The Blue Hackle (38 page)

“Yes, yes, it was. And the hat on the table
there, that’s the one he was wearing. I saw you, then, Mr. MacLeod?
And the American lass, Dakota, she saw you as well—this must mean .
. . Oh.” Catching on, Fergie stepped back and stage-whispered to
Alasdair, “But he’s Greg’s brother!”

Alasdair made a down-boy gesture just as
Nancy, Rab on her heels and McCrummin just behind, walked back into
the room. “Aye?” Nancy asked, pointedly wiping her hands on a
dishtowel.

Alasdair’s gesture changed direction and
indicated Kenneth. “Nancy, tell me again where you saw this man’s
face.”

“On Tina’s mobile,” she repeated.

“Aye, Greg’s mobile, that Tina was using, had
several photos of family members. Small ones, none too clear. I’m
asking if you’ve seen this man before, in the flesh. Wearing that
hat.”

Ahhh, Jean told herself. That’s where
Alasdair was going. The windows of the new kitchen overlooked the
yard, just like the windows of Fergie’s office.

Nancy’s colorless eyes flicked from Kenneth
to Rab—his forehead crumpled and his eyes scrunched, leading Jean
to conclude he was hiding a scowl behind his beard—and then back to
Alasdair. “Well then, I was thinking it was Greg I caught a glimpse
of in the kitchen yard. Are you telling me it wasn’t him at
all?”

“It wasn’t him at all.”

Fergie overrode Alasdair’s follow-up
question, which would probably have been,
Why did you not say so
to begin with?
by asking Kenneth, “You haven’t just arrived in
the U.K., have you? You’ve been here since . . .”

The murder.
The words hung in the air
like a bad smell. Even the appearance of Diana in the open doorway,
an apron wrapped around her green dress and Colin a shadow in the
corridor behind her, didn’t provide any fresh air.

Alasdair reclaimed command by lowering, not
raising, his voice. “You bought food at the Co-op. You wandered
about the area. You broke into the chapel and spent the
night—there’s a sleeping bag or blanket in your car, I reckon.
Where is it? In the village car park by the harbor?”

“Yeah,” said Kenneth. “That’s right.”

“Why’d you come to P.C. Thomson? Because the
chapel’s locked up now? Because Lachie or someone else told you of
Tina’s fall?”

“I’m tired, all right? It’s a bloody mess and
I’m tired of it all.”

No kidding
, thought Jean.

Kenneth’s chin tilted defensively even as his
eyes sagged with weariness and grief. “Yeah, I followed them to the
U.K. Just missed them in London, but got here first. I saw them
driving in the gate, laughing together. I saw them unpacking the
car. I told Greg in that last phone call that I was here as well,
that we were going to have it out—talking, that’s all. I never
meant it to get rough. He’s my brother, after all.”

“Even though Tina phoned you,” Alasdair went
on, “she did not know where you were. Not ’til Nancy identified
Kenneth’s photo as Greg, and told Tina she’d seen him in the
kitchen yard. That must have given Tina a horrible shock. She went
frantic to get herself away. She thought you’d killed Greg and were
coming for her.”

“I hung round, trying to get a word with her,
just the two of us. But no. You lot had her locked away in the
house.” Kenneth’s jaw tightened. “How could she think I’d touch
either of them?”

No one answered. No one could answer.

Maybe back home, Kenneth had a reputation as
a violent man. Maybe here, Tina had felt so much guilt, especially
after Greg’s death, that she made an assumption. Or . . . Jean told
herself yet again that she didn’t have enough straw to make one
brick, let alone a wall of them.

Alasdair’s face was hard enough to have been
built of bricks. “Where were you when Greg was killed, then?”

“Filthy weather here, cold, wet, dark—I don’t
blame old Tormod for leaving.”

“There was more to his leaving than the
climate. Where were you—”

“I went out into the garden,” Kenneth
replied, his hoarse voice sharpening. “That’s where I stopped and
phoned Greg. Someone was walking ahead of me, and I thought it was
him, but I couldn’t hear him except on the mobile.”

Jean sensed the flap of several pairs of
ears. Alasdair went into his patented looming position, never mind
that he was sitting down—head lowered, shoulders coiled, spine
extended. He was on a roll. If he sent everyone away he’d give
Kenneth a chance to think about his answers. “Someone was walking
ahead of you?”

“Yeah. When I came out onto the headland, I
saw him, bloke in a camouflage coat and a regimental hat like my
father’s. Except his had a red flash, and my dad’s was white, near
as I can tell from a black and white photo.”

A low gasp and murmur ran through the
watchers. Fergie went more or less onto his toes, his body
following his eyebrows into the stratosphere. As one, Rab and Nancy
backed away.

“I saw him squatting beside that green shed,”
said Kenneth. “Looked like he was scraping moss off a heap of
stones. He saw me, I’m pretty sure of that.”

Alasdair did not look around, although his
back-of-the-neck sensors were no doubt registering Diana’s
presence, not because she was moving or breathing but because she
was not. As for Colin . . .

Colin was the one who had lied. He had not
been at the lighthouse at the time of the murder. An eddy in the
watchers was Thomson loping up the steps and out the door. “Eh,
Colin, wait up.”

Alasdair’s sharp gesture sent the male
constable in pursuit. Then he asked Kenneth, “Did you see the
chap’s face? Did you see where he went?”

“No. I ducked back into the trees, didn’t
want him to see me. I’d just got to the new church when I heard
Tina screeching. I’d know her voice anywhere, like a galah with a
carpet-snake round its nest. But by the time I got back to the
headland—that garden’s a bloody maze . . . I don’t know.” Kenneth
slumped down again, rubbing his face with his grimy hands. “I got
to the edge of the headland and saw the flashlights on the beach.
Saw what the flashlights were aimed at. Tina was gabbling at some
bloke—guess it was you, Cameron. You were looking after her. She
didn’t need me. She’d made it clear she didn’t need me.”

Thomson’s voice echoed along the corridor.
“Colin!”

This time Alasdair did look around, grimaced
in frustration—even he couldn’t be in two places at once—and turned
back to his antipodean bird in the hand. “It was you standing just
where the path down to the beach begins, was it?”

Kenneth tucked his mud-caked, low-cut boots
further beneath his chair. “I never went past the top of the track.
I never went onto the beach. I didn’t kill Greg.”

Jean sensed the infinitesimal breeze of
several pent-up breaths released at once, including her own. Far
away, a door slammed with a report like that of a shotgun.

Diana stood petrified, her face whiter than
her apron. Fergie might have adopted a martial posture entering the
arena, but now he walked like a ballet dancer out of it,
delicately, on his toes. He wrapped his arm around Diana’s
shoulders and guided her away. If he said to her, “I told you so,”
Jean didn’t hear. But how unlike Fergie it would be, to gloat over
his enemy’s defeat.

Assuming Colin had been his enemy. Assuming
Kenneth’s evidence was Colin’s defeat. She and Alasdair and
everyone else, for that matter, had manufactured a lot of
assumptions recently, to say nothing of leaped to an array of
conclusions, and most of them had been mistaken.

Occam’s razor was all well and good, but if
Kenneth had not played Cain to his brother’s Abel, if Colin or
someone else had killed Greg, then she could no longer pretend that
the murderer was not someone belonging, however temporarily, to
Dunasheen.

Nancy and Rab stood close together, his scowl
eased into neutrality, her neutrality tightening into a glower that
hit every face in the room in turn. Alasdair met her gaze with an
almost audible clang. “Thank you, Nancy, Rab. I’m thinking it’s
time to be calling it a night.”

“Easy for you to be saying,” said Nancy.
“I’ll be tidying up ’til the wee hours.”

And Alasdair wouldn’t? But all he said was,
“It’s already the wee hours.” Turning to McCrummin, he ordered,
“We’ll be keeping Mr. MacLeod’s things. Catalog every piece.”

“Aye, sir,” she said, and picked up the
passport.

Thomson shouldered past the Finlays, his own
glower one of chagrin edged by worry. “Sorry, sir. Colin’s got away
from me.”

With a muttered curse, Alasdair ran for the
door.

Jean levered herself to her feet and
propelled herself into a walk. She didn’t notice until she stood
beside Alasdair in the entrance hall that Kenneth had lumbered
along behind her.

Thomson offered no excuses such as
It’s
dark out there
. He simply opened the door again and peered out
into the night.

The air filtering in seemed even colder than
it had been earlier, with a raw edge. Her skin shrinking beneath
the fabric of the dress, Jean tried visualizing August in Texas,
vast parking lots radiating heat like pancake griddles and furtive
breezes hot as gusts from a blow dryer. All that did was raise
goosebumps on her arms.

Beyond the lights of the house the world had
disappeared under a pall of darkness, which suddenly lurched closer
. . . oh. Someone had turned off the lights on the Christmas tree
in the library window. The rest of Creation still existed—someone
who had obviously indulged in his first-foot beverage sent up a
celebratory shout from the village.

The second constable materialized from the
murk and jog-trotted into the porch, his rapid breath steaming
upward and mingling with the mist condensing from the air. “He’s
either gone to ground or still running, though I couldna hear his
steps.”

“He’s got no coat,” said Thomson. “His
jacket’s hanging in the cloak room. And he’s wearing Rab’s old
trainers, a size or more too large. But he’s familiar with the
gardens and the woods.”

“P.C. Nicolson, is it?” Alasdair asked the
other constable. And, without waiting for an answer, “Have a look
at the lighthouse, in the event he’s gone there. Has he a
vehicle?”

“An old banger,” said Thomson.

“Watch that as well, then. And issue a
bulletin.” Alasdair made an abrupt about-face and showed no
surprise whatsoever in finding himself nose-to-nose with Kenneth.
“Thomson, have you a room at the police house for Mr. MacLeod?”

“Oh aye. The lock-up makes a fine guest room,
long as I’m not actually locking the door. Lest you’re wanting me
to go locking the door.” Thomson’s dark eyes assessed Kenneth’s
bulldog face but drew no perceptible conclusions.

“No need,” Kenneth said. “I’m tired of
hiding. I want this over with.”

“As do we.” Alasdair didn’t bother defining
his “we.” “P.C. Thomson will be taking your boots for testing.
He’ll lend you a pair of trainers.”

“Fine, mate. Anything. You’ve got a shower,
have you?” he asked Thomson.

“Aye, sir. No worries. I’ve got clean pajamas
as well. And an extra coat, if you’re all right walking a wee while
in your sweater.” Thomson herded Kenneth toward the door.

The Aussie stopped on the threshold. “I’m
sorry about all this, Inspector Cameron. I should have come forward
soon as I arrived, or soon as Tina rang me about Greg, but Greg was
always the one in trouble while I kept my head down, and . . .”

“Good night,” Alasdair told him, and shut the
door.

His fingers still grasping the handle, he let
his forehead fall against the wooden planks. For a moment Jean
thought he was going to hammer on the door with his skull. But no,
that would have been too dramatic. He stood immobile. The pleats of
his kilt swayed and then settled above the braw Cameron calves. The
epaulettes on the broad Cameron shoulders rose and fell.

He wouldn’t let anyone but her see him in
such a pose. She set her hand on his sleeve and squeezed the cloth
until she could feel his arm beneath, and sense the now-familiar
but never taken for granted hum of his body. If together, they
didn’t make more than the sum of their parts, then what was the
point of the relationship, let alone marriage?

The tiny hairs in her ear canal twitched to a
low murmuring wail, almost a voice but not quite. “The wind’s
picking up,” she said.

“That’s never the wind.” Alasdair looked up
and around. “That’s Seonaid playing the Dunasheen
glaistig
.
Is she predicting good news or bad?”

The cry twined down the staircase, a vine of
sound. Drawn upward, Jean and Alasdair passed the dark hallway of
the second floor—no sound came from the Wallace suite and the door
of the Queen suite was locked tight—and paused at the tripping
stane.

The air on the staircase was so cold it
sizzled. The wail rose and fell and died into an elemental
resonance, no longer sound at all. As Seonaid had died, there on
the staircase, the breath of life squeezed out of her. Here she’d
known fear and grief. At the chapel, she’d known joy, foolish as it
might have been.

Sleet gathered in the creases bracketing
Alasdair’s lips. Clearing his throat and taking Jean’s hand, he
walked on up the stairs, down the corridor, and through the door to
their own sanctuary. “Get on to bed. I’m looking to have a word
with Fergie or Diana.” And he was gone again, her knight errant
riding back into the lists.

Don’t think about it, any of it, Jean ordered
herself. But she thought about all of it while she washed, put on
her pajamas, shoved Dougie out of the center of the bed, and
climbed under the covers. The little cat placed his paw on her arm
and fixed her with his calm golden gaze. The rumble of a purr came
from his throat, echoing a soft brushing noise from the window.
Snow. Colin was outside, shivering, alone.