The Merciless Dead

by John Burke

  It took some finding, since the name on the stone had almost worn away, or been clumsily scratched away; and the outline of the burial plot at its foot was only a bare rectangle of earth. So the legend was true. Here the factor who had driven out so many families of the strath had gone on living and exploiting part of the resulting sheep ranch for himself, and in due course had been given a respectable Christian funeral. But one evicted woman travelled back from her family’s dismal hovel on the coast and cursed his grave so that no grass would ever grow on it.

  No grass was growing here.

  A thin smirr of rain blew across the strath, swirling like a woman’s skirt, swishing coquettishly from one side to the other in a grey dance before enshrouding the church in a chill embrace. Luke turned back toward the car. As he drove away he had to persuade himself that the shapes in the haze were not old phantoms drifting purposefully at him, demanding some recompense it wasn’t his to give. ‘Not my quarrel, old things,’ he said aloud, and was ashamed of himself for half believing in them when really, in his mirror, the only hazy shape was that of a car following, then drifting off along some side track that must be pretty harrowing on its suspension.

  He took the grimly named Destitution Road through a jigsaw of rills and bog to pick up the long road down Strath Kildonan, picking up the A9 at Helmsdale and stopping for a quick lunch and a few minutes bringing his laptop up to date. He could then turn south for Inverness. But if he was going to report on key sites as Jacques Hunter had suggested, two he really must visit were Badbea and Inchbeath, close together some four or five miles north. It would take no more than half an hour to give them a quick check, and add them to his report.

  A car which looked briefly like the one he had seen out in the wilds moved out of the car park as he came out of the café. There were few enough cars around: it would be worthier of comment if he had seen three or four vehicles within the past hour or so.

  A small signpost by a lay-by indicated Inchbeath. He parked the car and went down a rough path towards the glitter of sea and sky, blurring together with no definite horizon, and emerged on to a slope of coarse grass — a slope slanting down at a dizzying angle, with the gleam off the water slashing at his eyes. On this exposed height a keen breeze began to pluck at his jacket, groping inside it, forcing it out like a sail while he fumbled to fasten the buttons, urging him downhill.

  The families driven on to this alien coastal cliff from their burnt-out homesteads had no knowledge of the workings of the sea, the fishing trade, or anything to replace their slow, steady way of life. They had been exiled here and left to make the best of it. There was little they could grow on this barren soil, and little enough fodder for more than a few animals. On that precipitous slope, animals and children had all to be tethered to posts to keep them from being blown over the cliff edge. Not just human cruelty but the savage elements were against them.

  The posts to which they had clung were long gone. A few stones were all that remained of the few makeshift crofts, but other stones had been built up into a squat, ragged column with a plaque on it. Lettering almost worn away recalled the name of the last family to leave, driven at last to emigrate to New Zealand.

  As he began groping round the column to get out of the wind, Luke was suddenly aware that there was somebody pressed against the other side. Instinctively he moved back from the pillar, and the wind caught him full strength. He groped for some handhold that wasn’t there. Then there was an added thrust as hands tightened round his throat from behind and rushed him down the slope, kneeing him in the back as he stumbled, trying to fight free, trying to shout, desperately trying to get a foothold and fight back.

  Until he was thrown forward with one last heave, and there was nothing under his feet, and he was in the air, falling through the wind towards waters thrashing up in a foam to engulf him.

  16

  ‘It’s a tragedy.’ Morwenna Ross, sombre in a high-necked black dress which one could almost believe she had brought from Toronto in readiness, was posed at the end of the library stacks. Her voice was a powerful contralto, a throbbing half-octave lower than usual. ‘Such a gifted young man. So wonderfully committed to our work.’

  Simon Ogilvie, anxious to assert himself, was more of a seedy baritone. ‘Such a loss. Always regarded him as one of our key personnel. I like to think my encouragement was instrumental in helping him reach his full potential.’

  ‘I’m sure Mr Ross will agree we should set up some memorial for him.’

  ‘Perhaps endow a Luke Drummond chair at the Heriot Watt University.’

  Or a natty little bust on the library window-ledge, overlooking his well-worn chair? Beth felt a twinge of distaste. The news of Luke’s body having been spotted on the rocks below Inchbeath by a trawler from Wick had hardly been digested before being put to use as part of the Ross legend. It was all too sudden. She had not yet really taken it in. She felt guilty. But why? Even if she had been there with him, could she have saved him from falling off the cliff? And guilt about not being with him in the first place made no sense. Still she felt utterly miserable.

  As she left the building at lunchtime, Randal was waiting for her. Which somehow made it worse. Perversely she had been longing for him to be there, while at the same time wanting him to keep his distance, because his mere existence made her feel even more guilty about Luke.

  ‘Come and have an omelette and a glass of wine over the road there,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think I can manage to —’

  ‘You don’t have to talk. We’ll just sit there and eat. And drink a quiet toast in memory, if that’ll help.’

  ‘I couldn’t have a drink right now.’

  ‘You can,’ he said, ‘and you will.’

  She let him persuade her because she didn’t have the strength to argue. Just by being there he was what she needed; while at the same time she resented that need for him and blamed herself for the way things had worked out for Luke.

  ‘I’m not very good company,’ she ventured. ‘And look, I still don’t know how I feel and whether I ought to —’

  ‘Accidents happen every day.’

  ‘It’s not like Luke to do something silly. I mean, not let something like that happen to him.’

  ‘Come on, you’re not fretting about …’ He reached out and took her right hand firmly in his. ‘I don’t care how brutal this sounds. You don’t think he jumped off the cliff just because of his feelings for you?’

  She tried to smile. ‘More likely to kill himself over a wrongly attributed reference — some glaring error. But … oh, I don’t know what to think. Maybe you and I … I mean, I didn’t think about the way it might affect him.’

  ‘Was there any reason why you should? You weren’t engaged to him. Or living with him?’

  ‘Only off and on. And that was over anyway.’

  ‘Well, then. His death was an accident. Sad. But you’ll have to get over it.’

  She knew that made sense. But it was easier said than done. How long would it be before a clear memory of Luke faded away into a wraith and then disappeared altogether?

  Back at the Ross building, he would still be too vividly present in the library. She would have passed it as quickly as possible on the way to her own office but for a call from Lesley Torrance.

  ‘Oh, Beth. Just the girl. Maybe you can help us. It’s about those pictures your … er … contact took. The young Mr Ross, I mean. You know where Luke kept his set?’

  She forced her mind off the presence haunting the desk and into the old familiar working pattern they had established. Yes, she knew which long map drawer he used for storing large photographs, and had them out on the table within seconds.

  DCI Rutherford, seated beside Lesley, had already opened a folder of prints. ‘Comparisons here could be of great value. I’d like to confirm that that brooch was the only thing missing. And that everything else was in its usual place.’

  ‘Looking for anything particular?’ asked Beth.
>
  Rutherford grinned at Lesley. ‘We’ve been used to years of this, hey? Not knowing what we’re looking for until we find it.’

  Their heads were close together as pictures were shuffled to and fro. Some of the police shots had been taken from the same angle as Randal Grant’s, others in close-up, including some clinically detailed ones around the smashed head of Sholto Ferguson.

  Beth gulped, remembering the setting before the corpse was added. ‘That man. He’s … still lying there?’

  ‘For the time being,’ said Rutherford, ‘he’s in the mortuary while our inquiries proceed.’

  He reached for a cluster of the prints Beth had produced.

  ‘Just a minute.’ Lesley pointed at one. ‘What’s that?’

  Beth stared into the background of Randal’s picture of the totem pole head in the Native American room. She remembered the care he had taken to move it into the best light, sharp against that artistically hazy background. In contrast, the wooden head in the police version was lying on the floor smeared with blood and hair, close beside the more fragile head of the murdered man.

  ‘On the wall?’ Beth narrowed her eyes, trying to conjure a clear picture out of that blur. ‘Looks like a drapery of some kind. A hanging.’

  ‘Such as the longed-for Ross tapestry?’ said Lesley sceptically. ‘In that room?’

  ‘Hold it.’ Rutherford slid the police version of the scene alongside it.

  ‘It’s gone,’ said Beth. ‘Whatever it was, it’s not there in the later picture.’

  ‘Hanging on the wall before the murder. Gone after the murder — or at the same time. Looks to me like I need another word with a certain Ali Murdoch.’ Rutherford pored over the two different studies as if they might suddenly turn into a movie and provide him with a dramatic revelation. ‘Hmph. Oh hell, no, I still don’t see that little runt having the know-how to nick a selection of things worth flogging. One quick grab and run on impulse, that’s him. Whatever that thing there is, it was probably out of his reach.’

  Lesley turned to Beth. ‘Do you think your friend could have it blown up and brought into sharper focus?’

  ‘I’ll ask him.’

  ‘When you were there with him, did you notice that wall hanging?’

  ‘No. Sorry, it didn’t register.’

  Rutherford heaved himself to his feet. ‘Can I take this with me? I’ll get our lot to go over every possibility there. In the meantime, if your young man, under whatever name he’s using this week, can do his bit, we’ll get together.’

  Beth was slotting the rest of the prints away into a file which she appeared to use as automatically as Luke would have done. ‘Got to get back to my own little cell in the hive. Ringing round and assembling the troops. Making sure everyone’s in place when the curtain goes up.’

  In spite of the shock of Luke’s death, thought Lesley fondly, Beth was still committed to the cause. How deflated would she feel when the pace slackened, ground to a halt, and it was all over?

  She was gathering up her own papers when Jacques Hunter stopped by the open doorway.

  ‘Miss Crichton not with you?’

  ‘She went back to her office just a moment ago.’

  His lips tightened in a thin twist of irritation. He was as bad as Ogilvie when it came to resenting any hindrance, no matter how petty, to a progression he had established in his own mind; but far more intimidating.

  He forced a laugh. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it? I go there, she’s not there, I come down here, and she’s back there.’

  ‘It gets that way sometimes,’ Lesley sympathized. On impulse, half regretting it before the words had even finished coming out of her mouth, she said: ‘It’s just occurred to me, Mr Hunter. Perhaps with your background you could solve the problem in one of those photographs.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Photographs?’

  ‘The pictures that young chap Grant, or young Ross, whichever … the studies from the Ferguson house … you would have been sent those in Toronto, just before you came over.’

  ‘Of course. Yes, Miss Crichton transmitted a set.’ He managed to be impatient and politely attentive at the same time.

  ‘Did you notice a hanging on the wall among the Indian … Native American collection?’

  ‘I can’t say I did. Has it any relevance to our Achnachrain project?’

  ‘Not that I know of. But it reminded me of something.’ Behind the sound of her own voice was another voice, telling her to give up now, that she didn’t even know what sort of hunch she was stumbling after, and anyhow it wasn’t leading anywhere. Yet Hunter’s impassive stare somehow prodded her on. ‘I once had to help catalogue a collection of property stolen from an exhibition in Glasgow, and I remember one interesting item — a ghost dance shirt. You know of them of course.’

  ‘Of course, Lady Torrance. Symbol of an old tradition. But what concerns you about such things at the moment?’

  ‘It does seem that the one in Lockhart House — if that’s what it was — has gone missing. It was in that picture you saw, but it’s not there any more.’

  At last Hunter moved. It was only the slightest muscular relaxation, but it was as good as a clear, sharp dismissal. ‘I can’t say that I see any reason for us to be involved in the matter of any presumed theft from those premises. I fancy the police are seeking more tangible reasons for the distasteful murder there.’

  Was there, thought Lesley absurdly, such a thing as a tasteful murder?

  ‘You’ll have to forgive me, Lady Torrance.’ Hunter was at his most suave again. ‘I really must track Miss Crichton down. We do have to set up a meeting of various key visitors tomorrow. That, frankly, is our immediate priority.’

  Tomorrow’s priority proved instead to be a sad visitor from Thurso.

  *

  Dorothy Drummond was a wispy woman of early middle age, but looking as if the years had worn her down more swiftly than most. She plucked spasmodically at the left sleeve of her dark brown coat, glancing at her wrist watch as if to check how long she had got, but apparently forgetting within a couple of minutes and needing another glance. Her whole attitude and her tone of voice were tinged with apology.

  ‘I’m sorry I had to show up like this. So suddenly, I mean. So soon after Lukie … I mean, that is …’

  Beth steered her towards the most comfortable armchair in her office, and rang through for a pot of tea and biscuits.

  ‘I’m so glad you’ve come. It’s good to meet you. But I’m sorry it has to be in these circumstances.’

  ‘I couldn’t think what was best. I’ve got Lukie’s address down here, of course, but I don’t know Edinburgh, and I haven’t got a key anyway. Only I remember him talking about you, and I knew where he worked. The Ross building isn’t hard to find.’ She tried a thin, nervous smile and stared out at sunlight on the treetops. ‘It is all right, isn’t it? I mean, coming here where you work? You won’t be in any trouble?’

  ‘I’m glad you came. We’re all shocked about Luke’s death. If there’s anything we can do …’

  ‘He did speak of you. Some while back, that is. Not lately. But I thought you’d be the one knowing where that address is, and’ — her pale cheeks went a blotchy pink — ‘do you … that is, would you be having a key to his flat?’

  Not any longer, thought Beth. She had no intention of going into details. She said: ‘I’m afraid not. But the caretaker on the ground floor there will have one.’

  Dorothy edged her coat over her knees, looked round the room, looked at her watch again, then sagged helplessly back into the armchair.

  ‘You’ve seen Luke?’ asked Beth.

  Dorothy nodded. ‘Yes. They took him to Wick. He was … bless him, he didn’t look too … too awful. Just … he wasn’t there any more.’ She stared pleadingly at Beth. ‘I don’t know where we’ll go from here. Dad’s in a right mood. Complaining about why Luke couldn’t have gone straight to Inverness. ‘Didn’t have to go stravaiging about the countryside. Look where that got him.’ She
smiled apologetically. ‘That’s oor dad all over. He’s gone lively all of a sudden, and in a hurry to get back home and start making a fuss. And I’m to collect Lukie’s things together and take them home.’

  ‘Of course. But you needn’t have come yourself. Not yet, anyway. After the inquest, I’m sure we could have been given powers to look after any of his things on the premises here, and put things in store for you until everything’s settled. In any case, you know, I think the authorities may want to check on his belongings before releasing them.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, dear. Only dad said I was to come right away and make sure.’

  ‘Make sure?’

  ‘I was to get here just as fast as I could. ‘Before they start helping themselves’ — that’s the way he put it.’ Again she was wincing an apology. ‘That’s the way he is. I’m sorry.’

  There was a pause while a tray was brought in and set on the table between them. Dorothy’s hand trembled and the cup and saucer rattled as she reached for them.

  ‘And he said’ — she was shakily determined to get it all out in one rush — ‘to be sure and check if there was anything in the car as well.’

  That, too, was something which ought to be left to the authorities. But Beth could tell the poor woman needed some reassurance, especially when faced with having to report back to her father. While Dorothy sipped at her tea and nervously refused a chocolate biscuit, Beth began ringing around. The car had been returned to the hire company in Lairg, who had handed over a small overnight bag to the police officer who had made the delivery.

  ‘And that was all?’

  ‘A bag, yes. On the back seat. That was the lot, according to the officer who returned the vehicle.’