A Tale of Shadows

By Barry Litherland

For Matt and his friends it was to be a final, memorable holiday in the North West Highlands. It was unimaginable that it would end the way it did, out there on the island. Only one person saw what happened that night. Only one person knew the truth that lay behind the tragedy. But was the account given by Guy accurate or was he hiding something? As Aaron Marks investigates he uncovers a story of suspicion, intrigue and tragedy which will change all their lives.

From the author of 'The Cave' comes 'A Tale of Shadows' set against a background of seas and mountains in a fictional area of the North of Scotland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legend Press
• Release date: Dec 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781785073953

Barry Litherland

Barry Litherland lives and writes in the Far North of Scotland. He has written several crime and paranormal crime novels and Middle Grade children's novels. You can find out more about him and his work by visiting his website.

Book preview

Chapter One

I was alone at the northernmost point of the island when the stranger joined me.

‘There was a death here some years ago,’ he said.

I was momentarily taken aback. He did not look at me but continued to stare out to sea. ‘He was a young man, no more than twenty five years old. It was a tragic incident. You would hardly think of such a thing happening at such a place.’ He looked at me.

He was an old man with a face like a piece of driftwood, pitted and knotted, gnarled and beaten. His hands, I noted, had the texture of leather, like an old and well used wallet. Since I made no response other than that which could be conveyed by the raising of an eyebrow and the inclination of a head, he continued. ‘He jumped or fell from this very spot at dead of night. His body was broken on the rocks below. I remember particularly how his arm moved up and down, backwards and forwards as the tide rose and fell. For a moment, I thought he was alive and had, by some freak of nature, survived the fall.’

‘You were there then?’ I said, ‘You saw him?’

As I looked out from the rocky promontory I was aware that nothing lay between my and the Arctic Circle other than a small number of uninhabited rocks and a larger islet hosting a distant lighthouse. To west and east the coast rose and fell, yellow with occasional gorse or white with cotton grass except where grey white rocks emerged like fists above a green sward. On a headland away to the west I could see another pinprick lighthouse upright on a rocky pedestal. Cliff upon cliff wound away west and east as if they would stretch forever only to end when the seas, merciless and relentless, overcame their dogged resistance and ground them to sand and clay.

He nodded, ‘Then and many times since.’ He did not seem inclined to continue and we were silent for a moment.

A fulmar glided past stiff winged. It cast a careful glance as it turned with the slightest movement of wing and tail and dropped to follow the line of a distant wave.

‘Was it an accident?’ I asked, ‘or suicide or was there some other cause?’

‘I took the boat out to bring him to shore,’ he said. ‘He was on his back, twisted across the rocks, his limbs at strange angles to each other. His eyes were open. It was as if he were looking back up the cliff to the point from which he fell, as if he was looking for someone there or for some reason. I have drawn bodies from the sea before, divers drowned, drawn away from their craft by the tidal currents, holiday makers from capsized boats, even swimmers. There are none of them that I remember as clearly as the young man at the foot of this cliff.’

I repeated my question, ‘Was it an accident? Suicide?’ He paid no more attention to me than he did to the shadow that fell across us. The sun dipped its head for a moment in a pool of cloud. I shivered slightly. Even in the spring, in these northern latitudes the air could be cold and penetrating. The old man glanced at me or, more precisely, turned his eyes upon me The rest of him remained as immobile as stone. His hands hung heavily at his sides and his legs were braced as if to withstand a storm. It was a momentary look, as if he were trying to recall what it was like to be cold. He did not look like the kind of man who acknowledged the normal changes of wind, temperature or precipitation. He was conditioned to endure and to ignore such trivialities.

‘Now, when I return to the harbour I often see him, particularly when the weather is bad or mists cling to the headland or dusk is falling.’

A sudden breeze rose from below us and rose to lift a gull buoyantly over the cliff.

‘You are a seaman?’ I asked, to fill the strange silence that momentarily surrounded us.

He nodded. ‘Man and boy,’ he said, ‘mostly in these waters, though I spent a period overseas in the merchant navy.’

‘You’re a fisherman?’ I asked.

‘Trawler hand, inshore fisherman, lifeboat skipper, even the occasional tourist trip when there is a demand,’ he said. ‘Man and boy, fifty years at sea. I saw some of the world – the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic fishing grounds, the Baltic, even parts of the Far East; but that was when I was a young man. I’m happy to stay here now.’

‘You must have met some interesting people,’ I suggested, ‘along the way.’

His look was contemptuous but he withdrew it and replaced it with something that approached a smile.

‘I met very few people I didn’t later wish I hadn’t,’ he said, then after a moment’s reflection added, ‘but it was worth the effort, I suppose, in order to meet the few that pleased me.’

For a few minutes he seemed disinclined to speak and I was about to take advantage of the opportunity to leave when he spoke again.

‘Aaron Marks was one of the few who were worth the effort,’ he said. I waited for him to continue. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t know Aaron Marks. He was the detective sergeant they sent out to investigate the death. He was an unusual man, very strange in many ways, but as solid and as straight as you could get; a gentleman - aye, I see you smile. We don’t have much use for the term nowadays. But that’s what he was. Aaron Marks was the real thing. You knew that the minute you met him.’

‘You got to know him during his time here?’ I ventured. By now that my questions were no more than a prompt that brought him back from the edge of silence to continue his monologue. If he answered it was by chance rather than design. However, he turned a sharp eye on me and spoke briskly.

‘No, not then; he was here for just two days and one evening on that occasion. But it was enough to learn something about him. He walked with a black cane – he had a bad leg, you see – and he had a small springer spaniel with him. He took her everywhere, even onto the island and out in the boat. He was a smart man, always well dressed, foolishly so when you look at the land hereabouts. His shoes were polished – not something you see too often with young people nowadays.’

‘He was quite young, then?’ I asked. ‘I had imagined him to be older.’

He frowned as if exasperated at my interruption and continued. ‘You noticed him immediately; you couldn’t help it. But it wasn’t just his appearance that you noticed; it was his manner and his speech. When he spoke to you it made you feel as if you mattered, as if he was interested. You got the feeling that he felt for you, felt for the victim, the witnesses, the young man’s friends, everyone.’

‘You seem to have learnt a lot about him from such a brief acquaintance.’

I was growing curious about this detective sergeant and the peculiar impact he seemed to have had on the old man. I was tempted to smile at such enthusiasm. It was unusual to hear someone of his age and experience talk so effusively about a man he had met for no more than a few hours.

‘We met again a few years later. It was a time of grave danger – for him and for the others in the party -but Aaron Marks proved himself once again.’

‘He sounds far too good to be true,’ I said.

He looked at me sharply. ‘But he was true,’ he said. ‘Aaron Marks was as true a man as you could meet.’

Below us a line of gannets banked on slow wing beats, moving east.

‘About the young man,’ I asked. ‘Did they decide the cause of death?’

‘Suicide,’ the old man said abruptly and tightened his narrow lips as if closing a window tight shut, ‘though Aaron Marks knew there was more to it than that, just as I did. He knew it straight away although it was long after before he knew it all. The young man wouldn’t have returned to the cliff top like he has if his death had been natural. I told Aaron Marks that. He didn’t laugh. The others did but Aaron Marks listened. He knew I wasn’t a man to go imagining things. He cared, you see, and he wanted to know. He only had the words of that one witness, the young man who was there on the island at the time. He was a friend of the dead man - or so it appeared.’

My curiosity was aroused but his enigmatic words were almost the last he said to me. He looked at his watch. ‘The tide will be closing in,’ he said. ‘The island will be cut off in an hour and the causeway hidden. You don’t want to find yourself caught here, not alone, not after.’ His voice trailed away but he seemed to bethink himself quickly. ‘It can sometimes be days before the causeway is clear again,’ he smiled. ‘It all depends on the tides.’ He turned and strode away to rejoin the narrow path which led past ruined crofts towards the shore and the mainland.

‘Where is he now?’ I called after him. ‘Aaron Marks, where is he?’

‘He’s Detective Inspector Marks now,’ he called back over a shoulder. He stopped for a moment. ‘He has a house close to the centre of Chalness, I believe, near the shore. You see his name in the paper occasionally. I always look out for it.’ He raised a hand and waved and quickly vanished beyond the rise and down the twisting path.

I shivered slightly as the cold breeze caught my flesh. I had to smile. I had recently retired from my work in the city and had bought a cottage in a small patch of isolated ground just five miles outside a tiny seaside town on the north east coast. The town where I had chosen to settle was Chalness, home to the remarkable Detective Inspector who had made such an impact on that wizened old sea dog.

Chapter Two

I heard nothing further about the tragedy or the strangely charismatic detective and soon relegated this sad tale to the deeper recesses of my mind. It was, after all, merely a mournful tale of a young suicide. It drew from a deep pool of emotions some temporary feelings of shock, horror and despair. In the end, though, there was little of lasting interest. The coroner, I assumed, had made a decision and the grass had grown over the raw ground and those involved had moved on, however painfully and however unwillingly.

I returned to my cottage and, having business of a practical nature involving gutters, slates and the conversion of a number of dilapidated outbuildings, I was preoccupied for a number of weeks. It was only a chance encounter in the Hunter’s Moon Hotel which metamorphosed my interest and opened the shutters of my curiosity like my cottage windows opened onto a wilderness of garden.

I had concluded some business with Mr. Young, -David Young of Young, Darley and McColm, solicitors and land agents, - relating to my conversions. He was a grey man of late middle age, competent, thorough and professional. He had outlived Mr. Darley by a number of indistinguishable years and now shared the work of the practice with Mr. McColm. Mr. Young bowed his grey head over matters related to property whilst Mr. McColm dealt with matters of a civil or criminal nature. Both men shared an inability to move with any degree of urgency, an acute distrust of even the plainest of sentences and an unwillingness to express a personal opinion on any matter whatsoever, no matter how closely or distantly related to the business in hand.

It was, therefore, in a mood of frustration that I left the office on the main street late that afternoon having moved my business forward by the merest degree. I decided to eat in the town and headed towards the Hunters’ Moon Hotel. There, I knew, I would find a degree of solitude at that time of the day and could recover my equanimity over a home baked steak and ale pie in the company of a few men who had called in for a brief pint before heading home from work.

It was Autumn and a chill breeze was driving along the main street. A few pedestrians were busy concluding their shopping or heading home from work with some impatience to escape the ill mannered buffeting of the wind. A log fire was burning in the hotel lounge and I chose to take up a seat there rather than drift into the public bar to the sound of pool balls, darts and laughter.

There were a number of people who had evidently made a similar decision. Two were obviously local farmers. They were easily identified by the ruggedness of their features and hands, the bend of the shoulders, the sinking of the jaw. As I passed their table I inhaled the acrid smell of earth, animals and oil. I heard snatches of their muted conversation, tractors, silage, the season, items of machinery with obscure names and even more obscure functions. They sat to one side of the fire adjacent to a family who, judging by the brightness of their demeanour and dress were on holiday. The children, bored with their seats at the table, ventured into the open spaces and stared at the occupants of the other seats. The farmers glanced irritably at them and continued to talk.

A younger man, half hidden in shadow beside a curtained window was reading a newspaper. He rested his foot on a chair and sipped causally at a glass of red wine. He paid no attention to the other customers. A couple were sitting at a table in a small alcove set back in a secluded corner. They were obviously concluding a meal. An occasional muted laugh drifted across the room. The farmers looked up as if annoyed at the intrusion.

The landlord turned a smiling face to me; the genial expression of mein host gave way to the welcoming smile of a familiar acquaintance.

‘Good afternoon, doctor,’ he said. ‘Will it be a pint of the usual?’

I nodded.

The couple in the alcove had concluded their meal. I noticed the man leaned lightly on a black cane. They made their way to the bar and stood beside me ready to pay. We exchanged pleasantries about the weather and the season and the warmth of the lounge and I told them of my cottage and my new life. He appeared interested in my renovations and we spoke for some time until his partner interrupted us with a most pleasant smile.

‘We really must excuse ourselves,’ she said. ‘Our babysitter will be waiting. We must get back to Rosie!’ She looked at me and another enchanting smile brightened her face and, it seemed to me, the entire room.

‘You have a child?’ I asked.

The man smiled and looked with pride at the young woman beside him. ‘Soon,’ he said, ‘but not for a few months – April, we expect.’

It was impossible not to share their happiness. Rarely have I seen two people so hopelessly in love.

‘But who is Rosie?’ I enquired.

‘Ah, Rosie!’ the man murmured. ‘She is our surrogate baby and my best friend.’

The young woman dug him in the ribs. ‘Don’t pay any attention,’ she told me. ‘He likes nothing more than to speak cryptically when a simple sentence will do. Rosie is a springer spaniel. They belonged to each other before we were married and she is, at this moment, entertaining a friend of ours who is awaiting our return.’

I watched as the couple walked towards the door. They glanced towards the dark figure half hidden in the shadows then paused and turned back. They walked over to the solitary young man and there was a friendly grasp of hands and there were wide smiles. They sat down momentarily and exchanged several hushed sentences. Then they stood up, the young man slipped back into the shadows and they turned away and disappeared through the door. I caught a glimpse of the black cane and pastel shades and fished a memory from the pool of my thoughts.

‘Aaron Marks?’ I asked Roy, the landlord. He nodded.

‘Local celebrity,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows Aaron and Andrea and Rosie.’

‘I heard his name once before,’ I told him. ‘It was in relation to a suicide on an island I visited off the north coast.’ I was about to expand my story when I felt his hand press a warning on my arm. I stopped and looked up. He nodded almost imperceptibly towards the farmer who sat with his back to the window, beside the fire.

‘It was his son,’ he mouthed.

I adjusted my position by the bar and turned slightly towards the man who had suddenly taken on an interest that had previously been obscured. I looked now at the farmer for some external sign of the tragedy that had overtaken him and felt aggrieved that I could see none. His heavy, morose frame brought to mind one of those very pieces of agricultural machinery which they discussed. His eyes had little life and his face was motionless apart from the occasional movement of his lips. He leaned on the table and conversed without animation. It was tempting to believe that this stolid, tree of a man would be as impervious to tragedy as he was to the unpredictability of the seasons.

Later, after I had concluded my meal and was preparing to leave, Roy joined me at my table. The farmer and his colleague had gone and only the newspaper reader had prolonged his stay. The bar was empty, caught in the lull before the evening customers began to arrive.

‘Better not to be overheard talking about the suicide,’ he ventured, ‘not with William Greylock sitting a matter of yards away. He has the look of a dour, northern farmer, the sort that could barely be roused by the shout of ‘fire!’ He’s not a man to be crossed, though. He has a malicious streak and a nasty temper when he’s roused and once crossed he’s your enemy for life. His wife is Alison Graylock and if we could still burn witches she’d have gone up in flames years ago.’ He reduced his voice to a whisper, conscious that there yet remained one person in the bar. ‘Let’s sit over by the fire,’ he said.

I smiled at the unnecessary subterfuge. We were alone in the bar but for the newspaper reader who was seated at some distance and showed little interest in our movements. He had barely moved since Aaron Marks had departed other than to refill his glass once and to turn a page or two of the news sheet. He sat beside a heavy curtain adjacent to a window which faced the street. He was a dark haired, young man with a dark complexion. He resembled someone already half lost in shadows, requiring only the arrival of dusk to disappear completely, a creature of low light and shade, I thought.

‘It was Guy himself who told me,’ he said, ‘by this very fire. He sat like you sit now and he told me everything that happened on the island. It was shortly after he came back from the holiday. It wasn’t like Guy to open up like that, either. He was a taciturn, private individual if ever I’ve met one, a bit of a loner. We had barely exchanged more than a handful of words before that night. We were pretty much strangers even though we’ve both been here all our lives. He must have been about twenty six at the time. He always seemed older. He had a strange manner with him; he looked beyond you and through you. I never saw him excited or impassioned about anything except that once.’

‘Guy?’ I asked.

‘He was on the island and saw what happened. I suppose the very fact that we knew each other and yet were strangers made it easier for him to talk; that and three pints of real ale. Most of the time I felt as if he was rehearsing the whole story to himself and that I might as well not have been there. However, there I was and there I remained until he finished his story.

‘They were camping on the coast, just below the headland from where you crossed the causeway to approach the island. The party had been there for over a week. Guy, Matt and Joshua were the boys. Then there were Emily, Andrea and Jen. I see you smile but no, they weren’t couples at that time. They were friends, had been since primary school. There had been some minor romances between them in earlier days, I believe, but nothing serious and by this time they had become as familiar to each other as cushions on a favourite chair. They would have been going home three days later; that was the tragedy of it. They had enjoyed a week of kayaking, hiking and swimming and nothing, it seemed, could spoil a holiday which would be a lasting memory for them all.

‘Well, a memory it was and surely must still be. But it was not a memory they would have wished on themselves at the outset.’

‘And Guy?’ I prompted. I was impatient now to hear the details of the events that led to such an untimely death.

‘Ah yes,’ he said and he began his narration. It was some days later before I set down in print the tale that he told, an interlude during which I was able to gain even greater insight into the events of that time. It is to that story that I now turn.

Chapter Three

It was growing dark as Guy left the camp site that evening. He could hear the others preparing for the evening. There was a quiet murmur drifting towards him quite indecipherable beyond the clutch of tents. All meaningful sounds were contained, as if by a hidden barrier which prevented their escape into the expanse beyond. Only the occasional shout, laugh, call or brusque instruction flew over the barrier and, laser-like, broke the grip of the gathering wall of darkness.

Someone had made a fire in the heart of the site, Matt probably. He was the practical one, the organiser, the self appointed leader. Very soon its glow would eradiate a circle of space in which faces and figures would appear and disappear, brought into focus or lost in shadow as they approached or departed. Matt, of course, would be at its heart. His face and torso would be caught in flattering profile and his quick wit and ready quips would entice to his side the lovely Emily and the lean, athletic Jen. Andrea, self contained, detached, would probably sit opposite them, peripheral. Josh wouldn’t be far away. It was hard to tell whether Josh was illuminated in his own right or merely, moon-like, basked in the reflected glow of his leader. Guy, I suspect, did not think too highly of his junior friend, Joshua.

They would collide, these five molecules of life, in the pool of light created by the fire. It was strange how such tiny wisps of light brightened that small, hunched circle of life. Yet from there, on the beach, with the waves curling against the cold sand, the light and the faces were clear and distinct.

Guy could see them but they could not see him. They hadn’t noticed his absence. He felt a momentary pang of loneliness, not untouched by pride. The night closed around him and the distance between him and the fire seemed to grow immeasurably.

It was hardly surprising that they had not drawn any particular attention to his absence. He had withdrawn himself more and more over the previous couple of days. He found it difficult at times to co-exist with Matt. Their relationship, once strong, then rather more brittle, had suffered over the days spent continually together. No-one would really question his departure, even at such a time, when night was falling and a sharp chill made the stars harsh and sharp and the waves unwilling to penetrate any further upon the cold shore. It was just like Guy to do such a thing, they would say, typical.

He turned his back on the fire and walked along the edge of the water. His breath misted his vision. He could still clearly see the curve of the bay where the shore became rocky. It rounded towards a causeway which crossed to the island. The island rose rather than loomed ahead. In the full darkness it would acquire a menace that at present was merely a prospect. A few solitary oystercatchers expressed unnecessary alarm and fled to settle some distance behind him. Three gulls shuffled nervously but declined to give way and eyed him cautiously as he slipped past, a ghost. Thin slivers of silver wavelets rolled quietly up the beach.

As he approached the rocky causeway he could see the solitary pools left by the retreating tide. In daylight he might have scrutinised them closely for strange life lingering among their weeds and stones. It was just the sort of thing to interest him. Now, however, he was conscious of the need for haste. Later, the moon would rise and his route back would be clear. For now, it was important to cross the treacherously slippery pathway with a degree of careful urgency. The tide would only withdraw its protective guard for a brief period, snatch a couple of hours of restless sleep just beyond the island edge and then, refreshed, surge back.

It would not do to be trapped on the island overnight.

He sighed with a vague regret. Hurrying on always meant leaving things undone, places unvisited, opportunities missed. He was always hurrying on. He shook the thoughts away and concentrated on maintaining an uncertain footing on the slippery rocks and the fronds