Never Go Back (22 page)

‘You guys are serious about this?’ Howlett still seemed to doubt, despite several repetitions, that they meant what they had said — what Harry had said, at any rate, with Chipchase’s less than wholehearted support.

‘We’re going to Vatersay, Mark. With or without you. We mean to find out what this is really all about. And that’s where all the clues lead. Vatersay — and Haskurlay.’

Yeah. I guess they do. OK.’ A widening of Howlett’s eyes signalled the decision he had reached. ‘I’m in.’

‘Good.’

‘When d’you want to leave?’

‘Sooner the better.’

‘I checked up on how to get there a few days ago.’ Howlett pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his hip pocket. ‘It’s … quite a drag.’ He squinted at his notes. ‘There’s a car ferry to Barra from Oban most days. It’s a five-hour trip. Or you can fly… via Glasgow. But that could be pricey.’

‘And tricky,’ observed Chipchase. ‘Airlines have a habit of insisting on ID.’

‘So?’

‘We’re a little short of… documentation.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Does the ferry run on Sundays?’ Harry asked, eager to rein in Howlett’s curiosity.

‘Er, let’s see…’ More squinting. Yeah. It does.’

‘What time?’

‘Er… fifteen ten.’

‘And how long would it take to drive to Oban?’

‘It’s about five hundred miles. I guess… ten hours.’

‘In your rust-wagon that’d feel like ten days,’ Chipchase remarked.

‘Hey, I’m not forcing you to take a ride with me. If you’ve a smarter motor to—’

‘We haven’t,’ said Harry, glaring at Chipchase. ‘The point is, Mark, if we leave tonight… we can be on that ferry tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Yeah. I suppose.’

‘You said you were in. And time’s pressing.’

‘Pressing hard,’ muttered Chipchase. ‘Take our word for it.’

‘All right, all right.’ Howlett rubbed his face. ‘OK. Let’s do it. Let’s go.’

‘Great,’ said Harry.

‘You know it makes sense,’ Chipchase added through gritted teeth.

‘We’ll have to swing past my place so I can pack a bag,’ said Howlett. ‘What about you two?’

‘No baggage beyond this,’ said Harry, pointing to the small rucksack Jackie had bought to hold toiletries and a change of clothes.

‘Except the mental kind, of course,’ muttered Chipchase.

‘No car. No ID. No baggage to collect.’ Howlett pondered their suspicious lack of trappings. ‘You two really do travel light, don’t you?’

‘You have to at our age, Marky,’ said Chipchase. ‘Otherwise you’d never travel at all. And then where would you be? Tucked up in bed at home with a mug of cocoa and not a care in the world.’ He drained his glass. ‘Can’t have that, can we?’

—«»—«»—«»—

Howlett did not invite them in when they reached his flat, to the rear of a row of shops near Bermondsey Tube station. He said he would be gone only a few minutes, then vanished through a gate next to the dented, graffiti-blotched door of a seemingly abandoned garage. It was the first chance Chip-chase had been presented with to give Harry his uncensored opinion of the journey they were about to embark on. And he did not waste the chance.

‘The Outer bloody Hebrides, Harry? Ends of the bloody Earth, more like. Is taking off there really such a smart move?’

‘Maybe not. But it’s the least futile. It’s odds on Ailsa’s hiding out with her brother on Vatersay. Howlett’s girlfriend could well be with her. He hasn’t said so, but that’s really why he’s agreed to go. Because he hopes they’re hiding together.’

‘From what?’

‘We’ll ask them.’

‘Great idea, Harry. A hum-bloody-dinger, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘They already know what we’d have learned if we’d been able to decrypt that disk, Barry. We have to speak to them.’

‘Fine. So, let’s suppose we track them down. And they agree to share the secret with us. Has it occurred to you — has the thought flitted across the farther horizons of your see-a-windmill-let’s-take-a-bloody-tilt-at-it mind — that knowing what the secret is could be a whole sight more dangerous than not knowing?’

‘Yes,’ Harry replied, surprised by how calm he felt. ‘Of course it has.’

‘Oh, good.’ Chipchase fell silent for a moment, then added, ‘That’s reassuring.’

—«»—«»—«»—

Harry’s calmness, as it turned out, was not destined to last the night. Several hours later, during a stop at Sandbach services on the M6, he called Donna. She did not answer the phone. But it was answered. By someone whose voice he recognized very well: their old friend, Makepeace Steiner.

‘Hi, Harry.’

‘Makepeace? What are you doing there? Donna never mentioned you were paying a visit.’

‘Kind of a last-minute arrangement. Donna asked if I could look after Daisy for a few days. And I don’t need to remind you of all people how many favours I owe Donna, so—’

‘She’s not there?’

‘No, Harry, she surely isn’t.’

‘Then… where is she?’

‘Somewhere over the Rockies. On a plane heading your way.’

‘What?’

‘She wouldn’t tell me what’s going on any more than I expect you will, but it was pretty clear she was worried. About you. With good cause, I take it.’

‘Oh God.’

‘Thought so.’

‘I asked her to stay there. Pleaded with her.’

‘She’s a stand-by-your-man kinda gal, Harry. You should know that.’

‘I do. Worse luck.’

‘Are you OK?’

‘Don’t I sound it?’

‘Since you ask… Not really.’

‘It must be a bad line.’

‘Yeah. Sure thing.’

‘Before she left… did Donna say anything about a bloke called Marvin Samuels? He was… looking into something for her. Well, for me, actually.’

‘She never mentioned him.’

‘Or about a drug called… MRQS?’

‘Nope. Not a word. But she can give you an update herself tomorrow. Her flight’s due into Heathrow at two p.m. your time. She said she’d go straight from the airport to Swindon. And that’s where you are, right?’

Harry steeled himself. ‘Yes. I’m in Swindon.’

‘So, what’s the problem?’

‘No problem.’ Harry suppressed a groan. ‘None at all.’

They were nearing the Scottish border as dawn broke, a windless, mizzly morning revealing itself in ever paler shades of grey. Harry had still not decided what to say to Donna when he phoned her, as phone her he must, before she reached Swindon and found 37 Falmouth Street a burnt-out ruin. She was somewhere over the Atlantic now, her mobile switched off, decisively out of contact, asleep perhaps — or more likely wide awake and thinking of him, even as he was thinking of her. What had she learned from Samuels? What had prompted her to fly to Harry’s rescue? What did she know that he did not?

‘Want something to read now it’s light?’ Howlett asked suddenly. He was hunched beside Harry at the wheel of the Fiesta, gazing ahead along the unwinding ribbon of road. Chipchase lay asleep behind them, sprawled across the back seat, his snores drowned by the noise of the engine and the babble of the latest radio station Howlett had tuned to. ‘I brought with me the report on Haskurlay Karen wrote as part of her dissertation at Leeds. It’ll give you most of the known facts about the island. Interested?’

‘You bet.’

‘OK. It’s in my bag in the boot. I’ll dig it out when we stop for breakfast.’

—«»—«»—«»—

The breakfast stop was not long in coming. A wash, a shave, a fry-up and several strong coffees were had in virtual silence at Gretna services, then Howlett went outside to phone in sick to the trade magazine he worked for. This offered Harry the chance he had been waiting for to give Chipchase the news from Vancouver.

‘She’s on her way?’ Chipchase spluttered through the fumes of his post-bacon-and-eggs cigarette.

‘Even as we speak.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘Yeah. Which there’ll be to pay when she reaches Swindon.’

‘You need to head her off at the pass, Harry old cock.’

‘How do you suggest I do that?’

‘Well…’ Chipchase applied his mind to the problem. ‘There’s Jackie, I suppose. We could ask her to meet Donna at Heathrow and explain you only kept her in the dark about the fire so as not to put the wind up her and that… you and me have had to…’

‘Yes? What exactly have we had to do, Barry?’

‘OK. Let’s regroup. Jackie meets her, fills her in on the fire but assures her you’re fine — we’re fine, in case she’s two bits bloody bothered about how old Chipchase is faring — and invites her to stay at her place, pending word from us, which we’ve promised there’ll be… as soon as… possible.’

‘She’ll think I’m trying to avoid speaking to her.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No. Of course not. It’s just…’

‘If you do, I bet you’ll end up telling her where we’re going and why. She won’t let you get away with anything less than the truth and once your over-developed husbandly conscience kicks in…’

‘I don’t want her coming after us, Barry. It’s too…’

‘Dangerous is the word you’re groping for, Harry.’

‘Let’s just say… risky.’

‘Whatever we say, the only way you can be sure she won’t follow us is by staying incommunicado.’

‘It’s not as simple as that. She might have found out something about MRQS. Something we need to know.’

‘Or she might not have.’ Chipchase took a drag on his cigarette and studied Harry through a slowly exhaled lungful of smoke. ‘It’s your call.’

—«»—«»—«»—

It was indeed Harry’s call. He made it a few minutes later, from one of the service area’s payphones. Jackie responded surprisingly well to being woken from her beauty sleep early on a Sunday morning with a thinly reasoned request to cancel whatever else she had planned for the afternoon and drive to Heathrow to collect an unexpected house guest off the two o’clock flight from Vancouver. But she had a warning to give as well.

‘Donna will realize why you’re staying out of touch soon enough, Harry. You have to give me something more to tell her.’

‘Tell her I’ll phone… tomorrow.’

‘What time tomorrow?’

‘I don’t know. It depends.’

‘What on?’

‘I don’t know that either. But tomorrow… without fail.’

—«»—«»—«»—

They drove on north. Harry started reading Karen Snow’s Haskurlay report, grateful for anything that might distract him from the subterfuge he had been forced to resort to. There was not much he could be sure of. But the overriding need to keep Donna out of whatever was waiting for them at the end of their journey constituted one certainty he could cling to. He tried to concentrate.

HASKURLAY

Summary Report of Study Party Visit (Department of Archaeology & Prehistory, University of Leeds), April 2001, by Karen Snow.

Haskurlay lies 13km SSW of Barra, in the Outer Hebrides. It covers an area of 415 ha and has a maximum height of 238m. It is composed mostly of gneiss, with some granite. Its last human inhabitants left in 1910. It is owned by the National Trust for Scotland, who acquired it in 2000 from a syndicate of Barra crofters, who grazed sheep there.

The cliffs on the western side of the island are 150m high in places and are an active breeding site for various sea-birds, including guillemots, kittiwakes and skuas. There is also a colony of puffins on the island. There are two inland summits of more than 200m. Between them, grouped around an east-facing bay, are the heavily overgrown ruined cottages of the deserted village.

The purpose of the study party visit was to examine the remains of ancient human occupation to be found on the island, in particular a 7m high burial mound located on the northern side of the bay. It is unclear whether this is a neolithic structure or of later origin. Tradition has it that a large stone circle stood at the opposite end of the bay until it was demolished by the villagers in the 18th century, the stones being incorporated in the walls of their cottages and bothies. This suggests active neolithic occupation. Unfortunately, no trace of the circle now remains. Several stones near the ruined chapel bear Pictish carvings, however. The mound might therefore date from the Pictish period. The island was presumably also occupied at different stages by Celts and Vikings, though there is little or no visible evidence of this. The chapel itself is a 19th century structure.

The remit of the study party was to excavate a portion of the burial mound and to recover sufficient ossified human remains to facilitate a more definite dating of its origin. Unfortunately, for reasons outside the study party’s control, this project had to be abandoned shortly after initial excavation had begun in what appeared to be a disturbed area of the mound. As a result, no ancient material was removed for analysis and dating of the mound remains speculative.

It was decided, in the interests of making best use of the study party’s time, to leave Haskurlay following the abandonment of the excavation and to carry out a survey of known burial cairns on the neighbouring islands of Mingulay and Berneray. These have, of course, been adequately surveyed in the past and no new findings were therefore anticipated. (See separate report for details.) It is to be hoped that a future study party can return to Haskurlay and implement a definitive dating of the mound. When that might be possible is presently unknown.

Harry read the report through again to be sure he had not missed something, then handed it to Chipchase with a warning that he should not hope to learn anything valuable from it.

‘You wouldn’t even know why the dig was abandoned if Karen’s account was all you had to go on.’

‘It’s a piece of academic writing,’ said Howlett, snappishly enough to suggest he did not like anyone to criticize his girlfriend, however mildly. ‘What do you expect?’

‘You promised me “most of the known facts about Haskurlay”, as I recall.’

‘And that’s what you’ve got.’ Howlett shot Harry a grim little smile. ‘There just aren’t many of them.’

The hump-backed hills of Barra and Vatersay came into view as the Clansman car ferry sailed into the setting sun that evening. It was, in its way, a beautiful sight, the last land before Labrador silhouetted against a golden, cloud-barred sky. Chipchase for one, however, was in neither mood nor condition to appreciate it, having complained of seasickness ever since the ship had cleared the Sound of Mull and misgivings about the trip for rather longer.

Harry shared many of those misgivings, but did his best to stifle them. Tracking down Ailsa Redpath was their best if not only chance of unravelling the mystery they were caught up in. They were due to return to Police HQ in Aberdeen on Tuesday. If they did not, they would be officially on the run. There was, accordingly, no time to be lost. And the possibility that they were wasting what little remained of it was not to be contemplated.

—«»—«»—«»—

The Clansman performed a slow, elegant turn as it entered the harbour of Castlebay. This gave Harry and Barry a panoptical view of the hills of Barra; of the modest, mostly modern houses of the island’s capital strung out around the shore; of the fortress built on an islet in the bay that supplied the town’s name; and of the lower hills and inlets of Vatersay away to the south. The landscape was starkly treeless and ruggedly green, largely untouched by man. It was not the sort of place either of them was familiar with. Harry’s one spell of island living, on Rhodes, was far removed from the cutting wind and limitless ocean of the Outer Hebrides. And Chipchase, by his own admission, was a town rat by birth, breeding and inclination.

The same, they assumed, applied to Howlett, but they were in no position to check the point. He was still below, afflicted by a migraine, induced, to hear him tell it, by long hours of driving, though probably not helped by the quantity of lager he had drunk during the voyage. With Chipchase’s seasickness only slowly abating, Harry was left to co-ordinate their disembarkation. Fortunately, the drive to the hotel they had booked themselves into by phone from Oban could hardly have been shorter.

—«»—«»—«»—

The Castlebay Hotel, standing four-square and grey-stoned on the hill above the harbour, was warm and comfortable. Chipchase’s spirits lifted slightly once he was on dry land. As he watched the Clansman cast off for its onward voyage to South Uist from the window of the twin-bedded room he and Harry were sharing, his summary of their situation was marginally less bleak than it might have been.

‘We’re stuck here now, Harry old cock. For better or worse. So, do we get wrecked in the bar — or ask Marky if he wants to head straight for Vatersay?’

—«»—«»—«»—

A walk along the corridor to Howlett’s room supplied the answer. They found him prostrate on his bed, curtains firmly closed against the persistent evening light.

‘There’s no way I’m moving from here tonight, guys. Just driving up from the pier has made the migraine worse. I’ll have to sleep it off. Don’t worry. Sleep always cures it. I’ll be fine in the morning.’

—«»—«»—«»—

The bar it was, then, though only after a diversion to the hotel’s restaurant, Chipchase’s sudden hunger testifying to his recovery. It was dark by the time they stepped out into the cold, clear silence of Barra by night and strolled round to the cosily lit Castlebay Bar, their stomachs well filled with fresh island fish.

There were only a dozen or so locals inside, two of them engaged in a largely wordless game of pool. The atmosphere was far from uproarious. The amiable barman told them Sunday evenings were always quiet. ‘You should have been in last night. We had a grand ceilidh. The Vatersay Boys played.’ He nodded at a dais in the corner, adorned with a drum-set, and explained that the folksily Gaelic music rumbling in the background was from the Boys’ latest album — The Road to Vatersay.

‘We’ll be taking that tomorrow,’ said Chipchase as he lit a cigar.

‘Buying their CD?’

‘No, no. Taking the road to Vatersay. Visiting the island.’

‘Are you over on holiday, then?’

‘We certainly are.’ Chipchase took a deep and evidently inspiring swallow of whisky. ‘Birdwatching. Hill-climbing. Deep-sea diving. We can’t get enough of that sort of thing, can we, Harry? We’re a pair of genuine wilderness lovers. The Outer Hebrides is our idea of paradise.’

‘We’re just looking round,’ said Harry. ‘There are quite a few uninhabited islands south of here, aren’t there?’

‘That there are.’

‘Wasn’t one of them in the news a few years back? Halter-say? Haskurlay? Some… mystery or other.’

‘Haskurlay,’ replied the barman, frowning as if doubting whether Harry’s uncertainty about the name was genuine. ‘You’ll be thinking of when they found the bodies there.’ He sighed. ‘Aye, that was a dismal business.’

‘What was it all about?’ enquired Chipchase.

‘Och, nobody rightly knows. Though you’ll meet a few who claim to. Take Dougie over there.’

The barman had pointed to a wizened old man seated near the door, nursing a glass of whisky and a noxious-looking pipe. He was grim-faced, lantern-jawed and sharp-nosed, dressed in a frayed grey suit and black polo-neck sweater, with a still blacker beret perched at an incongruously rakish angle on his apparently pebble-bald head. He was watching the languid manoeuvrings of the pool players with the unfocused gaze of someone waiting for something more interesting to enter his field of vision. As Harry and Barry were about to.

‘Looks a testy old bugger,’ murmured Chipchase.

‘That he is,’ agreed the barman. ‘But talkative as well if you give him the right encouragement.’

‘And what might that be?’ asked Harry.

‘Well, he’s awful fond of the Talisker. A dram or two of that… and you’ll have your work cut out to shut him up.’

—«»—«»—«»—

Talisker malt whisky proved to be as effective a tongue-loosener with the initially taciturn Dougie McLeish as the barman had promised. The old boy was eighty-seven, a fact he mentioned more than once, proud as he was of the distant reach of his supposedly flawless memory. The construction of a bridge linking Barra to Vatersay was a recent and to his mind lamentable development. ‘What God has set asunder let no man join together.’ When Chipchase greeted this observation with a muttered ‘Bloody hell,’ he was rebuked for profanation. He seemed tempted to retaliate by snatching the tumbler of barely diluted Talisker from McLeish’s thin, faintly smiling lips, until reminded by a kick under the table from Harry that the only reward they needed for their generosity was solid information.

‘Why would the pair of you be interested in the Haskurlay mystery, then?’ McLeish asked when Harry none too subtly raised the subject.

‘No reason,’ said Harry, unconvincingly. ‘Just… idle curiosity.’

‘Aye, well, curiosity killed the cat, don’t they say?’

Chipchase stifled another curse and grinned stiffly. ‘You could give us the real story before we get our heads filled with all kinds of nonsense, Dougie. I’ll bet no-one would tell it as accurately as you.’

‘You have that right.’

‘So…’ Harry prompted.

‘Where were you two in the spring of 1955, I wonder.’

‘Us?’

‘Aye. I’m not talking to the bench-backs behind you.’

‘Well, we… were doing our National Service together, as a matter of fact. In the RAF.’

‘Were you, though? Where were you based?’

‘Dyce. Near Aberdeen.’

‘Aberdeen, was it?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘I wouldn’a know. But you were in the Forces, weren’t you? That’s my point.’

‘Point… taken, then,’ said Chipchase, still grinning fixedly.

‘You’re sure it was Aberdeen where you were based?’

‘We’re sure,’ said Harry.

McLeish sighed. ‘That’s a shame.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, for a moment there I thought you might know more than you were letting on. There’s a military strand to this tale, you see.’ He had pronounced military as four distinct and elongated syllables. ‘So they say.’

‘But what do you say, Dougie?’ asked Chipchase.

‘I say the word was put round among the crofters here and on Vatersay in May 1955 that they shouldn’a consider landing on Haskurlay for a couple of weeks. No reason given. Advice, they called it. From the Crofters’ Commission in Inverness, would you believe. Whose tune they were dancing to you must judge for yourself. But some of the fishermen claimed a Royal Navy frigate was out by night to the south of here, off Haskurlay. The rumour was the island was used for some kind of military exercise. All very hush-hush. Well, who was to complain about that? The Cold War was on, after all. Whatever was done, it caused no harm. So we thought, anyway. Even when Hamish Munro and his son went missing. The weather was bad enough for it to be no difficult thing to believe they’d been drowned while fishing. Their boat was washed up on the coast of Skye. No sign of them, though. They were lost. Taken by the sea, it was to be supposed.’

‘Not true, though,’ said Harry. ‘As it turned out.’

‘No. Not true at all. You have to understand that Hamish Munro was a hard man to warn off. He was born on Haskurlay, a couple of years before the last crofters moved from there to plots on Vatersay. So, he had stronger links with the island than most. Knowing the man, I’m no so very surprised he decided to break the ban and take a peek at what was going on there. If that’s what he did. We canna be sure, can we?’

‘What can we be sure of?’

‘That he died there. Him and his son Andrew. Thanks to those archaeologists and their diggings and delvings four years since, we know now the pair of them… were murdered … and buried in the ancient mound north of the deserted village on Haskurlay.’

‘Did you meet any of the archaeologists?’

‘Och, they were in and out of here. I spoke to several of them. Told them what I knew. Which was a sight more than they did.’

‘Have any of them been back since?’

‘Off and on. But no lately. They’ve put it all behind them, I dare say. Like a good few people would prefer to.’ Oddly, then, it seemed Karen Snow had failed to bend McLeish’s ear during her visit the previous autumn. ‘The polis set a fine example on that score. They didn’a exactly strain every sinew to crack the case.’

‘At least they identified the bodies.’

‘Hard not to, with plenty of us old’uns on hand to remind them of the Munros’ disappearance and relatives still living to settle the matter whether the powers that be wanted to or no.’

‘Relatives… here on Barra?’

‘On Vatersay. Murdo Munro is Hamish’s second son. He lives where he was born, as men are wise to. If you look out of yon window, you’ll see a few lights in the distance, beyond the bay.’

McLeish paused, apparently expecting them to look as directed. Harry obediently rose, steered an evasive course round the backside and jutting cue-end of a stooping pool player and peered through the window. There were indeed a few twinkling lights visible on the far side of the bay. ‘Highly bloody illuminating,’ muttered Chipchase, who had tagged along. They turned and retreated to their table.

‘That’s the coast of Vatersay, isn’t it, Dougie?’ Harry asked.

‘Aye. One of those lights’ll likely be the Munro house. Not the same house Hamish left for the last time one morning fifty year ago, mind. Murdo’s built himself a smart new bungalow with the money from Brussels they throw around here to no good purpose. He’s turned the old place into his garage, would you believe. Still keeps the name, though. The house is called Haskurlay. After the old times.’

‘Were there other children of Hamish’s? You mentioned relatives plural.’

‘There’s a daughter. Ailsa. But she moved to Glasgow years back. Married some… financier.’ The word was given similar treatment to military and came out closer to feenancieer. ‘Moved to London since, I hear. Money, money, money. You have to chase it to keep it. And then where’s the time for contemplation, I should like to know.’

‘Bags of time for that round here, I expect,’ said Chipchase glumly.

‘Aye. So there is. You could do worse than try to get the knack for it yourself.’ McLeish squinted at Chipchase. ‘Though you don’t look a naturally contemplative man to me.’

‘Is Murdo carrying on the family line?’ Harry asked, eager to keep McLeish to his subject.

‘Murdo’s a bachelor. Like too many men of his generation.’

‘Are you a bachelor, Dougie?’ Chipchase enquired, seemingly heedless of Harry’s agenda.

‘Widower. With sons and grandsons to my name.’

‘Does Ailsa ever visit the island?’ Harry asked, glancing reprovingly at Chipchase.

‘Now and then. As it happens, I—’ McLeish broke off. His mouth tightened. Caution had suddenly overtaken him. He sipped his Talisker and treated Harry to a long, narrow look of scrutiny. ‘Now and then,’ he repeated, in a lower, gravelly tone. ‘But no very often.’