The Trowie Mound Murders (15 page)

I couldn't see the sky yet, but the light filtering through was becoming clearer. The smell of things dead and rotting seemed to enfold me. I couldn't wait to get up to the air. When I began clearing the loose earth, I realised how much my hands were scraped by the tough heather. I took off my fleece, knotted the sleeves, and used the arms as gloves to scrabble out the loose earth, digging quicker and quicker as freedom came within my grasp. I knew I had to make it large enough for me to slip through without too much shoving. Although the lowest course of stones was slabs of boulder which had stood solid for four thousand years, no foundation likes being undermined, and the tunnel was almost the width of the great rock that formed its lintel.

I flung the last of the earth out and put my fleece back on, pulling the hood up and tightening its drawstring under my chin. It might protect my head from the scrape of rock. Then I turned back to the tomb. The cleared space in the middle, the thick dust at the sides – I wanted to know.

I shone my watch round in a slow circle until the light faded and died. There was no doubt now that this place had been used for storage. Opposite me, the green light had cast black cage shadows from a wooden frame, designed to hold paintings upright and separate. Beside it had been five wooden crates, each divided into four compartments of around thirty centimetres square. There was an arm's-width roll of bubble-wrap, and a litter of smaller pieces, with an incongruously domestic pair of scissors lying on top.

I was going to get out, to tell Gavin what I knew. I stretched both arms in front of me, like a diver, and went into the tunnel. It was tight around my shoulders, but not dangerously so. Earth trickled over my hood and down into my neck. The stench of something rotting filled my nostrils, making me want to gag. A dead rabbit in the hole, perhaps? I'd just said it to myself, pushing my shoulders onward like a weevil in a biscuit, when the first true daylight blinded my eyes, and my groping hand came down on cold fur, with the inert flabbiness of death under it.

I couldn't bear to crawl over it. I pushed it ahead of me through the last metre, and turned my face away from it, although I felt the dead fur touch my cheek, as I shoved the earth of the narrowed entrance forwards. I rolled it out of the hole and hauled myself after it into the light.

Chapter Sixteen

I collapsed against the stone I'd sat at to eat my mackerel roll, only the day before yesterday, although it felt like years ago. I must have sat there for half an hour, back against the stone, legs stretched, smarting hands on my belly, face turned to the sun, drinking in the heather-sweet air, the blessed warmth, the gold of light on my closed eyelids. I hurt all over, and I was as tired as if I'd done a full day's rope hauling in a Cape Horn gale. Soon, I'd go down, get into the RIB, and take it home to Brae, but I needed to rest first.

Now, with the first shock over, the death of Alex hit home. Poor Kirsten, poor Olaf – he'd been so young, so alive – he'd had the makings of a good sailor. I saw him as I'd last seen him, flushed and triumphant at having got to the RIB first, and then in that last spinnaker run home. Robbie had been helming, and he'd crouched forward on the gunwale, concentrating on keeping his yellow and red spinnaker a perfect curve. Once they'd got ashore, he'd de-rigged the boat and washed it down so thoroughly I'd had to tell him to bale it out before he put it away. That was the last time I'd spoken to him. ‘Alex, Robbie,' I'd said, lifting the red sail to show them a foot of water in the boat, ‘you've maybe overdone the wash-down a touch?'

‘Oh,' Alex had replied, and given me his broad grin. ‘Sorry, Cass. We'll bale her out.' They'd set to with the shovel baler, and most of the water went over each other, to shrieks of indignation and threats of revenge.

It was such a trivial exchange, to be the last time I'd speak to him, yet it seemed important to remember it. I remembered his intent face as he'd trimmed his spinnaker, and grieved. He'd been lively, and daft, and done no harm to anyone. Had somebody feared harm from him? I remembered how he'd asked me about the people in the motor-boat.
I ken them, see … I'm seen them afore, anyroad, when I was down at Brian's.
I'd thought then it had been Norman who was asking. Norman was Alex's big brother, his hero. If Norman wanted to know, Alex would do his best to find out. I'd stonewalled him, but then he'd heard Magnie talking about the trowie lights, and decided to investigate. The quad track by the mound showed he'd been here. He'd seen something or met someone, and they'd killed him. Then what?

They'd hit me on the head and slung me in the mound, but I could be made to disappear very easily. All they had to do was tow the RIB out to sea a bit and leave it loose. Everyone knew I always wore a life-jacket, but lifejackets can fail, and though they'd search for my body it wouldn't be that unusual if they didn't find it. One of these accidents at sea, case closed.

It wouldn't be so easy to make Alex disappear. There'd be a huge search the minute he was officially missing. No, for Alex they'd have to engineer an accident.
He seems to have come off the road just at Mavis Grind and gone down onto the beach
, Gavin had said
. The quad turned over on him.
Mavis Grind was just north of Brae, south of where I was now, a narrow neck of land between two voes, one reaching in from the North Sea, on the east, and the other a finger of the Atlantic on the west. If you were good at throwing stones, you could chuck one from the North Sea to the Atlantic, and tourists often tried. I tried to see the lie of the road in my mind's eye, and couldn't see anywhere that you'd accidentally bounce a quad off the road to land on the beach. Gavin must have meant that he'd apparently driven down to the beach, and overturned the quad there. Then I visualised the chart. Yes, the virtue of Mavis Grind was that it was the nearest place to here where you had both main road and sea access. It wouldn't take long, by quad, to get back down to Mavis Grind, half an hour maybe, and then a boat could pick you up. There were headlands by the beach where even a sizeable motorboat could nose in, to let someone jump aboard from the hill.

If they'd hit Alex as they'd hit me, one person could prop him before them on the quad, holding him as if he was still alive, then drive down over the hill to Mavis Grind. If you went direct to the beach, you wouldn't need to go on the road at all. Then – thinking of it made me feel sick. Then you finished off your inconvenient witness, and upturned the quad over him, to look like an accident.

I needed to talk to Gavin. If that was how it had been, Forensic would find traces. I opened my eyes and prised myself to my feet, joints protesting. The sun was almost at the horizon now; half past nine. The water dazzled like new-polished brass, and every grass tussock on the hill cast a shadow twice its own size. Beside me, the hump of inert fur I had pushed up from the depth had gold stripes … I looked at it in the daylight. It wasn't a rabbit, as I'd thought, but a cat – Cat's mother, whose death had forced her kittens out onto the hillside.

I realised what had killed her as soon as I turned her over, ready to put her back into the quiet earth of the burrow. Someone had been shooting on the hill, Magnie'd said, the evening before David and Madge, and Peter and Sandra had arrived at the marina. It hadn't been rabbits the marksmen had been after. Cat's mother had been shot; one back leg was shattered, with splinters of bone sticking through the fur, and the leg contorted in an agonised spasm, and her belly was swollen up as if with injury there too. A trigger-happy teenager, or someone who wanted to protect their hiding place in the trowie mound even from a cat?

I grimaced at the irony. If they hadn't killed Cat's mother, I wouldn't have found that starving kitten, wouldn't have known where to look for Brian's tunnel. I wouldn't have survived to tell what I'd found in the trowie mound, to be evidence for what might have happened to Alex. If I had any say in it, their casual cruelty was going to be their undoing.

It was time to go. I'd just taken a step away from the mound when I heard more than one someone coming up the hill below, climbing silently and fast towards me.

My first reaction was indignation. I'd had enough. Yet even as I was thinking a reproachful, ‘
Oh,Lord!'
I was backing across the cropped turf of the platform, to get to the other side of the mound. It might be rescue, but I'd heard no boat arriving in the time I'd sat here recovering. No, these were people who'd already been here, in the cottage, maybe, and the first thing they'd see, as they came up over the brow of the hill, was the enlarged tunnel entrance. They'd know I'd escaped, and they'd be determined to finish me off now.

I couldn't play hide-and-seek around the mound, and the hillside here was too open. I'd get a good start on them, and I'd be running downhill, but I'd be seen. I didn't want to be a target for people with a gun. If I crouched behind a knowe, I'd be flushed out of cover as they came to search, and I'd just be a closer target. There was only one other possibility, and I'd have to take it fast: that cliff ledge some two metres below the platform. I'd be a sitting duck there, of course, if they looked. I was taking a chance on them thinking I was long gone, across the hill to Mangaster, and already well along the main road towards the police station at Brae.

I slipped to the cliff edge. Shutting my mind to the drop to the sea, I half-slid, half fell, dangling for a moment from my hands while my feet felt for the ledge below me. The trampling feet were almost at the brow of the hill now. Any moment, my enemies would be able to see over onto the platform. I dropped the last two feet, and landed with a jar that had me staggering outwards. I clung to the sharp cliff-face with my hands, and managed to keep my balance.

My fleece was dark green. I hauled the the hood over my head and hurried to the furthest end of the ledge, where a knobble of rock cast a Cass-sized shadow. I crouched down and froze, like a novice skipper caught in a tanker-filled shipping lane, hoping stillness is safety. If I was lucky, if I was very lucky, I might escape a cursory glance. If they looked harder – well, I hoped they'd shoot to kill, and get it over with quickly.

There was a shout overhead, a flurry of speech. Crouched under here, I couldn't distinguish words, or recognise voices, but I could hear the anger. They'd found the end of my tunnel. Footsteps scuffled from one side of the mound to the other. A woman's voice spat out, ‘She can't have gone far!' A man replied, ‘Look!'

I could hear the scrunch of heather, the give of the turf, as they moved, feel the vibration of the earth. It seemed forever that I crouched there, hearing the hunt go on above me. At last the feet came to the platform.

‘Nothing.' It was a woman's voice.

‘If he doesn't come soon, I'm not waiting. They'll find the boy soon.' The man's voice crackled with anger. I was pretty sure it was David speaking. ‘I can't see what he'd want that would be so urgent.'

‘That's him.' There was relief in the woman's voice. Madge's? I couldn't be sure. I could feel the vibration in the hill, then there was the sound of a vehicle approaching, a pick-up or 4x4, driven fast across the uneven ground. I heard it stop, not very close. There was a surprised exclamation from the man, then a shot, a scream from the woman, another shot. The double crack bounced across from hill to hill until the echo diminished into silence.

The cavalry wouldn't come out shooting. I waited in stillness as a single set of footsteps came around the mound above my head. There was a dragging sound, grunts of exertion, and then with a slither of little stones, something was shoved from the platform edge above me, thudded on my ledge with an inert weight and fell on downwards to the sea. I opened my eyes too late to see what it was, but heard the splash and saw the ripples. Something dark surfaced on the gold water far below.

The second body was thrown over from the direction I was facing. I saw the cartwheeling of arms and legs, clad in a dark jacket and trousers, the heavy thud as it bounced against a ledge lower down. I recognised David's face, mouth open beneath the thick moustache, eyes glaring blindly. I heard the second splash, then there was a long silence, as if the person with the gun was standing there, waiting. I closed my eyes once more.
Lord, protect me.

The relief when the footsteps moved away left me shaking. The pick-up started up with a roar, and drove away over the hill. I waited until the last rumble had died away before I lifted my head, stiff muscles protesting, and gradually straightened up to stand on the ledge there, hands splayed against the red stone, feet planted on the grass ledge. Below me, the two dark backs hung heavy in the water. Already they were beginning to separate from each other, tugged away from the shore by the undertow. The police would need to retrieve them soon.

I turned to face the cliff. I'd had to drop maybe two feet onto the ledge, so I'd need to climb back up. I didn't want to do it. I was too tired, too scared of the long drop below me. I turned my back on it again and dropped onto the grass tussocks. Someone would come looking for me. They'd throw a rope over to hoist me up – 

I must have sat there for a good half hour, watching the bodies in the water drift seawards, and feeling sorry for myself. I hurt all over. My hands were black with earth, and criss-crossed with tiny scratches which I'd have to disinfect. I had a sizeable graze showing through a tear on one knee of my jeans. The blood showed dark red among the earth. My ankles hurt where I'd jarred them, dropping down here, and I didn't want to think about what I'd done to my face.

It was the drone of the Coastguard helicoptor that galvanised me into action. Gavin must have got back to Brae, seen that I wasn't there, and called them out. The red and white chopper came up from the south, quite high, then went round in a circle as if it had spotted something. The RIB, I betted, drifting with nobody aboard. Then, under the rotor-blade whirr, I heard the roar of a high-speed engine. They'd called out Aith Lifeboat as well. It came out of the Rona in a plume of white water. I was never going to hear the end of this … and the thought of dangling helplessly on the end of a rope, in full view of the combined rescue services, galvanised me into action. I turned my back on the drop to the shimmering sea, and looked properly at the cliff. All I needed was a foothold at knee height, and another at the same height again. That would get my shoulders above the cliff edge, and I could haul myself from there. If the ledge I stood on had been solid ground, I wouldn't have hesitated for a moment.

It didn't take very long to find the holds I needed. I took a deep breath, then swarmed upwards, giving myself a good shove upwards from the second hold, and wriggling my torso forwards on the viewing platform while my legs kicked wildly in the air. It wasn't elegant, but I'd made it. I didn't need rescued any more. I staggered to my feet and stood there, swaying.

Yes, they'd found the RIB. I could see it now, drifted out from the cottage bay. The lifeboat was taking it in tow while the chopper circled, looking for my body. I unzipped my fleece. The T-shirt beneath it had been white when I'd put it on after sailing, but it wouldn't pass any Persil test now. I hauled it off, put my fleece back on, and began waving the T-shirt as a signal flag. My watch wasn't quite big enough for a signal mirror, but it could give off a flash. I tilted it to the sun, away again, towards them again, several times, then went back to waving the T-shirt.

They'd spotted me. The chopper turned and came straight for me. It hovered, the red and white chevrons right above me, then tilted sideways, moving to the open hill just past the trowie mound, hovered again, and sank to rest. The ear-splitting noise continued for a moment longer, and the wind of the blades whipped my hair across my face and buffeted my body. Then the blades slowed, drooped and stilled, and the noise ceased. The door in the side of the chopper opened, and Gavin got out.

I wanted to run to him, to be hugged and soothed, but we weren't on those terms. I waited, casual as I could be with my dirty face and torn jeans, until he was within earshot. ‘Doctor Livingstone, I presume.'