by Jane Renshaw
‘Oh, Claire!’ Grannie always answered the phone as if getting a call from Claire was the highlight of her day. ‘How’s it going?’
‘I – I’m struggling a bit, to be honest.’
A little silence. Then: ‘Go on.’
‘I’m finding it pretty hard. To – to be around him. Hector.’
‘In that case, you should tell Phil you want out. If you feel you’re in danger from the man –’
‘But I don’t! That’s the whole problem – I’m not afraid of him at all. Not when I’m with him. It’s like I can’t summon any defences because all my instincts are telling me I don’t need them.’
‘Ah.’
‘My famous ESP seems to have deserted me completely. I know he’s a bad ’un, I know it, but I don’t feel it.’
‘Well. You had been warned that he was a – charismatic sort of person.’
She groaned. ‘You have no idea.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘I know, I know! Grannie, I kissed him!’
A long silence. Then: ‘Oh, Claire.’
Well, what had she expected? That Grannie would tell her that that was okay and not to worry about it? They were so similar, she and Grannie, that telling Grannie things was almost like telling them to another, better version of herself, who would assess the situation from Claire’s point of view and come up with advice Claire knew at once was right but couldn’t have arrived at on her own.
In sixth form, Claire had, eventually, told Grannie the awful truth about Dawn, all the dreadful details spilling out of her as they sat together in the front room. Grannie had hugged her, and let her cry, but then she had said the words Claire would never, ever forget:
‘I think she needed a friend, by the sounds of it. It wasn’t your fault, darling, really it wasn’t, but we’ll never know now, will we, whether you could have made a difference?’
If she had been hoping for absolution, Grannie hadn’t supplied it, and Claire had known then, unequivocally, that making a difference was what she needed to do with her life.
For once, she couldn’t wait to end this call. ‘Grannie, I have to go. I’ll call you later.’
‘Claire –’
‘Got to go. Bye, Grannie. Bye.’
Before she lost her nerve completely, she called the DCI. ‘Sorry for calling on a Sunday morning, sir.’
‘No problem. You can call me any time. What have you got?’
She returned to the kitchen. ‘Nothing much, yet. But I’ve spoken to Helen Clack, the woman who –’
‘Yes yes, I know Helen.’
‘Well, she says Hector was in Venezuela when his father was killed.’
An exhalation. ‘That’s his story, but nobody at the time checked it. Nobody checked if and when he’d been through passport control. And it’s too late to do so now, of course. Passenger information is only kept for five years – and he’ll have renewed his passport by now, so there won’t be any useful stamps on it.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘We’ve got those camera traps for you. Can you meet Phil later today in Banchory Tesco? Two-thirty okay?’
She looked out of the window. The garden had gone. The hedge had gone. There were just puffy mounds of snow, searingly bright in the cold morning sunshine. The windowsill was at least two inches thick with it and it had been blown onto the panes, frosting their corners like a scene from A Christmas Carol.
‘Phil?’ But of course, Phil. All the way up from London just to make sure she was okay. ‘Yes, that’s fine.’
‘Also a tracker, which we need you to attach to Hector’s Land Rover – his own personal one, which, tellingly, doesn’t have “Pitfourie Estate” emblazoned on the side. We’ve got a camera covering the gates to the House, and it picked him up in that vehicle last night and the night before, leaving around 2 am and returning a couple of hours later on both occasions.’
‘But – are you sure? He was drinking last night, and he seems very safety-conscious about driving –’
‘Chris McClusky was driving. And, most interesting of all, the vehicle was showing false registration plates.’ There was suppressed excitement in his voice. ‘Something’s happening.’
Her heart felt like it had plummeted down into her empty stomach.
‘Phil will give you the tracker and explain how to attach it.’
‘Right.’
‘What about the art and antiques in the House? Have you managed to get any photographs?’
‘Just a few, sir.’ Just two, actually, of the wind-up mouse and the weird stone ball in Damian’s room. ‘It’s been a bit full-on.’
‘Right, well, email me the images you’ve got so far.’
‘Will do.’
‘What about the drugs angle?’
‘Nothing on that yet. The anonymous tip-off about drugs in the boathouse, sir – do you have any idea who that came from?’
‘No. It came via the Crime Stoppers online form.’
‘Damn. Oh – one more thing.’ She bit her lip. How to put this? ‘To go back to the father’s accident... Hector and his brother – if Damian knew Hector had deliberately caused that accident, there’d be a tension there, surely? Which there just isn’t.’
Every time she saw them together, she was more convinced that DCI Stewart had got it wrong – about the accident, at least. Theirs was a strong sibling bond, at least as strong as her own with Gabby and David. Could that bond have survived intact, if Hector really had deliberately caused the accident, and Damian knew it?
‘Hector probably didn’t know the child was going to be in the car,’ said DCI Stewart. ‘His father was a creature of habit – had an appointment with his accountant in Aboyne on the first Monday of every month at ten o’clock. Only, this particular Monday was in the summer holidays and he had the child in the car with him – was taking him to spend his pocket money in the town. Hector wouldn’t have known that, and the boy probably realises it.’
‘But just the fact that Hector murdered their father... That would be enough to sour things between them, I’d have thought?’
DCI Stewart countered that with a question of his own: ‘Isn’t the most telling thing the fact that Hector took on the boy’s guardianship in the first place? Doesn’t that point to a guilty conscience?’
‘So you think he has a conscience?’
A short silence. Then: ‘I’m sure he’s capable of the odd human emotion.’
◆◆◆
Karen stood in front of the mirror next to the rack of socks, turning her feet in the Hunter wellies this way and that, pretending she wasn’t sure. She’d seen the price on the box – a hundred and fifty pounds? For a pair of wellies? Okay so they were super-deluxe, with soles like walking boots and adjustable straps. And they were super-comfy. But still.
The shop was in the Union Square shopping mall in Aberdeen. It was reasonably busy with Christmas shoppers, but the shoe department not so much. Shoes as Christmas presents probably not that popular. The assistant was breathing down their necks, telling them about the grippy soles and how good they were for walking in snow.
Karen’s cheap old wellies were flopped under a chair. They’d wiped them, before coming into the shopping centre, to remove any fingerprints.
‘They’re natural rubber, of course,’ the woman was saying.
‘Mm,’ said Karen, frowning. ‘I think I maybe preferred the Le Chameau. I know they’re more expensive, but...’
‘The Duchess of Cambridge always wears Le Chameau when she comes to Balmoral,’ gushed the assistant. ‘They’re a lovely boot too, maybe more stylish and lighter than the Hunter, although possibly not quite as sturdy. It depends what you’d be using them for.’
‘We live on a farm,’ said Ade.
‘In that case, I’d recommend the Hunter.’ The woman smiled at Karen, wrinkling her nose like a rabbit. ‘Are they a Christmas present? Maybe you could work on Dad to buy you both pairs, one for mucky stuff round the farm, one for posing in?’ She chuckled.
Karen shot a look at Ade, but he was smiling. ‘Wellies for posing in. Now I’ve heard everything!’
Gwennie, who had come into the shop a few minutes after Karen and Ade, was sitting trying on trainers. Now she was having an argument with the young guy serving her, saying she’d been in the shop last week and been told that these trainers would be in the sale at the weekend, which was why she’d made a special trip to get them. She beckoned the rabbity assistant over.
‘Was it you I spoke to, love?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘I think it was! About these Skechers? You said they’d be in the sale this weekend.’
Ade said loudly to Karen, ‘Well if you’re not sure, walk about the shop in them,’ and gave the rabbit woman a sympathetic grimace.
Leaving her old wellies under the chair, Karen strolled around the shoe area, looking down at her feet and saying to Ade, ‘I think my right big toe is a bit squished.’
‘Walk up to the door and back.’
At the door, they ran.
The tags flapping against her legs, Karen sprinted after Ade, across the main concourse, dodging shoppers, the doughnut stand passing in a blur, and then out through the doors into the freezing cold, the treads of her new wellies providing excellent purchase on the gritted but slushy paving slabs. Ade grabbed her hand and they ran out of the square and across the pavement to the road. He didn’t wait for the lights to change, he pulled her out into the traffic, their feet flying, carrying them across so fast that the car approaching didn’t even have to brake. And then they were past the Sainsbury’s Local on the corner, the mucky, icy water that covered the gritted pavements splashing out from under her grippy soles, splashing up the sides of the wellies and onto her leggings.
This was the way she and Anna and Eve and Susie would walk up to Union Street after getting off the bus at the terminus, but that Karen seemed like a different person from the one flying along now with Ade, laughing so much she could hardly get her breath.
He pulled her into one of the narrow cobbled lanes, grey granite buildings looming up on either side, the snow piled in dirty heaps against the walls. No shops here. She supposed the buildings were flats – four, five storeys of Victorian windows, even some fancy bay ones with elaborately carved, bulbous stonework under them like little upside-down pyramids. She’d never noticed those before, but it was as if all her senses were heightened, as if the world had become sharper and clearer and more real than before.
But now her whirring mind was whirring back to the rescue phone, to Chimp, and the hysteria had gone, leaving her weak and shaky and wanting to be that other girl, the one who was Christmas shopping on Union Street with her friends.
The phone was in her coat pocket. She’d put it in a freezer bag to preserve whatever fingerprints were on there. Hers would be, but that didn’t matter because she’d never had them taken so she wouldn’t be in the police database.
Whoever killed Chimp was bound to be in the database.
Ade pulled her into a doorway and took her into his arms, and she pressed her face to his coat as he laughed and said, ‘Fancy a new scarf? Gloves? A jumper?’
22
‘Good,’ said Hector. ‘Now just touch the brake.’
The secret to driving in snow, it seemed, was to move your hands on the wheel and your feet on the pedals in slow motion; not to stop if you could help it; and, if you did stop, to move off in second gear, not first. Hector exuded calm, and Claire found herself almost relaxing as she eased the Land Rover away from the drop on the Hill of Collienard and down onto a flat stretch of road between fields.
And she remembered that he’d been an officer in the Army, rising rapidly through the ranks, a captain at just twenty-one, when his career had imploded following the drugs conviction. She could imagine him under fire: completely calm and collected.
And deadly.
‘Phew,’ she breathed out. ‘What do you make of the Twat saying someone tried to force him off the road back there?’
‘When there’s snow or ice on the road, meeting a vehicle coming the other way is always going to be fraught on that hill, unless you have your wits about you, which I suspect the Twat may not have done.’
‘You mean he might have been drink-driving?’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised. But you negotiated it very well.’ Was that a deliberate change of subject?
‘I’ve still got to get up it on the way back.’
‘I would say don’t let it spoil the visit, but the chances of this social occasion being in any way enjoyable are slim to none anyway. Are you warm enough?’
She was perspiring a bit. ‘A little too warm.’ She reached for the heated seat button at the same time he did, and their fingers touched. She snatched hers away.
‘Do you want it turned down, or off altogether?’ he asked, a smile in his voice.
‘Off, please.’ Dammit.
‘Look, I’m sorry about last night,’ he said, as if kissing the staff in a dark corridor was an everyday occurrence. Maybe it was. ‘I don’t know what got into me. Other than the whisky.’
‘That’s okay,’ was all she could find to say. ‘I – you’re probably wondering what I was doing there at that time of night.’ She had rehearsed this, at least. ‘I thought I’d left the door to the terrace open.’
‘I see. Well, for future reference, the security system would have let us know about it if you had, when it was primed for the night.’
‘Oh. Right.’
His phone buzzed. ‘Karen’s mother. Sorry, I’d better take this.’
Her eyes on the white road ahead, she listened to his side of the conversation, which mainly consisted of ‘Yes, I can imagine’ and ‘No, of course’ and ‘That might be a good idea.’ And finished with, ‘So I’ll expect you about two o’clock. Not at all, Christine. Happy to help.’
‘So what’s the latest drama?’ she asked when he’d finished the call.
He sighed. ‘Can you imagine trying to parent Karen? Her mother and stepfather – Christine and Bill – are coming over for a chat about the whole situation after lunch. Then they’re going to Moss of Kinty to try to persuade Karen to go home with them. I’ll have to speak to Balfour Jarvie about the tenancy. See if there’s any way he can evict the hippies.’
‘I really don’t like the sound of this “boyfriend” of hers.’
‘No.’
‘Her parents must be worried.’
‘They are. Karen’s always been – rather impulsive. Volatile.’
‘She seems like fun, though.’ She glanced at him. ‘Is it a concern that she might be a bad influence on Damian?’
He laughed. ‘That would be a “no”.’
‘I don’t imagine he’s exactly easily led.’ Here was an opportunity to probe. ‘It can’t have been easy, taking on responsibility for him.’
He laughed again. ‘These days, sadly, it’s rather the other way round. Sometimes it’s like living with a particularly censorious great-aunt. I have to confess that watching him trying to wrangle two besotted twelve-year-olds this afternoon is a prospect I’m relishing.’ And as Claire gave him a blank look: ‘Christine and Bill’s younger daughter Mollie and her friend Cat. Mollie has had Cat for a sleepover, apparently, and Cat’s parents are away and can’t have her back until later this afternoon... So Christine and Bill are going to leave Mollie and Cat with us while they’re at Kinty, an arrangement that I suspect has been engineered by the girls.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Damian’s been blissfully unaware of Cat’s secret crush for the past year or so, but now Mollie’s been infected it’s out in the open. Like her sister, Mollie’s not a subtle child.’
‘And how’s Damian coping?’
‘Not well. I don’t plan on giving him advance warning of their arrival or he’ll be heading for the hills.’
‘Poor girls! When you’re that age –’ She stopped herself in time. Telling him about her own crush on an older boy at s
chool would be getting into dangerous territory.
In fact, she needed to get away from that territory altogether.
She pulled over into the next passing place and twisted in her seat to look at him.
‘Actually, it’s not okay.’
He raised his eyebrows, still smiling.
‘What you did last night. It’s not okay. Yes you pay my wages, but – but that doesn’t give you the right to – to pressure me into... anything of that nature. Whatever you thought was happening, it wasn’t. It’s not fair to take advantage of your position of power as my employer to – to sexually harass me.’
She expected him to protest at this gross misrepresentation of what had happened, but he just nodded. ‘You’re right. I can only apologise. You’d be completely within your rights to go to the police and have charges laid against me.’
‘Actually, I would. It’s obviously just a joke to you – you obviously think it’s just loony political correctness and any woman on the receiving end of – of your advances should be flattered, and if she isn’t, there’s something wrong with her – but I don’t think the authorities would see it that way.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose they would. I’m throwing myself on your mercy –’
‘Oh God, here we go – I’m throwing myself on your mercy, if nothing else?’
‘Am I so predictable?’
If only.
He was looking at her soberly. ‘Given the, um, gravity of the offence, you might want to get us underway. You won’t want to spend any more time than strictly necessary trapped with me in a confined space. Out here on our own... You never know what I might do.’
Her heart lurched.
Was he joking, or was that a threat?
She started the engine and pulled out without another word.
They had no further conversation until he said, ‘Turn right up here.’
The driveway to Drumdargie Castle wound through trees in the shadows between high evergreen hedges and then they were out in the open, and across an expanse of frozen snow was the spookiest castle Claire had ever seen. It seemed to loom up out of the ground, the mass of turrets and towers sticking out all round the top making it seem unstable, as if it could topple over at any moment. The many rooftops were covered in snow, and the tall walls were black where they shadowed each other and otherwise the cold colour of pale grey granite, but that wasn’t granite – the walls seemed rough in texture.