The Sweetest Poison

by Jane Renshaw

  He shook his. ‘Nae her wyte. We spoilt her, Ina and me. Never a skelp or a scauld, though she’d need of it.’

  ‘But would you have wanted her any different? I wouldn’t. She saved my life.’

  Uncle Jim shook his head again, and tipped back his glass. ‘Maybe she did. Maybe she did at that... Well well. She was my ain dearie, but I never could faddom her.’

  ‘If she hadn’t come to help me, she’d be alive now.’

  For a while they just sat there, saying nothing more. Then Uncle Jim stood, and said goodnight, and she heard his heavy steps on the stairs. And then silence.

  She knew she wouldn’t sleep.

  She could make a start on the kitchen.

  First, the piles of things cluttering the worktops and dresser. It seemed mainly to be junk mail, and this went straight into the recycling box she’d unearthed from the scullery. Almost all the rest was bills, with the payment slips torn off them, which hopefully meant he was up to date with paying; these she put in a pile on the table.

  Near the top of the third stack of envelopes was a Jiffy bag. It had a courier’s sticker on it and when she felt it her fingers encountered two hard knobbles.

  There was a sheet of paper inside. A letter from McIlraith Bridger, Solicitors, Glasgow, informing Uncle Jim that their late client, Mrs Clementina Clack, had made him a small bequest in her will, and they were accordingly enclosing the two items: viz. one solitaire diamond engagement ring, and one 18-carat gold wedding ring. The letter was dated February this year.

  Auntie Ina.

  Auntie Ina, sitting at the table with The People’s Friend, and milky tea in a cup and saucer covered all over with big dark-pink roses; capturing Suzanne as she ran past, and making her stand still as she retied the laces on her shoes.

  Auntie Ina, dead.

  She tipped the contents of the Jiffy bag onto the table.

  Uncle Jim hadn’t even taken the rings from their bubblewrap, which was still held tightly in place with Sellotape. Auntie Ina’s rings; digging into her face as she lay, half conscious, in a hospital bed.

  She pushed the letter and the squashy little packages back into the Jiffy bag.

  Had he told anyone that Ina had died? Maybe not. He couldn’t have told Mum, or she in her turn would have told Helen. It would be like him, she supposed, to keep it private. Not to want people making a fuss. What should she do? Confront him?

  No. When she’d sorted through everything, she’d give him the ‘Don’t know’ pile, Jiffy bag on top, and see if he said anything.

  The phone in the hall trilled, and she jumped her height.

  ‘Hello? Ms Clack?’ A man’s voice.

  ‘This is Helen Clack.’

  ‘Sorry to be calling so late. DCI Campbell Stewart from Grampian CID. You probably don’t remember me, but I was part of the investigation into your cousin’s disappearance.’

  She took the phone to the table and sat down. ‘I remember.’

  The man with the rugby player’s thighs, sitting by her hospital bed. The man who’d told her that the letters from Hector weren’t from Hector, and that the blood on her jersey was Suzanne’s.

  ‘Have they found him?’

  ‘ “Moir Sandison”? No. But our colleagues in Lothian and Borders have made some progress in identifying the man he appears to have been working with. The bogus headmaster in Dunfermline – we hope to have someone in custody imminently.’

  ‘Oh. Well, good. Who is he?’

  ‘I don’t want to say too much until it’s been confirmed – but that should happen tomorrow morning. I wonder if it would be possible to come out and see you in the afternoon?’

  ‘Yes – of course.’

  ‘We’d like you to look at a photograph; and I’d like to touch base with you generally. I’m the point of contact here for the “Moir Sandison” investigation – given the possible connections with your cousin’s case, which is still in my remit.’

  ‘Her case? But – you mean you’ve reopened it?’

  ‘We never close unsolved cases. Any new information that comes in on your cousin’s case automatically comes to me... Such as the email Mr Beattie has received.’

  ‘I didn’t send it.’

  ‘So he said. In fact it was sent from a disposable email address. And the IP has turned out to be an internet café in Aberdeen, so no joy there.’

  ‘In Aberdeen? So if he sent it – that means he was in Aberdeen yesterday?’

  ‘It wasn’t necessarily “Moir Sandison” who sent it.’ A pause. ‘The suggestion it contains, that what you told us wasn’t the truth –’

  ‘I only wish it wasn’t.’ She didn’t have to feign the weariness in her voice.

  ‘I’m sorry. I had to ask.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So – can we say five, five-thirty?’

  ‘That would be fine.’

  43

  She wasn’t asleep, this time, when she became aware of it.

  The sound of bells jingling.

  She flung out of bed to the window. The moon was huge and high in the sky, casting an unreal half-light over everything. A figure, a man, was walking across the yard. Away from her, away from the house, down the side of the steading until his dark form merged with the shadows –

  She ran to the bedroom door, hauled it open, ran across the landing.

  ‘Uncle Jim!’

  She grabbed him when he appeared; pulled him to the window. ‘Look!’

  The yard was empty and still.

  ‘He was out there. Moir. Rob. I just saw him.’

  ‘There was an aald gangrel mannie a year-two since –’

  ‘I’m phoning the police.’

  ◆◆◆

  In the harsh overhead light the kitchen looked like something from one of those TV shows where council workers go into a dead mad person’s house with masks over their faces. The two young officers in their bulky black waistcoats, one ruddy-faced, one pale, didn’t turn a hair. They sat down at the table and accepted her offer of tea. One could have Hector’s mug, but the other would have to take his chances.

  ‘Aye,’ the ruddy-faced one said. ‘A professional job.’

  How could he possibly know that?

  In their search of the farm, they’d discovered that Stan’s wheels had been removed. Her initial feeling of relief that at least she’d be believed, at least they wouldn’t think she was a hysterical female hallucinating, had been replaced by frustration.

  Because why would Rob Beattie do that?

  She said, ‘But if it was just thieves – there’s all sorts of other stuff, more valuable stuff, lying around on a farm. Machinery and equipment.’

  ‘Everything of value’s under lock and key, yes, Mr Clack?’

  Uncle Jim nodded. ‘Steading and sheddies are aye locked.’

  ‘They were probably hoping for easy pickings, found everything locked up, decided to cut their losses and take a set of wheels.’

  ‘He must have done it to try and keep me here.’ Even to her own ears it sounded ludicrous. ‘I’m going to have to get a garage to come out and replace them – and meanwhile I’m stuck here.’ She set their mugs down on the table and pulled her thin cotton robe closed over her chest.

  The ruddy-faced man piled sugar into his mug. ‘You could hire a car, couldn’t you?’

  Of course she could.

  ‘We’ll come by again in the morning. Make sure everything’s OK.’

  His colleague had a pad on the table in front of him. ‘If we can just get your statements?’

  When they’d gone, Uncle Jim said, ‘There’s a fair bit of it now. Tinkies coming out from the towns, raking round. Folk lock their doors now that never would have thought of it, twenty-thirty year back. Aye.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘That noise you heard the other night. That’ll have been them “casing the joint”.’

  Had it been? The jingling sound – had it just been thieves, with a bag of tools?

  She took the crockery to the sink, and swirl
ed water into Hector’s mug. ‘Could we leave the kitchen door open? So Fly and Ben can get out into the rest of the house?’

  Back in her room, she unhooked the ship picture from the wall and propped it against the door. If anyone opened the door, she’d hear it clatter over. Then she got a nail file from her bag and put it under her pillow, getting a sudden flash of Suzanne, Suzanne making a daft face:

  I’ve got a manicure set and I’m not afraid to use it.

  44

  At the top of Worm Hill she slowed the pick-up to look back across to Craig Dearg and the Lang Park. There were stirks in the field, toy-sized from this distance, heads bent to the grass.

  When she’d phoned the garage and arranged for them to come out to replace her wheels – which Uncle Jim had insisted on paying for – and the policemen had been and gone, she’d directed her nervous energy to battle with the kitchen. And overdone it. Her legs felt weak, her head woozy. The afternoon sun was fierce on the windscreen.

  She carried on down the brae to Kirkton, and past the kirk and the manse and the playground, empty in the sun. From the gates she could just see the block of toilets. She needed to go to the loo, in fact – she’d forgotten to go before she left. Well, she might be glad of the excuse to interrupt the conversation, if it got awkward.

  If?

  She carried on into the heart of the village, to the apron of tarmac in front of the shoppie and what used to be the butcher’s and was now ‘Damask and Delft’.

  Lorna’s shop.

  She opened the door on air that was unpleasantly cloying with the scents of candles and spices. There were two spaces separated by a doorway to her right. Mr Jappie used to have the counter in front of that door, and he’d disappear into the inner sanctum, as Dad used to call it, if you asked for something that wasn’t set out in the chilled display area of the counter.

  Now the inner sanctum, what she could see of it, contained antique furniture, and lacy things hanging on towel rails, and shelves with little pottery birds.

  In the front bit of the shop, where she was standing, there were whirly stands with cards in them, and tables with books and candles and a basket of little polished fossils, and at the right of the door stacks of wicker baskets, and a glass cabinet with Celtic jewellery, and another with pretty etched wine glasses and beakers.

  The counter was at the back of the shop.

  The girl perched behind the till smiled at Helen. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hello.’

  The girl was wearing a scoop-neck black top and an orange cotton scarf with gold and silver threads through it. Her jet-black hair conformed to the current teenage fashion for dead straight. Spiky, clumsy false eyelashes adorned her lids.

  ‘I’m looking for Lorna.’

  The girl nodded, slid off the stool and opened a door behind the counter.

  ‘Lorna!’

  Helen stayed where she was. She didn’t move forward towards the counter.

  A woman came through the door: small and neat in a white blouse and fawn skirt and sensible flat shoes; mid-brown hair styled in a glossy bob.

  ‘Helen,’ she said. She didn’t smile.

  ‘I’m sorry – to just turn up like this.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘I wondered if I could talk to you. Just for five minutes.’

  ‘Come on then.’

  Through the door was a little room with floor-to-ceiling shelves and a table and chair and computer, and a staircase leading up. Lorna stood facing her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Helen said. ‘I’m probably the last person you want to see.’

  ‘Is this about the email?’

  ‘I didn’t send it.’ And it just occurred to her: ‘Whoever it was knew your dad’s email address.’

  ‘So it must have been Rob? Dad’s email address is on the church website.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘Not that Rob would need to look it up, because we’ve secretly been in touch with him all these years, haven’t we? That’s what you’re alleging, isn’t it? Sending the police round to harass us, demanding a handwriting sample, and that we look at photographs of some man who obviously isn’t Rob.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I think I’d know my own brother.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She put her bag down on the table. ‘But could you just have another look? Please?’ She spread out the photos.

  Lorna glanced down. ‘It’s not Rob, Helen.’ But there was a new note in her voice.

  Next to the photos of Moir, Helen set the photocopies of the photo of herself and Baudrins, and what had been written on the back. ‘If he’s not Rob, why would he – the police have told you what happened?’

  Lorna nodded.

  ‘Why would he write this? How would he know I was called Smellie Nellie when we were little? And don’t say I must have told him, because I know I didn’t. Why would I tell anyone that?’

  ‘He must have found out somehow.’

  ‘And why would he send your dad that email, if he wasn’t Rob?’

  ‘How should I know? He’s obviously a headcase.’

  ‘Yes.’ Helen gathered the photographs back up.

  ‘Why didn’t you answer my letters?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When you went away to Edinburgh? Didn’t you get my letters? Do you think it was easy to write them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, you didn’t get them?’

  ‘I got them, but I couldn’t –’

  ‘You didn’t want to know me any more, because of what Rob did? Or was there another reason? Is it true, what was in the email? Was it not Rob at all? Was it someone else?’

  Oh God. ‘It was Rob.’

  ‘How can you be so sure? It was dark under the trees and you were all wasted. You’ve always had it in for Rob. You just assumed it was him, didn’t you?’

  ‘It was him.’ She snatched up her bag.

  ‘It’s only on your say-so that he’s been blamed all these years. Only on your say-so that no one’s ever tried to find out if maybe something else happened that night. What’s the point, when everyone knows it was Rob? Can you imagine what it’s been like for Mum and Dad? For Mum, having to face all those cows in the Women’s Institute? For Dad, having to stand up in front of the congregation every Sunday and preach at them when they all think he brought up a murderer? A psychopath?’

  ‘He is a psychopath!’

  And she grabbed up her things and fled: back through the doorway, past the wide-eyed girl, round the counter, past the pretty useless things and out.

  She was going to wet herself.

  Smellie Nellie.

  She ran along the pavement and across the tarmac of the playground to the passage open to the sky that led to the girls’ toilets. She ran along it, realising too late that the door would probably be locked, but she couldn’t wait any more – if it was locked she’d have to squat here like a dog.

  But the door came open under her hand. She dived into a cubicle, snibbed the door and sat down on the cold black plastic seat. They had been wooden before. As she emptied her bladder she shut her eyes and they were back – the ghosts of her childhood, out there in the empty playground.

  She could hear footsteps.

  She really could. Rapid steps, purposeful, coming closer. Coming very close.

  Bang.

  The door of the cubicle shook.

  Bang bang.

  Her fingers tightened on the toilet paper. She sat perfectly still, perfectly quiet, her eyes jumping about the cubicle. Was the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor big enough for a man to wriggle through?

  Bang bang.

  The door bowed inwards with the force of the blows.

  45

  She took in a long breath and shouted:

  ‘Help! Help me! Help!’

  She screamed it, the sound bouncing back off the walls. She screamed until her throat was raw, and she kept screaming, her eyes fixed all the time on the door. But it didn’t m
ove again. And when she finally stopped screaming there was no sound from outside.

  He had gone.

  Had he? Or was he standing on the other side of the door, waiting?

  And then from outside, distantly, a girl’s voice: ‘Be careful! Damian!’

  And a little nearer: ‘I think it came from the toilets,’ and it was Hector’s voice of twenty years ago, and somehow Damian wasn’t in Europe, he was out there, his chubby little face turning to Moir inquiringly –

  She tore at the toilet paper, cleaned herself, pulled up pants and jeans, didn’t stop to flush; fumbled with the lock on the door and yanked it open, ran out of the toilet and into the passage –

  And straight into not Damian, not Rob, but a stranger who said, ‘Whoa,’ and smiled at her, steadying her with a hand on each of her shoulders, and Helen couldn’t do anything but stare back at him.

  The sunlight glancing into the passageway lay across his shirt and the line of his jaw, and struck a sheen of gold from his hair.

  And maybe it was the incongruity, the feeling she’d stepped straight from a rerun of her childhood hell into one of those male fragrance ads, all sundrenched Mediterranean and gorgeous, narcissistic youth, that had her yipping, suddenly, with mad laughter.

  ‘Are you okay?’ said Narcissus, dropping his hands from her shoulders, and Helen, absurdly, wanted to stop him, to tell him not to speak, that his kind didn’t speak, not ever. Smouldering looks, yes. Sensuous hands on yielding flesh, yes. Speaking – no. No no no no no.

  She covered her mouth with her hand. Why couldn’t she stop this ridiculous yipping? Like a dog?

  ‘We heard someone shouting. Was that you?’

  We?

  She looked past him. A plumpish teenage girl in cropped jeans was standing at the end of the passage. And as Narcissus turned his head to the girl, as the sunlight fell full on his face in profile, she saw that he was much younger than she’d thought – that there was still a softness to his cheek and mouth and jaw, an adolescent fragility to the collarbone visible at the open neck of his shirt.

  Then he looked back at her, and raised his lovely eyebrows. He had asked her a question.