Strangers at the Gate

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘None of them moved to Brazil?’ I said. But that wasn’t it either.

  Then it came to me in a rush. Muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy. The online forums. That really was a good place to look for someone who’d been missing for years.

  ‘One of them’s real,’ I said. ‘There was at least one adoption through St Angela’s years ago. Two, actually.’

  ‘Shannon!’ said Paddy. ‘Finnie, get her on the phone.’

  ‘I already am,’ I said, dialling her number and trying to think what to say.

  I hung up before I had punched in all the numbers, though. ‘I’ll go along and tell her to her face,’ I said. ‘We can’t just summon her, like a witness for the prosecution. This is real for Shannon. This is potentially very real. Paddy, tell them while I’m getting her.’

  I unhooked his waterproof coat from its peg and shoved my feet in my big socks into his wellies. Then I left, pulling the door closed behind me. It was true what I had said about Shannon. If the story of St Angela’s was chapter after chapter of adoptions that hadn’t happened and children who’d disappeared forever, then the lead she believed she had on finding her brother had just evaporated.

  The rain was getting determined now. I put my hood up, my head down, my hands deep in Paddy’s coat pockets, and scurried out between the gateposts and along the puddling lane to Shannon’s cottage. It was wetter than you’d think it could get when there were trees so close on either side. Shouldn’t they give some protection? Or did the rain collect on their branches and funnel down even harder into the gap between them? It felt that way: a curtain of rain I had to push my way through, only to find another wave of it and another. I blew upwards to get rid of the droplet on the end of my nose.

  There were so many different kinds of cold in Simmerton. There was the middle-of-the-night bone-chilling cold, when Paddy’s muttering disturbed me and getting up for a pee was such a torture, getting back into bed so luxurious. Then there was the crisp morning chill that felt as refreshing as splashing your face. This soaking, seeping cold was something else. It was airless and lifeless, making me fight for each breath, as though I was gulping something heavier than oxygen down into me and pushing it out again. And all the smells of the forest seemed to grow plump on this dead seeping cold: the wet earth; the sharp stink of pine; the bad-breath belch of everything slowly breaking down under there in the dark of the trees. My stomach rolled. Mushrooms, Shannon had said. Bags of rotting leaves, Mr Sloan had said. Don’t ask, Paddy had said. Don’t make me tell you.

  I heard the dogs before I saw them, high-pitched yips and busy panting. Mr Sloan was just closing his front door, juggling the keys, the leads and the poo bags. Making a proper job of it too, turning the mortis lock and trying the handle to check it was locked.

  ‘Hiya,’ I called. ‘They keep you at it, don’t they?’

  The terriers nearly pulled him off his feet trying to get to me.

  ‘Best thing about owning a dog,’ he said. ‘Gets you out of the house twice a day, come rain or shine. Where are you off to?’

  ‘Just being neighbourly,’ I said. ‘Going to pop in on—’

  ‘You can’t come in here,’ he told me, his voice rising. ‘Myna’s making jam. She can’t be disturbed when she’s got jam boiling.’

  ‘Her ankle’s all better then?’ I said.

  ‘Even I’m banished on jam days,’ he said. ‘My, but it’s worth it. Rhubarb and ginger from our own rhubarb. I’ll drop you in a pot when it’s labelled up.’

  ‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t she mind being locked in?’

  ‘She doesn’t like to be disturbed when I’m not there,’ he said. ‘So don’t you go thinking—’

  ‘It’s Shannon’s I’m headed for,’ I said. ‘Have a nice walk.’

  ‘That I will,’ he said, though he still looked rattled.

  ‘Did you catch the gardener up at Widdershins?’ I asked. ‘You were going to see if he knew about this Brazil trip.’

  ‘I’ll need to get on,’ was all the answer I got. ‘Bracken here’s got her legs crossed and I don’t like them going in the garden. If you’ll excuse me.’

  I let him go and watched him until the dark swallowed his pale anorak and the two little straw-coloured blobs of dog. I hoped it really was Mrs Sloan’s choice to live as quietly as she did.

  But I needed to forget Mrs Sloan and think about Shannon. She was definitely in. The old windows had steamed up with condensation and the lamplight behind them was a bleary glow. The chimney was smoking too, the rain turning the sweet smell of burning wood into something rank.

  She answered the door before I’d even knocked. ‘Saw you coming,’ she said. ‘Come in, come in. Take that wet coat off.’ She sniffed and swallowed. I didn’t know if she had a cold or had been crying: those sunglasses hid so much.

  I sniffed too, coming from the soaking cold into the fug of the woodstove. The incense was even stronger, and the curry smell was sweeter, with something eggy underneath it. But it faded when we were in the living room with the door closed. Shannon sat down and picked up the lumpy knitting on the round needle. It was six inches longer than it had been yesterday and I thought what a cosy life it was, living in this snug little cottage, with the radio burbling and her knitting. She should have a cat. Or a couple of dogs, like Mr Sloan, as well as her chickens. Something to curl up with that she didn’t kill for the pot. Her couch was clear today, the bedding folded neatly on a stool in the corner. I had a flush of guilt for embarrassing her and spoiling such a harmless little treat as a duvet and DVD habit.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  I hadn’t realised how long I’d been sitting there in silence. When I started speaking, what came out was as big a surprise to me as it was to Shannon. ‘Paddy was adopted out of the care system, like I told you. And he kept it quiet. So did his mum. And then he got this partnership pretty young. Too young, if we’re honest. And too easily, after kind of a rough patch. Then I got offered this job. That was a bit of a turn-up too. Like you said. Remember? That deacons were usually in troubled parishes. Not places like Simmerton. So, when I tell you what I’m going to tell you, don’t think I’m not involved in it somehow. I’m not meddling in your business. Or not yours alone. It’s my business too.’

  ‘Have you found something out?’ Shannon said. ‘About Sean.’

  ‘Indirectly. Just listen and then you tell me.’

  I relayed everything Paddy had discovered, and what Abby made of it. Shannon did listen. She took her glasses off once and wiped her eyes, but she listened without interrupting.

  ‘What’s so special about us two, then?’ she said, when I had finished. ‘If most of the adoptions fell through before the placements were complete, how come I got my lovely mum and my happy home? What’s it all about, Finnie? Do you see what the pattern is? Because I’m damn sure I don’t.’

  I shook my head. ‘We’re going to have to hand it all over to the cops anyway.’

  ‘No!’ said Shannon. ‘Won’t that mean Dudgeon, Dudgeon and Lamb closes down?’

  ‘Probably,’ I said.

  ‘So Paddy loses his job?’

  ‘Yep, and my job’s a goner anyway.’

  ‘Don’t you want to try to … weather it?’ she said.

  I stared. Wouldn’t she crawl over hot coals to get answers? Why would two strangers’ jobs count in her reckoning?

  ‘Anyway, is it definitely a police matter?’ she said.

  So that was the problem, was it? Shannon didn’t think her life would stand up to official scrutiny. I could hardly judge her for that.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘There’s corporate irregularity going on, if nothing else. St Angela’s is as bent as a three-pound note, obviously. And if we can prove that Lovatt and Tuft have gone for good—’ I stopped myself. It’s unsettling the way the stories we tell ourselves take hold. I was halfway to believing what everyone else believed, forgetting what I’d seen with my own eyes. ‘If they’ve really gone,’ I went on
, ‘the cops will be able to start looking at the financial irregularities too.’

  ‘You think Tuft embezzled all the funds that were raised?’

  ‘They can’t have charged the adopters,’ I said, ‘can they? Not if they never handed over any kids.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Shannon said. ‘Maybe the fee’s for hours of work, regardless of outcome. Like a private detective.’

  ‘But if it’s a charity, do they actually charge at all?’

  ‘I don’t know that either,’ she said. She was silent for a moment. ‘What’s it all about?’ she went on at last. ‘Most scams, you can see what the scam is. What’s the scam here? What’s the point?’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s got to be something to do with what happened to Lovatt’s family,’ I said. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence that someone loses his kids like that because of a parent that can’t deal with her health problems and theirs, then spends the rest of his life helping kids with serious health conditions find new parents. Or pretending to.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Shannon. Then she stopped talking and gave me a look I couldn’t have fathomed with a week to ponder it. ‘Don’t laugh,’ she said.

  ‘Unlikely.’

  ‘And don’t tell anyone I said it.’

  I flicked my dog-collar. The starch made a stiff ping and she smiled.

  ‘That’s definitely what happened?’ she said. ‘It was definitely Lovatt’s ex-wife – whatever her name was – who killed the kids and herself, and not that Lovatt killed all of them?’

  Immediately, I could feel the pull of it. Whoever it was had had a motive, and revenge is as good a motive as any. But what about the decades in between?

  That was bothering Shannon too. ‘If we’re right, though,’ she said, ‘we’re saying he atoned all these years by running an adoption agency.’

  ‘Fake adoption agency,’ I said. ‘Which makes no sense.’ I wished it did because the other idea tugging me towards it was worse by far. ‘There’s another possibility,’ I went on at last. ‘But I don’t want to talk about it.’

  Shannon quirked her head, considering me. When the idea hit her, her mouth fell open a little and her lip trembled. ‘You mean,’ she said, in a small voice, ‘he started out by killing his wife and children because they had Huntington’s and got a … taste for it?’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ I said. ‘Angel of Death. If you were that kind of monster, getting access to children no one wan—’ I couldn’t say it. ‘Well, setting up a fake adoption agency would be a good first step.’

  ‘But it’s not possible.’ Shannon’s voice was so soft now I was basically lip-reading.

  ‘No,’ I said, feeling the relief flood through me and leave me tingling. ‘Of course it’s not. There has to be a plainer answer. That’s why I came to you. Because you don’t fit any of the worst patterns, do you? Lovatt did the legal work for your adoption and here you are.’

  ‘But it would explain something.’ She was on her feet, stowing her knitting in a bag by her chair and kicking off her slippers. ‘It would explain why they’ve scarpered.’

  I nodded. It would explain why whoever it was had hated Lovatt and Tuft enough to kill them too. We needed to have their bodies discovered, get the police onto this and all of it would unravel. And when whoever it was was found – if it was the relative of some lost child – they’d probably get a therapist, a bit of community service and a round of applause. I know that’s what I’d vote for if I was on the jury.

  I was deep in this daydream when Shannon dropped the bomb. She was pulling on her boots and winding one of her long scarves round her neck, changing her indoor cap for a waterproof hat with a brim all round.

  ‘I can think of an even better way to connect his own kids dying with all those other ones,’ she said. ‘Better than the Angel of Death thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He got rid of his ex-wife and two kids that were doomed to Huntington’s?’

  ‘The story is she killed herself and them.’

  ‘Bear with me. So he sets up an adoption agency to place children who’re hard to find homes for. Disabled children. Unwanted children. They go through all the motions and … he sounds the parents out.’

  ‘Sounds them out about what?’ I said, even though deep down I thought I knew.

  ‘A permanent solution,’ Shannon said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No one would do that. No one would even think that in their darkest moment.’

  ‘You sure?’ Her mirror lenses showed my face to me, owlish and stupid-looking. ‘You telling me you’ve never seen anything in your life that rotten?’

  My head was starting to pound. I’d seen something only days ago that was worse than I could fathom but violence is quick. What Shannon was hinting at, with a half-smile on her face, was slow and careful and had to be impossible.

  ‘What about the parents who said no?’ I asked, hating how desperate my voice sounded. ‘Some of them would be bound to say no.’

  Shannon was nodding, the smile spreading across her face. ‘Early on, I’m sure. While they were finding their way. Then they’d get a feel for it, don’t you think?’

  ‘But Paddy didn’t find anyone.’

  ‘From the early years – when more kids really did get adopted – there’s more chance of the names having changed. Divorces, deaths, kids renamed in their new families. It would be easy for a few successful cases to slip through Paddy’s search. And then later on, when Lovatt and Tuft got better at identifying clients who’d be interested in their service – their real service, I mean, not the cover story – of course there aren’t any records. Of course those people changed their names.’

  I closed my eyes, sick and dizzy just from the thought of it. I could remember Tuft saying how she approved of the morning-after pill, but not of scans and testing. I’d thought she meant that Lovatt’s children had deserved a life. Maybe she meant their supply was drying up. She couldn’t, though. No one could. It was unthinkable.

  ‘Why are you grinning?’ I said, when I finally opened my eyes again

  ‘Because here I am,’ said Shannon. ‘Even if it’s true, here I am. Living, breathing proof that my birth mother said no to Lovatt’s offer. And that means Sean is still alive.’ I tried to smile back at her. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked me.

  I hadn’t realised I was rubbing my temples. ‘Just a headache,’ I said. ‘I need some fresh air maybe.’

  I stood up and started buttoning myself back in, pulling my hood down close around my face, to scurry the few hundred yards to the lodge. Then I did what I had done the last time. Confused by the nooks and crannies of that cluttered little cottage, with its draped curtains, I went to the wrong door. I swear it was an accident. But I saw the flash in Shannon’s eyes, as I turned the handle.

  ‘It’s locked,’ she said. ‘Lot of expensive equipment.’

  ‘For your online video-streaming business,’ I said.

  ‘Look, I know we’ve been thrown together,’ Shannon said, ‘but when you get right down to it, I barely know you.’

  ‘Hey!’ I said, hands up and stepping back. ‘Don’t let the dog-collar fool you. I don’t care what you’re doing in there. I’ve got bigger things to worry about than anything behind that door.’

  Chapter 20

  We were silent on the way back. The rain hammered down, relentless, loud on the hood of Paddy’s coat. It was running down the backs of the sleeves too and getting into the pockets. I could feel the trickles of cold on my knuckles and dug my hands deeper into the nests of receipts and tickets and rewrapped gum shoved in there. Every coat and jacket Paddy owned, trousers too and the door pockets of the car, his briefcase, his bedside table, everywhere he went there was a flotsam and jetsam of ring pulls and wrappers, tangerine skins and price stickers. I felt a helpless wave of love for him as I took my left hand out of the pocket to push the front door open and saw a little white plastic net dangling from my hand, snagged on my engagement ring. I plucked it of
f and dropped it into the junk-mail bin by the coat pegs.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ I said, taking Shannon’s coat and rubbing her arms, halfway to a hug but partly because of the miserable weather. ‘Come in and sit down.’

  I could tell from their faces that Paddy had filled them in. Julie had that soupy look some women get whenever they hear a sob story. It didn’t sit well with her over-plucked eyebrows and her drawstring mouth. And Abby was straining, like one of Mr Sloan’s little dogs, so eager to start interrogating this new witness. She might only be a trainee but she was a born lawyer. She was just like Paddy, who used to reduce me to tears arguing about whatever there was to argue about. He had probably taught me to tussle with agnostics better than any theological training I’d ever get. I went over to him, hugged him hard and dropped a kiss on his head.

  ‘So, you’re a genuine St Angela’s client?’ Abby said. Shannon nodded. ‘And has Finnie told you you might be the only one?’ Another, smaller, nod. ‘Would you be willing to let us see your paperwork, if you’ve got it? Compare it with all the other records we’ve found?’

  ‘What will that prove?’ Shannon said.

  ‘Clutching at straws,’ Abby admitted.

  ‘Look, we’ve come up with an idea,’ I said. ‘It’s a horrible idea, just to warn you, but it might explain things. Here goes. Did Lovatt’s first wife – what was her name? – really kill herself and the kids or did Lovatt do it and get away with it?’

  There was a moment of silence all round.

  ‘Denise,’ said Julie. ‘No, he definitely didn’t do it.’

  Shannon slumped. Paddy had shoved a mug of tea into her hands and she bent her head and sipped at it.

  ‘You’re sure?’ I said.

  ‘Positive,’ said Julie. ‘No question. They were on the rocks by that time. Because Denise had had them tested – completely illegally – and Lovatt couldn’t forgive her for it. But when she killed them he was out of the country, precisely so there was no chance he could find out and stop her.’

  ‘He was out of the country?’ I said, feeling the theory collapse.