by Jane Renshaw
She poked around for a while in the parlour, looking down the back of the Chesterfield sofa and peering into gaps in the floorboards. When she returned to the kitchen, he was sliding the pudding onto a blue and white plate. There were spoons and bowls set out ready on the table.
‘What Chimp said about far from the madding crowd,’ Claire persisted. ‘It’s an odd choice of words.’
He placed the pudding on the table. ‘It was, considering you could say that about anywhere around here.’ He stopped, serving spoon in hand. ‘I was sure he must have meant the book.’
‘Did you look in it properly? He could have written something in it.’
‘I scrutinised every single page.’ He dug a spoon into the pudding.
‘And there’s definitely only one copy of Far From the Madding Crowd in the study?’
‘Apart from the antiquarian stuff, Damian has all the fiction arranged in alphabetical order by author, and that’s not the sort of thing he makes mistakes with. So yes, I’m sure. And yes, I did check the antiquarian section too in case there was another copy there.’
‘So you didn’t actually check if there was another copy somewhere else in the bookcases? What if Chimp put whatever it was in his own copy of the book, and then planted the book in the study, but didn’t realise that all the novels were alphabetical? And that you had a copy too?’
He looked at her. ‘Hell. Why didn’t I think of that?’
She smiled. ‘I am a detective. Or at least, I was.’
‘You’re a genius! I’ll get Gavin to take a look.’
She sat down and lifted the jug of milk. ‘But what if the evidence is against Gavin? It could be, couldn’t it? He could be the one dealing drugs.’
‘You have a very suspicious mind, Claire. I think I can say with some degree of confidence that the evidence isn’t against Gavin.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know.’
As he divided up the pudding, giving them each huge, steaming helpings, she watched him. She couldn’t trust this man. Even if he hadn’t killed Max Weber or Chimp – and she was sure, now, that he hadn’t – he was still a criminal.
And she knew there was something he wasn’t telling her.
44
He was gone.
Phil was gone.
And it was getting dark, already. Karen must have been sleeping for hours and hours but she felt she hadn’t slept at all, she felt exhausted, hardly able to lift her head up to scan the inside of the container and make sure Phil really wasn’t there in the shadows.
She must have slept right through Ade or whoever coming and taking him away.
What had they done with him? To him? She was so tired she couldn’t even be properly scared, and she needed to be scared, she needed to make herself do something to get out of here. Because they were going to come back and get her.
They had taken Phil, and next they would take her.
She made herself stand and walk to the other end of the container, to the door, to check it was still bolted. Her legs were so weak and wobbly that she keeled over to the side and almost fell a couple of times before she got there.
She pulled at the door, but of course it was still locked.
She needed to eat to get some energy. But the food must be drugged. That must be why she was sleeping the whole time. But if she didn’t eat she was going to starve!
She stumbled over to one of the ventilation holes and looked out. All she could see was the top fields and the wood, and a bit of the misty hill behind. She shouted for a bit. There were drips falling in front of her eyes. The snow was thawing. Shrinking. She could see tufts of grass sticking up from it in the field, and it had the translucence, the sorbet-like texture, that meant it was melting.
She sat down heavily next to the cool box. She had to eat. There was bean stew in Tupperware boxes, oatcakes, tomatoes, houmous... a packet of digestive biscuits. The oatcakes and the digestives would probably be safe to eat.
She ripped open the packet of digestives and made herself eat one, gulping water from a bottle to wash it down. What if the water was drugged? But she had to drink. Unless... If Damian had been here, he’d probably be rigging up some sort of contraption for collecting the water dripping down past the ventilation holes. But what could she use?
There were some planks of wood, but they were two big to fit through the holes.
The tomatoes were on a plastic tray inside the cellophane...
She took everything out of the cool box and stacked it in the corner opposite the now very stinky bucket. Then she ripped the end off the plastic tray and folded it lengthways to make a long V-shaped channel, and wedged it in one of the ventilation holes, angled down to the cool box, which she set under it. For a while she sat and watched the drips fall onto the brown plastic channel, and slowly work their way down it to drip into the cool box. Then, as lethargy suddenly overtook her, she shuffled over to the heater and squatted in front of it, arms wrapped round herself.
She had to get out of here.
◆◆◆
They were standing on the little wooden bridge across the stream – the ‘burn’ as he called it – watching the water tumble down the rocky gorge below. The snow, as he pointed out, was receding from the edges of the water. The sun was out, and there were rainbow droplets everywhere, on the spikes of the bushes he told her were whins – or gorse to her... on the branches of the little copse of trees between the burn and the house – those were birches, or birks...
‘Why do you have to have different words for everything up here?’ Claire complained. ‘It makes life very difficult for the uninitiated.’
‘I’m sure the French say the same thing about the English.’
‘But that’s not comparable. We’re meant to share a common language.’
‘Well, we share your language – in fact, my ancestors began speaking it a couple of hundred years ago when they started aping the English as a status thing – and so the process has continued. A hundred years ago, the minister and the doctor and the dominie – the headmaster at the local school – would have spoken Scots as readily as English. They’d have been bilingual. Now, the middle classes rarely venture into it, although they might understand a good few words. Even the country folk here... You’ve probably noticed that it’s the oldies who tend to use Scots. It’s dying, slowly but surely. Come back in another hundred years and you’d probably hear the odd word, but you’d have no difficulty understanding anyone. The Jim Clacks and Mrs Macs will be gone. The language will be gone.’
‘Oh. That’s – sad.’
‘It is. It’s not just a language, it’s... It’s hard to explain. It’s part of the fabric of things, I suppose, the folk memory – it’s part of the people here, and without it, we’re less ourselves, if that makes sense. I think we lost a lot when we started turning our noses up at our own language.’
‘Although I bet Beryl will grow up speaking her native tongue.’
‘True. There are some bucking the trend. Christ, I’m a doom and gloom merchant.’
How weird this was, to be having a conversation about language, to be out here enjoying the sunshine on Christmas Day with this man with whom she was on the run from her own colleagues for murder.
He took a fistful of snow and tossed it into the water, and they watched it bobbing away in the swift-flowing stream. The swift-flowing burn.
‘What is it you’re not telling me?’ she said.
‘In what connection?’
‘Well, yes, obviously I realise there’s a hell of a lot you’re not telling me. I mean about Max Weber, and Chimp. John Innes. That was his real name.’ And as he continued to look down at the water: ‘You knew that, though, didn’t you?’
She thought he wasn’t going to answer. He was watching the water, as if she hadn’t even spoken. And then: ‘I think John – Chimp – was on to a corrupt police officer. I think that’s why he was reluctant to take action or tell me about it. He had to be sure of his fact
s.’
She stared at him. ‘Are you sure? Did he tell you that?’
‘As good as. When I suggested that that was the case, he didn’t contradict me.’
‘But he didn’t give you a name?’
‘No.’
She breathed. ‘You think a police officer killed Chimp?’
‘It would be ironic, wouldn’t it? I –’ He became suddenly quite still, and then he grabbed her, and her heart rate was already rocketing before he pulled her off the bridge and behind a tree. He put a finger to her lips.
And then she saw it.
A flash of movement on the other side of the birchwood, near the cottage.
There were voices.
But Hector released her with a sudden flare of anger in his face, and strode away from her across the bridge and through the trees, and as she followed she heard:
‘We come bearing gifts... And you’ll be glad to hear that they’re all edible.’
Damian.
‘Christ almighty!’ Hector exploded.
Damian, looking like an advertisement for top-of-the-range winterwear, turned to admire the view. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been up here in the snow. Pretty spectacular.’
‘What – the – hell?!’ Hector yelled at Gavin, who was lurking by the cottage.
Gavin held out his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘He was coming, with or without me.’
‘And how did he know where to come?’ Hector strode past his brother as if he wasn’t there, and Gavin backed up a pace.
‘Hi,’ said Damian to Claire. ‘Sorry to crash the party, but I’ve stuff I need to talk to Hector about. Plus – well, Christmas. I’ve made a turkey curry and the rest of the rucksack’s pretty much full of chocolate.’ He indicated the rucksack on Gavin’s back.
As if nothing was amiss. As if the important thing was the Christmas food.
‘Thanks,’ she said weakly. ‘Although we’re both full to the gunwales with Christmas pudding.’
‘Leave him alone,’ Damian was saying now, grinning, limping through the snow towards Hector and Gavin. His walking boots were strapped to red frames that stuck out from under them, as were Gavin’s. Modern snowshoes, she supposed. And there were four ski poles propped by the door. ‘It’s hardly his fault,’ Damian added.
‘Oh, don’t worry, I know exactly where the fault lies.’ Hector turned to him at last, and Claire felt a shiver go through her. She had never, she realised, seen Hector angry before, and it was chilling. It was no wonder Gavin looked as if he wanted to turn tail and run.
She didn’t know how Damian was maintaining his equanimity, but he was grinning at his brother and saying, ‘Would it be possible to have this slanging match inside over a cup of tea? I don’t know about Gavin, but I could do with a sit down.’
Hector opened his mouth –
‘And before you say it,’ Damian got in, his tone suddenly as steely as his brother’s, ‘I don’t think my presence here is the real bone of contention, is it?’
Hector closed his mouth.
‘But Merry Christmas, anyway,’ Damian added, and then Hector was shaking his head and laughing, and pulling his brother into a hug, and saying, ‘Get your arse inside,’ to poor Gavin.
Shellshock.
It wasn’t just her, Claire realised, as the three of them sat round the table, in silence, listening obediently to Damian’s summary of the situation. He had the same effect on everyone.
‘While I agree that the Twat probably has plenty of enemies in London, Paris, Berlin, you name it, I can’t see any of them shlocking up here through the snow to do him in on Christmas Eve. As I see it, there are three main groups of suspects – which may overlap.’ He paused. ‘I want to draw a Venn diagram –’
‘Oh please God no,’ muttered Hector.
‘There’s the Jarvies, obviously – means, motive and opportunity. There wasn’t a break-in, am I right? So whoever killed the Twat either got him to let them in or had a key. The Jarvies must surely have wanted him gone, and Ferg’s a loose cannon if ever there was one – it’s even possible that Ferg tried to force him off the road and pushed him down the stairs at Aucharblet in failed previous attempts to do away with him.’
‘Possible but unlikely,’ said Hector. ‘If those were attempts on his life, they were pretty amateur. Whoever actually killed him knew what they were doing.’
‘Okay, so that brings us to whoever killed Chimp, assuming that he was in fact murdered, which is looking more and more likely, given recent events. This is a bit of a wild card...’ He looked at Claire. ‘Sorry to impugn your colleague, but Campbell Stewart has always hated Hector’s guts. A little drastic, killing Chimp and the Twat to frame him for murder, but –’
‘Hold on,’ Claire was shocked into interrupting. ‘You know I’m a police officer?’ She turned to Hector. ‘You told him?’
Hector barked a laugh and sat back in his chair. ‘No. He told me.’
‘But Hector already knew.’ Damian shrugged. ‘Wasn’t exactly hard to work out.’ And there it was. Her whole career, dismissed in a few damning words. ‘Finally, we’ve got the Kinty hippies. Ade turned up at Aucharblet when we were there for the engagement shindig, ostensibly to pick Karen up, but it’s possible he was some sort of criminal associate of the Twat. What we really need to do is talk to Perdita. And, if we can, work out who killed Chimp. It would be an idea to get Karen out of Kinty and search the place. Persuade the police to do so, ideally.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Karen needs to be got out of there. Quite apart from any physical danger she might be in, I think she’s – I think she’s vulnerable.’ She met Hector’s gaze.
Hector nodded. ‘That’s definitely a priority.’
‘Hopefully she might have already gone.’ Here was where she should tell them about Phil. But she couldn’t do that. Maybe her moral compass was broken, maybe her loyalties were all mixed up, but she wasn’t so far gone as to give up another UC – not just another UC but Phil – to a load of criminals. ‘But if not...’
Damian opened his mouth to speak.
‘You are going nowhere near Kinty, or Perdita, or anywhere else,’ said Hector. ‘You’re going home and you’re staying there – No, I don’t want to hear it. You can call Christine and impress on her the urgency of getting Karen out of there. I’ll talk to Perdita. What you can do is take a look in the study, see if another copy of Far From the Madding Crowd has randomly appeared on the bookshelves. We think Chimp might have left a copy there with something hidden inside it.’ He stood, and went to the window. The light was already going. ‘You’ll stay here tonight, then tomorrow morning you can get off. You left the vehicle somewhere sensible? Not visible from the road?’ He rounded on Gavin.
‘No. We left it well up the side track –’
‘Okay, good. As for the field of suspects – Ferg might have hated the Twat’s guts, but can you really see him getting his act together sufficiently to do anything about it? But I do like the idea of Campbell Stewart as some kind of crazed serial killer.’ He smiled at Claire. ‘Police officers do seem to be a lot less hidebound by convention than they used to be.’
45
‘Priiiiimmmm!’ Karen yelled, her mouth right up to one of the ventilation holes. ‘Hellllp!’
She could see Prim, away in the distance at the fence on the other side of the Top Park, picking wool off the barbed wire and pushing it into a bag slung over her shoulder.
She got one of the planks of wood and whanged it against the metal side of the container, so hard that her hands went all pins-and-needles.
‘Primmmm!’
Oh please please please hear me.
And – yes! She was looking over... She was walking across the field!
‘Prim, help me!’
She was hitching up her long skirt to climb a gate... and now she was crossing the next field...
‘Prim! I’m locked in here!’
And now she was coming across this field, stumbling on the tussocky grass u
nder the snow.
‘Oh God, Prim, please, let me out!’ Karen shouted when she was near enough. ‘Please! Can you unbolt it? Is there a padlock?’
Prim came right up to the ventilation hole and looked in at her, her pale blue eyes unblinking, vacant. She didn’t say a word. She just stared at Karen, and then she turned her back and walked away.
‘Prim! Oh God, Prim, please! Please let me out!’
Prim carried on walking.
Maybe she was too scared to interfere.
‘Call the police! You don’t have to give your name! Call 999 and tell them they’re keeping me prisoner here! Please Prim! Primmmm!’
◆◆◆
The turkey curry was amazing. There were chestnuts in it, and sprouts. When Claire was finished she wanted to lick the plate. She looked over at Damian to compliment him on it, but he was sitting, fork in hand, staring off.
Not staring off, exactly – he was watching Hector, who had gone to the range for another helping.
Hector came back to the table and dumped down his plate and said, ‘For something that looks like a Mrs Mac special, this is actually pretty good,’ and that made Damian laugh, and Hector reached over to fist-bump his shoulder.
All the signs were there, if you knew where to look for them. And, sadly, Claire did know. When she’d been in uniform, she’d met too many damaged kids. Some had been so messed up that they were basically feral – vicious little bastards for whom it was hard to feel any sympathy at all. But she remembered in particular one adorable little girl, who’d been snatched by her father and taken back to his family’s home in Pakistan. When he’d re-entered the UK with her a few weeks later, they’d been stopped at the airport and the girl had been returned to her mother. She’d been such an appealing little thing, wide-eyed and silent, and all the time Claire had been sitting talking, reassuring them both, the child’s eyes had followed her mum as she moved about the kitchen.