by Jane Renshaw
‘And you’ve been running a drugs operation with her from Kinty, and John Innes found out about it – so you killed him! But why put him undercover at Pitfourie in the first place? So close to Kinty and your – your nefarious activities...’
The wry smile was back. ‘Keeping me talking, are you, until the cavalry arrive?’ He looked past her. When she said nothing, he shook his head. ‘I wasn’t party to the decision to put John in place here. The Birmingham DI that John had worked with previously had already suggested him to Campbell before I was brought into the loop.’
‘That was bad luck.’ Yes, she needed to keep him talking. It was almost as if he wanted her to. ‘Presumably John came across “Baz” at some stage and found out what you were up to?’
‘That was also bad luck, given that “Baz” doesn’t – didn’t – socialise locally. He saw me in a field at Kinty one day, apparently, when he was driving past.’
‘So why risk the same thing happening with me?’ But she already knew the answer to that one. ‘You knew that Campbell was going to put someone else in, so it may as well be another of your own UCs, someone who would come to you first, like John did, if they stumbled on evidence of what you’d been up to. Someone whose loyalty you could count on.’
He lifted his shoulders in a helpless gesture.
‘And if I had found evidence against you, what would you have done?’
And as he looked off, as if to avoid the question, as the arm holding the gun dropped, she took her chance.
Never let your guard down.
She rushed him.
She didn’t, in all honesty, despite everything, despite all she knew, expect him to fire.
But he raised his arm, and she heard the bang a split second before the bullet slammed into her body and she fell, and white light exploded in her head.
FEBRUARY
52
The snow was back: there was a deep layer of it on top of the dwarf willow outside Karen’s bedroom window, like a cupcake with too much icing. It glowed white in the dark, reflecting the light shining on it through her sliding glass doors. Whenever there was the least bit of snow Hector didn’t let Damian drive, so he had dropped him off, and now Damian was looking out at the willow and suggesting a bird feeder.
‘We’ve got loads of bird feeders in the garden,’ Karen pointed out.
The triangle of grass outside Karen’s room didn’t really count as garden in her opinion. She meant the walled garden at the back that all the main rooms looked out onto.
‘You could lie in bed and watch them,’ he persisted.
‘I don’t want a load of beady eyes on me every time I get undressed.’
He grinned, and moved a pile of folded and ironed laundry – one of the many benefits of being back home – from the chair to the chest, and sat down, his right leg sort of kicking out slightly because most of his weight, she supposed, was on his other leg. His left foot was now flat on the carpet but the artificial right foot was just touching it at the heel. Sometimes he left it like that, but now he reached down below his knee and pulled it back so the sole of the shoe rested properly on the floor.
They hadn’t talked about the horrendous things she had said and done, and she hoped they never would. After she’d got back from hospital he had come to see her with supplies of her favourite food and it had been fine because there had been other people there. But since then, since she’d recovered from her ‘ordeal’, as Bill called it, Damian had been avoiding her a bit, and she couldn’t blame him.
From the kitchen across the hall came Mollie’s squeal:
‘Can’t we just cut off the burnt bits?’
Mum was keeping Mollie out of their way by getting her to help with dinner, and Mollie was being typically overambitious and making homemade oatcakes to have with the soup. They never usually had a starter, but Mollie seemed to think Damian feasted on swans and caviar and suckling pigs every night and had insisted they had to have three courses.
Poor Mollie. She must be pretty devastated by Brotzengate.
The best way Mum and Bill could think of to cheer her up was inviting Damian to dinner. At least, that was what Mum had said, so of course Karen could hardly argue. It was really annoying, the way Mum always picked up on stuff, and she must somehow know that things were a bit off with Damian. She probably thought this was Karen’s chance to ‘clear the air’. If she tried to do that, Damian would probably just make a joke of it, but there was also a chance he would go nuclear winter, as Eve called it, and it would be a disaster because she’d get all flustered and end up saying something else horrendous.
Instead, she said, ‘Has Bill told you to try and get me talking about my “ordeal”? Now me and you have both almost been killed by psychopaths – although I suppose you’re going to say that in your case it wasn’t your fault. Did you get counselling?’
He smiled. ‘No.’ As if the idea of Damian Forbes needing counselling was the most ridiculous thing ever.
‘I’m pretty much keeping Dr Hoang in gold cufflinks single-handed.’ She sat down on the bed. ‘Anyway, what’s to say? You were right about Ade. Is that what you want to hear?’
‘It’s a start.’
Ade was in prison, along with Jagdeep and Doffy. He’d been charged with several offences, top of the list being Chimp’s murder – they thought he had probably helped Phil Caddick kill Chimp – followed closely by Karen’s kidnapping and attempted murder. Jagdeep and Doffy had been charged as accessories.
Prim had gone to stay with her parents, and Rainbow was probably making friendship bracelets for everyone on Doffy’s wing. Baz – Phil Caddick – and Gwennie still hadn’t been caught. Karen’s nightmares and daymares, if there were such things, sometimes featured Ade and the others but mostly Gwennie, for some reason. Last night it had been Gwennie leaning over her and saying, What’s the matter, love?
She lay flat on the bed and looked at the ceiling. ‘What happens when Ade gets out of prison? What if he comes after me?’ When she thought about Ade in a prison cell, she couldn’t help feeling a bit guilty, which she knew was not healthy, as Mum would say. Dr Hoang said she had to let go of those feelings, to break free of the ‘control’ Ade had had over her.
‘By the time he gets out, you’ll have matured sufficiently – we can all hope – to be able to deal with Ade if he contacts you. You’d just tell the police and they’d put him back inside. You would tell the police, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course! God! He tried to kill me? But he might just – I don’t know, grab me off the street or something. Do you think Ade’s a psychopath?’
‘What, so you’re interested in my opinion now?’
She propped her head on her hand and glared at him.
Damian grimaced. ‘Of course he is. When you met him that first time, at the boathouse, he must have been back there revisiting the scene of the crime, where he and Phil Caddick killed Chimp. Someone who gets a kick out of that –’
‘Yes yes, okay.’ She really didn’t want to think about Ade any more. Talking about him to Dr Hoang once a week was bad enough. ‘Do you think Phil Caddick and Gwennie are psychopaths?’
It was so bizarre that Baz had turned out to be a rogue cop. He’d been so... so nice. He had seemed so nice. But it had all been a front. He’d pretended to be locked in the container with her just so she’d tell him if anyone else knew where she’d found the phone. He was just a crook. And a murderer, of course.
‘Who knows, but I would guess not. Phil Caddick probably took a bribe or something when he was a young cop, and that was him on the slippery slope. Gwennie seems to be someone he met while he was undercover, an animal rights activist who dabbled in drugs and –’
‘Gwennie probably wasn’t involved in Chimp’s murder?’
‘Maybe not, but she went along for the ride to the pond when they took you there. She was involved in the search when you escaped. She tried to reel you back in –’
‘Yeah,’ she cut him off. ‘You know t
he thing I find most unbelievable? That Claire was an undercover cop.’ She flopped her head back down and grimaced at the ceiling. ‘I miss Claire. I don’t suppose you do – she was worse than Mrs Mac, if that’s possible, wasn’t she?’
‘Of course I miss Claire,’ he said with a sort of weary patience, as if coping with Karen was almost more than he could handle.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered. And then: ‘But Claire being a cop. I mean, Claire! And when she caught Hector red-handed, literally, with a dead body, she helped him get away?’ She puffed. ‘What is it with your brother and women?’
‘Pathetic?’
‘Totally.’
Thanks to the footage from the camera in the hidden room that Claire and Hector had found, there was no doubt that Hector was innocent and Baz had killed Max Weber. DCI Stewart had wanted to charge Hector with stealing his car, until Hector had pointed out that he had to do it because he was being pursued for a crime he didn’t commit, because of DCI Stewart’s ‘unwarranted prejudice’ against him. Apparently Hector had used those exact words, which must have made Campbell Stewart want to punch his face.
‘And isn’t there the question of what he was doing at Drumdargie Castle in the first place?’
‘The police have accepted his explanation that Perdita asked him to fetch something.’
‘At one o’clock in the morning? I suppose Perdita would do anything for him too?
‘She and Hector have always been just friends.’
Karen snorted.
After a bit, Damian said, ‘Campbell Stewart is hopeful that Phil Caddick and Gwennie will be caught eventually.’
‘I hope Campbell Stewart’s going to get in trouble for not looking at Chimp’s evidence on the USB stick when you gave him it.’ The sight of Baz dealing drugs to Perdita at Kinty hadn’t meant anything to Damian and Gavin because they didn’t know who Baz really was, but Campbell Stewart would have taken one look and realised that ‘Baz’ was his old pal Phil, up to no good. ‘If he had, the police would have gone to Kinty and arrested Phil Caddick and searched the place, and found me in the container. I should sue him.’
‘Mm. Actually, the timing of when Chimp’s Kinty footage became available to the police hasn’t been brought up by anyone, least of all Campbell Stewart.’
‘But you could –’
‘I could, but I’d rather not. A joker to play at a later date, perhaps.’
‘It’s literally Hector’s get out of jail free card?’
He was saved from having to come up with a comeback by Mollie bursting into the room. ‘Dinner is served!’
She’d gone to town setting the dining table. There were candles, and napkins folded in waterlily shapes, and she’d drawn name cards with wombats on them – Mollie’s favourite animal. She’d seated Damian opposite her, presumably to facilitate the staring she was going to be doing all through the meal.
‘Very civilised,’ said Damian, and Mollie went red.
They’d got through the soup course – the oatcakes were really dry and difficult to swallow, but Damian managed to eat two – and had started on the cauliflower curry when Mollie suddenly said:
‘I suppose you’ve heard that Mr Brotzen has sacked me.’ And then added: ‘Because I don’t have any spark.’
Bill said, ‘Oh, now, Mollie, no.’
Mum said, ‘He didn’t say that.’
Karen said, ‘Mr Brotzen is an arsehole.’
Damian just raised his eyebrows.
Mr Brotzen was an arsehole. He had come to the house to talk to Mum and Bill and Mollie all together and Karen had listened at the door. He’d said he felt they’d ‘come to the end of the road’ with Mollie because although she was ‘a good technician with a great work ethic’ she had no ‘feel’ for the music – she was like ‘a very impressive automaton’. He had actually used that word, the absolute bastard. Automaton.
Mum had objected, ‘I hardly think that’s a helpful analogy’ and Karen had realised – and this had been the biggest shock of all – that Mum agreed with him on the basic Mollie-isn’t-all-that-good thing.
Poor Mollie!
But Mollie had just said, ‘Okay.’
Now, she was poking a floret of cauliflower across her plate. ‘He didn’t say it in so many words, but that’s what he meant. You and Andrew have spark, and I don’t.’
‘Well, that’s nonsense,’ said Damian, finally. ‘You’re one of the sparkiest people I know. Mr Brotzen, on the other hand, has about as much spark as...’
‘A wet fish,’ said Bill.
‘A potato,’ Karen suggested.
Mollie giggled.
‘I was going to say a slice of gorgonzola,’ said Damian. ‘Which he does in fact resemble on a hot day.’
Everyone laughed.
‘But he does have a musical spark,’ Mollie sighed. ‘And I don’t.’
‘Well, you’re only twelve,’ said Damian, and Karen thought he might be going to say she was too young to have musical spark anyway, but he went on: ‘You’ve got plenty of time to work out the medium though which your undeniable spark is best expressed.’
‘Exactly!’ gushed Mum, and Karen realised she’d been terrified that Damian – Damian, whose word Mollie would take as gospel – might give her false hope.
She needn’t have worried.
Damian didn’t do false hope.
He was loading his fork with curry and rice. ‘I don’t know why you’d want to be a professional musician anyway. Would take all the fun out of it.’
‘Life’s so not fair,’ wailed Mollie. ‘You’ve got the talent to be a concert violinist but you don’t want to be. I don’t, but I do. I did.’
Anyone else would have objected and modestly said they probably didn’t have the talent either, but all Damian said, after he’d chewed and swallowed his forkful, was, ‘I wonder which of us irritates Mr Brotzen more’ before changing the subject to wombats.
After they’d eaten, they sat with their coffees in the lounge for a while and then Damian suggested a musical interlude, and Karen could see that Mollie was torn. She hadn’t been in the music room since Brotzengate.
But this was Damian.
He didn’t go near the violins or violas. He opened the lid of the piano and said he’d been experimenting with a new technique, and delicately used his elbows to play a few notes of what could have been Bach. Mollie spluttered with laughter and Damian moved up the piano stool so she could sit next to him – she was blushing like mad by this time, of course – and have a go at an elbow duet.
‘Requests?’ said Damian.
‘The Moonlight Sonata,’ Mum chortled.
Karen sat in the big squashy chair and watched them all reflected in the long wall of windows and sliding doors. She was pretty proud of her little sister. She wished she could be more like Mollie, so soft-hearted and yet so tough. She’d just had the biggest disappointment of her whole life – she had wanted it so much, to be a professional musician – but she’d already started to put it behind her. If that had happened to Karen she’d probably have smashed up every musical instrument in the house and refused to speak to anyone for a year.
She supposed Damian and Mollie both had the knack of being able to get the most out of life, whatever shape it might take, whatever it might unexpectedly morph into.
They had the knack of being happy.
I could have died.
She faced it, for the first time.
She could have ceased to exist. Not been here any more. Not been able to sit here watching them, her lovely family and her lovely friend, and realise that she’d been a stupid idiot who had put them all through hell and had to start making amends. Somehow. She had a whole life ahead of her that had almost been gone, and she had to appreciate it and do good things with it. Damian had been right, that day at the pond. She needed to focus on the good stuff.
She got out of the chair and went over to the piano, and ruffled Mollie’s embarrassing bowl-cut. ‘Can I have a go?’
53
Alighting at Hampstead Heath station, Claire decided to take the stairs rather than the lift up from the platform to the street, but she took them slowly, her left arm resting on top of the bag that was slung across her body from her right shoulder. Her left shoulder was healing well, but it wasn’t there yet, and the walk to the Tube, and half an hour standing in a rattling carriage, hadn’t done it much good.
Up on the pavement, she stood back against a large window with the Hampstead Heath orange and blue underground symbol on it, out of the flow of people. She was ten minutes early. Buses, taxis, vans, cars, people... So many people, a lot of them plugged in to something or other, wires dangling from their ears. People from all the corners of the world, each intent on his or her own business. A teenage girl strode past, and Claire thought, as she often did, of Karen. She wasn’t in touch with anyone at Pitfourie, of course, but DCI Stewart had assured her that Karen was fine and back at home.
This was Claire’s natural habitat, the hustle and bustle of the capital, but she had become unused to it, she supposed. She felt gritty and street-soiled and weary. There were a couple of commercial bins at the side of the road, overflowing with rubbish, and the smell was overpowering.
And the noise!
She’d be on sick leave for at least another month and she supposed she’d spend it here. Mum and Dad were insisting she stay with them while she recuperated, and she was enjoying the pampering and spending time with them, but she also felt so restless, so unsettled, somehow. She took her phone from her bag and looked again at the email DCI Stewart had sent her that morning. At the link which she hadn’t yet followed.
A couple of weeks ago, DCI Stewart had nominated her for a commendation for being injured in the line of duty ‘while single-handedly attempting to apprehend an armed suspect’. He had confounded all her expectations by coming down firmly on her side in the aftermath of it all. He had visited her in hospital in Aberdeen several times, bringing fruit and chocolates and magazines.