But looking into that poor woman’s eyes today and seeing nothing but desolation, it made me truly wonder.’

  Fordyce could think of nothing to say in response; any words of intended comfort would be inadequate and inappropriate, and he could tell that Leo had no stomach for platitudes. Instead he kept his counsel, took a sip from his port and ginger, and then inwardly chastised himself for letting his mind drift to contemplation of the youthful Paul’s lissom rear profile. Meanwhile, Leo stared out at the pouring darkness. He detested these short days; everyone scuttling around like beetles in the gloom. He thought about the bleak, obscure muirs of bitter grass that lay beyond the window, and he wondered if the beast was out there, traversing the cold, wet ground as the birch woods and the drab, snow-streaked mountains turned to shadow. Watching. Waiting.

  ‘One almost feels helpless in the face of such pure, unadulterated evil,’ he muttered.

  22

  THANKFULLY, Leo had allowed Fordyce to persuade him to have a roasted cheese supper, in order to soak up at least some of the booze (he had ended up drinking a good deal more stout and Scotch), and this, accompanied by a pint of tap water, made for a more bearable morning ahead. And Leo, in spite of the amount of alcohol he had imbibed, did have a vision during his sleep, albeit on the face of it an unremarkable one.

  An old coach house, early nineteenth-century, with whitewashed harling and quaint dormers protruding from the roof, their frames and sills painted a pleasant shade of green.

  The scene recurred and recurred, such that it had made an indelible impression upon Leo’s consciousness by the time he awoke. It was disappointing, however, that the dream had disclosed so little. Again it seemed as though his visions were being frustrated, impeded by some unknown adversary. It was also disappointing that it was Sunday, and he had no prospect of keeping the Sabbath. But he felt sure that a dispensation was justified, such was the importance of his being around Loch Dhonn at this particular time.

  Leo prepared some liver salts and took a bracingly cold shower before dressing for the outdoors, driven on by some vague but compelling urge. He slipped into the dining room only to drain a glass of orange juice and procure several oatcakes and some Jarlsberg, which he would munch as he journeyed southwards, the direction his antenna seemed to suggest. He found Paul the barman outside, chaining his bicycle to a drainpipe, and checked with him that it was all right to borrow a gnarled walking stick topped with a piece of antler he had spotted in the hotel hat-stand. Having donned his deerstalker, he looked a singular sight as he strode forth, rather like an Edwardian ghillie leading out a gang of beaters.

  The sky was overcast, yet it still felt extremely cold, and Leo wondered if they would have snow soon. A scrawny kite hovered above, despondently scanning the ground for pickings. Leo walked along the road with the higher, forested ground to his left, and strips of meadow and virgin woodland to his right, beyond which was the loch itself. He cut down at one point in order to walk along the waterside. In a field a pair of magnificent thoroughbreds stood close together for mutual warmth, and Leo took a moment to admire them. He found a little beaten path which skirted the ragged shoreline and followed it due south. Each bay hemmed an enclave of contrasting topography. A little green faery dell with a tumbling white linn. A silent and enclosed valley utterly invaded and subdued by moss – everything clad in the stuff: the drystane dykes, the trees, the boulders, the blanket bog – a weird, verdant, alien world. A peat flow, all dun and drab, the bunch grass withered, a forest of tall rushes brittle and dead. A dense wood of spruce, the aspect of their tops against a charcoal band of sky somehow depressingly evoking the sensation of an indeterminable time lang syne.

  Leo then had to negotiate a burn which crossed the path, and he did so by taking a run and jump. This effort was initially successful, but unfortunately he landed on a patch of glaur, slipped and then fell on his bottom, strangling an expletive. His coat had ridden up and the rear of his light grey trousers was soaked and muddy.

  Kildavannan was situated near to the point where the Uisge Dearg drained Loch Dhonn and flowed eastwards to eventually irrigate the idyllic pastures of southern Perthshire. It sat on the northern bank of that little river, and consisted of a hotchpotch of eco homes, barrel houses, trailers and outbuildings, all focused around the original dwellings of the clachan of Kildavannan, which had been officially abandoned in 1960 and had lain derelict until the community was founded in 1979. Along the steep ridge behind the settlement stood a series of modestly-sized wind turbines, and many of the buildings were crowned with solar panels. Across a bland stretch of haugh, beyond which was the river mouth, sat the community’s biological sewage treatment installation.

  Leo ambled past some neat kailyards, then down an avenue of polytunnels which took him to the main Loch Dhonn road. It seemed queer to see the coach house of his vision so abruptly and so soon after having dreamed of it. There seemed to be nobody around.

  The building was on two levels. The lower one, which would originally have been used to stable horses, had evidently been converted to provide workspaces for various resident artists and craftspeople. Their living quarters were in the roof space which in bygone days had housed travellers on their way from Oban to Glasgow.

  Leo followed the sound of metalwork to the furthest unit. The large, arched wooden doors were ajar, in order to let fumes escape. He peered inside. A slender female figure clad in a dark blue boiler suit and a wel
der’s mask was hammering a white-hot piece of steel against an anvil. Leo was immediately put in mind of the image from the vision he had experienced in the church in Glasgow, of a smith wearing a welder’s mask, working at a furnace. The woman picked up the piece with a pair of tongs and immersed it in a tank of water. With her other hand she turned a valve and the rushing sound of her propane forge ceased.

  Leo called out hello.

  The woman started slightly, turned and flipped up the visor of her mask. She regarded Leo for a moment, then raised the tongs out of the water and placed them and the metal on a firebrick. She peeled off her mask and shook loose a mane of shoulder-length, wavy brunette hair, some strands of which were gathered in tiny cylindrical beads. She was in her mid-thirties, and her whole face seemed to smile good-naturedly at Leo, who was immediately taken with her overall impression: her informal bearing, the whiteness of her teeth, the largeness of her hazel eyes, her strong jaw-line, the little ridge of freckles over her cute nose. She wore no make-up, but her slightly weathered skin somehow suited her, its slight duskiness increasing the appeal.

  ‘Hi!’ she replied.

  Leo ensured he kept himself mostly outside the premises, concerned that a lone female would be made anxious by a strange gentleman caller, in the aftermath of Helen’s murder.

  ‘Sorry to bother you while you’re hard at work. My name is Leo Moran. I’m staying up at the Loch Dhonn.’

  ‘Yes, I saw you when we drove by the other morning. You were standing outside the main doors. You had a bandage on your head.’ She had a tranquil energy and spoke with a rich, confident tone, in a middle-class Home Counties accent.

  ‘Indeed. I was waiting for my lift. That was just before the storm – gosh, I was nearly blown away!’

  ‘It’s odd, I spent the entire duration in here, so engrossed in my work that I was hardly aware of it.’ She gestured towards a work-in-progress, a tall, skeletal structure that looked something like a plesiosaur built from a giant Meccano set.

  ‘Very impressive,’ said Leo politely.

  ‘I’m Eva Whitton,’ said the woman as she jauntily walked over and extended her hand. ‘Please, do come in. Do you like modern sculpture?’

  ‘I do admire Archipenko’s work,’ Leo lied as he stepped inside.

  Eva smiled pleasantly and Leo inwardly reproached himself for the mendacity of his statement.

  ‘Feel free to take your coat off.’

  ‘I will, thank you,’ said Leo, forgetting about his soiled behind which the outer garment had concealed. ‘It is a touch tropical in here.’

  ‘What happened to your hands?’ Eva asked with an uncommon yet endearing forthrightness.

  ‘They were burned in a house fire,’ replied Leo, a little taken aback.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be nosey. I just thought you might be a fellow smithy. Many of us bear battle scars.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘So, what brings you to Loch Dhonn?’

  ‘I’m here in a . . . professional capacity.’

  ‘To do with the murder?’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t say much more.’ Leo’s face flushed slightly at his words. For once, he didn’t mean to sound self-important.

  ‘You’re not a journo, are you?’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘I thought not. Thank heavens for that!’

  ‘I’m just trying to get a feel for the place. For the people round here, especially for those who knew Helen.’

  An expression of doubt flashed across Eva’s face.

  ‘The police know about my being here – I kind of have their blessing, actually,’ blurted Leo, keen to assuage her fears. Leo prided himself on being a man of his word, and he wondered what was so enamouring about this sculptress that it had made him risk breaching his promise of discretion to Lang. A feeling of unworthiness welled up inside him, familiar from other times when he had felt attracted to a woman. ‘I’m afraid I’m sworn not to divulge the precise nature of my involvement, and I must beg of you to keep what I have told you to yourself, if you please.’

  ‘Certainly,’ replied Eva. ‘I did know Helen, rather well, actually. I’ve been at the community for, oh, seven years now.’

  A surge of romantic bravado, which had lain dormant within Leo for a decade, suddenly sprang forth.

  ‘Well, then, perhaps you would do me the honour of being my guest for dinner this evening, at the hotel. It could be very useful to get your local insights.’

  ‘I’d be delighted.’

  ‘Excellent!’

  A rush of excitement rose in Leo’s chest, and he fought hard not to betray it in his expression or intonation. Trying to look cool he gazed round the workshop. As he turned, Eva noticed his muddy posterior and smiled. Leo saw a pile of scrap metal nearby. Alongside this, sitting upon a worktop, was a little stack of several foot-long, two-and-three-quarter-inch diameter rods of high-grade brass. Leo wasn’t initially sure why, but he felt compelled to step over and stroke the surface of the topmost one.

  ‘Brass. Must be expensive.’ Then it occurred to him. ‘Have any gone missing?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I really should keep stock control. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’

  23

  THE mere sight of Lex Dreghorn was enough to raise Craig Hutton’s hackles. He had always disliked the older man, whom he considered a phoney and a deadbeat with a fair conceit of himself, but had only come to despise him after he had made a pass at his beautiful Helen. Dreghorn, of course, would later insinuate that Helen had thrown herself at him, but Hutton had instinctively known the truth as soon as he happened upon them together in the lobby of the community hall. What he didn’t know for sure was whether or not the guy was capable of murder. Certainly, Dreghorn had worn a black look on his face that night after the village ceilidh as he stalked off, leaving the two young lovers holding hands as they watched his ignominious exit contemptuously. Dreghorn was proud, no doubt about it, and rumour had it that his two marriages had failed because of his egotistical need to cheat with younger women. But, pondered Hutton, what constituted a woman hater? At what point did chauvinism descend into something darker, something more violent? After all, someone had killed Helen, and as often as not a murderer turns out to be an individual who had previously been regarded as perfectly normal – and known to the victim. Why not Lex Dreghorn? Plus, the man lived quite near to the murder scene, and could easily have nipped there and back unnoticed in the dead of night.

  Hutton was aware of the whispered suspicions against Robbie McKee and he knew where they stemmed from: his increasingly erratic behaviour and his withdrawn moods. Hutton also knew that McKee had been strongly attracted to Helen, but he could hardly blame him for that. Helen hadn’t ever seemed the least bit intimidated by McKee’s interest, and had behaved sympathetically towards him. Therefore Hutton, as always impressed by his girl’s compassion and quiet wisdom, had followed suit. Sure, there was the unpleasant incident from his past, but he had been fourteen years old for goodness’ sake, and it’s not as though he had gone on to repeatedly bother young lassies.

  No. Hutton felt sure of McKee’s innocence. As for Dreghorn, he would spy on him, as he was spying on him now. Watching as he loaded scrap metal into the back of McKee’s Land Rover – he was aye borrowing it; he probably had McKee under his thumb. Indeed he was always hanging around the little homestead where McKee and Rattray lived quietly in adjacent buildings, as though he owned the place. And right now he was glancing around in a manner surely too suspicious for a man who was merely shifting a bit of hooky lead.

  Hutton would watch, and he would learn. Then he would act.

  24

  UPON returning to the Loch Dhonn a restless Leo had been unable to locate Fordyce, and so he had lunched alone (a light Caprese salad in order to preserve his appetite) and had little with which to occupy himself for the afternoon ahead. The sky cleared somewhat but the day remained too ugly to merit any further exploration of the c
ountryside and the wireless informed him that the mercury was to plummet even further. However, Leo felt in better spirits now, not only because of his forthcoming dinner date, but also because of the fact that a vision had borne forth a tangible lead: one of the brass cylinders at Eva’s workshop could have been stolen and be the very item used to violate Helen post-mortem. He would pass this piece of information to DI Lang when he returned from Glasgow, where the short constable had informed him he had been summoned by his superiors.

  Leo built a fire and drew a bath, which helped take the chill from his bones. He then telephoned his mother and pretended to read some pages from Travels with My Aunt. He whiled away the remaining hours gazing out of his bedroom window, resisting the temptation to drink, and wearing out the carpet by pacing up and down. He dressed far too early for dinner, and by the time Eva was due to arrive he was too wound up to properly enjoy the occasion. Booze would indeed be required to relax him, but also, if he had been being totally honest with himself, to dispel the little demons of self-loathing that had been haunting the edges of his consciousness ever since he had met the sculptress earlier that day. Why, he wondered in exasperation, did the default flavour of his psyche have to be so negative and ungentle towards his own self? Also, there was a nagging feeling that his excitement for the forthcoming engagement was because some unknowable but vital aspect to Miss Whitton reminded him of Maddi, his long-lost love.

  Leo descended to the dining room, where Eva had already arrived a few minutes early. She widened her eyes slightly when she noticed the formality of her date’s attire. She had chosen a simple charcoal woollen dress, but such plain clothing was more than adequate to draw out her easy natural beauty. Her hair spilled gorgeously from a green chiffon headscarf, and she wore an attractive antique jade brooch on her bosom, which, given her slim frame, was surprisingly ample. As they were being seated, Leo happened to glance towards the doorway and noticed Lex Dreghorn ambling through the hall on his way to the bar. He paused to stare in nosily. Leo fancied that he saw a look of envy register upon the man’s features as he noticed the identity of his comely dining companion.