The Missing Years

by Lexie Elliott

  He looks up with a ghost of a smile as I approach. “Black Americano,” he says, levering himself more upright to push an enormous mug toward me.

  “Thanks.” I sink into the chair opposite him. It’s the kind of low, squashy affair that one can either perch on the edge of or loll back in. I don’t feel relaxed enough to loll. “What do I owe you?”

  He shakes his head minutely. “I think I can run to one coffee.”

  “Well. Thanks then.” I gesture toward his clothing. “Not in work today?”

  “Not today. Not officially.” He’s looking me over carefully, but it doesn’t feel invasive. “You look a bit brighter than when I saw you last.”

  “You too, if I’m honest.” He inclines his head: Touché. Suddenly I want to put off the questioning for as long as possible. I force myself to lean back in the chair, cradling my coffee on my lap. “Have you been living here for long?”

  “Just over eighteen months. We moved up from Cardiff when Jill—my wife—first got diagnosed. She wanted to be near her family, and I managed to get this job . . .”

  There’s something about the way he says her name. “Is she—?”

  “She died. Brain tumor. It was supposed to be operable, but there were complications . . . She died three months after we moved up.” His delivery is matter-of-fact, but there’s a bleakness in his eyes that catches at me.

  “I’m so sorry.” His lips twist in acknowledgment in the smile I’ve seen on other days, with no warmth in it. It makes a difference that I now understand why, though. I’m coloring him in, in my mind. “Do you think about going back to Cardiff?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not sure it would be any better. Maybe I’d just miss her more, in all the places we used to go together . . . This is like starting over, apart from the odd Sunday lunch with the in-laws.” He pauses to correct himself. “Ex-in-laws, I suppose.”

  I raise my eyebrows, grateful for the opportunity to inject some humor. “How is that?”

  He spreads a hand in some kind of equivocation. I haven’t quite decoded his gestures yet. “Kind of nice, kind of weird.”

  “I suppose it would be.” I look out through the window. There are shadows racing across the steep slopes of the opposite side of the valley, from clouds scudding through the sky above. If I stayed here, I suppose it would be that way for me too: a new start. New friends, a new job, a clean break. Except that the Manse isn’t clean. It’s rotten and fetid and rank somewhere inside, somewhere I can’t see, but I can feel it all the same.

  “Are you still at the McCues’?”

  “Yes. Which means I get to do bedtime stories with Callum. I may never leave.”

  He smiles. “He’s a sweet kid. Brave soldier too.” He pauses. “His mum has an interesting reputation.”

  He’s fishing, though I expect he already knows more than me. “Does she?” He smiles a little at my refusal to take the bait. “Are you done with the Manse?”

  “We were done yesterday. Didn’t you get the message?”

  “No.” I automatically look at my phone, and in fact it does have a message, but not from him. It’s from Pete: Call me when you can. It’s about the painting x. “Reception round here can be kind of sketchy.” He nods. “So I can go back there?”

  “Yes.” Then he adds, “Though I wouldn’t until you’ve got a security alarm sorted out.”

  “That should be in place tomorrow, I think.”

  He takes a sip of his coffee, and then says, without the merest hint of a change of pace, “Were you going to tell me about the fox and the raven?”

  I lean forward to put my coffee down on the table, marveling once again at his ability to jump track with no signal. “Ben, I suppose?”

  “Ali, actually. He mentioned in passing that the vet confirmed the fox was poisoned. He assumed I already knew about its existence.” He puts a heavy stress on assumed.

  Ali. To my pals. Of which it seems Detective Bryn Laws might be one. “How do you know Ali?”

  “The tri club—triathlon. We cycle together. He was one of the first people I met here.” I stare at him for a moment, trying to imagine them both in Lycra. Having seen Laws’s lean musculature in the pool, it’s easy enough to place him on a bike, but I can’t see Ali beside him, no matter how hard I try. He sighs in mock exasperation. “Come on, it’s not that ludicrous.”

  “It is if we’re talking about the same Ali.”

  That brings a twist of amusement to his lips. “Middle-aged men in Lycra. It’s a thing these days. Not,” he adds hurriedly, “that I’d consider myself middle-aged yet.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re buying yourself time,” he observes mildly, but there’s still a hint of a smile around his ice-blue eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me about the fox and the raven?”

  “Because there was nothing to tell. The Manse is in the Scottish countryside—take a look.” I fling a hand toward the mountains that stand implacably beyond the glass. “Animals die. They have to do it somewhere. What do you want from me?”

  “You weren’t in the slightest bit spooked?” I look at him warily, sensing a trap. If he was in a suit, I think, if we were in a sterile room in the police station, for example, with thick-painted walls and a crappy coffee machine—if we were there, rather than here as we are with him in jeans, I would have a chance. I might see whatever is coming. His eyes are holding mine, and there’s no longer a smile in their vicinity. “What did the Post-it note say?”

  Oh dear God. Now I look like a raving loony. “You tell me. You obviously have it.”

  “We do. We took another pass at the garden after Ali told us about the animals. It’s suffered from water damage, but the lab will figure out what it says in time. Why don’t we shortcut that?” He leans forward, his elbows on his knees, exasperation carefully reined in—real exasperation this time—but I can sense it beneath the surface. “Come on, Ailsa, what did it say?”

  “I don’t remember exactly.”

  “Roughly will do.”

  “I thought you would think I’m overreacting. I thought you would think I’m nuts.” It sounds like a lament. It is a lament.

  “Because you received a threat pinned to a bird?”

  “What?” Then I twig. “Oh, you thought it was a threat to me.” It’s almost funny.

  He cocks his head. “It’s not?”

  “No. It’s a response.”

  “A response. From you?” I nod. His confusion is even funnier. “Saying what?”

  “Saying . . . saying . . . yes, okay, I’m going to tell you! It said: fuck off, I’m not scared and I’m not leaving.”

  I may actually have surprised him. He sits back in his seat, wide-eyed, and takes a sip of his coffee. “And you, erm, stuck it to the dead bird? With a safety pin?”

  “Yes. Ask Ben—he watched me do it.” Then I add miserably, “Is that . . . It’s not against the law, is it?”

  He blinks. “No, I don’t think so. If you’d pinned it to a dead human, that would be different.”

  “Good to know,” I say faintly.

  “Who were you expecting to receive this message?”

  “I don’t know. Really, I don’t.” The litany of names cycles through my head: Fiona, Ben, Ali, Jamie. And I can’t see what any of them would have to gain. The nutcase stranger theory might actually be more realistic. “Believe me, if I knew that, I’d be telling you.”

  “Really.” He’s surveying me again, with those ice-blue eyes above a freckled nose. “I know you’re lying to me.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You didn’t tell me about the animals, yet you were spooked enough to stake a note onto a maggot-ridden carcass. Most people I know wouldn’t have touched that pile of feathers with a barge pole.”

  “I wore Marigolds.” He throws up both hands in an unmistakable gesture. “Okay, yes, I ge
t your point! I was just worried you’d think I was some kind of neurotic mess.” Which I may be. “And anyway, it was more of an omission, really. I’m not lying now.” Except I am, about Fiona . . . I find I’m rubbing my temples with my fingers. “What did the vet say about the fox?”

  “That it must have been transported deliberately to your property. With that dosage, it couldn’t have gone far from wherever it was poisoned.”

  “Right,” I say after a moment when I can’t think of anything else to say.

  “Whose idea was it that Carrie come up north with you?”

  “Mine. I invited her.” But no, that’s not quite right. She didn’t invite herself, but it was more organic than a simple suggestion from me. “Why?”

  He shrugs. “Families are complicated things.”

  I laugh out loud. “You’ve got to be kidding. Carrie has nothing to do with all of this.”

  “Maybe not, but you haven’t lived with her for years. How well do you really know her?”

  “I know—” I stop. I can see her now, climbing into the jeep, her coat flaring out around her. “I know her,” I repeat stubbornly. She might be lying to me, but she’s not terrorizing me.

  She didn’t believe me about the flies. Or she pretended not to.

  This is ridiculous. Carrie has no grudge against me.

  He puts his coffee back down on the table and his elbows on his knees again, leaning in earnestly. “Ailsa, I don’t know what the hell is going on, but any which way I look at it, you’re at the center of it. It just doesn’t make sense that you arrive and suddenly there’s dead animals on your doorstep and bones in your house—a house in which you had all the locks changed, let’s not forget. You have to be the catalyst—”

  “I agree.”

  “Then why are you keeping things from me? It’s written all over your face.”

  “I’m not, and I can’t help it, this is just my face.”

  He starts to say something but stops himself and takes a deep breath. His next words are down a few notches in pace and volume. “I’m trying to help you. Are you scared?”

  I look out at the mountains. It’s not a landscape for reassurance. “Yes.” I look back at him, but then I have to look away again or the tears that are assaulting my throat might find a pathway out.

  “What of?”

  Everything. Everything, everything, everything. Never finding out what happened to my father, finding out my father is dead. Throwing away my relationship with Jonathan and never being happy, keeping my relationship with Jonathan and never being happy. Throwing away my career, losing myself in my career, losing the chance to build bridges with Carrie, losing myself, losing my mind . . . and always, always the Manse. I whisper it. “The Manse.”

  To his credit, he doesn’t look skeptical. “Ali says there’s some strange tales about it.” I nod again. He scratches his chin with a thumb. “I don’t blame you for not feeling safe there after all of this.”

  “I have to go back.”

  “You really don’t.”

  “I do. I have to. Carrie would think I was running away again.” I dash a hand across one treacherous eye.

  “Again?” I shake my head minutely and look out at the mountains. He leaves it a moment, his elbows still on his knees, his eyes and his thoughts elsewhere. “I don’t have the manpower to put an officer on you for protection.”

  I nod.

  His knee is bouncing as he thinks. “Do me a favor and send me a text when you’re moving back into the Manse. I can make sure any cars in the vicinity swing by from time to time. It’s not much, but . . .” He grimaces.

  “Okay. You haven’t had anything back from the lab yet?”

  “Not yet. We should have something tomorrow, or the next day. I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay.” He’s still looking at me, his frustration barely bridled, and I can see that he still thinks I’m being deliberately difficult and obtuse. “Bryn,” I say quietly. “It’s not that I don’t want to help. I just don’t know anything that could.”

  He holds my gaze for a moment, and then says mildly, “If you say so.” I wish he was in a suit.

  My father is dust and bone. That’s all he has been for the last twenty-seven years and that’s all he ever can be. He took an earlier flight back from his trip; when he found his car battery was flat, he bused into Edinburgh and then hopped on a train. He was thinking that he would surprise his little girl; he was thinking of the smile that would light up her face (though perhaps not his wife’s). But they weren’t home, and it was a burglar he surprised instead—a burglar with a crowbar that was used to fatal effect . . .

  I won’t think about this. I won’t.

  TWENTY

  I call Pete from the car park, sheltering in the warmth of the car to escape the rain that threatens. The clouds have completely overtaken the blue now, and there’s a heft to the wind; it means to push and shove rather than play.

  It’s good to hear Pete’s voice, though he sounds older than he did before. Before . . . what? I’m not quite sure when the watershed point was. When my mother died, or some point before? I’ve missed out on more than just Carrie by chasing every news story around the globe. But Carrie has clearly brought him up to speed—I spend at least the first ten minutes of the call dissuading him from getting on a plane, trying to reassure him that he needn’t worry, that I’m fine, that Carrie’s fine, that we are keeping ourselves safe.

  Stay safe, Jonathan would say. But Jonathan hasn’t got on a plane. He hasn’t even offered. We spoke last night, a snatched conversation given it was still his working day in DC. He’s horrified, of course. I thought he might at least offer to come, even if that offer was based on a calculation that I would tell him to stay put. But no. There were things I wanted to say but he had to get off the phone, and I looked at my silent Blackberry for several heartbeats after he hung up, thinking that every thought unuttered, every sentence unsaid, moves us further apart. Our DNA cannot handle the strain. Already I see it like a fraying rope, the liberated ends of the broken fibers swaying gently in any breath of breeze.

  “When will you hear?” Pete asks. I know he means about the identity of the bones. It has become like a Schrödinger’s cat experiment in my head. Right now the bones are both my father’s, and not my father’s; both possibilities exist simultaneously. Even though whichever outcome does in fact come to pass is already determined, has possibly been determined for twenty-seven years, it will somehow only come into effect at the point that Detective Laws—Bryn—calls me. Until then my father is both alive and dead.

  “A day or two more. It depends on how busy the labs are. A current murder would take precedence over this.” New bones, with flesh and dried blood on them. As these must have been once upon a time, regardless of who they once belonged to.

  “I suppose that’s fair.” I can picture him tugging on one of his long-lobed ears. “I expect you can think of little else.”

  “Something like that.” The Schrödinger’s cat experiment extends to my feelings about the potential outcomes, too, and my feelings about those feelings . . . I simultaneously want the bones to be my father’s, because then he never voluntarily left me, and I hate myself for feeling that; and I don’t want them to be my father’s, because then he could still be alive and I hate myself for not knowing better than to cling on to such pitiful hope. “Though it does help actually being out of the Manse.” I can at least breathe again. I can sleep again.

  “Your mother hated that house, you know.”

  “I have some sympathy with that,” I say wryly, and I hear a breath of a grim chuckle from him. Though in truth, I couldn’t say that I hate it myself, not all of it. There are versions of it I could perhaps grow to love, if they could find a way to stay fixed. I hesitate to ask my next question. “She wasn’t . . . scared in it, was she?”

  “I don’t think so. She j
ust said that she could never sleep properly. Why, were you scared there when you were little?”

  “I don’t think so.” I’ve tried to give it proper consideration. “I don’t have a lot of memories, but in the ones I have, I think I was . . . at home.” At home in the Manse. I’m surprised by a wave of longing. “But it’s certainly an odd place. Mercurial, I suppose.”

  “Mercurial.” He sounds amused. “That’s a strange description for a house.”

  “It’s a strange house. You should come and see it sometime.” It’s easy to imagine Pete in the Manse. I fancy there would be a sort of mutual respect between them. “Was it . . . was it just the house she hated, or was it everything here?”

  He blows down the phone, thinking. “I don’t know, pet. She wasn’t much for talking about it. The past is another country and all that . . . But I don’t think she was very happy then. If your dad hadn’t disappeared, I doubt they would have lasted much longer.” He gives me space to say something, but he doesn’t press. I appreciate that about him. He’s always been happy to let me come to things at my own pace. When I don’t speak, he moves on. “So, no safe place.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the name of the painting you sent me a snap of. No Safe Place. Never my favorite piece.”

  I tell him about Callum’s reaction to the painting, and he laughs uproariously, like I knew he would. My cheeks are aching with smiles at hearing him, but my eyes are curiously blurry. I miss him. I will miss him enormously if anything should happen to him. These little hooks, they catch and hold me; I feel them bite. I’m no different to Carrie after all: my mother’s passing has made me all too aware of Pete’s advancing years. “Anyway, it’s the oddest thing,” he continues.