3 A Reformed Character (9 page)

‘Anyone want to walk me down to the wool shop?’ she asked.

It would have been nice to have the chance to speak to Christopher alone. But he said, ‘Jemima’s going to show me how to make real Scottish tablet. I wouldn’t want to miss out on that.’

‘No, of course you wouldn’t,’ said Amaryllis and left the house, trying not to flounce.

Chapter 10  Cancellation

It was very quiet in the High Street – even quieter than usual. There weren’t any talking hams or men with placards, all the shops were closed and the whole place had a desolate air. Even the Pitkirtly Yarn Store was firmly closed. Amaryllis wondered if she had got the wrong night for Cosy Clicks. She checked the date on her mobile phone. Had they decided to meet on a different night this week for some reason? Had Jan been busy, or ill, and nobody had bothered to get in touch with her?

She had already started to feel rejected and was turning to walk back up the road, rather slowly so that she would have plenty of time to decide whether to turn left at the top for the tablet-making session at Christopher’s or right for the quiet sanity of her own flat, when Jan opened the door.

‘Oh good,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I thought I’d got the wrong night.’

‘Haven’t you heard the news?’ said Jan, excitement and sombreness vying for supremacy in her expression.

'No,' said Amaryllis. 'I've been out all afternoon.'

'It's Old Mrs Petrelli,' said Jan. 'She's gone missing... Giulia rang me to say she couldn't come because they're all having to go out searching, and then Penelope Johnstone rang too, getting ready to join the search. Even Maisie Sue's volunteered for it. I'm only staying here in case she wanders in.'

'Has she got a history?' asked Amaryllis

'A history?'

'Of wandering off. Being forgetful.'

'Not as far as I know - but then, she never spoke to anybody except Giulia. I couldn't tell what was going on in her head.'

Amaryllis didn't comment that in her experience it was impossible to tell what was going on in anyone's head, no matter how much they talked - if anything it was often harder the more they talked. It was no time to get into pointless discussions.

Christopher almost always had time for them. That was one of the things she liked about him.

'Where are they searching? Does she have any usual haunts?'

Jan frowned. 'I don't think she ever goes out on her own at all. She's always with Giulia or one of the others. I think young Victoria sometimes drives her to hospital appointments, that sort of thing... The police are organising it all. I expect they have a routine for those situations.'

It was amazing how much confidence people had in the police. It was as if they were all-seeing, all-knowing super-beings instead of the ordinary over-worked state functionaries they were. Amaryllis didn't mean that in an insulting way. She had once been an over-worked state functionary herself.

'I'll catch up with them,' said Amaryllis.

Maybe she hadn't changed as much as she imagined. The news had re-awakened her hunting instinct. She must still be in a state of metamorphosis, having not quite shed her secret agent skin because the new one wasn't ready underneath.

She moved fast, but managed to make a brief phone call to Christopher on the way. With luck he would correctly interpret it to mean she wanted him there - although this was a bit of a long shot since she had little faith in men's ability to interpret things correctly unless they were spelled out in neon letters ten feet high right in front of their noses. Even then it was problematic.

She headed straight for the old railway yard. There was no reason why Old Mrs Petrelli should have gone there, indeed it was some distance from the restaurant and across the railway line, and she had never seemed steady enough on her feet to be able to walk far on her own; then again, she could have had help from someone. It was just that an instinct told Amaryllis that bad things happened in that yard. It was a place that somehow attracted evil, although she told herself not to be so silly as she hurried along past the harbour towards the point where the railway line curved round to run along the river front.

There were still very few people around, so the main search must be going on somewhere else. Either that or the search party was still getting its instructions from the police. Amaryllis thought the police were all right in their place, but she felt she had an advantage in not being tied up in red tape, able to move flexibly - apart from her recent injuries, which she had almost forgotten about in the thrill of the chase.

No, not a thrill. That was completely the wrong word for a mission to rescue an old lady. 'Warm glow of having done the right thing' was a better description even if it was a clumsier phrase.

She crossed the railway tracks. Entering the railway yard brought the familiar feeling of unexplained dread. Of course the incident with Giancarlo could have made her feel like this - and yet. And yet there was something else.

She knew what the something else was as soon as she saw the feet in their sensible black shoes sticking out from behind the concrete wall of one of the old coal bunkers. It was foreboding. She paused for a moment, afraid to investigate further, but knowing she must. It was that Schrödinger's cat moment between wondering whether the cat was alive and establishing beyond doubt that it wasn't.

She walked forward.

Old Mrs Petrelli looked quite peaceful, considering that she was lying on a pile of rocks and stones in the ruins of the coal bunker, and considering also that there was a knitting needle sticking out of her chest. She was quite definitely dead, but Amaryllis never took anything for granted, and checked to make sure before standing back and looking at the surroundings again with a different perspective.

With the Schrödinger’s cat conundrum now out of the way, she had time to worry about whether Mrs Petrelli’s attacker might be still hanging around waiting to leap out at her the way Giancarlo had. Hmm. Giancarlo. He obviously had the aggression and the temper to do this kind of thing – and yet. And yet a knitting needle was a curious choice of weapon. Almost feminine. Or the weapon of someone who seriously resented women and who had been offended by the rise of assertive knitting clubs like Cosy Clicks.

She ran these ideas past Christopher when he arrived, ahead of the police, whom she had called immediately after finding the body.

He frowned. ‘I don’t know if it proves anything. A psychologist might have some idea though. I expect the police have one tucked away somewhere, doing profiling.’

He glanced at her sideways. ‘It’s in their hands from now on.’

‘Yes,’ she said reluctantly. ‘As long as they don’t try to pin this on Darren again.’

‘Why wouldn’t they, now that he’s on the run?’ said Christopher.

‘Oh, why are you being so sensible all of a sudden?’ cried Amaryllis.

He smiled. ‘Somebody has to be… It wasn’t very sensible of you to come down here on your own either, was it? Especially if you suspected the worst had happened. The murderer could have been still here.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I did think of that, but it was too late by then.’

Police sirens approached. The police must have had their own way across or round the railway line, and Amaryllis and Christopher were soon surrounded by cars, ambulances and paramedics, one of whom incurred Amaryllis’s rage by offering her a space blanket ‘for the shock.’

‘She doesn’t get shock,’ she heard Christopher explain as she stormed off across the yard.

Only moments later she called back to them, ‘I’ve found something over here.’

She had almost stood on a ball of red wool with sparkly bits in it. Another knitting needle lay not far away.

‘It’s Old Mrs Petrelli’s wool,’ she told the policemen. ‘She was knitting a top for Victoria – a red top with sparkly bits.’

Something must have got in her eye. She blinked. Something wet trickled down her face. She wondered when it had started to rain. It was only when Christopher took her by the arm – not the injured one – and said, ‘It’s all right to cry, you know,’ that she realised what was happening to her.

‘I’m not the Snow Queen, you know,’ she said crossly. ‘I am capable of crying.’

‘Don’t touch anything,’ said one of the policemen.

‘We’ll have to get it bagged up,’ said the other.

‘Don’t go anywhere, either,’ said the first. ‘Mr Smith’ll be wanting to talk to you.’

‘He just can’t keep away from me, can he?’ sighed Amaryllis. Was it only that afternoon she had spent two hours talking to Mr Smith? It seemed longer ago somehow.

‘He’s on his way,’ said the second policeman. ‘You’d better wait in the car… Both of you.’

She and Christopher were ushered to the back seat of an unmarked police car and sat there together.

‘This brings back memories,’ said Amaryllis happily.

‘I don’t think I need to know about any of those,’ said Christopher.

They watched in silence as the police worked around Old Mrs Petrelli. Amaryllis didn’t really want to think about all the indignities they would now put her through. In theory Amaryllis didn’t think it mattered any more now that Mrs Petrelli was dead, but in practice she felt for the woman and her family – contrary to popular belief, Amaryllis had feelings occasionally as well as being able to cry. She wondered if the other Petrellis would come and do a formal identification here or whether they would have to wait until the body had been taken away and laid out neatly in hygienic white surroundings. Probably the police would want to protect their crime scene so they wouldn’t allow anyone else in here.

After a while Mr Smith arrived in another unmarked car. They saw him look at Old Mrs Petrelli, speak to the officers and then glance over towards the car they sat in. Amaryllis wondered if she was imagining his stance becoming more unyielding and his face setting in hard lines as he heard they were there. She hoped he would let them go home before too long. They were only getting in the way here, and her elbow was starting to hurt a lot, a sure sign she was tired.

‘You’re just getting in the way here,’ said Mr Smith when he spoke to them at last, having done a complete circuit of the railway yard and having held a lengthy conversation with the officer who was presumably the next most senior one present – it was almost as if he was deliberately keeping Amaryllis and Christopher waiting. Now he sat in the front seat of the car, sideways on so that he could see both of them. ‘So I’ll just ask you a couple of questions for now and – providing you can be trusted to stay around town and not do a runner – you can come down to the station tomorrow to make formal statements.’ He turned to Amaryllis. ‘Were you the first on the scene?’

‘Yes.’

‘What made you come here?’

‘I was looking for Old Mrs Petrelli.’

‘Why here?’

‘Just a feeling,’ she said after a pause. It was embarrassing to admit to a senior police officer that she had let something as insubstantial as ‘a feeling’ dictate a course of action, but after all policemen, or at least fictional ones, were famous for obeying hunches, and she considered this to be at least as valid as a hunch. He raised his eyebrows. She amplified her statement slightly. ‘I thought it was the kind of place where something bad might have happened.’

‘Hmm… And you, Mr Wilson? You were the next one here? What made you come along?’

‘Amaryllis phoned me. When she was on her way. She needed backup.’

‘And she thought you could provide it?’ Mr Smith looked sceptical. Christopher met his gaze with the blandness that was his specialty.

‘I was someone she could trust.’

‘Ah, yes, trust… So neither of you had any inside knowledge of what had happened. No communication from Darren Laidlaw, for instance.’

So that was it! Amaryllis had almost forgotten about Darren. Her instinct – again that insubstantial thing – had told her this was nothing to do with him, so she had ruled him out of the equation.

‘I don’t think this has anything to do with him,’ she muttered, sounding even in her own ears like a sulky schoolgirl.