The Avalon Chanter (16 page)

Supposedly the test of a first-rate
intelligence was the ability to hold two opposing concepts in the
mind at the same time and still be able to function. She already
knew Alasdair had a first-rate, gold-star intelligence. He
obviously still functioned.

What she didn’t know was whether she and he
had chosen opposite sides in a situation that, until Grinsell’s
arrival, hadn’t appeared even to have sides. A situation that would
work itself out in spite of their opposition, she told herself—that
being one major detail to hope for.

He ushered her down the stairs to the ground
floor, where Pen was conspicuous by her absence—although the
washing machine in the kitchen was shrieking once again. They
stepped from the cool, sausage-scented air of the house to the
cold, smoke-scented air of the outside world. White gulls spun
across the grayish sky. Several people walked up and down the
street, intent on their own errands. A dog trotted along the
pebbled beach, ditto.

Here came Sergeant Darling down from the
breakwater. His features seemed less pinched, as though his bones
relaxed when not carrying the burden of Grinsell. And yet his dark
eyes were no less hunted, and his lips were set in such a tight
line they were invisible. Prying them apart far enough to speak, he
said, “Good morning. Have you seen Inspector Grinsell, by any
chance?”

“
No, we’ve not yet been out,” said
Alasdair. “When were you last seeing him?”

“
Before breakfast. He went off at half
past six, just at dawn, in a foul temper.”

Jean didn’t ask,
How could you tell?

“
Had a sore head from last night in the
pub, could be. He said nothing to us beyond our finishing up here
and getting ourselves back to Berwick. Could be he’s having another
look at the priory before the media lands like commandos on
D-Day.”

Or was he having a look in the windows of Gow
House? Jean glanced at her watch. Past ten.

Alasdair’s nod indicated approval of
Darling’s choice of words. “You’ve tried phoning him.”

“
Oh yes. As per his orders, I’ve got
Clyde Eccleston in the interview room, but he’s got his business to
be tending to, and with the fret—well, we’re all right till the sea
breeze starts up.” Darling shot a wary glance out to sea, where
clouds like dirty rolls of wool massed on the horizon.

One eye shivering in a half-wink toward
Jean—
aye, I’m contradicting
myself
—Alasdair asked, “You’re asking Clyde about
Thomas Seaton leaving the island all these years ago?”

“
That I—we are, yes. With the time
difference in our favor, we were able to have a word with the
authorities in Cape Breton, in Canada, last night. They’ve got no
missing persons report on Seaton at all. Likely he had no close
family, and his friends there thought he’d stayed here in the UK,
but still, that’s conjecture, not evidence.”

This time Alasdair’s nod of commendation was
even more emphatic. “You’ve set the Canadians to work, have
you?”

“
They’ll be sending along what they
turn up. Dental records would be helpful, much quicker than DNA—and
DNA’s only good, in any event, if you’ve got a relative’s to match
it with.” Darling looked up the street, and down, and across the
harbor to where Bamburgh seemed no more than a model photographed
in soft focus. “I’ll have a look at the priory, see if the
inspector slipped into one of those trenches and turned his ankle
or the like.” He angled toward Cuddy’s Close but didn’t actually
start walking.

Jean would have had a bad feeling about
Grinsell wandering around on his own, except she was already up to
her armpits in negative vibes.

“
Sergeant,” said Alasdair, “have you
looked out Mr. Eccleston’s pickup truck? Perhaps Inspector Grinsell
was driving it.”

The expanse of Darling’s forehead pleated. “I
did hear the old banger starting up, now that you mention it.”

“
Right.” Alasdair took off, stepping so
briskly up Cuddy’s Close that Jean and Darling were sucked into his
wake. Between the pub and the B&B, past the garden wall, and
they stood in the car park. Maggie’s elderly Land Rover and an even
older pickup held down different sides.

The pickup’s passenger-side rear wheel was
stuck deep in a pothole, making the entire vehicle list to the
side. “It was a car that ran into the hole last night, wasn’t it?”
Jean asked.

“
That it was, and it ran back out
again.” replied Darling. “That’s Eccleston’s truck, right enough,
wanting some strong young lads to give it a lift and a push. Lance
would do, if he’s sobered up, and his mates if he has
any.”

Alasdair contemplated the car, the tire, and
the mud-spattered appearance of both. “I’m seeing Grinsell, not
knowing the lay of the land, driving into the pothole. Then, being
the impatient sort, he birled the wheel till he’d rammed himself in
good and proper. Then he set out on foot. Going where? Why?”

Darling shook his head. “He’s been working
his mobile phone off and on, but we’re all doing that.”

“
Has P.C. Crawford seen him?” Jean
asked.

“
Not a hair, no, but then, I sent
Crawford home for the night, since the mist wasn’t so thick toward
Bamburgh. Now he’s sitting with Eccleston having a good yarn, near
as I can tell.”

A recent memory pricked at Jean’s mind—Pen,
carrying sheets from the first-floor bedroom toward the kitchen.
She’d had the room ready for the Campbell-Reids, but someone had
spent the night there after all, and, being a conscientious
landlady, she was cleaning it all over again.

Had it been Crawford’s voice she’d heard last
night? And if so, so what? “You may have sent him home, but did he
actually go?” she asked, evoking a puzzled frown not only from
Darling but from Alasdair.

“
He never said,” Darling replied. “He
came into our B and B this morning freshly turned out is
all.”

“
Ah,” said Alasdair. “You’re thinking
he’s the third voice you were hearing in the wee hours.
Why?”

Jean explained her theory about the sheets,
which, now that she vocalized it, sounded pretty thin. She
concluded, “I don’t see why it matters that they’d be talking to
each other.”

“
No harm . . .” Alasdair began, then
stopped. What was he going to say? No harm in asking Crawford? But
it was Grinsell’s case, and Grinsell’s responsibility to deal with
the help, so to speak.

Oblivious to the undercurrents of meaning,
Darling turned to consider the silent walls of the priory, the
broken arches, the vacant windows. Yeah, Grinsell could have
tripped over his own ego and fallen into one of the trenches. A
shame, Jean thought, that she was less than enthusiastic about
looking for him.

Hector Cruz bounded up from the Close, now
dressed in ordinary jeans and a bright yellow sweatshirt emblazoned
with the red sunburst flag of his native state. The long case of
his bagpipes banged against his thigh. “Good morning.”

Jean, Alasdair, and Darling replied in
triplicate, with Darling introducing himself and Hector stating
name and affiliation.

The courtesies observed, Hector focused not
on the tip-tilted pickup but on Merlin’s Tower beyond the village.
Its stones were a charcoal-gray, probably cut locally, not the red
and silver-gray of the priory. Its stolid cylindrical shape seemed
to have grown rather than been built. Jean half-expected to see not
a sentinel on the alert for Viking raiders but a Neanderthal stroll
out from behind the wall, picking his teeth with an antler.

“
What is that place, anyway?” Hector
asked. “The redhead with the natural pipes, Niamh, she said
something about Camelot and Wat Lauder and a castle. But it doesn’t
look like a castle to me, not like Bamburgh or even that cool
mansion house on Lindisfarne.”

Jean answered, “Its official name is Merlin’s
Tower. Why, I don’t know, although there are legends of Merlin in
the Borders area. Wat and Elaine were thinking of renovating it
into a stately home like Lindisfarne Castle—hopefully not designed
by the same architect who did the music school. Assuming anyone
designed the school and it wasn’t assembled from a kit.”

“
So no one lives there?”

“
No, Pen says it’s pretty much a
ruin.”

“
Really? Because when I came back from
the school about—geez, it must have been almost midnight. I was
helping a kid change a reed yesterday and left my own reeds up
there, so went back to get them. Anyway, I was walking along right
about here and saw a light up there in the tower.”

As one, Alasdair and Darling zeroed in. The
former asked, “This truck, it was not here just then?” as the
latter asked, “It was a misty night and yet you saw a light?”

Hector took a step back from the sudden
attention, his obsidian-black eyes widening. “That Land Rover was
the only car here, and yeah, the outline of the tower was kind of
blurry, but the light was bright. Must have been a high-powered
flashlight.”

“
A torch,” Jean translated for
Darling.

“
Not a torch, a flash—oh, that’s what
they’re called here, isn’t it? Call it a tortilla, whatever, it
moved around a little while, then went out. Or went behind a wall.
Same difference.”

“
What did you do after you saw it?”
Jean asked.

“
Went on back to the hostel and went to
bed. What should I have done?”

“
Not a bleeding thing.” Darling turned
to Alasdair. “Did the inspector see the light as well? Did he start
driving up there? Looks to be a road, mostly ruts, but
drivable.”

“
Unless it was Grinsell showing a light
himself,” suggested Alasdair.

“
No, no, he came in from the pub a bit,
well, he was helping me”—Darling winced—“with writing up my
notes.”

“
Is there a problem?” asked
Hector.

“
We’ve lost D.I. Grinsell,” explained
Darling. “We’re, ah, worried.”

We
haven’t lost
Grinsell, Jean thought. But they were worried, yeah. She could tell
by the barometers of Alasdair’s brows that worry fought with
annoyance for priority.

“
Let me run my pipes down to the school
and I’ll help you look. He may have fallen or something. At home
I’m a paramedic. You can’t make a living from a pipe band. Be right
back.” Hector took off across the parking lot and down the road
past the church and Gow House.

A flash of red hair in the front garden was
Niamh standing with arms crossed, face turned toward the sea.
Beside her, Elaine used a small pair of clippers to shape an
overgrown shrub, her white hair concealed beneath a floppy canvas
hat. So Elaine was the gardener, then. That’s why so many plants
there and in the cloisters had gone feral.

Hector waved but didn’t slacken his pace.
Niamh didn’t seem to notice. The clippers made a tiny snipping
noise.

Murmuring “Might as well have me that look,”
Darling strode off across the cloister and into the church, peering
into corners and trenches as he went. He paused in the door of the
chapel, glanced back over his shoulder at Alasdair and Jean, then
plunged inside. A moment later he reappeared, running.

They hurried forward to meet him. He held out
his hand. In it lay something small and shiny and crinkly. The
cellophane wrapper from a packet of snacks. “It was lying inside
the police tape round the grave.”

“
What is it?” Alasdair
asked.

“
I didn’t tell you,” said Jean,
“Grinsell was eating cookies while he interviewed Maggie. Digestive
biscuits. Little rounds of carb and sugar.”

“
D.C.I. Webber ordered him to give up
his pipe-smoking,” Darling said. “He wanted something else to fuss
about with.”

Alasdair’s gaze registered skepticism,
whether about the propriety of snack-eating or about Jean not
telling him something, she couldn’t say. Darling thrust the wrapper
into his pocket and whipped out his phone. “Crawford. You’re wanted
at the priory. Bring the lads in from the boat as well.”

By the time Hector hotfooted it back from the
school, Niamh had ushered Elaine inside and a search party had
fanned out across the priory grounds, into the cemetery, over the
fences and prickly hawthorne hedges into the surrounding
fields.

Darling himself, his chin set, his mouth
slitted, led Alasdair, Jean, and Hector up the twin muddy ruts
toward the tower. Yes, the path held prints of smooth-soled shoes
and scrapes where they had slipped and slid. Darling and Alasdair
tried to herd the other two around the prints, onto the verge,
through the heather, and over the occasional rock, but Jean
couldn’t imagine how the churned mud could be turned into evidence.
It looked as though a miniature water buffalo had had itself a good
wallow.

The hedges closed in, then parted again.
Seabirds called. The path wove back and forth up the hill and
finally ended at a kissing gate, one that swung back and forth
within a half-circle of fencing. Beyond it opened a grassy area, a
green moat around the outer wall of the tower. Half a dozen sheep
watched curiously from the edge of the headland, explaining why the
turf was cropped short as a golf course and promising even more
need for careful shoe-cleaning. Later.

Jean was vaguely aware of a fabulous view—not
only the priory and the village and harbor below, but also
Lindisfarne and the mainland, Bamburgh and the Farne Islands just
off the coast, that ominous gray curtain out to sea. She was
intensely aware of the grim faces beside her, the muscle jumping in
Darling’s jaw, Alasdair’s cheekbones crusted in ice, Hector
frowning with mingled bewilderment and determination.