Strangers at the Gate

by Catriona McPherson

  Chapter 32

  I was done with secrets. Really done this time. When the police arrived at Sonsie and Adam’s house – Speccy and Baldy, I was glad to see – I told them everything.

  Starting with what was lying on the floor of that huge empty room at Jerusalem.

  ‘Yes, dead,’ I said. ‘Very, very dead. And no bloody way it’s suicide. Lovatt’s cut to ribbons.’

  ‘Drink your tea, dear,’ Adam Webb said. He had tried to get a nip of whisky down me but my hangover was still raging so he’d settled for sweet, milky tea.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I don’t know everything, but I know this. They died in the kitchen at their house. I saw them there. I know! I know! Charge me with it, if you like, but just listen. Then they spent a few days at Bairnspairt – Shannon Mack’s cottage. They were in her bedroom. She burned incense but it was still pretty bad. They left there yesterday to go where they are now. But Shannon can’t have taken them because she can’t drive.’

  ‘Hasn’t got a licence, you mean,’ said Speccy, grimly.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Can’t drive. Bad eyesight and, anyway, no car. There’s no way she would have set off up that dark road in the low light. I don’t know who moved them but it wasn’t Shannon. I don’t know why she agreed to have them in her house. Or who she agreed with. Paddy.’ I blurted it out. ‘Oh, bugger it all to Hell, it’s my husband, Paddy. It must be. He must have known. He’s Lovatt Dudgeon’s son.’

  ‘Your husband?’ said Baldy, and shared a look with his partner. ‘Have you had a fight, hen? Have you been under any strain lately?’

  ‘Look,’ I said, struggling up from where I was reclining on the couch with a pillow under my knees. Sonsie had manhandled me into position, then put such a heavy quilt over me I felt trapped. ‘I know this sounds absolutely bloody mental. I’m sorry. But my husband, who goes by the name Paddy Lamb, is actually Simon Dudgeon. And the little boy in Simon Dudgeon’s grave is really a child called Sean Mack. Lovatt and Tuft killed him.’

  The two police pulled back and shared another look.

  ‘I know!’ I said. ‘But you don’t need to believe me. You can check the DNA. You can test Paddy. And you can test the little boy if you disinter his remains. It’s all true.’

  ‘Right,’ said Baldy. ‘Well, I know I shouldn’t say it, but when you’ve spent days looking for bodies it’s nice to find out for sure that they’re really dead.’ He tapped his teeth with the pencil he had pulled out to make notes with, notes he hadn’t taken because he didn’t believe anything I’d said. ‘So who sent the email saying they were in Brazil, then?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘Sorry. No clue.’

  ‘CID’s problem,’ Speccy said. ‘And they’re going to want to talk to you, hen. We need to get on with recovering those bodies. Get a team in. Get a doc in. Disturb the fiscal on a Sunday.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There’s a rat eating her neck.’

  That got them moving.

  ‘Can we drop you at home?’ said Baldy. ‘Not leave you here swearing your head off and mucking up the upholstery?’

  ‘My family’s at the pub,’ I said. ‘With Shannon.’ Although I didn’t know which pub because the text telling me was in my crunched phone on the floor up there.

  ‘I don’t think—’ Baldy began.

  ‘Me neither,’ I said. ‘I need to go home and talk to Paddy in peace. Find out what he’s got to say for himself.’

  We were halfway there, right through the town and up the Widdershins cut, when I had to ask them to pull over so I could puke in the verge.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, when I got back in. ‘It’s not even the bodies. I was hammered last night. I’ve been feeling like shit all day.’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ said Speccy. ‘Anyone that gets out this car before they start throwing up is ahead of the game. You’re a lady.’

  ‘I’ve never heard anyone in a cassock swear so much, except an Irish priest, though,’ said Baldy. ‘You’ve changed my mind about the Church of Scotland today. I thought youse were all like the Webbs there.’

  ‘The Webbs are okay,’ I said. ‘I’m a bad example.’

  Then we were swinging into the Widdershins gate and I scrambled out.

  ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ Baldy said, before he slid his window up and made the tight turn to drive away. I trotted after him and banged on the roof. The window slid down again.

  ‘Mr Sloan,’ I said. ‘He needs a Social visit when you get a minute, by the way.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Speccy. ‘Why are you telling us and not the local authority?’

  ‘Trust me. Send a family liaison officer round tomorrow.’

  Then they were gone.

  Paddy was in the living room and I could tell from his face it was a hangover, not a migraine.

  ‘How did it go?’

  I blinked a couple of times, winding back through this nightmare day. ‘Oh! The sermon? Not great but it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Not great how?’

  ‘I was distracted by the sudden thought that Tuft and Lovatt weren’t dead.’ I waved his objections away. ‘So I went for a walk to try to think it through and … Prepare yourself for a shock, Paddy. I found them.’

  Paddy stared at me. ‘Alive?’ he said at last.

  ‘You know they’re not alive,’ I said. ‘You need to stop trying to fool me. I’ve already called the police to go and see to the bodies and I told them – the police – what happened on Monday night. I didn’t tell them you went back, but only because I forgot. I’m not covering for you any more. I’m done. I’m out. If that means we’re over, we’re over.’

  ‘Where’s everyone else?’ Paddy said. ‘Have they gone back to Edinburgh?’

  ‘Are you trying to work out if you’ll be interrupted while you finish me off too?’ I was almost completely kidding. ‘Well, I’m sorry, but they’re out for lunch in a pub in town there. With Shannon. So I wouldn’t.’

  ‘You don’t think much of me, do you?’ Paddy said.

  ‘I think you’re lying to me. I just don’t know what about.’

  ‘I could swear on a Bible,’ Paddy said, looking around as if he expected to see one.

  ‘I bet you could,’ I said. ‘Are you working with Shannon?’

  ‘Shannon? I met her less than a week ago.’

  ‘Mr Sloan? It’s his area of expertise after all.’

  ‘Finnie, what are you talking about? I moved here for a good job. A great job. And not a bad job for you. Okay, I got talked into living in this cottage and I steamrollered you. But when we got here last Saturday it was to start a new life together, you and me. It went off the deep end pretty fast and I’ve been clinging on by my fingernails ever since. It would have been good to think you were in it with me. I shouldn’t have crapped out of seeing the bodies on Tuesday. I know I should have told you they’d gone when I went back for that bloody cactus. I get all that. I really do. I shouldn’t have been so fired up by the will. I get that too. I disappointed you. And – at least – I should have thought about my mum instead of myself when everything started coming out yesterday.’

  It was the first thing he’d said that really meant something to me.

  ‘But I didn’t know he was my dad and I didn’t know he was going to kill himself. Honestly, Finnie. I swear I didn’t know.’

  ‘He didn’t kill himself,’ I said.

  ‘Jesus! Why nitpick now? I didn’t know Tuft was going to kill him and then herself. Is that better?’

  ‘No one killed themselves. And neither one of them killed the other. Tuft couldn’t have done what was done to Lovatt’s body. And he couldn’t have done it to himself.’ I squeezed my eyes shut but the tears seeped out anyway. Had I really wanted to find them at the graveyard? Had I really wanted to see them again to drive away the vision in the kitchen? If I could get that vision back now I’d be happy for the rest of my life. The black butterfly on Lovatt’s back instead of the octopus jumble of his face? The blood in her mouth instead
of the rat on her throat?

  ‘He couldn’t have done it to himself,’ Paddy said. ‘But she could have. Of course she could. A sharp enough knife, and if she was lucky and didn’t hit a rib. Why not?’

  ‘I’m not talking about what killed him,’ I said. ‘I’m talking about what was done to his body. His face was slashed. So much hatred it must have taken.’

  ‘Sounds like a wife to me,’ Paddy said. ‘Don’t look at me like that. That’s what they say. It’s only crimes of passion that make people try to obliterate each other. Hit jobs are clean kills.’

  He was talking as if this was a movie, some designerviolence fantasy.

  And he was wrong too. ‘Setting fire to people is a pretty good way to obliterate them,’ I said. ‘And that wasn’t passion.’

  A look of such pain crossed Paddy’s face then, the like of which I had never seen, and he caught his breath in a sob. ‘That wasn’t to obliterate them,’ he said. ‘He loved them. His wife and his little girl. He wanted to save them pain. He must have killed them painlessly. I need to believe that, Finnie. The fire was to hide the fact that the boy wasn’t me.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Right enough. The little boy wasn’t you.’

  Then a shiver passed over me, as if I’d been doused in ice water. I’d made a mistake earlier when my mind had spun away from my words during the sermon. ‘We lie and do not act in truth,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Paddy frowned at me.

  But I didn’t answer. I was thinking better now – clearer and sharper – and finally it all made sense. Lovatt hadn’t just pretended once before that someone alive was dead. He had switched a body. One boy for another. Now I knew why that image from the kitchen wouldn’t leave me. The bright red cuts in her hands and the knife in his back.

  ‘The black butterfly,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said Paddy.

  He’d done it again. That old man had his face cut to ribbons not out of hate, not from passion, but to hide his features in gore so dreadful no one would look for long. He was the same age and height and weight as Lovatt Dudgeon and he was wearing Lovatt Dudgeon’s clothes. No one – not cops, not lawyers, not friends and neighbours – no one would doubt who it was. No one would call for forensics to prove it. The fiscal would save the public purse the price of a post-mortem. But Lovatt Dudgeon – just like Simon all those years ago – was gone.

  Chapter 33

  I was waiting in Shannon’s cottage when my dad’s car slowed at her gate. She came trotting up the path through a fresh shower of rain and let herself in. It was four o’clock and black as hate outside. I was sitting in the shadows and I spoke before she saw me.

  ‘How did he persuade you?’

  She started and, when she turned, she was trembling.

  ‘How did Lovatt Dudgeon persuade you to hide the bodies in here until the police were finished searching?’ I said.

  ‘He didn’t,’ Shannon said. She came and sat in the opposite armchair, the other side of the cold fireplace. Rain was dropping on the ash in the grate, and the air was rank with the smell of it. ‘Of course he didn’t. He couldn’t have. I would never.’

  ‘Shannon, I know it was you. Jesus, I accused Paddy! I suspected my own husband. But I know it was you.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Shannon. ‘Yes, that’s not what I mean. I’m not denying it. I’m saying I couldn’t have been leaned on to hide bodies,’ she said. ‘Bodies plural. I thought I was agreeing to one body. Tuft’s body. I was going to keep it here until the cops had found her suicide note and then he was going to take it away.’

  ‘Lovatt.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘Because she killed his wife and daughter. That’s what he said to me. She masterminded it. He didn’t know. That’s what he told me. He didn’t work out what had happened until I contacted him and asked about Sean. And he wanted revenge on her.’

  ‘He … What? He heard you out and then he suddenly had this incredible revelation about his current wife killing his first wife?’

  ‘And daughter. And stealing his son. It sounds mad now, but I believed him.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t Tuft just kill both children?’ I said. ‘Why keep Simon alive and turn him into Paddy and give him to Elayne?’

  ‘Insurance,’ said Shannon. ‘So if Lovatt ever busted her she’d have a hold over him.’

  ‘But he organised the adoption,’ I said.

  ‘Unless she could forge his signature.’

  ‘And he gave Paddy a job.’

  ‘Unless she persuaded him.’

  ‘And why was it important for the body to be hidden for a while? Why move it here and then move it on?’

  ‘He said the murder would be harder to solve if it wasn’t found straight away. And also if it turned up somewhere the police thought they’d checked, they’d be on the defensive and less likely to make trouble.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Right. So … what happened? What went wrong?’

  ‘I peeked,’ Shannon said. ‘I opened the door.’

  ‘Jesus. When?’

  ‘Monday night. Because one of their phones rang. I thought her phone was ringing – because I thought she was alone in there. So I went in. And there were two of them. Tuft and … I thought it was Lovatt. I thought he’d pulled a double-cross on me. Landing me with two bodies so I’d go to jail for murdering them.’

  ‘But that’s crazy,’ I said.

  Shannon held up a hand and went on. ‘The phone was in Lovatt’s pocket. I stopped it ringing – it was just a junk call – and I used it to email the office and tell them the story about Brazil. That’s where he’d told me he was going. I was so scared, Finnie. I didn’t know what to do. So I bought some time, sending that email so no one would look for them. Then I went up and faxed the papers. Like Lovatt had told me to.’

  ‘How long did it take you to realise?’

  ‘I woke up in the middle of Monday night and it was like someone had whispered it in my ear,’ Shannon said. ‘If that’s Lovatt…?’

  ‘Who moved the corpses.’

  ‘Exactly. I realised the old man – his face, Finnie!’

  ‘I’ve seen it.’

  ‘I realised he was a decoy. Lovatt had lied about the plan. The story was never “Tuft killed herself because her husband left her”. The story was “Two old people killed themselves”.’

  ‘And that got you thinking?’

  ‘Slowly. Very slowly, I pieced it together. You helped. Telling me Paddy had been enticed down here, had been given a partnership, was Lovatt’s heir. He was the right age.’

  ‘And you worked out that Lovatt’s plan was to install Paddy, fake his own death and hook it?’

  ‘You’re quick,’ said Shannon. ‘It took me days to get there. But eventually I got there.’

  ‘By Friday,’ I said. ‘That’s why you went to Simon Dudgeon’s grave.’

  ‘To see Sean at last after all these years,’ she said. ‘Yes. And while I was there, he moved them again. Two more bodies in Jerusalem House.’

  ‘He was taking a hell of a chance,’ I said.

  ‘Not really. Paddy wouldn’t open his gob, would he? Mr Sloan would hardly. I couldn’t.’

  ‘What about the family in the other house?’ I said. ‘What are they called? McGann?’

  ‘Mann,’ said Shannon. ‘That house has been empty for years. Those bikes never move. There’s weeds in the sandpit and dead leaves in the trampoline. Didn’t you notice?’

  I shuddered. ‘That’s beyond creepy,’ I said. ‘What’s the point of that, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe they kept it in case they needed to buy off someone else, like they bought off Mr Sloan and you two. And me.’

  ‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘he must know we saw the bodies. He must have been in Widdershins on Monday night when we went back. It was minutes later. He must have realised we might crack.’

  ‘He’s pretty good at judging what people will hide,’ Shannon said. �
��He’s never called it wrong before now.’

  ‘But why?’ I said. ‘Where did it all start? Was Denise Dudgeon even ill? Did she actually have Huntington’s? Was little Vanessa really tested? Or did Lovatt just want rid of them? Was he just a monster? A monster who met another monster.’

  ‘He is a monster,’ Shannon said. ‘He might have tricked Tuft the same way he tricked me. Maybe she found out on Monday night that her life was a lie. Maybe she had a split-second as the knife went in.’

  We had been ignoring the sirens. Two police cars had flashed past, headed for the gate lodge and Widdershins’ drive. Now one came back the other way and stopped outside.

  ‘They’ve probably come for poor old Mr Sloan,’ said Shannon, but I didn’t think so and something about her saying it bothered me.

  ‘Why would Lovatt think I’d keep the secret?’ I asked her, as the police-car door slammed shut outside.

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘But how did he know? It was such a fluke. Yes, Paddy and I were in too deep before we’d taken a single step, but how did he know? And why didn’t he lock the door?’

  ‘Ninety-nine people out of a hundred finding their bag in the vestibule nice and handy would have left it at that. But you had to go and be the one.’

  ‘That’s me,’ I said. ‘Hang on, though. How did you know where my handbag was?’

  ‘You told us all yesterday.’

  I nodded. She was probably right and, anyway, that wasn’t what was bothering me. ‘I think the cops are coming here,’ I said. ‘Not to the Sloans. The Sloans,’ I repeated. Was that it?

  Right enough, a plain-clothes cop was walking up Shannon’s path, talking into his phone.

  ‘I can’t face them,’ Shannon said. ‘Go and let him in, Finnie. I just can’t face it.’

  ‘Wait!’ I said. ‘I knew something was wrong when my dad told me how long she’d been dead. Shannon, you said you’d met Mrs Sloan.’

  But she was hurrying into the kitchen and didn’t answer me. I went to the door.