Cradle to Grave (2 page)

Macdonald grinned. ‘Oh, like Tam said, don’t mess.’

Darkness was thick about Beth and it was still raining, though less heavily now. There was no track to follow, only miles of rough grass and moorland, and she was struggling through heather and stumbling over hidden rocks. Then boggy ground would suck at her feet until she thought she would be dragged down, down, down, and though there was no one to hear her, she screamed out loud as she fought herself free.

It was the dark of the moon, and with the heavy cloud cover there wasn’t even a star showing through. Screwing up her eyes to make out what lay ahead in the murk, Beth sometimes wasn’t sure she was going in the right direction. Her only guide was the sound of the sea – keeping it to her left meant that she had to be heading back along the peninsula and sooner or later would strike the road – but it was hard to make herself take the risk of going close enough to the edge to hear it.

After the landslip, it had all gone deathly quiet. Beth had listened for sounds of distress and heard none, but she had been too scared to go near enough to look down. She knew what she’d see, anyway – the cottages obliterated under tons of earth and rocks. She had reluctantly lived for a month in the one she’d inherited from her grandmother and there were three others in the little row: one empty, one belonging to a woman she’d taken care to avoid and one a holiday let. At least there was no need to consider Lee, but she’d seen a young couple there this week, with their baby – oh dear God, the baby! Bile rose in her throat and she retched, feeling acid burn her gullet. The baby, and the rain . . .

Then it had been London rain, though, just dreary, persistent, depressing. It was her night off and she’d been going out with a friend to have a few drinks, cheer themselves up. Only she wasn’t, because they’d changed their plans and she was stuck in the house, angry and resentful and not feeling patient. It would all have been different if they hadn’t gone out . . .

Beth jerked her mind away from that obsessive thought, which ran on a loop in her brain, only needing the slightest trigger to set it running. Her present situation was bad enough without dredging up the past.

She had fumbled for her mobile phone, in the pocket of her parka with her purse and a comb – all she had left in the world now, presumably – in the hope that up here on the headland she might pick up a signal, but it was obstinately dead. There was nothing to do but stumble on.

Every movement was painful now. She was black and blue all over from her frequent falls. Once, when she had blundered across a grouse, which had whirred up into her face with an unearthly cry, she’d thought she would die of fright. Her tired muscles were screaming for relief, but if she lay down and fell asleep here in this rain, she would die of exposure. She had reason to know that, all too well.

There would be no rescue parties setting out unless she summoned them herself. She was the only one who knew what had happened there at the end of the road, which led nowhere, except to Rosscarron Cottages.

Beth heard the dogs barking before she saw the keeper’s house. They had heard her first, obviously, and were working themselves up into a state. Fear seized her: she wasn’t used to country life and she had no idea whether they were caged or running free – or even whether their master would come out with a shotgun to defend his isolated homestead against strangers appearing out of the darkness.

Even so, she headed towards the sound and saw a square of light appear, as if floating on the darkness. Another light came on immediately below it. A moment later one was switched on outside too, revealing a house, some outbuildings and, as a door opened, a man with a shotgun. The dogs’ barking rose to a frenzy and he switched on a torch, its rays probing the darkness.

Beth stopped, her heart pounding. But what was the alternative? To stagger on blindly to certain death, once her legs literally couldn’t carry her any more and she collapsed? Plucking up her courage, she screamed at the top of her voice, ‘Help! Help!’

Somehow, he heard her above the din. She could see his surprise. He swung the torch until the beam found her and she stood exposed and helpless. Then, to her intense relief, she saw him break his gun and come towards her with a halting gait.

‘Quiet!’ he snapped at the dogs, and, as obedient silence fell, shouted, ‘Who’s there? What’s wrong?’

Sobbing with thankfulness, she blundered across the last few yards towards a five-bar gate, opened it and fell on her knees.

He hurried across to her, looking shaken. ‘What the hell are you doing here? I could’ve killed you, for God’s sake! Thought it was the fox after the chickens again. Well, I suppose you’d better come inside.’

She didn’t notice the grudging response. He helped her to her feet and, stumbling and sobbing, she crossed the yard past the gundogs to Keeper’s Cottage.

From their runs, two spaniels and a black lab watched, then, the entertainment over, went back into their kennels.

‘The phone’s dead. The lines must be down.’ Maidie Buchan, her dark, wiry hair tousled from sleep, came back into the kitchen.

It was a gloomy room with a small window covered by thin faded curtains that barely met. An elderly Calor gas cooker stood in one corner, and the only storage was provided by a press and by cupboards under a Formica sink unit. A range on the end wall was cold and dead, and the plastic chairs round the kitchen table, also blue Formica, were unmatched, as if they had been picked up in sales here and there. It was immaculately, almost painfully clean, though, with patches scrubbed away on the old vinyl floor. On one of the shelves on the back wall there was a display of cheap, bright glass ornaments and plates in cheerful colours.

Maidie was in her thirties, thin and tired-looking, wrapped in a tartan wool dressing gown that had seen better days. She cast an anxious glance at her husband as she broke the news.

‘That’s all we need!’ he snarled, looking unenthusiastically at the crumpled figure sitting slumped over the kitchen table. ‘Where do we go from here? The woman’s not making sense.’

Alick Buchan was almost twenty years older than his wife. An accident with his gun during his time with the army in Northern Ireland had left him with a limp and confirmation of his earlier conviction that the world was against him.

‘She’s in shock. She’s freezing cold too.’

Maidie went to put an arm round her unexpected guest. Her hands were rough and work-hardened, but her touch and her voice were gentle. ‘Look, I know you’re shattered, but you’re needing out of those clothes before you catch your death. I’ve switched on the immersion and there should be enough hot water for a bath. If you come through the house, I’ll get you some clothes and a towel.’

She managed to coax the girl to her feet, though Beth was moving like an old woman and needed Maidie’s support to cross the kitchen. ‘She’ll want a cup of tea when we get back,’ she said to her husband. ‘Can you put on the kettle?’

Alick grunted, then complied with a bad grace. It wasn’t his job to go making cups of tea for strangers in the middle of the night when a working man should be in his bed. A landslide, the lassie had said, and her name, Beth Brown, but what with the way she was carrying on, and her teeth chattering, he hadn’t been able to make out anything more.

Maybe the emergency services were dealing with it already, but with the lines down and this area being a dead spot for mobile phones, they couldn’t find out. He could only hope Maidie would get Beth sorted so she could tell them what had happened. She was very young – not much past twenty, by the looks of her – so it was all just hysterical nonsense, probably, and then he could get back to his bed. He yawned, went to a cupboard and took out a bottle of whisky and a glass.

When the women returned, Beth was wearing a thick pair of flannelette pyjamas with a woolly sweater over the top, and sheepskin slippers. She had a little colour in her cheeks, and at least the violent shivering had stopped. She sat down at the table again and began rubbing her hair with a towel, rather ineffectually, as if she weren’t quite sure what she was doing. Her hair was very dark, in contrast to her fair skin, and she had a rather heavy face, with light blue eyes. He noticed that there was something strange about them, though he couldn’t quite work out what it was.

Maidie was looking almost as pale as Beth. ‘She managed to tell me. It’s the Rosscarron Cottages, Alick. You know there’s a wee sort of cliff up behind them? She was up there and saw half of it fall on the top of them. She was only feet away when the ground just disappeared.’

This wasn’t what he had hoped to hear. ‘Anyone there at the time?’

‘She doesn’t know. She says her partner’s away, but there’s a woman lives in one of the other cottages, and maybe a young couple on holiday with a baby. Alick, you’ll need to get over there, see what’s going on.’

‘Why does this sort of thing always happen to me?’ he grumbled. ‘Oh, all right, all right. I’ll have to go up and change.’ He was wearing a Barber jacket and wellington boots over his pyjamas; he threw back the rest of the whisky in his glass and went upstairs.

Maidie made tea, then, after listening anxiously to check that he wasn’t coming back, poured a slug of whisky into each mug. It would do Beth good to talk, and in her experience a drop of the craitur had considerable power to loosen tongues.

‘I was scared, so scared,’ Beth was saying when Alick returned fully dressed. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I just walked and walked. I couldn’t see where I was going.’

His eye lit on the bottle of whisky, standing where he had left it, and unsuspecting, he returned it to the cupboard.

‘Don’t know when I’ll be back,’ he said. ‘I’ll maybe need to go to the big house, but I’d better check it out before I disturb Himself in the middle of the night.’

Maidie agreed. Gillis Crozier, her husband’s boss, had quite an intimidating presence at the best of times and you wouldn’t want to get him out of his bed for anything less than a full-scale emergency.

Alick went outside. The rain had stopped, though the clouds were still heavy overhead and he reckoned it wouldn’t be long before it started again. He jumped into the elderly jeep and turned the key in the ignition.

It coughed, sputtered and stopped. He tried again. And again. He grabbed a rag, jumped out and dried everything he could think of. Then, swearing, he tried it again. And again . . .

Quarter of an hour later Alick came back into the kitchen. ‘It’s waterlogged. Can’t get the bloody thing started at all. I’ve pushed it under cover in the barn – see how it is by morning.’

Maidie looked at him in dismay. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘What the hell do you expect me to do? Grope my way two miles along to Rosscarron House in the dark? And then another two to the cottages, maybe, and tunnel through the landfall with my bare hands? They could have the lines fixed by morning and then the people who’re paid to do it can sort it out, instead of me. I’m away to get some sleep, that’s what I’m doing.’ He walked out.

‘Beth—’ Maidie turned to speak to the girl, to find that she had fallen asleep across the table. Maidie sighed, then shook her gently.

Beth came to with a start. ‘What . . . ? Where . . . ?’

‘You’re all right,’ Maidie soothed her. ‘There’s a sofa in Alick’s office you can sleep on tonight, and we’ll sort things out in the morning.’

Thursday, 20 July

The hens might be birdbrains, but they knew enough to keep out of the rain, taking it as usual as a personal insult. The mash in the trough was a persuasive argument, but even so they emerged from the henhouse with muted, discontented mutterings. Even Gordon, the rooster, was too dispirited to make much of a job of hailing the morning. He was a downtrodden creature anyway: since his predecessor, Tony, had sinisterly disappeared leaving only a ring of feathers, the alpha hen, Cherie, had bullied him unmercifully.

Had there ever been a worse July? Marjory Fleming watched them, her tall figure huddled into a hooded oilskin jacket, but even so her hair, chestnut brown with the odd streak of grey, was soaking wet. Usually her chookies had an instantly soothing effect, but this morning their low spirits seemed to be infectious.

She should be feeling elated, instead of having a knot of nerves in the pit of her stomach. The tribunal yesterday had reinstated her, with immediate effect, and today she would be back at the job she loved. She had been totally cleared of the charge of racism, but there was a reprimand now on a record that before had contained only commendations. It would, she kept telling herself, feel just as it had before once she was back, but somehow she wasn’t altogether convinced.

What had changed was her confidence in herself. Vanity had led her into a disastrous mistake, and in future when it was a judgement call – as in her work it so often was – there would be a small voice inside whispering, ‘Are you sure?’

For the first weeks of her suspension, Marjory had kept herself busy. She had returned to a fitness regime, which had slipped badly of late, and then begun a relentless programme of purging neglected cupboards and tackling overdue decorating projects, which had left her family begging for mercy. She had been thinking, though, in terms of weeks, not months: her superintendent, Donald Bailey, had assured her that the chief constable would pull strings to get her back on duty as soon as possible – and perhaps he had. Sometimes officers were suspended for years.