The Tartan Ringers (17 page)

My torchlight couldn’t be helping it. I kept the beam trained on its face. Not much of a dazzle, but what else could I do? I found a single loose stone flake, chucked it. The murderer leaned its head an inch and the stone flew by, clattered down the rock wall. It didn’t even blink. For a daft second I thought of persuasion. I said, ‘Ranter. Good dog.’ It gave me a glance of withering scorn. In fact, so compelling was its thorough examination of the stream’s narrow gully that I did it too. We were a weird partnership, quarry and hunter.

Downstream no hope that I could see, the spate frothing on a mincing-machine of large stones. The gully’s sides slanted outwards from the granite bed. My beam flicked, returned to the dog, flicked away for a quick glance, back. I didn’t want the beast doing anything sly while I was being conned into studying the terrain.

The monster moved, one of those sudden tensions as if about to leap sideways. I yelped in fright. It stayed, splay-footed. I followed its gaze, used my torch to see what it had worked out. The sides of my slab were ripped vertically by ancient geologic forces. A man could just about climb up there but no dog. So? I shone back at Ranter. And it was smiling, its stare fixed above me.

Above?
I shone upwards and nearly peed myself in terror. There was an overhang. Barely seven yards above my head the gully’s side leaned in to form a shelf. Ranter could get me. I’d had it. Any creature on earth could get up there, look down on me. Then leap and . . . and . . . I whimpered.

The hound gave one last calculating stare, gauged the distance from the ledge to me, then splashed off downstream bounding from rock to rock with that casual, lethal grace. A mad hope swept into me – suddenly Shona had missed him and whistled one of those dog whistles to call him off.

But no. The overhang was from the side opposite. No way to cross upstream, so it was doing the sensible thing. Downstream where the gully flattened it could easily lope upslope to gain the plateau, then reach the projecting granite and leap . . . I’ve made it sound like miles. It was maybe a couple of hundred yards, at most. I wondered if there was time to make a run for it . . . But it had nearly caught me when I’d had a start. And now I was knackered. I’m not proud of what I did then. I blubbered and wailed, yelled for help. And did nothing.

Wearily I discarded my jacket, some lunatic notion of wrapping it round my forearm for a last futile aquatic wrestle. It rattled. I felt in my pocket. Two stones. I pulled them out, still tied at opposite ends of the strong twine.

My bolus. That gave me . . . well, one go. The flopping sounded. I set one stone swinging, set the other going, and stood upright with the thing humming vibrantly in my right grip. Up and down, faster. Eyes on the tip of the overhang, I shone the torch there. It was only when I saw his great head loom above the overhang that I realized my stupidity. Too close. My perch was maybe a square yard wide. Any hit would bring me down with him.

He looked. For a millisec I saw puzzlement in his eyes as I leaned away, the bolus whirring. His head nodded up and down in time with my oscillating hand. Perhaps he could hear the string thrumming even over the torrent’s din. Then his brow cleared. That humming cord in the man’s hand was irrelevant. Orders were orders. He was to hunt and kill, string or no strings. He gathered and leapt down on me.

My arm came from behind. I was already in mid-throw when he left the lip. The bolus met and tangled. The stones were still whipping round and round him as I flung myself forward to avoid his hurtling mass. Foam pressed into my mouth and I was tumbling over, over. Stones slammed my legs, bum, head, shoulder. Noise deafened me. I rolled, engulfed and retching, too dazed to struggle or wonder which way was up. I was drowning. I lashed out, flailed at everything else not me. I was dying.

Except the pandemonium was now somewhere else, with me no longer part of it. I retched. Air. I was in air, not in the water. I breathed, vomited half of the torrent back where it belonged, breathed and crawled. A vertical stone stopped my crawl. I lay there, done for and too terrified to struggle further in case that damned hound heard me and came for me again. I lay, half hiding, half resting. I must have dozed a few minutes I suppose, not much more.

Something pressed against my feet. Something floating, pushing. Perhaps a log? I withdrew my legs, shoved them out.

Still there. It was being moved by the onrush. It was therefore inert. I reached out, scrabbled a cobble up from beneath me and lobbed it at the nudging thing by my feet. Thud. Not a splash, or a sharp crack of stone on stone. A thick bump.

Laboriously I raised myself, extended a hand. Fur. I recoiled in panic, started away. But it hadn’t growled. I felt. A huge paw. A great head. A metal-studded collar. And, tethering its forepaws to its neck in a stranglehold, twine. One of the stones seemed to have struck its eye. It was my hunter, my personal executioner.

You can only retch a few times, they say, then the body gives up. True.

Countryside is supposed to increase insight, make poets. That’s a laugh. Countryside does nothing but dull your wits. My mind was so addled that I actually started towards where I imagined
Shooters
to be before I said hey, and sat down for a think. It had emitted none of those chiming vibes, so it was no antiques cache. Whoever was in there had warned me, ‘Run, run!’ An ally. And trapped. Could I spring them? Perhaps, but would I get him/her as far as Dubneath before the clan caught up? Hardly, the state I was in and burdened by a possible ex-prisoner. And I already knew Hector checked the cottage each dawn.

No. The thing to do was turn up at tomorrow morning’s gathering and suss out the reaction to my sudden reappearance. So, typically stupid, I started in the reverse direction, then got lost.

An hour wasted wearying myself even more. See what I mean about countryside? Finally I followed the tumbling water downhill, going slowly and feeling my way. I was perished. No jacket, no torch, wet through, exhausted. The Tachnadray track crossed a stone bridge over a wide fast stream, probably the same water, about a mile from the gateway. I must have been travelling a good hour before I walked into the bridge arch and almost knocked my silly head off. I’ll never make a countryman if I live the rest of my life.

Which is why I had a fluke, coming at Tachnadray from that direction. Not as daft as all that, I was on the drive’s verge for silence, and moved on the grass round the big house, to reach my pad. There was a light showing beneath the curtain. I thanked my inexpert needlework that had left a wide gap. I slid to the wall and waited.

Shona and Robert came downstairs. The light was off now, but I could hear them clearly. I almost stepped out to warn her.

‘Nothing but the map,’ Robert rumbled.

‘That’s proof enough,’ Shona said. Her voice was teasing, provocative. ‘Ranter should be here now, lazy beast. Doubtless enjoying himself chasing something.’ They both laughed. She gave in. ‘Come, then, man. Let’s lay your head.’

They walked together past the end of the workshop, over to the far outbuilding near the perimeter wall. There was no risk of being overheard. Duncan and Michelle slept in the big house, as did Elaine. Hector was miles off. Mrs Buchan slept downstairs in the cook’s flat.

A light showed briefly. Robert having his head laid, doubtless. I stood unmoving for quite some time. Shona was a busy, busy girl. Sex as a reward for complicity. The idea wasn’t new. What worried me was its use as an assassin’s weapon.

Feeling a hundred years old, I crossed quietly to my garret, went in and locked the door. I had a bath in the dark and lay thinking until dawn blew the fright from the eastern lift. I wish I’d told Shona I’d had a headache in her cottage.

‘M
ORNING
,’
I SAID
brightly to the gathering.

‘Morning, Ian,’ Duncan gave back affably, pipe ready to stink us out. Michelle was in powder blue, her neat skirt stencilling her waist. She wore a light necklet – not necklace – of a single silver band with a central amethyst, say 1900. Risky, but stunning. Oh, and she too replied an easy good morning. Robert was silent, glaring. Shona, already pale and worn, whitened even more. She knew what my arrival – indeed, my existence – meant. Old Mac was there, to my surprise. And Hector, waving a cheery greeting. Mary MacNeish sat beside Elaine, who today seemed excitable, less transparent than usual.

‘Good morning, Ian,’ the boss said. ‘We were beginning to wonder where you were.’

‘Stopped off for a quick snack, love.’ Also, I’d actually been to check that my finished fake antique had already gone from Duncan’s workshop. I was very pleased at discovering that.

‘I’ve heard about your wee snacks,’ Elaine reprimanded dryly. ‘Mrs Buchan calls you Dustbin.’

‘Bloody nerve.’ She always pretends she likes my appetite. ‘I’ll take my custom elsewhere if there’s criticism. She’s not the only pasty-maker in Caithness, is she, Mary?’

If Mary MacNeish expected me to be staggered at seeing her revealed as a McGunn she was disappointed.

Elaine began. ‘Listen, all. Ian suggests we pretend to sell up Tachnadray.’ She held a fragile hand to shush the murmurs. ‘I’ve summoned you to judge the merits. You all know our difficulties. Income’s too little to keep the seat of our clan intact. At best we’ll last a twelvemonth. Then it’s the bailiffs and a boarding house—’

‘Never!’ Robert growled, fists clenched, glaring.

‘Whist, man! We have some reserve antiques still—’

My cue. I rose, ahemming. We were arranged round the hall on a right mixture of chairs and benches. I had no notes, standing at my customary hands-in-pocket slouch. The cultural shock had been too much for us all. Truth time.

‘Sorry, Elaine. There’s no reserve antiques.’ I spoke apologetically, but why? ‘Not a groatsworth.’

‘That’s quite wrong.’ Elaine held out her hand imperiously. ‘The list, Duncan.’

Duncan’s gaze was fixed on the floor. He made no move as I went on, ‘The list is phoney, love. Duncan and the rest made it up, probably to reassure you. They gave you some cock-and-bull story about the upper west wing being exactly right for storing the remainder of your antiques.’

Everybody tried to talk at once. Elaine cut the babble with a quiet, ‘Go on, Ian.’

‘Tachnadray is broke
now
, not next year. So, with the last genuine antique gone—’

‘Well I mind that day,’ Mac suddenly reminisced through his stubble. ‘Aye. Me and cousin Peter from Thurso took it. Your father’s grand four-poster, Miss Elaine—’

‘Shut up, you old fool,’ Duncan said. ‘The past is past.’

‘It’s a familiar story,’ I went on. ‘Youngsters drift to the cities, a few adherents cling to the past. We’ve empty villages in East Anglia for the same reason. Tachnadray’s marsupialized. It’s a rock pool inhabited by crustaceans and sea anemones – yourselves – after the tide’s ebbed.’

‘Is this true?’ Elaine demanded quietly. Nobody answered. She gazed at each in turn, waiting calmly until heads raised to meet her penetrating stare. She even gave me one. Suddenly I was the only honest crook on the campus. ‘Continue.’

‘There’s only one way out now. We pull a paper job.’

They listened, doubts to the fore, while I explained the rudiments. Duncan’s pipe went out. Michelle was enthralled, leaning forward and clearly excited by the whole thing. Robert sank into deeper caverns of hatred. Shona was still getting used to my resurrection.

‘We start the papering with a pawnbroker.’ Murmurs began, thunder from Robert, but I was fed up with their criticism and raised my voice. ‘Not to use. To buy from. Pawnbroking law changes, when items exceed fifty quid. The trick is to find a pawnbroker who’ll value even the Crown Jewels at forty-nine ninety-nine. In other words, the meanest. We take his stock – rings, necklaces, clothes—’

‘And pretend they are Tachnadray’s heirlooms?’ Elaine asked. ‘Isn’t that rather hard on the widows and orphans?’

‘Yes.’ My answer led into a vale of silence. I was a dicey Sherpa in treacherous mountains.

‘Will that be sufficient?’ Elaine must have been painfully aware of the outraged glances from the others.

‘No. We’ll need more. But pawnbroking’s gone downhill these sixty years. There’s only a couple of hundred left in the entire land, which narrows our choice. We’ll want an entire convoy of antiques from somewhere, especially furniture. I’ve already started raising the dealers.’

‘And told them
here
?’ Shona was on her feet, furious.

‘Don’t be daft.’

She subsided. Twice she’d absently reached out a hand as if about to pat a loyal hound. Both times she’d looked about, distressed. More grief was on the way, poor lass.

‘I’ve one problem, how to bring the antiques in. It’ll be a sizeable convoy.’

They waited. Elaine waited. And so did I, examining their expectant faces.

‘Well?’ Elaine’s telepathy trick had gone on the blink.

‘Air, road, or sea?’ I asked. ‘Same as usual?’

And Old Mac, bless him, said, ‘Och, yon sounds a terrible lot for a . . .’ Hector shut him up by a double nudge.

‘. . . For a wee ketch like Jamie’s,’ I finished for him, nodding. ‘And your old lorry, Mac. I’d better organize a road convoy. The airport at Wick’s too obvious.’

Elaine was smiling. ‘Congratulations, Ian. We can’t be blamed for trying to conceal our method of delivery. I hope you don’t think us too immoral. The fewer people know, the better.’

‘Is it agreed, then?’

‘Yes.’ Elaine’s pronouncement gained no applause. The atmosphere smouldered with resentment. ‘How long does this . . . papering take?’

‘A month. First, we need a compliant printer.’

Hamish in Wick is clan,’ Elaine said.

‘Next, I’ll need a secure helper. Can I choose?’

‘Of course,’ said the young clan leader, and everybody looked expectantly at Shona.

Shona spoke first. ‘I can start any time.’ She gave me her special bedroom smile.

‘Thanks,’ I said, beaming most sincerely. ‘But no, ta. Ready, Michelle?’

We were given an office in the empty west wing. Hector and a couple of men fetched some rough-and-ready rubbish for us to use as furniture. Michelle was awarded a desk: a folding baize-topped card table. They found a lopsided canvas chair from somewhere, and, unbelievably, for me a discarded car seat nailed to a stool. An elderly lady appeared from nowhere and contributed a brass oil lamp. Elaine ordered herself carried upstairs by Robert to inspect our progress.