Bareback

by John Burke

  ‘When you’ve had time to think about it, Sir Nicholas . . .’

  Nick fled from the frenetic chatter, but found himself playing idly with the proposition. Every tone-deaf guitarist and verbally retarded snooker player had a Scottish forest, thanks to their accountants. Why not himself? He could demand a bigger cut for the backings and orchestrations he supplied, then with luck make a tenth of what the front men were making. Invest the proceeds in a chunk of Lowland forest, and the income would be worth far more than Black Knowe could provide. Revenue from what he had acquired by honourable inheritance couldn’t compare with that.

  He stopped in front of a window with a sign boasting that it was the premier supplier of communication products and multimedia PCs in the Borders. He really ought to buy an answerphone. There had already been three irate letters from a recording company asking why they could never get through to him.

  A Range Rover with radiator bars massive enough to halt a rhinoceros charge stopped perilously close to the pavement on a double yellow line. A young man in wellies and Barbour jacket got out. ‘Is it true that the Rides’ll no be going ahead?’

  Nick was becoming the laird whether he liked it or not. People expected him to provide answers and decisions.

  ‘I think the problem’s been resolved,’ he hedged. ‘There’ll be an announcement on the Town Hall noticeboard by this evening.’

  ‘So we’ll be having it after all, the way it’s meant to be.’

  ‘One may hope so.’

  ‘Good. That was a grand party, Sir Nicholas.’ He sounded patronising rather than grateful. ‘You know, Sir John – your uncle, that’s right? – he was my father.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know.’

  ‘He didn’t visit here often, but when he did . . .’ The young man winked and shrugged a shoulder. ‘Lots of us. Any one of us might have been in Black Knowe where you are now.’

  You and Hannah and Kirsty, thought Nick. The tower was in danger of being overpopulated with might-have-beens.

  Across the way was the window of Ian MacKenzie’s shop. Over the shoulders of women jarring their shopping baskets into other customers’ knees he saw Detective Inspector Gunn questioning MacKenzie at the back of his shop. He had not contemplated going in, but found himself edging along the cramped space and taking a tin of Scotch broth from a shelf. MacKenzie’s voice whined high above the display of his special blend whisky.

  ‘What’ll I be doing with my order for quaich cakes? How many am I going to be left with?’

  DI Gunn made sympathetic noises, but had obviously already had enough of the grocer. Nick squeezed past a woman with her own shopping basket and one of the shop’s wire baskets, like a mule with panniers dangling on both sides. ‘To the best of my knowledge, Mr MacKenzie,’ he said, ‘the Rides are going ahead.’

  ‘Aye, so, you’ve decided, Sir Nicholas?’ There was an immediate change of tone. There could be little doubt which verdict MacKenzie had plumped for in the hung vote the previous evening.

  ‘I added my vote to the ayes.’

  ‘Ye’ll no regret it, Sir Nicholas. Grand to know ye’re so understanding. So well integrated already, sir.’

  DI Gunn made an odd little chuckle in her throat, and followed Nick out after he had paid for his tin of soup.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ he asked. ‘Any progress?’

  ‘If progress means tramping around the streets and covering a lot of ground, then yes, I’ve made progress. Not enough to satisfy some local newspaper reporter who keeps bobbing up and asking if I’m making any progress.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry. Me, too – guilty.’

  ‘Sir Nicholas, I didn’t mean that you weren’t entitled to –’

  ‘Care for coffee and a sticky bun?’

  The stiffness of her manner had been acquired from experience, not least among her own colleagues. When she allowed her mouth to soften into a polite smile even for a moment, there was a moist charm on those lips; and Nick toyed with the fantasy of making her grey eyes smile without restraint.

  She was a few inches shorter than he, though she held herself with such a straight back and high, alert head that the difference was hardly noticeable. Her light brown hair was cropped short, but retained a diminutive curl above each ear. Her dark blue two-piece was businesslike yet not drab, and the dark sheen of her stockings suggested neither a dowdy policewoman nor a Salvation Army lass. Close below the surface of her official austerity was something warm, eager, responsive. She had learned to control it.

  In the Bluebell Café she looked round in casual appraisal, like an under-cover agent wary of a killer slinking in from behind. Gossip was the likelier menace here. Nick said: ‘I’d like to see you when you don’t look so businesslike. But this morning you’d better keep your tough cookie face on. We are merely having an interim conference on the course of the investigation, right?’

  ‘What else could we possibly be doing?’

  But her detachment wavered when a trolley of cream cakes was pushed towards her. She shook her head in self-reproach, and chose something piled high with strawberries and slices of apple in a rich orange jelly.

  Watching those lips begin to get smeared with strawberries, he asked: ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘There’s a police house up the wynd, behind the clock tower.’

  He remembered passing a dun-coloured, pebble-dashed semi with a front door opening on to the pavement. ‘Comfortable?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far. Adequate. Just.’ She looked faintly apprehensive, as if afraid he might be about to offer her a bedroom in Black Knowe. ‘I don’t expect to be here too long. If we can’t wrap this theft up pretty fast, I’ll probably have to go back to HQ and slot it into our list of outstanding crimes.’

  ‘Quietly drop it, you mean?’

  ‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘We rarely drop an investigation completely. One hint even years on, and we press buttons and summon things up on screen – or out of some ancient drawer.’

  ‘But at this moment you’re not optimistic?’

  ‘None of the locals seem like thieves to me. And I’ve recognised plenty in my time.’

  ‘Petty rogues,’ he said. ‘Hypocrites, wheeler-dealers in their own lines. But not thieves, right?’

  ‘You don’t seem enamoured of your own townsfolk, Sir Nicholas.’

  ‘They’re hardly mine. Not yet. To them I’m still an incomer.’

  ‘In spite of Mr MacKenzie assuring you that you’re integrated?’ She rolled the ‘r’ as fruitily as the grocer had done.

  ‘In spite of Mr MacKenzie. They’re very doubtful about me.’

  ‘Just as some incomers are doubtful about them.’ Lesley Gunn wiped a last dab of cream from her mouth. Her hand and wrist were as smooth as the cream. ‘I’ve interviewed Professor Makepeace, for instance.’

  ‘I’m surprised they allowed a sceptic like him on the Committee.’

  ‘Only born troublemakers get to serve on Committees. In a way they enjoy the squabbles more than the actual decisions.’

  ‘Now who’s the one less than enamoured of our townsfolk?’

  She resumed her most matter-of-fact tone, as if summing up for a superior officer. ‘It’s Professor Makepeace’s opinion that the quaich tradition is suspect. He said in so many words that it wouldn’t matter a damn if they used an old teacup.’

  ‘And Makepeace’s son?’

  ‘Merely a visitor, isn’t he? Rather as you described him when I came to see you. A young swaggerer. Fancies himself as every girl’s daydream. Suggestive remarks about Miss Robson – and knowing looks at me.’

  Nick could imagine both of those reactions.

  On impulse he asked: ‘What made you join the Force?’

  ‘Nosiness, I think. Always wanting to find out what makes other people tick.’

  ‘And stop them doing it?’

  ‘Only when the tick gets to sound like a time-bomb.’

  ‘Mm. I shall have to be careful. Have to be a digital watch
rather than a kitchen clock.’

  When they left, she was as trim and straight-backed as any officer on the beat; but even the strictest discipline could not disguise the graceful rhythm of her hips.

  *

  Nick drove back to Black Knowe. Fiona came out as he slammed the car door. He felt that although she had not exactly been waiting for him, some instinct had led her to time their meeting nice and neatly. She must already have learned that the programme was to go ahead, and was waving her long, graceful fingers towards the slopes of bracken and the wind-warped hawthorn clumps below the ridge.

  ‘When did you last ride, Sir Nicholas?’

  ‘Well. It must have been . . .’ There had been holidays in Austria when his father was still performing in Vienna. Three years ago in Australia: rough, exhilarating. ‘About three years.’

  ‘Might it no be a good idea to have a ride out – just we twa, trying out the land before you take part in the final rides?’

  Her attitude was one of deferential consultation, but in fact she had already made the decisions. Of course she was right. A preliminary recce made good sense.

  ‘I’d better see about hiring a horse. And some riding gear.’

  ‘Our Colin’s breeches would fit you, I’d say. And I can borrow two mounts by this afternoon.’

  ‘Borrow?’

  ‘From one of the lads who had hopes I’d be choosing him as Callant.’

  ‘So he’ll make sure I’m provided with an uncontrollable beast who’ll throw me and break my neck?’

  ‘I doubt it’ll come to that. He wouldnae want to cross me.’

  Nick wondered whether among the local legends might be one of a white witch. Or of that fabled, elusive sprite stealing men’s hearts away into some faerie hillside which opened to receive them but rarely let them out again.

  This was getting ridiculous. The sooner he quit, the better.

  But then Fiona smiled again.

  *

  Colin’s breeches did indeed fit; and Colin also provided the stiff top hat which he himself had hoped to wear as Kirsty’s Callant.

  Nick had half expected Fiona to be riding bareback, but evidently this was not regarded as essential for a rehearsal. She swung confidently up into the saddle, her bright yellow shirt like a splash of broom against the rolling green background.

  They said that even if you hadn’t ridden a bicycle for years, it would all come back once you got into the saddle. It didn’t seem to apply with a horse’s saddle. He felt wary of the solid flesh moving beneath him, unsure of the directions it proposed to take.

  They set off towards the Hanging Tree.

  Fiona stayed close, guiding him and keeping up a running commentary on the route and its high spots.

  The tree had for centuries been a marker on the western rim of the Common. Up to the end of the nineteenth century a gibbet had stood beside it on the crown of the hill, a grim reminder of executions past, until it rotted away. Symbolically the tree took over as the Hanging Tree. A landscape littered with symbols, thought Nick. Did nothing round here exist in its own right?

  They made a wide sweep across the heugh which he had agreed should be incorporated once more in the Riding, climbed slowly to the tree and round it, and descended on the other side of the ridge towards the Roadhead Inn.

  ‘On the actual day,’ said Fiona, ‘the landlord is commanded to provide a stirrup cup and a bannock for all the riders.’

  ‘Do you fancy a quick one since we’re here?’

  ‘I think you should go in, yes, and issue the command, so that he knows when the Callant and his men will be coming.’

  ‘You’re not telling me that word hasn’t reached him already?’

  ‘Of course he’ll have heard. But not formally.’

  Another sacrosanct chunk of protocol.

  In the long bar with its low ceiling, Nick was grateful for his hard hat, which smacked into a massive beam. At this hour of the afternoon there were only two men in a corner, playing dominoes. They gave Fiona and Nick a separate stare, then resumed their game. The landlord recognised Fiona, offered her and her companion a drink, and made a great performance of welcoming Sir Nicholas Torrance to this humble tavern. The words must have dated from way back: the landlord didn’t for a moment consider his premises to be humble, but as a practised performer in the annual celebrations he knew his lines.

  When they left, Fiona pointed to a steep gash in a ridge two miles away, with a stubborn alder tree framed in it.

  ‘It’s through that swire that the Lass will come riding.’

  ‘And young Makepeace will come belting after her.’

  She smiled a secretive little smile. ‘It’ll be your task to make sure he doesnae catch up.’

  After their long curve round the boundaries of the Common itself, they turned back towards the gaunt stump of Black Knowe.

  She swung down out of the saddle and looped the reins over the twisted branch of a blackthorn. Was she contemplating a rehearsal of the programme’s culmination after the earlier stages they had just gone through? It was going to be uncomfortable inside that cairn after last night’s rain. Cosier in his wine cellar, he thought.

  He dismounted. ‘What would happen if the Callant backed down and rejected the Lass after their tryst in the cairn?’

  ‘A curse would be laid upon him.’ Fiona was bland and matter-of-fact. She stooped and led the way in.

  It was dark save for a shaft of light from some displaced stones in the upper curvature of the cone. She was very close to him.

  The scent of her was subtly spicy. Her breath was a quickening whisper. She put a hand on his arm to steady herself. Or perhaps to signal her readiness. Dress rehearsal . . . undress rehearsal? Droit de seigneur . . .? Tempting fantasies engulfed him.

  There was a dark mound in the middle of the floor: stones fallen in from the roof, or else a huddle of old clothes or a mattress which somebody had brought along for comfort. This seemed to be a regular rendezvous on Black Knowe land. Nick toyed with the notion of charging a rental for its use.

  Fiona’s whisper fluttered into a gasp of dismay. ‘Sorry, but I think we’ve interrupted . . . we’ve . . .’

  Had they blundered upon a couple of lovers already at it, in spite of the dampness of the interior?

  The light grew clearer. Nick had been about to mumble an apology and back away, until he saw that the shape was not of two bodies in an embrace, but of one body lying face down.

  Fiona stooped, about to turn the head sideways into the light.

  ‘Don’t touch!’ said Nick sharply.

  Light through the gap was picking out the left cheekbone. He bent down to see the side of the face.

  The Committee secretary would never offer any blocking vote or casting vote now. Archie Ferguson was undoubtedly dead. And he had died not from exhaustion after making love in this waterlogged rendezvous, but from a heavy stone smashed into his head.

  Something glinted beneath his left elbow. He was clutching the Reivers’ Quaich in the crook of his arm.

  Chapter Nine

  The police station was too small to house a properly equipped incident room. A home was found for it between the Tolbooth and the Sheriff Court, in what used to be the witnesses’ waiting-room before Kilstane’s court was made redundant in favour of a new regional centre. Windows high up from the floor were heavily barred, giving witnesses the impression that simply by being involved in a case they were as good as guilty themselves.

  The police surgeon had certified that life was extinct and had taken the body temperature to estimate time of death. While waiting for a Senior Investigating Officer to arrive, Lesley Gunn had called in SOCO, a pathologist, and a police cameraman; and removal of the body to the mortuary was authorised.

  By the time Detective Chief Inspector Rutherford of the Regional Crime Squad was on his way to Kilstane to take over as SIO, three telephone lines and a computer had been installed, and an incident room manager and three women officers were in place
to cope with messages and log accumulated data.

  Detective Inspector Lesley Gunn was not looking forward to the arrival of this newcomer. Murder was not, strictly speaking, her field; but she was unhappy at any implication that she needed a murder squad DCI sent down so quickly to ‘give the investigation some clout’ as the Chief Super put it.

  ‘This isn’t a razor gang or drug baron killing, sir,’ she had protested.

  ‘No. But Rutherford knows as much about dead bodies as you do about dead geniuses. You’ll give him valuable input because you’ve already got to know so many folk on the ground. We wouldn’t want that wasted. You’ll make a good team.’

  The local uniform branch was already geared up for the legwork. But unlike the search for the quaich, which had been found by chance and not by skilled detection, this job had to be concluded quickly: that was the command from on high. Lesley Gunn realised that it would involve trailing round the same people, asking different questions but getting familiarly misleading answers. Now it wasn’t a matter of who had nicked the family silver but who had bashed the family solicitor. And how the hell had he come to be carrying the quaich so close to home?

  A dismal priority had been to break the news to the widow and ask her to make formal identification, even though they all knew that it was Archie Ferguson. Lesley Gunn decided to back up the local WPC and make her own assessment of Hannah’s reaction. It was six o’clock on the Saturday evening when they rang the Fergusons’ doorbell. Kirsty answered it.

  Her mother was out. She had been out all day.

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  ‘No, she never said.’

  ‘What time did she go out this morning?’

  Kirsty swung to and fro on the door like a housewife impatient to get rid of an uninvited salesman. ‘I . . . didn’t look.’

  ‘And she didn’t say anything to you?’

  ‘No, she never said,’ Kirsty repeated.

  ‘You’ve been in all day?’

  ‘Well . . . no. But I’m here from now on. What’s it all about?’

  Gunn wondered whether to tell her, but decided against it. It had to be the widow first.