by Lin Anderson
The incident room was packed. The Sandman enquiry was a major investigation, one in which the former soldier, Harry McArthur, had suddenly become a part. Harry’s face was up on the board along with the other already known or suspected characters.
Also added to the rogues’ gallery was the dead Watson, and the photographs of the burnt-out jeep on an improbably steep hillside outside the village of Uig, together with images of the remains of the victims found inside.
Although the number plate had been replaced, the jeep was suspected as having been the one reported as stolen from the drive of a villa in Bearsden the previous week.
The boss registered McNab’s entry before he continued drawing the various strands together.
‘The MOD have reluctantly,’ he emphasized the word, ‘confirmed that the DNA of the dead climber is that of serving medic Private Peter Galbraith, who was currently on leave and due to return to Afghanistan forty-eight hours from now. They have not however released details regarding the rest of the team. The post-mortem conclusions on Galbraith suggest foul play, so I believe the military police will also now be involved. Maybe then they will be more co-operative.’ His expression suggested that as being unlikely.
‘Harry McArthur is still with us and his statement refers to a link between serving personnel in Afghanistan and the local Sandman network helping to bring heroin shipments into Scotland and Glasgow in particular.’
He continued, ‘Harry McArthur’s testimony is proving to be valuable to the investigation, lifting a lid on the entire organization, which was probably why there was an attempt on his life. Fortunately, DS McNab, who was following the assailant at the time, confirmed as being Malcolm Stevenson, succeeded in getting McArthur to hospital in time to save his life.
‘Harry has since confirmed the identity of his attacker, and we have been searching for Stevenson. He also identified Private Galbraith, who he knew as Sugarboy. They met in Afghanistan when the medic saved Harry’s life after he was trapped in a tank fire. Harry states that Galbraith sought him out, gave him money and drugs, and told him he had a plan to get out of the business. This plan may have led to Private Galbraith’s death and the turf war now apparently playing out here and on Skye.’
McNab’s focus as he’d listened to much of what he was aware of already had been on the grisly images of the most recent victims on Skye. There were multiple shots of both occupants of the burnt-out vehicle, none of them pleasant to look at. Yet his eyes refused to be drawn away from one photograph in particular.
From experience, he knew he was looking at a picture that held some meaning for him. What it was, he had no idea. Something he should perhaps recognize?
McNab moved forward, his eyes drawn to a closer observation of the board. As he approached, his gaze intent, the place fell silent, DI Wilson’s words dying on his lips.
McNab halted before the photograph showing the remains of the driver’s burnt hands still attached to the wheel.
‘Detective Sergeant McNab?’
McNab stabbed at the photograph as the memory his brain had been searching for suddenly presented itself.
‘The fucking ring, sir. There.’ He jabbed again at the image. ‘Wee Malky wore a ring like that. The driver of the stolen jeep is a fried version of Malcolm Stevenson . . . sir.’
Harry was still safely in his holding cell. When McNab arrived, he found the door standing open and Harry deep in a book. McNab stood for a moment, taking in this surprising image, before Harry registered his presence and looked up.
The face before him still had the gaunt look of a heroin user, but McNab was pleased to note that it had more colour and Harry looked less jittery than the last time they’d spoken.
‘I see they’re feeding you.’ McNab gestured at the nearby tray. ‘And providing ways to pass the time.’
‘You thought I couldn’t fucking read, Detective?’
‘I never doubted it,’ McNab responded. ‘What’s the book?’
Harry showed its cover. ‘The sergeant loaned me it.’
The title McNab recognized from a TV adaptation of a fantasy world where folk fought one another for a mythical crown and the undead marched down from the north.
‘Do the goodies win in the end?’ he said.
‘You tell me, Detective Sergeant.’
McNab handed Harry the photograph from upstairs, without telling him why.
Harry grued a little at the image, then checked McNab’s expression, and took a second and closer look.
Harry checked with him. ‘Is that fucking Malky?’
‘Why’d you think that?’ McNab said.
‘The fucking ring, that’s why. It was his trademark. How’d this happen?’
‘A jeep came off a road on Skye, caught on fire and took whoever this is, plus one other, to the promised land.’
A smile caught at Harry’s lips and the faint colour on his cheeks blossomed still further. ‘Sugarboy got him,’ he said with a smile.
‘The MOD confirmed that the dead climber on Skye was definitely Sugarboy, so it couldn’t have been him.’
A dark cloud passed over Harry’s eyes. ‘Then someone else in the squad did it.’
‘Seven?’ McNab tried.
Harry thought about that. ‘She must have been in on whatever plan Sugarboy had, but there were seven of them together in Afghanistan.’
‘Names?’ McNab demanded.
‘Fuck, I don’t know. Sugarboy mentioned someone called the Scorpion. By the way he said it, he hated him. But five of them got captured together.’
‘Sugarboy didn’t mention any names other than the Scorpion?’ McNab persisted.
Harry was trying hard, his forehead creased by the effort. ‘A sniffer dog got brought in. Sugarboy said the handler begged him to save it.’ He waited, his brain trying to recall whatever Sugarboy had told him. ‘The two guys who carried in the stretcher – Ben and Charlie, Mountain and Chucky, that’s what Sugarboy called them,’ he said triumphantly.
Harry smiled and in that moment McNab saw what Ellie probably saw, the Harry he’d been before he’d been imprisoned and his face cooked in a burning tank.
‘The MOD should fucking tell you the names.’
‘True,’ McNab agreed. ‘But they’re not inclined to tell us anything that makes them look bad.’
Harry pointed to his face. ‘Which is why I’m not on a recruitment poster.’
McNab left Harry to his book as the sergeant who’d recommended it appeared with a mug of tea for his prisoner.
‘Hope he’s not giving you any lip, Sergeant?’ McNab said.
‘A star pupil,’ the sergeant said, ‘as long as he gets his methadone.’
71
Don’t try and hide from the enemy. Lead him to you and then you have the advantage. But make it subtle. Your enemy knows you, too well in fact. But he also underestimates you.
The air in the caves was damp, but the wind couldn’t reach her, or the snow that had begun falling again.
And in the deepest recesses of the cave, the sand was dry, and inside her survival bag she was warm and comfortable. As for army rations, she had sufficient to see her task out. The required water she got from a tributary of the waterfall that cascaded down the cliff face, unless the wind was too high and forced it upwards again.
She sat now consuming the contents of one of the three ration bags remaining, preparing herself for what was sure to happen.
He would follow her here. She knew that without a doubt. And she had made it possible for him to do that. Even though he might suspect this, he would still come, because what else could he do? He couldn’t leave her alive, not with Sugarboy gone. And what of the other two? Who had they decided to back, now that Sugarboy was dead?
That word conjured up an image, one that she’d been trying hard to suppress. Despite her efforts, it blossomed and grew, and with it came the smells and the sounds.
He had anticipated their decision and had moved to thwart it, the outcome of which had le
ft Sugarboy dead at her feet.
She felt again the crack of her skull against the birch tree, causing her world to swim out of focus. The trickle of warm blood on her neck. The fear like a knife in her heart as the scenario played out again in her head.
Ben and Charlie had known nothing of the plan to eliminate him, so it had been easy to put the blame for Sugarboy’s accidental death on her.
But you did strike the fatal blow, a small voice reminded her.
Did I? Did I really?
Sugarboy told me not to run, but I couldn’t stop myself. It was my fault. I thought he was behind me, not Sugarboy. I thought I could smell the bastard, but I was wrong.
She stopped there, the unbearable image of Sugarboy lying on the ground, startled eyes staring up at her. She’d dropped to her knees, hugging him to her, begging him to live. For a moment, there was life in those eyes, and his mouth moved in answer.
Desperate, she’d leaned in closer, trying to hear the mouthed words.
Then he was there with the others, the words What the fuck have you done, Seven? ringing in her ears.
The wave of memory was retreating. She braced herself, not permitting the backwash to take her into the darkness with it.
She knew what Sugarboy wanted her to do. She’d heard his final words.
Finish it.
She had deliberately chosen an uncomfortable section of the rock to lean against, to prevent herself from falling into anything but a fitful doze. The distant and only entrance required watching.
Time-wise, he should be here shortly, if he was coming at all.
Although there had been other things for him to think about, bar herself. The fallout from Watson’s death being one of them. The mashing of his face would only deter the authorities for as long as it took to run a DNA profile. Watson was a convicted drug dealer who would be on the police database.
The fact that there had been a forensic expert on the island when the body had been found had been unforeseen. Had the woman she’d met in the plantation not been so readily available, then it would have delayed things still further. They might all have got away and back to Afghanistan and be free again.
But he would never have permitted that to happen. He didn’t want the arrangement to end. He wanted to make sure he was in charge of it again by the time they returned to the source.
Turf wars didn’t just erupt on the streets of Glasgow.
The only way to end it was for him to go. That’s what Sugarboy had said. Remember that night in prison? Remember what I said? His voice echoed in her brain.
‘You’d kill any bastard that would rape me.’ She mouthed the words as though Sugarboy was still in the darkness with her.
The sound of rushing water warned her that the tide was coming in and there wasn’t much time before the entrance to the cave would become inaccessible. She’d imagined that the speed with which he would follow would result in him being here by now.
Perhaps she’d been wrong about that?
Seven trickled the sand through her fingers, feeling its soft caress. The stone walls of the cave reminded her of her cell. The sand on which she sat, a different colour, but still sand. She thought of her fellow prisoners back then. The spider and the black scorpion, the latter offering her a way out, if she should so choose.
Perhaps that was also true about what was about to happen here, with the human version, equally deadly. That thought didn’t distress her. Sugarboy was dead, and inside so was she. Nothing he could do to her now would change that.
Seven felt in her pocket for the crumpled paper the woman had given her in the clearing. She didn’t need light to know what was written there.
Maybe I should have called her? Told her everything? That would have answered the question in her eyes. All the questions.
If Sugarboy hadn’t died, maybe she would have.
The sound was barely distinguishable, but when you’d spent so much time alone in captivity, you discerned and evaluated every noise.
He was here.
Relief swamped her because it meant that it was nearly over and oh how she longed for it to be over.
‘Seven?’ his voice called. ‘Are you okay?’
She remained silent, listening for his footfall on the sand, counting the steps until he met what she had prepared for him.
He’d halted, believing her to be there, but not yet sure of his approach. His voice was his greatest asset and he would use it, to cajole and reassure her of his intentions, just as he had when in a combat zone, and after the Taliban had released them, when he’d revealed how much that release had been down to her saving the baby.
Later of course the story had changed. It had been ‘the Scorpion’ who had really saved them, with his ability to speak the language and his proposition that they were of much more use to the Taliban alive rather than dead. He had become the hero of the tale.
All wars needed money to endure, he’d told them. And money far outweighed the birth of one baby, even a male.
She tried to envisage how far into the cave he had come. If he stood long enough, he might notice that something was wrong, and then what she had planned, like in the woods, would fail.
But his confidence in what he was capable of was as strong as ever.
‘Seven,’ he called, ‘I know you’re in there. I can smell you.’
She smiled as he stepped forward confidently into the trap she had laid for him.
72
‘Blaze. Here to me. Here to me.’
Rhona knew her voice sounded desperate, because she was.
It had been a self-indulgent move to come here and bring the dog. Trying to prove herself right. Trying to pretend she was back on the job. That her decisions were logical and properly thought through.
‘Blaze,’ she tried again.
‘There,’ Alvis said. ‘Quiet, Rhona, listen.’
She did. Nothing at first, then . . .
‘He’s barking.’ Alvis confirmed what Rhona thought she’d heard. ‘He’s below us somewhere.’
They were at least a couple of yards from the edge. Because of the ins and outs of the rock face, you could be well back, then suddenly much closer, and in the fading light it had been getting more difficult to make the necessary judgements, even with their head torches.
‘We should get down flat,’ Alvis urged. ‘There’s a gully. I think Blaze is down there.’
Rhona removed her backpack and lay flat. The surface was grassy, wet and no doubt slippery. She could hear the sound of falling water above the rising wind. Somewhere out ahead of them, she spotted the lights of a boat.
The barking had become fainter or the dog had stopped alerting them to his presence. Rhona, trying not to imagine why that might be, crept ever closer to the edge. Now her torch picked out the gully Alvis had suggested was there. It dropped swiftly and deeply, as an underground stream emerged to find itself suddenly exposed to the air, before it plunged over the cliff face.
In the moving circle of her head torch, Rhona couldn’t identify anything that looked like the big collie.
He’s black, with only a little white, she told herself. It doesn’t mean he’s not there.
Swinging round, her torch now found Alvis much closer to the edge than she was comfortable with.
‘Can you see him?’ she said.
‘I think he’s maybe reached the beach,’ Alvis told her. ‘He’s not on the ledge, and if he’s as sure-footed as Donald says, he will have found a way down.’
Alvis sounded surer than Rhona could persuade herself to believe.
‘What do we do now?’
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ Alvis said, ‘until it’s light. I can lower you down there as soon as we can see well enough to do that.’
‘But what if Blaze is hurt?’
Alvis didn’t respond, because it was a question he couldn’t answer. Not in any way that would make either of them feel any better.
Instead he said, ‘Let’s get the tent up, and we nee
d to get back from the edge unless we want to be blown over.’
The wind was steadily rising, and snow clouds scurried past the moon. Rhona suddenly registered how cold it had become. How cold she had become, although it seemed the ice-like wind was inside her body, encasing her heart.
73
Alvis had the map spread out between them and directed his head torch on where he thought they were.
‘Okay. There’s the gully. Note the contours. There’s a sharp drop, then it gets more shallow. With ledges, a sure-footed dog like Blaze could manage going down, although getting back up might be more difficult.’
‘So he’s stuck on the foreshore?’
‘Unless he can make his way along to the bay and not be trapped by the tide.’
‘But if he went down there on purpose, it must be because he was tracking Seven,’ Rhona said.
‘I suspect as much,’ Alvis agreed.
‘If we head for the bay, can we come in from that direction?’
‘Possibly, but there’s no guarantee.’
‘For us or the dog,’ Rhona said. ‘So, as soon as we get the light, you help me down.’
Alvis didn’t look enamoured by the prospect of Rhona being the one, but he was the better anchor for the rope.
‘Help could be here by daybreak,’ Alvis said cautiously.
‘We both stressed that we were equipped for an overnight stay, and that there was no reason to worry about us because we were offline.’ Rhona halted there. ‘Besides, this isn’t about finding Seven now. This is about Blaze.’
Alvis, noting her distress, nodded his agreement.
‘Okay, we go as soon as we have enough light. I suggest you try and get some sleep.’
Rhona nodded, not because she imagined she would get any, but because she knew he wouldn’t agree to her taking the first watch.
Rhona lay down, her brain going into overtime. How could she have let this happen? She should never have borrowed Blaze in the first place. He wasn’t a police dog. She should have acknowledged that. She had promised to keep him safe and she hadn’t.