The Murder Hole (24 page)

“Good evening,” she returned.

He stepped up to the door of the van just as
Alasdair opened it. Gunn retreated. “Sorry, Neville,” Alasdair
said, and held the door for him.

So his first name was Neville, just the sort
of moniker a thug like Sawyer would find diverting, although Jean
supposed it was less rarefied here in the UK.

Alasdair ducked back under the canopy, the
lights glinting off the water droplets collected on his hair and
shoulders. Before he could speak she said, “Brad wasn’t there. I
left a message. I’ll let you know what he says.”

“Right. Thank you.” Alasdair offered her a
thick brown envelope. “Here you are.”

“Say what?” She took the package and turned
it over in her hands, but saw no distinguishing marks.

“The transcripts of Ambrose’s trial for
murder. I promised them to you in return for your working for
me.”

There was that glint in his eye, peeking out
like a star from behind a cloud. No, not a star, which was an
indifferent natural force. Alasdair was pretending nothing
embarrassing had happened. Jean inhaled the elusive tang of whiskey
once more, trying to rekindle that warm glow. “I thought we were
working together.”

“We are. I’m expecting you to read through
this lot and tell me what’s there.”

“You could have had someone at your office do
that.”

“Wasting police time on a case from
nineteen-thirty-three? This is a curiosity, is all. Although if you
do go finding some relation to the day’s issues, you’ll be letting
me know.”

She managed an off-kilter grin. “Aye, aye,
captain. You want me to write up an abstract for you, or will an
oral report be all right?”

“That would be quite sufficient.” Alasdair
redirected his own awkward grin to the stage.

Jean followed his lead. Ah, Hugh was
beginning his final number, the ballad “Flower of Scotland.” The
music tickled her vocal chords and plucked each of her muscle
fibers into rhythmic contractions. This melody had the rhythm of a
waltz, you could slow-dance to it—she remembered the piece Hugh had
played earlier, when she thought he was making love to his violin .
. . To her relief, the song ended before her glow not only
re-kindled, but went nova.

“The tune’s not bad,” said Alasdair quietly,
“but the words, now. The battle of Bannockburn was seven hundred
years since. It’s time to move on.”

“Moving on can be like crawling out of
quicksand,” she replied, and, to mitigate stating the obvious,
“‘Flower of Scotland’ is a crowd-pleaser.”

“Oh aye, it is that.”

Pleased, the crowd applauded vigorously. Hugh
and his band bowed their way off the stage, to be replaced by two
young pipers and a drummer dressed in kilts, T-shirts, and combat
boots. They launched into the derisive and inspirational “Johnnie
Cope.” Jean tried lobbing a joke in Alasdair’s direction. “Why do
pipers march when they play?”

“It’s harder to hit a moving target,” he
returned obligingly.

“I was going to say to get away from the
noise. But it’s not noise.”

“No, it’s not. Not at all.”

This is the music that stirs the blood
was almost the last thing he’d said to her before they parted last
month. And now her blood was pounding like a snare drum. The rich
scent of peat smoke hung on the air, a hint of creosote and a whiff
of chocolate blended into its own unique flavor. The scent
complemented the tang of the whiskey in Jean’s nose and mouth,
suggesting warm rooms and flickering flames. Maybe she should get
it over with and . . .

And what? She didn’t know what the hell she
should do. It wasn’t that she felt like a teenager pulling the
petals off a daisy and chanting
he likes me, he likes me
not
. She had pretty much conceded the answer to that. It was
that she was mature enough to know the hazards of displaying her
emotions for someone else to pick over and accept or reject as he
wished.
He’ll hurt me, he’ll hurt me not. I’ll hurt him
.

Hugh walked by waving his violin. “We’re
having a ceilidh in the hotel dining room,” he announced. “Come
one, come all! Music and dancing and the best of the barley!”

“Does he ever stop playing?” asked
Alasdair.

“No,” Jean replied. “I’m a bit envious of a
job that’s both work and play.”

“You’re not saying that about your own?”

“Not just now, no. Ask me again after a good
night’s sleep. What about your job?”

He didn’t answer. She looked around to see
his profile against the misty lights, still and stern. Bleak, like
a rocky valley scraped clean and dry by a glacier.

Last month she had wondered if he was on the
verge of burning out. But he wasn’t just going through the motions,
not like some people did when they grew disenchanted with their
jobs. No, not Alasdair. He would never just go through the motions,
professionally or personally . . .

She’d done it again. Puncturing the mood the
first time had been justified by circumstances. But this time she’d
defaulted to her usual clumsy mix of self-defeating,
self-preserving, behavior. This time there was no rekindling the
glow. “I think I’ll turn in.”

“Good idea,” he replied politely.

“Thank you for the whiskey. I should have
some sort of report on the trial transcripts for you tomorrow.”
Jean unzipped her bag, pulled out her folding umbrella, and stuffed
the envelope with the transcripts inside, next to—nothing. Her
notebook was gone.

No. Oh no
. Turning toward the light,
Jean rooted around in the bag as though the notebook was somehow
small to enough to have slipped to the bottom with her keys. It
wasn’t there. “Hell and damnation! My notebook’s gone! It had all
my notes from my interviews and what I’d been thinking about the
case, everything.”

In an instant Alasdair went to full alert.
“When did you last see it?”

“At the hotel. I was writing in it while I
had my tea. I realized earlier I left my bag open when I paid my
bill. All the time I was walking around here it was hanging open.
Anyone could have taken that notebook.” She yanked the zipper shut,
closing the barn door long after the horses had galloped down to
the loch and plunged in.

“The notebook, but not your wallet?”

“A pickpocket would want the wallet, yes, but
maybe he—she—just grabbed what they could get. In that case the
notebook’s probably lying around here somewhere, trampled
underfoot.” Jean peered around suspiciously, at the faces bleached
out by the lights, at flags and tartans suddenly too bright, brash
instead of brave.

“I’ll have the lads look out for it. It’s
just a student copybook, is it? Spiral-bound?”

“Yes, that’s it. Like the one I had last
month.”

“I’ll walk you to the B&B,” Alasdair
said.

Not now, she told herself. Not like this. Not
under duress. “No, thank you. Please let me go on believing that
there’s nothing to this, that it’s just happenstance. That the
notebook’s lying back there in the lobby of the hotel or
something.”

“Jean . . .” His chin went up, but he knew
better than to gainsay her. He took a step backwards. “All right
then. Have yourself a good night.”

“You too, get some rest.” For just a moment
she dared to look into his eyes, but they were shielded and told
her nothing. She turned, wobbled—funny how she hadn’t felt the
whiskey in her knees until she stood up—and walked away not really
sure just what she’d been looking for. Reassurance? Affection?
Yeah, whatever.

Outside the shelter of the canopy the rain
was coming down, lightly but steadily. A couple of drops dribbled
down Jean’s glasses and half a dozen more went down the back of her
neck, extinguishing the last furtive embers of her glow. She
wrestled her umbrella open and put one foot in front of the
other.

Behind the clouds the sun flirted with the
western horizon, but here on terra firma Scotia, mist pressed in
around the lights of the Festival. Past the illuminated area the
evening was so thick that the town seemed no more than a series of
box-shapes spattered with the pale splotches of lights. The
mountains had vanished, as though rubbed out by a giant dirty
eraser.

A footprint-shaped puddle gleamed faintly
before her, then another, and another, until in front of the gate
the ground was a churned mess of mud and grass, like a relief map
of Scotland complete with trickling streams. Jean paused, looking
for a path through the mess.

The thud of steps came from behind her and
she glanced back.
Alasdair?
No, yes, no . . .

It was Roger’s pale face turned toward her,
beard bristling like steel wool, hair matted onto his forehead. His
voice was less flat than prostrate. “Oh. Jean. Hi. Going back to
Pitclachie?”

“Yes.” She caught a whiff of whiskey, not a
warm fragrance like Alasdair’s breath but something sour, evoking
spoiled dreams and harsh realities.

“Allow me.” He offered her his arm.

If he was stumbling drunk . . . But no, he
was walking as steadily as she was. That was a mark of the
alcoholic, wasn’t it, to drink and drink and still appear sober?
She rested her hand on his forearm—it felt brittle—and like
tightrope walkers, umbrella and all, they balanced on tufts of
sodden grass through the muddy area.

“Thanks,” Jean said, releasing him the moment
they’d achieved the sidewalk.

“No problem.” Without the least attempt to
share her umbrella, Roger walked on ahead, hands in his pockets,
chin sunk on his chest, either lost in his own thoughts or freed
from them by therapeutic booze.

The castle in the air he’d described to her
yesterday had collapsed into a pile of rubble. It was possible that
he himself had sapped its foundations, but if so, wouldn’t he be
bending her ear at this very moment with plans for new
construction? Here was her chance to ask him what his plans were .
. . No. No matter what evidence turned up tomorrow, either for or
against him, tonight she’d take pity on him and leave him
alone.

Jean glanced back at the Festival. Beneath
the large tent the mass of people blended into one organic mass of
movement and color, like a psychedelic amoeba. The rhythm of their
clapping was lost in the patter of rain on the road and its rustle
in the tall stalks of the nettles, but the skirl of the pipes came
through loud and clear.

A man-shape was taking long strides across
the field toward the gate. Again Jean’s mind, unbidden, repeated
the mantra,
Alasdair?
Then she saw the glint of metal on his
shoulders and the shape of his cap. A constable, no doubt
dispatched by his chief inspector to make sure a certain journalist
went to ground safely.

Suddenly bright lights leaped out of the
mist, making her and Roger’s shadows twirl wraith-like across the
asphalt. They jumped, startled. A spray of water and air wet Jean’s
legs and fluttered her skirt. Then the car was receding up the road
to the north, its taillights swallowed by the damp and murk.

The pipe music had concealed the sound of the
approaching car. Roger glanced around sharply, resentfully, then
trudged on. Jean grimaced. Technically, the man—make that the
gentleman—should be walking on the outside, but there was one of
those old customs that had gone by the wayside ages ago. No
problem. She was as much drip-dry as Roger was.

And, technically, they should be walking on
the right-hand side of the road, facing the traffic, in
mirror-image to the routine back home. But to do that they’d have
to cross to the other side and then cross back again. Instead, Jean
walked as far away from the road as she could get without brushing
against the nettles. There went another car, a flash of light and a
cold, damp whoosh.

The hotel’s white-painted sides were
illuminated by floodlights, and smears of rosy light leaked from
its front door and windows. Hugh’s ceilidh would be highly
entertaining, but no, she was wet and cold and tired. She wanted a
hot shower, a mug of chocolate, her flannel nightgown. Solitude.
Safety.

She heard the crescendo of the pipes, and
Miranda’s voice saying,
You came here because you were tired of
playing it safe
. . . A sudden roar detonated in her head. A
hard rush of air spun her against Roger just as a black behemoth
struck him a glancing blow.

Jean saw his face, eyes wide, mouth agape,
hands flung outwards. She heard her own voice cry out, the sound
thin and weak. The umbrella launched itself from her hand and she
fell, limbs flailing, fabric billowing. She landed on Roger’s wiry,
knobby body—arms, elbows, ribs, a surprisingly soft paunch. One of
her hands was burning.

With the squeal of skidding rubber, the
behemoth jounced over the curb and back into the road. Twin red
eyes blinked open and vanished into the mist. Tail lights. A car.
No particular shape, no particular color, seemingly as uninhabited
behind the streaming windows as the ghost coach of nightmare.

Jean lay sprawled on the sidewalk, one
thought looping repeatedly through her mind:
Alasdair was right.
I do need to be protected
.

The sound of the pipes was an attenuated hum,
less loud than Jean’s own heartbeat leaping in a syncopated rhythm
as much in her throat as her chest. Her breath was rasping. No,
that was Roger’s rancid breath, wheezing, cursing. Voices shouted
and footsteps pounded, each one resounding in the cold, rough
asphalt grating her knee.

Dazed, bewildered, suspended in that moment
when something’s going to hurt but it isn’t hurting yet, Jean tried
to struggle to her feet without adding insult to Roger’s injuries.
He was heaving at her, oblivious to which of her body parts his
hands and knees made contact with.

She was on all fours, feeling as though she
were playing a particularly gawky game of Twister, when hands
plucked her upwards. Oh, the constable. And behind him came a
thundering wave of humanity. Alasdair’s face emerged from the murk
and wet, into the light cast by the hotel floodlights, not at all
rosy but ashen. One quick, raw, look passed from his eyes to hers
and back—terror chased by relief, chased by the realization that
all the might-have-beens had almost come home to roost. Then his
face went blank and he got down to business.