No Place Like Home

by Jane Renshaw

  ‘I wish Grandad was here,’ muttered Max, and Bram couldn’t help but agree.

  Are you a man or a mouse, Bram?

  Turned out he wasn’t any sort of a man at all.

  9

  In the early morning light, Bram stood on the gravel area beyond the verandah, shaking his head. They were ranged in a semicircle in front of him – Kirsty, David, Fraser, Scott and Gemma the DC. Behind them, a man in a white suit was dusting the door for prints. It promised to be another beautiful day, already fragrant with pine resin and the dew evaporating off the grass.

  ‘I locked the front door,’ he said again. ‘I know I did. After you left–’ He turned to face Kirsty – ‘I locked the door behind you and put the key on its hook in the key cabinet.’

  David shook his head, staring off.

  ‘You can’t have done,’ said Kirsty. ‘The door wasn’t locked when the police arrived.’

  Bram couldn’t explain that.

  ‘Our working hypothesis,’ said Scott, ‘is that the intruder arrived with the intention of leaving the pig’s heart on the doorstep. He tried the door just on the off chance and found it open, so decided to opportunistically leave the heart inside.’

  ‘That message – “Your next” – surely that suggests that this isn’t just the kids the Taylors have been having issues with?’ Bram stared at Scott, willing him to put two and two together so he wouldn’t have to come out and say it in front of Kirsty.

  That Andrew Taylor could be right.

  That this wasn’t just kids.

  That it had something to do with what had happened all those years ago.

  That this was about Kirsty.

  The back room of the Bull and Bell, a few blocks from the halls of residence, had been the venue for Zoë Fisher’s twenty-first birthday party. Bram had arrived late on painfully blistered feet, tottering through the door in his size 9 burgundy court shoes. Was Kirsty McKechnie here? The party was in full swing and, with almost everyone having followed the fancy dress code and come as a character from Father Ted, it was difficult to recognise people.

  Zoë howled when she saw him. ‘Oh my God! You’re definitely the best Mrs Doyle!’

  ‘Thanks,’ Bram grinned, adjusting his hat, a blue felt 1950s number which kept threatening to fall off. ‘And don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a pretty good Tom.’

  Zoë was dressed in a dirty T-shirt with ‘I shot JR’ on the front, jeans and filthy trainers, with her short hair mussed and mud on her face. She gave Bram a mad stare.

  Bram shuddered. ‘Almost too good.’

  ‘I can’t believe how much trouble everyone’s gone to!’ she enthused. ‘And yes, before you ask, even Kirsty! She’s here!’

  ‘Ooh, really?’ Bram had done his utmost to bring this miracle about, but he still hadn’t expected her to come. He’d told Zoë, who was also doing history but in the year above him, all about Kirsty and how she needed to make friends, and got Zoë to ask Kirsty to the party. They’d set up an ambush to enable this to happen. Zoë had lurked in Bram’s room until they’d heard Kirsty leave hers and then pounced, engaging her in conversation and casually handing her an invitation. And then Bram had waged a campaign to persuade Kirsty to come, asking for advice on his costume and making suggestions for hers. She owned a fluffy white fleece, so he had suggested she accessorise it with a few well-chosen items and come as Chris the Sheep.

  Now he could see her.

  Standing by the far wall, with a glass in one hoof, was an adorable Chris the Sheep, wearing the fluffy fleece teamed with black leggings, black boots and black mitts. A sheep mask was pushed to the top of her head. Probably way too hot in this oven of a back room.

  ‘Hey, Kirsty!’ he tottered over to her. ‘You look great!’

  Her strained expression was transformed by a huge smile. ‘Bram?!’

  He attempted a pirouette to show off his costume. ‘How the hell do women spend their lives dressed like this? It’s a form of torture.’

  ‘The shoes?’

  ‘Yes, mainly the shoes.’ He kicked them off. ‘I’m going to ritually burn them tomorrow. But also the skirt. Draughty or what?’

  ‘Now you know how it feels to be a real fashion victim.’

  Bram indicated her glass. ‘Want another?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  When he returned with a gin and tonic for Kirsty and a pint for himself, she asked him where he’d found all the components of his costume.

  ‘Charity shops. Jake and I – Jake’s also Mrs Doyle, although naturally an inferior version… he’s here somewhere – Jake and I went on a mission on Friday, combing the charity shops for suitable attire. There’s a surprisingly good selection, let me tell you, of size 9 court shoes.’

  Kirsty spluttered. ‘I can just imagine the scene!’

  ‘Turns out I’m a size fourteen in tops, ten in a skirt.’

  ‘It’s the shoulders, I guess.’

  He nodded happily. Wow, but this was great! She was talking to him normally, she was making eye contact – she was, unbelievably, bantering with him! Kirsty! The Weird Girl!

  Although he mustn’t think of her like that.

  She was just shy.

  Was she?

  Now he wasn’t so sure.

  ‘The elderly women staffing the shops were not altogether on board with the whole cross-dressing thing. Are Jake and I the first people ever to be banned from the Sue Ryder on Tottenham Court Road for trying on a lilac Laura Ashley blouse and a lemon-yellow British Home Stores twinset?’

  ‘I wish I’d been there!’

  So do I.

  Oh. Where had that come from?

  Kirsty sipped her drink. ‘I hope Zoë appreciates the traumas involved in these costumes.’ She pulled the mask down over her face, and gestured at herself. She really was so adorable in that costume. ‘There was Chris the Sheep, minding his own business, trotting along the pavement trying to find the Bull and Bell, when this urban fox appears from an alleyway round the side of a shop. Couldn’t believe his luck! A defenceless sheep wandering the streets of Fitzrovia… And the mad thing was that just for a millisecond I did find myself thinking Oh-oh – a predator of sheep!’

  Bram chuckled. ‘You’ve inhabited the role.’

  ‘I am Chris the Sheep!’ she gurgled happily, striking a pose.

  The party rocked. Both Bram and Kirsty were much in demand for photographs, and Bram lost track of her for five minutes when Zoë insisted on getting together the ‘best’ Father Ted, Father Jack, Father Dougal and Mrs Doyle for a group photoshoot. As Father Jack leant in for a snog and Bram took evasive action, he noticed a commotion going on across the room. Nothing unusual about that, when you combined students and alcohol, but then he saw Chris the Sheep stumbling backwards away from Mrs Doyle, aka Jake, and shouting:

  ‘Get away from me!’

  And then Bram was across the room, putting himself between them. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded of Jake.

  ‘Nothing! I never touched her!’

  It was all Bram could do not to lay hands on him. He’d never felt anything like it, the surge of rage flooding his brain at the thought of anyone hurting Kirsty.

  Bram turned to her. ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Nothing. He didn’t do anything. It’s–’ She looked past Bram at Jake with a little grimace of apology. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  And she turned and fled.

  Bram ran after her, out of the pub, out onto the pavement, wincing as his feet, protected only by thin nylon tights, made contact with little stones and other debris he wasn’t normally conscious of. ‘Kirsty! I’m ripping my feet to shreds here!’

  She slowed at that, and stopped, and turned. In the harsh light of the street lamps, her face was paler than ever, tear-streaked, stricken. Bram tiptoed up to her.

  She wiped at her face. ‘Go back in. I’m fine.’

  ‘Oh yeah, you’re fine. I can see that. What did Jake do?’

  She sighed, and loo
ked off. ‘He really did nothing. He – actually, he asked me if I wanted to go for a pizza.’

  ‘Riiight…?’

  ‘He was – you know when someone gets that look, they’re bending over you like they want to kiss you?’

  ‘Not personally, no.’

  ‘I couldn’t deal with it. But it wasn’t his fault. He did nothing wrong.’

  And the answer came to Bram, all at once. Oh God, poor Kirsty! And the rage was back. ‘You were – you were assaulted, weren’t you? You were sexually assaulted.’

  She looked at him for a long moment, sweet little Chris the Sheep, tears drying on her face. ‘No.’

  ‘But something happened to you.’ Very gently, Bram touched her arm.

  ‘Something happened,’ she said. ‘But not to me.’

  He said nothing. He just waited. But she didn’t say any more, and in the end Bram suggested they return to the halls of residence.

  ‘You’d better get your shoes,’ she said.

  ‘I think I’m better off without them. If we go slowly.’

  Back at the halls, Bram expected Kirsty to scuttle into her room and close the door on him, but on the threshold she turned. ‘If there’s no one in the kitchen, do you fancy just – sitting in there a while? I don’t want to… I don’t want to…’ She gestured at her empty room, the bed, the prospect ahead of her, presumably, of the usual crying herself to sleep.

  ‘Sure. Just let me de-Doyle and I’ll meet you in there.’

  Bram slung on joggers and a T-shirt and found Kirsty in the kitchen. She had changed into cosy pyjamas and slippers. He put the kettle on for hot chocolates and Kirsty sat at the table. As he spooned cocoa into mugs, she said:

  ‘My boyfriend… At home. My boyfriend Owen. He was murdered.’

  Bram carefully put the spoon down and turned to look at her. ‘Oh no, Kirsty.’

  ‘And I can’t – I can’t even contemplate… the idea of being in another relationship, even going for a pizza with a boy – I can’t do it. It’s bad enough trying to hold it together at the best of times, it’s bad enough being around people and trying to act normal, when – when–’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to hug her, but she probably wouldn’t want that. So he just sat down next to her without making any sort of a move to touch her and without saying anything more. If she wanted to tell him about it, presumably she would. And in the end, she said:

  ‘They found his body in the river. The River Spey. He’d been… he’d been tied up.’

  ‘Oh Christ! That’s…’ What the hell could he say? Anything he said would be so inadequate. ‘That’s really awful,’ was all he could come up with.

  She nodded, and he got up, in the end, to finish making the drinks and bring them to the table. For a while they blew on them and sipped without speaking. Then:

  ‘I can’t be with anyone else,’ she said, and looked away.

  ‘Because it would be like a sort of… betrayal? Of Owen?’

  At the time he didn’t think anything of it, the tiny hesitation before she nodded.

  Another long silence, and then Bram, for some reason, found himself telling Kirsty about his family in Amsterdam, his grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins, the whole noisy, impossible, wonderful tribe of them, and at last Kirsty smiled, and then she was slumping, asleep on his shoulder, making little puffs as she breathed.

  He sat in that scuzzy kitchen and breathed in time with Kirsty, feeling the warmth of her against him, wanting so much to be able to take her pain away, to wave a magic wand and take it away. At one point he dared to kiss the top of her head, her clean, shiny, girl-smelling hair, as if she were his sister.

  But she wasn’t his sister.

  Oh, good merciful heaven, no.

  Scott didn’t help him out, so Bram was forced to say, ‘You don’t think… This might seem like a stretch, but you don’t think this could in any way be connected to Owen Napier’s murder?’

  David snorted, and Kirsty shook her head.

  ‘What if there’s some nutter out there who…’ He stared at Kirsty. He really didn’t want to say this, not in front of her, but what choice did he have? ‘Who’s obsessed with Kirsty, who killed Owen… And now Kirsty’s back and she’s got another partner – me – and the nutter wants me gone too?’

  Kirsty was still shaking her head.

  Scott was smiling. The bastard was actually smiling. ‘That’s quite a stretch. No, Bram, I think I can say with some confidence that the two things are pretty unlikely to be connected. Owen’s murder was a drugs killing, ninety-nine per cent. The theory was that he was either supplying drugs to an organised crime group and there was a falling out, or he was muscling in on someone else’s patch and they took exception to that.’

  ‘But whoever’s doing this to us seems to be targeting me specifically. The weedkilling of the veg, shooting at me in the wood… and the comments on my blog. And now the pig’s heart in my risotto, and Your next… That’s similar to some of the trolls’ messages. There’s one calling themselves Red.’ Bram got out his phone. ‘Take a look. “You people”. And “You’re bringing this on yourself, Bram”. I think Red could be the one. Someone obsessed with Kirsty who’s targeting me.’

  Scott examined the comments. ‘Although in this case the “you’re” is grammatically correct.’

  ‘They could have made a deliberate mistake to throw us off the scent.’

  ‘It’s just wee yobs,’ said David scornfully. ‘This has got nothing to do with Owen.’

  ‘How can we know that?’

  Kirsty put a hand on his arm. ‘Dad’s right. Scott’s right. I’m sure this has nothing to do with Owen.’ Like Bram, she hadn’t got much sleep, after arriving back last night to find the place swarming with cops. There were dark, sunken-looking semicircles under her eyes, which were bloodshot. ‘Can we go up to our bedroom?’ she asked Scott.

  ‘Aye, but use the terrace doors.’

  Bram followed Kirsty into their room and crossed to the expanse of glass in the gable to look out at the paddock, the field, the wood, the hills beyond, but he wasn’t seeing gorgeous scenery. All he was seeing was potential hiding places. Was Red out there now, crouched in that concealed dip in the field, or lying on his stomach in that clump of bushes? Watching and waiting?

  Kirsty sat down on the bed. ‘We have to try to keep things in proportion and not jump to wild conclusions. There’s no way this could have anything to do with… with Owen.’

  ‘How can you know that? We’re obviously being targeted – I’m being targeted.’

  Kirsty sighed. ‘This sort of stuff has happened before to the Taylors. The only reason we’re being “targeted” is that we live next door to them. You’re being paranoid.’

  ‘But don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence that as soon as you move back home, some nutter is coming after me? And I’m getting messages on my blog telling me – me, specifically – to go back to London or else?’

  ‘No one’s coming after you. And they’re just trolls. You shouldn’t take anything they say personally, Bram, you know that.’

  Was he being paranoid?

  Those BB pellets had been aimed at him. He was almost sure of it. Okay so maybe they weren’t dangerous, but still.

  ‘Did Owen… The same kind of thing didn’t happen to Owen, did it? In the time leading up to his murder? He wasn’t threatened? Someone didn’t try to put the frighteners on him, to get him to leave town? To leave you?’

  ‘No. Owen’s death… It was nothing to do with me. Like Scott said, Owen was involved in supplying drugs to an organised crime gang.’

  Bram nodded. She was probably right. ‘I’m sorry. For bringing all the Owen stuff up again.’ He sat down beside her and pulled her into his arms. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay. I agree that this is really worrying, someone actually coming inside the house… What are we going to do? Should we have the kids stay on with Mum and Dad for now, or sh
ould we go and get them? I really want to go and get them, Bram.’

  Max and Phoebe had been bundled off to David and Linda’s house last night, while Bram and Kristy had stayed here with the police. Linda had called earlier to say that Phoebe was in quite a state and was desperate to come home. And Max also wanted to come back. It had surprised Bram to hear that Phoebe wanted to come home. Despite all their reassurances that it was just naughty boys and the police would sort them out, he’d assumed she’d be glad to be far away from the ‘psychopath’ – but Phoebe had never really settled at David and Linda’s in the two months they’d spent there, always wanting to know ‘When will our house be ready?’

  Of course she wanted to come home, but was it safe?

  Bram could only lift his shoulders, helplessly.

  He didn’t know.

  He didn’t know what to do.

  ‘Okay,’ said Kirsty briskly, standing up. ‘I’ll ask Scott what he thinks.’

  Bram trailed her back down the stairs and outside and round the house to where the others were still standing. He watched Kirsty walk up to them. He watched her speak to Scott, saw Scott’s slight smile as he turned to her. His hand, momentarily, going to touch her back.

  David was listening to their conversation, nodding along to what Scott was saying, looking from Scott to Kirsty and back. David obviously had a lot of respect for Scott. His dream scenario would probably be Bram high-tailing it back to Islington, Scott leaving his wife and getting together with Kirsty. He’d be a great stepfather for Phoebe and, particularly, Max. A great role model for the lad.

  The thought that flashed across Bram’s mind was so outrageous, so awful, that he dismissed it immediately: that it was David. That David had shot at him in the wood, that David had left the heart in the risotto pan. David had a key, after all, to the house. Bram was positive he’d locked the front door.

  But David would never have hurt Bertie. He adored that dog.

  Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe it was just kids who’d shot the crows, who’d accidentally shot Bertie. And David had used what had happened to his own ends, to escalate it, to terrorise Bram into leaving. Even Kirsty as a single parent would presumably be preferable to Kirsty lumbered with Bram.