The unforgiven dead, p.36
The Unforgiven Dead, page 36
“No,” Kelbie muttered. “Death isn’t the end. Death is the centre of a long life, merely a passing between realms, part of a cycle of life, death, and rebirth. We believe the soul is immortal and treat life as sacred.”
“Even when you’re taking it?”
Kelbie’s eyes blazed with an incandescent fury. “Yes!” she yelled, spittle flying from her lips. “Even when we’re taking it!”
Her outburst shocked everyone, even Crowley, into silence. Angus glanced at Nadia, but her eyes were glued to the monitor. McKeown leaned across and whispered urgently in Kelbie’s ear. He turned to Crowley and cleared his throat. “My, err, client, would like to clarify that her previous comment was not an admission of guilt—”
“Sounded like one to me,” Crowley said mildly.
“Well, it wasn’t!” Kelbie hissed. “I didn’t kill Faye or Eleanor, so—”
McKeown slapped a hand down on her forearm. The fire in Kelbie’s eyes flickered, then went out. The braids again fell across her face. This time she didn’t brush them back. Nor did she say another word.
Chapter 55
Mrs MacCrimmon glowered at the search teams traipsing through Dunbirlinn’s draughty halls and recesses, her mouth an angry slash, powdered cheeks tinged pink.
“Is this really necessary, Angus?” she asked. “I’ve worked here for over forty years. I know every inch of this castle, and there are no secret exits or entrances.”
They were standing in a tight stone corridor with arched windows that connected the north watchtower to the chapel, with its vaulted ceiling and fluted pillars. A couple of SOCOs in Tyvek suits squeezed past them, one pushing a device that looked like a cross between a lawn mower and a fancy golf trolley. “’Scuse me, coming through—”
Angus and Mrs. MacCrimmon flattened themselves against the wall. “What in the name of the wee man is that?” the housekeeper asked.
“Ground penetrating radar,” he said. “It can be used to identify underground tunnels—”
“Of which there are none—”
“Then how did Eleanor leave the castle without being picked up by CCTV?”
“Perhaps someone . . . fiddled with the tapes.”
Nadia suddenly appeared behind him. “We have considered that, Mrs. MacCrimmon. Our experts have examined the tapes and found no evidence of . . . fiddling.”
Mrs MacCrimmon stuck her nose in the air. “Well, I’m still not happy with this. . . .” She wafted a hand in the air. “Not happy at all.”
“We’ll be out of your hair before you know it, Mary,” Angus said.
Mrs MacCrimmon fixed him with a watery stare. “Och! Fine then.” She turned on her heel and clopped away.
“Do you think she has something to hide?” Nadia asked.
“Mrs MacCrimmon? She’s protective of her territory. This place must feel more like her home than Chichester’s. She’s lived here most of her life.”
“She hated Eleanor,” Nadia said.
“Everyone hates their boss.” He thought of Stout hounding him about the Knicker Snatcher. “I know I do.”
They turned and followed the search team towards the chapel. “I don’t hate Crowley,” Nadia said. “Although sometimes I’d gladly wring his neck.” They scuffed down a small set of steps, the stone in the centre of the blocks worn down by the hundreds of feet that had passed this way over the centuries.
Angus watched as the technician slowly trundled his golf-trolley-cum-lawn-mower down one side of the chapel. Small recesses were carved into the wall every couple of meters, and would probably at one time have held religious statues. Now, however, the alcoves were empty. In fact, the chapel contained very little Christian iconography. A large reredos behind the plain altar appeared to have been intentionally defaced, the stone carvings on the screen hacked off.
Angus placed a hand on the altar. It was carved from one great block of stone, almost as if from the very rock on which the castle sat. He walked slowly around it, fingers tracing the edge of the cold slab. Angus saw the technician with the GPR machine out of the corner of his eye. He’d reached the end wall and was wheeling the machine towards the reredos, whistling tunelessly. He paused a few feet away, in front of the reredos, and stared down at the screen on his GPR machine. “Hold up! Think I’ve got something here!”
His voice echoed around the chapel. A couple of other techies in white Tyvek suits appeared from behind pillars and rustled towards them. Angus was closer, but when he peered down at the grid screen, he saw nothing but a series of wavy coloured lines that meant absolutely nothing to him. “’Scuse me,” one of the techies said, elbowing him aside. “What have you got, Ken?”
“See the lighter section,” he said, jabbing a finger at the screen. “That’s an anomaly, right?”
The other techie squinted at the screen, then turned to Nadia and Angus. “There’s definitely something down there. Could be a burial, like a tomb or a vault or something. It’s too big for an air pocket.”
“Or a tunnel?” Nadia asked.
“Could be. Can’t be sure yet. We’ll need to go over this whole area.”
“Right, we’ll get out of your way.”
“Probably a false alarm,” she said as they walked away. “I worked a missing gangster case a few years back. We got intel that he’d been executed by a rival and buried in some waste ground in Clydebank. We went over every inch of the place with the GPR. Turned up old sewers, a mine shaft, dead animals, even an unexploded bomb from the Blitz.”
“No dead gangster, though?”
“Nah. The intel was bogus. The gangster was in the Costa del Sol, working on his tan.”
While Nadia made a phone call to Crowley, Angus slipped outside Dunbirlinn for some fresh air and found himself wandering towards the stables. He went inside and leaned against Bessie’s stall. The white horse ambled over and let him stroke her muzzle.
“She likes you,” came a voice from the shadows.
Angus gave a slight start. Faye sat on a hay bale in the corner of the stall, watching him and Bessie with sad eyes.
“So what is it, Gus? Are we chasing a who or a what? You don’t mind me asking, do you? I’m rather curious . . . you know, as the blood sacrifice.”
“I don’t know.”
She appeared to accept his answer.
She stood and walked across to Bessie. The horse seemed to shudder when Faye stroked her flank. “I can’t feel her,” she said. “But I think she knows I’m here.”
Angus swallowed the lump in his throat. “Aye, she knows.”
He stared into Faye’s vacant pale green eyes. “I never thanked you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For saving my life.”
“Maybe that’s all I was here for.” She gave him a faint, watery smile, and then was gone.
Angus stood there for a long minute, his hand caressing Bessie’s warm neck. The sound of his mobile phone ringing shattered the silence. He slid the phone from his pocket and answered. “Angus, you’d better get back here,” Nadia said. “They’ve found something.”
He clattered down the steps and into the chapel, which had been transformed into a hive of activity. Nadia spotted him and gave a brief wave.
“You’ve got to see this.” She grinned, gesturing him over to her.
He edged past a cluster of portable crime scene lamps, which had been arranged around the altar, their beams pointed at the reredos on the back wall. The carved ornamental screen sat at an odd angle, and only when he got closer did he see why. A large panel of the screen actually swung outwards, and behind it was a small arched doorway.
“This is a false wall,” Nadia said, tapping the brickwork. “Take a look.”
Angus stuck his head through the arched doorway, breathed in the damp, musty air. Another lamp had been set up in here, illuminating a narrow room. He stooped inside, half-expecting to see a woman’s skeleton, straggly hair still attached to her scalp. The room, though, was empty. But a gaping hole in the floor revealed the first few steps of a rough staircase winding down into darkness.
Angus’s heart fluttered in his chest. A rank-smelling breeze came from the mouth of the hole.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Nadia said, shuffling into the room beside him.
He worked some saliva into his parched mouth. “Where do the stairs lead?”
“No one’s been down. The SOCOs want a safety assessment before anyone ventures any farther.”
Angus pulled a flashlight from his jacket. “Bugger that.”
Nadia grabbed his sleeve. “Angus, wait. What if the whole thing collapses?”
“Clearly, whoever abducted Eleanor entered this way. It can’t be that dangerous.”
He flicked on the torch and set foot on the top step.
“Famous last words,” Nadia mumbled, but he sensed her at his back as he began his descent.
Her voice was swallowed by the walls. Angus kept his torch pointed at the stairs as he crept downwards. The staircase seemed to twist like the body of a snake. The beam revealed a long tunnel, apparently hacked out of the rock, supported every few meters by rotting timber.
He set off again, gripping the torch tight in his right hand. From the darkness came the sound of tiny scurrying feet.
“What the hell’s that?” Nadia hissed.
“Mice probably.”
Was Eleanor already dead when the killer carried his blood sacrifice through here? he wondered. No, that final act would have taken place at the clootie tree.
They walked on in tense silence, for what seemed like several hundred yards, although it could have been more. Suddenly the torch beam fell on another staircase. Angus quickened his pace, practically bounding up the stone steps. But when he reached the top landing, he was met with a dead end. “No, no,” he muttered, “there must be some way out.” He scanned the space with the torch, the beam falling on a dark patch on the flagstone by his feet. He crouched and rubbed it with his fingertips. “Blood,” he said. “Whoever took Eleanor must have laid her down here.” He handed the torch to Nadia. “Here, take this. Shine it on the wall.” He stepped forward and worked his fingers along the section of wall where the stone met the ceiling, then down the side. Halfway down he felt something, like a metal lever. He squeezed it and to his amazement the wall began to move.
He jumped back, colliding with Nadia. “Bloody hell!” he gasped.
With a sound like grinding bone, the wall slid to the side. Nadia grabbed a fist of his jacket, and together they edged out, not into light, but a murky darkness, a twilight zone. “Angus, where are we?” Nadia asked in the voice of a frightened child.
“I’m . . . not sure,” he croaked. His mind flashed back to Gills’s tales of caves that led to the underworld. He tried to dismiss the thought, but it lodged, like a stone in his shoe. Nadia scanned the space with the torch. The beam fell on shadowy recesses, long shelves cut into the walls. Some contained crumbling tombs; others, stone effigies almost worn smooth by time.
And suddenly Angus knew where they were. “There’s a graveyard in the woods not far from Dunbirlinn. It’s where my mum is buried,” he murmured. “The chiefs of clan MacRuari are interred there too.” He ran his hand along one of the stone effigies. “We’re in their crypt.”
Angus crouched by his mother’s grave and howked out a couple of dandelions growing by the headstone. The forensic operation around the MacRuari mausoleum was in full swing, but he was hidden by the ancient yew tree’s twisted limbs and dense prickly leaves. It felt good to be out in the clean, fresh air after the suffocating dank of the tunnel and crypt. He stood and stuffed his hands into his pockets. In his head, he heard the words of both Gills and Annie Kelbie.
Close your eyes and see, Angus. Before it’s too late, close your eyes and see.
He did exactly that, squeezing his eyes tight. As expected, he was met with only darkness. His gift—his curse—didn’t work like that. If he hadn’t seen who killed his mother back then, he wouldn’t see them now. He spun around and found Nadia standing a few feet away, watching him.
“Sorry,” she said, “didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” Her eyes flicked to the headstone. He watched the frown creep across her face, followed by the dawning realization. “Is that—”
“Aye.”
“You never spoke about her, back in college.”
“No.”
“Do you mind if I ask what happened?”
“She was murdered.”
Nadia’s mouth fell open. She stepped forward as if about to hug him, but something in his eyes must have stopped her. “Oh, Angus, I’m sorry. I . . . I never knew.”
He sniffed, felt the tears nipping at his eyes. Sympathy was always the most difficult emotion to deal with. “S’okay,” he replied. “Long time ago.”
“Did they, you know, ever catch anyone?”
He ground his teeth, shaking his head. He was grateful that Nadia did not probe any further. She knew what it was like, of course. The case of the River Angel was still unsolved all these years later.
They turned and walked back towards the MacRuari crypt.
“This changes everything, of course,” Nadia said. “The killer has to be someone with an intimate knowledge of Dunbirlinn.”
Angus understood what she was saying. “James Chichester?”
“We have to consider him a suspect now, Angus.”
He nodded, but the possibility that Chichester, a man he’d grown to like and respect, could murder his wife and daughter was almost too perverse, too vile to contemplate.
“MacVannin used to work at Dunbirlinn as an odd-job man. He could have stumbled upon the tunnel?”
Nadia pursed her lips. “It’s possible. There’s also a scenario where the killer is someone we haven’t even considered yet. Either way, unless the killer swiped Eleanor’s hair for the clay corpse from her hairdresser, they must have had access to the castle. That way they could collect it from, say, her hairbrush.”
“Aye, makes sense,” he said. “The castle’s undergone a fair amount of renovation over the years. A workman could have discovered the tunnel by chance, or a housemaid or a cleaner.”
“Mrs MacCrimmon seems the fastidious type,” he mused.
“Aye, she does,” Nadia said, flashing him a quick smile.
“I bet she keeps records of anyone ever employed on the estate.”
“Let’s go and ask her,” she said.
Chapter 56
Ash found Granny Beag up a ladder, wearing an ancient green parka, trainers, and neon-pink rubber gloves.
“Granny, what on earth are you doing!” Ash exclaimed.
The old woman gave her a brief scowl, then reached forward and scooped a handful of dead leaves from the guttering. She dropped the soggy brown ball onto the ground, forcing Ash to take a step back. “I’d have thought that obvious, Ashleigh.”
“Don’t come crying to me if you fall and break your hip again.”
Granny Beag tutted and scraped another wad of dead leaves into her rubber-gloved hand.
“Couldn’t you at least have waited until the snow thawed?”
“Wheesht your whining. I’m done now anyway.”
Ash held the ladder steady as Granny Beag climbed down.
“So tell me, how’s the wee lassie getting on with my old clarsach?”
“Good,” Ash said. “Actually, I’m heading to Kintail House now. Just thought I’d pop in and see how you were.” Her face clouded over. “You’ll have heard there’s been another murder?”
Granny Beag yanked off the rubber gloves, then gave a deep sigh. “Aye, I heard.”
Suddenly she pulled Ash into a surprisingly tight hug. Ash smelt the mustiness of dead leaves mixed with lavender soap, and felt a catch in her throat. Granny Beag held her for a few seconds, then released her. Her face set into a frown. “You look like you’ve been crying, a luaidh?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
Granny Beag stared at her for a long second. “Have you time for a cup of tea?”
“Aye.”
Granny Beag shuffled inside the house and skooshed some water in the kettle. “Have you thought about what I said, Ashleigh? About being a candidate at the local elections?”
“Ach, no! Not this again.”
Granny Beag pointed to a pile of papers on the kitchen table. “I printed you a nomination form. All you have to do is fill it in and get it witnessed.”
“You don’t give up, do you?”
“I am persistent.”
“Stubborn, more like.”
Granny Beag clicked on the kettle and turned to face her. “You’re a great public speaker, love. And you’ve a way with folk. . . . They listen to you.”
Ash lifted the form and flicked through the sections. “I don’t respond to flattery, you know that.” She folded the form in half and stuck it into her pocket. “But I’ll think about it. As long as you promise not to go climbing any more ladders.”
Granny Beag cracked a wide grin. “Deal.”
A snowman lurked on the lawn in front of Kintail House. It seemed to stare at Ash with eyes of coal as she walked towards the entrance. Smaller lumps had been used for the mouth, arcing upwards in a black smirk. Together with the bent carrot nose and misshapen head, the snowman was a dead ringer for Reverend MacVannin. Ash glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then gave the snowman the middle finger. “Spin on it, you dirty old sod,” she muttered.
Her heart rate was higher than normal as she jogged up the steps and into Kintail House. She couldn’t be sure why. Having been a runner since her late teens, she was particularly sensitive to changes in her body’s rhythm. Perhaps she was coming down with a cold?
