“Sanjay?” Jean repeated, sure she’d misheard some Gaelic expression.
“My granny’s folk are from India,” the constable explained.
“Cool,” said Jean, remembering Hugh’s song about the Scots as rovers, as swords for hire and missionaries, as transported criminals like Greg’s ancestor Tormod.
Thomson turned to Fergie. “Sorry to be called out on business, Fergus.”
With the Highlander’s fine disregard for titles, “Fergus” instead of “Fergie” counted as respectful address. Jean said, “I never did get the first-aid kit from Diana. I couldn’t find, er, an American family arrived and she’s dealing with them.”
Fergie nodded. If he knew Diana had been AWOL, however temporarily, he didn’t show it. “Rab Finlay’s on his way as well, but Lionel, the manager, it’s his day out.”
“I’ve got my kit.” Even Thomson had to shorten his steps on the twisting and bumpy path. At his heels, Jean followed not only his flashlight but his reflecting coat, and Fergie trudged along behind her, his breath rasping louder and louder.
Mist was gathering, shimmering strands drifting across the circles of light from their flashlights like homeless phantoms. Beyond the rocks, pools, and scrubby bits of heather, Jean made out nothing more than a muted shimmer on the underside of the clouds, the reflected glows of Dunasheen and Kinlochroy. A similar shimmer played across the water of first the loch and then, as they approached the castle, the sea. She felt as though she was trailing along with her little lantern, looking for an honest man…well, she was. She was looking for Alasdair.
Down the hill they went, and across the bridge, first Thomson, then Jean, then Fergie. Thomson went up the enceinte path like a mountain goat, then turned to offer Jean his hand. Putting her feminist pride in her pocket—one casualty was enough—she took it. But instead of steadying her up the slope, he heaved her upward so forcefully her feet almost left the ground. With a scramble she retrieved first her footing and then her hand, and managed a breathless, “Thanks.”
She turned to take the blanket from Fergie, the beam of her flashlight spattering down the craggy drop-off to one side, her shoulder brushing the damp cold of the ancient stone wall to the other. A shudder raised the hair on the back of her neck. The night had stripped the old castle of its dignity. Now the broken barricades seemed more sinister than sad, concealing icy eyes that watched the living souls clambering past and hating them for their warmth.
The faint blip on her paranormal radar faded so fast she suspected it might merely have been imagination, the dark, the scene getting to her. No time to analyze, not now.
Fergie, too, hauled himself up the path and stopped at its summit, catching his breath. Ahead, the yellow blur that was Thomson dropped sedately down what might have once been stone steps, but was just as likely to be stacked bedrock. Balancing their burdens, Jean and Fergie levered each other down six or seven levels and across a muddy, weedy patch onto level ground.
There was Alasdair! Or there were two circles of light, rather, meeting, blending, parting again, emanating from a shambling lump. Jean thought for a moment that Alasdair and Tina were supporting Greg between them. But no, the clump wasn’t wide enough for three. As the double figure resolved itself from the darkness, she saw Alasdair holding flashlights in each hand, and his right arm locked around a staggering Tina.
The last memory of warmth and light drained through Jean’s cold feet into the unforgiving ground. There was only one reason Alasdair, and Tina with him, would have left Greg alone.
Chapter Four
The flashlight beams flared and clashed. Jean squinted. Then they settled, and she saw Tina’s face. Illuminated from beneath, it resembled a mask of tragedy, mouth hanging open, mascara smeared beneath empty eyes, skin like clay.
Every line of Alasdair’s features was carved in Skye basalt. The vapor of his breath rose and blended into mist. “Jean, Fergus. P.C.—”
“Thomson, sir. Sanjay Thomson, Kinlochroy.” And, before Alasdair could react as Jean had to his first name, “Where’s the injured party?”
Tina let out a moan like a collapsing accordion and buckled. Thomson grabbed her other arm. Spasms rippled through her body and her curls trembled.
Fergie took the blanket, threw it around her shoulders, and pulled her into his own arms. “Come along, dear. Let’s get you back to the house. A cup of tea will go down a treat. Maybe a wee drop of brandy as well.”
“Greg,” Tina said in a tiny voice.
Greg. Jean felt shivery, sick, numb, and she’d barely met the man. She could imagine—but didn’t want to—how Tina felt.
With a quickly suppressed gulp, she took one of Alasdair’s flashlights from his bare and therefore icy hand and exchanged it for Fergie’s carrier bag. A thermos bottle sloshed at its bottom, next to several plastic cups. Of course. Any emergency situation in the British Isles could be mitigated by tea—warmth, caffeine, and sugar. But no amount of tea was going to bring Greg MacLeod back.
Fergie guided Tina’s stumbling feet toward the gantlet of the enceinte path, and beyond it the oasis of new Dunasheen. His voice, murmuring sympathies, faded into the rhythm of the wind and waves, a rhythm much slower than Jean’s own heart.
Alasdair introduced himself to the constable and shook his hand. “Sanjay.”
“My grandad was stationed in India and my granny’s from Delhi.” The constable replied just as patiently as he had with Jean—no doubt he’d had lots of practice—and in a return-of-serve asked, “That’s the Alasdair Cameron, ex-D.C.I. at Inverness?”
“Aye, one and the same,” Alasdair replied cautiously.
“I’ve swotted up on the Loch Arkaig and Loch Ness investigations. Brilliant detective work, Chief Inspect—Mr. Cameron.”
“Thank you, constable, but I was no more than part of a team.” Alasdair’s face remained stony, although a glint in his eye, directed toward Jean, acknowledged her role as partner and gadfly in both of those cases as well as two others. “Let’s be getting on with this investigation, shall we?”
“Yes, sir.” Thomson started off, his feet creaking across the small stones of the shingle beach. “This way, sir?”
“Aye, straight on.” Even as he spoke, Alasdair’s gaze tarried on Jean’s, and the glint in his eye wavered like a candle in a draft.
“What happened?” she asked. “Did he lose his footing, or did a stone turn beneath his shoe, or what?”
“I’m thinking or what.”
Jean’s heart slumped downwards. “But how.…” She’d find out soon enough.
Alasdair pulled his gloves from his pocket and onto his hands, but not before Jean glimpsed the mottled rust-red on his fingertips. Bloodstained ground. The MacDonalds and the MacLeods went at it like billy-o.
She glanced back to see the glow of Fergie’s flashlight moving across the bridge and up the hill and then fading away, a MacDonald now giving aid and succor to a MacLeod.
Alasdair was off after the pale shiny blur of Thomson’s coat, so fast Jean had to hustle to keep up. No telling what was lurking out here to pick off stragglers. And she’d be thinking that even without Alasdair’s dire or what.
The beam of Thomson’s flashlight swept back and forth, from the rocky hillside with its thin skin of turf across the beach to the waves rolling forward, falling back, rolling forward again. “The tide’s coming in. How far above…ah. There he is, poor chap.”
Three rays of light converged on a long shape, inert as driftwood. Greg lay diagonally across the pebbles, feet to the land, head to the sea, one arm flung out as though reaching