Gently North-West (19 page)

Flora McCracken stalked ahead without wasting a back-glance at Gently. She had a springing ease in her step that seemed to mock at the law of gravity. Though so tall, she had the perfect body of some well-developed wild creature, a deer, a snow-leopard. Her footing was rapid but very sure.

They reached the gully. She went straight on up it, never slacking her pace for a moment. Her figure, lean in the jeans and buttoned jacket, went swinging rhythmically away from Gently. Gently let her go. He tackled the gully at his own deliberate pace. When he reached the top, panting and streaming, he found her sitting on a boulder, cool and unblown.

‘Is that the best you can do, Englishman,’ she sneered. ‘I wouldna want to take to the braes wi’ you often. I’m thinkin’ your roast beef is no’ what it was when you were makin’ such work at Culloden.’

‘I’m out of practice,’ Gently said. ‘Up here, you can run rings round me, Miss McCracken.’

‘Ay, is it comin’ to you now?’ she said. ‘But that should have been thought of before you ventured.’

She sprang off the boulder and marched on, leaving Gently to wipe his sweat. But now they had climbed on to a heathery top and had a fairly flat section before them. Behind them the Laggart plateau lay partly in view, ahead a range of craggy cliffs. To the right reared the crooked, alp-like peak with its dull, unsunned snow-in-June.

After a while Flora McCracken slowed and permitted Gently to draw abreast of her.

‘An’ do you feel it quite safe up here, ma man,’ she said. ‘When your heid is so full o’ so many great secrets?’

‘Pretty safe,’ Gently said. ‘That eagle’s still flying over Glenny.’

‘But Glenny is Glenny,’ Flora McCracken said. ‘An’ there’s nought on Laggart Braes but crows. An’ Laggart crows are hungry creatures, always ravenin’ after carrion.’

‘I’ll back the eagle,’ Gently said. ‘I imagine he’s used to dealing with crows.’

Flora McCracken stopped, looked carefully all round her. ‘I canna get sight of an eagle,’ she said.

She kept close to him. They walked on.

‘Let me tell you a tale, Englishman,’ she said. ‘It’s about a handsome chiel an’ a rich ane, who was for settin’ himself up in the hills.’

‘Did he come from Glasgow?’ Gently asked.

‘Ay, from thereabouts,’ she said. ‘But he was a proper man for a’ that, with a dark eye that rinned through ye. An’ he was strong, wi’ mowin’ shoulders an’ a neck like a young bull – the lassies were wild for him – he was marrit to a mouse of a female he caredna a rush for.’

‘Rich, handsome,’ Gently said. ‘And a patriot too, I’ve no doubt.’

‘You may weel say so. It was kent an’ held o’ him he would lead the motion against the southron. He could speak het an’ strang, baith at council an’ on the stand – he had a voice would sing in your bluid – you couldna withstan’ him – you wouldna try. He was elected out o’ hand to be leader next to the great chief. He was chief in his own right over the lealest district o’ them a’.’

‘He had a lieutenant,’ Gently said. ‘In this very leal district.’

‘He had sich a man,’ Flora McCracken said, ‘as would give his heart’s bluid – or take another’s.’

‘And they were, naturally, often together,’ Gently said. ‘And this handsome patriot met his lieutenant’s family – four hopeful sons with patriotic names, and a fiercely patriotic daughter.’

Dinna scoff at me,’ Flora McCracken scowled. ‘I winna thole your scornin’, Englishman. What if Donnie did cast his een ma way – who so fit as masel’ to go beside him?’

‘Who indeed.’ Gently said. ‘My apologies.’

‘I didna ken the weakness in him i’ those days. I didna ken his heart was false an’ fickle – his brain deluded by his anglified upbring. I took him for the man I saw walk in wi’ his honour an’ loveliness upon him – och, it was that man I loved sae lang, sae true – an’ who gied me the same coin. Ma feet didna touch the braes when I went ower the tops to Donnie. I never saw the heather sae fair, never heard the birds sing sae sweet. An’ this lang time – it would be three summers, a’ goin’ by like a dream – was never a cloud came between us – never a harsh word or look. I had it – I had it. It doesna signify where the warld is goin’ now.’

They had come to the cliffs and to a second gully, even more steep than the first. Flora McCracken led slowly into it, her eyes staring ahead.

‘There were two men,’ she said. ‘Two Donnie Dunglasses. Ane I loved an’ he loved me. Ane is livin’ wherever I go, he canna be choked in any grave. Ane is walkin’ on the brae-side an’ by the burnie an’ through the trees. I canna see a windflower blowin’ but Donnie is smilin’ at me there. There’s a sound o’ him in the breeze an’ a warmth o’ him in the sun an’ a look o’ him in the morn an’ a feel o’ him in the dark. I couldna have harmed Donnie any mair than harmed masel’. If Donnie were scratched, ma ain flesh would bleed. They say he’s deid, but it’s a black lie, an’ ye may cast it in their teeth – for I’m livin’ yet. An’ so is ma Donnie.’

She went on climbing, but slackly, allowing Gently to keep pace.

‘But what of the other Dunglass,’ he panted. ‘The one who ran after Poppy Frazers.’

He saw her lithe body jerk. ‘So ye ken that, do ye?’ she said.

‘We know he kept a woman in Balmagussie. A high-class prostitute from Glasgow.’

She hung on a moment. ‘Ay,’ she said. ‘Your English nose would lead you to that. There’s a need – there’s a need. We’re no’ so far off it now.’

‘When did you find out?’ Gently panted.

‘What can that matter to you?’ she flung back. ‘You’ll no be tatlin’ about it to Blayne or your southron hizzie wi’ her painted chops.’

‘I’d say you found out recently – last week.’

‘An’ if I did – what then?’

‘Dunglass had changed. You would have noticed it. You’d have been spying on his movements.’

She climbed a few yards silently. ‘Ay, Donnie had changed a’ right,’ she said. ‘He was down in Glesca in May – he wasna the same after that. But I didna spy on him, southron. I wouldn’t have spied upon Donnie. I may have guessed – I may have grieved – but I didna go searchin’ for his secrets.’

‘Who told you, then?’

‘There’s aye ane to bring the bad news.’

‘Your family knew?’

‘Ma brothers kent it. I wasna ignorant lang after.’

‘What day was this?’

‘Jist the Tuesday. Jist the Tuesday after the meetin’. Jist the day Donnie turned a traitor an’ a’ the truths were comin’ out. An’ I couldna believe it – an’ I was takin’ his part – an’ Wattie ups an’ ca’s me a name. An’ I askit him what was his meanin’ – an’ he was ower-gleefu’ to tell me. An’ I kent . . . I kent . . .’

She hauled herself up to a narrow platform at the top of the gully.

‘What was it you knew, Miss McCracken?’

‘I kent I’d be killin’ that other Donnie.’

She stood waiting for him on the platform, her back pressed against a shaft of rock. They had reached the divide. Beyond the platform was a sheer drop to the Strathtudlem Braes. It commanded a wide prospect. The strath, the village, the roads leading in and out, the bare tops above the forest, the Lodge, the Stane. Near the shaft where Flora McCracken stood a trough or cleft wore its way down the cliff-face. It looked a desperate sort of thoroughfare, but there was no other to the tops below. Gently climbed cautiously on to the platform.

‘Luik, luik,’ Flora McCracken said. ‘Feast your een on the bonnie outluik, the sweet Glen o’ Strathtudlem.’

‘It’s a good observation point,’ Gently said. ‘Better than the Stane – it includes the Stane.’

‘Does it no’,’ Flora McCracken said. ‘There’s little ye canna see from here. An’ many’s the day I’ve stood watchin’, many the night an’ the gloamin’ – in the het sun, the dashin’ rain, the whirlin’ ghosties o’ the snaw. I have stood here grey an’ stiff but wi’ ma heart boundin’ like a bird – an’ I have stood wi’ that same heart bangin’ an’ burstin’ in ma breest.’

‘You’d have seen McGuigan’s meetings with Mrs Dunglass.’

‘Tell me what I wouldna have seen.’

‘You knew where he hid his car. You were waiting, watching there – Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Friday.’

‘Ay, Friday. An’ Friday he came, as I kent he would if I kept ma patience. It was late, late, an’ still he sat there, glarin’ awa’ at his paper. Then he got out an’ luiked around, as though he half-kent there was a watcher. Then he jist closed the door quietly an’ took the auld path up the braes.’

‘Those were your finger-prints on the phone – and on the letter pushed under my door.’

‘I warned you, Englishman – you canna say other. But you jist came rushin’ on to your fate.’

‘You phoned Dunglass. You told him his wife had a lover waiting for her on the braes. You told him to make an excuse to go out, but to double back and to meet you at the Stane.’

‘Ay,’ she said. ‘His legs should have carried him there though his brain kent nothin’ o’ the affair – it was there we met an’ there we loved a thousand an’ ane nights together. An’ when I saw his dark een – when I heard his voice – I thought I never should get to ma purpose. But he was cauld. His only concern was his reputation an’ his pride.’

‘McGuigan came.’

‘You ken he did. You were sittin’ below wi’ your London hizzie. He was watchin’ you an’ watchin’ the house, an’ the bit o’ the track where it comes through the trees. Then you got up an’ saw him, which he didna like, an’ he pulled back, though he was still watchin’ – an’ you went aff down, an he went down, an’ Donnie’s woman jumps into his arms.’

‘And Dunglass went to the Stane.’

‘Ay. We were hid in those trees you can see. I fetchit Donnie to the Stane an’ bid him watch what would happen. An’ he sees a’, an’ it was bitter to him, an’ I ken he would have slain them baith. But he didna, he didna, for ma ain dirk was goin’ into his back.’

Her hand had been resting under the jacket. Now she suddenly snatched it out. It was grasping a short dagger with a wedge-shaped blade, a blade japanned with dark stains. Her eyes glittered at Gently. She raised the dagger. ‘Ma ain dirk, Englishman,’ she said. ‘Wi’ the bluid o’ ane traitor glimmerin’ on it – an’ about to mix wi’ that of another.’

‘Put your weapon down, Miss McCracken,’ Gently said.

‘Too late!’ she cried. ‘You didna lack for a warnin’. But you wouldna be warned, wouldna be told – you would have it. An’ here it comes!’

She sprang at Gently with such suddenness that he had barely time to strike down the blow, while the force of the assault threw him back on the rocks. She went down with him. He lay precariously with his head over the edge, grappling for her wrist with one hand, jabbing at her face with the other. But her strength and ferocity were amazing. Her fingers buried in his throat. With a series of sharp, violent snatches she freed her wrist from his grasp. Then the dirk glinted dully above him and he tensed his arm for a desperate parry; but before she could strike something exploded, and the dirk went spinning into the void.

Flora McCracken leapt back with a piercing scream and stood working her fingers and staring wild-eyed. Behind a rockrim, only a few yards distant, McGuigan was leaning with a smoking rifle. She screamed again. She darted past Gently, launched into the gully and disappeared. McGuigan watched her, his rifle pointing, but made no move to interfere.

He cocked a leg over the rim, came sliding down to land on the platform beside Gently. Gently scrambled up. His neck was bleeding and marked with a row of angry bruises. McGuigan looked at them.

‘Man,’ he said. ‘You shouldna go wrestlin’ with a wild-cat.’

He blew across the muzzle of the rifle.

‘Now all you’ve got to do is catch her,’ he said.

Gently pressed his neck tenderly and looked at the blood on his fingers.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘The situation was beginning to get awkward.’

‘But are you not surprised, man,’ McGuigan said. ‘With me poppin’ up like an old blackcock – when for all you kent I was takin’ my ease in the parlour at Knockie?’

Gently gave him a grin. ‘I wasn’t surprised,’ he said. ‘I had you in my mirror from Torlinnhead. If I hadn’t thought you were tailing me up here, I might not have pushed the business so far.’

‘Och, well,’ McGuigan said, his blue eyes abashed. ‘I just reckoned on havin’ my own back with you – you tailed me fine from Knockie to Glenny – I don’t ken yet what way you did it.’

‘Professional secret,’ Gently said.

‘Ay – if that’s a term for invisibility. I didn’t see
you
in my mirror, man, when I was crossin’ the bare tops.’

Gently shrugged, went down on his knees to peer over the airy edge of the platform. Flora McCracken’s dirk lay plainly visible on a seam of turf, a hundred feet below.

‘I’ll fetch it for you,’ McGuigan said, also peering. ‘It’s no’ but a scramble down there. An’ I’m thinkin’ with the bluid on one end, the prints on the other, it doesn’t leave Miss Flora with muckle room for manoeuvre. Man, give us your hand. You’ve lifted an ugly weight off my shoulders – off Mary’s too. You’ll no lack for friends when your feet are strayin’ in this direction.’

He grasped and shook Gently’s hand firmly, drawing him close as he did so. Then his eyes began to twinkle and he gave a rumbling chuckle.

‘All the same, ma mannie – as I am distant kin o’ the McCrackens – there was intermarriage, you ken, about the time o’ the Union – an’ Miss Flora bein’ the spunkie, sonsie lass you have seen – I’m hopin’ she leads you a dance through the heather before you clap her into a cell.’

‘She’ll find Blayne waiting for her below,’ Gently said.

‘An’ waitin’ is the word,’ McGuigan said. ‘You mustn’t suppose she’ll go trippin’ down there an’ slap bang into his arms. No, no, man – she’s mountain-raised – she’ll always keek before she leaps – she’ll be away into the back-country, no doubt o’ that, an’ you will not soon pick up with her there.’

‘We can seek her with dogs,’ Gently said shortly.

‘An’ where will that get you?’ McGuigan said. ‘She’ll ken as much about the way o’ dogs as the dogs do themselves.’

‘We can comb the area with military – use helicopters.’

‘Ay, it’ll be a grand sight,’ McGuigan said. ‘But my money’ll still be on Miss Flora. This is an uncommon country for gettin’ lost in.’

‘Then what would you recommend?’