The Ghost of Helen Addison

by Charles E. McGarry

  At that Leo withdrew the bottle of Wild Turkey, much to Millar’s appreciation. He proposed that they take the top off it there and then.

  ‘Actually, I’d love to try the homemade stuff, if there’s any ready,’ suggested Leo.

  Millar rubbed his hands together gleefully and came back from a little outhouse armed with an earthenware jug and two little tumblers. He poured two measures of rust-coloured liquid into the glasses, and handed one to his visitor.

  Leo had sampled homemade raki in Turkey, ouzo in Greece, grappa in Italy and poitín in the Connemara hills, but nothing came close to James Millar’s peatreek for sheer, throat-scalding potency. Millar laughed good-naturedly as his guest coughed and spluttered, his face flushed, his eyes glazed.

  ‘Well, that’s a fine drop!’ Leo croaked, before leaving an appropriate pause in the conversation. ‘James, I believe Helen used to come up here to visit you?’

  ‘Yes, even when she didn’t have to. She would visit lots of isolated people: the Grey Lady, the Kildavannan lot. She’d come up here on horseback. Bring me my prescription, various wee gifts and provisions. She was a lovely lassie. And for her age she had real wisdom, real empathy. But there was something else about her, a kind of vulnerable quality.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ enquired Leo, intrigued.

  ‘It was as though she was a little . . . damaged, by something that was buried deep.’ He paused, the colour draining from his face. ‘There was so much blood!’ he gasped. ‘Just like with Carole . . .’

  Millar blinked the tears from his eyes and gazed down towards the distant loch. Leo felt moved by the sadness that filled his innocent features, and ashamed that he momentarily begged God never to permit him to suffer the profound and incomprehensible agonies that had befallen this gentle creature. He instinctively sensed that James Millar was a human being incapable of a single act of cruelty.

  14

  ON the way back down Glen Fallasky Leo paused at a forlorn, turbid little pool called Lochan nan Nathrach, ‘Pond of the Serpents’. His perspiration had gone cold but he couldn’t be bothered stripping down and removing his damp singlet. He consumed his packed luncheon and brooded upon James Millar’s extraordinarily bad fortune. When he got to the foot of the glen he took a different, roundabout route back to the hotel, wishing to explore a little lane he had spied on the way up that ran in front of the Grey Lady’s walled abode before cutting through some pinewoods. It proved of little interest, but Leo followed this to the road, crossed over, and wandered down a narrow dirt path to the lochside. From here he negotiated the rocky way back to the Loch Dhonn.

  He soon regretted his choice of route, such was the difficulty of the terrain. Every headland deceived him that it was the final one prior to the hotel; it was akin to climbing Ben Lomond, with its numerous false summits. Just as he was about to opt for the easier route of a narrow beaten path he had noticed which skirted the worst of the shore, Leo reached yet another little bay and there was Craig Hutton, Helen’s boyfriend, unmistakable from the photograph he had seen behind the hotel bar. He was sitting upon a dilapidated little pier, smoking a roll-up. A fishing line, which was dipped in the water, swayed languidly in the almost imperceptible breeze. Hutton had sharp youthful features and a number two cut. He wore an olive-coloured field cap, a drab army-surplus shirt and body warmer, khaki combat trousers and safety boots. He turned and acknowledged Leo with a nod.

  ‘Any luck?’

  ‘I think I caught the cold about half an hour ago.’

  Leo smiled politely at the old joke. Already he knew by the expression on Hutton’s face that this was a straightforward country laddie who was struggling to find a way of processing the trauma that had so suddenly and indecently descended upon him. He had resolved to tough it out. He was too inexperienced and immature to know any other way.

  ‘I owe ye one,’ said Hutton.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I overheard the polis sayin’ ye’d vouched for me.’

  ‘I doubt that I had very much clout.’

  ‘Well, thanks, anyway.’

  Leo paused for a moment, then said, ‘I know what it feels like to be falsely accused of a crime, although apart from that I can’t imagine what you have been through. I am truly sorry for it all.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Hutton took a drag on his roll-up, then exhaled. ‘Ye must have an idea who he is?’

  Leo shook his head solemnly.

  ‘I know who ye are, why ye’re here,’ Hutton continued. ‘I saw ye talkin’ wi’ Lang, found out yer name. Googled ye.’

  ‘It’s edifying to discover I am so famous. I just hope the press don’t realise my identity quite so quickly, or DI Lang will dispatch me on the next train back to Glasgow. But I’m afraid I don’t know who did it. Not yet.’

  Leo looked out at the fishing float. He could feel the young man’s gaze on the side of his face.

  Hutton’s green eyes flashed as he spoke. ‘When ye do I want ye to kill him.’

  At these words blackness flickered in front of Leo’s eyes, not a vision but a peculiar sensation of premonition, a feeling that something profound and deadly augured. His legs almost gave way and he just managed to steady himself.

  ‘Are ye OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Leo sat down upon a mossy stump, panting, loosening his collar. Hutton handed him a bottle of water. Leo took a long draught, then withdrew his hip flask and brazenly gulped from it. He offered it to Hutton who took a nip.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps killing someone isn’t a very fair thing to ask of a man.’

  ‘I dinnae feel very much like being fair these days. He’s done it once, he may have done it afore and he’ll certainly do it again. Folk deserve to be protected. Ye’d be doin’ society a favour – destroyin’ somethin’ evil.’

  ‘Craig, you’re a young man. Don’t let him get inside your head like this. We’ll catch this devil and throw away the key.’

  ‘She was the best person I ever knew. We were talkin’ about gettin’ engaged. If ye dinnae have the stomach to do it, tell me who he is and I will.’

  15

  BY the time Leo reached the hotel the streetlamps that lit barely a hundred yards of Loch Dhonn village had been switched on, and whirls of black vapour had started to congregate in the cold, deepening blue sky. All was gloomy and shadowy. The meeting with Hutton had shaken Leo and he resolved to take dinner in his room alone and have a soak in the bath and an early night.

  Leo noticed that the population of the hotel had swollen somewhat, now that the initial horror of the murder had subsided. The incident room and a heavy police, and indeed media, presence remained, but the tape that had surrounded the crime scene had been taken down and no longer could polythene-clad forensic officers be seen crawling around in the undergrowth. Some tourists who had booked in advance and didn’t want to lose their deposits were milling around the lobby, and couples who had saved up a few bob for a slap-up meal had driven in from Fallasky, Inveraray and even Oban and Crianlarich to dine at the renowned restaurant. Leo retrieved his key from its hook in reception, also picking up a note inviting him to dinner from Fordyce, who even in this digital age rather charmingly insisted that invitations should always be handwritten. Leo used the desk telephone to call his friend’s room and respectfully postpone.

  ‘Not at all, old stick, think nothing of it.’

  As Fordyce rang off, Leo spied, through the doorway into the office, Shona Minto dressing down the pretty Polish waitress. Neither party was aware of his presence and Leo was struck by how unpleasantly the hotelier threw her weight around. When she had finished the waitress came out to the reception area and hurried off, not looking at Leo, with tears welling up in her eyes. Shona followed her out and saw Leo standing there with the telephone receiver in his hand. She gave him a look that said, ‘You can’t get the staff nowadays’, but Leo simply regarded her coldly in return.

  * * *

  He was glad
of the warmth of his bedchamber and poured himself a large whisky. He rang down an order for salmon mayonnaise, Cullen skink, and roast duck and green peas, with a bottle of Château de Beaucastel. He consumed his meal with some considerable voracity after the exertions of the day. He padded into his room after his bath, noting approvingly that the dishes had been removed and that the siphon and ice bucket he had ordered had arrived. He opened his portmanteau and withdrew his little chess computer. He tried a Budapest Gambit but played badly, his mind preoccupied by thoughts and theories about the murder case. He decided to say his night prayers and go to bed.

  Leo lapsed into a troubled, fevered sleep, his body twitching, his eyes moving rapidly as images bombarded his consciousness. These were largely random and banal, the type of dreaming that is common to all people, but soon certain visions permeated his psyche which were characterised by a familiar sense of potency and significance.

  Helen and Craig together in a wood. He chases her playfully through the trees. He catches her. They laugh, then he regards her fondly, strokes her cheek, kisses her passionately. He spreads his coat. The sylvan lovers lie down, thinking themselves concealed. But something is lurking in the undergrowth, watching. The beast. Leo can feel its envy, its hate; hear its breathing quicken as the animal anger rises in its throat. Leo’s vision turns a hundred and eighty degrees but the beast’s face is in shadow; something is jamming his signals, something is muddling his perception.

  Then Leo is on Innisdubh. He sees the serpents and griffins and gargoyles and dragons that are carved into the Green Lord’s gravestone come to life, and spit fire and whirl around a lead-grey sky which is bruised with intense Tyrian purple and vermilion. Then he sees pseudo-religious rites being performed upon the standing stone which had collapsed; repellent, obscene ceremonies. Then he sees the double doors of the tenth baron’s mausoleum. His vision zooms in upon the padlock, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Now he is inside the sepulchre, terrified yet somehow compelled to press further into its gloomy depths. He rounds a corner where a figure dressed in the robes Helen had described floats off the ground, wearing the ghastly, pointed hood on its head. The figure produces something, a wand perhaps, from the folds of its robes and raises it. It is black. There is an explosion of light yet there is no sound.

  Leo flinched as though to avoid the shock wave of the blast, and instantly woke up, overheated and unnerved, his sweat-sodden pyjamas clinging to him. He switched on the bedside light, got out of bed, and walked into the bathroom. His tongue was incredibly dry, like a fat piece of leather. He heard a two-note horn, strikingly loud in the still night air as it echoed mournfully across the loch’s surface. He supposed it was the milk train at Stob’s Bend, exiting the Lairig Lom as it headed for Glasgow or Perth.

  He rinsed and spat the sourness from his mouth. He held forth Benjamin Franklin, who looked rather distinguished in the half light.

  ‘Hail to thee, noble, redundant fellow,’ said Leo, keen to dispel the incubus with humour as the stream began tumbling noisily into the pan. He washed his hands thoroughly with soft soap, his mind heavy and indescribably bleak, as though his consciousness had been immersed within an ocean of the weird evil abroad in the world. Leo’s visions were often fragmented or oblique or symbolic, but in this investigation they all seemed to be particularly incomplete. ‘What is Your path for me, Lord?’ he wondered aloud. He recalled a line from the diary entry DI Lang had given him: ‘Tark cornered me in the woods today. Must have seen me and Craig making love.’ It chimed with the initial part of this latest vision, of the watcher in the woods. He would ask Helen about Tark, assuming he ever encountered her again.

  Leo peeled off his night clothes and sponged the clammy perspiration from his torso with a towel. He rummaged in a drawer for his other pyjamas, then slaked his thirst with two glasses of water followed by a slug of Scotch for his nerves. He caught sight of his tired likeness in the mirror. Something about the padlock had captured his attention at the time: its relative newness. Of course that could mean nothing of consequence; perhaps vandals or decay had broken the original lock. But generally these details recurred in his visions for a reason. He looked directly into the reflection of his eyes and resolved to return to Innisdubh that very day. He was going to find out what lay inside that tomb.

  16

  LEO slept only fitfully after that, and was comforted when he heard the mundane hum and clatter of life from below as the staff prepared for breakfast. He shaved, showered and dressed for the day.

  Downstairs a number of hacks were checking out, their editors presumably having baulked at the exorbitant expense claims being filed from the luxurious hotel and told them to find cheaper accommodation. Leo entered the dining room and was helloed loudly by Fordyce, who looked far healthier than he had the previous morning, and was tucking into a hearty Scottish breakfast.

  ‘Grab a pew, old stick. Gosh, did you have a rough night?’

  ‘Does it show?’ asked Leo.

  ‘You just look a little tired,’ said Fordyce, backtracking tactfully. In truth he had just witnessed a flashing image of Leo as an old man.

  ‘Bad dream,’ Leo said, massaging his forehead as he watched Bill Minto wait upon the tables at the far side of the room. Something servile in the hotelier’s manner irked him. ‘I don’t have any appetite.’

  The Polish waitress stood by Leo’s right shoulder, checking herself for staring at the livid skin of his burned hands. Leo noticed her gaze but didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Good morning. Just coffee, please.’

  ‘Bring him some toast and scrambled eggs also, if you please, Ania,’ interjected Fordyce.

  ‘And a wee dram, dear,’ said Leo, ‘as a pick-me-up,’ he added, noticing his friend’s look of disapproval.

  Ania first brought the coffee and Leo sipped disconsolately from his cup.

  ‘Fordyce, I need to go back to Innisdubh. May I borrow the Fairy Queen?’

  ‘Something to do with your dream?’

  Leo nodded solemnly.

  ‘Right. We’ll go over once you’ve rested a little more.’

  ‘I appreciate your concern, but I need to press on. I’ve been in Loch Dhonn almost three days and I haven’t a clue who the killer is. If he were to strike again I’d never forgive myself.’

  ‘But it isn’t your responsibility.’

  ‘Using my God-given talents to the best of my ability – yes, that is my responsibility.’

  Fordyce sensed Leo’s determination and relented with a shrug.

  ‘There’s something else I need to ask you.’

  ‘Anything, old stick, just say the word.’

  ‘Is there any way you could discreetly source me a hammer and a chisel? My wire cutters will be too flimsy for the job I have in mind.’

  Fordyce, remembering Leo’s interest in the padlocked tomb of the tenth baron, read his friend’s intentions. ‘You’re not thinking of breaking into that ghastly repository, are you?’

  Leo was silent.

  ‘But why not tell the inspector and get the police to investigate it? After all, he must take your powers seriously if he was willing to have conferred with you.’

  ‘Because DI Lang will play it by the book and time is of the essence. Even if I can persuade him to apply for a search warrant, and even if the sheriff was to issue one – which would be difficult because the baron would likely hire a top Edinburgh lawyer to prevent it – too much time would have elapsed.’

  ‘All right. I have a hammer and chisel in my boatshed. I’ll take us over to the island after breakfast.’

  ‘No, Fordyce. I’m going alone.’

  ‘Why, my dear fellow?’

  ‘Because what I am to do is illegal. You have to live up here; I’m not going to get you into trouble.’

  ‘Oh, what rot. We’ll go together and be damned together. Besides, those rocks are treacherous, and I’m used to them.’

  ‘I’m saying no, my frien
d. This is something I need to do myself.’

  Fordyce nodded slowly in defeat.

  * * *

  From the high turret window of the Loch Dhonn Hotel someone watched Leo and Fordyce walk down to the boatyard after they had finished breakfasting. The watcher watched as they wheeled the Fairy Queen from her shed and set her afloat in the water before lugging the outboard and fitting it to the boat’s stern. The watcher watched as Fordyce handed Leo a tool bag, mouthed advice on how to best operate the vessel, and Leo fired the engine and set off towards the dark isle of Innisdubh.

  Then the hand of the watcher – the manly hand of Shona Minto – reached for the telephone.

  17

  THE morning was grey and unforgivingly cold. Sound seemed to travel further in the frigid air. Leo, strung-out and tired from stress and lack of sleep, had great difficulty beaching the boat at Innisdubh. He struggled to haul it up the shore, and slipped and fell upon some ice. He recovered, secured the Fairy Queen, then slung the tool bag over his shoulder and headed for the mausoleum.

  All was as he remembered, and it seemed strange to be there so soon after his vision. Leo’s damaged hands were numb as he began hammering the chisel at the hasp. The vestibule was gloomy, so he held his pencil torch between his teeth and it shed enough light for him to work. The noise within the semi-enclosed space was terrific, and gradually the metal began to give way, before fracturing and shooting off in two jagged pieces. Leo tried the heavy iron doors. They were still jammed. He put his shoulder to where they met but still there was no give. He examined them using the torch and to his exasperation found another, smaller padlock and hasp, further down from the first one.

  ‘Someone is keen to keep this place firmly shut,’ he muttered out loud as he positioned the chisel once again.

  Then he felt an explosion of pain in his skull like a sheet of white light and a sickness in his belly as his legs turned to jelly and gave way. The last thing he remembered was a sensation like being cast into a fast-flowing river, a rushing torrent, the black water boiling and deafening.