The unforgiven dead, p.12
The Unforgiven Dead, page 12
Angus closed his eyes and muttered a silent curse.
“Give me five minutes.”
He hung up and stared longingly at the glass of whisky. Then he grabbed the keys for the police Land Rover and went out into the snow.
An impromptu ceilidh was in full swing when Angus flung open the doors of the Glenruig Inn. Iain MacFarlane sat in the corner like a giant oak tree, his fiddle sprouting from the crook of his neck like a bough. The instrument was tuned to perfection, and no matter how drunk the big man got, he could carry a tune. At the Games in August, Angus had seen him knocked to the ground by a couple of overzealous dancers, but Iain hadn’t missed a beat.
Next to Iain was a young accordion prodigy, whose name escaped him, and old Cally Swein, who was rarely seen without his uilleann bagpipes. With difficulty, Angus skirted around a knot of dancers, nodding to the odd familiar face, and almost collided with Grant Abbott coming out of the gents.
“How’s form, Gus?” the fisherman slurred. “Will you take a dram with us—we’re wetting the baby’s head.” He gestured over to a group of lads sitting at a table next to the musicians.
“Sorry, Grant, I’m here to take Ewan home. But congratulations. A girl, eh?”
“Aye, she’s a wee smasher.” He grinned, eyes glassy with pride.
Over Grant’s shoulder, a big bearded man with wild dark locks and muttonchop sideburns looked up from pouring a pint of IPA. Sandy Robertson caught Angus’s eye and gestured with a thrust of his chin towards the rear of the pub.
Angus clapped Grant on the shoulder. “Have a good night, mate. I’ll hold ye to that drink.”
Grant gave something approaching a thumbs-up and sashayed back to his seat, fist pumping in the air in time to the music. A half-smile on his face, Angus slalomed through groups of red-faced drinkers. He found Ewan sprawled over a small table in the corner of the pub, surrounded by empty whisky glasses, loose change, and crumpled Scampi Fries packets. The ghillie sat with his head drooped, wide shoulders shaking as he mewled into his dram. At first Angus thought he was crying, but then he recognised a few words from a rowdy song they used to sing on the shinty bus after a victory. Ewan had been the star player back then, strong and fleet-footed with a deadly strike—a shy boy who came alive on the shinty pitch. He could hardly believe the drunken, slabbering mess in front of him was the same person.
He leaned across the table and placed an arm on Ewan’s shoulder. “Time to go home, a’bhalach.”
Ewan glanced up at him with bleary, bloodshot eyes. It took him several seconds to focus. “Wha-tha-fu-d’you-wan?”
He walked around the table and pulled Ewan to his feet. “Come on, time to go, pal.”
Ewan shoved him away. “Ge-the-fu-off-me!” he roared. The music was loud, so only those nearest heard Ewan shout. Out of the corner of his eye, Angus saw them nudge each other and turn, hoping for a fight.
“Easy,” Angus said, raising his hands. “Let’s not make a scene, eh?”
Ewan, though, looked past caring. He stumbled forwards, fists clenched, eyes blazing. The ghillie snarled something incomprehensible and swung a right hook. He leaned backwards and the fist whistled inches past Angus’s nose. Ewan pitched forward, his momentum sending him sprawling to the floor. There he lay, groaning.
“Okay, show’s over,” Sandy said, emerging from behind the bar. The drinkers returned their attention to their pints.
With the bar owner’s help, he hauled Ewan upright and, like a fallen comrade on the battlefield, dragged him out through the emergency exit. “Sorry about this, Sandy,” he grunted as they levered the ghillie into the back of the Land Rover.
“That’s the third time in as many months, Gus.” Despite his size, Sandy’s voice was soft. “I should bar him, but”—he shrugged—“I feel sorry for the lad.”
“Aye, me too. I’ll speak to him. When he sobers up.”
The publican clapped him on the shoulder. “Good luck with that.”
Five minutes later Angus brought the car to a halt outside Ewan’s cottage. The ghillie had been garbling on the drive, something about the depth of Scotland’s lochs. He left him there and opened the door to the house, wrinkling his nose at the smell from inside, like a post-match shinty changing room, only worse.
He returned to the car and half-carried, half-dragged Ewan into the cottage. The ghillie grumbled and cursed, giving him a rancid blast of alcohol-laden breath as he barged into the bedroom. He grunted with effort as he swung Ewan around and tipped him onto the unmade single bed. He tugged off his muddy boots and let them fall to the floor. Ewan curled up into the foetal position. His stomach clenched as he recalled Faye lying in the exact same pose on the beach. As if the killer had been returning her to the womb.
He bent down and yanked the duvet over Ewan’s sleeping form. As he did so, his eye fell on a cluster of photographs pinned to the wall next to the bed. One featured a younger Ewan standing beside his father with a fly rod in his hand. On the grass in front of them lay a large silver salmon, a fine cock fish with a hooked jaw. John Hunter had his arm around his son’s shoulders and was smiling proudly.
The rest of the photographs—about fifteen or twenty—were pictures of Faye Chichester. Some were posed, Faye grinning or making silly faces at the camera, but others had captured her in unguarded moments—reading by a river, staring out across the sea, reclining on a rowing boat with the sun on her face. He plucked one photograph from the wall. It showed Faye in the stables at Dunbirlinn, brushing Bessie’s mane. A slash of sunlight cut across the shot, illuminating both girl and horse. The angle of the shot suggested Ewan must have taken it from a hiding place. Angus glanced down at the sleeping ghillie and remembered the young man he used to take for chips in Silvaig after shinty training.
“Ach, Ewan . . .” he whispered.
The fire in the snug room was still smouldering when he got back home, faint red embers glowing from the hearth like devil eyes. He threw on some kindling, then lifted the glass of Talisker he’d poured earlier. Small flames began to lick along the kindling, a dog tonguing a bone. Soon the wood was well alight and he was able to place on a couple of beech logs.
He stood, drinking his whisky as the fire spat and crackled, trying to avoid the inevitable. Finally he placed his glass down and walked into the hall. The shoebox was shoved to the back of the airing cupboard, concealed behind old clothes and miscellaneous junk—rarely played board games, an inflatable mattress, a box of plugs and cables that were probably broken or obsolete.
He pulled out the shoebox and carried it back through to the sitting room. He placed the box on a coffee table, fetched his whisky from the fireplace, and slumped onto the couch. There he sat, staring at the shoebox. He’d made running repairs to it over the years but noticed the Sellotape at the corners was coming loose, peeling away, a snake slewing its skin. He could have easily found a newer shoebox: every time Ash visited Inverness, she came back with a new pair of shoes. To do so, though, would have been a tacit acknowledgement that this—what he was about to do now—was going to continue, that he would never be able to move on.
He sat forward and reached for the lid of the box, paused.
Put it back. Better yet, throw the fucking box in the fire!
He glanced at the blooms of orange curling around the logs. He imagined the whoosh as the shoebox ignited.
He flipped the box open—quickly, like pulling an Elastoplast off a cut knee. The newsprint was yellowing. Decomposing. Like them. Familiar images and headlines swam in front of his eyes.
“Mum Slain.”
“Boy Drowned.”
“Fire Tragedy.”
“Community in Mourning.”
He jammed the lid back on the box, as if afraid whatever was in there might jump out and attack him. He reached for his glass of whisky and took a gulp. He wasn’t ready for this, not yet. He took another gulp, draining the glass. The whisky made his head spin, but rather than cloud his senses, he was suddenly back there, standing in the puddle as rain hammered off the roof of his mum’s old Renault Scenic. He could feel cold water seep through his school shoes; he could hear the animal panting as the car shook. Why were the windows steamed up? He flinched as a hand slapped onto the rear window.
Angus dug his fingernails into his palms, but the pain could not banish the images in his head. He was back there, his sodden school uniform clinging to his body, water seeping into his polished shoes. His teeth chittered as the hand squeaked down the window, clearing a patch in the condensation. Peering out from the car, as if trapped under a sheet of ice, he saw his mother’s face.
Act II
“Our pagan ancestors, as Highland folktales show, lived in a world controlled by great and fearsome monsters, who were ever seeking to work evil against mankind.”
—“A Highland Goddess,”
Donald A. Mackenzie, 1912
Chapter 17
Angus was familiar with Silvaig General Hospital. Too familiar. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d loitered in the wards or paced up and down the insipid mint-coloured waiting room. He was less familiar with the mortuary around the back of A&E, but only just. Whilst the rest of Silvaig General had benefited from a multimillion-pound investment a decade ago, the mortuary hadn’t changed. It remained the same squat Victorian building with crow-stepped gables, tucked out of sight around the back of the hospital like a dirty secret. The last time he had visited was about nine months ago. A climber had fallen almost a thousand feet from the Cuillin ridge on Skye. The aftermath was not a pretty sight.
He thought of the girl lying in the adjoining room and his stomach spasmed. By rights she should be out riding Bessie or painting or smoking weed like any normal teenage girl.
Nadia handed him a pair of scrubs. He garbled a thanks and bent over to tug them on, the rustle of the material like a cracked voice that only he could hear, the same phrase, repeating over and over. He saw himself as a boy, sitting against the wall of his bedroom, thin arms around his knees, pulling them to his chest. His eyes stung, and his throat was raw and gritty as he muttered to himself.
It’s not fair! It’s not fair! It’s not fair! It’s not—
He felt someone shaking his shoulder. He was jolted back to the present, and found Nadia frowning at him. “Are you okay?” she asked, concern in her voice. “You’re looking a wee bit peely-wally.”
He choked down the gravel in his throat. “Can’t stand autopsies.”
Nadia squeezed his shoulder, then let her hand drop. “Me neither. I think that’s why Crowley sent me. Ruthven’s an old-school face-your-fears kinda guy. He sees himself as my mentor.”
“But you don’t?”
She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Crowley’s a machine. The job’s his life, but if he weren’t catching killers, he’d probably be one himself.” She zipped up her white scrubs. “I don’t want to end up like him.”
“You won’t.”
“The signs are there. . . .”
“What signs?” He frowned.
She shook her head and refused to meet his eyes. “The usual: pushing folk away, drinking too much, obsessing on certain unsolved cases—”
He understood that, knew, too, the case she alluded to—a little girl murdered and dumped in the River Clyde. The River Angel. Nadia had found her body.
“Has anyone . . .”
She shook her head.
“You’ll keep going, though?”
“Aye. Always.” She placed a hand on his shoulder for balance as she slipped on a protective bootie. Her touch took him back to Tulliallan, her hand on his shoulder as she put on her black high heels for a night out in Stirling. He saw her straighten up and ask him to zip up her dress. He remembered the smooth tanned skin of her back, the fruity scent of her shampoo as he feathered her neck with kisses. The memory was fleeting and stung like a nettle.
She frowned at him, then pulled out a small tub of Vicks. He scooped out a pea-sized amount of the claggy menthol ointment and rubbed it on his upper lip. She tied her dark hair back using a bobble, then pushed open the double doors that led to the postmortem suite.
Angus closed his eyes for a second. He tried to convince himself that the girl lying on the slab next door was not Faye. It was a body, nothing more. Flesh and bone. His mind, though, could not make that leap. He’d tried to numb his senses with the pills, but they hadn’t worked.
Steeling himself, he followed Nadia into the PM suite, a sinister windowless room of grubby wall tiles and flaking paint reminiscent of a public lavatory. Victorian-era porcelain sinks jutted from the wall like broken teeth. The stained tiled floor sloped gently to a drain in the centre of the room.
Dr Orla Kelly looked up from a trolley of surgical instruments she was busy arranging. “Angus, not you again.”
“Hi, Orla,” he croaked.
She cocked an eyebrow in question.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, “this is DI Nadia Sharif from the MIT. Nadia, this is Dr. Orla Kelly.”
“Pleased to meet you, DI Sharif.”
The two women briefly shook hands.
“Likewise, but call me Nadia.”
Orla gestured for them to approach the gurney. Angus took a deep breath, then wished he hadn’t—despite the Vicks, the room still stank of formaldehyde and raw meat. He fought a wave of nausea as Orla peeled away the sheet that lay over Faye’s body. The girl’s clothes had been sheared away. She lay naked on the slab, eyes closed, hair a golden halo around her head. Her skin shone like alabaster under the harsh glare of the mortuary striplight. Red welts around her wrists marked where the rope had been tied. The garrotte had also been removed, but it had left its mark in a livid slash around the throat.
As he stared at her pallid body, he sensed a presence beside him, and saw a flash of blond hair out of the corner of his eye. Faye was standing next to him. She stared at her body on the slab with dull, washed-out eyes. Her look of utter desolation stripped him bare. Her hand dangled loose by her side. He let his fingers brush against her cold skin. Slowly, she took his hand in her own frigid grip.
“Okay, initial observations,” Orla said, going into professional mode. “The victim suffered three blows to the head. We have two fractures on the crown accompanied by adjoining scalp lacerations, each with swollen wound margins, which indicate the victim was alive at the time. The sharpness of the wound edges suggest a heavy weapon such as an axe was used. However, although severe, these blows would not have been fatal. Likely, the victim would have lapsed into unconsciousness.”
He felt Faye’s cold grip tighten. His throat constricted, as if she were squeezing his throat rather than his hand. He noticed now that she wore a cornflower-blue dress, as if she’d been out for a walk on a summer’s day.
“There’s a similar laceration to the base of the skull,” Orla continued, “but the fracture looks to have been caused by a blunt weapon, perhaps the reverse, or flat, of the axe blade.”
Angus’s breathing was shallow. He clutched Faye’s hand as Orla worked her way meticulously over every inch of the body, like an archaeologist on a dig at some Neolithic settlement, scraping away the dirt and soil to reveal an ancient skeleton. Her words were warbled, as if spoken underwater.
“Right leg has been fractured below the knee—
“Narrow laceration—
“Bruising to the upper arm—”
Orla lifted a pair of tweezers from her tray of instruments. She used them to pluck something from a silver dish.
“We managed to extract this earlier. It’s a simple garrotte, about forty centimetres in length, knotted in three places. Petechial haemorrhaging tells us that this is likely what killed her. The killer must have wound it around her neck, jammed his knee into her back, and pulled. Pulled with such force, he cracked two ribs and almost severed her spinal cord along with the jugular. Wherever she died, she lost a lot of blood.”
He saw a thin trickle of blood run down Faye’s neck. The crimson thread coursed down her arm towards their interlocked hands. He tried to free himself from her grip, but it was as if they were glued together. He felt her tepid blood pool between their fingers before it dripped like tears onto the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he croaked. He immediately attempted to cover his slip with a cough.
Nadia laid her hand on his wrist. “Are you okay, Angus?”
He thumped the side of his fist against his chest.
“Sorry, I’m fine.”
“Do you want a glass of water?” Orla asked.
“Only if it has whisky in it,” he muttered.
He noticed Nadia and Orla share a fleeting glance, before the pathologist continued: “The garrotte itself is unusual, as you suspected, Angus. I knew from my initial examination it wasn’t rope or wire, so I ran some tests. Turns out it’s made from animal sinew.”
“Animal sinew?” Nadia exclaimed.
“Deer, maybe.”
The pathologist dropped the tweezers into a metal bowl, then let out a long sigh, gathering her thoughts.
“Anything else you can tell us, Dr. Kelly?” Nadia asked.
“Her hair and the top half of her clothing were wet. Fresh water, not salt water. But there was no fluid in her lungs. I think she was held underwater after she was dead. It’s overkill. Literally. Whoever did this . . . they beat her unconscious, strangled her so hard, they exsanguinated her, then drowned her once she was already dead. They killed her at least three times.”
He felt Faye relax her grip on his hand, then let go completely. His fingers flailed for her hand, as if trying to hold on to her, but when he chanced a look to his left, the girl was gone.
Chapter 18
Ash coaxed the clarsach case into her Renault Clio. The instrument was too big for the boot, so she slid it into the rear seats and strapped it in with a seat belt, as if it were a child. In a way, the clarsach was her baby, which she guessed was a pretty sad thing to admit.
