Written in Bone dh-2

by Simon Beckett

  ‘Sounds like blackmail to me.’ The smile she gave him had become intimate.

  He turned to me. ‘If you get a chance before you leave, you should take a look at the burial cairns on the mountain. There’s a group of them, which is unusual. Neolithic. They’re quite something.’

  ‘Not everyone’s as morbid as you, darling.’ Grace shook her head in mock-exasperation. ‘Michael’s fond of archaeology. I think he’d rather have old ruins than me, sometimes.’

  ‘It’s just an interest,’ Strachan said, growing self-conscious. ‘Come on, Oscar, you lazy brute. Time to go.’

  He raised his hand in response to the respectful goodnights that accompanied them to the door. As they went out they almost bumped into Ellen coming the other way. She checked, almost spilling the steaming plate of stew she was carrying.

  ‘Sorry, our fault,’ Strachan said, his arm still round Grace’s waist.

  ‘Not at all.’ Ellen gave them both a polite smile. I thought I saw a flicker of something else on her face as she looked at the other woman, but it was gone before I could be sure. ‘Evening, Mrs Strachan.’

  It seemed to me there was a reserve there, but Grace didn’t appear to notice. ‘Hello, Ellen. Did you like the painting Anna did at school the other day?’

  ‘It’s on the fridge door, with the rest of the gallery.’

  ‘She’s got real promise. You should be proud of her.’

  ‘I am.’

  Strachan moved towards the door. He seemed impatient to leave. ‘Well, we’ll let you get on. Night.’

  Ellen’s face was so devoid of emotion it might have been a mask as she set the plate in front of me. She acknowledged my thanks with a perfunctory smile, already turning away. As she went out I reflected that Brody wasn’t the only person on Runa who didn’t seem overly impressed by the island’s golden couple.

  ‘Bitch!’

  The word seemed to ring in the quiet of the bar. Karen Tait’s mouth was pressed tight with bitterness as she glared at the door, but it wasn’t clear which of the two women who’d just left the insult was aimed at.

  Kinross levelled a warning finger at her, eyes angry above the dark beard. ‘That’s enough, Karen.’

  ‘Well, she is. Stuck up-’

  ‘Karen.’

  She subsided resentfully. Gradually, the ordinary sounds of the bar began to fill the silence. The clicking of the domino players’ pieces resumed, and the tension that seemed to have momentarily been present was dissipated.

  I took a forkful of the mutton stew. Ellen was as good a cook as Brody had said. But as I ate, I suddenly felt someone’s eyes on me. I looked up, and saw Kinross staring at me from across the bar. He held my gaze for a moment, his expression coldly watchful, before he slowly turned away.

  When I woke the hotel room was dark. The only light came from the window, where the street light outside lit the drawn curtains with a diffuse glow. There was an unnatural hush. The wind and rain seemed to have stopped, leaving not a whisper in their wake. The only sound was my own breathing, a steady rise and fall that could almost have been coming from someone else.

  I don’t know when I realized I wasn’t alone. It was more a dawning awareness of another presence than a sudden shock. In the dim light from the window, I looked at the foot of my bed and saw someone sitting there.

  Although all I could make out was a dark shape, somehow I knew it was a woman. She was looking at me, but for some reason I felt neither surprise nor fear. Only the weight of her mute expectation.

  Kara?

  But the hope had been nothing more than a waking reflex. Whoever this was, it wasn’t my dead wife.

  Who are you? I said, or thought I said. The words didn’t seem to disturb the cold air of the room.

  The figure didn’t answer. Just continued its patient vigil, as though all the answers I would ever need were already laid out for me. I stared, trying to fathom either its features or its intent. But I could make out neither.

  I jumped as a gust of wind shook the window. Startled, I looked round, then turned back, expecting the shadowy figure to be still at the foot of the bed. But even in the darkness I could see the room was empty. And always had been, I realized. I’d been dreaming. A disturbingly realistic one, but a dream none the less.

  For a long time after my wife and daughter had been killed, I’d been no stranger to those.

  Another gust shook the window in its frame, driving rain against the glass like handfuls of gravel. I heard what sounded like a cry from outside. It could have been an owl or some other night bird. Or something else. Wide awake now, I got out of bed and went to the window. The street lamp below was visibly shaking in the wind. I caught a flash of something pale flitting on the edge of its yellow corona, then it was gone.

  Just something blown on the wind, I told myself, when it didn’t reappear. But I continued to stare into the dark outside the window until the cold air sent me shivering back to bed.

  CHAPTER 6

  WHILE I WAS wondering what I’d seen outside my bedroom window, out at the cottage Duncan wasn’t happy. The wind had picked up, buffeting the camper van like a boat in a high sea. He’d already taken the precaution of putting the paraffin heater in a corner to stop it from tipping over. Its blue flame hissed only a few feet from where he sat wedged behind the camper’s small table. Still, even though the cabin was cramped, it was better than spending the night either in the Range Rover or huddled in the cottage doorway. Which was where Fraser would probably have put him, he reflected. No, it wasn’t having to stay in the van that bothered him.

  He just couldn’t stop thinking about what lay in the cottage.

  It was all well and good Fraser laughing, but he wasn’t the one having to stay here. And Duncan had noticed the sergeant hadn’t offered to linger after he’d brought out his supper. No doubt in a hurry to get back to the bar, because judging by his breath he’d already made a start on the whisky. Duncan had watched the Range Rover’s lights disappear with a feeling he’d not had since he was a kid.

  Not that he was afraid of being out here. Not as such, anyway. He lived on an island, and once you were out of Stornoway town there were plenty of places on Lewis where there was no sign of a living soul. He’d just never had to stay out in the middle of nowhere by himself before.

  Not with an incinerated corpse lying no more than twenty yards away.

  Duncan couldn’t get the image of those unburned limbs and baked bones out of his mind. However it had happened, they’d once been a person. A woman, according to Dr Hunter. That was what was so shocking about it, that someone who’d once laughed and cried and all the rest could end up reduced to that. The thought was enough to give him the creeps.

  Too much imagination, that’s your trouble. Always had been. He wasn’t sure if it would make him a better or worse police officer. It wasn’t enough for him to note down the facts, he always had to get lost in ‘what if’s. Couldn’t help it, it was just the way his mind worked. Like what if the woman had been burned by something science didn’t know about yet? What if she had been murdered?

  What if the killer was still here on the island?

  Aye, and what if you stopped trying to scare yourself? Duncan sighed and picked up the criminology textbook he’d brought out with him. Fraser could laugh at that as well, but he intended to make detective some day. And if he was going to do something, he wanted to do it as well as he was able. Learn as much about it as possible, and if that meant making a few sacrifices, then so be it. Unlike some people he could mention, Duncan didn’t mind hard work.

  Tonight, though, he found it hard to concentrate. After a while he pushed the textbook away, restlessly. Stick the kettle on. At least you can make a cuppa. Duncan thought he would be sick of tea by the time he’d finished here.

  As he got up to fill the kettle at the tiny sink, there was a sudden quietening as the wind dropped, gathering itself for its next assault. In the brief lull Duncan heard another sound from outside. It was dro
wned out a second later as the gale struck the van again with renewed force, but he was sure he hadn’t imagined it.

  The sound of a car engine.

  He looked out of the window, waiting for the dazzle of headlights that would announce the Range Rover’s arrival. But the darkness outside remained unbroken.

  Duncan thought for a moment. Even if the sound had come from a car passing on the road, its lights would have been visible. Which meant he’d either imagined hearing an engine…

  Or someone had turned off their headlights to conceal their approach.

  Bit of fresh air will do me good, anyway. He pulled on his coat, then picked up his heavy Maglite and climbed out of the camper van. He nearly switched on the torch, but at the last second decided against it. If there was anyone creeping around here, that would only warn them he was coming. He made his way slowly towards the cottage, depending on the fleeting breaks in the cloud cover to see where he was going. The Maglite’s weight was comforting as the black outline of the cottage loomed in front of him. At a foot long, the torch could also double as a substantial club. Not that he’d need it, he told himself, and as he did so there was a flash of light from behind the cottage.

  Duncan froze, heart thumping. He reached for his radio to call Fraser, then stopped. There was too much chance that the trespasser would hear him. He started forward again. He could see that the tape sealing the door hadn’t been tampered with. Staying close to the wall, he made his way to the corner of the cottage.

  He paused, listening. There was a scrape of something brushing against stone, then a swish of movement through the long grass. No two ways about it.

  Someone was definitely there.

  Duncan gripped the Maglite, tensing himself. Stay calm. He took a deep breath, then another. OK, get ready…

  Flinging himself round the corner, he turned the torch full on.

  ‘Police! Stay where you are!’

  There was a startled curse, then a figure was sprinting away. Duncan set off after it, the wet grass threatening to snag his legs. He hadn’t gone far when the figure suddenly tripped and fell headlong. Seizing it by the shoulder, he pulled it over and shone the torch beam on its face.

  Maggie Cassidy glared up at him, squinting against the bright light.

  ‘Get off me! O mo chreach, I think I’ve broken my leg!’

  Duncan felt a mix of relief and anticlimax. And guilt. As he helped the reporter to her feet, he realized she barely reached his shoulder.

  ‘You frightened me to death, yelling like that!’ she grumbled. ‘You’d just better hope my leg’s not broken, or I’m suing.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Duncan asked, trying not to sound defensive.

  There was only a second’s pause. ‘I thought I’d come and see how you were getting on.’ Maggie gave him a smile. ‘Can’t be much fun being stuck out here in this.’

  ‘So why were you looking through the cottage window?’

  ‘There wasn’t a light on in the camper van. I thought you might be in there.’

  ‘Aye, course you did.’ He noticed her trying to slip something into her pocket. ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  But he was shining his torch on to it, revealing a mobile phone clasped in her hand.

  ‘You’ll not have much luck calling anyone from here,’ he said. ‘You weren’t planning on taking any pictures with that, now were you?’

  ‘No, of course not…’

  He held out his hand.

  ‘Look, I wasn’t able to get anything, all right?’ she protested.

  ‘Then you won’t mind showing me, will you?’

  Maggie’s shoulders slumped. She let him see the screen.

  ‘They were rubbish anyway,’ she muttered, bringing up two blurred and bleached-out images.

  As he would explain later, Duncan didn’t think they would be any use. Even he couldn’t make out what they were. But he made her delete them anyway.

  ‘And the rest.’

  ‘That’s it, I told you.’

  He just looked at her. With an irritated sigh she showed him the other pictures in the memory.

  ‘Must have forgotten about that one, hey?’ he said, cheerfully, as another blurred shot of the cottage appeared.

  ‘Happy now?’ she demanded, deleting it. ‘So now what are you going to do? Arrest me?’

  Duncan had been asking himself the same question. Offhand, he wasn’t even sure she’d broken any law. She hadn’t actually crossed the incident tape.

  Besides, he had to admit there was something he liked about her.

  ‘Will you give me your word you won’t try this again?’ he asked, in what he hoped was an authoritative voice.

  ‘I won’t, honest. Ouch.’ She winced as she put her weight on her leg. ‘You all right?’ Duncan asked.

  ‘I can walk, no thanks to you. So can I go now?’

  He hesitated. ‘Where’s your car?’

  She gestured back down the track. ‘I left it back near the road.’

  ‘You sure you can manage?’

  ‘Like you care,’ she retorted. ‘I can manage.’

  Grinning to himself, Duncan watched her small figure hobbling off down the track, torch beam bobbing in front of her. When he was satisfied she’d gone, he started back to the camper van. As he went inside, he noticed a patch of mud in the doorway. He hadn’t noticed it before. Bloody Fraser. Too much to ask for him to wipe his feet.

  Thinking about Maggie Cassidy, he went to put the kettle on.

  Maggie’s car was parked about fifty yards along the track. Her limp had vanished as soon as Duncan was out of sight, but she was still scowling when she reached the old Mini. It was her grandmother’s: a tub of junk, but better than nothing.

  She flopped down into the driver’s seat and examined her mobile phone. Even though she’d deleted the pictures herself, she still couldn’t help making sure they were really gone. They were.

  ‘Bollocks,’ she said out loud.

  Throwing the phone into her handbag in disgust, she took out her Dictaphone and starting recording.

  ‘Well, a right waste of time that was,’ she said into it. ‘And I still didn’t manage to get a proper look at the body. Last time I try to play at commandos.’

  The scowl faded, replaced by a reluctant smile.

  ‘Still, gave me quite a rush, I have to admit. I’ve not been that scared since I wet myself playing hide-and-seek at junior school. God, when that young PC jumped out at me! What was his name? Duncan, I think they called him. Keen bugger, but at least he seemed human. Cute, too, come to think of it. Wonder if he’s single?’

  She was still smiling as she saved the recording and started the car. Its headlights split the darkness as she pulled away in a belch of exhaust. The unhealthy rattle of its engine quickly receded once she reached the road, and, after a final crunch of gears, the night settled back into silence.

  For a heartbeat nothing stirred. Then a shadow detached itself from the ground next to where the Mini had stood and slowly headed off into the dark.

  CHAPTER 7

  A GRUDGING DAYLIGHT was only just seeping into the sky as I showered and shaved next morning. There had been no let-up in the rain overnight, and I hoped the remains were still all right. I knew they’d lain there for several weeks already, and there was no reason to suppose the cottage’s crumbling roof wouldn’t survive a few more days, even in this weather. Even so, I’d be relieved when they could be moved somewhere safer.

  I hadn’t slept well after waking from the dream. I felt grainy and tired as I accessed my emails to see if the missing persons files from Wallace had finally arrived. They had, five of them in all. There was no time to look at them now, so after transferring them on to my laptop’s hard drive I went down for breakfast.

  The bar doubled as the dining room, and I’d nearly finished eating by the time Fraser trudged in. He looked red-eyed and hungover, the smell of unmetabolized alcohol noticeable even across the
table. After he’d returned from the cottage the evening before, he’d settled himself in the bar with the air of a man getting down to business. I’d left him there when I’d gone to bed, and judging from his appearance he’d obviously made a night of it.

  I tried not to smile as he gingerly sipped his tea. ‘I’ve some aspirin in my bag,’ I offered.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he growled.

  He queasily regarded the plate of fried eggs, bacon and sausage that Ellen set down in front of him. Then, taking up his knife and fork, he set about eating it with the determination of a marathon runner.

  ‘How long will you be?’ I asked. I was keen to make a start, conscious of how short the days were up here at this time of year.

  ‘Not long,’ he muttered, hand shaking as he forked up a spoonful of dripping egg.

  Ellen was clearing my breakfast plate from the table. ‘If you want, you can take my car. I won’t be using it today.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Fraser agreed quickly, through a full mouth. ‘There’s things I need to do in the village anyway. Start asking round, see if anyone knows who the dead woman is.’

  It hadn’t been made public yet that the body was a woman’s. I glanced at Ellen, and saw the slip hadn’t gone unnoticed. She gave me a knowing look as he carried on eating, oblivious.

  ‘If you’re ready I’ll get you the car keys.’

  I followed her from the bar. ‘Look, about what Sergeant Fraser said…’ I began.

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t say anything,’ she smiled as she went into the kitchen. ‘You run a hotel, you learn to keep secrets.’

  The kitchen was a single-storey extension, much newer than the rest of the hotel. Heavy saucepans stood on an old gas cooker, blackened with use, while a tall pine dresser was laden with mismatched crockery. A small portable gas fire hissed next to a big wooden table, on which sat a child’s colouring book and set of crayons. Ellen rooted in a drawer for the car keys, then led me out through a door into a small yard. Propane gas cylinders stood against the wall in a wire safety cage, looking like upright orange bombs. Parked in the lane just beyond them was an old VW Beetle.