by Gwen Moffat
Miss Pink moved to join the Lindsays, who stopped talking at her approach. Betty said, on a high false note: ‘We were wondering how long the heat wave would last.’
Andrew Lindsay went to the bar.
‘Poor love.’ His wife’s glance followed him and her eyes were shifty. ‘His ulcer’s bothering him.’
Miss Pink commiserated and wondered what was wrong. He was drinking double whiskies: strange treatment for an ulcer. Maynard, who had been looking out of the window with Madge, came across and asked if Miss Pink would accompany them to Sgurr nan Gillean the following day. She declined, not wanting to confine them to her own standard. To her mind, the South Crack had been a flash in the pan.
Madge said idly, ‘I wonder what Colin did today? There’s nothing hard to do at that end.’
‘Such arrogance,’ Maynard reproved. ‘Everything is hard on the Cuillin.’
Betty caught Miss Pink’s eye and remarked ambiguously, ‘So she’ll be alone tonight.’
Madge turned from the window. ‘I might pop over there this evening.’
Her words were clear in a sudden silence and Lavender said spitefully, ‘You do that; you can compare notes.’
Maynard walked out of the room.
‘It must be nearly feeding time,’ Betty said, and gave an inane giggle.
Madge stared at Lavender as the other woman lit a cigarette. Miss Pink asked with simulated interest, ‘Are you out to break the record for the traverse of the ridge?’
Madge gave a deep sigh and turned blank eyes on the questioner. ‘No.’ She opened her hands and stared at the palms, then turned them over and clenched the fingers tightly. She spoke like a somnambulist. ‘I’m fit; I want to stretch myself.’ She grinned emptily at Miss Pink. ‘That’s it,’ she said brightly, ‘it’s getting my teeth into something, you know? One gets bored with routine.’ She yawned, raising her hand to her mouth belatedly, her eyes on Lavender. ‘’Times I get sick of people.’
*
During the evening the residents disappeared. Over dinner an intense conversation between the Lindsays developed into an argument which led to a quarrel with Lindsay walking angrily out of the dining room and Betty hurrying after him. They were halfway through the pudding and didn’t return.
The Maynards didn’t go to the lounge for coffee and Miss Pink and Madge were left to themselves. Even the guide stayed only long enough for politeness’ sake and then excused herself. Miss Pink remembered that the other had said she might go to Largo. Reflecting that Watkins could put in an appearance at any moment, she said goodnight to Hamlyn and went upstairs. It was eight-thirty. There was a light in Largo. She wished she knew what Watkins was doing.
*
The following morning Madge and Maynard left early, and even the Lindsays’ party had gone by the time Miss Pink was ready to set off for what she anticipated would be a gentle walk along the coast. She was struggling into her rucksack straps when Colin Irwin came hurriedly across the lawn. He didn’t reply to her greeting.
‘Where did she go?’ he asked.
Miss Pink’s stomach contracted. ‘Terry? She was there last night. When did you get home?’
‘I just got back. The place is empty. She hasn’t even left a note.’
‘Has she taken her things?’
‘Yes, everything.’
‘She must have left either late last night—after eight-thirty when I saw her light—or this morning.’
‘She didn’t walk out of the glen this morning or I’d have seen her on the road. I got a couple of lifts round. What happened was that my client caught some kind of a bug; he was up most of the night. He came over to my tent this morning and cancelled today so I came straight here once I’d had some breakfast.’
‘If you came back by road, you could have missed her if she walked to Sligachan across the moor.’
‘She’d never have done that. It was the way she came in on Saturday and she only had sandals. She had to go bare-footed then, and she cut her foot. Besides, she was frightened of that moor; she didn’t like being on her own in the hills. She didn’t mind empty houses.’
Miss Pink looked at him sharply. ‘I’ll come across to Largo with you; we can’t talk here. There might be something you’ve missed. . . . Madge Fraser meant to go over last night. If she did, Terry may have told her where she was going. Madge has gone to Sgurr nan Gillean today.’
‘I know. I passed Maynard’s car on the road. They waved.’
He was very unhappy. Miss Pink said, ‘Terry gave no indication at all that she might be leaving while you were away?’
‘None. Did she go back to Watkins?’
They stopped and stared at each other, then looked towards the camp site. Tacitly, they changed direction and walked rapidly through the trees towards the sea. She thought that if she hadn’t been with him, Irwin would have run.
They found Watkins’ tent closed. Irwin called: ‘Terry?’ in a hopeless voice and unzipped the entrance. Inside there was only the cluttered squalor that they had found on the first occasion and no sign of the girl nor her belongings.
They walked slowly across the dunes towards Largo. At the ford they met Willie MacNeill driving the tractor with the hydraulic shovel on the front. He stopped when Irwin waved him down.
‘She was there yesterday,’ the young crofter shouted above the engine. ‘She didna say she was leaving.’
‘What time—?’
Willie throttled down. ‘It was getting on: evening time, I’d say. Six-ish, closer to seven, maybe . . . She was after giving me tea. . . .’
Miss Pink walked on, her feet dragging in the thick sand of the track. There were little waders on the tide-line but although she had brought her rucksack, she did not feel like using her binoculars. Behind her, Willie revved the engine, and Irwin came loping after her.
‘You heard that?’
She nodded. ‘What’s Willie doing over here?’ she asked.
‘There’s a strike of Council workers so Rahane’s emptying the camp bins; got to get rid of the rubbish quickly in this hot weather.’
*
The interior of the cottage was dark, and furnished only by squatters’ standards. In the living room there was a small ship’s stove with a flue leading into the chimney, two old car seats and a scarred wooden table. An oil lamp hung from a hook on a beam. There was a camp cooker and a canteen of billies on the window sill among a clutter of packaged foods, old newspapers and rocks. The fire was out, the billies were clean, and there appeared to be no trace of the girl.
‘She’s taken everything she owned?’ Miss Pink pressed.
‘I haven’t searched, but the obvious things have gone: bedding roll, handbag, clothes. You can look.’
She explored the rest of the cottage. On the left of the front door there was a room that would have been the parlour in better days. There was a pair of easy chairs with the stuffing coming out, and a sack half full of carrots and onions.
The stairs went straight up from the front door to a tiny landing and a bedroom above each of the rooms below. These were lit by dormer windows and each contained an iron bedstead on which were palliasses made of hessian and filled with straw or chaff. A fruit crate stood beside one bed and the stump of a candle. The crate had its back to the window. Up-ended it served as a bedside table, the partition in the middle doing duty as a shelf. As she turned it round, something moved inside: a large chip of rough green marble.
She came downstairs to find Irwin lighting the cooker.
‘You’ll have a cup of tea?’
‘Thank you. What’s this?’
He took the chip, frowned momentarily, then his face cleared. ‘I gave it to her. It was my best specimen. I pick them up beside the road at Drynoch.’ He gestured to the window sill and she saw, what she had missed at a cursory glance, that the rocks were interesting pieces; some were fossils, most were marble, but all were inferior to the chip she had found in the bedroom. ‘I was trying to think of a way to make them into j
ewellery,’ he explained. ‘I gave her that piece and she treasured it; said she’d always keep it. You see what it means? She’d never go without it. She left it deliberately to show she’s coming back.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Miss Pink was bright. ‘That could be it.’
She dreaded the moment when he realised how much simpler it would have been for the girl to write a note—but already he’d seen that his theory was too devious.
‘Well,’ he admitted grudgingly, ‘perhaps she forgot it.’ He brightened a little. ‘Then she’ll write and ask me to send it. Won’t she?’
But as they stared at the green chip they were both wondering why she had gone.
Chapter Six
Willie MacNeill, driving along the green shelf from Rahane to Scarf Geo, prepared himself for trouble. At the end of the track, just beyond the place where he tipped the rubbish, a solitary figure appeared to be waiting for him. It was the lady who had been with Colin on the camp site.
Willie had more than a passing acquaintance with elderly mountaineers, particularly in relation to Scarf Geo, and he wondered if this one would do as the doctor did in July: stand in his path so that he couldn’t tip. He found English ladies intimidating and as he approached this one, too fast for his own comfort but he was too proud to slacken speed, he had the feeling she was going to be awkward, and sure enough, here she came: advancing to the head of the gully to take up her stand this side of the sleepers that were his marker for lowering the shovel. His eyes widened in panic as she raised her hand, then, deftly, like a man, made the gesture of switching off the engine. It was that which unnerved him. He obeyed her and waited, momentarily defeated.
‘You’ll have to stop tipping,’ she said firmly.
He tried to grin. ‘You canna stop us—and we’re tipping for the Council now anyways; they’re on strike and the man at Portree says it’s a health hazard.’ He reached for the ignition.
‘Go back to Rahane,’ Miss Pink ordered, ‘and ring the police—’
‘It’s no’ a poliss job, mam; they won’t have nothing to do with it. The colonel, he tried—’
‘—Ask to speak to the man in charge and tell him that there is a body in Scarf Geo—’ She considered for a moment and in the silence Willie heard the sea birds calling and felt sick. ‘On second thoughts,’ she went on, ‘go to the house and ask the colonel to telephone. Tell him that I sent you.’
He swallowed. ‘I havena seen it.’
She regarded him doubtfully but led the way to the place where she’d been when he saw her first. There was a fence along the top of the cliffs and here on the edge a stretcher post was cemented in the rock.
‘If you get through the wire and lean out from the post, you can see.’
He looked at her suspiciously. She saw what was in his mind: a madwoman who would pick up a rock and hammer at his fingers when all his weight was on the post. She moved back a few yards and sat down.
He kicked the post, found it firm, stooped and stepped through the wire, then, still staring at her, he gripped the post and leaned out. The concern in her face infuriated him and he looked down.
At first he saw only the recent loads draping the back of the gully which dropped in two steps to the deep and narrow inlet. The tide was high and the geo almost awash below the accumulated filth. He couldn’t see anything in the water that looked like a body.
‘In a plastic bag,’ Miss Pink said.
He sneered. ‘Body of what? A dead cat?’
‘A large bag; it looks somewhat like a seal.’
There was a big piece of plastic down there, reflecting the sun. He couldn’t remember picking up a piece of plastic that size today. There was something red underneath it. And something like a foot—
Miss Pink had stood up. She said firmly, ‘Come back now.’
He felt the iron under his hand, pulled back, blundered through the wire, was surprised to notice how scorched the turf was here on top of the cliffs, and walked towards the sound of her voice. He sat down, shaking, and stared at the water, his eyes shocked.
‘Who is it?’ he whispered.
‘I don’t know yet.’ She was also looking out to sea.
‘I was tipping on it!’
‘No harm done,’ she lied, and looked at him closely. ‘Do you think you can drive back to the big house?’
‘Ay.’ He stood up. ‘You said to phone the poliss?’
She repeated her instructions and he walked towards the tractor. ‘MacNeill!’ He turned. ‘You were at Largo last night.’
He had been very pale. Now he flushed. ‘I wasna!’ She said nothing. ‘Early on,’ he muttered. ‘I came away before seven.’
‘You weren’t there later?’
‘No.’
He made to climb on the tractor but checked and stood with his back to her, his head hanging. Slowly he turned round. He looked bewildered and dangerous.
‘Why are you asking?’
‘She’s disappeared.’
He started back aggressively but before he reached her his face changed again. He looked as if he might burst into tears.
‘You’re no’ thinking—’ he glanced towards the cliff. ‘No!’ More quietly: ‘It’s no’ her, is it?’
‘We don’t know yet,’ she repeated. ‘Did you return to Largo after seven?’
‘No, no, no!’
He ran and leaped on the tractor, reversed, turned and sped back along the track, the shovel spilling rubbish. It was a grotesque spectacle.
Miss Pink became aware of a small boat approaching from the settlement, the figure in the stern following Willie’s progress with interest.
On the east side of the geo the cliffs were less steep and a buttress at an easy angle ran down to slanting shelves at sea level. She walked along the top of the cliffs and signalled to the boatman who, interpreting her correctly, shut down his engine and nosed into the rock.
She climbed down to the water and exchanged sharp looks with a heavy man, unshaven, with faded blue eyes, who wore the west coast garb of navy jersey and ancient beret.
‘Captain Hunt?’
He nodded economically. ‘And you’ll be Miss Pink who’s staying at the house.’ His wife, a rather superior person with blue rinsed hair and upswept red glasses, waited at table.
‘I wonder,’ Miss Pink began, accepting his hand as she stepped into the boat and went forward to the bows, ‘if you would mind running me into Scarf Geo?’
He smiled carefully. ‘’Tis a horrible place at the bottom, ma’am. You’ll be after seeing all you want to see from the top. My, but you’ve put the fear o’ death into that Willie. You didna even let un tip!’
They had come into the geo and he throttled back, regarding the scum round his boat benignly. ‘You would be wanting to go closer, ma’am?’
‘Right in, captain.’
A whiff of putrefaction drifted past. He blinked.
‘Can you do it?’ Miss Pink asked anxiously.
‘They put dead sheeps down here!’
‘Breathe through your mouth. Be quick, there’s a good fellow.’
He stared at the shore as he took her in. ‘What is it you’ve found?’
‘It looks like a body.’
‘Ay. Corpses do wash up in storms.’
‘No doubt.’
They reached what passed for land. The boat made no healthy sound of grating on pebbles but squashed and squelched on nasty things. A basic courtesy asserted itself and he floundered after her through the muck.
‘Can’t stay long,’ she announced stolidly. The sun beat into the back of the inlet and the flies were terrible. ‘Just to satisfy ourselves. Ridiculous if it were a sheep.’
She lurched sideways against her escort.
‘Watch your footing, ma’am; will ye no’ go back?’
She didn’t answer and she hadn’t slipped; she’d nearly trodden on a green suède shoulder bag.
‘God!’ the captain gasped, and stopped.
Miss Pink, having been shocked
by the sight of the bag, regarded the body almost with objectivity but thankful that only the legs were visible. The injuries were severe but they had not bled. Embroidered flowers showed on the rent trousers. She looked around. Willie might have tipped two or three times this morning but his shovel held comparatively little and she thought she recognised the cloth of a coat among the trash.
They returned to the boat and put out to sea. After a few hundred yards they started to take deep breaths.
‘Thank you,’ she said sincerely. ‘You did very well.’
‘How did she die, ma’am?’
‘I don’t know.’ There was a long pause. ‘How do you know who it is?’
The shock was fading and he looked sly. ‘Us canna tell, but they trousers is like the lassie at Largo wore.’
‘But is she missing?’ Her tone was innocent, but his was equally so.
‘You was looking for her this morning—with Colin. You didna find her.’
One or other of the crofters must have been watching her movements and now, like social animals, everyone knew—although they didn’t know everything. Or did they? Hunt would have taken her into the geo not because she’d requested it but because he needed to know the cause of Willie’s wild behaviour. She said, cautiously and untruthfully, ‘By “missing” I meant disappeared; there would be nothing remarkable if she’d merely left the glen.’
‘Ay. You was keen on finding her though.’
They chugged on towards the beach.
‘When did you see her last?’ she asked.
He reached in his pocket and, pulling out a packet of Players’, offered her one. She declined, and he lit a match with his thumb nail.
‘It would be after tea time,’ he mused. ‘Yesterday. She was sunbathing all day outside Largo. The wife said she hadna much on—’ he glanced at her, ‘—if anything.’