The Sideman Read online

  ‘Captain Patrick?’ The voice came from somewhere behind the wool. ‘Claymore. I am your commander, and as of now you are under my orders. Now, time to get about the night’s business.’

  Patrick recognized his reactivation command, and again that one word pushed unwelcome memories into his head, the smell of cordite, the sound of tracer fire. Faces flashed across his vision, bodies sprawled in bloodied heaps over the machine gun.

  He pushed the fear away. ‘Your business is none of mine, not now.’ Patrick said to reassure himself.

  ‘Shut it, Tonka, your file’s about a foot thick. Don’t ask, just obey.’

  ‘It’s a long time since somebody called me Tonka. I presume I don’t know you.’

  ‘No, but I know you by reputation.’

  ‘Then we are not mates, so Captain Patrick to you.’

  ‘Captain Patrick then. You are a police officer, you need to do your job, so we can do ours.’

  For a short moment they stood a metre apart. Two men regarding each other, separated by a generation or more. One unit bonded them and that would be with them both until the day they died. No matter how hard Patrick tried to leave, he would still be one of them. Their blood was his blood, their fight his fight, even to the end.

  There was a grunt, a nod. He walked away.

  Patrick called after him. ‘What are my orders?’

  The boss turned and pointed. ‘Up that gully. Fifty metres.’

  The spotlights crashed off plunging him into total dark, his eyes dazzled by kaleidoscope images on his retina. He closed his eyes and waited, heard one vehicle depart and opened one eye. If it wasn’t for the near invisible outlines of the vehicle that remained, he’d have thought that he was alone up here on the Bealach. Alone with the silent sentinels of the cairns and the ghosts howling in the wind. He saw the headlights of the departing Land Rover, the beam from the headlights consumed by the darkness, the noise of the engine eaten by the wind.

  They were gone. He was alive but with no idea what he was doing here.

  Qui audet adipiscitur.

  Fifty metres. What the hell did that mean? Had they accidently killed somebody?

  He was truly, completely alone. And the Land Rover was sitting, waiting, engine running. Left for him. He couldn’t see anybody inside.

  ‘But I can see that we still use Her Majesty’s money to play silly buggers, always money for shite,’ said Patrick into the wind, as he was bloody sure there was nobody there to hear it. Well, nearly sure. He faced uphill and now he had his night vision back and began to quarter the hillside in visual sweeps. He smiled. It had been a long, long time since he lived in a world where nobody knew your name because if you saw them as a person, then you might hesitate, and that could be fatal. He remembered the killing house, blacked out, and being told one man with a knife who kept his nerve could kill lots of people in the dark. Why? Because without hesitation he could murder every single one he met, while his enemies whispered, ‘Is that you Frank?’ You were given a nickname the minute you walked in the door, the second you signed up and became one of them, one of the ten percent. The nickname meant you ceased being a person in your own right, you became one of them, one of the team. And he had been one of that team, he had been on a hillside like this many a time, cold and wet, pumped with adrenaline listening to the noise of gunfire and following the pattern of tracer fire back to its source. Four men going where an army couldn’t. Small strong men, the four of them moving like an insidious, venomous little beast, working towards the heart of its prey.

  And they had. Patrick closed his eyes for a moment and he was back on a hillside, clouds of smoke, the smell of cordite and burned flesh filling his nostrils, pushing on and up, climbing, running over rough ground and pushing through, going in where angels failed to fly for fear of being shot down. Slotting everyone in front of them.

  He breathed deep in the air that was fresh and cooling to his lungs, air untainted by the death of those like him, born in a different belief system, in another country.

  Like the past.

  Valerie was hanging, swinging back and forth like a pendulum inside a clock, the tightness around her neck getting worse. She was back in the cupboard at the Blue Neptune, somebody was strangling her. She passed out, a tangle of colours appeared before her eyes, red bursting into yellow that faded to black as she lost consciousness. She waited to die.

  But didn’t.

  She was being strangled. She reached up to her throat, clawing at the noose, her fingertips tugging at the soft fabric that was winding round and pulling ever tighter.

  Then it all went dark.

  She opened her eyes. It was actually dark.

  Valerie was back in the cupboard, panicking. She lifted her other hand and slipped, hitting her head on the tiled floor. She could see in her mind’s eye the noose tightening, constricting her throat until she couldn’t breathe. She choked, rolling on the floor, her eyes closing. Then she realized she was lying down and not choking.

  She was lying in the dark.

  She walked her fingertips up to her neck, wondering what she would find. Unable to get her arms free, she tried to calm herself. She shuffled out the door of the bedroom, aware of something sticky under her. But she kept going, she had to get out of here. Shouldering the door open, she twisted her body and waited for her vision to clear so she knew what was on the other side of the door. She recognized this room, but had no idea where from.

  She could make out movement on the opposite wall, somebody lying low and trying to stay hidden, somebody like her, tied up and kept captured.

  She closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall, waiting for a noise or some clue. Her thoughts were all over the place. This was her worst nightmare all over again, he had found her and put her back in the cupboard. She needed to get out and help the other woman. Looking up she saw the woman was looking back at her. She edged her way forward as she came forward to meet her halfway.

  She was looking at herself.

  She was there, in the mirror of the hotel room. She stared into her own eyes for a long time wondering if she actually recognized that woman who looked back at her. She looked so much older and more tired than Valerie.

  She was old. On the floor after another blackout. Time had slipped somewhere, a few minutes or hours lost, a little bit of herself had escaped. She had no idea.

  Then she heard footsteps on the corridor outside. Valerie’s eyes fixed on the door, willing it to open. It seemed a long time before there was a very quiet double knock.

  She thought she saw a light, thinking that she might be dying now. All that bloody effort and now dying when she wasn’t ready. But God smelled familiar and said something, a voice she recognized as if he was far away down a tunnel, shouting at her. She presumed that, as she knew the voice, God has been talking to her before her final breath.

  She reached her hand out, ready to meet her maker.

  Her mouth was dry. It hurt to move her tongue. She thought she was forming the words correctly, she hoped she could be understood, but from God’s uncomprehending face, which blurred and danced in front of her, she was making no sense at all.

  She tried again. ‘You need to help me.’

  The Bealach was a terrible place to be in winter. It was like the surface of the moon but slightly less hospitable. Bealach Na Ba the locals called it, which meant the pass of the cattle or, as it was sometimes translated, the stink of burned-out clutch. Until recently, within Patrick’s memory, it had been the only road that connected Applecross with the rest of the country. Up here, two thousand feet above sea level on an exposed summit, the wind was so strong, it whipped at his jacket, almost pushing him over. Reminded him of the screeching winds on South Georgia, the Fortuna Glacier, where they had to creep about like German snipers.

  He took cover behind the shelter of the Land Rover, crouching against the body on the lee side where the wind and rain came under the Landie trying to get a bite at him. Once he got his bearings
, he gave in to the aching in his knees, stood up and climbed into the shelter of the vehicle, fumbling to check the keys. He set the demister at full, thinking.

  He moved the vehicle, pulling it forward and repositioning it so the lights shone right down the gully, but back enough from the edge to allow him to getaway easily without reversing.

  This was not a place for him, this was home for deer and sheep, this was where city folk and hill walkers died of exposure. Well, in the past that was true, but now the National Park had built access roads everywhere, the hills belonged to everybody. Now there was an invasion of mountain bikers, motorhomers, stupid people who had seen the North Coast 500 drive on the TV and thought they liked the look of it. Puffer fish looked nice too, but they were still fatal to the ignorant.

  So, there was something out on that hillside that was his business, or at least what Intel thought was his business. He’d no sure idea what his monosyllabic friends had been getting at but there was only one way to find out. Coming up with the story of how he came to be here might be more of a challenge, he thought. He could always tell the truth, no bugger would ever believe that, but that truth would already be being manipulated now, by faceless men in good suits, with no blood on their hands.

  He picked up the torch, turned it on, flashing it a few times to make sure the beam was strong and that it was waterproof, rolled into the rear and out the back door behind the glare of his lights. He did a quick grid search in the darkness, making sure he was alone.

  Then he walked quickly across the parking area till he was in the shadow again outside the arc of the lights and began to walk uphill, rolling silently on the outside of his boots, stopping at each perspective change and checking the ground. From the dark he could see every rock bathed in stark light. Forty metres or so up he saw it. Pale and white, out of place, waving at him in greeting. He crouched and scanned the dark above the lights. He pulled his mobile but there was a better signal on the moon than up here. He had to hurry. Throwing caution to the wind he rushed towards the movement in the heather.

  It was a hand, hanging from the sleeve of a jumper caught in a whipping gorse bush, the fingers caught in the wind, waving.

  Two hours after he found the body, Patrick was alone again at the top of the pass, waiting for the circus to come to town. He had rather enjoyed the drive to the north, going down the Bealach, until his phone told him he had a signal. Then he had contacted his DC, Morna Taverner, getting her out her bed at four a.m., and gave her a list of instructions, checking the local hotels for guests who hadn’t returned tonight, then check the list of young men reported missing, in Scotland for starters. Then any abandoned or burnt-out vehicles within a twenty-mile radius. It might be a long list, but she was a good police officer, despite that idiot she had married and a constant lack of a reliable babysitter. As an afterthought. He called the number of Lachlan McRae, who lived next door to Morna in Constance House, one street from the seafront at Port MacDuff and got him out his bed as well.

  Then he turned around and drove back up, slower than the Gorilla had driven but still bringing back an old thrill.

  The body on the hill had no ID on him, Patrick was not convinced of the most obvious answer; that the young man had been a rough tourist, not an extreme runner with the jumper he was wearing. Maybe more of an extreme walker, the big knitted jumper and border collie brigade, not the Rohan Craghopper super fit lot. They were both tough, both more than a little mad according to the mountain rescue. The real answer would be more tragic, brought about by human hand.

  The Bealach was isolated and high but it wasn’t steep. The road up twisted and turned, gaining height over nine kilometres, meandering its way up and over the pass. Who was he? Who took his ID and why he was dressed the way he was? And how did he end up here on a night like this when the road had been closed for a couple of weeks now. The uncomfortable answer to that was he was either somebody who knew the place, or he had been placed here by somebody who knew the place and whoever did that, well, that vehicle would be covered in blood and that vehicle would have been spotted somewhere along the way. At this time of year, strangers stuck out. Patrick had a slight rethink there. The North Coast 500 was far too popular. Tourists were driving it all hours of day and night, the holiday season now lasted twelve months. Everybody thought they knew the road because they had read about it in a magazine in a Sunday supplement, everybody and their uncle. Folk with 4×4s sat in pubs in the West End of Glasgow and talked about it, boasting about how they had driven it in a gale in October, a snowdrift in January, backwards at midnight while whistling the theme tune from The Great Escape. That was all very well until one vehicle missed a turn and plunged down into the glen, killing everybody on board. Then it would be his fault.

  Four hours after he found the body, Patrick was watching the circus. There was no daylight up here in the middle of the bleak wilderness, it was all spotlights and headlights, shadows dancing over bleak rocks and cairns.

  The scenes of crime team had pegged out the stony ground, fine puddles lying on top of the moss and grass. The vehicles were on the hard standing at the viewing point, there had been a decision, made by Patrick, to leave the civilian vehicles at the bottom of the hill. The road was closed anyway and probably would remain so until early in the new year. The forestry commission ATVs were doing the running up and down, safe and sturdy.

  Despite the weather things were going well; the lights were on, the plates were up. The body lay there, now bathed by light, a young man with dark hair that took a deep ebony sheen in the neon glow, a slight burnished copper tint when caught by the harsh glare of the spotlights.

  Alastair Patrick had taken one look at the man and knew he had been beaten to death. It looked like somebody had danced on his head, never mind the obvious wound across the front of the man’s throat which to Patrick’s expert eye was both amateurish and non-fatal. There may have been torture, but looking too closely would involve adjusting clothing, and maybe losing trace evidence, so he left it. A quick look through the pockets of the baggy jeans revealed nothing.

  This was no accident.

  Somebody had pulled him from a vehicle and rolled him into the gully.

  No rush. The victim wasn’t going anywhere.

  They could wait until they had him on the slab over at the mortuary, wherever he ended up. There was talk of taking him all the way down to Glasgow, and that could take another six hours or so. Maybe he could insist on Inverness.

  Patrick looked round to see the photographer in the spotlight, clicking away, the crime scene officer was helping with the video. Two CSIs were on their knees searching the ground, getting soaked and finding nothing but doing the job anyway. He had instructed that the body be taken off the hill ASAP, they would find anything they needed to find once the sun was up. He looked at his watch and that would be another three hours away.

  One of the CSIs shone her or his torch in the face of the young man, eyes closed, a pink, fresh face, as if he had decided to shave when he looked in the mirror on the day he died. His face was bloodied red, the rain running over it, giving him the look of both life and perspiration. He looked at peace in this desolate place.

  After dying a brutal death.

  The police surgeon turned up eventually, ignoring Patrick, picking his way over the ground, dressed in a huge downy anorak, and a woollen hat pulled far over his ears. He snubbed the group as he went about his business, then he stopped. Suddenly.

  The two CSIs and the photographer ceased to move, stilled exactly where they were, turned to stone.

  ‘Who is in charge here? Is that you, Patrick?’

  ‘Yes,’ he shouted over the screaming of the wind.

  ‘Well, you’d better get a chopper here right now. He’s not dead.’

  Alastair Patrick’s mind swiftly moved up a few gears. Oh, so he was not dead, so why was he here? Why had they thought he was dead? Had they checked? Had he checked? Of course he had, he had placed his bare fingers over the jugular
and found nothing.

  Alastair Patrick walked back to the Land Rover with greater purpose than he had left it, he was ready to drive back down the pass to get a phone signal as a stretcher, aluminium blankets, an oxygen tank and mask ready, was making its way back over to the body.

  The paperwork just got problematic.

  He was thinking of the long drive to Inverness as Patrick watched the body being placed on a stretcher, and placed into the back of the Land Rover, resting it on the top of the seat. There was no way a normal ambulance was going to get up here. They’d take him down to the coast and the Paraffin Budgie could meet them there.

  That would be safer, in this night sky, this weather, this visibility.

  He called the Multi Agency Briefing.

  It was someone else’s decision.

  FOUR

  Gareth Ahern had been volunteer ranger for as long as he could recall. He was better at it than most of the young professionals that came onto the lochside after graduation from university, all very good at the DNA of ferns and the breeding habits of otters, but not so bloody good at getting up at the crack of dawn and reading the signs of what had been going on in the wee dark hours of the night. And more recently they had had the hooligans from the city come up, making it out to the islands and killing the wildlife, most noticeably the wallabies. Last week one of the wallabies had been skinned on the beach and left in full view for the tourists on the loch cruise to see the next morning. Ahern had thought he would never see the day when there had to be security on twenty-seven square miles of water.

  One of the students, a nice young bloke called Cowan who drove a VW camper, had explained it to Ahern; it was some kind of game they had, an initiation ceremony to become a fully paid up member of the gang by showing how tough you were. The aim of it seemed to be to get out to the islands of the loch unseen, then trap and kill whatever they could find. Birds, ducks, rabbits and, most recently, the wallabies. There had been signs of torture of the animals, the Wildlife Protection Unit were taking an interest now that it looked likely the attacks would affect tourism. They had asked Ahern and Cowan and others to keep watch and collect any evidence that they could.