Ancestor

A Novel by

Michael Rolls

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Dedicated to the memory of my dear wife

Veronica Rolls

15th April 1943 to 23rd January 2018

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Ancestor

Contents

Prelude. .. .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ... . .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..2

Chapter One. .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ... . .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... ..3

Chapter Two. .. .... .... .... .... .... .... ... . .... .... .... . ... .... .... .... .... .... .... ... . .... .... .... . ... .... .... .... .... .... .... ...9

Chapter Three..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ....18

Chapter Four.. .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... ...27

Chapter Five.... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... ..40

Epilogue. ... .... .. .. .... ... . .... .... .... .... . ... .... .. .. .... ... ..... .... .... .... .. .. .... ... . .... .... .... .... . ... .... .. .. .... ...58

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Prelude

Jamie MacKenzie fixed his eyes on his objective as he raced forward; not looking down at the ground, he staggered as his foot sunk into a hidden rabbit hole in the soft, boggy soil. As he did so, his cousin, Graham MacKenzie, surged past him. A year younger than Jamie’s eighteen summers, Graham always had been fleeter of foot than Jamie and he was a good four feet in front of him when he suddenly pitched forward onto the ground. Unable to stop or dodge round Graham, Jamie tripped over him and fell face down on top of him, the force of the fall driving the breath from his lungs.

The fall saved Jamie’s life, The precise moment that he hit the ground face down, Corporal John Bewick, part of the artillery contingent supporting Barrell’s Fourth Regiment of Foot, applied his linstock to the touch hole of the three pounder cannon he was serving, and the weapon, small but deadly, belched forth smoke and a swathe of canister shot, forty-two lead musket balls, each nearly three-quarters of an inch in diameter, each fully capable of breaking bones and tearing flesh asunder, into the advancing Highland charge. From where he lay Jamie heard the awful sounds of the musket balls striking men’s bodies, and before he could begin to get to his feet again someone fell on top of him. Still winded, Jamie lay where he was for several moments before he realised that the charge was over – his fellow Highlanders, decimated by close range musket and cannon fire, were turning and fleeing for their very lives. As the charge evaporated, Jamie became aware of the tramp of many feet coming towards where he lay. The Redcoat regiment, until just moments before hard pressed by on-rushing Highland warriors who had reached within fifty yards of the thin line of soldiers, was now able to advance to take its revenge.

Unable to move without drawing attention to himself, Jamie lay stock still as booted feet passed either side of him. One pair of feet paused momentarily and the Redcoat soldier stabbed down with his bayonetted musket into the back of the man under whom Jamie was trapped. The soldier moved on, but others followed and, not daring to move, Jamie remained where he was.

Gradually things became quieter; where Jamie and his fellow Highlanders lay was bypassed by the Redcoats and at last Jamie dared to raise his head to take in the carnage that lay all around him. The open ground was littered with dead, dying and wounded Highlanders; only yards away he saw soldiers using their bayonets on some of the wounded and Jamie lowered his head again.

The brief look around that he had been able to take had confirmed his worse fears; Graham, upon whom he was lying, was dead, struck down by a musket shot just an instant before the cannon had been fired. So was his own elder brother, Hamish, under whom he lay. To his right lay his other brother, Iain, and to his right rested the corpse of their father, Charles Edward. In a trice, with the exception of himself, all the male members of his family had been slaughtered by the weapons of the Government forces.

Dusk was a long time coming on that blood-soaked day, the sixteenth of April in the year of Our Lord seventeen hundred and forty-six, but it came at last and Jamie was able to wriggle unseen from the sandwich of death which had hidden him from the merciless Government troops.

It was never meant to be this way. The Jacobite cause was never meant to have met such a bloody end on that terrible field of Culloden Moor, but Jamie was only too aware of the divided loyalties amongst the Scots, divided loyalties which had played into the hands of the Duke of Cumberland and his forces. Why, even his own clan was divided. Whilst George MacKenzie, the third Earl of Cromartie, to whom Jamie, his father and brothers owed their allegiance, had declared for the cause of the Stuarts, the titular clan chief, Kenneth MacKenzie, Lord Fortrose, had declared for the Government and had raised troops to support it.

For Jamie and his father and brothers it was even more ironic. The Earl of Cromartie’s forces had been attacked and delayed on their march to join the army of Charles Edward Stuart and were unable to reach Culloden in time to take part in the battle. Anxious that the Prince should be appraised of his inability to join him, the Earl had sent Jamie’s father, a trusted lieutenant, to bear the news to the Prince. Naturally, Charles Edward MacKenzie had taken his three sons and his nephew with him on the mission.

Once the message had been delivered, Charles MacKenzie and his sons and nephew, unwilling to miss the action, unwilling to fail to do their utmost for the young man they regarded as their sometime future king, had attached themselves to the Clan Chattan whose chief had led the ill-fated charge and seen his clansmen suffer disastrously as a result.

Carefully, Jamie slithered across the soggy ground, keeping belly-down on the wet soil to avoid making himself into a silhouette against the gloaming. When he had fallen he had lost his only weapon, his broadsword. It had disappeared, doubtless picked up by one of the soldiers who had marched past him.

Whilst he felt its loss keenly – it had been handed down to him by his late grandfather – he knew full well that to be found armed in this place and at this time was an almost certain recipe for summary execution.

4

With that in mind he also relinquished the sword’s scabbard, like the lost weapon itself, a gift from his late grandfather.

He slithered like a snake for several hundred yards, by which time it was full dark, although the darkness was punctuated by hand held torches as the victorious Government troops continued to search the field for survivors, survivors of the clansmen to be dispatched without mercy, survivors of their own forces to be taken up so that they might have their wounds attended to.

At last he felt that he was far enough away from the nearest torches to risk rising to his feet to make more rapid progress. It was essential, he told himself, to put as much distance as possible between himself and the battlefield before daylight reappeared. He was only too aware that his plaid was heavily stained with the blood of his kinsmen and would instantly alert any Government soldier should he be unfortunate to be seen by one.

When dawn’s grey light at last appeared he was some miles away from the carnage that was Culloden Moor, making his way ever south and east, away from the centres of population that lay to the west of him, between Culloden and the town of Inverness and into the wilder country towards Braemar. He found a small burn running through a stand of stunted trees, trees which would hide him from immediate view, and there he stripped naked and washed away as much of his kinsmen’s blood as possible from his stained clothes. It had come on to rain, so, as he shiveringly redonned the wet garments, he consoled himself with the thought that at least the rain gave a reason for their wetness, should such a reason be needed.

Once in the hills around the village of Braemar, Jamie was faced with a quandary. He dare not return to his family home; Kintail and its surrounds were surely barred to him. Those members of the clan who had followed Lord Fortrose in supporting the Government would clearly know only too well that Jamie, his father, brothers and cousin had fought for Charles Edward Stuart and would surely settle their differences with the Jacobite element of the clan by denouncing him.

It was springtime, but even so the Highland nights were cold and he found shelter scarce and inadequate.

Had it not been for the fortuitous appearance of a cattle drover who proved to be a stalwart Jacobite supporter, Jamie might even have died of hunger and exposure, but the man, Hector McGregor, fed him and shared with him his rough sleeping hides.

After five days on the run, never risking breaking cover in daylight unless rain and mist reduced visibility, and travelling usually by night, Jamie at last reached the small fishing village of Stonehaven. One thing was in his favour; although the bodies of his father and brothers had been perfunctorily rifled by Redcoats, the speed of their advance in pursuit of their beaten enemy meant that cousin Graham, lying at the bottom of the three strong pile of apparent corpses, had been undisturbed, as had he himself, and Graham’s corpse had yielded some coins and these, together with what Jamie himself had carried, whilst of no use whatsoever in the high wastelands of the Cairngorms, were enough to persuade an impoverished fisherman to take him across the sea to France.

As the small fishing craft stood away from the shore Jamie looked back at the coast which was slowly disappearing in a rain squall and wondered if he would ever see Scotland again.

Chapter One

The sixth of July – more importantly, the first Monday of the summer holidays; eight glorious weeks without having to try and drum the elements of physics into schoolboy minds. I stretched out in the bed, causing Sonia to murmur softly in her sleep. I idly contemplated waking her and suggesting that we celebrate the start of the holidays with a little mutual physical enjoyment but decided that she looked too peaceful to disturb. I looked at the clock and was surprised to see that it was gone nine o’clock – by our normal standards we had both considerably overslept.

I slipped from the bed, careful not to disturb my wife, donned my dressing gown and silently made my way downstairs to the kitchen where I made myself the first cup of tea of the morning. I took it to the window and gazed out on what promised to be a fine July morning.

There was a clatter at the front door as the daily paper was pushed through the letter box. I picked it up, wandered into the lounge and sat myself down with tea and paper, scanning the front page for the headlines.

As usual, death and destruction took pride of place and I moved on to the inside pages. Nothing grabbed my attention and I put the paper to one side and leaned back in my chair, contemplating the day ahead and the days beyond.

It would shortly be Sonia’s birthday, her twenty-ninth; I had provisionally booked a weekend at the Wessex Hotel in Winchester, but the booking was still fluid in case a better brainwave should occur to me.

5

I was still idly going through the paper, and still slumming it in my dressing gown, when there was a ring at the front door. It was the postman, with a package for me, a package too large to go through the letter box and which, in any case, required my signature.

I took it back into the lounge to open and as I sat down again, so Sonia appeared, dressed, like myself, in her dressing gown. She gave a sleepy yawn and stretched her arms above her head, causing the dressing gown to gape in a most interesting fashion. Quite aware of what she was doing, she gave me a wicked smile before allowing it to close again.

“Later, boy, later!”

I grinned back.

“Promises, promises!”

“Who that was at the door?”

I indicated the package which, for the first time, I realised bore French postage stamps.

“Oh, that looks interesting.”

I wasn’t so sure; the only person I knew likely to write to me from France was my elderly grand-father and apart from Christmas and birthday cards, we had scarcely corresponded since he had moved to the south of France a decade or so earlier, a move largely caused by his desire for a kinder climate than that of his native Scottish Highlands, in the hope, as he put it, that it would be kinder to his aging bones.

I reached for the package with a sense of foreboding, a sense that was swiftly justified. Opening the outer packaging revealed four items; a printed sheet of A4 paper, a heavy, sealed envelope, a second, slightly lest bulky, sealed envelope, and something wrapped in brown paper.

I picked up the printed sheet. It was a letter on headed notepaper, the heading declaring that it had come from a firm of lawyers in Toulon. Not only was it from a French lawyer; it was written in French. My knowledge of the French language is reasonable, but I didn’t trust myself with possible French legalese. Happily, the solution to the problem was sitting just three feet away. I teach physics at Guildford Royal Grammar School; Sonia teaches modern languages, French and Spanish, so I handed the sheet of paper over to her.

She took it from me and started to read.

“ ‘Esteemed M’sieu MacKenzie,’ ”

She grinned at me “They must be confusing you with somebody else, sunshine,”

However, the grin disappeared as she read the next sentence.

“ ‘It is my sad duty to advise you of the death of M’sieu James Edward David MacKenzie on Tuesday, the second of June of this year’.”

She stopped and looked at me.

“Oh, Jamie, I’m so sorry – I always wanted to meet your granddad and now he’s gone.”

I automatically looked at the calendar, wondering why it had taken virtually five weeks for me to learn of the death of my only close relative, apart, that was from my older sister, and I wondered if sister Helen already knew of granddad’s death.

“Go on,” I urged, “what else does the letter say?”

Sonia resumed reading.

“’M’sieu MacKenzie did me the honour of entrusting me with executing his will and administering the settling of his estate. He specifically requested that I should not advise you of his passing until the matter of his estate had been concluded. I regret that I was unable to persuade him to advise you earlier of his passing, but I understand that the relationship between you, whilst respectful, was not particularly close and he wished to cause you as little distress as possible.

‘Included with this letter is an envelope which he himself prepared; I have no knowledge of its contents.

There is also a further package – again I have no knowledge of its contents. According to his wishes, your grandfather was cremated and his ashes scattered in the sea off Toulon.

‘As you may be aware, your grandfather lived in rented, furnished accommodation, so his physical effects, other than what is contained in this package, amount to a number of books and photographs, his medals and uniforms; I await your instructions as to whether you wish these items to be returned to you or disposed of in some other manner. Regarding the financial element of his estate, I enclose with this letter a banker’s draft for fifty-five thousand Euros, the balance of his estate after tax, together with a copy of his will and a summary of his bank account.

‘Assuring you of my esteem, I remain Henri Delacotte, Attorney at law.’

We looked at each other in silence. Sonia stared numbly at me and an unbidden tear trickled down her cheek.

“Oh, Jamie, I’m so sorry – how sad that he didn’t want you to know straight away – why would that be?”

“That was typical of granddad – never wanted to show emotion, never wanted to be thought soft. He came from a long line of hard men, Highlanders to whom only honour and courage mattered, not anything soft. I 6

still wish I had known though – it means that there would not have been a single family member at his funeral – although, to be fair, the only family he had left was Helen and myself.”

It was a sad fact. My parents had both died in a traffic accident ten years earlier, unwitting victims of a drunk driver on the A1 when returning from a holiday in the Yorkshire dales. As a result Helen, four years my senior, grandad and myself were all that had been left of the direct line of a minor offshoot of the once mighty Clan MacKenzie. Now there was only Helen and myself, and I presumed that, like myself until just moments ago, she was blissfully unaware of what had happened.

I looked at the sealed envelope, wondering what it might contain. Reluctantly I tore it open to find that it contained a hand written letter and a couple of official looking envelopes, each presumably containing further missives.

I lifted the hand written letter and, for Sonia’s benefit, read it aloud.

“Dear Jamie,

First let me say that it is only now, in the twilight of my life that I realise how much I regret not having kept in closer contact with you and your lovely wife. It’s my fault –it would have been unreasonable to expect working people such as yourselves to drag yourself all the way down here to visit a doddering old man.

Doddering is the least of my problems – the doctors now tell me that I won’t make the autumn, never mind two thousand and sixteen. That being the case, I have asked my attorney, and good friend, Henri Delacotte, to sort out my affairs for me and he has promised that, after I am gone, he will offer you any help that may be needed with the French authorities, although, given his expertise, any such problems should be minimal.

So, Jamie, at the moment you are the last of us, but hopefully you and Sonia will correct that in time. In the meantime, however, it remains for Henri to ensure that you inherit as much as possible of what is left of my estate after the taxmen have taken their cut. One thing at least that they cannot touch is Castle Kintail which will for ever stand as a monument to us all – if anyone ever cares about such a thing.

Goodbye, my dear boy,

Your loving grandfather,

James Edward David MacKenzie of Kintail.”

I was aware of Sonia gazing at me.

“You now own a castle? And what’s this ‘of Kintail’ thing? Have you been holding out on me, Jamie MacKenzie?”

I shook my head.

“Not really, love. It’s a long story and not all that riveting – how about breakfast?”

“Oh no you don’t! You’re not leaving that chair until you explain yourself!”

I sighed; it really was a long story and unlikely to be of interest to anyone other than family – and of family there was now only Helen and myself left.

“OK, but don’t say that you weren’t warned. It all goes back to the start of the eighteenth century. At that time the MacKenzies were one of the more powerful Highland clans, but things were beginning to go wrong as early as seventeen fifteen – the Jacobite rising for James Edward Stuart – the ‘Old Pretender’. At that time the clan was more or less united in its support of the Jacobite cause – which was, of course, defeated – but despite that and the need for senior members of the clan to leave Scotland, mostly for France, in something of a hurry, the clan as a whole didn’t fare too badly. Then, however, came the rising of seventeen forty-five.”

“Oh, Bonnie Prince Charlie?”

“Yes, but despite all the legends, there was precious little that was ‘bonnie’ about it all. By that time the clan was split, part for the Prince, part for the government. Came the Battle of Culloden in seventeen forty-six, when the Prince’s army was totally smashed by the government forces. That part of Clan MacKenzie, led by Lord Fortrose, which supported the government were at the battle, but the Jacobite element, led by the Earl of Cromartie, never made it –they were attacked and delayed on their way to join the Prince.

“That’s when it all becomes a bit blurred. For some reason, there were five MacKenzies on the Jacobite side at Culloden, Charles Edward MacKenzie, his sons Iain, Hamish and Jamie, and his nephew Graham. All except Jamie were killed – and this is where it gets downright weird. In seventeen forty-six Jamie MacKenzie was on the run, a penniless fugitive with only the clothes he stood up in to bless himself with.

Had he been caught near to and soon after the battle he would most likely have been shot or hanged on the spot. He must have made it to France, because in seventeen seventy-five he arrived back in Scotland from France, a wealthy, married man with a wife and three children in tow. Somehow he had re-established himself with the clan elders, and it was at that point that he was given Castle Kintail – or perhaps given it back would be more accurate, because it was where his family had lived before Culloden, but from which the remnants of the family – the women, children and those too old to have to go to war – had been ejected after Culloden. He doesn’t seem to have stayed there long – by seventeen seventy-eight he had bought a large 7

house in Edinburgh and lived there the rest of his life and it was where his descendants lived right up to my grandfather. My father was the first to break the habit – not only by becoming a doctor instead of a soldier, but also in moving down south – and down south all the way to England!”

“But tell me about the castle! What’s it like?”

“Don’t get too excited! It’s nothing remotely like the Tower of London, or Glamis, or anything like that. It’s a tower, plain and simple, about forty or fifty feet square and the equivalent of four or five storeys high.

Nobody actually knows how old it is, nor who originally built it. It must be at least six hundred years old, because it was the scene of a battle between the Clan MacLeod, who originally held that area, and the MacDonalds of Glengarry, who were looking to expand westwards. The MacLeods triumphed and their victory was recorded by the monks of the monastery that then existed nearby – a monastery long gone. This was in fifteen eighteen and the monk’s record was used in a pleading before the Scottish king, James the Fifth, or to more accurate, as the king was only five years old at the time, before his councillors lead by his mother, Margaret Tudor, who was acting as Regent. The pleading was by the MacDonalds - I suppose it is always the losers who cry foul – but their claim to the land was dismissed.”

Sonia furrowed her brow.

“You know, I’ve never heard you talk about all this before – why not?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“I suppose it might be interesting, but it is all of no relevance in this day and age. I only know about it because my great-grandfather, Graham Iain, was fascinated by the family history and researched it pretty thoroughly. He wrote a little book about it all – just for family members, after all, who else would be interested, and my father had a copy which I read from time to time as a youngster – usually when the weather was too bad to play outside!”

I was suddenly struck by an idea.

“Look, love, please say if you don’t like the idea, but how about we do a little tour of the area for your birthday – we could stay at some decent hotels on the way there and the way back and you could have a bit of pampering.”

I was treated to one of Sonia’s most dazzling smiles – a smile that was reserved for when I actually managed to stumble on a relatively good idea.

“That would be super – it really would.”

“Oh, and back to the castle – my lot took it from the MacLeods in another punch-up, but not one formally recorded, around sixteen eighty or so – the exact date never has been identified, not even by great-granddad.

But now – how about breakfast?

“Your trouble, James Edward, is that you have no bloody sense of romance – tell me more –oh, and what is that thing wrapped in brown paper?”

I had temporarily forgotten the final item in the package, and now turned my attention to it. The size seemed familiar.

“I think I know what that is.”

So saying, I unwrapped it. There were actually two items inside. One I hadn’t expected –it was a copy of great-grandfather’s book. The other, however, I had expected. It was a leather bound Bible, clearly very old, the leather binding, once probably brilliant scarlet with gold leaf decorations but now dull brown with the gold leaf long since worn away, and the material itself dried and cracking with age. In the manner of many old and valuable books, it was closed by a metal clasp, a clasp which glowed dully in the light and which some might have thought to be gold, but which was, I was well aware, simply bronze. Sonia gazed at the old book in awe.

“But that’s lovely – it must be ancient.”

“That,” I told her rather pompously, “is the family Bible of the MacKenzies of Kintail. It originally belonged to my namesake, the mysterious Jamie MacKenzie who survived Culloden and somehow became rich and successful in later life. It was printed in seventeen eighty and has been handed down through the generations ever since.”

I picked it open and, very carefully, turned back the clasp and opened the book at the front flypapers. They were filled with handwriting, some faded virtually to invisibility, some surprisingly fresh looking, all clearly the products of different hands. They were a record of dates, dates of birth and dates of death of family members. I handed it to Sonia; she looked at it almost with reverence.

“But this is amazing!” She ran her glance down and across the pages.

“Why, it even shows you and your sister!”

“Yes. Because dad died before granddad, it was granddad who kept the Bible up until now. That’s why he has passed it on to me.”

Sonia looked at me quizzically.

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“So, you really come from a pretty ancient family, don’t you?”

I shook my head in negation.

“No, everybody comes from an ancient family – it’s just that some families histories are better recorded than others. Back in seventeen eighty, when Jamie MacKenzie bought that Bible and started recording births and deaths in it, your ancestors were around, just as he was, doing much the same things – making a living, having children, living, loving and dying – the only difference is that Jamie MacKenzie started a paper trail that could be followed.”

Sonia frowned gently.

“Yes, I suppose that’s true, really – makes you think, doesn’t it? I mean here we are, you and me, the final products of generation after generation of people before us – going back to the caveman and cavewoman.”

She shivered, even though the room was warm.

“H’mm – don’t think I want to go down that line of thought – you’re right – how about breakfast?”

We started breakfast, but half way through Sonia returned to the subject of Kintail Castle.

“What are you going to do about the castle?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Why not? Surely you should at least be thinking about doing something with it?”

“I can’t do anything with it – not possible.”

“But why ever not?”

“Well, although I now own it, as did granddad before me, and my great-grandad and so on before him, it all goes back to Iain James, my great-great-grandfather. He was head of the family from nineteen twenty-two until ninety forty-five when he died.

“By nineteen twenty-two, the castle was already pretty much a ruin. Nobody had lived there for donkey’s years and what had been the centre of a largish family back in the eighteenth century was now just a shell with no purpose to it. The land on which it stood – still stands for that matter – was poor stuff, just about suitable for a few sheep to graze, and that was about it. Great-great-granddad lived in the big house in Edinburgh, of course, and had no need of the castle, nor any use for it, but I suppose to be able to claim ownership of a castle did have a certain cachet to it; I don’t know if he ever tried to sell it or anything, but even if he had, who would want to buy such a dump?

“In nineteen thirty-one the National Trust for Scotland was established and it wanted to be able to offer places for people to visit that hadn’t been available to the public in earlier days. They had quite a lot of cooperation from some of the big families who had fallen on hard times during the Great Depression and who saw gifting some of the family assets to the NT a way to avoid death duties and the like. Iain James had a brainwave – he offered to rent Kintail Castle to the NT for a nominal sum, emphasising its links with the forty-five and the like. He must have been pretty persuasive, because the NT fell for it and for tax purposes it became a virtual zero in the family accounts books. The NT started off with good intentions – a little hut to house a volunteer and a charge of sixpence – I suppose the equivalent of about a pound today - to visit – but it wasn’t very successful – don’t forget, back then very few people had cars, so visitors were few and far between. Then came the war and people had other things to worry about than looking over some old ruined castle. After the war the NT decided that the place wasn’t worth bothering with – so they put up a plaque giving a potted history of the place – the little hut had long since fallen into rack and ruin - and left it at that.

And that’s how things stand today. The agreement between Iain James and the NT stipulated that we can’t sell the castle, or make any alterations to it without their consent, and similarly, they can’t make any changes to it – and why should they be any more interested in the place than we are? No, until it all finally crumbles away – which judging by the current rate of deterioration probably won’t happen for another couple of hundred years or so - it will just stay as it is.”

“Oh but that is so sad! It’s somewhere that people lived in, somewhere that was valuable enough to be fought over, even. Surely it should be more than just a pile of stone that nobody loves, nobody even visits, from the family it sheltered for all those years?”

As ever, I found myself on the defensive.

“I have visited it, you know.”

“When – not since I’ve known you!”

“When I was a child we visited granddad several times and he took us to the castle a couple of times.”

“Well, it’s high time that you visited it again!”

“Well, I’ve already suggested a Scottish tour, so where’s the problem?”

“Oh, of course – so we’ll view the family castle, yes?”

“Very much yes.”

It was then that, with a guilty start, I realised that I had yet to let my sister known of our grandfather’s death.

I was about to pick up the phone when I was struck by a thought and once more opened out his will and 9

studied it more closely. As had appeared at first glance, I was the sole inheritor; nothing to anyone else at all.

I was a bit surprised that he had made no provision at all for Helen, nor for her six year old daughter, Elizabeth.

I rang Helen’s number and Elizabeth answered the phone.

“Hello’”

“Hello, Elizabeth, it’s your Uncle Jamie – is your mummy there?”

“Hello, Uncle Jamie, I’ll call her.”

Just in time I moved the phone away from my ear as Elizabeth took a deep breath and, at near foghorn level, bellowed out her message,

“MUMMY, IT’S UNCLE JAMIE!”

There was a brief pause, and then, at a more normal decibel level, I heard my sister.

“Jamie, nice to hear from you – how are you and Sonia?”

“We’re fine, thanks, but I’ve got some bad news. Granddad has died.”

There was another brief pause before she spoke again.

“Oh dear, well, after all he was eighty-five, so I suppose it’s hardly unexpected. Do you know when the funeral will be – oh, and suppose it will be in France?”

“Well, it’s all a bit strange, actually. I only learned of his death when the post arrived this morning, but he actually died back in June.”

“In June? Why on earth weren’t we told at the time?”

“Well, I’ve got this letter from his lawyer in Toulon. According to him, granddad expressly wanted everything ‘sorted out’ – you know, tax and the like – before we were told. He was cremated and his ashes scattered out to sea.”

“That all sounds a bit odd. I can understand the old man not wanting to put us to the trouble of bringing him back to the UK – and presumably the family plot in Edinburgh – but not to let us know at the time…”

I could visualise Helen shaking her head in bewilderment and ploughed on with my tale.

“The lawyer sent me a copy of the will and it’s very short and to the point. As you know, he lived in rented, furnished accommodation so his physical effects are pretty minimal. Thing is, he just names me as the beneficiary and doesn’t even mention you and Elizabeth at all. The lawyer has sent me a banker’s draft for fifty-five thousand Euros, the balance of his estate after tax, but I don’t think that it is right that it all comes to me – I think that we should share it fifty-fifty.”

“Well, that’s very good of you, Jamie – oh, dear, that didn’t come out right at all – makes me sound like a grudging little cow – no, no, it really is very good of you, love – money’s always welcome. I wonder what he spent all his on? I always thought that the old bugger was loaded!”

We exchanged a few more family platitudes – her husband, John, was doing OK - he had a car dealership in Woking and things had been a bit sticky for them a few years earlier at the height of the depression, but trade had picked up a bit. Sonia and I were happy in our respective posts at the Royal Grammar, and so on.

Helen’s comment ‘I always thought that the old bugger was loaded’ made me take a closer look at the summary of my grandfather’s financial affairs. It was an examination that made me sit and think.

My grandfather had moved to France shortly after the deaths of my parents in that car crash. He had sold the big house in Edinburgh and had rented an apartment in Toulon. The summary, however, covered only the last two years and had no mention of the house sale. It did show that renting the apartment cost him twelve hundred Euros a month – so ten years would have represented a total outlay of something like a hundred and fifty thousand Euros. There was a monthly income of around three thousand Euros which was a transfer order from some other account, although the donor account was not identified other than by a serial number of some sort, and the amount wasn’t constant, although the variation was never very great. Where was the effect of selling the Edinburgh house? The balance of his estate- admittedly after tax – was just fifty-five thousand Euros. That meant that if the sale proceeds of the house had somehow been subsumed, his living expenses over the period must have been around half a million pounds, which seemed hard to believe. He had never been a profligate person when living in Edinburgh – why should he have changed once he went to France?

I realised that the summary was just too succinct to really tell me anything – if I was to pursue the matter any further, I needed to see much more detail and my only means of access to such detail, as far as I could see, was via Henri Delacotte, and, even though, in his letter to me granddad had described him as a friend, I did wonder uneasily if the man could be trusted.

It then dawned on me that I was considerably underestimating the money that would have been coming granddad’s way. I had only thought about the proceeds from the Edinburgh house – there was also his pensions to take into consideration, his normal old age pension and his army pension. He had retired in 10

nineteen eighty-five as a lieutenant-colonel and a bit of searching, courtesy of Google, showed that the current pension for a retired lieutenant-colonel was over thirty thousand pounds a year. Obviously it wouldn’t have been as much as that thirty years ago when he first retired and his old age pension would only have started to be paid at age sixty-five, but I had the unhappy feeling that there was a considerable amount of money not accounted for. Neither was shown in his French accounts – but they must have been paid to him somehow – but how and where?

I determined to dig deeper, but the first step would be to advise M. Delacotte that I wanted granddad’s effects sent to me.

Chapter Two

Even though I had done my best to forewarn her, I could see that Sonia’s first sight of Castle Kintail was something of a let-down for her. As I had said, it was a simple, a very simple, stone built tower, roughly forty feet or a bit more square. Originally it had been perhaps fifty feet high, but the years had caused the upper reaches to crumble away and to do so in an uneven manner, so it was now perhaps forty feet high at the tallest point, where the north and east faces met, and a good five or six feet lower at the diametrically opposite corner.

I feel an embarrassing need to defend to old place.

“I know it doesn’t look much now,” I said apologetically, “but try and think of it as it would have been in its heyday. Don’t forget, although the MacKenzie of Kintail and his immediate family would have lived in the castle, the castle itself would have been a strongpoint for his wider family and his clansmen, who would have lived in simple dwellings near to the castle. There would also have been animal pens – but all of that would have been wood and thatch and has long since rotted away. In troubled times – perhaps, say, if a neighbouring clan came raiding – everyone would have sought shelter in the castle itself. Back then there would have been perhaps a dozen or more actual dwelling houses scattered over an area a couple of hundred yards or so across – when great-great-grandad started on his book there was quite a bit of evidence still on the ground as to where wooden walls and the like had rotted down. The whole area had a wooden wall round it – more to keep livestock in than to keep enemies out, but even against enemies it would have been some sort of barrier.”

Sonia ran a critical eye over the tower and its surrounding area.

“Surely,” she demurred, “the tower would have been pretty useless if enemies did arrive? I mean – what would the people inside do for water? They might have stockpiled food, but the only source of water is that stream over there.”

I looked to where she was pointing.

“Quite right – oh, and up here they call it a burn – but in fact it actually ran inside the wooden wall for a while, so there would have been the opportunity to ‘stockpile’ water as well.”

“But they couldn’t have kept supplies for much of a period, surely.”

“Probably not, but small inter-clan punch-ups back then seldom featured determined sieges – any attacker would have been quite happy to force the defenders to take to the tower, then run off with as much livestock as possible and probably burn down the outlying buildings to drive home their point. Oh, and the only time that there were determined sieges were when the English invaded over the centuries and of course, in the fifteen and forty-five risings – and there’s no record of a castle as insignificant as Kintail ever being involved in matters that serious.”

Sonia nodded her head slowly, absorbing what I was telling her.

“Can we go inside?”

“Don’t see why not.”

We made our way to the entrance to the castle. Once it would doubtless have been a really substantial door, probably reinforced with iron and capable of being blocked from within; now, however, it was just a hole in the wall, about six feet high and eight across. A substantial stone threshold reduced the effective headroom on entry to the point where I had to duck my head as I went through.

Inside, the castle was really just like a large lift shaft. The various floors, which would have been of wood, were long gone, as was the roof, leaving the whole place open to the elements. The only real indication of the levels of the place was a stone staircase against the southern wall, made by letting individual stones, each about six inches thick, a good fifteen inches or so deep and perhaps three feet in length, into the stones of the wall. Even the stairs weren’t complete – perhaps thirty percent of them were missing, leaving gaping holes in the wall itself, and making it impossible to use it for its original purpose, even had there been anywhere left for it to lead to.

11

It was a summer’s day and outside the sun was shining brightly, but the thick stone walls kept any warmth at bay, whilst the empty doorway, the various windows – again mere holes in the stones, and the lack of a roof, combined to create a cold draught which lowered the temperature dramatically. Dressed in just a summer dress, Sonia shivered.

“Jamie, I’ve seen enough, let’s get back out into the sun please.”

I led her back into the warmth of the July day and she stopped and looked back at Castle Kintail. Despite the warmth of the sun, she shivered again.

“I can see why nobody wanted to look after the place, Jamie – it gives me the creeps.”

“I did warn you that it was no Tower of London, love.”

“So you did, so you did. I don’t know, somehow I thought that it might seem a sad place, one where people had lived and loved, where children had played – I’m sure all that happened there, but to me it conveys a sense of menace, a place where people fought and died more than anything else.”

“All those things happened there, I’m sure, but it was all a long time ago – now it’s just a ruin, a pile of stones that bear witness to the past.”

“Yes, I’m sure your right – but you know what? I can’t imagine anybody being happy there.”

I decided it was simpler to let her have the last word and escorted her back to the car.

We had set aside a whole week for our trip – this was the last day before we headed for home, with just one visit to pay and then one overnight stop to break the five hundred or so mile drive.

******************

Before setting off on our Scottish journey, I had, as I had determined, been in contact with Henri Delacotte, requesting that granddad’s effects be returned to me – I had been denied the chance of attending his funeral and the thought of whatever else was left of him being simply disposed of sat badly with me.

The package which arrived was the size of a large suitcase, and when the stout brown paper wrapping had been removed, that was exactly what had been revealed – a large, battered old leather suitcase. In it were his uniforms – three of them, the splendid dress uniform with its scarlet jacket, tartan trews, gold piping and a row of miniature medals, the more mundane everyday khaki uniform with the existence of the medals shown by their ribbons, and the final uniform, a camouflaged combat item with no indication of medals nor rank, just the simple name tag ‘MacKenzie’ on the right breast.

The medals themselves were also present, contained in a sturdy leather covered metal case and I looked at them with some reverence. They ranged from the Distinguished Service Order, awarded for precisely that, the Military Cross for courage in the face of the enemy, and the campaign medals – that for Korea, the General Service Medal with the clasp recognising his service in Ulster during the Troubles, and the South Atlantic Medal, chronologically his final one, for his service in the Falklands war. There was, as far as I could make out, no recognition of his involvement in the Suez campaign of nineteen fifty-six – the government of the day seemed to have been reluctant to do anything to recognise that particular political embarrassment.

There were also several diaries, each covering a number of years. A quick thumbing through the final pages of the most recent one showed little of interest – granddad hadn’t been a great chronicler – but I was determined that I would, in the not too distant future, sit down and read through all of them; I owed the shade of James Edward David MacKenzie at least that much.

Sonia sat back from examining the contents of the suitcase.

“I fancy a cuppa – want one?”

“Please, love.”

As she disappeared towards the kitchen, I lifted out the final uniform – the combat fatigues - and discovered that there was in fact one last item in the case, a heavily wrapped item, the wrapping of waterproof oilcloth.

Intrigued, I lifted it up and was surprised by its weight. I could feel whatever was inside through the cloth and had an uneasy idea as to just what this mysterious item might be – and if my guess was right, it was something that I most certainly didn’t want Sonia to know about – at least, not straight away, and quite possibly never. I hurriedly slipped it under the settee where it was totally hidden from view.

It was later that morning, when Sonia was safely out of the house to do some shopping, that I returned to the mystery item. Retrieving it from under the settee, I took it into the garage. Ours was a single space garage and we had two cars – my Ford C-Max and Sonia’s Vauxhall Corsa. As we couldn’t get both cars into the garage but were fortunate enough to have enough space in front of it for the two vehicles to stand side by side, the garage had become a sort of general storage area come sort of workshop with a bench and odds and ends of tools. There was an interconnecting door into the utility room, so that you could get to the garage without braving the elements –or in this case, importantly, any possibility of prying eyes from neighbours.

12

I unwrapped the package very carefully. As I had guessed – and feared – it was a gun. To be precise it was an automatic pistol, a Browning Model 35 Hi-Power which, at the time of granddad’s retirement, had been the standard issue sidearm in the British Army. Doubtless, this had been his own service pistol, which should have been handed back in when he retired. Clearly, it had not been, which left me with a problem. In the UK

the ownership of handguns by private citizens is strictly forbidden – a piece of legislation which seems to have passed the criminal fraternity by, but that was of no consequence to me. Just being found in possession of the weapon merited a five year prison sentence – and I was very fond of not being in prison.

I could, of course, hand it in to the police, but the subsequent investigation as to how I had come by it was unlikely to be straightforward; I had no confidence in the police simply accepting my story at face value, metaphorically patting me on the head and sending me on my happy way as a trusted, law-abiding citizen.

No, I would be the subject of an official file – for all I knew the knowledge might get back to my employers and I doubted that the Royal Grammar School would look kindly on one of their staff becoming the subject of police attention in such a way. By far the safest option would be to consign it to the depths of a convenient river, but that would mean a journey by car with the illegal weapon in my possession – and the thought of Sod’s law kicking in and finding me involved, even as an innocent third party, in some traffic incident attended by the police made my blood run cold.

I had recognised the weapon because whilst at school I had been a keen member of the Combined Cadet Force, or CCF. I had joined over the muted objections of my parents, neither of whom were in the least bit militarily inclined – indeed my father had, to a degree, rebelled against family tradition by becoming a doctor. From the year dot, just about every other male MacKenzie from our branch of the family had been in the forces, almost invariably the army with the exception of David James MacKenzie, my great-granduncle who had joined the Royal Air Force and been killed in action in nineteen forty-one in a fighter sweep over occupied France.

It was my admiration for these forebears – and especially for my grandfather – which had led me into the CCF and as a result, a passing familiarity with Army weaponry. It was a familiarity which enabled me to check out the pistol, ensuring that it was not loaded – hardly a surprising state of affairs. Granddad would never have left it lying around loaded other than in some very extreme, and frankly unimaginable, circumstance. It had two magazines and a cardboard box containing thirty rounds of ammunition – enough to fill both magazines should I so wish. I stripped the pistol down, checked the condition of the magazines, and reassembled everything – it was in perfect working order, but more importantly, what was I to do with this unwelcome acquisition? And, until I could come up with a fool proof method to dispose of it, where could I hide it in the interim?

After a moment’s thought, I realised that I could, at least, come up with a secure temporary hiding place. The garage had a row of cupboards just above head height. I had fixed them myself when I had first inherited the house on the death of my parents and in the process had discovered that the original builder had been rather too sparing in the mortar used in a small area up close to the roof with the result that several bricks were actually simply sitting on top of those below them. That piece of poor workmanship apart, the garage was well built and it had a cavity wall; it took only a little time to force a suitable piece of wood into the cavity to form a hidden cubby hole into which I placed the pistol and its accoutrements, still wrapped in the oilcloth and, by replacing the loose bricks, have them totally hidden. I was about to leave things like that when a thought struck me. Trying to dispose of the weapon at some time in the future would be just as risky as trying to do so right away. I searched through the accumulation of odds and ends that all garages seem to be heir to until I found what I was looking for – a half empty bag of cement left over from repairing some loose pointing at the front of the house. A quick mix of a couple of cupfuls of the cement, plus some water, and the bricks were cemented back into place rather more securely than before and I was content that my unwanted legacy was secured for all time.

I managed to complete the task, return to the house, and wash off the garage dust before Sonia returned from her shopping trip. I disliked keeping such a secret from her, but I convinced myself that letting her know about the pistol would achieve nothing except to create a worry for her. One of us worried about it was quite enough – and I felt that my solution to the problem meant that there was no need to worry anymore.

I had been surprised that the suitcase contained no letter from Delacotte, but that was explained the next day when a second wrapped suitcase arrived. Obviously the lawyer had expected both cases to arrive together but by some vagary of the carrier this had not happened. The second suitcase, rather smaller than the first, contained a large number of papers – at first glance correspondence on the normal run of household experience, a laptop computer and a mobile phone plus a letter from Delacotte in which he explained that the large suitcase containing the uniforms had clearly been undisturbed for a considerable period of time so had simple been wrapped up and sent, whereas the second case was the result of him having had granddad’s apartment gone through and anything that looked as though it might be of interest to me to be parcelled up.

13

That at least explained why the pistol had not been found; clearly nobody had actually bothered to check the contents of the case – thanks a lot, M. Delacotte!

Intrigued by the laptop, I plugged it in and turned it on, only to find that it was password protected. For a moment I was nonplussed, then I remembered that tucked into the back of the most recent of granddad’s diary which I had glanced at the previous day, had been a loose sheet of paper with details of what looked like passwords to internet sites on it. Could the computer password be there as well?

I hurried back to the pile of diaries, which I had left in the lounge and retrieved the sheet of paper. It was similar to something of my own – so many websites demand a password nowadays, and unless you use the same one evert time – hardly a good practice – who can remember them all?

I was in luck; although, unlike all the others, it wasn’t identified, written down was what was surely a password ‘380jem441’. I smiled; what the old man had done was to write down my birthdate in reverse and insert my initials in the middle of the string of numerals. I found it quite touching.

The computer recognised the password and obediently opened up to display a catalogue of folders. The first one to catch my eye was entitled ‘Family’ and I opened it to find myself looking at a collection of photographs; obviously grandad had scanned a lot of old prints, for some of them were clearly from long before the days of computers, never mind before the days of digital photography. One which was particularly poignant was of my mother and father which must have been taken only a few months before their death; they must have visited the old man, although I had no memory of the visit, as the picture showed them seated in the Edinburgh house. A shot which brought a smile to my lips showed my parents once again, but this time some years earlier; I was with them, aged about ten, with Castle Kintail in the background.

However, I hadn’t started up the computer to reminisce over old family photos, but in the hope of finding out just why granddad had left behind him a lot less money than I would have expected. A number of the folders had titles which were self-explanatory – ‘Car’, ‘Electricity’, ‘Rental’ – that sort of thing, and were unlikely to be of much help unless they revealed staggering levels of expenditure for such mundane elements. Others were rather more obscure and would obviously need going through in detail at some later stage. Sonia was sitting beside me as I cast my eyes over the list of folders – there were over twenty of them – and suddenly pointed at one particular one. It was entitled ‘JEM’ – my initials, and I opened in hoping to find something about the money mystery. We were disappointed; it proved to be file copies of the letters that granddad had written to me, going back to my childhood years and also scanned copies of letters that I had written to him –

the to and fro correspondence averaged perhaps two to three letters a year from our combined efforts, making me realise once again how little effort I had put into keeping in touch with the old man.

We trawled through the rest of the folders – they were arranged alphabetically, so we were nearing the end when we reached a folder entitled ‘Williamson’. It contained a number of document files, arranged in date order. The first, which was the best part of two years old was a letter to Grandad, a letter the text of which came as a big surprise to me. It came from an address in Scotland, an address in the Falkirk area.

‘Dear Colonel MacKenzie,

Whilst we have never met, I have taken the liberty of writing to you on behalf of my recently widowed mother, Louise Williamson, née Carrick. Her late husband, my father, James Frederick Williamson, was the son of Charlotte Mary MacKenzie, the daughter of your grandfather, Iain James MacKenzie, and therefore, if I understand these relationships correctly, my father was your first cousin once removed – and, incidentally, I presume that that makes me your first cousin twice removed.

It is this element of kinship that emboldens me to approach you, not on my own behalf, but on that of my mother. My father was a reasonably successful business man, running a small engineering company in Falkirk, but a failed order – the customer went bankrupt – and my father’s sudden death from a heart attack at much the same time, left his company almost bankrupt, and it wasn’t until after he died and his firm failed, that we discovered that he had borrowed heavily against the value of our home to see the company through the recession. As a result, the bank has repossessed our house and my mother has had to move to a far smaller place in a less than desirable area of the town; sadly it was not possible for me to take her in as I only rent a very small flat.

I well remember my grandparents and their stories of the family in which they made constant reference to you as the head of the family and a man of considerable wealth, and I am therefore, I suppose begging is not too strong a term, to see if there is any way in which you can help my mother.

Yours very sincerely,

Peter Williamson.

14

Sonia and I looked at each other – was this the explanation for my grandfather’s relative lack of funds when he died? We turned to the next file in the folder; this proved to be a response from my grandfather to Peter Williamson.

‘Dear Mr. Williamson,

I thank you for your letter and am currently engaged in looking to see if there is any way in which I can help your mother, whose plight concerns me. I will be in touch further as soon as I can, Yours sincerely,

James Edward David MacKenzie of Kintail.’

There was another letter, written the same day and addressed to a Lieutenant-Colonel Dalgliesh, but at an address in Perth, not to an Army post.

‘Dear Hector,

A voice from the past, I suppose, as we haven’t been in touch for some years. I am writing to beg a favour of you. Attached to this letter is a copy of a missive recently received from a young man who is apparently a somewhat distant relative, a person of whom I had no previous knowledge. As you will see, he is asking for money, although he says that it is for his recently widowed mother rather than for himself. I would be extremely grateful if you would try and find out a bit about the man – perhaps hiring some sort of enquiry agent would be the way to go – I will, of course, bear all costs involved.

How are you keeping now that you are retired? I must say that down here in the south of France I find the days slip by almost without my noticing them; I have a reasonably wide circle of friends, both locals and some ex-pats, a couple of whom are ex-service personnel, so much reminiscing about how much better things were in our time is the order of the day!

Yours,

James’

The next letter was not a direct reply from Hector Dalgliesh himself, but from his son.

‘Dear Colonel MacKenzie,

I have just received the letter you sent to my father and am very sorry to realise that you had not known that he died just over two years ago. I can only apologise most profusely; at the time I was in hospital recovering from the effects of a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, and it was left to my sister Margaret to cope with everything. Clearly she must have failed to identify all my father’s friends, and I can only apologise once again.

Regarding the task you asked of my father, I have taken it upon myself to act on his behalf and I hope to have something to report to you in the near future.

Yours sincerely,

John Dalgliesh’

There was a reply from grandad to this John Dalgliesh, but it was simply an expression of sorrow and thanks and we glossed over it. The next item of interest to us was a letter from John Dalgliesh.

‘Dear Colonel MacKenzie,

Thank you for your very kind words about my father, they are much appreciated both by Margaret – who adds her own apologies to mine – and myself.

I have now received a report regarding Mr. Williamson and it bears out much of what he said in his letter to you. Williamson himself lives in a small, one bedroom flat in Falkirk and is apparently living on benefits, certainly there is no indication of him following any profession. His mother, Louise Amanda Williamson, lives in a two bedroom house in a row of low cost dwellings in a relatively poor area of Falkirk. His father, as he stated, died of a heart attack in two thousand and twelve shortly after his company went bankrupt.

Prior to the death of Mr. Williamson senior, he and Mrs. Williamson lived in a large four bedroom house outside Falkirk itself; certainly her current circumstances appear to be considerably reduced from what she was used to before her husband’s death.

Talking to her neighbours has gained the impression that Mrs. Williamson is a quiet, reserved woman. Her son is seen occasionally but has made no impact upon her neighbours.

Mrs. Williamson is fifty-five years old; her son is thirty-one. Mrs. Williamson works in the local library and has no other means of income evident.

15

I hope that this is helpful to you,

Yours sincerely,

John Dalgliesh’

Granddad replied, thanking Dalgliesh for his efforts - again it was a letter that we glossed over. On the same day, however, he wrote to Peter Williamson. This we did not gloss over.

‘Dear Mr. Williamson,

Further to my earlier letter, I have been giving your request some thought. As a member of my family, albeit not a particularly close one, I would like to assist your mother if I can. Before doing so, however, I really need to meet with her and deal with her directly. Unfortunately, my age and health preclude any possibility of me travelling to Scotland to meet with her. Therefore, I feel that it would be most helpful if she could travel here to meet me, either alone or accompanied by yourself, whichever she wishes. I can accommodate her here in my apartment; if you do accompany her, I could accommodate you as well.

Please let your mother know of my suggestion and ask her to contact me.

Yours sincerely,

James Edward David MacKenzie of Kintail.’

A few days later there was a reply, this time from the lady herself.

‘Dear Colonel MacKenzie,

I was most touched when Peter told me of the possibility of you helping me in my current somewhat straitened circumstances and thank you most sincerely. However, I would ask for your indulgence over the matter of travelling to meet you in person. I regret to say that I have a medical condition which makes it inadvisable for me to travel by plane and I would be most grateful if you would accept Peter as my representative, as it were. If this is unacceptable to you I will quite understand and apologise for bothering you with my plight.

Yours sincerely,

Louise Amanda Williamson’

Sonia and I looked at each other.

“I am beginning to smell a rat here,” Sonia muttered, “what sort of medical condition – and how come the investigation that Dalgliesh ordered didn’t mention it?”

“I wonder if Mrs. Williamson even wrote that letter,” I wondered, “it was produced on a computer, only the signature is handwritten. Peter Williamson could well have written it himself - he sounds a bit of a slippery character.”

We turned to the next letter; this was a response from granddad to Mrs. Williamson.

‘Dear Mrs. Williamson,

Thank you for your letter. I am sorry to hear that you are unable to travel; being in much the same situation myself I can readily empathise with you. In the circumstances I am quite happy to meet with your son and look forward to hearing from him once more.

Yours sincerely.

James Edward David MacKenzie of Kintail.’

“Looks like granddad fell for it,” I observed glumly as we turned to the next missive. As expected, this was from Peter Williamson and suggested a date for him to come to Toulon, a date which my grandfather accepted and confirmed by return of post.

I had a thought, and retrieved granddad’s diaries from their resting place in my bookcase. My initial examination of then had been perfunctory, restricted to the most recent couple of months, when the most detailed entry – just six weeks before granddad died, had been ‘met GK and TF for lunch - G’s eldest just promoted Major - we drank his health!’

Now, however, I thumbed back to the entries around the time that he agreed to meet Peter Williamson – and there it was!

‘Young Williamson arrived in time for lunch – didn’t take to him. Doubt if he’s ever done an honest day’s work in his life. If he is to be believed – which I wonder about – his mother really could do with some help, regardless of what an obnoxious little shit her son is. Told him that I understood his mother’s inability to travel, so had decided to phone her. Had thought that might throw him, as I wonder if he hopes to get his 16

hands on anything going his mother’s way, but he was unperturbed and suggested that I phone her there and then. Did so; poor woman suffering from some sort of asthma condition or the like – wheezing and spluttering. Told her I intended to make a small monthly donation to her – most grateful – got her bank details. Williamson didn’t stay overnight as I had offered – glad to see the back of him.’

We looked at each other – on the face of it, it all seemed above board – but granddad’s bank details gave no indication of any regular payments, so had he later changed his mind after all?

We returned to the list of folders on the computer. Williamson was near the end, as they had been arranged in alphabetical order, but the very last folder was entitled ‘Z100’ and on opening it we found a Pandora’s Box of information.

The most significant item was a sub-folder titled ‘Bank’ and we eagerly opened it. It explained a lot, for in addition to the French bank that Delacotte had dealt with, there were details of a UK bank, a straightforward Lloyds account, which on examination showed that grandad had a current account into which his two pensions had been paid every month, and from which he had made a monthly transfer to his French account, and a savings account which contained nearly a million pounds.

We looked at each other in astonishment. How come Delacotte had – quite obviously – failed to identify this account when sorting out granddad’s affairs? As the money was there and clearly untouched, one could surely assume that it was simple incompetence rather than anything sinister. So, what to do next?

The obvious first step was to get in touch with the bank – as far as I could see from the contents of the various files on granddad’s computer, nobody had advised the bank of his demise. Also, looking at the current account, although his old age pension had stopped – clearly Delacotte had at least managed that satisfactorily, his Army pension had still been paid in on the first of each month following his death so the Army would have to be advised and the posthumous payments refunded.

As a result, three days later we were closeted with Eileen Carter at the London headquarters of Lloyds bank in Gresham Street. The meeting was the culmination of an initial approach to our local branch of Lloyds with a quick succession of telephone discussions with increasingly senior bank personnel. Eileen Carter, despite her youth – she was no older than myself, if indeed she was as old – was the most senior yet. Clearly, when there was the best part of a million pounds involved, the bank felt one of their high fliers needed to be involved.

She carefully perused grandad’s will, the death certificate issued by the French authorities, the certificate of cremation and the latest statements of his accounts. She also studied my own birth certificate, my driving licence and passport with their not terribly flattering photos of me, and several utility bills. Finally assured that I was who I said was, that I lived where I said I did, and that grandfather’s wishes were as I had expressed them, she nodded slowly, then looked up across the table in the small ‘interview room’ I suppose you would call it, and slid a document across the table to me.

“Right, Mr. MacKenzie – I am satisfied that everything is in order. Now, as this is a bequest, and a rather sizable one, the bank needs to satisfy itself that you will contact the tax authorities to settle questions of inheritance tax and the like, so I would be obliged if you would sign this disclaimer,” she pointed to the document, “confirming that you have been advised by the bank’s representative – that’s me - and you will see that I am identified by name in the disclaimer of your legal responsibility to advise HMRC of the monies which, in accordance with your grandfather’s will, the bank now transfers to you.”

I read the disclaimer through carefully. It was exactly as Ms. Carter had explained, and I signed it without any quibble. She retrieved it then pushed across a second document.

“That, Mr. MacKenzie, is the transfer document, closing your grandfather’s accounts with us and transferring their contents to your own account. Do you have any queries?”

“There is one thing, Ms. Carter – I was surprised that my grandfather had so much in a simple savings account, which hardly pays any interest in this day and age – any idea why?”

“Yes – up until the first of April your grandfather had most of his money in stocks and shares and the bank acted as his financial advisor through our investment department, so I am pleased to be able to say that we managed to obtain a rather better return for him than a simple savings account. Then, on the first of April he asked us to realise all his holdings and put the money into a savings account. We did, of course, point out that such a course of action would result in a considerable reduction in the interest income that he would receive, but he was happy with his proposed course of action so, of course, we complied with his wishes.

From what you tell me, that your grandfather wanted his death to be a secret from you until after his affairs had been sorted out, it seems likely that realising his stocks and shares into a simple savings account may have been part of that process.”

I nodded in agreement – it seemed the most likely explanation.

With grandad’s money now identified and transferred to my bank account, the next step was to advise the taxman of the new situation and wait for his greedy jaws to descend upon us. I also told my sister Helen the 17

news – as before I was determined that we would split the eventual legacy, after the taxman had done his worst, between us on a fifty: fifty basis; anything else would have been unthinkable.

That did leave one question unanswered – the regular payment that granddad had been making to Mrs.

Williamson. He had been transferring a thousand pounds a month to the widow and I wondered if I should continue to do so. I was undecided; it seemed mean to simply cut the lady off. On the other hand, did she still need it? Where her circumstances unchanged? I decided that the only way to come to a decision was to talk to her, preferably face to face, but if that proved impossible, at least over the phone.

*********************

It was to try and resolve that situation that after visiting Castle Kintail, we called on Mrs. Williamson. I had phoned her the previous day and explained our somewhat distant family relationship and asked if she minded us briefly calling in her, without telling her the main reason for our visit, and she had expressed herself as happy to see us.

Accordingly, it was late afternoon when I stopped the car outside Mrs. Williamson’s address. From the Dalgliesh report I was expecting her to live in one of the poorer areas of Falkirk, but in fact the road was rather smarter than I had expected from the comment in the report. One of a terrace of seven dwellings, like its neighbours it looked reasonably well maintained. The whole road looked as though the houses had originally been at the lower end of the market, perhaps one time council housing, but there was evidence that the current occupiers had moved their homes upmarket with things like replacement double glazed windows, new front doors, small porches, all that sort of improvement to not only improve an individual dwelling, but to make it that little bit different from its fellows. The overall effect was quite pleasant and a good bit better than I had been expecting. Each house of Mrs. Williamson’s short terrace had a small front garden separated from the pavement by either a low hedge or, as in the case of the Williamson abode, a low brick wall. We walked up to the front door and I rang the bell.

The door was opened by a smartly dressed woman; from the report I knew her to be fifty-five years old, but she could easily have passed for several years younger. Wearing a figure hugging woollen dress in a deep burgundy colour, the shade set off her lightly tanned features and silver blonde hair, cut to frame an oval face only lightly made up, and contrasted with deep green eyes – a most unusual eye colour. She smiled at both of us.

“You must be Mr. and Mrs. MacKenzie – come you in.”

She beckoned us into a small hall with doors off on each side and led us through the door on the right which took us into a small sitting room, tastefully decorated and furnished and looking as though thought and some money had been applied to it. Altogether, not what I had expected from the correspondence on granddad’s computer.

We were directed to two comfortable easy chairs whilst our hostess seated herself on a third. She smiled quizzically at us.

“Well, I must say that it is nice to discover some family that I never knew about – I’m not sure just how we are related from our telephone conversation?”

She was obviously intrigued by our sudden appearance – when I had phoned her I hadn’t mentioned granddad’s death, nor the payments he made to her. I had just said that we were distantly related, we would be in the area on holiday, so could we visit?

“Well, Mrs. Williamson..”

“Oh, do please call me Louise.”

“Thank you – and we are Sonia and Jamie. Well, Louise, your late husband was the first cousin twice removed of my grandfather, James Edward David MacKenzie.”

I was watching her closely as I spoke, expecting some sort of reaction at granddad’s name – but there was none, so I continued.

“They could both trace their ancestry back to my great-great-grandfather, Ian James MacKenzie, who died back in nineteen forty-five. Your husband was the grandson of Charlotte MacKenzie, daughter of Ian James and who married James Williamson.”

“Oh, yes, I remember James’ grandma – she died about eight years or so after we married, and we saw quite a bit of her. I knew that her maiden name was MacKenzie, but that was all. I never knew his grandfather though – he died back around nineteen seventy-two or so, when I was just a little girl and long before I met James.”

I was beginning to feel uneasy – Mrs. Williamson had shown absolutely no reaction to my mention of granddad’s name, nor the relationship between him and her own late husband, never mind any financial support from him. I was still wondering how to broach that particular subject when Mrs. Williamson effectively solved my dilemma for me.

18

“And how is your grandfather? I’ve never met him, but now that I have made your acquaintance it would be nice to do so. Where does he live?”

“I’m afraid that he died back in June – he died in Toulon, the same address as when you corresponded back in two thousand and twelve.”

A look of total bemusement appeared on Louise Williamson’s face.

“Corresponded? I’m sorry – there must be some confusion here. Until just now I didn’t even know of your grandfather’s existence, never mind corresponding with him.”

It was my turn to look puzzled, although to be honest, seeing the way the conversation had evolved, my puzzlement was more an act than genuine. I reached into my inside jacket pocket and withdrew the copy of the letter sent to granddad and handed it to her. She studied it closely, her brow furrowed in concentration.

“I’m sorry, Jamie, but I never wrote this – ‘straitened circumstances’ indeed! I know that I downsized from our old house after James died, but look around you – do I look like a pauper? Or even worse, a beggar?

Downsizing released quite a bit of capital for me and the part time job I do in the library is because I enjoy it, not because I am on the breadline.”

I began to realise that the report that Dalgliesh had obtained was a good bit less thorough than it might have been. However, before I could start to make any sort of apology or explanation, the widow was speaking again, her face changing from bewilderment to sadness tinged with despair.

“Oh dear, I think I know what has happened here. Was my son, Peter, in touch with your grandfather?”

Without speaking, I took the other copy letters from my pocket and handed them to her, although I saved her the extract from granddad’s diary, with its damning indictment of Peter Williamson. She read through them slowly, her expression growing more and more concerned as she did so.

“I’m so sorry,” she said as she finally looked up at us “my son, Peter, is responsible for this. He’s never been one to settle down at a job – always looking for easy money. He and my husband argued continually and finally James virtually threw him out of the house only a few months before he died. When James did die, as you can imagine, I was very distraught and I went and stayed with my sister in New Zealand for a couple of months – a couple of months when all this was taking place. I had bought this place but hadn’t properly moved in yet and I asked Peter to keep an eye on it – more fool me! And some of what he has written just isn’t true. The bank never repossessed our house, although it did call in a loan against it, but not a very big loan and one which was easily paid off.”

I found myself believing her. If she had been getting money from my grandfather she would surely never have taken the line that she had. An expression of gratitude, a hope that the largesse would continue, would have been more likely. No, I believed her, and I could sense her shame at the actions of her son.

“My grandfather did apparently speak to a woman in the course of Peter’s correspondence with him – in fact whilst Peter was with him in Toulon,”

Louise furrowed her brow once more.

“Well, it wasn’t me – I was in New Zealand all over that period. Peter does have a girlfriend though – I have met her and can’t say that I took to her. A scheming little madam to my mind – they deserve each other. If your poor grandfather was taken in by a woman on the phone, then I should imagine that it would have been her.”

She changed tack.

“But your grandfather’s money must have been paid into some sort of account – and an account that he believed to be mine. Do you have details of it?”

I had, and I passed over yet another piece of paper to her. She studied it for only a moment.

“That is an account which was supposed to have been closed. At the time that James died we had been using a couple of joint current accounts, one of which he normally used, the other of which I used. With James gone I didn’t need to retain both accounts but forgot to do anything about them until I was virtually ready to catch the plane to Kathleen – that’s my sister – in New Zealand. To be honest, I had long thought that the bad blood between James and Peter wasn’t totally one sided and when I asked him to keep an eye on the new house, I also asked him to check what I needed to do to close the account that James used to use. He sent me an E-mail about a week later saying that he had been able to close it for me and transfer the money in it to the account that I would continue to use. I was a little surprised that he had been able to close it without my being involved, but as the money that it had contained was now showing in the account that I would continue to use, I didn’t question it. Obviously, he didn’t close it, just transferred money out of it.”

The continuing revelations about her son’s perfidy must have been hurting her, but thankfully that was the end of my revelations. Whether the man would heap any more misery upon her, I had no way of knowing; I hoped not – she came across as a thoroughly decent woman cursed with an ingrate for an offspring, sadly by no means a unique state of affairs.

She looked at me helplessly.

19

“What happens now, Mr. MacKenzie? Peter has clearly committed fraud – are you going to go to the police?”

I had in fact gone over that possibility with Sonia before we came visiting, and we had agreed that whether or not Mrs. Williamson was a participant in what had gone on, there wasn’t really much that we could do about it. Although he had been misled, granddad had paid out money without any qualms. On the other hand, I was convinced that Louise Williamson had not known what was going on and any attempt to set the police on her son for fraud would be dependent upon her support, and we had no wish to visit that sort of unhappiness upon her.

“No, Louise – oh, and it’s still Jamie, you know – I don’t really think that is needed. After all, my grandfather paid out the money quite willingly, even if Peter did mislead him, and I can’t see what would be achieved by bringing in the police. After all, even though the money is gone, it wasn’t my money and it’s a case of not missing what I never had. No, I’ll just stop the payments and we’ll leave it at that.”

She gave a huge sigh of relief.

“That really is very good of you, Jamie – much as I despise what he has done, Peter is still my son and I would have found it awful if he had ended up I court.”

“We do understand, believe me, Louise. To be honest, no real harm has been done – granddad could well afford his generosity and now there is no risk of him knowing that it was misguided.”

And that is how we left it.

Chapter Three

Peter Williamson glared angrily at the computer screen, willing it to change what it was telling him, but it remained stubbornly unchanging. For the second month in succession the regular payment of one thousand pounds from MacKenzie had not appeared in his account. Why had that stupid old man stopped the payments? When he had gone to Toulon to – as he had pretended – plead on behalf of his mother, the old fool had fallen for the ‘poor little widow woman’ tale hook, line and sinker – so what had happened?

Morag Ross, his girlfriend for some five years now, was sitting beside him at the table, equally unhappy at what was being displayed on the computer screen.

“What’s going on, Pete?”

“How the fuckin’ hell should I know? All I do know is that I need that money – and I need it now!”

Williamson was in deadly earnest in what he said. The bloody Tories and their changes to the benefit system had meant that the years that he had enjoyed the fortnightly benefit cheque were over. He had been in receipt of the new Job Seekers’ Allowance, but that had entailed regular interviews at the job centre and his claim to be actively seeking work – a bare faced lie – had been treated with growing disbelief and at his most recent interview the jobsworth cow doing the interviewing had gleefully informed him that the next payment he received – now already received and spent – would be the last and that he need not bother coming back until, and unless, his circumstances changed – in other words until he got some sort of a job.

Getting a job was something he had no wish to do. Now thirty-one years of age, he had never held down what his parents would have considered to be a ‘proper’ job. Until his father’s patience had been exhausted, and he had effectively thrown Williamson out of the parental home, he had lived off his parents. That arrangement had ended about six months before his father’s sudden death from a heart attack, when he had been forced to fend for himself for the first time in his life. He had, he told himself smugly, done pretty well.

The local job centre had accepted his plea to be homeless and had supported his rental payments for the small flat that he had subsequently found, then there had been what he regarded as his masterstroke – getting money out of pukka-bloody-sahib MacKenzie. He had hoped for rather more, but a thousand a month wasn’t too bad. Added to his benefit payments it meant a reasonably comfortable life style, especially once he had persuaded Morag to move in with him and add her income from her job as an assistant hairdresser to the communal pot. However, Morag had already made it plain that she did not relish being the only source of income for the two of them – Williamson himself, she told him without any danger of misunderstanding, would have to find some new way to contribute. In a counter-attack that had rather soured the relationship between them further, Williamson had pointed out to her that the flat they both currently lived in was in his name – so would she like to find somewhere else to live?

An armed truce was probably the kindest description of their current relationship, and Williamson was at a loss to come up with anything that could improve matters. Why, he wondered, had the money from MacKenzie suddenly dried up? He decided that he needed to know the answer to that question, although it was important that in seeking for it he did not risk upsetting the apple cart.

20

He had been very pleased with the way that he had originally organised fleecing the old soldier. When his father had died so suddenly and his mother had just about gone to pieces, he had gone to her as the returning prodigal, as he had told her ‘to help in any way that he could’. As a result, his mother had trusted him to cope with much of the aftermath of a sudden death and it had been partly at his urging that she had decided to visit her sister Kathleen in New Zealand. With a clear run of his father’s affairs, and the hope of finding something that he could turn to his advantage, he had at first found himself doomed to disappointment; everything seemed to be tightly tied up with everything going to his mother.

That, however, had changed when he had discovered some old papers of his father’s. Amongst them had been some letters – some very old letters – between his grandfather and his great-grandmother. He had a slight memory of the old lady – she had died when he was only seven or eight years old – but the letters made reference to a number of family members – his own father and mother, his grandfather and grandmother, written when the former had been away on the Continent on business, but the letter that had most interested him had contained a reference to his great-grandmother’s parents, both long dead at the time that the letters had been written, but referring to a Graham Ian MacKenzie who had, to the disappointment of the letter writer – his great-grandmother – inherited everything. Williamson had wondered just how much

‘everything’ might have been – presumably reasonably significant to have been worth moaning about. With time on his hands, and no other prospects in view, Williamson indulged in some determined genealogical research and discovered that Graham Ian had died back in nineteen ninety-two leaving just one immediate descendent, a son, James Edward David, who was still alive and who had therefore presumably once again inherited ‘everything’. The man himself had a son – who was already dead – and a grandson still living, but Williamson was sure that his first target must be this James Edward David. Further digging discovered that the man was a long retired soldier – a lieutenant-colonel, no less, and now lived in the south of France.

His approach had been very carefully crafted – asking nothing for himself, emphasising the poor circumstances of his mother, suddenly widowed – and it had succeeded. It had taken some work, including using Morag as an imposter for his mother in the phone call than seemed to have finally clinched matters –

and for a bit over two years he had enjoyed a supplementary income of a thousand a month. But now it had stopped. Why?

He returned to his research site – and answer quickly became obvious. The old man was dead, dead for a few months now. Presumably whoever had inherited was responsible for stopping the monthly payments.

Whoever it was, Williamson concluded hypocritically, must be hard hearted to deprive a poor widow woman in such a manner. So who was it? His research had already shown that James Edward David’s son, Charles Edward, together with his wife, had died back in two thousand and five and that his daughter, Henrietta, had coincidently died the same year. The only descendent left was one James Edward MacKenzie, who lived down in England – so he was presumably the selfish bastard who had stopped the monthly payments. But what to do about it?

He thought long and hard before deciding on a plan which he hoped would work.

*********************

It was Sunday; one more week and it would be back to school and the weekend before that return would see both Sonia and myself busy with preparatory work for the term, so this was the last ‘proper’ weekend. It was also a miserable one. The fine weather that we had been enjoying had broken; Saturday had been unseasonably cold and windy with steady rain all day, and Sunday was following suit.

Walking or lounging in the garden were both out of the question and I had persuaded Sonia (without too much difficulty) that spending a good part of the afternoon back in bed was a very good idea. Now, replete and sleepy, I was reluctantly returned to full wakefulness by the ringing of the bedside phone. Too idle –and still a bit too sleepy – to be bothered to lift the handset out of its cradle, I pressed the speakerphone button.

“James MacKenzie.” I announced.

A woman’s voice answered.

“Mr. MacKenzie, I’m sorry to intrude, but I would like to ask for your help.”

My interest level rose slightly, although I expected that it would, in all probability, be a cold caller wanting me to buy double glazing or the like, or perhaps some sort of survey.

“Mr. MacKenzie, I’m Louise Williamson.”

My interest level shot up to maximum; unless she had suffered drastic alteration to her vocal cords very recently, this woman was most certainly not the Louise Williamson whom Sonia and I had met only a couple of weeks earlier. The voice continued.

“I don’t know if you are aware of it, but I am distantly related to you and to your dear grandfather who was making me an allowance. I have only just learned of his sad death and I suppose it is something to do with 21

his death that the allowance he was making to me seems to have stopped. I wonder if we could discuss the matter? His great kindness was very important to me as I am not in the best of health.”

I wondered how long to allow this charade to continue, but decided to play along for a little while.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Williamson – how do you think that I might be able to help?”

“Well, your grandfather was making me an allowance of a thousand pounds a month, which quite frankly means an awful lot to me. My poor health means that I cannot work to earn a living, so your grandfather’s help is very important for me.”

I decided that enough was enough.

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, Morag – it is Morag Ross, isn’t it? I met the real Louise Williamson only a week or two back and she was horrified to learn what you and Peter have been up to - so if you expect any money from me, I’m afraid that you are out of luck.”

Before I could ring off a man’s voice cut into the conversation.

“You’ll regret your bloody attitude, MacKenzie – You’ll regret this!”

At that the line went dead.

Because the call had been on the speakerphone, Sonia had heard every word.

“Bloody Hell! They’ve got a nerve!”

I rolled over towards her.

“Ignore them – I suppose they thought one more try was worthwhile, but it’s blown up in their faces. Now, seeing we are both awake again..”

She giggled as I rolled her over and we recommenced our Sunday entertainment.

**********************

Another week had passed. It had taken a considerable effort to track down James MacKenzie. Peter Williamson had phoned what had been the old man’s number in France, only to learn that he had died.

Fortunately the person answering had put him onto MacKenzie’s lawyer, Delacotte who, after a little persuasion, had given up the telephone number, but not the address, of this new James MacKenzie. After the failed attempt to persuade the man to resurrect the monthly payments that his grandfather had been making, matters between Peter Williamson and Morag Ross had deteriorated further. Things came to a head on the Saturday evening. Williamson had been out meeting a couple of acquaintances he had hoped might put some money his way in return for some casual labouring. The very thought of having, as he saw it, demean himself in such a way put him in a bad mood; when the possible work turned out to be not on offer after all his mood worsened and by the time that he returned home he was in no mood to be reasonable over anything. To find that he had arrived just in time to discover that Morag, after a bad day of her own at the hairdressing salon, was in an equally fractious mood was the final straw.

“Get me a beer,” he demanded.

“Get your own bloody beer – you think I’m your fuckin’ skivvy?”

“Just get it and shut yer lip!”

That did it; a furious Morag slapped him across the face. The blow stung, although it hardly hurt. However, it was enough for Williamson’s temper to boil over and he responded in kind – but he was much bigger and stronger than Morag and the blow was correspondingly harder. Hard enough, in fact, for her to stagger back, catch her heel in the rug in front of the gas fire and fall over backwards. The fire had a pseudo surround with a raised tile edging to it and the back of Morag’s head crashed against the corner of the tiles with sickening force.

Williamson stared uneasily at the young woman.

“Come on, you silly bitch, get up.”

There was no response; Morag simply lay there, unmoving, her eyes staring unblinkingly at the ceiling.

Williamson knelt down beside her and slapped her face, none too gently, but the only result was for her head to loll to one side, then slowly flop back to its original position. Williamson pressed the tips of his fingers under her jaw, seeking a pulse but without success. She can’t be dead, he told himself desperately. He recalled something he had once seen in a film of some sort, rose to his feet and scurried to bathroom, returning moments later with his shaving mirror. He held it close to Morag’s mouth and nose, willing the glass to mist over and prove the existence of breathing, but it remained crystal clear. There was no doubt about it – she was dead; he had killed her.

What to do? He immediately dismissed the idea of calling the authorities – who would believe that it was an accident? That it was the trip and the fall that had killed her, not his slap across her cheek? No, he decided, she had to disappear and in such a way that no suspicion would attach to him. But how to achieve it?

He thought hard about his options. Clearly, the first priority was to dispose of Morag’s body. The best solution was surely to sink her in one of the many lochs, some small, some large, to the west of Falkirk. Over 22

the years he had driven around many of them and he mentally reviewed those with which he was familiar.

One in particular sprang to mind. Banton Lock, about twelve miles away, was a middle sized stretch of water, perhaps a quarter of a mile long and two hundred yards or so across. It was easily accessible by minor roads right up to the loch side, making it a popular spot for visitors, which precluded any daytime activity on his part, but – and it was a BIG but – there was nothing to attract anyone to it after dark. Simply driving there at night might be suspicious – there was a country centre across the M80 motorway from which a car might conceivably be seen, although that again was closed at night, but the more that he thought about it, the more attractive the location seemed. The thing to do, he decided, was to drive there in the early evening, when there would still be people around, and simply park up somewhere until the area was deserted. Dump Morag in the water and drive away. A car driving away from the loch once darkness had fallen would be far less suspicious than one driving to it. The loch had a further attraction; he knew it well, having visited it a number of times over the years. It also boasted something that would be most useful – something not present at other nearby lochs.

Could he put the plan into operation straight away? The more he thought about it, the more he felt that it would be better to wait twenty-four hours. It was already nearly eight in the evening; by the time that he got to the loch it would be suspiciously late. No, he decided; Morag wasn’t going anywhere, so he had time on his hands.

His next problem was how to explain Morag’s disappearance away. He had a couple of choices; he could pretend that she had walked out on him, taking all her belongings, or she could simply not turn up for work on Monday having left, as far as all the world would know, at the normal time and in the normal way. The more he considered matters, the more he inclined to the latter option. For her to ‘walk out’ would mean having to get rid of all her clothes and other belongings. The only practical means of achieving that was to load everything into her car – and then what? If the car was subsequently found with everything in it, it would stink to high heaven as just unbelievable. On the other hand, having her seemingly set off for work, never get there and just vanish into thin air was much more credible. In fact, he told himself, an even better modification of that was to leave her car where it would be found – parked at the railway station with the inference that, for whatever reason, Morag had suddenly decided to catch a train to somewhere. That, he concluded, was the way to do it.

However, it still left him with the by no means minor problem of actually transporting Morag’s body to Banton Loch. Clearly, he would have to use a car – but should it be his or Morag’s? The more he thought about it, the more he felt that it would be better to use her car. If it ever came to a police search for the missing woman, the likelihood that her car had been seen driving around on the Sunday might help to conceal the fact that she was already dead. Another thought struck him. Why not drive her car around a bit this evening, making sure that it would be picked up by some of the traffic cameras? Once it was a bit dark, the cameras would never be able to pick up who was actually driving the car.

All this time he had been sitting in a chair, with Morag’s body lying on the floor in front of him, a silent accusation of what he had done. He needed to move her; with only one bedroom in the flat the only ‘free’

area was the bath, so he picked her up, carried her into the bathroom, and laid her out in the bath. Freed of her accusing presence, he returned to the sitting room to plan further.

The first element of danger would be to actually get her out of the flat and into the car. Here luck was on his side. His flat was on the ground floor of the four storey block, behind which there was a small residents’ car park. Because it was too small for all the cars owned by the tenants, it was a case of ‘first come, first served’

when it came to finding a space. His flat had a fire escape door at the rear, a door which opened straight into the car park, and Morag’s elderly Ford Focus estate was currently parked only a matter of feet away from that door. His own Vauxhall Vectra, only slightly less elderly that Morag’s Focus, was currently parked in the street as the park had been full when he had arrived home – another element of the cause of his bad temper at the time. He realised that his idea of driving her car around that evening ran the risk of having to park in the street on his return, so he reluctantly abandoned his provisional plan.

When, he wondered, should he put her in the car? To do so that night once it was fully dark seemed to be the only possible option, although it did mean that she would be there all the next day until it was time to drive to the loch. One thing to his advantage was that none of the flats had windows overlooking the car park, so there was very little danger of his actions being observed by any of the other tenants. His mind settled on that aspect of his problem, he turned his thinking to just how you would present Morag’s ‘disappearance’. She would not, of course, turn up for work on Monday. She had normally finished work at six in the evening; helping tidy up and the like meant that she was rarely home before six forty-five, often a bit later, but hardly ever later than seven-thirty unless she went for a drink with some of the girls she knew, in which case she almost always, but not quite always, would phone to let him know that she would be late.

23

He waited until two in the morning when, after very carefully checking for any signs of activity in the other flats, he was able to move Morag’s body into her car, covering her with an old blanket to conceal her from view, and ensuring that the car was locked securely. He returned to the flat and went to bed, but sleep eluded him as at last the full horror of what was happening truly struck home to him.

As he lay awake, his plan, which had seemed so logical and straightforward only hours before, began to unravel in his mind. The first snag concerned his intention of leaving Morag’s car at the railway station.

Falkirk was served by two railway stations, Falkirk Grahamston, the major station, and Falkirk High. Falkirk High was only a minor station on the Glasgow-Edinburgh line so he had intended to use Falkirk Grahamston with its wider range of possible routes. However, he now remembered that the carpark there had extensive CCTV coverage; the last thing that he dared risk was being captured on camera parking Morag’s car and leaving it. Falkirk High, on the other hand, had less extensive local CCTV, so despite its limited route options it would be the better location for leaving the Focus. That thought, however, led to another. If Morag’s body was found in Banton Loch – and bodies did have a habit of being found in water if the search was thorough enough - but her car was found at the railway station, any investigator would come to an inevitable conclusion – that she had been murdered and the murderer had tried to cover his tracks.

Should he leave her car, not in the station car park, but in the roads nearby? Unable to sleep, he got up and fired up his computer to check on parking restrictions in the area. As he had half-remembered, Falkirk Grahamston was in an area of extensive yellow lines – leaving a car there would result in its rapid discovery.

Falkirk High also had yellow lines in the nearby roads, posing the same problem. Leaving it far enough away from either station to avoid the yellow lines and their certainty of discovery of the vehicle, might result in the possibility of Morag having left the area by train not being considered by an investigator – after all, if she intended to catch a train, why not park at the station?

The more he thought over his plan, the more holes he saw in it – but could he come up with anything better?

Now thoroughly awake, he made himself a strong black coffee whilst he thought everything through yet again.

It was now five in the morning; he had a shower and dressed, then made himself a slow breakfast, killing time until he could drive around the town without looking at all out of place. At a little before seven he decided that he had waited long enough and drove his car to the Tesco car park, just a few hundred yards from Grahamston station. Locking the Vectra, he made his way on foot to the railway station car park; as expected it was already fairly busy so he could expect to create no undue interest should anybody have any cause to examine CCTV footage in the future – he had no idea how long the CCTV images might be kept.

A careful perambulation identified the location of the various cameras – and he realised that he was in luck.

Some mindless vandals – vandals to whom he uttered a very heartfelt silent vote of thanks – had damaged several of the cameras; the CCTV coverage of the car park was nothing like as extensive as normal, and this being Sunday, he couldn’t imagine that the cameras would be repaired before Monday morning – his plan to leave Morag’s car here suddenly was up and running again. He drove home, contemplating the final possible weak point in his plan – Mora’s body being discovered at Banton Loch. She was already in the back of the Focus; he couldn’t mess about with her body at the moment, but what he needed was some sort of weight that would guarantee that she stayed well below the surface of the water for a good long time.

Seeking inspiration, he went through her wardrobe; it was still late summer time and nothing that she would normally wear at present seemed to be of any use, but at the back of the wardrobe was a heavy winter coat.

He took it out and examined it carefully. It was made from a heavy woollen material and was clearly intended to provide warmth to the wearer, but in no way was it waterproof. Already heavy, saturated with water it would be much heavier still – but he still wanted to increase its weight still further. He mentally reviewed everything in the flat, or in either of the cars and hit upon a possible solution. The jack for the Focus was a quite substantial item and would be a useful addition to the weights needed to keep Morag down. He had some rope in the Vectra which would come in handy and then as he opened the fridge door to take out the milk to add it to a cup of coffee, he realised that a couple of two litre milk bottles, full either of their original contents or water, would also be a useful addition. Four kilos – nearly nine pounds, in the bottles, plus the car jack, plus the soaked coat – surely that would be enough?

All the rest of the day he waited in a fever of impatience and unease, unable to settle to anything, going over in his mind the events of the previous evening. Really, he convinced himself, it was all Morag’s own fault. If the silly bitch had just given him a beer as he had asked, none of this would have happened and she would still be alive and he wouldn’t have found himself in this impossible situation. The more that he thought about it, the he convinced himself that he was just the unlucky victim of fate.

At last it was time to put the first part of the plan into action. He had brought the rope from the boot of the Vectra into the flat, concealing it from any possible watching eyes in a plastic shopping bag. He had found two empty milk bottles awaiting the rubbish collection and filled them with water, also sacrificing the half 24

empty bottle in the fridge – so about twenty pounds of weight in the three bottles. Then it dawned on him that whilst the three bottles weighed twenty pounds or so in his hand, once they were immersed in water they would scarcely weigh any more than the water that they displaced – once under water they would only add a few ounces or so to the weights upon which he was relying. Desperately, he hunted around the flat for a way to increase the effective weight of the bottles, at last settling upon the contents of an old sweet jar in which Morag had made a habit of depositing one and two pence coins rather than have them weigh down her pockets or bag, depending upon what she was wearing. Every six months or so the jar would be full enough to make it worthwhile to bag up the coins and take them to the bank. He was in luck; the jar was virtually full and the contents must have weighed nearly ten pounds, so the bottles were emptied of water, filled with coins and the empty air space eliminated by topping up with water again.

Horribly conscious of what he had in the car, he drove the Focus to Banton Loch more carefully than he had ever undertaken any other car journey in his life –a life which would be ruined if all this went wrong in any way.

After what seemed a lifetime, he arrived at Banton Loch whilst it was still light, but with dusk not far off. As he drove round the loch towards an area of trees which would provide him with concealment from the road, yet which were only a matter of thirty yards or so from the waters’ edge, he saw a few cars leaving the area, but nothing to increase the nervous tension he was already suffering. One essential element of his plan – the unique feature of the loch amongst the others nearby - revolved around the existence, perhaps qurter of a mile away from his hidden location, of a small sailing club with sailing dinghies drawn up out of the water.

The club had an enclosed compound for the vessels, but of necessity the wire mesh fence which created the compound left the area open to the water itself. Satisfying himself that there was nobody around, he simple followed the fence to the water’s edge, where, clinging to it for support, he was able to pull himself round the end of the fence, He got quite wet in the process, but that was a minor consideration. He was once more in luck. He had been quite prepared to use one of the sailing craft, even though it would have been quite difficult, but amongst them there was a much smaller craft, a little rowing boat, and he quickly had it in the water and rowed cautiously round the edge of the loch until he was opposite where he had left the Focus. He secured it to a tree at the water’s edge and made his way back to the car. It was now virtually dark, but the late summer sky still gave just enough illumination for his next grim task. Opening the boot of the Focus, he threw aside the blanket which had concealed Morag’s body and hauled her out onto the grass. Dressing her in the winter coat, tying the jack and the milk bottles to her, was all more difficult and more time consuming that he had expected, but at last it was done and he dragged her laden corpse to the water’s edge and tumbled her into the little rowing boat. From that point on it was easy. He rowed well out into the loch, satisfied that by now he would be totally invisible from the shore, and slipped her over the side. For an awful moment, manoeuvring her now heavy body over the side threatened to capsize the little boat, but it was managed and Morag disappeared beneath the surface of the water with scarcely a ripple. He rowed the little boat back to the club site, dragged it out of the water and returned it to whence he had found it. The fact that it was wet, showing that it had been on the water, would no longer be the case come morning and nobody would be any the wiser of the use to which it had been put during that night.

The drive home was one undertaken with a sense of great relief. When he got back, hardly to his surprise, he found that there were no spare places on the small car park, so the Focus had to be parked in the road, but so what?

It was now nearly three in the morning and he felt bone weary from his efforts, but he was very aware of the fact that there was still lot to do to create a credible scenario of Morag simply disappearing of her own volition - but it would have to wait until he had had some much needed sleep. After setting the alarm clock for six, he tumbled into bed and was rewarded with virtually instant dreamless rest.

The alarm woke him; so deeply asleep had he been that it took several moments for him to come round to the realisation of his changed circumstances and the grim reason for Morag not being in the bed beside him. He staggered out of bed and slowly dressed himself; quarter of an hour and a couple of cups of strong black coffee later, he was ready to implement the next stages of his plan.

He had kept Morag’s bank cards, passport and driving licence. The passport and licence were destined for destruction at the earliest opportunity, but the bank cards were another matter. He and Morag had long known each other’s banking arrangements; both had on-line banking available to them and he fired up his computer intending to check on the exact status of Morag’s accounts. He was just about to log in when it dawned on him that to do so using his own computer would be a mistake. The picture he was creating was that this day would see Morag disappear; whilst she might well check on her bank balances before leaving, she would have used her own computer, not his, and he hurriedly shut his computer down again. Instead, he turned to his late paramour’s machine. It was a small notebook computer, small enough to be convenient for 25

carrying around in a shoulder bag or the like and in moments he was checking the all-important bank accounts.

His search showed that Morag had just over two hundred pounds in her current account and a further fifteen thousand plus in her savings account. He quickly transferred the funds out of the savings account into the current account and then closed the application down and turned off the computer.

He looked at his watch; it was now getting on for seven, time to complete the next stage of his plan. He left the flat and made his way to Morag’s car. Starting the engine and driving off, he cautiously made his way to Grahamston station and parked the Focus in the area temporarily bereft of CCTV coverage. Parking the car carefully, he then left it unlocked, with the key still in the ignition, just as though somebody in a hurry to catch their train, had thoughtlessly left the car with a wide open invitation to any passing thief to take it, as he was sure would quickly happen, He then made his way into the station itself, making his way to the cash machine in the concourse. He was wearing as an outer garment a lightweight fleece with a hood, and with the hood pulled up to conceal his face from the ubiquitous CCTV cameras, he used Morag’s bank card to purchase a one-way ticket to Glasgow and settled down in the first train to the city. Once there and off the train, he went to one of the cash points in the station and withdraw two hundred and fifty pounds in cash –

her upper limit for a single day, taking care to wait until a queue, a queue containing several women, had formed at the cash point. Now, should the police ever do anything more than simply open a missing persons file once he had reported her disappearance, there would be evidence that Morag had parked her car in Falkirk station car park, bought a ticket to Glasgow, and once there had used the station cash machine to obtain money – surely proof positive that she had been alive that day and, for whatever reason, had gone to Glasgow. By joining the queue with the women in it, Williamson had presented the CCTV camera with a choice of persons as to who had actually made the withdrawal – it was unlikely that the clock on the camera and that on the cashpoint would be aligned with sufficient accuracy to tie down exactly which person in that queue had actually used Morag’s account. So far, so good.

He took the first available train back to Falkirk, this time paying for the ticket with cash, and once off the train walked back to his flat, turning over in his mind what else he needed to do, determined that his plan must be totally and utterly fool proof. The next step on a normal Monday morning would be for Morag to arrive at the hairdresser’s to report for work in fact by now she should have been there. Her non-appearance would be an inconvenience to the owner – it was only a small place and she and Morag were the only workers, so she would see her workload doubled. Without doubt she would phone the flat, either on the landline or Morag’s mobile to demand to know why she hadn’t turned up. The mobile was no problem –it was switched off and would remain so. The landline didn’t have an answer phone, so the woman – Lynne Anderson was her name – wouldn’t be able to leave a message. There was always the possibility that, after a frustrating day of overwork and being unable to contact her missing assistant, she would come round to the flat in the evening – she must surely know the address from Morag’s employment records – so Williamson decided that tonight was a good night not to be home until late.

The next morning, the Tuesday, he put the next element of his plan into operation. Going through Morag’s address book, he phoned the few people that he had met in her company, asking if they had seen her, professing himself as being worried that she had not returned home the previous night. Included in that group was her employer, Lynne Anderson, who was angry at her assistant’s non-appearance the previous day, an anger slightly mollified when Williamson launched into his story of her disappearance. He also phoned Morag’s parents; they lived in Manchester, having moved down to England some ten years previously at a time when Morag was already living independently of them and apart from occasional telephone calls there had been only limited contact between parents and daughter in recent years – in fact Williamson had only met them once, about a year earlier when Morag had insisted on going down to see them on the occasion of her father’s sixtieth birthday. It had been a pleasant enough meeting; Mr. and Mrs. Williamson were clearly totally relaxed with their daughter’s choice of life style and whilst not exactly treating Williamson himself as a prodigal son, had at least been reasonably pleasant to him. He actually spoke with Mrs. Williamson and managed to convey his own sense of conceived anxiety to the woman, exchanging mutual assurances to get in touch should Morag contact either of them.

The next step was to phone round hospitals, asking if Morag, or anybody matching her description, had been admitted as the result of an accident of some sort. Unsurprisingly, he drew a blank.

By the evening, Williamson decided that he had created enough evidence of his attempts to locate his vanished girlfriend to formally report her as missing, so made his way to the police station. He walked up to reception desk where he was greeted by a rather tubby, rather moon-faced, female uniformed sergeant.

“Good evening, sir – how can I help?”

Williamson hesitated, doing his best to give the impression of a man unsure of himself and of what he was doing.

26

“Well, it’s my girlfriend – she’s gone missing.”

The policewoman looked more keenly at him.

“When did this happen, sir?”

“Well, she left for work yesterday morning and never came home – I checked with where she works – she’s a hairdresser – and she never turned up.”

The woman reached under the counter and brought up an A4 sized pad, a pre-printed form of some kind with the crest of Police Scotland at the head of the page.

“So she’s been missing what, just over thirty-six hours, yes?”

Williamson briefly furrowed his brow to give the impression of doing the maths in his head.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Well, sir, we very often find that people do go missing for a while for all sorts of reasons, but then turn up again after a day or so. However, just in case, can I have some details, please. What is the lady’s name?”

“Morag, Morag Ross.”

“And how old is Ms. Ross?”

“She’s twenty-nine – born on July the eleventh, nineteen eighty-six.”

The woman entered the details on her form, then led Williamson through a series of questions, ending up with a record not only of Morag’s age, but her state of health, her description – Williamson had thoughtfully brought a photograph to add to the form – where she worked, where her parents lived, all in all a fairly comprehensive pen-picture of her. Williamson confirmed that he had contacted all her friends, her parents, and local hospitals, all of which was duly written down. At last the process was finished.

“Right, sir. Now, as the lady is an adult and doesn’t appear to be a vulnerable person in any way I’m afraid that all we can do at this stage is to open a missing person’s file and circulate her details throughout Police Scotland. Now, as I say, we very often find that people who walk out like this often return quite quickly, so let’s hope that that is the case with Ms. Ross. If she does come home, please let us know so that we can close her file.”

Williamson did his best to look disappointed.

“Isn’t there anything else that you can do? I am worried that something may have happened to her, although I can’t think what.”

“Not really, I am afraid, Mr. Williamson, but please don’t worry – as I say, the chances are that she will turn up again none the worse.”

And with that Williamson did his best to give the impression of a very worried man still beset with concern but accepting the inevitable.

Satisfied with the progress that he had made so far, Williamson returned home to what he saw as a well-earned good night’s sleep.

On waking on the Wednesday morning, Williamson put the next stage of his plan into action. He drove the twenty-five miles to Glasgow and cruised around, first by car, then on foot, until he found a cash machine that was not overlooked by a CCTV camera and proceeded to withdraw a further two hundred and fifty pounds from Morag’s bank account. This he saw as killing two birds with one stone – it gave the impression, should anybody ever check, that Morag was still alive on that day, and it also gave him a bit of cash, cash that he desperately needed.

As he drove home he could not help but worry over his monetary situation. With his benefits stopped and the money from that old fool MacKenzie also stopped, the only money that he had was his own meagre savings

– just under ten thousand in his savings account, and what he could milk from Morag’s account. He had already decided that a regular visit to the Glasgow cash machine was an essential part of his plan, but with a grand total of about twenty-five thousand pounds available to him even if he could totally empty Morag’s account, he was under no illusion; somehow he had to obtain a regular source of income. Twenty-five and a bit thousand wouldn’t last for ever; being realistic, in about a year it would just about all be gone. Then what? It really did look as though, for the first time in his life, he would have to find a regular job, a ‘proper’

job as is parents would have called it – but what?

He mentally reviewed what he might be able to offer to a prospective employer. He had gone to university, mainly for the anticipated social life, which had been good, but not the non-stop hedonism of his prior imagination. He had got his degree, a two-one in French with Spanish and was still fluent in French, although lack of use had rendered his Spanish pretty rusty. What job would those skills fit him for? A tour guide for package holiday makers? He shuddered at the thought.

Idly, he fired up his computer and started looking for a list of job offers in the locality. Nothing with a salary that attracted him seemed to bear any resemblance to a job he was likely to land. Those he might be considered for - effectively unskilled – offered but a pittance. Dispirited, he closed down the computer and 27

stared gloomily into space. If only he hadn’t hit Morag. If only she hadn’t tripped on the rug. If only she hadn’t hit her head. If only she had just given him a beer as he had asked. Above all, if only the silly little cow hadn’t slapped him…..

Could he look to his mother for some help? A moment’s thought very quickly dismissed that idea; after the way he and Morag had effectively used her to get money out of MacKenzie, he couldn’t imagine for one moment that he was very high on his mother’s goodwill list.

It was then that he brought to mind a casual acquaintance, a man he had met from time to time at the local pub. George Logie was a man who seemed to have his finger in many pies, pies which, in many instances, seemed, if not exactly illegal, at least a bit on the dodgy side. He had last met Logie only a few days before, when the man had been bewailing the unreliability of a couple of young men whom he had, as he put it,

‘given the opportunity to get in on a nice little earner’ only for the ingrates to welsh on whatever the ‘nice little earner’ might have been – Logie did not elaborate on that aspect – and leave Logie with egg on his face in the view of whoever else had been involved. He wondered just what sort of ‘nice little earner’ Logie might be able to put in somebody’s way – only one way to find out.

It was three nights later before he met up with Logie again. Each of the previous nights he had been in the pub for a couple of hours but with no sign of his quarry appearing, so it was with a sense of relief that he saw the man finally appear. He nodded to him as he came through the door and Logie walked over to him.

Williamson looked the man over as he approached; Logie was about fifty years old, give or take a few, a bit below average height and slimly built. Greying hair was swept back to cover, as well as it could, semi-baldness and Logie’s face was dominated by a scar which ran down from his left eyebrow to the corner of his jaw. Williamson had no idea how Logie had come by the scar and had no intention of asking – it looked for all the world as though it might have been caused by a knife. It gave the man a somewhat menacing look, despite his slight stature.

“Evening, Pete – you look a bit down in the dumps, how’s things?”

Williamson was pleased to see that his carefully cultivated hang-dog expression had clearly had the desired effect, and nodded again.

“Could say that George, could say that. The bloody benefits people have stopped my money and now Morag’s walked out on me.”

“That’s tough, man.” He indicated Williamson’s nearly empty pint glass. “Get you another?”

“Please, George, although to be honest, I’m not even sure that I can buy you one back.”

“Ah, nae bother about that.”

A few moments later Logie returned with two new pints and set them down on the table. He surveyed Williamson quizzically.

“So, Pete, would I be right in thinking that you are looking for a job?”

“Aye, but what? Most of the vacancies around here are either for jobs paying pennies or needing fancy qualifications and experience that I just don’t have.”

There was a long silence as the other man continued to study him; Logie seemed to be weighing him up before saying anything more, but at last he spoke again.

“Pete, have you even driven a trailer?”

Surprised at the question, but hopeful as to where it might lead, Williamson nodded his head.

“Yes, I’ve towed horse boxes in the past – hired a caravan a couple of times for holidays – that sort of thing.”

“Look, I might be able to put something your way. You know Munro Motors?”

“Yes, Morag, the bitch, got her Focus from them a couple of years or so ago.”

“Well. So happen, Hector Munro is an old chum of mine from way back. Now, as you know, he’s built up Munro Motors over the years.”

Williamson nodded again. The company was the biggest car sales company in the area. As he had said, Morag’s car, although not his own, had been bought from them and stickers in the back windows of probably a majority, certainly a large minority, of local cars proclaimed them as having been supplied by Munro’s.

Logie continued with his explanation.

“Well, as well as the bread and butter stuff – mostly second-hand, but he also has a couple of franchises for new cars – he has built up what I suppose you might describe as a bit of a side-line in high quality used cars

– Bentleys, Mercs, Rollers – that sort of market. Now, as a result, he tends to buy those sort cars from a wide area – all over Scotland and much of northern England as well. He also sells them on over a wide area as well. Sometimes a car needs picking up or delivering and the owner, or buyer as the case may be, can’t do the necessary himself, so the car has to be trailered. Now, Hector was moaning only a couple of days ago about how he couldn’t find anyone reliable to actually doing the trailering – couple of blokes he was using had both quit on him. Now, what about you doing that job for him?”

28

Williamson pondered upon what he had heard.

“Well, George, it’s certainly something that I could handle – but what would it pay?”

“Hector pays the driver two hundred per trip, no matter how long or short. What he charges the punter depends on distance, but the driver gets the flat rate. It usually works out at four or five such trips a month, and you’ll always get at least a day’s warning. Truth to tell, the guys who let him down, I’d recommended, so I want to get back in Hector’s good books, and I reckon you’re the reliable type – or am I wrong?”

“No, you’re no wrong – if I take it, I’ll see it through all right. How do I go about things?”

“Why not tomorrow? If I pick you up around ten, we can both go over to see Hector and if the two of you click – that’s it. Oh, and one thing – it’s cash in hand so no tax to pay; what you get is what you keep.”

This, Williamson decided, sounded right up his street. OK, so the money wasn’t much, but it was tax-free and would at least pay the rent and leave a bit over. Also, it wasn’t full time – much of the time he’d have time on his hands which he might be able to put to some other use.

“OK, let’s do that – and thanks, George – I owe you.”

It worked out just as Logie had said and just as Williamson had hoped. As it happened, the first two months saw a rather heavier demand for his service that he had expected – eleven trips at two hundred pounds a time, plus the money that he was still drawing from Morag’s account meant that, at least for the time being, he was reasonably solvent. The plentiful spare time that the arrangement gave him he had found no means of profitably filling, but for the time being he felt that he could just coast, and for the first time since his benefits had been stopped and Morag had suffered her unfortunate accident, he felt reasonably secure.

None of the trips – seven had been deliveries, four had been collections – had entailed a round trip of more than about three hundred and fifty miles, but the twelfth was a different matter. A customer way down in Surrey had purchased a vehicle whilst in Scotland on a business trip and had neither the time, nor the desire, to undertake the pick-up himself. Clearly such a trip would mean Williamson being away for two days –

trying to do a round trip of nearly one thousand miles in Munro’s towing vehicle, a rather aged Ford Ranger pick-up truck further burdened by the big trailer – was out of the question and Williamson persuaded Munro that such a trip deserved more than the flat two hundred pounds he normally paid for the service. After some haggling they agreed on three hundred and fifty pounds for the actual driving, plus fifty for overnight accommodation somewhere.

It was to prove a trip that changed everything.

Chapter Four

The delivery was to an address in the small Surrey village of Ockham and studying the map made Williamson realise that it was surely fate. Thanks to Delacotte he knew the landline number for that sod MacKenzie and the exchange number showed that it was a number somewhere in Surrey – somewhere around the Guildford area, and in the slowly coalescing thought that it might one day come in useful, whilst he spent the night at the small motel after delivering the car to its new owner and prior to returning the next day, it only took a few minutes with the local telephone directory to discover MacKenzie’s address – and the man lived in another small Surrey village, Ripley, only a couple of miles or so from the delivery point.

Upon his return him a study of Google Maps showed that the MacKenzie address was just a few minutes’

walk from the village high street and a vague plan started to formulate itself in his mind. Ever since MacKenzie had stopped the thousand pounds a month that his grandfather had been paying out, Williamson had grown more and more to hate the man, even though he had never met him. To Williamson, everything that had gone wrong for him since then, including the death of Morag, he saw as being the fault of the bloody man, and he began to harbour thoughts of paying him back.

The plan for revenge took a while to formulate itself, but he finally decided that it was feasible and would offer him, once and for all, revenge against the man. Accordingly, a couple of weeks after he had delivered the car to the buyer in Ockham, he was once more headed south, but this time by a very different means of transport. A bus journey from Falkirk to Glasgow saw him catching the overnight coach to London, leaving at quarter to eleven and depositing him at Victoria coach station just before seven the next morning. He did his best, not terribly successfully, to get some sleep on the coach – sleep would be at a premium in the next twenty four hours. Across London to Waterloo and a train to Guildford, then a bus to Ripley saw him putting his plan into action by nine thirty then bus back to Guildford in time to catch the eleven twenty-eight to Waterloo. Then a couple of hours to kill before boarding the three o’clock coach back to Glasgow, arriving at ten past midnight. Then an enforced wait, spent well away from the coach station and its CCTV cameras until the buses to Falkirk started up again at seven.

29

What with the adrenaline caused by being able to put his plan into action, and lack of sleep, he was exhausted, but there was one more aspect of the plan to be completed. He had created a pattern of calling, on a weekly basis, at the police station to ask if there was any news of Morag. Not surprisingly, the response was inevitably negative, and so it was this time, but having established his presence in Falkirk he went home and fell into bed for much needed sleep.

******************

I awoke slowly, my bleary vision focussed upon a high white ceiling, unaware of where I was, but conscious of the fact that there was some sort of mask over my nose and mouth. I heard a voice, sounding disembodied and far away.

“Can you hear me, Jamie? Don’t try to talk, just blink your eyes if you can hear me.”

Obediently, I slowly blinked my eyelids, hopelessly bemused as to what was happening. I heard the same voice once more.

“Don’t try to talk or anything, Jamie, just relax.”

I was vaguely aware of a figure dressed in blue in my peripheral vision, a figure apparently reaching above my head to something, then I drifted back into unconsciousness.

I don’t know how much time had passed when I once again came slowly awake. This time my vision cleared to a slightly greater extent and I realised that I was in a bed, still with some sort of mask over the lower half of my face, and that there was a young woman, wearing a blue dress, seated near to the edge of my bed.

“Don’t try to talk, Jamie. I can see that you are awake and wondering what is going on. You’ve been very badly hurt and you are in hospital. I’m your nurse, my name is Liz, and now that you are awake I’m going to let people know. Don’t try to move – I’ll be back in a moment.”

True to her word, she rose to her feet and vanished, and I became aware of the fact that my bed was surrounded by curtains, and that a stand beside my bed held a couple of bottles, bottles from which tubes emerged. One tube disappeared under a bandage around my right arm, just above the wrist, and a second in a tube which entered my right nostril. I moved my head slightly and the tube in my nostril felt uncomfortable, so I stopped moving.

After a delay of no more than a minute or so, the curtain round my bed opened and Liz the nurse, accompanied by another young woman, this one dressed in a long white coat, entered.

The newcomer smiled at me.

“Hello, Mr. MacKenzie, I’m Doctor Helen Moore, the registrar looking after you, and I’m so pleased to see that you have woken.”

I tried to speak, but my voice was muffled by the mask. The two women looked at one another for a moment’s unspoken communication and nurse Liz leant over me and slipped the mask away from my nose and mouth and let it rest under my chin, kept in place by an elastic cord.

“What happened?” I croaked painfully; my throat felt as though it had been lined with sandpaper and the sounds emanating from my mouth I could scarcely recognise as my own voice.

“You were attacked and brought here as an emergency and we have been caring for you ever since. You have been very, very ill indeed, but you are now well on the way to making a complete recovery, but for the time being you are still going to have to lie still and let your strength return gradually.”

I started to relax, but then a thought struck me.

“Where’s Sonia,” I croaked, “where’s my wife?”

“Don’t worry about your wife for the moment, Mr. MacKenzie, just concentrate on getting better.”

There was another silent communication between the two women and nurse Liz again leant over me, but this time she reached up to one of the bottles on the stand and fiddled with it, then she replaced the mask over my nose and mouth and for the first time I realised that it was an oxygen mask as I slipped once more back into unconsciousness.

The next time I awoke there were three people by my bed. A woman, not Liz, in a nurse’s uniform, Dr.

Moore, and a middle-aged man, also in a long white coat. It was the man who spoke.

“Hello, Mr. MacKenzie. I’m John Read, the consultant here in the Intensive Care Unit, and I and my team have been looking after you. You seem to have recovered some of your strength, and we have been able to take the oxygen mask off you, but how do you feel?”

I realised that, as he had said, the oxygen mask was nowhere to be seen. I thought about what he had asked.

“I feel very weak, but that’s about it –I don’t feel ill or anything.”

“Good. You have been making good progress over the last three days and I think that we will soon be able to remove that tube in your nose – it’s a feeding tube and I think later today we will be able to try letting you feed normally – something soft, of course.”

“But what has happened to me – and where is my wife?”

30

Read’s expression instantly made me aware that the news was not good, but for the moment I had no idea as to just how bad it was going to be.

“You were attacked in your home, Mr. MacKenzie. Somebody stabbed you and it is almost a miracle that you survived.”

In that moment I knew what was coming.

“I’m terribly sorry to have to tell you, but Mrs. MacKenzie didn’t survive the attack. She died before help could reach her.”

I felt as though a huge weight was crushing me down. I had heard and understood the man’s words, but I couldn’t take them in.

“But she can’t be dead, she can’t be!”

Read shook his head sadly. No words were needed.

The next three days saw me continue to make progress and on the third day I was moved to a less high dependency ward where, a day later, I received a visit form the police. In the meantime I had, to my amazement, discovered that I had been in hospital for four weeks and that for the first three I had been in a medically induced coma whilst the staff fought to keep me alive, a fight that they had won but, as I was informed, only just.

It had been Read who had filled in the details for me.

“As I understand it from what the ambulance crew and the police have said, Mr. MacKenzie, you or your wife must have answered a ring at the door. Whoever was at the door then attacked both of you, stabbing both of you. Your wound was extremely serious – it badly damaged one of your kidneys, which we have had to remove, but thankfully your remaining kidney is perfectly healthy and fully functional and you will make a full recovery, although it will take time. Sadly, the blow to Mrs. MacKenzie punctured her heart and would have been fatal within moments. Even immediate medical help there and then could not have saved her.”

I felt numb. Sonia had been snatched from me weeks ago and I had been unaware of the fact; I still had no memory as to what must have happened.

Naturally enough, the police wished to speak with me and a couple of days later the medical staff agreed that I was now well enough for them to see me. The ward staff had moved me to a side room so that the discussion with the police could take place in private and I found myself talking with two officers, a Detective Chief Inspector George Kent, and a Detective Sergeant John Law. Kent was perhaps forty years old or a little more, his assistant perhaps ten years younger.

Kent was a slightly built individual with thinning sandy hair topping a narrow face that reflected a life facing the worst aspects of human society. Despite that, the face also reflected intelligence and determination.

He was sitting in the armchair, his sergeant perched on the hard plastic visitors’ chair, whilst I reclined in bed, propped up by several pillows so that we could face each other rather than me being flat on the bed staring at the ceiling.

“So, Mr. MacKenzie, first let me say how very sorry I am about your wife’s death and to assure you that we will do everything that we can to catch her killer. Tell me, please, what can you remember of the attack?”

I shook my head helplessly.

“I’m sorry – but I can’t remember anything. All I can remember about the day is getting up and getting dressed, then going down to breakfast. Sonia beat me down to the kitchen by a minute or so and had the kettle on – and that’s it. My next memory is of waking up in hospital and being told that I had been unconscious for three weeks.”

Disappointment showed clearly on Kent’s face, but there was nothing that I could do about it. But my lack of memory of that day’s events was only one aspect. Others must surely know more.

“But tell me, Chief Inspector, what actually happened to us?”

“Well, as far as we can tell, someone must have rung the door bell and Mrs. MacKenzie went to the door and opened it. Whoever it was stabbed her – apparently virtually as soon as she got the door open. You came to the door from the kitchen – there must have been some sort of noise or something to alert you, because you knocked a tea cup to the floor in your haste to get to the door and when you got there the person stabbed you as well. He –or perhaps she – then dragged both of you away from the door and spent several minutes inside the house. From what we subsequently learned he – or, again, she – found your credit and debit cards and made off with them, but doesn’t seem to have gone upstairs nor really spent much time in the house at all.

The killer than left – and this is why you were able to survive. You were clearly very badly wounded, there was a lot of blood and the killer almost certainly assumed that you and your wife were both dead – and made the mistake which saved your life. He closed the front door but failed to realise that the bolt of the Yale lock was snubbed in the open position – presumably by Mrs. MacKenzie as she opened the door, so although the door closed, it didn’t latch. It was a bit breezy that day and by the time the postman arrived quite soon 31

afterwards the door had blown open, with you and your wife in full view. He called nine, nine, nine and the ambulance got to you just about in time.

“As you may imagine, we went over your house pretty thoroughly to see what we could find, but so far as the killer is concerned, we found nothing helpful. No fingerprints, no DNA, nothing. We deduced that your credit and debit cards had been taken because we couldn’t find any in the house, although we did find your wallet and your wife’s handbag, where such things are normally kept. We didn’t even find any bank statements or the like so it took us a couple of days to track down your bank accounts and put a stop on the various cards. What we did find was a small strongbox, the key in its lock but no sign of any contents – the killer must have taken them away. The killer took advantage of the cards he discovered – I know I keep saying ‘he’ but I am keeping an open mind – there is no proof as to the killer’s gender – he withdrew two hundred and fifty pounds against each card, using a cash machine on Waterloo station. The machine is covered by CCTV, but not very well and, as you can imagine, is in almost constant use, so although we almost certainly have the killer on film, there is no way of identifying him for sure – over the time frame your cards were used there were men and women using the machine, black and white, tall and short – you name it. He didn’t satisfy himself with just cash – he used your credit cards to buy an expensive camera –

over a thousand pounds, a small laptop computer and a fancy wristwatch – all in all he raided your accounts for over five thousand pounds, but hopefully you will be able to get the money back from the bank. One thing puzzles me – to make those purchases and withdrawals, he would have had to have known your PIN

numbers – how could he have got those?”

I groaned inwardly; the loss of the money, even if I never got it back, was hardly important; grandfather’s legacy meant that it was a loss that I could live with, but the callous picture that Kent was painting drove me to a mix of despair and fury.

“It would have been easy for him. The numbers were all written down on a card in the strong box, which also contained all our bank details – we have,” I paused, took a deep breath and corrected myself, “ we had Internet banking so there was only the minimum of actual papers, again all in that box. You could have carried the whole lot away in a slim document case – in fact there was just such a case normally sitting on top of the strong box.”

DS Law spoke for the first time.

“We didn’t find such a case – looks as though the killer took it away.”

Kent nodded his head.

“Looks like it.” He changed tack. “Tell me, Mr. MacKenzie, can you think of anybody who might have wanted to harm you or your wife?”

It was a question that I had been expecting and for which I had a ready answer.

“Only one person – Peter Williamson – he lives in Falkirk.”

I had taken them by surprise; I later realised that the police had originally assumed that we had been the victims of an opportunistic attack, that perhaps Sonia had recognised the person at the door who had merely been looking to burgle the place.

“Why do you say that?”

So I told them the whole story about Williamson, the conning of my grandfather, the innocence of Williamson’s mother, his attempt, via Morag Ross, to gull me into continuing the payment of a thousand a month. The two officers listened intently, with Law making copious notes as I spoke.

“Well, this is at least a lead that we can follow up with the police in Scotland. I’ll speak to the people up there and let you know what happens.”

With that they took their leave of me and shortly afterwards were replaced by my sister Helen. I knew, from the ward staff, that Helen had visited me several times whilst I had been in a coma, but this was the first time that she had been able to visit me when I was in a fit state to receive visitors properly.

She took one look at me and burst into tears.

“Oh, Jamie, this is so dreadful, so very dreadful. Poor, poor Sonia, and poor you as well.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath and composed herself as best she could.

“I’m sorry, Jamie – just seeing you there – but at least you’re still alive and you look a lot better now than the last time I visited. How are you? What do the doctors say?”

I patted the chair beside the bed and she plumped down into it as I looked at her. Nearly four years older than myself, when we had been children she had always been the very best of ‘big sisters’ to me and still tended to have more of a maternal than fraternal view of me. She and Sonia had hit it off from the very first and had been very close to each other; Sonia’s death must have been almost as big a blow to Helen as it had been to me.

I made the placatory noises that one does in such circumstances and the tears slowed and then stopped.

“How long are you going to be in here, Jamie? Do you know yet?”

32

“Well, the staff are mildly optimistic that I can go home sometime next week. I’ve been walking a few steps these last few days and I’m feeling stronger every day.”

“That’s good – but Jamie, what happened? I really only know what has been in the local paper about the actual attack – the staff here have been marvellous on keeping me informed as to how you have been doing, but of course they don’t know what actually happened any more than I do.”

And so, for the second time that morning, I went through all that had happened, whilst Helen listened in mounting horror.

“Oh, my love –how awful!”

She sat back in the chair – she had been leaning forward whilst I recounted my tale as though to ensure she missed nothing of the telling – and looked at me sorrowfully.

“Jamie, I can’t even begin to imagine how you must be feeling after all this. When they say that you can leave here, what are you going to do? Would you like to come and stay with us for a while?”

It was something to which I had been giving thought for the last couple of days, vacillating between wanted to get home as quickly as possible – the ‘get back on the horse’ syndrome – and a sense of horror at walking back into the place where Sonia had died in such dreadful circumstances.

“I don’t honestly know, love. Part of me wants to get home as quickly as possible, part of me dreads the idea.”

Helen left for home shortly afterwards, but not before urging me not to go straight home when I was discharged, but to spend at least some time with her and her family, and I promised to think things through carefully.

My health continued to improve, so when, three days later, DCI Kent and DS Law returned, they found me sitting in the bedside chair and, for the first time, dressed in my normal clothes rather than pyjamas, After the introductions, with Kent sitting on the visitor’s chair and DS Law propping himself up against the wall, Kent launched into an account of the investigations that had taken place since we had last met.

“We’ve spoken with our colleagues in Scotland and they have checked into Peter Williamson’s movements at the critical time and also interviewed the man. I’m afraid that it doesn’t look good; he left his car at a garage for some work to be done the day before you and Mrs. MacKenzie were attacked and didn’t collect it until the day after the attack – so unless he had access to another vehicle he didn’t drive down from Scotland.

The day after the attack he didn’t only pick up his car – he also called into Falkirk police station. Apparently his girlfriend, a Morag Ross, disappeared a few weeks earlier and he had been in the habit it calling in the police station once a week to see if there was any news and, as he himself put it when interviewed, to make sure that the police wouldn’t be allowed to forget her. Now, we’ve done a bit more digging – or rather Sergeant Law has.”

He turned to his young subordinate, who produced a notebook from an inside pocket.

“Yes, assuming that Williamson didn’t travel by car, I did some digging on bus and train possibilities. Now, he could have left his car at the garage, caught the bus or train to Glasgow and once there taken either an overnight coach or train down to London and once there – Liverpool Street Station – taken the underground or a taxi to Waterloo, caught a train to Guildford, and then a bus to Ripley. Then, after attacking yourself and your wife he could have reversed the journey and been back in Glasgow just after midnight. There, he would have had to kill time – the buses and trains from Glasgow to Falkirk don’t start until around seven, but even so he would have had plenty of time to arrive at the police station by the time his visit was logged – just before nine thirty.”

Kent took up the tale.

“So, it would have been possible for him to carry out the attack on yourself and Mrs, MacKenzie in the timescale available to him. Trouble is, we haven’t a shred of evidence to show that he actually did so. There simply aren’t any grounds for accusing him other than that we know he has cause to be unhappy with you –

but would he have seen the loss of a thousand a month sufficient reason to try and murder two people – and to have to go to such lengths to achieve his aim? I’m sorry, Mr. MacKenzie, but I simple can’t see any circumstances, going on what we have at the moment, in which we could build a credible case against Williamson.”

“But who else could it have been?” I protested.

Kent shook his head slowly.

“Don’t get me wrong, Mr. MacKenzie. Like you, I can’t come up with any likely alternative – leaving aside the ‘nutter with a knife’ so beloved of the press. Unfortunately, in police work there are quite a few times when we know that a particular crime was committed by a particular person but lack the hard evidence to secure a conviction. In this instance, we can’t even claim that degree of certainly. There is another thing working against trying to build a case against Williamson. How could he have known that you would both have been home when he turned up? You can see the difficulty – defence counsel would make much of this 33

premeditated, carefully worked out plan, with no guarantee that the intended victims would actually be where Williamson needed them to be for the plan to succeed. After all, he arrived at somewhere around half past nine on a weekday – you were both working so why should he expect you both to be home?”

It was a point that hadn’t occurred to me – but I could think of a possible answer.

“We’re teachers – it was half term.”

“Very well, I see your point – but did Williamson know that your were teachers and even if he did know, how could he be sure that the two of you hadn’t decided to go out for the day and be miles away by the time he arrived? I’m very sorry, but there it is.”

At that point the two policeman took their leave of me and I was left to fume impotently over the situation..

For the life of me, I couldn’t come up with any suspect other than Williamson. The fact that, thanks to Sergeant Law’s work, it could be demonstrated that it was possible for him to be the killer, didn’t really help; there was absolutely nothing to back up what was only a supposition.

*************

Kirsty McDowell was frightened, and wishing to Hell that she hadn’t agreed to go out for a drive with Dougie Hastings in his recently acquitted Ford Focus estate. Dougie was showing off; Kirsty was no driver herself, but she was sure that he was driving too fast for the country lane they were on. Her protests were only meant with scornful laughter and being told she was a wimp. If anything, her protests had made him drive even faster.

Hastings threw the car into a tight, blind, bend and as he accelerated out of it, the big tractor emerged from the gate into the field on their right. In horror, Hastings stamped on the brake pedal, but they were too close and, above all, far too fast, to stop in time. He tugged at the wheel, trying to avoid hitting the tractor. If anything, it made things even worse; the Focus left the road and rammed into the two hundred year old oak tree, over fifty inches in circumference, that now lay directly in its path.

Kenneth Logan, the tractor driver, looked on in horror as the tragedy unfolded in front of his eyes. He jumped down from his cab and hurried across. One look into the cabin of the car was enough; he turned away from the sight of the shattered youngsters and reached for his mobile phone to call out the emergency services.

First to arrive was a police car; as with Logan, the occupants, PCs Ailsa Gordon and Iain Laing, needed only one look to accept that there was nothing that they could do for the car’s occupants. Instead, they busied themselves taking measurements of the car’s skid marks and talking to Logan for his take on what had happened. Laing also called in the car’s details for a check on ownership, only to be told that the number plates were false, so immediate identification of neither the driver nor his passenger could be established by that means.

It was some while before the bodies could be removed from the wreck, but at that time documents on the bodies indicated that the occupants were Kirsty McDowell, aged eighteen, and Douglas Hastings, also eighteen, both from the Stirling area. Further checking revealed that Hastings had a record for car theft as a juvenile, but nothing recent. The girl had no criminal record.

Once back at the police station, more checking, using the car’s chassis number, identified it as belonging to Morag Ross, a young woman who had been reported as missing some weeks earlier.

“That’s odd,” mused Sergeant Watson, the watch commander, He turned to the two young constables who had been at the scene of the crash.

“The missing car owner was reported by a Peter Williamson – go and talk to him and see if he can throw any light on the matter.”

Peter Williamson answered the ring on his doorbell and was taken aback to find two uniformed police officers at the door. He immediately fell back on his cover story and before they could say a word, launched into his long prepared defence.

“Have you found Morag?” he demanded, then as his story demanded, he stepped back and switched from eagerness to apprehension.

“Is she alright – she’s not…” he allowed his voice to tail away, mentally congratulating himself on what he was sure, under other circumstance, would have been an Oscar winning performance.

It was Ailsa Gordon who answered him.

“Do you think we might come in, please, Mr. Williamson? We have no knowledge of Ms. Ross, but we have found her car at the scene of an accident and we are wondering if you can help us in any way.”

Williamson adopted a puzzled expression.

“Yes, yes, of course, come in.”

34

He ushered the two police officers into the sitting room and indicated the settee and as they seated themselves copied their example and sank into an armchair to face them.

“What has happened? You say Morag’s car was in an accident – but how?”

Ailsa Gordon broke into his flow of words.

“Mr. Williamson, Ms. Ross’ car was being driven by a young man, a Douglas Hastings, and he had as a passenger a young woman, Kirsty McDowell. Do either of those names mean anything to you?”

Williamson shook his head.

“No, I’ve never heard of either of them – how come they were in Morag’s car?”

“That is what we are trying to establish, Mr. Williamson. Sadly, both the young people in the car died at the scene of the accident. We have established that the car belonged to Ms. Ross and the DVLA have confirmed that they have received no notification of a change in ownership. Now, I understand that you reported Ms.

Ross as missing nearly two months ago, is that right?”

“Yes, and I’ve been hoping that she would come back, or at least get in touch with me – but not a word from her.”

“When she went, did she take her car?”

“Yes. She worked at a hairdresser’s shop – it’s only about half a mile or so away so she tended to walk unless it was raining, or if she needed to do some shopping – parking near to the shop is a bit of a pain. That day it was fine, so I was a bit surprised that she took her car, but assumed that she needed to do some shopping and had forgotten to mention it.”

“Did you actually see her or speak to her that morning?”

Williamson did his best to look shame-faced.

“No, truth to tell, I’d had a few drinks the night before and she had left for work before I was properly awake.”

“So you have no idea what happened to her, nor to her car, after that morning?”

He nodded.

“That’s right.”

“Did you check with any friends as to what might have happened?”

“Of course I did – I was worried stiff about her. I phoned everyone that we both knew. She didn’t leave her phone of course, so there are probably names on her phone that I haven’t checked with, but we did have an old address book and there were a few names in that of people I didn’t know but which she obviously did, so I tried them as well. I also tried her parents – they live down south in Manchester – but nobody had seen her or heard from her. Of course, I asked everyone to let me know if they did hear from her, but nobody has got back to me.”

“Did she take everything with her that day?”

“Not everything, no. She took her phone, her laptop – it’s a small one, goes in a shoulder bag quite easily –

her passport, her bank details and cards and most of her clothes, but not all of them – so do you want to see them?”

“Yes please, if you don’t mind.”

Williamson led the two officers into the bedroom and indicated the built-in wardrobe and one of two small chests of drawers.

“The stuff that she left is in the right hand side of the wardrobe and that set of drawers is hers.”

Ailsa Gordon rummaged through the chest of drawers, then examined the items hanging in the wardrobe.

“It looks as though the stuff that she left behind must have been sort of second best, but that she took her best stuff with her – does that seem right, Mr. Williamson?”

Williamson, who after disposing of Morag had spent some time going through her effects to create just such an impression, nodded sadly.

“Yes, officer, it does look that way; that coat,” he indicated a long, heavy coat which had clearly seen better days, “she hadn’t worn in ages and kept saying that she ought to give it to a charity shop but never got round to it.”

The two police officers looked at each other and came to an unspoken agreement. This time it was Laing who spoke.

“Well, thank you for your help, Mr. Williamson. We will continue to try and find out how Ms. Ross’ car came to being driven by Mr. Hastings and if we do come up with anything we will be in touch with you.”

Back in their car, Laing turned to his colleague.

“You notice anything about Williamson, Ailsa?”

“What, you mean how he always referred to his girlfriend in the past tense?”

Laing nodded.

35

“Yes. Most times I’ve been involved with interviewing someone whose partner or parent or child – whoever

– has disappeared, they find it hard to refer to them in the past tense.”

“Perhaps he has just come to terms with her having gone – and to be honest, I can’t say I blame her. There is something about that man that gives me the creeps. Somehow, I got the impression that he is acting a part, that nothing is genuine about him.”

“Yes, he just doesn’t ring true to me, either. Ah, well, back to the nick.”

Debra Hastings bore the news of her son’s death stoically. He always drove too fast, she observed sadly to the two female police officers who had come to break the news.

“How did it happen?”

PC Glynis Weir took the lead.

“I’m afraid that you are right, Mrs. Hastings. From what we can gather from the scene of the crash, he was simply driving too fast for the conditions, and the car left the road and hit a tree. There is something else, however, that I wonder if you can help us with.”

The older woman looked at her suspiciously. Oh, oh, thought Glynis, there’s something going on here.

“What would that be?”

“Well the car he was driving was registered to a Ms. Morag Ross, with a Falkirk address. Does the name Morag Ross mean anything to you?”

The woman shook her head.

“No, never heard of her. Who is she?”

“We’re not really sure. Ms. Ross was reported missing some seven weeks or so ago and nobody has been able to find her ever since.”

Another shake of the head was all the response Mrs. Hastings made. Glynis wondered if she should press the mother – who seemed far less distressed than she had expected – as to just how Hastings had acquired the Focus, but decided that with Debra Hastings still to be faced with the grim task of identifying her son’s body, decided to leave it, at least for the moment. Instead, she broached the moment she always dreaded in such cases.

“Mrs. Hastings, although we are sure that it was Dougie who was driving the car, I’m afraid we do need to the body formally identified. Do you feel up to coming with us to do that? Or would you prefer that we ask somebody else – Dougie’s father perhaps?”

The answer was scornful.

“Him? Not seen the sod since Dougie was a wee bairn – don’t know where he is and don’t bloody care. No, I’ll do it. I’ll just get me coat.”

She rose and left the room, leaving Glynis to exchange glances with PC Helena Graham. No word passed between the two young women, but their unspoken assessment of their hostess was not flattering.

It took a little more than an hour to drive the bereaved, but scarcely openly grieving, mother to the mortuary, where, stony faced, she confirmed that the body laid out before her was indeed that of her son, Douglas Hastings.

As they drove back to the Hastings home, Glynis decided that it was time to broach in a little more detail the subject of just how Dougie Hastings came to be driving Morag Ross’ car. To make talking to the woman easier, she had seated the two of them in the back of the police car whilst Helena Gordon did the driving.

“Had Dougie had the Focus long, Mrs. Hastings?”

“A few weeks, Bought it off a mate, he told me because it’s due for its MOT soon and Dougie was quite good with cars. Apparently it needed something doing which the mate didn’t want to pay for, but which Dougie reckoned he could fix himself.”

“Do you know the name of the mate Dougie bought the car from?”

“No, I don’t remember him ever saying – truth to tell Dougie and me didn’t go in for much chat, and I’m not interested in cars. When he did talk, it was usually to moan that he was always broke and why couldn’t I help him out more.”

“Did Dougie have a job, Mrs. Hastings?”

“Him? No way – he’d do the odd bit of labouring for a guy he knew did sort of small building work – laying paths, mending roofs, all that sort of thing, but nothing regular. No. I’m the breadwinner – work at Tesco’s, but today’s my day off which is why I was home we you called.”

“Who was the man he worked for?”

“John Mackie – he stays out Stenhousemuir way somewhere, but I don’t know just where – but his phone number will be on Dougie’s phone – I suppose you’ve got his phone?”

“Yes, we have, Mrs. Hastings. We may give Mr. Mackie a ring to see if he has any idea who Dougie bought the car form, but it’s not really important.”

36

By now they had reached the Hasting’s home and the woman got out of the car, declining Glynis’ offer to come in with her.

The two policewomen watched as Debra Hastings disappeared from their view.

Helena gave a long sigh.

“Tough lady, that one.”

“Yes, she doesn’t seem to have had much luck, does she? Husband walks out leaving her with a little one, son seems to have scarcely been the apple of her eye, but even so, now he’s dead so it must have some effect on her.”

“Why didn’t you press her a bit about the car – stands to reason that it’s nicked and it was probably Dougie Hastings who nicked it.”

“Very probably, but I got the feeling that any suggestion that Dougie had stolen the car would have seen Mrs. H clam up – she has ‘no cooperation’ written all over her. But – there is one thing. Last anyone knows that car was in Falkirk with its owner. OK, so it’s only fifteen miles or so from Stirling to Falkirk – but most casual car thefts take place close to where the thief lives. If it was stolen in Falkirk, how did Dougie Hastings manage it? Unless he had an accomplice, is it likely that he’d have taken the bus to Falkirk on the off chance of finding a motor to nick? I reckon that there’s a bit more to it than that.”

“So what about this guy Dougie sometimes works for – John Mackie? We going to get in touch?”

Glynis shook her head.

“No, I reckon that we should run it past the sarge before spending more time on this.”

Back as the station the two women briefed Sergeant Watson on their meeting with the not very grieving mother. He frowned in concentration.

“So, stolen car – at least I don’t believe that it wasn’t stolen, especially given the fact that it had false plates on it. Owner disappears from Falkirk, boyfriend says he knows nothing about where she is, but confirms that she took the car the day she disappeared. We’ve already used the time of four officers on this – you two, and Laing and Gordon over at Falkirk. I think it’s time to dump it on CID – I’ll have a word with the boss.”

True to his word, quarter of an hour later he outlined the details of the case to his immediate superior, Inspector Dawn Halliday, who listened carefully, making an occasional note as Watson spoke.

“I agree, David – I’ll have a word with CID. They can take it up if they want to, but as far as I’m concerned we can butt out now.”

Detective Sergeant Hugh Fraser stretched back in his chair, trying in vain to ease the kink in his back caused by hunching forward over his desk as he read through the brief details in the file in front of him. It had been Fraser who, in company with his boss, DI George Sinclair, had interviewed Peter Williamson at the request of the Surry police, an interview which had been unsatisfactory in that it had resulted in them being neither to rule Williamson out of the attack down South nor come up with a shred of evidence to link him to it.

Fraser rose from behind his deck and took a few paces round the office to ease his back, causing the officer at the facing desk, DC Jane Hammond, to look up. Fraser’s problems with his back were no secret from his colleagues and she winced in sympathy as he painfully lowered himself back behind his desk again. Only two years away from retirement, Fraser made no secret of the fact that he really couldn’t wait to leave Police Scotland behind him and retire to his cottage on the outskirts of Falkirk – and the perceived wisdom of his colleagues was that once he achieved that aim, with his wife having died from cancer the previous year, he would probably drink himself into the grave after her. Again, his drinking was no secret, but he had, to date kept it strictly confined to off duty, but more than once of late he had looked more than somewhat fragile of a morning.

Fraser mused over the thin file, recalling the interview with Williamson, a young man to whom he had taken an instant dislike. Thirty-five years of policing had, he claimed, given him the ability to sniff out a wrong ‘un almost instantly, and as far as Fraser was concerned, Williamson ticked all the boxes to qualify as a wrong

‘un.

So now there was another aspect. When he and Sinclair had spoken with Williamson they had been unaware that his girlfriend had gone missing. Would it have made any difference, he asked himself? Well, so far as he was concerned, it would certainly have strengthened his suspicions of Williamson. He looked at the file report written up by Laing and Gordon. Williamson denied any knowledge of where Morag Ross might now be and similarly denied having any idea as to how her car came to be involved in a fatal road accident whilst wearing false number plates. So, the man was possibly involved in a murder, an attempted murder, an unexplained disappearance and, just possibly, something to do with Morag Ross’ car being involved in an accident. For Fraser’s peace of mind that was just too many coincidences to be believed. He decided that it was time to talk with his boss and five minutes later was sitting across the desk from him. He boss looked tired, Fraser thought. Younger than himself by over ten years, the confident, thrusting young Detective 37

Constable who had joined CID when Fraser himself was already a Detective Sergeant seemed a million miles away from the prematurely aged man in front of him. Sinclair raised a tired smile for him.

“What’s up, Hugh?”

“It’s this mish-mash that uniform have thrown our way, George, the Williamson come Ross case.”

“What about it?”

“It stinks. That guy we saw, Williamson, I reckon he’s as bent as they come.”

“Yeah, I can’t say that I was much impressed by him – but evidence, Hugh, evidence. We haven’t got a tinker’s cuss worth of it.”

“I’d like to do a bit of digging; I know that we couldn’t say anything to the Surrey mob just based on our gut feelings, but the more I look at things, the more I reckon that Williamson was probably the perp of that knife attack – and if he did that, I don’t reckon much for Morag Ross’ chances of still being in the land of the living.”

“So, what do you want to do?”

“I want to dig into Morag Ross’ life – bank account, that sort of thing.”

“OK, go for it. Need any help?”

“Could I use Jane Hammond if I need any donkey work done –she’s bright and probably better if anything like bank account oddities and the like come to light that I am.”

“OK, go for it.”

Ten minutes later Fraser had briefed Jane Hammond on the first step he wanted taken – a look at Morag Ross’ bank records. Looking at the file, Jane saw that in his original report of Morag as a missing person, Williamson had said that she banked with the TSB, so that was the young detective’s first port of call.

It took two days of digging, but finally Fraser was able go through with her what she had found. It made an interesting report.

“The Monday before Williamson reported Morag as missing on the Tuesday, the CCTV footage at the railway station picks up her car coming through the barrier at just after eight. The camera there is just aimed at the number plate so that they can check the parking is paid for. Once in the park itself there are four cameras giving overall coverage, but unfortunately one of them was out of action that day – vandalised – and the car is parked in the area that would normally have been covered by that camera. As a result, we don’t know who was driving the car – it might have been Morag, but it might equally as well not have been. A few minutes after the car was parked, Morag’s bank card was used to buy a railway ticket – one way to Glasgow and just after nine it was used again, this time at a Glasgow station cash machine, to draw out two hundred and fifty pounds – the maximum daily amount on her card.

“The next thing to happen is that Morag’s car leaves Falkirk station car park just before ten. Once again we only have the number plate camera to go on, so we don’t know who was driving, but of one thing we can be certain. It might have been Morag who drove the car in, but it can’t possibly have been her who drove it out

– there simply wouldn’t have been enough time between making that cash withdrawal at Glasgow station and her car leaving the Falkirk station car park for her – or anybody else if it wasn’t her driving the car - to have returned – I’ve checked both the train and bus timetables and it just wouldn’t have been possible.

“Since that day, the only evidence we have that Morag might still be alive is that every week two hundred and fifty pounds have been withdrawn against her card – and always at the same cash machine in Glasgow.

With just one exception, the withdrawals are always on a Thursday or Friday and always between eleven in the morning and one o’clock. The one exception is the week that the attack took place down in Surrey. Now, that attack took place on the Thursday; Williamson checked into the police station the morning of the next day, the Friday, to ask if there was any news about Morag – and the cash withdrawal happened on the Saturday. My guess is that if it was Williamson who carried out that attack, by the time had had spent the best part of two days charging around in trains or buses he was just too knackered to bother to make his weekly withdrawal – if indeed it is him using Morag’s card – until the Saturday – oh, and that withdrawal also just happens to have been later than any other – nearly half past two in the afternoon.”

Fraser leant back in his chair and contemplated.

“So, from what we have found it is entirely possible that Williamson murdered that woman down in Surrey, nearly succeeded in killing her husband as well, and what we have seen about the use of Ross’ bank card, there’s a good chance that he has done for her as well. Now, have we any idea where the car fits in after it disappeared from Falkirk station car park?”

“Not really. According to Mrs. Hastings her son had only had it for a few weeks, bought it from a mate, but didn’t know who the mate might be. She did offer up the name of that man Dougie Hastings sometimes worked for, John Mackie. I suppose it might be worthwhile having a word with him.”

“OK, give him a bell. Now as to Williamson – I have an idea which I will need to run past the DI, but try and get this Mackie guy first.”

38

Fortunately, when PCs Weir and Gordon had broken the news of her son’s death to her, Mrs. Hastings had known, and given to them, Mackie’s telephone number so Jane had no trouble with calling the man. A brief conversation established that Mackie had been unaware of Dougie Hasting’s death and that he had no idea of from whom he had bought the Focus. A dead end, she reported ruefully.

“Ah, well, perhaps we will never know.” Fraser observed. “I’ll go and talk to the boss.”

A few minutes later Sinclair and Fraser had agreed upon a course of action which, they hoped, would establish the likelihood of whether or not Morag Ross was still in the land of the living.

********************

After quite a bit of thought, I had decided to take Helen up on her offer to stay with them for a while after I was released from hospital. The thought of returning to my own home didn’t really appeal – well before leaving hospital I had decided to sell it and had placed it in the hands of estate agents who would, on my behalf, do any necessary showing to prospective buyers. Again from my hospital bed – but with Helen on site on the day – I had arranged for our furniture to be taken into storage. How much of it I might wish to live with in the future was something that remained to be seen.

I was still recovering from my wound, but was in far better physical shape than even the week previous, when I had a flash of memory.

Elizabeth, my five year old niece, was proudly showing off the costume that she would be wearing in a school play. She was to be a tiger – or I suppose, more accurately, a tigress – and had a suitably striped yellow and black one piece sort of leotard thing, and for her face – a mask, and as I saw her putting it on the memory flash occurred.

In my mind’s eye, I saw our hall, the front door open, Sonia lying on the floor and a man standing over her –

a man wearing a caricature mask of Prince Charles.

I ran the scenario through my mind several times. Had I visualised someone wearing one of those woollen ski masks sported by TV villains, I might have dismissed it as a figment of my imagination, a figment dredged up in a desperate attempt to make some sense of everything – but a caricature mask of Prince Charles? And it was a mask of a much younger man, with the ears cruelly over-emphasised, not the Prince of today in late middle-age. I hadn’t seen him on the news, nor referred to in the papers recently, so I felt that it was unlikely that this was imagination – far more likely that it was a genuine memory.

After thinking it over, I phoned the police. DCI Kent was out, but his DS, Law, was in and I recounted what I had remembered. The detective was silent for a moment before replying.

“You’re sure that you only saw the mask, Mr. MacKenzie? Nothing that might help actual identification?”

I was about to say no as I replayed the scene in my mind, when I realised that there was something else.

“I didn’t see his face, but I did see his hair, and get a general impression of his build – oh, it was definitely a man, no doubt. He had fair hair, about the colour of ripe corn, perhaps a bit darker, and he was fairly slightly built and about five feet eight or so tall.”

“Well, that gives as at least a bit of a picture of the man; I’ll add the details to the file.”

******************

Once he was off the phone, Law fulfilled his promise and added the details of the MacKenzie’s attacker to the file, then sat back and thought for a while. Given the suspicion that he and his boss shared, that it was difficult to come up with any logical suspect than the man Williamson, remote as the possibility might seem, at least he now had some sort of a description that was worth checking. If Williamson turned out to be six feet six and bald then he must be out of the picture. On the other hand…….

Ten minutes later he was talking to DS Fraser in Falkirk.

“Sarge, it’s DS John Law from Surrey here. I’ve just had Jamie MacKenzie on – he’s had a bit of a memory flashback and has come up with a bit of a description of the man who killed his wife and tried to kill him.

The perp is about five eight, slight build, with hair MacKenzie described as the colour of ripe corn. Any similarity?”

“Yes – the DCI and I interviewed him, and the descripton matches. Certainly the build and height are right and so is the hair, although not being a country boy I would have called it a sort of dark buttery colour.”

“Do you have a picture of him?”

“No, although he had a record as a juvenile, we can’t access that without due cause, which we don’t really have at the moment from this end. But what about yourselves? From what you have, can’t you get access to his passport photo?”

Law thought for a moment.

“Not sure if what we have is strong enough, but I’ll give it a whirl – thanks.”

39

Law had to wait until DCI Kent returned, but once he was back at his desk, Law wasted no time in appraising him of the latest news.

Kent leant back in his chair as he assimilated what he had been told.

“We’ll need to raise an official request, John, and I’m not sure that it will be granted, but let’s go for it.”

Twenty-four hours later, rather to the surprise of the two detectives, the request was garnet and Law was looking at the passport photograph of Peter Williamson. He phoned DS Fraser to let him know and to ask him if he wanted a copy of the picture.

“Yes please, John – it may come in useful – who knows?”

“You’re welcome, Hugh – I’ll E-mail it straight off.”

Law turned to his boss.

“Do we show the picture to MacKenzie, boss?”

“Oh yes – but not just by itself – don’t want a defence counsel, if we ever get that far, to claim we rigged an identification.”

Law nodded his understanding and reached for the phone once more.

*****************

Law and Kent met me at the door of the police station and ushered me into a small interview room containing a small table and four chairs, all of which showed signs of a long life and hard usage.

Three of the chairs had been arranged on one side of the table; I sat down in the middle one, flanked by the two policemen. There was a file lying on the table and Law flicked it open. It contained photographs, some twelve of them, and he spread them out on the table in front of me. Kent indicated them with a sweep of his hand.

“Mr. MacKenzie, we’ve assembled this photos in the hopes that one of them might further jog your memory.

There is a photo of the man you, and we, suspect of being responsible for the murder of your wife and the attack upon yourself amongst them, but we can’t indicate which one it is – that would be seen as leading you and, if we ever get to court, defence counsel would have a heyday over such a breach of proper procedure.”

I examined the pictures with savage concentration, hoping against hope that there would be one amongst them which would indeed trigger a further memory. I pored over each one individually, I spread them out again and looked at them as a whole. All twelve men were captured full face; all had hair that could be described as fair, although differing to the extent by which such a description might be applied. At last, I put them all back together in a pile and pushed them away from me, shaking my head as I did so.

“No, I’m sorry, gentlemen. I don’t recognise any of the men. I can’t say that the killer is there, I can’t say that he is not there – I just don’t know.”

They were both clearly disappointed, but I doubted that they were half as disappointed as I was. Hope against all logical hope, I really had hoped that somehow the picture of the killer would make itself known to me – but it wasn’t to be.

I left the station after receiving more assurances from Kent and Law that they would do everything that they possibly could to catch the man who had killed Sonia, but I think that in our heart of hearts none of us really expected it to happen – there was just nothing to go on.

I drove back to Helen’s and told her of the lack of progress. I was feeling really down in the dumps and I knew that it showed.

“I can’t see the bastard who killed Helen ever being caught, Helen. This man Williamson seems the only likely suspect, but there is absolutely nothing to incriminate him, nothing at all.”

Neither I, nor the Surrey police, were aware that something that was happening more than four hundred miles to the north which would soon change things.

*************************

Peter Williamson was pleased to find a parking space quite near to his chosen cash point. Even though there was no CCTV camera close to the machine it was in a small row of shops and as a matter of principle he never left his car in the same road as the machine - just in case.

He walked round the corner; there was a woman already using the machine and he waited, gazing idly in a shop window, until she had completed her transaction and left. He went to the machine, inserted Morag’s bank card, tapped in her PIN and withdrew his usual two hundred and fifty pounds.

He turned away from the machine and as he did so, found himself face to face with a heavily built, middle aged man, He attempted to side-step the man, only for him to hold up his left hand in the universal gesture of

‘stop’, whilst with his right hand he raised a sort of leather wallet, open to show the man’s photo and the crest of Police Scotland on a plastic laminated card. At the same time Williamson was aware of two larger, 40

younger men closing in on him from behind. He realised that he had seen the older man before – he was one of the two policeman who had interviewed him when Morag’s car had been found with those two dead kids in it. The man’s words promptly confirmed the fact.

“Peter Williamson, I am Detective Sergeant Fraser of Police Scotland; these two men are my colleagues Detective Constables Collis and Douglas. I am arresting you on suspicions of fraud and theft; you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

One of the men behind him grabbed Williamson’s arm, none too gently, and the three of him propelled him into the back of an unmarked Ford Mondeo parked a few yards away.

Once in the car Fraser spoke again.

“I assume that your car is nearby, Mr. Williamson. We don’t want it left to be the target of car thieves, now do we? Let me have your keys and DC Collis here will drive it to the police station.”

Williamson had so far been rendered speechless by the rapid turn of events, but now he at last found his voice.

“What’s going on? You can’t do this!”

Fraser glowered at him.

“I not only can, Mr. Williamson, I just have – now, let’s have your keys or I’ll add resisting arrest to the charges.”

“But I’m not resisting – I just want to know what is going on!”

Fraser shrugged.

“Your word against ours, Williamson - now – the keys.”

Grudgingly, Williamson delved into his jacket pocket and handed over his key ring; as Collis left the car he realised that none of the policeman had enquired as to what sort of a vehicle they were looking for, and Williamson realised that they obviously already knew what sort of car he drove. He looked desperately around, trying to make sense of what was happening as the car drove away from the pavement. For a moment he even contemplated trying to open the passenger door and jumping from the car; almost as though he had read his mind, Fraser spoke.

“Don’t worry about the door, Mr. Williamson. It can’t be opened from the inside unless the driver switches the security lock off from the driving seat, and DC Douglas isn’t going to do that – we wouldn’t want you falling out, now would we.”

An hour and a half later Williamson found himself seated in a small, scruffy interview room in Falkirk police station. Opposite him sat Fraser, the man who had arrested him, with the other man, the Detective Inspector Sinclair, whom he had met in company with Fraser when he had originally been interviewed about Morag’s car. Beside him sat a man in his late forties who had introduced himself as John Murray, the duty solicitor.

Spread out on the table were the contents of his various pockets and Williamson couldn’t drag his gaze away from Morag’s bank card.

Deciding that the best form of defence was offence, he glared at the two policemen.

“Look, what’s all this about – you’ve no right to have arrested me like this – I’ve done nothing, and you can be sure that I’ll be writing to my MSP to complain – bloody Gestapo, that’s all you lot are.”

Sinclair waited patiently for the diatribe to finish, then smiled gently at the prisoner.

“Tell me, Mr. Williamson, when did you last see Morag Ross?”

“You know when – the day before I reported her missing – like I told you before.”

“So that is, what, just on nine weeks ago?”

“Then why is her bank card in your possession and, much more to the point, why are you using it to remove cash from her bank account?”

Williamson had long rehearsed an answer to that particular question.

“It isn’t her money – it’s money I lent her, and now that she’s buggered off somewhere, I’m taking it back.”

Sinclair smiled again, but this time the smile had wolfish overtones to it.

“So, you are saying that the money never belonged to Ms. Ross but was money that you, out of the goodness of your heart, lent her and now that she has left you, you want it back – is that right?”

Williamson curtly nodded his head.

“Already told you, didn’t I?”

“Indeed you did, Mr. Williamson, indeed you did. Now, help me out here, because I am a bit puzzled. Until some four months ago your income stream was a Jobseekers Allowance, and one thousand pounds a month from the late Colonel MacKenzie. Both of those sources of income have now stopped. Looking at your bank details, and going back several years, we can find no trace of you ever making over to Ms. Ross anything like the sums that were in her accounts immediately prior to her disappearance. Now, please, how can you 41

explain her disappearance without taking her bank card with her. What can she have been using for money since she left you?”

Williamson shrugged in what he hoped was an unconcerned manner.

“No idea – perhaps she’s shacked up with someone, perhaps she’s gone on the game.”

“Perhaps you are right, Mr. Williamson – but that still fails to explain how the money in her account, money which you say that you lent to her, got there.”

It was time, Williamson decided, to play what he hoped would be his trump card.

“Look, alright, I’ll tell you. For the last couple of years I’ve been doing the odd bit of work, cash in hand because it was never very much, but what I got I reckoned was sort of a bonus, see? So, I gambled with it, and I did pretty well. Now, I’ve never been good at keeping money – you get it to spend it is how I’ve always looked at things, but Morag nagged at me and I gave in and let her bank the winnings for me. I insisted that I knew her PIN on her account so I could always get at my money – you hear me, there? MY

money if I really needed to – so that’s why she left the card behind. Now, I know that she’s got another account, that’s with the Bank of Scotland – but I don’t know any details of that account and that must be what she’s using now. She might have walked out on me but at least she didn’t steal my money.”

Sinclair looked sceptical.

“So you managed to accumulate around fifteen thousand pounds by gambling – you should patent your system. One small problem however. According to you, you handed these winnings to Ms. Ross to save you from the temptation of squandering them. Now as they were winnings from bookies, they would have been in cash. The trouble is that Ms. Ross’ bank account doesn’t show any inward payments of cash – just cheques. How do you explain that?”

Williamson was belatedly realising that his story was falling apart.

“I don’t know – I gave her the money, how she put it into the account was up to her – perhaps she found it more convenient to pay the cash into her other account, the one with the Bank of Scotland and paid cheques into the TSB account.”

Sinclair gave a long drawn out, theatrical, sigh.

“Well, Mr. Williamson, you might just find a jury naïve enough to believe your story, but I certainly don’t believe it. I’m convinced that you have been fraudulently misusing Ms. Ross’ bank account, which leads us once more to the question of her whereabouts. Where is she?”

“I keep telling you – I don’t bloody know!”

“Well, since we last met, I have had an alert out for Ms. Ross – and nobody can find her. She hasn’t used her Bank of Scotland account – yes, we did know of that account – for over two months and even before then the account shows nothing like the level of activity that would be needed to support your story. At the moment it has just over one hundred pounds in the current account and two hundred in a savings account – a savings account that hasn’t been activated in over a year.”

Sinclair looked long and hard into Williamson’s eyes.

“You know what I think Mr. Williamson? I think that Morag Ross is dead. I think that you have killed her, which is why you are able to use her bank account.”

Williamson shook his head vehemently.

“No – I don’t know where she is, I don’t know if she is alive or dead, but if she is dead, I didn’t kill her.”

It was at this point that Williamson’s lawyer, John Murray, made his first contribution to the proceedings.

“Inspector, are you accusing my client of murder? If so, can you produce a body to substantiate such a charge?”

“The answer to both your questions, Mr. Murray, is ‘not yet’, but I am charging your client with the fraudulent use of Morag Ross’ bank account.”

Sinclair treated Williamson to the full caution, then turned back to Murray.

“I have already discussed your client’s case with the Procurator Fiscal’s office and as a result we’ll be holding your client overnight and bringing him before the sheriff tomorrow for a preliminary hearing regarding custody. I must warn you that we will be opposing bail.”

Williamson heard Sinclair’s words with mounting horror. The fact that the police had clearly already got the fiscal’s office on board was worrying – the fiscal service didn’t like losing cases, so Sinclair must have been pretty persuasive.

Chapter Five

The telephone rang and Helen answered it and announced herself and listened to someone at the other end for just a moment.

42

“Jamie it’s Susie Harris for you.”

She handed me the phone; Susie Harris was the young woman who was handling the sale of my house. I had met her just the once shortly after getting out of hospital and had been extremely impressed with her obvious energy and competence.

“Hi Susie, what’s the latest?”

“We’re nearly there, Mr. MacKenzie – the Clarkes are looking to exchange contracts and complete at the end of next week – they’ve finally got their mortgage sorted. One thing I thought that I’ve promised them that I would mention to you. With their family growing up all the time they’ve decided to turn the garage into an extra room – quite easy seeing that it is integral with the house, so with the up and over door replaced by a wall and some windows knocked out of the back wall looking out to the garden, it could be a really nice room for them. I just thought that I would ask you if there were likely to be any building snags that wouldn’t have been clear from the survey – a drain running under the floor or power lines or something?”

It’s a cliché, but my blood really did seem to run cold. Somehow in the course of being wounded, of losing Sonia, of my protracted convalescence, the presence of grandfather’s pistol walled up in the garage had not exactly slipped my mind but had somehow achieved a status of something in limbo – that the gun would stay hidden for ever. Now, however, if the Clarkes were to have the wall in which it was hidden – as would doubtless be the case – it was sure to come to light and I would have some very difficult questions to answer.

Somehow I gathered my thoughts without too long a pause.

“No, just trying to think – no, there’s nothing like that to worry about. The garage doesn’t have any drainage of course, and the power to it runs from the back of the house, so there shouldn’t be any problems for their builder.”

“Thanks Mr. MacKenzie, I’ll let them know the good news.”

Susie rang off, leaving me with my thoughts. I found Helen, who had returned to the kitchen where she had first answered the phone. It was one of those cordless ones and as I returned it to its wall mounted base, I turned to my sister.

“That was Susie to say that the Clarkes are looking to complete at the end of next week.”

“Oh, that’s good, Jamie – one thing you don’t have to worry about any more.”

I had already decided my next move.

“You know, I think that I’ll just go and look at the place one last time.”

Helen looked concerned; I hadn’t even put foot inside the house since the day that Sonia had been murdered.

“Are you sure, Jamie? It must have awful memories for you.”

I nodded my head firmly.

“Yes, the more I think about it, the more I need to do it. I need to remember it as it was before everything happened.”

“Would you like me to come with you?”

“No, thanks a lot, love, but I think that I really need to do this by myself.”

An hour and a half later I pulled up in front of my garage for what would be the very last time. I still had a key to the house, so access was no problem, and I let myself in through the front door.

With all the furniture already removed to storage, the place was echoingly empty. I walked slowly through the rooms, visually refurnishing them from my memory of how they had once been, how they had been before my life had been ruined by the man in the Prince Charles mask.

On my way to the house I had stopped at a hardware store for some essential items; into the house I had carried a club hammer and cold chisel plus a small packet of ready mixed sand and cement. Shaking myself out of my reverie, I went into the garage via the connecting door from the utility room and set to work.

It proved more difficult to remove the bricks that I had cemented in place to conceal the gun’s hiding place than it had been to originally remove them, but at last it was done, the bricks were back in place and I could leave, taking the weapon and my tools with me.

It had been my original intention to drive back to Helen’s place via Newark Lane which after a mile or so from my house crossed the River Wey by means of a bridge. At that point there was a footpath running westwards along the river’s southern bank and I planned to walk along it until I found a secluded spot, whereupon the unwelcome pistol and its accompanying bits and pieces would be consigned to a watery grave.

It’s true what they say about the best laid plans of men ganging oft agley! As I reached the bridge I found several cars pulled off into the verge with no space left for an additional vehicle so I had to drive over the bridge instead of stopping short of it, and as I did so I saw several men on the southern bank, all busily fishing. Waking past them was out of the question, even if I could have found somewhere to stop the car –

driving beyond the bridge then walking back to it, carrying a package, passing the men and returning later 43

without the package would look odd in the extreme, so I kept driving, racking my brain to come up with a Plan B.

It was as I drove along, still a few miles away from Helen’s, that I changed my mind. A picture of my empty, violated, house formed in my mind. Sonia and I had been happy there, very happy there, and the man in the mask had taken that happiness away from us. I was as certain as I could be that it was Peter Williamson who had murdered Sonia. I was as certain as I could be that it was Peter Williamson who had come within a whisker of murdering me. Given the total lack of evidence, I was as certain as I could be that Peter Williamson was going to get away with both crimes.

Somehow, I told myself, even if the law failed to punish Williamson for what he had done, I would.

Somehow I would track him down and make him pay – and I decided that my resolve meant that it would make good sense to retain granddad’s pistol. Who knows if it might prove to be needed at some stage?

My immediate need however, was for a way of concealing it until it might be needed. Taking it into Helen’s house was totally out of the question, so, at least for the time being, it would have to remain in the car, but hidden from casual discovery.

I stopped the car in a lay-by whilst I thought things through. My car is a Honda CR-V, a quite big 4x4, and I looked around the interior with a more intense scrutiny than I had ever subjected it to before. Despite the vehicle’s size and various nooks and crannies, there was nowhere that could be seen as remotely resembling a safe hiding place for the gun.

Then I realised I was looking in the wrong place. On the passenger seat beside me was my briefcase. It had been a present from Sonia and was quite upmarket, solidly constructed with high quality locks – and those locks were combination locks, although I had never bothered to use them as such. Now, however, things had changed and I set up combinations for the locks – a different one for each. Once done, I simply put the pistol in the case and locked it, satisfied that it was the safest solution that I could come up with, and far better than trying to conceal it within the car, with the horrific scenario of the car being stolen and the weapon found.

When I got to Helen’s the case came with me into my bedroom where I placed it on top of the wardrobe and heaved a sigh of relief.

I was not only selling my house – I was also buying a new place, a flat in Guildford and it was only three weeks later that I left Helen, John and Elizabeth to enjoy their home without me underfoot and moved into my new abode.

**********************************

Hector Ross pushed open the gate to his parent’s front garden and limped up the short path to their front door. At least, he reflected, he was no longer using those bloody walking sticks. At least he was walking like a man again, not like a bloody cripple. It had been a long road back since that roadside bomb in Afghanistan had come so close to taking his leg off for ever. It was, he had been told many times, nothing short of a miracle that the surgeons had managed to save his leg. It was a miracle for which he would be forever grateful, but he was getting bored of being an invalid and the fact that the limp had virtually disappeared –

when he really put his mind to it – had at last persuaded the doctors that he could return to duty in the fairly near future. For the moment, however, they had insisted on a month’s leave and then a further medical examination before his return could be agreed. For Sergeant Ross of the Royal Regiment of Scotland the return couldn’t come soon enough. It had been nearly six months of inaction and his Commanding Officer, in his recent visit, had assured Hector that the battalion wanted him back as soon as he was passed fit. The black days when he had thought that his Army career was over were now thankfully behind him.

He pressed the bell, and moments later the door was thrown open by his mother who enveloped him in a bear hug – not easy, given that Ross was six feet three and sixteen stones and his mother five feet two and under eight.

“Come you in, Hector, come you in!”

She ushered him into the sitting room where his father also greeted him joyously.

Seated at last, he gratefully accepted a cup of tea – it had been a long journey from the Army’s rehabilitation centre at Headley Court in Surrey to his parents’ home in Manchester and the tea, and the comfortable armchair, were equally welcome.

“So, what’s the latest?” his father enquired.

“Good news, dad. A month’s convalescence leave, then a final medical and I’ll be declared fit to return to duty.”

“Does that mean back to Afghanistan?” asked his mother, worry beginning to cloud her face.

“No, the Army’s well out of that hell hole apart from a few poor buggers still stuck out there trying to help train the Afghans – a thankless task if ever there was one. But never mind me – how are you two keeping?

And how’s Morag?”

44

He instantly caught the worried look that passed between his two parents.

“What’s up?”

“We haven’t heard from Morag for some two months now. That Peter of hers phoned saying that she had walked out on him and asking if we knew where she was – but we didn’t, and still don’t.”

“Why didn’t you let me know?”

“Well, with you recovering from that wound and everything, we thought that you had enough on your plate to be going on with, and we did hope that she would be in touch – but like I say, it’s been two months now.

She was never very good at keeping in touch, but she used to ring for a chat every two or three weeks or so –

but to be honest, love, I’m very worried about her.”

“Have you been to the police?”

“Peter did but they weren’t any real help – you know what it’s like. Morag’s a grown woman so, unless they think that a crime has been committed, they’re not really all that bothered.”

Ross turned things over in his mind. Morag had left home when her parents decided to move down south from Falkirk to Manchester nearly ten years earlier. The move had been prompted by their father’s redundancy when the engineering company for which he had worked had gone bust but he had been lucky enough to land a similar job almost at once – the drawback being the need to relocate themselves. Ross himself was already in the Army, so the move had not affected him; Morag, just past her twentieth birthday and already sharing a flat with two other girls, had opted to stay in Falkirk. She had taken up with Peter Williamson a couple of years or so back; Ross had never actually met the man, although he had seen photos of him. He wondered uneasily just what might have happened to his sister.

“Did you get in touch with the police?”

It was his father who answered.

“Yes, I spoke to them after we hadn’t heard from Morag about ten days or so after Peter got in touch with us.

They contacted the Scottish police – there’s a missing person’s file on Morag up there, but no action has been taken to try and find her. As far as the police are concerned, Morag’s a grown woman and if she doesn’t want to get in touch with anybody then that’s her decision.”

Ross was less than happy at what he was being told; for some reason he had a very bad feeling about his sister’s disappearance. He knew full well that she wasn’t the clinging type – wouldn’t have been on the phone to her ma every day or anything, and his own contact with her had been limited to the occasional E-mail back and forth, but to cut herself off completely? No, that just didn’t seem right. Perhaps, he thought to himself, it might be worth making a visit to Peter Williamson and try and get some more information out of the man.

It took Hector a couple of days to re-establish a means of retuning mentally to the ambiance of his parents’

home and bring them, and himself, fully up to speed about family happenings and return his thinking to what might have happened to his sister. Finally, he determined that he could not simply sit back and do nothing –

it simply wasn’t within his nature. He told his parents what he had decided and wasn’t surprised that they fully agreed with his feelings.

****************************

DI Sinclair was furious.

“I cannot believe it,” he snarled, “what the hell was the sheriff thinking about giving Williamson bail? The man is laughing at us and if he decides to do a runner, he now has the opportunity.”

“Should we put him under surveillance, George?” Fraser suggested. Sinclair shook his head.

“For how long? It’ll be weeks, probably months, before he comes to trial. Simply can’t justify that sort of expense, I’m afraid, Hugh. Ah well, I suppose we’ll just have to make the best of it – at least that bloody sheriff stipulated that he has to report to the nick daily, so he’ll only get twenty-four hours start if he does decide to go walkabout.”

The two policemen tried to turn their attention to other matters, but their resentment against the soft treatment of Williamson was still simmering.

“How are we going to move on over the girl, George? I’m sure as can be that she’s dead and he did it.”

“Me too, but without a body….”

“Yeah, I know. Trouble is – twenty minutes’ drive out of town and there are an infinite number of places to hide a body, and most of them probably never going to be discovered.”

His superior shrugged helplessly.

“We’ll just have to do the best we can over the fraud charge and hope against hope that we get some sort of a lucky break about the girl.”

**********************************

45

Hector Ross got off the Glasgow to Falkirk bus in the early evening. He had thought of hiring a car for the drive to Scotland – he had disposed of his own vehicle when the injury to his left leg made driving a car with a manual gearbox impractical at least in the short to medium term – but decided that effectively sitting still, even if driving an automatic, for two hundred and thirty miles would not be good for his still recovering limb. Instead he had travelled by train from Manchester to Glasgow, then taken the bus to Falkirk.

His next steps were to pick up the hire car that he arranged over the telephone being setting off, and to book into his hotel, again pre-arranged over the phone the previous day. The Rosebank Premier Inn was ideal for his purpose and, as the adverts promised, he enjoyed a good night’s sleep before starting his quest in earnest the following morning.

He had obtained Williamson’s address from the electoral roll and at just before nine o’clock that morning he had the man’s flat in view. He had thought long and hard about how he would approach Williamson, from trying to obtain the man’s sympathy to a more direct approach of threatening to beat the truth out of him, and he was still undecided,

He got out of the car, locked it, and crossed the road to where Williamson’s flat was located on the ground floor of the four storey block, and entered, via the door to the street, into a small lobby. To his left was a staircase and lift to the upper storeys, to his right was Williamson’s front door. He rang the bell.

At the sound of the bell Williamson went to the door and opened it, to find himself facing a man of about his own age but considerably bigger than himself. The man looked at him.

“Mr. Williamson? Mr. Peter Williamson?”

Williamson nodded his head.

“Yes, that’s right.”

To Williamson’s surprise, the man placed one large hand in the middle of his chest and pushed him, none too gently, backwards, stepping in through the door and kicking it closed behind him as he did so.

“What’s going on?” Williamson demanded.

“I’m Hector Ross, Peter – and I want to know what has happened to my sister Morag.”

Williamson continued to back away until there was clear space between the two of them and indicated the door to the lounge, having rapidly come to the conclusion that discretion was the better part of valour. He knew from Morag that her brother was a soldier and not some khaki clad backroom boy but a combat infantryman and Williamson had decided that Ross was not a man to cross.

“Come and sit in here – I’ll tell you all that I know.”

Ross followed him into the lounge but as Williamson sank into an easy chair his unwanted visitor remained standing, towering over him. He looked up nervously at the soldier.

“Look, all I know is that she left, as I thought, to go to work on the Monday morning but never got there and there has been no sign of her since. She took some clothes and her passport and things, and I informed the police that she had gone missing, but they weren’t very interested. People go missing all the time and if they’re adults and there’s no sign of any crime having been committed, as far as the cops are concerned –

that’s it.”

Ross glared down at the man, wondering how much of what he was being told could be believed.

“She just walked out – no reason – after you’d been together for what? Three years or so?”

Williamson looked discomforted.

“Well, truth to tell, things hadn’t been too good for a while – I’d been on benefits and the sods went and stopped them, so Morag was the only one bringing in money and she was getting a bit fed up about it. We didn’t have any big rows or anything and I was looking around, but I think she didn’t believe that I was really trying – although swear to God I was – and that was why she went. Look, if she gets in touch with you, please tell her I want her back.”

Ross continued to glare.

“So, if you can’t sponge off Morag any more, what do you do for money?”

Williamson shook his head ruefully.

“That’s what’s so ironic – within days of Morag leaving me, I managed to land a job. I collect and deliver cars for a big local garage, Munro Motors. The pay isn’t marvellous, but it’s more than I was getting on benefits and more than Morag earned. If only she hadn’t walked out like that, I’m sure that things would have sorted themselves out.”

Ross was in a quandary. He instinctively mistrusted Williamson, but he had no way of demolishing the story that the man was feeding to him. He was about to begin some more aggressive questioning when the doorbell rang.

46

******************

It had taken me an age to make up my mind, but at last I had done so. Williamson, the man who had, I was convinced, murdered Sonia and so very nearly murdered me, looked to be untouchable by the law. I could well understand why – there was no credible evidence linking him to the crimes. No DNA, no fingerprints, nothing – only the circumstantial evidence that it was possible that he could have made the necessary journey from Falkirk to Surrey, but nothing to prove that he actually had.

I had at last come to the conclusion that I wanted to meet him face to face – to look into his eyes, eyes that I was sure were those of a killer. The man was potentially very dangerous, and I saw no reason to allow him any opportunity of doing me further harm, so I would be accompanied by a friend, a friend roughly eight inches long and weighing a tad over two pounds. I was taking granddad’s Browning pistol with me, something which would surely trump any weaponry that Williamson might have available to him. It had come into my possession with the needed ammunition to transform it from an inanimate piece of metal into a lethal weapon and before setting off I loaded ten rounds into the magazine. The pistol had a maximum capacity of thirteen rounds, but in view of its age and the possibility of the magazine spring being less strong than when it had first been issued, I didn’t want to chance straining it – and if I needed more than ten rounds something would surely have gone horribly, horribly wrong. Just in case the magazine did give trouble, the gun had been accompanied by a second magazine, which I also loaded, but this time with even fewer rounds

– just six. With the availability of the two magazines I was surely justified it believing that I was as well prepared as it was possible for me to be.

I loaded an overnight bag into my C-Max and drove off north, having first booked a room for the night in an hotel in Falkirk, the pistol and the spare magazine hidden under the passenger seat.

It was a long journey, well over four hundred miles, and I was glad to finally pull up in the car park of the Rosebank Premier Inn just outside Falkirk town centre and walk into the lobby, with the Browning now buried in the depths of my bag. There was someone already booking in, a big man perhaps six feet three or four tall and heavily built, with dark, almost black, hair cut in a short buzz cut style. Somehow he had an air of ‘Army’ about him, although if pressed I could not have told you why.

I had discovered Williamson’s address from a perusal of the electoral roll and had entered that address into my sat-nav, so after an hour or so of relaxation, I got back into my car and reconnoitred. I found out that Williamson lived in a flat, and as his address was Flat One in the block, he was presumably on the ground floor.

Parking the car in the next street, I walked past the block of flats; the door off the street was glass, giving a good view of a small lobby with a staircase and lift to one side and the front door of a flat, almost certainly that inhabited by my quarry, on the other. Satisfied with my reconnaissance, I drove back to the hotel and after a light dinner, I retired for the night.

Sleep did not come easily as my mind churned over possible scenarios for the morrow, but at last I dropped off and woke the next morning with my resolve reinforced by now being so close to the man I had cause to hate.

I parked my car around the corner from Williamson’s flat and walked the rest of the way. The door off the street just pushed open – no security measures – and I crossed the small lobby and rang the bell of flat number one which, according to the electoral roll, was where Peter Williamson lived. As I did so, I dropped my right hand to the small of my back where the Browning was tucked into the waistband of my trousers, wrapping my fingers around the gun’s reassuring bulk.

********************

At the sound of the bell Williamson was on his feet; he was nearer to the door than was Ross and, although the big man followed him, It was Williamson who was first to the front door which he pulled open.

*********************

Up until that moment I had accepted that there might be a slight chance – a very slight chance – that Williamson had not murdered Sonia and almost murdered me. His reaction to seeing me at his door banished that chance for ever. He took a half pace back before speaking.

“Yes, what can I do for you?”

It was what anyone might have said to a stranger who came to their door – but the words came too late.

Williamson’s eyes had already betrayed him. He knew perfectly well who I was and his eyes showed not only recognition but also fear. The expression was only fleeting – the man was a good actor – but it was there.

I stepped forward, my right hand still behind my back, my fingers still curled round the butt of the Browning, but then I realised that there was another man standing a few feet behind Williamson. To my surprise, it was the big man who had booked into my hotel immediately in front of me the previous night. Anything that I 47

might have hoped to achieve with Williamson – I had hoped to somehow force a confession out of him –

went out of the window. There was no way I could do anything with a witness present – and if the big man was an ally of Williamson there was the possibility that I was in danger from the pair of them unless I produced the Browning, something that I was extremely loath to do.

However, to my surprise the big man pushed past first Williamson, then myself, and as he did so Williamson quickly slammed the door shut before I could stop him.

We looked at each other, then at the closed door, then back at each other. Clearly neither of us knew the other, nor what interest we had in Williamson. My original assumption that the stranger was a friend of Williamson now seemed wide of the mark, and on an impulse, I let go of the Browning and proffered my hand.

“I’m Jamie MacKenzie.” I said. After a moment’s hesitation the big man shook my hand.

“Hector Ross.”

I wondered if I was about to make a mistake, but pressed on regardless.

“Look, I don’t know if you are a friend of Peter Williamson…” I got no further before the sort of reply for which I was hoping was forthcoming.

“No way – in fact I left because I thought that you were a friend of his.”

“It looks as though we have something in common – neither of us is a friend of Williamson. Look, do you fancy a cup of coffee? It might help both of us to compare notes.”

************************

Having hurriedly shut the door on his two unwelcome visitors, Williamson leant against it, breathing heavily, trying to fight off a rising sense of panic. Even since he had discovered that he had failed to kill MacKenzie, he had dreaded the possibility of coming face to face with the man. One look into MacKenzie’s eyes had convinced Williamson that the man knew – and it wasn’t only knowledge that he had seen in the other man’s eyes – there was also pure, unadulterated hatred. He shuddered to think what might have happened if Morag’s brother hadn’t been there. Clearly they hadn’t known each other and it looked as each had thought the presence of the other prevented them from taking any sort of action. Of the two he supposed that he ought to be more scared of that big fucker of a soldier, but the hatred he had seen in MacKenzie’s eyes more than made up for his lesser size – and in any case, even MacKenzie was a good bit taller and heavier than himself.

What to do? If Ross and MacKenzie were to get together then he was surely in trouble – staying in the flat was a definite no-no. Two problems: the terms of his bail required him to report to Falkirk police station every morning at ten – and it had been made very plain to him that to miss reporting just once would immediately see him arrested and held in custody until his trial would be held – which could be months in the future. Even more to the point – where could he go? He had no bolt hole prepared – how could he have foreseen the need for one in such a manner? If he tried to run he would have the police after him. If he stayed put – well, given what he had seen in MacKenzie’s eyes, he wouldn’t put anything past the man, even murder. Not for the first time, he bitterly regretted allowing the blind fury that he had felt against MacKenzie for the loss of his money, money that he had schemed and worked so hard to obtain, to lead him to attacking the man and his wife. Even more he regretted not having killed the man as well as the woman, but too late now to cry over spilt milk.

He pondered his options. In theory, the police had taken his passport, but he had outwitted them, claiming that it was long lost, a tale which had some semblance of credibility in that apart from visiting retired lieutenant-colonel MacKenzie, he hadn’t left the UK in years – and that visit hadn’t resulted in any entry on the passport, as was usual for travel within the EU. The passport was in date, and although its number would have been given to the various port authorities in Britain, it was extremely unlikely that any French immigration officer would have it. More problematic was his money situation; once he left Falkirk and the Munro’s Motors work, his situation would quickly become dire, as he no longer had access to Morag’s account. On the other hand, he was reasonably fluent in French and had actually lived in France for four months during his gap year before going to university. Whilst there he had actually worked – for one of the few occasions in his life - as a tour guide for a Paris firm specialising in coach tours for British and American holiday makers where his English and rapidly improving French had been priceless attributes, and he wondered if he might be able to land such a job again, but then he remembered the number of times the job had brought him into contact with French officialdom – something that he scarcely contemplate in his present position. No, if he was to get away he would have to think of something else.

He even began to wonder if he wouldn’t be better off in custody, safe from Ross and MacKenzie and any form of revenge that they might be planning, but the thought of being locked up only appealed for a moment, to be replaced by a desire to somehow escape from all his problems. The thought of France continued to nag 48

at him, but he had no more idea as to how he would support himself there than anywhere else in the UK once he lost his income from Munro’s Motors. However, the first thing to do was to get away from the flat before Ross and MacKenzie could compare notes and make common cause against him. It was still a bit before ten; if he hurried, he could report to the police station and thus give himself a twenty-four hour window before the police started to look for him.

One of the advantages of having the ground floor flat was that it had a back door leading into the small car park behind the block. The car park was too small for all the residents’ cars at the same time, but as luck would have it, his car was parked there. Stuffing some clothes into a bag, and making sure that he had his passport and all his bank cards and cheque book, he threw everything into the boot of his Vectra and drove hurriedly away.

********************

Hector Ross agreed to my idea of a coffee and a few minutes later we were seated opposite one another in a small café only a hundred yards or so from Williamson’s flat. I studied my companion closely. He was a big man, heavily built, but without the slightest trace of surplus fat about him.

“So,” I started, “what do you have against Peter Williamson?”

He frowned, the frown lending an additional air of menace to a face that clearly belonged to somebody that it would not be a good idea to get on the wrong side of.

“My sister lived with him – they got together about three years ago. I knew about it, of course, but I’d never met the man before today – I’m in the Army and we’re based at Fort George in Inverness, but we’ve been overseas a lot on the last few years so apart from an occasional letter or phone call, I haven’t actually seen Morag since she got together with Williamson. Our parents live down south in Manchester and I’ve spent what leave I have had of late with them – and for the last six months I’ve been recovering from a wound I picked up in Afghanistan, so it wasn’t until I visited my folks a few days ago that I leant that Morag had disappeared. Williamson swears that she just walked out on him, but I don’t believe him. I can understand her leaving, but I can’t understand her not getting in touch with our parents. I think something has happened to her, and that Williamson is the cause. But what about you?”

“Williamson killed my wife and came within an inch or so of killing me as well.”

Ross took my news in his stride; no exclamations of shock and horror, just an increased air of concentration.

“What happened?”

I explained everything, from the discovery that Williamson had been cheating my grandfather and even his own mother, right up to the present day. The only thing that I left out was the presence of the Browning, which was currently digging uncomfortably into the small of my back.

“The problem is that the police have absolutely no evidence, not a scrap. They’ve checked that Williamson could have got down to Surrey, attacked Sonia and myself, and got back up here within the timeframe available to him, but knowing that he could have done it isn’t good enough. I’m convinced, however.

Nobody else had any motive for attacking us and when I looked into his eyes I just knew, I absolutely knew that he was the man. He recognised me and seeing me there frightened him – and we’ve never met before.

The only previous time that I’ve been in Falkirk at all was when Sonia and I visited his mother and discovered that she had played no part in his fraud, and we were only in the town for a couple of hours or so.”

“So what happens now?”

I shrugged my shoulders in frustration.

“I don’t know. I knocked on his door intending to beat the truth out of him if I had to, but seeing you there with him threw me. I thought that you were a friend of his, and obviously there was no way that I could have tackled the two of you.”

Ross shook his head ruefully.

“And I thought that you were a friend of his who had arrived at the worst possible moment for me, the best for him – I also intended to beat the truth out of him if I had to. Williamson is one lucky bugger.”

Ross was right in what he said; Williamson really was one very, very lucky bugger. Had the two of us but known about each other, things by now would have been very different – but that’s life.

“One thing is for sure,” I said, “No way is he going to answer his door to us again. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he has legged it off to somewhere already.”

************

Once he had left the police station after reporting in, Williamson pointed the Vectra’s bonnet north and simply drove. Had he been asked, he could have come up with no reasoned argument for his choice of direction other than that it offered the quickest opportunity to get well away from Falkirk and his problems 49

there, but as he drove, the glimmerings of a plan started to form in his mind. He joined the M9 and followed it until, just south of Dunblane of shooting tragedy notoriety, it became the A9, but instead of following it towards Gleneagles and Perth, he swung left at the junction with the A84 which took him north-west towards the wild country beyond Loch Earn. Surely somewhere in that virtually deserted countryside he could find somewhere to hide whilst he planned a more permanent escape from the law and from Ross and MacKenzie?

He followed it until it became subsumed by the A85, then in turn swung north-east off that road and drove along the A827 as it followed the north bank of Loch Tay. It must have been about then that a long forgotten memory resurfaced. He remembered how, when he was about twelve or thirteen, he had gone on holiday with his parents. His father had recently purchased a caravan and they had toured the area around Loch Rannoch and he remembered his father expressing dissatisfaction with the way that bed and breakfast houses seemed to be proliferating in the area and, over the muted protests of his mother and himself, headed them ever further north. Once north of Ullapool, his father had been forever pointing out the remnants of crofts, abandoned in the clearance of the Highlands back long before any of them were born, even the most recent well over a hundred years earlier.

The visit had stayed buried within Williamson’s mind until just two years earlier he had remembered the area and he and Morag had spent a week in a small chalet, one of a group of such well off the road and he remembered that they had only opened in the spring and summer. It was his hope that at this time of year they would be uninhabited and that he could break into one and use it as a temporary refuge whilst he considered his future options.

It was growing dark and, realising that he could scarcely expect to search for the track to the chalets other than in daylight, he pulled off the road and settled down for an uncomfortable, but safe, night of sleeping in his vehicle.

He woke feeling cold and cramped and got out of the car to walk around to restore some suppleness in his body and to relieve himself. On his journey north he had stopped at a service station come small general store where he had filled the Vectra’s tank and also purchased some basic rations and bottled water, so he made a meagre breakfast of a bread roll and water before driving off to resume his search for sanctuary.

It was a dull day, with a gentle drizzle necessitating the use of the windscreen wipers and as a result he nearly missing the turning off to the chalets, but spotted it just in time.

From the road the chalets were hidden by a rise in the ground, round which the track skirted to finally reveal his destination. He stopped the car a good hundred yards away from the site and surveyed it anxiously. It was unchanged from his previous visit; four wooden chalets grouped in a cluster, with behind them a stone built cottage. Thankfully, ten minutes of patient surveillance showed no sign of life and he drove cautiously up the cottage, realising that its stone structure should offer better protection from the cold of a Highland winter than the more flimsy chalets.

From his visit with Morag he remembered that during the season the owners of the chalets, a married couple in their sixties, had lived in the cottage so as to be on hand for any problems that their tenants might encounter, but that during the off-season they retreated to their house in Ullapool, nearly one hundred and fifty miles to the south and only visited their cottage a few times during the winter to check that all was well.

Hopefully, no such visit would coincide with his unauthorised stay in the cottage.

Gaining entry was simple; the back door was secured by a hasp and padlock and it was simplicity itself to unscrew the fitting and enter the house without even casing any damage.

To his pleasant surprise he found that the electricity was turned on to provide power to a large space heater which, although turned down to its minimum level, was clearly intended to prevent the house from becoming damp over the winter.

He settled in and made himself at home whilst he reviewed his predicament. Before leaving Falkirk he had withdrawn the maximum daily limit – two hundred and fifty pounds – from both his debit and credit cards.

Added to the three hundred pounds in cash that he already had, he now had eight hundred pounds in cash with the knowledge that he dare not use his cards again anywhere near his hiding place or he would leave a trail for the police to follow.

*********************

We expected it to be a fruitless attempt, but Ross and I returned to Williamson’s flat anyway. We knocked on his door but there was no reply. Wondering whether he was inside but just not answering, or if he gone away to escape us, we contemplated our next move. Trying to force an entry was out of the question; the door from the lobby to the street was of glass, exposing us to the view of anyone passing by, but before we 50

could come to any conclusion, the lift hissed to stop, its door opened, and a young woman emerged. She saw us clearly trying to attract Williamson’s attention and spoke.

“If you’re looking for Peter, I’m afraid that you have just missed him. I saw him drive away about fifteen minutes ago.”

We thanked her and left, Ross holding the lobby door open for her as we did so.

We returned to the café for a second coffee, dispirited that sheer bad luck – or from Williamson’s point of view, sheer good luck, had denied us our quarry and a chance to question him.

We returned to the café that we had visited previously for a second cup of coffee and an examination of any possible courses of action open to us, but unless Williamson returned to his flat – and we shared the view that he would almost certainly stay well clear for a while in the hope – not unreasonable – that we would give up and leave the area.

Reluctantly agreeing that we would be wasting our time hanging around Falkirk, we exchanged telephone numbers and addresses and promised to let each other know if we ever heard of Williamson’s whereabouts, although I think that we were both pessimistic of any such a happening.

*************

Iain MacDonald was a careful man, a man whose working life as a consultant ophthalmic surgeon at Glasgow’s prestigious Western Hospital was centred on precise, careful decisions and their implementation.

He carried those attributes into his days away from the hospital and much appreciated the opportunity to relax away from work with pastimes which demanded similar, but different, care and precision.

His wife was of a similar outlook on life and leisure – a solicitor specialising in company law, like her husband, Fiona MacDonald enjoying similar off-duty pastimes. The two of them were keen members of the sailing club based at Banton Loch, not far outside Falkirk where they lived in a large detached Victorian four bedroom house on the outskirts of the town which Iain had inherited from his grandmother on her death some seven years previous.

They sailed their fifteen foot dinghy on the loch most weekends in the summer, less frequently in the winter, but this particular Saturday they weren’t in their own dinghy, but were passengers in a rowing boat being propelled by their friend and fellow club member John Ferris. This was because they were off on a winter’s break in just over a week, a week that would be spent in the waters around Barbados where they would indulge in their second water dependent hobby – scuba diving. They were a careful couple and far preferred to take, and rely upon, their own equipment rather than hire on the island when they got there. Today they were checking out that equipment, which had not been used for nearly a year and whilst the cold loch waters could be scarcely more different from those they would be enjoying in the Caribbean, it was, after all, water, and it gave just the same opportunity to ensure that all their equipment was fault free.

Ferris rested on his oars and the boat glided to a halt, bobbing gently as the slight breeze ruffled the loch’s surface.

“Thanks, John, See you in a bit” So saying MacDonald, followed almost instantly by his wife, flopped backwards into the water and disappeared from sight.

They swam slowly down, using head band mounted torches to light their progress in the dark loch waters, for the day above the surface was grey and miserable, a far cry from the sunshine that they expected to enjoy in the West Indies. Satisfied that the equipment was in fine order MacDonald swan deeper to ensure that the increased water pressure at depth didn’t reveal any fault not apparent nearer to the surface, and as he neared the loch bottom, the beam of light from his torch reflected on something that looked out of place.

As he got closer the beam of his torch revealed something about five or five and a half long, clearly wrapped in some sort of plastic. Whatever it was, it was irregular in shape and, worryingly, it was weighed down by what looked like a car jack and three large plastic milk bottles, all tied to the object with rope. Already he was beginning to formulate an idea of what had been wrapped in the plastic and dropped into the waters of the loch, weighed down to keep it below the surface. He wondered whether to investigate further, but decided against it – if the object was what he thought it was, this was a matter for the police.

First things first. Fiona was swimming a few yards away, a little nearer to the surface than himself and he indicated to her that they were to return to the surface and as they did so he ensured that they remained as near as possible vertically above his find. On his left wrist there was a diver’s compass and once he broke surface he took a careful bearing on the club house and another, roughly at right angles to the first on a prominent tree on the water’s edge roughly three hundred yards away. Using those bearing, which he made sure that he had memorised and double checked, it would be easy to relocate the sunken object without having to scout a large area of the loch.

Back in the boat he explained his worrying find to his wife and to Ferris, then once ashore and changed out of his wet suit he phoned the police.

51

Things were about to change.

**********************

The news of MacDonald’s find, and the possibility that it might be something needing investigation, came first to the desk sergeant at Falkirk police station. Impressed by the clarity and competence f MacDonald’s call, he passed the news on to his immediate superior, Inspector Kenneth Moran, who after a brief pause for thought, decided that the report was worthy of investigation. The upshot was that the very next day Moran supervised a pair of police divers, two other uniformed officers, and a police doctor who between them, guided by MacDonald’s compass readings and the presence of the man himself, were soon looking at the plastic wrapped object that the divers had received from the depths of the loch.

All too soon the ‘parcel’ was unwrapped and its tragic contents displayed, the naked body of a female.

Clearly, Moran now had a suspicious death on his hands, a matter that would normally fall within the ambit of the CID, so he called DI George Sinclair. The two men knew each other well, and in view of the fact that there was no crime scene as such – unless one wished to regard the bottom of the loch as such, and the fact that the doctor expressed the opinion that the dead woman had been in the water for at least several weeks, and that there were no means of identification on or with the body, Sinclair and Moran agreed that the body be transported to the morgue for a post mortem examination.

It was two days later that Sinclair had the full post mortem report. As near as the pathologist could ascertain, the body was that of a young woman who had been dead between six and twelve weeks. Cause of death had been a single blow to the back of the skill from an item which had left a roughly triangular wound some four centimetres across. The pathologist stated that, in her opinion, the wound could have been cause equally probably by the victim being struck from behind or by falling heavily against an item such as the corner of a table.

Sinclair had already received the news that fingerprints – taken from the body with considerable difficulty –

and a DNS sample had no match on the database, so it was a question of trawling through missing persons reports in the hope of identifying the young woman who had so callously been disposed of in the cold waters of the loch. There had been thirteen young women in the right age group – mid-twenties to mid-thirties -

reported missing in Scotland in the appropriate time scale. Thankfully, six of them had already turned up safe and sound after family fallings out had been reconciled. The other seven were the subject of intensive follows up by his team.

It was Hugh Fraser who made the intuitive leap that saved a lot of donkey work. He came into Sinclair’s office with an expression of determination written large on his face.

“George, I reckon that we have found Morag Ross! Remember how we talked to her ex-partner, Peter Williamson? The creep who’d make a corkscrew look straight? Well, I’ve just heard that he’s missed reporting as required under his bail conditions – coincidence, or what?”

Sinclair nodded his head in agreement with his sergeant’s thinking.

“Nice one, Hugh – let’s get a DNA sample from the family – they stay down in Manchester, don’t they?”

“That’s right – I’ll get on the blower to the locals right away.”

As a result of Fraser’s phone call, a Manchester police officer called on the Ross family and took DNA samples from all three members – for Hector was still on leave and staying with his parents – and within twenty-four hours it was confirmed that the body in the loch was, indeed, that of Morag Ross and a full scale hunt for Peter Williamson was launched.

**********

I had just finished dinner – a ready meal of a singular lack of character – when the phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Jamie, it’s Hector Ross – they’ve found Morag. The bastard had dumped her in a loch and a scuba diver found her by chance.”

Neither of us had ever believed that Morag would be found alive, but even so the confirmation of her death was hard to accept.

“Hector, I’m so sorry – what happens now?”

“Apparently Jamieson has disappeared. The police are looking hard for him, but at the moment it appears that there is no sign of where he has run to.”

I wondered what to do. I was still on sick leave from school, although I would be returning to work after Christmas, but in the meantime my time was my own. I could hear the frustration in the big man’s voice, frustration that I shared for I had the unhappy belief that had we not visited Williamson he would not have run off – surely there was no way that he could have known that Morag’s body would be discovered just a view days after our abortive attempt at discovering the truth about Morag’s disappearance? Instead of moving things forward, we had effectively made things more difficult for the police.

“What are you going to do now?”

52

“I don’t know – me immediate reaction was to go up to Falkirk, but even if I do so – what can I achieve? I’ve no more idea where the sod might have gone than anybody else has.”

I could understand Hector’s reaction – what, indeed, could either of us achieve even if we hotfooted it up to Falkirk?

“I suppose that we can only leave it to the police and hope that they find him, wherever he is.”

************************

Williamson was in limbo. He had now been hidden away in the cottage for three days – this was the fourth –

and he was no further forward in coming up with a sensible plan to keep himself out of the clutches of the law and those of MacKenzie and Ross. As the electricity was on the cottage he had had no qualms about using it – including looking at television, basically the news to see if he featured in it.

It was time for the six o’clock news and he settled down to watch it – and what he saw filled him with horror. The presenter for Scotland Today, turning from the latest political idiocy, assumed a grave expression as she faced the camera.

“Police Scotland have today confirmed that the body of a woman found in Banton Loch three days ago is that of Morag Ross, aged twenty-nine, who disappeared from her Falkirk flat on the eleventh of July. Police Scotland are anxious to contact her partner, Peter Williamson, aged thirty-one, who disappeared from the same address four days ago. Mr. Williamson was last seen driving a dark blue Vauxhall Vectra estate, registration SP55FLC; would anybody who may have seen Mr. Williamson in the last four days, or have any information as to his current whereabouts, please contact Police Scotland at the number now showing on the screen”

To Willaimson’s mounting horror, the screen then displayed, side by side, pictures of himself and Morag, plus a view of a Vectra similar to his own, and with a telephone number across the bottom of the screen.

He sat in numbed disbelief, feeling, quite literally, physically sick. How on earth had she been found? More importantly, what should he do now?

His immediate concern was that he was running out of food. Indeed, he had intended the next day to drive to the nearest village, about twenty miles away, and stock up, but with his picture so recently on the TV news, dare he risk being seen and possibly recognised? His car was also now a liability due to the number having been broadcast.

There was also the question of the owners of the cottage. There was no telling when they might decide to come and check up on it – then what? He relived the moment when his rage had consumed him to the point of plunging his knife into the bodies of MacKenzie and his wife. Could he bring himself to do it again? In his heart he knew that if necessary, he could and would – but what if the owners were expected somewhere after the trip to the cottage and it was known where they had been headed? He would simply be making things worse for himself.

Reluctantly, he decided that he had to leave – and soon – but to go where? And what was he to do for money?

************************

Peter Williamson was not the only member of his family to see the news bulletin. His mother, Louise Williamson, also viewed it in horror, but it was a horror that had been anticipated. Earlier in the day she had been visited by DI Sinclair, accompanied in this instance by a female Detective Constable, Samantha Gordon, and after introducing themselves and accepting Louise’s offer of cups of tea, they had broken the news to her of the disappearance of her son and the death of his partner.

Louise absorbed the news slowly, unable at first to accept what she was being told. She shook her head in bewilderment.

“I can’t believe what you are telling me, Inspector. Peter and I have fallen out over his attempt to swindle that Mr. MacKenzie, but this – and Morag? To be honest, I never much liked the girl. She struck me as a little money grabber, not that Peter ever had very much to grab, but the two of them, in some ways, were well suited. Neither of them really wanted to work hard enough to make anything of themselves.”

She hesitated before continuing.

“There’s no chance of a mistake, is there? You really are sure that it is Morag that you have found?”

“I’m afraid so, Mrs. Williamson – we have had it confirmed by DNA sampling. There is no doubt at all.”

“And you are sure that Peter killed her and did away with her body?”

“There we cannot yet be categoric, but I’m afraid that it does seem by far the most likely scenario. Ever since Morag disappeared Peter has been using her bank account – or to be more accurate, one of her two bank accounts. We believe that he was trying to give the impression that Morag was still alive after the eleventh of July when she disappeared. and that he travelled to Glasgow once a week to give that impression by withdrawing money from a cash machine. In fact, he was arrested there and charged with the fraudulent use of Morag’s money and when he disappeared four days ago, he was in fact out on bail awaiting trial.”

53

Sinclair felt very sorry for the woman; clearly she had played no part in the criminal activity of her offspring and he spared telling her that Williamson was also by far the strongest – in fact the only – suspect for the murder of Sonia MacKenzie and the grievous wounding of her husband down in Surrey.

“As I’m sure that you can imagine, Mrs. Williamson, we are most anxious to apprehend Peter. I honestly believe that he may be a danger to other people, even perhaps to himself, and I think that it is vital that we find him as soon as possible. Do you have any idea where he might be? Do you know of any friends who may have taken him in?”

Louise shook her head.

“No, I’m sorry to say. Peter never made friends easily, and over the years he has become more and more of a loner – in fact since his father died in two thousand and twelve, I doubt that I have seen him more than half a dozen times and he has never mentioned any friends to me for years. From what I can gather from the little that he confided in me, he and Morag seemed very much an entity as it were, an entity not really needing to socialise much with other people.”

Sinclair was becoming depressed; he had hoped that Louise Williamson might have been able to provide leads, no matter how slight, to her son’s whereabouts, but that was obviously not to be the case. He had one last throw of the dice to play, however,

“Mrs. Williamson, it seems that when Peter disappeared four days ago, he headed north – we have CCTV

footage of him leaving Falkirk in that direction and he used his bank cards to draw out money that same day in Doune on the A84, a road which again would take him generally north. Do you know if there might be any reason for him to head in that direction?”

Louise shook her head mutely, then paused.

“You know, Inspector, when Peter was a child my husband bought a caravan and we toured the north of Scotland quite a lot. He must have been fifteen or even sixteen the last time he went up that way with us. I don’t know how much of it he would remember now….”

She stopped in mid-flow.

“I’ve just remembered something. The summer before last he and Morag went up that way on holiday – he actually told me about their proposed trip before they went, which rather surprised me at the time, both from the destination, for I always saw both of them as being very town centred people, and the fact that he bothered to tell me.”

“Do you know where the two of them stayed?”

She shook her head.

“I’m afraid not, except that I know that it was a self-catering chalet of some kind – he mentioned that he would probably do most of the cooking because Morag, in his words, could burn a boiled egg.”

Sinclair wondered at what he had just been told. Most holiday lets in the north would be closed at this time of year; was it possible that Williamson was holed up in such a place somewhere? If that was indeed the case, the task of finding him would be gargantuan; there were literally hundreds of possible locations north of Doune, where he could last be placed, and thousands of square miles. However, it was at least a lead of a sort, no matter how tenuous and would have to be followed up – after all, Williamson was, so far as Sinclair was concerned, a double murderer and it was only by chance and the lucky arrival of a postman, that he wasn’t a triple murderer. He could visualise the man preying on isolated farms for food, possibly meting out violence in the process. In effect, anywhere within the whole of the north of Scotland might be at risk. The thought of the manpower that would be needed – and the cost of it - made him shudder. Heaven knows what the bean counters would say – but the thought of doing nothing to apprehend a murderer just wasn’t on, no matter what happened at the next budget meeting.

He thanked Louse Williamson for her help and he and Samantha Gordon took their leave of a very anxious woman.

Back at the station he updated his immediate superior, DCI Joanna Gilchrist. A recent import from the Metropolitan force, she had quickly established herself as a competent, imaginative detective and was well liked both by her superiors and her subordinates – by no means a common achievement in Police Scotland.

She listened in mounting horror at the potential implications of trying to find and arrest Peter Williamson. As Sinclair finished his tale, she theatrically buried her face in her hands.

“Christ, George, I suppose we should be grateful that at least we can probably ignore anywhere south of Doune. Ah well, I’ll have to get the Chief Super in on this little beauty – I reckon he’ll want to go even higher to get the necessary manpower deployed. At this rate we might as well get every copper in Scotland on the case! Still – never mind the problems – well done to you and your people for getting this far, and if I get my hands on that fool of a bloody sheriff who gave Williamson bail, I’d shove his tin star up where the sun don’t shine!”

She lifted her face and grinned at Sinclair.

54

“Yeah, I know he doesn’t wear a star, tin or otherwise, but I like the thought!”

Sinclair shrugged helplessly.

“Only wish it was a bit more focussed, Jo..”

The DCI shrugged her shoulders in return.

“No, can’t be helped, George – after all, if it was easy they wouldn’t need the likes of us!”

True to her word, Joanna immediately sought out the Divisional Commander, Chief Superintendent James Ogilvy, who shared her dismay at the size of the task facing them, but, again like her, saw no alternative to launching one of Scotland’s biggest manhunts in recent years. By the end of the day every police officer north of Doune had been advised to keep a look out for Williamson, and local stations were told to organise checks of possible hiding places in their areas. As a task it was far easier said than done. Nowhere was there in existence a comprehensive list of every holiday let, disused building, hidden bothy, all the sort of places a fugitive might find and use.

One thing that she and Ogilvy discussed and agreed upon. As he was out on bail, and even bailed suspects have to live, which costs money, Williamson still had access to his bank account. Ogilvy’s immediate thought was to freeze the account, thus depriving the man of any money other than what he might have on him, but he came round to Joanna’s way of thinking – not freezing the account would, hopefully, result in Williamson accessing it – and when he did the fact, and the location, would be flagged up. It would be a help in tracking the man down.

************************

At much the same time, Williamson was planning his next move. His first concern was his car. Its details were common knowledge to any Tom, Dick or Harry who had watched the Scottish news on TV over the last twenty-four hours, abandoning it was out of the question. In this deserted area of the Highlands trying to escape on foot was out of the question. The days were too short, the weather too inclement – there was a good chance of dying from exposure on the hills and nowhere near to offer an alternative hiding place.

One thing that he could do, however, was to achieve a minor disguise of the Vectra. A hunt through the small shed beside the bungalow revealed a tin of gloss black paint and a suitable paintbrush and with them he set to work on the car’s number plates. Fifteen minutes careful brushwork and the car’s original registration, SP55FLC, had become SB58ELC. He had no idea if such a registration number actually existed and the change wouldn’t deceive the police if it was closely examined, or picked up by a number plate recognition camera – not that there were any such devices in this deserted area – but at more than a few yards distance it was a good enough disguise.

The next thing needed was somewhere else to hide out- if only he knew when, or even, the owners would next check on the property, he could plan accordingly, but that luxury was denied to him. Therefore, he had to leave his current location and find somewhere else. Reluctantly, he packed a sleeping bag, found in the house, and all the tinned and non-perishable foodstuffs the kitchen contained, into the car and drove away, still heading north.

The more he drove, the more worried he became. Up here there were scarcely any sheep to be seen, never mind people or other cars. To anyone in the area who saw him, he and the Vectra would stick out like a sore thumb. There was no cover, no welcoming forest within which he could hide, just miles and miles of rolling, heather clad hills. He was making a mistake, a bad mistake. His original intention of heading ever further north and ever further away from towns and villages made him too conspicuous by far. He coasted to the side of the road and thought furiously; what he was doing was stupid and he did a three point turn in the narrow road and retraced his tracks. His next concern was petrol; the Vectra’s tank was showing a bit less than half full – about a hundred and fifty miles worth if he drove carefully. Willy-nilly, he would have to find somewhere to fill up and risk being recognised. He was beginning to worry as he continued south with no sign of a petrol station – for somebody like Williamson, born and brought up in a town, it was a never ending surprise to see just how empty was so much of Scotland, but at last he found a filling station in the largish village of Lairg. He was about to use some of his dwindling cash to pay for the fuel when a thought struck him. There were two aspects of using his bank cards. Firstly, using them would tell the police where he was. Secondly, they might, in any case, have had his account frozen by the bank. However, the thought that was uppermost in his mind was the fact that he last used the cards in Doune, well to the south and west of his current location. If he now used them, it would indicate to the police that he was still headed north, whereas in fact the moment that he had completed the transaction he would be headed in the opposite direction.

As he drove through the village he saw the Bank of Scotland sign and, with his heart in his mouth, used the cashpoint. To his relief, the cashpoint was outside the building, set into the wall so that it could be accessed 55

at any time, day or night, which enabled Williamson to use it without being seen by anyone, and he withdrew another two hundred and fifty pounds against both of his cards, then drove sedately away.

.

He almost had a panic attack when, just two hundred yards down the road, he drove past a police office – the description that Police Scotland used for its smaller, rural presences. Somehow he resisted the temptation to put his foot down and exit the village like a bat out of hell – he daren’t draw attention to himself.

Surely, the locals wouldn’t already know that their most wanted fugitive was virtually only a stone’s throw away?

His heart beating furiously, he followed a sign out of the village to the local Costcutter convenience store where he filled the Vectra’s tank and paid with his debit card. The young woman at the till didn’t even really look at him, just handed over his receipt and returned her attention to the magazine she had been reading, a magazine which, according to the somewhat lurid cover, promised never before know ‘facts’ about the lives and loves of media celebrities.

Still worried about the possibility of the local police already being on his tail, he continued away from the village, following the minor road alongside the River Shin until it met the A839 which, whilst starting to swing south and east, would, according to his map, soon turn north again but after a few miles he was able to join the A837, then the A836, both roads taking him south and away from what the police would hopefully assume to be his flight to the north. .

He was in luck over the police reaction to his use of the cashpoints. It was nearly fifteen minutes before the message got through to PC Hamish Grant, the sole officer on duty in the office. The office car, containing the other two officers based in Lairg, Sergeant Willie Henderson and PC Karen Killick, was over five miles away investigating a complaint of criminal damage to a farmer’s barn. By the time Grant reached them on the radio, Williamson was well away, and although Henderson and Killick toured the immediate area as they headed back towards Lairg itself, it was a hopeless task.

***********

The moment that they entered their cottage, John and Elizabeth Craig were aware that something was not quite right. For a start, it was too warm. The big heater, situated in the hall so that it sent gentle heat throughout the whole building, was set higher than it needed to be to just provide enough warmth to prevent anything from freezing up during the winter. For that to work properly, all the internal doors were always left wide open when the house was empty; now, however, a couple of them were almost shut.

Cautiously, they made their way through the house, relieved to find nobody squatting in it, and also that no damage had been done. Additionally, valuable items – the television, the DVD recorder, the microwave, and the like, were still where they always had been.

On the other hand, every one of the tins of food left in the kitchen cupboard was gone, as was the sleeping bag that their grandson had left to save it having to be taken it back and forth when he and his parents visited.

When Williamson and Morag had stayed in one of the chalets, they had learnt from the Craigs that they lived in Ullapool, nearly one hundred and fifty miles to the south, and that information had guided Williamson in his decision to use the cottage, thinking that a three hundred mile round trip in winter was not something to be undertaken lightly by a couple of old age pensioners. Had he known that when they checked on the cottage and the chalets that they did so in the course of staying with their daughter, son-in-law and grandson, who lived only twenty miles away, he might have had second thoughts. He didn’t know, and he was lucky.

The Craigs came the check on the properties the very day after he had vacated the cottage.

In their tour through the cottage, the Craigs discovered something else that was missing – several Ordnance Survey maps of the areas south of them, down to the border with England. Maps for the areas north of them, however, had not been taken.

Ten minutes later the Craigs had reported the break-in to the police. The knowledge remained unused for twenty-four hours, but then, an officer remembering the all points call to look out for a fugitive believed to have been heading north, fell to wondering about the Craigs’ report.

It was three days since Williamson had left the cottage before Sinclair and Fraser were aware of the illegal use of the Craigs’ cottage. Within hours the cottage had been checked for fingerprints – and the fact that Williamson had definitely been there was firmly established. The same thought struck them both – it was Fraser who voiced it.

“If he’s supposed to be heading north – why did he only take maps that would be of use if he headed south?

OK, so he used his cards in Lairg – and nowhere since. Lairg is north of where he had previously used them, making it look as though he could be headed further north – but I’m sure that it’s a bluff – he’s turned south again.”

Sinclair nodded in agreement with his sergeant’s view.

56

“I’m sure that’s the truth of it, Hugh – he’s trying to fool us – and he’s not going to succeed. But where might he have gone? We know that he must have something like a thousand pounds in cash on him, but that won’t last him forever. I think that it is time to bring the forces in England up to speed – he may well have gone over the border by now and there’s been no cause to alert forces further south before now; at least if he uses his bank cards again we will know – doesn’t matter where he uses those cards, the bank will know within minutes and we’ll know right after.”

******************

By the time that the forces in England had been advised of Williamson’s flight from justice north of the border, the man himself was hiding out once again. Two days after leaving the cottage he had crossed south into England, avoiding major roads where, he knew full well, the erroneous number plates on the |Vectra would be spotted by number plate recognition camera in no time, he had instead used one minor road after another, a process which added miles to his journey, but an essential ploy if he was to avoid detection.

He had found what, at least for the time being, promised to be a safe haven.

The Moorland Mobile Home Park, a few miles outside Oldham, was ideal. Clearly deserted – although he had no way of knowing it, the small company running the park and several others through the Lancashire moors had gone bust the previous summer – it offered shelter from the elements and somewhere to leave the incriminating Vectra when he found an alternative means of transport. Not only would its false number plates give him away, it was virtually out of petrol and he had no intention of using his bank card to purchase more; also he needed to minimise the depletion of his cash reserve. He needed to steal a car, and to do so in such a manner that the theft would not immediately be linked to him and also offered some sort of period of grace before the theft was reported.

He rapidly discovered a problem with his new, temporary, abode – warmth. Or rather, the lack of it. Not surprisingly, as the place was clearly shut down at least for the winter, the electricity supply had been cut off

– the mobile homes were, by comparison with normal houses, poorly insulated and that first night saw him donning virtually every item of clothing that he had with him in a largely unsuccessful attempt to keep warm.

The homes also had electric cooking facilities – again useless to him. The only crumb of comfort was the discovery of a small camping stove fired by a little gas cylinder, so at least he was able to have a hot drink and heat up a can of soup purloined from the Craig’s cottage.

He was becoming increasingly desperate over his plight, and at a loss as to what to do next. Ideally, he needed to assume a new identity – but how? Popular fiction, whether in the printed page or on the screen, made such a task seem simple, but the more that he thought things over, the more difficult it seemed.

Then he had a brainwave.

*******************

Margaret Jenkins was in the middle of emptying the washing machine when she heard the front door bell ring. Giving a frustrated sigh, she straightened up, easing her back with her hands as she did so. Six and a half months pregnant, it seemed that an aching back was a constant presence, but something that she was stoically coping with. She made her way from the utility room to the door and opened it, to find herself face to face with a stranger, a man of around average height so that, with the advantage of being at the top of the two steps which led up to the door, she was slightly looking down at him. The man seemed surprised at her presence; she smiled at him.

“Hello can I help you?”

The man now looked confused.

“I’m sorry to bother you – I’m looking for Jamie MacKenzie.”

“Oh, he doesn’t live here any longer – we moved in a couple of months or so back.”

“Oh dear, I’m an ex-colleague – was in the area and I thought that I would pop in on the off chance. Did he leave a forwarding address by any chance?”

“Yes, he did – hang on a moment.”

Margaret turned away from the door to the small occasional table a few feet away and picked up the scribbling pad upon which Jamie MacKenzie had written down his new address and phone number. She tore off the top sheet, wrote down its information on the blank page beneath, and handed the loose sheet to the stranger.

“Thanks very much – and again, sorry to have bothered you.”

As the man turned away and walked to a Renault Megane parked in the street immediately outside her door, Margaret frowned dubiously; somehow, something didn’t seem right about him and she wondered if she should have given up MacKenzie’s address so readily. She reached for the phone.

*********************

The phone rang as I was just finishing marking the fourth form’s homework. Glad of the interruption, I answered it willingly.

57

“MacKenzie.”

“Jamie, it’s Margaret Jenkins.”

“Margaret, nice to hear from you – how are you and Sam?”

I had met the Jenkins after they had completed the purchase of my old house – they had very kindly brought round a couple of books that I had overlooked – they had somehow slipped down behind a radiator and I had missed seeing them. A little younger than myself, husband Sam was a solicitor, as was his wife, although with a different firm. In thanks for returning the books – which were of sentimental value, having been presents from Sonia – I had taken them out to dinner one evening, when I had learned that they were expecting their first child in the not too distant future. For a moment I wondered if they had found something else at the house, but her next words caught my attention.

“Jamie, a man came calling for you ten minutes or so ago – he didn’t know that you had moved. I gave him your address and phone number, but now that he has left, I feel a bit uneasy. Don’t know why, but something about him just didn’t seem quite right.”

I wondered who that caller might have been – all my circle of friends and acquaintances know of my new abode.

“Can you describe him for me, Margaret?”

She recited a quick rundown of the man’s build, appearance and clothing, and left me wondering uneasily just who he might be. The more that I thought about it, the more the description that Margaret gave me sounded like Peter Williamson. Admittedly, I had only seen him for a few moments when I had visited him at his flat in Arbroath, the visit that had been truncated by the presence of Hector Ross, but you don’t forget somebody who has tried to kill you and who has murdered your wife.

“Did you see if he had a car?”

“Yes, a silver car – I think that it was a Megane.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” I said grimly, “I’ll expect him to come and see me.”

“Do you know him, then?”

“I’m not sure, but from your description I think so.”

So, what to do? If he was coming straight to see me, he could arrive in a matter of minutes – no time to call the police and have them arrive – and would I be able to get them to act on such a flimsy premise? For the moment, I was on my own.

On my own, but forewarned is forearmed, and I was not an unsuspecting victim as Sonia and I had been the last time Williamson had come to my door.

It had been against my better judgement, against all aspects of common sense, that I had kept granddad’s pistol. Now I was glad that I had. I retrieved it from its hiding place; secreted in an old briefcase tucked behind the heavy wardrobe in the main bedroom, it was safe from a casual inspection of the flat, although not from a determined search, but why should anybody indulge themselves with a determined search of my property? It shared the briefcase with its ammunition and a purchase that I had made quite recently, a purchase that I suppose exhibited a degree of paranoia on my part.

I loaded the weapon and waited.

It was nearly half an hour before the bell rang. Our block of flats had no security system or the like; a visitor simply walked in off the street and took the lift or the stairs to the appropriate floor and rang on your door bell. In this instance, although I had no prior warning of Williamson’s arrival – if indeed it was Williamson –

I was happy that there was no CCTV record of any sort of him arriving – just in case things turned nasty.

My front door opened inwards; I opened it and immediately stepped back three paces, well out of arm’s length of my visitor, who reacted with surprise at my action.

It was indeed Williamson, and in his right hand he held a wicked looking knife with a blade perhaps nine inches long, but with me out of reach he hesitated, a hesitation made more sensible because I levelled the Browning at his face.

“Drop the knife,” I told him, “drop the knife or I swear to God I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

Rooted to the spot, he let the knife drop from his fingers.

I took a further pace backwards, still keeping the pistol aimed at his face.

“Kick it away, step inside and close the door – do it now!”

Slowly and reluctantly he complied; the man was no fool and my determination to carry out my threat was clear to him.

“Keep on coming and sit in that chair.”

Prior to Williamson’s arrival I had placed one of the dining room chairs in the entrance hall. It was a sturdy wooden item, a chair with arms, and as he sat down in it I tossed a heavy duty plastic cable tie onto his lap.

“Use that to secure your right wrist to the arm of the chair.”

58

Numbly, he obeyed; with his arm secured to the arm of the chair rapid movement was now impossible for him. I slipped the Browning into the waistband of my trousers and used a second cable tie to secure his left arm in a similar manner to the right one.

“Right,” I said with a wicked smile at my now helpless would-be assailant, “don’t go away – I’ll be back in a moment.”

I left him sitting there whilst I went and made a telephone call to the police. It took a while, but eventually I was speaking to John Law, the Detective Sergeant who, along with his boss DCI Kent, had interviewed me in hospital what seemed an age ago. I explained what had happened and after a wait of perhaps thirty minutes – I had assured DS Law that Williamson wasn’t going anywhere – he and DCI Kent arrived at my door.

They took it all in – the knife still on the floor where Williamson had kicked it and the man himself secured helplessly to the dining room chair.

“Right, Mr. MacKenzie, we’ll take your visitor away – Sergeant, caution him for possession of an offensive weapon, that knife. That’ll do for the present.”

As Law recited the caution, Kent looked at me suspiciously.

“Tell me, Mr. MacKenzie, he had a knife – how did you overpower him?”

I pointed to the object of my paranoia, which had lain, so far unnoticed by the two policeman, on the occasional table a few feet further into the hall.

It was a replica firearm, the spitting image of the real Browning which was now safely back behind the wardrobe. Kent looked at me anxiously.

“Don’t worry, Chief Inspector – it’s not real – it’s a replica I bought when I knew that Williamson was on the loose. Can’t tell you have glad I am that I did so. If he hadn’t thought that I could have shot him, you might well have had another murder on your hands. Do you want to take it?”

“I think that we had better – it’s evidence, after all.”

So saying, he crossed over to the table, picked up the replica and weighed it in his hand. Law reached inside his jacket and brought out a couple of plastic evidence bags. Kent deposited the replica pistol in one of them and Law used the other to carefully pick up the knife from the floor. Once both bags were sealed, Kent signed his name and the time and date on them. He looked again at the replica Browning.

“I must say, it looks very convincing. I normally despair of these things being on sale - too many are used to intimidate folk being robbed or mugged, but in this instance…”

His voice tailed off and I looked at Williamson. There was no way that he could tell that the replica now in Kent’s evidence bag wasn’t what I had pointed at his face when he had arrived; as far as he knew he had been bluffed. He was clearly furious, but that was his hard luck – what he didn’t realise was that, had he refused to drop the knife, had he advanced upon me still holding it, I really would have shot him and taken my chances with the law. Sonia’s murder would have been my driving influence; he was lucky to still be alive.

The two policeman departed with Williamson, safely handcuffed, led away between them and I sank into an armchair in lounge after pouring myself a large whisky. As I did so I realised that my hands were shaking.

Suppose Margaret Jenkins hadn’t phoned me? Suppose that I hadn’t kept granddad’s pistol? Suppose that I hadn’t bought that replica? The alternative scenarios were too awful to contemplate – but I did, of course. By now, unaware of my danger, I could be lying dead on the floor. Alternatively, I might have killed Williamson and now be trying to explain to the police why I had an illegal weapon, why I had killed a man.

One more thought came to me. I knew that Williamson was on the run from the Scottish police – why on earth was he down in Surrey looking for me?

It was a question that Kent answered for me a couple of days later when he came to see me on a courtesy call

– he had promised to let me know how matters progressed.

“Well,” he said as he settled into one of my chairs after gratefully accepting a cup of coffee, “Williamson is now with the Scottish police. They have a strong case against him over the death of his girlfriend, Morag Ross, whereas I am afraid that there is still no evidence linking him to the murder of your wife. We do, of course, have a strong case against him for possession of that knife and potentially threatening behaviour, but the Scottish case is much more serious.”

I was angry, but did my best not to show it.

“So, he’ll never be punished for killing Sonia?”

“Well, to be honest with you, unless he confesses – and I can’t see that happening, I’m afraid, no – there is no case that we can make which would stand up in court.”

It was unsatisfactory; Sonia’s shade cried out for vengeance, as did my need for closure, but I had to accept that there was nothing that I could do about it.

59

The previous day I had spoken with Hector Ross on the phone. The Scottish police had already advised him that Williamson would be tried over Morag’s death and, like me, he was unhappy at the likelihood that Williamson might not even be charged with murder, but with manslaughter at most, as apparently forensic examination of his flat had come up with evidence that the fatal blow to Morag’s head did seem to have been caused by her falling against the tile edging to the gas fire rather than from a blow delivered by Williamson or anyone else. The evidence would, of course, have to be declared to Williamson’s defence lawyers and would be a strong element in a defence against a murder, although at the very least he would still clearly be culpable of having concealed Morag’s body.

It was some while before we learned that Williamson had pleaded (‘pled’ in Scotland) to the concealment of Morag’s body but not guilty to her manslaughter and that a determined defence had seen him sentenced to just ten years in prison – meaning that provided that he behaved himself, he would most probably be out in five. There was still the charge of possession of a knife in England, but being realistic, I couldn’t see that really getting anywhere. So, five years in prison. He would still only be in his late thirties. Still a relatively young man – and Sonia and Morag would still be dead. I would still be without my wife, Hector without his sister. On the other hand, Hector and I would also still be relatively young men.

Chapter Six

It got worse. Williamson’s lawyers lodged an appeal and eventually his conviction for manslaughter was struck down and his sentence – now purely for the concealment of a body – reduced to three years. After just eighteen months inside he was out on licence. It was a travesty.

Williamson had been a free man for some six months when Hector and I met up in a small pub in Falkirk. In the interim we had cultivated some contacts in the city and learnt that Williamson was now living in a different flat, but still in Falkirk.

We had identified its location and discovered that one of the conditions of Williamson’s release on licence was that he obtained a job and, however, much that must have galled with the wretched man’s character, he had actually done so. He was working as a driver for a delivery firm based on the outskirts of the city and we had already tailed him in his distinctive yellow and blue van a couple of times. All this was preliminary work, essential to our desire for revenge, a desire that the laughingly inadequate punishment handed down by the court had totally failed to satisfy.

Now it was time to formulate plans – plans that would meet our need for vengeance. One thing that our plans would not include. I had disposed of the Browning; it had been with an uneasy feeling that one dark night I had consigned it, along with its ammunition and magazines, to the depths of the River Wey where it would never again be found nor used. I realised that there would be no point in retaining it to try and subdue Williamson, should the need and opportunity ever arise. He was convinced that when I had pointed it at him when he came calling on me that he had been bluffed, that it was just a harmless, but scary looking, replica.

He wouldn’t be put off by it again – so I might have to use it in earnest, and that was a risk I dare not take.

No, we had to come up something which did not include firearms, real or replica, and as the pistol had splashed into the dark waters of the river I had muttered an apology to my grandfather’s ghost; the weapon had served me well, as it had doubtless served him well in its time, but that time was now past. Hector and I had needed somewhere to stay, but we had no wish to leave any trail behind us should our plans come to fruition, so booking into an hotel was out of the question, as was using debit or credit cards in the area.

Instead, I had bought for cash a small, second hand, campervan from a small ad placed in the local Surrey paper by a chap in Wimbledon. The vehicle having been originally registered in Birmingham, would not display tell-tale Surrey plates, nor plates local to anywhere near Falkirk and I had given a fictitious name and address to the owner who was more concerned at getting the price he wanted than enquiring too closely into my bona fides – the only bona fides that I had needed was the bundle of fifty and twenty pound notes he had gratefully pocketed. Needless to say, I had ‘overlooked’ notifying the DVLA that I was now the new owner.

The little van was cramped, but ideal for our purpose and as anonymous as one could wish. If it should be picked up on traffic cameras the only lead would be back to the chap from whom I had bought it, and he would be unable to offer any really useful information to any enquiry. Hopefully, there never would be any enquiry – but I was sure that it was impossible to be too careful in covering our tracks. Hector and I wanted vengeance, but not at the Pyrrhic cost of ending up in prison ourselves.

Williamson lived, once again, in a flat, this time one of a cheap block of sixteen, four per storey in the four storey building, so there was a frequent coming and going of residents, making a straightforward assault on his abode just about out of the question, especially as he was on the top floor.

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Fortunately, the location of the block was ideal for easy surveillance; there was a small car park a hundred yards or so away with a clear line of sight to the main entrance to Williamson’s building.

One thing that we had discovered; after work Williamson returned to his flat, changed clothes and presumably had a bite to eat, and then walked the half mile or so to a pub where he would stay for an hour or so before returning home for the night.

We had decided that, some way or another, our only real chance of grabbing the man was on one of those two journeys – either on his way to the pub or on his way home.

The campervan wasn’t the most suitable vehicle for what we had in mind, but it was all that we had, so it would have to do. It took three nights of careful surveillance, careful stalking, but at last we managed it. Just over two hundred yards away from the pub Williamson’s route home led him down a narrow side street. On the previous nights there had been other people around, but this time the street was deserted. I let the van coast to a gentle stop as Williamson walked along the pavement, oblivious to our presence. Hector threw open the passenger’s door and leapt out, with me as close behind him as I could manage. Before Williamson had realised what was happening, we had seized him and bundled him inside the ‘van, using the side door into the living area. As he grabbed the man, Hector had dealt him a savage roundhouse punch to the side of the head, following it up with a short arm jab to the solar plexus. Winded and half stunned Williamson was no real problem to the two of us, and whilst Hector literally sat on him, I closed the side door, made my way to the driver’s seat, and drove gently away.

A few moments later, with Williamson rendered helpless by cable ties round his wrists and ankles and gagged with duct tape, Hector joined me in the cab as I drove carefully away from Falkirk, out west through Denny into the empty country beyond, headed for Loch Coulter. We had reconnoitred the area over the last few days and had decided that the loch was perfect for our purpose. No nearby habitation, no roads of any magnitude anywhere near, just a country lane and even that didn’t get nearer that some three hundred yards.

We got out of the van and dragged Williamson out with us. There was a track, probably used by fishermen or the like, from the lane to the loch – far too narrow for any sort of vehicle so ideal for what we wanted. We had stripped Williamson naked before leaving the ‘van and he was shaking with a combination of cold and fear, but I had no pity for the man and I am sure that Hector was similarly impervious to the wretched man’s condition. We dragged him to a spot a few dozen yards away from where the track reached the loch’s shore, were there was, we had previously ascertained, quite deep water right up to the loch’s edge.

Williamson looked from one to the other of us; although it was night, there was some pale moonlight, enough to able to make out a person’s face when, as was the case with us, that person was only a few feet away.

“Please,” he beseeched, “please, what are you doing? I’ve served my time, I’ll never do anybody any harm, please, you must let me go.”

Hector slapped him across the face, the force of the blow bringing blood and spittle from his mouth.

“You killed my sister, you swine – and now you are going to pay.”

“No, I swear, it was an accident – she tripped and fell – I was just so frightened that I thought nobody would believe me…”

Hector hit him again, cutting off the flow of excuses. It was my turn.

“And what about my wife – was that an accident?”

“I didn’t mean to kill her - I only wanted to frighten you both, but she came at me and ran onto the knife.”

It was pathetic. With a strength, with a rage, that I never, until that moment, realised that I possessed. I smashed my fist into his lying face. The force of the punch sent him over onto his back, only semi-conscious.

We had heard enough – it was time.

Hector had been carrying a length of chain with us as we had brought Williamson to the water’s edge. It was heavy; I would have struggled to carry it at all, but Hector had slung it over his shoulder as though it weighed nothing at all. And know he wrapped it around Willaimson’s body, securing it in place with yet more cable tows.

We picked up the now barely conscious form and carried him to the very edge of the lock. There, despite the weight of the chain again to the man’s own weight, we swung him backwards and forwards, one, tow three and away. He was just conscious enough to scream in terror as he sailed through the air to hit the water with a huge splash and disappear instantly below its surface. We waited, just in case but he never didn’t reappear.

Vengeance had been achieved. We returned to the van and drove, not to Falkirk, but to Edinburgh, where, after spending the night in the van, we left it unlocked and with the keys in the ignition and caught our trains back to our respective homes.

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Epilogue

It was a good three weeks later that I received a another visit from DCI Kent and DS Law. They had arrived unannounced, but I had long been expecting them.

“Come in, gentlemen,” I greeted them, ushering them into the flat. “How can I help you?”

Kent took the initiative.

“It’s about Peter Williamson, Mr. MacKenzie.”

I frowned in puzzlement.

“But he’s in prison, surely?”

“Well, no – and that’s the point. He was released after serving his sentence a few months ago ….”

I interrupted angrily

“What do you mean? Released? He can’t have served more than a year or so – he shouldn’t be out for years yet!”

The detective looked embarrassed – as well, I told myself, he might.

“He appealed against his conviction and had the manslaughter verdict declared unsafe, so his sentence was only for concealing Ms. Ross’ body.|”

I gave vent to anger – both genuine and concocted, as I lambasted the two police men, the judge, the justice system, Scotland as a whole. Kent waited patiently until I finally ran out of steam.

“I’m sorry about all this, Mr. MacKenzie – believe me, I am also very unhappy at how little time Williamson has served, but it is no way that I can do anything about it. However, we came to talk to you because the man has disappeared. Nobody has seen him for something like three weeks. Now, he may have just decided to do a runner, although I can hardly believe that to be the case – I mean. Why should he? He’s out of prison and unless he is stupid enough to break the terms of his licence, that’s it – he’s a free man. The other possibility, however, is that something has happened to him. Now, you and I both believe that he killed your wife and nearly killed you, so you must appreciate that if anything has happened to him you must be seen as having a motive to do him harm.”

I drew a deep, shuddering breath, doing my best to give the impression that I was struggling to keep my temper under control.

“If something has happened to him – bloody good job. I hope that he is rotting in Hell!”

Kent looked at me searchingly.

“If he is rotting in Hell, Mr. MacKenzie – did you send him there? What have been your movements over the last few weeks?”

This was the tricky part. Obviously, at the time that Hector and I had been dealing with Williamson I had been absent from my flat. Neighbours might have noticed the fact; then again, they might not, but I had my story ready.

“Well, it is term time, you know. For the last few weeks I have been working.”

“Ah, but how about four weeks ago, when your school was on holiday?”

I frowned in concentration for a moment.

“Well, I visited Helen, my sister and stayed with them for a couple of days. I went up to town on the sixteenth and stayed a couple of nights at the Savoy – decided to treat myself to a bit of luxury for a day or two. Apart from that, well nothing, really”

This was the one area of my cover story which was a potential problem. It had taken Hector and myself five days to stalk, and then dispose of, Williamson, five days when nobody would have seen me in my normal haunts, but I was living in a fairly anonymous block of flats – I scarcely knew any of my neighbours, nor them me, other than to say ‘Hello’ to in the lift or the likes. It was time to shift the focus of the discussion.

“But tell me, Chief Inspector, if Williamson has disappeared, do you think that you will come after me again? He’s already come for me twice. The first time I nearly died – and my wife did die – the second time I got lucky with that imitation firearm – if he comes again, then what?”

Kent shook his head.

“We don’t think that is very likely, Mr. MacKenzie.”

I pressed him.

“But how can you tell? The man’s a homicidal maniac as far as I am concerned – and I never did understand why he came after me last time – do you?”

The shift in emphasis was working, as Kent answered my question rather than pursuing his own.

“We asked him about all that, of course, before shipping him up to Scotland. His story was that he was going to overpower you, take your bank cards and passport, and leave the country. According to him, he’d tie you up and leave you to be found. To make sure that you were found, he was going to phone the police after twenty-four hours to let them know of your predicament.”

62

I gave him my most sceptical look.

“That’s rubbish. He was going to kill me. That way he could use my cards at least for a while.”

It was Kent’s turn to shift the questioning.

“One thing that I was never clear about, Mr. MacKenzie, although as Williamson was sent to Scotland to face the charges up there, I never pursued it at the time. Why did you actually have that replica pistol?”

I shrugged.

“To be honest, I was frightened. I bought it when I moved in here, after I left my sister’s place. Paranoid, I suppose, but the ease with which Williamson attacked Sonia and myself, and the fact that these flats have no real security worried me. Don’t forget, I had nearly, very nearly, been murdered. Ideally I would have had a real pistol, not an imitation, but of course only criminals can arm themselves like that in Britain; the rest of us have to trust to luck. I used to keep it beside the front door, and before opening the door, I would always check who it was by looking through the spy-hole. When I was that it was Williamson,” I shrugged, “well, the rest followed naturally.”

The questioning dried up and, after declining a second cup of coffee, the two policemen took their leave of me.

********************

Once in the car, DS Law turned to his superior.

“What do you think of that performance, boss? I reckon MacKenzie knows more than he’s telling.”

Kent looked back at the block of flats and mulled what they had just been told, and the events of the last two years, over in his mind before issuing his verdict.

“Let sleeping dogs lie, sergeant, let sleeping dogs lie.”

They drove away into the gentle drizzle as darkness closed in.

The End.

63

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six