Death and Poetry by Rachel McLean, book 2 in the McBride & Tanner series - Chapter 1

“Jeez, Helen, why did you think we’d want to climb this bloody hill?”

Helen looked round to see her friend Bal standing in the middle of a patch of gorse, hand wedged into the small of her back, face red as Helen’s hair.

“You’ll be fine, Bal. It’s worth it, I promise.”

Bal shook her head. “Nothing’s worth this. It’s torture.”

Lisa was a few feet ahead of Helen, poking around in a hole in the hillside. “D’you reckon this is where the castle once was?” She deepened her voice and stood straighter. “‘By interims and… something-or-other, we have heard the summons of the castle’.”

Helen rolled her eyes. You couldn’t get away from Macbeth references in these parts. “There’s no castle, not really, and you know it. Just an old fort.” She shook her head. “And it’s further up. Almost at the top.”

“We are almost at the top.”

“Uh-huh. Once you get over that wee rise up there you’ll find there’s more. The top’s obvious when you get there. Big cairn, views over to Dundee.”

“Why would I want to look at Dundee? I spend enough of my life looking at it from the inside.”

“It’s not the same.” Helen smiled. “Dunsinane Hill isn’t beating you too, is it?”

Lisa raised her eyebrows. “Of course not. I’d just rather be back in that tearoom we saw. The Three Witches. Great name.”

“The tearoom will be our reward once we’ve got to the top and back down again.”

“I’m stopping here!” Bal had sat down on the ground below them, having found herself a small clearing in the gorse.

Helen resisted the urge to go back and drag her up the damn hill. That would mean doing this last section of the climb twice. And she wasn’t as fit as she’d been the last time she was up here. Giving birth to Roddy had made sure of that.

She sniffed and looked out towards the Cairngorms in the distance. Roddy was over there, with his bastard of a dad and evil granny. Fenella was worthy of a cauldron herself. Maybe Helen should bring them all up here and leave them for the crows.

“Right,” she said. “The sooner we get up, the sooner we’ll be down again. There’s clouds coming in from over past Pitlochry.”

“Rain, too,” moaned Lisa. “All we bloody need.”

“You’ve got sensible clothes, you’ll be fine.” Helen tried to inject some breeziness into her voice. When the three of them had been at Uni in Dundee, they’d regularly gone out walking. They’d even done this hill once, hungover. She was surprised Lisa didn’t remember the deceptive summits and the way the hill tricked you into thinking you were at the top. She wondered if Macduff and his troops had thought the same when they’d attacked Macbeth’s castle.

Not that they had. A King Macbeth had existed up here at one time, but chances were he’d never set foot on Dunsinane Hill. Or lived in the fictional castle that Shakespeare had made so famous.

“We’re most of the way there,” she said, and started walking, not turning to check if Lisa was keeping up. She tucked her frizzy red hair into her beanie and ignored the dampness in the air.

Ten minutes later, she could see the top. Thank fuck for that.

She turned to see Lisa a few paces behind and Bal nowhere in sight.

Shit.

Should she go down?

Don’t be daft. Bal was a grown woman. In London, she had a responsible job as deputy director of an international charity. Of the three of them, she was the one who’d gone furthest. But all that work had affected her fitness, it seemed.

“Do we go back for her?” Lisa asked.

“You want to?” Helen replied.

“No.”

She laughed. “Then we don’t. We can bag the top, then it’ll be no time before we’re back where we last saw her.”

“She’s probably in the car, eating all the chocolate.”

“It’s fine. We’ve got tea and cake to look forward to, remember?”

“I hadn’t forgotten. I had my eye on that Snickers, though.”

“You and your Snickers.” Lisa had been addicted to chocolate at Uni, and judging by the expansion of her hips in the last ten years, she still was. When Lisa had arrived at Helen’s house in Perth yesterday, she’d been unable to stop her gaze flicking up and down her friend’s body. She’d said nothing, but she was sure Lisa had noticed. It probably explained her foul mood.

“Right.” Helen could make out a shape next to the cairn. Someone had beaten them to it. She was surprised; most people tackling this hill were experienced walkers, and would have done it much faster than her and Lisa had. But no one had overtaken them on the route up.

“Race you to the top!” Lisa passed her, her footsteps heavy on the spongy grass, her waterproof jacket making a swishing sound against her hips as she strode.

“OK.” Helen picked up pace.

To Helen’s surprise, Lisa made it to the top first. She bent over, the flats of her hands on her thighs, her body rising and falling with her heavy breathing. As Helen arrived, Lisa straightened up.

“What the hell?” Lisa said as she looked up.

“Huh?” Helen looked at her friend, then followed her gaze. “Whoah.”

Someone had beaten them up here, alright. A man was slumped against the cairn, his jeans damp from sitting on the wet ground.

“You alright, pal?” Lisa approached the man. He didn’t move.

“Is he…?” Helen said. The man’s face was pale and his beanie had slipped over one eye. She felt her stomach constrict as she took in just how bad he looked.

How long had he been up here?

She pulled out her phone. “We need to get help.”

Lisa turned to look at her. “There’s no signal here, surely.”

“There is.” They were between the Cairngorms to the north, Perth to the south and Dundee to the east. It felt remote, but in reality, they weren’t far from civilisation. And it seemed there was a mobile phone mast somewhere nearby. She dialled 999.

“He doesn’t need help,” Lisa said.

The phone was ringing out. Come on.

“What d’you mean?” Helen asked Lisa. “Look at him.”

Lisa was crouched on the ground beside the man. She looked at him, then up at her friend. “I’m sorry, H.” She bit her bottom lip. “But he’s past help. He’s dead.”