by Jane Renshaw
‘He’s forensically aware. He’d know that diatoms and so on from the water in the lungs can pinpoint the body of water in which a person drowned. Oh, he’d know all about that. He also has an “alibi” for the evening in question, provided by his brother. For what that’s worth. You’ll need to look at that too.’
She glanced at the man at her side, striding along cheerfully, talking about red deer and how dangerous the stags could be in the rutting season, as if this were an added attraction.
‘Before they fight, stags size each other up by walking parallel to each other. “Oh look, he’s walking alongside me,” observes the unsuspecting Londoner. “How cute.”’
‘So what’s a Londoner to do, if actually attacked by a marauding stag?’
‘Attempt a selfie?’
She grinned. ‘I do seriously need to know. I don’t suppose trying to outrun it is a good idea?’
‘Generally not – although you did say on your CV that you’d been on the sprint team at university.’
‘That was then. Now, I’m more of a bumbling-round-a-marathon type of runner. I doubt I could compete with an irate stage.’
‘Best not to try. Just back off slowly. And if that doesn’t work... climb a tree?’
‘At least there’s plenty of them.’
The path sloped up and curved round a rocky outcrop and then she was standing looking down at a grassy track and a stream and a clearing in the trees, which contained a lawn and a vegetable garden and, nestled behind a low hedge, the cutest cottage she had ever seen.
It was like something from a storybook.
Many-paned windows and bargeboard-trimmed gables and stone mullions, but all on a miniature scale. To the left of the wide blue front door was a bay window of dressed stone, and above it a gable with stone detailing and a little window in it. On the other side of the door was another window and above it a little pointed dormer in the roof.
A hobbit house!
‘Oh, it’s lovely!’ she exclaimed. ‘This is Pond Cottage?’
Grinning, he indicated the wooden sign on the gate, pulling from his pocket a collection of keys on a string with a brown paper label saying ‘Pond.’
Inside was just as charming. There was a tiny stone-flagged hall, and to the left a sitting room with a window in each of three of its walls – one of which was the front-facing bay – and a hearth with a plain wooden mantelpiece and a wood-burning stove. It was furnished simply but cosily: an inviting, chubby sofa and armchair in oatmeal linen loose covers, tweedy throws and cushions, a fluffy rug, an old oak sideboard, a little wooden chair and a pouffe. A TV sat on a three-legged table in the corner. There was a big log basket and a small wooden barrel with cones in it, and above the fireplace a watercolour of a summer field, two men and a woman pausing in whatever agricultural work they’d been doing to drink from a rustic pottery flask. The back wall was panelled, if that was the right word, with tongue-and-groove planks, like a floor, and painted white. The other walls were wallpapered in a cream paper with a barely visible honeycomb pattern on it, with a tiny pale grey feather in the middle of each cell which you couldn’t see unless you were close up to it. The impression from a distance was just of a subtle texture, a softness. On the floor, there was a big square carpet with a tweedy pattern which filled most of the room, the waxed floorboards just visible between the edges of the carpet and the high skirting boards.
Unexpected, to say the least.
She had imagined very basic living conditions: a battered coffee table with beer can rings and the scars of takeaway spillages; oily stains on the carpet and soft furnishings; no attempt made to create an ‘ambience’.
‘This is gorgeous.’
‘It’s all right, isn’t it?’ He’d gone to the mantelpiece and was looking at a little bird – a turkey? – made out of a cone, with wire legs and a shaped twig as its neck and head. He picked it up; turned it over. ‘The place was a bachelor establishment for years, so you can imagine the state of it. It’s been “made over” by Lorna Beattie, who has the shop in Kirkton. Sells knick-knacks and so on.’
‘Oh – I think I maybe saw the shop as I drove through the village. Next to the general store?’
‘That’s the one. She’s recently branched out into interior design. Seems to be rather good at it.’
So all traces of John, anything incriminating he might have left behind, had been removed. Looking around her, she felt a little shiver run up her back. Anything pushed under a rug, under a mattress, to the back of a kitchen cupboard... It would have been found. Had the place been gutted with exactly that aim in mind?
‘Kitchen through there,’ he said, and she realised that he was waiting for her to precede him. These unfailing good manners were exhausting to deal with.
The kitchen had another bloody Aga in it, and this time she didn’t see an electric cooker. A scrubbed pine table, antique pine chairs padded with gingham cushions, two windows, one front and one back, with wide windowsills with cushions on them, this time in a faded roses pattern. But then – hooray! – she spotted the only piece of kitchen equipment on which she was an expert.
A microwave oven.
‘The Aga’s oil-fired, so no stoking required,’ he was saying. ‘Heats the radiators and the hot water.’ He opened another door into a little back hall. ‘Bathroom...’ With a flagstone floor and an old enamelled bath. No doubt wonderful period features, but she didn’t like to imagine it in winter. ‘Extra heating in the form of a heated towel rail,’ he said, correctly interpreting her expression. ‘Not ideal having the bathroom downstairs, but these old cottages...’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘Back door...’ He opened this with another of the keys on the string. ‘Garden’s mainly to the side of the house.’ Opposite the back door was a collection of sheds, behind which the trees of the forest pressed, branches skittering in the breeze over the roof of what seemed to be a shed for logs. It was full of logs, neatly stacked. Had John done that? Had he spent a summer day stacking logs in preparation for a winter he would never see?
Next to the bathroom was a tiny bedroom with a single bed in it. From the back hall a steep staircase led up to a claustrophobic little landing. Even when he stood in the centre of it, away from the eaves, Hector’s hair brushed the ceiling.
‘It really is a hobbit house,’ she said.
‘It’s certainly not built for the modern human. Watch your head on that doorway.’
There were two sweet bedrooms, with brass beds and Victorian chests of drawers and botanical prints of ferns and flowers. ‘The Victorian version of a fitted wardrobe,’ he said, opening a tongue-and-groove door to reveal a hanging space.
‘So what’s happened to the bachelors?’
‘One of them’s moved in with his girlfriend, one’s got alternative accommodation, and one contrived to get himself drowned in the pond.’
He might have been talking about a minor accident, a slight inconvenience.
‘Oh!’ She didn’t have to feign shock.
‘How he managed to do so is beyond me.’
‘But –’
‘Liked a drink, did Chimp. That was what he called himself – Chimp. Tells you all you need to know about the chap, I’m afraid.’
There had been no alcohol in John’s bloodstream. He must surely know that.
She descended the stairs ahead of him carefully. ‘That’s terrible.’
‘You’re not someone who believes in ghosts and ghoulies, I don’t suppose: you’re not likely to start seeing poor old Chimp’s unquiet spirit slopping about in the bath or the sink or –’ A chuckle ‘– the toilet bowl?’
It was as if everything had slowed down, her feet on the steps, her eyes scanning the stairwell in front of her to send a series of freeze-frames to her brain: that little knot in the tongue-and-groove panelling, the dried glob of cream paint caught inside it; a crack in one of the panes of glass above the back door; the sun through those panes highlighting gouges on the old pitch pine of the bathroom door where s
omeone had kicked at it.
It was as if what he’d just said, the cheerful callousness in the pleasant, amused baritone, had jerked her back into the world as it really was, the world that had been waiting for her while she was off living in a parallel fantasy version of it.
‘So, do you like what you see?’ came his voice from behind her.
She wheeled round to face him. ‘What?’
The little back hall was suddenly far too small. He loomed over her, too close.
How could she ever have thought him charming? How could she have felt any sort of meeting of minds with this man? So much for her famous ESP. He obviously really was some sort of psychopath. And she had been within a whisker of falling under his spell.
DCI Stewart wasn’t unreasonably obsessed. He wasn’t seeing something that wasn’t there. He was one hundred per cent right about Hector Forbes.
She backed up, feeling behind her for the wall; pressing her hands to it to steady herself. Surely he must see that she was shaking? Surely he must see the shock in her face, in her eyes?
‘Sorry, unfair to pressure you.’ His lips just barely lifted at the corners; it was mostly the eyes, she realised, those soft brown Mr Darcy eyes, that gave his smile its power.
‘Oh, no, that’s okay, I – I’d love to take the job.’ She backed into the kitchen. ‘It’s – a lovely cottage. I’m sure I’d be very happy here. I think I included the details of my referees in my last email?’
‘Ah, yes, your references.’
Her references. Coppers, both of them, primed to provide Claire Colley with glowing references regarding her hospital corners and raspberry pavlovas.
He waved a hand. ‘In my experience, references aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. If you want it, Claire, the job’s yours.’
‘Thank you,’ said Claire Colley, and smiled, and straightened her spine, because at last it was here for her to put on, her chameleon skin, it was here waiting for her when she needed it most. She was Claire Colley, and Claire Colley was delighted with everything she’d seen – the cottage, the big house, her future employer. Claire Colley nodded happily. ‘I do want it. Of course I do.’
And as she smiled into his soft brown eyes, as he smiled at her, the Bristows were back in her head, their mocking smiles and voices and hands, and she welcomed them, she welcomed them in as she made a silent promise to this man who was, fundamentally, just like them:
I will do this.
You will never hurt anyone again, because I will do this.
I will bring you down.
DECEMBER
9
Claire couldn’t feel her toes. She was wearing her good boots and thick tights and the same wool skirt she’d worn for the interview, and a cardigan over her jersey top, and her wool coat and a scarf and gloves, but she was still freezing. The ground was furry with frost so thick that she’d thought at first it was snow. The skeletons of the trees by the path were outlined in it, sparkling white but also, in a million tiny points, all the colours of the rainbow. The conifers were a deep evergreen backdrop, sweep upon sweep of frond-like branches untouched by the frost except for a lacy scalloping, here and there, defining their shape.
In the pinky glow of the late winter dawn, it was like an illustration from a fairytale.
Magical.
There wasn’t a breath of wind, so the trees were completely still. Her boots crunched on the frozen leaves layering the path.
Would the pond be frozen?
She could see it, a sheet of silver, through the trees.
It was quarter to nine. Hector Forbes’s text yesterday had said she should come across to the house when she was ready – apparently they got their own breakfast, so there was no set time she had to be there. But she’d decided she’d better make an appearance before nine.
There was a path leading off the main one, towards the pond. After a second’s debate she took it, and as she approached the pond there was a sudden flurry, a whooping and a splashing and a rising from the water of a whole lot of birds.
Ducks? Geese?
The pond was a lot bigger than she’d expected. It was an elongated oval, and she was standing at one of the short ends. On her left there was a small, rather scruffy wooden building, with steps up to an elevated deck area shimmering with frost. Presumably this was the boathouse, where Hector had stashed the drugs, according to the tip-off; where the teenagers had been hanging out when they’d found the body. Surely those two things were incompatible? Would a master criminal really keep drugs where any random kid could find them? She would have to ask DCI Stewart about that tip-off – whether he had any idea who could have made it.
The pond was frozen solid, apart from a small, still, dark area in the middle where the birds had presumably been. It was as if the frosty ground had encroached out over the water.
Her breath was a visible series of puffs in the air in front of her face.
John had been found, she knew, in the water on this side of the little island. He’d been fully clothed – well, shorts, T-shirt and trainers. The theory was that he’d gone in for a swim; that the extra clothing had perhaps been for protection. When people went wild swimming, apparently, they sometimes wore something on their feet in case of glass or sharp stones, and a T-shirt or even a wetsuit to protect their skin from stuff that might be floating in the water.
The birds had all, suddenly, disappeared from the sky.
She stopped breathing and listened.
Not a single sound. Not a single movement. Just the iced-over pond and the encircling trees. Silent, frosty sentinels. White Walkers, come with the frost, pressing up to the water, frustrated by it, encircling it –
She shivered.
And into her head came a picture of this place in the summer moonlight, of John crashing through these trees, running for his life, splashing into the pond as if it really was White Walkers who were after him and he knew they couldn’t survive in water... But not a White Walker, Hector Forbes, those soft eyes intent on his prey, launching himself at the smaller man – those strong hands pushing him under, pulling at the T-shirt, maybe, so as to leave no marks on the body –
She turned abruptly on her heel and crunched back along the path and through the silent wood, past the high, looming walls of the kitchen garden, and then the house itself came into view, yellow light in a couple of windows shining a welcome across the frosty grass.
She turned a slow three-sixty. From here there was a view across the lawns to the fields and trees and the hills beyond, all coated in frost – or was that snow, on the hills? – sparkling in the sun, hurting her eyes.
She didn’t cross the grass, she continued down the path to the door in the wall that joined the back of the house to the range of outbuildings, following Gavin Jenkins’ directions. He’d appeared at Pond Cottage yesterday, just after she’d arrived after a marathon drive up from London, as she was unloading the car. ‘Just wanted to check everything’s okay,’ he’d smiled. She’d made them cups of coffee and they’d sat at the kitchen table in front of the Aga, which, Gavin had told her, had been fired up the night before to warm the place.
At least the cottage had been cosy. He’d shown her how to set and light the wood-burning stove in the little sitting room, and when he’d gone she’d sat curled up on the sofa, curtains pulled against the early dark, watching the flames writhe and flare against the glass.
She was a city girl.
She was used to people, all living cheek-by-jowl and stacked up on top of one other; to noise, to human life going on around her. The quiet, the absolute quiet here was unnerving. When her phone had buzzed she’d jumped a mile. It had been Phil, checking on her, against protocol. It was only natural, after what had happened to John, that he’d be concerned, but she’d told him firmly that she was fine, everything was fine, and she’d be in touch if and when necessary.
Then she’d got out her laptop and scrutinised Google maps, but that had been a mistake. Sitting by that hot fir
e with the curtains drawn, she’d felt anything but cosy and safe as she’d discovered that, beyond the far end of the house, you could draw a straight line through the wood and over the hills and not hit another human habitation for four miles. Four miles. And in the other direction was the House of Pitfourie and the target; to the south, more cottages like this one, probably inhabited by his henchmen.
At least in London you always had the option of running screaming into the street.
If she ran screaming from Pond Cottage, who was there to hear her?
But she’d been determined not to sit there freaking herself out on her first night. She’d closed the laptop and sat back and thought about her strategy. Tried to crystallise her thoughts.
There were several different lines of evidence she was after, necessitating some multitasking. First and foremost, she was looking for information about how John Innes – no, she was going to have to start thinking of him as John Cameron, as Chimp – had died. She needed to talk to the men with whom he’d shared Pond Cottage. It was possible he’d told them something. It was unlikely, given the make-over the place had had, that there was any physical evidence still there, anything Chimp had squirrelled away, but she’d search the place anyway.
She would need to ingratiate herself with her fellow-employees and see if any of them had anything interesting to say. With Mrs MacIver, she felt, that would be a challenge.
The easiest of her tasks was going to be searching the House of Pitfourie for stolen goods. As housekeeper, she had a ready-made excuse to access all areas. She was going to have to systematically photograph any possibles and send them through to DCI Stewart for the team to check against the databases. All that was going to be tedious but hopefully fairly stress-free. She also had to keep an eye out for Chimp’s missing phone – a black Samsung Galaxy.
The last thing on the list, and the worst by far, was tackling the boy, Damian. She never liked involving kids, but sometimes it was necessary, and it was generally a whole lot easier than trying to get adults to open up. Even teenagers trying to be cool were usually pretty naïve, pretty easy to manipulate into giving up information, and this ‘slee’ one, she imagined, would be no different. If the alibi he’d provided for his brother for the time of Chimp’s death was a false one, she could probably trick him into admitting it. He was the person most likely to have useful things to tell her. Family members, in her experience, always knew what was going on, at some level.