Snare Read online

  SNARE

  Gwen Moffat

  CHIVERS

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available

  This eBook published by AudioGO Ltd, Bath, 2012.

  Published by arrangement with the Author

  Epub ISBN 9781445829418

  Copyright © 1987 by Gwen Moffat

  The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  All rights reserved

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental

  Jacket illustration © iStockphoto.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ivar Campbell was dangerous. He wasn’t violent, he wasn’t in a bad mood; it was just that the wild geese were flying south and they had this effect on him. He was tinder waiting for a spark, a ticking bomb, a man born out of his time.

  He came out of the Post Office and paused as he caught the sound of the geese passing over. Late September in the far north of Scotland and the air was warm enough for high summer. Hens crooned in the dust, eider duck talked at the edge of the loch, a buzzard mewed above the North Wood. Campbell stood immobile, his eyes shadowed by the peak of his cap, listening and watching.

  All boys dream, but Campbell’s dreams had stayed with him. Before marriage he had considered becoming a mercenary, a detective, a spy. He read a great deal and all his heroes had blended to form the image of a tall, thin, loping man with restless eyes and a drooping moustache: a copy of himself.

  He had left his Glasgow comprehensive school at sixteen to work in a garage, but although he was a competent mechanic he found the job stultifying. He lived for his books in the evenings, for camping trips at weekends when he could indulge the fantasy of a man on the run, a scenario varied only by the alternative: the killer on the prowl.

  Then he met Debbie, a nursing auxiliary: a country girl disenchanted with urban life, who wanted only to return to the Highlands and raise a family. They married and Campbell threw up his job and bought an old van in which they lived for a summer, drifting up the west coast until Debbie discovered she was pregnant. They were then at Sgoradale, a crofting township at the end of a road.

  Debbie found work as a housemaid to Lady MacKay at Sgoradale Lodge, and they moved into the old keeper’s cottage in the woods. Over the next ten years Campbell established himself in the community as an odd-job man. The boredom threshold was higher on this wild coast, but it was still there. Fishing and tree-felling, draining and fencing occupied his hands but not his mind. Another child followed the first and he discovered that family responsibilities were a world away from that free-ranging life which had been the dream before he met Debbie.

  He returned to reading, switching now from fiction to true-life accounts of adventure, espionage, crime. Debbie accepted his absorption as easily as she accepted his ability to understand and use long words. Only recently, when the Russians hit the headlines and Campbell started to tell lies, did she start to wonder if all that reading was something more than a harmless hobby.

  Soviet trawlers had been using the little port of Ullapool for years, but suddenly an enterprising reporter realised that no one kept surveillance on the landing parties. No one counted them back. The scandal was a nine-day wonder and, further up the coast, Campbell’s expertise was acknowledged. His fantasies were private, but everyone knew he was the authority on espionage. His opinion was sought, he became the arbitrator in the inevitable bar-room arguments. He swelled and bloomed – and started to drop hints of a dark and secret life before he came to Sgoradale. He wished passionately that a Russian trawler would put into the loch but he knew it wouldn’t happen now, at the end of the season, when any foreigner would be as conspicuous as a Siberian bear.

  And yet there was a stranger in Sgoradale, which was why he lingered outside the Post Office after the geese had gone. His gaze slid over the grey water, past the cormorant that surfaced off the steps where his boat was moored, to come to rest on the figure at the head of those steps, its hands to its temples in the unmistakable stance of one using binoculars. Campbell, the observer, was being observed.

  He looked away quickly, seaward. With peripheral vision he caught a movement and smiled thinly. She, too, had turned towards the mouth of the loch. I’ve got her now, he thought; she has to pass me to get away. He had been stalking her for two days, looking for a chance to engage her in conversation and discover what kind of story she would give him to explain her presence in the far north of Scotland at the back-end of the year. She had avoided him, not once but twice. Once could have been arrogance – she was old, but she was a lady – but twice was suspect. And why should Rose Millar, the postmistress, deflect his questions concerning the visitor? That had peculiar significance given that Rose was a government servant. Campbell climbed into his van and drove to the quay.

  She was still at the top of the steps. He pulled up more sharply than he’d intended and the tools in the back shifted with a clatter. She regarded him from behind thick spectacles with green frames: a large solid lady with trim grey hair, wearing tweeds and clumpy shoes with huge serrated tongues. The binoculars were Zeiss. Campbell nodded curtly, opened the back of the van and reached in for a petrol can, remembering to heft it as if it were full.

  At the top of the steps he paused and surveyed the sky.

  ‘Is the weather going to break?’ she asked pleasantly.

  ‘It won’t break today, ma’am.’ He grimaced as the courtesy slipped out. His tone hardened. ‘Were you wanting to go out?’ He nodded towards his boat.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it. Is that yours: Blue Zulu? Why did you call it that?’

  He stared at her. ‘She was called that when I bought her.’

  ‘You were not curious yourself?’

  His anger flared. Questions were his job, not hers. ‘So,’ he said heavily, ‘you’re staying next to the Post Office. You’ll be writing a book?’

  Her eyes were steady. ‘That’s a possibility. Where do you stay, Mr – ?’

  ‘I use the Post Office for an address. People contact me there if they need me.’

  There was a pause. ‘You keep a low profile,’ she observed.

  ‘Exactly.’ He was pleased that she should gauge him correctly, but he would play it cool, ‘I’m not much bothered, but in my line it’s always a good idea ... I come and go; mail drops are convenient, you know, like collecting spots?’

  ‘Your line, Mr – ?’

  ‘Campbell. Ivar. I’m ...’ The eyes shifted, ranged the water and returned to her. ‘I’m a handyman,’ he told her blandly. She smiled and waited. He glanced at the empty windows of the hotel at the back of the quay and lowered his voice. ‘You’ve been listening to the talk. You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. I left all that behind when I came to Sgoradale. Mind you, I’m not saying it’s over; it can never be over, but I’ve got a wife and family to think of now. If I accept anything nowadays, it’s just routine work.’ His smile was smug; it was almost a leer. He saw her surprise and he giggled. ‘Not contracts –’ He stared at the twin discs of her spectacles, saw his own reflection and added wildly, ‘There’ll be time enough for contract work when the children leave home.’ He gave her a fierce fr
own, nodded, turned on his heel and strode to the truck, swinging the can.

  His old Morris crept up the quay with a slow menace that was belied by its dangling exhaust and a trail of orange baler twine protruding from an ill-fitting rear door.

  Miss Pink followed thoughtfully, wondering how long he had been what Rose Millar called ‘a wee strange in his ways’. It had been a short encounter and he’d been consumed by a kind of demon as if, in accosting her, he’d been conforming to an image. Well, the ice had been broken; next time he might have more confidence.

  She dismissed him and sauntered along the quay observing Sgoradale with approval. From here the Post Office and its adjoining neighbours (the nearer rented by herself) were the focal point of the one street, but on either side of this short terrace were houses each standing in its own plot of land: the old schoolhouse, the police house, the nurse’s bungalow. Miss Pink had been here only three days and if she hadn’t met everyone she knew where they lived – at least, those who lived in the street.

  On the far side of the bay that was the head of the loch, seaward of the hanging woods, was a scatter of crofts and that grim reminder of the Clearances: the sad grey stumps of ruins. On this side, at the back of the quay and inland of the fish sheds, was the Isle Chrona Hotel – a sprawling whitewashed building, all corners and extensions, with dormers, gables and a glazed verandah. The food was execrable. She had dined there once and next day had laid in a stock of tinned ravioli to serve against future emergencies.

  Beyond the hotel with its garages, barns and disused stables were several cottages on a bend in the road, the approach road that was known locally as Lamentation because it had been built during the potato famine of 1846. At the other end of the so-called street the highway crossed a stone bridge above the mouth of the River Ord, then swung sharp left through the North Wood to run down the shore of the loch and end at the lighthouse on Fair Point.

  Miss Pink’s attention returned to the foreground, noting that the largest house in the village was the only one to guard its privacy. Sgoradale Lodge was scarcely visible from sea level; only the upper slates of its roofs and the top of a crenellated tower showed above magnificent trees. Behind and above the lodge loomed an escarpment of rock below which the township nestled like the first colony on a strange continent.

  The simile of stalwart pioneers did not extend to the inhabitants, at least not to sweet, fat Alec Millar from the Post Office, now coming carefully along the stone flags of the quay. Alec was always unsure of his footing. Some years ago he had contracted meningitis and had been left with brain damage, although the only obvious signs were a childlike mentality and a tendency to convulsions. He had worked in a bank: a clever man, destined to become branch manager, according to his mother. Now he was an overgrown child with nice manners and an overwhelming passion for a miniature apricot poodle called Baby.

  ‘A fine morning, Alec.’ Miss Pink, who had been nipped by Baby, made no move to touch her.

  ‘Great!’ His eyes shone behind his pebble spectacles. ‘Are you going out with Ivar?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  He looked down the loch. ‘I love going out in a boat –’ Miss Pink opened her mouth, then closed it, but he’d noticed. ‘They wouldn’t let me come,’ he told her. ‘I could fall overboard. I can swim but that’s no good if I faint, is it? I’m too heavy for you to get me back in the boat.’

  ‘There’s a steamer that goes round the

  Summer Isles in the season. Go with your mother and have a picnic.’

  ‘She wouldn’t go if there wasn’t a doctor on board.’

  ‘There’s no doctor within fifteen miles of Sgoradale, Alec. I’m sure your mother copes very well if you faint, doesn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She changed the subject, is this your regular walk?’

  ‘In the morning. After dinner I go the other way, past the big house. Usually I come down here later, when the bar’s open. I have one beer; that takes ten minutes. I can stay longer, so long as I don’t have more’n one beer. The visitors talk to me and they want to buy me drink, but I mustn’t let them.’

  ‘It’s the fainting, isn’t it? You could have a nasty fall. You’re a big man.’

  ‘Be thankful for small mercies,’ he said cheerily, evidently echoing his mother. ‘I can look after myself and I enjoy my food, and I got Baby here.’

  Miss Pink and Baby exchanged wary glances. Alec said, peering, ‘Who’s that in your garden, miss?’ in my garden? I can’t see anyone.’

  ‘They’re gone now. Maybe it was my father.

  I don’t see all that well.’

  ‘But ... it doesn’t matter. We’re all friends.’ With which inane comment she left him and made her way home, pondering his gentle nature, forgetting the possibility of an intruder in her garden until she entered her kitchen and was astonished to find the daylight blocked. A figure was outside, its hands shading reflections from the glass, peering round the interior until it spied Miss Pink. A grin materialised like that of the Cheshire cat, a hand waved, lips moved, there were faint calls of greeting. Miss Pink made no move towards the back door but that was immaterial; her presence was known and the front door was open.

  Esme Dunlop knocked superfluously as she stepped in from the street: a large, ungainly woman in her fifties in fawn trousers with a knife-edged crease, a Viyella shirt and burgundy pullover. Her expression was as ingenuous as her style. She brimmed with enthusiasm and, having encountered her several times already, Miss Pink had found herself reflecting that such relentless exuberance might prove tiresome on occasions – upon bereavement for instance, or if one were trying to do something quietly without attracting attention.

  ‘I went round the back,’ Esme was saying. ‘I got no reply at the front, so I thought you must be in the garden. You’ve got a wilderness out there! I wasn’t really surprised. I mean, Coline owns the holiday homes but who looks after them?’

  Miss Pink refused to be steam-rollered. ‘Gardens always look unkempt at this time of year –’

  ‘It’s the same in here –’ Esme wasn’t listening. Her eyes probed the corners of the living room. ‘Mary MacLeod is supposed to look after this property, but look at it! If I spent a couple of hours in this room you wouldn’t recognise it.’

  Miss Pink had, in fact, spent an appreciable time cleaning her one reception room when she moved in. She had even polished the table.

  ‘It’s not dirty,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Well – those loose covers haven’t seen the inside of a washing machine for yonks, but I was thinking in terms of a spot of polish and some elbow grease. Look at that table ... Is this your latest book –’ Esme advanced heavily.

  Miss Pink skirted a chair and placed one hand on a pile of manuscript, forestalling her visitor, it’s not a book as yet; merely a draft.’

  ‘That has to be typed.’ It was a flat statement. ‘And that’s your typewriter?’ Regarding the portable as if it were a museum piece, Esme gave a snicker of amazement. She said decisively, ‘Look, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. What you want is a secretary, and here I am, with oodles of free time at my disposal. Coline’s between books at this moment. I’ve got an electric typewriter and I’m an excellent typist. None of your two-finger pecking for me. I’ll come over each morning – better still, you give me that manuscript and I’ll return it to you, clean as a whistle, in three days. With all the spelling mistakes and grammar corrected: word-perfect, guaranteed. How’s that?’ Her beam split her face.

  Miss Pink hesitated, and Esme pounced. ‘I promise you, I’ve got nothing else to do. It’ll be a pleasure. Give it to me now –’ Their hands shot out simultaneously, but Miss Pink was the quicker. Esme wasn’t beaten. ‘Half price?’ She twinkled roguishly. ‘I shall adore reading it.’

  Miss Pink struggled with her reactions. ‘No,’ she said, and knew she sounded aggressive. ‘You’re accustomed to Lady MacKay’s methods –’

  ‘No problem! All grist to the
mill. I’m adaptable – and we’re all alike: romantic and gothic, the three of us –’

  ‘I want a man,’ Miss Pink said loudly and, since she had managed to silence Esme, went on more quietly, ‘I prefer working with men; their angle is different, and refreshing.’

  Esme was all contrition. ‘I was crowding you. You’ve only known me three days. And here I am, a total stranger, proposing to take more than half your work-load on my broad shoulders. Look, forget I ever proposed the arrangement, at least for the time being’ – she grinned happily – ‘and I’ll forget the crack about a male secretary, right? I’ll leave you now to get down to work, and we’ll meet this evening.’ She thrust past the sofa to the door and paused on the step. ‘We don’t dress, you know, nothing formal.’ Her gaze travelled from Miss Pink’s hair to her brogues. ‘Tweeds would do,’ she added doubtfully.

  * * *

  Miss Pink walked along the street to take morning coffee with Beatrice Swan, whom she’d met on the foreshore two days ago while watching the waders. An old lady, emerging from the Post Office (which was also the store), had crossed the road and introduced herself. Having chatted about the local wildlife, she had indicated a house she called Feartag and extended the invitation to coffee. Miss Pink, observing the old but beautifully tailored Harris tweed, the leathery skin and serene eyes, sensed a kindred spirit: another loner living out her remaining years on the fringe of the wilderness.

  Feartag was at the far end of the street where the road crossed the river before turning west towards Fair Point. The house had been built just upstream of the bridge and some thirty feet above the water which, in a dry autumn, was merely a stream between boulders. It was approached by a gravel drive between lawns which were still mown. Grass had a long growing season in this climate, where the Gulf Stream lapped the shores.

  Feartag was Victorian; there were sash windows downstairs but the upper storey was in the roof, its dormers whimsically fitted with casements of leaded lights. The roof was purple slate; even the porch had its own neat cap of slates, supported at each corner by knotted trunks of Scots pine. The front door was open on a passage where a bowl of sweet peas stood on an oak table. Above it, on the planked wall, was a narwhal’s tusk of spiralled ivory.