Jack Higgins - Midnight Never Comes

'And a damned good job too,' Donner said.

Asta appeared in the doorway, smiling weakly. 'I'm terribly sorry, everyone. I'm afraid I made something of a fool of myself. Could we go now, Max? I'm rather tired.'

And as his arm went round her, it was there in the look in his eyes, his instant solicitude, just as Chavasse had guessed from that single photo in the file, that one expression as he had looked up at a sixteen-year-old girl.

'We'll go now, angel,' he said. 'Right now.' He glanced over his shoulder at Chavasse. 'We can drop you off on the way. We pass your uncle's place.'

'That would be fine,' Chavasse said.

Murdoch took the wheel for the drive down the glen, Asta and Donner beside him on the large bench seat, the Doberman at their feet on the floor. Chavasse sat in the rear with Ruth Murray and when the Land Rover swayed on a bend, she leaned against him and smiled.

'The roads aren't quite up to twentieth century standards, Mr. Chavasse. A trifle primitive like everything else in these parts. Will you be staying long?'

'Depends how I like it,' he said. 'I could stay for a month if I wanted. I'm a university lecturer and the term doesn't start until October.'

'Which university?' Donner asked.

'Essex.'

The big man nodded, lapsing into silence again and rain rattled against the windscreen. Ruth Murray smiled. 'Here it comes again. Rain, Mr. Chavasse. Rain and yet more rain and the wind driving in from the Atlantic six days out of seven. I could think of more attractive places for a holiday, but then I suppose it depends what you're looking for.'

'Peace and quiet mainly,' he told her.

Murdoch changed down and swung into a narrow drive through trees with the lights of a house beyond, and braked to a halt. There was a lamp in the porch and lights showed at a window through a chink in drawn curtains, but it was difficult to see much else of Ardmurchan Lodge in the darkness and driving rain.

Chavasse started to get out and Asta turned quickly. 'I hope to get a chance to thank you properly, Mr. Chavasse. Tomorrow perhaps?'

'Plenty of time for that, angel,' Donner told her. 'Let's give Mr. Chavasse a chance to settle in.'

Chavasse got out and as he had expected, Donner followed. 'I'll just see you to the door,' he said and pressed the bell.

Footsteps approached almost at once, the door opened and a greying, military-looking man in a black alpaca jacket peered out. 'Yes, who is it?' he said and then he saw Chavasse and opened the door wide. 'Why, Mr. Paul, we were getting quite worried about you.'

'Hello, George,' Chavasse said briskly. 'You picked up my luggage at Lochailort, did you?'

'We did, sir. The guard gave us your message.'

Chavasse turned to Donner. 'I'd ask you in for a drink, but under the circumstances…'

Donner squeezed his arm. 'I'm the one who'll be supplying the drinks, sport. I'll be in touch.'

He hurried back to the Land Rover. Chavasse stood there, watching it drive away and when he turned, George drew himself stiffly to attention.

'Mr. Chavasse? George Gunn, late Company Sergeant Major, Scots Guards. If you'll come this way, sir. Colonel Craig's waiting in the library.'

Colonel Duncan Craig, D.S.O., M.C. and bar, carried his seventy years well and when he pushed back his chair, stood up and walked to the fireplace, he moved with the physical assurance of a man many years his junior.

He filled his pipe from a tobacco jar and turned to face Chavasse, the lamplight shining in his white hair. 'Have another brandy, my boy. You look as if you could do with it.'

'It was rather a long walk,' Chavasse said.

'At least you've accomplished stage one of this operation as I see it, which was to get to know the girl. Under the circumstances, I should imagine we'll be good for a dinner invitation to Donner's place at the very least.'

'You sound as if you're looking forward to the prospect.'

'Eagerly, my boy. Eagerly. There I was, rotting away by inches in Edinburgh with only old George Gunn for company and then Graham Mallory appeared from out of the blue and asked me to go to work again. It's been like a new lease of life, I can tell you. You've read my report?'

'With interest. There seems to be little doubt in your mind that Donner's up to no good, and yet you haven't given a single concrete reason.'

The old man shrugged. 'I spent thirty-five years in Military Intelligence, Chavasse. After a while, you get an instinct for things, a sort of sixth sense that tells you when something isn't quite as it should be. You must know what I mean.'

Chavasse nodded. 'I think I could say it's saved my life on more than one occasion, but I'd still like to hear your reasons.'

At that moment, the door opened and George Gunn came in with the coffee. Colonel Craig accepted a cup and settled himself comfortably into the armchair by the fire.

'To start with, I can't find any real reason for Donner's being here. Oh, he's been out after the deer of course, but the season's very short as you probably know. He hasn't bothered with the grouse at all and he doesn't fish. There just isn't anything else to do in this sort of country and he looks to me to be the last sort of man to want to bury himself in the wilds.'

'How many times have you met him?'

'Half a dozen-no more. He's always been perfectly civil, but he's refused my invitations and hasn't offered any in return. Now that just doesn't make sense, not in a place like this. Another thing-I don't like the kind of people he's surrounded himself with.'

'Who do you mean exactly?'

'Take this fellow Murdoch for a start. I suppose you'll have read his file? He was a captain in a good regiment. Cashiered for embezzlement. I understand he was mixed up in some shady affair in London that ended in a man's death.'

Chavasse nodded. 'He was tried at the Old Bailey for manslaughter five years ago and acquitted. He went to work for Donner almost immediately afterwards.'

'And then his house servants are a rum bunch. When I first moved in, I called to pay my respects. The man who answered the door was as ugly a looking customer as I've ever seen, I'd say he would have been more at home as chucker-out in a waterfront saloon.'

'Was he English?' Chavasse said.

'That's the strange thing. I couldn't tell. You see he never opened his mouth, simply waved me in and disappeared. I waited in the hall and finally Murdoch arrived and told me Donner wasn't in residence which was a lie because I'd seen that plane of his fly in the same morning.'

'So all your meetings with Donner have been purely by chance?'

'No, he called once to ask me not to fish in Loch Dubh.'

'Now this really does interest me,' Chavasse said and he took the ordnance survey map of Moidart from his pocket and spread it out on the table. 'You said in your report that you thought something odd was taking place on an island in the middle of the loch.'

'That's right,' Craig said. 'I was fishing at the lochside one day when some damned rascals Donner has taken on as keepers turned up and escorted me off the estate. They didn't give me much option in the matter either.'

'Who are these people?'

'Old Hector Munro and his sons. They're tinkers-the last remnants of a broken clan. They've wandered the high roads since Culloden, but there's nothing romantic about them, believe me. There's old Hector, Fergus …'

'Will he be the one I had the run-in with earlier this evening?'

'That's right. He's got one brother-Rory. A big, dark-haired lad and as wild as they come.'

'And you say they ran you off the estate?'

Duncan Craig nodded. 'Fergus knocked George down when he tried to stop them. I wrote a stiff letter of complaint to Donner, mainly because I think it would have looked suspicious if I hadn't. I told him I was considering laying a complaint before the County Constabulary.'