House. Tree. Person.

by Catriona McPherson

  “Email. You think I came up the Clyde on a biscuit?”

  “Mum, I haven’t shown anyone the picture!” he said. “I swear on … What do you want me to swear on? Sylvie’s grave?”

  “She hasn’t got a grave,” I said.

  “Fine, well her memory then. I swear on—”

  “Don’t,” I said. I didn’t know whether I hated the thought of the real Sylvie sitting calmly in her room or my faceless girl, gone before she was ever called anything. I didn’t want either of them mixed up in this. “You don’t need to swear. I believe you. Now let me see it, eh?”

  I saw his shoulders sag as he relaxed. He’d got away with something. He’d managed not to lie to me. Technically.

  Eighteen

  There were three pictures. One dark from the flash failing, one fuzzy from the phone shaking, and one, like Goldilocks, just right. I thought I was ready but still I gasped when Angel clicked it onto the screen in front of me.

  It was nothing like the skeleton hands from medical models, white and shining. This one was streaked dark, with leathery twists of gristle still in its joints and jagged tags of fingernail still hanging from the thumb and the middle finger. And the watch, of course. It had fallen down the arm as the flesh rotted away from around it, so it was half submerged in the soup of mud that the bone stood up from. I clicked and zoomed in, too close at first so the details were gone, then too far out, then—Goldilocks again—just right, the watch clear and huge on the screen and all of the body out of the shot except two brown lines that could be anything.

  I swallowed hard and then squinted at the letters visible under the glass, half of them lost in the flash but three of them as plain as day. mex.

  “Timex?” I said, turning to Angelo. “Does any other kind of watch end with m-e-x?”

  “No way,” Angel said. “We did this in Design and Tech. It’s not a prestige brand so nobody would want to echo it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Timex, then.”

  “Kind of makes you wonder why the cops kept the watch quiet instead of the specs,” said Angelo. “There’s got to be tons more men wore Timex watches than … what was it specs? Dolce and Gabana?”

  “Armani,” I said. “And I really don’t think they did.” I tested the idea and it didn’t break. “I think someone was there after you took the picture but before the police came. And that person took the watch away. Angel, when did you take the photo?”

  “Two nights before the cops came. I told you.”

  “The Sunday, right,” I said. “And did you look on the Monday after school? On the Tuesday?”

  “I didn’t go over on the Monday. I was in Dumfries getting my phone stolen, remember?”

  I fingered the receipt in the pocket of his coat. Why was he lying to me? Then I felt a flood of relief. “She’s got a car!” I said. “She picked you up after school in her car and took you to the Centre. And brought you back here later. But first you bought her a Coke.”

  “Have you been spying on me?” he said.

  “No,” I blurted. “Else I’d know if you went back and saw the hand again, wouldn’t I?”

  “Well, stop nagging me about drinking Coke and let’s talk about the—you know—murder?”

  “Good scheme. Right. Sorry. Okay then.” I clicked the zoom back out again until we could see everything. “What else? Is that a left hand or a right hand? It’s a left hand, so the guy was right-handed. And can we tell if he bit his nails?” I moved the cursor and then clicked in again. “Hard to say. Ange? What do you think?”

  He was silent and so I turned again to find him staring at me.

  “What are you doing?” he said. “Why are you getting all Sherlock?”

  “What do you think I’m doing? Even if you didn’t see anyone, I think someone was over there and took the watch. And the sooner this guy’s identified, the sooner the cops will stop bugging you as if you’ve got something to do with it. So here’s what I’m thinking. Can you print this out with no marks on the paper that would show that it came from your computer?”

  “What marks?” Angelo said. “It’s a piece of paper. What are you on about?”

  “Good,” I said. “And then we can send it to the cops. Anonymously.”

  “What’s the point of that? Mum, what are you playing at? This is getting daft.” His voice had risen and there was a faint flush on his cheeks too.

  “We need to wipe the paper in case there’s prints on it from when you filled the tray,” I said. “And wipe the envelope. And for sure not lick the stamp. Then we send it to the cops from somewhere in town and they’ll never know it came from us. Will they?”

  “You can’t be serious. You don’t think they’ll be able to work it out? After I’ve admitted that I saw a hand? They’ll be round here with a warrant for my printer quicker than—”

  “Well, then put it on a flash drive and I’ll print it somewhere else then,” I said. “At the library.” He snorted, which I deserved. “Or at work.”

  “At work!” Angel’s eyes were as round as when I read him bedtime stories about the teatime tiger or the Gruffalo, like two little roasted hazelnuts I used to tell him. “You can’t get them mixed up in this, Mum.”

  Protecting his doctor from the trouble I’d cause her. I reached out and brushed the hair back from his forehead. It had almost dried after his shower, soft black silk lying in feathers. “Okay,” I told him. “Sorry. But I’ve got to say this, Angel. I don’t think you should see her again. At least not until all this is—”

  “I’m not,” he said. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Of course you don’t,” I said. “Put it on a flash drive for me, I’ll print it out, give it to the cops, and we’ll never talk about any of it again.”

  Outside, the neighbour was getting off the bus from Kirkcudbright and we could hardly ignore each other. In fact, I couldn’t help putting a hand out to help him get down the last big step and steady on his feet on the pavement. The look he gave me, wary but ready to fight, brought a flush of shame.

  “Hiya,” I said. “Sorry about earlier. I think we’re all feeling a bit tense.”

  “My conscience is clear,” he said.

  “Oh for God’s sake,” I said. “That was an olive branch. Did you have to crack it over your knee?”

  “I’ve no idea what you mean,” he said, his voice beginning to sound thin as his temper flared.

  “Hey, missus!” the bus driver shouted, leaning forward and peering out at me. “Are you getting in or no’?”

  “Sorry, pal, I’m just coming.” I stepped round the neighbour and boarded. Then at the last second, as the thought struck me, I leaned back out and asked him softly, “Have you got a watch on?”

  “Eh?”

  “I wanted to know the time, but I haven’t got my watch on. Have you got a watch on, by any chance?”

  He gave me a look of such blank bewilderment that I just waved a hand at him and turned to scrabble out my bus fare. No one who’d snatched a watch from a corpse’s hand in the last week could have pulled off that innocent face. So, even though the guy lived just as close as we did and had it in for Angel and pissed me off every time I clapped eyes on him, I didn’t think he was guilty.

  I hadn’t been in T&C’s builder’s merchants since the early days in our real house, when we were still hanging pictures and spreading gravel. It had grown since then. The outside yard had displays of decorative paving, birdbaths, and sundials. And inside, as well as the saw blades and nails by the pound, there were alcoves with bathrooms set up and bigger alcoves with kitchens laid out, fruit bowls, wine racks, and all. For the first time, it struck me that Marco getting his foot in the door here was more than just a bit of casual money and a way to save his face while he looked for a proper job. This was a proper job.

  “Ali?” I looked at the girl behind the counter a
nd just about recognised her. She had definitely gone to school with me, anyway. “You looking for Marco?”

  “I was in town and thought I’d stop by,” I said. “See if I could cadge a lift home with him. What time does he finish?”

  She shrugged. “He’s the boss. He can finish when he likes. Go through.”

  She nodded at a half-glass door to the side of the counter and I opened it after a quick knock to find Marco behind a desk covered with invoices and sample books. He was on the phone and he was smiling round the stick of a lollipop held between his teeth. As he saw me, he sat up and spat the lolly out all in one smooth move. I had time to wonder who he was talking to, with his eyes dancing that way. The same brown eyes as Angel, of course, since that was where Angel got them, but Marco’s were bigger, big enough to shine tawny in sunlight, not like those two wee roasted hazelnuts that spiked my heart every time I really looked at our son.

  “I’ll phone you back in a bit,” Marco said. “My wife’s just walked in. Eh? Aye. Oh aye, probably.”

  “Who was that?” I said, when the phone was down and Marco had wrapped the lolly in a twist of paper and dropped it in the wastebasket. He stood up and wiped his hands on his trouser-fronts.

  “Pete Muirhead,” he said, just a bit too loud. “You know he got divorced, right? Aye well, he’s been at that online dating. Jesus Christ, don’t ever leave me, Als. It’s a jungle.” He laughed and that was loud as well.

  “Whose office is this?” I asked him.

  “Shared,” he said. “The two supervisors and the manager all share it depending on who’s in. But never mind that. Are you okay? What are you doing— Not that— Listen, do you want a cuppa now you’re here? I’m gasping. I’ll shoot over to the Whistlin’ Kettle, eh? Tea? Latte?”

  I had meant to tell him about the photograph of the watch and ask him what he thought. Double-checking, relying as I always had on his rough and ready good sense. The same bluff common sense that got me better quick after I was ill and had got him a supervisor’s job ten minutes after he’d started working here.

  But three things got in the way. One, I didn’t believe for a minute that Pete Muirhead had put those lights in Marco’s eyes, and two, that common sense hadn’t stopped him from bringing a three-year-old baby to a hospital and letting him see his mum pure white and flaked out with compression boots on and needles in the backs of her hands. (There was too much else going on for me to think about that right now, but it was in there waiting.) And three, it never occurred to me how strange it would strike him, me turning up like this. He should be worried, like maybe I wasn’t okay. He shouldn’t be stuttering and stumbling, trying to say the right thing and not quite making it, covering up with offers of tea.

  But even while I tried to unpick all that, I saw something that distracted me. On the cabinet behind him was a colour printer, its red standby light flashing at me. “Cup of tea would be great,” I said. “And a coconut cake if they still do them.”

  “Oh aye,” said Marco, standing up and patting his back pocket to check his wallet. “Ice caps melt and empires fall, but the Whistlin’ Kettle’s coconut cakes are forever.”

  He gave me a kiss on the cheek as he passed me and I heard him shout to whatever her name was behind the till, asking if she wanted a coffee. Hail fellow well met, I thought to myself. And he hadn’t even asked about Angelo.

  I walked round the desk and sat down, hoping the guy who really belonged here didn’t show up suddenly. Marco’s claim that the office was shared hadn’t fooled me for a minute. Then I saw something that puzzled me. There was a silver picture frame on the desk, incongruous there in that scruffy little room with the order books and invoices. It belonged on a bank manager’s polished mahogany or even on the top of a piano in a grand drawing room. But that wasn’t what bothered me. It was the picture. It was a photograph from a year ago, when Angel had dabbled, so briefly, in after-school rugby. He had hated the dirt and the endless bruises as much as I had and he’d dropped out quickly. But there on the manager’s desk at Marco’s new job, was a picture of him, hot and muddy, laughing into the camera with some other boy’s leg behind his head and some third boy’s hand tugging his jersey.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Did two supervisors and the manager himself “hot-desk” this grubby little office, even to the length of swapping their family photos shift by shift? And who was Marco trying to impress, picking a photo of Angel from a short-lived and out-of-character sporting career, instead of the honest truth of him scowling out from under his hoodie?

  But I was wasting time. I kissed the photo—he was my boy, after all—and then looked for where to stick in the flash drive.

  The picture printed and the envelope sealed with a squirt of hand sanitiser, I pushed it up my sleeve and went back out to the shop floor.

  “Melanie!” I said, happy finally to have remembered.

  “What?” she said looking up, startled.

  “Can you tell Marco I’ll be back in a minute?” I said. “And don’t let him eat my cake. I just need to nip out to the post.”

  “Away and get,” Mel said. She nodded to a wire basket on a shelf behind the till. “Stick it in there and I’ll bung it in with my post office run at the back of five.”

  “Oh, but I haven’t got a stamp on it yet,” I said. “I’m not going to give Marco a bad name, pilfering the petty cash on his first week.”

  Mel frowned at me. “Who’s going to know?” she said.

  “The other supervisor?” I said. “The big boss?” This was why I didn’t lie. I’d tripped myself up. I could have said anything about where I was going, but because I had an envelope up my sleeve I just had to mention the post.

  “The supervisors don’t care,” Mel said. “And the big boss thinks the sun shines out Marco’s hm-hm. Take a bloody stamp, Ali. This is me you’re talking to.”

  And I knew what she meant. Her and me and Elaine Malcom had swiped all the cooking chocolate from the home economics department store-cupboard one day when we were going to an athletics tournament and made ourselves as sick as pigs in the back of the bus.

  She dinged open the till and peeled a stamp off a sheet, holding it out stuck to the tip of one finger. I stared at it. If I stuck that stamp on the envelope, her print would be on it. If prints can survive the glue. Never mind how she’d wonder why I put gloves on before I shook my letter down from up my sleeve.

  “I’ll just nip out to the post if that’s okay,” I said. “Keep things ship-shape.”

  Mel’s face closed like a flytrap and she jerked her chin up once before she unpeeled the stamp and stuck it back to the book again. “Good to know,” she said. “Spot me this one for old times’ sake, eh? And I’ll watch it from now on. Ship-shape, eh?”

  I gave her the best smile I could muster and then headed out, trying to make sense of the drop in temperature. Just because I didn’t want to nick a stamp, why would I go to Marco with tales? And how big a numpty would he have to be to carry tales from his wife to the manager about somebody who’d worked there longer than he had?

  I could just see the back of his head in the queue inside the Kettle so I turned away and nipped up the side street, headed the long way round to the Post Office.

  “Well, there’s a sight for sore eyes,” a voice said as I came out of the next street down. I lifted my head. It was Muriel, one of the hairdressers who’d rented a chair from me and then gone in as co-owner when I left. “How are you? Where have you been? How come you’ve not been in to see us all?”

  “Oh, you know,” I said vaguely.

  “What? You’re not waiting for an invite, are you?”

  She had never been the sharpest tack on the stair carpet. Maybe she really couldn’t imagine why I didn’t want to come back in and visit the place that used to be mine now that it was nothing to do with me. I gave her a smile and hoped my thoughts didn’t show through
, because what I was thinking was that it was pretty great to work with people who had a clue about how human brains work. But as well as that I was thinking I couldn’t go into the Post Office now, because clearly meeting me was a big deal in Muriel’s day and she wouldn’t forget it in a hurry.

  And just like that I came to my senses. I was mad to think I could hand this over on the down-low. The cops would check Marco’s work printer as quick as they’d check Angelo’s home one. There was a much better way to do it. As long as my nerve didn’t fail me.

  I marched into the police station five minutes later, all set to tell them someone had pushed the sealed envelope through our door and I had brought it to them before I even opened it in case it was something to do with the investigation. I sat down under the posters about needle disposal and drunk driving, waiting for the person in front of me to finish up. It was an elderly woman, well dressed and so ashamed of what had brought her here that she was leaning right over the desk, whispering to the secretary. I tried to sink back into myself so’s not to hear whatever it was she was so desperate to keep quiet. Her voice shook with emotion and the low responses from the secretary didn’t seem to be soothing her.

  I shifted on the hard bench and moved the envelope to my other hand. The more of my prints on the outside the better, since the inside was clean. I read the poster about home safety again. I could feel sweat trickling down the insides of my arms. I was sitting so rigidly that, when my phone rang, I let go of the envelope and then dropped my phone when I bent down to swipe it up again.

  “Mum?” It was Angel, his voice stretched harsh. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the waiting room at the poli—”

  The secretary stood up and looked round the embarrassed woman at the desk. “No mobiles in here, madam,” she said.

  “Mum, you need to get out of there.”

  “I’m just leaving,” I said, standing up. I waved the phone at them. “He found it so I don’t need to make the theft report. Typical male!” The secretary gave the ghost of a smile. I think she believed me. The old woman didn’t even turn round.