The Tears of Angels

by Caro Ramsay

  She found Inchgarten, the bay with a small diagram of the Lomondstone – the Rocking Stone, she presumed. It was a drumlin of an island. From this viewpoint it looked like a wedge of cheese. She lifted her binoculars to her eyes. It lay to the north on the opposite side of the loch before it narrowed; from here it looked close to the far shore, but the map indicated that the shore receded at that point. The slow, sandy curve of Inchgarten Bay where the holiday lodges were, where the children had been enjoying their summer holidays …

  Looking at the map, it was fairly obvious civilization stopped at Rowardennan. The lochside road became a single track and swung away from the water side to skirt the Ben, then went nowhere. The Google street view showed a gate, a no-entry sign on the path that swung away to the left and led to Inchgarten Bay as a single track road. Any walker descending the Ben from that side would meet the road and walk along back to Rowardennan and its coffee shops. And public loos.

  Nobody ever went as far as Inchgarten Bay. Costello had heard of it before but would have been hard pushed to find it on a map. Up around there somewhere …

  But Robbie and Callum had died there, wee Grace had died the year before. McAvoy had slipped into his own shadow. She realized why Anderson had wanted them to come down and have a wee reconnoitre.

  Something niggled at her. From the sound of it, McAvoy had been well liked and … And? Unsophisticated? Was that the word? Yet that scene at Riverbank showed a high degree of planning. She was sure Anderson had been struck by the same thought. Something in the service was very rotten, as Shakespeare might say.

  She wondered if the murders had been bad for business. Or perhaps good for business? You never knew with people. They had to knock Fred West’s house down before it became a tourist attraction.

  There was nothing much to see on the island, even less on the far shore. Just a wee sandy strip, a big rock and trees. She could make out a gap – probably the path that went up to the lodges themselves, a few outbuildings and a house that might be a working farm. A building closer to the water that might be a boat shed then more rocks, more trees and the rise of the Ben. Then it was sheep as far as the eye could see.

  Vik joined her, managing to be silent and annoying at the same time. Then he spoke.

  ‘You’ve met Sonja, Costello, when we had that meal at Tony Macaroni’s. Did you like her?’

  ‘Can’t say if I liked her. But I didn’t trust her. Never trust a woman who doesn’t steal your chips.’

  O’Hare got fed up and figured he would be quicker driving round to Partickhill and telling them in person. Ten minutes later he met Batten in the main office and asked where Anderson was.

  ‘In his office, he’s going out again in five minutes,’ said Batten, not able to take his eyes off the pathologist’s briefcase.

  ‘Well, this will take four.’ He knocked on Anderson’s door and opened it without waiting for a response.

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ Anderson was saying down the phone. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to go; I need to give some attention to some new information.’ He put the phone down. ‘Which your constant phone calls preclude me from doing.’ He looked at his colleagues. ‘Professors. I am honoured. Please tell me you have something I can use, either of you.’

  O’Hare opened his briefcase and started to explain. In ten minutes Anderson’s desk was a chaotic pile of drawings, photographs, files and printouts.

  Anderson sat quietly absorbing it all. ‘OK,’ he said, rubbing at his eyes with the palms of his hands. ‘Wyngate has come up trumps by threatening vets with all sorts to release details about their patients. Dead patients. And the Dewars spread their business around when it came to vets. Either they are very unlucky, or their pets are subject to harm and they don’t want anybody noticing a pattern.’

  ‘As I would have expected,’ said Mick. ‘Eoin Dewar?’ The psychologist was already flicking through emails and printouts. ‘Cassie, Jerry, Tom, all dogs. Petra, Bubby, both cats. No pet ever reaches old age. Causes of death are both uncommon and unpleasant. The kitten in a car engine, then turning the ignition key.’ He pointed at O’Hare. ‘And you say all three boys were subject to some kind of abuse while at Inchgarten.’

  ‘Physical abuse, yes. No sign of sexual interference, thank God. They have injuries that may have been sustained by doing their outdoor activities – as the hospital accepted. The Dewar boys go to hospital, Robbie more than Jimmy throughout the year, but Callum doesn’t, so it’s in the Dewar house. Kids learn what they see. Jimmy is a bully – he might have learned that at the hands of his dad. The bullied go on to bully if they can find a weaker victim.’

  ‘And that points at Eoin. Eoin the big man.’

  ‘And it is never severe stuff, more anxious parent than broken limbs, but when you put it together … Burns from the bonfire, banged heads from falling off logs …’

  ‘But why would they not say?’

  ‘Why does any victim keep quiet? Fear. Speak out and lose your dad? Some choice.’ Anderson was scornful. ‘Scared of Eoin, scared of McAvoy. Where they in it together? What the hell was going on up at that campsite?’

  Elvie dumped her bags behind the door and watched the undulating figure of Daisy Laphan make its way down the path. If she herself was short on female hormones, Daisy had them to excess. She was lovely, all shining skin and soft, light hair; Daisy looked like she had a halo of springtime round her. If these murders needed a fit and lithe person, then Daisy wasn’t in the frame.

  She turned to look at the lodge itself. Wooden floors, Swedish style chairs and sofa, a tiny area for a kitchen, but as Daisy said, all the food was served at the Boathouse. The windows had been opened; the only smell was perfume of bleach and furniture polish. It was very clean.

  Elvie looked out the window to the loch. The lodge had its own decking in front of the big French window. The voile curtain had been pulled back and halfway down the path she could see something that looked like a whirlpool or a Jacuzzi, protected from the elements by a faded blue plastic cover, which had caught a thick arc of dead leaves. Last year’s leaves.

  She thought about what it reminded her of. It looked like a town from those old Westerns where everyone had deserted. Daisy was the last woman standing. It was eerie. Elvie could hear Sophie saying, ‘Inchgarten Lodge Park welcomes the Grim Reaper.’

  She smiled to herself. Sophie was always with her; not even the Grim Reaper had separated her from her sister. Opening her bag, she took out her swimming costume. The weather was very hot but the water in the loch would be one degree above freezing. So she was going to go for a swim. With a wee walkabout first.

  Instead of heading down the steps to the path that led to the shore, she cut right across the fronts of the other lodges, looking for signs of life, signs that Warren might be being kept here somewhere. But it all looked rather broken down and dilapidated, cobwebs on the windows, the curtains twisted, the wood needing to be revarnished or restained, peeling paintwork. She passed the front of the Boathouse; the top half of its stable door was open, covered by mesh to keep the flies out. The big table was set for a meal, chairs pulled round, the Welsh dresser covered in odd plates and dishes. Elvie sneaked a look round then scissored over the lower part of the door. Beyond the dining part of the Boathouse was a decent kitchen, not quite professional but set up for more people than Elvie had ever catered for. She stood, looking round and listening to the hum of the fridge freezer and the deeper hum of a generator behind that. It was cool in here.

  She walked further back into the Boathouse, which was warmer – because the door was open? She looked out on a huge, well-kept vegetable patch, a few beehives, a small greenhouse and an abandoned wheelbarrow.

  She came out the way she went in, and walked down to the shore, passing the house where the boats were kept – which was not called the boathouse. She struggled with that fact but accepted it. As she neared the midden she spotted a man on the hilltop watching her, through binoculars. She waved at him. He waved back so she
walked on. The path was worn and seemed public. When it turned sharply right, she ducked into the hedge on the left, to a private place, out of sight of any overseers. Elvie crawled on her knees to get through the dense growth. She judged she must be between the midden and the side wall of the boat shed, parallel with the bay. She stood up again, her back to the hedge. The grass was thick underfoot and smelled as though it was fermenting. Nobody came this way very often. There was the wall of a small outbuilding to her left, a huge apple tree in front of her. Was this the back garden of the farmhouse? It must be here somewhere, hidden away from the holidaymakers. The apple tree was huge, old and gnarled. A wooden seat circled its trunk and round the seat was an abundance of daisies, buttercups, goatweed and dandelions.

  Quiet, secluded, private. Could have been miles from anywhere. Hidden. The image of Edward Woodward burning to death in The Wicker Man flashed through her mind; Sophie had loved that film.

  Keeping close to the hedge, she edged her way to the window at the back of the outbuilding. The black paint of the window frame was fractured and flaked, the glass grimy and covered in cobwebs. A moth-eaten curtain hung off its rail and a white fungus was slowly forming a lace pattern across the bottom of the pane. She leaned into the window, looking through her cupped hand. A dark room, a fireplace, a … she struggled to make it out … an unmade, huge Victorian bed? And on the top of the high mantelpiece there was a lot of picture frames. Each one held a face, much too far away for her to make out anything but the most basic of details. Little faces.

  Little faces of little children.

  She carried on with her walkabout; if he asked she would say she was nosey. Before reaching it she noticed the patch of flat land – used for tennis or football or something – through the gap in the large trees that lined the loch side of the path. She noticed three holes in the ground, big enough to break an ankle over. The grass was worn, in a linear strip up to one particular tree. She walked up it and felt the bark, pecked with irregular holes, some grown over, some more recent. Too big for darts. Too random for them to be evidence of something being nailed on. Archery?

  The door of the boat shed was lying open, not only open but off its hinges. Inside was a smell of dampness, a huge stack of water sports equipment: canoes, paddles and oars piled up against the wall. On the far side a large fridge and a mouldy pool table. The right wall was a jumble of wellies. She heard the dog bark – somebody was coming. And the stink here was awful. She turned back to the water’s edge, ready to slip out of her leggings and T-shirt and into the cool loch. After that smell she was looking forward to it.

  By noon Professor Batten and Mr Peppercorn were sitting together at the lochside like Belle and Sebastian. The dog had been easily bribed with some KitKat. Batten adjusted his hat and continued to watch the figure on the beach – Inchgarten Bay, he presumed. Her hair was wet and she was dressed in leggings and a T-shirt. She was stretching with the grace of a ballet dancer and the strength of an elephant. She was strong, there was no doubt about that, but no amount of strength could stop an arrow through the heart. Wyngate had texted him an update as he got out the taxi. The DNA confirmed that Dotty was Patricia McAvoy, mother of Warren and Alexis McAvoy.

  A sick mind was at work here. Sick but clever.

  He got up and strolled round the bay towards Elvie, Mr Peppercorn trotting back and forth between them, waving his plumy tail. Elvie was standing on one leg, pulling her other foot up behind her, and he took off his Crocodile Dundee hat.

  ‘Professor Batten?’ she asked without changing her posture.

  ‘Indeed, you must be Elvie.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did they buy your story?’ He placed his briefcase down and slipped off his jacket, folding it over the top of the case. Batten was now dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Then he put his hat back on his head; he could feel his scalp prickle with sunburn.

  ‘Yes. Does that matter?’

  ‘Probably not. This place is deserted,’ said Batten con-versationally.

  ‘It is now.’ They were standing on the shore, looking out towards the island. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to go and explore the island.’

  Elvie looked back at the psychologist in his jeans, his briefcase at his feet. ‘OK.’

  ‘So row out to Snooky Bay, then follow my instructions.’

  ‘Why? The place has been searched many times.’

  ‘You can only find something if you know that you are looking for it.’

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘That is not logical.’

  ‘I want you to run through the events of that evening, forgive the pun.’

  She didn’t flicker.

  ‘Three of the four people involved have never given testimony. The one that did was a terrified child.’

  Elvie bounced on her toes a few times. ‘OK.’

  He pointed out over the water. ‘There are over sixty islands out there. They have wallabies, graveyards, churches and white deer, follies, all kinds of things, but they do appear and disappear as the water rises and falls. It had been dry for days before the boys were killed. And as the witchcraft theorists relate, the heavens opened the minute Jimmy got back to the mainland, like they had conjured up the downpour to get rid of the evidence. The run-off from the land into the Faloch, the Fruin and the Endrick rivers meant that the water level rose considerably. And it drizzled on and off for the following week. Who knows what they missed because it was under water?’

  Elvie started to walk down the shore. ‘And they have missed it for a whole year?’

  He noted that strange quality, asking a straight question without a hint of criticism. ‘Maybe. It depends where they were looking.’

  She looked at him. ‘Why do you wear that hat?’

  Elvie paddled out to the island on the Dreamcatcher, paddling it one to the right, two to the left to keep on course for the island. Once clear of the protection of the bay, the wind picked up. The sun was hot but the wind-chill made her eyes water. Once she reached the obvious landing ground, the sandy patch on the south edge of the island locally called Snooky Bay, she pulled the canoe up on the middle of the sandy beach and walked through the narrow path in the long grass to the two big rocks. And looked around. She was sheltered from the wind here. The sun warmed the skin at the back of her neck. She could hear some noisy insects buzzing away over her head and flipped them away with an open palm. Across the water she could see Batten, sitting on the Rocking Stone where he had a clear view of the island, his face in the shadow of the big hat.

  She switched the phone on, attached the earpiece then clipped her phone to her waistband. ‘Can you hear me OK?’

  ‘Yes, OK. The weather’s lovely here, how about you?’

  ‘The same.’ Deadpan.

  ‘Elvie, I want you to imagine you—’

  ‘Not good at that.’

  ‘Well, go exploring; where would you run?’

  ‘OK. Going to my right takes me along the beach. In front of me is the start of the cliff. To the left is a kind of wall thing that runs from the rock face into the water.’

  ‘Can you get over that? It’s an old folly, Elvie. From the photos I’ve seen it’s supposed to look like an old castle.’

  ‘It looks like a wall. Of a castle.’ She made her way over to it, climbing through thorns and bushes, and patted the old stones of it with her hand. ‘It’s too high to climb over. Hang on. There’s a convenient boulder to stand on. The wall has a tall, narrow aperture in it, like they had for firing arrows through.’

  Batten barked down the phone. ‘An archer’s hole?’

  ‘If you say so. Do you want me to get over it? It’s the only way forward from here. There’s no other reason to hang about on the bay.’

  ‘If you can get over the wall, then go.’

  ‘It’s bloody high.’

  ‘I was told you were fit.’

  Elvie sprang off the s
tone and got a hold on the floor of the arrow slit, then scrambled up and over the top, dropping down on the other side. Even for her it took a fair bit of effort.

  ‘This side is much lower than the other; the ground is wet and marshy. It’s quite a drop. I can see a vague path …’

  ‘OK, so follow it. Talk to me as you go, what you’re seeing?’ Batten knew she should start describing the Jungle, part of the island that was largely overgrown and inhospitable.

  ‘The path goes through the woods up to Snooky Hill, small trees overhead. Steep rock to my right, like a cliff. The water is right on my left, it looks deep. Ahhh, I can’t go straight ahead, the rock is jutting out here.’

  ‘Left?’

  ‘Immediate left is a narrow path with a drop about a foot, right at the water.’

  ‘Go that way then.’ He heard a rustle and an impact.

  ‘OK, I am now battering back bushes and stuff, getting scratched to blazes.’

  ‘Keep going; can you see anything of the campsite?’

  ‘No, I’m right on the other side of the island with Snooky Hill in between, and about four feet below is a maze of bushes and ferns and bracken, all kinds. My feet are wet.’

  ‘So you might be below the water table. Where do you fancy going now?’

  ‘North-west.’

  ‘Why, is it less dense there?’

  ‘The path goes that way. There’s no way the boys could have come this way – they would have been covered in scratches.’

  ‘They were covered in scratches – that’s why they called it the jungle. Keep going.’

  ‘This is getting overgrown and nasty.’

  ‘It’s the only way to the north side.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That hit me in the face, nearly took my eye out.’