Once that was sold, there’d be money to move the project along a lot faster, and every day with a workman employed was one day fewer to wait for her freedom. She just had to keep things ticking over until then.
Niall’s little escapades didn’t bother her. He’d always had an eye for the girls and for some reason, which she had understood at one time but certainly didn’t now, they seemed to fall for him too. But Jenna hadn’t considered anyone a serious threat for years and she viewed the busty blonde now chatting him up over the wall with the same weary contempt she had felt towards all the others. Set in the balance, she was comfortably certain that her value to him as a free tradesman far outweighed any romantic consideration, and she hadn’t been worried.
Until the phone call yesterday. She knew who it was immediately when she’d picked up on the top landing just as Niall answered it downstairs.
‘Voice from the past!’ Husky, with a touch of laughter – it was unmistakable. ‘I’ve a new project, Niall. Meet me today, usual place, two o’clock?’
‘God – Davina?’ Niall sounded stunned. ‘What – where are you?’
The only response was a mocking laugh, and the line went dead.
When Niall had put down the receiver, Jenna dialled 1471, but the mechanical voice told her that the caller had withheld the number. Of course.
She said nothing about it to Niall, who had been edgy and preoccupied at lunch. Jenna would do whatever she had to do to make sure Niall did not wreck her precious future, but today, by the looks of things, he seemed to have nothing on his mind beyond his obsession with proving something to a dead man.
Niall was shouting at the poor dog now. He’d ruined it already; when he got it, it had been a cheerful, confident animal and now it was a mass of nerves with an uncertain temper. Mirren, whose love for animals was so passionate that she’d become a vegetarian five years ago when she was only eight, had been bitten the last time she’d gone to comfort it for being chained up outside. She had come in crying, for the dog not herself, having no doubt at all where the blame lay, and flown at her father with a sort of cold fury that was quite unnerving. Niall hadn’t taken it well, and the relationship was now as bad as his own had ever been with his father.
Jenna heard a sudden yelp of pain from the dog and winced, looking at the clock. The schools were finishing early today for half-term and the bus from Wigtown would be dropping Mirren back any time now. If she saw that . . .
A moment later, the door flew open and Mirren burst into the room. She was thirteen, a thin, sharp-featured, awkward thirteen, still childish in some ways but with all a teenager’s intensity. She was white with fury, her dark brown eyes wide and brimming with tears.
‘He’s hitting poor Moss now! I wish I could hurt him like that – I hate him, I hate him! He should be in prison!’
‘Come and sit down. I’m just going to make you some pasta.’ Getting drawn into her daughter’s histrionics was never constructive.
‘I’m not hungry!’
Mirren, starting to sob, ran out of the kitchen and slammed the door. Jenna sighed. Niall would be in any minute, also in a dramatically bad mood, and suddenly the job of varnishing floorboards seemed curiously attractive.
‘And what, may I ask, are you doing with that thing indoors, on my clean kitchen floor?’
Gavin Scott, on his knees before the god of his idolatry – a new mountain bike – looked up with a start. He’d meant to get it out of the kitchen before his mother came home from work, but what with polishing it and oiling it the time had passed without him noticing.
‘I’m just seeing it’s ready for tomorrow,’ he said defensively. ‘I’m doing some of the forest tracks up above the Queen’s Way, so I’m needing to be away first thing.’
Mrs Scott sniffed. ‘Away to break your neck on that stupid thing, more like. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. And if there’s a mark left on that floor . . .’ Leaving the threat unspecified, she went out.
Gavin pulled a face at the shut door. He was nineteen, too old to be living at home still. It was cheap, that was all you could say for it, but now he’d saved up and bought his bike he could afford to rent a room in a flat somewhere. He might make more friends that way, find some other guys who liked mountain biking too. He enjoyed it anyway, but it would be more fun in a group.
With one last, loving polish to the machine, he stood up and prepared to carry it reverentially out to its place in the shed.
The Yacht Club bar was busy this evening, with the official start to the sailing season next day and the first race on Sunday. The schools’ half-term week had started too, and the tables by the bar’s low windows looking out over Drumbreck Bay were crowded, even if the view was less appealing now with the tide out. The decibel count rose to discomfort levels as acquaintances from previous years, not yet jaded by over-familiarity, brayed enthusiastic greetings. Children were bunched round a pool table at the farther end of the room, already establishing a pecking order which would condemn the unconfident, the unathletic and the seriously uncool to a summer of miserable isolation. A plump boy with spectacles was even now hovering uncomfortably on the fringes.
Niall Murdoch made his way directly to the bar, looking neither to right nor to left. He hated having to do the glad-handing bit; it was all very well for Ronnie to tell him that chatting up the buggers was part of the job, but he wasn’t the one on the spot. Every time Niall spoke to one of the punters it seemed to turn into a moan session about some problem with the marina – broken decking on a pontoon, a dispute about moorings, vandalism by some of the disaffected locals which had meant they’d even had to hire a night watchman, a retired policeman, at great expense. And there were one or two people he was quite anxious to avoid, Kim and her husband in particular. But she’d said Adrian wasn’t coming until tomorrow, and she’d be stuck in the house looking after the youngest kid, with any luck.
And the alternative was staying in the house, where Mirren kept looking through him as if he weren’t there and Jenna, saint and martyr, was spending the evening drilling – deliberately, he reckoned – in the room next door to the sitting-room. And he’d engaged a rather tasty new water-ski instructor for the summer season – ah, there she was!
Niall bought a pint and made his way to the corner of the bar where she was standing with a group of young men, a couple of them his own workers from the marina. She welcomed him into the group enthusiastically, having seen nothing but his charming side as yet, and amid the banter and laughter his concerns about the trials tomorrow, the money and Davina slipped from his mind.
‘Niall!’ His partner’s voice was an unwelcome surprise. Murdoch turned and looked down from his six foot one at the squat man with prominent eyes, bulging now with temper, and three layers of chin below a jaw thrust out pugnaciously.
‘Ronnie! I didn’t know you were coming down this weekend.’
‘I’ll bet you didn’t,’ he said ominously. ‘I wasn’t, till I clocked the printout from the bank. Outside!’
Feeling faintly sick and with a feeble smile at his companions, Niall set down his glass and followed Lafferty’s swaggering passage between the chatting groups and into the reception hall. It was empty at the moment; as the heavy glass door shut on the bar the noise diminished to a hum.
Lafferty squared up to him. ‘Taken up embezzling, have you? What a moron – didn’t even cover your tracks! Did you think I didn’t check?’
Murdoch gulped. ‘Ronnie, it’s not like that! Just a temporary loan, that’s all.’
‘The marina’s not in the money-lending business.’ Lafferty took a step closer, jabbing at Niall’s chest with a stubby finger. ‘See, you – I want that money put back, right now. I don’t care how you get it. OK?’
‘Sure, sure.’ Murdoch was sweating now. ‘I’ll sell the dog again whenever the sheepdog trials are over. I could have the money by tomorrow night.’
Lafferty’s hand dropped, along with his jaw. ‘You spent that on a
dog
? What are you – gormless or something? Oh, they saw you coming, boyo! You’d have done better backing one down the tracks.’
Stung, Niall protested, ‘They’re valuable, champion collies! And with another title to its name—’
‘With you running it? That’s a joke!’ Lafferty laughed rudely. Then he shrugged. ‘Not my problem anyway, is it? We’ll need that money for wages at the end of the week. Where’s it coming from?’
Murdoch flinched. He’d never quite allowed himself to articulate the fear that he would fail; Ronnie’s naked contempt made it seem all too real. Inevitable, almost.
‘Thanks. That’s a great help, undermining my confidence,’ he said bitterly, then, emboldened by self-pity, added, ‘Anyway, what’s five thousand to you? You could pay that out of your back pocket.’
‘Five thousand!’ Lafferty’s roar of rage earned a startled look from the couple just leaving the bar on the way out. ‘I could pay
fifty
thousand out of my back pocket! But I’m not going to. You’ve stolen money that’s mine – just ask around what happens to people who try to cheat Ronnie Lafferty!
‘Tomorrow night, you said? I’ll be expecting to see it lodged in the account on Monday morning.’ He turned and went to the door, shouldering his way past the couple who were still standing transfixed.
‘Are you – are you all right?’ the woman said hesitantly.
Niall, his face sickly pale, tried to smile. ‘Just a little difficulty between friends. Flies off the handle – he’ll calm down now he’s got it off his chest.’
‘Fine, fine!’ The man’s response was hearty and he put his arm round his wife’s shoulders, urging her towards the door. ‘Come on, Shirley – we’d better go. Babysitter, you know!’
As they left, with obvious relief, Niall put his hand up to his head. It would be a miracle if he won tomorrow, or even if Moss performed in a way that would make anyone want to buy him, and then there would be nothing he could do to raise the money. Chewing his lip, he walked across the hall. Then, at the door, he stopped.
Unless, unless . . .
Marjory and Bill sat on at the supper table in the kitchen after Findlay had left, lingering over the coffee cups. The children were upstairs, hopefully engaged in homework though more probably, in Cameron’s case, finding elaborate ways of not doing it. Catriona mercifully seemed to be back on an even keel, eating normally, and wasn’t for the moment at least a source of anxiety to her parents.
‘He’s in a bad way, isn’t he, poor Fin!’ Marjory shook her head. ‘He couldn’t talk about anything but the trials tomorrow. And if I had a fiver for every time he said, “If I just hadn’t had to sell Moss!” I could afford to buy one of his dogs myself. I know he needs winners to boost his reputation, but he seems a bit paranoid – even if they lose to Moss, everyone’ll know Fin trained him.’
‘That’s not what it’s about, really,’ Bill argued. ‘It’s personal. It’s as if we were forced to sell Meg.’
The dog, curled up beside the Aga, looked up at the mention of her name.
‘Don’t listen to him, Meggie. We’d starve first,’ Marjory said soothingly, and the dog put her head back down and shut her eyes. ‘Oh, I can see it’s awful for him. And even if he gets offers for both dogs tomorrow, it’s not exactly a living wage, is it? He doesn’t have another two he can sell next month.’
‘No.’ Bill shifted in his seat. He was playing with his teaspoon; he looked up and said, ‘Marjory, I’ve been thinking.’
‘Oh dear! I thought I heard a grinding noise.’ She spoke lightly, but her eyes were suddenly wary. She knew her man, and she had a sinking feeling that the storm her tension headache had been signalling was just about to break, even if outside the evening was warm and still.
‘You know this compensation money? I thought I’d go back to fattening cattle for the market again, the way I used to.’
‘Good idea!’ Marjory said enthusiastically. ‘It’d be nice to have calves around the place again. But Bill, if you do you’ve got to have proper help—’ She stopped. ‘Oh.’
‘It’s obvious, really, isn’t it? Fin needs the work, he’s a good man and a hard worker, knows everything you need to know—’
‘And you get on with him. OK, OK.’ Marjory sighed. ‘It’s only the past history with me that’s the problem. I can forget it but I’m not sure he can. I can hear him thinking about it whenever I’m around.’
She paused, drumming her fingers on the table. Bill said nothing and at last she sighed again.
‘Of course you must. I know that. When you’ve got a job to offer and he needs one so badly, it would be wicked not to do it. He’ll get used to me eventually, I suppose, and anyway I’d hardly need to see him, would I? I’d be out at work all day and he’d be gone by the time I came home.’
Bill still said nothing and she looked at him sharply. ‘He would, Bill, wouldn’t he? You’re not thinking – oh Bill, no!’
‘He didn’t mention it this evening, but they’re worried sick. With the tourist market recovering, their landlord would rather have holiday lets, so he’s raised the rent to get them out. He’s within his rights – it was only a six-month contract – but they’ve had to move in with Susie’s parents. And our cottage is standing empty—’