Never go back, p.23
Never Go Back, page 23
part #3 of Harry Barnett Series
‘It’s a piece of academic writing,’ said Howlett, snappishly enough to suggest he did not like anyone to criticize his girlfriend, however mildly. ‘What do you expect?’
‘You promised me “most of the known facts about Haskurlay”, as I recall.’
‘And that’s what you’ve got.’ Howlett shot Harry a grim little smile. ‘There just aren’t many of them.’
FORTY-SEVEN
The hump-backed hills of Barra and Vatersay came into view as the Clansman car ferry sailed into the setting sun that evening. It was, in its way, a beautiful sight, the last land before Labrador silhouetted against a golden, cloud-barred sky. Chipchase for one, however, was in neither mood nor condition to appreciate it, having complained of seasickness ever since the ship had cleared the Sound of Mull and misgivings about the trip for rather longer.
Harry shared many of those misgivings, but did his best to stifle them. Tracking down Ailsa Redpath was their best if not only chance of unravelling the mystery they were caught up in. They were due to return to Police HQ in Aberdeen on Tuesday. If they did not, they would be officially on the run. There was, accordingly, no time to be lost. And the possibility that they were wasting what little remained of it was not to be contemplated.
—«»—«»—«»—
The Clansman performed a slow, elegant turn as it entered the harbour of Castlebay. This gave Harry and Barry a panoptical view of the hills of Barra; of the modest, mostly modern houses of the island’s capital strung out around the shore; of the fortress built on an islet in the bay that supplied the town’s name; and of the lower hills and inlets of Vatersay away to the south. The landscape was starkly treeless and ruggedly green, largely untouched by man. It was not the sort of place either of them was familiar with. Harry’s one spell of island living, on Rhodes, was far removed from the cutting wind and limitless ocean of the Outer Hebrides. And Chipchase, by his own admission, was a town rat by birth, breeding and inclination.
The same, they assumed, applied to Howlett, but they were in no position to check the point. He was still below, afflicted by a migraine, induced, to hear him tell it, by long hours of driving, though probably not helped by the quantity of lager he had drunk during the voyage. With Chipchase’s seasickness only slowly abating, Harry was left to co-ordinate their disembarkation. Fortunately, the drive to the hotel they had booked themselves into by phone from Oban could hardly have been shorter.
—«»—«»—«»—
The Castlebay Hotel, standing four-square and grey-stoned on the hill above the harbour, was warm and comfortable. Chipchase’s spirits lifted slightly once he was on dry land. As he watched the Clansman cast off for its onward voyage to South Uist from the window of the twin-bedded room he and Harry were sharing, his summary of their situation was marginally less bleak than it might have been.
‘We’re stuck here now, Harry old cock. For better or worse. So, do we get wrecked in the bar — or ask Marky if he wants to head straight for Vatersay?’
—«»—«»—«»—
A walk along the corridor to Howlett’s room supplied the answer. They found him prostrate on his bed, curtains firmly closed against the persistent evening light.
‘There’s no way I’m moving from here tonight, guys. Just driving up from the pier has made the migraine worse. I’ll have to sleep it off. Don’t worry. Sleep always cures it. I’ll be fine in the morning.’
—«»—«»—«»—
The bar it was, then, though only after a diversion to the hotel’s restaurant, Chipchase’s sudden hunger testifying to his recovery. It was dark by the time they stepped out into the cold, clear silence of Barra by night and strolled round to the cosily lit Castlebay Bar, their stomachs well filled with fresh island fish.
There were only a dozen or so locals inside, two of them engaged in a largely wordless game of pool. The atmosphere was far from uproarious. The amiable barman told them Sunday evenings were always quiet. ‘You should have been in last night. We had a grand ceilidh. The Vatersay Boys played.’ He nodded at a dais in the corner, adorned with a drum-set, and explained that the folksily Gaelic music rumbling in the background was from the Boys’ latest album — The Road to Vatersay.
‘We’ll be taking that tomorrow,’ said Chipchase as he lit a cigar.
‘Buying their CD?’
‘No, no. Taking the road to Vatersay. Visiting the island.’
‘Are you over on holiday, then?’
‘We certainly are.’ Chipchase took a deep and evidently inspiring swallow of whisky. ‘Birdwatching. Hill-climbing. Deep-sea diving. We can’t get enough of that sort of thing, can we, Harry? We’re a pair of genuine wilderness lovers. The Outer Hebrides is our idea of paradise.’
‘We’re just looking round,’ said Harry. ‘There are quite a few uninhabited islands south of here, aren’t there?’
‘That there are.’
‘Wasn’t one of them in the news a few years back? Halter-say? Haskurlay? Some… mystery or other.’
‘Haskurlay,’ replied the barman, frowning as if doubting whether Harry’s uncertainty about the name was genuine. ‘You’ll be thinking of when they found the bodies there.’ He sighed. ‘Aye, that was a dismal business.’
‘What was it all about?’ enquired Chipchase.
‘Och, nobody rightly knows. Though you’ll meet a few who claim to. Take Dougie over there.’
The barman had pointed to a wizened old man seated near the door, nursing a glass of whisky and a noxious-looking pipe. He was grim-faced, lantern-jawed and sharp-nosed, dressed in a frayed grey suit and black polo-neck sweater, with a still blacker beret perched at an incongruously rakish angle on his apparently pebble-bald head. He was watching the languid manoeuvrings of the pool players with the unfocused gaze of someone waiting for something more interesting to enter his field of vision. As Harry and Barry were about to.
‘Looks a testy old bugger,’ murmured Chipchase.
‘That he is,’ agreed the barman. ‘But talkative as well if you give him the right encouragement.’
‘And what might that be?’ asked Harry.
‘Well, he’s awful fond of the Talisker. A dram or two of that… and you’ll have your work cut out to shut him up.’
—«»—«»—«»—
Talisker malt whisky proved to be as effective a tongue-loosener with the initially taciturn Dougie McLeish as the barman had promised. The old boy was eighty-seven, a fact he mentioned more than once, proud as he was of the distant reach of his supposedly flawless memory. The construction of a bridge linking Barra to Vatersay was a recent and to his mind lamentable development. ‘What God has set asunder let no man join together.’ When Chipchase greeted this observation with a muttered ‘Bloody hell,’ he was rebuked for profanation. He seemed tempted to retaliate by snatching the tumbler of barely diluted Talisker from McLeish’s thin, faintly smiling lips, until reminded by a kick under the table from Harry that the only reward they needed for their generosity was solid information.
‘Why would the pair of you be interested in the Haskurlay mystery, then?’ McLeish asked when Harry none too subtly raised the subject.
‘No reason,’ said Harry, unconvincingly. ‘Just… idle curiosity.’
‘Aye, well, curiosity killed the cat, don’t they say?’
Chipchase stifled another curse and grinned stiffly. ‘You could give us the real story before we get our heads filled with all kinds of nonsense, Dougie. I’ll bet no-one would tell it as accurately as you.’
‘You have that right.’
‘So…’ Harry prompted.
‘Where were you two in the spring of 1955, I wonder.’
‘Us?’
‘Aye. I’m not talking to the bench-backs behind you.’
‘Well, we… were doing our National Service together, as a matter of fact. In the RAF.’
‘Were you, though? Where were you based?’
‘Dyce. Near Aberdeen.’
‘Aberdeen, was it?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I wouldn’a know. But you were in the Forces, weren’t you? That’s my point.’
‘Point… taken, then,’ said Chipchase, still grinning fixedly.
‘You’re sure it was Aberdeen where you were based?’
‘We’re sure,’ said Harry.
McLeish sighed. ‘That’s a shame.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, for a moment there I thought you might know more than you were letting on. There’s a military strand to this tale, you see.’ He had pronounced military as four distinct and elongated syllables. ‘So they say.’
‘But what do you say, Dougie?’ asked Chipchase.
‘I say the word was put round among the crofters here and on Vatersay in May 1955 that they shouldn’a consider landing on Haskurlay for a couple of weeks. No reason given. Advice, they called it. From the Crofters’ Commission in Inverness, would you believe. Whose tune they were dancing to you must judge for yourself. But some of the fishermen claimed a Royal Navy frigate was out by night to the south of here, off Haskurlay. The rumour was the island was used for some kind of military exercise. All very hush-hush. Well, who was to complain about that? The Cold War was on, after all. Whatever was done, it caused no harm. So we thought, anyway. Even when Hamish Munro and his son went missing. The weather was bad enough for it to be no difficult thing to believe they’d been drowned while fishing. Their boat was washed up on the coast of Skye. No sign of them, though. They were lost. Taken by the sea, it was to be supposed.’
‘Not true, though,’ said Harry. ‘As it turned out.’
‘No. Not true at all. You have to understand that Hamish Munro was a hard man to warn off. He was born on Haskurlay, a couple of years before the last crofters moved from there to plots on Vatersay. So, he had stronger links with the island than most. Knowing the man, I’m no so very surprised he decided to break the ban and take a peek at what was going on there. If that’s what he did. We canna be sure, can we?’
‘What can we be sure of?’
‘That he died there. Him and his son Andrew. Thanks to those archaeologists and their diggings and delvings four years since, we know now the pair of them… were murdered … and buried in the ancient mound north of the deserted village on Haskurlay.’
‘Did you meet any of the archaeologists?’
‘Och, they were in and out of here. I spoke to several of them. Told them what I knew. Which was a sight more than they did.’
‘Have any of them been back since?’
‘Off and on. But no lately. They’ve put it all behind them, I dare say. Like a good few people would prefer to.’ Oddly, then, it seemed Karen Snow had failed to bend McLeish’s ear during her visit the previous autumn. ‘The polis set a fine example on that score. They didn’a exactly strain every sinew to crack the case.’
‘At least they identified the bodies.’
‘Hard not to, with plenty of us old’uns on hand to remind them of the Munros’ disappearance and relatives still living to settle the matter whether the powers that be wanted to or no.’
‘Relatives… here on Barra?’
‘On Vatersay. Murdo Munro is Hamish’s second son. He lives where he was born, as men are wise to. If you look out of yon window, you’ll see a few lights in the distance, beyond the bay.’
McLeish paused, apparently expecting them to look as directed. Harry obediently rose, steered an evasive course round the backside and jutting cue-end of a stooping pool player and peered through the window. There were indeed a few twinkling lights visible on the far side of the bay. ‘Highly bloody illuminating,’ muttered Chipchase, who had tagged along. They turned and retreated to their table.
‘That’s the coast of Vatersay, isn’t it, Dougie?’ Harry asked.
‘Aye. One of those lights’ll likely be the Munro house. Not the same house Hamish left for the last time one morning fifty year ago, mind. Murdo’s built himself a smart new bungalow with the money from Brussels they throw around here to no good purpose. He’s turned the old place into his garage, would you believe. Still keeps the name, though. The house is called Haskurlay. After the old times.’
‘Were there other children of Hamish’s? You mentioned relatives plural.’
‘There’s a daughter. Ailsa. But she moved to Glasgow years back. Married some… financier.’ The word was given similar treatment to military and came out closer to feenancieer. ‘Moved to London since, I hear. Money, money, money. You have to chase it to keep it. And then where’s the time for contemplation, I should like to know.’
‘Bags of time for that round here, I expect,’ said Chipchase glumly.
‘Aye. So there is. You could do worse than try to get the knack for it yourself.’ McLeish squinted at Chipchase. ‘Though you don’t look a naturally contemplative man to me.’
‘Is Murdo carrying on the family line?’ Harry asked, eager to keep McLeish to his subject.
‘Murdo’s a bachelor. Like too many men of his generation.’
‘Are you a bachelor, Dougie?’ Chipchase enquired, seemingly heedless of Harry’s agenda.
‘Widower. With sons and grandsons to my name.’
‘Does Ailsa ever visit the island?’ Harry asked, glancing reprovingly at Chipchase.
‘Now and then. As it happens, I—’ McLeish broke off. His mouth tightened. Caution had suddenly overtaken him. He sipped his Talisker and treated Harry to a long, narrow look of scrutiny. ‘Now and then,’ he repeated, in a lower, gravelly tone. ‘But no very often.’
FORTY-EIGHT
‘Exactly how much dosh did Jackie give you?’ Chipchase asked when Harry returned from the bar with another around of drinks.
‘Never you mind,’ Harry replied, taking a slurp of beer.
‘I only ask because pouring Talisker down Dougie’s throat could be regarded as flagrantly wasteful given how little we learned from the crabby old bugger.’
McLeish had just left, claiming it was way past his bedtime, though looking alert enough to suggest that may not have been the literal truth. He had relapsed into taciturnity once Harry’s interest in Ailsa Redpath’s whereabouts had become apparent and had shown no inclination to expound further on the Haskurlay mystery.
‘I wouldn’t mind a drop of Talisker myself. While we’re up here, we may as well sample the—’
‘You’ll have Bell’s and be grateful. You won’t be able to taste the difference through that cigar anyway.’ Harry was beginning to regret buying Chipchase a replacement pack of Villiger’s during their stop in Oban. ‘And we learned more from Dougie than you seem to think.’
‘Did we?’ Chipchase blew a defiant ring of cigar smoke towards the ceiling. ‘You’d better remind me what exactly.’
‘Ailsa’s here. On Vatersay. With her brother. The man’s a bachelor. Dougie said so. There’s no Mrs Munro. So, the woman Mark spoke to must have been Ailsa.’
‘Bachelors have been known to entertain women other than their sisters. I’m glad to say.’
‘Ailsa’s here. Dougie knows that. She’s been seen. He only went coy on us when his loyalty to a fellow islander kicked in.’
‘OK. Have it your way. She’s here. We’re here. Though God knows why. We never have been before. You know that as well as I do, Harry. Whatever went on on some unin-bloody-habited lump of rock out there fifty years ago’ — Chipchase gestured towards the night-blanked window — ‘has sod all to do with us.’
‘It shouldn’t have, I agree. But it does, Barry. You know that as well as I do. You just don’t want to admit it.’
Chipchase puffed out his cheeks. ‘Bloody hell,’ he growled.
‘We’re linked to the Haskurlay mystery in some way or other. Everyone in Operation Clean Sheet is. Tomorrow… we’ll find out how.’
‘Is that a promise?’
‘I suppose it is.’
‘Funny. It sounded more like a threat to me.’
—«»—«»—«»—
There were no more rounds. With midnight fast approaching, they decided to head back to the hotel. Close by though it was, Chipchase opted to visit the bar’s loo before leaving. Harry said he would wait for him outside. As a reformed smoker, he had no wish to linger in the fug created by Chipchase’s cigars and the locals’ cigarettes.
The air that enveloped him as he left was certainly fresh. It was also on the wintry side of cool. But the wind had dropped. A pallid serpent-tail of moonlight stretched out across the bay towards Vatersay. Harry stared towards the distant peninsula where Murdo Munro lived — and where, he strongly suspected, Ailsa Redpath had taken refuge.
Then someone whistled to him, softly but distinctly, from the bottom of the path leading up from the road. Harry looked down and saw a figure standing there, gazing up at him. An aromatic drift of pipesmoke clinched his identity.
‘I thought you said it was past your bedtime,’ Harry remarked, strolling down to join McLeish at the roadside.
‘Decided on a walk before turning in. Pure chance I should be coming back this way as you stepped out of the bar.’
‘That a fact?’
‘Where’s your uncontemplative friend?’
‘Getting rid of some of the beer he’s drunk.’
‘Is he the only one of the men you served with you’re still in touch with?’
‘Not the only one, no.’
‘Have regular reunions, do you?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘And you were definitely based in Aberdeen?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Not Benbecula, say, or somewhere… closer to hand?’
‘No. Not Benbecula. What are you driving at, Dougie?’
‘Was there a black fellow in your unit?’
‘What?’
‘Name of Nixon.’
‘What?’
‘I’d judge from your reaction there was.’
‘OK. Yes. There was. Leroy Nixon. Dead and gone now, I’m afraid.’
‘Aye. As you say. Dead and gone.’
‘What do you know about Leroy?’
‘Take a turn down to the quay with me and I’ll tell you. You can leave your friend to make his own way back to the hotel. I wouldn’a want to be… interrupted.’
