Her thumb is rubbing little circles on my hand.
“He knew there was going to be pain for you both but he wanted to minimise it, to make it only the pain of not having a mother. Not the pain of having a mother who was murdered. Or the pain of having a father who had never been able to prove he didn’t kill her. I promised him that I’d help. That you would never know from me.”
“But Sarah?” I say.
“He was hers,” she says vehemently, and for a second I am confused and think, illogically, that she means Sarah was biologically Da’s child. “He loved her like she was his.”
“Did he ever think about not taking Sarah with him? Leaving her to Cory or to Kirstin?”
“Cory?” spits Peggy. “You think Cory would have claimed her? And if he had, you think your dad would have left her with him? A man like that?” She shakes her head. “Joe felt that Sarah was Kath’s, not Corey’s. He loved Kath and he would love Sarah. Simple as that.”
It isn’t simple, I think, as I look out the window at the trees swaying in the growing breeze. It isn’t simple at all.
Peggy squeezes my hand tight. “Becca, you can’t tell Sarah… Please…”
“I don’t want to tell her, Peggy,” I say. I am confused, unable to think clearly. “But doesn’t she have a right to…?”
“What would be the point?” demands Peggy. She shakes my hand agitatedly. “What would be the point of telling her that the man she loved, that she’s grieving for, was not her dad really? What’s the point?”
“But it’s about who she is, Peggy, it’s her right…”
“You can’t,” she interrupts.
“People have the right to know where they come from.”
“You can’t,” repeats Peggy, and her voice is squeaky with emotion. “Don’t you see? It would be like your father’s whole life was for nothing. All the sacrifices. All the pain. Trying to protect you. It would be for nothing. For nothing.”
Her voice is getting louder. I can hear Sarah moving about in the room above us. Charlie stands up from the armchair and goes over to the sofa.
“Peg,” he says, and he lifts her to her feet. He puts her head against his chest and she doesn’t resist. Charlie wraps his arms right round her and she disappears into him, crying softly. “Shhh, now,” he says gently. “Shhh. You’ve done what you can, Peg. You’ve done your best. Always done your best. Becca will have to do what she thinks best now. She’ll do what she thinks is right.” For Charlie, it is a long speech.
Sarah comes in the room. She begins to say something, then sees Peggy crying against Charlie’s chest and stops.
“Come on,” I say, and pull Sarah gently from the room. “Let’s go and make Peggy and Charlie some breakfast.”
CHAPTER THREE
The roar of the hairdryer is irritating yet also strangely comforting. Da is to be buried this morning and nothing should feel comfortable. The noise assaults me, leaving my senses jangling. Then a lighter tone. I switch off. My phone. I scramble for my bag, emptying it out onto the duvet. A call, not a text. I think it’s going to stop ringing before I manage to get to it.
“Hello?”
There is a silence, just long enough to be unnerving, then a voice that is vaguely familiar says, “Rebecca?”
“Yes?”
“It’s David.”
My brain does not move immediately into gear.
“David Carruthers.”
“Hello David.” My voice registers my surprise.
“You got back home safely.”
He sounds strangely subdued.
“The funeral is today.”
“I’m sorry. I… I shouldn’t be phoning but…”
“It’s okay.” I feel alarmed and I don’t know why.
“Rebecca, it was me.”
I sit down suddenly on the edge of the bed, my mind making an illogical leap. For one stupid moment, I think he means it was he who murdered my mother but of course, that doesn’t make sense.
“What was you?” My voice is sharp, rising more aggressively than I mean it to.
“The texts. The Islands.”
“What?
“I’m sorry.”
But…” I turn towards the dressing-table mirror, suddenly catching sight of my own, unguarded reflection, incredulity etched into my face. None of this seems to fit.
“But I got the first text before I met you.”
“You phoned the office. My mother got the message and I knew I had to do something, the state of her… Rebecca she’s ill. I wanted you to just go away and not ask questions so I sent a text hoping it would unnerve you. Then I phoned you at the guest house to make sure. I didn’t plan to meet you, but…”
He means it. It was him. Fury sweeps over me as the reality sinks in.
“You bastard.”
He says nothing.
“You fucking terrified me at those Islands.”
“Rebecca, I wouldn’t have touched you. You weren’t in any real danger, I promise you. I liked you.”
“You liked me? You liked me, you little fucker!” I jump up from the bed, unable to keep still. I am shaking with anger, my hand trembling so much that the phone knocks lightly against the metal of my hooped earring. I am aware of the noise but somehow can’t think what to do to stop it.
“Listen…”
“I should get the police to you.”
“Please don’t. Please… I know I shouldn’t have phoned but…”
“So why did you phone? To be forgiven? Fucking forget it!”
“Rebecca, I phoned to explain but also to warn you.”
Something inside me goes cold. I stop suddenly, in the middle of the room, listening.
“James Cory,” he says.
“What about him?”
“He… I think you…” I hear him sigh in frustration. “Look, I need to tell you this from the start. Please just listen. Please.”
“You’d better be quick.” I look at my watch. “You might have forgotten, but I’ve got a funeral to go to.”
He ignores my hostility.
“When you phoned the office looking for my father, I did really want you to leave because my mother was so upset about the whole thing being raised again. It had been a terrible episode in my parents’ lives, and she does suffer from mental illness, so she really was in a state that this was all going to be dragged up again. That bit was absolutely true.”
I say nothing. I don’t feel the need to give him any verbal encouragement because I’m still furious.
“My father… I told you that he once spoke to me about the whole thing.”
The rain pattering gently against the bedroom window suddenly intensifies and I look over at the patterns of raindrops against the glass. So welcome after the heat.
“Rebecca, are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“There was one thing I didn’t tell you.”
“What?”
“It might be nothing.”
“What?”
“The week before your mother’s murder, James was in the process of setting up his office in Glasgow. He and my father had a business trip together round the same time.” He hesitates. “My father said it might be completely irrelevant but… well, they were away three days and had gone to the hotel bar each night. On the final night, James said he was having an early night because of the journey next day. My father agreed but found he was a bit restless and decided, on a whim, to go out for half an hour to a small bar near the hotel. He saw James there.”
“So…?”
“It might be nothing, really…”
“David, what are you trying to tell me?
“James was sitting at a table, deep in conversation with a man.”
“Who?”
“My dad didn’t know. It wasn’t anyone he recognised. He said there was something about the way they were talking that seemed a bit odd.”
“Why odd?”
“Nothing he could put his finger on. Just a general
impression. The way they were sitting. The body language.”
“Helpful.”
He sighs.
“So what happened?”
“James put his hand in his inside pocket as if he was looking for something but at that point, the barman asked Dad if he wanted a drink and he got distracted.”
“So he never saw what Cory took out of the pocket?”
“No – if he took anything out. Anyway, when Dad looked back, James caught sight of him. He had the distinct impression James wasn’t pleased to see him. The striking thing was how quickly James got up and left the guy when he saw Dad. It was clear he didn’t want to introduce him.”
“And…?”
“That’s it really. I told you it might be nothing.”
It was hard to make sense of this.
“How did Cory explain the fact that he wasn’t having an early night?”
“He said that he’d had an unexpected call from a business associate – something to do with the new office – so he’d agreed to meet this man late on because they were leaving early in the morning to drive back to Inverness. It sounded perfectly plausible and my father didn’t think any more about it. He and James walked back to the hotel together, then had a nightcap in the hotel bar after all, before heading for bed. It was only later, after your mother died, that Dad found himself wondering again about who the man was.”
I don’t even know why he’s telling me this. Then a bell begins to ring in my head. A newspaper story I read about a man who arranged to have his business partner killed. The attempt was botched but he was later charged with attempted murder. The basis of the prosecution was that he was filmed the week before on a hotel’s CCTV, handing over money in a bar. A hitman. A clean way of killing. A way you get no blood under the fingernails, just as Jackie Sandford suspected. But of course, there was no CCTV back then to capture James Cory’s actions.
“Rebecca?”
It was the final piece of the jigsaw.
“I’m thinking.”
“Anyway, my father never said anything to the police.”
“Why not?”
“Because it could have been exactly what James claimed. And because James was his friend and he didn’t want to complicate his position by mentioning something that might have been completely irrelevant.”
“And might not…”
“And might not,” Carruthers agrees, his voice subdued. “Anyway, before I met you…”
“That’s the bit I don’t get,” I say belligerently. “You actually met me… We talked… We walked by the river… Christ, I nearly…”
“That was real.”
“How can it have been real when the next night you terrified the life out of me?”
“Rebecca, listen! I did that for a reason. Please try to… Before I met you, I contacted James and told him you were in town. We were old family friends and I thought you were just some nuisance who was going to open old wounds and stir up something that our families were glad to put behind us. I just wanted you to go away. But there was something about James’s reaction that… well, it unnerved me.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Just an instinct. There was something not right. That’s all I can say, Rebecca. Something that combined in my head with the story my father told me. I know that my father wondered about that incident, in his later years especially. And then I met you and I began to think, what if James had been involved? What would he do to you? I wanted you to go home, but I knew you wouldn’t. You’re not the type to back off. I could tell that.”
“For fuck’s sake, David! What did you think Cory was going to do to me?”
But even asking the question makes me shiver suddenly. The silence that follows scares me.
“I needed you to go home,” David says eventually.
I sit back down on the edge of the bed. We both know what James Cory is capable of. David Carruthers had told me he didn’t believe Cory was capable of murder. But his actions suggest otherwise. When the chips were down, he followed his instinct. “Rebecca…?”
“What?”
“I said, can you forgive me?”
There is action, and there is motivation, and sometimes one is wrong and sometimes both are wrong. But, however wrong David Carruthers got the action, he has taken a huge emotional risk in phoning me, a risk that shows that he believes in me more than Cory. That moment at the river… Perhaps it had been real after all.
“Why did you phone today? Why did you tell me all this?”
“Because… because I didn’t like the idea that I had frightened you and that you might think you were still under threat. I wanted you to know you weren’t in real danger, that there wouldn’t be any more texts, and that nobody would follow you home.”
Shit. That hadn’t even occurred to me. “But I also want to make sure you leave this now, that you don’t go near James again. And yes, I admit that’s partly for my mother’s sake.” He pauses. “But it’s for yours too.”
“Is Cory… Do you think he…?”
“No. I think he thinks that you’ve gone and that it’s over. It is over, isn’t it?” There is an appeal in his voice.
I suppose it is, but I don’t answer.
“Another thing,” he says.
“There’s more, David? I’m not sure I can handle it.” Sarcasm is my default setting. I can’t help it.
“When I phoned and you were in James’s office…”
“Yes.”
“I had only called again to tell him I’d met you, that I didn’t think you would be sticking around. I wanted him to think you were just a grieving daughter up here on a passing whim. I didn’t want him near you. I told him you’d seen Terry Simons and were beginning to see that your father was most likely the guilty one.”
“What did he say?”
“That he was glad you had realised the truth.”
I smile grimly.
“Oh, I realised the truth all right.”
“I told him you were going home, tried to make out you were no threat.”
“And was I? A threat?”
“Yes, I think you probably were,” he says slowly. “Did you find anything else out after we met?”
He sounds curious. But can I trust him? Maybe this is all a ruse. Maybe Cory is making him phone to find out what I know.
“I found out what I already knew. My father did not kill my mother.”
“That’s good, Rebecca. You have peace then. But you can’t prove it, so please leave it now. Let it lie. Don’t come back here.”
“Not very friendly of you, David,” I say mockingly.
“I want you to be safe.”
I feel weary suddenly. The early rise. All the emotional tension. The ordeal still ahead. I let myself fall backwards onto the bed and stare at the ceiling.
“I wish…” he says.
“What?”
“I wish things could be different. That I could see you again.”
For a moment, I realise how easy it would be in other circumstances to build something in the north. The little threads that might amount to strong connections. My aunt Kirstin and her family. David Carruthers. The possibility of another life. But he is right. It can’t be pursued.
“Yes,” I agree vaguely. It is tempting, but maybe I have finally learned some sense. I don’t add an invitation to contact me when he is next in Glasgow.
I glance at my watch and sit up again.
“I have to go.”
“Good luck,” he says. “And I’m sorry. Really.”
“Goodbye, David,” I say.
For a moment after I hang up, I lie still on top of the bed, listening to the rain. There is something about David Carruthers that reminds me of Father Dangerous. He liked me enough to take a serious emotional risk. But not quite enough to be truly courageous.
The memories are rolling to an end. The song Shameena sang at the funeral is coming up again on the CD, and this time I will finally switch off when it finishes. I do
not know how many times I have listened in the last few weeks, but I know it will be some time before I listen again.
I would love to tie this up neatly now. Present it in a gift-wrapped box. I would love to say that I tracked down that mystery man in the hotel. I would love to say that I confronted him, that he crumbled and confessed to killing my mother. But life isn’t like that, is it? The mystery man is probably dead, for a start. But there is something important to remember. Just because you can’t prove something, doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Here’s my truth. My mother thought she was being daring when she met James Cory for lunch. Bet she dressed really nicely that day, took extra care with her makeup. Bet she was skittish with it all, the way she was going to manipulate him, get what she wanted, pressurise him to leave his wife. I keep thinking of Jackie Sandford saying she was laughing with nerves and excitement afterwards. She knew she’d pushed it. But the truth was, it didn’t matter what she’d said. Her fate had already been sealed the week before. She just didn’t know it yet. They talked over lunch. Cory got angry. He didn’t like someone else taking control. He didn’t like what she was saying about corruption and the council contracts and the Masons. But he tried to placate her. He agreed to leave his wife because he knew he’d never actually have to do it. Then he left her to her fate, knowing he would never see her again. What did he think about as he walked back to his office? What did he feel? Doubt? Guilt? Or just relief? Does a psychopath get normal emotions mixed in with the madness? Meanwhile, my mother phoned Jackie Sandford. Then she phoned my father, who fell apart and drove to the loch to end his life. But he couldn’t. And while he was doing that, the man in the bar, the nameless, faceless assassin, did the work he was paid to do.
I wish I knew exactly where… how… but those details are not mine to know. Life has unanswered mysteries. Her car was abandoned, so my guess is that she was bundled into another vehicle. Her life probably ended as my father drove to terminate his. But we stopped him, me and Sarah. I know we did. He thought of us.
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