by Penny Grubb
‘But aren’t you needed in London, Annie? I don’t mind entertaining Marian for a couple of days.’
Unexpectedly, she felt tears prick the back of her eye. She’d always known he’d come through for her; do his best. She knew just how much he hated his sister-in-law’s fussing. ‘It’s OK, really. And like I told you when I rang, I’m half here on business. Mrs Watson wants me to make enquiries about a guest who did a moonlight.’
Annie took the long route to drive to town the other side of the peninsula. It would tempt fate to push the Nissan across the mountain pass too often. She decided to go straight to the heart of things and see if talking would help calm her aunt. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the break-in when you rang?’
‘I did tell you, dear. I told you I was sure it was Charlotte. You see Mrs Watson thinks it was drugs she came back for.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘I’m sure it was Charlotte, but it wasn’t drugs. It was the tapes she was after.’
‘The tapes she took from Margot’s?’ Annie remembered the call she’d overheard.
‘Yes, she’d given them to me for safe-keeping. She insisted. I didn’t want them.’
Annie kept her own opinion under wraps about who had insisted, because it was clear that however she’d felt at the time, her aunt didn’t want the things now. ‘Why should they have been safer with you?’
‘Anyone could have found them in one of the ordinary guest rooms. I’ve my own furniture. I locked them in the tallboy.’
‘And what were these tapes anyway?’
‘I didn’t listen to them, of course, but Charlotte told me they were the tapes of Lorraine, the drug addict, the one who had the fall in the hills and went to hospital. And Charlotte went to talk to her. I’m sure she told you. They were the tapes of Lorraine in counselling at Margot’s.’
Annie wondered if Margot’s clients knew that their sessions were taped. What a fertile field for blackmail. ‘Dad said they’d taken Mrs Watson’s booze.’
A crate of single malt, he’d said. Annie thought of the raw spirit Mrs Watson poured down her guests. She balked even at calling it whisky. It was the oldest insurance scam in the book, of course, taking advantage of a break-in, expanding the claim, but this one wasn’t her problem.
‘A decoy, dear. Just a decoy, so we didn’t know what she was really after. And you will take the tapes back with you when you go, won’t you? I’m getting too old for this sort of thing. I want to die in my bed. I’ll keep the doll if I may, but now you know about it, you be sure it comes to you. I’ll get it added to my will.’ Aunt Marian’s voice had lost all its bounce.
Once on the outskirts of town, Annie cast a look towards the ferry docks and put her own tiredness aside. She thought of the treats her aunt had arranged in the old days and how ungrateful she’d always been. The city today must be daunting to her aunt, but maybe she’d like to revisit some of the old haunts now they were together. ‘We could nip across into Glasgow if you like; have a look round the lighthouse museum, or go out to the Rennie Mackintosh house. Then we could get a bite to eat in one of those little bistro places we used to go?’
Her aunt pulled a face. ‘I’m not really in the mood for traipsing round museums. Couldn’t we stay here and just go to the burger bar?’
‘Yeah, fine.’ Annie tried not to feel the rebuff. Not-in-the-mood was her line, when she, a pouting and sulky twelve-year-old, protested that she wanted chips and burger, not silly fancy food. Had her weekend jaunts with Aunt Marian been born from her aunt’s determination to raise her niece the way her dead sister would have wanted? Had they both been miserably bored with museums and fancy food? She turned the thought away, feeling suddenly empty. As though a part of her had grown up and left a void behind. She headed the car for the main street and the burger bar.
As she slid on to the seat, Annie hoped she’d remember to get up slowly. Her skin would be welded to the plastic by the time they left. They ordered sausage, egg and chips. Aunt Marian sat back. ‘Now, I phoned Margot, but she didn’t seem to know what I was talking about, so you’ll have to speak to her.’
‘You’ve been in touch with Margot?’ Annie’s toes curled.
‘Yes, to tell her about Charlotte. Good Heavens! I haven’t told you yet, have I?’
Annie’s thoughts were drawn irresistibly to a mental picture of Margot. Margot smiling that cold half-smile of hers as she listened to Annie’s aunt’s absurd theories.
‘… you know the high pass, the short-cut back to your father’s?’
‘Sorry, Aunt Marian, what was that? Did you say Charlotte’s been in a car crash?’
‘Yes, dear. Pay attention. Last Wednesday. That’s how I know where she is.’
The tables around them were empty, but cluttered as though they’d arrived just after a coach party left. The air was stale. Annie’s hunger disappeared and she balked at the thought of greasy chips. ‘Which hospital?’
‘No, dear …’ Aunt Marian stopped as a harassed and hot looking woman in an apron brought their food.
Annie caught the smell of freshly cooked chips, golden and crisp. Her hunger returned and she reached for the salt.
‘No,’ Aunt Marian repeated, watching the waitress walk away, ‘not the hospital, the morgue.’
‘Oh my God!’ Annie looked up, shocked. ‘Poor Charlotte. What happened?’
‘She must have been going too fast and I suppose she skidded. She’s not the first. The thing is, they don’t know.’
‘Don’t know what? Who doesn’t know?’ She spoke automatically as the shock rippled across her skin. Only a week ago, she and Charlotte had shared drinks and confidences in a pub not so far away. Her aunt held the ketchup bottle out to her. On auto-pilot, she took it and watched herself inscribe her name in big loops with a thin line of tomato across the mound of chips. If she’d been twelve, there’d have been sharp words from her aunt. She stopped herself from dotting the i.
Poor Charlotte. That explained her sudden disappearance. She hadn’t done a runner after all. Then it came to Annie with a jolt, a playback of the words she hadn’t registered as Aunt Marian had spoken them. That road. It happened on that same road.
‘They don’t know it’s her.’ Aunt Marian speared a chip as she spoke. ‘It was in the papers. They said they hadn’t identified the driver, but, of course, I knew at once.’
‘How do you know it’s Charlotte? Was there a photo?’
‘Oh no. I just knew.’
Annie felt a surge of relief. It was a complete stranger in the car, not someone she’d known, no connection with her own race across that mountain. Last Wednesday, Aunt Marian had said. That made one thing sure: Charlotte might either have died in the crash or been responsible for the break-in, but not both. Clearly her aunt hadn’t done the maths. She’d let that dawn in its own time.
‘It’s sad to think of it,’ Aunt Marian continued cheerfully, ‘Charlotte lying there at the bottom of the glen.’
The plate in front of Annie came into focus as slabs of chip-shaped concrete over which someone had sneezed an ill-cooked egg and dribbled her name in congealed blood. A wave of nausea swept over her. She made a pretence at eating, while her aunt’s voice, like a radio too loud to ignore, too soft to understand, played on in the background.
A torrential rainstorm. The car that vanished. A blinding flash of light from nowhere. And a terrifying race across a mountain … Someone had tried to drive her off the road at that exact spot. Had they tried again with Charlotte and succeeded? No, it was just coincidence. It was all coincidence. She’d panicked in the thick of a storm. Charlotte was living it up miles away, having the rest of her holiday out of the reach of interfering old women.
A chill speared Annie. She desperately wanted her aunt to be wrong.
As they set off towards her father’s, the first brushstrokes of dusk swept the sky.
Aunt Marian sat up and peered into the mountains. ‘Let’s go back the short way, shall we?’ Her vo
ice was interested, alert. ‘We can see where poor Charlotte went over.’
Annie was too tired to think of a good reason to say no, and it was the shortest route.
When they reached the windswept summit, Aunt Marian insisted Annie stop so she could get out to peer over the crash barrier. ‘I hope you’re always careful when you come this way, Annie.’
Annie gave her aunt a smile but was glad of the failing light that hid what a poor attempt it was.
‘Poor girl. She didn’t have much of a life.’
Annie said nothing. She looked down at the road surface and imagined she could see tyre marks. It needed a conscious effort to stop her mind conjuring up the screech of rubber on tarmac; the picture of Charlotte terrified, stamping down on the brake, while her car was pushed closer and closer to the drop. She spun on her heel and ushered her aunt back to the car. There’d been no whisper of any other vehicle involved, and anyway there was nothing but her aunt’s imagination to say it was Charlotte.
Chapter 10
When they eventually pulled up outside her father’s, Aunt Marian sighed and said, ‘I’m absolutely whacked. I hope there’s a bed made up. I need an early night.’
‘I’m sure you can rely on Mrs Latimer to have the spare room ready.’
Annie’s father came out to greet them and carry his sister-in-law’s bag inside. ‘What on earth’s in here, Marian? It weighs a ton.’ Annie heard forced joviality in his tone. He’d seen the tiredness in her face.
‘Just my overnight things.’ She yawned. ‘Dear me. I wish we hadn’t stopped at the top of the pass now. That fresh air’s really taken it out of me. We saw where that car went over.’
Once inside, Aunt Marian refused even a cup of tea, and headed for bed. Annie went straight to the phone to call Pieternel.
‘Much the same, Annie. Still on the knife edge, but looking positive. Just you sit tight a few days. I’ll let you know. How’s your vanished guest going?’
Annie told her Aunt Marian’s theory. ‘It probably isn’t Charlotte,’ she finished. ‘But if it is, it kind of wraps up the job.’
‘Yeah, great. Put a claim on the woman’s estate and they might get their money back.’
‘You’re a callous bastard, Pieternel. I quite liked Charlotte.’
After her call, Annie and her father sat cradling mugs of cocoa as she told him the bones of what had happened. She omitted any mention of the doll. For Annie, the trauma of her mother’s murder was something she glimpsed in flashbacks of fractured memory or bits of dreams. For her father, it must have been a horrendous milestone that sliced his life in two. He assumed his sister-in-law’s trip to Glasgow had no concrete focus and Annie didn’t enlighten him.
‘What in heaven’s name possessed you to go and gawp at the crash site?’
‘It was Aunt Marian’s idea. She’s got it into her head she knew the victim. The guest who did a moonlight from Mrs Watson’s. Charlotte Grainger.’
Her father shook his head. ‘The woman in the car had ID on her. She wasn’t Charlotte. She was Julia. Julia Lee. Though we can’t find out where she’s from. What was she like, this Charlotte person? Short? Tall?’
‘Short. Shorter than me. Why?’
‘Her body was thrown from the car before it hit the bottom so she was pretty badly smashed up but the fire that destroyed the car didn’t touch her. I’m expecting to find she was a good bit taller than you once the PM results come back.’
‘How come?’
‘It was a hire car. The woman at the garage said Julia Lee was almost six foot. It’ll be a disappointment to Marian. She always fancied herself as a bit of a detective.’
Annie rose early the next morning and went downstairs to find her father already at breakfast. He put down the paper as she came in. ‘What have you in mind for today?’
‘There’s no point me going overboard after Charlotte. Minimal job, minimal fee. I’m here for Aunt Marian really. If she’s up to it, we’ll go round the village. I want to jolly her out of this mood she’s in over the break-in.’
As they sat together, Annie told him about Charlotte, about her theory she’d been driven away by the fussing of the old women at the guesthouse. When she went on to tell him about Lorraine, the woman who’d fallen on the moor, he nodded. ‘Yes, I heard about that. People do some stupid things. They don’t realize how dangerous these hills can be.’
Annie was relieved. She wanted him to know about Charlotte’s hidden agendas in case there was more beneath them than it seemed. Charlotte’s face flitted across her mind’s eye. Charlotte sitting next to Aunt Marian, desperate to stem the flow of her aunt’s chatter; and in the pub; her avid questions about the Doll Makers; her unconvincing tale of a friend-of-a-friend. As she thought about her, Annie was struck by a sudden conviction that she would see Charlotte again soon. It was no more than a feeling, but reassuring. She saw herself apologizing for her aunt.
All morning, Annie trailed behind her aunt as she renewed a multitude of old acquaintances. Aunt Marian’s stamina amazed her. In the post office, while her aunt swapped information on mutual friends with Mr Caine, Annie studied him. He’d been one of the Doll Makers and she expected some hitherto unnoticed glint in his eye, or secretiveness in his expression. But he was the slightly distasteful old man he’d always been, except now she knew he was only her father’s age. She watched as he drank in the minutiae of the mini-scandals and squalls that upset village life, and leant eagerly towards her aunt to share from his own store of gossip. She turned away and looked into the faces and tiny eyes of the straw dolls as they hung from their rack, and understood their blank expressions. They had to listen to this stuff day after day.
It was as they left the shop, Aunt Marian grabbed her arm. ‘Who’s that? Over there. Who is it? I know that face.’
Annie looked. A group of children pushed and shoved each other towards the sea wall. ‘Who?’
‘No, he’s gone. He went round the corner. Now where do I know him from?’
‘I’ll jog on and get a look at him if you like.’
‘No, dear. No point. It isn’t someone you’d know. He was a real blast from the past.’
Their morning stroll stretched itself to lunch in the pub and a further leisurely saunter round. It was late afternoon by the time they headed home. Annie had forgotten the incident outside the shop, until her arm was gripped again as they strolled back up towards the house. ‘There, look! That’s the man I told you about this morning. Don’t look round! He’ll see us.’
‘How can I look and not look? Do you want me to see who it is or not?’
‘Be careful. Pretend you’re looking at something else. I’ve remembered who he is.’
Annie turned and saw a lanky individual leaning on the car park rail, looking out over the water. The sun was low in the sky and he squinted into its glare. His clothes had a slightly battered air. He looked nothing like her mental image of an old acquaintance of her aunt’s. The reflection of the sun off the water made it hard to see his face, but she wouldn’t have put him much beyond mid-thirties. He stood, looking at nothing in particular, but with a glimmer of a smile, a spark in his eye, as though waiting for life to toss him his next instalment of entertainment, and with every confidence that it would. She liked him immediately, but knew he was the sort her aunt would disapprove of on sight. The area attracted any number of people in the good weather, but he wasn’t the type to be welcome at Mrs Watson’s.
‘So who is he?’ They turned and continued their way up the hill.
‘It’s no wonder I couldn’t remember. I had in mind I knew him from years ago, but of course I don’t. He’s the one Mrs Watson’s nephew said he’d seen.’
Annie tried to head off a tangled explanation by having a guess at where this led. ‘You think he was responsible for the break-in at Mrs Watson’s?’
‘No, no, that’s the thing. Mrs Watson’s nephew’s in one of the front dormitories, and it couldn’t have been long after he’d been on the ferry, wh
at with his cases and things.’
Annie’s head spun. ‘What?’
‘He saw him. Mrs Watson’s nephew saw that man from his bedroom window the evening of the break-in. That’s how we know it couldn’t be him.’
Light dawned. Mrs Watson’s nephew, along with his contemporaries, was a weekly boarder in town the other side of the peninsula, as Annie had been when she was his age. Crossing the high pass to and from school in town, even when the weather would allow it, made it too long a day for the children who lived this side of the mountain.
‘He saw him before that too,’ Aunt Marian went on. ‘A week before they got that body out of the water. From his bedroom window again. Exactly a week. He remembered, with it being his friend’s birthday.’
‘It wasn’t a body,’ she murmured. ‘Just a leg.’
‘I know, dear. It makes it worse, doesn’t it?’
Annie would have moved from local primary to weekly boarding in any case. It had been unfortunate timing that made it one more thing in an unrelenting series of changes after her mother died. Something else to resent her father for. First Mrs Latimer, then he’d packed her away to her aunt’s. It must have been hell for him, she thought now. He’d had to pick up the pieces of his life and try to deal with open warfare between his daughter and housekeeper. It had felt to her then as though he’d chosen Mrs Latimer over her. And before she could make real sense of her new life with Aunt Marian, she’d been plucked off to big school. It must have been hell for Aunt Marian too. The unmarried elder sister, marvellous as an aunt, but clueless about how to be a parent. Annie knew it was the Monday to Friday of school that had given her an anchor, at least until she’d found and joined the bad crowd. Weekends with Aunt Marian were eccentric interludes, both weird and wonderful.
‘But why on earth would Mrs Watson’s nephew tell her about who he’d seen at school? She might be a world-class gossip, but surely she doesn’t interrogate her nephews on what they see out of their bedroom windows?’