The Blue Hackle (20 page)

“The Crusades were wars,” she said. “The
original graves were scattered around the church yard. Fergus’s
uncle collected the best gravestones here, to protect them,
although the finest one, of a priest or bishop holding a chalice,
is in the National Museum in Edinburgh.”

“That guy there’s holding a really nice
sword,” said Dakota, pointing.

Jean peered into the green-tinged shadow of
the shed, following the direction indicated by the girl’s mitten. A
broken stone lay on its side behind two of the upright ones, as a
prop rather than as part of the display—its carved figure was no
more than a clumsy bashed-out sketch of a human being. Or maybe the
original mason had intended the figure to be a skeleton, in which
case its position, sinking into dark peaty muck, was appropriate .
. .

A straight edge lay next to the figure’s
rudimentary hand, half concealed by a tuft of grass. A straight
edge reflecting a watery gleam of light and ending in what might
have been a chess piece, black and knobbly, and beside that a round
glow like a cat’s eye in smoky gray.

The shapes spun through Jean’s vision like
those in a video game, assembling themselves into a whole. Her
breath burst out of her lungs in a couple of four-letter words,
hastily edited for tender ears. “Holy shi-moley.”

“What?” Dakota asked.

Grasping the girl’s shoulders, Jean pulled
her back. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t make any more footprints.
Stand still. I’ve got to make a phone call.”

Dakota stood still, her expression swinging
between puzzlement and alarm.

Her folks are gonna love this.
Jean
whipped out the phone and punched Thomson’s number. Kudos to
Alasdair for thinking of programming the phone with that, otherwise
they’d have to run down to the beach looking for him—and for
Gilnockie, okay, it was still his case.

The readout displayed the time. 11:45. Where
was Alasdair, anyway?

“P.C. Thomson.”

“This is Jean Fairbairn. Are you with
Alasdair and Inspector Gilnockie?”

“Oh aye, that I am, if you’d like . . .”

“I’ve found the—well, the missing regimental
dirk, not necessarily the murd—” She saw Dakota’s ears growing like
Dumbo’s beneath her earmuffs. “It’s with the grave slabs in that
shed next to the old church. Y’all need to get up here ASAP.”

“Aye, madam, I’ll spread the . . .”

Word,
Jean concluded, when Thomson
ended the call a bit too quickly.
News.
Stuffing the phone
back into her pocket, she peered once again into the shed. Was that
mud on the knife blade or the dark rust-red of blood?

Now Dakota’s eyes were growing larger, the
mind behind them evaluating acceptable responses. Jean told her,
“Let’s go around to the other side of the church, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Are you getting cold?”

“A little.”

A minute ago, Jean would have said the same
thing. Now, if she unbuttoned her coat a cloud of steam would
escape. “We’ll go back to the house as soon as the others get
here.”

“Okay.” And, after a moment punctuated by the
brush of grass against denim, Dakota said rather than asked, “The
man who died, he was killed.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe with that knife. That’s what the
police have to find out. Okay?”

Well, no, it wasn’t, but . . . a shadow ran
swiftly over Jean’s face. She looked up, but saw nothing. A bird
must have come between her and the sun. It wasn’t a blip in
reality.

Dakota was looking not up but down. Jean
followed the direction of her gaze.

From this side of the church, they could see
into the ravine separating the hillside shelf from the steep slope
leading to the lighthouse. The bridge spanning the rocky stream at
the ravine’s bottom was identical to the one spanning the moat at
the old castle, as though Fergie’s uncle, the old laird, had found
them at a two-for-one sale.

And just as Jean and Alasdair had stood on
the one bridge yesterday evening, this morning Diana and Colin
Urquhart stood on the other. Except this couple wasn’t sharing a
joke but a passionate kiss, the silk scarf tied around her blond
hair tucked in close to his dark tam o’shanter. They couldn’t have
been entwined any more closely if they’d been wearing the same
coat.

But they weren’t. Diana’s coat was a
beautiful lilac tweed. Colin’s was a bulky camouflage jacket . . .
that’s what he’d been wearing when Jean saw him last night, a black
hooded sweatshirt beneath a military jacket treated with
waterproofing and fire retardant chemicals that shimmered in the
light.

Clasped together, they swayed back and forth
as if to silent music, oblivious to their audience. Colin, Jean
saw, knew his way around Dunasheen’s daughter as well. She was
going to have to reassess that “vestal virgin.”

Dakota asked, “Are they having sex?”

“No, they aren’t!” Jean grasped the child’s
narrow shoulders and this time spun her quickly toward the church
wall with its empty, bird-nested windows. “Look there, see how the
stones in the wall aren’t too well dressed, they’re still kind of
lumpy, except for the ones at the corners, which are squared off,
they’re called quoins.”

“Dressed? Coins?”

From the corner of her eye, Jean saw a human
figure duck back into the exit of the smaller garden path, the one
leading from the kitchen yard. Pritchard? The shape was masculine,
and too slender to be Rab’s. Had he been afraid she and Dakota
would steal the totem pole? Or was he keeping an eye out for
Diana?

Here came the cops up the brae from the
beach, Gilnockie and Alasdair at point. Here came Diana and Colin
up from the bridge, walking a demure three feet apart. Maybe no one
had been home at the lighthouse when Thomson knocked on the door
this morning. Maybe no one had answered the knock. Or maybe . . .
surely the constable hadn’t lied, but then, he was Diana’s
childhood friend and Colin’s defender, not an impartial
observer.

Now Thomson, Young, and two white-suited
crime scene technicians beelined for the shed while Gilnockie and
Alasdair beelined for Jean.

Spotting the advancing police people, Colin
stopped. He put one foot behind the other as if about to spin
around and run. Diana shot a level glance from Jean and Dakota to
Gilnockie and Alasdair. She settled her mesh shopping bag on her
left arm and took Colin’s hand with her right. Victoria couldn’t
have claimed Albert with any more dignity.

“What’s wrong with his face?” asked
Dakota.

Good question. Half of Colin’s face was set
in handsome, symmetrical lines. The other half consisted of taut
patches of scar tissue. As Diana drew him closer to the others,
Jean saw that his good eye was the same startling cornflower blue
as hers. But Colin’s other eye glinted dully from a nest of
shattered flesh.

No telling what scars laced the body beneath
clothing that Jean now saw was too large, the coat hanging off his
shoulders, the trouser legs sagging over scuffed military boots.
He’d lost weight. A long grueling hospital stay would do that. As
for the cause . . . “He was hurt in the war,” Jean whispered, but
Dakota, staring in horrified fascination, didn’t respond.

Neither did Diana. Anyone else would have
looked frumpy with a scarf wrapped around her head, but on Diana,
the scarf made a fashion statement. Her complexion would have
abashed a rose. The words “beauty” and “beast” materialized in the
back of Jean’s mind, and guiltily she dismissed them.

Gilnockie stepped forward, greeted Diana, and
introduced himself and Alasdair to Colin, who said nothing. A
slight breeze riffled the red hackle on the bonnet pushed forward
over his forehead.
Black Watch
. Another distinguished
regiment.

The side and back of his head were also
scarred, so that the crew-cut dark hair grew in patches above a
pristine but achingly vulnerable nape. His hands knotted at his
sides and his entire body seemed to shrink, coiling like a
compressed spring, poised for fight or flight. Oh yes, he was a
reclamation project. In spades. Was that why Fergie thought Colin
wasn’t good for his daughter? Was the broken man asking, or was
Diana offering, too much?

Jean thought of him standing outside the
house last night. He’d thought Jean in her window was Diana. Some
people might interpret that sort of thing as stalking, but not
Diana.

Gilnockie said, “We’ve been hoping to have a
word with you both,” which was a typical Gilnockian
understatement.

Alasdair’s sharp gaze moved from face to
face, ending at Jean’s. His eyebrow shivered, almost
infinitesimally, not at any beasts or beauties but at her little
shadow. “Hello there, Dakota. You’d like to be getting on back to
the house, I reckon. It’s going on for noon. Diana . . .”

“Luncheon will be served at one,” said Diana,
her rasped red lips smiling imperturbably. She relinquished Colin’s
arm and extended one handle of her mesh bag, revealing, yes,
potatoes and other edibles. “Dakota, can you help me carry the
shopping?”

“Thanks for coming with me,” Jean said to the
child. “I’ll see you later.”

Shrugging—inscrutable were the ways of
adults—Dakota took the proffered handle and walked off beside
Diana, the bag hanging lopsided between them. “What’s for
lunch?”

“Mrs. Finlay’s laid on a mulligatawny soup.
Do you know what that is?” The two figures, one tall, one short,
disappeared into the garden.

Alasdair’s and Gilnockie’s heads turned in
unison, from Diana back to Colin.

“Would you be so good as to walk back to the
house with me, Mr. Urquhart?” Gilnockie and his long shadow
gestured toward the beach. “Let’s go this way, shall we?”

To see, Jean added silently to herself, how
Colin reacts when he passes the site of the murder. In medieval
times the authorities might have had all the suspects lay hands on
the body, to see if it started bleeding again at the touch of the
murderer.

Colin cast a quick glance toward Thomson, who
offered a gesture that was part greeting, part reassurance. He cast
a slower one at the crime scene techs easing the dirk into a
plastic bag, then set off down the brae. Young fell in behind
Gilnockie and his—well, not prisoner, person of interest—and with a
nod of satisfaction rather than encouragement followed.

Exhaling as the pressure, not to mention the
heat, went out of her chest, Jean turned to Alasdair.

A tiny crack or two opened in his
countenance, the everyday personality shifting beneath the police
carapace. “Well done Jean, finding the dirk.”

“Not really. It was Dakota who pointed it out
to me. Y’all would have worked your way up here eventually, on your
way to the lighthouse.”

“Eventually, aye, though likely we’d have had
rain or a blow or something of the sort first. We’d have had our
wedding as well, Gilnockie’s team dusting the aisle behind us.”

Laughing, if shamefacedly, she bumped up
against his side. “Here I thought you hadn’t noticed the proximity
of the crime to the wedding.”

“I’d have made a piss-poor detective
observing that little.” His fierce mock frown moderated into a
smile. “Just now Patrick’s having his crew dredge the water off the
beach and scour the rocks on the hillside. We’ve, he’s found no
evidence beyond a few scuff marks in the shingle and footprints on
the path. Looks to be one set stood for a time at the head of the
brae, whilst other sets ran on by. The weight’s on the toes,” he
explained, “that means running. They’re all boots or shoes with
treaded soles, like everyone’s wearing these days. Sorry to be
letting the time get away, but . . .”

“Someone needs to keep the investigation
moving along.”

“Patrick’s keeping it moving, it’s just that
his head’s somewhere else. Young let slip that he’s retiring this
spring.”

“And she’s planning to take his place?” Jean
asked.

“She’ll be a sergeant a long while yet. Those
rough edges need smoothing. I had a word with Patrick about the
scene with Tina MacLeod, and he had a word in Young’s ear.”

“And now she’s pegged you as a busybody and
tattletale.”

“Oh aye, she’ll have done that, right
enough.” Alasdair’s grim smile indicated his lack of concern for
Young’s opinion.

The sea shone the brilliant lapis lazuli of
Diana’s Egyptian necklace. Waves swelled, surged forward, tripped
and fell into froth, receded and swelled again, with a slow rolling
thrum like the heartbeat of the Earth itself. Jean felt her own
rough edges starting to smooth—and chill seeping into her body.
More food, especially spicy soup, sounded like a great idea. “We
have just enough time to check out the chapel again before we go to
the house. I know you want to sit in on Colin Urquhart’s interview.
And Diana’s.”

“As do you.”

“If you can get me in there, great.” Jean
went on, “Did Fergie make his statement this morning, before we got
to the incident room?”

“Aye, he did that. Patrick’s saying there’s
nothing there to be going on with.”

Well no, not if you don’t ask the right
questions.
Jean opened her mouth to tell Alasdair about her
odyssey through Fergie’s computer, then shut it again. Better to
work up to that.

Shoulder to shoulder, they turned away from
the sea toward the shed, where Thomson had assumed his best
parade-rest position. “What happened to Urquhart?” Alasdair
asked.

“Roadside bomb in Iraq,” replied Thomson.
“There were four men in a lorry carrying supplies from the
quartermaster’s depot. He was the one in charge, and the only one
made it out.”

“That’s a shame,” Jean said, inadequately.
How many Scottish soldiers had come home with posttraumatic stress,
or shell shock, or whatever the horrors of war were called in their
eras? Dealing with that made dealing with an allergy to ghosts a
piece of cake.