Silver Fin Page 14

  ‘He inherited this estate,’ said James.

  ‘Sure. But he was running a very successful operation in America. Why’d he leave it all behind? What was he running from, d’you suppose? And what happened to his brother?’

  ‘Do you know?’ asked James.

  ‘Maybe Randolph’s wife and his brother, Algar, were closer than she let on, or maybe Randolph just bumped him off, so’s he could keep the whole shooting match for himself. Or maybe some experiment went wrong.’

  ‘Experiment?’ asked James. ‘But I thought he made weapons.’

  ‘Oh, that he does. But he’s always looking for ways to make new ones. So’s he can sell the latest, most deadliest weapons on the market. So I guess he has to do a certain amount of research to stay one step ahead of the competition.’

  Kelly whistled appreciatively. ‘So, he’s making some new sort of bomb?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Meatpacker. ‘A new bomb? Maybe a new type of gun that shoots round corners? A faster tank? A bigger submarine? Who knows? Maybe even a fancy kinda invisible airplane, or something.’ He chuckled. ‘But you can be sure, whatever it is, it’s some new way of killing more people more efficiently.’

  James’s mind was turning over this information ‘Do you think,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that Lord Hellebore would be prepared to kill someone to stop them from finding out too much?’

  Meatpacker sucked his bushy moustache. ‘Good question,’ he said after a long pause. ‘And the simple answer is, I don’t know. If he’s already killed his brother, who’s to say he wouldn’t kill again? And there have been accidents, other people have gone missing, guys who worked for him. The wife even claimed that he’d tried to have her done in, make it look like an accident, but there’s no hard evidence that he’s a killer…’

  ‘Have you heard about a boy called Alfie Kelly?’ said James, and he quickly explained to Meatpacker exactly why he and Kelly were there.

  Afterwards the detective stood up and stretched, the buttons straining on his tartan waistcoat. ‘So that’s what you’re up to, is it? Doing some sleuthing of your own.’

  ‘We’ve already found this,’ said James, and he showed Meatpacker the freshly turned earth behind the bushes.

  ‘Well, now, lads,’ said Meatpacker, taking a drink from a silver hip flask, ‘this sort of thing is best left to the professionals. You’ll only go getting yourselves into a whole lot of trouble. If this all adds up, it adds up to one thing: that our Lord Hellebore is a very dangerous man. Now me… I’m prepared…’

  With a flourish like a cheap magician, Meatpacker rolled up a trouser leg and displayed a small, pearl-handled revolver strapped to his shin in a leather holster.

  ‘Is that a Derringer?’ asked Kelly.

  ‘It sure is.’

  Kelly laughed. ‘I thought that was a lady’s gun.’

  ‘Well, now, and aren’t I a lady’s man?’ said Meatpacker, and he laughed his great booming laugh again. ‘It may not look much, lads, but it’s got me out of many a scrape. Now then, I’ve work to do. You fellers can tag along with me for a while if you keep your heads down and don’t step on my toes. But when it gets serious, I’ll have to send you on your way.’

  Meatpacker did a thorough search of the area, all the while regaling the boys with hair-raising stories about his exploits as a Pinkerton man. He told of stake-outs and shoot-outs and fist fights in back alleys. He told of bloodstained corpses and the bright flash of explosions in the night. It sounded daring and exciting, and James asked him question after question. It was obvious that Meatpacker was glad of the company and had been feeling lost and lonely up here on the moors. He was a garrulous chap and used to company.

  Once he was satisfied he’d found out all he could here, he led the boys round the fence towards the castle, keeping in the cover of the hills. They soon came to where the water ran off the loch down a small river that eventually fed into An Abhainn Dhubh, the Black River, further down the glen. It was too wide to ford, but they found a small bridge near the fence.

  Meatpacker stopped halfway across and stroked his moustache. ‘What do you make of that?’ he said, nodding towards a complicated structure of cement blocks, wooden runways and netting that had been constructed where the river flowed under the wire.

  ‘Looks like a dam of some sort,’ said Kelly.

  ‘Could be,’ said Meatpacker. ‘But it don’t seem to be stopping the flow of the water none.’

  ‘Maybe it’s something to do with fish?’ said James.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kelly. ‘To keep fish out.’

  ‘Or to keep them in,’ said Meatpacker. Then he spat into the water and walked on. ‘No matter,’ he said. ‘This case ain’t about fish.’

  They pressed on, and after a quarter of an hour they arrived at a sheltered spot with clear views over to the castle. Meatpacker produced a pair of binoculars and they lay on their bellies while he studied the castle. After a while he took the glasses from his face and handed them to James.

  ‘Take a look,’ he said, ‘and tell me what you see. We’ll find out how good an eye you have.’

  ‘All right,’ said James, and he looked through the glasses. It took him a moment to get his bearings, but he eventually found the tip of the castle roof and worked his way down, adjusting the focus so that the walls came sharply into view.

  ‘At the end of the causeway there’s a large gravel parking area,’ he said, describing the scene to Meatpacker. ‘Then you reach the main entrance to the castle across a small bridge – not a drawbridge, it looks permanent. The lower windows are all barred, but not the upper ones.’ He scanned the length of the causeway, following it to the shore. ‘There’s a gatehouse which has been repaired recently by the look of it, then the road carries on to a second gate in the new fence.’

  ‘See anything else?’ asked Meatpacker.

  ‘Oh, there’s a sort of sentry box with somebody sitting in it with what looks like a hunting rifle over their knees…’

  Meatpacker grabbed the glasses back. ‘Is there, now…? I didn’t see that, where is it?’

  ‘It’s set into the wall near the gatehouse; it’s in shadow, but you can just make it out.’

  ‘By God, you’re right, well spotted.’

  Meatpacker handed the glasses back to James.

  ‘The place is better guarded than Buckingham Palace! Look see if there’s anything else I’ve missed.’

  As James looked again, he saw the heavy castle doors swing open and a man in bloodstained white overalls came out, carrying a large bucket. He said something to somebody inside the castle, then walked over to the edge of the bridge and tipped the contents of the bucket into the water. James saw a filthy stream of bloody water pour out and then what looked like several pieces of raw meat and offal. He focused on the water and saw it surge and bubble up as some creature, or creatures, thrashed about just beneath the surface.

  ‘There’s something in the lake,’ he said. ‘Some kind of animal, I think.’

  ‘Well, that needn’t bother us,’ said Meatpacker. ‘We’re not here to study Lord Hellebore’s pets. Come on, let’s move on and see what’s round the other side.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said James. ‘There’s someone else coming out.’ As he watched, two figures walked across the bridge from the house; they were George Hellebore and his father, carrying shotguns, broken across the elbow. Lord Hellebore seemed to be telling George off about something; he looked angry and George looked sullen and cowed. They stopped and Lord Hellebore gesticulated wildly before slapping George hard round the back of his head, knocking his cap on to the floor. When he bent down to retrieve it, Randolph gave him such a kick up the backside, he sent him sprawling into the dirt. Randolph offered his son a last, scornful look, then strode off. George brushed his jacket, put his cap back on his head, picked up his gun and followed his father.

  They were met by a third person, who came from the gatehouse. He was a very small man with long arms and a stooped back that made
him resemble an ape. He had a long nose with a bulbous end, like a ping-pong ball on a stalk, and wore an incongruous, battered bowler hat. His face was so weather-beaten it looked purple, and it was impossible to tell his age, although he seemed as old as the craggy rocks round the loch. Four tatty, mean-looking Jack Russell terriers darted round his heels and he let fly a kick at one of them, but the dog was obviously expecting it and leapt out of the way.

  The monkey-man touched the brim of his hat and took the gun from Hellebore, who said something to him before walking on, and in a few moments all three of them had disappeared through the gatehouse.

  After this, all was quiet and Meatpacker and the boys waited for a while before cautiously leaving their hiding place and skirting round the edge of the hills until they arrived at the road, which was a wide dirt track, deeply rutted by tyres. They found a spot where a bend between high banks hid them from the buildings, and darted across to the safety of the hilly ground on the other side. They made it to the cover of some rocks just in time as a lorry came rumbling down the road from the direction of the castle and thumped and banged its way towards Keithly, mud flying up behind it from the wheels.

  ‘That was close,’ said Meatpacker. ‘We’d best be on our toes from here on in. Now, let’s go see what we can see.’

  They moved through the higher ground until they had a good view of the castle compound where a second fence had been erected, about ten feet behind the wire one. It was a solid, wooden affair some twelve feet high and topped with spikes. There was a makeshift guardhouse here, next to a gate, and behind the gate was a high lookout tower where two men stood, smoking cigarettes, silhouetted against the darkening sky.

  ‘I told you he was a secretive beggar,’ said Meatpacker. ‘And look over yonder.’

  He pointed to an open patch of ground behind the hills where the grass was closely cropped and a twin-engined aeroplane stood beside a large, tin-roofed shed.

  ‘An airstrip. Quite a set-up this guy’s got himself. Now, let’s take a look-see what’s behind that fence.’ Meatpacker climbed up into a twisted, stunted rowan tree to try and get a better look, but he was too big and ungainly and only managed the first couple of branches before he got stuck and had to come down.

  Once again he passed the glasses to James.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘You’ve got good eyes, shin up there and tell me what’s what.’ Meatpacker yawned and settled down with his back to the tree.

  James was a good climber and was soon at the top, from where he had a fairly clear view over the fence. He could see the ugly, new, concrete buildings that had been visible from the other end of the loch. They were clustered round a couple of older stone structures and an open cobbled area where three lorries were parked in a row, one of them being unloaded.

  ‘What’s a lorry?’ said Meatpacker after James had described the scene.

  ‘A truck,’ said Kelly. ‘You’d call it a truck.’

  ‘Yeah, I got you,’ said Meatpacker. ‘And what are they unloading?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said James. ‘It looks like animal feed of some sort.’

  ‘Animal feed?’

  ‘Yes, and over at the back there’s a row of what look like animal pens.’

  ‘I guess he has to feed his little army,’ said Meatpacker.

  Indeed, it did resemble an army barracks. Men walked busily about the place, dressed mainly in tweeds with flat caps, but occasionally a figure in white overalls and rubber boots would hurry from one building to another.

  ‘Any clues as to what the buildings might be?’ asked Meatpacker sleepily, and he yawned again.

  ‘A couple of them are dormitories, I think,’ said James, who had seen beds through the windows. ‘And a guardroom of some sort. The larger ones nearer the castle could be small factory buildings, but if you ask me they’re not making anything as big as a tank or an aeroplane…’

  But Meatpacker said nothing; instead, James was answered by a long, rasping snore. He looked down. Meatpacker had fallen asleep.

  James climbed out of the tree and smiled at Kelly.

  ‘“We Never Sleep!”’ he said, and they laughed. The noise made Meatpacker open his good eye.

  ‘I ain’t asleep,’ he said, ‘just resting.’ He hauled himself up and stretched. ‘Tell you the truth, this country air makes me tired. I’m a city man. I’m used to busy streets and crowds of people. I don’t know what to do out here. After all, you can’t take fingerprints off a tree trunk. You can’t ask a sheep if they’ve seen anything… And the locals. They don’t want nothing to do with me. Lord Hellebore’s pumped money into the place; he’s their hero. So what if he lives in secret up here?’

  James looked up at the sky and realised that it was getting late.

  ‘If Kelly and I are going to get back before it’s dark, we’ll have to set off fairly soon,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, you’d better get going,’ said Meatpacker.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Kelly.

  ‘I’m going to keep on the case. Camp out up here, watch their comings and goings, get a feel for their routine. You two fellers can help me out. Ask as many questions around the place as you can. People’ll probably be more happy to talk to a couple of kids than to an old scrapper like myself. And remember: don’t do anything else until you hear from me. I get paid to take risks.’

  As James headed off with Kelly, he couldn’t help thinking that Meatpacker Moran wasn’t at all equipped for a night on the moors, unless he’d already built a camp somewhere nearby with a tent and provisions. But he seemed happy enough and he’d obviously dealt with worse situations than this in his time.

  Kelly’s imagination had been fired by the day’s events and on the way back he entertained himself with all sorts of lurid imaginings as to what Lord Hellebore might be up to in his fortress in the hills.

  But all James could think about was that one lonely footprint and the boy who had made it… And the man in bloody overalls tipping the bucket of dead stuff into the seething moat.

  14

  The Massacre of the Innocents

  The magnificent stag stood proudly on the hillside, its forelegs up on a granite boulder that was almost completely covered by a cushion of pink-flowered moss campion. It was a big red deer, standing nearly five feet high, with wide, heavy antlers. It looked like it was posing for a picture – Monarch of the Glen. It sniffed the air, then roared once. It knew that there was danger nearby.

  Red deer are cautious beasts, with excellent sight and sense of smell, and one wrong move would send this fellow skittering and leaping away across the rocks.

  Three figures waited patiently in the shadows of a narrow corrie, dressed in grey hunting gear. At their head was Lord Randolph Hellebore, lying stretched out on the ground in a bed of alpine speedwell, peering intently through a small telescope. Behind him was George, staring sullenly at the back of his father’s head, and behind George, crouched by a rock, his ever-present bowler hat squashed on to his tiny head, was the man in charge of hunting and fishing on the estate, Randolph’s gillie, Cleek MacSawney.

  MacSawney was pouring three cups of whisky from a bottle. George looked at him with disgust. He was pickled in whisky, he drank it for breakfast, lunch and supper. George had never seen him eat, only drink. His skin had the appearance of boiled ham, the fat, squashy end of his long nose had great gaping pores and the whites of his watery eyes were permanently pink.

  ‘Look at him,’ breathed Lord Hellebore, wriggling back on his belly and sitting up once he was sure that he was out of view of the deer. ‘There are fourteen points on those antlers. He’s an imperial.

  ’ ‘He’s a fine, braw fiadh,’ grunted MacSawney, and he passed a whisky to his master. Randolph sank it in one gulp as if it were water.

  George sipped at his – he hated the taste, he hated the way it burnt his throat and he hated the way it sat in his stomach like acid – but he had no choice. If he was going to be a hunter, if he was going to be a ma
n, he would have to keep up with his father.

  ‘What’s the distance?’ Randolph asked.

  ‘Eighty yards,’ said MacSawney bluntly.

  ‘Do we risk a shot?’

  ‘It’s now or never,’ said MacSawney, drawing the cover off a rifle and passing it to George. ‘The land’s too open from here on up. We’re way above the treeline, and if we follow the fold in the rocks we’ll get on the weather side of him.’

  Randolph turned to George and smiled, showing his big, white teeth beneath his golden moustache.

  ‘Go on, then, son,’ he said. ‘He’s all yours.’

  ‘I don’t know, Dad,’ said George. ‘It’s a long shot.’

  ‘No. It’s about time you shot yourself a deer. This is your day.’

  George sighed and got down on all fours. He was tired and hungry and soaking wet. They had been stalking the deer since first light that morning. It was now nearly dark, and all they had eaten was oatcakes.

  They were out on Angreach Mhòr, far above Loch Silverfin and the castle. It was bleak and barren up here, and the cold, thin rain had completely soaked through his hunting tweeds.

  He looked down the sights of his rifle and picked out the figure of the stag, which was taking fitful snatches at young heather shoots and grass, all the while on the alert.

  George had no desire to shoot the poor animal, but he knew his father demanded it. To his father this was the most worthwhile activity a man could undertake. How many times had he heard him praising the joys of stalking… ‘We’re like Red Indians,’ he would say. ‘Forget all the feeble trappings of civilised society. This is man against beast. This is man taking his rightful place in nature. Man is a hunter. We forget that nowadays, but it’s how we started. To stalk a deer you need energy, strength, perseverance, patience, a steady hand and a quick eye.’

  As George watched, the stag turned and trotted warily up the mountain.

  ‘He’s moving too much,’ George whispered.