Mosaic

by Caro Ramsay

  ‘I thought that she got away to a better place, she waited until I was settled and then went. But now I am back, I doubt it.’

  ‘None of that is good enough for me. I need to know what happened to her.’

  ‘For your promotion?’

  He doesn’t flinch. ‘It would help, be a feather in my cap so to speak. Cold case. Sensitive. Your dad being who he is.’

  I got up and walked over to the shadows of the redwood trees but that was not where the chill was coming from. ‘Do you suspect him?’

  ‘Of course we suspect him, we always suspect the husband. I am well aware that all that care and concern could be a smokescreen. He was in the study when your mother was last seen. His friend, Alistair Connolly left at ten past eleven. Heather popped in to see him, he and Alistair passed in the hall, Beth had spoken to Heather as Heather drove in, your mum was still waiting when she drove away later. Heather claims she went for a drive but didn’t see your mum in a car on the road.

  ‘I am astounded that nobody is asking why a woman married to a Melvick was waiting for anything.’

  ‘She never said,’ I replied. ‘And she didn’t answer when Heather asked. And she did ask.’

  ‘You don’t know that, Megan, we only have Heather’s word for that.’

  ‘It’s odd that. What was she doing, where was she going that she didn’t want you to know?’ Drew pursed his lips, leaving a pause for me to consider the options. It had seemed there was only one; she was waiting to be picked up by somebody that we didn’t know. ‘Your dad said he was around the house and it was only when somebody phoned looking for Beth about six thirty that they realized she wasn’t anywhere to be found. He was concerned and went out to the Tentor Wood and checked the faerie pools. On his own. He found her stuff later up in the bedroom when he was going to bed, so he could have returned to the house with it himself.’

  I took a minute to digest that.

  ‘But Heather said, at the time, your mum took clothes that she would wear. And your dad wouldn’t have a clue about that. So it seemed to her, and us, that your mum packed her own bag.’

  ‘As if she was going somewhere. Have you seen the Munnings?’

  He looked puzzled at the change of subject. ‘Indeed. He’s very passionate about it. It’s a pretty picture, one of Munnings’ finest from my rather uneducated point of view.’

  ‘I always thought that Dad had bought it for Mum, but it was actually Papa who bought it for my grandma shortly before she died, and then he died.’ The picture of Papa, on the rope, comes through like a gust of wind, crystal clear but fleeting. ‘Mum bred these beautiful ponies and it stopped as a breeding line when she walked. It took about a year for Dad to come to terms with selling off the youngest three colts and that pretty filly Mum had high hopes for. We kept the two oldest brood mares as we couldn’t bear to part with them. Like having teddy bears in the home field. Dad loved what Mum loved. He wouldn’t have hurt her.’

  ‘And you are a very faithful daughter. Did your dad get on with Carla?’

  ‘Oh, my God, no.’ I laughed at the memory, a welcome break from the serious chat. ‘Just before the wedding, we were so pissed off with Melissa having tantrums left, right and centre Carla broke into his wine cellar to get some booze. We got a bit carried away and emerged very drunk. Dad was tight-lipped and a few hundred pounds poorer. He caught us, took us into his study. We were so, so pissed, holding onto each other giggling. He gave us a very stern talking to, lots of finger wagging, from behind the big oak desk. I’ll never forget it, saying that it wasn’t about the wine, it was about respect, “respect for other people’s property”.’ I mimicked his voice. ‘“And you should both know all about that. I thought I had brought you up better than that, Megan Melvick”. And then Carla said, clear as day, “But you didn’t bring her up, the nanny did. If you had brought her up you might have realized she was deaf”.’

  ‘She actually said that?’

  ‘Right in front of him, she didn’t swear, she didn’t shout. It was so unlike her. The worst of it all? Everything she said was true.’

  ‘Out of the mouths of babes. And what did your dad do?’ Drew wiped some ice cream from his lips with the back of his hand. ‘Run her through with a sabre?’

  ‘He said, “You can go now”, rather coldly. He stopped me as I went to go out the door just to give me one of his looks. I’ve not seen that look on his face since.’

  ‘And when was the wedding, in relation to that?’

  ‘Four days later.’

  ‘So four days after Carla accused him of being a bad father, she was dead. Yeah, that fits in with my thoughts.’

  We didn’t talk much after that.

  TWENTY

  Megan

  I parked the Merc up at the house and walked back to the lay-by. Drew and I had decided to have a look around, there were a few demons that I needed to lay to rest. Drew was leaning on the top of his Red Fiesta, looking at his tablet then looking over his shoulder, making sure that the car was parked in the exact spot where my mother was last seen, in the spot I first saw him.

  ‘So this lay-by was new three years ago?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. The eagles had come back three years before, the birdwatchers needed somewhere to park and Dad had this strip of land. It was spring then, overgrown. Just this road, the lay-by, then the high wall. Not really that many options. Somebody must have picked Mum up.’

  Drew walked up to the gates of the Benbrae Estate, looking at the road to the right, to the left, on the inside was a slight lessening of the undergrowth between the wall and the thick tree trunks of the Tentor Wood.

  I pointed to the gates. ‘This was where Carla always got in. My dad put the spikes on those cross struts after she died to stop others getting in the same way and here is the start of Melissa’s path.’

  ‘Not much to see now. But both Melissa and Carla knew that path well, it was better established in those days, I guess.’

  ‘It was, five years have passed.’

  ‘We need to figure this out. Somebody filled a tub with petrol, soaked a rope then tied it onto the Curlew. Curlew One that would be.’

  ‘So we are talking about Carla now, not my mother?’

  ‘We never stop talking about Carla, her death was horrific.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s what happened?’

  ‘Yeah, the lads at the station and I have tried it. Petrol floats, it will burn but it’s not directional, the vapour on the surface burns but the water doesn’t ignite. Somebody knew that and thought it through. That rope had to take care of that, connect shore to boat, and the boat went up in a blue light because something flammable was already in the boat, caused a mass of flame that nobody could have escaped from.’

  ‘I know, I was there.’

  ‘Where? Where were you, Megan?’

  ‘I was with Deborah, I do have a very strong memory of that.’ I saw him smirk. ‘For what that is worth.’ The memory though is strong and terrifying, it comes back, a silent film in my head. The carousel in full colour, the lights and colour flickering on and on in a dark universe. Ebony and sapphire sky, the lights down the Long Drive, sparkling their way, a faerie path, the candles on the table flickering and inconstant. The darkness of the Wood and the evil dark of the loch to the left. The Benbrae beyond, faerie coloured lights strung over it, red and yellow and blue and greens suspended in the darkness. Fireworks, flashes and sparks. I felt very alone, looking up in the dark sky and seeing something flare and fade. Deborah, a hand held out, she fell, I was running, there and back, with ice … A drink, it goes wrong. And I had no memory after that until I was at the top of the Long Drive, being comforted by some friend of Mum’s.’

  I knew I had a gap there.

  Drew kept quiet, letting the memory return as I looked round at the familiar view, trying to see it as I had five years before.

  ‘I was intending to go down there, meet Carla, have a float around in the water, escape from everybody else and have a go
od bitch. Carla had been humiliated at the wedding, asked to stand out of a few photographs, told to get out the way full stop.’

  ‘She was not family, fair enough.’

  ‘It was embarrassing. Carla was not the person to take that lying down. Deborah wanted a word with her, I think to tell her to stop drinking. Debs was complaining about sore feet and we both walked barefoot. The fireworks hadn’t started at that point. We went behind the fence and had a ciggie, then we walked down to the water. She slipped and hurt her foot. I went back up for ice. I think I passed Heather on the way.’ That memory did come back. ‘I did, she said that Mum would prefer it if I put my shoes back on.’ I looked at my feet. ‘I did make it back to the water before the explosion happened.’

  ‘Did you now …’ said Drew thoughtfully.

  ‘I know they said it might have been because a cigarette was flicked out in it. Tom smoked, so they thought it was him and he was in charge of the petrol for the boats. But he was a careful man.’

  ‘That was what the investigation said, they had nothing else to go on. It’s not good enough for me. It was a terrible crime.’

  ‘I know, I was there, I saw the boat burn. I am deaf, not blind.’

  ‘And sometimes you are not that deaf, like now.’

  I look up. ‘Yes I know, they are my bloody ears, you know,’ I snapped.

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Why are you so difficult?’

  ‘Because I can be.’

  ‘I mean you can be selective in what you hear and what you don’t.’

  And that punched home. That was two people who had said that to me. Him and Carla.

  ‘Do you think I fake it? How interesting.’

  ‘Not that at all, I think it takes a lot of concentration when you need to hear; you have to work hard at listening. Why should you not tune out, God there’s enough shite spoken at work in meetings that I wish I had the integrity not to listen to.’ He turned towards me. ‘My uncle was under the impression that you were protected during that investigation, your dad maybe didn’t go so far as to pull strings but you were always “too upset to talk”. Your friend had died, at your sister’s wedding, you were fifteen and you were a Melvick so nobody was going to give you a hard time, were they? Not if they didn’t want to be transferred to Glasgow and a four-hour commute.’

  ‘I was very upset.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. But the fact remains, your dad did protect you. Maybe he didn’t want you talking as he thought you knew something, or that you did it.’

  ‘What? Why would I kill Carla? I loved her.’

  ‘The ten-year-old Megan loved ten-year-old Carla. Maybe as fifteen-year-olds you had started to drift apart. Would you be friends with her now? I doubt it.’

  I stopped walking, realizing how much he had misunderstood. It was black and white to him and he had never known the evil that is exclusion. Carla had been rejected by about everybody she knew. No family she could trust, a mum who ditched her every time a new man came on the scene, pulled back and pushed away by her dad and her stepmother. Maybe there was a bigger picture there that my youth had never suspected, Carla was a vulnerable child. I had never known rejection but I had never really belonged in the first place. I was always hanging on the coat-tails of the Melvick family; I was the one standing at the bottom of the stairs, as they all went out the door. ‘Oh don’t bother about her. She’s staying behind,’ Melissa would say as I asked them to wait for me. Not unkindly, just matter of fact.

  Well, I was staying behind now, Melissa had moved on, to somewhere she could not come back from.

  And the exclusion of deafness can be isolation in a crowded room, nobody ever repeats gossip or chats in inconsequentialities to a deaf person. ‘She was the only one who ever told me a joke, you know, the only one. So yes, I think we would have still been friends, maybe something closer than that.’

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘She believed in fluid sexuality. We were young. Close.’

  That surprised him.

  ‘She had a bit of a reputation, as I am sure you know, she was too young to be running around like that. Children who are abused sexually are often seen as promiscuous and over friendly,’ Drew said.

  ‘Abused?’

  ‘Is that a surprise to you?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Why do you think she kept moving, all those social services, all that child protection?’

  ‘Good God, I hope she felt safe here.’

  ‘I think she did feel safe here,’ said Drew, non-committally, ‘which is ironic as she died here.’

  ‘She should have had the chance to grow up, got a chance to live rather than fight for survival. She had never known the good things in life until she got to know us.’

  Drew smiled but I could sense no sarcasm in the curve of his lips. ‘Did it cross your mind that your family might have thought that Carla was not the best influence on you? Like the wine and the haircut.’

  ‘And they had her killed?’

  ‘You were proving to be a very loyal friend to her, you wouldn’t just dump her. Would Melissa have caused her harm?’

  That was a bigger question.

  ‘And I have seen the later pictures of you and Carla, almost identical. Would Melissa have wanted to cause you harm? She knew you would both be in the Curlew?’

  ‘She said “sorry” just before she died.’

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  I shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

  Drew nodded slowly, savouring the word. ‘Dramatic to the end. Was she apologizing for killing the right person or killing the wrong person?’

  ‘She’s gone too far for us to ask, hasn’t she?’

  Carla

  Hard to hear but true. But I refused to be a victim, I had the smarts in those days. Or I liked to think that I did. Maybe I was mistaken, things that went on and shouldn’t have. There was that evil shit called Davy and he was evil. So yes DS Drew Murray, you are right. But what happens if a kid has no support and no help, no stability and well … nothing.

  Davy was tattooed with gold chains round his neck. He had a permanent suntan and spoke with an accent so weird I could hardly understand him. He was much older than Mum, he had money – or so he said – and lived in a flat, one of those conversions, an old villa split into four where the residents all knew each other. It was the beginning of the end for me, I was already eleven, maybe twelve. Back on the road with my mum after being settled for the summer in Kilaird. OK, the cooking was shit, Gran was annoying and Dad kept trying to pat me on the head but I did get to go up to the Italian House.

  Mum was trying to get herself together and Davy was trying to help her, or so it seemed. They would ply me with cheap vodka until I fell asleep and when I woke up I knew something had been going on.

  I told Mum and she went apeshit. At me. She liked Davy, said I was making it up.

  Sober she was fine but on the drink? Looking back, I felt I was in control because I knew. I was getting thinner, the social worker noticed that all was not well but it was only when I went into a coma that somebody really noticed and, at that point my dad came to the rescue and picked me up lock, stock and barrel back to bloody Kilaird and a sentence of death by boredom.

  I guess I was lucky, caught before I fell too far.

  Megan

  We spent an hour or so standing at the bank of the Benbrae mapping out in our minds who was where when the explosion happened. The whole exercise got us nowhere but left me with a vague feeling that Mum was being side-lined for Carla, again.

  Drew took a phone call and left, so I walked back up to the house, wondering if the call was personal or not. At the house Dad immediately said he would go to bed, he had a headache. Deborah was in the kitchen trying to tidy up the bottles and glasses after the funeral. It would seem the ladies from the guild had a bit of a taste for vodka. Anastasia was rolled up on a kitchen chair, Molly was outside the kitchen door so I presumed Heather was around.

  ‘Oh yes, she’s been doing the Florence Nightingale b
it.’

  ‘Do you think Dad’s OK?’

  ‘Nope.’ Debs fished for more information. ‘Heather was saying …’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That your mum was younger than your dad, by a fair way, and that maybe, you know, after yesterday, he’s realized that she’s not coming back. Maybe it has just hit him.’ She sat down across from me, ready for a chin wag. ‘She was kind of saying that your dad was left a laughing stock really, half the village sniggering at him behind his back, because she’d run off with a younger man. For a proud man that must have been hard to take. I mean, he’s been sitting looking at that Munnings, it reminds him of your mother, doesn’t it? The way the three shell seekers reminds him, and me, of you and Melissa and Carla. He never forgets Carla, you know.’

  ‘Nobody forgets Carla.’

  ‘I’m not saying those memories were fond but they are there.’ She smiled, recalling her daughter’s pixie face and wicked humour. ‘Heather has been helpful. Been a shoulder to cry on, but she always angles for a way to spend the night here. Do you think she had designs on your dad before your mum left?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, I’m learning that I have no idea what goes on in this house.’

  ‘I’ve always been shite with men.’ She took a slug of vodka from a nearly empty bottle. ‘But then they have always been shite with me.’

  The doorbell went, Molly gave a half-hearted bark.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I said.

  It was inevitable after the events of the previous night that Dr Scobie would come back, same face, different patient. I took him upstairs, not speaking, not listening to his chatter. I took him into the room Dad was using as a bedroom, I thought I could smell the lingering scent of Pomegranate Noir.

  Bloody Heather.

  ‘Ivan? How are you, I was a little stunned by the call. I got the first ferry over.’

  ‘Feeling better today,’ said my dad from the bed, swinging his legs round, ready to stand up. ‘You can leave us now, Megan.’