Evil for Evil

by Aline Templeton

  She replied in the same vein. ‘Not too soon, I hope. I’m staying in one of the chalets.’

  ‘Wonderful view from up there. Hope you enjoy your holiday.’

  He nodded and moved off, the dog at heel, heading back to the farmhouse. Elena continued her walk, with that light-headed feeling of unreality even stronger than before.

  There was a rough path leading off to her left and she followed it through the whin bushes towards the shore until it came out in a small, pretty, sandy bay, unexpected on this rocky shore. The tide was going out and on the coarse sand a trail of little shells showed the high-water mark.

  Elena bent to pick one up. The twin shells were still joined butterfly-style, pink and perfect with a pearly sheen, and she studied them as if some extraordinary secret they held would yield to her scrutiny. A fit of shuddering took her. It was close to decision time.

  She took a long, deep breath. Then slowly, deliberately, she crushed the pretty shells to fragments between her fingers and dropped them on the sand. She didn’t notice a sharp shard piercing her finger until she saw a smear of blood on her hands.

  She walked briskly back up the hill to the chalet and got into the car without going inside. She needed petrol and a warmer jacket and she wanted, anyway, to see what Kirkcudbright had to offer.

  The hunger was a gnawing pain in Fergus’s belly now, and knowing the time had become an obsession. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t very late, it was just that with nothing to do time passed slowly.

  Anyway, what could he do if Brodie meant to leave him here to die? He could batter the door and scream, but it could be weeks before any of the owners of the lock-ups came here again. He’d come under fire in Iraq but he’d never been as scared as he was now.

  A sort of fatalism possessed him. From the start he’d never had any luck in his life, until he joined the army where everything was arranged for him and he’d a bit of money to spend. He’d blown that now.

  So what was the point of all the pain and the misery if this was where it finished? What was the point? That was all he wanted to know, before the end came.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Rosie Drummond was looking harassed when she opened the door to DI Fleming and DS MacNee, her plump face creased with anxious lines and her fair curly hair wild, as if either she hadn’t had time to brush it or had run her hands through it since. There were shadows under her brown eyes. There was no sign of her husband.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said, in tones of helplessness. ‘More questions? Jamie’s been up half the night and I’ve just settled him on the sofa with a DVD in the hope he’ll drop off.’

  ‘You look as if you could use some sleep yourself,’ Fleming said sympathetically. ‘Look, I don’t want to upset the poor kid again. The officers yesterday took his statement, so perhaps we could just have a chat with you meantime?’

  Rosie’s face cleared. ‘Oh, thank you. Yes of course. Come through to the kitchen. Coffee?’

  The house had obviously started out as a traditional two down, three or four up, but the ground floor was now open-plan, in an L-shape. Everywhere there was the comfortable clutter of a family too busy getting on with life to be obsessive about tidiness, and Rosie made disjointed apologies as she took them through to the kitchen area, lifting a basket of washing off the island unit as she waved them to stools by the breakfast bar.

  The sound of shrieks and canned laughter came from the sitting area round the corner and Rosie went to peer anxiously round.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she reported. ‘He’s gone to sleep. Now, coffee …’

  Fleming noted the smart coffee-maker with relief, and MacNee’s face brightened too as Rosie set a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits down in front of them, asking what they needed to know.

  ‘I just wanted to get events clearer in my own mind,’ Fleming said untruthfully and allowed Rosie to give a dramatically enhanced version of the official report. Once they reached the account of Jamie’s nightmares, Fleming felt she could broach the subject that interested her.

  ‘By the way, there was something in Jamie’s statement which rather intrigued me – something about the island being haunted? Is this a local legend someone’s told him?’

  Rosie looked embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid it was me. Oh, I’m kicking myself now, I can tell you.’

  ‘Really?’ This was an unexpected bonus. ‘Where did you get it from? Is it a good story?’

  ‘Not … not really. It’s just – well, wailing and stuff.’

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ Fleming said lightly. ‘What sort of wailing?’

  MacNee very quietly got out a notebook as Rosie said, ‘I know it sounds silly, but I first heard it years and years ago. My family had a house here that we came to for weekends from Glasgow. I was probably – oh, twelve, thirteen maybe.’

  What age was she now? Early forties, probably, but Fleming didn’t want to interrupt the story to ask.

  ‘It was my sister and me. We were out along the shore, mucking around when it was getting dark one night. It wasn’t late – must have been March, April maybe, because I remember going back for tea afterwards.

  ‘It was quite a still night, no one about, and then we heard the wailing. It was just … sort of crying, on and on, not like anyone calling for help or anything, coming from the island. But no one lived there, and it was really creepy. We just ran away home and didn’t tell anyone.’ Rosie shivered in recollected terror.

  ‘We used to make up stories about it to scare ourselves but we weren’t brave enough to go there again before we went back home. We never heard it after that and I sort of forgot about it. And of course, I don’t believe in ghosts – not really.’

  The disclaimer lacked conviction. She went on, ‘But years later, I’d a nephew staying who wanted to go out fishing one evening, and Tony had stuff to do so he babysat while I took Johnny out in the boat. We were round the other side of the island and we heard it again – sort of groaning this time. There was no one to be seen, and it totally spooked me. I didn’t want to scare Johnny – he was only seven or eight, I think, so I just said it was the sort of noise the wind made sometimes. Maybe it was, even, but it didn’t sound like that.’

  MacNee’s pen had frozen on the page and he looked up. Fleming felt a chill run down her spine, and it took quite an effort to sound casual. ‘It sounds very alarming! Was Johnny convinced?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never asked him. Well, he’s probably forgotten anyway – it’s a long time ago. Goodness, he’s … what, nineteen now, I suppose. I can’t believe he’s that age! More coffee?’

  Fleming passed across her mug, trying to work out how to phrase her next question so that it wasn’t an accusation. ‘But … Jamie heard the story somehow?’

  Again, Rosie looked embarrassed. ‘I just didn’t think. He came in a few weeks ago – he’d gone out after supper, and it was getting dark, and he said he’d heard someone crying and wailing on the island. And of course, they’d been talking about the poor Lovatt baby being buried there – you know what ghouls kids are – and he was all set to tell his pals it was the baby’s ghost.

  ‘I’d have hated that to get back to them – they’ve been finding things difficult enough here, without that sort of stupid gossip. So I told him about the other times. God, I wish I hadn’t now! I can’t think how we’re going to get it out of his head.’

  There was a lot of material there, opening up several promising lines of enquiry. But Fleming wasn’t ready to do the sort of probing about times and dates that Rosie would tell her husband about, and have him asking questions long before she was ready to answer them.

  ‘It’s easy with hindsight, isn’t it?’ she said with a smile. ‘I hope your husband’s sympathetic – I’m not sure mine would be!’

  ‘Sympathetic? Tony? I haven’t told him where Jamie got the story – he’d go crazy!’ She looked alarmed. ‘You won’t – you won’t tell him, will you?’

  Fleming looked at MacNee, now on his fourth
chocolate digestive. ‘I don’t know what you’ve found to write in your notebook, Sergeant, but if Mr Drummond comes in suddenly, you may have to tear out the pages and swallow them.’

  With Rosie laughing, and Jamie still asleep, they got up to leave.

  The question was, when did you decide to start yelling? If Brodie had only been delayed – or worse, if he came back while you were beating on the door with your bare fists – you’d look a right eejit. Or worse, he’d go radge and then anything could happen.

  Fergie bit at his last remaining nail. He couldn’t quite believe this was really happening – that he’d been shut up in this place to die. It wouldn’t happen quickly, either. Death from starvation could take days, especially if you’d access to water. He didn’t, though. There wasn’t a tap.

  He knew all about dehydration, after Afghanistan. You could die of dehydration in – like, about ten minutes there. He’d never heard of anyone dying of dehydration in Scotland, but if there wasn’t any water, you could. How soon would it start? Suddenly he felt a raging thirst.

  What time was it? If he ever got out of here, he’d buy a watch. He’d never needed one before. Either he was in a situation where time didn’t have much meaning, or else the place was full of people who’d order you to move when you had to move.

  He didn’t know what to do. He’d never been good at decisions. The ones he’d made himself were mostly bad, and now there was no one to make this one for him. He began to cry, in a dismal, hopeless sort of way.

  Fergie was still crying when the garage door was flung open and he sat blinking in the sudden flood of light.

  Brodie stood in the aperture, eying him in disgust. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you, Crawford?’

  ‘I-I thought you weren’t coming back,’ he snivelled.

  ‘Wasn’t coming back? For God’s sake, man, I told you I’d be here in the morning, and it’s twelve o’clock!’

  ‘Twelve o’clock?’ Fergie knuckled his eyes. ‘I thought – I didn’t know what time it was.’

  ‘Get yourself a bloody watch! And get in the car.’

  Fergie stumbled out after him. So life didn’t end here, in this brick-walled prison. He just didn’t know what would come next.

  ‘We certainly got more than we bargained for there,’ Fleming said to MacNee as they drove away from Innellan.

  ‘Embarras de richesses,’ MacNee said with a smug expression and an execrable French accent.

  ‘What did you say?’ Fleming stared at him, dangerously taking her eyes off the narrow road just as she rounded a corner.

  ‘Embarras de richesses. It means so much good stuff you don’t know where to start.’

  ‘I know what it means, thank you very much. I was actually quite a star when it came to Higher French, and if I can ever persuade Bill to take a holiday for long enough to let us get across the Channel, I intend to prove it.’ Then she paused. ‘If I can remember any of it, that is.’

  ‘You could brush it up. Have a chat with Louise.’

  ‘Louise?’ Fleming again risked their lives on a tight corner. ‘Who’s Louise? Does Bunty know?’ It was said jokingly, but there had been problems last year when MacNee’s adored wife Bunty had suffered badly from depression, though according to Tam she had made a good recovery.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ MacNee said scornfully. ‘Hepburn – just started in CID, you know? She’s all right.’

  High praise indeed, from MacNee. ‘Of course I know Hepburn. Didn’t realise that was her first name.’

  ‘Her mum’s French. When I dumped a pile of reports on her desk, that’s what she said – “embarras de richesses”.’

  ‘If she’s managed to start teaching a chauvinistic Scot at least some elements of a foreign language, I’ll make a point of getting to know her.’

  ‘Ah well, that’s French,’ MacNee said. ‘The Auld Alliance – the happy days when the Scots and the French fought the English.’ As a clincher, he added, ‘I read in a book about Rabbie Burns that he spoke French. He told someone his wife thought he was “le plus bel esprit et le plus honnête homme du monde”.’ The accent was even worse this time.

  ‘Did they add what his wife actually said about him – “Our Robbie should have had twa wives”?’ Fleming asked dryly. ‘Anyway, why are we talking about Burns, for goodness’ sake? This stuff – I’m a bit dazed. Spectral cries and groans coming from the island – what did you make of that?’

  ‘Hardly know where to start. By Rosie’s account, there’s been someone in distress there maybe twenty-five, thirty years ago, depending what age she is, then around twelve years ago and again just recently. Is this maybe some sort of thing the teuchters do? Like kind of ritual sacrifice?’

  ‘I resent that. Despite being denied the glories of culture as practised in the backstreets of Glasgow, I think even us hayseeds would have noticed if people were disappearing regularly,’ she said acidly. ‘But Tam, seriously, are we to assume there were three separate episodes, years apart, that there was an ongoing cause for cries that were occasionally heard, or that Rosie and her son just have vivid imaginations? Do you suppose other people have heard it too?’

  ‘Two wee girls, scaring themselves on a dark night, and a laddie who knows a baby’s buried on the island – if the wind was blowing through a crack or something, you could easy convince yourself it was someone crying. But I tell you what’s getting to me—’

  ‘You don’t need to,’ Fleming said heavily. ‘“Round the back of the island” – it was chilling when she said that. The shape of the cave would amplify the sound, of course. It could have been that poor tortured guy dying, too weak to scream for help. If she’d just gone to see, if she hadn’t that silly idea about ghosts in her head, she might have investigated and saved his life.’

  ‘If you gave Rosie a penny for her thoughts, you’d be wanting change,’ MacNee agreed. ‘Nice lady, though.’

  ‘Give you a chocolate digestive and you’re anyone’s,’ Fleming said absently, then went on, ‘We’ll get some sort of confirmation about date of death, of course, but the timing sounds plausible to me. Once we get it, we can start questioning to see if anyone else heard strange sounds around that time.

  ‘I’d like to investigate the most recent one too. Oh, I know Jamie may have imagined it, but it’s worth asking. And if Lovatt’s keeping everyone else off the island, we should check out his household to see if anyone there has a rational explanation.’

  ‘No time like the present,’ MacNee suggested, but Fleming shook her head.

  ‘I’ve got a meeting this afternoon. I’ll get Andy and Ewan to come down tomorrow. It’s not what you’d call a matter of urgency – nothing’s going to happen if we don’t make use of the “golden hour” on this one.’

  MacNee gave her a pitying look. ‘Will you never learn?’ he said.

  Elena Tindall swung across the heavy metal cattle gate and bolted it. It was a laborious operation: getting out of the car, opening the gate, driving the car through, getting out to go back and shut it before driving on to repeat the process a few yards on. There were two of these gates enclosing a field, each having to be latched to stop cattle from straying. She was nervous about the cows too, though the great black beasts grazing nearby didn’t even lift their heads to look at her.

  Still, it had been a satisfactory expedition to Kirkcudbright. She’d got what she needed, found a reasonable deli and a newsagent which had Vogue, Marie Claire and Vanity Fair as well – a pleasant surprise. And it had occupied part of what could be a long, empty day too.

  She stowed away her purchases, then fetched another bottle of Barolo from the case and took it, along with a glass and her copy of Vogue, to the chair by the picture window overlooking the bay.

  As Elena set down bottle and glass on the window ledge, she noticed binoculars, half-concealed by the curtains – a thoughtful provision for visitors, presumably. She put them to her eyes and adjusted the focus.

  They were high-magnification lenses and
the road below, running through Innellan, became suddenly close and so clear that she could have counted the pansies in the Smugglers Inn window box. She could see round the bay, along past the Lovatts’ farmhouse. And she could see the island.

  With uncanny clarity she saw a deer lifting a back leg to scratch its ear, like a dog. She watched it for a moment, then swung the binoculars along.

  There was the stand of trees at the far end and close by, the cottage. It looked deserted, the door standing open and the windows boarded up. She had only just focused on it when a motor boat starting up made her turn towards the sound.

  The man steering was definitely the man she’d seen on television – grey hair, stocky. In the boat was something covered by a tarpaulin, but she couldn’t make out what it was.

  He guided the boat in neatly to the jetty then walked with a lurching gait uphill towards the cottage. There was a small tractor with a trailer parked beside it which he hitched to the back, then drove it down on to the jetty.

  It blocked Elena’s view of the boat, but when he heaved the tarpaulin package on to the trailer she saw it was long, narrow and clearly heavy – heavy and oddly flexible. Almost … almost like … a body?

  Now she really was losing touch with reality. It was this terrible place. She shouldn’t have come – she shouldn’t have come.

  But she had to. She’d decided.

  The man was driving it back up the hill now, the trailer bumping behind. He swung it along the front of the cottage, then with impressive skill reversed the trailer through the doorway, with only inches of clearance on either side.

  Elena put down the binoculars and picked up her wine glass, but she didn’t open a magazine. She was still watching ten minutes later when he drove out again, parked the tractor, then got into the boat. It sped back to the jetty below Lovatt’s Farm, where a car was parked. He drove it up to the farmhouse.

  What had she just seen? She didn’t know. Perhaps it was nothing to do with her. But for her own safety, it would be wise to know everything she possibly could about what was going on here.