Where the Bodies are Buried (16 page)

‘Who’s missing?’ she asked. ‘What’s the name?’

‘Glen Fallan,’ Jasmine replied.

The woman shook her head, but it was to register a lack of recognition, not a refusal of help. Despite this, something in
her seemed to soften.

‘Why don’t you come inside and wait. Tron’s out the back working at the moment, but he’s due a break. It’s getting on for
lunch.’

She opened the door a little wider and stepped to the side.

‘I’m Rita, by the way,’ she said. ‘Rita Cranleigh. Have you come far?’

‘Down from Glasgow.’

Rita led her into the hallway, which was dark after the bright sunshine outside. There was oak panelling on the walls, absorbing
a lot of the light, and causing both of their footsteps to reverberate from the varnished boards below. Jasmine could see
a staircase leading to a gallery above, three doors visible along it. They were all firmly closed. She thought she could still
hear the children’s voices, somewhere behind one of them.

Rita caught her glancing upwards, detecting her curiosity at her surroundings. She led her beyond the staircase, past more
closed doors, and on into a huge kitchen towards the rear. Jasmine could hear the chainsaw louder and closer, though she couldn’t
see who was wielding it; despite the allaying of her unease, she was now actually pretty sure that a chainsaw it was.

‘You’re wondering what this place is, aren’t you?’ Rita said, sounding strangely assured by Jasmine’s curiosity.

‘I’m not here to pry,’ she insisted politely. ‘Well, not into that, I mean,’ she added with a self-conscious giggle. (Because
I’m an investigator, me. Really, really, really.)

‘It’s a refuge,’ Rita told her neutrally. ‘A safe house. The women here generally don’t want their whereabouts to be known,
so you’ll forgive me if I was a little defensive earlier.’

‘Not at all. Under the circumstances, I don’t suppose I could actually have said anything worse than that I’m a private investigator.’

‘No,’ Rita agreed, offering a wry smile as she filled the kettle. ‘Although the likelihood is that a private investigator
come in search of one of our residents wouldn’t announce his or her profession up front.’

Jasmine worried for a moment that this was Rita’s way of saying she had seen right through her as a shambling amateur, which
was probably why she offered a renewed reason to suspect her by way of response.

‘Could always be a double bluff. Allay your suspicions by asking after a man.’

‘No,’ Rita replied, almost amused by the notion. She opened a large
double-door fridge-freezer and took out a carton of milk, placing it on the kitchen table next to a sugar bowl. ‘They wouldn’t
know to ask for Tron Ingrams. He’s discreet about his involvement with us. And believe me, they wouldn’t be asking for him
by way of subterfuge. He’d see through them in a twinkling.’

‘What is his involvement with you?’

‘He works here on a voluntary basis, when he can. Gardener, handyman, courier, just whatever needs doing to keep the place
shipshape. He was in the army. Kind of bloke who could demolish a shed for you in the morning, then use the parts to build
a bridge in the afternoon. I don’t know how we ever managed without him, to be honest, though we still have to at times. He’s
often away, out of the country.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Work.’

Jasmine wondered whether it was worth probing for a more specific answer, unable to decide whether Rita was being vague because
she didn’t know or because she wouldn’t say.

She heard an interior door open somewhere beyond the kitchen, then close again a couple of seconds later.

‘They won’t come out until you’re gone,’ Rita said, lifting mugs from a shelf. Jasmine was simultaneously expectant and apprehensive
to count three. ‘They don’t want anyone to see they’re here in case it gets back to the people they’re trying to escape from.
We take every precaution, but it’s not fail-safe. People let things slip, or they trust the wrong person with information.
We’ve had quite a few husbands and partners turn up here over the years, and it’s very distressing, not just for the women
concerned. It shatters the sense of security for everybody.’

‘What do you do then?’

‘We have to call the police.’

She made this sound more trouble than it was worth.

‘They warn the blokes off, escort them from the premises, but they come back. Once they know their wives or partners are here,
they always come back. Except when Mr Ingrams is available,’ she added, arching her eyebrows. ‘When
he
warns them off, they never come back.’

Jasmine heard the buzzing sound cease outside as Rita poured hot water into a capacious and seasoned-looking teapot. She had
just set it on a low heat upon a gas hob when the back door opened and Ingrams came in. He was dressed in dark green camo
pants and a
sleeveless black T-shirt, a pair of protective goggles fixed around his eyes by an elasticated strap. He had an unmistakably
military bearing about him: tall, toned and muscular, his skin tanned and weathered, indicative of spending a lot of time
outdoors in warmer climates.

He took the goggles off as he tugged the door closed, which was when he appeared to notice that Rita had a visitor. He fixed
Jasmine with a stare from the doorway that made McDade’s gaze seem like an ambient mood light by comparison. It was a look
so deeply scrutinising that she felt pinned to her chair by it until he looked away again, glancing to Rita for explanation.
He seemed discomfited by the sight of this new presence, but Jasmine guessed that this was his default position regarding
strangers here until Rita vouched for them.

Jasmine put his age at early forties, but allowed for a margin of five years either side; he was clearly a man who kept himself
fit and healthy, yet something about his face suggested a very hard paper-round. His eyes gave the impression of having seen
a great deal more than he would have liked. There was a stillness about them that hinted at chilling cold and perilous depths,
where something truly frightening lurked beneath the surface.

‘Ah, Mr Ingrams,’ Rita said familiarly. ‘This is Jasmine. She’s down from Glasgow. She’s a private investigator and she says
you spoke to her colleague a while back regarding a missing person. She’d just like a little of your time to ask some questions.’

Ingrams stared at Jasmine again, a trace of confusion playing briefly across his face before it returned to its previous look
of suppressed hostility. This time, she really didn’t think she was being paranoid to suspect that the confusion was born
of his failure to equate the words ‘private investigator’ with what he saw in front of him.

‘I don’t have anything to tell you that I didn’t already tell your colleague,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t have anything to tell
your colleague.’

He walked straight to the sink and poured himself a glass of water, standing with his back to Jasmine as he gulped it down.
Closer by, Jasmine could see the wetness that was hidden by the black of the T-shirt and a thin film of sawdust adhering to
his skin, held there by a layer of sweat. His hair was close-cropped, shaven in tight at the back and sides, pale lines of
scars amidst the salt-and-pepper dots like the canals on Mars or fragments of crop circles.

She glanced anxiously at Rita to see how she was taking his response,
in particular the indication that he hadn’t been quite so helpful to Jasmine’s ‘colleague’ as she had implied.

‘I don’t imagine Jasmine’s travelled all the way down here if there weren’t perhaps some new questions to ask,’ Rita said,
giving her an apologetic but unsurprised look. He might be Mr Sun-kissed, but clearly he was seldom Mr Sunshine.

‘I don’t have time,’ he replied. ‘I have to go to Heddon to the garden centre, plus the wood-shredder’s finally given up the
ghost, so I need to pick up a replacement.’

‘Well, why doesn’t Jasmine accompany you and she can ask her questions on the drive? That way you’d be killing two birds with
one stone.’

It would have been hard at that moment to know which of them fancied that idea less. The main difference was that Jasmine
had to disguise her misgivings at the prospect of letting Ingrams drive her off into the unknown behind a mask of gratitude
for Rita’s helpful suggestion. Ingrams was not constrained by any such dichotomies and thus shot Rita a glare that would have
had most people whimpering.

The fact that Rita seemed mildly amused by it told Jasmine that there must be a great deal of trust between them. Rita would
not have presumed to impose upon him in the face of such obvious reluctance, and equally Ingrams would not have responded
with a look like that if they didn’t both understand that she was immune to its threat.

Ingrams gave a sigh and muttered something about leaving in two minutes, before stomping back through the outside door again
with unapologetically bad grace.

Jasmine had no reason to believe that she shared Rita’s immunity, but she couldn’t see how she could back out of this without
making it obvious that she believed she had something to fear from him.

Rita seemed to read her apprehension. She patted Jasmine’s hand.

‘Make sure he buys you a cuppa at the garden centre, seeing as he’s hauling you away from this one. And don’t worry: his bark’s
worse than his bite.’

Jasmine was reminded of dog-owners who said things like ‘he won’t touch you’ as their horribly befanged hound bounded towards
her in the park, regardless of the fact that they would have precisely no control over the slavering beast if it decided to
have her leg off. This woman, who ran a refuge, thought highly of Ingrams and thoroughly trusted the man, and that in itself
was a kind of endorsement, but by
her own admission there were plenty of things she didn’t know about him. Like whether he had murdered Jasmine’s uncle and
was about to do the same to her. Either way, Jasmine really wished that Rita hadn’t used a phrase that included the word ‘killing’
when she made her helpful suggestion.

‘What time will you be clear?’ Drew asked, as Catherine indicated to pull in at West Street underground station.

‘How long is a piece of string? You know what court’s like.’

‘You know what I mean. You sure you’ll be done in time for the boys?’

‘Of course. Don’t worry about it. You take all the time you need.’

Catherine gave a small laugh as she spoke, trying to sound reassuring, but it was as much to cover her resentment at the implication
that she might not be free in time to pick up Duncan and Fraser from school. Drew was going through to Edinburgh for a project
meeting and then dinner with his colleagues. As he mostly worked at home and it was usually down to him to cover the school
run, he could get anxious when it was left to Catherine, allied to a certain prickliness over the fact that though such instances
were few, they were often nonetheless fraught with complications. He didn’t spell it out, but she knew it pissed him off.
In Drew’s mind, given that he constantly and invaluably accommodated the unpredictability of Catherine’s schedule, it was
only fair that on the rare occasions when he needed her to reciprocate, he should be able to ride off relaxed in the knowledge
that there weren’t several variables in play that could potentially screw the whole thing up.

Catherine understood why it annoyed him, but she still considered it unfair. Admittedly there had been a few mad dashes and
some last-minute contingencies worked out, but neither of the boys had ever been left standing at the school gates, and nor
would she ever have allowed that to happen.

Drew knew that, and he wasn’t really implying that there might be a problem, either. He was angry with her about something
else, but there wasn’t time to talk about it, far less do anything about it (which was itself the rub).

‘Okay. I’ll phone around teatime,’ he said, opening the passenger-side door. The rain chose that moment to progress from heavy
to torrential, yet he seemed in a hurry to get out into it.

‘Enjoy yourself. Give me a kiss.’

She feared for a moment he was going to say no, maybe use the rain and the fact that he was halfway out the car as an acceptable
reason to just hurry off. Instead he leaned in and gave her a rather cursory peck on the lips, pulling away even as she was
trying to prolong it.

‘I’ll see you about ten-ish.’

‘Don’t rush. Late as you like. Love you.’

He didn’t reply: simply gave her a weak smile and then hurried off across the pavement, holding his wee man-bag over his head
as cover against the downpour.

Catherine watched him disappear inside the station, her auto-responsive windscreen wipers thrashing like a pair of turbo-charged
metronomes. She gave a sigh and indicated to rejoin the traffic, heavy and slow because of the rain.

It was a real ‘party’s over’ moment, in her mind heralding the death of the summer. The weather had broken, an Atlantic low-pressure
system blowing in to quench the heat of a sustained sunny spell, the majority of which had happened, typically, during the
fortnight Catherine had spent on holiday in Menorca. Now the holiday was finished, the sunny spell had been washed away, the
schools were back and she was knee-deep in another murder case. It felt like summer was over and she didn’t quite know where
it had gone, or what she’d been planning to do with it anyway.

Catch up, that was what she had wanted to do. Get off the belt, step back. Now the belt was whizzing away again, everything
the way it always was, except maybe faster. Fraser was starting Primary Two, yet some mornings over the school holidays she
had caught herself wondering why Drew wasn’t getting him ready for nursery. Duncan was starting Primary
Four.

Then there was Drew, the main reason she had wanted to get off the belt.

They hadn’t had sex in six weeks. He probably didn’t think she was counting, but she was, and she knew for a fact that he
would be. He probably thought she wasn’t that fussed either, but he was wrong about that too, acutely.