by Jane Renshaw
Good question. ‘How about I call Scott right now and ask him?’
Phoebe nodded vigorously. ‘Yes! Scott needs to make more of an effort, Dad.’
Scott didn’t answer, but called Bram back half an hour later, when he was heating stream water on the stove in four pans for a bath he and Kirsty planned to share.
He checked he was alone in the room. ‘Hi, Scott, thanks for calling back. I just wanted to let you know the latest. Trolls on Max’s Facebook page and my blog are mouthing off and linking to a video of me at the party. One or more of them must have been here last night, or at least know someone who was.’
‘You really think these trolls could be responsible for the incidents at Woodside?’
Bram sighed. ‘Who knows, but it’s a line of inquiry, isn’t it?’
‘Okay, I’ll take a look at the blog and Max’s Facebook. It might be possible to identify some of them with a bit of local knowledge, without going through the rigmarole of contacting Facebook’s Law Enforcement Response Team.’
‘Oh, uh, actually, we just deleted all the comments. And blocked the trolls.’
‘Well, not to worry – I’m sure they’ll be back. Let me know when more comments appear.’
When, Bram noted, not if. ‘Okay. And we’ve got two writing samples now, the “Your next” written in blood on the worktop and “Stupid hippy shit” across the mandala. You could get everyone who was here last night to provide writing samples and see if they match up.’
‘Scrawling in marker pen on a wall isn’t exactly a crime, Bram. And there’s nothing to suggest that whoever did that left the other message, and the heart in the risotto.’
‘So it’s just a coincidence?’
‘There were a lot of drunk people in the house last night. Any one of them might have scrawled on the wall without meaning it to be in any way threatening.’ Silence. Then: ‘In these situations, it’s very easy to become… not paranoid, but oversensitive. Having a go at those kids last night, when really you had no evidence that they’d done anything… Telling everyone to leave…’
‘Oh God, I know,’ said Bram. ‘I know I overreacted. The thing is, Scott, I’ve got this feeling that it’s all aimed at me. Not the family. Me personally. All the stuff online is about me. My suspicion is that it’s not a dozen or so different people, it’s one person with multiple online identities.’
‘Right…?’
‘“Fucking wee hipster arsewipe”… “Your next”… “Stupid hippy shit”… And I was the one who was fired at, in the wood. It was my vegetable patch that was weedkilled.’
‘Bram, the Taylors were having issues with local youths before you even bought the plot.’
‘But this is a level up from that, surely? I know you don’t think it’s possible that all this could be connected to Owen Napier’s murder, but – could you at least consider it?’
‘We’re keeping an open mind, of course, but really, Bram, I think you’re tilting at windmills.’
‘Yes,’ said Bram patiently, turning off the heat under the pans as the water began to bubble. ‘I know that’s what you think.’
But does he really? The little niggle of doubt wormed its way to the surface again. Was Scott too eager to dismiss the possibility of an Owen connection?
‘What leads did the police have on Owen’s murder?’
‘It was long before my time on the force, but I know they didn’t have much. A couple reported seeing him walking along the High Street in Grantown on the Friday night before he failed to turn up for work on the Saturday. He’d been drinking in his local, The Foresters pub. His drinking cronies said he seemed just as normal. Had a couple of pints and then left. He had a bedsit on Seafield Avenue, so this sighting of him on the High Street makes sense if that was him on his way back home from the pub.’
‘So the thinking is that he was ambushed as he walked home?’
‘It’s one possibility, yes.’
‘And then what? He was beaten up, tied up–’
‘The length of time his body had been in that river, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of forensic evidence of any use, although the pathologist did note that there seemed to be pre-mortem bruising to his body and face. So yes, probably he was beaten up, bundled into a vehicle. Taken to the river and dumped in there. Classic drugs gang stuff.’
‘Did anyone ever look into the…’ He checked again than there was no one within earshot, but lowered his voice anyway. ‘The Kirsty angle? Maybe some guy carried a torch for Kirsty and wanted Owen out of the picture?’
‘Bit of a drastic way to edge out a love rival.’ An exhalation. ‘All his friends were interviewed, and Kirsty, of course, but nothing came from that line of inquiry, other than the drugs stuff. He had a nice little scam going in which he filled out fake prescriptions, pocketed the drugs and sold them on. His pals came clean after his murder, otherwise no one would have been any the wiser. His employers at the pharmacy hadn’t rumbled him.’
‘God. How did Kirsty get mixed up with someone like that in the first place?’
‘She said she didn’t know about it. Owen was very plausible. Seemed like a fine upstanding young man, played five-a-side football at the weekend, did a bit of boxing at David’s club, which is how he and Kirsty got to know each other.’
‘So, before the drugs stuff came out, David probably thought he was ideal boyfriend material?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far, Bram. I don’t imagine the paragon exists who qualifies as ideal partner material for David’s princess. When I went out with her – we were just babies, remember, thirteen and fourteen, we’re talking holding hands and sharing a banana milkshake in the ice cream parlour – I was subjected to the full interrogation, down to the marks I’d got in my last exams. You’ve no doubt been there.’
‘Been there, done that, got the frilly apron.’
Scott laughed. ‘You’re a braver man than I am. Look, I’ll keep it in mind, all right, that there’s a slim – slim – possibility of a link with Owen, but I really wouldn’t worry about it. I doubt we’ll be fishing you out of the River Spey any time soon.’
Bram leant back against the worktop. ‘Is that meant to be reassuring?’
‘Ha, sorry! Cop’s black humour.’
‘Yeah, funny.’
After ending the call, Bram poured the hot water into buckets and lugged it upstairs. Thank God the borehole people were coming on Thursday to do a geological survey. If all went to plan, they could have a new water supply up and running, according to the guy Bram had spoken to, within two weeks.
After a late lunch, all four of them rather subdued, Bram took his laptop up to the bedroom and sat in the armchair by the window to properly read through the stuff on Owen he’d gathered together. Scott had said it had happened before his time, which was obviously true. The dates on these contemporaneous articles were September, October and November 1996. Scott was the same age as Fraser and Bram – thirty-nine. Just a year older than Kirsty. And 1996 was twenty-three years ago. Thirty-nine minus twenty-three was sixteen.
That meant…
Kirsty had been born on 17 November 1980. In September 1996, when Owen had gone missing, she hadn’t yet turned sixteen. And Owen had been twenty-three.
Kirsty was in the home office, staring at a spreadsheet. She swivelled the chair round to face him as he came into the room. ‘How are you holding up?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m fine. How about you?’
‘Fighting a losing battle with a deadline.’
He perched on the kick stool by her shelving unit. ‘Okay, I’ll leave you be, but first – can I ask you something?’ God. This was awkward. ‘About Owen?’
‘Oh, Bram, no. Forget Owen. What happened to him has nothing to do with any of this.’
‘But how can you know that?’ he asked gently.
‘Like Scott said – Owen’s death was drugs related.’
‘That’s just a best guess, no more. Kirsty – I hadn’t realised how young you were. When y
ou went out with Owen. You were only fifteen when he was killed.’
She sighed. ‘What can I say? I was a bit of a wild child back then.’
‘But he was twenty-three. If you were sleeping together…’ There was no easy way to say this. ‘That was statutory rape. Were you? Sleeping together?’
Another sigh. ‘Yes.’
‘And did David know you were in a relationship with a twenty-three-year-old man? How did he feel about that?’
‘Of course he didn’t know. I used to sneak out to see Owen. Easy enough, living in a bungalow. I used to get in and out through my bedroom window.’
‘From what Scott said, I thought David knew. About you and Owen.’
‘Well, he found out, obviously, after Owen went missing and the police started picking his life apart. He found out then.’
‘I can imagine his reaction.’
She grimaced, and swivelled her chair back to face the screen. ‘Sorry, but I need to get this done.’
‘You don’t want to talk about Owen. I get that. But if this is connected–’
‘You’re tilting at windmills, Bram.’
Exactly the words Scott had used. How likely was that to be a coincidence? They had known each other forever. Of course Scott would have got off the phone to Bram and immediately called Kirsty. And said what? That Bram seemed to be losing it? He wouldn’t put it past him.
He gave Kirsty’s shoulders a squeeze and dropped a kiss on the top of her head, but she didn’t respond. He patted her shoulders and left the room.
The day before Kirsty’s nineteenth birthday, Bram had turned up at the halls of residence in a rented car and told her to pack a bag – they were off for a birthday weekend extravaganza to a mystery destination.
Kirsty’s face lit up, and she looked around her room, obviously wondering what to take, but then she sort of drooped. ‘I don’t know, Bram.’
‘Hey, don’t worry, I’m not going to get any ideas! Separate bedrooms!’ He made his tone hearty and upbeat and cheery. Bram the best friend, not Bram the wannabe lover.
The smile crept back into Kirsty’s face, and then it became a wide grin, and she was clapping her hands like a little kid. He wanted to take her in his arms right there and then. Poor Kirsty! Over the summer, she’d gone home for only a few days. She’d spent the rest of the holiday in the halls and got a job in a pub. She’d probably told her family she was off interrailing with a group of friends. He was beginning to think that Kirsty staying in the halls over the holidays was about more than just pretending to her family that she was happy; it must be difficult for her, being home, with all those traumatic memories of Owen to face.
So she didn’t get out of London much.
No wonder she was excited to be going away. It was nothing to do with Bram himself.
Smugglers’ Cottage on the North Devon coast turned out to be as perfect as Bram had been hoping. He’d scrutinised the photos and made sure it was a suitably cute period property with beams and a real fire, and there was direct access to a beach along the coastal path that went right past the garden gate.
‘I want to stay here forever!’ Kirsty shouted when they’d dumped their bags in their separate rooms and gone straight down to the beach, wrapped up in coats and scarves against the wind coming off the sea.
They collected shells and stones and watched hermit crabs in a pool, and then they ate pizza and ice cream and watched crap on TV in front of a roaring fire, Kirsty lying on the sofa, Bram sitting on the rug by the fire, not saying much, just smiling at each other from time to time.
The next day, Kirsty’s birthday, she had a long conversation with her mum, and Bram persuaded her to do a bit of early morning meditation, sitting in the cottage’s tiny sunroom overlooking the sea. Then he took her fossil-hunting along the rocky shore, as he used to as a kid with Pap. Kirsty was thrilled when she found her first ammonite amongst the pebbles and hurried to show Bram, her palm extended proudly: a perfect bronze spiral, wetly glinting in the pale sunlight.
‘What is it made of? I mean, the type of stone? It almost looks like metal!’
‘Iron pyrites, I think. Fool’s gold. If it was polished up it would look like actual gold, but I like them as they are.’
‘Me too.’
They had lunch in a café in Ilfracombe, the ammonite sitting on the table between them. Kirsty tried to explain to Bram that the ammonite’s shell was a perfect logarithmic spiral with self-similarity. ‘See, this tiny central part has the same form as the whole thing.’
Bram pretended to get it.
In the afternoon they did a walk along the coastal path – an old smugglers’ path, according to the guidebooks – and scrambled down to a cave that was apparently used by the smuggler ‘Old Worm’ Williams in the 1700s when he was on the run from the coastguard. They sat for a while in the gloom right at the back of the cave, where it was surprisingly dry and warmer than out on the beach. Kirsty explained that this was because of geothermal energy stored in the surrounding rock, which meant that caves maintained the same temperature all year round. ‘Usually equal to the annual average temperature at the cave’s entrance, so inside a cave is warmer than outside in winter.’
Back at the cottage, Bram cooked Kirsty’s birthday meal, even though he was vegetarian: her favourite food, roast chicken with oatmeal stuffing, bread sauce, roast potatoes and sprouts. He drew the line at eating it, though, and made a nut roast for himself, although they shared the sprouts. Then there was apple crumble, and coffee and posh mint chocolates, and Bram presented her with her present, a colourful velvet and silk scarf made by a friend of his mother’s who used recycled scraps in her creations.
‘Oh, Bram, I love it!’ Kirsty looped it round her neck and looked at herself in the mirror in the hall. ‘The colours are amazing – like a stained-glass window. And it feels so luxurious! It’s gorgeous!’
‘Not as gorgeous as you,’ Bram couldn’t help himself mutter, as the thought came to him that she was like a girl in a Klimt painting, the rich colours of the scarf in all its sumptuousness surely something you would want to gaze at forever but no, you barely noticed them, because all your attention was captured by the beautiful face, the shining green eyes, the glowing skin…
He winced at himself.
But she met his eyes in the mirror and smiled.
They sat together on the sofa that night, and Kirsty put her head on his shoulder and told him it had been the best birthday ever.
‘I’m glad you’re enjoying it,’ he said. And after a while: ‘I know you’ve had some really awful things happen to you, and no, I’m not going to ask you to talk about them. I know you don’t want to. But – you have the rest of your life ahead of you, you know? I reckon it’s going to be pretty good.’
She didn’t say anything for a long time, and he cursed himself again for an insensitive idiot. Saying he knew she didn’t want to talk about it was bringing it all back for her, wasn’t it? She was probably thinking about it now. But then: ‘I reckon maybe it is,’ she said.
That night, Bram woke in the dark to a waft of air and an expanding triangle of light moving across the floorboards from the opening door. A figure flitted into the room and over to the bed, and then the mattress sank slightly as she slipped under the covers. There was a soft drift of hair across his face; a warm body against his.
‘Hello,’ she said.
His heart was pounding so hard he was sure she would feel it knocking against her.
He felt her fingers, exploring his face, trailing across his lips, and he reached up and touched the fall of her hair, slippery as silk. ‘Are you sure?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she answered him at once. ‘I love you.’
I love you I love you I love you. The words seemed to chase themselves around in his head so he could hardly make sense of them, he could hardly comprehend what she was saying.
‘Do you?’ he said, stupidly.
‘Of course.’ He could hear the smile in her voice.
> Of course?!
He ran his fingers through her hair, pushing it back over her shoulder. ‘And I love you,’ he said. ‘But neither of those things means that you have to do this.’
‘I know. I want to. I’m sure, Bram. I’ve never wanted anything in my life as much as I want to be with you.’ She touched his lips again, as if to silence any objection. ‘In every way there is. It’s like you’re already a part of me. An indivisible part.’
How many times had he fantasised about this moment? But the reality – it was almost more than one human being could handle. There was the intense physical pleasure of what they were doing, the release of all the sexual tension that had been building up over the weeks and months, but this was magnified and at the same time dwarfed by the overwhelming, dizzying, unimaginable joy of what was now possible between them. Now they could have what no mere friends could have, the closeness that came with, but was so much more than, a physical relationship.
It was as if they had been sitting companionably together in a nice, warm, dark cave through a long winter, but now summer had come, and she was taking his hand and pulling him to his feet, and they were running together into the light.
14
The Inverluie Hotel bar was just as bad as Bram remembered, but Max was looking about him as if they’d just stepped into the Ritz. He’d jumped on David’s suggestion that the two of them go to the Inverluie ‘for a bit of grandad and grandson time’, and Bram and Kirsty hadn’t had the heart to say no.
‘Don’t get him drunk, Dad,’ Kirsty had said sternly as they’d left.
David had waved a hand at her as they’d jogged down the verandah steps to Max’s car. David was leaving his own car at Woodside and they’d leave Max’s overnight at the hotel and get a taxi to drop them at their respective homes afterwards.
As Max’s red VW Polo disappeared off down the track, Kirsty grabbed Bram’s arm. ‘I’m not happy about this. I’m not happy about the way Max has latched onto Dad. If Dad said jump, Max would ask how high? Could you go with them? Make sure nothing happens?’