Troubled Waters

by Galbraith, Gillian

  ‘I’ll get the photo,’ Alice said as they entered, key still in hand, ‘you check the post.’

  ‘Nothing here by the flap,’ DC Cairns replied, glancing at the doormat. ‘Anyway, I thought Trish was going to do that,’ she added, looking about the dismal little place, preoccupied by the fate of the black and white cat. Having briefly pictured it licking its blood-spattered nose, the creature held a grim fascination for her.

  ‘Others will have been in and out. They might have put it anywhere. I did ask Trish, but she probably won’t have been here yet today. So there’s nothing to be lost, we can always phone her and put her off. If she’s already taken it, that’s not a problem. The intercepts don’t work immediately or like clockwork once they’ve begun. So just check, eh?’

  ‘Jawohl,’ the girl replied, setting off for the kitchen.

  The photographs, when Alice held them side by side, were, clearly, of the same young man. The one in the girl’s flat was more recent, more flattering than the image of the skier, so recently taken off his own wall; but they both were portraits of Hamish Evans. If she was in luck, she thought, his prints might even be on it.

  ‘This is all there is,’ Elizabeth Cairns said, returning to the hall and handing over a brown envelope with a window to her boss. ‘It was the only one, someone must have picked it up and put it on the top of the TV.’

  Through the window of the envelope could be seen a couple of names, ‘A Tennant’ and ‘N Mills’. Inside was a letter headed ‘Survivors Sanctuary, Windsor Gardens, Musselburgh’, and dated three days earlier. It read as follows:

  Dear Miranda,

  I was sorry that you were unable to attend your appointment on Tuesday at 3 PM with me. As you know we discussed a course of twelve sessions. Unless you let me know otherwise, I’ll assume that you are going to come to the next one which has been fixed for the same time on the next Tuesday of this month. Look forward to seeing you then.

  Yours faithfully

  Aileen Tennant.

  ‘Did that moggy go to the Cat’s Protection League or did the girl’s mother take it, or what?’ DC Cairns asked, reminded of it once more on spotting deep claw marks on the outside of the kitchen door.

  ‘Neither,’ Alice replied, stuffing the letter back into its envelope and putting it into her pocket.

  ‘Neither?’ the constable said, ‘Christ! It wasn’t put down, was it? What happened to it?’

  Before Alice had a chance to reply, there was a knock on the front door and she pulled it open. Standing on the landing was a short, portly man with watery, grey-green eyes, holding a copy of the Yellow Pages in one of his plump white hands. His profuse hair looked unnaturally dark against his pale, dry skin and his sparse eyebrows and eyelashes suggested it might not have grown from his scalp but have come, ready styled, through the post, probably in a cardboard box together with adhesive and fitting instructions.

  ‘Mandy?’ he said in a warm tone, looking pleased to see her and holding the phone directory out for her to take.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, she doesn’t live here any more,’ Alice replied. Her colleague peered over her shoulder, keen to get a glimpse of the caller, particularly as he did not seem to recognise the person he had, apparently, come to see.

  ‘Where’s she gone? She never told me she was leaving,’ the man said, crestfallen, letting the directory drop against his side with an audible thump. His eyes rolled around erratically as if to emphasise his surprise.

  ‘How do you know her?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Because I’m your landlord, dearie. I live in number five. The lease has months to run. I never thought she’d do this to me. Do a runner, and she’s not paid this month’s rent yet, just the first month. And you’re not allowed – I never said you could get the tenancy. So you can sling your hook or I’ll get my solicitors onto you. Right? Got that? You can’t just take over like that, you’ve got to get my permission, which,’ he added, wrinkling his pink nose in distaste, ‘you’ll not get. Not now, not with Mandy gone.’

  ‘I’m not sure who you’re mistaking me for, sir, but I’m Detective Inspector Rice from St Leonard’s Street Police Station.’

  ‘Bloody hell! What’s Mandy done?’ he exclaimed, stepping back, both eyes now swivelling rapidly from side to side.

  ‘She’s done nothing. I’m afraid she’s dead.’

  ‘Dead? Murdered? That baggage will have done it, then, and then buggered off,’ he murmured to himself, chewing his lips and flapping the phone directory against his thigh. ‘That other one. She’ll have done it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her. Her,’ he said impatiently, ‘the one who moved in with her. The one I thought you was. The lesbian lady, you know. I didn’t say anything at the time, I didn’t know how long she’d be staying. The lease don’t prohibit boyfriends, so I couldn’t have got her out at the best of times. Tenants’ rights and that. It’s swung too far the wrong way with the Nats. It all made the hairs on my neck stand up.’

  ‘How do you know she was . . . was a lesbian lady?’ DC Cairns interjected. Hearing a different voice, his eyes widened and, for a fleeting moment, shifted onto her before the irises rolled upwards once again, all but disappearing behind his eyelids.

  ‘Where the hell did you pop up from?’ he demanded, sounding surprised.

  ‘I’m DC Cairns, sir. I’m with the inspector.’

  ‘Any bloody more of you?’ he said, shaking his head as if in disbelief at the numbers appearing from nowhere.

  ‘No,’ Alice replied, ‘just the two of us. Forgive me for asking, Mr . . .?

  ‘Mr Dowdall. I own this property.’

  ‘Mr Dowdall, but have you a problem with your eyesight?’

  ‘Aha,’ he replied, his eyes flitting across DC Cairns’ face. ‘I’m registered blind. Can make out light alright, outlines at a pinch, if I’m close enough but, nowadays, not much more. I’m due to get an op at the eye place but my GP says not to hold out too much hope. I know my way around here though in the dark. I was born here.’

  ‘Going back to Mandy, how do you know about her lesbian friend?’

  ‘I’ve not met her, but there’s only one bed in the flat. Used to be my mum’s, actually. It stands to reason. The old girl upstairs seen them too, holding hands and that, canoodling. She’s never away from her window – likes to see who pops into the church opposite. Sinners, she says. She told me all about it, about the argument and everything. There was a man in the stair, shouting and bawling. Margaret said she could hardly hear her programme at times, had to turn the sound down.’

  ‘When was that? What was it about?’

  ‘What? The argument? I can’t remember when. Margaret told me on the phone about it, maybe a week ago or less. I’ve been away since last Saturday, I’ve a caravan near Eyemouth that I go to when I can, with a friend, like. We like going for walks, but I had to come back, it was that cold. I only got back earlier this morning. She needed to speak to me about a common repair notice-like thing. A council letter. I never heard them arguing myself. I wasn’t here.’

  ‘Where’s Margaret now?’

  ‘Away. She’s got a son in Port Seton, Cockenzie or wherever, somewhere near the harbour, and she’s away on her holidays with him.’

  ‘Do you know his name?’ Alice asked.

  ‘William Stobbs . . . Stobbs, like her. He’ll be the same as her, won’t he?’

  ‘Could you give us a description of the girl, the lesbian lady?’ DC Cairns inquired. The sound of footsteps on the stone stair could be heard and DC Trish Rennie appeared on their landing, huffing and puffing, hauling her considerable bulk upwards by the bannister. Seeing them, she said, breathlessly, ‘Can anyone come to the party then? I thought I was supposed to be here this morning, checking the post, not you, Boss. It’s a long way up for nothing.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Mr Dowdall asked, looking in the direction of the voice.

  ‘No one,’ DC Cairns said coolly. ‘No one to trouble you, at least. It’s just a
colleague of ours. Late, as usual. So, what did she look like – the girl, the one you were telling us about, do you know her name?’

  ‘D’you not listen to me, dearie? I’m blind, blind. I couldn’t describe you, her or her. Mandy, I could describe. She let me feel her face once. She was pretty, I felt that. Such a nice wee thing, even if she was a lesbian like Margaret says. But the other one, I never even met her. Try Margaret, she’ll be able to help youse if anyone can.’

  ‘Do you know what she was called, the lesbian?’

  ‘No,’ he replied, then he smiled and corrected himself, ‘I do, of course, I do. Her name was Anna. I’m sure I heard Mandy call her that. Don’t ask me for a surname, though. That I cannot tell you.’

  Once they were back inside the flat, DC Cairns said, ‘So, what happened then?’

  Trish Rennie, red in the face after her exertion, snapped back, ‘How do you mean, what happened then? I got here, didn’t I? No one told me there was a race to collect the post!’

  ‘No, Trish, sorry, I didn’t mean that. I was talking to Alice about . . .’

  ‘Sssh!’ the inspector said, gesticulating at the phone held to her ear, turning her back and determined to finish giving the instructions she had started to issue.

  ‘Find out where a William Stobbs lives, could you? It’s somewhere in Port Seton or Cockenzie. Phone me back, eh? Trish is going to bring back another photo of Evans, get it copied and handed out. We must find him. It seems there was an argument here on the night she probably died. I’ll get more about it, with luck, from Stobbs’ mother who is staying with him. Presumably, prints are being taken from the framed photo too, to see if they match any of those found in the girl’s flat? Get copies made of the other photo, too. The one of the deceased and the girl in the hat. OK? Bye.’

  Seeing her opportunity, the young constable tried again. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know, we don’t have enough information yet. Maybe there was an argument, maybe the vanishing “lesbian lady” was involved, maybe the boyfriend. We can only guess at the moment, we’ll . . .’

  ‘No, no,’ the constable butted in impatiently. ‘I’m not talking about the bloody deceased. I mean about the cat, what happened to the cat?’

  ‘Oh well, that one’s easy. No one wanted him, claimed him, so . . .’

  She hesitated briefly and, aghast, the girl finished her sentence for her: ‘He was put down!’

  ‘No, no – I took him home with me.’

  ‘Tiddles?’

  ‘Was that his name? I call him Hannibal. It fits him rather better, I think. Not that he was a cannibal or anything . . . Now I’m off to speak to Aileen Tennant in Windsor Gardens. I need you to check that no one else has returned to the block since the first door-to-doors – that there’s no one else who might have seen or heard anything and who we might have missed first time round.’

  9

  ‘The Survivors Sanctuary’ was on the east side of a square of Georgian terraced houses, and separated by the old A1 road from the Musselburgh Race Course, the Ash Lagoons and the sea. All of the houses in Windsor Gardens, other than the Sanctuary and a nursing home two doors along had the sort of well-tended exterior usually associated with affluence, security and comfortable living. Smugness, some might say. The gloss paint of their front doors was chip-free, trellises had been provided for each clematis and rose to climb and their names, painted in gilded letters on the door lights, obviated the need for any vulgar enumeration. The nursing home, with its extended ramps and unsightly handrails, was a final residence for the aged and well-heeled of East Lothian. So, with a view to the future, it was tolerated.

  The Sanctuary, however, was considered by its neighbours to let the square down. It would pass for a hostel. Posters were stuck inside its slightly grimy front windows, a flattened cigarette packet lay on its cracked doorstep among piles of dog ends, and a large dark-green stain disfigured its frontage. This eyesore was the result of a permanently overflowing gutter. Funding for the Sanctuary, after the cuts, no longer ran to routine maintenance. Opposite, in the centre of the square, was a small, enclosed garden which had been planted with trees and a few flowering shrubs.

  Since the City Bypass had been opened property prices in Windsor Gardens had rocketed. It had become an exceptionally tranquil place, a backwater, isolated from the hustle and bustle of the town for most of the year. On race days alone its peace was shattered. The hubbub they created transformed the square, to the chagrin of residents and visitors alike. Jaguars, Range Rovers and Saabs revved on the nearby Linkfield Road, nose to tail, queuing to enter the grandstand, their numbers augmented by horse-lorries, horse-boxes and coaches, the pavements on either side of the road overflowing with streams of chattering, enthusiastic pedestrians. Later the pounding of hoofs and the roar of the crowd would further enliven the noisy mix, until finally, in the late afternoon, the meeting would come to an end. Then the punters would depart, tired and hoarse, their wallets lightened, some going to console themselves with an ice cream from Luca’s Café in the High Street, some in search of more alcohol. All that would be left would be litter, blowing like tumbleweed about the place for days.

  Aileen Tennant, a plain woman in her mid-forties with thin, mousy hair, was employed as a counsellor by the charity which owned and ran the Survivors’ Sanctuary. That afternoon she was exhausted. Her last hour had been spent empathising and communing, almost exclusively in silence, with Allan, one of her regular clients. He invariably wore black and was, she intuited, mourning his lost innocence. When she had mentioned this to Janice, the secretary, she had opined that he was probably just a Goth.

  As the minutes of the session had ticked by, she had had to remind herself, several times, that the pace of the meeting must be dictated not by her or her needs, but by him and his needs. Months earlier, the lad had confided in her the cause of his distress, but since then, at their five subsequent sessions, he had uttered hardly another word. All of the sympathetic noises, remarks and inquiries that his counsellor had made that afternoon had been greeted with either silence or, at best, a flash of his shy and unhappy smile. Today, quarter of an hour into their allocated time, Allan had shaken his head, clicked his tongue and said, ‘Women, eh?’

  The last time he had made this precise, solitary and momentous remark, she had seized her chance and immediately inquired if he would prefer to speak to a male colleague. It could easily be arranged, she had assured him. No offence would be taken by her. But he had declined, shaking his head at the suggestion and, reluctantly, she had accepted his decision. There was no point in repeating the offer now.

  And all her subsequent gentle prompting had produced nothing more until, having racked her brain for inspiration, anything to help her client to open up, air the issues which so obviously preoccupied him and paralysed him, she said, ‘Is your mother . . .’

  His response was immediate and silenced her once again.

  ‘I have no mother!’

  The emotion so briefly displayed died down as quickly as it had flared up, and he shifted his wooden chair away from her, scoring the lino in the process. Motionless once more, he emitted one of his long, hopeless sighs.

  A vase of white lilies stood on her desk, brought by her from home to shield the cat from their deadly pollen, and, deliberately, she inhaled their strong, musky scent, hoping that it would have a soothing effect on her. ‘Touchy’ was the word that trespassed into her thoughts. No, no. Vulnerable, damaged.

  It was odd, she reflected, that sitting still, moving not a muscle, simply trying to emanate sympathy and understanding, could be quite so wearing, so tiring. Listening, proper, active listening, even to nothing, required intense concentration, drained the last drop of life-energy. Mid-session, forgetting herself for a moment, she had jotted down a list of things to do for Duncan’s birthday party. There were not enough hours in the day, what with that, organising the builders, finding a home for Granny and helping Hannah with her Healthy Eating project. When Alla
n had caught her writing (could he read upside down?), she had smiled, closed her notebook, and tried to return her full attention to him and his issues. Thankfully, there was only ten minutes to go, only ten minutes to coffee time. And a Jaffa Cake, possibly, if there were any left. Perhaps, she wondered, counselling was, after all, not for her? How could she beam off safe, soothing, relaxing vibes if her mind was constantly elsewhere, on her next break, or planning her post-work work? That thought recurred when Allan rose from his seat and said, warmly, and with more animation that she had ever seen from him before, ‘Great. See you next week, then, Aileen.’

  From his tone, they might have been regulars at the same pub, arranging another convivial drinking session. Baffled, she nodded her assent.

  As he left, Janice on the desk rang to say that a police-woman wanted to speak to her. This news both rattled and perplexed her. She was in sore need of a break, not to mention the coffee and Jaffa Cakes.

  ‘Now? You’re joking. Why?’ she asked, feeling unreasonably put upon by the world and its unceasing demands.

  ‘Now,’ Janice replied, before adding, to protect herself, ‘that’s what Mr Tranter says. You’ve an emergency appointment coming next but they’ve not arrived yet. She was your client, the woman they want to speak to you about. I’m to bring in her notes to you now.’

  Once the policewoman had introduced herself, her request for information about Miranda Stimms caused the counsellor further perplexity. She could feel herself becoming hot and bothered, her hunched posture betraying her inner turmoil. No secrets, she had determined, would leave her lips. Usually, if there were questions to be asked, she asked them. Usually she was in control, even if she did not dictate the pace.

  ‘I’m afraid, Inspector Rice,’ she replied, disconcerted, her brow furrowed, ‘that I cannot disclose anything about Ms Stimms. All our clients are assured of confidentiality. It’s to do with trust, trust is central to the relationship between counsellor and client. No one would tell us anything if they could not be sure that what they said would not leave this room.’