The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea (22 page)

‘Dr Turner,’ Mrs Findlay said, ‘has asked if you could take his appointments this afternoon.’

Dr Alexander Turner was the senior doctor in the practice. By her tone Mrs Findlay made clear her opinion that Fiona was ill-equipped for the task.

‘Why, what’s happened?’ Fiona was deliberately breezy.

‘Well if you must know he’s been asked by the police to attend a death.’ Again her tone spoke volumes. It let Fiona know that a 27-year old upstart like her had a long way to go before she could be trusted with such work.

‘Where?’

‘Near Poltown,’ Mrs Findlay said, relishing the opportunity to deliver another slight. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘if there had been a sufficiently experienced doctor available nearby Dr Turner wouldn’t have had to go.’

‘Where near Poltown?’

Mrs Findlay sounded taken aback by Dr Bell’s abruptness. ‘A place called Boyd’s Farm.’

Fiona’s face turned ashen as she ended the call. Even Mr Mackie noticed it and unusually for him spoke without being spoken to. ‘All right, doctor?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘A bit of a shock but I’m fine now. Right where was I?’’ She returned to his infected toe, cleaned it, dressed it and left him to put on his sock and shoe after suggesting he made another appointment for the following Wednesday. She found Janice coming out of the waiting room into the hall.

‘You’ll never guess, Dr Bell,’ she said, ‘the police are at Boyd’s Farm. There’s been a death. Apparently it’s Duncan Boyd. He hanged himself.’ She pursed her lips as though a tragedy like that had been inevitable sooner or later. Janice, as Fiona knew, was a supporter of the windfarm for the jobs it would bring to Poltown. ‘It doesn’t do to speak ill of the dead, Dr Bell,’ Janice said, ‘But that one wasn’t right, not at all he wasn’t. Never was.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Fiona said diplomatically but feeling sick. Back in her room she rang Nick to tell him what had happened and that she felt guilty.

‘Well don’t,’ he replied. ‘What could you have said or done that would’ve stopped him?’

‘But I should have done something,’ she said feebly.

‘How would warning him about the meeting have helped? It might just have put more pressure on him. Imagine Fiona if you’d spoken to him and
then
he’d topped himself. How would you be feeling now?’

‘I suppose.’ She winced at Nick’s language.

For the remainder of the surgery, each patient entered Dr Bell’s room with a bulletin of the latest news, and in between appointments Janice provided updates. After the last patient had gone, Janice stood in Fiona’s doorway, shaking her head at such a morning. ‘The whole story’s come out now,’ she announced confidently. ‘Duncan was there when Megan had her baby. He begged her to stay with him, at the farmhouse. He had prepared a room for them both. He was in love with her but she turned him down and he killed her in a jealous rage. If he couldn’t have her, nobody else was going to. Her mistake was letting Duncan see a letter she’d written to the baby’s father. She’d threatened to disappear with the child, go somewhere where the father would never be able to find them. Duncan realised it gave him a cover for murder. After he’d killed her he posted the letter.’ She paused. Her eyes widened. ‘And you’ll never believe this bit.’ Janice launched into another breathless rush of words. ‘Once he had hidden Megan’s body and abandoned the baby, he dressed up in Megan’s clothes, put on her sun-hat and went swimming so that Mrs Armitage would see him.’ Janice checked to see if Fiona was still following this. ‘Mrs Armitage is dead now but she used to take her little dachshund for a walk every morning. She’d go to the road end at South Bay before returning home. She’d often see Megan there. Well, anyway that morning, she thought she saw Megan walking into the sea. But really it was Duncan.’ Janice took a breath. ‘The police got suspicious when Duncan didn’t raise the alarm after finding Megan’s hat and bag on the beach at North Bay. He was about to be charged when Mrs Armitage came forward and Megan’s letter arrived in the post.’ Janice’s eyes widened. ‘You’d never have thought it of him, would you, being cunning like that?’

The sound of Janice’s mobile phone ringing brought a grin of excitement at the prospect of more news to come. ‘Do you mind if I take it?’

Janice retreated into the corridor and Fiona heard her say, ‘Really . . . Really . . . uh-huh. . . . Oh,’ as some new revelation circulated the Poltown grapevine. Fiona went to the window and looked towards South Bay. If she had time she would still take Pepe there for a walk. She would like to remember Duncan as she had known him.

Janice returned. ‘Guess what? Duncan hid Megan Bates’s body under one of those piles of rubbish he collected from the beach.’ Janice waited for Fiona to look impressed, or at least interested. She tried again, with the titbit she’d been keeping till last. ‘And . . . you’ll never believe this . . .’ Still no reaction apart from a polite expression of dutiful attention. ‘Duncan told Jim Carmichael . . . do you know him? The little fat man in the blue van that does deliveries for the shop . . . him. Well, apparently, Duncan told Jim last night that he’d murdered Megan Bates. Jim says he was crying and all sorts, kind of baring his soul, but Jim thought it was just Duncan having one of his funny turns until first thing this morning when he heard the news about Duncan being dead. Then he rang the police.’

‘I’m sorry Janice,’ Fiona said. ‘I’ve got to go.’ She made her escape before Janice’s phone rang again, and she had to listen to another bulletin.

Pepe had found a dead gull. The bird’s body had been covered with sand. Only its black beak protruded. It was at an angle of 45 degrees and slightly open. In death as in life the gull appeared prepared for a fight. The dog was circling suspiciously, growling and barking by turns, sometimes darting towards the beak, hackles raised, before retreating to safety.

‘Oh come on Pepe, we have to go.’

Pepe dashed in one last time, retreated, barked and trotted nonchalantly towards Fiona who was by her car at the road end. ‘Come on Pepe. Patients are waiting . . . Dr Turner’s patients.’ She mimicked Mrs Findlay’s ability to make Dr Turner’s patients sound as though they were the most important in medical history. While she waited for the dog, she surveyed the beach, wishing she had the time to remove every piece of flotsam, as Duncan would if he were still alive. Still, she’d gathered up all the big pieces – buoys, rope, plastic containers, drift wood – and put them into a pile and drawn in the wet sand ‘In memory of Duncan Boyd who was kind to me’. Looking at it from a distance she liked the idea of the next tide washing away the words and possibly the memorial too, of it being impermanent, even fleeting, like her own acquaintance of Duncan.

Police Constable Buchanan
was walking Cal through the house again, double-checking his
route to the attic. ‘And you’re sure you didn’
t go in there, sir?’ The constable indicated the open
door to a room which by its dimensions and fire-
place if not its furnishings – a clutter of broken chairs
and tables – appeared to be the original sitting room.

‘I’ve told you already …’ Cal broke off because Violet appeared in the hall, a policewoman leading her, another following. She looked dazed, as though she wasn’t sure whether she was still asleep and this was a nightmare.

PC Buchanan nudged Cal. ‘Hey, you’re paying attention to me.’

‘No,
I didn’t go into that room,’ Cal replied, still
watching Violet as she was led upstairs to the inspector,
wondering if she would be treated with the same hostility.
Cal had answered question after question: how he’d come
to be in Poltown; how he’d met Duncan and
Violet; what he knew of her; why she hadn’t
gone to the police. It had taken him a while
to realise why the inspector and now PC Buchanan were
so antagonistic. The body hanging in the attic room would
lead to more than one post-mortem: Duncan’s and another into
the police investigation 26 years ago. Why had the
police let a murderer go; why had they allowed a
letter to distract them; why had they closed a case
without a body? A reporter and photographer from the local
newspaper had already been to the farmhouse. Others were on
the way. The police seemed to blame Cal and Violet
for the media interest, for causing trouble by disturbing the
past.

After all, didn’t Cal have form as a trouble-maker? The inspector had alluded to him ‘making a habit of this’. Someone must have Googled his name and discovered other cases he’d worked on where he had fallen out with the police, usually because he found evidence they had overlooked. Cal had snapped back at the inspector. ‘That’s not the point really.’ It was as though Cal had committed a crime instead of being the one who had raised the alarm about Duncan’s death. ‘Is it?’

The inspector had ignored Cal and suggested to Constable Buchanan that Mr McGill – he’d said it with distaste, like a dog baring its teeth before biting a rat – might like to go through his story again, how he’d come to be at Boyd’s Farm when a man was hanging dead upstairs, why he considered it appropriate to enter a private dwelling without permission, and where he went, step by step.

Constable Buchanan seemed to be a man who obeyed orders to the letter. He’d escorted Cal from room to room upstairs, making him detail his movements again and again, before going downstairs and doing the same. After the question about the sitting room, he made Cal retrace his steps along the back corridor to the porch and to stand exactly where in the steading yard he’d made his phone call to the police and afterwards to Violet. ‘Why,’ he asked, ‘did you go outside before ringing?’

‘I just wanted to get out of the house, I suppose.’

His answer provoked a sceptical look from the constable, who said Cal was being allowed to go for now. However, he was warned he would have to make himself available for further questioning as the inquiry progressed.

Cal waited for Violet by the big barn until he was moved on for ‘operational reasons’. As he was crossing the field, it became clear what they were. Two trucks and a digger passed him on the track to the farm, followed by a police van carrying a dozen officers. It had been another hour before Violet appeared. By then the officers had cleared one pile of flotsam – the collection of orange buoys – and had filled one of the trucks. The digger had started to excavate the ground underneath.

‘They’re looking for her aren’t they?’ Violet said.

Cal nodded. ‘Looks like it.’ He touched her arm. ‘I’m sorry.’ It seemed the only thing to say. She flashed him a smile but he could see how wounded she was, how upset.

‘The inspector implied Duncan taking his life like that was my fault.’

Cal had expected as much. ‘He’s wrong. You were looking for your mother, doing the job the police should have done years ago.’

‘That’s not how he put it. He seemed to be saying even the guilty shouldn’t be hounded – that’s why countries have systems of justice, juries, judges and courts.’

‘Did he actually say that?’

She didn’t seem to hear him. Her focus was on the field. A digger dumped another load of topsoil into a truck. Police moved in to examine the newly opened ground. ‘I just can’t bear to think of her suffering,’ she said. ‘What he might have done to her . . .’ She crouched, watching another truck reverse to be loaded up. ‘Do you think he hid her there?’

He made no attempt to reply but she didn’t seem to mind or notice.

‘I don’t want her to be there.’ She shivered. ‘Cal.’ Her eyes were wide with shock. ‘I thought he was sweet too.’ Until she had gone into the house, until she had seen him watching her. She’d been fooled just like her mother. ‘Duncan said she loved me . . . How could he have killed her knowing that? How could he have separated us?’

‘Jealousy, maybe; seeing her loving another man, another man’s child . . . it’s possible, at least that’s what the police think.’

There was hesitancy in Cal’s answer. Violet looked at him. ‘But you don’t?’ She sounded puzzled, as if there was nothing to doubt.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t know what . . . about Duncan being jealous?’

‘Don’t know about any of it, about Duncan being a murderer.’

‘He’s admitted killing her.’ Violet studied his face. She was trying to work him out. Why was he still taking sides with the creep?

Cal sighed. ‘Last time the police took the obvious line. Mother-to-be kills herself and her baby after being let down by her married lover. They wanted a solution that wouldn’t involve detectives from headquarters descending on Poltown, turning the place upside down. Now, they’re doing the same. It’s all so neat and tidy again. I’m sorry.’ He gave her a regretful glance. He didn’t mean to be difficult, but his training taught him to be suspicious of obvious explanations especially when there were questions without answers.

‘Like what?’ she asked.

‘Why were you brought here? Who wrote the letter and why now?’ He paused. ‘I keep coming back to that. Whoever wrote that letter knows what happened. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Duncan.’

He swore, wishing he could make himself clear. ‘I’m sorry, Violet but everything you’ve told me about Duncan, and what I’ve seen for myself . . .’ He paused. ‘I know this is going to sound strange, but I don’t think he knew your mother was dead, not until you turned up looking for her.’

For once Mrs Anderson didn’t have to tolerate snide remarks. Usually when she visited the shop, a group of villagers would be hanging around the counter. ‘Idle bletherers’ she had taken to calling them, grumbling it under her breath as well as to their faces when the occasion warranted. There were more of them today, a dozen at least, but instead of passing the time making comments about Mrs Anderson (how stuck-up she was; how demeaning it must be for her to do her own shopping) they paid her no attention at all, so engrossed were they by Duncan Boyd’s death. Mrs Anderson took advantage of her invisibility by going from display to display, picking up items, returning them, selecting one or two for her basket – a packet of rice, a tin of tomatoes, milk – and taking her time. If anyone had paid her attention, they would have seen how she dithered by the shelves closest to the ‘bletherers’, how she seemed to concentrate as much on what was being said as on the packets and tins she was examining and how, after being in the shop a while, she left it again hurriedly and on the way out abandoned her basket by the door, the rice, the tin of tomatoes and the milk still in it.

If anyone in the shop had gone to the window and looked out they would also have seen Mrs Anderson sitting in her car. They would have noticed her talking to herself and, if they’d watched for long enough, they’d have seen how flustered she seemed to be. They might have called the others over to enjoy the spectacle: the dour and disapproving Mrs Anderson discomfited for a change.

The possibility of being observed was one
factor in Mrs Anderson’s unease. Another was the way
she had already drawn attention to herself by leaving her
shopping behind. But mostly her disquiet stemmed from the conversation
she had just overheard: how Jim Carmichael had visited Boyd’
s Farm the previous evening; how he’d found Duncan
to be tearful and distressed and wanting to unburden himself ‘
about a darkness in his life which had become too
difficult to bear’; how between sobs and howls Duncan had
confessed to Megan Bates’s murder; how he’d kept
on repeating ‘she knows, she knows’ and when Jim had
asked who
she
was he’d replied Violet Wells. Jim
had thought Duncan ‘was just being Duncan’ and having one
of his emotional turns. He’d stayed on at Boyd’
s Farm until Duncan had calmed down again and then
he’d returned to his small-holding. He’d rung
the police as soon as he heard about the hanging.
He blamed himself, according to the bletherers. Duncan would still
be alive and facing trial for murder if only Jim
had realised he was telling the truth.

Mrs Anderson’s head was left spinning at the turn of events.

When the postman gave her the news about Duncan’s death, she gasped with surprise, ‘Oh my goodness,’ she said. ‘Poor Duncan . . .’ She must have appeared upset because the postman asked if he could make her a cup of tea with sugar in it before he carried on with his rounds. ‘Sugar is good for shock,’ he said. He’d learned the tip watching Holby City the night before. Had she seen it, he asked. She said she hadn’t and declined his offer. She’d gone back to her kitchen, where she did as he suggested; made herself sugary tea. After all she was a little shocked, as much by Duncan hanging himself –
that
she hadn’t expected – as by the postman linking it so definitely to the murder ‘a long time ago to some woman called Bates’. After the revivifying tea, she decided on a visit to the shop to discover what else was being said.

So thrown was she by her eavesdropping that instead of returning to Gardener’s Cottage (as she knew she should) she decided to take a chance on visiting Jim to find out what was going on. As she had never been to his smallholding before, she fretted about drawing attention to herself again. She started the car in a tizzy of indecision and let it roll towards the road. Left for Jim; right for Gardener’s Cottage. She chose left and berated herself for making the wrong decision. She called herself ‘idiot’ and ‘fool’ in the vague hope she’d come to her senses, turn the car around and go home. Still, she drove on. A compulsion had overtaken her. She had to find out why Jim had been inventing things, whether he was just being Jim – making himself the centre of attention – or if something else was afoot, something that could spoil her plan.

On the southern shore of Poltown Loch, the road narrowed at a cattle grid. Mrs Anderson stopped the car to compose herself (it would never do to let Jim think she was in a flap) and to rehearse her explanation for dropping by. After checking her face in the mirror and adjusting her hair, she released the brake and let out the clutch. The car progressed slowly along a winding road sheltered by birch and alder trees. Then emerging on to more open ground, Mrs Anderson spied Jim’s small-holding ahead of her. It amounted to a patchwork of small fields around a house and outbuildings set back from the shore of the sea loch. She stopped the car to take it all in and noticed sheep spilling from a trailer into a pasture beside the house. A man was banging on the trailer sides as the animals careered down the ramp. Jim, she thought. At least he looked like Jim: small, round and wearing blue overalls. Mrs Anderson released the brake and drove on only to regret her impetuosity. What concerned her was the Land Rover attached to the trailer. She knew it wasn’t Jim’s. Someone else had to be there: the thought hadn’t occurred to her earlier so distracted had she been.

She scolded herself again –
idiot, fool!
If only she had gone home and rung Jim. Why hadn’t she thought of it earlier? There was nothing she could say to his face that she couldn’t have mentioned on the phone. But it was too late to turn back now. Jim, or the figure she thought was Jim, had noticed her car. He was looking towards it. Although she was still a distance away, too far for her face to be identifiable, the chances were he recognised her car. Being the obliging sort, Jim had a habit of inquiring whether she needed the oil or tyres checked, and sometimes she let him tinker. Even so, Mrs Anderson considered turning round and going home. She could always ring later and spin him a story about not wanting to bother him when he was busy. She looked at the road ahead but couldn’t see anywhere to turn; nor, she realised after glancing in the mirror, was there anywhere behind so thick was the bracken growing at the edge of the tarmac. In desperation she considered reversing all the way to the cattle grid. But her neck was far too stiff to carry it off with any degree of safety. She made a muffled exclamation of frustration and resigned herself to the inevitable.

Once she’d parked beside the stone wall in front of the house, Jim came hurrying towards her. He seemed agitated. She wondered if her unannounced (and unprecedented) visit was the cause or if he was aghast at the thought of someone like Mrs Anderson seeing inside his house. As soon as she got out of the car she attempted to reassure him, complimenting him on his home. A little paradise, she called it, and remarked with feigned exasperation at her unadventurous nature that had prevented her from paying a visit until today.