Cradle to Grave

by Aline Templeton

  After she left, there was a brief silence, then the hum of artificial conversation. MacNee, his colour heightened, busied himself at a desk, then exactly nine minutes later went out.

  As the door shut behind him, a voice said, ‘Stand back from the windows. They might come in at any moment.’

  Anger had carried Fleming out of the room and along the corridor, but as she climbed the stairs, it began to change to concern. That was utterly unlike Tam. What the hell was wrong with him?

  She let herself into her office on the fourth floor of the Galloway Constabulary Headquarters and went to the window. She had always like the outlook over the roofs of the canny market town of Kirkluce, out through the canopy of leaves on the plane trees along the High Street. Those leaves were sodden today, flattened and dripping from the ceaseless rain. She turned away.

  Once as familiar to her as a second skin, her office felt strange. If she had been an imaginative woman, she reflected, she might almost have felt it was hostile, as if it had resented its violation by strangers. It was lucky she wasn’t an imaginative woman.

  She sat down at the desk which, apart from the pile in the in-tray, was most unfamiliarly tidy. She’d more to do than consider the psychology of inanimate objects when there were animate objects needing urgent consideration. There were two problems – Tam’s attitude to her and his attitude to the new detective.

  MacNee had thought Fleming’s suspension was justified. He wasn’t wrong: much of her own agony over the past months had arisen from her knowing that it was. But surely by now . . .

  She couldn’t afford to feel hurt. They weren’t in the playground now, best friends falling out. This was a professional relationship with her most effective officer, and it was her job to make it work. They had a shared past and a dedication to the job, which she believed to have bred a certain loyalty – and growing up in one of the rougher areas of Glasgow had left Tam with a positively tribal sense of being true to your pals, overdeveloped, even.

  Was that it, right there? Had his reaction to her been guilt, not hostility? Did he assume she would despise him for having, as he would see it, gone over to the enemy? Perhaps she was overanalysing, with her recent reading in psychology making her look for deeper meanings where none existed. But it would fit.

  The problem with Kershaw was more immediate. According to Bailey, things had slipped during Fleming’s absence and it certainly looked as if they had. This was, quite simply, a disciplinary matter, and before she started understanding Tam, she had to knock him back into line. She wasn’t looking forward to it, though.

  MacNee’s body language was expressing deep discomfort as he came in. His head was lowered, and when he looked towards her, it was at an angle so that their eyes could not connect.

  Fleming had no intention of making it easier for him. She didn’t ask him to sit down and, after a brief acknowledgement, allowed a pause to develop until she saw him shift from foot to foot.

  ‘I presume you know what this is about.’ Her tone was cold.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, addressing the remark to the surface of her desk. ‘I made a stupid joke, that’s all.’

  ‘I’ll go along with the first part of that last statement. I want you to think about the second part.’

  He didn’t speak, and nor did she. At last MacNee burst out, ‘I know I shouldn’t have done that. It just gets to me, the way she goes on about Glasgow – always rubbishing it. And anyway . . .’

  ‘And what?’ She waited, but when he said nothing, went on, ‘Not a very professional way to behave – not even a very adult way to behave, really. And from the way she spoke when I made that remark about you having a lot in common, I don’t think it’s an isolated incident, is it?’

  MacNee studied the floor.

  ‘Let me spell it out. You’re a senior officer. That’s harassment, if she chose to pursue it. But let’s not be technical, let’s be blunt. It’s just plain bullying. For heaven’s sake! You’re not a bully, Tam – you’ve always been the one who stood up for the underdog. What the hell’s wrong with you?’

  Fleming saw the shaft go home. MacNee rubbed his hand down his face. ‘Sorry. I didn’t think about it – she’s well able to stand up for herself, and . . . It’s just . . . Things have been difficult lately. Sorry, like I said.’

  ‘Sit down, Tam.’ Her voice had changed. ‘What’s the problem?’

  He sat down, but all he said was, ‘Oh, just this and that. I’ll sort it out, and you won’t have to warn me again.’

  She could see that he wasn’t going to confide. She tried not to think that before, if he had a problem, he’d share it with her. It might not even be true, but it still hurt.

  ‘Right. I accept your assurance and I’m sure Kershaw will accept your apology when you make it to her.’

  MacNee nodded and got up. ‘Is that it?’

  Fleming sighed. ‘No, sit down again. I want to clear the air. I’ll freely admit I was hurt that you didn’t contact me these last months, but I can understand that you thought I’d brought it on myself.’

  For the first time he met her eyes. ‘Yes. I’ve always stood by my friends, but . . .’

  So her instinct had been right. ‘You’re a very loyal person, Tam, but loyalty doesn’t mean saying wrong’s right, and I was wrong. I know that. I got what I deserved. We don’t disagree. I didn’t expect anything from you except perhaps sympathy. We all make mistakes—’

  He interrupted eagerly. ‘Oh, you’d my sympathy, all right. Bunty wanted me to go and see you, but I couldn’t lie and say you were right. I thought you’d be disappointed, angry, even—’

  Now Fleming cut him short. ‘Enough said – let’s move on from there. We’ve a job to do, and what I want more than anything else is to be able to get on with it as usual. All right?’

  ‘Sure,’ MacNee said, though the response was almost offhand and he still seemed subdued as he left.

  Perhaps she’d forced the pace. But the sooner she could put those miserable months behind her, reset the clock to where it had been . . .

  Studying psychology was a mixed blessing. It made you realise that you couldn’t set back the clock, that experience shaped you, and that both she and Tam – and all their colleagues – were to varying degrees different now.

  Even so, you could choose not to look back. There was plenty in her own past that Fleming had no wish to remember and she’d found ignoring it was as good a way of managing the present as any.

  She would, she decided, arrange that he came with her to see Crozier. It was a long drive and maybe in the course of it some of the awkwardness would disappear.

  Crozier gunned the motor boat along the line of the coast. It had taken him only moments to realise the impracticality of clambering over the landslip, and shouting proved pointless too, with the wall of soft earth and rubble deadening the sound. His boat, kept moored at the mouth of the Carron for rough fishing, was close by, and he had Buchan and a couple of other estate workers with him. They’d brought spades in case digging was needed, and a couple of hatchets too. You never knew what you were going to find.

  He took a deep drag on his cigarette. His was a complicated history where the Rosscarron Cottages were concerned, and revisiting it was painful.

  Unbidden, a picture came to his mind of his younger self, halfway up the cliff that had now fallen: aged ten, perhaps, with more ambition than skill, stuck and terrified, with his handhold crumbling. If it hadn’t been for Kenna – a bit older, neat and agile, a better climber than he would ever be – he’d have fallen to his death. He could almost see the red flame of her hair as she appeared below him, hear her contemptuous voice saying, ‘Move your foot to the right, you gomeril – there’s a rock ledge.’

  Kenna . . . His throat tightened. She was all he remembered of his teen years: the ecstasy, the pain and ultimately the despair. Then life had happened to them both elsewhere, until—

  He scowled. He didn’t want to go back to the cottages. He’d even taken to
heading out in the opposite direction in the boat when he left the moorings, to avoid coming this way. But she was dead now; his parents, dead too, had long since sold up and he had no more connection with this place.

  They were starting to run through mud in the sea, a dirty red-brown stain spreading out as far as the eye could see. In a moment, when the boat rounded the curve, they’d be looking at what had happened. No one said anything, but Crozier could sense the tension matching his own. He took a last drag on his cigarette and threw it into the water, where it died with a tiny hiss.

  There was the bay. Crozier caught his breath. They all did. There was a gaping, jagged scar in the bluff behind, and below was devastation.

  The neat terrace of two-up-two-downs, built of red sandstone, had taken the full impact of the landslide. Number 1 Rosscarron Cottages – the one that had long ago belonged to his parents – was almost completely buried. Number 2, next door, had been engulfed in the torrent of earth and water that had swept through the house, forcing its front door open and half off its hinges, and there was a gaping hole in its roof. The two nearest the end of the road, numbers 3 and 4, were less badly affected, though there were a couple of smashed windows and the mud had invaded the ground floor, then spread out, sticky and smelly, a foot deep, across the road and the shore in front of them.

  At the sound of the boat’s engine, a young man appeared from number 4, shouting and waving his arms frantically. He was dishevelled and filthy with mud, and he had a bloody bruise on one side of his face.

  ‘Thank God someone’s come!’ he exclaimed, as the boat was beached and the men got out, moving gingerly to keep their footing. ‘We couldn’t phone for help or – or do anything!’

  He was, Crozier realised, very young – hardly more than a boy, with his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his distress. Behind him a slight, fair-haired girl appeared, carrying a sleeping baby; she was sobbing.

  ‘I was so scared!’ she wailed. ‘I thought the mud would just come higher and higher, and all the lights went and it was that dark . . .’

  She reminded him of his own daughter. Crozier went over and put a reassuring arm round her. ‘It’s all right. Everything’s all right now.’ He looked at the boy. ‘Any casualties?’

  ‘Just Jan – she’s the lady who was next door to us – but we took her in with us last night. I think she’s broken her leg.’

  Crozier turned to look at the two most damaged cottages. ‘No one in there?’

  ‘That one’s empty.’ He pointed to the buried house and shuddered. ‘Just as well. There’s a couple has the other one, and I went over last night after it happened. Couldn’t get in and it was too dark to see much, but I shouted and there was no reply. Jan said she thought they’d gone out.’

  Crozier jerked his head at Buchan. ‘Better make sure.’

  The man plodded off through the mud as Crozier said, ‘I’ll come and speak to the lady. We’ve sent someone to alert the emergency services, so they’ll be here before long to get you out. Did you have a car?’

  The lad pointed to the heap of earth. ‘That was the parking area. The cars are under all that.’ Whatever was there wasn’t going to be recognisable as a car when they got it out.

  ‘Hope everyone was insured,’ Crozier was saying when he realised that Buchan had come back and was standing looking at him meaningfully. Oh God! Since Ballymena, even the thought of a dead body turned him queasy.

  ‘You go back in,’ he urged the young pair. ‘Look out what you need to take with you. I’ll see you in a minute.’

  As they walked across to their cottage, the other men, quick to pick up the significance, stood as if frozen in a live tableau. Once the couple were safely inside, Crozier walked towards number 2.

  Through the damaged door he could see the stairs, and daylight above, where a huge stone had come through the roof. But Buchan was mutely indicating the left-hand window, surprisingly still intact, and with a gesture Crozier indicated that he should check out whatever was in there.

  The inner door was wedged by mud. Buchan had to fetch a hatchet, and with a few blows broke through it and disappeared inside. Probably they didn’t all hold their breath until he came out again, but it felt as if they did.

  Buchan reappeared and limped over to him. ‘There’s a body. Man lying under rubble in the sitting room, bad head injury.’

  ‘Definitely dead?’

  Buchan gave a sour grimace. ‘Oh, aye. Definitely dead.’

  3

  Kim Kershaw arranged her face in an expression of intelligent interest as DI Fleming explained her general philosophy of policing in the community. There was nothing wrong with it: good, standard ethical stuff that she’d heard often enough before, but she’d had bosses who talked the talk quite eloquently while their gait in walking the walk was uneven to say the least. She didn’t have a trusting nature – not now – and what she’d seen of both the police and the criminal fraternity had only deepened her cynicism.

  Fleming’s hazel eyes were penetrating, though, and Kershaw was careful not to let these thoughts register on her face. She answered the questions Fleming posed about her professional life fully, about her personal life briefly: she was divorced; she had one child; she was renting a perfectly satisfactory ground-floor flat in Newton Stewart.

  Despite sex-discrimination rules, she had suffered interrogation in the past about her childcare arrangements, but this time, when she didn’t elaborate on her circumstances, Fleming didn’t probe. Kershaw did catch a look on the inspector’s face, though, which suggested that this reticence might have been filed away as interesting information.

  Fleming was winding up the meeting now. ‘Sorry I can’t give you longer, Kim, but as you can imagine, I’m up to my eyes this morning. Looking forward to working with you, though.’

  While you’d never describe Big Marge as good-looking, her smile lit up her face in a very engaging way and Kershaw found herself smiling back.

  ‘Thanks, boss. I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Good. That’s all from my point of view. Any questions?’

  Kershaw had been hoping for an opportunity. ‘Not a question, ma’am, but may I say something?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The tone was cordial enough, but she sensed that the other woman was on her guard. She took a deep breath.

  ‘DS MacNee has just apologised to me. I appreciate your concern for me as a newcomer, but I don’t need you to fight my battles. I’m perfectly able to deal with him myself and it won’t help to have an awkward relationship made worse by him getting grief from you.’

  There was a pause, during which Kershaw remembered Andy Macdonald’s warning and began to wish she’d taken it to heart.

  Then Fleming said calmly, ‘I admire your capacity to be direct – and I don’t mean that in a sarcastic way. I’m all for straight talking. On the other hand, I don’t think you quite appreciate what I was doing. Your relationship with MacNee is your own business. You’ll have to sort things out between you. My business is the good discipline of my officers. A divided team is an ineffective team, and I don’t tolerate any behaviour that affects our standards of professionalism. My intervention was on that basis. Do you understand now?’

  Wrong-footed, Kershaw muttered that she did.

  ‘Good. I’m sure you’ll be a valuable addition. Thanks, Kim.’

  Kershaw left, reflecting on the interview. There had been no aggression, no animosity; Fleming had merely been as blunt as she had been herself in spelling out her position. Why, then, did she feel like saying, ‘Phew!’ as she shut the door behind her?

  ‘And this blue one on top. Now, what shall we do? Oh dear, over it goes!’

  Beth Brown laughed as the toddler gleefully knocked the tower of bricks to the floor.

  ‘Do it again? Here we are – green one, red one . . .’

  From her seat in the corner of her son’s sitting room next to the mottled brown thirties fireplace, Ina McClintock Buchan watched Bet
h like a spider assessing the potential of an unfamiliar species of fly.

  A lifelong habit of discontent had etched itself on Ina’s features, producing eyes narrowed by suspicion and harsh lines between her brows. Even when she smiled, usually in triumph at some barb that had found its mark, there was still a sour downturn to her thin-lipped mouth.

  Now she said, ‘You’ll be wanting away, to get back to your family, no doubt.’

  Beth, placing a yellow brick on top of the green and the red, didn’t look up. ‘Not really.’

  Ina frowned. ‘ “Not really”? What kind of answer is that?’

  Beth gave her a sidelong look, then shrugged.

  The thin lips tightened. ‘If that’s your idea of manners, it’s no wonder if your family don’t want anything to do with you.’

  Goaded, the girl retorted, ‘I never said that! I’ve none to go to, that’s all.’

  ‘Funny thing, that – no family,’ Ina mused artlessly.

  ‘I’m an only child and my mother’s dead, all right?’ Beth snapped. ‘If it’s any of your business.’

  ‘What about your partner, then? Maidie said you’d a partner – apparently that’s what you call it these days when you’re a bidie-in.’

  ‘He’s – he’s away.’

  Beth was biting her lip and she put the brick in her hand on to the tower so clumsily that it collapsed. Calum crowed and clapped his hands.

  ‘Away where?’ Ina persisted. ‘You’ll be wanting to let him know what’s happened before he sees it on the telly and gets a fright.’

  ‘Well, I can’t, can I? Phone’s not working.’

  With malevolent glee, Ina heard real anger there. The girl was glaring at her, and there was something curious about her eyes. What was it, now?

  As Beth looked away to say something to the child, Ina realised there was a gap between the bottom of the iris and the lower lid. It made her eyes look as round as marbles and oddly staring.

  ‘Funny eyes you’ve got. Not natural, that, is it?’ Ina was saying when the door opened and her daughter-in-law came in with mugs and a plate of biscuits on a tray.