by V Clifford
He ran his hands through his hair. ‘You never get bored doing this kind of stuff?’
‘You forget, I’ve got other strings to my bow, which means I never get bored.’ She stood to leave. ‘Besides, boredom is an activity of anticipation.’ She watched as he ran this round his head.
‘Not bad for this time . . .’ and in unison, ‘on a Saturday night.’
They laughed and she asked, ‘Can I go now? I’ve got work to do.’
He eyeballed her. ‘Sure . . . We must get a coffee sometime.’
She smiled back over her shoulder as she headed out the door. Viv and Mac almost had a history. He said that she blew it, but she said it was his call. Whoever it was, it never got further than the starting blocks. But there was no animosity between them, and Viv had become as useful to him as he was to her.
Chapter Seven
Once back in the flat Viv wrote a to-do list then got to work online. She emailed Rebecca to ask for any information she could get her hands on about Tess’s family, photographs, address, also any details on the other two flatmates. The more information she gathered about everyone involved the better, and she soon found herself engrossed in web pages about a man she believed was Tess’s dad. This was probably not her most practical use of time because she got hooked on reports of a battle he’d been involved in to do with the size of pipes used in the North Sea – not information that was likely to find his daughter. Nonetheless, the news reports went on and on about his company, who produced and supplied the original pipes, and another company who were trying to muscle in with a new product, which was different and cheaper. Inevitably there was tuppenceworth thrown into the mix by an MP who only marginally managed to veil threats of cutting government funding.
Slowly she scrolled through the newspaper articles on Andrew Grant, a marine engineer for Off-Carne, a company based in Stonehaven, which reminded her of a journey she had taken through the Mearns and Aberdeenshire to visit Dunnottar Castle, with Katherine, a nurse who’d turned out to be more unhinged that even Viv could have coped with. Aberdeenshire wasn’t short on castles, but Dunnottar had the most spectacular setting ever. Maybe she’d use this enquiry as an excuse to revisit.
Eventually she came across an odd article – a report by an Andrew Grant who, it seemed, was the treasurer for some church group called ‘The Eastern Brethren’. Viv had never heard of them and did a separate search on them to find out more. It turned out that they were founded in 1915 in Pennsylvania. ‘What’s it doing in Aberdeenshire?’ She went back to the report. It seemed as though there was in-fighting to do with missing funds and Andrew Grant had resigned. The article was dated four years ago. There are more than a few Andrew Grants in Aberdeenshire so she’d have to wait for a photograph to compare with those fuzzy images she’d seen online.
Her email pinged and she read what Beccs had written in her reply. ‘I think it might be better if you come here and take a look. I don’t feel good about going through her things.’
Viv checked the clock, ten thirty, and decided that now was as good a time as any to check it out. Within half an hour she was ringing the buzzer of a flat in Broughton Place. Beccs answered with, ‘Top floor.’ Viv checked out the lists of names on all the doors – a student ghetto or just big families? She knew where she’d put her money. Beccs was waiting on the landing and showed her into a long wide hallway where their footsteps echoed on broad wooden boards.
Viv breathed in a whiff of healthy vegetarian food that lingered in the air, and swept her eyes round the ornate cornicing. ‘Big flat! Which is Tess’s room?’
‘In here.’ Beccs pushed open a door onto a huge room with three tall windows at one end. A king-sized bed with a black and white duvet cover and bright red cushions occupied half of one wall. One side of the bed was crumpled. Mahogany bedside cabinets sat on each side with different alarm clocks on top. Very domestic.
Viv nodded. ‘Nice space. You both sleep in here?’
She wandered across to the window, drew back the voile and stared down at the street below. The room remained silent. So she glanced back at Beccs who threw her a filthy look. Viv raised her eyebrows in another question but it also remained unanswered. Viv shook her head. ‘I’m not asking for my own sake, Rebecca.’
The smell of French lavender oil edged its way into Viv’s consciousness and she spotted an aromatherapy vase with sticks poking out of it sitting on a chest of drawers. Shelves, with books stored alphabetically, stretched along one wall. Hanging above those was a row of geological maps in fine black frames. Clean and tidy for a geology student. Viv had expected rucksacks, boots and endless waterproofs, but everything was clean and neat. She swung open the door of a highly polished mahogany wardrobe. Immaculate.
‘Tess always this tidy?’ Beccs’s body language couldn’t have been more defensive. Arms crossed high on her chest. Viv continued. ‘I can see why you might be intimidated by this place. Where is her computer?’
Beccs pointed to a door at the far right hand corner of the room. The sort of door that in most Edinburgh flats would lead to nothing more than a press, but when Viv opened it there was a box-room big enough to hold a desk, chair and two filing cabinets, again unusually neat. A laptop sat closed, looking forlorn on a large, Victorian, leather topped desk. If Tess had taken off of her own accord she’d surely have taken her laptop.
‘Beccs, it might be worth me taking a look at her correspondence. Emails, letters, anything that’s lying around.’
It was all too tidy, which in itself said plenty. ‘How about you go and make us some herbal tea and I’ll get to work.’ Viv was not prepared to have Beccs drawing in breath with every file she opened. Beccs hesitated but went. The laptop hadn’t been switched off, and leapt into life when Viv lifted the lid. She knew a few tricks where accessing material was concerned, but she didn’t have to try because Tess’s email account had been left open. There were dozens that had been unopened. Viv drew in her breath and released it really slowly – this could take a while. She removed her jacket and set to work. Beccs arrived with a steaming mug but didn’t ask anything and retreated to another room. Viv, relieved by this, carried on methodically until she remembered the tea. She stretched and sat back and distractedly reached out for the mug.
The flat was warm and homely. The desk, although tidy, had trinkets. One unusual piece of kit with multi-coloured feathers dangling from it looked like a wire mesh upside down cloche cap. Viv guessed it was some kind of new-agey dream catcher. A Zen garden set with miniature implements, rocks and sand, sat at the back edge of the desk. Viv’s hand hovered over the tiny rake but she resisted temptation. She gently ran her fingers over the surface of a note pad: no indentations to speak of, but she rummaged about inside the top drawer and found a long wooden box with an oriental motif carved into the top. She slid the top along and exposed pens and pencils. ‘Good girl, Tess.’ she whispered. Then with a sheet of A4 she rubbed the top of the pad. Viv grinned as a significant part of a number became visible. She folded the A4, stuck it in her pocket, and continued checking inside the desk drawers. They were all in order: the girl’s correspondence was filed alphabetically. Under ‘Personal’ she found letters to Tessa Grant at an Aberdeenshire address, which had been scored through and replaced by the Broughton Place address. She glanced through three or four with the same writing then found one in a different hand, ‘not known at this address’ written. This had also been scored out and the Edinburgh address scribbled in. Odd.
She wrote down the Aberdeenshire address and turned her attention to the emails. The unanswered messages were not of much interest. Mainly chums seeking meetings and wondering where she was. Those prior to the date of abduction, if this was what it was, were of more interest. Beccs returned and quietly perched on the edge of the desk. ‘You’ve obviously done this kind of thing before?’
Without lifting her head Viv replied, ‘Yeah. More times than I can remember. Human beings are as alike as they are different.’
‘That sounds cryptic.’
‘Not really. Most of us have patterns. Not so that we’d recognise them, but patterns nonetheless. For instance I can see from the timing of her emails that Tess gets up early – well seven thirty – checks her emails and then there are a few minutes before she answers them. I guess she goes for a shower or makes herself a cup of tea.’
‘I don’t always feel her getting out of bed, but yeah she does have a habit . . . So do I, come to think of it. I check my emails when she comes in here. I don’t get out of bed, though.’
Viv looked up. ‘You’re doing psychology, aren’t you? Did you notice anything different going on in the weeks before she went?’ She had been going to say ‘missing’. Beccs directed her huge brown eyes towards the ceiling while poking her tongue around her teeth. Viv caught a glimpse of a stud on the middle of her tongue and grimaced. For most of us the tiniest grain of foreign matter in the mouth feels like a boulder, and Viv was sure an immobile lump of metal in her own mouth would make her gag.
Beccs looked back at her. ‘We were not getting on too well with one of the flatmates. She and Tess were having a “quiet period”.’
‘What did that mean? They just weren’t speaking, or what?’
‘Yeah. They’d agreed to only speak when necessary. Like if there was a phone call or something.’
‘But what caused it?’
Beccs shook her head and shrugged. ‘Tess was telling us a story about their school days. They were at the same secondary school, and Paula said that Tess had got the story wrong, that the event had been quite different and that Tess was embellishing it to get attention.’
‘And did it seem like that to you?’
‘Not at the time, but now it does. Tess is funny and it sounded like a funny situation.’
‘What was the story?’
‘Nothing, really. Just this preacher guy had turned up at the school and they had to sing songs. Tess was doing all the hand actions to the songs and that’s when Paula got pissed off. She said it hadn’t been like that. But Tess argued that it was. Paula went off in a strop and when I saw them together again they had agreed not to talk about school. But that seemed to spill over into everything.’
‘The atmosphere can’t have been much fun.’
‘We’re all doing different courses. Our paths don’t cross that often. Paula and Leanne are doing biomedical science and have labs every day. They spend a lot of nights in the library. I do my studying here and Tess tends to work here as well. But listen, you don’t think that Tess falling out with Paula could have anything to do with Tess’s disappearance?’
‘Stranger things have happened. But let’s wait to see if anything comes up in her emails.’ Viv turned to the laptop and after sorting through more dross about a cappella singing and field trips to Arran she spotted a conversation, which took place over twenty-nine emails. The first, sent by ‘RTG’, said, ‘You will return to us. I know you. You can’t survive without us.’
Tess’s reply was brief. ‘You think?’
The response. ‘You forget, we are watching you, we can see that you are failing.’
Her reply. ‘Good for you. I’d get a life if I were you, Si.’
The reply. ‘I have my life in God. You will return to us.’
The article, with the report by her dad, now made more sense. Viv turned to speak to Beccs but she’d gone. ‘Rebecca!’ Viv found her staring out of the kitchen window with earphones in. Viv tapped her on the shoulder then had to jump free of the elbow, which just missed her solar plexus.
Beccs ripped the earphones out. ‘What the fu . . . You gave me the fright of my life!’
This struck Viv as a serious over-reaction, given that she was the only other person in the flat, and here by invitation.
Beccs now said sheepishly, ‘Sorry. Sorry, that was over the top. I told you I’ve been feeling spooked since she was taken.’
‘I found a few emails which make me think Tess has been involved in some kind of religious group. You know anything about that?’
Beccs hesitated. ‘No, just the school story made me think that maybe her family are religious. She didn’t talk about it. In fact, she didn’t talk about them much if she could avoid it.’
The kitchen was well equipped and also too tidy. No dirty plates or mugs lying around. A refectory table with eight chairs round it, none of which matched. A wooden carousel with jars of peanut butter and jams on it. Two candlesticks like dragon’s heads with multi-coloured candles protruding from their upturned mouths sat neatly and equally spaced on the table. It was not like any student flat that Viv had ever lived in. Even the wooden floor looked clean. A six-burner cooker with a giant shiny hood stood against the wall. The only evidence of its recent use was the smell of Cranks in the air.
‘Look. Those emails. You want to check them out?’
Beccs shrugged. ‘I’ll take a look.’
They returned to Tess’s study. Beccs took the chair this time and Viv perched on the desk. It took a good few minutes for Beccs to read them all and when she looked up her eyes were brimming. ‘How can this be? Like, how could she not have told me about this? He sounds like a serious nut case.’
‘Maybe she’s scared to talk about it. Maybe Paula knew about this. Where is Paula?’
‘I think they’ve gone to a potluck supper. She and Leanne were cooking earlier. It looked as if they were going to feed the five thousand.’ The irony struck her. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . ’
‘So that’s why this place smells so homely?’
Beccs nodded.
‘I know this isn’t a polite question, but are Paula and Leanne an item?’
Beccs snorted. ‘God, no . . . Paula has sworn to celibacy. But Leanne, I’m not sure. I’d guess that they wouldn’t have chosen to live with us if they weren’t sympathetic. Neither of them have lovers but . . . ’ She stalled and Viv prompted. ‘But what?’
Beccs stood and left the room, returning with a collage of photographs showing the four flatmates larking around.
‘Who is who?’ Although Viv recognised Beccs and Tess they looked nothing like the carefree girls from the earlier photograph that Beccs emailed.
Beccs pointed to a black-haired, pale-skinned girl, who was wearing as much face make-up as Siouxsie wore thirty years ago. ‘That’s Paula.’ Then, pointing to another Goth, said, ‘That’s Leanne.’ She also had dark hair and was well made-up, but at least her eyes were visible. Both girls were heavily built and looked as if they were having a whale of a time. Viv was aware that people didn’t put on that kind of anarchist’s armour if they were really having fun. The over-tidiness of the flat could be an indication that there was something underlying their joviality.
Viv turned from the photographs and wandered to the kitchen window. It looked out onto a green with lots of pots and wooden carvings. ‘Who does the flat belong to?’
Beccs had joined her, and said, ‘Tess’s dad.’
‘Don’t suppose I could have a look at the other rooms?’
‘No way!’
Viv, getting bored with her lightly lightly approach swung round. ‘For fuck sake! You want me to find Tess or not?’
Rebecca, startled, reluctantly pushed open a door onto another huge room and Viv glanced in. A double bed adorned with white damask bed linen convinced her that student standards had definitely leapt up a notch or two. A huge desk sat with an empty space where a laptop should have been.
‘Whose room is this?’
‘Leanne’s.’
‘I’m guessing she takes her laptop with her?’
Beccs shrugged and quickly pulled the door closed again. ‘Over here.’
Same thing. Beccs pushed open a door onto a room only slightly smaller but still with a double bed and a big desk in it. No laptop there either. Viv couldn’t believe how domestic it all looked. It was as if they had someone clean for them. ‘You don’t have a cleaner, do you?’
Beccs crossed her arms across her chest. ‘What i
f we do? Gives her pocket money.’
Viv felt like swiping her round the head for condescension. But she didn’t have to - the look on her face was loud and clear.
‘Come.’ Beccs beckoned toward the final room. It was neat enough but didn’t have the tightly controlled quality that Tess’s had.
‘Does Tess ever sleep in here?’ It was also a large room with windows out to the back, north facing, much darker than Tess’s, but still it had a healthy, youthful, restlessness, about it.
‘Not any more. When we first moved in she was fine in here. But she gets SAD and needs full light. I know how she feels, and anyway I love her room, although I don’t work in there.’ Beccs’s desk had the usual stuff of study on it: piles of books with coloured tabs stuck to pages of interest, endless sheets of A4 both printed and hand written. Viv smiled at a nodding doll of Freud. ‘What do the others think of your Freud?’
‘They think I’m a traitor. We’re not even taught about Freud. Psychology without Freud – how bad is that? I’m fascinated by his stuff.’ She looked at Viv, waiting to see what camp she’d fall into.
In Viv’s experience there was no middle ground with Freud. People either loved him or hated him. She had had to justify her own passion for his work many times, and smiled recalling when Jung, accused of anti-Semitism, had fallen from grace, and Freud had made a come back. ‘I’m with you on Freud. People are too fond of bashing him up without really knowing his theories. We all make mistakes, but if you’re famous that’s not allowed. Worth remembering that, if you were thinking about it.’
Beccs gave the slightest smile. ‘No thanks, it’s bad enough having parents in the public eye.’
Viv had lost sight of this. ‘Yeah. I guess that’s not much fun. But what’s your mum like?’ She hadn’t heard much about Mrs Malcolm Younger, which was odd given her husband’s high media presence.
‘Mum’s a psychiatrist, Betty Bates. You’ve probably heard of her.’
Viv had, and tried to disguise her surprise with a cough. She’d never have put Prof. Bates, as Viv knew her, together with Malcolm Younger.