Authors: Alan Hunter
‘I
’M SORRY IF
I startled you.’
He was standing on the verge exactly at the spot where Earle claimed he had waited. His face was merely a pale blur but I could imagine his amused smile. I grunted surlily.
‘What are you doing here?’
He laughed. ‘I came to indulge in the frissons. One doesn’t often have such an opportunity. And I’m still young enough to admire Shelley.’
‘You mean you were ghost-hunting?’
‘I thought I’d give one a chance. I dare say that if Fortuny could appear he would jump at it. And I was his enemy in life, so who would be a better subject for haunting?’
I didn’t at once reply. There seemed something almost predestined about Alex’s appearance in this place, and I realized that, in my reverie, I had been just about to find him a niche. I had been sketching the killer’s qualifications. They were qualifications shared by Alex. Small wonder if I had started when I found him close to me just then.
‘Were you waiting for me?’
He laughed again. ‘One expects you to look for the prosaic reason. But you’re right, the frissons were just a bonus. I thought it was time we had a little talk.’
‘What have you to tell me?’
‘Not very much. But I appreciate that you may have questions to ask me.’
‘Suppose we go somewhere a little less chilling.’
He shook his head. ‘We can’t talk in the house.’
He shivered; he was wearing a short coat and his hands were stuffed into the pockets. I wondered how long he had been waiting there and why he had not come up to the hotel. But I wasn’t going to stay in that icy frost-trap. I gestured with my head and began to retrace my steps. Alex followed. We came to the parapet. He hesitated briefly, then sat down on the wall.
‘This will do.’
I sat down near him. It was not a perch I would have chosen. One hundred and fifty feet below us the waves gnawed at the rocks where Fortuny had lain. But here in the better light I could just make out the features of the oval face turned towards me, and the large, dark eyes that stared unwinkingly into mine.
‘Do you think I set Earle up for this?’
I paused before nodding abruptly. I thought I saw his mouth twist.
‘You’re right. It was too good a chance to miss. I knew that Earle could give him a beating. He had wiped the floor with him before. I would like to have done the job myself, but frankly I’m no good in a punch-up.’
‘Are you satisfied with the result?’
His black eyes considered me. ‘The truth is yes. I can be as hypocritical as other people, but not on Fortuny’s account.’
‘You are glad he is dead.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘You must have felt he had done you grave injury.’
‘He stole my work. He jeopardized my career. And now he’s dead, and I’m glad.’
‘You don’t find it in your heart to pity him.’
Alex gave a jerk of his head. ‘It would be easy to say so. After four years working for Aunty, making the right sounds becomes an automatic reflex. Perhaps I’m not BBC material. Coming up here has taught me a few things. I’m a Mackenzie too. I have a tough soul. I’m not what Oxford tried to make me. I’ve been doing a lot of re-thinking, lately, about who I am and where I’m going, and first I’m determined on moral honesty. I don’t have a scrap of pity for Fortuny.’
‘Who killed him?’
‘Earle, I think.’
‘It could have been you.’
‘Yes, it could. You could make a good case out of casting me as the villain, and showing how I followed Earle to finish off the job.’
‘Why did you follow him?’
‘You don’t think I’m the villain?’
‘I think, like you, that the case is a good one.’
He laughed. ‘You’re not certain, are you? You think I’ve got it in me to have done it.
I said nothing. He eyed me steadily.
‘This would be an excellent place to confess. After I had got it off my chest I could decide whether to take the consequences or not. I might even dodge them altogether by a treacherous attack on yourself. I might be armed, had you thought of that? I could be holding a gun in one of these pockets.’
‘But you’re not. You’re romanticizing.’
Now I was sure of the bitter twist to his mouth. ‘Yes, you’re right. I’m still twenty-seven. It isn’t an age when moral honesty comes easily.’ He caught up a chip of rock and hurled it violently into emptiness: it vanished silently. He sat moodily staring towards the surf, invisible below. ‘I thought there was a chance of what happened.’
‘Of Earle’s killing him?’
He nodded. ‘Earle can lose his head. When I told him about Fortuny he went nearly crazy. I felt there was a chance that he wouldn’t stop at thrashing him and it gave me a queer thrill. Can you understand that? I was crazy too. I felt that at least I’d found a way to be even with him.’
‘Then you were crazy.’
‘Yes, I admit it. Yet perhaps not as crazy as you are thinking. You’re an abolitionist, I’m not so sure: I think there are men whom society should get rid of.’
‘Men like Fortuny?’
He shook his head, but reluctantly. ‘Perhaps with Fortuny that’s going too far. But it’s an argument that retentionists have tended to overlook that execution purges us of killers. They get led astray by red herrings such as the elements of revenge and prevention. They are irrelevant. The question is simply one of the disposal of the men who kill.’
‘That solution would leave a killer in our midst.’
‘Perhaps we could devise automatic execution.’
‘You can’t get rid of the moral guilt.’
‘It might be worth it.’
‘It has never been found so.’
Alex dug into his pockets. ‘I’ve no doubt you’re right. I’m just a foolish young man trying to question everything. And the fact is that I didn’t stay crazy for long – I got on the road and tried to head Earle off.’
‘That was why you followed him.’
‘Of course. I thought I could catch him in the MG. He had two hours’ start but it’s seven hundred miles and I knew the road a lot better than he did.’
‘And if you caught him?’
‘I would have tried to argue sense into him. I admit that probably he wouldn’t have listened. But there was a chance that I could have got there first and warned Fortuny. At least I might have exerted a calming influence.’
‘But you didn’t catch him. Or get here first.’
‘I didn’t know that he would drive so far and so fast. By Stirling I was sure I must be ahead of him, and that probably he’d lost himself getting round Glasgow.’
I nodded, because this was credible in the days before the spur from the motorway was completed. Either you followed the slow A73 or continued towards Glasgow and hoped. The latter, if you didn’t possess special knowledge, could turn out to be a frustrating adventure.
‘What time did you leave Stirling?’
‘I was away by half-past eight. I kept to the main road and kept going fast. But obviously I didn’t catch up with Earle.’
‘He spent the night at Pitlochry.’
‘So I’ve been told.’
‘He didn’t leave until nine.’
‘But that’s seventy or eighty up the road.’
‘Do you still have the hotel bill for where you stayed in Stirling?’
Alex was silent a few moments. ‘I do have the hotel bill,’ he said. ‘But if you’re intending to cast me as the villain that proves nothing, either way. I was at the Royal. I could have left earlier. I could well have been here ahead of Earle. But then I would have to have hidden my car, made myself invisible, and divined where they would meet by supersensory perception.’
‘Would that really have been necessary?’
He was silent again.
‘What time do you say you arrived in Kyleness?’
‘I’m not sure of the precise time. It was something after 4 p.m.’
‘Did you meet any traffic between here and the junction?’
He shook his head. ‘Should I have done?’
‘Why didn’t you call at the hotel, where Fortuny was staying?’
‘Well, I thought I should talk to Anne first.’
‘You were so confident that you had beaten Earle to it.’
‘If you say so. But I wanted her viewpoint.’
‘It could also have been for a different reason. You could have known that Fortuny was out.’
This time Alex was silent for longer. His head inclined broodingly towards the breakers; his hands, thrust hard into the pockets, did give an impression that he was clutching concealed weapons.
‘Where did you park?’
‘Up there in a passing place. I could see the commotion going on here.’
‘You walked down and faded into the commotion.’
‘No. I walked down and asked what was going on.’
‘Who was present there?’
‘Well, there were the fishermen. Uncle Iain was just leaving. But after that all sorts of people arrived, including Earle and Anne. And then the police.’
‘Your Uncle Robert?’
‘I don’t remember seeing him. Aunt Ailsie was there and Cousin Beattie. Aunt Ailsie was very pale and Beattie was snivelling when they landed the body.’
‘How was Earle behaving?’
‘He looked thunderstruck. He was standing over there by himself. Anne was behaving like an idiot. She thought he had done it, no doubt about that.’
‘Where was your grandfather?’
‘He came back with Uncle. They were both of them looking pretty blue.’
‘Did your uncle give a hand with the body?’
‘I don’t think he touched it. But the police arrived as they were swinging it in.’
‘What else did you see?’
His shoulders hunched. ‘I was convinced that Earle had done it, too. I was watching him. The guilt seemed written in him. The police must have spotted it, without what he did afterwards. It was like watching a film that somehow was real. Nothing could change what was going to happen. There was the victim, there was the culprit, and the film just had to keep coming off the reel.’
‘Yet Earle didn’t kill him.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I know it, and so does the rest of Kylie.’
‘You’re guessing. If the family knows anything, it hasn’t been dropped in my hearing.’
‘Perhaps they have a reason for that.’
He picked up another rock splinter and sent it spinning into emptiness. I cursed the still-increasing darkness that was hiding his expressions from me.
‘I’ve admitted that I could have done it. I wouldn’t have needed to hide my car, either. And the family wouldn’t have split – that’s one of the advantages of being a Mackenzie. And if I had done it I could live with my guilt, I’ve found that out about myself. I might regret it but I could put it behind me and keep my face turned to the future. I hated Fortuny. Well, now he’s dead, and I can’t hate him any longer. But he had to die for that to happen, and I won’t be dishonest and say I’m not glad. And I don’t pity him, not as Fortuny, but just the man in him like myself: the man in his terror going over this cliff. For the rest he deserved all he got.’ He paused, a little breathless. ‘And if Earle did it, I hope he feels about it like I would. I hope he gets away with it and that it doesn’t hang on his conscience. Fortuny was rotten. He should take it to the grave with him, there shouldn’t be any grief left behind.’
‘Did you do it?’
He made an odd little gesture. ‘Does it matter whether I did it?’
‘It may come to a straight question of who is going to jail for twenty years.’
His pale face glimmered towards me. ‘I didn’t, but you can never be certain of that. The proof is negative. I might well have killed him and for a time I was hoping that someone else would. That will have to be good enough. You can put it to Sinclair. I don’t care how you wrap it up. I owe it to Earle to be the suspect if that’s what it takes to get him off.’
‘You couldn’t give me a little more? To help me convince him?’
He got up off the stones. ‘You can go to hell. When it comes to a straight question of twenty years I can look after myself as well as the next man.’
M
Y ANORAK HAD
been scarcely adequate for the rigours of an evening in Kylie and I was happy to linger a little by the parlour fire when we got back to the Mackenzie house. James and his wife were the only others present. She sat placidly knitting a gorgeous sweater. He sat smoking a big, long-stemmed pipe of the sort you can buy in gift shops in Oslo. He looked up to give me a keen glance when I entered the parlour alone.
‘Have you seen young Alex?’
‘He went up to his room.’
He nodded and pointed to the decanter with his pipe. I helped myself. I was finding that in these latitudes Scotch was less of a luxury and more a way of life. I carried my glass to the hearth and stood basking in the comfortable warmth. Mrs Mackenzie’s needles clicked cheerfully and her husband drew unhurried puffs.
‘Is it cool outbye?’
‘It is.’
‘I heard you had a crack with Robbie.’
This didn’t surprise me. I imagined Robert Mackenzie’s first move would have been to phone the head of the clan.
‘Are you further forward?’
‘I found his daughter interesting.’
‘She’s a wilful lassie,’ Mrs Mackenzie said. ‘I doubt she’s been spoiled. With all the laddies to tease her you cannot wonder if her head has been turned.’
‘Robbie you can trust,’ James Mackenzie said. ‘Robbie was always a douce laddie. And Ailsie has a good heart, though sometimes her manner is a wee brisk.’ He puffed rapidly once or twice. ‘What had Alex to say?’
‘He accounted for his movements on Tuesday and Wednesday.’
‘He is a discreet lad.’
‘I think you may say that.’
‘Aye. In that he takes after Colin.’
‘But you would not think him Colin’s son,’ put in Mrs Mackenzie. ‘It is hard to ken who the lad favours. It will be from his mother’s side, I am thinking. There is not black eyes among the Mackenzies.’
‘There was Alistair Mackenzie,’ her husband said. ‘But you would not ken him, he was from Harris.’
‘They are no near kin, James.’
‘They are not far away. We have called them cousins since before the Union.’
Mrs Mackenzie seemed moved to dispute this and her husband seemed content with the change of subject, so I drank up briefly and said my goodnights and reluctantly withdrew from the comfortable fire. I was weary after my long day, but I still had some work that would not wait. In the silence of my room I unbuckled my briefcase, uncapped my pen and began to write. My notes were selective rather than detailed, or I would have been scribbling until the dawn. You will recall that they were required to stretch back to my initial sparring with Inspector Sinclair. They ranged through my interview with Earle, my second encounter with Sinclair, the conversation at dinner, and my visit to the hotel; and ended with what I found not the least troubling section, my exchange with Alex on the clifftop. I had covered much ground. What concerned me professionally was that I had failed to uncover a firm lead. I was extending the list of suspects almost to infinity without arriving at a prospect who would appeal to Sinclair. There was scarcely a Mackenzie who could be eliminated, nor any other member of the trawler’s crew. I might lay more definite suspicion at one or two doors, but none of it supported by evidential fact. I had my instincts, but they were irrelevant: no doubt Sinclair had plenty of his own. And of anything more substantial I could detect no glimmer in all my scribblings.