One Perfect Witness: a gripping psychological suspense

by Pat Young

  ‘Sixteen hundred and something. Never paid much attention at school, me.’

  ‘I thought Oliver Cromwell was English,’ said Seb, keen to show interest.

  ‘He wis. Sent here to keep us under control. Same old, same old.’ The man shook his head as he walked and said no more until they reached a flat-fronted building painted white and blue. ‘This is us,’ he said, pushing open the door.

  The room was small and filled with men, all of whom stood watching a TV screen above the bar. Round the edges of the room, elderly customers sat at copper-topped tables. Against one wall a slot machine flashed garishly, its jangly music competing with the television and a guy tuning a guitar in the corner. A shout went up from four men playing darts, ‘Ya jammy bastard!’

  Seb felt a tug on his sleeve.

  ‘Here, mate. Yer pint. Cheers.’

  Seb took the large glass, trying not to spill the dark liquid over the brim. ‘Cheers,’ he said, ‘and thank you.’ He raised the beer to his companion, then to his lips and drank. It was cool and slightly bitter. Very different from the blonde lager that was popular in France. Not that he was a connoisseur. A couple of bottles at his friend’s was about his limit.

  Seb swallowed till his thirst was quenched. As he lowered the near-empty glass, a loud burp escaped his lips.

  ‘Better oot than in, pal!

  Seb looked round at the man on a stool beside him. He could have been any age from thirty to sixty. His face looked not so much lived-in as wrecked by squatters, and his bleary eyes may once have been blue. Now they were red and rheumy, but they had a sparkle that told Seb he was being made fun of.

  He smiled, conscious that others were listening. ‘Pardon me.’

  ‘Ye’re pardoned. Could ye go a wee half?’

  The men laughed while Seb tried to work out the joke.

  The barmaid glanced over. She was wearing an outfit she must have borrowed from her granddaughter. Her face, plastered with garish make-up, was a kind face.

  ‘Josie,’ she said, ‘that’s no fair.’

  ‘Jist trying tae buy the bloke a drink.’

  ‘Ah, another drink?’ said Seb, understanding at last.

  ‘Aye.’ He touched the rim of Seb’s glass and tapped it twice with a grubby nail, making it ring. ‘But not a pint this time. A wee goldie.’ He enunciated each syllable as if speaking to a rather dim-witted child. ‘No comprende, amigo?’

  The barmaid crossed her arms and leaned on the bar. Seb tried to keep his eyes off the massive breasts that poured towards him like pink lava. ‘Josie’s asking if ye’d like a whisky.’

  Seb considered for a moment. Would it be rude to refuse a drink? ‘Thank you. I mean, please. Yes.’

  As it turned out, he had to refuse several drinks. After far too many pints and ‘wee goldies’ he made a promise to come back soon and began saying his farewells.

  He staggered home to his ‘digs’ with a good feeling about this Scottish adventure. So good he even considered calling his mother, till he remembered he’d no phone.

  That was last night.

  This morning’s a different story. Seb groans and buries his face in the pillow. Of all the days to be hungover, when he was so keen to make a good impression.

  If only he could sleep for a while. If only the damned seagulls would stop their screeching and screaming. Seb imagines them perched on every rooftop like a scene from an old movie he once saw. How can anyone sleep through that racket?

  He should get up and go. So what if he leaves the guesthouse early? The full Scottish breakfast, as described by his landlady when he checked in, holds no appeal this morning. Dressed in his last clean t-shirt, Seb packs up his gear, lets himself out of the guesthouse and heads to the seafront.

  Much though it hurts his head, the quality of the light is special, even though there’s no sign of the sun yet. The Island of Arran sits out in the bay, hazy and indistinct compared to last night’s glory. The water is millpond calm, lapping onto the sand in tiny wavelets.

  His new best friends in the pub claimed it’s an easy walk to the Heads of Ayr and their directions turn out to be straightforward. A pleasant stroll along the shore ends at a metal bridge over a narrow river estuary that’s swarming with swans and ducks. The Doon, he presumes. Keeping all houses on his left and his eyes on a ruined castle perched impossibly close to the edge of a cliff, he follows a quiet path that brings him out, as promised, at a road with a pavement along one side.

  He wonders what Brackenbrae will be like. None of the drinkers seemed to know much about the place, apart from one man. ‘Oor Joyce works up there. See the guy that owns it? A nutter.’

  ‘Thought yer wife liked working for him?’ said Josie.

  ‘Aye, she does, but he’s still a nutjob. Wait till you see it, Seb. An old farm, just ruins when they bought it. They’ve spent thousands doing it up and now oor Joyce says they’re trying to sell glamping holidays.’

  ‘Glampin? Whit the hell’s glampin?’

  ‘Camping, for folk that have mair money than sense,’ the barmaid replied, her smile replaced by a sour look that made it clear what she thought of glamping.

  Seb’s stomach gives a sudden churn and he can’t decide if the roiling is due to nerves or last night’s excesses. Hoping the nausea will pass soon, he stops and eases his rucksack from his back. He rubs his shoulders where the straps have been chafing through his t-shirt. He discarded his top layer earlier, the minute the early morning sun peeped over the eastern horizon to his left. But standing exposed on the road he feels a cool edge to the breeze and thinks about putting his fleece back on. Bizarrely, the breeze brings with it a heady scent of coconut from the yellow flowers of prickly bushes that start on the other side of the hedge and cover most of the hillside.

  He can’t be far away now. Follow the A719 heading for Dunure, he was told. Stay on this road till you pass a big holiday park on the right-hand side. Some of the guys in the pub called it Butlins but the barmaid put them right.

  ‘Last time it was called Butlins, my Jason was a wee boy. It’s Craig Tara now and it’s beautiful. Ah widnae mind a holiday there. In fact, ah widnae mind a holiday anywhere.’

  ‘Aye, well, it will always be Butlins tae me,’ said Josie. He then went into a description of a place where hundreds of people came from the city to live in rows of wooden buildings and eat together in huge dining halls.

  ‘Like a prisoner of war camp?’ Sebastien asked, causing another wave of laughter.

  ‘See you, son? You’re a pure tonic, so ye are,’ said Josie, and although Seb didn’t understand the words, he could tell it was a compliment.

  Smiling at the memory, Seb hoists his backpack onto his shoulders, wondering if he’ll ever make sense of the way Scottish people talk. Or the mess he’s left behind in Paris.

  3

  Brackenbrae Holiday Park, Ayrshire

  Monday 28 May

  My room’s still dark but I can tell it’s morning. Mum bought me a special blind last week to stop me waking up too early. A slice of light pushes in at one side, just enough for me to see Spiderman on the wall.

  Maybe I fell asleep for a wee while, but it seems like it hardly got dark through the night. Miss Lawson once told us about the lands of the midnight sun. Alaska, Norway, Finland and one more that I’m too tired to remember. It never gets dark there in the summer and people go bonkers. If every night was like last night, I’d go bonkers too.

  The Thomas the Tank Engine clock beside my bed says it’s half past five. I want a new clock, with a proper alarm that will get me up when I start high school, but Thomas was a present from Gran and Pops, and they’re dead now. Mum thinks I want to keep it forever but seeing it makes me feel like a little kid.

  I’m going to put on the same clothes I wore yesterday. Supposed to put dirty clothes in the basket and Mum sorts out clean ones, but today I’m up too early.

  I lift a corner of the mattress. It’s heavy to hold up and the gun seems much bigger than when I hid
it. As if it’s been growing like Jack’s beanstalk while everyone was asleep. Everyone except me.

  Mum lost her temper last night. Big time. I could hear them from the top of the stairs.

  It was way past my bedtime. But I needed to know what the fight was about, the one that started at dinner. I always sit near the top of the stairs, so they don’t know I’m listening. It wasn’t hard to work out they were still fighting, even though I could tell they were trying to keep their voices low.

  ‘Richard, we’re up to our necks in debt.’

  ‘But if we want to compete with that place along the road, we have to invest in Phase Five.’

  Mum made a kind of snorting noise.

  ‘Vivienne, what’s happened? You used to share all my dreams.’

  ‘Your crazy dreams.’

  ‘Maybe so, but you always believed in them.’ Dad sounded like he was nearly crying. ‘You’ve planned and schemed with me, laboured till your hands bled, even gone without new clothes, all to turn our dreams into reality.’

  I couldn’t hear if Mum said anything.

  ‘What’s changed, Vivienne? Have you fallen out of love with Brackenbrae?’

  ‘Of course not. But I’m tired of seeing you work yourself into the ground, year in, year out. I’m bone-weary, Richard, and the summer season hasn’t even started. I look ahead and all I see is long days where everyone can enjoy Brackenbrae, except us. I see weeks on end where you’ve no time for your son, far less for me.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Yes, it is. But what I’m really sick of is worrying about money. We can’t keep on spending funds we don’t have.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it? Is that all you can say every time I mention money? I do worry. It’s my job to worry. One of us has to. Have you any idea how much we owe? How big our debts are? Go on, take a wild guess.’

  Dad didn’t know the answer.

  ‘It’s not only the vast amount of debt that worries me, Richard, although that’s terrifying enough to keep me awake at night. It’s the fact we’ve sunk everything my mum and dad left me into the business, and your inheritance too. Lifetimes of savings, all gone. If we lose Brackenbrae, there will be nothing left to show for their hard work, not to mention our own.’

  ‘Now you’re being silly.’

  I hoped he was out of punching distance.

  ‘Don’t you dare call me silly.’

  Knew that was a dangerous thing to say.

  ‘I don’t mean you’re silly, I meant that’s silly talk. How can we lose Brackenbrae? It’s ours.’

  ‘It’s not ours, Richard. The debts are ours, and if the lenders demand their money back, or the business fails, we’ll be left with nothing.’

  ‘Oh, surely not nothing? You’re overreacting.’

  I couldn’t believe it. Would he never learn? Even I know you don’t say that to Mum. She must have given him one of her scary looks because the Jolly Joe voice had gone when he spoke again.

  ‘Anyway, why would the business fail? It’s a great business. That’s why they gave us a loan in the first place.’

  ‘Loans, Richard, loans. Plural. What you don’t seem to understand is how much things have changed since we first started out. Haven’t you heard? We’re in a recession.’

  ‘Yes, I’m aware of that, Vivienne. My head is not completely buried in the sand. I know these are difficult economic times, but don’t you see? That’s good news for us.’

  Mum interrupted. She tells me off for that, but I could tell she was losing her patience. Her voice was getting all high and shouty. ‘What the hell are you talking about? How can a recession be good news?’

  ‘When people have less disposable income, they choose cheaper holidays, don’t they?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Richard! Be realistic. When people have no disposable income, they don’t take holidays, they stay at home. There couldn’t be a worse time to be in the tourist trade.’

  Silence from Dad. He was learning.

  But Mum wasn’t finished. ‘If they’re looking for cheap holidays they go to places like the one along the road. Where they get a huge pool with six flumes and amusement arcades with a thousand fruit machines and cheap booze and bingo and a choice of bars and umpteen restaurants where they can stuff their faces with burgers and chips and guzzle cola all day long. They don’t go glamping, paying over the odds to stay in a yurt or a glorified garden shed.’

  Oh dear, that was rude.

  ‘They’re log cabins, Vivienne, blockhouses, actually. Also, when the tower is refurbished, we’ll be able to offer visitors a unique experience, the chance to sleep in a sixteenth-century tower.’

  ‘That’s if we’re not bankrupt or divorced by then.’

  Divorced? Like Oliver’s mum and dad? There was a long pause. Was Dad as shocked as me? His voice sounded so sad and tired when he spoke, I hardly recognised it. ‘What should we do then? Give up on our dream? Sell Brackenbrae and walk away?’

  ‘That may be the first sensible thing you’ve said for years. Yes, maybe it’s time we considered selling up and moving on.’

  ‘Sorry, Vivienne, I can’t do that.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure I can do this any more.’

  Dad said something I didn’t hear and she shouted at him, well, screamed more like, ‘You’re obsessed with this place. You’ve no time for me, no time for Charlie, no time for anything but bloody Brackenbrae.’

  There was a horrible silence. It seemed to last forever. I sat there wishing one of them would speak.

  Mum did, finally, but in a wavery little voice, so soft I could hardly hear her. ‘Will you do one thing for me? Can you please, please forget about Phase Five?’

  After a long time, Dad said, ‘No, Viv. I can’t do that.’

  ‘Well, I’m not prepared to go on like this.’

  It all went quiet. Then the EastEnders music started. I crossed my fingers. Really hoped they were having a cuddle on the sofa. I uncrossed them again when I heard one of them slam the back door. I rushed to my room and peeped out. It was Dad, and he was heading for the bar.

  That meant I had plenty of time to take his keys and get into the gun cupboard.

  4

  Ayrshire, Scotland

  Monday 28 May

  Seb has been getting used to the vagaries of Scottish weather, but he still can’t believe how quickly it can change. The sky over Arran has altered in the few minutes he’s taken to get his breath back. White fluffy cumulus clouds that looked charming against the blue sky when he left Ayr have turned grey and unpleasant. Like his face, if his mother is to be believed. That’s what she said about a month ago. It was probably a joke but you never knew with Mother.

  ‘Sebastien, you should see your face. It’s as dark and surly as a thundercloud. Come on, son, give me a little smile.’

  Seb wanted to oblige but she was really getting on his nerves.

  ‘Mother! You can’t keep me wrapped in cotton wool forever.’ He folded his arms and slouched against the kitchen worktop.

  She tipped her head, as if trying to look puzzled. ‘I’m sorry, Sebastien, I just don’t understand. You don’t need a holiday job. We give you a generous allowance, don’t we?’

  ‘Yip, guess you do. But that’s not the point. I’d like to earn some money of my own.’

  ‘Tell you what. Father will be home in an hour. Why don’t you speak to him over dinner about one or two days a week with the firm? You can learn the ropes and earn a few euros at the same time.’

  She patted his arm as if the matter was settled and began to pull at a loose thread on his cuff. Seb moved away, beyond her reach.

  ‘I want to go to Scotland. My English teacher says it’s a brilliant thing to do before we start uni. He spent the summer in Edinburgh before he did his degree. Really helped his English, he says.’

  ‘Edinburgh? I’m not even sure they speak English in Edinburgh. Besides, your English is already excellent. As it sh
ould be with the small fortune we’ve spent on summer courses.’

  ‘I know that and I’m grateful, but a fortnight with a family in Essex isn’t the same. Mr Lagrasse says we need to immerse ourselves in the language and culture. You know I’ve always wanted to go to Scotland.’

  ‘But it’s so cold and always raining.’

  ‘I don’t care about that. Anyway, I’ll be going in summer, to the south-west coast where palm trees grow, like on the Côte d’Azur.’

  ‘When you say, “I’ll be going”, you make it sound like a foregone conclusion.’

  ‘It sort of is. I’ve found a job on a campsite.’

  ‘They won’t pay you properly. Everyone knows the Scots are mean.’

  ‘They’ve got to pay a minimum amount by law. They call it the living wage.’

  ‘Tell me, Sebastien, what would this job involve? Do you have any idea? Bearing in mind that none of us has ever set foot on a campsite, far less holidayed on one.’

  ‘Don’t turn up your nose like that.’

  ‘Well, really, son, who can blame me? Call me a snob if you will, but I can hardly think of a worse place to spend one’s summer. Can you imagine, all those creepy crawlies in your tent, having to share showers, not to mention toilets, with other people. No, thank you, not if it were the last holiday in the world.’

  ‘No one’s asking you to go, Mother.’

  ‘Please tell me you won’t be cleaning toilets?’ She grimaced.

  ‘It’s not cleaning toilets, it’s organising the Kids Club, except they spell it with two Ks and a Z, apparently.’

  ‘What does organising a kids club with a badly spelled name, involve?’

  ‘Please, can you forget about spelling and grammar for once and listen?’

  Mother pretended to zip her lips closed. That annoyed him too, but he carried on, trying to explain.

  ‘It’s basically about providing activities for children, a couple of hours a day. There will be two club leaders, me and a girl. I’ll get full board and lodging, one day off every week, loads of free time, and money. It sounds great.’ He didn’t mention the fact that he was also expected to be the lifeguard for the pool. The less she had to complain about the better.