Deadly Code (10 page)

Chapter 16

Glasgow dropped behind her like a cloud. Rhona slipped a CD in the drive and let the music envelop her escape. She took the Loch Lomond road at a steady pace, the beauty of the loch reminding her there was more to life than overtaking.

Sean had not called by the time she left and she had no idea where he was. She hadn't spoken to Chrissy either. Chrissy didn't need to be implicated in any of this, if things turned out for the worse.

Rhona tapped out the swift fiddle music on the steering wheel, then indulged in a bout of nostalgia as Duncan Chisholm's strings slowed to match the ripples of the wind on the loch.

This was what the American Diaspora craved. A sense of belonging to a past time and place. A landscape that created the soul and played it in bittersweet tunes your whole life long.

The further north she went the more the essence of the city fell away from her. She was going home. A home that no longer held her and hers. A home long forsaken but still there, its contours etched deep in her heart. Loch Lomond gave way to Glen Falloch, Crianlarich and then Rannoch Moor.

Today the sun was shining on Glencoe. It was not a place full of the sorrow of its tragic history but a place of tourists seeking the hot blood of highland conflict to make sense of their present.

Rhona stopped at the visitor centre and, as she drank a coffee, tried to imagine what Andre the American had made of it all.

Despite her cynicism, the atmosphere of Glencoe moved in on her like the Campbells on the MacDonalds. She was glad to leave the Valley of Weeping and descend towards Fort William, which was full of early tourists and rural weekenders eager for retail therapy. Forty-seven miles later, she skirted Morar sands and emerged in Mallaig. The ferry was in port, cars unloading in a steady stream onto the quay. Rhona headed for the Coffee Pot, an attempt to bring cafe society to downtown Mallaig.

Seven sailings a day, the girl who brought her order told her. Mallaig to Armadale, the scenic route to Skye. Rhona knew that already but she didn't want to spoil the girl's enthusiasm for talking to tourists, so she thanked her with a smile. Before she left the cafe she tried the mobile, which worked perfectly. She hadn't expected a connection. Chrissy answered almost immediately.

'Where are you? I've been phoning the flat all day.'

Rhona wasn't willing to say, even to Chrissy.

'I couldn't stay in the flat.'

Silence.

'Sissons is walking about with a bad smell under his nose,' Chrissy said.

'More dead bodies than he can handle?'

'Just another foot, washed up on a nice clean white beach in the inner Hebrides.'

'I'm off the case, Chrissy.'

'Like hell you are.'

There was a noise that meant someone had come into the lab. Chrissy obviously didn't want to speak in their presence. 'Thanks, that will be fine,' she said, and hung up.

Rhona wished she could have asked about the results of the tests on the hand. Wished she knew whether the hand and foot were a match. Wished Sean had not fucked-up so badly. Wished she was back in her lab.

The Small Isles peeped at her out of the mist halfway across the Sound of Sleat. Rum, Canna, Eigg and Muck. Hard-to-forget names in a hard-to-forget landscape. Over the sea to Skye. If only she had a pound for every time that song in memory of Bonnie Prince Charlie had been sung, she could retire.

As the ferry docked at Armadale pier, Rhona had to admit why she had come the scenic route. If she had gone further north and crossed by the bridge, she would have had to make a conscious decision to go to the south of the island to look at the cottage. It was better this way. Driving past, knowing she could stop if she wanted to.

She had not set foot on the island since her father's funeral. Even now, two years later, she sometimes had to stop herself from dialling the number. After all, dead men don't answer the phone.

Rhona pulled off the road and found the path that skirted the hill and led down to the beach. She had intended to rush past the cottage, head for Broadford and stay the night there. Now it didn't seem so difficult to see it. Maybe she could stay nearby after all.

The path to the beach was well trodden and the front door of the house and the boat shed had been painted a bright Saltire blue. Rhona was suddenly glad she had agreed to rent the cottage to Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic college, for one of its teachers. Whoever had moved in was taking care of the place.

A young man came out of the boat shed, whistling. He didn't see Rhona at first and stopped to gaze over the water to Knoydart. Rhona followed his gaze.

'The view from Arainn Chalium Chille across to Knoydart has been described as the most stirring in the world,' he said, acknowledging her presence. 'That's what they told me when I applied for the job at the college.' His voice was low but definitely North Atlantic. 'To be truthful, it was probably why I took it.'

Rhona did a quick calculation and came up with Cape Breton. The Gaelic College had strong links with a similar establishment in Cape Breton. Exchanges were commonplace.

'I always thought the view from the cottage was even better than the view from the college.'

'You know the cottage?' He looked round at it affectionately.

'I know it well. I lived here once.'

'Then you'd better come inside and have a coffee.'

The last time Rhona had stepped through the doorway, she had been clearing the cottage of her father's things. It had taken her a year after his death to do that. She had carted everything to Glasgow, given his clothes to a charity shop and stacked her shelves with his books.

Now the shelves in the living room were filled with books again. Rhona ran an eye over the Gaelic titles.

The young man brought her a mug of coffee from the kitchen and waved her to a seat beside the newly lit fire. He had made the room his own, but the old comfort was still there.

'I'm Norman MacLeod,' he told her, 'from St Ann's Bay, Cape Breton Island.'

'Rhona MacLeod, sometime Skye, now Glasgow.'

They shook hands, laughing at the coincidence of their shared name.

'How long have you been here?'

'Since September.'

They talked about the Gaelic College and the resurgence in the language and culture of the Gaels. Her host was almost evangelical in his enthusiasm for the language

As she left, he recommended a new B&B five miles further on. Rhona had already made up her mind to head for Broadford, but let him go back to his desk to collect the leaflet anyway.

She turned back when she reached the car. Norman MacLeod had followed her progress and was giving her a last wave as she climbed in and drove off.

When she reached Broadford, Rhona drove straight through and headed on to catch the ferry at Sconser. She phoned the Raasay Post Office from the ferry terminal and asked if there was a room free. Mrs MacMurdo sounded surprised and delighted to get a visitor so early in the season.

The crossing took fifteen minutes. Rhona left her car and went up on deck to take in the view. Raasay House,
Taigh Mor an teilean
, 'The Big House on the Island', stood in the southwest corner, May sunshine washing its gracious facade with a golden light. On the slope of lush green grass that led to Raasay Sound, distant figures ran about as if in a game.

Andre had reminded her of its story. When the Raasay MacLeods chose to support the Jacobite cause, government troops burned down all homes on the island, including Raasay House, then set about raping the women and murdering the men.

'It didn't stop the local people smuggling Prince Charles Edward Stuart onto the island and off again in his search for a way back to France.'

'Americans have a romantic view of Scottish history,' she had retorted.

'And you don't?'

It was hard not to, once you were here.

Rhona waited in the car for her turn to drive up the ramp. She'd returned to the islands every time a major change happened in her life. Maybe that was part of the reason she was here now.

Instead of turning left for the village, she pulled into the ferry car park and fished out a card.

She texted Dr Lynne Franklin that, if the offer of a job still stood, she was open to discussion.

Chapter 17

They had been lucky to get this far unnoticed.

Spike looked up at the towering cliffs and tried to remember exactly where he had landed the dinghy the last time he had been here. He had escaped for a weekend's fishing. Anything to get away from the rising tide of his father's frustration and anger. Calum was ill again. While his mother walked the floor with his baby brother, his father cursed the genes that had given him such a sickly child.

The sun was sinking rapidly now and a snare of panic caught at Spike. He ignored it and pulled the rope towards him, curving the dinghy into the wind. The pebbled strip of shore hung under the cliffs. When he felt the bump as the rudder scraped bottom, he slipped over the side into the water thick with seaweed, so brutally cold he gasped.

Esther looked wan but she rallied as he began to pull ashore. She laid Duncan in the stern and plopped over the side to help him. The cliffs cut out the dying rays of the sun and Spike saw, despite her encouraging smile, that her lips were blue.

They pulled the dinghy as far under the cliffs as they could, then Esther lifted up the silent child and kissed his startled face. Spike hoisted the bags on his back, conscious of how far they still had to go before they could light a fire and get warm. His hands and arms were aching, a dull rheumatic pain that set his teeth on edge. He looked down at his hands, but they were mere shadows in the fading light.

Spike made Esther climb the steep path in front of him, worried she would slip and fall. She was bending to balance the weight of the baby, placing her feet carefully on the uneven surface. When they reached the top, they both fell into the heather and breathed in great gulps of air.

It took more than half-an-hour of walking through the twisted heather stems before they reached the corrie. Whoever wrote songs about marching through heather, thought Spike, had never tried to walk in the stuff.

Behind him Esther was humming a tune. It had worked like a lullaby, because Duncan was asleep, his face squashed sideways to her back.

They had been climbing since the cliff edge. Head down to negotiate the dull brown knots of heather, Esther had been unaware of what was unfolding around her. Spike waited for her to catch up so that he might watch her when she raised her eyes and took in where she was.

The first time he had found this spot, Spike had been almost blinded by anger and fear. He had left the house before he did something stupid. Before he smashed everything in that room. Before he hit the man he called father.

Then he reached this place.

The setting sun was throwing its last rays at the loch, staining the surface red. Spike watched Esther's delight blossom, knowing how she felt.

A sudden lightness filled his heart, stirring him on.

'Come on,' he said. 'Come and see your new home.'

The blackhouse was surrounded by early grass, a green patch in a sea of brown heather. Once it had been a croft, with a family and animals and crops grown in the runrig system that still rippled the hill behind. Now only the left-hand section was wind and waterproof. Spike had made it that way on his various visits, and he'd brought food and bedding and fishing gear. At first it had been fun, like camping out. Then it became more serious.

He ignored the familiar fear that dogged his memory and went inside. The fire was set in the hearth, although the kindling looked damp. He substituted some windswept heather and drier sticks from the bunch in the corner.

When he lit it, the flames shot up in a wild crackle. He boxed the heather in with peats and went looking for Esther. She was sitting outside, watching the last light on the loch as if it would never return.

'You okay?'

'Yes,' she said and he knew she meant it.

Whatever happened now, he didn't want it to happen anywhere else.

They stripped off and hung their wet clothes over a line strung between the beams near the fire. Spike pulled out dry clothes from the backpack, but Esther chose to wrap a blanket round herself instead. Duncan was already asleep on a bundle of heather, having gorged his startled face on two tins of baby food. Spike suddenly realised he hadn't heard him whinge once since he'd given him to Esther to look after. Having a mother was obviously a novelty he was enjoying.

Spike re-stacked the peats and told Esther he was going outside for more heather for the beds. She nodded, not taking her eyes from the glow of the fire.

The loch had descended into blackness, a dark crater under the navy sky. A curlew called to him across the water, a long cry that echoed around the walls of the natural amphitheatre. Spike stopped to listen, hearing his own cry in the bird's lonely call.

He filled an old creel, killing time before he had to go back into the cottage. He sat down on a rock, glad he couldn't see his hands in the darkness. The marks were getting more noticeable. Like Lady Macbeth, he couldn't rub them off. He laughed suddenly and the echo threw itself back at him, a mocking hyena.

'Spike.'

Esther was standing in the doorway, firelight shaping the blanket round her shoulders. He could see her clearly but she glanced about, seeing nothing in the sudden blackness.

'Coming,' he said, and lifted the creel.

She woke with a cry. Spike was still awake, but the haunting quality of the cry threw him into a panic. Esther's mouth was moving quickly, babbling, answering some voice he couldn't hear. Her eyes were blank, viewing another place.

'Hey. It's alright.' He crawled towards her.

She turned, registering his presence.

'They were there again,' she said, her voice small like a child's.

Spike put his arms about her, wishing he could squeeze the horror from her body. She shuddered and pressed her face against his chest.

'Spike.'

'What?'

'Don't leave me.'

'Never,' he said, and meant it.

She breathed out against him, a deep sighing breath. When her face tipped up to look at him trustingly, Spike bent and placed his lips gently on hers.

When she fell asleep, he slipped his arm from under her head and stood up. In the faint light from the fire, Spike examined the body that had stupidly entered hers. His father had been right. He was an abomination. An abomination that should not be allowed to live and must never reproduce.

He crumpled to the floor in front of the dying fire. In the corner, the baby whimpered and a small fist waved in the air.

Spike buried his head in his hands and wept.