SWOA Give Good Wood.
21
McCleod drove the old Volvo up the rutted track that led to her house, an old croft that the last owners, city dwellers, had lovingly restored before their dreams of an idyllic life in the west coast of Scotland had turned sour, wrecked by endless rain, midges making their lives hell in the summer, and a lack of things to do. She parked outside, stretching and yawning as she got out of the car and opened the hatch for Wemyss to jump out. The dog leapt gracefully onto the track outside her cottage and then stopped and sniffed. He looked around, as if puzzled.
‘What is it, boy?’ asked McCleod, immediately suspicious. Wemyss had never done this before. She glanced around her, frowning. In the course of her life in the police she had, over the years, had a fair number of people threaten her: ‘I’ll kill you, you bitch…’, ‘I’ll track you down and…’ That type of thing. Nothing had ever happened but one day it could; she wondered if this was the day.
Someone was there, either inside the house or close by. She knew it. For a brief moment she thought about getting back in the car and fetching help. Then she dismissed the thought. She was not a faint-hearted person. If someone was there, she would deal with them.
She went over to the small shed by the wood-store where logs were neatly stacked ready for the winter. She walked round the bulk of her old quad bike that she sometimes used if she had to access some of the rougher tracks into the hills. She opened the door and took down a crowbar that was hanging on a hook just inside on the wall. She hefted it in her hand; it felt good and heavy. If there was someone there…
‘Come on, boy…’
Wemyss walked to heel, looking happy and excited. She frowned at the dog. She wished he would look a bit more menacing. He was certainly capable of it. She’d seen her dog protective of her, hackles raised, body low to the ground ready to spring, jowls drawn back revealing long, sharp white teeth, an ominous low growl in his throat. He could be very scary; now would be a good time. By the front door she noticed a pair of boots that didn’t belong to her.
What the hell? Whose were they?
McCleod frowned. She put her key in the lock, then the door opened.
‘Hello, Catriona!’
Wemyss gave a bark of joy and leapt forward to greet Hanlon.
‘What the fuck?’ McCleod said, in astonishment, then she stared at Hanlon’s clothes. Morag was much taller and bigger than Hanlon; the old jumper she had lent her hung like a sack on the smaller woman and the patched cord jeans were low in the crotch and the bottoms were rolled up. Hanlon looked like a scarecrow.
‘And what the fuck are you wearing?’
Ten minutes later the two women were drinking whisky in McCleod’s front room.
‘I think I should get back-up and go and arrest him,’ McCleod said. Hanlon shook her head.
‘That’s the last thing you should do.’ She drank some whisky.
‘He nearly killed you,’ protested McCleod.
‘He’d just deny it.’
‘We could bring him in anyway, and Harriet. She might back you up.’
Hanlon shook her head. ‘The main thing is that we don’t disturb whatever is happening next week. That way, we should be able to see Big Jim sent away for a considerable amount of time.’
‘Yes, you’re right, of course.’ McCleod sighed and had another drink of Scotch. ‘How the hell did you get here, by the way? All the way from the end of the island?’
Hanlon had told her all of what had happened up until Morag had left. Now she finished her account.
‘When I saw that Barbarian and knew she was one of Big Jim’s clients, participants, groupies, whatever you would call them, I was worried that she’d call him, and he’d be back for a second attempt. Maybe even helping him. God knows, if anyone would know where to stash a body it’d be her.’ She drank some more whisky. Morag’s forestry work would take her all over the island; she would, quite literally, know all the back roads, all the little-known or scarcely used trails. She would make an ideal accomplice. She continued, ‘So I walked back to Donald’s place, cross-country so no one would meet me.’ She looked at the clock on the wall: 6 p.m. ‘It took me a couple of hours. When I got there, I took his bike. I left a note.’
McCleod nodded. ‘You must be shattered.’
‘I am,’ Hanlon said. ‘It’s been like some nightmare triathlon, swimming from a sunken boat, running away from a potential ally of an attempted murderer and then a ten-mile cycle, wearing bloody steel-toed wellington boots.’
‘Well,’ McCleod said, smiling, ‘you did tell me you were in training for an Iron Man event. Maybe it’ll do you good in the long run.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Hanlon drily. ‘It’s not how I usually train, I can assure you.’
‘Come here,’ McCleod said, standing up. ‘I want to hold you.’
The two women put their arms around each other and McCleod hugged Hanlon fiercely. Hanlon felt McCleod’s body jerk as she repressed a sob and when they looked into each other’s eyes, she saw that the other woman’s eyes were wet.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but you nearly died out there. I don’t want to be attending your funeral…’ She took another drink of whisky. ‘I can’t help but think of those two girls being sent home, back to Germany, back to Latvia or wherever she came from… They should be travelling economy, getting pissed on the flight and looking out of the window, not freight in a cheap coffin in the hold. That could have been you, so
