The Sideman

by Caro Ramsay

  He watched a gang of bikers line up to get on the ferry, their engines roaring. The noise rolled across the bay, at odds with the beauty of the scenery. He turned round, chilled by the wind and keen to keep moving. He saw a thin grey-haired man leaning against the rail further along the harbour. Anderson was sure it was DCI Patrick. Accompanying him was a tall, leanly built man, dark-haired with, from this distance, some grey at the front, maybe even a Mallen streak. They had both been watching him, Anderson was sure of that, but there was no wave of welcome. Nor did they turn and walk away. They just watched. So Anderson waved at them both, then set off towards Castle Terrace, the map memorized from his phone. There were only a few streets in Port MacDuff, it was a small port surrounded by hills on three sides and the very deep water of the Inner Sound on the other.

  He kept walking, knowing that Patrick and his friend were still watching. Anderson knew that Patrick might see his being here as a right royal pain in the arse. Patrick could do nothing but acquiesce to his presence; Police Scotland working together and all that crap. But he enjoyed the walk up to the impressive terrace of three-story houses, all painted in different bright colours. His heart was lighter, Costello was alive. He could cope with anything.

  Number twelve was bright blue. The five houses in the block had a clear view over the Sound, the buildings in front had been demolished, leaving a flattened area, obviously now used as a temporary car park, a weird assortment of vehicles parked in a very haphazard fashion with no white lines to guide them. He noticed two matching vans parked, a tall young man standing at the open back door of one, clipboard in hand. On the ground were a couple of large bags, easily five-feet long. As Anderson passed, the man read the label on a small rucksack and then placed it in the bigger bag, repeating the process with the next bag, a small holdall; he was moving awkwardly, as if he had a sore neck or a sore shoulder. As he lifted the zippered flap on the long bag, Anderson caught a flash of the orange lining. The man saw him looking and straightened his posture, adjusted the collar of his boiler suit and stared directly back. To his left was another man dressed in a white coat doing something very noisy with white fish boxes, stacking them to left and right then stacking them back the other way. The rear door of his van was open, the refrigerator unit on the top was quiet. He too looked up at Anderson as if they both possessed some sixth sense that had alerted them to his scrutiny. More likely he was a stranger here and they were curious about him. Strangers here should walk along the front, take photographs, buy coffee and get on the ferry, not walk the backstreets looking for number twelve.

  Better people than them had tried to psyche out Colin Anderson, so he opened the front gate of the blue house, casually looking over his shoulder to read the side of the van; HikeLite, and a mobile phone number. Anderson tried to gauge the man’s height; tall and slim, this was a young man. The fish guy was older, stockier, but was still looking over as Anderson turned to walk up Morna’s pathway.

  Noted.

  Morna opened the door, her face brimming as if he was a long-lost friend. If he had been twenty years younger Anderson thought he would have fallen in love with her there and then. Her red hair streamed down her back, her smile as wide and fresh as a Bavarian milkmaid.

  He followed her down the hall listening to her incessant chatter, then into a cold living room. The old blue sofa was covered with a brightly coloured patchwork blanket from the middle of which a crumpled face looked out at him. The blanket was wrapped round a young boy, too obsessed by his X-wing to even look up. From the two posters on the wall, Anderson judged the creased face on the blanket was Hans Solo.

  ‘Somebody a Star Wars fan then?’ he asked.

  ‘My other half. I think it’s genetic.’ She nodded at the boy on the sofa. ‘Neil’s very good on Star Wars, Alien and Bladerunner but can’t remember to pick his son up from school. Sorry,’ she said, as if he was too important to be interested in her life outside of work. ‘I’m DC Morna Taverner. As you might have guessed.’

  ‘Glad to meet you, DC Morna Taverner. DCI Colin Anderson, call me Colin, I work a closed unit so we don’t need to be formal.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, then laughed.

  He noticed the swing of her hair, a russet mane.

  ‘And this is Finn, he’s a very rude wee boy. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  Anderson said hello to the boy and got a flicker of a smile in response. Anderson walked round the back of the settee, taking in the thin carpet, the cold chill in the air, the peeling paint.

  Somebody was short of cash here, yet Morna would be on a good salary surely. There was a sense of this house being temporary, nothing in the way of homeliness, a few pictures of Finn on the wall, two years of primary school, proud in a uniform that didn’t really fit him. And one wedding photograph, the bride easily recognizable as Morna, the groom just as easily recognized as the man outside with the two vans. HikeLite? Those vans were expensive, Anderson wondered who ran the company. It would be too obvious if he walked back to the window and looked out to see if both vans were still there. Morna was chattering away from the kitchen, asking about his drive up, the roadworks, the weather. All the things you need to know about if you live this far from a good supermarket.

  ‘Is that you then?’ he asked Finn, pointing at the school photograph.

  ‘Aye,’ said the boy, showing Anderson his X-wing.

  ‘Lovely. The Millennium Falcon is my favourite. Do you have one of them?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘Death Star, and Imperial Stormtrooper.’

  Anderson moved slightly round the back of the sofa, stepping over a dog basket, smiling awkwardly at the boy but the curtains precluded him from seeing the vans in the makeshift car park. All he could see was a fat woman walking past with two Scotties on the same lead. Even she seemed to take a good look at the house as she strolled, oblivious to the weather. He looked beyond her, something trickling into his head, in the car park, in his line of sight, a vehicle pulling away, a small white Fiat car driven by a blonde with a hat on.

  He turned back into the room, trying to keep the grin from his face, looking round his eyes saw the picture. It hung on the wall over the fireplace and was a huge photographic print of a beautiful house standing high on a cliff, old and grand. A glassed terrace ran along the front so that anybody sitting there in a comfy Chesterfield enjoying a good malt, could see the waves at low tide and on a clear day, Raasay, Rona and Skye beyond. They were easily recognizable, even to Anderson.

  The gold engraving on the bottom of the frame said Le Adare Lodge.

  ‘Is that your house?’ Anderson asked the boy, getting a cheery, ridiculous laugh in return.

  ‘Nooooo.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  A huge nod.

  ‘Would you like it to be your house?’

  Another big nod.

  ‘Is it your mum’s house?’ asked Anderson.

  Finn shook his head. ‘No, my dad’s. Chewbacca lives there.’

  ‘Don’t you start him going on about that again,’ mocked Morna, appearing at the kitchen door with two steaming mugs of coffee and a box of Viennese Whirls in the crook of her elbow. ‘Everybody does.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare. It’s very impressive. Is it French? The name?’

  ‘The name? It’s a corruption of the Gaelic for Dolphin Point. It’s the highest point on the coast, over there.’ She indicated to the front door, so he presumed, she was talking about the clifftops to the west. She placed the cups on the narrow table on the back wall, a bit rickety.

  It dipped when Anderson sat down and leaned on it, spilling a little coffee from both mugs. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No worries, there’s normally a bit of paper in there to keep it level.’

  They sat facing each other. The table was so small, he could have easily reached out and touched her fingertips, her blue, cracked fingertips he noticed. And he did want to reach out and warm her tiny hand in his. He was glad she had placed a large box b
etween them.

  She put the Viennese Whirls right in front of him, still in their box. ‘Have you looked at Jennifer Argyll’s file yet?’

  He was thrown a little at her directness. ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘That was where she disappeared.’ She pointed up at the picture. ‘Last seen walking up to the lodge.’

  ‘Oh right.’ It was not that the lodge itself was unimpressive, it was the size of the picture in such a small house. Anderson couldn’t think he knew anybody under the age of thirty who would have a picture in their house bigger than their TV screen. ‘You son seems to think you own it.’

  ‘He thinks Chewbacca lives up there and he believes Santa lives at Fearnmore Cragg farm and that he snogs Betty Alexander from the post office.’

  ‘The innocence of youth. Are you planning to buy the house when you win the lottery?’

  ‘Aye, that’ll be right. I would have to buy a ticket though to give myself a chance, Neil does think of the lodge as his ancestral home. Only because his mum used to clean the floors there and he hung around it a lot as a child. If you are here for a while, you should take a drive up to Dolphin Point, the views are amazing.’

  He looked out the window, the view of the car park opposite had been obliterated by a squall of rain. ‘And do you see dolphins?’

  ‘That’s what we tell the tourists.’

  ‘And what is it now?’

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘The house, is it a hotel or something?’

  ‘Nope,’ Morna said, ‘it’s a heap of bricks. Thank god.’ She leaned closer to him, he could see the individual freckles on her nose. ‘Bad karma, as if the spirit of Jennifer was making sure it was never going to be a success. Her ghost walks the cliffs, you know. I thought that was why you were looking at it, because of Jennifer.’ She sounded disappointed. ‘I thought you had read the file.’

  ‘I will, believe me.’ He sipped his coffee, breaking that chain of conversation. ‘So who looks after the wee guy while you are doing all this? His dad?’

  ‘No, Finn gets the runabout. Neil runs HikeLite, and he is so busy at the moment as he’s self-employed and you don’t want to turn away any business, do you? He’s outside I think, loading up the vans.’

  ‘Neil Taverner?’

  ‘Yes, do you know him?’ She smiled, proud of her husband.

  ‘I think he came forward about an abandoned old Dormobile a few days ago.’

  Morna didn’t flinch. ‘Sounds like him, he loves all that old crap. If the owner hadn’t claimed it, he’d have tried to buy it.’ She shook her head, indulging the vagaries of the man she loved.

  ‘Works all hours, does he? Nights? The 500 is busy.’

  ‘You guessed it.’ She was oblivious of the seismic leap Anderson’s heart had just made, and the struggle he had not to interrogate her right there and then. ‘And for people doing the West Highland Way. Well, that was how it started. He’s now getting a lot of business out the 500 as well, it used to be summer-only trade but now the season is all year and he has two assistants, three vans and a larger minivan.’

  ‘What does it entail?’ He kept his voice casual, merely making easy chit-chat after a long drive.

  Morna looked at Anderson and waved her hands, expansively pulling ideas from thin air. ‘Say you want to cycle the 500 on the sixth of December. Well, you would email Neil your route, the hotels you have booked, where your overnight camp is going to be or an agreed pick-up point if you are wild camping,’ she warmed to her subject, ‘and he will take the heavy bag. That means you only have to carry it from the post office to the camping site. If you leave your bag packed in the morning, Neil picks it up, and when you get to where you are going, your bag will be there for you. It’s fifty quid for the West Highland Way, hundred quid for the 500, due to the distance involved. But it’s easier now as we can make the vans rendezvous and swap bags and the vans then go off north, south or west. So, Neil is away less. We also do more remote places off the way, there’s a small extra charge to do that but it’s worth it, it’s getting so busy. Folk are having to take B and Bs and hotels further from the route, in the summer at least. It’s so popular, there are mad winter walkers out now. In that!’ She nodded at the window.

  ‘I prefer the comfort of the internal combustion engine.’ Anderson smiled at her. ‘Does he employ anybody?’

  ‘He’s very busy.’ She evaded the question.

  ‘Just that he has three vans, can’t drive them all at the same time so I presume business is booming as the 500 becomes more famous. There must be lots of work, I’m not from the revenue, I don’t care if he’s moonlighting.’

  All Morna said was, ‘He works lots of hours,’ then she looked at Finn. She spoke like a woman whose husband was having an affair; never there, never with their son. A fractured family.

  So,’ said Anderson, ‘maybe you can you tell me about Jennifer?’

  ‘Jennifer Argyll?’

  ‘And,’ said Anderson, ‘the Jennifer Rhu. Tell me what happened there.’

  A look of slight shock passed over her face. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Oh, but you’d be better talking to Lachlan. He was a cop at the time, he was in charge of it. It was big news. At the time.’ She looked disappointed.

  ‘OK, I’ll speak to him. Is this file for me?’

  She brightened immediately and opened the lid of the box. Anderson took out his notebook glancing at his watch. This could take some time.

  Lachlan McRae was indeed the man Patrick had been with, he was exactly what Anderson had always imagined the inhabitants of Wester Ross should be. He was tall and solid without carrying an extra ounce of fat although he must have been in his late sixties, maybe even edging into his seventies. He seemed to absorb the weather and walked at a speed that had Anderson struggling for breath trying to keep up with him at, or maybe that was the wind snatching the breath from him. Anderson was relieved when they stopped at a set of traffic lights that had no traffic to control and Lachlan gave him very scant details of the disappearance of Jennifer Argyll thirty years before, in November 1987. The older man didn’t want to say very much about it and Anderson didn’t ask any more. It was a debrief. Anderson felt he had the measure of these two, Lachlan was ex-military and Anderson knew he was being told enough of the story to tantalize him. The girl had gone out on a date with an untraced man and had never come home.

  ‘So where was her “last seen”?’

  It was then that Lachlan turned and looked at him. ‘Up on Dolphin Point, up at the Lodge,’ he said, with a shrug that seemed to say, so what would you expect?

  They walked across the deserted street, a gust of wind blew a sudden squall of rain over the tarmac in front of them, the raindrops bounced up to soak their trousers. Anderson put his hand up to keep the water from his eyes. Once it had passed he turned to Lachlan, who was laughing ‘don’t worry you get used to it’. But Anderson’s eyes fell into the further distance where he caught sight of a woman with her hand also on top of her hood, fighting the force of the weather – but not before he caught a glimpse of short blonde hair. As soon as the woman saw him she turned and walked away, vanishing round the nearest corner.

  Anderson stopped walking, causing Lachlan to turn and make sure he was alright. ‘Sorry, I thought I saw someone that I used to know.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Just a cop I used to work with?’

  Lachlan patted him on the back, pushing him on slightly, not letting Anderson entertain any thought of following her. ‘Don’t worry about it, this place isn’t only home to the ghosts of the past, ghosts of the future hang about here as well. She’s been around for a few hours. Do you know her?’

  ‘I think I do?’

  ‘Do you have a name?’

  ‘Does she need one?’ asked Anderson, feeling a sense of relief, but it was his relief nobody else’s. ‘Do you know where she’s staying?’

  ‘Not without a name.’

  ‘It’s OK, I’ll track her down.’

&nb
sp; The he realized Lachlan had stopped walking.

  ‘The Exciseman’s that way.’ He indicated down the street and left Anderson to his own thoughts.

  ‘OK,’ he said to himself, ignoring the image of Edward Woodward being burned to death.

  Checking into the pub was a matter of showing ID and getting a key. His host was curt to the point of being surly. Anderson could cope with that.

  He climbed the narrow stairs, his rucksack over his back, laptop in his arms, the wooden tagged key hanging from his finger. Once in the clean, but tiny room, he checked his phone. No signal. Sure that he had seen Costello, he didn’t know if he was relieved that she was up and about, or disappointed that she’d felt she couldn’t let him in on what she was up to. Or maybe, as Brenda had said to him, it was simply none of his business. He could ask around the hotels but she’d have booked under an assumed name. Any official search would be flagged up immediately and he’d find his remit up here changed to tracking down and bringing in his friend ‘to help with enquiries’.

  He needed to be careful.

  He also tried to ignore the black rolling clouds coming in from the Inner Sound. He was hoping to go out and phone Archie, to tell him that Costello was up and about and that he would try to meet her, and then phone the office for access to the cold case file of Jennifer Argyll. He’d like to see that for himself, not be influenced by the agenda of who was telling him what.

  So, he put his phone on charge. The information file tucked under the lamp on his bedside table said the best signal was down at the ferry terminal. He looked out the small window, along the water. The clouds, like his mood, seemed to be getting darker.