Human Face

by Aline Templeton

  ‘We can’t cross here, sweetie. It’s too wide and steep – we’ll have to go a bit higher up to where it’s narrower, won’t we?’ she murmured to the doll. She’d have to take it slowly but the exercise would warm her up. She was starting to shiver convulsively now in the cold, damp air.

  She slipped on the wet grass as she set off up the hill, giving a yell of pain as it jarred her arm, but she recovered her balance and with dogged, insane persistence struggled on.

  It was infuriatingly slow driving. Kelso Strang was used to the haars that came in to the East Coast off the grey North Sea, but he’d never seen anything approaching this. It was like being in an aeroplane passing through a cloud layer – which, he supposed, was exactly what it was.

  Even with the fog lamp on he couldn’t see more than fifteen feet and on a road like this where anticipation was essential if you weren’t to be caught out by a sudden bend, it became an endurance test. It seemed claustrophobic, too, with the shroud of mist blotting out the surroundings; even though he knew that he could stop and get out any time he liked, he still felt half smothered.

  When his mobile rang he pulled in to a passing place to answer it, guessing correctly that it might be JB returning his call.

  He thought he could hear tension in her voice. She listened in silence while he told her as much as he knew himself about what had happened at Balnasheil Lodge, then said, ‘Not quite what I expected you to have to deal with. Still, they think it’s straightforward enough? Have they arrested the woman?’

  He found himself bridling at the implied lack of confidence. ‘I don’t think anyone will have got there yet. I’m on my way there now and there’s fog like you wouldn’t believe so unless there’s a local prepared to risk life and limb to take them across by boat I’ll be the first to arrive.’

  ‘Hmm. Your ETA?’

  ‘Hard to say, ma’am. Twenty minutes, maybe? There may be a delay anyway while they find a vet to deal with the dog – as I understand it, it’s standing guard.’

  ‘You’ll take over as SIO, of course. Your big break.’ There was a touch of mockery in her voice. ‘I’ll put in a priority request for a chopper to bring in your SOCO team, but from what you say they won’t be able to get to you.’

  ‘Not right now, certainly, but it can change quickly around here and it’s probably very local, around the Cuillins. They may be able to put down somewhere else on Skye and take it from there.’

  ‘Right. I’ll work with that. Report back when you can.’

  It was reasonable enough for her to be edgy, Strang told himself as he drove on. All the bad press Police Scotland had been getting had left the top brass reeling, and leaving a totally inexperienced SIO to deal with this new-style murder investigation was definitely high risk. But she’d been quite clear at the start that he was to be in charge – in naval parlance, she had said, ‘You have the ship’ – and he wasn’t going to allow himself just to be elbowed aside the moment it got tricky.

  Was it his imagination, or was the mist starting to lift just a tiny bit? It would be good if it was; he must be near that awkward bridge with the nasty right-angle bend and the drop below, and he realised he was gripping the wheel a little tighter at the thought of it.

  He slowed down and saw that ahead of him the mist was discoloured in a muddy yellowish patch to one side of the road. It took him a couple of seconds to work out what he was seeing and then he braked abruptly. The yellow glow was the headlights of a car, being reflected back against the mist, and judging by the angle of the road, it was a car in a very odd position.

  Strang got out of the car, feeling sick and starting to shake, his hand going unconsciously to the scar on his face. Blood, smashed bodies – Alexa, crumpled sideways against him—

  But he forced himself towards it, his heart racing. It came into clearer view: a big blue car, a Mercedes, straddling the road with its nose embedded in the hill and its tail right on the brink of the crumbling edge. He couldn’t tell how close the whole bridge might be to collapse and he stopped just short to assess the situation.

  There seemed to be no damage except to the bodywork and the car was empty; the airbag had deployed so with luck no one had been hurt. The lights had been left on and the driver’s door was standing open as if someone had got out in a hurry – as you would, if you thought you might find the road beneath you suddenly subsiding into the gulf below.

  There was no indication how long it had been standing there. Strang edged his way forward cautiously, keeping close to the inside of the road, and felt the bonnet. It wasn’t quite cold; perhaps ten, fifteen minutes since the engine was switched off? He hoped it was off; there was an oily smell in the air and he couldn’t get past to check without climbing over the car – and who knew what effect that might have?

  It was very, very quiet. Even the sound of the burn splashing down the side of the mountain was muffled and there was no sign of anyone – presumably they had walked back towards Balnasheil Lodge. He called, ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ but he didn’t really expect an answer.

  It was only then, with the assurance that there were no casualties and with his heartbeat steady again, that he took in the implications. The road was firmly blocked. They would need a recovery truck at the very least; even once they got it moved, the bridge wouldn’t be safe without repairs – and Fiona Ross had said there was some sort of dispute about who was responsible anyway. It could be weeks – months, even, and as he stood there he could hear a rattle of small stones slipping off the gaping hole at the side of the road, making the damage worse.

  What was certain was that he wasn’t going to get to Balnasheil Lodge this way today. He’d have to back up round all those bends, with a limited view of the road behind him, until he got to one of the passing places that would grudgingly offer a barely adequate space for turning round. He groaned, and went back to the car. He took his mobile out of his pocket; he’d have to let Buchanan know what had happened.

  Just as he reached the car again, he felt a faint breath of wind, sensed a movement of the air, and a gap opened in the cloud with dramatic suddenness to show him the ground dropping away just by his feet to the sea, a dizzying sixty feet below. It was only a moment before it was blotted out again but it did look as if the mist might be thinning out down below. Perhaps they’d get across in the boat shortly.

  They already had, he discovered when Buchanan answered. The cloud was clearing at sea level and Murdo John Macdonald had agreed to take them over.

  ‘In fact,’ Buchanan said in what Strang recognised as carefully neutral tones, ‘DC Tennant was here already when we arrived.’

  ‘I …see.’ Strang’s response was equally careful. ‘I’ll get back to Balnasheil as quickly as I can and once I get there I’ll phone for Macdonald to come across and fetch me.’

  He rang off. He was just about to get back into the car when he heard a little scream from somewhere high above his head. His first startled thought was, A seagull, surely? but then he heard what was unmistakably a woman sobbing.

  With the distorting effect of the mist it was hard to work out where it came from. He swivelled round, trying to pinpoint the sound, but the heavy air made it difficult. ‘Hello!’ he called. ‘Who is that? Where are you?’

  The sobbing stopped instantly and there was silence, as if she was holding her breath. Then he heard, ‘No! No! Go away! Leave me alone!’

  Strang had seen the hill on that side – a gradual ascent between scrubby trees from the road at first, but then steeper, rockier and more unforgiving as it rose into the mountain itself. It was crazy to be out there in weather like this and whoever this was had plainly got herself into trouble already.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ he called. ‘You’ll be all right. I’m coming to help you down.’

  He pulled on his heavy jacket, then with considerable misgiving clambered over the damaged wall beside the nose of the car and began the climb up the side of the burn.

  ‘What do you know about what�
�s happened at the Lodge?’ DC Tennant said.

  Marek Kaczka looked at him impassively, then shrugged. He had allowed the detective into his house reluctantly and was standing only a few feet inside the door, his arms folded and his legs apart, so that to get in further Tennant would have to push him aside.

  He didn’t; he merely stepped up close and the man took an involuntary step backwards, as he had calculated that he would. Then another step, and another, until Tennant had established who was in charge of the choreography. Then he smiled.

  ‘Not good enough. What do you know?’

  Kaczka was showing definite signs of unease. ‘Nothing. I know nothing.’

  ‘Why are you looking shifty, then? After what’s happened, you’re acting evasive – what are we going to think?’

  ‘No! No! I don’t know!’

  He’d got him going now. He changed tack. ‘You’re not Polish, are you. What are you? Serbian? Albanian?’

  The man had started sweating, Tennant noted with satisfaction. He wasn’t saying anything, though, just shaking his head.

  ‘Oh, we’ll find out soon enough. And you don’t like policemen, do you? Criminal record back home, maybe?’

  The man’s dark eyes spat hate. ‘Mr Carnegie – he tell you. He has my papers.’

  ‘But he’s dead, isn’t he? Dead in a pool of blood. Can’t tell us anything now, can he?’

  Kaczka’s face was impassive. He said nothing.

  ‘Don’t want to talk about it, eh?’ Tennant jeered. ‘We’ll get you in the end – you might as well make it better for yourself and confess now. Only way to get a lighter sentence.’

  He realised suddenly there was someone standing behind him, someone who had come in the open door without him noticing.

  ‘Sorry – could I have a word?’ PC Murray said.

  Furious, he turned on her. ‘Not right now, for God’s sake, Constable! I’m busy here.’

  Murray stood her ground. ‘I’m to take you back to the house, Constable.’

  ‘I don’t take orders from plods,’ he snarled.

  Even under this provocation, she didn’t lose her temper. ‘You’ve no authority here,’ she said sweetly. ‘This is a Police Scotland investigation and in any case, I don’t know what you do down at the Met but here being CID doesn’t give you a right to pull rank. Anyway, I just pointed out to my sarge that you have to be a suspect in this case and he wants a wee chat, right now.’

  Tennant stared at her, then swore at her violently.

  ‘The C-word? Nice,’ Murray said. ‘But abuse won’t help. You’ll find Sergeant Buchanan up at the Lodge.’

  He had no alternative. Boiling with frustration and rage, he left and stormed off up the drive. Behind him he heard Murray saying, ‘Good morning, Mr Kaczka. We’re trying to find out if you noticed anything last night – any cars coming up the drive, say, anyone moving about, that sort of thing?’ and him replying, ‘Just car – it come, then go back after.’

  The mist had lifted now. Ahead of him he could see a knot of people standing on the patio outside Carnegie’s flat and he could hear a dog’s frenzied barking.

  Then there was the sound of a shot, and the barking stopped.

  Beatrice wanted to wake up now. It was a horrible, horrible dream: she was outside, somewhere wild and scary, and she couldn’t see where she was going, as if she was walking through sheets of gauze. It was steep and slippery under her feet and she was first hot then terribly, terribly cold and her arm was on fire. She’d fallen more than once and now it was getting rocky and her leg was grazed and bleeding. She’d even dropped Rosamond, twice, wailing in dismay as she grabbed her up. She had to go somewhere, do something, though she didn’t know what it was, and there were people chasing her. And a dog – there had been a dog somewhere too. A terrible dog.

  Beatrice tried hard to jolt herself out of it, shaking her head, shutting her eyes, opening them again, but it still went on. She could hear running water somewhere, and she remembered something about that. A burn – that was why she was here. She had to go up, that was right, and cross it, but she couldn’t work out if it should be on her right or her left. Had she crossed it already? She didn’t know. And now she couldn’t even tell if she was going up or down. The ground under her feet was bumpy; sometimes it went down and sometimes it went up so with all this gauzy stuff everywhere she couldn’t tell.

  There was something you did to wake up – oh yes, pinch yourself. She reached down to pinch herself hard on the leg, then cried out at the pain – but the nightmare still went on.

  Was she awake, then? So why would she be here? Disconnected images started tumbling through her mind. There was something about Adam, something awful – blood. Blood everywhere. And the dog – the sharp white teeth, the bared pink gums, the pain—

  Her legs were wobbling with tiredness, the muscles twitching. Beatrice sat down heavily and toppled sideways, finding herself lying with her head and shoulders over some sort of drop – a foot or twenty feet, she didn’t know. She gave a scream of fright and began to cry.

  Then she heard the voice, someone calling. ‘Where are you?’ it said.

  They were right there, chasing her. Somehow she muffled her sobs. There was a spindly alder tree growing almost out of the rock just beside her and panic gave her the strength to grab it and pull herself to her feet. She had to get away, hide from Them or—

  She didn’t know ‘or what’; she only knew she had to go. Stumbling and tripping, she forced herself on into the damp greyness. But now there were voices talking to her: Adam, saying, ‘What are you doing, sweetie?’; her mother scolding her for playing outside and getting dirty.

  She argued with them, but very, very softly, so that They wouldn’t hear, and talked, too, to the doll still cradled in her arm, though it was very muddy now. ‘Shush, Rosamond. You must be mousy quiet for Mummy, like a good girl.’

  She was so tired, though, so exhausted and she felt so ill and shaky. She would have to sit down soon; just a few more steps up. Or down, maybe. She still didn’t know.

  Listening for any betraying sound, Kelso Strang began climbing up the side of the burn. There was mossy grass at this level as well as the stunted silver birches, and though it was steep and greasy underfoot it wasn’t challenging for a fit young man.

  His mind was busy. It was a reasonable supposition that the woman who had cried out had come from the wrecked car, reasonable too to guess that this might be the Mercedes he had noticed outside the Lodge when he was last there and had assumed to be Adam Carnegie’s. So who was the woman who had crashed it?

  Buchanan had said that Beatrice Lacey had been accused of the murder. Could she have been overcome with panic at what she’d done and decided to make a run for it?

  Not a clever idea, whichever way you looked at it. Having met the lady, he could be sure she wasn’t at all the sort to feel at home on a mountain in the best of weathers, let alone in conditions like this. If she had been trying to get away, the crashed car would have prevented her from continuing along the road but she must have been desperate indeed if she was thinking about crossing the burn higher up. And now Strang thought about it, Buchanan had said she was injured as well, after an attack by the dog.

  He paused, still listening, but beyond the sound of the burn and the whisper of a breeze getting up, there was an eerie silence. He took a deep breath, then shouted as loudly as he could, ‘Beatrice? Are you there? Call back and I’ll come and help you.’

  He waited, but there was no response. He tried again. ‘Beatrice, it’s dangerous. Don’t move, just call to me and I’ll fetch you down.’ Still no response.

  She could be anywhere – this side of the burn, the other side. And there were no paths on the higher slopes, just ledges and ravines and cliffs and steep scree, slithering away down to the sea below. An injured, frightened, clumsy woman would be lucky to get out of this alive. Even if she just stayed hidden somewhere without moving, she’d get hypothermia unless she was wearing proper
weather gear, which seemed unlikely.

  What they needed was a tracker dog. Surely they must have one round about here? People were always getting themselves lost in the mountains. Until they had one there was little point in pursuing her.

  He called Buchanan when he got back to the car and it seemed his guess had been right. Beatrice Lacey was indeed missing, but there was good news too: there was a mountain rescue team based nearby, with an experienced dog, and they could be scrambled immediately. The helicopter with a scene-of-crime team from Edinburgh was on its way already and should be able to land right on the lawn by Balnasheil Lodge.

  He could see that the mist was definitely less dense even where he was and the sun, which had been a ball of silver in the mist, was showing a gleam of stronger gold. That was something, at least.

  She couldn’t go on any longer, she just couldn’t. But what if They were right behind her, creeping up on her already? Steadying herself against a rocky face, she turned fearfully to look.

  She wanted to scream but the sound died in her throat. Looming behind her in the mist was a terrible shadowy figure, hugely tall, a glow of light round about its head. She shrank away backwards, and it moved after her. Forgetting her injury, she flailed about frantically then howled in pain.

  Jerked out of her arms, the doll flew up, describing an arc in the air as it fell down, down, and disappeared. With a wail of anguish, Beatrice stumbled after it.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  DCS Jane Borthwick looked out of the window as the helicopter banked and came in across the bay between the little township of scattered houses and what must be, from the group of ant-sized people clustered outside it, Balnasheil Lodge on the other side. It was clear enough here and the sun was even shining, but for all she could see of the Black Cuillin there might have been nothing there at all, beyond cloud and more cloud – the Misty Isle, indeed. They’d been worried they wouldn’t be able to put down within miles of the crime scene.