The unforgiven dead, p.24
The Unforgiven Dead, page 24
“Christ!” he muttered. “Just speak plainly, would you?”
She sat up and twisted towards him, eyes blazing. “Your heart’s not in this.”
“It’s not my heart that’s the problem,” he retorted.
“But it is, Angus. You’ve gone along with this for me, but you’ve never been fully committed.”
“Ash, we’re right in the fucking middle of IVF. How am I not committed?”
“Because I see it in your eyes every time we talk about the future.”
The sadness in her voice shamed him, as did the truth of her words. He could not meet her glare. He grasped for some comeback that would make sense, but the words became clogged in his throat. All he could do was stare at the ceiling in mute self-disgust.
“Tell me something, Angus,” Ash said, her voice cracking. “Is it just that you don’t want children—or that you don’t want them with me?”
It’s you who shouldn’t want children with me, he thought.
Angus willed the words out of his parched mouth, but they would not come. He felt as if a space were opening between them as they lay on the bed, a growing chasm that he had no idea how to bridge.
“You need to go to the spare room,” Ash said in a pitiful whisper.
Angus sat up and went to put a hand on her arm, but she flinched away.
“Go,” she said.
“Ash, wait . . .”
He reached for her again, but she slapped his hand away and whipped her head round. Her eyes shone with an incandescent anger. “Go!” she yelled. “Get the fuck out!”
He slid from the bed and stumbled from the room, the taste of bile and regret in his mouth.
Chapter 32
Ash thrust her arms back and forth like pistons as she ran along the narrow path by the sea. Waves crashed onto the rocks, sending great fountains of foamy water into the air. Last night’s argument with Angus was raw and painful. She tore at the memory of it like a wolf at a carcass. There had been a moment when she’d felt an almost overwhelming urge to strike him. She thought she’d left that rage behind at Kintail House, but evidently it was still inside her, buried deep. She had been that angry, scared girl again. Alone and confused, her trust shattered.
From the minute she set off on her run, she’d been mentally composing a new piece of music, but the notes were off-key and jumbled. A knot of fear and sadness tightened across her chest. Did Angus really want to be with her? Did she want to be with him if he couldn’t be honest with her about wanting children? Was this life she was grasping for another pipe dream, destined to be snatched away from her like everything else?
Something akin to panic rose inside her. She sucked in a lungful of cold air but couldn’t seem to take a breath. Everything was crumbling, breaking apart until she was on her own again.
No! she thought, gritting her teeth. Focus on the music, Ashleigh. That’s what Granny Beag had told her to do at Kintail House when the pain and loss threatened to overwhelm her. Let the music wash all the bad stuff away.
Ash closed her mind to the turbulent thoughts in her head and listened to the sounds all around her. The squawks of herring gulls and the staccato alarm call of a curlew segued into the pips and trills of chaffinches and blue tits as she left the shore behind and cut through the woods. Soon the path began to steepen as she reached the lower slopes of the hill. The sound of water was everywhere, not just from the stream that gurgled and spat down the mountainside. It dripped from the spiky needles of the Scots pines, squelched under the soles of her running shoes, swept across the hillside in sheets of rain that landed in rolling timpani bursts. Behind it all, the ever-present wind soughed a melancholy refrain through the naked trees.
Nature’s music soothed her. It always had. She imagined the anger and fear sweating from her pores. If life in Kintail House had taught her anything, it was to build herself anew. And music was her foundation. Granny Beag had taught her that, too.
The symphony began to take shape as she pounded up the mountainside, flushing a pair of red grouse from the heather. The birds burst into the sky in a flurry of wings, croaking their displeasure at having been disturbed. The scarlet wattle above the male’s eye looked like a splash of blood.
A memory flashed into her head: a cracked windscreen speckled with blood. Her dad slumped over the steering wheel. Water filling the car.
She throttled the memory before it could become fully formed and redoubled her efforts on the steep climb to the summit. As she neared the top, a wan dawn light permeated the mist illuminating the cairn. She checked her watch. She’d knocked almost a minute off her previous time. Just showed what a bit of anger could do. She slowed to a walk, hands clasped behind her head as she regained her breath. Her leg muscles burned, but she felt stronger now than she had when she set off. She wouldn’t allow last night’s argument to destroy five years of marriage.
Ash traced her fingers over the cairn, so solid and immutable, yet once it had just been a stone. Folk had built it—piece by piece, year after year, just as she had rebuilt herself after the Accident. The argument with Angus had shaken her foundations, but she was still standing.
Chapter 33
Angus again sat on his own in the observation room in Silvaig Police Station, eyes glued to the monitor. His back ached from sleeping on the hard sofa bed in the spare room. The argument with Ash reverberated through his head, filling him with self-loathing. She deserved so much better than him. He took a sip of vending machine coffee and winced. On-screen, Crowley sat with his arms folded, staring at Ewan, saying nothing. The ghillie was slumped on a chair in the interview suite, looking as if he hadn’t slept a wink. Nadia flicked through her phone. Hamish McKeown, the portly duty solicitor, appeared to be sleeping.
Suddenly Crowley began to talk, taking everyone by surprise. “So that wolf I was telling you about, Ewan,” he said. “That was all bullshit. I do have a mate who runs a hunting retreat in Montana, but we mainly go after bear and elk. And he’s not Native American. I made that up too. Just to add colour. You believed me, though, didn’t you, Ewan?”
The ghillie refused to meet Crowley’s eyes.
“And that stuff about my father being an ex-polis. Made that up too. In truth, I don’t even know my dad. He was a drunk who ran out on my mum when I was still in nappies. You see, Ewan, lying is an art form. I’ve learnt from the best, and you—buddy boy—are not one of the best. You’re lower leagues, the Cowdenbeath of porky pies.”
“Are you going somewhere with this, Detective?” McKeown asked without opening his eyes.
“That deer you say you shot, Ewan. We checked in the storeroom at Dunbirlinn last night, where you said it was hanging. Guess what—there was no deer.”
Ewan finally looked at Crowley, his eyes wide in panic. “Bollocks! It must be there. I hung it myself. I did!”
Crowley shook his head, as if disappointed. “The Cowdenbeath of liars.”
“I’m not lying!”
Crowley cocked an eyebrow. “The best lies contain a kernel of truth. I may not have shot a wolf between the eyes, but I am a hunter; I understand that primal instinct. You do too, don’t you?”
Ewan’s bottom lip stuck out as if he were close to tears. Angus had seen him like this as a child, on the shinty minibus when his teammates were making fun of him. Crowley reminded him of those boys now. No sympathy. No mercy.
“How do you feel, Ewan, when you have a Monarch stag in your crosshairs? Your finger poised on the trigger. The steady pump of your heartbeat. Every sense heightened.”
The ghillie shook his head, still refusing to make eye contact.
Crowley smirked. “Oh, don’t tell me! You take no pleasure in it? It’s just a job?”
“It is,” Ewan mumbled.
Crowley placed his elbows on the table and glared at Ewan. “Liar,” he said in an almost-whisper. “Killing is all about power, Ewan. That’s why we do it, you and I. In that moment, before our finger squeezes the trigger, we have the power of life or death.”
Crowley leaned back and placed his hands flat on the scored table. “Did you feel powerful when you killed Faye, Ewan?”
Ewan’s shoulders trembled. “I didn’t kill her,” he whined, tears beginning to flow. “I didn’t . . . I wouldn’t . . .”
The sound of Nadia’s mobile phone ringing cut across Ewan’s sobs. She glanced at the screen, then Crowley. Angus saw something pass between them. She stood and marched from the interview room, already tapping the phone screen.
Angus slid back on his chair, slipped out of the observation room, and clattered down a flight of stairs towards the dingy corridor that housed the interview suites, which were buried below the station. He found Nadia standing in a shadowy alcove, her mobile phone pressed to her ear. She was nodding forlornly at whatever the caller was saying. She muttered a thanks and then cut the call.
“Was that the lab?” he asked.
Before she could answer, the door to the interview room sprang open and Crowley barrelled out, looking pleased with himself. He shot Angus a frown, then turned his attention to Nadia. “So, don’t keep us in suspenders, DI Sharif.”
She shook her head. “Nae joy, sir. The blood isn’t Faye’s. It’s from a deer, like he said.”
Angus saw a flash of rage in Crowley’s eyes, a hunter denied his kill. He turned away from them and stomped down the corridor, aiming a boot at a rubbish bin on the way past. The sound reverberated around the space. “Arse biscuits!” he yelled.
Angus and Nadia shared a look. “What now?” he asked.
She sighed. “We let Ewan go. Then we go buy something sugary. Then we start again.”
DS Robert—aka Boaby—Dunbar dived on the box of sticky buns like the gannets Angus had seen yesterday at Camus Ghaoideil feasting on krill. Luckily, Nadia had had the foresight to buy three boxes from Nevis Bakery in Silvaig before they drove back to the village hall.
He lifted a Chelsea bun from the box and brought it over for Nadia. “Ta,” she said, eyes glued to the screen of her laptop. A movie was playing—Eleanor Chichester again, this time dressed in a see-through black dress, concocting some kind of potion in a cauldron.
“What’s this one called?” he asked.
“The Suffering. Could easily describe the viewers.”
“Bad?”
“Truly terrible.”
She lifted the bun and took a bite, murmuring appreciatively. A door thudded open and Crowley marched in, noticing that everyone seemed to be eating buns. He walked over to the discarded boxes and scowled. “Is that all you left me? Greedy bastards.” He picked up the last cake—a glistening strawberry tart— and crammed it into his mouth.
“Right, everyone,” he said, spraying crumbs, “gather round. I want progress reports.”
Nadia snapped her laptop shut, and Angus found an unoccupied chair facing the murder board. As the rest of the MIT crowded round, he watched Crowley polish off the tart and suck red jam from the remaining fingers of his mutilated hand.
“Now, as you’ll no doubt be aware, we’ve had to let Ewan Hunter go,” Crowley said. “He’s still very much a person of interest. Just because the blood on his clothes wasn’t Faye’s, doesn’t mean he didn’t kill her. So we keep on him. He’s a drunk—if he did it, chances are he’ll spill his guts to someone. Let’s park him for the moment. Who’s next on our hit list?”
DS Dunbar raised a hand, in which he held half a chocolate eclair. “Been going through the witness statements, sir.” He dropped his hand and looked at the eclair as if he dearly wanted to take another bite.
“And . . . ?” Crowley asked.
“And the minister’s wife is lying. Mrs. MacVannin told us her husband came home at eleven thirty on Halloween night. She remembered because a politics programme was starting on Radio Four. Only, it wasn’t. Some crap with Nick Robinson was supposed to be on, but the schedule had changed. Nick Robinson was ill, so they put on something about Britain’s finest waterways instead. Sounded quite good, actually.”
“Good work, Boaby,” Crowley said.
Dunbar acknowledged the praise by stuffing the rest of the eclair into his mouth.
“If Ruth MacVannin lied about her husband’s alibi, that suggests he was out later than he claims,” Crowley mused.
“Just a thought, sir,” Vee Lockhart said, “but MacVannin will probably own black vestments. They’d look similar to the cloak worn by the mystery guy with the antlers from the Samhain footage.”
“Aye, fair point. Maybe you can ask for a look at his vestments when you go to interview him? Hopefully he won’t take it the wrong way.”
He gave Lockhart a thin smile. “Moving on, and in light of Dr. MacMurdo’s revelations, we need to look again at the pagans. The deer sinew clearly has ritualistic overtones. Either our killer is trying to cast suspicion on the pagans, or there’s some religious mania at work here. Which reminds me.” He turned to the murder board and picked up a marker. “At the start of this case, I said there were three motives for murder: lust, lucre, and loathing. But I missed one, as Dr. MacMurdo reminded us. When religious cults and maniacs are involved, all rational thought vacates the premises.” He held up his mutilated hand and grinned. “As I know only too well.”
Angus almost winced. You had to wonder about someone who made jokes about having his fingers amputated by a serial killer. Or was humour Crowley’s coping mechanism?
The DCI daubed another heading on the whiteboard. “Sometimes this is the only explanation for murder.” He tapped his pen against the board, where he’d written in block capitals the word “LUNACY.”
“By this I don’t mean our killer is some deranged escapee from a mental institution, although—” He glanced at Boaby.
“All nutters accounted for, sir. At least those we know about.”
“Well, that’s reassuring.” Crowley gave a short cackle, the sound reminding Angus of a crow’s caw. “Right, let’s just say Faye was sacrificed to some old pagan gods as Dr. MacMurdo suggested. She was at a Samhain celebration on the night she died. Stands to reason that the killer is someone from the commune, right?”
“Seems a bit . . . obvious, and the blood wasn’t a match,” Fleet said.
“Aye, it does, Rylo,” Crowley agreed. “But if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etcetera, etcetera . . .”
He turned to the murder board and stared at the mug shots taken of the Teine Eigin residents—two rows of piercings, pleated hair, tattoos, and scowls. He tapped Chris Kelbie’s picture. “What do we know about her, other than that she’s from the Traveller community?”
“Indigenous Highland Travellers,” Fleet said. “Apparently, they’re a distinct group from your Romani Travellers and the showmen who go around the country with the funfairs. Kelbie had no formal education until she was twelve. Did a few years in Lochaber High School. Council records show she was living at a Traveller site near Spean Bridge. She left school at fifteen, though, and fell off the grid. She was known to authorities, but no criminal record.”
“Has she any family?”
“Aye, the mother’s local, although she’s no longer a Traveller. I’ve an address for her, if you want us to interview her.”
Crowley worked a crick out of his neck. “Might as well. Nadia, Angus, you take care of that, okay?”
“Yes, sir,”
The DCI turned to the suspect list. His pen hovered over the board for a second before he wrote Kelbie’s name under the “LUNACY” heading, along with a plus sign and the word “PAGANS.”
“Could they all be in on it, sir?” DC Lockhart asked. “Kelbie might be the Highland’s answer to Charles Manson.”
“Certainly possible, Vee,” Crowley replied. “I worked a cult homicide back in the States, where the ringleaders were a respectable Massachusetts couple. Abe and Carol Zimmer were the least likely cult leaders you could imagine. He was the manager of a bacon-processing plant while she was a dowdy housewife who hosted Tupperware parties. Somehow, the Zimmers convinced folks they had spoken to aliens and knew how to evolve into a higher life-form. To join, followers had to give up their worldly possessions and, eventually, shed their mortal bodies. Aliens would then resurrect them at an undefined period in the future.” Crowley chuckled. “It was batshit crazy, and at least five people were killed trying to reach alien nirvana, although it was probably more. Abe had access to an incinerator at his workplace, you see. We sifted through ash for days.”
Crowley sighed, a smile playing about his lips, as if—Angus thought—he were reliving the good old days.
“Let’s invite Christine Kelbie in for a wee chat. Any other business?”
“I’ve been trawling CCTV in Silvaig, boss,” Fleet said. “Faye was in the town on Friday afternoon, a few hours before the Samhain celebration.”
“Oh, aye? What was she doing?”
“I’ll show you.” Fleet scampered over to a PC and rattled his fingers over the keyboard. The monitor behind Crowley’s head sprang to life, displaying grainy footage of Silvaig High Street. “Here she comes,” Fleet said.
Angus watched as Faye’s slender figure walked into the shot. Her hands were buried in the pockets of a knee-length sapphire-coloured coat with a fluffy collar. She wore a tartan scarf around her neck, and her hair fell in golden waves over her shoulders.
He clenched his teeth, eyes glued to the screen. Faye strode past Hutton’s Butchers, a Ladbrokes betting shop, and Boyd’s Chemist before turning into a small doorway. “Where’s she going?” Crowley asked.
“Fancy dress shop,” Fleet replied. “The manager told me Faye was there to pick up a green cloak.” He scrolled the footage on until Faye reemerged, a mauve plastic bag with the shop logo on it held in her hand. Her face was tilted up at the camera, and there was a faint smile on her lips. However, as she continued along High Street, her expression seemed to Angus to become more sombre. Soon she was out of shot, but Fleet tapped a few keys to bring up footage from a camera positioned near the war memorial. It captured Faye walking past a Trespass store and turning down a small lane, which Angus recognised—Shaggers’ Alley.
