“Aren’t the shops busy,” said the woman. “I remember when Inverness was just a quiet country town.”
The woman ordered a vodka and Red Bull when the waiter came up. “You haven’t touched yours, dear,” she said to Philomena.
“Oh, I don’t feel like drinking.”
Philomena’s bag was open on the seat beside her. “Look at that man!” said her companion suddenly. “What
Looking out the window, all Philomena could see were innocent-looking passersby. She did not see the woman reach over and deftly extract the letter from her handbag. Nor did she see her slipping something into her drink.
“Cheers!” said the woman when her drink arrived.
Philomena took a sip. “I couldn’t see anything odd,” she said.
“I could swear there was a man exposing himself. Disgusting, I call it. No morals these days.”
Philomena made up her mind. He was not going to come. She took a strong gulp of her gin and tonic to give herself courage to move. But she began to feel dizzy and faint.
“Are you all right?” she heard her companion ask. “Someone help me get her outside into the fresh air.”
“No,” said Philomena weakly. “No.”
The bar tilted and swung before her eyes. Outside she faintly heard her companion say, “Help me into her husband’s car. That’s right. She’ll be right as rain once he gets her home.”
Philomena’s last conscious memory was of a deep voice saying, “Mistake, Philomena. Bad, bad mistake.”
Chapter Three
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Philomena slowly recovered consciousness. She tried to move, but her wrists were chained and padlocked to a bed. Her voice was dry. “Help,” she croaked.
“I will let you go,” said a man’s voice from the corner of the room, “if you swear to me you did not show that letter to the police.”
“I swear… I promise you on my life.”
“If you’ve lied to me, then your life is what you’ll be losing. Do you understand?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Shut your eyes.”
Philomena heard two clicks as the handcuffs were released. “You will find your car a bit away from this bothie on the Struie Pass. You will stay here for ten minutes and then go. If you so much as utter a word about this to anyone, I know where to find you.”
“Yes, please,” begged Philomena.
She heard the door of the bothie close. After a few minutes, she tried to sit up. She felt dizzy and weak. She could barely remember anything except sitting in that bar in Inverness and the woman opposite urging her to look out the window.
She finally swung her legs down onto the floor. The place was filthy and looked as if it had not been used, except maybe by schoolboys or vagrants, for years. There was a strong smell of excrement and urine. The mattress she had been lying on was soiled, with broken springs curling through the torn covering in places.
A rickety table held a bottle of mineral water and the remains of a bottle of whisky. She felt so parched, she opened the bottle and drank the water.
She did not care whether ten minutes had passed or not. Philomena staggered out into the spring sunlight. Over the heather, she recognised her car parked up on the road.
She hurried towards it, sometimes tripping and falling, but always rising and forging on to safety.
A watcher lowered his powerful binoculars. “Think she’ll keep her mouth shut?” asked the woman beside him.
“No.”
“Think she drank the water?”
“Probably. That drug you slipped into her drink causes a tremendous thirst. Let her set off and then we’ll follow her to make sure. We can always take her out before she reaches Drim. Did you put all the flammable stuff in the back?”
“Yes.”
“She’s off. Let’s go.”
The Struie Pass, the old road into Sutherland, is full of hairpin bends, but at the top it commands the most beautiful view as Sutherland lies in front and below: ranges of blue mountains and lochs stretching into the distance.
Philomena kept blinking. Lights were flashing before her eyes. At the viewpoint, she suddenly saw a smooth dual carriageway stretching out in front of her. People seemed to be dancing on it, which was odd but all she thought of was escape. She pressed her foot down hard on the accelerator and plunged right off the edge of the Struie Pass. The car rolled and tumbled and finally hit a rock where it burst into flames, a fireball from hell.
“She drank the water,” said the man with satisfaction.
“Aren’t you being a bit overelaborate? All that LSD?” asked his companion. “She probably told someone.”
“No, she didn’t. I know Philomena. She had a tape recorder in her bag. She was going to play detective. If she’d told her sister or the police, they’d have been after me by now. Now, let’s go. I’ve got to cover my tracks. We’ll throw her phone along with that tape recorder in the nearest peat bog.”
“Look, she may have said something to her sister.”
“Not her, pompous cow.”
Milly enjoyed a relatively peaceful day. But as evening approached and there was no sign of her sister-in-law, she began to fret. She went up to Philomena’s room. All her clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe.
She phoned Hamish Macbeth. “It’s not like her. For days, she hasn’t left me alone for a minute, and now she hasn’t even phoned. She said she was going to Inverness to do some shopping.”
“Have you a photograph of her?”
“I might have an old one somewhere.”
“Look for it. What was she wearing?”
“A heather-mixture tweed suit with brogues.”
“Hat?”
“No hat.”
“What was she driving?”
“A Ford Escort.” Milly gave Hamish the registration number.
“Phone me as soon as she gets back,” he said, “but I’ll let you know if we find her.”
Milly said goodbye, put down the receiver, and sat staring at it. Then she phoned Tam Tamworth. He was not in the office, but he had left her his mobile phone number.
“Now then,” said Tam when she told him about her missing sister-in-law, “I wouldnae put it past thon wumman to stay away jist to frighten you. But I’ll go look.”
The next morning, a family stopped at the viewpoint on the Struie Pass to admire the view: father, mother, and two small children, the Renfrew family up from Glasgow.
“Aren’t the Highlands just grand,” said Ian Renfrew, taking his binoculars and getting out of the car. “Come and see the view.”
“You go,” said his wife, huddled in the front seat. “It’s as cold as hell out there.”
