Quiet Neighbors (29 page)

“Can I get you some tea?” she said, as everyone sat.

“A glass of water perhaps,” Lowell said.

Mrs. Hewston ignored him. She only had eyes, and refreshments it seemed, for the inspector.

“You don't mind, Mrs. H., do you?” said Jude, and slipped back through. She filled a glass and returned, setting it down beside Lowell on a coaster instead of the laminate top of the side table, under Mrs. Hewston's watchful eye.

“And can you tell me what you remember about that night?” Begbie was saying. “April the nineteenth, 1995?”

“I remember it as if it was yesterday,” Mrs. Hewston said. “It was a beautiful spring evening and I had the windows open to smell the narcissus. I was watching the news from Oklahoma, because Mr. Glen here was just down the road and I was worried about him.”

She hadn't said any of that last time, thought Jude. She hadn't mentioned the kind of flowers, or what the disaster was that she was glued to. And Jude hadn't asked. If she'd thought to check what flowers smelled so sweet or what the terrible doings in America were … what? The events of the last week, dreadful as they were between Jackie's collapse and the fire, were nothing to do with Miranda, after all.

As Jude thought that, though, she felt something somewhere. She'd read her share of suspense novels and she had heard it described in various ways. Either as a stray hair across the face, unignorable and elusive, or as a shifting inside like sunken objects when the tide turns. She had even heard it described as a half-familiar face seen from a train carriage and gone again before it was pinned down.

But sitting musing like this, she was missing what Mrs. Hewston was saying.

“—would recognise the sound of a newborn baby's cry in my sleep. I was a nurse, you know.”

“And yet you didn't attend?” said Inspector Begbie.

“I don't like to push myself in,” said Mrs. Hewston.

There it was again. Begbie didn't know the woman and so he only nodded, but it took all Jude's willpower not to snort. She glanced at Lowell, who didn't catch her eye.

“I mean, for all I knew there was a midwife there, wasn't there? Or a doctor. I don't have anything to do with the new surgery. They're not interested in old-timers like me. For all I knew there was a whole team in.”

“So … you didn't actually see anything?” said Begbie.

“I saw plenty!” said Mrs. Hewston. “I heard a noise close to my house here, and I looked out and saw the Miranda one, the mother of that piece that's fetched up here now, in the garden, busy with her ways.”

“You saw her through the window?” said Begbie. “Or you went out?”

“Me?” said Mrs. Hewston. “An old widow woman like me? I did not. I stayed safely inside, but I saw her in the garden through my small bedroom window. She was digging.”

“And when you say ‘the mother,'” said Begbie, “you mean this woman, don't you?” He held out one of the photographs, unpeeled from behind its sticky plastic in Lowell's album. The glue had dried onto its surface and it looked decades older than it was, yellowed and tatty.

“Wait a minute, till I get my right specs on,” said Mrs. Hewston. She fumbled down the side of her chair and brought up a spectacle case. She opened it, polished the glasses inside with the little cloth, and threaded them carefully over her ears. “Let's see now,” she said. “Yes, that's her. The tall one with the bushy hair. The wee thing that's come back now doesn't favour her at all.”

“She looks like my mother,” said Lowell.

“God help her,” said Mrs. Hewston and everyone, even the constable who was taking notes, raised their eyes and stared at her.

“And so you never went outside and you never mentioned this to anyone and you never told Mr. Glen when he got home,” Inspector Begbie said.

“I keep myself to myself,” said Mrs. Hewston, her mouth pinched.

“Yes, you do,” said Begbie. “You certainly do. Not so much as a twitched curtain all day while we dug up round your house and the press was at your gate. You're a marvel.”

“My
gate
?” said Mrs. Hewston. “If they'd stayed at my gate, I would have been delighted. They were ringing my bell and shouting through my letterbox. You should arrest them for harassment.”

“We'll have to see,” murmured Begbie. “We've got one or two wee things to be getting on with.” Then he rose, excused himself, and left, with the rest of them trailing after him.

When Jude got outside, Begbie was standing just to the side of the tent, gazing back at the bungalow.

“She told me a very different version,” Jude said to him. “I think she's forgotten.”

Back at the big house she laid it out. “The newborn baby's cry bit was the same,” she began, “but what she said to me was that she went out and saw Miranda with a placenta in a bowl, all bloody and streaked—Miranda, I mean—and barefoot.”

“She embellishes,” Lowell said. “People do, don't they? And she got it wrong. She knew a baby had been born and so when she saw something being buried she guessed at what it was. And got it wrong.”

Begbie played a little tune with his fingertips on his stretched cheeks and then shut his lips with a smack. “And is that true about recognising the cry of a newborn?”

“It must be,” said Jude. “If she didn't see the placenta or talk to Miranda, then the crying is the only thing in the whole night that would have made her guess about a baby. No one knew Inez was pregnant. Not even Inez, maybe.”

“I'll ask my wife,” Begbie said. “She's a lactation consultant up at Ayr. But I have to say, my crap-dar's going off like an air-raid siren.” Jude smiled. “Oh, by the way,” he added. “A couple of things. First, Sharon got back with a prelim. She's washed the bones and says they're pristine. No sign of violence. So
I was talking to my wife at lunchtime, Mr. Glen, and she said to me to say to you that if that's right enough, if young Eddy's mother died of eclampsia or some such, that's crucial information when her own time comes. I don't know if it's genetic, but there's a lot we don't understand and it's best to be safe, eh?”

Lowell took it in only slowly, but then he groaned and, clamping one hand on each knee, hauled himself to his feet. “I'll go and break the news,” he said. “She's been talking about doulas and pools of water, you know.”

“No way,” said Begbie.

When Lowell was gone, Jude smiled at Begbie again. “What was the other thing?” she said.

“No flies on you,” said the inspector. “Aye, you're right enough. I wanted to tell you on your own. Not sure how things stand between the two of you. Did you know you're on a missing persons list?” Jude shrugged. “I had to call it in when I realised who you were,” he said. “Sorry, love. Life doesn't play the game these days for anyone who wants to take off and get lost. Surprised this Miranda managed it twenty years ago, if I'm honest.”

“Me too,” said Jude. “Didn't Inez have anyone looking for her? No one who missed her?”

“She had someone who missed her right enough,” Begbie said, nodding at the chair where Lowell had been sitting. “Anyway, I best be off.”

“Thank you,” said Jude. “For the heads up,” she added at his frown. For not being what I thought policemen were, she really meant. Maybe none of them were the way they had seemed when she had looked at them from Max's side. “Am I … I got in the habit of not looking and I can't seem to break it. Am I just a missing person? Or a witness? Do you know?”

“Witness?” said Begbie. “There's no need for a witness. The guilty one's dead. Just like here. Miranda's dead and gone and the case is closed.”

Just like Lowell's father too, Jude thought. The guilty one dead and the case closed.

Except
someone
put a note in a door,
someone
shoved papers through a letterbox and lit them, and
someone
upset Jackie enough to make her collapse.

Maybe none of the stories was the way it seemed. Dr. Glen and the old people. Inez and Miranda. Maybe two more guilty ones were alive and well somewhere and counting their blessings. Just like her.

Thirty

It took her two
days to get there. She arrived at half past eleven on Friday morning and the first any of them knew about it was when they heard a baby crying.

They were in the dining room. Lowell and Jude had started trying to organise the hundred-books books. Eddy had drifted in; since Lowell's lecture about the hazards of childbirth, she had been sticking close to him, catching his eye a lot, assuring him she was fine. She had even moved downstairs from her pink and yellow haven to sleep in the adjoining room. Liam and Terry had taken over the attic rooms now, their third occupants in a month after the long empty years. Jude, that first night after Begbie left, ended up in Lowell's bed and had slept ten straight hours there.

“Totally disgusting, by the way,” said Eddy. “But fair enough, because Dad would probably pass out if my waters broke. But you'd be okay.”

“I think I'd have time to get to you from any door on the landing,” Jude said. “Even from downstairs if I was still up.”

Eddy shook her head solemnly. “Who knows how quick it might come on?” she said. “Did I tell you Dad's taking a hotel room beside the hospital starting next week, cos of how we're in the back of beyond. And as for the boat!” It was decided. Liam and Terry's child would be born Scottish. They didn't seem to mind. They were already making jokes about wearing kilts to its Christening.

The question of “how quick it could come on” was one of the many things that troubled Jude about that night almost twenty years ago. Dying in childbirth was surely slow. Even if Inez meant to go it alone, wouldn't she finally panic and cry out? And even if Miranda meant to do everything with a cup of raspberry tea and some lavender oil, wouldn't she eventually realise she was out of her depth and get help? The only pictures Jude could bring to mind of women dying alone in childbirth were Victorian and as gruesome as any of Lowell's collection, involving locked doors and shackles and grim-faced wardens determined to see that some wretched girl paid for her sin. When she tried to think of Miranda and Inez in those terms, tried to imagine Miranda locking Inez in a bedroom and ignoring her screams, she felt faint and foolish. They were friends. It couldn't have happened that way.

She was half thinking about it as she sorted books on the Friday morning. Eddy was propped across two armchairs, complaining about her newly swollen ankles. Liam and Terry, who followed Eddy as closely as she followed Lowell, were massaging one each. Jude was trying not to roll her eyes.

When they heard the baby cry, Lowell put a hand out to steady himself and Eddy batted the fathers' hands away. “What the fuck?” she said, suddenly white in the face. “Jesus Christ, see what's happened now? They've disturbed her grave and here she is.”

“Eddy,” Jude said over her shoulder, making her way to the door, “it's lunchtime. Ghosts haunt at night. And the baby didn't die, you moron. The baby's
you
.”

“Oh yeah,” said Eddy, sitting back and lifting her feet again.

“Is it who I think it is, dearest?” said Lowell. And then louder when she didn't answer, “I'm here if you need me.”

“I'm fine,” Jude called back. She went on her own and opened the inside porch door.

Raminder was standing on the tiled floor of the vestibule with a wailing, wriggling bundle under one arm and a phone in her free hand.

“Hi,” said Jude. “You better come in.”

“I'm glad you see it that way,” Raminder said and, despite everything, Jude felt a surge of emotion to hear the sound of home in her London accent after all those weeks of dry Scottish twigs snapping. “Jade's starving.”

She cast her eyes about as they walked along the passageway to the kitchen. Jude could see her appraising the place, the soaring ceilings and deep mouldings, the shabby carpet and dusty picture frames.

“Looks about right,” she said. “The
Mail
said he was some kind of corpse collector. Photographs of remains and owned a house in a graveyard. But he didn't know about the woman in the garden?”

“He's not really as—I mean, they can twist anything,” said Jude, holding open the kitchen door and stepping back to let Raminder enter. The baby was gasping and grizzling, sure she'd be fed soon now that they were inside.

Raminder shrugged out of her coat and plumped down in a chair. She lifted her jumper, rootled in a capacious beige bra, and then bent low over the baby until the crying stopped, replaced by soft little snorts and grunts. She sat up and smiled.

“Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks, really,” she said.

“For … ?” Jude sat down opposite her. She should offer tea, but she didn't know if Raminder could drink hot tea over Jade's head. Anyway, she seemed to have lost the use of her legs.

“For phoning,” Raminder said. “Dialling it in. No one sussed out it wasn't me, by the way. It only took them two minutes to get there. Shouldn't get preferential treatment, I suppose, but the truth is, what with it being my number and me being on a crew … Yeah, about two minutes.”

“But—I mean, you know what I said, right?”

“Oh yeah,” said Raminder. “I worked it out eventually.”

“I'm not sure I—”

“Police came round the next day. I was still pretty out of it. They asked me what I could remember. I said I tripped and fell. They said they understood I was frightened and would it help to know I wasn't in any danger.”

“
What
?”

“I twigged then. That's what they say to abused wives. They say, ‘He's under lock and key, love. He can't hurt you.' Get the woman to make a statement and then they bail the bugger out and he goes straight back round and beats her bloody. Brilliant system.”

“How do you
know
all that?” Jude said. “Max never—”

“No!” said Raminder. “Just from us being there getting the poor cow on a stretcher and the cops being there asking questions at the same time. This one time, we were splinting the wife—dislocated shoulder, dislocated jaw—and there's a copper with his notebook out saying, ‘Where does he drink, love? What's his local? We can pick him up now and he'll never bother you again.' Little kids in their pyjamas standing there listening to it all. And she goes—through her dislocated jaw—she goes, ‘Don't arrest him. We can't afford a babysitter.'”

“So … ” Jude was trying to piece it together. “The cops prompted you? Told you what I'd said?”

Raminder shook her head and glanced down at the little head burrowing deeper and deeper into her. “The crew came to check up on me. Tom and Bernie, it was. Came shuffling in looking at their feet. And I asked them. I said I couldn't remember what I'd said on the call.
They
told me. And so when the cops came back—no one had said a word about Max at this point, mind—when the cops came back, I said he was angry and drunk and he didn't mean anything by it. Probably didn't even realise I was at the head of the staircase, just pushed past me to get to the bedroom.”

“When did you find out he was dead?” Jude said.

“Later that day, once the nurses said it was safe to upset me. Yeah, later that afternoon. My mum was there. And they told me. He'd passed out drunk and choked on his own.”

“But why didn't the ambulance crew that came to get you take care of him?” Jude said. “Tom and Bernie.”

“Ah yeah, there you've got it,” said Raminder. “That's why the police were so keen to get me on record that he'd beaten me about a bit and why Tom and Bernie wanted me to spill.
They never checked the house
. They found me and Jade and took us off and never looked upstairs. They were covering their arses in case I tried to sue them, innit? In case I asked for forty jillion for the loss of my loving husband.”

“Tom and Bernie never looked upstairs?” Jude knew ambulancemen. It was second nature to check a premises when they were called out.

“That's their story and they're sticking to it,” Raminder said. “Said they were concerned for my safety, what with me being a colleague. If they'd known he was there, they'd never have left him … like that, you know?” She paused, chewing her lip. “If you back me up, we're all okay.”

“Back you up … ?”

“I've told the cops you left before it kicked off between Max and me.”

“But one of the neighbours saw me leaving.”

“That's right,” Raminder said. “I told the cops you left and that's when Max went to bed and pushed past me and I fell down the stairs, just had time to dial 999 and say he shoved me before I passed out. Neighbour hears Jade crying, sees you leaving, bit later sees an ambulance turn up. There's no loose ends.”

“You don't seem—I mean, are you okay? You seem okay.” In the depths of the house, Jude was aware of the doorbell, but she ignored it. “I mean, he's dead, right? And you loved him.”

“Must have, innit?” Raminder said, hollowly. “I went against my family, broke up a marriage. If I didn't love him that'd make me a bit of a bitch.” She looked down again and this time crunched herself over so she could kiss the side of Jade's head. The baby was lolling, sated already, and Raminder pulled her gently away from her breast, with a soft sound like a small pebble falling into water. Jude took her eyes away after just a glimpse of a dark egg-shaped blotch and a sharp black nipple. Raminder was still smiling. “I can't regret anything I did,” she said, “or I'm wishing this little one away.”

Jude was speaking before she knew what she would say. “I don't regret anything you did either. Choice between living in London still married to Max and being here? Easy.”

Raminder nodded, rhythmically. She looked almost as sleepy as the baby, blinking slowly.

“How did you get here?” Jude asked her. “Did you drive?”

Raminder nodded again. Jade was snoring.

“Do you want to go upstairs and rest?” Jude asked. “First left at the top's a spare. Bathroom's the one with the etched glass.”

Raminder got to her feet and pushed her car keys across the table. “Don't suppose you'd slip out and get her changing bag?” she said.

“Course,” said Jude. Raminder's words were still ringing in her ears.
They'd never have left him … like that, you know
. “Hey, can I ask you something?” she said. Raminder was walking slowly, carrying the sleeping baby like a ticking bomb, Jude thought. “Was that his first slip? Since you two got together?”

Raminder snorted. “You're kidding, aren't you? That was his fourth ‘slip.' First time since Jade was born, though.”

“I remember that,” Jude said. “First time this year, first time this holiday, first time since the last time.”

Raminder gave a ghost of a laugh, just a lift of her chin and a single breath. The weariness couldn't all be from her long drive and the broken sleep that comes with a baby.

She knew, Jude thought. She'd been three times round the merry-go-round Jude had been round so
many
times she couldn't count anymore. She definitely knew.

“No regrets,” Raminder said, reading her mind. “No complaints. My parents have forgiven me. Well, this one helps.” She lifted the baby a little and then let her settle again.

Jude was dazed when she walked back into the dining room. Liam and Terry were dusting books now and Eddy was sitting in one of the armchairs in the window staring at her phone. Lowell stood with his back to the fireplace, hands in his pockets, sorting his change. In the two carver chairs at either end of the long sideboard sat Maureen Bell and Jackie MacLennan.

“Hey!” said Jude, rushing over and taking both Jackie's hands. “You look fantastic. But what are you doing out?”

“Out of the hospital or out in the rain?” said Jackie. Her voice was rough and she had bags under her eyes, but she gripped Jude firmly. “Billy told me you'd been round so I asked Mo here if she'd give me a lift. See if we couldn't set things straight somehow.”

Maureen shifted in her seat and cleared her throat. “I'm sorry I was a wee bit thon way last time,” she said.

Jude managed to smile without her eyebrows rising, but she couldn't forget Maureen's jabbing finger and her voice snapping
Out!
like a dog's bark.

“You've nothing to be sorry for,” she said. “I raked up old hurts.”

“It was a terrible time,” Maureen said. “We'd always been such a friendly wee town and then suddenly everyone was looking sideways at everyone else.”

“Aye well, it was us MacLennans that started it,” said Jackie. “That besom putting poor Auntie Lorna in a home. Like kenneling a dog.”

“And what with this trouble that's come to you now,” Maureen went on, with a glance at Eddy, “I was glad Jack asked me to bring her. Gave me the excuse to say sorry and let's just forget it happened, eh?”

Lowell was frowning deeply. “That's very generous of you both,” he said, “but you're not in full possession of the facts.”

“Lowell,” said Jude, flashing a desperate message at him with her eyes. “They're not facts. They're suppositions. And Maureen and Jackie want to let it drop.”

He was going to fall on his sword if she didn't stop him. He was going to tell the world his father was a killer and do no one any good—not the relatives, not himself, not the town that was already reeling.

If she could take what Raminder offered, Jude thought, then Lowell could grab this chance that the two women were holding out to him now.

“Since it was me who opened up the can of worms,” she went on, “flying around dropping names, it should be me who gets to close it again.”

“My father—” Lowell began.