None but the Dead (19 page)

Aye, fucking right!

The bile rose in his throat again.

McNab turned from the wall, his mind now made up. He would have that second double, then head for bed. Tomorrow he would be off this fucking island, and back where he belonged.

The mist had thickened, the neighbouring harbour no longer visible. McNab reached out, feeling his way along the wall, the concrete underfoot slippy with water droplets and sea slime.

Somewhere out there a fog horn sounded, like a long blast of pain.

McNab halted, the skin on his neck suddenly prickling.

Whoever came on him from behind must have been waiting there all along, biding his time. McNab felt the sudden impact of a fist on the back of his head. Stunned, he staggered against the wall,
reaching out for a handhold to prevent himself falling to his knees.

Before he could collect his wits, a second blow landed square between his shoulders.

McNab swung round, thrashing blindly into the mist at his ghost attacker. His fists met nothing and no one.

He heard the muffled sound of retreating footsteps and a shouted, ‘Fuck off back to Glasgow, filth!’ Then silence.

McNab leaned over the wall, his head swimming, the nausea taking over.

Below, the sea swallowed his watery vomit and came back for more.

Get back inside
.

Out here in this mist he was a sitting duck, should his assailant – or assailants – take another shot at him.

He pulled himself upright and moved towards the door, but not quickly enough.

Never turn your back
.

The full weight of a heavy male body slammed into him, propelling him against the wall. There were no fists this time. McNab’s stomach hit the sharp edge of the top layer of stones,
winding him. He bent over the wall, gasping, trying to draw air into his lungs, the sea spray flying up to meet him.

McNab now knew what was planned, but could do little to prevent it. Almost immediately, his feet were swept from under him. Up and over. That was the plan. The Glasgow cop who forgot that the
mean streets existed everywhere. Who forgot to watch his back. The swiftness of the action saw him balance there a moment, then he was over and scrabbling madly for a handhold to prevent his
descent.

No chance.

Seconds later he hit the water.

The tentacles of seaweed reached out for him, binding his flailing arms. He shouted as he briefly surfaced, but his voice was drowned as the fog horn repeated its mournful warning call.

PC Tulloch dropped her at the road end. Walking through the mist to the cottage didn’t bother Rhona, the sandy track being clearly visible under her feet, the porch light
she’d learned to leave on, her guide.

Mike’s pickup was already parked outside the schoolhouse, a light shining in the big room.

Rhona contemplated knocking and asking to speak to him. After the incident in the pub, he’d confessed to an indiscretion with a pupil who was underage, which had resulted in his dismissal
from his job and his flight north to Sanday. Rhona had accepted that part of the story. It was the reason he’d given for the existence of the drawing that she’d found difficult to
believe. According to Mike, he’d imagined a face and sketched it. He’d never seen Inga before she’d knocked on his back door.

Yet what he’d created was a portrait of the child.

As she hesitated, the light in the schoolhouse went out, deciding for her.

I’m going home tomorrow,
she reminded herself
. After I collect a sample of shell sand. My job here is over.

The thought both pleased her and made her a little sad. There was something to be said about living remotely. Life did seem simpler, and more real.

But bad things happen everywhere.

The almost brawl in the pub had confirmed that. The guy at the bar hadn’t been the only one who’d wished Mike Jones ill tonight. Was that because they were aware of his past before
the police had even checked him out, or was it something else?

People came here to hide from the world. People like Mike Jones. But there was nowhere to hide in a community this size. Nowhere at all.

She headed along the track. There was still no wind and the fine droplets of mist were a soft curtain against her face. She couldn’t see the sea, but she could hear it, beating the
shore.

Reaching the front door, she went for the key, strategically placed under a stone.

Taking off her boots in the porch, she welcomed the draught of warm air that met her when she opened the inner door. The place was just as she’d left it and yet . . .

Rhona sniffed the air, the way she did when first stepping onto a crime scene. The scent of diesel was faint but definitely there. As though someone with oily hands had been in the room.

Her first thought was that Derek had visited while she was out. But he knew she was getting a lift back from the community centre with the rest of the team. He’d even joked about having a
night off from police work.

A thought occurred, sending her out and round the back of the cottage with her torch. Maybe her visitor hadn’t come by road. Maybe they’d come by boat.

The grass directly behind the cottage was kept short and there was a washing line strung between a stone-built turret and the house. There were numerous similar flagstone edifices along this
northern section of the coast. Derek had told her he believed they were used by fishermen to mark their location, or by the wives to hoist signals to bring them ashore.

After the cut grass were the dunes, low and rolling, the grass spikey and much longer than the back lawn. It only took a few minutes for her to accept that, in the mist, it was impossible to see
what she sought. If someone had come ashore here, then they would have trampled the grass, and the mark of the bow of the boat where they dragged it ashore would be visible in the sand.

Rhona cursed now at the mist and the darkness. It would have to wait until morning.

She retreated inside and made a point of locking the door.

She was used to living alone and in truth she preferred it that way. Her relationship with Sean, on and off, functioned better when he wasn’t a permanent feature in the flat.

But tonight she would have preferred company, and wished Chrissy was still here. She would have welcomed her take on all of this. What had happened, both in the bar and here at the cottage? Her
forensic assistant had a knack of seeing things for what they truly were, and for saying so outright.

Rhona prepared for bed, realizing that the silence was all encompassing and that she missed the sound of the wind. As she shut the curtains, she caught a light on again in the schoolhouse and
suspected Mike had doused it on hearing her arrive, hoping she wouldn’t do what she’d intended and knock on his door.

As she pulled the curtain to, she saw something through the mist. A ghostly light she realized was the lighthouse. Somewhere a fog horn sounded a muffled warning. This area of Sanday had seen
countless shipwrecks before a lighthouse had finally been built on Start Point. According to Derek, Sanday folk hadn’t pillaged the cargo and endangered the survivors such as in the tales of
Cornish wrecks. The tradition of the island had been to save the men and their cargoes, for which they were well rewarded by the companies whose ships had gone aground.

Rhona slipped under the duvet.

If the fog didn’t lift, the likelihood would be that she’d leave tomorrow by the teatime ferry to Kirkwall. There was little point in asking the helicopter to chance a landing in
this soup when she could make her way by sea. Once in Kirkwall she could await a normal service flight south.

She thought about McNab and hoped that he’d forsaken the bar and gone to bed. It was obvious all was not well between him and Freya, thus his desire to come on what he thought would be a
jolly. She smiled at her memory of his expression on seeing the empty landscape. Having been brought up on Skye, places like this didn’t faze her. Chrissy was impervious to whatever
environment you put her in. McNab, on the other hand, was an urban warrior, ill at ease outside the city limits.

Her phone buzzed, startling her. There was a signal inside the cottage, precocious and entirely dependent on the time of day and the weather. It seemed the fog was better than the wind.

She glanced at the screen and answered.

‘Hi.’

There was a pause as though the caller hadn’t expected a response.

‘How are things in the north?’

‘How are things in Paris?’

‘I’m home,’ Sean said. ‘Missing you.’

‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ she said, hearing the sad note in his voice. ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘Have you?’ he countered.

‘Some white wine in the local hotel.’

‘Never red.’

‘The food was great. As good as yours,’ she countered.

‘I’ll cook for you tomorrow?’ A question, not a statement.

‘I’d like that,’ Rhona said.

‘The meal might require red wine to compliment it?’

‘Okay,’ Rhona conceded.

‘Until tomorrow, then?’

‘Until tomorrow.’

She rang off wishing Sean was here beside her.

The banging on the door had become one with her dream, of spectres rising from the sea, covered by the mist in their approach to the island.

Rhona sat up, wondering what time it was. At this time of year, Sanday was dark well into the morning, and she wondered if she’d slept in. Glancing at her watch, she found it was only an
hour after she’d gone to bed.

Rising, she shouted, ‘I’m coming.’

She had no idea what she expected to find when she opened the door, but it hadn’t been a dripping McNab being held up by Derek Muir.

‘What—’ Rhona didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence.

Derek propelled McNab into the room and deposited him on the couch.

‘I’ll strip him. Bring blankets. A duvet, anything to get him warm.’

Ten minutes later, McNab was encased in the duvet from Chrissy’s bed, a hot-water bottle tucked inside.

‘What happened?’ Rhona finally said.

‘He went over the wall behind the bar.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘We won’t know until he can tell us. Tor saw him go outside and eventually went looking for him. God knows how he spotted him among the seaweed at the foot of the sea wall. They
brought him up and called me. I thought it better to bring him here. If someone with access to the hotel has got it in for him . . .’ He tailed off.

McNab was shivering. At regular intervals, a raft of shudders swept through him.

‘We should get him into bed.’

‘Chrissy’s room,’ Rhona said.

‘Is it warm in there?’

‘I’ve kept the stove stoked, the radiators are hot.’

Together they hitched McNab up, who was acting like a drunk man.

‘How much did he have to drink?’

‘I don’t think it’s alcohol. I think he’s approaching hypothermia.’

Fifteen minutes later, they had McNab tucked into bed. It was obvious from his colour that the warmth was penetrating. ‘I’ll keep an eye on him, if you want to head home,’
Rhona offered.

‘I’m happy to take the couch, if you want to get some sleep,’ Derek offered.

‘You’ve done enough already,’ Rhona said.

‘I feel responsible.’

‘How can you be responsible?’

‘This is my island. We did this to him.’

‘That’s like saying that everything bad that happens in Glasgow is my fault,’ Rhona countered.

‘There are six hundred people here; you have, what, a million?’

‘Not any more,’ Rhona said. ‘In the heydays. You go home. I’ll look after his lordship.’

As she let him out, Rhona said, ‘Have you any idea who might have done this to McNab?’

‘Plenty of ideas, but no proof,’ Derek told her.

Dawn didn’t break at this time of year on Sanday, it eased its way in, and after the time most people needed to rise. It was still pitch black outside when Rhona showered
and went into the kitchen. On her way she checked on McNab. He was sleeping peacefully, his bristled face a much improved colour from the stagnant look of his arrival the previous night.

Gazing on him, Rhona had a moment of madness, remembering the odd occasion they had come together sexually, and she’d wakened to find McNab beside her, looking like that. It was usually
followed by his eyes opening and some pointed remark which she immediately had to rebut. Rhona wondered if that was what it had been like with Freya. The jokes covering his real feelings, only
getting so close and no further.

A bit like myself.

Her plan for today, McNab not included, had been to collect shell sand and investigate the remains of the radar station, including the old mortuary. She hadn’t changed her mind.

McNab was renowned for pissing folk off and getting into trouble for it. Rhona had no idea what had happened after she’d left the bar, but if he’d hit the whisky? There were stories
of drunks tipping over the back wall into the sea. In Glasgow he could stagger home. Here, on Sanday, he may well have crossed a wall, rather than a busy street, and ended up in the water.

She began a fry-up, trying to be like Chrissy, not sure she was succeeding.

I did it in Skye, I can do it here.

She fried bacon and slice sausage and potato scones and kept them warm in the oven. As she started on the eggs, McNab appeared.

He sniffed the air. ‘Tell me you have baked beans.’

‘You’re alive,’ she said.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘And hungry.’

Rhona shovelled the fry-up onto his plate and added an egg. ‘No beans,’ she said.

‘If Chrissy had still been here.’

‘Well, she isn’t,’ Rhona said and served herself.

It was apparent that McNab was not about to enlighten her on last night before he filled his stomach. They ate in companionable silence. Rhona had already set up the coffee machine, putting in a
few extra spoonfuls to give McNab his required caffeine fix. He accepted the cup of thick black coffee with a grateful smile.

‘So,’ she said, when he’d drunk it and had a refill, ‘what happened exactly?’