Lethal Whispers Read online

  “It’s time to let him out,” said Mhari the second an hour had passed.

  Jack checked his phone. “So it is,” he said with a grin. “Come on then, let’s see if he’s survived.”

  Mhari winced at his careless words. Evelyn was now watching her continuously, and with such a fierce intensity that if Mhari wasn’t a little afraid of her, she would have asked her what she thought she was looking at. Jack and Skye leapt up, and once Jack had retrieved the key, they began the journey to the kitchen without one shred of nervousness between them. Avoiding Evelyn’s ferocious line of sight, Mhari got up and followed them hesitantly.

  “You alright in there, mate?” shouted Jack as they approached the white door. “Was she gentle with you?”

  No reply came.

  “He’s trying to freak us out,” said Skye, rolling her eyes.

  Jack laughed and turned the key in the lock, but on turning the handle and pushing the door, he found that it would not budge. He laughed again, a little less joyfully this time, and knocked loudly on the door.

  “Come on, Callum. Open the bolts.”

  Still, no reply came.

  Skye joined Jack in knocking on the door and shouting for Callum to let them in. “Callum, open the door, you idiot!”

  After a few minutes, when the door remained bolted and there had still been no response from inside, both Jack and Skye began banging frantically on the wooden panels and screaming at Callum to stop winding them up. On the other side of the kitchen, Mhari stood silently, her face drained of all colour and her demeanour sombre. Part of her wanted to tell them that he couldn’t answer them, not anymore, but she found herself unable to speak.

  “You’ll have to break it down,” demanded Skye.

  “Why me?” asked Jack. His voice was panic stricken, and he sounded completely out of his depth.

  “Well, I’ve never broken a door down before, have I?!”

  “And I have?!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Mhari from behind them. Her voice was distant, as if she wasn’t even aware that she was speaking. “You can’t save him. Not now.”

  Jack and Skye both looked at her with a mixture of aggravation and dread and then returned to the task at hand. Between them, and with the help of a solid bronze statue from the main hall, they managed to pound the rusty bolts from their hinges and smash the ancient door open.

  Approaching them timidly as they stood in silence, Mhari peered between them cautiously, already having a good idea of what she was about to see. A quiet gasp escaped from her, as her eyes fell desolately on Callum lying in the middle of the pantry floor, lifeless and with a number of bruised lines around his neck.

  Two

  The sounds of typing and the odd bit of chatter drifted through my door from the main office. There wasn’t too much on at the moment, and we were all taking the opportunity to catch up on things that had been pushed to the background for months on end. I glanced up from my screen and saw Caitlin staring resolutely at hers, looking bored and miserable. Almost three months of constant desk duty had not suited her at all.

  My phone buzzed suddenly, distracting me from my thoughts, and I looked down to see McKinnon’s name flashing up on my screen.

  “Conall,” he said as I answered. “I hope you’re not too busy at the minute?”

  “No more so than normal, James.”

  “Well, I’ve got a new murder case for you, if you want it?”

  I definitely did want it. Although I hadn’t been sitting at my desk anywhere near as long as Caitlin had been, it had still been a while, and it was becoming tedious for me as well.

  “Yeah, of course,” I told McKinnon. “If you want to send me over the details, I’ll get onto it straight away.”

  “Will do.” He hung up in his usual brusque manner, leaving me to wait for the details of the case to ping through. Gathering my things as I waited, I scanned what McKinnon had sent me as soon as it came through, and then went out into the main office, wondering who to take along with me.

  “Are you going anywhere interesting?” asked Caitlin as I approached her desk. She seemed relieved to have an excuse to look up from her computer for a while.

  “Yeah, actually. There’s been a murder up at some big house out near Craig Dunain.”

  Caitlin’s eyes widened in excitement and she reached behind her for her coat. “How long will it take us to get there?” she asked.

  “You’re not coming,” I told her with a frown.

  “Why not?” she demanded.

  “Because you’re on desk duty. Typically, that means you need to stay at a desk.”

  Her face fell into the darkest of scowls. “Ahh, come on, Conall. You can’t leave me out of a murder case. I’m bored out of my brains here!”

  “It’s not up to me.”

  “I’ve only got a couple of weeks left on desk duty, anyway. What difference is it going to make?”

  “It’s still not up to me.”

  “I’m only going to be asking a few questions and taking notes. I don’t need to be an athlete, do I?”

  “Are you listening to a word I say?” I asked in exasperation. “It’s up to McKinnon, not me. You know he’s watching me like a hawk at the minute. If he finds out I’ve let you off desk duty early, I’ll be for the jump.” Since I had been largely blamed for Caitlin ending up on desk duty in the first place, McKinnon had been watching my every move of late, although he had relented somewhat in the last month or so. He had told me back in July that I was on my final warning, but I had a feeling that it had now been dialled back to first warning at the most.

  Caitlin tilted her head pleadingly. “You could call him and ask,” she suggested. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you tell him I’m fine.”

  She waited as I weighed up whether or not she was fine yet. She certainly seemed a lot better, although I was still haunted by the sight of her with a bullet in her stomach.

  “Come on,” she cried out after a while, when I failed to respond. “There’s nothing wrong with me!”

  I sighed. “Am I ever going to hear the end of this if I don’t call McKinnon?”

  “Probably not, no,” she replied, her eyes twinkling.

  Ten minutes later, after assuring McKinnon that she was well enough to visit the murder scene and securing his permission for her to come with me, a very happy Caitlin sat next to me in the passenger seat, buzzing with energy as if we were going on a day trip.

  “Who’s been murdered then?” she asked far too cheerily as I started the drive.

  “Some young lad. Callum Waters. He was found strangled in a locked room at the back of the house. A pantry or something, I think it says in the notes.”

  “He was locked in?” said Caitlin, intrigued.

  “Yeah.” I grinned. “From the inside.”

  The spike of a huge turret was the first thing we saw of Crawcrag Hall. It stuck up through the forest of hawthorns on the drive like a great dark beacon, pulling us farther in as each second rolled by. When the woodland which they called a garden had subsided a little, and the house came into clear view, we saw that it had a number of spiky turrets all over the roof, but none quite as big as the first one we had seen. The place was ancient; its stonework was dingy, its many windows were long and thin, and carved faces stared sternly at us from below the lining of the roof. A sudden breeze seemed to sweep across the front of the house as we approached, despite the day being mild and calm.

  Caitlin whistled as we pulled up to the front of the drive. “Fancy,” she muttered, craning her neck to look up at the towers.

  It may have been fancy on the face of it, but it didn’t escape my notice that one of the guttering pipes was hanging off at the side, and moss grew undisturbed in patches along the front. In truth, when you got up close, it looked a little rundown.

  Davie Baird had already been at the scene for a good few hours with the SOCO lot, and I guessed that he was nearly finished, given that he was waiting outside when we pulled u
p.

  “Conall, lad,” he called with a nod of greeting as I emerged from the car. “And Caitlin! Back in action, I see.”

  “Large as life,” Caitlin declared, beaming and throwing her arms out to the side to emphasise the fact.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Davie with a chuckle.

  “What have we got in here then, Davie?” I asked him. He produced an A4 envelope and handed it over to me.

  “Twenty-eight-year-old male found strangled, it would seem. We’ve already moved the body, I’m afraid, but help yourself to those.” He gestured to the envelope, and I pulled out a series of photos of a young man lying in a tiny, bare room, with severe bruising ringing his neck. “It looks like the killer used a weapon rather than their bare hands, and we’ve found some fragments of what look like standard rope fibres on his neck, but no sign of the rope in question anywhere in the vicinity.”

  “Was he really locked in from the inside?” asked Caitlin curiously.

  “It would seem that way. The family had to break the door down to get to him. They took the bolts off inside as they did it. We’ve got them bagged up for you in the back of the van.”

  “So, how did the killer get out?” I pondered aloud.

  “That’s your department,” replied Davie carelessly. “Oh, and good luck with the family, by the way. They’re an odd bunch, that’s for sure. Especially the old woman.”

  I quirked a brow at him. “How do you mean?”

  “You’ll see,” he said with a grin, slapping me lightly on the arm as he made to leave.

  I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that.

  Once inside the house, a DC directed us to the main living room, where the family were waiting for the many police officers to finish up their work. A shiver ran inexplicably down my spine as we entered. The place could really do with some heating.

  The family consisted of two women and a man, roughly the same age as the deceased, and an elderly woman whose grey eyes pierced me as I walked over to them. Before she had even spoken one word, I could tell what a commanding presence she held here.

  “Good morning,” I began, making all the heads in the room turn to look up at me. “I’m DCI Keane, this is DI Murray. I’m sorry to have to do this now, but we do need to ask you all some questions about what happened here.”

  “You may ask us all the questions you wish, of course, Inspector, but I fear you will not find the answers you seek on this plane of existence.” The old woman’s voice was even more imposing than her glare.

  The man and one of the young women rolled their eyes wearily. The other young woman, however, was looking at her elderly relative in terror, her face creased in dread.

  “Excuse me?” I said, confusedly.

  “Aunty Evie believes this place is haunted,” explained the more rational young woman, in a tone which clearly demonstrated that she did not share her aunt’s belief. “There’s a stupid old story about some woman that haunts the kitchen.”

  “The pantry, to be precise, my dear,” her aunt rebuked frostily. She had turned her head to gaze out of the tall bay window, and kept looking out as she spoke. “And you would be well advised to speak with more tact about those things of which you can have no real knowledge.”

  Her niece raised her eyebrows and looked imploringly up at the ceiling, as if begging not to have to hear whatever was going to come next.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, addressing the aunt, although she remained looking away from us all. “Are you telling me you think a ghost murdered Mr Waters?”

  “I know it, Inspector,” the old woman snapped, jerking her head back round to face me. Her skin was doughy, but her countenance was hard as rock, and that gaze of hers was as sharp as a dagger. She wore her dark grey hair in a neat bun wrapped up harshly at the back of her head, and on top of that, she seemed to fashion herself from a completely different century. The plain cotton dress she wore was long, grey, and covered every inch of her apart from her face and hands. It even had a white ruffle around the neck, which was held together by a large brooch showing the silhouette of a woman’s portrait. I could see how convincing she might be to the gullible, and my eyes flickered momentarily to the other girl in the room, who seemed to cower in her aunt’s wake. “This is not the first time a young man has fallen victim to Nell.”

  “Nell?”

  “That’s her name,” said the man apologetically. “The ghost’s name.”

  “Auld Nell,” cried the aunt authoritatively, peering dramatically out of the window once more. “Although old, she was not when she was murdered herself, in this very house, by a cruel and jealous master.”

  I turned to Caitlin, expecting her to be stifling a laugh, but to my surprise, her face was deathly serious.

  “She took her revenge, of course,” continued the old woman, the edges of her lips curling up sadistically, “as is often the way in these matters. And she has continued to do so ever since.”

  “Right,” I said, breaking the dramatic pause that followed. “Well, I’m afraid I’m going to need something a little more concrete than that. So, if I could start by taking everyone’s names, please?”

  “I’m Skye Cross. This is my sister, Mhari Cross. This is Mhari’s boyfriend, Jack. Callum was my boyfriend, but we’ve all been friends since we were little. And this...” Skye waited a second for effect. “... is our great aunt Evelyn.”

  “Do you all live here?”

  “Absolutely not!” Skye seemed disgusted by the idea. “You couldn’t pay me to stay in this wreck. Aunty Evie lives here with our granddad, and Mhari has just moved back in.”

  “What about you, Jack?”

  “I’m planning on moving in soon,” he answered, “but we haven’t quite got round to it yet.”

  “And you, Mhari,” I said, keen to hear what the girl had to say for herself, “what made you move back?”

  She looked a little taken aback to have been spoken to directly, and I got the feeling she had been hoping that the others would take the brunt of all the talking for her. She shuffled slightly in the seat she had made for herself on the rug by the coffee table and slid some of her auburn hair behind her ear nervously.

  “Our granddad isn’t very well,” Mhari explained. “So I moved back to help Aunty Evie look after him.” She spoke in a light local accent, much like the rest of her family and Jack, but her voice was definitely the meekest of the bunch.

  “And when Granddad finally carks it,” Skye shot in, “Mhari gets the house. You forgot that bit, Sis.” She smirked contentedly as her callous words made Mhari visibly flinch.

  “It doesn’t go to your parents?” I asked, directing the question to Mhari once again.

  “Our parents died a good few years back, in a car crash.” Her reply was glum, but matter-of-fact.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, a little uncomfortably. “Is your granddad in the house at the moment?”

  “Yes, but I doubt you’ll be able to speak to him. He’s very rarely conscious these days.”

  “That’s alright. I’m sure the four of you can tell us all we need to know.”

  Evelyn tsked loudly from her gilt-framed armchair, making no effort whatsoever to hide her objection to my words. “There is only one person who can tell you what you wish to know, Inspector. And she is most certainly not in this room.”

  Skye’s head now lolled against the back of her chosen settee, while she tapped her fingers against a cushion, while Jack leaned forwards with his head in his hands and a bored expression on his face. They had obviously both heard this spiel far too many times.

  “Where is she?” asked Caitlin quietly. I shot her a look of disbelief, but she was too absorbed in Evelyn’s words to even notice.

  Evelyn now focused her attention wholly on Caitlin, smirking eerily at her from across the room. She reminded me of an eagle sensing out any hint of weakness in her surroundings.

  “Auld Nell is now and forever more to be found in the old pantry, where she herself met her end.
And woe betide any unworthy man who steps foot into that room, for Auld Nell is sure to reap vengeance on him within the hour.” Caitlin gulped audibly. “She has taken claim of twelve victims that we know of over the years. There may, of course, be many more that we have no record of. Auld Nell does not concern herself with our desire to document her every deed.”

  “How does she... reap vengeance?” asked Caitlin.

  I couldn’t stop my face from twisting at how seriously she was taking the woman’s drivel.

  “Some are strangled, as Nell was.” Evelyn moved a flouncing hand through the air as she continued with her tale. “For others, the sight of her alone is enough. Many have been found without a single mark on them.”

  “The story goes,” Jack shot in, clearly tired of hearing Evelyn’s dramatised version, “that this kitchen maid, Nell, from hundreds of years ago, was having it off with the owner of the house.” Evelyn’s face contorted in disgust at his choice of words. “And when his wife found out, she started to make life hell for the girl, so she planned to move on. The owner of the house, some lord or whatever, told her to stay, but when she refused, rather than let her leave, he strangled her in the pantry. If he couldn’t have her, then nobody else could, that kind of thing. And ever since, people have wound up dead in the same room, and it’s snowballed into a sort of legend. Any man who’s been unfaithful and goes in there ends up with a rope around his neck.”

  “It isn’t only men she murders, though,” said Mhari suddenly. “She’s strangled two women in there too, that we know of.”

  “Except she hasn’t strangled anyone, has she?” said Jack, sounding unmistakably irritated now. “She’s dead. She’s been dead since the 1800s. Dead people can’t strangle anyone.”

  “No,” I agreed. “So, counting out anyone who’s been dead for the past few hundred years, who was actually in the house last night when Mr Waters was killed?”

  “The four of us and Granddad,” said Skye. “But Granddad can’t leave his bed without help these days.”