Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

Dehan blinked furiously at him. I nodded one last time, thanked him and returned to the car.

“What was that, Stone? Was that English?”

“With a liberal dose of Scots Gaelic. I think he said there’d be a storm tomorrow.”

“You understood him?”

I didn’t answer, instead I fired up the car. Fortunately the signs were in plain English and I drove to the loading point where I figured the ferry would dock, then stopped and thought for a moment.

I turned to her. “Tull be mochie afore the gloaming. It will be muggy before dusk. An’ nay doot there’ll be a fair gailleann by t’morrah. And no doubt there will be a fair gale, or storm, by tomorrow. Weather here is pretty unpredictable.”

She stared at me for a long moment without expression. Then she said with a hint of disapproval, “You’re a remarkable man, Stone.”

The sea was flat and almost milky in consistency. The crossing took an hour and was unremarkable, except that the views from the deck, of the Isle of Stroma to the west and Okney to the north, were extraordinary. There was a desolation about the beauty of the place that was not quite like anywhere else. At one point Dehan shook her head, squinting into the sea breeze, fingering her long hair from her face. “I never imagined England like this…”

I laughed. “Don’t let them hear you say that. This is not England. Scotland is a country in its own right. In some ways it is closer to Scandinavia than it is to England.”

She frowned and shook her head. “It’s so… remote!”

“Yup. And you have brought us to the most remote part, of the remote part.”

She took hold of my arm and squeezed it. “Good. No inspector, no Mo, no distractions, no cold cases for two long, wonderful weeks.”

We stood like that for a while, enjoying the strange, peaceful desolation. It had turned warm and close, and Dehan ran her fingers over her brow. Then she gave a small laugh. “He was right!”

I smiled at her. “Hm?”

“The guy at the terminal. He said it would turn muggy in the afternoon…”

I did a fair imitation of his brogue. “Tull be mochie afore the gloaming, an’ nay doot there’ll be a fair gailleann by t’morrah.”

She looked up into my face. “So we’ll have a storm tomorrow? That means breakfast in bed and hot toddies in front of the fire.”

“I’m not complaining. Bring it on.”

We sighted Gordon’s Swona twenty minutes later. It was a wedge-shaped island that rose dramatically out of the sea mist. The narrow end consisted of high cliffs and a relatively flat tableland towering some hundred and fifty or two hundred feet above the waves, and then sloping gently for about a mile and a half, or a little more, toward broad, rolling grasslands and white, sandy beaches. On the tableland, at the top of the cliffs, a spectacular castle stood silhouetted in the coppery, afternoon light.

As we stood staring, the note of the engines changed and we began to slow, churning the water and nosing toward the beach where we could now see a small port with a long pier that had been built out of wood and concrete. Eventually, after some careful maneuvering, we eased to a halt, the apron ramp was dropped with a huge, metallic clang that threatened to take off the end of the dock, and, amid a lot of shifting, drifting and grinding, we rolled out of the cargo hold and onto the concrete pier.

And then we stood by the car and watched as the ramp was raised, clattering and clanking, to its closed position. The ferry reversed away from the dock, turned, lumbering, and slowly took off north, toward the distant shadow of Orkney on the horizon.

Behind us, in the south, the mainland was no longer visible, but before us the road wound through gentle hills of green pasture, meadow flowers and heather, where sheep and goats ruminated and watched us with saurian eyes, to a broad forest, perhaps a mile away, that climbed the slopes for perhaps another half mile toward the hazy silhouette of castle on the hill. All around us, the air was rich with the smells of aromatic grasses and herbs—maybe lavender, rosemary and thyme. It seemed very still. The only sounds were the lapping of the small waves on the shore and the lazy buzz of bees among the grass and flowers.

Ahead, about halfway up the slope, half a mile from the castle, we could just make out a small village among the woods by the road. It seemed to consist mainly of stone cottages and tall chimney stacks poking up among the trees.

I glanced at my watch. It was six o’clock, and though the light was definitely coppery and there was a feel of evening to the sultry air, the sun was still a good four hours or more from setting.

I smiled at Dehan. “Let’s go.”

It was a fifteen minute drive, because though the speed limit on the island was 25 MPH, the road wended and wove in big loops, and in many parts was rough and pitted. When we passed through the village, we saw that it consisted of a village green, a handful of houses, a two-story post office and a picturesque pub called the Gordon Arms; and a moment later we were in the woods again, winding our way up the steep hill through tall pine trees that cast an eerie green light, until at last we broke out of the forest and onto the broad, flat, grassy tableland. There the road went straight, and ahead of us, tall and ancient, stood the castle, brooding, lowering over the dark expanse of the North Atlantic toward the Arctic Circle, and the heavy, dark clouds that were gathering there.

As we drew closer, we could see that Castle