‘I’ve not got a clue. Hold on, I’m at the hotel. Missy Galbraith asked me to come along, in case there was any trouble.’
‘I thought you didn’t work for the Wolf family anymore?’
‘I heard what happened last night. This is just a favour for her. Hold on, I’ll see if she knows.’
Dunbar could hear muffled talking and then Muckle came back on the line. ‘She says she’s never been to it, and it isn’t part of the will or anything, but it’s an old house belonging to the Wolf family, right enough. It’s called Hillside. But get this: it was an asylum.’
‘An asylum?’ Dunbar looked at Harry and made a face.
He could hear Muckle being spoken to again. Then the man came back on the line.
‘Aye. It wasn’t just an asylum. It was a proper wee hospital, but it had a small psychiatric wing. The new hospital opened, and services transferred there, but Murdo Wolf kept his wife locked up. She’d had a breakdown and he kept her there, with staff looking after her. It was closed after his wife died. It’s been closed up for years now and never reopened. Not since Murdo died.’
‘Thanks, pal.’ Dunbar cut the call and told the others what Muckle had just told him. ‘Seems old Missus Wolf was the sole psychiatric patient in that big hoose. It was a hospital.’
‘There has to be a road somewhere nearby,’ Harry said.
‘Up there, on the right,’ Evans said, looking back down at his phone.
‘Your eyes are sharp,’ Dunbar said from the back seat. ‘Despite your mother telling you you’ll go blind one day.’
‘I have Google Maps up on my phone.’ Evans added something under his breath.
‘What was that?’
‘Blind and deaf,’ Evans said to Alex as she turned the car onto the narrow road.
‘I bloody well heard that, though.’ Dunbar resisted the urge to smack Evans on the back of the head. ‘This better be right. Bloody Maps. Give me a good old road map any day. What do you say, Harry?’
‘I don’t know, Jimmy, these things are kind of handy on your phone.’
‘Until you can’t get any bars or your phone dies. Aye, exactly. I don’t hear a peep out of any of you.’
The gates were across the road and nature had started to take the hillside back. Trees and bushes lined the path, and the tarmac had long since given up trying to keep itself together. Big cracks allowed weeds to creep through.
Alex stopped and they sat looking at the gates.
‘They’re not going to bloody open themselves,’ Dunbar said.
Alex and Evans got out and walked up to the wrought-iron gates. Evans lifted the iron peg that was keeping one of the gates closed, and it slid up easily. He moved the gate in and it offered no resistance. Alex moved the other one.
‘No, no, that’s alright, we got it,’ Evans said, getting back in the car.
‘Good, because I had no intention of lifting my arse off this seat,’ said Dunbar.
Alex grinned as she got back behind the wheel. The tyres crunched over broken tarmac and what looked like either small bushes or huge weeds.
‘Seriously, though, boss, that gate moved like it was opened every day. I was expecting to have to shove it hard, but it almost glided.’
The road went through a canopy of trees for almost a quarter of a mile before breaking out into a wide driveway. There was an old car park over on the right, empty now except for more weeds. It had been mostly gravel at one time before the greenery got hold of it.
The house was on three levels with a tower on the left-hand side, poking through the trees. More modern wings had been tacked on to the side, extending it.
Dunbar took his phone out, but once again the bars had disappeared. ‘Christ, why are we paying so much every month for service that’s little better than two cans and a piece of string?’ he said.
Alex stopped the car in front of the main doors, and they got out. Miraculously, none of the windows were broken, except one, where a branch had been blown through it. Apparently, Laoch didn’t have an abundance of vandals. Or maybe they just didn’t want to come up to the old asylum.
There were old lampposts, but Harry doubted they were working. Why would they waste electricity lighting up an old building that had been abandoned for years?
‘I wonder why this place wasn’t mentioned by any of the Wolf brats?’ Harry said as Alex and Evans wandered off to one side.
‘Who knows?’ Dunbar said. ‘Maybe they’re just embarrassed by this place. But it will get sold anyway. If anybody wants to buy an old asylum.’
‘If this was Edinburgh, it would have been torn down by now and flats built on it.’
‘Look over here,’ Harry said. He walked over to an iron gate set into a stone wall. It opened easily. He and Dunbar walked through into a small cemetery. There were only a few headstones in the small area. Harry stopped in front of a small row.
‘Oliver Wolf and his wife,’ Dunbar said.
‘And Murdo Wolf. They must have put the stone up while he was still alive. There’s no death date. And his wife next to him.’
‘They’ll be able to add the death date now, Harry.’
Harry nudged Dunbar. ‘Look at the names. Murdo and Oliver.’
Dunbar looked at what Harry was pointing to and then he understood. They walked back out.
‘See this!’ Alex said, waving them over.
Harry and Dunbar walked over to where the new addition was attached to the old house. Alex pointed to an old sign that was sitting on the ground outside a set of double doors. Harry read it out loud.
‘Accident and Emergency.’ He looked at the others. ‘This was the original Laoch hospital right enough.’
‘Until they built the new one down on the south island,’ Alex said.
‘Which
