Death Takes the Low Road

by Reginald Hill

  He adjusted his glasses and the woman turned into a kilted Scotsman, booted and haversacked for the mountains. The proportions remained gigantic.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Hazlitt, rising unsteadily to his feet.

  ‘Are you lost, then?’

  The voice was educated Scottish, very deep and faintly mocking. There was a glimmer of white teeth through the black tangle of facial hair, as though the man were smiling.

  ‘No!’ protested Hazlitt, his pride stung. ‘I know exactly where I am. I merely lost my footing.’

  The man laughed loudly. Then he stuck out his hand and clasped Hazlitt’s again.

  ‘Lackie Campbell,’ he said. ‘If you’re heading up the glen, I’ll walk with you a ways.’

  ‘Bill Hazlitt,’ said Hazlitt. ‘By all means. I’ll be happy to show you the way.’

  Campbell roared with laughter and waved Hazlitt in front of him, a position he accepted with some uneasiness. In his present state of mind he felt reluctant to expose his back to anyone, even to a man who had just saved him from possible serious injury. But the track they were following was too narrow for anything but single file and he had volunteered to lead. It was not the first time his hastiness had put him in undesirable positions. In fact, the whole business of coming to Skye which until a few hours ago had seemed so well planned and carefully executed now began to feel ill-conceived and bungled. He had long ago grown used to living within small capsules of time, bounded by the next pleasurable experience—a fine meal, a good play, a holiday in the hills and recently more and more often, a meeting with Caroline—but suddenly his present capsule had no such sensuous limits and all that he could conceive of outside it was a terrifying and unlimited emptiness.

  As they descended towards the shining thread of water running through Glen Sligachan he stumbled once more and once more felt the big Scotsman’s hand steadying him. It provoked another outburst of song.

  ‘Wi’ linked hands, we took the sands

  A-down yon winding river;

  And, oh! that hour and broomy bower,

  Can I forget it ever?’

  ‘How long can this go on?’ Hazlitt groaned.

  ‘Another hour should see us on the road,’ reassured Campbell, deliberately misunderstanding. ‘Just keep right on!’

  If he starts singing again, Hazlitt promised himself, I’ll kick him off the mountainside. I will. I really will.

  But fortunately he was not put to the test as the path petered out in a shelf of smooth rock which required their full concentration to negotiate.

  The Scotsman’s timing was out by nearly thirty minutes but Hazlitt said nothing, feeling that his own short legs, plus the overhang of fatigue from his earlier adventures, had been the main cause.

  ‘I didn’t realise you were coming all the way,’ he said to Campbell, who was now marching along at his shoulder on this broader path.

  Now Campbell did burst into song, but as freedom was in sight and there was no longer a mountainside to push him off, Hazlitt, inclined to clemency, grimaced and kept silent.

  Soon their cleated boots were printing patterns in the heat-softened tarmac of the road. The early-evening sun was as warm as ever and Hazlitt felt in need of a rest, a cold shower and a long ice-packed drink. Only the first seemed immediately available, but for once in his life considerations other than personal comfort prevailed. He was uneasily aware of the hours that had elapsed since his flight from Coruisk and of the ease with which his escape route could be plotted.

  ‘Though you’re tired and weary, still journey on …’ incanted Campbell and the advice sounded good. Even the singing was not so unpleasant to his ear now. There might be a great deal of comfort to be derived from having company along this lonely road.

  There was other company besides, he suddenly realised, as a sound too discordant to be attributed even to Campbell mingled with his singing. A car engine somewhere behind them. He turned his head, in his present state of nervousness half expecting to see a 1927 bullet-proof Buick with tommy-gun protruding from the windows. The approaching vehicle was much more homely and reassuring. A battered and mud-spattered Ford Transit van whose amiably bucolic driver probably used it for bringing sheep down off the hills. It slowed down to their pace as it overtook them and the driver spoke to them through the open door, scratching his gingery hair in a kind of greeting.

  ‘Grand day.’

  ‘It is that,’ responded Campbell.

  ‘Are you tired with walking?’

  ‘A touch,’ grinned Campbell.

  ‘I’m going as far as Sligachan. You’re welcome to the ride.’

  The driver halted the van without waiting for an answer. Hazlitt’s weary legs took a couple of steps towards it, not needing any prompting from his mind; but to his surprise Campbell’s hand gently engaged his arm and hindered further motion. The tall Scot spoke.

  ‘I thank you, but no. Having stepped so far on our own two feet, we’re jealous of our reputations. Drive safely.’

  The driver shrugged, engaged the clutch and the van moved slowly by, but it stopped once more when it had completely overtaken them. For a moment Hazlitt thought it had broken down. Then the rear doors burst open and for the third time that day be found himself looking into the goldfish mouth of an automatic.

  ‘You,’ said its owner, a pale little man in a hot-looking blue serge suit. ‘Inside.’

  In fact he didn’t say ‘inside’. Hazlitt’s mind provided the complete word, but the little man only had time for ‘in’—or perhaps ‘ins’—before Campbell (who could afford to be brave, screened as he was by his companion’s body, Hazlitt commented later) brought his crummock whistling round in a short arc which ended at the gunman’s left ear.

  ‘Oh my God!’ commented Hazlitt. The little man had seemed pale before, but now the blood perceptibly fled from his face as though a plug had been removed somewhere. His body hardly moved till Campbell pushed it roughly back into the van, catching the gun as it fell.

  ‘Wait,’ he commanded, quite unnecessarily, and ran round the side of the van. Seconds later he reappeared with the driver. For a music-hall Scotsman he seemed most efficient, Hazlitt thought.

  ‘Inside,’ said Campbell, managing the whole word. Hazlitt moved to obey.

  ‘Not you,’ said the Scot impatiently. ‘You.’

  He poked the driver in the ribs. Silently the man clambered aboard and began ministering to his partner.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ enquired Hazlitt, thinking suddenly and irrelevantly of a dish of aubergines stuffed with duck and pimentos he had once been served in Bordeaux. Perhaps it was a premonition that such things could never happen to him again. Or perhaps it was merely the colour of the contusion around the pale man’s ear which had brought it to his mind.

  ‘We can’t leave them littering up the countryside,’ said Campbell reasonably. ‘I think on the whole it would be a goodly notion to remove them from the island. Aye. That’s the thing. You drive, I’ll sit in the back and keep them company.’

  ‘But …’ began Hazlitt. And stopped.

  ‘What’s the matter? Do you fancy sitting in the back, is that it?’

  No, that wasn’t it at all. Indeed, it was the very horror of that thought which had prevented Hazlitt from saying but I can’t drive.

  It was, in fact, not quite true. It had certainly been ten years since he had abandoned the motor-car as a means of transport. It had been shortly after he had given up smoking (except for the occasional Havana after a superb meal) on the grounds that it was a personal hazard and a public nuisance. The same arguments applied to the car, he had realised one wet Saturday lunchtime as he peered short-sightedly through a misty windscreen at the mad abacus of traffic on the motorway which lay between him and home. The police had been puzzled by his equable reaction when a few days later they tracked him down to report that his car had been found wheel-less and engine-less alongside the motorway approach road.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he had said.
‘I don’t want it. Just leave it there till the rest goes.’

  But driving was preferable to sitting with an aubergine-eared semi-corpse and his vengeful mate. Like riding a bike, it was something you never forgot, he assured himself as he climbed behind the wheel. But he remembered uneasily the perilous weeks which had followed his own return to cycling after giving up the car.

  It took three attempts to get the thing started, another five to let the clutch in without stalling and a good ten minutes before he managed to negotiate the change from first to second gear. Behind him Campbell roared alternate abuse and advice, only ceasing when finally Hazlitt managed to reach third and thereafter ignored the gears and concentrated on keeping the vehicle moving along a relatively straight path at between twenty-five and thirty miles an hour. Only the small township of Broadford offered any significant obstacle to his progress and something desperately single-minded about the round face pressed almost flat against the windscreen persuaded even the most arrogant of motorists and suicidal of pedestrians to give way.

  Then there was a nice straight stretch of road almost all the way to Kyleakin. Slowly his speed crept up as his mind felt confident enough to turn to thoughts other than keeping the van on the road.

  ‘What am I doing?’ he asked aloud. ‘What the hell am I doing?’

  It was a good question. Unlicensed, uninsured, he was driving along in a stolen van, kidnapping two men (one of whom was perhaps seriously injured, and both of whom he suspected desired seriously to injure him), aided and abetted in this by a Burns-quoting Scot whose own motives and role were, to say the least, shadowy.

  But Hazlitt was not a rising star in the world of university administration for nothing. Two qualities were needed, perhaps dependent on each other—a grasp of essentials and a capacity for survival. Campbell’s suggestion had been right, in part at least. It would be a good thing for Hazlitt to get off the island. Skye suddenly felt very small, a simple circle of rock and sand, a bull-ring into which ferocious beasts were being released by the minute.

  But whether it would be a good thing to get off the island in present company he very much doubted. He began to examine his resources of ingenuity for means of freeing himself from these unwanted companions, but found he had used it all up for today. Yet he did not give up hope. In his job he had found that if only you approached an apparently insoluble problem at a fair turn of speed, it frequently went away. Speed was the thing.

  A car horn blew abusively. A group of old ladies crossing the road skipped athletically out of the way, with balletic gestures whose meanings were beyond interpretation.

  Hazlitt glanced at the dashboard and realised with horror that his metaphor of speed had become reality. Without noticing, he was roaring through the middle of Kyleakin at sixty-five miles an hour. The road turned sharply left into a one-way system on the approach to the ferry, but there was no chance of following. Instead the van went straight on past the ‘no entry’ signs, slowing reluctantly to the full pressure of Hazlitt’s foot on the brake pedal. And suddenly, and having much the same effect as the Pacific had on stout Cortes, there before him stretched the sea.

  The road became a causeway and ran down a gentle slope to the car-ferry landing, from which a packed boat was on the point of departing. There was obviously no chance of getting the van on it without causing a great deal of distress and damage to the vehicles and passengers already aboard, though this must have appeared Hazlitt’s purpose as the reluctantly slowing van careered down the causeway. But he rose to the occasion, literally, standing hard on the brake and at the same time heaving the handbrake upwards as forcefully as possible. With dreadful high screeching noises, like a conventful of Viking-ravished nuns, the brakes locked and the van halted. Hazlitt was flung forward very painfully against the wheel. But he gauged from the noises in the rear that he had in fact come off best. Perhaps even better than best, he thought, sliding open the door, grabbing his rucksack and hopping out.

  Irate and official-looking men in peaked caps were coming towards him down the causeway. He turned and ran towards the outgoing ferry. For a second he thought he was going to have to swim after it to the mainland, but only his feet got wet before helping hands aided him over the barrier and on to the deck.

  ‘Thanks,’ he gasped, ‘thanks. Desperate hurry. Bad news at home. Mother ill. Ruined holiday.’

  The madman suddenly became an object of sympathy. He turned away from the clucking noises which the Briton makes at such moments and looked back towards Skye. The locking of the brakes, it turned out, had merely been a temporary fusion, for they seemed to have released themselves now and the van was rolling slowly down the causeway into the sea. Out of the back tumbled two figures, neither of them kilted. The pale man with the aubergine ear had apparently made a good recovery. They pushed by the onlookers on the shore and disappeared towards the town. Hazlitt began to have serious doubts about the well-being of Campbell and memories of the two occasions on which the man had saved him from an unpleasant fate filled him with guilt.

  But as the van plunged finally into the water, Campbell emerged, too late to avoid getting wet. His kilt spread out around him on the surface like a ballet dancer’s skirt and he shouted with visible but inaudible fury after the departing boat.

  ‘What’s he say?’ asked a man standing up through the sunshine roof of his car and busily clicking away with his camera. Hazlitt smiled up at him with great charm.

  ‘He’s an old sentimentalist,’ he said. ‘I think he may be singing Will ye no come back again?’

  6

  Caroline was packing. She opened her shoulder bag and to the British cheque book and cheque card it already contained she added her Diners’ Club card, her American Express card and her Barclay card. After a little thought she further added her American cheque book, her Eurocard and her Thomas Cook’s travellers cheques. And for good measure she chucked in her passport and her international driver’s licence.

  All told, in credit terms she reckoned she was good for about twenty thousand dollars.

  In ready cash terms she had seven pounds and eighty-two pence.

  She completed her packing by thrusting into the bag her toothbrush and as much underwear as it would hold. She recognised that her motives were neurotic as well as hygienic. She had been brought up to find it difficult to go anywhere without two or three suitcase-fuls of unnecessary clothing. At 1 am, however, with stealth at a premium, she had no desire to encumber herself or make herself conspicuous by an excess of luggage. But though necessity demanded that she travel light, heredity required that her lightness should be as heavy as possible.

  One last glance to make sure that her explanatory note was clearly visible and she was on her way. She moved with exaggerated stealth and by the time she reached the pavement outside the garden gate she felt quite shattered by nervous exhaustion. But her spirits and her strength revived as she left the house behind and made her way to the nearest telephone box. A taxi to the station, a ticket, a train, and she would be away.

  In her note she had said that the prospect of appearing in court was so distressing that she felt she had to get away, and proposed spending a few nights with a friend in London. She congratulated herself that she had struck the right note between distress and self-sufficiency. No one would set a search in motion on the grounds that she might be suicidal. On the other hand she knew too little of English law to gauge whether non-appearance in court would mean that the magistrate would issue a warrant for her arrest. She wished she could have consulted Thomas Poulson about this, but the early hours of the morning did not seem a good time to ask for free legal advice.

  In any case her note would ensure that any search was centred on London, which was one place she had no intention of going. While the hunt was on in the great metropolis, she would be breathing the freer, fresher air of bonnie Scotland. She almost laughed aloud. All a good fugitive needed was the ability to trail a few nice and smelly red herrings. She stepped out of the phone b
ox and waited for her taxi.

  ‘You’re sure she’s going to Scotland?’

  ‘Edinburgh is what she asked for,’ said the flaxen-haired man.

  ‘Oh Jesus. These bloody Americans. What’s the time?’

  ‘Just after two.’

  ‘Oh Jesus. I’ll never get back to sleep, you realise that?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry. Look, what do I do?’

  ‘You’d better follow her, I suppose.’

  ‘Follow?’

  ‘That’s your assignment, isn’t it? Surveillance. Well, surveille away. Give me a ring when you can, preferably at a more civilised hour. Tell me what she’s up to. Perhaps she just wants to visit the festival.’

  ‘That’s not till August.’

  ‘You don’t imagine she knows what month of the year it is, do you? Just keep her out of our hair, that’s all I ask.’

  ‘What about this shop-lifting case? Won’t there be a warrant?’

  ‘For God’s sake, man! She’s not due in court till tomorrow. And even then … no, not for that, but it might not be a bad idea if she looks like being a trouble. I’ll fix something … but bed first. Have a nice trip. Good night.’

  ‘Good night, sir.’

  The phone was replaced.

  ‘And get stuffed,’ added the flaxen-haired man.

  ‘And get stuffed,’ added the Old Etonian.

  Caroline had never been in Scotland before and made her way out of the gloom of Edinburgh’s Waverley Station with all the eagerness of a New World seeker after the Old. She was not disappointed. A couple of minutes drifting with the morning work crowd brought her first sight of the castle. It was a soul-stirring sight, looming over the town with all the protectiveness and the threat of an Old Testament deity. But other needs took over and she crossed the road to the built-up side of Princes Street and after a bit of searching found a place which provided both breakfast and a ladies’ room.

  Porridge and Aberdeen kippers, she recalled Hazlitt saying, were the only dishes one could order with confidence anywhere north of Hadrian’s Wall. With half the rainfall and one decent restaurant, the country would be as near to Paradise as man could hope for here below, he had asserted.