twenty-three
Which was ridiculous, obviously. Mrs. Watson, sending a threatening letter? Mabel Watson, greengrocer, fruitseller, and poison pen? It was … there was only one word for it, that wonderful word, unpronounceable by any Japanese person without decades of immersion in English-speaking circles, but since there was no one to hear her mangling it she could say right out loud, kneeling here on the genkan … it was preposterous.
But what about her niece Dina who used to be so happy here and then suddenly was not? Might she have witnessed it and sent the note? Might Mrs. Watson have found out and sent her niece away?
And besides, what was she imagining it was that was done in the old slaughterhouse? An assignation? An empty building was an obvious trysting place for lovers. Her thoughts flew to Murray, of course, but there was nothing for them to settle upon. Murray—and Malcolm, come to that—were young single men; no affair of theirs would cause a scandal. But what if the woman were married—or what if the “woman” was a man? Keiko could not imagine that any of the Painchtonites would care about that. Mr. Callan of Palmer and Callan (surveyors) was married to—in Mrs. Watson’s own words—a lovely boy called Martin who was a good cook, one of her best customers, and had beautiful sensitive hands. “Not like these old trotters,” she had said, turning her own hands over and back and shaking her head at them. “Only good for rummaging in the tattie sack, these are.”
Anyway, it couldn’t be Murray: he had been alone since the break-up with his beloved girlfriend—whose name she couldn’t bring to mind, if she had ever heard it. And Malcolm? Keiko considered this for a moment and rejected it too.
That left Mrs. Poole. And then it wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to puzzle out who the other party might be for her. Keiko smiled to herself, recalling him sitting on the edge of his seat, his bright black eyes fastened on her as he jabbed her with questions. And—this was all conjecture, but to let it run for a moment—if Mr. Poole had found out and if the shock had killed him, wouldn’t that explain his widow’s numb dismay and her hysterical scrubbing in the hated place which had seen, no doubt, the confrontation between all three points of the love triangle?
But would that make sense of Murray? Would his mother’s affair, even if it had felled his father, trap Murray the way he seemed to be trapped here? Would it make him tell her to be careful and wish that he could get her—get both of them—safely away? Would it make him, despite all that, glad that she was here, someone who could help him solve mysteries?
It would not. Nor would it suddenly make three young women leave. Even if one of them tried her hand at blackmail, that still left the other two. And anyway, Mrs. Watson—Keiko was sure now that she thought about it calmly—would have handled Grace Poole’s affair by coming over, laying one of those tattie-sack hands on her friend’s arm, and talking to her.
So if it wasn’t an affair, what was it? What were the facts? Were there any facts when she stripped away all the conjecture?
Keiko was aware of a sick feeling settling not into her stomach but somewhere behind her jaw, like the insidious nausea of a journey in a vehicle with a dirty engine, where the fumes build up so gradually that you just gulped them down. There was only one fact, really, one thing was not preposterous but rather incontrovertible: Mr. Poole was dead. Murray’s father had died, and no one seemed to know what had killed him. And—returning to conjecture again, but with a certainty which made the bend in her jaw flood with saliva and caused to her to swallow hard—she could only too easily combine a death, a certain kind of death, with a neighbour too scared to talk plainly.
Her thoughts were racing along now; Murray hated the shop, but Malcolm loved it. Duncan Poole’s death had ended one son’s ambitions, but it had handed the other all that he desired. And wasn’t it strange that Malcolm alone of the three of them spoke of his father so easily, so soon? Didn’t it hint at a lack of feeling, perhaps a block to proper feeling? How could Malcolm be so contented while his mother stumbled through her days numb with sorrow and his brother fretted and ached? And if it seemed outlandish to think a boy might value a butcher’s shop above his own father, she could pull to mind more instances than she cared to of Malcolm stroking bloody steaks as though they were kittens, delving with glee into a wriggling mass of ground beef or a slithering vat of liver. She could hear Murray’s voice: Malcolm’s a butcher. That more or less sums it up as far as Malcolm goes. And Craig’s voice: That creep across the road.
But even Murray stayed, despite everything. And Craig regretted saying even as much as that, which was nothing. We’ve all been pals since we were wee.
The problem was that everyone in Painchton was loyal to the town. Its ways, Mr. McKendrick had said. Its traditions. If only she could find the missing girls. They would have no loyalty; they would tell her the truth.
She opened the browser on her laptop and sat with her fingers on the keys. But she did not even know their full names. Nicole might be a McKendrick, and Dina might be a Watson, but unless Tash had taken Mrs. McMaster’s name—which was not likely—she could be anyone. Keiko closed the laptop again.
If she couldn’t find the people who had left and those who stayed were too bonded to the place like Fancy or too scared like Murray, then she might as well give up on this tenuous mystery.
Then she remembered Mrs. Poole turning pale at the thought of the questionnaire, forbidding her sons to take it. Keiko turned her head and looked along the passage towards the sideboard in the living room, to where Mrs. Watson’s answer sheet lay. It would show up, wouldn’t it? A sneak, a secret holder, a writer of that horrid little note—a person like that couldn’t have answered all those questions on rumours and gossip and disbelief without something showing.
And so Keiko took the first small steps down a path she had never dreamed she would find herself on, one from which there was no returning. She made herself a cup of tea and, with a very soft pencil that she could rub away almost by breathing, she copied the names from her sign-up sheet onto the answer pages in the order of when people visited, opened her stats software, and began.
An hour later, she stared unblinking at the graph she had made until her eyes started to water. She went to the bathroom, took out her lenses, and came back again, threading the wires of her spectacles around her ears.
Maybe Mrs. Watson had seen something surprising behind Keiko in the street that first day. Or maybe she’d been trying not to sneeze. One thing was for sure: there was nothing in her profile—not in scruples, trust, discretion, anywhere—that marked her out as different from Pet McMaster, Pamela Shand, or Moira Glendinning. They were all as innocent as newborn babes.
They were, but it wasn’t like that for everyone. Hidden in the crowd of forty was a very worried little band. Their names, when she put them together, rang a faint bell somewhere. Imperiolo, McLuskie, Dessing, and Ballantyne. Where had she come across them bunched together before? Murray, she remembered, had told her she’d be better off without the Imperiolos and McLuskies as friends. Except that it wasn’t both Imperiolos that stood out on this graph she was staring at; it was Kenny Imperiolo, him alone. And it wasn’t Andrew McLuskie, Master Baker, but his wife, Provost Etta. Likewise, Alec Dessing and Margaret Ballantyne ran with the herd, and it was only his wife and her husband who had made the anxiety indicators shoot off the top of the scale.
What did these four have in common? She was sure there was something. She could see them as clear as day, as if she was looking down on them from above.
That was it! Of course she had seen them, across the street. She had seen them going into the flat door beside the ironmongers, to Mr. McKendrick’s offices up there. They, along with Jimmy McKendrick himself, were the Painchton Traders committee.
Well, of course they were worried! Her shoulders fell and she let her held breath out with a hiss, almost laughing. They were steering a massive project, involving all kinds of decisions and initiatives—in
cluding having her here in the flat doing this project. She heard again Mr. McLuskie’s voice telling her she must be wondering why they’d brought her there. And then she remembered his voice saying it was anyone’s guess what was wrong with Etta. He had said she was up to high doh. And Mrs. Imperiolo had said her husband was stressed to his oxters, and Keiko had had to ask Fancy for translations.
But if they were merely anxious about Traders business, wouldn’t their spouses understand that? Why would Andrew McLuskie and Rosa Imperiolo be puzzled if that was all that was going on?
So what was worrying them? Keiko glanced back at the graph again. She hadn’t asked the right questions; she didn’t know. And she couldn’t ask the right questions—simply couldn’t—because of conscience, ethics, morals … and the small fact that the questions she asked were supposed to help with her PhD and not with Painchton’s secrets, whatever they were.
Unless … Keiko lay back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. The target questions—food fads and health scares; her shitty kale, as Fancy called it—they were sacred and they were harmless. But the filler questions could be anything at all. And if she wrote on the front page that responses to the study questions were anonymous, then possibly, logically, technically, you could say that the filler questions, not actually a part of the study, were …
Well, if she never put a name to this, it would be that much easier to forget once it was done.
She was surprised to find herself wondering what her mother would tell her to do. Let the stream flow past you, was a favourite of her mother, who would not let the slightest trickle flow anywhere without her permission. But sometimes, and more honestly, she would say: Cover your ears, Keko-chan, and steal the bell.
It would be for a good cause—for Murray. No one should have to laugh to keep from screaming. No one should have to know things that were crushing them and be sure that no one else would understand. Another saying of her mother’s popped into her head, the best one yet. She said it aloud to herself.
“The weak are meat. The strong eat.” And she nodded, decided at last.
But would it work? Could she find out Painchton’s secrets this way, through a questionnaire? She gave a dry laugh. Everybody else certainly thought so. As soon as Murray had heard about her work he had thought she could help him. And Mr. McKendrick reckoned she could analyse Mrs. Poole. All of them believed that Keiko’s training, her expertise, her methods, would let her crack open their secrets like eggs against stone.
But that was the mark of a layman. Keiko sat up a little straighter in her chair. A professional always acknowledged the limits as well as the scope of her discipline. So, yes, she would design a study within a study to see where the secret lay. She would also, however, complete her investigation of the committee. If Sandra Dessing’s husband and Iain Ballantyne’s wife were as worried and puzzled about their spouses’ stress as Rosa Imperiolo and Andrew McLuskie were, she would have discovered something.
She turned over a new page on her scribble pad.
Fillers, she wrote.
Snoop spouses
She stood at last, knuckling her back, looking out across the empty street to the dark buildings across the way. She stretched and made her way across the room towards bed. Then she wheeled back and added a third line to her list:
Find the girls.
twenty-four
Tuesday, 12 November
The piano didn’t quite stop playing as she walked into the bar of the Covenanters’ Arms, but Margaret Ballantyne rushed towards her, came right out from behind the bar, and had her away to the empty dining room before any of the drinkers had gathered themselves to call a greeting.
“Different if you were meeting someone,” she said. “Different if Fancy or Murray”—she winked at Keiko—“was coming, but you can’t just sit there in the public bar on your lonesome.”
“Can I sit alone in here?” asked Keiko looking around.
“Away, I’m not going to leave you,” said Mrs. Ballantyne. She drew out two chairs opposite Keiko, sat in one and put her feet up on the other, kicking her shoes off. “The bar can manage without me for half an hour,” she said. “Pulling pints is great for your arms, but it’s murder on your ankles. Anyway, I’m pleased to get the chance to do my bit.”
“Your bit?”
“Feeding you up,” said Mrs. Ballantyne. “Getting a good dinner down you. Mind and tell Jimmy McKendrick too. He had plenty to say to Iain and me about us dodging the schedule, but what could we do about it? We’re always busy in here and he was adamant that it was home-cooking he wanted for you. He said as bold as brass: ‘I’m not wanting her stuffed full of all the additives and chemicals. They’re just poison.’”
“He’d drop dead if he saw my freezer,” said Keiko, thinking of the honey-dipped Southern-style boneless breaded buffalo bites (deep fry, shallow fry, microwave, or oven).
“I told him,” said Mrs. Ballantyne, not listening to her. “I said: the Covenanters’ is home-cooking, Jim. Local suppliers and all made from scratch in the kitchen. But there’s no telling him. So, what are you in the mood for?”
“Whatever you recommend,” said Keiko, choking back the impulse to suggest that they phone Mr. McKendrick and ask him.
What Margaret Ballantyne recommended was sausage and mash and onion gravy.
“Oh my goodness,” said Keiko when she saw it.
“And seasonal vegetables,” Margaret said, putting a dish of them down beside the plate.
“Gosh,” said Keiko. And then: “Ah! Is it for me? Is that supposed to be Mount Fuji rising out of the …” Her voice faded at the frown that met her words.
“Mount Fuji?” said Margaret. “It’s just a wee drop of mashed potato.”
The sausage was curled round the edge of the plate and swimming slightly, and the potato corralled by it did—she was not imagining things—rise up in vertiginous slopes and crags almost to her eye level. She turned to the vegetables, as you might turn from a sickroom to look at a garden.
“Roast Parmesan parsnips,” said Margaret, “creamed greens, baby sweetcorn in tempura batter—you’ll like them, eh?—and stuffed mushrooms.”
“Do you get your vegetables from Mrs. Watson?” said Keiko, thinking to kill two birds with one stone.
“We go to the same wholesaler, dear,” said Margaret. “What are the mushrooms stuffed with?” she called through to the kitchen.
“Mozzarella,” came the reply. The moment for questions about Mrs. Watson’s niece Dina had passed. And anyway, Keiko could not imagine how to get from vegetables to a missing niece. Certainly not in English. She turned back to the first bird: did Mrs. Ballantyne know why her husband was on edge?
“It’s very good of you to take the time to sit with me,” she said, digging her fork into the summit of the potato. “I know how busy you are.”
“If only,” said Mrs. Ballantyne.
“I mean the Traders as a whole,” Keiko said, trying again. “Or the committee anyway. With the initiative. Including me, Mr. McKendrick tells me.” She smiled.
“Oh, me too,” said Margaret. “You’re the centerpiece and no mistake, but Iain’s the one that’s neck deep in all of that.” Mrs. Ballantyne smiled as she spoke. “I just make the sandwiches. Try a bit of sausage.”
“I will,” said Keiko. “It looks lovely.”
“Aye, he’s a fair sausage hand, that boy.”
“Malcolm Poole,” Keiko said, and it was not really a question.
“A fine butcher for a young one, so he is,” said Mrs. Ballantyne. “And he understands what people come to a pub for—when they’re hungry, I mean.”
“And what’s that?”
“A good plate of hot dinner,” Mrs. Ballantyne said. “A right good feed, hot and rich and easy going down. Doesn’t even matter what it is as long as it’s piping hot, well seasoned, and there’s plenty o
f it. A lining on your stomach, if you’ll pardon the expression, but that’s what my old mother used to say. She was a pub landlady too, you know, with the veins to prove it. You’d not have half the mess on the night buses if these youngsters kept to it. But there’s no telling them: eatin’s cheatin’, they say.”
Keiko sipped at her glass of spring water and hoped the subject would change.
“But what was I … Oh yes,” Mrs. Ballantyne said. “Yes, Iain’s the committee man.” Keiko ventured on a mushroom. “And it’s getting to him, it’s true. He’s that crabbit these days, you wouldn’t know him.”
“Crabbit?” said Keiko.
“Tripping over his own chin,” said Mrs. Ballantyne. “Not to me, I have to say. He’s always been a good husband. Flowers every Friday, tea in bed on a Sunday morning, and he’s all that just as usual—more so, if anything. But he’s nipping at folk like a wee ferret, and that’s not like him. He’s got some kind of stooshie going with the Dessings across the way, for one thing.” Keiko pricked up her ears. “There’s two pubs in Painchton; there’s always been two pubs in Painchton. They serve Belhaven beer, we serve McEwan’s. We both do lunches and suppers, but we make sure and not clash our quiz nights. But I don’t know, since this new initiative got going, all of a sudden this town ain’t big enough for the both of us. The four of us, I mean.”
“Times are tough?” said Keiko.
“Not really,” said Mrs. Ballantyne. “No worse than ever. The smoking ban hit the bar years back, but it actually helped the suppers. We’re okay. And if it was business Iain was worried about, he’d not be spending money like it grew on trees, would he? No. And is he? Yes.”
Keiko summed up, “So you know your husband’s anxious and you don’t know why.”
“That I do not,” Mrs. Ballantyne said. “I don’t even know where he is tonight. He went out with the dog, and that’s the last I’ve seen of him. Are you not a lover of spinach then?”
Come to Harm Page 19