The Christmas Puzzle (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 8) (13 page)

Chapter 19 The Day After

Jock had spent all day on Sunday sitting in his front room, more or less motionless. He had the television on for the company but didn’t watch anything, or at least not consciously. Getting home the night before had been more of an ordeal than he had imagined it would be, and by the time he flung himself into bed, head aching and most of his limbs protesting strongly, he almost wished he had tried to call the doctor to check out his head. The only thing that stopped him was that he knew there wasn’t even an emergency doctor in Pitkirtly after hours, and he would have had to ring the helpline and put up with a lot of inanity in order to be advised to take an aspirin. Or did they even advise aspirin these days? He had a packet of it in his kitchen drawer which had been there since he moved into the house, but he prided himself on having an iron constitution and never needing painkillers. Except for that time he had been blown up, of course. But that had been a freak accident and not a sign of weakness on his part.

He wasn’t going to let the ice incident put him off going to the Queen of Scots later on, of course, after he had done his turn as Santa. But maybe he should leave with the others in future, no matter how tempted he was to stay on until closing time. He and Christopher and Amaryllis were all friends, and there was no need to worry about being the odd one out with them. In fact there was very little sign these days of anything at all romantic between them. But why was he even thinking about this kind of thing? It was nothing to do with him. He obviously just didn’t have enough to think about these days. Not enough in his own life... His thoughts strayed for some reason in the direction of Tricia Laidlaw, and he steered them back into line after a bit of a tussle over who was in charge.

On the way down to the tram to get ready for the day’s session on Monday, he met Amaryllis, who was loitering near the fish shop.

‘You’re not getting obsessed with lemon sole too, are you?’ he enquired.

‘No – I’m waiting for Jemima. She’s coming down to the Christmas market with me to look at Maisie Sue’s quilts and have some mulled wine.’

‘What about Dave?’

‘He says the whole thing’s a lot of nonsense, and he’ll pick her up before it gets dark.’

‘He’ll have to be quick then,’ said Jock, looking at the sky which had turned the dark grey colour that meant that either snow or rain was imminent, meaning in turn that nightfall would be at about two-thirty in the afternoon.

Jemima was impressed by the interior of the tram. She even went upstairs and poked about a bit.

‘I remember when there were real trams taking us everywhere,’ she said. ‘Not like these wee caterpillar things they’ve just brought in over in Edinburgh – real double-decker trams with wooden insides that gave you terrible bruises when you were flung about going round corners. Ah, those were the days.’

‘There weren’t any around here, though, were there?’ said Jock.

‘They were everywhere,’ said Jemima, giving him a look that dared him to contradict her. ‘Rattling along at some speed too – if you didn’t get out of the way in time they just ran you over.’

‘It sounds lovely,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Well, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to get into my elf suit now.’

She took off her leather jacket. A piece of paper fell out of the pocket.

‘Oh! I’d forgotten about that.’ She reached to pick it up, but Jemima was there first.

‘This looks like one of those McCallum letters that Christopher likes to work on,’ she said.

Jock noticed that Amaryllis almost blushed, which was very unusual for her.

‘I’m afraid it is a McCallum letter,’ she said. ‘I had a sort of argument with him and I must have walked off with it in my hand. I meant to take it back but I got held up this morning. Visitors.’

‘I could take it to the Cultural Centre and sneak it back into the drawer if you like,’ offered Jemima. ‘Will it be all right if I just have a wee read of it first to see what the date is? Then I’ll know where to put it.’

Amaryllis waved a hand carelessly. ‘Do what you like with it, Jemima. I don’t think I’d be welcome in Christopher’s office right now anyway.’

‘Oh, it won’t be that bad, dear,’ said Jemima. She tucked the letter into her bag. ‘Come on, Jock, let’s get out of the way and let Amaryllis get on.’

They descended the stairs carefully. Jock remembered trams too – though not in Pitkirtly – and was just grateful this one wasn’t moving.

He warned Jemima not to go near the ice in the road, and showed her the way to Maisie Sue’s tent, where Jan and Maisie Sue were just setting up ready for the afternoon’s extravaganza. Because it was Monday, he hadn’t imagined anybody would come near the place, but he had reckoned without a nursery school party that arrived in force just as everything was opening, and which left him with a renewed headache. Then there were the harassed parents who had just collected their kids from primary school, and then a brief respite during which Giancarlo brought coffee and a dish of lasagne his mother had made back at the family restaurant. Fortunately the lasagne was still warm, for Jock didn’t think he could have managed to eat two platefuls otherwise. He had to admit it made him feel a bit better in himself.

‘My mother would like you both to go and eat in the restaurant tomorrow after you’ve finished here,’ said Giancarlo, sitting on the harbour wall with his long legs dangling in front of him, and Amaryllis staring up at him lustfully from the bench. ‘She doesn’t think it’s good for you to eat out here in the cold – especially at your age,’ he added to Jock.

‘Right enough,’ said Jock, not taking offence. At his age he couldn’t afford to turn down an offer from an attractive Italian woman, even if it had to be relayed through her son. ‘That’s very kind of her. I won’t say no.’

Of course what he was really afraid of was that Amaryllis would accept the invitation unilaterally and leave him to his own devices. Not to mention the fact that he had a personal mission to stop her pestering the boy with her soulful gazes. The boy didn’t seem to mind, but that wasn’t the point. Jock licked the last of the sauce off his lips and heaved himself up from the bench. His centre of gravity was never quite the same when he was wearing his Santa Claus outfit.

‘Better get back to it, then,’ he said. He took hold of Amaryllis’s hand and pulled. She rose reluctantly from the bench, still looking at Giancarlo.

‘Leave the poor lad alone!’ he hissed as they headed for the tram again. ‘He’s far too young for you and that’s all there is to it.’

‘I know,’ she said almost wistfully, ‘but he’s just so good to look at.’

‘Haven’t you got anything better to do than stare at him?’

‘Not really.’ She gave her shoulders a shake. ‘Not until I take over the Council, anyway.’

‘That’s another thing,’ said Jock sternly. ‘They won’t vote for you if they think you’re a loose woman.’

She started to laugh. ‘You think I’m a loose woman? Really?’

‘Of course not. I know it’s just a game to you,’ he said. ‘I’m just telling you what everybody would think.’

‘I’ve given up worrying about that,’ she said, and turned round to give Giancarlo a little wave.

Jock knew she had done it deliberately to annoy him. There was no reasoning with her in this mood, though.

Later, they called in at the Queen of Scots as usual. There was a depleted group at their usual table.

‘Where’s Dave? And Jemima?’ said Jock, bringing over his pint of Old Pictish Brew. Christopher, Maisie Sue, Zak and Harriet were sitting with their heads together, possibly discussing something to do with the Cultural Centre. Or possible the weather, or the inevitability of Christmas.

‘Jemima had a bit of an accident this afternoon,’ said Christopher. ‘I don’t think it’s too bad. She went over on her ankle in the car park outside the Cultural Centre. I’m not sure what she was doing there – Dave said he had arranged to pick her up at the bus stop just over the road here.’

‘She was probably on her way to see you,’ said Amaryllis, arriving at the table.

‘Me? What about?’

‘Oh, she said she would return one of the McCallum letters to you to put back in the file,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I accidentally took it away with me.’

‘I wondered where it had gone,’ said Christopher.

‘I didn’t mean to take it,’ said Amaryllis. ‘It wasn’t important, was it?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘How is Jemima, anyway?’ said Jock.

‘A passer-by got her back on her feet, and then I looked out the window and saw what was going on, and Zak went and got Dave to come round with the car and he took her home,’ Christopher explained. ‘He said something about phoning the doctor. But I expect he ended up having to speak to someone on one of those help-lines.’

‘It’ll be aspirin all round, then,’ said Jock darkly.

‘Was she on her way back after seeing you, or had she still to get to you?’ said Amaryllis.

‘I hadn’t seen her,’ said Christopher. ‘But she might have popped into the office while I was in the library, and put the letter back without saying anything.’

‘Can you check tomorrow?’ said Amaryllis.

Jock gave her a look. ‘As long as Jemima’s all right, it doesn’t matter about the letter, does it?’

‘I have a sort of feeling,’ said Amaryllis.  It wasn’t like her to be vague and mysterious, and Jock couldn’t help thinking it meant trouble.

‘I didn’t think you had feelings,’ said Christopher. ‘I mean – I don’t think that came out quite as I meant it to... I thought you relied on facts and deductions, not on intuition.’

Amaryllis ignored Christopher’s stumbling semi-apology and pressed on with her own line of thought as ever. ‘How are the police getting on?’

‘Not all that well,’ said Christopher, frowning. ‘They complained that one of the rolls of microfilm was damaged.’

‘I would have thought they’d have their own records,’ said Zak. ‘And couldn’t they go to another library or ask the newspaper people for back numbers?’

‘I guess they wanted to try something simple first,’ said Maisie Sue brightly.

‘It isn’t simple for us,’ said Zak. ‘They’re taking up space and scaring people away.’

‘It was just that one time they scared everybody,’ said Maisie Sue. ‘When they were showing Mrs Davidson’s grandson how the taser worked.’

Zak scowled into his pint. Jock watched him in amusement. The boy seemed to have skipped the twenty-something and thirty-something decades and was in danger of turning into a clone of Christopher, heaven help him. Only a bit grumpier – more like the way some people seemed to see Jock himself, if anything.

‘Look out – bandits at twelve o’clock,’ said Amaryllis suddenly.

Jock couldn’t help following the direction of her gaze. Tricia Laidlaw and Jason Penrose had just entered the bar. They were looking over towards the group and laughing.

Bandits indeed.

Chapter 20 Repelling the Roman threat

Against his better judgement, as soon as he got into the office on Tuesday morning Christopher opened the drawer where he kept the McCallum archive and took out the folder.

He couldn’t even begin to imagine why Amaryllis was so interested in the letter. Up to now, as far as he knew, she had shown almost no enthusiasm for archives, any of the Folk Museum exhibits or anything in the library collections. She only ever came into the place to harass him or to investigate yet another suspicious death.

The letter wasn’t back in the folder. Well, that only proved Jemima must have been on her way in with it when she had turned her ankle. It would be just as safe in her keeping as it was in the filing cabinet. Possibly safer, since Amaryllis wouldn’t be able to get at it, and neither would any other random visitors such as Bruce. Or the police, for that matter. He frowned. Where had he got the idea the police might want to see it?

Zak came into the office. None of the staff bothered to knock these days. Christopher hoped it wasn’t a sign that he wasn’t managing them properly. On the other hand, they didn’t demonstrate any greater disrespect for him than they had always done.

‘The police are back,’ he reported. ‘They’re complaining about the microfilm again.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ said Christopher. ‘Don’t they have anything better to do?’

With one – or maybe two – deaths to investigate, he thought there must be any number of things waiting to be done. Interviewing suspects, collating evidence, reporting to police headquarters, driving around in their cars with the officers who had been said to be the hard men from Dundee...

‘They’re still waiting for forensics,’ said Zak.

‘It’s taking a while, isn’t it?’

Zak shrugged. ‘I think it always takes this long. You just don’t see all this waiting around when you watch murder shows on television.’ Zak must have correctly interpreted Christopher’s expression, for he added, almost defensively, ‘My Mum sometimes watches them.’

Christopher couldn’t work out why anybody who had ever been involved in a murder would want to watch fictionalised versions of the drama around it. Could it be voyeurism, maybe, or gratitude about being still alive?

‘We could order up a new microfilm,’ suggested Zak. ‘Or Dunfermline might have a spare one.’

‘Do they even have it for the Pitkirtly paper?’

‘I can ring them and find out,’ the boy offered.

‘It’d be better to send the police over to Dunfermline to look,’ said Christopher.

‘But they might not let them into the library – not if they’ve heard about the taser incident.’

‘We could try,’ countered Christopher.

As soon as Zak had gone, Jason Penrose appeared. At least he had the grace to poke his head round the door, looking embarrassed, and ask if it was all right to come in. Christopher didn’t know what he and Tricia had been laughing at the night before. The two of them had gone over to the table for two in the corner instead of joining the group. Christopher had thought at the time that Jock McLean might explode, so he was relieved when Jock got up soon after that and announced he was planning to have an early night. The whole group departed en masse at that point, which was probably a good idea all round.

‘I just wondered,’ said Jason, standing in front of the desk in the role, apparently, of a supplicant, ‘if you could put in a good word for me with the police.’

Christopher suppressed an unseemly laugh that threatened to escape.

‘Why – what have you done?’

‘Nothing. Well, that’s not quite true. I’ve made an archaeological discovery in the patch of ground behind the police station – perhaps Amaryllis has mentioned it – and now they’ve stopped me following up on it.’

‘What sort of discovery?’

‘Well,’ said Jason, shuffling his feet in their expensive-looking cowboy boots, ‘it might give us evidence of Roman occupation. But I wouldn’t want to get your hopes up...’

‘Hopes?’ Christopher didn’t know what to think. He couldn’t remember ever having even speculated about Roman remains in Pitkirtly. It was just one of those unimaginable things. ‘How on earth did you come to look in that area in the first place?’

‘The old maps in the library. I really just put a different interpretation on them. I didn’t do anything very special – nothing you couldn’t have done if you had looked at them under a microscope.’

‘Hmm,’ said Christopher doubtfully. He was almost certain either that somebody was having Jason on, or that Jason himself was trying to instigate some sort of fraud or deception. The idea that the Romans had ever bothered to visit Pitkirtly – not that there would have been anything here in those days in any case, as far as anybody knew – was ludicrous in the extreme. And it would take more than an amateurish excavation in the back green behind the police station to uncover the evidence even if there was any. He wondered why on earth the police had let him do it. He couldn’t imagine Inspector Armstrong or even Sergeant Macdonald allowing anything like that.

In fact, wouldn’t the Council have insisted on carrying out some sort of check before they gave permission for the new police station to be built in the first place? He decided to have a quiet word with the Council archaeologist and not to bother the police for the moment. They were already cross enough about the microfilm without reminding them about Jason too.

‘I’ll do my best,’ he told Jason, being as non-specific as he could. ‘By the way, I think Bruce might want a word with you. Will I see if I can find him?’

‘No, thanks.’

Looking as if he could barely resist the urge to cross himself, Jason left again. Christopher looked at his watch and smiled. In and out in seven minutes. Not bad.

He rang the archaeologist before the idea evaporated.

Needless to say, the man was indignant at Christopher’s implication that he might have missed finding Roman ruins behind the police station.

‘We were as thorough as we always are,’ he said. ‘There’s no evidence that the Romans ever came anywhere near Pitkirtly.’

‘Jason Penrose mentioned an old map.’

‘Hmph! If there’s a map it’ll be one he’s drawn himself... I wouldn’t be surprised if he planted any so-called Roman finds himself too. The man’s mad for publicity. He lives on it. I wouldn’t mind, only it makes our real work look boring and insignificant.’

Christopher wasn’t sure what Jason had done to stir up the wrath of the Council archaeologist, but something must have happened.

‘And as for those so-called Celtic remains found out on Pitkirtly Island... Hmph! Twenty years old at the most. Could be less than that.’

‘Is that what the police are saying? I haven’t heard anything.’

‘You didn’t hear it from me,’ said the archaeologist in a whisper. ‘And it’s only my opinion. There’ll be other people willing to argue all round it for weeks or months.’

‘Twenty years,’ said Christopher thoughtfully.

‘That’s a very rough estimate. And for heaven’s sake don’t say anything to the police.’

‘I won’t. Thanks.’

‘If you need any help bringing Jason Penrose down, just say the word.’

‘I wasn’t planning to bring him down exactly,’ Christopher began, but halfway through the sentence he heard a click as the archaeologist presumably rang off.

He was still sitting at his desk deep in thought when Dave came into the office. Dave was almost as much of a fixture in the building as some of the staff were, what with Jemima’s research and everything, and he never knocked either.

‘Jemima sent me down to apologise,’ he said.

‘Is she all right?’

‘She’s fine, but I’ve asked for the doctor to come and see her. You can’t be too careful with ankles.’

‘What’s this apology about?’

‘Well,’ said Dave, pulling up a chair and sitting down heavily, ‘she had a letter with her that she was meaning to put back in some archive for you.’

‘The McCallum archive.’

‘That’s the one. Amaryllis had taken it away with her by mistake the other day, and Jemima offered to bring it back. Only she fell over that wee dog while she was still on her way here, and now she can’t find the letter. It wasn’t valuable, was it?’

‘She fell over a wee dog?’ said Christopher. ‘I hadn’t heard that bit of it before.’

‘That wee white one. I’ve seen it around town a few times just lately... The man with it was very nice and helped her up. But now she’s worried she dropped the letter when she fell.’

‘We could have a look for it in the car park,’ said Christopher. ‘Maybe it went underneath a car or something. Or somebody’s put it in the bin.’

‘Ha!’ said Dave. ‘That’ll be the day when anybody bothers to put rubbish in the bin. It usually ends up just blowing about out there.’

‘Do you want a cup of tea now you’re here?’

‘Might as well. I don’t want to be about when the doctor comes round. He’s always nagging me about something.’

Christopher and Dave had a pleasant tea-break together, using the office in preference to the tea-room, where Christopher knew they might bump into either somebody from FOOP or one of the staff with some urgent but probably trivial problem. It was safer to stay on his own territory.

‘What are the letters about anyway?’ enquired Dave.

‘Oh, just domestic stuff mostly,’ said Christopher. ‘Cats staying out all night, that kind of thing.’

‘It doesn’t really seem worth keeping them, does it?’ said Dave.

‘That’s always the thing with archives,’ said Christopher. ‘This might one day turn out to be a great source of information about twentieth century families. There’s always a judgement to be made about what to keep and what to throw away... Not that Jemima would let me throw those away. She’s always nagging me to get them catalogued properly, or digitised, or both.’

‘There’ll be other things taking up your time, though,’ said Dave. ‘Couldn’t young Zak help you out with that?’

At this point there was a disturbance that seemed to be happening just outside the office door. A woman was shouting, and a man’s deeper voice kept interrupting her. Christopher hesitated. He didn’t really want to open the door and possibly transfer the chaos outside into the peace of the office, but on the other hand he did have a responsibility to keep an eye on what was going on in the Cultural Centre.

He got up reluctantly and opened the door.

‘I know they’re here! I need to speak to them!’ screeched Tamara.

‘Just calm down a bit first,’ said Bruce, who had a hold of her arm and was evidently trying to restrain her.

‘Who do you want to speak to?’ said Christopher. He stayed on the threshold of the office in case he had to dive back in there for his own safety.

Zak came down the corridor from the Folk Museum at a run.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I need to see the police! I want to tell them what really happened!’ sobbed Tamara.

‘You’re overwrought,’ Bruce told her. It wasn’t news to any of the bystanders. ‘Come into the office and have a seat for a minute.’

He tried to push past Christopher, who thought of resisting but eventually stepped back and allowed the two of them in. Bruce cast an unfriendly glance at Dave, who stayed exactly where he was, watching unashamedly.

‘You’d better try and get the police along here,’ Christopher said quietly to Zak. ‘They might be needed here, one way or another.’

‘They’ve just left,’ said Zak.

‘You’d better go after them, I suppose.’

Christopher sighed as he turned to look at Bruce and Tamara, now arranged artistically by the office window. What on earth was he going to do with them?