None but the Dead (11 page)

Then the airmen and soldiers had left, taking some of the island women with them.

The war years were past, but perhaps not the fallout from them.

His initial thought had been that the grave Hugh had uncovered would prove to be yet another manifestation of Orkney’s distant past, like the numerous brochs and standing stones that
littered the islands. Sand was a great preserver of bones as he knew from his work at the museum.

Then Erling had revealed that the bones weren’t so old after all.

Sam addressed the empty seat on the other side of the fire. ‘The scientist, a woman who’s in charge of excavating the grave, told Erling that she’s lain there fifty years or
more.’ He paused to let that sink in. ‘A lassie, Jean, buried in the old playground. How could that be?’

Sam tried to imagine her reaction to the startling news, but wasn’t able to. That was the problem. As their time apart lengthened, her voice, once so easily recalled, had grown
fainter.

His mood, disturbed by news of the magic flower and darkened by Erling’s call, had now reached rock bottom. The reason of course being that he thought he might know the answer to his own
question.

The child shouldn’t be out on a night like this.

The face at the window had seemed at first like a pattern made by raindrops. His eyesight being what it now was, both distant images and those up close had assumed the quality of an old film. He
needed new glasses, but chose to make do, because he didn’t like life to be too magnified. Then he could see the dust that had accumulated, the smeared marks he hadn’t cleaned.

He rose to open the door.

Her face and hair were wet. She wore a waterproof jacket but had chosen not to raise the hood. When he scolded her for that she just smiled. She removed the jacket, shook it and hung it on a
hook next to the door, then took the seat opposite him.

‘Have you eaten?’ she said, in a verging-on-scolding tone.

‘I have.’

‘Have you eaten enough?’

He told her what he’d had, enlarging the portions somewhat.

She nodded as though satisfied. ‘Tea?’

The mug by the fire was lifted, rinsed, and then he watched her go through the motions he had undertaken a short while before.

His tea delivered, she sat down again.

He had a question to ask her but wasn’t sure when and how to accomplish it. She normally did the talking. Telling him stories about school and walks on the beach. Tonight she sat silently
staring into the fire. He wondered if the sound and fury of the wind attacking the roof was worrying her, then remembered she’d come calling despite the storm.

‘You shouldn’t have come out in this,’ he said.

‘I had things to do.’ She looked at him with her bright blue eyes.

He thought again how lucky he was to still be able to talk with the young. When he’d retired from the classroom, that’s what he knew he would miss the most – the everyday chat
of the children.

But that hadn’t happened, because of the young girl before him.

He hadn’t taught her. Sam had retired well before she’d come to the school. They had met in a different way. She’d turned up at the heritage centre of her own free will.
Declared she’d come with her mother to live on Sanday and wanted to know all about the island.

The intensity of her desire to discover the place he felt so strongly about had made them firm friends. That and the fact that she and her mother had become tenants of the neighbouring
farmhouse. Coming from near Carlisle, they were more used to the mountains of the Lake District than the flat fertile fields of Sanday. But it seemed that two generations before, her family had
been Orcadian, as evidenced by her mother’s choice of name for her daughter, Inga.

‘What things?’ Sam said, returning to the conversation.

‘I’ve been looking for the skull,’ she told him.

McNab hadn’t slept a wink and, glancing at his mobile, realized there wasn’t much time left to do so. The settee was at least six inches shorter than required, but
that hadn’t been the main impediment to sleep. He was used to dreich weather, Glasgow endured plenty of that. But in the city he was enclosed by other flats and surrounded by tall buildings.
Despite the three-foot-thick walls on this one-storey cottage, he’d never felt so exposed to the elements.

As he’d lain there, he’d imagined the scene outside. Wind stripping everything from the surface of the earth – buildings, creatures, humans. At any moment he’d expected
the roof to be torn off, exposing the people inside in all their frailty. He’d thought of that German destroyer beached not that far away, the sea further demolishing that which it
couldn’t blow to smithereens.

Why would anyone choose to live in such a place?

According to the brief lecture he’d been subjected to last night by Chrissy, it appeared that people had chosen to live in Orkney before anywhere else on the British Isles. When he’d
questioned that assertion, she’d told him Neolithic remains proved her point.

Rhona hadn’t intervened in the heated discussion, preferring to write up her notes at the kitchen table on her laptop. On his surprise arrival, he’d been greeted with a hug from
Chrissy and a questioning look from Rhona. McNab had quickly explained how he’d arrived on the last helicopter, courtesy of the boss.

‘Because it’s a serious crime.’

Rhona had thrown him a look at that point which had dented his bravado somewhat.

‘It could have waited until the weather improved.’

‘What’s a bit of bad weather?’ he’d said, deliberately forgetting how his stomach had performed on board the chopper.

It was at that point a gust of wind had hit the building with such force that he’d risen to his feet, then realizing what a prick he looked had headed for the fridge and the beer to cover
his sudden attack of the vapours.

As he’d opened the fridge door, his eye had caught sight of a bottle of unopened Highland Park nearby on the worktop. What he would have given at that moment to pour himself a glass. The
fact that he had made it through the night on the settee only yards from the whisky was a cause for celebration, even if he’d had no sleep, he decided.

McNab rose with a groan for his cramped limbs and went in search of the bathroom. There were no sounds from either of the women’s rooms. He found himself impressed by the thought that they
might well have slept through the storm, unlike himself.

The howl of the wind had abated somewhat, but rain still lashed at the small windows and he could see the white-topped waves crashing onto the beach. As he stood, in awe of the edge-of-the-world
scene, a very large cat made its way past the window, pausing briefly to examine him on the way. It was, he’d learned last night, one of ten wild felines who called the outhouses home and
were fed by the farmer’s wife.

That’s all I need. Ten fucking cats.

He stripped off and turned on the shower, catching sight of the bullet scar on his back via a wall mirror. Being out of normal view, he usually managed to ignore the life-threatening injury
he’d acquired when Chrissy had been pregnant with baby Michael – until he’d met and bedded Freya, that was. She, he’d come to realize, was obsessed by it. She liked to trace
it when they made love. Often spoke of it. Interrogating him on what had happened when he’d died in the street in Rhona’s arms, then been brought back to life in the ambulance.

McNab held no beliefs in the afterlife and, if he was honest with himself, he had no desire to examine either his feelings about his death or what had happened in the interim between breathing
his last and his reappearance.

But Freya was a Wiccan who believed in resurrection, if not of the body, then of the spirit. McNab also suspected she’d been trying to resurrect the spirits of her murdered fellow Wiccans,
Leila and Shannon. He’d woken up in the middle of the night to find her in her temple, chanting. Listening through the door, he’d caught their names, discerning words in her spell that
caused him disquiet.

Then she’d brought Leila’s cat to live in the flat with her.

McNab turned the shower abruptly to cold. In his mind’s eye he saw the angry red of the scar pale as he forced his own anger to fade.

His feelings towards Freya he’d interpreted as love. He had risked his own life to save hers. Yet here he was, getting angry because of a bloody cat.

He forced himself to stay under the cold water longer than need be, then stepped out and rubbed himself dry.

Which is why I asked to come here. The man who’s more alarmed by wide open spaces than he is of a knife fight, or a bullet for that matter.

McNab glanced at his face in the mirror, surprised at the honesty of his thoughts.

Well, he was here now and there was a job to do. Including finding a bed more comfortable than that couch, preferably somewhere that didn’t have cats.

The scent of frying met him on entry to the sitting room. Through the open door to the small kitchen he could see Chrissy at work. Rhona was nowhere to be seen.

‘She’s gone to check on the grave,’ Chrissy informed him. ‘Although it’s not calm enough yet to start work again. What do you want in your fry-up?’

‘Everything,’ McNab told her.

Rhona walked the short distance along the sandy track, the sea beating the white shore on one side, empty fields on the other. The squalls of rain and wind had subsided from
last night, but according to Derek they were entering the eye of the storm and there was more to come.

Which meant she would spend today viewing the images she’d taken of the excavation so that McNab could see what they were dealing with. When McNab had surprised them with his appearance
last night, Rhona realized he was the result of her conversation with Erling. She hadn’t expected a response quite so quickly, which suggested McNab had definitely put himself forward. But
for what reason?

Since the formation of Police Scotland, specialist units were drafted in to help the local force deal with homicides, many of whom had never encountered a murder on their doorstep before. In
those cases, the first few days of an investigation, if carried out properly, usually produced a result. The community officers would work with the local population, backed up by the expertise of
seasoned officers.

The discovery of the body at the schoolhouse didn’t fall into that category, although McNab was on the MIT list. Last night he’d spoken of Jock Drever’s death and the
likelihood that he had come from Sanday, which made Rhona suspect McNab was here as much because of Jock Drever as the skeleton she’d unearthed.

The playground was covered in sand whipped up by the wind. Even now she could feel it on her face like pinpricks and taste it on her lips. The tarp, she was glad to note, had stayed secure. A
quick peek below determined that the lower layer of sandy soil remained undisturbed.

Rhona, pleased, headed for the shed. Solidly built from the flat stones Orkney was famous for, its roof was, like the cottage, constructed with larger flagstones.

No wind, she thought, however fierce, could dislodge this building.

She tried the door, then suddenly remembered that Mike had said he would lock it – and was surprised when it opened under her hand. She had stacked the equipment, the bags of recovered
soil and, of course, the bones carefully at the rear of the shed. In the dim light she was relieved to find that all looked as it had done last night. The shed had proved as robust as Mike had
promised.

Hearing footsteps, she turned to find Mike, looking a little startled and wielding what appeared to be a length of driftwood.

‘Sorry, I saw the door lying open. I didn’t realize it was you,’ he said, lowering his weapon. ‘How did you get into the shed?’

‘It wasn’t locked.’

‘It was,’ Mike said in a determined fashion. ‘That’s why I came with this.’ He gestured to the driftwood cudgel, then looked around wildly as though expecting an
intruder to suddenly appear from the shadows. ‘I definitely locked the door.’ He flashed a key at her.

Rhona wondered if he had, in fact, forgotten his promise and, spotting her arrival, wanted to cover his forgetfulness.

‘Maybe the elusive children came back?’ Rhona tried to make light of the situation.

It didn’t work.

‘Why do you say that?’ He darted her a suspicious look. ‘You think I’m making them up?’

‘No, I—’ Rhona halted as Mike strode past her.

‘Have you checked your evidence is okay?’

‘I was just about to.’

Mike located a light switch and flicked it on, then headed for the rear of the shed, Rhona at his heels.

From her viewpoint at the door, the carefully stored evidence had looked secure, but not from where she stood now. Rhona stared down at the torn evidence bags and scattered soil, a rush of
emotions sweeping over her, guilt being the main one. If only she’d transported everything back to the cottage. But how would that have been possible?

‘An animal got in?’ she tried.

‘There’s no entry other than the door. And,’ Mike said, catching her thought, ‘no cat or any other animal could have done this. This is wilful destruction.’

As Rhona studied it, she was inclined to agree.

‘I’ll call Erling,’ she said, internally reminding herself that McNab would have to be told too.

At the policeman’s name, Mike blanched. ‘Please make sure he knows I had nothing to do with this.’

Rhona, shaken and puzzled by what she had just witnessed, took herself outside.

In all her time in forensics, she had never had the evidence she’d collected tampered with. True, she’d had a severed foot found in the waters off Skye removed from the lab fridge,
but that had been by order of Her Majesty’s Government, a situation she’d had no control over, however much she’d complained.

Here, it had begun to look like someone was trying to thwart this investigation.

But for what reason?

She assumed young people could be as mischievous on Sanday as anywhere else. Derek had assured them the skull would turn up, and she’d bought his explanation that it might be children
who’d removed it. Tampering with and destroying evidence collected in the course of an investigation was a very serious matter.