War Games

by Douglas Jackson

  But I wasn’t there for the stone.

  The exhibit that caught my eye consisted of a heap of flat, grey sheets of dull, unpolished metal. Lead. This, or something very like it, was the source of the material for the killer’s toy soldiers, and for the first time since I heard Gurya Ali’s name I felt close to him. A small plaque beside the lead told how it had been found in a cavity between two walls of the presbytery and hinted that it might have been part of the loot plundered by ‘Walter Balfour, parson of Linton, Michael Chisholm, baillie depute of the regality of Melrose, and others’ caught in the act, stealing twelve stones of lead from the roof of the cloister in 1558. They obviously had a much better class of scrap merchant back then. On impulse I approached the young girl on duty at the door who seemed to constitute the entire staff of the museum. I congratulated her on the displays and she smiled her appreciation. She gave the impression it didn’t happen very often.

  Her name was Jenny and when I turned the conversation to the stuff that didn’t make it to the museum she was happy to enlighten me. ‘They keep a lot of it in the yard behind the abbey,’ she said. ‘It’s mostly just anonymous pieces of stone they use for repairs. There’s tons of it.’

  ‘What about the lead?’ I asked, deciding to turn on the old Savage charm. ‘I thought the story about the parson from Linton pinching it from the abbey roof was hilarious. It must still be worth a few bob. You wouldn’t want somebody driving it away in their van?’

  Jenny smiled and shook her head. ‘I’m sure the boys keep it under lock and key. I know there’s plenty of it but I’ve never heard of anyone stealing it.’

  ‘The boys?’

  She giggled. ‘Not really boys. I doubt if any of them are under forty, apart from the apprentices. I mean the craftsmen who do the repairs on the abbey and the other buildings we’re responsible for.’

  I kept the grin on my face, but my heart started to race. ‘So all of the craftsmen have access to the stores?’

  ‘Of course. I think the clerk of works has overall control of what’s there, but during the day the men will be able to get anything they need to do whatever job they’re working on.’

  ‘And they’re all Historic Scotland staff?’

  A faint light of suspicion dulled her smile and I realised I was testing her patience. ‘Not necessarily. We employ outside contractors as well. Er, I’m sorry but I’m just about to start closing up now.’

  I thanked her and apologised for taking up her time. A few more pieces had fallen into place. An idea was forming in my head, but it was as if I was groping for the exit of a fogbound minefield. So far, all I could make out were a few vague shapes in the mist ahead and one false step could end up with the whole lot going up in my face.

  Before I left I had another thought. ‘Are there any Historic Scotland buildings I can visit on my way south to Carlisle?’ I didn’t have any intention of going to Carlisle but the unnamed New Zealand girl had been travelling from Carlisle to Edinburgh when she disappeared, so it seemed worth asking.

  She frowned, looked at the clock on the wall, decided she had an obligation to help a customer and pulled a map from her drawer.

  ‘The main properties are at Hermitage Castle, which is a bit out of your way, and at Gretna. They’re both interesting places to visit. The current Hermitage was originally built by the Douglas family . . .’

  The name hit me with a jolt. ‘I’m interested in the Douglases,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, in that case you should visit the library in Jedburgh. The librarian there is a real authority on the family. Apparently the Black Douglas had some connection with the town.’ She paused, seeming to remember something. ‘Strange that you were asking about lead.’

  ‘Why strange?’

  ‘The castle at Hermitage has a very dark history and is linked to many dirty deeds in Borders folklore,’ she explained, warming to her subject and ignoring the clock. ‘But the most horrible is the death of a man called William de Soullis. He was boiled alive in a vat of molten lead.’

  I walked out of the museum with that cheering image seared on my brain and, after a moment’s hesitation, I turned left at the door, along the track towards the abbey stoneyard. It wasn’t a conscious decision and I had no idea what I expected to find, but I needed time to think before I returned to Aelish and we resumed our difficult conversation. Three days. Seventy-two hours. I thought of the clock ticking remorselessly in the Glendearg coffee house and the seconds passing that I’d never get back. Gurya Ali’s dark-eyed, intelligent face filled my head . . .

  ‘What the fuck d’you think you’re doing?’

  Pete Campbell marched from a stone outbuilding to my left with a mason’s hammer held purposefully in his right hand and a face suffused with blood and righteous anger. By the time I opened my mouth to reply he was already swinging, the shining dome of the hammer aimed at the fragile bones in my left shoulder. I should have been pleased that at least he wasn’t going to kill me, but things happened too fast. The movement he expected was backwards, away from the danger. Instead, I took a step towards him, inside the arc of the swing. Before he could adjust I’d blocked his wrist with a solid forearm and diverted the blow so the steel head of the hammer didn’t smash bone, but seared across the flesh of my bicep. I grunted as the nerve ends exploded into white-hot wire, but at the same time my right fist came up and I hit him under his ribs harder than I’d ever hit anyone in my life. Pete’s lips scraped back in a snarl of pain and his body shuddered, but for all the good it did I might as well have punched a brick wall. We were close enough for me to see individual droplets of sweat on his face, and the bitter sourness of his breath tickled my nostrils. Too close for him to think of using the hammer again. He dropped the useless weapon and his arms clamped around me like an industrial vice, pinning mine to my side and leaving me helpless in his grip. The last time I had experienced power like this was in the bottom of a shit-caked Argentinian trench on Mount Tumbledown when a man who might have been my friend tried to skewer me with a hunting knife as big as a machete. I felt Pete Campbell’s muscles contract, and all the air was crushed from my lungs as if I was being squeezed by a giant anaconda. As he turned on the pressure every rib felt about to crack. I lashed out with my right foot, but his legs were as solid as the rest of him. That meant I only had one weapon left and I used it. He had his head pulled back, his features frozen in bloated savagery and the veins in his neck bulging like tree roots as he strove to exert more pressure. I battered my skull into the snarling face, pulping a nose that had already been broken more than once and feeling the spray of hot blood on my face. He reeled on his feet but his grip didn’t loosen until I’d repeated the exercise twice more going for his teeth and the tender skin around his eyes. Even then it wasn’t enough for me to struggle free, but it did allow me to use my hands. My left arm was still numb from the hammer blow, but I groped with my right until I found what I was looking for. My fist clenched around the soft bundle of his genitals and I squeezed and twisted until he squealed in agony and his arms fell away. Still I didn’t let go, but used the freedom to twist even more and hammer him backwards with my shoulder. The battle madness was on me now and I would have torn them from his body but for the flailing fist that felt like it had taken my head clean off my shoulders. Now it was my turn to stagger back. He rushed at me throwing indiscriminate punches, which I countered with a quick-fire right and left, quickly finding the rhythm that had brought me the battalion boxing title and using fancy footwork to dance out of range. He was strong, but he was slow, and when his guard dropped a fraction I stepped in with a right hook that should have put his lights out. He went down, but still he wasn’t finished and when his groping hand found the fallen hammer I kicked him in the face, snapping his head back and sending him sprawling again. As I discovered on Tumbledown, the battle madness does not end with victory. Sometimes it must be sated by ever more violence and I barely understood what I was doing as I picked up the great lump of abbey sandstone and held
it ready to crash down on Pete Campbell’s unprotected head.

  ‘Savage, no!’

  Even the desperate appeal in Sandy Armstrong’s voice wouldn’t have stopped me, but the woman’s scream that accompanied it somehow pierced the red cloud of my exultation. I dropped the rock beside Pete’s prone body and turned to find his workmate standing in the roadway beside the girl from the museum.

  Campbell groaned, and his friend ran to his side as he tried vainly to get to his feet. The older man checked him over and looked up accusingly at me. ‘He’s lost a couple of teeth and he’ll be sore in the morning, but he’s not bad hurt, no thanks to you.’

  ‘He can think himself lucky.’ I loomed over them and the expression on my face brought the fear into Sandy Armstrong’s eyes. ‘He tried to kill me. Tell him if he ever does it again I’ll put his lights out for good.’

  ‘He’s been through a lot.’ Armstrong’s expression softened and his tone turned apologetic. ‘His temper sometimes gets the better of him.’ He turned to the girl. ‘This didn’t happen, Jenny. Understand? If the boss ever finds out, Pete will lose all his contracts, and me, too, like enough. So it didn’t happen, okay?’

  She nodded, still in shock at what she’d witnessed. As I walked by, her wide eyes followed me as if she’d encountered some kind of monster beyond her understanding.

  CHAPTER 28

  By the time I cleaned up in the local public toilets and got back to the car it was past five. I knew Aelish would be expecting me, but I had two new leads and a growing certainty that time was running out for Gurya. If the librarian at Jedburgh was an authority on the Douglases then I had to speak to her, but the library was unlikely to be open by the time I got there. On the other hand I still had four hours of daylight. I reckoned it would take me about an hour and a half to reach Hermitage, which is about forty miles from Melrose, close to the English border and in one of the remotest valleys in Britain. The journey didn’t look too far on the map, but I knew the roads were narrow and treacherous. Eventually I made up my mind.

  I gave Ann Pringle a quick call asking her to look in on Aelish, then I sent Aelish a text on my mobile confirming what I’d done. That’s the true joy of text: it saves you answering awkward questions.

  Why Hermitage? Because it was remote, isolated and linked to the Douglas family, just like two of the locations where the bodies had been found. I couldn’t rule out that her kidnapper was holding her there or somewhere nearby. There was no guarantee – there never is – but I gambled that if I could get close enough I’d receive some kind of message or sign. The way took me south, in the direction of Jedburgh, then west up the Teviot valley to Hawick. From Hawick I had to turn south again through rolling, heather-clad hills up the narrow road past Stobs and Shankend and Whitropefoot that leads into the badlands of Liddesdale. This is the old haunt of the Scotts and Elliots, Armstrongs and Kerrs, raider families who carried their lances over the Border to pillage and lay waste with the kind of unabashed ferocity that gave even the Border Reivers a bad name. As I drove, I considered Pete Campbell’s unprovoked attack at the abbey. It was puzzling, but not altogether surprising. Campbell had marked me as his enemy from the moment we’d met and he was the type of man who used violence as a first resort and not a last. He was also damaged by war. I knew plenty of men like that. I was one myself.

  By the time I reached the Liddell Valley I could almost smell the blood. Even the sun dappling the waters drifting innocently over the pebbled shallows wasn’t enough to lift the gloom. It’s a dark, desolate trail, lined by tightly packed fir and pine, and the evening mists had gathered by the time I turned off what passes for a main road and drove the last few hundred yards to the great keep at Hermitage. I’m not a superstitious man but the first sight of that brooding, fog-shrouded Border tower with its dour presence and oppressive majesty gave me the shivers. Squat and stark on its massive earth mound above the stream, it’s about twice the scale of Threave, and so forbidding it made the western stronghold of the Douglases feel like a five-star hotel. I already regretted the impulse that had brought me here. That feeling turned to concern when I checked my mobile to see if Aelish had returned my text and discovered I didn’t have any reception.

  Troubled, but undaunted I parked the Capri in the little car park and crossed the Hermitage burn. Down here by the water the mist thickened and I could barely make out the bulk of the castle looming over me. A few hours earlier I’d felt as if I was groping through fog in a minefield, now it seemed a frightening reality.

  A worn path led from the car park towards the castle and I followed it upwards. I had Gurya Ali’s toy dog in my anorak pocket and as I walked I stroked my fingers across the cloth and tried to blank out everything physical around me. Nothing. Fog cloaked the path in a damp, impenetrable silver blanket and the eerie silence was broken only by the gentle rush of the swift-flowing stream behind me. In normal circumstances the sound would have been comforting, now it only served to mask the approach of whoever might be waiting for me. I’d no doubt my quarry knew I was getting closer. Maybe he’d already broken his cover. To him, it was part of the game. The little lead soldiers he’d left at the murder scenes were meant to be found. They heightened the killer’s excitement: the thrill of being hunted only added to the adrenaline rush of the murders. By rights it should have been the cops closing in on him, but they’d been sidetracked by Donnie McLeod’s suicide by proxy and were wasting their time looking for Gurya Ali’s body on the hill behind his cottage. They hadn’t been able to make the connection between the Black Douglas and the killer, and I felt that familiar twinge of guilt because I knew I hadn’t helped them by keeping the two crucial pieces of evidence to myself. The question was how close he’d allow me to get before he really did something about it. Maybe Glen Savage was the next victim, not Gurya Ali.

  I strained every fibre to catch the presence I knew was out there in the murk, but when it struck it caught me by surprise. A pale shadow racing low and swift through the mist. A few years ago, it would have been no contest. Even if he had a knife I would have backed myself to take him, but today I knew he was quicker and cleverer than I was, and I barely had time to raise my hands to deflect the blow I knew was heading my way.

  The shadow stopped about four feet away and gave a low growl.

  ‘Heel! Mike, you old bugger, get back here.’

  The shadow barked acknowledgement. I stood for a moment feeling stupid and allowing my heart rate to get back to something like normal before walking the few paces towards him. The big Golden Retriever eyed me warily, lips curled back and teeth bared as a warning, but with no real menace.

  ‘Mike!’ His ears twitched at the sharp command from the mist and he gave me one last glare before bounding off only to return a few moments later followed by a human shape that slowly transformed into a short, balding man leaning heavily on a shepherd’s stick.

  ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’ He studied me intently as if to make certain I wasn’t one myself. ‘Plenty of them around here.’

  He must have been around sixty, with a puffy-cheeked face, wind-blasted skin and a straggly white moustache that drooped below his lips. He didn’t so much roll his Rs as turn somersaults with them, and I knew by that peculiar linguistic logic of the borderland that he originally came from the hills somewhere south of the Kale/Liddell river line and to the west of Carter Bar.

  ‘I just came to look at the castle.’ His expression didn’t change but I could see that the idea of taking a tour of Hermitage when you could barely see your hand in front of your face didn’t seem very likely.

  ‘They’re closed,’ he said helpfully. ‘They always close at five.’

  ‘That’s a pity. They tell me it’s an impressive place.’

  ‘Aye, it is that.’

  ‘You live around here?’

  ‘I’ve the cottage over by Shaws,’ he said, gesturing with the stick beyond my shoulder. ‘Just me and Mike these days.’

  ‘I’m sorr
y.’

  He shrugged. ‘Life and death. You don’t get the one without the other.’

  The thought made Aelish’s face flash into my head. I shouldn’t be here. I should be with my wife.

  ‘I can show you round if you like. What there is on the outside.’

  I thought about it for a second. ‘I wouldn’t want to put you out of your way.’

  The round face split into a grin, revealing two rows of battered, nicotine-stained teeth behind the moustache. ‘Mike needs a walk anyway. If I can find the bugger in this fog. We might be a bit slow for you, though.’ He tapped his left leg with the stick. ‘Arthritis in the knee. Auld age.’

  He turned and limped off, lighting up a cigarette, and I followed him, with the dog frolicking ahead among the bushes.

  ‘When they first built this place it almost started a war. We’re maybe two miles from the Border and sometimes Hermitage was in Scotland and sometimes it was in England. The men who held it had to be prepared to sell their soul to keep it.’

  ‘You said there were ghosts?’

  ‘Aye, plenty of ghosts,’ he repeated. ‘They reckon that on some nights ye can hear the screams of the damned, though I’ve no’ heard them myself. Then there’s Sir Alexander Ramsay, who was starved to death in the dungeons.’ By now we were by the walls and he patted the massive worked stones that rose layer upon layer to tower over us. ‘Mary Stuart, who they call Queen of Scots, visited Lord Bothwell here when he was lying on his sickbed with Jock Elliott’s blade still in his belly. Bothwell survived, though much good it did him, but Mary came close to dying of the pneumonia down in Jethart.’ He used the local name for Jedburgh, just as Newcastleton, a couple of miles from Hermitage is known as Copshie. ‘A couple of years ago an American lady asked Geordie, the caretaker, when the pageant was due to start. He asked her what pageant she meant and she said the one with the pale-faced woman in the beautiful velvet dress. He thought she was mad, but she took him to where the woman had stood and he saw an auburn-haired girl in a dark medieval costume disappearing round the corner. He said he’d swear to his dying day it was Mary.’