by S L Beaumont
“Feel a bit better?”
I shrugged. “Drier anyway.”
Harry pushed a cup of tea in my direction. “I’ve added some sugar, s’posed to help with shock,” he said.
“And I’ve grabbed my emergency supply of whiskey from the truck,” Alastair said splashing a generous nip of amber liquid from a small flask into each of three glasses. “To Buffy,” he said, raising his glass.
“To Buffy,” Harry and I echoed. The whiskey burned all the way down to my stomach, but I was surprised to find that it helped to settle me until a loud knock on the door made me jump and spill my tea.
“It’s okay, it’ll be Constable Jones,” Alastair said, leaping up to let the police officer in.
I stood as he walked into the kitchen behind Alastair, removing his hat and tucking it under his arm.
“I hear you’ve had some trouble, Mrs. McDonald,” he said.
“Ms. Harley, but please call me Jess,” I said. “Someone killed my dog and left her on the front porch.”
Harry motioned to the kettle, offering to make Jones a cup, but he shook his head as he pulled a notebook from his pocket.
“Maybe it was a hunting accident and they brought her back for you?” Jones suggested.
I stared at him. “Except for the fact that I left her locked inside when I went to Ayr earlier in the day.”
“Harry said that a man threatened you with a gun,” Alastair said. “Did you see who was it?”
I shook my head. “No. He wouldn’t let me turn around.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Just not to turn around, then he went away.”
Jones frowned and scribbled in his notebook. “Are you sure you didn’t just imagine that?” he said closing his book and sliding it back in his pocket. “Shock does funny things, y’ know.”
I opened and closed my mouth for a moment before I trusted myself to speak. “I think I’d remember someone threatening me. Aren’t you going to take fingerprints? Someone broke into my home and killed my dog,” I said.
Jones looked at me with pity. “I know you’ve been through a lot, Mrs. McDonald, I’ll look into it.”
“Harley.”
“Excuse me?” he said.
“My name is Harley, not McDonald.”
“Good day, Ms. Harley.” He exchanged a look with Alastair before turning to leave.
Alastair saw him to the door as I sank back down onto the chair.
“It’s his job to be skeptical and look at things from all angles,” Harry said.
“It’s not his job to be rude, though,” I replied.
“Don’t worry about workin’ tonight or tomorrow for that matter, Jess,” Alastair said closing the front door behind the police officer.
I nodded. “Okay, thanks.”
Chapter 38
April 17
I parked the car in the center of Ayr and started looking for a payphone on High Street trying to look nonchalant. But my heart was beating at a million miles an hour. I wasn’t sure whether I’d just worked myself up into an anxious knot or whether it was nerves from the call that I was about to make. I located a payphone booth part way along the busy shopping street. Its glass walls were grimy and I was careful not to touch anywhere more than I had to as I entered the tiny booth. On the wall behind the telephone a patchwork of business cards and flyers were arrayed, most offering services of the professional kind. Ignoring the images of scantily clad women, I lifted the receiver, taking care to hold it away from my ear, slid my credit card into the slot and keyed the number written on the card that Will had left me at the hospital.
“Leave a message after the annoying beep,” Will’s voice message said. Startled, I slammed the receiver down, disconnecting the call. For some reason, I wasn’t expecting to hear his voice sounding so normal. Breathing deep and slow, I tried again.
“You can do this, Jess,” I told myself. I lifted the receiver, redialed and waited for the annoying beep.
“Will, ah, Charlie, it’s Jess. I think I need your help. Text, don’t call.”
I left my new mobile number, hung up and rushed out of the booth and across the road to a small coffee shop where I ordered a latte. I sat at a table in the window, placing my mobile in front of me and stared at it. Part of me willed it to beep, another part hoped it wouldn’t. It chimed with an incoming text almost as soon as my coffee was delivered. The message came from a withheld number and simply said, ‘Call again’. I drained my coffee and hurried back to the phone booth and called the number on the card again.
“Jess.” Will answered on the first ring.
“Yes.” It came out in a whisper, as the memories that his voice conjured up, crowded me.
“What’s wrong?” His tone was businesslike, which brought me back to the present with brutal force.
I cleared my throat. “Ah, I’ve been looking into Colin’s past and I must have found something, because someone shot my dog and threatened to kill me,” I said, the words rushing out.
“I’ll come to you,” he replied. “Where are you?”
“No, a stranger would be noticed. Can you meet me in Ayr in Scotland?” I asked.
“Sure, tomorrow?”
“Yeah, but it’ll need to be around lunchtime, as I’m working in the evening.”
“Where are you working, Jess?” His voice softened.
“In a pub.”
“Aw, Jess.”
I didn’t reply. I couldn’t speak past the lump that had suddenly formed in my throat.
“Okay, where shall I meet you?” he asked after the silence became uncomfortable.
“There’s a coffee shop called Bette’s on the high street,” I said, looking across the road at the café on the opposite. “Midday tomorrow.” I managed to say before hanging up, my heart pounding. I was surprised to find my face wet.
I figured if someone was watching me, I would need a reason to come back to Ayr again so soon, so I dropped into M&S and ordered some new bedding to collect the following day.
On the drive back to the village, I began to second guess my decision to call Will. Surely I was just being paranoid, but then again someone had shot my dog and threatened me. It was hearing Will’s voice again that had rattled me, I decided. I supposed that I could just do a no show, but then if I didn’t meet him, he would come looking for me and that would most certainly attract more unwanted attention.
It was late afternoon by the time I pulled up to the cottage. I hesitated at the front porch. Despite having scrubbed the doorstep in the morning, I could still see the stain that Buffy’s blood had left. I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer for my faithful companion. She didn’t deserve to die like that, not when she’d kept me going over the past few months. I unlocked the door and stepped inside as the tears rolled down my cheeks.
I changed my shoes and headed out to a nearby field where there were patches of wildflowers blooming. I gathered as many as I could carry and returned to the cottage, covering Buffy’s grave with them. I stood up and brushed myself down, before heading back indoors, locking the door behind me. I turned on some music and began preparing dinner. I gathered an armful of firewood before the sun set and locked the front door, shooting the bolts across the top and bottom. I double checked that each window was secure as I pulled the curtains across and leaned the rifle within easy reach against the wall by the door.
I sat by the fire to eat my dinner and after washing the dishes and putting them away, I curled up on the sofa to read. After a page, the words became blurry as once again tears poured down my cheeks. Buffy had cuddled up to me every night on the sofa. Wiping my cheeks with the backs of my hands, I stood and walked into my bedroom to retrieve a warm throw from the end of my bed. Buffy’s basket was in its usual place by the fire, which made me cry harder. The irony that I was crying more over the death of a dog that I’d only known for a few months than for my husband of six years, was not lost on me.
Unable to settle, I retrieved the stack of in
formation I’d hidden in the kitchen. I moved my coffee machine away from the wall and pried out the loose brick. Reaching in, I pulled out the biscuit tin. I returned to the sofa and sorted the most relevant paperwork into a logical order and scribbled a long handwritten note explaining my research, conclusions and noting the gaps. Satisfied, I grabbed a new envelope from a drawer in the kitchen, slid the stack of documents inside and sealed it. Bending the envelope in half, I added it to the tin before replacing the lid and pushing it back into my kitchen wall safe, replacing both the brick and the coffee machine.
Chapter 39
April 18
Will was sitting in the café, when I finally arrived in Ayr. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I had a prickly feeling on the back of my neck, as though I was being followed. There had been very little traffic in either direction on the road from Strathgarvan, so I figured that I was once again being paranoid. Someone threatening you with a gun tends to do that to a person.
I wandered along the high street towards Bette’s, making a pretense of stopping and looking in various shop windows before entering the café. As I pulled the door open, I saw a reflection in the glass door, of a man watching me from across the street. I managed to resist the urge to turn, but in the distorted view on the glass, he looked somehow familiar. I was glad that I hadn’t planned on staying to chat in the coffee shop. Will looked up as I stepped inside and rose from his seat. I gave him a single shake of my head and he instead modified his movement to grab the newspaper off an adjacent empty table and sit back down to read, ignoring me. He looked just the same as I remembered. His dark hair was shorter but still flopped across his forehead. He had discarded his jacket on the back of the chair and the blue t-shirt pulled across his broad shoulders accentuating his muscular arms. The only indication that he wasn’t actually relaxing and reading the paper was his clenched jaw, which gave a little twitch. He knew I was watching him. I blushed, took a deep breath, told myself to get a grip and ordered my coffee to go. This, after all, was the man who lied to me for months and broke my heart. There was no coming back from that. As I turned to leave, coffee in hand, I walked past his table and dropped a small piece of paper onto his newspaper. Will flipped the page over, covering it.
Half an hour later, having picked up my new duvet and dropped it back to the car, I took myself to the cinema.
The matinee screening was almost empty, only half a dozen other people, all elderly. I slipped into a seat in the back row, just as the trailers began. Five minutes later, the lights went fully down and the opening credits of the feature film rolled. I glanced around the cinema. No one new had arrived and the closest people were sitting eight rows away.
Out of the darkness, Will slid into the seat beside me.
“Hey, you,” he whispered. “No one followed you in here, I’ve been watching, so you can relax. There’s a guy sitting in an SUV across the road, though, who looks out of place, so you might want to avoid him, when you leave.”
“Thanks. I’m a bit out of my depth here.” I grimaced.
“You did great today; the cinema was a genius idea. If you ever want a job…” He trailed off.
I was glad it was dark so that he couldn’t see my face. I rummaged in my bag and handed him the envelope of documents and notes that I’d taken out of my kitchen hiding place that morning. “I think I’ve been asking too many questions. I’ve felt like I’m being watched the last few days, particularly at the cemetery.”
“Is that where Colin is buried?”
“No. I wouldn’t waste my time visiting his grave, if he had one,” I scoffed. “It’s his mother and grandparents. I found their graves.”
“You said on the phone that someone killed your dog.”
“Yeah, she was shot in the head and left on the doorstep for me to find.” My voice caught on the last word. “And the person who shot her was still there and gave me a warning to let the dead rest in peace unless I wanted to join them.”
Will’s eyes widened as he absorbed that.
“Could you identify him if you saw him again? I could have one of the team do a Photofit,” Will said.
I shook my head. “He told me not to turn around,” I whispered.
“God, Jess, you must have been terrified.”
I tapped the envelope that I’d given him. “You need to look into Mendelson some more.”
“Mendelson? We’ve already checked them and they’re clean. There’s no evidence of additional weapons being produced,” Will said.
“Remember the companies chart that Dad drew up? Most were shell companies, but the only thing that I can find that they have in common is that they each have shareholdings in Mendelson, which if you add them together, could give someone a controlling interest.”
That got Will’s attention. “Interesting.”
“Was there anything else in your safety deposit box that you didn’t tell me about?”
I nodded. “Yeah, a note telling me not to trust anyone, ironic really, Colin’s mother’s death certificate, a photo of Colin and some boys as teenagers, some old newspaper clippings from Colin’s student politics days, along with some cash; an emergency fund.” I drew air commas around the word emergency.
Will frowned.
“I have this feeling that Colin’s mother’s death was suspicious, just like my father’s, but I can’t prove it. It’s all there, you can make of it what you will.”
“God, Jess. I’m so sorry.” He reached out to squeeze my hand, but I moved it.
Will cleared his throat. “We’ll take a look at this. In the meantime, lay low and don’t do anything further to provoke unwanted attention. Do you need protection?”
“I think that would draw attention,” I replied.
“You could have someone come to stay. I know a couple of women who would be great.”
I shook my head. “No, it would look strange. I haven’t had anyone to stay at all since I moved there.”
“What? No one? Not even Marie?” I shook my head. He gave me a long look. “Okay, I’ll be in touch.” He rose to leave.
“Hey,” I started.
Someone further down the theatre gave a loud shhh. Will stopped and sat down again, turning his body toward me.
“Uh, what should I call you?” I whispered.
“My real name is Charlie,” he replied. An awkward pause followed. “I’m sorry, Jess. I never meant for you to get hurt.”
I forced a bright smile. “No problem, Charlie. Bye.” I turned my attention to the movie. It was a nineteenth century drama and I had missed all of the opening scenes, so I had no clue what I was going on.
Charlie paused a moment longer and drew in a breath as if to speak, but stopped himself, rose and was gone.
I felt the tears pricking my eyes as the warmth left by his body vanished with him. Only when I raised my fingers to my face to stop any tears spilling onto my cheeks, did I realize that my hands were shaking.
It took until the end of the movie to get my emotions under control again. I sat in the darkness and let the sadness engulf me. A black SVU with tinted windows was still parked opposite the cinema entrance when I left an hour and a half later. Anger and annoyance replaced my sadness and grief, and I crossed the street walking straight towards it. The driver gunned the engine and pulled away before I could get a good look at him, but not before I noted the number plate with a shock. The last three digits were the exact same as those captured by the surveillance cameras outside Dad’s office in Edinburgh the day he died. It was the same vehicle that was at the warehouse the day before the explosion. I hoped that Charlie would move fast, I didn’t know how much longer I would be safe.
Chapter 40
April 18
Business was steady at the pub that night. In a break between wiping down tables and collecting empties, I chatted to one of the regulars sitting in his usual position at the end of the bar. He was a lonely figure. Late fifties at a guess, overweight with thinning grey hair that was desperately
in need of a good cut. Alastair had introduced him as Douglas on my first night and he’d sat there quietly nursing a pint or two every night that I had worked since, before shuffling off when Alastair called last orders.
I gathered from my brief chats with him that he’d lived in the village all his life and that he lived alone. This particular Thursday night, he was chattier than usual.
“You’re Colin McDonald’s widow, are ya not?” he asked.
I nodded. Douglas was silent for a while as I emptied the dishwasher that had just finished washing the first round of glasses.
“I knew his mother.” It was a closed statement, but not one that I was going to let rest. Apart from my neighbors, no one spoke about her.
“You knew Catriona?
He nodded and sighed. “Aye, she was a beautiful lass. Kind-hearted too.”
I gave him a smile of encouragement and put down the cloth that I was using to polish the glasses, so that he knew he had my full attention.
“Loved that wee bairn, she did.”
“Colin, you mean?” I asked. I couldn’t think of Colin as a wee bairn, more a wee bastard in more than one sense of the word.
Douglas nodded.
“Who was his father?” I asked, leaning forward so that the question was just a whisper.
Douglas shook his head. “Cannae say I know. She ne’er said, although I have my suspicions.”
The bell above the door leading from the hotel’s accommodation upstairs jangled making us both jump. Four strangers ambled in chatting and laughing. Silence settled over the pub as the locals took in the interlopers, four men in their late twenties, dressed in jeans and checked shirts or jumpers. Alastair greeted them from behind the bar.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said in his broad Scots accent. “I trust your rooms are to your liking.”