Human Face

by Aline Templeton

Perhaps the fog would lift as suddenly as it had settled. As they said around here, ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.’

  ‘All right,’ Vicky said, trying not to sound tight-lipped as she set about making her preparations for their own meal at night. If she had it ready, she could stay on a bit if the fog lifted and work her hours; Beatrice had pointed out to her that not to dock her for work she hadn’t done was taking food out of the mouths of hungry children. Vicky could have suggested a few economies the directors could make towards the same noble end, but she didn’t. She wasn’t daft.

  As she chopped onions, her mind was on the odd household across the bay. There had been a bad atmosphere of late and she was trying to figure it out. Last time she’d sensed that, it was because Adam was plainly getting bored with Eva’s predecessor, who had left shortly afterwards, but this time wasn’t like that. He’d seemed very taken with Eva until fairly recently, when there had been a sudden cooling – a sharpness in the way he spoke to her, no casual arm round the girl’s shoulder, no laughter between them any more. And Eva was definitely on edge.

  She’d noticed, too, that when Adam was on one of his frequent trips away Eva had been spending time in the pub with a man who’d been living in a rented cottage in the village for a month or two – a writer researching a book about hillwalking in the Inner Hebrides, apparently.

  Eva claimed to be Polish – but then the last girl had, too. Vicky doubted it; when she’d tried to talk to Eva about Poland she’d shown the whites of her eyes and suffered a relapse in the standard of her English. She worried about Eva; she seemed so young and vulnerable and she was in a very unhealthy situation. Her strong protective instincts aroused, Vicky had tried to befriend her, but despite being happy enough to smile and chat, she shied away from anything approaching intimacy. When Vicky had asked how she had come into Adam’s life she had clammed up immediately.

  If her immigrant status was dodgy she’d be wise to keep Adam Carnegie sweet. And if he found out she was carrying on with someone behind his back, from what Vicky knew of the man, he wouldn’t like it – wouldn’t like it at all.

  There wasn’t a lot she could do about it, though. With another sigh, Vicky began peeling the carrots.

  Beatrice Lacey looked out of her window with a sinking heart. The view had vanished this morning and she couldn’t see anything – not the Black Cuillin across the bay, not the near hill, not even the lawns and shrubs in the garden, only a dense, vaporous blanket wrapping the house in a smothering silence.

  On mornings like this she felt she could barely breathe, that she was in exile – a prisoner, even – stifled by the implacable strangeness of this place where she had found herself living, a fairly modest fishing lodge in a remote part of Skye. She hated it here, where the natives spoke another language, at least among themselves, and put up a wall of polite aloofness that barely concealed their dislike.

  She’d been so happy when Human Face had been headquartered in Surrey, in what had been her own home until she had turned it over to Adam Carnegie’s foundation. She’d had old friends there, a brother, even, and it had been quite a shock when, six years before, Adam had announced they were moving to Skye.

  He’d been getting restless, she knew that. For some reason he didn’t like her friends, and particularly not her brother. Well, she could understand that; Quentin, with his constant crises, was a problem and even she hadn’t been pleased when he too moved to Skye, not long ago, and only a few miles away.

  And there were the interruptions to their work, too, like the supporters who wanted to do charity events to raise funds – which, as Adam said, never raised more than a piffling amount that didn’t pay for the time they had to spend helping with the arrangements – and the unheralded official visitations, making sure they weren’t embezzling all the money. When world poverty was such a colossal challenge, the petty stuff was frustrating.

  Certainly, they weren’t plagued like that out here in the wilds and once Adam had explained, looking at her with those blue eyes, so dark that they were almost navy, that with property prices the way they were they really ought to liquidate their assets and cut their overheads at the same time, for the sake of the children. And she had agreed, of course: the photographs he had shown her of the refugee children with huge pleading eyes and malnourished infants with grotesquely swollen stomachs had haunted her ever since.

  It had given her a pang to sell her house and move but it was a comfort to think that it would put food in a lot more hungry mouths, just as the monthly income from her trust fund did. And it had, most importantly, pleased Adam too.

  Another benefit, he’d said, was that at Balnasheil Lodge he could offer fishing and a bit of rough shooting on the moor that went with it to promising sponsors, and from time to time a group of men would come to be wined and dined and flattered.

  Not that she had much to do with them, though, apart from making bookings for flights and transport from Glasgow. Adam had explained that he needed a housekeeper, someone to be a hostess when he entertained, who could charm the money out of their pockets. And it worked: she could see the evidence in the size of the donations they made afterwards.

  The ‘housekeepers’ had all been immigrants, struggling to make their way in a hard world, and she’d have been pleased that this was giving them a chance to find their feet if she hadn’t realised that they had – well – other duties. She managed to ignore it, though with pain, telling herself that one day he would tire of the shallow vapidity of these girls. None of them lasted long, and they were easily replaced: she would be here, at his side, long after the current one was gone.

  Eva. She didn’t want to think about Eva: Eva with her little pixie face and her bright smile. Though she’d tried to hate her she couldn’t quite manage it. It was lucky Adam had been away last night, because—

  She shied away from the thought and fixed her mind on the tasks of the day as she showered and dressed and chatted to the doll while she did her hair and put on make-up; it took her mind off the face she saw in the mirror. She’d got up a little earlier than usual today; several applications had come in late yesterday and she wanted to get on with them. Locking her door carefully behind her, she set off down the stairs from her attic flat to open up the charity office on the ground floor.

  On a day like this, with little light coming through the staircase window, the hall looked even gloomier than usual, with its heavily varnished pitch pine and the brown and orange stained-glass window in the front door.

  It was a dark and oppressive house, so unlike her bright and sunny Surrey villa. With its six bedrooms, plus servants’ quarters, it was far too big, except when sponsors visited, and it wasn’t as if the public rooms were handsome either. It had obviously been thrown up on the cheap by someone who only came in August for the shooting, and in bad weather the draughts whistled through the gaps round the windows. Today there was even a hint of the mist outside creeping into the hall.

  Beatrice had reached the last few steps when the door to Adam’s private flat on the left of the staircase opened and the man himself – stocky, with thick black hair and strongly marked brows – came out. He was frowning.

  Her heavy face brightened. ‘Adam! I thought you were staying over with the Lindsays last night. I didn’t know you were back.’ She couldn’t disguise the yearning in her voice.

  He stopped and the scowl vanished at once. ‘Morning, sweetie! Yes, the company was deadly boring – dear God, once the colonel gets into his stride you lose the will to live. I couldn’t face him again over breakfast so I drove back at some ungodly hour in the fog. I’ve quite a lot to see to anyway before I go off tomorrow.’

  She was hurrying down when she saw the dog following him and stopped dead – not that the Dobermann took any notice of her. It never did, never showed any interest in anyone except its master.

  It was, she had to admit, an elegant animal – sleek, muscular, its black and tan coat gleaming. She liked dogs well enough, in ge
neral – just not this particular dog. She waited, with an almost superstitious shudder, until it had passed.

  Adam was going towards the private office, the one she only went into when they were working together. Her heart lifted. She’d put some papers for him in the box outside the door and they might need discussion.

  Those were the happy times, when they talked about the next project. Once, gloriously and unforgettably, he had taken her with him to a refugee camp they were supporting in North Africa. It was the most – and, indeed, the only – romantic experience in her life and she lived on the dream that it would happen again – and perhaps this time she might be lucky with a real baby. It was a long time ago now, though, and she was losing heart.

  ‘Adam,’ she called as she went towards him. ‘There’s a couple of things—’

  ‘Yes?’ he said impatiently, over his shoulder.

  He didn’t sound enthusiastic and she hesitated. If he wasn’t in the mood for a chat, there was no point.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said hastily. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  He nodded without turning round as he put a key into the lock, then wrestled with it, puzzled. He tried the handle and the door opened.

  Adam stopped on the threshold. ‘Have you been in here, Beatrice?’

  His voice was icy and her hand went to her throat in dismay. ‘No, Adam, no!’ she cried. ‘Of course I haven’t! You know I never go to your office unless you’re with me. And I keep the key in my bag so no one else could have used it. Perhaps you just forgot to lock it.’

  He ignored that. He went into the room, the dog at his heels. It was empty but Beatrice, hovering uncertainly in the doorway, could see that the chair by the desk was pushed back and the edge of a piece of paper was sticking out of one of the drawers in the filing cabinet.

  He didn’t say anything. She was turning to leave when he said suddenly, ‘Where did she go last night?’

  ‘Go?’ She was flustered. ‘I – I don’t know—’

  Adam smiled. ‘You do, don’t you? You’re a rotten liar, darling. I was out with Amber this morning and I saw the footsteps in the wet grass, going down to the jetty. It wasn’t you, was it?’

  Beatrice shook her head.

  ‘No, I didn’t think it would be. Who was she meeting?’

  Her heart beating a little faster because he had called her ‘darling’, she told him what she had seen the night before.

  ‘That’s fine. You’re my good girl.’ He smiled at her and then went to open the top drawer of the filing cabinet as the dog, with a sigh, lay down in the corner of the room. He began piling files onto his desk, as if he was planning to move them somewhere else.

  From what he said, from his smile, he should have sounded pleased. But he didn’t, he sounded …grim.

  Oh God, she mustn’t think about it. With a hollow feeling in her stomach Beatrice went back to the main office on the right of the front door, a large draughty room with too many windows. She always dreaded the approach of winter.

  She sat down at her desk in the bay window at the front, switched on the computer and checked her to-do list. Keep herself busy: that was the best thing. There was a flight to be confirmed; she could do that first. Her hands were trembling, though, and in the part of her mind she couldn’t quite silence a voice was whispering, Not again, not again.

  PC Livvy Murray sat up in bed and looked out of her window with no enthusiasm at all. She lay down again, pulled the duvet over her head and groaned. What was a nice Glasgow lassie like her doing in a place like this? And how long could she stand it before she cracked? After all, she could resign any day she wanted.

  The trouble was, Livvy loved her job. At least, she’d loved the job she’d had in Glasgow, until it all went horribly wrong.

  He’d said, ‘Sorry, doll,’ as they took him down, grinning at her stony face and giving her the cheeky-chappie wink that had been his stock-in-trade since they were at primary school together.

  Bastard! But you had to give it to him, he wasn’t one to bear grudges. She’d been the one who’d shafted him, after all, even if he’d shafted her first.

  She hadn’t known anything about his double life, though perhaps she should have: with the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight she could see that there were questions she should have maybe asked, but she hadn’t. She’d let herself be blinded by the looks and the gallus charm. It was amazing what you could choose not to see if you didn’t want to.

  When it all hit the fan, at Glasgow HQ they’d have been happy enough to sack chippy, sassy PC Murray, but once she found out what had been going on she’d grassed him up as best she could and was the star prosecution witness. She’d had no problem in court; she’d been totally honest about her own stupidity and she’d come out of it with this as the only stain on her character.

  How humiliating was that, though? She’d never been as confident as she tried to sound, covering up the sense of inadequacy instilled by her endlessly critical mother – a mean drunk – with a bright, shiny armour of indifference. She’d had to stand there, in public view, exposed as such a rubbish police officer that she hadn’t even spotted the crime syndicate operating right under her nose.

  Her bosses couldn’t pin anything on her, though they’d tried. Since they couldn’t bust her for having rubbish taste in men they’d just moved her – no discussion, no appeal – to exile in the piddling wee police office in this place that would make Troon on a wet weekend in November seem buzzy by comparison, that didn’t do any proper police work and that was going to be shut down any day now, along with a police house that was all but unheated and had so many leaks in the roof that you could barely see the tatty carpets for the basins put out to catch the drips.

  Nothing happened here. Nothing. And now Police Scotland was scaling everything down so that in the unlikely event that something did happen, they’d have to call in someone qualified to deal with it and she wouldn’t get a look-in even then. The highlight of her week was a Saturday night, when she might be called along to Portree to deal with a rammy in one of the pubs. There certainly wasn’t much else to do if she was off on a Saturday around here.

  But if the idea was that she’d just resign in disgust, they could get stuffed. Even if she was totally pissed off, she wasn’t going to give them that satisfaction. She’d keep her head down for a bit, then she’d start very politely applying for a transfer to a place where the most interesting thing to do wasn’t watching the grass growing down the middle of the road.

  As Eva Havel slipped along the below-stairs passage, she was shaking so that her legs would hardly hold her up. He’d almost caught her red-handed.

  All she’d had time to do was shove the files in the drawer, push it shut and flee when she heard Beatrice talking to Adam in the hall. There hadn’t been time to lock either the drawer or the door and all she could hope for was that Adam, secure in his own house, was sometimes a bit casual about locking up himself.

  She’d know about it soon enough if he wasn’t. Like a frightened animal taking refuge in its den, she headed for her little bedsitter but before she reached it Marek Kaczka came out of the kitchen, eating a sandwich.

  He too was an immigrant but he was much older and he’d been there for a couple of years, living in the gatehouse at the end of the drive and doing maintenance on the house and grounds. He never said much and he wasn’t usually in the house unless he was sent for; he looked guilty and made a movement as if to hide his sandwich when he saw her. She just nodded to him as she passed and he went on towards the side door.

  Reaching her room, she shut the door and leant against it, her eyes shut. At least he hadn’t come along in a towering rage; perhaps, after all, he hadn’t noticed. She could get Daniel to fetch her tonight – but then she remembered that Adam was going away the next day, flying to Paris for a conference.

  Once he’d gone, she could pack up everything, including the important notebook, and leave quietly so that he would just come back and find her gon
e. And until then, she would try to keep out of his way.

  When she picked up her phone to text Daniel, she saw there were two anxious messages from him already. She hesitated, then tapped out a blandly reassuring reply; she had found the paper files, got the details he wanted. She didn’t mention that Adam might have realised what she’d done – he might be annoyed. She could be out of here by tomorrow afternoon.

  The fog was starting to clear now, but rain was taking its place, the relentless soft, wetting rain that could soak you to the skin in minutes. She couldn’t wait to get away.

  It was raining in Edinburgh too, though here the rain had come in on tearing winds, lashing the small windows of the fisherman’s cottage at Newhaven where Kelso Strang lived. Even within the shelter of the stout stone walls of the harbour opposite, the little yachts were tugging at their moorings, rocking on the swell.

  He was a tall man, dark-haired and hazel-eyed with a lean, intelligent face, currently disfigured by a neat scar running straight down the right-hand side. His expression was bleak as he stood in the silent house, staring out at the rain.

  He’d wanted peace, had believed he was desperate for it, after the surreal, frantic activity of the past few days. He’d told his fussing, anxious family to leave him alone, unable to cope with their grief as well as his own, and at last he’d persuaded them to go.

  Kelso had been thankful to see his father out before he said something that would wreck their already damaged relationship. Highly successful professional soldiers are not celebrated for their tact, and though Major General Sir Roderick Strang had made all the conventionally proper noises, he hadn’t been able to resist saying, ‘Things will be different now, of course. I’m sure I can still find a string or two to pull to get you back into the regiment.’

  His tone suggested that there was a silver lining to every cloud. Kelso was digging his nails into the palms of his hands, struggling for control, when Mary Strang flew across the room like a small, heat-seeking missile. ‘Leave the boy alone, Roddy. He’s not wanting to think about anything more just now. I’m taking you home.’