The Merciless Dead

by John Burke

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  ‘I fancy it could have been one of the staff at Lockhart House nicked it.’

  ‘One of the staff?’ Randal laughed. ‘From what Mrs Ferguson said, there were precious few of those.’

  ‘Then it shouldn’t take long to round them up and interview them,’ said Rutherford.

  *

  ‘You bastard!’

  Beth was heading for the library as Randal came up the steps and into the foyer. He shifted the large leather display folder under his arm to get a better grip after shouldering the door open, and grinned.

  ‘Absolutely not. Parentage vouched for very recently. In front of reputable witnesses.’

  ‘All those pretences,’ she seethed. ‘And all the time you just wanted to wheedle your way back into the family firm. That’s what it’s been about, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Where do you people get these deplorable ideas?’ Randal protested. ‘That’s the second time today I’ve been accused of that. The first time, it was linked with a picture of me as a murderer. Wheedling — what a word! But speaking of pictures, wouldn’t you like to see the stuff from the reception?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Come off it, my love. Of course you would.’

  ‘I’m not your love. And I’m not sure I ought to have let you con us into taking on that …’ Her voice trailed away. Reluctantly she said: ‘Did you get a clear picture of Morwenna and me? Of her shoulder and …?’

  ‘Better let me show you.’

  She held the library door open for him.

  It might almost have struck a spark triggering an explosion. Crouched before his computer, stabbing at the keyboard and glaring spasmodically at the monitor, Luke let out a furious shout. It was quite unlike him. He could remain calm and methodical over the most complex analyses, and even when there was a glitch he usually confined himself to a shrug and a derisive sigh. Today he was out of control.

  ‘Damn clodhoppers. There must be a way of separating these family strands. Has to be. But I’ve got to be sure. And here we are, stuck halfway between paper and online records.’

  ‘National Archive hiccups?’ said Beth sympathetically.

  ‘Switching all their records from files to this.’ He gestured a challenge at his computer screen. ‘And taking their time about it. The online version’s running two years behind time. I’ve tried the microfiche, but some of it’s too blurred to be any use. I’m told the Statistics Office can access its own files digitally, but the rest of us are going to have to wait another couple of years, sod it.’

  He became aware of Randal Grant behind Beth and stiffened, the way a dog might stiffen when a dubious newcomer edges onto its territory.

  ‘Special delivery,’ said Randal. ‘Ready to see my pretty pictures? No porn, I’m sorry to say.’

  ‘What about that business with Morwenna and me?’ Beth could not restrain herself. Like Luke, she was desperate to grapple with a question plaguing her. ‘There was something very nasty there. Does any of it show up on your shots?’

  Randal opened the folder and riffled through the transparent pockets. There were scenes of Ogilvie, looking even more of a pompous clown than he did in reality, Mrs Ogilvie sprawled out on her lounger, Sir Nicholas and Lady Torrance in several relaxed poses, and several long shots covering the whole pool. The camera then zoomed in on Morwenna and Beth, favouring Beth, with Morwenna half turning away and Beth staring, blurred by flashing ripples of light across the water.

  ‘That’s as close as you got?’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t know there was anything special going on. We didn’t have time to discuss it afterwards. Things took rather an unexpected turn.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Luke sourly. ‘Family revelations. Wonderfully dramatic timing, Mr … er, Mr Ross, isn’t it?’ But he must have felt the need to soothe Beth. ‘What’s worrying you about that scene?’

  ‘Morwenna. On her shoulder, where her costume got pulled away, there was a weal just above her left breast. The shape of a horseshoe. She was very upset. Didn’t want me to see it.’

  ‘A riding accident back home?’

  ‘No, it was … I don’t know, it was somehow worse than that. I was telling Lady Torrance afterwards, when … oh, we got interrupted by that business about you and old Jamie.’

  ‘Apologies, I’m sure.’

  ‘It was frightening. I’ve been trying to tell myself it must be a tattoo, but people aren’t usually in a hurry to conceal those. Tend to flaunt them.’

  ‘Don’t tell me she’s got a ring in her navel as well?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that. It was … well, the only way I can put it … that mark was almost burnt into the flesh. As if with a branding iron. Or a red-hot horseshoe trampled into her shoulder.’

  Luke very quietly said: ‘Like Margaret Ross of Strathcarron.’

  ‘They called that a massacre, didn’t they?’ said Randal.

  ‘You’ve been doing your homework, Mr Ross. Yes, all those women attacked by the police. Truncheons splitting their heads open. Dragged off to Tain gaol dripping blood. Nailed boots stamping on their breasts. And Margaret Ross knocked down while a mounted officer’s horse trampled on her.’

  They looked at one another and then at the photograph of Morwenna and Beth as if to zoom in on that shoulder under the torn strap. It was Beth who broke the shuddering silence. ‘You can’t inherit the shape of an injury over the generations, surely?’

  ‘You might feel so strongly about it’ — Luke had slid back into being his usual quiet and implacably matter-of-fact self — ‘that you develop sympathetic stigmata.’

  Randal raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Inheriting stigmata?’

  ‘Psychosomatically, maybe you can believe yourself into inheriting it. If your feelings are intense enough.’

  Intense, yes, thought Beth. But Morwenna was a Ross only by marriage. Could she possibly have taken on a weird inheritance along with taking on her Ross husband?

  There was a bumping noise from the outer hall. A mutter of voices, one of them suddenly becoming harsh and impatient. A door thudded shut, the door into the library opened again. James Fergus Ross was wheeled in by one of his heavies, who came to a stop and stared blankly above his employer’s head.

  The old man squinted in an attempt to focus on some recognisable features out of those already in the room.

  ‘Whatever you’re doing, you can stop right now.’

  Beth glanced down at the photographs. No point in showing them to him, even if he had been in the mood to study them, which sounded unlikely.

  However poor his sight, old Ross seemed to have sensitive antennae. ‘Getting bored, young lady? Losing a taste for the Edinburgh fleshpots? And the whole job?’

  ‘No, sir. I’ve felt all along that we were actually achieving something with this project.’ It sounded as if she were buttering him up, but that was just too bad. She was telling the truth.

  He seemed to have picked that up, too. ‘Meaning that you usually spend your time promoting some very dubious causes?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean —’

  ‘Of course you did. And quite right, too. Chopping down trees, running fleets of container ships, and telling the world what noble deeds we’re doing. Why do you think I’m trying to make up for all that? Glad you’re with me.’ He twisted his wheelchair to one side, while his bulky attendant lowered over him, trying to interpret which direction he wanted to go. ‘David, I know you’re here. I can tell. And you’ll be joining us.’

  ‘Joining you?’

  ‘Since one of my staff has, I understand, engaged you to make a photographic record of our entire project’ — he directed a crooked grin into space, hoping to hit either or both of them — ‘you’ll be coming along with us to Achnachrain tomorrow.’

  ‘Rather short notice, sir.’

  ‘You haven’t got any other engagements.’ It was a statement, not a polite query. The peremptory old Ross was still there within that shrivelled frame. �
��I want this whole thing wrapped up. Send for Ogilvie, someone, and check on how soon we can fix the official opening. And David —’

  ‘I keep telling people I think of myself as Randal nowadays.’

  ‘Too bad. I don’t. Anyway, let’s see you contribute something useful.’

  ‘I’m not sure I —’

  ‘Not sure you won’t be in the cooler waiting trial for murder?’ Ross winced as he shifted awkwardly in his wheelchair. ‘Doing you a good turn, getting you out of the way. And if you are guilty, I could get to be quite fond of you in spite of everything.’ He grunted, wriggled again. ‘Come on, all I’m asking for is a few pretty pictures. That’s your line, isn’t it? Pretty pictures of landscapes? Damn it, I’ve created whole landscapes.’

  ‘And ruined others.’

  Beth waited for the explosion. None came. Instead there was a guttural sound in Ross’s throat which might have been a laugh.

  ‘That’s settled, then,’ he said. ‘Better buy yourself plenty of film.’

  ‘Nobody uses film nowadays. We just feed our results into the computer, juggle with them a bit, and pick out what we need.’

  ‘I’m always willing to learn,’ said his father. ‘Hope you are, too.’

  15

  Luke was informed by a busy, bustling Ogilvie that his services as a driver would not be required this time. One of the bodyguards took the wheel of the specially adapted minibus into which Mr Ross’s chair could be lifted. So far the man had been nameless. Now he became known to the rest of them, in his employer’s crackling tone, simply as Waldo. His own responses consisted of monosyllables grunted in acknowledgment of instructions.

  Those others on the trip were Ross himself, Morwenna Ross, Luke Drummond, Simon Ogilvie, and Randal Grant — referred to by his father occasionally as David, but then correcting this emphatically as ‘young Grant’, as if it were the sort of ridiculous joke which would enliven the whole journey.

  Ogilvie’s appearance threatened to add another frivolous note. He had abandoned his usual starchy office gear in favour of a light blue tam-o’-shanter, open-necked shirt and tartan trews, and carried a navy blue blazer draped over his left shoulder. Wanting to seem one of the gang, out for the day? Luke wondered what Mr Ross’s bleared vision would make of that rig.

  He wondered, too, why the old man had agreed to let Jacques Hunter go on two days ahead to familiarize himself with the whole set-up, but leaving his daughter-in-law to follow with the main party. It raised the question again: were those two collaborators or rivals? Nothing specific had been said, so far as Luke knew, other than one passing remark to Jacques Hunter as they set out: ‘I need a fresh mind to set alongside what I’ve already been told. And this is strictly a research trip, not a holiday — not for anybody.’ He turned on Luke with a sour smirk. ‘Sorry we’ve had to cut out the female companionship, Drummond. Single beds all round, hey?’

  Randal Grant stiffened. His quick, questioning glance at Luke showed him in no mood for suggestive jokes. And Luke was in no mood to admit that his own affair with Beth was over. Keep the bastard on the wrong foot.

  ‘Your job, young man,’ Ross went on, ‘is to keep me informed about every significant site along the way, right? And I do mean every single one. I have these pictures in my mind, and I’ve read plenty, but I need you to sharpen my eyesight. You with me?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Luke had brought along his laptop loaded with every detailed reference he could foresee being called on to explain. He was pretty sure he knew most of the historic sites off by heart, confirming them on that previous visit, but in case of any awkward questions he wanted every exact little detail to hand. You didn’t take any risks with Mr Ross.

  For a while there was nothing for him to do. He was like any day tripper, looking out of the window, apart from the fact that he knew so much about the landscape, even those parts of it that had no particular bearing on Ross interests. Only now it was becoming three-dimensional again. This was reality, somehow less reassuring than the files and documents and old prints which he enjoyed browsing over in his comfortable library.

  Two hours into the northwestern Highlands, Ogilvie became brisk and authoritative. ‘Turn left at the T-junction coming up, and slow down. There’s a tight little bridge immediately round that corner.’

  Waldo stared straight ahead and went on driving steadily without saying anything.

  Ross said: ‘Check the satnav and see how it squares with young Drummond’s route map.’

  ‘Should tally with what Mr Ogilvie says,’ Luke confirmed.

  ‘OK. First left at the roundabout, then.’

  Waldo grunted. That remained the pattern for the rest of the journey: Ogilvie fidgeting and piping eager instructions; Waldo waiting until his boss had confirmed them before acting on them.

  When Luke said, ‘Stop by that stand of alders half a mile ahead,’ there was the same wait for confirmation: the same words, but in Ross’s cranky voice.

  ‘This was where the Macdonalds reneged on their emigration deal,’ Luke explained.

  From the corner of his eye he saw Morwenna Ross’s head jerk, the way a dozing traveller jolts abruptly awake. She stared intently out of the window. At the same time her father-in-law pressed his face to his nearest window, straining to see. Not that there was much to see: the trees shuddering slightly in the breeze, a lochan rippling under those same gusts, and a heap of stones like jagged teeth jutting up from the whin.

  A brief rise in the pitch of the breeze might have been the voices of ghosts lamenting their life that could never be restored.

  Here the widow of the Macdonald clan chief had ordered that because of arrears of rent her tenants should be driven off the land to make way for sheep. She assured them that she had their welfare at heart, and offered to pay their passage to Australia. Then at the last minute the destination was changed to Canada. Several families refused to move, declaring that the lady’s late husband had promised that after the recent famine no rents would be collected until times improved, and no one would be ejected. One elderly widow, scared of facing such a journey alone, declared that rather than leave her native land she would prefer a grave to be dug beside her daughter’s, even if it meant them throwing her in and burying her alive.

  ‘When the factor and his heavies arrived,’ Luke recited in a solemn monotone, ‘she wouldn’t move away from her fireside. So they doused it with water and dragged her out, while she grabbed at everything within reach. When they had dumped her outside, they threw her stools and bed, her spinning-wheel and her dishes, out on to the grass. Then they tore the house down.’

  ‘A house of the Chisholms,’ said Morwenna in little more than a whisper.

  An echo came as another whisper from the back of Luke’s mind. Of course. Morwenna’s maiden name had been Chisholm. Not that it would have made any difference to the Macdonald widow had the other old woman’s name also been Macdonald: she was quite determined to drive her own clan folk off the land to make way for a prosperous Lowland grazier.

  Old Jamie sighed a dramatic sigh acknowledging the validity of all his deepest sorrows. It was all real and vivid to him. Just as intense as his moneymaking had once been. All those old energies were now concentrated into one knot deep inside: a sick man physically restricted but mentally all the more fervent because of that; hating every moment of his dependency, but suffused with a burning obsession as powerful as all his entrepreneurial obsessions had once been.

  As they drove on, a mobile’s ring-tone squeaked a few bars of Annie Laurie. Ogilvie, flustered, was trying to decide whether the phone was in his jacket pocket or back trouser pocket when Ross shouted: ‘Turn that damn thing off. I should have told you before we set off —’

  ‘We need to keep in touch with Queen Street, sir, in case of —’

  ‘Turn it off. And keep it off. I’ll tell you who we need to be in touch with and when.’

  Wretchedly Ogilvie fumbled and managed to drop the mobile on the floor.
Fortunately for him, Ross was distracted by a sudden vista of Swedish-style timber chalets above the sheltered arm of a loch.

  ‘What the hell are those things doing here?’

  Luke was prompt with explanations. ‘Started out as a holiday complex, then a time share. Now some of them have been sold off as permanent residences.’

  ‘They’re a damned eyesore. Don’t belong. All the genuine clachans were stone-built.’

  Again Luke felt himself back in his library, looking through the company archives with all their references and cross-references to Ross activities in Canada, the profits they had made from timber and the company housing and stores monopoly for so many full-time and part-time employees working in the forests. He was careful not to allow himself even the flicker of a smile.

  ‘Ogilvie, the moment we’re back, set about buying those properties. For demolition. Give the occupants notice to quit.’

  ‘There may be some problems, Mr Ross. It all depends on the terms of the —’

  ‘Problems? Problems are for getting over, man.’

  Nobody, thought Luke, was likely to draw any embarrassing parallel between the arrogant evictions of the distant past and the present intentions of James Fergus Ross.

  Until Randal Grant came out with it. ‘It’s still in the local tradition, then? The exploiter from far away drives off the irritating local residents. What were you thinking of putting there instead, father? Sheep are just too, too last year. Not much call for a library. Maybe there’s room for yet another of the celebrated Ross sawmills, right?’

  ‘Very amusing,’ said Ross. ‘All right, Waldo, drive on.’

  Luke resumed his stint as guide, pointing out hillocks which half covered old homesteads, and two places where wells had been closed up and the factor’s teams had pulled up saplings which people had planted to shelter the homesteads they were struggling to maintain.

  ‘Stop!’ snapped Ross at one point, where a ruined croft had been converted into a sheep-fank. ‘Got your gear at the ready, Mister Grant? A few shots of that. And you could have been a bit livelier over some of the sites we’ve just passed. Make sure of getting them on the way back.’