‘Oh, indeed I do. I’ve one who put a dent in his patrol car yesterday. Brown! I’ve a job for you!’
‘What’s happened to you?’ Jenna Murdoch, putting a vegetable curry into the microwave for her daughter, turned to stare at her husband as he came in. He was sporting a livid bruise on one cheek and his lip was split and swollen.
‘I was attacked, that’s what happened.’ He was in a state of barely suppressed fury. ‘Stevenson went for me like a madman after the trials. Not content with conning me over the dog, he comes up when I’m having a quiet drink at the bar and has a go at me.’
Jenna tried to conceal a smile. ‘Do I take it you and Moss didn’t cover yourselves with glory?’
‘What could I do? The dog’s past it, and Stevenson knew it. Who’s going to buy it now, I said, and he started yelling at me. Then, when I told him if I didn’t have a decent offer – from him, preferably – within the week, I was going to have the useless beast put down.’
Taking a stew out of the oven for their own supper, Jenna froze, waiting for Mirren’s reaction. She had come in just before her father and gone to sit at the kitchen table, saying nothing; she’d probably start throwing crockery at any moment, having inherited her temper from her father’s side of the family.
But she didn’t even speak. Turning, Jenna saw that her daughter’s face was white and drawn and her dark eyes, burning with hatred, were fixed on her oblivious father.
The microwave pinged. Relieved to have an excuse to break the tension, Jenna said, ‘Here you are, Mirren. It’s ready now.’ She scooped the food on to a plate and put it in front of her daughter.
‘I’m not hungry.’ Mirren didn’t drop her gaze.
‘Can’t say I am either,’ Niall said. ‘What is it – stew? If it’s your usual watery muck, I’m not sure how much I fancy it, with my lip being sore.’
Jenna’s lips tightened. She helped herself, then sat down at the table with her own plate. ‘Seems like I’m the only one who’s eating,’ she said lightly.
Niall was taken aback. ‘Well, that’s nice, isn’t it! I’ve been beaten up, and all my wife can do is sit and stuff her face. I would have thought I might have been entitled to a bit of sympathy and consideration.’ He glanced towards his daughter, as if expecting support, then, encountering her unblinking, accusatory stare, snarled, ‘And you can stop looking at me like that, too!’
He jumped to his feet. ‘I wouldn’t like you to worry about my supper,’ he said to Jenna with heavy sarcasm. ‘I’ll get something to eat at the Yacht Club.’
‘I’m surprised you’re prepared to show your face there,’ she returned with saccharine sweetness, ‘looking like it does.’
Niall stormed out, slamming the door behind him so hard that the room shook.
Jenna set down her fork. ‘Oh dear, I don’t think I’m particularly hungry now either.’
Mirren’s thin body was still rigid with tension and Jenna’s heart went out to her spiky, passionate daughter. ‘Mirren,’ she said gently, ‘please try to eat something.’
The girl’s eyes were bright with tears. ‘I can’t. It would stick, here.’ She touched her thin throat. ‘He mustn’t kill Moss, he mustn’t!’
Jenna sighed. ‘It’s a working dog. It’s not a pet. And if it can’t work—’
‘Moss only can’t work because he’s useless. When Moss came, he was fine. It’s him that’s the problem. He should be put down, not Moss.’
When was the last time her daughter had called her father Dad or Daddy, or indeed anything but ‘he’, spoken with contempt? Jenna had been absorbed in her own daily struggle with the brutal demands of restoration work; she hadn’t spared time or energy to attend to more than the basic physical needs of her family and she was long past concern about her own relationship with her husband. Now, looking at the sad child in front of her, she experienced terrible guilt.
She’d known, of course, that Mirren was something of a loner at school. Well, that was just Mirren. She’d never made friends easily, but she was a self-sufficient child, keen on wildlife and passionate about her Green causes, to the point where she was a pain in the neck about conservation. Jenna had been reduced to smuggling bottles into the bin after Mirren was in bed to reduce the glass mountain in one of the sheds; who had time to drive into Wigtown regularly to recycle them?
It was only recently that her mother had begun to feel uneasy. She’d heard a programme on the radio which she always had on while she was working. It had caught her attention, because the speaker was someone who lived in Galloway: a woman psychotherapist who wrote for the newspapers and had published a book about problem situations in family life. On this occasion, what she was talking about was the relationship of teenage girls with their fathers and the importance of paternal approval and encouragement to the development of self-confidence.
That was something Mirren notably lacked, which was another problem that could be laid at Niall’s door, but on the other hand, her own dismissive attitude to her husband, while perfectly understandable, could only have made things worse. She had taken pleasure in cutting him down to size in front of her.
‘Mirren,’ Jenna said unhappily, ‘I know how upset you are. But Dad’s had a bad time. He’d set his heart on doing well in the trials.’
Her daughter’s face was still stony. ‘You see,’ her mother went on, ‘Granddad always made Dad feel a failure because he didn’t win. And I know you find it hard to accept it, but Moss is only a dog—’
‘Only a dog? Only a dog?’ The tears started to spill over, fat tears, splashing down Mirren’s face. ‘There’s nothing special about humans, you know – all they are is nasty animals.’ She stood up. ‘But I’m going to stop him. I don’t care what I have to do.’
A moment later, Jenna was alone at the table with the plates of uneaten food and her uncomfortable reflections.
The rain had stopped by the time Niall had flung himself out of the house and the first pale stars were beginning to appear between clouds chased along by a stiff breeze. Jolly boating weather, he reflected acidly, as he walked out towards the far end of the marina’s pontoons, beyond the lights and out of sight. It was always quiet there and you could be sure of being alone once sailing was over for the day.
Around the bay, behind the lit windows the smart set were having dinner parties, no doubt, and on some of the moorings, warm yellow light glowed from the boats’ portholes, showing where some keen sailor was drying out equipment after today’s outing, or preparing for tomorrow’s. From the Yacht Club he could hear the sound of music, voices and laughter.
He couldn’t bring himself to go in. Some of the laughter was probably at his expense and even the consolation of knowing that Findlay Stevenson could be behind bars by now didn’t compensate for his own public failure and humiliation.
And anxiety. He’d still hoped, when he went to hang around the bar after the trials, that despite the disaster of Moss’s performance, someone would come up and make him an offer on the basis of the dog’s previous reputation. But he’d been drinking alone when Stevenson came in and started slagging him off. He’d lashed out with the deadliest weapon in his armoury – killing off the dog – and there had been considerable satisfaction in seeing the pain in the man’s face. Niall had even managed to land a punch or two in self-defence before Stevenson was dragged away.
His big problem was Lafferty. Ronnie had scared him last night, but if he went ahead with the rescue plan that had occurred to him, Davina would be furious and she was a bad person to cross. Then again, did she need to know? She’d said she was only passing through . . .
‘Hey, lover!’ The voice that spoke at his shoulder made him start, but when he looked round it wasn’t the woman he was thinking about who stood there. He hadn’t heard her approach, with the wind stirring the boats into clinking movement and the creaking of the pontoons.
Gina Lafferty stood smiling at him out of the darkness, the full mouth inviting as ever, the flirtatious eyes glint
ing and the plunging neckline of her dull gold silky top an arrow pointing to the dark hollow below. Lust on legs, he had called her once: the ideal woman, someone whose appetites matched his own, and who had an even greater vested interest in discretion.
Niall stood up, glancing nervously over her shoulder. ‘Gina! I didn’t know you were down this weekend. I thought Ronnie was here this week on his own.’
‘He was. But then I thought, hey! Why don’t I come down too? Especially when the office phoned the Glasgow house to say they were looking for him – some sort of minor crisis. I got here last night; he left this morning. And tonight – well, I felt like playing with fire and I came along to see if I could find someone to light the flame.’
It had been a bruising day, in every sense of the word. He’d have to be crazy to take a risk like this, but it was balm to his wounded spirit. So Lafferty was richer, more powerful? In one direction at least he was a loser, big time. How could Niall resist?
He took a step closer, smiling at her. ‘Oh, I think I could just about manage that.’
Gina put out her hand and touched soft fingers to his sore lip. ‘I hear you’ve been in the wars. I’ll have to be gentle with you, won’t I?’
‘You go back,’ he said thickly. ‘I’ll drift along when the coast’s clear.’
‘You’re awful quiet this evening,’ Rab McLeish said. ‘You’ve barely touched your breezer.’ He sounded faintly impatient as he looked down at the dark-haired girl sitting alone at the small corner table next to the bar.
They were a curious pair. Rab was big, self-confident and loud and she was a quiet little thing – mousy, in the opinion of some of his friends, though they never said it to his face. They’d been stepping out for nearly two years and Rab was daft about the girl; certainly she was pretty enough, with the soft blue eyes and pale skin that often goes with dark hair in Scotland.
Tonight she seemed even paler than usual and he was immediately concerned. ‘You feeling OK?’
‘Not – not brilliant.’
‘Are you wanting home? I’ll need to stand my round first, but—’
‘No, no,’ she said hastily. ‘I’ll be fine just sitting here for now. You get away back to the lads.’
Rab hesitated, but didn’t argue. He was having a good time; this evening there were a lot of the regulars in the country pub just outside Wigtown and she watched him slap one of his mates on the back with a remark that made the group laugh. He wasn’t good-looking, but she liked the way he looked: big-built and heavily muscled, thanks to his obsession with weight-training and keeping fit. Just as well, really, considering you didn’t get much exercise driving a lorry. He’d been a barman before but that wasn’t a lot healthier, and at least the money was better.
She was reluctant to break up the party. She hadn’t seen him relaxed and happy like this since he got the dusty answer about the flat – which she always knew he’d get – from Niall Murdoch.
He’d come back then in a towering rage. Cath wasn’t scared of him; she was serenely confident that he would never lay a finger on her, but she did worry that his fixation with Drumbreck would get him in trouble.
Cath could understand, in a way. He’d lived in Drumbreck when it was just a hamlet at the back of beyond, like generations of McLeishes before him. His parents’ long-term tenancy of a cottage at the far end of the bay had been terminated when the gentrification of Drumbreck started ten years ago, and being offered a council house in Wigtown they’d moved out without making a fight of it. Rab’s mum, at least, had been happy enough to go; she liked having central heating instead of a coal fire with a back boiler, and being able to pop out for a wee daunder round the shops in the town when she felt like it.
Rab, though, had been in his early teens at the time, just the worst age in Cath’s opinion. If they’d stayed there longer he’d most likely have got sick fed-up of having nothing to do in the evenings but as it was he’d been left with a kind of storybook idea of the place. He was unbalanced about it.
That was Rab’s problem. He wasn’t good at balance. He saw things black-and-white and with his temper he didn’t always see them straight. And he’d friends that didn’t help: to him the Drumbreck thing was sort of like a religion but some of the others saw it as a bit of fun, baiting the toffs with their flashy cars and boats. Cath had heard rumours about vandalism and damage that made her very uneasy.
When he’d heard the flat was coming up on the market, he was elated. ‘The rest of the property’s a tip. They can’t be expecting an incomer will offer for it, with the place looking like that. And I’m making good money – I can give them a fair price.’
Cath’s heart sank. She wasn’t anything like as sure as he seemed to be that other people wouldn’t see its potential and there were plenty folk in Glasgow with silly money to spend just gagging to get in there. Murdoch wasn’t daft.
The worst thing was, Cath had been hoping to persuade him just to get somewhere in Wigtown. It would be handy for her, with her job there in one of the bookshops, and it would be better for him too. You couldn’t take a great lorry down that road and park it outside your door when you’d an early start in the morning.
But once Rab had an idea in his head he was stubborn. He’d this picture of them getting married and giving their kids the childhood he’d had. Cath wasn’t sure it would work like that; Drumbreck with half the houses shut up except at weekends and no shop or anything would hardly be the same. But she wasn’t caring about where it was, just when. She’d had enough of living at home, with her parents worried and angry when she came in late, looking all flushed and rumpled. She just wanted somewhere they could move in together, and sort the rest out later.
And until this week, she had almost been winning the argument. She might look a wee mouse of a thing but she was strong-minded in her quiet way, and mostly Rab would let her have what she wanted if she dug her toes in. When he got caught up in the Drumbreck fantasy again, though, she was powerless. He was talking wildly about making the Murdochs change their minds, and she’d been really scared that he and his friends – the ones Cath didn’t like him hanging out with – would do something crazy to the property to put people off.
But what Cath had to tell him tonight would bring him down to earth with a bump. A bump! That was a sick joke. She had made up her mind, and once she’d done that, she could match Rab any time for stubbornness. She was giving him a choice.
He could drop his daft notions about Drumbreck and find somewhere sensible now, or she could get rid of the baby. She hated the thought, but what she wasn’t going to do was brazen it out living at home with her parents taking out their feelings of humiliation on her.
It was up to Rab.
Chapter 5
Mirren slipped quietly out of the house. Her father was out somewhere and she could hear the sound of her mother’s electric drill as she made for the big open shed across the yard where Moss was kept chained up. He was lying dozing on some straw in one corner, with a couple of bales providing a bit of shelter from the wind, but the second she approached he sat up, eying her warily.
‘It’s all right, Moss,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not even going to try to touch you because I know you’re scared. I know you don’t trust me – you don’t trust anyone now, because of what he’s done to you.
‘But look—’ She reached for the tin bowl lying on the floor and taking a squidgy plastic bag out of her pocket, emptied it in. ‘Here’s the stew they didn’t eat – you’ll like that.’
She pushed the bowl towards him and he sniffed the savoury smell; the tip of his feathery tail tapped the ground and he moved cautiously towards it, eying her all the time. He wolfed it down, then retreated to his corner again.
‘That’s better, isn’t it? But oh, Moss! I don’t know what’s going to happen!’ Her eyes prickled as the dog put his head to one side, both ears cocked, listening, as if trying to work out what she was telling him.
‘Anyway,’ she went on fiercely, sniffing
and wiping her nose on the back of her hand, ‘I’ll see it’s nothing bad, whatever I have to do.’
It was almost completely dark when she went outside. The bay looked pretty and cosy with all the houses lit up and the lights from the Yacht Club and the marina, with the night watchman standing on the dock talking to someone. Inside the house, the noise of the drill had stopped and she could hear the television. Her mum was probably watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?; Mirren liked that, and she was feeling quite hungry now too. She could get a packet of crisps and join Mum in the cosy sitting-room.
But she had work to do. She let herself into the darkened house and, shivering a little, bypassed the sitting-room and went down a corridor beyond. Here there had been little restoration and the walls were rough brick, with wires looping down from the ceiling. She hated these parts of the building. They always made her feel creepy, but this was where her mother had a sort of office, with a computer.
She never told anyone when she went on the internet like this, choosing a time when no one would be using the phone and dialling up, straining to hear any movement that would warn her someone was coming. Not that Mirren wasn’t allowed to use the computer; her mother positively encouraged her to use it for schoolwork, but she wouldn’t approve of what Mirren accessed on these quiet evenings.
As the familiar Google window appeared, she typed in the chatroom address.
‘I’ll need to speak to the Fiscal first,’ Marjory Fleming was saying as she and Tam walked up the steps of the Kirkluce Police Headquarters. ‘He’s been notified, but I have to check if he wants to go up to the site. I’d be surprised if he does – he’s usually happy enough to leave it to us and he hasn’t exactly got the figure for hillwalking.’
‘You could say,’ MacNee agreed. ‘He’d be asking for a hoist.’ The Procurator Fiscal, a portly gentleman, was coming up for retirement, and his idea of being in charge of a murder inquiry – as indeed, legally, he was – consisted of delegation of the ‘Carry on, chaps’ variety, which suited them just fine.
Lying Dead Page 7