Cradle to Grave

by Aline Templeton

  One of the girls had her mobile out already, then pulled a face. ‘No signal. Have to go back to that town with the funny name. So, I guess that’s wrecked the rave. Fancy a weekend camping by ourselves in the rain?’

  DS Tam MacNee darkly suspected the guy had been having a laugh, though Cris Pilapil’s smooth-skinned brown face was perfectly solemn as he handed MacNee a pair of his own chinos and a shirt that was the sort of explosion of colour that made you want to cover your ears as well as your eyes, and took away MacNee’s white T-shirt and dark jeans to be washed and dried. The trainers, at least, fitted, though the chinos were a bit too long and too tight. But that was the least of MacNee’s discomforts.

  He was in some pain from his abused muscles, the glass cuts on his hands were stinging, and he was smarting, too, over Joss Hepburn’s efficiency as a rescuer. The man was a bloody giant, which gave him an unfair advantage – dropping down off the bank, giving Tam a leg-up, then hoisting Marjory on to his shoulders so that with Tam’s help from above she made it to the top. Then Hepburn had got himself up, no sweat. And the bastard had thought it was funny.

  Marjory had thankfully collapsed into the bed Pilapil had ushered her to, but MacNee was struggling with his duty of gratitude, despite being warm, dry and having a large Scotch at his elbow as he sat at the huge glass dining table in yet another white room in Rosscarron House. He could be struck by snow-blindness at any time, and there was rubbish music going on and on and on, though none of the other six round the table seemed even to be aware of it, far less listening.

  He had his concerns too about Marjory. She ought to be in hospital even now, having a brain scan, but she’d been adamant that all she needed was rest. He just hoped she wouldn’t wake up dead.

  What MacNee hated more than anything was the feeling that he was trapped. There was no way out of this until a temporary bridge was in place, unless HQ decided they were so indispens-able that they needed to be taken off by chopper. Aye, right!

  He was simmering with frustration. He felt he ought to be doing something – anything – but Crozier, inviting him to have lunch with a sort of weary courtesy, had pointed out there wasn’t anything they could do. MacNee had never been good at not doing anything.

  So here he was, looking at the bowl in front of him, which held rice and some meat in a pale green sauce – that wasn’t natural, for a start. Curry, they’d said, but it didn’t look anything like the curry you got in the Indian on Kirkluce High Street.

  Opposite him, a kid of about seven or eight was eating a pizza, or rather mucking about with a pizza, tearing off chunks and shoving them into his mouth. He saw MacNee’s envious glance and began making faces, crossing his eyes and putting his fingers in the corners of his half-full mouth to pull it into a square shape.

  ‘Nico!’ Crozier said sharply. ‘If you’re going to eat like a pig, you’re going to have to leave the table and eat on the floor.’

  It was so predictable that MacNee almost groaned aloud. Grabbing his plate, Nico lay down on the floor and carried on eating with suitably disgusting animal sound effects.

  Crozier looked at his daughter. ‘Has he had his Ritalin today?’ he asked.

  Cara looked vague. ‘I think so. I’m not sure.’

  Crozier sighed, then shrugged. He looked, MacNee thought, a defeated man.

  Cara had been polite when MacNee was introduced, smiling and even making a charmingly sympathetic remark, but she seemed somehow detached and MacNee didn’t have any difficulty in working out why.

  He hadn’t taken to her husband, Declan Ryan, the blond man they had seen visiting at the campsite, the man so swift to identify plainclothes coppers. Ryan was ignoring his son’s behaviour and now was having some sort of domestic discussion with Pilapil.

  MacNee had been surprised to find the hired hand sitting down to eat with his employer. He’d have thought, given this sort of money, that the serfs would be kept in their place. He was even more surprised by the tone of the conversation.

  ‘If you need loo paper and fresh towels in your bathroom, you know where to find them,’ Pilapil was saying. ‘The cleaner didn’t appear today.’

  ‘So?’ Ryan said insolently.

  Crozier intervened. ‘Declan, I’ve told you before. Cris is here to organise my life and cook me the meals I like. He’s not here as a personal slave to idle young men.’

  Ryan’s expression suggested that he would like to reply, but after a moment he said meekly, ‘Sorry, Cris,’ with a brief, false smile.

  On the payroll too, was he? MacNee studied him covertly as he ate the surprisingly delicious food.

  Declan Ryan was, MacNee conceded, quite good-looking if you went for the sulky, sissy-looking James Dean type. Women seemed to, though he couldn’t see it himself. With a name like that you’d guess at Irish extraction, though his accent was pure Estuary English. He certainly didn’t appear to have much control over his son, who seemed to be spoiled by his mother and thoroughly out of hand. You’d have thought a pair like Declan and Cara, sunk in ‘luxury’s contagion, weak and vile’, would be just the sort to buy some poor lassie to keep him out of their hair, but there didn’t seem to be anyone around.

  The other member of the party, Joss Hepburn, had said almost nothing. He and Crozier both lit up the moment they had finished their curry, and now Hepburn was leaning back in his chair sending out almost visible waves of boredom.

  Finishing his cigarette, he got up. ‘Just going to my room. Let me know when you get a signal that the outside world still exists.’

  MacNee glanced at his watch, with a sudden start. He hadn’t realised how the time was passing – it was three o’clock already. If they weren’t back in some sort of communication by six, it was going to cause him problems, but there was nothing he could do about it, nothing.

  Crozier was saying, ‘I’ll have to go up and tell the kids at the campsite that the party’s off. Don’t relish it, but it’s got to be done. They need to be packed up – someone’s bound to have reported it by now, so it shouldn’t take too long to get them out.’

  Cara, taking an interest in the conversation for the first time, said sharply, ‘Declan, you go.’

  Ryan looked at his wife for a long moment. ‘Oh, right.’ He didn’t sound happy, but he said, ‘Right,’ again, and to his father-in-law, ‘It’s OK. If you don’t want to do it, I will.’

  It had been a significant exchange and MacNee saw Crozier look from one to the other, but he said only, ‘Fine. I certainly wasn’t looking forward to it. Tell them they’ll get refunds, of course. And at least the rain’s stopped, thank God!’

  It had, indeed, and even some rays of watery sunshine were coming in the windows.

  Crozier got up. ‘I’ll need to go and have a word with the contractors up in the top field. They’ll all have to be paid off. This whole exercise is going to cost me a bomb.’ He shook his head. ‘Right, then, Declan – you’ll take care of the campers? Thanks. I’ve a couple of things to do now, but I’ll drop by and add my apologies on the way back from seeing the caterers. What about Nico? Will you take him with you?’

  Nico, hearing his name, got up from the floor. ‘I don’t want to go,’ he whined. ‘It’s boring.’

  ‘You stay with me, angel,’ Cara said dreamily. ‘Watch a DVD – that’ll be cool, won’t it, sweetheart? Harry Potter?’

  The boy gave his mother a look of contempt and left the room.

  MacNee cleared his throat. ‘I was thinking I’d come up the hill with you, Mr Ryan. Just to reassure the punters, ken?’

  He thoroughly enjoyed the look of dismay that passed between husband and wife.

  ‘Oh God! That’s all we need!’ Inspector Michie looked horrified. ‘The bridge as well!’

  The PC who had waylaid him in the corridor to give him the news said, ‘I suppose it’s just part of the same problem as the cottages. And at least no one seems actually to have been hurt, as far as we can tell.’

  ‘Well, that’s something. The re
scue services are at full stretch – there’s another river burst its banks over in the Machars. But get on to the telephone engineers and tell them to pull their fingers out so we can find out what’s happened. Unless they’ve a problem needing immediate attention, they’ll just have to wait till the army’s got time to put across one of those Bailey bridge things.’

  Gillis Crozier’s mind was on his unwelcome guests as he went into the cloakroom to fetch his outdoor clothes. Police in the house, on top of everything else, was just about the last straw. He had almost heard the crackling of tension round the lunch table. And when could he hope they would go?

  Problems seemed to be piling in on him, but it was the family problems that made him feel someone was twisting a knife in his stomach. He’d seen the exchange between Cara and her husband over lunch. Drugs, no doubt – but what could he do?

  He’d adored Cara since they’d put his tiny daughter in his arms and he’d looked into those unfocused baby-blue eyes. He’d been possessed with a fierce desire to give her the perfect life – everything that money could buy, he had promised her. But he hadn’t been thinking of heroin at the time, and now unfocused eyes were a sign of an unfolding tragedy.

  Perhaps if his wife hadn’t walked out, it might have been different. She’d been the disciplinarian, but he’d always been a lump of putty in his daughter’s hands. What Cara wanted, Cara got, and an addiction problem was the result. There were days when he felt so burdened by guilt that it was an effort to stand up straight.

  He’d thrown money at the problem, tried everything from coaxing to threats, and for a time she would cooperate in the latest fashionable rehab before she went back to it again. After the baby died, though, she was beyond reason. His fault, again.

  He had no time for his son-in-law – sly, sycophantic little sod – but in a way he could understand why Declan kept Cara supplied. Denied a fix, she would get that look of fury, hatred, even, and however much you told yourself it was the drug talking, it hurt. God, it hurt!

  He’d been such a failure as a father, a failure as a husband too, and he was helpless to stop the disaster that was his grandson getting worse day by day. The only thing he seemed to be good at was making money – as if that mattered now. And he’d made it mainly in a way that meant police officers were extremely unwelcome guests. Crozier gave a sigh that was almost a groan.

  As he pulled on his waterproof boots, the doorbell rang and he paused hopefully. A rescue party? He heard Pilapil going to answer it and then a brief conversation.

  But when he called, ‘In here!’ and Pilapil appeared, he was pulling a face.

  ‘Buchan,’ Pilapil said, with a tremoring-hand gesture. ‘Wants a word. Shall I get rid of him?’

  Crozier considered. ‘Tempting. God knows I’ve had enough today, without that. But I’d probably better see him. Find out what his problem is, will you?’

  ‘I tried. Wouldn’t tell me. Said he has to see you.’

  ‘Right, right.’ Crozier pulled on his other boot and went out into the hall.

  ‘Alick! What can I do for you? Do you want to come into the office?’

  ‘No. No need.’

  The man, Crozier realised, was not just drunk but very drunk. It had been a difficult day, certainly, but even so . . .

  ‘Look, Alick, the best thing you can do is go back to Maidie, have a cup of tea and a rest, and then come back later. You’ve had an upsetting day.’

  ‘Upsetting! Aye, you could say! You’ve not had an upsetting day. You’ve not been ordered to go and – and deal with the corpse, just like before. I’m not – I’m not in the bloody army now under your bloody orders.’

  It was a shock to realise that the incident, so long ago, had festered in the man’s mind. ‘Alick, we were all having to deal with bodies at Ballymena. I did too, and it haunts me, just like it haunts you.’

  ‘Aye, but I’d to take the worst – the woman with her head . . .’ Buchan began to shed drunken tears.

  ‘Look, come in and sit down and we can talk about this. Cris’ll bring us some strong coffee.’

  Pilapil, hovering in the background, nodded and turned to go as Crozier attempted to take Buchan’s arm and lead him through to the office, but Buchan shook him off. Pilapil stopped, eyeing the man.

  ‘No!’ Buchan shouted. ‘I’m – I’m not wanting your talk. You’re to take the girl.’

  Baffled, Crozier said, ‘What girl?’

  ‘Landed on us. It’d be nothing to you – have her here. Costs money to feed folk, only you – you wouldn’t know, with your big house and your fat wallet.’

  As Crozier still looked blank, Pilapil prompted, ‘I think he means the girl who came in last night and told him about the landslide.’

  Buchan turned to look at him blearily. ‘Aye, her. You’ve bedrooms here – rooms and rooms. It’s not right.’

  ‘No, we don’t, actually.’ Pilapil’s voice was crisp with distaste.

  ‘I think we may be talking money here.’ Crozier reached into the hip pocket of his jeans. ‘Alick, you perhaps don’t know that the bridge over the Carron has collapsed and we’ve got two police officers here indefinitely. It’s been very good of you to take in this girl and I don’t want you to be out of pocket over it. I’ll pay for her board and lodgings until she can leave. Here’s a hundred pounds for a start.’ He peeled off five twenties from a wad of notes.

  With some difficulty, Buchan’s eyes focused on the money. ‘You – you think you can buy everything. Well, you can’t. You can’t buy Alick Buchan, you dirty, rotten bastard!’

  Nevertheless, he snatched the notes from Crozier’s hand. Pilapil moved swiftly to open the front door and Buchan lurched out of it. He spat on the doorstep, then headed uncertainly for the jeep, parked in the drive.

  ‘He’s going to drive!’ Crozier said in alarm. ‘He could be off the road at the first bend.’

  Pilapil dangled a key. ‘He was holding it when he came in and he didn’t even notice when I took it off him. God knows how he got himself here. He’s looking for the key now.’

  From a window to one side of the front door, they could see Buchan digging in his pockets, then, shaking his head in bewilderment, going off with a limping stagger.

  Crozier sighed. ‘I’ll go and talk to him once it’s worn off a bit. That’s all I need.’

  Nico Ryan was bored. He’d seen Harry Potter too many times already, so there were no surprises, and his mother hadn’t watched for very long before she drifted away. He wandered out of the house, kicking up stones in an aimless sort of way, then ducked in under the bank of rhododendrons opposite the front door. The purple blossoms were over now and all the dead petals were brown and soggy.

  The shrubs grew thickly together and he had made himself a little den underneath, with a rug and some cushions he had taken from the house without anyone noticing. They were all damp and fusty with the rain, but that, mingled with the smell of sodden earth and rotting vegetation, was part of the mystery of his secret place.

  Nico liked it because he could watch people coming and going without being seen. It made him feel very strong and powerful, and he enjoyed that. Once he was big and had lots of money and it was his house, not his grandfather’s, he’d tell everyone what to do. He’d be mean to them if he liked and there wouldn’t be anything they could do about it.

  He saw his grandfather coming out of the house and crossing the drive, and he screwed his face up into an expression of hate. Granddad had told him off again today. He shouldn’t do that. It made Nico angry just to think about it. He wanted to hit something, throw something . . .

  There was a big stone embedded in the earth beside his rug, and when he picked it up, all sorts of little pale creatures started scurrying away in a panic. Diverted, he looked at them, then turned the stone on its edge and brought it down, again and again and again, squashing as many of them as he could.

  The encounter with Buchan had upset Gillis Crozier. He liked to see himself as a decent employer, demand
ing but not unreasonable, and paying wages that were more than fair. The depth of resentment Alick Buchan had concealed all these years shocked him, and he didn’t feel up to negotiating with the contractors yet who, quite reasonably, would try to drive a hard bargain.

  The sun was shining strongly now and the sea, far below in front of the house, had silver sparkles so brilliant that it was almost painful to look at it. He headed towards it on a rough track, then stood at the end, lost in thought. A breeze was blowing and the air had a green, grassy freshness as the sodden ground began to steam gently in the warmth.

  Perhaps he’d been wrong to give Buchan the keeper’s job when he came back to Rosscarron three years ago. In the army, the man had always been one of the awkward squad, but there wasn’t much employment around here and Crozier had felt sorry for his former comrade-in-arms, invalided out after a careless accident with his own rifle. Sooner or later you must pay for every good deed!

  Ballymena, 1976. Crozier remembered the carnage all too well, though he had tried to put it out of his mind. He remembered, too, the sickeningly injured dying woman he had sent Buchan to deal with. But his own job was to bring order out of bloody chaos and there had been no time to consider individual sensibilities. Perhaps Buchan ought to have been sent for counselling, but it wasn’t so fashionable in those days. You got on with the job, shut up about it and tried to forget.

  It was probably too late to help Buchan now, and his drunken outburst had created a problem. He could only hope the man would backtrack once the drink stopped talking. Having to sack him would be deeply unpleasant.

  Perhaps he’d just sell up here, find somewhere else. Crozier needed a headquarters outside London, but not necessarily here. Choosing Rosscarron had been a sentimental decision and they were rarely sound; it had been in part a desperate attempt to give Cara and her children a healthier lifestyle, but that had failed. Worse than failed.