Deadly Code (Rhona MacLeod #3)

by Lin Anderson

  ‘I just took a notion,’ she lied.

  She glanced sideways, watching him construct a thought before putting it into words.

  ‘You’d better watch Mrs MacMurdo,’ he said with a laugh. ‘She’s a bit of a gossip. I bet she knows your life history by now.’

  ‘Probably. Why are you over here yourself?’

  He hadn’t expected the question, or at least not its directness.

  ‘Oh, I have one or two friends on the island,’ he said in Gaelic. ‘I come over from time to time to practise my Gaelic on them.’ He laughed. “They tell me I’ve got a terrible accent.’

  Fortunately the Post Office appeared from the sheeting rain before Rhona had to voice an opinion on his accent. She certainly didn’t want to have to admit to the fact that his Gaelic sounded pretty good.

  ‘So, are you planning to stay around for a few days?’

  Rhona opened the jeep door. ‘Probably.’ God she sounded cagey. It was difficult not to. ‘It depends on the weather,’ she added. If in doubt, rely on the weather.

  ‘Yes it can be unpredictable,’ he said with humourless understatement.

  They observed the downpour together.

  ‘Thanks again for the lift.’

  Mrs MacMurdo was waiting in the hall.

  ‘You’ll be wanting something hot,’ she said firmly. ‘Come through to the kitchen when you’ve changed. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  Kitchens like Mrs MacMurdo’s deserve to be savoured like good food, Rhona decided. The big solid fuel range beamed out comfort. Mrs MacMurdo waved her into a seat and placed a mug of hot tea on the edge of the range beside her. She refilled her own mug and sat herself down opposite Rhona.

  ‘I see you got a lift from the Gaelic teacher from the college,’ she said crisply.

  ‘It was lucky he came along. I would have been even more drenched.’

  Rhona could sense her landlady had something to say about Norman MacLeod. Whether she would choose to say it was another matter. Rhona decided to clear the air herself.

  ‘I just met Norman yesterday. I dropped into Dad’s cottage on the way here.’

  Mrs MacMurdo said nothing, but chose to stir purposefully at a bubbling pot. ‘I’ve made some stew for tea. I hope that will be alright?’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Oh, and there was a phone call while you were out. It was a man. American. Wouldn’t leave his name. Just asked if there was a Rhona MacLeod staying here.’

  The word American had a disapproving ring to it. If it wasn’t Norman MacLeod, Mrs MacMurdo seemed to be saying, then who was it?

  Rhona was wondering the same thing.

  After eating, Rhona went up to her room. Tucked under the eaves, the window alcove housed a small desk and chair. She had already set up her laptop there.

  Watching the soft swell of the water through the Narrows, it was difficult to imagine anything bad happening here. Peace seemed part of the place. Yet the reason most tourists visited these islands was because of their violent history. Every landmark told a horrific tale of clan killing clan. It made Rhona think of ReAlba and the Men of the West, caught in the past, ready to wipe out anyone who wasn’t one of their clan. But why use swords when they could manipulate the codes of life itself?

  Rhona began work on her paper, trying to ignore all other thoughts. The house sank into silence and she decided Mrs MacMurdo must have gone to bed. She made up her mind that she would speak to her landlady tomorrow about Dr Fitzgerald MacAulay.

  Andre said he’d had no luck with his enquiries, but although island people were friendly to strangers, they liked their privacy. To Mrs MacMurdo, Rhona was one of them. Maybe she would confide in Rhona what she would not tell an inquisitive American tourist.

  The nightmare that wakened her was the same one. Always the same one. The warmth and comfort of the bedclothes changing into the heavy wet cloying chill of water thick with debris. This time the water was filled with weeds, long tentacles curling round her legs and pulling her down until her lungs ached to burst.

  Rhona’s eyes flew open. A yellow moon split the darkness and danced its beams through the window. Her hammering heart began to slow. She took three long deep breaths. A clock on the mantelpiece ticked a steady beat and she willed her heart to match.

  This was stupid. Ever since she had got involved in this case she had dreamt of drowning. Having recurrent nightmares about the way her forensic victims might have died wasn’t the way to stay sane.

  Rhona got up and pulled on her dressing gown. Beneath her window, the path left the back door of the Post Office and went eastwards. Mrs MacMurdo had already told her there was a nice walk in that direction. Maybe tomorrow, she promised herself, turning back to her warm bed.

  The soft knock on the back door brought her to the window again. Rhona craned her neck trying to see who was standing on the step. The figure was male and not very tall. His face was turned from her, but she had a feeling he was a young man. The knock was louder this time, its echo drifting up the narrow stair.

  Rhona waited, silently wondering if she should go and open the door, but the third knock brought movement She heard Mrs MacMurdo’s bedroom door open and the swish of her slippers on the polished floor. Then the back door creaked open.

  The surprised gasp sent Rhona to her own door and onto the landing. There was such delight in her landlady’s voice; the visitor was someone she was pleased to see, whatever the hour. She ushered him inside. Rhona chanced a view, but the hall light was dim and the young man was quickly taken into the kitchen and the door shut behind him.

  Rhona got into bed and tried to go back to sleep. After all, it was none of her business who was visiting her landlady in the middle of the night

  She was finally dozing off when there was a tap at her own door. In the stair light, Mrs MacMurdo looked both embarrassed and concerned.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you at this late hour, Dr MacLeod, but I wonder if you can help? There’s a boy here who used to live on the island. He’s camping up by the loch with a friend and she’s been taken ill. We need a car to fetch her down.’

  A teenage boy walked up and down in front of the range, distraught. As Rhona entered, he shifted his look to Mrs MacMurdo, as if he wasn’t sure about this latest development.

  It’s alright, Donald. Dr MacLeod will help.’

  ‘I thought if I brought her to the island, she would get peace. It did get better for a while, but now it’s worse. She keeps hearing things. Things that really scare her.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Rhona asked.

  He turned to Mrs MacMurdo. ‘She’s up near the loch in the ruins of the blackhouse.’

  ‘We should get the police,’ Rhona suggested.

  ‘No,’ Mrs MacMurdo said firmly. ‘Constable Johnstone is on Skye. ‘It’s better if we bring the lassie here. Then we’ll decide.’

  As they drove away, Rhona could see the boy’s hands were shaking. When he saw her looking at them he quickly shoved them in his pockets, but not before she noticed their dry, wrinkled surface. Rhona took a quick look at his face. The skin there was as papery as on his hands. There was something wrong with this young man, something more than worry.

  ‘Donald?’

  He didn’t answer, his eyes staring straight ahead.

  ‘Donald?’

  He realised she was speaking to him and turned to face her.

  ‘Sorry. No one calls me that any more. Not since I left the island. My name’s Spike now. Just call me Spike.’

  Chapter 19

  The moon had disappeared behind thick cloud. Rhona, following the boy’s instructions, took a left onto a gravel road just wide enough for the car. Her headlights danced across a mixture of young birch trees and thick heather, the wheels following ruts trailed by some jeep through the mud left by the heavy rain. The boy said nothing, his face wooden with fear.

  ‘What’s your friend’s name?’

  He looked round at her suspiciously.

  ‘Her name�
�s Helen.’

  Rhona’s brain slowed down, stopped putting two and two together to get five. Spike. There were probably hundreds of guys called Spike. It went with the territory. Gelled hair, combat jacket, jeans. Choose a name that fitted the image. Anything but Donald. They were half-an-hour on the forestry track before he told her to stop. She got out of the car and set off on the sheep trail that the forestry track had become.

  ‘Not that way!’ he shouted at her. ‘It takes you over the cliff.’

  Rhona stopped, glad his eyes were keener than hers.

  ‘You stay with the car,’ he told her. ‘I’ll get Helen.’

  ‘But what if you need help?’

  ‘I’ll manage.’

  Rhona nodded. The boy looked a hundred per cent more at home out here than she felt. She got back in the car and turned off the headlights. If she flattened the battery, they wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, Rhona could make out the line of the cliffs and the grey swell of water beyond. Mainland lights twinkled in the distance and here and there a single pinpoint suggested someone on another island. She rolled down the window and night air swept in, bringing the tangy softness of the sea and a fine whisper of coming rain.

  She switched on the roof light to look at her watch. Spike had been gone an hour. He’d told her it would take that at least. She settled back in her seat and pulled up the hood on her jacket The fine smirr of rain was thickening, pattering the windscreen.

  Rhona was already contemplating what she would do if Spike didn’t reappear. She would have to sit here until it was light. Going back alone in this downpour was not an option.

  A figure suddenly emerged like a ghost in front of her, hood pulled up, a large lump under his jacket. Rhona switched on the headlights to guide him and a wail like a child’s cry rose into the air. Spike threw open the car door and slid inside, his face grey with worry.

  ‘She’s gone. She’s fucking gone.’

  He unzipped the jacket and a baby’s face peeped out solemnly at her. ‘No matter how ill she was, Esther wouldn’t have left him alone.’

  ‘Esther?’ Rhona said in a small voice.

  Spike stared at her in the realisation that the name meant something to Rhona, something important. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he said.

  They wedged the baby on the back seat behind one of Rhona’s bags. Rhona didn’t tell Spike how concerned she was about finding her way back in the rain. He was worried enough.

  ‘I have to stay at the blackhouse in case Esther comes back. When it’s light, I’ll be able to look properly.’

  Rhona didn’t mention police or search parties. Things were bad enough. Spike hadn’t told her why he was so anxious about the police knowing he was here. Rhona had her suspicions. She hadn’t mentioned the raid on the club and neither had he. They had established that he and Esther had stayed at her flat, that was all.

  ‘I didn’t want to stay there, it was Esther,’ he’d told her defiantly. ‘And she wasn’t shagging Sean, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  Rhona didn’t admit what she was thinking and she didn’t tell him that Sean was in trouble and so was she.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of the baby.’

  Spike didn’t look back as he strode off into the rain, even when little Duncan let out a cry of anguish at his disappearance.

  Rhona was trying to reverse the car when she heard the boat. The soft swish of rain had been joined by the steady putt of an outboard motor. She killed the lights and sat in silence, wondering if what she had heard was the hammering of her own heart. The baby had gone silent and when she looked round his eyes were like saucers. ‘Sshh,’ she told the startled face. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  The door opened with a squeak and she stood behind it in the pelting rain, calculating how far she was from the cliff edge and whether an incoming boat could see her. If she couldn’t see them chances were they couldn’t see her. Rhona silently closed the door and moved towards the cliff edge.

  The track had narrowed to the width of a sheep and the heather on either side was thick and tall. It pulled at her legs as she passed, springing back with a thudding wet sound that seemed momentous in the silence.

  The engine spluttered to a halt and now there was only the slap of waves against the rocks below. Rhona sat down and edged her way forward. Spike was right, the sheep track did go down at what looked like a forty-five degree angle. It would be madness to try and descend. She would just have to watch whatever was going on from here.

  The crunch of gravel signalled an exit from the boat and then she heard the scrape of a keel being pulled on shore. No voices, just a grunt of effort, then silence.

  If the people below were intent on coming up the cliff track then she was sitting right in their path. But there wasn’t a sound. No footsteps, no voices, nothing. The occupants of the boat were either creeping up the hill in complete silence or they had disappeared into a cave.

  The rain had lessened to a steady drizzle and the moon was trying a reappearance. Rhona pulled herself back from the edge and retraced her steps to the car. Now was the time to leave, while there was a glimmer of light and before the baby started crying. Whoever was creeping about the shoreline in the middle of the night was unlikely to be thrilled by her presence at the proceedings.

  She was climbing into the car when she heard the howl. It reverberated as if it had hit a circular wall and was replaying again and again. The silence below the cliff changed to shouts and she heard the loose rattle of scree as someone started to scramble up the hillside path.

  Rhona threw the gears into reverse, trying to turn the wheel free of the heather. The howl echoed in her mind. She tried not to imagine who or what had made that terrible cry.

  She reversed one more time, tearing roots from the bank to scatter across her path. Now she was facing the right way. All she had to do was retrace her route, but without Spike’s directions. Rhona put her foot down and the car jumped forward. Behind her, two dark figures pulled themselves over the cliff edge.

  As she dipped into the village the sky was striped with the promise of morning. Rhona felt suddenly tired, as though she had manually dragged the car through the heather. In the back, sandwiched between a bag and a coat, the baby slept the sleep of the innocent.

  As she drew up outside the Post Office, Mrs MacMurdo appeared at the door. If her landlady was surprised to find her latest guest was a baby she didn’t show it. Mrs MacMurdo was obviously made of stern stuff. She took one look at the sleeping bundle, opened the door, picked the baby up and carried it inside.

  ‘There’ll be time enough for explanations once you dry off,’ she told Rhona, who hadn’t noticed how wet and cold she was until she stepped out of the car. She stumbled up the front step, her legs feeling as if they were stuck in the accelerator-brake position. Her eyes were smarting from peering through the rain and mud-splattered windshield, and she didn’t want to think about what had happened to the underside of her car during its numerous forays into uncharted heather.

  The kitchen was heavenly, warm and dry. Rhona kicked off her shoes at the door. Mrs MacMurdo had put a tartan blanket into a wood basket and was carefully placing the sleeping baby inside.

  ‘Poor wee thing,’ she said to the oblivious infant. She ushered Rhona into the chair beside the stove and produced a bottle of Talisker from the cupboard.

  ‘Not that I approve of strong drink. But at times such as these, as my husband used to say.’

  Mrs MacMurdo did not partake of a glass herself, but poured another nip for Rhona as soon as she finished the first.

  ‘Right,’ she said, seeing Rhona relax. ‘Where’s …’

  ‘Spike?’ Rhona finished for her.

  ‘Spike? So that’s what the boy’s calling himself. His father wouldn’t have liked that much.’

  ‘His girlfriend had disappeared from the blackhouse when he got there. Spike brought the baby to me and went back to wa
it for Esther. If the girl is ill and lost in the hills,’ Rhona added, ‘we’ll have to call in the police.’

  But Mrs MacMurdo wasn’t listening. She was looking across at the sleeping child. ‘Donald didn’t say anything about a baby.’

  Rhona was puzzled by that too. Sean hadn’t mentioned Esther having a baby either.

  ‘It can’t be Donald’s child,’ Mrs MacMurdo said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Donald left the island two months ago, just before his sixteenth birthday.’

  ‘Spike’s only sixteen?’

  An image flashed across Rhona’s mind: the trembling, spotted hands, the white, drawn face.

  Mrs MacMurdo met her look.

  ‘Aye. I was thinking the same thing myself. Whatever happened in that time has made Donald MacAulay into a man. And not a well or happy one, at that.’

  Rhona was silent, weighing up just how much of the story she should reveal. Her own best interests would be served if Esther gave herself up to the police; then they could question her and maybe find out the truth about the jazz club. Then she could go back to work.

  Mrs MacMurdo spoke before Rhona could answer.

  ‘I think it’s time you told me the real reason you came to the island, Dr MacLeod.’

  Chapter 20

  The fear that thumped his stomach had turned to nausea.

  Spike turned from the wind and vomited into the heather. The rain whipped the mess away, spreading it in a semicircle round him. He grabbed a bunch of moss and wiped roughly at his mouth.

  Christ. What if she had gone into the loch?

  He imagined Esther waking up, calling for him, leaving in a panic, walking on and on until the brown water lapped her body and the cold seeped into her soul.

  He wanted to scream her name. Esther, Esther. He could feel the words rise in his throat, then they escaped, resounding across the moorland in an anguished cry.

  When he reached the blackhouse he hurried inside, praying she was back, but the fire was almost dead, the bed empty. Spike sat down and covered his face. He always knew this would happen. Knew Esther would leave him. He thought he could hold on to her, look after her. And it was his fault. He had driven her away.