by William Paul
The holiday was already bought and paid for, half and half. They were due to fly out on Saturday morning. She had changed her shift, bought a new outfit, renewed her lapsed passport. She had been looking forward to it. Recklessness told her to tell Dalglish to shove his romantic weekend. Maturity lent her objectivity and told her to keep her options open. There was plenty of time to make up with him before Saturday but she couldn’t admit that at the moment. He would be phoning her to apologize tomorrow morning. Nothing was more certain. It would be all right.
‘Unless you’ve got somebody else to take,’ she said.
‘I might have.’
‘I hope you’ll be very happy together.’
Moya almost made the mistake of bursting out laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation but her stubborn pride strangled the sound and made it into a contemptuous grunt. She wanted Dalglish to stay. She wanted to sleep with him. Her sex drive was much more demanding than his. He knew it and used it as a weapon against her. She couldn’t lose face by giving in to her hormones. She would just have to cut off her nose to spite her face. Humour faded rapidly to be replaced by anger at their mutual foolishness.
‘Are you going or not?’ she spat.
‘I’m going.’
‘Don’t slam the door. You’ll disturb the neighbours.’
‘Fuck the neighbours.’
He went out and slammed the door. The coats hanging on the back of it billowed out dramatically and settled back. Moya stared for long minutes at the spot where Dalglish had been standing. She took a bread knife from the wall rack and threw it as hard as she could. It flew end over end across the kitchen and the point stuck deep into the door, quivering furiously. That made her feel a lot better.
Chapter Seven
Wednesday, 22.43
The snake was out. Robert Ross touched the bulging s-shaped blue vein on his temple above the left eye and felt it pulse under the skin. He moved his hand and picked an irritating shred of tobacco from the corner of his mouth and rubbed it between the tough nicotine-stained skin of forefinger and thumb until it disappeared.
‘It’s not like the other islands on the loch. No, it’s different is the Isle of Maree. The trees, the air, the atmosphere. There’s something about it, something that sets it apart. You’ll see for yourself tomorrow once we get out on the water.’
Ross studied his audience as he licked the edge of the cigarette paper and fashioned a thin roll-up. There were three of them, rich bastards with heavy-jowled faces, bulging stomachs and fat wallets. Some kind of diplomats attached to the European Commission in Brussels. They were smooth bastards as well, oozing the kind of arrogant self-confidence that made it a pleasure to ensure they got their feet wet. One was Greek with an unpronounceable name, another Belgian and the third English. They had come for the sea trout fishing, at its best in September, arriving too late that evening at the Lochside Hotel to get out on the water. They were now drinking after-dinner malts and chewing on big cigars in the Ghillies’ Bar. They were big men, too big really for the small chairs at the oval tabole. They kept looking past Ross, over his shoulder and through the window at the loch where the rowing boats nuzzled at the jetty. Then their eyes would wander enviously to the big fish trophies on the walls, each privately hoping to hook at least as big a prize the next day. They kept drinking too, and buying drink for Ross. He didn’t mind. He could take as much patronizing as they could dish out.
‘I can hardly wait,’ said Ralph Barrington, the English rich bastard who was the most excitable of the trio.
Ross rubbed the black and grey stubble on his chin with the back of his hand and replaced the lid on the tobacco tin. The Rizla packet went on the lid. He kept them waiting, scratching his head under the green woollen hat studded with colourful trout flies. On the fourth attempt he flicked a flame from his cheap novelty gas lighter, just as they all leaned forward offering the use of their fancy ones. One third of the roll-up disappeared instantly with just the faintest crackle of burning paper. Ross sucked in the smoke, enjoying his role as resident Ancient Mariner in the kingdom of fishermen. Another ghillie was giving another fishing party the same treatment a few tables along. Another was sitting at the bar in a head to head with a satisfied customer who had taken a twelve-pound beauty from the loch that afternoon.
Punters liked Ross and his stories. They expected it as part of the ghillie’s job, and spinning his tall tales usually turned out to be worth a decent tip at the end of the week. From behind the bar the hotel owner, Fat Joe Hallett, winked at Ross in appreciation of another good performance.
‘There’s an ancient graveyard on the island you see and a ruined chapel.’ Ross kept his voice low, making the clients strain towards him to hear properly. ‘And in the graves there is a Viking prince and his princess. They both died young. Some say when he died in battle she killed herself so they could be buried together.’
‘Vikings?’ queried Barrington. ‘What? Vikings here?’
Ross sat back and nodded wisely. He drained his whisky glass. The Greek took the hint and motioned to Hallett to bring another round.
‘Oh yes. The Vikings sailed here from Scandinavia and occupied the islands in the loch. The local tribes couldn’t get at them. Anyway it was all a very long time ago but some say the princess was never able to rest in peace. Some say her spirit drifts sadly round the loch to this day. They say you can see her if you look closely enough, all robed in white and almost invisible in the mist. That’s what some say.’
‘And have you seen her?’ Barrington asked. His two companions looked at each other, grinned and leaned back simultaneously to blow cigar smoke at the ceiling.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. It’s hard to tell when the mist is down on the water. You see movements on the islands and it’s the deer. At least you assume it is the deer. Who knows.’
‘Deer? On the islands?’
‘That’s right. There are twenty-seven islands, each one a little pristine patch of ancient pine forest, the kind that used to cover all of the Highlands. The stags come down from the mountains in the rutting season and swim across to do their business. I’ve seen some boats almost tipped over by swimming stags. At least one has been holed by antlers in my time. They had to use their jackets to plug the leaks to give them enough time to row back to shore.’
‘You’re joking,’ Barrington said and his two companions laughed good-naturedly, leaning back to blow smoke at the ceiling.
Hallett delivered a tray of drinks. ‘Our Robert never lies,’ he said as he gathered in the empties. ‘But like most fishermen he does have a tendency to exaggerate just a little.’
Ross shrugged to demonstrate his humility. ‘Anyway, there’s no deer on the Isle of Maree. Just the Viking graves and the wishing tree.’
‘The wishing tree?’
‘A very special tree. A holly tree. You hammer a coin into it, make a wish and it comes true.’
‘I would wish to be able to see the princess,’ Barrington said.
The Belgian’s seat creaked loudly. He thumped his hand on the table. The glasses jumped and rattled. Ross snatched his up and emptied it in a single gulp to make it safe.
‘I bet everybody wishes for the biggest sea trout ever caught,’ the Belgian roared in his thick accent.
‘It’s not the wishing tree you consult if you want something like that,’ Ross said. ‘It’s me.’
‘Can you make my wish come true.’
‘I can but try. And you don’t even have to hammer coins into my flesh.’
‘No?’ The Belgian frowned. ‘What do we have to do?’
‘Pour whisky down my throat.’
The Belgian laughed and punched Barrington playfully in the shoulder. The Greek raised his arm to call for another round. Ross opened his tobacco tin but then accepted a fat cigar instead. He puffed at it and, one eye closed by the rising smoke, kept making roll-ups to pack into the tin for the next day.
He had got the taste for the drink now. He tapped the thr
obbing vein on his temple by way of casual salute. The snake was out. There was no holding it back.
Chapter Eight
Wednesday, 23.06
Silvery drops of water, illuminated by the moonlight, trailed from the blades of the oars as they dipped in and out of the calm water. The rowing boat made steady progress across the loch. Every few minutes the rower raised the oars high and looked round, holding back the fur-lined rim of an anorak hood and peering ahead over the water, checking the positions of the heavily wooded islands. Then the oars were lowered into the water for the next pull.
A couple of hundred yards away from one of the islands the head of the boat bumped against a flat rock that was barely visible on the surface of the loch. The rower stood up and jumped on to the rock, grabbing the prow and hauling it up just far enough to stop it floating freely.
Laura’s body was lying on the bottom of the boat beside the transom at the stern. The rower clambered across to collect her, lifting her dead weight easily with an arm round the shoulders and another under the knees. Laura had been carried in the same manner from the whitewashed cottage, curled up like a little child in a parent’s embrace, down to the wooden jetty to be placed in the boat.
Now the rower walked with elaborate care, high-stepping over the central seat and over the side of the boat in a strange makeshift funeral march.
On the rock platform the rower laid Laura down gently and arranged her arms and legs in a decorous sleeping position before kneeling beside her in an attitude of prayer, head bowed. Tears glistened on a face hidden in the depths of the hood. A voice broken by emotion tried to speak but the words would not come out properly formed. Instead, the rower took a small piece of paper from the anorak pocket and pushed into Laura’s hand, closing her dead fingers tightly round it.
The rower remained motionless for a few minutes looking up at the incomplete white disc of the moon before turning to the boat. It slid back easily into the water and the oars swiftly moved into rhythmic motion, pushing it away. The face of the rower hidden in the folds of the hood never once left the white bundle on the rock as it merged into the distance and the darkness. Silvery drops of water trailed from the blades of the oars, marking the line of the return journey to where another waited at the cottage by the edge of the loch.
Chapter Nine
Wednesday, 23.55
David Fyfe heard Sally coming from a long way off. He was sitting in the new conservatory at the back of their house in the Border country south of Edinburgh. He put his feet against the low table and tilted the cane chair back to look up through the roof at the three-quarter moon floating in a shifting halo of ragged cloud.
‘What’s the matter darling? Can’t sleep?’
‘I tried not to waken you when I got out of bed.’
‘Your absence wakened me.’
‘Sorry.’
‘What are you looking at?’
‘The moon.’
He was inexplicably restless and unable to sleep. His brain wouldn’t turn off. Thoughts raced around in it at random in a form of mental hyperventilation. He kept thinking he was about to shape his thoughts into something significant when meaning eluded him entirely. It was like driving into a snowstorm. The oncoming snowflakes came hurtling towards the windscreen but flew on past at the last instant, and you just kept on driving through this endless, formless tunnel.
Before Sally had come down to join him he had been staring obsessively at the garden shed. It was an ordinary wooden shed with a cracked side-window and planks of wood beginning to rot at the bottom. But inside it was stored his ill-gotten gains from the Angela Simpson episode. His old flame Angela, whom he had let walk away from a murder charge while helping himself to half her cash as a reward. Three hundred and sixty-eight thousand pounds was stuffed into old biscuit tins which were hidden in a specially dug hole under the floorboards. Not a soul suspected that he, a respected detective chief inspector of police, was a common thief. His past record made interesting reading. But what worried Fyfe most was that it didn’t worry him at all.
He had intended the shed to act as a temporary hiding place while he set up various bank and building society accounts to take it but in the end he had decided just to leave it there. He didn’t want anything written down, no records of accounts and balances. He didn’t want anyone else to know of its existence. It made him a man of independent means, wonderfully solvent, with the conservatory, all-round double glazing, a Volvo estate in hideous metallic purple and a telephone credit account with Ladbrokes to show for it. He had yet to make a significant dent in the cash.
A very faint impression of guilt about his actions was imprinted on his mind like an after-image on a retina. Sally didn’t know about the money. He hadn’t told her about Angela either. She might understand one but not the other. She thought the conservatory was being paid for by instalments. She thought the purple Volvo with its fancy mobile phone belonged to the police force. Well, no one would voluntarily buy a car that horrible colour, would they? It was his only obvious indulgence. Otherwise he was happy to live frugally and take out his biscuit boxes from time to time to gloat miser-like over the thick sheafs of bank notes. It was tremendously liberating to be independently wealthy.
‘What are you thinking?’ Sally asked.
‘I’m trying not to.’
Sally sat down beside him and let her hand rest on his leg. He looked right through the pair of them reflected in the glass of the roof and thought how Sally had been an ever-present in his life. They had been at school together, married young, become parents before they knew where they were. Then over the years they had drifted apart, had affairs, got divorced, and finally come together again as much friends as lovers. They had come full circle except that, since they weren’t dead yet, the lines were presumably still being drawn.
Sally was totally recovered from her long drawn-out bout of depression and had got her old job back teaching Russian at the university. It was him that was depressed now, but they were sleeping together, eating together, talking together and going for walks on the hill together. It was almost like being newlyweds again. One of these days he really would ask her to marry him again.
He glanced sideways at her, admiring the familiarly cute kiss-curls on her forehead. His main concern was that if he was keeping such big secrets from Sally, what was it that she was hiding from him?
They sat staring up at the moon. The clouds were slowly obscuring it, like snow piling up in a drift. Finally it was gone and the countryside around the house was doused in total blackness. It was impossible to see the garden shed outside, impossible to see anything beyond his own transparent reflection in the glass.
‘Come to bed now,’ Sally ordered. ‘It’s after midnight.’
His mind was quieter now. His thoughts more lethargic. The snowstorm was over. He followed her up.
Chapter Ten
Thursday, 06.03
The shroud of impenetrable mist was beginning to burn off the surface of the water. It retreated ahead of the boat at a faster rate than the hollow puttering of the small outboard motor could match. Visibility lengthened from five yards, to ten, then fifteen, over the glass-calm surface of Loch Maree.
At the boat’s stern Robert Ross tucked the arm of the outboard motor under his oxter and drew deeply on a freshly rolled cigarette protected by his cupped palm. The infusion of raw tobacco smoke mixed with the icily cold air raked his lungs and made him cough harshly.
It had been a long night in the bar and it seemed to him that he had barely curled up in his warm bed in the wooden chalet at the back of the hotel before Ralph Barrington came hammering at the door demanding to be ferried out into the early morning mist. Back in the hotel his two rich bastard companions, the Belgian and the Greek, snored on.
It was his own fault, Ross reasoned, for spinning his stock tales of swimming stags and ghostly Vikings. Barrington was impressed and gagging to get out on the loch, up at the crack of dawn and promising a tip of more than
twenty pounds. He was desperate to have the chance to see the sites of these magical events for himself. The customer was always right, so Ross was obliged to drag himself out of bed, shake off the worst of a vicious hangover, and get a boat ready to take his client sailing before breakfast.
Land could be seen on both sides now, heavily wooded and flat to the left, a rock face rising into the mist to the right. At the head of the boat Barrington in his tartan shirt and bulky body-warmer was leaning forward like an overweight pointer dog, nose into the air, eyes weeping wind-bled tears. He was smiling beatifically.
Ross sniffed, coughed, shook his head, and spat shreds of tobacco over the side into the opaque black loch. He scooped up a handful of water. It was crystal clear. He sipped it from the hollow of his palm and it slid down his dry throat like melting ice.
The mist stopped retreating and kept its distance. The boat sailed inside its fixed boundaries, sending long whiskers of bow wave to stroke both shores.
‘Will we see anything, Robert?’ Barrington asked excitedly.
‘Who knows?’ Ross stifled a yawn. ‘We might be lucky. It’s the right time. Keep your eyes peeled.’
‘What’s that?’
Barrington stiffened and leaned even further forward. The boat rocked slightly as he shifted position. Somewhere ahead in the mist there was the faint sound of movement through undergrowth. A few seconds later it was followed by a ripely unpleasant smell.
‘Is it a stag?’ His voice had risen an octave with the excitement. ‘Is it a stag? Is it?’
‘It’s a wild goat. There’s a big herd of them on Letterewe Estate on the north side. You can smell the buggers a mile downwind.’
‘It’s absolutely horrible. What a stench.’
‘If you’re a goat you probably think it’s lovely.’
‘Chanel number five you mean.’