by GJ Minett
Ellen played along, having decided overnight that she would tell him what he wanted to hear, that she’d taken his advice and phoned Wilmot rather than travel all the way to Cheltenham. She’d been left a small sum of money, for some reason. No idea why. Bit of a mystery but the whole thing seemed like a lot of fuss about very little – over and done with. Forgotten.
She wasn’t sure, when it came to it, exactly how convinced Sam was but she had no intention of hanging around any longer than necessary to find out. Bringing forward her visit to her mother by a couple of hours, a laudable excuse of which she knew Sam was bound to approve, she brought the session to an end before he could question her further.
She was putting on her coat, ready to leave, when Angela buzzed to let her know that a Derek Wilmot had phoned twice and was anxious to speak to her the moment she became available.
‘He said it was of the utmost urgency. Called me young lady,’ she said.
Ellen rolled her eyes and asked her for the number. She dialled and waited patiently for Wilmot to answer.
‘Miss Sutherland,’ he said, when she identified herself. ‘Good of you to call.’
Ellen apologised for not getting back earlier. Wilmot cleared his throat, the prelude to a prolonged bout of muffled coughing. When he came back, there was a catch in his voice which suggested another episode might not be far away.
‘So sorry,’ he said, at length. ‘Dreadful thing. Started yesterday and I haven’t found anything yet that will shift it. Not that you want to hear about that. I’m ringing about the cottage.’
‘The cottage?’
‘Yes – you’ve heard the news, I take it?’
‘What news would that be?’
‘Dear me, I was under the impression they were going to contact you in person but . . . of course – that would be it. I did inform them that the property is not technically yours until we exchange tomorrow, so maybe they decided –’
‘Mr Wilmot –’
‘My apologies. I’m afraid there’s been a break-in. I was contacted this morning by the police who informed me that an intruder was interrupted early yesterday evening by a neighbour of yours, a Mr Woodward. His wife notified the authorities but unfortunately the intruder was long gone by the time they arrived. We were contacted as solicitors for the previous owner and I was driven out to the cottage. I’ve been trying to contact you since I returned to the office.’
‘This is . . . this is awful,’ said Ellen. ‘Do you know if anything’s missing?’
‘As far as I can see, the intruder, whoever he was, did not get much further than just the one room. Everywhere else was tidy, just as my client had left it but there had been some sort of disturbance in the conservatory. I don’t know if you recall, but there is a desk in there and the locked drawers have been forced open and emptied, I regret to say. There was also a laptop which has been removed, which is intensely irritating for you, I’m sure, but I am not aware of anything else that has been taken. The rest of the cottage seemed untouched. It could have been a lot worse.’
Ellen thought for a moment, wondered if she might be able to get away without saying anything, then decided that the police involvement left her with no choice.
‘About the laptop, Mr Wilmot,’ she said, pausing to allow another fit of coughing on the other end of the line to subside. ‘There’s no need to worry. I have it.’
Wilmot’s response, when it came, sounded cautious.
‘You have it?’
‘Yes. I brought it home with me when I visited the cottage yesterday.’
‘But I thought I made it quite clear –’
‘You did, yes. I’m sorry. I was hoping to find something in there that would explain exactly why the cottage has been left to me and I couldn’t wait until the weekend. I know I had no right to take it and I apologise but at least you don’t need to worry about it. It’s quite safe here.’
Wilmot let her know that this was hardly the point and asked if Liam was aware she had taken it with her. She lied and said she’d sneaked it out of the cottage while he was otherwise occupied. She suspected the boy was going to have a tough enough time of it as things stood, without having to explain why he’d seen fit to collude with her.
‘So this intruder,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘Did the neighbour manage to get a look at him? Do the police have a description of some sort?’
‘Unfortunately not,’ muttered Wilmot, sounding none too appeased. ‘I understand that an unfamiliar car was parked towards the foot of the hill, just opposite the church, at around that time. One of the villagers saw it there and assumed it was someone who was calling in at one of the Mews cottages opposite or maybe visiting the churchyard. It was a dark colour by all accounts but that is not likely to be of much assistance.’
Maybe not, thought Ellen, recalling O’Halloran’s dark blue Escort. And then again . . .
She thanked Wilmot for putting her in the picture and apologised once more for having taken the laptop. She asked if the break-in had changed anything – would it still be OK for her to take possession of the cottage and stay there that weekend? He told her there would be no problem from a legal point of view but queried the wisdom of staying overnight, given recent events. He was making arrangements for the broken window to be replaced but that hardly made it any safer.
She assured him she wouldn’t be staying there alone and thanked him again. He finished by saying that, as she was not yet in full legal possession of the property, he would take it upon himself to contact the police and explain the missing laptop.
The note of censure in his voice was difficult to ignore.
March 1974: O’Halloran
He’s aware of the waitress hovering at his shoulder. Without turning his head to acknowledge her, he removes the road map from the table to make room for the tray she’s carrying. While she unloads the contents – steak and kidney pie and chips with a side order of onion rings and two thick slices of farmhouse loaf – he refolds the map to fit what little space is left on the table. Then he spears a couple of chips and takes a bite from them while his eyes roam across the multicoloured lines representing the roads of Inverness and the Black Isle.
He’s glad he decided to make a weekend of it – good move, that. Yesterday was a pig of a day, all that fog and ice on the roads. If he’d left it till this morning to set off, he’d have been shattered by now . . . not exactly the best preparation for his big evening. Doesn’t bear thinking about. The only time he’s ever travelled this far north, he couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old and it was his father behind the wheel, trying to find a way past a succession of caravans and lorries on the roads around Loch Lomond. Not very big on dual carriageways, the Jockos. Crawling along past even the most spectacular scenery can lose its appeal after a while, especially if you can’t see half of it for mist and sleet and you’ve got the windscreen wipers on the whole way. By the time he arrived yesterday evening, he felt so sick and tired he opted for an early night without dinner.
He’s made up for it today though. A good night’s sleep worked wonders and after a big fry-up for breakfast he was fit and raring to go. He’s had a look round the Black Isle – neither black nor an island, as the woman on Reception felt obliged to point out. The tourist pamphlets in his room suggested dolphins might be seen from somewhere called Chanonry Point, just beyond Avoch, but even though he stood there like a dummy for half an hour with a coach party of Japanese tourists he hadn’t got even a sniff of them. He did get some photos of the Moray Firth, although he wasn’t sure how they’d come out with the weather as filthy as it was. Amazing to think people actually chose to live here.
Next he drove south to have a look at Castle Urquhart and grabbed a sandwich and a coke from a café in Drumnadrochit before driving back with Loch Ness to his left and picking up the coast road along to Nairn, where his parents rented a cottage all those years ago. He spent the best part of the afternoon there, reliving childhood memori
es and freezing his backside off, before driving back to the hotel for dinner. He knows he hasn’t got long before he’ll need to head off for the Prince’s Arms but there are no guarantees he’ll be able to get a decent meal there and no way is he missing out on dinner.
He empties three spoonfuls of sugar into his tea and drags the spoon through the liquid. Taking a sip, he wonders where Martin Adams is right now – or Peter Vaughan as he insists on being called. By all accounts he’s managed to scrounge a car from somewhere so he’ll be driving up instead of taking the train, which was the original plan. Ironic really – if Adams hadn’t gone to the station that morning to check on train times, this whole Inverness business might have remained a secret between him and his son.
He talked with Adams last night on the phone. Apparently he could only get the weekend off work so he had to delay setting off until this morning. Up today, back tomorrow, poor sod. He looks at his watch – getting on for 6.30 – and decides he can’t be far away now. Not if he’s going to be there by 8.00.
Old man Kasprowicz too. It won’t have been easy for him. He’s no spring chicken. He’s glad he chose Josef in the end. It would have been easy to go for Phil Bingham. Many would have seen him as the obvious choice, because with someone like Bingham you’re guaranteed a bit of a scene, something dramatic. In the end though, that’s what counted against him. The problem with the Binghams of this world, him and that gobby wife of his, is that they’re just too much after a while. They’re too obvious. They might have been flavour of the month for a while, rent-a-quote, instant copy to be wheeled out at the drop of a hat, but overexposure can soon turn you into a caricature. Between them they’ve managed to turn a groundswell of heartfelt support into one big yawn and, given what happened to their daughter, that’s some achievement.
Josef Kasprowicz though is something else. There’s something compelling about the man, a certain . . . dignity. O’Halloran has no children of his own so maybe he’s not the best judge, but it seems to him that the Binghams have been claiming more than their fair share of moral outrage. For all they’ve suffered, they do at least still have their daughter. And yet, since the news first broke to a disbelieving world, Kasprovicz and his wife have shunned the limelight as assiduously as the Binghams have courted it, which is why Josef will prove to be the right choice for this evening.
He wonders what they’re doing right now, Kasprowicz and Adams – what they’re thinking. Two solitary travellers, each utterly unaware of the other, following the threads he’s woven and drawing ever nearer to the centre of the web. The maps he has with him at the breakfast table show the area around Inverness and the Black Isle – they go no further south than Perth. He puts them on the floor beside him to create a little space on the table. Then he takes the salt cellar and gradually empties it, using its contents to sketch an improvised outline of England and Scotland on the table.
When he’s finished, he draws a diagonal wavy line from east to west to represent the border between the two countries. He takes another sip of tea and thrusts his fork into the steak and kidney pie while he admires his handiwork. Then, having done the necessary calculations, he takes the salt cellar and places it below the border somewhere in the east, where Adams would have started his journey. Kasprowicz is represented by the pepper pot, which he puts in the west.
As an afterthought, he scoops up a chip and drops it somewhere in the north-east of Scotland. He has no idea where John Michael Adams is at present – even his father can’t (or won’t) say where – but he assumes it has to be somewhere vaguely near Inverness, otherwise why drag his old man all that way up here for their big reunion? Yes, he won’t be far away, that’s for sure.
He sits back and studies the map. For a moment he thinks he has a sense of what it must have been like to be a general during World War II, standing on the balcony in the War Office and looking down on the troop deployments on the large-scale maps below. Then, taking hold of the salt cellar and the pepper pot, he slowly nudges them further north, through the border and into Scotland.
At some stage this evening, they’ll all be together: salt cellar, pepper pot and chip will all have converged on the Prince’s Arms. And he’ll be there, waiting. John Michael is expecting only his father. Martin Adams knows O’Halloran will be there but has no idea about Kasprowicz. And in a couple of days from now, everyone this side of Pluto will want to talk to the man who single-handedly choreographed the whole thing, the only one capable of putting it all together. The wailing and gnashing of teeth at the Cotswold Daily Fucking Gazette will be something worth hearing. He smiles as he wonders who they’ll send over the top to talk to him about it. Poor sod.
The waitress is clearing another table and has noticed his unorthodox use of the condiments.
‘Is everything OK?’ she asks.
‘Fine,’ he replies, picking up the chip and flipping it into his mouth. ‘Everything’s just fine.’
February 2008: Ellen
Ellen had been coming here for almost three years now. When asked for her impressions of Calder Vale, she was never less than effusive in her praise. The staff were remarkable – she could not speak highly enough of their dedication, their professionalism, the unlimited reserves of patience they brought to their work and, above all else, the genuine affection in which they seemed to hold those entrusted to their care – as if these were not patients but friends or relatives in need of their support. She had no idea how they did it. Mild irritation seemed to be the worst they could run to, whatever the provocation.
As for the location, only the most churlish of dispositions might find grounds for complaint. When her mother’s dementia was compounded by a stroke and her need for round-the-clock supervision became irrefutable, Ellen and the Balfours had done extensive research to ensure that they came up with the right place. They looked at Calder Vale online initially and it was the beauty of the physical surroundings, the swathes of lawn sweeping down to the shore that persuaded them to investigate further. They were already half-sold on the place before they’d even been there in person.
The moment they turned off the access road and in through the imposing gates, their first glimpse of the house set the seal on things. It was a particularly bright late April morning and the sun seemed to pick out each of the huge banks of windows at once, lighting up the building like fireworks against a clear night sky. The poplars lining the approach to the front of the house were swaying in the breeze, as if nodding in the direction of the building, waving them forward. As they pulled into one of the parking spaces and crossed the shale-covered area leading to the entrance hall, Sam pointed out the closed-circuit cameras that followed them every step of the way. She found it immensely reassuring. Her mother would be safe here.
She couldn’t point to any one occasion and say that was it – that was when her feelings about Calder Vale started to change. Presumably it was a gradual process, this insidious erosion of her reserves of optimism. Maybe it was inevitable, given the uncertainty in which everything in her life seemed to be shrouded. The past three years had been such a drain on her energy; first Barbara’s dementia, then the stroke, and finally the realisation that she was going to have to face it all without Jack. In some respects it was like living in a cryogenic state, waiting for some unspecified moment in the future when it would be OK to surface and resume a normal life.
All she knew for sure was that now, every time she turned in through the gates and the house came into view, she felt weighed down, assailed by a sense of unease for which she had no rational explanation. It had nothing to do with any doubts concerning the quality of care, nor any reservations about the comfort of the accommodation. Nothing substantive had changed since that first visit and yet somehow it was all different. The poplars lining the drive slid past her now like bars on a cage. There was something unsettling, something almost Orwellian about the way the camera seemed to single her out, locking onto her the moment she stepped from the car and logging her every move. The w
indows were dark and gloomy, with so many shades drawn it was difficult not to imagine several pairs of eyes peering out at her from behind them, noting the length of time since her last visit.
In the early days, Jack and the children used to come with her, at least at the weekend. Then, for obvious reasons, it had been just Megan and Harry. Now, as often as not, she came alone. For a while she’d insisted they come at least once a week on the grounds that this was their grandmother and there was no way of knowing how much longer they’d have the chance to see her. She didn’t want them to regret missed opportunities.
The relentless deterioration in Barbara’s condition however had eventually taken its toll on the children as well. They would arrive to find their grandmother almost totally unresponsive, staring out of the window or gawping at the TV screen in the corner of the Day Room. Even when she was at the peak of her powers, she tended to drift in and out, unsure who her own grandchildren were without frequent reminders. They found it disconcerting when she asked questions they’d answered in detail only a few moments before, or retold the same anecdote three or four times in quick succession.
Harry in particular was anxious too about the physical changes brought about by the stroke. He flinched when prompted to kiss her cheek. Her lopsided smile and frozen features confused and upset him, as did the fact that most of the time he found it difficult to understand what she was saying. In the car afterwards, he tended to be subdued while Megan was more likely to give voice to her frustrations. It was all so boring. She could have been spending the afternoon with friends, watching this or that programme on television – and anything could have been happening on Facebook while she’d been away from it. Why did they have to come to this stupid place? Ellen took a deep breath, forced herself to look beyond the obvious and decided one evening that she wouldn’t make them visit any more unless they chose to. She only had the energy to fight on so many fronts at once and besides, maybe they were right. Maybe it was just too much to ask children of that age.