by Jane Renshaw
She broke the silence to exclaim: ‘Oh my God! It’s like something in a horror film.’
He leapt on this neutral subject. ‘They’re called tower houses. Built up rather than out, for defence. There are a lot of them in this part of the world, but this is one of the better examples – survives pretty much unchanged since the sixteen hundreds. Hasn’t been messed about like our place.’
‘What are the walls made of?’
‘Well, stone. Stone harled in lime.’
‘Okay.’ She had no idea what that meant. ‘And Perdita’s father has given it to her?’
‘Yep, although she and the Twat aren’t living here yet. Twat has insisted on having Drumdargie totally refurbished, although thankfully it’s Category A listed so he’s not been able to touch the fabric of the building. The refurb is finished, and they’ve moved their stuff in, but apparently Twatboy isn’t satisfied with the kitchen installation and is making them redo it.’
‘Sounds like he’s the type who’s not happy unless he’s finding fault.’
‘Quite. He has a six-bedroom mansion in Belgravia but apparently it’s too small, so he’s in the process of renovating that too – constructing an iceberg basement, pissing off all his Russian mafia neighbours with the excavation work. But unfortunately not sufficiently to end up wrapped in chains in the Thames.’
Was she just oversensitised, or did he make a lot of so-called jokes about death?
‘So they’re living with Perdita’s parents at the moment?’ She couldn’t blame them for finding excuses not to move in here. No wonder there were stories about the place being haunted. She realised she had slowed the vehicle, as if reluctant to move into the castle’s shadow.
‘Mm,’ said Hector. ‘At the main house on the Aucharblet Estate, about four miles east of here. They’ve been there for weeks. Balfour – Perdita’s father – is probably considering putting a hit on the Twat himself.’
Out of the Land Rover, the air was almost sore in her lungs it was so cold, and had a sharp, astringent, metallic taste to it which she now recognised as the taste of snow. Norrie had been right – you could taste snow in the air.
The door was a dark studded oak affair set into a carved stone surround with a coat of arms above it. Perdita opened it herself, looking pale and drawn and, Claire thought, rather ill, but when she saw Hector her face lit up. She stepped into his arms and put her lips to his cheek. She totally ignored Claire.
‘Engagement present,’ said Hector, waving a hand at the two stone urns he’d unloaded from the back of the Land Rover. ‘It suddenly strikes me that they have rather a funereal quality. Sorry.’
Perdita squealed. ‘Oh, but they’re perfection. Thank you!’ Excuse for another hug. ‘Come on in. We’ve got Jess and her grandmother upstairs – they’re staying with us at Mummy and Daddy’s. For the engagement party. You can still come, can’t you? Tuesday to Thursday? You can come for the whole thing?’ While Hector and Damian had what Claire thought of as very posh Scottish accents – received pronunciation with a Scottish twist – Perdita’s was one hundred per cent Chelsea.
‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ said Hector.
They followed Perdita through a gloomy stone-flagged hall with, incongruously, a sixties-style button-back sofa against one wall and a big sunburst mirror on the other. The cheery retro furnishings managed somehow not to be cheery at all in here, serving only to throw into relief the sepulchral quality of the place.
Perdita was wearing orange flairs and a tight Fair Isle jumper, her hair a tumble of curls around her waif’s face. ‘It’s a bomb site,’ she said, indicating an open door, through which Claire glimpsed a dark, low-ceilinged kitchen in the process of having stainless-steel units installed which probably cost a fortune but had a suitably grim, industrial look to them. ‘So no refreshments on offer, unless you want a whisky, which if you’re driving I guess you don’t.’
They followed her to a curious staircase. It was one of those old stone spiral ones found in every self-respecting castle, but this one had very shallow steps and was so wide they could walk two abreast – and Perdita did, with Hector. She had hooked a hand into his arm, talking in a low voice – too low for Claire, climbing the stairs behind them, to make out.
They passed a wide door, presumably giving onto the first floor, and continued up another storey to a long, dimly lit gallery, lined with framed black and white photographs of abstract shapes. Perdita opened a door off it and they stepped into a room that was the twin of the library at Pitfourie. The same plaster ceiling, the same carved stone fireplace. The only physical difference was that the windows were smaller. No Georgian alterations here. Was that what made the room seem so much less welcoming? That, maybe, and the way it was furnished?
There were more sixties-style sofas and chairs, stiff and uncomfortable-looking. A large rug with a geometric pattern in brown and yellow and cream. Grey silk curtains and sleek grey cabinets with lights in them displaying what looked like a collection of crockery you could get at Tesco for two pounds a time but which presumably was sixties designer stuff.
The Twat was standing with his back to the fireplace, in which was set a shiny chrome wood-burning stove that seemed to have gone out. There was some smoke behind the glass, but no flames were visible. The room was uncomfortably warm, though. No doubt the central heating was very efficient, and with these low ceilings the place would heat up quickly.
There was ‘something of the night’, as Grannie would have said, about the Twat. He was tall and bloodless-looking, pale faced, with slicked-back dark hair and piercing blue eyes; his physique imposing but not athletic. Not flabby, exactly, but soft around the edges. Maybe exercise was an issue if you had to spend all the hours of daylight out of the sun.
‘Hector,’ he said – like Perdita, ignoring Claire completely.
‘You remember Claire?’ said Hector.
A nod in her direction.
‘And you remember Jess White?’ said Perdita. ‘I think you’ve met, in London?’
Standing by one of the windows was a girl a little younger than Claire, wearing a green wool dress and high boots.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Hector. ‘Nice to see you again.’ Social kisses were exchanged.
‘Yes, we’ve met.’ Jess turned to Claire with a smile. ‘But we haven’t.’ She held out her hand. She had a round head, very wide-apart eyes, a small nose and plump cheeks, giving her the look of a cute animal of some kind – maybe a hamster?
‘I’m just the hired help,’ Claire grinned, taking her hand.
‘Hired to do what?’ She seemed genuinely interested.
As she carried on a conversation with this nice girl about her job, and entertained her with the story of the burnt pheasants, Claire listened with half an ear to what Hector was saying to the Twat.
‘I’m guessing your plan to hack off the Eighteenth Century plaster in the hall has been thwarted? Small-minded of the Historic Scotland bods not to embrace your vision of 1980s-style exposed “original stonework”.’
‘The earliest record of a building on this site is in 1462. The plaster on the walls is a later addition and should, in my view, be removed.’
‘The interior walls of castles were always plastered,’ said Hector. ‘Whether in 1762 or 1462. The fashion for exposed stonework is a rather more recent, Disney-inspired phenomenon – ironically, in view of the fact that a Scottish tower house like this, probably Craigevar, is thought to have been the model for the Disney castle.’
‘Oh God,’ said Perdita, her eye-roll saying: men and their obsession with the technical details.
‘You maintain a proprietorial interest, I suppose,’ said the Twat, ‘given that your ancestor... acquired Drumdargie in 1543?’
‘Yes, but don’t worry,’ Hector smiled. ‘I left the broadsword at home.’
The door opened behind them and an elderly woman came into the room, dressed in a blue tweed skirt and jacket and a black cashmere jersey with a high neck. Her white hair was
caught at the nape of her neck in a tortoiseshell and silver clasp. ‘I’ve been lost in your dungeons. Then it took me what seemed like several years to ascend the stairs... This place wasn’t built for arthritic hips, but then I suppose not many people in the sixteen hundreds lived past fifty. Hello, and who have we here?’ The accent was cut-glass, but the tone was friendly.
‘This is Hector Forbes, Frieda. And –’ Perdita grimaced a smile at Claire.
‘Claire Colley,’ she supplied.
‘Frieda Mortimer.’ She didn’t offer to shake hands. ‘I’m going to try the red chair. Can’t be any less comfortable than that thing.’ She waved a hand at one of the sofas. As she lowered herself suspiciously onto the chair, she examined Hector and Claire. ‘Well, if you’ll permit me to say so, you make a very handsome couple. You are a couple?’
Claire could feel herself blushing. ‘No –’
‘She’s his “housekeeper”,’ said the Twat, smiling for the first time.
‘She’s the cat’s mother,’ said Frieda, and Claire did a mental fist-pump. Her own grandmother used exactly the same rebuke to anyone who said ‘she’ instead of a person’s name like that.
The Twat was not amused.
‘Do you live in London?’ Hector asked Frieda.
‘I do. Perdita and Max were kind enough to ask Jess and her husband, Nick, to their engagement party, and I’m shamelessly tagging along. No party’s complete without an aged grandmother dribbling in the corner.’
Perdita laughed. ‘We’re delighted to have you, Frieda.’
‘I don’t recall that you had much choice in the matter. I do love Scotland, you see – especially in winter. Caledonia, stern and wild... Land of the mountain and the flood...’ Frieda changed her position in the chair. ‘And, of course, the undeniably grim old castle. I don’t believe in ghosts, but this place gives me the heebie-jeebies, Perdita! I wish you hadn’t told us all those stories about Black John.’ She turned to Claire and Hector. ‘Apparently this monster of a man used to lop off the heads of his enemies and kick them around the place like footballs. Perdita claims that late at night you can still hear them bouncing down the stairs!’
‘I really did hear something,’ said Perdita, bending to fiddle with the recalcitrant stove. ‘And I’ve been hearing footsteps, when there’s no one there. And I keep thinking I see a figure in the shadows in the hall – or just moving out of sight beyond the curve of the stair in front of me.’ She shivered. ‘Daddy jokes that it’s Black John prowling the castle with his broadsword, but I’m starting not to find it very funny. There’s a definite... presence here, don’t you feel?’
Jess grimaced. ‘Maybe it’ll be better when you’ve properly moved in and have all your bits and bobs around you.’
But Claire suspected, given the furnishings, that there was no plan to install homely ‘bits and bobs’ any time soon.
‘I don’t like to think what these walls might have seen.’ Perdita put her hand on the panelling next to the fireplace.
‘And heard,’ Hector added. ‘If the stories about a concealed torture chamber are true, there could be skeletons fettered to the other side of that wall, rattling their chains; fingernails clawing at the mortar in a desperate attempt to break through...’
The Twat gave him an uneasy look, and Claire – who, she told herself firmly, didn’t believe in ghosts either – wondered what exactly the Twat might have heard.
Perdita snatched her hand away from the wall and smacked Hector’s arm. ‘Stop it! God!’ And she turned to Frieda. ‘Black John was Hector’s great-great-whatever grandfather. Direct line of descent. Doesn’t maybe come as much of a surprise?’
Frieda raised her eyebrows, taking a closer look at Hector, who raised his eyebrows back at her with one of his trademark semi-smiles.
‘Stories about a secret torture chamber must be just stories, though, surely,’ said Jess, perching on the arm of Frieda’s chair. There wasn’t much of a family resemblance between grandmother and granddaughter apart from their rather wide-apart eyes; Frieda had the kind of strong nose and chin that improved with age, counteracting gravity and giving definition to her face in a way that more delicate features wouldn’t have done. ‘If there really was such a thing, you’d have found it during the renovations.’
‘Of course you would,’ said Hector. ‘Unless it was very well hidden indeed.’
23
Karen shook hay into the trough, which wasn’t easy because Toby the soay ram kept trying to nudge her aside to get to it first. She loved the soays – their wool was like fur and the colour of chocolate. They came from the island of Soay way out off the Atlantic coast of Scotland. Baz said the name Soay meant ‘Island of Sheep’ in Old Norse, which suggested that the sheep had been there at least as far back as Viking times. They shed their wool naturally, as all primitive breeds did, so there was no need to shear them. Prim spun the wool and knitted stuff with it which she sold at craft fairs.
Gwennie tangled her fingers into Toby’s fleece and pulled him away.
The sheep’s breath was steaming all round them in the icy air, and they’d trampled the snow around the trough into a muddy guddle. But in her snazzy new wellies, Karen was fine with that.
Across the field, Ade was striding through the snow towards them. It was so deep here, where the field dipped into a hollow, that he had to lift his feet high with every step, leaving weird tracks with gouged-out channels in the snow where his feet had trailed, like they had giant claws on them.
She turned to Gwennie. ‘Can I ask you something?’
Gwennie heaved another bale off the back of the pick-up and straightened, hands on the small of her back. ‘Oof. Yes, love?’
‘How old is Ade?’
Gwennie didn’t answer, just stood watching Ade approach.
‘I’ll take you to Pitfourie now,’ he said to Karen when he was near enough. ‘Wouldn’t mind having a go at the little bastard myself.’
‘Okay, great, thanks.’
‘Karen wants to know how old you are,’ said Gwennie.
Fuck.
Ade was breathing heavily from walking through the snow. He came right up to her and put his arms round her and pulled her against him. He hadn’t had a shower that morning and there was a slightly sweaty-underarm smell coming off him. ‘I’ve told you how old I am. I’m twenty-eight.’
‘Uh, yeah.’ She ducked out from his arm to pull more hay out of the bale. The rescue phone was in her leggings pocket, the bump of it covered by her long fleece, and she didn’t want him to feel it there.
‘So what are you asking Gwennie for?’
‘I don’t think she believes you, fella,’ cackled Gwennie. ‘It’s not the years it’s the miles, eh? How old do you think he looks?’
Fuck.
‘Maybe thirty-two?’
He was standing leaning against the trailer, watching her as she moved about.
‘First I’m David Koresh. Now I’m lying about my age.’
‘No –’
‘You want to see my passport?’
Yes. Yes, she did. ‘Of course not. Ade –’
He shook his head and looked off. He could be such a moody bastard, but it never lasted long. She had learned that the best thing was not to engage, because any little thing you said seemed to make him angrier and he would get that cold look in his eyes and then he’d suddenly explode, grab something and smash it, or shout right in your face.
She scattered hay in the trough. As she turned to get more, she found he was suddenly standing right next to her. She tried to step back, but she couldn’t because the big metal trough was in the way. He was breathing a cloud of vapour into her face, and as she stared at him his lips parted and the tip of his tongue flicked out to lick his upper lip, like a lizard.
He had never hit her. He would never hit her.
And Gwennie was right there.
Karen could hear the sheep ripping up the hay with their teeth, and the trough clanking as they jostled each other.
A crow cawed from across the field. Apart from Ade and Gwennie, there was no one in sight: just fields, and trees, and the shipping container, and the hill rising behind it. Then someone shouted:
‘Hey, Karen!’ Jagdeep was standing at the gate. ‘Your parents are here!’
◆◆◆
The last person Claire wanted to see was Phil. He would know something was up. There wouldn’t be time for an interrogation, but he’d be calling her later, giving her the third degree. And what on earth would she say?
For some reason – probably not unconnected to the fact that he and Jennifer were such foodies – Phil had always favoured supermarkets for this type of contact, so his choice of the Tesco store in Banchory hadn’t come as a huge surprise. But as Claire collected a trolley she reflected that it wasn’t ideal – the place was buzzing, a constant stream of people coming and going, kids playing up, teenagers jostling each other and screaming with self-conscious laughter. You couldn’t get much more of a contrast between Drumdargie Castle and Tesco.
She stamped her feet before entering the store to dislodge the snow sticking to her boots. She’d used one of the newer Land Rovers for this shopping trip, but Gavin Jenkins had told her to keep to the main roads, and she had done. The A93 had been completely clear of snow where it mattered – under her tyres – although it had been piled up all along the sides of the road, presumably by a snowplough.
The phone in her pocket buzzed, right on time.
A text from Phil: just the number ‘10’, which meant ten minutes to contact. She replied with a thumbs-up and then deleted both texts.
She started in the cereal aisle, selecting her own favourite cornflakes and the nutty muesli Damian liked. The idea was to make her way leisurely to the relevant aisle, piling stuff in her trolley as she went. With a minute or so to go, she would linger by the tinned vegetables until Phil appeared with his own trolley, and he’d pass her the carrier bag with the tracker and cameras inside.