The Adept (27 page)

“I hate to say this,” he announced, “but I don’t see any sign of a telephone.”

“There isn’t one,” McLeod said matter-of-factly. “That’s why I brought my own.”

He unzipped one of the side pouches on his overnight bag and extracted a cellular phone unit. He was about to switch
it on when a grey Volvo estate car came rumbling into view along the unpaved track that connected the airfield with the main road.

“Perhaps you won’t have to bother with that,” Adam said. “It would appear that someone’s sent a welcoming party.”

The Volvo was moving fast, its wheels throwing up sprays of wet gravel as it negotiated the rats. As McLeod straightened to watch, it rattled noisily across the cattle grid that lay just outside the open gate, shooting on through the gap and coming to an abrupt halt but a few yards from where the three of them were standing. A fair-haired young man in a cloth cap rolled down the window and gave McLeod a wave.

“Hullo, Inspector!” he called. “Would ye be needin’ a lift, now?”

McLeod’s craggy face creased in the first smile Peregrine had seen all day.

“Sandy!” he exclaimed. “How did you know when to come? I was just about to put in a call to the castle, and here you are!”

“Och, we saw the plane comin’ in, so I thought I’d better get down here. My da had word direct from the Chief tae say ye’d be handling this case for us, so we figured it had tae be you. We dinnae get that many planes, this time o’ year.” He threw open the door and stepped out onto the turf, unfolding to well over six feet. “The Chief said ye were tae have all the assistance we could give ye. Dad took that tae mean
not
leaving ye tae cool your heels at the airstrip any longer than anyone could help. Can I help ye with yer bags?”

McLeod chuckled with genuine good humor as he turned to Adam and Peregrine.

“You see how helpfulness and good sense run in the MacLeods,” he said. “I want you both to meet Alexander MacLeod. His father is head caretaker at the castle. Sandy, I’d like you to meet Sir Adam Sinclair of Strathmourne and his associate, Mr. Lovat. They’re going to be giving us a hand with the investigation.”

Sandy gave a tog at the brim of his cap. “I’m sore pleased tae meet both of ye, gentlemen. An’ if ye can help the inspector get the Flag back for us, ye may be sure of the friendship of the MacLeods forever—for the luck of the clan stands or falls by it.”

Chapter Seventeen

RELIEVED
to get out of the wind, Adam and Peregrine slid into the rear seat of the Volvo, stowing their scant luggage behind the seat and leaving McLeod to sit up front. With an admonition to hang on, Sandy swung the car around in a tight U-turn and headed back up the lane toward the main road. Within minutes they were roaring along the A850 toward Dunvegan Castle.

The road was narrow and winding, and fortunately empty. Sandy drove at top speed, making scant allowance for dips and bends, cutting the inside of curves. As they bore left at Sligachen, changing to another “A” road, Peregrine braced himself and briefly closed his eyes, taking but little comfort in the assumption that Sandy MacLeod must know this stretch of road like the back of his hand. White-knuckled and silent, he soon abandoned all thought of admiring the scenery as they raced through the hills under a lowering pall of cloud.

They ran into a squall just north of the village of Bracadale. The driving downpour eased a few minutes later, but the wind persisted, whistling shrilly through the wet heather on the high ground. By the time they reached the fork in the road leading up to Dunvegan, the broken cloud banks had begun to close ranks, and the turbulent air carried the bitter tang of ozone, like a threat of impending lightning.

“I don’t like the feel of this,” McLeod muttered over his shoulder to Adam and Peregrine. “There’s something uncanny about the way the wind keeps changing.”

“Changing?” Adam was instantly alert.

“Aye,” said McLeod. “Hadn’t you noticed? It’s chasing itself around in circles, widdershins. Whatever else it is, it isn’t natural.”

He spoke with authority. It reminded Peregrine that McLeod had spent at least one previous lifetime battling the elements at sea. Adam peered out the window for a moment at the racing scenery, and presumably the errant wind, then shook his head.

“I wish I could reassure you that it’s nothing to worry about,” he said, “but unfortunately, I can’t. If it’s what I suspect, this may be even harder than we thought. But there’s nothing to be done about it just now.”

On that enigmatic note, he fell silent—which only made Peregrine worry more, for he had not a clue what the other two were talking about. The wind just looked like wind, to him. He glanced at Sandy, hoping the younger man might offer some additional comment, but Sandy seemed intent on his driving—for which Peregrine was grateful, for the driving conditions were atrocious. Still, his silence did nothing to reassure Peregrine about the enigmatic wind.

Their route to the castle took them steadily northwest, eventually skirting briefly along the eastern shore of Loch Dunvegan. About a mile short of their destination, within sight of the weathered timbers of Dunvegan Pier, Sandy suddenly emitted a grunt of surprise and began applying the brakes.

As the Volvo lurched to a halt, its three other passengers saw that a police barrier had been set up across the road. A broad figure in a fluorescent macintosh stepped out from behind the barrier and strode forward to meet them, sergeant’s stripes bold on both sleeves. Sandy cranked down his window as the wearer came around toward the driver’s side.

“What’s goin’ on, Davie?” he asked. “Have ye no’ had enough trouble for one day?”

“Aye, ye’d think so,” the sergeant replied. “As if it wasnae bad enough ye had the robbery up at the castle, Tarn Dewar’s just pulled a body out o’ the water, out past the seal
colony. Happened about an hour ago. He an’ his brother were checkin’ their lobster pots.”

Beyond the barrier, two police cars and an ambulance van were pulled up on the left-hand shoulder of the road. The wind-driven stretch of exposed beach below was dotted with moving figures, anonymous in glistening macs and rain-hoods, and there was more activity on the pier.

McLeod threw a sneaking glance over his shoulder at Adam before asking, “Was the victim somebody local?” The Island policeman eyed him in unconcealed surprise.

“An’ who might ye be, sir?”

“Now, Davie, there’s nae need tae gawk like a mackerel,” Sandy said tartly, before McLeod could answer. “This is Detective Inspector Noel McLeod. The Chief’s called him up from Edinburgh, tae look into last night’s theft. Show him yer ID, Inspector.”

“I’m not here in any official capacity, understand,” McLeod said, as he produced his police credential. “Just as a favor, from a clansman to his clan and Chief, I’m sure your people are quite capable of handling the police side of things.”

The sergeant’s troubled face cleared slightly at the statement of confidence, and as he verified the ID.

“Weel, now. That’s all right, then, isn’t it? If the Chief called ye in . . . tae answer yer question, the dead woman wasnae anyone from around here. We didnae find any identification on the body, but all her clothes had foreign labels. We think she may hae been Dutch—or possibly Scandinavian. We’ll know more, maybe, when we get the fingerprint report back from Fort William.”

“How did she die?” asked Adam. “Did she drown?”

The sergeant turned to gaze at Adam as though seeing him for the first time.

“This is Sir Adam Sinclair,” McLeod said crisply, “He’s a physician. He and his associate, Mr. Lovat, are here to lend me a hand.”

“As ye say, sir.” The police sergeant accepted McLeod’s explanation with a nod, before returning his attention to Adam. “No, she didnae drown. She was shot in the side o’ the head, at point blank range, and she took two more bullets tae the heart.”

At Adam’s noncommittal, “Ah,” McLeod scowled even more darkly.

“Are you saying it was an execution, Sergeant?”

The sergeant shrugged. “Weel, I wouldnae go so far as that,” he said. “Granted, we dinnae get much o’ this sort o’ thing around here, but—weel, it did look tae me like the killer made a professional job of it. Ye might care tae have a wee look at the body for yerselves, before the medics ship it off tae the hospital morgue in Portree. The bullet that killed her made a bit of a mess o’ her face, but otherwise, she fits the general description o’ the woman who took part in yer robbery.”

“I think we
will
have a look at that body,” McLeod said, already opening his car door.

Sandy stayed behind with the Volvo. Adam and McLeod set off down the beach in the company of the police sergeant, shoulders hunched against the buffeting of the off-shore gale. Peregrine lagged behind long enough to retrieve his sketchbox from the back of the car, then followed after. A random gust sent a shiver up the back of his neck, but he told himself it was just the cold and hugged his sketchbox closer to his chest.

He caught up with his companions halfway along the length of the pier. The body was lying stretched out on a heavy sheet of tarpaulin a few feet short of the pier’s end. The men from the ambulance were getting ready to transfer it to a black plastic body-bag.

“Hold up a minute, Geordie,” the sergeant called. “We’ve got a couple o’ experts here tae take a look at what we’ve found.”

The men stood back to make room for the newcomers. While McLeod looked on, Adam crouched down to examine the body. Peregrine hung back, white-knuckled.

The woman appeared to have been in her early thirties, with blond hair clipped so short it was almost crew cut. An overnight immersion in seawater had washed away most of the blood, but the cause of death was unmistakable. The bullet had entered just behind the left ear, exiting below the
right eye. From the sergeant’s description, Adam had expected major facial disfigurement, but in fact the damage was fairly minimal—not that the face elicited any twinge of recognition.

Sighing, Adam turned his attention to a superficial inspection of her body. The chest wounds were self-evident; and other than a few lacerations on the legs—apparently made after death, since there was no bruising—he could find no other visible marks, no signs of a struggle. The hands were neat and well-manicured, the fingers slender and tapering, blackened at the tips from taking a set of fingerprints.

“Good hands for a thief,” McLeod grunted at his elbow. “I’ll wager a month’s salary she’s got a police record someplace—even if it isn’t here in Scotland.”

“A professional, done to death by a professional,” Adam said quietly. “And you think she
was
involved in stealing the Flag?”

McLeod nodded. “I feel it in my bones, Adam. I don’t know why she was killed, but she’s our lady thief, mark my words.”

Adam looked around for Peregrine. The young artist was clinging to one of the pilings closer to shore, fair hair feathered wild by the wind. He was gazing out at the tossing waves with a wooden expression on his thin face. It was clear that he was not finding it easy to come to terms with the physical evidence of premeditated murder.

Adam got to his feet and went over to him. At his approach, Peregrine turned and gave him a hollow look.

“I thought it couldn’t be worse than Melrose,” he said bleakly, “but somehow, it is.”

A white-crested wave crashed into the pier, sending seawater splashing high into the air. Both men shrank from the flying spray, and Adam steadied Peregrine with one strong hand.

“I think I know what you’re feeling,” he said, his voice carrying clear and low through the surge of wind and water. “Sudden and violent death is always disturbing. That’s what makes it something to be resisted with equal intensity.” Continuing to watch Peregrine closely, he added, “Noel and I don’t always enjoy the work we do, Peregrine. But it still has to be done.”

The younger man lowered his head, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be difficult. Did you want me to make some sketches?”

Adam tilted his face to the stormy sky.
“Can
you, in these conditions?”

“I’ll manage,” Peregrine said, squaring his shoulders. Moving closer to the corpse, he shielded his sketchbox with his body and took out a drawing pad and pencil. Seeing what he was about to do, McLeod moved over to help Adam screen him from the force of the wind. Peregrine’s face was stiff and pale at first, as he stared down at his subject, his initial pencil strokes tentative and halting.

Then all at once he seemed to relax. His gaze focused and sharpened, and his sketching became swift and decisive. Intrigued, Adam and McLeod watched over his shoulder as a finely detailed image took shape.

The portrait was that of the murdered woman—not as she was now, but as she must have appeared shortly prior to her death. The face and clothing were unchanged, but the hair now was longer and dark, cut in a fashionable bob. She wore glasses, too—missing now, after her buffeting in the sea.

More significant still, to Adam’s way of thinking, was the fact that Peregrine had drawn a large medallion hung on a chain around his subject’s neck. As if in response to what was in Adam’s mind, the artist indicated the pendant with a touch of one forefinger.

“There’s another one of those medallions, like the one I drew at Melrose,” he murmured dreamily. “I’d swear it carried the same device—only I still can’t make out what it is.”

Adam laid a quieting hand on his forearm. At his touch, Peregrine recollected himself, closing his sketchbook self-consciously and then making a nonchalant show of putting it away. Thoughtful, Adam turned back to the Island policeman, who had been watching all with undisguised curiosity.

“Mr. Lovat is a forensic artist,” he explained, stretching
the truth only a little, to defuse any further speculation. “Tell me, was this woman wearing, any jewelry when her body was recovered?”

The sergeant shook his head, apparently satisfied with the explanation.

“Jewelry? No, sir. Not a ring, not a brooch, not even so much as a wristwatch. I know the men who found her,” he added, “and I’ll vouch for their honesty. Tarn’s an elder o’ the Kirk.”

“That’s fine,” Adam said. “I wasn’t questioning—just wondering.”

As he and McLeod traded glances, the inspector drew him a few steps farther away, leaning in so that his mouth was close to Adam’s ear.

“I guess that confirms what we already suspected: that the folk who engineered this job are the same ones who summoned Michael Scot at Melrose and who stole Francis Hepburn’s sword.”

Adam nodded. “I agree. And it occurs to me that this murder has some of the same earmarks of another unsolved murder that I’ve remarked upon before. I wonder if your mystery drug-dealer, over in Glasgow, could actually have been hired to steal the sword, and then was killed for his efforts, with it made to
look
like a bad drug deal. I’d guess this woman was also an outsider—a small-time professional, hired on for this particular job and then killed to safeguard the identity of her employers.”

Peregrine huddled in closer to follow what they were saying.

“But—if she wasn’t a member of the gang,” he ventured, “why give her a medallion?”

“Not a gang,” Adam corrected. “More in the nature of a magical lodge, I’m beginning to suspect—a lodge of black magicians, by the evidence so far. And to answer your question, they would have given it to her for protection.”

“Protection from the Flag,” Peregrine asked, “because she wasn’t a MacLeod?”

“Quite likely,” Adam agreed. “The Fairy Flag is a powerfully charged artifact. Even insulated behind glass, which
probably
would make it safe to handle, it still represents a potentially dangerous source of elemental energy.