Paths of the Dead

by Lin Anderson

  Although Magnus admired the bigger town of Kirkwall with its splendid St Magnus Cathedral, Hamnavoe was by far his favourite. With less room to spread out, it had retained its fisher town character. The main street was open to cars travelling in both directions, despite being single track, and you could still park your car in the wider bits. On this occasion, Magnus chose to leave the car down by the harbour. The MV Hamnavoe was already berthed, having made her last trip to and from the mainland for the day.

  The Stromness Hotel was a tall building facing the harbour, its main door reached by a set of wide steps. On the left, at street level, was the wee bar he was headed for. Jack was already inside, a locally brewed beer before him.

  ‘What are you having?’ he offered.

  ‘The same,’ Magnus said.

  They took time to savour the beer, before Jack suggested they head to one of the outside tables. He had something to show Magnus. The sun wouldn’t drop below the horizon for three hours at least, before it swiftly came back up. It was a perfect night to sit outside, still and mild, though not exactly warm.

  When they’d settled down, Jack produced a map and spread it out on the table. It was a map of Scotland and its islands, but not one Magnus had seen before. The most prominent features were not the major cities and routes in between, but Neolithic sites. Jack had drawn a series of straight lines connecting a number of these together.

  Jack began his explanation. ‘We don’t know for certain why stone rings like Brodgar were built, or why they were built in specific places. But there is no doubt that those who built them chose their location carefully.

  ‘The sun was an important part of their worship,’ he continued. ‘You probably already know about the rays of the midsummer and midwinter sun and the entrance to Maeshowe?’

  Magnus nodded.

  ‘As to whether human sacrifice was part of any ritual, we don’t know. So I can’t help you on the spiked hands and the stone in the mouth. As for the direction of the hands, that, I must admit, intrigued me. Have you heard of ley lines?’

  ‘My father used to douse to find field drains on the farm,’ Magnus told him.

  ‘Dousing locates disturbed ground. It’s used to locate buried bodies, or underground water courses. Ley lines are similar. They appear to suggest an energy change in the earth’s surface. You use the same method to locate them. Two L-shaped metal rods will do. When you cross a ley line, the rods move towards one another and cross, just like in dousing. Marker stones such as the one on the drive leading to the house we use at the Ness are on them. These lines appear to link Neolithic sites. The physics of dousing and ley lines is unexplained, so scientists tend to dismiss them. Non-scientists like your father just use them in a practical way, because they work.’

  Magnus nodded in agreement. Plenty of scientists didn’t believe in psychology either.

  Jack pointed at the Ring of Brodgar’s position on the map. There were three prominent lines radiating from it. One due south, one southwest, the third southeast. Jack ran his finger along the southwest line. Magnus knew where it was headed before Jack got there.

  ‘Callanish,’ he said.

  ‘You’d spotted that already?’

  Magnus nodded.

  ‘The southeast one looks as though it might run through what was once a triangle of three stones at Skelmuir Hill in Aberdeenshire. There’s only one stone still standing there, as far as I’m aware.’

  ‘And the hands at Cathkin Braes?’

  ‘You’ll need an exact compass reading to check them out.’

  ‘R2S, the forensic team, are mapping an accurate layout.’

  Jack nodded and lifted his pint. He took a long swallow while Magnus continued to study the mesh of lines criss-crossing the map. There were scores of marked sites, many of them clustered near the lines. And no way they could determine an exact fit.

  ‘Another one?’ Jack offered.

  Magnus rose. ‘I’ll get it.’

  There were only a couple of people in the tiny bar, the clientele taking advantage of one of the few summer evenings they could sit outside. Magnus headed for the Gents, while the barman poured his order. As he entered the empty toilet, he was conscious of someone coming in behind him and the door shutting. He turned to find a hooded man barring the doorway. He fired Magnus an expectant look, and held out his hand.

  Magnus had never encountered a beggar in Orkney, and his surprise resulted in silence. The guy produced a small sachet from his pocket and waved it at Magnus.

  Now Magnus understood. ‘How much?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  Magnus handed over a note and received the bag. As the man opened the door, Magnus used his bigger bulk to push it shut again.

  ‘I need some information.’

  The guy shook his head. ‘No questions,’ he said in a thick accent. Magnus took a guess and repeated his request in his limited Polish.

  The man’s eyes registered surprise. He muttered what sounded like a curse, and pulled a metal object from his pocket. With an ominous clicking sound, a blade appeared. Short and sharp. He used it to wave Magnus away from the door.

  Magnus immediately obliged and in seconds the man was gone.

  Magnus stood, his need to use the urinal surpassed by the surreal nature of the encounter. Eventually he pocketed the cannabis, used the facilities and went to collect the beers.

  Jack was watching for him. ‘I wondered where you’d got to,’ he said.

  Magnus, keeping his voice low, gave a brief résumé of the encounter. ‘How did he know who I was, and where I’d be? I never gave my name when I called Tanya,’ he said.

  ‘It doesn’t take a cop to work that one out. You and I talk. I ask the team for a contact, obviously on your behalf. We come here for a pint tonight.’ Jack shrugged.

  ‘There’s no chance one of your lot knows who the victim is, and is keeping quiet about it?’ Magnus said.

  ‘They told the police they didn’t. I have to believe that.’

  Magnus let it go, accepting Jack’s need to protect his team. The cannabis connection had always been a tenuous one. Even if the elusive Tanya knew the victim, she was unlikely to reveal it to Magnus, or the police.

  ‘So,’ Jack said. ‘What next for our investigation?’

  ‘We await developments.’

  Jack, looking disappointed, began to fold the map.

  ‘Can I hold on to that for the moment?’ Magnus said. ‘At least until R2S come up with the compass readings.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jack replied reluctantly.

  After his strange visitor, Magnus had decided to lock the house when he’d set out for Stromness. That fact irritated him now, as he searched for his key. He eventually found it in a rarely used pocket and slipped it in the lock.

  The silence on entry seemed profound. It was a silence rarely experienced in Orkney, or at his flat in Glasgow. Here, the wind and sea were in perpetual motion. In Glasgow it was the traffic. Magnus stood for a moment in the hall, subconsciously scenting the air, registering the fact that no one had been there since he’d left.

  Although it was late, he had no desire for sleep. The midnight sun had reset his internal clock as it always did. Insomnia was the price you paid for long summer days this far north.

  Magnus headed for his study and opened the window a little. Now the silence was broken by the soft lapping of water against the jetty. Across the Flow, the humpback of Hoy loomed inky black against a red and purple sky.

  He located the bottle of Highland Park he kept on the bookcase and poured himself a shot, then spread the map out on the table near the window. The map bothered Magnus in ways he could not yet put into words.

  His job as a profiler was to try and interpret the signature of a killer. To build up a picture of the person who committed such an act. Everything was done for a reason, which may have no rationale to the observer, but nonetheless was clear to the perpetrator.

  The perpetrator had a reason for positioning the hands. A reason f
or the stone in the mouth. A reason for the number on the stone. What the hell was it?

  Magnus drank down the whisky and poured himself another.

  He knew he should stop thinking now, and try to get some sleep, but he couldn’t get the questions out of his head. It was always like this. The crime followed by a fog. Then a deluge of thoughts. A bombardment of ideas. A maze of possible paths. The majority of them leading to a dead end.

  And doubt. Doubt that the psychological theories were valid. Doubt that he could apply them correctly. Doubt that he believed the stories he told himself.

  McNab, on the other hand, operated in reality. He wasn’t interested in playing with psychology. McNab had to take ultimate responsibility for his every move.

  That was why McNab doubted and questioned. To a detective, everyone was capable of lying. Everyone was lying, until proved otherwise.

  Magnus confronted the next uncomfortable thought, that there was a distinct possibility they were being set up. By the layout of the body, by the manner of death, by the symbolic nature of it. A possibility that the perpetrator was playing with them. That they were the pawns in his game.

  The light had finally faded, rendering the room full of long and ominous shadows.

  Magnus felt suddenly chilled, inside and out. He closed the window and carried the whisky up to his room. Tomorrow he would contact Erling and find out whether the link between the two deaths was officially established. Then he would plan his journey south.

  20

  She’d fucked up by coming on to him. He hadn’t liked it. That had surprised her because it usually worked and gave her the upper hand. She rubbed her wrist, remembering his reaction, the look in his eye as he pushed her away. That had unnerved her and she’d stupidly lit the joint.

  Normally that would have calmed her down, so she could speak to him. But combined with what she’d taken earlier, it had made her head weird. On the ferry back she’d felt sick.

  Looking across the Flow, she could picture his house by the shore and the jetty where she’d waited for him. She’d had it all planned and still she’d fucked up.

  She fingered the stud in her nose, pulling at it until she felt it weep. The scent of the seepage brought three flies almost instantaneously to investigate. It made her think about the stupid bitch lying in the Ring. The flies buzzing round, filling her eyes and mouth.

  Why had the woman been there? It was her location. She, Morvan, had won her location fair and square. Months it had taken her. But what if she had got there first? Would she be the one in the mortuary?

  A cloud of midges found her. She would have to move or she’d be eaten alive. She stood and walked over to the concrete slab and free-standing chimney, all that was left of the Second World War Nissen hut. Below her, Scapa Flow glistened under a full moon.

  Since the stupid bitch was dead, did that mean she was safe?

  She took out her phone, and looked at it. She shouldn’t go online. It was too risky. But what if something happened to the others?

  She didn’t really know them anyway. They weren’t her responsibility.

  Guilt swept over her. Shouldn’t she warn them just in case? Hey, maybe she was wrong and what had happened had nothing to do with the game. It wasn’t as though it was a war game.

  Then why had the girl died?

  She set the mobile down, her hand trembling. Fear was still stabbing at her despite the effects of the joint. She would light another if need be. Otherwise she would get no sleep. She rolled one, her hand shaking. Once lit, the glow calmed her a little.

  Before she’d come here, she’d read about this place where grown men had been driven insane, not by the war they fought, but by being eaten alive by midges. The aromatic smoke enveloped her, shielding her from the more voracious biters. She would have lit a fire in the chimney, but hadn’t wanted to make her presence known.

  She would pack up camp and leave tomorrow. Catch the morning ferry south. Then the train. She’d be back in the city by nightfall. No one knew what she looked like. No one knew who she really was. Now the other girl was dead, she was safe. That thought helped her drift off into sleep.

  She awoke suddenly and with a start. Her mouth felt dry and crusty with dead midges, her head still swimming with the effects of the drug. She tried to sit up, feeling woozy. The slap and suck of water on the rocks below suggested Scapa Flow had woken as she had slept. She felt about for her mobile to light the way, but it was no longer where she thought she’d laid it. She stumbled to her feet, and into the rising wind. Nearby she heard her tent flap and wondered why she hadn’t crept inside before falling asleep.

  The wind rustled the surrounding heather. Tinder dry in the sustained warm spell, it sounded like a crackling fire. Somewhere, the horn of a boat hooted like an owl in woods. But there are no woods here, she thought, no trees.

  As she approached the tent, she thought she heard her game name, ‘Morvan’, like a whisper on the wind.

  She stopped short, unnerved and listening. This had been happening recently. She was smoking too much grass. She forced herself forward. There was a knife in the tent and a torch. Holding them would make her feel safer.

  But she never reached the tent.

  From behind, a hand pushed her and she stumbled forward, falling onto the concrete. For a moment she was too shocked to move, then she managed to drag herself to her knees. Immediately hands forced her back down.

  Her head was wrenched back, then slammed down to crack against the concrete. Stunned, she couldn’t resist as she was dragged by the hair, then rolled inside the tent. She scrabbled about, trying to find the knife as the tent collapsed about her and she was rolled in an ever-tightening cocoon, then lifted.

  She heard a scattering of stones. They rumbled forward and fell to bounce off the cliff below. Suddenly she knew what was about to happen. Her scream, prevented from escape by the nylon gag, drove backwards and down her throat.

  And then she was launched.

  The first time she hit the cliff face, her jaw smashed, driving her teeth upwards and inwards.

  The second bounce shattered the bones in her right leg and shoulder.

  The third sent a rib to pierce a lung.

  By the time she met the rocks that rose above the now-seething waters of the Flow, she wasn’t yet dead, until a sharp pinnacle pierced the nylon cocoon to enter her left eye and then her brain.

  Above, her attacker listened to each slam of the descending body, counting them, hoping there would be five.

  21

  ‘And then there were three,’ McNab said ironically.

  ‘That’s not funny,’ Rhona said.

  McNab turned on her. ‘I know it’s not fucking funny. It’s you who’s suggesting it.’

  ‘I didn’t suggest …’ She paused.

  ‘No, but you implied.’

  McNab was on edge and, she suspected, hung over. She didn’t feel that good herself after the wine last night at the jazz club, then at Sean’s. Rhona winced at the memory.

  ‘We can’t ignore the similarities,’ she said quietly.

  ‘No one’s ignoring them,’ McNab said tersely. ‘I’m in contact with the DI in charge up there.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We’re awaiting results from both PMs and from forensic,’ he added pointedly.

  ‘What about this spiritual church business?’

  He shot her a look fit to kill. ‘Chrissy been blabbing again?’

  ‘The whole team’s been blabbing.’

  ‘You and I both know that the mumbo-jumbo stuff is just that. Mumbo jumbo.’

  ‘So Patrick Menzies isn’t a suspect?’ she said.

  ‘A prospect for the funny farm, maybe.’

  ‘He didn’t mention Orkney?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  Rhona decided to wade in. Sometimes it was the best way with McNab.

  ‘Magnus took compass readings. The victim’s hands at Brodgar were placed to point southeast and southwest.’ She ca
rried on despite the glint in McNab’s eye. ‘The westward line passes through Callanish on Lewis, the second largest stone circle in Scotland.’

  McNab held up his hand. ‘Stop right there.’ He looked askance at her. ‘And I thought you were a scientist, Dr MacLeod.’

  They were in McNab’s office and their raised voices were no doubt being noted in the incident room. The next strategy meeting was due to begin in five minutes. This time it would be key personnel only, including the senior officer in charge, Superintendent Sutherland. A man McNab had failed to impress on a number of occasions, which might have had something to do with his combative attitude.

  Rhona was about to come back at McNab with a further piece of news, when there was a tentative knock on the door.

  McNab bellowed, ‘What?’

  DS Clark looked in warily. ‘They’re ready for you now, sir.’

  The strategy meeting was proceeding more smoothly than Rhona had expected. Roy Hunter of R2S had just completed his demo of the online crime-scene mapping of the Cathkin Braes site, together with the evidence collected. The PM results, or lack of them, had been discussed. McNab had handled everything up to now with aplomb. Now it was Rhona’s turn to speak.

  She gave details of the body in situ, emphasizing the layout and positioning, the samples she took and why. She then brought up the subject of the stone. They all knew about the number scratched on it, but there was one detail they didn’t know. Something she would have told McNab, had she been allowed to before the meeting.

  Rhona indicated Roy should bring up her images and detailed analysis. Then she began.

  ‘A forensic examination of the stone in the victim’s mouth indicated it wasn’t local. In fact, the stone in question is the geological equivalent of the stones used to build the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney.’ She paused for a moment, aware that Superintendent Sutherland was listening intently. ‘The stone in the mouth of the young woman found in the Ring of Brodgar in similar circumstances some forty-eight hours after our crime, doesn’t belong to Orkney, but has been identified as similar to that of the stones found on Cathkin Braes.’ She paused briefly before adding what had to be said. ‘After visiting the Orkney locus on the invitation of Professor Magnus Pirie, who has worked with us on a number of cases, and seeing the body in situ, it is my forensic opinion that the two crimes are linked and may therefore have been committed by the same perpetrator.’