Strangers at the Gate

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘What’s this?’ said the baldy cop.

  I hesitated. How did he not know? Then I realised that if anyone was going to tell the police about wrongdoing at the adoption agency it would have been Paddy, and there was no way Paddy would have opened his gob. Since he’d read that fake will, he’d lost his mind.

  ‘Mr Waugh didn’t say anything?’ I asked the cops. ‘St Angela’s is the charity Tuft raised funds for and Lovatt acted as lawyer for. And – actually – we found out that the Dudgeons are CEO and finance bod for it, too, and the rest of the board are ghosts. We think it was a scam.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ said Speccy. ‘We were wondering what they had to run away from, however it is they’ve run. A long con’s exactly the sort of thing that makes folk consider suicide. Surprised you never mentioned any of this, Mr Lamb.’

  Paddy was staring at me as if I’d stripped to my knickers and given them a lap dance.

  ‘I’m still going through the papers,’ he said, in a strangled sort of voice. ‘I’ll need to get some advice from the Law Society about what to do with them. I can’t just turn over confidential documents, but Finnie’s right. There’s a lot of irregularities need looked into.’

  ‘Confidentiality doesn’t trump criminal investigation,’ said Baldy. ‘Have you got these papers here? We can take them away with us and hand them over to Financial.’ He was patting his jacket pockets. ‘Got any evidence receipts on you?’ he asked his partner.

  ‘In the car,’ Speccy said, jerking his head.

  ‘They’re at my work,’ said Paddy, which was a total lie. Both bulging briefcases were right there beside the couch where he’d put them when we cleared off the table to set it and I knew he was working not to glance at them. His face was frozen and his eyes, trained on the cops’ faces, were beady. But either they couldn’t read him because they didn’t know him, like I did, or they couldn’t read him because they weren’t detectives. For one reason or another they bought it.

  ‘No point getting you to open the office on a Saturday when you’re obviously busy,’ Baldy said. ‘Someone’ll drop round on Monday morning. None of this is going anywhere, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Paddy said. ‘And anyway, from what I’ve seen, there’s no criminality. My wife should have picked a better word than “scam”. There’s certainly no embezzlement.’ I started to protest and managed to bite my lip, ending up letting out no more than a squeak. ‘If I come across anything that hints at where they might have gone, to do whatever they did, I’ll get straight back to you.’

  The coppers seemed to be satisfied with that. They put their hats back on, Velcroed their hi-vis jackets shut and went on their way.

  ‘What the hell, Paddy?’ I said, as soon as the door was shut behind them.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Contradicting you in front of them. I know.’

  ‘Not that!’ I said. ‘Who cares? I meant what the hell are you doing lying to the police? They’ll see for themselves on Monday when you hand the stuff over.’

  ‘But it’s true,’ he said. ‘I was up last night going through it all again. It didn’t make sense to me that they would be so careful in some ways – faxing through my forms, getting your signature on the will – and so reckless in others. Why make sure and have an heir if your estate’ll be frozen and all your assets confiscated for financial wrongdoing?’

  ‘And?’ I said. The two lots of gravy were cooling and congealing and the clock was against us. ‘What did you find? Why didn’t you wake me?’

  ‘Small print,’ he said, ignoring the other question. ‘The logos and banners were all St Angela’s.’ He went over to the couch and started scrabbling through some of the files in one of the briefcases. ‘Look.’ He held an elderly deed-of-covenant certificate. It was a photocopy of a photocopy, the print thick and fluffy, ghosts of paperclips and staples visible in the top corner. ‘See what I mean. This is all headed up in the name of St Angela’s, but the small print lays out a commitment to donate’ – he squinted at the form – ‘no less than eighty-six per cent, after admin costs, to a charity supporting adoption and fostering in Scotland or overseas. Which is what they did. St Andrew’s usually and one or two others. It’s all above board, Finnie. Not just deeds of covenant. The receipts, the accounts, any wee contracts they had to draw up for liability and all that. The whole bit. And they managed more than eighty-six per cent most years. Especially recently, when all the admin was done online with downloadable forms.’

  ‘When did you see all this?’ I said, heading back to the kitchen. I wanted to shake him, but I had to keep on with getting the table ready.

  ‘Last night, like I said. I sat up.’

  ‘And why didn’t Abby notice it?’ I walked back through to the living room with the salt and pepper to put near my dad’s place. He’d douse everything before he took a bite but, to spare my feelings, he’d choke half of it down before he asked for ketchup.

  ‘I think she was the same as me. The shock of the news stopped her scrutinising the documents as thoroughly as she should.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Right, of course. So what does it mean? Is it an answer to anything? Because it strikes me as just another layer of mystery.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Embezzlement makes sense!’ I said. ‘Stealing money and then hopping it to Brazil, or stealing money and then killing yourself when it all catches up with you. Both of those make a horrible kind of sense. But this is crazy.’

  ‘But that’s good.’

  ‘How is “crazy” good?’

  ‘Because it doesn’t make any sense. It raises so many questions. And, as long as there are questions to be answered, there’s a chance the answers will make everything clear. Everything.’ He was sounding manic again. ‘And there’s something else.’

  I waited.

  ‘Like I said, I was going through papers last night. Papers I hadn’t looked at for years. Adoption papers.’ He waited, staring hard at me.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Your adoption papers?’

  ‘I found them years back and made copies. The name didn’t mean anything then, of course, but it jumped out at me this time. Do you see?’

  I had to swallow before I could speak. ‘St Angela’s handled your adoption?’

  He smiled at me but I couldn’t smile back. My head was swimming. ‘It’s nearly lunchtime,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, sorry. We’d better get on with—’

  ‘Paddy!’ My voice was a shriek. ‘I’m not talking about the bloody gravy. How could you find that out last night and not tell me till now?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, so calm I wanted to scream. ‘I shouldn’t have waited. But now you know, what do you think?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, heading back to the kitchen because, despite what I’d shrieked at him, I needed to crack on. And all of this would be easier to say if I wasn’t looking him in the eye. ‘So this couple met after one of them had lived through a massive tragedy: the death of his wife and their two little children. They moved to the town where the deaths occurred and set their lives up as if they were dedicated to preventing any such thing ever happening again. They’ve spent the whole twenty-five years they’ve been married fundraising for real adoption charities – except in a pretty underhand way – and pretending to take care of the legal side of a fake adoption charity that they’re using as cover. Except that this fake adoption service has actually overseen at least three adoptions: Shannon’s and Sean’s. And then yours. Sean disappeared. Shannon tracked Lovatt down and was more or less given a house. You were headhunted to join his practice. Your wife was headhunted to join the fundraising organisation. The Dudgeons immediately kill themselves, making it look like murder and putting us in line for a major inheritance, except that the will is a piece of crap. The fake charity is wound up. The new partner is given free rein. Oh, and maybe they didn’t kill themselves because someone’s moved the bodies and said they’ve gone to Brazil.’

  ‘There’s two things wrong with your round-up,’ Pa
ddy said. He was taking plates out of the cupboard to warm in the oven. If we gave Elayne a cold dinner plate she wouldn’t even get as far as chewing her meat and spitting it out again. She’d just push wrinkles into her congealing gravy and shudder.

  ‘Oh?’ I thought I’d done a good job.

  ‘One: the will’s only a piece of crap if you won’t confirm that you witnessed it.’

  ‘Wrong,’ I said. ‘You can’t confirm a lie, Paddy. You can only shore up a lie with another lie.’

  ‘And that’s your problem, is it? So holier-than-thou all of a sudden?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Look, I can’t suddenly say I witnessed the signature of someone I’ve been going around saying I’ve never met. The plan went wrong, Paddy. I get that it’s infuriating, when you can see a good wedge slipping through your fingers, but the plan went wrong. We weren’t supposed to go back. We weren’t supposed to see them. And they weren’t supposed to be moved. Obviously I was meant to go to work on Tuesday morning saying we’d been round there for dinner and signed a lot of papers and then when the will was found … Bob’s your uncle.’

  ‘Only you forgot your bloody bag!’

  ‘What?’ I was staring at him. ‘That was an accident. Because I’d had some wine and I had things to carry.’

  ‘And then you had to go snooping inside the house!’

  ‘I was worried about them!’ I said. ‘There had been those noises of someone crashing around in the trees.’

  ‘It was a deer.’

  ‘It had a torch!’ I shouted. ‘I was worried because all the lights were on and the door was open but they weren’t answering the bell. Oh, no! That’s my dad’s car.’

  We had both heard the growl of his engine as he pulled up and we both saw the sweep of his headlights across the front windows.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Paddy said. He sounded like a kid who’d broken an ornament. ‘I’m sorry I blamed you. I just don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, going to the front door. ‘It seems fairly obvious to me.’ I threw it wide and opened the golf umbrella that was sitting on the step. ‘Shannon’s mum and birth mum are both dead. Her brother’s missing. She was a kid. You were a baby. Lovatt’s dead. Tuft’s dead. There’s only one person left who could answer any of our questions about adopting through St Angela’s.’ I stepped down and held the umbrella up as the passenger door of my dad’s car opened. ‘Elayne! Welcome! Come away in out of this weather. I’ve got something I want to ask you.’

  Chapter 26

  But my own mum distracted me. It was easier when I lived with her and saw her every day. Back then it only hit me hard very occasionally, when I dreamed of her old self, her foulmouthed, sharp-witted bossy old self, sparring with my dad and keeping all of us in line, then woke up to the reality of her slumped, grey and slow, in her dressing-gown by the window with her sippy-cup of warm tea. When I moved out, only visiting once a week, sometimes I’d forget how she was and I’d find myself in the lift on the way up scraping the picture of her out of my head to ditch it, forcing the truth in so my face didn’t fall when I saw her. And if I managed to fix a vision of her at her very worst – dirty hair, dead eyes, clumsy fingers – I might even be cheered to see her if it was a good day, if she raised a hand to wave and smiled at me. Now, seeing her after two weeks when I’d had so much to think about and she’d hardly crossed my mind, I knew my face fell and I had to blink tears away.

  Paddy took his mum inside and I waited while my dad undid her seatbelt and held his hands out for her. She emerged from the back seat as though from hibernation, creaking and blinking, and she tottered a bit to get her footing.

  ‘Mammy!’ I said, surging forward and wrapping my arms round her. ‘Thanks for coming down. You’ve no idea how much it means to me. How are you doing? Do you need a wee lie-down?’

  My dad was beaming, standing with his hand under her elbow, and when I drew back I saw why. She was stiff from the journey but she was having a spectacular day. Her eyes were twinkling and her mouth was steady. ‘No, I’m fine, Finnie doll,’ she said. ‘I dozed in the car. What with the soundtrack.’

  I laughed and squeezed her. If she was bitching up Elayne she really was on top form.

  ‘So this is it, is it?’ my dad said, coming in for a hug and kissing me just in front of my ear, like he always does, leaving it ringing. ‘What’s it like in daylight?’

  ‘God, I know,’ I said. ‘I think I’m getting rickets after a week. Come on in and get settled.’

  My dad opened the boot to unload all the gifts he’d brought as I ushered my mum inside.

  Elayne was already installed on the end of the couch with her slippers on and her bag tucked down by her feet.

  ‘Come and sit by me, Mary,’ she said. ‘Get yourself warmed through. I had to have the car cold in case I turned queasy.’ It was a habit of Elayne’s to give a lot of information about her digestive system. And her menopause.

  ‘Oh, I think I’ll stick to the kitchen, see if Finnie needs a hand,’ my mum said. She took her coat off and hung it up. Elayne’s eyes narrowed as she saw my mum take her fag packet and lighter out of a pocket. She sniffed the air, her nostrils pinching.

  ‘There’s a shed, Mam,’ I said. ‘Just out the back. I’ll show you.’

  My dad was unloading carrier bags onto the worktops, shoving aside the things I’d placed where I needed them. ‘Turnips,’ he said, dumping a muddy load of them, the size of footballs, in the sink. ‘Brilliant turnips this year.’

  ‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘Still at the allotments, then?’ He shared one with a couple of pals. I think it was just a way to get a break from my mum. They spent more time sitting in the potting shed with the racing papers than they did digging and weeding but this harvest was undeniable and there was no way he’d bought such misshapen turnips in a shop.

  ‘Well, it’s a break for him,’ my mum said. ‘I don’t mind.’ She had propped herself in the kitchen doorway, blowing the smoke out into the rain and ignoring the fact that most of it curled in again. ‘Ashtray, Finn?’

  I gave her a saucer and watched as she flicked ash onto the step anyway.

  ‘So how are you doing?’ I said, as my dad went through to show Paddy the bottle of homebrew he’d brought with him. ‘You seem well.’

  ‘I am,’ my mum said. ‘I think I’m turning the corner. I’m feeling better than I have for years.’

  I was stripping the green bits off a cauliflower and breaking it up and I bit my tongue to keep from answering. It took years for that first black cloud to lift off her. Whether it was her hormones changing, or the doctors finally getting her prescription right, or maybe just time doing what people are always saying time does best, when I left home she was having good days and bad days. Good weeks sometimes. We’d all take those days back now. Because after them came the time when the cloud lifted enough, lightened enough, for her to get ambitious. She started beating herself up about how long she’d been down. She read some guff about positive-thinking and pomegranate juice and start mucking about with the fabulous, miracle, genius pills that had saved her life and brought her back to us. That first crash was worse than the darkest days after the miscarriage. She was completely gone, my dad on compassionate leave, a nurse coming in to bathe her. She even went into the Royal Ed for a bit. They got her drugs balanced and she came out, shaken, grateful and living each day. None of us ever dreamed it would happen again. Now we didn’t dare to dream it would ever stop. And this – her saying she’d turned a corner, better than she’d felt for years – was how it started every time.

  ‘I’ll just see if Elayne needs anything,’ I said. I ignored my mum’s look, not really an eye-roll. It wouldn’t even register as a look to anyone who didn’t know her as well as I did. To me, it spoke volumes: one mum chumming along out in the kitchen and the other sitting like the Queen of Sheba on the couch waiting to be run about after.

  ‘Sherry, Elayne?’ I said. She had that pinched expression on her face
because Paddy and my dad were off somewhere and she’d been left sitting on her own.

  She looked at her watch and one of her eyebrows lifted.

  ‘Wee glass of sherry and a bit of shortbread at half eleven,’ I said. ‘Nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘You didn’t need to go making shortbread,’ she said. Cow. ‘Oh, that reminds me.’ She leaned over to the side and had a rootle in her handbag, sitting tidily by her side. ‘Rocky Road bites and caramel wafer bites, you said?’

  ‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘What do I owe you?’

  She muttered and fluttered but she took the receipt out of her bag and slipped it into my hand. And when she saw the shop-bought shortbread she was right back to her sunny mood again, thinking how embarrassed I must be. None of it was conscious, I was sure. And it didn’t even bug me any more. I thought eventually, as the years rolled by, it would make me love her.

  My mum joined us just as I was prising the cork out of the sherry bottle. ‘Not for me, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Not with my medicine. One of the reasons I’m looking forward to ditching it.’

  ‘Nice wee set-up,’ my dad said, easing himself into the middle seat of the couch and making Elayne’s mouth purse up again. ‘As long as they don’t work you to a standstill. What like’s the boss, Paddy?’

  Here it was then, already. I had hoped to have the starter down them and the main course served before we got into it. Paddy drained his sherry glass. It was tiny, one of the set his mum had given us for an engagement present. I was such a crawler.

  ‘Well,’ he began. We had discussed how to broach it. ‘It’s all been a bit fraught, to be honest. It turns out it wasn’t just chance that got me this partnership right here and right now. The managing partner had a pretty specific reason for installing me. It’s quite a tale.’

  Elayne put her bit of shortbread down on the tea plate she’d insisted on – my mum held hers in her hand and my dad had put his on his trouser knee. My heart flooded with love for them both. ‘Why shouldn’t you get a partnership?’ she said. ‘It’s no more than you deserve.’