by M. B. Shaw
‘I’ve decided to switch designers,’ she announced, boldly. ‘I know it’s late in the day, but this new guy said he’s certain he can do it in time, and I just wasn’t feeling it with my original dress. It’ll be expensive,’ she admitted, noticing Iris’s eyes widen, ‘but I swear this designer is awesome. He’s like, this totally awesome genius,’ she gushed. ‘His bridalwear is super-simple, but it’s all cut from this to-die-for Italian silk and anyway, the thing is, he’s in Milan. Which means I have to fly there for a fitting. I was kind of hoping Jock would come with me and we could do Rome and Venice.’
‘That sounds lovely,’ said Iris, amused by the very American idea that one could ‘do’ Rome, or Venice, the same way one might ‘do’ the laundry.
‘Yeah, it would be,’ Kathy pouted, ‘except that Jock says he can’t leave Pitfeldy while this murder case is still ongoing. Or this ‘nonsense up at the bothy’, as he calls it. I mean, seriously, I don’t see why. We need a break together so badly. DI Haley might not like Jock, but it’s not as if he’s told him he can’t leave town.’
No, it isn’t, thought Iris. It’s Jock who wants to stay and keep an eye on Haley, not the other way round.
‘Will you go on your own, then?’ she asked, as Kathy got up to leave. It was getting late, and Jock would not appreciate being kept waiting to start his supper, which cook always had ready at eight o’clock sharp.
‘I guess so,’ said Kathy. ‘At least for the fitting in Milan. I might stay longer. Travel a bit, while I’m there. I haven’t decided.’
‘What about the portrait?’ asked Iris, a touch plaintively. The last thing she needed was weeks of delays.
‘Oh.’ Kathy’s face fell. ‘I hadn’t thought about that.’ Then, brightening suddenly, she grabbed Iris’s arm. ‘Why don’t you come with me? We could go together. Make it a girls’ road trip!’
‘I’m not sure about that,’ Iris backtracked, thinking of all the reasons not to go – her involvement in the case; Jamie Ingall; the likelihood of two weeks cooped up with Kathy driving her bonkers – and then realising that she couldn’t tell Kathy any of them. ‘We really ought to finish the sittings in the attic room. A sense of place is important,’ she finished lamely.
‘Well, sure, but I thought you’d finished the background?’ said Kathy reasonably.
‘Jock might not be comfortable with the two of us going away,’ countered Iris.
Kathy’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re right. He might not be. But Jock doesn’t own me.’
It was an unexpected flash of defiance, one that Iris noted without comment.
‘Just think about it, anyway,’ Kathy finished. ‘It might be fun.’
Iris did think about it, late into the night, as she lay in bed, waiting for sleep to claim her. When finally it did, her dreams were wild and vivid, a kaleidoscope of Vitruvian men and Venetian rooftops, and of two shrouded women, their faces hidden, walking barefoot through a Scottish forest, both wearing fairy-tale wedding dresses of ‘to-die-for’ Italian silk.
Chapter Seventeen
Iris looked on intently as the jeweller rolled the glass beads between his fat fingers, pausing every few seconds to focus on a subtle variation in texture, or the different ways the light played on the bright, kingfisher-blue surface.
‘Hmmm,’ he said again. It was his third or fourth ‘hmm’ in as many minutes, and each time Iris waited for him to elaborate, so far in vain.
She’d driven to Edinburgh specifically in order to show the beads from the bothy to some of the specialist jewellers’ on George Street. So far, disappointingly, the photographs she’d posted on her Facebook page had drawn a blank. No one remembered the beads, or the necklace, any more than they remembered the two women who had met such tragic and premature ends up in the Pitfeldy woods. But the beads were unusual, of that much Iris was sure just by looking at them. Her hope was that someone in Edinburgh’s famed jewellery quarter might know more and provide the key that would unlock this clue, this precious, tangible connection to the girls’ identities. But the chubby little man standing behind his old-fashioned mahogany counter was the fourth ‘expert’ she’d seen this morning, all to no avail, and the last on her list of likely suspects.
‘Are they ringing any bells, Mr Harris?’ she asked eventually, unable to stand one more ‘hmmm’. ‘Have you seen anything like these before?’
‘Well…’ He spoke slowly, setting the glass orbs down with unhurried precision on the soft cloth he’d laid out on the counter for the purpose. ‘I’m not sure.’ Everything about the man was deliberate and measured, Iris thought. It was a way of being that seemed to fit perfectly with his surroundings and this exquisitely old-fashioned shop, all polished wood and dark green baize and little antique brass bells to summon the jeweller from his secret back room like a Hobbit. It wouldn’t have surprised her to learn that Harris’s Gems had been the inspiration for Ollivander’s wand emporium in Harry Potter. Certainly it was every bit as romantic and atmospheric.
‘The glass is hand-blown, not mass-produced. Each bead is just slightly different, you see. I would say the necklace is relatively modern, but the technique used to produce it is old.’
‘Would it have been expensive?’ Iris asked.
‘That depends on one’s perspective,’ the old man replied, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘It’s glass, at the end of the day, so it isn’t precious. But the craftsmanship might have added to the cost, perhaps considerably.’
‘Are we talking hundreds or thousands?’ asked Iris, not sure that it mattered but curious anyway. She imagined that not many migrant prostitutes wandered around in thousand-pound necklaces.
‘High hundreds,’ Mr Harris asserted, with unexpected confidence. ‘But we don’t sell much of this sort of thing in Edinburgh, my dear, so that’s an educated guess.’
‘Any idea where they were made?’
He shook his head. ‘The Czech Republic, possibly? They make beautiful Silesian glass there. Russia has a big industry. Italy, of course, Murano, although that tends to be more chandeliers and what have you. Israel?’
‘OK, thank you,’ said Iris, re-bagging the beads.
So much for that.
Disheartened, but not defeated, she decided to treat herself to a fish-and-chips lunch. She had one more visit to pay this afternoon, but she wasn’t expected till three, so there was plenty of time.
This last appointment wasn’t with a jeweller, but with a woman Iris had been curious about for months, ever since she first came to Pitfeldy. Yesterday, at the last minute, this person had finally responded to Iris’s email and had agreed to meet. Iris told herself she was going as a public service, in her unofficial capacity as DI Haley’s assistant-slash-consultant on the Girls in the Wood case. But the truth was she just really wanted to meet Fiona MacKinnon: Jock’s ex-wife, Rory and Emma’s mother, and the woman in whose room, whose sanctuary, Iris had spent the last three months, diligently painting her nemesis, Kathy Miller.
If I were her, I’d hate me, thought Iris. And yet Fiona’s email reply, albeit late in coming, had been scrupulously polite, leaving Iris more intrigued than ever.
* * *
The politeness, it turned out, concealed an anger so white-hot that at times Iris could have sworn she smelled burning. Luckily, it wasn’t directed at her, but exclusively at Jock.
‘My ex-husband is evil. Pure evil,’ Fiona MacKinnon announced bluntly, before proceeding to spout off like an embittered volcano for fifteen straight minutes on the subject of the baron’s numerous extra-marital escapades. According to Fiona, Jock had spent every waking moment of their marriage fucking everything with a heartbeat that came within a ten-mile radius of the castle, and as many ‘tarts’ as he could get his hands on in London as well.
‘Black, white, pretty, ugly, younger, older. It really didn’t matter as long as they were ‘new’. My husband’s libido became a sort of monster, Miss Grey,’ Fiona explained in her cut-glass voice, a quivering masterclass in barely controlle
d fury. ‘And after our children were born, things got worse. There was no restraint at all. None. He used to go whoring with his aristocrat friends in London – the Eurotrash were the worst, Comte this and Marchese that. Jock didn’t give a hoot who saw them out with call girls, or whether or not rumours got back to me. In fact, there were times when I think he wanted me to find out.’
‘Why would he want you to find out?’ asked Iris. ‘So you’d leave him?’
Fiona laughed bitterly. ‘That wasn’t an option. Jock made it very clear he’d ruin me if I tried to divorce him. That he’d come after the children, leave me penniless. Purely out of spite, you understand. He threatened to paint me as an unfit mother, as mentally unstable. Oh, he held every card and he knew it. No, he wanted me to know about his mistresses just to humiliate me. He can be an incredibly cruel, vicious man when he sets his mind to it.’
Fiona MacKinnon was a handsome woman, Iris thought, but you could see the toll that years of emotional torment had taken on her, trapped in a miserable marriage. Deep lines etched into her forehead and around the corners of her mouth spoke as much of a face set permanently to ‘unhappy’ as they did of her age.
‘What about up at the castle?’ Iris asked, trying with as light a touch as possible to steer the conversation back towards the Girls in the Wood. ‘Did any of these other women ever come to Pitfeldy?’
‘Not when I was there,’ said Fiona, refilling Iris’s iced tea and her own from a pretty pewter jug on the side table. ‘Although I couldn’t tell you what he might have got up to while I was away. I slightly doubt it, though.’
‘Oh?’ Iris sounded surprised.
‘Jock had no respect for me,’ said Fiona, ‘and no discernible care for Emma or Rory either. But he did respect the estate and the castle as places sacred to the family, to the MacKinnon name. So I’d be surprised if he brought any of his whores up to Pitfeldy. Apart from his latest one, of course.’ Her lips curled, visibly disgusted by the very thought of Kathy. ‘Although she didn’t actually move in until after we’d divorced. That’s Jock’s warped sense of morality for you.’
‘I imagine the engagement must have been hard for you,’ said Iris awkwardly.
‘Mmmm,’ said Fiona with a clipped nod, indicating that as far as she was concerned the subject of Kathy was closed.
Iris sipped her tea and looked around the flat, trying to get a better feel for this unhappy, controlled woman. Everything about the room they were sitting in was tastefully decorated, she noticed, with each object carefully positioned and curated to add either comfort or beauty or both. The vibe in the Edinburgh apartment was different to the one Fiona had created in her attic sanctuary at the castle, now the backdrop for Kathy’s portrait. That space was warm and rich, yet still steeped in tradition. Here the atmosphere was much lighter and more feminine. Less cluttered, but with room to breathe. Having recently been through a divorce of her own, Iris was just reflecting on how much she approved of Fiona’s choices when something caught her eye. It was a pretty, grey-blue china figurine of a milkmaid, and Iris was certain she recognised it.
‘Isn’t that… Doulton?’ she asked.
‘How clever of you, yes,’ said Fiona. ‘I collect them.’
‘I know,’ said Iris. ‘I painted that very milkmaid a few weeks ago. It was in your old room, up in the castle attic, wasn’t it?’
The smile melted, and for a moment Fiona seemed to consider denying it. But in the end she said simply, ‘Yes, that’s right. The Doulton belongs to me, and although I don’t have room for all of it here, I always liked this particular figure. So I reclaimed it.’
‘Did Rory bring it down when he visited?’ Iris asked casually. She couldn’t believe that Fiona herself would have made the trek out to the castle, not given the naked hostility between her and Jock. Apart from anything else, Iris would have heard about it if she had.
‘Rory? Oh no, I’m afraid my son’s useless with things like that,’ said Fiona, indulgently. ‘Eileen dropped it off.’
Eileen? As in Eileen Gregory? Were the two of them still friends?
‘But enough about me,’ Fiona went on, all warmth and hospitality once again. ‘I’m dying to know more about you. I’ve read about you on the Internet, you know.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Iris. ‘Good or bad?’
‘Good, of course.’ Fiona chuckled. ‘All good. I read that you’re a celebrated portrait artist, and that you cracked the Dom Wetherby murder case.’
‘I wouldn’t say that exactly,’ Iris said awkwardly. ‘It was more a case of being in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place, depending on how you look at it.’
‘Ever since Rory told me about you finding those bones up at the bothy, I’ve been following the Girls in the Wood case closely,’ Fiona went on, not interested in any false modesty on Iris’s part. ‘Naturally, I was shocked. From what I’ve read, it seems the victims were killed and disposed of there while I lived at the castle.’
‘That’s the police’s best estimate, yes,’ said Iris.
‘Which is why you wanted to see me?’
‘Yes,’ said Iris. Partly.
‘And you’re wondering whether the murdered women might have been lovers of Jock’s?’ asked Fiona.
Wow, thought Iris, she didn’t waste much time before twisting the knife. Although the truth was, of course, that she had been wondering that, and was very curious to hear Fiona’s take on things.
‘I’d like to know who the bones belonged to,’ said Iris cautiously. ‘But I’m trying not to make any assumptions.’
‘The thought crossed your mind, though?’ pressed Fiona.
Iris hesitated before replying. ‘Unless we can establish the victims’ identities, the police will probably close the case. So at the moment, all sorts of thoughts are crossing my mind. Tell me: was Jock ever violent towards you?’
‘No,’ Fiona sounded almost disappointed to have to admit it, ‘I have to say he wasn’t, not physically. Mental torture, absolutely. And verbal abuse. But he never hit me.’
‘And you never knew him to be violent with any of his other girlfriends?’
Fiona shook her head. ‘I would have heard rumours, if that were the case, I’m sure. Jock was a bastard but he wasn’t a wife beater. Not like Edwin.’
Iris sat up eagerly. ‘Did Edwin Brae beat his wife?’
Now it was Fiona’s turn to look surprised. ‘Didn’t you know? It’s common knowledge in Pitfeldy that Edwin used to knock poor Linda about. He was ludicrously jealous of her, forever accusing her of having affairs.’
‘And was she?’ Iris asked.
‘Not to my knowledge,’ said Fiona, ‘although, God knows, I wouldn’t have blamed her if she were. Edwin was a pig. A pig.’
She spoke with such venom, Iris was intrigued.
‘It wasn’t only Linda,’ Fiona went on, setting down her mug of tea beside the old-fashioned typewriter on her writing desk. ‘I think Edwin genuinely hated women. He was a very odd man, even before the Alzheimer’s kicked in.’
This was interesting, new information.
Leaning forward, Iris told Fiona: ‘Angus Brae said that Jock was close to both of his parents, back in those days. Is that what you remember?’
Fiona frowned, casting her mind back to those dark, unhappy times.
‘Not exactly, no. But then I never understood my husband’s relationship with Edwin. They were always keeping secrets together, like little boys in a private club. They were more like brothers than friends.’
‘How so?’ asked Iris.
Fiona attempted to explain. ‘There was this knee-jerk loyalty between them, almost a blood bond, but they didn’t always like one another. Edwin resented Jock for being the baron, and Jock certainly disapproved of Edwin’s behaviour towards Linda. Perhaps that was what Angus meant?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Iris, although she was certain it wasn’t.
‘They fell out spectacularly over it before Linda ran off,’ Fiona continued. ‘I re
member Jock threatened to fire Edwin unless he left Linda alone, and they came close to physical blows. But then after Linda left, Edwin sort of disintegrated, and Jock forgave him. And then, of course, there was Angus,’ she added, injecting the last word with a heavy dose of disdain.
‘You don’t like Angus?’ Iris probed.
‘I don’t like or dislike him personally,’ sighed Fiona. ‘Although I gather he’s started to take after his father in terms of a tendency to violence, which is a shame. Rory told me he attacked poor Mr Donnelly with a glass at Jock’s tacky Halloween party. Were you there?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Iris, keen to steer clear of recent gossip and to get back to Fiona’s fascinating memories of the past. ‘It wasn’t Angus’s finest hour. But he was very drunk.’
‘Again, like father, like son,’ said Fiona. ‘Anyway, as I say, it wasn’t that I didn’t like the boy. As far as I was concerned, he was the gillie’s son and that was that. What I didn’t like was Jock’s obsession with him. And I use that word advisedly. After Linda left and Edwin unravelled, Jock practically adopted Angus as his own son. You should have seen the way he favoured him over poor Rory.’ She shook her head bitterly. ‘Jock never showed a shred of affection to our children, Miss Grey. Not a shred. But “poor wee Angus” could do no wrong. That was hard, for the children and for me.’
She swallowed, and seemed almost to be choking back tears. Iris felt a wave of compassion for her, followed by a second, more familiar feeling of dislike for Jock MacKinnon. What any of these women had ever seen in him was quite beyond Iris’s powers of deduction.
‘It still is hard,’ Fiona continued. ‘And now, of course, he’s taken up with this gold digger who’s young enough to be his daughter, and is lavishing affection on her by all accounts, not to mention money. My children’s inheritance.’
Sadness was turning to anger now. Iris noticed the clenched fists and tightening jaw, and the narrowing of the eyes into little slits of hatred.