by Caro Ramsay
Dr Scobie sat on the other single chair, the one nearest the fire, listening to Tom McEwan, Carla’s dad, talk to Dad in the simplest most mundane of conversations, about the farms, the eagles, the damage to the banks after the surge of the tide and if the powan had survived. Tom had aged well, thinner, healthier, relaxed even. He was nodding in agreement as if the man beside him was not the man who had put him in jail. They seemed close. I knew that Tom had walked out of jail and into a job. Had Dad paid him off? Guaranteed him a position elsewhere? Of course he had.
I had a feeling, looking at them all, that the carousel was spinning again, round and round. The rooks coming home to roost.
Drew was dressed in a suit, his jacket open. Tie clipped back. There had been police all over the Benbrae yesterday, and all over the Tentor Wood today. I had seen the lights up in the wood overnight, figures in overalls walking around but from the talk round the house, the idea of the sewers being breached had stuck. Even Debs was saying it was as if the house was truly cursed.
‘Thank you for coming along,’ said Drew, softening it with, ‘but you appreciate that you know you didn’t have any option.’
Dr Scobie opened his mouth to say something, but Drew silenced him by lifting one finger. ‘I am here to update you with regard to the disappearance of Elizabeth Rose Nicolette Melvick.’
I looked round, wondering why everyone was in this room with us. This should have been Dad and I, and DS Drew Murray. Unless …
‘We discovered a body on the estate yesterday. We have now carried out a post-mortem, established a likely cause of death.’
I looked at him but he avoided my eyes. Why was he doing this so publicly?
‘The injuries are not consistent with an accident, nor does it appear that she took her own life. Her mobile phone has not been located.’
Heather moved to say something but then thought the better of it.
‘I’ve read all the statements including Deborah Sullivan’s who met Beth out at the lay-by. Then Heather Kincaid, you drove past her twice.’
‘And I only spoke to her once, I had money to hand in, from the church. So yes, I said a few words to her out the car window and on the way back, I waved. It’s quite simple and straightforward.’
‘Alistair Connolly saw her in-between as he was leaving this house, and Ivan, you said you were up at the house.’
‘I was. I was in the study.’
‘And Deborah is a witness to that.’
‘We went through all this before. Deborah and Alistair, then Heather then Deborah all saw me here.’
‘But that alibi really depended on where Beth was going and when she was intending on coming back. Or when she actually disappeared. So Tom, you had been released from jail the year before. You were on holiday from work.’
‘I wasn’t here though.’
‘But you were in the area, visiting your mother? Six-mile drive from here, three of them on a road that’s very rarely used.’
Tom nodded. Everybody in the room looked at him. ‘When I said here, I meant the house. I didn’t come near here.’
‘And Heather? That morning you had no alibi either, you went’ – he made quotation marks with his forefingers – ‘for a drive, after you left the Italian House.’
‘Beth was seen after I saw her.’
‘After the time you said you saw her.’
‘If you insist.’
‘And you spoke to Beth.’
‘Yes, as I said, then we waved and she texted me later. Much later. More than once. I told Ivan she had made contact.’
‘And we all stopped looking for her.’
‘She did text and say she was fine.’
‘I doubt that.’
‘She did,’ argued Heather.
‘No, I doubt it was her texting. That’s what I mean, and that itself is interesting, that a message was to you, not her husband or her daughters. How much did that hurt? How much did that diminish her in the eyes of those that loved her? It also reinforced the message that she had rejected them for another. Cruel. And untrue, as we suspected then, and as we now know.’
‘They were from her, she called the girls Mel and Megs, she … Well, they were from her.’
‘Or from somebody that read the rest of her messages and copied her style. Not rocket science.’
‘She kept her phone locked,’ I said.
‘And do you know her pin number?’
I nodded.
‘I rest my case.’
Heather’s face fell.
‘So we are looking for somebody that knew her really well. As all of you in this room did.’
I was watching Heather’s face, she was looking worried now.
‘How exactly was my wife killed?’ asked my dad.
‘Dad!’
‘Cover your ears, Megan, if you don’t want to know. You shouldn’t find that too hard.’
I glared at him, the bastard.
‘We think she was strangled after having suffered a blunt force trauma to the head. I presume she was on her own, her assailant had the element of surprise. So a female could have done it. There’s an interesting piece of local knowledge. The boathouse was being rebuilt at that time, the mosaic was under construction, as was the pontoon. All on the inside of the ten-foot-high boundary wall, the gate controlled by a keypad. There had been workmen about, people wanting to see the eagles, so you, Ivan, were enforcing the gate control system much more in those days than you do now. You had just had it installed. Beth was last seen walking away from the house on the other side of the wall, a long way from the mosaic and the boathouse. But this was the twenty-seventh of May 2016.’ He raised his eyebrows at my Dad. ‘The lay-by was just finished, because the eagles had come back.’
‘Yes, of course there had been cars everywhere, people waiting to see the birds so yes … we built the lay-by but I don’t see the relevance. It was finished by the time she went missing. Was that near where Beth was attacked?’
‘Deborah said that she had walked past that point, Heather, your statement, ten minutes later says she was back at the lay-by.’ Drew nodded. ‘She never got on a bus. Perhaps she stayed there knowing you would be driving back after a short word with her husband, maybe she didn’t want you to see where she was going, or who she was with or who was waiting for her, but it’s obvious that she either walked from the side of the road to the site of the mosaic, or she was killed and taken there. Remember that the timing is up for grabs if any of the three people who saw her on that quiet deserted road had killed her.’
Heather placed her hand on top of mine.
The room went quiet.
‘You think it was one of us, don’t you?’ I asked.
‘Megan? Yes I do. I’ve been watching your moods, your sleeping, your sleepwalking, the family think you are mad, but I think, Dr Scobie, even you must notice that she has got so much worse now she’s here, at home.’
‘Because of the stress of Melissa and …’
‘Or because she was being drugged. I had her cup tested, interesting mix of uppers and downers as my uncle would have called them. Easy to buy on the street. So yes, Megan, somebody in this house wanted you to be unreliable, dependant on the family.
‘Somebody who knew this place inside out, somebody who knew there was a new trolley in the boathouse. Somebody knew the number for the gate, somebody knew the clothes Beth would take, somebody knew exactly what to leave to hurt Ivan. The necklace and the wedding band.’
‘But there always was, in my day, a pull-along low-loader in the boathouse,’ said Tom.
‘We replaced it after, after the fire,’ added my father, his mind already painting the bigger picture.
‘That could have been used to take the body from the site at the lay-by to the boat and then across the pond. Or maybe all the way round, who knows? They could have used Melissa’s secret running path, it was still there, three years ago.’
‘And nobody noticed?’ Heather was dismissive, crossing her legs violentl
y, looking at her watch. ‘All that going on in broad daylight.’
Drew was unperturbed. ‘We have some photographs. The grass was four feet high at the side of the road. There was a ditch next to the wall, sloped at the side, left for drainage. It’s not there now, but it was there then. I have the pictures from my uncle’s camera taken two weeks before Beth went. I was thinking how I’d do it. Broad daylight and a body to get rid of.’
‘The police went through all this,’ said Dad a tension in his throat.
‘Until Beth supposedly texted and everybody stood down. You found her things in your bedroom, Ivan. We have been manipulated as much as you.
‘So how would I do it?’ Drew got up and started pacing. ‘Let’s say I’ve met Beth on that road, some altercation, I hit her, she’s unconscious. What do I do? Leave the body there where it will be seen? Strangle her, that’s quick, not difficult. Then I have a body. I remember the trolley. So I need to hide her until I can get the trolley. So I roll her to the side of the ditch, drag her along a little so there’s tall grass between her and the road, not the flattened grass that I’d created by dragging her. Then I’d take the wedding ring, the engagement ring, the necklace. Her purse, a plan is forming. Maybe later, when it’s dark, when nobody is looking for her, I get the trolley, put it in the ditch and roll her onto it. You can see from the pictures that the ditch is sloped at the end, easy to drag the trolley back up. I figured it would take somebody about seven minutes to get the trolley loaded and through the gate, behind the wall. Once on Melissa’s path nobody has a chance of seeing you. Risky, but it’s a quiet road on a Thursday. They could leave the body there, move it later, maybe after dark, and they return the wedding ring, the necklace etc to the house, pick up her passport, a few clothes, dispose of them. And you thought she had rejected you all. The text messages, they were cruel. It was humiliating so, like a true Melvick, it was brushed under the carpet and not spoken about.’
‘No, nobody could do that, spur of the moment.’
‘Who said it was spur of the moment. There’s a cunning mind at work here. Look at the big picture. Look at Beth. Look at Carla. The dog that had its throat cut …’
‘Marcie,’ I mumbled.
‘Marcie, maybe one person was responsible for it all,’ said Drew quietly, looking at us all.
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Heather. ‘You’ve been watching too much Agatha—’
‘Maybe, but she always names the guilty party. Usually in a room like this, I think,’ Drew said.
‘So why are we all here? Is somebody going to confess?’ asked Dr Scobie.
‘I think you should confess that you all had your reasons: Megan? Beth constantly chose Melissa over you. She was never really in your corner; she sided with Melissa who was always so much more …’
‘Demanding,’ I said.
‘Appealing,’ Drew retorted.
The door opened and Deborah came in, placing another pot of coffee on the table.
‘Deborah, would you say Melissa was more appealing than Megan?’ asked Drew.
‘Nope,’ said Deborah, shooting a look at my father. ‘They were different. You can’t choose one child over another.’
I thought it odd, the way she phrased it. I wondered if she and Drew were up to something, the way she had been sent in with the coffee.
‘Tom? Beth had put you in jail for something that certainly was not your fault but something had to be done. Heather, had you started coveting your friend’s life, her husband, her daughter?’
‘I had not.’
‘Yes, you had. It was right up your street for Beth to go away over the horizon and give you a shoe in. And Donald Scobie, the Melvicks asked for your help with Melissa and with Megan. Beth didn’t share the friendship her husband had with you. She didn’t like the way you had failed to help Melissa. She was the one who took them away from treatment and you were the one who benefitted, financially, when they came back. And Deborah, did you blame her for the death of your daughter? And then you suffered the indignity of them having the Melvicks help you out, all being lovely. But that must have hurt.’
‘Or,’ said Deborah, with a sigh, ‘maybe I was grateful for the chance to live here, near where my daughter died, with people who knew her.’ She shrugged. ‘I like being here.’
‘Yes, I know you do,’ said Heather, a concise bite to her voice.
‘I get paid to be here,’ Deborah snapped, moving her fingers as if she was flicking ash from her jeans.
I noticed she didn’t have her Ugg boots on.
‘Look, Carla was my daughter too,’ said Tom, hands out. ‘I had no truck with the Melvicks, I know what they did. I was guilty of what I was found guilty of. If I had been looking after the petrol as closely as I should have done, then Carla would still be alive. If I had stored the gas canisters properly and locked the boathouse, the explosion would not have happened. Whoever did what they did, they succeeded in killing my daughter because I turned my back.’
‘And now that you have had five years to think about it, who do you think tampered with the petrol that day? Who went into the boathouse?’
‘I have thought it through, again and again. I don’t know.’
Drew nodded as if this was the answer he expected. ‘We did find a lighter?’
‘Debs?’ said Tom.
‘Yes, it was mine, I was down there. The cops gave me it back.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it was not important.’
‘No, why were you down there?’
It was Tom who answered. ‘She had come down to say that Carla was fucking it up as a bridesmaid, and she was to behave. Debs thought she had the chance of a job here.’
‘I never said that.’
‘Norma said you did.’
‘Your ex-wife? Yeah, like she hung about, did she?’ I saw the side of Deborah’s mouth twitch. ‘The minute you were arrested, she was off.’
‘Why was Carla a bridesmaid anyway, Ivan?’
He shrugged. ‘It was one of those decisions.’
‘To help,’ said Heather, ‘in case Megan struggled with her hearing.’
‘So Megan has her friend foisted on her on her sister’s big day, sharing the glory of the bridesmaid and then that bridesmaid dies. What persuaded you to do that? What put that into your head, Ivan?’
Dad didn’t answer, his eyes were full of fury.
‘Was it the moment Carla came in through the front door, her and Megan looking like twins? How awful that must have been for you?’
‘Obviously Megan was top of the list of killing Carla. She’d outstayed her welcome, Melissa felt that also. She was driven away so quickly after the incident. It was a full week before she could be interviewed. You had no idea where your daughter was, either of them were. Did you, Ivan? It must have crossed your mind that one of them might be culpable?’
‘No, it didn’t, but we all know Megan suffers from mental health issues.’
‘Well documented Dissociative Identity Disorder,’ added Donald Scobie, crossing his legs ready to pontificate.
Nobody said a word, but I could feel my cheeks burn.
‘I thought we were here to talk about the death of my wife. If not …’ My father stood up, as did Heather, ready to walk out.
‘Sit down,’ said Drew, with quiet authority.
They did.
‘We had many ways we could address any issues we had with Carla, we are not savages,’ explained Dad.
‘Melissa was smashing up her bedroom and threatening to call off the wedding, she had a temper,’ Drew said.
I was getting angry now. I had just buried my sister and had found my mother dead. ‘Drew, Deborah had hurt her ankle, she couldn’t walk.’
‘Megan, you have to stop believing what people say. She claimed she had hurt her ankle,’ Drew corrected me.
I ignored him. ‘I went and got ice and came back, I think we would have noticed Melissa in her big white dress swanning around.’
‘But yo
u don’t seem aware that she had changed outfit by then, it was dark, and she reappeared at the time of the carousel. She was in white for the first few turns, after that, when the fireworks started, she was unaccounted for. She was driven away in a navy blue trouser suit.’
‘God, I had forgotten that. You are right.’ I nodded. ‘There was no sending away of the bride, the explosion had happened by then.’
‘Why would she harm Carla? She would be free of her. She was moving to London anyway.’
‘Because Jago is a bed-hopping, faithless little man who likes his flesh young, younger than Melissa was on her wedding day. That is the kind of man you let marry into your family, Mr Melvick. If you hadn’t been blinded by his money, you might have noticed. The question is, did Melissa know? Jago’s not going to say, is he? And it was only by good fortune, if it was good fortune, that Deborah sent you away for ice, Megan, otherwise you may have been in that boat with Carla. Except …’ He slid four photographs on the table, we all looked as he handed them out. To me, to Tom, to Dad and then to Deborah. It showed an old fat man, obviously dead, sitting up in bed, his glasses askew on his nose, a case number printed on the top right corner, the name Bernard Long handwritten in black capitals.
Heather gasped and pulled away, not able to look at it.
‘Who is this?’ asked my father. We all looked round.
Deborah didn’t appear to move, it was an effortless glide up towards the door muttering something about having had enough and going for some fresh air.
Drew caught her by the wrist, and as quick as a flash she bit him, and he let go, squealing. She was out the open window and away. Both Ivan and Tom got up.
‘Leave her.’ Drew shook his head, shaking his hand. He held up a finger. We heard the barking of a dog, then some extreme language. Drew walked over and closed the window, silencing the commotion outside. ‘We had a police dog on site. I hoped she would do that, I didn’t want to tackle her in here, God she has sharp teeth. I’ll need a tetanus on that. She’ll have money and clothes stashed somewhere on the estate, no doubt. Mr Melvick, you invited more than one devil into your house, neither of them were Carla.’