QUIET NEIGHBOURS an unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist

by MCPHERSON, CATRIONA

  Lowell opened the album to the photograph Jude knew he would, the last one of Miranda and her friend, Inez. Small, pale, lost Inez, who everyone forgot to mention because beside the other girl she simply faded until she had all but disappeared from view.

  This time, looking at her, Jude didn’t know how she could have missed it. They were identical apart from the hair: Inez’s a dazzling veil against the window and Eddy’s the same soft, draping sheet but dyed the impossible black that Jude kicked herself for not seeing through before now. They had the same slightly twisted little nose, the fine collarbones and tiny wrists. Inez’s breasts were high and round and her stomach flat behind a cheesecloth shirt, but the legs below it in their jeans were Eddy’s pipe-cleaner legs as plain as day.

  “That’s your mother,” Lowell said. “Her name is Inez Cato and I loved her. She broke my heart when she left, and she’s just broken it again today. I have no earthly idea why she would do such a thing as to go and take you with her when she didn’t even wan—”

  “Don’t say that, Lowell,” said Jude. “Maybe she didn’t know how you felt. Maybe she thought you’d send her away anyway. We can’t know what was going on inside her head.”

  “Not until we find her!” said Eddy. “I mean, I’ll always love Mum—she’s my mum!—but if I can find this Inez woman … maybe I’ve got brothers and sisters!”

  “Of course she knew I loved her!” Lowell said. “I wanted to marry her. I gave her my mother’s ring and she accepted it.”

  “Did she take it with her?” said Terry. “If she absconded with a family heirloom you might be able to get official help tracing her.”

  “But you didn’t know she was pregnant?” Jude said. “How long were you in Dallas?”

  “Less than a month,” Lowell said. “If Eddy was born on the nineteenth of April, even if she was early, Inez must have known. I would have noticed. We were, dear me, we were sharing a room.”

  “It happens,” said Jude. “Usually with young girls. How old was she?”

  “Twenty,” said Lowell. “And I was forty, to save you making calculations. I know it sounds tawdry but I loved her, and I thought she loved me. I thought we were going to live here together and she’d paint and take pictures and I’d potter around in the bookshop and we’d be happy.”

  “She didn’t nick your ring,” Eddy said. She hadn’t spoken for a moment or two and when she did her voice was gravelly. “She didn’t nick it. Mum had it. She gave it to me.”

  “What did you do with it?” said Lowell. Eddy put her hands in her cardigan pockets and balled them up into fists. “Did you sell it to buy your ticket here? Your price is far above rubies, you know,” he added gently.

  “You sold it once you knew we’d found you” said Liam. “So you could scarper!”

  “Talk sense,” Eddy said. “That was only today. How could I have sold it already?”

  “You’re not exactly denying it,” Terry countered.

  “I was scared!” Eddy said. “All that stuff you said about breach of contract and suing me. I only wanted to see my dad! I was always going to come back in time for the baby. Ask Jude! Before you started in on threatening me, I was totally coming back.”

  “Sorry,” said Terry. “Heightened emotion. We’ve waited so long.”

  “Lucky little baby this, isn’t it?” said Eddy, with tears in her eyes. “Two dads besotted with it, and a granddad. Not like me, eh? My mum just abandoned me with her pal and my dad just wants his precious diamond ring back.” She took one hand out of her pocket and threw it at Lowell. “Here!” she spat.

  He caught it in one hand and then opened his palm and regarded it calmly. It was a heavy, old-fashioned setting, as crusty as a barnacle and tarnished with dirt.

  “Eddy, that’s not fair,” Jude said. “He just said he’d rather have you.”

  “No he didn’t. He said some guff about rubies that could mean anything,” Eddy said. “And don’t blame Mum either. She gave it to me the night before she died and she told me if I went to Lowland Glen, to bury it in the garden. She probably meant here at the house, eh? But I didn’t know your name was the same as the shop, did I? So I buried it in the garden at the back of LG.”

  “That’s what you were doing that first day!” said Jude.

  “Yes. Fuck’s sake. Happy now?’ Eddy said. “And then I dug it up today. Because …” She flashed a look at Liam. “All right, shoot me! I was scared.”

  “Did she say why she wanted you to bury it?” Jude said.

  “She was always burying something somewhere,” said Eddy. “Leather boots and dead things and sacral stones. I thought it was because it was my birthstone and this was going to be my home. I—I—I can’t take any more.”

  “Of course you can’t, you poor love,” said Jude, standing. “You need a hot bath and some soup in bed and a good night’s sleep. You need to put all of this out of your mind and let us see to it. We all care about you very much. And we’ll sort it out. It’ll be better in the morning.”

  Eddy had started listening with a wry look, but the tug of comfort was too much for her and she was on her feet, nodding, by the time Jude was done.

  “Shall I run your bath?” Jude said. Eddy shook her head. “Well, I’ll warm some pyjamas round a bottle. Shout down when you’re ready for them.”

  Eddy looked around the four of them, as if trying to think what to say, then gave up and trailed out of the room.

  “Is a hot bath safe?” said Terry.

  “It’s essential,” Jude told him. “She’s not a vessel, she’s a person.” Then she reached out and took the ring from Lowell.

  “My dear,” said Lowell, “why on earth would Miranda tell Eddy to bury Inez’s ring in my garden?” But Jude thought he wasn’t really asking. She thought somewhere, deep down inside, he already knew.

  “She meant to bring the baby back to you,” Jude said. “That’s why she made the trip here in the autumn of 1995 and slept with you. So that, a few years later, she could roll up with a kid about the right age and you’d believe her. But then she married that rotten Dave, and by the time she left him she didn’t trust men anymore. So she never returned.”

  “But the ring?” said Lowell. “Why did Inez give Miranda her ring? And where is she?”

  “Oh, Lowell,” said Jude. “Ten years you said one end of that bloody asparagus bed was giving you bumper crops and the other end was only so-so. You couldn’t get that just from burying a placenta, could you?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Jude knew the jig was up. A police tent draws the press like jam draws wasps, and by lunchtime the next day there were two outside broadcast vans and a clutch of print reporters gathered beside Lowell’s garden wall.

  Even without the incidentals—the pregnant teenager and the two waiting dads living in the house; the mysterious London stranger who seemed to have unearthed it all somehow; and the fire in a graveyard, difficult to connect in any sensible way but irresistibly creepy—even without all of that, an exhumation was big news. The worst thing was that they’d got hold of Lowell’s hobby. Someone he had outbid at an auction told the press that Lowland Glen collected corpse portraits, and the headline writers went into orbit. The one comfort was that, unbelievably, Mrs. Hewston kept out of it.

  Only that saved Eddy from a meltdown. Lowell and Jude told her together, as gently as they could, the next morning, but her breathing grew fast and shallow as she listened and by the time Lowell had finished speaking, hot tears were spilling down her cheeks and she was shouting.

  “Miranda killed her?” she blared, sitting up in her bed with the covers pushed to her waist. Jude wondered how she could ever have doubted the pregnancy. In the thin nightie the massive swell of Eddy’s stomach seemed to pulse. “She’s dead? She killed her and stole me?”

  “Your mother—” Lowell began.

  “She’s not my mother!” Eddy screamed, high as a train whistle.

  Hovering at her bedroom door, Terry cleared his throat. “You sh
ould try and stay calm,” he managed to get out before Lowell wheeled round and marched over to him.

  “You”—he poked a finger into Terry’s chest—“might think you bought my daughter, but you are mistaken. She will shout and swear as much as she needs to while learning this news and if you don’t like it you can jolly well lump it.”

  “Fucking hell, Dad,” said Eddy.

  “Good girl,” said Lowell, coming back. “That’s more like it.” He resettled himself on the edge of Eddy’s bed and took her hand.

  Jude took her other one, ice-cold with shock, and squeezed it.

  “I meant Inez,” Lowell said. “I have many, many things to tell you about Inez, when you’re ready.”

  “But why did she do it?” Eddy said. “If Mum had loved you—if she had wanted to get rid of Inez to get you—that would be nearly … but why did she do it?”

  She was so very far from ready. Miranda was her mother, and it was Miranda’s motives and actions that were filling her head. Jude supposed there would be a stage when she realised what she had lost with Inez’s death. She hoped there wouldn’t be a time when she realised what a close call it was—how easy it would have been for Miranda simply to kill them both; snuff the life out of the baby and bury her too. And the more Jude thought about it, the more the idea gathered a head of steam. Miranda had risked a lot over the years to keep Eddy. There had to be a reason.

  “We don’t know that she did anything,” Jude found herself saying. “We don’t actually know if Inez is dead—we need to wait and see what happens out there. And even if she is, we don’t know why she died. Maybe Miranda did no more than hide her body and take you.”

  Eddy blinked once or twice and then lay back against her pillows. “That does make tons more sense,” she said. “If Inez died and Miranda told people, I’d have ended up in care, wouldn’t I? I’d have ended up in a children’s home, Social Services and all that. She’d have done a lot to stop that happening.”

  “At great personal risk to herself, I might add,” said Lowell. “She loved you.”

  Eddy nodded. “You know when she came back, Dad? In the October? Did she ask you about moving away?” She searched Lowell’s face hungrily. “Cos you know what occurred to me? She couldn’t live here, knowing that Inez was … could she? She’d go ape. Did she try to persuade you to move but you said no and she couldn’t explain why and so she was kind of stuck? Did she?”

  “Um, dear me,” said Lowell. “It was one evening and it was years ago. I can’t honestly remember anything like that.”

  “I bet she did,” Eddy said. “That’s it. She tried to save Inez but she failed, and she didn’t want me to go into care so she did the only thing she could, and then she tried to wangle it all so her and you and me would all live together somewhere, but it was a no-go. I’m not blaming you, Dad. You didn’t know.”

  “Thank you,” Lowell said and managed not to sound too dry.

  “Now get lost so’s I can get up and dressed.”

  Jude and Lowell walked in silence down the first flight of stairs. On the bedroom landing, Jude took his hand, raised it to her lips, and kissed it.

  “It’s just a defence mechanism, all that,” she said. “It’ll stand her in good stead.”

  “Oh quite quite,” said Lowell. “I’m here for her to rail at and get it out of her system. Much better than being angry with poor Miranda, really.”

  “I’m just praying she doesn’t go over it and over it,” Jude said. “Or pretty soon she’ll wonder why Miranda didn’t get help while Inez was still alive. Why she didn’t call a doctor when she knew about the labour.”

  “Dear me, dear me,” said Lowell.

  “Unless Inez didn’t tell her.”

  Lowell shook his head. “They were inseparable,” he said. “I can’t believe that.”

  “So … no way Miranda would have harmed her then?”

  Lowell was quiet for a moment. “If it were the other way around,” he began, “Inez wouldn’t have harmed Miranda. Or a flea, come to that.” He made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a sob and then said. “Forgive me. But Miranda was a woman of great passions and appetites. She flew into rages as easily as she was transported into raptures. If she discovered that Inez had a secret, that Inez and I had kept Miranda out when she thought she was the centre of our little band here …”

  “Let’s see what the doctor says,” Jude murmured.

  They stepped over the landing and into Lowell’s bedroom, which had a side window. Down at the edge of the garden the white tent billowed and snapped in the wind and, as they watched, someone inside it poked at the sagging roof to spill the rain gathered there. Then, realising that the hubbub of the reporters had grown louder and realising too that every camera was now trained on the pair them standing there, they drew back. Lowell pulled the shutters roughly over the window and bolted them.

  “It won’t take long,” Jude said. “She can’t be too far down, can she? One woman alone doing it all on one night?”

  “Miranda was a force of nature,” Lowell said. “If she did bury a corpse, it would be deep.”

  Four of them—Lowell, Jude, Liam, and Terry—were in the kitchen when the knock came. The doctor was a short, broad woman in her fifties, with hair too thin to withstand the drenching she had taken on her way up the garden. It was plastered to her head and rivulets were running down her cheeks and the sides of her nose. The policeman with her had a Gortex jacket on over his suit. He pushed the hood back once they were inside.

  “We need to question you, Mr. … Glen, isn’t it?” the policeman said. “I’m Inspector Begbie and this Ms. Naughton, the forensic specialist from Glasgow.”

  “Sharon,” said the doctor, smiling. “Are you all family?”

  “More or less,” Lowell said. “Modern family, you know. Dear me, yes, very much so. This is my partner and these are the parents-to-be of my daughter’s biological child. She’s resting. But I can fetch her.”

  Give them their due, they caught up without so much as a blink. Sharon smiled at each of them and the inspector took out a notebook and snapped open its elastic strap.

  “Full names?” he said. He wrote down TERRY ENNIS and LIAM DOYLE without reacting, but Jude was sure his pencil hovered before he printed JEMIMAH HAMNER. “So,” he went on, “you were right enough, Mr. Glen. There is indeed the skeletonised remains of a corpse buried in your garden. Who is she?”

  “Definitely a she?” said Lowell. He had drained of colour but his voice sounded steady enough.

  “Most definitely a she,” the doctor said. “From her size alone I’d have said it but also, her pelvic girdle is detached. She died either giving birth or very shortly afterwards and men tend not to, you know.” Even these words were softened by a smile at Liam and Terry.

  “And do you know who she is?” the inspector persisted.

  Lowell nodded. “Her name is Inez Cato. I’ve got photographs of her, if they’d help.”

  “Alive?” said Begbie, and then blushed at revealing he’d heard the gossip.

  “Photos would certainly help,” said Sharon. “Although DNA would help more.”

  “She was my daughter’s mother,” Lowell said. “DNA won’t be a problem.”

  “Your wife?” said Begbie, and Jude wasn’t the only one who noticed the change in his voice.

  “My fiancée,” said Lowell. “She lived here from early summer in 1994 until the following spring and then—so I thought—she left. In fact, I see she didn’t.”

  “You see?” said Begbie, with another sharp drop in the temperature of his voice. “She ‘left’ and the baby stayed and it’s all news to you, sir, is it?”

  “What did she die of?” Jude asked the doctor.

  Begbie rumbled but Sharon ignored him. “I can’t see any signs of trauma beyond the evidence of childbirth,” she said. “Of course, I’ll have to have a good look at the cleaned bones for nicks and dents.”

  “Nicks?” said Liam.

  “It’
s unusual for a fatal stabbing not to leave marks on bone somewhere,” Sharon said. “Or for strangulation not to compress at least one vertebra. But there are no breaks, nothing dislocated. If I had to guess, I’d say she died of natural causes—haemorrhage, eclampsia, scepticaemia—childbirth, I suppose you’d say.”

  “Well, aren’t you a wee ray of sunshine,” said a voice from the kitchen door. Eddy stood there in another cardigan and tights outfit. “That’s set my mind right at rest.”

  “Perinatal mortality rates are lower in the UK than in any other developed nation in the world,” said Sharon. “We even beat Scandinavia because they’ve got so many elderly prims and not as many teenagers as us. You’re doing it at the right time, flower, at least as far as your body’s concerned.”

  “This is all getting a bit too much like a tea party,” said Inspector Begbie. “Mr. Glen, perhaps you’d be more comfortable answering these questions at the station?”

  “Oh no, I don’t think so at all, Inspector,” Lowell said. “My family needs me here today, I’m afraid. If you want me at the station you shall jolly well have to arrest me.”

  “Speaking of tea,” said Sharon, and Jude and Liam both leapt up as Eddy lowered herself into the last empty seat.

  “There’s no need to arrest my dad,” she told Begbie. “We know who killed her if she was killed. Or buried her anyway. It was my … Shit! It was the woman who brought me up. Miranda Preston. What’s that wee word, Jude? For Mum’s other name?”

  “Née?” said Jude. She was sure Begbie had given her another look when he heard what Eddy called her. And he glanced his notebook. Jude Hamner was ringing bells in him somewhere.

  “Right,” Eddy said. “Miranda Preston, née Daley. She buried my … Inez and took me to Northern Ireland. I’ve been there my whole life until this month—you can check the schools and that, but I don’t think I’ve got a birth certificate. Can I get one?” she asked turning to Lowell.