Dead in the Water

by Aline Templeton

  Tonight, with Cammie setting off tomorrow for a two-week school rugby tour in France, they were having a farewell supper of roast beef – his choice. Marjory’s roasts tended to be hit-and-miss affairs, but tonight it was definitely a hit, with the beef just pink inside and even the roast potatoes, for once, crispy without being charred.

  ‘Better make the most of this, lad,’ Bill advised as he carved the sirloin. ‘Frog’s legs and snails tomorrow night, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  His children ignored this facetiousness. Cammie took his plateful and began piling on potatoes; Cat, who had spent three weeks with a French family the previous year, said, ‘Oh, he’ll like the food all right. The big problem is that I’m not sure he knows the French for “That’s not enough. I’m still hungry.” ’

  Cammie looked up, alarmed. ‘They’ll speak English, won’t they? Some, at least.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ Cat said darkly. ‘Even if they do, they won’t.’

  At the last parents’ evening, Cammie’s French teacher had pointed out that oral competence could only be achieved by actually saying something. Marjory looked at her boy, wondering how he would cope. He was looking forward to the trip, but he was clearly nervous too; he’d never before been away for so long, and he’d be moving around the different homes of his French counterparts – quite a challenge for her quiet, home-loving son. He’d been such an undemanding teenager and she’d never had the run-ins with him that she’d had with Cat; Cammie was still close, still affectionate, and she’d miss him. She could only hope he’d be too busy and happy to think of missing her – as long as they won their matches!

  ‘The important thing,’ Bill was saying now, ‘is to understand what the ref is telling you, or you’ll get yourself sent off.’

  ‘The coach has taken care of that.’ With a certain triumph, Cammie turned to his sister. ‘Bet you don’t know the French for offside, anyway. Or handling the ball in the scrum—’

  The ringing of Marjory’s work phone cut into what he was saying. He stopped, she said, ‘Damn!’ and went to pick it up, conscious of accusing looks on all three faces. They knew it wasn’t her fault when a family evening was spoiled, but they still blamed her.

  ‘Fleming. Yes?’ She knew she sounded terse. But listening, she began to smile. ‘That’s great news, Ewan! Mairi’s all right? And have you decided on a name?’

  She listened for some time, said once, ‘Yes, of course. That’s fine,’ and eventually rang off.

  ‘That’s Ewan Campbell’s baby arrived. A little girl, to be called Eilidh Shona, after her two grannies. And Ewan said more in the last five minutes than he’s said in all the time he’s been with us. Just as well he’s taking paternity leave – his mind certainly wouldn’t be on the job.’

  Marjory sat down and everyone relaxed. It was only after she had gone to bed, and was in that first, profound sleep, that the phone rang again.

  Jaki flew to the bedroom window and peered out. Lights from the house flooded the terrace outside, and she went cold as she saw Marcus below lying motionless and crumpled on his side, his head against the step up to the French windows of the drawing room. He had been wearing a pale grey cashmere sweater and even from here she could see a great dark patch on his back. Blood! She gave a stifled scream.

  She could hear Sylvia’s tremulous voice from the room below, calling, ‘Jaki! Jaki! Help! It’s Marcus! Jaki, are you there?’

  ‘On my way,’ she shouted back. But even as she turned, her eyes went with sudden recollection to where the shape had been that she had convinced herself was a bush. The space was empty.

  Jaki gulped, then pulled the chunky sweater she had been wearing over her pyjamas, shoved her feet into shoes and grabbed her mobile. She ran across the landing and down the stairs, hands shaking so much that it took her three goes to dial 999. She was gasping out the details as she crossed the hall.

  The front door stood open. For a fraction of a second she hesitated – was Kevin lurking just outside, waiting for her to appear? A terrifying thought, but she didn’t lack courage. Marcus could still be alive and she might be able to do something for him – but he had been so utterly still . . . inert – not dead! Oh please, not dead!

  Outside, it was a clear, cold, moonless night, with a touch of ground frost. To the left, light from the drawing-room windows spilled out over the scruffy gravel in front of the house. No one was visible, but the trees and bushes of the shrubbery made great pools of shadow and it was not only the cold that made Jaki shiver. The police and ambulance were on their way – but who knew better than she did how long it took to reach this place? She mustn’t cry. It would only weaken her. Plunging into the darkness, she rounded the corner of the house.

  It was treacherous underfoot, with an icy slick on the green slime on the paving stones. She slid and had to steady herself against the wall, and looking down she saw marks which showed Marcus, too, had slipped – clearly, that was how he had hit his head.

  He lay in the oblong of light from the drawing room. The lights from Jaki’s room upstairs revealed an expanse of overgrown lawn beyond the terrace, and from Sylvia’s bedroom immediately below an agitated shadow was cast on to the paving stones further along. Jaki saw Sylvia was vainly trying to lift the heavy sash. She was mouthing something but Jaki didn’t wait to see what it was.

  She knelt down by Marcus’s side. His eyes were horribly half-open, showing the whites, and in the dim light his face looked almost grey. The bloody patch on his sweater was spreading, spreading . . .

  Dead bodies don’t bleed. She had been working long enough on a crime series to know that. So he was alive – but for how much longer? And what could she do? She wished she’d had her fictional counterpart’s training as she groped for the scraps of information she retained from first-aid lectures at school.

  You put pressure on a wound to stop it bleeding, didn’t you? But what if that was the wrong thing to do – what if it made things worse? What if – oh why, for God’s sake, did anyone live more than ten minutes from an A&E department?

  She could hear his breathing now, shallow, but steady enough. With both hands, she found the site – a neat slit, just below his shoulder blade at the left-hand side – and pressed heavily. After a few interminable minutes, it seemed as if the blood flow was at least slowing. She raised her head.

  Sylvia, her expression anguished, had her face pressed to the window pane. ‘He’s alive!’ Jaki yelled, wondering if she would be able to hear through the glass, and saw her put a hand to her throat in relief. ‘Blankets! Can you hear me? Blankets!’ Sylvia nodded, and turned away.

  Jaki was beginning to realize that the cold could be as deadly as any wound. The knife must have missed his heart, or he would surely be in a worse state, but she didn’t know what internal bleeding there might be, and with the head injury too she dared not move him. Her own teeth were beginning to chatter and her hands were growing numb, making it hard to keep up the pressure.

  It seemed an age before Sylvia in her wheelchair appeared at the French windows, opened them with difficulty and threw two blankets and a quilt down the step to where Jaki could reach them.

  ‘How is he? How is he?’ Sylvia seemed almost hysterical. ‘I can’t help, I can’t do anything! Have you called the police – an ambulance?’

  Jaki didn’t need this. As she cautiously removed her hand to spread the quilt under Marcus as best she could, then pulled the blankets over both of them and restored the pressure, she was thinking desperately of something else useful the woman could do, before she lost it entirely.

  ‘They’re coming, Sylvia. But we need hot-water bottles. Boil up the kettle and see if you can find any. Do you think you could manage that?’

  ‘Yes! Yes, of course I can!’ Given a task, Sylvia visibly took a grip on her emotions, and the wheelchair hummed into action as she disappeared back into the room.

  It was very, very silent after she left. The stars in the night sky were so numerous and so close, t
hey almost seemed to be bearing down on Jaki as she lay pressed to Marcus’s back to share her body heat, looking about her fearfully. The thought that Kevin Docherty, out of sight but close by, perhaps admiring his handiwork and its success as bait to lure her out, took possession of her mind, and every rustle of leaves in the light wind, every snap of a twig as some night creature went about its business, made her gasp and stiffen with terror.

  The bleeding, she thought as she removed her hand and flexed it to get the feeling back, seemed to have stopped, which for a moment made her panic – was she trying fruitlessly to warm a corpse? When she put her hand to his throat, she could feel a pulse – but he was cold, so cold!

  Hot-water bottles would help, but Jaki didn’t have much confidence in Sylvia. She’d been away a long time now – was she just going to come back in an even worse state, saying she couldn’t find them? The frustration, that Jaki couldn’t go and search on her own swift feet, was mounting by the time the wheelchair came into view again.

  She had done the older woman an injustice. ‘That’s two.’ Sylvia, now much more composed, threw the bottles down to her. ‘I found four – the kettle’s just boiling for the other two.’ She turned and went off again.

  Jaki was tucking in the bottles beside Marcus’s still body when she heard the blessed sound of sirens, and burst into tears.

  Karolina Cisek had been on edge all evening. She’d told Rafael what had happened, of course. He’d been much less bothered than she was about the fight, but then men were like that. And, she suspected, he hadn’t been as shocked as she had been last night to find that Kasper carried a knife. He’d mumbled something about needing protection, and made her put it back without saying anything.

  She didn’t trust Kasper. He had a temper and he’d been furious with the man he called Stefan. Money was everything to Kasper, and he was a – what was that English word she’d learned the other day? Chancer, that was it. You couldn’t trust him. He always had his own agenda.

  She couldn’t settle to anything. Rafael, watching TV, said at last impatiently, ‘What’s the matter? He’s not coming now. You made it pretty clear he wasn’t welcome, anyway.’

  ‘As if he’d care!’ she said scornfully – but at least Rafael seemed finally convinced she wasn’t still secretly looking back over her shoulder at Kasper. She’d been a foolish girl at that time, very young and dazzled by the money he could flash about, until she realized a smooth tongue wasn’t the same as honesty and a good heart. Rafael had his faults – and who didn’t? – but he would never let her down.

  It worried her that Kasper had followed them here. Why should he do that? He had not been a friend of Rafael’s, and he couldn’t possibly think that now she had a husband and child she would so much as look at him. But then, being Kasper, with his arrogance, he just might. And he might have reckoned they could be useful, too.

  Karolina sighed, unconsciously, then looked at her watch. Half past ten – surely he would have appeared by now if he was going to? And that was late, when you had a six o’clock start.

  ‘Never mind the football,’ she said, getting up. ‘I can tell you – the Manchester United will win. It always does. Time we were in bed.’

  Sylvia was waiting in the drawing room doing breathing exercises to try to control the whirling thoughts that were making her feel dizzy, as the paramedics did their work on Marcus, making professionally soothing noises. A woman constable had taken efficient control, sending her male colleague to make tea and bringing Jaki, wrapped in a blanket, shivering and tear-stained, back into the drawing room.

  ‘Don’t worry, dear,’ she was saying. ‘You did great. Are you all right?’

  Jaki, shaking uncontrollably with reaction, looked down at her bloodied hands. ‘If I could just wash—’

  Sylvia went to her side. ‘Darling, you were so brave!’ she said, her mouth trembling. ‘If – if Marcus pulls through, he’ll owe his life to you.’

  Jaki nodded, biting her lip, then trailed off wearily.

  Sylvia sat back in her chair, fighting fatigue herself. Her face was grey with shock and there were purple shadows round her eyes, but she was determined to show nothing more than dignified distress, if it took the last of whatever remained of her acting skills. She despised public displays of raw emotion.

  When the doorbell had gone – it seemed as if hours had passed since then! – she had been sitting in her chair, looking out at the night and thinking her melancholy thoughts, as had become her habit before she began the long and complicated process of putting herself to bed. She’d seen the attack, but if she told the police that now there would be questioning, official statements, hours and hours of it, when she wanted – needed – to be with Laddie’s son, whom she so wished had been hers too. They’d stop her going with Marcus – and anyway, she was still too confused to sort out exactly what she’d seen.

  With her most gracious manner, Sylvia turned to the constable. ‘My dear, I shall want to go to hospital with Marcus, obviously. Can you arrange for them to take me in the ambulance, or must I drive myself?’

  Doubt showed on the woman’s face. ‘Are you his mother?’

  ‘Stepmother,’ Sylvia said unblushingly.

  ‘Oh, I see. But really, you could help him more by telling us anything you can about what happened. They’ll take care of him, you know, and there’s nothing else you could do for him.’

  ‘Of course. But quite honestly, I couldn’t tell you anything coherent. I’m feeling very muddled, and until I know about – Marcus, I can’t even bring myself to think about anything else.’ Her control had slipped for a moment here, but perhaps it was all to the good: even she could not have produced quite such an affecting sob deliberately.

  It worked. ‘Don’t get upset, now,’ the woman said hastily. ‘I’ll have a word with the crew – it’s not regular, but I don’t think you should be driving—’

  She gave her a worried look and Sylvia seized on this. ‘I would have to, for Marcus. To be there if – when he wakes up.’

  ‘That’s right, dear. He’ll be fine, I’m sure.’ The woman went out into the garden, where a stretcher on wheels was waiting for Marcus to be lifted on.

  Sylvia closed her eyes with a sigh of relief. She’d promised Laddie she wouldn’t leave his boy, as she struggled and swore in her clumsy search for the hot-water bottles that just might save him from dying of cold. And would she ever have thought of looking in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, if Laddie hadn’t put the idea in her head?

  She wished he could have helped her think clearly now, but close as she felt he had been to her, Laddie had remained silent on that point.

  DI Fleming passed the ambulance on the road between Sandhead and the A75. She’d been told there had been a possibly fatal assault, but no more than that, so she noticed with interest that its lights were flashing but it wasn’t in a tremendous hurry. That could be a good or a bad sign for the victim inside, but at least it meant there wasn’t a corpse waiting for her at the other end.

  When she reached Tulach House there were three badged cars outside, and a sergeant standing by the front door saluted. There was blue tape stretched across from the front of the house and she congratulated him on his efficiency.

  He gave her a quick description of what seemed to have happened, then went on, ‘There’s only one lady here now. The other lady, Miss –’ he squinted at his notebook – ‘Lascelles – she’s disabled, so they took her with them in the ambulance rather than let her drive to the hospital. She’s the victim’s stepmother.’

  Fleming’s brows rose. ‘Stepmother? Is she, indeed?’ That wasn’t her information, but perhaps Sylvia Lascelles had elevated her status to that of common-law wife – an old Scottish tradition. ‘So who is it that’s here?’

  ‘Miss Johnston – Jaki Johnston, her that’s in the series, you know?’

  ‘Right.’ Fleming went in, following the voices to the room on her right. The French windows were open and there was police activity outs
ide. The room was icy cold, and a young constable was standing by the fireplace looking hopelessly at the dying embers in the grate.

  ‘Looking at it won’t help. Find a box of firelighters and shove in three or four – that should get it going again,’ Fleming instructed him with the voice of experience. ‘And for goodness’ sake shut that door. It’s freezing in here.’

  He shut the windows and went out, looking helpless. The prospect of a fire in the immediate future did not look promising.

  Fleming turned to the forlorn-looking girl sitting on the sofa beside a woman officer, her hands wrapped round a mug of something hot. She was wearing pyjama trousers and a sweater and was swamped by an ill-fitting man’s overcoat.

  ‘Miss Johnston – Jaki? I’m DI Fleming. I came here the other day—’

  ‘Yes. I remember.’

  Jaki was alarmingly pale and still shivering spasmodically. Fleming could barely recognize her as the bright, pretty girl she had seen before. Was there any point in trying to question her at the moment? She was clearly in shock and a doctor would undoubtedly say she ought to be in bed, under sedation.

  ‘Jaki, I don’t want to push you if you don’t feel up to it, but the sooner I know what you can tell us the sooner we can get things moving. Can you help us?’

  The girl’s response was unexpectedly fierce. ‘Of course. The sooner you go and pick the bastard up, the better.’

  Startled, Fleming said, ‘You mean – you saw who did it?’

  ‘No, I didn’t actually see him. Sylvia might have. She’s gone to the hospital with Marcus.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I didn’t need to see what happened. The doorbell rang – I thought it was the director, maybe, coming to talk about scheduling. Then a few minutes later there was a noise, a sort of cry outside my bedroom window, and then Sylvia started screaming.

  ‘But I know who it was. Kevin someone. He was in the pub last night, and he came on to me and then picked a fight with Marcus.’ There were two hectic spots of colour in Jaki’s cheeks now. ‘Nothing happened because there were all these guys from the film crew there and they moved in on him, but then he got banned from the pub and he was just spitting hatred. They told us afterwards he was out on probation or something for knifing someone else. So it’s not rocket science, is it?’