‘Yes, the papers,’ said Marcus. ‘Where do we sign?’
Quinn opened the folder and pulled a black pen from the inside of his jacket. He turned the folder round so that the print was facing the three of them.
‘I’ve marked the places where we should each sign. Rebecca,’ Quinn pointed, ‘you should sign here.’ He handed her the pen.
She crossed her legs and leaned forwards. Her foot moving up and down and the sandal making a faint slapping sound each time it hit her heel. She reached for the pen, signed with a flourish and sang a couple of notes from whatever song had been entertaining her in the lift.
What was that tune? wondered Ranald.
‘My turn,’ said Marcus, and he reached over and pulled the file so it was in front of him. He signed. Rebecca’s heel slapped against her sandal. Marcus pushed the file along to Ranald.
With a look at Quinn, Ranald took the pen from his cousin. The heavy metal barrel of the pen was warm from his cousins’ hands. Ranald cleared his throat. Leaned towards the file and saw the spot where he should sign. He pushed down the end of the pen with this thumb, closing up the nib. He pushed down again so that the nib once again shot out of the hole at the bottom. Ready to spill ink.
Could he do this? He was about to betray his uncle and Jennie.
His stomach twisted again. His tongue soured in his mouth.
What choice did he have?
Rebecca’s heel continued to slap quietly against her sandal. The noise was suddenly becoming very annoying. He looked down at her foot as if sending it a message to stop.
And there, just under her ankle bone, a tattoo.
A very familiar tattoo: a blue butterfly.
He looked from there to her face. Aware of his scrutiny, she turned to face him.
‘You need to sign it,’ she said, as if talking to a child.
‘That tattoo,’ he said as information slowly uncurled in his brain. Then, without thinking about what he was saying, he allowed the words to fall from his mouth. ‘I’ve seen that tattoo before. You’ve got another one at the top of your right thigh. A pink heart.’
Oh my God, he thought.
He stood up. Looked from Rebecca to Marcus.
‘What have you people done?’ he shouted.
They were all standing now.
‘What are you talking about?’ Rebecca and Marcus demanded at the same time. Quinn was also saying something, but Ranald couldn’t hear him. He was seeing a woman in his bedroom. In the toilet at the café. Cheerful, naughty, fun. Dead in his pool. And now, she was here, in front of him.
She was different somehow. Not just in the clothes she was wearing, and her hair, but in her cold, assessing eyes, her voice, the set of her shoulders.
But it was her, he was certain.
Alive.
‘How could you? How could you?’ Ranald asked, taking a step closer to Rebecca. ‘Oh my God. You people…’ He looked from Rebecca to Marcus.
Marcus moved his body between them, leaned towards Ranald, his face close. ‘What rubbish are you talking about, Ranald? Are you back off your pills?’ His face was bright red, saliva sparking from his mouth. ‘Sit your arse down and sign that fucking document.’
Ranald took a step back, almost tripped over his chair. ‘What did you do?’ He shouted. ‘What did you do?’
Louder than anyone else, Quinn shouted. ‘Will everyone sit down, shut up, and tell me what the hell is going on?’
‘Ask my cousins,’ Ranald answered. He looked around the room as if the solid wood furnishings would offer some understandable shape to the memories, thoughts and emotions that were crowding his mind. The evidence was there in front of him, but still he struggled to piece it all together.
‘Ranald, what the hell is going on?’ demanded Quinn.
Ranald looked from the lawyer to his cousins. Read the defiance in their faces. They would deny everything he threw at them. Try to say that he was crazy. That he should be put on stronger drugs.
‘Oh my God,’ he said again. He stared into Rebecca’s eyes and tried to locate the woman he’d laughed with. The woman he’d made love to. But he saw nothing of her, just this dark-eyed woman who was looking at him as if he was certifiable.
So strong was her certainty, so different from Liz’s, for a moment he questioned himself. He thought about her voice, her tattoos, her singing. This was her. There was no doubt.
‘You…’ He stared at her. ‘How could you do…?’
‘Ranald, you are going to have to explain yourself,’ said Quinn.
With a supreme effort, Ranald contained the riot of emotion surging through his mind. He tried to think of what his uncle would do in this moment. How he might be and act.
He drew himself to his full height, and looked at Rebecca and Marcus with a certainty chilled by the realisation of just what kind of people his cousins were. For, without doubt, they had orchestrated the whole thing together.
‘Mr Quinn, this meeting is over.’ He looked at Rebecca and shook his head. ‘I will not be signing the papers. The house will remain in my sole ownership as per the original reading of the will.’
It may have been his imagination, but Quinn almost smiled.
Marcus and Rebecca weren’t smiling though. They began shouting – at each other, and at him. Marcus pulled his phone out of his pocket. Held it up for Ranald to see the image displayed there.
‘I just need to press send, cousin, and your fucking life is over.’
Ranald stepped forwards. ‘Go ahead. Press send, you detestable prick.’
‘People. People,’ Quinn rushed round from his desk, trying to play peacemaker. ‘Will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?’
‘Ask them,’ answered Ranald.’ Ask Rebecca here.’ He stared into her eyes. ‘Or do you prefer “Liz”?’
35
Ranald hailed a taxi as soon as he was out of the building and asked the driver to take him home.
As he sat back in the seat he wondered about everything he had just discovered.
How could anyone do something like that? For his home? For money?
Shame scoured him. He was such a fool. How could he be such a dupe? They’d sized him up so easily and manipulated him like he had all the brain power of a newborn.
She’d slept with him.
Several times.
They were family. And he’d enjoyed it, really enjoyed it. What did that make him? He was sure Marcus’s taunt that they were more than cousins was a malicious invention, but still. He shuddered. It felt like something else he could enter in the column of his life marked ‘Just like Mother’.
He thought of that afternoon. Waking up to find Danny bending over him. Liz in the pool. Marcus, fully clothed, carrying her out. How stupid had he been?
And then he considered the Hacketts. What was in it for them? In the first plans he’d seen they were going to lose their house. But Marcus had clearly changed the design; was that in order to persuade the couple to go along with his scheme? Was that the hold he had over them?
When the taxi dropped him off, he made straight for the Hacketts’ house, grabbed the brass lion knocker and rapped loudly on the door.
The door opened almost instantly. It was Danny, and one look at his face told Ranald that they’d been warned by Marcus about what had happened.
Without a word, Danny stood to the side and let him in. Questions, thoughts and ideas all jumbled within Ranald’s mind; he didn’t know where to start first.
Mrs Hackett appeared in the hallway.
‘In here.’ She turned and led him into a small living room. The room was fronted by a large bay window, looking out into a small part of the garden Ranald had never been in. Mrs Hackett sat in a chintz armchair, every inch the power in the room. She was sitting slightly forward, her feet crossed at the ankles, her hands clasped in front of her and her face a quiet simmer. She appeared ready for anything Ranald might throw at her.
Danny stood behind her chair, his hand on her sh
oulder.
Ranald opened his mouth to speak.
‘Sit, please, Ranald,’ Mrs Hackett said. ‘Let’s at least be civil about this.’
At this polite request, he felt the fury within him fizzle out, and he slumped into a seat.
He simply asked. ‘Why?’
‘We…’ began Danny.
‘We helped hide the body…’ Mrs Hackett completed his sentence, her tone wrapped in denial.
‘You’re still going with the dead body thing then?’ asked Ranald, his anger returning.
‘We helped hide…’
‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ Ranald said. ‘I know.’ He repeated. ‘I know.’
But Mrs Hackett persisted until Danny interrupted.
‘It’s over, dear,’ he said. ‘The man knows it was all a ruse.’ Mrs Hackett looked up at her husband, mouth open. ‘We’re sorry, son. It was just—’
‘Shut up, Danny. Shut up. He’ll put us out of our house,’ she hissed.
‘It’s no more than we deserve,’ he replied, his voice a hushed admonition.
‘Wait.’ Ranald sat forwards in his seat. ‘What the hell are you talking about – put you out of your house?’
‘Marcus told us everything,’ said Danny, looking into Ranald’s eyes for the first time.
‘I saw the plans in that folder on the hall table, in which you…’ Mrs Hackett began. Ranald could see large red blotches had flowered up and down her neck. ‘You were planning to pull this house down and put up a small block of flats.’
‘What? I had nothing to do with those plans. And what’s more I have no plans to sell this house.’
‘What?’ asked Mrs Hackett, her tone one of disbelief.
‘I have no intention of selling. Never have had. I want everything to stay as it was.’
‘You have no plans to…’ Danny repeated, his face going pale. He sat on the arm of his wife’s chair. Rubbed at his head. ‘Good lord. What have we done?’
‘Your name was on those plans. Your signature was at the back. I saw it all, Mr McGhie.’
‘You may have seen those plans, but you saw them just after I saw them for the very first time – after Marcus dropped them there. I can assure you they were as much a surprise to me as they were to you.’
‘Well, what…’
‘Mrs Hackett, why don’t you start at the beginning and explain what my cousin told you.’
She took a deep breath and looked at Danny. He gave her a small nod.
‘I saw those plans and your name on them and I contacted Marcus and asked him what we could do to stop you from tearing down our house…’
‘So, you thought that pretending I had killed someone and Danny burying the body was what – some kind of thing that reasonable human beings would do? It’s fucking nuts.’
‘Please don’t swear in my house, Ranald,’ said Mrs Hackett.
‘Right, cos using the f-word within these four walls is beyond the pale, while tricking someone into thinking they had actually committed murder is acceptable. That’s a screwed-up value system right there, Mrs Hackett.’
‘Marcus was very convincing, Ranald,’ said Danny. He was twisting his fingers in his lap. He looked like he wanted to combust with embarrassment.
‘That man has spent a lifetime arguing in our top courts. We were putty in his hands, Ranald,’ added Mrs Hackett.
Ranald could see where they were coming from, although, from his point of view, it was Liz’s – or Rebecca’s – performance that was the more convincing.
‘Right. The plan?’ he asked.
‘Marcus said that you had the final say on any plans. That your intentions would be carried out, and the only way to overturn them would be to completely discredit you. Bribe you in some way. He said that he and Rebecca had already started on their plan and that I had come to them just at the right time.’
Ranald sat back in his chair, his anger fading again. ‘He manipulated you as easily as he did me.’ He paused for a moment, considering the lengths of Marcus and Rebecca’s plans; he couldn’t help but admire their cleverness.
‘Here’s the truth, Mrs H, Danny: the will states that the house and grounds are mine. And that you guys have to stay on as staff for as long as you live. If I sell up I have to share the proceeds with Marcus and Rebecca.’ He looked at Mrs Hackett to check if she was following him. She was. ‘The plans were dropped there for you to see, Mrs H. He knew you would come to him for help and then you would be drawn in to assist him.’
‘We truly thought we were going to lose our home, Ranald,’ said Danny.
‘Again, and that’s enough to make someone think they were a murderer?’
‘I would do anything … anything, to keep my home, Mr McGhie,’ answered Mrs Hackett, her eyes brimming with tears and her jaw set with indignation. ‘My family has done everything to help your family over the years, and I would not – could not – allow another one of you to…’
‘Dear,’ Danny put a hand on her shoulder, ‘you’ve said enough.’
Mrs Hackett closed her eyes, visibly pulling herself together. She opened them and glared at Ranald. ‘I was keeping my home whatever it took.’ And Ranald could see what a formidable adversary Mrs Hackett might be if she put her mind to something.
‘Marcus came up with another set of plans,’ Danny took over. ‘Where this house was untouched. Said he couldn’t stop the sale of the big house, but he could make sure we were safe if we helped him.’ He looked at Ranald. ‘After you giving me that car…’ His voice faded. He stood up as if he had come to a decision. ‘Give us till the end of the week, Ranald, and we’ll be out of here.’
‘What?’ said Mrs Hackett.
‘No one’s going anywhere,’ said Ranald.
Danny was all but at attention; a soldier at his court martial. ‘Our position here is untenable. We simply can’t stay on.’
‘Yes, you can,’ said Ranald. ‘My uncle’s wishes were that you are retained in service till you retire and then stay on in the cottage for life.’ He shook his head. They were good people who had been fooled just as he had. And, anyway, he needed some kind of constant in his life. ‘No one’s leaving,’ he said, ‘and I’m not taking no for an answer.’
Mrs Hackett looked over at him, sending a silent ‘thanks’.
‘You’ve known these people all your life, Mrs H. What on earth would make them behave like that?’
She exhaled. ‘When you’ve been a servant for as long as I have, Ranald, you learn to look away. If you didn’t, you couldn’t live with yourself. But what I will say is this: those two children were spoiled rotten. Everything they ever wanted they got. And Marcus was always about stuff. He wanted the biggest car, the biggest house, the prettiest wife, and he would do anything to get them.’
‘And Rebecca? Ranald asked.
Mrs Hackett sat for a moment as she considered her response. ‘She has always been a strange one, that girl. Less interested in the material things in life.’ She paused as she considered this. ‘Don’t get me wrong, she always liked having nice clothes, but it was like something else motivated her. And she had a gleeful disregard for what other people thought of her. She simply didn’t care.’
‘First day I worked here she turned up,’ Danny joined in. ‘Said she would give me a blowjob for a tenner.’
‘What?’ Mrs Hackett demanded. ‘You never mentioned that before.’
‘She didn’t mean it,’ said Danny. ‘Not really.’
‘What do you mean, not really?’
Danny thought about his answer for a moment. ‘It didn’t matter to her either way. If I went for it she would have complied. When I said no thanks, she just laughed, showed me her boobs and ran off. It was more about her trying to shock me as much as she could.’
‘Good grief,’ said Mrs Hackett and pressed the back of her right hand against her forehead as if blotting the sweat there. ‘The more I learn about this family the less I understand.’
‘You and me both, Mrs H,’ said Ranald.
‘You and me both.’
Mrs Hackett grew quiet, her blush reasserting itself.
‘All that trickery, Ranald,’ she said at last. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Trickery?’
‘The drugs … and the mentions of the mirror. I said too much to Marcus. He knew your medical condition could cause all sorts of strange things. He encouraged me to have you think all the strange stuff about the lift was real.’ She focused on her hands where they lay in her lap, watching as she twisted her own fingers. ‘That stuff I said about the mirror was all nonsense. It was manipulative when you were in a bad place.’ She swallowed as if gathering the strength to look up at him. Eventually she managed. Her eyes heavy with apology. ‘The mirror in the lift, Ranald. It really is just a mirror.’
36
Back at the house, in the library, Ranald’s mind was part fog, part crystalline clarity.
The phone on the desk rang. It was Quinn.
‘What just happened, Mr McGhie?’ He sounded completely flustered.
‘Why don’t you tell me?’ demanded Ranald.
‘I can assure you I couldn’t be more at sea.’
Ranald talked, and over the next few minutes, as if putting all the pieces into place, he explained his cousins’ plot.
Silence. Then.
‘Good lord.’ Quinn paused. ‘I don’t know what to say, Mr McGhie. Do you have any proof of this? Do you want to press charges? We could take out a civil suit on your behalf and sue them for emotional distress.’
‘Stand in front of a court and say my cousin had sex with me; told me she was hearing things in the walls – crying babies and ghostly women – all to get me to sell the house? And that she and her brother then faked her death? How well do you think that would work, Mr Quinn?’
‘Marcus is a formidable lawyer,’ he replied, doubt in his voice.
‘He will have covered his tracks. I doubt Mr and Mrs Hackett will have the stomach for it and, besides, who would believe that they would go to such lengths?’
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