He didn’t greet them formally. ‘Dreadful thing, this,’ he said heavily. ‘Dreadful.’
The officers looked at him blankly. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I’m afraid this is something we haven’t heard about,’ Fleming said. ‘We came to discuss the problems with vandalism.’
‘Oh, yes, that.’ He dismissed it with a wave of his hand. ‘I thought you’d come about the landslide at the Rosscarron Cottages down below there. A man dead, a woman injured, homes destroyed . . .’
The guitar had just stopped and there was an appalled silence, before Fleming said, ‘That’s terrible news. I think, if you’ll excuse us, we’ll leave the other matter for the moment.’ She took her mobile out of her pocket and squinted at it. ‘No signal. If I might just use your phone . . .’
‘No point. Lines must be down somewhere – they’ve been out since last night.’
‘Then we’d better get on over there.’
Just then the sitting-room door opened and a man came in behind them, a very tall, slim man with a mane of iron-grey hair swept back from his face – an interesting face, with a slightly crooked nose and grey eyes so light they were almost silver. The black jeans and black granddad shirt he wore made him look taller still.
‘Oh, sorry, Gil!’ He had a faint American accent. ‘Am I interrupting something, or—’ He broke off. Stared. Then said, ‘Good God –
Madge
!’
Slowly, Fleming turned her head and for a moment time slipped. She could hear the thump, thump, thump of the heavy bass, taste the astringent burn of smoke in her throat. The air was thick with it, blue-grey wisps floating in the beam of the rigged-up spotlight. There was a sickly-sweet, decadent edge to it too, as well as the rawer smell of beer and sweat and youth itself in the cramped back room of the pub. The band was coming to the raucous end of the last number now, its signature tune, ‘And the Walls Came Tumbling Down’, and for a moment she had almost thought they would.
‘Joss? But – but you’re in America!’ she said stupidly.
‘Evidently not.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘So, how’s it been, these last twenty-odd years?’
4
With Calum on her hip, Maidie Buchan was stirring the soup for lunch when her husband came in. He was wet, dirty and visibly shaken.
He said nothing, only crossing to the cupboard where the whisky was kept and collecting the bottle and a large tumbler, then sitting down heavily at the kitchen table and filling the glass to the top.
‘What’s – what’s wrong?’ Maidie faltered.
Alick swallowed, grimaced, then said, ‘Where is she?’
‘Beth? She’s . . . out.’ It wasn’t the moment to tell him it was his mother who had driven her out. Not that he’d care, anyway: Ina was smart enough to treat her son with wary respect, and the money she paid for her keep was more important to him than whatever burden it might place on his wife.
‘You know she said her partner wasn’t there? Well, he was.’
Maidie’s eyes widened. ‘Dead?’
‘Dead. Could barely see him for plaster and rubble. But who was it had to go in there and check he’s really dead, with the house ready to come down any minute?’ A shudder ran through him. ‘Not Himself, that’s for sure – wouldn’t sully his hands. Like last time. Oh, he’s still got me doing his dirty work, even though I’m not under orders now. One day I’ll tell him what he can do with this lousy job.’
That was a threat so familiar that Maidie barely heard it. ‘Oh, poor, poor Beth! Was there anyone else? What’s actually happened?’
‘There’s a young couple with a bairn – they were all right – and a woman that’s hurt her leg. The end cottages weren’t so bad. The other two are wrecks, basically – hers is one of them. Roof’s stoved in, stairs smashed. The police were there, won’t let anyone move the body out till they’ve done their stuff. And what’s bugging me is, where’s the girl going to go? Has she family or that?’
Maidie said stiffly, ‘No, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t. She’ll have to stay here till she gets something sorted out, Alick.’
He glared at her. ‘That’s what I was afraid of. We end up having to pick up the pieces. Why does it always happen to me? She couldn’t have gone to the big house, where another mouth to feed wouldn’t even be noticed – oh, no! Stumbles in here in the middle of the night, so there’s no way—’
Maidie cut across him, horrified by his attitude. ‘Apart from anything else, she’s well worth her keep for the help she’s giving me with Calum.’
The whisky was starting to take effect. ‘What’re you needing help with Calum for?’ he said belligerently. ‘Should be able to take care of your own child.’
Today, for the first time, Maidie had told her mother-in-law what she thought of her, and it had been a heady, liberating experience. Instead of meekly backing off, as she would normally have done, she said, ‘If it was just Calum, aye, I could. But your mother deliberately makes work for me and I’m getting fed up of it. She’s perfectly fit to live on her own – she’s not seventy yet, for heaven’s sake, and she doesn’t need waiting on hand and foot, like she expects here. Having help from Beth’ll stop me telling her she can leave right now and take her money with her.’
Alick blinked at her in owlish astonishment. He’d never known Maidie answer back before.
And she didn’t wait for his response. ‘What’s worrying me is how on earth we’re to break it to Beth.’
Alick drained the tumbler and got up, a little unsteadily. ‘That’s your problem. I’m away to have a bath and get the smell of death off my hands.’ He topped up his glass and went to the door.
‘She was so sure her partner wasn’t there,’ Maidie said, almost to herself. ‘She wasn’t worried at all.’
Alick swung round. ‘Aye, and that’s a funny thing, if you ask me. People that go out sometimes come back unexpectedly.’ He paused, and his eyes darkened as if he was reliving a bad experience. ‘And he did. Poor bugger.’
Beth was tired of bloody walking. She’d walked more recently than she had done in the whole of the rest of her life put together. If you could bank exercise, the last month would mean she could go back to London and never take another step that wasn’t on concrete. Back to London – if only!
London. Beth had lived there all her life until— Well, afterwards she hadn’t. She’d been too scared to stay, but with what she knew now, she’d have been better to try to lose herself among the millions of people who lived where nature came in neat little packets called parks. Nature there knew its place; it didn’t threaten you, like it did here.
She was on a little track now, skirting a sort of thicket of scrubby bushes, dripping dankly. She didn’t know where it was leading, but it was off the road, where she might meet people. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been out, either. She wasn’t wearing a watch, and time had gone weird since yesterday. Then again, in her world, things had been going weird for a long, long time.
Beth had hated moving house. At first it had been a relief just to settle at all, here in the odd, dark little cottage that had been Granny Kenna’s, even though it meant putting her head in the crocodile’s mouth. She’d been prepared to take that risk; it was better than going on looking over her shoulder, feeling her heart pound at a footstep behind her on a quiet street for the rest of her life. And she’d believed Lee Morrissey totally and utterly—
And how clever had that been? What had Beth done with her brain the day she’d met him in the little corner shop?
She’d been afraid to go out these last few weeks. Women had lined up to scream and spit as she was driven away from the court, and the press had orchestrated a frenzy of anger.
The little ground-floor flat that had been home to her until her mother died, and after that somewhere to stay, was up for sale. She was exhausted and terrified by the constant ringing of the doorbell and banging on the windows and the assault of a battery of flashlights if she stepped outside. Even once she wasn’t a story any more, she had the permanent feeling of being spied on, followed, though when she turned her head, all she could ever see was the usual thronged London pavement, with indifferent people busy about their indifferent lives.
She was permanently afraid of being recognised. She never shopped twice in the same place so no one would be interested enough to look at her closely.
She was queuing with her chicken tikka and pint of milk in a tiny, cluttered corner shop which smelled of curry when he joined the queue behind her and said, glancing at her basket, ‘My favourite too.’
She looked round. He was fit, he was smiling, and she’d barely spoken to anyone for days. His casual friendliness was like a blink of sunshine in a long, dark day.
She smiled back. ‘Everyone’s favourite, probably.’
He nodded, paused, then said, ‘Do you come here often? Oh, I know it’s a cheesy chat-up line, but it was all I could think of.’
It made her laugh, and when he said, ‘Fancy a beer before that?’ she agreed.
She was flattered, hungry for company, desperate to talk to someone – anyone. She hadn’t meant to tell him what had happened, but she found herself pouring it all out.
He was sympathetic. He took her hand in both of his. ‘That’s tough, babe! You’ve had a bum deal. Now, how do we fix it?’
It was a new experience – a man who cared. She allowed herself to believe that there and then, over a beer in a squalid little pub, he was appointing himself to do battle for her, relieving her of the fear that stalked her daily life.
Lies, lies, lies! Her whole life she had been surrounded with lies. Even her own mother hadn’t been straight with her – you would think you’d recognise a lie when you heard it by now. But how dumb could you be? How stupid, how pig-stupid? He hadn’t meant any of it. He’d been playing some sort of game, though Beth still didn’t understand quite what it was.
Would there be any money left at all in the joint bank account she’d been besotted enough to agree to? Or would she have nothing left, except a house buried under several tons of earth?
Even being totally cleaned out wasn’t the greatest of her worries. Now, once again, she was afraid. Now she knew Lee’s promises had been false, she was back where she had been, only worse. In the wrong place – in entirely the wrong place. She felt a chill down her spine and looked over her shoulder. Did they know she was here? Were they watching her, even now?
At the disaster scene, the emergency services had swung into action. A JCB with earth-moving equipment was attacking the pile of mud and rubble, and behind it the approach road was clogged with police cars, two fire engines with cutting gear and an ambulance on standby. A coastguard cutter was acting as a ferry to take necessary personnel on the two-minute trip round to the cottages until there was a clear way through.
By the time DS Macdonald and DC Campbell were dropped at the site, there wasn’t much for them to do. They’d been planning to take witness statements, but the inhabitants had been airlifted out already. Inspector Michie from Kirkcudbright was busily in charge, at the moment speaking into a radio phone; it looked as if he had mounted a textbook operation, with blue-and-white tape round the cottage where the body had been found and a constable logging their names as the officers came on shore.
Feeling surplus to requirements, the detectives stood awkwardly on the area in front of the cottages, while men in yellow jackets, with shovels and stiff brushes, attempted to clear the treacherous sludge from underfoot.
Suddenly Campbell declaimed, ‘ “If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year, Do you suppose,” the Walrus said, “that they could get it clear?” ’ Then, encountering an astonished look from his colleague, he mumbled, ‘Sorry. Lewis Carroll. Alice – you know. Just came into my mind.’
‘You’re weird, frankly,’ Macdonald said. ‘
Alice
? Oh, forget it. Here’s the inspector now.’
Michie nodded a greeting. ‘Nasty situation here, right enough. Is DI Fleming on her way?’
‘Haven’t been able to reach her. What’s the position?’
‘They’ve put in props to stop the building collapsing, and the photographer and the pathologist came in by chopper. The latest estimate is that the road’ll be open in ten minutes or thereabouts, so once the doc’s done his bit, we can get the body moved out and start clearing up. I’d have liked to get DI Fleming’s OK before we did that, though.’
‘I’ve left a message on her mobile,’ Macdonald said, ‘but we think she’s up at Rosscarron House with no signal, and the lines seem to be down.’
Michie nodded. ‘They haven’t found where the fault is as yet. Could be anywhere – apparently the flooding can loosen poles so they topple.’
As they were speaking, a grey-haired man in white overalls and boots came out of the cottage, bending his head to get under the temporary steel beam fixed above the door and stripping off a pair of rubber gloves. He came over to the officers.
‘That’s me finished. With the state of things in there, I can’t make any proper examination till you can get him out. He’s got an obvious head wound from a beam, but that wasn’t what killed him – internal injuries, at a guess. Anyway, the photographer’s done his stuff, so you can get him shifted now.’
‘Thanks, Doc. The cutter’s waiting to take you back.’
When Michie returned from seeing him off, Macdonald asked about the age of the victim.
The inspector pulled a face. ‘Couldn’t really tell you. There was a lot of dust and plaster. They’ll need to clean him up to get an ID, poor sod.’