An Unfolding Trap

by Jo A. Hiestand

  “Where?” Liza looked at the knots as they walked up to Lanny.

  “Back down the trail. To the village. You need looking after.”

  Lanny moved his head slightly and groaned.

  “Should we leave him some water?” They walked past the man and she turned her head, studying him.

  McLaren pulled her along. “No. I’ll call from Balquhidder. I know the mobile works there. He’ll last that long out here.” He glanced at Lanny’s wool jacket. “He won’t turn into an ice cube. The police will be here soon enough. I’ll tell them it’s urgent.”

  They hurried down the trail, wanting to put as much distance between them and the two men as possible.

  Back in the village, McLaren insisted Liza use his bed-and-breakfast room to clean up. He sat outside, the cold wind racing across the surface of the loch and along the road. He angled his back to the cold and phoned the police.

  He’d just finished talking to them when Liza stepped outside. She’d washed her face and hands and combed her hair, and seemed more relaxed now that she experienced some form of normalcy.

  “How about something to eat?” McLaren stood up, looking hopeful.

  “I won’t say no.” Liza fell in beside him as he walked to a café. “I honestly can’t remember when I last ate.”

  “Didn’t they feed you?”

  “A sandwich, but that seems days ago. I think I drank more coffee and water than I’ve ever done. I had the impression that was their main staple.”

  “Well, choose whatever you like from the menu. Coffee and water are optional.”

  “Thanks.” Liza glanced at the village. “This where your family comes from?”

  “The MacLarens, yes. But my grandfather lives elsewhere.” He let the silence build between them, uncomfortable with the topic. “This is it,” he said, coming up to the café. “Whatever meal you want. Don’t be influenced by the time.”

  “What time is it?” Liza looked at the sky. The sun hovered near the western horizon.

  “Does that make a difference what food you order?”

  “No. I like breakfast any time of day. But I’m disoriented. Late afternoon, obviously, but what time? What day?”

  “Thursday. Just after three o’clock.”

  “It’ll be dark soon.” Her voice suddenly sounded tired. Or perhaps she was dreading the approaching night, he thought.

  “I can get you a room at the b-and-b. You could take off for home in the morning, if that’s what’s bothering you.” He glanced behind him, to where the main road led east to Kingshouse on the A84.

  “Oh. No. I didn’t mean to sound… Oh, I don’t know what I sounded like.” She smiled weakly as he opened the café door. “Thanks. I’m starving.”

  After the late lunch, McLaren drove Liza to the nearest bus stop. She repeated that she was fine, that she’d be home in a few hours, and that she was eternally grateful for his rescue. He stayed until she boarded a bus to Edinburgh, made her promise she’d phone the next day, and then drove back to Balquhidder.

  Back in his room he turned up the heat on the radiator, then showered, brewed a cup of tea, and sprawled out on his bed, the weariness and aches from the past two days screaming in his muscles. He wanted to search the shieling again, more thoroughly, interior and exterior. The money had to be there. All those clues in the diary couldn’t refer to anywhere else, not with the hint of the song and the Braes’ title underlined.

  He rolled onto his side and stared out the window. Dusk was advancing quickly, the first star visible through the branches of a tree. Had Lanny or Fowler come upon the money while they’d been there? It was possible. But the two men hadn’t the air of someone just finding a large hoard of coins. They’d still be arguing about the division of the treasure or where they’d taken it even if they’d been there since they snatched Liza on Tuesday.

  And what about Lanny? Now that McLaren had seen Lanny’s chin tattoo up close and personal, he had to admit he’d not seen anything like it. A Maori moko.

  Did those tattoos mean anything? Not literally, for he was certain they did when the Maori wore them. But here were three people he knew of—George Roper, King Roper, and Lanny Clack—and they all sported a moko. Did King wear it because his father had? But why Lanny? Was it a symbol of acceptance, like full membership in King Roper’s gang?

  McLaren lay back in his bed and stared into the dark. Instead of magnifying his fears, the night cocooned him, and he fell asleep.

  ****

  Fowler parked his off-road vehicle alongside the shieling. He’d been gone only an hour but shadows already stretched eastward from the hut and boulders and blanketed most of the ground. The sun touched the highest peak of the hill range to the west, transforming the slopes and valleys at their base to shades of indigo and violet. Gray light crept into the air, softening the edges of objects, blurring them in a near-dream. Lanny’s trussed up body, however, was no dream.

  “What the hell happened?” Fowler yanked the ropes binding Lanny’s arms, then strode into the shieling without waiting for a reply. He charged back outside seconds later. “Where the bloody hell is she?” He pulled on the rope again, tightening his grip. The hemp bore into Lanny’s skin.

  He let out a yowl. “She got away, Fowler. I-it wasn’t my fault.”

  “Yeah? Whose fault, then? Hers? She over power you with a rock? Get you down with a judo hold? All while she was tied up?” He kicked Lanny’s shins, drawing another cry from the man.

  “Fowler, don’t! Please!”

  “When did this happen? How long’s she been gone?” He stared at the forest, trying to discern the path she took.

  “She’s not been gone long. I don’t know exactly. Right after you left. Not five minutes from when you drove off. I swear. We can find her. She’s probably still heading down the trail. She’ll walk slow, wobbly, probably. We’ll catch her up.”

  “If she had an hour start, we’re not going to grab her on the trail, you idiot. We’ll have to find her again. Either in Balquhidder or Edinburgh or her house. That’s if she went there. She’s probably thinking she can hide so she’ll go to a friend’s. Or check into a b-and-b or holiday camp under a different name.” He ran his fingers along his jaw, trying to decipher where the woman would stay. “You’re really somethin’, you know that? Wait till Harvester finds out you let her escape.” He kicked Lanny in the back.

  “Bloody hell!” Lanny arched his back and grimaced, his eyes watering. “I couldn’t help it, Fowler. I was ambushed. It was a trick. I didn’t have a chance. There were a bunch of blokes. They all jumped on me. I couldn’t do a thing.”

  “Where’d this army come from? The Royal Scots Guards? NATO? The infants’ class at the local school?”

  Lanny raised his head, as Fowler pushed the sleeve of his jacket up. Lanny’s voice croaked, sounding frightened, the words quivering before the wind snatched them away. “You’ve got no right to treat me like this, Fowler. I won’t involve you when I talk to…hell!” He rolled onto his side, trying to escape the blows.

  “You better not mention my name. I had nothing to do with this. I was in Callander, as you well know. You botched the Mary King’s Close incident and you botched this. How do you think he’s going to take it?”

  “He’ll be mad as hell. He’ll kill me but he’ll keep me on.”

  Fowler stood over Lanny, shaking his head. “Wrong again, mate. He won’t kill you, but I will.” Fowler withdrew a knife from his jeans pocket, opened it, and plunged all six inches of its sawtooth blade into Lanny’s stomach. He watched Lanny gasp and fold up like a pocketknife, the blood seeping from his wound and pooling beneath him into the snow, before yanking it out. He then pulled a leather bracelet from his pocket, glanced at it and tossed it onto Lanny’s body. “Almost wish you’d be alive to explain that when the cops come. Almost. But I’m chuffed pink to see you this way, mate.” He kicked Lanny once more, then spat on him. This time Lanny didn’t groan. A few minutes later, Fowler got into his vehicl
e and drove back down the hill.

  ****

  Knocking on McLaren’s door woke him an hour after he’d drifted to sleep. Confused, he looked at his watch, then out the window. The moon balanced on a branch of a pine tree along the road and someone walked past the guesthouse, the footsteps slapping against the tarmac. Just gone nine o’clock.

  He staggered to his feet, ran his fingers through his hair, and shuffled over to the door. He grabbed the doorknob as he asked who was there.

  “Mr. McLaren?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Ross Gordon,” explained the soft Scottish accent.

  “Oh, yes. The friend of Jamie Kydd.” He opened the door and in the pool of light cast by the hallway light fixture saw a red-haired man of forty, dressed in tailored trousers, shirt, and tie. The business suit was implied, for Ross Gordon emitted Official Matters. “Come in.” He stepped back, gestured toward the room, and shut the door after Ross took a chair.

  “I know it’s rather late, but I needed to talk to you.”

  “That’s fine. It’s not about Jamie, is it? He’s not hurt or anything.”

  Ross shook his head, his expression still stern. “As far as I know, Jamie’s all right. I’m here about the report you made this afternoon.”

  “The report?”

  “About Lanny Clack.”

  “Oh, yes. I rang up the police station as soon as I got back to the village here. Several hours ago,” he added, checking the time on his watch. “Well before we—Before lunch. It was rather late. The lunch, I mean, but I phoned as soon as I could. Ordinarily I’d have done it at the scene and stayed, but with no phone service up there—”

  “I understand that, sir. My visit isn’t about your rather unorthodox procedure.”

  McLaren frowned, clearly confused. “Not about… You found him up at the shieling, didn’t you?” McLaren’s voice rose in near panic. Had the man escaped? Was he still at large?

  “We found him. That’s not the problem.”

  “Then I don’t see…”

  “The problem is we found him dead.”

  McLaren’s throat went dry and he rubbed his forehead, trying to ease the throbbing that suddenly filled his head. He lowered himself slowly into a chair, sitting opposite Ross. “What do you mean he’s dead? I left him tied up on the ground outside the hut. He was unconscious but alive. There’s some mistake.”

  “Hardly a mistake, Mr. McLaren. We arrived and found him bound with rope, a knife wound in his stomach, a wound from which he died. Have you any idea what may have happened?” Ross didn’t sound overly friendly. In fact, he sounded tired, as though he envisioned another case comprised of long hours and little information.

  “Not at all.” McLaren explained that he’d been with Liza Skene at Hurd Dowell’s hit-and-run accident, that he’d been looking for Liza since that time to assure himself of her safety and health, and that he’d found her in the shieling as he hiked the area. “All I did was free her and tie up this Lanny Clack bloke. I suppose I could’ve forced him to walk back to Balquhidder with us, but Miss Skene was a bit unsteady of her feet and I had to help her for a while.” He paused, debating if he should be completely truthful. “And frankly I didn’t want his company.”

  “Personal, was it? You angry that he’d nearly killed you in Edinburgh?”

  “Not particularly. I didn’t want Miss Skene to endure his company any longer than necessary. She was near the emotional breaking point, if I judged her correctly. She’d been through a hell of an ordeal, and I didn’t see any benefit to prolonging her association with her kidnapper by taking him with us. I left him tied up, assuming he’d be safe for an hour or so until the police arrived. I escorted Miss Skene to Balquhidder, treated her to lunch, and saw her safely onto a bus to Edinburgh. That’s it. Plain and simple.”

  “When did you discover Lanny with Miss Skene?”

  “I don’t know the time. I didn’t think I’d need to confirm it later. But I phoned the constabulary as soon as we got to Balquhidder.”

  “When was that?”

  McLaren exhaled heavily. Hadn’t the man seen the report? Surely the time was noted on it. “An hour or so after we left the shieling.”

  “You just said you didn’t know the time.”

  “It takes about an hour to climb to the shieling. I’ve asked in the village and that’s the universal answer. We may have made it down more quickly, but with Miss Skene’s physical condition, it probably took about an hour.”

  “What was wrong with her condition? She suffer from hypertension or have any injuries?”

  “I just stated,” McLaren said, his voice rising in his anger and frustration, “that she’d obviously endured this captivity. She’d been physically assaulted and then tied up, for days. She’d been in this roofless hut, again possibly shortly after her kidnapping, and she sat on cold ground in bloody hell freezing temperatures and in snow. Of course she wasn’t in the best shape to run a damned marathon or jog down the damned hill.” He broke off, aware he was too angry for his own good.

  “You know Lanny Clack was wanted for murder.” Ross’ tone assumed an edge to match McLaren’s.

  McLaren blinked. Why the detailed questioning? “Well, I saw a television newscast giving his description after the hit-and-run. Since the CCTV tape shows it’s clearly him driving the vehicle that killed Hurd Dowell, I figured you wanted him for murder. If not that, then some other offense, such as culpable homicide.” He hoped he had mentally translated the English ‘manslaughter’ into the correct Scottish equivalent.

  Ross leaned forward, closing the distance between them. “You’re sure you didn’t get angry when you found him this afternoon?”

  “Of course I got angry! Who the hell wouldn’t? The bloody git killed a man, frightened a dozen others who were there, kidnapped Miss Skene, held her hostage—” He stopped before saying Lanny had knocked him on the head and left him for dead in the marshland along the loch, or that he was a threat to Neill McLaren. He took a deep breath. “But I didn’t kill him. I tied him up so he wouldn’t escape, then phoned you when I could.”

  “An hour later.” The voice was flat, unimpressed.

  “Yes. An hour later. Maybe ninety minutes. I didn’t write down the bloody time, but I phoned here, in the village.”

  “Why wait so long to ring us?”

  “Pardon?” The suspicion that things were turning horribly wrong whispered to McLaren.

  “Why didn’t you phone right then? Did you want to put some space between you and the killing so you could establish an alibi?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  McLaren stood up, clenching his fists. His neck muscles threatened to erupt from the tension filling his body. He shouted, his voice bouncing off the walls. “I did not kill Lanny Clack. I admit I wanted to, but I merely tied him up. I gave Miss Skene my mobile to call the police, but we couldn’t get a signal up there. The closest spot we could phone from is here. So I did. Look somewhere else for your killer.”

  “The trouble is,” Ross said, his voice easing, “the Procurator Fiscal can’t accurately establish time of death due to the cold temperature and wind. The body cooled quickly.”

  McLaren exhaled deeply and ran his hand over his chin. The stubble felt like sandpaper beneath his fingertips. He walked to the window and stared into the darkness. Though the bedside lamp gave off a pool of warm, yellow light, the majority of the room lay in gloom. As gloomy as his future seemed at the moment.

  He turned and sat on the window ledge, his back against the pane of glass. The cold bit into his cotton shirt, helping to anchor him to reality in this nightmare. “Look, Sergeant Gordon, I appreciate that you’ve got a body on your hands and you’re needing to find the bloke who killed Lanny, but I’m not your man. I have a witness that he was alive when I left him at the shieling.”

  “Yes? Who is that?”

  “Liza Skene.”

  “The kidnap victim.” The voice turned skeptical.

  “She
obviously was there, saw me tie up Lanny. When we were leaving, Lanny groaned. Miss Skene asked if we should give him some water. I said it wasn’t necessary, that the police would be along soon after I phoned them.”

  “Is Miss Skene here?” Ross swiveled in his chair, staring at the door to the bathroom.

  McLaren nearly snapped that he had higher morals than to go to bed with a woman he didn’t know. He pressed his lips together, trying to keep his cool. “Miss Skene is not here. Neither in this room nor in this bed-and-breakfast nor in this village. We had lunch when she got freshened up a bit. Then—”

  “Where did you have your lunch?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Did you have a picnic on the trail, or eat in Callander, or sit in your car?”

  “We ate in the café here in Balquhidder. It was rather a late meal, but we were both hungry and couldn’t wait for tea.”

  “Which café was this?”

  McLaren gave Ross the name. “After lunch, I drove her to the bus stop and she boarded a bus for the city, I believe I told you not two minutes ago. Now, if you want to speak to her, either to confirm my statement about Lanny or about anything else, I suggest you phone her at her house.”

  “I will. I wanted your statement before I spoke to her.”

  “Have you had the knife fingerprinted?”

  “We will when we find it.”

  “I thought it was left in the body…”

  “I merely said Lanny died of a knife wound. I didn’t mention we had the weapon.”

  McLaren acknowledged his assumption.

  “Can you tell me about this?” He produced a leather bracelet encased in a plastic evidence bag.

  The room dimmed and tilted. “Where…that’s mine! Where’d you find it?”

  “At the crime scene. Next to Lanny’s body.”

  “You can’t believe I killed him. That’s what you think this suggests, don’t you? That he ripped it off my wrist in a fight. I didn’t kill him!”

  “How else do you explain its presence? Did you lose it at the shieling and Lanny just happened to fall next to it? Did Miss Skene have it and toss it onto the ground while you weren’t looking?”