Gallow Falls E-Book

Alex Nye

• Herausgeber: Fledgling Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 450

Beschreibung

A remote Scottish estate. A missing teenager. When a young archaeologist discovers bones at the site of her Bronze Age Broch on Gallows Hill, the community of Kilbroch hold their breath. A post-mortem on the remains reveals that the body is that of teenager, Robbie MacBride, missing for more than a decade. The teenager was shot at close range, and his gamekeeper father falls under suspicion. However, not everyone is convinced. The archaeologist, Laura, ex-detective, Callum MacGarvey and Robbie's grandmother continue to investigate, while Robbie's sister, the silent Ruthie, remains haunted by her inconclusive childhood flashbacks. Local landowner, George Strabane is arrested, Robbie's father is released, and it seems that old ghosts have been put to rest. However, the truth is darker still and the tragic reason for Ruthie's self-imposed silence is finally revealed.

Leseprobe

Gallow Falls

Alex Nye

Contents

Gallows Hill

Twelve Years Later

Glenwhilk

Ruthie

Kells Chapel

The Gamekeeper’s Cottage

Glentye

Kilbroch Castle

Digging up the Past

Running Away

The Broch

Joan

Slippage

The Kilbroch Arms

Ghosts

Strabane

Lydia

Kells Chapel

The Dig

Artefacts

The Past

Twelve Years Earlier

The Camper Van

Radio Silence

Laura

Dan Lennox

The Guest Room

The Gamekeeper’s Cottage

Breakfast

Owen

Pat

The Camper Van

Kilbroch Castle

Joan’s Grief

Words

A Hopeless Case

Joan’s Ire

The Shoot

Excavation

Findings

Exhumation

Compensation

Ghosts Never Haunt the Innocent

Glass Houses

Kells Wood

The Gamekeeper’s Cottage

DNA

Excavating the Past

Burial

Night

Bricks and Mortar

Ruthie

Gallow Falls

Twin

The Key

Finding Her Voice

Leavings

A Tragic Way to End a Life

Digging

Pete Brodie

Salvage

Dunbrochan

Flashback

Biology

Pelmore Avenue

The Castle

The Gorge

The Outbuildings

Places bear the marks

Robbie’s Room

The Moon Hangs Low over Kells Wood

The Curse of Kilbroch

What The Birds Can Tell Us

Glentye

Friends in High Places

History Lies in Layers

Lottie

Restraint

Clearing

Wreckage

The Basement

Homecoming

Sleeping Dogs

October 10th 2010

Acknowledgements

For Joe, Micah and Martha

Gallows Hill

A clear high moon hangs like a lantern in the sky.

If you were an owl, or any other bird of prey, or simply an astronaut enjoying the view from a space station, you might hone in with your telescopic eye and see an area of dark forest below, the pointed tops of trees stretching for miles. And you might, in that carpet of dark green, eventually see a small clearing, where the trees make way for one tree in particular, an ancient oak, and beneath that oak, a square of turf, where a man is digging in his shirt sleeves.

He bends and grunts, shovelling the dark earth, one spadeful after the next, onto the bank accumulating above him.

It’s an eerie scene, although there is no one nearby to witness it.

When an owl cries out, he pauses, stands, and takes note of the silent trees crowding close. The sigh of the wind stirs the branches, enough to freeze his blood.

Time stands still in that forest.

If we believed in curses, we might be inclined to believe that a curse has been brought to this place tonight. But the locals will tell you that the curse which hangs over Kilbroch is centuries old.

Kells Wood, and the scattered hamlet of farmsteads and houses around it, has borne this curse since the time when women were drowned in the pond at the bottom of the gorge – under the supervising eye of the laird of the castle – while crowds watched on with glee.

The night wears on, and the digging eventually stops, and at some point during the early hours the man places a body in the grave and shovels the earth back over as if he is planting a tree. One which will never bear fruit or life.

On a branch high above him an owl sits, twists its feathered head, and holds the image in its amber eye, focusing.

Its eyelids click like a camera shutter on the image, as if recording, taking note. Once. Twice.

The man works.

The owl watches.

And the moon has nothing to say.

Twelve Years Later

Laura has marked out the area for inspection. She’s excited to see what will reveal itself. She has metal pegs pinned into the ground, and string stretched taut. She knows what she is looking for. At least, she thinks she does.

Around her the trees gather silently like ghostly witnesses. She has to kneel, and it makes her neck and shoulders ache with the effort. She is completely concentrated on the few inches of dust in front of her nose, as she scrapes away with her trowel. Very delicately, so as not to disturb too much of the soil, she probes away, millimetre by careful millimetre.

The light is fading and she knows she ought to give up for the evening, repair to her camper van, light the stove, make some tea. Maybe a pot noodle. But she can’t help herself. She has to keep digging. Even without the support of her colleagues, she loves this task, and she focuses everything on what is in front of her, hoping for the big find.

Dusk creeps steadily closer, crawling from between the trees like a dark animal. She ignores it, because she has a job to do and doesn’t have time to waste on fanciful notions. She’s never allowed an isolated location to put her off before.

The name of the hill alone is enough to spook even the hardiest of archaeologists, amateur or otherwise.

Gallows Hill.

A gnarled old oak hangs just above her. Its branches stretch in a great twisting canopy; its spreading roots are beneath her feet, beneath the moss, beneath the area of her dig.

Scrape, scrape is the only sound, as not even a faint breeze stirs the trees tonight.

Something, she doesn’t know what, makes the hairs prickle on the back of her neck, a creeping, tingling sensation that draws her attention. A faint breath, as of the earth itself exhaling. She looks up.

She’s surrounded by trees. Kells Wood is not large, but large enough, isolating her from anyone else. There’s no through road here. Anyone passing is heading for one of the converted cottages, or the castle. Or Broch Farm in the distance.

She feels watched. Deer maybe, lurking in the undergrowth. Silent watchers, keeping still for minutes at a time. She frowns slightly, peers deeper into the trees.

Gamekeepers inhabit these woods. There is at least one that she is aware of. Lives in the gamekeeper’s cottage with his daughter, on the tree-lined avenue that heads up to the castle. They’re a silent bunch, if her reading of Lady Chatterley’s Lover is anything to go by. Not given to conversation. In all the books she’s read, they creep about, watching people. She gets too much of her knowledge and experience from books rather than real life.

She tries to keep her thoughts light. No sense in spooking herself. After all, she’s got to come back to this spot every day for the next three or four weeks. She can’t afford to start imagining an unwanted intruder lurking about in the trees.

She was so excited when she got the funding for this project. She had studied aerial photographs of the area which hinted at the possibility of a Bronze Age broch. She pinpointed this particular hill as a likely spot, and is convinced she will find what she is looking for, despite the lack of encouragement from her colleagues at the university. The success of her funding application was a small victory, affirmation, if she needed it, that her work is meaningful. When you’re relying on the renewal of six month contracts for your academic livelihood, that matters.

Laura’s mind expands as she travels across the centuries, those thousands of years and millennia, into deep time which isn’t even deep time at all, really, but shallow time, if you weigh it up in the balance against the birth of the planet. This is the part of her job she loves, delving into the dark mists of the human imagination, accompanied by the verification of science.

Human time is so shallow, she thinks, so surface-deep, and buried under this earth are the ghostly remnants of skeletal structures that once stood tall, when this hill was bare rather than cloaked in trees as it is now. The building she is looking for is shaped like a cooling tower, where families lived protected within its circular walls, although of course only the base of those walls remain, buried by centuries of accumulated earth deposit.

This is what drives her, the way that the search can expand the mind, release the imagination into a time before, which inevitably makes you aware of the time after, and the time yet to come. Particularly poignant at the moment, she thinks, with the new rules we are living with, not to mention the current state of the world reminding us how fragile we all are.

She thinks, briefly, how people long ago thought of the trees and rocks as spirits, before they began to build permanent shelters and cultivate the land. What must it have been like to see the world through those ancient eyes, knowing so little about what things were really made of, and yet, perhaps, knowing so much more.

Rolling her shoulders to ease some of the tension from hours of stooping, she returns to her task.

It’s then she hears the crack. A twig trodden on, breaking the silence, snapping the thread of her thoughts so she’s back in the present, staring into the trees. They’re so tightly packed in places that she can’t make out anything clearly.

Then a shape, the outline of someone who seems to slip back behind the trunk of a tall pine.

She shouts across at them, ‘Hey?’ Partly to show she isn’t afraid.

But whoever is there decides to run. Too fast for her to glimpse them in the dusk. They are merely a blur between the trees, disappearing into the depths.

She stands up, takes a few steps, but they’re already too far away to see.

She doesn’t know it but above her an owl watches, hidden by foliage, waiting for its hour of dusk to arrive.

She downs tools for the day and heads back to her camper van, taking the same narrow path through the bracken that she has taken every day since she got here.

Her sky-blue camper van sits in the lay-by below, where the road bends to the right. It’s a single-track road with no markings. Tarmacked, but too narrow for more than one vehicle. She chose a spot in a wide passing-place, with enough space to park and set up camp. It’s surrounded by trees, thick pine, and behind it, a double-rutted track made by tractor tyres cuts through into an unappealing stretch of woodland where no one goes.

She feels a little uneasy, and is annoyed with whoever disturbed her. If they had anything to say, they should have made their presence known and she’d have shown them what she was working on.

The sight of her van brings a smile to her face. Laura loves her van. It’s home for now, containing all she needs to keep body and soul together. Seeing its sky-blue exterior and metal trim is like catching a glimpse of home lurking down there, waiting to embrace her with its warmth.

But as she draws nearer she can see there’s something lopsided about the way it sits, something not quite right. Before unlocking it, she takes a look around. One of her tyres is flat. She stands back to look properly.

‘Shit,’ she murmurs.

She has a spare, but it’s still a nuisance, and she’s tired. She just wants to relax. She bends to inspect it. Was it like that earlier? A slow puncture perhaps.

She goes to the back of the van where she keeps her jack, and the spare. She wants to get this fixed before the light fades.

As she works, her head bent to the wheel, her sense of unease grows. She looks around her nervously. What she doesn’t want is for a pair of boots, male boots, to suddenly appear within her line of vision out of the surrounding forest.

She works on, trying to ignore a mounting sense of dread.

Should she trust her instincts and get the hell out of there?

But first she needs to fix this tyre.

When at last it’s done, she flings her tools down and takes a long look about her. Shadows are gathering between the dark corridors of pine.

Scooping everything up and replacing it in the boot, she climbs into her camper van and locks the doors with a huge sense of relief.

She tries to settle down for the night, lights her gas-burner, places the small camping kettle on it, filled with water.

The night stretches ahead of her. The idea of being parked up here on the edge of Kells Wood seems suddenly a little disconcerting. She has good locks though, and a car alarm. She’s sure she’ll be fine.

Glenwhilk

Dawn breaks over Kells Wood. Its luminous glow spreads over the scattered homesteads of Kilbroch, and the early risers stir from their beds and make a start on the day.

The summer months are a good time for these residents. The winters are long and bleak, with darkness falling early and daylight hours short, so when the season changes, they revel in the length of the days.

Callum MacGarvey is splitting timber inside the open barn where he keeps his tools. He spends a lot of his time doing this. The whine of the buzz saw as it slices through the logs is satisfying. He knows his trees. Beech burns well, pine not so good: it sparks and crackles like an exploding firework so he never gathers pine. Birch is a slow burner. A bit like me really, he thinks. He spends a lot of his time exploring the conifer plantations on the land around here. He knows all about them, how they were planted in the 1780s, how European Larch, Scots Pine and Norway Spruce arrived in the 1830s and 40s. But now it’s mostly Sitka spruce, native to the west coast of North America, and useless for burning as far as he is concerned.

He’s lived at Glenwhilk for five years now, since his life collapsed. He doesn’t look back often. It’s not a good idea to dwell on the past. Everyone knows that, especially a man like him.

His work shed and hangar sits just below the farm, not far from his cottage. He has a van and a trailer, and an agreement with Strabane up at the castle. He clears bits of neglected woodland that lie far from the main roads, with the blessing of the local estate, fills his hangar, splits it, and sells it by the ton, giving Strabane a third of all the profits from whatever he sells. He mainly clears birch and larch, but is happier with beech or any other hardwood because he gets more money for it, although it takes longer to season.

Ear defenders clamped to his ears, he is lost in his own world as the splitter cuts through each log, dividing it in half and then in half again. It’s almost a dance in his mind, a balletic movement that requires his complete concentration.

When he was out gathering timber earlier, he glimpsed Ruthie again. Silent Ruthie, who never speaks, just staring at him through the trees. He nodded, but she didn’t acknowledge him. She never does. He doesn’t know what that’s all about. People are odd, especially around here, but as long as he keeps his head down, he doesn’t mind.

He just wants a quiet life, that’s all. To forget about the past, and nurse his grievances. Of those, he has many.

When a red Mini turns up in his front yard, Callum is completely unaware. He works on, cocooned by the noise of the machinery.

Joan Metcalfe climbs out of the driver’s seat, takes her stick out of the boot and heads purposefully past his cottage and towards the hangar, drawn by the deafening whine of the saw.

He is forced to work with his back to the entrance, which he doesn’t like, so he’s not aware of her until she moves into his line of vision.

He silences the machine, startled.

‘Joan? Don’t creep up on me like that.’

‘Sorry. I’m interrupting.’

‘It’s okay. I could do with a break anyway. What can I do for you?’

‘I was just passing.’

‘What would I do without you keeping an eye on me, eh?’

‘I’m just an old woman, looking for company.’

He laughs as he walks with her towards the door of his cottage.

‘What kind of a state will I find this place in today?’ she asks him.

‘No worse than usual. Tea?’

‘Please.’

Joan has become an old friend of his since he took up the lease at Glenwhilk. They had an inauspicious start to their friendship, beginning when he ran into her dog on the way back from Dunbrochan late one summer’s evening. It was dusk at the time and the dog was loose on the road. He caught it side-on and felt the impact. When he got out to investigate, it lay on the roadside, blood trickling from its jaw, panting up at him. He lifted the poor thing into his van, and drove it to Joan’s villa, the house with all the tumbling plants in the front garden.

He had knocked on her door and held up the dog in his arms, watched Joan bend and cry. It broke her heart, but oddly enough, she forgave him. When he asked her why, her answer was simple.

‘You could have driven on, left the dog at the side of the road,’ Joan told him. ‘But you didn’t. Instead, you decided to tell the truth.’

‘And for that, you reward me with your friendship?’

‘It’s not everyone who tells the truth,’ she told him.

Callum had sighed. ‘Much good it does me.’

And that was the sore truth of it.

So, they’d become good friends since then, despite Joan’s sorrow and grief at losing her canine companion. She’d recognised Callum’s guilt, his need for forgiveness and she’d opened her door to him.

God knows, he’d needed a friend at the time.

That was five years ago. Now they are still friends, better with each passing year.

He leads her into the cottage now, and they sit at the kitchen table, Joan tutting at the mess as she lifts yesterday’s newspaper from the only spare chair.

‘Sorry,’ he begins to fuss.

‘Oh, don’t fuss, man. You know it makes no difference. You can’t hide anything from me.’

He looks at her and smiles. There is something unnerving about Joan’s brusqueness, her direct attitude which never pulls any punches. He likes her for it.

She watches him while he fills the kettle at the tap. ‘You heard about what happened to Laura?’ she asks suddenly.

‘Laura?’

‘Young archaeologist lassie, digging up on Gallows Hill,’ Joan says.

‘Jesus, woman, you know everyone. Even when they’ve only been here five minutes.’

She nods and winks. ‘I make it my mission in life.’

‘Anyway, what happened to her?’ He looks alarmed now, wondering if it’s bad news. Joan has always maintained this place is cursed and he sometimes wonders if she’s not far wrong. He came here to hide, but bad news seems to follow him around.

‘Her vehicle was attacked up in the woods.’ She waits for a reaction and then adds, ‘She was sleeping in it at the time.’

‘Jesus!’

‘She’s fine,’ Joan adds quickly. ‘Someone tried to frighten her, that’s all, but she’s pretty shaken up.’

‘What happened?’

‘They smashed a side window. Ran away before she could catch sight of them, but gave her a bad fright, I can tell you.’

Not much in the way of crime ever happens in Kilbroch – the odd bit of poaching – so anything like this is noteworthy.

‘Unusual,’ he says, as he brings two steaming mugs to the table. People even leave their barns and garages unlocked around here. ‘Kids, d’you think, messing about, trying to frighten her?’

Joan shrugs. ‘Your guess is as good as… Odd, though, don’t you think?’

‘Has she cancelled the dig?’ he asks.

‘Cancelled it?’ Joan shakes her head. ‘Seems to be made of sterner stuff than that.’

She sips her tea thoughtfully. ‘Anyway, she’s moved her camper van up to the castle, parked it in the courtyard.’

‘Perhaps she feels safer there.’

‘Perhaps.’

Joan studies him for a moment. ‘I came here with a proposition actually.’

He raises his eyebrows comically. ‘Oh yes?’

Ignoring him, she continues. He senses it’s difficult for her to talk about the next bit. She takes her time, builds up her courage to speak.

‘I want to know what happened to my grandson.’

Callum freezes for a moment, his cup halfway to his lips. He never met Joan’s grandson but he’d heard rumours that he ran away from home twelve years ago, before Callum took up the lease at Glenwhilk. It was reported to the police at the time and there was some kind of investigation, so he’d heard, but no one could trace the missing teenager. And from what Joan has said to him over the years, they hadn’t tried very hard.

He lowers his eyes out of respect, a sympathetic nod to her grief.

‘I’m sorry, Joan,’ he begins.

‘Oh, save your platitudes. They’re no use to me. That’s not what I’m after.’

He doesn’t say, but he’s heard people talk about it in hushed voices, malicious mutterings laced with a hint of accusation. The boy who disappeared, who ran away from home. Why did he run? What was so awful about his home life that he chose to pack a rucksack one day, walk out of Kilbroch and never come back? That’s what people hinted at.

Callum listened with half an ear, but preferred to say nothing. Anything could have happened to the boy since, a sixteen-year-old out in the world by himself. He could have wound up homeless on the streets of any city in the UK. In any event, Robbie MacBride became just one more missing person. Posters showing his face from his last school portrait had been taped to the doors of the local supermarkets in Dunbrochan, and throughout Scotland, but people go missing all the time, and they don’t always want to be found.

He waits for her to continue.

‘I want you to find my grandson. I want you to tell me what happened to him.’

Callum stares at her. ‘How can I do that?’

‘I know it’s a big ask.’

‘I thought the police told you what happened to him? He ran away.’

She scoffs. ‘Oh, the police. Don’t get me started. You, of all people, ought to know…’

‘Okay, okay,’ he nods, not wanting her to continue.

‘So?’ she holds his gaze for a moment.

‘It’s not so easy.’

‘I realise that.’

He contemplates the scars on the table, flaws that run through the wood. ‘Why now?’

‘Because.’ She pauses for a moment, and he can feel the stubborn set of her shoulders and the look in her eye. He knows Joan well enough to predict that she won’t take no for an answer. ‘I’m fed up with the lies people tell.’

She doesn’t explain who she means by ‘people’.

‘It was before my time.’

‘Yes, before you moved to the area which will give you a fresh perspective.’

‘I’m not a detective.’

‘You used to be.’

‘I left the force nearly ten years ago.’

‘And I’m not a biology teacher anymore, but... once a teacher, always a teacher.’

He smiles. ‘That’s not quite the same thing, Joan, and you know it isn’t.’

‘Isn’t it? I’ll pay you, if money’s your concern.’

‘It’s not that,’ he replies.

‘What is it then?’

Joan is so persistent. He can imagine her being ruthless with her own pupils twenty or thirty years ago. Formidable, even.

‘Fear?’ she says now, trying to catch his eye. ‘Because I know what that’s like. I know about fear. Fear of failure, of loss. I’ve lost so much I’ve nothing left to lose.’

He looks at her quickly. They have so much in common, he and Joan. Perhaps that’s why they get on so well. Life’s experiences have left them raw.

‘It’s been twelve years,’ Callum says. ‘How do you expect me to find anything after all that time?’

‘I trust you.’

‘It’ll take more than trust to find out what happened to your grandson. What about the police? Didn’t they question people at the time, search the area?’

Joan looks scathing. ‘They were useless,’ she says dismissively. ‘Didn’t take it seriously. When they found out he was gay, their attitude changed remarkably.’

Callum stares at her. ‘What difference…?’

‘What difference did that make? To the investigation? It made all the difference in the world. They said he’d gone off with someone, that lots of young boys like him run away. By choice.’

He thinks for a moment. ‘Did his father know he was gay?’

Callum knows Owen, and can’t imagine him dealing with his son’s sexuality in a calm and reasonable manner.

Joan laughs. ‘It was obvious. To me and his mother at least. Owen never accepted it. Not sure it even occurred to him. Fathers can be like that, you know. And things were different back then. It wasn’t so easy to admit you were gay. I mean, now people are more open and accepting, but then? Forget it!’

‘You think the police didn’t take his disappearance seriously for that reason?’

‘Well it wouldn’t be a first, would it?’

He acknowledges this quietly. He can feel her bitterness and he understands it, having his own burdens to carry about police incompetence and the damage it can cause.

‘They kept looking for a couple of years, but when nothing turned up, no clues, they gave up.’

They sit in silence for a moment.

‘He’s still here, Callum. I know it.’

Callum looks at Joan across the table and senses the landscape breathing outside, exhaling like a living being, the pine-scented hills and the endless miles of forest and plantation beyond.

‘And if I find nothing?’ Callum says.

‘Then at least you and I will have tried.’

He thinks about it for a moment, without committing himself.

‘There’s always been something malign hanging over this place. Don’t you feel it sometimes? A curse.’

‘Why don’t you leave, then?’ Callum asks.

‘God knows. Ruthie is still here. And Robbie.’

‘But I thought?’

She cuts him off. ‘Robbie is still here.’

Callum shakes his head. He can’t digest all of this right now. He can’t do this. He’s been out of the force for more than ten years, and he has no intention of going back.

‘I’m sorry.’

She glares at him and he feels her disappointment. Nothing new there. He’s used to disappointing people.

But Joan hasn’t finished with him yet.

‘Why did you leave the force?’ she asks now. ‘What happened?’

‘D’you really want to know?’

‘Yes, I really want to know.’

‘I didn’t leave voluntarily. I was hounded out.’

The expression on his face makes it clear he is not yet ready to talk about it, so she nods and smiles.

‘Well, seems we’ve all got things to hide.’

He gives her a quick double-take. ‘So our visiting archaeologist will carry on with the dig then?’ he asks.

‘Laura? Yes, she’ll carry on. Not sure I’d fancy camping up there myself though. It’s called Gallows Hill for a reason.’

‘Aye?’

‘There’s an atmosphere. There have been stories about it over the years.’

‘What kind of stories?’

‘Well,’ she smiles to herself. ‘Two boys camping up there reckoned they saw a body hanging from one of the branches one night. Terrified the wits out of them. Left their tent and ran home, back to Dunbrochan. Came back the next morning to collect their tent, no sign of a body.’

Callum laughs. ‘Too much of the old whacky baccy, perhaps?’

‘Perhaps,’ she laughs. ‘But it’s not those kinds of ghosts I’m looking for. I want to find my grandson.’

‘I wish I could help, Joan.’

She nods, and gets up to leave.

As he watches her cross to her Mini, he feels the unspoken words ‘you owe me’ drifting like smoke across the yard towards him.

Ruthie

Back in her own house Joan empties the shopping from her boot, stacks it in her kitchen cupboards and moves through to her conservatory. She sits down at the table. It’s the warmest room in the house. The sun pours through the long glass windows on a day like this, and she likes to sit here and paint, surrounded by plants.

A jug full of used paint brushes sits in front of her. She pushes it aside and props her chin in the palm of her hand, stares out at the softly retreating fields beyond. She remembers when two small grandchildren sat at this table with her, drawing. She smiles at the memory.

But even then there were dark clouds building on the horizon, threatening their happiness. She never quite knew what it was, but things were out of kilter. Something was always wrong between her daughter and… that man. Her son-in-law, Owen.

And now look at what has happened to us all, she thinks.

She can’t afford to grow melancholy. She hauls herself up, walks through into the kitchen to make something to eat. Life must go on, as it has done all these years.

Callum stands at the window of his cottage, staring out at the yard where his battered red van sits, covered in dust. Off to the right, the sun glints off the corrugated roof of his work shed where he keeps his tools and where piles of logs lie heaped high and steaming in the cool shadows, ready for delivery.

He’s chosen an odd life and he knows it. He’s chosen a life of retreat and seclusion, hiding away from his past, trying to lay his own ghosts. He likes Joan, he’s close to her, but he doesn’t want to become entangled in someone else’s tragedy. He’s intrigued, yes, but he pulls away at the thought of getting involved. Joan has her sorrows, but he has his own to contend with.

‘Why me?’ he had asked her, ‘And why now?’

‘Because you’re here,’ she replied. ‘And you were a good detective.’

‘Was.’

‘And I think someone’s trying to hide something.’

He hadn’t asked who. He hadn’t pursued it any further than that, or encouraged her to talk more. As she had so rightly guessed, he was afraid, and fear dampens curiosity. He has no desire to know, no desire to probe, and certainly no desire to become a private investigator. He just wants a quiet life, away from the media circus of the past, atoning for his sins, seeking forgiveness in his own way.

He wonders for a moment why that young woman – Laura, Joan said her name was – wants to carry out that dig, all on her own, without the support of her colleagues. He can’t help being curious. He shakes the thought away. All he wants is to exist here in his quiet secluded cottage, watch TV in the evenings, unscrew the cap of the whisky bottle and seek solace on his sofa without thinking – especially about the past.

As he crosses the yard on his way to the work shed he notices a figure on the brow of the hill, outlined by the light behind her. A young woman, walking quietly through the fields, solitary as usual. He raises his hand in a wave, but she doesn’t wave back. Probably too far away.

Ruthie.

What must it have been like to lose her brother all those years ago?

Callum prefers to mind his own business, but Ruthie is a mystery, for sure. She never speaks. She just wanders the fields and woods hereabouts, avoiding people, something she is uncannily good at. Right now, it looks as if she is heading towards the chapel and the gorge just beyond it.

Dark-haired, dark-eyed, kind of sad-looking. And what’s particularly sad is that a distance has grown between Joan and her granddaughter. Joan never visits the house where Ruthie lives. And likewise, Ruthie never visits her grandmother. Relatives who live within two miles of each other and yet never care to darken one another’s doors. What was all that about? Joan is angry with her son-in-law, Owen, that much is obvious. But why?

He walks into the shadow of his work shed, the entrance open to the fields and the sky. He likes the height of this space, almost cathedral-like. Birds live in the rafters, and the corrugated roof creaks as the sun hits it. He puts on his ear defenders, throws the switch and loses himself in the act of dividing the logs, surrounded by his circle of noise as it radiates outwards. His arms and wrists ache with the effort, but he’s used to it, and he enjoys taking his anger out on the wood. Better than venting it on human beings at any rate, those closest to him, those he loved and left.

He tries very hard to lose himself in his work, dismissing all thoughts of Joan and her strange request. She’s a tough old character, that’s for sure, but she’s not going to get him involved. The past is the past, he told her, and that’s where it should belong.

‘This isn’t the past, Callum,’ she’d insisted. ‘It isn’t over yet. It hasn’t even begun.’

In his experience, people should always look forward. There’s no sense in looking back, even for him. Regrets follow everyone but if you give them too much licence, too much room in your head, they become a disease. Walk with your eyes on the horizon all the time, never glancing back over your shoulder. Despite himself, he knows how hollow and empty those intentions are. So easy to say, so much harder to put into practice.

As he works, his thoughts inevitably lead back to Joan, running their conversation through his head. Surely the police would have explored all avenues at the time, he thinks, investigated every possibility? As Callum knows, when a young person chooses to disappear, they can stay that way forever if they want, and more often than not, the mystery is never solved. Families go on hoping and grieving for years, and often die not knowing the truth. That’s the sad reality of it. He doesn’t know which is worse. God knows, he was glad to give all that up, watching other people’s pain and suffering and failing to help, and if Joan thinks she can persuade him otherwise, she has another think coming.

Kells Chapel

She heads down the slope towards Kells Chapel. For some, the loneliness of the woods would be overwhelming, but not for Ruthie. It’s all she’s ever known. Birds flit and call to one another and a wind sets up a stir in the highest branches as last year’s leaves crunch underfoot.

She stands still for a moment, and listens. If she peers between a gap in the trees, she can see Ben Ledi rising above the sweep of forest and green hills in the distance, its peak no longer dusted with snow. And behind her is the sound of water flowing through the gorge. It roars after winter rains, but is quieter during the summer months, always there, a constant in her life. At the moment the land is dotted with clouds of yellow broom and gorse with sheep grazing in between.

Ruthie saw her grandmother earlier, visiting that man in his cottage, up at Glenwhilk. She misses nothing. They think she keeps herself apart and separate, which she does, but she still knows exactly what is going on, who leaves their house at what time.

She knows they’re good friends, Callum and Joan.

She never visits her grandmother, although she’s seen the older woman watching her from time to time across the fields, and she knows where she lives of course. Joan will stop her car, wind down the window and wait, hopefully, but Ruthie is like a wild animal. She never draws near. She keeps her distance from everyone.

She was thirteen when her brother disappeared. She had always been a strange one, but after he went missing she lost her voice completely. She cut herself off, lived in a closed-down universe where she didn’t need to communicate and didn’t have to confront the possibilities and complexities of life, walked alone in the only landscape she has ever known, the one she once shared with her brother.

She’s close to nature. She watches the birds, spends whole days outside, unobserved by human eyes, sitting in strange places, little invisible hideouts she has built for herself where no one intrudes because no one knows they are there. Her father is the gamekeeper so why should she have any fear of discovery? He’s the only one who knows this forest as well as she does. The family up at the castle, who own Kells Wood, have no kind of intimacy with the land. The land doesn’t really belong to them despite their ancestry, Ruthie knows that. If these woods belong to anyone, they belong to Ruthie and Owen. Just as they once belonged to Robbie. Before he went away.

When Ruthie was a teenager, she somehow managed to avoid the scrutiny of social workers. She kept her head down, did her work when she was asked and avoided school the rest of the time. She’d always hated the big modern building with its echoing corridors and clanging bells and her parents had assisted her in the game of truancy and avoidance, especially after Robbie went missing. They didn’t force her to attend when they saw how unhappy it made her. Besides, they had other more pressing matters on their mind at the time.

She remembers the old days, being bullied in the school corridors, back when Robbie was still around to stick up for her. He’d be twenty-eight now. If he appeared along the path up ahead of her, would she recognise him?

She’d recognise him alright. She’d know him anywhere. Her almost-twin despite the three years between them.

Robbie.

Her mind rolls back the years.

Remembering the school bus dropping them at the end of the road, and she and Robbie walking home together, up the lane, seeing the grey smoke above the roof of the cottage. Laughing. She can smell the smoke drifting in the air towards them. She stops at that point. The memory goes no further. It’s a soft, hazy vision. And that’s the way it must remain.

People think she must be lonely, spending all of her time alone in Kells Wood, but she loves it here. She’s never lonely as long as there are no people to remind her of what she might be missing. She is a silent presence in Kells Wood, on Gallows Hill. Along the glen and in the gorge she picks her way silently, seeing things others miss, listening, taking it in, absorbing nature.

She keeps ferrets and stoats in her back garden, and up until recently had a dog who followed her everywhere. The loss of Buddy was massive, but she lives close enough to nature to know that’s the way it works. Life begins and it ends. And there is a bit in between which we call our life, and that is a journey we must try to enjoy because it won’t last forever. Ruthie understands this, though she never expresses it in words anymore. Words have long since fled, to be replaced by a silence that asks nothing of her.

She just has to avoid thinking too much.

Outside, she lives for the moment, but once enclosed by walls, echoes of the past can float up from the depths without warning. She closes her eyes now and the voices come. The memories. The flashbacks. The shouting.

She remembers being a child in the cottage where they grew up, where she still lives with her father. She remembers standing in the hallway, and seeing her parents fight.

‘Our own son!’ Her mother’s pained voice, shrieking.

‘Keep your voice down. She’ll hear you.’

‘He was my son and I loved him.’

‘I loved him too.’

Then Ruthie appearing silently in the doorway.

‘Alright Ruthie?’

The anger exploding from both her parents. The anger, the pain and the rage.

Then a blank. Nothing after that. She remembers nothing.

Except that Robbie isn’t with them anymore. And she can’t even remember his face, even when she looks at the old photos. Her dad put them all away, eventually, didn’t want to look at them.

Up ahead she can see the old chapel between the trees in the distance. It tops the ridge of the gorge, its graveyard perched above the drop where you can hear the tumble of the burn below.

When a tall figure she hadn’t noticed before stands upright on the other side of the crumbling stone wall, Ruthie stops. It looks as if he was bending to one of the graves. She recognises him as George Strabane from the castle, her father’s employer, and wonders at seeing him here. He never strolls about Kilbroch and Kells Wood, despite owning most of it. He’s mainly to be seen in the driver’s seat of a Land Rover, passing through. She wonders what he’s doing here.

She expects him to turn, but he doesn’t. Instead of heading for the main gate, he disappears behind the chapel.

Ruthie advances cautiously. She likes to wander here, between the moss-covered graves. It’s a peaceful place, the way it merges with the moor beyond, its walls crumbling into soft mossy decay. When she reaches the old chapel, she wanders past the porch and turns the corner to see if George Strabane is still there. There’s no sign of him. There’s a steep path down to the gorge from here, but he’d have had to scramble over the wall to access it.

Strange man, she thinks. They think I’m strange, but he’s stranger still.

She finds a spot on a flat tombstone shaped like a coffee table, in the shelter of the building, and sits herself down. Takes stock.

A gnarled old oak guards the edge of the graveyard, next to the tumbling wall, which barely keeps the hillside at bay. At her back the chapel sits in its perpetual silence, forever closed to the public. The family at the castle prefer to keep it that way. They will open it up for weddings, to raise cash, and they will bury the one or two locals who live in Kilbroch, if a family insist upon it and have no other plans for cremation over at Falkirk, but other than that, the place remains largely obsolete, a closed book, with wire mesh guarding the top half of the doors enclosing the front porch. Pigeons roost on its apex and in the rafters if they can find their way in. Soft grey feathers float to the ground.

Ruthie sits quietly, and listens. Because she is largely silent these days, sounds have become more important to her over the years, the melancholy cry of curlews, the fat burble of pigeons, a rook. The water talking in the gorge, communicating to her its love of life.

Her own mother’s grave lies in this burial ground, below the oak, next to the crumbling wall. Mosses cover most of the headstones, but Lydia MacBride’s stone remains bare.

Ruthie doesn’t think of her mother when she sits here, though. She thinks of other things. She thinks of her estranged grandmother turning up in her red Mini at that man’s cottage, Glenwhilk. Callum, she thinks his name is. And she thinks of her clambering out of the car, leaning on her stick, and walking with him to his cottage. She wonders what they have in common, and what they have to talk about.

There is too much talking in the world, as far as Ruthie is concerned. Too many words. What does anyone have to say that can possibly be important or relevant?

There is nothing to say. She realised that a long time ago.

Standing to leave, she notices a speckle of blue and white at the foot of her mother’s headstone. She steps between the graves, bends down to look. A few gathered wildflowers, tied with a bit of gardening twine. She touches the delicate flower heads with one finger. Other people lay flowers for her mother then, even after all these years, and it occurs to her now that she might have caught George Strabane in the act of putting them there, absurd as that might seem.

Her gaze remains impassive, inscrutable. Whatever she thinks, she rarely shares.

She walks on until she reaches the gamekeeper’s cottage where she was born, and where she still lives, despite the terrible things that have happened and the grief that has visited their door. Sturdy brick house with crow-stepped gables, a homemade lean-to conservatory at the back, attached to the kitchen, which catches the sun. Her father put it together from the remains of a metal-framed greenhouse he salvaged. There’s smoke coming from the chimney and Owen is standing out in the yard.

‘Where’ve you been, Ruthie?’ he tries, smiling as she passes him.

When she makes no reply, he sighs, giving up, as he gives up every day.

The Gamekeeper’s Cottage

Late afternoon sunlight finds its way into the entrance of his work shed. His pile of split logs has grown. He’s only got a few orders at the moment, but in Scotland people still want their log burners, even during the summer months. A fire at night, until the weather gets really hot, is what most people like around here.

He’s trying not to think about Joan and what she asked of him, but he doesn’t quite succeed.

Her son-in-law, Owen, is a friend of Callum’s, up to a point. They pass the time of day together, chat, share news, but rarely about their own personal lives. Owen never mentions his son or his wife, or the fact his daughter is mostly silent. He likes Callum because he gives Owen space, and doesn’t pry. He accepts people for what they are without asking questions. Not bad for an ex-detective. And certainly not typical.

Callum drives the van along the lane, past Joan’s house, intending to scope out another bit of woodland in need of a tidy up, but stops when he catches sight of the gamekeeper’s cottage, its chimneys appearing through the trees.

It sits at the bottom of a tree-lined private road that sweeps on up to the castle, the turrets and central tower of which you can’t quite see from this angle. Too many trees.

Owen is in the front yard, so he winds the window down and gives his old friend a thumbs up.

‘Owen!’

‘Callum,’ the gamekeeper replies. Their usual terse greeting.

‘How you doing?’

‘Not bad. You?’

‘Same. What you up to?’ Callum asks him.

‘What does it look like?’ He throws down his tools and gives Callum a grin. ‘Drink?’

‘Thought you’d never ask.’

As he follows his friend into the hallway, he admires its solidity as usual. An old grandfather clock stands against one wall, immovable, as if it was there before the house was built. Callum sometimes imagines the grandfather clock came first and the house was built around it afterwards, the way a house might be built around an old tree. He glances at it and thinks it’s a shame that Owen never bothers to wind it anymore. What use is a grandfather clock if it no longer speaks, if it no longer marks and measures time? It’s like robbing an old man of his voice.

There’s no sign of Ruthie. She’s disappeared inside, upstairs somewhere, making herself scarce as usual.

‘Ruthie?’ Owen calls up the stairs hopefully. ‘We’ve got company.’

No response.

Callum makes no comment, because he knows how it is.

They’ve been friends since Callum moved here five years ago. Owen is taciturn, quiet, but then so is Callum, and neither of them ask too many questions. At least Callum doesn’t, usually.

Thinking of Joan’s visit earlier, he feels a shadow of guilt edging his discomfort, and makes an effort to hide his thoughts.

Owen is a very private man. They live within a two mile radius of each other, but they respect one another’s privacy.

He watches his friend open a kitchen cupboard, take out a bottle of whisky, pour his friend a shot, but abstain himself.

‘Go on, Owen,’ Callum says. ‘You can’t be bartender all the time.’

Owen shakes his head.

‘You make me feel bad,’ Callum says, but he lifts the glass to his lips all the same, knowing he can’t resist.

‘Don’t worry about it, man. We all have our vices,’ Owen smirks as he levers off the top of a non-alcoholic beer, takes a sip.

Callum knows that his friend doesn’t drink much, but always keeps a bottle handy for when his pal turns up. It’s a little routine that has crept into their lives over recent years.

‘Tell me, Owen, why don’t you ever partake of the amber nectar?’

Owen shrugs. ‘Fear of losing control, I suppose.’

‘And what would happen if you did?’

Owen laughs, but doesn’t reply.

Both men are quiet for a while, as they often are.

‘It’s a good life, this, isn’t it?’ Callum murmurs, sipping his whisky.

‘The woods, you mean?’

‘Aye, the woods and the countryside.’

Owen stares ahead of him where he can make out the trees at the bottom of his garden. ‘D’you ever miss Glasgow?’

Callum laughs and shakes his head. ‘Never.’

‘I could never hack it in a city,’ Owen adds. ‘Wouldn’t last five minutes in an office.’

Callum doesn’t doubt it. He likes Owen. He went to school with boys like him, boys who couldn’t bear to be inside and always wanted to be outdoors, fishing or hiking. But there weren’t too many gamekeeper jobs available in Glasgow. Some of them went into the Parks Department, ended up working for the Council, tending municipal garden spaces, places like the Botanics if they were lucky. It helped if you were a Protestant, of course, not that anyone was supposed to mention that. One or two ended up in prison. It was that kind of school.

He can see that Owen wouldn’t have been happy in Pollok, where Callum grew up.

‘You heard about Laura?’

‘Laura?’

‘Young archaeologist lassie, digging up at Gallows Hill?’

‘No. What?’

‘Her camper van was broken into, in the night. Terrified the life out of her. Opted to sleep up at the castle instead.’

‘And Strabane’s alright with that?’ Owen says.

Callum shrugs. ‘Appears to be.’

There is a slight pause.

‘She’s alright, by the way. Laura. It was just a scare. Whoever did it, didn’t follow through.’

‘Well, that’s a relief.’

Callum lifts his whisky and watches it swirl in his glass, leaving an oily bead up the side.

Owen is thoughtful for a moment, shaking his head.

‘Youngsters, d’you think?’

‘Hope so. Hope it’s nothing more sinister than that. Even so.’

Callum finds himself watching his old friend curiously. ‘Joan came to see me earlier.’

‘Oh yeah. How is the old bird?’

‘She’s okay. Still wants some answers though.’

‘Answers?’ A look of pain crosses his friend’s face, as he struggles with his emotions. There is a long silence, then Owen’s expression changes as a wave of realisation washes through him. ‘Don’t open that door, Callum,’ he warns.

‘I’m sorry, mate. It’s just…’

‘D’you think I haven’t wondered what happened to him? D’you think I haven’t lived with it every day of my life?’

Callum begins to apologise, and hates himself for stirring up the past. God knows, he’d hate it if his own past was raked through.

‘It’s been twelve years,’ Owen tells him. ‘And in all that time, I’ve had to learn to live with it. With what it did to my family.’

‘I know it’s hard.’

‘You don’t know,’ Owen mutters, then glances towards the hallway. ‘He was my son.’

Callum follows his gaze, into the darkness, but there’s no one there. If Ruthie is lurking on the stairs, listening, she doesn’t make herself known.

‘We all need to be forgiven for something, Owen.’

Owen stares at him, uncomprehending. ‘Why d’you say that?’

Callum holds his breath, doesn’t answer, and Owen doesn’t pursue it. Instead he asks, ‘And what have you ever done that you need to be forgiven for?’

He thinks of his wife and son, now estranged. He thinks of how his career ended, punished for telling the truth.

‘Plenty,’ Callum says. ‘Plenty.’

‘What has that old witch been saying?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Oh, come on. I know the two of you are thick as thieves.’

He sips his whisky, playing for time, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut. He can feel Owen’s eyes on him, watching.

‘You’re just like the rest of them, then. Nosy bastards down in the village, always suspecting the worst, trying to get off on someone else’s tragedy and suffering. Ambulance-chasers, every last one of ‘em.’

‘Hey, take it easy,’ Callum urges him.

‘I lost my son. What d’you expect me to say?’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...’

Callum looks up to see Ruthie standing in the doorway, the darkened hall behind her, wearing a faint look of bewilderment. Wide-eyed, haunted.

‘Ruthie.’ He greets her with a nod and a smile, but she’s as non-communicative as ever. Nods in return, with the barest acknowledgement.

Callum gets up to leave. He knows he’s gone too far.

Owen doesn’t usually say this much. He’s largely reticent and reserved. Tight-lipped. Guarded, even. He hopes he hasn’t messed things up.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he says now.

‘Aye, do that.’ Owen remains seated. ‘Tell Joan I was asking after her,’ he says sarcastically from his chair.