The Ghost of Helen Addison

by Charles E. McGarry

  Leo checked in with Paul the barman, and the two were glad to meet in person to banish the bicycle debacle. Leo apologised profusely, while Paul explained that he felt embarrassed by his overreaction, and had been moved by Leo’s parting gift. Leo enquired after Fordyce, and Paul told him that he had returned from Edinburgh but had then gone back again yesterday; apparently he had seemed disappointed by Leo’s absence. He had, however, left a sealed envelope for Leo, lest he return.

  Leo eagerly unpeeled it and unfolded the creamy high-grade paper within to reveal his friend’s beautiful script. He fancied that he detected a faint suggestion of Lily of the Valley, but dismissed the notion as absurd. His blood ran cold as he read.

  Leo,

  Dreadfully sorry for my hasty retreat, please do forgive. I needed to spend some time in the ’Burg, not least to revisit certain key volumes in the National Library in order to brush up on my cryptographic skills.

  Should this find you, then you have returned, and are in need of due warning. I have decoded the blurb from the tomb. The runes were written in cipher, as you rightly suspected; a fiendish but somewhat redundant old technique known as polyalphabetic substitution. My guess is that the thirteenth baron ordered the ghastly sepulchre long before he actually expired. The inscriptions are mostly tedious, self-aggrandising ramblings, but for one rather chilling paragraph:

  ‘Heed ye my example of the dark crafts, the means required to satisfy the profound and unknowable Majesty. Emulate me, but beware an adversary who ventures northwards, in search of retribution.’

  Take good care, old stick.

  Yours affectionately,

  F.

  Leo deposited his suitcase in his familiar room, quickly freshened up and then went down to the bar, where a sandwich he had ordered was waiting for him. The Mintos were nowhere to be seen and the regulars were absent, no doubt traumatised by the recent arrest of their friend and neighbour, but the remaining police officers were there, providing a mood of muted celebration, or at least relief and satisfaction that the case was solved at last. Leo felt like the spectre at the feast.

  DI Lang was present, drinking heavily and enjoying the company. It seemed odd to hear his laughter, to get a glimpse of the man and not the copper. Some of the colour had returned to his cheeks, and he looked as though he might survive the Helen Addison case after all. He noticed Leo, who had installed himself in a booth with his cheese sandwich and a pint of beer, as he walked by after using the gents.

  ‘So you meant it,’ he said, sitting down opposite Leo, ‘about coming back up.’

  ‘I just know it wasn’t McKee. It’s too obvious.’

  ‘Murders usually are.’

  ‘What happened to keeping an open mind? Do you have a confession?’

  ‘He’s not been lucid enough to make a statement.’

  ‘I think he’s been set up.’

  ‘“I think” isn’t good enough. You want to hear our case?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  First, Lang retold Bill’s description of the attack upon and rescue of Eva, and then began relating what had happened in the aftermath: ‘We found Robbie wandering around in the woods at five twenty-five a.m. He was wearing only jeans and a jersey, and he was barefoot. He was suffering from mild exposure and rambling incoherently; we think he’s had some sort of a breakdown.’

  ‘Did Bill notice if the attacker was barefoot?’

  ‘No. He says the robes were long and covered the feet. We found the robes floating in the loch at first light, near to where we picked up Robbie. I’ll give you this, Leo: you were right about the killer being into the occult – those robes were bloody weird. We then found the knife in the undergrowth nearby; a highly decorated thing, like an antique. It had Eva’s blood on it from when she was slashed.’

  ‘May I see it?’

  ‘No, you may not. Alongside it we found a brass rod with Robbie’s handprint on it. It was the same one used to violate Helen – Forensics have just rung to confirm it has her blood on it. You were correct about it having been lifted from Eva’s workshop. It all fits perfectly.’

  ‘Too perfectly. The first instinct of the criminal is to divert suspicion from himself, preferably by casting it onto someone else. Tell me, did you find Robbie’s footprints where Eva was attacked?’

  ‘No, because it occurred on tarmac.’

  ‘Of course. What about nearby?’

  ‘Robbie’s footprints are all over those woods, including at the top of the path that leads to his home, which is where Bill saw the assailant emerge from, and the little trail he escaped down. Oh, and Robbie’s a size nine, by the way.’

  ‘That all proves nothing. Were any prints found on the knife handle?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did Bill say if the attacker was wearing gloves?’

  ‘He says he was. We haven’t found them yet.’

  ‘So, you’re saying the killer, having left his identifiable footprints everywhere, took the trouble to wear gloves to keep his prints off the knife, but for some reason decided to dispose of the brass rod having managed to leave a print on it?’

  ‘Yes. You should have seen the state Robbie was in. He was in no fit state to act rationally.’

  ‘I don’t buy it. Remember, Helen’s murder was well covered up, despite the high level of violence, and therefore committed by someone who was very clear-thinking, in his own cold-blooded way. For example, you took no incriminating fingerprints from the oars or the boat used by the killer before he attacked Helen. Why? Because he was wearing gloves, and I believe he would never have handled either weapon without wearing gloves. By the way, I bet you don’t find those gloves, because the real attacker will have kept them in his possession; they’re easily cleaned or disposed of.’

  ‘They could be lost to the loch. Incidentally, his time no boat was found away from its usual berth,’ interposed Lang.

  ‘Probably because the boatyard was in the killer’s direction of travel this time, on his way back from black rites at Innisdubh, as he journeyed south to intercept the entranced Eva on her long, solemn march from Kildavannan. So it made sense to return whichever vessel he had borrowed from whence he had taken it.’

  ‘There were no clues on Innisdubh as to a Black Mass or anything else; my men have searched every blade of grass on that island,’ said Lang.

  Leo continued unabashed: ‘The murderer would have previously got Robbie to unwittingly handle the rod, so that he could plant it and implicate him. Robbie does odd jobs all around this area, so he wouldn’t have blinked if someone requested they help him move some scrap metal. The killer threw the robes into the water, probably in case any miniscule forensic traces of him remained on those items, assuming they would dissolve in the water. He would stash the knife and of course the rod, as this was the item with which he would frame Robbie.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ said Lang. ‘We searched Robbie’s home and found Helen’s rag doll there. It was streaked with her blood.’

  ‘It could have been planted.’

  ‘Look, Leo,’ said Lang, getting to his feet, ‘this is no time for denial, for vanity. It’s too serious for that.’

  The detective left a dejected Leo alone again. He withdrew his mobile phone and typed a simple text to Fordyce: ‘Back at Loch Dhonn. This isn’t over yet. Sorry I missed you. Thanks for the letter. Warning duly noted.’ He hit send and waited until the icon confirming the message’s successful dispatch appeared.

  44

  LEO ventured outside, despite the hour. The rain had gone off, but a damp texture still pervaded the atmosphere, and the waxing moon peered out from behind the clouds. He hoped for another visitation, and indeed he saw Helen standing on a little incline, which was covered in cushion and sphagnum moss, near to the folly where they had first met. She was gazing at the loch, out towards Innisdubh. Leo approached her and wordlessly stood by her side.

  Over the last day, which in her dimension could have seemed like a minute or a month, Helen
had finally faced up to thinking about her parents, her brother and Craig. She had at last dared to consider the agony they were enduring. How she longed to be held by Craig now, to feel protected by him, loved by him. But that would never happen again. Never. Up until now that fact had been incomprehensible to her, as though this state of affairs was some existential gag, a mere hiatus; soon justice would be done, soon she would be somehow reunited with her loved ones. But no – she had been cut down in her glory, just as she was blossoming, just as she was falling completely in love with that big lummox with his inner steel which she so admired and his pale green eyes which she thought were dreamy and beautiful. With that man whom despite her city experience she preferred because he embodied home, and everything fine and honest and rural and daft and gentle about it. The unnatural, premature, violent nature of her death was held up to her now, in all of its obscenity.

  Leo was unnerved by the ghost’s oddly disengaged demeanour. She turned to face him. Something terrible was happening to Helen Addison. Twenty-three pinpoints of blood had appeared on her nightdress, and were quickly expanding until they merged into a single mass of darkness. Helen’s face was now splashed and streaked with the gore, her hair matted from a further wound on her scalp, her eyes sparkling with fury. Then, horribly, her form began to levitate as she slowly raised her arms until they were perpendicular to her torso, as though to more fully display the stigmata of violence upon her.

  ‘You men are all the same,’ she said in a chilling voice.

  ‘Helen!’

  ‘All the same! What vicious filth do you fantasise about, Leo, you silly little man?’

  ‘Helen, please, stop it!’

  ‘Yet we have something in common, you and me,’ she said, as she floated back down to the ground. ‘Because we’re both trapped, we’re both stuck in a dungeon of visions and unreality, in this . . . in this fucking limbo! But at least you’re alive, Leo, at least you have that. So whatever it is from your past that’s trapping you, for Christ’s sake forgive yourself and let it go, otherwise I won’t forgive you. Look at you – here you are, thinking you can ride in like my knight protector, saving a girl who isn’t even properly here!’

  She turned and ran off. He didn’t call after her. Then she stopped. Turned. And said, ‘Oh, and tell that stupid policeman he’s got the wrong man.’

  She disappeared into the nothingness.

  ‘I know,’ he whispered.

  45

  LEO slept badly that night, shocked by the visceral encounter with Helen, deeply upset by her obvious anguish and horrified that he might in some way have contributed to it. No amount of alcohol could assuage his distress. The next morning, after a desolate breakfast, he went for a walk, hoping to figure out some plan of action.

  He headed up to where the attack upon Eva had occurred, and examined the muddy ground at the top of the path from which Bill had seen the robed figure emerge. It was the same one where Bosco had found the ketamine vial. Despite the obliteration caused by the heavy police presence, a few of Robbie’s footprints, travelling in the direction the assailant initially took, were still discernible, as were Eva’s from when she had been escorted to safety by Minto. At one point her print was superimposed upon one of Robbie’s, in keeping with the theory that he was the attacker, in that he had trodden here first. The path itself was of hardpan lined with compacted gravel, therefore only this glaur at the top was soft enough to receive a footprint. Leo examined the verge at either side of this area. On the northern flank he discovered a mere toeprint in a tiny, turfless patch of soil. It proved nothing, of course, but it might mean that the real attacker had kept to the edge lest his footprints be detected in the mire. It belonged to a moulded rubber sole with a basic grooved pattern, and the print looked of a recent vintage. It didn’t match the design of shoe worn on the night of Helen’s death which Leo had photographed a fortnight ago, but doubtless the killer wouldn’t have set off wearing those same soles again. Crucially, it pointed eastwards, the attacker’s direction of travel up this path. Leo took a quick measurement and photographed it with his mobile phone, stepped back onto the tarmac and walked further along, finding the little trail that was presumably the one down which the assailant had fled. This was a narrower, muddier track than its nearby counterpart, and there was some extraneous foot traffic here, probably belonging to policemen and before that anglers and ramblers. Again Leo found evidence of Robbie’s soles. In fact, these prints went in both directions, possibly more than once, indicating a man wandering around in a trancelike stupor. Leo stooped down to examine a particular shoeprint. His phone and tape measure matched it with the toeprint by the other path, and it pointed westwards, the direction of the attacker’s flight. It was a size nine, and soon Leo found another, and another, and another. It made sense that the attacker, surprised by Minto and having taken off at speed, would have been less cautious about where he stepped during his retreat than he had been in his approach. But Leo felt as though he was clutching at straws.

  He daundered aimlessly and found himself down at the boatyard. A trailer had been wheeled to the lochside, to take the police launch away the next day. Leo gazed out towards Innisdubh. He considered if he should hire a boat; if another black ceremony had been held over there, the islet might yield some further clues missed by the police. As he deliberated, he absent-mindedly picked up a flat stone and tried to skim it across the water, but it bounced only once and promptly sank.

  ‘That’s nae good for the boats’ keels; we try to keep the harbour free of rocks, ye fuckin’ tumshie.’

  Leo turned round to see Kemp grinning at him, wearing a sports jacket and no overcoat despite the time of year.

  ‘Takes one to know one, I guess,’ he responded.

  Leo stepped up and over the jetty. Kemp moved to one side, as though to bar his path. Leo suddenly felt vulnerable, despite the daylight, despite the open space. He instinctively glanced up towards the hotel, hoping to see another human being.

  ‘Can I help you with anything?’ he asked Kemp.

  ‘His lairdship’s fashed that yer back poking around in his private business.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, he has tasked me with beating ye like a red-headed step-bairn,’ grinned the hired thug.

  ‘I must say you seem to enjoy your work, if that inane grin is anything to go by.’

  ‘Oh, I do, don’t ye worry about that.’

  ‘That’s nice for you, you big bully.’

  ‘Ye remember this?’ asked Kemp, brandishing a sand-filled sap. ‘Oh, of course ye dinnae, ’cause ye didnae see it coming last time.’

  ‘And what about my being run off the road last week, after the Innisdara Inn – that wasn’t you, was it?’

  ‘Nope. Not my style, pal.’

  ‘I didn’t think so.’

  ‘Now, where were we?’

  Leo stepped back, glancing over his shoulder in desperation and seeing only the empty grey expanse of Loch Dhonn. He gulped and turned to face his aggressor, who was theatrically slapping the cosh upon the palm of his hand.

  ‘Come to Daddy!’ Kemp stepped towards him.

  Behind the boatsheds was a dense thicket of glossy-leaved deciduous shrubs, which suddenly burst with violent animation as the thick-set figure of Bosco rushed into the scene in a blur.

  Kemp turned, jaw slack with surprise, but his expression quickly changed to one of aggression as he braced himself for the attack. He raised the sap and brought it down with immense power, but Bosco, his face livid with exertion, skilfully deflected the blow with a glance of his forearm; undoubtedly some simple but effective martial arts technique, thought Leo. Bosco then ripped the weapon from Kemp’s grip and cast it aside as though it was a child’s toy.

  The two then engaged in a terrifying bout of unarmed combat, in which Kemp chiefly tried to land punches on Bosco’s face, and Bosco tried to neutralise Kemp using various slaps and jabs with his hands, and by attempting to drag his jacket over his head. The duel was tr
uly titanic; Leo felt as though he was watching two Tyrannosaurus Rex battling to the death upon some primeval stage. Mud, ice and gravel were thrashed up into the air, and the sound of the violence set Leo’s nerves on edge. Suddenly, the thought occurred to him that perhaps he should intervene on Bosco’s side. He deliberated upon his rudimentary knowledge of the honour code of the Glasgow ‘square go’. This was Leo’s – his – battle, but, then again, it was proscribed to ‘jump in’ and ‘gang up’ on a single fighter. And it wasn’t as though he had asked Bosco to help. Then Leo recollected himself; this wasn’t some crude street brawl. An assault – a crime – had been about to be committed, and Bosco had been sterling enough to intervene (Leo correctly speculated that Bosco’s clandestine protectorate of him had been at the Grey Lady’s direction). And so Leo, with a not insignificant amount of valour, stealthily approached the whirlwind of violence, while hesitantly adopting a vaguely Victorian boxing posture. He then felt strangely self-conscious of this pugilistic pose, and couldn’t seem to aim a fist on target. Therefore, he instead resolved to fashion a cudgel from a fallen bough. While he scanned the floor for a suitable potential weapon, he noticed that Bosco was now getting the better of his opponent. It was queer to see Kemp being dwarfed in terms of girth and sheer physical power by another man. In fact, Bosco now had Kemp on his knees, and was throttling him. Kemp’s eyes were standing out on stalks and a horrible gargling sound was emanating from his larynx. Leo shouted out at Bosco to stop, before remembering that he was deaf, and so he approached the Maltese at close quarters and demonstratively mouthed his concerns in an attempt to avert disaster. Finally, after a moment which seemed like an eternity, Bosco relented and let Kemp’s limp frame flop and then crash to the ground.

  The victors left Kemp choking for breath, and walked to the hotel where Leo bought his rescuer a much deserved pint. In fact, Bosco quickly downed an entire gallon of ale, before wiping his wet mouth on his sleeve, shaking Leo’s hand vigorously with one of his gargantuan paws, and heading off home to Fallasky House.