Ash (13 page)

Because they were nearer to the sea now, there was a low mist rolling in across their view. Much of the grounds were becoming difficult to see clearly, which disappointed Ash, though it didn’t hinder Dalzell’s flow.

‘Y’ve glimpsed the deer park and the woodland beyond. In fact, most of the woodland is wild hereabouts and y’could mebbe get lost if y’strayed from the paths through it. There’s a cottage hidden away in the woods and a swan pond further on and somewhere in there is a braw walled garden. Y’shouldnae give it a miss. It includes a lovely summerhouse. Close to that there’s an aviary. An old disused railway line borders the northwest aspect—’

‘With an electrified fence?’ Ash interjected.

The driver nodded. ‘Aye, that’s right. Now, coming back there’s a cliff walk where you’d need to take care if you use it. A boat house is on the beach and, above that, what we call the Battery. That’s the ancient cannons facing out to sea. S’been a long time since they were used, of course; then you’ll find what’s known as the Fountain Court, which speaks for itself – a central ornamental fountain in the middle of a beautifully kept lawn surrounded by flower beds.’

‘Sounds like heaven,’ Ash said flatly.

‘Oh, y’can be sure o’ that. It’s only recently that it’s lost some of its charm.’

Ash wondered why that was but, playing by his own rules, he let it go for now.

‘So what about the castle itself?’

‘Be patient a little longer and y’ll see for y’self.’

Ahead there was a ruined archway, the stonework that hadn’t been destroyed or neglected still forming an entrance into the castle forecourt.

Dalzell brought the Mercedes to a standstill, its engine left purring, so that the investigator had a fine view through the partially demolished arch.

Ash suppressed a sudden gasp of apprehension.

There, rising from the low, drifting sea mist like some towering behemoth, stood the dark castle called Comraich.

PART TWO: COMRAICH CASTLE

Dr Delphine Wyatt lifted the pen she was using to add further notes about her new patient Petra Pendine. Later, when the psychologist was in her proper office on Comraich Castle’s lower ground floor where the medical unit was set, she would enter them into the fresh file she’d created on her computer, which also contained individual records of all her clients. Calling patients ‘clients’ bemused her, but she’d become used to it.

She removed her black-framed glasses and leaned back in her cushioned chair, one wrist resting against the edge of the mahogany bureau’s desk flap, a Mont Blanc fountain pen dangling between her long slender fingers.

Next to the notes was the hard-copy file on Petra’s twin brother, Peter. The bond between the young man and his sister was troubling, to say the least. The brother had been waiting for the executive helicopter to arrive at the helipad not far from the castle walls. It was fortunate that the Gazelle carrying three passengers, plus the pilot and carefully packed pharmaceuticals, had reached its destination just as the mist had come rolling in from the sea otherwise landing would have been tricky, though not impossible.

Petra, who had the privilege of being in the seat next to the pilot, was completely revived since Prestwick and had virtually leapt from the machine the moment it settled. In her excited haste she’d forgotten to remove the mike and headphones that enabled passengers and pilot to speak to one another above the sounds of rotor and engine. The curled wire had jerked her head back, pulling her to a halt. She’d snatched them off and tossed them onto the Gazelle’s front seat, and had then run towards her brother without even crouching below the still-turning rotor arms, an involuntary if usually needless precaution against decapitation taken by most passengers.

She’d given a short, delighted shriek as her brother, who had been waiting by the landing pad since the moment he’d heard the jet had touched down at Prestwick, scampered towards her with arms open wide. They met, they hugged each other tightly, then had kissed, kissed full and passionately on the lips.

The psychologist had been briefed on Petra only a week ago and had spent a couple of days with her in the girl’s parents’ luxurious home near Regent’s Park; Delphine already knew Peter – he was one of her clients at Comraich. Drugs, insecurity and obsession were part of his bipolar condition, and sometimes violence was a major fault. In fact, six months ago he’d almost killed a man in Boujis, a trendy London nightclub, by smashing a bottle and then grinding the jagged end into the victim’s face, leaving him scarred for life. What made the matter unaccountable, and so much worse, was that the severely injured target was one of Peter’s best friends.

To avoid involving the law, even though the friend – now
ex
-friend – was left with only one good eye set in a face no longer handsome, a
huge
amount of money was paid as compensation by Peter’s billionaire father, and his parents also agreed that Peter would be locked away in a non-penal institution for many years. According to the brief given to Delphine, the attack was over a girl, and that girl was Petra.

Over the months and with regular psychological probing, Delphine found it almost impossible to get to the root of her client’s conscious and subconscious problems; on the face of it, Peter appeared to be a pleasant if rather arrogant young man, but one whose life so far had combined acts of extreme cruelty to others, including family pets, with more commendable traits such as extreme kindness towards people less fortunate than himself. When questioned about his relationship with Petra, he tended to be evasive. A sister who could be relied on to support her brother through thick and thin. Mutual hatred of their own father, coupled with a total disregard for their mother, had created a special bond between them. Certainly, Peter realized he would have had to serve a long prison sentence for the physical harm he’d wrought, but fortunately his father had not only extreme wealth, but power and influence too.

Arrangements had been made for Peter to disappear from society for a while (Delphine, unlike the spoilt young man, knew that it would be many, many years before he would be fit for release) and he’d agreed to be interned by people his father had had dealings with over the years, a powerful though covert association that could solve problems with the minimum amount of fuss, albeit at a high price.

Delphine still had difficulties with Peter, who, even after six months of psychoanalysis and therapy, continued to insist on one condition to ensure his co-operation in any programme of treatment: the presence of his sister. Delphine had thought it was just an example of the close bond between siblings, the uniqueness of the ‘twin connection’. She had been surprised when Peter’s father, whose business was in the mass production of titanium, had deemed it a favourable solution to his son’s problems. And even more perplexing, Petra had jumped at the idea, perhaps because of her own psychological issues and the fact that she truly loved her twin both emotionally and physically.

That kiss between them at the helicopter landing pad – a kiss so intense it had alarmed Delphine – had also given her fresh insight into their relationship. She’d realized that a further element had entered the frame, a factor that hadn’t yet emerged from her lengthy counselling sessions with Peter and one that explained his father’s attitude. It seemed that the twins’ parents were aware of their children’s incestuous relationship and now, cold-heartedly, they wanted to rid themselves of this blight, a perversity that they couldn’t begin to understand, one that could have had serious, and more than moral, consequences. So, at a very high price financially, they had washed their hands of their offspring. The parents’ inhibited attitude towards their degenerate progeny doubtlessly played some part in the complexity of the twins’ feelings for each other.

Delphine squeezed the inner corners of her deep brown eyes between finger and thumb. She could feel the tension headache growing worse and she prayed it wouldn’t turn into a serious migraine. Such attacks had once been the bane of her life, although she hadn’t suffered a full-throttle migraine cluster for some time, leading her to hope – and pray – that she might finally be free of this malady. Laying the fountain pen down and pushing her chair back, she rose from the bureau. Deep in thought, she slowly walked over to the window.

When she’d got to her room after the mercifully brief helicopter flight, she’d immediately changed into black fleece pull-ons and a mauve V-neck sweater, the sleeves of which were pushed up to the elbows, the soft material ruffled around her lower arms.

Her living quarters were compact, rather than cramped, with a tiny bathroom, bedroom, and sitting room squeezed onto the castle’s second floor with other renovated apartments. The bureau shared the main room with a mahogany chest of drawers on which stood a twin-branched table lamp with elegant cream shades. Despite renovation, an old brick fireplace with a green leather fender seat remained, and at one side there was a set of black Victorian fire irons. A landscape print occupied one wall. The sparsity of art was easily negated by the impressive window-framed view overlooking the sea, which was usually magnificent, with waves crashing madly against the rocky shoreline below the high vertical cliffs and great spotlessly white adult gannets plunging past the window or the slightly less impressive cormorants and shags swooping down on helpless prey. On a clear day she might see the hazy outline of the island of Arran across the Firth of Clyde, but today the sea was full of mists. Even with those mists and the greyness the wonderfully fresh, tangy air would usually have lifted her spirits, but not this time; today she felt strangely feeble. She’d assumed it was due to the sudden drop in adrenaline after the near-death incident, but now she began to wonder if it was not Comraich Castle itself. Arms folded, she closed her eyes as if to appease the gradually worsening headache by blocking the daylight. Instead, flashbacks of the almost-fatal plane crash crowded in on her.

With those images also came the memory of the man who had held her tight so that she wouldn’t be tossed around the aircraft’s cabin in free-fall, refusing to let go of her even though it seemed inevitable that they would all die.

Although she knew little of him, David Ash appeared to be a strange, impenetrable man, something she felt immediately when she set eyes on him after she and Petra had boarded the jet. He was certainly attractive in a dark, tousle-haired sort of way, but it was his eyes that puzzled her: they were a deep shade of blue and somehow they looked – well, they looked
haunted
, as if they’d witnessed events that were irrational, illogical. Yes, eyes that had truly
seen
ghosts, burdened with intimidating thoughts of them. A psychoanalysis would be interesting, to say the least, but she sensed that he bore secrets he would never tell.

Delphine looked out on a day that was darkened by cloud and mist and continued to wonder about the psychic investigator. She wanted to know more about him and why Petra, in her fraught state, had warned him that they – whoever
they
were – knew he was coming, presumably to Comraich. She—

There was a sudden brisk knock on the door, accompanied by the calling of her name.

‘Delphine, are you in there? Can I come in?’

The visitor was not unexpected and it was a confrontation that she’d been dreading.

‘You know the door isn’t locked, Rachael,’ the psychologist responded reluctantly. For whatever reason, none of the old-fashioned door locks on that floor had keys to lock or open them.

The panelled door opened and Rachael Krantz, Comraich’s senior nurse, came through. She was a tall woman and her strong-featured face was handsome rather than beautiful. Under a certain light her long dark-red hair could look like burnished copper. Today, it was loosely tied at the back, much like Delphine’s was at the moment. She wore a spotless white tunic, which reached below her knees. Her tights were also white, as were her functional, soft-leather, unscuffed shoes.

Rachael quickly crossed the carpeted floor and stopped only when she was barely two feet away from the startled psychologist, who stepped a few inches backwards to create space between them again. Rachael smiled as though she hadn’t noticed the reaction, her hazel eyes, flecked with light-brown shards, looking intently at Delphine.

For a moment, Delphine thought the taller woman was about to sweep her up into her arms.

‘I was worried about you,’ Rachael said, keeping her distance. ‘I heard about the problem with the plane and thought you might be traumatized. Why didn’t you look for me when you got back?’

Those fierce hazel eyes seemed to search Delphine’s mind and, not for the first time, the psychologist realized she was a little frightened of the tall nurse. Yet – and the young psychologist hated herself for accepting this – there was something undeniably seductive about Krantz, even to another woman.

‘I thought we might take an early lunch together. In the staff canteen, if you like, rather than the restaurant.’ Delphine often preferred the large canteen meant for nurses and the manual employees, rather than the more formal dining room inside the main part of the castle, which was usually used by heads of department and Comraich VIPs. Important clients also dined in the huge, round room, although some preferred to eat alone in their comfortable apartments, while others were kept under lock and key for the safety of all, including themselves.

‘I need to write more observation notes on our new client, Petra Pendine, while they’re fresh in my mind,’ Delphine replied.

‘It’s taken you all this time?’ The question was rudely challenging.

‘I showered and changed before I started my notes, so I really do have to get on with them.’

The senior nurse was hardly appeased, and it showed in her tone. ‘How did the girl react to the scare?’

‘Well, she’s already on fluoxetine hydrochloride, and I gave her one clonazepam when I collected her from home this morning,’ Delphine said calmly, ‘but I’m sure she’d been partying on coke or skunk last night – her last night of freedom before “incarceration”, as she likes to put it. I also gave her a shot of lorazepam for shock on the plane.’