Gently North-West (17 page)

‘Not with strong Nationalist feelings behind it?’

‘I tell you no, man. You’re misconceiving it.’

‘And though it results in misconduct towards innocent tourists?’

‘Och man, that’s explained. Jamie’s worried by deer-stealing.’

Gently drank. ‘Just the same,’ he said. ‘My feeling is that military training is going too far. Pinching the Stone of Scone I’d shut my eyes to, but not bullets aimed at my tyres. So I’d rather like your word – and whose is better – that the Gorseprick Project will be cancelled. It would save so much red tape and perhaps unfortunate publicity.’

‘Geordie,’ McClune said. ‘You turn a knife sweetly. You’ve a surgeonly touch, ma mannie. Maybe I will just be sendin’ some lines to a score of names out of yon book. Will it answer the purpose?’

Gently gave a nod. ‘To nineteen – as of Friday night.’

‘You’re a good reckoner, too,’ McClune said. ‘And I dare not hope you have a poor memory. But touching this other question of Jamie’s – I ken we’ve settled with the first just what were you thinking that would be?’

Gently drank some more. ‘You tell me,’ he said.

McClune’s broad brow wrinkled and he looked askance at his quaigh. ‘This is putting me in a queer position, Geordie,’ he said. ‘It’s asking me to point at my own cousins. Murder is an evil thing, that’s true, and it behoves a man to help put it down – and if the affair were clear of suspicion I wouldn’t hesitate, ye ken. But as it stands it’s a cloudy business with cousins squintin’ across at cousins – and the McClune looked to guard his own, and not to be communicating his knowledge to police chiefs.’

‘The McClune is also the Lord Thistle,’ Gently said. ‘With the reputation of the Action Group to maintain.’

‘True,’ McClune said. ‘You can press me with that – we’ll be under suspicion till the matter is clarified.’

‘And one of your cousins is already suspect and in a fair way to being arrested.’

‘And as innocent as a babe,’ Brenda put in. ‘Or are you insinuating Jamie did it?’

‘Just listen to the pair of you,’ McClune said. ‘Will you not leave me a leg to stand on? Was ever a McClune so badgered and mishandled in his own drawing-room in his own castle! Yell have it, will ye?’

‘We’ll have it,’ Brenda said. ‘Though all the bens fall into the glens.’

‘Which would be a sair catastrophe,’ McClune said. ‘So I’ll say no more – except hand up your quaighs.’

He collected the quaighs and refilled them again. This time he gave the toast standing. The whisky was bringing a flush to his cheeks and his eyes were twinkling down at Gently.

‘Our Jamie, you ken – for all I’ve said – is not without his glimmerings of sense – a man’s mind can get strangely clear when his own Craig is nearing the widdie. And he was thinking it was a queerish thing how the murderer kent his movements so well – and the braeside, how the murderer kent that, like maybe it was his own backyard. For one way or another Jamie kens Tudlem almost as well as he kens Knockie, and he couldn’t make out in his own mind any Tudlem body he could suspect. And Tudlem, you ken, is fairly remote – it’s a few good miles to the next village – and there was no vehicle used that Jamie kent of – but there was the murderer, watchin’ and waitin’.’

‘Yes,’ Gently admitted. ‘That puzzled me, though I wasn’t in a position to eliminate the villagers. But if it wasn’t a villager, who fits? Where did this knowledgeable killer spring from?’

‘Aha,’ McClune said. ‘Ye’re no hillman, Geordie, or you wouldn’t have puzzled over it long. If the laddie came not from the village and came not down the glen – ask yourself, what’s left? He must have come down from the tops.’

‘From the tops!’ Gently said. ‘But there’s no path over them.’

‘I’m not so damned familiar with them,’ McClune said. ‘But Jamie tells me there’s a way over.’

‘But there’s nowhere behind them,’ Gently said. ‘It’s just a plateau and peaks running through for miles.’

‘You’re wrong,’ McClune said. ‘You must study the map, Geordie. There’s a wee glen behind there called Glen Laggart. It runs up high out of Glen Skilling, so you won’t find it marked green. But there’s good pastures at the top end and a farm they call Snaw-in-June.’

‘And – who lives there?’

‘Just Jamie’s question – who was my tenant at Snaw-in-June. With the additional inquiry, as you well may guess, as to whether that tenant was in the Movement.’ He jigged his shoulders. ‘For administrative purposes – nothing more nor less, ye ken – we have the Movement divided into sections with a Chief at the head of each.’

‘Like communists and anarchists,’ Gently said.

‘If you put it so – the arrangement is doubtless not original. But that’s the way of it, and Jamie had no knowledge of who and who wasna in Dunglass’s chiefship.’

‘And the answer to that question?’

McClune hesitated. ‘This is givin’ up my own tenant,’ he said. ‘Tenant – clansman – honest man – and always punctual with his rent. But I’ve shown him to you, so I must name him. He’s Hector McCracken, of the Bieth McCrackens. He’s farmed in Laggart for twenty years and raised a bonnie family on wool and mutton.’

‘A member of the Movement?’

‘Didn’t I say so?’

‘An important member?’

‘Dunglass’s lieutenant.’

‘A man of what character?’

‘A hanging character,’ McClune said. ‘A passionate hater of all the English – he and his four blockhead sons. Ay, if there’s one who might have scragged Dunglass for cuttin’ loose from the Movement it’s Hector Bruce McCracken, the wild man of Glen Laggart.’

‘And the sons?’

‘All of a kidney. Not one of them under six foot two.’

‘Would there be a daughter?’

‘Ay, such another. She could wrestle evens with her brothers.’

‘The original mountain hizzie,’ Brenda said. ‘She canters around with a socking great dog.’

‘That may be,’ McClune said. ‘There’s never a sheep-farm without them – now I mind it, McCracken keeps wolfhounds – my factor, Johnson, was nearly eaten by them.’

‘And you gave McGuigan this information,’ Gently said. ‘What does McGuigan intend to do with it?’

‘Not a thing,’ McClune said. ‘Unless friend Blayne is for running him in. Then he’ll come out with it, I doubt not, for all the McGuigans and McCrackens are kin. But man, I hope there’ll be a colour put on it that’ll keep the Movement on the windy side.’

‘Will you talk to McCracken?’

‘Will you give me the time?’

They stared at each other. Gently said nothing. McClune solemnly raised his quaigh and tossed back the last of his whisky.

‘You’re a queer man, Geordie,’ he said. ‘I can’t help liking you, English or not. It’s no grief of yours, but you’ll be for goin’ up Laggart like the Miller o’ God on a visit. Am I right?’

Gently gave a faint shrug.

‘Ay – you’ll be for it, I ken,’ McClune said. ‘And you must watch your step, Geordie ma mannie, when you’re treadin’ round Snaw-in-June. But I’ll do my best for you – I’ll give ye a sayin’ – and ye’re to forget it, mind, the next day after. If you find you’re in trouble up the glen, say: The eagle is flying over Glenny. Have you got it?’

‘That’s lovely,’ Brenda said. ‘I’ll try to forget it, but that won’t be easy.’

‘So long as you don’t remember it aloud,’ McClune said. Och – for me to be giving the Word to southrons!’

An the Percie cam to Hartshorn Edge

Wyth his bowmen yn the van,

An he saw the Douglas whytlin a stick

An bowsin out of a can.

Chevy Chase
(Jedburgh MS)

M
CCLUNE ACCOMPANIED THEM
across the lawn and bid them farewell at the gate. By the time they arrived back at the Minx he had vanished again into the Castle.

‘Do you think he’ll be on the phone now,’ Brenda said. ‘Sending out a May-Day to the clan.’

Gently shook his head. ‘I know too much,’ he said. ‘One glance at that bluebook put me in business. Besides, it’s in McClune’s interests now to have the matter cleared up promptly. He may not want it pinned on McCracken, but at least that will exonerate the Movement.’

‘And of course, you’re going to do the Miller of God act – wolfhounds and the kidney notwithstanding?’

Gently started the engine, grinned at her. ‘Do you really want me to leave it to Blayne?’ he said.

They drove on down, joined the main road, turned west again towards Torlinnhead. Brenda lit a cigarette irritably and glided fierce puffs towards the windscreen.

‘Were you planning to drop me off?’ she asked.

‘That would be sensible,’ Gently grunted.

‘Oh no it wouldn’t,’ Brenda said. ‘It would be damn silly. Going up there you need someone with you.’

‘You forget,’ Gently said. ‘I’ve the McClune’s protection. Also some experience in handling these matters.’

‘And a fat lot of good they’re likely to do you when you’re about to be eat by ravenous wolfhounds!’

Gently said nothing.

‘No,’ Brenda said. ‘No. If you go you’re taking me too, George Gently. At least if I’m with you it will make you more careful, more likely to pull out if things get rough. And I want to go. I’d like to see this ferocious McCracken and his sons. And what’s more I decided, when I was driving the Cortina, that I’m more of a heroine than I’ve been giving out.’

Gently’s mouth twitched. ‘Perhaps the job doesn’t call for a heroine,’ he said.

‘Well, whatever it calls for I am, so you can consider that settled.’

‘If you come, you must do as I say – no questions, no arguments.’

‘Oh,’ Brenda said. ‘That makes it rather harder. But I’m still not letting you go there alone. I don’t trust that mountain hizzie an inch – she was playing it coy, but man, she was playing it.’

Gently pushed the Minx along. They unravelled Loch Torlinn, passed Kinleary. Excursion traffic dotted the route and was parked suicidally at every viewpoint. At Loch Cray, briefly seen as they threaded a jam at Lochcrayhead, sails blue, white and striped leaned and weaved on slaty water.

‘Happy souls,’ Brenda observed sourly. ‘Little do they know what we’re up to. We could use a posse of big brave dinghy-men, padded to the eyes in P.V.C.’

‘Oh no we couldn’t,’ Gently grunted. ‘The idea is to give the McCrackens some bait.’

‘Perhaps I should strip,’ Brenda said.

‘Just remember – do what I tell you.’

They came to Skilling and turned down into its mazy spread of trees. The traffic thinned. They passed cottages, reached the lower end of Loch Balva. Here the road divided, continuing on the right its long trek to the head of Skilling, on the left passing below the loch and striking a line to the south of it. They forked left and shortly came to a lefthand junction.

‘Check that,’ Gently said.

Brenda checked it. It was the back road coming in from Strathtudlem. A mile further on they arrived at a massive divide in the braes southward. A track of the sort now becoming familiar thrust roughly and steeply into this gorge, and a board nailed to an adjacent tree read:
Snow-in-June Farm – Private Road.
Gently parked. He looked at Brenda.

‘Here’s the battle-plan,’ he said. ‘We’re going in. I’m going to ruffle McCracken, see if I can get him to show his hand. At some stage I may tell you to leave, and you’ll leave promptly without arguing. You’ll drive to the nearest phone, which is at Skilling village, and ring the police at Balmagussie. Get Blayne, Purdy or whoever and tell them to bring some men up Glen Laggart: explain the situation: if you can’t get Blayne, make sure the information is passed to him.’

‘Can’t we ring Blayne first?’ Brenda suggested.

No,’ Gently said. ‘
I may want you to leave.
And I shan’t want Blayne coming out here unless I have someone for him to take back. And understand this clearly: it may seem to you I’ll be sticking my neck out at some point. Don’t let it influence you. Just follow the plan. I’ll maybe have an ace up my sleeve.’

‘Oh dear,’ Brenda said. ‘I’m feeling rather less brave than I did an hour ago. You’re sure you know what you’re doing?’

‘Pretty sure,’ Gently said. ‘And if I find I’m wrong I can still draw my horns in and come quietly back down the glen.’

Brenda shivered. ‘Kiss me,’ she said.

Gently gathered her close and kissed her.

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I’m heroic again. Lay on, Macduff – let’s go.’

They drove on up Glen Laggart. At first it was little more than a ravine. Rough, craggy cliffs, stained with lichens, carried a slot of sky high above them. The track gnawed and twisted its way upwards with a gloomy cut-off on the left, where white water and green went rumbling down a deep crevasse. Then they came to a waterfall, a thin, shooting, tress-like cascade, and the crevasse closed, the track levelled, the cliffs shallowed, stood farther apart. They were entering a fertile basin in the mountains, a little kingdom hedged by peaks. The braes rose peaceably before, beside them, their lower slopes grazed by sheep. Above the furthest braes lifted a crooked peak with a napkin of white which was not sheep. A pocket of snow, it lay chillily secure in the shadowed, north-facing heights.

Below this peak they began to see the red-painted iron roof of the farm, a low stone building, very bare, with a cluster of outbuildings grouped around it. Sheep-wire enclosed some pens in its neighbourhood. A few stunted firs made a line behind it. Smoke rose from one of the potless chimneys and was the only token of life.

They came closer. Still nobody appeared, though the car must certainly have been visible on the open track.

‘Perhaps they are all out,’ Brenda muttered hopefully. ‘Gone head-hunting or whatever they do on Sabbaths.’

Gently shook his head. ‘There’s a car in that lean-to. They’re probably watching us, getting us figured.’

‘Well I wish they wouldn’t,’ Brenda said. ‘And the car’s a Skoda. The heathens.’

They entered a fenced yard before the house. Then at last there was movement. In his mirror, Gently saw the tall girl of the crag glide swiftly to the yard-gate, close it, pad-lock it. At the same moment the house door opened and a man stepped out, followed by two wolfhounds. Two other men appeared from behind the house, two more emerged from the outbuildings. They carried rifles. They surrounded the car. The man with the dogs waved his rifle at the car.