The Going Down of the Sun (19 page)

“I could forgive him for loving her. But he killed her. Damn it, woman, I know Ali's feelings got the better of her. We risked that from the start, we both knew it, we were ready to cope with it. But she didn't deserve to die for it, and I'm going to get the wee shite that killed her.”

I shook my head in despair. I just wasn't getting through to him. So much depended on my being able to convince him—too much, and I'd almost nothing left to say. He knew everything I knew now, and he still believed Alex had blown up the
Sun.
I couldn't prove that he hadn't, only repeat it. “That isn't what happened.”

Angrily he turned on me. “That's easy for you to say. You always thought I did it—because of Peter, for fear of losing him. Well, I know I didn't, and that leaves Curragh.”

It wasn't as easy as he thought. I found his account pretty convincing too. But I've never believed in passing maniacs, and the accident theory just didn't stand up. Not with the gas detector switched off.

“I don't think he even knew about her will.”

“Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?” And of course he would.

“You knew. But she didn't throw it at you in an argument, did she?”

Again the shrewd glance out of the tortured face. His emotions moved as quickly as his mind. “No, that was a lie. She wanted to do something for him. He hadn't much; he was trying to get the money together for a boat of his own. She didn't think he'd accept it as a gift, thought he'd be offended if she offered. So she made it a bequest.”

“She was thirty years old. He'd have had to wait forty years.”

“That must have worried him too.”

It wasn't his thinking that concerned me, it was hers. If you want to help someone do something with their life you don't wait until they're sixty years old. “When did she make the will?”

“The bequest to Curragh she added as a codicil after she was pregnant. The will itself she made after we were married.”

“That didn't strike you as odd?”

Clearly it hadn't. Of course, he was a man to whom the moving around of money was second nature. “A marriage revokes an existing will.”

I stared. “You mean, as a single girl of twenty-six working as a clerk in Stirling she had already made a will?”

He nodded, surprised at my surprise. “She worked for a solicitor, you mind. And then, she had a little capital of her own. The family farm was sold after George McKeag died and her mother bought the house in town. Some of the money from that came to her, and she had a half share in her father's boat. It must have added up to around …” He paused for a moment, calculating.

I knew what it added up to. “Fifteen thousand pounds.” That was the money she had bequeathed to Alex: her own money, the money she'd brought to her marriage. At last the amount made sense. She had wanted to thank Alex, not reward him. She wouldn't pay him with McAllister's money. Her own was hers to give with honour.

McAllister nodded slowly, thoughtfully. He hadn't appreciated the significance of the figure until just then. It confirmed something he had always known. “Aye. She was some lady, my wife.”

I was still thinking about what he'd said. It seemed curious that the McKeags, with their history of self-reliance, would sell the family farm. “Alison had a brother, hadn't she? Wasn't he interested in farming?”

Again McAllister looked faintly surprised. “He was of course. He ran that place of theirs for nigh on ten years after the father died, and worked at the fishing too. But Alison's mother couldn't manage alone, and Alison had no mind to go back to the island, so they sold up.”

Dates and figures danced like spots before my eyes. I couldn't get them to agree. There was something here that I really wasn't understanding. “Alison's father's been dead over ten years? Mrs. McKeag said she was home for the funeral six years ago.”

McAllister saw my problem. “So she was. But it wasn't her father's funeral. That was when George died.”

Comprehension dawned. “George was the brother?” Mrs. McKeag never said otherwise, I'd just assumed she was speaking of her husband. “And he ran the farm for ten years, and then he died too. Was he a lot older than Alison?”

McAllister shrugged. “A few years. About eight, I think.”

He'd only been thirty-three when he died. I had the sudden dreadful urge to comment that, while losing a daughter in her early thirties could be construed as misfortune, losing a son young as well smacked of carelessness. I fought the urge and thank God it passed. “What was it, an accident?”

“Aye. At least, the family always believed it was. The insurance company wasn't so sure. They paid out on Alison's share of the boat but they wouldn't meet the claim for George's interest.”

The blood within my veins seemed to run slower, and cool. In the snug room, insulated from the real world by four-foot walls, time seemed first to stand still and then flip backwards. I said, very carefully, “Boat?”

McAllister nodded, unperturbed. “That fishing boat they had from the old man. George was working on her in the harbour one night. There was a fire; George was killed and the boat was gutted.”

Two things staggered me to my heels: that both George McKeag and his sister should have died in catastrophic boating incidents six years apart, and that McAllister seemed to have read no great significance into that. Not enough to mention it to the police. Not even enough to keep it from me, though it had only come out because I chanced to ask the right question.

He'd even told me that the insurance company refused to meet the claim of George's estate, and I could think of only one reason for that. The premiums were paid or they wouldn't have entertained Alison's claim as joint owner. They believed George had started the fire himself, deliberately.

And Alison had seen it. Her mother said she was home for the funeral, but she must have been on the island some days before. I found a voice from somewhere. “Alison was in Stromness that night, wasn't she?”

“That's right.” He was watching me in some puzzlement. Astute as he was, he still couldn't see where I was going and so didn't understand the hollowness in my face and voice. “She was home visiting for a week or so. There was a dance that night in the Stromness Hilton.” I had noticed the hotel overlooking the harbour. I couldn't remember the name, but it wasn't the Hilton. “When the fire started they all went outside. She'd been watching for a couple of minutes before she realised it was their boat—hers and George's.

“It wouldn't have made any difference, there was nothing anyone could have done. It burned to the water-line. It was after that they sold the farm and the old lady moved into town.” Mrs. McKeag may have been ten years his senior, not more. The puzzled frown between the remnants of his eyebrows deepened. “Did she tell you this—Alison's mother?”

“No, Alex Curragh did. He said Alison saw a boat burn once, that was why she was so careful. She didn't want to die the same way.”

Even the purple side of his face turned pale. He ground out, “The bastard!”

I shook my head. “McAllister, I know it's hard but face the facts. Alison's brother committed suicide, and he did it by setting fire to his boat. I don't know why, we may be able to find out. Six years later, when she'd been under enormous stress for fourteen months, feeling herself ripped apart by her feelings for two men and a baby, Alison took the same way out. She said goodbye to you, she said goodbye to Curragh and sent him away, and when she thought she was alone she turned off the gas detector—in case it should wake Harry and me in time for us to stop her—turned on the gas, closed all the vents; and after a time she struck a match.”

He threw me out. Not quite bodily, though I think he would have done if he'd had to.

It quite simply hadn't occurred to him that Alison's death was suicide, and when I put it to him he wouldn't consider it. I tried to reason with him. He would not be reasoned with.

He accused me of collusion, of trying to protect Curragh at the cost of Alison's memory. He accused me of being infatuated with him myself. I pointed out, with what dignity I could muster, that I was ten years older than Alison and old enough to be the boy's mother. In view of the fact that McAllister was old enough to have been Alison's father it wasn't the most tactful thing I could have said. It was around then that he showed me to the door.

Mindful of the unguarded steps beyond, I didn't continue the argument over the threshhold. I turned and came down, and both Harry and DCI Baker, who had heard our voices raised in dispute and were on the points of intervening, were out of the car and waiting for my report.

Before I could catch my breath and explain, Harry murmured, “You talked him round, then.”

I ignored him. “Alex didn't kill Alison. I don't think McAllister did either. She killed herself, and she did it that way because that was how her brother did it six years before.”

“Why?”

It was two possible questions. I answered the one I had an answer to. “Because she loved two men and one baby, and she couldn't resolve the dilemma without hurting someone she cared about deeply. Because if she left Alex she expected to spend the rest of her life wanting him; and if she left Peter with McAllister she'd spend the rest of her life wanting him; and if she took Peter away from McAllister she'd spend the rest of her life hating herself. She saw no way out except a Viking funeral.”

I told them what McAllister had told me and what I had pieced together for myself. I believed I had finally got it right. They listened in silence. Once Harry looked up at the little castle looming greyly over us. Once Baker kicked unhappily at the tyre of the car.

When I had finished, Baker said, “Will he call off the manhunt?”

“I don't know.” Suddenly I felt weary, a deep weariness of bone and spirit. “If he believes me when he calms down enough to think about it he will. He's not a vicious man. But he'd much sooner not believe it, because it makes him and his need for an heir the reason for Alison's death. If he can persuade himself that I'm wrong, he won't lift a finger to help Alex. We have to find him, because wherever the hell he is there'll be someone who can get to him for enough money.”

Harry was looking away now, over the hills. He said quietly, “When Alison made her will, she wouldn't expect to be in that quandary twelve months later. This was the very start of the enterprise, remember, before the emotional entanglements began to hurt. All right, she wanted to thank Curragh for her baby. Was she really content for him to wait forty or fifty years for the expression of her gratitude to reach him?”

He was absolutely right. If I hadn't been side-tracked by the role and fate of her brother George I'd have spotted it earlier. She hadn't spent twelve months planning her suicide, at least not for the reason I'd come up with. I said, “Shit,” with feeling, and from Baker's expression that shocked him more than anything that had gone before.

“Or were you right,” Harry went on, “when we talked about this at Skara Brae and you wondered if Alison thought she was ill? Maybe she half expected to die young—not necessarily at thirty-one but in middle-age. If so, the bequest to Curragh makes a lot more sense.”

So did other things, not least her marriage to a man she hardly knew. She would have worked her way out of Stirling if that was what she wanted, found a man to care for and had a family. But these things take time, and if time was her enemy she would have been looking for shortcuts.

Baker was flicking his eyes between us like a man sitting too close to a Wimbledon final. Then his gaze settled on me. “You're a doctor. How do we check that?”

With difficulty, I suspected. So much depended on what it was she thought she had. “The autopsy will give the definitive answer—when they find her, if there's enough of her left to work on. If she was seeing a doctor about it there'll be a record of any tests that were made and their findings. Failing that, the hospital that delivered her baby may know something.”

Baker looked glum. “I know doctors. They won't want to talk about it.”

I know doctors too. I said sharply, “They don't have any choice. Their patient is dead, and a man's life could depend on establishing why. Put them on that spot and they'll talk.”

Harry said, “Somebody had better talk to Mrs. McKeag again. If her son killed himself for the same reason her daughter expected to die young, that's a family problem and she's the only family remaining. Nobody's more likely to know about it than her.”

“According to McAllister she never accepted George's death was other than an accident.”

“She may have to accept it. The stakes are too high for people's sensibilities to be humoured.”

“OK,” said Baker briskly, “so what are we doing? I'll chase up Alison McAllister's medical record, see if there's anything there that'll help.”

“I'll go back to Orkney,” said Harry. “Clio, do you want to come with me? Or can she be more help to you, Chief Inspector?”

It was possible, but the Glasgow police must have had more expert witnesses than me to call on. But I wasn't going to Orkney either—Harry needed no help that I could give him in questioning a stubborn old lady with her family honour to protect.

I said, “I'm going to look for Alex. I'll start in Crinan—I don't think he'll be a million miles from there. Once he's safe we have all the time we need to work out what happened.”

Baker looked doubtful. “As you think best. But half the police on the west coast are looking out for him—I don't know what you can do that they can't.”

“Probably nothing. Except that Alex will be looking out for them too, and he may not go to the same lengths to avoid me.”

It was a long shot, I knew. It was more that I wanted to be doing something useful rather than trailing round after either Harry or Baker, waiting to hear the worst. Also, all those summers sailing had given me a familiarity with the fine detail of the area Alex Curragh would make for that perhaps even the local police couldn't match. Alex was a sailing man: even if he was on foot he'd make for the shore, and there wasn't a beach or a cove between Ballachulish and the Mull of Kintyre where I hadn't dropped anchor sometime in the last fifteen years. If he went to ground, and unless they put the Army in, I had as good a chance of finding him as anyone.