by Jane Renshaw
She put her fingers on Ade’s cheek, all rough like sandpaper, and then her lips.
11
Before she started cooking, Claire assembled her ingredients on the worktop. Jennifer said you should always do that unless you were using stuff from the freezer you didn’t want to defrost.
Mrs Mac had ‘suggested’ she make a batch of soup and serve some to Hector for his lunch. And apparently Damian liked a healthy bowl of soup when he got back from school. So: sunflower oil, lentils, onions, carrots, potatoes, and vegetable bouillon powder stuff which Chef Google had informed her was the equivalent of stock cubes.
The lentils looked a bit different from the ones Jennifer had, but hopefully a lentil was a lentil was a lentil.
She peered at the packet.
Oh God – they weren’t lentils, they were yellow split peas, whatever they were. And the instructions said they had to be either soaked overnight or boiled for two hours. It was nearly twelve o’clock. She didn’t have time for that!
Chef Google said that eating undercooked yellow split peas wasn’t actually dangerous but could cause stomach ache.
Should she risk it?
Probably not.
What could she use instead?
The larder was huge, like a shop, and had chest freezers in it as well as all the shelves of food. She walked slowly round it. Surely they must have lentils if they were trying to be flexitarian? But she couldn’t see any. The nearest thing she could come up with was tins of Heinz beans. Beans were almost pulses, weren’t they?
She boiled up the other vegetables for half an hour then opened a couple of tins of beans. The girl, Karen, came flying in through the door from the passage as Claire was tipping the first tin into the pan.
‘Oh. Hi!’ She skidded to a guilty halt. Frosty air had whipped into the room with her, and her nose was pink with cold. ‘I’ve been feeding the birds.’
‘For two hours?’ On leaving Mrs Mac’s flat, she’d gone in search of Karen and hadn’t found her. She was pretty sure the girl had been AWOL.
‘Uh, yeah. I had to clean the feeders and stuff. Damian’s OCD about it. Well, he’s OCD about pretty much everything as you’ll soon find out, but particularly about the feeders because if you don’t keep them clean bacteria can build up and infect the birds and they can like die.’ Her face had lengthened solemnly.
‘I see.’
Karen had gone to the Aga and was fiddling with the deconstructed phone contained in a baking tray that had appeared there. When Claire had first seen it her heart rate had rocketed, but this wasn’t Chimp’s Samsung Galaxy – it wasn’t even a smartphone, it was a cheap and cheerful little Nokia.
‘Is that your phone? Did you drop it in the sink or something?’
‘It’s a rescue phone.’
‘A what?’
‘I found it in a ditch and I’m giving it a second chance at happiness. Probably won’t work, but worth a try. I’m trying to not, like, buy in to the throwaway culture?’
‘Well, good for you.’
‘Yeah. And I think Mrs Mac has a charger that might be compatible. I’ll give it another hour or so to dry out and then test it.’ She sidled over to Claire, her eyes on the stove like a hungry little animal. ‘What are you making?’
‘Soup.’
‘With baked beans?’
‘Yep.’
‘Radical.’ She peered into the pot. ‘Smells good.’
‘So what happens at lunchtimes, usually? Should I take Mrs Mac some soup?’
‘She usually makes her own lunch and has it in her flat. She doesn’t think it’s right for “the staff” to eat with Hector and Damian. Up until now Hector has got his own lunch, if he’s here, and so has Damian, because Mrs Mac’s like the worst cook in Scotland? But now you’re here, they’ll probably make you cook all the time.’
Great. Although if Mrs Mac really was a dreadful cook, maybe in comparison she wasn’t going to look too bad.
‘So... Where should I serve Hector his lunch? In the dining room?’
‘Probably just in here. I’ve got like a packed lunch and I usually eat it in here either before or after Hector’s had his. We could have lunch together if you want, me and you? Is the soup vegan?’
‘Uh, yes, I suppose it is.’
It was the sort of thing Dawn would have done, Claire reflected uneasily – invite herself to lunch. Was it that there was a certain brazenness about Karen? Was that what was reminding her so forcefully of Dawn?
‘Would there be enough for me too?’
‘Yes, I think so. All right. I’ll serve Hector in here, and when he’s finished I’ll come and get you and we can have ours. Sound like a plan?’
The girl nodded, crossing to the Aga and plomping herself down in the chair. ‘Just defrosting before I get back to the Dirty Sink. You’ve seen the scullery?’
‘Yes. It all seems very... organised.’ Claire tipped the second tin of beans into the pan.
‘That’s one way of putting it.’
‘So you’re a school friend of Damian’s?’
‘I was. I mean, we’re still friends – I was at school with him. I’ve left. This is kind of my gap year.’
‘Somehow I’d expected him to be at boarding school.’
‘Yeah, Hector went to Eton but Damian didn’t want to. Damian’s like super-bright, so I guess it didn’t really matter where he went to school because he was always going to be like way ahead of the teachers wherever. He didn’t want to go to London. That’s where you’re from?’
Claire stirred the pot and placed the lid on it. ‘Yes.’
‘Cool.’
‘Well, not really. Smelly and dirty and overcrowded and overpriced.’ And about ten degrees warmer. She missed it already. ‘Have you always lived here?’
‘Since I was three. I was born in Italy, then my parents got divorced and my mum moved back here. This is where she was brought up.’
‘I can see why she’d want to come back. It’s a gorgeous part of the country.’
Karen shrugged.
It was a basic rule of undercover work that you let conversations take a natural path. Claire was itching to ask this girl about finding John Innes’s body. She needed to establish what she knew about him. About Hector Forbes. About the brother. But all that would have to come out naturally.
‘Okay, if that’s you thawed out, you’d better get back to that sink.’
Karen dragged herself out of the chair. ‘Can’t I do something in here?’
‘Well, you can find me a blender.’
‘I think that sort of stuff is in here.’ She opened a cupboard under the worktop and peered into it. ‘This do?’ She dumped a clear plastic jug and its base on the worktop. ‘Need a hand?’
‘No, Karen, thank you.’ She didn’t want an audience when she was trying to fathom how the thing worked. It looked different from Jennifer’s.
◆◆◆
Hector Forbes, of course, breezed in when she was on her knees on the floor, scooping soup off the flagstones back into the pot. She’d thought she was being so clever, carefully keeping her hand on the lid of the blender in case it decided to pop off. What she hadn’t thought to check was that the plastic jug was properly attached to the base. Soup had started pouring out of the join onto the worktop, and in trying to shove the bits back together she’d slid the jug sideways and everything in the blender had tsunami-ed out over the worktop and slopped down onto the floor.
She’d grabbed the empty pot and held it under the lip of the worktop to catch as much as she could, sweeping it in with her hand. But she’d been left with barely enough for one person. She needed at least two servings. She’d had no choice but to get some off the floor, scooping it up with the ladle.
And he had caught her.
She gestured at the blender. ‘Bastard thing.’
He was grinning. Thank goodness, he was grinning. Then he turned away from her and she saw – oh God! – that Gavin Jenkins was standing behind him, alon
g with a stringy older man and the tattooed wonder. They were all grinning.
‘Claire, I think you’ve met Gavin. And this is Mick Shepherd and Chris McClusky.’
They nodded at her, and she raised a weak hand. So the stringy older guy was Mick Shepherd, one of the men with whom Chimp had shared Pond Cottage.
‘Go on up to the study,’ Hector said, and the three men reluctantly moved off through the kitchen and up the stairs.
‘I’m not taking any that’s actually touching the floor,’ she lied. ‘I’m just skimming it off the top.’
He opened a drawer, selected a large serving spoon, and dropped to his knees. ‘So what’s the technique?’
‘There’s no technique,’ she snapped. ‘I’m just saving as much as I can.’ She took a breath. ‘Obviously, you don’t have to eat it.’
‘That’s generous of you, but I’m sure it’ll be fine. Might be an idea not to tell Damian what’s happened, though. We’re what you might call out of his comfort zone here.’
‘I’m not likely to advertise it. If you hadn’t walked in when you did –’
‘What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.’
‘Exactly. Once it’s boiled up...’
He helped her clean the floor and the worktop (‘Don’t tell Damian we used blue cloths for this’) and then, while he made sandwiches, he insisted she heat up the soup.
He took three of the sandwiches upstairs and then reappeared, jogging down the stairs, rubbing his hands together as if psyching himself up. ‘Right, let’s do this.’
‘There’s only enough for you and your brother,’ she said as she set a bowl down on the table in front of him.
‘Nice try, but Damian can fend for himself. I think it’s only fair that you join me.’
And so she tipped the remaining soup into another bowl and sat down opposite him. It tasted a bit strange, but she didn’t think that had anything to do with the fact that it had been on the floor.
‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘Are these – Heinz beans?’
‘Yes,’ she said briskly, tearing a piece of bread off the sandwich he’d made her. ‘I worked for an Icelandic family and this soup was one of the things I made for them on a regular basis.’
‘A traditional Icelandic recipe?’
‘I think it dates from the 1950s. They use a lot of tinned goods in Icelandic cuisine. They’re heavily dependent on tins – with the isolation, and the long winters.’
‘Of course. Well, it’s certainly –’
‘Different?’ she suggested.
‘Unique. If you’d been quicker on your feet, you could have claimed that the Icelandic recipe involves smearing the soup on a stone floor.’
She snorted a laugh, and took a big bite of sandwich as a terrible thought struck her: she wasn’t Claire Colley any more. The moment he’d entered the kitchen and found her on her knees scraping up soup, her chameleon skin had slipped off, and with it any vestiges of fear. This was like having lunch with a friend.
And Phil’s words came back to her, what he’d said about mad bastards who felt no fear being a liability. Without that edge of fear you were vulnerable in all kinds of ways, in all kinds of situations, like a prey animal that had relaxed its guard.
‘Are you settling in okay? Finding everything you need? Apart, obviously, from blenders that aren’t bastards?’
‘Yes, thanks.’ Claire Colley. She was Claire Colley. ‘I had a long chat with Mrs MacIver this morning. I think I offended her, though, by struggling to understand what she was saying. She had to switch from Scottish to English – well, sort of – and I don’t think she felt it was a concession she should have to make. In her own homeland.’
‘Don’t take it personally. Mrs Mac views anyone not born within the boundary of the estate, or in Aberdeenshire at a pinch, with the deepest suspicion.’
‘So someone from London...’
‘Is guaranteed to be up to no good.’ He took another spoonful of soup, his eyes on the bowl, and a jolt of paranoia shot through her. Did he suspect something? But how could he? ‘And how’s Pond Cottage? Heating and so on working all right?’
‘Yes, thanks, everything’s fine. It’s very cosy.’
She thought of that awful sick joke about John’s spirit slopping about the toilet. It was as if there were two different Hectors – this one, and the one who could make twisted jokes about a man he had very possibly murdered.
Whenever she was with this man, she was going to have to remember that one.
The criminal.
The potential murderer.
She looked down at the soup in her bowl, wondering how she was going to force it into a stomach that was suddenly rebelling, roiling. But here was her opening to obtain some necessary information. ‘Do you have forwarding addresses for the previous occupants? In case any mail arrives for them.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that. They’ve arranged for it to be forwarded by Royal Mail.’
Damn. ‘Okay, good.’
But Mick Shepherd was hopefully around the place a lot, so she’d be able to get to know him and maybe find out what he knew.
‘If anything comes for Chimp, you can bring it to me and I’ll deal with it. His real name was John Cameron.’
‘Okay.’
There was a very faint smile on his face as he scraped up the last of his soup. As if he was secretly amused at a private joke. Because he’d killed Chimp?
‘I’ll have that, if you don’t want it.’
She passed over her bowl and watched him as he tucked in. Had he? Could this man really have killed John Innes?
12
Karen trailed after Mrs Mac and Claire as they progressed around the drawing room. Mrs Mac was explaining what each item was (‘That’s Meissen and affa rare’) and how it should be cared for and cleaned (‘Just a dicht noo and again’). Swotty Claire was writing it all down in a notebook. Claire had suggested that Karen accompany them on this never-ending tour of the house, as Mrs Mac’s instructions would be ‘useful’ for her too.
‘Can I go and see if the rescue phone has charged up?’ Karen asked. Mrs Mac had allowed Karen to plug it in to her charger in her flat. Mrs Mac didn’t really believe in mobile phones, but Hector had made her get one for safety reasons, a little Nokia like the rescue phone. She was always forgetting to charge it, though.
‘In a min’tie,’ said Mrs Mac. ‘This winna tak lang.’
Yeah right.
But things took a more interesting turn when they’d done the dining room and moved on to the little room off it, the butler’s pantry, where all the silver was kept.
Mrs Mac took a key from her pocket and opened one of the big mahogany cupboards. Inside were lots of shallow drawers. She pulled one out. ‘This press – this cupboard has aa the siller flatware – all the silver cutlery – that’s to be used when Mr Forbes has a dinner party. Aathing fantoosh is in the top drawers, but for ordinar, for just a normal dinner party, this drawer with the number four on it’s the one you’ll be needing.’ There was a little ivory circle with a four on it on the front of the drawer. There was so much ivory in this house, it made you sick.
‘Knives and forks and spuins.’ Mrs Mac took out one of the soft rolls of red cloth and undid the ties and unfolded it on the table. Inside were long pockets with silver handles peeping out of them. She lifted one out. It was a cute little fork.
‘Do they always use the silver for dinner parties?’ asked Claire, pen poised over her notebook.
‘Oh aye.’ Mrs Mac gave her a disapproving look, as if to even suggest that they wouldn’t was really perverted.
‘It would be, like, Armageddon if you used the wrong cutlery,’ Karen said. ‘What’s that for? Caviar?’
‘It’s a dessert fork,’ Mrs Mac tutted. She put the fork back in its pocket and rolled up the cloth. ‘Pit that awa’,’ she told Karen as she opened another cupboard, this one full of glasses, and started telling Claire what each type was for.
K
aren carried the cloth roll back to the other cupboard, poking her fingers inside. She wheeked one of the little forks out of its pocket and palmed it, put the rest away and shut the drawer. Then she shut the cupboard door, leaving the key in the lock, hoping Mrs Mac would forget it.
She pushed the fork into the pocket of her leggings to join the pig and the chick, and followed them into the end sitting room. Hopefully the fork would make up for her not taking any of the little boxes – snuff boxes? – she’d found in the cabinet. Every time she moved her right leg she could feel the points of it digging in a little bit. Her heart was pounding! She’d never taken anything while other people were in the same room, and the adrenaline rush was amazing! Having the little fork actually in her pocket while Mrs Mac binded on about how Claire had to check all the downstairs windows were secured last thing in the evening...
Little did they know that there was a thief right here with stolen goods on her person!
Mrs Mac had stopped at the table in the corner with photos on it in silver frames. She had a soppy smile on her face. ‘That’s the chiel,’ she said, picking up the photo of Damian, aged about five, proudly holding a toad up to the camera. Mrs Mac gave the glass over the photo a ‘dicht’ with the duster she was carrying.
‘Sweet,’ said sooky Claire.
Claire was such a bitch. When Karen had gone to the kitchen for her soup, Claire had been washing up the pot. ‘Oh, sorry, there’s none left.’ Thanks a lot.
‘And that’s Mr Forbes and his friends, oh, a whilie ago now. A twenty-first birthday do, I think.’ Hector and his Hooray Henry pals, about thirty of them, were all crammed in together in someone’s posh dining room, boys in dinner jackets with arms round girls in not much at all. ‘That’s Perdita Jarvie.’ She set a finger on one of the girl’s faces. ‘She’s a London socialite.’
Karen snorted.
‘Oh,’ said sooky Claire. ‘Of course. Perdita Jarvie.’ And she peered at the photo.
Perdita Jarvie was supposedly an ‘It’ girl but Karen couldn’t see any It about her. In this old photo she was more or less normal-looking, but now every time you saw a photo of her she looked more anorexic and she had ridiculous plumped Botox lips and there was always something on the internet about how she had been cautioned for possession of drugs or had been caught snogging someone’s boyfriend. Hector had probably got her on drugs when they were young and now she was addicted. And he was probably shagging her even though she was engaged.