by M. B. Shaw
‘Well, Angus was so upset when I said that, I can’t tell you,’ said Hannah, looking pained at the memory. ‘Like, “who was I to judge them?” sort of thing. But I wasn’t judging them at all.’ She turned away sadly. ‘Sometimes I forget how differently Angus sees the world.’
‘Why is that, do you think?’ asked Iris.
‘Because his mum left,’ Hannah replied instantly. ‘Simple as that, really. Some scars never heal.’
Her love for her boyfriend was obvious and endearing, and it made Iris warm to this young woman even more. Angus was lucky to have her.
‘He’s had terrible nightmares since it happened, between you and me,’ Hannah went on. ‘And Jock – Baron Pitfeldy – being so angry about it all hasn’t helped.’
‘What’s he angry about, specifically?’ asked Iris. She’d seen occasional snatches of Jock’s temper during her sittings with Kathy. He hated Kathy’s dogs, in particular, to a point where Iris almost wondered if he were jealous of Milo and Sam Sam, and the hold they had over their mistress’s affections.
‘The investigation,’ said Hannah, matter-of-factly. ‘He loathes the police running roughshod through the estate, and he particularly dislikes the detective in charge. I think part of Angus feels like it’s his job to stop them, if that’s what Jock wants. But I mean, it’s a murder inquiry, isn’t it? What’s he supposed to do?’
‘Yes,’ Iris said sympathetically. ‘I can see that must be hard. To feel he’s letting the baron down. They’re quite close, aren’t they?’
‘Quite?’ Hannah laughed. ‘Thick as thieves, most of the time.’
Standing up, Iris strolled around the room. She was surprised by how much art was on the walls, and by how good some of it was. For a working man, Angus certainly appeared to have educated tastes.
One piece, a triptych based around Da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian Man, particularly stood out to her. In this version, Leonardo’s figure had been cartoonishly stretched out, with dangling, spaghetti arms and twig-like legs emerging from a swollen, froggish abdomen. The first of the three images had been splattered with dots of vivid green paint, the second with yellow and the third with a rich, reddish ochre. Iris wasn’t sure if she loved it or hated it. Was it supposed to be dark, or some sort of comic take on the idea of the perfect human form? Either way it was striking.
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ Hannah said proudly.
‘Very,’ agreed Iris.
‘Angus did that when we were at school together.’
Iris looked suitably amazed.
‘He went on a history of art trip to Italy in sixth form and came back all inspired,’ Hannah went on. ‘Florence and Venice, I think it was. Or it might have been Rome. Anyway, he loved it.’
‘I’ll bet,’ said Iris. She could imagine, growing up as a lonely, only child on a remote Scottish estate, that Florence and Venice must have felt like paradise, or at least a different planet. Especially for a sensitive, artistic boy like Angus.
‘You didn’t go on the trip?’ she asked Hannah.
‘Me? No way. For one thing, I was three years below Angus, and for another, I’ve got no artistic bone in my body. Properly crap at art, I am.’
‘That’s not true,’ said Iris. ‘You can appreciate Angus’s work, so you have a decent eye.’
‘Aye, well, that’s true, I suppose,’ Hannah admitted. ‘But I’d have been bored stupid traipsing around galleries looking at all those Tintins and Cornettos.’
Iris laughed loudly. ‘All those Tintorettos, maybe?’
‘That’s the one.’ Hannah grinned. ‘All that’s right up Angus’s alley.’ She pointed back to the triptych. ‘The teachers took him and the others to see the real one of that,’ she told Iris. ‘You know, the famous arms and legs man, stuck in the wheel?’
‘I know the one,’ Iris said kindly. ‘Has Angus ever tried to sell any of his work?’
‘Sell it? Ach, no.’ Hannah batted away the question. ‘No, no, nothing like that. It’s only a hobby.’
‘It could be more, if he wanted it to be,’ said Iris, sincerely. Then, suddenly, another thought struck her. ‘That history of art trip he went on. Did the headmaster go too? Mr Donnelly?’
Hannah looked at her strangely, setting her coffee mug down on the table. ‘He did, as it happens, yes. Why do you ask?’
Iris blushed, blustering something about having met John Donnelly at the St Kenelm’s fair. But a subtle shift in Hannah’s face and body language suggested she may have already smelled a rat. They’d both been at the Halloween party, after all, and the whole village knew by now that Angus had gone after John Donnelly with a glass.
Before Iris had a chance to steer the conversation back to smoother waters, the kitchen door swung open and Angus walked in.
The surprise on his face when he saw Iris quickly morphed into something else, an emotion that Iris judged to lie somewhere between anger and fear. But he was too polite to confront her directly, instead nodding a brief ‘hello’, before turning his attention to his girlfriend.
‘What are you doing back here?’ Hannah asked.
‘I forgot the paperwork for the Gordons’ new tenancy agreement,’ said Angus, rummaging through one of the drawers in the kitchen dresser. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’
Hannah rubbed her throat sheepishly. ‘I’m not feeling too good. I thought I might stay home today.’
Angus raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, if you’re that ill, I suppose you’d best be in bed.’
‘You’re right,’ croaked Hannah. ‘I was on my way back up there when Iris dropped by. We were just admiring your artwork.’
‘Oh.’ Angus blushed, not sure how to take this. ‘Well, you should get some rest now,’ he told Hannah firmly. ‘I can give Iris a lift back to the castle. Or into the village, if you like?’ he added, looking at Iris directly for the first time.
It was funny, Iris thought, that despite his good manners and soft, conciliatory tone of voice, Angus’s ‘offer’ of a lift was in fact not an ‘offer’ at all, but an instruction. It was time for her to leave, and for Hannah to take her imaginary ailment back to bed with her. He wasn’t asking them, he was telling them.
‘Nice to see you again, Iris,’ said Hannah, accepting her fate, which left Iris with no option but to do the same. Not that she minded. The offer of a lift would give her some unexpected one-on-one time with Angus after all, although she suspected his restrained mask might slip a little once Hannah was out of earshot.
She was right. No sooner had the door of his Land Rover closed than he made his disquiet known.
‘You were looking for me, I suppose?’ he asked Iris bluntly. ‘When you dropped by?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it about the bodies?’
‘Partly,’ Iris admitted.
‘Look, I don’t mean to be rude.’ He fixed his gaze on the road ahead. ‘But I’ve really nothing more to say about all that.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Iris.
‘I’ve already told the police what I know. Which is basically nothing. So if it’s all right with you, I’d like Hannah and I to be left in peace.’
It was as close as Angus was going to get to an outright expression of anger. At least when sober, he was a calm and controlled young man. Nevertheless, the tension was palpable. Iris let it sit in the air between them for a moment before she spoke again.
‘I’m not trying to harass you. Either of you,’ she countered calmly. ‘But I would still like to find out who those women were. Wouldn’t you?’
Angus exhaled slowly, shifting down into second gear as they reached the main castle driveway.
‘May I ask you a question?’ he said, echoing Iris’s measured, rational tone.
‘Of course.’
‘Why do you care so much? Is it because you found them?’
Iris thought about it for a moment. ‘I suppose so. That’s part of it, yes.’
‘What’s the other part?’ asked Angus.
‘If I’m hone
st,’ said Iris, ‘I disapprove of the baron trying to shut the investigation down. To sweep it all under the carpet, simply because it’s inconvenient to him. I saw him at the Halloween party, bending the chief constable’s ear.’
‘And you think that was about the case?’
‘Don’t you?’ asked Iris. ‘Kathy’s told me that he wants the police to give the whole thing up. And they might, at some stage, especially if the victims do turn out to have been prostitutes or illegal immigrants. How tragic would that be? I don’t think it’s right for Jock to try and use his position in that way. To pressure people.’
Angus slowed further as they took another sharp bend onto the village road, listening intently to every word Iris said. She hadn’t asked him to take her home, but he seemed to be doing so.
‘And what about the police “pressuring”?’ he asked her in return. ‘What about the way DI Haley drove out to Buckie and bullied my father?’
‘Did he, though?’ asked Iris, surprised to hear Angus frame it in these terms, in what sounded like Jock’s exact words. ‘As far as I’m aware, all he did was go to the home to try and ask Edwin some questions.’
‘It’s the same thing, in my dad’s condition,’ Angus insisted, somewhat sheepishly. ‘Dad had nothing to do with those – with the Girls in the Wood. Neither did Jock.’
How do you know? Thought Iris. Unless you know something you aren’t telling me, or the police?
Aloud she said, ‘You didn’t complain to the police, though, did you? About the interview with your father? You left that to Jock.’
Angus relapsed into silence at this point. It was some minutes before he spoke again, and when he did, he chose his words carefully.
‘I don’t like conflict,’ he told Iris. ‘I’m not good at it.’
An image of him brandishing a broken glass in his old headmaster’s face instantly popped into Iris’s mind, but she decided not to mention it.
‘So you leave the battles to Jock,’ she replied. ‘Is that it?’
Angus looked pained. ‘Jock’s always been very good to me. I know how he comes off sometimes, and I can understand why you might not like him. But there is another side.’
He sounded just like Kathy, Iris thought. Why was it that so many good, kind people, people she liked, seemed compelled to defend Jock MacKinnon?
‘When my mother left…’
He cleared his throat and paused for a moment. Iris waited patiently, sensing that they had strayed into important waters.
‘Your father blamed her?’ She cast out a tentative fly.
‘Yes,’ said Angus, sucking air through his cheeks and grimacing. The subject was clearly still a painful one, even after all these years. ‘He did blame her. And I blamed him, at the time. Although later I found out there were other people – anyway.’ He cut himself off, apparently thinking twice about confiding whatever it was he’d been about to say to Iris. ‘The point is, Jock sort of bridged the gap between Dad and me.’
‘OK.’ Iris nodded, willing him to go on.
‘They were all close friends,’ explained Angus. ‘Not just Dad and Jock, but my mother too. I remember them as this trio. When Mum left, it was like she left all of us.’
That’s a strange thing to say, thought Iris. She found herself wondering exactly how ‘close’ Jock MacKinnon and Linda Brae had been, and what the nature of their relationship really was. Whether, perhaps, it had anything to do with the later falling-out between Jock and Edwin, a rift that Angus denied but everybody else in Pitfeldy seemed to confirm.
Is Jock fighting Edwin’s corner now because he feels guilty about something? Could he have been part of the reason that Linda Brae fled?
Perhaps sensing her confusion, Angus carried on.
‘Jock wasn’t happy with Fiona,’ he said, choosing his words carefully. ‘Something broke in him I think, after his first wife left him. Their baby died, you see.’
‘Mary. Yes. So I heard,’ said Iris.
‘Jock never really bonded with Rory and Emma. I think maybe it was because of that.’
‘He bonded with you though,’ Iris pointed out.
‘Aye,’ Angus said softly, pulling up outside Murray House.
‘Why do you think that was?’
He shrugged, not entirely convincingly. ‘No idea.’
Unbuckling her seat belt, Iris opened the door.
‘Thanks for the lift.’
‘Any time.’
‘Your art’s very good,’ she told him in parting. ‘If you ever thought about doing it professionally, I’d be happy to introduce you to some agents or gallerists.’
Angus blushed vermilion. ‘Thanks, but you’re all right. It’s just a hobby.’
‘Don’t sell yourself short,’ said Iris kindly. ‘You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Your artistic journey doesn’t have to stop with one school trip to Italy, you know. I’m curious,’ she added, deciding to take a risk before she missed her window completely. ‘Did your teachers never encourage you to take your art further? I mean, I know John Donnelly was on that trip. Did he never…?’
‘I don’t want to talk about Donnelly,’ Angus snapped, cutting her off. ‘Not now, not ever. Please, just leave Hannah and me in peace. OK?’
And with that he drove away, the mud-splattered Land Rover belching diesel as it headed back up the hill towards the castle.
Watching him go, Iris had two thoughts in quick succession.
The first was that Angus Brae knew more about the Girls in the Wood than he was letting on.
And the second was that something had happened on that school trip to Italy. Something connected with the headmaster, John Donnelly. Something that was neither forgotten, nor forgiven, to this day. A secret, buried by the tight-knit community of Pitfeldy.
Just like those bones.
* * *
Iris was deep in dolls’ house mode a few hours later when Stuart Haley rang. She hoped he might have good news about the latest note to Kathy, from the Halloween party, which she’d dropped off for him at the station yesterday. But as with the others, there were no fingerprints. Whoever was leaving these notes was fastidious enough to wear gloves. The envelope lead, with the distinctive watermark, had also proved to be a dead end so far.
‘Either they came from abroad or they were made bespoke by one of those online printing companies where you choose your own design,’ Haley told Iris. ‘No stationer in Scotland stocks them.’
‘What about the ink on the envelopes?’ Iris asked. ‘Or the typeface on the letters themselves?’
‘Needle in a haystack, I’m afraid,’ said Haley. ‘With the ink we have the opposite problem to the envelopes – you can buy it anywhere. The letters were typed on an old-fashioned typewriter, probably an Olivetti. But again, there are a few of those around. Just go to any local boot fair and you’ll see a couple. I do have some good news though,’ he said, sensing Iris’s deflation. ‘The intimidation campaign against Ms Miller is now an official investigation in its own right, separate to the murder inquiry. The chief constable gave the go-ahead this morning.’
‘We’ll be working together on two cases, then,’ said Iris, perking up. ‘Not that I’ve been much help so far with either.’
‘Actually, we won’t,’ said Haley, rather awkwardly.
‘Oh. So I’m not on the team?’ Iris tried not to sound put out.
‘Actually, I’m not on the team,’ said Haley. ‘Apparently, the family don’t feel “comfortable with my approach”. The chief constable’s asked me to hand over the letters to one of my colleagues.’
Iris felt the anger start to bubble up inside her, remembering the way that Jock MacKinnon had pulled Sir William Roebuck aside at the Halloween party and whispered in his ear. It was obvious he was behind this sidelining of Stuart Haley. What’s he so afraid of? she wondered. What’s he trying to hide?
They chatted briefly about Iris’s visit to Angus and Hannah earlier, but with no solid leads yet from Iris’s Facebook page on t
he beads, there wasn’t much else to say.
‘Kathy’s coming over to my place for a drink later,’ Iris told Haley, signing off. ‘Should I mention any of this to her?’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ he said after a brief pause. ‘For the time being at least, I’m still in charge of the murder inquiry. I can’t afford to do anything to upset the apple cart any further with her and lover boy.’
Iris grimaced. It was difficult to picture Jock MacKinnon as anybody’s lover boy. Although over the years, by all accounts, it was a role he’d reprised many times and with an impressive array of women.
‘Just let me know if she tells you anything interesting. See if you can get her chatting.’
* * *
Getting Kathy chatting was never a problem during their sittings, and it turned out to be even less of one sitting by the fire after a couple of strong gin and tonics.
‘I would so love to know what went down between Angus and the headmaster,’ Kathy sighed breathlessly, in full gossip mode as she listened to Iris’s edited account of her trip to the gillie’s cottage today. ‘I mean, something happened, right?’ she asked, helping herself to another giant handful of salted peanuts, her third. It was astonishing to Iris how much crap Kathy could eat and still look the way she did. ‘Do you think Donnelly abused him, maybe? I mean, it happens.’
‘It does,’ Iris agreed. ‘But I’ve no reason to think that. Apparently, Donnelly’s a decent guy,’ she added, thinking back to what Jamie Ingall had said about him. ‘I suspect whatever happened with Angus was specific and personal, and that there’s a connection to his mother somewhere in there. But I really don’t know yet.’
She told Kathy about Angus’s art, how good it was and about the Italian connection. Also about the school trip to Italy that both Angus and his headmaster had been on and that seemed to have marked a turning point in Angus’s life.
‘That is so weird you should say that,’ Kathy breathed, draining the last of her second, strong drink. ‘I’ve been thinking about Italy all day today.’
‘Oh?’ Iris’s ears pricked up, hoping for something relevant to Angus or the case. But sadly this was just a segue back to Kathy’s favourite subject of all – her wedding – and, specifically, her wedding dress.