Cradle to Grave

by Aline Templeton

  ‘Bill? Here! Are we talking about the same guy – the “hardy son of rustic toil”, good-natured to a fault?’

  ‘Well, there were . . . reasons.’ Fleming’s colour deepened further.

  ‘Reasons?’ MacNee knew the value of persistence in interrogation, and when Fleming sighed, he reckoned she was cracking. To encourage her, he said, ‘And if I knew the story, I’d not be so likely to find myself speculating to Andy Mac, just accidentally, mind.’

  Fleming acknowledged defeat. ‘There’s no time just at this moment. I’ll tell you on the journey back. Now, not an ideal site, this, is it? They don’t seem to have given much thought to what it would be like in weather like this.’

  The rough field up at the back of Rosscarron House was on a slope and near the bottom it was marshy already, with visible streams trickling down. Although only half-a-dozen vehicles had arrived, the ground had been churned up by the lorries bringing in equipment to the upper field, and it was hard to see how the numbers arriving later could be catered for.

  There was a gate with a Portakabin beside it, presumably for security staff, though there was none in evidence. When they drove through, though, a youth with a row of rings in both ears appeared in the doorway and shouted, ‘Hey! You need to show your tickets.’

  Fleming drew up and produced identity, looking round. ‘Haven’t much here to stop gatecrashers, have you?’

  ‘Team’s coming this afternoon. Just a couple of us at the moment. Not much doing anyway, weather like this.’ He shot back inside.

  ‘The security’s rubbish,’ Fleming said, as she coaxed the big Vauxhall up the slope. ‘Asking for trouble, frankly. And I’d have taken the four-wheel drive this morning if I’d known about these conditions. I tell you, Tam, I’m worried.’ She parked beside an elderly camper van, which seemed to be the hub of activity.

  It was brightly painted with amateurish flowers, and its sliding door was open. From it, a canopy had been rigged up as protection from the rain and a dozen people were huddled under it, laughing and talking. From a speaker Mick Jagger was belting out ‘Satisfaction’, and inside a bulky woman was dispensing tea from a huge teapot, and a large grey-haired man, similarly middle-aged, had a crate of beer at his feet, which seemed also to be for sharing. They must have been a good twenty years older than the next oldest in the group but for the moment at least were the life and soul of the party.

  The man was in conversation with a young man with unnaturally blond hair and a petulant expression, but as Fleming and MacNee got out of the car, he broke off to call out to them, ‘Come one, come all! Beer or tea – beer from yours truly, and tea, if you fancy it, from my good lady Angela.’

  Then, as they approached, he frowned. ‘Not really dressed for it, are you, my loves?’ he said, looking askance at Fleming’s walking shoes and MacNee’s trainers. ‘You’ll learn that the first rule is to come equipped, when you have as many battle honours as we have.’ He indicated, with some pride, the stickers that almost obliterated the back windows of the van. ‘Glastonbury 1970, that one there. Day after Jimi Hendrix died – we were all in mourning.’

  The blond man gave them a narrow stare. ‘Something tells me they’re not your average punters. Cops?’

  Interesting, MacNee thought, watching him as he and Fleming took out their warrant cards and she explained that they were just checking out the site. Admittedly, they looked out of place, but people who instantly thought of cops usually had reason to know. He looked around the others too, with the trained observation that had long ago become instinctive.

  ‘Any problems?’ Fleming was asking.

  There were two girls who looked about sixteen. One of them asked, ‘Do you know when the catering’s coming? We didn’t, like, bring any food or stuff – thought they’d be here by now.’ Then she giggled, looking up under her eyelashes at the spiky-haired young man beside her. ‘We’re, like, starving – I’d do anything for a burger.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, my love,’ the large grey-haired man said. ‘We won’t see you go hungry, will we, Angela? We’ve learned enough to know the catering always lets you down and we prepare accordingly.’

  He turned to Fleming. ‘Bob and Angela Lawton. Not much impressed with this, to tell you the truth. The Portaloos are all right – the toilets are always the first things we check, aren’t they, love?’ Angela nodded confirmation, and he went on, ‘But the ground here’s shocking for these poor kids. High water table, see – they’ll all be sleeping in waterbeds if it doesn’t stop raining. I suppose that’s Scotland for you, isn’t it? But we love the Scotties, don’t we, Angela, so we keep right on coming to these festivals, all the way from Dorset.’

  He beamed patronisingly, and MacNee felt Fleming’s eyes boring a hole in him. In a contrary spirit, he said, ‘Good to hear it, sir. Hope you enjoy the music.’

  As they turned away, he noticed the blond man have a brief, low-voiced conversation with another young man, before heading off down the slope towards the house. Not a camper, then.

  ‘All the business stuff seems to be in the upper field, beside the stage,’ Fleming said, as she started the engine. ‘The lower field seems to be all there is for tents – it’s not exactly T in the Park, but it’s going to be ridiculously cramped if they get any sort of gate.

  ‘Anyway, what do you make of the groupings among that lot? The blond man – staying at the house, I’d guess. The two girls together, though if I was their mother, I’m not sure I’d let them out. Three obvious couples, and then the two young men – the short guy with spiky hair, and the taller one with sideburns. The guy with the spiky hair seemed to be with the girls, but the other one didn’t seem to be with anyone. Wouldn’t have thought many people came to things like this on their own, would you? And the couple with the caravan – too good to be true?’

  ‘Check,’ MacNee agreed. ‘The guy, though – probably just came hoping to pull.’

  ‘That would figure. But I’m not happy about this whole thing – the organisation seems far too casual. I don’t know how many they’ll get, out here in weather like this, but it could be a disaster waiting to happen. The Kirkcudbright lads will have to keep an eye on it once the numbers start building up.

  ‘I’m going to have a close look at the bridge on the way back and see if we can find a reason to declare it unsafe. If much more water starts coming through and the headland’s cut off, there’ll be a major logistics problem with food supplies, for a start. And we’ve enough trouble down at the Rosscarron Cottages without looking for more.’

  DC Kim Kershaw looked with considerable pity at the pair in front of her, as they sat together in a patients’ sitting room in the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary. They barely looked old enough to be parents, and their six-week-old girl, yelling lustily, looked as if she didn’t find them convincing in that role either. Her mother who, Kershaw reckoned, couldn’t be more than eighteen herself, jiggled the baby helplessly for a bit, then thrust her at her partner, in tears herself.

  ‘You take her, Craig. I don’t know what to do with her and I’ve just – just had enough! Holiday! Some holiday! OK, it was cheap, but you never said there’d be, like, nothing to do. Then the weather, frigging rain all week, and now this!’

  Craig put the baby to his shoulder, patting her ineffectually. ‘Not my fault, was it?’ he said, aggrieved. ‘I nearly got killed too, remember. But we didn’t, right, so what are you greeting for, Donna? That’s probably what set her off greeting too.’

  As Donna opened her mouth indignantly, Kershaw stepped in, raising her voice above the noise.

  ‘I was wanting to ask you about last night.’

  It was no use. She could barely make herself heard over the din and the distracted parents weren’t listening anyway. Kershaw went out into the corridor and looked hopefully up and down. Spotting a nursing auxiliary, a middle-aged, competent-looking woman, she hailed her.

  ‘Look, have you a minute? I’m a police officer, trying to get a statement fro
m the young couple in there, but their baby’s bawling so I can’t hear myself think, let alone speak. Any chance you could take it out of earshot for a bit? I won’t be long, I promise.’

  The woman gave her a good-natured grin. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’ve had three of my own, so I know what it’s like. Ten minutes is all, though – I’ve to be somewhere after that.’

  With order restored, Kershaw produced her notebook, took down personal details and repeated her question.

  ‘There was this kinda . . . well, just noise, really, like, loud,’ Craig said. ‘We were upstairs with the baby, ken.’

  ‘Do you know what time it was?’ Kershaw asked, but he shook his head.

  ‘Just – it was pretty dark. All the lights went and the house was, like, shaking like it was an earthquake, sort of. And Donna was screaming and yelling. It was like we were in a horror movie, only, well, real.’ He shuddered. ‘I grabbed the bairn and went to the door – bashed my face on a sharp edge . . .’

  He fingered a scratch on his cheek, and Donna put in, ‘Nearly dropped the baby too.’

  He glared at her. ‘That was with you hanging on to me and yelling we’d all be killed. Didn’t help.’

  Hastily, Kershaw interjected, ‘And then?’

  ‘It was the water downstairs,’ Donna said, shuddering. ‘I was, like, going mental. It was all slimy and muddy with sort of stuff in it and you couldn’t see and it was up to our knees – I’ll be waking up screaming the rest of my life.’

  Craig’s expression suggested that he did not relish the prospect. He went on, ‘Then we got out, and Jan next door was calling help or something. She’d hurt her leg. She’d a big torch by her door so that was better, and she kinda hobbled out with a stick. But the road was blocked so there was nowhere to go and it was that wet and cold.’

  ‘Thought we’d die out there,’ Donna put in. ‘So I go, “If we’re going to die anyway, might as well die out of the rain, right?” And Jan goes, “If I don’t sit down, I’ll fall down.” So we went back in and found somewhere we could sit. But it was, like, horrific. I’m scared to go to sleep – I’ll wake up screaming—’

  ‘Yeah, you said,’ Craig said unsympathetically, and she put out her tongue at him.

  ‘The other house, where the man was killed,’ Kershaw began, then stopped when she saw the looks on their faces. ‘Sorry – you didn’t know?’

  ‘Oh. My. God!’ Donna said, eyes wide. ‘Someone was, like, dead – right there beside us?’

  ‘I saw them all round the cottage with their tape and stuff, but I sort of thought it was because it was falling down.’ Craig’s face had turned white.

  ‘Did you look last night?’ Kershaw asked.

  He shifted in his seat. ‘Kind of. But it was really dark, ken, and Jan said they were both out. And there wasn’t a noise, like anyone . . . well, groaning or stuff.’

  ‘I think he was probably killed outright,’ Kershaw said. She had no idea whether that was true or not, but she was sorry for the boy. Craig looked relieved.

  The sound of a wail approaching down the corridor, suggesting that for all her experience the nurse had failed in her mission to pacify, brought Kershaw to her feet. She closed her notebook.

  ‘That’s all I need from you. I’ll get this typed up into statements for you to sign, but there’s no rush. Thanks for your help.’

  As she went out, passing the baby on her way in, Craig’s envious voice said, ‘It’s all right for some,’ and she heard Donna’s shrill reply, ‘You’re just rubbish, you know that?’ The odds on their being together to celebrate their daughter’s first birthday weren’t good.

  Maidie glanced anxiously at the kitchen clock. Beth had been out for a long time now. The rain had gone off, but the sky was still threatening, and with the girl getting so chilled last night, it wouldn’t do her any good to get soaked through again.

  It crossed her mind to wonder if she had actually gone for good. That would please Alick, but Beth had said she’d nowhere else to go, and Maidie couldn’t bear her to think that shelter wouldn’t be gladly offered in such a dreadful situation.

  Alick’s attitude had left her profoundly shocked. Oh, she knew he was mean, of course, and she’d grown so used to his complaints about the unfairness of life that she barely heard them any more. As a crofter’s daughter, she was accustomed to the harsh realities of rural poverty and they’d rubbed along well enough. She’d had no high expectations when she married him: she wasn’t bonny, and there’d been no other offers. And without Alick there wouldn’t have been Calum, the light of her life.

  A big issue like this hadn’t cropped up before, though. Today, the sheer nastiness of the Buchans, mother and son, had aroused something in her she hadn’t known was there. Beth had come to them in desperate need, and now she was both homeless and bereaved, she needed protection. The girl was barely more than a child herself, and Maidie’s maternal instinct was strong.

  There was Beth now. From the kitchen window she could see her trudging towards the house. Maidie carried Calum through to the sitting room and put him down on the floor.

  ‘There you are, wee man,’ she said. ‘Gran will play with you.’ She didn’t look at Ina, so was spared the look of indignation on her mother-in-law’s face as she looked up from her People’s Friend.

  Beth was opening the outside door as Maidie came back into the kitchen. She hesitated on the threshold, giving the other woman a sideways glance.

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I was out of order.’

  ‘It was Gran who was out of order,’ Maidie said firmly. ‘It’s sort of a hobby with her. Come away in and sit down. Are you very wet?’

  ‘Just my jacket,’ Beth said, taking off her parka and draping it on the overhead pulley to dry. She sat down at the table ­obediently, saying nothing, just studying her hands.

  ‘Beth,’ Maidie said, her stomach fluttering with nerves, ‘I’ve – I’ve – I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you.’

  ‘The cottage,’ Beth said. ‘It’s wrecked, isn’t it? I knew it would be.’ Her voice was flat, emotionless.

  ‘Well, yes, but it’s – it’s worse than that.’ Maidie gave a nervous little cough. ‘You know you said your partner wasn’t there? I’m afraid you were wrong. He was.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t,’ Beth said flatly.

  It was even harder than Maidie had thought it might be. ‘He must have come back, Beth. They found him in your house, dead.’

  ‘Dead? Lee? I – I don’t know what to say.’ She was oddly calm.

  Shock, Maidie decided. It affected different people different ways. ‘I know it’s hard to take it in. It’ll hit you later. Grief’s like that.’

  Beth looked at her coolly. ‘Grief?’ She gave a short laugh. ‘We’d quarrelled. I found him out, you see. He was a bastard, a total bastard. I threw him out.’

  Gran was right: there was something funny about Beth’s eyes. Maidie couldn’t think of anything useful to say, and could only take refuge in the familiar.

  ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea anyway, shall I? It’s meant to be good for shock.’

  And if Beth wasn’t shocked, she certainly was.

  A heavy lorry was rumbling up the road towards Rosscarron House as Fleming and MacNee left the camping site on their way down to the Rosscarron Cottages. Fleming pulled in to one side to let it pass.

  ‘I wonder if that’s catering for the starving masses,’ she said. ‘Probably half of them come planning to survive the weekend on nothing but junk food.’

  ‘And beer – they’ll have plenty of that, all right. And dope, no doubt, though the dealers’ll be out in force as well. Rare healthy pastime for the young. Don’t know what the parents are thinking about, these days. Shouldn’t be parents, the half of them.’

  Fleming gave him an anxious glance. MacNee had always, of course, been a cynic, but there was a sort of sourness about the way he spoke that wasn’t normal.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ she said, half laughing to t
ry to make light of it. ‘My own kids are coming tomorrow. There’s plenty of decent, sensible kids, and good parents too.’

  ‘And plenty of the other kind. See Kershaw? Asked her how she managed the job with her kid and she said she’s in a boarding school. What kind of parent is that? Why have kids at all?’

  ‘Tam!’ she protested. ‘There’s plenty parents scrimp and save to send their kids to boarding school where they reckon they’d get a better chance. Cammie’s got rugby pals who love it – fantastic facilities, and more time and great coaching. He’d be off tomorrow given half a chance.

  ‘Anyway, people’s circumstances change. Kim’s divorced with her living to earn, and her daughter’s probably far better at boarding school with chums and lots of activities than having a patchwork of babysitters who could let her down at any time.’

  His face was mutinous and she knew she could have saved her breath. Still, it had given her an insight into Tam’s antagon-ism towards the new detective: Bunty’s childlessness had always been a great grief to her, and though Fleming suspected that Tam himself could have lived with it, he cared deeply for the sake of his adored wife.

  They were driving down towards the bridge over the Carron now and Fleming, happy to change the subject, said, ‘I think we should both take a serious look at the bridge, Tam. I’ll park on the further side where there’s a bit more space and then we can have a good poke around.’

  She drove on to it slowly, looking over the side. ‘Do you think the level’s down at all from this morning? It could be—’

  Suddenly everything was slipping sideways, out of her control. The bridge was tipping. With a tearing sound the Vauxhall crashed through the metal barriers at the driver’s side and plunged nose first into the river.

  5

  Indie music was pounding from the speakers in the white sitting room at Rosscarron House, but the two men with beers in their hands seemed inured to the level of sound.

  ‘Cigarette?’ Gillis Crozier leaned forward to hold out a packet to his guest. He had been virtually chain-smoking for the last half-hour.