“We properly got together when I was fifteen, started walking out together.” Margo realised how old fashioned that phrase sounded, even as she spoke the words. What she should have said was, when heavy petting turned into something that spoke to the animal in both of them. She’d felt it then, felt as if she’d conquered him, even as he bragged openly about shagging her. She was made a woman, she knew things he didn’t. She knew he was still a boy and inside him was a need to be loved and held, warm and close to her skin.
“We were in love,” she said simply, unable to express in mere words something that felt so deep and true to her. “My parents had a fit when they found out. I was locked in the house for a week, but Oscar climbed in through my bedroom window and helped me escape. It was pure Romeo and Juliet.” Margo smiled at the memory, the day she left her parents for the last time. They never spoke to her again. “Although it did turn out more Bonnie and Clyde in the end.”
“How do you mean, Bonnie and Clyde – the bank robbers?”
Margo laughed at her pronunciation of robbers, the r rolling around her tongue in a parody of a French accent.
“Aye, ze bonk hrrobbers. We got involved in a few scrapes, nothing much, but the polis started taking an interest. Oscar was beaten up more than a few times by the polis. Bastards!”
“Are you saying Oscar was mistreated by the police?”
“Aye, they took him into the cells and took turns hitting him. Happens all the time, you just live with it.” She watched as the reporter’s pencil raced across the notepad, then her eyes widened as she realised what the scribbles represented. “Is that shorthand?” Her finger pointed at the notebook.
“Yes, any reporter should know how to use shorthand. You can’t always rely on electronic equipment.” Josephine’s eyes indicated the mobile phone lying innocuously in between them.
“No, guess not.” Margo filed away that information for later. “Aye, well, it was just small-town stuff. You know, bit of drug dealing, stealing stuff people wouldn’t even know was missing. Just making ends meet. Oscar was hardly a criminal, but he was a bit too quick to use his fists. I held him back a lot, stopped him before he did too much damage. People used to wind him up on purpose, you see, especially when he’d had a drink. Thought that he’d be easier to take on if he was pissed, get themselves a reputation as the man who brought Oscar down. Trouble was, I couldn’t control him when he was pissed – he really hurt some of those guys. It was their own fault, everyone knew not to wind him up when he was pissed!” She said this defiantly, still protecting Oscar even after he was dead.
“And when did he start hurting you?” Josephine’s voice was quiet, the question unexpected.
When did it start? She cast her mind back to the early years, his playful ‘hitting’ as he’d called it. She’d accepted the smacks as his way of showing he loved her – they weren’t proper punches, just affectionate. “We’d been together a couple of years and I’d caught him with another girl.” Her memory took her back to that day, the hurt she’d felt at being so easily replaced by another woman, the mix of anger and fear as she confronted him. He’d hit her properly then, she remembered her head exploding from the force of the blow before she learnt how to move with his fist, reduce the force of the impact without avoiding it – that just made him want to hit her harder. Funny thing was she welcomed the pain, it hurt less than the feeling of rejection, of being used, of being disposable. In time, the physical violence became a natural part of their relationship, and like a whipped cur she crawled back to him every time.
“After a few years.” Margo’s voice was a whisper. She’d never told anyone this before, so why now, sitting before this French reporter, spilling out her soul as if she was in a confessional? “It wasn’t his fault.” She said this defensively, angry at letting down her guard. “Oscar had a terrible childhood, no one ever believed him.”
“Believed what?”
Margo looked up from her lap, the calculating expression returning. “I’ll tell you what his demons were, but you’ll have to pay me.”
Josephine toyed with her pencil, spinning it around her long fingers like a drum majorette on parade. “I’m allowed to offer you £100, cash. If the story is good and we can lead on an insight into Oscar’s murder, then I can go higher.”
They sat like poker players facing each other across the table, and Margo cashed in first, as Josephine knew she would.
“Where’s the money? I’m not saying anything else until you give me a hundred quid.”
Josephine gave her a thin smile and stood up, leaving Margo on her own in the office. She looked around her in disinterest, then turned the computer monitor around to see what the reporter was working on. A mock-up of the next Courier edition filled the screen, a photograph of the minister with a headline announcing his murder. She hastily turned the monitor back, thinking hard.
She sat motionless until Josephine returned, counting out five £20 notes and placing them in front of her as if placing a bet. Margo pocketed the money and sneered at the reporter as though it was she who had won the round.
“Oscar was sexually molested as a young child. He told his teachers, his fucking useless parents and the polis. Nobody did anything about it. On top of that, Oscar was beaten, beaten hard by his dad and forced to spend hours alone with his fucking abuser. How do you think that affected him? Every week he was forced to go to his abuser and face every fucking perversion the old sod felt like doing, safe in the knowledge that he was untouchable. It wasn’t just the one old pervert either. Oscar told me he was taken to the orphanage and raped by people there, whilst the fucking nuns looked the other way. That’s why he turned out like he did, that’s why I stayed with him and tried to help him. I did my best.” Margo started crying, the tears leaving trails of black mascara in their wake. “I did what I fucking could for him. I loved him, I just wasn’t strong enough for him. No one was.”
Josephine handed over a box of tissues and Margo grabbed it angrily, dabbing at her eyes, too late to avoid smearing her make-up. “The bastard had it coming to him. I’m glad he’s dead!”
“Who, Oscar?”
Margo looked up at the reporter, contempt written across her tear-stained face. “Not Oscar, I loved him.” She spun the screen around, finger jabbing in accusation at the minister’s photograph. “The fucking pervert minister of St Cuthbert’s. He’s the bastard that ruined Oscar.”
Josephine’s pencil made indecipherable scribbles across the page. “Tell me how you found him, the day he died.” Her voice was softer now, gentle.
“I’d waited all night for him, worried that he hadn’t come home. First thing in the morning, I went looking for him, thought maybe the polis had him. I was only a little way down the glen when I saw him.” Her eyes widened as she relived the moment, saw the shape dangling from the tree. “He was hanging from the Hanging Tree, dead. I saw crows picking at his eyes, his neck sliced open. That tree is fucking cursed, someone should chop the bloody thing down.”
“What then?” Josephine encouraged.
“I ran. I ran as fast as I could. I thought he’d killed himself but...”
“But what, Margo?”
“But Oscar wasn’t ever going to kill himself. Someone killed him. For all I knew they were still somewhere close. I ran all the way to the town and ended up at the polis station. I told them everything I know.”
“Did you tell them about the minister?”
Margo shook her head. “No, but then, they weren’t offering me money.”
IX
MONDAY 13:50
“Damn it!” The laird swore at the note pinned onto the gamekeeper’s cottage door. Gone to town food shopping, please let yourself in and look around. I couldn’t find any notes. Margo. He tried the door. It was unlocked and he entered the small, dark hall. Margo had left a faint scent on the air which he inhaled deeply, his imagination running riot as he
pictured himself in closer proximity to Margo’s body than had hitherto been the case. Shutting the door behind him, he walked the few steps to the kitchen, eyes searching the shelves and cupboards whilst deciding where to start his search. Selecting a drawer at random, his fat fingers rifled through the contents to search underneath, then lifted the entire drawer out of the unit. The procedure was repeated for each kitchen cupboard, the contents carefully examined and then replaced.
He pursed his thin lips in disappointment as he stepped through into the living room, turning the cheap cushions to look underneath, moving the heavy furniture that came with the cottage to investigate any potential hiding places – nothing. That left the upstairs bedroom and bathroom.
An hour later and he had to admit defeat. It didn’t help that he had no real idea of what he was looking for, but Oscar had made it clear that he held written evidence which would look very bad for him were it ever to be found. A threat that had been left to hang over his head like Damocles’ sword. He stood in the bedroom, fingers absently stroking the fabric of Margo’s underwear that he had taken out of a bedside drawer with a reverence usually reserved for religious artefacts. Could Oscar have invented the whole thing? Maybe the only evidence that had ever existed had died with him. A smile flitted across his face at the justice of the blackmailer’s death, his satisfaction only tempered by a slight worry as to who was responsible for the murder on his land.
With a feeling of regret, he laid the underwear down on the chest of drawers, but not before burying his face into the fabric and taking a long, deep breath. The sheds would have to wait for another day. He’d need them emptied first, which reminded him to retrieve a letter from his jacket pocket which he propped on the kitchen table before leaving the house.
The dogs barked in excitement as he approached the Land Rover, expecting their confinement to be over. He ignored them, turning the vehicle around in the small area in between cottage and outbuildings before heading back down the glen. On an impulse he took the turn-off before the estate house, heading along a rough track that led into one of the conifer plantations he’d inherited from his father. The track split several times and he unerringly made each turn without hesitation. One advantage of being raised as a child on an estate like this was to develop an encyclopaedic knowledge of the lay of the land, to know each track and path as well as an urban child learns the city streets around its home.
An abandoned stone building eventually came into view, trees growing almost up to the walls. The windows consisted of small slits, looking more like a Second World War bunker than a house. Iron bars covered the windows as if it were a prison, but the windows were too small for any human to climb through. He parked the Land Rover, opening the back door to release the two big dogs who began running around in a frenzy, dropping noses to the ground in search of interesting scents to follow.
“Heel!” The word was spat out, the animals reluctantly running to shadow their master as he pushed open the solid wooden door that sealed the entrance. They filed in, the laird followed by the two large dogs, and entered a square, stone room devoid of any furniture. Several rusting metal hooks hung from high ceiling beams awaiting the next slaughter. The room was cold, little sunlight reached the building through the oppressive fir trees and the sealed windows left the air stale, smelling of dust and that faint odour he associated with death and decay.
The building had once been a cared-for home, a place to bring up a family and work the land, but whichever family had last lived here were long gone – forcibly removed with so many others in the time known as the Clearances. The laird’s family were landowners even then, greedy for the profit offered by sheep grazing and uncaring of those who worked their lands. The building was now used as a cold store, a place to hang pheasants, grouse and deer killed during the seasonal shooting sprees. He stopped in surprise, seeing a box of crisps left against the wall. Next to the box was an ornate hourglass, full of red sand. The laird picked up the hourglass, wondering who had been using his cold store as an impromptu hide-out and wondering at their choice of accessories. The hourglass was heavy and rested on a base made of mahogany or some other valuable hard wood. It pivoted between two carved and polished leg bones, from a young red deer, he estimated, judging by the size. He thought it would make a handsome addition to the mantlepiece in his trophy room and inverted the hourglass to watch the red sand trickling through its pinched centre. What could it have been designed to time? The sand would take days to complete the journey from one side to the other. There was a coin embedded in the newly upturned base, Pope Paul II in profile. Holding it under one arm he turned to the door and pulled on the handle. It wouldn’t move. “Blast! Must be the damp.”
He placed the hourglass on the floor and pulled at the door with more force – it still wouldn’t budge. “What the hell?”
He bent down so that his eyes were at the same level as the handle and keyed the torch on his mobile, peering at the gap between door and frame. The mortice lock had engaged, he could see the over-engineered Victorian slab of metal bridging the gap and locking him inside. He stared stupidly at the empty keyhole – there had not been a key in the lock ever since his father had died – there was never a need this far out in the glen, especially for a building that remained empty most of the year. Nobody had locked it, he’d have heard the key being put in the lock, or the dogs would have barked at the first sign of anyone else being near.
“This is ridiculous!” he muttered to himself, angry at being locked inside one of his own buildings. How could it have happened? He’d been in and out of the cold store for years. The door always swung shut on well-engineered gravity hinges and the latch held it shut. That was sufficient to keep any animals out of the cold store when he had game hanging, and a simple turn of the handle released the catch. He tried turning the handle again, watching through the narrow gap in the frame as the latch wound back into the door – but the mortice remained put.
The dogs panted up at him, wondering why he didn’t open the door. There were interesting smells outside, new smells that needed investigating. One of the dogs whined impatiently only to receive a kick. “Shut up, stupid animal, let me think.”
The sheriff thought, and the more he thought, the more concerned he became. The cold store was well off any beaten track, the only person he could expect to visit was Oscar – and he was dead. Nobody knew he was here. He checked his phone for a signal, knowing that the nearest phone mast was on the other side of the mountain. Nothing. No connection available. He checked the window, too small to climb through even if it didn’t have solid steel bars – his father had insisted the cold store be made more secure after a deer carcass had gone missing one particularly bleak winter. With eyes growing ever more frantic, he searched the room for a way out. The walls were thick stone, the narrow windows barred, the ceiling too high to reach and made with solid wooden beams with lathe and horsehair plaster filling the gaps – and the door, he already knew, was impassable.
The next appointment in his diary was for the Sheriff Court in Inverness on Thursday, three days away. If he ate the crisps sparingly, he reckoned he could last until then – and surely someone would be sent out to look for him if he hadn’t appeared or answered his phone? Then there was whoever had been using his store for their own purposes, perhaps they’d turn up any minute and help him out? Feeling suitably encouraged, he opened the first crisp packet and sat down on the floor, sharing a few packs with his dogs who wolfed the snack down as if it were their last meal. The box stated ‘24 mixed flavour multipack, not for resale’.
“That’s almost six packets a day, plenty to keep us going!” He grinned at the dogs, ruffling fur in a companionable way. They were all in this together and might as well make the best of a bad thing. The red sand still spilled in a minute waterfall through the hourglass, a gentle trickle from one glass container to the next. He made a bet with himself there and then, believing he’d be found and let out
before the sand completely filled the lower glass.
Hours passed, the sun shone for a while and a narrow rectangle of light traversed in slow motion across the opposite wall until obscured by trees. One of the dogs released its bowels on the floor, completely ruining the transcendental state he was trying to achieve as a way of passing time. The acrid smell filled the room, it had nowhere else to go. He moved as far away from the unpleasant stench as he could, burying his nose in his tweed jacket to moderate the odour, and realised for the first time that he was thirsty. A light bulb went off in his head – thirst! They had no source of water, both he and the dogs would be needing to drink before too long. He desperately tried to remember how long someone could survive without water, was it three days? That seemed an awfully short time. Surely nomads crossing deserts managed longer than that?
An uncomfortable thought occurred to him: suppose whoever had left the hourglass and the crisps had done so in the knowledge that he would be trapped here without water? The salt-laden crisps would hasten death, of that he had no doubt. He searched the room for anything that could be used to force the door, not even a loose stone in the wall. The roof offered a possible way out, if only he could pull himself up using the metal hooks. After twenty minutes of launching himself into the air and cutting his hands on the rusty metal he was out of breath, collapsing on the cold stone floor and coughing from the exertion. No way out. He’d have to wait until someone found him.
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