‘We’ve got some school groups coming along today,’ she said. ‘You can work the crowd – get them all ready to see Santa. Then Jock will come out of his grotto – the lower deck - and sit in the tram doorway and they’ll each get a turn at speaking to him. It’s quite straightforward – just as we rehearsed it. We can close up early if we don’t get anybody in the evening. They’ll probably be a bit more enthusiastic nearer Christmas. If we have the ice rink ready by then.’ She looked with some disfavour at the ice rink crew, who had been arguing for two days about why the ice wouldn’t freeze enough to allow skating. ‘Then we have the German stallholders arriving at the weekend, of course.’
‘And Maisie Sue and Jan still have to set up their stalls,’ Amaryllis reminded her, suddenly anxious to cheer the woman up. It was a thankless task, after all, organising a Christmas event in a place like Pitkirtly. She couldn’t understand why anyone had even imagined it would be a good idea. If she were in power the only events permitted would be drinking competitions at the Queen of Scots. And maybe some pagan fire processions. She wondered if the Vikings had ever been to Pitkirtly.
Almost on cue, the man who could undoubtedly answer that question appeared, walking towards the tram with Giancarlo Petrelli, who was carrying a tray of paper cups. Amaryllis gazed at them admiringly for a few moments. Although she was highly suspicious of Jason Penrose, there was no doubt he was a treat for the eyes, and he and Giancarlo would have looked like a couple of movie stars sauntering along in their black leather, if it hadn’t been for the paper cups. She sighed, realising once again exactly how far off limits Giancarlo was.
‘You shouldn’t keep bringing us coffee,’ she said to him, hoping he wouldn’t take her seriously.
‘It’s an investment,’ he assured her, brown eyes amused. ‘I’ll sell a whole lot more once the Christmas events get properly under way.’
‘Do you think the Vikings ever came to Pitkirtly?’ she asked Jason.
He blinked. She had taken him by surprise again. Good. She liked to keep people on edge.
‘Not as far as we know,’ he said. ‘There isn’t much evidence of them even along the North Sea coast hereabouts. And we’re quite a way upriver. The Picts were here, of course.’
‘Are there any Pictish festivals we could celebrate here?’ she enquired, still clinging to her idea about fire processions. Launching a Viking-style boat and setting fire to it outside the harbour would be ideal, of course, but there might be something they could do on a smaller scale.
Jason frowned. ‘I don’t think enough is known about the Picts specifically... Of course there are some more generic Celtic feast days. Beltane, Lughnasa and so on. And if we find evidence of Roman occupation there’s always the feast of Bacchus.’
‘Do you think Charlie would be up for hosting Bacchanalia in the Queen of Scots?’ said Amaryllis to Jock, who had finished being padded out with cushions and had waddled to the tram doorway to see what was going on.
‘It wouldn’t be all that different from the times when Torryburn have just won a match in the West Fife league,’ muttered Jock.
Amaryllis turned her attention back to Jason, who didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. ‘Have you been on a field trip today?’
He scowled. ‘Bloody police won’t leave me alone. They were round at Tricia’s at the crack of dawn asking a lot of stupid questions, and now they’ve cordoned off the whole of the Island and won’t let anybody on there at all from any direction. I’m thinking of hiring a boat and seeing if I can sneak round there from the river.’
‘You won’t get a boat for hire this side of Queensferry,’ Jock warned him. ‘You might as well go and look for Roman ruins somewhere else.’
‘But I want to look on Pitkirtly Island,’ said Jason, sounding like a petulant toddler.
Amaryllis couldn’t bring herself to like the man very much, no matter how attractive and famous he was. But she still wanted to know what he was up to, so she resigned herself to stalking him for a while. And after all, he wasn’t going to be around for very long.
‘What about having a poke around at the harbour?’ she suggested. He would be close by if he did that, and then she could nip along in the intervals of being an elf and see what he was doing. Or she could ask Giancarlo to keep an eye on him. The coffee kiosk was about halfway between the Queen of Scots and the harbour.
‘That’s an idea, I suppose,’ said Jason reluctantly. ‘If the Romans did pop in here it would definitely be by boat. They’d be dropping by for supplies.’
Amaryllis didn’t ask what sort of supplies the Romans might have expected to find in the Pitkirtly of the Dark Ages. In her experience, even in the modern town you were lucky to find olive oil in the supermarket.
‘That’s a bit of a wild-goose chase, isn’t it?’ murmured Jock McLean as Jason headed off towards the Cultural Centre to round up the FOOP troops.
‘It’s my civic duty,’ said Amaryllis primly. ‘I’m keeping him out of the way of the police.’
His idea about the boat had been a good one. She stored it in a special compartment in her mind for later. In the mean-time they had to get through an afternoon of school visits and an evening, no doubt, of people scoffing at them on the way to the pub.
Chapter 10 The far side of the law
‘No,’ said Jock firmly. He should have known Amaryllis was up to no good. She had developed that look in her eye while she was talking to Jason Penrose, and she was obviously still annoyed by her encounter with the unfamiliar policemen earlier. ‘It’s pointless,’ he added. ‘You won’t be able to see anything in the dark, even if you don’t get swept out into the middle of the Forth and drowned on the way.’
‘Sssh! I don’t want Christopher to overhear and try to stop us.’
‘Stop you, you mean. It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘I can’t do it on my own,’ she said with a sidelong glance over to where Christopher sat with Jemima, Dave, Maisie Sue and Charlie Smith’s dog. ‘It wouldn’t be the act of a responsible adult.’
‘Adult! Don’t make me laugh! This is completely mad.’
‘Don’t you think saying that is a bit disrespectful to mad people?’ she said in a fair imitation of Elizabeth French.
Now he really did laugh out loud. ‘She’s never said that!’
‘No, but it’s the kind of thing people who work for the Council say, isn’t it?’
‘I thought you were going to work for them.’
‘Good heavens, no,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I’m going to be the Council. That’s quite different.’
Jock had an uneasy feeling about Amaryllis’s political ambitions. But he knew she was only trying to distract him from her mad – all right, insane – plan. As if their current day-time activities weren’t daft enough, she wanted to spend all night rowing round to the far side of Pitkirtly Island to look for clues. Did she think she was the leader of the Famous Five, or something? It would serve her right if he just went over and told Christopher right now.
‘What are you two whispering about?’ said Charlie Smith. ‘Are you going to order or not?’
‘Nothing,’ said Amaryllis.
‘Oh yes?’ said Charlie. ‘I suppose I might as well call the police now in that case.’
‘Try the coastguard,’ said Jock gloomily.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Charlie. ‘Any chance of talking her out of it?’
‘No,’ said Jock.
Amaryllis looked from one disapproving face to another and said crossly, ‘All right, all right! I wasn’t really going to do it.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Jock with feeling.
‘Not in the dark,’ said Amaryllis. ‘We’ll get up first thing in the morning instead.’
‘It’s dark first thing in the morning as well,’ said Charlie. ‘Hadn’t you noticed? It’s only a day or two until the Solstice. It doesn’t get light until about nine o’clock.’
‘Or at all, if it’s one of those dark dank days,’ said Jock,
cheering up by the second.
She glanced from one to the other again and slumped forward against the bar in a gesture of defeat. ‘How on earth do you expect me to work out what happened to Jackie Whitmore if you won’t even give me a tiny bit of support?’
‘It’s for your own good,’ said Charlie Smith. ‘Do you want a drink or don’t you?’
‘Same again all round,’ said Amaryllis gloomily.
‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ said Charlie. He lowered his voice. ‘Keith Burnet’s been taken off the case. They think he’s too close to it. They’ve brought in the hard men from Dundee.’
‘Ha!’ said Amaryllis. ‘As if there wasn’t enough crime in Dundee to keep them busy. Anyway, how can they possibly understand how we do things here without the local knowledge and experience people like Keith and – well, you, Charlie – have?’
‘Nothing to do with me any more,’ said Charlie. He went back to the task of gathering the round of drinks.
‘Don’t you have any inside information?’ said Amaryllis.
‘Don’t push him,’ said Jock.
‘I don’t have any,’ said Charlie. ‘If you want to know anything you’ll have to get round those Dundee men – but I don’t recommend it.’
‘I think I’ve got the wrong side of them already,’ said Amaryllis.
They carried the drinks over to the table. Jock was happy to have the weight of Amaryllis’s expectations removed from his shoulders. He hoped she would just forget about investigating the case, but he was almost sure she wouldn’t. She might even think of a riskier way to do it.
He woke up early the next morning. He didn’t usually use an alarm clock these days, so that couldn’t be what had awakened him. For a horrible moment he wondered if Amaryllis had broken into his house again. Then he remembered her boat idea, and groaned aloud. For some reason he now knew she would do it after all. It was up to him to stop her.
Jock didn’t like it when things were up to him. Particularly things like stopping Amaryllis once she had made up her mind to do something dangerous. Pushing these negative thoughts aside, he got dressed as quickly as he could, ate one of the pink wafer biscuits and set off for the harbour. It was just as dark and dank on the way as he had expected it to be. He hoped he wasn’t too late. Or that his intuition wasn’t wrong, which would be embarrassing. He didn’t very often have flashes of insight, in fact he didn’t really believe in anything psychic, but this feeling was so strong he couldn’t ignore it. He told himself it was based on his close observation of Amaryllis and experience of what she was liable to do, and not on something intangible and irrational and airy-fairy.
Of course he hoped he was completely wrong. If so, he reassured himself that it wouldn’t be embarrassing at all to anybody except him, because nobody else would ever know.
When he came to the end of the harbour wall and heard the splashing and swearing of somebody who didn’t know enough about boats and who was trying to get the oars the right way up, he knew it wasn’t wrong.
He clambered down the steps with some difficulty, holding on to the slimy wall at the side as tightly as he could.
‘What do you think you’re up to?’ he hissed just before he got right down to the same level as the boat.
‘What do you think?’ said Amaryllis crossly. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to stop you.’
‘You can’t stop me. You’ll have to come with me.’
He grabbed at one of the oars. ‘If I take the oars away, you can’t go.’
They had a ridiculous tug of war, during which his feet almost slipped out from under him several times.
‘Stop it, for heaven’s sake,’ said Amaryllis after a few minutes. ‘You’ll fall in and it’ll be my fault.’
‘It’s definitely your fault,’ he grumbled. ‘If you just stop this nonsense...’
She gave a heave and he let go of the oar just for a second – and grabbed at it again, and somehow ended up on his knees inside the boat.
A scary few minutes followed while he tried to get up and the boat rocked violently from side to side. In the end he lifted himself on to the nearest seat and held on to it as Amaryllis pushed away from the jetty and established a rowing pattern.
‘Oh well,’ she said, wielding the oars fairly competently after all. ‘At least you’re not Christopher.’
‘If I were Christopher I’d have talked you out of this by now,’ he said.
‘That’s the problem. I’m an adult. I don’t need to be talked out of doing things for my own good. I should be allowed to make my own decisions.’
‘He just worries about you,’ said Jock, wishing he could have stopped her himself. He began to panic over the possibility that she planned to have a deep and meaningful conversation while they were trapped together like this.
‘That isn’t the point,’ she said.
‘Where did you get this boat?’
‘I didn’t steal it, if that’s what’s bothering you... I borrowed it for a few hours.’
‘Does the owner know?’
‘Of course he does. At least, I warned him I was likely to have to borrow it and he didn’t say I couldn’t.’
‘Won’t he need it for anything?’
‘Not just now.’
Amaryllis behaved quite sensibly in the boat, by her own standards at least. She didn’t take it further out into the river than she had to, but skirted round the coast between the mud flats and the currents that would have swept them along if they had gone closer to the middle. Jock was almost beginning to relax when they heard a noise.
At first he thought it was an echo. It sounded like the splashing of oars and the creaking sound made by old wooden boats whenever they were in the water. Straining his eyes to see anything in the dimness that meant dawn wasn’t far away, he realised that there was a dark mound silhouetted against the lightening sky. They must be nearly at the island. There was nothing else even remotely resembling a hill along this part of the coast.
Then there were voices. He looked at Amaryllis, but she wasn’t speaking.
‘There’s somebody else here,’ he whispered.
‘Sorry?’ She seemed to be concentrating hard on the oars and what to do with them.
‘There’s somebody else about. I can hear them. And I think we might be nearly there.’
‘Damn it!’ she hissed.
‘Just keep rowing for a bit. Is there anywhere to land?’
‘We’ll have to go round the side and moor somewhere by those big rocks.’
‘Then what?’
‘One thing at a time! I’ve got to stop the boat before it...’
A sharp bump sent Jock flying again. On his knees in the bottom of the boat, he wished he were Christopher and not himself. Not least because Christopher was probably safely tucked up in bed, or maybe eating his morning toast in preparation for going out to work... Or was it Saturday? He seemed to have lost track of time, what with all this Christmas stuff and everything.
‘We’ve hit a rock,’ said Amaryllis, not even bothering to whisper now. ‘We might need to bail out.’
Jock was in the middle of wondering whether she meant him to find a bucket and start scooping water out with it, or to leap out of the boat altogether, when she took his arm and pulled hard. He jerked upright in the boat.
‘Now jump on to that rock,’ she told him, pointing to a flat rock that seemed to be sticking up in the middle of nowhere.
‘But where...’
‘Never mind that. Just go!’
He jumped, landing on the flat rock more elegantly than he had expected. Amaryllis landed beside him, and together they turned and watched as the small rowing boat gradually filled with water and almost disappeared. It was tilted up to one end, so the bench where Amaryllis had been sitting was still above the water line while Jock’s had gone.
‘Do you need a hand?’ said somebody in a deep voice that was tinged with amusement. They turned back to face the island, and saw Jason
Penrose about three feet away, holding out the hand in question and smiling annoyingly.
‘How did you get here?’ said Jock.
‘We borrowed a boat, but it was a bit more watertight than yours,’ said Jason. He shifted position slightly and Tamara from FOOP became visible just behind him. She was wearing something that shimmered in the faint daylight which was starting to filter through the clouds. ‘There’s something magical about winter dawn, isn’t there?’ he added in a conversational tone.
Something cold and dark and downright hostile, more like, thought Jock, shivering.
‘Come along then,’ said Jason, gesturing towards Jock. ‘We’d better get you off that rock first. You look as if you need a hot drink and a blanket.’
‘I wouldn’t say no to a dram,’ Jock admitted as he gave in and took Jason’s hand. The man was stronger than you would expect from some effete media person. He half-dragged, half-lifted Jock over to the shore, which seemed to be composed mostly of mud. It made strenuous efforts to suck in Jock’s shoes, and complained with hideous glugging noises when he wrenched them free. Amaryllis arrived on land nearby almost at once. He noticed that her shoes weren’t making anything like as much noise as his.
As they clambered up a bank, a different sound broke into the ethereal winter dawn. It was a car engine and it seemed to be approaching fairly rapidly.
‘Duck!’ said Jason. ‘Headlights.’
‘Police,’ said Amaryllis, who had stuck her head up briefly to take stock. ‘Damn it – I thought we had some time in hand.’
‘It takes longer to row over from the harbour than you’d think,’ said Jason.
They huddled in the cover of the bank.
‘We’re going to get into terrible trouble,’ said Jock, thinking of Charlie Smith’s ‘hard men from Dundee.’
‘Only if they catch us,’ said Amaryllis. He knew without even looking that she had a wicked look of wild enjoyment on her face again. How could she revel in danger the way she did? It was unnatural. Jock had the disloyal thought that it might do her good to be locked up for a while.
The Christmas Puzzle (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 8) Page 7