Chapter 4
A THIN mist closed around Ashleigh as she reached the summit of Glenruig Hill. Her thighs and lungs burned from the climb, but she knew she was far off her personal best. No surprise, really. She’d slackened off since winning the Games back in August. The key was to peak at the right time, and she’d managed that. Winter had now arrived, though. A few races would still be held in the coming months, but she wouldn’t compete. Instead, she’d train, then emerge stronger and fitter in the spring. Everything was cyclical, wasn’t it? A time to kill and a time to heal.
Ash wiped a sleeve across her sweat-streaked brow. Where had that thought come from? Sounded like something that bigoted old goat Reverend MacVannin would come out with. She shivered, and not just because of the icy wind that scoured the summit. The minister gave her the heebie-jeebies. That MacVannin now thought they were allies in the fight against Chichester’s wolf reserve needled her. His support she could do without.
She put the minister and his roving eye out of her mind and jogged across the summit, the notes of a new clarsach melody running through her head. As always, she’d been mentally composing music on her run. The stone cairn appeared from the mist. Every time she reached the summit, she made a point of adding another rock to the cairn. She had no idea where the tradition had come from, but generations of hillwalkers had been adding stones. The cairn now stood almost as tall as she was. Ash slid a flat rock into one of the crannies. Her fingers caressed the ribs of stone. She felt a fizzle of connection in her fingertips, as if a gossamer-thin thread connected her to those distant others who had laid stones here in the past.
Her descent was cautious, in contrast to the race day months earlier when she’d flown down the scree, feet hardly touching the ground. It had been drier then, of course, one of those rare cloudless days in the Highlands when the colours were so vibrant, they seemed otherworldly. Such a shame her victory had been overshadowed by the presence of the laird, strutting around in a kilt like a cock pheasant. He had been asked to present the prizes, but she’d refused to shake his hand. She’d taken some flak for that gesture afterwards, but most folk were supportive.
Soon, Ash emerged from the mist and the village spread out below, like a child’s model creation. She picked out the village hall, Lachlan Campbell’s bookshop, the Glenuig Inn, and the small cluster of houses around it, her and Angus’s own cottage farther along the coast. They all looked so small, dwarfed by the surrounding mountains, tracts of pine forest, ochre moorland, and the leaden expanse of sea to the west. A road snaked along the lochside like a black tongue. On it she saw a blue flashing light blinking furiously. Ash felt a tremor of apprehension. Angus had not been in bed when she’d risen that morning. She had presumed he had gone for a swim, but it now looked more likely he’d been called out to some emergency.
Instead of heading home, she took the alternative route alongside the burn that led past Granny Beag’s cottage. Perhaps the old woman would know what was going on.
There was no response when she knocked on the door of Granny Beag’s sturdy, well-kept house. She was about to go inside—Granny Beag never locked her door—when she heard a sound of splintering wood coming from the rear. Rolling the tension out of her shoulders, she walked around the side of the cottage and found Granny Beag splitting logs.
“Och, Granny! I said I’d chop those for you.”
Granny Beag glanced towards her. Her face was a scored and wrinkled, like the bark of the clootie tree. Two sharp grey eyes glinted from the whorls of flesh. Her thin lips puckered into a scowl. “Pah!”
“You shouldn’t be hefting that big axe at your age.”
Granny Beag drew the axe back and split the log in one fell swoop. “See. No bother.”
Ash couldn’t help but smile. The woman was as immutable as the land. “Don’t stand there grinning like a gowk,” Granny Beag scolded. “Fill up that log basket and carry it inside for me.”
Ash bit back a retort and lifted the log basket. Granny Beag had a knack for making her feel like the same frightened, destructive child she’d been when they’d met in Kintail House. She gave the old woman a tart smile as she slipped past her into the house. She dropped the log basket by the hearth and threw a couple of blocks onto the smouldering fire.
“Not so many, Ashleigh! It’s like a sauna in here as it is.”
She stepped across the room and took Ash by the hands. Her skin felt like dry leaves. She rubbed the pads of Ash’s fingers, as if testing the quality of a fine dress.
“Soft,” she declared. “You’re not practicing enough.”
Ash extracted herself from the old woman’s grip.
“I’ve a lot going on, Granny.”
“Aye, so I’ve heard. Up at the castle every day waving your placards.” Ash frowned. “I thought you’d approve.”
“I do, but a bunch of middle-class villagers stamping their feet won’t change a damn thing. You need to be on the inside to affect change. You should run as an independent at the next local elections. The folk like you.”
Ash rolled her eyes. “We’re not going over this again. I was just wonder- ing if you know what’s going on in the village? Saw a police car wheeching past when I was out for my run.”
“No idea. I haven’t been out for my messages yet. But whatever it is, I’m sure Moira will have the inside track, nosey old besom that she is.”
Granny Beag smiled, and for Ash it was like the sun appearing from behind a cloud.
“Now, a luaidh, you’ll take a cup of tea?”
Ash found Moira Anderson at the back of her shop, gossiping furtively with the so-called beautician Geraldine MacAuley. The local store was little more than a trumped-up Portakabin shoehorned into a tight scrap of ground over- looking Glenruig Bay. Moira stocked an odd assortment of goods: fishing tackle, midge spray, the obligatory tartan tat for the tourists, garden orna- ments, hardware, and—for reasons Ash could never fathom—a whole cabi- net full of sun cream.
Despite Moira angling for secrecy with Gerry, Ash could hear every word of their whispered conversation.
“. . . it’s a real shame, Moira. And her only gone fifteen.” Gerry’s smirk belied her expression of sympathy. Her makeup looked as if it had been applied with a trowel. Hardly a great advertisement for her business, although Ash had heard she did a line in knockoff clothes, which she sold from a stall at the Sunday market in Silvaig.
“Aye, poor Ethna, and after the husband was done by the police for flash- ing the nuns. God alone knows what will become of the child. She’s only a child herself, the daughter. A flighty one by all accounts. They say she’s been with half the lads who work on the fish farms. . . .”
Moira glanced at Ash, a gleeful set to her thin lips. “How’s form the day, Ashleigh? Have you heard the news? They’re saying there’s been a suspicious death.” Moira rolled the word “suspicious” around her mouth like a fine malt.
“We all know whit that means,” Gerry added. “Someone’s been done in. Murdered.”