by Lin Anderson
Rhona sat down, feeling suddenly uncertain. It was true. She had sent that text message.
‘But we thought this was Maley’s boat,’ she said stupidly.
Dr Franklin looked as puzzled as Rhona felt.
‘I have no idea who this Maley is,’ she said quietly, ‘but this is certainly not his yacht.’
Rhona let that sink in. If that was so, Spike needn’t have panicked.
‘Spike?’ she asked.
“The boy with you? I’m afraid he is still missing.’
‘Oh God.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Franklin sounded as if she meant it. ‘I’ve already contacted the coastguard and, of course, we’ll keep on looking until it gets dark.’
Rhona felt like a fool, a stupid fool. Spike had panicked when he thought it was Maley, and she had joined in.
‘Please don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll find him,’ Franklin said. ‘Look, can I get you something to eat?’
Rhona nodded blearily. Whisky on an empty stomach hadn’t been such a good idea. Her body felt as light as her brain.
Franklin spoke on the phone, then sat down beside her.
‘While we’re waiting for the food to arrive,’ she said, her voice full of concern, ‘maybe you could explain what this is all about.’
Rhona decided to cut everything from the script except Maley and the drugs. Franklin didn’t seem interested, but she had plenty of questions about Spike.
Where would he go if he managed to reach the shore? How did Rhona know him? Where had they been going in the dinghy?
Rhona looked at the impeccably made-up face. Asking questions; interested, but not too nosy. Lynne Franklin was a beautiful woman. Rhona wondered why she had never headed for Hollywood. She got the feeling that she was a very good actress.
‘When did you say you phoned the coastguard?’
The slippage in the mask was momentary but Rhona saw it nonetheless.
Franklin rose to replenish her glass, which was still half full.
‘As soon as we picked you up,’ she said evenly.
‘The helicopter would have been here by now.’ Rhona’s head was swimming, but she wasn’t stupid. ‘You may have come looking for me, but not, I think, to offer me a job.’
Lynne Franklin stood motionless, her back rigid. Rhona could imagine what was happening to the mask on that beautiful face. Then the woman turned and laughed. The sound should have been pleasant. It wasn’t.
‘You are right, of course.’ She looked Rhona up and down. ‘Actually, Dr MacLeod, I would have liked to have you work for me. Unfortunately I think we have incompatible scientific agendas.’
Rhona said nothing.
“The truth is, I came looking for you because I believe you have information I need.’
‘What information?’
‘The whereabouts of Dr Fitzgerald MacAulay.’
Rhona nearly laughed.
‘MacAulay’s dead,’ she said. ‘Bits of him have been washing ashore here for weeks.’
‘You’re wrong. MacAulay is not dead. And we believe Spike knows where he is.’
‘Then it’s you who are wrong,’ Rhona told her. ‘Spike and his father had an argument. MacAulay went overboard and drowned.’
Franklin glared impatiently. ‘When was this?’
‘MacAulay went overboard a month before his foot turned up in a fishing net,’ Rhona repeated. ‘The foot we found had a ReAlba tattoo just above the ankle.’
‘We believe the body pieces belong to the man we sent looking for MacAulay,’ Franklin responded.
‘And who exactly is we?’
‘The more I tell you, the more fragile your life becomes, Dr MacLeod.’
‘I’ll take that risk.’
‘Very well. We are both women in a man’s world, so I’ll be frank with you. I tried to recruit you because you were directly involved in the forensic investigation of this case. You were coming to LA for the conference, which was convenient. Even better, Andre met you en route and … how shall I put it? Made friends with you.’
If the bitch thought she was going to react to that bit of information, she was wrong.
‘Why do you want MacAulay?’
‘MacAulay was being financed by my organisation to carry out some experimental work. We believe he has been hiding some of the results of this work from us.’
‘He was working for ReGene?’
‘Indirectly, yes.’
‘You mean he was working for ReAlba.’
Franklin smiled. ‘ReGene is not ReAlba.’
‘And in which capacity are you here, Dr Franklin?’ Rhona said angrily. ‘ReGene representative or racist bastard?’
The other woman looked pityingly at her.
‘Tell me, Dr MacLeod,’ she said, ‘where do you hide your blacks in Scotland? I don’t think I’ve seen one since I arrived.’
Rhona was silent but Franklin wasn’t finished yet.
‘Of course, you do have incomers. Asians, plenty of them; Chinese, and then there are those English. White settlers. I hear the locals hate them so much, they’ve formed an organisation called Settler Watch to burn them out.’
Rhona ignored the taunts. ‘What was MacAulay working on?’
‘As you probably know from Andre, Dr MacAulay left his project for the British government at Porton Down to work for us,’ Lynne Franklin said. ‘We were keen to establish specific genes found in the families of Gaels who came from the west coast of Scotland.’
‘The Men of the West.’
Franklin nodded.
‘And MacAulay was working on that?’
‘We believe he had completed the work before he disappeared … and that’s where you come in.’
Rhona was fed up discussing a dead man as if he was alive.
‘MacAulay is dead,’ she said again.
But Franklin wasn’t listening.
‘Where would the boy go to hide?’
‘You think Spike got ashore?’
Rhona’s heart leapt. She didn’t care if this woman or Andre had lied to her, as long as Spike was alive.
Franklin looked amused by the show of emotion.
‘One of my men saw him swim into the cave. We sent the dinghy in, but unfortunately he had disappeared. The boy trusts you, which means you can deliver him to us.’
‘Like hell I will.’
If Spike was alive and free, Rhona was going to make sure he stayed that way,
‘Very well. You leave me no alternative.’
Franklin picked up the telephone. ‘Tell Maley there’s someone I want him to meet.’
Chapter 32
As he ran his footsteps echoed through the tunnel. At every turn, Spike threw himself violently forward, arching his back, expecting a hand to reach out and grab him.
When he reached the cave opening, he hurled himself out into the night air and ran for the crevasse, snatching at handholds, his knees scraping their way down the narrow opening. At the bottom he stopped and looked up at the sliver of sky, forcing himself to wait and listen for footsteps above the snap of his own frantic heart.
Nothing.
He ran along the rocky hillside and down into high heather, disturbing midges that rose in a biting cloud, scenting the blood that seeped from his skinned hands and face.
When he reached the edge of the loch, Spike thrust his face in the water, drowning the midges that encrusted his wounds and washing the bitter salt from his lips.
It was still faintly light, the long day refusing to end. Spike picked his way northwest, edging ever closer to the sea.
He had made up his mind.
He would bargain for Rhona the way he had planned to bargain for Esther. He would give Maley what he wanted. He would give him that and more.
His damp clothes clung to him. His body had dropped into nagging exhaustion. Each swish of his feet brought more midges to feast on his bare skin. The woodland near the shore was no better, the maddening midges being replaced by fat black flies that buzzed tirele
ssly around his sweating face. Then he was on the edge of the wood and the soft sea breeze cleared his head of everything except his decision.
On his way to the black rock, Spike picked up the small dried sticks that would start his signal fire.
The drowned motor boat was thirty feet from shore in ten feet of water. Spike stood on the shingle and found his bearings, forty-five degrees east from the black rock, in line with the last deserted blackhouse of Screapadal. He’d picked up the knife, diving torch and some rope from his stash in the ruins of the castle. All he had to do was swim to the boat, release the stuff and get it to the castle. Then he would radio Maley to come and collect it.
But not before Maley agreed to free Rhona.
The water crept up his legs like the chill of death. But it wasn’t the cold that was filling Spike’s mind with horror. He looked up, trying to judge how much good light he had left. An hour at most to get the cargo ashore. He dipped his head and plunged into the water, striking out towards the place that was etched forever in his brain.
When his head broke surface he was six feet away from the sunken boat. Spike took a deep breath and dived. The back of the boat was visible in the arc of his torchlight. It was lying upside down, the wooden stern driven deep into the sandy bottom, the long rent he’d dug in its side filled with the darting of small silvery fish. He flashed the torch, and the fish flew for the entrance, masking his face in a shimmering shoal, blinding him. Then they parted and the torchlight found the plastic container that held his father’s notes.
Spike had just enough breath in his lungs to attach the rope before his body threw itself upwards, desperate for air. He struck out for shore, dragging the rope behind him, letting the drift of the sea carry him where he wanted to go.
On his second foray, a pale moon shimmered through a cluster of rain clouds. This time Spike wasn’t so sure of his position and cursed himself for not releasing the orange buoy that was tied to the boat’s stern. He looked to shore, checking for his landmarks, knowing he would have to trust his intuition.
He took a breath and sank, sweeping his torch through the sullen water, looking for the wreck. Something drifted against him, brushing his shoulder with a handless arm.
Spike flung himself round.
The head bobbed at him, eyes hollow and accusing. The rope he’d wound round his father’s swollen body -once, twice, three times, like a hangman’s noose - cut through the decaying flesh.
Dr MacLeod had told him the body parts could not belong to his father, but Spike knew she was wrong. Bits of the corpse had made their way from here to the other side of the island even though he’d tried so hard to tie it to its watery grave.
Spike sliced frantically at the rope that attached Maley’s parcel to his father’s corpse, then rose kicking to the surface.
Chapter 33
‘Maley and I have already met,’ Rhona said, ‘Very recently, in fact.’
Maley’s expression made her skin crawl.
Interestingly, he seemed to be having a similar effect on Lynne Franklin. Certainly Maley didn’t fit her image of a big handsome Gael with a sing-song voice and something enticing under his kilt. But it was more than that.
‘Joe didn’t tell you he tried to kill me?’ Rhona enjoyed scoring that point.
Franklin turned to Maley, ‘You told me you couldn’t find her.’
Maley was out of his depth. ‘She’s fucking off her head. I never saw her before.’
‘That’s funny, Joe. I distinctly remember the smell of your rotten breath, just before I twisted your wizened wee balls,’ Rhona taunted.
‘Bitch!’
Rhona’s side-step wasn’t quick enough to avoid Maley’s body as it smashed into hers. They fell together onto the fancy couch. Somewhere in the background a voice was screaming at Maley to get off. He did, but not before Rhona had snapped her teeth shut on his ear.
Maley howled. ‘You’re dead, bitch!’
But he wasn’t to have his heart’s desire … yet.
Franklin had recovered her sense of purpose. She stared unwaveringly at Rhona. ‘You must see that your continuing survival depends on whether you decide to help us.’
Rhona looked at the two faces, one twisted with dumb hatred, the other devoid of emotion, and knew which she feared most.
‘And if Spike takes you to MacAulay, what happens then?’ she said.
‘You have my word neither you nor the boy will be harmed.’
The voice was smoothly honest. Franklin might even believe what she was saying. But Maley’s eyes told a different story.
‘I need to think,’ Rhona stalled.
‘You can have ten minutes,’ Franklin warned. ‘After that Maley has my permission to do whatever is necessary to get us the boy.’
Rhona splashed her face with cold water. The ache in her head had eased, to be replaced by a pain in her chest where Maley had landed on her. She knew she had done her case no good by winding him up, but she couldn’t help it.
Did Franklin know about Maley’s little torture session with Spike? She doubted it. Maley wouldn’t want his boss to know he had let the boy escape.
The drugs were top of Maley’s agenda, above getting even with her. He wanted to know where they were before anything else. Maley was just a big fuck in a scabby wee pond. The politics of human genetics wasn’t something his brain could handle, but he would carry on the charade until he got what he wanted. The drugs delivery and Rhona’s death, in either order. Anything else would be a bonus.
Rhona didn’t need time to decide. She had already made up her mind. She used the time to work out how to inflict the most pain on Maley with the glass stopper she’d taken from the whisky decanter.
If Spike had reached shore, surely he would have gone to Mrs MacMurdo by now. Even if he hadn’t, she wouldn’t wait forever before calling the police. Constable Johnstone would contact Northern Constabulary, who would contact Strathclyde Police and Bill Wilson. Somewhere in that chain would be Phillips and whoever he represented.
Rhona never thought the day would dawn when thinking about Phillips would make her happy.
They were passing the shielings south of Caol Rona. She could make out the broken stone walls clustered on the ribbed grazings. As far as Rhona knew, the nearest night anchorage was round the north point in Loch a’ Sguirr. Anywhere else was too exposed. While she watched the passage between Raasay and Rona slide into view, she heard the door behind her open.
Esther was everything Rhona had imagined. Pale skin, big dark eyes, sexy in a waif-like way. Rhona remembered sitting next to Sean on the sofa, listening to her sing. She had felt the sound vibrate his senses, saw his excitement grow with every note. Music was sex to Sean. Playing it, listening to it.
In her imagination Sean was already fucking the owner of the voice. She had been wrong, she knew that now. Sean had accepted the girl for what she was, a singer with a problem. But had Esther betrayed Sean and helped Maley set him up?
Rhona had blamed Sean for screwing up her life. The truth was, her connection with Maley had screwed up Sean’s life.
Esther closed the door quietly behind her.
Her voice shook as she whispered, ‘Joe’s strung out on speed. He’s going to kill you.’ She produced a small handgun from her pocket. ‘Here, take this. I stole it from that woman’s cabin.’
The gun felt light as a toy. Rhona stared at it. She had seen the results of gunshots. She had never imagined herself inflicting one. She slipped the gun into her pocket.
‘There’s a dinghy trailing the stern. You can make it ashore.’
‘What about you?’
Esther shook her head vehemently. ‘No. If I try to leave him, Joe will kill Spike.’
She turned for the door and Rhona saw the heart-shaped mole on her cheek.
Realisation dawned. ‘It was you that day in the underground.’
Esther nodded, remembering. ‘You were sitting opposite me. I was crying.’
‘And I didn’t
help you.’
‘You can help me now. Find Spike. Tell him I never wanted him hurt.’
The yacht rocked gently at anchor. The engine must have stopped while they were talking and they hadn’t noticed. There was no one on deck. In the east, the sun was creeping over the horizon. Westward, the coast of Raasay was a dark pencil line.
Too far to swim.
They made their way towards the stern, every creak and shift of the boat playing their nerves. Rhona wanted Esther to leave, shooing her away immediately when they reached the rail, but Esther shook her head.
‘You’ll need help with the dinghy.’
They pulled it in as silently as possible. When it was close alongside, Rhona swung herself over the rail and found the ladder.
She dragged the oars into place, hating the grinding sound they made in the silence. When she looked up, Esther was no longer in sight. Then she heard her strangled cry.
‘I’m sorry, Dr MacLeod, but we require the dinghy to get to shore ourselves.’ Lynne Franklin was dressed for business, from the slim black trousers to the yellow waterproof. ‘While you were contemplating your future, Spike very kindly radioed us and told us his location.’
She pointed southwest, where a dull red beacon fluttered in the darkness.
Maley had Esther’s slight figure clamped to his side, and Rhona was sure that pain was being inflicted.
‘Bring the girl,’ Franklin told Maley, ‘we might need her yet.’
They moved Rhona to the bow, alongside the guy who had brought her the clothes. He pressed his body hard against her, getting off on closeness and the scent of fear. Rhona sat her hands in her lap, the right one resting on the gun Esther had given her, and imagined blowing the creep’s dick and balls all over the Inner Sound.
Esther sat next to Maley, her eyes vacant. Maley was on the engine, busy glaring at Rhona. She met him eyeball to eyeball, until Franklin reminded him to keep his eyes on where they were heading.
The wind was coming from the northwest, light but constant and the engine had to fight the small grey waves that pushed the dinghy east, away from shore.
The beacon fire hung on their horizon and Rhona tried to work out where it was, thinking at first that the rising blackness was cliff line before she recognised the shadowy outline of Brochel Castle.