Cold in the Earth

by Aline Templeton

  Eventually Bill said, ‘You’ve three problems, haven’t you? One’s the staffing angle – you’ve always said he’s one of your most effective men and you’d be hard pushed to find anyone as good again. The second is whether, if he doesn’t get his cards, anything can be done to stop him going “aff his heid” and hitting someone. And the last one, my lass, is covering your own back. What’ll happen if you go to the Super?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Bill was spot-on with his analysis, as he usually was. ‘It depends. He won’t care about Johnston and to tell you the truth, I know I should but I’m not sure I do – she’s kind of a feeble creature and I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t jack it in anyway. But if I tell him I felt threatened – you know what a stickler for protocol Bailey is. Mason would be out so fast his head would be birling.’

  ‘Do you know what you want?’

  ‘Oh, I know what I want right enough. I want Mason to keep a civil tongue in his head and I want everyone else to behave so well they won’t provoke him. Oh yes, and I want world peace and us to win the lottery and Scotland to get the Rugby Grand Slam this year. And I wouldn’t mind just once having Cammie choose to read a book instead of zapping aliens on his GameBoy.’

  ‘Well, I’m jake with all the rest but I think you’re reaching a bit with Cammie.’ Bill finished his whisky and got up. ‘You’ll have to work it out for yourself, lass. I’m just away to let Meg out and check on the sheep.’

  As he moved, Meg was instantly at his heels. Marjory drained her own glass. ‘You did remember to shut in the hens, didn’t you, love?’

  ‘Would I forget your precious chookies?’

  Master and dog went out together. Marjory stood up, yawning hugely, put the fireguard in front of the fire and switched off the lamps. She’d think about what to do in the morning, but at least now she had the problems clearly articulated in her head.

  4

  With a cup of coffee, a road map and a Good Pub Guide, Laura Harvey was attempting to plan her future.

  The one-bedroom flat she was renting had been a lucky find. It was tastefully furnished in neutral colours and the big windows and cream walls made the living-room with a kitchen area at one end feel quite spacious. It had a good central location too, within walking distance of Oxford Street.

  She’d been here for two weeks. London was full of seductive attractions, her friends were hospitable and it would be easy just to drift, filling her days with pleasant, purposeless activities until it became a way of life – easy, and self-destructive. In the aching emptiness of her loss, she felt a fierce need for somewhere to call home and it wasn’t going to be in another restless capital city. She was in danger of making her grief a prison; planning a physical escape had a symbolic attraction.

  She’d been very disciplined, each day choosing a different route out of London, only to return depressed each night by country roads choked with traffic and pretty villages which were no more than urbanised commuter colonies. She would have to go further afield, she realised now, find a pleasant country pub and spend a night or two over on the borders of Wales, perhaps, or down in Devon. The map was spread open now on the coffee table and she was surveying it helplessly.

  Yesterday’s edition of the Sunday Tribune, also on the coffee table and folded open at the page with her article, distracted her attention and she looked at it again with the pride of authorship. ‘Dear Dizzy . . .’ was the headline and below, ‘Laura Harvey anatomises the psychology of loss.’ The small photo of Laura at the head of the column, she had noticed wryly, made her look strikingly like Dizzy herself. She was pleased with it, though. It read well and she was hopeful Nick Dalton might think so too and ask her to write something else. If she was lucky, it could be a new direction for her career – once she found somewhere to pursue it from. She went reluctantly back to the map.

  Her house-hunting research was in want of focus. She needed a practical itinerary, clear, ordered objectives, systematic planning. With a pad balanced on her knee and pen poised, she turned to the map of the whole country. Wales, Devon, East Anglia, Cumbria . . . where to start? She sighed, twisting a strand of hair escaping from its clip at the back as she always did when trying to concentrate.

  At last she did the only logical thing. She shut her eyes and was just describing circles with her forefinger prior to stabbing the map at random when the phone rang. She suspended the operation, opened her eyes again, feeling foolish, and answered it.

  It was Nick Dalton’s secretary. They had, she said, received a lot of e-mails about Laura’s column; would it be all right to forward them to her, once they’d weeded out the cranks of course? Nick himself would be phoning in a day or two, but he was very pleased.

  Glowing with pride, Laura agreed and hurried to plug in her laptop. Imagine – fan mail! She was, however, quite unprepared for what came through: there must have been at least seventy e-mails. Feeling stunned, she settled down to read them.

  They varied enormously in character. Some were short and gratifyingly appreciative of a good professional job. Laura enjoyed those. Others were less complimentary and she was mature enough to stop reading when she recognised their tone. There were some making helpful suggestions (‘Try the Salvation Army’ was the usual one – as if they hadn’t!) and still more expressing sympathy. She came across two which claimed to know where Dizzy was, but the context made it plain that these were either naïve or malicious nonsense. A small number were encouraging, telling of the unexpected return of a prodigal son or daughter and urging her not to give up hope, but the vast majority were heart-rending cries of agony, hundreds of words describing unremitting grief and pain for someone who had walked out, last week in one case, more than twenty years before in another.

  Laura felt emotionally battered before she was half-way through them. She forced herself to stop – they had a horrid fascination – and make a cup of coffee while she took time to think.

  She didn’t have to read them all, couldn’t possibly reply. She wasn’t strong enough, just at the moment, to bear the weight of other people’s despair. Perhaps the newspaper would help; it was bound to know of counselling services they could recommend and have secretaries to deal with this volume of correspondence. She would switch off the laptop now and go back to her blind selection of an area to visit.

  Her finger was poised to click the mouse-button when her eye caught the subject of the e-mail she had stopped at. ‘Was Dizzy Di?’ it said. She caught her breath, clicked on it and scrolled down with a shaking hand.

  ‘Yo! Laura Harvey,’ it began. ‘Did your sister look like you? There was a gorgeous Di who looked like that, way back in the bad old days when we were in the power of the Minotaur. I would have played Theseus to her Ariadne but she escaped first and I could only follow. Call me to hear more.’ It gave a mobile number and a name.

  Laura’s hand was stretching out to the phone when she had second thoughts. Struggling to keep calm, she read the message on the screen again, more carefully this time. It had a very strange tone; had the sifting process let one of the crazies through?

  On the other hand – yes, Laura looked like Dizzy; yes, Dizzy did call herself Di outside the family. And for all she knew this sort of cryptic style might be no more than a common affectation in chat-rooms on the Net.

  It still made her feel uncomfortable. She frowned at the screen. What sort of person had written this? It shouldn’t be impossible to tease something useful out of the evidence in front of her.

  He wasn’t very sensitive, for a start – that jaunty ‘Yo!’ wasn’t an appropriate response to an article which had been serious, even moving. A young person, perhaps, or at least someone trying to appear trendy.

  Then there was the reference to the Minotaur, Theseus, Ariadne – what on earth was that about? She’d had the Ladybird book of Greek myths when she was small – there’d been a labyrinth, hadn’t there, and human sacrifices to a monster, half-man, half-bull, until Theseus killed it. There was something else she’d read too, a bo
ok by Mary Renault expounding some theory about it all being to do with some ancient Greek fore-runner of bull-fighting. Ariadne, she seemed to remember, scrabbling in the rag-bag of recollection, was the customary simpering supportive princess. Not exactly a role she could imagine Dizzy performing – but then he said that she hadn’t.

  So what did it have to do with her sister? And why should – she squinted at the name – this Max Mason have wanted to put it in his message?

  The most obvious answer was, to get attention. But just saying he might have known her sister would have had that effect – so what did this do that the plain facts wouldn’t? Well, it caught her off-balance, intrigued her, whetted her curiosity. And curiosity was like an itch you just had to scratch, driving you to impulsive, unconsidered behaviour.

  Laura felt the tingle of anxiety. She would have called herself streetwise after her years in New York; this was a rather strange individual she knew nothing about, yet she’d been on the point of grabbing the phone and opening up a channel for him into her life without giving a thought to her own security. Not very smart!

  She couldn’t possibly ignore the message, even though it didn’t sound as if he and Dizzy were still in touch. She could e-mail back, of course, which would keep him at one remove, but then he’d have her e-mail address and she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted him to be able to contact her at will.

  A ‘number withheld’ call was probably the best thing: he’d have no way of calling her back if he proved to be some sort of weirdo and she put down the phone on him. And as a plan, it had the merit of satisfying her impatience to find out what he had to tell her. She reached for the phone again, dialled the privacy number carefully, then the number she had been given. She drummed her fingers nervously as she heard it ringing.

  The voice that said, ‘Max Mason’ didn’t sound weird. It was a pleasant voice with, Laura thought, the faintest hint of a Scottish accent. When she announced herself he said, ‘Hey, that’s great! I was afraid the message would get, maybe, snarled up in the system.’

  Laura said cautiously, ‘The girl you knew – she looked like my photograph?’

  ‘Spitting image. Were you alike?’

  ‘Yes, oh yes!’

  ‘I reckoned you had to be her sister. I knew her as Di – Di Warwick.’

  At the name, Laura’s throat constricted. ‘That – that was her name. Oh, do you have any idea where she is?’

  Max sounded regretful. ‘Not a clue. Sorry if I raised your hopes. Like I said, it was way back – fourteen, fifteen years ago, it must have been.’

  ‘I didn’t really think you would,’ she said dully. ‘Where was that?’

  ‘Up in Scotland. In Galloway where I – where I used to live.’

  There was, Laura thought, bitterness there. ‘Scotland! Why on earth – what on earth was she doing in Scotland?’

  ‘My father’ – she hadn’t been wrong about his tone – ‘employed her as a sort of Girl Friday. He has a pedigree herd of Welsh Black cattle and she did the office stuff for the farm and saw to it he wasn’t bothered with details like cooking his meals or ironing his shirts – you know the sort of thing.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Everything you can remember.’

  ‘Everything! Well, that’s some story. It would be better to meet up. Where are you?’

  Laura hesitated before admitting that she was in London.

  ‘That’s no sweat, then. I could do lunch tomorrow, if you can.’

  She felt pressured. ‘Perhaps we could talk a bit more—’

  ‘My battery’s low,’ he said. ‘There’s so much to tell you . . .’

  It was an artful thing to say. She wasn’t sure it was true, but she had to talk to him: it was possible he might know more than he realised . . . Covent Garden, she suggested, the pub downstairs at one o’clock.

  She could feel quite safe there; even in February there would be tourists and buskers, probably. She had no reason, no reason at all, for feeling a terrible reluctance to go, as if this were something much, much more momentous than a meeting with a stranger who had once known her sister, a long time ago.

  The warehouse, on the outskirts of Newton Stewart, was a seedy-looking breeze-block building, but its doors stood open on what looked like some sort of eccentric department store. Nicked tellies, DVDs and car radios were laid out together in one corner, smuggled cartons of cigarettes piled up in another. A grandfather clock dominated a collection of antique furniture and silver and beside a couple of weathered garden statues a gnome with a leer and a fishing-rod peeped out of a classical stone urn.

  DS Mason showed DI Fleming round with a proprietorial air, drawing her attention to the more choice pieces like a salesman. ‘That sideboard – looks like it’s the Regency one they said was worth five figures. And there’s a painting at the back there fitting the description of the one that went in the break-in at Knockhill House . . .’

  ‘That’s been a very nice piece of detective work, Conrad. Very nice indeed.’ Fleming was generous in her praise and listened attentively as he detailed his plans for follow-up arrests. She gave the operation her blessing and then with a final, ‘Well done!’ went back to her car, where DS MacNee was waiting to return to headquarters with her.

  She started the engine and the wipers – had there ever been a wetter spring? – and said wryly to the man at her side, ‘All I ask is that you don’t say, “A man’s a man for a’ that.”’

  Tam MacNee had spoken up for Mason when she had canvassed his opinion before; now he gave his gap-toothed grin. He was short and stocky with swarthy, acne-pitted skin, and in his regular plain-clothes uniform of jeans, trainers, black leather jacket and white T-shirt looked nothing like the conventional image of a policeman. When he and Marjory had worked together as partners, some years before, a suspect they’d lifted – clearly aggrieved that pigs working under cover weren’t obliged to wear diced caps – had snarled, ‘You’re nothing but a wee Weegie hard man,’ and she could find no fault with the description.

  The first twenty-five years of Tam’s life had indeed been spent in his native Glasgow where Marjory guessed he’d been on the lawless fringes of society. Like many another man, he’d been saved by the tough love of a good woman; behind him – indeed, towering over him – was Bunty MacNee, a comely Dumfries lass who could give her husband, at a conservative estimate, a couple of stones and when necessary the sort of flea in his ear which would have a lesser man whimpering for mercy. He adored her, though, and had put up no resistance to her determination to return home and remove him from the companions of his misspent youth.

  As poacher turned gamekeeper Tam was a first-class detective, with a near-uncanny knack of second-guessing the criminal mind and no ambition for any promotion which would take him away from down and dirty operations. Fleming still relied on him more than anyone else despite their cultural disagreements.

  ‘Too obvious,’ he scoffed. ‘No, no, I was just going to say Jackie Johnston was a “wee, sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie” –’

  ‘And that isn’t obvious?’

  ‘– and about as much use to us as a chocolate fireguard. But Mason, now – he’s the wee boy!’

  ‘He’s certainly got better timing than Fred Astaire,’ she said dryly. ‘He was needing the Brownie points after the way he’s been carrying on.’

  ‘Och, if he just keeps a civil tongue in his head he’ll do fine.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She was still far from certain that he would, or could, even, but there was no doubt that Mason’s coup in mopping up the house-breaking gang which had caused them endless hassle – particularly from middle-class householders, every copper’s nightmare – went a long way towards justifying the softly-softly approach she had decided on, with Tam on the watch for any further trouble.

  ‘How’s the “hardy son of rustic toil”?’ MacNee asked idly. ‘Busy with the lambing?’

  Fleming nodded. ‘Poor Bill – this rain’s been a problem. They can cope with snow all
right, but they don’t like the wet. Still, there’s been a good few twins and no orphans yet. Cat’s very disappointed. To tell you the truth, I’m a wee bit disappointed myself.’

  A fair number of lambs owed their lives to the warm bottom oven of the Aga, and she loved their quavering bleats and the eager butting of the little, hard, black woolly heads as they scrambled for their bottle. It was time-consuming, though, and then it was always tough persuading the children that come the day they’d to go off to the market like any ordinary sheep.

  ‘Bunty’s always at me to get you to give her one to raise, but I’m not that daft. I’d end up living ten years with a bleating hearthrug. Her and her waifs and strays!’

  The MacNees had no children and Bunty’s kind heart was legendary. Marjory had lost count of the three-legged dogs and one-eyed cats that called the MacNee villa home, and asking Tam for a reprise on the numbers wasn’t tactful. She changed the subject.

  When they got back to Headquarters MacNee went to give warning to the dungeonmaster of the likely influx to the cells while Fleming sought out Superintendent Bailey to give him the good news, then briefed the Press Officer. It was a good day; the mood of satisfaction spread through the building as word got round and a couple of personnel problems Fleming had thought might be tricky sorted themselves out in the general atmosphere of goodwill.

  For once she managed to knock off in time to pick up the children from school. As usual, they were bickering; to avoid having to listen to them she switched on the car radio and caught a news summary which had just started.

  ‘. . . suspected case of foot-and-mouth disease at Cheale Meats Abattoir in Essex. Tests are being carried out . . .’