The Murder Hole (47 page)

He was scanning the room. His gaze landed on
Jean and brightened like headlights going from low-beam to high. He
started toward her as she started toward him. The crowd swirled and
thickened from individual bodies to a barricade as Kettering
stepped forward. “Ladies and gentlemen!”

Roger set down his glass and stood poised,
his dogs groomed, his ponies curried, and his water monsters
bedecked with tartan bow ties. Maybe he was swaying because of the
drinks, maybe because of the slow rise and fall of the boat. Maybe
he was swaying because he stood at the top of a precipice and was
ready to jump.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Kettering proclaimed.
“I present to you Roger Dempsey, the discoverer of the Loch Ness
monster!”

Roger whisked away the cloth covering the
easels. With various gasps and exclamations, everyone pressed
forward, kilts sweeping, bosoms heaving, cameras whirring. Even the
waiters and barmaids and musicians leaned toward the exhibit.

Jean stopped working her way around the back
of the crowd and gaped. Poster-sized photos of the bones from the
tomb, artfully arranged, were accompanied by drawings of various
concepts of Nessie, some more zoologically possible than others.
Another poster showed the Pitclachie stone, with 8x10s of the
newly-revealed upper half pinned to its edge. Roger pulled a
marking pen from an inside pocket and sketched in the gripping
beast, just to make sure everyone appreciated it for what it was.
Kettering babbled about museums, openings, sponsorships,
advertising campaigns.

Alasdair ranged up beside Jean, seized her
arm with his strong right hand, and pulled her into the back
corner. “Gunn’s saying you’ve knocked a bittie chip out of Roger’s
alibi.”

“Yeah, and Hugh just blew it to pieces—one of
the tunes Roger said he heard the band play on Saturday they only
played on Sunday, and it was a one-off then.”

“Well then. No surprise the trace evidence .
. .”

“Rubbish!” shouted a deep but unmistakably
female voice. Jean’s and Alasdair’s and every other face in the
room swung toward the door.

Iris Mackintosh stood there, tall, straight,
and regal. Her high-collared jacket and loose trousers shimmered
silkily, her iron-gray hair swept back from her forehead. She cut a
path through the onlookers like Moses through the Red Sea.

Roger stood his ground, beard out-thrust
belligerently. Kettering smiled, gracious to a fault. “Miss
Mackintosh! So glad you can join us for this wonderful moment, the
vindication of your father’s writings . . .”

“Rubbish,” she said again. “If Dr. Dempsey
had bothered to consult a proper scientist, he’d have discovered
right smartly that what he has discovered are the calcified remains
of a basking shark.”

“A what?” asked Kettering.

The color drained from Roger’s face. Iris
grabbed the pen from his limp hand and began drawing on the largest
poster. “Here is the shark’s tail, and here its head, and here its
mouth . . .” she sketched in a huge, gaping maw, drooping down from
the skull like a debutante’s crinoline skirt. “They feed on
zooplankton. Once the flesh and less-calcified bits of cartilage
rot away, and the other perishable parts of the animal are no
longer extant, you are left with the spine and skull. What you’ve
interpreted as flippers are no doubt bones of some other creature.
You’re not the first person to jump to the wrong conclusions,
Roger, but you’re by far the biggest fool amongst them.”

The room was so quiet that Jean could hear
the swish of water around the bows of the boat, an undertone to the
thrum of the engines. From just outside the door came Elvis’s, “I
want to see the pictures, Mummy,” and Noreen’s, “Not just now.”

Jean leaned toward Alasdair as he leaned
toward her. “It was never Nessie,” he whispered.

“Basking sharks have unusually well-calcified
skeletons,” Iris went on. “Plus, this specimen was quite large and
probably very old, which is why its remains are heavy and dense as
bones. It’s remarkably well-preserved, even so. Perhaps the shark
was originally found on the shores of the sea and brought here by
the Picts as a totem, to protect their borderland. Perhaps it had
somehow found its way into the loch. In any event, it was buried
long ago, and forgotten until my father Ambrose discovered it, and
from it constructed his myth. I will not apologize for that. Each
of us is free to believe anything we wish, but that does not mean
that believing something makes it true.” She handed the pen to
Kettering, who stared at it as though it were a grenade.

“Iris,” Roger said, his usual rumble strained
and thin.

“Roger,” said Kettering, in a slightly
stronger voice.

Bedlam broke out in the room, people
chattering to each other and shouting questions at Kettering and
Roger and Iris and calling for more alcohol to wash down the
headline news.

Smiling like a cherub on steroids, Hugh put
his fiddle to his shoulder and started to play “MacPherson’s Rant,”
supposedly composed by the titular MacPherson just before he was
hanged. If Hugh had realized the full implications of the moment,
he’d never have chosen that piece. Did anyone else recognize it?
Her hand over her mouth, holding in something between hysterical
laughter and a scream, Jean turned to Alasdair.

“The forensics reports,” he said, his breath
tickling her ear. “The trace evidence. The clothes Roger was
wearing the night Tracy was killed. Bits of dust and pollen match
those in the tower room. So do microscopic bits of wool, from
Iris’s knitting, most likely. A scrap of plastic from the floor of
the tower, just below the window, is a bandage from a paramedic’s
kit. I’ll be asking the medicos to examine Roger for a scratch or
stab wound from the knitting needle.”

Jean, chilled, could see it all. Roger and
Tracy, already at odds, in over their heads, their ship sinking.
They thought the hit-and-run meant their enemies were closing in.
They doubled their efforts to find the complete book—a treasure
would rectify everything. But they also doubled their resentments.
One word from a tense, edgy person to another. Shouts. The shove .
. . It had truly been a crime of passion. “We might have looked
right at that wound. He had bandages and scratches on his arms
anyway.”

“Oh aye.” Alasdair’s gaze transferred itself
to Roger.

Above the beard Roger’s tanned skin was pale
as beeswax, sagging like a candle burned too long. He lurched back
against the wall. Jean thought he was going to slide down it and
melt into a puddle on the deck. But no. Suddenly his body
solidified. He thrust Iris against Kettering, sending them both
against one of the easels, which in turn fell over with a
clatter.

Roger shoved his way through the crowd,
batting away microphones, ignoring grins, and strode out onto the
forward deck. Hugh segued into a jig. The other instruments joined
in.

Alasdair’s mouth set itself in a grim line.
“Let’s finish it, shall we?” He started toward the door, not
waiting to see if Jean was with him. That had been a rhetorical
question.

But she wasn’t going to shrink away now. Now
that she’d done everything she could to bring down Roger’s castle
in the air, including feeling pity for the man.

Alasdair burst out of the door, sweeping away
a cameraman in his path, Jean right behind him. She saw Gunn
standing by the railing next to Noreen and Elvis. She saw Roger
come to a halt in the middle of the deck, arms crossed,
half-crouched as though in pain. She saw high on the green bank of
the loch, above a huge metal boat-house so incongruous it seemed
alien, the row of white houses that was Foyers. She couldn’t see
Crowley’s Boleskine House. It lurked in the trees, wrapped in
darkness and despair.

Alasdair jerked his head at Gunn and with a
gesture summoned the constables. He took Roger’s shoulder and
turned him around, not roughly but firmly. He met Roger’s shocked,
furious, desperate stare with a flinty stare of his own. “Roger
Dempsey, I arrest you in connection with the murder of Tracy
Dempsey. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do
say will be taken down and may be given in . . .”

“Roger!” Brendan, Kirsty at his side, popped
out onto the deck. “Roger, I’m sorry, I thought those bones might
be a whale of some kind, but the head wasn’t right—vertebrates
aren’t my field—I didn’t think there’d be any harm . . .”

“Mummy,” said Elvis, “it isn’t Nessie, is it?
The man lied.”

In one convulsive movement Roger wrenched
away from Alasdair, pushed Gunn sprawling onto the deck, evaded a
constable’s tackle, and sprinted for the side of the boat. He
grabbed the little boy and set him up on the railing so that his
feet dangled over the water. “You’re going to get this boat turned
around, Cameron. You’re going to turn it around and get me back to
shore.”

Noreen’s scream was anything but short. It
was Edith’s cry, it was Tracy’s—disbelief and rage mingled. She
lunged for Roger. Alasdair diverted her towards Jean. Jean handed
her off to Kirsty. Jean was vaguely aware of Gunn clambering to his
feet, of people spilling out of the lounge and down the stairway,
of the music ending abruptly, of cameras clicking. All she could
see was Elvis in Roger’s hands, suspended above the cold water of
the loch.

“Mummy?” he asked, not yet frightened but
wondering why his mother had screamed. He wriggled. In another
minute his bottom would slip off the railing and only the strength
in Roger’s arms would keep him from falling. And Roger was
trembling, his pallor taking on a shade of green. Great, Jean told
herself, he was going to faint and drop the child anyway.

“Sit still, lad,” Alasdair said, and taking a
step closer to Roger, “Don’t be stupid. You’re adding charges on
top of charges, and this time you’ve got witnesses aplenty.”

“It’s all over,” Roger mumbled. “I gave it my
best shot. Tracy, she meant well.”

“You’ve done remarkable work. Omnium’s a
going concern. You found the upper half of the Stone. That’s quite
genuine.” Alasdair took another step.

Behind Jean’s back, she heard Gunn
whispering, “Put the inflatable into the water, now.” Footsteps
slowly retreated, then broke into a run. The sound of the engines
changed timbre, throttling back.

Elvis sat still, staring out at the expanse
of water between the boat and the shore. Maybe he thought this was
some sort of thrill ride. Maybe he was just stunned. Noreen was
sobbing in Kirsty’s arms. Brendan was flanking Alasdair, and two
uniformed constables were standing ready—to do what? They couldn’t
shoot Roger. They could try lassoing him, Jean supposed.

She felt utterly helpless, utterly useless,
cursing Roger, cursing herself—all she’d done was challenge Roger’s
assumptions and ask questions, it wasn’t her fault that his
suspicions of her had fueled his and Tracy’s plots . . .

Roger inhaled, shuddering. For just a second
his head fell forward and his grip on Elvis’ torso loosened. In
that second Alasdair leaped. He seized Elvis’s small shoulders and
yanked him free of Roger’s grasp, then pirouetted and threw the
child into the arms of the constable who had followed his leap.

“No!” Roger snapped erect and scrambled up
onto the railing, first rung, second, and teetered at the top. In a
flurry of tartan, Alasdair leaped up beside him and wrapped his
right arm around Roger’s chest. They struggled, Roger straining
toward the water, Alasdair pulling him back, tilting further and
further. And were gone.

Brendan and the second constable lunged into
the railing and leaned over it, grabbing at air. A deep-throated
splash resounded from the water.

Alasdair!
Jean didn’t go for the
railing. She didn’t even go for conscious thought. Kicking off her
shoes, she dashed for the doughnut-shaped life preserver hanging on
the bulkhead—red and white, it wouldn’t clash with Alasdair’s
tartan. The life preserver seemed to bound off its hook and into
her hands. Spinning around, she clambered up onto the
railing—trajectories, the speed of the boat, the hump of its wake
moving across the water surface, the patch of roil and froth there,
limbs splashing like dark snakes, going under. She jumped.

Somewhere about half way down, and it was a
long way down, her brain kicked back in. What the hell was she
doing, protecting her investment in a certain policeman? Refusing
to go on without him? She hit the surface of the water. It was
hard, breaking beneath her weight, sending a shock wave through her
body. The dark water closed over her head. Her breath shattered
into pellets of hail, so cold they burned her throat and chest.

Fight! Fight!
Hooking her left arm
around the life ring, she didn’t only let it pull her to the
surface, she pushed it upward. Her skirt wrapped her legs and she
kicked and flailed. Something touched her thigh, a trailing bit of
weed or a tentacle or a bit of fabric. Blindly she grabbed and came
up with a handful of stiff cloth—a collar, she realized, connected
to a heavy body.
Please, please, let it be Alasdair
.

Like breaching a membrane, she broke the
surface of the water. Prisms danced in her eyes—her glasses, they
were gone, like she cared. The black wall of the boat rose out of
the black water several yards away. Clinging desperately to the
buoyant ring, she pulled the collar upwards with every micron of
strength she had and some she didn’t know she had, and Alasdair’s
head popped into the air beside her, streaming water.

He gasped, gulped, and coughed, and started
to sink back. The wet wool of the kilt was dragging him down. A
tremendous splash doused her face with ice water and Brendan was
swimming toward them, arms stroking powerfully. He pulled Alasdair
back up and toward the life ring. And here came the inflatable,
bouncing over the swells toward them, a sailor and a constable
already leaning over the sides.