Bad Blood (10 page)

He went on past her into the kitchen and Anita followed more slowly, rubbing at her lips, still bruised from his kiss, still shaken by her own instant response to it. His behaviour was confusing; she had heard what
he said but when he stepped into the lighted hallway she saw the steel behind the smile and the marks of anger in the taut lines of his face. She resolved to keep her distance until she was sure he wasn’t going to snap.

But as they sat over the whisky Drax seemed to have relaxed. He was sipping it, not downing it with the sort of cold intensity that always meant mayhem. He was lounging in his chair, making encouraging noises as she went through the whole story again, prompting her with questions until he was satisfied that she had told him all there was to tell.

Then he was silent for a moment or two, holding up his hand when she tried to speak. At last he said briskly, ‘Right. To sum up: we don’t know why she’s come, we don’t know who she’s talked to already, we don’t know where she’s staying. Lorna Baxter’s vigilante brigade is on the march. The girl can’t be convinced that anything she remembers is wrong, so she’s difficult to lie to.

‘Suppose we just tell her who her mother was, and that she’d better leave before someone takes the law into their own hands?’

Anita shook her head. ‘She might go away, perhaps. But it won’t stop her trying to find out what happened to Karen.’

She stole a glance at him as she said that, but he was looking into the middle distance. He was frowning, but he had been so understanding that she felt emboldened to say, ‘The thing is, Drax, I’m getting frightened. I’m not young, the way I was; I get panic attacks and if it’s all stirred up again, if they start on the endless questions, I’m afraid I’ll break.’

‘Break?’ He turned his gaze on her and she realised how wrong she had been to think that he was relaxed. ‘Oh no, my sweet, you won’t break – will you?’

Anita swallowed hard. ‘No, Drax, of course I won’t. It was just – oh, me being silly, I suppose.’

‘Then don’t be silly,’ he said, his voice silky, and Anita feeling suddenly cold wondered why she had been foolish enough to think that telling Drax her problems was a wise thing to do.

‘I’ve eaten far too much,’ Marjory Fleming said ruefully as she and Bill went up to bed after Cammie’s celebratory supper. ‘With Karolina pulling out all the stops for the first course and Mum going her length on the puddings, I’m going to have to starve for the next three days.’

‘I’m just going to find the Rennies,’ Bill said. ‘They’re an absolutely lethal combination, the pair of them.’

Karolina Cisek, whose husband Rafael worked on the farm with Bill, played domestic goddess to the Fleming household, aided and abetted by Marjory’s mother Janet Laird, who suffered from a sense of guilt that she had not managed to impart any of the housewifely virtues to her daughter. Their joint feast for Cammie had been a triumph of culinary skill.

Marjory laughed unsympathetically. ‘The penalties of greed,’ she called after Bill as he headed for the medicine cabinet.

She was still smiling as she sat down at the dressing table to take off her make-up. It had been such a lovely evening, the happiest as a family that she could remember for a long time.

Cat had been holding her at arm’s length ever since last year’s disaster but her pleasure at Cammie’s success seemed to have softened her tonight, and she was less abrasive, too, when Janet was around. Cat had always been devoted to her grandmother and with her now approaching eighty, that affection had developed into a touching protectiveness which so far Janet, thank goodness, had shown no sign of needing. She had an active social life and was kept busy, too, with charitable good works for elderly ladies rather younger than she was herself.

Cammie, the star of the show, had been alight with happiness. Seeing his shining face, his mother had felt a pang: how rare they were, those golden moments of unadulterated joy, and how quickly they dissipated. Before long Cammie would be worrying about doing well enough to cement his place in the team.

It had been a golden evening for them all, in fact, and Cat had given her mother a spontaneous hug when she said goodnight, the
first for a long, long time. It looked almost as though peace was being declared and Marjory found herself wiping away a sentimental tear along with her mascara.

Shelley Crichton found she couldn’t settle to anything. She had a headache for a start, and she was finding it very difficult to sort out her feelings about all that had happened today.

Janette had told her what to think. ‘You know what Lorna Bruce is like,’ she said firmly. ‘That woman would cause trouble in an empty house and she’s just using you. Anita explained who the girl was, and the only reason you thought she had such a strong resemblance to Kirstie was because she was so much on your mind at that moment. If you saw her now, you’d wonder why on earth you thought that.’

Shelley, still tearful and feeling a little shocked by Lorna’s aggressiveness, had allowed herself to be convinced. But now, at home by herself, she wasn’t so sure.

If Kirstie Burnside really had sent her daughter to gloat, as Lorna had claimed, it was almost as wicked as what she had done originally. They had said at the trial that she had an ungovernable temper, that she had just lashed out, and she was only a child at the time – a child whose own experience of family life had been horrifying, violent abuse. The counsellor they’d arranged for Shelley afterwards had stressed that, and of course she acknowledged the child had suffered – of course she did. In a way. It hadn’t done anything to assuage her grief for Tommy, though, or tempered her hatred or blunted her wish for revenge.

She still had the dreams, dreams where she confronted Kirstie Burnside – sometimes a child, sometimes a woman with a child’s face – and screamed her hatred, until Shelley found there was a knife in her hand and plunged it deep, deep in her heart, and woke up screaming and bathed in sweat.

It had been particularly bad when Kirstie was released after only
a few years, and given what the press called ‘a new life’. Tommy couldn’t have a new life to replace the one Kirstie had taken away and neither could Shelley, but there was nothing she could do about it. She’d had to learn about forced acceptance the hard way.

Now, though … The face of the young woman she had seen swam up before her. The light-blue eyes, the goldy-red hair, the neat sharp line of the jaw: no, she hadn’t imagined the resemblance. Kirstie had been a child when last Shelley saw her, but she would have grown up to look like this, the child-woman of Shelley’s dreams.

The thought of it made her feel sick. How could she just pretend it hadn’t happened? Despite what Janette had said, Shelley was becoming more and more convinced that Anita’s story hadn’t been true. Tomorrow she was going to go round again to make her admit it, and force her to tell where she could find the woman.

The girl, she told herself, was probably no more than a cat’s-paw. Anita, though, was someone she’d known for years, almost a friend. They weren’t close but they’d have a chat if they met in a shop, say, and to help Kirstie Burnside get fun out of Shelley’s tragedy was disgusting – treacherous, really. She had felt fury when she saw the girl but now what she was feeling was a sort of cold rage.

Getting worked up like this wasn’t doing her headache any good at all. She needed to calm down, take something for it and go to bed. The violent emotions of the day had left her feeling drained, almost light-headed with the pain and tiredness. If she wasn’t to lie awake all night she needed to put it all out of her head, sleep on it and decide what to do in the morning.

Shelley was on her way upstairs when the phone rang. It was unusual for anyone to call this late, and she was frowning as she answered.

A woman’s voice said, without preamble, ‘Just wanted to tell you you’ve got friends, Shelley. We’ll get rid of her, don’t you worry.’

It had taken Marnie Burnside a long time to get to sleep. The events of the day had formed a sort of continuous strip of scenes – the crazy lady, the attacking dog, the woman who had looked her in the eyes and lied, the luxurious farmhouse kitchen – and all that broke the loop was her own speculation about what she could expect from her interview tomorrow.

Exhaustion overcame her at last, but the mattress was thin and the covers inadequate for a cold night so that she was troubled by half-wakings and unpleasant dreams. It was during one of the periods of deeper sleep, though, that the noise erupted outside in the quiet street.

Shocked awake, bewildered, Marnie sat up and tried to make some sense of what she was hearing. It sounded like a dozen metal drums being beaten in a frenzy, with car horns blaring in the background. Then came the sound of angry voices howling some sort of slogan, and bangs and thumping that echoed through the house. Her bedroom looked out onto the street; still not properly awake, Marnie staggered to the window and drew back the curtains.

It was a mistake. The sight of her seemed to inspire the group below to howling frenzy. They were holding pots and pans that they were beating with spoons and there were cars parked across the street, headlights blazing, as the drivers leant on their horns.

Marnie recognised the fat woman who was beating on the front door as one of the witches in Dunmore and shrank back out of sight with her heart pounding in terror. Was she still dreaming? Was this just another nightmare? She could make no sense of it at all.

She could hear now what they were chanting, though: ‘Come – out – and – face – us! Come – out – and – face – us!’ On and on it went, on and on, as the noise intensified until she cowered into a corner and covered her ears, sobbing.

When the door to her bedroom opened, she almost fainted with terror. But it wasn’t one of the mob from outside; it was the familiar figure of her unpleasant landlady wrapped in a tartan dressing gown. Her face, too, was pale with shock in the orange light from the street lamps, but she had unerringly placed the blame on her guest and was spitting venom.

‘What’s this all about? I never heard such a thing in the whole of my life. It’s you, isn’t it? What have you been doing?’

‘I don’t know! Nothing,’ Marnie whimpered.

‘You needn’t think you’re going to stay skulking in here until they start breaking my windows. They’re saying they want you to go out and face them so you’d better get on and do it.’

‘No! No!’

The woman advanced on her, seizing her by the shoulder to pull her up just as the sound of a siren rose above the pandemonium outside. As suddenly as it had started, it stopped; there was the sound of car doors being slammed, of engines revving and then there was only the siren and the flashing blue light of the police car.

The landlady released her grip. ‘Lucky for you,’ she said coldly.
‘Now you’d better away down and explain to them what this is all about. You’re out of here, first thing tomorrow morning. And don’t come looking for your full Scottish breakfast.’

Anita Loudon woke around seven. Drax, sprawling diagonally across the bed, had forced her into a cramped corner and she was stiff and unrefreshed.

She lay for a moment looking at him, seeing the signs of middle age in the slackening around the jawline and the greying strands in his hair. She never noticed them when he was awake: his constant, edgy vitality gave him the air of youth which she knew she had lost long ago. She needed her sleep these days.

With infinite caution she slid out of bed. Drax stirred slightly and she froze: he never took kindly to being disturbed, and anyway, she didn’t want him to see her the way she must be looking now. He turned over, sighing, and she quickly sorted out clothes for the day then slipped out of the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

The bathroom mirror was relentlessly well lit. She shuddered at what it reflected back at her and ducked into the shower, as if hot water could wash away the bags under her eyes and the crêpey skin of her neck or even the thinning lips.

Sooner or later, though, she would have to come out. At last she gritted her teeth, faced the mirror again and began an extensive repair job.

When she’d finished, or at least done all she could, she listened outside the bedroom door for a moment but there were no sounds of movement, just heavy, regular breathing. She didn’t fancy breakfast; she made herself coffee and sat with her thoughts, looking out into the garden through which Marnie had made her escape.

Anita had no idea what the day would hold. She was due at work in the dress shop at half past nine; if Drax got up before that and he’d made plans involving her, she could phone in sick, but since he hadn’t mentioned it last night, she’d better carry on as usual.

Would he be here when she got back? There had been so many occasions when she’d come home in hope then spent the evening in tears but now she hoped he’d be gone. He’d been in a strange mood last night and he’d made her feel – alarmed. Yes, that was the word.

She’d been so frightened, anyway, and she’d made the mistake of confiding her fears. She’d realised, too late, how angry it had made him, but he hadn’t lashed out. It wasn’t like him. That was scaring her even more.

And now that Marnie had made her think of it, what had happened to Karen? She’d asked Drax once and all he’d said was that she’d left and he’d lost touch with her – but she never knew when Drax was lying to her. She gave a little shiver.

It was all coming apart, just as she had always dreaded it would. They’d said that to her, when they were asking her what she knew, what she’d seen, all those years ago. ‘If you don’t tell the truth,’ one of the policemen had said, ‘you’ll be punished later, you know.’ She’d believed him at the time and she’d never forgotten. But she’d still lied.

Perhaps it was time she told the truth, to someone at least.

DS Andy Macdonald’s lips were compressed as he sat in the car outside the Galloway Constabulary headquarters, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel while he waited for DC Hepburn to finish her cigarette.

His usual partner, the taciturn DC Campbell, was on leave this week and the temporary pairing with Hepburn had been unwelcome to both of them. They had fallen out badly during a murder case last year; he had become emotionally involved with one of the suspects and thought Hepburn’s questioning of such a vulnerable woman had been brutal. The case, and the involvement, were long over but he had never forgiven her.

For a time Big Marge had, he suspected, discreetly kept them apart as far as possible, but this week’s decision looked like a signal that she thought this had gone on long enough.

She was probably right, but the months of heartbreak had changed Macdonald from the laid-back, cheerful lad he had once been to a harder, sterner, colder man. The most he was prepared to do towards rapprochement with Hepburn was to treat her with icy professionalism – as long as she didn’t deliberately irritate him, as she was certainly doing now.

She was putting her stub in the bin at last and he started the engine as she got into the car.

‘Did you have to have a fag just before you got in? You stink of smoke and I’m going to end up smelling of it too.’ Macdonald knew that sounded aggressive. He didn’t care.

Hepburn was unmoved. She gave a very Gallic shrug as she fastened her seat belt, saying simply, ‘Get over it.’

With a sidelong look of dislike, Macdonald drove off.

‘What’s the situation, Sarge?’ Hepburn asked as if she hadn’t noticed his mood. ‘I was caught by a query just as I was going to the briefing.’

She always called him ‘sarge’, he had noticed, rather than Andy. He avoided calling her anything at all.

‘Disturbance outside a B & B in Bridge Street. Cars hooting, people yelling, banging on doors and windows. Scarpered when the uniforms turned up, but there were ten complaints from neighbours and a furious landlady. We’ve to talk to her, and the lodger, who seems to have been the target.’

Hepburn raised her eyebrows. ‘A lynch mob in Kirkluce – whatever next? What’s she done, then?’

‘No information. The names and address are there.’ He fished in his pocket and handed her a notebook with an elastic marker at the place as he slowed down and indicated a turn. ‘That’s Bridge Street now.’

‘Oh – Marnie Bruce!’

Macdonald turned his head at her exclamation. ‘Know her?’

‘Yes. I spoke to her a couple of days ago. It was a really weird thing – quite a story. Big Marge and Tam are stressing about it. Look, that’s the house there.’

He pulled into the kerb and there wasn’t time to ask her what she was talking about. Anyway, he’d rather ask MacNee than put Hepburn in a position to patronise him with her superior knowledge.

The furious landlady was still furious this morning. She had the door open before they rang the bell, a short squat woman with greasy grey curls and a soiled apron over a grey jersey dress with part of the hem down, and she talked them all the way through to the sitting room at the back.

The house was chilly and smelt of dust and stale fat, overlaid with sickly synthetic lavender from an air freshener. The decor seemed to have shades of mud as its inspiration and with the utter cheerlessness of it all Macdonald could feel depression settling on him even before he and Hepburn sat down on the beige uncut moquette sofa in front of an electric fire that hadn’t been switched on.

‘I can tell you one thing,’ the landlady declaimed, ‘the minute you’ve finished talking to her, she’s out the house. I never heard anything like it – a riot in Bridge Street! That’s what it was, you know, a riot. Thought they were going to break down the door and smash the windows.’

‘Well, Mrs … Wallace,’ he said with a sidelong glance at the notebook Hepburn was still holding, ‘we can be thankful the patrol car arrived in time to prevent that. I gather they dispersed immediately – is that right?’

While obviously still feeling that the police should have been in position to stop it before it started, she admitted grudgingly that they had and returned to her main grievance. Her eyes were small and unfriendly behind smeary glasses.

‘It’s that girl,’ she said. ‘A perfect bother, right from the start. Always wanting something, complaining about the hot water,
complaining about the heating, having to have coffee to her breakfast instead of tea from the pot – and there she was yesterday forcing her way in at dinner time when I’d told her rooms are not available to guests until after three. And a right mess she was in too, I can tell you that – torn clothes, bloody knees and hands. Don’t know what she’d been doing, but she’d obviously been causing trouble somewhere.’

‘Didn’t you ask her what had happened?’ Hepburn was looking at the woman with some distaste.

Mrs Wallace sniffed. ‘That was her business. Didn’t want to get involved.’

‘Right,’ Macdonald said. ‘So you have absolutely no idea what this was all about?’

‘No, and I’m not wanting to know. I’m just wanting rid of her. They were chanting, “Come out and face us”, and I told her last night, I said, “You get out there and face them, if that’s what they want, before they start in to breaking my windows,” but of course her ladyship wasn’t going to do any such thing. I’d have made her, though, if your lot hadn’t come along.’ She sounded positively regretful that she’d been denied the chance.

‘You didn’t feel you had a duty to protect Ms Bruce from an angry mob?’ Hepburn’s tone was unprofessionally hostile, and Mrs Wallace reacted to it.

‘Oh, it’s my fault now, is it?’ Her voice was shrill. ‘I’m the victim here, being terrorised in my own home and I can promise you that Councillor Brunton, who’s a friend of mine, will take a poor view of the police attitude when I tell him.’

Macdonald winced at the name of a famously troublemaking local politician and shot Hepburn an irritated glance.

‘No, no, Mrs Wallace, I assure you we are entirely sympathetic – a most unpleasant and alarming experience for you. We’re here so that we can find out what the problem was and make sure that it will never happen again.’

‘Oh, it won’t – she’s not staying.’ She seemed slightly mollified, though, and got up saying, ‘I’ll send her in to you right now, will I, and then I can get her to clear out. Sooner the better.’

Fleming glanced at her watch: ten past nine. She recognised it as a neurotic action, prompted by her anxiety about the ten o’clock interview with Marnie Bruce. She still hadn’t worked out what she was going to say to her, and the disturbance last night was worrying too.

She’d detailed Macdonald to go and find out what it was all about, and only afterwards had remembered that Campbell was off and it was Hepburn he’d be taking with him. That had been a mistake; she’d been hoping to sideline Hepburn until she’d managed to persuade Marnie that there was nothing she could find out here. But it sounded as if the ripples were spreading already in a very alarming way.

Superintendent Rowley’s phone summons was seriously unwelcome. She didn’t say what it was about, she just wanted to see Fleming as soon as possible.

‘I’ve got an appointment at ten,’ Fleming said, though not hopefully, and the reply, as she had feared, was that in that case she had better come immediately.

It seemed unlikely that Rowley had heard about Bridge Street. In her lofty position she took little direct interest in problems on the ground, preferring to wait, as she put it, for significant reports to be filtered through to her. But maybe she’d had more thoughts on dealing with the Marnie Bruce situation, in which case Fleming would be grateful for any constructive idea and even more grateful for the implication of shared responsibility.

Rowley was clearly in a high state of tension this morning, anyway. There were red spots in her cheeks and she said, ‘Oh Marjory, there you are!’ in a tone that suggested that taking the time to come down three flights of stairs instead of dematerialising and rematerialising
on the instant in her office had been an unreasonable self-indulgence.

‘I’ve had a very important phone call from … someone,’ she said. ‘I’m not at liberty to disclose the name, but someone extremely important.’