The Time and the Place

by Jane Renshaw

  And stopped.

  And stared at Claire.

  37

  Claire managed not to react. She managed to think on her feet and say, ‘There was a book Karen said I could borrow – about sustainable living?’ Surely they were bound to have such a thing.

  ‘Come on through,’ said Phil. ‘I think we might just have a few in the library... Otherwise known as the scabby bookcase.’

  ‘Hey!’ Earth Mother objected. ‘That scabby bookcase is fooking sustainable. Came out of a skip in Leeds.’

  The sitting room across the hall was chilly, and in the harsh overhead light it was very unappealing – the fireplace was boarded up and a lethal-looking gas fire sat in the hearth. There was a large Indian shawl tacked up on the wall over the mantelpiece, but no pictures. The furnishing consisted of two dralon-covered dark brown chairs, a black leather-look sofa, a large, stained coffee table and the scabby bookcase full of airy-fairy nonsense like The Path to You and The Art of Spiritual Healing. The wallpaper was marked and scratched, as if the place was home to a family of navel-gazing werewolves.

  Phil shut the door behind them. ‘We’ll have to be quick.’ He strode to the bookcase and pulled out a dog-eared paperback. ‘This’ll do.’

  ‘I take it you’re “Baz”?’

  ‘Yes, okay, mea culpa. It was only a matter of time before the two operations collided, what with Karen having a foot in both camps – but Campbell didn’t want to close Baz and Gwennie down just yet.’

  ‘Baz and Gwennie?’

  ‘They’ve been an item for years.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Supplying organic hand-knits, lentil casseroles and, supposedly, class A drugs to the populace since 1995. Although actually they were put out to grass – no pun intended – years ago. Revived for one last hurrah at Campbell’s behest.’

  ‘Okay.’ She took a breath. ‘I know all about compartmentalisation, but didn’t you think it might just be an idea to let me in on this one? Given the Karen connection?’

  ‘Not my call.’

  God! It was the same old story. The UC was told only as much as she needed to know. Never mind the operational cock-ups this institutional holding back of information could, and often did, lead to. She did see the wisdom of keeping knowledge of any UC operation to the core team, but surely this was taking it too far?

  The elephant in the room, of course, was that the reason Claire hadn’t been let in on this parallel operation was that Campbell didn’t trust her. If she was going to mess up, he wanted to contain the damage. The bastard had even denied ever having heard of Ade.

  ‘Thanks a lot.’ She sighed. ‘I’m assuming Ade is the target?’

  ‘Amongst others. By the way, I don’t think we’d better tell Campbell this has happened – his confidence in either of us can’t be said to be high at the moment, and I’d just as soon not give him an excuse to pull the plug. I’m beginning to think he may be right and there’s a connection of some sort between Ade Cottingham and Hector Forbes.’

  Yet another thing it was felt she didn’t need to know. ‘What sort of connection?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Has Hector been here?’

  ‘I doubt it. If they do meet, I imagine it’s elsewhere.’

  ‘So you don’t actually know for sure...’

  A silence.

  ‘I mean, you don’t have evidence of a criminal association yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  She should be furious with him for keeping this from her. But what was his omission, really, compared with hers?

  He looked past her to the door. ‘We’d better get back before my lot start to wonder.’

  ‘I’m not happy about Karen being here. Does Ade know about her finding that phone? I’m assuming she found it somewhere around here?’

  ‘Phone?’

  ‘The phone with the text on it from Chimp – John?’

  Phil looked blank.

  She sighed. ‘More compartmentalisation.’ And she filled him in on the phone Karen said she found by the drive at the House.

  Phil sat down on one of the dralon chairs. ‘So he was murdered. Forbes really did kill him.’

  ‘There’s nothing connecting Hector to the phone, other than where Karen says she found it – and why would he dump it on his own drive? It doesn’t make sense. The worry is that she actually found it here, but hasn’t told anyone. And so is in danger. She hasn’t told any of you about the phone, as far as you know? That’s revealing in itself, I’d have thought.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you – I don’t know... Persuade her, somehow, to go home? If it’s all going to kick off, I don’t think we want her here, do we?’

  ‘No,’ said Phil. ‘No, we certainly don’t.’

  ◆◆◆

  Karen was well and truly pissed off. Half an hour to walk to the bus station, another half an hour waiting for the fucking bus, and an hour and a half sweating on it, sitting wedged next to a woman with massive thighs. She supposed Susie, Eve and Anna would have taken the stuff back to Hector and Damian by now, and they would all be shaking their heads and telling each other how despicable Karen was.

  Then finally she was out in the fresh air at the bus stop opposite the Huntly Arms Hotel in Aboyne. The taxi she’d booked was there waiting, driven by an idiot called Callum Mitchell, whose main claim to fame was getting his stomach pumped at A&E every New Year, like it was his contribution to the festive season. Ordinarily she might have wound him up about it, but she didn’t get in the front as she usually would, she slumped in the back looking out at the snow on the fields, tinged pale pink by the weak winter sun setting over the Grampians.

  ‘Can you wait?’ she said, when he stopped at the end of the track to Moss of Kinty. ‘I need to get some stuff.’

  ‘Yeah, sure. Want a hand?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Prim and Rainbow were in the kitchen knitting. Karen said ‘Hi’ and ran upstairs. She could hear Doffy in the room he shared with Rainbow, doing his laughing thing. The theory was that laughter was the key to inner wellbeing, and Doffy really took it seriously, sitting alone in his room laughing for fifteen minutes every day.

  Karen got her hold-all from the cupboard and started shoving her stuff into it. If she was quick, she could be out of here without having to see Ade at all.

  It was as if Ade had become another person, a completely different Ade from the one she’d been in love with. All those feelings – gone. How could she have thought she loved someone like that?

  Just how stupid was she?

  Eve, Susie and Anna pressuring her not to come back here, to go home, was the one thing that might have made her think twice about leaving – they would all be so smug-face when they found out she’d taken what they’d said on board, as they’d see it. But staying with Ade just to spite them really would be mega-stupid. She shoved more clothes into the hold-all and went to get her toothbrush and things from the bathroom. But when she got back to the bedroom, Ade was there, looking at the hold-all open on the floor.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ He looked at her with his leopard eyes and she didn’t know what to say, she didn’t know what to do. Did he know about her burgling Benny’s flat?

  Doffy was still laughing: Ha ha ha ha haaa!

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, pushing past Ade.

  He grabbed her arm.

  ‘You leaving us, love?’ said Gwennie, suddenly there at the top of the stairs.

  Ade let her go.

  ‘I –’ Karen just stood like an idiot.

  ‘Well, if that’s what you want.’ Gwennie enveloped her in a garlicky hug. ‘But we’ll miss you like crazy. You’ll come back and visit, won’t you?’

  Karen nodded.

  ‘That your taxi on the road?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Well now, how about you tell him to go, stay for a last supper, how about that, and we can say our goodbyes properly?’ Gwennie looked at Ade as she said this. ‘I�
�ll run you home after.’

  Ade shrugged. ‘I don’t think Karen’s too bothered about goodbyes.’

  She could feel her face going beetroot.

  ‘Bean stew.’ Gwennie smiled at her. ‘Your fave, yes? Then I’ll run you home.’

  They couldn’t know about Benny. Relief swept through her. ‘That would be great. Thanks, Gwennie.’

  38

  Claire had never seen so many stars. In between the bright ones she half-recognised there were thousands and thousands of pin-prick points of light, as if a curtain had been drawn back to reveal a whole other layer of Universe. She stood on the terrace, head back, gaping.

  She’d come out here to cool down after running around like a headless chicken for the past hour getting the Terrace Room ready. The massive stove was belting out heat, and the huge room was finally warm. Damian had removed all the musical instruments to safety – apart from the grand piano, obviously – and the men had brought in chairs from other rooms. Claire had spread white damask cloths over the tables against one wall, and set an arrangement of cones and holly in a basket on the middle one, and three fat candles which she would light in a bit. She’d lugged through plates from the China Room – this was a little room leading off the Silver Room with nothing but china in it, mainly dinner and tea services. Mrs Mac had instructed her to use the willow pattern side plates, which were the least precious, and there were now two stacks of them looking very pretty on the white damask, one blue and white and one manganese and white, along with a forest of green mugs which had apparently been used for this purpose every year for decades.

  She had left Damian in the kitchen preparing the hot chocolate and the cinnamon buns. There was a tacit understanding between them that Claire should confine herself to the unskilled labour.

  This was her last night at Pitfourie.

  And she couldn’t shake this feeling of hopelessness.

  The door opened behind her and she knew without turning that it was him, and then she felt his hand on her back and he was saying, ‘Orion the Hunter.’

  And then she did turn and look at him, into his eyes, those eyes that were alight with a suppressed excitement he couldn’t quite contain, because in a few hours’ time he’d be off into the starry night on his nefarious mission. She had worked with UCs who’d been the same, the thrill-junkies, the ones who got an adrenaline rush every time they set off on a mission to stop people like Hector doing what they did.

  ‘What?’ she said, dampeningly.

  ‘The constellation. I’m sure you know it.’

  ‘I’m a city girl, remember?’

  ‘So you’ve said, but is that true?’

  She didn’t dignify the question with a response.

  He pointed at the sky. ‘The one with a star at each corner and three more in a line in the middle. Those are supposed to be the hunter’s belt. That fuzzy thing under it is a nebula.’

  ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘Quite a display, isn’t it, before the moon rises? And in the absence of light pollution.’

  ‘Does it make you feel small and insignificant?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’ He laughed. ‘Get anything much out of Jim Clack?’

  ‘I –’ How the hell did he know about that?

  And now he had grabbed her hand and was pulling her after him, down the icy steps, and she slipped in her good boots with the smooth soles, and had to grab him in her turn to stop herself falling. Then they were running, kicking their way through the snow, and he was pulling her outside the light from the windows and he had his arms around her from behind, his arm raised alongside her face, pointing at the sky, and he was saying, ‘The Pole Star. Find The Plough... Not the handle, the other end. Follow the line of those two stars up... If you ever want to find north...’

  He dropped his arm to hug her back against him.

  How many women, she wondered, had he held while they looked at the stars?

  If she ever wanted to find north...

  No.

  She never would. Tomorrow she would leave this place and she didn’t think she would ever come back to Scotland. She and her siblings had had vague plans to spend a week in Edinburgh sometime, to go to the Festival, but she wouldn’t, now, because at any moment she might hear, in the audience behind her, on the street, in a pub, a well-bred Scottish accent –

  He didn’t kiss her, he didn’t do anything except hold her close, so that all the parts of her body that were touching him slowly became warm, and all the parts that weren’t leached heat into the frozen air.

  Love in a cold climate.

  But this wasn’t love. He had seduced her because he knew she was a cop. And just a few days later he was sleeping with someone else. He had absolutely no scruples. He was, as Campbell Stewart had said, a despicable human being.

  She broke free from the circle of his arms, she staggered forward in the snow away from him and turned, but before she could say anything he was looking away and saying, ‘And here they are. The hordes descend.’

  Faintly, she could hear children’s voices. She could see torches, moving in the dark, where the drive must be.

  ‘I should warn you to expect breakages.’

  And he grabbed her hand and pulled her back through the snow towards the house. At the doors onto the terrace she could see Damian standing, looking out into the dark, and it was as if they themselves were naughty children, truants, as Hector said, ‘Oh-oh, rumbled,’ and she couldn’t help it, she was laughing with him, half-hysterically, looking from him to the House to the stars and wondering how on earth he was going to cope with prison – it would be like locking up a wild animal – but of course he would cope, he’d done it before, of course he would cope; he would cope, she thought, with pretty much anything.

  But as he called, ‘Battle stations!’ and turned to grin at her, the contours of his face suddenly illuminated by the light from the windows, she stopped dead, his hand in hers, pulling back until he stopped too, standing under the terrace just out of Damian’s earshot.

  ‘Hector.’

  The moment stretched on.

  ‘Claire?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She pulled her hand from his and ran to the steps ahead of him.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t tell him not to do it, not to risk it, not to go out tonight.

  She wasn’t quite far enough gone to cross that line.

  ◆◆◆

  ‘Are you enjoying that, love?’ said Gwennie from across the table, her face zooming towards Karen and then away again.

  She hadn’t had that much wine. But she felt strange, and things were moving about oddly around her. She needed to get more food inside her, obviously. She hadn’t eaten much today at all. She forked up another mouthful of stew, but when she opened her mouth and aimed for it, she missed. The prongs of the fork stabbed her cheek and sauce glooped onto it. She put down the fork and tried to find a tissue in her pocket to wipe it off, but now she couldn’t find her pocket!

  Imagine not being able to find your own pocket!

  ‘I can’t find my pocket!’ she said.

  So funny! She pushed her plate away so she could collapse her head down on the table, stretching out her arms, honking with laughter, her whole body heaving with it. Now there were grey splotches dancing everywhere, and someone said, ‘You take her,’ and someone else – Ade? – was pulling at her arms.

  ‘I can’t find my pocket,’ she repeated, but now her head was miles away from the table, like she was whooshing backwards down a fairground ride, whooshing away from the grey splotches, but they were coming after her, they were whooshing right into her, right into her brain.

  And then there was just black.

  39

  The children were standing in a semicircle on the area outside the front door that had been cleared of snow, the parents in a cluster behind them. Claire, Hector and Damian were positioned in the doorway: the audience. Damian was even wearing a Christmas jumper, a hideous thing in scratchy-looking brigh
t blue wool with what looked like a giant turd on the front garnished with a sprig of holly.

  The singers ranged in age from maybe eight to late teens, and Claire recognised little Lizzie on the shoulders of a heavy-set man with dark hair – as dark as Hector’s – standing next to Fiona. The kids were all looking at a woman with a blunt-cut grey bob in a bright pink hat who was standing slightly to one side, her enthusiastic expression one that Claire remembered as characteristic of good teachers. The ones that made it fun.

  ‘Ohhh...’ The woman sang.

  ‘Oh little town of Beth-le-hem...’ the kids trilled.

  Lizzie, gripping the man’s hair, started to shout, in an aggressive monotone, before the last note of ‘hem’ had died away:

  ‘See you liiiiiie!’

  Cat, standing front and centre, started to giggle.

  ‘Above it deeeepppp!’ Lizzie bellowed.

  Next to Cat, Mollie was red-faced with the effort of not giving in to laughter, but the shorter, cherubic-looking girl on Cat’s other side glared round, unamused.

  It was like travelling back in time. Claire could imagine this happening thirty, fifty, a hundred years ago. These lucky children, growing up in this lovely community, having safe country childhoods. She wouldn’t be surprised if they still went out to play in the fields and woods, rather than being constantly supervised by adults.

  Two carols later and they were charging through the house to the Terrace Room and she was heading for the kitchen with Damian. Of course he had it all under control. There were two massive pots of hot chocolate on the Aga, sharing the simmering plate.

  ‘What can I do?’ she asked.

  ‘You could take the first lot of buns out of the warming oven. If you put them on the plates on the trolley and put the tea towels over them to keep them warm...’

  There was a big bowl on the trolley full of squares of milk and dark and white chocolate, and another of chocolate buttons.

  ‘Those are for people to add to their hot chocolate, theoretically, but the kids tend to bypass that and just inhale them.’