Cradle to Grave

by Aline Templeton

  She ate without enjoyment, had a long bath and was asleep when Bill and the children came back, and even their giggling and shushing didn’t wake her.

  The car that had overtaken Fleming on the A75, a white Vauxhall Vectra, slowed down as she got near to Mains of Craigie. When her car didn’t turn in, the driver, looking in his mirror, frowned. Had his information been wrong?

  He kept a steady distance ahead of her on the long, straight road, and when, after a time, she went into a side road, he braked, ready to go back and follow her along it. But then he saw the lights fan across the road as she turned and drove back the way she had come.

  Going home now? Odd behaviour, but he found another turning and went back himself, pressing on a little to catch up. This time, Fleming signalled and turned in to Mains of Craigie. He drove a little way past, then pulled into the side and switched off his headlights.

  He saw the car arrive at the darkened house at the top of the track, and the lights go on as she entered. His big chance?

  But he hadn’t built his reputation on impulsive decisions. There was one way in, and one way out. A slow, narrow track, so the noise of his engine would announce his arrival and there would be no quick getaway. It looked, too, as if the family he knew she had were out; they could come back anytime and he would be trapped.

  No, it was urgent but not that urgent. Later, maybe. Catch a bit of shut-eye, then go back to have a sniff around.

  24

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Cris Pilapil.’

  The young man looked seriously rough, unshaven and scruffy, and from the way he winced at the brusque voice of the sergeant at the charge bar he was in the grip of the mother of all hangovers. He’d certainly turned the crystals in the breathalyser an interesting shade when they’d pulled him over for erratic driving.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Don’t have one.’

  The sergeant sighed. ‘Come on, son – if you give us an address, you can probably be bailed to go and sleep it off. If not, we’ll have to keep you here. Where did you spend last night?’

  ‘Can’t remember.’

  Wearily, the sergeant pulled across a thick pad of forms. ‘Have it your way. Let’s start again. Spell your name for me.’

  Nico Ryan sat in his room playing Grand Theft Auto. He was in Liberty City tonight, and he’d moved up a level since he’d started. He could get really good, now he’d enough time. He’d played for hours last night till he was too sleepy to go on. But tonight he wasn’t concentrating like he should. He’d even made one or two silly mistakes.

  His parents had gone on and on at him, and they’d searched his room today when he was out. It was all messy with his things out of place when he came in, which unsettled him. It had taken him ages to put everything back properly. He liked everything arranged in his own special way, and he hated broken and spoiled things.

  She’d torn one of his books. She’d grabbed it in her horrid fat, pudgy hands and ripped it, but she hadn’t got punished, like Nico had when he’d ripped up her pink rabbit. She’s only a baby. That’s what that nanny said, but the baby was getting bigger all the time, doing more things, and he knew what that would mean. She was messing up his life. She’d no right to do that.

  Anyway, it was fine now. He didn’t think about it any more, really. Except he was sure it was the nanny he’d seen that day, even if her hair was brown, and that had upset him again. She’d never liked him. She’d said . . . things. And then talking about it to that policeman made it all come back, and he didn’t like that either. The policeman was a bit scary, and though Nico didn’t believe him about getting locked up, he wasn’t comfortable.

  His parents were quarrelling again. He could hear his mother yelling at his father. She probably needed a fix and Dad was holding out on her. He didn’t know why – as long as she got it, she was OK.

  The yelling stopped. He went to his door and listened; he was safe enough as long as he knew where they were, but if they came upstairs, he’d have to hide the laptop. There was a little space at the back of the bed, not as safe as having it outside in his den, but it was OK while he was in the room.

  A door opened and Nico heard his mother’s feet clipping up the stairs. Quickly, he closed down the laptop, thrust it out of sight and was reading a comic when she came in.

  She’d obviously got what she wanted. She always did in the end. She was smiling, a bit dreamy, and she gathered him to her, pushing his hair back from his face in a way he particularly detested.

  ‘How’s my precious?’

  ‘Gerroff,’ he growled, pushing her away.

  Cara sighed. ‘You’re getting to be such a big boy now! Darling, you would tell me if you had that laptop we asked you about, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I told you.’ Nico picked up the remote control and switched on the TV. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He became instantly immersed in Big Brother.

  Cara sighed again. ‘I know, I know, sweetheart. Daddy wanted me just to check one last time. But Cris has disappeared now, so perhaps it was him.’

  Nico didn’t turn his head, but he heard what she said. After a moment he said casually, ‘Yeah, I saw him with a laptop yesterday. Took it to his room.’

  His mother was pleased at that. ‘Did you? I was sure he must have it, but Daddy didn’t believe me. I’ll go and tell him.’ She drifted out.

  Stupid woman! Nico looked without interest at Big Brother, but he daren’t risk going back to his game. It was long past his bedtime, and if she wasn’t too spaced out to care, she’d come back and fuss.

  He climbed into bed without washing. Once she’d been back to check on him or else gone to bed, he could play for as long as he liked. And if they thought Cris had taken the laptop away, he wouldn’t have to smuggle it in and out of the house any more.

  Marjory Fleming had fallen asleep instantly. But perhaps Bill creeping into bed later had broken the pattern of her sleep waves, because she embarked on a series of vague, uncomfortable dreams, culminating in one that inspired in her such a sense of terror that she woke up gasping for breath, but with no recollection of the detail.

  She sank back on her pillows and tried to drift off to sleep, lying first on one side, then on the other. That was usually enough on the few occasions when her sleep was disturbed, but it wasn’t working tonight. More wide awake than ever after a quarter of an hour, she slid out of bed with an envious glance at her slumbering husband and went downstairs.

  When she switched on the light in the kitchen, Meg looked up from the basket by the Aga, gave her a dirty look and went back to sleep.

  Marjory laughed. ‘It’s all right, Meggie,’ she said softly, ‘I’m not going to disturb you. Unless you want a crust of my toast.’

  She was hungry – that was most likely the problem, not having had a proper supper. She lifted the lid of the range, pushed across the kettle and picked up the toasting grid. Agas made the very best kind of toast.

  With her snack ready, she sat down in the old chair beside it, glad of the cosiness on this cool, damp night. The light ticking of the clock on the dresser seemed loud in the quiet house; Meg was snoring gently, and from the field near the house she heard a snort from one of the beasts. Familiar, comfortable sounds. A good way to soothe yourself to be ready for sleep.

  Only somehow, it wasn’t. She hadn’t drawn the curtains across the kitchen windows – she never bothered – and now they were great yawning squares of darkness as she sat in the lighted room, a room that had suddenly lost its cosiness. Someone could be out there, looking in at her, and she wouldn’t know. She was exposed, vulnerable – what sort of security was that? And she could hear movement too.

  It was the stirks, restless in the field behind the house. Marjory knew that, of course she did. But was she absolutely sure? And if it was, why were they restless? Because they always are, the common-sense part of her mind insisted, but there was another voice that said, Because someone’s moving among them.

  I
f she was going to go on sitting here, and finish her tea like a sensible person, she was going to have to close the curtains. She just didn’t want to get up, walk across, exposed, a target . . .

  But she was a target already, sitting where she was. Come on!

  Her legs felt like jelly as she got up and walked across the room, to the switches by the door that would put out the light in the kitchen, and put on the light in the yard. If nothing happened, if there was no one there – and of course there wasn’t – she could draw the curtains and be comfortable again.

  Marjory had just done that and was peering fearfully out into the yard when the door behind her opened. She spun round in the darkness and screamed.

  She had not seen the panicky movement outside as someone shrank into the shadows, like some creature of the dark for whom light is pain. But behind her, framed in the doorway to the lighted hall, was the burly form of her husband Bill in his pyjamas.

  ‘Marjory, what on earth’s the matter?’ he said.

  She had given herself too much of a fright to be calm. ‘Oh, Bill, Bill,’ she said, hurling herself into his arms.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right – I’ve got you.’ He patted her back, and Meg, who had shot out of her bed in alarm and was now looking extremely reproachful, came to push her nose against her mistress’s legs.

  ‘I woke up and realised you weren’t there,’ Bill said when, laughing shakily, she let him go. ‘I wondered if you were all right, but I had no idea that my well-intentioned concern would provoke terror. Let’s put the light on again and I’ll make myself a cup of tea while you finish yours and tell me all about what’s going on. And toast – toast seems a good idea. Where’s the syrup?’

  The normality, after her crazy imaginings, left her laughing weakly. ‘It’s probably not the time, the middle of the night, when we’ve both to be up early, but I really do need to talk.’

  A certain wariness came over Bill’s face. ‘If you’re going to talk about us, I don’t care how long it takes to sort things out. If you’ve work problems to talk through, frankly, you’d deal with them better after a night’s rest, and so would I.’

  ‘It’s only partly work. It’s mainly about Joss Hepburn.’

  ‘Then I’m all ears.’ Bill spoke lightly, but his face was grave.

  ‘It’s just – I’m going to draw the curtains before I put on the light.’ Marjory went across to the window.

  The silent yard was empty under the lights – of course it was! She heard a sheep bleat from the lower field, then another echo it, but these were perfectly normal night sounds. She pulled the curtains across and switched the lights back on. The kitchen was homely and safe again, the threatening world of darkness and lurid imaginings banished outside.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said.

  Her husband raised his eyebrows at her, but didn’t ask why. ‘More toast?’

  Marjory shook her head and sat down. ‘Joss. It’s difficult.’

  Bill went on with what he was doing, but she could sense his tension.

  ‘I hate getting old and boring, you know that?’ she said. ‘Perhaps we all see our adult selves as being clothes we put on for a marathon fancy-dress party, but underneath we’re still – what, nineteen?’

  Bill sat down with his toast. ‘Twenty-five. Able to play a useful game of rugby, sink half-a-dozen pints and be bright-eyed for the sheep-round in the morning.’

  ‘Nineteen for me. Nineteen, and still thinking I could break all the rules because I was immortal and nothing could go wrong. I knew what Joss was even then, really, but bad was glamorous – bad was cool.’

  ‘I think a lot of people see it that way.’ Bill’s tone was dry.

  ‘I know. And I suppose I did still see him as glamorous even now. He has charm by the bucketload.’ Marjory stole an anxious glance at Bill, but he said nothing. ‘He applied that charm when we met again. And I was flattered that he still felt I was worth the trouble, even though I was in a professional position and that made it very awkward.

  ‘I wanted, I think, to believe he was still “bad” in the old, fun sense – daring, crazy, edgy, not overly concerned about breaking a few of the laws the young agree are self-evidently silly. But, Bill, he’s not. He’s ugly bad. I was completely wrong. There, I’ve said it. And if you say, “I told you so,” the conversation stops here.’ She half meant it.

  ‘I don’t need to.’

  Marjory smiled, but she wasn’t sure it was meant to be a joke. She couldn’t read his expression, but she’d come this far; she had to go on. ‘I thought the business Crozier was running at Rosscarron House was suspect – and I was right, though I’m not going to go into details. Joss knew what was going on, but he wouldn’t tell me, and in the end he tried to blackmail me.’

  That startled Bill. ‘Blackmail?’

  ‘If I wouldn’t stop asking questions about the business, everything he could think of dating back to our relationship would go to the gutter press. You can imagine . . .’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said heavily, ‘I can imagine.’

  Marjory was struck with shame. She had thought about how it would affect her career and her marriage, but not how Bill would feel at having his friends read about his wife’s youthful misdemeanours, courtesy of the Sun. ‘Sorry,’ she said inadequately. ‘It may be bluff – it may never happen.’

  Bill sighed. ‘It’s as well to know the worst.’

  ‘There’s something else.’ At the look on his face, she said hastily, ‘No, no, it’s different. It’s just – well, a Glasgow hitman’s been seen in the area. We’ve no idea who the target is, but it’s all linked to Crozier’s business, and the last time I saw Hepburn he warned me, very seriously, to think again about pursuing my enquiries.’

  ‘What! You mean that bastard’s taken out a contract on you?’ At Bill’s roar of rage Meg started awake once more.

  From the look of fear she’d seen in Joss’s eyes, Marjory didn’t think so, but she wasn’t about to argue his cause. ‘I’m probably reading far too much into what he said. It’s highly unlikely that it’s anything to do with me, and I’m not taking it too seriously.’

  ‘Of course not. You’re just closing curtains you haven’t closed since they were put up, and screaming when I come into the room.’

  ‘I have an overactive imagination.’

  ‘So do I. If my wife’s in any danger, I’m downright paranoid. I want her properly protected. What’s being done about it?’

  ‘Nothing, at the moment, until we see more clearly what’s going on.’

  Bill had his stubborn face on. ‘You mean like someone takes a pot shot at you? Better hope they miss.’

  ‘To be honest, I wouldn’t feel any safer with some poor guy detailed to trail around after me. If I’m going out, I won’t be out alone. And I won’t go into any dark alleyways, and I’ll make sure there isn’t a car following me.’ She felt braver as she said it, but as Bill still looked sceptical, she added, ‘Anyway, over the next twenty-four hours or so the investigation’s being opened up and it’s going to be obvious that taking me out won’t solve their problem. And dead police officers spell serious trouble.’

  Marjory found she was yawning. ‘Look, it’s dreadfully late. We’ve got to get some sleep or we’ll be pulp in the morning.’

  ‘Fine.’ Bill collected up the plates and mugs, and put them in the sink. Marjory glanced at his back, still unsure how things stood between them, but as she went to the door, he came to put his arm round her and turned her to face him. ‘Be careful, Marjory. You’re precious.’

  She put up her face to be kissed. ‘I will. And I love you too.’

  As they went upstairs, the details she hadn’t shared about her odd encounters with Joss Hepburn were on her mind, but however much she might believe in full disclosure in a professional sense, she felt strongly that in personal life you could simply give too much information. Oh, Bill wasn’t a fool. He knew there were things she hadn’t said and there was still constraint
between them, which couldn’t dissolve instantly, but at least they were on the way.

  Cursing, the man stumbled down the farm track in the dark, sheep bleating as he passed, making what speed he could as he headed for the car he had parked down on the main road. It had looked like all his Christmases had come at once when she appeared in the kitchen while he was doing his recce. He could have been speeding back to Glasgow by now, but he’d missed his chance, and it had looked almost as if she knew he was there. She might even have made an alarm call and police cars could be screaming this way right now.

  Shaking and breathless, he needed three attempts to get the key in the lock, but at last he was on his way without any sign of danger. It was a moonless, starless night; the road stretched empty ahead, the fields on either side pitch dark under the opaque lid of the cloudy sky, the occasional house by the road lightless and blank.

  How could she have known? Perhaps she had felt his eyes upon her as he assessed his shot, and would even now be dismissing it as imagination, or at worst a prowler, he told himself, but he was arguing against the nagging pain in the pit of his stomach.

  Wednesday, 26 July

  Declan Ryan put down the phone. He was feeling sick, as if the shock of what he’d heard had been a physical blow. What was he to do now? He was fire-fighting on every side.

  He went along to the kitchen, where Cara was breakfasting on black coffee, and Nico, with his elbows on the table, was gnawing on a pizza with both hands. It disgusted him.

  ‘Out!’ Ryan said to Nico, jerking his head, and for once his son obeyed without appealing to his mother, giving a frightened look over his shoulder as he left and still clutching his unorthodox breakfast.

  ‘That was the police in Kirkluce. They’ve picked up Cris for drink-driving. Traced us through the car.’