‘Yes. And he was wearing some sort of robes; they were black, too. The robes and the hood had these weird patterns, in red.’
‘Describe them, if you please.’
‘A kind of a star with something superimposed on it, like an animal’s head.’
‘A goat’s head?’
‘It could’ve been a goat, yes. There was other stuff too. Geometric shapes . . . like diagrams.’
‘Can you remember what?’
‘A pyramid, some interlinked circles – no, ovals – and another star, inside a circle.’
‘A pentacle?’
‘I don’t know what a pentacle is.’ She turned to face him. ‘I can’t remember any more shapes.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘We walked up, towards the rhododendron paths.’
‘Did he force you to come with him?’
‘No. I was in, like, a trance. I couldn’t but follow him. It was as though it was all kind of fated.’
‘What did he have with him?’
‘A stick.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Quite thick; it looked quite heavy.’
‘Could it have been made of metal?’
‘Yes. Like copper or brass. He also had this bundle over his shoulder.’
‘Did you see the blade?’ Leo felt desolate upon uttering this sentence in so callous a manner.
‘Not then. He had it under his robes. He bashed me over the head with the stick. It hurt like heck and I nearly passed out. Then he put the bundle and the stick down, pulled out the knife, grabbed me by the neck and started stabbing me.’
‘What height was he?’
‘About six foot. More or less.’
‘What was his build like?’
‘It was hard to tell because the robes broke up his shape, but I think he was quite broad-shouldered. And he was strong . . . I could tell by his grip when he had me by the throat. I thought it might be that mute who worked for the Grey Lady.’
‘Bosco.’
‘He always scared me a bit. But maybe I’m being unfair; he never did me any harm.’
Suddenly, Helen turned on her heel and raced away, into the shadows, out of sight.
Leo made to yell after her, but his voice came out faint and broken: ‘Helen, I’ll catch him for you. I promise.’
And then he sat down upon a mossy tree stump and wept.
8
UPON wakening the next day Leo sat upright in bed for a while, still deeply affected by the spectral encounter. He sought solace in his morning prayers, and then performed a perfunctory toilet to make him respectable enough for breakfast. He was glad of his dinner the evening before; it had lined his stomach and curtailed his hangover to just a thirst.
He arrived in the dining room to be waved enthusiastically over to Fordyce’s table. Leo ordered a pot of coffee, an entire jug of grapefruit juice, a rack of toast, and a full Scottish breakfast, with double egg (one fried, one scrambled), double sausage (one link, one Lorne) and double Stornoway black pudding. He devoured the lot voraciously, then slipped the waitress a fiver to bring him a dram (‘a mere curer’).
Fordyce, meanwhile, only picked at a poached egg on toast, as he was feeling last night’s alcohol consumption a lot more keenly than Leo. ‘I’ve something of a delicate constitution, I’m afraid to report,’ he said.
Nonetheless, Fordyce retained his cheery disposition, and Leo was silently impressed to notice that he had already worked his way through the majority of the Times crossword; he himself couldn’t get on with such things at all.
‘What’s the plan for today, old stick?’
Fordyce had endearingly started referring to Leo by this sobriquet in the light of the intractable political views his new acquaintance had proclaimed late the previous night. The adjective ‘old’ was affectionately employed despite the fact that they were the same age.
Leo remembered that he had been circumspect the night before, not telling Fordyce his real purpose in visiting Loch Dhonn, instead murmuring something about a rambling holiday. He felt a little guilty about this apparent mistrustfulness, but he had been obeying a long-standing vow never to discuss sensitive matters while inebriated. He was sober now, and he knew in his heart that he could depend upon Fordyce. He resolved to confide in him that very morning; apart from anything else he could prove a useful ally. DI Lang need never know.
‘A bracing walk around the environs. Won’t you join me, as a guide?’
‘It would be a singular pleasure, old stick!’
Leo clad and equipped himself appropriately, and having restored Fordyce’s overcoat to his possession the duo set forth into the cold morning. Leo noticed his companion was wearing his canary-yellow flat cap, and felt bad for having been irked by it the previous evening. Wisps of low cloud persisted over the water, and Ben Corrach could barely be discerned at the northern end of the loch, just as a sinister black shadow lurking behind a veil. Their breath came out as mist, and the freshness of the day was invigorating, heightened by the quarter pound of Pan Drops Leo supplied.
They made their way northwards along the road a little distance, past a quaint red telephone box, towards a track that cut off to the left and would eventually lead them down to the loch. Before taking this they passed two rather outlandish-looking young women wearing knitted ponchos and bright woollen Peruvian chullo hats to defend themselves against the chill. Fordyce greeted them warmly and they returned tentative smiles.
‘They’re from Kildavannan. It’s a community about two miles south of here,’ explained Fordyce, once they had passed by.
‘What’s that – some sort of hippie commune?’
‘Not really. They describe themselves as an eco community; there’s accommodation for meditation retreats and whatnot, and studios for artists and writers. Marvellous, really.’
The men presented a rather curious sight as they walked towards the lochside; two country gents dressed for the winter season of 1950, Leo with his deliberate, long stride, Fordyce with his jaunty, almost skipping gait. Fordyce chatted pleasantly as they went along. His parents were both deceased. He was unmarried, and when he wasn’t at Loch Dhonn he lived with his sister in Edinburgh’s New Town or in Galloway, where the ancestral pile was. Leo guessed that this wasn’t a room and kitchen, but Fordyce, with fastidious decorum, never directly referred to the wealth or station of his kin. There was also an elder brother who split his time between Scotland and London.
‘We used to take our childhood summers up here,’ he continued. He paused to take in the air. ‘This place gets into one’s blood. Now I spend much of my time here. For periods I’m a permanent resident at the hotel – like the major in Fawlty Towers!’
Leo laughed at the reference.
‘Have you read much of Scott, Leo?’ asked Fordyce as he surveyed the prospect.
‘I adore him. Apart from his politics.’
‘Then you are a Scottish romantic, like me?’
‘And proud of it!’
‘Scott eulogised Scottish history and the Highland clans, and cynics have been quick to deride him as quixotic. But he tapped into something real. There truly is nothing like this land for romance. And for legend and heroism. It makes one feel alive, to be a Celt!’
‘We are truly blessed,’ agreed Leo. ‘In spite of the grim timing of my visit here, it is always refreshing to leave behind the urban sprawl for these wild and enchanted glens.’
‘How right you are – how right you are!’
Encouraged, Leo theatrically addressed the braes on the opposite side of Loch Dhonn, and declared, ‘Land of the mountains – my beloved home!’
Leo really did feel a renewed sense of vigour, having been released from the confines of his apartment, and it felt thrilling to be in wide open spaces among new company, so soon after having craved only solitude and seclusion.
Further down the path, amid a little grove of firs, was an ancient Pemberton caravan, painted army green, its windows filthy. Jun
k littered a scruffy little yard and a couple of neglected vegetable plots. Derelict cold frames and greenhouses sat nearby, the glass long since shattered or removed, and a rusted hatch led to an old root cellar.
‘That’s where Lex lives,’ remarked Fordyce.
Leo noted that no other abode lay in the expanse between Dreghorn’s place and the murder scene.
Near the loch much of the land was intersected by deteriorating drystane dykes, evidence of long-forgotten enclosures. They came across a coppice of various conifers amid a larger wood of bare alder, lime, oak, rowan and apple, and Leo voiced his appreciation of the rich medley.
‘They’re the remnants of parkland from the old estate,’ Fordyce informed him. ‘The current baron of Caradyne’s grandfather sold this land off after the First War. You should see this area in autumn – it’s a perfect riot of copper and gold!’
They entered a walled garden, ruined and overgrown. Leo stopped to regard some strange, large specimens, with long purple protrusions extending from a nest of huge, rubbery leaves.
‘What’s the Latin for that one – Phallus Phallus?’ he joked.
‘Rather!’ said Fordyce, enigmatically. ‘The twelfth baron was a regular botanist; he imported lots of exotic plants from the Empire. This odd fellow seems to flower at the strangest of times.’
Leo decided to get down to business. ‘Fordyce, I have something to tell you. I’m afraid I was rather insincere last night, when you asked why I had chosen to visit Loch Dhonn.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Fordyce, with his usual equanimity. ‘I didn’t mean to probe.’
‘I’m perfectly happy to confide in you, but you must swear to keep what I am about to tell you within your own breast.’
‘I swear it upon my honour, old stick.’
‘The truth is I’m here to help the police with the murder case. You see, I am blessed with a certain type of extrasensory perception, a power which I have put at their disposal.’
‘Extrasensory perception! Are you joshing?’
‘I am in deadly earnest. I possess a sort of second sight. I see things, in visions. Academic researchers in the US termed one comparable phenomenon “remote viewing”, but I am unsure if they are referring to my specific gift.’
‘Well, more power to your elbow, old stick!’
‘You’re not a sceptic?’
‘I’m open-minded about such matters. And don’t worry about me – Mum’s the word. Anyway, I’m honoured that you would see fit to take me into your confidence.’
‘I wouldn’t be too flattered.’ Leo smiled. ‘You see, I know for sure you aren’t the murderer.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘You’re the only man round here who’s under five foot nine.’
Fordyce laughed good-naturedly, although he didn’t actually get the reference.
They walked out of the walled garden, through a rusted old gate that hung languidly from its hinges. The land sloped steeply towards the water below in a pleasant, tree-covered bank.
Leo examined a grim building on the far shore of the loch through his binoculars. This, no doubt, was Ardchreggan House, the other property the Mintos owned. It was set against a beautifully wooded hillock, and alongside this to the north was a stretch of more open parkland, the sparser, brown-grey, leafless trees ghostly in the slight mist. A lovely old boathouse sat on the waterside. Leo adjusted the focus and scanned the little islands on the loch. His gaze rested upon the jagged profile of Innisdubh. It was enclosed by rocks and trees as though to conceal its possessions.
‘Fordyce, do you happen to possess a boat?’ asked Leo.
‘Why, yes, as a matter of fact I do. The Fairy Queen.’
‘I need to ask of you a favour. I wish to take a dekko at those isles, in particular Innisdubh.’
‘Certainly, old stick. Let’s head along forthwith and release the old girl from her winter bondage. She’s just a dinghy, but the outboard’s been serviced recently.’
‘Splendid.’
They ambled along the lochside, a series of pebbly little bays lined with young birch, hazel and alder crouching over the waterside. Past a soggy paddock in which were a pair of fine, caramel-coloured colts and a flock of noisy peewits, towards the little boatyard and jetty, at the end of a track which came down from the hotel. Halfway there, just adjacent to Innisdubh, at the place where a path led up to the folly and then to the hotel, Leo suddenly halted, rooted to the spot.
‘What’s up, old stick? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost!’
‘This place – I’ve seen it before. In a vision I had, in church,’ replied Leo, recalling the image of the dark, robed figure standing by the water. ‘Yes, and this is where the killer’s boat was landed,’ he continued, noticing the telltale impression of a shallow draft upon a muddy area at the water’s edge, and several sharp indentations from where the police must have staked out the scene. Leo observed that the groove the boat had left had a particular texture within it: a little tramline caused by some tiny flaw in the fabric of the keel. ‘Helen would have been somewhere over there,’ he said, pointing towards the path. ‘Watching him.’
‘Good God, man, how on earth can you tell such things?’ exclaimed Fordyce.
‘It’s all simply a question of opening the senses.’
Leo took out the bespoke detective’s kit he kept stowed in his coat and crouched down to take some measurements with a little tape. Next to a particular shoeprint, which had been made by a deep criss-cross grip, he noticed a few blobs of solidified agent, used by the police to take a cast. He produced his mobile phone and after fiddling with it for a while positioned it and took a photograph of the print and then the impression the boat had left. ‘Take a good look at this shoeprint, Fordyce. When we visit Innisdubh, I want us both to have our eyes peeled for any similar ones.’
Just before the boatyard they came across two men working a splash net at the mouth of a burn. One was McKee from the previous evening, who wore a vacant expression, his eyes red and his face ugly from lack of sleep. He was clad in oily overalls and a little unlit roll-up cigarette was tucked in the corner of his mouth. The other was apparently one George Rattray, a large man in a Barbour jacket, who was aged about sixty, as bald as a mushroom and who had a broad, pleasant face.
Leo was curious about the men’s task, which involved fishing out fat brown trout and depositing them in a large tub of water. A long kit bag lay across the path. Rattray seemed to hold a distinct authority over McKee, whom he instructed with barely a word. McKee obeyed, lifting the tub with his strong arms and placing it onto a barrow. He wheeled this off towards a beat-up old Land Rover pick-up which was parked in the boatyard.
Rattray noticed Leo’s interest and explained: ‘We take out the pregnant trout so that we can hatch the eggs, and make sure the loch is well stocked.’
‘Isn’t it a bit late – or early – to be doing that?’ enquired Fordyce.
Rattray smiled good-naturedly. ‘Hark at the expert!’ he joked. ‘What brings you to Loch Dhonn?’ he then enquired of Leo.
‘I’m up to see what I can catch,’ Leo replied, obliquely.
‘Well, you’ve come with the wrong guy. I’ve yet to see Fordyce land so much as a stickleback!’
‘Liar,’ joshed Fordyce. ‘What about that brace of trout last October?’
‘Ach, he’d been to the shop in Fallasky,’ whispered Rattray, tapping the side of his nose conspiratorially. ‘You should’ve seen them; they were already filleted – and smoked!’
Leo laughed politely, but he reckoned that Rattray was one of these mildly annoying people who would inanely milk a lame joke. He reproached himself for his irritability. Why couldn’t he be more like Fordyce, who seemed only to see the best in folk and celebrated their myriad facets?
‘Robbie seems to be taking things rather badly,’ noted Fordyce, after a pause.
‘Yes, poor soul,’ sighed Rattray, shaking his head as he stood up.
‘He was recently ma
de homeless by a fire,’ Fordyce told Leo. ‘But George here did the decent thing and put him up.’
‘Ach, he’s just living in my old converted washhouse. It makes no odds to me.’
‘Still, that’s very kind of you,’ said Leo, wincing slightly at the man’s coffee breath.
‘Do you know the police haven’t even spoken to me yet?’ said Rattray, suddenly frowning. ‘Did they interview you?’ he asked of Fordyce.
‘Yes. It wasn’t very pleasant, I can assure you. Although that Detective Inspector Lang strikes me as a very able man.’
‘Well, they haven’t talked to me. It’s not as though I stay far outside the clachan, so what the heck are they playing at? They should be grilling every male around here, straightaway. I overheard two of them blethering about Robbie.’ Rattray broke off momentarily to glance over his shoulder and check that his companion was still out of earshot. ‘Robbie McKee – I ask you! He thought the world of Helen. A bit of an oddity but he wouldn’t harm a fly. Well, apart from that bad business – but he was just a boy then. Och, I don’t know anything any more,’ he concluded despairingly.
‘If you think you can help the police, you ought to approach them without delay,’ said Leo, who was unimpressed by the offhand way the man had referred to McKee as ‘an oddity’. ‘Otherwise, I’m sure they will speak with you directly.’
‘It’s not that I know anything specific. It’s just that I live here, I know the family. I even babysat for Helen when she was wee. They might be able to get a clearer picture of Loch Dhonn, of the folk here. I might know a clue without even realising it.’
* * *
After they had said their goodbyes, Leo and Fordyce walked past a little memorial cairn dedicated to the drowned bassist, and on to the boatyard. A row of motor boats for hire bobbed on the water, tethered to a pontoon. Numerous vessels sat idle on trailers, some under tarpaulins. Others were kept in wooden sheds, and Fordyce, being a trusting type of soul, generally left his unlocked. They wheeled the Fairy Queen out, down the gentle slope and into the water, before loading the outboard and the oars. Leo was glad of his waterproof walking shoes. He noticed a rigid inflatable police launch moored alongside the rickety little jetty, the twin Evinrude engines latent with power. The duo clambered aboard, and after Fordyce had fastened the outboard to the stern, they set off, using only the oars at first.
The Ghost of Helen Addison Page 8