None but the Dead (17 page)

The driver, a relative of Hugh Clouston, was bang up to date with developments. He knew that Dr MacLeod’s assistant, ‘the lassie with the pink hair’, had gone off in the police
helicopter this morning, ‘along with a lot of stuff, delivered there by the Ranger’.

‘And Dr MacLeod got her replacement tripod,’ he assured Erling.

Erling said he was very pleased to hear that.

‘So do you think it was that Beth Haddow, the lassie that old Don Cutts was speaking about?’

At that point, Erling realized either the driver was ahead of him in the game or the story was growing legs. When he didn’t respond, Dave Clouston tapped the side of his nose knowingly.
‘I know you cannae divulge details of the investigation, Inspector.’

Erling didn’t think there was anything else left to divulge.

When he reached Heilsa Fjold, he found DS McNab holding court in the room directly behind the open area, which was busy with folk either checking emails and accessing the internet or waiting to
be interviewed.

His own arrival caused a stir of interest. Erling spoke to those he knew, and asked after families and life in general. Through the glass partition he could see that DS McNab was deep in
conversation with a woman in her thirties, whom he didn’t recognize.

PC Tulloch arrived at this point and, spotting his superior officer, looked horrified and examined his watch. ‘Sir, I—’

‘I came over on the launch instead of waiting for the afternoon ferry. The bus brought me here.’

Relief flooded his constable’s face.

Erling drew him to one side. ‘How are things going?’

‘They all ask to speak to the Glasgow detective.’ He looked dismayed by this.

‘Who’s in with the sergeant now?’

‘Inga Sinclair’s mother, sir. One of the children we thought might have taken the skull.’

In the following silence, McNab observed the woman who sat before him. His gut feeling was she was telling him the truth about her daughter and what she was up to. Then again,
who the hell really knew what their children got up to or what they were thinking? He was pretty certain his own mother never had. If he was honest, that was one of the reasons he didn’t
fancy settling down and having a family. He would be on their backs all the time, interrogating them, worried about them, not like a father, but like a policeman.

People lied. Big lies, small lies, evil lies, innocent porky pies. Looking the other way when answering could be a lie, because the truth was often written in the eyes. Then there were shy folk
who just couldn’t meet your gaze, yet were telling the absolute truth. In the end you just had to trust your instinct.

‘Maybe she’ll grow up to be a detective,’ McNab said.

The mother’s face flushed, and she dipped her head to avoid his gaze. ‘There’s something I haven’t mentioned. It’s not relevant to this case, but . . .’

McNab waited.

‘We left Carlisle to get away . . . from Inga’s father.’ She hesitated. ‘This was where my mother’s family came from. I thought we’d be safe here.’

The eyes that met his were fearful.

‘Have you any reason to think you’re not safe?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s just . . . if the children didn’t take the skull or damage the evidence, then who did, and why?’

‘If I asked you that question, Miss Sinclair, what would your answer be?’

‘My name’s Claire,’ she told him.

‘Well, Claire. What do you think?’

She’d obviously thought about it, but was unsure whether to give her opinion.

‘Someone who wants to hide the identity of the body you found. Or . . .’ She hesitated.

‘Or what?’

She shifted in her seat. ‘Maybe someone who wants to cause trouble for Mr Jones.’

‘Why would they want to do that?’

‘Most people here welcome incomers, but not everyone does.’

‘Did you have someone particular in mind?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

McNab made a decision and, pulling out the letter, pushed it across the desk at her.

The seconds it took to register the contents heightened the flush on her face.

‘That’s terrible,’ she said. ‘Why would someone do that?’

‘Have you any idea who that someone might be?’

‘No.’

‘If you do have an idea, will you come back and tell me?’

‘I will.’

As she rose to go, McNab caught sight of DI Flett through the intervening glass.

That man is my way off this island.

McNab swallowed his espresso. His hopes of being served by the Norwegian girl had been dashed. It seemed the task of keeping them fed and watered had passed to the elderly Mrs
Skea, whose rich Sanday accent had proved problematic to someone more versed in Glasgow patois. They’d eventually succeeded in establishing understanding by pointing and nodding. Mrs
Skea’s age suggested that she might be a good interviewee on the subject of wartime Sanday, so McNab had willingly passed her on to PC Tulloch. A few seconds listening to their unintelligible
conversation had convinced McNab that Orcadians were probably closer to Norwegian than they were to him.

Now seated in a small private room with DI Flett, plus an espresso refill, McNab was intent on finding an escape route from this ‘jolly’. It seemed DI Flett had picked up on his
intention.

‘You want to leave us, Detective Sergeant?’

‘Once we’ve completed the interviews and established whether Jamie Drever is our man in Glasgow.’

DI Flett eased himself back in the chair. ‘I’ve been talking to DI Wilson about that.’

‘You have?’ McNab had been using the ‘no signal’ excuse and had thus barely had a conversation with the boss since his arrival.

‘He said your Jock Drever died in suspicious circumstances?’

There was only one answer to that and McNab gave it. ‘Yes.’

‘He’d been tied up, perhaps interrogated?’

‘I don’t know about interrogated,’ McNab said.

‘He hadn’t been gagged?’

‘Not to our knowledge.’

‘Then he wasn’t secured to keep him quiet or, you’ve established, to rob him.’

McNab had no idea where this was going, but the fact that he hadn’t thought along these lines irritated the hell out of him.

‘There are few people left alive who might shine a light on what happened in Lopness when the woman was murdered,’ DI Flett said. ‘What if James Drever was one of
them?’

The journey to Lady Village and the heritage centre was the first occasion McNab had had a proper view of the Sanday landscape, and it only served to convince him that, much as
he disliked trees, they were less threatening than all this open space.

PC Tulloch having been abandoned at the community centre, DI Flett had taken the wheel.

‘Not much road congestion here, Sergeant?’

McNab smiled politely in acknowledgement of the fact they hadn’t met a car since exiting the car park at the community centre.

‘I take it country life isn’t for you?’

‘You could say that.’

‘Yet you volunteered to come, according to DI Wilson.’

‘Things were quiet at home.’

‘Quieter than this?’

As they entered an area where the mobile signal picked up, McNab heard a series of pings as the outside world intruded. Not to appear uninterested, he checked the screen, skimming past all but
one, from Rhona, which he opened.

‘Dr MacLeod’s headed for the heritage centre.’ Even he could hear the pleasure in his voice.

DI Flett gave him a swift look. ‘Then we can have a strategy meeting.’

The two photographs lay side by side on the table. A young Jamie Drever standing with Sam’s family, then the man known as Jock Drever as a newly married man. The likeness
between the two was unmistakable.

McNab watched as a riot of emotions crossed Sam Flett’s face. He had seen such turmoil before, but it was usually on the faces of those people who’d been forced to identify a body in
the police mortuary.

‘How did he die?’ Sam said finally.

McNab glanced at DI Flett before answering.

‘Dehydration.’

‘He was ill?’

‘He was restrained in a chair next to a fire.’

Sam looked horrified. ‘Restrained? You mean tied up? Was it a robbery?’

‘We wondered about that, but in fact nothing was taken, not even the money in his wallet.’ McNab changed tack a little. ‘His neighbour said Jock used to talk about someone
called Ella?’

The two Fletts looked at one another.

‘That would make sense, Sergeant,’ Sam said. ‘Ella was my mother’s name.’

McNab cut off what he had been about to say next. In Mrs Connelly’s opinion, the Ella that Jock had talked of had been more than just a friend.

‘Your mother looks very young in the photograph,’ he said instead.

‘She was twenty when she married my father.’

‘So not much older than Jamie?’

‘And my half-brother, Eric,’ Sam said.

McNab took a moment before getting to the real point of the conversation.

‘There aren’t that many people left alive who would have been here when the girl was killed. Jamie Drever would have been one of them.’

McNab watched as his words sank into Sam’s thoughts. The result was, in his opinion, utter panic. Sam stood up suddenly and gripped the table.

‘You’re saying Jamie’s death has something to do with that body in the schoolyard?’ He swayed then as though about to keel over. DI Flett was there immediately, urging
him to sit down.

‘The sergeant’s only echoing my thoughts, Sam. We have nothing to suggest that’s the case, and Jamie Drever probably died before the body was discovered.’

McNab watched as the old man crumpled back into the seat.

‘I want to bring Jamie home. Give him a decent burial in Lady churchyard near my mother and father.’

‘We’ll do that,’ Erling promised.

When Sam went to make them some tea, McNab headed for the toilet. He would have much preferred to have questioned Sam Flett on his own. To his mind having DI Flett there had
been a mistake. Of course, Sam wasn’t a suspect in either case, having been a baby at the time of the first killing and having been on Sanday when Jock Drever died.

Assuming he was here.

In normal circumstances he would have requested a check on whether Sam had left the island around the time of Jock’s death. After all, there were only a couple of ways he could have
travelled. But he hesitated to do so, because DI Flett was his superior officer and a relative of Sam’s.

McNab ran the cold water and splashed his face, since there was no hope of a dose of caffeine until he got back to the community centre or the hotel. As he dried his hands, he heard
Rhona’s voice and felt his spirits rise.

Now that they’d established who Jock Drever was, he would suggest to the boss that he head back with Rhona and let DI Flett and PC Tulloch take over here. Buoyed up by his decision, he
headed out to the so-called strategy meeting.

Sam entered the small office, shut the door and turned the key. Not to keep anyone out, but to encourage himself to stay in. His overwhelming desire to listen at the door of
the research room being the reason.

He hadn’t liked being questioned by the Glasgow detective about his mother and he was fully aware what was being implied when his mother’s age had been mentioned. By Erling’s
expression, he too had picked up on it.

If it’s true it was years ago and they’re both dead anyway.

Just another island secret.

‘Of which there are many,’ he told himself.

There was no mirror in the room, so Sam sat down at the desk and examined his reflection in the computer screen.

Now that Erling had seen a photograph of Jamie Drever, would he guess what Sam himself suspected? The gaunt face looked back at him. A face that resembled neither his pretty mother nor his
father. His half-brother had, on the other hand, resembled Geordie, in temperament as well as looks. Dark, handsome and brooding with a strong and resilient work ethic, but a fiery temper. A temper
that exploded on occasion.

As a young child he hadn’t been aware of it, but in Ella’s latter years her stories of the past had been frequent and vivid, in contrast to her grip on the present. And both Eric and
Jamie had featured in many of them.

I think in her own way she was trying to tell me.

Sam switched on the screen and his image was replaced by the desktop.

Dr MacLeod had shown him a pilot’s knife she’d found in the grave. With the aid of her magnifying glass she’d picked out a reference number, 27C/2125 and wanted to know if he
could trace it. Concentrating on that task would take his mind off the other secret he had no wish to reveal.

McNab was on edge. Rhona suspected it was due to a lack of caffeine, rather than too much, and the tea that Sam had served them, however strong, wouldn’t supply the
required fix. He was also angling for a return to Glasgow and DI Flett seemed happy to let him go.

Jock Drever had been identified as a Sanday man, and could be returned here for burial once his body was released, and the excavation had been completed. The continuing investigation into what
was a definite cold case could go on without him.

The jolly, it seemed, was over.

Having established this, McNab produced a letter which he passed round. Erling seemed familiar with its contents; Rhona wasn’t.

‘What’s this about?’ she said.

‘Someone has it in for Mike Jones.’

‘I got that,’ Rhona said. ‘Do we know why?’

‘I suspect it’s just an anti-incomer thing. Or he’s annoyed someone with the renovation work. We’re running a check on him just in case. There’s nothing back as
yet,’ Erling told her.

A fleeting thought crossed Rhona’s mind. One she wasn’t happy about having.

‘What is it?’ McNab said, noting her expression.

‘I saw a girl coming out of the schoolhouse this morning, and when I asked about her, I’m sure Mike was about to deny she’d been there.’

‘What did this girl look like?’ McNab said.

Rhona described her.

‘That’s Inga Sinclair. I interviewed her mother this morning. Inga and her gang are searching for the skull. That’s probably why she was there.’