2 Reunited in Death

by Cecilia Peartree

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘They remind me of the extending dog leads,’ he said. ‘Little white dogs running under your feet.’

  She took his hand as they walked towards the exit.

  ‘How’s Pitkirtly?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’

  ‘Go on – something must have happened.’

  He considered that for a while as they walked around the car park complex looking for Big Dave’s car, a frightening concept and an even more frightening reality.

  ‘Oh, yes – Young Dave’s in prison.’

  ‘Not a moment too soon,’ she said.

  ‘It was mostly the pension funds swindle. Embezzling money from the Council was a tiny part of it... Big Dave and Mrs Stevenson have more or less moved in together. Mrs Stevenson’s driving him nuts with all her projects. Jock – well, he’s about the same as usual.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Amaryllis.

  They paused for a moment.

  ‘Aren’t we going round in circles?’ she added. ‘I’m sure we’ve seen that pay station before.’

  ‘They all look the same,’

  Christopher was starting to wonder if anyone had ever been benighted in this godforsaken place by the time they heard a shout.

  ‘Hey, you idiots, I’m over here!’

  ‘Well, who would have thought of parking in the drop-off zone?’ said Amaryllis rhetorically as they retraced their steps and saw the most frightening car in the world, parked casually right in front of the terminal where only taxis were allowed to park. It was a black pick-up truck with colossal wheels and an American eagle painted on the side.

  ‘Hurry up or I’ll get a ticket,’ said Big Dave, although it seemed to Christopher that if you drove a car like that you had no need to be afraid of anything as mundane as a parking ticket.

  ‘It’s the middle of the night,’ said Amaryllis with a yawn.

  But the luminous jacket of an airport parking enforcer appeared in the distance, and they bundled themselves into the car and set off at some speed. Christopher held on to the side of the seat, he hoped unobtrusively. Amaryllis laughed and bounced around in the front. She had lost her licence about six months before, a tortuous process that had included a court case in which she defended herself from speeding allegations by insisting she was being pursued by agents of a foreign power – Peruvian, as far as Christopher recalled. He remembered thinking of Paddington Bear as he sat in court.

  Fortunately – or perhaps not, he thought as they hurtled round a corner and found themselves on the Forth Road Bridge – Big Dave had bought the monster truck soon after that. But Christopher knew he didn’t often get the chance to travel at speed, since his journeys mostly involved taking Mrs Stevenson to one of her many and varied activities in Pitkirtly and environs.

  ‘I never knew there was so much to do around here,’ he had once told Christopher gloomily. ‘There’s even a scrapbooking circle. Scrapbooks! Things that kids play with. Cutting and sticking. Odd bits of paper all over the house...’

  Now Dave roared, trying to make himself heard above what was surely a souped-up engine, ’How did you find Outer Mongolia, then?’

  ‘I just carried on right through Russia, and there it was,’ said Amaryllis. The two of them laughed, and Big Dave accelerated.

  ‘So what was it you were doing there again?’

  ‘Trekking.’

  ‘Trekking?’

  ‘Trekking.’

  She obviously wasn’t going to say any more.

  Later, as she and Christopher shared a late fish supper and a bottle of Irn Bru at the flat in Merchantman Wynd, she did say a bit more.

  ‘I wasn’t really in Outer Mongolia.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were,’ said Christopher reluctantly. He had clung to the hope that she was really trekking in Outer Mongolia and not doing anything even more dangerous, but he supposed that if their relationship was going to develop he would have to get used to her other life.

  ‘I was in China,’ she continued. ‘I was asked to try and get some Tibetans over the border to Arunachal Pradesh. Things went a bit pear-shaped. I thought of you.’

  ‘Of me?’

  ‘I let go of the rope at the wrong time and landed in the river. When I got swept up on the shore there were giant pandas. Just as I was wondering if they were going to eat me, the SAS arrived.’

  ‘I don’t think I need to know any more,’ said Christopher.

  There was a silence.

  ‘Something weird happened here yesterday,’ he said, changing the subject as clumsily as he had noticed Big Dave changing gear on the pick-up truck.

  ‘Yes?’

  She picked up a large chip and bit into it aggressively.

  ‘Ms Farquharson told me off for being late, and Jemima hinted that she knew something I didn't know.'

  'You're right, that's weird.' Amaryllis nodded lazily, leaning back in the uncomfortable leather and chrome designer chair she liked so much, and watching him through half-closed eyes as she sipped Irn Bru.

  ‘I've no idea what it can be... Jemima's in the Cultural Centre every day at the moment. I bump into her round every corner. I hope she isn't over-hearing things she isn't meant to hear.'

  ‘Try asking Dave what she’s up to. You just have to get him started and he’ll talk about her for hours on end.’

  Amaryllis yawned.

  ‘Sorry – you’ve been travelling all day and all night,’ said Christopher, starting to gather up the fish supper packet. ‘Sorry – I’ll go now.’

  ‘No need to be sorry, it isn’t your fault.’

  After Christopher had gone, and once she was sure he must have reached the top of the road, Amaryllis yawned again, stretched and put on the special leather jacket she kept hanging up on a hook in the hallway. Never mind jet lag or any of that nonsense, it was time to get back into her nightly routine. She was glad Christopher was too shy to suggest staying over. One of these days it might happen, but for the moment she would rather it didn’t. She enjoyed the novelty of having a good friend of the opposite gender, and didn’t want to spoil it. She thought he felt much the same. The idea of settling down in a conventional romantic relationship filled her with horror.

  She took extra care as she slid over the railings and dropped lightly to the ground under the balcony. In her absence, who knew what sort of low-life had taken over her own patch here in Pitkirtly? She raced into the shadows of the beech tree at the corner of the street and peered out from there, heart pounding. She sidled along by the wall, making her way cautiously down towards the waterfront and the harbour.

  Something was wrong: she could sense it with that sixth or seventh sense that had been born in her and developed to its utmost in the course of her chosen career. A misplaced wheelie-bin here; a gap in a hedge there as if someone or something had pushed through; a ragged blanket, perhaps carelessly abandoned by a rough sleeper, in the doorway of the boarded up pub down by the river where smugglers once used to bring contraband ashore. She paused to examine the blanket: it had an exotic pattern that wasn’t native to Pitkirtly.

  Amaryllis was frowning as she slipped out of the doorway and along the waterfront like a shadow. Her plans hadn’t included anyone sleeping rough.

  There was someone at the end of the harbour wall, sitting on the bench that Amaryllis knew had a memorial plaque dedicating it to a former town councillor who had got rich by building a school extension of sub-standard concrete in the 1960s. The seated person seemed to be contemplating the different kinds of darkness: the clear sky in midnight blue with its ostentatious display of the sparkling jewels that were stars, the darker shapes of the hills at the far side of the river, the flame that illuminated the funnels and chimneys of Grangemouth oil refinery, the swirling dark currents of the River Forth itself. You could stare at the changing flavours of darkness for hours without getting bored, after all. Amaryllis had done it herself before. So it wasn't surprising that the person on the bench didn't stir for a while.
>
  Even when someone else suddenly appeared, rising up magically from below the wall like some sort of sea creature and then assuming the shape of a man as he walked towards the bench, its occupant showed no visible reaction. Amaryllis, though she considered herself immune to surprise, had to admit his sudden appearance made her jump. It took her brain a moment to process what had just happened and translate it into something that made sense. Of course, the newcomer had come up the steps from the river, perhaps from a boat. She had seen the steps there, thick with slippery seaweed and not at all inviting.

  It was late to be arriving from a boat, and her first thought was that he was up to no good, but she told herself firmly not to superimpose the lessons learned from her professional life on to the much less turbulent world of Pitkirtly, even if that world had proved itself in recent times to have hidden depths, much like the currents in the River Forth. It was purely survival instinct that made her draw back against the wall of the nearest building before either of these people looked in her direction. Even at the level of social interaction, if they came this way Amaryllis didn't want to get trapped in conversation with them on her first night back.

  The shape of the man who had come up the steps merged into the darkness near the bench. He seemed to be stooping over the one who was sitting on the bench. He -

  'Why, Amaryllis! And here we thought you were in Mongolia - or was it Azerbaijan?'

  Amaryllis nearly jumped out of her skin. How had someone as loud as Maisie Sue McPherson managed to creep up on her so silently? She really must be too old for this game.

  'Amaryllis.' Maisie Sue's husband Pearson caught up with his wife and gave Amaryllis a curt nod. He had been a CIA agent, but she had no idea if he still was. She felt no comradeship with him either way - quite the contrary.

  'Maisie Sue!' said Amaryllis, trying to mask her dismay. She glanced at Maisie Sue's feet. Native American moccasins. Of course.

  'I couldn't sleep?' said Maisie Sue. 'I guess it's the same with you?'

  'Yes,' said Amaryllis. She manufactured a yawn. 'I'm quite tired now, though. On my way home.'

  'I guess we should be getting home too, shouldn't we, Pearson?' said Maisie Sue.

  'I guess so,' said Pearson, glaring at Amaryllis. She ignored him.

  'We'll come along with you,' said Maisie Sue. 'Pearson doesn't think it's safe for a woman to be out on her own at this time of night, do you, Pearson?'

  'I surely don't,' said Pearson.

  'So - how did you find Mongolia?' said Maisie Sue.

  Amaryllis opened her mouth to make the same joke she had shared with Dave earlier, but decided the McPhersons wouldn't appreciate it. She tolerated their company as far as the end of Merchantman Wynd, and then said goodnight to them. It was probably just as well they had come along. Complications and excitement could wait. She wanted to find the rhythm of her life in Pitkirtly again, to adjust her pace accordingly and to join in with whatever new and random pleasures her friends had become involved in since she had left for China.

  The exotic blanket worried her quite a lot. She didn't like her plans going awry.

  Chapter 3

  Jemima Stevenson explains

  ‘It’s a Homecoming thing,’ said Dave, slurping at his pint to capture the drops that would otherwise have spilled over the edge when he was carrying it back to his seat. ‘The Pitkirtly Homecoming Project. PHP.’

  ‘PHP? Isn’t that some sort of computer program?’ said Christopher.

  ‘What do you know about computers?’ said Dave suspiciously.

  They started back towards the table. They had once been on a committee together, and although it had been ceremonially dissolved after the fire at the old village hall, the core group still met every Wednesday at the Queen of Scots, and discussed much the same topics as before. Young Dave was in prison, of course, but you could always rely on Jock McLean and Mrs Stevenson to turn up - and Big Dave.

  ‘It’s something to do with a family reunion,’ said Dave in a low voice just before they reached the table. ‘But don’t tell her I told you.’

  ‘Why is it so secret?’ said Christopher.

  ‘Why is what so secret?’ said Mrs Stevenson, graciously accepting a Dubonnet and lemonade.

  ‘The lottery numbers,’ said Dave.

  ‘The recipe for Irn Bru,’ said Christopher.

  They glared at each other. Mrs Stevenson looked at Amaryllis and they both shrugged their shoulders.

  ‘The workings of women’s minds,’ said Jock McLean, who, as far as Christopher knew, had very little direct experience of what he was talking about. ‘The eternal mystery. Won’t be solved in my lifetime.’

  ‘So is there anything in the pipeline?’ said Amaryllis. ‘Any special events, Christmas Fairs, random visits to other pubs?’

  ‘We don’t really organise things any more,’ said Christopher.

  ‘We never really organised them in the first place,’ said Jock. ‘Face it.’

  ‘We tried,’ said Dave.

  ‘I wouldn’t like that as an epitaph,’ said Mrs Stevenson, surprising them as she often did.

  ‘What do you suggest we do, then?’ said Christopher.

  ‘Aha, well, some of us are already doing things,’ she nodded.

  ‘That’s a bit cryptic, Jemima,’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘Mmhm,’ said Mrs Stevenson, taking a great gulp of the Dubonnet and lemonade and sitting back with a smug expression on her face. It was a shame to deny her the pleasure of having a secret. Christopher felt he should make at least a token effort to winkle it out of her.

  ‘So – is it anything to do with what you were up to in the Cultural Centre?’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t up to anything,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, but what were you doing there in the first place?’ he persisted.

  ‘Everyone in Pitkirtly has the right to use the Cultural Centre,’ she said. ‘It’s not just for the intellectual elite, but for the people. It’s their birthright – access to culture – that’s what that man from the Council said when he declared it open.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Christopher, already tired of winkling.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me any more questions?’

  Mrs Stevenson was clearly disappointed. Amaryllis stepped in.

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing the Cultural Centre in action. Is it the bustling heart of the community?’

  Dear God! Had they all steeped themselves in the language of official brochures? Amaryllis was smiling a particularly evil smile that suggested she knew his feelings on the subject.

  ‘It’s not that busy,’ he muttered just as Mrs Stevenson, nodding enthusiastically, said,

  ‘They cater to a lot of people’s interests. I’ve found them all really helpful.’

  ‘Helpful? Us?’ said Christopher. He found it very hard to believe that either he or Grumpy Graham had knowingly helped any member of the public.

  ‘Oh, not you,’ said Mrs Stevenson. ‘You and Grumpy Graham – no. You’re just there to stop people stealing stuff. But the wee girl in the library – she’s been a big help to me. Helped me find some new sources I didn’t even think of. And the young man in the Folk Museum. Andrew. It was his idea really – but I’ve said too much.’

  As far as Christopher was concerned, he could have done without her comments on him and Grumpy Graham, but in other ways she hadn’t said nearly enough to explain her sudden – and some would say uncharacteristic – interest in the Cultural Centre.

  ‘Sources?’ said Amaryllis. ‘Have you been doing some sort of research, Jemima?’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Stevenson, and they all settled more comfortably into their chairs. Mrs Stevenson didn’t often say much, but when she did speak, it tended to be a lengthy process with numerous diversions into the more obscure byways of her mind.

  ‘Will I get another round in?’ said Jock McLean helpfully. Christopher knew this was just a ploy to allow Jock to sneak outside and smoke his pipe so that he didn’t have t
o listen, so he said,

  ‘I think we should wait until we hear what Mrs Stevenson has to say.’

  Jock gave him a ‘thanks very much’ look as Mrs Stevenson began her narrative.

  ‘It started,’ she said, ‘when my Auntie Mima died. That would be about four years ago, because it was about the same time as there was that awful gastric flu bug going around, and we all thought Jim Coltrane at the bowling club was going to be carried off by it, only he made a miraculous recovery and ran off with that belly-dancer from Lochgelly. He couldn’t keep a thing down for nearly a week and –‘

  ‘For God’s sake, Jemima, this has got nothing to do with anything!’ Big Dave protested. Only he could have got away with it – and even he was on the receiving end of a half strength glare from Mrs Stevenson’s wintry blue-grey eyes.

  ‘As I was saying,’ she continued after an appropriate pause, ‘it started after my Auntie Mima died. She was from a big family – eleven, there were. My mum was the eleventh and Mima was the tenth. I didn’t know anything much about the rest of them at all. But I found something in Mima’s house when I was clearing it out. What a tip – she hadn’t thrown anything away for twenty years or more. I was ashamed to let anybody outside the family see it in that state, so I did it myself.’

  ‘You should have got some help, Jemima- you’re no spring chicken yourself,’ said Big Dave.

  ‘Aye, and look who’s talking!’ she said. ‘If you’ll let me finish...’ She glared at them all equally, took a big gulp of her drink and continued in a slightly louder tone, ‘So I found a family Bible with all the names written in the front. And that got me thinking, who are all those people? What are they to me? At one time we would all have known where we came from and where we would be buried, now we’re a long way from home and our ashes are scattered to the four winds...’

  She had succeeded in silencing them.

  ‘So then I thought, some people manage to trace their ancestors right back to Adam and Eve. Why shouldn’t I? And who knows what I might find out? I could be descended from royalty. Or somebody famous, for all I know.’