by V Clifford
She kept munching but nodded. She swallowed. ‘Sounded like a big deal.’ She took another bite.
‘They’re not sure if we’re the right outfit for the task.’
‘Tell them to fu . . .’
He shook his head. ‘That’s what they are hoping we’ll say. I’d like us to tackle it. I’d like them to know that we’re more than just a cyber unit with back-up for the odd . . .’
‘Excuse me for being inquisitive, but who exactly are “they”?’
She didn’t expect an answer and she wasn’t disappointed. He smiled, his face lit up and his eyes came alive with the prospect of a challenge. Everyone in this unit, at this training facility, was up for a challenge or they wouldn’t be there. She glanced around. A couple of men in fatigues sitting at another long table with benches on either side, were tucking into similar food to her and Ruddy. Rolls and coffee eaten off trays - her mum would be horrified. Then she recalled that her mother might well have sat at these very tables eating similar food. The apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.
Ruddy said, ‘Penny for them?’
‘Oh, nothing really. Just wondering if my mum had been here.’
He nodded. ‘Sure. This place has been on the go since 1940. Anyone who has done Special Services’ work will have passed through here at some time. You’ve done most of the training now. You’re no longer a rookie. All you have to do is keep proving that it was worth it when you use it in the field.’
‘And this new job?’
‘It’s a long game. But your listening skills and unorthodox interest in the web will be helpful up to a point. Your physical fitness needs a bit of work. I’d like to know you’re ready for anything, anytime. Besides that’s one less box-ticking exercise I’ve got to do.’
She choked on a mouthful of coffee, ‘There’s nothing wrong with my fitness. You saw what I did in there.’ She pointed in the direction of the gym block. ‘Shit. I mean how much more fit do I need to be?’
‘Oh, you’re fit right enough, but I’d like you to be able to run with a pack on, over rough terrain. Not the Meadows. We’re talking about deep bogs, rivers, heather, deer tracks, big hills. Wet, I can guarantee it’ll be wet. That’s why this place is so special. Landscape is everything.’
She didn’t relish the idea of freezing on a wet hillside but was compelled to nod her head in acceptance. Could she really do it? Would he let her if he didn’t have confidence in her? Or was he desperate? At the beginning of this spiral into self-doubt she put the brakes on her thoughts. Of course she’d be able to do it even if she didn’t yet know what it was. They parted in the Green Welly car park with his assurance that he’d be in touch - might not be soon but at least he’d ticked his box.
Chapter Nineteen
The following morning she could hardly lift her arms to wash her hair in the shower. Would her biceps ever recover? When she arrived at the Hall Sholto answered the door himself. He stomped off ahead of her but gestured with his hand for her to follow. They retraced the steps they had taken on the night of the drinks party but then took a different route upstairs. He opened a door onto a large library. One window was draped with heavy velvet curtains that shaded much of the room and protected the books from sun damage. He walked over to a bookcase on the left side of the room and slipped his hand in between two tomes. A panel clicked open and he gestured again for her to follow him through. She raised her eyebrows. Inside, it was ordered like the stacks of the National Library but in miniature. She smiled. The musty scent of old documents was one of her favourite smells.
‘Wow! So this is where the real family secrets are kept?’
He nodded. ‘I’m sure the locals know there’s an inner room in the house but I don’t think they know where to find it.’
She continued to scan the room. At five metres square and about five metres high there were enough documents in here to keep any archivist busy for a while. Wide shallow drawers with labels of their contents covered one wall. Stepladders fastened to a rail meant she could push herself round the room gaining access to the top drawers and shelves. Easy.
‘So is it lead lined?’
‘I think so. It’s part of the old house. Probably used to hide the priest back in the day, then turned into a store for things that my forebears believed were precious.’
‘Does that mean you don’t think they’re precious?’
‘No, it’s not that. It’s just that times have changed. The old hierarchy has disappeared.’
She snorted. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Okay. There’s still a hierarchy but there’s a lot less doffing of caps.’
‘Thank God for that.’
He nodded. ‘I’m with you. We have some pretty good schemes here collaborating with other agencies and farmers. There’s no more of that thing where the landowner can call the shots or indeed pull the trigger when it suits him.’ He sighed. ‘People still have to get to know you as an individual. And if not they make assumptions about you based on their beliefs about the past.’
How many people had he run into who had made assumptions about him? Everything, even the smallest gripe, could become disproportionate to a person holding or cultivating a grudge.
Opposite the wall with the drawers, shelves held black metal boxes also marked with a short list of their contents.
‘This could take a while, so if you want to get on with something else I’ll be happy to make a start.’
He hesitated, ‘Er.’ His eyes flitted about the room as if he was trying to work out how much of it he was prepared to trust her with. His shoulders slumped. ‘I’ve no idea how much of this stuff matters now. It’s a bit of a drag being the custodian.’
‘If you’re looking for sympathy you’re looking at the wrong woman. I could live my life in a room like this and never get bored.’
He ran a hand through his hair leaving it standing at an odd angle. ‘Fair enough. Right. I’ll leave you to it and come back in an hour or so.’
She’d hardly make a dent in this in a month never mind and hour, but she nodded her agreement and said, ‘Sure, that would be great.’ She pulled the first metal box from the shelf, groaning at the pain in her biceps, and read the list of contents. Her telephone’s camera would be a godsend in the next hour or two. She flipped open the first box and released the unmistakable waft of old organic documents. The one on the top had a broken wax seal, which made it easy for her to unfold. It was written in legal jargon and from what she could make out recorded land auctions in which farmers had to bid to get use of the pasture. How bad was that? It meant that a family couldn’t plan beyond one year because they weren’t assured of grazing. It also meant that it pitted one local man against another.
She closed the box and lifted another down, groaning less but still in agony, and read the list. It contained more of the same, but she knew from experience that things frequently were misfiled and she’d have to go through each one thoroughly.
Sholto returned, breathless, wild-eyed and with his hair even more on end than before. ‘You’ll need to go. We’ll have to find a way out.’
‘What’s going on? Has something happened?’
‘The press are here. They’ve surrounded the house.’
She snorted, ‘Why would they?’
He rubbed his hands through his hair again. ‘I’ve called off the wedding. It’s a story.’
‘Surely got to be a slow news day if they want to run a story on a cancelled wedding?’
He stared at her. ‘Not everyday an earl cancels his wedding for his male lover.’
‘Oh, my God. How did they get that story?’
‘Well, they haven’t got that bit yet, but someone somewhere obviously wants to dig and they are all over the grounds. Even a TV crew.’
She folded the document she was holding and placed it back into the metal box. ‘Shit, surely there’s an old escape route? You know, one of those underground corridors where your forebears brought in their mistresses and contraban
d?’
She was half kidding but his eyes suddenly widened. ‘Crikey! We have. You’re a genius. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to get out of the other end of it. There’s a deep bank of gorse and brambles growing over the exit, and it’s also pretty low and narrow in places. Come with me.’
They went back into the library, closing the secret room behind them, and retreated through the corridors that they came along before. Back on the ground floor he pushed open the door of the loo where she’d found the family photographs. He pulled back the tatty Persian rug and exposed a large hatch. A depression at one end where a metal ring used to be was empty.
‘There used to be a way of opening this but the ring rusted. No one imagined it would ever be used again.’
The depression was thick with dust so hadn’t been opened any time recently. He tried to get his fingers beneath the edge of the hatch but it wouldn’t budge. She got to her knees and tried with her own thin fingers but it wasn’t going anywhere.
‘There has to be some sort of bar, or lever.’
He held his forehead. ‘There is. What was I thinking?’ He stepped into the cubicle and at the back where the pipes looked as if they’d been boxed in he pulled open a panel and retrieved a metal crowbar.
‘Bloody hell, you’d think your ancestors could have been a bit more creative with their escape procedure.’ He didn’t bite. She said, ‘Look, before we go crawling into oblivion at least let me go and check how many journos are out there. Maybe I could go out and distract them while you go out another door?’ She rubbed her palms down her thighs and swallowed. She stared at the hatch, imagining what it covered, and took a deep breath. Could she do it? She put her hands over her mouth and breathed into them.
He shook his head. ‘No, don’t. Let’s stick together.’
She glanced at the hatch. ‘D’you think the Catholics were really in so much danger?’
He screwed up his eyes. ‘Are you kidding me? So many died. We’ve no idea how scary their lives must have been.’
She was rapidly getting the idea, but going down into a tunnel, what was she thinking of suggesting it in the first place?
Between them they levered the hatch open with the crow- bar and exposed a deep dark hole with a rusty metal ladder attached to the wall leading down. The stench was abysmal.
She gazed into the pit. ‘Shit. When was the last time anyone was down there?’
‘Pammy and I were caught playing hide and seek as children. So it’s been a while.’
They clambered down the steps into the dark, damp, cramped space. She pulled out her phone and activated the flashlight. ‘My God, how far are we from the exit? It really stinks.’ She’d experienced a similar smell and it wasn’t good.
Sholto had to bend almost double and she crouched, flashing the light into the darkness. The walls were covered in dark green slime. No end in sight and no way to lever themselves along.
‘It’s a fair distance. It comes out near the fishing hut by the river. We’ll have to crawl part of the way.’
‘Is it worth it? Can’t you just go and speak to the press? If you think they’ve already had a lead on why you’ve cancelled the wedding it might be worth coming clean. They’ll get the story in the end.’ Visions of women trapped in a metal container flashed before her. She worked to steady her breath. Now was not the time to have a full-blown panic attack.
She was already speaking to his back as he hunkered along with the determination of a man being hunted.
It was filthy, wet and it really did stink. Rotting organic matter had built up on the floor and they squelched their way along the barrel-vaulted, stone-lined corridor. The back-breaking man-hours it must have taken to build it reminded her of just how wealthy Sholto’s family had been. None of this had been made with modern machinery. It took picks, shovels and sweat to create it. Tool marks were everywhere as proof. They moved in single file but at times even with the indented passing places it became so cramped that she struggled to get her flashlight round his bulk to illuminate the passage.
He said, ‘Let me have your phone.’
‘No. Let me go ahead.’ She wasn’t giving up her phone to anyone. Especially now that she had so many photographs of his family’s documents on it. Another shallow indent in the wall allowed her to squeeze past him and continue. The further into the passage they got the more intense the smell became. She had smelled this kind of rot before. Decaying flesh was quite distinctive. She gagged and put a hand up to her mouth. ‘Look, you stay, let me go ahead.’
She stopped. ‘There’s something blocking the way.’ She was sure she knew what it was before they reached it but the man’s head caught in her torch beam and Sholto’s scream confirmed her worst fears. He pushed past her. She’d heard many a scream before but nothing like his.
He fell to his knees like a wounded animal and cradled the bloodied, crushed head of a man. ‘Oh, God. Oh God, who could do this to you?’
Viv scanned the walls with her torch but had no way of knowing how far they were from the river opening. How did a body get there? Was he brought or had he crawled to hide from someone? The roof of the tunnel dripped incessantly. Any evidence marks on the ground would be spoiled. There were drag marks at the sides and at her first check she noted two sets of footprints. She felt sick and rubbed her palms down her trousers. They were destroying a crime scene.
‘Sholto. We need to go back the way we came and phone the police. There’s no way the story of a cancelled wedding will . . .’
‘I can’t leave him.’ He sobbed, ‘How could anyone do this? He broke down again. ‘Go. I’m not leaving him.’
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’
He didn’t answer so she edged her way back, shuffling as quickly as she could along the passage. By the time she scrambled up the stepladder and into the loo she was filthy and retching. She splashed her face with cold water and washed her hands before making a call to Mac.
‘Hi, I’m with Auchenban. I think we’ve found David.’
‘You just think or you have?’
‘By Auchenban’s reaction it had to be David. But he didn’t say.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘No, I should have said we’ve found a body.’
‘Where?’
She sighed. ‘This is going to sound mad but hear me out. Sholto and I were escaping from the press down an ancient old passageway. I could smell something bad a long way before we reached him but I thought it might have been an animal. It’s definitely a crime scene. The exit to the passage comes out near the fishing hut. Do you have any idea where that is?’
‘Yes, I’m just phoning it in. Give me a minute.’
She could hear him talking to someone then he said to her, ‘Why the need to escape?’
‘He’s called off the wedding and the press got hold of it.’
‘Quiet news day or what?’
‘Exactly what I said. I mean who actually gives a?’
‘Well someone does, otherwise David would still be alive.’
She kneaded her biceps then blew out a breath. ‘I’m going to go back to see Sholto. He’s distraught. And why wouldn’t he be.’
‘There’s a team on their way from Stirling. I’ll be up in forty minutes.’
She heard the sound of his Audi starting up and him wrestling to fix his phone into its cradle.
‘Right. That’s me on the road. If we’re lucky we’ll get DCI Coulson. She’s totally on the money. You know the form, try and keep him from spoiling any evidence. See ya.’
He cut the call and she made her way back to the hatch. She was about to descend but decided to check to see if anyone else was in the house. On the back corridor she found the kitchen where the back door was ajar. She walked toward it but a woman bustled in, red-faced and swearing under her breath.
She started when she spotted Viv. ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘I’m a friend of Lord Auchenban. I need you to . . .’
‘I don�
�t take orders from anyone but Auchenban so save yer breath.’
‘There’s been an incident and the police are on their way.’
The woman paled. ‘Is he all right?’
The words were hardly out when a bell in the corner of the kitchen rang.
‘Is that the front door?’
The woman nodded. ‘I’ll get it.’
Viv followed her along the corridor and into the front hallway. The light from glass panels on either side of the door was shaded by dark uniforms. The woman glanced back at Viv. ‘What kind of incident?’
Viv shook her head. ‘Let’s just open the door shall we?’
A familiar fair-haired woman in a neat navy suit stood on the flagstone porch surrounded by uniforms. She flashed her badge. ‘DCI Coulson.’ Viv knew her from another incident that she and Mac were drawn into a few months back at Port of Menteith. Viv stepped forward and put her hand out.
‘Viv Fraser.’ They shook hands.
The DCI said, ‘Yes, Dr Fraser, we’ve met.’
Viv nodded. ‘That was before you had promotion. Congratulations by the way.’ She gestured. ‘It’s this way.’ She strode off toward the loo and the hatch.
As they walked Coulson said, ‘How come you are here?’
‘I was doing some research in the family archive.’
Coulson drew herself up and said, ‘I’m sorry about Sal.’
Viv flinched. ‘Thank you. How did you know her?’
‘She was always really helpful to us. Central doesn’t get the same resources as the big urban centres. Always enthusiastic to get a call and give us her thoughts. So many times when we couldn’t afford to pay for a profiler she just did the work and never asked for payment. She was good at her job. We had the odd pint together.’ The woman’s voice cracked and she swallowed. Obviously upset and upset at being upset.
