‘Tania, we’ll talk about that tape-recording as soon as I see you, but do forget about it for the time being. I promise you that there is a perfectly rational explanation.
‘Please, please, madam.’ He glowered at the bell ringer who had resumed her efforts. ‘Darling, it is quite obvious what happened. Dr Rose told me that Mrs Van Traylen almost regarded Mary as her own daughter and she was a sick woman with a painful and inoperable growth. Surely it is feasible that, in her distress, she told the child about her experience and, when Mary learned of the suicide, it became lodged in her subconscious.
‘Tania, are you listening?’ Marcus joggled the rest again, but the line was quite dead and he replaced the receiver.
‘Yes, you heard me correctly, ladies.’ The woman had lowered the bell and they both smiled at him. ‘I am leaving tonight, but I have a double room with a friend who is staying on. No, I’m afraid he is not a gentleman and I doubt if he would vacate out of chivalry. I am also quite sure that he would not relish sharing his bed with either of you.’ He gave them a courtly bow and shouldered his way into the bar where he had arranged to meet Kirk.
Though Anna Harb was a monster, she had certainly done a lot of good for the tradespeople of Lochern. The bar was crowded from end to end and most of the clients appeared to be drinking heavily: young army, naval and air force officers, groups of newspaper reporters and a cluster of campers in brightly coloured anoraks and heavy boots. Most of them were talking loudly and all were concerned with the subject of the chase.
‘Yes, we’ve covered Sections K, L, M and N up to now and cordoned them off. That leaves only O and it’s flat open country with no cover to speak of. The C.O. says he’s convinced the woman has either managed to leave the island or is dead. All the same, I’m not so sure myself and between the three of us I’m looking forward to the morning. 06.00 hours we assemble and I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if we don’t flush her out. Tally ho, eh. Thanks, I would like a refill. A pink gin and ask him to put in a spot more angostura this time.’
‘Cheers, gentlemen. Yes, it was a good story while it lasted. Got some cigarettes on you, Mr Murray, I seem to have come without my case?’
Marcus was wedged between the military and the roar of the Press: three prosperous-looking gentlemen on national dailies, the representative of the Nordwest deutsche Tagesblatt, and a crushed youth from the Inner Isles Clarion and Advertiser.
‘Did you see my article yesterday? The chief was delighted. Sent me a personal telegram of congratulation. Let’s have a light, Mr Murray.’
‘Pity old Fattie Forest got in first, though. I was hoping that the capture and a few pictures might make him feel pretty silly about dashing back to the “Smoke”, but there’s little chance of that, apparently. I was talking to one of the helicopter pilots this afternoon and he’s convinced the woman must be dead and all they’ll find is a body. Still, while there’s life, there’s death, eh, and we’ll just have to content ourselves with a corpse. Thanks, I’m alight, Mr Murray, but shove over those olives, there’s a good chap.’
‘What about another round, gentlemen? No, no, keep your hand out of your pocket, Bill. Surely it must be Mr Murray’s turn? Of course it is. Mr Murray will get them. That’ll be the three whiskies, a brandy and whatever you’re drinking yourself, Mr Murray.
‘I beg your pardon. Yes, naturally doubles and I rather think Herr Krebs would like a cigar. Let’s have some sandwiches too, while you’re about it. Smoked salmon all right with you, gentlemen?
‘Good. Five rounds of the salmon, Mr Murray, and we might as well have a few anchovies as a relish.’
‘I’m terribly sorry, Sir Marcus. Are we holding you back from the water hole? Show a little respect, Mr Murray. Don’t let a Nobel prize-winner go thirsty. Won’t you join us, Sir Marcus? Mr Murray’s in the chair.’
‘It’s very kind of you, but I’m waiting for a friend so I’ll get my own.’ Marcus bought a small whisky and carried it over to the single vacant seat beside the window which was flanked on either side by groups of aggrieved hill walkers.
‘Free country; don’t make me laugh. National Trust property, all the Blyven Range is, and they wouldn’t let us go near it.’
‘Come ’ere to ’elp the police and do our civic duty and they chase us off like bleeding dogs.’
‘Sod all rozzers and let’s have another round, lads.’
They are enjoying themselves, Marcus thought, as he stared around the room. Even the abject Mr Murray who was having to change a cheque at the bar had an eager, excited look in his eyes. Everybody had thrilled to the chase and everybody was disappointed that their quarry might be dead. Who was it who had praised fox hunting as a sport that provided half the excitement of a battle with only a tenth the danger? The fellow was obviously right, but a human being appeared to be a much more attractive adversary than a fox.
Poor Tania, though. He should never have left her in her advanced state of pregnancy; she had sounded almost hysterical on the telephone. Marcus glanced at his watch. Charles was late but, whatever happened, he intended to catch that ferry. He would finish this whisky, pack his bag and leave a note for him. The old boy would understand. He’d once told him that his own wife had had bad pre-natal neurosis while she was carrying his son and a lot of good it had done her. Marcus turned and looked out of the window at the dark hills and the sweep of the Atlantic all around them. Alan Kirk was a few charred bones locked in a rusty hull and Charles had no family at all.
Damn John Forest. Damn you too, my darling. Oh, Tania, I love you very much, but why must you let your imagination run wild all the time? The soul of a dead woman entering the mind of a child to pass on her memories and personality: a ridiculous and repulsive notion.
Cajal and Forbes and Lashley. Marcus frowned as the names suddenly occurred to him without any apparent reason. Why should he suddenly think of three scientists whose work had been quite unconnected with his own?
Yes, complete nonsense. Helen Van Traylen had told that child her story and it had become lodged in the back of Mary’s mind till the shock of the accident and Haynes’s drugs released the memory. Cajal and Forbes and Lashley.
The personality of a woman who had died old and in great misery entering the mind of a child. Preposterous! There was not a shred of proven evidence for psychic possession or communication by a sixth sense. The subject was only fit for consideration by cranks and wishful thinkers and the writers of fairy stories.
Ramon Cajal and Forbes and Lashley. They had not been cranks, but level-headed men of science. Tyrell too. A fourth name joined the others in his mind and Marcus suddenly recalled just such a fairy story which had frightened him as a child. The details were vague, but it concerned a young baby, an old man and a mountain. Eagles too. Somehow the eagles had been the instruments of salvation.
No, it was too far back. He couldn’t remember the story, though he distinctly recalled the nightmares it had given him and how he had tossed and turned on the straw bed at the back of his father’s little shop at Lemberg.
Time was getting on, however, and he would have to leave soon without waiting for Kirk if he hoped to catch the ferry. Marcus glanced at his watch and took another sip of whisky. The room was filled with smoke and smelled pleasantly of damp tweed and two big collies which were crouching under the next table, obviously disturbed by the influx of strangers. Their owner was an old man in a kilt whose bow legs looked far too frail to support him.
Rubbish! Marcus fought against a sudden theory but, as he did so, the rest of the fairy tale came back to him. The room behind his father’s shop had been dark and bare, the rain rattled on the shutters, but the brightly coloured illustration of the book was clear in his mind’s eye and he knew that, outside, the Polish steppes had reared up into mountains as high as the Alps. On one of those mountains a stunted figure was climbing. A gnome, old and bent and hideously deformed, was toiling up to the summit with a white bundle in his arms. He halted on the summit, unwrapped th
e bundle, took a deep breath and leaned forward to transfer his own evil spirit into the body of the child. Their mouths were almost touching when, out of the heavens, came the eagles.
‘Cajal and Forbes, Lashley and Tyrell.’ The last name was the one that mattered and Marcus spoke aloud to the consternation of the aged shepherd beside him. Something cracked, something burned, but he hardly noticed the broken glass or the blood and whisky dribbling down from his hand. He was on his feet, pushing his way out of the room and he had completely forgotten about the ferry. For the first time he knew that there might be a rational explanation for Anna Harb’s sudden outburst of mania, for Mary Valley’s terrors, for the death of Sidney Molson, for everything.
‘My apologies, Tania, and to you too, Mr Forest,’ he said to himself as he hurried out of the hotel and across the square towards the tiny hospital. ‘You are the only people who managed to hit on what may be the truth and it took a fairy story to make me believe you.’ He halted at the entrance and turned to blow a kiss in what he imagined was the direction of London. ‘Oh, my good, clever Tania Valina Levin, I am so much in love with you.
‘And thank you also, my dear colleagues. I know little of your work, but I may be indebted to you before long.’ He followed the kiss with an ironic bow. ‘Doctors Cajal and Forbes, and Tyrell and Lashley.’
Chapter Sixteen
‘She is dead, General Kirk. In my own mind there is not the slightest doubt about that, and I’m equally sure that we’ll never find the body.’ The walls of the laird’s chalet-type residence were lined with sporting trophies and between an otter’s pad and the mask of a dispirited-looking fox hung a glass-covered map of the island.
‘And without a body, the story will turn into legend. For generations this island will remain a symbol of murder and insanity and witchcraft. Our tourist trade may well be wiped out and all we’ll get will be morbid day-trippers to stare at us as if we were ghouls ourselves.
‘Yes, Anna Harb has shot her bolt but the poison will remain.’ Cameron’s knuckles rapped the glass cover. ‘You heard what Colonel Fenwick had to report, I believe. Only one section is left to be searched in the morning and that’s Drummond Moor, over here. It’s been under observation from the air and from the Blyven Ridge since yesterday and it provides no cover at all. A rabbit couldn’t go undetected on the moor, let alone a human being. The woman is dead, and her story will remain to trouble Bala.
‘May I refresh your drink, General?’
‘No, no thank you, Chief Constable.’ Kirk knew the power of the clear, innocent-looking Skye whisky and he slid a hand over his glass as Cameron approached with a bottle.
‘But how can you be so certain that Harb is dead? It is still a comparatively short time since that little boy was murdered. Unless a body is found I think we must assume that she may be alive and the danger remains.’
‘Because we will never find a body, General.’ Cameron poured himself another generous measure. ‘If you knew Bala as well as I do, you’d understand why I’m so sure about that. There are bogs and pitfalls and caves all over the island and a tide called the Scourie that sweeps between us and Raasay like a fast-flowing river. She’s dead, and either deep in the earth or somewhere out in the Atlantic.
‘Try and think about it dispassionately. Food and above all water she’d need and it’s been a dry year. The burns are very low and every one of them and every lake is guarded. We found some of her clothing in the car, as you know, and the dogs have the scent. The bloody woman probably stank like a polecat and they haven’t had a sniff of her.
‘Just look at that now.’ There was a sudden glow of light beyond the town and Cameron strode angrily out on to the veranda. ‘Another blasted bonfire and our people will have had nothing to do with it. They are either good Catholics who share my view that Guy Fawkes should have had better luck, or pious Calvinists who disapprove of all idle celebrations. The whole place is crawling with hooligans from the mainland and most of my regular police have been taken off the hunt to control them. That’ll be more of their work. We’ve had fighting in the bars, that poor gipsy pedlar assaulted and the attack on the soldiers. Now, they are obviously burning ricks and it’s got to stop, General. Once Drummond Moor has been covered tomorrow and they’ve drawn a blank, I intend to issue a statement that Harb is dead and the emergency is over. They’ll scurry back to the Glasgow rat holes where they belong once they think the fun is over.
‘Quite sure you won’t have another jar, General? This stuff never did anybody any harm, whatever that fool James Knight, our new G.P., has to say.’
‘No thank you, I must be off in a moment, Chief Constable.’ Kirk looked up at a clock on the mantelpiece. ‘I’m meeting Marcus Levin at six thirty and time is getting on.’
‘Well, it’s your funeral.’ Cameron downed his own drink and refilled the glass. ‘Angus Sinclair, our good old doctor, said that pure malt spirit was the finest tonic there is when taken in moderation. But he retired last year and this young English pup, Knight, took over the practice. I went to see him not so long ago because I’ve been having a bit of trouble with me guts. The fellow had the impudence to suggest it might be due to my drinking habits. He even joked about it and said I was suffering from a condition known as “Publican’s bile”.’ Cameron glanced at the bottle with a frank plea in his eyes.
‘You might ask your pal Levin what he thinks about that, General. Surely there’s no harm in it; not good pure whisky taken in moderation and if you eat well.’
‘I’ll certainly mention it to him, Chief Constable.’ Kirk was leaning against the balustrade and staring at the glow across the bay.
‘Fire,’ he said to himself. ‘Mary Valley is both attracted and repelled by fire.’
‘That’s it, General. Right first go, which proves what a fool young Knight is.’ His host nodded in agreement. ‘You obviously suffer from the same complaint, though you seem to be a most modest drinker. Every morning it’s as if there was a ruddy great fire in my guts, burning the innards; horrible. Then, whenever I go to the heads, it’s like passing razor blades.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sure your symptoms are most objectionable, Captain Cameron, but I was thinking of something else.’ Kirk walked back into the room and studied the wall map. ‘The daughter is fascinated by fire and I’m wondering if the mother has the same fascination. This evening, the orphanage children are being given a party with a bonfire and fireworks. Do you think it possible that that might bring her out?’
‘No, I do not, for the simple reason that I am convinced the woman is dead; buried in a bog or swept out to sea.’ Cameron shook his head in irritation. ‘But even if she is alive, she couldn’t possibly get anywhere near Inver House. There are pickets right across the peninsula, as you have seen for yourself, General; here, here and here.’ He pointed at the map. ‘Nobody could possibly get past them, even at night, and I’ve also got dog handlers patrolling the walls.’
‘I am not worried about her getting in.’ Kirk tried to recall the layout of the orphanage. A wall which was approximately eight feet high, grounds with trees and shrubs, the playing field ending at the edge of the cliff, which he had considered horribly dangerous for children, and a flight of steps running down to the jetty from which the launch had put out on its last voyage. The main block itself with imitation turrets and battlements towering over the paved quadrangle and at least a dozen minor buildings dotted around it; garages and store-houses and sheds.
‘If you are wrong and Anna Harb is alive, it seems probable that the only place where she could be hiding is Inver House itself.’
‘Good God, General.’ Cameron brought his fist crashing down on a table. ‘Though they wouldn’t let us station men inside the grounds, the Van Traylen people have searched every nook and cranny of the place themselves. They are completely confident the woman is nowhere on their premises. If they’re not worried, why should you be?’
‘Because of a little girl’s fascination with fire, Chie
f Constable.’ An unpleasant picture had formed in Kirk’s mind. The cheerful glow of the bonfire, the sound of fireworks, children laughing and shouting and old people who were trying to forget their fears and sorrows. Then, out from some dark cranny might come a woman. A monster creeping stealthily out to kill again.
‘Just another hunch, but all the same, I would rather like to go to the orphanage this evening, so if you will excuse me . . .’
‘Please yourself, General Kirk. Go to Inver House and play watchdog if you’re so minded. But it’s blowing up for a foul night so don’t expect me to accompany you. I’ve done everything I can to protect those people and I’m quite sure they’re not in any further danger.’ He sat down and scribbled a note as Kirk put on his coat and muffler. ‘Take this to the police station and they’ll lay on transport. We don’t want you wandering about on your own and ending up in hospital with that poor gipsy.’ Cameron handed Kirk the paper and led him to the door feeling extremely disgruntled.
‘Bloody old fool.’ He returned to his sitting-room, muttering aloud as he poured out another tot of the harmless, pure malt spirit. ‘The blasted woman is dead and this business has driven everybody round the bend. She must be dead because no other explanation is possible.’ The telephone rang and he scowled as he answered it.
‘Oh, it’s you, Inspector. Well, what’s the news? More outrages by those Glasgow hooligans, I suppose.’
‘Yes, sir. They’ve set a rick alight near Fula Bay, but that’s not why I’m ringing.’ The policeman’s voice was slightly guarded. ‘I am speaking from the hospital and Sir Marcus Levin is with me. He has just told me a rather strange theory and wishes to examine the medical evidence. But Dr Knight is here as well and he refuses to co-operate.’
‘Then make him co-operate, Inspector. Marcus Levin is a very eminent man.’ Kirk’s sudden departure still ruffled the Chief Constable and the very mention of the offending Knight increased his ill-humour. ‘Good God, Grant, can nobody take any action without me holding his hand? Have I to be a wet nurse to the whole blasted island?’
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