Devil's Garden

by Aline Templeton

  As the door opened and the two men came in Sascha glanced round. Gil Paton she had met and had a late coffee with the previous night; yes, she’d been keen to pump him about Anna’s background story and the set-up at the Foundation but distinctly less keen to hear how he was planning to reshape it and how much he resented Cassandra Trentham coming in tomorrow when he, Gil, was perfectly able to cope on his own. His companion definitely looked more interesting – tall, fair-haired and quite a sharp dresser.

  She tossed back her hair and stood up. ‘Morning, Gil.’ She had a low, husky voice. ‘We’re bright and early at our desks today, aren’t we, Marion?’

  Marion looked flustered, half got up and knocked one of the tottering piles of paper to the floor, then dropped to her knees to pick them up. Gil stepped forward to help her while Sascha turned to meet the other man with an encouraging smile.

  But he had walked on past her towards the farthest desk and was greeting Jason Jackson as if he was a mate. That surprised her: her fellow writer hadn’t made a good impression. He’d been helping himself to coffee and biscuits when she came in after breakfast and when she’d introduced herself had responded with a surly sort of grunt. He looked scruffy too – unshaven and wearing builder’s-bum baggy jeans, with a sneery expression – so maybe the new guy wasn’t as classy as he looked.

  ‘Well, hi there,’ he was saying. ‘I didn’t realise last night that you were a writer.’

  Jackson looked up from his laptop, surprised. ‘Didn’t know you were something to do with the Foundation. You never said.’

  ‘I’m not really. I work for Anna’s publishers and I’m to be up here for a bit doing PR for her.’

  Jackson’s lip curled. ‘Oh, of course. Nothing but the best for our Anna, eh?’

  Gil, being thanked profusely by a blushing Marion, stood up frowning. ‘Not the sort of remark you’d expect from someone who I see has made free with her hospitality already,’ he said to Sascha in an undertone, eyeing the coffee mug and biscuit crumbs on Jackson’s desk. ‘Local, of course. I think it’s just as well he won’t actually be staying here.’

  Sansom was smiling, saying easily, ‘Well, that figures, doesn’t it? Will I see you down the pub again tonight, or will you be socialising here?’

  Jackson flickered a contemptuous glance at his companions. ‘What do you think? Oh, I’ll be there all right. We’ll get them in for you and you can dish us the dirt on the real Anna Harper – the one behind the perfect public image.’

  Sansom dealt with the question with practised skill. ‘You’re coming to the wrong person,’ he was saying smoothly when the door behind him opened and Cassie Trentham came in. She’d been impressively quick; she was very much looking the part of Chair of the Foundation now, her silver silk shirt open at the neck to show a heavy gold chain and a pale grey cashmere jacket picking up the tones in her soft tweed skirt. The only jarring note was the cut on her cheek, beginning to bruise, and a bandage on her leg but she seemed perfectly poised.

  ‘Richard, do forgive me. At least it’s given you a chance to see the set-up.’ She glanced round at the others, smiling. ‘Hello, I’m Cassie Trentham. Welcome to the Harper Foundation. I hope you’re settling in all right?’

  Jason said nothing. Marion nodded shyly and Sascha came forward holding out both hands. ‘I’m so glad to meet you. I promise you I’m absolutely your mother’s greatest fan.’

  Cassie’s coolly polite thank you as she submitted to the double handshake suggested that she’d heard that before and Sascha was annoyed with herself. You don’t make your mark if you go round bleating clichés. She opened her mouth to say, ‘Oh God, how gauche! Sorry that slipped out,’ but Cassie had turned back to Sansom.

  ‘Richard, why don’t you come up to my office and we can have a proper talk?’

  ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘The only thing is, I wondered if I should go up and at least leave a message for your mother to see if there’s anything she wants me to do. Would that be appropriate?’

  Cassie thought for a moment then said, ‘Yes, I think you should. Knowing her I guess she will want to see you, but if not Marta will know what plans she has. Come back after you’ve finished and we can talk then.’

  ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Sansom said. ‘I’ll come back later and we can talk over lunch. There’s a nice pub across in Melrose.’

  To Sascha’s watchful eye it looked as if that was probably the last thing Cassie wanted but she said gamely, ‘Thank you. I’ve got a rights meeting with some hopeful theatre people but—’

  ‘I could take that for you,’ Gil butted in. ‘You just go off. You must be feeling a bit shaky.’

  ‘No, I’ll manage,’ Cassie said flatly. ‘I’ll be finished with them by lunchtime, anyway. That would be nice, Richard.’ Then she added hastily, ‘But for goodness’ sake don’t tell my mother I fell off my bike!’

  ‘Of course not,’ Sansom promised, laughing, and they went out.

  But Sascha, watching him narrowly, would have bet good money on that being a lie. From what she knew of Anna, if she found out about her daughter’s accident later, as she almost inevitably would, she wouldn’t be at all amused that he’d kept it from her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  After Richard Sansom had gone, Anna Harper turned to Marta Morelli, allowing herself to shudder at last. ‘I need a drink,’ she said.

  For once Marta didn’t point out that it was early in the day to start hitting the bottle. ‘Cognac?’

  ‘Scotch.’

  She went to the drinks cupboard and poured that, then cognac for herself, her shaking hand making the crystal ring as the decanter’s edge caught its rim. She didn’t trust herself to manage a tray; with one glass in each hand she said, ‘Come, we will go through to your study.’

  They had seen Sansom in the big sitting room but more and more just now they were using the study: towards the back of the house with its smaller window it made them feel less exposed. It had two walls of bookcases behind Anna’s work area with a desk and filing cabinets and in front of the fireplace on the opposite wall there were comfortable chairs and a huge square coffee table piled high with books and magazines. As Anna sank into her customary seat Marta set down the glasses and bent to put a match to the fire laid ready in the grate.

  ‘We will feel better with a fire,’ she said almost as if she meant it, glancing anxiously at Anna huddling now over her glass. ‘You did well. I don’t know how you could look calm while he told us.’

  ‘You did too. We’ve had practice now – we’ve been waiting for something to happen for weeks now.’

  ‘Not this, though.’ Marta sat down opposite, putting her hand to her head. ‘This …’

  When Anna spoke there was a hysterical note in her voice. ‘She might have died, like Felix. One after the other, he’s stalking us down. I can hear the rustling in the bushes – there’s a tiger there, waiting to strike. We just don’t know where or when.’

  Fighting down her own fears, Marta said, ‘But we must not panic.’ Anna was always volatile; it was her role to be the steadying influence and she added with a conviction she didn’t feel, ‘We don’t know it was anything bad – just a minor accident, like Richard said. Maybe this could be – it is a narrow road.’

  ‘Oh Marta, you don’t think it was, any more than I do. And we don’t believe he won’t try again. What can we do now? We have to protect her. And ourselves.’

  There was a long pause. The fire, starting to catch, gave a sudden crackle and a spark flew up. They both jumped; Anna’s whisky slopped on to her skirt. She dabbed at it as Marta said, ‘We call the police.’

  Anna looked up, startled. ‘But what do we tell them? We believe someone wants my children dead, but we can’t give them a reason? If we say there have been threats, they’ll want to see them, question us about why and when. Otherwise they won’t take it seriously – they’ll just say what Richard said, it was only cuts and bruises. And Felix – dying from an overdose was an accident that ha
d been waiting to happen to him, as far as they were concerned.’

  ‘We don’t say this. We say there is a person who drove dangerously. Your daughter could have been killed. You want to know who this person was and you are an important person here. They will have to pay attention. Maybe they can do the work for us, to find out who he is.’

  Anna sat up slowly. ‘Yes – yes, that could work. Oh, you are so good for me, Marta – I can’t imagine where I would be without you. Of course that’s what we can do. I’ll ask to speak to that inspector who came about Felix – he seemed competent enough. And Cassie can come and live here meantime where we can see to it that she is safe. I’ll send Davy to fetch her from work.’

  The conference at Police Scotland, Fettes Avenue in Edinburgh, aimed at stations in the Borders division, was well attended. The latest twist in the war against drugs that Scotland was so comprehensively losing was a hot topic: even areas that had previously suffered only minor problems were seeing the epidemic spreading like Ebola.

  After the horror of Felix Trentham’s death, PC Graham had felt a particularly personal interest. She had lived in Halliburgh all her life and it sickened her to see evil like this taking root in her own neighbourhood, such a peaceful backwater before.

  Of course, what the speakers had to say wasn’t news to anyone: underage kids with no satisfactory home background – and there seemed to be increasing numbers of these – were being seduced into gangs. Taking orders on mobile phones, they were actually doing doorstep deliveries of substances that got more powerful and more dangerous by the month.

  With the Human Rights legislation and the restrictions on stop and search, there was little the police could do about it. The lectures were interesting in themselves but at the end of it there wasn’t really any sort of answer, just a lot of hand-wringing.

  Not that she had actually thought there would be. Feeling depressed, Kate joined the queue making their way out of the room, thinking that such new information as there was could have been circulated by email, without the cost of bringing them all in here. Still, Police Scotland was so far in the red that saving a few hundred would be a drop in the ocean – and at least she could put a tick in her ‘professional development’ box, which would mean she wouldn’t be threatened with the ‘Equality Impact Assessment’ training module next month.

  She was just reaching the door when a voice hailed her. ‘Kate! It is you! I saw your name on the list and wondered if it was the Kate Graham I knew in Tulliallan days.’ She turned round to see DCI Kelso Strang making his way between the rows towards her. ‘Good gracious, Kelso!’ she said. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised – I knew this was where you were based.’

  Yes, she knew; she’d seen the coverage there had been of his cases and read his sad history in a background piece too. The accompanying photo had shown the left side of his face – perhaps purposely? − so she was unprepared for the heavy scar that ran down the right-hand side. He wasn’t quite the hunk he’d been back then.

  ‘I move around a lot but I have a sort of broom cupboard here in HQ – it’s not much, but I call it home. You’re still in Halliburgh, I see?’

  She could hear the surprise in his voice and she coloured. She’d done well on the training course, better than many contemporaries who were in much more senior positions now. ‘Yes. I was encouraged to work towards promotion but then I’d have had to move. And – well, my mother was ill for a long time and after she died my dad was just really lost. He was a lot older and now he can’t manage for himself.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  He sounded as if he meant it, sounded too as if he regretted for her the career she might have had. ‘I’m sorry about your wife, too,’ she said. ‘I read about it in the papers.’

  Strang’s face darkened. ‘Yes. It was … hard.’ Then he gave a stiff sort of smile. ‘But we have to play with the hand we’re dealt, don’t we?’

  The room was emptying. He looked at his watch. ‘It would be good to catch up. How are you placed for time?’

  ‘Oh, it’s no problem now with the Borders Railway. There’s a good service to Tweedbank, so no more long scary journeys when the weather’s bad.’

  ‘That’s good. They’re threatening us with something nasty before very long. Why don’t we go and have a drink—’ Then he stopped and groaned. ‘Oh no! I’m on bedtime story duty again tonight.’

  Graham tried not to look surprised. A new girlfriend – or new wife even – with a kid, presumably. ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she said at once. ‘You certainly can’t break a bedtime story promise.’

  ‘It’s my niece,’ he said. ‘My sister’s had marital problems and they’re staying with me meantime. Betsy is not someone to be trifled with and Peppa Pig is the current obsession, heaven help me. Look, why not come back with me and when I’ve done that we can grab a bite to eat – there’s a decent pub nearby, and then I can drop you off at the station if it won’t make you too late.’

  ‘That’s a tempting offer. Dad always makes jokes about me having a late pass when the carer’s covering, but he doesn’t mind.’

  She followed him through the corridors to his office – minuscule indeed – and then to the car park. As she got into the car she gave a sudden laugh and he looked at her quizzically.

  ‘I was just thinking, the last time I saw you was the final night of the course in Tulliallan. Mayhem! No one would believe graduating police officers could behave like that. I remember you leading a group of other savages down the stairs bellowing in triumph at having got a senior instructor’s car up on to the top landing.’

  Strang looked abashed. ‘Well, yes. But that’s what an army training does for you – it was quite a feat of engineering, I’d have you know. And as I remember it, you weren’t sitting primly in a corner somewhere.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ she admitted. ‘Anyway, it’s tradition to trash the place on the final night of the course. One last hurrah before we have to spend the rest of our lives being law-abiding.’

  ‘Pretty much,’ he agreed. ‘At least we try, mostly. Right, I’ll take you back to meet Betsy. She’s very cute but she’s an absolute minx.’

  At half past five Sascha Silverton closed her laptop and looked around. Jason had packed it in a little earlier then disappeared through the door to the street in his usual graceless fashion without a goodbye.

  Marion had irritated Sascha all day by her constant fluttering, getting up to make a cup of tea, leafing through the papers on her desk, giving tiny sighs when she couldn’t find what she wanted, making little excursions up to her room, stopping for a chat at Sascha’s desk as she passed.

  The remaining retreaters had arrived but they weren’t a lot more promising: a sullen, ratty little man called Mick McNab who worked, he told her over lunch, in the gig economy so that he had time to write the hard-boiled crime that would make his name. When she said she wrote full-time, he scowled. ‘All right for some.’

  She’d actually heard of the other one, Elena Jankowski, who was dark and intense, with very pale skin and hooded grey eyes; it was hard to say what age she was. There had been a little stir about her first book, a slim volume that had been nominated for one of the big prizes – Sascha couldn’t remember which one – but that had been a year or two ago and when Sascha googled her there didn’t seem to have been anything since. She had gone straight to her room, emerged briefly for lunch where she said the bare minimum politeness required and then retreated again.

  The evening meal would be at seven, Gil had said, and there would be wine and beer put out for a happy hour at six. ‘See you then,’ he had said to Sascha.

  So that settled it. She stood up. ‘I’m just going for a walk. Check out where the hot nightspots are in Halliburgh.’

  Marion looked alarmed at the very idea and Mick said, ‘Don’t think you’ll find there is much.’

  ‘No, I didn’t actually mean I thought there would be,’ Sascha said with elaborate patience. ‘There must be a pub o
r two.’

  ‘You’ll get it free here in half an hour,’ Mick pointed out.

  ‘Mmm,’ she said from halfway up the staircase on her way to fetch her coat. She came back down after a few minutes in which she’d brushed her hair and renewed her make-up – you never knew who you might meet – and with an airy ‘See you later,’ went out into the street.

  It had been a long, hard winter with little sign of spring as yet and tonight it was bitterly cold with a sort of crystalline chill that even seemed to have stilled the wind. It was getting dark; there was a thumbnail of moon low in the sky and one star showing above the roofs and spires of the town. Sascha turned up the faux-fur collar of her tweed coat and stopped to put on her gloves.

  Further down the street there was a large, expensive-looking BMW SUV parked immediately outside the door to the Harper Foundation and as she looked a small man, thin and wiry, came out and held it open for Cassie Trentham. He closed it behind her then hurried to hold the car door for her, though she had opened it already herself and Sascha heard her saying, ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Davy,’ as he shut it behind her and went round to the driver’s side.

  Sascha watched her being driven off and her mouth twisted in envy. It was all right for some; Cassie Trentham had been given everything on a plate, while Sascha Silverton had grafted hard for every penny she had. The childish cry, ‘It’s not fair!’ was ringing in her head as she set off down the hill into the town.

  Cassie Trentham sank into her bath with a groan of relief. The warmth was comforting to her aching muscles and she had hopefully tipped in an excessive amount of her favourite Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir bath oil and lit the matching candle, as if she thought relaxation could be bought over the counter. It couldn’t, of course, not with her brain humming with the events of the day.

  Davy Armstrong had brought her home. He’d appeared at the Foundation at half past five, asking to see her. When she came downstairs, a little surprised, he’d said bluntly, ‘I’m to take you home, Cassie.’