The Rat Stone Serenade

by Denzil Meyrick

  Left alone with Symington and Daley, Veronica launched into conversation. It turned out that she and her husband walked most days, taking in the beautiful scenery around Blaan, as well as helping the new Mrs More meet her husband’s flock outwith the confines of the church.

  ‘I’ve come to realise that the life of a minister’s wife is much more involved than I had expected, Mr Daley,’ she said, nursing a glass of wine. ‘I’ve never been involved with so many groups and societies. All great fun, though. And the people here are just lovely.’

  ‘So you haven’t come across any resentment?’ asked Symington, rather brusquely, Daley thought. ‘I mean, you are clearly a few years younger than your husband. I know how difficult certain elements of small rural communities can be about that sort of thing. I’m from one myself.’ Daley wondered if his new boss had inadvertently given something of herself away by that remark. Certainly, he detected a momentary look of regret on her face.

  ‘Oh, you and me both, superintendent,’ replied Veronica. ‘This place isn’t all that different to the village in Ireland where I grew up – the same obsession with gossip, for one. But sure, don’t we all have our own faults? In the main, people are nice and kind. Iggy works hard and I think folk appreciate that.’

  ‘Iggy?’ asked Daley with a smile.

  ‘I know. Iggy, short for Ignatius. I love the man but not his name, Mr Daley. Of course, I daren’t call him that in front of the parishioners. It would cause nothing short of a riot. They’d probably take me down to the Rat Stone and . . .’

  ‘What do you know about this Rat Stone?’ asked Daley.

  ‘Just what I’ve been told, mainly by the older members of our congregation. It’s ancient, I know that. The Vale of the Druids, if you please. Old Jock would be able to tell you more. He’s a retired writer, lived here for most of his life and loves the history of Blaan. It was him that first took me to see the stone.’

  The lounge door swung open. ‘One of the very few local people who will go anywhere near the place,’ said More, now decked out in his vestments. ‘Lovely guy. There’s nothing about Blaan he doesn’t know.’ He stood beside his wife, putting his arm around her waist. ‘Strange how traditions maintain in this country. I found it so odd when I first came here. In Australia, we’ve all kind of lost touch with our roots. Leave all that ancestor stuff to the Aborigines. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, you know,’ he added hurriedly, after a look from his wife.

  ‘What traditions are you talking about?’ asked Daley.

  ‘Oh, you know, all that ancient magic stuff, paganism, a certain way of doing things. Fascinating if you study it, dates back to the sun worship of prehistory. Little quirks still persist, like never clockwise, always anti-clockwise – widdershins, they call it.’

  ‘Fascinating, I’m sure,’ observed Symington.

  ‘Yeah, it is. Do you know, they don’t come to church here, they still “go to the stone”?’

  ‘I thought nobody went there?’ said Daley, momentarily confused.

  ‘Oh, it’s to the church they come, but that’s what they say. It’s an echo of what used to happen. Clearly, the Rat Stone was the centre of worship here, long before Christianity was even heard of.’

  Veronica’s face darkened. ‘Though I’m not sure that worship is the right way to describe it. Evil – pure evil – went on there. Human sacrifice, that’s what the druids were all about.’

  ‘Oh, don’t listen to her. The druids were devoted to learning, healing, protecting the environment,’ said More. ‘My wife finds it hard to leave her old profession behind, sometimes.’

  ‘I’m sure no one is interested in that,’ she said, glaring at the minister.

  ‘Why not?’ said Symington.

  Veronica raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Once upon a time, I was a nun. I spent eight years of my life locked away from the world. It was a long time ago but, as you can see, I saw the light and decided to carry on God’s work out in the open. In the community rather than hidden from it. The druids might have been the first eco-warriors my husband describes, but if you crossed them, or formed part of their rituals, well, you weren’t in a good place. We know that much.’

  ‘But old habits die hard, is that not right, my dear?’

  ‘Ha ha,’ she replied, her smile thin. ‘Seriously though, there’s something about that stone, it draws you in. It’s like the feeling you get when you stand too near to the edge of a cliff. You feel that you want to jump.’ She looked straight at Daley. ‘There’s no good there, no good at all. I – everyone – can feel it. It pulls at you.’

  ‘And you, Reverend More. You are a long way from home. Why choose to be a minister here?’ asked Daley.

  ‘Oh, I love it – dream come true, in fact. Mind you, if I were to stand here and bore you with all the twists and turns my life’s taken, I’d miss the service tonight – and probably the one after that, too.’

  ‘So you didn’t enjoy your pastoral work in Australia?’ asked Symington.

  ‘Oh, yeah, I mean, for the short time I was there. I only worked as a man of the cloth at home for a couple of years. Spent my earlier life drifting, you know. I’ve been a stock man, sheep shearer, tour guide – you name it.’

  ‘So why the church?’ asked Daley.

  More smiled. ‘I had an epiphany, if you like. No heavenly trumpets, choirs, or golden visions, but I woke up one morning after a night on the grog. We’d been taking a thousand head of cattle over to new grazing in the Northern Territory. It was hot, dusty work, so we all enjoyed a coldie of an evening. Me more than most.’ He grimaced. ‘I’ll never forget it. I woke up under a blanket, just as it was getting light, the sun was rising, but the stars . . . billions of them still in the part of the sky that was black.’ He paused, looking up as though he could still see them glinting. ‘I watched as the sun slowly washed those stars out and I could feel its warmth on my face. Something happened, I don’t know what. Suddenly I just knew that there was something else – something bigger, you know what I mean?’ He looked to Daley and Symington with a smile.

  ‘And you ended up here. Happy?’ asked Daley.

  ‘Yup, and never regretted it. I had a pretty rough time as a kid. My father was handy with his fists, especially when he’d had a tinny or two, which was most nights.’

  ‘Is that not something you have in common with him? Enjoying a drink, I mean?’ asked Symington.

  ‘No, not at all.’ More’s tone was pleasant, though Daley recognised a flash of irritation on the minister’s face. ‘Back in my stockman days, yes, everyone drank. I like a glass or two but that’s where the similarity ends. In any case, my father and I didn’t share any genetics, superintendent. I was adopted as a youngster.’

  ‘What about your real parents?’ asked Symington.

  ‘My father refused to say and my mother was too scared to disagree.’ He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Have you ever tried other channels?’ Symington persisted.

  ‘Yeah, I did – half-heartedly, I suppose. Though much good it did me back then. Thousands of orphaned kids found themselves adopted by families who used them as slave labour – nothing else. I was no different.’

  ‘If you’d approached the authorities, could they have checked back for you?’ asked Daley.

  ‘No questions asked in that part of the world back then, Mr Daley.’

  ‘A lot of unwanted children from Ireland were shipped down under, and from the UK, too,’ interjected Veronica. ‘As my husband says, treated like cattle – little more than unpaid help until they reached an age that they could do something about it and leave. I’m right, aren’t I, darling?’

  ‘Yep, pretty much. But a bad start to life doesn’t mean that the rest of it will be the same – I know that.’

  Daley thought of some of the children he had come across in the course of his career, many of whom had not been as lucky as the Reverend More – a bad start leading to a worse middle and pitiful end to life.

 
He asked the Mores some further questions then made his excuses, anxious to find out if the forensic team had arrived to examine the skeleton found on the Rat Stone.

  Outside, he was just about to radio in to request that the police Land Rover pick him up when the manse’s front door opened again and Symington walked out.

  ‘I want you to come with me to Kersivay House, DCI Daley.’

  ‘If you say so, ma’am.’

  ‘I want to present a united front. From what I can glean from the files in Kinloch, these Shannons can be bloody difficult. They’re real players, the company is still family owned and it’s one of the biggest private enterprises in the world.’ She looked at Daley. ‘And in my experience, the more money people have, the more demanding and difficult they can become.’

  4

  Ailsa Shannon sat by the window of her top-floor room in Kersivay House. The only light came from the gibbous moon, which hung low over the sea, casting a pale thread upon the rippling water.

  She loved the view from this window, high in the big mansion on its towering cliff, dark and immovable. It felt as though both the house and the sheer granite upon which it perched had been hewn by the forces of time and nature.

  In her eightieth year, she mused on how important this place had been in her life. Faces passed before her mind’s eye: some youthful, now grown old; some for ever young, frozen for eternity where time had left them. Memories, both good and bad.

  A Mozart symphony soared in the large room; a suite really, with a separate bedroom and sitting area. To dispense with the long climb, she had ordered a lift be installed for her convenience, though for those of more tender years, fleet of foot and heart, the dizzying spiral staircase still corkscrewed down to the ground floor.

  She felt this mansion was part of her, solid and ever present, always in the back of her mind – a hundred years old, nearly. Kersivay House had been the dream of Archibald Shannon, a dream made real in stone and glass, facing boldly out to sea from the cliff that shared its name. No wind was too strong, no sea too wild to breach its tough façade; a symbol of the family that made it. A hundred years ago it had been a portent of the success that was to come, the success that saw the Shannon family, the descendants of a humble Blaan blacksmith, rise to dominate the world of business and commerce.

  In the shadows cast by the pale moonlight she noticed that a dark crack had appeared in the high ceiling, splintering down to the top of the wide window frame. As the music faded, the old house creaked and groaned in the quiet cold of the midwinter evening. She thought of her husband, now long dead, the feckless son who now frustrated her so, and the little boy, lost to her long ago. She pictured her in-laws, nieces, nephews, their children, spouses, friends, lovers; her granddaughter, so beautiful, so sensitive, but so troubled. They were all here for another New Year, but for how many more?

  She stared down onto the terrace balcony, which overlooked a stretch of sand upon which the tide lapped cold and dark. In her mind, under a long-ago grey sky, she could still see the little boy with his bobble hat and coat, buttoned up to its velvet collar to keep out the cold.

  A knock at the door broke the spell.

  ‘Come in,’ she called. The solid oak door creaked open and an old man stepped into the dark room.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he said politely, though his low voice was laced with insincerity and irritation. ‘We have visitors.’

  ‘We have lots of visitors, Percy. To whom in particular do you refer?’

  ‘The constabulary are here, they want to speak to you.’

  ‘Oh well, please put on some lights, then show them up, if you don’t mind.’

  Percy mumbled under his breath as he hobbled around the room, switching on various lights. ‘Why are you sitting in the dark?’ he asked, the question more like an accusation.

  ‘Because that’s what I want to do. I’m sorry that it doesn’t meet with your approval.’ She watched him, the room now bright in the lamplight. He was thinner than ever, stooped, the wrinkles on his face highlighted by the white of his hair and sparse goatee beard.

  Percy was the old family retainer, a throwback to days long gone. He and his plump wife lived in a small cottage in the grounds, one of the few buildings left standing after the old blacksmiths had been demolished to make way for the mansion. He had been caretaker for more than sixty years. She remembered him when he was young and fit, dark haired with a lantern jaw, able to turn his hand to anything; irascible, but with a kind of guileless charm. He had made Kersivay House his life; as caretaker he had taken his role seriously and performed it well. Accustomed to having the place to themselves, he and his wife had become less and less happy with the annual influx of Shannons as the years went on – but then again, so had Ailsa.

  ‘How old are you now, Percy? I always forget.’

  ‘Not in my dotage, as your nephew thinks,’ he replied testily, careful not to reveal his age. He had taken a cloth from his pocket and was rubbing at the brass surround of a light switch. ‘Honestly, I don’t know what people are doing with their hands these days. Finger marks all over the place. I was brought up to wash my hands and not plaster them across everything.’

  Ailsa smiled as he mumbled on, his attention now taken up by the angle of a lampshade. ‘I’m sure the police officers won’t mind about that. Please go and fetch them – and take the bloody lift! Climbing that staircase in your mid eighties is bordering on the suicidal.’

  ‘I’m in my early eighties,’ he replied, less than convincingly. ‘Anyhow, the policeman doesn’t look as though he’d make it to the first floor, great gut hanging over his trousers. And as for the little bitch he has with him, well, by the sound of it, she’s English. Adorned with buttons and braid like the old king, if you please – just a wee lassie, too. What good would she be in a fight? I don’t understand why they bother with policewomen.’

  ‘Off you go – and try to keep your archaic prejudices to yourself,’ Ailsa chided as he mumbled his way out of the door.

  In the lamplight, the crack above the window frame looked longer and deeper. She stared at it then picked up the business magazine lying at her side.

  There he was, her nephew, Maxwell Shannon, under the bold headline: THE RISE OF THE HEIR APPARENT.

  She scanned the article once more: After running Shannon International’s North American banking operation, Maxwell Shannon’s stellar rise in global business seems without limit as he is poised to take control of the world’s largest private company from his ailing father.

  I want to begin the process of forming Shannon International for the twenty-second century, never mind the twenty-first, he was quoted as saying. My vision will see us continue to challenge the largest multinationals and our dominance in areas of finance, mineral extraction and technology go from strength to strength. There was an accompanying picture of Maxwell smiling sickeningly from behind his large desk in the Shard, the lighting angled strategically to minimise the lines around his eyes.

  She took a deep breath and thought of her own son, Bruce. Were it not for his father’s premature death, it would have been he and not his cousin Maxwell being interviewed, struggling behind the scenes to wrest control of the company from the hands of the board.

  But the two cousins were on opposite poles. Maxwell was ruthlessly focused, Bruce dissolute and self-indulgent. While Maxwell would sell his soul to succeed, her son was more likely to turn over in bed to sleep on, to hell with business and its exigencies. There was one thing, though, that she was sure of: Bruce had a good heart. Maxwell was cruel, manipulative and vindictive – a living embodiment of the very worst qualities of the Shannon family she had been part of for so many years.

  She gazed at that face again, smiling triumphantly from the glossy pages of the magazine. ‘You haven’t won yet, nephew.’

  She put the magazine down and stared at her reflection in the black window, waiting for her visitors to arrive.

  Hidden from Ailsa’s view, on the beach below, a d
ark figure emerged from a cleft between the dunes and looked up at the mansion on the cliff, a deep hood obscuring their face.

  The sea splashed onto the shore, hissing over the shingle on its retreat. A cloud of breath rose from the cloaked figure, illuminated only by the moon. Light flashed off cold steel, held out in front of the hooded face. A soft chant was carried on the light breeze, up from the beach, across the fields and, gaining strength, through the trees that guarded the Rat Stone.

  Brian Scott started the car in his driveway in Kirkintilloch, turning the heater on full blast to melt the ice that obscured his windscreen.

  He rubbed his hands together and cursed. The night before Hogmanay and here he was, just about to embark on the drive to Kinloch; a journey which was long and arduous enough on a bright summer’s day, never mind on a night like this, as the temperature plummeted in tandem with his resolve.

  Scott was a man with a mission: he had been tasked – by the Chief Constable, no less – with persuading his long-time colleague and best friend Jim Daley to withdraw his resignation.

  He mentally replayed the conversation with his boss of bosses.

  ‘With the greatest respect, sir. When oor Jimmy – I mean DCI Daley – has made up his mind, there bugger a’ . . . there’s not much you can dae to change it.’

  ‘Nonsense, DS Scott. If there is one man that Daley listens to, it’s you. I’ve read your files – both of them,’ he added, staring at Scott from over his narrow spectacles.

  ‘That cannae have made pleasant reading,’ mumbled Scott, not intending his superior to hear.

  ‘Indeed it did not,’ observed the Chief Constable, opening a file on his desk. ‘I find here that you’ve been arrested – arrested, mark you – on no less than four occasions since joining up.’

  ‘Aye, well, sir, you’ll see that these arrests were proven tae be in error,’ said Scott, nervously clearing his throat. ‘I wasn’t guilty of any crimes, so tae speak.’