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  ‘You live locally, then?’

  Alan Fraser gave him a sideways glance. ‘Yes. I’m a professional climber.’ It was said with just a faint air of surprise that it should have been necessary to explain, and it reminded McLeish sharply of someone he could not immediately place. With Fraser silenced by another cup of tea, McLeish realized that it was Francesca’s brother Peregrine, a glitteringly successful singer, whom this man resembled. Not conceited, exactly – just used to being recognized instantly and not at all accustomed to having to explain who he was. He remembered suddenly a large display of books in one of the Inverness bookshops, with a colour photograph of the author surmounting the stand, the red-gold hair very bright even in the shop. The battered and swollen face in front of him was recognizable even in that state – this Alan Fraser was one of the successful pair who had got to the top of K2 by the North Face on an expedition which had killed three members of the large team and had defeated all but the lead pair. He was a television personality as well, McLeish recalled, specializing in spectacular stunt-climbing on the sea rocks off the islands on the west coast.

  ‘Were you alone? The girl I was with saw someone up there above you, wearing a yellow anorak.’

  ‘Wasn’t with me, whoever it was.’ Fraser was chalk white and shivering but his mind was working. ‘Something fell on me, I think – loose rock somewhere.’

  ‘Were you tied on?’ McLeish tried not to sound censorious, but Fraser looked at him sideways.

  ‘No, but I know that climb like my Granny’s front garden. No, something hit me on the head.’

  He started to shiver more violently and McLeish rummaged in his rucksack to see what else he could pile on to keep him warm. They agreed that gloves would be too painful on the lacerated hands, but McLeish set to work on them with bandages. ‘Try and eat something else,’ he suggested. ‘I’ve got a sandwich left, and we won’t get help for hours yet. You’re lucky to be here at all, and I don’t want to lose you from shock.’

  Fraser’s smile was like a bright flash in the battered face. ‘I must have come down over 200 feet, dragging at the rocks all the way.’

  ‘Francesca – the girl I was with – said you somersaulted?’ McLeish decided he had done all he could with Fraser’s right hand and reached over for his left, and another roll of bandage.

  ‘That’s right. I felt myself go and I knew I’d to get facing the hill, and get my feet under me. I was lucky, too.’

  Not that lucky, McLeish thought respectfully; having committed the initial idiocy of not tying himself on, he’d kept his head, he’d checked his fall by every way he knew, and here he was, alive and with luck barely injured, where most men would have been dead or paralysed. He made him as comfortable as he could and settled himself as close as possible, prepared stoically for a long wait. They both dozed and woke, McLeish continually checking that Fraser was warm enough, for about an hour. McLeish had just shared out the last of the chocolate when a disconcerting noise, barely distinguishable from the incessant wind caught his ear and he looked enquiringly at Fraser who was registering incredulity.

  ‘It’s the helicopter! I suppose Duncan must have realized it was me.’

  McLeish, as incredulous as he, peered into the mist as the noise got louder, and suddenly a helicopter appeared, whole and entire out of the drifting mist, hanging about 300 feet away. It swung ponderously towards them.

  ‘Saw the space blanket,’ Fraser shouted, as both men put their hands over their ears and huddled into the hill. The helicopter put down, as neatly as if it were landing on a large lawn, on a tiny flat patch at the edge of the corrie about a hundred feet away. Two men dropped out, carrying a stretcher, and ran over to them, bent double. McLeish rose to his feet, bracing himself against the noise and the wind.

  ‘His name is Alan Fraser, he’s shocked and badly bruised, and there’s maybe a rib or so broken, and that seems to be all,’ he reported succinctly.

  ‘Alan!’ Both men pushed past him. ‘We’d not expected you. What happened?’ They both glanced up the hill, and saw the long dragged slide below the rocks down which Fraser had come. ‘What did you have on, lad, full armour? Let’s get you away.’ The bigger man knelt by Fraser, gently unwrapping the layers of covering. ‘The young lady insisted on the helicopter, so you’ll have an easy ride.’

  ‘I thought you’d realized it was me, Duncan?’

  ‘No, no.’ The big man nodded to McLeish, and punctiliously introduced himself as Duncan Mackintosh, and the other man as his brother Roddy. He looked at McLeish with sly interest as the three of them supported a wincing Fraser to the helicopter, and McLeish wondered if Francesca had found it necessary to pull his rank to get the helicopter out. He looked back at Duncan, and decided that his expression was simply curiosity not unmixed with pity. Francesca must have been at her forceful best.

  ‘She’s good at insisting,’ he shouted disloyally over the noise of the helicopter.

  ‘Ah, but we knew she was a sensible lass,’ Mackintosh shouted back reprovingly. ‘It was Francesca Wilson – ye’ll remember her, Alan, her and the boys, and the wee boat? She got us out of the bar.’

  This was not received wholly kindly, McLeish thought with interest; even allowing for the bruising, Fraser’s expression was, at best, ambivalent.

  ‘She’s back, is she? With a boat?’

  Both Mackintoshes roared with laughter as the young RAF pilot picked the helicopter up as neatly as he had set it down, and headed off through the mist, dropping swiftly towards the valley floor to get below the worst. McLeish wondered detachedly whether Fraser had been an old flame of Francesca’s, and what this was about a boat, and decided he would wait until someone told him.

  ‘Dr Mike or Oban?’ the pilot shouted.

  ‘Land it at Dr Mike, and we’ll see if we’ve to go on.’

  The doctor came out to meet the helicopter, looked deep into Fraser’s eyes, prodded his chest, and dispatched him to Oban. ‘They’ll clean him up there more quickly than I can, and I’m thinking he’s maybe a bit concussed. Better safe than sorry, and there’s only his mother at home to see after him.’ The helicopter soared away.

  McLeish, who had watched this inspired piece of laziness with appreciation, found himself in the doctor’s surgery with an enormous glass of whisky in his hand. The speed with which the doctor downed an equally large one offered some explanation of why, at this time in the afternoon, Dr Mike felt it more prudent to dispatch a potentially difficult case to Oban. On the heels of this reflection he found that Duncan Mackintosh had downed an equally large one and was waiting for him to drink up so he could be given a lift back in a police Land Rover. With a faint ringing noise in his ears from the drink, he joined Mackintosh.

  ‘We’ve not seen you in the bar?’ Duncan observed, throwing the big vehicle round a difficult corner.

  ‘No, we’ve been too tired.’ McLeish saw his mistake as he spoke but decided to ride over it. ‘Francesca is not used to hill-walking, and I was very tired when I came up.’

  ‘She didn’t do much walking when she was last here.’ Duncan was grinning broadly. He suddenly hurled the Land Rover into a passing-place, and waited motionless for five seconds until a large dark-blue Range Rover crawled cautiously past them, the driver lifting a hand from the wheel in acknowledgement. ‘Saw him from the corner. It’s Mr Vernon’s car. You know him? No? He stays at the hotel here, every year with his family – oh, for the last five years it must be. They’re all walkers but they fish as well. Wonder where he’s been the day? There’s Francesca now.’

  Duncan jerked his head to where a small figure above them on the hill was waving. ‘I’ll say good-day to you, and thank you. Alan was maybe in no state to return thanks for himself, but he could have been there the night but for you two. We’ll be seeing you some evening, then?’

  McLeish, disentangling his rucksack from the car, realized that this was both an invitation and a reminder of his social duties, and said heartily that he and Francesca would
certainly be down, perhaps not tonight but on the day after. He turned to greet Francesca, who was dancing on the hill above him, very pleased with herself.

  2

  Forty-eight hours later, bathed and changed after another long walk, McLeish and Francesca locked the cottage behind them and headed for the hotel bar. Around them a clear bright Highland evening shone, the sky darkening into a deeper blue, with the sun still bright out to sea and every inch of the distant hills glittering in its setting light. McLeish breathed deeply of the scented air, and thought that if he never went back to his crowded office that would suit him splendidly. Perhaps he could find a job up in Scotland, since he was a full Scot, and come to this place every weekend? He looked down at Francesca, tidy in clean jeans and a white shirt, with a scarlet sweater knotted round her shoulders, and thought that she too looked part of the scenery. Indeed as she had pointed out on their way through the city, every second woman in Inverness looked like her, tall, dark-haired, with long straight noses and blue eyes. He put an arm round her. ‘Are you going to know everyone here?’

  ‘It is ten years since we were last here. On the other hand, people don’t move much, and we were all here, and we had the boat.’

  McLeish decided detachedly that Francesca, her four brothers, her mother and a boat might well have been conspicuous in a small Highland village, even one as used to tourists as this. So it proved. They walked into the hotel bar – a large room amply provided with small rickety tables, faded heavy armchairs of uncertain date and provenance, and even more faded group photographs featuring gentlemen in massive whiskers smirking modestly at deceased stags. Duncan Mackintosh hailed both of them, bought drinks all round and started to enquire about the welfare of the rest of the Wilson family. Francesca being removed to talk to the daughter of the house, McLeish decided the moment had come to find out about the boat that had accompanied the Wilson family, and prompted Duncan Mackintosh with a gentle enquiry. He could not, he realized, have given greater pleasure had he set out with that object; the group vied with each other to tell him about it. It had been, it transpired, a wee sailing boat, built from a kit by Francesca’s brothers. McLeish, who knew the Wilson boys to be as cack-handed a group as you could find anywhere, blinked at this revelation, and Duncan Mackintosh confirmed, happily, that indeed with every passing day a further bit of the boat had fallen off, or come apart. But the real fun had been when the Wilsons, severally or in pairs, had sought to sail the craft.

  ‘We’d no need of the television the while they were here,’ the square, fifty-year-old postman observed, smiling reminiscently into his drink.

  ‘It’s not a place for a sailing boat, mind,’ Duncan Mackintosh objected, with a sidelong glance at McLeish to see that he was not offended on behalf of Francesca. ‘The wind is difficult, one minute there’s not a breath, the next minute it gets up and comes from all around, particularly at this end of the loch.’

  ‘You couldna take your eyes off them for a minute. They must have been in the water a dozen times a day.’ The postman, Derrick Grant, ruthlessly destroyed this tactful approach.

  ‘We’d only to go and fetch them the once, though.’ Duncan Mackintosh clearly felt the tenor of the conversation might be causing offence to McLeish. His audience, reminded of their social obligations, agreed, happily, that despite the continual stream of spectacular capsizes that had so greatly contributed to the entertainment locally available, no harm had come to the Wilson children until Charlie the eldest boy, two years junior to Francesca, had tipped the boat over more awkwardly than usual and cracked his head on the mast. Peregrine, sailing with him, had found himself being pulled on to the rocks by the ebb tide as he tried to keep his dazed brother from sinking. Duncan had been at their side in a commandeered motor-boat in minutes. McLeish nodded, liking the feel of a community which would automatically keep an eye out for a gaggle of visiting teenagers, no matter how much nuisance they were.

  ‘Then they made friends with another family with a big boat, is that not right, Derrick?’

  ‘Aye. With a lad a bit older than Francesca,’ Derrick agreed, and perceptibly flinched as Duncan Mackintosh indicated that this might be less than tactful given the presence of Francesca’s current man.

  ‘I expect it meant the boys were a bit safer,’ McLeish observed, disentangling without effort his love’s probable motivation, and got a sharp appreciative look from Duncan Mackintosh.

  ‘That would be right,’ he agreed. ‘Are the wee boys still singing?’

  McLeish realized he must mean the youngest boys, the twins Jeremy and Tristram, now twenty-three, and said that Jeremy was in a merchant bank but still sang in a good choir, while Tristram was trying to follow in the footsteps of the twenty-five-year- old Peregrine and become a professional singer.

  ‘He sings as Perry Wilson, doesn’t he? He’ll have made a bit of money,’ Derrick Grant observed with interest, and McLeish agreed that the proceeds of two records which had both remained at the top of the charts for weeks would have been substantial.

  ‘We never heard Perry sing here, you know. He was fifteen then and his voice had broken the year before and he was not allowed to use it.’ McLeish blinked at him, momentarily disoriented by the thought of that golden talent muted. ‘It was Tristram that was the star. He had made a record of hymns and the like, and was well known. He came to the kirk with the family – we’ve no instruments there, so the precentor gives the tune and leads the singing. It was like the angels come to earth to hear him and Jeremy.’

  They would have been thirteen and at the full power of their treble voices. ‘Of course Francesca and her mother and Charles have fine voices too,’ Derrick Grant added courteously. ‘So the missionary we had then asked them to sing for a concert he was getting up, and people came from everywhere, and we’d a lot of visitors, too. I can see Francesca now, playing for the boys on the old piano where half the notes stuck. We got the new one from that concert.’

  A missionary? McLeish wondered wildly, then remembered that the Church of Scotland would use lay preachers in areas which they could not provide with a full-time clergyman. The Wilsons had paid their debts, then, though that talented bunch of extroverts would doubtless have appeared anywhere they were asked, for any cause. He realized that the group was watching him, and just managing not to speculate aloud about how he coped with this lot.

  ‘You’re a Londoner too, I understand?’ Duncan Mackintosh enquired, reposing a comfortable beer tummy against the bar.

  ‘Yes. I work for the Home Office,’ McLeish said firmly.

  When asked about his job casually he usually replied that he was a civil servant, but Francesca had pointed out he would have to do a little better than that in this community. ‘They’ll think you’re a tax man or the Customs and Excise, either of which would be death to any social life,’ she had stated with her customary authority. ‘You’d better work for the Home Office. There are lots of jobs there of such unutterable dullness that no one would have the heart to enquire in any detail. Couldn’t you be responsible for liaison with Treasury on pay and conditions for firemen, and invent any detail you needed? No one would be any the wiser, including Home Office ministers if present.’

  McLeish, continually amused by the contempt with which the Department of Trade and Industry spoke of all other Departments of State, had agreed that the Home Office was the right place for him to be attributed to. More cautious than she, he had also said firmly that if pressed he was going to own to one of the Home Office jobs to which members of the Metropolitan Police Force were from time to time seconded. Duncan Mackintosh, apart from one single doubtful glance at McLeish’s breadth of shoulder, did not seem inclined to press further and at that moment they were distracted by a noisy group arriving at the other end of the bar.

  ‘There’s Alan Fraser. I thought they’d have kept him in Oban a bit longer.’ Duncan Mackintosh sounded thoroughly startled, and they all looked down the bar to where Alan Fraser, face very swollen and both hands
heavily bandaged, was calling for four beers. He accepted a hand to get his anorak off from a slight black-haired man, olive-skinned and as tall as he, but who looked pale and mildly unhealthy beside his glowing colouring. McLeish, considering Fraser, noticed again the air of authority and the look of one accustomed to being recognized as he nodded in greeting to the group next to him. Someone drew his attention to McLeish, and he looked over, unhurriedly, picked up his drink, and made towards him, a space clearing round him as he moved.

  McLeish was momentarily distracted by Francesca who had returned to his side and was pressed close to him, half hidden by his shoulder. ‘That’s Alan Fraser,’ she said, anxiously, only increasing his puzzlement since she normally had the unhesitating social confidence of the successful eldest child.

  Before he could ask her what the matter was, Fraser had joined them and was thanking him, formally, for his services the day before. ‘And Francesca – I hear I’ve to thank you for the helicopter. Duncan told me you’d not take no for an answer.’

  Francesca, wholly uncharacteristically, mumbled something inaudible in reply, and McLeish took over the conversation, asking Fraser how his various injuries were settling down. As they talked he found more details of Fraser’s career assembling themselves. This lad, twenty-seven or so (younger than Francesca which made her obvious embarrassment with him the more surprising), was one of the new young tigers who were pioneering climbing in the Himalayas without oxygen at heights of 20,000 feet and above. What was he doing in this part of the world?

  ‘Is your granny still living here, Alan?’ Francesca had finally recovered her voice, and was sounding exaggeratedly BBC standard against the soft Highland accents in the bar. McLeish realized she was still not at ease.

  ‘Aye, and still doing the bed and breakfast.’ Fraser’s accent had, by contrast, thickened. ‘And what are you doing with yourself these days? Are you done with all that education?’ His glance ust flicked over McLeish, and Francesca, looking particularly severe, scowled back at him. She nodded, unamused, and turned to McLeish.