4 Death at the Happiness Club (18 page)

'What's that?' said Christopher.

'Oh, that would be telling,' said Jemima, tearing off the lower half of the page, folding it neatly and getting up to put it away in a drawer.

'Do they really use the track for trains?' said Christopher. 'I didn't think there were any left.'

'Of course there are. They take coal to the power station at Longannet,' said Jemima. I don't expect they'll be doing that forever though.'

'Nothing lasts forever,' said Dave. He glanced up and caught Jemima's eye and smiled at her. 'Well - not many things.'

It was probably the closest Dave would ever come to a declaration of undying love, mused Christopher. A curiously melancholy feeling crept over him, but it resisted analysis. Surely it wasn't envy - he had never really fancied Jemima Stevenson, or Dave, for that matter - but maybe it was a kind of poignant wish for someone to feel like that about him.

Not that it would make any difference to anything, he told himself. He was sure he had once read in one of Caroline's self-help books that you shouldn't rely on someone else to make you happy. Which made the Happiness Club a bit of a con trick, of course.

Something nagged at his mind - an odd memory, or a thought that had passed by too quickly to be corralled and dissected. Hadn't Maisie Sue told him something that might be significant? But in what context? And what was it anyway?

Before he had time to remember, he saw a movement at the kitchen window, and the shape there resolved itself into Amaryllis's face looking in. Her dark red hair stood right up on end as it often did when she was on the trail of something or someone. She made a signal with one hand. What on earth did it mean?

'Amaryllis. At the kitchen window.' He was replying to Jemima's unasked question about why he had been making funny faces. She got up and opened the window.

'Are the police still here?' Amaryllis asked. She had Zak sheltering behind her.

'There's an Inspector Forrester in the living-room. But it's all right, he's only talking to Jock,' said Jemima.

Amaryllis shuddered theatrically. 'He's the worst of the lot.'

'You'd better come in here in case they see you on their way out,' said Jemima, opening the window a bit wider. Amaryllis clambered through and turned back to help Zak.

'Tell me you're not on the run,' said Christopher.

'Not exactly,' she said.

'Would you like a cup of tea?' said Jemima hospitably.

'Coffee for me,' said Amaryllis. 'What about you, Zak?'

'Got any juice?' said Zak.

'When you say not exactly, what does that mean - exactly?' said Christopher.

'We kind of left the police station in a bit of a hurry,' she replied, glancing at Zak, her co-conspirator in this case. Christopher was just pleased it wasn't him, for once.

'Does Inspector Forrester know that?' he asked.

'Oh, stop harassing the poor lass,' said Dave suddenly. 'Sometimes I wonder whose side you're on.'

'Amaryllis's side, of course,' said Christopher. 'I just don't want her getting into trouble.'

'But that's what she does,' said Dave. 'You've just got to live with that.'

'If they come in here,' said Jemima, 'you can hide in the old larder - look, this door here.' She opened the door to a horrible little room with a stone floor and one tiny window high up on the wall. If anyone but Jemima had owned this house, Christopher thought, they would have had it converted to a utility room, or had the wall knocked down and extended the kitchen. He knew he was only thinking about interior design to avoid working out whose side he was on. He wrenched his mind back to the current situation.

Amaryllis studied the small room with a nervous expression on her face. Christopher knew she was looking for spiders or signs of their presence, but he wasn't about to reveal her phobia to everyone else, so he kept quiet. He knew she would prefer him not to mention the 's' word anyway.

'So what happened to you?' he asked, in an effort to stop himself from mentioning spiders or appearing in any way censorious. 'What were you doing at the police station in the first place?'

'It's a long story,' said Amaryllis, sticking close to the open door of the larder but with many a sideways glance into the dim space. 'But we were planning to go round there this morning to turn in Zak's father. And a gun he said wasn't his. Only they decided to raid the motor caravan in the middle of the night instead, so we didn't even get the chance to be good citizens.'

'It wasn't exactly -.' muttered Zak.

'Well, near enough.' She narrated the events leading to the police raid, racing through the hours she and Zak had spent together, and skimming over some of the details. Christopher hoped this was because they were too mundane and boring to be of interest, and not for the opposite reason.

'So we planned just to persuade Liam Johnstone to go into the police station and then ask if Zak could see Penelope,' she concluded, 'but after the raid it all went a bit pear-shaped. They decided we might be able to help with their enquiries too, and they took us to separate interview rooms and started grilling us - didn't they, Zak?'

Zak nodded silently.  

'Zak got Mr Smith and I got Inspector Forrester. Then they swapped. It was almost as if they were trying to catch us out on inconsistencies. And I tried to get them to tell me if there was a victim, and whether it was a man or a woman - they can tell that from blood, if there is some. But they wouldn't tell us anything, not even if we were actually suspects or not. I kept telling them we were just innocent bystanders, but they didn't seem to grasp that. Idiots!'

'Well, you can hardly blame them for that, can you?' said Christopher. 'I mean, you haven't always been a completely innocent bystander.'

She glared at him. 'I've always been on the side of truth and human rights.'

Yes, but not always on the right side of the law. Christopher formed the sentence in his mind but he knew better than to speak it out loud. In any case, they heard Inspector Forrester in the hall.

'Mrs Stevenson?'

Amaryllis shot into the larder backwards, and immediately opened her mouth to scream as a large spider, possibly disturbed by the movement of air, abseiled into view in front of her. Christopher saw the danger and acted with uncharacteristic speed. Just as the kitchen door opened from the other side, he squeezed into the larder through the gap where Jemima was just closing the door, took a couple of steps, got hold of the retreating Amaryllis and jammed her face into his chest to muffle the scream. She started to struggle. He fought back panic. This was the first time he had ever been this close to her in all the time he had known her.

'Sssh,' he whispered. 'If you scream, Inspector Forrester will hear you. Close your eyes and pretend there isn't any spider.'

Zak, who had nipped into the larder right behind Christopher, didn't help by breathing, 'Wow, that's a massive one.'

They stood there for a few moments. Amaryllis stopped struggling; Christopher hoped he hadn’t suffocated her in his jumper. Never having held her like this before, he was surprised to find she wasn’t constructed from wire and electricity. She did have a few soft spots, which he was just starting to appreciate when the larder door swung open again.

‘All clear,’ said Jemima, and then, ‘My goodness me!’ as Zak got out of the way and she registered the scene in front of her.

Amaryllis finally clawed her way out of Christopher’s grasp, without even giving him an electric shock, and rushed over to the other side of the kitchen table, putting a safe distance between them. Dave was laughing.

‘There was a spider,’ Christopher explained, breaking his vow in the interests of saving them both from embarrassment. It didn’t entirely work.

‘It’s the Happiness Club,’ chortled Dave. ‘It’s cast its romantic spell all over the town.’

‘Has Inspector Forrester definitely gone?’ said Amaryllis, ignoring this. ‘We’d better find out what he said to Jock. It might be another piece of the puzzle.’

‘I don’t think my larder’s been used as a love-nest before,’ said Jemima as they followed Amaryllis into the other room.

‘It still hasn’t, believe me,’ said Christopher.

Jock McLean was indignant about his talk with Inspector Forrester.

‘You’d think I’d done something wrong! I’m the victim here. He just had to look at my leg to see that.’

‘What did he think you’d done wrong?’ said Christopher.

‘He more or less accused me of conspiring to blow up the boat for the insurance money.’

‘Conspiring? Who with?’ said Amaryllis.

‘I don’t know,’ said Jock, puzzled. ‘The boat didn’t belong to Sean Fraser; it was just some trip boat he hired. So he wouldn’t come in for any insurance payout. The man in charge of it was nowhere near it at the time it blew up either. He’d gone on ahead to the abbey.’

‘It was lucky there was nobody left on board,’ said Christopher vaguely.

‘So they think it was sabotage, do they?’ said Amaryllis.

‘It sounds like it to me,’ said Jock. ‘But how could anybody fix that? It was pure chance I forgot my pipe and had to go back for it.’

‘They could have thrown a lit cigarette in the window or something,’ said Amaryllis.

‘Sean Fraser smokes,’ said Dave suddenly. ‘I remember him lighting up that day. One of his sisters told him off. He wasn’t very happy about it. Said something quite nasty.’

‘Were they together all the time?’ said Amaryllis, apparently going off at a tangent.

‘I think so,’ said Jemima. ‘They seem to do everything together – it must be a very close family.’

‘Claustrophobic,’ said Christopher. The others all stared at him. ‘I mean – I wouldn’t like to get that close to my family. It would drive you nuts.’ He said it with feeling, having such recent experience of being at close quarters with Caroline in a tent. ‘At least they don’t live in a tent,’ he added.

‘Hmm,’ said Amaryllis. ‘They’ve got a camper-van. I saw Dilly there one day. Sweeping the steps.’

‘Do they live in it all the time?’ said Jemima.

‘Who knows?’ said Amaryllis. ‘They weren’t there last night. Maybe it’s just a base they can use while they’re working at various venues. Maybe they’ve got a house somewhere too – or a house each. Maybe they’ve each got their own family, two point four children, three cats, a dog and so on, to go back to.’

'They seem very close, all the same,' said Jemima doubtfully.

'What are you suggesting, Jemima? Incest?' said Amaryllis.

'Sssh, the boy might hear you,' said Jemima.

'I think you'll find the boy knows more about sex than you do,' said Jock McLean to Jemima, who unexpectedly took offence.

'I think you'll find he doesn't,' she said. 'Oh dear - that didn't come out the way I meant it to.'

'Never mind, love,' said Dave, reaching a hand across Christopher to take hers. 'By the time you get to our age it doesn't matter.'

As often happened, nobody knew what he was talking about, but at least his words calmed things down.

Later, walking up the road with Amaryllis, Zak trailing behind at a safe distance, Christopher said, 'Sorry about what happened in the larder.'

'Ha! At least the spider didn't try to smother me,' she said, but added in an undertone, 'Thanks for trying to help, anyway. I shouldn't be so ungrateful.'

It wasn't like Amaryllis to worry about what she should or shouldn't do. He resolved to take her up on it some time, but of course it had slipped his memory within the hour.

Chapter 22 Entrepreneurial activity

Maisie Sue hadn't meant to take Amaryllis's advice, but after letting it marinate in her mind for a while she started to wonder if it would be a good idea in this case.

She had always wanted to be a professional quilter.

Well, no, that was an exaggeration: in junior school she had wanted to be a film star, then in high school a veterinarian, then after school she had gone into hospitality work. So to be strictly honest - which Maisie Sue tried hard to be - running a quilting business came quite far down her list of priorities. But as long as she had to start over with her life, she had decided there were few things she would rather do than spend the time making quilts. Of course she hoped to become a world-famous quilt artist and make Pearson wish he had stayed with her instead of going off with the blonde floozy, but even if that didn't happen, if she started a business employing at least two people, she might get the chance to stay in the UK, according to the website she had consulted following her chat with Amaryllis.

She had discounted Jemima's suggestion of tracing her family history for the moment, on the grounds that it would take too long. She wasn't that interested in going back beyond her pioneering great-grandmother who had crossed the Rockies by covered wagon. She knew all she needed to know.

She had already started creating a business plan and it was only ten a.m. The day stretched ahead of her, ripe with possibilities. She would go down to the Cultural Centre soon and do some research in the Folk Museum. If she started out making quilts with traditional Scottish patterns, she might even be able to become a Scottish citizen once independence came. Heck, she could even fight for independence just as at least one of her ancestors had done. That side of her family history had the power to excite her, even if she didn't want to poke about in the records of poor-houses and prisons like the people she had seen on television.

That nice boy Andrew would help her. And Christopher might be there too.

After opening a spreadsheet on the computer with the intention of designing a book-keeping system, then staring into space for fifteen minutes, Maisie Sue was so bored with the whole idea of starting up a business that she had to get out of the house. She would go and walk by the river for a while to get inspiration. It was something she had avoided doing since Pearson left, because they used to walk there together and up to now she had been scared it would bring back memories and set her off getting all upset again. But now it was time to make a fresh start, accept that her relationship with Pearson was now ancient history, and get on with her life.

She sighed heavily as she put on the woolly hat, scarf and padded coat that were essential for walking along the river front at Pitkirtly even in July. Especially in July, if last summer's weather had represented a typical Scottish summer. A glance out the window confirmed that it was indeed raining rather heavily. She collected an umbrella in the hall-way on her way out.

Mid-morning and nobody else had braved the rain. She guessed they were all either at work, staring gloomily out and alternately wishing they were out there and feeling glad they weren't - Maisie Sue had been a wage slave too in her time - or at the shops, pausing for cups of tea in cosy tea shops or spending hours in the wool shop working themselves up to buying the latest cashmere blend at some ridiculous price.  Of course, that was one thing that might stop her from building a quilting empire: the cost of raw materials. She would probably need to invest quite a lot upfront. She wondered if someone whose stay in the UK was literally hanging by a thread could get a bank loan in order to start a business.

Down near the harbour, the rain was blowing about so that one minute it was in your face and the next minute it started to trickle down the back of your neck. It was a good thing there was nobody else about, thought Maisie Sue, trying hard to convince herself. She would only get talking to them about this and that, they might all go for a coffee together in one of the cosy little tea shops, and before she knew it the morning, and all her quilting business plans, would have gone, never to be recaptured.

She put her hands in her pockets and plodded along the road a bit. Then she wondered if it would help to cross the railway line, which she almost never did, and walk along the other side, where there was a sort of beach, although personally she wouldn't have called it by that name. The word beach suggested Long Beach or Miami Beach, where there were endless stretches of golden sand, frilly white waves and almost constant blue sky. In Pitkirtly the beach consisted of rocks, pebbles and then endless stretches of mud-flat which disappeared twice a day when the tide came in. Sometimes she had seen people digging in the mud-flats. Christopher had told her they were digging for shellfish, but she hadn't believed him until she saw someone bringing a bucket of mussels across the shingle.

She found a place where there was a gate to allow pedestrians to cross the railway track - which in her opinion was extremely dangerous, and she only brought herself to use it because she hadn't seen a train here for several months and she couldn't see or hear any sign of one now.

The railway line was up on a kind of embankment, and when she had crossed it, she had to walk down a slope on to the beach, such as it was.

Very much to her surprise, someone was sunbathing a little way out on the mud-flats.

Well, at first she thought they were sunbathing - what else did it mean when someone lay on a beach? - but it only took minutes for her to work out they couldn't be. For one thing, the sun hadn't come out at all today, and no-one could have expected it to. For another, the man - she saw it was a man as she got closer - was fully clothed. And another thing - she stopped in her tracks as she realised this - was that he wasn't moving at all. Maybe not even breathing.

A dead man on the beach! Oh my!

She tiptoed across an expanse of mud to get closer still, afraid to make a sound in case he was sleeping after all and she might wake him up. His clothes looked very wet. He didn't look at all well.

She realised he was definitely dead at about the same time she recognised him. It was Sean Fraser.

Sean Fraser! If Maisie Sue had ever imagined herself finding a dead body on the so-called beach at Pitkirtly, she would have pictured herself either fainting or throwing up nearby, both actions equally embarrassing. She would never have thought of herself studying the body to try and work out what had happened, or walking all round it to see if he still had his shoes on.

She must have been spending too much time with Amaryllis and her friends.

It was at this point Maisie Sue remembered she hadn't brought her purse with her on this outing. Her mobile phone lived in a special little pocket in the side of the purse, and she hardly ever left home without it. The implications of this gradually sank in. Either she would have to wait here until someone else came along - which seemed unlikely since she had hardly seen anyone else along the whole river front from the harbour to the car park, and there was certainly nobody else on the beach - or she would have to abandon this poor man and go off in search of a telephone to call the police.

She experienced the faint echo of a wish that Pearson were here to tell her what to do, and then she pulled her shoulders back and made up her mind. She would temporarily leave the scene to find a telephone. There was no time to lose: the police should certainly know about this as soon as possible. She wasn't sure if there was a public telephone in the area, but Mrs Petrelli, whom she had met at Cosy Clicks before all the trouble started up in the Petrelli family, would definitely let her use a phone if she got as far as the ice-cream shop without finding one. The tide, although she wasn't actually an expert in the tide times at Pitkirtly Bay, didn't seem to be coming in across the mud-flats, or at least not imminently. She shouldn't even attempt to move the body - that much she had learned from watching crime drama on television.

She squelched back across the mud to reach the pebbled part of the beach, noting with distaste that her sneakers, which had started out silver-grey, were now coated up to the laces with horrible green-grey mud. Would it wash off? She crossed the railway line again and was absorbed in rubbing the edges of the shoes on the grass verge when she heard a car draw up nearby.