No Place Like Home

by Jane Renshaw

  ‘They’re both very sensitive,’ Kirsty said in bed on the third night, after they’d finally persuaded Phoebe back to her own room. ‘Yes, they’re upset about the Taylors, but I think, subconsciously, they know it’s more than that. They know that something’s far wrong.’

  And Phoebe seemed to be getting worse. The next day, she was so clingy with Kirsty and Bram that one of them had to be in the same room as her at all times, although they drew the line at the bathroom. In desperation, Kirsty went into Grantown to pick up Linda and Bertie as distractions. As soon as Bertie appeared, Phoebe insisted on fixing the petcam to him ‘in case the Taylors come for revenge’.

  Oh God. Phoebe’s imagination was often more of a curse than a blessing. ‘That’s not going to happen, kleintje. They’ve no reason to come for “revenge” against us.’

  ‘But they think you killed Finn!’

  ‘They’ll soon realise they’re wrong about that,’ said Kirsty firmly.

  Linda suggested that Phoebe help her make lunch.

  ‘With Dad too?’ Phoebe said at once.

  As they cut up potatoes and carrots and onions for soup, Phoebe seemed to recover some of her bounce. ‘Tell the story about how you and Grandad met,’ she begged Linda.

  Linda smiled. ‘How many times have you heard that story, Phoebe?’

  Phoebe grinned. ‘Not enough times!’

  Linda paused in her chopping of a carrot. Bram always marvelled at how proficient she was in the kitchen, without being able to see what she was doing. He had asked her once how she pictured things, and she’d explained that she formed a sort of three-dimensional map in her mind, only it was a map with no colour, not even black and white or light and dark, as she had no way of picturing those. He couldn’t get his head round that.

  ‘I was sixteen at the time,’ she was saying now. ‘Grandad and his family had just moved in next door to us.’

  ‘On Capercaillie Drive!’ Phoebe interjected. Phoebe loved the name of that street, and they often took a walk along it past Grannie and Grandad’s old houses, ugly council semis covered in greyish-brown rough-cast cement.

  ‘Yes. Grandad was always friendly, saying hello and chatting–’

  ‘And he helped you clear up leaves on your driveway!’

  ‘He did. Several times. I worshipped him from afar, but he was an alpha male. I never thought he’d be interested in me romantically. He was captain of the school rugby team and heavily into sports of all kinds. I wasn’t at his school, of course – I was away at the Royal Blind School in Edinburgh during term time, so I didn’t know him very well at first.’

  ‘Then one day…’

  ‘I think you could tell this story better than me, Phoebe,’ smiled Linda, finding another carrot with her fingertips. ‘One day, I had gone to the shops, using my white stick – I didn’t have a dog then, but I knew the route, although I had to concentrate hard. On the way back, some teenagers thought it would be funny to spin me round and let me go, so I had no idea which way to go to get home. They were all grabbing me and spinning me, and I’d dropped my stick and the bag with the shopping in it, and I was crying, of course, but then there was shouting and suddenly the spinning stopped and the other kids were yelling and I could hear some of them running, and sounds of fighting. I was staggering around, trying to feel for the edge of the pavement with my feet in case I walked out into the road – or was I on the road? I couldn’t tell. And then I felt someone pull me against their chest, and heard Grandad’s voice saying, “It’s okay, Linda. It’s okay.” He had his arms around me. He was so solid. So reassuringly solid.’ Linda’s face glowed with the memory. Usually at this point in the story Bram teared up, but all he could feel now was disgust. What had David done to those kids? Linda, being blind, couldn’t know exactly how badly he’d hurt them. ‘And he didn’t let go my hand all the way home,’ she finished with a smile.

  Phoebe was jumping up and down in delight. ‘Grandad kicked their arses!’

  And here was where Bram would usually step in and say there was always a better way to solve a problem than violence, and Grandad should just have told the teenagers to stop and explained how wrong their actions were, but the words stuck in his throat, and it was left to Linda to say, ‘Well, yes, and he really shouldn’t have,’ but without any conviction.

  ‘He should! He should!’ Phoebe objected, and burst into tears.

  It was four days after they’d left Finn’s body in the forest that Scott appeared at the door, his face telling Bram all he needed to know. But he went through the pantomime of ‘Hi, Scott – any news?’ and showing him through to the Room with a View where Scott said yes, there was news, and it wasn’t good, and could he speak to him and Kirsty together? Bram fetched her from the TV room where she was trying to relax with the kids, and the two of them sat side by side on the sofa facing Scott, Bram wearing what he hoped was a concerned but blameless expression of apprehension.

  ‘Finn’s body has been found,’ said Scott.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Kirsty.

  Bram left a shocked silence before asking: ‘What happened?’

  ‘They’re doing a post mortem, obviously. But it looks like he suffered a nasty head wound.’

  ‘Where was he found?’ Bram asked next. They would ask that, wouldn’t they?

  ‘In the forestry plantation at King’s Seat Quarry.’

  ‘Oh!’ breathed Kirsty. ‘You think he was swimming there, and – what? He had some kind of accident?’

  ‘He wasn’t near the actual quarry. It isn’t looking like an accident. The death is being treated as unexplained, obviously. I just thought I should let you know. It’ll be reported on the late news. Might already be on the internet, for all I know.’ He got up from the sofa. ‘I’d better get off. It’s crazy busy, as you can imagine.’

  ‘Thanks – for coming over and telling us,’ said Kirsty, jumping to her feet a little too eagerly. A little too eager for him to leave. ‘The poor Taylors.’

  Scott nodded. ‘It’s hit them hard, of course.’

  When he’d gone, Kirsty grabbed Bram, pressing her face against his shirt. He held her, and murmured what he hoped were reassuring words. ‘There’s nothing to tie us to the body. Thank God we burned the tarp and the other stuff.’ They had bought matches and firelighters and kindling at a garage and chosen a remote spot in another forest, and piled the kindling and then the waterproofs and the tarp and the mask on top of the bloodstained cardboard. It had gone up in a good blaze, and within ten minutes everything had been consumed in a throat-choking conflagration.

  ‘We need to check the internet.’

  And so began two days of obsessive checking of the internet and the local TV news. The police were, of course, giving out very little information, only saying that ‘enquiries to establish the full circumstances of the death are ongoing,’ but there was plenty of speculation on Finn’s Facebook page: ‘So sorry, man. No way was this an accident. Hope whoever did this rots in jail’ and ‘There’s a crazy new star up there shining down. Miss ya forever. Police know who did it, they’re gonna arrest the bastard in next few days.’

  Did Finn’s friends suspect him and Kirsty? Had Finn told them what he was up to, or had it come out, had Andrew and Sylvia and Cara been telling people? If so, Bram and Kirsty were the obvious suspects.

  The ring at the door came before seven the next morning. Both Bram and Kirsty were already up and dressed and surfing the internet at the kitchen table. They looked at each other, neither making a move to get up and go to the door.

  But they had to answer it. Bram got up and crossed the Walton Room and opened the door.

  ‘Mr Hendriksen, I’m PC Macintosh and my colleague here is PC White. We understand that your son Maxwell Hendriksen is staying at this address?’

  ‘Max? Yes. But what–’

  ‘We need to speak to him, please, Mr McKechnie. Can we come in?’

  ‘Why do you want to speak to Max? If it’s about Finn Taylor, he doesn’t know an
ything about what happened to him.’

  ‘Sir, if we could come in, and you could let Max know that we need to speak to him?’

  ‘Right now? He’s asleep.’ Bram moved back instinctively until he was standing at the foot of the stairs, as if guarding them.

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  ‘I’ll go and get him,’ said Kirsty, gently pushing past Bram.

  Bram didn’t invite the policemen to sit down. They stood in an awkward triangle. From the floor above he could hear Kirsty’s voice, and then Max, answering her groggily.

  ‘I don’t know anything,’ Max said at once as he came padding down the stairs in his boxers and T-shirt.

  ‘We understand that you and Finn Taylor had an altercation in the Inverluie Hotel bar,’ said the larger of the two big men. ‘A physical altercation?’

  ‘Uh, yeah.’

  ‘But that was days before Finn went missing!’ Bram interjected. ‘A couple of days, at least.’

  ‘Did you know that it was Finn Taylor who’d been terrorising your family?’

  ‘What?’ Max shook his head as if to clear it. ‘No.’

  ‘Is that your VW Polo on the track beyond the bridge?’

  Max turned to Bram, as if expecting him to sort this out for him. Bram said, ‘What on earth has that got to do with anything?’

  ‘A red VW Polo was seen on the forest track at King’s Seat Forest four days before Finn Taylor’s body was found there. The witnesses stated that the vehicle reversed away from them, which at the time they felt was strange.’

  ‘Well it wasn’t my car!’ Max was looking from the policemen to Bram and Kirsty. ‘How could it have been?’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t!’ said Kirsty.

  ‘We need to impound the car for forensic investigation,’ said the other cop. ‘Max, now’s your chance to tell us anything you need to tell us. Things will go so much better for you if you tell us the truth at the outset.’

  Max was shaking his head, stunned. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Okay.’ The bigger cop grimaced. ‘Maxwell Hendriksen. I’m PC Darren Macintosh and this is PC Ian White. We’re arresting you for the murder of Finn Taylor. You don’t need to say anything at this time other than giving your name, address, place of birth and nationality. We’re taking you for questioning to Aviemore Police Station–’

  ‘Oh my God!’ said Bram. ‘No! No, it wasn’t Max! No!’

  But Kirsty was suddenly at his side, gripping his hand, whispering one word – ‘Don’t’ – before going to Max and taking him in her arms, and saying to the policemen, ‘I suppose he’s allowed to get dressed?’

  When they nodded, she hustled him back up the stairs to his room.

  23

  After Kirsty had called David to break the news that Max had been arrested, Bram said, ‘We have to tell the police what really happened. We have to tell them what I did. We can’t let Max take the blame for it.’

  ‘That’s not what we’re doing.’ Kirsty leant back against the front door wearily. ‘There can’t be any evidence against Max, because he didn’t do it. That’s what I told him. I told him to tell the truth, but not to say anything about the “patrol” he was on that night with Dad and Fraser – that would just confuse the issue.’

  ‘But Max–’ Oh Jesus. ‘They’re going to question him. Browbeat him!’ He must be so scared.

  ‘It’ll be fine. Scott will look after him. They’ll have to release him within twenty-four hours or charge him, and they don’t have enough – they can’t have enough – to do that. How much worse is it going to be for Max if we’re convicted of this? We have to hold our nerve.’

  ‘You mean we’re the real suspects, and Max has been arrested to push us to confess?’

  ‘It’s possible, isn’t it? But there’s no need to panic. Hopefully the tarp will have prevented any forensic evidence from Finn being transferred to the car, but even if they do find something, Max was in that fight with Finn. Any of Finn’s blood inside the car could be explained by that. His blood getting on Max’s top, and Max chucking the top into the boot. Or even just onto his hands. Max opens the boot, grabs something, transfers the blood…’

  ‘But there might be other evidence. Something from the car, fibres or whatever, transferred to Finn’s body.’

  ‘He was completely wrapped in the tarp.’ Kirsty frowned. ‘And we’ve destroyed all the cameras–’ She broke off as her phone buzzed. ‘Oh, hi, Dad. Yes… No, not yet, but I suppose we… Okay. Okay. Thanks.’ She ended the call. ‘Dad’s going to organise a lawyer for Max. I couldn’t really refuse, but I don’t think it’s in Max’s interests to go No comment as a lawyer would probably advise him. He just needs to tell the truth.’

  Bram nodded. ‘But hopefully Max will heed your advice and do that, lawyer or no lawyer. If he–’

  ‘Bertie-cam!’ Kirsty interrupted. ‘Phoebe’s so obsessive about it, I bet she made Bertie wear it that night, when he was out on patrol.’

  ‘She did – I saw her attach it. But that’s okay. Bertie was nowhere near us. If he had been, he’d have come up to greet us. Chances are he was with David and Max all night.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Kirsty, a smile curving her mouth. ‘And if that’s the case, the footage might prove that Max couldn’t have killed Finn. It’ll show Max on patrol, and then us coming to get him… And you can say you sat up on watch all night and Max didn’t leave the house again. Max just has to tell them about the patrol, and we’ll produce the Bertie-cam footage…’

  ‘Okay.’ This could work! ‘Okay, yes, but what about Fraser? The footage might exonerate David and Max, but Fraser was off on his own.’

  ‘Let’s just concentrate on Max for now, Bram.’

  Phoebe’s room was in darkness. Bram opened the curtains and Kirsty sat on the bed and gently touched Phoebe’s sleeping face. ‘Phoebe? Darling?’

  ‘Mm?’ she opened one eye.

  ‘Where do you keep Bertie-cam? Is it somewhere in here?’

  ‘In my treasure box,’ she said, suddenly awake, sitting up in bed and looking past Kirsty to the door. ‘Is Bertie here?’

  ‘No. We just need to take a look at what’s on the camera.’

  ‘Can I look?’

  ‘You can get dressed and then have your breakfast. Then we’ll see.’

  Phoebe kept her ‘treasure box’, a little oak box they’d picked up at an antiques fair, on top of her chest of drawers. It contained her favourite hair slides and some pottery animals and a misshapen, mutant sweet she had become too fond of to eat. And Bertie-cam.

  ‘What on earth are we going to tell her about Max?’ Kirsty hissed as they headed back downstairs.

  ‘We can just say Max has gone with the police to answer some questions.’

  Bram sat down at the kitchen table and removed the SD card from the camera. He plugged it into his laptop and they began going through the footage. The early stuff was just Bertie plodding about the house hoovering up crumbs. Then he was running about outside. The camera was a fish-eye one that gave a wide-angled view of Bertie’s world, and there was audio, and they couldn’t help smiling at the sweet snuffling sounds he made as he went about his business.

  Then Bertie was back in the kitchen, presumably just after Phoebe had attached the camera on that fateful night.

  ‘Come on, then, boy,’ said David’s voice.

  Now David and Fraser were in shot in the Walton Room, and Kirsty, telling them to be careful and not confront anyone. Each person’s knees came into close-up one after the other as Bertie went around the room getting petted: David, Fraser, Phoebe and Kirsty. Then he was following David and Fraser out onto the verandah, and off out into the dark, at which point the view changed to infrared, David and Fraser’s outlines glowing white and yellow and orange.

  They fast-forwarded through the patrol of the paddock and then the wood. And then a third figure appeared – Max – and they switched to real speed. The image juddered as Bertie bounded over to greet him.


  ‘Hi, Bertie!’ said Max. ‘I’ve come to help with the patrol,’ he added to the men.

  ‘Good lad!’ said David. ‘More the merrier.’

  Kirsty clicked fast-forward again. Bertie, as they’d hoped, stayed close to Max and David throughout – they didn’t let him run off on his own. Fraser peeled off at one point and David and Max left the wood to walk round the paddock and the house. That was when Bram saw them and came out onto the verandah to talk to them. Then they continued back into the wood.

  ‘This is brilliant,’ said Kirsty. ‘It surely shows that Max is innocent.’

  And then it all happened at once, the action speeded up almost comically. A third figure came into shot from the left of the screen, there was a blurry tussle, and David grabbed a long object from him and hit out with it, causing the third figure to stumble back.

  As Kirsty hit ‘pause’, the figure froze, off balance, David’s compact form leaning towards him, chin jutting aggressively.

  ‘Oh my God,’ breathed Bram.

  Kirsty replayed the sequence at normal speed.

  They sat there in silence as the figure appeared – a tall, lean figure whose head, in the infrared glow, was less bright than David and Max’s because, of course, it was insulated by the mask and, presumably, the beanie hat – and David pounced with a wordless shout, and they grappled together, each trying to wrest from the other something long with a triangular-shaped end.

  A gun.

  It was an airgun or a shotgun.

  It was like watching a fight from a science fiction film, the two un-human-like, glowing figures merging and separating as they struggled, grunting and growling. A third figure – Max – darted in, but David said, ‘Stay back, Max!’ and Max backed away. David eventually got the gun from Finn and lashed out with it, lashed out at his head, and Finn staggered back, the top of his head glowing brighter as, Bram assumed, the beanie hat fell off.