This Emerald Veil, page 12
‘Oh! You just stepped on my foot, babe. I’m a vegan.’
‘Just chips then.’
Garth studied Gill’s face as he leaned over to pour the tea. ‘I like you, Gill. You have appealing energy. Where’d you get that?’
Gill shrugged. ‘Maybe this is my natural, happy daily disposition?’
Garth glanced from the teapot to Gill’s face, and back again. ‘Nah. Has to be more to it than that.’
‘I’m with The Nazarene,’ said Gill flatly.
‘Oh, surprise, surprise,’ smirked Garth. ‘You’re cosy with the boys and girls in the abbey.’
‘I dunno,’ said Gill. ‘I’ve walked around a few times now. You talk about a vibe. The only place on Iona where I sense any energy is the museum building.’
‘Good call. That’s because it was the infirmary for hundreds of years. Can you imagine all the praying and dying that went on in that place over the centuries?’ Garth nodded. ‘The very floor of the place must be soaked in spirit.’
Gill mused on Garth’s sentiment, though he wasn’t sure he understood the man’s theology well enough to agree with his diagnosis.
‘Yeah, Druidry would still be top dog if Christians hadn’t nicked our best songs.’
‘Oh, right? Like what?’
Garth shrugged. ‘Human sacrifice for one.’
Gill peered at him. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’
‘Come on!’ Garth protested. ‘God comes as a man, then allows himself to be killed. A single perfect sacrifice, and the rest of us get away Scot free. It’s an awesome strategy. I bet there were a bunch of religious houses kicking themselves they didn’t think of that one.’
‘Okay.’
‘And then his followers stand up and promise eternal life to the miserable, short-lived poor. Biggest order of jam-for-tomorrow ever placed in the history of mankind.’
‘I think there’s a bit more to it than that,’ said Gill.
‘Oh, there is,’ Garth continued. ‘Because then the Benedictines came along and realised they could turn salvation into a revenue-generating subscription operation.’
‘How?’
‘By inventing purgatory,’ said Garth. ‘You know the deal; rich guy dies and leaves his worldly wealth to the church, just so they can pray eternally for his soul. I ask you. What a racket?’
Gill found himself agreeing. ‘I guess it implicitly denied the one-time sacrifice.’
‘Totally. Think of all those grave coverings that adorn the museum and the cloisters. They represent a big chunk of worldly wealth from a warrior class that probably made their money slaying innocents.’
‘Yeah,’ said Gill. ‘Purgatory was one of many things the church got wrong.’
‘Look, I’m not like Roger. You know Roger?’
‘We’ve met. Briefly.’
‘Used to be part of the Iona Community but decided it wasn’t militant enough for him.’
Gill thought about the earnest young people he’d passed along the road near the abbey. Or the smattering of visiting nuns who never acknowledged him on the street no matter how cheerily he bid them ‘good morning’. “Militant” certainly wasn’t the word he’d use.
‘These days, Iona preaches peace at any price,’ Garth continued. ‘Which is hilarious when you think about the way the Benedictines built their abbey by taxing the pay packets of mercenaries.’
Gill nodded, seeing the implicit conflict of interest.
‘And here’s another,’ said Garth. ‘Let’s assume Columba was just an honest man trying to get square with God. Making copies of The Book and spreading it around Scotland. But he’s barely cold in the ground before his followers are digging him up and hawking his bodily remains around Europe for a fee. A dead guy, mutilated into holy relics.’ He stopped and sniffed. ‘Bit of a travesty really.’
‘So, you feel you’ve little in common with your fellow islanders down at the abbey?’
Garth raised his hands. ‘Oh, we’re looking for the same thing. Drawn to the thin place like asteroids towards the sun. We’re just interpreting the data differently.’
Gill nodded. In his depiction of holy relics, Garth had voiced another historic error by the church. ‘There’s still a chance Celtic Christianity will rediscover its roots. Especially in places like this. A simpler faith, following daily rhythms of devotion.’
‘Maybe,’ said Garth, before taking a deep swig of tea. ‘But even they have a long walk back to a place where honesty and common sense shake hands with the God they confess to worship.’
Gill signalled agreement. He understood from his own research that Celtic Christianity had been crushed by the politicised lowland kirk in the fourteenth century. Lairds and priests who'd needed the Scottish church to look sufficiently like Rome, thereby winning the Pope’s support to ward off an English invasion. The rot that set in then had never been eliminated.
‘This is good,’ said Garth, pushing his drink across the bench to clink mugs with Gill. ‘Here we are. Two men from different traditions, caught in the gravity of the thin place. Taking responsibility for our own spiritual lives, but still talking like adults.’
‘Yes,’ said Gill. ‘Though I’m struggling with your asteroid analogy.’
‘How would you describe it?’
Gill considered his words carefully. ‘I don’t believe thin places are accidents of nature. My theory is they’re worn into a region by generations of people seeking God.’
‘Really? Maybe we’re just humans looking at a daunting landscape and realising it makes us feel small?’
‘There’s more to it than that. Spiritual people, like you and me, sense these thin places. That somehow, the physical and spiritual worlds are only separated by a thin veil.’
‘Like it,’ said Garth, tapping the table. ‘Tell me more.’
Two hours later, Gill emerged from the caravan under a starlit sky. The rain had cleared, and the absence of light pollution allowed the Milky Way to hang over the island like a sky-high fresco. The mug of tea had been followed by a branded whisky, then a shot of something clear from an unmarked bottle that Garth swore was safe. He walked Gill far enough to ensure the slightly woozy archaeologist was headed in the right direction. Then he shook Gill’s hand and with a cheery wave, wandered whistling back in the direction of his trailer.
Chapter 18
Where the bloody hell are we?’ demanded George Wiley as Alex Lillico drew up beside two police vans and turned off the engine. For the last hour they’d driven past nothing excepts lochs and industrial forests.
‘The nearest settlement is Dalmally,’ said Lillico, pointing down a grassy, waterlogged track. ‘And Loch Awe is down there.’
As they exited the car, Wiley glanced at his shoes and growled. ‘And why isn’t the local Murder Investigation Team running this one? We’re Special Investigations and the only “special” thing about this case is how sodding remote it is.’
‘Local MIT are run ragged apparently, and we’re the only team with capacity.’ Lillico nodded at Wiley’s shoes. ‘It’s Scotland, George. You really should get yourself a decent pair of walking boots.’
His boss meanwhile had started rummaging in the trunk. With a victorious flourish he produced a pair of plastic overshoes.
‘Seriously?’ said Lillico. ‘You’re going down there in laboratory-grade noddy-boots?’
‘They’ll do the job,’ said Wiley, pulling them on. ‘And it is a crime scene. Come on. Let’s go see what’s happening.’
For fifteen minutes they trudged down the track, through sparse birch trees, as the path wound its way to the loch. Gradually the view opened up and they caught sight of a brooding stone fortress on the shoreline, perhaps a mile distant.
‘That’s Kilchurn Castle,’ said Lillico. ‘Former stronghold of the Campbell’s.’
‘You know it?’
‘Read about it. It’s quite a fortress.’
‘Super. Once we’re done here, we can spend the rest of the day sightseeing.’
Lillico suppressed his amusement. His relationship with his boss had got off to a rough start, with fiery episodes that could have seen one or both of them fired from Special Investigations. But they’d worked some difficult cases together in the last six months and Wiley had learned to value Lillico’s honesty. Grudgingly, they’d come to respect each other and had morphed into a workable double act. And he knew today they must look the part as, stoney-faced, they walked in lock-step towards a group of uniformed officers gathered on the damp fringe of the loch.
‘I’m PC Archer said one of the men. I was first on-site when the bodies were found.’
Wiley scowled at the landscape and ignored PC Archer’s hesitant smile. ‘Where’s your detective?’
‘DI Morrison, sir. He’s on Mull. On another case. Sends his apologies.’
‘And his rationale for calling Special Investigations, is what? He’s too busy?’
‘We are spread pretty thin as it happens. But when you view the bodies, you might see where we’re coming from.’
‘Who found them?’ asked Lillico.
‘Local fellow. Keen pike fisherman. He was trolling along the shoreline just after dawn and spotted the first one caught in a reed bed. When he called it in, we did a search of the shoreline and found a second body a little way along.’
‘No sign of a perpetrator?’
‘They’ve been dead a while, sir. The onset of decomposition is probably what brought them to the surface.’
Perhaps anticipating the smell, Wiley took a deep breath. ‘Let’s have a look then.’
They walked a little way down the shore where the bodies lay covered under a blue plastic sheet. PC Archer pulled it back and stood aside to let the new arrivals make their own observations.
‘Chinese?’ said Wiley to no one in particular.
‘Chinese are fairer skinned,’ replied Lillico. ‘Hard to tell with the decomp, but these guys look South Asian. Vietnam. Thailand. Somewhere like that.’
‘Don’t look like tourists.’
‘No. With their cotton outdoor clothes, it’s like they were lifted off a film set.’
‘Any sign of foul play?’ said Wiley, turning to Archer.
Archer took a second to pull on latex gloves, before stooping to carefully roll one body onto its side. ‘Just this, sir.’
Lillico squatted to study the black cable ties binding the man’s hands behind his back. ‘No sign of their shoes?’
Archer shook his head.
‘What are the currents like around here?’ asked Lillico.
‘I asked the fisherman about that. He said there’s a very weak current from this north end, moving west. The river Orchy comes in near the castle and the loch drains towards the sea about eight kilometres west of here.’
‘No idea where these guys entered the water?’
‘The influence of the wind will trump any current in the loch. We’ve had a stiff south-westerly these last couple of days, so my guess would be they were dumped somewhere along the south shore.’
‘Anyone conducted a search for possible sites?’
Archer looked at Lillico. ‘Not yet, sir. As soon as we get done here, I’ll take a couple of the lads and make a full list of every place someone could have accessed the water.’
‘And where is your pathologist?’ barked Wiley. ‘Or is he too busy as well?’
Archer studied his watch. ‘Should be with us any minute.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Wiley sarcastically. ‘We’ve legged it up the road all the way from Bathgate and managed to beat a techie coming from where?’
‘Fort William, sir.’
Lillico dropped his hands in his pockets to protect against the damp chill. ‘Your old haunt, George. With any luck it’ll be one of your old pals.’
Wiley turned on his heels. ‘I don’t have “pals,” Sergeant. Especially not in Fort William.’
---
Around the same time as DCI Wiley was getting his feet wet on the banks of Loch Awe, Gill was spending his last full day on Iona marking details on a large map of the island. Leone had asked him again about running a survey and he needed to get his head around the amount of effort required. Not that Iona was a big island, and many areas were too rocky or marshy to be rational places for burying treasure. But there was lots of grazing land and plenty of machair. Most intriguing were the protected little bays that offered deep sandy soil well back from the sea. These places wouldn’t have changed much in the last millennia and would have been Gill’s first choice if he’d needed to bury something valuable in a hurry.
He'd visited most of these bays during his time here and marked them on his map from memory. But there was one he couldn’t picture, just a short distance east of Columba’s Bay. Glancing at his watch he realised he had enough daylight left to make it there and back, so donning his running gear, he set out immediately.
He arrived at the little bay fifty minutes later. Someone was there ahead of him, working on a humanoid sculpture over three metres tall.
‘You’re still here, unicorn man?’ called Garth, working on the edge of the machair.
‘My last day. Heading back to Dundee tomorrow.’
‘And did you find what you’re searching for?’
‘Thanks for the cuppa yesterday,’ said Gill, raising a hand in greeting. ‘And you know, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular.’
‘Everybody’s searching for something, Gill. I mean look around. It’s mid-January and there are still travellers coming to this far-flung piece of Scotland.’
‘Isn’t that just tourism?’
Garth turned to look at the sea. ‘In part. Or because they’re drawn to this thin place we were talking about.’
‘Scotland seems to have a few of them.’
‘And why do you think that is?’
Gill shrugged. ‘Maybe, with the passing of so many years, this old land has been worn down in places. Maybe the planet’s got so thin by all our living and dying, that only a veil separates us from heaven and hell.’
Garth snorted. ‘Oh, big thoughts. A city boy like you, believing in unfashionable notions like heaven and hell.’
‘I’m an archaeologist. A historian of humanity. Our whole backstory lies buried beneath our feet.’
Garth nodded slowly as if still weighing Gill up. ‘There’s something appealing about you, man. You have the wisdom of an old soul.’
‘Is there?’ Gill replied. ‘Or am I just well read?’
Garth laughed. ‘You’re not a man who remembers his past lives?’
‘Oh, that’s a big question,’ said Gill, playing for time. ‘Put it this way. I’ve lived my own life. And I remember my father living his. And I remember lots of what he told me about his father before him. Everything I remember about my ancestor’s lives comes from the stories the family used to tell.’
Garth flinched one shoulder. ‘We’ll not fall out over a wee detail like that. Not everyone remembers.’
Gill nodded, looking for a way to change the subject. Garth seemed to see his discomfort. ‘I was thinking about you this morning.’
‘That’s sweet,’ said Gill. ‘How come?’
'Did you hear about the earthquake last night? Up near Fort Augustus.’
Gill took a deep breath and slowly released it. He had spotted a tiny item in the news and skipped over it. Thinking about the Great Glen Disaster didn’t rouse happy memories. ‘Just a wobble, yeah? I don’t think anyone was hurt.’
‘That’s what I heard.’
‘Good.’
‘Do you think she’s crying for help, or for revenge?’
‘Who?’
Garth squatted and gripped a handful of sandy soil. ‘Our home planet.’
‘I’ve never thought of Earth being alive,’ said Gill evenly.
‘She’s awash with living things,’ laughed Garth. ‘And yet you think the planet itself is inanimate?’
‘Big ball of rock hanging in space? That would be my guess.’
‘We’ve exploited and polluted and extracted. And as climate change comes home to roost, you have the audacity to think the planet isn’t angry?’
‘I agree we’re messing with the weather; I’ve seen big changes in my own short lifetime. But if we suffer for that it’ll be as a consequence of those changes; not because the planet is punishing us.’
Garth jumped down on all fours and theatrically pressed one ear hard against the grass. Then a few moments later, he jumped up again. ‘Try hearing her, man. She’ll speak if you listen.’
