The Darkness and the Deep (42 page)

There was Cat coming now, walking alone and a little apart from the noisy, chattering groups of youngsters. There was no sign of anyone with her fitting Marjory’s description of Cat’s undesirable friend Kylie.

Cat’s face lit up when she saw Laura. ‘Hi, Laura! Oh Daisy, haven’t you grown!’ She dropped her bag and crouched down to pat her.

‘Pick her up, if you like,’ Laura urged, and as Cat straightened up with Daisy in her arms the girls clustered round, crooning.

‘Is this one of Meg’s puppies, Cat?’ she heard one plump, cheerful-faced lass say. ‘Dad’s sheepdog’s old now but he’s going to buy one that’s trained instead of a pup – it’s so mean! I love them when they’re puppies.’

One of the other farmers’ daughters, presumably. ‘Another day,’ Laura suggested cunningly, ‘why don’t you see if Cat would bring you for tea, and you could play with Daisy?’

‘Would you, Cat?’ the girl asked hopefully, and another said, ‘Oh, me too!’

‘Sure.’ Cat gave the assurance casually but there was a flush of pleasure in her pale cheeks. Marjory was right, Laura thought; the girl was looking peaky and definitely thinner.

Marjory had phoned that morning to tell her about the accident, and on a suggestion from her Laura had bought home-made meringues from the Copper Kettle in the High Street, caramel-tinged, cream-filled, delectable. While Cat played a squeaky-toy game with Daisy, she fetched them out from the kitchen with a pot of tea for herself and a can of Pepsi, Cat’s favourite tipple.

‘Do you want a glass, or will you drink it straight from the can?’

It was clear that the girl’s mind had been on seeing the puppy, and that the other implications of ‘going to tea’ hadn’t struck her. Her face took on a hunted expression. ‘The can’s fine. But have you any Diet Pepsi?’ she asked awkwardly.

‘Heavens, no!’ Laura said cheerfully. ‘Can’t stand that sort of stuff.’ She opened the can and handed it to her guest. Cat touched it to her lips and set it down on the table beside her. ‘And now – ta-ra!’ Laura presented the plate of meringues with a flourish.

It was instructive to see the child’s reaction. Her tongue came out and licked her lips, then her eyes slid away from the plateful. ‘I’m not really hungry, thanks – I had a big lunch.’

‘Oh, you don’t have to be hungry to eat a meringue. Just greedy. Come on – I went and got them specially for you.’ Piling on the pressure, she helped herself, then held out the plate; years of conditioning in the guest’s duty of politeness should make it impossible for the child to refuse.

She took it. ‘Cheers!’ Laura said, raising the cake before biting into it, and Cat, with an obvious effort, did the same. But after an initial reluctance she devoured it while Laura chattered inconsequentially on about Marjory’s accident and Daisy’s most recent misdemeanours. Cat responded with a certain vagueness, then five minutes later asked if she could go to the bathroom.

Laura gave her a level look. ‘No, I don’t think so, Cat. You see, I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to make yourself sick, aren’t you?’

Cat’s eyes widened in shock, then she burst into tears.

It was Daisy’s distress, rather than Laura’s attempts at comfort, that brought the fit of sobs to a hiccuping close, even producing a watery smile as Cat reassured the dog.

Fetching a box of tissues, Laura said, ‘Cat, I’m not going to ask questions, I’m going to tell you what I think first. I think that this is all to do with your friend Kylie, and perhaps her boyfriend. I think you feel so uncomfortable about it that it sort of screws you up inside and you feel you don’t want to eat.

‘Shall I tell you what I’d say professionally? I’d say that things in your world are scary and out of control and you feel there isn’t anything you can do about it. Eating is something you can control so there’s a sort of triumph when you manage not to eat. And if you do – like now, with the meringue – you panic and throw up to feel back in charge again. So it sounds as if it’s a problem about food, but the only way to sort it out is to give you back power over your own life.

‘Does that make any sort of sense?’

‘Kind of.’ Cat, her head bent, mumbled the words, as if reluctant even to consider what Laura had said. But she looked up sideways a couple of times, then as Laura waited, went on, ‘I suppose – it is Kylie, sort of. She’s like – well, you know – doing it, with Nat. And she says I’m just a dumb kid, because – well, one of Nat’s mates fancies me, and I won’t. And now – well . . .’ She hesitated. ‘She said I mustn’t tell . . .’

Laura knew better than to get into an argument about the teenager’s honour code. She said nothing. Cat took a deep breath and said in a rush, ‘She’s pregnant. And she’s like, “Oh, it’ll be really cool to have a baby,” but Nat’s trying to make her – you know, get rid of it. And I don’t – I don’t know what I should do. Neither of them’s in school today.’ She began to cry again.

It was a nasty mess, that was for sure. It gradually emerged that Nat Rettie was a serious problem, with a drug habit financed by stealing from the till in the pub, and if the police pursued the driving charges he’d soon have a criminal record too. Cat swore that neither she nor Kylie had taken drugs, though Laura was far from sure that Cat would know what her friend got up to when she wasn’t there, since Kylie didn’t seem to have a problem with joyriding or under-age sex. It took Laura quite some time to convince Cat that, however loyal she might be as a friend, this was something she didn’t have to cope with.

‘It’s up to Kylie and her parents to deal with this, not you,’ she said firmly. ‘There’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. And anyway, you could still be her friend without her being your only friend. Those girls today – they seemed OK.’

‘Yes,’ Cat sniffed. ‘They used to be my friends, until Mum—’ She broke off. ‘But at least they’re not being mean to me now. And when Kylie was off today, Fiona – that’s the one who asked if I’d bring her to tea – came and sat beside me in English.’

‘It’s a start. What about bringing a couple of them here next week? And Cat, you really should talk to your mum about this—’

Cat’s face hardened. ‘Mum? She’d probably just go out and arrest them, or something.’

‘Right,’ Laura said hollowly. That was a whole other problem; she wasn’t going to go there at the moment. What she expected was that Cat would go on to ask her to promise not to tell Marjory, but she didn’t, which was encouraging in itself. Laura was satisfied with the initial groundwork; there would be tricky times ahead but having the problem out in the open was the first step towards solving it.

It was beginning to get dark when MacNee and Fleming reached Knockhaven. Following the main road south, about half a mile beyond the town MacNee turned off on to a single-track road leading directly towards the sea, where there was a right-angled bend with only a fringe of grass separating it from the edge of a low bluff, about fifteen feet above the rocky shore.

Police cars, summoned from Kirkluce, lined one side of the road, making it awkwardly narrow, so that MacNee had to bump along, half on the verge, to get Fleming as near to the scene as possible. He drew up behind an ambulance and a fire-engine which were blocking the road; Fleming got out with some difficulty and leaning on her crutches, winced her way across to look down over the edge.

The tide was full, but the wreckage of Katy Anderson’s small green Peugeot was lying immediately below, above the high-water mark and nose into a long ridge of rocks. The front of the car was no more than mangled metal; firemen with cutting equipment were working at the driver’s side and the lights they had rigged up highlighted a slumped figure.

Tansy Kerr, standing in a group of policemen, came across when she saw them arrive. ‘They’ve taken Kylie off to hospital. She’ll be all right – broken leg, bit of concussion – but of course she’s in a hysterical state, trapped there since this morning with Nat—’

‘Dead?’ Fleming asked grimly.

‘Oh yes. Broke his neck on impact, they think. They weren’t found until this afternoon when someone was walking their dog along the beach – there’s not much traffic on this road, and even if you did pass you wouldn’t see the car unless you happened to peer over.’

‘So do we know yet what happened?’

‘One of the front wheels came off, just as he reached the corner, probably coming a bit too fast – look.’ She pointed to a wheel, lying a short distance away. ‘He lost the steering, of course, and the momentum took the car over. The second front wheel came off as it landed.’

‘Not an accident, then,’ Fleming said heavily.

‘Doesn’t look like it, I have to say.’ Kerr glanced anxiously at Fleming; this was the last thing she needed, standing there looking as if she should be going to her bed for a week.

‘I didn’t suppose it was, really. Though of course if you wanted to kill someone this is a pretty haphazard method – the car might have just collapsed more or less harmlessly. Do we know what they were doing out here?’

‘Finding somewhere quiet for a snog, probably,’ Kerr offered. ‘There’s a wider part further along that’s quite popular with courting couples. And no, Tam, that’s not from personal experience.’

‘Never said a word!’ MacNee was protesting when Fleming’s phone rang. Balancing awkwardly, she got it out of her pocket and answered it; Kerr saw her weary face come alive as she listened intently to the report from the other end.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Thanks,’ and snapped it off. She turned to MacNee. ‘That’s the answer I needed. We’ve got enough to do some serious questioning. I’ll just fill you in on this, then go and bring her in. Take one of the patrol cars with you and I’ll get another sent from Kirkluce.’ Her voice was strong and decisive. ‘Katy Anderson – she’s been told about all this, has she? I’m going to have to talk to her anyway. Tansy, you’ve had dealings with her – you can drive me along there now. It’ll only take a couple of minutes.’

The patients’ records had been sorted out and returned to their places in the filing system, the repeat prescriptions had been arranged in alphabetical order for giving out next day and the appointment book opened to the next page, ready for the morning. Dr Lewis had finished his surgery and gone home; all that Muriel Henderson and Enid Davis, on late shift today, were waiting for was for Dr Matthews to get rid of his last patient so that they could switch on the answerphone and lock up.

‘Whatever you said about Dr Ashley,’ Muriel said crossly, ‘at least she didn’t go encouraging them. You could always reckon that the surgery would get shut up at six o’clock sharp. Dr Matthews just lets them walk all over him – well, that’s his privilege, but he’s no consideration when it comes to us—’

The ringing of the telephone interrupted her rant, and she scowled. ‘Now what? By rights, that thing should have been switched off ten minutes ago. If it’s someone wanting attention they can just ring the night service, that’s all.’ She picked up the phone. ‘Yes?’

But from the change in Muriel’s expression, this wasn’t a professional request. ‘Well!’ she said, two or three times, and ‘Would you credit that?’ At last she said, with great solemnity, ‘Oh yes, terrible, terrible!’

Enid Davis, needlessly sorting a pile of letters as distraction from her companion’s monologue, looked up sharply. It had been a long, long day.

Muriel replaced the receiver with almost reverent awe. ‘You’ll never guess! That was Janine,’ she said, naming one of her most favoured sources of local news. ‘You know Katy Anderson’s wee green car? Well, it went off the road and down a cliff!’ She paused for effect.

Enid’s face became a mask of concern. ‘Oh no, how awful! Is Katy all right?’

‘Oh,
Katy
’s fine.’ Muriel was enjoying her telling of the story. ‘But that son of hers, that Nat – bunking off school, and away joyriding with his girlfriend, Janine says, and her only thirteen and a wee hizzie. He’s dead and she’s at death’s door!’

The blood drained from Enid’s face. ‘Nat – dead?’

‘Good riddance, is what I say. Save his mother a lot of grief, and us taxpayers a fortune. I read in the papers you could send them all to Eton for what giving them the jail costs, and that’s where he was headed, I’ve no doubt. But see you – you’re shaking! No need to take on like that – he’s no loss.’

Enid said, through stiffened lips, ‘I’m going. Katy’s – Katy’s going to need a friend.’

‘And
then
, if you please,’ Muriel said to the patient who had emerged from the consulting room, at last having come to the end of her ‘And-another-thing-doctor’ list, ‘she just walks out without a word, leaving me to set the answering machine and sort out Dr Matthews’s patient records and do all the checking and locking up. That woman has never in her life given a thought to anyone but herself.’

It was Katy’s friend Ellie who admitted Kerr and Fleming to the house, looking faintly surprised at seeing a woman on crutches, wearing a grey jersey tracksuit, who declared herself to be a detective inspector.

The stairs presented something of a problem but clinging to the banister Fleming hopped up doggedly, Kerr following with her second crutch. MacNee had offered to do her questioning by proxy, but she’d refused. ‘I won’t know what I want to ask till I see what she’s able to tell us. And I know you’re every bit as competent as I am, Tam, but I want to do it myself. I don’t think with my ankle, so stop looking like that.’

He’d muttered something about ‘
glaikit Folly’s portals
’, but she’d chosen to ignore it. A bit of pain and exhaustion would be worth it if they could get corroboration that at last they were on the right track. And that – ouch! – was the top of the stairs at last. She’d worry about getting back down later.

Fleming heaved herself back on to her second crutch with some relief and swung across the narrow landing as Kerr held the sitting-room door open.

The room was a testimony to the failure of Katy’s plans to tidy the past back into its boxes and pick up the threads of her life. The photographs, letters, cards and newspapers still lay in untidy piles on the floor and Katy herself was sitting on the sofa, her face grey with shock. She turned blank, incurious eyes on her visitors as they came in.