Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
I’m at the kitchen table with my second coffee and a half-finished sketch of a knapweed I cut on the way back from the moor two days ago. The sketch hasn’t been going well. The petals keep coming out wrong no matter what I do, and the coffee isn’t helping.
I’m just about to go get a fresh cup when there’s a knock at my door.
Fucking hell, I think to myself, nearly jumping out of my skin. One would think that being in a cottage in the middle of nowhere would mean I wouldn’t have many visitors, but clearly that’s not the case. There’s someone knocking at my door nearly every damn day.
I stand up quietly and listen. Hear a man clear his throat from outside the door.
At first, I am certain it was Alasdair, even though he promised—for reasons I can’t figure out and maybe don’t want to—he wouldn’t visit me at the cottage again, but Alasdair isn’t a man who coughs to fill the silence.
Alasdair is the silence.
I go pull back the curtain and peer through the window. There’s a cop car in my driveway, same one I saw at the Torridon Hotel a few days ago.
This can’t be good.
Automatically I think I’ve done something wrong, illegal, even, like I was caught driving on the wrong side of the road and didn’t realize it, or I didn’t know that honking at Highland cattle when they’re blocking the road is a crime.
I’m practically sweating when I open the door and see the same cop who had the conversation with the bartender.
“Can I help you?” I ask, trying to sound nonchalant and not incredibly guilty over imaginary things.
He’s standing on the front step in plain clothes, his hands at his sides, the small respectful distance of a man who does this for a living.
Up close he’s older than I thought at the pub, late forties, solid build with that older man paunch.
His eyes are grey-blue and they’re taking me in, all of me.
I’m suddenly very aware of how disheveled I must look with my hair pulled back in a greasy, messy bun—I’m due to wash my hair—wearing a black hoodie, lime green silky harem pants I snagged on sale, and fuzzy slippers.
“I’m Inspector Sinclair. I saw you at the Torridon a few days back. I’d hoped to catch you then but you left before I’d had the chance.”
“Ah, yes, I think I remember seeing you there.” I give him a shaky smile, trying to play it cool.
“Aye.” He gives a small nod, as if that settles something. “Sergeant MacRae down at Lochcarron sent your report up to me. You called him awhile back about a man on your property?”
Oh. “I did…”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you can spare half an hour.”
“Sure.” I wait a beat, however, because the thought occurs to me: Could this be who Effie was talking about? Don’t let him in. Did she mean this cop? Did she means all cops in general? Did she mean any man?
But it feels like I’ll get in big trouble if I don’t oblige. “Come in, Inspector,” I say, stepping aside. At the very least I’ve always wanted to say a line like that, as if I’m acting in a British murder mystery show.
He gives me a faint smile and steps over the threshold.
I take him into the kitchen. I offer him tea and he accepts, and as the kettle boils, I make an effort to gather sugar and milk into little ramekins my aunt has stacked on the shelf so I don’t offend him with too little or too much of either.
He looks around the kitchen, noting the salt at the windows, but doesn’t comment.
“So, Miss Galloway…”
“Iris.”
“Iris. I’ll be straight with you. I’m working a series of incidents on this stretch of coast between Ullapool and Lochcarron and your name came across my desk.
MacRae’s report mentioned a man on your property.
A man you’d had at your door the previous evening.
A man you said gave his name as Alasdair and said he was staying at the castle across the bay. ”
“That’s right,” I say slowly.
“How many times have you seen him since?”
The question is so direct it almost takes me off-guard. Who is this man to know how many times I’ve seen him and if I’ve seen him at all?
“Once,” I lie through my teeth. “Maybe twice. At the start of all this. He came to the door; the time MacRae knows about. I saw him out walking around the bay once or twice after. We haven’t spoken in a while.”
It comes out smoothly, which surprises me. I’ve been a great many things in my life, but I’ve not, generally, been a person who lies cleanly to police officers. I always have a tell—and that’s to say too much—so I clamp my jaw together as a reminder not to go blabbering and ruin it all.
Sinclair’s face does not change.
“You haven’t spoken with him?”
“Not really.” His brow raises and my jaw becomes unclamped. “In passing. Hello. Good morning. You know, not what I’d call speaking, speaking. Just…noises coming out of my mouth, really.”
Oh god, Iris, shut up. So much for that.
“And he hasn’t been to the cottage since the night MacRae has on record?”
“No. He’s not been in here.”
It’s not a lie lie.
“Can you describe him for me?” he asks as he takes out a notepad.
I describe a man. I describe a man who is several inches shorter than Alasdair, with short brown hair instead of black, and with hazel eyes. The description I give would fit a hundred men on this coast.
The real question is, of course…just why the fuck am I lying for him, a supposed, possible serial killer?
Because you know, deep down, he’s not, I tell myself.
I’m choosing to believe that for now.
“Mm,” Sinclair rumbles.
He takes a long sip of his tea. His eyes go to the salt line at the back window again. They stay there for a beat, then they come back to me.
“Iris. There’s something you should know, and I don’t know that the people in these parts will ever come around to telling you.”
I set my mug down. Jesus. He has my full attention now.
“There have been four incidents this summer between Lochcarron and Ullapool. Women, on the shore, alone. I’m not going to give you details because the details won’t help you.
What I will tell you is that the last witness we had described a man on the shore with the victim, and the description was specific enough to be useful, and the description matched what MacRae has on file about your visitor. ”
He says it flatly, letting it sit in the air between us. Meaning, he knows the description I just gave him is a load of shit.
“I’m not here to tell you who that man is,” he adds. “I’m here to tell you that if he comes to your cottage again, or if you see him on your property, or if he speaks to you in passing, I would like to know about it. Here is my card.”
He slides it across the table. I don’t pick it up.
“You think he’s the one? This Alasdair?” I wonder.
“I think he is a man we’d like to talk to.
I think you are a woman living alone in an area of the Highlands where four women have either been killed or gone missing this summer.
I think your great-aunt kept her doors locked her whole life and the salt on her sills for a reason, and I think I wouldn’t be doing my job if I sat here and pretended I didn’t see that salt. ”
“Did you know my aunt?”
“I knew of her.”
But there’s something else, I can tell it’s on the tip of his tongue. I do the thing where I wait, trying to be comfortable with the silence instead of yammering my way through it.
It’s hard but it works.
He clears his throat and slowly spins the teacup around.
“There was a case in 1962. A young woman, Catriona Carmichael, went missing from this coast. Your great-aunt was the last person to see her alive. She was a person of interest. She was never charged, obviously. The case is still open. Inactive, but open.”
He’s watching me carefully, though I think he knows I have no idea what he’s talking about, nor how the hell my aunt got wrapped up in anything to do with a missing person.
“I’m telling you this because the cottage is yours now. And because, if anything turns up on this property, I’d want to know about it before I read it in a report.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means call me first.”
Good lord, what is with these Highland men and their inability to speak plainly?
He stands up, the chair making a loud sound on the kitchen floor. He hasn’t touched his tea past the first sip.
“I’m sorry to bring this to your door, Iris. I’ll see myself out.”
He doesn’t wait for me to walk him. He goes back through the sitting room, into the front hall, and out the front door, then I hear the car start a moment later, and the wheels on the gravel, and the engine receding down the drive, and then nothing.
I get up and lock the door.
Then I go to the trunk.
I placed the trunk in the mudroom and, despite having told myself I need to go through all the letters and materials in the chest, I haven’t done so in a while. I guess there’s been a part of me that wants to remain in the dark.
But not anymore.
The latches are stiff as I work them open. The lid lifts with the soft dry creaking of old hinges, and the scents of camphor and lavender, and, beneath that, the smell of paper.
I take everything out and lay it on the floor around me.
The field sketches I have already looked at. The packets of pressed flowers, the tin of pen nibs, the notebooks I haven’t yet opened.
The horse on the cartridge paper, the one that looks exactly like the one I saw in the woods, came at low tide; did not invite.
The list of names, forty-seven of them.
At the bottom, against the cedar wood of the trunk’s base, are two things.
A bundle of letters tied with twine, the paper cream and slightly yellowed at the edges, and, beside the bundle, in the corner of the trunk like it was placed there with intention, a small wooden box.