Free Evil for Evil by Aline Templeton Page A

against her will she found herself warming to him. ‘How’s your son? Must have been an unpleasant experience for him.’
    ‘Better in the daylight. What it’ll be like tonight, goodness knows. He’d got hold of ghost stories from somewhere which has made it all worse.
    ‘It is a bit macabre, mind you. See for yourself.’
    They were round the seaward side of the island now and he throttled back the engine as he steered the boat into the mouth of the cave.
    It was dim inside even on this bright day and their eyes took a moment to adjust. The tide was higher now and the ledge was just above their heads. As Drummond swung the torch around Fleming felt a twinge of sympathy with Tam as her own stomach turned. Not at the clean bones, no, but at the hideous reality of the torment those clamps represented. How long had it taken him to die – days, a week, straining, lacerating himself, screaming unheard, with the heavy watch on that painfully suspended wrist marking the slow excruciating hours? If the place was haunted by a restless ghost it would hardly be surprising. What sort of monster could inflict this sort of torture?
    There was no evidence of clothes. The man had been stripped naked and left to die of exposure or starvation. She cleared her throat. ‘The shelves.’ It was a safer subject. ‘Man-made, obviously. Know anything about it?’
    ‘Not specifically. Oh, there’s stories about smugglers running cargoes in from the Isle of Man – maybe this was somewhere to leavebarrels for later collection. Maybe they’re just stories. But it doesn’t look recent, does it?’
    ‘Hard to say, in these conditions.’ Fleming looked around and spotted a ring driven into a rock nearby. Her usual caution about the press made her pause before drawing his attention to it, but he had been more than helpful and deserved a reward.
    ‘Someone’s tied up a boat here, look. Rusted iron – new or old? Corroded, certainly.’
    Drummond shone the torch directly on to it. ‘Looks as if there’s been some sort of older fixing here, then a new ring added later on.’
    ‘You’re in the wrong job,’ Fleming said, smiling at him. ‘We have guys who’ll be able to date it. And the watch, of course.’
    Again, he obligingly directed the torch on to it and they both studied it. Apart from being a relatively modern man’s wristwatch with a date display they couldn’t make out, it told them little.
    ‘Thanks,’ Fleming said. ‘That’s all I need to see.’
    Drummond turned the boat cautiously, then opened up the throttle and they headed back round the island.
    ‘Look, Inspector,’ he said, ‘I’ve done you a favour on this. When you get reports, will you keep me in the loop ahead of the others once they catch up with the story?’
    ‘I’ll see you get a favour in return. On one condition. That you leave out the funny section on my seasick sergeant.’
    ‘It was going to be good,’ Drummond said wistfully. ‘But OK, it’s a deal. I can understand you want to spare him public humiliation.’
    ‘Partly,’ Fleming said. ‘And even more than that, I’m a bit short just now of something that gives me a hold over him and this is perfect.’
     
    MacNee sat gloomily on his rocky perch. It was going to be a long time to wait, outside here with nothing to do except appreciate thebeauties of nature and the sea air. His lungs weren’t really adapted to that kind of strong stuff.
    Not long after his exchange with Brodie, he saw a man come over from a jetty across the bay in a flat-bottomed boat; the slaughtered deer was loaded into it and ferried back to the mainland. Brodie drove the forklift back to a sort of bothy, left it there, then went back down and took off himself in a smaller motor boat. He didn’t offer to take MacNee back. MacNee wouldn’t have accepted if he had.
    A little later there was another shot, from a field across the water, and later still a tractor and trailer came along the rough track by the shore.