‘The other house, where the man was killed,’ Kershaw began, then stopped when she saw the looks on their faces. ‘Sorry – you didn’t know?’
‘Oh. My. God!’ Donna said, eyes wide. ‘Someone was, like, dead – right there beside us?’
‘I saw them all round the cottage with their tape and stuff, but I sort of thought it was because it was falling down.’ Craig’s face had turned white.
‘Did you look last night?’ Kershaw asked.
He shifted in his seat. ‘Kind of. But it was really dark, ken, and Jan said they were both out. And there wasn’t a noise, like anyone . . . well, groaning or stuff.’
‘I think he was probably killed outright,’ Kershaw said. She had no idea whether that was true or not, but she was sorry for the boy. Craig looked relieved.
The sound of a wail approaching down the corridor, suggesting that for all her experience the nurse had failed in her mission to pacify, brought Kershaw to her feet. She closed her notebook.
‘That’s all I need from you. I’ll get this typed up into statements for you to sign, but there’s no rush. Thanks for your help.’
As she went out, passing the baby on her way in, Craig’s envious voice said, ‘It’s all right for some,’ and she heard Donna’s shrill reply, ‘You’re just rubbish, you know that?’ The odds on their being together to celebrate their daughter’s first birthday weren’t good.
Maidie glanced anxiously at the kitchen clock. Beth had been out for a long time now. The rain had gone off, but the sky was still threatening, and with the girl getting so chilled last night, it wouldn’t do her any good to get soaked through again.
It crossed her mind to wonder if she had actually gone for good. That would please Alick, but Beth had said she’d nowhere else to go, and Maidie couldn’t bear her to think that shelter wouldn’t be gladly offered in such a dreadful situation.
Alick’s attitude had left her profoundly shocked. Oh, she knew he was mean, of course, and she’d grown so used to his complaints about the unfairness of life that she barely heard them any more. As a crofter’s daughter, she was accustomed to the harsh realities of rural poverty and they’d rubbed along well enough. She’d had no high expectations when she married him: she wasn’t bonny, and there’d been no other offers. And without Alick there wouldn’t have been Calum, the light of her life.
A big issue like this hadn’t cropped up before, though. Today, the sheer nastiness of the Buchans, mother and son, had aroused something in her she hadn’t known was there. Beth had come to them in desperate need, and now she was both homeless and bereaved, she needed protection. The girl was barely more than a child herself, and Maidie’s maternal instinct was strong.
There was Beth now. From the kitchen window she could see her trudging towards the house. Maidie carried Calum through to the sitting room and put him down on the floor.
‘There you are, wee man,’ she said. ‘Gran will play with you.’ She didn’t look at Ina, so was spared the look of indignation on her mother-in-law’s face as she looked up from her
People’s Friend
.
Beth was opening the outside door as Maidie came back into the kitchen. She hesitated on the threshold, giving the other woman a sideways glance.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I was out of order.’
‘It was Gran who was out of order,’ Maidie said firmly. ‘It’s sort of a hobby with her. Come away in and sit down. Are you very wet?’
‘Just my jacket,’ Beth said, taking off her parka and draping it on the overhead pulley to dry. She sat down at the table obediently, saying nothing, just studying her hands.
‘Beth,’ Maidie said, her stomach fluttering with nerves, ‘I’ve – I’ve – I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you.’
‘The cottage,’ Beth said. ‘It’s wrecked, isn’t it? I knew it would be.’ Her voice was flat, emotionless.
‘Well, yes, but it’s – it’s worse than that.’ Maidie gave a nervous little cough. ‘You know you said your partner wasn’t there? I’m afraid you were wrong. He was.’
‘No, he wasn’t,’ Beth said flatly.
It was even harder than Maidie had thought it might be. ‘He must have come back, Beth. They found him in your house, dead.’
‘Dead? Lee? I – I don’t know what to say.’ She was oddly calm.
Shock, Maidie decided. It affected different people different ways. ‘I know it’s hard to take it in. It’ll hit you later. Grief’s like that.’
Beth looked at her coolly. ‘Grief?’ She gave a short laugh. ‘We’d quarrelled. I found him out, you see. He was a bastard, a total bastard. I threw him out.’
Gran was right: there was something funny about Beth’s eyes. Maidie couldn’t think of anything useful to say, and could only take refuge in the familiar.
‘I’ll make us a cup of tea anyway, shall I? It’s meant to be good for shock.’
And if Beth wasn’t shocked, she certainly was.
A heavy lorry was rumbling up the road towards Rosscarron House as Fleming and MacNee left the camping site on their way down to the Rosscarron Cottages. Fleming pulled in to one side to let it pass.
‘I wonder if that’s catering for the starving masses,’ she said. ‘Probably half of them come planning to survive the weekend on nothing but junk food.’
‘And beer – they’ll have plenty of that, all right. And dope, no doubt, though the dealers’ll be out in force as well. Rare healthy pastime for the young. Don’t know what the parents are thinking about, these days. Shouldn’t be parents, the half of them.’
Fleming gave him an anxious glance. MacNee had always, of course, been a cynic, but there was a sort of sourness about the way he spoke that wasn’t normal.
‘Oh, come on!’ she said, half laughing to try to make light of it. ‘My own kids are coming tomorrow. There’s plenty of decent, sensible kids, and good parents too.’
‘And plenty of the other kind. See Kershaw? Asked her how she managed the job with her kid and she said she’s in a boarding school. What kind of parent is that? Why have kids at all?’
‘Tam!’ she protested. ‘There’s plenty parents scrimp and save to send their kids to boarding school where they reckon they’d get a better chance. Cammie’s got rugby pals who love it – fantastic facilities, and more time and great coaching. He’d be off tomorrow given half a chance.
‘Anyway, people’s circumstances change. Kim’s divorced with her living to earn, and her daughter’s probably far better at boarding school with chums and lots of activities than having a patchwork of babysitters who could let her down at any time.’
His face was mutinous and she knew she could have saved her breath. Still, it had given her an insight into Tam’s antagon-ism towards the new detective: Bunty’s childlessness had always been a great grief to her, and though Fleming suspected that Tam himself could have lived with it, he cared deeply for the sake of his adored wife.
They were driving down towards the bridge over the Carron now and Fleming, happy to change the subject, said, ‘I think we should both take a serious look at the bridge, Tam. I’ll park on the further side where there’s a bit more space and then we can have a good poke around.’
She drove on to it slowly, looking over the side. ‘Do you think the level’s down at all from this morning? It could be—’
Suddenly everything was slipping sideways, out of her control. The bridge was tipping. With a tearing sound the Vauxhall crashed through the metal barriers at the driver’s side and plunged nose first into the river.
5
Indie music was pounding from the speakers in the white sitting room at Rosscarron House, but the two men with beers in their hands seemed inured to the level of sound.
‘Cigarette?’ Gillis Crozier leaned forward to hold out a packet to his guest. He had been virtually chain-smoking for the last half-hour.
‘Got my own, thanks.’ Joss Hepburn took out a packet of Marlboros and lit one, leaning back in an unyielding black chair and reflecting with a sort of desperate boredom that at least it gave him something to do. Sitting here while Crozier twitched wasn’t his idea of entertainment, though admittedly, trying to arrange a pop festival without Internet or even phone would make anyone twitch.
But then, it had been a crazy idea in the first place, and he’d been crazy to allow them to twist his arm. He was regretting it now, though it had almost been worth it just to see Madge Laird’s face. A copper – who’d have thought it!
‘So, you’ve absolutely no idea what time the rest of the band are arriving?’
‘No,’ Hepburn said for the fourth time. ‘The arrangement was, they’d call when they landed. Never crossed my mind this would be a dead spot. I guess they’ll have your landline on a schedule somewhere, though that’s not exactly a whole heap of use at the moment.’
‘It’s a right bugger, this entire thing.’ Crozier crushed out his half-smoked cigarette into an overflowing ashtray. ‘Someone trying to tell me something, do you think? I can’t get confirmation of times of arrival for equipment or supplies or the other first-day groups – I don’t know where anyone is and they can’t tell me. Alex was taking time off from his legal duties in London to do a job for me and was to report back, but he’s obviously been delayed and can’t let me know, and the bands we’re expecting can’t warn me if there’s a problem. If I’m honest, I’m not sure how we’re going to cope, given the weather. Never seen rain like it at this time of year.’
‘Not just a huge amount you can do about it now, is there – artists on their way, kids starting to party out there already. But—’
The door opened and a woman came in. She was small and slight, in her mid-thirties perhaps, with a cloud of fair hair and unhealthy-looking skin with a hectic flush. She was clearly distracted.
‘Have you seen Declan? I need him urgently.’ Her words were slightly thickened and she licked her lips as if her mouth was dry.
Hepburn, after a swift glance at her eyes, drooping and red-rimmed, dropped his own and made a business of stubbing out his cigarette.
Crozier’s voice was strained. ‘Gone up the hill to the campsite to see how many people have arrived, I think.’ She left before he finished his sentence.
He lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘My daughter, Cara,’ he said, then as Hepburn made a noncommittal noise, burst out, ‘I know, I know. You don’t have kids, do you?’
‘No. I never go looking for trouble.’
‘Wise man!’ Crozier said with feeling. ‘I found her stash yesterday and I got rid of it. Pointless, probably – she’ll get it from somewhere else. My adored only child and I’m helpless. I’ve tried everything – keeping her short of money, bribing her, threatening her – but she’s not interested in kicking it. All she says is, “I can handle it, Dad,” and then she gets upset with me. I may have to do something drastic, or she’s going to kill herself.’ He shrugged. ‘Before, I knew she maybe dabbled a bit, but recently . . . After all that’s happened to her, I can understand why she tries to blot it out.’
With a sinking feeling, Hepburn finished his beer. Agony uncle really wasn’t his scene; there was nothing bored him more than other people’s personal problems, but he couldn’t exactly say, ‘Sure, sure,’ and walk out.
He continued the discussion reluctantly. ‘Well, hard for kids, growing up in our kind of world. You can’t stop them meeting guys who’ll put the stuff their way.’
‘Like her husband,’ Crozier said grimly.
‘Declan? Oh, he’s not so bad. I’ve had a bit to do with him, off and on.’
‘He doesn’t do drugs himself, but she makes him get them for her.’
It likely wouldn’t be tactful to say, ‘Oh well, keeps it in the family.’ Instead, he gave a discouraging, ‘Mmm.’
Crozier barely heard him. ‘After the baby, of course.’
‘Of course.’
Something in the way he spoke must have betrayed his ignor-ance. Crozier looked at him sharply. ‘Don’t you know about the baby? Didn’t Declan tell you?’
‘We didn’t have that sort of relationship.’
Crozier got up and walked to the window, turning his head away. ‘And I suppose it didn’t make the news in the States, like it did here. That was part of the hell of the whole thing.’
Hepburn got to his feet too. ‘Hold it right there, Gil – we can’t have this sort of conversation without a glass in our hand. What you need is a Scotch. Where do you keep it?’
‘Oh . . .’ Crozier looked at him blankly for a second, then said, ‘Cris – ask Cris. He’ll get it for you.’
‘Great!’ Hepburn went out, rolling his eyes and groaning quietly as he shut the door.
The music had changed to a mordant Leonard Cohen number. Crozier stared blankly out of the window. He wasn’t thinking about the baby. He was thinking about Kenna, when he had seen her that last time, after she had so terribly betrayed him: the burnished copper of her hair, still without a thread of grey, springing from her head as if its energy had drained the colour from her face and life from her wasted body. It should have been a time for love and grief, not for accusation and anger.
The door opened again behind him and Hepburn’s head appeared round it.
‘Gil, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to break up our talk, but the boys will have landed by now and be trying to raise me. I figured that if I headed off towards Kirkcudbright, I could pick up a signal and get you an ETA. And I’m almost out of Marlboros too – don’t know if they’ll have heard of them out here in the boondocks, but I sure hate smoking anything else. Hold the thought, will you?’