by S L Beaumont
A sense of unease settled on me as I watched the old boy stand at the door waving to the doctor. Not stopping to give myself time to change my mind, I walked down to their house there and then, carrying the pie wrapped in a tea towel and knocked on the door.
The old man cracked it open and peered out.
“Hello?”
“Hello, I live in the cottage at the end of the road. I’ve just taken this out of the oven. It’s a chicken pie.” I held it out towards him. “I thought you might like it.”
“Och, thank you. Mrs. Gordon has just come out of the hospital. Broken ’er hip, she has. Would you like to come in?” He took the pie from me and stepped back inside.
“Look I won’t, thanks all the same.”
“Thank you again, Mrs. McDonald, I’m not much of a cook, so this is most appreciated.”
“It’s Jessica, Jessica Harley now. I’ve gone back to my maiden name. Please wish Mrs. Gordon a speedy recovery.” I turned to leave.
Mr. Gordon nodded. “I will. Goodbye, Jessica, and thank you, lass.”
Chapter 32
April 12
There was a knock at my door mid-morning as I lifted a carrot cake from the oven. It startled me. Apart from Alastair, I never got visitors. Putting down my oven mitts, I walked over to the door and pulled it open. An attractive, middle-aged man stood there smiling. His wavy dark hair was flecked with grey, and he wore an expensive looking Burberry jacket over his dark trousers.
“Hello?” I said.
“Mrs. McDonald. I’m Ewan Campbell, from the estate. We met a few years ago,” he extended his hand.
I wiped my floury hands on my jeans and returned his handshake. He looked familiar. I had met him before, but I couldn’t remember the circumstances.
“How can I help you?” I asked. My experience over the last few months had taught me that people only came to me if they wanted something from me.
“I knew your husband well, and I wanted to offer my condolences,” he said, the smile dropping. “However it ended, Colin was a good man.”
I stiffened and put my hands on my hips, glaring at him. “You’ll forgive me if I disagree with that sentiment.”
“I am sorry that I haven’t been by sooner, but I understand something about grief and I guessed that you would want some time alone to come to terms with things,” he continued as though I hadn’t spoken.
I nodded and started to close the door.
“I hear you’ve been helping to look after the Gordons,” he said, moving his foot across the threshold. I couldn’t shut the door now, without looking extremely rude.
“I haven’t been doing much, just helping with meals,” I replied. Buffy had come to stand beside me. She looked from me to Ewan and growled, low in her throat.
“Buffy,” I murmured.
Ewan smiled. “I don’t know that she’ll find many vampires to slay around here.”
“Mmm… just a few demons, maybe,” I replied, with a wry smile.
“Well, I won’t keep you,” Ewan said. “If you feel like getting out one night, Alastair does good fare down at the pub on Fridays and Saturdays. Give me a call and I could pick you up.” He handed me a business card.
“Sure,” I replied. “Thanks for dropping by.” My manners finally returned from wherever they had been hiding. I turned the card over in my hands and read it. Of course, the Ewan Campbell, Laird of the estate. He’d been at our wedding. Colin’s mates from the village had treated him with much reverence. Ewan nodded and walked back to his vehicle, a fairly new Range Rover of some sort. It dwarfed my little Fiat 500. He raised his hand in farewell and drove off down the drive. I leaned against the doorframe, playing with Buffy’s ears as I watched him leave.
“That was odd, Buffy, condolences and a dinner invitation all in one.”
My mobile rang as I stepped back inside. I checked the caller ID before answering; it was Colin’s parents.
“Hello,” I answered.
We chatted for a few minutes before the reason for the call became apparent.
“Jessica, the police have returned a rather large box of paperwork from Colin’s warehouse. We think that you should have it,” his father said.
I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I didn’t really want anything belonging to their son, because he’d ruined my life already. But they were grieving too. In many ways it was worse for them. They still loved the little boy that they had raised and weren’t able to reconcile that little boy with the actions of the man he had become. Whereas I didn’t have that problem, I didn’t love him. Not at all, in fact, I hated him. The worse thing was that he wasn’t here for me to tell him. I often shouted it into the wind off at the top of the cliff near the cottage, hoping that wherever he was, probably the depths of hell, it would reach his ears and he would know.
“How about I drive over to Edinburgh on Monday to collect the box?” I suggested.
“Aye, that would be grand.”
I said goodbye and ended the call. I was determined to make the visit as short as possible. They would want to sit and rehash everything and to be honest I didn’t think that I could stand doing that again.
For the first time, I realized that I was moving forward. I burst into tears and dropped down on the nearest chair. Oh, thank God. I didn’t think it was ever going to happen. Buffy came over and put her head on my knees, licking at the salty tears that fell.
A little while later, having iced the cake, I took it down to the Gordons. I left with their shopping list tucked in my pocket and drove straight to the village store.
I was loading the bags into the car, when I heard my name. I turned to see Alastair hurrying across the road towards me.
“Jessica, just the woman I wanted t’ see,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Oh yeah, what can I do for you?”
“My barmaid has up and gone to the city and I need a replacement, urgently,” he said. I nodded, unsure what it had to do with me. “Can ye help me out?”
“Me?” I laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so. I haven’t worked in a bar before,” I said shaking my head and closing the boot.
“Yer a smart gal, you’ll pick it up in no time,” he said.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to be out in public, Alastair, ya know?” I replied.
He put a big hand on my shoulder. “Jess, it’s been a couple of months. It’s time. And people round ’ere, they keep to their own business. No one’ll bother ya. I’ll make sure o’ that.”
“Aw, I don’t know,” I hedged.
“I’ll see you tonight, six o’clock.” He grinned and loped back across the road.
Chapter 33
April 13
The drive to Edinburgh on Monday took just over two hours. I decided to stop at Colin’s parents first and get that over with, before spending the night with Mum.
The previous night had been an experience, and not an entirely unpleasant one, I was forced to admit. The time had flown by as I learned to pull pints, collected and washed glasses and cleaned down tables. Alastair had patiently taken me through the various tasks, and at the end of the evening declared that I was hired, whether I wanted to be or not. So somehow I had found myself a part time job, or a part time job had found me. I was to work four evenings, Thursday through to Sunday. I decided that I’d give it a go. It would be an interesting addition to my CV at the very least, although most people do the bar work before the career, not after. The irony was not lost on me. My mother would be horrified, her daughter working as a barmaid. I couldn’t wait to tell her.
Colin’s mother, Maggie, looked old and tired when she opened the front door. Their small terrace house was neat and tidy but crying out to be redecorated. I felt like I was stepping back into the 1970s every time I visited. A handmade macramé plant holder hung from a hook in the ceiling by the door trailing green foliage down to the floor.
Maggie McDonald embraced me and led me into the front room. She was a short round woman with a kind face and
soft auburn hair streaked with silver. Colin’s father John was the opposite, stooped and willowy. He was standing looking out at the street from behind a net curtain which covered the front bay window. He turned and nodded to me as I walked into the room. I crossed the floor and hugged him.
“Come and sit, Jessica, I’ll make some tea,” Maggie fussed and hurried from the room. I could hear the clatter of china coming from the kitchen.
The events of the past few months had very clearly taken their toll on them. John also looked old and grey. I knew that the media had hounded them too for a time. I swallowed a painful lump in my throat and I told myself not to rush my visit.
I dropped my bag beside the brown and orange paisley patterned sofa and sank down onto it. John retrieved a box from behind the sofa and set it down beside me. A whiff of smoke brought an immediate flashback to that terrible day. I pushed the mental images aside.
“This box of papers is from Colin’s office at the warehouse,” he said. “They don’t mean anything to us, so I thought you might know what to do with them…” He trailed off and waved his hand in the direction of the box. “The forensic teams have been through and taken copies of everything they need. I don’t quite understand what it all is, you probably will better than me, but they said something about the proceeds of illegal activities like selling weapons was being used to fund his terrorist activities.” He rubbed his hand across the back of his head, a mannerism that I’d seen Colin do many times. “I just don’t understand.”
Despite not wanting to be, my interest was piqued. When I had been trying to make sense of the information that Dad had left in the safety deposit box, I had been unable to find anything at home to tie Colin to any of the companies Dad had identified. And my one attempt at accessing that information from his office had only raised my suspicions further without providing any real answers. Perhaps the information in the box would help to fill in some gaps.
Maggie bustled back into the room carrying a tea tray with cups, saucers and a tiered cake plate, which she placed on the coffee table separating the sofa from two matching armchairs. She left the room and returned with a large teapot.
“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble,” I said, smiling at her as she poured the tea.
“It’s no trouble, love,” Maggie said. She glanced at John. “It’s nice to have a visitor.”
I must have looked surprised.
“People have been avoiding us like the plague,” John explained.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said.
“It’s not your fault, love,” Maggie said pushing one of the cups towards me and handing me a plate. “Please help yourself.”
I selected a small round savory and a little egg sandwich from the platter.
“Take more than that, you’ve lost so much weight. Are you sure that you’re eating properly?” she fussed.
“I am,” I assured her. “In fact, I’ve been cooking rather a lot. One of my elderly neighbors is unwell and I’ve been cooking for them.”
Colin’s parents were keen to talk about Colin, as I expected.
“He was such a bonny wee boy when he came to us, standing there on the doorstep with his wee suitcase, trying not to look afraid.” Maggie’s tired blue eyes filled with tears.
“Standing on the doorstep? I thought you adopted him as a baby?” I asked, sitting up straighter.
“Oh no, Jessica, he was six, the poor wee man. His mother had just died and he was being so brave,” she explained, standing and reaching up to the mantelpiece to pick up a bundle of photos.
And just like that a little piece of the puzzle fell into place. It wasn’t a piece that I had realized was missing, but it explained the death certificate in the safety deposit box. I had never investigated that properly. Now I would.
“Funny, your dad thought that too,” John said.
“My father?”
“Yes, it came up in conversation when he dropped around just before he died. He thought we were generous setting Colin up in business, but I had to explain that the money didn’t come from us, but from his substantial trust fund,” John said.
“Trust fund?” I echoed.
John looked uncomfortable. “Jess, I just assumed that Colin would have told you. He had a trust fund which amounted to £750,000 by the time he was twenty-one, a fortune.”
I shook my head, my brain whirring. I knew he’d used an inheritance to buy a small local courier firm and had bank funding to expand it, but I didn’t realize that he had that much to begin with.
“What about Colin’s birth father?” I asked, frowning.
“No one knew who he was. It was left blank on his birth certificate. She was a single mother, an only child, whose parents were dead, so there was no one to ask,” John explained. “The lawyers for her estate organized everything. There were a few stipulations. We had to agree to send him back to the village he came from for his holidays to stay with an old couple who were friends of his mother, and to use some of the trust fund to ensure that he had a good education, so there must have been some money somewhere.”
“Was it a closed adoption?” I asked, sitting forward on the sofa.
John and Maggie exchanged glances.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter now. It was a private adoption. We were considered too old to adopt through the usual channels, so I made some enquiries through contacts of mine. We thought we might have adopted a child from overseas. You can imagine our delight when we got our own wee Scotsman,” John explained.
“So—” I paused, unsure how to ask the next question, without sounding rude. “Was it legal?”
John gave a short laugh. “Well, we didn’t follow the normal adoption process. But there were lawyers involved who ensured that the paperwork was correct. So, yes, it was legal.”
I nodded. My mind was busy processing this new information.
“We didn’t use his trust fund. We wanted to pay for his education. He was our son. He got the fund when he turned twenty-one. That’s how he bought and expanded the business,” Maggie added.
“So, Colin would have remembered his mother?” I said.
“Oh yes, he cried for her on and off for many months. He understood that she’d died.”
“He never spoke to me about her. I always assumed that you’d adopted him as a baby from a teenage mother. I didn’t realize that he lived with her for the first six years of his life.”
“I expect it was too hard for him to talk about,” Maggie said. “I always thought that was the reason he bought the little cottage down in Strathgarvan.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s where she lived, and died,” John said.
Maggie patted my hand and poured me another cup of tea, although at that point, I would have preferred something stronger. The lying bastard, what else hadn’t he told me?
I left them a couple of hours later, still poring over old photos. I hated Colin even more. All those two ever did was love him unconditionally and to see them in such pain, was unforgiveable.
The drive across Edinburgh to Mum’s house took ages. Detours and road blocks were starting to be set up ahead of the G7 conference in a week’s time.
Mum was delighted to see me and was horrified, as I’d expected, to learn that I was working as a barmaid. I reassured her that it was all above board and while she started making dinner, I slipped into Dad’s study to make some phone calls. I closed the door behind me and stood for a moment surveying the room. I closed my eyes. Nothing had changed. I almost expected him to be sitting behind the desk waiting to chat with me. I shook my head to dislodge the morbid thoughts threatening to crowd me and strode over to his bookcase. I selected the large vintage world atlas where I’d hidden a set of copies of the items from the safety deposit box before I moved to the cottage. I laid it on his desk. It fell open to the page containing the large brown envelope. I opened it and retrieved Catriona Mackie’s death certificate and pulled out my mobile.
I wanted t
o check the Ayrshire Post from around the time of her death and I supposed that Scotland’s newspaper archive was located in Edinburgh. Sure enough, after a quick Google search and one phone call, the Edinburgh Public Library put me through to the City Chambers. I made an appointment for 10 am the following day.
Chapter 34
April 14
The City Chambers are located in the heart of Edinburgh’s historic district. Again, the roadblocks and detours made getting there a nightmare and I ended up parking about twenty minutes away and walking. The building itself is impressive, a grey brick three-story structure arranged around a central courtyard. I wandered past a large bronze statue of Alexander and his wild horse in the center of the front quad and through the arched colonnade. I followed the signs for the newspaper archive and introduced myself at the reception desk.
“Welcome, Ms. Harley,” the pleasant receptionist said. “If you could just show me some identification, sign the visitor’s book and note what you’re researching.
“Sure,” I replied, digging out my driver’s license from my wallet and entering my name followed by the words ‘newspaper archive’ in the large book.
“Now if you go through that door, one of the archivists will be able to assist.”
“Thanks.”
I pushed the sturdy wooden door open and entered a large hushed, cool room with a high ceiling and opaque windows. A number of people were sitting at wooden tables perusing books and documents. Along one wall was a bank of ten computer screens. Several researchers were perched on high stools in front of the first six terminals scrolling through documents on the screens.
“Can I help you?” A man in his fifties approached and peered at me through black framed spectacles.
“Yes please, I would like to see the Ayrshire Post for the two weeks beginning 30th May 1998.”