Raid 42 by Graham Hurley

Author:Graham Hurley [Hurley, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Wars Within
ISBN: 9781788547499
Publisher: Head of Zeus

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Moncrieff took a taxi to the Glebe House from Laurencekirk station. He’d slept badly on the train, half awake for most of the night trying to fathom just who might have broken into the Glebe House. The remoteness of the place had always been something he’d taken for granted. The village was tiny, a mere speck on the edge of the wilderness that was the Cairngorms, and the house itself, a brisk half-hour walk from the kirk and the tiny village shop, was yet another step into the yawning emptiness of the mountains. No one came here by accident.

The taxi dropped him at Esther McFaddon’s house. She had her coat readied beside the door. An overnight thaw had melted most of the snow and when they finally made it to the Glebe House, Tam could find no traces of tyre tracks in the drive.

‘Did the police look for fingerprints?’

‘Yes. Most of them were mine and the rest were probably yours. They need to talk to you. They want to check.’

She had the key to the front door. Tam stepped into the chill of the entrance hall. Already, in some unfathomable way, it felt sullied, interfered with, a home that was no longer entirely his own. Someone had been here, a stranger, maybe strangers. They’d probably come in the dead of night, aware that they had time and privacy on their side. He tried to imagine the beam of a torch in the darkness, shadows moving from room to room, the creak of an unoiled hinge on a door, the scrape of a drawer being carefully opened.

Esther went to the kitchen. It must have been a long journey, she said. She’d make him tea and rustle up something to eat. Tam thanked her, grateful to be left alone. No hurry, he said. This may take a while.

It didn’t. The last time he’d been here was at Christmas with Cathy Phelps. She’d served out her time afterwards and, as he’d expected, left the place spotless. In room after room, everything was exactly where he remembered it should be. Only in the snug, where Tam had always attended to his paperwork, did he find signs of disturbance.

His father’s escritoire had been his pride and joy, a treasured piece of Louis XVI furniture that had passed down the generations before him. Tam had moved it carefully into the snug where it now occupied a space between the corner of the room and the window. The hinged top lifted to reveal a series of compartments beneath and Tam had taken some care to index letters, bills, diaries and sundry other items he might need in the future.

Now, studying the contents of the desk, he knew someone had been through it. The smallest of the battered cloth-covered notebooks he’d filled with jottings should have been here, not there. And the big address book on which he’d always relied had been replaced upside down. Someone had paid the Glebe House a visit because of this desk, and these contents.

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