Chapter 13 #2
‘You’re a detective chief inspector. You told the Laird to go to his room, and he did.
You think someone “working class” could do that?
’ Nairn pointed his hook at the shelf again.
‘You’re not a sea eagle, but maybe you’re a fox or a weasel?
’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Or mebby a grey wolf.’ Back to digging.
‘Me and Sergeant Moore here? We’re worms.’
‘Speak for yourself.’ Moore chapped on the tabletop. ‘Now, where the hell were you last night?’
Nairn pulled the last gobbet of innards from his mouse and wiped the hook clean on his sleeve.
‘Once the wedding guests had gone, I stacked all the chairs in the ballroom and came home.’ His eyes drifted over Sergeant Moore’s shoulder.
‘Been working on a special project and wanted to get the ears done.’
Somehow that managed to sound even creepier than everything else.
Roberta turned in her seat and stopped.
OK . . . Just when you thought Albert Nairn couldn’t get any odder.
A hideous man-animal thing lurked in the shadows beside a bookcase full of owl parts.
It was only about a third finished, but the framework had to be at least six foot six.
God knew how many species had contributed to the repulsive melange, but it was a lot of them.
Stag’s antlers reached up from either side of its head, with curling ram’s horns beneath them, spines of bone making a line down its back.
There was something primitive about it. Something that made the air taste metallic and greasy all at the same time.
Nairn hadn’t got around to putting the eyes in yet, but the empty sockets of whatever he’d used for the skull still stared back at her. Hostile and judging.
A shudder rippled its way across her shoulders, making the hair on her arms stick up.
Whatever the hell Nairn was making, it was wrong in so many ways.
That strange pride-and-awe sound was back in the old freak’s voice. ‘Cernunnos: the Horned God!’ A happy sigh. ‘The secret is to use only the freshest of roadkill.’
Roberta dragged her gaze back to the table. ‘Did you kill Sir Reginald Bradbury-Scott?’
‘Pff . . .’ He picked up a short-bladed knife. ‘Worms don’t kill eagles. They get eaten and are thankful for it.’
Roberta huddled under her hotel umbrella, peering back across the clearing at Albert Nairn’s Cottage of Horrors.
The mini-me-mouse version of her was soft and furry against her fingers as she stroked it in her pocket.
Which sounded like a filthy euphemism, but it was kinda weirdly comforting. Soothing, even.
Look: here’s a dead rodent that’s been dressed up to look just like me.
Wasn’t every day you got to say something like that.
Sergeant Moore sidled up beside her, the rain drumming on his umbrella. ‘What do you think?’
‘Creepy as a creepy thing.’
‘Oh hell yes. But did he do it?’
‘Don’t know . . . Maybe.’ She frowned at all those bones, hanging from their metal posts.
Couldn’t deny that the whole place screamed SERIAL KILLER!
in six-foot-tall neon letters, decorated with dead mix-and-match animals, but just because the guy was a grade-A nutbasket, it didn’t make him a killer, did it?
‘Displaying the body like that, up on the stag’s horns? That I can see him doing.’
‘OK.’ Moore pulled his shoulders back, chin up, being all heroic. ‘Want me to go in there and arrest him? Got to be a room at the hotel we could lock him in till Inverness gets here.’
‘Thought you didn’t have handcuffs with you?’
‘Ah . . .’
Roberta grabbed the sleeve of his high-vis and dragged him further into the woods, behind a thicket of brambles.
Which, if they were lucky, would offer a bit of camouflage.
Difficult to be sneaky in an oversized fluorescent-yellow waterproof and a bright-blue brolly with ‘Skirivour Castle Hotel’ on it.
He hunkered beside her, keeping his voice down. ‘It was Nairn running around in the woods earlier, wasn’t it?’
‘Bloody well hope so. Wouldn’t want two sinister-spooky sods messing about out here.’
Moore tried on a thinky face. ‘Mind you, would a raving monarchist really kill someone like—’
‘Shh!’
The cottage’s door swung open and Albert Nairn stepped out onto the porch.
He was wearing some sort of hairy cloak over his tweeds, stitched together from patchwork animal pelts.
It had a rack of half-sized antlers mounted on either side of the hood, making him look like a dressing-up-box version of the monstrosity he was building in his cottage: Cernunnos.
Only the Horned God probably wasn’t depicted holding a rifle big enough to stop an elephant. Assuming there were any roaming this part of the Scottish Highlands. Which was doubtful, because if there were, Nairn would have shot and stuffed one by now.
Moore ducked down. ‘He knows we’re on to him!’
She slapped his arm, voice a hissing whisper. ‘Will you shut your hole?’
But Nairn didn’t march over and blow a mammoth-sized hole in either of them. Instead he stepped out into the rain, sniffing the air as he did a slow three-sixty. Then froze, hunkered down, and hurried off in the opposite direction, rifle held across his chest.
Roberta breathed out. ‘See? He’s no’ coming after us.’
‘Unless he’s circling round behind . . .’
Now there was a comforting thought.
But no point standing here like a pair of lemons, waiting to find out if Moore was right or not.
Time to beat a hasty retreat.
Amazing how much ground you could cover when you thought a homicidal maniac was chasing after you.
Roberta and Sergeant Moore staggered in through the hotel entrance, puffing and panting. Thunking the doors shut behind them and shooting the bolts. Which probably wouldn’t stop Nairn and his dirty-big rifle for long, but it was the thought that counted.
The lobby was silent and empty, just the dead animals and that massive stag statue to witness them kid-on they hadn’t been running scared from an auld mannie in a hairy cloak.
She pushed herself off the door and had a wee shake, sending water spattering off her high-vis. Every step made horrible squishing noises. ‘Feet are like sponges.’
Moore unzipped his soggy jacket and hung it on the rack. ‘On the plus side, at least we’ve not been shot.’
‘Know what? I get the feeling that if our boy Nairn had killed Sir Reginald, he’d have wheeched the body back to his weirdy cottage and stuffed it.
’ Roberta squelched in place for a couple of steps as she peeled off her waterproof.
‘Never been so damp in my life. Aye, and that includes in the bath.’ She pulled off her trainers and tipped the water out onto the tartan carpet.
‘Haven’t got a single dry sock to my name! ’
Sergeant Moore put their umbrellas away. ‘Actually . . . I think there’s something we can do about that.’