The Dark Isle

by Katherine Pathak

  Lorraine dabbed her eyes with a ball of tissues. “I’m the last person you should ask. Kerr told me nothing about his work.” She snorted. “I’ve probably provided you with a motive for myself. Although, I wouldn’t have bothered with the woman now – all these years later.” A thought seemed to abruptly occur to her. “What if she slept with someone else’s husband more recently?”

  Dani raised her eyebrows. They hadn’t identified any evidence to suggest this.

  “Because I hated her back then. After I saw them together in that bar I used to imagine them in bed together – her underneath my husband, writhing and groaning.” She had started shredding the tissues in her hand, the tears now dried up. “My hatred for Juliet Lowther was so strong that I would quite happily have seen her rot in hell.”

  Chapter 17

  Bill Hutchison rested a hand on his lower back and examined the pattern of clouds in the sky. The rain had held off for a day now, but he could tell that a heavy shower was imminent.

  He bent back down over the task. The old-fashioned implement in his hands performing the job of cutting smooth rectangles of peat from the soil amazingly well. Bill didn’t have long, so he slid the last deposit onto the wooden board, where the other dark brown oblongs lay, side-by side, ready to drag into the barn to be dried off. The peat would take days to dry out properly, but they might just get a smoky fire lit from it by nightfall.

  Joy came out of the dilapidated farmhouse to join him. “You’ve done a marvellous job, dear. All that peat should keep the fire going for at least a week.”

  “I just need to get them into the barn before the rain comes. They’ll be reasonably dry then by sundown. The lack of rain recently has left the earth parched of moisture. Which is fortunate for us.”

  The Hutchisons had set up camp in the living room of the Rushbrooke farm. The fireplace in there was functioning well, now that Bill had climbed onto the roof and removed a gulls’ nest from the chimney. He carefully carried it down. Placing the crown of twisted twigs and feathers, filled with a lining of tiny speckled eggs, into the branches of an apple tree. Hoping the mother would discover it there.

  The sofa and chairs, now damp and threadbare with age, were still in the room. Joy had placed their sleeping bags on the furniture’s cushions, to provide some support and comfort. They hadn’t brought many provisions with them, only enough for a handful of days – a week at the most. The water supply had long since been cut off, but Bill had brought a device that converted salt water into drinking water, which he’d purchased online. Neither of them ate much these days, so they had sufficient resources for the short-term.

  What Bill hadn’t counted on was the terrible cold at night. The chill winds whipped through the crumbling stonework after dark. It became essential to light a fire. They hadn’t wanted to have the smoke potentially give away their position, but after one bitter night in that place they knew it was unavoidable.

  It was evident that Detective Sergeant Calder hadn’t reported them missing to his superior officer. Not yet.

  Bill knew that the longer they were on the island, the more Calder would worry about their welfare. He would blow the whistle eventually.

  Joy was walking around the edge of the trench that her husband had created with his cutting. “I can recall my uncle doing this job. His collie dog would follow after him, getting his paws covered in the mud.”

  “The peat is very sticky,” Bill replied. “Almost like clay.”

  Joy glanced across at Bill. “Thank you for bringing me here. I feel so close to my family now. It’s like a burden has been lifted.”

  Bill nodded. He thought his wife did seem brighter the last few days, despite the discomfort of their sleeping arrangements. There was something about the peace and quiet of the island that had a very healing quality to it.

  As Joy was still wandering up the hillside, Bill decided to cut one more slice of the peat. Then they would have enough fuel to keep the fire going all night. The thought of this luxury sent a warm sensation through his tired limbs. Bill forced the tool into the side of the trench, resting his boot on the metal plate and using all his weight to dislodge the dense soil from the bank.

  The peat slid away with ease and Bill nearly lost his footing in its wake. He steadied himself and gazed down at the side of the trench, which had slumped into the hole, as if there was nothing solid underneath to keep it stable.

  A tingling sensation of dread crept up Bill’s spine. He clambered back onto the bank and began to dig into the ground where the soil had collapsed. He had no spade, so made do with the peat cutter. It didn’t take long for Bill’s suspicions to be proved correct. The peat in this section had already been disturbed. Far more recently than when Joy’s family had farmed there in the early sixties.

  Beneath the shallow surface of grass and moss was a hollowed-out section of ground. Bill continued to clear the soil with his hands. The rain was falling now in fat droplets, making the soil oily and slick. He stopped when he felt material brush his fingertips, and then bone. He glanced up to look at Joy, who had reached the brow of the hill and was gazing out to sea, a contented expression on her face.

  Bill sighed deeply. He knew now why they had been drawn to come back to this place. And it wasn’t for the reason he and Joy had thought.

  *

  Something had made Andy wake-up. He got out of bed and pulled back the curtains. The sky was still a purplish colour, as dawn had not yet broken. His vision was drawn to the outline of Ghiant on the horizon. He thought about the Hutchisons spending another cold night out there. Not for the first time, he felt a stab of guilt. He should really have raised the alarm about the couple’s disappearing act before now.

  Then he noticed something. At first, the dark shadow had seemed like a sliver of low-lying cloud. Andy reached for the binoculars he now kept permanently on the windowsill of his hotel bedroom.

  The cloud was most definitely smoke. It appeared to be billowing from some kind of bonfire, which must have been lit on the beach near the jetty.

  Andy furrowed his brow in thought. He could well imagine Bill and Joy being forced to light a fire to stay warm, but he was sure that his old friend wouldn’t place the fire in a position where it was so obvious to anyone from Nabb who happened to be watching.

  Then realisation dawned. He brought the binoculars up to his face once more and scanned the shoreline of the island. He couldn’t make out much, but the red glow was still burning bright against the black profile of the dark isle.

  The Hutchisons had lit that fire alright, he was certain of it. But it wasn’t for warmth. The old bugger was sending him a signal.

  Chapter 18

  Andy had remained on Ghiant with the Hutchisons whilst the police launch returned to Nabb for reinforcements.

  They would need a full forensic team along with the on-call pathologist from Fort William. It would take several hours for the boat to return. In the meantime, Andy had set up a cordon and had been given the task of preserving the scene.

  “Why the hell didn’t you just call me?” He said in frustration, pouring more tea from his thermos flask before pushing the plastic beaker towards Joy.

  “I removed the battery before we left Nabb. I thought that if the phone was on, our position might be traced.” Bill gratefully sipped from his own cup.

  Andy rolled his eyes. “I think you overestimated what the police response to your disappearance might be. The two of you are adults, you can go wherever you like.”

  Bill shuffled forward on the Rushbrookes’ old creaky sofa. “I hope our actions haven’t got you into trouble, Sergeant Calder. We thought long and hard about our subterfuge. The decision to deceive you was not taken lightly.”

  Andy shrugged. “I told DI Peyton that I’d seen a fire on the beach. He volunteered the police patrol boat immediately. I didn’t tell him about my role in getting you here and I hope you won’t either. You’re going to have to come up with your own explanation. You owe me that much at l
east.”

  “The discovery of the body seemed to occupy all of the Inspector’s attention,” Bill said gravely. “But when he returns, I know there will be questions to answer.” The older man tapped his nose. “Don’t worry, we have a story ready. We won’t grass you up.”

  Andy had to stop himself from snorting out a laugh. “It’s the discovery you’ve made here that matters now. Are you sure you didn’t know what was buried at your uncle’s farm before you came?”

  Joy shook her head. “Not at all. We were simply gathering fuel for the fire. But obviously the island was revealing its secrets to us. That’s why it called on me so clearly to come back.”

  Andy tried to ignore the supernatural undercurrent of her words, he knew what the Hutchisons were like. “I suppose that if someone had used Ghiant as a dump site for Juliet Lowther’s body, it makes sense it had been done before.”

  “By the same person?” Bill asked.

  “I don’t know.” Andy dragged a hand through his hair. “Lowther’s body wasn’t buried like this one.”

  “The body in the peat is remarkably well preserved. Have you heard of the Tollund Man?”

  Andy shook his head, bracing himself for one of Bill’s lectures.

  “The conditions in the peat bog have the effect of almost mummifying the corpse. Tollund Man died in Iron Age Denmark, yet his skin and internal organs were preserved by the highly acidic, low temperature and oxygen environment. Unfortunately, although the skin can be well preserved, often the bones are not, due to the acidity of the soil.”

  Andy put up a hand to stem the flow of information. “But the body you found was hardly pre-historic. The man was wearing an Adidas jacket.”

  “But the shorter-term implications are the same. If the body had been in the ground for several months under normal conditions, it would just be a collection of bones right now. But did you see the face, DS Calder? It looked like the man was sleeping.”

  Andy edged forward in his seat, his interest getting the better of him. “So what else does the peat do to the body after death?”

  “Well, the pathologist will be able to give you a better idea than I can, but from what I’ve read, the combination of acidity, cold and lack of oxygen has the effect of both preserving and severely tanning the skin.”

  “This might make it difficult to determine the race of our body?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Also, the lack of bones will make it tricky to pinpoint a cause of death. In the case of Tollund Man, his body was discovered with the rope used to strangle him still around his neck. I don’t suppose that in this instance, you will be quite so lucky. I also imagine that the extraction of DNA will prove problematic.”

  “Great, that’s all we need.”

  Bill leant forward. “But you will have the face. There will be someone out there who recognises him.”

  Andy sighed. “Only if he had friends or family in the UK. If our John Doe is an illegal or an asylum seeker from another continent, we haven’t got a hope.”

  “But if that is the case,” Joy interjected. “What on earth would he be doing here on Ghiant?”

  “That’s an extremely good question,” Andy replied, a grim expression on his face.

  *

  Dani was helped off the boat by one of the forensic technicians. She crunched up the beach behind DI Peyton, who was walking with the on-call pathologist.

  The rain had started again, which was the last thing they needed. A couple of SOCOs ran off ahead to set up the tent over the body, trying to minimise the potential damage the water could cause. The cadaver was only loosely covered in a tarpaulin sheet. The initial team had no idea that they were going to discover a scene of crime when they’d travelled out to the island in the early hours of the morning.

  Dani left Peyton and his team to do their job, heading in the direction of the farmhouse, where she knew Calder and the Hutchisons had been holed up all day.

  “Andy?” She called out, stepping carefully through a dark entrance way which was strewn with the debris of several decades of structural decay. There were even a few branches lining what was once a stone-tiled floor.

  “We’re in the kitchen!” He hollered back.

  Dani picked her way to the room at the side of the house which contained a large oak table and a selection of Formica cupboards and appliances lying under a layer of dirt.

  Bill and Joy were seated on wooden chairs at the table. Andy was watching the activity outside through a pane of glass that was almost opaque with filth and riven through with a jagged crack. He turned as Dani approached.

  “Afternoon, Boss. I’m glad you’re finally here. I was starting to worry I’d be stuck in this God-forsaken place over night.”

  “I drove straight up from Glasgow. The team were just about ready to set sail when I got to Nabb. Peyton had to wait for the pathologist and the techies from Fort William to arrive.”

  “Sure. They don’t have the facilities for this kind of thing on Nabb. But don’t worry, nobody’s gone near the body since Bill dug it up yesterday.”

  Dani took in the state of the couple. They were hugging plastic cups of what must have been lukewarm tea as if their lives depended on it. Joy looked exhausted. But she had to admit, her cheeks had more colour than when they’d last met.

  “What on earth were you two doing here in the first place?”

  Bill took a deep breath, as if preparing for a big speech. “We paid a local fisherman to bring us here. Joy needed to return to the island one more time. I’m afraid we will not divulge the name of the skipper. I worked very hard to persuade him, so I will not betray his identity.”

  Andy laughed hard. “You can save that speech for Peyton.” He turned to address his boss. “I brought them over, Ma’am. I paid Ballater to transport us in his boat at dusk. He’s got nothing to do with the Lowther murder, we thoroughly checked him out. Bill told me they only wanted to look around. But as soon as we arrived on the island, they both gave me the slip.”

  Dani slid onto one of the chairs. “For Christ’s sake, Bill. We’re in the middle of a murder enquiry. The killer could still be on this island somewhere, or return at any time. Now we’ve got a second body, we could be talking about a serial offender.”

  “Yes, but if Bill and Joy hadn’t found that body, we would never have known it was here,” Andy added.

  Dani shot him a warning glance. “We may eventually have re-examined the area.”

  Andy grunted, to indicate he found this prospect remote.

  Bill’s expression was penitent. “I’m sorry, Danielle. We’ve caused you and DS Calder all this trouble. But the call of the island was so strong. I really thought that Joy might fade away without the chance to come back here.”

  Joy nodded in agreement. “My dreams were becoming increasingly vivid and urgent. There was no question I had to return.”

  Dani rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and slowly counted to ten. “Okay. You’re here now and no real harm is done. But when Peyton interviews you, stick to story one. I don’t want you to mention Calder’s involvement, it will only complicate the investigation.”

  Bill’s face lit up. “Oh yes, we intend to.”

  “But he’s going to find the situation extremely odd, so please don’t start going on about the island calling you home. He’ll probably bring in the division psychiatrist to assess you both.” Dani was beginning to wonder if that might actually be a worthwhile exercise.

  “Anything you say, Danielle.”

  Andy moved across the room to join them. “Bill’s got some quite good knowledge about bodies buried in peat, Ma’am. It’s worth hearing it.”

  Dani sighed heavily. “Go on then.”

  Bill described the case of the Tollund Man, and other similar discoveries across Europe.

  Dani leant forward. “Do we think the man was deliberately buried in the peat, in order to preserve the body?”

  “The preliminary examination showed no identification amongst the clothing. It�
�s not like the Lowther case, where her ID was left clearly on show,” Andy explained.

  Bill looked thoughtful. “The body wasn’t buried very deeply, but then it would be very difficult to make a deeper trench in that kind of soil. The fact the body was buried at all suggests the killer did not want this man’s whereabouts to be discovered.”

  “Unless the man died of natural causes and he was buried out of respect,” Joy suggested.

  “This has got to be a suspicious death,” Andy said flatly. “Otherwise, you’d just call the authorities and let them deal with it.”

  “I don’t believe that the person who buried the body understood the effect this type of soil would have on the nature of decomposition. Peaty deposits surround the farm. It would have been impossible to avoid it.” Bill gazed at each of them in turn, resolution in his expression. “For your forensic department, I’m convinced this is a bonus.”

  Dani nodded. “You may be right. We’ve got a photographer out on the hillside now getting the best shots we can of the face. If we distribute the images out amongst the press, it should jog someone’s memory.”

  It was Andy’s turn to look grave. “We’ve found two victims already. Do we think there might be more out there?”

  Dani involuntarily glanced out of the grubby window at the landscape, made grey by the continuous drizzle. She shuddered. “I don’t know, Andy. We’re going to have to perform a thorough survey of the area to find out.”

  Chapter 19

  DI Peyton gazed at the photographs laid out on his desk. The death mask of the man found in the shallow grave on Ghiant reminded him of the mummy of Tutankhamun which he’d seen in a TV documentary with his wife a few months previously.