Buchanan glanced at Murray, whose head went down again. ‘There’s a handyman lives in the gate cottage in the grounds,’ he said. ‘Another foreigner. Don’t know his name. Do you, Livvy?’
Murray shook her head.
‘He wasn’t interviewed?’ Strang said sharply. ‘So he may have helped her to get away, or at least seen her go?’ He got up. ‘Sooner we get on to that the better.’
The other officers stood up too. ‘What help will you be needing, sir?’ Buchanan asked. ‘We’ve no CID at Broadford now, but there’s a team in Portree.’
Strang smiled, shaking his head a little ruefully. ‘I’m on my own. Budgets, you know? I’m hoping that it’s just a question of ensuring all appropriate enquiries have been made. I’m not expecting to be here more than a couple of days.’
‘It’s all money these days, isn’t it, sir,’ Buchanan said. ‘Anyway, you know where to find us.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.’
He had noticed, with mild irritation, that Murray had been looking mutinous – she should have done a more thorough job if she didn’t want to be panned – so he was surprised when she said, ‘It’s my day off, sir. If you like I could come with you to take notes. I’ve nothing planned and it’ll be good experience.’
Buchanan, too, looked taken aback. ‘Not like you to give up time off, Livvy.’
She shot him a look. ‘Some of us like learning stuff more than dossing about. Others of us don’t,’ she added pointedly.
Strang remembered a certain young DC who’d made a remark like that to his sarge and been given, as that redoubtable man had said, his head in his hands and his lugs to play with. He had to suppress a smile; she’d got spirit, certainly. She could be useful to guide him around and maybe he’d glean a bit of background info from her at the same time.
‘Thanks, Murray. That could be very helpful,’ he said and pretended not to notice the withering look she’d cast at her more tolerant sergeant.
When they parked at the Macdonalds’ cottage the rain was falling steadily and even in the few steps to the front door Strang could feel it trickling down the back of his neck. When there was no immediate answer to Murray’s knock he said impatiently, ‘No one in, obviously. We’ll try later,’ and headed for the shelter of the car.
‘Hang on,’ Murray said, pointing to a boat crossing the bay. ‘That’ll maybe be him now, sir.’
They walked along to the pier and waited as the boat came in to tie up. Strang saw Macdonald look up and see them, then look down again to busy himself with the rope. His face was impassive and his movements unhurried. At last he came up the ladder and Strang moved forward.
‘Could we have a word, sir?’ They showed their warrant cards and Macdonald took them and studied them, which Strang found interesting. It wasn’t something people often did; did he just have a slow, deliberate cast of mind or was it a delaying tactic? Or was it even, he wondered bitterly, prompted by a malicious pleasure in seeing him get soaked to the skin? This was a lesson about the unwisdom of leaving the car without his oilskin jacket.
Macdonald nodded at last, then led the way into the cottage. The front door opened into a pleasant sitting room but he didn’t invite them to sit down; Strang sat down anyway and after a brief hesitation Murray did too. Macdonald stood like a rock, looming over them.
‘Perhaps you could sit down as well,’ Strang said. ‘I’m not sure how long this will take.’
He wondered if the man would refuse, but after a moment he complied, giving Strang a hard look from under his heavy brows. He hadn’t so far spoken a single word, which wasn’t promising for the interview.
‘You’ve been barman at the Black Cuillin for some time, haven’t you?’ As Macdonald only nodded, he added, ‘How long?’ and waited.
At last Macdonald said, ‘I suppose about ten years, off and on. It’s irregular work – I do it when I’m needed.’
‘Do you have other work?’
‘Sometimes. Used to work in construction.’
There was a touch of bitterness in his reply but that was an irrelevance Strang didn’t pursue, only going on to establish that he knew Eva Havel, that she had come in quite frequently, if not regularly. And that recently she had spent quite a lot of her time with Daniel Tennant.
‘Anyone else?’ Strang asked, and saw Murray stop her note-taking and lean forward, as if she was willing the man to say yes. He said no, and she gave a small sigh as she wrote that down.
‘The other women who have been housekeepers at Balnasheil Lodge recently – were they regular visitors to the bar?’
‘Oh yes.’ There was no mistaking his reserve.
Strang raised his eyebrows. ‘Not welcome guests?’
‘It’s a public bar. Nothing to do with me,’ Macdonald said stiffly.
‘Did any of them leave without warning?’
He shrugged. ‘I – I wouldn’t know.’ He shut his mouth as if he never intended to open it again.
He was uneasy and Strang was onto it immediately. ‘There was something else?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘Oh, I think there was. I don’t want this to take longer than it has to, Mr Macdonald. Am I to assume there was a question mark about another woman?’ Macdonald was looking down, not meeting his eyes, and he went on, ‘I’ve no doubt if there was talk someone else will know as well – Mrs Ross, perhaps?’
Macdonald shot Strang a look of dislike but after a moment’s thought he spoke. ‘There was one girl, Veruschka. Four years ago. There was a local woman did cleaning over there – she said she’d disappeared, but she was always one to exaggerate.’
‘Her name?’
‘Morag Soutar. Died last year.’
‘And no one else knew anything about that?’
‘Just gossip. Never believed it for a minute.’
‘Right.’ Strang thought for a moment. Relevant – not relevant? Something to follow up later, perhaps. Go for the important question now.
‘How did you get on with Eva, Mr Macdonald?’
He shrugged. ‘Barely spoke to her, except to ask what she wanted to drink.’
‘Did you fetch her from Balnasheil Lodge the day she disappeared?’
‘No.’
There was no obvious reaction. Naturally impassive, or expecting the question? ‘There would be no crime in helping her,’ Strang said. ‘Still no?’
‘No.’
Strang got up, taking Murray by surprise. As he said, ‘Thank you for your time, sir. We may want to talk to you again later,’ she scrambled up, dropping her notebook and going pink with embarrassment as she bent to pick it up.
When they were back in the car she said stiffly, ‘All right, I screwed up. I should have interviewed him. Maybe something awful has happened to that girl and we could have done something if I’d picked up on it sooner.’
Strang cast her an impatient look. Self-flagellation was usually an oblique demand for reassurance that this was unnecessary and he wasn’t going to be drawn into playing that game. ‘Let’s check the evidence before we start dramatising. All the indications still are that she’d decided to go and there’s probably no more to it than that.’
But he was beginning to have a nasty feeling that actually, there very possibly was.
Daniel Tennant arrived at Broadford Police Station just after nine o’clock. He was looking tense and he drummed his fingers on the shelf by the hatch in the entrance hall as he waited for someone to answer the bell he had pressed.
He waited, fretting, then pressed it again. The woman who at last appeared was a civilian and she looked resentful at being summoned. When he said he wanted to speak to the officer who had come from Edinburgh she looked blank. ‘What name?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said impatiently. ‘He came up yesterday and he’s not at the hotel where he was staying so I thought he’d be here.’
‘He didn’t sign the book,’ she said, pointing at the ledger on the shelf by the hatch with some triumph. ‘Y
ou can’t just walk in off the street, you know. There’s security, so he’d need to press that bell and get OK’d by me or he wouldn’t get in here. And he didn’t, so he isn’t.’
‘And you don’t know where he might be, I suppose?’ She gave him a pitying look, and he went on, ‘Perhaps there’s someone here who would know. Could you ask, please?’
‘What’s his name?’ she said again.
Tennant gritted his teeth. ‘I – don’t – know.’
‘Then I can’t really ask about him, can I? Sorry, sir.’ She shut the hatch and disappeared.
Tennant shut his eyes and groaned. Vicky had told him he’d need to make an appointment but he’d ignored that. Now he’d just have to wait until Inspector Whoever-he-was decided to seek him out – in fact, he’d better return home in case he missed him.
‘Shocking road,’ DI Strang said as they went round the edge of the bay. Even by local single track standards it was bad, very narrow and seamed with potholes; it began to rise in a series of sharp corners and blind brows as they went further up into the lower slopes of the Black Cuillin. ‘If someone’s coming the other way we’ll meet bumper to bumper.’
He kept his voice determinedly level but it was spooking him. The rain had eased off a little but the surface was greasy and he realised his knuckles were white. He had to force himself to loosen his grip on the steering wheel.
PC Murray hadn’t noticed. ‘Oh, there won’t be anyone coming the other way,’ she said with youthful overconfidence. ‘It only leads to the Lodge and mostly if they’re going out it’s the motorboat across to the pier. Watch when you come to the bridge, though – it’s on quite a sharp bend and it’s pretty rickety.’
She had been subdued at first, dealing with her humiliation probably, but when he asked her about Balnasheil Lodge she was ready enough to talk. ‘You know they have this charity – Human Face. Funny kind of name, that, isn’t it?’
‘Very suitable. “Mercy has a human heart, / Pity a human face, / And Love, the human form divine, / And Peace, the human dress,”’ he quoted, then as she looked at him blankly added, ‘Blake. William Blake.’
She pulled a face. ‘Sorry. Doesn’t mean anything to me.’
‘Romantic poet. Never mind. It’s just that I guess whoever gave the charity its name knew the poem.’
‘Doesn’t sound very romantic to me,’ Murray said. ‘You’d think romantic would be just about love and stuff.’
‘Er – yes,’ Strang said. ‘You were telling me about the set-up?’
‘It’s run by this guy Adam Carnegie – I’ve never met him but he’s not well-liked. Beatrice Lacey’s the secretary or something – quite posh but she’s really fat.’ She paused. ‘Are we allowed to say that now?’
‘Probably not. But I get the picture.’
‘She definitely had it in for Eva Havel. Sort of implied she was a wee hoor who’d go with anyone.’
‘And was she?’
‘Vicky Macdonald didn’t think so – got quite huffy about it. But there’s stories about the girls who came from there – and they were mostly hard-faced bitches on the make and snooty with it, according to the locals. Well, they’re a bit traditional here.’
Murray was clearly untroubled by considerations of political correctness. What she said might or might not be accurate but it would certainly be what she believed to be the truth. That could cut both ways.
‘Watch out,’ she said now, ‘the bridge is just round the corner.’
He was grateful for the warning. They had climbed quite a bit and there was a deep fissure in the side of the mountain, cut over the centuries by a burn that sprang down over slabs of rock in a series of waterfalls and deep pools, the stone worn away and pitted. The lush ferns and the moss growing around it were a green that seemed shockingly violent in this grey, misty landscape.
It was magnificent, if you were in a position to admire it, but Strang was engaged in changing gear as he drove down onto a bridge with low stone walls that looked as if it was just clinging on to the sides of the gully, like one of the straggly silver birches that grew on the slopes above. Then there was the sharp corner on the other side to negotiate, with a sixty-foot drop to rocks on the seaward side.
Strang was breathing unevenly as he said, ‘Thanks for the warning,’ as lightly as he could. With the second bend safely negotiated, the road sloped down towards the shore and now he could see the Lodge and its outbuildings, together with a cottage beside the entrance to the short drive leading to the front door.
The grounds were wooded and lawns stretched on either side but it was less grand than it had seemed from the farther shore; indeed, looking from above he could see that some of the outbuilding roofs had collapsed and even on the cottage there were tiles missing, and it badly needed repainting.
He drew up just inside the gate. ‘We’ll try here first. Don’t know his name, I suppose?’
Murray shook her head, colouring up again.
There was no answer when Strang knocked on the door but there was the sound of wood being chopped at the back and they followed it round to a yard with a shed stocked with wood and a peat stack.
The man who was wielding an axe on the huge logs was powerfully built with musculature that spoke to a lifetime of manual work. He had a shock of black hair and a black beard, shining with the moisture clinging to it; somewhere around fifty, Strang estimated. His eyes were dark, almost black, under heavy brows and he didn’t look pleased to see them.
Strang took out his warrant card. ‘DI Strang and PC Murray. Could we have a word?’
The man didn’t respond. He drove the axe into a waiting log and stood up, his great rough hands on his hips.
‘Your name is …?’
‘Marek Kaczka.’ He had a heavy accent.
‘Do you speak English?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your nationality?’
‘Polish.’
Of course. You had the right to work in Britain if you were Polish. If you were Polish, which Strang doubted. But it wasn’t his business, at the moment anyway.
‘We wanted to ask some questions about the female who left here last week. Inside, perhaps?’ The rain might be gentler now but it was unremitting.
He could see hostility in the dark eyes but the man, familiar perhaps with the wisdom of cooperating with the police, turned and led the way round to the front door.
It opened directly into a small, dark room that had an unmade bed with a sagging mattress, a small sofa with the stuffing hanging out and a hard chair, with a sink on the back wall and a small camping stove on a table beside it. There was a pile of dirty dishes in the sink and dirty ashes in the meagre fireplace; the mantelpiece was thick with dust and there were clothes piled up haphazardly in one corner. There was a smell of peat smoke and something more unpleasant – human sweat, unwashed clothing. As tied accommodation it was basic to an extreme degree.
‘You knew Eva Havel?’ Strang asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Was she Polish too?’
‘I do not ask.’
Breakthrough! The man had actually said four words. ‘Did you know that she was planning to leave?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know if she had friends in the area?’
‘No.’
‘Did you see her on the day she left?’
There was a pause. Then he said, ‘What day?’
PC Murray, with a glance at Strang, told him.
‘No.’
‘You didn’t see her leaving in a boat? Or driving past here in a car?’
For a moment Strang thought there was a flicker of something in his eyes, but he only said, ‘No,’ again.
Strang sighed. He had no idea whether or not the man knew anything but he was quite sure that if he did, he wouldn’t tell them. That might be because of an inbuilt dislike and distrust of the police, or it might be that if he was in a vulnerable position with his employment, he wouldn’t be saying anything that his employer
might not want him to say. They were wasting their time.
They got back into the car to drive up to the Lodge, parking it up by the front door. As they were getting out, he heard sudden, savage barking and turned sharply.
There was a man walking down from the rough moorland beyond the house towards them, one of the men he had seen in the hotel the night before, with a shotgun broken over his arm. A Dobermann dog was racing ahead of him, snapping its pointed teeth. Murray, with a squeal of fright, jumped back into car and shut the door. Strang paused, holding his door open for a sudden retreat, but interested to know what the man would do.
After a moment, when the dog was less than a hundred yards away, the owner barked out a sharp command and the dog all but skidded to a stop, turned round and ran back.
It had been a long moment. Long, and quite deliberately calculated. As the man, smiling and very apologetic, came up to them Strang studied him through narrowed eyes. If he was under the impression that playing little games like this with the police was clever, he was going to learn his mistake.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘Adam Carnegie,’ he said, shaking DI Strang’s hand and nodding to PC Murray. The dog stood by his side, looking up at its master, displaying no interest at all in the officers. ‘Do forgive Amber – she’s just a little overenthusiastic when it comes to strangers.’
‘We noticed. Do you find you need a guard dog?’ Strang’s voice was cold.
The smile vanished. ‘We do live very much out in the wilds here. We don’t have the luxury of a squad car round the corner if there was a problem.’
Strang raised his eyebrows. ‘You surprise me. I understood that around here people didn’t even lock their doors at night. I didn’t realise that the sort of violent crime that might call for an aggressive dog was a problem.’ He enjoyed the flicker of annoyance that appeared on the man’s face and went on smoothly, ‘However, perhaps we could have a word about some concerns that have been raised about Eva Havel’s departure.’
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