The Stalking Party Read online

  ‘Do Lord and Lady Strathtorran encourage their guests to walk to the Prince’s Rock?’

  Lady Priscilla shrugged. ‘Let’s say they don’t discourage them. Can’t blame them: they’ve got to give the punters what they want, and hikers are never happy unless they’re hiking. But it does cause a certain amount of friction between Glen Buie and Strathtorran.’

  ‘I see. But despite this friction, all the people concerned attended Lord Strathtorran’s Ceilidh?’

  She smiled. ‘Only a fool picks a quarrel on a submarine. In a remote place like this, you’ve got to be civilised.’

  ‘Tell me more about the brother. Ian McNeil. You say he works at the fish-farm?’

  ‘I believe he puts in a few hours there when he feels like it.’ The bony nose wrinkled. ‘The rest of his time is spent on the hill or in the pub. It’s Torquil Strathtorran who organises the hostel, with his wife: a bonny way for the umpteenth earl to earn his living. Personally, I think Janie is a saint to put up with her brother-in-law, but perhaps she likes to keep him under her eye.’

  ‘He’s not married.’

  ‘Was.’ She saw Robb’s next question coming, and went on, ‘I might as well fill you in and be done with it. He married one of the Graham girls from Abertulloch. The middle one – Eliza.’

  Eliza McNeil? Robb’s memory stirred. There had been a tragedy... ‘She died?’ he prompted.

  ‘She was drowned – in that same bloody pool, would you believe it. The Greeting Pool or, as we Sassenachs would say, The Weeping Pool.’ Lady Priscilla nodded sombrely. ‘It has certainly caused more than its share of grief.’

  ‘How did that affect Mr McNeil?’

  ‘Just as badly as you’d expect. Worse. They had only been married a couple of years, and most of that time he’d been away, doing hush-hush stuff with the Army in Belfast. Eliza’s death knocked all the stuffing out of him. He resigned his commission and simply dropped out. Friends and family tried to help, offered him jobs, but he didn’t want to know. He came back here and grew that awful low-mow beard, and now it looks as if he means to stay here doing as little as he possibly can for the rest of his life.’

  *****

  The library was on the western corner of the house, and its windows commanded a sweeping view across the broad shoulder of Ben Shallachan, ridged at the top with bare spines of rock, while the lower slopes wore the vibrant colours of autumn – yellow and russet, purple, silver and green – in the densely planted stands of broadleaf trees which gave the house and its many outbuildings shelter from the fierce nor’-westerlies, and were themselves protected from the depredations of deer by a seven-foot wire fence with high wooden gates.

  As Robb stood at the window, a battered Land Rover drove up the track from the wood. Donny sprang down from the tailgate and swung open the barricade, then followed the slowly-moving vehicle across the courtyard to a square, buttressed stone outhouse with a steep slate roof, set apart from the other buildings. By the row of bleaching skulls with antlers attached that were propped against its wall, and the monotonous drumming of a refrigeration unit, Robb identified this as the game larder.

  Fergus left the driver’s seat and reached up to the lintel in a gesture that left no doubt that this was the customary hiding-place of the key.

  Security! thought Robb. The two young men opened the door and vanished into the larder, and he returned to study the contour model. Work of art was a fair description. Hills and rivers, lochs and forests – a miniature kingdom was up for grabs as the reigning monarch prepared to abdicate. Who would succeed him? Who wanted Glen Buie enough to kill for it?

  He abstracted a lump of Blu-tac from Peggy Kenny’s supplies, and placed a small blob beside the Prince’s Rock to represent Beverley Tanner. Glancing at his notes, he rolled more blobs to stick where members of the party had been on Tuesday afternoon. Two at the trout loch. Four on the slopes of Carn Beag. Another four on Carn Mhor. Two on the river.

  Whereabouts on the river had Nicky and young Benjamin been? He must find out. Standing over the model, it was easy to suppose that each of his blobs knew where the others were. On the ground it would be very different. There would be obstacles and angles of sight that you couldn’t guess at from here. Like it or not, he would have to heave his bulk up those hills and see for himself. He groaned softly, and his knee gave a sympathetic twinge. Long ago he had wrecked it playing rugger, and any unusual stress stropped up the cartilage and gave it merry hell.

  How, he thought, could people like these, rich enough to indulge themselves in any exotic holiday they fancied, choose to spend their leisure sweating up hills and crawling through peat-hags? Give me the Costa any day, he reflected. He didn’t share Jim Winter’s outrage at the idea of killing deer. It had to be done, but how people could do it for pleasure was beyond him.

  Chacun à son goût. Interrogate, don’t speculate, as his sagacious first sergeant used to advise in the far-off days when he was a young DC.

  ‘Your tea, sir.’ With a flourish, Wpc Kenny set a tray on the desk. Two kinds of scones, plain and currant; butter, strawberry jam, and several slices of dark, damp gingerbread.

  ‘Peg, you’re an angel!’

  ‘Yes, sir, and don’t you forget it when I ask for leave at Christmas.’ Despite the pert tone, he thought she looked tired and wan. That husband of hers must be on the booze again.

  He remembered that they would need a place to lay their heads tonight. He wasn’t going back and forth on the ferryboat if he could help it. ‘Did Jim book us in at the pub?’

  ‘Sorry, sir. They don’t do accommodation.’

  ‘Damn.’ He wolfed the gingerbread and washed it down with tea.

  ‘Shall I ask Lady Strathtorran if she can put us up at the hostel?’

  ‘Aren’t they closed?’

  ‘From what I hear in the kitchen, her ladyship is always keen to rake in the extra bob.’

  ‘All right, then. No harm in asking. And before you go, send in young Benjamin, would you?’

  *****

  Ben had none of his elder brother’s eagerness to please. ‘Cool’ and ‘laidback’ were the adjectives he himself would have used to describe his baggy black clothes and slouching gait, but to Robb’s eyes they merely appeared slovenly. The boy’s round face was still childish, but his mumbled, adenoidal responses were those of the quintessential teenage rebel.

  ‘Can you tell me exactly where you were fishing last Tuesday, Benjamin?’ Robb decided he was damned if he’d call this bolshy little number ‘sir.”

  ‘Was I fishing last Tuesday?’ Ben drawled.

  ‘According to the Game Book you were.’

  ‘Yeah, I remember. What a drag! Hours flogging the water, and I never got a bite.’

  ‘You were with your cousin Nicholas, is that right?’

  Ben considered the question from all angles, decided it wasn’t a trap, and said warily, ‘What if I was?’

  ‘We are trying to establish where everyone was on the afternoon Beverley Tanner was killed. Take a look at the contour model, and show me whereabouts on the river you and your cousin were.’

  Unable to think of a reason to protest, Ben waved a vague finger along the line of the Buie. ‘Lower Beat,’ he said. ‘Below the Greeting Bridge.’

  ‘How did you get there?’

  ‘In Nicky’s car.’

  ‘Good. Perhaps you’d indicate your position at, say, one o’clock.’

  Ben said petulantly, ‘How can I remember? We started at the top and fished down. I wasn’t looking at my watch all the time.’

  ‘Did you stop for lunch?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘And ate it together?’

  ‘Yeah. Actually we went back to the car, which was parked in the last layby before the bridge.’

  ‘What about after lunch? Did you go further upstream?’

  Ben flushed, and said reluctantly, ‘Actually, we didn’t go on fishing after lunch. There was a gig on at the Clachan, and one of the groups wa
s Spurs & Sporrans. They’re doing a tour.’

  ‘How did you get to Tounie?’

  ‘By the car-ferry, of course. We only just made it.’ Ben shifted uncomfortably. ‘Please don’t tell my mum. She’s fanatically anti-rock.’

  ‘Did your cousin attend this gig?’

  ‘Well, no,’ said Ben after a fractional pause. ‘It’s not his scene. He’s more into Classical.’

  ‘What did he do, then?’

  ‘He wanted some new boots, and went from shop to shop but couldn’t find any he liked.’

  ‘A wasted journey for him, then. What time did your gig end?’

  ‘About five, I suppose. Yeah, round about five.’

  ‘Rather a long wait for Nicholas?’

  ‘He didn’t mind. He’d brought his golf-clubs so he could play a round on the 9-hole course beyond the bus stop.’

  ‘I see. Were you back in time for dinner?’

  ‘Just about. Aunt Gwennie makes an awful fuss if anyone’s late.’

  ‘All right, Benjamin. That’ll do for now,’ said Robb, and wondered at the boy’s look of profound relief. What pitfall did he think he had dodged? It would be worth looking closely at those timings. But despite the relief, the boy turned at the door to say again, ‘Please don’t tell Mum!’ before his steps hurried away.

  When Winter came in, Robb relayed the information extracted from Benjamin and said, ‘Find out if anyone saw them at The Clachan. That car of young Hanbury’s is quite distinctive.’

  ‘Rich boy’s toy,’ said Winter, looking with disapproval at the low-slung red Caterham outside the front door.

  ‘That’s right. Someone’s bound to have noticed it. And try the ferry. They probably know Nicholas by sight.’

  ‘Right, sir. Who do you want next?’

  Robb glanced at the ticks beside his list of names, rubbed his eyes and said, ‘Seven down and three to go. It’s time I had a word with Mrs Forrester.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  TO AN EYE by now attuned to muted tweeds, Maya’s shiny jade and magenta shellsuit with its diamanté questionmark on the front and equally bold exclamation mark between the shoulderblades had a stunning visual impact: a hummingbird among terns.

  I know that face, thought Robb, then realised that the features were familiar only because similar polished-bronze beanpoles with dramatic cheekbones and baby-giraffe legs stared provocatively from every celeb-mag his daughters left lying about the house. Wide-set eyes, sultry lips, flared nostrils and the untamed look admired by fashionistas the world over.

  She prowled catlike across the room while Wpc Kenny, sweetest of uniformed dumplings, goggled in open envy. Robb wondered if such unadulterated allure would penetrate Sergeant Winter’s frosty soul.

  ‘Hi, I’m Maya Forrester. Glad to know you.’ Beneath the warm drawl and professionally brilliant smile, Robb sensed tension. A police investigation was hardly what she could have expected on her first Highland visit.

  He introduced himself and Peggy, and said directly, ‘I’ve been told, Mrs Forrester, that you found Beverley Tanner’s body under a rowing-boat up at Loch a Bealach last Wednesday, but when the search party went to look for it, it had gone. Is that correct?’

  She nodded, and said in the unhurried voice that sounded as if it would run out of steam between phrases, ‘Wednesday afternoon, huh? You heard that Ashy and Nicky and I went up there so she could do some painting? She asked me to go along to stop things getting heavy.’

  ‘Between her and Nicholas?’

  ‘That’s what I thought, but I guess I got it wrong because when we got up there, she made it clear enough she wanted time alone. Oh, she didn’t chase me off, not exactly, but she sure didn’t want Nicky hanging around to watch her paint. I thought maybe they’d had a fight.’

  ‘Would he have liked to stay?’

  ‘I guess so, but she didn’t give him the chance.’

  ‘You don’t think she was trying to take Beverley’s place in his life?’

  ‘It didn’t look that way to me, officer. If Ashy’s attracted to anyone, I’d say it was Fergus. Or doesn’t that square with your British class system?’

  Robb let that one go. ‘So you all split up, and you went off alone and found the boat on the shore, right?’

  ‘Correct. It was kinda warm, and we’d drunk a bottle of wine with our picnic, and although I could see Nicky way over on the track above the loch, I didn’t feel like talking, so I sat by the boat to wait until he’d gotten out of sight. And...’ she paused, shaking her head, ‘then I guess I just dropped off to sleep.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Maybe an hour, maybe just a few minutes. You know how it is when you go to sleep in the sun?’

  ‘And wake up with a splitting headache?’

  ‘Not a headache. Just kinda woozy. I couldn’t think where I was. Then I saw by my watch it was half-four, and thought I’d row the boat back to where Ashy was and help her get her gear on the pony. I figured the oars would be under the boat, so I turned it over.’

  She stopped abruptly and drew a shuddering breath.

  ‘What was underneath?’

  ‘There was this long bundle covered over in sheeting – the kind they use in construction yards.’

  ‘Did you touch it?’

  ‘Sure I touched it. Jesus! I didn’t know there was a body in it. I took hold of the sheeting and pulled a little, and there was Bev...’ Her voice trailed away and she put a hand to her mouth.

  ‘A nasty shock,’ said Robb sympathetically.

  She swallowed hard. ‘I guess I screamed. I thought my mind was playing tricks. I mean, she was meant to be in Stornoway, so how come she was dead under a boat? Her face – she looked really amazed, as if she couldn’t believe it either.’

  ‘Can you remember what she was wearing?’

  Maya narrowed her eyes, but after a moment shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t be sure. Something dark...maybe a black turtle? I didn’t spend time looking. You see, I had this weird feeling that someone was watching me. When I looked back at the hill, I could see the sun flashing on glass.’

  ‘Binoculars? A telescope?’

  ‘Something like that. I figured that whoever killed Bev was right there, watching me.’

  ‘You ran away?’

  ‘Just as fast as I could lay legs to the ground.’ She gave Robb an apologetic smile. ‘Not very heroic, I guess.’

  ‘Very understandable.’

  Maya shook her head. ‘I should have taken a better look at her. I should have gotten my bearings so I could find the place again. You think of these things afterwards, but I guess just then I was on auto. I wanted to get the hell out, fast.’

  ‘Did you run to where you’d left the others?’

  ‘That’s what I meant to do, but somewhere I went off course. These hills are real confusing, and out in the open I was so exposed. I wanted some cover, but when I reached the trees and stopped running, I couldn’t recognise a darned thing.’

  ‘Did you try to retrace your route?’

  ‘No way. Whoever killed Bev could have been looking for me. I took the shortest route off of that hill, down through the trees.’

  Robb moved to the contour model, his finger tracing a line from the loch to the river. ‘Is this more or less where you came down? Through the plantation?’

  ‘I guess so. I just kept heading downhill, praying I’d hit a track, and suddenly I came out on one.’ She smiled faintly. ‘It was like one of those nightmares where you’re running and can’t move your legs; then I woke up and found myself on the track with a truck coming towards me, so I thumbed a lift.’

  No need to tell him of her terror that the truck-driver might be the killer, or how she had crouched in the culvert beside the track, hoping he would drive by without seeing her. But he had stopped, and she recognised the chatty, tousle-headed boy who had taken her ticket on the car-ferry and had felt instinctively that she could trust him.

  ‘Had the others returned by
the time you got back?’

  ‘They were in their baths. Ashy didn’t say much, but I knew she was mad at me for getting myself lost. And she’d had trouble loading up the pony with her gear. I never did get to see the painting she did up there.’

  ‘So you all came back separately?’

  She nodded, and he said, ‘That all seems clear enough. Now, turning to something else, I’d like you to tell me about the previous day’s stalking. You went along with Fergus to Carn Beag, didn’t you?’

  ‘With Fergus, yes; and Mr Cooper, and Mrs Forbes, and that black dog of hers. We had a long walk, and some of it was kinda tough, but Mr Cooper shot a stag in the end, so he won his bet and that night Archie broke out the champagne to celebrate.’

  ‘What bet was that?’

  ‘You didn’t hear? Oh, Mr Cooper hadn’t shot anything all week, so when he was talking to Ashy at dinner the night before, he said he hoped his rifle wouldn’t let him down again. He’s the kind of guy –’ said Maya with a touch of scorn – ‘who can’t do anything unless he has all the best gear.’

  ‘And this bet?’

  ‘Oh, he was sitting next to Ashy and acting the good stepfather, you know, getting her opinion on which gun was best – she’s quite an expert – and Lady Priscilla leaned across the table and said in this very cold, sneering voice that there was nothing wrong with the rifle; the trouble was the man with his finger on the trigger. Yes, she said that! I sure was surprised. She looks so – well, quiet, and he’s always full of noise and bluster, but then she comes out with something like that. She said – wait, I remember her exact words – she said, “You’re a rotten shot, and the best rifle in the world can’t cure that, so why waste any more money? You haven’t shot a beast all week, and I bet you won’t tomorrow, either.”’

  ‘What did he say to that?’

  ‘Who-ay! He was real mad.’ Maya shook her head, smiling. ‘He didn’t like being told that in front of everyone. He bet her a hundred pounds that he would; and Ashy tried to smooth things over by saying if anyone could get him a stag, Fergus would. He didn’t like that, either. I guess it sounded as if he needed special help.’