Candles and Roses (2 page)

When they were able to check Lizzie Hamilton’s bank account, they discovered that she’d withdrawn all £200 of her painstakingly accrued savings a few days before her disappearance. There were only a few pounds left in the account, and no attempts had been made to access it since.

Over the previous weeks, at least as far as the regulars in the bar could judge, she’d been her usual self. Cheerful enough, friendly, chatting amiably with the regulars, but as private and reserved as ever. She’d rarely talked about her private life, and had given no indication that anything might be troubling her. But then, McKay thought, people don’t always need a reason.

Maybe it was as simple as that. She’d come up here to start a new life, but life hadn’t come running to greet her. Perhaps she’d simply grown tired of the endless round of work and sleep. Perhaps she’d wanted more. He could imagine her, walking along the sea shore, staring out at the clear sky and the blue waters of the Moray Firth and the North Sea beyond, thinking that there must be something else out there. Something she could aspire to.

The summer weeks had dragged by, and no further leads or clues had emerged. The last time she’d been seen was at a housekeeping visit to one of the holiday lets the weekend before her disappearance. One of the assistants at the local Co-op thought he might have served her on the Monday, but couldn’t be sure. If he had, she’d paid cash, as no credit or debit card transactions were recorded to her name. They’d checked the CCTV in the store as well as elsewhere in the village, but could find no images of her in the relevant period. They’d been unable to trace her mobile phone and no calls had been made from its number since she’d left. None of her neighbours could recall when they’d last seen her but that wasn’t unusual, they said. She’d never been what you’d call sociable.

McKay had made routine contact with the relevant missing persons agencies and with his colleagues in the larger cities and towns. They’d checked the local hospitals. That image—the picture that still sat in the front of the file—had been sent to all parties. Nothing had come back.

It still seemed extraordinary to McKay that, in the modern world, anyone could simply disappear. He felt tracked and trailed every minute of his waking life, always conscious of the countless surveillance tools that, for good or ill, were now simply part of the landscape. But people vanished every day. They stepped off the grid, sometimes by choice, sometimes by accident, occasionally for sinister reasons. And it was easiest for people like this, with no ties, no obligations, no reasons to stay.

Even so, aspects of the case made McKay uneasy. Lizzie Hamilton had made no effort to cancel the tenancy on her bungalow or to contact the utility companies. The fridge had contained perishable food bought in the days immediately before her disappearance. She had left behind a number of apparently personal items, though admittedly nothing of great value. She’d had no car, and there’d been no sightings of her on the local buses or records of her booking a taxi to leave the village.

But as the weeks went by the case, which had never been a high priority to begin with, inevitably slipped further down the list. McKay had half-expected that eventually she might reappear, one way or another, alive or dead. Her body would be discovered, lost in woodland or washed up by the tide, the victim of an accident or something worse. Or she’d simply return one day from wherever she’d been and resume her humdrum life in the village. Maybe she’d be tracked down, living back down in Glasgow or here in Inverness.

But it never happened. When her rent direct debit bounced for the second time, the property company foreclosed on the tenancy and repossessed the property. As far as McKay knew, it was still standing empty. The owners of the holiday lets found new housekeepers. Denny Gorman no doubt found himself a new barmaid to lust after. Life ground slowly onwards.

And every once in a while, McKay would pull out the file and sit staring at that scanned image. Not even a particularly good likeness, he’d been told, and clearly taken a few years before she’d arrived up here.

But it was a good likeness, he thought.

Of another young woman. Another lost soul.

Another Lizzie.

His own daughter.

CHAPTER THREE

‘Just five minutes.’

‘I know your five minutes, Greg. And I know what you can get up to in five minutes.’

‘Aw, come on. We’ve got time.’

‘I’ve told you, I don’t like it. Place gives me the creeps.’

‘Ach. Just a wee walk. Breath of fresh air. Blow the cobwebs away.’

‘You sound like my mother. And it’s not blowing cobwebs that you’re interested in.’

Greg Johnson laughed, but said nothing more as he pulled off the road down the short track to the makeshift car park. It was a Monday morning in midsummer, but theirs was the only car there. Other people had more sense, she thought. They came here only if they were desperate. Even more desperate than Greg, she added to herself, as she noted his eagerness to leave the car.

She knew well enough what was on his mind, and in truth she wasn’t exactly averse to the idea herself. Christ knew, they got little enough time together. It would be different come the autumn when they both went off to university.

She just didn’t want to come
here
. The place really did freak her out. She should be used to it by now. It was just part of the landscape, and she’d been walking round there more times than she could remember. But every time she felt the same frisson, the same sense that the place wasn’t quite right.

‘Fancy a quick walk, then?’ he said.

‘A quick what?’ She laughed. ‘Yeah, go on then, loverboy. But straight into the woods. Not up there.’ She glanced behind them to where the low hill rose gloomily above the car park, a dark tangle of trees endlessly festooned with strips of fabric and items of clothing, some new, some long-faded, fluttering in the summer breeze like the banners of a defeated army.

They both knew the story of the Clootie Well. A Celtic place of pilgrimage, a running stream with supposedly health-giving properties. People still came here when their friends or relatives were unwell, tying pieces of cloth—sometimes wiped on the skin of the invalid in question—to the trees around the stream. The theory was that as the fabric rotted away the illness would dissipate. No doubt some people believed it enough to make it work.

It was a harmless piece of superstition, and these days, for most people, the place was no more than a quaint tourist attraction. Somewhere the summer trippers visited on their way to their holiday lets on the Black Isle, traipsing along the paths, chattering patronisingly about the gullibility of the locals. While, in some cases, no doubt stopping to attach their own votive offerings, just in case.

Even so, the place disturbed Kelly. It was partly the disparate and often poignant nature of the offerings. Nearer the stream, it wasn’t just shreds of cloth. It might be baby clothes, old stuffed toys, football scarves or shirts. Things that had belonged to real, identifiable human beings, left here in a last, desperate hope that the act might cure a terminal disease, remove a cancer, allow a child to live beyond her first birthday. Kelly assumed the magic would mostly have failed. That the former owner of the rotting teddy-bear or the faded Caley shirt would be long since dead. For Kelly, the place was infested by ghosts, the spirits of those who clung on, earthbound by their last dregs of hope, watching as the worthless waters poured endlessly down the wooded hillside.

Well, she thought, as she followed Greg into the woods, he might be in the mood but she certainly wasn’t. Not now, not in this place. Still, maybe five minutes in the company of Greg’s caressing hands might be enough to change her mind. Even before they’d become an item, she’d found him attractive—well, for a Scotsman, anyway, she added to herself. Most of the lads at the Academy had been all ginger hair and freckles. Greg was more the tall, dark and brooding type, or at least that was the image he tried to cultivate, with his swept-back black hair and incipient stubble. He was probably aiming for a cross between Heathcliff and William Wallace.

She glanced behind her and then, allowing herself a smile at her own thoughts, she ran ahead of him into the shade of the trees. He jogged behind her, laughing.

It was a fine sunny day, one of the best they’d had so far this year, and it was relatively warm even in the woodland. Greg led them off the footpath, tramping through the undergrowth until they were out of sight of any potential passers-by. ‘Well, here we are.’

‘We seem to be.’ She threw herself against him with sufficient force to knock him off his feet. He stumbled, regained balance, and then allowed himself to fall sideways into the thick heather, pulling Kelly down with him. They lay for a moment, looking up at the dappled sky through the shifting leaves, listening to the rustle of the breeze. Greg rolled over and kissed her, gently at first, then more hungrily.

She responded enthusiastically, enjoying the feel of his firm body against hers, conscious of his arousal and finding that, whatever her earlier feelings, she was beginning to share it. They kissed for a while, losing themselves in each other. Finally coming up for air, she said: ‘It’s good to have some time together. Just the two of us.’

He rolled over, peering through the grass. ‘It is. It’ll be even better when we’re at uni. As much time together as we want.’

‘I think we’re expected to do some work as well.’

‘I suppose. We can fit it in between the bouts of rampant sex.’

‘It’ll need careful scheduling.’

‘We’ll be very organised.’ He began to turn himself back towards her, and then he paused, staring along the rough ground. ‘What’s that?’

‘What’s what?’

‘That. There.’ He sat up and pointed. She hoisted herself up and sat beside him, trying to follow the direction of his gesturing.

At first, she could make out nothing but the rough undergrowth. Then, between two thorn bushes, she saw what he was indicating. Evenly distributed blurs of colour, something crimson.

‘Flowers?’

‘I don’t know. It looks very neat, if it’s just something growing wild.’ He climbed to his feet and took a step or two forward. It was typical of Greg, she thought. Lost in the throes of passion, but it took only the mildest tug of curiosity to drag his mind, if not necessarily his body, elsewhere. It was one of the qualities she found endearing. ‘Think you’re right, though. It is flowers. Looks like roses. Weird.’ He walked forward another few steps. ‘Jesus. What is that? Come and have a look.’

Reluctantly, she stumbled after him. ‘What is it?’

‘Look. There.’

It was a line of alternating candlesticks and small black vases, positioned some fifty centimetres from each other. Each candlestick contained an unlit candle and each vase was filled with cut red roses. As she moved closer, Kelly realised there were two parallel lines, each comprising three identical vases and two candles, with a further vase positioned between the lines at the two ends to form a rectangle. It took her a moment to realise what the arrangement resembled.

A grave.

It was the right size, she thought. The size of a human body.

‘Jesus,’ Greg said. ‘What is it?’ She could see the same thought had struck him.

‘Somebody’s idea of a joke?’

‘Strange joke. Some sort of installation piece, you reckon? On the short list for the Turner prize?’ He was talking too quickly, more rattled than he was letting on. Kelly realised that both of them had been glancing involuntarily around, as if someone might be observing them. ‘Maybe we’re being filmed for some TV programme?’

‘Greg.’ Kelly had moved ahead of him, conscious of Greg’s reluctance to approach the vases. She was a few metres away, staring down.

‘What?’

‘Look at this.’ She pointed to the grassed area between the vases. The turf had been cut into several sections and then had been lifted and, slightly unevenly, replaced. As a result, the surface was raised above the surrounding grassland, although the difference was partly obscured by the positioning of the candles and vases.

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. But she had a growing feeling she knew all too well. Greg had moved past her now, embarrassed at his own previous trepidation. He crouched down to pull at one of the sections of turf.

‘Greg—’

It was too late. He’d already dragged back the heavy lump of earth and was staring at what lay beneath. Kelly turned her head away, unable to look.

‘Jesus,’ Greg said. ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘Right,’ McKay said. ‘Let me explain how you should handle it.’

DC Josh Carlisle, a young fresh-faced figure who looked to McKay as if he might have bunked off school for the afternoon, nodded earnestly. ‘That would be good, sir.’

‘You don’t need to call me sir. Boss will do.’ McKay stretched back in his chair, chewing on his habitual gum with the air of a man enjoying an after-dinner cigar. ‘It’s like this. What you should do is tell him to fuck off. Then tell him to fuck off some more. And then to fuck off a bit more still. And then to keep on fucking off until he gets back where he started. Then you can tell him to fuck off again.’ He paused. ‘Is that clear?’

Carlisle blinked. ‘Crystal, sir. I mean, boss. Thank you.’

‘Always glad to be of assistance. Door’s always open.’ McKay gestured towards the door in question, in a manner clearly intended to indicate the meeting was over. Carlisle took the hint and rose to take his leave, stopping as he saw DCI Helena Grant standing in the doorway. She was a slightly stocky woman of no more than average height, but like most of his colleagues Carlisle found her more intimidating than any of her male counterparts. She was gazing at them now with the air of a teacher watching two over-excited schoolboys.

‘Alec giving you one of his motivational team talks?’

‘Something like that.’ Carlisle shuffled past her and, with visible relief, made his escape.

‘Good lad,’ McKay said. ‘Will go far.’