Candles and Roses Read online

  She knew well enough what was on his mind, and in truth she wasn’t exactly averse to the idea herself. Christ knew, they got little enough time together. It would be different come the autumn when they both went off to university.

  She just didn’t want to come here. The place really did freak her out. She should be used to it by now. It was just part of the landscape, and she’d been walking round there more times than she could remember. But every time she felt the same frisson, the same sense that the place wasn’t quite right.

  ‘Fancy a quick walk, then?’ he said.

  ‘A quick what?’ She laughed. ‘Yeah, go on then, loverboy. But straight into the woods. Not up there.’ She glanced behind them to where the low hill rose gloomily above the car park, a dark tangle of trees endlessly festooned with strips of fabric and items of clothing, some new, some long-faded, fluttering in the summer breeze like the banners of a defeated army.

  They both knew the story of the Clootie Well. A Celtic place of pilgrimage, a running stream with supposedly health-giving properties. People still came here when their friends or relatives were unwell, tying pieces of cloth—sometimes wiped on the skin of the invalid in question—to the trees around the stream. The theory was that as the fabric rotted away the illness would dissipate. No doubt some people believed it enough to make it work.

  It was a harmless piece of superstition, and these days, for most people, the place was no more than a quaint tourist attraction. Somewhere the summer trippers visited on their way to their holiday lets on the Black Isle, traipsing along the paths, chattering patronisingly about the gullibility of the locals. While, in some cases, no doubt stopping to attach their own votive offerings, just in case.

  Even so, the place disturbed Kelly. It was partly the disparate and often poignant nature of the offerings. Nearer the stream, it wasn’t just shreds of cloth. It might be baby clothes, old stuffed toys, football scarves or shirts. Things that had belonged to real, identifiable human beings, left here in a last, desperate hope that the act might cure a terminal disease, remove a cancer, allow a child to live beyond her first birthday. Kelly assumed the magic would mostly have failed. That the former owner of the rotting teddy-bear or the faded Caley shirt would be long since dead. For Kelly, the place was infested by ghosts, the spirits of those who clung on, earthbound by their last dregs of hope, watching as the worthless waters poured endlessly down the wooded hillside.

  Well, she thought, as she followed Greg into the woods, he might be in the mood but she certainly wasn’t. Not now, not in this place. Still, maybe five minutes in the company of Greg’s caressing hands might be enough to change her mind. Even before they’d become an item, she’d found him attractive—well, for a Scotsman, anyway, she added to herself. Most of the lads at the Academy had been all ginger hair and freckles. Greg was more the tall, dark and brooding type, or at least that was the image he tried to cultivate, with his swept-back black hair and incipient stubble. He was probably aiming for a cross between Heathcliff and William Wallace.

  She glanced behind her and then, allowing herself a smile at her own thoughts, she ran ahead of him into the shade of the trees. He jogged behind her, laughing.

  It was a fine sunny day, one of the best they’d had so far this year, and it was relatively warm even in the woodland. Greg led them off the footpath, tramping through the undergrowth until they were out of sight of any potential passers-by. ‘Well, here we are.’

  ‘We seem to be.’ She threw herself against him with sufficient force to knock him off his feet. He stumbled, regained balance, and then allowed himself to fall sideways into the thick heather, pulling Kelly down with him. They lay for a moment, looking up at the dappled sky through the shifting leaves, listening to the rustle of the breeze. Greg rolled over and kissed her, gently at first, then more hungrily.

  She responded enthusiastically, enjoying the feel of his firm body against hers, conscious of his arousal and finding that, whatever her earlier feelings, she was beginning to share it. They kissed for a while, losing themselves in each other. Finally coming up for air, she said: ‘It’s good to have some time together. Just the two of us.’

  He rolled over, peering through the grass. ‘It is. It’ll be even better when we’re at uni. As much time together as we want.’

  ‘I think we’re expected to do some work as well.’

  ‘I suppose. We can fit it in between the bouts of rampant sex.’

  ‘It’ll need careful scheduling.’

  ‘We’ll be very organised.’ He began to turn himself back towards her, and then he paused, staring along the rough ground. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘That. There.’ He sat up and pointed. She hoisted herself up and sat beside him, trying to follow the direction of his gesturing.

  At first, she could make out nothing but the rough undergrowth. Then, between two thorn bushes, she saw what he was indicating. Evenly distributed blurs of colour, something crimson.

  ‘Flowers?’

  ‘I don’t know. It looks very neat, if it’s just something growing wild.’ He climbed to his feet and took a step or two forward. It was typical of Greg, she thought. Lost in the throes of passion, but it took only the mildest tug of curiosity to drag his mind, if not necessarily his body, elsewhere. It was one of the qualities she found endearing. ‘Think you’re right, though. It is flowers. Looks like roses. Weird.’ He walked forward another few steps. ‘Jesus. What is that? Come and have a look.’

  Reluctantly, she stumbled after him. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look. There.’

  It was a line of alternating candlesticks and small black vases, positioned some fifty centimetres from each other. Each candlestick contained an unlit candle and each vase was filled with cut red roses. As she moved closer, Kelly realised there were two parallel lines, each comprising three identical vases and two candles, with a further vase positioned between the lines at the two ends to form a rectangle. It took her a moment to realise what the arrangement resembled.

  A grave.

  It was the right size, she thought. The size of a human body.

  ‘Jesus,’ Greg said. ‘What is it?’ She could see the same thought had struck him.

  ‘Somebody’s idea of a joke?’

  ‘Strange joke. Some sort of installation piece, you reckon? On the short list for the Turner prize?’ He was talking too quickly, more rattled than he was letting on. Kelly realised that both of them had been glancing involuntarily around, as if someone might be observing them. ‘Maybe we’re being filmed for some TV programme?’

  ‘Greg.’ Kelly had moved ahead of him, conscious of Greg’s reluctance to approach the vases. She was a few metres away, staring down.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look at this.’ She pointed to the grassed area between the vases. The turf had been cut into several sections and then had been lifted and, slightly unevenly, replaced. As a result, the surface was raised above the surrounding grassland, although the difference was partly obscured by the positioning of the candles and vases.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. But she had a growing feeling she knew all too well. Greg had moved past her now, embarrassed at his own previous trepidation. He crouched down to pull at one of the sections of turf.

  ‘Greg—’

  It was too late. He’d already dragged back the heavy lump of earth and was staring at what lay beneath. Kelly turned her head away, unable to look.

  ‘Jesus,’ Greg said. ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘Right,’ McKay said. ‘Let me explain how you should handle it.’

  DC Josh Carlisle, a young fresh-faced figure who looked to McKay as if he might have bunked off school for the afternoon, nodded earnestly. ‘That would be good, sir.’

  ‘You don’t need to call me sir. Boss will do.’ McKay stretched back in his chair, chewing on his habitual gum with the air of a man enjoying an aft
er-dinner cigar. ‘It’s like this. What you should do is tell him to fuck off. Then tell him to fuck off some more. And then to fuck off a bit more still. And then to keep on fucking off until he gets back where he started. Then you can tell him to fuck off again.’ He paused. ‘Is that clear?’

  Carlisle blinked. ‘Crystal, sir. I mean, boss. Thank you.’

  ‘Always glad to be of assistance. Door’s always open.’ McKay gestured towards the door in question, in a manner clearly intended to indicate the meeting was over. Carlisle took the hint and rose to take his leave, stopping as he saw DCI Helena Grant standing in the doorway. She was a slightly stocky woman of no more than average height, but like most of his colleagues Carlisle found her more intimidating than any of her male counterparts. She was gazing at them now with the air of a teacher watching two over-excited schoolboys.

  ‘Alec giving you one of his motivational team talks?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Carlisle shuffled past her and, with visible relief, made his escape.

  ‘Good lad,’ McKay said. ‘Will go far.’

  ‘As far as possible from you if he’s any sense. What was that about?’

  ‘Some scrote of an informant looking to screw a few more quid out of us.’

  ‘Fair enough. In that case, I fully endorse your proposed approach.’ She lowered herself on to the chair opposite McKay’s desk. The building was too old to accommodate the open-plan offices now commonplace in most of their locations, and McKay shared this room only with his DS, Ginny Horton. Grant assumed it was Horton who kept the office in order, although McKay could be surprisingly domesticated when it suited him. ‘How are you doing with the burglaries?’ There had been a spate of apparently linked house-breakings in the estates off Glenurquhart Road.

  ‘Ach. You know. Making progress.’

  ‘Is that McKay-speak for getting nowhere?’

  ‘It’s McKay-speak for working our balls off but apparently still not doing enough to get your arse off the line. With respect,’ he added.

  Grant didn’t rise to the bait. She and McKay went back a long way, and despite McKay’s best efforts they’d always managed to maintain a more or less effective working relationship. ‘I’m here because we’ve just had a big one called in.’ She smiled. ‘But don’t worry if you’re too busy. I can find someone else.’

  For the first time, McKay looked genuinely interested. ‘A big one?’

  ‘Murder, looks like. Body up on the Black Isle. Bit strange.’

  ‘Aye, well, they’re an odd lot up there.’

  ‘You know the Clootie Well, up by Munlochy?’

  ‘You’ve proved my point. Worshipping the fairies. That where they found the body?’

  ‘In the woods there. Shallow grave. Young woman, not yet identified. From the state of decomposition, it looks like she’s not been there long. A few days.’

  ‘I like my corpses fresh,’ McKay said. ‘So what’s strange about it?’

  ‘The grave was marked. Candles and vases of red roses. The sort of flowers you take home to Chrissie when you’ve something to apologise for.’

  ‘In her dreams. Who the fuck murders someone and then sticks flowers on the grave?’

  ‘Someone who cares about the victim? I don’t know. That’ll be your job.’

  ‘Oh, Christ, I knew that was coming. You want me to be SIO?’

  She laughed. ‘Come off it, Alec. You’d be pissed as hell if I gave the job to anyone else.’

  ‘Aye, well. Maybe. But you know how stretched we are.’

  She sighed. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Aw, thanks, pet,’ he said. ‘In that case, your wish is my command.’ He paused. ‘Or at least it will be if you give those sodding burglaries to some other poor bastard.’

  ***

  McKay was a short wiry man. With his close-cropped greying hair and generally belligerent expression, he looked like a textbook illustration of a chippy Scotsman. He knew that and made a point of living up to the image whenever he thought it might be useful. He was a Dundonian by background, but most people assumed he was a ned from Glasgow. He didn’t bother to disabuse them of the idea. Better be thought a streetwise metropolitan than a turnip-eating provincial. He had a university education, too, but didn’t advertise the fact. On the whole, people underestimated Alec McKay and he was happy to keep it that way.

  He and DS Ginny Horton made a disconcerting couple, but again McKay liked it like that. Horton was English—fucking English, to use McKay’s standard phraseology—small, neat, anonymously pretty, with tidily bobbed dark hair and an amicable smile. Someone who, in McKay’s words, looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her arse. He knew from experience that that wasn’t the whole picture, either.

  ‘I don’t take the Munlochy turn, then?’ He’d asked her to drive so he could relax and concentrate on making disparaging remarks about how badly she was doing it.

  McKay shook his head. ‘No. Best carry on up the A9 to the Tore roundabout, then take the Black Isle road from there. It’s before you get to Munlochy. On the right.’

  She knew the area fairly well by now. At the weekend, she and her partner would sometimes drive over to Cromarty or Rosemarkie for a walk by the sea or to grab a bite at one of the cafes. But she normally took the more southerly route up through Munlochy, and the Clootie Well was a new one to her. ‘What is this place?’

  ‘Somewhere people go to worship the old gods.’ He winced at what he saw as the endless gullibility of humankind. ‘It’s a stream, basically. People hang up bits of cloth belonging to sick relatives so they’ll recover.'

  She allowed him to finish his diatribe. ‘You think there’s any significance to the body being left there?’

  ‘I don’t imagine the killer thought she’d recover through the healing power of the well, if that’s what you mean. Maybe the body was intended as some kind of offering. Perhaps that’s the significance of the roses. Or maybe Helena’s right and the killer did care about the victim. Placed the body there to make some kind of amends.’

  ‘Must have gone to some trouble with the roses and candles,’ Horton said. ‘If you were burying a body, you’d think you’d want to get it done with as quickly as possible.’

  ‘From what they’ve said, it’s a fair way from the road. You could bank on not being interrupted if you were doing it overnight. I’m not aware the doggers have taken to hanging out at the Clootie Well just yet, and I can’t think of anyone else likely to drop by. And this time of year it’s not even dark for that long, so you could see what you were doing. But, aye, it shows a certain dedication.’

  They were heading down the A832, the main road into the Black Isle. The place was, as the locals said, neither black nor an isle. It was a peninsular protruding out into the North Sea, north of Inverness, bordered on three sides by the Moray, Beauly and Cromarty Firths. No-one seemed to know why it had been called ‘black’. Possibly because of its mild local climate which left the area relatively snow and frost free compared with its Highland neighbours. McKay preferred to think it was on account of the unenlightened heathens who inhabited the place.

  After a mile or so, McKay gestured for Horton to slow down, pointing out the turning for the Clootie Well. The entrance was draped with police tape, a more formal echo of the festoons of fabric on the trees beyond. As they turned in, an ambulance was pulling out, presumably taking the body off to the mortuary.

  Horton slowed to greet the uniformed officer controlling the entrance, waving her warrant card out of the window. ‘DS Horton and DI McKay,’ she said.

  McKay leaned across from the passenger seat. ‘Morning, Murray. You’re not planning to delay us, are you?’

  The police officer squinted into the car. ‘Alec, I wouldn’t delay you if my life depended on it. Which it probably would.’ He unhooked the tape and waved them past.

  Horton parked next to the white scene of crime van, and they climbed out into the late-morning sunshine. There was a marked car closer to the roadside,
which presumably belonged to Murray and his colleague. McKay noted that the car was occupied, and he walked over and tapped on the window.

  The passenger seat was occupied by another PC, a red-faced, slightly overweight figure who gazed benignly up at McKay. ‘You’ve copped this one, then, Alec? Thought you would.’

  ‘Just lucky, I guess, Russ. Who’s in the back seat?’

  Russ twisted in his seat and looked at the young couple sitting awkwardly in the rear of the car. ‘The two poor wee buggers who stumbled across the body. I thought you’d want to talk to them before they left, and they graciously agreed to hang around. That right, kids?’

  ‘You listen to Uncle Russ,’ McKay said, peering into the interior of the car. ‘Thanks for staying, you two. Not that Russ will have given you a choice. We’ll need to take formal statements from you in due course, but in the meantime I’d appreciate an informal chat while your memories are still fresh.’ He noted the paleness of their skin, the blank look in their eyes. ‘I’m sure it’s been a shock,’ he added. ‘I need to take a look at the site first, but I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  ‘You sounded almost human there,’ Horton said, a few minutes later, as they were tramping through the woodland.

  ‘Aye, well. Don’t tell anyone, will you?’

  Up ahead, through the trees, they could see the two white-suited crime scene examiners walking back towards the car park. McKay waved, and one of them walked over. ‘Morning, Alec. Why am I not surprised to see your ugly mug here?’

  ‘Because there’s a job that needs doing properly, I’m guessing. How it’s going?’

  ‘All done. Trust you to turn up when the party’s over.’ Jock Henderson was a tall, angular man who looked as if his centre of gravity was too far from the ground. McKay wondered where they found protective suits to fit him. He had a slightly shambolic air, but was good enough at his job.