Callum Ross had told them that back in 1981 the hotel was run by a Charlie Aitken. With any luck, like the establishment across the road, they had kept it in the family.
A waitress brought their food; she was a young girl in her late teens or early twenties. She spoke with a soft and lilting Highland accent, warning them to watch their plates as they were very hot.
Jasmine asked if the owner was in, and if so could she speak to him.
The girl said she’d just go and get him, but didn’t leave without first making sure they had all the condiments and drinks they needed.
Jasmine watched her withdraw into the corridor leading to reception, and heard her call out as she walked.
‘Dad, you busy?’
A brawny and bearded man emerged into the bar a few minutes later, approaching their table with a helpful smile. He looked late forties or early fifties, and Jasmine immediately pictured him halfway up a mountain when he wasn’t behind his bar or his reception desk.
‘I’m Murdo Aitken,’ he introduced himself. ‘Is everything all right with your meal?’
‘It’s fantastic,’ Jasmine replied truthfully of a very welcome plate of beer-battered haddock and chips. ‘The decor is lovely too. Did you renovate it recently? It’s very striking. A real improvement.’
‘You look a bit young to remember it before, but thank you.’
‘I saw the photos,’ she said.
‘Aye, right enough. No, it was done about, God, is it really ten years? Aye, ten years ago now. I took over from my old man in ninety-six, and I meant to change it sooner, but you know how it is.’
Jasmine agreed, thinking of that office furniture she was going to buy before she retired.
‘We kept the photos, wee bit of continuity, keep the old spirit of the place. Was there something I can help you with?’
‘Perhaps. Did you work here a long time before you took over?’
‘All my days. Started off washing dishes and I was behind the bar as soon as I was legal. Why?’
‘We’re trying to find out a bit about a woman who worked here in 1981. She was from New Zealand, went by the name Saffron.’
Aitken screwed up his face in thought for only the briefest moment. His eyes lit up in recognition before an equally swift change in his expression brought on a hint of rather furtive concern.
‘Aye, I remember Saffron all right. She wasn’t here long, just a couple of months. Looked like she’d just come in from Woodstock, or maybe Lord of the Rings. Seemed very exotic to me, though I was about eighteen and never been further than Perth.’
‘You don’t happen to remember her surname, by any chance?’ Jasmine asked, her tone almost apologising in anticipation of being rebuffed. It was, after all, a long shot at thirty years.
‘Simpson,’ he replied almost instantly, a little smile creeping across his face. ‘And her real name was Veronica.’
‘That’s some memory,’ Fallan observed. ‘Can you rhyme off everybody who worked here?’
‘No,’ Aitken replied, looking a little coy. ‘But her name was easy to remember, because she told me some people used to call her Roni.’
Jasmine’s blank expression must have begged an explanation.
‘Ronnie Simpson,’ Fallan offered. ‘Celtic goalkeeper. One of the Lisbon Lions.’
‘That’s right,’ Aitken confirmed, a little bashfully.
‘Do you remember when she left and where she went?’
‘I remember she left pretty suddenly. She didn’t turn up for work, just phoned to say she was packing it in and moving on. Gave absolutely no notice. Her landlord said much the same thing: she called him and told him she was shipping out. Lived in one of the wee places just along the street, on the road north. We wondered if she’d got bad news or something. We were all pretty disappointed. She had the sort of personality that lit a place up, really outgoing, priceless in a pub.’
Aitken had that furtive look again, like he’d given something away. Fallan read it better than Jasmine.
‘I’m guessing it wasn’t just her name that made her easy to remember,’ he said, once Aitken had retreated back to Reception.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean he was eighteen and she was a woman of the world. I’m guessing he was just a boy when Saffron started working here, but a man shortly after.’
The Deceiver
They located the Reverend Tormod McDonald a little while later, via Fallan’s suggested strategy of wandering across the road to his churchyard and making themselves sufficiently conspicuous that someone would inevitably come out and inquire as to what they were doing there. Discreet inquiries had suggested they were more likely to find him in Balnavon than Baghdad, but Jasmine was surprised that it was the man himself who appeared in the grounds and very politely asked them if he could be of any help. After recent weeks, it was quite a relief to encounter a veteran of the Glass Shoe debacle who wasn’t protected by the human firewall of a PA or secretary; and nor was he likely to have been on Hamish’s round-robin advance warning list.
He was thin and angular, a gawkiness about his posture like a small man trapped in too tall a body, or as though he had never quite outgrown the physical awkwardness of his teenage years. The effect seemed all the more pronounced alongside Fallan, who carried his stature so effortlessly that it was easy to forget just how big he was. Jasmine was reminded of Aunt Spiker in James and the Giant Peach, though Tormod lacked the harshness in his face that she had always imagined on Roald Dahl’s monstrous creation. Nor did his features suggest the pinched and curmudgeonly figure Callum Ross had described as having sired him.
Jasmine had done some reading ahead of her trip, acquainting herself with ‘young’ Tormod’s works and world view. He had proven a predictable hit with a constituency that was reassured to find a churchman under seventy who didn’t have any truck with all the wishy-washy liberal views increasingly espoused by his peers in the Church of Scotland and its southern counterparts. However, she had discovered that he was also an occasional theatre critic, both as a regional stringer for the Mail and in a blog, and in these writings the picture became far less black and white. Jasmine perceived a serious disconnect between the more compassionate and insightful perspective underpinning his appreciation of drama and the priggish curtain-twitcher ranting about ‘feral youth’ and ‘sexual incontinence’ in his columns.
Would the real Tormod McDonald please stand up.
‘Are you looking for a grave?’ he asked, which Jasmine considered might seem a very threatening opening gambit from anyone not dressed in a dog collar. Her expression must have said as much.
‘People are sometimes looking for a particular headstone: an ancestral figure. Have you come far?’
‘Glasgow.’
‘We’ve had visitors from all over, who had their roots in Balnavon. So what brings you here?’
Jasmine composed a look of the utmost innocence and sincerity.
‘We were wondering whether there’s going to be any kind of service. You know, for Hamish Queen. I was at drama school with his daughter Charlotte,’ she added, for further benign context.
‘I see,’ he replied. ‘Dreadful, dreadful business. Unspeakably tragic, and unimaginable for the family. But no, there will be no service. We’ll pray, for sure, and there are those of us in the village who would like there to be a service, but the family are not religious. It’s a pity, for they’ll have no comfort now.’
A pity, yeah, thought Jasmine. Because back when Mum died, having some guy in a dress mumble glib platitudes about a nonexistent super-being would have made all the difference. However, Tormod’s tone wasn’t glib, and nor could his sentiment be described as a platitude. In fact, there was a certainty about it that was disarming. He truly believed there was comfort to be had from his God, his faith, and he sounded regretful that Hamish’s family were denying it to themselves.
‘I saw him only recently,’ Jasmine said. ‘I spoke to him in Edinburgh, when he was at the
Playhouse ahead of his Grange Hill musical going on tour. Were you familiar with his work?’
‘I must confess I’ve never seen one of his productions. I’ve very seldom been to London, so opportunities have been scarce.’
He sounded apologetic though not regretful, as though he had been remiss in his duties by not catching one of Hamish’s shows, but that they wouldn’t have been his natural choice.
‘My time is mostly spent around here. I’ve been overseas a bit in recent years, but never anywhere you’re likely to see a big musical. One of my duties is as an army chaplain at the base over in Glen Fynart. The regiment have been heavily involved in Iraq, so they’ve flown me over there a few times. It’s a humbling and disturbing experience.’
‘But you are a fan of the theatre generally, aren’t you,’ Jasmine stated. ‘I’ve read your reviews.’
‘Oh, you have?’ he said, his face brightening. He seemed very pleased but stopped himself from breaking into a smile, self-conscious about skipping onto the subject of himself so directly from where they’d been only a moment before.
‘Yes. You’re very passionate about it. Some critics write like they hate the theatre and resent having to sit through the plays. You always seem to find something positive to say.’
‘I can’t help myself. I’d sooner sit through a bad play in a theatre than a good film in a multiplex. Are you involved in theatre yourself? You said you trained with Charlotte Queen. I’ve seen a few of her Fire Curtain productions on tour at Eden Court.’
‘No, I had to drop out. It runs in the family though: my mother was an actress, back in Glasgow in the late eighties. Had to give it up when I came along. Yvonne Sharp was her name.’
There she was again, throwing out her line. She felt doubly self-conscious doing it in front of Fallan, but she could not help herself.
She didn’t catch anything, however. Tormod did seem to search his memory for a moment, then gave her an apologetic wince.
‘I would have just missed her. I was at Glasgow University eighty-one to eighty-five. I went to see quite a few plays back then. I was studying theatre as well as theology.’
‘A curious combo,’ Jasmine observed.
‘Well, yes. I applied and was accepted for theology and philosophy, but when I got there, I found you had to choose a third ordinary subject for first year. There were places in theatre studies, so I chose that and got the bug. Ended up dropping philosophy and did my honours in the other two.’
He allowed himself a smile now, relaxing into reminiscence.
‘And have you ever crept the boards yourself?’ Jasmine asked.
‘Oh, goodness no,’ he answered, issuing a little chuckle at the absurdity of the suggestion. ‘The pulpit is as much of a stage as I’m cut out to inhabit.’
‘What about when you were younger? Like maybe summer 1981?’
The smile vanished, a guarded expression coming down to replace it like the curtain dropping over a set.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
Jasmine handed him a card while Fallan stiffened, folding his arms to reinforce that the pleasantries were over and now they meant business.
‘My name is Jasmine Sharp, Sharp Investigations. I’m looking for a woman called Tessa Garrion. She was last seen in summer 1981, here in Balnavon, where she was working with Hamish Queen’s Glass Shoe Company, rehearsing for a tour of Macbeth. You and your sister were also involved in the production. Your sister was helping with costume and you even had a non-speaking role. That was until it all fell apart one night, when Tessa Garrion disappeared. Hamish Queen said she walked out after an argument, but the next day you told the police you had seen a woman stabbed at Kildrachan House and someone dragging a body.’
‘I have things to be getting on with,’ he said, turning away. ‘I am not prepared to discuss this.’
As he turned, he found Fallan blocking his path.
‘What did you see, Reverend?’ Fallan asked. ‘You can tell us. You don’t have to worry about Dougal Strang any more.’
‘Please step aside, or I shall be forced to call the police. I haven’t spoken about these matters in thirty years and I’m not about to start now, not to two strangers, with Hamish Queen dead and not yet buried.’
Fallan didn’t step aside, but nor did he move to block Tormod when he opted to walk around him on to the grass.
‘Have you considered the possibility that his death and what you saw that night might just be related?’ Jasmine asked.
This stopped him in his retreat towards the church.
‘How could they be, after all this time?’ he asked.
He wasn’t saying this to dismiss the idea. There was palpable anxiety in his voice.
‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m trying to find out what I can about what happened here, but nobody wants to talk to me. When I met Hamish Queen in Edinburgh it was to ask him about Tessa Garrion. He told me lies and then he phoned the surviving members of the Glass Shoe Company in an attempt to stop them speaking to me. Julian Sanquhar did agree to talk, but only so that he could urge me against pursuing my inquiries. He warned me it would have the direst consequences, and with Hamish Queen now dead it looks like he was right.’
Nothing she said appeared to be giving him any solace. He looked increasingly concerned, and increasingly trying to conceal it.
‘You met with Julian Sanquhar? Who else have you spoken to?’
‘I’ll answer your questions when you start answering mine. What I will say is that Sanquhar was genuinely afraid, like by probing into this I was likely to raise the devil himself.’
Jasmine had chosen her words carefully and they had their impact. She saw him flinch: nothing pronounced, but there was a noticeable flash of alarm about his eyes.
‘We don’t mention such things lightly, Miss Sharp,’ he replied, his voice dropping as though afraid of who might overhear. ‘And certainly not on sacred ground.’
‘I’m sorry. No offence intended: it was a figure of speech. I’m just curious as to why nobody wants to talk about what happened here, and why Julian Sanquhar seemed so concerned.’
‘It sounds to me like you should have heeded his advice. I’m heartened that nobody wants to talk to you about this. It proves they feel shame. Remorse. There was something wanton and corrupt in those people, and they sought to corrupt us too. We were innocents. My sister was just a girl, yet she was taken advantage of in the most squalid and disgraceful way.’
‘What happened to her?’
He shook his head gravely. Jasmine couldn’t tell whether it was in refusal to answer or in bitter remembrance.
‘There was evil abroad in that place. They both summoned it and were consumed by it, willingly so. People talk about being seduced, about giving in to the darkest desires they wouldn’t admit to even harbouring. I can forgive that: it is human weakness. But when those desires are not their own, when they are driven by something that did not come from within and they become something other than themselves …’
He glanced away to the west, towards the ancient woods that bordered the Kildrachan estate, his face grey with loathing and anxiety.
‘Miss Sharp, people like you don’t fear Satan because you think science and psychology have explained him away. In truth, you’re falling for his disguise. I did too. Satan walked among us at Kildrachan as surely as you have walked through this churchyard. We didn’t recognise him until it was too late, but then, that’s how he works. He is the Deceiver.’
‘I think we should take a detour via Logie-Almond,’ Jasmine said as they hit the road back south. ‘I’m guessing there was quite a bit Finlay Weir neglected to tell me.’
‘Aye. Almost as much as Creeping Jesus back there.’
‘True, but he wasn’t going to give us anything else, whereas we can put the screws on Weir because I’d wager much of what he didn’t tell me concerns Creeping Jesus, or more accurately his kid sister. He gave us Saffron, probably because he reckoned she would be untraceable, but m
ade no mention of those two.’
Jasmine had suggested to Tormod that they ought to go and talk to his sister instead, hoping to elicit some angry and hence unguarded disclosure, but he had snorted dismissively.
‘Good luck with that,’ he replied. ‘She lives in Sydney, has done for twenty years. She works in television, making costumes.’
So not that traumatised by her brush with the decadent thesps, Jasmine thought. She’d got away from here, though, tout de suite: glimpsed another life when the circus passed through town and decided she was having it. Tormod had glimpsed something that scared him, and ultimately retreated. He had been drawn to the Glass Shoe people by the irresistible allure conveyed by his father’s disapproval, but ended up filling his robes.
The retreat hadn’t been total, however. He started at Glasgow Uni in 1981, which would have been the September after whatever had happened at Kildrachan. Despite that, when he had to find a third subject he still chose theatre, and took an interest to this day. Perhaps it had shown him a side of himself he didn’t want to admit to, but nor could he entirely free himself of it.
‘You know,’ said Fallan, ‘this shit used to be a lot easier back in the day. You would just tie somebody to a chair, show them a selection of power tools and a site transformer, and all of a sudden they’d get this cathartic urge to tell you everything you wanted to know.’
Jasmine said nothing.
‘That was a joke, by the way,’ he clarified.
‘Yeah, you’ll probably find that kind of humour works best on people whose relatives you didn’t murder.’
It was Fallan’s turn to respond with silence.
She felt bad for saying what she had and was about to apologise, then saw the situation for what it was and asked herself what the hell she was feeling bad for. She couldn’t help it, though. She did feel bad.
‘I’m grateful to you for sticking around,’ she told him, her voice threatening to catch in her throat. ‘You don’t owe me anything. Well, you do, but I’m not holding you to any obligations. I won’t pretend I don’t need your help right now, though.’
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