` By the blade…' said Sarah. 'Sounds sort of witchy, doesn't it?'
He stared out of the window at the red sunset sky. 'Wait a minute,' he said, but to himself.
When he turned back to face her, the look on his face was one that she had seen before, a look of recollection, but mixed with something else, something which, in anyone else, she would have taken for apprehension. `Back in a minute.'
When he emerged from the hall Sarah had carried Jazz into the living room. They were seated in a corner of the long sofa, the child still feeding, but cradled now in his mother's left arm. Bob sat down beside them. His expression had changed. It was wistful. Sarah glanced at the dusty folder which he carried and knew the reason at once.
The cover bore the title, hand-printed, 'East Lothian Project,' and the name, 'Myra Skinner, Primary VI, Longniddry Primary School.'
Not long before Myra was killed,' he said, softly, 'the school researched a history of East Lothian. It was a project for the Queen's Silver Jubilee, I think. The teachers and kids all pitched in and each class did a different period. Myra's lot drew the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Eventually the whole thing was typed up and published, but these are Myra's notes and tapes. I found them in a cupboard after she died. I was going to give them to the school, but I never got round to it. They've been up in the attic for the last fifteen years.
I remember one tape she played me at the time. It was a wee girl telling a family story, and it was something else. Let me see if I can find it.' He opened the folder. There were two tape cassettes inside in plastic boxes, labelled 'Children's Stories', in a firm hand.
Bob carried them across to the mini hi-fi unit which had replaced the equipment moved up to the Edinburgh house. He used his headphone, cutting off the sound from the speakers as, head bowed and hunched over the machine with his back to Sarah, he reviewed the tapes.
After ten minutes, on the second tape, he found the section for which he had been listening.
He straightened up and unplugged the headphones. `This is it.'
He pressed the play button. There was a hiss for a second or two, then a woman's firm, clear voice filled the room. Her accent was as Sarah imagined Bob's might have been two decades earlier, before Edinburgh had begun to knock the hard edges from his Lanarkshire tones.
` OK, the red light's on, so we're recording. I'm in the staff-room, alone with Lisa Soutar, who's going to tell me a story for the Jubilee history project. Let me get this right, Lisa. You were told this story by your great-grandma?'
The child's voice was faint. 'Yes miss, by ma Nana Soutar.'
Are you ready to begin?'
`Yes, miss.'
`Right, just step a wee bit closer and speak into the mike. On you go now.'
There was a pause, and then the child spoke again, her thin reedy voice much clearer than before.
`Well miss, in the olden days, there were these witches in Longniddry, and they worshipped the Devil, and did harm to people, and cast spells, and put a curse on the King's ship and he wis nearly drowned.' She paused for breath.
`Well one day, the minister and the laird, they rounded up a' the witches, ken. And they took them a' to Witchy Hill..
`Do you know where that is?'
Aye miss, it's up by Aberlady… they took them a' tae Witchy Hill and they tied them tae trees, and they piled wood a' around, ken. Well, the head witch was called Aggie. They were just goin' tae light the fires when Aggie said… '
The child's voice rose and changed. It became shrill and strangely menacing. Sarah, listening almost twenty years later, felt a shudder go through her.
"This is oor master's place, not yours. This is the Devil's kirk, not God's. What you are doing is des-ec-ra-shun!"
It was as if the child's voice was no longer hers. It had risen to a shriek.
" You can burn my body but you will not dissolve my spirit. I will always be here. I curse you all and all others who desecrate this place. Here is your doom: by the blade, by water, by fire and by lightning shall the desecrators be destroyed."'
A silence filled the living room, broken only by the background hiss of the tape. And then the adult spoke again, breathlessly.
And what happened then?'
Oh they lit the fires, miss, and a' the witches wis burned tae ashes!'
And what happened to the desecrators?'
A dinna ken, miss, ma nana never said.'
Bob stepped over and switched off the tape. Sarah saw that his face was pale. 'I take it that the other voice was.. ' He cut her off with a nod. 'Does it make you feel strange, hearing her speak again after all this time?'
He shook his head. 'Sarah, honey, I heard her voice every night in my head, for about ten years afterwards, whenever I settled down to sleep. But gradually it faded away. I loved her very much, but she's been gone for a long time. I can cope with it.
`But I must give those tapes to Alex. Would have done a long time ago, if I hadn't pushed them to the back of my mind' Apart from the accent, Alex sounds just like her.'
`Yeah, and looks like her too. She's just past the age Myra was when we first met.'
`Her mother would be proud of Alex,' said Sarah.
His laugh had an ironic tone. 'Aye, even if she does have a law degree! Myra had very clear views about what should be done with lawyers. Her father was one. He left her mother with three kids and used the law to get out of paying decent support. Right now, Alex probably feels the same way about policemen'
He paused. 'But enough of the recent past. What did you think of the kid?'
'Spine-chilling.'
It fairly ties up with Andy's letter, doesn't it? I wonder what Miss Lisa Soutar's doing now. I think we'd better find out.
Meantime, let's see what the Scotsman does with that letter tomorrow; let's see what sort of a hornets' nest it stirs up.'
He sat down on the couch beside Sarah and Jazz, who was asleep once more. She put a hand on his thigh. 'It's a great story, but is it any more than an old wives' tale? Shouldn't you research it?'
He thought for a moment. 'You're right. I probably should. I think I'll put Maggie on to it.
She's got an arts degree, and I know the very man who might help her too.'
`Who's that?'
`Henry. Henry Wills, at the University.'
`But he's the Registrar.'
`That doesn't stop him from having been a lecturer in Scots history! Yes, I'll brief Maggie tomorrow.'
She smiled. 'That's tomorrow, but for now you've got another task.'
‘Whassat?'
`To take this guy from off my chest and get a nappy on his ass.. without waking him up and having me start all over again!'
And after that?' It was a loaded question.
She smiled. 'Yeah, OK. I'll let you watch News At Ten!'
Tuesday
Thirteen
‘You, re an early bird, Skinner. Trying to catch your people on the hop?'.
The Marquis of Kinture sat stiffly upright in a green leather captain's chair, which had been positioned in the bay window of the boardroom to provide a clear view of the eighteenth green. The morning sun shone strongly into the room, glinting off the metal frame of the wheelchair which sat empty alongside the newly installed throne. He was dressed immaculately, in a tailored pale blue blazer and grey slacks with knife-edge creases. There was a badge on the blazer's breast pocket, a heraldic crest which Skinner guessed was the emblem of the new club. The Marquis seemed in high humour, and the policeman noted that on this occasion at least he had chosen to recognise him without preamble.
He returned the smile. 'I'd need to be up earlier than this, sir, to surprise my troops in a murder investigation.' He walked slowly down the room. 'No, I called in to make sure that our technicians had finished their work in the starter's hut.'