Deadly Code (Rhona MacLeod #3)

by Lin Anderson

  Spike didn’t like looking at his hands. Didn’t like thinking what they had done. Didn’t like the way they reminded him of what he was. He slid his hand from Esther’s.

  Outside the dark was stealing the day. Spike wiped a dribble from the baby’s chin, then slipped his hand in his pocket.

  Chapter 14

  The shoreline was long, a million years of seashells ground into soft white sand. The right foot, helped by the wash of a western wind, sailed in with the tide and came to rest halfway up the beach. A crab, scuttling eastwards, found the jagged opening above the ankle bone and crawled inside.

  Rhona looked down. In the dark it was difficult to see, but there was definitely one of them on her right breast. The body was white, elliptical; like a small hard insect shell. She screamed and flicked at it, sending it scuttling into the darkness. It was then she spotted the others, a myriad of them, like eyes in a black night. She stood up and tried to run towards the daylight, but rotting arms snaked her legs, tripping her up, landing her face down in soft white swollen flesh.

  The alarm dragged her mind towards the day. At the same time the buzzer sounded, three short insistent drones. Rhona sat up, examining her right breast, knowing there was nothing there but checking all the same.

  She killed the alarm and pulled on her dressing gown. There was no need to hurry, whoever was at the buzzer was not giving up. Already the button was marking the next three-beat bar.

  Rhona snatched the handset off its cradle.

  ‘Alright, alright.’

  Bill’s voice was half drowned by other voices.

  ‘Are you going to let me in?’

  When she opened the door, his face was grey in the watery light of the stairwell.

  ‘Press vultures are out in force.’

  Rhona stood back and let him in. In the few minutes she had waited for him to climb the stairs, she had forced her brain into wakefulness and realised how alone she was. Sean had not come home, at ten o’clock or any other time.

  ‘Where’s Sean?’ Bill said.

  ‘You tell me.’

  Bill Wilson looked old, like a newspaper caught in the rain.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said.

  They were in the sitting room. Rhona sat down, legs drifting from under her.

  ‘Should I be worried?’

  Bill was still standing. A bad sign.

  ‘There was a phone call from the hospital,’ he said. ‘The girl picked up in the drugs raid was removed last night by someone claiming to be her brother.’

  The mugs of coffee sat between them on the kitchen table. Bill’s had grown a white skin waiting for him to drink it.

  Rhona already knew it wasn’t Sean who had removed Esther from the hospital. That had been easy enough to establish. Where the hell was he now, if he had been released from custody at eight o’clock?

  ‘I’m sorry, Rhona.’

  ‘About what?’ Rhona looked at the weary face marked with the strain of the previous night’s events.

  ‘Your job.’

  She shrugged. ‘Standing up for colleagues against the MOD is not in Dr Sissons’ rule book. He tried all the same.’ She looked across the table. ‘What about Sean?’

  ‘O’Brien says he got an anonymous tip off. He had no option but to check it out. A female operative found the girl ga-ga in the toilets. A quantity of amphetamine powder and ecstasy tablets were found in there with her.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean Sean was supplying.’

  ‘No. But it looks like it.’

  Rhona studied her coffee. ‘Esther could be a witness.’

  Bill nodded. ‘And she’s gone.’

  He pulled the morning newspaper from the inside pocket of his coat and spread it out on the table for her to read. The London-owned Scottish tabloid was having fun, running the line of Scots junkies living off the UK treasury; but this time with the help of a government servant’s live-in lover. Forensic science was having a bad morning.

  She paused. ‘O’Brien could be lying.’

  ‘Why would he lie?’

  ‘Hell hath no fury like a man scorned?’

  Bill knew the story. ‘O’Brien’s a fool. But he’s not bent.’

  Bill was right. If there had been stuff at the club, O’Brien wasn’t the one that put it there. He just enjoyed finding it.

  By the time Bill left, he had gently warned her not to show any more interest in the drugs bust or in the dismembered body, for both their sakes. His Super had been adamant.

  ‘Sleep off your jet lag,’ he added. ‘Leave it to me.’

  Rhona watched from the landing as he nodded up to her before opening the main door to a gaggle of questions. Between them, she and Bill Wilson had put many men behind bars. It only needed one of them to decide to get even.

  The dose of caffeine had woken Rhona up. She ignored the bed and sat down at her laptop. Chrissy would know all about her fall from grace by now. A Miss Angry letter was bound to be winging its way through cyberspace.

  There were two messages in the inbox. The first subject heading was the name of a jazz song. Rhona double-clicked and opened it up.

  Sorry I didn’t come home last night. I wanted to avoid the Evening Post blokes parked on your doorstep. I’m going to ask around, see if I can find out who planted the stuff and why.

  Esther’s gone from the hospital. She’ll be with Spike. She’s ill, Rhona. If you can find her, get her to a doctor.

  You were right. This electronic stuffs not so bad after all. I’m sorry,

  Sean.

  ‘If you can find her, get her to a doctor.’

  The spare room was tidy. Nothing left of its recent occupant except a faint smell of perfume.

  Rhona let her mind work through everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

  Below, the convent garden reminded her she had survived another winter. The trees were bright with fresh leaves and sometime during her sojourn in LA the borders had become a splash of colour.

  Sean wouldn’t come back, at least not until he could prove he had nothing to do with the drugs at the club; staying out of it didn’t seem an option, despite Bill’s advice.

  Rhona went back to the computer.

  Chrissy’s email was short and steeped in anger. She promised to keep Rhona informed about what was happening at the lab. She would call round soon.

  Rhona poured another cup of coffee and dropped onto the sofa. Okay. There was plenty she could do. There was another article to write, requested by an American biomedical journal. And she would have to speak to Lynne Franklin, although whether ReGene would wish to recruit a suspected drug dealer’s girlfriend was another matter.

  And there was Andre.

  According to Andre, Dr Fitzgerald MacAulay had moved to Britain in the 1980s, working at Porton Down.

  ‘At what?’ Rhona had asked him.

  ‘At the time, most countries viewed biological weapons as limited to non-specific targeting,’ Andre said.

  ‘And they wanted something more efficient?’

  He nodded. ‘MacAulay was good. Better than good. He was already thinking gene-specific viruses. He just didn’t know how to do it … then.’

  ‘And now?’

  Andre did not have to spell it out to her. How FBI crime labs, like their British counterparts, had routinely stumbled on genetic markers specific to blacks, whites, Hispanics and Native Americans; there was a genetic marker present in the DNA of Palestinian Arabs distinguishing them from Israeli Jews.

  ‘And MacAulay?’ she said.

  ‘He disappeared at what was essentially the peak of his career … and the peak of his interest to the British government.’

  Rhona could hardly believe it, ‘And no one knew where he went?’

  ‘They thought the Soviet Union at first, but that was never a possibility. MacAulay was as right-wing as they come. Believed in American Capitalism and the right to bear arms.’

  ‘No wonder Mrs Thatcher wanted him here.’

&nbs
p; Rhona was avoiding asking Andre how he knew all this and why the interest anyway? But Andre didn’t need the question.

  ‘Dr Fitzgerald MacAulay was my father.’

  Rhona still remembered her reaction. The open mouth, the puzzled face and then the stupid remark, but your name is Frith.

  ‘My mother’s name. They never married.’

  Andre went on, ignoring the look on her face. ‘A letter was posted in Raasay. It said he was coming back to the States. He never arrived. I came to look for him. No one in Raasay knew him. They said the only Americans were the tourists.’ He paused. ‘Maybe he was a tourist. Maybe he visited the island like me and posted the letter from there.’

  Rhona still couldn’t see the connection with the foot she’d examined.

  ‘There’s one way I would know if the foot belonged to my father.

  He had a tattoo on his ankle. The sign that showed he belonged to the clan.’

  Rhona’s heart went cold. ‘The clan?’

  ‘The Clan of the Men of the West.’

  ‘ReAlba.’

  The wise move then would have been to tell Andre the truth. The foot did have a tattoo, in fact she’d just received the digital image of it. But she didn’t. Instead she told him the foot she’d examined had been badly decomposed. There was no obvious tattoo. Then she suggested Andre contact the British government and tell them what he had told her.

  Even now, Rhona wasn’t sure why she hadn’t told Andre about the tattoo. Okay, so she never discussed cases outside the lab, but the police wanted to identify the foot. If it was his father, Andre had a right to know.

  Maybe the real reason she didn’t tell him was because she didn’t trust him.

  Rhona repacked her case before she went to bed, piling the dirty washing on the kitchen floor. The Rough Guide to Scotland offered her various possibilities. Raasay House was an outdoor centre, which also did bed and breakfast. There was the Raasay Hotel, or there was Mrs MacMurdo at the Post Office.

  Chapter 15

  Esther was smiling. The baby smiled back at her, making Spike wonder at the power of a full stomach. The pinched look was gone from his wee face. The stolen fleecy jacket bunched up around his red cheeks as Esther threw the wee one up and caught him again.

  Their laughter was a better tonic than the oxygen-filled air and the dark serrated edge of the Cuillin over the water behind them.

  Spike had spent the morning scouring the shops for what they needed, leaving Esther to drink tea and eat scones in a tourist cafe.

  Now he was ready, the backpack stuffed with nappies and baby food. He had already decided not to hitch a lift to the dinghy. Once they were out of the more touristy places, people would ask questions.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Of course we’re ready.’ Esther met the baby nose to nose and kissed him.

  Spike lifted him into the carrier and slipped it onto his back.

  ‘Let’s go, then.’

  They took the coast road out of town, keeping the sea on their left. Now that they were here, the apprehension that had invaded Spike on the bus had gone. Whatever happened, he would rather it happened here.

  After a mile he cut inland, letting the water drop behind them. Esther climbed quietly behind him. Every so often Spike stopped and turned, but Esther’s eyes were clear and bright.

  They reached the dinghy two hours later. Spike had felt the baby fall asleep, the weight of the backpack suddenly changing. He stopped when they reached the headland, eased the straps from his shoulders and laid the baby like a papoose on the grass.

  ‘Wait here,’ he told Esther.

  The pebble beach was hidden beneath a thick overhang of broom but Spike knew the dinghy’s whereabouts by the single standing stone. Spring sunshine had forced the broom into flower and as Spike pushed his way through, the heady scent of coconut filled his nostrils.

  The sailing dinghy was where he had left it, pulled into a shallow cave under the overhang. Standing in the entrance, Spike waited for the nausea of remembering, but there was nothing but the scent of salt water.

  At the back of the cave, the bundle of clothes had dried in stiff folds. Spike shook them out and laid them on the ground.

  The tins of food stood undisturbed. He pulled his army knife from his pocket and sliced the circle of the lid. He didn’t want to light a fire until they were at the blackhouse. Esther would have to dine on cold beans and corned-beef.

  When he emerged, Esther had the baby bare-arsed on the grass, its wee legs kicking for the sky. Spike handed her a plastic plate with the sliced beef and cold beans.

  ‘A picnic,’ she said.

  She propped the baby up against her legs and fed it a mashed mouthful before she started to eat.

  ‘Duncan,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to call him Duncan.’

  She swooped the spoon down from a great height.

  ‘Duncan. Duncan.’

  His wee mouth spread like a hatchling’s.

  Spike pointed across the water. ‘That mountain is called Dun Caan.’

  Esther laughed. ‘See. I knew that was his name.’

  Spike had never heard the baby’s real name. ‘It was his name. It or the wean. Something to put outside the door when the Flintstones were humping or shooting up.

  The thing, that’s what his father had called Calum. The thing, as if Calum had no heart and no soul.

  Spike got up and lifted the empty plates. A splutter of water seeped from the ground nearby, trying to find its way to the open sea. He rinsed the plates, wiped them with moss and shoved them in the backpack.

  The sky above them was clear but that could change very quickly.

  ‘Time for a sail,’ he called to Esther. ‘Hope you don’t get seasick.’

  Chapter 16

  Glasgow dropped behind her like a cloud. Rhona slipped a CD in the drive and let the music envelop her escape. She took the Loch Lomond road at a steady pace, the beauty of the loch reminding her there was more to life than overtaking.

  Sean had not called by the time she left and she had no idea where he was. She hadn’t spoken to Chrissy either. Chrissy didn’t need to be implicated in any of this, if things turned out for the worse.

  Rhona tapped out the swift fiddle music on the steering wheel, then indulged in a bout of nostalgia as Duncan Chisholm’s strings slowed to match the ripples of the wind on the loch.

  This was what the American Diaspora craved. A sense of belonging to a past time and place. A landscape that created the soul and played it in bittersweet tunes your whole life long.

  The further north she went the more the essence of the city fell away from her. She was going home. A home that no longer held her and hers. A home long forsaken but still there, its contours etched deep in her heart. Loch Lomond gave way to Glen Falloch, Crianlarich and then Rannoch Moor.

  Today the sun was shining on Glencoe. It was not a place full of the sorrow of its tragic history but a place of tourists seeking the hot blood of highland conflict to make sense of their present.

  Rhona stopped at the visitor centre and, as she drank a coffee, tried to imagine what Andre the American had made of it all.

  Despite her cynicism, the atmosphere of Glencoe moved in on her like the Campbells on the MacDonalds. She was glad to leave the Valley of Weeping and descend towards Fort William, which was full of early tourists and rural weekenders eager for retail therapy. Forty-seven miles later, she skirted Morar sands and emerged in Mallaig. The ferry was in port, cars unloading in a steady stream onto the quay. Rhona headed for the Coffee Pot, an attempt to bring cafe society to downtown Mallaig.

  Seven sailings a day, the girl who brought her order told her. Mallaig to Armadale, the scenic route to Skye. Rhona knew that already but she didn’t want to spoil the girl’s enthusiasm for talking to tourists, so she thanked her with a smile. Before she left the cafe she tried the mobile, which worked perfectly. She hadn’t expected a connection. Chrissy answered almost i
mmediately.

  ‘Where are you? I’ve been phoning the flat all day.’

  Rhona wasn’t willing to say, even to Chrissy.

  ‘I couldn’t stay in the flat.’

  Silence.

  ‘Sissons is walking about with a bad smell under his nose,’ Chrissy said.

  ‘More dead bodies than he can handle?’

  ‘Just another foot, washed up on a nice clean white beach in the inner Hebrides.’

  ‘I’m off the case, Chrissy.’

  ‘Like hell you are.’

  There was a noise that meant someone had come into the lab. Chrissy obviously didn’t want to speak in their presence. ‘Thanks, that will be fine,’ she said, and hung up.

  Rhona wished she could have asked about the results of the tests on the hand. Wished she knew whether the hand and foot were a match. Wished Sean had not fucked-up so badly. Wished she was back in her lab.

  The Small Isles peeped at her out of the mist halfway across the Sound of Sleat. Rum, Canna, Eigg and Muck. Hard-to-forget names in a hard-to-forget landscape. Over the sea to Skye. If only she had a pound for every time that song in memory of Bonnie Prince Charlie had been sung, she could retire.

  As the ferry docked at Armadale pier, Rhona had to admit why she had come the scenic route. If she had gone further north and crossed by the bridge, she would have had to make a conscious decision to go to the south of the island to look at the cottage. It was better this way. Driving past, knowing she could stop if she wanted to.

  She had not set foot on the island since her father’s funeral. Even now, two years later, she sometimes had to stop herself from dialling the number. After all, dead men don’t answer the phone.

  Rhona pulled off the road and found the path that skirted the hill and led down to the beach. She had intended to rush past the cottage, head for Broadford and stay the night there. Now it didn’t seem so difficult to see it. Maybe she could stay nearby after all.

  The path to the beach was well trodden and the front door of the house and the boat shed had been painted a bright Saltire blue. Rhona was suddenly glad she had agreed to rent the cottage to Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic college, for one of its teachers. Whoever had moved in was taking care of the place.