Dead but not Buried

by Iain North

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘And she got Billy to drive her there.’

  ‘That’s what I think.’

  ‘And she was going to do Bennet too?’

  ‘For Katrina. Call it a favour. They must have got talking in prison. But it didn’t go according to plan.’

  ‘Billy got in the way?’

  ‘And he paid for it. Sam legged it in his car and Bennet must have given chase. He drove her off the road.’

  ‘So who did kill Bennet? It couldn’t have been Katrina. She was out of her face in a police cell when it happened. And Samantha was out of the picture, permanently.’

  Amber was picking huge holes in his hypothesis. Some of the jigsaw fitted. But there were pieces that didn’t. Was Samantha O’Brien really capable of murdering a complete stranger in cold blood? Her uncle’s death might have been heat of the moment stuff, a quick stab in the dark. But premeditated murder was a different thing altogether. He realised he knew absolutely nothing about her. And there was no evidence Bennet had pushed her over the embankment, just a badly dented car.

  Amber interrupted his musings. ‘We still haven’t found Bennet’s other victim. Maybe she has something to do with this.’

  Of course, there was the other girl. Where was she? Why hadn’t he asked Mrs McBurney?

  He pulled the car off the road into a lay-by.

  Amber looked around. ‘Why have we stopped?’

  ‘I need to make a phone call.’ He tapped a number into his Blackberry and waited for a moment.

  ‘Mrs McBurney. Hello. It’s Jim Buchan here. Sorry to trouble you again. But I forgot to ask you something.’

  ‘Aye?’ Her snuffling response made it was clear she was still crying.

  ‘The other girl, where is she now?’

  There was a long silence. Jim thought he had lost signal. But eventually she spoke.

  ‘Amanda Anderson? She...’ Mrs McBurney broke off again.

  He waited patiently.

  ‘She killed herself, a couple of years ago.’

  He paused a moment. ‘What about her family?’

  ‘They stay here, in Inverness. They’ve separated now.’

  Jim thanked her and closed the conversation. ‘Question answered.’

  ‘But we’re no further forwards,’ Amber pointed out.

  ‘No. But I’m off on holiday.’

  *****

  Jim dropped Amber at her door.

  She smiled. ‘Do you want to come in for a coffee?’

  He took a second or two to consider the offer. ‘No, I’d better get home.’

  He lifted her bag from the boot and handed it to her.

  ‘I’ve had an interesting time. It’s been...’ She was searching for the right word. ‘An eye-opener.’

  ‘Mull it all over while I’m away. See if anything springs to mind.’

  ‘Can I give you a call if I think of anything?’

  ‘Sure. You’ve got my mobile number.’

  She nodded. ‘See ya.’

  ‘Take care.’ She drifted off up the street. Turned and waved. Then disappeared into her close.

  Jim lowered his hand slowly and closed the boot. ‘Bye,’ he whispered to himself.

  George was right. She would do him no good.

  *****

  Chapter 9

  Jim brought his laptop down from the overhead luggage compartment.

  ‘Do you ever stop working?’ Jenny scowled. ‘We’ve only been on holiday for...’ she glanced at her watch. ‘An hour and a half.’

  ‘Just checking my emai1s’ Jim promised. ‘It’ll only take a minute. Then I’ll put it away.’

  ‘Go on,’ she huffed.

  He had downloaded two messages before he left home that morning but in the rush to get to Glasgow Airport on time he hadn’t time to read either of them. Jim pulled down the seatback table and flipped the screen up.

  His son David watched with interested. ‘Don’t laptops interfere with the plane’s navigation systems, dad?’

  ‘I think that’s mobile phones, son,’ Jim said. ‘Anyway, there’s a guy over there using one.’

  He pointed across the narrow aisle of the Airbus to another poor soul incurring the wrath of his wife. All he was doing was playing Spider Solitaire.

  ‘So we blame him if we crash?’ Jenny scowled.

  Jim ignored her. Power up. The screen flickered as the computer checked its own systems and software were in place. The Windows XP screen flashed up, then his desktop. Jim clicked the Outlook Express symbol with-his keypad mouse. His mailbox opened. Three messages. The first was from Brian Baxter thanking him for his help over the last few days. Jim sent him a story for Sunday last night when he got home. Poster of Hate, he headlined it. Much of it was a rehash, but he had hung it around the leaflet Donnie Fraser gave him. He emailed Brian a scan hoping he could make use of it to illustrate the piece.

  The second message was from Ron D’All checking their travel arrangements. They were landing in Palma at 1.30pm, local time. Ron and Debbie would meet Jim, Jenny and the kids at the airport and drive them to their villa.

  Jim turned to his wife. ‘Message from Ron. The wedding’s still on.’

  She smiled. ‘Thank God for that. It’s a bit late for second thoughts.’

  The stewardess was coming down the plane with the in-flight meals. She was a couple of rows away.

  ‘You’d better put that away,’ Jenny added.

  Jim was a little disappointed there was nothing from Amber. She had promised to send him an email, her thoughts on his various theories.

  A plastic tray landed on top of his computer.

  ‘Tea or coffee, sir?’ A second stewardess was standing at the end of the row with a stainless steel pot in each hand.

  ‘Coffee, please.’

  He slipped the laptop out and put it on the floor under his seat.

  Jenny lifted the lid of Jim’s lunch and the stewardess slopped steaming brown liquid into his little cup.

  ‘I’ll have tea, please,’ she added.

  He opened the sealed packed of plastic cutlery and prodded his chicken in gravy. His appetite was gone. He never ate much when he was travelled, but he wasn’t feeling hungry at all now.

  Jenny noticed. ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jim was thinking about Amber. He turned to the stewardess. ‘Is there a phone on the plane?’

  She shook her head. ‘Sorry, sir.’

  He checked his watch. They’d be landing in an hour. He had to make contact with her, if only to say ‘hello’.

  ‘Can I have your roll?’ David was eyeing up his uneaten meal.

  ‘Go ahead, son.’

  ‘You really must try and eat something.’ Jenny was talking to him like he was a kid.

  It irritated him. ‘I’m not hungry. I’ll get something when we land.’

  The plane touched down half an hour ahead of schedule. But by the time they passed through passport control and reclaimed their baggage it was half past one.

  ‘David, can you get a trolley.’ Jenny was marshalling operations. Kirsty traipsed along behind, her MP3 player blasting dance music into her own private little world.

  Jim spotted a bank of payphones across the arrivals lounge. His mobile was at the bottom of his suitcase. Jenny put it there, well out of the way, with the instruction it was to be used for emergencies only.

  ‘Two minutes. I’ve got to make a call.’

  ‘Be quick,’ Jenny instructed. ‘I’ll see if I can find Ron and Debbie.

  ‘I’ll catch you up.’ He jogged across the crowded floor and found a free phone. He whipped the receiver up, poured in some Euros and punched in the number of Amber’s flat in Dundee.

  The call connected within a few seconds and he heard a dialling tone. It rang and it rang and it rang.

  ‘Bugger,’ Jim cursed under his breath. Finally the call was picked up, by her answering machine. ‘Bugger,’ he swore again, loud enough for the woman at the next phone to rais
e her eyebrows. Jim winked an apology and waited for the garbled spiel to end. Finally he heard the high-pitched tone.

  He remained silent. Pondered for a moment. Then hung up.

  Across the shiny concrete floor Jenny had found Ron. He waved and jogged over to meet his old mate.

  ‘How you doing?’ They shook hands warmly.

  ‘Glad you could make it,’ Ron beamed. ‘Hope the flight was okay.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Where’s Debbie?’

  ‘She had a bit of a headache. The heat.’

  ‘As long as she gets over it for the wedding night.’ Jim laughed.

  ‘The car’s outside.’

  They trooped out into the blazing sunshine. It hit Jim like the backdraft from a burning building. ‘Phew,’ he panted.

  ‘Bit warmer than Scotland, eh?’ Ron sympathised.

  ‘Certainly is. It was raining when we left.’

  ‘So what’s new?’

  Jenny was fanning herself with one of the magazines she’d been reading on the plane.

  ‘We should move out here too.’

  It was tempting, no doubt about that.

  ‘We’ll go straight up to the villa. You can cool down in the pool.’ Ron opened the boot of the Ford Galaxy he’d hired to ferry wedding guests around. He helped David load the cases while Jenny and Kirsty piled into the back.

  The air conditioning hummed gently as they picked their way through the airport traffic.

  ‘I bet you’re loving it out here,’ Jim said.

  ‘Best move I ever made.’

  When Ron and Jim worked together hardly a day went by when his former boss hadn’t bemoaned the Scottish climate, the job, the life. After much pleading on Ron’s part, the company finally relented and granted early him retirement at 55 and, after a couple of years selling second hand cars from a yard in Dundee, Ron upped sticks and emigrated to the sun.

  ‘It’s worth thinking about,’ Ron enthused. ‘You’d love it here.’

  ‘Did you bring your yacht out?’

  Ron nodded. ‘She’s moored at a marina a couple of miles from the villa. I’ll take you out tonight if you like.’

  Jim remembered summer evenings spent drinking bottled beer on the deck in Tayport Harbour. The cold, dark waters of the River Tay estuary and the chill North Sea winds were now a world away.

  David piped up from the back. ‘Can we, mum?’

  ‘If Ron’s got time.’

  ‘The wedding’s pretty much sorted,’ Ron continued. ‘It’s only going to be a small affair. Just a few folks from home and some of our friends here.’

  ‘Where are you having the ceremony?’ Jenny asked.

  Ron twisted his neck round. ‘At the villa.’

  The villa was about an hour’s drive from the airport. It sat part way up a hill, overlooking the sea.

  ‘Come and have a look around.’ Ron led the way.

  ‘I’m boiling,’ Kirsty moaned. ‘Is there a pool?’

  ‘Is there, dad?’ David begged.

  ‘On you go, kids.’ Ron guided them through the front door into an airy tiled lobby. It was beautifully cool, out of the sun. ‘You can get changed upstairs. Second room on the left.’

  The two sprinted up with their bags.

  Ron turned to Jim and Jenny. ‘You want a drink? I could certainly do with one.’

  He lifted a big jug of Sangria out of the fridge.

  ‘Have you got a beer?’ Jim prompted. Two bottles of Becks followed. ‘You want one, Jenny?’ She nodded. He took out a third and clicked the tops off.

  Jim lifted his in a fake toast. ‘To the lucky man.’

  Ron copied the motion. ‘To the best man, and his wife.’

  They collapsed round the kitchen table and drank thirstily. Outside they could hear the kids splashing about in the pool.

  ‘What are you working on just now then, mate?’ Ron asked. He was still a journalist at heart.

  Jenny rolled here eyes, but for once she relented. ‘If you’re going to talk shop boys, I’ll go out to the pool.’

  Jim told him about Samantha O’Brien and Maurice Bennet: the car, the cops and the castration.

  ‘Nasty,’ his friend snorted, crossing his legs. ‘Sounds a bit like my vasectomy.’

  ‘Do you not regret that now?’ Jim asked.

  ‘We’re not going to have any more children. Two’s enough.’

  ‘Aye,’ Jim sympathised. He drank some more beer, changed the subject. ‘So you’re not missing Scotland?’

  ‘A bit, I suppose. But I can’t see us going back, not for a few years anyway.’

  Jim looked around him. ‘And all this is yours.’

  ‘Certainly is. Not bad, eh, for a used car salesman? You should come out at Christmas and enjoy a bit of festive sun. It’s great here in the winter.’

  ‘We might just do that.’ Jim was starting to relax. Doubtless, the cool beer was helping. He peered out through the patio doors towards the pool. Kirsty and David were both bouncing about in the water. Jenny was reclining on a sun lounger under a huge floral parasol.

  ‘I think I might just,’ he added. It was a far cry from the wet and windy West Highlands, a world away from Mrs McBurney’s damp council flat in Inverness, or her daughter’s prison cell.

  ‘How did Jenny take the news about that young girl you slipped the length?’ Ron whispered.

  Amber.

  Jim sighed. ‘Not well.’

  ‘That was foolish.’

  ‘Sleeping with Amber?’ Jim nodded.

  ‘No, telling the missus.’

  ‘You’d tell Debbie if anything like that happened, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘As if. She’d go fucking mental.’

  ‘Amber was in Kyle with me,’ Jim admitted in a whispered tone/

  ‘Fucking hell. You don’t half sail close to the wind. What’s the story?’

  ‘She’s good company.’

  ‘And Jenny’s not?’

  ‘Not as much as she used to be. And Amber’s... well, Amber’s different.’ Jim needed to get it off his chest.

  ‘You sly devil. Anything happen?’

  Jim shook his head.

  ‘You look disappointed,’ Ron observed.

  ‘I don’t want to lose Jenny.’

  ‘You’re not making sense, Jim. You say you don’t want to lose Jenny, but you take an 18-year-old honey off on a dirty weekend in the West Highlands?’

  ‘It was work,’ Jim protested.

  Ron shook his head. ‘Dress it up anyway you like.’

  Jim drank some more beer. Put like that, it was crazy.

  ‘You need to get it sorted, mate.’

  *****

  After supper, Jim unpacked and retrieved his mobile phone from the bottom of his case. It was a move that didn’t please Jenny. But he carried on regardless. He waited for the handset to pick up a signal and, a few seconds later it rang. He moved across the room, away from Jenny, and answered.

  ‘Welcome to Vodafone 121. You have two new messages. Message received at 3.45pm.’

  George’s voice followed. ‘Just thought I’d let you know, there’s been an accident at Kishorn. Some scaffolding collapsed. We’ll talk when you get back. Cheers.’

  ‘Message received at 3.50pm.’

  It was Amber. ‘Did you phone, Jim? Sorry I missed you. I’ll see you when you get back. Take care.’

  ‘Can you put that away now,’ Jenny was agitated. ‘We should be getting ready for dinner.’

  Jim tucked the phone into the breast pocket of his linen jacket.

  ‘No.’ Jenny frowned, twitching her finger at him.

  He took the handset out and threw it down on the bed.

  ‘Happy?’

  They took supper in a quiet tavern on the waterfront. Jim and Ron recounted old times, Jenny made polite conversation and Debbie stayed in her bed. Afterwards, Jenny took the kids back to the villa and the two men went down to Ron’s boat in the marina for a nightcap, or two.