The Time and the Place

by Jane Renshaw

  ‘What, so it was just a coincidence that she killed herself after... after what we did, at the party?’

  ‘That was possibly the trigger, but if it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. I would lay money on her having tried to kill herself before.’

  ‘Well, yes, it came out at the inquest that she had attempted suicide a few times.’

  ‘Okay, then.’

  ‘No.’ She could hardly get the words out. ‘It’s not okay. I –’

  ‘You were just doing what all teenagers do – what Dawn herself was doing. You were trying to fit in, be one of the gang. You had no... evil intent.’

  ‘It was cruel. I knew that.’

  ‘Who isn’t cruel, from time to time? For God’s sake, Claire, what that girl decided to do to herself wasn’t your fault.’

  She could only shake her head. She shouldn’t be finding what he was saying in the least bit reassuring. His views on mental health were abhorrent. She shouldn’t be listening to this.

  ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I suppose you’re reflecting that, in aiding and abetting me, you’ve come full circle? I’m the equivalent of the mean girls, and I’ve sucked you in –’

  ‘No!’ she said at once. The thought had never even occurred to her. ‘You’re nothing like them!’ Wasn’t he? ‘It’s Karen I’m worried about. She reminds me – in some ways, she reminds me of Dawn. I should have done more to try to help her. Do you think she’s all right?’

  ‘Karen will be fine.’

  She felt her face collapse and then he was holding her, finally, he was holding her in his arms as she cried.

  ◆◆◆

  It was only later, as she was drifting into sleep, with her foot just touching his, that their earlier conversation came back to her. After she’d told him about the Bristows, he’d said he was sorry about the ‘balls-up’. But what did he mean? If she hadn’t come blundering in as he’d been robbing Drumdargie Castle and disposing of an inconvenient corpse, presumably there would have been no balls-up at all.

  So just what was he apologising for?

  43

  Karen sat up and pushed herself backwards, kicking her legs out of the sleeping bag, shivering as the chilly air hit her, despite the heater that still glowed orange.

  She felt sick. Her mouth was so dry that her lips were stuck together.

  In the gloom of the barn, if that was what it was, she could see there was a man sitting against the wall, knees drawn up to his chest. The first, surreal thought that popped into her aching head was that it was Dad.

  But how could it be?

  As she looked at him, he stood, unsteadily, and said, ‘Karen, hey, it’s okay. It’s Baz.’

  She pushed her tongue between her lips. ‘Baz?’

  ‘We’ve been given something. I’m guessing a sedative of some sort. There’s a bucket over there if you want to use it. At least they’ve given us loo roll. And a cool box with food.’

  ‘What’s – happened?’

  ‘We’re in the shipping container. I’ve no idea why they’ve put you here, but I... I’m an undercover police officer. They must somehow have rumbled me.’

  Karen just kept staring at him. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m an undercover cop. My real name’s Phil. DI Phil Caddick.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  He grimaced, and stood, and turned to look through one of the line of big holes that had been drilled in the metal sides of the container. This was where they kept the hay. The holes were to ventilate the space, she remembered Ade telling her when she’d come with him to fetch bales of hay for the sheep. So that the hay didn’t go mouldy.

  ‘You’re a cop?’

  He nodded wearily.

  ‘But – how –’

  ‘Gwennie and I both.’

  ‘Wow.’ But somehow, weirdly, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think of either of them being cops. ‘Are you trying to get evidence against Ade?’

  ‘Ade and the others, yes.’

  ‘Where’s Gwennie?’

  ‘That’s what I’m worried about. Amongst other things.’

  ‘Ade has done this? He’s – locked us up in here?’

  Baz – Phil – nodded. ‘He and Jagdeep and Doffy. I don’t think Prim and Rainbow are involved or even aware of what’s going on. Not that Prim is aware of anything much, of course.’

  Karen swallowed. She didn’t want to ask this, but she had to know. ‘What are they going to do with us?’

  He looked round at her. ‘I wouldn’t like to speculate about that. These are pretty ruthless people. Which is why, if at all possible, we should think about getting out of here.’ He turned back to the hole he’d been peering through and shouted:

  ‘Help! Help us!’

  He started banging on the metal with a plank of wood, the clanging reverberating through Karen’s temples. The next farm, Mains of Kinty, was three fields away. Was that close enough that people there might hear them?

  She pushed herself up from the hay and wobbled across to where he was standing. ‘I, um, have to use the bucket... Then I’ll help you make noise. Can you please look away?’

  They banged and shouted for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few minutes. Karen’s throat was raw with it.

  ‘The animals are all down off the top fields for the winter,’ she croaked. ‘No one has any reason to come up here. And Mains of Kinty is probably too far away.’ She crossed her arms round herself. ‘I guess Ade must have found out about the phone.’ And she told Phil about the phone, although she could tell by the way he was obviously not really listening that he already knew about it. Of course he did, if he was a cop.

  ‘I didn’t tell the police the truth about where I found it. I said I found it on the drive at the House, but that wasn’t true. I found it here, by the bins. Someone – Chimp’s murderer – had obviously thrown it away.’ She felt tears rising. ‘Ade must somehow know that I found it and that the police know about it, but that I haven’t let on where I found it... That’s why he... He has to stop me blabbing –’

  ‘So who have you told about where you really found it?’

  ‘No one! I think Damian and Hector suspect that I found it somewhere around here, but I never told anyone... I’m so stupid! If I’d told the truth, Ade would have been arrested or at least be under suspicion –’

  ‘He is under suspicion.’ Phil grimaced. ‘Look, don’t worry. When I don’t check in, Campbell Stewart and the team will come running. And if Ade and Co. want rid of us, why go to the trouble of keeping us in here? They’re probably stalling until a big deal goes down, and then they’ll disappear.’

  ‘But you said they’re ruthless and we have to get out of here!’ Her voice rose on hysteria. She couldn’t help it. ‘Maybe they are going to get rid of us!’

  He touched her arm. ‘I’m not going to let them hurt you.’

  ‘But how can you stop them? There’s three of them!’

  ‘Here.’ He handed her a plastic bottle of water, and it occurred to her, ridiculously, that that wasn’t very environmentally friendly, unless it was a reused bottle with tap water in it. ‘You’re probably dehydrated.’

  The water tasted weird. Too minerally. She drank about a quarter of it and set the bottle back down on a wooden pallet, wiping her dry lips. ‘So is Ade – Ade really is a criminal?’

  He looked at her like Bill often did. ‘I think you know he is, Karen.’

  She could feel herself flushing. ‘Yeah, but I mean... a serious criminal?’

  ‘He’s a drug dealer and we suspect he’s into other pretty serious stuff. Adrian Cottingham isn’t his real name.’

  ‘I’m such an idiot!’

  ‘But he’s obviously genuinely fond of you. I’m sure he wouldn’t hurt you.’ Baz rubbed her shoulder in an awkward dad sort of way.

  ‘Gwennie...’ Karen gulped. ‘Do you think Gwennie’s okay?’

  ‘Honestly? I don’t know.’

  �
��Is Gwennie her real name?’

  ‘No.’

  Karen sniffed. ‘Maybe she got away. Maybe she’ll raise the alarm.’

  He nodded at her encouragingly. ‘In any event, it’s only a matter of time before someone finds us.’ He didn’t complete the thought, but Karen heard the words as if he had spoken them, echoing around the draughty container:

  Let’s hope it’s not too late.

  ◆◆◆

  Claire stood, naked, on the old towel in front of the range and gave herself a quick, cursory wash with a face cloth, a cracked bar of soap, and the hot water in the bucket drawn from the little tap on the range. It seemed that the part on the right wasn’t an oven, it was a boiler for heating up water.

  She used a less-old towel to dry herself and pulled on her clothes, including the long johns and vest Gavin had supplied. He must have gone to Pond Cottage and rummaged about in her underwear drawer, she supposed, smiling at the thought of him contemplating the deeply unexciting thermals.

  When Hector appeared with another couple of buckets of water, setting one down on the floor and pouring the contents of the other into the boiler, she said, ‘I’m sorry for unloading on you last night. About the Bristows. About Dawn.’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing to apologise for. I’m flattered that you felt you could tell me all that.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it again now,’ she pre-empted him. ‘I think it’s time you did some talking, don’t you? Got some things off your chest?’

  He just smiled.

  ‘Was it one of your men who searched Pond Cottage? I know someone was in there.’

  He straightened. ‘No. That’s interesting.’

  ‘My things weren’t disturbed. I think whoever it was must have been looking for something Chimp could have left there.’

  He filled the kettle with water from the other bucket and set it on the hotplate. ‘I’m afraid there’s a somewhat limited choice when it comes to breakfast. Oatcakes, jam and tea do?’ He left the room.

  She followed him into a little pantry. ‘Hector.’

  ‘The oatcakes have been in a metal tin, so not exposed to mouse action.’

  ‘Hector! Tell me what you know about Chimp.’

  He removed a packet of oatcakes from the tin, and selected a jar of jam. ‘Oh, and Merry Christmas, by the way. All right, all right –’ He grinned at her. ‘Chimp told me he had evidence against this person he wouldn’t name, and that it was somewhere safe. Not at Pond Cottage. He came here a couple of times, before you ask, and yes, before you ask, I have searched the place. I didn’t find anything, but with your superior detecting skills, maybe you should have a look. I’ll light a fire in the other room – the ‘parlour’, as Alice and Kenny called it – and we can leave the doors open to heat the rest of the house.’

  ‘What sort of “evidence”?’

  ‘That, he didn’t tell me.’

  She frowned. ‘I’m not sure if I believe you. And yeah, Merry Christmas.’

  As they ate their meagre breakfast at the table in front of the range, Claire watched drips falling past the window from the snowy gutter, and Hector told her the thaw had begun.

  ‘We only just made it to a white Christmas.’

  ‘Why would Chimp tell you he had evidence against this person?’ Claire demanded.

  He shrugged. ‘I assume he wanted someone to know it existed, in case anything happened to him.’

  ‘And he chose you.’

  He dug his knife into the jam jar. ‘Am I not a trustworthy type?’

  ‘The fact that you’re about as far from trustworthy as it’s possible to get is presumably why he didn’t open up to you about what exactly it was or where he’d put it. He didn’t want you going straight to it and taking matters into your own hands. But it must be somewhere reasonably accessible to you. He didn’t give you even a clue as to where it was? In retrospect?’

  ‘He said it was “far from the madding crowd”. Chimp was a bit of a closet intellectual, so I thought he might mean he’d hidden something in the book. Thomas Hardy. Far From the Madding Crowd. There’s a copy in the study, and it’s the kind of stunt Chimp would pull. But there was nothing.’

  ‘So you wondered if he could mean here.’

  ‘Yes, I did wonder.’

  They ate in silence for a while. Then she asked, ‘Who were Alice and Kenny? Did they live here?’

  ‘They were the last people to live here.’ He got up and left the room, and came back with a photograph, a grainy old colour one of a smiling elderly couple, the woman with snowy-white hair clipped back from a beaming face, the man in suit trousers, a collarless shirt and braces.

  ‘They look nice.’

  ‘They were.’

  Something in his voice made her ask: ‘You knew them well?’

  ‘I used to visit them here, as a child. They had a dozen grandchildren, and there were always some of them around. A great place for kids, as you can imagine – the lack of modern conveniences was exciting for us, rather than a pain in the arse as it was for the adults. I used to love dipping a ladle into the bucket when I wanted a drink, rather than turning on a tap. And Grannie Alice and Grandpa Kenny always had a welcome for any random kid who turned up. That’s what we called them – Grannie Alice and Grandpa Kenny.’ He smiled. ‘They made us all feel at home.’

  ‘They sound wonderful. But it must have been a hard life here for them, when they got older.’

  ‘They eventually moved to Ballater to live with their daughter. But my father knew how much they’d miss Reidpark, and the daughter wasn’t keen on having any of their “old-fashioned” belongings in her new bungalow – he left the place as it was, so they could come up here whenever they wanted and spend a day or two “back home” as they always called it. And now their grandchildren use it with their kids, and various other people.’

  She looked around the room. ‘But for everyone who knew Alice and Kenny, isn’t it sad, being here without them? I mean, you’d always be thinking of them, and wishing they would walk into the room.’

  ‘Mm. I always think the kettle is disappointed that it’s just me and not Grannie Alice.’ He smiled. ‘But it would be worse, to have to clear the place out; to abandon their things at charity shops and the recycling point.’

  She smiled back at him. ‘You’re a sentimental old thing, really, aren’t you?’

  ‘I think I’ll go “no comment” on that one.’

  His mother had died when he was very young. She could imagine Grannie Alice fussing over him, maybe brushing his hair and wiping his face and feeding him gooey puddings. Loving him, almost, perhaps.

  On paper, they had just been his father’s tenants. But she was starting to understand that the connections between people went deep here.

  After breakfast, she spent the morning searching Reidpark. This proved fruitless as far as Chimp’s evidence was concerned, but she did find a box of old Christmas decorations. While Hector stirred a pot of something savoury-smelling on the range, Claire arranged a Christmas tableau at the centre of the table – a weird, rather grubby cotton-wool toddler with a little china face and hands, a painted plaster Santa carrying a large bag of presents, with a stick of rock and a teddy bear sticking out the top, silk holly leaves complete with red bead berries, and some thin-walled glass baubles.

  He had combined rice with tins of tuna, tomatoes, kidney beans and sweetcorn. As they tucked in, she said, ‘You’re hereby designated chef. How did I ever imagine I could masquerade as a cook/housekeeper?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. The Icelandic cuisine thing was inspired. You were pretty much getting away with it. Until –’

  ‘Bagmolt,’ she spluttered.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever struggled quite so much to keep a straight face. Where did that come from?’

  ‘Dunno. But how was I to know you’d done your research? Was that when you started to suspect...?’

  ‘Nope.’ And, infuriatingly, that was all he would say on the sub
ject. ‘To turn the conversation from fermented shark to decomposing twats... I’m going to Aucharblet tomorrow to speak to Perdita.’

  ‘Oh, right, great idea, pay your respects to the grieving fiancée.’

  ‘I need to pick her brains, such as they are.’

  ‘She’ll call the cops on you!’

  ‘Perdita will know I didn’t do it, whatever the police have told her.’

  ‘Oh, really? She’s got that much faith in you, has she?’

  He shrugged. ‘We go back a long way.’

  ‘She’s a drug addict.’ Claire pushed her plate away. She’d lost her appetite.

  ‘She used to be.’

  ‘She still is. Trust me, I know the signs. My guess would be amphetamines.’

  He was looking off.

  ‘But then I’m guessing there’s a trail of damaged women floundering in your wake, isn’t there? Helen, Perdita, Fiona... Is Lizzie yours? Are you her father?’

  He blinked at her. ‘God, no.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  He smiled. ‘In the usual way.’

  ‘Oh, come on! I’m not a complete idiot. You’re saying you haven’t had a sexual relationship with Fiona?’

  ‘Not in the last sixteen years.’

  Claire’s heart, ridiculously, was pounding. She picked up the plaster Santa and rubbed dust off his beard. ‘So why does she look at you like... Like she’s dying of thirst and you’re an oasis in the desert?’

  ‘Very poetic.’

  She glared at him.

  He raised his eyebrows a little. ‘It’s complicated.’

  She stood. She didn’t want to hear about how complicated it was with Fiona. ‘I’m going to have another look in the parlour.’

  ‘Don’t you want some Christmas pudding? After Gavin, or possibly Damian, was so thoughtful as to include one in our survival package?’

  She glanced over to the range, where a pan of water was bubbling. ‘I thought I smelled something good.’

  ‘Ready in half an hour. We’ll have to make do with UHT milk rather than cream and brandy butter, but at least it’ll supply us with a couple of thousand calories to get us on our way towards the obligatory massive Christmas Day intake.’