by William Paul
‘There it is!’ McIsaac said dramatically, jabbing his finger against the inside of the windscreen.
Two bright red eyes suddenly glared out of the grey blackness. Fyfe stood on the brakes unnecessarily hard. Number Five’s paws slipped off the back of the seat and she wrapped herself around McIsaac’s neck. She yelped in surprise and Jill growled in sympathy. Moya dragged the young dog back into the rear.
‘That’s it there,’ McIsaac said with his head bowed and his arm half-raised to fend off anything else that might fall on him from behind. ‘That’s it. Torridon Cottage.’
Close up, the red eyes became the reflective tail lights of a Range Rover parked askew with its front tyre in a flower-bed. Beside it the whitewashed walls of a squat single-storey house appeared in the headlights.
They were out of the tunnel of trees in a u-shaped clearing giving access to the loch. The sky was a lighter shade of dirty grey but at ground level the blackness persisted like a mist. To one side a flatter expanse of darkness must have been the loch.
‘Do you know who the Range Rover belongs to?’ Fyfe asked McIsaac.
‘Never seen it before.’
‘It’s not Laura’s then?’
‘It might be, I suppose. They’re common as muck around here.’
‘We’ll get the number checked.’
Fyfe got out of the car first, leaving the engine running and the lights trained on the wall. A window had curtains drawn inside it. Rose bushes cowered underneath the ledge. The dogs jumped down onto the gravel before anyone could stop them. McIsaac spoke across the roof of the car.
‘Did you bring a torch?’
Fyfe cursed himself for forgetting such an obvious thing. An owl hooted derisively.
‘I’ve got one,’ Moya said. ‘Where’s the door?’
McIsaac led the way out of the circle of light. The torch’s thin beam was a poor replacement but it picked out a crazy-paving path with moss growing in the joints leading to an old-fashioned porcelain sink overflowing with muddy rainwater beside the door. Jill and Number Five both started drinking noisily from it. On the door was a cast-iron knocker in the shape of a leaping fish. Fyfe took hold of its tail and bashed it three times against the weathered wood panels. It made a hollow sound, like the beating of a drum, indicating emptiness. He waited only a few seconds before trying the handle. The door opened easily, hinges creaking hardly at all. The torch flitted over hanging coats, neatly stacked wellingtons, a sideboard with brass handles, closed doors standing sentry along the corridor.
‘Where’s the light switch?’ Fyfe asked.
‘No mains electricity here,’ McIsaac replied. ‘You’d have to start the diesel generator.’
‘Where abouts is it?’
‘Search me.’
‘Okay then Moya, it’s you and me and the torch. Stay close. Watch our backs Donald.’
Moya took him at his word. She stayed in close at his side, her leg touching his, her hand holding his lower arm. They walked a few steps over the threshold. The dogs ran past them ignoring Fyfe’s command to stay.
‘You’re not afraid of the dark, are you Moya?’ he said.
‘Of course not. Only of the things hiding in it.’
The first door on the right was not quite closed. Fyfe felt Moya’s grip tighten as he gently kicked the door open with his foot. It moved a little way, then Jill and Number Five pushed in front and fought to get through the gap, throwing the door wide open.
The dogs started barking. The torchbeam showed slices of furniture, polished floorboards, a table stacked with magazines, ashes in a fireplace, pictures on the wall, and a figure rushing towards them across the room.
Moya screamed and dropped the torch. Fyfe stumbled backwards. The dogs barked furiously. Moya was outside the doorway but still clinging to him, her fingers digging deep into his arm. The room was blank darkness once more.
‘What was it?’ she demanded breathlessly.
‘It’s okay. It’s okay. Shut up, will you, dogs.’
Fyfe was calm. The flicker of near-panic had stilled. He knew what the situation was. He had made sense of it through his one good eye. There was no need to be afraid of the dark, not now he knew what it was hiding.
‘What was it?’ Moya asked again.
‘Nothing we can’t handle.’
He picked up the torch. Moya reluctantly let go of him, staying where she was facing outwards with her back to the door jamb. The torchbeam sliced across the room; furniture, floorboards, fireplace, and a retreating figure this time going away from him. Number Five bumped into his leg but when he reached for her she was gone, still barking loudly.
Fyfe followed the wall round to the window. He pulled the curtains open and the room was flooded with bright light from the car parked outside. Jill and Number Five were standing side by side at the fireplace barking up at an arch-backed black cat on the mantlepiece. It was like a beautifully sculpted porcelain ornament. The light glinted on its green eyes and the icicle tips of its bone white teeth.
The hanged man swung across Fyfe’s line of sight. Set in motion by the blundering entrance of the two dogs, he hung at the end of a rope in the centre of the room, knees slack, rotating more than swinging in a macabre slow motion tiptoe pirouette. The rope round the man’s neck went up over an exposed ceiling beam and diagonally down to be anchored to a corner of the cast-iron fender surrounding the fireplace. The shadow the body threw was the largest among a seething fluidity of stark blacks and greys in the room. Glass-fronted pictures on the walls flickered like reels of silent movies.
‘Come away,’ Fyfe ordered sternly.
This time the dogs obeyed and stopped barking. The cat on the mantelpiece changed shape. It sat down, raised a paw to its mouth and began to lick it clean. It bumped a pendulum of half a dozen steel balls and started them swinging. The clicks counted the seconds. A low growl continued to rumble in Number Five’s throat.
‘Who is he?’ Moya asked from where she stood in the doorway. McIsaac’s bearded face peered over her shoulder.
‘Our murderer?’ Fyfe replied.
‘That’s two we’ve found in one day,’ Moya said.
‘Well, this one won’t be confessing to anything. We’ll have to work out the story for ourselves.’
The scenario that led to the hanged man unreeled of its own accord for Fyfe. Laura Lambert is killed in a fit of passion, laid out in tribute on Parliament Rock, suicide follows in a fit of remorse. So who was he? Husband? Lover? Candlestick-maker?
‘The story looks promising from our point of view,’ Fyfe said.
There was something wrong but he didn’t yet know what it was. Moya came back into the room, McIsaac after her. Fyfe wanted to be optimistic but he always distrusted obvious explanations.
‘Is this our murderer?’ Moya asked.
‘Could be.’
‘A crime of passion followed by the suicide of the perpetrator. Neat isn’t it?’
‘All wrapped up for us.’
They exchanged doubtful looks. She sensed there was something wrong too, Fyfe realized. You’re learning, he thought but didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to be patronizing. But there was definitely something not quite right.
The dead man was on tiptoe at the end of his rope, his shoes just scraping the floorboards and no more, knees hardly bent. McIsaac looked at his watch ostentatiously, catching their attention.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘It looks like you might be beating my record after all.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Thursday, 19.14
The wallet of documents Fyfe found in the glove compartment of the Range Rover suggested the hanged man was Ron Gilchrist. The name checked out as the registered owner and it was the same one on the credit cards in the hanged man’s jacket pocket. No criminal record. Unless the vehicle was stolen, the police back in Edinburgh would soon be out breaking more bad news to grieving families.
Moya started organizing the scene of crime procedur
es and delegated to a sergeant as soon as the troops arrived, blocking the narrow track with their convoy of cars. The white-walled cottage was centre stage, illuminated by half a dozen pairs of headlights drawn up in a ragged semi-circle. A couple of navy men came out of curiosity, still wearing their wet suits, and stood at the fence. A couple of reporters too.
Dr Eames, dressed in borrowed clothes after his soaking, turned up in his little sports car and telescoped himself up from its low-slung chassis. As he approached the front door somebody discovered the generator had run out of fuel, poured in a handy can of diesel and flicked the switch. Bob Dylan was suddenly roaring out from the cottage:
‘I’m knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s door . . .’
Everyone, inside and out, froze as if they were players in a game of musical statues. Then Charlie Simpson killed the music at source and everyone was able to move again. The invisible owl hooted its increasing annoyance at the disturbance in its domain.
Fyfe went down to the edge of the loch to use his mobile phone. Jill and Number Five went with him, the younger dog roamed around excitedly until she disturbed a big swan that hissed, opened its wings wide, extended its neck and made a clumsy warning charge. To Fyfe it was a white flicker against the dark background. Number Five came scampering back to hide behind his legs. That’s why it’s called Swan Bay, he thought, slapping at the voracious midges that swarmed around him.
He was standing over the rowing-boat that was probably used to ferry Laura’s body out to Parliament Rock. It moved in slow rhythmic motion, almost imperceptibly, as if it was breathing. Somewhere out on the loch tiny waves were being created and running into the shore. Maybe it was the remains of all the activities of the day: the loch settling down again after all the fuss and bother. Eventually it would lie perfectly still, if nobody and nothing ever touched it again. Fyfe looked out over the black water and knew that perfect stillness was impossible to achieve.
He contacted Sally first to tell her he wouldn’t be back that night. It took only the briefest of explanations to satisfy her. Then he phoned his own detective sergeant Bill Matthewson in Edinburgh and was passed round the building until he was found. Matthewson was a country boy from the north-west. He said he remembered McIsaac as the local bobby who had put him through his cycling proficiency test at primary school. A much more detailed explanation of events was needed to put him in the picture.
‘I want you to find out who has got the job of breaking the bad news to this Simon Wright character and tag along with them,’ Fyfe said.
‘I won’t ask why.’
‘You know the way my mind works.’
‘Only occasionally.’
‘This is one of those occasions. Look him up and down. Let me know what you make of him.’
‘Okay. Give my regards to Isotonic.’
‘Who?’
‘McIsaac. Isotonic was the nickname the kids gave him.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
Number Five was getting restless and beginning to feel brave again. She went sniffing into the scrubby undergrowth between the trees and the loch. The flapping wings and loud hiss of an angry swan sent her scuttling back to safety. Fyfe killed a palm’s-width of midges and led the two dogs back to the white-walled cottage in front of the battery of vehicle lights. He put them into the back of the Volvo. They went willingly but began to whine when they realized Fyfe wasn’t going to follow them. Instead he called over McIsaac and told him to take the car up to the road-end to prevent any more reporters coming down. Fyfe mentioned Matthewson and McIsaac said he remembered the name. They laughed together about the Isotonic nickname. ‘Something to do with athletes and muscle energy,’ he explained from the driving seat. ‘I looked it up in a dictionary once. I take it as a compliment.’
Fyfe stood by the Range Rover and watched the Volvo be absorbed by the darkness and the trees. There was a bundle of paper stapled together on the rear seat that no one had paid any attention to. He opened the door and took it out, noticing there were a few other similar bundles on the floor. Moya emerged from the front door of the cottage, shading her eyes from the blaze of lights. She had the right idea to keep the midges off, a piece of netting covering her face and held on by a baseball cap, but Fyfe hardly noticed because his attention had been seized by the paper bundle which turned out to be the proof copy of a magazine. It was not the title, Ethereal, which he had never heard of before. Nor was it the arresting cover image of a disembodied pair of eyes floating among fluffy clouds. It would be even more arresting in colour. The magazine seemed to be an airy-fairy New Age publication, relatively thin but obviously expensively produced in its final form, full of adverts for books on Tarot card readings, mystical pendants, and how to cook insects. It was Laura Lambert’s name on the inside page, jumping out at him over the disproportionately big eyes of a stylized pen-and-ink drawing of the head and shoulders of the dead woman. There was absolutely no resemblance to the severe mug shot. In the drawing her mouth was an imitation of a Mona Lisa smile, her hair was a furiously swirling storm of twisted black lines. Her shoulders hovered in the white space below the headline: Learn the future with Laura, Princess of Prophecy.
Fyfe slapped at midges and started to read her column, trying to imagine the sound of Laura’s voice. It would have been deep and husky almost certainly. Moya approached and she was about to speak when he raised a hand to stop her. He showed her the magazine and the page with the Laura Lambert column on it like a magician demonstrating he had nothing hidden in any of his equipment.
‘Listen to this,’ he said. ‘And then tell me if it is spooky or what?’
He tilted the page a little to catch the strange light thrown upwards from the assembly of halogen beams and began reading aloud.
‘I know I must die and I know why. I have a vision of myself falling to the ground, toppling slowly like a heavy statue from its pedestal. And as I fall my killer rises. The rope tightens round his throat and squeezes from him the life he had to take from me. We are as one. It was a fateful bargain that we should die together in this manner. Two lives from the chrysalis of this world born anew in the butterfly heaven of the next.’
‘Spooky. Definitely spooky,’ Moya said from behind her facial netting, moving on to Fyfe’s shoulder so she could read it for herself. ‘She did see it coming from a long way off then.’
Fyfe slapped a midge on his cheek. He rolled the tiny gritty remains under his fingertips until there was nothing left to roll. He felt something tickle the swollen skin round his injured eye and brushed it more gently. He continued reading.
‘I bear no grudge. I deserve my fate. Although my vision does not allow me to know the pain I shall be subjected to I believe it will be swift and transient. For him, briefly my master on this earth, the pain will be more prolonged. It will contort his face into that of a devil incarnate. It is right and satisfying that the male of the species should suffer in death as the female suffers in childbirth. Death and birth are so similar in many ways and, of course, they are the portals through which we all must pass to achieve our destinies. I am human therefore I am afraid. But I am immortal and therefore I am at peace.’
Fyfe looked up needlessly to check he had Moya’s attention. She was hanging on every word. Someone came close and she waved them away impatiently. Her whole body was tense. She was standing so close to him he could feel her warm breath against his face.
‘Now it gets really creepy,’ Fyfe said. ‘Nostradamus has nothing on this lady.’
‘Come on. Keep going.’
‘I remember a swing I had as a child. I remember the rush of air against my face as I sat on it and was pushed by my father. My killer now feels the same gentle rush of air against his dead skin. He swings at the end of a rope that ends his brief span. It is as it must be.
‘I remember also as a child one early morning my father rowing me out over mist-shrouded water to an island in a loch. There he put me ashore
and made a game of pretending to leave while I wept and stamped my feet in frustration.
‘This time my body will be borne to the island, clad in diaphanous white, and will be laid out there respectfully. I shall not weep, nor stamp my feet in frustration. This time there will be no pretence when the boatman rows away into the mist. It is to be my final resting place until I am found by unaware souls. I crave the touch of my rocky pillow and the sensuous feel of the breeze over the water. Do not grieve for me. The truth must be revealed. It is as it must be and I am content. Death waits and I will be truly at peace when the guardian of my soul howls at the moon.’
Silence. The unseen owl hooted. Fyfe couldn’t make out any expression on Moya’s face behind the netting mask. The small of his back was damp with sweat. The moon was momentarily exposed through the racing clouds and the wind-shifting treetops clawed at it, failing to get a grip.
‘Suicide pact firmly back in the frame,’ Fyfe said. ‘She saw it coming all right. She wrote a travel brochure about it.’
Moya snatched the magazine from him and began to read the column for herself. ‘The laws of prophecy have just come back to me from my spiritual phase,’ she said. ‘One is that the most obvious interpretation is likely to be wrong. Recently confirmed by my friend Ross.’
‘How many laws are there?’
‘As many as you want. Another is the law of non-existent impossibility. If it can happen it will; if it can’t, it might.’
‘Well that leaves our options wide open,’ Fyfe said. ‘I still fancy the suicidal option though.’
‘Of course prophecies can be self-fulfilling too.’
‘Of course.’
They both became aware of Dr Eames standing a little way off from them. The collar of his borrowed shirt was far too big, his overcoat too small. His eyes were bloodshot and blinking furiously.
‘I thought you’d like to know my preliminary findings,’ he said.
‘Go on then, Doc,’ Moya replied.
‘The rope from which he is hanging didn’t kill him. There is a mark on his neck made by a much narrower ligature. Suicide seems unlikely if not physically impossible. I think you should mark this one up as murder number two. I’ll know more after the post-mortem. Speak to you tomorrow.’