by M. B. Shaw
Angus shrugged. ‘I know.’
‘Well, how long has he been here?’
‘An hour or two. Mrs Gregory was unloading his things when I left to get you.’
* * *
Once inside, with Kathy safely resting and Angus dispatched for ice, Iris buttonholed the housekeeper.
‘Mrs Gregory, I wonder if I might use the house phone,’ she explained. ‘I can’t get mobile reception in the castle and I need to call the police.’
Holding up the Lidl bag, she explained briefly about the bones. True to form, Mrs Gregory was neither shaken nor stirred, but instead handled the situation with her usual calm efficiency.
‘How dreadful,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘If you’d like to follow me, you can use the telephone in my office. You won’t be disturbed there. The number for the local police will be in the book in the top desk drawer.’
* * *
By the time Iris returned to Jock’s study, Kathy and Angus had been joined by Rory MacKinnon. Still in his office attire of dark suit and tie, he wore the same expression of sneering superiority that Iris remembered from dinner on her first night. Perhaps it was how he always looked – a masculine version of resting bitch face – or perhaps it was being at Pitfeldy, or, more specifically, being around his father’s fiancée, that brought it on.
‘The police are on their way,’ Iris announced to the room in general, setting the bag of bones down on Jock’s antique card table. She turned to Rory. ‘Hello again.’
‘Hello,’ he said coldly. Pulling an old 1930s silver cigarette case out of his jacket pocket, he flipped it open, removed a cigarette and lit it, blowing smoke in Iris’s general direction like a louche dragon. ‘So, I gather you and my wicked stepmother-to-be have been snooping around the bothy? Showing you her plans for world domination, was she?’
‘For God’s sake, grow up,’ Kathy hissed through gritted teeth. ‘You do know what we found up there?’
‘A few old bones, as I understand it,’ drawled Rory. ‘I highly doubt that will be of much interest to the police, even in a backwater like Pitfeldy.’
‘Really?’ Iris matched his offhand tone. Rory was even more obnoxious than she remembered him. What sort of pretentious twat carried a cigarette case in this day and age, for God’s sake? ‘In my experience, dead bodies buried in abandoned buildings are just the sort of thing the police are interested in. They certainly sounded keen on the phone.’
‘That’s because they’re mostly morons with barely a Higher between them who’ve overdosed on CSI and think they’re dealing with a murder,’ said Rory dismissively. ‘Chances are those bones are centuries old. They could be Iron Age, for all we know. Ancient tribes have lived in the forests up here for ever, and there’s been a structure of some kind on that site since before the conquest. That’s one of the reasons people have been so opposed to Kathy’s plan for concreting it over.’
‘It’s certainly possible the bones are old,’ agreed Iris, who actually hadn’t thought of this at all but was damned if she was going to let this supercilious wanker get her on the back foot. ‘Important to know for sure, though, don’t you agree?’
‘Hmmm,’ grunted Rory. ‘What do you make of all this, Angus? You’re unusually quiet this evening, even by your own standards.’
‘Perhaps Angus has given up on trying to get a word in around your ego?’ said Kathy sarcastically, leaping to the mute gillie’s defence. Lying back on Jock’s favourite Harris tweed sofa with her injured leg propped up on a cushion and her two dogs curled loyally on the floor next to her, she looked every inch the lady of the house. Iris noticed that she was less inhibited with Jock being away. More confident in her own status. ‘Besides, why would you need to hear other voices when you’re so in love with the sound of your own?’
The two glared at each other in open enmity.
Might Rory be the mysterious note writer? Iris wondered. He certainly hated Kathy, and, no doubt, would be delighted to see her romance with his father come to an end.
Angus’s quiet, measured voice interrupted her musings.
‘I do think the bones could be old,’ he observed meekly.
Rory’s eyes narrowed. ‘Well, well. So the gillie finally agrees with me on something. Wonders will never cease.’ Turning to Kathy, he added, ‘You realise Dad’s going to go ballistic that you dragged Iris up to the bothy? After you promised to let this appalling “visitors’ centre” idea drop.’
‘It’s not an appalling idea,’ said Kathy.
‘Nobody “dragged” me anywhere,’ Iris added. ‘We were going for a walk, that’s all. I was curious to see the building, after hearing so much about its history.’
‘Hmmm,’ grunted Rory.
Iris found it hard to cut through the toxic soup of negativity that seemed to swirl around Rory’s every word, expression and movement; not just towards Kathy, but also towards Angus and herself. He’s like bitterness personified, she thought, although she had to admit that he brought a handsome face to that ugly characteristic. Notwithstanding his heavy, hooded eyebrows and lean, sunken cheeks, Rory MacKinnon was unquestionably an attractive man. With his moss-green eyes and olive skin, his long limbs and elegant, languid movements, he was as close to the complete opposite of his sister Emma as one could conceive. Iris could detect traces of his father in both his features and bearing, but Rory was a physically superior version of Jock, and not only by virtue of his youth. Iris found herself wondering what his mother looked like.
‘Speaking of Dad, where is he?’ Rory asked Kathy.
‘He’s in Edinburgh.’
Rory’s eyes danced mischievously. ‘Is he now?’
‘On business,’ said Kathy, through gritted teeth.
‘Monkey business, more like,’ Rory chuckled. ‘Up to his old tricks. Oh dear, oh dear. Is he getting bored of you already? Poor Kathy. Did you think he was a changed man? That you’d changed him?’
‘The only thing I want to change about your father is his will,’ Kathy replied, flushing with pleasure as she watched the smile die on Rory’s lips. ‘I’d say I’m making pretty good progress on that score, despite your best legal efforts.’
Iris caught Angus’s eye. He looked pained. It truly was the most unedifying display of loathing on both sides. It was a relief when Mrs Gregory knocked on the door and announced the arrival of the local police.
A slight man about Iris’s age with thinning, once-blond hair and wearing a cheap grey suit that did him no favours, introduced himself in a broad Glaswegian accent as Detective Inspector Stuart Haley. ‘And this is my sergeant, Danny Spencer,’ he added, nodding towards a spotty young man with a shock of red hair and a faintly anxious expression.
‘Who found the bones?’ Haley got straight to business.
‘I did,’ said Iris. ‘Well, technically, it was the dogs. Miss Miller’s dogs unearthed them up at the old bothy.’ She gestured towards Kathy.
‘And you have them here?’
‘Yes.’ Iris retrieved the plastic bag from the card table. ‘I did touch them, I’m afraid. When the dogs first dropped them, I didn’t realise…’
But Haley wasn’t listening. Peering into the bag, he looked at the jaw, making his own assessment.
‘OK,’ he said, closing the bag with a grimace and handing it to his sergeant. ‘Well, I’m no pathologist, but I agree those teeth look human. What’s your name again, ma’am?’
Iris told him.
‘And who else was there when the wee doggies – you know.’
‘I was,’ said Kathy. ‘I’d tripped and fallen on one of the loose stones – that’s how I twisted my ankle – and I heard Milo barking like crazy. Iris went over to put the dogs back on their leashes and –’
‘OK, OK,’ said Haley, hurrying her on. ‘Was anybody else at the scene?’
‘Angus came later to pick us up in the Land Rover,’ said Kathy, looking across at Angus. ‘He manages the estate.’
‘Right.’ Haley made a note of the above. �
��And do you have anything to add, Mr…?’
‘Brae. Angus Brae,’ said Angus. ‘No, sir. Not really. I just drove Miss Miller and Miss Grey back home.’
‘We were just observing before you arrived, inspector,’ Rory’s cut-glass, entitled voice rang out around the room like a ricocheting bullet, ‘that in all likelihood the remains are ancient. Tribes have roamed these moors and forests for centuries. And that bothy’s as old as the hills.’
‘And you are?’ Haley asked, an unmistakable note of disdain in his voice.
‘Rory MacKinnon,’ came the clipped reply. ‘My father is the baron here.’
‘Right. OK. Well, thank you, Mr MacKinnon. When I’m in need of your theories I’ll be sure to ask for them.’
Iris hardly dared glance at Rory, who had flushed bright red and looked as if he might be about to explode.
‘I’ll need brief statements from all of you tonight,’ Haley continued brusquely. ‘Sergeant Spencer will take those down in a moment. And then, Mr Brae, if you would be so kind as to drive me and two of my officers back out to the bothy, we’ll tape that off tonight and leave a man here, just in case. It’ll be dark soon so I won’t bring forensics in until the morning. And then, depending on their findings, I may need to talk to you all again.’ Turning to Iris he added, ‘Thank you for calling us, Ms Grey. Let’s hope we can get to the bottom of it all quickly.’
* * *
At seven o’clock the next morning, Stuart Haley climbed into his car wishing he felt a bit more alert and a bit less like a man who hadn’t had an unbroken night’s sleep in seven months. It was nearly three years since Jean had died, so he couldn’t blame grief anymore. Or ‘play the widower card’, as she had memorably put it, instructing him on her deathbed not to ‘whinge like a girl’ but to ‘get out there and grab life by the bollocks’.
He had tried. Most days, he even felt like he’d done a pretty good job of it, fighting for his promotion at work, making time to see old friends, to go out and have fun. But the last seven months had been – well, shite. First, he’d got sick. Shingles, brought on by stress and a low immune system, apparently; a deeply unpleasant experience. Apart from the pain, fever and vomiting, for six straight weeks the entire left side of his face collapsed, making him look like he’d had a stroke, or had melted himself by accidentally falling asleep on a radiator. Then when he finally recovered, his dad had had a heart attack and had dropped dead. They weren’t close, but still. Dead was dead, and horribly final, as Stuart was only just beginning to learn. And then, a month after the funeral, came the cherry on the cake: some lying toerag of a recruit from years ago filed a sexual harassment suit against him, every single syllable of which was a steaming pile of horse ordure, but which had still gone to tribunal. It had taken twelve weeks for Stuart to be exonerated on all counts. ‘That’s as good as it gets, Haley,’ the chief inspector had assured him. ‘You’re in the clear.’ Which was great, of course. But three straight months of waking up in a cold sweat, wondering if you were going to lose your job and be branded a groper for the rest of your life, was proving to be a hard habit to break. As was the perennial ‘brace for impact’ mental attitude he’d developed ever since Jean’s diagnosis. Fucking cancer.
The drive to Pitfeldy Castle from Haley’s bungalow near Fochabers was about twenty minutes. It took him through some of the most beautiful scenery in Banffshire, and he made an effort to try and appreciate it. But his trip to the castle yesterday, and the human mandible still sitting in the Lidl bag on his passenger seat right now, kept pulling his attention away from the majesty of the landscape and back to the case at hand.
Were the bones old? Chances were, Rory MacKinnon was correct about that, but Haley hoped not. For one thing, he enjoyed the challenge of a murder inquiry. It sounded morbid – it was morbid – but it was his job and he was good at it. But, beyond that, if the bones were ancient, it would mean that that posh bastard Rory MacKinnon was right, and Haley would be denied the privilege of making him look like the know-it-all, chinless, Etonian chump he undoubtedly was.
SNP to the very core of his being, Stuart Haley’s natural prejudices against the likes of the MacKinnons ran deep and strong. The entitlement of these ‘lairds’ of the manor, with their English public school educations and ruling-class accents, stuck in Haley’s craw almost as much as the obsequiousness of the ordinary locals that allowed them to get away with it.
Almost before he knew it, Haley found himself snaking back up the long, stately drive to Pitfeldy Castle. This time, however, he continued straight past the house, following the track through the forest that led to the deserted bothy, almost at the edge of the moor. The crime scene was already a hive of activity, with the ruined building surrounded by cones and orange crime-scene tape. Inside the crumbling walls, three white-suited technicians were busy excavating. Outside the tape, three uniformed officers sipped coffee from plastic cups and chatted among themselves, although they did their best to look busy when their boss arrived.
‘Any updates?’ asked Haley, climbing out of his Ford Fiesta and cracking his neck extravagantly.
‘Yes, sir.’ Sergeant Spencer, the perennially surprised-looking redhead stepped forward eagerly. ‘Quite a big one, actually.’
‘Well, don’t keep me in suspense, man,’ Haley snapped. ‘What have they found?’
Sergeant Spencer cleared his throat. ‘According to the techs, sir, there’s more than one body in there.’
Chapter Seven
Drawing in a sharp breath, Stuart Haley ducked under the orange crime-scene tape. As he stepped into the ruined building, one of the white-suited men walked over to meet him.
‘Tell me it isn’t true, Dave,’ said Haley.
‘Sorry, Stuart.’ David Gaffney was one of the top forensic CSIs in all of Scotland, renowned for being both thorough and profoundly cautious.
‘So it’s a mass grave?’ Haley sighed.
‘No, no,’ Gaffney shook his head, ‘not a mass grave. Only two bodies. At least, that’s all we’ve found so far.’
‘ “So far” – meaning there could be more?’
Gaffney shrugged. ‘There could be. But judging by the scatter pattern of the remains, I doubt it.’
This was as close as Dave Gaffney was likely to get to a ‘no’.
‘OK, well, what can you tell me about them?’ asked Haley.
‘Not much, I’m afraid,’ the CSI admitted. ‘They’re both female. Both adult. That’s about it.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘Can’t say.’
‘How old are the remains?’ asked Haley.
‘Can’t say that, either.’
‘Well, are they ancient or modern?’ Haley pressed. ‘You must know that at least? Ballpark.’
‘Sorry,’ said Gaffney. ‘A forensic pathologist might be able to tell you more. But even then it’s far from an exact science, especially once animals have had a go at the bones. These are reasonably well preserved. That’s the most I can say at this stage.’
‘Which means what? That I’m not looking at cavewomen?’ said Haley, casting around desperately for anything he could use.
‘You’re not looking at cavewomen, no.’
‘And that’s the best you can do, is it?’
Dave Gaffney grinned. ‘I found you two bodies before nine in the morning. What more do you want?’
DI Haley took a look around him. The bothy had been built in a remote spot, that was for sure; about as far off the beaten track as one could get on a private estate. Not a bad spot to bury a body or two.
But there was something else that struck him about this precise location, this lonely clearing in the woods in which the ruined building stood. Something more than just its isolation. Perhaps his imagination was running away with him, but Haley couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something ritualistic about this particular site, a spiritual resonance that ran old and deep. Whether or not the skeletons Iris Grey had found turned out to be ancient, he strongly s
uspected that the place they were buried in held secrets older than the hills.
Rory MacKinnon had mentioned that the bothy itself was an ancient building. Haley found himself wondering who had built it, originally, and why they had built it here.
On the other side of the tape, standing a few feet back from the action, Haley spotted the young gillie he’d met last night, Angus Brae, watching the technicians at work. There was a young woman with him clasping a thermos. His girlfriend, presumably. Every now and then she would reach out and rest a comforting hand on Angus’s arm as the bones emerged, one by one, from the rubble.
Raising a hand in greeting, Haley walked over. ‘Morning.’
‘Good morning,’ said Angus.
‘Is it true they’ve found a second body?’ the young woman asked, introducing herself as Hannah Drummond.
‘Aye,’ Haley admitted. He’d likely release a statement by the end of the day anyway, so there didn’t seem any point in being secretive about it. ‘At the moment we think we’re looking at two sets of remains. Two women.’
‘How terrible,’ said Hannah with feeling. ‘I suppose you’ve no idea who they are? Or how they ended up buried here?’
‘Not yet.’ DI Haley smiled, then turned to Angus. ‘As I mentioned last night, I’m going to need more detailed statements from yourself, Ms Grey and Ms Miller. I’ll also need to speak to the baron when he gets back from Edinburgh. Do you have any idea when he’s expected?’
‘Oh, Jock’s back already,’ said Hannah, blithely jumping in before Angus had a chance to speak. ‘I saw his car earlier. Angus called last night to let him know what had happened and I think he must have raced back first thing this morning to be with Kathy. She was quite upset by the whole thing, Angus said. And of course Rory being here doesn’t help.’
‘Hannah!’ gasped Angus.
Haley clocked the look of displeasure that the mortified gillie shot his girlfriend.
‘Sorry, inspector. We don’t mean to gossip. But Baron Pitfeldy is back at the castle, if you need him.’