The Sweetest Poison

by Jane Renshaw

  But if Suzanne was alive and living her life somewhere, if she’d killed Rob and had to disappear – wouldn’t she have let Helen know? If it had been the other way round, Helen would never have let Suzanne think she was dead.

  ‘Okay?’ said Damian.

  ‘Yes. Sorry.’ She walked past the table, down the passage to the kitchen. The stack of correspondence was where she’d left it on the dresser. She could go through it while she waited, couldn’t she? See if there was anything significant she’d overlooked?

  Damian hadn’t followed her. She turned back into the hall, half expecting him to have found something on the table, a phone number written on a piece of paper with ‘S’ next to it or a cryptic note scribbled in the phone book – but he was just standing, one hand on the stick, the other lightly touching the wall. When he realised she was there he smiled and started to move, with an odd, rapid sort of lurch that had her hurrying back to him.

  The look he gave her – full-strength death ray – banished any thought she might have had of taking his arm, of offering help.

  ‘Do you have the letter from Ina’s solicitor?’

  She went ahead of him to the dresser and pulled it from the Jiffy bag. She didn’t watch his progress into the room, to her shoulder. She didn’t suggest he sit down.

  When he’d read it: ‘You could phone them. Ask them about Ina’s will – who the beneficiaries were. Although that stuff’s probably confidential. You’re a relative though. Maybe they would tell you. If Suzanne’s alive and Ina knew it, she’ll be the main beneficiary, won’t she? Under whatever name she’s using.’

  Helen set the letter back down on the dresser. ‘Of course. Yes.’

  ‘And look at all these coincidences.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If this letter was written a few weeks after Ina died, that means she must have died in January or February this year. Just a month or so before Moir came into your life. And Ina was living in Glasgow – where Laing lives. Where he met Moir. Where Moir scammed Lisa Greig.’

  ‘But how can those things be related?’

  ‘Through Suzanne, somehow, if she’s alive?’ He picked up and then discarded the next item of correspondence on the pile – an invoice from a seed merchant. ‘Where would your uncle keep stuff he wouldn’t want anyone to find? His bedroom?’

  ‘I’m not going to pry round his room. I’m going to just wait and ask him.’

  ‘Right, and he’s always so forthcoming with information.’

  She pushed the letter back into the Jiffy bag. ‘When he finds out about Rob’s body being found, maybe he’ll open up.’

  ‘How about we compromise? We could confine our search, initially, to the public rooms. Kitchen, sitting room...’

  There were steps in the hall and she looked round, straight into Moir’s smiling face.

  64

  She shot backwards away from him, tripped over Damian’s stick and fell. The stick clattered away under the table. Damian grabbed the dresser and hauled at it, bringing it crashing down across the doorway, between them and Moir. China exploded, shards bouncing over her legs, over the floor.

  ‘Go! The back door!’ Damian was grabbing her, pulling her up; pushing her. ‘Go!’

  Moir jumped up onto the back of the fallen dresser, easily, casually, not hurrying.

  Helen ran.

  She ran into the scullery, to the back door, and pulled it open. Shouted:

  ‘Help! Help us!’

  She turned back into the kitchen, but Damian was right behind her, reaching past her and jiggling the key from the door, and then they were outside and he was slamming it behind them and locking it.

  ‘Go!’ he pushed her. ‘Get Dod – if you can’t find him just go, run – not on the track, cut through the fields to the road – I’ll hide.’

  He had a curved, triangular shard of pottery in his hand.

  He didn’t have his stick.

  ‘Go!’ And he shouted: ‘Dod!’ And started to hobble across the grass of the Bleach Green. ‘I’ll hide in the shed. Go!’

  Yes. She had to get Dod. She was running before the sense of it got through to the front of her brain, as if her limbs had some primitive survival instinct her brain lacked. She ran round the side of the house, shouting something, eyes leaping from steading to byre to yard.

  Oh God. Oh God.

  Chris’s Land Rover was gone. The other was still there. But where was Dod?

  Not here.

  She carried on running, past the byre to the dyke and scrambling over it, into the field of barley, running through it like a sprinter. But still it was too long before she reached the other side of the field, and the dyke that separated it from the next one, pasture, easier for running. Then she’d be on the road.

  How could he hide?

  The shed would be locked. And so would the gate into the steading courtyard. How could he climb it to get to the steading? The byre was too far.

  Where was there for him to hide?

  Nowhere.

  But she couldn’t do anything to help him.

  Her mobile was in her bag. And her bag was in the kitchen.

  When she got to the road she’d stop the first car that passed and make them help.

  But an hour could go by without a car on this road.

  She stopped, and turned, and looked back down the slope, across the barley, to the byre, to the house looming beyond it.

  There was nothing I could do. Was that what she’d say to Hector?

  He must have known the shed would be locked. He must have known there was no way – but he’d pretended that he could hide. Not to make her leave him – there was never any question about that – but to make her feel all right about it.

  She started to walk, back to the dyke – and then she was clambering back over it, running down the trampled path through the barley, the dusty scent of it rising in her nostrils, her feet slipping on the smooth stalks.

  A weapon. She needed a weapon.

  The tools were all in the shed, or in the steading room.

  Over the other dyke, and she was grubbing wildly amongst the grass-tangled remains of the binder at the end of the byre, pulling at the rusty metal. Finally a piece came loose in her hand, a long length of rusty steel.

  She ran back across the yard, on round the side of the house.

  65

  He hadn’t got far.

  He was lying on the grass of the Bleach Green.

  His lips were parted. There was blood in his hair, on his forehead, streaked down the side of his face. One hand was curled in the grass, as if he’d clutched it.

  The slate-grey eyes were open and empty.

  She dropped to him and took the curled hand in both of hers. It was cool.

  ‘Damian.’

  She willed his eyes to move. She squeezed his hand.

  ‘Damian.’

  Moir said, ‘Oh, Helen.’

  And before she could react he’d dropped down next to her, and put an arm round her, the smell of his cologne choking her throat.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He was looking at Damian with a slight rueful pout. There was a red line down his cheek, seeping blood.

  ‘Why?’ She didn’t know what she was referring to, or who, even, she was addressing.

  He reached past her. His hands were encased in clear gloves, the kind surgeons wore. He took the hem of Damian’s trouser leg between finger and thumb and began to lift it up over his ankle, revealing smooth flesh-coloured plastic above the blue sock. ‘Shall we call it euthanasia?’

  And Helen’s hands were at his face, her fingers howking at the line down his cheek, the side of his eye – and then she was hurling herself the other way, falling, scrambling up, grabbing for the rusty spike, whirling to bring it down on his head.

  But he’d moved too. Body-builder arms came round her, pinning her own arms, and as she kicked her heels back against him he flung her, hard, to the grass.

  She dropped the spike and he kicked it away.


  His breath was ragged in her ears. He wrenched both her arms up behind her back. She wriggled under him but he was too heavy. She managed to turn her head.

  There was blood on his face. He wasn’t smiling now.

  She turned her head again, to Damian. He hadn’t moved.

  How could he move?

  Moir was wrapping something soft and stretchy around her wrists.

  ‘Right.’ He pulled her to her feet, and she screamed, and he pushed her against the wall of the house. Then there was cloth in her mouth, and he was wrapping a bandage – yes, it was a bandage – across her mouth, round her head. And now he had binder twine, pulling it tight over the bandage. And all the time the pressure of his body, pinning her to the wall.

  She sniffed desperately, swallowed mucus, air whooshing in through her nose – Oh God. What was he going to do?

  He pulled her round and she felt him wrapping more twine round her wrists, on top of the bandage. And some detached part of her brain wondered, Why the bandage? Why the concern for her comfort?

  When he’d finished he made her walk, holding onto the wrists bound behind her, supporting her when she stumbled – across the grass and behind the steading to a dark blue car whose passenger door he opened for her.

  He eased her, quite gently, into the seat and fastened the seatbelt across her. He patted her shoulder with his gloved hand.

  ‘Excuse me for a minute, Helen – I just have to make a call from the landline. Back soon!’

  He shut the car door. She watched him walk back to the house and in through the open back door.

  She wriggled round in the seat, wriggled to the side so that her hands could feel for the thing the seatbelt clipped in to – but she couldn’t find it. But it had to be here! Her fingers fumbled for the belt itself, found it; moved down it until the plastic casing was shaking in her hands.

  She pushed at it until with a click she’d released the belt.

  Opening the door was harder. She twisted the other way and pushed her back against the door, running her hands up it to find the handle, lifting herself off the seat awkwardly.

  Her eyes met Moir’s through the windscreen.

  He shook his head.

  He opened the door and she half fell out of it. He pulled her all the way out and pushed her, face down, to the ground. He sat on her legs. She couldn’t see what he was doing but she could feel the slippery gloved fingers on her ankles, bandaging them, tying the twine on top. When he’d finished he got up, leaving her trussed on the ground. She could hear him walking away. She was going to choke on the cloth in her mouth. She couldn’t swallow. Her mouth was too dry –

  She wasn’t brave.

  She’d always known that. She couldn’t be brave about this.

  Footsteps. He was coming back. She rolled her head to look.

  He was moving backwards, quickly, almost jogging, pulling something along the ground. At first his body was between her and what he was pulling. And then she could see.

  Damian. Moir had him by the wrists. The sleeves of his shirt, rolled up a few times at the cuffs, had fallen back to his shoulders, exposing the length of his arms. They were thin – the muscles defined but without the bulk that would come with maturity. That would have come. The skin was lightly tanned where it had caught the sun, but the insides of his arms were pale and smooth-looking, milky-white, like a baby’s.

  There was blood in his hair, on his face, on his shirt.

  The heels of the polished shoes bounced on the dusty ground.

  She closed her eyes.

  One thud. Two. The clunk of the boot shutting.

  ‘Helen? You okay?’

  She hated herself for shaking her head – for pushing out her lips against the cloth, trying to move it, trying to make him see what the problem was.

  He stooped and put a knife flat against her cheek, hard and cold – then whipped it away, slicing through the twine, and with his gloved hands he was pulling the cloth from her mouth, and she was coughing, choking, gasping –

  ‘That better? You’re not going to scream again, are you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘That’s my good girl.’

  He lifted her against his chest. She held her breath, not wanting to breathe him, the smell of him as he carried her back to the passenger seat and dropped her into it. This time he didn’t fasten her seat belt, or his own, as he started the engine.

  At the track they turned not right to the road, but left.

  Left, to the Parks.

  66

  He had to unbind her feet so she could walk in front of him, past the motor home, in at the back door, through the kitchen, up the stairs to her old bedroom. To the woman sitting, small and calm, on the bed under the eaves.

  ‘Have you checked to see if she’s got a phone?’ It wasn’t Suzanne’s voice. The accent was Glaswegian – apart, oddly, from the o in phone.

  ‘No – good point.’

  ‘Suzanne?’

  The woman stood, and walked towards her. She was wearing the same clear gloves as Moir. Her eyes were heavily made up with kohl and smoky eye shadow. She stared at Helen as she pushed a hand into each of her jeans pockets. The small hands were quick, deft. She was so close that Helen could smell the garlic on her breath.

  Garlic bread. Suzanne had always loved garlic bread.

  ‘Oh come on, girls.’ Moir encircled them both with his arms, pressing them against each other, chuckling as Suzanne wriggled free, her pixie face contorting –

  ‘Suzanne.’ Joy, uncomplicated and primitive, flooded her mind, to be replaced at once by pain. Anger. ‘Why –?’

  In a flash Suzanne had lifted a hand and slapped her, hard. Grabbed her hair.

  Slammed face-first into the wall, Helen’s head banged on the plaster – once, twice, three times. Suzanne had a hand in her hair and a hand squeezed round her neck. The hard point of her shoulder was pressed into Helen’s back.

  And then she was released.

  Pivoting against the wall, she met Moir’s eyes. He was holding Suzanne from behind, grinning past her at Helen. ‘Uh uh uh.’ He lifted Suzanne bodily and tossed her onto the bed.

  Suzanne immediately jumped up again, but Moir turned and pointed a finger at her. ‘No.’ Like she was a dog he was training. ‘Don’t mark her.’

  Suzanne sat down on the bed, her eyes never leaving Helen’s.

  She was wearing black leggings and a red shirt and red shiny high-heeled boots. Her hair was short. Very short, almost clipped, and dyed black. Her eyes looked huge in her pale face.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ said Helen, as the tears came.

  ‘You hoped.’

  ‘No!’

  Suzanne turned her mouth down at the edges and half-shut her eyes and trembled her lips, mimicking, Helen supposed, her own expression.

  And they were eight years old again. ‘Does Uncle Jim know you’re –’

  ‘Alive and kicking? Of course not.’

  Oh God – ‘Where is he?’

  Moir laughed. ‘What do you take me for, Helen? A psychopath? Unc and his minder were off at the crack of dawn. Where to, I’ve no idea.’

  Of course. Dod had gone with his charge, with Uncle Jim. When Chris had whistled, it’d been Moir who’d answered. Moir had been watching the watcher; learning his habits. His whistle. His voice.

  Moir put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her to a hard chair by the window; forced her down onto it. On the floor were more rolls of bandage and twine.

  ‘Please – not in my mouth. I won’t scream.’

  He untied her wrists, but before she could even think about how she could turn this to her advantage he had gripped them in his hands, and Suzanne was wrapping bandage round and round her body and upper arms. Like a game they might have played as children: Suzanne going too far as usual; Helen crying.

  But no Mum and Dad downstairs to come and put a stop to it.

  Suzanne. Suzanne was here. She was alive. But –

  �
�What are you going to do?’

  ‘Well,’ said Moir. ‘That all depends. Are you going to be a good girl?’

  He had orange twine in his hands. But he only handed it to Suzanne, who tied it round Helen’s ribs and arms, over the bandage, round the back of the chair.

  Her hands were free. She could move her arms from the elbows. But what good was that, when she was tied to the chair, and her ankles were tied together?

  She said, ‘Did you kill Lisa Greig?’

  ‘Lisa?’ Moir stuck out his lower lip. ‘Poor Lisa took her own life.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘It was either suicide or an accident, according to the inquiry. Take your pick.’ He slid something onto her lap – a magazine. As if she was waiting to see the dentist. And then a sheet of paper on top of it, and a pen.

  ‘Write this,’ said Suzanne. ‘Write “I killed Rob Beattie.” ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Write it. Write what I tell you.’

  And so Helen wrote:

  I killed Rob Beattie. He was lying drunk by the stalkers’ path and I stuck a knife in him until he was dead. Suzanne tried to stop me and I half killed her too. When the others came I pretended to be unconscious. But then I told Hector and Norrie that Rob had attacked me and I’d killed him, and they hid the body until Norrie could come back for it and take it to Willie Duff’s grave. Hector told Suzanne that she had to disappear and not come back, or else we would all say that she killed Rob.

  Tears were plopping onto the paper. ‘No one’s going to believe this.’

  When Moir turned up in my life I didn’t know what to think – whether it was possible that Rob wasn’t dead after all. So I got Hector to dig up the grave.

  ‘It doesn’t even make sense!’ Helen flung the pen across the room and started to scrunch the paper in her hands, but Moir wrenched back her fingers and pulled the paper away.

  ‘It’s not meant to make sense.’ Suzanne clipped across the floor in her high boots. ‘Poor little Helen hasn’t thought it through logically. The poor little murderer, haunted by her victim. She doesn’t know what way’s up any more. She doesn’t know if Moir Sandison is Rob Beattie, or the ghost of Rob Beattie, or the Sith, come jingly-jangly-jingly through the veil…’ She laughed. ‘We were pretty good Sith, don’t you think? Were you scared? Did you have baaaaad dreams?’