Page 26 of The High Island

Erling considered this for a moment. ‘Unless, at a wild guess, Ivor stipulated that it should?’

Jo shook her head in consternation at such a thought. ‘Why would Ivor do that?’

Erling thought of Hugh Mowat, and his opinion of his father, ‘that auld bugger’.

‘I’m beginning to think Ivor Mowat was capable of anything,’ he said honestly.

Maybe even bestowing the Mowat land on Maitland, knowing he would clear the site and uncover what was buried there?

They lapsed into silence for a moment before Jo spoke again.

‘There’s also the possibility that some locals took umbrage at the building of an eco-styled house overlooking the bay. And further hampered its construction by setting fire to the surrounding area.’

‘Or,’ Erling said, ‘it was simply a spot of fire-raising on the part of local youths.’

‘Which happens here often?’ Jo said with a questioning look.

‘Well, it definitely happened in my day,’ Erling told her. ‘And not that far from where we’re headed.’

She stared at him. ‘Don’t tell meyouwere involved?’

‘It was, of course, an accident. Although almost a fatal one,’ Erling added, without humour this time.

He explained that it had centred on a camping trip. Four of them had come over on Magnus’s boat from Houton to a wartime site just along the coast from Lyrawa Bay. The Nissen hut that had housed war personnel was long gone, but the concrete floor and chimney were still there.

‘We lit a fire in the chimney space,’ Erling said, ‘and sat round drinking into the early hours of the morning.’

He recalled that the freedom to do as they’d pleased had been exhilarating, their drunken ruckus almost ending in a fist fight.

‘We eventually crawled into our tents. Only to be woken whenthe fire exploded like a Second World War bomb, firing blocks of concrete at us.’

‘Jeez,’ Jo said, wide-eyed. ‘Was anyone hurt?’

‘Magnus was knocked out cold. I thought he was a goner at one point. I couldn’t find a bloody pulse.’ Even now Erling could taste his fear at that moment. ‘Plus the debris from the explosion set the heather alight, and the fire engine was called out.’

‘Did they catch you?’ Jo said.

‘We were well on our way home to Houton by the time they got there.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘I wonder, even now, how the law would have dealt with four fifteen-year-old boys if they had caught us. Or worse still, if Magnus had died.’

12

The scene was one of devastation. The smell even worse.

They’d got suited up at the vehicle, and had walked along the road where the fire had jumped on its advance towards the top of the hill and the grave of Betty Corrigall.

Erling found himself inordinately relieved that the fire had failed in its attempt to engulf her final resting place.

A light wind whipped at the burnt heather stalks, sending choking clouds up into the air. Jo’s eyes sent him a silent thanks for suggesting, no, insisting that she mask up before they left the car.

The track to the croft had been widened by the fire engine’s approach. It stretched muddily before them, the edging of burnt heather flattened on either side, trails from heavy boots visible through the surrounding scorched vegetation.

It looks like a battlefield, he thought. And it had been. While he and Magnus had watched from Houton through binoculars, the men and women of the Longhope fire service had directly faced and fought the raging inferno on the ground.

The smoky debris in the air obscured a clear sight of the digger until they were up close. The shock at what it had become stopped him in his tracks.

The twisted and blackened shape bore no resemblance to the bright, shiny red vehicle that he had seen standing on that spot two days ago, its shovel crusted with damp clumps of peat.

Now, even through the mask, he caught the taste and scent of accelerant. He hadn’t doubted Willie, last night, when he’d declared it as arson, but smelling it now confirmed it for him.