‘Where did you get those?’ she asked him, aware of the note of envy in her voice. ‘You didn’t bring them with you, did you?’
‘No. I got them from reception.’
‘Oh. Can I have a go with them?’
‘Sure, in a minute. I want to…’
He got no further, as Rachel took the binoculars from him and turned back to the window, fiddling with the focus until the island was clearly in view.
‘Yeah, go ahead. Help yourself,’ she heard him saying. ‘Don’t mind me.’
At length, she grudgingly lowered the binoculars and handed them over, ignoring the look of consternation on his face.
‘It’s time to go for breakfast anyway,’ she said.
‘Hold your horses,’ he told her. ‘Breakfast’s going nowhere and I want a look as well. You can just make out the abbey on the island. Pretty amazing, isn’t it?’
‘Priory,’ she corrected him. ‘It’s a priory not an abbey.’
‘Whatever. I’m going to try to get some photos of that later. How do you get across to it?’
‘You can’t, not in the winter,’ she told him. ‘There’s a ferry that takes you across during the summer season but the only way to get across in winter is if the lake freezes and you can walk there. But that’s happened only three or four times in the last seventy years.’
‘You wouldn’t catch me walking over there on the ice. No chance. How come you know so much about this?’
‘Listen, I’m starving. And I can smell bacon.’
Winter could feel an impatience growing in him at her evasiveness and wondered what the hell she was up to. He decided that, for one last time, he would let it go.
‘Rach, you are avoiding far too many questions for my liking but okay. I’m hungry too.’
After filling themselves with sausage, bacon, black pudding, eggs and toast washed down with mugs of tea, they returned exhausted to the bedroom and collapsed on the sofa overlooking the bay window and the lake beyond.
Rachel got her Martina Cole novel from the bag and sat with her knees pulled up to her chin, her eyes occasionally stealing fleeting glances above the pages to the view through the window. Tony opened the Sunday newspapers and they both fell into a silence that was contented on his part, uneasy on hers.
They sat like that for half an hour without a word passing between them, their pact of relaxation being broken only when Winter lowered his paper and looked at her. Rachel ignored him and Tony raised the pages of the newspaper again. A couple of minutes later, however, he placed it down open on the table in front of them.
‘Tell me what this is all about.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Enough. Don’t take me for an idiot, Rachel. This—’
He turned the pages of the newspaper towards her until she saw a large advert headed in block capitals ‘INCHMAHOME MURDER’.
‘What’s going on?’ he persisted. ‘According to this ad, someone is seeking information about a girl found murdered on that island out there. They think she was murdered nineteen years ago this weekend.’
‘And your point is?’
‘And my point is that you are a fucking detective and you’ve been acting strangely from the minute we left Glasgow.’
Rachel gave a resigned shake of the head. She put her book down on top of Tony’s paper and, taking his hand in hers, led him to the bay window.
‘The media called her Lily,’ she explained, looking out towards the island, ‘as in Lily of the Lake, a typically glib sound bite. Her body was found in late March 1994, four months after the probable date when she was murdered on that island out there. It had been the worst winter in thirty years and the police were sure she was killed on the last of the days when the lake was frozen. If it had been any earlier, her body would have been found because there were so many people walking across to the island. Some bastard caved her head in.’
‘Okay. I vaguely remember the case,’ he admitted. ‘I was at secondary school and staying with my Uncle Danny and Auntie Janette. I remember Danny being really angry about it and Janette was upset. Who was she?’
‘She was never identified,’ Rachel replied. ‘Various families came forward thinking she might be their missing daughter but it wasn’t any of them. Her body was so badly decomposed and eaten away that dental records were all they had to go on but they proved nothing. The four months in between the murder and the body being discovered meant no one locally remembered a girl who could barely be described.’
Winter shook his head, recognising anger building that she had conned him into being there. He should have known her sudden urge for them to be away as a couple was too good to be true.
‘So that’s why we’re here? That’s the reason for this sudden urge for a weekend away? Nothing to do with you and me?’
‘Partly,’ she admitted.
‘Great. Rachel, I don’t remember much about this case because I’d have only been about 16, in which case you’d have been 17. How come you remember this so well?’
‘It’s personal.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The man in charge of the investigation was my dad. Police Inspector Alan Narey. This was his last case and he couldn’t even find out who the girl was, never mind who’d killed her. It’s haunted him ever since.’
Tony bit on his lower lip and thought about what she was saying.
‘Unfinished family business?’ he asked her.
‘Yes.
‘And this ad in the paper — what’s that all about? Who put it there?’
‘I did. And I placed one in every other Sunday paper in Scotland as well. I wanted to make sure that it was seen by as many people as possible.’
He sighed, pissed off that she had dragged him along on false pretences but more because she had chosen to shut him out of whatever it was she was up to. Yet his dark itch was also working overtime at the prospect of learning more about what had happened on the island so tantalisingly close across the water.
‘Tell me everything.’
So she did.
CHAPTER 7
The body had been found half-hidden in undergrowth in the grounds of Inchmahome Priory by two men who had gone over to the island to do maintenance work in time for the spring opening. The little that was left of her had been half-eaten by animals and insects, a bag of bones wrapped up in a red anorak. Her head had been repeatedly struck with a blunt object until the skull shattered, then her face had been smashed until it was unrecognisable. Decay, the freezing winter and the local wildlife did the rest.
It was thought that the girl was in her late teens. No one local had gone missing; no one local had any idea who she was. Rachel’s father had cops knock on every door in the area but all to no avail. He’d dispatched them wider afield, setting up incident centres everywhere from Callander to Aberfoyle, from Lochearnhead to Stronachlachar. Nothing.
Vague sketches went nationwide and they’d even bagged a spot on Crimewatch but, other than scaring up the usual nest of nutters, it had earned them nothing. Distinguishing the genuine sightings from the wild-goose chases was a thankless task. Identifying her proved impossible.
‘The real problem was the damage to the girl’s skull. According to my dad, it was horrendous: the worst he’d ever seen, and he’d seen plenty in his thirty years. It was smashed to bits. Most of the blows were to the back and side of the head and that was the principal area of attack. But there were also blows to the face, breaking the nose and teeth. In all, they estimated that she was hit twenty-two times in the head and face.’
‘Jesus Christ. Twenty-two?’
‘That many blows isn’t a lashing-out. It isn’t a flash of anger. It’s deep-seated rage. It’s sadistic. She would have been dead after less than a dozen hits. The rest was either to make recognition even harder or else it was borne out of pure evil.’