The Stalking Party Read online

  Too many people going in different directions. Too many guns and people who knew how to handle them. For all their law-abiding demeanour, these people were the devil to deal with, he thought. Not only were they on first-name terms with the Chief Constable, but young and old, male and female, they belonged to a circle for whom killing large mammals was a normal activity. People accustomed to deciding whether or not a stag was ‘better off the hill’ might with no great mental or moral adjustment apply the same criterium to their own species. Most of them hardly bothered to conceal their conviction that Beverley was better off the hill. A dangerous outsider. A threat to the sport they loved. One of them might well have decided to get rid of her in the same spirit as he or she would have disposed of a fox or mink, or any other destructive vermin.

  It was perfectly possible, too, he thought gloomily, that several of them knew who had taken that decision and, approving of it, would do what they could to foil his own efforts to get at the truth. And if he did succeed in nailing the villain, it was Lombard Street to a china orange that the Chief Constable would be furious.

  Time for a pork pie, a pint, and a Mars bar to banish such thoughts. Without Winter’s calorie-conscious eye on him, he might even enjoy them. He thanked Mrs McNichol, and rose to leave.

  ‘You’ll no’ take a cup of tea before you go?’ Clearly she was disappointed to lose him so soon.

  ‘Thank you, but no. I don’t suppose you spoke to Miss Tanner yourself?’ he added as an afterthought.

  ‘Indeed I did.’ The old woman brightened. ‘She was aye dropping in here, asking questions about the old days. A nosy body, right enough. Many an hour she spent looking through the old albums from Strathtorran, and she’d a wheen questions that were none of her business, but there! The young folks have no manners today.’

  Robb bade farewell to the Mars bar, and resumed his seat. ‘What did she want to know?’

  ‘Och, about the auld laird’s troubles, and how Lady Helen was drowned, but I saw no cause to go raking over old sorrows for that one’s edification.’

  ‘No, indeed. But it might help us.’

  ‘Maybe.’ The old eyes considered him. ‘And then again, maybe not.’

  ‘Who told her you had the photographs from Strathtorran?’

  ‘That would have been Kirsty, sir.’

  ‘Your son’s wife?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, aye. ’Tis my belief she sent that one to me to keep her away from the Stalker’s Cottage. She’s been as jumpy as a cat ever since Miss Tanner went up there without so much as a by-your-leave, and told Kirsty she was wasting her life in such a godforsaken hovel.’

  Mrs McNichol’s eyes sparked danger.

  ‘I tell you, sir, if she’d said that in my hearing, I’d have given her a piece of my mind.’

  ‘I should think so. Why would she want to upset Kirsty like that?’

  Mrs McNichol pursed her lips until the whistle-lines looked more like pin-tucks. Robb did not press her, and after a while she sighed and said, ‘The Dear knows, that puzzled me too, but now I see it was all part of her politicking ways. She couldna abide a body that was contented with her lot, and she was aye ettling to change the social order here at Glen Buie. Well, I’m an old woman, sir, and able enough for the likes of her, but wee Kirsty’s no’ in a very strong position. Ye’ll have heard how my son took her in when she ran from home?’

  Robb made a noncommittal noise, and she went on with grim humour, ‘She’s not the first choice I’d have made for him, nor yet the second, but she’s a good wee thing, for all she canna cook nor sew. It would break Sandy’s heart to lose her now.’

  ‘I’m told she looks very like Lady Helen McNeil,’ said Robb, and she gave him a sharp glance.

  ‘You shouldna pay too much heed to Miss Ashy’s blether. That one can spin tales from cobwebs, just as young Mrs Ian would.’

  ‘You mean Eliza McNeil?’

  ‘Who else? Many’s the time she’s sat where you are sitting now, and told tales that would make my flesh creep if the half were true.’

  ‘How long did she live over at Strathtorran House?’

  ‘Four winter months,’ said Mrs McNichol heavily. ‘September to Hogmanay, and if there were two days together it didn’t rain, I never saw them. Such a wet year’s end as never was known, and Strathtorran is a lonesome place for a lassie when she’s nae sight of her husband for weeks on end.’

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘Off with the Army hardly a year after they married. Poor Mrs Ian! Running a salmon farm was never the life for her. Small wonder it wasna long before she went looking for mischief.’

  ‘What kind of mischief?’

  ‘Breeks,’ said Mrs McNichol, with a tremendous roll of the r. ‘And none too choosy who wore them, forbye.’

  ‘Did Lady Strathtorran know?’

  ‘That I canna say, sir. Her leddyship was busy at the house, and she’s one that willna abide idle hands. It was “Eliza, do this, and do that,” until she’d ride her bicycle here to see me, just to get away. “What’s the news, Catty?” she’d ask; and then, “Does nothing ever happen in this dump?” Och, I can hear her now.’

  ‘It must be very quiet here in the winter.’

  ‘A grave would be noisier,’ she agreed.

  ‘The Hanburys weren’t at the Lodge, then?’

  ‘No, sir. The big house is aye shut up at the end of the season, and if any of the gentlemen come to shoot hinds, they take their meals with Mary Grant and sleep in the bothy. The winter you’re speaking of, Mary had Mr Nicky to cook for as well as the ghillies, for he’d failed in his examinations and Sir Archibald’s orders were that he must live here and study to make up the work.’ She chuckled. ‘Before he’d been here a week, Mrs Ian had him running her errands. Well I mind the day I came in to find the pair of them puffing those nasty French cigarettes of hers, turn and turn about. I tell you, sir, the smell was enough to make you sick. I opened the window and told Mr Nicky he should be ashamed. “What would your father say if he saw you now?” I asked. “I’d tell him Eliza’s leading me astray,” he said, and they both laughed, but I made him throw it on the fire for all that. She was a woman grown and could do as she pleased, but I didna want Sir Archibald saying I had encouraged him.’

  ‘How old was Nicholas then?’

  ‘Eighteen, I’d say,’ she answered after a moment’s consideration, ‘but young for his age. All that money! It’s no’ chancy for a boy to ken he can buy the moon if he chooses, though his father was aye strict with him – too strict, some would say.’

  ‘Can’t be too strict,’ said Robb heartily, and rose. ‘I must have a word with Kirsty. Will she be at home now?’

  ‘The bairn’s due at the clinic at four, and she’ll go over on the three o’clock ferry,’ said Mrs McNichol. ‘Ye’ll likely catch her at the house if you hurry.’ She shot him a conspiratorial glance. ‘Ye’ll no’ be telling her you were talking to me, now?’

  ‘Mum’s the word.’

  As he drove away, he glanced up at the big window over the archway, and saw she had resumed her self-imposed vigil. On impulse he sounded his horn, and glimpsed the white blur of a waving hand.

  *****

  The larder in which the dead stags were hung, headless but still in their skins, to await collection by the game-merchant’s van, stood at the junction of front and back drives, screened from the main house by a thicket of laurel and ramping ponticum. To the left of the larder’s door, the refrigeration plant’s motor throbbed in its weldmesh cage. To the right, was a wooden bench on which the stalkers would prop antlers with identifying labels for guests who wanted to take them home.

  It was a gloomy, dank spot, from which no amount of hosing and sweeping could entirely banish flies. The smell of blood and corruption lingered about the drain grilles, together with scraps of hair and splinters of bone. But as a rendezvous, it had the merit of being equidistant from the Lodge and Mary’s cottage, yet hidden from both. It was also private. Apart
from the flurry of activity at the end of each day’s stalking, when stags were unloaded and hung up for weighing, no one had any reason to linger there.

  ‘Elspeth?’ Ben called softly as, clutching a plastic bag full of tapes, he hurried down the cinder path that wound through the leafy jungle. ‘Sorry I’m late, but –’

  He stopped abruptly, realising that the shape on the wooden bench was an overflowing black polythene sack full of severed heads and legs awaiting disposal in the offal pit. Of Elspeth there was no sign.

  He walked all round the larder and returned to the door.

  ‘Elspeth?’

  It surprised him that the door was ajar. Usually the stalkers were careful to lock it, though the key’s hiding-place was known to everyone. He pushed it a little further, and thought he heard a rustle and gasp of indrawn breath, like stifled laughter. It would be just Elspeth’s idea of a joke to hide behind the door and jump out at him. She could be quite childish at times.

  At least that would mean she had cheered up since breakfast. He grinned: all right, he’d play it her way. He stepped quickly through the door and moved into the dank, meaty-smelling gloom, where the afternoon light filtered dimly through windows set near the roof.

  ‘I know you’re here.’

  No answer. Inside the larder, the beat of the refrigeration plant was muffled to a soft, steady thrumming. Gimbals and pulleys, empty now, hung from the beams, and a large spring-balance, the dial calibrated to 200 kg, was suspended over the long butcher’s table, V-shaped to support a carcase belly-upward, and criss-crossed with cleaver scars.

  Along one wall stretched a stainless steel refrigerated cabinet with a heavily-flanged door at either end. This was where the carcases awaiting collection were stored in the chilled hygienic conditions demanded by Brussels. Gone were the days when dead stags could be towed down the loch behind the outboard, then hung a week or more in the open larder.

  Now the stags were weighed, their heads and lower legs removed, and then the gimbal with each carcase would be slotted on to electrically-operated rails at one end of the chiller. A push of a button moved it farther along as the next one was loaded in, so that the dealer’s men could carry out the stiff bodies from another door at the far end, which opened on to the drive. This ensured that the carcases were collected in strict rotation, with no need for the collectors to enter the larder itself.

  Where was Elspeth hiding? Ben pressed the light-switch just inside the door. As soon as the twin fluorescent tubes flooded the larder with flat light, his eye was drawn to a scrap of bright material, incongruous against the grey concrete floor.

  He picked it up and fingered it, puzzled, a little disturbed, recognising it as one of the elasticated chiffon rings with which Elspeth tied back her long red hair. Shocking pink, electric blue or dayglo yellow, they made a strong contrast with her dark uniform dresses, defiantly declaring that she was only pretending to be a skivvy.

  She must have pulled it off deliberately. It couldn’t just fall off, and without it her thick, crinkly tresses got in the way of everything she did. Why had she left it here? It had the look of bait...a clue that she was close at hand, but where? Surely even Elspeth would not be so reckless as to hide in the chiller?

  Suddenly anxious, he tugged at the sprung handle, and the heavy door swung outward. He hooked it back and peered into the shiny, sterile interior. Icy vapour plumed out to meet the warmer air, and when the miasma cleared he glimpsed the stiff, truncated, hairy bodies silvered with frost as they hung from the rail. Wedged between two of them was another shape.

  Behind him he heard a footstep and turned quickly, anxiety dissolving into relief. ‘Oh, hi! I’m looking for -’

  Then he gasped, and his voice rose sharply to a shout, a choking terrified roar: ‘Hey! Don’t do that! Stop it! Let go! What are you – ?’

  *****

  Moments later, the larder door swung shut, and its key grated. The grim little building resumed its usual secretive stillness, broken only by the buzzing of bluebottles around the grilles of the drains.

  Chapter Seventeen

  KIRSTY STOPPED THE battered Volvo a hundred yards short of the gate-house, and looked anxiously towards the house to see if Elspeth was coming. It was 2.45 already, and she had been due to pick her up five minutes earlier. Dougie had dropped off to sleep in his padded seat as she bumped down the track from the Stalker’s Cottage, but the moment she switched off he woke and began to grizzle.

  Hastily she re-started the engine and let it idle, watching the child in the rear-view mirror. His crying stopped, but she knew it was only a temporary reprieve, and willed Elspeth to hurry. Though clumps of shrubs hid the car from the gate-house, she knew that inquisitive old Catriona must have seen her drive down the track, and would soon wonder why the car had not emerged on to the shore road.

  Just knowing Sandy’s mother was watching made Kirsty nervous. She drummed her fingers against the wheel, tension building inside her. Stupid girl! Why couldn’t she be punctual? By offering a lift, Kirsty was saving her the cost of a taxi: you’d think she’d make an effort to get here on time.

  Five minutes crawled past, while Kirsty watched the toddler and the temperature gauge with equal anxiety. She dared not switch off, but the ancient engine was getting dangerously hot.

  At nine minutes to three, her patience gave out and she put the car in gear. Elspeth would have to shift for herself. If Dougie missed his appointment he wouldn’t get another for a week, and she couldn’t bear seven more days of wondering what was wrong with him. As it was, she was cutting the ferry finer than she liked.

  With a final glance up the deserted drive, she shrugged and let in the clutch. ‘Won’t be long now, bairnie,’ she crooned to Dougie, and drove as fast as she could towards the harbour.

  *****

  Sunday’s taped-off areas and police signs had been removed, but still the sandy head and well-filled uniform of Constable McTavish maintained a lonely vigil on the bridge across the Greeting Pool, ready and waiting to repel the world’s press should it choose to descend on his patch.

  He had been leaning over the parapet, jaws moving rhythmically, but as Robb approached he straightened, pulling down his tunic.

  ‘Not the first body that’s been pulled from this pool,’ said Robb by way of greeting.

  McTavish’s larynx moved convulsively and his toffee slid on its way. ‘Indeed it’s not, sir, and I doubt it will be the last,’ he said with ghoulish relish. ‘‘Twas here that poor Lady Helen drowned, and young Mistress McNeil, forbye. ‘Tis an unchancy spot.’

  Even the late gleam of sunlight that often ends a wet day could not dispel the sinister air of the Greeting Pool. If anything, thought Robb, adopting McTavish’s position at the parapet, the ruddy glow emphasised the oily blackness of the water, the sinuous strength of the current sucking round the bridge’s pillars, swirling in eddies and whirlpools over submerged rocks, and washing a yellowish froth into backwaters.

  ‘Is it true what they’re saying, sir, that the lassie was kilt on the hill and her body put in the river later awhile?’

  ‘That’s the way it looks,’ Robb nodded. ‘Shot first, and dumped in the water next day.’

  ‘If she was shot, sir, it would have tae be one of the stalkers. There’s no one else here with a rifle.’

  ‘You’re not troubled by poachers, then?’ Robb saw the leap of apprehension in McTavish’s eyes and relented. ‘No, you’re right. It looks like the work of a stalker, but the question is, which one? Pro or Am? There’s half a dozen rifles in the gun-room at the Lodge, all licenced and above board, and close on a dozen people used to handling them. Male and female. Young and old.’

  ‘Aye. They say Miss Ashy’s a grand shot, and her leddyship, too.’ McTavish pushed back his cap and deftly intercepted a ked about to take refuge in his sandy curls. ‘And there’s Ian McNeil has the auld laird’s .300 Magnum over at Strathtorran, the one they call Mons Meg. Did ye no’ find a bullet, sir?’

 
; The question brought Ashy’s artless prattle to mind. Robb leaned farther over the parapet, scanning to right and left. He said, ‘Go and stand on the bank below and look back at the bridge. Tell me if you can see a stone missing below the parapet.’

  With a mystified air, McTavish complied, and presently called back that there was a stone out at the top of the central pillar. Guided by his shouts, Robb moved a few paces to his left, and soon his searching fingers located the cavity. It went back further than he expected.

  Heaving himself ponderously on to the coping, he balanced on his stomach and wriggled forward as far as he dared, feeling both absurd and insecure as he groped within the hole. What was he expecting to find? Sweets for the wee folk? An indignant toad?

  At first he thought it was empty. Then his questing fingers closed on the damp smoothness of paper – an envelope – and with a grunt of satisfaction he tried to wriggle backwards. A gust of wind buffeted him between the shoulders, and his feet waved helplessly like a stranded crab. Too much of his heavy body was hanging over the edge. He could get no purchase on the smooth parapet to push himself to safety. For a moment his head swam as he stared into the swirling black water far below; then a hand like a ham grasped him by the collar.

  ‘Have a care, sir!’ Puffing and alarmed, Constable McTavish heaved him on to firm ground. ‘Losh, man, I thought ye’d fall! What have ye there?’

  ‘Got a knife?’

  The plain buff envelope was clean, though damp. It had not been in the hole long. Holding it by one corner, Robb slit the top and extracted a folded postcard headed: D. L. Paish, Studio 12, TRL Films (UK) Ltd.

  The message was brief and to the point. No chance last night, but will try again. Enclosed brings us up to date. Regards, DLP. Clipped to the postcard were ten £10 notes, crisp from the ATM.

  *****

  ‘That’s odd,’ said Ashy, as she and Maya, with Sergeant Winter close on their heels, slid down the last forestry bank and reached the Trooper. They had been on the hill for eight hours and were chilled, sodden, and exhausted.