Cradle to Grave (17 page)

‘Have you been feeding the doggies?’ Calum nodded solemnly. ‘
What
a clever boy!’

Maidie’s tragic face brightened. ‘He’s been so good this afternoon, haven’t you, my lambie?’

Calum, satisfied at having undivided attention, held out his arms to his mother again.

‘You’re just a wee rogue!’ she said fondly, taking him back. ‘Did you have a nice walk, Beth? Lovely now the sun’s out.’

Beth ignored the polite enquiry. ‘Maidie, I’ve been thinking. Thanks for everything, but I’d better go now. I thought Alick could maybe take me to Kirkcudbright. Then I’ll be fine—’

‘Alick!’ Maidie’s bitterness burst out. ‘Alick’ll not be taking anyone anywhere for a bit. He’s sleeping it off. Got drunk and insulted his boss, and come tomorrow we’ll probably have to be out of here, without a roof over our heads. Anyway, no one’s going anywhere. The bridge is down, and God only knows when it’ll be repaired.’

Preoccupied though she was with her own problems, Maidie did wonder about the look of horror on Beth’s face as she said, ‘You mean I’m trapped? Trapped here?’

‘The phone’s still off,’ Declan Ryan said, as he came into the kitchen, where Cris Pilapil was preparing the evening meal.

Pilapil didn’t look up. ‘Yes, I believe so.’

‘Gillis won’t be pleased. What are we going to do about it?’

Pilapil brought the side of his knife down to crush a clove of garlic and shrugged.

Ryan raised his voice. ‘I said, what are we going to do about it?’

‘We could try shouting, I suppose, but short of that the answer’s nothing.’ His sidelong glance was contemptuous.

Clenching his fists, Ryan said coldly, ‘I’m looking for Gillis, as it happens. Where is he?’

‘In his office, I presume. I heard the music start not long ago.’

‘He’s not there. That was me. I can’t find him.’

Pilapil was chopping lemongrass now. ‘He said he was going up to see the contractors.’

‘Yes, but he didn’t. I drove up to the top field just now and the minute I arrived they pounced on me. Wanted to know what was happening, when they were going to be paid. Put me in an awkward position.’

‘Bad luck.’ Pilapil picked up a wok and set it on the stove. ‘I saw him leave the house after lunch. That’s all.’

‘You’ve been your usual charming and helpful self.’ Ryan went to the door. ‘If you see him before I do, you might like to tell him that someone sabotaged the bridge, probably his little friend who likes writing messages with weedkiller. He could have killed someone. Let’s just hope it hasn’t given him a taste for it. We can’t get away, and probably neither can he.’

MacNee had got his clothes back and returned the shirt and chinos with sarcastic thanks to Cris Pilapil, whose polite expression gave nothing away. He produced the keys for the staff runabout and MacNee, with more sincere thanks this time, collected Fleming and drove off towards the river and the flooded houses.

Fleming was shaken when she saw the evidence of deliberate destruction. ‘That could have been kids, in a small car without the airbags we had to protect us – more or less,’ she added, fingering her brow. ‘I hadn’t realised quite how bad it was. Tam, how long are we going to be stuck here?’

MacNee’s only answer was a shrug. He was looking across the river. ‘No one there,’ he said, looking at the empty road, then at his watch. ‘I’d been hoping . . .’

He’d looked at his watch several times, she realised, and he was definitely anxious. ‘What’s the matter, Tam? They obviously know what’s happened and they’re turning people back. That’s good news.’

‘Yes.’ He sighed heavily, turning away. ‘Not a lot we can do about it, I suppose. Do you want to drive along towards the houses or walk?’

Fleming stopped. ‘Tam, there’s something wrong. You’ve been twitching all the way down here. I want to know what it is.’

MacNee looked at her. Then he said, ‘Och, it’s just the animals. They get fed at six o’clock and it’s past that now. I can’t see when we’re going to get back and my neighbour won’t know to go in.’

‘What about Bunty? Surely—’

‘Bunty’s away.’

Tam always hated being without her. It probably explained why he seemed out of sorts at the moment, though usually she’d have been deaved long before now with his complaints about looking after the selection of abandoned dogs and pathetic cats that Bunty always had under her motherly wing.

‘Off at one of her sisters’ again? But when she phones and can’t get a reply, she’ll call your neighbour, won’t she? I wouldn’t worry, Tam. It won’t do the creatures any harm to wait for their tea. If the teas I’ve had from Bunty are anything to go by, they’ll be overfed anyway.’

‘Likely you’re right. We’ll walk, shall we?’ He led the way down the side road to the flooded executive homes and Fleming followed.

The water level had definitely gone down since the last time they looked and they were able to walk to within twenty yards of the properties. Fleming, feeling rough anyway, found it hard not to gag at the stink of sludge and sewage, intensified by the warmth of the sun. The road was thick with mud and cluttered with debris – nasty enough, but further on, the houses were still sitting in a foot and a half of water. She paused, considering her footwear.

‘We’d need waders,’ Fleming said. ‘Maybe they’ve got some at the house, or the water may have gone down more by tomorrow. I can’t say I’m wild about getting my clothes soaking wet and filthy all over again for the sake of interviewing someone who might not even be there.’

‘Certainly not,’ MacNee said with deep feeling. ‘Can you see anything to suggest someone’s still around?’

They stood in silence scanning the half-dozen houses, one of which must be Jamieson’s. There was no sign of life, no evidence of recent occupation.

‘No,’ she said, and feeling deflated and useless, they went back to the car. The sight of the bridge had emphasised their isolation and Fleming headed back to Rosscarron House with profound reluctance. Her headache had returned with force and she could only hope Cris hadn’t run out of Nurofen.

‘Chum me to the toilet?’ one of the teenage girls said to her friend, now entwined with Damien on a rather damp sleeping bag in front of their tent.

Damien looked up impatiently. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Mel! You’re not at school now! “Please, miss, can my friend come with me to the toilets?” ’ He mimicked her voice.

Melanie addressed herself to the girl. ‘Come on, Stacey,’ she whined. ‘We’re meant to be here together – you promised. And I don’t like going away up there by myself. It’s getting dark now.’

Stacey groaned. ‘Oh, all right, if you’re going to make a big thing of it.’ She gave Damien another lingering kiss, disentangled herself and stood up. ‘Don’t go away, lover. Won’t be long.’

Blowing him a kiss, she set off with her friend up the hill.

The nearer end of the long row of Portaloos was beside the spinney near Rosscarron House and the girls took the two end ones. It was Stacey who came out first and stood looking around her as she waited impatiently for her friend.

When Melanie emerged, Stacey was giggling, pointing towards the spinney, where shadows were gathering. ‘There’s a guy there, passed out. Must be drunk. Haven’t seen him around, have you?’

Melanie peered into the dimness. ‘He’s, like, old.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘There’s no one old here, except Bob and Ange. Must be from the house.’

‘Why’d he be lying up here, then? Here, maybe he’s not well. Should we check? I’ll get Damien.’

‘What for?’ Melanie’s tone was hostile. ‘We can check ourselves, then get help if he’s ill or something.’

The girls went to investigate. It was a man with iron-grey hair, and he was lying on his side with his head against a big stone. It was only as they got nearer that they saw the blood.

Their piercing screams echoed across the campsite. Damien jumped to his feet, but another man was faster up the slope. When he reached the girls, they ran to him, pointing.

‘Is he – is he
dead
?’ Stacey had begun to cry.

He went to look, picking up a flaccid hand, and he was feeling for a pulse when Damien arrived. Stacey, with a shriek, flung herself into his arms.

He called across her head, ‘What’s going on, mate?’

The other man straightened up. ‘Yeah, he’s dead. Poor beggar must have slipped and banged his head. Take the girls down and keep everyone else away, all right? I’ll go and tell the police down at the house.’

8

‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ The telephone linesman came back to the little van, parked on the road towards Rosscarron House. ‘We’ve checked everything else. It’s a break in the line on the other side of the river.’

His colleague, looking weary, groaned. ‘I’ve been on the job since six this morning. If you think I’m swimming across, you’ve another think coming. I’m knocking off.’

‘Don’t see what else we can do. Make a report to the police – tell them we need access before we can repair the fault.’

He got into the car and started the engine. ‘Anyway, folk managed without the telephone for hundreds of years. Another day won’t matter.’

‘Maybe the super’s gone home,’ DC Kim Kershaw said in an attempt to cheer up her colleague.

DS Andy Macdonald grimaced. ‘It might be better to get it over with now. His reaction’s not going to be any different in the morning, is it?’

‘No,’ she admitted, ‘but you might be feeling stronger.’

Kershaw, Macdonald and Ewan Campbell were reviewing the day in a corner of the CID room. It had been long, tiring and unsatisfying, with problems accumulating and no loose ends tied up.

‘Maybe by tomorrow they’ll have got the bridge repaired and then it’s Big Marge’s problem,’ Kershaw went on with determined optimism.

‘Can’t see it.’ Macdonald was sunk in gloom. ‘All the solutions are expensive, and there’s not much urgency, really. Could be late tomorrow or even the next day before it reaches the top of the priority list. I just wish there was some good news to tell him.’

‘Haven’t found the girl’s body in the rubble at the Rosscarron Cottages,’ Campbell offered. ‘Has to be good.’

‘We won’t know for sure till we find her, and we haven’t, any more than we’ve found Jamieson. Bailey will be fit to be tied when he hears no one has any idea where he is.’

‘Maybe one of them will have turned up by tomorrow,’ Kershaw suggested.

Macdonald gave her a darkling look. ‘You’re a right little ray of sunshine today. It can get quite irritating, you know.’

‘One of my favourite films,
Pollyanna
,’ she said demurely. ‘You should try playing the glad game – you know, find something to be glad about in everything. For instance, Ewan and I can be glad we don’t have to go and see the super. We can go to the pub instead. Fancy a jar, Ewan?’

Campbell got up. ‘Wouldn’t mind.’

‘Join us later, Andy. Come and lick your wounds,’ Kershaw said over her shoulder as she left.

Swearing under his breath, Macdonald went along to Bailey’s office. There was no answer when he knocked.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d have been glad to get it over with, but on the other hand he was glad he could knock off now and go to the pub. Hey! Maybe there was something in Kim’s glad game after all.

‘I’ll get them in,’ Kershaw said. As Campbell went to a table by the window, she glanced around the pub, nodding to a couple of officers at the other end of the bar.

She liked the Salutation. It was an old-fashioned, no-nonsense pub, with wood floors that weren’t designer beech and walls still yellowed by years of cigarette smoke. There were two rooms, divided by a fireplace open on both sides, and she liked it that when no fire was burning, it just held dead ashes, not an elaborate floral arrangement of fake flowers. It served good beer, the house wine didn’t strip the skin off the roof of your mouth, and it was only a stagger across the road for an exhausted copper coming off duty. The cherry on the cake was that you were among friends: the local villains shunned the Salutation as if a dose of plague came along with the sandwiches.

The
spécialité de la maison
was cold sausages and she ordered two, then changed it to three. If Macdonald got bogged down, they could always eat it for him.

Kershaw was in a good mood today. She’d been heartened by seeing Debbie so well looked after in that cheerful, friendly atmosphere, Jan Forbes’s decency and generosity had lifted her spirits, and above all she’d had a day without Tam MacNee’s sharp comments and sourly disapproving silences. People kept telling her it wasn’t like Tam, but as far as she was concerned the longer he was marooned at Rosscarron House, the happier she would be.

She carried over Campbell’s pint and her own red wine, then went back for the sausages. ‘One’s for Andy,’ she warned as she sat down. ‘Cheers!’

Campbell raised his glass, but he didn’t say anything. ‘How’s the baby?’ she asked, trying to get a conversation going. She knew he had one, but she didn’t know anything about it.

‘Fine.’ Campbell speared one of the sausages.