by Jane Renshaw
Bram, against his expectations, found that he was actually looking forward to this shindig, and the kids were hyper, dashing about the house shouting at each other. Kirsty was stringing bunting around the walls of the Walton Room.
He headed up to the bedroom to change.
After he’d sponged himself with water from a bucket, he sat in his robe in the sun streaming through the big window and opened his laptop. Unbeknownst to Kirsty, he’d been googling Owen’s murder. The articles he’d found so far had all been very repetitive – they must all have used the same source, or copied from each other. He did another search on ‘Owen Napier Grantown-on-Spey’ but instead of ‘murder’ he added the words ‘body’ and ‘river’. This threw up some fresh results, and Bram copied and pasted the texts into the document he’d already created for all the material, which he was yet to read through properly. He’d go through it all when he had a bit of time to himself.
The first of the articles that his new search had thrown up reported that the body found by a fisherman in the River Spey on Thursday had been identified as that of missing local man Owen Napier, age twenty-three, a pharmacy assistant. It seemed he’d been reported missing by his employer on 21 August, and the body had been found on 18 September. Most of this Bram already knew.
Another article described the finding of ‘a man’s body’ by a fisherman near Cragganmore on the River Spey, caught in submerged branches. No mention, at this early stage, of a name. Another, much later article, published during the police investigation, added the information that Owen’s ankles and wrists had been bound and added, needlessly, that the police were treating the death as ‘suspicious’.
Sitting there in the hot sun, Bram shivered.
Bound hand and foot and thrown in the river to drown. Owen would have had no chance. The River Spey was the fastest flowing river in Scotland. Its catchment area was huge, and mountainous, so if there was a lot of rain it was guaranteed that the Spey would spate. They’d walked some of the Speyside Way, Bram and Kirsty and the kids, on one occasion after heavy rain, and it had been scary enough just standing on the path looking at that water, churning past in its headlong rush to the sea. Kirsty had soon turned away, suggesting an alternative path away from the river.
If whoever had tied Owen up and thrown him in that river was now after Bram –
But Scott and Kirsty and David and everyone else were no doubt right, and there was no connection at all between Owen’s murder and what had been happening here at Woodside. Bram had no logical reason to think otherwise.
11
‘Let’s get this party started,’ said David, heading past Bram to the kitchen, six-pack of lager dangling from one hand. ‘No more bits of offal left lying around we could chuck on the barbecue?’
‘That must have been really frightening,’ said Amy, Scott’s wife. She was beautiful, of course, with lots of wavy blonde hair and a model’s figure.
‘Yeah, it–’
‘Hey, doc!’ said Finn Taylor, grabbing a handful of crisps from the bowl Bram was holding. He looked Amy up and down appreciatively as he munched. ‘Max has got this, uh, embarrassing problem?’
‘Is it called Finn Taylor?’ Amy came back at him, quick as a flash. She was a doctor who worked in A&E at the local hospital, and Bram could imagine her dealing with all the Saturday night drunks with just this sort of brisk no-nonsense attitude.
Finn flushed.
‘Could you do me a favour and hand round some of these nibbles, Finn?’ Bram said to cover his embarrassment – not that the boy deserved it.
Finn looked at the array of snacks as if Bram had asked him to handle nuclear waste, but reluctantly picked up a bowl of pretzels.
As Bram walked about topping up wine glasses, he was conscious of many pairs of eyes tracking his every move. Was that the silent family from the Inverluie Hotel, the ones who sat staring at the blank TV? Who the hell had invited them? And there were Isla and Mhairi and the rest of ‘the gang’, already well on the way to inebriation.
He couldn’t help thinking: was one of these people the intruder who had left the heart and the threatening message? Kirsty was talking to a man whose name, Bram thought, was Craig – another old school friend. He was speaking to her earnestly, standing just a little too close. As Bram watched, he put a hand on Kirsty’s shoulder, leaning in to make his point.
He had an intense look to him. Disturbingly intense?
Had Craig been obsessed with Kirsty at school? Had he and Owen maybe clashed? Was Craig a bit of a loner, a bit of a weirdo, the type who followed women around supermarkets and had to be ejected by security? He looked as if he might be. He looked as if he cut his own hair. Not that there was anything wrong with that, per se.
And there was bloody Scott, moving through the crowd, stopping to talk to people, working the room. He’d gone out with Kirsty at school, when they were young teenagers. Had it just been one of those early, experimental romances that was more like friendship, that had never really been going anywhere, or had Scott been serious about her?
Scott had been very quick to dismiss Bram’s worries about an Owen connection. Suspiciously quick?
But all this speculation was pointless, and probably paranoid.
‘Okay, folks, time for a song or two!’ Bram called out. ‘Who’s up for a bit of X Factor? I’ll be the first lamb to the slaughter!’
‘Yessss!’ exclaimed Phoebe, dancing up to him with the three Miller sisters in tow, all four girls flushed and overexcited. ‘X Factor! We can be the judges!’
‘It’s a no from me!’ giggled Rhona Miller, the cheekiest of the three sisters and Phoebe’s particular friend.
People started moving through to the Room with a View to find seats and places to stand, and Bram turned one of the leather library chairs to face outwards and sat down with his guitar. ‘This is a bothy ballad.’ He stroked the strings of the guitar. ‘It’s called The Plooman Laddies – about a kitchie deem’s devotion to her man, a humble ploughman.’ And he began to sing:
‘Doon yonder den there’s a plooman lad,
Some simmer’s day he’ll be aa my ain.
And sing laddie-aye, and sing laddie-o,
The plooman laddies are aa the go.’
He saw David, sitting on one of the sofas, shoot a horrified look at Fraser, who lowered his head to his hands. Finn Taylor was openly laughing, as were the other teenage boys standing with Max by the door. Max’s face was slowly turning bright red.
Kirsty was perched on the arm of a chair, nodding along, a fixed smile on her face. A few of the other faces turned towards him were politely attentive, but most were stony or downright contemptuous. Only Phoebe and the three Miller sisters were grinning happily. The family from the Inverluie Hotel bar were clumped together by the sliding doors, silently staring. Willie was shaking his head, and as he met Bram’s gaze, he swiped a hand across his neck to mime cut.
Linda’s expression said it all:
Bloody Nora.
He fumbled his way through the verses about the merchant and the miller, tripping on the word ‘stour’ in the line ‘The smell o’ the stour wad hae done me ill’ – was it pronounced sto-ur or stoor? – he went for sto-ur but that was evidently the wrong choice. He saw Kirsty and a few other people wince.
Finally he was through it, ending with a defiant flourish on ‘The plooman laddies are aa the go’, and there was a horrible, horrible silence before Linda and Kirsty started to clap, and others joined in politely but very briefly, Max, he noted, not among them; he was studying the carpet.
‘Oh my God,’ he heard Mhairi say in a low voice.
‘Great, Bram, great!’ Kirsty enthused, jumping up. ‘Now, I think it’s time to fire up the barbecue, eh Dad, and get some meat burnt for all you carnivores?’
Bram slunk out of the room and up the stairs to their bedroom, clutching the guitar to his chest, as if to comfort it. He slumped down with it on the bed.
This bloody housewarming had been a terrib
le idea.
And now Kirsty was coming in and sitting down next to him, hugging his arm. ‘Never mind.’
‘It was terrible, wasn’t it?’
‘It was pretty bad. But you tried, and that’s the main thing.’
‘Really?’ He sighed. ‘It was like they were… I don’t know. Offended?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ Her tone was too bright.
‘There was nothing dodgy in the song, was there?’ He had a sudden, terrible thought. ‘I know some of the bothy ballads are a bit… close to the bone. But I looked up the Scots words in The Plooman Laddies and none of them were obscene or anything, that I could see… But maybe there was a double meaning?’
‘No no, it was fine.’
‘So why –?’
‘There’s a bit of sensitivity, maybe, about English people… mocking the Scots language.’
‘But I wasn’t mocking it!’ Bram gaped at her in consternation. ‘No! No! I love it, I love all the different dialects and the history behind the Scots language and–’
‘I know that, but they don’t, necessarily.’
He jumped up. ‘I have to explain.’
‘No. Bram, just leave it–’
But this was terrible! He cannoned back down the stairs and made his way to the middle of the Walton Room, clapping his hands to silence the chatter, to get everyone’s attention.
‘People, I just have a few words to say.’ God, what was he going to say? ‘About that bothy ballad I just sang. Kirsty has pointed out to me that it might have been taken the wrong way? That maybe you might have thought I was having a go, having a laugh at it? At the Scots accent, the Scots language? Which I absolutely wasn’t!’
‘Dad, no,’ groaned Max.
‘I love the way you all talk!’ Oh Christ. That had sounded so patronising.
‘And waaee love the waaee yaaaooo tooook, Braayyyiiiim!’ Fraser mimicked, and there was general laughter.
Not with him.
At him.
And he didn’t know what to say. He just stood there staring around him, and they all stared back, as if wondering what outrage he would perpetrate next.
‘I know I messed it up,’ he said lamely.
And he felt Kirsty’s arms snake around his chest from behind. ‘Oh, Bram, what are you like?’ she said brightly. ‘You’re your own worst critic.’
Silence. A few perfunctory smiles.
‘Absolutely,’ said Amy stoutly.
‘D’you want a bet?’ David roared from the back of the room, which erupted in laughter.
Bram slunk off again, through the kitchen and through the Room with a View – he was coming to hate this room – and out onto the terrace, from which the smell of charring meat was drifting in through the sliding doors, drawing a bit of a crowd. Fraser was manning the barbecue, bottle of beer in hand. There seemed to be about a dozen of each item on the massive grill – burgers and chicken and kebabs and corn on the cob and sausages. Bram dropped onto one of the seats just outside the doors, bile rising as he thought of that huge raw heart, seeping blood into the risotto.
There was a group of teenagers on the other side of the terrace, some sitting on the low wall, some standing. Max approached them, holding a platter of the hors d’oeuvres he’d made – ricotta, avocado and pine nut toasts, tomato tartlets and crispy kale with a chilli yoghurt dip. As Bram watched, one of the girls picked up a piece of crispy kale and shoved it at a boy’s mouth. The boy backed off, laughing, and the girl threw the kale at him.
‘That’s not food, that’s what you’d scrape off the floor after a fire in a rabbit hutch,’ she said. ‘Did you make this crap?’
‘Yep.’
‘Man, you need to get a life,’ said Finn Taylor. ‘Although I guess you needed an excuse to get out of the room while your dad was practising his “singing”? He sometimes makes you do it, yeah?’
‘He doesn’t make me do it.’
‘Can you imagine two of them giving it fal-de-diddly-dee?’ giggled the girl.
‘Actually,’ said Max, ‘a lot of folk songs are used in contemporary music. Modern-day songwriters derive inspiration from them.’
Finn whooped. ‘Modern-day songwriters derive inspiration? Oh, I say, old chap, how spiffing!’
‘Such as who?’ Cara Taylor spoke for the first time. ‘What songwriters are you thinking of, Max?’
‘Doja Cat,’ laughed Finn.
‘Kendrick Lamar,’ suggested another boy. ‘You reckon he’d derive inspiration from folk songs?’
Max shrugged.
‘Name a Kendrick Lamar track, Max,’ demanded Finn.
As Max looked blank, the others all laughed.
Apart from Cara. ‘Shut up, idiots. I genuinely want to know. Which songwriters, Max?’
‘The Beach Boys? Paul Simon?’
‘Who?’
‘As in Simon and Garfunkel.’
The teenagers looked at each other.
‘Oh my God, you are my dad,’ the loud girl cackled. ‘Are you actually like fifty but you use a lot of moisturiser?’
Bram hadn’t wanted to intervene and embarrass Max all the more, but this had gone far enough. He got up and walked over to the group, patting Max on the back. ‘I think these particular delicacies are wasted on an immature palate.’ He smiled round the group of kids.
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ said Finn, looking Bram right in the eye. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any chicken nuggets and chips, Mr Hendriksen?’
‘We’ll see what we can do. Max, could I have your assistance in the kitchen for a minute?’
The kitchen had emptied out a bit as people gravitated towards the barbecue. Max opened the freezer. ‘The only battered stuff we’ve got is vegetable tempura, and I don’t think that’s going to cut it.’
‘I think Finn was joking. And anyway, it’s not as if there’s any shortage of rubbish for them to eat, with Fraser manning the barbecue.’
Max shut the freezer door with a sigh. ‘This party sucks.’
Bram spluttered a laugh. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’ He put a hand on Max’s shoulder. ‘You know, there’s no shame in not wanting to buy into mainstream teenage culture. It’s okay to have different interests; not to know about the rappers and so on. You’re more into folk music and there’s nothing wrong with that.’
Max, squirming in embarrassment, shrugged.
‘It’s a strength, Max, not a weakness, to be an individual rather than trying desperately to be like everyone else, like a silly sheep.’
‘Maybe in London,’ Max sighed. ‘But we’re not in Kansas anymore, Dad.’
12
When Bram had refilled another couple of pails from the stream, he sat down on the bank and took a moment. There was music booming from the house now, a high-energy dance track he was sure none of the Hendriksens possessed. One of those appalling kids must have brought an iPod and put it in the docking station.
He’d rather stay out here and be jumped by a psychopath than spend another minute in there. In their own house. But somehow it didn’t feel like theirs any more. It didn’t feel like home.
Kirsty was right – all Bram wanted was a nice safe place where the people he loved could be secure and happy. Was that too much to ask?
He had never understood people like Steph from uni, whose ultimate ambition was to travel the world, to live in exotic places among strangers. When Steph had enthused all about her latest trip to Italy or Turkey or Vietnam, Bram had always felt like enthusing about his own holiday spent in his parents’ house in Primrose Hill, the wonderful, hilarious dinner parties with all their friends, the chats with neighbours, the casual popping in to people’s houses to see what they’d done with the garden. It was people who imbued places with meaning, so how could anywhere populated by strangers possibly have more allure than the cities and towns and houses that contained the people you loved?
He hefted the pails and plodded back to the house. In the downstairs loo, he flicked on the light.
The toilet hadn’t been flushed in a while and it was pretty grim. As he reached for the toilet brush, he saw it.
The mandala that he and Phoebe had drawn on the wall above the loo roll holder, so laboriously, with a compass, had had the words ‘STUPID HIPPY SHIT’ scrawled across it in black marker pen.
Bram reeled away.
It was like he was here; the intruder was here with him in this cramped space, shouting at him.
He was here.
In the house.
He was one of the people they’d invited into their house.
Bram rocketed out of the loo and down the corridor to the Walton Room. David and Linda were sitting on the sofa with plates of food on their knees, and he found himself blurting out that the intruder was here, he’d vandalised the mandala –
‘Come and see!’
David took one look at the mandala and nodded grimly. ‘Okay. I’ll sort this, Bram.’ The look he gave Bram was dismissive, as if he was resigned to the fact that Bram wasn’t going to step up.
‘What is it?’ said Linda, coming after them, her stick tapping the wall. They hadn’t brought Bertie to the party as it had been felt he’d not cope well with the combination of all the food and attention.
‘The bastard has defaced Phoebe’s wee drawing, love. Right.’ David squared his shoulders. ‘None too bright, this joker. Probably has the marker pen still on him. And I know just where to start.’
‘No, David,’ said Linda. ‘You can’t go around accusing people with no evidence.’
‘I’m not going to accuse anyone. All I’m going to do is ask those lads to turn out their pockets.’
‘It amounts to the same thing.’
David marched past her and off down the corridor.
‘Don’t let him do anything stupid, Bram,’ Linda begged.
Bram hurried after David, through the Walton Room, through the kitchen, through the Room with a View to the terrace, where the teenagers were still gathered.