The unforgiven dead, p.34
The Unforgiven Dead, page 34
Nearer to the clootie tree, Nadia broke off from her conversation with Orla Kelly and tramped towards him through the snow. Her cheeks, and the tip of her nose, were flushed from the cold.
“What did Orla say?” he asked.
“Not much. Difficult to examine a body when it’s . . . where it is. Going to be a while before they get her down.”
She gave him a tight smile, then frowned at the scratches on his face. “What happened to you yesterday? I called about a hundred times.”
“Aye, sorry about that. Got tied up with a few cases.”
“Did they involve being attacked by an angry cat? Because that’s what it looks like.”
“Nah, had to chase some wee ne’er-do-well from the undergrowth.”
She nodded, losing interest in the conversation, as he’d hoped she would. “Come on, we have to go to Dunbirlinn and take a statement from James Chichester.”
“He’s been informed, though, right?”
“Aye, and he hasn’t spoken a word since.”
James Chichester sat on a fiberglass rock amidst the wildlife exhibit in Dunbirlinn’s new museum, watched by the lifeless eyes of stuffed animals. In his hands he cradled a silver object, which Angus recognised as the Fairy Horn of the MacRuaris. The glass cabinet that displayed the ancient horn yawned open. Angus’s and Nadia’s footfalls echoed around the hall as they approached. He glanced warily at the stuffed wolf, which reminded him of the animal he’d shot yesterday with Corky’s shotgun.
They stopped a few feet from the laird, and Angus cleared his throat.
“Ah, Angus Dubh,” Chichester rasped. “At last, someone I actually like.”
Angus tipped his head in sad acknowledgement. “James Glas. This is my colleague, DI Sharif. I don’t believe you’ve met.”
Chichester gave Nadia a fleeting glance. “Detective,” he said, with a slight incline of his head.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Nadia said. “I know that always sounds trite, but it’s true.”
Chichester, however, appeared not to hear her. “Our ancient ancestors believed, at the end of time, the sky and stars would collapse upon the earth, and the earth would crash into the ocean. Other historians have a different theory—that the Celts, like the Norse, believed the apocalypse comes in the form of a great wolf that devours everything: the sun, the moon, the earth, and all living things. . . .”
Gills’s prophecy echoed through his mind.
The wretched will make bargains with demons and, thus possessed—
Nonsense, son, his father’s voice nagged. Look at this man! Does he look possessed to ye?
Angus looked into Chichester’s greenish-blue eyes, but all he saw was grief and despair.
“What do you believe, DI Sharif? How does it all end?”
“I was raised a Sufi Muslim, Mr. Chichester. The Quran teaches us that life is merely an amusement and diversion; the real life is in the hereafter. Sufis still hold the traditional Islamic view of the Day of Reckoning, though, where all life will be annihilated before the resurrection, when we will be judged upon our deeds in life.”
“And if you’ve led a bad life?”
“Jahannam—Hell—awaits.”
The laird nodded slowly. “Perhaps, but if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that much in life is beyond our control.” He turned the fairy horn over in his hands, his fingertips tracing the intricate spirals. “I used to think one’s importance was directly proportional to their bank balance. Which made me very important indeed. Made me think I had my own sort of superpower, that I was special. I’d click my fingers, and people would scurry around doing my bidding. I had world leaders on speed dial. I could bring down governments. With a few choice whispers in the right ears, I could raise a man up or cast him down. There were times when I felt godlike.” His face twisted into a sneer. “And now I’m paying for that hubris.”
“We need to ask you a few questions, James. About Eleanor.”
Chichester’s cool glare slid over Angus. “Very well.”
“When did you last see your wife?”
“Yesterday evening. She was in the drawing room, passed out drunk. The same as the night before, and the night before that.”
“You left her there?” Nadia asked.
He nodded. “Draped a blanket over her and went to bed. Mrs. MacCrimmon had gone home for the night, so must have been after ten.”
“Do you have any idea why she would have gone outside after that? Could she have met someone, or gone for a walk?”
Chichester shook his head. “Impossible. Elle doesn’t walk anywhere if she can avoid it, especially not in this weather. And who would she meet at that time of night?”
“Fair point,” Angus said. “Did she have any visitors yesterday?”
He shook his head again. “She meets her girlfriends for lunch and gets a manicure at some health spa on Wednesdays. Usually returns home around five, in her best performance of sobriety.”
“Did you see her come home?”
“No, I was out with the search teams, looking for my wolves. Mrs. MacCrimmon will know more, perhaps.”
The laird, groaning, got to his feet. “Do you know the story behind this artifact, DI Sharif?” he asked, holding up the horn. “It was a gift from the fairies to my ancestor Dòmhnall MacRuari. His is the portrait hanging in the entrance lobby. Dòmhnall was a colourful character, by all accounts. Anyhow, if the horn was blown in battle, no matter the odds, the MacRuaris would emerge victorious.” He gave a bark of laughter. “Didn’t do Dòmhnall much good in the end.”
“How so?” Nadia asked.
“Dòmhnall and his men murdered the son of a rival chieftain of the MacLoughlin clan. As a reprisal, MacLoughlin launched a surprise attack on Samhain as the MacRuaris were celebrating. Those who were not butchered, including Dòmhnall and his family, escaped and hid in a cave. But MacLoughlin tracked them down. Rather than go in after them, he had a bonfire built across the mouth of the cave. MacLoughlin decided he would leave the final decision to God’s will: If the wind blew from the sea, the fire would be lit. If there was a land breeze, the people would be spared.”
Angus watched Chichester place the fairy horn back on its stand. Chichester turned and caught Angus staring at him. He gave a thin smile. “Dòmhnall was reputed to follow the old gods, hence his moniker—an Draoidh, the Druid. What do you know of druids, Angus?”
“Very little,” he lied.
“Druidism fascinates me,” Chichester said. “Their training was intense, but we have no idea of the breadth of their learning because they never wrote anything down. They fell into three classes: the druids themselves, who were philosophers, teachers, and judges; the bards, who sang the songs and stories of the tribe; and the ovates, which is a Latin word equivalent to the Irish filí, or seer.”
Angus maintained his blank face. Chichester was just a man wishing to drown himself in stories, anything to distract himself from the loss that now surrounded him on all sides.
“Long ago, those with the gift of prophecy were part of a privileged caste,” Chichester said. “They drew their lore from the natural world and the old deities, as did my ancestor, I believe. The MacLoughlins, though, were Christians. You might think a Christian god would show mercy, but no—the wind blew in from the sea and the fire was lit. Dòmhnall and most of his kin suffocated. The incident went down in legend as the Glen Màma Massacre.”
Chichester looked at his brogues, then up at Angus. “That cave, Angus Dubh, was the same one in which I took refuge.” He swung the door of the glass cabinet closed. “Magic horn, my ass,” he muttered, the end of the sentence disintegrating into a sob.
Angus gave Nadia a sidelong glance. He padded across to the laird and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find who did this, sir. I promise you.”
Chichester placed his own leathery hand on Angus’s and gave a brief squeeze. “I know you will.”
Angus let his hand drop to his side. “With your permission, we’d like to see the CCTV footage from last night.”
“Of course. Mrs. MacCrimmon will give you all the assistance you need.”
As if from nowhere, the housekeeper appeared. Angus wondered if she’d been there the whole time, listening in on the conversation.
“Follow me, please,” Mrs. MacCrimmon said.
Angus locked eyes with Chichester and gave a brief nod. The laird leaned towards him and said in a low whisper: “Know what I reckon, Angus? We’re bit-part players in an epic game as old as time. We’re nothing but pawns. And sometimes pawns are sacrificed.”
Angus was still mulling over Chichester’s cryptic comment when Mrs. MacCrimmon showed them into a narrow room that might have been a prison cell in a former life. Now it was an office, with a bank of monitors showing footage from all the cameras perched around the walls of Dunbirlinn.
“When was the last time you saw Lady Chichester?” Nadia asked the housekeeper.
“Just before ten. I poked my head into the drawing room to tell her I was done for the night.”
“Did she say anything?”
“No, she was too busy dancing by herself. I left her to it.”
“Would it be unusual for her to leave the castle at that time of night?”
“Unheard of.”
Angus listened as Nadia asked Mrs. MacCrimmon a few more questions, but his eyes were glued to the monitor in front of him. It showed footage from the courtyard played at high speed, Faye’s Merc and Eleanor’s mustard Range Rover parked side by side. Nothing much was happening until another vehicle appeared.
“Here we go,” he said to Nadia. She leaned forward, peering over his shoulder, so close that he could smell her fresh perfume. He slowed down the video as the car—a gleaming BMW—trundled to a halt. “Who’s that?” Nadia asked.
“Taxi,” Mrs. MacCrimmon replied.
“Bit fancy for a cab.”
“Diamond Cars,” the housekeeper said. “A cab firm for folk with more money than sense. Eleanor used them when she was going to drink.”
As if to prove the point, Eleanor emerged from the taxi and stumbled up the castle steps, clearly drunk.
“Five minutes past five,” he said, glancing at the time stamp on the screen.
Using a trackpad, he again sped up the footage, watching as daylight faded and security lights flicked on in the courtyard. At just after six, Chichester himself returned to the castle and trudged up the steps. Angus scrolled on, hours passing in minutes, but still no movement.
“When Eleanor left the castle, she would have to go this way, right? Nadia asked.
“There’s a servants’ door,” Mrs. MacCrimmon said, “but she’d still be on that camera walking across the courtyard.”
Angus returned to the point in the footage when Eleanor had arrived in the taxi. Then he fast-forwarded again. By the time he stopped the video, dawn was breaking in the sky above the ramparts.
They’d been through the entire night, but Eleanor had not reappeared.
Chapter 52
Cameras flashed and questions were lobbed towards Angus and Nadia as they drove past the scrum of reporters outside the village hall. Their numbers appeared to have swelled in the past couple of hours, like flies drawn to the scent of decay. Angus spotted Alice Seaton smoking a roll-up under a large sycamore tree. The local reporter didn’t look happy about the blow-ins.
Inside the incident room, the atmosphere was less febrile but more tense. There was none of the usual good-natured badinage from Crowley as he assembled the team for afternoon briefing. The DCI’s face looked pinched, his deep-set eyes like two smouldering embers as he plucked Eleanor’s photograph from the “suspect” column, and pinned her under the “victims” heading.
Angus’s mind returned to Gills’s bòrd-murt, so similar to Crowley’s in some ways, but with four additional “victims.” His eyes scanned the photographs of all the suspects the MIT had so far considered. MacVannin glared at him with his bulging eyes. A man of Christian cloth, would he really make a bargain with demons, as Gormla’s prophecy suggested?
Then there was the scowling Kelbie, her braids partially covering her eyes. The woman who believed in blood sacrifice, if the traces on the altar stone were anything to go on. When he and Nadia had spoken to Annie Kelbie, she’d hinted at a deep confusion and anger festering inside her daughter. What was it Annie had said about Chris? My daughter is up on those mountains with her sheep and goats, flailing around like a blind woman.
Perhaps it was no stretch of the imagination to see a woman like that making such a deal—by Kelbie’s own admission, she and her followers were Reconstructionists who sought to replicate ancient rituals. And what ritual could be more potent than blood sacrifice?
Ach! Wise up, would ye! his father’s voice hectored in his ear. These pagan folk may be deluded, but they’re no’ possessed. Not any more than MacVannin’s possessed by the Holy Spirit.
Nadia quickly explained about the CCTV apparently showing Eleanor returning to Dunbirlinn but not leaving again that night.
“Must be another way out,” Ryan Fleet said. “Secret tunnel or something.”
“Agreed. Otherwise, how did she end up dangling from a chain burnt to a crisp? Rylo, sort out a team. I want every inch of Dunbirlinn Castle searched. Dogs, GPR, the works.”
“Maybe we’ll finally find out if the legend’s true,” Vee said.
“What legend?” Crowley asked.
“I’ve been reading up on Dunbirlinn’s history. A certain nasty chieftain supposedly bricked up his cheating wife behind a wall. Alive. You can still hear her ghost scratching at the walls of her tomb.”
“Aye, thanks for that, Vee,” Crowley said, rubbing his temples. “This case is a horror show as it is, without the ghost stories. But speaking of horrors: Nadia, can you and Angus interview Reverend MacVannin again? We’ll see if his wife can come up with a more compelling alibi this time.”
“Nae bother,” Nadia said.
“Okay, what were Ewan Hunter’s movements last night?” Crowley asked.
Angus was about to speak up but clamped his mouth shut. Better not to leave a thread to pull on.
“Took a statement from him earlier, sir,” Vee said. “He was in A&E last night after being bitten by a dog. He was discharged around half ten, so I suppose he could have made it back and killed Eleanor, bearing in mind his cottage is not far from the crime scene. But I spoke to the doctor who treated him. He said Ewan would have trouble lifting anything heavier than a pint glass. No way he could have hauled Eleanor up that tree.”
The gruesome image of Eleanor hanging head down from the branch was seared into Angus’s brain. He saw again the pink and purple blistered skin, the yellowish rendered fat. The roots of her dyed-blond hair were grey, which suddenly reminded him of the corp creadha. Whoever had made the clay corpse had used human hair.
“Which leaves us with the pagans,” Crowley said. “It makes sense given the nature of the killing. I don’t need Dr. MacMurdo to tell me I’ll find similar accounts in the Big Book of Celtic Sacrifice. The weather’s forecast to clear later, so we can get the chopper up to the commune. But let’s get the dogs out again too. Kelbie and her lot don’t have access to a helicopter. They’d have had to get to Dunbirlinn on foot, abduct Eleanor without being picked up on CCTV, and kill her in front of this sacred tree. Then they’d have to get back to the commune. Bound to leave a trail.”
“In normal circumstances, aye,” Nadia said. “But it was snowing last night. Any footprints were covered.”
“Don’t piss on my parade, DI Sharif,” Crowley said, his spirits much restored. “Scour the forests. Scour the hills. We’ll find something. When’s the PM?”
“Orla’s going to do it for us this afternoon,” Nadia replied.
“Good of her.”
Nadia ignored the sarcasm. “She did warn not to expect much in the way of DNA evidence.”
“Okay,” Crowley said. “Anyone got anything useful to add?” His eyes flitted around the group.
He did.
Angus cleared his throat. “Sir, the hair on the clay corpse was dyed blond. I think it might have been Eleanor’s, which would mean the killer was telling us their next victim all along.”
Chapter 53
A JCB lurked like a vulture beside the rubble of John MacVannin’s church, its bucket drawn up as if ready to feast. The twisted corrugated iron roofing, shattered timber, and blocks of stone had been pushed to the side, and a space cleared for the foundations of a new church, farther away from the mountainside this time. Angus wondered if the Clach Rìoghalachd, the Royalty Stone that Gills had talked about, lay amidst the debris. Perhaps it would be reused in the new church walls. The idea appealed to him.
He climbed from the Land Rover and picked his way across the churned-up ground towards the crofthouse, Nadia not far behind. His mobile phone pinged—a text message from Inspector Stout, three words all in block capitals: KNICKER SNATCHER UPDATE. Followed by a line of question marks. Angus shoved the phone back into his pocket.
The clang of someone hammering metal sounded from the rear of the crofthouse. “Try round the back first,” Nadia said.
