Bad Blood (5 page)

The place felt full of ghosts. Images assailed her, one after the other,
until she was dizzy and whimpering in dismay, ‘No, no!’ Shaking, she struggled to displace them with some rational insight, opening the doors one after another.

There was nothing here. How could there be? It was just a shabby, gloomy, soulless place and it certainly wasn’t going to tell her anything about what had happened to her or where her mother had gone. She didn’t want to be here any more. She gave a shudder as she left, locking the door behind her.

Marnie hefted the key in her hand, preparing to throw it away into the tangle of scrubby growth at the foot of the forest trees. Then, for no real reason that she could think of, she put it back in its place under the stone and pushed the dislodged earth and the torn moss back round about it.

The meeting had finished early for once. It was just after four when Fleming came out and went immediately to the CID room looking for Hepburn, though without much hope. It would have been good to know what exactly Marnie Bruce was expecting.

Hepburn had gone off duty, of course, and Fleming set off up the stairs to her office with the problem still dominating her thoughts. She’d been far too junior to make decisions at the time – had protested about them, indeed – but those more responsible had left the force. Jakie McNally was dead and Donald Bailey, a DI at the time, had retired as superintendent last year – a nice piece of timing there.

Of course, MacNee had been a DS at the time, while Fleming had been a humble PC, but she knew who Bailey’s successor would look to for explanation and it wouldn’t be him. She quailed at the thought.

Detective Superintendent Christine Rowley had been fast-tracked in Edinburgh to DCI and then had transferred to the Galloway Constabulary to cut her teeth before, as she made all too plain, she returned in glory to the sort of policing that was worthy of her talents. She viewed both the inhabitants of her present patch and
her subordinates with a sort of lofty amusement which edged into high-pitched annoyance when things went wrong.

East Coast and West Coast Scotland have never seen things in quite the same light, but Fleming’s attempt to explain to her that the old joke, ‘Glasgow and Edinburgh aren’t speaking’ wasn’t just a joke fell on deaf ears. To Rowley it was incomprehensible that they weren’t grateful for enlightenment when she explained how things were done in the capital. It was putting a severe strain on MacNee’s blood pressure.

She wasn’t popular with anyone. Her affected Morningside accent grated and Fleming had taken care not to find out which of her colleagues had coined the nickname ‘Hyacinth’, after Mrs Bucket of TV fame, but she suspected MacNee was involved. It had become quite hard to think of her in any other way.

Rowley would have fifty fits about the Marnie Bruce case. Fleming had frequently moaned about her predecessor, who had elevated busy idleness to a fine art, but she had taken it all back several times since his departure. At least Donald Bailey had let her get on with the job, whereas Rowley liked playing puppet-master till the strings got tangled and then let everything collapse in a heap which would involve hours of patient sorting out for someone. Usually Fleming.

There was no point in giving a preliminary explanation before she knew just what sort of trouble Marnie Bruce was going to cause, but perhaps it would be wise to trawl the files to see precisely the level of constraint they’d been under at the time, given the situation.

It wouldn’t have been computerised. With a sigh, Fleming turned round and went back down the stairs again to the dusty store where the archives were kept. It could take hours to find what she was looking for, and she wasn’t looking forward to the search.

But it was a visit to Disneyland compared to the conversation she would have to have with Hyacinth tomorrow.

Marnie Bruce glanced at her watch as she went back onto the road. Three-quarters of an hour till the next bus was due – how could she fill the time? She’d freeze if she hung about here, so she’d be better walking briskly towards Newton Stewart in the hope that the exercise would warm her up. She might even manage to hitch a lift from a passing car.

She was about to set off in that direction when her eye was caught by another cottage a couple of hundred yards down the road on the other side, and she stopped. She remembered it but she’d never been inside. They’d had no real contact with their neighbours, except that morning …

He’s standing over her with a gun in his hand, and she thinks she’s going to be sick again, with terror. He’s saying something about foxes then he says, ‘You know me, don’t you? Douglas Boyd, from along the road.’

She latched on to the name while trying to force the memory away. Douglas Boyd. It gave her a fresh purpose and she turned back, towards the other cottage. It was a quaint-looking grey stone building with small windows and a slate roof. There was a little bit of land round about it and a grassy patch in front where there was a child’s swing and a sandpit, muddy and pooled with water at the moment.

Douglas Boyd and his wife would be long gone but perhaps the current owner might know where they were if they were still alive: an old people’s home, most likely, but they might still have something to tell her.

The woman who came to the door looked blank at the name ‘Boyd’. She wasn’t much older than Marnie herself; there was a child screaming in the background and her expression conveyed that a stranger at the door was pretty much the last straw. They’d bought it from some people called McCrae, she said, and shut the door in Marnie’s face.

It wasn’t the girl’s fault that she didn’t know, but she didn’t need
to be rude. Feeling irritable and dispirited, Marnie walked aimlessly back past the cottage. What lay ahead of her was a long walk under dark purple clouds that threatened rain, and all this expedition had done was to prompt random bursts of upsetting memories without giving her anything more to follow up.

A silvery glint caught her eye and she turned her head. The trees were thinning now and beyond them there was a glimpse of water, Clatteringshaws Loch. There was a little path leading past the back of the cottage and down to the shore – at least there had been, though it might be overgrown by now. On an impulse she went back into the garden and stepped over the loose wires of the boundary fence.

It was still there. It was some sort of laid path, perhaps a shortcut for the foresters, and it wasn’t completely overgrown, though the sprawl of shrubs was encroaching and she had to duck under snagging branches. It was about fifty yards long and she could see the loch glimmering beyond.

Its wide expanse was steel-grey today under the heavy sky. On a sunny day it would be charming, with the backdrop of green native woodland and the soft surrounding hills hazy-purple with heather, but at this time of year with the trees bare and the heather black and dead it looked grim, even menacing.

The path came out in a little car park beside a tea room and information centre, closed of course. She walked down from the green bank onto the narrow pebbled shore and out of long habit bent and chose a flat stone to skim out across the surface of the loch. It was half-in, half-out of the water, the dry half dull grey, the other half glowing with soft blues and pinks and greens. She’d noticed that before …

She stares at the pebble. How can just water make it look so different? Maybe it’s a different colour anyway? But no, it’s drying already. It’s going back to grey and she loses interest, sending it scliffing across the water – one, two, three, four, then quicker and
quicker five, six, seven, nearly eight, and then it sinks, in circles of ripples. She tries another stone or two then she wanders down to—

The Iron Age broch! She hadn’t thought of it until now. It had been a curious structure: a circular drystone wall, overgrown with grass and mosses, with a sort of wigwam of wooden struts added on top to show how they would have lived, that unimaginably ancient tribe who had made their home here, probably to fish in the lake. Perhaps their children had scliffed stones too, maybe even wondered at their colours, as she had done, standing just where she was now. It was a weird thought.

Could it still be there? Marnie was just about to take the path towards it when she was suddenly buffeted by a gust of wind. She turned to look out across the loch and saw the squall coming towards her between the hills, battering down silver spears of rain and ruffling the water into choppy little waves.

She was wearing light rainwear well suited to London showers and had a neat little umbrella in her tote bag, but borne on the wind the rain reached her before she could dig it out and she was soaked through before she could get it open. Once she did, the wind took it, contemptuously blowing it inside out and breaking a couple of its ribs.

The broch would give her shelter – if its roof was still there. Gasping under the shock of the downpour, she ran along the path, her sight blurred by the rivulets pouring down her face. But yes, the roof was there, its timbers blackened by age, and she ducked gratefully under the entrance into the dim interior.

It was smarter than it had been when she was a child, with a neat gravelled floor where once there had been only packed earth, and even a bench. She sat down on it to dig out tissues from her bag to mop her face but rose immediately; there were gaps between the struts and now the seat of her jeans was wet too.

The smell was the same, though – damp, earthy, with an edge of rotting vegetation. She felt a sudden churning in her stomach …

‘Quick, quick,’ Gemma hisses. ‘He’s coming, he’s coming!’ She gives a little squeal of delighted terror as they dash into the broch. They clutch each other as they cower at the back, listening for the footsteps.

She says, ‘They’re getting closer!’ and Gemma mutters, ‘What if he comes in? What’ll we do?’ They’re both covering their heads with their hands, as if that makes them invisible.

Without even a pause, the footsteps go on along the path. ‘That was close,’ she whispers to Gemma.

‘Better wait a minute or two,’ Gemma says. ‘In case he looks back and sees us.’

They know, of course, that he’s just an ordinary man out walking who hasn’t even noticed two silly kids who think it’s fun to scare themselves. And it’s worked; Gemma might be giggling but she’s beginning to feel creepy, as if the ghosts of those people wearing skins and holding clubs resented her being alive when they were long, long dead.

She scrambles up, startling Gemma. She’s desperate to get out, as if something horrible might happen if she doesn’t escape
…

Marnie felt the same now. She had the odd prickling down the back of her neck that you get when someone’s looking at you, and even though she knew there was no one there she turned to check. She told herself she was being stupid, but her heart rate speeded up and her breathing thickened. Rain or no rain, she was getting out of here.

It had been too heavy to last long. It was stopping already and as she walked back along the path, mocking her own stupidity, the wind blew a rift in the clouds and a sunbeam lit up the farther shore with golden splendour.

It was the fourth time today that Anita had tried his number, but she didn’t want to leave a message. There was never any guarantee that he would respond.

‘All right, Anita, what do you want?’ he said as he answered the phone.

Caller ID always threw her and she was upset too by his unwelcoming tone. ‘I-I just wanted to warn you about something.’

His voice sharpened. ‘Warn me? What do you mean?’

‘The anniversary,’ she said. ‘It was forty years ago yesterday, and there was a big piece in the
Record
. Maybe others too.’

‘So?’

Anita hadn’t an answer to that question. ‘Well—’

He cut across her. ‘Just rehashing the old stuff?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Tomorrow’s chip paper, then. That’s all.’

He didn’t even say goodbye and she knew she had, yet again, made a fool of herself. She hated the way she’d sounded. Needy. Pathetic. Hearing his voice had been the sort of fix for her addiction that did no more than keep it alive. She knew she should go cold turkey, yet she also knew the flimsiest excuse to call him would prompt a craving she couldn’t resist, whatever it might cost her.

Marjory Fleming set her mobile into the hands-free slot before she set off home to Mains of Craigie. She didn’t always remember but today she was anticipating a phone call – had hoped for it sooner, in fact, and she kept glancing at the phone as she drove as if by the power of the human will she could not only force it to ring but make it say what she wanted to hear when it did.

When at last it obliged, she answered it instantly. ‘Cammie?’

‘They’ve picked me. I’m to be in the team on Saturday, Mum.’ His voice, securely bass for years now, was so high with excitement that he sounded suddenly thirteen again.

‘Oh darling, that’s fantastic! Well done! What—’

‘Can’t talk now. Speak later.’

As she drove on, Marjory couldn’t stop beaming. The Scotland under-20 team! Playing for his country had been Cameron’s dream since he learnt there was a game called rugby and a national side, aged about three; the baby present his father had brought Cammie in the maternity ward had been a miniature rugby ball, not a teddy.
Bill would be – she didn’t want to say ‘over the moon’, but somehow it was the only phrase that covered it. He’d been no mean player in his own day and she knew that it had cost him to turn his back on the game for the sake of the farm and the family, but then Bill would never have sacrificed anyone else for his own ambitions. She wished she could say the same for herself – though not so much, she had to admit, that she’d do something about it.

She knew Bill would be putting a bottle of champagne in the fridge even now, but Cammie was staying with friends in Edinburgh tonight so perhaps it had better wait till he got back. There was something faintly sad about a celebration that involved only two people and more than a couple of glasses of champagne always gave Bill indigestion anyway.

No doubt Cammie would be away a lot more now. Hoping for just this, he’d taken a gap year doing farm work before going to agricultural college. Mercifully the veggie phase had passed as the charms of Zoë of the soft brown eyes had faded.

The Darby-and-Joan life lay just ahead of them. Catriona was back in Glasgow studying social work, her planned career as a vet abandoned. Cat seemed very busy with her life up there and with the evening bar job she’d taken on to help pay the bills; they didn’t see much of her.

Marjory tried not to see it as an estrangement, though her conversation with Cat about her choice of a new career had given her the sinking feeling that at least part of its attraction was to be able to take the side of criminal clients against the wicked police. Bill with his usual calm good sense had told her she was being paranoid: she might be, but it didn’t mean her daughter wasn’t gunning for her.

She wasn’t going to let thoughts like that cloud her happiness for Cammie today. Her eyes misted a little as she thought how quickly the funny, affectionate little boy had become this six foot five giant, broad with it, who towered over his tall mother and made even Bill, a very respectable six foot one, look puny.

That was Mains of Craigie now. As she went up the drive she could see that Bill had draped the blue-and-white saltire usually pinned to Cammie’s wall out of his bedroom window, and as she got out of the car sheep scattered in the near field as ‘Flower of Scotland’ blasted out at ear-splitting level.

She’d chosen the Glendale bed and breakfast in Kirkluce for its cheapness not its decor but even so the dingy wallpaper and the random vases of dusty plastic flowers had a lowering effect on Marnie Bruce when she returned chilled from sitting in a bus in her damp clothes. Passing cars had proved unsympathetic and she was footsore as well after the long walk until the bus appeared.

The dismal room with its beige tufted bedspread and brown carpet was cold. The two small electric bars set into the blocked-up fireplace weren’t promising but she switched them both on and held her hands out to the grudging glow, shivering. She picked up the one thin towel that was provided and vigorously rubbed her hair, then realised that had made it so damp that she’d have to dry it before she went for the bath she craved. She spread it over a chair and set it in front of the fire while she unpacked her bag.

She’d wanted to stay in Kirkluce because she’d thought she would be going to and fro to the Galloway Police headquarters. Now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe the policewoman who had talked to her had just been professionally cautious but she had a nasty feeling that she was going to be choked off without any answers at all.

Her trip out to Clatteringshaws had been completely pointless too – in fact this whole thing was starting to seem a really dumb idea. She could have stayed in London where you never had to walk miles in the rain without shelter, and she could have spent the week’s holiday she’d taken from her job looking for somewhere cheap to live near her work. That reminded her of her lovely flat and Gary and misery lapped round her again.

Was there any sense in this attempt to find out what had happened to her mother, after all these years? It wasn’t as if she had golden memories of her childhood; the scenes that repeated in her head mainly showed rows or neglect, but if the person who had left her for dead had gone on to kill, her mother deserved justice. And even if she wasn’t the perfect mum, the word had a sort of glow about it, as if it could warm the cold loneliness in her heart.

Anyway, she couldn’t bear
not knowing
. She who remembered everything, even things she would much have preferred to forget, had nothing but an echoing silence when it came to the most significant event of her life. She had to find out what lay on the other side of that silence.

A long-submerged anger was driving her now too. The authorities should be held to account for rubbing out this section of her childhood so ruthlessly that all these years she had obligingly blanked it out of her own mind. The memories were back now, though, crowding everything else out, demanding her attention.

They would no doubt prefer her to give up and go back to London with her questions unanswered, so she wouldn’t. She had a stubborn streak and she wasn’t going to be pushed around. If she didn’t hear back from them in the next couple of days, she would camp on the doorstep until Inspector Fleming would see her.

But what was she going to do meantime? The landlady had already made it clear to Marnie that she couldn’t expect to stay in her room all day.

She was still considering it as she lay in her bath. The tub had brownish stains under the hot tap and the water wasn’t as deep as she would have liked, since the hot started running out when it was only half-full, but at least it was warming her up.

Her visit to the broch had reminded her of Gemma, her only real school friend. Was she still around? The Morrisons had lived in Newton Stewart so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find them. Gemma
was unlikely to know what had happened after Marnie disappeared but her parents might remember, and making contact with them would give her something to do tomorrow.

The only other person she remembered was her mother’s friend Anita. She had visited quite often; she and Karen would talk for hours in the sitting room with the door shut, drinking and smoking. Interruptions from Marnie weren’t welcomed.

She looks at her watch. It’s eight o’clock and she’s starving. There’s sausages in the fridge but if Mum didn’t plan to have them tonight she’ll be in trouble.

It’s not fair. She’s got a right to her supper. She’s feeling cross now and she flings open the sitting-room door and hears her mother saying, ‘And then he just—’

She breaks off. She’s been crying but now she turns angry. ‘What the hell do you want?’

There’s an empty bottle of wine on the table and another one half-full and the air’s thick and smoky. Anita has turned to look at her too. She’s slim and small and very smart in a cream trouser suit, with long blonde hair and bright-red fingernails and beside her Mum looks sort of faded with her jet-black hair and grey tracky bottoms and black sweatshirt.

She swallows. ‘When’s supper?’

‘For God’s sake, you’re ten! You’re old enough to get something for yourself.’

Anita smiles at her but doesn’t speak. Anita often does that but she hasn’t worked out whether it means anything.

‘Can I have sausages?’ she says.

‘You can have champagne and caviar, as far as I’m concerned.’ Mum gives a sort of nasty laugh. ‘If you can find any.’

It’s a stupid thing to say. They never have anything like that. Probably it means she can have the sausages, though, and she retreats.

Anita gives her another smile as she goes. Before she closes the
door she hears her saying, ‘I should be getting back to Dunmore, anyway.’

That was really all she knew about Anita. She didn’t know her surname and she’d never been to her house and she didn’t know where Dunmore was. Even if she did, she could hardly go to a strange place and wander round asking for Anita.

It wasn’t a common name, though. She’d nothing to lose by trying to find her mother’s best and indeed only friend as far as Marnie knew.

The bath water was no more than tepid now, and though she turned on the hot tap again hopefully only a trickle of hot came out and then went cold again. She got out of the bath and rubbed herself as dry as the inadequate towel would allow. At least, though, she had a plan for tomorrow and she went back to her room feeling a little more purposeful.

DC Hepburn had only just come on shift when the summons to DI Fleming’s office came, and she had barely entered the room before Fleming, waving her to a chair, demanded, ‘Well? What does Marnie Bruce want?’

Hepburn sat down with severe misgivings. Fleming was clearly on edge about this and she wasn’t going to like what Hepburn had to tell her. It was just her luck that MacNee was off today; normally she would have filtered it through him. Taking the flak direct from Big Marge was definitely above her pay grade.

She began cautiously. ‘I have to say first that she seems a bit flaky. It’s hard to put a finger on it but she often seems distracted when she’s talking to you and if she’s reporting on something that happened it’s – well, it just seems too detailed.’

Fleming raised her eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m struggling to explain. It’s almost as if she’s describing something she’s looking at – sometimes she even uses the present tense.’

‘Mmm.’ Fleming considered that. ‘Anyway, what’s the general drift?’

Hepburn gave a nervous cough. ‘What she
says
is that she was taken into care when she was eleven after her mother disappeared and she wants to know what happened to her mother, whether she’s alive or dead and whether she chose to vanish or – or somebody killed her. And, er, why she never heard about any inquiry.’

‘I see.’

Judging by the grim expression on Fleming’s face, what she was seeing didn’t please her one little bit.

Hepburn hurried on, ‘I’m sure there would have been and it’s just that perhaps being a child she wouldn’t have heard about it or she doesn’t remember, or something.’

That was Fleming’s cue to say, ‘Oh yes, of course there was.’ She didn’t say it. There was just an awkward silence, and feeling required to fill it Hepburn blundered on.

‘Were you involved in it, ma’am? Marnie had a very clear recollection of you. You had a ponytail at the time, she said.’

Fleming flickered a smile. ‘More like a shaving brush, really. That was to go under my hat. I was just a PC at the time, so no, I wasn’t really involved.’

Hepburn was sure that was the truth – apart from anything else, it squared with what Marnie had said – but she was equally sure that it wasn’t the whole truth, or anything near. She was beginning to feel very uncomfortable.

‘Did you get any impression of what she is expecting?’ Fleming asked.

‘Not really. Just – well, some answers, I suppose.’

‘What was her attitude – cooperative or aggressive?’

Hepburn hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. Tense, certainly. And she seemed very determined not to be fobbed off.’

‘Right.’ Fleming thought for a moment. ‘OK, Louise. Have you written up your report?’

‘Yes. I can forward it to you immediately, if you want.’

‘Fine. Is there anything else came out of the interview that you want to tell me?’

Hepburn thought for a moment then shook her head. ‘I said I’d get back to her once I’d spoken to you, ma’am.’

‘There’s no need for that,’ Fleming said quickly. ‘Have you got a mobile number for her? Good. Leave it with me – I’ll contact her myself. Thanks, Louise.’

Hepburn recognised dismissal. As she walked back down the stairs she was feeling – yes, shocked. The words ‘cover-up’ were beating insistently in her head.

There was no Morrison at the Newton Stewart address Marnie remembered when she leafed through the local telephone directory her landlady grudgingly produced for her. That was a blow; it was the only definite contact she had.

She could go to Newton Stewart, find the house and see if the new owners knew where the Morrisons had gone, but that meant bus journeys and her experience with the unhelpful woman at Clatteringshaws wasn’t encouraging.

She ran her eye down the list of Morrisons. What had Gemma’s father been called? Obligingly, the scene popped into her head.

‘Michael! Where are you?’ Gemma’s mum is saying as she comes into the sitting room where they’re watching TV. ‘Oh, hello, Marnie – you again! I didn’t know you were here.’

It isn’t said nastily – Gemma’s mum’s lovely, the sort of mum she wishes hers was – but she sort of curls up inside. Gemma never comes out to Clatteringshaws unless Mum isn’t there.

Gemma’s mum goes out again. ‘Michael!’ she calls. They go back to watching Grange Hill. Tucker’s in trouble again.

Michael, Michael. She pushed the scene away and went back to the directory. There are quite a lot of M. Morrisons but only two
Michaels, one in Wigtown and one strangely enough in Dunmore, the place she associated with Anita.

That was a sign. She could find the information centre in town and ask where Dunmore was and how she could get to it.