by V Clifford
Viv Fraser Mysteries
Box Set
V. Clifford
Beyond Cutting, Copyright © Vicki Clifford 2013
Finding Tess, Copyright © Vicki Clifford 2014
Digging up the Dead, Copyright © Vicki Clifford 2015
This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
Published by Inverardoch Press
Contents
Beyond Cutting
Finding Tess
Digging up the Dead
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CONTACT
Beyond Cutting
Chapter One
Out on the pavement, high tenements exclude much of the promising sky that Viv Fraser had seen from her window, six ancient floors up. A nippy wind gusts around her as she hitches her rucksack over her shoulder and pulls her jacket up close to her neck. Looking left and right she’s damned if she can remember where she parked last night. As the memory surfaces she sets off with her head down in a futile attempt to avoid the cold. She trots through the Grassmarket into King’s Stables Road where the impressive bulk of Edinburgh Castle casts its shadow across the street, cursing as she spots her little maroon MG wedged in by other cars. The worst thing about living in the West Bow is finding a parking space. It’s a daily routine that she could do without.
As she draws closer she swears again quietly under her breath: it’s even worse than she thought. She has no idea how she’ll get her car out short of rubbing lard on the bumpers of the Beamer and the Volvo. The MG is temperamental and today is no exception. After she has turned the key for the fourth time the engine catches and she revs it until it sounds convincing. Chastising herself for keeping the car, she reconsiders whether it still has any of the merits she once believed it had. She glances round to see if anyone’s watching. Her first nudge is tentative, but as she gets into the swing of it the BMW takes more of a bumping than she means it to and slowly it begins to shift. The switch on the radio is equally temperamental, but this morning Radio Four crackles into life. For once, she might hear Woman’s Hour through to the end. The discussion, on Augustine and Rousseau, reminds her of all those contemporary ‘confessions’ that should never have made it to print. At least Augustine and Rousseau had controversial things to say, and were not full of vacuous clichés. She listens to the debate as she crawls through bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Southside. Everywhere she looks there is bargain shop after bargain shop: a depressing sight. She finally makes it to one of the main routes south from Edinburgh. Her first clients are in the Borders. Forty miles and she’ll be in Earlston.
Listening to three academics not getting to the point just isn’t doing it for her, and her mind returns to this morning’s conversation. Jules, an old friend and editor at a newspaper that Viv occasionally writes for, had telephoned to call in a favour knowing Viv’s familiarity with the gay scene. ‘A bit of quiet research’: Jules had said it was to be handled with ‘sensitivity’. A schoolboy has gone missing and Jules is keen that Viv find out as much as she can. Viv had recognised the face that Jules was talking about from a news clip on Breakfast TV, and was disturbed that she couldn’t remember exactly where she’d seen him before. As she whistles an old Eddi Reader tune the face of the missing boy floats through her head, but she shakes it away: there’s her holiday to think about. By Sunday she’ll be up on the West Coast driving through Assynt: Stac Pollaidh, Suillven, Canisp – extraordinary hills, each rising from a landscape as beautifully bleak as imagination could allow.
Viv has been making this trip to the Borders for over a decade. Her townie friends are amazed that she’s prepared to drive this far ‘just to cut hair’– a sign that they’ve no understanding of the relationship that develops between hairdresser and client. Viv’s clients want to know that they can trust her beyond a decent haircut. She’s privy to many secrets: pants and socks on the floor, girlie mags by the bed, kitchen roll in the loo, bank statements lying on worktops. The women she’s seeing today are familiar with her and she with them. They’re comfortable with one another . . . well, most of the time.
Over the years, Viv has skirted the tricky topics of fox hunting and getting ‘good help’. These girls no longer consider her as ‘help’. Viv has more qualifications than they could claim between them. So it’s difficult for them to ask her to use the tradesmen’s entrance, although there are some who might try.
Once she’s driven out beyond Dalkeith her breathing slows. She’ll barely see another building above one storey for the rest of the journey. When she reaches the steep brae up onto Soutra, the terrain changes, becoming bleak and inhospitable. Even the tough old Romans struggled with this moorland but they weren’t as tough as the monks who built the hospital at its highest point: archaeologists have found indications of a learned group who healed travellers over centuries as they moved between north and south. On the south side of Soutra the landscape stretches out – it begins to roll, becoming gentler and less violent.
On this familiar journey Viv passes through Lauder, a typical Scottish market town with one main street. The Tolbooth, the town’s grandest building, houses a clock in its tower which she usually relies on, but not today – most of it is obscured by polythene and scaffolding. Viv doesn’t get it when planners bang on about the vernacular buildings of Scotland. This county architecture is all slightly different, evolving as it has, through generations. As she nears Earlston she notices a dusting of snow on the Eildons. Walter Scott country. Poor wee Walter struggling around this landscape with polio; can’t have been much fun. Still he made up for it on the page.
On reaching her destination, Viv inches up the drive, just containing a longing to spray the meticulously raked gravel over the pristine lawn. She looks up at the front elevation of a gentrified farmhouse: its stone façade belies generations of dissatisfaction, each alteration attempting perfection. The shutters excluding life and light on the upper floors make the house appear closed for business, which much of the time it is, now that the children have been exiled to the Home Counties. Viv reflects that bricks and mortar are all very well, but they’re no solution to the happiness question.
Before the car draws to a halt a pair of pugs bolt out of the front door and snarl at her tyres, which is par for the course. As soon as she extricates her legs from the bucket seat they’re all over her like a rash. Lou Lou jumps inside sniffing like the bloodhound she’d like to be. It’s as well the dogs make a fuss because their mistress never does. After retrieving a compact case and the pug from the car Viv negotiates dods of dog poo, finally reaching the door, which as ever is ajar. She could have been off with the silver many times if she’d a mind to. This open door policy is a puzzle to her. Is it a conscious act of wisdom in that, if burglars want to they’ll get in regardless, or is it simply neglect?
She scrapes her boots on an oversized coir mat sunk into a shallow well in the vestibule and strolls through a cavernous hallway, panelled in light oak up to the dado rail. The cloying scent of hyacinths mingles with that of furniture polish. She spies the blooms on a side table contained by a discreet wire – an obstacle to their naturally wayward behaviour – and muses on how distinctly we assert our need for control. The walls are lined with paintings of hunting scenes and portraits of Margie’s family who, in their heyday, held positions of some social importance: years of coal smoke have dulled t
heir lustre, but they remain an intimidating sight. She glances up into the eyes of a stern old man and notices that the painter has given his hands a delicate femininity, which isn’t echoed in his chiselled face. By the time she reaches the kitchen the smell of hyacinth is making her gag. Closing the door behind her she calls out, ‘Margie, it’s Viv!’ Nothing.
It isn’t until Viv has set up her gardener’s sheet on the floor and found the extension cable for her drier, that Margie strolls in with a pile of washing teetering on one arm, her face its usual picture of disappointment, a far cry from her self-assured relations in the hallway. Viv finds Margie’s inertia criminal. Living in a big house with a husband who bores for Britain isn’t much to be proud of, but now that the kids are away at school she’s no excuse not to get a grip and create a new existence. Viv reminds herself to stick to what she’s being paid for.
‘Oh hi, Viv. How are you?’ No interest in hearing the answer – just going through the motions. If Viv said, ‘I’ve had a shit morning,’ Margie would just say, ‘That’s nice.’ Sadly there’s no opportunity to test this, as Tosh arrives, setting the pugs off into paroxysms again.
With a hand balancing her towelling turban Tosh negotiates the delicate task of air kissing Margie, bypassing Viv, before they decide the order of play. Tosh says, ‘I’m out to lunch’ – not even a hint of irony from someone who has never been anywhere else. Viv disguises a smile beneath a cough. She knows Tosh’s husband Perry who happens to be Jules’ boss. He’s a fair man whose tolerance for his wife’s trivia is already stretched. Margie doesn’t seem to mind who goes first and, the tailor’s dummy, Tosh takes a seat, unwrapping her turban to allow her dark, poker-straight hair to fall over one of those faces whose individual features are unremarkable, but add up to a picture of a Renaissance mistress.
Viv, embarking on her first miracle of the day says, ‘A little or a lot?’; much hysteria has been caused in the past by ‘too much coming off’, and Viv is more cautious than most hairdressers: the repercussions of bad hair days are untold.
Of no one in particular Tosh asks, ‘D’you think the time has come? I’m sure I saw a grey hair the other day.’ This is not a new question. Then, not missing a beat and without so much as a glance at Viv, she brushes an invisible speck from her shoulder, ‘Just the usual, thank you. Are you well, Viv?’
‘Yes th. . .’
But Tosh is off into a diatribe about her gardener. Viv may as well have vaporised.
She feels a perverse pity for them. All that money spent on public school education, to teach them that they are privileged. Lies, all lies. Their journey through boarding school leaves each with an aching void that has no hope of being filled. There can’t be anything worse than investing in the belief that ‘one’ is privileged when it turns out to be the emperor’s new kit. The investment might as well have gone up the lum. Out of these two only Margie has been touched by humanity, and she’s pretty inconsistent, especially when Tosh is around.
Margie offers Viv coffee and Tosh blinks in surprise, as if the offer is a breach of allegiance. They see Viv as another sort, but are no longer sure where to place her. ‘What exactly is a PhD?’ Margie had asked. Not many people know. And they certainly can’t get their heads round a hairdresser being a Doctor, unless it’s one of those barefoot kind. They need her – she’s the best there is north of the border – but this blurring of the boundary is tricky for them. But not only tricky for them – people are always baffled when Viv has to explain what she does; their fondness for fitting others into neat boxes doesn’t work with her, and it causes them more than a little discomfort. Viv’s careers, in hairdressing, academe and now an occasional guest column on a Sunday magazine, courtesy of Jules, has had even her closest friends shaking their heads in disbelief.
While Margie continues to stroke her pile of cotton sheets as if they might purr, Tosh, hair now finished, in an act of vandalism runs bejewelled talons through her beautiful blow-dry, then kneels down to tie her shoe lace. She flicks Lou Lou roughly out of range causing Margie’s eyebrows to reach for her hairline. As Margie sits down she says, ‘I saw a strange thing this morning on my way back from the village; a man was dumping black sacks in the lay-by. I tooted because I thought it was Jock MacCallum, but it was just someone with the same kind of truck. Anyway he shot me the most vicious glare.’
Viv wonders if looks can be vicious and decides that if they can kill then surely they can be vicious. After too much comment on the general rudeness of some people the inevitable school talk begins. Viv is always astonished by this. It’s not as if they aren’t intelligent women, but the chat on this topic always takes precedence over current affairs. Margie’s hair is a frizzy mass that is unwilling to be tamed by any product from African wax to Araldite, but somehow Viv has managed to create a shape that survives despite Margie’s neglect.
The morning passes, each is happy with her hair, neither of them a risk taker, and once their next appointments are made – no mean feat given the fishing season has started – Viv is on her return journey.
She can’t believe it when she reverses into a prize parking place in front of her stair, then curses; she never gets this space when she’s in for the night. Standing on the pavement she stretches her neck and notices a ‘For Sale’ sign attached to Ronnie’s window. He lives in the flat next door to her and is a perfect neighbour. It would be a pity if he moved out, but perhaps she could buy it? Viv rents her flat and, if she could afford it, would gladly make this investment. She retrieves the mail from her pigeonhole then bounds up the eighty-six steps two at a time, thinking this could be her only exercise for the day. Breathlessly she taps on Ronnie’s door. Silence. He usually works from home, but you’d never know it. She’ll try later.
She rings the estate agent while the number is fresh in her mind; the price is scary, but might be doable. Her answering machine registers three messages. The first is from Paul, a friend who only rings when he’s having relationship issues. He can definitely wait. The second is another from Jules. Viv hasn’t heard from Jules in a while and had wondered if she was out of favour: two calls in one day spells ‘desperate’. The final call is from Perry, Tosh’s husband and Jules’ boss. He pleads, ‘For God’s sake Viv do us all a favour and ring Jules before she kills us all.’ Now for her emails. Jules, true to her word, has filled her in and attached a photograph – Viv recognises it. It is the face from the news report this morning. Viv returns Jules’ call and gets Alice, her long-suffering secretary.
‘Hey, Alice, is Juliet around? She left me a message to contact her.’
‘Sure, I’ll put you through.’
Within seconds they are connected. ‘Viv! Thank God. Where the hell have you been? I’ve left at least a dozen messages. Even Perry said he’d try.’
Viv shakes her head, amazed at Jules’ shift from heaven to hell in so few syllables, and replies, ‘Not far since we spoke this morning, but you’d have to be ringing the right number.’
Viv smiles, visualising some poor sod whose answering machine is choked with irate messages from an unknown crazy woman. ‘Okay, what’s so urgent?’
‘Well, for starters the young man that went missing from St Jude’s. His school blazer has turned up, down by the Water of Leith . . .’
‘I’m guessing he wasn’t with it?’
Jules is not in the mood. ‘Very funny, Viv. He’s head boy and loves the blazer. Apparently it has all kinds of coloured braiding and leather patches on the elbows. His parents are keen on doing the reward thing, but at the moment I’m interested in his extra-curricular activities. Get what you can . . .’
‘Hold on a minute. I’ve got a busy week!’
‘It’s night work, Viv, no excuses.’
After a long pause Viv asks, ‘What is it you’d like me to do?’
‘The word is that he prefers boys and could have got himself involved in stuff in, the gay underworld. You . . .’ Viv cringes. Jules obviously skipped classes on political correctness.
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‘And what? You think guys in gay bars’ll talk to me? You’re more nuts than I thought. Do the words “sore thumb” make any sense to you? They’ll no more talk to me than to . . .’
She can’t think of anyone and huffs and puffs a bit more. Jules waits until she hears the quality of sigh that she’s hoping for.
Sure enough Viv exhales emphatically and concedes: ‘Okay, I’ll give it a go.’
‘Great, I’ll need all you can get by noon Thursday.’
‘It’s already Tuesday. Not hoping for much are you!’
Viv ruffles her fringe, thinking it’s time it was cut, as she mulls over where the likely haunts would be for a young man with a penchant for other young men on a Tuesday night. She is familiar with Edinburgh’s gay community, although it has been a while since she was out and about herself. Many of the bars are open all hours, so she showers and changes into leather jacket and jeans, then decides against the leather, it’s too stereotypical. Instead she grabs a warm wool jacket and locks up. She hears Ronnie’s laboured breathing as he pauses before tackling the final few steps to their landing.
‘Hey, Ronnie, what’s happening? I saw the sign.’
Ronnie is the shyest man she’s ever met, but somehow they’ve got through that. Viv never tries to finish his sentences. Occasionally his stammer has stopped her waiting for an answer, but she keeps smiling; her body language lets him know when she’s in a hurry. This afternoon she’s not in such a rush to keep moving and eventually he says, ‘Got a bit of a legacy. Would like a garden.’
‘I’ll be sorry to lose you – are you sure you won’t miss the hustle and bustle of the Bow?’
He looks confused, as if it hasn’t occurred to him. Viv restarts her move towards the stairs. As she leaps down she dodges the worn step and wonders for the thousandth time why out of eighty-six steps only one should be so much more worn than the others.