None but the Dead (22 page)

The silence of the grave.

She wondered how many people had been entombed here. The care that the Neolithic people had taken in the construction of this burial place indicated how important their ancestors had been to
them. The huge stones had been so well put together that they still stood resolute against the wind and weather after thousands of years. A remarkable feat of engineering and determination for a
people whose average lifespan had been only a quarter of a century, according to a study of their bones.

She’d reached the end of the tunnel. Here, a large flat flagstone had been manoeuvred into place, partially blocking the entrance to the main chamber. Positioning herself, she directed her
torch through the gap. As the beam ran over the side wall, she could make out a series of rectangular chambers where the dead had been laid. Above was a beautifully constructed corbelled
ceiling.

The nagging thought that she’d already spent too long here made her begin her retreat.

As she eased her way back, the torch slipped from her hand and rolled under the flagstone. Reaching for it, she realized the beam had caught something in its circle of light.

What she saw startled her, although in theory it shouldn’t have, because this was a grave.

But a grave long since cleared of bones
.

Rhona hurriedly pulled off her boots, keeping on her socks in the hope that they would give her traction on the slippery rocks. The sandy crossing was no longer viable, the
depth and speed of the water pouring in on that side the impediment. The rocky path was less submerged, but finding a firm footfall was going to be a problem.

She moved out into the water, which felt a great deal colder than on her way here.

How could she have got it so wrong?

According to the tidal clock in the cottage, she should still have half an hour to get across the causeway, but it certainly didn’t look that way.
I shouldn’t have delayed at the
mound
.

As she waded deeper, the shock of the cold hit her thighs. Only a couple of yards in, it was obvious that by midway the water would likely be chest high.

If I can keep my feet, I might make it.

Rhona felt for another step, bracing herself as the power of the incoming tide threatened to take her with it. Her waterlogged clothing was making things more difficult. She eyed the distance
yet to travel, knowing that she was barely halfway.

She could keep going and take her chances, retreat and wait for the tide to turn in eight hours’ time or abandon her outdoor clothing and attempt to swim. None of the proposed options were
attractive. Marooned on the island for eight hours in wet clothing would be as life-threatening as trying to complete the crossing. As for wading back and undressing . . .

A white-topped wave swept towards her as the sea strove to take over the channel between Start Point and the bigger island. This time it met her chest. She gasped as its icy cold grip caused her
heart to momentarily stop.

I must be more than halfway by now.

The wave passed but it had unbalanced her. She felt herself floundering and strove to locate something flat and solid on which to plant her feet, and all the time the current tugged at her legs,
keen to show who was in charge. Her toe slammed against what she knew to be broken concrete, which meant she was in the region of the old causeway, built to transfer the shell sand by lorry.

Which means I’m on the right path.

She felt something sharp stab her sole and realized that concrete had torn her sock and, she suspected, cut her foot. Deciding she couldn’t get much wetter, she plunged forward, half
walking, half swimming, her boots abandoned to float off with the tide, intent now only on getting to the opposite bank and crawling up onto dry land.

The final lap saw the heavens open once again. What little of the top of her clothing had been dry, was within minutes as wet as the rest of her. Rhona didn’t care. Her feet were on dry
land at last, or at least on crusted seaweed. She didn’t stop to assess her injury. She just walked on as swiftly as possible, knowing if she stopped even to get her breath, the shivering
would increase tenfold.

She was on the coastal track now, a field wall on her left, a plunge to the rocks below on her right. She walked for ten, then ran for ten, like a soldier in training, her eye on the distant
prize – the smoke curling up from the cottage chimney.

By the time she reached the front door, the shudders had set in and she could barely retrieve the key from under the stone. Getting it into the lock was even more difficult, any instruction she
gave to her hands being ignored.

Eventually the door opened and she fell inside. Once in the hall, she stripped, dropping the clothing in a wet bundle on the floor. Stumbling through to the bathroom, she put the plug in to
capture the water, then turned on the shower as hot as was bearable and stepped into the bath.

The water swirled at her feet, reddened by her blood.

She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, steam filling the room, condensing on the mirror to run in streams down the glass. When the chittering cold had eased, she stepped out and dried
herself, using the towel roughly, persuading blood to rise to the skin surface.

Dressed again, she set the kettle to boil, then fetched the Highland Park and poured herself a large measure. It went down like fire and she poured another, the craving for warmth as strong
inside as out.

As she’d undressed at the front door, she’d extracted her mobile and placed it on a table. She fetched it, hoping against the odds that it had survived the crossing. Taking it to the
seat near the stove, she now took time to view what she had discovered in the Neolithic mound on Start Island.

‘No CCTV, no police station, no Wi-Fi, no mobile signal most of the time. How the fuck do you catch criminals?’

‘We don’t have many to speak of,’ Tulloch had said.

The answer had only served to infuriate McNab further. ‘Give me the mean streets of Glasgow any day,’ he’d muttered under his breath.

He’d set up shop at the heritage centre, which had a reasonable Wi-Fi connection. Sam hadn’t accompanied him. The old man, shaken by events, had nevertheless insisted on joining the
search party. For the moment, they were checking all farm outbuildings and derelict properties, of which there were many in the vicinity of the girl’s home. The various beaches and their
neighbouring dunes were also on the list.

Sam Flett seemed particularly concerned about the water, as though he expected to find that Inga had drowned, but he could offer no rational explanation for that fear.

The last known sighting of the girl had been by her mother, as she’d left the house to go to Sam Flett’s. The walk there, along a single-track road, or a shorter way through the site
of the former camp, should have taken less than ten minutes.

Apparently, no one had seen her after that, although the mist that morning had been blanket thick.

Had McNab been able to muster a helicopter, a sweep over the farmland would have been useful. With no trees to block the view and few buildings, it would have been easy to spot a body, alive or
otherwise.

But they didn’t have a helicopter. And it would soon be dark.

Glancing out of the window, he was struck again by how quickly the night descended here. The girl had told him she, or her gang, were searching for the skull. According to the other members of
the gang, Inga had taken over. She thought she knew where the skull was. Where, they had no idea. How she knew had brought an equally blank response.

The kids were as puzzled as everyone else.

Or someone is lying.

McNab took out a flask of coffee, laced with Highland Park. He’d made it in the cottage before he left, anticipating something – probably his inability to cope.

His mobile pinged, delivering a text message from an unknown number.

McNab opened and read it.

Magnus stood on the police launch watching the approaching island, remembering the last time he’d visited Sanday. Then, home from university for the holidays, he’d
been recruited for the Stenness football team, who were short of a goalkeeper, and frankly would have accepted anyone who’d offered. It had been midsummer’s day. The team had met up in
a Kirkwall pub and boarded a ferry, hired for the occasion. The trip had taken a couple of hours.

It had been a fine night to cruise up through the islands, though Magnus hadn’t seen much of them as he’d spent the journey, like the others, in the bar. Everyone had tumbled off the
boat at Kettletoft and headed for the football field near the school. They’d played the game in broad daylight at midnight. Stenness had lost, down to Magnus’s inability to save goals.
Then they’d adjourned to the Kettletoft Hotel to consume food and further alcohol, after which they’d boarded the ferry home and spent the return journey back in the bar. Someone had
profited from the excursion, but it hadn’t been the players, who’d depleted their bank accounts and attacked their livers with the fury of a Scottish battle.

Yet I remember the excursion with great pleasure.

Just as he remembered Sam Flett.

Magnus had accompanied Erling as a young teenager on one of his summer outings to Sanday to stay with his ‘adopted’ uncle and aunt. Magnus’s memory of that time was as powerful
in image as it was in smell. Sanday had made an impression on him. Sam Flett and his wife, Jean, even more so.

It was during those weeks together that he’d sensed an awakening in Erling. It had, in the end, come down to scent. Erling, he suspected, had a crush on him. But it was more than just an
adolescent crush. Magnus could smell his desire, even if Erling couldn’t, or wouldn’t, acknowledge it.

That summer together on Sanday had been, for Magnus, magical. It had also been a break from the past. An acknowledgement that no matter how much he loved Orkney, every island in the archipelago,
his future, at least in part, would lead him elsewhere.

They’d swum off the nearby beaches and cooked fish on an open fire in the dunes. Sam and Jean had left them to their own devices, sensing this was the end of childhood for them both, and
that tomorrow would be a different day.

And it turned out to be true.

They’d remained friends, though they’d gone their own way in the world. But Magnus had never forgotten the role Sam Flett played in that.

It had been Sam’s most recent email which had prompted this visit. When it arrived, Magnus had been considering a long weekend at home in Orkney. Sam’s message had made up his mind
on that front. The storms of the previous week having abated, he’d reached Kirkwall from Glasgow just as the fog descended, so had no hope of a quick hopper trip to Sanday.

Until now, he hadn’t talked to Erling about his recent correspondence with Sam, preferring to talk to Sam face to face about it first.

Sam had been ‘seeing’ things. Darkness and evil that involved a local child. Apparently the unearthing of a collection of muslin flowers in the loft of the old schoolhouse had
triggered his angst. The discovery of a body buried in the old playground had served to make things worse.

‘I can talk to you. You won’t think I’m going mad,’ he’d told Magnus.

Magnus had recruited Sam’s help a while back, with a paper he’d been writing on the second sight, asking for local stories and legends that might indicate its presence in Sanday. Sam
had been very helpful, sending material from the museum archives and eventually admitting to his own experiences.

And now the child he was worried about had gone missing.

Magnus’s call to Erling this morning, indicating his intention to catch the ferry to Sanday to see Sam, had resulted in his presence on the police launch. It was as swift a passage as
Magnus could have hoped for, but he sincerely wished that it hadn’t been necessary.

He had hoped to talk Sam through his fears, help him establish psychological reasons for them. Learn a bit more about the muslin flowers that had so disturbed him.

Magnus hadn’t thought that any such discussion would involve the disappearance of a child.

From his own experience with criminal profiling, he was aware that the window of opportunity for finding a child was small. By the time the troops were assembled, half that time had gone.

Erling was in the cabin with his small group of men. They would be relying on locals to do the majority of the work. They were there to offer support and to investigate behind the scenes.
He’d given Magnus a brief résumé of what had happened up to now. When Rhona’s name had come up, Erling had said, ‘I thought you may have known she was on
Sanday?’

‘I’ve been in Germany,’ Magnus had told him. ‘A lecture tour.’

‘Her assistant’s gone back to Glasgow with the remains. Dr MacLeod was intent on following later today.’

The two men had exchanged a look that indicated Rhona wouldn’t be going anywhere if the child wasn’t found alive.

‘And DS McNab?’ Magnus had asked.

‘He had a run-in with a local and got pitched over the wall at the Kettletoft Hotel. Torvaig fished him out, soaked, but otherwise unharmed.’

‘A bit like the old days?’ Magnus had smiled, remembering the drunken escapades of their youth.

‘DS McNab didn’t find anything amusing about it,’ Erling had told him. ‘He saw it more as attempted murder.’

Now that did worry Magnus.

‘He maintained it was linked to the cold case.’ By Erling’s expression, he hadn’t dismissed such a thought.

‘What’s happened to Sanday since I was last there?’ had been Magnus’s reply.

Putting the mobile in a sealed evidence bag had been a good idea. A little moisture had entered in her struggle to negotiate the causeway, but not enough to do damage. The
photographs she’d taken at Mount Maesry were good. Or at least the ones taken outside were, including the footprints she’d recorded on the ground leading to the tunnel. Those
she’d taken of the central chamber, not as clear.

‘But it’s definitely a skull,’ Rhona told the screen.