by Alan Hunter
‘Aha,’ McClune said. ‘Ye’re no hillman, Geordie, or you wouldn’t have puzzled over it long. If the laddie came not from the village and came not down the glen – ask yourself, what’s left? He must have come down from the tops.’
‘From the tops!’ Gently said. ‘But there’s no path over them.’
‘I’m not so damned familiar with them,’ McClune said. ‘But Jamie tells me there’s a way over.’
‘But there’s nowhere behind them,’ Gently said. ‘It’s just a plateau and peaks running through for miles.’
‘You’re wrong,’ McClune said. ‘You must study the map, Geordie. There’s a wee glen behind there called Glen Laggart. It runs up high out of Glen Skilling, so you won’t find it marked green. But there’s good pastures at the top end and a farm they call Snaw-in-June.’
‘And – who lives there?’
‘Just Jamie’s question – who was my tenant at Snaw-in-June. With the additional inquiry, as you well may guess, as to whether that tenant was in the Movement.’ He jigged his shoulders. ‘For administrative purposes – nothing more nor less, ye ken – we have the Movement divided into sections with a Chief at the head of each.’
‘Like communists and anarchists,’ Gently said.
‘If you put it so – the arrangement is doubtless not original. But that’s the way of it, and Jamie had no knowledge of who and who wasna in Dunglass’s chiefship.’
‘And the answer to that question?’
McClune hesitated. ‘This is givin’ up my own tenant,’ he said. ‘Tenant – clansman – honest man – and always punctual with his rent. But I’ve shown him to you, so I must name him. He’s Hector McCracken, of the Bieth McCrackens. He’s farmed in Laggart for twenty years and raised a bonnie family on wool and mutton.’
‘A member of the Movement?’
‘Didn’t I say so?’
‘An important member?’
‘Dunglass’s lieutenant.’
‘A man of what character?’
‘A hanging character,’ McClune said. ‘A passionate hater of all the English – he and his four blockhead sons. Ay, if there’s one who might have scragged Dunglass for cuttin’ loose from the Movement it’s Hector Bruce McCracken, the wild man of Glen Laggart.’
‘And the sons?’
‘All of a kidney. Not one of them under six foot two.’
‘Would there be a daughter?’
‘Ay, such another. She could wrestle evens with her brothers.’
‘The original mountain hizzie,’ Brenda said. ‘She canters around with a socking great dog.’
‘That may be,’ McClune said. ‘There’s never a sheep-farm without them – now I mind it, McCracken keeps wolfhounds – my factor, Johnson, was nearly eaten by them.’
‘And you gave McGuigan this information,’ Gently said. ‘What does McGuigan intend to do with it?’
‘Not a thing,’ McClune said. ‘Unless friend Blayne is for running him in. Then he’ll come out with it, I doubt not, for all the McGuigans and McCrackens are kin. But man, I hope there’ll be a colour put on it that’ll keep the Movement on the windy side.’
‘Will you talk to McCracken?’
‘Will you give me the time?’
They stared at each other. Gently said nothing. McClune solemnly raised his quaigh and tossed back the last of his whisky.
‘You’re a queer man, Geordie,’ he said. ‘I can’t help liking you, English or not. It’s no grief of yours, but you’ll be for goin’ up Laggart like the Miller o’ God on a visit. Am I right?’
Gently gave a faint shrug.
‘Ay – you’ll be for it, I ken,’ McClune said. ‘And you must watch your step, Geordie ma mannie, when you’re treadin’ round Snaw-in-June. But I’ll do my best for you – I’ll give ye a sayin’ – and ye’re to forget it, mind, the next day after. If you find you’re in trouble up the glen, say: The eagle is flying over Glenny. Have you got it?’
‘That’s lovely,’ Brenda said. ‘I’ll try to forget it, but that won’t be easy.’
‘So long as you don’t remember it aloud,’ McClune said. Och – for me to be giving the Word to southrons!’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
An the Percie cam to Hartshorn Edge
Wyth his bowmen yn the van,
An he saw the Douglas whytlin a stick
An bowsin out of a can.
Chevy Chase (Jedburgh MS)
MCCLUNE ACCOMPANIED THEM across the lawn and bid them farewell at the gate. By the time they arrived back at the Minx he had vanished again into the Castle.
‘Do you think he’ll be on the phone now,’ Brenda said. ‘Sending out a May-Day to the clan.’
Gently shook his head. ‘I know too much,’ he said. ‘One glance at that bluebook put me in business. Besides, it’s in McClune’s interests now to have the matter cleared up promptly. He may not want it pinned on McCracken, but at least that will exonerate the Movement.’
‘And of course, you’re going to do the Miller of God act – wolfhounds and the kidney notwithstanding?’
Gently started the engine, grinned at her. ‘Do you really want me to leave it to Blayne?’ he said.
They drove on down, joined the main road, turned west again towards Torlinnhead. Brenda lit a cigarette irritably and glided fierce puffs towards the windscreen.
‘Were you planning to drop me off?’ she asked.
‘That would be sensible,’ Gently grunted.
‘Oh no it wouldn’t,’ Brenda said. ‘It would be damn silly. Going up there you need someone with you.’
‘You forget,’ Gently said. ‘I’ve the McClune’s protection. Also some experience in handling these matters.’
‘And a fat lot of good they’re likely to do you when you’re about to be eat by ravenous wolfhounds!’
Gently said nothing.
‘No,’ Brenda said. ‘No. If you go you’re taking me too, George Gently. At least if I’m with you it will make you more careful, more likely to pull out if things get rough. And I want to go. I’d like to see this ferocious McCracken and his sons. And what’s more I decided, when I was driving the Cortina, that I’m more of a heroine than I’ve been giving out.’
Gently’s mouth twitched. ‘Perhaps the job doesn’t call for a heroine,’ he said.
‘Well, whatever it calls for I am, so you can consider that settled.’
‘If you come, you must do as I say – no questions, no arguments.’
‘Oh,’ Brenda said. ‘That makes it rather harder. But I’m still not letting you go there alone. I don’t trust that mountain hizzie an inch – she was playing it coy, but man, she was playing it.’
Gently pushed the Minx along. They unravelled Loch Torlinn, passed Kinleary. Excursion traffic dotted the route and was parked suicidally at every viewpoint. At Loch Cray, briefly seen as they threaded a jam at Lochcrayhead, sails blue, white and striped leaned and weaved on slaty water.
‘Happy souls,’ Brenda observed sourly. ‘Little do they know what we’re up to. We could use a posse of big brave dinghy-men, padded to the eyes in P.V.C.’
‘Oh no we couldn’t,’ Gently grunted. ‘The idea is to give the McCrackens some bait.’
‘Perhaps I should strip,’ Brenda said.
‘Just remember – do what I tell you.’
They came to Skilling and turned down into its mazy spread of trees. The traffic thinned. They passed cottages, reached the lower end of Loch Balva. Here the road divided, continuing on the right its long trek to the head of Skilling, on the left passing below the loch and striking a line to the south of it. They forked left and shortly came to a lefthand junction.
‘Check that,’ Gently said.
Brenda checked it. It was the back road coming in from Strathtudlem. A mile further on they arrived at a massive divide in the braes southward. A track of the sort now becoming familiar thrust roughly and steeply into this gorge, and a board nailed to an adjacent tree read: Snow-in-June Farm – Private Road. Gently parked. He loo
ked at Brenda.
‘Here’s the battle-plan,’ he said. ‘We’re going in. I’m going to ruffle McCracken, see if I can get him to show his hand. At some stage I may tell you to leave, and you’ll leave promptly without arguing. You’ll drive to the nearest phone, which is at Skilling village, and ring the police at Balmagussie. Get Blayne, Purdy or whoever and tell them to bring some men up Glen Laggart: explain the situation: if you can’t get Blayne, make sure the information is passed to him.’
‘Can’t we ring Blayne first?’ Brenda suggested.
No,’ Gently said. ‘I may want you to leave. And I shan’t want Blayne coming out here unless I have someone for him to take back. And understand this clearly: it may seem to you I’ll be sticking my neck out at some point. Don’t let it influence you. Just follow the plan. I’ll maybe have an ace up my sleeve.’
‘Oh dear,’ Brenda said. ‘I’m feeling rather less brave than I did an hour ago. You’re sure you know what you’re doing?’
‘Pretty sure,’ Gently said. ‘And if I find I’m wrong I can still draw my horns in and come quietly back down the glen.’
Brenda shivered. ‘Kiss me,’ she said.
Gently gathered her close and kissed her.
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I’m heroic again. Lay on, Macduff – let’s go.’
They drove on up Glen Laggart. At first it was little more than a ravine. Rough, craggy cliffs, stained with lichens, carried a slot of sky high above them. The track gnawed and twisted its way upwards with a gloomy cut-off on the left, where white water and green went rumbling down a deep crevasse. Then they came to a waterfall, a thin, shooting, tress-like cascade, and the crevasse closed, the track levelled, the cliffs shallowed, stood farther apart. They were entering a fertile basin in the mountains, a little kingdom hedged by peaks. The braes rose peaceably before, beside them, their lower slopes grazed by sheep. Above the furthest braes lifted a crooked peak with a napkin of white which was not sheep. A pocket of snow, it lay chillily secure in the shadowed, north-facing heights.
Below this peak they began to see the red-painted iron roof of the farm, a low stone building, very bare, with a cluster of outbuildings grouped around it. Sheep-wire enclosed some pens in its neighbourhood. A few stunted firs made a line behind it. Smoke rose from one of the potless chimneys and was the only token of life.
They came closer. Still nobody appeared, though the car must certainly have been visible on the open track.
‘Perhaps they are all out,’ Brenda muttered hopefully. ‘Gone head-hunting or whatever they do on Sabbaths.’
Gently shook his head. ‘There’s a car in that lean-to. They’re probably watching us, getting us figured.’
‘Well I wish they wouldn’t,’ Brenda said. ‘And the car’s a Skoda. The heathens.’
They entered a fenced yard before the house. Then at last there was movement. In his mirror, Gently saw the tall girl of the crag glide swiftly to the yard-gate, close it, pad-lock it. At the same moment the house door opened and a man stepped out, followed by two wolfhounds. Two other men appeared from behind the house, two more emerged from the outbuildings. They carried rifles. They surrounded the car. The man with the dogs waved his rifle at the car.
‘Out,’ he said, ‘ma fine friends. Let’s see what the wind has blown in on us. Flora, jist shift a wee out o’ my aim – I may be for shootin’ your grand English acquaintances.’
‘Stay in the car,’ Gently told Brenda. He climbed out and walked up to the man with the dogs. The dogs watched him with smoky eyes, planted one each side of their master. He was a man as tall as or taller than McGuigan and of a similar cast of broadboned feature, but he was beardless and his hair was white and his eyes were pale and squinted. His mouth, too, was cruelly thin and pulled into a savage sort of droop, and the long cheeks with trailling furrows gave the face an expression of wildness.
‘Hector McCracken?’ Gently said.
‘Ay,’ McCracken said. ‘To friend and foe. An’ if you come here as the latter, yell rue the day ye set fute in Laggart.’
‘I come as a private citizen,’ Gently said. ‘With the rights of whom you are maybe familiar.’
‘I ken them in Scotland,’ McCracken said. ‘What they’d be in other part I kenna and carena.’
They stood staring at each other. McCracken’s rifle lay light and easy in his knobbly hands. His thumb was resting on the safety-catch, his fingers extended along the trigger-guard. The four other men, whose resemblance to McCracken left no doubt of their relation to him, stood holding their rifles in the same way. Only Flora McCracken was unarmed.
‘There’s been a death in the parish,’ Gently said. ‘Your neighbour died last Friday night.’
McCracken spat. ‘No neighbour o’ mine. There’s a mountain between us he daredna have climbed.’
‘But you dare climb it,’ Gently said. ‘And I think it likely you often do. It’s your short cut to the nearest village – shop, post-office, telephone, bus.’
‘I tell you there’s no path over there,’ McCracken said.
‘Ask your daughter,’ Gently said. ‘She can tell you. She was over there last night, perhaps yesterday afternoon. And if she can get over, so can you.’
McCracken’s thumb smoothed the catch back and forth. ‘Jist carry on talkin’,’ he said. ‘I’m listenin’. Ye’re a bold rash laddie at gi’en words – ma fingers are jerkin’ an’ jinkin’ already.’
‘There’s a way over the top,’ Gently said. ‘And you know it. Your sons, your daughter know it too. One or more of you go that way often – like the persons who knew so much about Dunglass’s affairs.’
‘Is it so, is it so,’ McCracken said.
‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘It is so. And that way went Dunglass’s killer, and that way Dunglass’s killer returned. Where were you on Friday evening, McCracken?’
‘Jist shoot the ugly Englishman, faither!’ Flora McCracken cried. ‘Put a bullet through his heid an’ another through his heart – gie Buska an’ Ban a taste o’ fresh bluid.’
‘Whist,’ McCracken said. ‘You’re too eager. I’m thinkin’ tumblin’ him ower a crag would suit better. But let’s hear more o’ his clatterin’ yet – let him dig his grave wi’ his tongue.’
‘Dunglass’s killer,’ Gently said, ‘was a man who knew him, a man Dunglass trusted. A man he thought he could turn his back on when he went with him in the dark. A man he’d known as a comrade. A man who was posing as his friend. A man who nevertheless hated Dunglass so he could strike him down in cold blood. A twisted man. A would-be patriot. A treacherous man. A coward.’
‘By jings,’ McCracken rasped through his teeth. ‘This is more than ma mither’s flesh can take – lay haud of him! I’ll have his scrapin’ tongue out o’ his heid.’
‘You won’t,’ Gently said. ‘You’ll stand your ground and listen, McCracken. Because the eagle is flying over Glenny – and you’re the man who’ll have to answer.’
McCracken’s squinted eyes opened stupidly and his hand went slack on the rifle. He stared wildly at Gently, his almost lipless mouth dragging.
‘What did ye say, Englishman?’ he asked.
‘Och, let me get at him, faither!’ cried Flora McCracken. ‘If he kens the Word he’s a spy – I’ll rend him mysel’ – we’ll have the dogs on him!’
‘Back, lassie!’ McCracken said. ‘You canna treat the Word i’ that fashion.’
‘It’s stolen, sure!’
‘Hauld your clatter! The Word’s the Word, an’ you canna go over it.’
He let the butt of the rifle fall, his eyes never leaving Gently. It was a signal. Four other rifles sank reluctantly to the ground.
‘So,’ McCracken said. ‘I micht have guessed it from the way you came whifflin’ up to ma door – from your manner o’ speakin’ to your betters. You wouldna have ventured it on your ain bottom.’
‘No,’ Gently said. ‘I don’t usually walk up to a tiger without a gun.’
‘Your tongue will ruin you yet,�
� McCracken said, ‘if you wag it for lang enough. What’s your business?’
Gently hunched a shoulder. ‘The truth,’ he said. ‘Who killed Dunglass. Why.’
‘We ken nothin’ of it.’
‘You’ll have to prove that. The finger is pointing at you, McCracken.’
‘Let it point!’ McCracken said violently. ‘I havena been over the hill this fortnight. On Friday night I was takin’ ma ease by ma ain hearthside, in ma ain house.’
‘Have you witness to that?’
‘Ay, have I. Robbie, tell the Englishman where I was.’
‘You were right here, faither,’ said one of the young men. ‘It’s the mortal truth, an’ I’ll swear to it.’
‘Willie?’
‘Ay, faither.’
‘Wattie?’
‘Ay. We were playin’ cards till gone twelve.’
‘Stevie?’
‘Ay. I mind Friday fine.’
‘Flora?’
‘Ay, faither. We didna shift.’
‘So what about that, Englishman?’ McCracken said. ‘Five credible witnesses sayin’ I was here. An’ five for each an’ every one of us – where will that get ye with a magistrate?’
Gently shook his head. ‘It won’t work, McCracken. We can prove that one of you was over the hill.’
‘Ye canna.’
‘Yes. We found fingerprints on the phone that was used to fetch Dunglass out.’
‘Fingerprints – phone – I ken nothin’—!’
‘The murderer used a Forestry box on the braes. He rang Dunglass and told him his wife was keeping an assignation near the Keekingstane.’
McCracken stared stupidly at Gently. ‘He rang Dunglass – tellt him that?’
‘Yes.’
‘But glory, man – I didna even ken that Mrs Dunglass was lookin’ astray!’
‘The person who used the Forestry box knew. They knew every detail of those assignations. They knew the place, the man, the road he’d come by, the crag below which he hid his car. They knew a very great deal about it, McCracken. They’d spent a lot of time spying up there. I’d say they were over the top most evenings, going out early, coming in late.’